I’ve just started reading “Heart of Darkness”..well, I should say that I started reading the book, but not the story. The book I bought at the second hand store is “Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and the Critics” and I’ve started with the critics.
I’d not realized before how close to being autobiographic the story was. I just found out that Kurtz is actually based on a real character (Georges-Antoine Klein). The critics seem quite sure that this Mr Klein is pretty close to Kurtz. In fact in the original manuscript of Heart of Darkness four times Joseph Conrad apparently first wrote “Klein” instead of “Kurtz” and later crossed it out and change it. This kind of thing makes me even more curious about the story. I am pleased I decided to read the critics first.
