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 gave her her let­ters (I heard the men in that lonely ship were dy­ing of fever at the rate of three a day) and went on. We called at some more places with far­ci­cal names, where the merry dance of death and trade goes on in a still and earthy at­mos­phere as of an over­heated cat­a­comb; all along the form­less coast bor­dered by dan­ger­ous surf, as if Na­ture her­self had tried to ward off in­trud­ers; in and out of rivers, streams of death in life, whose banks were rot­ting into mud, whose wa­ters, thick­ened into slime, in­vaded the con­torted man­groves, that seemed to writhe at us in the ex­trem­ity of an im­po­tent de­spair.

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

They were con­querors, and for that you want only brute force—noth­ing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an ac­ci­dent aris­ing from the weak­ness of oth­ers. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just rob­bery with vi­o­lence, ag­gra­vated mur­der on a great scale, and men go­ing at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a dark­ness.

Often far away there I thought of these two, guard­ing the door of Dark­ness, knit­ting black wool as for a warm pall, one in­tro­duc­ing, in­tro­duc­ing con­tin­u­ously to the un­known, the other scru­ti­niz­ing the cheery and fool­ish faces with un­con­cerned old eyes. Ave! Old knit­ter of black wool. Mori­t­uri te salu­tant. Not many of those she looked at ever saw her again—not half, by a long way.
“There was yet a visit to the doc­tor. ‘A sim­ple for­mal­ity,’ as­sured me the sec­re­tary, with an air of tak­ing an im­mense part in all my sor­rows. Ac­cord­ingly a young chap wear­ing his hat over the left eye­brow, some clerk I sup­pose—there must have been clerks in the busi­ness, though the house was as still as a house in a city of the dead—came from some­where up­stairs, and led me forth. He was shabby and care­less, with inkstains on the sleeves of his jacket, and his cra­vat was large and bil­lowy, un­der a chin shaped like the toe of an old boot. It was a lit­tle too early for the doc­tor, so I pro­posed a drink, and there­upon he de­vel­oped a vein of jovi­al­ity. As we sat over our ver­mouths he glo­ri­fied the Com­pany’s busi­ness, and by and by I ex­pressed ca­su­ally my sur­prise at him not go­ing out there.

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.