Fergus, Quondam Happy Face's review of Heart of Darkness (original) (raw)

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Fergus, Quondam Happy Face's Reviews > Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

Heart of Darkness
by

70395042

Kurtz is a modern day Prometheus. He dares to peer upon the hidden Dark Side of the Moon, and All the Heavens then seek revenge upon his startled soul.

And he must Pay.

Until that Gracious Day in some Faraway Future arrives, and the Divine Eagle quits chewing apart his liver.

Until this modern-day Oedipus, now an ancient, cursed soul in faraway Colonus, expiates the last dirty remnants of his crime before the very gods themselves.

And that futureless future day - when the last ‘I’ is dotted and the last ‘T’ is crossed - will be the Last Day, upon which Franz Kafka is certified “safe” to enter the Kingdom by the sleepless Gatekeeper...

And Kurtz’ weary soul is Graced with Pardon and freed, like the rest of the absolved, to drink the healing Draughts of Lethe.

On THAT day we’ll All Forgive... and Forget the Gorgon!

But you know what?

When T.S. Eliot gives his famous spoiler to this short masterpiece in The Wasteland, and wrecks the ending for young readers, it’s No Coincidence that he qualifies that spoiler with the incredibly apt line, “Hieronomo’s mad again!”

For once you wade into the dread waters of Acheron, you see the Furies that will torment you till mercy dawns again.

Don’t hold your breath! As the Hindu sacred books say, endless Kalpas will seem to pass before that glad dawn.

I know what you’re thinking.

Kurtz is like Adam.

And of course ALL Adams, like you and me (and all my negligently disobedient friends!) will see our Edens forever blighted - like our dying planet - or so it will seem to us, since that first Kurtzian day of wrath.

Dante Alighieri once said us poor blokes who pass up a Life of Faith as a kid will have to slowly slog around Mount Purgatory for a hundred painful years before even getting our tickets punched at the door!

Oh, I’m no different.

I didn’t say I believed “loud (and) clear” as a youth.

No, we ALL Refused to “listen as well as we hear... in the living years” of our youth, to the Truth.

That’s right. We did EXACTLY like Adam, believing we’d “be like a god” once we saw through the more inconvenient truths.

And so we continue to run the unforgivingly downward and rapid rails of Perfectionism, or Guilt, or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, maybe.

But, you know, there are moments when pure sunlight breaks through our heavily curtained minds...

A child laughs innocently, a bird chirps cheerily, or an old person smiles an incredibly crinkled smile of joy.

Those moments are meant for US - that we may have eyes to see!

But, sooner or later, just like the rest of you - and Mr. Kurtz - we have to Face the Face that Kills.

And tuck the Golden Moments under our belt for the Next Time, in yet another stripping bare of our conscience -

Yes - Until, in fact, the Far-off Day, Kalpas and Kalpas from hence, of our Final Heavenly “Shantih.”

In blessed Forgiveness.

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Reading Progress

November 30, 2019 – Shelved

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