【英文翻译版57】马娅·亚桑诺夫：《黑暗的心》

英文文稿+中文翻译 

Zachary Davis: Joseph Conrad spent much of his life on the water. He became a sailor at the age of 17, and his experiences at sea and abroad provided much of the inspiration for his later writing career. By the time he died, in 1924, he had written 20 books, as well as many stories and essays.

扎卡里·戴维斯：约瑟夫·康拉德一生中的大部分时间都在海上度过。17岁时，他便成了一名水手。在海上和国外的经历为他后来的写作提供了很多灵感。1924年去世时，他已经写了二十本书以及许多故事和散文。

Maya Jassanoff: They were often regarded in the generation or so after him as adventure novels or sea stories or books that were geared toward boys. And that's because a lot of them do have, you know, these non-European settings and feature sailors and so on. But I would say that, you know, perhaps a better way to think about it is that his novels often have a kind of, some sort of political element in them. I'm Maya Jasanoff, I'm a professor of history at Harvard.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：他之后的一代或几代人往往把这些书看作冒险小说、航海故事或面向男孩的书。之所以这么认为，是因为书中的很多场景确实设置在欧洲之外的地方，而且充满了水手之类的元素。但我觉得，或许我们不妨这么看——他的小说其实往往蕴藏着某种政治元素。我是马娅·亚桑诺夫，是哈佛大学的历史学教授。

Zachary Davis: Conrad was writing in the late 19th and early 20th century during the height of European colonialism. Many European countries were establishing overseas colonies around the globe. In the late 1800s, Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, and Italy were in the process of colonizing the African continent. They were after its rich resources like ivory, palm oil, cotton, gold, diamonds, and rubber.

扎卡里·戴维斯：康拉德的作品写于19世纪末至20世纪初，当时欧洲殖民主义正发展到了顶峰，许多欧洲国家在全球各地建立海外殖民地。19世纪末，英国、法国、德国、比利时、西班牙、葡萄牙和意大利都在非洲大陆殖民。他们攫取着大陆上丰富的资源，如象牙、棕榈油、棉花、黄金、钻石和橡胶。

Zachary Davis: Conrad briefly worked on a Belgian steamship that was exporting ivory out of the Congo Free State, located in central Africa. Conrad’s best known work is Heart of Darkness, which he first published in 1899 and is based on his experience in the Congo. The book has lent itself to many readings over the decades—first detached from its historical context and then completely situated within it.

扎克里·戴维斯：康拉德曾在一艘比利时汽船上工作过一小段时间，这艘汽船从中非的刚果自由邦出口象牙。康拉德最著名的作品是《黑暗的心》。这本书于1899年首次出版，以他在刚果的经历为原型。几十年来，人们对这本书有很多种解读——先是脱离了其历史背景，然后又将它完全置身于历史背景中来分析。

Maya Jassanoff:It's often turned to as a primary source, really, for European perspective—very critical perspective—on the “scramble for Africa”, so-called, that unfolded in the last quarter of the 19th century. And every time I go back to it, I'm amazed at its brevity because it's really short. You know, it's a thin paperback, and the edition that I have sitting next to me right now, it's less than 90 pages. And yet it's a text that just, you know, gives up so much meaning and has lent itself to so many different kinds of interpretations. And, you know, for me, that's really kind of a definition of “great literature”.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：这本书常常被用来佐证，19世纪最后二十五年欧洲国家如何掀起了瓜分非洲的狂潮。每次我回顾这本书时，都不免惊讶于它的简洁。它真的很不厚，是一本薄薄的平装书。我现在手头的这一版总共还不到九十页。然而整本书的内涵却如此丰富，衍生出了如此多种多样的阐释。在我看来，这完全可称得上是“伟大的文学作品”。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world’s leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode, I sat down with Professor Maya Jassanoff to discuss Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：100本改变你和世界的书，在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集，我都会和一位世界顶尖学者探讨一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我和马娅·亚桑诺夫教授一起讨约瑟夫·康拉德的《黑暗的心》。

Maya Jassanoff: So, Conrad didn't start his life as Conrad. He started his life as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, as he was born in 1857 in present-day Ukraine. And his parents were Polish. He was Polish, spoke Polish, and his home was Catholic. But having been born in Ukraine, which, you know, at the time was part of the Russian Czarist Empire, as was Poland, he grew up in an environment of, in which his parents felt intensely their own outsiderness or marginal position within the Russian empire.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：康拉德本名并不叫康拉德，而是叫约瑟夫·特奥多·康拉德·科尔泽尼奥夫斯基。1857年，他出生在今天的乌克兰。他和父母都是波兰人，说着波兰语，全家都是天主教徒。当时，乌克兰和波兰都是沙皇俄国的一部分。他的父母强烈地觉得自己是沙皇俄国的边缘人，而小康拉德成长时期也一直笼罩在这种情绪之下。

Maya Jassanoff:So, Poland had ceased to be a sovereign state at the end of the 18th century. It had been carved up by neighboring empires, including the Russians. And the ethnic Poles, Conrad included, living within the Russian empire were very eager, many of them, not all of them, but many of them were eager to try to get Polish independence back. And Conrad’s parents were fervent Polish nationalists. So, he grew up in this atmosphere of intense Polish nationalism, but also thwarted Polish nationalism because efforts to have insurrections against the Russians failed during his childhood. And in the process of all of this, his own father was arrested by the Russian authorities for sedition against the Czarist Empire.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：18世纪末的波兰已经不再是一个主权国家。它已经被邻近的沙皇俄国等几大帝国所瓜分。康拉德在内的生活在沙皇俄国的波兰人渴望让波兰重新独立。不是所有人都这么想，但至少很多人都是。康拉德的父母就是狂热的波兰民族主义者。在他成长的环境中，波兰民族主义一度盛行，最终却减弱了。在他童年时期，俄国的波兰人起义失败，他的父亲被俄国当局以煽动反对沙皇俄国的罪名逮捕。

Maya Jassanoff: So, Conrade spent his early years, his childhood, most of them as a kind of political exile with his parents in, you know, relatively remote parts of Russia where they were sent off as exiles because of their nationalist activity. And he was also orphaned very young. Both of his parents ended up contracting tuberculosis, dying very young. And so Conrade as a, you know, eleven, twelve year old was left an orphan, raised then mostly by a maternal uncle, kind of shunted around from one schooling situation to another. And then at the age of 16, he decided to strike out in a completely different direction yet again, and that took shape in his desire to become a sailor.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：所以康拉德童年的大部分时间都和父母一起被政治流放。作为对他们民族主义运动的惩罚，他们被流放到了俄国偏远地方。不久之后，他的父母染上肺结核去世，他年纪轻轻就变成了孤儿。这个十一、二岁的孩子由一位舅舅抚养，被安排到一所又一所的学校就读。十六岁时，他选择了一个全新的人生方向——他的水手梦开始有了雏形。

Maya Jassanoff: Now, it's a little remarkable that this boy who grew up in Central Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, you know, hundreds of miles away from the ocean, had gotten it into his head that what he really wanted above all else was to become a sailor. But, you know, the way that I think about it is that he had essentially been adrift before he even set foot on a ship. And for somebody who was an orphan and didn't have, you know, had been raised to think that his nation had been taken away from him and, you know, had been sort of shunted around from one location to another, it's sort of, I feel like it makes a kind of psychological sense that he wanted to kind of really get away from it all and travel the world.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：这个小伙子在离海洋几百英里远的中欧和东欧长大，但他已经发现自己最想做的是一名水手。在我看来，他在登船之前，内心就已经漂泊很久了。他无父无母，也没有民族国家作归宿，还四处辗转。我想，他心里一定渴望彻底摆脱这些，然后环游世界。

Zachary Davis: Conrad’s maternal uncle and guardian supported this decision to become a sailor and provided young Conrad with a monthly stipend while he looked for a ship. Because he was fluent in French, Conrad traveled to Marseilles, France and began his career as a sailor on merchant ships. What was sailing industry like? How was it that you could run away from home and get on a boat and make a living and have adventures?

