Illuminating
Darkness
“In the beginning when God created the heavens
and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of
the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters. Then God
said, ‘Let there be light;’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was
good; and God separated the light from the darkness.”[1]
Whether or not one believes in this fable from Judeo-Christian cosmology, the
contrast between light and darkness has been present in the universe since the
beginning of time. Punctuations of light occasionally rebuff the ceaseless
darkness, but as light fades primordial darkness remains the dominant presence
in the cosmos. Some may describe the relationship between tints and shades as a
struggle between good and evil, but this polarity is entirely anthropocentric.
Only since the time of man have metaphorical values been ascribed to light and
dark, making such ascriptions suspect.
Throughout his novella Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
explores the immanent dichotomy of light and darkness.[2]
He takes special care with the second element, darkness, illuminating its
potential to convey not only the traditional notion of evil, but also its impenetrable
obscurity and emptiness. Four artists, Michelangelo Caravaggio, Plato, and T.S.
Eliot, use darkness and the inseparable element of shadow in a manner that
exemplifies these two potentials. Caravaggio allowed sins he committed late in
his life, and his feelings of remorse, to permeate his later works. One piece
in particular, John the Baptist (1610),
a depiction of St. John the Baptist reclining with heavy shadows obscuring him,
reflects the overflowing darkness present in the moribund Caravaggio. Plato’s “Allegory
of the Cave” opposes this conception of an oversaturated darkness arguing
instead for its inherent emptiness. T.S. Eliot uses shadow in his poem “The
Hollow Men” to articulate the interplay between the two conceptions through the
turbidity of men affected by war. Though the artists convey darkness in a
different manner, their respective interpretations of the motif are not mutually
exclusive and can be used to better understand the powerful and empty meanings
of darkness in literature and art.
In the late sixteenth and early
seventeenth centuries, the Milanese artist Michelangelo Caravaggio came to
prominence because of his excellent ability to create paintings containing
moralizing messages, exaggerated motion, and clear detail. These qualities soon
became known as the baroque school of art. A particular quality that shines
through in Caravaggio’s art was his exploration of themes of light and
darkness, known as chiaroscuro.[3]
While the technique had existed since the illuminated manuscripts of the early
Renaissance, Caravaggio did not simply rely on prior techniques, but instead
made the style his own. Through his exceptional use of chiaroscuro to create
images with extreme contrasts of light and dark, Caravaggio innovated the
technique of tenebrism, which emphasized shadows.[4]
Conrad explicitly mentions this notion of tenebrism twice in Heart of Darkness: in reference to the
mysterious land of the Congo.[5]
Caravaggio’s innovative use of
shadows in his work did not go unnoticed by his contemporaries. Annibale
Caracci, an artistic contemporary of Caravaggio and one of the other founders
of the baroque style, remarked “the shadows of night” conveniently hid “the
difficult parts of art.”[6]
I do not believe this was Caravaggio’s intention when he chose to emphasize
darkness over light. I think there is something to be said for the relationship
between physiognomy and art put forth by Wittkower and Wittkower in their work Born Under Saturn.[7]
In this book on art theory, the authors explore the relationship between the
personality, character, and work of artists. In the case of Caravaggio this
connection is quite evident. Caravaggio began his career with a wide spectrum of
colors and painted characters with gay dispositions. He painted his own
likeness in many pieces to save on the costs of hiring a model – an act that
already foreshadowed the connection between his characters and his work. A few
years after Caravaggio moved to Rome, his works began to take on a decidedly
darker tone. Spending a considerable amount of time in taverns and other sordid
locales, Caravaggio came to paint his figures in the environments he was now
used to and cloaked his works in ‘cellar light.’ The growing presence of shadow
in his work paralleled the darkness in his life. In 1606 Caravaggio was forced
to flee from Rome after a brawl left another man dead. As he moved from Rome to
Naples, Malta, and later Sicily, Caravaggio’s work became increasingly steeped
in darkness.
This gradual transformation from colorful
scenes in the light to monochromatic scenes in darkness can be seen clearly in
his many portrayals of St. John the Baptist. St. John was a common figure portrayed
by Caravaggio from his early years in Rome, perhaps even prior to his arrival,
to the final months of his life. The earliest of these pieces depict a sanguine
saint in bright outdoor environments. As Caravaggio’s life became more violent
and tumultuous, his paintings of St. John lost their vibrant coloration and the
shadowy borders began to enclose the figure. By the end of the trajectory, the
background is no longer visible as a result of the extreme darkness and the
figure is almost entirely submerged in black. Some scholars have seen this blackness
as a sanctuary for Caravaggio, who was acclimated to the darker parts of
society and even had his studio painted dark colors. “Shadows, he felt, offered
shelter as can four walls and a roof. Whatever and wherever he painted he
really painted interiors… He only felt at home - no, that he felt nowhere - he
only felt relatively at ease inside... A body flares with light in an interior
of darkness. The surroundings - the world outside the window - can be
forgotten. Only the worst news can come from there.”[8]
This passage reflects the aspect of darkness that Caravaggio found comforting.
