Just before Kurtz dies, Marlow says of him: "His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bottom of a precipice where the sun never shines. . . . One evening coming in with a candle I was startled to hear him say a little tremulously, 'I am lying here in the dark waiting for death'." It is very shortly thereafter that Kurtz utters his pronouncement on his own life and perhaps on human nature as well. "Anything approaching the change that came over his features I have never seen before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I wasn't touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had been rent. I saw on the ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror--of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision--he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath: 'The horror! The horror!' I blew the candle out and left the cabin"
(pages 117-118 in Bantam, and pages 147-148 in Signet Classics).
