Heart of Darkness

It was the still­ness of an im­pla­ca­ble force brood­ing over an in­scrutable in­ten­tion. It looked at you with a venge­ful as­pect.

to a sea­man un­less it be the sea it­self, which is the mis­tress of his ex­is­tence and as in­scrutable as Destiny.

This is the rea­son why I af­firm that Kurtz was a re­mark­able man. He had some­thing to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge my­self, I un­der­stand bet­ter the mean­ing of his stare, that could not see the flame of the can­dle, but was wide enough to em­brace the whole uni­verse, pierc­ing enough to pen­e­trate all the hearts that beat in the dark­ness. He had summed up—he had judged. ‘The hor­ror!’ He was a re­mark­able man.

We live, as we dream—alone.

was as un­real as ev­ery­thing else—as the phil­an­thropic pre­tence of the whole con­cern, as their talk, as their gov­ern­ment, as their show of work. The only real feel­ing was a de­sire to get ap­pointed to a trad­ing-post where ivory was to be had, so that they could earn per­cent­ages

The word ‘ivory’ rang in the air, was whis­pered, was sighed. You would think they were pray­ing to it.

They were dy­ing slowly—it was very clear. They were not en­e­mies, they were not crim­i­nals, they were noth­ing earthly now—noth­ing but black shad­ows of dis­ease and star­va­tion, ly­ing con­fus­edly in the green­ish gloom. Brought from all the re­cesses of the coast in all the le­gal­ity of time con­tracts, lost in un­con­ge­nial sur­round­ings, fed on un­fa­mil­iar food, they sick­ened, be­came in­ef­fi­cient, and were then al­lowed to crawl away and

dark­ness. The con­quest of the earth, which mostly means the tak­ing it away from those who have a dif­fer­ent com­plex­ion or slightly flat­ter noses than our­selves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What re­deems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sen­ti­men­tal pre­tence but an idea; and an un­selfish be­lief in the idea—some­thing you can set up, and bow down be­fore, and of­fer a sac­ri­fice to. …”

was just rob­bery with vi­o­lence, ag­gra­vated mur­der on a great scale, and men go­ing at it blind—as is

wa­ter shone pacif­i­cally; the sky, with­out a speck, was a be­nign im­men­sity of un­stained light; the very mist on the Es­sex marsh was like a gauzy and ra­di­ant fab­ric, hung from the wooded rises in­land, and drap­ing the low shores in di­aphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brood­ing over the up­per reaches, be­came more som­bre ev­ery minute, as if an­gered by the ap­proach of the sun.