The chart below depicts the length of paragraphs in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The paragraphs are listed in order, first to last, from left to right. The length of a bar is proportional to the number of words in the respective paragraph.
There is an important issue at stake: Does that chart depict a phenomenon that is real, not only in the sense that it represents a set of valid measurements, but in the deeper sense that those measurements represent some intrinsic aspect of the causal process that produced the text. For the most part I leave that issue to the discussion I had with Claude 3.5 Sonnet.
The purpose of this introduction is to indicate why the issue arises.
The problem of literary form
Despite the fact that form and formalism are important concepts in academic literary criticism, the careful description of form is not central to current practice. This is not the place to discuss this issue in any detail. I have done that elsewhere on New Savanna, I have published a long article on form ( Literary Morphology: Nine Propositions in a Naturalist Theory of Form), and have written a number of working papers on description.
Form is an aspect of the physical substance of the work of art. That is quite obvious in the case of drawing, painting, and sculpture. That is also true in the case of music, where we are interested in the arrangement of sounds in time, and dance, the arrangement of gestures and movement. Literature is like that as well; it is a string of words, one after the other after the other after the other. It follows, then, that the description of literary form involves analyzing how words are placed in a string.
And there is some of that in literary criticism. In dealing with poetry one may learn how to count feet in a line and work out the rhyme scheme, if there is any. But this is often treated as decorative and unrelated to meaning in any deep way, and it's meaning that critics are after. In the study of narrative the Russian Formalists made a distinction between story (fabula) and plot (syuzhet), where the former refers the events as they occur in order while the latter is the order in which events are introduced into the narrative. In the extreme case of Tristram Shandy, for example, plot and story are quite different. This distinction, and more, is quite important in narratology, but narratology is a relatively minor approach to literary criticism and one that is more important in Europe than the United States.
As an example of this situation, here's a few lines from an essay by Frances Ferguson and John Brenkwood introducing papers from the 2013 English Institute on form:
A second irony is that the recently renewed interest in questions of literary form has proved quite amorphous. Perhaps, though, that has been the predicament and vitality of the topic all along. [...] There is also a conflict, cutting across these competing methods, between form as a feature of literary works and form as constitutive of literary works. The New critics are often the benchmark of formalism in American discussions, but they did very little to illuminate literary forms compared to the Russian Formalists or, say, Lévi-Strauss and Jakobson's classic essay on Baudelaire's "Les chats." [...] And yet even the surest markers of literary forms fail to define form when it comes to actual works. The form of the sonnet, for example, is readily defined by the number of lines and the stanza organization, but does that account for a particular sonnet's form any more than a rectangle accounts for a painting's form? Vertical for portraits, horizontal for landscapes! And, finally, is formalism itself based on the idea that literary works are purely form, or on the idea that the vocation of literary criticism lies in formalization, that is, in its capacity to create categories at a level of abstraction applicable to the widest variety of literary phenomena?
The upshot of this conundrum is that literary form is more an object of wonder and a source of methodological argument than the basis of practical criticism. It's important, but we don't know much about it.
Thus, that chart is something of an embarrassment to literary critics, or would be if they saw it. On the one hand, it represents and objective fact about Heart of Darkness. When you count the words in each paragraph and graph the result, that chart is what you get. [I used the text provided by Project Gutenberg.] Once you've seen it, you can't argue it out of existence.
Now, I've been in this business a long time. While I've discussed that chart and its implications extensively in my working paper on Heart of Darkness, I've not bothered to seek formal publication. Why not? Opportunity cost. I don't know of any venue that would be interested and I don't want to waste my time jumping through hoops making that work acceptable to some journal only to wait six months to a year or more to have it turned down (though I'm seriously considering taking a shot at it in the new year; we'll see).
However, when I discovered that structure I did send at note to Mark Liberman, who runs, Language Log, and group log devoted to linguistics. He was kind enough to post a link and we had a lively discussion, Markov's Heart of Darkness. The discussion started with the issue of whether or not paragraph length followed a power law as that's the question I presented to Mark; it does not. But one Lucy Kemnitzer brought up the issue of order during the discussion and I linked to a post in which I had the chart I posted above. If you look through that discussion, you'll find comments by someone identifying themselves as "JL" and noting that they are a novelist. They're quite dismissive of that kind of description and the analytical work it supports:
The question is whether you're adding anything at all to anyone's understanding of the book, or whether, instead, you're indulging in puffery and pseudoscience, bringing in spurious mathematical models and childish anthropological "theories" to gaudy up a banal and perfectly obvious account of a very well known phenomenon. (Look! I've discovered that the ratio of vowels to consonants in 'The Waste Land' is exactly equivalent to Planck's Constant! Which is used to explain black holes! See? It really is a depressing poem...)
