Heart of Darkness / Joseph Conrad

Title: Heart of Darknes

Author: Joseph Conrad 

Subjects: Fiction; Imperialism; Psychological; Classic;

The Novel is about a voyage up to Congo river; heart of Africa. The story create a parallel between London as greatest place on earth and Africa as darkest place on earth. 

Contents: 

1

A Smile of Fortune / Joseph Conrad

Harbour Story

Ever since the sun rose I had been looking ahead. The ship glided

gently in smooth water. After a sixty days' passage I was anxious

to make my landfall, a fertile and beautiful island of the tropics.

The more enthusiastic of its inhabitants delight in describing it

as the "Pearl of the Ocean." Well, let us call it the "Pearl."

It's a good name. A pearl distilling much sweetness upon the

world.

An Anarchist / Joseph Conrad

A Desperate Tale

That year I spent the best two months of the dry season on one of

the estates--in fact, on the principal cattle estate--of a famous

meat-extract manufacturing company.

Il Conde / Joseph Conrad

A Pathetic Tale

"Vedi Napoli e poi mori."

The first time we got into conversation was in the National Museum

in Naples, in the rooms on the ground floor containing the famous

collection of bronzes from Herculaneum and Pompeii: that marvellous

legacy of antique art whose delicate perfection has been preserved for

us by the catastrophic fury of a volcano.

The Warrior's Soul / Joseph Conrad

The old officer with long white moustaches gave rein to his indignation.

"Is it possible that you youngsters should have no more sense than that!

Some of you had better wipe the milk off your upper lip before you start

to pass judgment on the few poor stragglers of a generation which has

done and suffered not a little in its time."

Prince Roman / Joseph Conrad

"Events which happened seventy years ago are perhaps rather too far off

to be dragged aptly into a mere conversation. Of course the year 1831 is

for us an historical date, one of these fatal years when in the presence

of the world's passive indignation and eloquent sympathies we had once

more to murmur '_Vo Victis_' and count the cost in sorrow. Not that

we were ever very good at calculating, either, in prosperity or

in adversity. That's a lesson we could never learn, to the great

exasperation of our enemies who have bestowed upon us the epithet of

Incorrigible...."

The Tale / Joseph Conrad

Outside the large single window the crepuscular light was dying out

slowly in a great square gleam without colour, framed rigidly in the

gathering shades of the room.

The Black Mate / Joseph Conrad

A good many years ago there were several ships loading at the Jetty,

London Dock. I am speaking here of the 'eighties of the last century, of

the time when London had plenty of fine ships in the docks, though not

so many fine buildings in its streets.

To-morrow / Joseph Conrad

What was known of Captain Hagberd in the little seaport of Colebrook was

not exactly in his favour. He did not belong to the place. He had come

to settle there under circumstances not at all mysterious--he used to

be very communicative about them at the time--but extremely morbid and

unreasonable. He was possessed of some little money evidently, because

he bought a plot of ground, and had a pair of ugly yellow brick cottages

run up very cheaply. He occupied one of them himself and let the other

to Josiah Carvil--blind Carvil, the retired boat-builder--a man of evil

repute as a domestic tyrant.

Freya of the Seven Isles / Joseph Conrad

CHAPTER I

One day--and that day was many years ago now--I received a long,

chatty letter from one of my old chums and fellow-wanderers in

Eastern waters. He was still out there, but settled down, and

middle-aged; I imagined him--grown portly in figure and domestic in

his habits; in short, overtaken by the fate common to all except to

those who, being specially beloved by the gods, get knocked on the

head early. The letter was of the reminiscent "do you remember"

kind--a wistful letter of backward glances. And, amongst other

things, "surely you remember old Nelson," he wrote.

The Duel / Joseph Conrad

A Military Tale

I

Napoleon I., whose career had the quality of a duel against the whole

of Europe, disliked duelling between the officers of his army. The great

military emperor was not a swashbuckler, and had little respect for

tradition.

The Informer / Joseph Conrad

An Ironic Tale

Mr. X came to me, preceded by a letter of introduction from a good

friend of mine in Paris, specifically to see my collection of Chinese

bronzes and porcelain.

