ellauri008.html on line 465: He made me feel so natural and very much myself, that I was almost afraid of losing the thrill and wonder of being there, although I was vibrating with intense excitement inside. His eyes under their pent-house lids revealed the suffering and the intensity of his experiences; when he spoke of his work, there came over them a sort of misty, sensuous, dreamy look, but they seemed to hold deep down the ghosts of old adventures and experiences—once or twice there was something in them one almost suspected of being wicked. But then I believe whatever strange wickedness would tempt this super-subtle Pole, he would be held in restraint by an equally delicate sense of honour. In his talk he led me along many paths of his life, but I felt that he did not wish to explore the jungle of emotions that lay dense on either side, and that his apparent frankness had a great reserve.
ellauri008.html on line 468: Super subtle pole. Kolakka polakka. A month later, Bertrand Russell visited Conrad at Capel House, and the same day on the train wrote down his impressions:
ellauri035.html on line 395: And curving hair, subtle as a smoke,
ellauri035.html on line 462: Fails not, subtle and fresh, in perfuming
ellauri046.html on line 268: Kierkegaard's humor ranges from the droll to the rollicking; from farce to intricate, subtle analysis; from nimble stories to amusing aphorisms. In these pages you are invited to meet the wife of an author who burned her husband's manuscript and a businessman who, even with an abundance of calling cards, forgot his own name. You will hear of an interminable vacillator whom archeologists found still pacing thousands of years later, trying to come to a decision. Then there is the emperor who became a barkeeper in order to stay in the know.
ellauri052.html on line 749: They stopped, they discussed methods, they practised grips and throws, they became accustomed to each other, to each other´s rhythm, they got a kind of mutual physical understanding. And then again they had a real struggle. They seemed to drive their white flesh deeper and deeper against each other, as if they would break into a oneness. Birkin had a great subtle energy, that would press upon the other man with an uncanny force, weigh him like a spell put upon him. Then it would pass, and Gerald would heave free, with white, heaving, dazzling movements.
ellauri052.html on line 952: Oppressed and heavy-hearted, Bellow resorted to subtle concealment of competing mistresses, moved around like a man on the run and needed bursts of frenetic activity, “even if it means constant trips to Japan, London, Yugoslavia or Israel to keep one jump ahead” of his emotional entanglements.
ellauri053.html on line 1255: Depth In Work: Pater’s work is not subtle and superficial. There is a certain depth and richness in his work.
ellauri061.html on line 635: Latin blunder for self-defense’s se defendendo is sic, either a befogged muddling of a professional legal term, or a post-Freudian slip, or (least likely) a very oblique and subtle jab at Gately from a Ewell intimate with the graveyard scene from Hamlet — namely V.i. 9.
ellauri069.html on line 766: Hugh Rockoff suggested in 1990 that the novel was an allegory about the demonetization of silver in 1873, whereby “the cyclone that carried Dorothy to the Land of Oz represents the economic and political upheaval, the yellow brick road stands for the gold standard, and the silver shoes Dorothy inherits from the Wicked Witch of the East represents the pro-silver movement. When Dorothy is taken to the Emerald Palace before her audience with the Wizard she is led through seven passages and up three flights of stairs, a subtle reference to the Coinage Act of 1873 which started the class conflict in America.”
ellauri107.html on line 504: Whenever Thompson twanged, “Put your John Hancock on that line,” Babbitt was as much amused by the antiquated provincialism as any proper Englishman by any American. He knew himself to be of a breeding altogether more esthetic and sensitive than Thompson's. He was a college graduate, he played golf, he often smoked cigarettes instead of cigars, and when he went to Chicago he took a room with a private bath. “The whole thing is,” he explained to Paul Riesling, “these old codgers lack the subtlety that you got to have to-day.”
ellauri112.html on line 693: The same can be said for Cody’s rough around the edges, unsubtle screenplay. This is far from her best work and for once, she seems to have written herself into a corner. Some of the narrative is so contrived that it’s dripping with cliché, crowded with irritating, pithy platitudes dressed up in a bright hipster bow. Worst of all, the film treats serious post-partum depression as a gimmicky afterthought and even tacks on a borderline inappropriate ‘gotcha!’ ending.
