Marlowe's Shade

Friday, August 13, 2004

"...we live as we dream - alone..."

For the last twenty years I recognized that phrase as the title and absurdly falsetto yet haunting chorus of a song by the Marxist post punk band Gang of Four.
Like myself they were disillusioned romantics, so I've forgiven them for their ideology.

But I was shocked last night when I came across the same phrase reading Heart of Darkness.

So why does a line written a century before by a mind steeped in the scrupulously practical conservative worldview of a sea captain resonant with a bunch of post-modern leftist existentialist musicians?

Better read the book.

papijoe 11:57 AM
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