First of all, get this straight: Heart of Darkness is one of those classics that you have to have read if you want to consider yourself a well-educated adult. That’s the bad news; the good news is that this is a very easy book to read — tremendously shorter than Moby-Dick, for instance. ...
“Se n’era andato. La notte lo aveva inghiottito. Mi rimase negli occhi l’immagine di lui, di un uomo impacciato, sconfitto, finito. Era terribile. Udii il sordo cricchiare della ghiaia sotto le sue scarpe. Stava correndo. Stava correndo, vi dico, e non sapeva nemmeno lui dove era diretto. E non a...
Ah, the satisfaction of the short novel. Clocking in 132 pages, I was able to move swiftly through The Shadow-Line, which gave the narrative something of the sense of a deep inhale.Among the overused tropes in book reviews--from 'Dickensian' to 'limn' to 'poignant'--count in the phrase 'deceptive...
This took me rather a long time to read because I seem to have less time to read than I used to. Many people see it as Conrad's magnum opus. I think I lean towards Lord Jim or the Secret Agent. This is a deep and wide ranging novel with several themes. I don't quite understand why it is called No...
Imagine then that you are standing at the edge of a fallow field, planning your route through it. You could walk across it and end up on the other side, safe and sound. But you’ve heard rumors of treasures buried underneath the dirt, so you decide to tunnel your way through. You start shallow and...
"A perfect singleness of intention, a homicidal austerity of mood" Se ben ricordo, nella sua biografia (Il mondo di ieri) Stefan Zweig scrive che Napoleone Bonaparte, dimostrando nei fatti le possibilità offerte dai tempi nuovi a un giovane coraggioso e ambizioso, per quanto di modeste origini, a...
The flood had made, the wind was nearly calm, and being bound down the river, the only thing for it was to come to and wait for the turn of the tide. The sea-reach of the Thames stretched before us like the beginning of an interminable waterway. In the offing the sea and the sky were welded toget...
The only thing his aspect might have been said to suggest, at times, was bashfulness; because he would sit, in business offices ashore, sunburnt and smiling faintly, with downcast eyes. When he raised them, they were perceived to be direct in their glance and of blue color. His hair was fair and ...
His gaze was penetrating and direct, his smile frequent and fleeting. He observed Lingard with great interest. He was attracted by that elusive something—a line, a fold, perhaps the form of the eye, the droop of an eyelid, the curve of a cheek, that trifling trait which on no two faces on earth i...
He was not exactly a showy figure; his shoulders were high, his stature but middling—one leg slightly more bandy than the other. He shook hands, looking vaguely around. A spiritless tenacity was his main characteristic, I judged. I behaved with a politeness which seemed to disconcert him. Perhaps...