ellauri117.html on line 247: They stopped, they discussed methods, they practised grips and throws, they became accustomed to each other, to each other´s rhythm, they got a kind of mutual physical understanding. And then again they had a real struggle. They seemed to drive their white flesh deeper and deeper against each other, as if they would break into a oneness. Birkin had a great subtle energy, that would press upon the other man with an uncanny force, weigh him like a spell put upon him. Then it would pass, and Gerald would heave free, with white, heaving, dazzling movements.
ellauri119.html on line 684: She is good at writing a thriller novel and carries a hypnotic theme that keeps the reader absorbed and lends to a subtle brainwashing/indoctrination toward her worldview. That doesn´t make it right, just believable, and, unfortunately, too many people think that believable means it is true. Believable just means that you can be fooled.
ellauri142.html on line 167: Vittu mitä pellejä! Jo on lapsellista touhua. According to the historian David Stevenson, it was influential on Freemasonry as it was emerging in Scotland. Robert Vanloo (n.h.) states that earlier 17th century Rosicrucianism had a considerable influence on Anglo-Saxon Masonry. Hans Schick sees in the works of Comenius (1592–1670) the ideal of the newly born English Masonry before the foundation of the Grand Lodge in 1717. Comenius was in England during 1641. Their mission is to prepare the whole wide world for a new phase in religion, which includes awareness of the inner worlds and the subtle bodies, and to provide safe guidance in the gradual awakening of man's latent spiritual faculties during the next six centuries toward the coming Age of Aquariums. This is the dawning of it, judging by the sea levels. According to Masonic writers, the Order of the Rose Cross is expounded in a major Christian literary work that molded the subsequent spiritual beliefs of western civilization: The Divine Comedy (ca. 1308–1321) by Dante Alighieri.
ellauri142.html on line 178: “Mahaluu” is a subtle celebration of exclusive membership and a commitment to specific communally agreed-upon ideals.
ellauri143.html on line 736: And subtle sense of other men´s discourse takes in.
ellauri146.html on line 648: But it is dangerous to attempt to separate any historical figure from his setting. No individual can ever be understood fully until the subtle influences of his formal education, his reading, his associates, and his time and country (with his heredity) are traced and synthesized. Too much has been said, perhaps, about Poe’s “detachment” from his environment and too little about his background—his heritage from Europe and the influences of his early life in Virginia. Elizabeth Arnold, Poe’s mother, was born in England in 1787 and was brought to this country when she was a girl of nine. “In speaking of my mother,” Poe wrote years later to Beverley Tucker of Virginia, “you have touched a string to which my heart fully responds.” Judging from his spirited defense of Elizabeth Poe, it appears that Poe never became unmindful of his immediate English origins on the maternal side.
ellauri146.html on line 670: Profound must have been the appeal to his subtle aesthetic sense even in youth as he looked at all those classic buildings on some night when the rays of a full moon had softened and blended the separate details of roof and entablature, cornice, and, pillar. It may well have been that, at such an hour and in such a spot, the most celebrated expression in the entire body of his writings was suggested to him by so extraordinary an interfusion of Nature’s beauty with the beauty of art in one of its loveliest forms.
ellauri152.html on line 77: Although for the most part The Songs of Bilitis is original work, many of the poems were reworked epigrams from the Palatine Anthology, and Louÿs even borrowed some verses from Sappho herself. The poems are a blend of mellow sensuality and polished style in the manner of Parnassianism, but underneath run subtle Gallic undertones that Louÿs could never escape.
ellauri152.html on line 626: I’d never heard of this story before, but all the thoughts you had are so interesting! I totally get your frustrations about the movie changing a pivotal scene to make it more “romantic and dramatic” though – why can’t movies just appreciate subtlety and friendship sometimes?
ellauri156.html on line 637: It all seems to be over. David is not looking for another wife; he is not even looking for an affair. He is looking for a conquest. That should have happened on the battlefield, not in the bedroom! Things take a very different turn when Bathsheba sends word to David that she is pregnant. David first seeks to cover up his sin by ordering Joab to send Uriah home on furlough, ostensibly to give David a report on the war. David's efforts to get Uriah into bed with Bathsheba begin as subtle hints, then change to veiled orders, and then turn crass as David seeks to get Uriah to do drunk what he will not do sober. When these efforts fail (due to Uriah's noble character), David sends Uriah back to Joab, with written orders to Joab to put him to death in a way that makes it seem like a casualty of war. Joab does as he is told and sends word to David: “Mission accomplished.” It is here that our apparently never-ending story resumes.