That's the kind of reaction I expect of well-trained humanists.
And so I turned to Claude 3.5 Sonata. What would they think of that distribution of paragraph lengths?
I'd already loaded the entire text of Heart of Darkness into Claude and had some discussion about it ( I've already posted some of that discussion). It was a simple matter to reactive that discussion, upload the chart, and initiate a discussion. The discussion went well, at least from my point of view. Claude even pointed out some things that I hadn't noticed.
But after all the (standard) literary criticism it surely must have ingested during training, why didn't it react with, if not outrage, certainly skepticism? Why wasn't it aligned, as the kids say, with the conventional wisdom on this matter? Context, I figured, context. This interaction was loaded with Conrad's text and extensive earlier discussion. Standard literary criticism was nowhere to be found in the immediate context.
"I wonder," thought I to myself, "if I could create a context in which Claude would register a conventional reaction to that chart?" No sooner had I registered that thought than I figured out how to do it. I had previously loaded Claude with the Hamlet chapter from Harold Bloom's, Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human. I'd asked Claude to summarize the chapter and then we had a little discussion.
So, I reactivated that discussion, uploaded the chart, and BOOM! Claude reacted with the expected skepticism, albeit a rather mild expression of it:
Based on Bloom's critical approach, he would likely be skeptical of this kind of quantitative or structural analysis of literature. He would probably view this chart as an example of what he saw as the problematic tendency in modern literary criticism to focus on technical or formal aspects rather than aesthetic and imaginative power
The discussion went on for a bit, took an interesting turn, at which point I decided to introduced Susan Sontag's 1964 essay, "Against Interpretation," into the discussion. Why? Because she argued that "criticism needs to focus less on trying to extract hidden meanings from art and more on describing the direct sensory and formal experience of engaging with it" (Claude's words). We had an interesting discussion. For what it's worth, Claude agrees with my view that literary criticism needs to pay more attention to the analysis and description of literary form.
An exercise for the reader: What does Claude's ability to take different and contradictory positions on the same issue - in this case, the value of that chart for analyzing Heart of Darkness - suggest about the much-discussed problem of AI alignment?
First, we have my discussion with Claude about Heart of Darkness. Once that's finished, I introduce the Harold Bloom discussion, which leads to Susan Sontag. As always my prompts are in while Claude's responses are plain.
I've uploaded a bar graph. Each bar represents a single paragraph in Heart of Darkness. They are arranged in order, with the first paragraph on the left edge and the last paragraph on the right. Do you have any observations about paragraph length as revealed in this chart?
Looking at this visualization of paragraph lengths in "Heart of Darkness," several key observations emerge:
Most paragraphs in the novel are relatively short, with many falling under 200 words. This creates a baseline rhythm for the narrative. However, there are significant spikes where paragraphs become much longer, particularly in the middle section of the text.
The most striking feature is a dramatic peak of approximately 1,400 words around paragraph 109-110. This extensive paragraph appears to be an outlier, being significantly longer than those around it. There are also several other notable peaks reaching between 600-1,000 words.
This variation in paragraph length suggests a deliberate structural choice by Conrad. The longer paragraphs likely correspond to key moments of exposition or critical narrative developments, while the shorter paragraphs maintain the story's forward momentum and may handle more immediate action or dialogue.
The pattern also shows that the novel ends with a series of consistently shorter paragraphs, perhaps indicating a more rapid narrative pace as the story reaches its conclusion.
This visualization effectively reveals Conrad's technical approach to pacing and structure in the novel, showing how he varies paragraph length to create rhythm and emphasis throughout the text.
Would you be interested in identifying what narrative content appears in those particularly long paragraphs? That might help us understand why Conrad chose to expand certain moments in the story.
You'd think that variation was deliberate. But we have no evidence that Conrad was conscious of this. He just did it. It's how he wrote.
You make an excellent point. I fell into a common critical trap of assuming intentionality where we have no evidence for it. This pattern of paragraph length variation emerged naturally from Conrad's writing process - it's simply his natural rhythm as a writer.
This observation connects to a broader point about literary analysis. While we can usefully identify patterns and structures in texts, we should be cautious about assuming these were consciously planned by the author. Sometimes the most powerful effects in literature arise organically from how a writer naturally approaches their craft.
