译自：Walker, F. (1969). Introduction. In J. Conrad, Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer (pp. vii-xv). Bantam Dell.
译者水平有限，请读者不吝指正。
本文第一段涉及康拉德原文之处，翻译时部分参考了：康拉德：《吉姆爷 黑暗深处 水仙花号上的黑水手》，熊蕾、石永礼、黄雨石译，人民文学出版社，1998。
In his famous preface to The Nigger of the “Narcissus,” Conrad stated that: “Art itself may be defined as a single minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect.” But what was the truth for Conrad? Was he basically an observer of life or a moralist commenting on it? H. L. Mencken wrote in 1917, “Conrad makes war on nothing; he is preeminently not a moralist. He swings, indeed, as far from revolt and moralizing as is possible, for he does not even criticize God.” While Douglas Hewitt asserted in 1952,” The most cursory glance at Conrad’s work is enough to convince us that he has a conception of a transcendental evil, embodying itself in individuals—a sense of evil as great as that of any avowedly Catholic or Calvinist writer.” These judgments obviously reflect a radical shift in critical fashion, but Conrad’s intentions themselves may be complex enough to support such a double reading.
康拉德（Joseph Conrad）在他著名的《“水仙号”的黑水手》序言中写道：“不妨为艺术本身下这样的定义：专心致志地揭示隐藏在可见世界的种种外貌下的形式多样而统一的真理，据以进行向它提供最高正义的尝试。”但对康拉德来说，真理又是什么呢？总体而言，他是一个静观生命的观察家还是一个评论生命的道德家？1917年，H. L. Mencken写道：“康拉德并不发动论战，他明显不是一个道德家。他其实是尽可能地远离了反叛和道德说教，因为他甚至没有批判过上帝”。而Douglas Hewitt则在1952年断言：“我们只需粗略扫一眼康拉德的作品就足以确信，他对邪恶持一种超验的观念，并将其体现在个人身上——这是一种与任何公开的天主教或加尔文主义作家一样伟大的对邪恶的观念。”这样的判断显然反映了主流评论的重大转变，但康拉德的意图本身可能就很复杂，足以支持这样的双重解读。
A similar quandary presents itself in any discussion of Conrad’s technique. Early readers of his fiction felt that his appeal lay in the surface level of his writing—in his handling of plot, setting, and characters. But today critics delve into its deeper levels of symbol and myth. Conrad clearly supports both views in his comments on his writing. At one time he stated: “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see.” But at another time he wrote to areader who had inquired about the meaning of one of his stories: “Coming to the subject of your inquiry, I wish first to put before you a general proposition: that a work of art is very seldom limited to one exclusive meaning and not necessarily tending to a definite conclusion. And this for the reason that the nearer it approaches art, the more it acquires a symbolic character.”
在任何关于康拉德的文学技巧的讨论中，都会出现类似的困惑。康拉德小说的早期读者认为，他的吸引力在于他写作的表面水平——他对情节、环境和人物的处理。但今天的评论家则更进一步，深入研究其中的象征和虚构。康拉德在评论自己的作品时，对这两种观点都表达了明确支持。有一次他说：“我试图完成的任务是，通过书面文字的力量，让你听到，让你感觉到——但首先是让你看到”。但另一次，他回复一位询问他写的一篇故事的意义的读者说：“至于你的问题，我想首先向你提出一个一般性的观点：艺术作品很少被限制在一个唯一的、排他的意义上，而且未必有一个明确的结论。这是因为，它越接近艺术，就越是具有一种象征性的特质。”
Certainly there can be no doubt about the authenticity of the adventures and settings in The Secret Sharer and Heart of Darkness. Like much of Conrad’s fiction, they are autobiographical in that they make use of the author’s own experiences and reflect characters he had met and events he had heard about in his far-flung voyages. Conrad was prompted to write The Secret Sharer by the visit of a sea captain from Penang who reminded Conrad of his own sailing days in the Malay Archipelago twenty years before, when he had assumed his first and only sea command on the sailing ship Otago in Bangkok after the death of its captain. Such an initiation into the awesome responsibility of commanding a ship is at the heart of Conrad’s story.