ellauri159.html on line 1181: Naturally you adopt a preceptorial conversational tone in your writing. You often use imaginative and hyperbolic language to illustrate a point like 'smoking kills'. You have a talent for seizing on subtleties and choosing the exact word to convey a not so subtle idea. You always consider how your writing affects their audience. You notice if your audience is passing notes behind your back.
ellauri160.html on line 806: It is really sweet that Germans and others have adopted something and that this sketch is special for them. I respect that and don’t doubt for a second the genuine love and admiration some have for Dinner for One. But I am really surprised to see Monty Python compared with Dinner for One. I have to say it was painful to sit through. Painfully, painfully bad and unfunny. That’s why it has never caught on in Britain. I suppose we must have a very different sense of humour to that of Scandinavia and the German-speaking countries. We don’t consider it funny if someone falls over something. There’s nothing subtle or clever or nuanced about it (Rowan Atkinson’s absurdist physical comedy went down so well due to its complexity, think of the sketch where Mr. Bean makes the sandwich on the park bench and it gets progressively more and more absurd, he gets the fish out of water and slaps it against the bench to kill it before eating it, etc. now that is funny, and food fights in general). It’s not funny the first time the butler falls over the tiger-skin rug and it gets progressively more and more irritating each time he does it. You can spot the punchline a mile off and so the end of the sketch falls very flat. It’s nothing whatever to do with the length of the sketch or its obscurity or difficulty finding it: people still seek out all the comic greats on Youtube, like that fat man watsisname, or Charlie Chaplin who bravely made fun of your Hitler.
ellauri161.html on line 599: The satire not only lacks subtlety, it pushes the bounds of ridiculousness to levels where it works neither as a comedy nor as social commentary. It is too true for laughs.
ellauri161.html on line 631: I’ve seen some people criticise Don’t Look Up for lacking subtlety. I’m not bothered by this. I don’t necessarily need or want the communications about climate change to be subtle. The issue itself certainly is not subtle. We are heading towards—and, again, already are in the midst of—unprecedented death and destruction. Our systems and rulers are not just woefully ill-equipped to deal with this or to prevent the worst of it, they are actively complicit in bringing it about. Those communities around the world that are the most vulnerable and that have had the least part to play in causing the crisis will be the ones to suffer the first and the worst. This isn’t subtle sh*t! This is horrifying, grotesque, psychologically debilitating stuff to ponder—if you even have the privilege to ponder in the first place! I don’t necessarily need subtlety here. Sometimes, to fight propaganda, you need to go loud and bold. But you still have to be effective. We are fighting an almightily powerful enemy. Competence is a necessary minimum. Regrettably, Don’t Look Up does not meet those standards. Its central metaphor doesn’t even make sense! Yes, capitalism is responding as dreadfully to climate change in real life as it does to the comet in the film—the key difference is that capitalism didn’t cause that comet to come hurtling out of the sky in the first place.
ellauri161.html on line 635: A Kike lady says it well: Granted, many will accuse Don’t Look Up of lacking the subtlety of McKay’s earlier movies, but there is something refreshingly honest about the film that undeniably lends itself to the silliness of its narrative. Furthermore, it is a film about the absurdity of the current times we live in and nobody can argue that is isn’t crazy to deny facts in favour of outlandish fabrications — or can they?
ellauri161.html on line 707: Annoyingly bad. I suppose this might appeal to those who like their humor and satire delivered like a sledge hammer to the head, but if you prefer a more subtle approach, this is not for you. Added to this are the ludicrously exaggerated characters that are so bad that they are laughable, but in the wrong way. The DiCaprio character is just plain irritating. After 20 minutes of this film, I was just wishing the comet would arrive much earlier than anticipated.
ellauri162.html on line 826: Scienceblogs appears to have a problem keeping and attracting talented writers. According to PZ Myers, Scienceblogs has "been facing a steady erosion of talent". In 2010, the Christian apologetic website True Free Thinker wrote a quite pointed and accurate criticism of PZ Myers Pharyngula blog indicating that PZ Myers' blog posts often lack substance. Pharyngula is widely acclaimed in the liberal media due to its embrace of evolutionary pseudoscience which liberals irrationally embrace (see: Evolution, Liberalism, Atheism, and Irrationality). Myers' blog is also listed by the science journal Nature, which also embraces evolutionary pseudoscience, as the best blog by a scientist. Pharyngula is known for its sarcastic and often specious criticism of creation science and intelligent design theory, as well as regular postings of photos of cephalopods (often with vulgarly sexual connotations both subtle and blatant). As Singer said, sexual organs are the best indicators of the soul.
