The Suzerain: Is the judge in McCarthy's Blood Meridian similar to the enigmatic Kurtz in Conrad's Heart of Darkness?

Whatever exists, he [the judge] said.  Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent.
He looked about at the dark forest in which they were bivouacked.  He nodded toward the specimens he'd collected.  These anonymous creatures, he said, may seem little or nothing in the world.  Yet the smallest crumb can devour us.  Any smallest thing beneath yon rock out of men's knowing.  Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is routed out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.

Barbarians at the gates

... and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of christen reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eyes wanders and the lip jerks and drools.

Excerpt from Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian

The University of the Absurd

"Another important department is Adynata, or Impossibilia.  Like Urban Planning for Gypsies.  The essense of the discipline is the comprehension of the underlying reasons for a thing's absurdity.  We have courses in Morse syntax, the history of antartic agriculutre, the history of Easter Island painting, contemporary Sumerian literature, Montessori grading, Assyrian-Babylonian philately, the technology of the wheel in pre-Columbian empires, and the phonetics of the silent film."

Jacopo Belbo in Umberto Eco' "Foucault's Pendulum"

Ever watch a seagull?
A seagull at rest will just stand and look into the ether of the air.
Does he think?  Does he remember or have foresight?
In the winter if he gets cold he may switch the legs he is standing on;  the only reaction he gives to the external world.
Nothing in those lifeless eyes.
Does he get bored?  Can he get bored?
Is there a past or a future for him? or just a never-ending present.

- 1/30/09

Post Halloween excerpt from Frankenstein

"Why did I not die? More miserable than man ever was before, why did I not sink into forgetfulness and rest? Death snatches away many blooming children, the only hopes of thier doting parents; how many brides and youthful lovers have been one day in the bloom of health and hope, and the next a prey for worms and the decay of the tomb!
Of what material was I made that I could thus resist so many shocks, which, like the turning of the wheel, continually renewed the torture."

Question: Was the fiend in Frankenstein "real" in the novel or was it a metaphor/analogy for some other torment suffered by the protagonist or the author?

Favorite Movie Quotes (post yours in my comments section)

"you're gonna need a bigger boat" - JAWS (1975)

"buzzards gotta eat, same as worms" - The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

"....

The Freedom of the Hills

Oh! What a joy it were in vigorous health,

To have a body, (this our vital frame

With shrinking sensibility endued,

And all the nice regards of flesh and blood)

And to the elements surrender it

As if it were a spirit! - How divine,

The liberty for frail, for mortal man

To roam at large among unpeople glens

And Mountainous retirements, only trod

By devious footsteps; regions consecrate

To oldest time! and reckless of the storm

That keeps the raven quiet in her rest,

Be as a presence or a motion, - one

Among the many there; and while the mists

Flying, and rainy vapors, call out shapes

And phantoms from crags and solid earth

As fast as musician scatters sounds

Out of an instrument; and while the streams

(As at a flight creation and in haste

To exercise their untried faculties)

Descending from the region of the clouds,

And starting from the hollows of the earth

More multitudinous every moment, rend

Their way before them - what a joy to roam

An equal among mightiest energies;

And happy sometimes with articulate voice,

Amid the deafening tumult, scarcely heard

By him that utters it, exclaim aloud,

"Be this continued so from day to day,

Nor let the fierce commotion have to end,

Ruinous through it be, from month to month!"

- Thomas Starr King