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Content THE GENIUS OF JOSEPH CONRAD A STUDY OF THE NEUROTIC EMOTIONS THAT STIMULATED HIS IMAGINATION A Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School The University of Southern California In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy ^7 Lionel Harold Turner August I9I 1 . 9 UMI Number: DP22995 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Dissertation Publishing UMI DP22995 Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 -1 3 4 6 rk. p. £ . T ? o'B P a te £agUjt_3£jJL9&9. Com mittee on Studies Z Chairm an T h is d issertatio n, w ritte n by M P m . HAROLD. TURNER.............................. . u n d e r the g u idan ce o f h i& .... F a c u lty C o m m itte e i-y on t f on S tudies, a n d a p p ro v e d by a ll its m em bers, has /( Z f been presented to and accepted by the C o u n c il r on G ra d u a te S tu d y and R esearch, in p a r tia l f u l fillm e n t o f require m e n ts f o r the degree o f D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y ■ I 971 TABLE OP CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE PART I I. GENIUS AND NEUROSIS ............. 1 Ground plan of the dissertation ..... 13 II. BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE..................... l5 III. JOSEPH CONRAD, A NEUROTIC PERSONALITY ... 2I 4. Neurotic personalities ................ 25 Five indications ............ ..... 26 Pe s simism .... ........... 27 Irritability ..... ................ 28 Restlessness .............. 29 Anxiety ....... .......... .... 30 Isolation.............................. 31 VI. CONRAD«S NEUROSIS ......................... 35 Need for his mother.................... 37 Helplessness .......................... 3& Punishing demands .................... 39 Jealousy and desire for exclusive attention 0 Origin of the tendency................ 43 The effect of early love affairs .... If7 His father .......... 50 Mental conflict ........................ 56 The positive factors .................. 56 Negative forces............ 58 CHAPTER PAGE ' V. THE PROCESS OP CREATION . ............... 77 The preliminary dream process.......... 81 Inducing the dream state.............. 82 VI. THE POSITION OP SCHOLARLY RESEARCH IN THIS FIELD.................................. 88 PART II I. INTRODUCTION .................... 9& Principles governing the investigation . 97 II. ALMAYER1S FOLLY.......................... 101 III. THE OUTCAST OP THE ISLANDS.............. 121 IV. TALES OP UNREST........... ............... 135 The Outpost of Progress................ 136 The Idiots............................ l l f . 0 The Nigger of the Narcissus............ lij .6 Karain................................ llj.9 The Lagoon ...................... 157 The Return............................ l62 V. YOUTH, AND THE HEART OP DARENESS........ 169 Youth ......... 169 The Heart of Darkness.................. 172 VI. LORD J I M ................................ 187 VII. TYPHOON, FALK, AMY POSTER, THE END OP THE TETHER, AND TOMORROW . ............. 202 Typhoon................................ 202 CHAPTER PAGE F a l k .................................. 207 Amy Foster............................ 211 The End of the Tether.................. 2l6 Tomorrow ................ 220 VIII. N0STR0M0................................. 2 2 1 * . IX. THE INFORMER, AND THE SECRET AGENT .... 2 l | - 2 The Informer ...................... 2i|2 The Secret Agent ........ 2 i | l j . X. GASPAR RUIZ, THE ANARCHIST, IL CONDE, AND THE D U E L .............................. 253 Gaspar Ruiz ........................ 253 The Anarchist...................... . . 257 II Conde.............................. 259 The Duel ............................ 262 XI. THE SECRET SHARER....................... . 266 XII. UNDER WESTERN E Y E S ...................... 275 XIII. THE PARTNER, A SMILE OF FORTUNE, FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES, AND CHANCE............ 293 The Partner............................ 293 A Smile of Fortune ........... 294 Freya of the Seven Isles.......... . . 301 Chance............................. 303 XIV. THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES, BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS, AND THE PLANTER OF MALATA ... 315 CHAPTER PAGE The Inn of the Two Witches............ 315 Because of the Dollars............ • . . 322 The Planter of. Malata . . .............. 324 xv. VICTORY- ............................. 331 XVI. THE SHADOW-LINE........................... 347 XVII. TALES OF HEARSAY:.................. 354 The Warrior’s S o u l .............. 354 The Tale............................... 36l The Black M a t e ........................ 365 XVIII. THE ARROW OF GOLD .......... 367 XIX. THE RESCUE ... . .............. 376 XX. THE ROVER .............................. 391 XXI. THE SISTERS, AND SUSPENSE............ 4<>4 The Sisters............................ 4^4 Suspense ............................. 4l® XXII. THE GENIUS OF JOSEPH CONRAD: SOME CONCLUSIONS............................ 4l6 Genius and Neurosis ..... .......... 4l6 Significant events in the progress of his neurosis ............ 421 Conrad1 s method of writing.......... 1^ 2. 2 Neurotie outlets in Conrad’s fiction . . l j . ^ 4 BIBLIOGRAPHY- .................................... 434 THE GENIUS OP JOSEPH CONRAD A Study of the Neurotic Emotions that Stimulated His Imagination PART I CHAPTER I GENIUS AND NEUROSIS An eight-year-old boy was watching artesian water gush up on a cattle station in Northern Australia. In reply to a puzzled question, his father explained that a pipe had been put deep down into the earth. But the boy was not satisfied. ”1 know,’ 1 he said. ’ ’That's what makes it come up round. But I want to know what's down there squeezing it to make it come up at all.” This dissertation has the same kind of curiosity about the work of Joseph Conrad. Most people who have written about Conrad have been fascinated by some aspect of the unusual form that his works exhibit; but this dis sertation seeks to find out what was squeezing him deep down in the unconscious so that we have a story at all. Many contradictory opinions have already been expressed about the nature of Conrad's genius. It seems unwise, therefore, to proceed without some discussion of the con cept of genius in general and Conrad's genius in particu lar. It would be idle to deny that art of high standard has been produced by men who work very largely at the con scious level, deliberately summoning the imagination to toil in the service of a clearly conceived purpose. On 2 the other hand, every age has produced examples of that more fascinating type of genius that seems fated to wait humbly at the beck and call of strange imaginative forces that are as imperious as they are unpredictable. Sometimes they force the unhappy genius to wait in a kind of bitter Impotence for days, and weeks, and months. And sometimes they summon him to follow eagerly, helplessly, breathlessly In their train till utter exhaustion overtakes him. Mozart gives this fascinating description of his own creative experience: When I am feeling well, and in good humour, per haps when I am traveling by carriage, or taking a walk after a good dinner, or at night when I cannot sleep, my thoughts come In swarms and with marvelous ease. Whence and how do they come? I do not know: I have no share in it. Those that please me I hold In mind and I hum them, at least so others have told me. Once I catch my air, another soon comes to join the first, according to the requirements of the whole composition, counterpoint, the play of the various instruments, etc., etc. And all these morsels com bine to form the whole. Then my mind kindles if nothing happens to interrupt me. The work grows— I keep hearing it, and bring it out more and more clearly, and the composition ends by being complete ly executed in my mind, however long it may be. I then comprehend the whole at one glance, as I should* a beautiful picture, or a handsome boy; and my imagination makes me hear it not in its parts successively as I shall come to hear it later, but as a whole in its ensemble. What a delight it is for met It all, the inspiration and the execution, takes place in me as If it were a beautiful and very distinct dream.1 1 F. G. Prescott, Poetic Mind, pp. Ij.2-43* 3 Mozart’s experience during the process of creation seems to have been singularly enjoyable, but it was typi cal in this respect: it was not the result of conscious effort. And artist after artist has reported that his material came like this, moving before his eyes, as it were, like the pageant of a dream, rising into conscious ness by some process as inscrutable to him as the func tioning of his glands or the beating of his heart. And p this experience is the very sign of genius. Indeed, p During the course of the Leslie Stephen Lecture delivered at Cambridge May 9* 1933» A. E. Housman gave a fascinating account of his own process of composition. It is worth noting that in the following extract from this lecture the morbid and the unconscious aspects of this process are frankly emphasized: "In short," Housman said, "I think that the production of poetry, in its first stage, is less an active than a passive and involuntary process...! should call it a secretion: whether a natural secretion, like turpentine in fir, or a morbid secretion, like the pearl in the oyster. I think that my own case, though I may not deal with the material so cleverly as the oyster does, is the latter; because I have seldom written poetry un less I was rather out of health, and the experience, though pleasurable, was generally agitating and exhaust ing. If only that you may know what, to avoid, I will give some account of the process. "Having drunk a pint of beer at luncheon--beer is a sedative to the brain, and my afternoons are the least intellectual portion of my life— I would go out for a walk of two or three hours. As I went along, think ing of nothing in particular, only looking at things around me and following the progress of the seasons, there would flow into my mind, with sudden and unaccount able emotion, sometimes a line or two of verse, some times a whole stanza at once, accompanied, not preceded by a vague notion of the poem which they were destined to form part of. Then there would usually be a lull of k genius, according to P. W. H. Meyers, should be regarded as ...a power of utilizing a wider range than other men can utilize of faculties in some degree innate in all,--a power of appropriating the results of subliminal mentation to subserve the supraliminal stream of thought,— so that an ’inspiration of genius’ will be in truth a subliminal uprush, an emergence into the current of ideas which the man is consciously manipulating of other ideas which he has not consciously originated, but which have shaped themselves beyond his will, in profounder regions of his being.3 The relation of nervous activity to consciousness suggests a comparison with the eye. Only a small part of the eyeball is ever exposed to the light. When it is exposed, we are conscious of seeing. But we can turn it through only a small arc to vary our vision. Likewise, we can turn our attention through only a comparatively small arc. And by far the greater part of the vast ner vous system that directs the manifold functions of our being never makes itself felt in our conscious life: an hour or so, then perhaps the spring would bubble up again. I say bubble up, because, so far as I could make out, the source of the suggestions thus proffered to the brain was an abyss which I have already had occasion to mention, the pit of the stomach., f (A. E. Housman, The Name and Nature of Poetry, pp. ij.7-49) 3 Prescott, op. cit., p. 93* ganglia that control vital functions, systems associated with basic instinctive activity, cells that hold the traces of repressed memories. These things are beyond the periphery of attention, and if it were possible to bring them into the field of consciousness, it is doubt ful if the experience would be much like the process of cognition as we know it. But who knows what kind of back ground hum these things give to consciousness? Who knows if the whole tone of living might not be reduced to a thin treble if complete awareness of this deeper nervous activity could be stilled? Now just as under such abnormal conditions as a fit a wider area of the eyeball becomes visible, so there are certain abnormal conditions under which some, at least, of this nervous activity can be brought into focus. Under the influence of hypnotism, under certain narcotics, and in the dream state there is frequently "a subliminal uprush” of material. Why, one naturally asks, should these materials from the unconscious mind well up like a spring in certain people when for most of us they lie deep and still like a water table beneath impervious rock? Nothing very cer tain is known about this, but everything points to the importance of emotional factors. It seems that they supply the pressure that forces these materials into consciousness, and they do most to determine what class of material shall emerge. In other words, there is an artesian uprush because unsatisfied emotions are pressing on all sides for expression, and it is emotionally rele vant material that is forced up Into consciousness, be cause that is the way the tinconscious mind works. Under the bright light of conscious attention facts group them selves into relationships that are based on all kinds of intellectual abstractions, but where there is no such light, they can only grope about and link hands in a primitive emotive chain. Thus whatever is expressive of the same emotive tones is drawn into consciousness together. The result is often so logically incoherent that factually unpleasant things give pleasure in dreams. Now it is by no means certain that genius as Meyers defines it can always be explained by the exist ence in age and strength of unsatisfied emotions, but it does seem a valid explanation of most cases in the world of literature and art generally. Indeed, Prescott states quite categorically that "poetic madness is a high degree of the emotional disturbance arising from unsatis fied desire."^ It is significant, as he also points out, k - Ibid., p. 268. 7 that the lover often becomes a poet. For the lover "has the poet's unsatisfied desire, his passion, his inspira tion, his ecstasy, and his madness."^ This ecstasy seems to lead quite naturally away from rational thought and towards spontaneous imaginative thought highly charged with emotive imagery, or to what poets call "vision., r But the madness of love does not last. Often the poet achieves the object of his desire for his very own, and he finds to his sorrow that as his desire is satisfied he loses the power to call upon the rich wines that mature in his subliminal vaults. Thus if a great poet seems to use such an emotion throughout his life and use it with success, it is usually due to the coincidence of being associated with some deeper emotive urge. And the type of literary genius that never seems to lose its power to "peer over the edge of the conscious world into the giant-house and Utgard of the unconscious," is often associated with powerful repressed emotions. As Prescott puts it, YOaen a strong desire is strongly repressed it is forced into unconsciousness; various forms of sex ual desire are especially subject to such repression. With its associations it becomes what Freud calls a ^ Ibid.., p. 266. ^ H. Ellis, The World of Breams, p. 277. 8 complex or what Janet calls a souvenir traumatique— that is, it constitutes a mental wound or sore. The remaining inflammation is clearly noxious and patho logical. The unconscious desire now expresses it self through the imagination in hysterical manifest ations— dreams, hallucinations, even involuntary speeches and actions.7 The fact of the matter is that such traumatic situations are often highly complex and consist of mem ories that are almost never quite beyond the border of consciousness and other memories arbitrarily linked with them— memories that have been repressed beyond recall. In other words, painful memories often lie like hams behind the busy shops of our lives, and besides the flavor of their own intrinsic emotions, they have a strange tang of another sort. It is as if they had been smoked in the emotions that rise from hidden fires whose indestructible fuel is the stuff of completely repressed memories. It is only to be expected that such situations would have a powerful effect on the life of the Individual concerned. Sometimes he finds himself well high suffo cated by a seemingly incurable melancholy. Sometimes, when his complexes involve a sense of guilt his unconscious convictions express themselves in such hysterical symptoms as tics. Sometimes his emotions find relief in dreams or in the day-dreams of creative literature. Such relief is 7 Prescott, oj>. cit., p. 270. 9 not usually permanent, though it is believed that the process of expression over a long period of an artist’s life has such cathartic value that a genius sometimes writes himself out of his neurotic condition, and inci dentally out of his inspiration. Prescott puts it this way: For the desire, giving rise to passion, repression, and madness, the poetic vision and the poetry afford a fictional gratification which tends to allay the desire and the emotional tension. The desire may not be removed; a thirsty man who dreams of drink ing will be thirsty when he wakes; but he has perhaps avoided disturbance of his sleep. A poet when his vision is over may still feel his desire, but as we shall see in the next chapter, even the fictional gratification puts the desire on the way to its ultimate actual satisfaction; and at any rate it is robbed of its noxious effect.” It is not to be supposed, however, that all art is a product of neurotic drives, and there are those who would deny quite vehemently that Conrad’s genius was of this type. Indeed, Gonrad drew so much on the objective facts of his own past, and he has given so much evidence in his letters and conversations of a preoccupation with questions of form and technique that is would be diffi cult to deny that he wrote under the bright light of conscious attention where critical faculties and object ive awareness were allowed to play their parts. And it 8 Ibid., pp. 273-74. must beiadmitted that the creatures of our dream world can scarcely be persuaded to emerge Into so much light. Yet, on the other hand, it will be remembered that Poe and Maupassant and Coleridge were all interested in fozm and could write critical prose with clarity and power. The fact of the matter is that literary genius is not complete without the, power both to dream and to shape up one's dreams under the keen eye of the critical mind. Like the spider, he takes the material of his web that comes to him by some process that he cannot understand and does not consciously direct, and he shapes it pur posefully, according to a plan of which he is often very clearly aware. As for Conrad, he gives every indication of de pending quite largely on a neurotic drive. Indeed, the pattern of his daily life and his attitude in emergencies, his method of composition, the subject matter and poetic character of his books, all furnish evidence of such a drive. Zabel speaks of his "conjuring a personal method and style out of a profound condition of introversion."9 In the same article he says: "Those tales, with their re peated patterns of conduct, ordeal and conscience, their tenacious fixity of impulse, their deviously incremental ^ M. D. Zabel, "Conrad Nel Mezzo Del Cammin." New Republic. Vol. CIII: 874» December 23, 1940. 11 sincerity and exhaustive penetration of static or trance- bound situations, their centripetal mode of moral and dramatic analysis, had their source in a creative neces sity of a peculiar kind.” And it would be very diffi cult to read for any length of time in Conrad without finding oneself in complete agreement with such a state ment. Detailed evidence of such a neurotic drive, how ever, will more effectively follow the historical sum mary of the second and third chapters. In the meantime, it is proposed to conclude the present chapter with a more precise statement of the aims of this dissertation. If it is assumed that Conrad was a genius who had access to subliminal material by virtue of some neurotic situation in his life, it follows that as an author he can be fully understood only in the light of this neurosis. A few of the more discerning critics have felt the need for this type of study. In 1925, for instance, J. B. Priestly said, ’ ’While his work.. .has been approached from many different angles, it has rarely been examined, if it has been examined at all, in the light of his own personal history. Yet this, it seems to me, is at once 10 Loc. cit. 12 the shortest and easiest method of approach to a diffi cult, complicated, and elusive subject."1- * - And as late as I9I 4 .O, M. D. Zabel wrote, "The fuller integration of the facts, the man and the books--a labour begun by James, Garnett, Morf and Crankshaw— remains a major problem in the critical assessment of Conrad’s remarkable achieve ment in modern fiction.This dissertation seeks to make some contribution to this need. It aims to probe the circumstances in Conrad’s life wherein his failure to make a satisfactory compromise between his instinctive drives and his moral code resulted in a neurotic attitude that cast its shadow over his whole life, and became the "creative necessity" of which Zabel wrote. In particular, the dissertation aims to trace and identify the dream activity of the novels through which Conrad’s -unsatisfied emotions found stealthy expression. Thus it should be possible to chart the general progress of the artist as he wrote and otherwise made his way out of the melancholy shadows where emotions of which he was but dimly aware struggled against the stern exigencies of actuality for 11 J. B. Priestly, "Modern English Novelists: Joseph Conrad." English Journal. XIV, {January, 1925), p. 13. M. D. Zabel, op. cit., p. 87k* 13 some kind of outlet. Ground plan of the dissertation. The remaining chapters of this dissertation are planned to carry for ward the investigation as follows: Chapter II consists of a brief survey of Conrad's life. This Is intended to serve primarily for a back ground against which the material of Chapter III will more easily achieve three-dimensional reality. Chapter III presents evidence from Conrad’s life of the existence of neurotic attitudes. Chapter IV seeks out and elaborates the signifi cant psychological incidents that probably contributed to the neurotic attitudes which so profoundly influenced Conrad’s creative activity. Chapter V glances at Conrad’s method of writing to see if it was such as would permit the dream mind to make its neurotic contribution. Chapter VI consists of a brief survey of the work already done in this field by the few scholars who have concerned themselves with this topic. This survey is de layed until Chapter VI, because its significance can be best understood at this point. Part II consists of the body of the investigation. In the first chapter the reader is introduced to the Ik nature of the work to toe undertaken in this part. Some of the principles that lie toehind such a study are enu merated, and the method of attack on the problem is de fended. In the following twenty chapters Conrad’s works are studied in the approximate order of their composition,3-3 and an attempt is made to trace in detail the effect upon his creative dream activity of the neurotic attitudes established in Part I. Works in which Conrad collabo rated with Ford Madox Ford^4 are not examined in this study, because it is not possible to isolate Conrad’s contribution with any certainty. In any case, the dream activity would not be the same process in these books. Essays and articles In which dream activity is smothered by the more intellectually controlled processes are also not considered here. Chapter XXII presents with some discussion the findings of this investigation. 3-3 The exact order of all Conrad’s work is not always clear. Conrad’s Prefaces, his letters and the writings of Jessie Conrad are sometimes at variance. Besides, Conrad was often at work on three or four stor ies at a time. 34 The books are: The Inheritors, Romance, and The Nature of a Crime. CHAPTER II BIOGRAPHICAL OUTLINE Teodor Joseph Konrad Korzeniowski was born at Berdiczew, Poland, on December 3* 1857. While he was little more than a baby his parents became interested in Poland's struggle for freedom, and in October, 1862, his father was arrested by the Russian authorities on sus picion of subversive activity. After a hasty trial, he was exiled to Russia. His wife was permitted to accom pany him on condition that she submit to the same disci pline. She had never been physically strong, however, and she soon sickened and died of consumption in 1865. Conrad's father settled into a state of incurable melan choly and fixed his thoughts on death. Some four years later, when he was broken in body and spirit, he was per mitted to return to Poland. He died there on May 23, 1869. Stefan Buszczynski, a friend of the family, looked after Conrad, who was now eleven years old, but later his mother’s family took charge. He was sent to high school in Cracow, where he made satisfactory progress. In Dec ember, 1872, Conrad was given the freedom of the city of Cracow in honor of his father’s contribution to the cause 16 of freedom. It was during this year, too, that Conrad announced his intention of becoming a sailor. His Uncle Thaddeus, who was now his guardian, tried desperately to argue the lad out of this intention, but he was unexpect edly stubborn. Towards the end of his school days, Conrad came under the influence of a high-spirited, patriotic girl, and he fell in love with her. However, the call of the sea was greater, and on October l l j . , I87I 4 . , while he was still in his seventeenth year, he left for Marseilles, where his uncle had arranged that he should be introduced to a small circle of friends. For a few months Conrad enjoyed a belated play period. Free from all sense of responsibility, and from the feeling that he was under the constant surveillance of Russian authorities, he divided his time between the society of harbor pilots, and that of his more aristo cratic friends in the city. His first taste of the sea delighted him, and in the company of his humble friends, he learned that life could be very pleasant if one lived but for today. With his friends in the city he joined in the social pleasures of the day, and he soon became interested with them in the Carlist movement in Spain. In 1875 Conrad made his first voyage as a sailor, 17 a seemingly uneventful trip to Martinique. On Ms return, he spent six months in Marseilles sowing Ms wild oats. Then in 1876 he had his first taste of gun running when he made Ms second voyage, this time to Central America. During this voyage he met and made friends with Dominic Cervoni, the sailor who captured Ms imagination and be came the basis for characters in several of Conrad*s stories. On his return to Marseilles, Conrad fell in love with the mistress of a rich painter. She was the girl who forty years later became the Rita of the novel Arrow of Gold. Under her influence he secured the service of Dominic and organized a party to take arms to the Carlists. They acquired a small ship of sixty tons, the "Tremolino** The Mirror of the Sea, and made several successful voyages. Finally, however, during a hopeless race with coast guards, they were forced to beach their ship. A few months later, Conrad1s love affair with Rita led to a duel in which he was critically wounded. On his recov ery, he joined an English steamer and made a voyage to Constantinople. Later in June, 1878, he landed in England. After making several trips in a coaster, Conrad em barked in October, 1878, on Ms first voyage to Australia. He discovered, however, that he still harbored longings for the scenes of his early exploits, so he left his ship 18 and joined a steamer on a round trip to the Mediterranean. In June, 1880, he took his third mate’s ticket, but his restlessness was already making itself felt, and for a time he contemplated leaving the sea and becoming the sec retary of a Canadian railway man. When the opportunity of another voyage to Australia presented itself, however, he took it. In l88l came the great adventure in the barque "Palestine”, which is recorded in Youth. He had his first shipwreck and his first command, life-boat though it was, and he seems to have been more exhilarated than distressed by his adventures. During the next few years he took his mate’s exam ination and sailed as second mate on various ships in the East. Then in 1885 he returned to London to study for his Master’s Certificate. On August 19* 1886, he became a naturalized British subject, and on November of the same year he obtained his ’ ’Certificate of Competency as Master." During this year also, he submitted his first story for publication in a magazine, but he was unsuccessful. The story has been lost. In February, 1887, he took the post of first mate in the "Highland Forest,” bound for Samarang, in Java. Unfortunately, however, he was injured by a spar and had 19 to spend some months in a hospital in Singapore. When he recovered he joined the "Vidar" as first mate, and made many trips round Sumatra and Java and the Celebes. The period was uneventful, but it was at this time that he met many of the characters like Almayer and Lingard who acted out their parts in his Malaysian books. Quite suddenly, without any apparent good reason, Conrad left his job on the "Vidar" and was preparing to return to Europe, when circumstances threw a command in his way. Thus in 1888, only ten years after landing in England, he found himself in command of a smart barque, ’ ’Otago." An enjoyable period followed in which he made trips between Adelaide and the Malay islands. Then, hearing news of his uncle’s ill health, he resigned his command and returned to Europe. While he was in London waiting for permission to enter Russian territory, he began to write Almayer’s Folly. At the same time he began looking for a ship. One day he remembered a boyhood ambition to visit the Congo, and he wrote to his aunt Poradowska, begging her to use her influence to get him a river command there. Meanwhile, he was able to visit his uncle. By the time he returned, arrangements had been made for his work on the Congo. By June, 1890, he found himself there, but 20 with poop prospects of ever achieving a command. He was depressed by the heartless exploitation of the natives, broken in body by repeated attacks of fever, and completely overwhelmed by the implacable stare of the dense jungle. A few months later, he left Africa with a bitter legacy of gout and a sense of disillusionment that did not leave him till near the close of his life. Conrad spent a good deal of 1891 in the hospital, but it seemed that he had lost forever the youthful re siliency that should have been his. In 1892 he resumed his sea career, as mate on "The Torrens," and made voyages to Australia, During the second voyage he showed his in completed manuscript to an educated passenger named W. H. Jacques, and was encouraged by his critic’s brief report. He also met John Galsworthy and E. L. Sanderson, who later became firm friends of his. Late in 1893# convinced that he was not well enough to fulfill his duties, he re signed his position. He had not been very long in London, however, when he was persuaded to act as a mate on a ship which was to take immigrants to America from Prance. He made his preparations and went to Rouen, but the whole scheme fell through. Conrad returned to London and began to work on Almayer’s Polly in earnest. He had just heard of his uncle’s death, and no doubt his mood fitted well with the mood of the last chapters of this book. Edward 21 Garnett, Unwin’s reader, was enthusiastic over the manu script, and when he met Conrad a little later became his fid end for life. He persuaded Conrad to work on The Out cast of the Islands, and by the time it was finished Conrad was no longer a sailor. In 1896 he married Jessie George, and, though he made attempts to secure a command on more than one occa sion, they were neither persistent nor prolonged efforts, and he never again went to sea except as a passenger. The remaining years of his life were years almost devoid of incident in a physical sense. They were years full of toil and sickness and worry, as he struggled, for many years vainly, to hasten the process of creation so that the shadow of poverty might be kept from his door. Prom the very first he was recognized by writers and critics as a genius of unusual powers, but his reading public was small. He won the friendship and esteem of men like Galsworthy, Cunninghame Grahame, William James, Stephen Crane, Hugh Walpole, Arnold Bennett, and Ford Madox Ford. But it was not until the publication of Chance, in 19l4» that Conrad’s books began to sell in sufficient quantity to relieve him from the threat of poverty. From that time forward, how ever, he was recognized on both sides of the Atlantic as a literary figure of distinction, and his visit to America in 1923 was like a triumphal tour. Conrad worked very hard at his art, and almost every major work was followed by a prolonged illness and nervous exhaustion. Every now and then he suceombed to a fit of restlessness when he either went abroad or changed his place of residence. After his marriage he began work in Brittany, but soon returned to Kent. In 1905 he took his family to Capri. He spent part of 1906 in France, but once-again he felt the urge to return to his beloved Kent. During the next few years Conrad was spiritually and physically far from well. He toiled on, however, be cause his financial position was always precarious. In 1908 he spent a year in Bedfordshire, and he changed houses again before settling down at Capel House, Orlestone, where he lived for ten years. In 19lif- the family made a trip to Poland as the guests of a Polish friend Conrad met in England. When war broke out, it was only through the good graces of the American Ambassador In Vienna that they were able to get back to England in time to escape internment. The anxi eties of war took a heavy toll of Conrad. Through the agonized eyes of his imagination he followed the progress of his son, Borys, through battle after battle. He wrote little during these years. He visited naval stations, however, and made a trip on one of the Q boats sent out to trap submarines. In 1921 Conrad made a trip to Corsica with his wife. He wanted to get atmosphere for his unfinished book, Suspense, but illness and fatigue kept him from making much progress. His last voyage was the American trip of 1923. The warmth of his welcome gladdened his last days. He died while he was working at Suspense on August 3, 192ij.. CHAPTER III JOSEPH CONRAD, A NEUROTIC PERSONALITY When a clinical psychologist is working with a patient, he has three main sources of information: the attitudes and feelings expressed by his patient as he talks about himself and about his relationships with oth ers, the patient's day-by-day behavior as it is reported by those who know him, and the history of his past life. The psychologist is particularly interested in the patient feelings, and he takes note of those which seem to be ex aggerated or irrelevant to the situation. He looks into the pattern of his subject’s present behavior for manifest ations of these feelings, and he peers into the past for traumatic situations that suggest the origin of these emo tions. This dissertation has similar sources of informa tion. In Conrad's stories, feelings that have neurotic origin betray themselves by their morbid character, and by the very persistency with which they recur. In his overt behavior, as it is revealed by his intimate friends and through his letters, one can see some very interest ing projections of these morbid feelings. Likewise, in the story of his past, there are strong indications of the origin of his neurotic emotions. 25 Now in practice, an investigation such as this is neither a very tidy'nor a very consistent procedure. One finds clues in all three sources, and sometimes one traces cause to effect, and sometimes effect to cause. Sometimes, indeed, one moves out in both directions from elements that are neither cause nor effect. However, in presenting the results of this investigation, it is tidier to deal with the evidence of the novels as a separate unity. That is the function of Part II. The remainder of Part I is con cerned with the process of isolating and identifying neur otic emotions in Conrad1s life, and in tracing them back to their probable' sources. These feelings are the motive forces of his art, and their treatment here may be looked upon as a kind of basic chart to refer back to from Part II. The function of the present chapter is preparatory to Chapter IV. It is intended to establish the fact that Conrad was neurotic. Neurotic personalities. To begin with, Conrad had a temperament that is indicative of neurosis generally. The normal man fights his problems in the open. He is sometimes overwhelmed by sorrow, sometimes feels defeated, or frustrated, or gloomy. Nevertheless he lives largely in a world of cause and effect. For the most part he knows why he feels as he does. He knows that these more 26 unpleasant emotions will pass with their causes. Conse quently he has a certain sense of mastery over his envir onment, and his moods are generally sanguine. The neurotic, however, does not live entirely in the open. He feels himself suffocated by emotions that rise like a fog from he knows not where. They bring their murky contributions to prevailing moods that are nameless and seemingly causeless. They color his thoughts a dull grey, and he finds himself giving way to an attitude of pessimism in which life seems cruel and meaningless, and death something to be desired. These are the unsatisfied emotions of his neurotic complex— emotions that were born and had abortive expression in the distant past. They are omnipresent but disturbingly elusive. They make their shadowy progress in the night of his soul like fettered ghosts that are cursed with a mission that they cannot fulfill, because they lack the means of communicating with the world of reality. Five indications. Now there are five common in dications of a neurotic condition which are plainly vis ible in Conrad’s life: a profound and apparently inescap able pessimism, feelings of restlessness, feelings of an xiety, a sense of appalling isolation, and the conviction that life was altogether too much for him. These feelings, 27 are not, of course, the neurosis. They are simply the reactions of a puzzled self to the emotional leak that gave him perpetually more emotions than he could handle. Pessimism. The evidence of Conrad’s pessimism is overwhelming. Almost everyone who wrote of him from personal knowledge spoke of it. It is reflected in his philosophy, in Ms letters, and indeed, in his very por trait, as Garnett remarks.^ The letters are so full of pessimism that it hardly seems worth while to select a typical extract. As Bradbrook says, ’ 'His melancholia was at times so intense that his letters make altogether in tolerable reading."^ One gets an impression of the age and persistency of this feeling from a letter written by his Uncle Thaddeus in November, I89I: "Thinking over the causes of your melancholy," he says, "I cannot attribute It either to youth or to age...I may be mistaken, but I think this tendency to pessimism was already in you as long ago as the days when you were at Marseilles. Almost at the same time, Conrad was writing to Marguerite Poradowska, "Your sympathy is very dear to me, but to E. Garnett, ed., Letters from Joseph Conrad, p. 12. ^ M. C. Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad, Poland’s English Genius, p. L\2. 3 J. Aubry, Joseph Conrad. Life and Letters, I, 1I 4. 8. 28 speak truly, I don't care a straw for happiness. I hardly know what it is."^- And a little later: "One must drag the ball and chain of one's selfhood to the end. It is the (price) one pays for the devilish and divine privilege of thought."-^ If anything, the years seemed to intensify these moods. Mrs. Conrad has said a great deal about them. So, indeed, have all his friends who wrote of him. But Conrad himself is the best reflector of them. On June 2, 1896, he wrote to E. Garnett: "I have long fits of depression that in a lunatic asylum would be called madness. I do not know what it is. It springs from nothing. It is ghastly. It lasts an hour or a day: and when it departs it leaves a fear."k And he could not hide these feelings. Curie says, "Deep within him, in the ferment of his consciousness, there lay an inappeasable melancholy and dissatisfaction. It was the price he had to pay for his genius. Irritability. Besides this constitutional melan choly, Conrad betrayed his inability to direct his confused J. A. Gee and P. J. Sturm, editors and translators, Letters of Joseph Conrad to Marguerite Poradowska, p. 35. > p* 72. 6 Garnett, oje. cit., p. 56. ^ R. Curie, The Last Twelve Years of Joseph Conrad, p. i^O. 29 stream of emotions by Ms continual manifestations of strain and irritabilityP and by "his frequent outbursts of concentrated fury” over mere trifles.^ Restlessness. Conrad’s restlessness was quite as obvious as bis pessimism to his friends. During less than twenty years of sea life, he served in more than twenty ships; and when he left the sea, he moved into seven diff erent homes; and, at the time of his death, he was contem plating another move. He could not explain his restless ness, but when it became unbearable, he simply had to move. More than once he "threw up a berth” for no good reason when common sense told him to remain. Conrad smoked al most incessantly, and he was seldom still. "I think I never saw Conrad quite in repose,” says Galsworthy. ”His hands, Ms feet, his knees, his lips— sensitive, expressive, and ironical--something was always in motion, the dynamo never quite at rest within him."l® Symons speaks of a "physical disquietude which was but a sign of what it cost 11 him to venture outside humanity.” O See, for instance, W. Rotherstein, "Genius at the Turn of the Century," Atlantic Monthly, CXLIX (Feb., 1932) 233-il3. 9 Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, p. 12. J. Galsworthy, Castles in Spain and Other Screeds, p. 117. " H A. Symons, Notes on Joseph Conrad, p. 12. ! 30 Anxiety. It is not hard to find evidence of Conrad's anxiety. He seemed to be persecuted by the nauro- tic fear that he would not be able to cope with, his envir onment * It' led him into some strange behaviour patterns. When he was afraid of the future, he felt impelled to go forward to meet it. Such people have to expect the worst, because they are afraid they will not be able to face it. Mrs.. Conrad says: "His was not a happy nature, and he often anticipated trouble long before it came. On the other hand, he had a curious way of shrinking from actualities when it came to facing suffering."^ This same anxiety led him to doubt his courage, so that he had to be constantly testing himself out. One gets the impression that his sea life presented situations to him that other men would have taken in their stride, but which for him were a chall enge. This situation is clearly mirrored in Youth and Shadow Line. Ford tells us that "all the several officers who once sailed with him have narrated the same thing to the writer. Conrad would indulge in extremely dangerous manoeuvers, going about within knife-blades of the deadly shores whilst his officers and crews shivered." Then he adds the significant sentence: "But over very small details of the bestowing of spars and the like he would go out of 12 Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad as I_ Knew Him, p. 2. 31 his mind and swear the ship to p i e c e s , 1’ -1--* it is im possible to read his correspondence without being oppressed by the sense of-his constant morbid anxiety. In a letter to Galsworthy, for instance, he speaks of "moments when the mere fear sweeps my head clean of every thought. It Is agonizing--no less. And,— you. know,--that pressure grows from day to day instead of getting less.1 ' - 1 ' ^ ' Such anxiety does not spring out of circumstances, of the moment. It is a neurotic anxiety which is the patient’s response to the vague mist of emotions that rise from the unconscious to prevent him from seeing the clear outlines of his en- vironment. This state of affairs is undoubtedly responsible for Conrad’s "absorbing interest in the mental processes of fear,1 1 ' 1 '^ which so many critics have noticed. It is responsible also for the presence in story after story of themes whose essence is that man simply cannot hope to master his fate. Isolation. The last general evidence of neurosis to be noticed here is the sense of isolation with which p, M. Ford, Joseph Conrad, a Personal Remem brance, p. 112. Aubry, c>£. cit., p. 6£. A. Waugh, Tradition and Change in Contemporary Literature, p. 277. 32 Conrad was so familiar. The typical extrovert is very much aware of his environment, hut the man who has a part icularly vivid inner life is likely to be so much absorbed by what is going on inside himself that external events of surprising magnitude pass unnoticed by him. So we have the perennial story of the absent-minded professor. How ever, when it is simply the richness of mental life that separates a man from the external world, the subject feels no distressing sense of isolation. It is the exotic pro fusion of emotional life that leads to the depressing con viction that the external world is inaccessible and unreal. The psychotic so far loses control of Ms physical envir onment, that he 'mistakes his bizarre inner world for reality. Consequently he has no real insight into his condition. The neurotic, on the other hand, knows that his condition is not normal, but he is persecuted by a feeling of isolation that is very distressing.^ Conrad knew altogether too much about these sensations of isola tion for his own good. It is significant that almost all his characters are cut off from their fellow men by some means or other. They are men full of illusions and full of fears. To leave them is to escape back with a sense of relief into the world of reality. As the Follett1s have said, nNo one else has written with so profound a 33 sense of the awful privacy of the soul, the intense pal pitating secrecy which underlies even the most placid and composed phenomena of the everyday world.*. In earlier stages of his work, his bent was towards the man cut-off by his own act; in the later stage, it has been towards •j / I the man cut off by his own nature.” Conrad’s own sense of isolation was so strong that he often declared that life was only a dream,1? and he complained of being a complete stranger to the feeling of having something solid behind his back.'*'® Altogether there are so many aspects of Conrad’s behaviour that cannot be accounted for by the visible ele ments of present situation and circumstance, that one can only attribute them to neurotic emotions. No one who knew him thought of him as a normal man. Indeed, his wife said on one occasion: One accepts the many vagaries when one is dealing with a genius, but I have often wondered what is the dividing line between ’a bit peculiar and the claim to being a genius.’19 1^ H. T. and W. Follett, "Contemporary Novelists: Joseph Conrad,” Atlantic Monthly, CXIX (Feb., 1917), 233. • * • 7 M. D. Zabel, "Conrad: The Secret Sharer,” New Republic, CIV (April 21, I9I 4 -D, 568. • * - ® Aubry, o j d . eft., p. 2I 4 . 8. 19 Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, p. 46. And after all, It seems a mild enough statement to make of a man who was so much the plaything of his inner life that he could, in his isolation, throw bread pellets at on his guests without being aware of it. 20 Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad as I_ Knew Him, P. 19. CHAPTER IV CONRAD’S NEUROSIS In Chapter III it was pointed out that Conrad gave many indications of being haunted by the ghosts of emo tions that should have been decently buried long before. Now it is time to look more closely at this neurotic con dition in an attempt to separate the emotive strands and trace them back to their origins. For those who recog nize with Aubry that Conrad's books are "only the visible projections of his nature and of the inward warfare that he never ceased to wage,"there is one inescapable fact that dominates his whole work: Conrad suffered from a guilt complex that gave him no rest till near the end of his life. Gustaf Morf has written most convincingly of it,^ but many others have noticed it. Of course, theories such as Morf has so ably developed are impossible to prove; and, as some of his critics have pointed out, it is easy to mesmerise oneself with such ideas. However, there is some significance in the fact that the present writer reached similar conclusions quite independently, - 1 - Aubry, 0£. cit., p. 163. ^ G-. Morf, The Polish Heritage of Joseph Conrad. 36 before he so much as heard of Morf’s work. Morf deals with the obvious core of this guilt complex: Conrad’s failure to accept what his most intim ate self felt to be a moral responsibility, namely lead ership in Poland’s struggle for independence. However, complexes like this are seldom simple. They tend to cut their way down into the unconscious like rivers, and drain a good deal of surrounding emotional terrain. This certainly seems to be the case with Conrad. As the pres ent chapter will show, his guilt complex was by no means a simple thing. Both in his books and in his life there are reflec tions of -unusual attitudes towards many apparently quite ■unrelated things: strange contradictory tendencies to get into dangerous situations and to avoid them; reticence on the subject of his father, arid loquacity on the sub ject of his mother; a great anxiety to avoid meeting strangers of his own nationality; conflicting urges to punish cowards and to find excuses for them; and a‘curi ous need to point out the futility of revolutions. Strange as it may seem, all these tendencies are related, and each makes some contribution to his central guilt complex. One hardly knows which of these threads to pick up first. They are so intricately involved with one another that it is quite impossible to keep them entirely separate. 