ellauri191.html on line 1349: "for the human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture that are combined in his work"
ellauri196.html on line 838: Montalen Dante-ihailu on epäilyttävää. Voiko Danten suunnalta odottaa mitään hyvää? Wesley oli siihen verrattuna huumormies. Montanelta pitäis ilmeisesti löytyä subtlea ja provokatiivista huumoriakin setäilyn lomasta. Peukutti se ainaskin Italo Svevoa.
ellauri197.html on line 313: A piece of irony is that she claims the memory is “making November difficult,” but as “November” is the final month of autumn and a step toward harsh winter, it could be noted as one of the harsher months of the year on its own. With this in mind, her phrasing could be a subtle hint that her current state is already harsh, and perhaps she is blaming too much on the memory in regard to her unhappiness.
ellauri222.html on line 803: British critics tend to regard the American predilection for Big Novels as a vulgar neurosis — like the American predilection for big cars or big hamburgers. Oh God, we think: here comes another sweating, free-dreaming maniac with another thousand-pager; here comes another Big Mac. First, Dos Passos produced the Great American Novel; now they all want one. Yet in a sense every ambitious American novelist is genuinely trying to write a novel called USA. Perhaps this isn’t just a foible; perhaps it is an inescapable response to America – twentieth-century America, racially mixed and mobile, twenty-four hour, endless, extreme, superabundantly various. American novels are big all right, but partly because America is big too. You need plenty of nerve, ink and energy to do justice to the place, and no one has made greater efforts than Saul Bellow. In 1976 Bellow was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, praised by the Swedes ‘for human understanding and subtle analysis of contemporary culture’. Many times in Bellow’s novels we are reminded that ‘being human’ isn’t the automatic condition of every human being. Like freedom or sanity, it is not a given but a gift, a talent, an accomplishment, an objective. The busiest sections of the Chicago bookstores, I noticed, were those marked ‘Personal Growth’.
ellauri241.html on line 393: Any more subtle fluid in her veins hiänen suonissaan ollut hienovaraisempaa nestettä
ellauri241.html on line 609: Came, and who were her subtle servitors. tulivat ja ketkä olivat hänen hienovaraiset ​​palvelijansa.
ellauri269.html on line 575: There is literally a track in the WoD soundtrack called ‘Messenger’ in Hebrew (Malach), which features traditional Jewish liturgical singing. They are led by a Moses figure, and literally came to Azeroth on a ship named after the Exodus. It’s not subtle, I don’t see why you’re denying it.
ellauri270.html on line 302: The irony in “The Daemon Lover” is that the female protagonist becomes suspect as she hunts for the mysterious young man “who promised to marry her” (DL 23). Everywhere she searches, she encounters couples who mock her with not-so-subtle insinuations that she is crazy. Indeed, at the end of the story she may well have become insane; the narrative is ambiguous on this point. Significantly, however, if the nameless woman has indeed lost her mind, it is James who is responsible. Although some critics speculate that the disruptive male figure—both in this story and in the others in the collection—is a hallucination of a sexually repressed character, the epilogue to The Lottery, a ballad entitled “James Harris, The Daemon Lover,” suggests otherwise: He is, in fact, the devil himself.
ellauri324.html on line 232: When someone brags, they highlight their positive traits, qualities, or accomplishments. This kind of self-promotion is usually an attempt to impress other people. Bragging can be subtle or obvious. People who brag in obvious ways might try too hard to be liked or exaggerate certain traits or stories in an attempt to seem cool, funny, or important. People who are more subtle may hide their bragging with humor, sarcasm, or self-deprecating remarks.
ellauri324.html on line 253:

Send subtle social cues
ellauri368.html on line 296: Evidently, his satire lacks that subtle irony which made Profiat Duraii's Epistle so powerful, and at the same time gained for it such great popularity. Undoubtedly, it is due to this directness and plainness of speech, that this parody has never yet seen the light of day. About as humorous as this invective against J.N. somewhat earlier:
ellauri375.html on line 286: Sounds like more beating about the bush. I don't thing you got a clue. You are not very deep, sorry to say. I have had a better conversation with a coffee machine. You're as useless as a screen door on a submarine! You're about as much fun as a sandpaper toilet roll! You're as welcome as a skunk at a lawn party! You've got a face like a bulldog licking piss off a nettle! You're as sharp as a bowling ball! You're about as subtle as a chainsaw in a library!
xxx/ellauri013.html on line 1069: The story also reveals unsuspected depths of cunning in the wretched Cornelius, whose abject (sic) and intense hate acts like a subtle inspiration, pointing out an unerring way towards revenge.
xxx/ellauri068.html on line 221: I also said something about Borges’s love life, which is present in several places in his work, just like his reticence, yes, to go beyond “a certain point” (in the story “The Other,” for example, various critics have found a subtle reference to a brothel and a prostitute located almost in a blank space, between two French names that are almost identical).