While I agree with the statement, I believe that Caravaggio did not choose to
paint darkness, but rather that darkness played such a central role in his life
at that time that he could not paint a bright and colorful alternative.
The painting that best expresses this
descent into darkness is Caravaggio’s 1610 depiction of John the Baptist. [9]
This image of the saint has him almost fully enveloped in shadow facing away
from the viewer. The background is almost completely obscured by darkness.
While all of the other depictions of the saint associated him with some form of
life - vegetation or animals, in this piece the saint is almost, if not entirely,
alone, isolated by the dark. This isolation reflects the contemporaneous stage
of Caravaggio’s life. Following his escape from Rome, Caravaggio spent time in
Naples before finding himself as a member of the Knights of St. John on
the island of Malta. After murdering a fellow knight, Caravaggio fled from the
island to the home of his friends in Sicily. In order to evade his pursuers, Caravaggio
had to flee from his friends and then beseeched a number of his previous
patrons, Cardinal Scipione Borghese and Alof de Wignacourt, for clemency for
his actions. Along with letters of supplication Caravaggio sent paintings to entreat
the cardinal to his cause. The 1610 painting of John the Baptist was one of
these paintings.
This piece marked the nadir of
Caravaggio’s life. St. John and the
paintings that accompanied it were all it was possible for Caravaggio to do to
save himself from the misfortunes he created. Two of these supplication pieces,
David with the Head of Goliath and Salome with the Head of John the Baptist,
contain unequivocal examples of Caravaggio’s atonement and deep connection to
his work. Both of the decapitated figures presented in the works wear the face
of Caravaggio himself. This connection between artist and painting helps unite the
literal and figurative darkness in Caravaggio’s life with the tenebrism of his
canvas; the misery of his life began to overflow into his art. In this sense,
Caravaggio clearly connects darkness with its traditional association with
evil. This contrasts the most obscure connection put forth by T.S. Eliot in his
poem “The Hollow Men.” Eliot ascribes values to darkness aside from evil. Before
exploring this alternative definition, it may be helpful to present a more
antithetical definition put forth by Plato in the “Allegory of the Cave.”
In book VII of The Republic, Plato illustrates the hollowness of reality through
the so-called “Allegory of the Cave.” Presented as a dialectic between Socrates
and Glaucon, the parable describes the circumstances of a group of captives who
have spent their entire lives imprisoned in a dark cave. Their limbs have been
bound and their heads restrained so that they can only see the wall straight in
front of them. There is a fire burning behind them and various objects placed
on a raised way between the captives and the fire. This light then casts
shadows of those objects on the wall in front of the constrained people. To
these people, “the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the
images.”[10]
While the intent of Plato’s Allegory
is to assert that the roles of philosophers, those who have made it out of the
cave and seen real light, is to return and deliver the masses from the
ignorance of shadows, his notion of shadow can be applicable to the ones
portrayed in Heart of Darkness. To
the people in Plato’s Allegory, shadows represent a vapid reflection of
reality. This notion of darkness or shadow seems to be at odds with the one
presented in Caravaggio’s work. Instead of representing the violent melancholy
of Caravaggio’s life and the darkness he took comfort in surrounding himself
with, Plato’s darkness embodies ignorance and hollowness. The divergent views
can be rectified if one equates ignorance with evil, but that answer may be too
simplistic. T.S. Elliot’s “The Hollow Men” considers the interplay between
these divergent elements by focusing on the obscure nature shadow.
Written in 1925, “The Hollow Men” is
recognized to be most concerned with Europe in the period following World War I.
Seen in this light, the poem’s use of shadow understandably reflects the
ambiguity of darkness in the period. People committed heinous acts fighting for
their nations and whether or not those acts were legally justified as part of
war, the actors needed to confront the repercussions personally. This situation
was not dissimilar to the one faced by Marlow and Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. In both cases the protagonists, the soldiers in
Europe and Marlow and Kurtz, found themselves in a context where committing
dark acts, either the murder of enemy combatants or the exploitation of native
peoples, was not only rational, but encouraged. Eliot’s explicit connection to Heart of Darkness with his epigraph
“Mistah Kurtz – he dead” directly taken from the novella demonstrates the
thematic connections between the works. Though it does not explicitly refer to
darkness, the following passage is pertinent to its definition nonetheless.