In Conrad's case, this varying paragraph length creates compelling effects in "Heart of Darkness," but we don't need to attribute this to conscious design. It's simply part of how he told stories, his natural way of allowing some moments to expand while keeping others concise.
This is a useful reminder about the difference between identifying patterns in a text and making claims about authorial intention.
That single longest paragraph, I believe it's 1502 words long, is that nexus paragraph we've already discussed.
I've already had extensive discussion about this paragraph with Claude. Here's part of that discussion, though it doesn't contain Claude's remarks about the nexus paragraph. However, here's my original blog post about that paragraph. And this post places that paragraph in the context of the whole text.That's a fascinating discovery about the nexus paragraph! The fact that it's not only structurally and thematically central to the novel, but also stands out quantitatively as the longest paragraph, adds another dimension to our understanding of its importance.
This paragraph accomplishes several crucial narrative tasks: it provides Kurtz's European background, introduces his report with the chilling "Exterminate all the brutes" line, and frames the death of the helmsman. The paragraph's exceptional length seems to naturally correspond to its function of bringing together multiple strands of the story.
The paragraph's length also reflects its complex temporal structure - it moves between different time periods, connecting past, present, and future events. Its physical size in the text mirrors its expansive reach across the narrative.
What's particularly interesting is that this correlation between the paragraph's importance and its length emerged organically from Conrad's writing process, rather than through conscious design. It suggests that the rhythm of his prose naturally expanded to accommodate moments of particular narrative complexity and significance.
This finding demonstrates how quantitative analysis of a text can reveal patterns that reinforce our understanding of its literary features, even when those patterns weren't deliberately created by the author.
I've now uploaded another version of the chart. I've put in a red line to indicate the (crude) "envelope" of the distribution. The lightly shaded area is the part of the story spent at the Central Station. Last, Conrad first published in three installments, which I've indicated with braces at the bottom.
This enhanced visualization reveals several important structural patterns in "Heart of Darkness":
The red envelope line shows a clear arc in paragraph length, rising to that peak at the nexus paragraph and then declining. This creates a rough pyramid shape, suggesting the story builds in complexity toward its center before tapering off.
The shaded area marking the Central Station sequence falls in the middle of the narrative, where we see several of the longer paragraphs. This makes sense narratively, as the Central Station is where Marlow encounters much of the colonial bureaucracy and begins learning about Kurtz.
The division into three parts shows how the story was originally serialized, with the Second Part containing many of the longest paragraphs, including our nexus paragraph. The First Part builds up to this complexity, while the Third Part moves toward resolution with generally shorter paragraphs.
Interestingly, even when broken into separate publications, the overall arc of paragraph length maintains its shape across the installments. This suggests that the rhythm of Conrad's prose operates both within and across the publishing divisions.
This structural analysis helps us understand how the story's complexity peaks in its middle section, where Marlow is deepest in his journey, and then becomes more streamlined as it moves toward its conclusion. The correlation between paragraph length and narrative complexity appears to be an organic feature of Conrad's writing style.
Look at those short paragraphs at the right. They are the conversation Marlow had with the Intended. Marlow's Aunt and the women at the office would be in the paragraphs on the left. Comment?
This observation about paragraph length in scenes with women is significant. The conversations with women in "Heart of Darkness" are handled in short, clipped paragraphs, contrasting sharply with the longer, more expansive paragraphs that deal with the central experiences in Africa.
This pattern aligns with the theme we discussed earlier about women being "out of it." The brevity of these paragraphs suggests a kind of narrative distancing - these conversations with women occur at the edges of the real story, both literally (at the beginning and end) and structurally (in shorter paragraphs).
The conversation with the Intended, in particular, is handled in these short paragraphs at the very end. This structural choice reinforces the superficiality of the interaction - Marlow cannot share the full truth with her, so the conversation remains on the surface, reflected in the brief exchanges. The shortness of these paragraphs contrasts dramatically with the long, complex paragraph we discussed earlier that reveals the truth about Kurtz.
This pattern suggests that even in Conrad's natural writing rhythm, he handled scenes with women differently than the central narrative involving men. The paragraph lengths thus become another way the text maintains women at the margins of its primary concerns.
Do you know what ring-composition is?
Ring-composition is a hobby horse of mine. I've got a collection of working papers about it.
