Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)

Tibor Tóth: Conrad's 'Secret Garden'

His mythical discourse becomes clearly the expression of progression and regression, of the erotic and the thanatic quality. Progression is used here to express the hero's attempt to interpret the 'civilising mission' of the company using constructive religious discourse: "pilgrims", "apostles". This discourse in itself comes to be employed within a thanatic context, meaning the death of that discourse: the concrete noun objects are defined through portentous and vague qualifications: the pilgrims are faithless, the apostles are false, and we become participants in a "weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares."

6 Progression is not the expression of the erotic, but of thanatos, the desire to die, to be swallowed up by the uncertainty defining the expedition as the rival discourse deconstructs the initial meaning of progression, the process intended to clarify meanings having mythical dimensions. Regression into the 'primitive' world is, on the other hand, simultaneously governed by Eros, the desire to chart the mythical parallels that might create order in and love of what is assessed by virtue of prejudice as 'prehistoric', that is, pre-Christian, chaos. Marlow is dominated by the desire to experience this chaos. The fact that he does not idealise his appointed task contrasts his insistence on his status of the person chosen for this mission. Marlow repeatedly states that he is not one of them, that is he is isolated among those people and he has no point of contact with them.

7 The Europeans he so insistently separates himself from become the agents of the decaying West, and Marlow alone is granted the right to set out in search of God. Considering his standing, his search can be defined as an attempt to reintegrate the modern man into a state he seems to have lost forever. His pilgrimage in spite of its objective, physical progression remains essentially static, because its real destination is, and remains, a spiritual one. The snake that charmed him,

8 becomes a recurring motif and even the river Congo comes to be perceived as "an immense snake uncoiled, with its head in the sea ...,"

9 The religious terminology and the biblical allusion to the snake, together with the loss of the "blank space of delightful mystery - a white patch for a boy to dream gloriously over. ... [which] had become a place of 6 Heart of Darkness, 63 7 Heart of Darkness, 61 8 Heart of Darkness

, 53 9 Heart of Darkness, 52 157