Going up that river was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of overshadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side. The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once–somewhere–far away–in another existence perhaps.

From “Heart of Darkness,” by Joseph Conrad

“When Vegetation Rioted on the Earth,” what a gorgeous phrase! Can you watch the beauty of the jungle unfold before you? Joseph Conrad can make you see with the eyes of your mind and feel with your heart the awesome spectacle of the jungle: “You thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once–somewhere–far away–in another existence perhaps.” Every detail of his powerful prose transports us to that boat with the protagonist along that interminable river.   And to think that when he began his career as an author, he did not know whether to write his novels in Polish—his first language—French or English. I am glad he wrote them in English, although Polish and French are beautiful languages.