当然，《秘密分享者》和《黑暗之心》中的冒险情节和故事场景的真实性，是毋庸置疑的。如同康拉德的许多小说一样，它们是自传性的，因为它们受益于作者本人的经历，反映了他自己远航时的所见所闻。康拉德创作《秘密分享者》的灵感来源，是一位槟城船长的来访，他让康拉德想起了20年前自己在马来群岛的航海岁月，当时他在曼谷的“Otago”号帆船上，一生中第一次也是唯一一次担任了航海指挥。康拉德故事的核心，就是这样一种关于航海指挥之巨大责任的启蒙。
The crime and escape of Leggatt were based on the experiences of a first mate known as Sidney Smith who had killed a rebellious seaman and was given an opportunity to escape by his skipper. Conrad noted in his preface that the story was widely known in the Far East at the time, and he may have heard it when he was in Singapore. For the purposes of his tale, he made Leggatt a much more sympathetic character than the hard-fibered, despotic Smith, who had killed his man with an iron capstanbar. Conrad’s sailor is a younger man, son of an English parson (like Lord Jim), and he kills in a desperate act of self-defense while trying to save his ship. Thus, in helping Leggatt, the young skipper in The Secret Sharer is put in the position of favoring Christian humanism over the harsh maritime letter-of-the-law attitude represented by the commander of the Sephora.
Leggatt犯罪和逃亡的故事，是基于一个名叫Sidney Smith的大副的经历，他杀死了一个叛变的海员，他的船长则给了他一个逃跑的机会。康拉德在序言中提到，这个故事在当时的远东广为人知，他在新加坡的时候可能就听说过这个故事。为了叙事需要，他把Leggatt塑造成一个比Smith更值得同情的人物。Smith为人粗砺（hard-fibered）而专横，用铁制绞盘棒行凶。而康拉德笔下的水手是个年轻人，是英国牧师的儿子（就像吉姆爷一样），他在试图拯救他的航船时，绝望之下才出于自卫杀人。因此，在帮助Leggatt的过程中，《秘密分享者》中的年轻船长被置于倾向基督教人道主义的位置，而不是Sephora号的指挥所代表的苛求墨守海上法条的本本主义态度。
It is the emphasis that Conrad puts on Leggatt as the protagonist’s double which has puzzled many readers and encouraged a number of moralistic or psychological interpretations. The controversy over this element in the story is well illustrated by the difference in opinion between Albert J. Guerard, perhaps the most influential interpreter of Conrad’s fiction, and Jocelyn Baines, who has written the best biography of Conrad. Guerard looks upon the story as a symbolist masterpiece, in which Leggatt, “criminally impulsive,” represents the lower elements in the narrator’s nature and the action itself becomes a psychological “night journey” into the captain’s unconscious. Baines, on the other hand, feels that the work has little psychological or moral content. One “symbolist” critic finds the sleeping suits worn by both characters represent “the garb of unconscious life” (in spite of our knowledge that Conrad frequently wore his pajamas on the deck of the be calmed Otago because of the heat). Another claims that The Secret Sharer reflects not only the archetypal Cain-Abel story but also the Jonah myth, with Leggatt reaching a state of repentance in the sail-locker such as Jonah experienced in the whale’s belly. To the present writer, the captain’s predicament most resembles the moral dilemma of Captain Vere in Herman Melville’s Billy Budd.