“Those
who have crossed
With
direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom
Remember
us—if at all—not as lost
Violent
souls, but only
As the
hollow men
The
men referred to in the passage are likely those who participated in or were affected
by World War I. They have been filled with darkness and left vacant by their
experiences with war. Describing them as both “hollow” and “stuffed” poses an
interesting contradiction. [12] Hollow
implies the idea of emptiness
and lack of content similar to the notion of shadows in the “Allegory of the
Cave.” Stuffed implies the inverse: filled to the point of overflowing, a
concept similar to the darkness in Caravaggio’s life spilling over onto his
canvas. This contrarian description of the “violent souls” as both hollow and
stuffed is redolent with the multifaceted notion of darkness put forth in Heart of Darkness. These notions are not
mutually exclusive, but can be used to arrive at a complex, but also more
complete, understanding of the human conception of darkness.
The final stanzas of the poem
situate shadow between pairs of abstract concepts. In this pivotal location, the
shadow acts as both an undoubtedly powerful force and as something preventing intentions
from becoming actions.
“Between
the idea
And the
reality,
Between
the motion
And the
act,
Falls the
Shadow. For Thine is the Kingdom.
Between
the conception
And the
creation
Between
the emotion
And the
response
Falls the
Shadow Life is very long.
Between
the desire
And the
spasm
Between
the potency
And the
existence
Between
the essence
And the
descent
Shadows
interrupt all levels of reality becoming the “God of anti-creation, it stops
time and aims for an eternity of hollow abstraction and nothingness.”[14]
While such profound rhetoric may seem like hyperbole, in the case of “The
Hollow Men” it is appropriate. In this poem shadows are both powerful and
hollow. The evils of war have both saturated the hollow men and left them empty
vessels questioning their choices and incapable of action. The character of
Kurtz, in Heart of Darkness, conveys a
similar precedent regarding the dangers of darkness.
One of the most salient examples of
the affects of darkness can be found in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. While there are countless mentions of darkness,
shade, shadow and other related terminology throughout the novella, one scene is
particularly useful for understanding the interpretation that I put forth. The
excerpt when Marlow and the crew of his riverboat successfully extricate
Kurtz from his home in the Congo demonstrates the dangers of living in darkness
for too long a time. After months in the Congo, Kurtz, the Chief of the Inner
Station, has established himself as a prodigious ivory trader and as a demigod
to the local natives. In order to do so, Kurtz gave himself completely over to
the native culture. Kurtz’s abrupt removal from his adoptive home in the
darkness of the Belgian Congo left him a shell of a man consumed with strong
emotion and confusion.
"Kurtz
discoursed. A voice! a voice! It rang deep to the very last. It survived his
strength to hide in the magnificent folds of eloquence the barren darkness of
his heart. Oh, he struggled! he struggled! The wastes of his weary brain were
haunted by shadowy images now—images of wealth and fame revolving obsequiously
round his inextinguishable gift of noble and lofty expression. My Intended, my
station, my career, my ideas—these were the subjects for the occasional
utterances of elevated sentiments. The shade of the original Kurtz frequented
the bedside of the hollow sham, whose fate it was to be buried presently in the
mold of primeval earth. But both the diabolic love and the unearthly hate of the
mysteries it had penetrated fought for the possession of that soul satiated
with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the
appearances of success and power.”[15]
Marlow’s narrative conveys “the
darkness of the Congo wilderness, the darkness of the European's cruel
treatment of the natives, and the unfathomable darkness within every human
being for committing heinous acts of evil.”[16]
This common held interpretation of Heart
of Darkness suggests a number of different ways in which darkness is
expressed. While I agree with the traditional view of the novella I would like
to focus on a less-discussed aspect of the darkness: Kurtz’s hollowness. This
passage in particular encapsulates the conception that darkness is both empty
and evil. I do not believe that it was the influence of the Congolese, but
rather his reversion to baser instincts of greed and exploitation while working
for the trading company that consumed Kurtz with darkness. The passage earlier
in the novella concerning Marlow’s discovery of the decapitated heads confirms
this notion of Kurtz’s “wanting nature” and his quality of hollowness that the
wilderness did not create, but rather only capitalized on.[17]
While Kurtz’s strong voice is
demonstrative of sound mind and body, in fact his strength is only superficial.
