the book list

HEART OF DARKNESS, JOSEPH CONRAD

"And, don't you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head- though I had a very lively sense of that danger, too- but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low... his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. He had kicked himself loose of the earth. Confound the man! He had kicked the very earth to pieces. And I before him did not know whether I stood on the ground or floated in the air."

It seems so wrong to start off a book list with such a dark and heavy story, a story of such weight and relevance that it most certainly clears itself to any claim of random or fleeting.  But as it happens, it is the book that I finished last night. But! as an offering of balance, I give you the following, from Conrad's short story Youth.

"By all that's wonderful it is the sea, I believe, the sea itself- or is it youth alone? Who can tell? But you here- you all had something out of life: money, love- whatever one gets on shore- and, tell me, wasn't that the best time, that time when we were young at sea; young and had nothing, on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks- and sometimes a chance to feel your strength- that only- what you all regret."

... a chance to feel your strength.