康拉德强调Leggatt是小说主人公的“世另我”，这让许多读者感到困惑，并引起了一些道德性的或心理学的解释。对故事中这一因素的争议，在Albert J. Guerard和Jocelyn Baines之间的意见分歧上得到充分展现，后者也许是康拉德小说最有影响力的解释者，也是最出色的康拉德传记作者。Guerard认为这个故事是一部象征主义的杰作，其中“罪恶冲动的”Leggatt代表了叙述者本性中的阴暗面，而行动本身则成为潜入船长之无意识的心理“夜行”。而Baines则认为这部作品没有什么心理学或道德性内容。一位“象征主义”评论家认为，两个人物所穿的睡衣代表了“无意识生命的装束”（尽管我们知道，康拉德经常因为天气炎热而在风平浪静的“Otago”号甲板上穿睡衣）；另一位评论家则声称，《秘密分享者》不仅表现了典型的该隐和亚伯（Cain-Abel）的故事，也映照出约拿（Jonah）的传说，Leggatt在船舱里达到的忏悔状态，恰似约拿在鲸鱼肚子里的经历。在这位评论家看来，《秘密分享者》中船长面临的困境，正如同赫尔曼·梅尔维尔（Herman Melville）的《水手比利·巴德》中，Vere船长的道德困境。
Conrad was himself much annoyed with a critic who referred to Leggatt as “a murderous ruffian.” Moreover, Leggatt, unlike the double in Poe’s “William Wilson,” is not a typical “doppelgänger,” that is, “an apparitional double or counterpart of a living person”; on the contrary, he is a very real person. Perhaps the best clue to the meaning of the story lies in Conrad’s statement that it “deals with what might be called the ‘esprit de corps,’ the deep fellowship of two young seamen meeting for the first time.” The young captain’s successful protection of Leggatt gives him confidence in himself—both in his ability to make difficult moral decisions, and in the brilliant navigational skill that finally assures Leggatt’s escape. In assuming responsibility for Leggatt, he has proven himself worthy of command.
康拉德本人对一位将Leggatt称为“杀人不眨眼的流氓”的评论家非常恼火。此外，Leggatt与爱伦·坡（Poe）的《威廉·威尔逊》中的“世另我”不同，他不是一个典型的“二重身”（doppelgänger），即“一个幽灵般的复刻或活人的分身”；相反，他是一个非常真实的人。也许关于这个故事之意义的最佳线索在于康拉德自己的说法，即它“涉及到可能被称为‘团队精神’（esprit de corps）的东西，两个年轻海员第一次见面时的深厚友谊”。年轻的船长成功地保护了Leggatt，这使船长对自己有了信心——既对自己作出困难的道德抉择的能力有了信心，也对最终保证Leggatt逃脱的出色的航海技术有了信心。在承担对Leggatt的责任时，他已经证明了自己胜任指挥。
In 1889, when Conrad was thirty-one, he resigned his command of the Otago in Australia, for reasons that are not entirely clear, and returned to England. A few months later he went out to Africa to command a river-boat for the Belgian Company for Commerce on the Upper Congo. His motives for this venture were mixed; he was out of a job and had spent his savings, he could not find another sea command, he had connections who could help him with the company authorities in Brussels, and, most of all, he had wanted since boyhood, to journey to the little explored center of the dark continent. He spent six months in the Congo, two of them learning the river as first mate of a small steamer which went up as far as the end of navigation at Stanley Falls. There, at the company’s inner station, the boat picked up a sick agent named Klein, who died on the return trip—a trip during which Conrad took command of the boat for a few days because of the captain’s illness. After returning to Kinshasa and learning that he was not to have charge of the steamer he had been promised, ill and thoroughly disturbed at the Belgians’ crass imperialism, he left for home, visiting Brussels en route, where he saw his aunt and possibly called on Klein’s “Intended.”
1889年，康拉德31岁时，由于不甚清楚的原因，他辞去了澳大利亚的“Otago”号指挥一职，回到了英国。几个月后，他去了非洲，为上刚果地区的比利时商业公司指挥一艘内河船。他这次冒险的动机很复杂：他没有工作，而且已经花光了积蓄，他找不到其他航海指挥的工作，他的关系可以帮助他与布鲁塞尔的公司管理层打交道，而且最重要的是，他从童年起就想去这片黑色大陆上鲜有人涉足的中心。他在刚果呆了六个月，其中两个月是作为一艘小汽船的大副去熟悉河流，这艘船一直开到斯坦利瀑布（Stanley Falls）的航行终点。在那里，船从公司的内站（inner station）接上了一个名叫Klein的生病的代理人（agent），他在回程中死亡——在这次旅行中，由于船长生病，康拉德指挥了几天的船。回到金沙萨后，他却得知自己不能负责之前说好归他指挥的汽船，他病了，并对比利时人粗暴的帝国主义感到彻底的不安，他离开了家，在途中访问了布鲁塞尔，在那里他看望了他的阿姨，可能还拜访了Klein的未婚妻（“Intended”）。
Although he never fully recovered from his sickness picked up on the Congo, Conrad was still able to say to a friend, “Before the Congo I was a mere animal.” There is no question but that the experience affected him deeply. He drew on it for two stories: first “The Outpost of Progress,” concerning two misfits among the “pilgrims” or agents, and then, eight years after he came back to London, Heart of Darkness, which deals with the Congo without ever mentioning it by name. Like Lord Jim, which started to be 20,000 words long and ended up 140,000, Heart of Darkness began as a short story and ended as a novelette. Before he wrote it, Conrad had published three novels and a collection of tales. He had emerged from his apprentice period.