37 Indeed, it is proposed to try to do this only where it seems practicable. Need for his mother. Perhaps it is best to begin with Conrad’s attitude to his parents, because so many guilt complexes go back to these relationships. Conrad lost his mother when he was very young, and his memories of her were quite vague. Yet, strangely enough, he felt the need for her all his life. He looked for his mother in the woman he married. Indeed, the success of his mar riage lay very largely in the fact that Jessie Conrad could minister to this need. In writing of her marriage, she says, "In a very short time all my maternal instincts were centred upon the man I was to marry, he became to me as much a son as a husband."3 a little later she adds, "His dependence upon me touched my maternal instincts, and to the end of his life I remained a willing buffer between him and the outside world. When a child is frustrated in his strivings after a satisfactory relationship with his mother, this frustra tion is reflected in various indirect techniques. He 3 Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, p. l6. k Ibid., p. 50. simulates the helplessness of a baby, he shows jealousy of his rivals, he makes fantastic and sometimes punishing demands on his mother. The fulfillment of such demands gives him double satisfaction, because it constitutes a powerful assurance of her love. It is evident that Conrad was using his wife as a belated mother figure, for he availed himself of all these techniques. Helplessness. There are so many instances recorded in which Conrad simply folded up before difficulties and called upon his wife, that it is difficult to choose an illustration. However, the following will serve. During one of the boat trips that the family took together, Conrad was in need of the ship’s doctor. After approach ing two likely-looking men in turn, and discovering that • neither was the doctor, he succombed to feelings of embar rassment and retired to his cabin. Then he sent for his wife, who was, by the way, a cripple and a very poor sailor, and instructed her to find the ’ ’blamed" man and see to it that he was the doctor.-^ Conrad soon learned, like many a child before him, that there was considerable point in retiring into a protective tantrum. Here is another incident that speaks for itself: ^ Ibid., p. 188. 39 Poor Conrad had a bad time with his teeth, which had now begun to worry him in earnest. He would try no remedy suggested, but kept his mouth full of cold water when the pain was bad. One night he lay with his poor head on my shoulder and his mouth full of water (I keeping awake and holding the glass ready to pass to him as he needed it). He would fill his mouth, hand me the glass, and fall asleep, and the water would run all over me. I was soaked before morning. When he finally roused himself sufficiently to be aware that he was uncomfortable, he declared we had been sleeping in a damp bed.0 Punishing demands. One day when Conrad was in Poland in 19l4» and facing a long cold drive through the snow, he quietly appropriated his wife’s warm cloak and cardigan as well as his own overcoat, leaving her unpro- tected except by her ordinary clothing.‘ The fact that this could be put down to^ absent-mindedness does nothing, of course, to explain away the unconscious desire to force his wife into the kind of situation where she was making mother-like sacrifices for him. Besides it is one of many incidents pitched in the same key. There is psy chological significance, too, in the fact that Conrad had the curious habit of appropriating to his own use any thing given to his wife personally.® 6 Ibid., pp. 129-30. 7 Ibid., pp. 175-76. 8 Ibid., p. 154. Jealousy and desire for exclusive attention. Conrad began his married life with a powerful bid for his wife’s sympathy when he told her that he did not expect to live much longer. At the same time he forestalled the possibility of competition for her maternal attentions by announcing that they were not to have any children. He showed a significant (though possibly unconscious) re sentment when his children were born* Mrs. Conrad had learned enough about her husband to have some anxieties about the advent of a competitor for her attentions. She says, "When I knew my first baby was coming . . . I wond ered how I should continue my life. Which would be God and which Mammon? My husband or my child?"9 Her fears were to some extent justified. When Borys was bora, Conrad did as much as possible to minimize the importance of the occasion and to draw attention to himself.^ Con cerning the birth of John, we have this illuminating re mark: "On one occasion, he had declared that his second son’s birth could quite easily have been delayed some days had I really wished to please him."^ 9 IMd*> p. 271. 10 Ibid., p. 57. 11 Ibid., p. 265. According to his wife, Conrad would even go to the length of simulating sickness when her attention was likely to be claimed by others, or when this seemed the 12 easiest way out of a difficulty. She tells of one oc casion when Borys became ill with scarlet fever, and she was visiting the nursing home daily: I would be asked the first thing when I arrived from the Home for news. But almost before I could answer, my attention was claimed by my senior pat ient and it was pointed out that ;he required his share of my ministrations. There would be a pile of letters to answer, dressings for the painful foot or ankle, or some dainty dish to be cooked. 3 But perhaps the most illuminating illustration of this jealous, exclusive attitude is told on pages 211-212 of Mrs, Conrad’s book, Joseph Conrad and His Circle. She had recently undergone an operation. When Conrad visited the hospital, he could not refrain from an at tempt to divert the sympathy of the matron to himself. He confided in her that he had influenza. The natural result was that he was forbidden to see his wife. "In spite of all his arguments she remained obdurate. At last he flung over his shoulder: ’Then you will please tell my wife that she will see no one from home. If I ^ Ibid., pp. 185 and 213, for instance. 13 Ibid., p. 106. Ik Ibid., pp. 211-12. kz am not allowed to see her, no one else shall. A final incident is selected, because it shows so many of these things at once: Conrad's regressive be haviour in the face of difficulties, his child-like ten dency to punish himself to forestall any displeasure that might be due from the mother figure, and the ten dency to simulate sickness when another was threatening to take the limelight. The maid had been ill a long time, but when she eventually went into hospital my husband had to take my place and visit her. His appearance at the Cottage Hospital was fraught with some con fusion. He refused his name, and the name of the person he desired to visit, and returned in high dudgeon. When the poor girl died he betook himself to a bedroom upstairs, and there remained for weeks on end. He and his son were consummate actors. Both liked to live in a world of make-believe, both were fond of crying wolf. I see similarities be tween the two all the time. Joseph Conrad would play at having the same complaint--if he heard of or knew someone was ill. The following letter was written just after the maid's death, which had very much impressed him. He confessed the day after he had written it that there was nothing really wrong with him— but k® stayed upstairs for nearly three weeks." And there follows a letter to his wife which can only be described as a childishly cunning attempt to gain her notice and sympathy. It is signed, "Your Boy." It is very clear from what Mrs. Conrad has written that, happy as their marriage relationship seemed to be, I£id-» p. 213. k-3 it was certainly not a normal one. Conrad seemed to be unsatisfied unless he was insinuating himself into the position of a child accepting the exclusive attention of his mother. Origin of this abnormal tendency. What were the nature and origin of the emotions that were finding be lated expression in this way? No one can say with certain ty, but it is safe to assume that they had their source in the unsatisfied hungers of a child for the care and attention of his mother. However, it is sometimes the re-activation of oedipal needs at a later stage of boy hood that is the more important cause. It will be shown that factors of both type probably had a bearing in the life of Conrad. It is certain at least that there were circumstances enough in his boyhood to divert his mother’s attention from him, and there is some significance in the fact that in his books he seemed to feel the need to ex press veiled resentment against these very circumstances. While Conrad was still in the oedipal stage of development, his father was suddenly plunged into the busi ness of the secret National Committee, and it is plain that his wife was also very much preoccupied with the sec ret activity. During these days, the little Conrad was subjected to the sudden shock of being deprived of much of kb his mother’s care. The only description he gives us of these times is full of suggestions of a child lost and forlorn in a world that had grown suddenly too large for him--a world that had taken his mother and somehow trans formed her from the familiar and comfortable image of his earliest memories: . . . its first meetings were held in our Warsaw house, of which all I remember distinctly is one room, white and crimson, probably the drawing-room. In one of its walls there was the loftiest of all archways. Where it led to remains a mystery; but to this day I cannot get rid of the belief that all this was of enormous proportions, and that the people appearing and disappearing in that immense space were beyond the usual stature of mankind as I got to know it in later life. Amongst them I remember my mother, a more familiar figure than the others, dressed in the black of the national mourning worn in the defiance of ferocious police regulations. I have also pre served from that particular time the awe of her mys terious gravity which, indeed, was by no means smileless.16 In The Planter of M a l a t a , ^ ? Conrad attributes to Renouard a rather remarkable dream that makes one think of this passage. It has so much genuine dream quality that one feels quite safe in saying that it is either a trans cript of one of Conrad's own dreams, or else it is a day dream direct from the unconscious, coming spontaneously at a time when Conrad was musing over emotionally relevant A Personal Record, p. xii. - * • 7 a short story in the volume entitled Between the Tides. material. In any case, one is tempted to make some com parisons. Here is the passage: He lay on his back, sighing profoundly in the dark, and suddenly beheld his very own self, carrying a small bizarre lamp, reflected in a long mirror inside a room in an empty and unfurnished palace. In this startling image of himself he recognized somebody he had to follow--the frightened guide of his dream. He traversed endless galleries, no end of lofty halls, innumerable doors. Room succeeded room. At last the lamp went out and he stumbled against some object which, when he stooped for it, he found to be very cold and heavy to lift. The sickly white light of dawn showed him the head of a statue. Its marble hair was done in the bold line of a helmet, on its lips the chisel had left a faint smile, and it re sembled Miss Morsom. While he was staring at it fixedly, the head began to grow light in his fingers, to diminish and crumble to pieces and at last turned into a handful of dust, which was blown away by a puff of wind so chilly that he woke up with a des perate shiver and leapt headlong out of his bed-place. It is a powerful dream full of suggestive imagery: of Conrad following the image of himself back to the time referred to in the previous extract, the lamp of memory in his hand; the frightening uncertainty of those days when he was deprived of his mother’s attention through her earnest interest in revolutionary affairs; the indes cribable lost feelings of childhood when the world grows suddenly incomprehensible; then the sensation of finding his way again when they were a tiny family circle in Russia thrown completely upon each other's company; and lastly of losing his mother irrevocably in death. So through the Planter of Malata, pp. 31-32. long corridors he pursued he knew not what, till the lamp of conscious memory went out and he came upon the primi tive mother image of his earliest childhood. But the image was blurred by subsequent memories: the knowledge of her death, the confused associations that had pursued him ever since in his need for her in the woman he was to marry. How many emotive associations mingle in the image of that head! There is the martial aspect of the helmet which may well represent her association with the revolu tion; there is the thought of death in the cold marble; the horrible feeling of taboo in the image of heaviness— an inevitable feeling to one who unconsciously mingles the image of wife and mother. There is something of this feeling and its associate sense of futility in the image of the dust and the chilling wind. When Conrad was five years old, his mother was granted three months1 leave from her Russian confinement, and she took him with her back to Poland. Thus for a short time he had her to himself. It would be natural for him to resent the necessity of sharing her with his father when they returned. Peihap's the precocious young ster associated her suffering and death with his father’s political activities, and he may even have held him res ponsible for her death. However, such feelings are trans itory, and were very soon replaced by feelings of closest affection for his father. Their importance here lies in the fact that presumably they did exist, thus making poss ible a powerful reactivation in adolescence. This will be referred to later. The effect of early love affairs. Perhaps this is the place to mention Conrad’s early love affairs. He tells us of three, and they were all unpleasant in their way. Their effect upon him was to make him withdraw from the experience so that he was nearly forty years of age before he had another love affair. It is probable that these experiences threw him back once more on the need for a mother whose love was to be trusted, and who would give him all her care. The first of these affairs is mentioned only in a cancelled manuscript. But it is of great importance be cause it started the pattern with a rather intense feel ing of revulsion. (It should be mentioned by way of ex planation that the first partial paragraph of what follows has reference to his second love.) He was in love with her. But he never betrayed this sentiment to her, to anybody. He rather aff ected resistance to her influence. He even tried to cheat his own self in that respect. The secret of this resistance is that she was not his first love. That experience had come to him the year before in the summer of his last school holiday . . . Prom the nature of things first love can never be a wholly happy experience. But this man seems to have been exceptionally unlucky. His conviction is that, in colloquial phrase, he had struck some thing particularly wicked and even devilish. He holds that belief after thirty-five years, and posi tively shudders at the mere recollection. If she was really devilish, then she may count it for an amazing success. My opinion, however, is that the girl was simply very ordinarily stupid. Stupid people are very prone to turn a genuine display of sentiment into ridicule--and, women, of course, have special opportunities in that way . . . She amused herself again by tormenting him privately and pub licly with great zest and method and finally "exe cuted'1 him in circumstances of peculiar atrocity— which don't matter here. Perhaps he was unduly sensitive. At any rate, he came out of it seared, scarred, almost flayed and with a complete mistrust of himself, an abiding fear. He still thought her a superior being, but not yet a devil. That opinion came later. But he said to himself: if that's it then never, never again.^9 His second love affair was also a disaster in its way. For the girl was more patriot than lover, and here was one of the voices in the whispering gallery of his conscience that Conrad never seemed able to silence. In the end, he had to choose between love and the freedom he so much desired. His farewell to her was the more poig nant because it was only at the last moment that he un covered a hint of her affection for him. It was no wonder that thoughts of her lay at the heart of the half-buried complexes that were the very reservoir of his guilt. In a sense she symbolised all that he turned his back on in Poland--a decision that his conscience never forgave him. ^9 Aubry, 0£. cit., I, 26, footnote. k-9 Conrad must have left Cracow with a heart heavy as only the heart of the extremely young can he, when they turn their hacks on the bright prospect of love. One can feel something of the poignancy of that farewell in the glimpse Conrad gives in his Author’s Note to Nostromo: That afternoon when I came in, a shrinking yet de fiant sinner, to say my final good-bye, I received a hand-squeeze that made my heart leap and saw a tear that took my breath away. She was softened at last as though she had suddenly perceived (we were such children stilll) that I was really going away for good, going very far away--even as far as Sulaco, lying unknown, hidden from our eyes, in the darkness of the Placid Gulf.20 Conrad's third love affair was the affair with Rita of The Arrow of Gold. It cost him the life of his beloved "Tremolino," and it ended in a duel that almost cost his own life. And it seems evident that for all its wild transports of feeling, it had more in it of magic than of satisfaction. Little wonder if Conrad withdrew more and more from the experience of love and found him self falling back on safer and more satisfying dream feelings from his early childhood. At any rate three things are highly significant: In almost every case the women of Conrad's fiction brought disaster to their men in circumstances that are reminiscent of one or other of 20 Nostromo, pp. xiii, xiv. 50 these three girls. Secondly, some of his most virile men like Lingard, and Gaspar Ruiz, and Monsieur George found their most ecstatic moments with their women, not in passionate embraces but in surrendering to maternal strok- ings, with their heads in the laps of their beloved. Thirdly, there is the indisputable fact that Conrad him self acted in this way, taking the place of an unprotect ed child and reacting to the outside world in such a way that Mrs. Conrad declared that she was a buffer between him and reality and that he was as much a son to her as a husband. His father. And now it is time to consider the strange pattern of feelings that developed out of Conrad’s relation to his father. But these things are so intimately involved with his feelings for his country and for his uncle, that there is no point in trying to keep them sep arate. More than one writer has marvelled at the inten sity and persistency of Conrad’s guilt complex. One can not help feeling that if an outraged patriotism were the only cause, the conflict should have been resolved more easily. Besides, Conrad’s novels give many indications that this sense of guilt is older and more deep-rooted than his flight from Poland in 187^* and that it is some- 51 how associated with his feelings towards his father. There is, of course, nothing surprising about that. Most guilt complexes have their origin in such feelings. Now it must be remembered that from the death of his mother until the death of his father some six years later, Conrad had no constant companion but his father, during the lonely years of exile their hearts were knit as the hearts of only father and son can be knit in such Circumstances. A letter that Apollo Korzeniowski wrote to - his friend, Casimir Kaszewski, on November 22, 1866, re veals something of the depth of this attachment: Conrad has gone to his uncle in the country. We are both of us unhappy. The child is silly enough to be troubled about my solitude and to regret a life in which my gloomy face and his lessons have been his only distractions. He pines for me in spite of the country and games with a cousin of his own age. Even under the wing of his grandmother's tender care and in spite of the indulgencies of his uncle who spoils him and has transferred to him all the love he had for his mother, the boy pines for me. 1 It is easy to understand the boy's remorse and his sense of guilt, when he allowed his feelings so to change later that he virtually rejected his father. At the time of his father's death his feelings were still unconfused. There is some reflection of them in the 21 Aubry, o j d . cit., p. 17 52 passage that Conrad wrote many years later in the Author’s Note to A Personal Record: What X saw with my own eyes was the public funeral, the cleared streets, the hushed crowds; but I under stood perfectly well that this was a manifestation of the national spirit seizing a worthy occasion. That bareheaded mass of work people, youths of the university, women at the window, school-boys on the pavement, could have known nothing positive about him except the fame of his fidelity to the one guid ing emotion in their hearts. I had nothing but that knowledge myself; and this great silent demonstra tion seemed to me the most natural tribute in the world--not to the man but to the I d e a . ^ 2 This is probably a rather mild reflection of Conrad's actual feelings at the time. Over half a century had gone by when he wrote this passage, and he had long since ac quired the habit of deprecating his father’s contribution to the cause of Poland. It is probable that to the mind of the twelve-year-old boy, there was never, since the world began, a cause like the cause of his motherland. Doubtless in his young imagination Apollo Korzeniowski rode a peerless knight with the device of Poland on his shield. All this, however, was soon changed. During his adolescent years, Conrad came under the guardianship and influence of his Uncle Thaddeus, who set to work deliber ately to turn the boy's attention from the cause of Poland. On the whole, this was probably a good thing, but Bobrowski made use of a most unfortunate method. No doubt he could 2P A Personal Record, p. x. 53 see that he had small chance of success as long as the boy worshipped his father’s memory. He therefore made every effort to help the lad see his father as he, Bob- rowski, saw him. He succeeded at last, but the psycho logical results were devastating. One has only to look through his eyes for a moment to understand the point of view held by this man. Thad- deus Bobrowski was one of those folks who are guided throughout life by practical common sense. He had watched a comparatively tiny nation struggle in vain against the Russian giant, and, under his clear-eyed gaze, patriotic sentiment such as his brother-in-law had exhibited lost all its glamor, all its compelling religious ardor, and became a pitiable thing. After all, by the very nature of things, any such uprising as the abortive rebellion of 1863 could not succeed. On the other hand, it was bound to bring much suffering upon those who took part, and sterner control over the country as a whole. Therefore all such underground activity was not only futile; it was a national sin. Thaddeus advocated a policy of appease ment on the common-sense grounds that Poland would never know more liberty than Russia was willing to give her. Now, in the opinion of Thaddeus Bobrowski, Conrad’s father was nothing more than a gambler and an adventurer. 22 a Personal. Record, p. x. Indeed, in his younger days, the Korzeniowski family had such a reputation for squandering money, mismanaging pro perty and embarking on impractical ventures that Conrad’s mother could not obtain her father’s consent to marry Apollo. It is no wonder that Thaddeus Bobrowski felt that his favorite sister was throwing herself away on Apollo KorseniowS'ki. lor is it strange that he accepted the guardianship of their son some years later with consider able misgivings. There is no record of the conversations that took place between uncle and nephew in those early years before Conrad left Poland. One feels certain, however, from the letters that passed between them in later years that the uncle taught the boy to recognize two strains in himself; the Bobrowski strain and the Korzeniowski strain. When ever the idealistic and adventurous qualities showed up in his conduct, Conrad was warned that these were danger ous Korzeniowski tendencies and must be suppressed. The boy was admonished to encourage in himself the development of the quiet common sense of the Bobrowskis. If he were to achieve stability at last, it would only be by grace of his mother’s blood in him. One has-only to quote a few passages from the letters to establish this point: You are always restive and careless. You remind me much more of the Korzeniowskis than of my dear 55 sister, your mother.^3 And again, in a letter of August 15, 1881: As you are a f , Nalecz,M beware of risky speculations which rest on nothing but hope, for your grandfather wasted his property in speculations, and your uncle got into d< and many awkward fixes through the And in a letter dated July 30, 1891: Your weakness comes from the Nalecz Korzeniowski. Your grandfather and your uncle were always enter taining projects which had no validity except in their imaginations . . . Your father was an ideal istic dreamer; he loved mankind and wished them well, but he had two standards for judging them. He was indulgent to the poor and very hard on the rich. All three of them were ambitious and suffered acutely when they failed. Alas, in making plans, you too allow yourself to be carried away by your imagination, and, when ose plans fail, to be far It must have been a severe emotional shock for the lonely boy to have this new view of his father and the re volution thrust upon him. It is easy to imagine his thrusting the idea from him in anger and indignation at first. And perhaps it was easy to do this when he was in the company of the ardent patriotic spirits of the city. Nevertheless, his uncle1s calm common sense began to pre vail before he left school. same cause too deeply discouraged 23 Aubry, 0£. cit., I, 39. 24 Ibid., I, 65. Ibid., p. llj. 6- 56 Mental conf 11 ct. The fact of the matter is that Conrad became at this time the victim of a particularly fierce mental conflict, which it is proposed now to study in some detail. It was a conflict in which quite a number of moral and emotional forces opposed each other under the watchful eye of conscience. The issue to be decided was this: Should Conrad accept his father's ideals with all the responsibilities that they involved^ towards Poland? Or should he accept his uncle's viewpoint and thus escape into a milder moral climate where the shadows of duty and sacrifice never fell to cast their chilling forebodings over the future? The positive forces. Foremost among the forces on the positive side were his love for his father and the influence of his early training. As Aubry says of those early days in Russia, "His surroundings brought home to him Ideas which seldom come close to men in childhood, death, faith, and liberty. Unconsciously he was being trained in a secret and inflexible fidelity to ideals dis associated from hope.There must have been a convincing power about that inflexible patriot who "was like a senti mental miser, living for self-sacrifice, saving every 26 Aubry, o j d . cit., p. 13. 57 breath, every atom of personal happiness for his mother land," and for whom "wife, child, family were details of minor consideration."^^ When Conrad was alone with his memories in that atmosphere of sad exaltation that seemed part of his earliest life, no doubt his uncle’s logic seemed cold and unimportant. He must have endured a tre mendous battering at the hands of the negative forces be fore he surrendered his ideals to them. Then there was the little circle of patriots with whom he mingled at high school. Their influence must have powerfully reinforced the natural tendency to be loyal to the ideals and the memory of his father. G-ustaf Morf speaks of this influence in an article called, "Conrad and Cowardice": He /Thaddeus Bobrowski^ regarded the Polish up risings as foolish and thought the Poles should try to get along with the Russians as best they could. In his view it was chimerical to hope to build up the Polish nation in the near future. But the boy was not his father’s son in vain. He rebelled against his uncle's opportunism and tried to associate as much as he could with friends who were patriotically inclined. Little groups of school boys and schoolgirls hatched revolutionary plans, but as soon as they grew up they had to recognize that there was no sense in knocking their heads against the wall of Russia.2® ^7 j. h . Retinger, Conrad and His Contemporaries, pp. 18-19. 2^ G. Morf, "Conrad and Cowardice," Living Age, CCCXL (August, 1931), 572. £ 8 On December 28, 1872, the Municipal Council of Cracow gave Conrad the freedom of the city exempt from tax. It was a gesture to the memory of his father, and one can imagine how it must have fired the ardor of the boy. To his sensitive mind the gesture no doubt carried with it a responsibility: he was marked for future lead ership . Lastly, there was the influence of the schoolgirl patriot with whom Conrad fell in love. He tells in his Author’s Note to Nostromo: How we, a tallish band of schoolboys, the chums of her two brothers, how we used to look up to that girl just out of the school-room herself, as the standard-bearer of a faith to which we were all bom, but which she alone knew how to hold aloft, with all Unflinching hope.29 It must have'been very hard for him to disappoint the hopes of that girl. Negative forces. On the other side of the strug gle there were also powerful forces. The first was the almost irresistible force of elemental fear. Conrad shrank from the consequences of patriotic leadership. When one remembers his background,'- that is not at all sur prising. The writer remembers'reading an incident from the days of the religious persecutions that may help to explain something of Conrad’s spiritual ordeal. It is 29 Nostromo, p. xiii. 59 an incident which exhibits what surely must be one of the most resolute acts of moral courage in history. Some martyr whose courage failed in the ordeal of the flames recanted and slowly healed of his burns after weeks of suffering. One day, however, his subsequent remorse was too much for him, and he decided to face the flames a second time as a resolute adherent to his faith. It is one thing to face suffering in the abstract. It is quite another thing to go back and embrace the face of a fam iliar but almost unendurable anguish. Seen in retrospect from the safe ground of a care free and protected boyhood, those early years in Russia must have presented an awful prospect as the sensitive Conrad looked down the long line of vivid memories that finally blurred Into nightmare vagueness. To children, especially to sensitive children, there are spiritual qualities like loneliness, and despair, and presentiments of they know not what, that can invest early memories with a horror that quite transcends the horror of phys ical suffering. One has only to consider the few glimpses that are given us of those days to appreciate to some extent what a horror their memory had for Conrad. What an atmosphere of morbid sorrow, for instance, is revealed here: 6o . . • he grows up in a monastic cell. For the memento mori we have the grave of our dear one, and every letter which reaches us is the equivalent of a day of fasting, a hair shirt or a discipline. We shiver with cold, we die of hunger. We are overwhelmed by the destitution of our fellowmen, our brothers, but prayer remains to us, and in our prayers I call God to witness there is scarce a word about ourselves. Should I describe this place I would say that on one side it is bounded by locked doors, behind which the being dearest to me breathed her last, without my being able to wipe even the death sweat from her brow, while on the other, though there the doors are open, I may not cross the threshold, and I see, what Dante did not describe, for his soul, appalled though it was with terror, was too Christian to harbour in human visions. Such is our life.30 From his earliest childhood Conrad was all too familiar with mysteries of silence and suffering and death, but apparently these experiences did nothing to prepare him for the ordeal of his father's death. There are few passages in literature that depict convincingly the scared heart of a child recoiling before the great mystery than the passage in Conrad’s essay, "Poland Re visited." He tells of the long evenings when he sat "in a large drawing room, panelled and bare, with heavy cor nices and a lofty ceiling, in a little oasis of light made by two candles in a desert of dusk." He pictures the tall white door that now and then came ajar and how the nun "in a white coif would squeeze herself through the crack, glide across the room, and disappear," and how he would 30 Aubry, 0£. cit., p. l6. 6i ,!sit and vmteh the awful stillness of the sick room flow out through the closed door and coldly enfold my scared heart.” The passage continues: Later in the evening, but not always, I would be permitted to tiptoe into the sick room to say good night to the figure prone on the bed, which often could not acknowledge my presence but by a slow movement of the eyes, put my lips dutifully to the nerveless hand lying on the coverlet, and tiptoe out again. Then I would go to bed, in a room at the end of the corridor, and often, not always, cry myself into a good sound sleep.31 It would be strange, indeed, if some four years later, when Conrad was fighting a losing battle with his conscience, he did not still quail before these memories. They robbed his patriotism of half its ardor. When he was granted the freedom of Cracow, they were no doubt « there to turn his proudest moment into an emotional climax. He could see himself marked for leadership by the eager hand of fate. He could hear his destiny in the enthus iastic voices of his comrades and in the pleas of the girl he loved. And he felt that he must escape at once, before it was too late. This elemental fear had two powerful allies: his strange longing for the sea, and the arguments of his uncle. As Aubry points out, Conrad’s longing for the sea was very likely a direct expression of the deep, in- 31 Notes on Life and Letters, pp. 167-168. 62 articulate craving for the kind of freedom that he en countered in his early reading.32 But, in view of the content of some of his books, there is more than a possi bility that it was also associated with tendencies to regress to an earlier state. This, however, will be elab orated later. In any case, Conrad found in this desire for a sailor’s life a very satisfactory alibi in which his fears could take refuge. Conrad’s greatest ally, however, was his uncle. To Thaddeus Bobrowski, who knew nothing of the devastating conflict that was taking place in the mind of his nephew, the issue was clear enough. Conrad, as the son of his father, could expect no peace from the surveillance of the authorities. He must go abroad. The only point at issue was the occupation he was to take up. Conrad natur ally fought hard for the cause of his sea career. It was not only that his longing was genuine enough. His uncon scious demanded that the motive of fear be hidden from himself. He must leave Poland as an adventurer, for an adventurer is not a coward. And he must leave on a quest, not in flight. So he fought the battle of his career with a doggedness that surprised and awed his relative and friends. 32 Aubry, og. cit., p. 1I 4 .. 63 But this was not the end of Conrad's rationaliza tions. He had to surrender gradually to his uncle's point of view. He had to see that the patriotism of his father was not such a shining thing after all. He had to see Apollo Korzeniowski as an amiable adventurer, impractical, reckless, a visionary and an idealist, but unbalanced. He had to see all the Polish uprisings as futile, and tragic in their futility. It must have been a hard thing to do. It must have cost him sorrow and remorse, but he did it. The strange thing is that one can mouth over such arguments till the mind is completely convinced, but the unconscious pays not the slightest attention. And therein lies the basis of a much more devastating confliet--a con flict in the darkness beyond the rim of conscious scrutiny. Repressed elements in confli ct. When Conrad left Poland on October llf, l87lj-, he went as a devout proselyte of his own indoctrination. Amongst the articles of his creed were the following: Polish revolutions were futile, his father was a mistaken idealist, his mother was a type of the truer, wiser patriots who knew how to stimulate national spirit without recourse to bloody revolutions, and his uncle was henceforth to be his mentor. As for himself, Conrad was convinced that he was not running a- way. He was answering the call of the sea. He was responding to the spirit of adventure that was innate in a gallant Nalecz. It was all eminently reasonable. The trouble was that deep down in his heart he did not believe it. For a few glorious play years, it is true, he almost forgot, but when he emerged once more to face the real issues of life, his unanswered questions were waiting for him. He shut the door on their noisy insitence and tried to busy himself with the stern realities of an active life; but the voices confused him and filled him with a profound pessimism. The rationalizations and half-repressed emotions that made such busy havoc in l87i^ are of immense Import ance to the student of Conrad, for they are the very mot ive forces and themes of his books. The most devastating aspect of his uncle's argu ments lay in the fact that they forced Conrad to choose between his mother and his father, with the result that his oedipal attachments and hostilities were re-activated. It was particularly traumatic for Conrad to reject his father, because his love for him had almost amounted to worship. But fear was driving him. The urge to escape was becoming Intolerable, and he had desperate need for the support of his uncle's arguments, which, after all, were so reasonable. When his conversion was complete, his consequent guilt feelings were tremendous, In his new position, Conrad felt desperately alone, deserted by God and man, and the support of his uncle was not enough. He felt a longing for the support of the mother that the uncle kept offering him as an ideal in the place of his father. The dream activity of his books would lead one to suppose that he peered into the waver ing outlines of his earliest memory images, and perhaps into his mother’s photographs in a vain effort to con vince himself that she would approve of his decision to have'no part in patriotic activity. This is probably the reason why so many of his women characters are in scrutable creatures with smooth brows whose very appear ance teased their men into vain speculations on the sub ject of their thoughts.33 No doubt one effect of this rejection of his father and this search after his mother was the attitude observed in later life by Ford Madox Ford: Of his father Conrad spoke always deprecatorily. For his mother he had, on the other hand, that passionate adoration that is felt by the inhabitants of Latin and Western Slav countries.34- And: Oddly but comprehensibly, when he spoke of his mother as revolutionary, he was full of enthusiasm. For him the Polish national spirit had been kept alive by such women as his mother. The men were 33 see R. Stauffer, Joseph Conrad— His Romantic- Realism. o. 52: and W. Phelps, ^Advance of the ungiish Novel, Bookman, XLIII (May, 19l6), 203. 6 6 36 hopeless. His outraged patriotism. ThougH Conrad’s rejection of his father was probably the most fundamental cause of his guilt feelings, it was not the most obvious cause. That was related to his sin against the patriotic creed that he and his coutrymen held so fiercely. In itself it was no light sin. Polish writers assure us that in their country patriotism had a peculiar mystic quality quite unknown elsewhere. We must therefore understand that even without the peculiar psychological concommitants of Conrad*s particular case, his sense of guilt could well have been severe. Some quotations regarding this peculiar patriotic sense may be interesting. Gustaf Morf, for instance, says: We must not forget that Polish patriotism was a kind of religion handed down from father to son. Patriotism meant believing in the impossible and the absurd, in other words, in the immediate pros pect of a united, independent Poland.3o And again: A famous Polish critic remarked shortly after Conrad’s death that he did not understand how Conrad had been able to survive ’the tragedy of renegation,’ jKf p. y[, Ford, Joseph Conrad, A Personal Remembrance, p. 76. Ibid., pp. 76-77. 36 Q. Morf, ’ ’Conrad and Cowardice,” Living Age, cccxl (August, 1931), 573. 67 the denial of his fatherland; for Conrad was no ordinary Pole, but the son of a man who sacrificed his whole life’s happiness for Polish independence' Drabowski, a Polish writer and journalist, tells of a most illuminating interview that he had with Conrad in 19114-. As usual, when in the presence of one of his own countrymen, Conrad felt the need to explain his exodus from Poland. One can hear in the haltings and pauses something of the tension that persisted after all these years. Drabowski, at least, was at no loss for an in terpretation: Conrad was speaking freely. "It was a strange feeling . . . My father . . . Ha, I was young, every thing was so interesting, the sea called." Conrad fell Into silence. I understood that speaking to me now was Joseph Konrad Korzeniowski . . . that in the soul of this Polish expatriot hidden forces were at work--that spiritually he was ours. The stem silence lasted several minutes. I had the impression of a sea quieting after a storm, of huge billows subsiding. "Ask me questions." said Conrad, sharply interrupting the silence.38. The effect of this outraged patriotic conscience on Conrad’s overt behavior was to make him avoid Poles, to make him querulous and sensitive on the subject of Polish criticism, and to accentuate his feelings of infer iority and not belonging. One reason why he could never 37 Ibid.* p. 5 7 J j . . M. Drabowski, "Interview with Joseph Conrad," American Scholar, XIII (July, 19i|4), 373. 68 feel thoroughly accepted as an Englishman was the unfor giving conviction in his own heart that he was a bad Pole. In his books, this guilty feeling was compensated for— in the strange way that our unconscious has of seeking to make restitution— by stressing the themes of loyalty and fidelity to duty. But in his daily contacts, Conrad could only withdraw from the threatening ^subject. As Retinger says, "Polish patriotism, if not in deed, is always in word and gestures overbearing, enthusiastic, dynamic and active. Conrad’s attachment to his country was objective, passive and reticent."39 The guilty secret. One of the most active elements of Conrad’s complex had to do with a guilty secret which he felt continually urged to confess. Some of his most power ful prose is written with the indelible ink of this emotion. No one will ever know for certain what that secret was, but everything points to the motive that drove him out of Poland. As far as the world knew, it was his love of the sea, his lust for adventure. But there is no doubt that fear played its part, a morbid fear that recoiled from a repetition of tortures already endured. Prom Conrad’s own account he passed through a particularly trying ordeal in trying to explain to his family his need to go to sea. 39 h # Retinger, op_. cit., p. 135. o' 69 The fact of the matter Is that that ordeal really consisted in trying to explain the thing satisfactorily to himself. Satisfied emotions dissipate themselves in the satisfying activity, and there is no better evidence that the emotions engaged in manufacturing these particular rationalizations were never satisfied than these words of Conrad: I catch myself in hours of solitude and retrospect meeting arguments and charges made thirty-five years ago by voices now for ever still; finding things to say that an assailed boy could not have found, simply because of the mysteriousness of his Impulses to him self.4-0 There are many evidences both in Conrad’s life and his writings of the poisoning effect of this secret. It is the emotive force behind the exaggerated bitterness that takes possession of the hero of the Heart of Darkness when he is forced to carry the secret of Kurtz’s hollow hypoc risy to the grave, the awful urge to confess experienced by men like Razumov, the curse that hangs over Nostromo's undeserved reputation for being 1 1 shining, incorruptible." Indeed, the atmosphere of secrecy lies so heavily over his writing as a whole that H. T. and W. Follett have been im pressed to say: . . . no one else has written with so profound a sense of the awful privacy of the soul, the intense ^ A Personal Record, p. 121. 70 palpitating secrecy which underlies even the most placid and composed phenomena of the everyday world . . . . . Readers will have noticed the extraordinary number of passages in his work which involve the presence of somebody or something hidden: evidently . the bare fact of concealment fascinates this author.Z +-L One of the most interesting things about the writ ing of Conrad from this aspect is the extent to which he gives himself away in his fiction, and the strength of his tendency to hide something when he is allegedly con fessing in his biographical books. Almost everyone who has written about his Personal Record is impressed by Conrad’s obvious reticence. Likewise, a great many would agree with what G. B. Donlin has to say concerning his fiction, "All his work has the air of a personal confes sion. The fact of the matter is that Conrad is con stantly laboring -under the contrary urges to confess and to conceal his guilt at the same time. As Guerard says: Conrad seemed determined to conceal from the casual reader his sense of guilt and moral isolation, his self-distrust and fears, his attraction to the abnormal and the fantastic; to conceal in fact those very conflicts which we now see to be the dark found ations of his art . . . The fact of spiritual and moral isolation dramatized in all the important books is almost never referred to in the prefaces,^-4* ^ H. T. and W. Follett, o£. cit., p. 277. See, for instance, R. Lynd, Books and Authors, p. 196. ^*3 g. b . Donlin, "The Art of Joseph Conrad," Dial, LXI (September 21, 19l6),.p. 173. 71 But quite apart from his hooks, Conrad gave myster ious impressions of harboring a cankerous secret. Richard Curie maintained that no one could hope to give anything like a complete picture of the artist unless he gave this aspect considerable stress.^ He tells how, "when he was upset, he would retire into eclipsed, nerve-racked rumin ations where it was impossible to follow him, and where he seemed fearfully a l o n e ."4^ Even in his moments of seem ingly irresponsible gaiety, this mysterious secret seemed to be at his elbow: "And yet to me there was, now and then, something almost painful about these wild bouts of fun. It was as if they had been consciously fomented as a mom entary anodyne of forgetfulness. •47 Mrs. Conrad was troubled by this same conviction of a mysterious secret. She says, "In death he seemed to have retired completely from his fellows. I too shared In the impression that there was still something I did not know and now could never know."4® 44 A. Guerard, Jr., Joseph Conrad, p. 13. 45 See, for instance, R. Curie, The Last Twelve Years of Joseph Conrad, pp. 16, 22, 32-35, ^0, I j l 6, etc. 46 Ibid., p. 30. 47 Ibid., p. h,7. 48 Jessie Conrad, oj>. cit. , p. 277. 72 It is significant that Conrad was always very sensitive about his exodus from Poland. He imagined thab his countrymen thought of him as a traitor. Garnett says: Of himself Conrad spoke as a man lying under a slight stigua among his contemporaries for having ex patriated himself. The subject of Poland was then visibly painful to him, and in those early years he would speak of it unwillingly, his attitude being acquaintances from pressing This sensitiveness is especially interesting in view of an article that appeared in Living Age in September, 1932, in which it was claimed that Conrad as a young man of thirty-one suffered from a kind of tic that is often associ ated with guilt complexes. "in those days,’ 1 says the writer, "he had a tic of his shoulders and eyes, and any thing unexpected, such as a slamming door, or something falling, made him jump."