(by: Purwarno, Faculty of English Literature, UISU, Medan, Indonesia. E-mail: purwarnofs@uisu.ac.id)

"Heart of Darkness" is the most famous of Joseph Conrad's personal novels: a pilgrim's progress for a pessimistic and psychological age. After having finished the main draft of the novel, Conrad had remarked, "Before the Congo, I was just a mere animal." The living nightmare of 1890 seems to have affected Conrad quite as importantly as the Andre Gide's Congo experience 36 years later. The autobiographical basis of the narrative is well known and its introspective bias obvious. This is Conrad's longest journey into self. But it would do well to remember that Heart of Darkness is also a sensitive vivid travelogue and a comment on "the vilest scramble for lost that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and...