尽管他再也没有从在刚果染上的疾病中完全康复，但康拉德仍对一位朋友说：“在去刚果之前，我只是衣冠禽兽”。毫无疑问，这段经历深深地影响了他。他利用这段经历写了两个故事：首先是《进步前哨》，讲述了“朝圣者”或代理人中两个不合群的人，然后，他在回到伦敦八年后，写了《黑暗之心》，其中涉及到刚果，但从未提到它的名字。与《吉姆爷》一样，《黑暗之心》开始时是两万字，最后是十四万字，《黑暗之心》开始时是一个短篇小说，完成时是一部长篇小说。在写这本书之前，康拉德已经出版了三部小说和一部故事集，已然走出了学徒期。
Conrad once stated that Heart of Darkness was “experience pushed a little (and very little) beyond the facts of the case”; perhaps this is the reason for the sense of immediacy that makes most readers feel with F. R. Leavis that the “details and circumstances of the voyage to and up the Congo are present to us as if we were making the journey ourselves.” By his mastery of tone as well, Conrad gave his “somber theme” a “sinister resonance” and “continued vibration”; as T. S. Eliot put it, “we are continually reminded of the power and terror of Nature, and the isolation and feebleness of Man.”
康拉德曾经说过，《黑暗之心》“描绘的经历只对真实情况作了少量的（而且是极少的）加工”，也许这就是这部作品给人带来直接感的原因，它使大多数读者与F. R. Leavis一样感到“远航刚果的细节和境况就呈现在我们面前，让我们身临其境”。康拉德还通过对语气的掌握，给他的“灰暗主题”以“阴间的回响”和“持久的共鸣”；正如T. S. Eliot所说，“作者不断地提醒我们大自然的力量和恐怖，以及人的孤独和虚弱”。
But what more was Conrad doing in the story? The common assumption when it came out was that, unlike Kipling, he was attacking imperialism. Certainly imperialism was at its worst in the Congo despoliation by Leopold II, whose heritage is still with us, and the tale amply illustrates that “merry dance of death and trade.” As Conrad wrote elsewhere, the Congo venture was “the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration.” Kurtz’s collapse also exemplified a related theme popular with Conrad and other writers of the period—the perils of going native, whether it be on an island in the Indies, a South Seas atoll, or a wild part of Africa.
但康拉德在这个故事中还做了什么？当它问世时，人们普遍认为，与约瑟夫·吉卜林（Kipling）不同，康拉德在攻击帝国主义。无疑，利奥波德二世（Leopold II）对刚果的掠夺将帝国主义表现得淋漓尽致，其余孽至今仍挥之不去，而《黑暗之心》正充分展现了“死亡与贸易的快乐舞蹈”。正如康拉德在其他地方写的那样，刚果的冒险是“人类良知和地理探索史上最肮脏、卑鄙的抢夺行为”。Kurtz的失败也体现了康拉德和当时其他作家喜爱的一个相关主题——背井离乡的危险，无论是去往印度洋的一个岛屿、南太平洋的一个环礁，还是非洲的一处荒凉地区。
More recent interpretations of the story stress the role of Marlow, the narrator. Marlow was Conrad, but he was also a character in himself. He had appeared as the protagonist of Youth and was to tell most of the story in Lord Jim and Chance. Probably he is the narrator in The Secret Sharer, although he is not identified there. The use of Marlow as narrator allowed the author to comment on his story without using old devices like Thackeray’s “dear reader” asides. It also preserved a sense of immediacy and enabled Conrad to manipulate time almost as freely as later practitioners of the stream-of-consciousness technique. Above all, the use of Marlow controlled aesthetic “point of view”—the camera angle, as it were, from which the story is recorded.