^ Cowardice. If Conrad’s guilty secret were indeed the fact that his expatriation was dictated largely by fear, one would expect to find that cowardice was another of his preoccupations. And that is certainly the case. Indeed, it is doubtful if any other writer has sounded the ^-9 E. Garnett, editor, Letters from Joseph Conrad, p. vi . Anon., "Conrad at Thirty-one," Living Age, CCCXLIII (September, 1932), p. 82. Living Age, subject as completely. What is so curious about his treatment of the subject is the fact that he is quite plainly the victim of contrary impulses. No one has agon ized over his cowards as Conrad has done. He goes to the ends of the earth, as it were, to find excuses for them. He travails in his soul to prove that a man can disgrace himself in a moment of weakness and still achieve moral re-habilitation. At the same time he has a brutal urge to punish them, as Hirsch is punished in Nostromo or Razu- mov in Under Western Eyes. Nothing but death will do. The intimate psychology of his treatment of these themes could, one feels, come only from the workshop of a soul tortured by like stresses. The vital question in the treatment of all these characters seems to be this: Is this man really a coward or not? If, like Lord Jim, he were faced with the same situation agaiia when he is on his guard, or if he were brought to torture again like Dr. Monygham, could he act the manly part? The terrible thing about all these travailings is that the author seems unable to find the assurance he seeks. For one feels quite con vinced that these are only strange translations of his own cry of distress: If the need arose, if I were prompted by unwavering conviction, could I, Joseph Conrad, endure again what I suffered as a child and what as a youth I turned my Ik back upon? That question lay at the very heart of his neurosis* It had the power to draw in its train all the morbid emotions that were so complexly connected with it* Summary. It is time, now, to summarize the con victions of this and the previous chapter* Conrad was a highly introverted, insecure, deeply pessimistic and with drawn individual, because he had to contend with an endless train of unsatisfied emotions from the past that cluttered up his everyday emotional life. These feelings had their origin in an incompletely resolved adolescent conflict be tween a powerful Instinct and an austere moral force: the urge to escape, and a religiously toned sense of duty. Duty bade him remain in Poland at great personal sacrifice. Pear bade him flee. In his search for an alibi, Conrad allowed himself to be converted to his uncle’s artuments. Thus the conflict was complicated by a rejection of his father and an earnest searching into the past for the sup port of his mother. The conflict was also confused some what by his love affair with the Polish girl patriot. However, the magic catalyst that precipitated the neurotic reaction and kept the emotions in a state of con stant turmoil was In all probability Conrad’s feeling for the sea. When the stress of the conflict became unbear able, he felt he must escape at all costs. Unconsciously, he longed for the warm and inviolable security of the womb. And somehow from the midst of this deep and desperate need, there rose a vague longing for the sea, the salt sea, the eternal sea, the mysterious realm that lay beyond the troubled regions of earth where men must facq the reality of life--the sea that would receive him as a mother would, and rock him to sleep on her ample bosom till he could for get Poland and her cruel requirements, and the father who had been strong where he had been weak. The prospect was fascinating because it was spiced with the thrill of for bidden things. It gave symbolic realization to an allur ing but socially unacceptable desire. It concealed the ugly face of fear behind the gay mask of romance. It turned a flight into an adventure. But it lured the sen sitive lad Into repression of the most sinister kind. As a result of all this, Conrad found a continual need to deal with the repressed emotions and the buried convictions. He felt compelled to justify his rejection of his father by frequently enunciated arguments of a most specious kind. He had to pacify his guilt feelings by making certain concessions (though at times he felt the need to fight them with excuses'). He had to find some kind of compensation for the fact that his mother was be yond his reach. At the same time he felt compelled to project himself into all kinds of situations both imaginary 76 and real In an effort to solve the unsolvable enigma: Had he really acted the coward's part? If so, could he redeem himself? Could he remove the stain from his es- cut che on? Thus, like all neurotics, he spent a great deal more of his time and energy with emotions that belonged to his past than his tired soul could afford. They robbed him of much of the passing pageant of life. They drove him from sea to sea, and from house to house. They would call upon him suddenly at the most inopportune times, in the social hour, in the midst of a pleasant chat. And when they called, it was to beckon imperiously into the dark inner chamber of his soul's distress. There he was compelled to dream endless dreams that proved nothing-- dreams in which a disguised Conrad fought his spiritual battles all over again. Conrad's fiction was part of this activity. CHAPTER V THE PROCESS OP CREATION The essential function of this investigation is to discover the neurotic drives that are responsible for Conrad’s art, and to watch these drives at work in the actual process of creation. Now such an investigation presumes not only that Conrad was a neurotic personality, but that he worked in a way that permitted these neurotic drives to take control. This chapter is designed to show that Conrad did work in such a way. The great enemy of subjectivity of any kind is its converse, objectivity. It is quite impossible to wallow in one's own emotions while one is giving one's whole at tention to an exercise in geometry. Likewise it is impos sible to surrender to neurotic feelings when one is fash ioning a piece of art according to clearly conceived prin ciples. If one is to give one's feelings full sway, the attention must be pushed out of the way. On the other hand, one has urgent need of the type of concentration that can compare achievement with ideal, can modify, re ject, and re-shape, whenever one is the conscious artist. Conrad presents a special difficulty here. As J. W. Beach says in his book, The Twentieth Century Novel ” . . . unmistakably Conrad belongs in the hierarchy of * 1 conscious and deliberate writers.” It is no use trying to deny that. Ford Madox Ford gives instance after in stance in his writing on Conrad of the tireless preoccu pation of this artist with questions of words and tech niques. He had very definite ideas, and he worked with his eye on clearly defined principles. Conrad often spoke of the concentrated attention he put into his writ ing, when he wrote to his friends. His letters to Gals worthy and Cunninghame Graham are full of such references. Here is one in a letter to Arthur Symons, dated August 29, 1908. It is clear and brief in its reference to conscious effort: I have been quarrying my English out of a black night, working like a coal miner in his pit. For fourteen years now I have been living as if in a cave without echoes.2 However, his works alone provide sufficient evi dence. The best of his novels and short stories each distill a theme that is so beautifully lucid, and one feels convinced that the plot was especially constructed ^ J. W. Beach, The Twentieth Century Novel, p. 337* 2 Aubry, op. cit.. II, 73* 79 to carry c - that theme, and that the characters were cre ated to serve the plot. As Stallman observes In a recent essay, in which he discusses The Secret Sharer, "It wasn't by pure luck that the bricks in that mosaic of meaning fell into place. For how could it be otherwise with any work that has meaning than that the meaning was executed brick by brick, built into the mosaic by the laboring intellect of the artist?"3 It is no wonder, then, that there are critics whose attention is so wholly captivated by this technical perfec tion in Conrad that they are prepared to ridicule the sug gestion that Conrad's deepest emotional drives were res ponsible for his books. What such critics overlook is the fact that the great artist combines in himself the great dreamer and the great technician. Conrad himself under stood this perfectly. In a letter to Galsworthy in which he discussed Henry James's story, The Real Thing, he says: To me even the R. T. seems to flow from the heart because and only because the work, approaching so near perfection, yet does not strike cold. Technical perfection, unless there is some real glow to illumine and warm it from within, must necessarily be cold. I argue that in H.J. there is such a glow and not a dim one either.4- The fact of the matter is that there are two stages in the creative process: the dreaming and the shaping of 3 W.V. O'Connor, ed., Forms of Modem Fiction, p. 232. ^ Audry, ojd. cit. , I, 270. 80 the dream. There is abundant evidence that Conrad always experienced the first stage, and that during the process he did not take control, he simply watched. What actually takes place is this: The mind is stored with images gath ered into the storehouse by the senses. Often enough these images slip down the crevices beyond the reach of conscious memory, but the unconscious forgets nothing. The emotive forces, often neurotic, stir these images into fantastic activity to suit their own whimsical needs. Lastly, the intellect plays over the vision, shaping it ac cording to the dictates of a higher conscious purpose. But often the artist knows very definite limitations in this latter function. If he tries to change the vision so that any of the primary emotional needs is thwarted, the whole thing vanishes, and he is left to grope in the re sulting emptiness. Conrad suffered from this limitation. At one time, when Edward Garnett felt that Conrad had not fully exploited the possibilities of one of the characters in his book, The Rover, he wrote to offer a suggestion of his own. Conrad replied, "Yes, my dear, I know you will believe me when I tell you that I had a momentary vision of quite a great figure worthy of Peyrol: the notion of a struggle between the two men . . . No use talking about it. 81 How long would I have had to wait for that mood?”^ Conrad was a superlative novelist because he had all three of these requirements of the artist. He had superb opportunities for collecting his imagery. As Galsworthy said: The storehouse of his subconscious self was prob-' ably as interesting and comprehensive a museum as anything in the world. It is from the material in our unconscious minds that we create.® Secondly, the emotive forces that stirred these images into activity were powerful dream makers. Thirdly, his critical powers were keen to conceive and direct his higher artistic purposes. The preliminary dream process. There i s ample evidence that Conrad passed through the initial dream stage. Garnett, who knew his early work better than any one else, declared that he ’ ’worked by intuition after a preliminary meditation.And Conrad himself said, "I prefer to dream a novel rather than to write it. For the dream of the work is always more beautiful than the reality ^ Aubry, o£. cit., II, 237. J. Galsworthy, Castles in Spain and Other Screeds. p. 118. 7 Garnett, ed., o]D. cit. , p. 82 of the printed thing."8 The reality of that dream state was obvious to his friends who watched him work. Curie says, "When the day's active work was over he seemed some times to emerge out of a kind of dream state."9 According to Megros, Conrad lapsed more easily into the dream state than most artists. He says: Mentally he was nearest to a reaction type which psychiatrists explain as due to a divorce between thinking and feeling, so that feeling is often re pressed to such an extent that the subject appears to be emotionally lame, obtaining satisfaction by taking refuge in a symbolic world of fantasy. There are all degrees of this schizoid state, as it is termed, but every artist shares it to some extent, and Conrad is a striking example of the conditions in which the self can find freedom only in fantasy. ® Inducing the dream state. Conrad did not direct the dreaming process. Indeed, he could not always achieve it. His letters are full of cries of distress because of his impotence in this respect. But he soon learned that he simply had to wait till the mood took hold of him. He wrote to Pinker on one occasion when the latter tried to hurry the process of production, "I must add that I have no control whatever over the spirit— neither has the man who 8 G-ee and Sturm, ed., op. cit., p. 108. 9 r . Curie, The Last Twelve Years of Joseph Conrad, p. 78. 10 Megros, op. cit., p. 88. has paid the money. "H And in an early letter to Garnett, who had pointed out a weakness in the plot of his second book, Conrad wrote, Nothing now can unmake my mistake. I shall try— but I shall try without faith, because all my work : is produced unconsciously (so to speak) and I cannot meddle to any purpose with what is within myself.12 ’ ’The dsrnned stuff," he confided to Wells on one occasion, "comes out only by a kind of mental convulsion lasting two, three, or more days--up to a fortnight--which leaves me perfectly limp and not very happy, exhausted emo tionally to all appearance."^ One thing, however, Conrad learned fairly early in his artistic career: the mood always preceded the dream. Consequently the thing to do was to give oneself up to the emotions. This, in fact was precisely the advice he gave to Edward Noble. "Cultivate your poetic faculty . . . give yourself up to the emotions (no easy task). You must squeeze out of yourself every sensation, every thought, every image,--mercilessly, without reserve and without remorse: you must search the darkest corners of your heart." H Aubry, o£. cit., I, 278. 12 Ibid., p. 181. 13 Ibid., II, 25>. Ibid., I, 183. aii. The result was not always an enjoyable experience. The dream experience came, but it brought real travail of soul. "All this is ghastly," he wrote to Galsworthy on one oc casion. "I seem to move, talk, write in a sort of night mare that goes on and on. I wouldn’t wish my worst enemy this experience."1-^ The result of this dream activity is a literature exhibiting that magic quality which characterises the greatest of our romantic poetry. It has the power to in duce something of the dream state in the reader. For, as V. S. Pritchett says, "They are dreams, these books. Their colour, their unreal major characters, their insectile minor ones, their torturous action, live in the compulsive twi light of a hypnotic dream, a drean that slows down to the intense heat of a nightmare."1^ * "To read Conrad is to shudder on the edge of a gulf, in a silent darkness,"1? jcontends Symonds. The reason lies in the fact that the emotions that drove his dream figures on to their suffering and death were the nightmare emotions brewed out of "his Ibid., II, 51. V. S. Pritchett, "Malayan Novels," New Statesman and Nation, XXIII (January 31, 19^2), 78. !? A. Symonds, Notes on Joseph Conrad, with some Unpublished Letters, p. 11. 8 5 haunted sense of guilt and indecision, his feeling of political cowardice in betraying a family trust, his fret ting suspicions and trussed up sense of honor, his tranced compulsion to write,"1® No wonder Symonds, who knew the mand as well as hev knew his writings, declared that "ab normality is the keynote of Conrad’s genius.” The Secret Sharer offers a splendid opportunity for the student of Conrad to study the creative process oper ating in his author. When Conrad was in the East, he heard a story that was common knowledge in those parts. A ship's officer who had killed a man in what many would regard as excusable circumstances, escaped from his ship and swam to a nearby vessel where his story won the captain's sympathy. The latter -undertook to hide him in his own cabin till he could maroon him on an island out of reach of the author ities. » This story set Conrad dreaming, and The Secret Sharer is the result. But it wasn't the imaginative possi bilities in the story that set him dreaming. It was his own deep sense of insecurity. That is why The Secret Sharer is not, as so many seem to think, the story of the fugitive, Leggatt, but the story of the captain who served him. "Suppose," wondered Conrad, ."suppose I had been placed in that situation, how would I have acquitted myself?" And because it was such a familiar question to him, and be cause it always leered at him over the ruins of his own "tragedy of renegation," he had to make the circumstances as difficult as he could— as difficult as they had been in Poland. Suppose, he wondered, suppose the murderer had come to him in that hour of destiny when he took over his first commandl Suppose he had come to complicate still further the pattern of events told in Falk and The Shadow Line 1 How would he have handled this conflict between what he felt to be,a moral obligation, and his almost frantic desire to be free of all embarrassments, and alone with his ship? The very thought almost made him sweat. He just had to know the answer. So he went back in memory to the circumstances of those days. By and by, he began to recap ture his feelings in that critical hour. And gradually he began to see the fugitive. He watched him steal silently amongst the memory images, and as they moved to make way for him, the day-dream began to act itself out before him. He did not direct its progress. He did not need to. There was a more subtle force at work within him: the neurotic emotions of his old, old conflict. And if the reader will ^ M. D. Zabel, "Conrad: Nel Mezzo Del Cammin," Hew Republic, CIII (December 23, I9I 4 .O), 8 7 lj .. 19 A. Symonds, o£. cit., p. 23. but take the time to study the story, he will see that every aspect of it serves those emotions. It is a struggle in the mind of the young captain between the instinctive desire to be free1 so that he can acquit himself as captain, and the moral force that bids him prejudice his whole future for the sake of another to whom he owes a mystic and shad owy allegiance. CHAPTER VI THE POSITION OP SCHOLARLY RESEARCH IN THIS FIELD There are few artists whose work is more inviting to the student interested in the process of literary creation than the work of Joseph Conrad. Indeed, a complete appre ciation of his work lies on the other side of such a study. Many critics have felt this, and a number of writers have Interested themselves in this problem one way and another. There has only been one major study, however, that has given serious thought to the neurotic forces behind Conrad' dream activity. That Is Gustav Morf's The Polish Heritage of Joseph Conrad. As its title indicates, this book is not directed specifically to the task of exploring all the psychological factors that contributed to Conrad's dreams. It seeks, rather, to trace the influence of his Polish background upon his work. Dr. Morf finds, however, that by far the most important influences were related to psychological con flicts that arose out of his desertion of the cause of Poland. Dr. Morf studied Conrad's background from Polish manuscripts and letters. He paid special attention to the letters of Apollo Korzeniowski and to the Memoirs of Thaddeus Bobrowski. Prom these sources, Morf discovered what manner of influence Conrad’s near relatives had upon the growing boy. He went on to trace the development of these and other influences in Conrad the youth, the sailor, the captain, and finally the English writer. Morf is part icularly interested in Conrad’s guilt complex, and he shows very convincingly how it grew out of his troubled feelings over Poland. Other psychological influences stressed by this writer are: 1) Conrad’s melancholy consciousness that there were within him two conflicting strains, the Bobrowski blood and the Korseniowski blood, 2) Conrad’s feelings of rejection and his sense of foreighness in England and in English ships, and 3) the effect upon his melancholy Slav nature of his years in the East. Dr. Morf proceeds to trace these influences as they manifest themselves in Lord Jim, Nostromo, Amy Foster, Victory, and the Rover. He quotes a great many details from the text of these books, and he shows how the con flicts developed there are really projections of the art ist's own conflicts. He adds a very interesting chapter tracing the influence upon Conrad’s English idiom of his background of Polish language and literature. Since the appearance of Dr. Morf’s book, most critics have assumed the general truth of the thesis that Conrad suffered from a guilt complex as a result of his expatriation, 90 and that this complex has had material effect upon the content of his books. A few, on the other hand, have disagreed with this thesis, one or two quite emphatically; but no one has pursued the investigation much farther. M. D. Zabel is deserving of special mention, how ever, because he has kept the idea alive. Most critics who study Conrad restrict their interest either to the aspect of his conscious craftsmanship, or to the aspect of his dream activity. Indeed, many of them write as though these two aspects were mutually exclusive. It is Zabel*s special merit that he has an interest in both aspects. He has seen the work of Morf as a necessary tool, whereas some others have looked upon it as a sort of threat to Conrad's reputation as an artist. Zabel has discerned the important principle that the process of creation begins in the deep urges that cry for expression deep within the artist, and that it ends only when the last change In the form of expression is made. Zabel has seen that if the work of appreciation Is to be complete the study of the product must begin at the beginning, and encompass the whole process in the light of both the unconscious and the conscious purposes of the artist. It Is because he has given due emphasis to Conrad’s dream activity, to his deep conflicts, and to his "tranced compulsion to write," that his articles have such power to awaken fresh interest in 91 Conrad.2 He has read Morf intelligently, seen a little farther all round the edges of Morf's observations by the light of the latter's book, and gone a good way towards showing how these investigations may be used in apprais ing the craftsmanship of Conrad. Albert Guerard, Jr., is the only one of Morf's critics who has given enough elaboration to his criticisms to make a mark in the negative direction. In his essay, ’ ’Joseph Conrad,” published in Direction,3 h© devotes most of his space to the sections on ’ ’Psychological Explora tions," and "Skepticism in Solitude." It is difficult to be sure of his position, because his arguments are frag mentary, and consist largely of unsupported general state ments, and sudden, almost irresponsible attacks on details. He says, for instance: "The book has the ruthless and in tricate naivete of most psychological criticism. Morf's biographical portrait has a seductive simplicity. The al ready lonely eleven-year-old child has a 'first eye-to-eye meeting with destiny, by the death-bed of his father;' 2 See, for instance, the following three articles by M. D. Zabel, "Conrad: Nel Mezzo Del Cammin," Hew Repub lic, CIII (December 23, 194®), 873-74? "Conrad: the Secret Sharer," Hew Republic, CIY (April 21, 1941), 567-68; "Chance and Recognition," Sewanee Review, LIII (January, 1945) , 1-22. 3 A. Guerard, Jr., "Joseph Conrad," Direction, I, 1947. --------- 92 that first bitter disenchantment accounts for the pessi- * mism of his later years.Guerard proceeds to point out what he regards as inconsistencies and inadequacies in Morf’s arguments, but at no time does he stop to look at the thesis as a whole. He is content to reiterate some' of Morf’s statements in a tone that is likely to raise a doubt in the mind of the reader. Guerard does not seem to be clearly aware of the nature of the difference between his own point of view and that of Morf: but this much emerges from his essay: He does not believe that Conrad was a dreamer at all. He sees him as a conscious artist dealing in ideas and. choos ing material with conscious purposefulness to develop these ideas. Indeed he says plainly: "Conrad’s is a theor e m etical psychology assumed for aesthetic purposes." "The books," he declares, "are moral allegories rather than clinical case studies." It is only natural, therefore, that what Morf sees as symbols that rise out of the un- conscious--symbols that are sometimes recognized by Conrad, ^ Ibid.. pp. 30-31. ^ Ibid., p. 60. 6 Ibid.. p. 45. sometimes half discerned, and sometimes not recognized at all— Guerard sees as symbols deliberately conceived and used in the service of thematic ideas. As a result of this point of view, Guerard finds himself called upon to criticise Conrad*s psychology as something that is often poorly applied theory used in the service of what is supposes to be Conrad’s artistic purpose. Morf, on the other hand, would be inclined to look on such psychology as a magnificent piece of self revelation, all the more artistically complete and beautiful because it is a product of dream activity. What the reader finds particularly interesting about Guerard’s essay is this: He is obviously fascinated by the very thing he criticises as facile and unscholarly in Morf. He makes a few speculations of his own and then adds pre cipitately, "But at the brink of such dark speculation the present critic withdraws."^ But he does not withdraw. He continues with some very interesting and quite discerning speculation that will be referred to later in this disser tation. He is particularly interested in Conrad’s treat ment of the jungle and isolation, and with the possible forces at work in his personal life to make him preoccupied 7 Ibid., p. 35 with, these things. One need scarcely point out that all such speculation is heresy to the doctrine enunciated else where in the essay to the effect that Conrad did not write because inner forces were urging him, but because he had a specific idea to develop in each of his works. That, of course, is another wajr of saying that Conrad was not a literary dreamer, but a man who synthesized according to a scientific literary formula. As this dissertation has already shown, there is a great deal of evidence against that point of view. PART CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Part II of this dissertation is devoted to an exam ination of Conrad’s fiction, in an attempt to show how the artist’s literary dream activity was stimulated by his / neurotic emotions. Part I prepares the way for this study. In Chapter I it is shown that much of the work of genius is often done in the unconscious, and that, because they live and move amongst memory materials from the past, neurotic emotions have the power to stir these images into fantastic dream life. Chapters II and III sift through evidence in Conrad’s life of peculiar attitudes and behavior patterns that are suggestive of a neurotic personality. Chapter IV examines in some detail a situation wherein Conrad’s failure to deal satisfactorily with a mental conflict weakened the struc ture of his personality, so that neurotic channels were cut in which the streams of his present activity mingled with deep emotions from his past. In Chapter V it is shown that Conrad's method of composition was such as to allow the dream activity stimulated by these emotions to prepare for him his basic story material. 97 Before embarking upon the actual task of Part II, one is reminded by some of Guerard's criticism of the work of Dr. Morf that one cannot give too much emphasis to the fact that this dream activity is directed largely by un satisfied emotions and not by the intellect. These emo tions are not intelligent. They seize upon anything that can be fantasied into satisfying asctivity, and they are only consistent in their use of symbolic materials when they are handling poetic imagery that is almost universal ly employed for certain primitive ideas. There is no reason at all, for instance, why a character like Lingard should not be used for two entirely different purposes In two different books like Almayer's Folly and The Out cast of the Islands. In short, there is no reason to ex pect the same kind of uniformity in imagery as one should look for in symbols that are used purposefully by the con scious mind. Principles governing the investigation. Now, as Guerard and other have pointed out, the type of observa tions that will be made in the following chapters can never have anything of the objective certainty that charac terizes textual criticism such as J. D. Gordon has accom plished in the fieH of Conrad.1 On the other hand, such 1 J. D. Gordon, Joseph Conrad: the Making of a Novel ist . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, I9I 4. 0T 98 y Observations are not so facile and irresponsible as Guerard would have tbem. They are based on certain scientific prin ciples which are used to help one get as near the truth as possible in a case where there are so many unknowns. When Conrad tells us that his work is done unconsciously, and when so many critics agree that his stories have genuine dream qualities, one has a right to assume that it is, In deed, dream work. Such activity must have some motivation, and it is generally agreed that unsatisfied emotions supply the moving force behind these dreams. Now when one sees one’s analysis of Conrad’s reaction to the most likely-looking conflict in his life confirmed by the evidence of his reti cences and his sensitiveness to certain subjects, one feels justified in testing out one’s hypotheses on the dream con tent of his books. Again, when it is noted that there are marked similarities between the expectations of the hypo theses and the evidence of the books, and that the factor of frequency is silently applying its own confirmation, one can claim at least, that the laws of chance are point ing in favor of the speculation. Lastly, when it is ob served that the factor of temporal progress is also play ing Its part, and that the evidence seems to built itself into a system over the years, one has a right to feel even more conviction. 99 Method. In examining the books the following method is used: Each book is scanned with the primary question in mind: -What emotion is being satisfied in this story? What, in other words, is the principal mood? To this question are added these others: How is this emotion being satisfied? With whom does the author identify himself? How are the other figures being used in relation to this principal figure? Care must be taken, of course, not to push an analysis too far, because the artist works over his dream as he writes. He changes, and eliminates, and adds in the cause of artistic perfection. The product, therefore, Is never pure dream, and the desires of the .■unconscious are often painfully countermanded by the in tellect . Special attention is given to the type of emotional pattern that occurs over and over again in the books, and when the emotional situation looks like a fantastic shadow of the neurotic situation, one feels justified in making comparisons. Of course, it is Inevitable that the mind of the investigator will tend to be mesmerised by the idea that he has enunciated. He will tend to look for and stress the factors in the books which bear out the expect ations of the hypothesis. Care is taken to guard against this possibility by restricting the attention to emotions 100 connected only with dominant themes. Exceptions are made, however, in the case of passages that seem to have especial dream character, and in the case of passages that are sus piciously charged with unnecessary emotion— passages that seemed to have forced their way into the book with ruth less irrelevance. CHAPTER II ALMAYER1S POLLY In September, 1889* when Conrad was idle and lonely in London, he began to write. It was natural enough that people should lean out of his memories to talk to him at such a time, but it is very strange that Almayer should be the one to haunt him. After all, most people would find Almayer the one person in almost any group whom they simply could not bother with. No amount of manipulating could transform him into a hero, or a villain, or a figure of tragedy, or even a figure of fun. It was not that Conrad felt that he was a suitable subject for his art either, because, at the time, he had no though of publication.- * • Why did he choose Almayer, of all people? It was simply that Almayer suited Conrad's mood. He found it very easy to dream about him, and to transfer his own feelings to this indolent Dutchman. What was this mood? And why was it so natural to Conrad? There were two stagnant, melancholy pools of thought into which a good deal of his thinking must have drained A Personal Record, p. 68. of got/thesm C alttom te 102 at that time: the loss of his beloved command, and the prospect of his uncle’s death in the near future. When Conrad reached Melbourne in March, 1889* on what was to be his last voyage in the ”Otago,” there was news waiting him from his uncle. The report of the latter’s condition was serious enough to frighten Conrad into resigning his com mand and setting out immediately for Europe. When he reached London, however, he was forced to wait a long time before arrangements could be made for him to enter Poland. It was during the period of waiting that he began to write Almayer’s Folly. There is no doubt that Conrad was very fond of his uncle, but much more than affection lay behind his concern. There may have been other reasons for his resignation from the command of the ”0tago,” but it seems very likely that it was the melancholy prospect of his uncle’s death that set Conrad writing. If this Is true, it is reasonable to assume that it had deep psychological import for him, and that Almayer’s Folly holds the clue to this meaning. One has only to review the circumstances that lay behind Conrad’s relationship with his uncle to realize that his feelings towards this man must have been complex and contradictory. He was, in a way, responsible for Conrad’s neurosis. He had introduced all the ideas that at the same time so enticed and repelled the young lad. Every neurotic emotion was somehow associated with his Uncle Thaddeus. A brief review of some of these feelings will make the mood of Almayer's Folly more Intelligible. Rejection of father. In Fart I it was pointed out how the turmoil of love, and loneliness, and fear ming ling with the desire to escape and fierce pride reached a climax in the hart of the orphan when his father died and was honored as a national hero. Then came the sudden change new surroundings, new relationships, a groping for security; and with these things new doctrines--doctrines that were terribly new--cruel doctrines that cut his past to ribbons. His father was no longer something to be loved and honored. He had contributed to young Conrad’s heredity something that was to be feared and disowned. His influence, burled deep within Joseph's very life cells, was to be wrestled with till the dawn of maturity. It is not strange that the boy's protective reaction against this painful exper ience was a repression of an unusually morbid kind. It would only be natural to assume that he, would feel resent ment against the uncle who forced this conflict upon him, and who lanced the wound so often. Leaving Poland. It has been shown also how, before he left Poland, the whole conflict must have been renewed l o l l - and sharpened when the freedom of the city was conferred upon him in redognition of his father’s patriotism. No doubt the incident was an ominous thing to the boy. It would make him suspect to the Russian authorities, and perhaps he could feel the unwelcome mantle of leadership falling upon him, and see the shadowy figure of destiny moving towards him out of the mist of that half-forgotten past when life had been more like a nightmare than anything else. No doubt his uncle felt something of this, too, for he urged the boy to get out of Poland. The boy’s ultimate reastion is well known. He felt an irresistible urge to escape from all this at any cost, to escape into a world where there were no authorities to appear suddenly with ominous intent, where one did not feel forever squeezed between an unspeakable past and a disastrous future, where duty was simple, where contrary voices were not forever whispering in his ears, in his heart. But who knows what was his immediate reaction to this advice? The boy had known the security of a home for only a short period. His dismay- at the need to leave it and go abroad could very well have been projected toward the uncle in a bitter re sentment that love and affection would cause him to repress, and even feel guilty about. His uncle a supporting figure. Balancing all this io5 resentment, however, was the conception of his -uncle as a supporting figure. Oonrad had taken refuge in his argu ments, and he had long ago learned how to place his uncle between his guilt and his conscience. It was consequently almost unbearable to have to face the prospect of his death. It was a most threatening situation, and Conrad must have felt terribly alone in his trouble. The threat of the Korzeniowski blood. To complicate his feelings -still further, there was the issue of his car eer. In the end, Conrad had needed more than his uncle's arguments to sustain him, and he had seized on this myster ious urge for the sea and fought for It doggedly. In the process the whole thing had become irrevocably associated with the Korzeniowski strain in him. In his uncle's eyes, this was another manifestation of that wild recklessness that had been the undoing of Apollo and his brothers and their father before them. He had taught Conrad to have a morbid fear of it. And now all these years had slipped by and he had accomplished nothing to justify his fierce loyalty to the sea. True, he had achieved his captaincy. But he had lost it again now. Besides, he was probably only too well aware of the restlessness within him that was driving him from ship to ship and from locality to locality. It is not likely that he had sufficient insight io6 to recognize this impulse as a neurotic expression of his conflicts. It is much more likely that he thought of it as a manifestation of his dread Korzeniowski heritage. The need for expressi on. Although it is true that lack of adjustment is the very essence of neurosis, neuro tics achieve and take refuge in an emotional orbit that is more or less constant. Consequently when anything occurs to change this orbit, the subject becomes seriously dis turbed. Bobrowski's death promised to change the very axis of Conrad’s complex. It was a threatening prospect, and Conrad was seriously disturbed. His feelings about his uncle were so confused and so many of them were re pressed and hidden from himself that he felt a need at this time to express them. The act of writing a book provided him with the only kind of arena where the conscious feel ings could mingle and strive with the unconscious ones. In the opinion of the present writer, it was this need that lay behind Conrad’s mysterious impulse to begin his writing career. He certainly did not understand his own reaction. He speaks of it this way: The necessity which impelled me was a hidden, ob scure necessity, a completely masked and unaccount able phenomenon.1 A -^QPsonal Record, p. 68. 107 It will be noted that Almayer1s Folly provided an ideal vehicle to objectify these emotions. Essence of the story. Almayer* s Folly is the stoiy of a man who ceased to struggle because he found life too difficult. Years earlier, when Almayer was a mere youth, he had allowed Captain Tom Lingard to shape his destiny for him. In exchange for an easy security, he agreed to marry a Malay woman, who was a protege of Lingard*s. Then, at the captain's request, he went to take charge of a trad ing post on a river discovered by Lingard. While Lingard was there, the Arabs and the Malays were obsequious in their respect, but during his absence they gradually got out of hand and became a threat. At the time of the story, Lingard had been away so long that Almayer could only sup pose he was dead. With gloomy apprehension he watched his enemies becoming daily too much for him. He watched with a sort of indolent despair while life itself drifted past on the bosom of the river. His only hopes lay in his beautiful daughter, and In the promises of a certain Malay prince, Dain Maroola, who was to join with him in a last treasure-seeking venture. But Dain fell a victim to the Dutch "Authorities," of whom Almayer had a positive phobia, lost his ship and became a fugitive. In the meantime, Nina, the daughter of Almayer, for whom a career in Europe was planned, gradually allowed the native blood in her to gain sway. Finally she eloped with Dain. They fled across the sea to the kingdom of his father. Almayer*s reaction was regressive. He determined to forget everything and die. fle burned his home in an effort to destroy every reminder of Nina, and joined company with a Chinese opium smoker. But even opium was not enough to enable him to forget. Death, however, brought him release at last. One has only to write down the elements of the story to see them as grotesque shadows of Conrad* s own emotional situation. Lingard, Who by the way never appears in person is the dominant figure. Everything^depends on him. He is the god who upholds Almayer*s world. In a sense, he is Almayer’s creator. Almayer depends on him for his very sustenance. It was Lingard who had imposed upon Almayer his situation of isolation among enemies and foreigners. He was even responsible for the warring strains in Almayer’ daughter: native and European. Life was difficult as long as Lingard was alive, but it was possible. He could shield Almayer.from all his enemies, the Arabs, the Malays, and even the "Dutta. Authorities." He could in a measure control the native strain in Nina. But when he died, everything gradually got out of control. Almayer*s reaction was in fantile. He simply gave up and let life suffocate him. It is hardly necessary to point out the parallels. 109 Conrad blamed his uncle for his whole situation. It was he who had planted in his heart the seeds of all his con flicts. He had advised expatriation. He had made Conrad so painfully aware of the two strains within him that every evidence of the Korzeniowski blood became the cause of morbid fear. On the other hand, there was no one else so necessary to Conrad. Thaddeus Bobrowski was Conrad’s shield. As long as his uncle was alive there was some one to fend off the critics. No wonder that this expatriated Pole felt vague resentment mingle In his grief and distress when he contemplated the prospective death of his Uncle ThaddeusI Mood. What strikes one immediately as one tries to get hold of the mood of Almayer’s Folly Is the fact of Its vagueness. One finds oneself groping for something tangible to begin with. The part played by the reader himself is a curious one. He seems to be part of Almayer’s household, an intimate but contemptuous observer. Yet, somehow the fate of this indolent, dependent Dutchman which ought not to be of any real concern to the reader, takes hold of his sympathies in an absurd way. It is as if the mind were in sisting on a detached, half-amused, half-disgusted scrutiny, while the heart cannot be persuaded to withhold its sympathy. The two emotions come most sharply in conflict at the very end when Almayer sinks to the level of the Chinese opium 110 smoker in an effort to forget. Against one's better judg ment, the heart extends its pity. That, one feels, was precisely what Conrad did. In some of the later books--for instance, in Lord Jim--specific issues emerge quite clearly even where the atmosphere is most suffocating. But the mood of Almayer's Folly lacks these more obvious specific constituents. One discerns their shapes vaguely in the jungle haze of pessi mism that never lifts through the course of the book. There is the feeling of defeat, of standing on the edge of life, watching it drift past without having any part in it, of being frozen in such an attitude of' dependency, of enter taining feelings of weak, futile, petulant anger against fate, against people, against self. In typical Conrad fashion, he causes this mood to begin its subtle, infiltrating movement into the reader's mind through the initial descriptions: Such were Almayer’s thoughts as, standing on the verandah of his new but already decaying house--that last failure of his life--he looked on the broad river. There was no tinge of gold on It this even ing, for it had been swollen by the rains, and rolled an angry and muddy flood under his inattentive eyes, carrying small drift-wood and big dead logs, and whole uprooted trees with branches and foliage, a- mongst which the water swirled and roared angrily. One of those drifting trees grounded on the shelv ing shore, just by the house, and Almayer, neglect ing his dream, watched it with languid interest. The tree swung round, amid the hiss and the foam of the water, and soon getting free of the obstruction began Ill to move down stream again, rolling slowly over, raising upwards a long, denuded branch, like a hand lifted in mute appeal to heaven against the river’s brutal and unnecessary violence. Almayer’s interest in the fate of that tree increased rapidly. He leaned over to see if it would clear the low point below. It did; then he drew back, thinking that now its course was free down to the sea, and he envied the lot of that inanimate thing now growing small and indistinct in the deepening darkness. As he lost sight of it altogether, he began to wonder how far out to sea it would drift. Would the current carry it north or south? South, probably, till it drifted in sight of Celebes, as far as Macassar, perhaps. One is never allowed to forget that drifting river throughout the whole story. It moves forward relentlessly, carrying everything before it, but Almayer remains with his Folly, growing older without having lived, the very symbol of futility. This general mood Is the most superficial aspect of Conrad’s neurosis. It is the sum total of all his emotions. It is what he had been aware of for years. Long before he had begun to distinguish the solo voices, he had listened to this combined chorus, had heard it dully, as it were, through many closed doors— a deep, sustained chant full of minor chords of unrelieved pessimism. But as he began to write, he distinguished and portrayed more and more of the individual emotions that contributed to this pessimistic mood. Even in Almayer’s Folly such work is begun. 2 Ibid. . P. 112 Mixed feelings towards Lingard. Almayer’s feelings for Lingard are the most important of these emotions. They have a curious quality of elusiveness, and no quota tion would give a clue to their importance. Nevertheless they dominate the whole book. Everything that happens to Almayer happens because of Lingard. Throughout the story one can hear the echo of Almayer1s frustrated longing for him. It sounds distinctly in the tone of filial gratitude that is almost surly, and even his petulance and resent ment and the dull anger that comes in the realization that his protector has allowed himself to get killed is not enough to smother It. It is a curiously convincing melange of emotions, and one feels sure that this is so because it is almost an exact transcript of Conrad's feelings for his uncle. Isolation. Conrad's sense of guilt proved to be a very complex thing when he wrote his way into its heart. Its most superficial aspect was the vague feeling of un worthiness that possessed him, a feeling of inadequacy, of being rejected by all the world. The conscious mind, which is conveniently dense In such matters, related these emotions to Conrad's feelings of expatriation, of being cut off from his kind forever by physical circumstances. All these feelings are projected upon Almayer: the vague 113 enmity of his surroundings, the overwhelming sense of isolation, the despair that comes with the realization that it will always be thus. This feeling of enmity is hard to particularize, but one has a conviction that all the world is against Almayer. The vagueness of this feeling is a source of irritation to the reader at times. There are the Arabs led by the oily-tongued Abdulla, and the Malays under Lakamba, and the crafty Babal&chi. They are always plot ting and scheming and menacing, but it is all so indefi nite, so much a matter for tomorrow rather than today, so far on the other side of the river, that the whole effect is to give the reader a depressing conviction that things are getting to be altogether too much for Almayer. But that is not all. One feels a vague uneasiness that the Dutch 1 1 Authorities1 ' are ready at any minute to pounce upon the household of this unhappy man. Even in his own family there are enemies: his native wife and her shadowy ser vants. Then, as if that were not enouigh, Conrad makes the very forest inimical, nay, dark and menacing: As he skirted in his weary march the edge of the forest, he glanced, now and then into its dark shade, so enticing in its deceptive appearance of coolness, so repellent with its unrelieved gloom, where lay, entombed and rotting, countless generations of trees, and where their successors stbod as if mourning, in dark green foliage,, immense and helpless, Hi*. awaiting their turn . . . An acrid smell of damp earth and decaying leaves took him by the throat, and he drew back with a scared face, as if he had been touched by the breath of Death itself. The very air seemed dead in there -- heavy and stag nating, poisoned with the corruption of countless ages It is not strange that in the midst of all this enmity one should be depressed by a strong sense of isola tion. Curiously enough it extends to one’s visual imagery. One carries away a picture of a dirty, hurrying river hedged in to the very banks by forest, and winding in troubled fulness for mile upon lonely mile. Then sudden ly, there is that incredible compound of Almayer's cut out of the solid forest, incongruously, p^^rposelessly, It seems. And on the verandah, the vague, ponderous figure of Almayer sweats In the cloudy afternoon humidity. He is a prisoner of circumstances, condemned to live there, ^ a solitary European, for the term of his natural life. One can hear the anguish that throbbed in Conrad’s sen tence of- eternal expatriation in the words of Almayer: "Arrest I" laughed Almayer, discordantly. "Hal Hal Hal Arrest 1 Why, I have been trying to get out of this infernal place for twenty years, and I can’t,. You hear man! I can’t, and never shall 1 Neveri"H- ^ Ibid., pp. 166-6 7. ^ Ibid., p. l I j - 2 . - n5 Two strains of heredity. As a result of his uncle’s continual preaching, Conrad had a morbid fear of the Korzeniowski strain in his heredity. Throughout his years at sea, the voice of his 1X0016 was forever catching up with him. He felt that he must get on! He must prove himself worthy. Yet his restlessness and his continual changing of ships seemed to proclaim to him that this strain was triumphing. On the other hand, the idea had a secret fascination for him. All that was romantic in him welcomed the blood of his father, and no doubt feel ings of exultation mingled with his fear. These two emotions are powerfully expressed in the story of the struggle between the Malay and the Eur opean in Mina, the daughter of Almayer. One is kept aware of this struggle for many pages of the book, and one is made to feel that the more primitive, the less approved strain, is slowly gaining the ascendancy. To Mina it brings exultation. She enjoys the mingled emo tions of freedom, growing certainty, and complete, exult ing abandonment. But to Almayer it brings only an over powering sense of defeat. A single quotation will have to suffice: For years she had stood between her mother and her father, the one so strong in her weakness, the other so weak where he could have been strong. Be tween those two beings so dissimilar, so antagonistic, 116 she stood with mute heart wondering and angry at the fact of her own existence. It seemed so un reasonable, so humiliating to be flung there in that settlement and to see the days rush by into the past, without a hope, a desire, or an aim that would justify the life she had to endure in ever growing weariness. She had little belief and no sympathy for her father’s dreams; but the savage ravings of her mother chanced to strike a respon sive chord, deep down somewhere in her despairing heart; and she dreamed dreams of her own with the persistent absorption of a captive thinking of liberty within the walls of his prison cell. With the coming of Dain she found the road to freedom by obeying the voice of the new-born impulses, and with surprised joy she thought she could read in his eyes the answer to all the questionings of her heart. She understood now the reason and the aim of life; and in the triumphant unveiling of that mystery she threw away disdainfully her past with its sad thought, its biiiter feelings and its faint affections, now withered and dead in contact with her fierce passion.5 Regression. Conrad’s uncle did not die on the occasion referred to at the beginning of this chapter, but he did die before Almayer’s Polly was finished. It is significant that the last three chapters telling the story of Almayer’s attitude to the loss of Lingard, and Nina’s rejection of the Eur0pean in her was written soon after the news of his uncle’s passing reached him. It seems fairly clear that Conrad’s attitude to his loss was projected accurately upon Almayer. His letters to Marguerite Poradowska reveal his attitude of profound ^ Ibid., p. 152. 