Heart of Darkness

A great travelogue recounting a sea voyage from Britain to Porto Velho on the Amazon river system in 1909 - 1910. I found it through James Mustich’s 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die. It was published in 1912 and is free as an e-book. As much as I liked it, be warned that I sometimes struggled with the author’s florid Edwardian prose. He can wax poetical when describing the Amazon, but also when discussing not much at all. His sentences may run on and sometimes run backward. There are scattered words that are no longer used much, if they were then, and a few are not in the dictionaries I have access to. You may need to bear with him until he is well at sea. Here is a suggestive example:
From our narrow and weltering security, where the wind searched through us like the judgment eye, I know, looking out upon the wilderness in turmoil where was no help, and no witness of our undoing, where the gleams were fleeting as though the very day were riven and tumbling, that I saw the filmy shapes of those things which darken the minds of primitives.
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Watch out for the story within the story that reads like a miniature version of Heart of Darkness.

Carolyn started out by saying how much she appreciated that Conrad wrote a book decrying colonialism while colonialism was a current matter, and not from the safe distance of a generation or two after it was gone. I firmly believe that his sympathies were with the Africans rather than the European exploiters (after all, he'd spent his youth in a Poland occupied by Russian overlords). But would an English reader in 1900 have seen this? Or would he have seen slavery and robbery as a civilizing influence? In other words, was the true heart of darkness the interior of deepest, darkest Africa, or was it the blackness of Kurtz' heart as he was utterly corrupted by the power that he held?

Bruce had read it in high school, when it felt like butting his head against a wall.  This time through he found that he understood it.  And really enjoyed it.  It's amazing how a few decades will improve an author.

1) '''And this also,' said Marlow suddenly, 'has been one of the dark places of the earth.'''

2) [On the civilised conquerors of barbaric early London] ''What saves us is efficiency---the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. 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 and 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.''

3) [On Kurtz's displaying shrunken heads on posts] ''They only showed that Mr Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him---some small matter which, when the pressing need arose, could not be found under his magnificent eliquence. Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can't say. I think the knowledge came to him at last---only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude---and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core...''