SOURCE: Firchow, Peter Edgerly. “Envisioning Africa.” In Envisioning Africa: Racism and Imperialism in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, pp. 18-30. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2000.

In the following essay, Firchow discusses Conrad's vision of Africa as found in Heart of Darkness.

True symbolism is where the particular represents the more general, not as a dream or a shadow, but as a living momentary revelation of the Inscrutable.

—Goethe, Maxims

An historian of hearts is not an historian of emotions, yet he penetrates further, restrained as he may be, since his aim is to reach the very fount of laughter and tears.

—Conrad, “A Familiar Preface”

Joseph Conrad's African experience was of relatively short duration. Not counting his somewhat muddled preparations in London and Brussels or the slow sea journey to and from the Congo Free State, it actually lasted a little less than six months, from mid-June to...