On the River Thames: Marlow
He was the only man of us who still "followed the sea."
The worst that could be said of him was that he did not represent his
class. He was a seaman, but h e was a wanderer, too, while most
seamen lead, if one may so express it, a sedentary life. Their minds
are of the stay-at-home order, and their home is always with them
–the ship; and so is their country--the sea. One ship is very much
like another, and the sea is always the same. In the immutability of
their surroundings the foreign shores, the foreign faces, the
changing immensity of life, glide past, veiled not by a sense of
mystery but by a slightly disdainful ignorance; for there is nothing
mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the
mistress of his existence and as inscrutable as Destiny. For the
rest, after his hours of work, a casual stroll or a casual spree on
shore suffices to unfold for him the secret of a whole continent, and
generally he finds the secret not worth knowing. The yarns of seamen
have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning of which lies within the
shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity
to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the meaning of an episode was
not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which
brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of
one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the
spectral illumination of moonshine.
His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow --
"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago--the other day. ... Light came out of this river since --you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker--may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine – what d'ye call `em?--trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries,--a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been too --used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here-- the very end of the world, a sea the color of lead, a sky the color of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina-- and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages, - -precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay--cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death,-- death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh yes--he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of p romotion to the fleet at Ravenna by-and-by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga --perhaps too much dice, you know--coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax -gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him, -- all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hear ts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination --you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
He paused.
His remark did not seem at all surprising. It was just like Marlow. It was accepted in silence. No one took the trouble to grunt even; and presently he said, very slow --
"I was thinking of very old times, when the Romans first came here, nineteen hundred years ago--the other day. ... Light came out of this river since --you say Knights? Yes; but it is like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker--may it last as long as the old earth keeps rolling! But darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine – what d'ye call `em?--trireme in the Mediterranean, ordered suddenly to the north; run overland across the Gauls in a hurry; put in charge of one of these craft the legionaries,--a wonderful lot of handy men they must have been too --used to build, apparently by the hundred, in a month or two, if we may believe what we read. Imagine him here-- the very end of the world, a sea the color of lead, a sky the color of smoke, a kind of ship about as rigid as a concertina-- and going up this river with stores, or orders, or what you like. Sandbanks, marshes, forests, savages, - -precious little to eat fit for a civilized man, nothing but Thames water to drink. No Falernian wine here, no going ashore. Here and there a military camp lost in a wilderness, like a needle in a bundle of hay--cold, fog, tempests, disease, exile, and death,-- death skulking in the air, in the water, in the bush. They must have been dying like flies here. Oh yes--he did it. Did it very well, too, no doubt, and without thinking much about it either, except afterwards to brag of what he had gone through in his time, perhaps. They were men enough to face the darkness. And perhaps he was cheered by keeping his eye on a chance of p romotion to the fleet at Ravenna by-and-by, if he had good friends in Rome and survived the awful climate. Or think of a decent young citizen in a toga --perhaps too much dice, you know--coming out here in the train of some prefect, or tax -gatherer, or trader even, to mend his fortunes. Land in a swamp, march through the woods, and in some inland post feel the savagery, the utter savagery, had closed round him, -- all that mysterious life of the wilderness that stirs in the forest, in the jungles, in the hear ts of wild men. There's no initiation either into such mysteries. He has to live in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. And it has a fascination, too, that goes to work upon him. The fascination of the abomination --you know. Imagine the growing regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate."
He paused.
Heart Of Darkness di L.Bartolotti รจ distribuito con Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione 4.0 Internazionale.