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 50: Gravity is more subtle, though: the real problem is not so much nonrenormalizability as high-energy behavior inconsistent with local quantum field theory. In quantum mechanics, if you want to probe physics at short distances, you can scatter particles at high energies. (You can think of this as being due to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, if you like, or just about properties of Fourier transforms where making localized wave packets requires the use of high frequencies.) By doing ever-higher-energy scattering experiments, you learn about physics at ever-shorter-length scales. (This is why we build the LHC to study physics at the attometer length scale.)
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 54: This tells us that quantum gravity, at very high energies, is not a quantum field theory in the traditional sense. It's a stranger theory, which probably involves a subtle sort of nonlocality that is relevant for situations like black hole horizons.
xxx/ellauri113.html on line 56: None of this is really a contradiction between general relativity and quantum mechanics. For instance, string theory is a quantum mechanical theory that includes general relativity as a low-energy limit. What it does mean is that quantum field theory, the framework we use to understand all non-gravitational forces, is not sufficient for understanding gravity. Black holes lead to subtle issues that are still not fully understood. But not contradictions, just lacunae.
xxx/ellauri127.html on line 496: 4. Why do Silk’s colleagues fail to defend him? Why would highly educated academics—people trained to weigh evidence carefully and to be aware of the complex subtleties of any object of study—so readily believe the absurd stories concocted to disgrace Coleman Silk? Why does Ernestine describe Athena College as “a hotbed of ignorance”?
xxx/ellauri137.html on line 206: And the Majas, they are not aristocratic ladies as their fine apparel may suggest; they lack refinement and dignity, though they are extremely attractive (particularly the one on the right, I would fuck her anytime). The artist calls them majas not mujeres. A patent wink to the same artist's best known work La Maja desnuda from the same year. They are no ordinary women. They are courtesans! Sluts, not to make too fine a point on it. Goya makes a subtle criticism on the society of his time. In Majas on a Balcony, Goya combines an ironic treatment of material with an impressionistic technique, a mode of presentation, which succeeds in creating a piece of social criticism. Buaahahahaha don't make me laugh!
xxx/ellauri154.html on line 101: Honoré de Balzac, who knew Sand personally, once said that if someone like himself thought that she wrote badly, it was because his own standards of criticism were inadequate. He also noted that her treatment of imagery in her works showed that her writing had an exceptional subtlety, having the ability to "virtually put the image in the word, and the lyre you know where." Alfred de Vigny referred to her as "Sappho".
xxx/ellauri154.html on line 103: Fyodor Dostoevsky "read widely in the numerous novels of George Sand" and translated her La dernière Aldini in 1844, but "discovered to his dismay that the work had already appeared in Russian". In his mature period, he expressed an ambiguous attitude towards her. For instance, in his novella Notes from Underground the narrator refers to the sentiments he expresses as, "I laugh off at that point the European, inexplicably lofty subtleties of George Sand".
xxx/ellauri165.html on line 436: Lyyra Häpykielen sammakkomaisen äidin nimi Philip Pullmanin kirjaan His Dark Materials perustuvassa Netflix-sarjassa His Masters Voice on Marisa. Sen lemmikki on toinen ikävänoloinen apina. The malevolent dæmon, represented by a golden sub-nosed monkey, is a cute-but-creepy little beast and is supposed to be male as all daemon’s are the opposite gender to their human. Awkwardly, the BBC realised some viewers may be perturbed to see the monkey’s genitals on their 60 inch HD TV, so Mrs Coulter’s Dæmon has had a subtle gender reassignment. Clitoris peeking out from the labia instead of erect middle figer is offensive in Russia, Ukraina and in the eastern half of the Swedish empire.
xxx/ellauri166.html on line 171: Taikaesineitä oli iso lauma Harry Potter-kirjoissa. Apinat on kuin harakoita, ne kerää kaikenlaista kiiltävää. Oli niitä His Masters Voicessakin, ennen kaikkea aletiometri ja the subtle knife.