扎卡里·戴维斯：康拉德找到了一艘船。他的监护人，也就是他的舅舅，非常支持他的决定，还为这个小伙子提供了每个月的津贴。小康拉德会说一口流利的法语，于是就来到法国马赛，开始了他在商船上的水手生涯。他的航海生涯是怎样的？为什么他会离开家园，去船上谋生、冒险呢？

Maya Jassanoff: I think that his maternal uncle probably hoped when he first came up with this idea that it would be like the equivalent today of somebody wanting to take a gap year. You know, you think of you think of a lot of teenagers now, who, you know, want to see the world. A lot of people want it, I mean, at any age, a lot of people want to see the world. And nowadays, of course, there are a whole range of ways you can do it if you belong to a relatively privileged economic class and have the resources to do things. You know, Conrad grew up in this very sort of self, consciously marginal way culturally. He did, however, belong to a kind of hereditary landed elite. And although he would need to have pay and work through his life, he also did have the sort of backup resources of family money.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：他第一次提出这个想法的时候，他舅舅可能希望他只是像我们如今“间隔年”一样，体验个一年就完事儿。现在很多年轻人都希望在世界各地转转。不管是哪个年纪，都有很多人希望可以游览世界。当然，如今如果你经济条件相对还可以，你就有很多办法来实现你的梦想。康拉德成长在有意自我边缘化的氛围中，在经济上尽管他一生都需要工作来赚些报酬，但他家里留下了不少土地，所以也有钱供他航海游历。

Maya Jassanoff: So, even though he then went and took a, you know, really working class kind of job, he did have this kind of back up thing. So, I think the analogies would be, if you look later into the 20th century, you know people wanting to take a big road trip or go off and, you know, hike for a while or now take a gap year. That's kind of what it started as.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：尽管后来他确实做了那种工人阶级的工作，但家里还是可以给他保障。我觉得可以把他当时的行为看作20世纪的公路旅行和远足，或是如今的间隔年。他的旅途就是以这种方式开始的。

Zachary Davis: When he arrived in France, he knew almost nothing about sailing.

扎卡里·戴维斯：到达法国时，他对航海几乎一无所知。

Maya Jassanoff:I think the phrase learn the ropes, you know, is super relevant here because you literally have to learn the ropes on a ship. But pretty soon he ends up working on British ships, and that's, among other things, because Britain had the largest merchant fleet in the world at that time. But the other point to make here is that in doing so, you know, there were a lot of other foreigners, and that's because this was a very big industry that needed to import labor, but also because it was pretty open, you know, you know, you could join, you could learn on the job and move on up. So, again, despite being hierarchical, you know, everyone can, can move up.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：我觉得说他在“不断摸索”超级贴切，因为他真的要在船上摸着绳索，学习些水手的门道。不过很快他就跑去英国的船上工作了，因为英国当时拥有世界上最大的商船队。但这里要说明的另一点是，当时船队里还有很多外国人。一是因为这个行业很大，需要外来劳动力；二是因为这个行业非常开放，你可以入行后边工作边学习，继续往上发展。所以，尽管这一行同样也有三六九等，但每个人都可以往上爬。

Maya Jassanoff:And by taking exams, which you could, you know, study for and put in your time at sea, you could move up the ranks. And that's what happens to young Konrad Korzeniowski over the years, is that he ends up learning what he needs to do, he puts in his time on the ships, he takes the exams, and he ends up becoming a certified captain in the British merchant marine. And over the course of these years—he will end up being a sailor for about 20 years—and over the course of this time, he also builds more and more of a kind of shore life in England, learns English, which he only starts learning in his early 20s, and anglicises his name. And so he'll end up, at the end of this time, Joseph Conrad.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：而且通过考试后，你可以在航海过程中学习，一步步提升自己的级别。后来的那些年里，康拉德·科尔泽尼奥夫斯基便是这么做的。他学会了要学的东西，在船上度过了自己的年华，参加了考试，最终成为了英国商船的船长。这些年里，他做了差不多二十年的水手，不过也越来越多地到英国陆地上生活、学习英语——二十来岁前他从来没学过英语。他还把自己的名字英语化了，改成了后来我们熟悉的约瑟夫·康拉德。

Zachary Davis: Okay, so he, he joins shipping, becomes a captain. How in the world did he start writing at the level that he ends up writing? What do you think is motivating him?

扎卡里・戴维斯：他加入了商船队，成了一名船长。那他又究竟是如何写出了后来这么多伟大的作品呢？您觉得是什么驱动着他写作？

Maya Jassanoff: Well, this is a kind of famously unanswerable question about Conrad, but I'll give it a shot, which is that… Well, okay, so the conventional answer might say something about how, look, sailors, like, they're known for telling stories. They're known for filling the time by spinning yarns. And then not only do they have all this time on ship to do that, and they see a lot and they learn a lot and they encounter different people in different places. But then when they're on shore, they have all of this time between voyages.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：众所周知，这是一个关于康拉德的未解之谜，不过我会稍微猜想一下。人们一般觉得，水手都很会讲故事。他们常常会编一些奇闻异事来打发时间，在船上他们有很多时间来编故事。而且他们还游历四方，见多识广。于是当他们回到陆上，在下一次航海之前，就有许多时间可以创作。

Maya Jassanoff: The thing that's particular to Conrad, however, is that he came from a literary family. His father was a writer. He wrote plays, and he wrote poems, and he did translations. In fact, he even translated Dickens into Polish. And Conrad was raised, you know, on a very substantial diet of Polish and French literature. And I think that that literary inheritance is probably really significant.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：不过康拉德的特别之处在于，他来自于一个文学家庭。他的父亲是一位作家，写过剧本和诗，还做过翻译，把狄更斯的书翻译到了波兰。所以康拉德从小就接触到了丰富的波兰和法国文学作品，这种文学熏陶或许对他影响很大。

Zachary Davis: Conrad started writing in the late 1880s. His first published work is believed to be a short story that he submitted to a contest in a sailing magazine. He published his first novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1894. In his works, Conrad often drew on personal experience. Several of his stories are set in Southeast Asia, a place he frequently traveled to on sailing voyages.

