Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conradwas a Polish-British writer regarded as one of the greatest novelists to write in the English language. He joined the British merchant marine in 1878, and was granted British nationality in 1886. Though he did not speak English fluently until he was in his twenties, he was a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote stories and novels, many with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst...
NationalityPolish
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 December 1857
CountryPoland
The old river in its broad reach rested unruffled at the decline of day, after ages of good service done to the race that peopled its banks, spread out in the tranquil dignity of a waterway leading to the uttermost ends of the earth.
The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealth, the germs of empires.
When one has got to make correct entries, one comes to hate those savages--hate them to the death.
The reaches opened before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.
He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable.
It echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core.
Everything belonged to him--but that was a trifle. The thing to know was what he belonged to, how many powers of darkness claimed him for their own.
They had behind them, to my mind, the terrific suggestiveness of words heard in dreams, of phrases spoken in nightmares.
The vision seemed to enter the house with me-the stretcher, the phantom-bearers, the wild crowd of obedient worshippers, the gloom of the forests, the glitter of the reach between the murky bends, the beat of the drum, regular and muffled like the beating of a heart-the heart of a conquering darkness.
He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is detestable. And it has a fascination, too, which goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination--you know.
... it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my choice.
We live in the flicker -- may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday.
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.
We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness