Publisher's Synopsis
At the heart of Darkness is a long story by Joseph Conrad, who appeared as a serial in the Blackwood Magazine in 1899, then in a collection of three stories, youth: A Narrative, and Two Other Stories (Youth), in 1902. The Heart of Darkness relates the voyage of Charles Marlow, a young officer of the British Merchant Navy, who goes up the course of a river in the heart of black Africa. Hired by a Belgian company, he has to re-establish commercial links with the manager of a counter in the heart of the jungle, Kurtz, very efficient ivory collector, but of which we are without news. Conrad describes Marlow's experience as a journey into the darkest aspects of the world. Many characters have been suggested as sources of inspiration for Kurtz's character. Conrad's closest was Georges-Antoine Klein, a sick agent of the Congo's trade and industry company that Conrad fetched with his steamer King of the Belgians by going up the river, but who died on board (like Kurtz). As sources of inspiration, we also cite Leon Rom, the slave trader Tippo Tip or Officer Edmund Musgrave Barttelot. But Conrad was able to use other narratives, as in the darkness of Henry Morton Stanley's Africa recounting the expedition to find the adventurer Oscar Schnitzer. Finally, in the same year 1899 resounded in France the case called "mission wanted-canon," French expedition of colonial conquest of Chad, led by captains Paul wanted and Julien canon and marked by numerous massacres and by the total loss Control of the French authorities on the two officers. For the Belgian diplomat Jules Marchal, who extensively documented Adam Hochschild, Kurtz's character corresponds to a very real dimension: Kurtz had surrounded his house with pickets which were hung on decapitated human heads. It shows that the colonial environment can create a man capable of going to the end of crime and horror that is what Joseph Conrad wants to make. He adds, however, that Kurtz does not represent the "white generality."