Creation’s Abortion and a Great and Terrible Violence Restrained: The Influence of Judeo-Christianity on the Cosmopoetics of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Howard O’Hagan’s Tay John (with Some Help from Northrop Frye)

Abstract

In Genesis, Creation begins with four words: “Let there be light” and Adam later sub-creates by mimicking God and naming the animals he observes. The implication is that the deer wave function does not fully collapse into deer until Adam says, “Let there be ‘deer’.” But what happens to Creation when words fail? Does the inability to describe reality constitute a reversal of Creation and an Armageddon of sorts? If it does, an Armageddon of what? Or an Armageddon of whom? And where might one find examples of Creation’s extinction? The answers lie in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Howard O’Hagan’s Tay John which are heavily influenced by Judeo-Christian cosmopoetical mythmaking and which are replete with characters who create or destroy – that is, they un-create – depending upon their ability or inability to precisely describe reality.