His heart is now barren and darkness. The darkness has so fully consumed him
and satiated his primitive emotions, “wealth and fame,” that he is left with
little substance. Another Though Kurtz did achieve his goals and become
notorious for his success as Chief of the Inner Station it left him a “hollow
sham.” Elsewhere in the novel Kurtz’s sickly appearance is described as the
“the animated image of death carved out of ivory.”[18]
Kurtz mentions instances when he questioned his place in the Congo and longed
to return home, but quickly reverted to his dark ways when the opportunity to
return presented itself. These instances demonstrate Kurtz eschewing the path
back to a world where he does not necessarily have to exploit and kill to be
successful. Unfortunately for Kurtz, he is unable to escape his primal
darkness. After being forcibly removed from his dark circumstances Kurtz’s
hollowness becomes more evident. Without the exercise of his darkness, Kurtz
begins to die. Kurtz finally utters his enigmatic last words “The horror! The
horror!” and as he passes on Marlow extinguishes the dim candle illuminating
his cabin.
Despite a common usage of this
particular thematic element and decision to allow shadow to dominate light,
each artist uniquely applies darkness to his work. Caravaggio demonstrates the
strength of darkness by painting the evils of his life into his works and
innovating the style of tenebrism. Plato instead argues for the emptiness of shadows
as a poor reflection of properly illuminated life. T.S. Eliot explores a
combination of his two predecessors by addressing the uncertainty felt by those
steeped in darkness following war. Finally, Conrad uses darkness to echo the
confusion of the war-touched men through the character Kurtz and synthesizes
the qualities of emptiness and overflowing evil. In spite of their different
goals, Caravaggio, Plato, Eliot, and Conrad demonstrate the importance of darkness
in literature and fine art. Darkness should not be relegated to its traditional
location opposite from light; darkness contains a dichotomy within itself between
hollow and stuffed and this nuance deserves proper attention. The definition of
darkness is not black and white.
Bibliography
The Holy Bible,
King James Version. New York: American Bible Society: 1999; Bartleby.com, 2000.
www.bartleby.com/108/.
Conrad, Joseph. Heart
of Darkness. New York: Penguin, 1999. Print.
Warwick,
Genevieve, and Michelangelo Merisi Da Caravaggio. Caravaggio: Realism,
Rebellion, Reception. Newark [DE: University of Delaware, 2006. Print.
Wittkower,
Rudolf, and Margot Wittkower. Born under Saturn; the Character and Conduct
of Artists: A Documented History from Antiquity to the French Revolution. New
York: Random House, 1963. Print.
John Berger,
"Caravaggio: A Contemporary View", 1983, Studio International, Volume
196 Number 998. Print.
Plato. The
Republic. Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1955. Print.
Eliot, T. S..
“The Hollow Men.” Poetry X. Ed. Jough Dempsey. 13 Jul 2003. 12 Mar. 2013
<http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/784/>.
“Analysis and
Interpretation of ‘The Hollow Men.’” http://mural.uv.es/rubafa/hollowmen.htm.
N.p., n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2013.
Introduction to
"Heart of Darkness." By Joseph Conrad. Search EText, Read Online,
Study, Discuss. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2013.
Da Caravaggio,
Michelangelo Merisi Da. John the Baptist (Reclining Baptist). 1610. Oil
on Canvas. Private, Munich. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Caravaggio-Baptist-reclining.jpg
[2] My choice to print this
document in black and white further supports this dichotomy.
[3] A term derived from the Italian: chiaro (light) and scuro
(dark).
[4] A term derived from the Latin tenebrae
(darkness).
[5] Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 76, 85.
[6] Warwick, Caravaggio, 34.
[7] Wittkower, Born
Under Saturn, ch. 12.
[8] Berger,
"Caravaggio: A Contemporary View," 1983.
[9] Da Caravaggio,
Michelangelo Merisi Da. John the Baptist (Reclining Baptist). 1610.
[10] Plato, The Republic, Book VII.
[11] T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow
Men,” 13-18.
[12] "Analysis and
Interpretation of The Hollow Men."
[13] T.S. Eliot, “The Hollow
Men,” lines 72-90.
[14] "Analysis and
Interpretation of The Hollow Men."
[15] Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 85.
[16]
http://www.online-literature.com/conrad/heart_of_darkness/
[17] Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 72.
[18] Conrad, Heart of Darkness, 75.
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