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But his soul was mad. Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens! I tell you, it had gone mad... No eloquence could have been so withering to one's belief in mankind as his final burst of sincerity.

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We all know that this is frequently read as an indictment of colonialism but while that's definitely one of the layers in this dense book, to merely read it in that way is to do it a profound disservice. The text it reminded me of most strongly is Eliot's The Waste Land - only this is written almost twenty years earlier and before WW1. Did Eliot take his title The Hollow Men from this passage?

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...

Conrad's writing is striking and his insistent motifs of light and darkness, of the river which links the Thames of the opening to the Congo, manage to stay on the right side of over-laboured. There's an interesting nested narrative structure, too, though it's Marlow who remains the most affected by his tale; Marlow who is twice described as a sitting like a Buddha or an idol, linking him proleptically and in retrospect with Kurtz. And those final 4-5 pages are a masterly piece of writing: understated, and shattering in 'the girl's' lack of comprehension. Is that hopeful? Or an instance of refusing to see the vision that Kurtz and now Marlow can never escape? I think it might depend on the mood of the reader and that there might not be the intimations of possibilities that end Eliot's own The Wasteland.

A magnificent possibly nihilist vision in beautiful, beautiful prose.

"Ascoltavo, ascoltavo, attendendo allerta la frase, la parola che mi avrebbe permesso di comprendere l'indefinibile disagio ispirato da quel racconto che sembrava prendere forma senza il bisogno di labbra umane nell'area greve della notte sul fiume."

A bordo di un vaporetto rattoppato, salvato dalle acque placide del grande fiume, tra milioni di alberi e il caldo opprimente, verso la fonte, sempre più a fondo nel cuore delle verdi tenebre, alla ricerca di un' Ombra, alla ricerca del sig. Kurtz.

Nel mentre si parla della debolezza umana che non tradisce mai, sempre pronta a mostrarsi nella sua maschera peggiore. I bianchi conquistatori pronti a succhiare fin nel midollo ogni bene della terra per quel dio silenzioso: il Profitto.

Un viaggio, claustrofobico e carico d'aspettativa ma anche un viaggio interiore alla ricerca di una morale nascosta nel fitto delle tenebre, lì dove l' uomo bianco è giunto a sostituirsi a dio, mostrando senza vergogna il suo cuore di tenebra.

"Che Orrore! Che Orrore!"

Tante le chiavi di lettura e i temi che Conrad propone con una prosa che sembra il travaglio di una lucida e assurda allucinazione. Fonti prese da personali memorie ed esperienze di viaggiatore unite in un' avventura onirica nella giungla dell' Africa nera sul finire del 1800.

Un piacere da leggere per uscirne arricchiti.

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"I listened, I listened, waiting alertly for the sentence, the word that would allow me to understand the indefinable discomfort inspired by that story that seemed to take shape without the need for human lips in the heavy area of the night on the river."

On board a patched steamboat, saved from the placid waters of the great river, among millions of trees and the oppressive heat, towards the source, ever deeper into the heart of the green darkness, in search of a shadow, in search of Mr. Kurtz.

Meanwhile, we talk about the human weakness that never betrays, always ready to show itself in its worst mask. The white conquering ready to suck every good of the earth to the marrow for that silent god: Profit.

A journey, claustrophobic and full of expectation but also an inner journey in search of a moral hidden in the thick of darkness, where the white man replaces God. Showing without shame his heart of darkness.

"What a horror! What a horror!"

Many are the keys to interpretation and themes that Conrad proposes with a prose that is a labor of a lucid and absurd hallucination. Sources arising from his personal memories and experiences united in an adventure in the jungle of black Africa at the end of 1800.

A pleasure to read to come out enriched.