Relay Race: Science vs Literature

Minute-to-Minute:

@20: 07 – FINAL! This is the end ladies and gentlemen, its Coleridge. Coleridge gives the Literature team the victory. Science team must be proud of the pure battle they gave to their rival. Anyways, I’m sure all of you underwent a voyage of mind and body by watching these fine racers. This is everything for today. Have a nice evening and remember Coleridge: “For he on honey-dew hath fed, / And drunk the milk of Paradise” (53-54).

@20:06 – Still tied. It will have to be decided in the final relay. The two best voyagers in the world for the end. What a final ladies and gentlemen. Its just a matter of seconds. Coleridge and Banks. Let’s take a look at Banks, and in my opinion, leave the best for last. His voyage on board of the Endeavour involves both the exterior and interior of himself. Bank’s voyage leaves many details upon Romanticism. Through the physical and metaphysical approach to his voyage, we are able to unite the Romantic science and poetry. His arrival of paradise can be interpreted both as the destiny he arrived (Tahiti), and the boundaries that were reached through his cognitive process. This idea of expeditions and mind journeys is the basis of Coleridge’s argument of voyage. Indeed, his poem “Kubla Khan” portrays through water imagery (the river) the voyage to paradise through dreams. Finally, even though voyage leads to a physical and metaphysical destiny, according to Coleridge, there might be no way back. Therefore, he establishes a connection between poetry and science: he questions whether a voyager is master of its discoveries or a slave of them. Also, Wordsworth’s “The Prelude” employ’s the river to portray the voyage towards imagination, and how mankind tries to connect its cognitive and sound power to pave nature towards paradise.

@20:04 – Close tie. The next relays, Cook for the Science side, and Conrad for the Literature team, continue the race amazingly tied. Many things are said about Cook’s voyage. Holmes, for example, compares it to that of Darwin to Galapagos. Even though both are “exploratory voyages,” they don’t conclude at the moment the voyager finds its discovery. In fact, I don’t believe he will never completely overcome the process of discovering. As he returned to England, he encouraged others to venture into the unknown, and relay his discovery. Afterwards, he was killed by natives in his third voyage, never fulfilling his discovery. On the other hand, Conrad maintains Cook’s fast rhythm, knowing that if they arrive at the same time, Coleridge will undoubtedly beat Banks. Anyways, Conrad’s approach to the idea of voyage in The Heart Of Darkness illustrates a metaphysical desire to reach something that, in the end is never discovered: the heart of darkness. Manifested through dreams, thoughts, and recreations of Marlow’s mind, the story within the story leads the reader to believe that there is no end in life’s voyage. In this case, the reader is brought back to the beginning at the end of the novel, in order to start a new voyage. How F. Scott Fitzgerald would once finish a book of his, we are “borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

@20:02 – Davy is able to take a 1.23 seconds advantage over Cowper. Now its Herschel and Wordsworth. Wow two Williams. Greetings to all the Williams who are watching this amazing Relay to Paradise. Wordsworth is now cutting distances with Herschel. Wordsworth was able to take an static image and imagine Newton “voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone” (Holmes xvii). Converts Newton’s plain image into a Romantic landscape. It’s not about the statue, but about what it’s looking, thinking, and wandering. Meanwhile, Herschel is looking at those stars that Newton’s statue, and that Romantic traveler, wanders. He didn´t only discover the first new planet to be seen in one thousand years, but also expanded humanity’s lantern of imagination. The boundaries of the imagination were now greater.

@20:01 – Cowper seems to be falling behind from Davy’s amazing rhythm. Another voyager this Cowper guy. In this book I’ve been reading lately The Age Of Wonder, Holmes describes him as the one who “invented the idea of the armchair traveler” (Holmes 51). It’s overwhelming how all these voyagers are able to create instead of receding upon the voyage’s dangers. I recall Shackleton. His leadership and persistence led him to survive his Antarctic expedition and bring his voyagers back with him. Even though these voyagers reach their destiny physically, they remain restless and unfulfilled, as there’s no such thing as an end to the voyage. The poem goes forever.

@20:00 – START! The first racers begin their run. Davy takes the lead. Wonderful chemist. He initiates a voyage for the scientific world. His lantern, that which would ignite the beginning of a scientific wonder. What might that tell us? Will his precedent help the Science team to beat Literature? Even though his voyage was purely scientific, his discoveries around Chemistry symbolize a poem, which begins with a word and ends with many meanings. Anyways, apparently Cowper is being left behind…

@19:55 – The members of each team are already in position, waiting for the signal to begin the race. The first relays will be Davy and Cowper, followed by Herschel and Wordsworth. It will start at any minute…

@19:50 – Here are the four members of each team. On the Science side: William Herschel, Humphry Davy, James Cook, and their captain, Joseph Banks. On the Literature side: William Cowper, William Wordsworth, Joseph Conrad, and their captain, Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

@ 19:47 – Hello everyone! Greetings from “the island of Tahiti, 17 degrees South, 149 degrees West” (Holmes 1), we are here present to live, minute-to-minute the wonderful Final Relay Race of the season. It’s been a passionate year. We’ve seen prospects show their talents on track, and I’m sure we’ll see some pretty good ones today in the Final.