117 pessimism and utter hopelessness, and long before he met Jessie Conrad he had formed the pattern of crumpling be fore difficulties and his fears. More than once he ex pressed the wish that he had never been born.6 In short, he was in certain respects not very different from the indolent Almayer whom he despised and pitied so much. Indeed, it is probable that he got a good deal of satis faction in contemplating his own sufferings through Almayer. In any case, Almayer’s reaction is striking. He wanted no more part in this world and Its struggles. He wanted only to forget. Conrad depicts this desire with a power that is suggestive of dream-like expressions of the unconscious: Now she was gone his business was to forget, and he had a strange notion that it should be done sys tematically and in order. To Ali’s great dismay he fell on his hands and knees and, creeping along the sand, erased carefully with his hand all traces of Nina’s footsteps. He piled up small heaps of sand, leaving behind him a line of miniature graves right down to the water. After burying the last slight imprint of Nina’s slipper he stood up, and turning his face towards the headland where he had last seen the prau, he made an effort to shout out loud again his firm resolve to never forgive . . . He brought his foot do?m with a stamp. He was a firm man--firm as a rock. Let her go. He never had a daughter. He would forget. He was forget ting already.* ^ Anon., "Conrad at Thirty-one," Living Age, CCCXLIII (September, 1932), 82-83. 7 A Personal Record, pp. 195-96. 113 But Almayer could not forget. He could not forget, even though, he burned his house and with it every physical trace of Nina's presence. He could not forget, even though he sought oblivion from the ”great smoke.” In that manner did A3-mayer move into his new house. He took possession of the new ruin, and in the undying folly of his heart set himself to wait in anxiety and pain for that forgetfulness which was so slow to come. He had done all he could. Every vestige of Nina's existence had been destroyed; and now with every sunrise he asked himself whether the longed-for-oblivion would come before sunset, whether it would come before he died? He wanted to live only long enough to be able to forget, and the tenacity of his memory filled him with the dread and horror of death; for should it come before he could accomplish the purpose of his life he would have to remember for everl He also longed for loneliness. He wanted to be alone. But he was not. In the dim light of the rooms with their closed shutters, in the bright sunshine of the verandah, wherever he went, whichever way he turned, he saw the small figure of a little maiden with pretty olive face, with long black hair, her little pink robe slipping off her shoulders, her big eyes looking up at him in the tender trustfulness of a petted child . . . One morning Ford found him sitting on the floor of the verandah, his back against the wall, his legs stretched stiffly out, his arms hanging by his side. His expressionless face, his eyes open wide with immobile pupils, and the rigidity of his pose, made him look like an immense man-doll broken and flung there out of the way. As Ford came up the steps he turned his head slowly. ”Pord.” he murmured from the floor, "I cannot forget.”o There are many suggestions in the life and work of Conrad of this desire to escape from life, to regress *?' Pages. 201-202, 20^. 119 to the period of pre-natal safety in the womb. Freudian psychologists tell us that the sea is a primitive symbol for the womb.9 It may be that there is a connection here with Conrad’s inexplicable yearning for the sea. It is significant that there is more than one instance in his 1 o books of people like Renouard u who desired to swim out to sea till they sank in the bosom of the ocean. It will be noticed that in the passage quoted on page 110 Almayer envied the lot of the log that was drifting down the river and out to sea. And in more than one place there are dream-like passages in which a death wish is expressed in connection with dark places and the image of falling into deep ravines.^ Here is one from Almayer* s Folly: A strange fancy had taken possession of Almayer’s brain, distracted by this new misfortune. It seemed to him that for many years he had been falling into a deep precipice. Day after day, month after month, year after year, he had been falling, falling, fall ing; it was a smooth round black thing, and the black walls had been rushing upwards with wearisome rapidity; a great rush, the noise of which he fancied he could hear yet; and now, with an awful shock, he had reached the bottom, and behold I he was alive and whole, and Dain was dead with all his bones broken . . . . He seemed somehow- to himself to be standing on one side, a little way off, looking at a certain Almayer who was in great trouble. Poor, poor fellow’ W 9 See, for instance, A.'A. Brill, tr. and ed., The Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, p. 395. 10 hero 0f the short story, "A Planter of Malata.” 11 A See, for instance, Heart of Darkness. Why doesn’t he cut his throat? He wished to en courage him; he was very anxious to see him lying dead over that other corpse.^--*- One observation may be made on the general nature of the emotions expressed in this book. They are many and they are less specific than in some of the later books like Under Western Eyes, for instance, where the need to confess is treated in great detail. Such vagueness is to be expected in a first book like Almayer1s Folly, for here Conrad is just coming to grips with his repressions. One would expect him at first to be aware of nothing more definite than a vague feeling of depression like that which overtakes a man when he knows something is worrying him, but cannot, for the moment, decide what it is. Later, as he continued to write, one would expect Conrad to begin to discern the vague outlines of his deeper repressions, and to become more specific in his emotional outlets. Finally, it is not outside the bounds of possibility that he should write himself clean of his neurosis. And that, to some extent, is what Conrad did. 11 Pages 99-100. Chapter III THE OUTCAST OP THE ISLANDS In Almayer1s Folly, Conrad found the gateway into the shadowy regions where the inner drama of his life was continually being enacted. His second excursion took him well beyond the fringes of this strange new land, for in The Outcast of the Islands he began to come to grips with some of the more important elements of his conflict. Fewer emotions are dealt with, the theme is more definite, and the whole story moves more surely towards a precon ceived goal: Willems' betrayal of Lingard, and the former's subsequent punishment. Willems represents an aspect of Conrad's past for which he had nothing but disapproval, and the reader is led to take a more detached attitude towards Willem's fate at first. He looks on with a feel ing of cheerful contempt, but it Is an attitude that Conrad cannot sustain. Long before the story is over, he has won over the sympathies of his reader for this strange outcast, who found circumstances too much for him. Plot. When the fatherly Captain Lingard found Willems in trouble, he carried him off to Sambir and left him with Almayer till the scandal in which he was involved 122 should be forgotten. Long months of Idleness and ennui prepared Wiliams to succomb to the fascinations of the Malay maiden, Aissa. For her sake he betrayed the secret of Lingard1s passage up the river Pantai. Lingard re turned to thrash Willems and to maroon him up-river with Aissa, till death released him. Emotions. Willems Is the emotional centre of of gravity in this story. Two major stresses oppose each other. They are the fascination that bewitched Willems in the presence of Aissa, and the turmoil of remorse and fear that all but destroys a guilty soul waiting for pun ishment. Aissa is at. once Ifillem's delight and his shame, his excuse and the bitter cause of his undoing. This book is written with some of the bitter emotions that had influenced Conrad's moods for a long time. They belonged to the upper strata of his repres sions. He had betrayed his father by joining forces with his uncle, and by yielding to the fascination of the sea. No one was more familiar than he was with the tumoil of remorse and shame in Willems' heart. No one knew better what is was to live with the shadow of coming punishment. One would not be at all surprised if a shad-, owy father figure stalked menacingly through Conrad's dreams, and mysteriously troubled the waters of his most peaceful moods. 123 Ajssa. It is not suggested that Aissa was a symbol of Conrad's desire for the sea, for the unconscious does not - choose symbols in the real sense of the term. It is suggested, however, that the curious little cluster of emotions that were associated with Conrad's feeling for the sea, found in Aissa a medium for their expression. A comparison of these emotions with Willems' feelings for Aissa will support this conviction. When the idea of the sea first occurred to Conrad, it came in the guise of something alluring and incredibly romantic. He looked through it as through the barred gates of Poland into the wide freedom of life untrammeled. But all these shining associations soon became tarnished when he exposed his idea to the scrutiny of others. It began to be numbered among the forbidden things. It be came associated with the disreputable Korseniowski strain in him, and it acquired a sense of taboo. Later, when he became a sailor, his feelings seem to have fluctuated. The idea walked in company with romance and adventure In his youth, but it soon became associated with his guilty secret. It was the very symbol of his loneliness and iso lation. Ford Madox Ford, who probably knew only some of Conrad's moods, insisted that Conrad hated the sea.^ No F. M. Ford, Joseph Conrad: A Personal Remembrance, p. lllf. 12k doubt in some moods he loved, it and found consolation there. But how often he must have realized that the com panions of the forecastle, and later even his fellow off icers, had not a -thought in common with him! How often he must have felt that he was hopelessly alienated from them, that they could not understand a single one of the impulses that moved him I This is an unusually complex prescription. Yet in the laboratory of the imagination it is prepared with cunning and precision, and presented in the Aissa-Willems relationship. That exactitude is more than a coincidence. It is the work of the neurotic emotions stirring the images of the memory and the imagination to capricious activity. Willems was feeling oppressed by his surroundings on the Pantai. He was di sturbed by the vague menace of the Arabs and the Malays, and he suffered from the sense of being confined, of being sought for by authorities. Suddenly he came upon Aissa. She appealed to him as some thing incredibly romantic, something irresistibly alluring, a means of escape from the stifling atmosphere of Sambir. Her very proximity awakened a new and more vivid ’ Willems, but when he yielded to those fascinations, he felt the shadow of moral taboo. After all, she was native, and consequently degrading, forbidden. 125 Later she became identified with his guilt and degradation. She was a symbol of his isolation and he began to hate her. Prom that time forward his feelings for her fluctuated. In some moods he felt fear and loath ing. Sometimes quite suddenly she regained all her ini tial allure. Then her image once more became mingled with the image of himself as an outcast, and he hated her and spurned her. Three quotations will help to illustrate some of these changing moods. Here, for instance, is a passage that tells of his mingled emotions at the time of yield ing to Aissa. It might equally well be a metaphorical expression of the moment when Conrad yielded to the allur ing yet forbidden idea of the sea: He seemed to be surrendering to a wild creature the unstained purity of his life, of his race, of his civilization. He had a notion of bding lost amongst shapeless things, that were dangerous and ghastly. He struggled with the sense of certain defeat— lost his footing— fell back into darkness. With a faint cry and an upward throw of his arms he gave up as a tired swimmer gives up: because the swamped craft is gone from under his feet; be cause the night is dark and the shore .is far— be cause death is better than strife.^ Here is an expression of the reversion of feeling-- strong, yet not strong enough to overcome the lure: 2 Pages 80-8l. 126 He listened to the shuffle of footsteps going away, and staggered to his feet, mute with the ex cess of his passionate anger against that being so savage and so charming; loathing her, himself, ev erybody he had ever known; the earth, the sky, the very air he drew into his oppressed chest; loathing it because it made him live, loathing her because she made him suffer. • But he could not leave the gate through which she had passed.33 And here is an expression of the sickening real ization that he had sold himself into an association in which he could not hope for the slightest sign of spirit ual communion of soul with soul: Would his ideas ever change so as to agree with her own notions of what was becoming, proper and respectable? He was really afraid they would, in time. It seemed to him awful. She would never change! This manifestation of her sense of pro prieties was another sign of their hopeless diver sity; something like another step downwards for him. She was too different from him. He was so civilized! It struck him suddenly that they had nothing in common— not a thought, not a feeling; he could not make clear to her the simplest motive of any act of hi s. 4- There is another aspect of this whole relation ship which is worth noting. The sea was associated with Conrad's guilty secret. Indeed, in a sense It was his secret. It was a disguise to hide his cowardice. In this connection the following passage is significant. What makes it particularly striking is that it is com- 3 Page 156. 4- Page 128. 127 pletely irrelevant to the story. One cannot help notic ing that it is overcharged with emotional connotations, but the point is that they are all gratuitous, because Aissa had no such confession to make as is here suggested. This is a case of an insistent emotion being left without a vehicle of expression. It simply hitches a ride where i t can: She came up close to Lingard, with the wild and stealthy aspect of a lunatic longing to whisper out an insane secret— one of those misshapen, heart rending, and ludicrous secrets; one of those thoughts that, like monsters — cruel, fantastic, and mournful, wander about terrible and unceasing in the night of madness. Lingard looked at her, astounded but un flinching. She spoke in his face, very low.5 Lingard. Lingard is the figure of an indulgent father betrayed by a selfish son and transformed by a guilty conscience into a nightmare of vengeance. This part of the story was written by the most fearful of all the-emo tions of Conrad’s complex. It is like a nightmare of a child who has sinned in the absence of a stern father, and who is waiting in dread for his return. Conrad must have ached like a disgraced child for reconciliation with the father whose image persistently turhed its face from him. That is doubtless the source of the masochistic tendencies Page 253 < 128 that recur from time to time in his hooks. Like a child, he knew that punishment stood between him and reconcilia tion > and he longed for punishment so that the way might be open for reconciliation. This emotion is strikingly portrayed in the Willeras-Lingard relationship. Guilt and punishment. Prom the beginning there are interesting overtones in this basic father-son rela tionship. It begins in a kind of surly submission and half gratitude. Then, as individual rights begin to as sert themselves, there is a process of drifting free that is not without its feelings of uneasiness. These feelings rise steadily to a pitch that is almost unbearable after the betrayal. In Conrad's usual way, they are projected on the screen of nature so that we feel the full weight of their ominousness. Menace. Here is a typical extract: The night was very dark. For the first time in many months the East Coast slept unseen by the stars under a veil of motionless cloud that, driven before the first breath of the rainy monsoon, had drifted slowly from the eastward all afternoon; pursuing the declining sun with its masses of black and grey that seemed to chase the light with wicked intent, and with ominous and gloomy steadiness, as though conscious of the message of violence and turmoil they carried. At the sun's disappearance below the western horizon, the immense cloud, in quickened motion, grappled with the glow of retreating lights and rolling down to the clear and jagged outline of the distant mountains, hung arrested above the 129 steaming forests; hanging low, silent and menacing over the unstirring tree-tops withholding the bless ing of rain, nursing the wrath of its thunder; un decided— as if brooding over its own power for good or for evil.6 Indeed, "menace," which is the keynote of this passage, is the keynote of the descriptive passages in the book; for here the emphasis is not so much on guilt as upon punishment. The whole book waits for it. One is oppressed by the sense of delay when Willems is wait ing for Lingard. And while he waits there is fear. Pear. He was in the grip of horrible fear; a fear whose cold hand robs its victim of all will and of all power; of all wish to escape, to resist, or to move; which destroys hope and despair alike, and holds the empty and useless carcase as if in a vice under the coming stroke.' Did Conrad actually dream of father figures who came with awful menace, one wonders, or was it only in his literary day-dreams? Passages like these contain the emotions of nightmares: Tell me, Rajah Laut, do you know the fear without voice— the fear of silence--the fear that comes when there is no one near--where there is no battle, no cries, no angry faces or armed hands anywhere? . . . The fear from which there is no escapeio 6 Page 213. 7 Page 252. ® Page li4-9. 130 And: It was the unreasoning fear of this glimpse into the unknown thing, into those motives, impulses, desires he had ignored, hut that had lived in the - breasts of despised men, close by his side, and were revealed to him for a second, to be hidden ~ again behind the black mists of doubt and deception. Punishment. When Lingard comes at last, the sit uation exploits so many significant emotions that it is impossible to refer to them all. It is noticeable that Aissa meets Lingard to plead for Willems. She represents the lure of adventure that drew the young Conrad so ir resistibly. But it is vain. Lingard is bent on dealing with the culprit directly. The meeting itself has some thing of the atmosphere of a dream, for the fear of death, and punishment, and the unknown becomes suddenly reduced, and Willems sees the familiar and fatherly in the old man. The reader senses that he desires nothing so passionately as reconciliation. That is the reason why he invites, his punishment by his refusal to defend himself. And that was doubtless Conrad’s unconscious feeling about his father. The idea is repeated so often in his books. Like Lord Jim, he felt that he had 1 1 jumped”, but he would prove his cour- age by facing the music. Jim was desperately anxious to 9 Page IJ4. 9; ' . 131 make that point to Marlow, just as Willems is anxious to make it to Lingard. But Willems cannot find even the shadow of that reconciliation. There Is something final and awful about the way those mighty fists fall. But the punishment is not in the physical suffering. It is in Willems’ rejection by Lingard, and In the awful sense of shame that is left him as the dread heritage of fate: You are not fit to go amongst people. Who could suspect, who could guess, who could imagine what’s in you? . . . To me you are not Willems, the man I befriended and helped through thick and thin, and thought much of . . .You are not a human being that may be destroyed or forgiven. You are a bitter thought, a something without a bodv and that must be hidden . . . You are my shame. Masochism. Throughout the book Willems seemed to provoke alternately Conrad’s pity and a hysterical desire to punish him. If one accepts the proposition that Conrad was reluctantly Identifying himself with Willems, there is, at the end of the book, a clear example of this urge to punish himself that has already been noticed in Conrad’s work. In the following extract Almayer is speaking, and it seems likely that Almayer still represents an aspect of Conrad. And now, throwing his body over the rail, he shouted Impudently into the night, turning his face towards that far-off and invisible slab of imported granite upon which Lingard had thought fit to record God’s mercy and Willems’ escape. Page 275. 132 "Father was wrong— wrong!" he yelled. "I want you to smart for it. You must smart for it I Where are you, Willems? Hey? . . Hey? . . Where there is no mercy for you-— I hopei" "Hope," repeated in a whispering echo the startled forests, the river and the hills; and Almayer, who stood waiting, with a smile of tipsy attention on his lips, heard no other answer.11 Is not this the voice of that part of Conrad which never acquiesced to the deprecating words of his uncle, screaming for punishment on Conrad the traitor? Yet all the time another part of Conrad is sorry for himself, re sentful that the misfortune of his birth and of his father's career has thrust such an unhappy conflict upon him. It Is continually pleading for Willems. It makes excuses for his first fall from grace. It emphasizes his boredom, the desperate attraction of Aissa, his terrible isolation, and his great need for some kind of standing in that isolation. Cleansing. There is an interesting piece of symbolism in the description that follows immediately upon the punishment. One would be inclined to pass It over, were it not that it is repeated in a later book, Under Western Eyes, where Razumov comes home from his con fession through a rainstorm and mutters that he is now washed clean. It will be noticed from a piece of des cription quoted on page 129 that while Willems awaited Page 368. 133 the coining of Lingard and his just punishment, the heavens were angry but withheld their rain. Immediately after Lingard meted out punishment upon Vtfillems, the rain came to wash him. He made a few hurried steps up the courtyard and was arrected by an immense sheet of water that fell all at once on him, fell sudden and overwhelming from the clouds, cutting his respiration, streaming over his head, clinging to him, running down his body, off his arms, off his legs. He stood gasping while the water beat him in a vertical downpour, drove on him slanting in squalls, and he felt the drops striking him from above, from everywhere; drops thick, pressed and dashing at him as if flung from all sides by a mob of infuriated hands. Prom under his feet a great vapor of broken water floated up, he felt the ground become soft--melt under him-- and saw the water spring out of the dry earth to meet the water that fell from the somjbre heaven.^ There is nothing permanent about this feeling of cleansing. In both Under Western Eyes and The Outcast of the Islands. death alone will siiffice. There is no sense of finality about the book till death overtakes Willems. It is not till he has paid his debt in full that one Is free to pity him. Regression. There is at least one passage sug gesting regressive tendencies that catches the eye of the reader in this book. It is not associated with the prin cipal theme, but it clamors for attention because it is 12 Page 283. i3ii- a day-dream. Willems is lying with his head in Aissa* s lap, and she is stroking it as a mother might. In this position Willems has a day-dream which expresses the wish that he might grow smaller and smaller and finally vanish- a startling expression of a regressive wish: There was a long interval of silence. She stroked his head with gentle touches, and he lay dreamily, perfectly happy but for the annoyance of an indis tinct vision of a well-known figure; a man going away from him and diminishing in a long perspective of fantastic trees, whose every leaf was an eye looking after that man, who walked away growing smaller, but never getting out of sight for all his steady progress. He felt a desire to see him vanish, a hurried impatience of his disappearance, and he watched for it with a careful and irksome effort. There was something familiar about that figure. WhyI Himselfi He gave a' sudden start and opened his eye s. 3-3 CHAPTER IV TALES OF UNREST In all Conrad’s .writing there is nothing quite so convincing as Lord Jim’s hours of pleading with Marlow as he fights for his lost honor. If anything is a trans cript of an author’s own soul-travailings, it is that. It makes one feel sure that during his long years at sea, Conrad lived over and over again the struggles of those last months in Poland. No doubt he listened to the echo of his own boyish voice pleading the'cause of the sea, and the voice of his conscience pleading the cause of Poland, and mingled with them the voices of his uncle, and his tutor, and his patriotic friends. No doubt he felt again the sudden thrill of his fears as circumstances began to crowd him, and the desperate need to escape at all costs. In some moods he had only fierce condemnation for himself. In other moods he turned to meet the accus ing voices with desperate excuses. One of the most speci ous of these arguments was that circumstances were too much for him, that in his place anyone would have done what he did. Indeed, he pleads this argument most elabor ately in Lord Jim. It became one of the obsessions of 136 his writing life to depict men like Almayer, and Willems, and Lord Jim in circumstances that were too much for them. It |jave him pleasure to write of guilt worse than his own and make it seem excusable through circumstances. The Outpost of Progress, The Idiots, and The Nigger of the Narcissus are all stories with this theme. They were all written in the same period, too, between March, 1896, and February, 1097. The Outpost of Progress. The plot. The essence of the plot of The Outpost of Progress is this: Kayerts and Carlier, two men of very ordinary capabilities and character, were assigned by a trading company to an out post somewhere in the heart of Africa. While they were wrapped about by civilised society, their weaknesses were hidden from them; but the jungle and the long, idle months found them out. The veneer of.social behavior began to wear thin, and their crude instincts were laid bare. When through their indolence and avarice they found them selves acquiescing to slave trading, they were already lost. But it was fear that betrayed them at last--fear and contempt for themselves and each other. A ridiqulous quarrel developed. Carlier threatened Kayerts, who ran around the house in terror. Somehow in a moment of panic 137 a pistol seemed to fire itself, and Kayerts found he had killed an unarmed man. Before he could dispose of the body of Carlier, the long overdue steamer appeared, and the director arrived to find his station chief hanging from the arm of the white cross that he personally had erected over the grave of Kayert1s predecessor. Mood. Conrad's mood in this story is positively sardonic. It is as if he hates Kayerts and Carlier--as if their weakness and inadequacy had betrayed him person ally— as if he had wanted to prove something with them and they had failed him. The fact of the matter is that his bitterness and contempt are all for himself. It is true that fate was cruelly against him as he fought his battle in Poland. Circumstances were crowding him. He was all alone, isolated in his timid reserve. When the ceremony of public recognition thrust its menace at him, he panicked. There were excuses all right. But he had been weak. He despised himself. All these feelings are portrayed in the atmosphere of this story. Indeed, it is all expressed In the very aspect of the forest, its vastness, the way it crowds one with its stifling nearness, its dreadful fecundity, and its mystery; the fact that It provided no way out of an appalling isolation: 138 The river, the forest, all the great land throbbing with life, were like a great emptiness. Even the brilliant sunshine disclosed nothing in telligible. Things appeared and disappeared be fore their eyes in an unconnected and aimless kind of way. The river seemed to come from nowhere and flow nowhither. It flowed through a void. The tempter. One of the remarkable things about this story is the sinister atmosphere that seems to envel ope Makola, the native who really managed the station. He trapped the white men into a slave deal, and they had the ivory and had paid the price by selling their servants as slaves before they knew anything about it. It is an inter esting thing to notice how often this tempter figure oc curs in Conrad. One is reminded of the voice in Lord Jim that Morf has very aptly related to Conrad's uncle, the figure of Mikulin in Under Western Eyes, and the hateful Vladimir in The Secret Agent. Deeply repressed, perhaps, but very much alive, Conrad harbored a fierce resentment against the uncle who tempted him. The total effect of the story is curious. Conrad proves his point at an intellectual level. The jungle was soul-destroying, their isolation was great, time was long, and the tempter was subtle and sinister. Circumstances literally pushed Kayerts over the precipice of crime. He 1 Page 92. 139 was not wicked. He was only weak. His environment was too much for him. Then there was the moment of panic that looked out from behind the deep incompatibility that skulked under their superficial cameraderie: Kayerts looked up quickly. Carlier was smiling with marked insolence. And suddenly it seemed to Kayerts that he had never seen this man before. Who was he? He knew nothing about him. What was he capable of? There was surprising flash of violent emotions within him, as if in the presence of some thing undreamt of, dangerous, and final . . .2 And in a moment he was a murderer without ever having harbored murder in his heart, and now there was no way out to him but through the gateway of death. On the other hand, these men were weak and Conrad could forgive them their weakness. The director of the company left them with these remarks: Look at those two imbeciles. They must be mad at home to send me such specimens. I told those fellows to plant a vegetable garden, build new store houses and fences, and construct a landing stage. I bet nothing will be done! They won’t know how to begin.3 Conrad’s fierce contempt for their weakness endured to the end. Hot even in death is Kayerts an object of pity: His toes were only a couple of inches above the ground; his arms hung stiffly down; he seemed to be standing rigidly at attention, but with one purple cheek playfully posed on the shoulder. And, irre verently, he was putting out a swollen tongue at his Managing Director.4- 2 Page 110. k- Page 110. 3 Page 88 THE IDIOTS The Idiots was one of the stories that Conrad worked at on his honeymoon. His selection of such morbid material from such an environment at subh a time is quite as remarkable as his earlier selection of Almayer when he had the whole of his past to choose from. What seemed to appeal to him was the fact that fate could deal blow on blow to one family. It was inexplicable. It was horrible. Yet it was fascinating. Plot. Jean-Pierre Bacadou returned from the wars to find his parents’ farm poorly tended. He took hold firmly. A gay wedding was followed by the birth of twins that turned out to be idiots. The despair of the parents grew into fear when the third child was also an idiot. The father yielded up his atheism in superstitious awe, and tried the effect of religious observances. But the fourth child was an idiot, too. Blasphemies and drinking were only the outward signs of his personal disintegration. In his bewilderment, and his anger against fate, he poured his scornful reproaches upon his wife. His final approach to parenthood was in the spirit of defiance. His protest ing wife in an ecstasy of fear and horror killed him. Later, almost out of her mind, she leapt out over the cliffs into the sea. The mood of this story betrays the fact that it lip. gave Conrad much, more satisfaction than did The Outpost of Progress. Here he excuses the inexcusable to his own satisfaction. If the theme spelled out by this story says anything, it says that fate forced Susan Bacadou to commit murder. Was not her deed mere self-defence against the heaped up malignity of fate? And was not her punishment enough? That is what Conrad woos us to say, for this story pleads with us as Lord Jim pleaded with Marlow. No doubt it gave him great emotional satisfaction to find excuses for the darkest deeds, for every such success was a kind of reprieve for what he considered to be his own crime. Bitterness. This story is bathed in a bitterness all its own. There is nothing "of the fierce bitterness against the weakness of men. It is bitterness of a more ultimate kind. It is bitterness against fate. The student of Conrad grows quite familiar with the view of man's en vironment and circumstances as something too complex to cope with, but nowhere else in Conrad's writings is he look ing through quite the same eyes as those of the farmer looking out on the farm at Bacadou. They are the eyes of a man who has suddenly lost his faith in God and a purpose ful universe. Conrad tells us how such an experience began to dawn in his own heart: I looked forward to what was coming with an in credulous terror. /The death of his father]? I turned 11±2 my eyes from it; sometimes with success, and yet all the time I had an awful sensation of the inevitable. I had also moments of revolt which stripped off me some of my simple trust in the government of the universe.5 By the time he wrote this story the process was complete in his heart. His years of neurotic distress had long since taught him to see fate as something that strews disasters in the path of men— disasters of just sufficient magnitude to tempt him to struggle agonizingly, futilely. In this story we look out on a world where everything is twisted and ugly just because it has happened to grow that way: Autumn came. The clouded sky descended low upon the black contours of the hills; and the dead leaves danced in spiral whirls under naked trees, till the wind, sighing profoundly laid them to rest in the hollows of the bare valleys. And from morning till night one could see all over the land, black denuded boughs, the boughs gnarled and twisted, as if con torted with pain, swaying sadly between the wet clouds and the soaked earth. The clear and gentle streams of summer days rushed discoloured and raging at the stones that barred the way to the sea; with the fury of madness bent upon suicide. Prom horizon to horizon the great road to the sands lay between the hills in a dull glitter of empty curves, resembling an un- navi gable river of mud. Jean-Bierre went from field to field, moving blurred and tall in the drizzle, or striding on .the crests of rises, lonely and high, upon the gray curtain of drifting clouds, as if he had been pacing along the very edge of the -universe. He looked at the black earth, at the earth mute and promising, at the mysterious earth doing its work of life in death-like stillness under the veiled sorrow of ^ Notes on Life and Letters p. 171• 114-3 the sky. And it seemed to him that a man worse than childless there was no promise in the fertility of the fields, that from him the earth e&caped, de fied him, frowned at him like the clouds, sombre and hurrying above his head . . . He turned homewards, going straight at the roof of his dwelling, visible between the enlaced skeletons of trees. As he swung his legs over the stile a cawing flock of birds set tled slowly on the field; dropped down behind his ✓ back, noiseless and fluttering, like flakes of soot. Against this background, man becomes insignificant and altogether inadequate. Indeed, Jean-Pierre himself felt this: "Having to face alone his own fields, he felt the inferiority of man who passes away before the clod that r e m a i n s . 117 There is no hope for him. Tragedy, we are made to feel, will stalk him leisurely in the darkness. His part is simply to wait, to wait while fate like some great Frankenstein, immense in its power and unpredictable in its typhoon-like frenzies, stumbles on without malice or significance of any kind. Religion. The emotions that centre in Jean-Pierre’s attitude towards religion are worth noticing, because it is the only story in which such emotions find expression. It begins in the dull atheism of a soldier and man of the world who has seen too much. This feeling is succeeded by the shamed and half-angry faith, the superstitious faith 6 Pages 70-71 7 Page 70. iit4 of a man who believes with his heart against the testimony of his head. "See what your God will do for us. Pray for some masses," says Jean-Pierre before the birth of the girl.® When the newcomer proves to be an idiot also, Jean-Pierre yields in his rage to a childish display of b l a s p h e m y .° The whole incident is reflected in the sen sitive religious conscience of his wife, and we are made to feel that the final tragedy stems from this act. Al together, the emotions centering in the theme of religion seem to emerge froim the attitude of a man who is angry with the subject because the sweeping broom of his intel lect has not managed to get at all the corners of his heart- of a man who is superstitious against his will. It is doubtful if one reared as Conrad was, ever gets the mystical force of religion out of his system. The child Conrad was reared a Catholic and Jean-Aubry gives us some intimate pictures of the simple piety of his father.^ There is no record of the time or the process of Conrad’s complete spiritual apostasy, but there is plenty of evi dence in the letters of the fact that he lost all faith 8 Page 67. 9 Pages 68-69. 10 Aubry, op. cit., I, l6. lij.£ In G-od and a purposeful universe. Superficially, at 11 least, this loss of faith was complete. However, it is probable that he buried guilty feelings which are related to this apostasy. Such feelings of guilt would be the more lively for their association with his father. After all, to.deny his father’s God was to deny his father's faith, and to make a mockery of his pious end. There is evidence of conflict between the heart and the head in this matter. Mrs. Conrad tells of an illuminating incident when he was taken off his guard and declared with consid- 1P erable feeling that he was a Catholic. And towards the end he made what seems to be a sincere enough and rather pathetic request for the prayers of his old friend, Galsworthy.^ in the light of these facts, the strangely powerful scene when Jean-Pierre goes up to the little church in drunken malice and defies God takes on an added interest. How often, one wonders, had Conrad In the bit terness of his uncertainty felt impelled to do the same 11 Ibid. , I, 216.- 1 P Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, p. 228. ■ * * 3 "Don't forget me in your prayers. You who have never strayed beyond the precincts of the temple.’ 1 Aubry, op. cit., II, 25>7. 346 kind of thing? How often, after he had denied his father’s God so emphatically, did he feel a mysterious thrill of fear overtalcing him in its incredible flight from child hood days, as he bated his defiance with blasphemy? THE NIGGER OF THE NARCISSUS In this story Conrad achieves an air of detachment which gives it quite a different literary personality from any of the stories so far examined. Perhaps this Is because his hero is not an individual but a group. One gets the impression, however, that the repressed emotions of Conrad’s neurptic complex had little to do with the weaving of this story. Its descriptive passages remind one of The Mirror of the Sea. They are magnificent In their way, but they do not seem to look at one with that mesmeric stare that is so characteristic of Heart of Darkness, and Lord Jim, and Nostromo, and.so many of the others. What seems to have happened is this: His theme arose out of the preoccupations of his neurosis (for It is the same as the theme of The Idiots and The Outpost of Progress), but once the story got under way, the exhilar ating emotions of his youth took charge and carried it forward through the storm and through its 'strange emotion al turmoil with a kind of puzzled triumph. 347 plot. A group of sailors, gathered together at the opening of a voyage in "The Narcissus” promised to be a very ordinary ship's company till James Wait came on the scene. He was a nigger dying of consumption, and he fell into his place among them as a loose cog. He dragged, and caught, and rattled the machinery of their lives till the whole structure of their society disintegrated. Mere ly by doing nothing the man came into prominence. Sail ors are accustomed to a life where every man pulls his weight, and here was one whose inaction threw extra work on them, and whose brazen self-pity demanded endless petty sacrifices of thou. He became the rock upon which the waves of their emotions spent themselves. They despised him, they were indignant, disgusted, pitiful, generous, humane, self-sacrificing, magnanimous, heroic, till the drama of their inner lives fascinated them, and they began to use Wait as an emotional stimulus, as some men take liquor. Then, psychologically drunk, they blundered into indiscipline, near-mutiny, near-murder, and imbecile sent imentality. Wait's death restored the equilibrium of the society, but things were not the same. The experience swept in like a huge wave, and though peace followed its retreating waters, it left the foreshore of their lives permanently changed. 1 2 4 . 8 The significant thing about the whole direction of the story is this: These men passed through a tre mendous experience simply because their environment con tained one element that was different from anything they . had encountered, and they made complete fools of them selves in their efforts to cope with it; but they emerged from the experience without being the least bit better equipped to meet another such difficulty. Conrad insists on the last point: Outside, on Tower Hill, they blinked, hesitated clumsily, as if blinded by the strange quality of the hazy light, as if discomposed by the view of so many men . . . But at the corner I stopped to take my last look at the crew of the Narcissus. They were swaying irresolute and noisy . . . Prom afar I saw them discoursing . . . while the sea of life thundered in their ears ceaseless and un heeded « . . they appeared to be creatures of an other kind--lost, alone, forgetful, doomed; they were like castaways . . . making merry in a storm and upon an insecure ledge of a treacherous rock . . . The crew of the Narcissus drifted out of my sight. I never saw them again.Iq. It is true that the title of the first American edition, Children of the Sea, was a source of great annoy ance to Conrad; but the title comes very close to the theme, for here the mood is one of kindly tolerance that is usually reserved for children. It is as if Conrad had for once found his genius in the conscious levels of the Pages 170-72. 11^9 mind, and had drifted so far away from the bitter repressed past that his problems became like vague shapes whose shad ows affected his theme in idea only. For here men are just as ineffectual as in the earlier stories before the vast complex forces of their environment, but they are neigher guilty in their inadequacy, nor do they provoke our pity. They are simply quaint. KARAIN With Karain and The Lagoon we are back to the typical Conrad atmosphere. One is very much aware of the sombre tone, the tropical gloom, the vague time sense, and the long tensions, the heavy pessimism, the dream like imagery. And one has little doubt that the emotions that find expression here belong to the past, and have matured like rich wine in the deep vaults amongst imagery that is primitive and poetic. To the student interested in Conrad’s conflicts, Karain is one of the most fascinating of all his stories. It is as if, wandering in the kingdom of his dreams, he had looked into the wavering surface of some mysterious pool and seen the whole outline of his spiritual distress. For it is almost a complete parable of the most obvious aspects of his guilt. One has only to make a statement of the plot to establish this fact. i5o Plot. Marain, a Malay youth, of royal birth, made a long pilgrimage with his elder brother, who was his king. They travelled together and. suffered hardships far from home. Years passed. Time became blurred and lost in vague memories. The king was sustained by singleness of purpose and belief in his mission, but to Karain a curious thing was happening. The image of the woman they were pur suing began to grow in his mind. It took shape, and grew in spirit. He began to commune with it. By and by it grew more real to him than his companion. He began to suffer from a conflict of loyalties. The crisis came when they discovered the woman hidden in the forest, and Karain had to choose between her and his king. In a moment of blind impulse he saved the woman and killed his king. In that moment Karain had shaped his destiny. He had betrayed his country. Everlasting exile was to,be his lot. The woman for whom he had spent his sacred loy alties was claimed by the forest. He never possessed more of her than her image, and now a voice took its place. t For he was haunted ceaselessly^by the voice of his erst while companion. He knew no peace, and the image of fear looked over his shoulder night and day, till he came under the influence of a wise old man who knew how to exorcise the spirit and silence the voice. With his help, i5i Karain built up a new life. Together they conquered a kingdom and gathered fame. Then suddenly the old man died, and Karain had no one to stand behind him to ward off the evil spirit. ■^e tried to rule alone for a while, but all at once he knew it would be in vain. One dark night when the trop ical rain was blurring the outlines of land and sea, he swam out to the brig where the white traders were sitting in calm contemplation of their surroundings. He told them his story, and, to calm his fears, they gave him a fetish: a Jubilee sixpence with the image of the queen of England stamped upon it. Karain seemed appeased, but the traders were left to wonder how long it would be efficacious. Parallels in Conrad* s life. It almost seems like redundancy to point out the parallels in Conrad’s life, for the whole story is like a fascinating dream elabora tion of his relationships between himself, and his father, and his uncle, and his mother. He had gone with his fath er on a long patriotic mission to uphold the honor of his country. It seemed a fabulous experience as he looked back on it with its base like sunset clouds lost behind the horizon of memory. Much of it seemed vague and unreal, but he knew that they had suffered together in a great cause. Then came the period when his uncle took charge 152 of his life. As Th.ad.deus talked of his sister (Joseph’s mother), an image of a woman of beauty and wisdom and talent grew steadily in the boy’s mind. Byband by this image began to replace the memory of his father in his affections and esteem. Suddenly, before he was ready, ^ the crisis was on him, and he had to decide between them. Like Karain he chose the woman. In rejecting the cause of Poland, he had, as it were, slain his father. Prom that time onward, his guilt pursued him. The voice of his father haunted his dreams. He ran; he sought danger, violence, adventure, action of any kind. But he could not escape the voice. His only comfort lay in the wise old uncle who could tell him so convincingly that he had done right to keep out of Poland. It was as if he had stood sword in hand just behind Conrad through all those years. Then suddenly he died, and Conrad was all alone. Did Conrad try to forget all his past with its sins of omission and its deep scars by burying himself in thoughts of England, his new motherland and his constant home now his wanderings were over? Did he wonder how effective these tactics would be? Dream qualities. As a plot this is not very con vincing. One cannot, for instance, imagine a chief leav ing his kingdom for years to follow a woman in whom he 153 had no personal interest, simply to take vengeance on her for the honor of his tribe. Yet the story is convincing in its dream quality. It has the atmosphere of a dream, and it seems like a genuine dream parable. Conrad him self seemed to realize this, and he claimed only a dream reality for it: He /Karain/spoke at last. It is impossible to convey the effect of his story. It is undying, it is but a memory, and its vividness cannot be made clear to another miph* any more than the vivid emo tions of a dream.15 It is full of tangled images that come and go without comment or logical relevancy: We lost outselves in the fields, in the Jungle; and one night, in a tangled forest, we came upon a place where crumbling old wallings had fallen amongst the trees, and where strange stone idols--carved images of devils with many arms, and legs, with snakes twined round their bodies, with twenty heads and holding a hundred swords— seemed to live and threaten in the light of our camp fire.16 One feels, too, that Conrad has imparted to this story that subtle sense of timelessness so characteristic of dreams. There is the feeling of Immense duration, but no sense of measurable time. The image of the woman. There is space to illus trate only the more important aspects of this dream par able* But one can hardly pass over the rather striking language that is used in connection with the way the image of the woman grew in the mind of Karain. It is an Page 26. 16 Page 32. 15k image that is better fitted to the description of Conrad’s own mother than to a native woman who had given herself up to a fat Dutchman: Matara brooded by the fire. I sat and thought and thought, till suddenly I could see again the image of a woman, beautiful and young, and great and proud, and tender, going away from her land and her people.^7 There is surely some association between these words and the fact that Conrad’s first clear memories of his mother were associated with the time when she was leaving the home of her parents to rejoin her husband in exile. She had been granted a short leave by the stern Russian auth orities. Of this experience Conrad says: This is also the year in-which I first began to re member my mother with more distinctness than a mere loving, wide-browed, silent, protecting presence whose eyes had a sort of commanding sweetness. During his last years in Poland, however, this image began to exert a living influence on his life. The experience is projected upon the person of Karain as follows: I said nothing; but I saw her every day--alwaysi At first I saw only her head, as of a woman walking in the low mist on a river bank. Then she sat by our fire. I saw her! I looked at her! She had tender eyes and a ravishing face. I murmured to her in the night . . . She was beautiful. She was faithful, and in the silence of foreign countries Pages 3i|--35. A Personal Record, pp. 23-2lj. 155 she spoke to me very low in the language of my people . . . And she was sadi Her eyes were tender and frightened; her voice soft and pleading. Once I murmured to her, ’You shall not die,1 and she smiled . . . ever after she smiled.19 Another aspect of the story that should not be passed over without illustration is the haunting, ines capable sense of Matara’s accusing presence. Passages like this could all too easily be echoes of Conrad’s own dreams of the father figure that pursued him accusingly: I lifted my head. I had heard no sound, no rustle, no footsteps--but I lifted my head. A man was coming towards me across the small clearing. I waited. He came up without a greeting and squat ted down into the firelight. Then he turned his face to me. It was ^atara. He stared at me fierce ly with his big sunken eyes. The night was cold; the heat died suddenly out of the fire, and he stared at me. I rose and went away from there, leaving him by the fire that had no heat.2® And is not the following a sufficient explanation of Conrad’s restlessness, his lust for adventure, for new experiences, for ceaseless activity? I bore it as long as I could £~th.e voiced -- then leaped away, as on this very night I leaped from my stockade and swam to you. I ran--I ran crying like a child left alone and far from the houses. He ran by my side, without footsteps, whispering, whisper ing- -invisible and heard. I sought people--! wanted men around mei Men who had not died! And again we two wandered. I sought danger, violence and death. I fought in the Atjeh war, and a brave people won dered at the valiance of a stranger.21 !9 Pages 3i|_—35. . 