When was the last time you read Heart of Darkness? Has it been a while? Well, if you haven't

read it, then at least you probably heard of it. The famous novella by Joseph Conrad is

a perennial of first year reading lists and was the inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's

Apocalypse Now. If you're not familiar, the novella tells the tale of Charles Marlow, a

British sea captain who travels up the Congo River in search of the power mad ivory trader,

Mr. Kurtz. Since his publication is a serial on 1899, the story has not stopped being the focus

of analysis and some very heated debate. It's been lauded as a scathing critique of imperialism,

racism, and the exploitation of the Congo. It's also been famously criticized by African authors

and scholars as promoting many racist ideas about Africa. The debate continues in English departments

and among scholars of post-colonial literature to this very day. But what you might not remember

about Heart of Darkness is that it begins with the protagonist, Marlow, imagining Britain

in the early days of the Roman occupation. Here's a few choice selections from that passage.

Conrad writes quote, I was thinking of very old times when the Romans first came here 1900 years ago.

Darkness was here yesterday. Imagine the feelings of a commander of a fine, what do you call him?

Tri-ring in the Mediterranean? Ordered suddenly to the north, run overland across the Gauls in a hurry.

Imagine him here, the very end of the world, a sea the color of lead, the 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. Sand banks, marshes, forests, savages. Precious little to eat for a civilized man,

nothing but tems water to drink. No falerny and 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. Land in a swamp, march through the woods,

...