扎克里·戴维斯：19世纪80年代末，康拉德开始写作。一般认为他的第一部作品是一个短篇小说，是提交给一个航海杂志的参赛作品。1894年，他出版了第一部小说《奥尔迈耶的愚蠢》。康拉德经常在作品中融入个人经历。他的几个故事都是以东南亚为背景的，这是他在航海时经常去的地方。

Maya Jassanoff:He drew extensively on various encounters that he had during his years as a sailor. He even drew on various elements of that life before he became a sailor, sort of meditating in a couple of novels about European revolutionaries and anarchists and nationalists and stuff like that. Almost all feature figures who are drawn together from a variety of different societies. You know, virtually none of his fiction is just sort of set in Britain or among British people exclusively. They usually have a much more diverse cast of characters.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：他广泛借鉴了他当水手的几年里的各种遭遇，甚至借鉴了成为水手之前生活的各种元素。他在几部小说中思考了欧洲的革命者、无政府主义者和民族主义者。他笔下的人物大多脱胎于各种不同的社会环境，没有哪部小说的背景只有英国，或是其中的角色只有英国人。书里往往会有很多不同的人物形象。

Maya Jassanoff:And it's for that reason that I argue, at least, that Conrad is really the first writer who develops a kind of literature of modern globalization across his works because his works are set on a whole range of continents and, you know, feature a lot of the kind of systems and technologies and ideas that characterized the world at the turn of the 20th century, which was one of increasing mobility and interconnection and also, in various ways, upheaval.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：在我看来，康拉德是第一个创作了全球化视角下的现代文学的作家。他的小说设定在了多个大陆，涉及了多种多样的社会环境、技术和思想，展现了20世纪之交的全球风貌。在那个时代，全球的联系越来越密切，但动荡与剧变也并不少见。

Zachary Davis: So, does he become successful and celebrated in his own life to the point where, you know, he can quit sailing and stuff, and he just sort of sits in London and is a, you know, celebrated author?

扎克里·戴维斯：那么，他生前有没有因为写作而成功、变得赫赫有名，于是放弃了航海，待在伦敦做一个有名的作家？

Maya Jassanoff: So, Conrad is a great example of the kind of author who is “critically acclaimed”, which often means they don't make money. And in the first 20 years of his literary career, he did not make a lot of money. But he did get a lot of acclaim. I mean, he was recognized very early as somebody who was doing something different.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：有些作家饱受评论界的好评，但不怎么赚钱，康拉德就是这样的。他在写作生涯的前二十年里没有赚到多少钱，但确实收获了不少赞誉。很早的时候，他就被公认为给文学界带来了新面貌。

Maya Jassanoff: So, he had a lot of critical acclaim. He continued to publish at a rate which, of course, was not uncommon, I guess, at the time, but nowadays is pretty startling. You know, the major authors of the 19th century would put out a new novel almost every year. And Conrad also was writing in a period when it was still not uncommon to write it in a serial form in a literary magazine first.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：他在评论界收获了很多赞誉。后来，他继续按照这个速度发表作品。这在当时并不罕见，19世纪的作家大多每年都可以推出一本新的小说。不过在现在看来，这个速度还是很惊人的。在康拉德那个时代，在文学杂志上连载小说也很常见。

Maya Jassanoff:So, he's writing a lot, and he is earning money off of writing and not sailing. But in fact, for the first several years of his career as a writer, he still talks about maybe having to go get a ship again. And then it's only really on the eve of World War I that he achieves commercial success enough that he can stop worrying about money to the extent that he has been, really throughout his adult life.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：他写了很多作品，主要靠写作而不是航海赚钱。不过实际上，在他写作生涯的前几年，他还说过也许要再去航一次海。直到第一次世界大战前夕，他才取得了商业上的成功，不必再像从前的几十年一样为钱而发愁。

Zachary Davis: Towards the end of his life and career, Conrad had several best-sellers, beginning with the novel Chance in 1913. But over time, many of his most successful works have faded into the background. Today, Heart of Darkness stands above as his most celebrated book.

扎克里·戴维斯：在晚年和写作生涯的末期，康拉德写了几本畅销书，比如1913年写的小说《机缘》——这是最早的一本。但一百多年来，他的许多最成功的作品已经逐渐被我们所遗忘。到了今天，《黑暗的心》的名气依然屹立不倒，成为了他的代表作。

Maya Jassanoff:Heart of Darkness, like so much else of Conrad's fiction, is based in, to some extent, personal experience, and the personal experience was that in 1890, Conrad, who was at the time a sailor professionally, traveled to what was then called the Congo Free State as an employee of a company who, a company involved in doing trade up and down the Congo River.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：和康拉德的其他很多小说一样，《黑暗的心》在某种程度上取材于他的个人经历。1890年，康拉德还是一名水手，当时他作为一家公司的员工来到了刚果自由邦。这家公司从事刚果河河运贸易。

Zachary Davis: This job was very different from his previous sailing gigs. Typically, Conrad would go on long ocean voyages on large sailboats. For this particular job, he was working on a steamboat traveling on a river.

扎克里·戴维斯：这份工作和他之前的航海工作大不相同。以往，康拉德是乘着大型帆船出海航行。然而这次，他是在一艘河运汽船上工作。

Maya Jassanoff:And so, you know, he goes into a working environment that is already, you know, pretty different from what he's done before, and it's also a region that he had never been to before, sub-Saharan Africa. And it's a region that at the time was being transformed by a colonial project that he saw firsthand and then captures with such critical acuity in his novel.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：于是他进入到了一个全新的工作环境中，做的工作和以前不太一样，去的地方之前也从来没去过。这次他来到了撒哈拉以南的非洲，这儿的模样因为殖民活动发生了很大变化。康拉德亲眼见到了这些变化，在小说中敏锐地传递出了这一点。

Maya Jassanoff: So, the deal was that the Congo Free State had been carved out in the Berlin Congress in 1885, which had essentially, in this incredible act of, you know, expropriative arrogance, European powers had just carved up sub-Saharan Africa and said, “Okay, you know, the Portuguese are there and the British are there and the French are there.” And in the middle, there was this big tranche which was nominally independent, but administered under the supervision of King Leopold II of the Belgians.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：1885年，柏林会议召开。与会各国同意建立刚果自由邦。这一决议透露出了侵略者们叫人难以置信的傲慢。欧洲列强瓜分了撒哈拉以南的非洲，说：“好吧，那儿给葡萄牙人，那儿给英国，那儿给法国。”中间一大块地方名义上是独立的，但实际上是在比利时国王利奥波德二世的代理下管辖。

Zachary Davis: The Berlin Conference, also known as the Congo Conference, regulated the European powers in sub-Saharan Africa. Up until this point, European powers had tried to grab whatever they could on the continent, but there was no formal agreement over which territories belonged to whom.

扎克里·戴维斯：柏林会议又被称为“刚果会议”。它划分了欧洲列强在撒哈拉以南非洲的势力范围。在这之前，欧洲列强一直想要在非洲大陆上鲸吞蚕食，但对于哪些领土属于谁，他们还没有正式的协议。

Zachary Davis: Disagreements began to arise, which were negativ

ely impacting trade and resource extraction. In 1884, the chancellor of Germany held The Berlin Conference, to help establish European boundaries in Africa. The four main countries involved in this conference were Britain, France, Belgium, and Portugal. No African countries were consulted. France got northwestern Africa, Britain got South Africa up through Egypt, Belgium got central Africa, which included the Congo Free State, and Portugal got the western and eastern edges of Africa.

