"To Make Us See What We See": Impressionism in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness  (Paperback, Indrani Chaudhuri)

"This book is an intriguing and intimate study of the dialogues forged between different forms of art, paintings and texts in particular. It entwines art with literature to create a complex yet marvellous mosaic of textures hitherto undiscussed in this manner. Reading, here, becomes both painting and travelling through Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the works of the French Impressionist painters of the nineteenth century. Through an exploration of the distinctive characteristics of the paintings of Monet, Manet, Renoir, Pissarro, Cézanne and even Van Gogh and Gauguin, this book tries to decipher the codes and symbols of Conrad’s enigmatic novella. By taking the help of intertextuality, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches, detours and retours through time and space, this book offers extensive readings of texts on art, literature and Conrad’s works. Reading Heart of Darkness in this manner emerges as a kind of journey through the continents of imperial Europe and of colonized Africa, through diverse cultures, imaginary geographies, psychological processes that separate one human from another, through the metaphors and metonymies of the modern malaise that vacillated from Darwinian theories of evolution to Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God."