"this alone, i was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations. […] he had kicked himself loose of the earth."who is being described in this passage?

Kurtz.

Explanation:

In Joseph Conrad's novel "Heart of Darkness", the narrator Marlow had traveled to the African Congo River to meet a man named Kurtz. He had been thought to be an idealistic man with great abilities. But when Marlow reached and met the man, he was nothing as he had been thought to be. Rather, he seems nothing like it.

Marlow had joined a Belgian company named "The Company" and had been made a riverboat captain, trading in the Congo. The above excerpt is from the third book of the novel, where Marlow had encountered a sick Kurtz. The Russian trader that Kurtz had been associated with for several occasions had told Marlow to take Kurtz back to civilization. He claims that Kurtz had become like the people he had tried to influence, the natives. he had looted ivory from some natives and so he (the Russian) expects them to be attacked. The particular passage is a description of Kurtz when Marlow had gone looking for him after he had been found missing from his cabin.