20 Page ipl 21 Pages ipl— . 156 The following passage is a reference to the old man who was almost certainly a dream metamorphosis of Conrad’s uncle. The passage is a powerful expression of the comfort that Conrad found in Thaddeus Bobrowski, and of his helpless distress when the old man died: You all knew him. People here called him my sorcerer, my servant and sword-bearer; but to me he was father, mother, protection, refuge and peace . . . But the old man has died, and I am again the slave of the dead. He is not here now to drive away the reproachful shade--to silence the lifeless voice! The power of his charm has died with him. And I know fear.22 There is just one more comment that one cannot forbear to make. It concerns the matter of religion that has been referred to more than once already in this dis sertation. Conrad's rejection of his father's religion seems to be associated quite meaningfully with his rejec tion of his father and his Polish responsibilities. At any rate, one gets the impression that atheism was a kind of fearful comfort to Conrad as it was to Karain: "He cannot come here— therefore I sought you. You men with white faces who despise the invisible voices. He cannot abide your unbelief and your strength." He was silent for a while, then exclaimed softly, "Oh! the strength of unbelieversi"23 ^ Pages i j . 2 -1|3 . 23 Page 2 THE LAGOON 157 The Lagoon has a certain haunting quality that sets it apart even amongst Conrad's works. Long after the memory of more famous scenes described by Conrad has faded, one retains the image of Arsat1s lonely house in the midst of the marshy little lagoon from which the for ests have retreated a little. It is one of the most deso late pictures in literature, for its loneliness is troub led by associations of darkness, and uncleannes^, and morbidity,, and death. The theme is almost the same as the theme of Karain, but the spotlight has shifted a little to the thought of guilt bathed in despair. Because the atmos phere seems more important than the story, space is taken to quote enough passages to show how these associations of darkness and uncleanness induce in the reader a feeling of guilt and despair. In the stillness of the air every tree, every leaf, every bough, every tendril of creeper and every petal of minute blossoms seemed to have been bewitched into an immobility perfect and final .9* Darkness oozed out from between the trees, through tangled mazes of creepers, frcm behind the great fantastic and unstirring leaves; the darkness, 2k- page 187. 158 mysterious and invincible; the darkness scented and poisonous of impenetrable forests.25 A little house, perched on high piles, appeared black in the distance. Near it, two tall nibong palms, that seemed to have come out of the forests in the background, leaned slightly over the ragged roof, with a suggestion of sad tenderness and care in the droop of their leafy and soaring heads . . . The Polers ran along the sides of the boat glanc ing over their shoulders-at the end of the day’s journey. They would have preferred to spend the night somewhere else than on this lagoon of weird aspect and ghostly reputation.26 The ever-ready suspicion of evil, the gnawing suspicion that lurks in our hearts, flowed out into the stillness profound and dumb, and made it ap pear untrustworthy and infamous, like the placid and impenetrable mask of an -unjustifiable violence. In that fleeting and powerful disturbance of his being, the earth enfolded in the starlight peace became a shadowy country of inhuman strife, a battle-field of phantoms terrible and charming, august and ignoble, struggling ardently for the possession of our helpless hearts. An unquiet and mysterious country of inextinguishable desires and fears.27 Plot. The story itself is simple. Without its atmosphere and setting it is hardly worth telling. Arsat was visited on the night when his wife was dying by his friend, the white man. Arsat told his story in the long tropical silence of the night. To gain his wife he had betrayed his chief and despoiled the camp of an enemy. Page 189. page 1 8 9. 27 Page 193. (■ 159 His powerful brother lent his skill and courage, and they fled at night in a canoe. When they were overtaken, the brother stopped to hold the enemy while the lovers seized a new canoe. When they could see that delay would imperil their liyes, the lovers paddled away and left the pleading warrior to be cut down by their enemies. The young people made good their escape, but they had been forced to live in the haunted isolation of this lagoon ever since. But now his lover was dying, and the future was dark with despair. As Arsat watched the dawn through sorrowing eyes, he made vague plans to return to his ene mies and make restitution in death. The plot is almost like another parable. Most of the familiar elements of Conrad1s guilt complex have found some expression there. There is the strong, protecting figure who is betrayed in a moment of crisis, there is a flight with a beautiful woman, the horror of exile, the uncomfortable conviction of being taboo to the faithful, and the feeling that life is utterly futile. One or two points may need comment. The first con cerns the woman figure. It may seem strange that Conrad should use this figure as a means of expressing emotions concerning his mother on some occasions while at other times he uses it to express his emotions about the sea. i6o But the fact of the matter is that the acceptance of his mother in the conflict between his parents as it was foisted upon him by his uncle was inextricably mixed up with his feelings for the sea at the time of his exodus from Poland. It i s significant that the love of a woman and the love of a ship are inseparably linked in three of OQ his stories. In connection with the death of Arsat!s beloved in this story, it is doubtless significant that at the time he was writing this tale Conrad was liter ally watching the death of his beloved career as a sea man. He must have been chagrined to know that he had sold his soul In vain as far as his present standing was concerned. Another point that is worth observing here is that Conrad first begins in this story the bitter rationaliza tions and excuses about his guilt, that take up so much space in Lord Jim. Arsat had left his brother to peri sh in circum stances that looked uncommonly like cowardice. Arsat's mood was chiefly one of gloomy self-condemnation, but he could not refrain from futile attempts at self-justifica tion at times. "There is a time," he said, "when a man should forget loyalty and r e s p e c t . " ^ 9 And a little later: O ft Freya of the Seven Isles, The Arrow of Gold, and A Smile of Fortune. 29 Page 186. i6i "Tuan, I loved my brother." A breath of wind made him shiver. High above his head, high above the silent sea of mist the drooping leaves of the palms rattled together with a mourn ful and expiring sound. The white man stretched his legs. His chin rested on his chest, and he murmured sadly without lifting his head-- "We all love our brothers." Arsat burst out with an intense whispering violence— "What did I care who died? I wanted peace in my own heart."30 The final point concerns the idea of a return. Perhaps when his career at sea was finally ended-, Conrad considered returning to Poland. According to Mrs. Conrad, he had every intention of spending his last days t h e r e . 33 But no doubt at this time the intention was very vague, as vague as Arsat1s determination. At the end of the story, the mood is one of hopelessness, of disillusionment, but through it all one thought is taking vague shape, one emo tion is calling dully in the darkness for satisfaction: the need to return and make restitution: Now I can see nothing— see nothing! There is no light and no peace in the world; but there is death—-death for many. We are sons of the same mother— and I left him in the midst of Ms enemies; but I am going back now." He drew a long breath and went on in a dreamy tone: "In a little while I shall see clear enough to strike--to strike. But she has died, and . . . now . . . darkness."32 3° Page 20£ . 33 Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, p. 271. 32 Pages 203-0I j . . 162 There is something pathetic about the very ir- resoluteness of this utterance, for Arsat was not the man • he believed himself to be. Something was lacking. wrould go back and face the past, but not yet. Not quite yet. No doubt the creator of Arsat knew in his heart that he would never go back, in spite of his resolutions. That was one of the "illusions” of which he writes so often with a curious bitterness. Many of his characters were "men of illusions." Conrad felt that he had need of his own. They would have a great influence on his life, but they would never be more than dreams. The story closes on this note: The white man, leaning with both hands over the grass roof of the little cabin, looked back at the shining ripple of the boat's wake. Before the sam pan passed out of the lagoon into the creek he lifted his eyes. Arsat had not moved. He stood lonely in the searching sunshine; and he looked beyond the great light of a cloudless day into the darkness of a world of illusions.33 THE RETURN In its theme, The Return is like a sequel to The Lagoon. It is as if Conrad had contemplated returning to Poland with the quiet pretense that his only motive for leaving had been his sea career. But the very idea of 33 page 20i4-. The italics have been added by the present writer. 163 living with such a guilty secret was so nauseating that he dismissed it at once. The actual textures of the two stories, however, have nothing in common. As a matter of fact, Conrad re fused to number The Return among his legitimate literary children. He refers to it in his Author's Note as "a left-handed production," and as an experiment in "that sort of virtuosity."34 And it certainly seems like a technical exercise— a synthetic production in which the deep feelings that mesmerised him into such dreams as Almayer's Polly had little part. Plot. The plot is one of the simplest in all Conrad's stories. It is this: Alvan Hervey came home to find a note from his wife informing him that she had run off with another man. While he was still getting over the shock, she returned with the explanation that she could not go through with the elopement. Hervey appeared to have only one concern: How was this thing to be kept secret? But this question soon led to another: How could he endure living with such a secret? He decided that he could not endure it at all. He left his home at midnight and he never returned. 34 Page x. l6i{. The theme of a guilty secret and the disgust at having to keep it was developed powerfully in a story which he wrote almost immediately after this one, The ^eart of Darkness. There must surely be significance in the fact that he was still preoccupied with the theme. Because the theme is developed superficially in this story--because the whole' thing was too clearly before the conscious mind to provoke a dream— the story is a good field for alluvial prospecting. As a matter of fact, it is quite rich in suggestions that are developed more fully in other stories. It is significant that these ideas and emotions are all related to the guilty secret. Nauseating secret. In the first place, it is worth remarking that when Hervey first became aware of his misfortune, Conrad describes his reaction to the thought of harboring this secret in precisely the same metaphor he used in describing his own reaction to lies and deceits in The Heart of Darkness. He /Bew&y/ felt very sick--physically sick-- ^ as though he had bitten through something nauseous. ^ Resentment towards the One foisting the secret upon him. It has already been noticed that Conrad gives Page 128. Compare Heart of Darkness, p. 82. i65 evidence of irritation with his uncle because he forced the conflict upon him. There are echoes of that feeling here, too: Then a fresh wave, a raging wave of humiliation, swept through his mind, and left nothing there but a personal sense of undeserved abasement. Why should he be mixed up with such a horrid exposure 1 It anni hilated all the advantages of his well-ordered past, by a truth effective and unjust like a c a l u m n y .3b Rationalizations. There are two strange ration alizations that Conrad employed against his conscience when the urge to confess his guilty secret pressed upon him: l) It was not fair to trouble other people with his burdens. 2) At least he did not seek to evade the tri- p bunal of his condemning conscience: he lived and suffered in the full glare of his guilt. The first of these rationalizations occurs in many ways in Conrad's books. Here it is in The Return: "For it is self-evident,” he went on with anxious vivacity, ”it is self-evident that, on the highest ground we haven't the right--no, we haven't the right to intrude our miseries upon those who--who naturally expect better things from us. Everyone wishes his own life and the - life around him to be beautiful and pure. Now a scandal amongst people of our position is disast rous for the morality--a fatal influence— don’t you see— upon the general tone of the class . . .”37 36 Page 128. 37 Page l61p. 166 The second of these rationalizations is developed to an almost painful extent in Lord Jim, and here is a hint of it in The Return: He felt himself utterly corrupted by her wicked ness, and the most significant symptoms of his ' moral downfall was the bitter. acrid satisfaction with which he recognized it.3° The need to forget. In this story, too, we have an echo of the reaction of Almayer and other characters to the unbearable pain of the conflict: the need to forget and to begin to forget systematically. He thought: "This is like being haunted--I sup pose it will last a week or so, at least. Till I forget. Forget I Forgetl”39 And: He had made up his mind to eat, to talk, to be natural. It seemed to him that deception should begin at home. The servants must not know— must not suspect. This intense desire of secrecy, of secrecy dark, destroying, profound, discreet like a grave, possessed him with the strength of a hallucination— seemed to spread itself to inanim ate objects that had been the daily companions of his life, affected with a taint of enmity every single thing within the faithful walls that would stand forever between the shamelessness of facts and the indignation of mankind.^0 3^ Page 137. ^9 Page 1 3 8. ^0 Page 170. 167 A compulslon neurosis. There is in this story, too, a very interesting hint of a compulsion neurosis such as Shakespeare gave to Lady Macbeth. It is no more than a hint, but it is worth while to note that Conrad seemed to have suffered somatic symptoms of neurotic origin. As a child he suffered from epileptic fits, according to one authority.^4-1 And he is said to have suffered from tics and other symptoms of anxiety and guilt.^ In addition to this evidence, we have testimony from Mrs. Conrad that he had the curious habit of brushing and brushing his hair when he was nervously disturbed. k-3 One cannot help won dering if this was not a form of compulsion neurosis, a feeling that not a hair must be out of place lest the world know of his worrying secret. Had he, one wonders, unconsciously diagnosed this peculiarity in the following passage about Hervey? Only his hair was slightly ruffled and that dis order, somehow, was so suggestive of trouble that he went quickly to the table, and began to use the brushes, in an anxious desire to obliterate the compromising trace, the only vestige of his emotion. ^ G-. P. Putman, "Conrad in Cracow," Outlook, CXXIV (March 3, 1.920), 382. ^ Anon., "Conrad at Thirty-one," Living Age, CCCXLIII (September, 1932), 82. k3 Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle, p. 256. ----------------------------- 168 He brushed with, care, watching the effect of his smoothing; and another face, slightly paler and more tense than was perhaps desirable peered back at him from the toilet glass. He laid the brushes down, and was not satisfied. He took them up again and brushed, mechanically— forgot himself in that occu- pati on. 4-4 Page 136. CHAPTER V YOUTH AND THE HEART OF DARKNESS The emotional tone of You.th is so completely differ ent from that of the typical Conrad story, that one is in clined to ignore it in a study of this kind. And yet it is by no means a "left-handed production" like The Return. Indeed, it is the least synthetic of all Conrad’s works. What makes it so different is this: Youth is not patterned by the mysterious tracings of those morbid., repressed emotions with which the student of Conrad is so familiar. It is the product of the youthful emotions that found a natural outlet in the adventures of his early sea man life. That, however, is not the whole story. Most people look back upon the days of their youth with a certain tender regret. And for most people the memories of youth are pulled into focus by a lens of wish ful imaginings and harmless illusions. But Conrad’s feel ings have an unnatural tenseness because of their relation ship to those strange, unsatisfied emotions that were the fermenting essence of most of his stories. They lift Youth quite frequently into the realms of poetic illusion where there is little need of incident to carry a story, and where feeling is directly communicable by that 170 mysterious process that we are content to call poetry. Its presence in a work of literature is the very seal of genius, and often a sign of neurosis. . -When Conrad arrived at Marseilles on the first stage of that epic journey towards the Master’s Ticket, he enjoyed a wonderful play period in an atmosphere of complete irresponsibility. It was a period crammed with activity that was motivated by momentary goals— goals which seen against the perspective of his whole life were scarcely more serious than the goals that make games worth-while. He played at being a dandy, a pilot, a revolutionary, a lover, a deep-sea sailor. Like Karain, he forgot in the bustle and activity the voice that pursued him so relent lessly and that caught up with him a few years later. He silenced the accusations of cowardice that whispered to him in the sudden stillnesses. He silenced them by the testi mony of his own deeds. But it was not long before he began to cringe before the voice of conscience, and the letters of his uncle, who was genuinely troubled by his nomadic irres ponsibility. He began to fear the Korseniowski strain in himself, to feel the need to attain position and security, to justify his choice of a sea career. He began to hold moody consultations with the voices that accused him of 171 dishonouring his father, and betraying his country. Finally a deep pessimism assailed his spirit and he exp- ressed the wish that he had never been born. The years slipped by, and he became Joseph Conrad, the writer who communed almost constantly with the evil spirits of his past, and who emerged from these long seances only to sur vey the gloomy prospects of poverty, and misfortune, and pain for his family and himself. Is it any wonder that he looked back on the period of youthful freedom with almost morbid envy? Is it any wonder that he should emphasize the courage, endurance, and optimism of youth. 3 1 and that these things should be all wreathed about with the glamor of the East? It is quite true that Youth has, as J. S. Doubleday said in an early review, ! , the miracle-sign, it has intuition inspiration.’ ’^ The fact of the matter is that Youth makes such satisfying reading because it opens a window through which we can see In glorious perspective our own youth, not as it was, but as we remember it, wreathed about with illusions projected back from a troubled maturity. And we have such a pro duction as Youth not simply because a great stylist had an adventurous past, but because this is one of nature’s Anon., "Conrad at Thirty-One," Living Age, CCCXLIII (September, 1932), 82. p C. Morley, "Note on Conrad," Saturday Review of Literature, IV (January, 1928), 519* 172 antidotes against the repressed emotions that wrought such havoc in the sensitive mind of Conrad. As an emotion, it is no more normal than the condition of immunity built up by innoculation. Indeed, if it were quite normal, Youth would not be so gloriously suffused with the poetry of genius. It would not have so much in it of the very stuff of dreams. HEART OP DARKNESS Effect on Conrad of Congo experience. Prom a physical point of view Conrad’s Congo experience was devas tating enough. There he met failure and disillusionment. There his young eyes looked through the distorting mists of delirium at the face of death. From there he had to retreat with an unfulfilled contract. And it was there that -a mysterious illness overtook him, despoiling him of youth and leaving him a frightening heritage of gout that threatened to incapacitate him altogether. Psychological effect. The psychological effect, however, was even more devastating. The experience of writing the first chapters of Almayer1s Folly prepared him for what was to follow. Such an experience may be compared to the first visits of a neurotic to a psychological clinic. The repressed emotions were disturbed. Conrad's feelings 173 of insecurity and depression were aggravated. He felt that life held nothing for him but a series of dreams and illu sions. But the crisis occurred, in the Congo: he discovered the secret that he had been hiding from himself all these years. As with Kayerts and Carlier, the jungle found him out. No one can know precisely what happened, but it is very probable that in his hours of weakness during the long bouts of fever, he forgot to guard the cavern that held the deep secrets of the unconscious; and his bright, fevered eyes watched the shameless dance of his repressed motives in deliriums and dreams. The evidence. Conrad once confided to his friend Edward Garnett that he was an animal pure and simple before his trip to the Congo.3 That was undoubtedly an exaggera tion, but it implies that the Congo had wrought a tremendous change in him. The best evidence of that is in the story itself. It is a thinly disguised story of self-discovery— a story which is dominated by the horror of having to guard forevermore the secret of that discovery. There is evidence in the very atmosphere of the story. Nothing In Conrad is so suffocating. It has so much dream-stuff in it that 3 G. Jean-Aubry, "Joseph Conrad au Congo: d’apres les Documents Inedits," Mercure de Prance, CLXXXIII-(Oct ober 15, 1925), 337. ^ 1 17k Conrad was afraid that he had made his story obscure. More than once he makes a, comment like this: "Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me that I am trying to tell you a dream-- making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, the commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by , the incredible which is the very essence of dreams."^ All through the story, too, there is the unavoid able conviction that it was not the vastness of the Congo that Conrad was exploring, but that he was pressing deeper and deeper into the dark unknown of his own personality-- that he was gradually bringing something into focus— gradu ally and reluctantly: It seemed somehow to throw a kind of light on everything about me— and into my thoughts. It was sombre enough, too— and pitiful— not extraordinary in any way--not very clear either. Ho, not very ^ clear. And yet it seemed to throw a kind of light.^ A strange and fascinating statement that has nothing to do with the story 1 The kind of thing a man says musingly when he is following a half-obscured track back into his dreams I The words of a man vaguely aware that relation ships affecting his total personality integration have somehow been clarified, that there has been a kaleidoscopic shift, too complex to analyse. There is more than one ^ Heart of Darkness, p. 82. £ Page £l. 175 suggestion in the story that Conrad was not anxious to pause long enough to come to grips with himself, either. When you have to attend to the things of that sort, to the mere incidents of the surface, the reality--the reality, I tell you--fades. The inner truth is hidden— luckily, luckily.° One of the most interesting hints of the fact that The Heart of Darkness is a spiritual autobiography of hor rifying self-discovery, lies in the fact that there is al together too much emotion devoted to the topic of ITexploit ation." Sometimes neurotic emotions get energetic exercise in moments of conscious attention when they are ’ ’borrowed" and applied to a situation which would normally evoke sim ilar emotions. Under these circumstances, the feelings expressed by the individual have morbid strength, because the normal emotion evoked by the situation in question is reinforced by feelings that belong to the neurotic complex. Under such circumstances, the individual is sometimes cheat ed by his indignations into becoming a radical or a reformer. In the particular case before us, Conrad was projecting the indignation and horror that arose out of his self-discovery into the situation in which the Belgian traders were ex ploiting the natives. He speaks of their cupidity thus: 6 Page 93. 176 The word 'ivory* rang in the air, was whispered, was sighed. You would think they were praying to it. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew through it all . . . like a whiff from some corpse. By Jove I I've never seen anything so unreal in my life. And outside, .the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invin cible like evil or truth waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.' I. Lutken, who was out there at the time, maintains that Conrad very much over-emphasized this matter. A final interesting hint lies In the fact that The Heart of Darkness ends on the note that it was quite unbearable to keep Kurtz's secret; any longer, and that the next book, Lord Jim, contains one of the most obvious confessions in Conrad's writings* Plot. The germ of the story of The Heart of Darkness has a weird kind of simplicity. Marlow arrived on the Conbo with depressing feelings of isolation. He heard of Kurtz, a man who was, in the opinion of all who spoke of him, a man to emulate. Marlow felt the need to meet him, to lean upon him for support. When he finally met Kurtz, he found him to be an awful sham. He returned 7 Page 76. O 0 I. Lutken, nJoseph Conrad in the Congo," London Mercury, XXIII (May, 1930), ij.O-ij.3. 177 home to Europe with the knowledge of the real Kuriiz, and he was disgusted to find that all Kurtz’s friends, and his fiancee in particular, worshipped the man. Marlow felt that he had to tell them the horrible truth, but he didn’t have the courage. "It would have been too dark, too dark, altogether." 9 One of the outstanding things about this story, and, indeed, one of its weaknesses, is the fact that Marlow’s emotions of horror about the secret are absurdly strong. It is one of the things that convince the reader that this horror is an emotion transferred, a little ineptly at that, from Conrad’s own experience. Prom the beginning of the story, feelings of iso lation, hostility, depression, and loneliness positively exude from the descriptions; but the essence of the story lies in the unmasking of Kurtz. Marlow had the first hint of the truth when he was met by the young Russian who had been assisting Kurtz. Then, through his seaman’s glass he saw the fence posts of the trading station decorated with skulls. But it was not till he had dragged the almost de lirious trader on board and watched him die and read his manuscripts that the full horror of the situation dawned upon him. Kurtz, who preached so eloquently of bringing 9 Page 162, 178 civilization and progress to the natives, got more ivory than anyone else because he positively raided the country for it, terrorized natives, and slew all who opposed him. The sustained emotions that are evoked about the figure of this man are of the utmost significance. They tell the complete story of the shock of ‘self-discovery that spread like a slow stain through the very person of Conrad. In the opinion of the writer, what happened was this: In his deliriums Conrad came face to face with facts that he had repressed and hidden from his own conscious knowledge all these years. He lived over again his exper ience in Poland, and what emerged upon the vivid stage of his dreams and deliriums was not the call of the sea, but the awful fears, and the unbearable urge to escape. The vague disquiet that had hovered all these years on the peri- phexy of his attention suddenly came into focus: He now realized that he had acted the coward’s part. He could see now that the impression that he had built up of himself during his years at sea was nothing but an illusion. He must surrender it. A surrendered illusi on. He left behind him forever in Africa his illusion of Conrad, the gallant adventurer. That impression is powerfully conveyed by the image of the young Russian, who looks remarkably like the young Conrad 179 of "The Tremolino," striding away out of our ken like a vision that was slowly fading: The pipe soothed him, and gradually I made out that he had run away from school, had gone to sea in a Russian ship;, run away again; served some time in English ships; was now reconciled with the arch priest (his father). He made a point of that. ’When one is young one must see things, gather ideas; enlarge the mind.’10 I looked at him lost in astonishment. There he was before me, in motley, as though he had absconded from a troupe of mimes, enthusiastic, fabulous. His very existence was improbable, inexplicable, and altogether bewildering. He was an insoluble problem . . . For months--for years— life hadn't been worth a day’s purchase; and there he was, gallantly, thoughtlessly alive, to all appearance indestructible solely by virtue of his few years and of his unre flecting audacity. I was seduced into something like admirati on--like envy. G-lamour urged him on, glamour kept him unscathed. He surely wanted noth ing from the wilderness but space to breathe in and to push on through. His need was to exist, and to move onwards at the greatest possible risk, and with a maximum of privation. If the absolutely pure, uncalculated, impractical spirit of adventure had ever ruled a human being, it ruled this youth. I almost envied him the possession t>f this modest and clear flame.H With a cheerful wave of the hand, this strange, glamourous young man turned and was swallowed up by the jungle. It was the last Conrad ever saw of him. It was with Kurtz that he had to live henceforth. Before leaving this character, one is interested 10 Page 123. Page 126, 180 to notice how Conrad used him to express the fierce bit terness of the illusions he had had'of himself. Marlow’s contempt for the young Russian’s blind admiration for Kurtz is withering: The young man looked at me in surprise. I sup pose it had not occurred to him that Mr. Kurtz was no idol of mine. I hadn’t heard any of these splendid monologues on what was it? — on love, justice, conduct of life, — or what not.^ The horror of self-discovery. One of the most powerful emotions that centers in Kurtz is the horror of self-discovery, of finding in the midst of the beautiful dream of altruism that constituted the ideal self a rot ten core of cupidity that was sweating its way through the man in this hot jungle solitude to produce an "incred ible degradation." Whether he knew of this deficiency himself I can’t say. I think the knowledge came to him at last--only at the very last. But the wilderness had found him out early, and had taken on him a terrible vengeance for the fantastic invasion. I think it had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude--and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating. It echoed within him because he was hollow at the core,13 12 Page 132 13 Page 127 181 But the shock of discovery comes in many ways. It comes coldly in the single, contemptuous sentence that interrupts the Russian's glowing eulogy of Kurtz--this highly esteemed collector of ivory who was supposedly using trade as an instrument of culture and enlightenment. "'To speak plainly, he raided the country,' I said. n li| . It comes with sudden horror when we are seeing the trading post through the two circles of Marlow's sea glasses. The line of fence posts leaps suddenly into focus and every post is decorated with a skull. It comes weirdly in the insane postscript that Kurtz had added to his rhetorical paper on the proposed missionary program for the natives: There were no practical hints to interrupt the magic current of phrases, -unless a kind of note at the foot of the last page, scrawled in an unsteady hand, may be regarded as the exposition of a method. It was very simple, and at the end of that moving appeal to every altruistic sentiment it blazed at you, luminous and terrifying, like a flash of lightning In a serene sky: 'Exterminate all the brutes. ' ^-5 Conrad conveys this sense of shock, too, in the horrible appearance of the man, "I saw him open his mouth wide--it;- gave him a weirdly voracious aspect, as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the Page 128. 15 Page 118. 182 men before him."1^ And lastly, there is the testimony of Marlow’s own words: What made this-emotion so overpowering was— how shall I define it? — the moral shock I received, as if something altogether monstrous, intolerable to thougtt and odious to the soul, had been thrust upon me unexpectedly.17 Three characteristic and quite closely related reactions to this shock of discovery are the fierce desire to punish Kurtz, the feeling of struggling in vain for his soul, and of looking wide-eyed into the horror of his ut terly lost condition. Three brief quotations will illus trate these reactions: Desire to punish. I strode rapidly with clenched fists. I fancy I had some vague notion of falling upon him and giving him a drubbing. I don’t know. I had some imbecile thoughts.1® Struggling for his soul. Souli If anybody had ever struggled with a soul, I am that man. And I wasn’t arguing with a lunatic either. Believe me or not, his intelligence was perfectly clear; and therein was my only chance-- barring of course, the killing of him there and then, which wasn't so good on account of unavoid able noise. But his soul was mad. ^-9 Page 13if. *7 page lip.. Page 1I 4. 2 . Page ll(.5 . 183 His lost condition. And don't you see, the terror of the position was not in being knocked on the head--though I had a very lively sense of that danger, too, but in this, that I had to deal with a being to whom I could not appeal in the name of anything high or low. I had, even like the niggers, to invoke him--himself--his own exalted and incredible degradation. There was nothing either above or below him, and I knew it. fie had kicked himself loose from the earth.20 His was an impenetrable darkness. I looked at him as you peer down at a man who is lying at the bot tom of a precipice where the sun never shines.2- * - The climax of all these emotions comes at the end when Kurtz looks into the horror of a great darkness that he will never be able to reveal, and utters those two words that linger so long in our consciousness: I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven terror— of an intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, tempta tion, and surrender during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision— he cried out , twice a cry that was no more than a breath— 'The horror! The horror 1*22 But now it is time to consider what from every point of view is the most significant of all these emotions associated with Kurtz. The whole story has been moving towards it, and it is the note on which it ends: the guilty indignation, the pained self-derisi on that lay in the 20 Page l i | i | . . 21 Page li^9 • 22 page i i j . 9 . 181} . knowledge that he must keep Kurtz’s secret hidden, that he must, till the end of time, keep up the mad pretense of the great, the eloquent, the generous, the self-sacri ficing Kurtz. It is noteworthy that he rebels most be cause Kurtz's dearest and most intimate acquaintances must go on thinking of him in that way. The emotion is introduced quite early and quite Irrelevantly in an atti tude towards lying that reeks of neurosis: You know I hate, detest, and can't bear a lie, not because I am straighter than the rest of us, but simply because It appals me. There is a taint of death, a flavour of mortality in lies--which is exactly what I hate and detest in the world— that I want to forget. It makes me miserable and sick, like biting something rotten would do.^3 But it is the final scene in which Marlow lies to Kurtz's fiancee that expresses the horror of this deception most completely: I did not betray Mr. Kurtz— it was ordered I should never betray him— it was written I should be loyal to the nightmare of my c h o i c e . 2 q - It seemed to me that the house would collapse before I could escape, that the heavens would fall upon my head. But nothing happened. The heavens do not fall for such a trifle. Would they have fallen, I wonder, if I had rendered Kurtz that justice which was his due? Hadn't he said he wanted only justice? But -I couldn't. I could not tell her. It would have been too dark— too dark altogether.25 23page 82.» ^KPage li}.l. ^Page 162. 185 An American visitor once pressed Conrad over and over again with the exasperating question: "How in thun der did you think of the plot of Chance?” There are few of Conrad's stories that provoke this question so insist ently as does The Heart of Darkness♦ This is not because the plot is involved like the plot of Chance, but because the plot seems so wholly inadequate to hold the wealth of emotions that Conrad has poured into it. The conviction takes hold on one that this plot is a mere excuse for the outpouring of these emotions, and that it is not a very good excuse at that. The only incidents of importance are taken from Conrad's memories, but they seem to pale into insignif icance beside the fantastic dream movement that f o l l o w s . ^6 The fact of the matter is that it is the dream emotions that impart to the story all its power and significance, and incidents seem to fall like shadows upon them. Thus the conviction comes with undeniable force that these emotions were not conjured up as a by-product of an in cident in the Congo. Rather they welled up from the depths of Conrad's being' to discolor the conscious memories till they looked fantastic and dream-like. One feels convinced that the story of Kurtz, and Marlow, and the young Russian is the story of Conrad's self-discovery, his lost illu sions, and the secret that became unbearable--the secret 186 that Insisted on the endless babbling confessions of Lord Jim, Conrad's next book.^7 26 por some idea of how much of this story is autobiography, and how much is dream, see I. Lutken, "Joseph Conrad in the Congo," London Mercury, XXII (May, 1930), I 4.O-I1 . 3; and Jessie Conrad, ■ "Reply to 'Joseph Conrad'in the Congo'", London Mercury, XXII (July, 1930), 261-6 3. 27 It should be remembered that, whereas The Heart of Darkness was not written till 1898 and that several books preceded it, Conrad's Congo experience had occurred in I89O. All his books, except the first part of Almayer's Polly, were written after this experience. Indeed, it seems probable that Almayer's Folly would have ended dif ferently had Conrad not gone to Africa. The dream activity of the books that preceded The Heart of Darkness was doubtless stimulated by the revelation that had come to Conrad in Africa; but the experience of writing The Heart of Darkness was, in itself traumatic. It brought the con flict under the scrutiny of the conscious mind. Very likely it gave Conrad a good deal of insight Into the cause of his melancholy. Henceforth he seemed to be quite familiar with the more superficial aspects of his trouble. lUe knew that he had been afraid when he left Poland, and he knew that he had been something of a hypocrite in clinging so desperately to his desire for a sailor's car eer. Lord Jim, with its dreaming Jim and its critical Marlow, was, as we shall see, one result of the experience of writing The Heart of Darkness. CHAPTER VI LORD JIM Of all Conrad’s books, Lord Jim, Is perhaps the most obviously significant to this study, because in this work he suddenly focuses our attention on the stomrt center of his neurosis and keeps it there unwaveringly for four hun dred pages. It Is as if we had been listening to a chorus harmonizing upon a given theme, and we had been trying in vain to Isolate the melody, when suddenly the soloist comes forward and sings It In a clear, unfaltering tenor. The reason for that sudden clarity has been suggested in the last chapter. The theme is the conflict in the mind of a man who had proved a coward in a moment of crisis, and who had refused to recognize the act of cowardice as an integ ral part of himself. Two psychological forces urge this theme forward, and unfortunately their lines of force are not parallel: They are the urge to confess, and the desire to know if rehabilitation is possible. Plot. Lord Jim, a high-spirited young Englishman, took a berth as mate of a vessel chartered to transport eight hundred pilgrims to their "Mecca” overseas. The ship struck a submerged wreck and only a rotten bulkhead held her up. While the passengers lay asleep on the decks, the 188 captain and his officers slipped quietly away. Lord Jim looked on contemptuously as they made their preparations, and he listened with sublime indifference to their repeated invitations to join them. Then suddenly a kind of moral blackout descended on him and, before he realized it, he had jumped down into the boat with the rest of the officers. Surprisingly enough, the wreck was towed to port by a passing steamer, and the action of Lord Jim and his colleagues became a far-reaching scandal. By different methods, all except Lord Jim shuffled out of the enquiry, but the latter was punctilious with his idealistic con science, and he met the scorn and derating with uplifted head. At the inquiry, he met Marlow, who conceived a genuine paternal interest in him; and- during the years that followed, Marlow kept an eye on Jim’s career. The pattern was pretty much the same. He gave efficient ser vice in whatever he undertook, but he left the district the moment his identity was revealed. Finally, through Marlow’s(-efforts, he was sent as a representative of a certain trading concern to a jungle kingdom. Here, hidden from the eyes of men, he carved out for himself a role of immense local significance. Law and order were established amidst suspicion and jealousy 189 and hatred, and the whole of this structure was built about the keystone of his being. The natives trusted him. They believed him to be morally and mentally in fallible, and on that belief rested the whole structure of his government. In the strength of his new found self, he felt that he could walk proudly, defying fate; but there came a day when casual circumstances scratched the Achilles’ heel of his new Lord Jim personality. He was called upon to decide the fate of a worthless adventurer whose words of pleading happened to contain the magic words: nWhen it came to saving one’s life in the dark, one didn’t care who else went--three, thirty, three hundred people." Jim found himself face to face with his old weakness and. it became morally impossible for him to con demn. His weakness cost him the life of the friend who trusted him. Jim paid the price of that life with his own life, which he voluntarily yielded up. Many critics have found Lord Jim the most con vincing of Conrad’s novels. The fact of the matter is that it depicts an emotional turmoil that simply cannot be synthesized. Contradictory emotions get expression through the same conversation or the same incident in a way that is logically absurd, but completely convincing. 190 It is the very stuff of the unconscious that never bothers to sort out and queue up its desires for individual atten tion. Indeed, the book has an air of such spontaneity, and is full of such subtly absurd touches, that one feels Instinctively that it is a projection in another medium of the turmoil that was going on In the deepest part of the author's being. One has only to scan the record of these emotions to feel the breath of Conrad's own experience in the long struggle between a sense of guilt and futile efforts to rehabilitate himself in his own eyes. Living over the crisi s. There is Jim's fascina tion with the experience of his downfall. He felt an awful compulsion to live over and over again the long moments of his temptation and fall, as if he could by a kind of necromancy think them into a different outcome. fle was silent again with a still, far-away look of fierce yearning after that missed distinction, with his nostrils for an instant dilated, sniffing the intoxicating breath of that wasted opportunity. If you think I was either surprised or shocked you do me an Injustice in more ways than one I Ah, he was an imaginative beggar . . . He was very far away from me who watched him across three feet of space. With every instant he was penetrating deeper into the impossible world of romantic achievements. He got to the heart of it at last 1 A strange look of beatitude overspread his features, his eyes sparkled in the light of the candle burning between us, he positively smiled . . . I whisked him back 191 by saying, ’If you had stuck to the ship, you mean.’ He turned upon me, his eyes suddenly amazed and full of pain, with a bewildered startled suffering face, as though he had tumbled down from a star.l And after that you would have thought from his appearance he would never make a sound again. But-- no fearI He could no more stop telling now than he could have stopped living by the mere exertion of his will.^ But that is only one of many feelings that whirl round the storm center of his guilt. There was the im mense desire to disown the action, to prove that it was involuntary, not representative of himself. Action disowned. He raised his hand deliberately to his face and made picking motions with his fingers as though he had been bothered with cobwebs, and afterwards he looked into the open palm for quite half a second before he blurted out — ’I had jumped . .’ He checked himself, averted his gaze . . . ’It seems,’ he added . . . ’I knew nothing about it till I looked up,’ he explained hastily.3 ’It is all in being ready. I wasn't, not— not then.14 He was confident that, on the square, ’on the ^ square, mindI’ there was nothing he couldn’t meet. 1 Page 83. ^ Page 100. 3 Page 111. Page 8l. ^ Page 95. 192 Blame others. There is the desire to blame his superior officers. It is a child-like, pitiful excuse, but, as Morf has shown,8 it was a reflection of Conrad’s tendency to blame his uncle. , In this book, all these things have come closer to the surface. He i s testing them out on the Marlow of his critical self, and he is finding to his evident distress that they are not good enough to pass the scrutiny of the calm judgment. No doubt it is this need to find some form of argument that the intellect would accept that is responsible for turning a short story into a long novel.? ’Oh, yes,’ Jim pleads, ’I know very well--I jumped. Certainly I jumped, but I tell you they were too much for any man. It was their doing as plainly as if they had reached up with a boathook and pulled me over. Can’t you see it? You must see it. Come speak--straight out.’° Circumstances irresistible. Mingled with all these reasonings, there is the illogical feeling that, quite without this urging from superior officers, anyone at all would have done what he did: ’What would you have done? You’are sure'of yourself— aren’t you? What would you do if you L Gr. Morf, o j d . cit. 7 Lord Jim, p. vii. 8 Page 123. 193 felt now— tills minute— the house here move, just, move a little under your chair. Leap! By heavens 1 You would take one spring from where you sit and land in that clump of bushes yonder.’^ This is one story in which Conrad was quite con scious of the meaning of his dream activity. All the time his pleadings were being presented to his judgment for decision, he was standing aside in Marlow* s shoes to watch with sardonic interest. Indeed, he expresses this knowledge vividly: He was not speaking to me, he was only speaking before me, in a dispute with an invisible person ality, an antagonistic and inseparable partner of his existence— another possessor of his soul. 0 He watched himself confessing in a vain attempt to receive the benediction of his own absolution. Didn't I tell you he confessed himself before me as though I had the power to bind and loose? He burrowed deep, deep, in the hope of my absolution, which would have been of no good to him.11 He watched himself fumbling amongst all the arguments and excuses in an attan.pt to find something that would pass the stern scrutiny of the judgment. I didn't know what he was playing up to— if he was playing up to anything at all--and I suspect he did not know either; for it i s my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges p to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge. 9 Page 106 Page 93. 11 Page 97. ^ Page 80. 19^ The fascinating thing, however, is the fact that Conrad could not always manage to keep the two parts of himself separate. When all his excuses failed, the Marlow part of him tried to slip in a subtle attempt of his own. Marlow told the story of Captain Brierly, the man who had apparently mastered his own fate completely, who had walked in arrogant and Olympian serenity, and who shortly afterwards jumped overboard in the night to escape his own private ghost. It was a careful attempt on the part of Conrad to level all men to what he felt to be the plane of his own degradation. The question of rehabilitation. The great ques tion in Conrad’s mind, however, was this: Can man who has once proved a coward in a moment of crisis ever re-instate himself? That was the great issue that he felt he must explore. That is why he took the case of Lord Jim and gave him many of his own qualities and much of his own situation. In the remainder of the book he watched him and dreamed about him. The first thing, of course, is "to face the music." Jim jumped, but thereafter he did not run. He welcomed his punishment. He felt that he could expiate only by suffering. "I discovered that, say what I would, he was eager to go through the ceremony of execution."