扎克里·戴维斯：这就阻碍了欧洲列强在非洲开展贸易、开采资源。1884年，德国首相主持召开了柏林会议，推动欧洲各国在非洲定下边境。参与这次会议的四个主要国家是英国、法国、比利时和葡萄牙。在没有征求非洲国家意见的情况下，法国得到了非洲西北部；英国得到了南非到埃及的一大片土地；比利时得到了非洲中部，其中就包括刚果自由邦；而葡萄牙得到了非洲西部和东部边缘的土地。

​Zachary Davis:King Leopold II of Belgium controlled the Congo Free State from 1885-1908. He extracted ivory and rubber and enslaved the local population to process and export these resources. Leopold was so brutal that his rule in the Congo is known by some historians as Africa’s “forgotten Holocaust”.

扎克里·戴维斯：1885至1908年，比利时国王利奥波德二世控制着刚果自由邦。他在那儿开采象牙和橡胶，奴役当地居民加工、出口这些资源。利奥波德二世非常残暴。他在刚果的统治被一些历史学家称为非洲“被人忘却的大屠杀”。

Maya Jassanoff:So, it's a weird area because, in terms of colonialism, because it's putatively independent, but it has what we would now, I think, really readily recognize as a kind of multinational capitalism, you know, sweeping in and basically grabbing what it can, you know, really kind of shoestring, white personnel, huge amount of coerced African labor, and at the time that Conrad went, the primary trading commodity that they were interested in was ivory. So, there was an elaborate system where, you know, people—agents far up the river would get ivory, and then they would ship it down the river and back out to the seaport and then to Europe for export.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：这个地方很特殊。比起殖民地，它似乎相对来说要独立一点。但如今我们可以清楚地看到，多国资本都将魔爪伸向这里，不断剥削掠夺。白人员工强迫许多非洲劳动力为他们劳动。康拉德来到这儿的时候，当地出口的主要商品是象牙。于是就出现了一套复杂的贸易体系——刚果河上游的人猎得了象牙，将它们通过河运运输到海港，再出口到欧洲。

Zachary Davis: Conrad was initially hired to command the steamer Florida up the Congo River, but when he arrived at the boat, it was seriously damaged and unfit for travel. He joined another steamer called King of the Belgians, commanded by Ludvig Rasmus Koch.

扎卡里·戴维斯：康拉德最初奉命驾驶“佛罗里达号”蒸汽船沿刚果河开往上游。但登船后，他发现这艘船已经严重受损，不适合航行了。于是他加入了另一艘名为“比利时之王”的蒸汽船，这艘船的船长是路德维格·拉斯穆斯·科赫。

Maya Jassanoff:So Conrad goes. It's 1890. He's supposed to stay for three years. He very quickly records his discontent with what he sees there—having gone, I should add, thinking that he's going to be part of this great, you know, sort of civilizing project, which is what everybody holds up the Congo Free State as in the West. And he thinks, “Yeah, sure, you know, this is a place where, look, it's independent, but it's being administered, you know, with these, with certain values in mind. It's dedicated to not having slave labor. It's dedicated to, you know, building up, you know, infrastructure, et cetera.” Right? So he goes thinking he's going to find all that, and instead he arrives and very quickly is dissatisfied.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：于是，康拉德出发了。那是1890年，他原本应该在这儿待上三年。一开始，他以为自己将投身于一项伟大的文明事业——当时西方人普遍是这么看待刚果自由邦的。康拉德原本觉得，这块地方独立了，人们怀揣着伟大的价值观念管理着这里，为解放奴隶劳动力、建立基础设施而奋斗。这就是他出发时以为的。但到了当地之后，他很快便感到不满。

Zachary Davis: Instead, what he sees is a lot of Europeans abusing the native Africans.

扎克里·戴维斯：他目睹的与之前所想的恰恰相反——很多欧洲人都在虐待非洲土著居民。

Maya Jassanoff: He shows up and he immediately starts noting in letters back to Europe and also in this diary that the Europeans that he meets, he doesn't like them at all. He finds them...I think in part it's sort of snobbery and stuff, but he finds them very sort of rough and tumble characters. And they are constantly fighting with each other and backstabbing and having little intrigues with each other. And then he also sees this violence along the way. And I think it does make an impression on him.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：康拉德来到了刚果。很快，他便在寄回欧洲的信件和自己的日记里批评起了这儿的欧洲人。他一点也不喜欢他们。或许这出于某种优越感，但他也确实觉得这些人粗暴蛮横，不停地明争暗斗，耍些阴谋诡计。他还目睹了刚果河沿岸欧洲人的暴行。这些都给他留下了深刻的印象。

Maya Jassanoff: Then he goes on a ship. So, the idea, the other thing with the Congo River, and indeed any river, is that while to those of us who are not sailors it might seem that a river is a pretty straightforward thing to navigate. After all, it's a line. In fact, you know, any river has channels and branches and tributaries and all of that. And so you have to kind of learn your way. And so, Conrad goes up the river as a, just sort of watching what the captain is doing so that he can learn how to navigate it himself. And another notebook that he keeps on this trip has his maritime notes, and so we can see him making even little sketches of different bits of the river and noting down soundings for depth and so on.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：然后他就登上了一艘船。关于刚果河、或者说任何一条河流，还有一件事我想提一下。在我们这些没当过水手的人看来，在河流上航行很简单。毕竟这就是一条河嘛。但你要知道，其实任何一条河都有河道和支流，所以你必须熟悉航道。于是，康拉德在往刚果河上游航行的途中，一直观察着船长在做什么，好学习一下自己要如何在刚果河驾船。航行过程中，他还有一本笔记本，里面是他的航行日志。我们甚至可以看到，他画了一些不同河段的草图，记下了水深探测数据。

Zachary Davis: Conrad completed a round trip journey up and down the river and then decided he had enough. His three-year contract wasn’t over, and he had no other source of income, but the trip was so physically and psychologically miserable that it wasn’t worth continuing.

扎卡里·戴维斯：康拉德在刚果河上下游往返了一趟，便已经受够了。他的三年期的合同还没有到期，也没有别的收入来源，但这次旅行让他身心备受折磨。他觉得没有必要再继续下去了。

Maya Jassanoff:So, he quits the job and sails back to Europe. And he never really—I mean, he does get another sailing job after that. But it's, I think it's a real turning point in his maritime career. It had been very difficult for him to get a job in the first place, and then he ends up on that. And it's a terrible experience. I should say, too, that Conrad suffered from what we can pretty obviously see as clinical depression, and he had a lot of mental breakdowns in his life. And he had a very significant one when he came back from Congo.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：于是他辞去了工作，驾船回了欧洲。除了之后的一次航海，再往后他就基本没有出海航行了。刚果之旅是他航海生涯中真正的转折点。之后他很难再去找类似的工作，最终还结束了航海生涯。这段经历太可怕了。康拉德显然因此陷入抑郁之中。他一生中有过多次精神崩溃。从刚果回来后，他的精神崩溃得格外厉害。

Zachary Davis: When he returned to Europe in 1891 after his time in Congo, he took a couple other sailing jobs before fully retiring from the sea. He decided to focus on writing and began publishing novels. In the late 1890s, he began working on Heart of Darkness and in 1899 he published the story serially.

