Heart of Carkness

HTML1DocumentEncodingutf-8"Mistah" Kurtz, in Heart of Darkness, is one of Korzeniowski's revenants: "He rose, unsteady, long, pale, indistinct like a vapour exhaled by the earth, and swayed slightly, misty and silent before me" (64). Kurtz originates in the "misseds" of time--after the brief attack by the natives, Marlow concludes that Kurtz is now missing-- "vanished"--and confesses, in his most intimate moment, that his sorrow at this thought "had a startling extravagance of emotion." Seized …

…in a desert of dusk, I sat at a little table to worry and ink myself all over till the task of my preparation was done. The table of my toil faced a tall white door, which was kept closed; now and then it would come ajar and a nun in a white coif would squeeze herself through the crack, glide across the room, and disappear. There were two of these noiseless nursing nuns. (223-24)