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    Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)
    Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)
    Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)
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    Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)

    By Joseph Conrad

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    About this ebook

    This eBook features the unabridged text of ‘Heart of Darkness’ from the bestselling edition of ‘The Complete Works of Joseph Conrad’.

    Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. The Delphi Classics edition of Conrad includes original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of the author, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

    eBook features:
    * The complete unabridged text of ‘Heart of Darkness’
    * Beautifully illustrated with images related to Conrad’s works
    * Individual contents table, allowing easy navigation around the eBook
    * Excellent formatting of the textPlease visit www.delphiclassics.com to learn more about our wide range of titles
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateJul 17, 2017
    ISBN9781786565242
    Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Illustrated)
    Author

    Joseph Conrad

    Joseph Conrad was born to Polish parents in the Ukraine on 3rd December 1857. He grew up surrounded by upheaval. His father was exiled to northern Russia for political activities and although they eventually returned to Poland, Conrad was orphaned by the age of 11. Subsequently he was taught by his uncle, a great influence and mentor. Leaving for Marseilles in 1874, Conrad began his training as a seaman. After an attempt at suicide, Conrad joined the British merchant navy and became a British subject in 1886. After his first novel, Almayer's Folly was published in 1895 he left the sea behind and settled down to a life of writing. Indeed, as his wife wrote in 1927, he would move only "from his table to his bed, for days and days on end". Troubled financially for many years, he faced uncomplimentary critics and an indifferent public. He finally became a popular success with Chance (1913). By the end of his life on 3rd August 1924 his status as one of the great writers of his time was assured.

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      Book preview

      Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (Illustrated) - Joseph Conrad

      The Complete Works of

      JOSEPH CONRAD

      VOLUME 7 OF 51

      Heart of Darkness

      Parts Edition

      By Delphi Classics, 2013

      Version 4

      COPYRIGHT

      ‘Heart of Darkness’

      Joseph Conrad: Parts Edition (in 51 parts)

      First published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Delphi Classics.

      © Delphi Classics, 2017.

      All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form other than that in which it is published.

      ISBN: 978 1 78656 524 2

      Delphi Classics

      is an imprint of

      Delphi Publishing Ltd

      Hastings, East Sussex

      United Kingdom

      Contact: sales@delphiclassics.com

      www.delphiclassics.com

      Joseph Conrad: Parts Edition

      This eBook is Part 7 of the Delphi Classics edition of Joseph Conrad in 51 Parts. It features the unabridged text of Heart of Darkness from the bestselling edition of the author’s Complete Works. Having established their name as the leading publisher of classic literature and art, Delphi Classics produce publications that are individually crafted with superior formatting, while introducing many rare texts for the first time in digital print. Our Parts Editions feature original annotations and illustrations relating to the life and works of Joseph Conrad, as well as individual tables of contents, allowing you to navigate eBooks quickly and easily.

      Visit here to buy the entire Parts Edition of Joseph Conrad or the Complete Works of Joseph Conrad in a single eBook.

      Learn more about our Parts Edition, with free downloads, via this link or browse our most popular Parts here.

      JOSEPH CONRAD

      IN 51 VOLUMES

      Parts Edition Contents

      The Novels and Novellas

      1, Almayer’s Folly

      2, An Outcast of the Islands

      3, The Nigger of the Narcissus

      4, Lord Jim

      5, The Inheritors

      6, Typhoon

      7, Heart of Darkness

      8, Romance

      9, Nostromo

      10, The Secret Agent

      11, Under Western Eyes

      12, Chance

      13, Victory

      14, The Shadow-Line

      15, The Arrow of Gold

      16, The Rescue

      17, The Nature of a Crime

      18, The Rover

      19, Suspense

      The Short Stories

      20, The Black Mate

      21, The Idiots

      22, The Lagoon

      23, An Outpost of Progress

      24, The Return

      25, Karain: A Memory

      26, Youth

      27, Falk

      28, Amy Foster

      29, To-Morrow

      30, The End of the Tether

      31, Gaspar Ruiz

      32, The Informer

      33, The Brute

      34, An Anarchist

      35, The Duel

      36, Il Conde

      37, A Smile of Fortune

      38, The Secret Sharer

      39, Freya of the Seven Isles

      40, Prince Roman

      41, The Planter of Malata

      42, The Partner

      43, The Inn of the Two Witches

      44, Because of the Dollars

      45, The Warrior’s Soul

      46, The Tale

      The Essays

      47, Notes on Life and Letters

      48, Last Essays

      The Memoirs

      49, The Mirror of the Sea

      50, A Personal Record

      The Criticism

      51, The Criticism

      www.delphiclassics.com

      Heart of Darkness

      This famous novella was serialised in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1899 and first published in book form in 1902, when it was included in Youth, A Narrative, and Two Other Stories (a volume that also saw the first UK book publication of ‘Youth’ and ‘The End of the Tether’). It is considered a classic of twentieth-century English literature and a pioneer work of early modernism.