对《黑暗之心》的晚近解读强调了叙述者Marlow的作用。Marlow就是康拉德，但他本身也是一个角色。他曾作为《青春》的主角出现，并在《吉姆爷》和《机缘》中讲述了大部分的故事。他可能也是《秘密分享者》中的叙述者，尽管没有点明。使用Marlow作为叙述者，作者就能够对他的故事进行评论，而无需像威廉·萨克雷（Thackeray）一样使用“亲爱的读者”这样老套的旁白。它还保留了一种直接感，并让康拉德能够像后来的意识流作家一样自由地操纵时间。最重要的是，Marlow这一角色的使用掌控了美学上的“视点”——也就是记录故事的摄影角度。
Today it is widely accepted that Marlow, not Kurtz, is the principal character, and that Heart of Darkness deals with his maturing through an arduous and soul-searching initiation, for it is clear that Conrad was writing about the impact of Africa on himself. This emphasis on Marlow has also led to much discussion of the “frame,” that portion of the narrative which takes place on the yacht at the mouth of the Thames. Here Conrad emphasizes the play of light and dark first over London and then out at sea, and he anticipates the situation in Africa with Marlow’s comments on the days when Romans were invading primitive Britain. As one critic has pointed out, the yacht swings with the tide between the beginning and end of the story, so that Marlow first faces upstream towards the “mournful gloom” of the “monstrous town” (London) and later, down the Thames water way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth … into the heart of an immense darkness.” Thus the present is linked to the moral universe of the story.
今天，人们普遍认为Marlow而非Kurtz是故事的主角，《黑暗之心》讲述的是他通过艰苦的、内省的启蒙教育走向成熟的过程，因为很明显，康拉德在写非洲对他自己的影响。对Marlow的强调也导致了对“框架”的许多讨论，即发生在泰晤士河口的游艇上的那部分叙事。在这里，康拉德首先强调了伦敦上空的明暗变化，然后是海上的明暗变化，他通过Marlow对罗马人入侵早期不列颠的时期的评论，预见了非洲的情况。正如一位评论家所指出的那样，游艇在故事的开头和结尾之间随潮水摆动，因此Marlow先是面向上游“恐怖城市”（伦敦）的“悲哀阴暗”，后来又顺流而下，从泰晤士河去往天涯海角……进入巨大黑暗之心。因此，故事中的道德世界是与现实相连的。
The action of Heart of Darkness has also been related to the theories of Freud and Jung, though it is unlikely that Conrad read either psychologist. Most bizarre is the suggestion that Kurtz is like the id, the unharnessed primal forces, with the manager representing the timid repression of the superego and Marlow the awareness and control of the ego. More persuasive is Albert J. Guerard’s thesis that, whether he knew it or not, Conrad was writing of “a night journey” or a discovery below the level of consciousness of the evil innate in all men. This concept is based in part on the generally accepted theory that writers tell more than they realize. Corollary to this view are the several suggestions that Heart of Darkness reflects archetypal myths, some found in folklore and religion, others in literary works which build on them. Thus, Marlow’s journey becomes a descent into Hell, the main question being whether Conrad echoed Virgil, Dante or the Orpheus legend. Biblical analogies have also been applied: the story reflects the myth of the fall; Kurtz is driven out of Eden; Kurtz is a Christian Satan; the story is a disguised retelling of the Passion Week; it is an “epiphany” or discovery story in Joyce’s terms. Readers interested in medieval literature have suggested that Heart of Darkness parallels the quest for the Holy Grail and that there is an Arthurian echo in the manager’s round table at the Central Station. Drawing on anthropology, Harold R. Collins has argued persuasively that a main element in the story is the “detribalization” of the helmsman and Kurtz; both succumb because they have abandoned their tribal views and customs.