-^3 The next thing would be to live down the past, to be born again. Conrad sees the difficulties as he watches’ Lord Jim. He remembers only too well his own tendency to avoid Poles and conversations about Poland, and he recog nizes how difficult it v/ould be for Jim to outstrip his past. Thus in the story, vshen folks discover Jim’s iden tity, he must move on. He cannot live with the illusion that all that is past belonged to another man while he lives in the minds of others as the cowardly mate of the 1 1 Patna." Then there is the contradictory factor that keeps cropping up: He is so unsure of himself. He has constant need to test himself in situations requiring courage to see if his deep secret fears about himself are true. He is full of eagerness and optimism, but all the time, like an undercurrent, there flows the murky conviction that he will never escape this thing, that he is forever degraded and not fit to live amongst men of decent calibre, that he can atone only by death. This sense of degradation is well expressed here: And then at the moment of taking leave he treated me to a ghastly display of dubious stam mers and movaments, to an awful display of hesi tations. God forgive him--mei He had taken it into his fanciful head that I was likely to make some difficulty as to shaking hands. page 153 1 1 4 - Page l-5>5« 196 Even years later, when he had become the trusted Lord Jim of Patusan, he felt degraded in the presence of Marlow, and he couldn’t keep it out of his speech: "Come,” he said to Marlow, "I haven’t done so badly." ’Not so badly,' I said. 'But all the same, you wouldn't like to have me aboard your own ship,— hey?115 A new kingdom. What Conrad seemed to feel very surely was that Jim’s only chance was to bury himself away in a new kingdom vftiere no one had heard of Jim, the mate of the "Patna." He was very likely thinking of his own chances of rehabilitation as an English writer. And the last section of the book is dominated by the exhilar ating emotion that belongs properly only to day-dreams: the feeling that one has balanced one’s account with fate. The book fairly glows with it. The situation is ideal. It is a new world inhere no one has ever heard of the cowardly mate. They only know the man born again, Lord Jim, feared by the wicked, and the cruel, and the unjust; loved and trusted by all the little people who need his strength. It is perfect wish-fulfillment. Jim himself voiced this need: "I must feel--every day,--every- time I open my eyes— that I am trusted--that nobody has a right — don't you know? Leave I For where? What for? To 1-5 page 306. 197 get what?"1^ And Patusan provided that trust. To his people he was incorruptible like the gods, and infallible. There indeed he was born again. And yet there was a shadow. It falls across the story in his wife’s fears for Jim, the awful fears that Marlow is powerless to quieten. It is in the shadows of the jungle. It lurks inexplicably In the last words of Marlow’s narrative be fore the tragic epilogue of the long letter that closes the story: For me that white figure in the stillness of the coast and the sea seeme'd to stand at the heart of a vast enigma. The twilight was ebbing fast from the sky above his head, the strip of sand had, sunk al ready under his feet, he himself appeared no bigger than a child--then only a speck, a tiny white speck, that seemed to catch all the light left in a dark ened world . . . And, suddenly, I lost him . . .17 And so it happened. Jim’s past caught up with him even in Patusan. G-entleman Brown found his vulner able spot with his plea so reminiscent of Jim’s own fatal jump. And Lord Jim, the god-like, the trusted, the perfect projection of all his boyhood dreams was reduced to the level of the brutal pirate. "And there ran through the rough talk /with Brown^ a vein of subtle reference to their common blood, an assumption of common Page 2ltf. page 336. 198 experience; a sickening suggestion of common guilt, of secret knowledge, tliat was like a bond of their minds and of their hearts.”' * ' ® And Jim had to let him go with the muttered excuse to his wife that "men act badly some times without being much worse than others.”- * - 9 And so for all his explorations through the person of Lord Jim, Conrad reaches the melancholy conclusion that there is no escape in life from the nemesis of our past. That is the sinister conviction that stalks through the whole book and leads us at last to the only wholly satisfying emotion in the four hundred pages--the feeling that Jim has made a perfect expiation in death: The crowd, which had fallen apart behind him as soon as Doramin had raised his hand rushed tumul tuously forward^after the shot. They say that the white man sent right and left at all those faces a proud and unflinching glance. Then With his hand over his lipss he fell forward, dead.2* - 5 It is a melancholy conclusion indeed, and it is doubtful if the curiously complex activity of this novel gave Conrad much relief. He had given expression to all the morbid emotions that jostled each other around the futile turnstile between the areas of guilt and acquittal He had made a lovable figure, a hero of romance, enigmatical 18 Page 387. ■ * ■ 9 page 39^4-* 20 Page It-16. 199 and splendid out of a coward. He had pushed Jim into the limelight of a public tribunal, he had shown him in the worst possible ligjat and still managed to find ex cuses for him; but the Marlow in him refused to let him rehabilitate himself permanently. He had to look beyond the punishment of death for his expiation. Parallels in his own experience. There are two details that are worth noting before Lord. Jim is closed to our study. The first has reference to some points of similarity between Conrad’s dream of Jim’s rehabilitation and his own experience. Did he not enter a foreign soci ety in the Carlist movement? Did he not storm the strong hold of the enemy, as it were? Was he not perfectly trusted? Was it not all associated with the woman who needed him? And did it not all end when he left the wo man to meet the bullet that obliterated all that part of his life, and severed him from his only romantic love? It is interesting to speculate how much satisfaction the young Conrad had got from his part in the other rebellion against the established monarchy of Spain. There is no doubt that he had used it against the cries of "coward" that he heard shouting dimly in his innermost soul at times. And there is no doubt that his arguments were only partly successful. How many of his characters are 200 brave in most things, but have, like Dr. Monygham and the simple Neilsen, their one devastating fear! Marlow* s pleadings. The other point concerns Marlow’s attitude. Nothing else shows how earnestly Con rad’s heart was engaged in the fate of Lord Jim . ' a s the way Marlow pleads for him. Marlow’s role was that of the all-wise, all-understanding listener who was sorry for Jim, but who faced facts at all costs and exposed all Jim’s pitiful defenses. But, at the same time, Conrad cannot forbear to plead for Jim through the character of Marlow. He does it in the most surreptitious ways. He pleads the vivid imagination that pictured the horrors of a situation to Jim beforehand, and unnerved him. It is very evident from this and other books that Conrad looked on his own vivid inner life as a handicap in the race of courage. He so patently envies the Mac- Whirrs and the Leggatts and the Nostromos, who think and act objectively. Marlow’s pleadings have a special strength because, while they seem not to spare Jim at all, they slip in, quite negligently, as it were, these extenuating circumstances: He was not afraid of death perhaps, but I’ll tell you what, he was afraid of the emergency. His con founded imagination had evoked for him all the hor rors of panic, the trampling rush, the pitiful screams, 201 boats swamped— all the appalling incidents of a disaster at sea be bad ever heard of . . .21 But the following passage is probably the most direct pleading in all his writings for the young Pole whose imagination and those manories subdued his courage. One can see in it the bitter recollections of his child hood, the solemn, lonely days with his father, the grim sense of enemies all around, the hunger and cold and the spectre of death in the background. One can see the future as he saw it: leadership in a lost cause, the utter hope lessness of it, the long, long years of suffering that must follow--for what? "For honor and a namel1 1 A certain readiness to perish is not so very rare, but it is seldom that you meet men whose souls, steeled in the impenetrable armour of re solution, are ready to fight a losing battle to the last, the desire of peace waxes stronger as hope declines, till at last it conquers the very desire of life. Which of us here has not observed this, or maybe experienced something of that feel ing in his own person--this extreme weariness of emotions, the vanity of effort, the yearning for rest? Those striving with unreasonable forces know -it well,— the shipwrecked castaways in boats, wanderers lost in a desert, men battling against the unthinking might of nature, or the stupid brut ality of crowds.22 ^ Page 88 ^ Page 88 CHAPTER VII TYPHOON, FALK, AMY FOSTER, THE END OF THE TETHER, T.Q-MORROW According to Jean-Aubry, Typhoon was written immedi ately after Lord Jim.1 That is significant, because Typhoon is like a postscript to the larger work. It is as if Conrad had said, ’ ’Certainly there are plenty of folk to whom the idea of ’jumping* would never have occurred, but we must remember that to people without imagination, courage is a negative virtue.1 1 And he proceeds to prove his point with the case of Captain MacWhirr. Plot. The steamer Nan-Shan was on its way to Fu-chau with some two hundred Chinese coolies returning to their village homes after years of work in the colonies. When the barometer signaled a typhoon, the first officer advised his captain to change his course to avoid it. Cap tain MacWhirr kept resolutely on. When the coolies below deck began to fight in frenzied terror in the midst of the typhoon, the captain calmly put a stop to it, in spite of the fact that he had his hands full with the storm. There is just enough similarity between the situa tion of the ’ ’Patna" and that of the "Nan-Shan” to attract 1 Aubry, op. cit., I, l68. 203 one's attention. The ships were both in serious danger, and they both had a cargo of helpless natives. MacWhirr is one of the few central characters in Conrad who lacks a vivid inner life. Erobably that is why it seems such a strange experience to come upon Typhoon after a considerable acquaintance with Conrad. The book seems like a physical illustration of the most characterist ic feature of his works: the sense of being completely over whelmed by circumstances. Usually it is the spiritual exper iences of the leading characters that are so tremendous. Indeed, the racket and clatter that are going on In their minds often make physical experiences seem dream-like and shadowy. But in Typhoon it is the physical events that are overwhelming--so overwhelming that minds are numbed. It could not well be otherwise. Captain MacWhirr’s mind, has not enough resonance to sustain a mental crisis such as overtook Lord Jim. Indeed, there Is not enough light and sensitivity In MacWhirr*s mind to provide a clear picture of events, so Conrad had to photograph the whole thing through the more vivid mind of Jukes. Actually the contrast between the two books Is striking. Jim met his crisis in the most complete calm, and against that background his mental life is almost strident. MacWhirr met his crisis in the most tremen dous storm in literature. And against that background the silence in his mind is equally striking. r 20k Conrad’s attitude to these men is fascinating. For Jim he has a stealthy, hut whole-hearted sympathy. Like Balaam of the Bible he seeks to condemn, but, in spite of himself, the words that proceed out of his mouth are words of blessing. For MacWhirr Conrad has a kind of reluctant envy, but no sympathy. Somehow, MacWhirr's calm devotion to duty, his silent heroism, his complete mastery of the situation— these things become shabby both in the dull light of his own mind, and under the hard glare of Juke's critical mind. Conrad seems to be bent from the beginning on shielding MacWhirr from our sympathy, or even our interest. He makes him completely featureless and ordinary: Captain MacWhirr, of the steamer Nan-Shan had a physiognomy that, in the order of material appear ances, was the exact counterpart of his mind: it presented no marked characteristics of firmness or stupidity, it had no pronounced characteristics whatever: it was simply ordinary, irresponsive, and unruffled.^ Then, as if he feared that this were not enough, Conrad deprives him of the rightful glamor of the sailor. He describes him as the perfectly satisfactory son of a petty grocer and attributes the fact that he became a sailor to one of the minor miracles of chance. But it is 2 Typhoon, p. 3. 205 the lack of* imagination that Conrad stresses most: "Having just enough imagination to carry him through each successive day and no more, he was tranquilly sure of him self. "3 The incident of the Siamese flag makes the point beautifully. Jukes was disgusted that he had to sail under such a flag, but his indignant protest to his skipper was so completely outside the range of the latter*s feel ings, that MacWhirr could only interpret it in tems of the flag's not being set right. He checked with the book and came back to straighten the matter out with Jukes. "There is nothing amiss with that flag." "isn’t there?" mumbled Jukes . . . "Ho. I looked up the book. Length twice the breadth and the elephant exactly in the middle. I thought the people ashore would know how to make the local flag( . Stands to reason. You were wrong, Jukes . . . "h- When Lord Jim learned of the damage done to the "Patna," his vivid imagination pictured to him all the horrors of what was to follow. MacWhirr was spared all that. Dirty weather could never mean more to him thaia dirty weather. Pear, it might bring with it, but not as a herald, not even one feels sure, as a memory— only as a companion of the moment: "That’s a fall, and no mistake," he thought. "There must be some uncommonly dirty weather knock ing about. "5 " " " ' . , " - r 3 Page I 4 .. Page 6. ^ Page 10. 206 . . . but the past being to his mind done with, and the future not there yet, the more general actual ities of the day required no comment. It is highly significant that MacWhirr, like Lord Jim, was given his opportunity to run. Jukes suggested it to him. MacWhirr considered the suggestion stolidly, gravely, but his decision was clear. The thing was madness. He had never heard such 'a foolish suggestion. True, Jukes1 opinion was reinforced by the authority of a book he had been reading on how to dodge storms. But both suggestions were treated contemptuously. As he saw the situation there was absolutely no trace of emotion In it. He could only see facts. "If I didn’t know you, Jukes, I would think you were in liquor. Steer four points off . . . And what afterwards? Steer four points over the other way, I suppose, to make the courses good. What , put it into your head that I would start to tack a steamer as If she were a sailing ship?"‘ And thus MacWhirr passed through the experience without ever knowing hesitation or fear, but Conrad insists quite without the aid of direct comment that it was nothing to his credit. Lord Jim's fear was quite impossible to MacWhirr. His courage was a negative thing. It simply marked the absence of one of the greatest attributes man 6 Page 9* 7 Page 32 can have. His life was calm, but it was barren: Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as some men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been made to see all it may contain of per fidy, of violence, of terror. There are on sea and land such men thus fortunate*-or thus dis dained by destiny or by the sea.0 One would think that were enough. But Conrad*s secret envy of MacWhirr and his secret resentment are further emphasized. It seems he can't let the poor man alone. Long after the story is finished, he insists on giving us a picture of the way his letters are Ignored by his family. It is as if Conrad were adding a last word: , ! Ies, he is spared the bogey of cowardice, but it is noth ing to be proud of. It is nothing to be envious of, either. The curious thing is that, in spite of himself, Conrad has made MacWhirr an attractive figure. And in spite of his careful efforts to conceal it, his own envy and annoyance reveal themselves. So, for all Its object ivity, Typhoon holds on its raging surface a troubled reflection of that same cowardice complex that is the very essence of Lord Jim. FALK "But what is the subject of '^Falk* ? I personally do not feel so very certain about it." So writes Conrad 8 Page 19. 208 in his Author's Note.^ One can sympathize with this state ment when one tries to set down the plot in a way that is satisfactory to oneself. The fact of the matter is that there are two stories, and they have a psychological rela tionship that the author was in all probability, not aware of. The first is the story of the narrator's efforts to get out of the river in which he had found his first com mand. The second story which lies in the first as a jewel lies in its casket is the story of Falk's guilty secret. This is another story, like The Secret Sharer, which Conrad reached by walking along the path of those memories that pertained to his first command, till memories were lost in dreams. The emotions that belonged to that time converged very naturally to a meeting place with the emo tions that belonged to his repressed memories. At the time Conrad had been feeling stifled by his sailor's profession, as he had felt stifled by his Polish destiny a dozen years earlier. He had just resigned from his job with no clear reason to support his decision. He felt restless. Sudden ly came this opportunity of a command. It meant excape from his irksome subordinate rank. It meant justification of his earlier flight into a maritime life. But he did not ^ Typhoon, p. ix. 209 feel sure that he was equal to the task any more than he had felt equal to his Polish destiny. There were all kinds of difficulties, and anxieties. As The Shadow Line makes clear, the great thing was to win his way out to sea. Conrad had no doubt heard the story of the man who refused to put his tug at the service of a harrassed skipper because of a feud. It was his nature to apply that diffi culty to the part of his life where he would have feared It most. His sense of insecurity forced him to ask ques tions of himself like this: What should I have done in such a situation? How should I have acquitted myself? His answer is the answer of the story. He would have capitulated with as little loss of face as possible. It is interesting to notice how he pleads for that decision: Now I will merely state that in my opinion, to get his sickly crew into the sea air, and secure a quick despatch for his ship, a skipper would be justified in going to any length, short of absolute crime. He should put his pride in his pocket; he may accept confidences; he must explain his inno cence as if it were a sin. He-may take advantage of misconceptions, of desires, and of weaknesses. . The story of Falk's guilty secret is, in essence, the situation that keeps recurring in Conrad's stories. A man committed a crime in very excusable circumstances. It was forced upon him by exigencies of life and death. He carried his guilty secret for years. It Isolated him Page 196. from his fellows and condemned him to live in a kind of mental twilight. He wanted desperately to live, as he said, to be like other men. He felt that his escape could only come by confession and by union with a woman. It hardly seems necessary to make further reference to the emotions that find expression in this story, because they are already old acquaintances. The principal emphasis is on Falk’s tremendous urge to escape from his isolation and live as other people did in the sunshine where the shadows of guilty secrets were only memories. Schomberg got right at the heart of the matter when he said, "I don’t suppose there is one person In this town that he isn’t en vious of." And Falk himself revealed this attitude in his very speech: The pain and disgust of his denial were very striking. Couldn’t I understand that he was as respectable as any white man hereabouts, earning his living honestly? He was suffering from my suspicion, and the low undertone of his voice made his protestations sound very pathetic. If, as the record has It, Conrad suffered at this period from tics,- * - 3 and if he recognized perhaps uncon sciously their origin through his own sense of guilt, his Page 176. Page 205. - * - 3 Anon., "Conrad at Thirty-one," Living Age, CCCXLIII (September, 1932), 82-83. 211 description of Falk’s gesture of drawing liis hands over his face and shuddering violently--a gesture obviously deriving from his memories of cannibalism--is of real psychological significance. Another detail that is worth mentioning also con cerns Falk's guilty secret. It is not like the usual Conrad type of guilt in that it has nothing to' do with betrayal. Yet Conrad seemed compelled to relate it in some way to such a betrayal of trust. Quite without any apparent justification he says of this secret: I remembered that I had known a man before, who had declared himself to have fallen, years ago, a vic tim to misfortune. But his misfortune, whose ef fects appeared permanent . . . when considered dis passionately, seemed indistinguishable from a breach of trust. Could it be something of that nature?19- AMY FOSTER Plot. The plot of Amy Foster is very simple. Yanko, an uneducated foreign peasant of child-like good ness was washed ashore from the wreck of a ship chartered to take European immigrants to America. After a period of misunderstanding and persecution at the hands of the ig norant English peasants, he was shown kindness by Amy Foster, an extremely dull and uninteresting domestic. They married and appeared happy. As time went on, however, little 1 ^ 4 - page 5^2; 212 flashes of foreignness in Yanko perplexed and frightened Amy, and when he babbled in his native tongue during an attack of fever, she fled from the house in terror. Yanko tried to follow her and died from exposure. Amy was left alone with her child, to all appearances quite unchanged by the experience. It was as if Yanko had never been. As Dr. Morf has shown at some length in his chapter on "Three Visions" in his book, The Polish Heritage of Joseph Conrad, the story is full of emotions that stem from Conrad’s early contact with the British: feelings of be- wildermant and feelings of rejection, barriers of language, and the consciousness that he was looked down upon by people who were in every way his inferiors. All these emotions are reflected in the picture of Yanko, the lithe, bright-eyed youth who sought so earnestly to find a place amongst the insular and heavy peasants: Ahl he was different; innocent of heart, and full of good will, which nobody wanted, this cast-away that, like a man transplanted into another planet, was separated by an immense space from his, past and by an immense ignorance from his future. ^ But these emotions are not the principal emotions of the theme. The theme is almost identical with that of The Nigger of the Narcissus. There are the same little people, awed and bewildered, struggling forlornly with Typhoon, p. 132. 213 forces without and within that are too big for them. They are not malleable enough to be beaten into shape by the interaction of environment and these forces within. Thus Amy and Yanko come together in a vague fumbling way because life has washed them ashore together. Then the tide comes in again they have separated. The forces of attraction within them were not quite strong enough to counteract the slight pull of the cross currents: little differences, needless fears of the incomprehensible. The prevailing mood that takes charge of the reader from the beginning and arranges his attitude to suit the theme is the mood of a man who looks out on the battlefield of life with the conviction that all is lost before the battle begins. It is a mood that speaks in the very lands cape : With the sun hanging low on its western limit, the expanse of the grass-lands framed in the counter scarp of the rising ground took on a gorgeous and sombre aspect. A sense of penetrating sadness, like that inspired by a grave strain of music, disengaged itself from the silence of the fields. The men we met walked past, slow, unsmiling with downcast eyes, as if the melancholy of an over-burdened earth had weighted their feet,,bowed their shoulders, borne down their glances. _______■ It is the mood that watches the figure of humanity stumbling along clumsily, heroically amongst his failures, Page 110. ploughing futilely at his environment with the toil of uncounted ploughmen behind him in a field neither time nor toil can change: The tired chestnut drooped into a walk, and the rim of the sun, all red In a speckless sky, touched familiarly the smooth top of a ploughed rise near the road as I had seen it times innumerable touch the distant horizon of the sea. The uniform brownness of the harrowed field glowed with a rose tinge, as though the powdered clods had sweated out in minute pearls of blood the toil of uncounted ploughmen. But added to all the futilities of man’s struggle with his outer environment, there are the fears within. Conrad makes us feel this pitiable, child-like quality in a magnificent sentence that haunts the mind for a long time after it has passed: "There are other tragedies, less scandalous and of a subtler poignancy, arising from irre concilable differences and from that fear of the Incompre hensible that hangs over all our heads— over all our heads." Such a little thing, such a little fear separated Amy from her destiny and caused the death of Yanko, but she was not equal to even that difficulty. She lacked enough light to see her way--enough light to banish the childish spectre of fear. And v^orst of all, it doesn’t seem to matter in the least, because Yanko’s memory seems to have "vanished 17 Page 108. 1® Page 108. 215 from her dull brain as a shadow passes away on a white screen.”^ Under such circumstances, it is quite futile to be indignant. Conrad felt that, too. He expresses it power fully. in- Yanko’s dying protest: And with his panting breast and lustrous eyes he reminded me again of a wild creature under the net, of a bird caught in a snare. She had left him. She had left him--sick--helpless--thirsty. The spear of the hunter had entered his very soul ’Why?' he cried, in the penetrating and indignant voice of a man calling to a responsible Maker. A gust of wind and a swish of rain answered. ^ There is little doubt concerning the origin of these feelings. Long before he sat down to write this story, Conrad had begun to face his own failures with the excuse that circumstances could be too much for any man. They were too much for Lord Jim. They were too much for the crew of the "larcissus .1 l They were too much for Arlette and Kayerts. They were too much for the sixteen- year-old Conrad when so many voices were troubling his youthful ears. Who knows how memory and nighmares combined to create unnamable fears--fears of the incomprehensible-- fears that had long since looked unreal and foolish? But like Amy Poster he had fled in unreasoning panic and left his rightful career to perish in dishonor. Like Amy B'oster he was left with a meaningless existence in the place of a 20 page 1^.1 . 19 page llf.2. 216 destiny. And now his excuse had broadened to include all men.- It had become a philosophy. It had even invaded his private life and given him the habit of crumbling before his domestic difficulties. THE END OF THE TETHER The End of the Tether is, in a sense, an elaboration of the incident of Captain Brierly’s suicide in Lord Jim. There is,no similarity of plot and, indeed, very little sim ilarity of theme. The relationship goes deeper to the cre ative impulse. It has already been shown that the Brierly incident is part of Marlow’s subtle pleading for Jim, part of his efforts to show how little difference there may be between an exposed coward and the most admired of men. From this point, a step to the right takes us to the theme of Amy Foster where circumstances are so overwhelming and man is so small. A step to the left takes us to the theme of The End of the Tether where a man of the highest ideals finds himself betraying a trust for the noblest of motives. In so doing he not only wins our sympathy, but becomes a hero in our eyes. By this subtle trick of the unconscious, Conrad allies himself with those victims of fate who find themselves pushed into the most unfortunate situations that besmirch their honor, but whose manhood and integrity lift them above their fate in death. It is a kind of spiritual 217 sleight of hand that will not stand up to the most casual inspection of the conscious mind; but no doubt it gave Conrad a good deal of satisfaction, perhaps without his detecting what he was about. Plot. Captain Whalley, a famous commander of fifty years' sea experience, was reduced by cruel circum stances to become dependent upon a partnership with Massy-, - a worthless engineer-shipmaster. A contract kept him at his captain's post long after his eyes had become almost useless to him. By depending on a Malay serang he kept his guilty secret hidden. His conscience troubled him, but he dared not give up till the present trip was finished, because his whole remaining fortune was tied up in a con tract with the unscrupulous Massy. His daughter needed that money. After confessing his guilt to a sympathetic friend, Y/halley set out on the last stage of his' final voyage. However, his partner had thought of a way of re couping his own fortunes: he deflected the compass needle and caused the wreck of his ship for the sake of the in surance money. Whalley realized that he was at the end of his tether and he went down with his ship, taking his guilty secret with him. In spite of its individual tone, this story has too many features in common with Conrad's typical guilt-complex 218 stories to require much comment. There is the man reduced to a dependent position--a position that is responsible for his tragedy. Whalley was in Massy* S.% hands just as Almayer and Willems were in Lingard's hands and just as Conrad was under the direction of his uncle. There are the unkind circumstances that force him to commit a crime against his honor— a crime that is not at all representative of his character. There are the wicked and unscrupulous enemies who play into the hands of fate. There is the sense of isolation, of being separated by his secret from all men. There is the shadow of hopelessness that stretches slowly over the life of Whalley. There is the sudden need to confess, and so a suitable confessor is found. There is the cruel trick of fate that brings the final, unexpected situation from which there is no escape but in death, a death, too, that seems like an atonement. Lastly there is the depressing conviction that seeks us out in the sud den silence at the end that all this is not important. It was Captain Whalley1s private problem. It overwhelmed him, but to the rest of the world it is of "not the slightest consequence.” It is an impression that comes to the reader in the postscript where Whalley1s daughter receives the news and the money together. It is our first glimpse of the daughter who was never out of Whalley*s consciousness. 219 "There had been whole days when she had not thought of him at all— had no time. But she loved him, she felt she 21 had loved him after all." It seems quite unnecessary to comment on the emo tions of this story in any detail. They are all combined to build up the reader's admiration and pity for the old man. He is guilty. He has betrayed a trust. But the sense of guilt is so girt about with elements of pathos that the story achieves a tone of almost epic dignity: "It Is as if the light were ebbing out of the world. Have you ever watched the ebbing sea on an open stretch of sands withdrawing farther and farther away from you? It is like this--only there will be no flood to follow. Never. It is as if the sun were growing smaller, the stars going one by one. There can't be many left that I can see by this. But I haven't had the courage to look of late. In Whalley's last moments there is an awful qual ity of heroic despair that reminds one of the mother in The Idiots, and of Yanko's indignant "Why?" shouted to a God who has turned away His face. In that old heart, in that vigorous body, there was, that nothing should be wanting, a horror of death that apparently could not be overcome by the horror of his blindness. But after all, for Ivy he had carried his point, walking in his darkness to the very verge of a crime. God had not listened to his prayers. The light had finished ebbing out of the world; not a glimmer. It was a dark waste; but it was unseemly that a Whalley who had gone so far to carry a point could continue to live. He must pay the price.23 23-Youth, p. 339. 22 Page 30I 4.. 23 Page 333. TOMORROW Plot. Captain Hagberd chose' a career for his son and tried to impose his wishes on the boy with the result that the latter ran away to sea. The old man lived for the day when his boy should return, but his hopes were de ferred beyond endurance. Eventually his crazed mind took refuge in the delusion that his son would return soon. After a time, the delusion gained complete control over the old man, and he became convinced that the return would take place "tomorrow." In his dementia, this return was bound up with the boy’s marriage to his neighbour, Bessie \ Carvil. Strangely enough, Harry Hagberd did return one day. He came to extort some money from his father. Captain Hagberd, however, refused to recognize him, because his son was not due "today" but "tomorrow." He had grown to love his delusion better than reality. Harry was only amused at the old man’s lunacy. After persuading Bessie to give him what spare cash she had, the young sailor took her in his arms and kissed her passionately. Then he walked jauntily away, pleased with his conquest; but Bessie was left with an awakened storm of passion in the lonely sil ence of the night. She was condemned to live a meaningless existence alongside the mad old man and his delusion of "tomorrow." 221 This is one of the slightest of Conrad’s stories, and it is not of much significance to this investigation. However, it is not hard to see why it interested Conrad. There were elements in his own past that provided him with the emotions that he makes use of. In a sense, Conrad's father had sought to force a career upon his son. He did it simply by virtue of his own accomplishments. Like Harry Hagberd, Conrad had run away blithely and carelessly from his responsibilities. It was not hard for him to sympathize with Captain Hagberd either. His Uncle Thaddeus had taught him to think of his father as one of the deluded revolutionaries who believed in the impossible: a free Poland ’ ’tomorrow.” The most poignant emotion in the story, however, is centered in Bessie Carvil. We learn from The Arrow of Gold, and A Personal Re cord, and the preface to Nostroma of the girl that Conrad left in Poland. Her patriotism had inspired him--and frightened him, too. When he left her, he found at the moment of parting that he had awakened some passion in her. Perhaps he made some promises to return. And it seems evident that he had day-dreamed a good deal about a return. At least we know that this girl was sufficiently on his conscience to claim two places for herself in his fiction. She is doubtless the girl addressed' in the note at the beginning of The Arrow of Gold, and she 222 is avowedly Dona Avelanos in Nostromo. The idea of awaken ing sudden passion in a girl and leaving her heartlessly is twice exploited in Conrad's short stories. It is the central incident in A Smile of Fortune, and it is the emo tional climax of Tomorrow. Deep down in his heart, Conrad had always identified himself with the Poles. He held himself in contempt for his callous abandonment of the deluded revolutionaries with their pathetic belief in "tomorrow,1 1 and of the girl who had loved him after all. No doubt that is why the cold detachment of his story yields at last to pathos--a pathos that rose upon the sudden surge of feeling from his own half-buried memories. In any case, it is a pathos that has upon it the unmistakable seal of poetic genius: She opened her eyes after a while; and, listening to the firm, leisurely footsteps going away with their conquest, began to gather her skirts, staring all the time before her. Suddenly she darted through the open gate into the dark and deserted street. "StopI" she shouted. "Don’t go I" And listening with an attentive poise of the head, she could not tell whether It was the beat of the swell or his fateful tread that seemed to fall cru elly upon her heart. Presently every sound grew fainter, as though she were slowly turning into stone. A fear of this awful silence came to her-- worse than the fear of death. She called upon her ebbing strength for the final appeal: "Harry I" . . . She . . . began to totter silently back towards her stuffy little inferno of a cottage. It had no lofty portal— no terrific inscription 223 of forfeited hopes--she did not understand wherein she had sinned . . . It was as if all the hopeful madness of the world had broken out to bring terror upon her heart, with the voice of that old man shouting of his trust in an everlasting to-morrow.24 Pages 275-77 CHAPTER VIII NOSTROMO In Mostromo Conrad dropped all his excuses and his defenses, and deliberately played with the thought of re turning to Poland and acting the part of a patriotic re volutionary. Of course, the impulse is disguised: it is not the story of Poland but of Sulaco, a small South American republic of Conrad’s invention. It tells how this republic was born after a period of bloodshed and suffering, and of the part played by its leading citizens But the story of Sulaco is really the story of the silver mine at San Tome, because it was only the wealth of the mine that made Sulaco worth fighting for. A generation earlier, when it was unproductive, the mine had been foisted on a wealthy Englishman by a scheming local gov ernment as an excuse to tax him •unmercifully. To his son Charles Gould, the mine presented a challenge. This was the thing that had killed his father. Charles determined to conquer it. Capital and brains and engineering genius were marshalled against it, till the thing became Gould's slave. It poured out fabulous riches and brought Its owner potential political power that was almost fright ening. All Sulaco lived in its shadow. It aroused the 225 cupidity of the army leaders. It dominated the politics of the province. It caused bloodshed and heartbreak even while it conferred endless material benefits upon the place. But finally Sulaco-emerged from civil strife as an independent state with a democratic government and freedom from everything but the materialistic attitude that dominated even Its patriotism. The book is called "Nostromo" because Nostromo’s story Is really the story of Sulaco In parable. An edu cated Italian, "a man of the people," Nostromo landed in the province when Charles Gould was still struggling with the problem of the mine. Nostromo’s splendid physique and compelling personality, his courage, and his resourceful ness, made him a man In demand. He became foreman of the wharf laborers, and a man of great Influehce amongst the common people. Revolution and Intrigue provided him with opportunities for exploits that captured the imagination of the whole town. His unfailing success became a legend. He built up a reputation for infallibility and incorrup tibility, and to him, this reputation became the only thing that mattered. He dramatized It, timing his entries on his gallant grey horse with its silver trappings, and making lavish gestures that left him perpetually without funds, but reaping him a glorious applause. There came a time, however, when he became suddenly aware of his true position in the community: he was the petty servant of material interests. While the cynical bitterness that distilled from.this discovery was still upon him, circum stances conspired to rob him of his reputation for infal libility. He was sent with a lighter full of silver into the darkness of the gulf. The plan was to save the silver from the insurgents who were expected in force the next day. He secreted the treasure on a near-by island, but when his associate put some ingots in his pocket in a suicidal drowning, Nostromo was left with an inexplicable fact: four ingots were missing. He could not bear the thought of the suspicion in which he would be involved. He reported that the silver had been sunk in a collision with the steamer full of insurgents. Prom that time for ward Nostromo became a thief. Slowly he enriched himself by trips to the island. He soon became demoralized by the burden of his guilty secret, but though he came to the very verge of confession, he took his secret to the grave with him. Charles Gould suffered a fate which was spiritually not much different from that of Nostromo. In spite of himself, the material aspect of his great possession very soon began to smother the ideals that prompted him to at tack the problem of the mine. It began to enslave him. 227 He became abstracted and withdrawn. Family life, love, idealism, spiritual values, all gave way to this obses sion, and a last glimpse of him shows something as spir itually dead as Nostromo. That, too, was the fate, of Sulaco itself. The reader sees it blaring out its false ideals of patriotism at the top of its voice lest it have time to listen to the cold, calculating voice of cupidity that is speaking tonelessly, perpetually, in the inner chamber of its heart. Nostromo is the most fascinating of Conrad’s books from almost every point of view. As Dr. Morf has shown in his splendid chapter on this work, the emotional re lease is here widely dispersed. It is not confined as it is in Lord Jim, to one major emotion that carries in its train a host of minor, related emotions. As Morf puts it: It is one of the best examples of the compensatory function of artistic creation. All the repressed Polish reminiscences, sentiments, aspirations and resentments, lying deep under the surface of the artist’s conscious mind, had their day of rehabil itation when this book was written.! Theme. If Nostromo were to be interpreted as a parable of Conrad’s attitude to the Polish question, the interpretation would be something like this: Men are all too easily blinded by the sentiment of patriotism. Amongst ! G-. Morf, The Polish Heritage of Joseph Conrad, p. lij.8. 228 the so-called patriots, there are very few who are not ruled by ulterior motives. With some it is reputation, with others it is the love of a woman, but with most it is material interest. And, after all, what is accomplished by these revolutions that aim at the autonomy of some state? Bloodshed and suffering are followed by great en thusiasm and a blaring forth of patriotic sentiments, but often enough all this is only a facade to cover an even more soul-destroying materialism. This is the first of the stories in which Conrad exposed the futility of revolutions. It became one of his fixed defenses when he faced himself with the past. Nostromo is not, however, a parable in the sense that certain characters in the book stand for certain people in Conrad's past. As Dr. Morf's treatment pre supposes, Conrad has simply projected his feelings into the various characters. He identifies himself with Gould, with Dr. Monygham, with Hirsch, and with other*s, too. However, there is one exception to this principle of dis persal. That is D^coud. As Morf has pointed out, Conrad dreams that he came back to Poland in the person of Decoud to take the role that his lover would have had him take. In the dream, Dd’ coud, the young adventurer who has been abroad in Prance for many years, comes back to Sulaco for the love of Antonia Avellanos. He cannot, in view of his 229 attitude to revolutions, become an enthusiast; but, as he admits to himself quite openly, he enters the struggle because it is plain to him that Antonia can love only a patriot. He takes charge of the local paper and writes for the cause, and when the hopes and the enthusiasms of others are waning, he strengthens their determination. He goes with Nostromo on the great adventure with the silver; but when he is left alone on the island with his thoughts, the hollowness of his motives becomes unbear able, and he seeks death in the placid gulf. One cannot escape the conviction that Conrad got morbid pleasure from the fact that Antonia was left to mourn for her hero and patriot. It is a depressing end to the dream, but it indi cates that unconsciously Conrad did not really desire to have a hero’s part in establishing Polish sovereignty. His desires were deeper and more repressed. They were desires that correspond with Almayer’s desire to forget, to regress, to float away on the swollen river and dis appear in the deep, placid sea. Perhaps it is the influence of this repression, or perhaps it is a dim reflection of the feelings that must have come over Conrad when his uncle first robbed his father and his father’s activities of the glamour that had been theirs, but the whole book is dominated with an 230 afternoon atmosphere of disillusionment. Nature is never magical here. Almost without exception she is hot, silent, oppressive, or ominously still and dark; or, If the moon looks down on the scene, It Is not to bathe ev erything in the liquid magic of her beams, but to appear cold and expressionless and withdrawn. A sample or two will establish this point: On the other side, what seems to be an isolated patch of blue mist floats lightly on the glare of the horizon. This Is the peninsula of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp rocks and stony levels cut about by vertical ravines. It lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone stretched from a green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly waterless, for the rainfall runs off at once on all sides into the sea, it has not soil enough--it is said--to grow a single blade of grass, as If it were blighted by a cur s e . In the face of the open gulf, the sun, clear, unclouded, unaltered, plunged into the waters in a grave and untroubled mystery of self-immolation consummated far from all mortal eyes, with an in finite majesty of silence and peace.3 . . . the solitude appeared like a great void, and the silence of the gulf like a tense thin cord to which he ^/Decoud/’ ’ hung suspended by both hands, without fear, without aurprise, without any sort of emotion whatever.H- These feelings of aridness, of meaninglessnass, of awful loneliness and emptiness were old acquaintances of Conrad. They are associated throughout this book and ^ Pages 3 - if 3 Page if9 5 . ^ Pages if9 8 -9 9 231 throughout the Heart of Darkness and The Outpost of Progress with materialistic interests that lie at the heart of sentiments like false patriotism, and hypocrit ical missionary zeal. It is a fact of great interest that this general mood should be the envelope to hold such a variety of loose and semi-related emotions that belong to his repressed past. It is time now to notice some of these emotions. Charles G-ould and his father. There are some fascinating aspects of the relationship that existed be tween Charles Bould and his father. Conrad begins by establishing a similarity between the background of the G-ould relationship and that of the Korseniowskis: He was a lonely man. Ever since I was ten years old, he used to talk to me as if I had been grown up. When I was in Europe he wrote to me every month. Ten, Twelve pages every month of my life for ten years.- 5 There is the excuse that his own father did not know him in the all important time when he was growing up, and the conviction that his father would never have wanted him to continue the struggle for Poland. He had not seen me for ten years. He did not know me. He parted from me for my sake, and he would never let me come back. He was always talking in his letters of leaving Costaguana, of abandoning everything and making his escape. But he was too valuable a prey . . .6 ^ Page 73 ^ Page 73. 232 It Is interesting to notice that even though his common sense told him that his father would approve of his conduct, Conrad was nevertheless oppressed by the feeling that he was disobeying his father. He gets revenge on this emotion, as it were, In Nostromo by reversing the situation. Young G-ould went back to Costaguana against the wishes of his father and continued the struggle. In a way that was perfectly absurd \whexi taken on Its face value, he felt guilty about his return. He felt that he had to excuse himself, to justify his return, and he Is- forever explaining himself to his wife, till she exclaims, "Charley, you are splendidly disobedient."*^ It must have often distressed Conrad as a growing boy subject to the continual lectures of his uncle in which his father was disparaged, to feel that he was gradually slipping away from that intimacy of spirit that had been precious to him as a tiny lad. It no doubt made him restles’s so that when he chose the sea,' he looked for ' i.' ▼ '4 • ' y _ • - * 7 • « - consolation in action. All these things are mirrored unmistakably here: • ' ■ It hurt Charles Gould to feel that never more, by no effort of will, would he be able to think of his father in the same way he used to think of him when the poor man was alive. His breathing image was no longer in his power. This consideration, closely affecting his own identity, filled his breast with a mournful and angry desire for action. In this his 7 Page 8 l j . . 233 instinct was unerring. Action is consolatory. it is the enemy of thought and the friend of flatter ing illusions. Only in the conduct of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the fates. For his action the mine was obviously the only field. It was imperative sometimes to know how to disobey the solemn wishes of the dead. He re solved firmly to make his disobedience as thorough (by way of atonement) as it well could be. The mine had been the cause of an absurd moral dis aster; its working must be made a serious and moral success. He owed it to the dead man’s memory. Such were--properly speaking--the emotions of Charles Gould.