Some fifty years before the first significant ‘modern’ terrorism and assassination madness in North America and abroad.
Listening last night again to a complete reading of The Secret Agent when the following quote turned up as the mad Professor-bomber was talking about the U.S. to a wanna-be revolutionary in a seedy London cafe :
“They have more character over there, and their character is essentially anarchistic. Fertile ground for us, the States–very good ground. The great Republic has the root of the destructive matter in her. The collective temperament is lawless. Excellent.”
This might have been spoken by forces in Russia or China nowadays about an s-hole country in the process of imploding with its many irreparable divisions.
The relevance of Huxley and Orwell’s classics are perhaps more obvious, but Conrad preceded them in his wisdom and perspicacity gained from his seafaring days around the world. And Heart of Darkness (1902) preceded The Secret Agent in its prescience about colonial exploitation and the essential corrupt source of many of humankind’s ongoing, recurring problems and conflicts. Yes, Conrad as much as those other two others–very prophetic. (And if one desires more insights–Shakespeare: Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet, Othello, and his other tragedies.)
Finally, I am reminded again of how literature, especially great literature shows us as we really are and articulates how the species’ self-destructive processes work and unfold. Recurring chaos, madness, and evil all thanks to our potential, inner hearts of darkness.