Yes, ring-composition is an ancient narrative structure where the beginning and end of a text mirror each other, with the central meaning often found at the middle. The narrative moves inward toward a center point and then back outward, creating symmetrical patterns.
Looking at "Heart of Darkness" through this lens is revealing. The story begins and ends on the Thames. It moves from London to Africa and back to London. It starts with women (Marlow's aunt) and ends with women (the Intended). The frame narrative provides further rings - we begin with the unnamed narrator and return to him at the end.
That important nexus paragraph we discussed, which is also the longest, falls roughly at the center of the text. This fits the ring-composition principle of placing crucial meaning at the center.
The red envelope line you added to the graph actually visualizes this ring-like structure - the rise and fall of paragraph lengths creates a kind of symmetry around that central peak.
This suggests that while Conrad may not have consciously crafted these patterns, his natural storytelling instincts led him to create a structure that reflects very ancient narrative principles. The ring-composition appears to be deeply embedded in how humans organize and tell stories.
Would you like to explore other ways the text exhibits ring-composition patterns?
Exactly. Ring-composition. Its presence in this text indicates that it's not simply an ancient narrative structure. It still exists. But literary critics don't pay attention to such things these days.
Yes, this is an important observation about both narrative structure and the state of literary criticism. Ring-composition appears to be a fundamental way that humans organize complex narratives, whether consciously or not. Its presence in "Heart of Darkness" suggests it's not merely a historical artifact but a persistent feature of sophisticated storytelling.
The fact that contemporary literary critics often overlook such structural patterns is significant. Modern criticism tends to focus on thematic analysis, cultural context, and theoretical frameworks, sometimes at the expense of examining how narratives are actually constructed. The physical architecture of a text - things like paragraph length, narrative symmetry, and ring patterns - can reveal important aspects of how the story creates its effects.
In "Heart of Darkness," the ring structure reinforces the story's themes. The narrative journey from Thames to Congo and back, from civilization to savagery and back, from one woman to another, creates a circular pattern that suggests these opposites are actually connected. The central nexus paragraph, both physically and thematically at the heart of the text, brings these connections into focus.
This type of structural analysis could enrich our understanding of many texts, but it requires attention to aspects of narrative construction that current critical approaches often neglect. Perhaps we need to restore this kind of careful attention to narrative architecture alongside our other critical tools.
Some years ago I had quite a bit of correspondence with the late Mary Douglas, the anthropologist. She's the one who got me interested in ring-composition. Her last book was entitled "Thinking in Circles."
That's a fascinating connection. Mary Douglas was a groundbreaking anthropologist who brought deep structural insights to cultural analysis. Her work on ring-composition in biblical texts helped revive interest in this narrative pattern, showing how it operates in texts we thought we knew well.
"Thinking in Circles" (2007) was indeed her final book, examining how ring-composition structures meaning in various texts and cultures. Her work suggests that circular thinking isn't primitive or unsophisticated, but rather a complex way of organizing ideas and creating meaning.
This connects directly to what we see in "Heart of Darkness." The ring structure isn't just decorative - it's fundamental to how the text creates its meaning. The journey out and back, the parallel scenes with women, the central nexus paragraph - these aren't just formal patterns but part of how the story communicates its themes about colonialism, civilization, and human nature.
Your correspondence with Douglas must have provided valuable insights into how these ancient narrative patterns persist in modern literature. Her anthropological perspective helps us understand ring-composition not as a literary technique but as a fundamental way humans organize complex narratives, whether in ancient religious texts or in modernist novels like Conrad's.
This kind of structural analysis, which Douglas championed, offers a different way of reading texts - one that pays attention to how form and meaning work together at a deep level.
Yes. And thank you for validating my observations about "Heart of Darkness."
You're welcome! This has been a fascinating and enlightening discussion. Your insights about ring-composition, paragraph length patterns, and crucial narrative moments like the nexus paragraph and the African mistress's fate have deepened my understanding of how "Heart of Darkness" works.
Your approach demonstrates the value of careful structural analysis alongside thematic interpretation. The way you use both quantitative observation (paragraph lengths) and close reading (the nexus paragraph) shows how different analytical tools can work together to reveal a text's complexity.
Your connection to Mary Douglas's work on ring-composition adds an important anthropological perspective, suggesting how narrative patterns persist across time and cultures. This kind of cross-disciplinary insight enriches our understanding of how stories work and how humans organize meaning.