扎克里·戴维斯：1891年，他结束了刚果之行，回到了欧洲。他又出海航行了几次，之后便放弃了航海。他决定专心写作，开始发表小说。19世纪90年代末，他开始创作《黑暗的心》，并在1899年连载了这个故事。

Maya Jassanoff:Heart of Darkness roughly follows the line of a river. It narrates the voyage of an old seaman named Charles Marlow who captains a steamboat on a river in Africa and tells a group of former sailors about it while sitting on the deck of a pleasure boat in the Thames estuary many years later.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：《黑暗的心》的情节大致沿着一条河流展开。一个叫查尔斯·马洛的老水手在非洲的一条河流上担任汽船船长。多年后，他坐在泰晤士河口一艘游船的甲板上，向一群曾经的水手讲述自己在非洲航行的经历。

Maya Jassanoff: So, there's a frame narrative, which is Marlow sitting on this ship in the Thames with a bunch of friends who are all former sailors. And then embedded within that, there's the main story, which is the story of going up and down this river in Africa. The fundamental point, though, of Marlow's journey is different from Conrad’s and is very important.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：这是一种框架叙事结构。大的框架是，马洛和一群朋友坐在泰晤士河口的一艘船上，他们都当过水手。嵌在这个框架之中的才是小说的主体，也就是在非洲河流上航行时的经历。不过我们有必要知道，马洛的航行与康拉德的航行有着本质上的区别。

Maya Jassanoff: Marlow goes up and down the river, but he does it with an objective in mind. And he's supposed to retrieve from the farthest upriver point a rogue agent of a European trading company. This agent has been trading ivory, has collected a lot of ivory, is believed to be enormously successful as a collector of ivory. But he has also adopted methods which are described by one of the characters in the book as “unsound.” And the result is that there are other agents of the company who want to have him removed.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：马洛的航行是有目标的。他被委托去河流的最上游接走一家欧洲贸易公司的业务员。这位业务员一直在做象牙贸易，收来了很多象牙，事业上取得了很大的成功。但他用了很多为人诟病的手段，于是公司的其他业务员想把他带走。

Maya Jassanoff: So, Marlow’s journey takes place in a bunch of stages. But one of the things that's kind of amazing about it is that along the way up the river, he also learns more and more about this person whose name is Kurtz. And in fact, Marlow and Kurtz are the only characters, if I'm not much mistaken, who have names in the book. Everybody else is referred to by some kind of epithet.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：在马洛的航行中，各种事情轮番上演。不过神奇的是，在往河流上游行驶的过程中，他也越来越了解这个叫库尔兹的人。其实，马洛和库尔兹是书中唯一有名字的人物。如果我没有记错的话，其他人都是用称谓来称呼的。

Maya Jassanoff: So, you get the sense that as he's going up the river and as he's seeing more and more of the unnamed African country that he's in, he's getting closer and closer to this, you know, distant goal that's becoming clearer and clearer as he goes along. I mean, sort of like when you're approaching an object from far away, and you gain resolution on it, that is what work, well, that is what happens with Marlow as he learns about currents going up the river.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：所以你会感觉到，当他往河流上游行驶的时候，当他看到越来越多不知道叫什么的非洲国家时，他就越来越接近自己的目标，这个虚无缥缈的目标就变得越来越清晰。我的意思是，这有点像从远处慢慢走向一个物体。你走得越近，看它就越来越清楚。当马洛逆着河流前进时，他感受到的便是这样。

Zachary Davis: Heart of Darkness begins with Marlow telling his small audience of friends how he got the job in the first place.

扎克里·戴维斯：在小说的开头，马洛告诉他的年轻朋友，自己当初是怎么得到这份工作的。

Maya Jassanoff: He describes getting the job. He describes going to the corporate headquarters. He describes hearing about the ambitions of this company to civilize the people among whom they're working, etc.. He then will travel to the river in question in Africa. Again, none of this is named. I mean, I say Africa because we understand it to be Africa, but it is not actually named. So, there's another phase where he's on a ship traveling to the mouth of the river.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：他讲述了自己得到这份工作的过程，讲述了自己去公司总部的情景，讲述了自己听到的这家公司的愿景——那就是向业务所在地的人们播撒文明的种子。然后，他将前往非洲的某条河流上游。同样地，这些地理事物的名字也都没有被提及。虽然我说是去往非洲，但实际上仅仅是因为我们解读成了非洲，书里并没有明确提到是哪个大陆。书里还有一段讲了他驾船来到了河口。

Maya Jassanoff: Then there's the phase where he has to work his way up the rapids to get to another, you know, from the mouth of the river inland a bit. He pauses there for a while. He discovers that the ship that he's supposed to, the boat that he's supposed to be taking up the river is actually damaged, and it's going to take some time for it to be repaired. So, he's in this place for quite a while, at least a month. And, you know, interacting with the European agents there. He then starts traveling in the boat.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：之后有一段时间，他要逆着湍急的河流驶往上游，从河口开往内陆。他在河口停留了一阵子，因为他发现本该乘的那艘船有些损坏了，得花些时间才能修好。于是他在这儿待了至少一个月，和当地的欧洲业务人员联系了一番。一个月过后，他乘船驶向内陆。

Maya Jassanoff:And again, it's funny because even though this story is often thought of as a story about somebody going up and down the river, in fact, the journey on the river is only, you know, maybe half of the book at most. You know, it's, a lot of it is kind of build-up. Then as he's on the boat going up the river, there are also, kind of, stops along the way, including to get wood. There's episodes—It's again, it has a little bit of the feel of a sort of Odyssey-like story where there are these various, you know, episodes that happen, encounters that happen. They get attacked by people on shore at one point.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：这本书很有意思，因为尽管它经常被人认为讲了主角沿河流往返的故事，但事实上，河上的旅程只占了全书最多一半的篇幅。其余的很多内容都是在作铺垫。书里还写到了，当他乘船往上游走的时候，停下来去岸边找了木材。在另一处，他和同行的人还被岸上的人攻击了。全书给人的感觉有点像《奥德赛》，穿插着许多各种各样的小故事。

Maya Jassanoff: And then finally, he does reach what's called “the inner station”, which is the, again, a non-specific name given to the place that the, Conrad would have, would have traveled to that we now know of is Kisangani. And it's there that he encounters Kurtz two thirds of the way through the book.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：终于，他来到了“大陆腹地”。康拉德同样没有点明这个地方的名字，不过我们知道这就是如今的基桑加尼。在那儿，马洛遇到库尔兹。这时全书已经进行了三分之二。

Zachary Davis: So what does he learn about Kurtz when he arrives?

扎克里·戴维斯：当他到那儿的时候，他对库尔兹有何了解呢？

Maya Jassanoff: So, one of the things about this book that's intriguing to some readers and maddening to others is that it's all wreathed in this kind of sense of foreboding. Oh, Kurtz, he's up there. He's very special. He's very remarkable. He's very unusual. He's all these things. And you never really get a clear sense of what's going on. And part of it is, of course, deliberate. That is, Conrad wants to create this kind of sense of mystery, but it's never quite fully resolved[MTTH1] .

