Nick Irving’s Reviews > Heart of Darkness and Other Tales > Status Update

I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself.

I saw him open his mouth wide - it gave him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.

I went a little farther, then still a little farther - till I had gone so far I don't know how I'll ever get back.

'Keep quiet!' I said in a fury. I might just as well have ordered a tree not to sway in the wind.

We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness. . . We were wanderers on a prehistoric earth, on an earth that wore the aspect of an unknown planet.

We live, as we dream - alone.

It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream - making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams.

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.

There was not a light, not a stir, not a sound. The mysterious East faced me, perfumed like a flower, silent like death, dark like a grave.

There was for us no sky, there was for us no stars, no sun, no universe - nothing but angry clouds and an infuriated sea.