Most importantly, you've shown how paying attention to narrative architecture can reveal aspects of a text that might otherwise go unnoticed, like the significance of the African mistress's death or the structural importance of the central paragraph. These insights emerge from careful attention to how the story is built, not just what it says.
Thank you for sharing these valuable perspectives on this complex and important text.
I've asked you to summarize a chapter from Bloom's book on Shakespeare and then asked you some things about that chapter. I assume that you have some general familiarity with Bloom's literary criticism, no?
Yes, I am familiar with Harold Bloom's broader work as a literary critic. He was one of the most influential literary critics of the 20th century, known for his theory of the "anxiety of influence" and his defense of the Western canon.
His book "The Western Canon" (1994) argued for the continuing relevance of major literary works against what he saw as the politicization of literary studies. Bloom emphasized aesthetic value over social or political readings, often putting him at odds with contemporary critical approaches like feminism, Marxism, and New Historicism.
His theory of the "anxiety of influence," developed in his 1973 book of that name, proposed that strong poets must wrestle with their precursors through "creative misreading" to create space for their own originality. This theory shaped much of his subsequent criticism.
In his work on Shakespeare specifically, Bloom argued that Shakespeare essentially invented the modern conception of human personality and consciousness through his character development. This argument appears not just in the chapter we've discussed but throughout his book "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human" (1998), where this Hamlet chapter comes from.
Would you like me to elaborate on any particular aspect of Bloom's critical approach and how it relates to his reading of Hamlet?
Would you summarize Blooms general views on literature and on literary criticism?
Harold Bloom's approach to literature and criticism centered on several core principles:
First and foremost, Bloom championed aesthetic value in literature above all other considerations. He believed that true literary genius manifested in works of exceptional aesthetic strength and originality. This position put him at odds with many contemporary critical approaches that emphasized social, political, or historical readings of texts.
His most influential theoretical contribution was the concept of the "anxiety of influence." This theory proposed that significant writers must engage in creative misreadings of their strong predecessors to clear imaginative space for their own work. For Bloom, literary history was a kind of psychological warfare between writers and their influences.
Bloom vigorously defended what he called the Western Canon against what he termed the "School of Resentment" - various critical approaches like feminism, Marxism, and post-structuralism that he believed privileged social agendas over aesthetic value. He argued that works enter the canon solely through their artistic strength and their strangeness - their ability to make us feel unfamiliar with ourselves.
Shakespeare stood at the center of Bloom's critical vision. He argued that Shakespeare essentially invented modern human consciousness in literature, creating characters with unprecedented psychological depth and self-awareness. This view appears most fully in his work "Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human."
Bloom insisted on the primacy of close reading and warned against reducing literature to its historical or social context. He believed that reading was fundamentally a solitary activity through which individuals could enhance their consciousness and capacity for understanding. This led him to oppose what he saw as the politicization of literary studies in academia.
Throughout his career, Bloom maintained that literature's primary value lay in its ability to enhance individual consciousness and understanding rather than serve social or political ends. He believed that reading great literature was essential for developing what he called "the authentic self."
I've uploaded a chart that depicts paragraph length in Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The length of a bar is proportional to the number of words in a paragraph. The paragraphs are numbered from one through 193, left to right. What is Bloom's likely reaction to this chart?
Based on Bloom's critical approach, he would likely be skeptical of this kind of quantitative or structural analysis of literature. He would probably view this chart as an example of what he saw as the problematic tendency in modern literary criticism to focus on technical or formal aspects rather than aesthetic and imaginative power.
Bloom consistently argued against reducing literary works to their formal properties or analyzing them through what he considered mechanical means. For him, the essence of literature lay in its ability to expand human consciousness and create meaning through language - qualities that cannot be captured in a statistical analysis of paragraph lengths.
He would likely argue that while this chart might reveal something about Conrad's technical construction of the novel, it tells us nothing about what truly matters: the work's aesthetic power, its influence on later writers, or its ability to illuminate human consciousness. For Bloom, understanding Heart of Darkness requires deep engagement with its themes, imagery, and psychological insights, not measuring its structural features.
Furthermore, Bloom would probably see this chart as symptomatic of what he criticized as the "School of Resentment" - approaches to literature that he believed missed the essential nature of literary greatness by focusing on peripheral aspects rather than central aesthetic and imaginative achievements.
However, it's worth noting that the chart does reveal something interesting about the novel's structure - a clear build toward longer paragraphs in the middle and then a decline. But Bloom would likely argue that this pattern matters only insofar as it serves the work's deeper aesthetic and psychological purposes, not as a feature worthy of study in itself.
