Impressionism is a term more frequently used with regard to painting and music than to
literature and especially with artistic movements occurring in France in the late nineteenth
century. A related trend is that of the French Symbolist poets of the same period.
Conrad's prose can be seen in conjunction with these movements because of a deliberate
subtlety and even vagueness in his descriptions and his wording overall. In
, the entire episode ofsearching for and finally discoveringhas the quality
of a strange dreamlike fantasy. Though the narrative material could not be more different, the
tone, at least, of Conrad's story is similar to that of one of the iconic Symbolist poems,
Stephan Mallarm© 's "Afternoon of a Faun" (known also through Debussy's musical
treatment, a central work of Impressionism in music).
Conrad's story seems
covered by a veil, a kind of blur. We are nevertheless first given a sharp description of the
dysfunctional nature of colonialism...
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