      The story, told in three sections, concerns the seaman Marlow’s journey up the Congo River on a steamer trading ivory to find the deranged Kurtz – a journey partly inspired by Henry Morton Stanley’s quest to find the missing explorer David Livingstone. Along the way, Marlow witnesses at first hand the horrors perpetrated by the Belgian colonisers.

      Whole books have been written about the many-layered significance of the novel’s narrative style and subject matter – unsurprisingly since, as with Lord Jim, perhaps the most striking feature of the text is its beguiling (and profoundly unsettling) ambiguity. Stylistically, the story is filtered through a framing narrative in which Marlow relates his experiences to a group of fellow-sailors aboard a ship moored in the Thames. As the frame-narrator explains, however, Marlow has a habit of locating the meaning of the events he describes ‘not inside the events themselves, like a kernel, but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze’. This prepares the reader for what is to come – a series of events whose ultimate significance is unnervingly deferred. An example is Kurtz’s famous last words ‘The horror! The horror!’ Although it would be fair to assume that this ‘horror’ refers to the atrocities perpetrated by the Belgian colonisers, the meaning of Kurtz’s words is left hanging and is never explained.

      One definite source, if not of horror, then definitely of unease, is the ability of the untamed jungle and its alien natives to unsettle Western civilisation’s sense of itself as at the apex of human development. For Marlow, it is not only the atavistic Congo, but also the conquering civilisation that has a heart of darkness.

      Cover of the first edition of Youth, a Narrative, and Two Other Stories (1902) — the first appearance of ‘Heart of Darkness’ in book form

      CONTENTS

      I

      II

      III

      Beginning of the novella in its first book edition

      Francis Ford Coppola’s celebrated film Apocalypse Now (1979) is a modern adaptation of Conrad’s novel, setting the action during the Vietnam War

      I

      The Nellie, a cruising yawl, swung to her anchor without a flutter of the sails, and was at rest. The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide.

      The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded together without a joint, and in the luminous space the tanned sails of the barges drifting up with the tide seemed to stand still in red clusters of canvas sharply peaked, with gleams of varnished sprits. A haze rested on the low shores that ran out to sea in vanishing flatness. The air was dark above Gravesend, and farther back still seemed condensed into a mournful gloom, brooding motionless over the biggest, and the greatest, town on earth.

      The Director of Companies was our captain and our host. We four affectionately watched his back as he stood in the bows looking to seaward. On the whole river there was nothing that looked half so nautical. He resembled a pilot, which to a seaman is trustworthiness personified. It was difficult to realize his work was not out there in the luminous estuary, but behind him, within the brooding gloom.

      Between us there was, as I have already said somewhere, the bond of the sea. Besides holding our hearts together through long periods of separation, it had the effect of making us tolerant of each other’s yarns — and even convictions. The Lawyer — the best of old fellows — had, because of his many years and many virtues, the only cushion on deck, and was lying on the only rug. The Accountant had brought out already a box of dominoes, and was toying architecturally with the bones. Marlow sat cross-legged right aft, leaning against the mizzen-mast. He had sunken cheeks, a yellow complexion, a straight back, an ascetic aspect, and, with his arms dropped, the palms of hands outwards, resembled an idol. The director, satisfied the anchor had good hold, made his way aft and sat down amongst us. We exchanged a few words lazily. Afterwards there was silence on board the yacht. For some reason or other we did not begin that game of dominoes. We felt meditative, and fit for nothing but placid staring. The day was ending in a serenity of still and exquisite brilliance. The water shone pacifically; the sky, without a speck, was a benign immensity of unstained light; the very mist on the Essex marsh was like a gauzy and radiant fabric, hung from the wooded rises inland, and draping the low shores in diaphanous folds. Only the gloom to the west, brooding over the upper reaches, became more sombre every minute, as if angered by the approach of the sun.

      And at last, in its curved and imperceptible fall, the sun sank low, and from glowing white changed to a dull red without rays and without heat, as if about to go out suddenly, stricken to death by the touch of that gloom brooding over a crowd of men.

      Forthwith a change came over the waters, and the serenity became less brilliant but more profound. 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. We looked at the venerable stream not in the vivid flush of a short day that comes and departs for ever, but in the august light of abiding memories. And indeed nothing is easier for a man who has, as the phrase goes, followed the sea with reverence and affection, that to evoke the great spirit of the past upon the lower reaches of the Thames. The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled — the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen’s Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests — and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith — the adventurers and the settlers; kings’ ships and the ships of men on ’Change; captains, admirals, the dark interlopers of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned generals of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!... The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.

      The sun set; the dusk fell on the stream, and lights began to appear along the shore. The Chapman light-house, a three-legged thing erect on a mud-flat, shone strongly. Lights of ships moved in the fairway — a great stir of lights going up and going down. And farther west on the upper reaches the place of the monstrous town was still marked ominously on the sky, a brooding gloom in sunshine, a lurid glare under the stars.

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

      He was the only man of us who still followed the sea. The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his class. He was a seaman, but he was a wanderer, too, while most seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them — the ship; and so is their country — the sea. One ship is very much like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of mystery

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