The River

There are always objects which become symbols in a novel.
Here, we can identify many symbols as Marlow himself
Encounters them but struggles to interpret them adequately.

Justifications of these are shown in Conrad’s novel as he confronts an
Obscure reality and realizes how these symbols posses

Unsettling qualities that define reality. This conception of
Reality illustrates Marlow’s transformation as he travels upstream, the
Naïve illusions created by women, which depict all the social fictions and

Economic endeavor that colonialism involves. Also, Conrad
Yuxtaposes Marlow’s struggle upstream with the ease in which he travels back.

Upstream’s journey towards Kurtz represent his struggle to understand the

Present situation he has found himself. Also, this struggle might
Symbolize the river’s intention of expelling colonists from Africa, making their
Travel dawdling and intricate. The river separates the outside from the inside, opens a
Reality that resides beyond its currents, inside the gilded idea of imperialism.
Even though the river separates him from the heart of Africa,
At the end, the river is what keeps
Marlow coupled to Africa and recede along with the darkness forever.

The perfect example for this: “The brown current ran swiftly out of the
Heart of darkness, bearing us down towards the sea (…)
Ebbing, ebbing out of his heart into the sea of inexorable time (…) This

Choice of nightmares forced upon me in the tenebrous land (Conrad 127).
Only the river’s brown current is what relentlessly brings him back to the
Nihilistic white civilization, but, he is unable to leave the
Glimpses of darkness behind as he becomes internalized by it, and
Out of the white sepulchre that lays upon the colored map of Africa.

Twain’s Gilded Age And Matthew's Whited Sepulchre

What is the “whited sepulchre?” I couldn’t avoid wandering as I read “In a very few hours I arrived in a city that always makes me think of a whited sepuchre” (Conrad 13). I was even further intrigued as I saw the title of Mr. Tangen’s entry to his blog White Sepulchre. So, I did what ninety-nine percent of humanity would do: googled it. The first result I get is a line from the Book of Matthew that reads: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead [men's] bones, and of all uncleanness” (King James Bible, 23:27). According to these lines, a whited sepulchre symbolizes gild. Then, relating it to Heart Of Darkness timeline, the allusion of whited sepulchre to a city means that the city itself is gilded. Or, in other words, covered with gold, but filled with cruelty. Taking into account that the Congo was a Belgian colony, the city he might be referring to is Brussels. Hence, the allusion signifies hypocrisy, where the monarch’s premise of the civilizing benefits of imperialism is filled with cruelty, death, and violence in the colony of Congo.

Therefore, the reader can imply that Marlow’s point of view towards imperialism is a very critical one. Through imagery, Conrad is able to describe Marlow’s direct encounter with scenes of torture and cruelty. For example, “Nothing but black shadows of disease and starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish gloom” (Conrad 28). Marlow’s feelings are directly sensed by the reader, since he is the narrator of his own story. The reader feels the moment, can recreate the scenery from Conrad’s careful use of imagery. Also, the reader feels pathos towards the African natives, as Conrad illustrates the European missioners as cruel, and the Africans as the poor victims. Therefore, Conrad is able to criticize European imperialism through his use of imagery. On the other hand, taking into account the frame story (the Nellie and the men at the Thames River), the reader can sense both aspects of the whited sepulchre: the calm and optimistic men at the Nellie representing the beautiful white paint, and the vindictive scenery of Congo characterizing the death corpses inside.

The Painting And Its Story

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings…” I’m going to stop for a while and write a blog for Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness. I hope I don’t forget the poem.

It’s all about metafiction, once again. Just before the Classroom Without Walls outing I wrote an essay about Slaughterhouse-Five and Vonnegut’s use of metafiction. Apparently, the setting of the Nellie anchored at the Thames is just the frame story of this meta story of Marlow and his experience at a Belgian steamship in the Congo River. Concurrently, as soon as Marlow starts telling his story, the reader sets aboard a train of thoughts and memories that lead him to start reading the story in another manner: forgetting of the Nellie, and starting to understand Marlow’s ironic tone. For example, “I don’t want to bother you much with what happened to me personally” (Conrad 9). Here, the reader can juxtapose the omniscient narrator’s voice with that of Marlow. Starting from this, the reader can furthermore juxtapose many aspects of both stories. On one hand, the civilized, enlightened, and optimistic Thames River symbolizing the countless men who sailed abroad and colonized many distant cultures. On the other hand, the dark, savage, and hopelessness of Marlow’s story makes the reader realize his critical attitude towards imperialism, and the before-and-after of a character who lived both sides of the picture.

Back to memorizing: “Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

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Oh, by the way, guess of what novel this reminds me of ;)