《黑暗之心》的情节也与弗洛伊德（Freud）和荣格（Jung）的理论有关，尽管康拉德不太可能读过这两位心理学家的著作。最奇特的观点是，有人认为Kurtz就像本我（id），是未被驾驭的原始力量，经理代表了超我（superego）的胆怯压抑，而Marlow则是自我（ego）的意识和控制。更有说服力的是Albert J. Guerard的论点，即康拉德有意无意中描写了“一次夜行”，或曰在潜意识层面对人类内在邪恶的揭露。这种观念有着更受认可的部分理论基础，即作家讲述的比他们意识到的要多。这一观点的推论是，《黑暗之心》反映了原型神话（archetypal myths），有些可以在民间传说和宗教中发现，有些可以在基于这些民间传说和宗教的文学作品中找到。因此，Marlow的旅程就成为了堕入地狱的过程，而主要问题就变成康拉德是否呼应了维吉尔（Virgil）、但丁（Dante）或奥菲斯（Orpheus）的传说。也有人用《圣经》作类比：故事反映了人类堕落的神话；Kurtz是被逐出伊甸园；Kurtz是基督教的撒旦（Satan）；故事是对受难周（the Passion Week）的变相重述；或者用乔伊斯的话说，它是一个“主显灵”或探索的故事。对中世纪文学感兴趣的读者认为，《黑暗之心》模仿了对圣杯（the Holy Grail）的追求，中央车站的经理圆桌上有亚瑟的（Arthurian）回声。Harold R. Collins以人类学为基础，有说服力地指出，故事中的一个主要元素是舵手和Kurtz的“去部落化”：两人都屈服了，因为他们都放弃了自己的一己之见和习俗。
Not only the meaning of Marlow’s experience, but also his reaction to it is open to a wide variety of interpretations. As Marlow tells his story, is he still suffering from a nervous breakdown, or has he gained serenity by glimpsing the nature of evil? Or does he show that even he is unchanged, strangely unaffected by his journey into the heart of darkness? What about his puzzling interview with Kurtz’s “Intended”? Does Marlow lie to her in order to defend Kurtz’s memory, because he has always over-idealized women, because he wants to balance evil with good, or because he has become a relativist, willing to go against his own pronounced dislike of lying? Is Marlow an “isolato” in existentialist terms, who lives as he dreams—alone? Has he come to realize that he lives in an irrational universe, or has he simply revolted against conformity? That might explain his ironic view of life.
除了Marlow的经历的意义之外，他对这一经历的反应也可以有多种解释。当Marlow讲述他的故事时，他是仍在遭受精神崩溃的折磨，还是通过窥见邪恶的本质而获得了宁静？抑或他是要表明，他竟根本就没有被前往黑暗之心的旅程所影响，而自岿然不动？他与Kurtz的未婚妻（“Intended”）进行的令人费解的谈话又是怎么回事？Marlow对她撒谎是为了保护Kurtz的记忆，是因为他总是将女性过于理想化，因为他想在邪恶与善良之间取得平衡，还是因为他已经成为一个相对主义者，愿意违背自己曾明言的对撒谎的厌恶？Marlow是不是一个存在主义术语中的“弃儿”（isolato），像他梦想的那样孤独生活？他是否意识到他生活在一个非理性的宇宙中，还是说他仅仅是在反抗盲从？这也许可以解释他对生活的讽刺态度。
It seems to me, however, that the emphasis on Marlow has resulted in neglect of Kurtz and in a distorted interpretation of his character. He is surely more than Marlow’s evil inner self or his depraved double; he, like Leggatt, is very much a man in his own right. It is well to remember Conrad’s own description of his story as an “histoire farouche d’un journaliste qui devient chef de station à l’intérieur et se fait adorer par une tribu de sauvages” [a wild story about a journalist who became a chief of station in the interior and made himself adored by a tribe of savages]. From the time Marlow first hears of him from the Accountant to the occasion when he tells Kurtz’s fiancée that he died with her name on his lips, Kurtz remains the focal point of Heart of Darkness.
