Only 40000 words long,this story of colonial brutality is a mesmerisingly ambiguous voyage into the darkest parts of the soulConrad’s famous novella is based on a genuine journey the author took up the Congo in 1890, during King Leopold II of Belgium’s horrific rule. It is a fantastic, or imaginative journey to find a man named Kurtz who has lost his intellect in the African jungle. It is a journey into inner space; a metaphorical investigation into the turbid waters of the human soul. It is a political journey into the murky heart of European colonialism. It is a nightmare journey,into horror. It is a journey to nowhere, set on a boat lying motionless and at anchor on the river Thames, or which also “has been one of the murky places on the earth”.
There’s no shortage of journeys to talk approximately in relation to Heart of Darkness – but selfishly,I want to talk approximately my own. Few things absorb had such a profound effect on me as my passage towards understanding this book. When I began to realise how many possibilities the book contains, and how beautifully Conrad brings out their meanings, or I felt enlightenment. A indistinct kind of enlightenment,it’s true. One, in fact, or described by Conrad himself in a typically glorious – and typically elusive – passage approximately his narrator Marlow’s storytelling style:
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com