马娅·亚桑诺夫：这本书有一点让一些读者很感兴趣，也让另一些读者很不喜欢，那就是全书都被这样的感觉所笼罩：“库尔兹在上游。他很特别、很了不起、很不同寻常，他是这样一个人。”你永远不清楚发生了什么事情，当然这在某种角度上也是作者故意为之。康拉德想营造这种神秘感，但故事最终并没有好好交代库尔兹为什么这么神秘。

Maya Jassanoff: I mean, we know, what we learn later is that Kurtz has an idea of the civilizing mission, as it was known in European parlance at the time, that appears to involve some combination of an incredible cultish personality with an almost genocidal impulse. And we learned this because Kurtz has written a report that he's planning to give to something called, I think, the Society for the Suppression of Savage Customs. And in this report, there's a—which Marlow sees—there's a line in which he says, “Exterminate all the brutes.”

马娅·亚桑诺夫：后来我们了解到，库尔兹怀揣着传播文明的念头。用当时欧洲人的话来说，这个人既有着邪教徒般的狂热，也有着种族灭绝的的冲动。我们知道这一点，是因为库尔兹写了一份报告，打算交给“国际消除野蛮习俗协会”。马洛看到这份报告中有这样一句话——“消灭所有的野蛮人”。

Maya Jassanoff: So, he writes this report about “the suppression of savage customs” in which, you know, there's a line in a kind of cover memo for it that says “exterminate all the brutes” and this kind of genocidal impulse is, you know, very scary to Marlow. And Marlow, in fact, will end up censoring it, so to speak. I mean, when he brings Kurtz—so he brings Kurtz back down the river. And as he does so, Kurtz dies on the journey. And Marlow is therefore left to dispense with Kurtz’s worldly goods, which include mostly some letters and papers and things. And the book actually ends with Marlow going back to what he calls “the sepulchral city”, which is the word he, the phrase that he uses to describe what we can take to be Brussels.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：他写了这份旨在“消除野蛮习俗”的报告，其中有句话是——“消灭所有的野蛮人”。这种种族灭绝的念头在马洛看来非常可怕。事实上，我们可以说马洛最终把他的这份报告销毁了。因为马洛在把库尔兹载往下游的时候，库尔兹却在途中死去了。于是，马洛不得不处理库尔兹的遗物，主要是一些信件和文件。在这本书的结尾，马洛回到了自己那座“坟墓般的城市”，也就是如今的布鲁塞尔。

Maya Jassanoff: And while he's there, he visits, he gets a visit from a cousin of Kurtz’s. He talks to someone from the, you know, involved in this project in Africa. He also visits Kurtz’s fiancee. And he gives back the various things that, you know, Kurtz’s papers, but as he does so, he actually sort of covers up some of what has happened. So famously, while Kurtz is dying, he has a kind of vision and he whispers in his dying breaths, the words “the horror, the horror”. And when Marlow visits Kurtz's fiancee back in the sepulchral city, and she says, you know, “What did he say?” Marlow pauses, and he says, you know, “The last words he spoke were your name.”

马娅·亚桑诺夫：回到那座城市之后，库尔兹的堂兄弟来拜访了他。马洛还和一个同样去非洲做过这个工作的人交流了一番。之后，他还看望了库尔兹的未婚妻，把遗物交给了她。不过马洛掩盖了一些事实。有个情节非常有名。库尔兹临死的时候像是见到了什么幻象，低声叫着：“可怕啊！可怕啊！”而当库尔兹的未婚妻在这坟墓般的城市里问起库尔兹的遗言时，马洛迟疑了一会儿，说：“他最后说的是你的名字。”

Maya Jassanoff:So, he kind of hides this. And then the book ends on that note, except it pulls back out for just a brief moment so that we see Marlow again as through the eyes of the frame narrator on the deck of the Nellie, the name of the pleasure boat in the Thames, and it wraps the story up again in this encasing frame narrative.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：他隐瞒了这个事实。全书的主要情节在这里就结束了。结尾一小段又切回到马洛这里，透过框架叙事者的视角，将视线拉回到他们乘坐的泰晤士河上的“奈丽号”小艇，同时也将主体情节嵌入到一个大框架中。

Zachary Davis: Heart of Darkness was not critically acclaimed in Conrad’s life. It received little commentary, and Conrad himself didn’t think it was his best work. But over the years, critics have returned to the work with several different interpretations.

扎克里·戴维斯：《黑暗的心》在康拉德生前并没有受到什么好评。评论它的人很少，康拉德本人也不觉得这是他最好的作品。但一百多年来，评论家们对这部作品又有了几种不同的解读。

Maya Jassanoff: You know, for a while, Conrad's text was understood to be a meditation on the human condition that could be read in a manner quite detached from historical context. And that squared with a particular critical instinct that prevailed in the middle of the 20th century, called the New Criticism. And Conrad was celebrated by some mid-century critics because of the psychological depth of his works and so on, but was also, in this way, cut off from some really important historical realities that shaped the conditions of possibility and production of his work.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：康拉德的作品曾一度被理解为对人类状况的反思，你可以抛开他所处的历史背景对其进行解读。这种文学批评理论派别叫“新批评”，在20世纪中叶非常盛行。当时一些批评家对康拉德赞不绝口，因为他的作品深刻挖掘了人物的内心世界，但当这些批评家这样解读康拉德的作品时，同时也就把小说从它背后重要的历史事实中剥离开来。然而正是这些历史背景催生出了康拉德的作品。

Maya Jassanoff: So, in the late ‘70s, or in the ‘70s, the Nigerian author, Chinua Achebe, seeing that there was all of this critical work about Heart of Darkness that was being held up as this great sort of parable about, you know, good and evil, about savagery and civilization, about the savage instincts that lurk within every human being, pointed out, “Look, guys, you know, you're creating this seeming universal on the back of the crudest racist stereotypes about Africa that are embedded in the history of European colonialism and violence and oppression.”

马娅·亚桑诺夫：所以在20世纪70年代末、或者说在70年代，尼日利亚作家钦努阿·阿契贝发现，所有这些关于《黑暗的心》的文学批评都把这本书看作关于善与恶、文明与野蛮的寓言，认为它揭示了野蛮的本性如何潜藏在每个人的心里。但阿契贝指出：“嘿，你们觉得康拉德讲的是普遍的人性，但这背后透露的是对非洲的成见，对非裔人的刻板印象，而这种刻板印象则源于欧洲的殖民主义历史以及过去对非洲的暴行与压迫。”