° He was prepared to stoop for his weapons. For the moment he felt as if the silver mine, which had killed his father, had decoyed him further than he meant to go; and with the round-about logic of the emotions he felt that the worthiness of his life was bound up with its success. There was no going back.9 It must have given Conrad a good deal of satis faction thus to reverse the situation and make the son the strong man and the father the weak one, and to make the son responsible for the emergence of free Sulaco. Suffering. Dr. Morf has stated his'belief that Don Jose Avellanos is made to stand for Conrad's father, and there are reminiscences of the poor man’s sufferings and of his awful emaciation at the end: Don Jose Avellanos, clanking his chains amongst the others, seemed only to exist in order to prove ® Pages 65-66. 9 Page 85. G. Morf, oja. cit., p. llj.0. 23k how much, hunger, pain, degradation, and cruel tortures a human body can stand without parting with the last spark of life.1J- Cowardice. A good deal has already been said in this dissertation about Conrad’s attitude towards coward ice, but it is in Nostromo that one finds the most power ful expression of the contradictory phases. There are few more horrible pictures in literature than the vivid portrayal of Hirsch’s fear and his torture. One can sense the morbid satisfaction that this man’s sufferings gave Conrad. The fact of the matter is that Hirsch is made to suffer because he is a coward--because he is Conrad’s cowardi ce. In Dr. Mony gharri a contrary attitude is seen. It is an expression of the mood in which Conrad sympathized with himself for his shrinkings from any activity that would force him back into the awful experiences of his boyhood. He presents in the picture of Dr. Monygham a man who has suffered more than anybody could be expected to bear. It Is a powerful picture. It woos the sympathy of the reader so that he tends to feel that the doctor is altogether too hard on himself. That, one feels, is the source of the satisfaction that Conrad gets out of the presentation. He could understand all too well how the d-------------- 11 Pages 137-38. 235 doctor cowed before his memories. He could understand his feelings of unvrarthiness, his life-long remorse, the exaggerated humility with which he punished himself. The reader can feel the morbid strain in all this. It bears all the marks of obsessive thinking:, The doctor had been a very stubborn prisoner, and . . . his subjugation had been very crushing and very complete. That is why the limp in his walk, the twist of his shoulders, the scars on his cheeks < were so pronounced. His confessions, when they came at last, were very complete, too. Sometimes on the nights when he-walked the floor, he wondered, grind ing his teeth with shame and rage, at the fertility of his imagination when stimulated by a sort of pain which makes truth, honour, self-respect, and life itself matters of little moment . . . And he could not forget Father Beron with his monotonous phrases, nVifill you confess now?” reaching him in an awful iteration and lucidity of meaning through the delirious incoherence of unbearable pain. He could not forget. But that was not the worst. If he met Father Beron in the street after all these years, Dr. Monygham was sure he would have quailed before him. This contingency was not to be feared now. Father Beron was dead, but the sicken ing certitude prevented Dr. Monygham from looking anybody in the f a c e .12 It is interesting to note that Conrad excuses even the cowardice of Hirsch because of the vividness of his imagination. It is the same kind of excuse he made for Lord Jim. Likewise, he belittles the courage of Captain Mitchell as he belittles the courage of MacWhirr on the ground that the former lacks the imagination of Hirsch: 12 Pages 373-71*.. 236 The old sailor /Witchell/- > with all his small weaknesses and absurdities, was constitutionally In capable of entertaining for any length of time a fear for his personal.'safety. It was not so much firmness of soul as the lack of a certain kind of imagination--the kind whose undue development caused intense suffering to Senor Hirsch, that sort of imagi nation which adds the blind terror of bodily suffer ing and of death, envisaged as an accident to the body alone, strictly— to all the other apprehensions on which the sense of one’s existence is based.13 Silences. Silences have a strange fascination for Conrad. His books depict many a silence of morbid intensity in which the thoughts of his characters palpi tate frighteningly. In such silences these people dis cover themselves. It is interesting to speculate upon the significance of these things. Perhaps Conrad’s own guilty secret discovered itself to him in such moments of silence. But it is not at all hard to understand how mea» ories of childhood could invest a silence with morbid power. In that "atmosphere of sad exaltation/' when the small boy sat in the dull winter light with his ailing father, there was many an hour-long silence in which word less questions sought to fill the solemn void. Conrad himself says of those days: "My young days, the days when one’s habits and character are formed, have been rather familiar with long silences," 13 Page 338. Notes on Life and Letters, p. l68. 237 It is no wonder, then, that silences have such awful pov/er in Conrad's works. And nowhere are they more potent than in Nostromo. There is the long silence when the lighter loaded with silver drifted forward through the darkness of the gulf, the silence that surrounded the hanging figure of Hirsch, and, most powerful of all, the silence in which Decoud discovered himself, and lost him self, too: . . . the solitude appeared like a great void, and the silence of the gulf like a tense, thin cord to which he hung suspended by both hands, without fear, without a surprise, without any sort of emotion whatever. Only towards the evening, in the compar ative relief of coolness, he began to wish that this cord would snap. He imagined it snapping with a report of a pistol--a sharp, full crack. And that would be the end of him. He contemplated that even tuality with pleasure, because he dreaded the sleep less nights in which the silence, remaining unbroken in the shape of a cord to which he hung with both hands, vibrated with senseless phrases, always the same but utterly incomprehensible, about Nostromo, Antonia, Barrios, and proclamations mingled into an ironical and senseless buzzing. In the daytime he could lool? at the silence like a still cord stretch ed to breaking point, with his life, his vain life suspended to it like a weight.15 Nostromo. Morf has pointed out that Nostromo has many of the characteristics of the Korseniowskis. It seems likely that the creation of Nostromo was affected to some extent by Bobrowski's picture of his brother-in- Pages . J 4 . 98—99. ^ G. Morf, o j d . ci t., p. ll|.l. 238 law, Apollo. If so, Conrad has unconsciously taken a grim revenge on his father for his part in thrusting the conflict on his son, for the implication is that much of the motive behind Apollo's patriotism was the love of adventure and reputation. Buj: it must be stressed that Nostromo was not a symbol of Conrad’s father, nor of any body in particular. Indeed, Conrad projected upon Nostromo many of his own feelings. He is the one to carry the guilty secret that the reader of Conrad learns to expect. In this story, the secret is associated with religious superstitions that are reminiscent of Jean Bacadou in The Idiots. The circumstances are as follows: Before Nostromo went forth on his great mission to save the silver, he refused the dying request of his foster mother. Thereafter, he feared the curse of that blasphemy. It seemed to blight his life. It fell like a shadow across every attempt he made to master his fate. ^t stifled his attempts at confession. It stifled them so completely that he found it Impossible to speak of his guilt even to his beloved Giselle who was willing to follow him to the end of the earth: "Not that I Not that I" he gasped out, appalled at the spell of a secrecy that had kept him dumb before so many people falling upon his lips again with unimpaired force. Not even to her. Not even Page 239 to her • • . He had not regained his freedom. The spectre of the unlawful treasure arose, standing by her side like a figure of silver, pitiless and secret, with a finter on its pale lips.1? And even at the very last, when he was dying in the presence of Mrs. Gould, he was not given grace to confess: 'But there is something accursed in wealth, Senora, shall I tell you where the treasure is?,n To you alone . . . ShiningJ Incorruptible!” But the confession did not come. It was not wanted. There is a strange power in Conrad’s handling of this theme. Perhaps this curse is a reflection of the feeling that could well have assailed Conrad of having blasphemed his father’s God and refused the unspoken request of a dying father. He had refused to take the torch of liberty that was handed-to him. Mrs. Gould. There can be little doubt that Mrs. Gould was drawn very largely frcm Conrad’s impression of his mother, a woman of whom Zeromski wrote as ,fa type ad mirably expressive in her moral distinction, of the nation al culture of that generation . . . the picture of a charm ing woman in whom all is beauty, but beauty outlined against the halo of misfortune.nl9 Conrad, it will be remembered, 1? Page 210. 1® Page 560. x9 S. Zeromski, "Joseph Conrad,” Nineteenth Centurv. Cl (March, 1927), 4 l 2 . ----------------- 2I4.O felt that nthe Polish National Spirit had been kept alive by such, women as his mother. The men were hopeless." Mrs. Gould with her wide brows,^ her air of com manding sweetness,^ and the deep sorrow that burdened her heart was the only one in Sulaco in whom the pure flame of patiotism continued to bum. Her husband was completely buried in his "material interests," Nostromo was utterly corrupted by his vanity, his love of reputation and of ad venture for its own sake, and finally by his guilty secret. Only Mrs. Gould remained "shining . . . incorruptible." Her patriotism was of the heart and could not be impaired. It is significant that Conrad emerged from this long dream of his return to his native land with a feeling of complete futility. He saw the whole movement as a kind of hypocrisy. He saw himself in the person of Decoud wast ing his life and. his talents for something that he did not really believe in— merely to please a girl whom he had loved. He saw the whole country rejoicing in a blood-bought freedom which was only another kind of bondage--the bondage of materialism. And when he turned away at last from his dream, it was with the'memory of the lighthouse sending its P. M. Ford, Joseph Conrad, A Personal Remembrance, pp. 76-77. ^1 See A Personal Record, p. PP Ibid., pp. 23-24. rays meaninglessly into an empty gulf--a lighthouse sup posedly tended by the old idealist who no longer lived to give light to Nostromo's egoism; and with the memory of the voice of Linda sobbing out her sorrow into the dark ness like the bitter cry of a people whose patriotism was inadequate to subdue its real enemy, materialism. CHAPTER IX THE INFORMER, THE SECRET AGENT The emotions:’ that were seeking an outlet in Nost romo were still unsatisfied after the book was finished. Conrad's continued preoccupation with the theme of anarchy for the succeeding years from 1904. will 1910 is the best evidence of that fact. During this time he wrote The In former , Gaspar Ruiz, The Anarchist, The Secret Agent, and Under Western Eyes. Behind all these stories there is a bitter urge to show that all revolutions against estab lished government are futile and disreputable. In all these stories he struggles to maintain an attitude of exaggerated detachment and a tone of superior Irony, but the author Is much too closely identified with his central characters for such a treatment to be successful. The Informer is nothing more than an excuse to present the final scene in which the hero protests before his scornful lover that he is an "informer" from, conviction. Plot. After a long, involved prelude in which the author seems bent on making it perfectly clear that he Is not really interested in anarchists, the reader is taken to the scene where anarchists are at work. Amongst them is a girl who is interested in their activities merely 2lf3 for the thrill that she gets out of it. Her emotions are false and her convictions are superficial. Her lover is detected as a spy. He is shown as a man of convictions that are more real than those of many of the anarchists. He dies protesting to the girl he loves that what he is doing is not for pay but from conviction. In his Note at the head of The Arrow of Gold Conrad betrays the fact that he had never lost the con sciousness that he had been spending all his life out of Poland under the quiet, disapproving eyes of the girl who sought to inspire him with patriotic Ideals. The Informer seems to be a product of some of the contradictory emo tions associated with that experience. Conrad's conflict lay In the fact that he had accepted the point of view that the Polish rebellions were futile and harmful. That was the argument of his uncle. But Conrad's heart had never yielded to these arguments. Two years spent with Nostromo seemed to have done nothing to convince that heart. He had to keep on with his rationalizations and these stories of anarchy are the result. In the story under study, contradictory emotions find satisfaction: His natural resentment against the Jgirl who rebuked him is satisfied by making the heroine of the story a slip of a girl who knows nothing of life and who has gestures and words to take the place of convictions. The informer, who is despised by all, is shown to be a more genuine member of society than she. It is as if Conrad were saying, "You accuse me of deserting the nation al cause from cowardice. But I take no part in such rebel lions from conviction. Theyare futile. They do more harm to the national welfare than good." It is significant that all the impassioned words of the informer are directed to the girl he loves. It is she alone whom he wants to con vince . Emotions associated with Conrad’s sense of guilt are satisfied by punishing this man with death as he pun ished so many of his guilty characters. Conrad has his revenge on the revolutionaries by depicting anarchists inspired by motives that are not at all clear to themselves and not at all intelligent, by de picting their working methods as crude, and by making all their activities look disreputable. THE SECRET AGENT Plot. Adolf Verloc was employed by one of the foreign embassies in London as a secret agent. In this capacity he was required to associate with anarchists and to pose as one of them. One day he was summoned to the 2 i | - 5 > embassy by Vladimir, the man to whom he was immediately responsible. There he was bullied and threatened with discharge unless he consented to bring about a bomb out rage against the Greenwich Observatory. After a great deal of worry and irresolution, Verloc hit upon a desperate ex pedient. He trained his half-witted brother-in-law, and after a period of careful supervision and indoctrination, he sent him off to place the time bomb at the chosen place. Unfortunately, however, the poor boy tripped over in the park and the resulting explosion destroyed him without doing any other damage. When Verloc1s wife discovered the truth of the affair, she killed Verloc as he lay on the sofa talking to her. Mrs. Verloc fled and sought the protection of another revolutionist, but, when he abandoned her, she took her own life. Principal emotion. In spite of the title, Mrs. Verloc is the center of interest, and the only thing of much consequence about her is the fiercely maternal passion that she has for her brother, the half-witted Stevie. Years earlier she turned away from love for Stevie's sake to be come the faithful wife of Verloc, solely on the grounds that the latter was both able and willing to support his brother-in-law. Conrad acknowledges that she was his in- spirati on: Slowly the dawning conviction of Mrs. Verloc1s maternal passion grew up to a flame between me and that background, tingeing it with its secret ardour and receiving from it in exchange some of its own sombre colouring. At last the story of Winnie Verloc stood out complete from the days of her childhood to the end, unproportioned as yet, with everything still in the first plan, as it were; but ready now to be dealt with.-*- Atmosphere. The atmosphere of this book is one of dreariness and futility. Here is a typical description The futility of office work especially appalled him on those days so trying to his sensitive liver. He got up, unfolding himself to his full height, and with a heaviness of step remarkable in so slender a man moved across the room to the window. The panes streamed with rain, and the short street he looked down into lay wet and empty, as if swept clean sud denly by a great flood. It was a trying day, choked in raw fog to begin with, and now drowned in cold rain. The flickering, blurred flames of gas-lamps seemed to be dissolving in a watery atmosphere. And the lofty pretensions of a mankind oppressed by the miserable iddignities of the weather appeared as a colossal and hopeless vanity deserving of scorn, wonder and compassion. That is the color of anarchy as the reader sees it in The Secret Agent. It is shady. It is unclean. It is disreputable. It belongs behind Verloc's shop with its shady wares, and its slinking customers. The impression comes to us with the powerful opening description of the Page xii. ^ Page 100. grimy squat shop with its cracked door bell and its cheap pictures of dancing girls, its patent medicines, its closed yellow envelopes, its French publications strung across a string, its obscure and badly printed newspapers, its shabby books with their "titles hinting at impropriety," and its dull gas-jets. - * - t is an impression that never leaves us till the end of the book. It serves to reinforce the feeling that anarchy is insincere, and unintelligent, a feeling that takes hold on us as we watch Ossipon, and Karl Yundt, and Michaelis enter and talk, as we glance at the garish publications. It makes the insane fanaticism of the Professor seem more deadly and morbid, and it makes the horrible, calculating, unemotional purposefulness of Vladimir seem more sinister and implacable. In its way, The Secret Agent has an atmosphere as powerful as any of the Malay books. It penetrates to the very heart of the theme so that we spell out its message slowly, despondently, but very surely. It Is this: Anarchy Is the exploitation of fanatics by such powers - as Vladimir represents; it wrecks the lives of those that participate in its activities, but it accomplishes nothing. Underneath, written in small type, as it were, is the corollary: Polish revolutions against the great Russian power are a type of anarchy; only fools would have anything to do with them. 2 i { - 8 This theme emerges from a mere statement of the bare out lines of the plot: Vladimir, a ruthless external force, exploiting the unfortunate circumstances of Adolf Verloc, brought tragedy upon Verloc*s protege and death to all of his family. After they were removed from the scene, the forces of anarchy continued to plot their futile schemes as though the Verlocs had never been. This theme is sustained unwaverlingly till the last description, which is like a perfect reflection of all that has been established: And the incorruptible Professor walked, too, averting his eyes from the odious multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignifi cant, shabby, miserable— and terrible in the simp licity of his idea, calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of m e n .3 The maternal passion of Winnie Verloc. But as Conrad himself admits, it was Winnie Verloc*s over-developed maternal passion that fascinated Conrad. This woman was so completely devoted to her unfortunate brother, that she was willing to accept Verloc into the household simply be cause Verloc was prepared to be a father to Stevie. For 3 Page 311. 2i+9 the boy’s sake, she pretended for several dull years to love her husband. And all the time she lavished the wealth of her affection on the boy. Stevie was quite incapable of making himself understood to others, but Vtfinnie under stood him perfectly. When Stevie was killed in the bomb explosion, life had no more meaning for his sister. In the cold desperation of grief, she killed her husband with a carving knife and fled away into the night to seek her own destiny in the dark waters of the channel. It has already been shown that there is nothing casual or superficial about Conrad's interest in maternal passion. It emerges Into his literary work for the first time with anything like clarity in this book. Indeed, this and subsequent books take Gonrad much nearer the deepest part of his neurosis. What evidently took place, as has already been pointed out, was this: Conrad's morbid fears caused him to reach eagerly after his uncle's point of view. That point of view labeled revolutionaries as fool ish people. It led Conrad to reject his father--to de throne him from the dominating position in his memories. The effect upon him was traumatic. He felt the need for support. He reached out after the mother image that Bob- rowski's arguments built up in his mind. He wanted It all for himself. That deep, unconscious desire caused a re-activation of his oedipal conflicts. The father image became a threat. His hostile feelings led to a great increase of guilt feelings, but the guilt was not conscious ly related to these repressed aspects. He simply became aware of inhibitory feelings concerning his father, and vague desires to belittle him. Complementary to these feelings, there were vague needs for mother relationships stirring in him. He took pleasure in achieving dependent relationships with his wife. But deep down there was hosti ity of a more specific kind for his father and regressive desires towards his mother. These things emerged only through the dream activity of his books. In The Secret Agent the relationships are almost intelligently symbolical. There is the tiny family circle, the father, the mother and the little boy who was exploited by the father and protected by the mother. The father is not evil, but he has no qualities to admire. He lends himself blindly to the exploiting powers. The mother is passively loyal to the anarchists, but her real interest is in the boy. She sacrifices everything for him. When the father sacrifices the boy to his plans, the mother hates the father. It becomes an issue between them and she chooses the boy and kills the father. It is a perfect dramatization of an unconscious conflict. 251 Fantastic as it may seem, it is with. Stevie that Conrad identifies himself. Indeed, Stevie is the most at tractive figure in the book, and the reader finds himself more sympathetic to his welfare than to anyone else*s. Apart from his docility, Stevie has only one noticeable characteristic: his hatred of suffering. That was one of Conrad’s more obvious permal characteristics. Mrs. Conrad tells us that Mhe shrank with an almost morbid sensitive ness from the sight of pain and distress. For Instance, during the war we had some wounded soldiers to tea. Vs/hile they sat round the table In the dining-room, feeding them selves as well as their bandaged limbs allowed, one and all expressed their pleasure at the prospect of meeting the man whose books had helped them through many hours of pain and discomfort."^ Conrad peeped through the door before entering, and having done so fled in distress up stairs. ”1 suppose,” adds Mrs. Conrad, "to a man of such vivid imagination those awful years during the war must have been even more intensely painful than to other people. The sight of his tortured face has often called forth all my maternal feeling, and at such moments he was to me a son as well as a husband."^ ^ Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad as I_ Knew Him, p.llj.. ^ Ibid. , p. l l j . . In T;he Secret Agent Conrad’s deep desire for mater nal attention had its day of triumph,- for Stevie is the supreme object of pity, and he is from first to last pre ferred above the father figure by the mother*. CHAPTER X BAS PAR RUIZ, THE ANARCHIST, IL CONDE, THE DUEL, THE BRUTE In The Secret Agent Conrad focussed his attention on the character who was exploited, and he made him an ob ject of pity. This mood was sustained in a number of short stories that followed it. Caspar Ruiz is one of these st ories. Plot. Caspar Ruiz was a simple soldier involved in one of the South American revolutions. He was a man of enormous strength who blundered into a situation that demanded his execution. He excaped in a badly wounded condition only to fall in love with a woman motivated by t a passion for revenge on the revolutionaries. She saw him as something to be exploited, and used his love for her as as a lever to accomplish through him her whole program of hate, a program which involved the destruction of both of them— the soldier because he followed his love beyond his strength, and the woman because her mission was associated so closely with death that her end was inevitable. Emotions. The reader feels admiration and pity for Caspar, whose love was so abject that he allowed the woman, Erminia, to use him completely in the service of her vengeful soul. For Erminia he feels a dull resentment that she should he so cold, and so domineering, and so relentless. The reader feels that she is not worthy of the dog-like devotion of this simple strong man. Situation. The situation is significant enough from the viewpoint of this investigation. Here are people, loyalists to the original regime, that have suffered ter ribly at the hands of the insurgents. They are impotent against the powers that be, but they feel passionately for their country’s woes. Gaspar Ruiz lacks the enthus iasm of some of the others. In his straightforward manner of thinking, one must accept one's fate. It is no use struggling against the inevitable. For the sake of love, however, he allows himself to be lured into the service of the loyalists. He has great strength, and he becomes a leader of considerable stature. The end, however, is inevitable. He is sacrificed to a cause in which he had no real belief. The atmosphere that dominates the whole story has something in common with that of The Secret Agent and that of Nostromo. It is big with the sense of futility and hopelessness that makes participation in the revolution seem childish. One can feel it in such descriptions as these A red and unclouded sun setting into a purple ocean looked with a fiery stare upon the enormous wall of the Cordilleras, worthy witness of his glorious extinction. But it is Inconceivable that it should have seen the ant-like men busy with their absurd and insignificant trials of killing and dying for reasons that apart from being gener ally childish, were also imperfectly understood. It did light up, however, the backs of the firing party and the faces of the condemned men. This sense of futility is an integral part of the story. It speaks in the fate of Gaspar and Erminia, and, indeed, of their daughter. For surely nothing could under line the futility of her parents1 enormous efforts like the last glimpse we have of the daughter,'the true child of Gaspar Ruiz, reared in the home of a leading general of the opposing side to live a calm and dignified exist ence in the backwaters of life. The idea of a woman driving a man to his death in a cause which demanded a hate that he did not possess takes us at once to Conrad’s love affair in Poland. That girl would have driven him with the enthusiasm of her own patriotism to any lengths. In Nostromo Conrad dreamed about the results of yielding to her pleas. He saw him self In the figure of Decoud undertaking desperate exploits and finally dying. He saw himself driven not by his own patriotism or hatred of oppression, but by his love for Antonis. He saw that his mood would not be one of exultation but one of settled gloom and cynicism, the emotions that rise up in a man when he is doing what he does not approve of. Of the original of Antonia he said: She had perhaps more glow and less serenity in her soul than Antonia, but she was an uncom promising Puritan of patriotism with no taint of the slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her scathing crit icism of my levities--very much like poor Decoud--. or stand the brunt of her austere, unanswerable invective.2 And of Decoud, he wrote: His disdain grew like a reaction of his scep tic! am against the action into which he was forced by his infatuation for Antonia. He soothed himself by saying he was not a partiot, but a lover.3 Gaspar Ruiz is woven out of that emotion of re sentment , and is a kind of protest against the end which he felt to be inevitable should he have yielded to the pleas of his beloved. It used as part of its emotional argument the feelings that belonged to his uncle’s phil osophy of rebellions, one which had so much more in it of common sense than of patriotism. G-aspar Ruiz'was a simple man of the people until " she poured half her venge ful soul into the strong clay of that man, as you may pour intoxication, madness, poison into an empty cup.1 1 ^- 2 Nostromo, p. xiv. 3 Ibid., p. 176. 2 £7 Then he became a force, a destiny, a scourge, but he had no life of his own, and the end was death in a futile bid for her love. Erminia, like the Polish girl patriot, was not prepared to love ^ Ruiz'’ till she had spent him in the cause of her patriotic fervour— not till it was too late. The Polish girl showed no signs of interest in Conrad till he was actually leaving the country. Conrad's resentment is reflected in the picture of Ruiz, who had spent his enormous strength for Erminia, receiving too late the earnest of her affection: 'She bent down, dry-eyed and in a steady voice: •On all the earth I have loved nothing but you, Gaspar,1 she said. His head made a movement. His eyes revived. 'At last I 1 he sighed out. Then anxiously, 'But is this true . . . Is this true?'5 But he never knew for sure, because he was dead when Erminia1s first kiss brushed his lips. THE ANARCHIST The Anarchist is another expression of the curious attitude of self-pity and of resentment against those who would have exploited Conrad in the cause of Poland. It is the story of a man who was made an anarchist against his will when so-called ”comrades" made use of circumstances ^ i b i & », p . 66 258 to exploit him. After a long period in jail, he finally made use of a small boat to effect his escape. But he was condemned to spend the rest of his life in exile, a meaningless existence in surroundings where people regarded him as peculiar and held him in everlasting suspicion. The principal emotions expressed here are resent ment against the anarchist who exploited this unfortunate fellow, the feeling that anarchy is utterly futile and un intelligent, and pity for the anarchist who seems to be so much an arbitrary victim of fate and who is condemned to a life in exile amongst coarse-minded, self-satisfied folk to whom he is continually an object of suspicion. The similarity to Conrad* s own experiences are almost too obvious by this time to be worth mentioning. Like the anarchist, he resented the activities of those who would have involved him in the cause of resolution, Poland became a jail to him, and like the anarchist he felt the need to escape. Like the anarchist, it was only in his escape that he committed a crime. Like the anarchist, too, he was condemned to a life of exile where he felt that he was never wholly accepted. The coarse laughter of the manager echoes what Conrad often felt to be the sneers and superior smiles of the native Englishman. There is a strange phrase used over and over again 259 by the anarchist: "I deny nothing." It is used so pecu liarly that one feels that it may have some psychological significance. Perhaps it is expressive of Conrad's atti tude to those Poles who accused him of desertion. He never asnwered the charges. He seemed to feel that silence was his best defense. He simply avoided those who he thought likely to make the charge. IL CONDE II Conde concentrates on the emotion of self-pity. It is the story of a Polish Count, a sensitive old gent leman whose sense of honor was deeply touched by an in cident that occurred to him in Naples. One night as he strolled within the hearing of a band a little apart from the crowd, he was accosted at knife point by a dangerous- looking young man who disdained his cheap watch and his few pence and finally left him unharmed after accepting the Count's assurances that he had no more money on his person. As the Count was returning home shocked and hungry, he suddenly remembered a gold coin that he had kept for years on his person for just such an emergency. He entered a cafe and was recognized by the young robber who was also, dining there. The latter reviled him and threatened him for his deceit in the matter of the gold coin and then left hurriedly. The old gentleman’s delicate sense of honor was touched, and he felt that he could no longer remain in Naples. There was nothing for him to do but to return to his own country where the climate would most certainly kill him. Like Stevie and the anarchist, and Gaspar Ruiz, the Count in no way deserved the fate that overtook him. He was the victim of a misfortune and as such claims our pity. What is so interesting about this story, however, is the tincture of guilt that discolors the delicate con science of the Count. In his mind he was perfectly sure that he was innocent of any kind of offense. Yet he felt guilty. Common sense told the old man that he was inno cent of any intention to deceive. Indeed, if he had de liberately deceived the robber, such a lie could scarcely be accounted a stain upon his honor; but he quailed before the fiercely whispered accusations, and the scorn and con tempt. The words held a strange power for him, because of that tiny element of truth that they contained: ”Ah! So you had some gold on you— you old liar-- you old birba^-you furfantei But you are not done wi th me yet . " ® The Count felt himself to be defiled by these words. He could no longer remain in Naples because others 261 vtrould hear of the experience. There was nothing left for him but to return home, and that meant death: His delicate conception of his dignity was defiled by a degrading experience. He couldn’t stand that. No Japanese gentleman, outraged in his exaggerated sense of honour could have gone about his prepara tions for Hara-Kiri with greater resolution. To go home really amounted to suicide for the poor Count.' To the student of Conrad this is a fascinating story, because it is such a clear reflection of his own feelings about the Polish question, feelings that were con stantly changing like a wavering reflection in troubled waters, but always active. Conrad had, at some stages of his mental conflict, almost rationalized away his sense of guilt. He had in The Secret Agent. In I_1 Conde the hero is plainly the victim. He is quite innocent of the sli ghtest intention of deceit, and what he is afraid of * is not the truth but the accusing voices. Likewise Conrad was most afraid of the criticism of his fello?/ countrymen. Nevertheless, he makes this delicate acknowledgement of guilt, and he has to suffer for it. He has to go home and die. This is the second indication of that need to pay for his flight by a final return. The first was in The Lagoon. ^ Page 288. THE DUEL Ferguson Has shovm that there is very little that is original about the plot of The Duel.8 However, Conrad has given the whole thing an interesting direction, and has controlled the sympathies of-the reader after his own manner. Plot. In a fit. of temper, Lieutenant Feraud challenged an unwilling colleague, Lieutenant D'Hubert, and forced him to fight a duel. D'Hubert hoped that the incident was concluded when he left his wounded antagonist on the field, but Feraud challenged again and again. The series of duels became famous in the Napoleonic armies. Sometimes one was wounded, and sometimes it was the other who lay looking up at.the sky in a pool of blood, but it became quite clear that Feraud would be satisfied with nothing less than the life of his enemy. Finally when they were both generals and the emperor had been finally banished from Europe, Feraud offered his last challenge. D'Hubert was appalled because life had suddenly become very attrac tive to him through the prospect of marriage with a beauti ful girl. He determined to end the thing for all time. By a stratagem he succeeded in drawing his enemy's fire In a pistol duel fought ambush style. He emerged from the S (see next page) 263 trial with his own pistols still loaded. His enemy's life was in his hands. He reserved the right to avail himself of those two shots at his own convenience. Thus he circum vented Feraud's intention to challenge again. In Conrad's hands, this material "becomes primarily a story of one life overshadowed by the foolishness and perversity of another. Conrad allies all our sympathies with D'Hubert, who looks out on life with eyes that are steady with the virtues of common sense and self-respect. He has none of the swashbuckling gallantry of his Gascon opponent, none of his impulsiveness, nor his burning sense of personal honor. He does not issue a single challenge, and he receives every one of Feraud's bitter invitations with regret. Indeed, for him it is a constant conflict between inclination and honor, because he sees all too clearly the futility of the whole situation. The code of honor itself is at variance with common sense. Yet he can not escape its requirements. It is D'Hubert's misfortune that wherever he goes, whatever are his circumstances, he must hold himself ready at any moment to face the absurd ity of another duel; and just beyond the fringe of every such experience there is the gloomy conviction that if he should escape this time there will surely be another. 8 j. D. Ferguson, "Plot of Conrad's The Duel," Modern Language Notes, L (June, 1935), pp. 385-97. 261}. Conrad Invented notching of this plot, but he found the circumstances appealing and he enveloped them with emotions of his own. They were emotions that he was person ally well acquainted with. It is surely more than a coin cidence that Feraud had all the qualities of Conrad’s father as Bobrowski portrayed him, while D’Hubert had the attitude and common sense of Bobrowski himself--the atti tude that Conrad felt he had to emulate. All his life Conrad had been pursued by the image of a man who persisted in challenging him. His sense of honor bade him take up that challenge. His common sense bade him refuse it. It is significant that D’Hubert had to listen to Feraud's bitter charges of unpatriotic behavior when he went over to the service of the government after Napoleon was de feated. Feraud, on the other hand, kept his fierce un reasoning loyalty for Napoleon. With D'Hubert, "It was a patriotic sadness, not unmingled with some personal con cern, and quite unlike the unreasoning indignation against men and things nursed by Colonel Feraud."9 One gets the impression that consciously or uncon sciously Conrad was reaching desperation point at this time. His stories stress the cruelty of a malignant fate that was pursuing his characters. Indeed, The Brute is nothing 9 A Set of Six, p. 2l£. else but the story of an inexplicable curse that hung over a certain ship and menaced the lives of all who tempted fate by embarking on her. And as will be shown in the next chapters, The Secret Sharer and Under Western Eyes each takes up a phase of the desperate need to get rid of this thing that was blighting his life--the desper ation of D'Hubert, who was determined to risk all on a final throw of the dice. CHAPTER XI THE SECRET SHARER The Secret Sharer is a fascinating story because it is significant at three levels of understanding. There is the significance of the legend as Conrad heard it, the .significance of the day-dream that emerged as he fitted the legend Into the pattern of memories, and the signifi cance of the story as it gives expression to his neurotic complex as a whole. Plot. A young seaman takes command of his first ship under particularly unenviable circumstances. He joins the boat at a foreign port during an Interrupted voyage to find himself stumbling over barriers of suspicion, and reserve, and self-distrust in an endeavor to make room for himself in a ship’s company that is already a tried and familiar complement. His task is made harder by the fact that his officers have personalities that set up petty Irritations with his own, and he has to establish himself in the face of suspicion and disrespect. Before the ship gets under way, he finds himself moved by a mysterious sympathy to hide in his cabin a man accused of murder. Prom that time forward it becomes a 26? struggle between his desire to get rid of this encumbrance so that he will have a better prospect of acquitting him self as captain, and the desire to be loyal to a man who is, after all, a very congenial companion, and the only kindred■spirit on board. He finally succeeds in manoeuver- ing the ship close to an island, and the secret sharer of his cabin slips overboard and swims ashore. The day-dream. It has already been shown in Chapter V of Part I of this study how the very fact of the dream activity of this stoiy betrays Conrad’s deep sense of insecurity. It is proposed now to notice some of the details of this revelation. The principal emotions. The principal emotions are all like notes in the same scale— isolation, insecur ity, anxiety, an aching for support, conflict, confusion, guilt, a need for punishment, neurotic exultation through fantasy. These will be noticed in order. Isolation. The mood in which the story opens is one of vague disquietude. The reader is reminded of the feelings of a child who finds himself away from home for the first time, pausing in dismay to watch an unfamiliar twilight slowly robbing him of his last hold on reality: 268 She floated at the starting-point of a long journey, very still in an immense stillness, the shadows of her spars flung far to the eastward by the setting sun. At the moment I was alone on her decks. There was not a sound in her--and around us nothing moved, nothing lived, not a canoe on the water, not a bird in the aj.r, not a cloud in the sky. In this breathless pause at the thres hold of a long passage we seemed to be measuring our fitness for a long and arduous enterprise, the appointed task of both of our existences to.,-be car ried out, far from all human eyes, with only sky and sea for spectators and for judges. Insecurity, anxiety. The Captain's deep sense of inferiority and insecurity is seen as he peers short sightedly at the characters of the mates and sees only hostility and suspicion, where the reader can see stupi dity and uncertainty also. This sense of insecurity is seen in the way every word and action of the captain's sounds with clanging gaucheness in his own consciousness: I asked myself Yrhether it was wise ever to in terfere with the established routine of duties even from the kindest motives. My action might have made me appear eccentric. Goodness only knew how that absurdly whiskered mate would 'account' for my conduct.2 Heed for support. One can see how the captain feels the need of support in the way he clings to the com fort of his secret sharer. One feels a sudden warmth come 'Twixt Land and Sea, p. 92. 2 Page 97. into his experience with the advent of Leggatt. Conflict and resulting confusion. The deep con fusion resulting from the captain's mental conflict mani fests itself in rather a striking way. He becomes almost completely identified with Leggatt. One is continually reading passages, like this: ’ ’That mental feeling of being in two places at once affected me physically as if the mood of secrecy had penetrated my very s o u l . ” 3 Indeed, from this point onwards, Conrad's mood is so complex as almost to defy analysis. In Its broad outlines it is shaped by a particularly sharp mental conflict between his desire to achieve complete confidence in himself as captain, and the desire to shield this murderer. ' Guilt and punishment. Wrapped up with this con flict and all its by-products of distress and anxiety, there is a growing sense of guilt that seems to associate itself with the fact that the captain's desire for mastery Is consciously stronger than his desire to shield the murderer. As a sort of compensatory function, therefore, there is a strange satisfaction In his own anxiety, and a very real need to punish himself to the uttermost so that he will seem literally to buy the peace that he so much 3 Page 125. 270 desires--the peace that can only be obtained by getting rid of his welcome-unwelcome guest. One of the most interesting touches in the whole story occurs when the dim outline of this masochistic com plex comes close enough to the surface to be recognized. When the captain protests against Leggatt's offer to swim to Koh-Ring, he suddenly catches himself in the attitude of hypocrisy. "I felt suddenly ashamed of myself. I may say truly that I understood— and my hesitation in letting that man swim away from my ship's side had been a mere sham sentiment, a sort of cowardice."^ Immediately after wards, he knew that he had to punish himself, ostensibly for his relief at the prospect of getting rid of Leggatt. And he felt desperately anxious that Leggatt should under stand what he was doing: I came out on deck slowly. It was now a matter of conscience to shave the land as close as possible- for now he must go overboard whenever the ship was put in stays. Mustl There could be no going back for him.5 And: He was able to hear everything--and perhaps he was able to understand why, on/my conscience, it had to be thus close— no less. V Page 132. £ Page 139. 6 Page l 2 j . l . 271 So the captain proceeds to subject himself to the most exquisite torture that could be endured by a sailing master: long moments during which he must watch his ship hover on the brink of destruction while he is powerless to affect her destiny one iota. It was only after this so ill- searching ordeal that he could feel that he was clean, and that there was "Nothingl no one in the world1 * to throw a shadow "on the way of silent knowledge and mute affection, the perfect communion of a seaman with his first command. Exultation through fantasy. The final scene of the story is the kind of triumphant fantasy that is natural to an inferiority complex. The captain has suffered so long from the sense of being under the critical surveillance of his subordinates that he obviously revels in the moment when the ship is apparently sailing to certain destruction on the rocky coast of Koh-Ring. Both the mates, the steers man, and the whole crew are in a state of panic: "My GodI Where are we?” It was the mate moaning at my elbow. He was thunderstruck, and as it were deprived of the moral support of his whiskers. He clapped his hands, and absolutely cried out, "LostJ" "Be quiet," I said sternly. He lowered his tone, but I saw the shadowy gest ure of his despair. “What are we doing here?" . . . "She’s ashore already," he wailed, trying to tear himself away. 7 Page II 4 . 3 272 f , Is she? . . . Keep good full there!” “Good full, sir,” cried the helmsman.in a frightened, thin, child-like voice. I hadn’t let go the mate’s arm and went on shak ing it. "Ready about, do you hear? You go forward”— shake— "and atop there "--shake— "and hold your noise . . ."” We can see the young captain's delight in his opportunity of self-assertion. What cares he for 12© danger? This is where he emerges, the man of action, the master of the situation, the one outwardly calm man amidst a crowd of scared and chastened sailors. He is the hero of the situation with a vengeance. It is fascinatingly like the dream of a child whose longing to excel is trampled under the implacable feet of mediocrity--a dream in which there is only one central figure that towers above the cringing figures of those i f l f a o in real life persecute him. The neurotic situation. It is a fact of immense significance that when Conrad applied this legend of the shielded murderer to his own experience his day-dream should take this form. But it must be remembered that Conrad’s neurotic attitudes were what they were because of the nature of the specific situation in the past that provoked them. The day-dream is closely related to this deeper situation. The essence of the dream is this: Conrad had a secret sharer of his destiny, a man who was being pursued by the ® Page lip.. 273 "^authorities, a calm, brave man who suffered from none of his own uncertainties. He had foisted himself on Conrad. But he had a mysterious right to do so. Gonrad felt strangely warmed by his presence. Indeed, he seemed to be part of himself. Just to have him to ‘ whisper with was a comfort. On the other hand,- he was an embarrassment to him. While he harbored this fugitive, he could not be free to live his own life. Suddenly he saw a way out of his difficulty. It was a way that was associated with danger and adventure. It would prove to all the critical eyes that were upon him that he was no coward. When he took advantage of this way, however, he began to experience a deep sense of guilt. He felt that he was a hypocrite, and he wanted to punish himself--to make some kind of restitution. Beyond this experience of punishment he could see a glorious freedom. It is sufficient to state the facts of the dream to realize Its signiflcanck. It is Conrad's old conflict expressing itself in a dream. Leggatt is his father coming to him with his destiny of honorable suffering. It was a great comfort to have him again, but his desire to be free was stronger.9 9 For a penetrating study of this story, see R. W. Stallman, ’ ’Life, Art, and 'The Secret Sharer'", in 27 k Forms of Modern Fiction, W. V. O’Connor, ed. , (University of Minnesota Press, 19^8), pp. 25>3-61f. For some of the wider implications of this story, see M. D. Zabel, "Conrad: The Secret Sharer," Mew Republic, CIV (April 21, 19^-1), pp. 567-68. CHAPTER XII UNDER WESTERN EXES Plot. Razumov, an ambitious student in a Russian university, was involved in a revolutionary plot by an en thusiast named Haldin. The latter had decided quite arbi trarily that Razumov was an ardent revolutionist at heart, and that he was to be trusted implicitly with his own secrets and those of the movement. One evening Razumov came home to find Haldin taking refuge in his rooms. He had been the leading spirit in a bomb outrage, and the authorities were hard on his heels. Razumov was completely unnerved by the situation. He had some sympathy with Haldin, and a strong conviction that he must be true to the trust that had been placed in him. His most lucid emotion, however, was indignation that this thing should have been foisted upon him. He felt that his whole career had been jeopardized, and he had an overwhelming urge to get rid of the fellow at all costs. At Haldin's bidding he went out into the night to arrange for the escape of this terrorist; but, when obstacles got in the road, he panicked. He caught a vision of himself being hounded by the police, being under- constant surveillance, never able to live in the fullness and freedom that he felt to be the 276 heritage of eveiy man. In his distress, he sought an older friend and he revealed the secret of Haldin’s whereabouts. As a result, Haldin was captured and executed. Ramuzov now found himself lauded as a patriot and selected as a counter spy. It was his special work to become acquainted with the friends of Haldin in Sv<ritzer- land. However, when he met Haldin rs sister and his mother and saw the misery that his perfidy had caused the family, he experienced an irresistible urge to confess. His con fession cost him heavily. The revolutionists burst his ear drums and as he wandered, shocked and deafened, he was run over and crippled. The Secret Sharer was written while Under Western Eyes was in process of creation. One cannot but feel that it is an elaboration of the scene in the bedroom where Haldin lay silent, a secret sharer of Razumov’s destiny. In each story the problem was what to do with that silent figure. -In each case the secret sharer had foisted him self on the hero. He was a fugitive with the authorities hard on his heels. To harbor him was to be involved In his difficulty. He was a source of embarrassment. He would prevent the hero from living the life of a free man. In both ^tories the secret sharer was rejected amidst mingled feelings of relief, guilt, and need for punishment. 