[General] Is this sentence taken literally or does it mean idiomatically?

[worldme2020key]

In the sentence below:

He has not lost his bright self, and it has gone nowhere.

Does the underlined part mean "it is still there with him" or does it mean idiomatically "it makes no progress or has no success"?

I feel perplexed with this sentence.

Thank you for any kind help.

 

[GoesStation]

Where does this text come from?

 

[Tdol]

What's the wider context? Without that, it is hard to say what a sentence like this means.