Analytical reading-Part 15

From Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad

G

oing up that river was like travelling 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 sand-banks 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. There were moments when one’s past came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect. I got used to it afterwards; I did not see it any more; I had no time. I had to keep guessing at the channel; I had to discern, mostly by inspiration, the signs of hidden banks; I watched for sunken stones; I was learning to clap my teeth smartly before my heart flew out, when I shaved by a fluke some infernal sly old snag that would have ripped the life out of the tin-pot steamboat and drowned all the pilgrims; I had to keep a lookout for the signs of dead wood we could cut up in the night for next day’s steaming. When you have to attend to things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality—the reality, I tell you—fades. The inner truth is hidden—luckily, luckily.

Notes and comments:

to run riot—раста буйно (за растение)

riotous—буен (за растителност)

impenetrable—1) непроницаем, гъст, непрогледен (Ex.: impenetrable darkness); 2) непроходим (Ex.: impenetrable forests and swamps); 3) неразбираем, неразгадаем, тайнствен (Ex.: impenetrable mystery)

stretch—syn. expanse, area; пространство, протежение, повърхност

a stretch of water—водно прострнаство

a beautiful stretch of wooded country—красива гориста местност

a stretch of open country—открита местност

to butt against/into—syn. to run/bump into; натъквам се на, блъсвам се в

implacable—syn. relentless; неумолим, непреклонен

an implacable enemy, implacable hatred/love

to brood (on, over)—to think about (troubles, etc.) for a long time; syn. ponder, muse, meditate, reflect, ruminate, dwell on; замислям се, седя умислен, размислям се

inscrutable—syn. mysterious, inexplicable, unfathomable, incomprehensible, impenetrable, enigmatic; неразгадаем, загадъчен, енигматичен, неразбираем

vengeful—syn. revengeful, vindictive, spiteful, avenging, retaliatory; отмъстителен, злобен, злостен

by a fluke—по една щастлива случайност, съвсем неочаквано