A very complex relationship exists between "The Hollow Men" and Conrad's
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Heart of Darkness.
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Following Eliot's writing of "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" in 1910-1911, Conrad's short novel is arguably the second most important literary influence in Eliot's poetry, after Dante. Eliot once described Conrad's novel as an outstanding instance of the literary evocation of evil. Conrad's story is full of hollow men --empty of faith, of personality, of moral strength, of humanity. Marlow tells of his journey into a nightmare kingdom of death, the heart of darkness in the forests of the Congo, where he feels himself to have "stepped into the gloomy circle of some Inferno" and sees around him figures "in all the attitudes of pain, abandonment, and despair" ( see p. 26 in Bantam edition and pages 81-82 in Signet Classics) - [a scene which could come straight from Dante].