然而，在我看来，对Marlow的强调导致了对Kurtz的忽视和对其性格的扭曲解释。他肯定不仅仅是Marlow邪恶的内心或他堕落的分身；他和Leggatt一样，本身就是一个有血有肉的人。须知，康拉德自己把他的故事描述为一个“histoire farouche d’un journaliste qui devient chef de station à l’intérieur et se fait adorer par une tribu de sauvages”（关于一个记者在大陆腹地成为站长并被野蛮人部落崇拜的野史）。从Marlow第一次从会计那里听说Kurtz，到Marlow告诉Kurtz的未婚妻（fiancée）他死时嘴里念着她的名字，Kurtz始终是《黑暗之心》的焦点。
There is some justification for assuming, with most critics, that Kurtz had become a completely depraved man. Even Conrad called him “hollow at the core.” No doubt Kurtz was self-centered, power-mad, and lacked the “restraint” exhibited principally by the cannibals in the story. But, as Marlow points out, “whatever he was he was not common,” as the other traders were common. It is significant that Marlow remains loyal “to the nightmare of his choice.” Even after he learns of Kurtz’s violent acts, Marlow is still drawn to him, risks his life for him, lies for him. He recognizes a kindred spirit.
与大多数评论家一样，确实有理由认为，Kurtz已经成为一个完全堕落的人。甚至康拉德也称他是“行尸走肉”（hollow at the core）。毫无疑问，Kurtz自我中心，渴求权力，缺乏“克制”，这主要表现在故事中的食人族身上。但是，正如Marlow所指出的，“无论他是什么人，他都不是普通人”，因为其他商人是普通人。重要的是，Marlow仍然忠于“他选择的噩梦”。即使在得知Kurtz的暴力行为后，Marlow仍然被他吸引，为他冒生命危险，为他撒谎。他意识到志同道合的真情。
An “emissary of pity, of science, and progress, and devil knows what else,” Kurtz was idealistic even though his ideals proved of little help to him in the jungle. In this quality, as in others, he is contrasted with the opportunistic, tepid-blooded agents whom Marlow (and Conrad) so much disliked. He had initiative and was fearless. He had “the gift of expression”; even to the end he retained his voice. But most commendable (and dangerous) of all, he was imaginative and hence inordinately curious. The other agents, who represent much the worst of nightmares, were “too dull even to know you are being assaulted by the heart of darkness.”
Kurtz是“怜悯、科学和进步的使者，鬼知道还是什么”，他是个理想主义者，尽管他的理想在丛林中对他没有什么帮助。在这一点上和其他方面一样，他与Marlow（和康拉德）非常讨厌的那种机会主义的、不温不火的（tepid-blooded）代理人形成了鲜明对比。他有主动性，他无所畏惧。他有“表达的天赋”，甚至到弥留之际他还保持着自己的声音。但最值得称赞的（也是最危险的）是，他很有想象力，因此好奇心极强。其他代理人则代表着最糟糕的噩梦，他们“太迟钝了，甚至对自己正在遭受黑暗之心的侵袭都浑然不觉”。
Conrad was constantly interested in the effect of imagination in men. As he wrote of Lord Jim, “your imaginative people swing farther in any direction, as if given a longer scope of cable in the uneasy anchorage of life.” Certainly, Kurtz swung to extremes: to his idealistic paper on the “Suppression of Savage Customs,” he added a postscript in an unsteady hand, “Exterminate all of the brutes.” It is these extremes of vision, and the path of Kurtz’s career from the most enlightened European traditions to the most primitive human instincts, which give Conrad’s vivid story of his African adventure its immense range and lasting resonance as a work of art.
康拉德一直于想象力对人的影响颇感兴趣。正如他笔下的吉姆爷，“这些想象力丰富的人，思绪在任何方向上都会飘散得更远，就像在生命这片令人不安的锚地上拥有更长的缆绳一样。”当然，Kurtz是走火入魔的：在他关于“禁止野蛮习俗”的理想主义论文中，他用颤抖的手写下了一句附言：“消灭所有的野蛮人。”正是这些走火入魔的狂徒，连同Kurtz从最开明的欧洲传统走向最原始的人类本能的生涯之路，赋予了康拉德笔下生动的非洲冒险故事以艺术生命，广阔深远，余音绕梁。