to the squad and especially to glove, platt, struan, and roger who answered
me regarding the nature of evil and the MOQ:
i am a lover of literature which i see as a reflection of ourselves. more
and more i have been attracted to writers who question the duality of good
and evil. writers like Blake who saw good as innocence and evil as
experience in the progression of contraries. remember the allure of ,
"Tyger, Tyger burning bright in the forest of the night!"? and Hesse who
intuitively understood the illusory reality of two separate worlds of dark
and light, good and evil which is "Demian". but it is Conrad who best
captures the ambiguity of evil.
Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" is a literal journey into Africa and a
figurative journey into the dark heart of Mankind. Conrad doesn't delve in
the light, he focuses on the wild attraction of the beckoning darkness. Who
among us is not enticed by the forbidden abandonment of order to a wild
surrender of the senses that the jungle seems to inspire?
But the ambiguity does not stop there. It is the tension between order
and wild abandonment that tempt us into the heart of darkness. Conrad
maintains this delicate dance between the order of a civilized world and the
fascination with the abomination until the very end which is exemplified by
Kurtz' last enigmatic words, "The horror, the horror". But, it is in
Marlow's narration that this carefully orchestrated tension is best
illustrated. For if the darkness of Mankind's heart destroys Kurtz, it is
the spectre of Marlow which underscores the spiritual and moral degradation
that ensues after the confrontation with the terrible truth that he must
hide from Kurtz' beloved.
It isn't the truth in the heart of darkness that destroys Man it is the lie
by which we live that permeates the "horror" of our existence. i contend
that this is what Dynamic Quality really is. A "horror" unintelligible to
humans. as Nietzsche said "Beauty is terror". only by separating it into
an illusory duality of good and evil can it be understood with some measure
of safety.
what do you say to that?
and if anyone says im off the subject, let me remind you of all the
motorcycle talk that there has been of late...*S
Lithien
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