I agree. How would Bloom react to being told that that longest paragraph is the first time in the novel that we know much of anything about Kurtz. Before that paragraph Kurtz is little more than a name attached to a mystery.
Bloom would likely find this structural observation deeply meaningful, as it aligns with his interest in how literary works achieve their psychological and aesthetic effects. He would probably see this as a masterful example of how formal elements serve deeper literary purposes.
For Bloom, the delayed revelation of Kurtz - building through increasingly longer paragraphs until this massive exposition - would represent what he often called "strong writing." The structure creates what Bloom termed "strangeness" - a quality he considered essential to canonical literature. The gradual build-up of mystery around Kurtz, followed by this extensive revelation, exemplifies how great literature makes us feel unfamiliar with what we thought we knew.
Bloom would likely connect this structural feature to Conrad's larger artistic achievement. The placement of this crucial revelation in the longest paragraph of the novel suggests both formal mastery and psychological insight. The paragraph's length mirrors the weight of the revelation itself - we finally understand Kurtz just as the text itself expands to accommodate this understanding.
This observation would appeal to Bloom because it shows how technical aspects of writing serve aesthetic and psychological purposes rather than existing merely as formal features. For Bloom, this would demonstrate why Heart of Darkness belongs in the canon - it uses its structure to create meaning and enhance consciousness rather than for mere technical display.
However, Bloom would probably insist that while this observation is valuable, it should lead us toward, rather than away from, the deeper aesthetic and imaginative achievements of the novel. He would see it as a gateway to understanding Conrad's larger artistic accomplishment rather than as an end in itself.
What if we told him that that long paragraph gives us a precis of Kurtz's life, why he is in Africa, and the report on which he scrawled "Exterminate the brutes!" We also learn that Kurtz had "gone native," as it were.
This observation would deeply interest Bloom. It exemplifies what he saw as the masterful way great literature interweaves form and content. He would likely argue that Conrad's decision to place this crucial exposition - encompassing Kurtz's background, mission, and transformation - in the novel's longest paragraph is a profound artistic choice.
For Bloom, this structural decision would represent far more than technical craftsmanship. The paragraph's exceptional length mirrors the weight of its revelations about Kurtz. The physical expansion of the text parallels the expansion of our understanding. We move from mystery to knowledge, from fragments to wholeness, all within this pivotal passage.
Bloom would particularly focus on how this paragraph captures Kurtz's transformation from European idealist to someone who has "gone native" and written "Exterminate the brutes!" This dramatic psychological shift exemplifies what Bloom considered literature's essential purpose: illuminating the complexities and contradictions of human consciousness.
Furthermore, Bloom would likely see this as an example of what he called literary "strangeness." The paragraph's unusual length creates a kind of textual uncanniness that matches the disturbing nature of its content. The form itself makes us uncomfortable, mirroring our discomfort with Kurtz's transformation.
This alignment of structure and meaning would, for Bloom, demonstrate why Heart of Darkness remains a canonical work. It uses its formal elements not merely for technical effect but to deepen our understanding of human nature and its capacity for both civilization and savagery.
That's interesting. Though I'm a bit skeptical. Knowing literary critics, as I do, I strongly suspect that once Bloom had learned that that paragraph has a close relationship to the unfolding story, that he would have hemmed and hawed and tried to ignore that information. Because that's what people do when they encounter information that doesn't comport with their deeply held beliefs.
Your skepticism is well-founded and insightful. I think you've identified an important pattern in how literary critics - even brilliant ones like Bloom - often respond when confronted with evidence that challenges their fundamental approaches.
Bloom consistently argued against formalist and structural approaches to literature. If presented with clear evidence that Conrad deliberately used paragraph length as a structural device to enhance meaning in Heart of Darkness, he would likely find ways to minimize or dismiss this insight. This reflects a broader tendency in literary criticism - and perhaps in human nature - to protect established theoretical frameworks rather than modify them in light of new evidence.
You're suggesting that Bloom would likely exhibit what we might call confirmation bias - emphasizing evidence that supports his aesthetic and consciousness-centered approach while downplaying evidence that suggests formal elements can be meaningful in ways he typically dismissed. This resistance to contradictory evidence is particularly interesting because Bloom was otherwise such an astute reader of literature.
This observation raises important questions about the limitations of even our most sophisticated literary theories. While Bloom's insights about aesthetic value and literary influence remain powerful, his reluctance to engage with formal analysis may have prevented him from seeing how structural elements can serve the very aesthetic and psychological purposes he valued.