xxx/ellauri177.html on line 205: The 24th feature from Hong Sangsoo, doppelgänger of the talkative celeb guy in the last scene of the movie THE WOMAN WHO RAN follows Gamhee (Kim Minhee), a florist and the wife of a translator who never in 5 years time has left her for a moment from his sight. She has three separate encounters with friends while her husband finally is on a business trip. Youngsoon (Seo Youngwha) is divorced, turned lesbian (the couple likes to feed alley cats) and has given up meat and likes to garden in the backyard of her semi-detached house. Suyoung (Song Seonmi) is divorced, has a big savings account and a crush on her architect neighbor and is being hounded by a young poet she met at the bar. Woojin (Kim Saebyuk) works for a movie theater and hates it that her writer husband has become a celeb. Their meetings are polite, but not warm. Some of their shared history bubbles to the surface, but not much. With characteristic humor and grace, Hong takes a simple premise and spins a web of interconnecting philosophies and coincidences. THE WOMAN WHO RAN is a subtle, powerful look at dramas small and large faced by women everywhere. Basically, they are 40+ ladies who may have met at some art school and get a chance to compare notes on how well their childless lives have turned out. Gamhee used to be the celeb's girl friend until the movie theater attendant stole the guy. Now both of them are sorry that she did, but really not that much. The Éric Rohmer of South Korea.
xxx/ellauri193.html on line 248: There is a not-so-subtle message in the statements disseminated regarding Mr. Seib. Why not simply announce that, although he appears to have a "Jewish name" and to "look Jewish," he actually is a Catholic and a "German Volga" one at that.
xxx/ellauri225.html on line 48: The gay content in The Telling is rather subtle and subdued, but it isn’t an afterthought. Sutty’s lesbianism is an important aspect of her character, and when she starts meeting mazis, the keepers of the Telling, many of them are gay couples as well. There is a quiet romanticization of gay monogamy throughout The Telling that moved me when I first read it, and although not every aspect of the novel has aged as well, I’m still very endeared of it for that reason. If you enjoy classic science fiction, where the point is less a thrilling story and more the discovery of a brand new world, The Telling is by far my favorite of the bunch.
xxx/ellauri235.html on line 774: So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner, sly, Se kutoi hienon verkon pieneen nurkkaan, ovelana,
xxx/ellauri251.html on line 888: That though I be not subtle of wit as thou
xxx/ellauri251.html on line 1058: Thou art swift and subtle and blind as a flame of fire;
xxx/ellauri251.html on line 3181: Would worship, but thy fire and subtlety,
xxx/ellauri268.html on line 343: Probably the most influential greedy Jewish caricature after Shakespeare’s Shylock is Charles Dickens’ Scrooge. Scrooge (as many Jewish writers have pointed out) is a miser with an obviously Jewish name (Ebenezer) and a pointed nose. He doesn’t celebrate Christmas and needs to be converted to charity and piety. It’s not especially subtle.
xxx/ellauri298.html on line 572: Vinosuinen Stan jauhamassa paskaa. Methinks we are all component parts of some self-organizing wisdom whose movements and machinations are subtle and likely overlooked by the modern Western psyche. In other words, I suspect that everything really is interconnected, although in ways that are deeper than we may be capable of imagining. They're coming to take me away haha.
xxx/ellauri379.html on line 119: One of the most resoundingly Modernist elements of Conrad’s work lies in this kind of early post-structuralist treatment of language—his insistence on the inherent inability of words to express the real, in all of its horrific truth. Marlow’s journey is full of encounters with things that are “unspeakable,” with words that are uninterpretable, and with a world that is eminently “inscrutable.” In this way, language fails time and time again to do what it is meant to do—to communicate. It’s a phenomenon best summed up when Marlow tells his audience that “it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence… We live, as we dream—alone.” Kurtz—as “eloquent” as he may be—can’t even adequately communicate the terrifying darkness he observed around him.“The horror! The horror!” is all he can say. Some critics have surmised that part of Heart of Darkness’s mass appeal comes from this ambiguity of language—from the free rein it gives its readers to interpret. Others posit this as a great weakness of the text, viewing Conrad’s inability to name things as an unseemly quality in a writer who’s supposed to be one of the greats. Perhaps this is itself a testament to the Heart of Darkness’s breadth of interpretability.
62