Commentary |
Jackson’s plinth of Thornycroft’s statue of Boudica and her bare-breasted daughters did not yet exist when Conrad wrote The Heart of Darkness, but it is beautifully undercut by the book’s opening. One inscription on the plinth is from “Boadicea: An Ode” (1782), which refers unironically to the fact that the British terrorist was slain by the Romans before her descendants built an empire even bigger and more horrifying than Rome. Her name, like “Victoria”, refers to victory. In 1902, the ridiculous statue was erected at the heart of darkness: near an old Roman wall of Londinium. |