Maya Jassanoff: So, in a really blistering and forceful and vital critique, Achebe said, you know, “This is not some, like, universal parable about savagery and civilization. This is one European man looking at Africa and being completely unable to reckon with the humanity of Africans. And Conrad was a bloody racist,” as Achebe put it. So that, of course, immediately shifted the focus of discussion about Conrad and, you know, I certainly am one of the many, many, many people out there who would not teach Heart of Darkness without also teaching Achebe's essay at this point. And so it completely transformed the discussion around Conrad and around this text in particular, and is really significant in the genesis of post-colonial literary criticism and much, much more.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：在这个尖锐有力且非常重量级的批评中，阿契贝说：“这并不是关于野蛮与文明的普适性寓言。这是一个欧洲人目睹着非洲、却对非洲人民熟视无睹故事。康拉德就是个彻头彻尾的种族主义者。”阿契贝的言论彻底改变了人们讨论康拉德时关注的焦点。如今，我和其他许多人一样，教《黑暗的心》的时候都会讲到阿契贝的这篇论文。它完全改变了人们对康拉德讨论的重点，尤其是对他这本书讨论的重点。它对后殖民主义文学批评的起源与发展等等都至关重要。

Maya Jassanoff:I think we can then detect this later move in the ‘90s with Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost and Lindqvist’s Exterminate All the Brutes where we see a more careful rendering of Conrad and the text of Heart of Darkness as a historical text, and again looking at the ways in which it does and doesn't map onto the realities of Congo at the time. And that correlates in turn, I think, with another major sort of trend line and literary criticism, which is the New Historicism where, you know, from the ‘90s to really the present, I think, that nowadays, it's extremely common for literary critics, in the U.S. at least, to look at texts in their historical context. And Heart of Darkness, you know, has become a great sort of exemplar of how that can be done.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：我想，我们可以在上世纪90年代霍赫希尔德的《利奥波德国王的鬼魂》和林奎斯特的《消灭所有的蛮族》看到这一点。这些书更多地将康拉德的小说《黑暗之心》看作纪实小说，并且再度审视了它和当时刚果社会历史情况的关系。而这又反过来催生出了另一股重要的文学批评潮流，那就是“新历史主义”。从上世纪90年代到现在，新历史主义文学批评都很普遍，至少在美国是这样的，大家会把文本放到历史语境中去看。而《黑暗的心》便是一个很好的范本，告诉人们要如何去做。

Maya Jassanoff:We've had the reading of Heart of Darkness that detaches it completely from its context. We've had readings of Heart of Darkness that situate it completely in its historical context. And I think now, as we are thinking again or, you know, in a later generation of thinking about the legacies of colonialism and racism and slavery, the question is where do we put Heart of Darkness now? And, and I think that, you know, there's, there's no single right answer to this. I think that it still repays reading. But I think that, you know, its manifest limitations have to be called attention to, and it's not a text that should ever stand in isolation. I mean, one should always be reading other things as well.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：我们曾脱离历史语境去解读这本书，也曾完全把它放到历史语境中去解读。如今，当我们这些新一代人再度思考殖民主义、种族主义和奴隶制的影响时，我们需要思考，应当把《黑暗的心》放在什么位置上。不过我觉得这个问题没有什么确切的答案。在我看来，这本书仍然值得阅读，但人们必须注意到其中明显的局限性。这一本书并不是独立于外在的其他东西的，作为读者，我觉得我们永远都应该同时读一读别的东西。

Zachary Davis: If I'm understanding you, it was celebrated in the West because it was seen as this universal parable that evil can lurk in the heart of anyone. But the post-colonial critique is like, “No, no, no, hold on, hold on, like, nobody did this to Africa except you guys!” So, you know, it sort of, it helps us resist maybe apologizing for historical wrongs because, well, you know, all humans are bad or something.

扎克里·戴维斯：如果我没理解错的话，这本书在西方之所以广受好评，是因为它被视为一个普遍性的寓言，告诉人们恶念可以潜藏在任何人心里。但后殖民主义文学批评似乎在说：“等等，除了你们，其他人从没对非洲做过这些。”西方人的这种解读会让他们无法正视或纠正自己的历史错误，因为他们可以用所有人本性都很坏作为借口。

Maya Jassanoff:I guess what I would say is this, that, okay, so we had the, we had a moment in which Heart of Darkness was celebrated as the universal, a portrayal of something universal. That was rightly thrown out in favor of a reading that saw a Heart of Darkness as a testimony of European racism, and that was important and resonant.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：我会这么说：《黑暗的心》曾一度被人赞为描绘了某些普遍性的道理。但很快这种解读被抛到了一边。人们转而认为这本书反映了欧洲的种族主义压迫。这种解读很重要，也被人们所认同。

Maya Jassanoff:For me, reading now in the 21st century as we think about the society we're living in now and the, you know, many ramifying effects of empire and decolonization and racism and immigration and all the rest of it, one of the things that I'm most drawn to in this text is that relationship between the frame narrative and the inner narrative, that, you know, Conrad is saying that the Thames flows into the Congo in various ways and the Congo back into the Thames. And, you know, I think that that sense of the interconnectedness of regions...not an easy interconnection and not one that we can necessarily get behind, you know, Conrad's picture of, but I think that that's actually sort of in a certain central way, kind of right.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：在我看来，这本书值得我们21世纪的人读一读，因为帝国主义、殖民地独立、种族主义和移民问题仍然影响着如今的社会。这本书还有一点很吸引我，那就是外层框架和内层框架之间的关系。康拉德说，泰晤士河以不同的方式汇入刚果河，刚果河也以不同的方式流回泰晤士河。我觉得，其实我们不一定能从康拉德的描绘中感受到区域与区域之间的相互联系，这种联系也不是轻轻松松就能达成的，但这种想象的核心还是正确的。

Maya Jassanoff:I mean, that is that, you know, he's pointing to a kind of blowback, if you will, of colonization on the metropole, which at the time was really quite radical. And I think that, you know, if you look at, for example, Britain today, which is the post-colonial European society, which is the European former imperial society that I know most about, I mean, you know, we can see in Britain today this incredible kind of ignorance about the imperial past, and kind of an amnesia about all kinds of things that happened in the era of the British Empire. And I mean, in this regard, I think it's more important than ever that we pay attention to the ways in which empire constituted Britain as it is today, and that a lot of these links really need to be sort of well, first of all, just illuminated and elucidated and talked about, and then we need to think about what to do with them.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：我觉得，如果你愿意的话，可以把康拉德的书看作对帝国主义殖民行为的抨击，这在当时可是相当激进的。如果你看看后殖民时期的欧洲社会，你会发现人们对过去的殖民主义历史所知甚少。就拿英国来举例吧，在所有有过殖民主义历史的国家中，我对英国最熟悉。叫人惊讶的是，如今的英国不怎么知道大英帝国的历史，几乎已经全然忘记了那个时期的发生的事情。在这方面，我认为比以往任何时候都更重要的是，我们要关注一下帝国的历史如何造就了今天的英国。第一步，我们需要探讨并阐明这些古今的联系；然后，我们需要考虑如何处理它们。

Zachary Davis: Do we see its influence more widely in culture? Are there movements that it's a part of that contributed to the world that we, you know, might recognize or different aspects of the world that we might recognize?