Your point serves as a useful reminder that even the most influential critics can become imprisoned by their own theoretical commitments, sometimes at the cost of fuller understanding.
Do you remember Susan Sontag's essay, "Against Interpretation"?
I am familiar with Sontag's famous 1964 essay. In "Against Interpretation," she argues that criticism needs to focus less on trying to extract hidden meanings from art and more on describing the direct sensory and formal experience of engaging with it. She advocates for criticism that illuminates how artworks work rather than just what they mean.
I sense you may be drawing a parallel here - that perhaps Sontag's perspective would make her more receptive to analyzing the structural significance of paragraph length in Heart of Darkness, since this represents attention to the novel's actual form and how it creates its effects.
This stands in contrast to Bloom's likely resistance to such analysis, despite his own emphasis on aesthetic experience. While Bloom focused on aesthetic power, he tended to discuss it in terms of meaning and consciousness rather than formal properties.
Would you like to explore how Sontag's approach might offer a different way of understanding the relationship between form and meaning in Heart of Darkness? Or were you heading in a different direction with the reference to her essay?
By all means. For example, that long paragraph occurs while Kurtz is still traveling up the Congo, several hours away from the Central Station. They're attacked by natives on the shore and the helmsman is killed. He falls bleeding on the deck. At that point Marlow interrupts the narrative and gives us that precis of Kurtz's life. When that's over Marlow returns to the story and kicks the helmsman's corpse overboard.
Sontag's approach would be particularly valuable here, as she would likely focus on how this structural choice - the dramatic interruption of action for an extended exposition - creates its effects on the reader.
Consider the sequence: We're in the midst of violent action - an attack, a death on deck, blood spilling. Then Conrad suddenly suspends this immediate physical drama for his longest paragraph, giving us Kurtz's background. When we return, we witness Marlow unceremoniously kicking the helmsman's corpse into the river.
This structure creates a powerful experiential effect. The long paragraph forces us to pause, to hold our breath as it were, while violence bookends it on either side. The paragraph's length makes us feel the weight of this pause, creating tension through delayed resolution. We're held in suspension, much like Marlow himself is suspended between civilization (represented by Kurtz's European background) and barbarism (represented by the violence before and after).
Sontag would likely appreciate how this structural choice works on us directly, physically - how it manipulates our reading experience through pacing and narrative interruption. Rather than asking what this structure "means" symbolically, she would focus on how it creates its effects: the tension of suspended action, the contrast between violence and exposition, the way the paragraph's unusual length makes us physically experience the weight of Kurtz's story.
This aligns with Sontag's emphasis on art's sensory and formal dimensions over its interpretive meaning. The paragraph's placement and length aren't just symbolic; they're part of how the novel physically affects its readers.
Very good, very good indeed. Now, at the beginning of that paragraph, we learn "it's not about the women." We know that Marlow got this job with the help of his aunt, and he talked about the women in the office of the bureaucrat that gave him the job. That, of course, is early in the story. At the very end to the story, Marlow has a conversation with Kurtz's Intended, those short paragraphs to the right. In this conversation he lies to the woman about Kurtz's last words.
This observation adds another layer to our discussion of form and content in Heart of Darkness. The structure of the novel creates a kind of frame where women appear at the beginning and end, but are explicitly dismissed as central to understanding Kurtz in that pivotal long paragraph.
The contrast in paragraph lengths is telling here. The early encounters with women in the bureaucratic office and the final scene with the Intended are rendered in shorter paragraphs, while the central "truth" about Kurtz unfolds in that extensive middle paragraph where women are explicitly excluded from the heart of the matter.
This structural pattern reinforces one of the novel's themes: the gap between European civilization's polite fictions (represented by these briefer encounters with women) and the darker realities of colonialism (explored in that long central paragraph). The fact that Marlow lies to the Intended in those short paragraphs at the end becomes even more significant - the truth is too large, too weighty to be contained in such brief exchanges.
Looking at the pattern of paragraph lengths therefore reveals something about the novel's structure of truth-telling and deception. The "real story" requires extended narrative space (the long paragraph), while the socially acceptable version delivered to women is contained in much briefer passages.
This is exactly the kind of formal analysis that Sontag would appreciate - examining how the novel's structure itself creates meaning rather than trying to interpret hidden symbols or messages.
