Joseph Conrad on Sailors
into the "Heart of Darkness"
I recently re-read The Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad (the last time was
in high school, for English class). I was pleasantly surprised by how short it
was (~90 pages) and delighted by the prose: so much of the “modern” texts I
read are either soulless corporate speak, that say very little, particularly
about the things that actually matter, or flowery advertising speak, that
serves more to misdirect and hide, or bland and flat, by writers who are
exposed to very little soulful writing (or is this a description of my fears of
own writing??). It’s hard to tease apart how much is a result of being written
in over a century ago in 1899, how much is the writer displaying his craft, and
how much of the structure is borrowed from Conrad’s native Polish.
• ~2 min to read • read more
