The style of Heart of Darkness (and Secret Sharer, as well) is what I tend to call "poetry prose." It's technically just prose, but the way it's written, with so much vivid imagery, gives the same kind of sense that poetry does. It sort of makes me think of this line about how Marlow tells stories: "enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illuminations of moonshine." Regardless of what it's actually supposed to mean, wow, those are some words, there. It makes my writing feel clunky and inelegant in comparison.
I just thought it was pretty amazing that these stories were written by someone who only learned English as an adult, and manages to write far better than anything I could. I can only think of one other author who wrote in English as a second language (though, if there were others who wrote as well as Conrad, then I suppose it never would have occurred to me.) And the author I was thinking of was Anchee Min, who doesn't much compare in terms of language, though it's a bit of an unfair comparison, since being a Polish noble who decides to move to England is a bit different from escaping Communist China and learning English from Sesame Street while struggling through poverty.
I suppose my point here is that I'd never considered that is was even possible to learn a language so well as an adult to the point of sounding, well, like Heart of Darkness does. I'm trying to imagine what writing a novel in, say, French would be like (answer: horrible, awful, abominable, etc etc.) Probably Conrad was a genius or something, but still, I find it pretty inspiring.
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