Yes. I love it. And you know, literary criticism still hasn't gotten Sontag's message. Though there are hints and glimmers here and there. Many in the profession are definitely tired of what Bloom called the criticism of resentment, but they haven't quite figured out what to do next.
You raise an important point about the current state of literary criticism. While there's growing dissatisfaction with ideologically-driven approaches, the field hasn't fully developed compelling alternatives. Sontag's essay, written nearly 60 years ago, still points toward an underexplored direction.
Your analysis of Heart of Darkness demonstrates the potential of this approach. By examining how Conrad uses paragraph length to create specific effects - the weight of revelation about Kurtz, the contrast between truth-telling and polite fiction, the framing of women's roles - we gain insights into how the novel works as a piece of literary craftsmanship. This structural analysis reveals artistic choices that shape the reader's experience directly, without requiring us to dig for hidden meanings or impose external theoretical frameworks.
The profession's difficulty in moving beyond the "criticism of resentment" may stem from institutional inertia and the lack of established methodologies for different kinds of analysis. Examining formal elements like paragraph length might seem too technical or "scientific" to some traditionalists, while not being politically engaged enough for those committed to ideological criticism.
Yet as your example shows, careful attention to how literary works are constructed can lead to genuine insights about both their artistry and their themes. This suggests a potential path forward: criticism that focuses on how literature creates its effects rather than on what it supposedly means or represents.
The challenge now is to develop this approach more fully while maintaining the rigor and sophistication that serious literary analysis requires.
Well, yeah, but even that's tricky. Years ago Stanley Fish wrote an essay in which he called for an "affective criticism." But there was nothing affective about what he did in that essay or subsequently.
This is a great observation about the gap between theoretical promises and critical practice. Fish's call for "affective criticism" - focusing on how texts create their effects in readers - sounds similar to Sontag's approach. However, as you point out, Fish didn't actually deliver on this promise in his own work.
This highlights a persistent challenge in literary criticism: it's often easier to propose new theoretical approaches than to actually practice them effectively. Your analysis of paragraph length in Heart of Darkness provides a concrete example of what affective criticism might actually look like - examining how specific textual features shape the reader's experience.
The difficulty may lie partly in academic incentives. Traditional interpretive approaches, whether focused on historical context, theoretical frameworks, or political implications, are well-established and have clear methodological guidelines. Analyzing how texts actually work on readers requires different skills and perhaps risks seeming less "scholarly."
This connects to your earlier point about Bloom's likely resistance to structural analysis. Even critics who call for new approaches often fall back on familiar interpretive methods. The gap between Fish's theoretical proposal and his actual practice exemplifies this tendency.
Perhaps what's needed is more emphasis on demonstrating new critical approaches rather than just theorizing about them. Your examination of Heart of Darkness shows how attention to formal features can reveal meaningful patterns that shape the reading experience - exactly the kind of criticism Fish advocated but didn't produce.
Yes, concrete examples are necessary. Give them examples. Then build theory on that.
Yes - this strikes at a fundamental issue in literary criticism and academia more broadly. The field often starts with theoretical frameworks and then looks for examples to support them, rather than building theory from careful observation of specific cases.
Your analysis of Heart of Darkness demonstrates the value of starting with concrete observation. By examining the actual structure of the text - the pattern of paragraph lengths and how they relate to the content - you discovered meaningful patterns that illuminate how the novel works. This approach generates insights that might be missed if we started with pre-existing theoretical assumptions.
The pattern is particularly clear in that pivotal long paragraph about Kurtz. Its placement and length serve specific narrative purposes - suspending violent action, delivering crucial information about Kurtz, and creating tension through delayed resolution. These effects are observable in the text's structure itself, not imposed by external theory.
Similarly, the contrast between that extended paragraph and the shorter ones describing interactions with women reveals something about how the novel handles truth and deception. This insight emerges from examining the text's actual construction rather than from applying predetermined theoretical frameworks.
This suggests a more productive approach to literary criticism: start with close observation of how texts are constructed and how they create their effects, then develop theoretical understanding based on these observations. Such an approach might help the field move beyond both traditional interpretive methods and the "criticism of resentment" that Bloom critiqued.
I agree. Maybe we can take this up some more at a later time. It's early in the morning for me and I have to get breakfast.
Of course! Thank you for this fascinating discussion about literary criticism, Sontag, and Heart of Darkness. Your approach of building theory from concrete textual observations rather than the other way around is compelling and worthy of further exploration.
Enjoy your breakfast! I'd be very interested in continuing this conversation another time.