Falk: A Reminiscence / Joseph Conrad

Several of us, all more or less connected with the sea, were dining in

a small river-hostelry not more than thirty miles from London, and less

than twenty from that shallow and dangerous puddle to which our coasting

men give the grandiose name of "German Ocean." And through the wide

windows we had a view of the Thames; an enfilading view down the Lower

Hope Reach. But the dinner was execrable, and all the feast was for the

eyes.

Youth / Joseph Conrad

THIS could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak--the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning.

The Secret Sharer / Joseph Conrad

I

On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach.

Amy Foster / Joseph Conrad

Kennedy is a country doctor, and lives in Colebrook, on the shores of Eastbay. The high ground rising abruptly behind the red roofs of the little town crowds the quaint High Street against the wall which defends it from the sea. Beyond the sea-wall there curves for miles in a vast and regular sweep the barren beach of shingle, with the village of Brenzett standing out darkly across the water, a spire in a clump of trees; and still further out the perpendicular column of a lighthouse, looking in the distance no bigger than a lead pencil, marks the vanishing-point of the land. The country at the back of Brenzett is low and flat, but the bay is fairly well sheltered from the seas, and occasionally a big ship, windbound or through stress of weather, makes use of the anchoring ground a mile and a half due north from you as you stand at the back door of the "Ship Inn" in Brenzett. A dilapidated windmill near by lifting its shattered arms from a mound no loftier than a rubbish heap, and a Martello tower squatting at the water's edge half a mile to the south of the Coastguard cottages, are familiar to the skippers of small craft. These are the official seamarks for the patch of trustworthy bottom represented on the Admiralty charts by an irregular oval of dots enclosing several figures six, with a tiny anchor engraved among them, and the legend "mud and shells" over all.

The Return / Joseph Conrad

The inner circle train from the City rushed impetuously out of a black hole and pulled up with a discordant, grinding racket in the smirched twilight of a West-End station. A line of doors flew open and a lot of men stepped out headlong. They had high hats, healthy pale faces, dark overcoats and shiny boots; they held in their gloved hands thin umbrellas and hastily folded evening papers that resembled stiff, dirty rags of greenish, pinkish, or whitish colour. Alvan Hervey stepped out with the rest, a smouldering cigar between his teeth. A disregarded little woman in rusty black, with both arms full of parcels, ran along in distress, bolted suddenly into a third-class compartment and the train went on. The slamming of carriage doors burst out sharp and spiteful like a fusillade; an icy draught mingled with acrid fumes swept the whole length of the platform and made a tottering old man, wrapped up to his ears in a woollen comforter, stop short in the moving throng to cough violently over his stick. No one spared him a glance.

An Outpost of Progress / Joseph Conrad

I

There were two white men in charge of the trading station. Kayerts, the chief, was short and fat; Carlier, the assistant, was tall, with a large head and a very broad trunk perched upon a long pair of thin legs. The third man on the staff was a Sierra Leone nigger, who maintained that his name was Henry Price. However, for some reason or other, the natives down the river had given him the name of Makola, and it stuck to him through all his wanderings about the country. He spoke English and French with a warbling accent, wrote a beautiful hand, understood bookkeeping, and cherished in his innermost heart the worship of evil spirits. His wife was a negress from Loanda, very large and very noisy. Three children rolled about in sunshine before the door of his low, shed-like dwelling.

The Lagoon / Joseph Conrad

The white man, leaning with both arms over the roof of the little house in the stern of the boat, said to the steersman--

"We will pass the night in Arsat's clearing. It is late."

Karain: A Memoir / Joseph Conrad

I

We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in our hands our lives and our property. None of us, I believe, has any property now, and I hear that many, negligently, have lost their lives; but I am sure that the few who survive are not yet so dim-eyed as to miss in the befogged respectability of their newspapers the intelligence of various native risings in the Eastern Archipelago. Sunshine gleams between the lines of those short paragraphs--sunshine and the glitter of the sea. A strange name wakes up memories; the printed words scent the smoky atmosphere of to-day faintly, with the subtle and penetrating perfume as of land breezes breathing through the starlight of bygone nights; a signal fire gleams like a jewel on the high brow of a sombre cliff; great trees, the advanced sentries of immense forests, stand watchful and still over sleeping stretches of open water; a line of white surf thunders on an empty beach, the shallow water foams on the reefs; and green islets scattered through the calm of noonday lie upon the level of a polished sea, like a handful of emeralds on a buckler of steel.