扎克里·戴维斯：在文化方面，这本书有没有产生什么更广泛的影响？它有没有催生出什么运动，来变革我们所知道的领域或某个领域的不同模块呢？

Maya Jassanoff: So, one thing to say about Heart of Darkness is that it has lent itself to adaptation quite fluidly. The phrase itself has become a catchphrase. Most famously, it was taken up and reworked on the movie Apocalypse Now which transposes the novel to Vietnam. It's a brilliant movie about a really suggestive book. And I find nowadays when I talk to people that they're much more likely to be familiar with Apocalypse Now, and that's how I can explain to them who Conrad is than simply by mentioning the novel Heart of Darkness.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：《黑暗的心》的改编非常顺利。书名的这个短语成了我们挂在嘴边的话。最引人注目的是，小说被改编成了电影《现代启示录》。电影将故事背景改到了越南，对这本意味深长的书做出了精彩的改编，是一部不错的片子。如今我跟人聊的时候，会发现他们显然对《现代启示录》更熟悉。我一般都是从电影开始向他们科普康拉德，而不是一上来就跟他们讲《黑暗的心》这部小说。

Maya Jassanoff: So, I think it you know, as a catchphrase that connotes something about what happens when Europeans run amok and kind of neo-imperial and colonial situations, I think we definitely see a kind of resonance there. The concept of going rogue is something that I think Heart of Darkness really captures that we see resonating a lot, and it will often be invoked in that context. We see it, of course, being something that writers continue to engage with, and I would note that a number of African writers have engaged with the text and sort of pushed back against it. So, it continues to be a source of stimulation for writers of fiction.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：这个挂在嘴边的名词集中反映了欧洲殖民主义、新殖民主义和殖民地的悲惨情况，绝对能激起我们的共鸣。《黑暗的心》所展现的殖民者的敛财嘴脸叫我们印象深刻，也常常被拿来作为案例。许多作家仍旧继续关注着这本小说。我注意到，一些非洲作家也已经关注到了它，还对它进行了批判。所以说，它仍然是小说作家的灵感来源。

Zachary Davis: What do you think is the value of the document as a historical testament, and like, what does it teach us about colonialism that we are continually, at least in the West, liable to forget?

扎克里·戴维斯：这本书是历史的写照，您觉得它有什么价值呢？它向我们展现了哪些西方世界往往会遗忘的殖民主义史实呢？

Maya Jassanoff:It was published in 1899 in a magazine, Blackwood's Magazine, and then in a book form in 1902. And in that time, something happened in Britain with respect to Congo, which is that the economy of the Congo Free State, which had been ivory-based when Conrad went in 1890, had shifted within a decade to becoming rubber-based. And the rubber industry in Congo was unbelievably violent and brutal in its methods of labor, and the labor regime was incredibly violent and brutal and became the subject of an outcry that was led by, among others, British activists, in fact, quite notably a British activist and in fact an acquaintance of Conrad’s called Roger Casement.

马娅·亚桑诺夫： 1899年，小说发表在了《布莱克伍德杂志》上， 1902年它出版成书。而在那个时候，英国在刚果有了一些动作，刚果自由邦的经济出现了变化。1890年康拉德去刚果的时候，那儿的经济还是以象牙贸易为主的。但十年之内，它就开始以橡胶产业为主了。刚果的橡胶工业异常原始，劳动方式非常野蛮，劳动制度也异常严苛。一些英国社会活动家带头抗议刚果的劳动制度。值得注意的是，其中一位活动家恰好是康拉德的朋友，名叫罗杰·凯斯门特。

Maya Jassanoff:But others got in on this as well. Mark Twain, for example, became part of what in the early years of the 20th century was organized into a kind of campaign against the abuses in Congo and ultimately led to King Leopold stepping back and the Belgian government stepping in. So, there was this big international outcry against what was happening in Congo. And against that backdrop, Heart of Darkness appears.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：其他人也参与其中。比如。马克·吐温参加了20世纪初的活动。这些活动和其他活动一起，构成了反对刚果暴政的运动。迫于舆论压力，利奥波德二世交出了刚果的统治权，刚果由比利时议会接管。所以，当时很多人都为刚果奔走疾呼。正是在这样的背景下，《黑暗的心》问世了。

Maya Jassanoff: But it chronicles a different historical moment. And I guess what I think about here is that when...so, when the British, and for that matter, the Americans, were castigating Leopold and his agents in Congo for their abuses, they themselves were imperial powers. You know, the British and the Americans were imperial powers, and it fed a self-flattering image of British imperialism or American imperialism as being “better”.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：不过书里描绘的是不同历史时期的事情。虽然英国和美国谴责了利奥波德二世和他的手下在刚果的暴政，但它们也是一丘之貉，都是帝国主义列强。这也让英国帝国主义势力和美国帝国主义势力“更好地”包装了自己。

Maya Jassanoff:And that has persisted. That, you find that all the time now. People will routinely say, you know, “Oh, but, you know, you think the British were bad, just look at the Belgians.” Or, “Just look at the Japanese,” right? I mean, that's what they'll always say. And so I guess, you know, in response to your question about historical forgetting and manipulation and all of that, I would say that for me, Conrad's text is...let's return it to, in this one respect and in this one respect only, let's return it to that universalist thing.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：而且这种情况一直存在，不管什么时候你都能看到这种情况。人们经常会说：“你觉得英国人是恶棍，但看看比利时人吧。”或者他们会说：“看看日本人吧。”这就是他们经常会说的话。我来回答一下你之前提到的忘记或篡改历史的问题的吧。我觉得康拉德的书在这个问题上、也只有在这个问题上有着某些普遍性的意义。

Maya Jassanoff:And let's say that even though there are ways embedded in the text that Conrad is also saying British imperialism is better than all the others, and Conrad himself certainly believed that, and so on, let's remember that he took the names out for a reason. I mean, let's remember that the names are taken out. And let's remember that when you take the names out, you can't any longer play that game of like, “okay, we're all bad, but you're worse than I am.”

马娅·亚桑诺夫：尽管康拉德在字里行间也流露出英国帝国主义好过别的帝国主义的意思，他本人也确实是这么认为的，但我们要记住，他也有意在书中隐去了国家和地理事物的名称。把名称隐去，这样你就没法再玩那种比烂的把戏，嚷嚷着：“好吧，我们都是恶棍，但你比我还要坏。”

Zachary Davis: Although Conrad and Heart of Darkness has had varying reception over the years, its influence remains. And one of its biggest influences goes back to Conrad writing from personal experiences—writing about the abuses he saw and opening his European readers’ eyes to the harm their people were committing.

扎克里·戴维斯：虽然这么多年来，康拉德与《黑暗的心》收获了各种各样的评价，但它的影响力一直持续着。而说起它最大的影响之一，还要追溯到他在刚果的经历。正是这次经历让他写下了这本书，讲述自己目睹的暴行，让他的欧洲读者得以了解海外殖民地人民所受到的伤害。

Maya Jassanoff:It made readers in the West, people in the West who were very self-confident about their position in the world realized that what was happening “over there”, as they would put it, could also have really powerful and not entirely positive effects on what was happening “over here”.

马娅·亚桑诺夫：《黑暗的心》让对本国地位深感骄傲的西方读者了解了殖民地的情况，也让他们意识到、乃至亲口承认，“他们”的情况会深深地影响“我们”，而且这种影响并不完全是积极的。

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Jack Pombriant, Liza French, and me, Zachary Davis. Script editing is by Galen Beebe. We get help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu and Monica Zhang. Our theme song is by Ian Coss. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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