No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream--alone.

This line occurs in Joseph Conrad’s novella *Heart of Darkness* (1899), in the frame narrative aboard the Nellie on the Thames. Marlow, the principal storyteller, reflects on the difficulty—indeed the impossibility—of communicating the felt reality of past experience to listeners. The remark comes as he prepares to recount his Congo journey and signals Conrad’s modern preoccupation with the limits of language, memory, and narration. It also sets the tone for the tale’s layered storytelling: what the audience receives is not the experience itself but a mediated, partial account shaped by the teller’s consciousness and the listeners’ distance from it.

Marlow’s insistence that the “life-sensation” of an epoch cannot be conveyed suggests that experience has an irreducibly private core: its “truth” and “meaning” are not just facts but a texture of perception, emotion, and atmosphere. The repeated “It is impossible” dramatizes the failure of narrative to transmit that inner essence intact. The closing aphorism—“We live, as we dream—alone”—extends the point from storytelling to existence itself: consciousness is solitary, and even intimate communication cannot fully bridge the gap between selves. In *Heart of Darkness*, this becomes a warning about how easily moral and psychological realities are distorted when translated into public language or imperial “reports.”

1) “We live as we dream—alone.”
2) “We live, as we dream, alone.”