Page:Last essays - 1926.djvu/184

158 As to the appended footnotes, their chief purpose has been to show how closely some of the earlier pages of “Heart of Darkness" are a recollection of Conrad’s own Congo journey. This story was serialized in Blackwood’s Magazine between February and April, 1899, and I remember Conrad telling me that its 40,000 words occupied only about a month in writing. When we consider the painful, slow labour with which he usually composed we can perceive how intensely vivid his memories of this experience must have been, and, to judge from the parallel passages, how intensely actual. But then the notebook only goes to prove the almost self-evident contention that much of Conrad’s work is founded upon autobiographical remembrance. Conrad himself wrote of this story in his Author’s Note to the new edition of the “Youth” volume in which it appeared: “‘Heart of Darkness’ is quite as authentic in fundamentals as ‘Youth’ . . . it is experience pushed a little (and only a little) beyond the actual facts of the case.” If only he had kept a diary of his meeting and association with Kurtz!

The pages of The Concord Edition of “Youth” the edition always referred to in the noteswhich bear direct reference to the first volume of the diary, are only three, 70-72, but in these few pages there are an astonishing number of touches strongly reminiscent of the diary. One would argue, indeed, that he must have consulted the diary when writing the story, but Mrs. Conrad assures me that it was not so. Twice had she saved it from the wastepaper basket, and probably by the time “Heart of Darkness” came to be written Conrad had forgotten all about it, or did not dream that it had survived. He never spoke to me of it, and I never heard of its existence until after his death.

The second notebook, which is an entirely technical