277 Under Western Eyes, however, takes the story further. It leads rapidly past the period of initial exhilaration to the bitter remorse and suffering. The emotions that find release through more elabor ate disguise in Lord Jim and Nostromo seem to disdain any thing so indirect in this book. Indeed, Razumov's situa tion is daringly similar to the situation•that Conrad faced just before he left Poland as a youth of sixteen. It was as a result of the activities of just such an ardent revo lutionary as Haldin, (at least that is how he had learned to think of his father), that Conrad found himself involved against his will in the Polish cause. One night he came home to find his father’s ghost, as it were, sitting on his bed, looking to him to carry on the struggle. He had that day received the freedom of the city and was thus publicly recognized as a patriot. He saw his hopes of a career of peaceful progress menaced by the shadows of exile with which he was already too familiar. He could already feel the breath of officialdom on his neck, the sense of everlasting surveillance. He longed like Falk to come out into the freedom and' sunshine. He wanted to live in the fullest sense of the term. Possibly he wrestled with the problem for a long time. • In his distress he turned to his uncle just as Razumov turned to that shadowy father-like guardian 278 who stood on such a firm footing with the government. Under his advice it became the correct thing to betray the sacred trust thus conferred upon him. He left the country, however, feeling as if his father’s blood were upon his head. He felt the need to confess and to be punished. This need he satisfied to some extent through the fantasy of this and other books. The Author’s Note at the head of this story con tains an open avowal that the dream was motivated by the author’s own feelings: 1 1 The course of action need not be explained. It has suggested Itself more as a matter of feeling than a matter of thinking."^ Again, there Is the matter of the author’s defense of Razumov with whom he was obviously identified. It is very difficult for the average reader to feel that Razumov Is a person who is worthy of his sympathy, or that his sensitive conscious ness, continually on the stretch, is normal. But Conrad says : Razumov Is treated sympathetically. Why should he not be? He is an ordinary young man with a healthy capacity for \vork and sane ambitions. He kas an average conscience. If he is slightly ab normal It is only in his sensitiveness to his posi tion. Being nobody’s child, he feels rather more keenly than another would that he is a Russian--or he is nothing. He is perfectly right in looking Page viii . 279 at all Russia as his heritage. The sanguinary futility of the crimes and the sacrifices seething in that amorphous mass envelopes and crushes him. These are words of special pleading. One has only to change the name of the country to Poland, and the name of Razumov to Conrad and one is reading a very frank plea for Conrad and his own reactions. Conrad continues his frank pleading for Razumov in the book itself. He excuses his desire to live a normal life freed from the incubus of political responsibility. "There was nothing strange," he says, "in student Rasumov’s wish for distinction. A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men by reason of respect or natural love."-^ He excuses the Russian's cowardice, too, in language that is full of passionate images from the memory of his own youth: Razumov saw himself shut up in a fortress, worried, badgered, perhaps ill-used. He saw himself deported by an administrative order, his life broken, ruined and robbed of all hope. He saw himself at best--leading a miserable existence under police supervision, in some, small, far-away provincial town, without friends to assist his necessities or even take any steps to alleviate his lot — as others had. Others had fathers, mothers, brothers, relations, connections, to move heaven and earth on their be half— he had no one. The very officials that sen tenced him some morning would forget his existence ^ Page ix. ^ Pages 13-lil. 280 before sunset. He saw his youth pass away from him in misery and half-starvation— his strength give way, his mind become an abject thing. He saw himself creeping, broken down and shabby, about the streets— dying unattended in some filthy hole of a room., or on the sordid bed of a governmental hospital. A- These were the feelings that had tormented Conrad years before. These were the arguments that he had list ened to in the deep recesses of his own mind. One feels convinced that he actually verbalised them for himself just as Razumov’s noisy mind did for him: nNol If I must suffer let me at least suffer for my conviction, not for a crime--my reason— my cool superior reason— rejects . . . He went on thus, heedless of the way, holding a discourse with himself with extraordinary abundance and facility. Generally his phrases came to him ^ slowly, after a conscious and painstaking wooing.-3 Sadism. Among many things that are made plain in this book is the origin of that strange masochism- sadism complex that keeps cropping up in Conrad’s works. Chief among the many moods inwhich he reviewed what he felt to be his own cowardice in refusing to receive the torch of national liberty handed him so dramatically by his countrymen, was the mood of fierce disgust with himself. The victims of his sadism are always the cowards like Hirsch or the inadequate like Ziemianitch who are really Page 21. ^ Page 35. 281 projections of* his own cowardice and his own inadequacy. The revolutionists were looking to Ziemianitch on that fateful night to convey Haldin to safety. He failed them because he had yielded to drink, and Razumov, who saw in' that failure a vivid illustration of his own weakness, gave way to an overwhelming urge to punish him cruelly: "Ahl the vile beast,” he bellowed out in an un earthly tone which made the lantern jump and tremble. , 111 shall wake you I G-ive me . . . G-ive me . . .” He looked round wildly, seized the handle of a atable fork and rushing forward struck at the prost rate body with inarticulate cries. After a time his cries ceased, and the rain of blows fell in the still ness and the shadows of the cellar-like stable. Razumov belaboured Ziemianitch with an insatiable fury, in great volleys of sounding thwacks. Except for the violent movements of Razumov, nothing stirred, neither the beaten man nor the spoke-like shadows on the wall. And only the sound of blows was heard. It was a weird scene . . . It was a sort of terrible childishness. But children had their masters. "Ahl the stick, the stick, the stern hand,"/thought Razumov, longing for power to hurt and destroy. The urge to get rid of Haldin. The strength of the urge to get rid of this man who had foisted himself on the central character is a great deal more strongly ex pressed in this story than it is in The Secret Sharer: It was the thought of Haldin locked up in his rooms and the desperate desire to get rid of his presence which drove him forward.' ^ Pages 31-32 7 Page 27. 282 And: And, Indeed, considering the guest he had in his rooms, it was no wonder he lingered on the way. It was like harbouring a pestilential disease that would not perhaps take your life, but would take from you all that made life worth living--a subtle pest that would convert earth into a hell. So strong was this desire that Razumov had a strange hal lucination in which his wish was fulfilled. He saw Haldin lying dead in the snow at his feet, and it was some time before he could make up his mind that it was merely an hallucination. 9 Desire for reunion. Conrad, who harbored so many contrary feelings, must have often entertained strong de sires to be reunited with his father, to know once more the intimacy that he had enjoyed in those dark days in Russia. In the same way, in the very midst of Razumov’s hate for Haldin, when he longed for nothing but to be rid of the man, he felt a sudden urge to be reconciled with him. The morbid power of the following passage can best be felt when it is realized that Razumov had never really known Haldin except 'as a casual acquaintance: / He embraced for a whole minute the delirious purpose of rushing to his lodgings and flinging himself on his knees by the side of the bed with ® Page 32. ^ Pages 26-27. 283 the dark figure stretched on it; to pour out a full confession in passionate words that would stir the whole being of that man to the innermost depths; that would end in embraces and tears; in an incredible fellowship of soul. It was sublime.±u Rationalizatl ons. In the interval between his beating of Ziemianitch and his report to the prince, Razu mov gave way to all the emotions that Conrad experienced In the interval between his decision to run away and the actual flight from Poland. There is his deep urge to rationalize away his cowardice. He brought his thinking mind to his rescue, his mind that had accepted the view point of his uncle so completely. He did not believe in these futile revolutions. How could his failure to take part in them be a betrayal? - So Razumov argues: Betray. A great word. What Is betrayal? They talk of a man betraying his country, his friend, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray Is his conscience. And how is my conscience engaged here; by what bond of common faith, of common conviction, am I obliged to let that fanatical Idiot drag me down with him? On the con trary every obligation of true courage is the other w & y . 1 His uncle. In the midst of this agony of self- accusation and self-justification, Razumov longed for the comfort of some soul who could understand him, just as 10 Pages 39-4-0. 11 Pages 37-38. 28 lf Conrad warmed to the comforting arguments of his uncle who knew all the facts of Conrad's life, and had a stead fast opinion of the Polish revolutions unspotted by per sonal fears. Razumov sought out this shadowy relative of his, and almost immediately the act of betrayal was complete. Isolation. One catches a vivid picture of a man isolated by his secret in a terrible loneliness of spirit in many of the passages that deal with the state of mind of this unfortunate young Russian. And here, one feels sure, is the explanation of the sense of isolation ex pressed In so many of Conrad's novels: With something resembling anguish he said to himself-- ”1 want to be understood.” The universal aspiration with all its profound and melancholy meaning assailed neavily Razumov, who, amongst eighty millions of his kith and kin, had no heart to whom he could open himself . . . Razumov longed desperately for a word of advice, for moral support. Who knows what true loneliness is— not the conventional word, but the naked terror? To the lonely themselves it wears a mask. The most • miserable outcast hugs some memory or some illusion. Now and then a fatal conjunction of events may lift the veil for an instant. For an instant only. No human being could bear a steady view of moral soli tude without going m a d . 12 Unreality. Having once betrayed Haldin to the authorities, Razumov became a prey to the emotions that 12 page 39• 285 tear at a man's unresisting soul when he is in the grip of a strong mental conflict. They are the emotions that one by one take charge of Conrad's books. There is the feeling of unreality that took hold of the captain in The Secret Sharer and Lingard in The Rescue, and indeed, many others. He had the distinct sensation of his very existence being undermined in some mysterious manner, of his moral supports falling away from him one by one. He even experienced a slight physical giddiness and made a movement as if to reach for something to steady himself with.^-3 The feeling that his moral personality was at the mercy of these lawless forces was so strong that he asked himself seriously if it were worth while to go on accomplishing the mental functions of that existence which seemed no longer his own.^ Feeling of i denti by with the secret sharer. Razumov was a prey to the same feelings of identification with the victim of his betrayal as the captain was in The Secret Sharer. Razumov had a day-dream of Haldin on the rack, and he was not sure whether it was Haldin or himself*: The solitude of the racked victim was particularly horrible to behold. The mysterious impossibility to see the face, he also noted, inspired a sort of terror. I-5 13 page 77. ^ Page 78. Page 88. 2 8 6 A little later we read, "His mind hovered on the borders of delirium. He heard himself suddenly saying, ’I confess,’ as a person might do on the rack."!8 And through the days and weeks, and months that followed he was haunted by the spectre of Haldin. Over and over again he told himself that the fellow had no power over him. "What is his death to me?" he asked. "If he were lying here on the floor I could walk over his breast . . . The fellow is a mere phantom."1? But it was all to no purpose. This secret sharer of his destiny was In the cabin of his heart to stay. All this was Haldin, always Haldin--nothing but Haldin— everywhere Haldin; a moral spectre Infin itely more effective than any visible apparition of the d e a d . 16 Hatred of lies. What became so intolerable was the constant need for falsehood. Here Is the precise emo tion that was the very theme of The Heart of Darkness. Curiously enough, too, the symbolism is almost identical. The narrator in The Heart of Darkness could not endure the fact that he had to lie to Kurtz’s fiancee. Likewise it was the thought of all this deception before the woman he had learned to love that Razumov found unendurable. I8 Page 65. ^ Page 96* . 18 Pages 299-300. 287 The choking fumes of falsehood had taken him by the throat— the thought of being condemned to strug gle on and on in that tainted atmosphere without the hope of renewing his strength by a breath of fresh air. ' Razumov listened without hearing, gnawed by the new born desire of safety with its independence from that degrading method of direct lying which at times he found it almost impossible to practice.20 The urge to confess. One of the curious contra dictory emotions that evidently disturbed Conrad was the urge to c onfess and with it the awful fear that in some unguarded moment he would confess. This is one of the most sustained emotions in the book. It undermined the coherence of Razumov1s thinking. It led him into uncon trolled utterances that frightened him. He felt sure that in some unguarded moment he would betray himself. The reader is continually coming upon words like the following: Even as he spoke he reproached himself for his words, for his tone. All day long he had been say ing the wrong things. It was folly, worse than folly. It was weakness; it waspthis disease of perversity overcoming his will. 1 In the presence of Natalia (Haldin1s sister) he babbled.dangerously on the edge of confession as a man on a bicycle wavers towards the edge of a precipice: page 2 9 6. 20 Page 297. 21 Page 253. 288 ’But suppose that the real betrayer of your brother--Ziemianitch had a part in it too, but in significant and quite involuntary--suppose that he was a young man, educated, an intellectual worker, thoughtful, a man your brother might have trusted-- lightly, perhaps, but still--suppose . . . But there’s a whole story there.' ’And you know the story I But why, then--’ ’ ’I have heard it. There is a staircase in it and even a phantom, but that does not matter if a man al ways serves something greater than himself--the idea. I wonder who is the greatest victim in the t a l e . ’ ^ B { When the strain grew more than he could bear, Razumov wrote his confession with great fullness in his diary, "the pitiful resource of a young man who had near him no trusted intimacy, no natural affection to turn to." One wonders if in his own mind Conrad equated this idea of the diary with his own novel writing, especially such a book as Under Western Eyes, in which his confessions were so little disguised, for he speaks of it as "the danger of that strong self indulgence."^ ¥ifhen the confession came at last, it brought with it a kind of welcomed suffering that i s so familiar in Conrad. "It was as though he had stabbed himself outside and had come in there to show it; and more than that--as though he were turning the knife, in the wound and watching 22 Page 353. 23 Page 309. 2^- Page 339. 289 the effect.Punishment followed quickly. Razumov was struck by the brutal Nitika, who methodically and very deliberately broke both his ear drums. Razumov was cleansed by his confession,' a cleansing that is powerfully symbol ised by the scene wherein he came home through the stream ing rain and the flashing lightning and replied to the landlord’s remark on his soaking. "Yes, I am washed clean." Cleansing and peace through a woman. It is inter esting to notice that from this time forward women played an increasingly important part in Conrad’s books. It is through the woman that Conrad’s men in these later books achieve cleansing. There is, one feels, particular force 27 m the symbolism in the story of Peter Ivanovitch 1 with whom Conrad temporarily identified himself. Peter had wandered half-way across Siberia with his chain wrapped around him, afraid to approach the dwellings of men. One day he came upon a solitary woman. He approached her in his wild state, and she had him freed of his chain. He tells the story in a book that he wrote: ’My fetters .... were struck off on the banks of the stream in the starlight of a calm night by an athletic, taciturn young man of the people, kneeling at my feet, while the woman like a liberat ing genius stood by with clasped hands ^ Page 351 ^ Page 357 27 ' A minor character— one of the leaders in the subversive movement against Russian monarchism. 290 Conrad adds the comment, "obviously a symbolic couple." As for Razumov, bis cleansing coLild, it seems, come through no one but Natalia Haldin, a woman with the calm, maternal interest and the smooth brow of so many of Conrad’s T/omen— characteristics taken from his mother. Indeed, Razumov's plea to her was child-like, pitiful: "Do 7/ou know why I came to you? It is simply because there is no one anywhere in the whole great world I could go to. Do you understand what I say? No one to go to. Do you conceive the desolation of the thought--no one— to--go— 29 to? 7 And in his last message to her he wrote: "I remem bered the shadow of your eyelashes over your grey trustful eyes. And your forehead 1 It is low like the forehead of statues, --calm, unstained. It was as if your pure brow bore a light which fell on me, searched my heart and saved me from ignominy, from ultimate undoing. Suddenly, you stood before me! You alone in all the world to whom I 30 must confess." One is reminded of Nostromo trying to pour, out his confession to Mrs. Gould, who had many of the same characteristics as Natalia. "Shall I tell you where the treasure is, you alone, shining, incorruptible?" 28 Page 12If. 29 Page 353. Page 3 6 1. 291 It Is significant, too, that Mrs. Gould was the wife of the man whom Nostromo had wronged by his great crime. Natalia was the sister of the man Razumov had betrayed. He longed to'be united with her, but the shadow of his sin came between them. And there is a shadow be tween most of the women of Conrad’s later novels and their men: between Captain Anthony and his wife, Heyst and Lena, between Arlette and the lieutenant, between Lingard and Mrs. Travers. The fact of the matter is that Conrad is moving closer to the deepest of his repressed wishes, and there is a vague awareness In his dream activity that he cannot possess the shadowy woman figure to whom he desires to confess. Maternal care. It is significant that Conrad did not kill Razumov. Instead of death he prepared for him a kind of neurotic heaven. After his punishment, Razumov wandered out into a world of complete silence and in a short time he was knocked down by a passing vehicle and rendered absolutely helpless. At this moment Tekla with her extraordinary maternal instinct came on the scene. She devoted herself absolutely to his needs. She had no- ties. There was no one to compete with Razumov for her attentions. Thus Razumov achieved an existence that was as sheltered and as free from conflict and strife as is a 292 child's in its mother's womb. His was a world of eternal silence and absolute rest. He had no responsibilities. He had no need to struggle. All his sins had been paid for. A mother figure hovered over him to attend to his slightest need, and to brood over him with her air of loving sympathy. A final plea. There is one more point in this book that should not be overlooked. That is the matter of Conrad's desperate anxiety to have this man, Razumov, forgiven and accepted by his readers, just as he was for given and accepted by the kindly Western Teacher of lan guages whom he provided for the purpose. Conrad cannot bear to leave his story without a final plea: There are evil moments in every life. A false suggestion enters one's brain, and then fear is born-- fear of oneself, fear for oneself. Or else a false courage--who knows? Well, call it what you like; but tell me, how many of them would deliver them selves deliberately to perdition (as he himself says in that book) rather than go on living, secretly debased in their own eyes. How many . . . And please mark this--he was safe when de did it. It was just when he believed himself safe and more--infinitely more— when the possibility of being loved by that admirable girl first dawned upon him, that he dis covered that his bitterest failings, the worst wick edness, the devil woxic of his hate and his pride, could never cover up the ignominy of the existence „ before him. There's character in such a discovery.^ Pages 370-80 CHAPTER XIII THE PARTNER, A SMILE OP FORTUNE, PREYA OP THE SEVEN ISLES, CHANCE, THE PARTNER The Partner is the story of a temptation and fall, a guilty secret, and a ruined reputation. Cloete, an un scrupulous business man, gradually wore down the resistance of his weak partner, George Dunbar, till the latter was prepared to stand aside, while Cloete arranged the sinking of the ship which the partners owned and which Harry, George's brother, captained. Unfortunately circumstances conspired against them, and Harry Dunbar was killed. The guilty pair received their insurance money, but people were convinced that Captain Harry Dunbar had committed suicide. His name remained under a cloud, because the culprits had to keep their guilty secret. George's life was ruined by the whole affair, but Cloete went on his a-moral way un scathed by the transaction. The story is motivated by the fierce resentment of the narrator for those who believed that such a fine man as Harry Dunbar would commit suicide. Apart from that re sentment, the story has not the emotional power to warrant a detailed treatment in this study. However, it should be remarked that Conrad certainly had all the elements In his 2911- own experience that would lead him to sympathise with the emotions expressed. He had listened to his uncle and had been gradually won over to his point of view, because it was to his advantage to accept that point of View. This mental "transaction" had cost the reputation of his father in his own conscious mind, and resulted in a bitter resent ment against himself and his uncle. A SMILE OF FORTUNE Plot. A young captain was delayed in a certain Eastern Port by the fact that he could not secure bags for his cargo of sugar. He had expressed his disgust with a certain social situation he discovered in the town, and he had been made to pay for that expression. The situation centered around two merchants called Jacobus. The elder brother was a social success in spite of the fact that he had a half-caste son. Everyone knew about his affair, but he had the good grace not to acknowledge it. His brother, on the other hand, was a social pariah. In his youth, he had become infatuated with a circus girl. .He followed her to the ends of the earth, and after her death he settled down with their daughter in the port. Because he openly acknowledged his past in this way, he was ostra cised. To associate with him, was to share with him the disapproval of the town. With the recklessness of youth, the young captain had insulted the elder Jacobus and consorted with the younger. The elder Jacobus replied with a refusal to siipply the sugar bags the captain so much needed. In the meantime, the captain met the daughter of the younger Jacobus. He discovered in himself a strange infatuation for this most unprepossessing girl. The fears and sus picions that she had lived under for so long seemed to have blocked all the avenues to her interests. Her almost in sulting indifference fascinated the captain, and his sudden onslaught of kisses was prompted as much by curiosity as by passion. They awakened vague, tentative emotions in the girl, and the captain lingered to probe the depths of his own reactions. He discovered to his horror that the whole experience had become quite insipid to him. He gave up a cherished command rather than face her again. It is hard to imagine how anyone could see a story in this uninviting material. Of course, a personal exper ience sometimes assumes a significance that defies object ive scrutiny, but one learns with surprise that this was not a personal experience at all. "Notwithstanding their autobiographical form," says Conrad of this story and The Secret Sharer, "the above two stories are not the record 296 of personal experience,"^ So the old question rears its head: What made Conrad dream his way through this story? Mood. The mood of this story is one of bitter self-derision. It expresses itself in the irony of the title, and it is sustained to the very last word. Through out the story the captain is aware that he is being drawn by his emotions into behavior for which he can have only disapproval. The emotions that contribute to this mood are complex enough. Morbid attraction. The curiously strong attrac tion that he felt in the presence of the girl was by no means normal or healthy. It consisted largely of three things: the girl’s defenseless position, the insult of her colossal Indifference to the captain’s existence, and a primitive passion awakened by a magnificent body whose lazy, sinuous movements seemed somehow to strengthen the appeal of her smooth forehead, her air of inscrutability, and her dark, empty eyes. Associated with this emotion there was a curious turmoil of other feelings In which a sense of Inner disajcproval was mingled with anger and shame. The silent Jacobus with his sordid absorption with trade, and his bland indifference to the social stigma that hung over his family was a constant reminder to the captain that this strange infatuation must be paid for. -I’Twixt Land and Sea, p. ix. 297 Critic!sm . Another emotion that is continually present is the sense of being under critical surveillance. In spite of his fine scorn for the attitude of society that persisted in conniving at the merchant’s sordid past while it sent his more decent brother to Coventry simply because he made no attempt to hide his transgressions, the captain really suffered from feelings of isolation that his fool ish infatuation imposed upon him. Inhibition. Perhaps the strangest of all these emotions;■ however, is the curious fear, the strange in hibition that halted his passion as soon as it was expressed openly in that storm of kisses. It is interesting to notice that what the captain was so desperate to know— desperate enough to pay away his whole savings, was whether there was anything genuine about this passion. The discovery that it had left him cold while it stirred a vague emotion in Alice filled him with a guilty disgust--a disgust that is powerfully expressed in its association with the smell of rotting potatoes: ”. . . the girl with her provoking contempt and her tragic loneliness of a hopeless castaway— was everlastingly dangled before my eyes, for thousands of miles along the open sea. And, as if by a satanic re finement of irony, it was accompanied by a most awful smell. 29 8 The climax came in Melbourne when the captain realized with a bitter sense of renunciation that he had been running away from the experience, and that he could not face it again— that he must continue to run, even at the cost of his beloved command. The origin of these feelings. This must surely be one of the strangest day-dreams about love in literature. Where, one feels impressed to ask, did this dream come from? Why should these emotions be lying in Conrad's unconscious on the qui vive to seize such means of expressing themselves? The attention of the critic is especially drawn to what appears to be the catalytic agent that makes this witches' brew so potent: the feeling that there was something un worthy about this love--that it must be investigated. It has already been shown in Chapter IV of Part I that Conrad's early love experiences were sufficiently un pleasant to develop In him inhibiting tendencies. The ob ject of his first passion exposed him to public ridicule. Her successor frightened Conrad with patriotic admonitions. His associations with the third girl caused him t.b lose the lovely "Tremolino" and Involved him In a duel that almost ended his life. It was nearly twenty years before he had another affair. In the meantime he seems to have allowed ^ Page 82. the mother image that grew in his heart during his deep conflict in Poland to take the place of a lover. It was a safe emotion. Henceforth, he dreamed of women with pure, unruffled brows, "low like a statue," and with inscrutable personalities, and who spoke in mysterious accents with irresistible charm. Almost always these figures were as sociated with guilt feelings. Sometimes they moved men to confession like Natalia Haldin and Mrs. Gould. Sometimes they brought strength, and healing, and freedom from guilt like Herman’s daughter In Falk. Sometimes they were un utterably desirable but strangely inaccessible like Flora - * - n Chance, Lena in Vi ct ory, and Mrs. Travers in The Res cue. And sometimes they seem like Arlette in The Rover, "fit for no man" because the curse of guilt is upon their heads. These creations are all expressions of the Inhibitions that grew out of Conrad's early failures In love, and perhaps out of the unconscious recognition that the defense mech anism associated with the mother image was ultimately untenable. But there are other more specific references here, one feels sure. It would be strange if the contiguity of such facts as the loss of a ship and the flight from an unsatisfactory love affair did not hold vivid associations of Conrad's affair with Rita in Marseilles. Conrad's ex perience there was inconclusive and likely to leave behind it a veritable whirlpool of unsatisfied emotions. It is significant, too, that for all Conrad's revelations in The Arrow of Gold, the whole experience is so carefully veiled in ambiguity that Richard Curie was impressed to ask what such a study as this would very much like to know: Why did M. George leave Rita at last? The question did not please Conrad. It only provoked an angry reticence. The implications are obvious: Conrad has not given us the whole truth about the affair because the subject was pain ful t o him. Prom what we do know of Conrad’s experience in Marseilles, there is every ground for suspecting that he harbored the same kind of 'emotions that are revealed in A Smile of Fortune. It is clear from The Arrow of Gold that Rita's power over him was a matter that he was con stantly brooding upon. After all, she was older than he, and she had been another man’s mistress. It would be dif ficult to believe that to his penetrating common sense the whole affair was quite acceptable. Furthermore, it is evident that Rita was the object of severe social criti cism. One can well imagine the scorn of young Conrad as he considered how all the carefully veiled, but just as obviously immoral situations escaped the stigma that set- 3 R. Curie, The Last Twelve Years of Joseph Conrad, p. 81. 301 tied over his beloved, and voiced itself so potently in the book through her self-righteous sister. Again, anger and exasperation and a veritable turmoil of emotions mingled with his love for Rita, and he was constantly examining with a kind of scared thoroughness into' the nature of this love--acting, in short, like the lingering captain in The Smile of Fortune. It is a matter worthy of note that a good deal of his infatuation with Rita lay in her physical attract!ons— her pure forehead, her voice, and her air of inscrutability. We have never been told the real reasons for Conrad’s departure from France and Rita after the duel. One can well imagine, however, that during the long months of illness, he looked into the secret of this fascination and found it unworthy, --found, like the young captain of The Smile of Fortune that the glamor was gone and that he must flee. FREYA OF THE SEVEN ISLES Freya of the Seven Isles is another expression of the conviction that love brings disaster. Jasper Allen had two loves: his beautiful brig, "Bonita," and Freya Nielsen. Freya’s father did not approve of Jasper for the simple reason that the young man was frowned upon by the 302 Dutch, "authorities" of whom Nielsen was unreasonably afraid. The young people, however, planned to wait till Freya was of age; then they would elope together, and live forevermore on the brig. Freya, however, had other admirers and it was particularly unfortunate that Heemskirk, the Dutch naval officer, who was responsible for the district, was one of them. When Freya rebuffed this man, he vowed to take his revenge on Jasper. A little later, he found an excuse to seize the "Bonita" in the name of the govern ment , and he deliberately grounded it on a reef at high tide. • In the mind of Jasper, life, and love, and the "Bonita" were linked into a mysterious oneness. After the brig was gone, life had no meaning, and love was impossible. He simply gave up the struggle, and waited for death to overtake him. Freya died of a broken heart. It was not till Conrad came to write The Rover that he was able to save any of his lovers from the anger of the gods. The shadow of his own early experiences, and the vague feelings of taboo associated with his own unconscious desires had tarnished the idea of love in his mind. He felt that it was something marked by the gods for the bolt of their displeasure. This story is an expression of that convi cti on. CHANGE 303 Like all people who have a sensitive spot in their memories, Conrad was painfully reserved about his past. As E. M. Foster points out in one of his penetrating es says Conrad’s reminiscences give one the impression of being received with a great deal of fuss into an ante room on the pretenslion of presently being ushered into the inner sanctum. Conrad never touches on his Polish reminiscences without giving one the impression of talk ing very fast on comparatively safe ground lest someone ask a question. He must have experienced considerable revulsion of feeling after skirting the region of his neurosis in broad daylight, as it were, in Under Western Eyes. One is, therefore, not at all surprised to come upon the following passage in his next novel, Chance: She did not answer me for a time, and as I waited I thought that there’s nothing like a con fession to make one look mad; and of all confessions a writtaa one is the most detrimental all round.. Never confess I Never confess I Never, never1 . . . AhI What a sell these confessions are! What a horrible sellI You seek sympathy, and all you get is the most evanescent sense of relief--if you get that much. For a confession, whatever-,it may be, stirs the secret depths of the hearer's character. Often depths that he himself is but dimly aware of. And so the righteous triumph secretly, the lucky are amused, the strong are disgusted, the weak either upset or irritated with you according to the measure ^ E. M. Forster, Abinger Harvest, p. 137. * 3 O i l . of their sincerity with themselves, and all of them in their hearts^brand you for either mad or imprudeht . . . And so Chance, the most disguised of all the stories that contain Conrad’s inner feelings, follows the story where they are placed most evidently on display. Every thing in the scheme of Chance gives one the impression of the most elaborate precautions for concealment. The story reaches us by the most roundabout of all routes. Most of it comes through Mrs. Pyne or her husband, who relays it to Marlow, who in turn relays it to the narrator, who passes it on to the reader as a kind of confidence. Such precautions can scarcely be wholly in the cause of tech nique. This is probably Conrad’s way of saying, "Now here is one story that has nothing to do with me personally, absolutely nothing." For once, too, Conrad makes a girl the subject of his study. It is true that he does seem to experience some difficulty in keeping Pom^ell and Anthony away from the centre of the stage, and the reader is not always sure ■where to turn his eyes. However, Conrad tells us quite, plainly, "It is very difficult to put one’s finger on the imponder able, but I venture to say that it is Flora de Barral who is really responsible for this novel which relates, in fact, ^ Chance, p. 212. 305 6 the story of her life." Plot. Flora de Barral grew up under a cloud. Her father was in prison. It was not that he was wicked. He had simply been under an illusion about himself, and, indeed-, all mankind. Flora was forced to listen to the calumnies of her guardian, a hateful governess, and as a result her whole outlook on life was spoiled. She devel oped a defensive attitude, and when the offer of love and protection came in the person of Captain Anthony, she found it difficult to believe in the reality of these things. Together they sailed away from the country that had brought her only suffering and distress. But she could, not find happiness for a long time because her father, who had been released from prison and who sailed with them, came between the young people. It was not till her father died that Flora could find peace and happiness in Anthony. After a few years, however, Anthony was drowned, and she settled on shore with young Powell who was waiting with his devo tion and protection. Emotions. One has only to write down the plot to realize how naturally the story lent itself to the Indul gence of emotions that were, by now, Conrad’s familiar ^ Page ix. spirits. Like Flora, he had lived under a cloud, at least as far as some of his countrymen and his own tender con science were concerned. Ultimately it was all a result of his father’s illusions that had taken him into the prison-like territory of Russia from which, like de Barrall he emerged a broken man with little of life left him. Like Flora, Conrad knew the bitterness of having his mind pois oned towards his father by a trusted guardian. He knew all the subterfuges that a loving heart uses to hide from it self what it is later forced to believe. He had lived on illusions too long not to know the bitterness of yielding them up. He knew all too well the whole range of emotions that Flora experienced towards her father from the impotence of childish pity to the resentment that grows in the dark places of the heart and remains there unacknowledged till pent up fellings break through with startling suddenness, as they did with Flora at last. He knew what it was for his father to rise up from the dead, as it were, to haunt his life, and cast a shadow wherever he turned. Thus, when, like Flora, he sought peace on the sea, the shadow was even there between him and his love. We have no re cord of Conrad’s inner life during all those years at sea, but we have evidence of his restlessness in his letters and in his constant changing from ship to ship. Like Flora, too, he knew what it was to lose his first love when illness 307 came out of a clear sky to rob him of his career. Like Flora he found another love waiting for him on shore. It would be idle to suggest that there is anything of direct symbolism in this story, bvit It Is quite certain that the course of the story was directed by the emotions. In his Author’s Note, Conrad describes himself as floating "in the calm water of pleasant speculation" and allowing his sympathies to take control. Under such circumstances, one can learn most from studying the emotions that are seeking expression, but one cannot go very far wrong in thinking of the nature of the activity as a kind of dream symbolism of the past. It is interesting to see how Conrad began on the firm ground of memory, as he so often did. He told a story that held very vivid emotions for him: the story of his examination for the second mate’s ticket. On the surges of those emotions he went forward till he met Flora and Captain Anthony. From that point, as he says, "I simply followed Captain Anthony. Bach of us was bent on captur- O ing his own dream." It is doubtful if Conrad could have stated very precisely what his own dream was. Indeed, It 7 Page ix. 8 TV Page x. 308 might have shocked him to reduce it to something definite. For in essence the plot is this: Flora's life was ruined by her connection with her father. Even at sea where she should have known peace * he came between her and her happi ness. It was not till he died that she really began to live. Self pity. Flora is presented primarily as a helpless creature to whom things happen. She did nothing to merit the blows levelled at her by a malignant fate. It was simply her misfortune to have for a father that man of illusions, the great de Barral. Had he been content t<o> fill his place as a humble clerk, Flora would never have known the miseries that darkened her childhood; but he fell a prey to illusions that brought him temporary fame followed by long years behind prison bars. As for Flora, she suff ered as only the s ensitive can suffer, and her miseries are the principal subject of Part I. By identifying him self with this girl, Conrad was able to wallow in self- pity for over two hundred pages. One has only to consider the sub-title to realize how completely dependent he made her. Part I is called ’ ’The Damsel,” and Part II is called "The Knight." Resentment. Part I also affords Conrad an oppor tunity for an expression of the resentment that he felt 309 for the uncle who destroyed his illusions about his father and left him with i deas that part of him wanted to reject and part of him found very seductive. The picture of the governess poisoning the mind of the adol escent girl against her father, and the reactions of the child herself are particularly vivid, and her protest, "You mustn’t speak like this of Papa" is likely enough an echo of the words that years earlier formed themselves soundlessly in the mind of the young Polish orphan: It seemed that poor Flora had to know all the possible phases of that sort of anguish, beginning with instinctive panic, through the bewildered stage, the frozen stage and the stage of blanched apprehension, down to the Instinctive prudence of exrrerae terror— the stillness of the mouse. But when she heard herself called the child of a cheat and a swindler, the very monstrous unexpectedness of this caused in her a revulsion towards letting herself go. She screamed out suddenly, ’You mustn’t speak like this of Papal’9 During the ensuing years, the fatherless girl knew all the miseries of "not belonging" and finally decided to do away with herself. When the opportunity of escaping her troubles by going to sea with Captain Anthony came to her, she accepted only after long deliberation and many arguments with herself. To Conrad who no doubt was living over again the state of mind he had endured during the interval between his own decision to go to sea and the 9 Page 121. 310 accomplishment of that fact, it was not a very difficult thing to enter into the mind of the troubled girl. Feelings for her father. The most vivid emotions in the book are the strangely muddled feelings that the girl had for her father. There is loyalty that to the very last would not admit of his guilt. "But he hasn’t," in sisted Flora de Barral with a quite -unexpected fierceness when Anthony used the phrase, "if he had done wrong." "You mustn’t even suppose it. Haven’t you read the accounts of the trial?"1* ^ And there is pity, too, and an overwhelm ing sense of responsibility regarding his welfare. Most interesting to the student of Conrad’s psychology, however, are the overtones of guilt and remorse for which Conrad has made no provision in the recorded attitude of Flora towards her father. "She made a conscience-stricken move ment towards him, thinking: ’Ohi I am horrible. I am horrible.’"^ And; "Now and then a great anxiety gripped her heart with a mysterious sense of guilt--as though she had betrayed him into the hands of the enemy."12 Conrad never states the reason for these feelings, but there is more than one hint of how he was feeling as he looked on at the drama of hi s own imaginings. He felt that this 11 Page 367. 12 Page 36I1 -. 311 father of hers was like a ghost returning from the dead to come betv/een Flora and her destiny. And he wanted to dispose of him. The following passage, is highly signifi cant because it is one of Marlow's daydreams and it has all the qualities of a day-dream, too: Further off, in a sort of gloom and beyond the light of day and the movement of the street, 1 saw the figure of a man stiff like a ramrod, moving with small steps, a slight girlish figure by his side. And the gloom was like the gloom of villainous slums, of misery of wretchedness, of a starved and degraded existence. It was a relief that I could see only their shabby, hopeless backs. He was an awful ghost. But indeed, to call him a ghost was only a refine ment of polite speech, and a manner of concealing one's terror of such things. Prisons are wonderful contrivances. Open— shut. Very neat. Shut-open. And out comes some sort of corpse to wander awfully in a world in which it has no possible connections and carrying with it the appalling tainted atmosphere of its silent abode . . . Fancy having to take such a thing by the hand! How I understood the remorse ful strain I had detected in her speeches. 3 This idea of a ghost from the past coming to spoil the peace of what should have been the perfect escape in a ship-board existence is no casual idea. One cannot afford to dismiss what is virtually the theme of nearly two hundred pages. Here are the hopes of the great peace of the sea. Here is the girl, helpless, innocent. Here is her rightful destiny in Anthony. She all but holds him. But here, too, is the inscrutable figure of her father, silent for the • * • 3 page 2lj_5 most part, but the living embodiment of disapproval. She cannot reach across his body for what is her inalienable right. De Barral is the silent sharer of their ship and their fate. Both desire to get rid of him, but it is an unexpressed desire. They are punished for it by their act of renunciation. Conrad finds an ideal way of dispos ing of this secret sharer as he did in the story that bears that name. But Anthony cannot live on to enjoy his happi ness. He must pay with his own life in what Is artistic ally an altogether meaningless fate. The girl, however, lives on to bring what is virtually the first happy end ing in Conrad*s books. There is another aspect of this book, which In view of the development of later books, demands some at tention. It is difficult to escape the thought that Conrad is using the marriage relation to give expression to other emotions than those connected with his escape to sea. There is a certain morbid power about the treatment of the uncon summated marriage of Anthony and Flora. The figure of de \ Barral is like a shadow between them. It is as if the re lationship were cursed,^ Indeed, the idea of a curse • i lli A comment of Veron Young’s is interesting here. He says: nGuerard claims that in it ^Chance/ Conrad for once chose sexual repression for a major theme. A condition or an outcome, if not a major theme, it certainly is; that 313 following Flora is more than once hinted at. "it was as if the forehead of Flora de Barral were marked,"1^ Conrad says on one occasion. And again, "For, under a clous cloud Flora de Barral was fated to be even at sea. Yes, that sort of darkness which attends a woman for whom there is no clear place in the world hung over her. Yes, even at seal"^^ As for de Barral himself, he seems almost a sin ister figure. Even young Powell felt it. "He felt it in the sudden sense of his isolation; the trustworthy, power ful ship of his first acquaintance reduced to a speck, to something almost undistinguishable, the mere support for the soles of his two feet before that unexpected old man 17 becoming so suddenly articulate in a darkening universe." Already in this study it has been remarked that vague feelings of guilt seem to be associated with many of Conrad’s women. It is as If the creative lens were flawed and Conrad could not project an image without that shadowiness. It comes between the women and their men to make the kind of intimacy they desire impossible. It is, one feels sure, an expression of the vague conviction that troubled the unconscious wish for a mother-figure to take Conrad consciously chose it Is unlikely. It was thrust upon him by his own psychological celibacy." (Vernon Young, "Joseph Conrad," The Hudson Review, II, 19I 4 . 9, 17). the part of a wife. It is interesting to notice that it is the father who comes between the lovers in this case, and that he comes like a curse--like a voice becoming "suddenly articulate in a darkening universe." In Chance Conrad is moving back into the darkest areas of his neuro- 18 sis. In his next novel, Victory, he probes still deeper. Page 309. 1^> Page 281. Pages 292-93* ~ | ^ Several short stories, however, precede Victory. They are dealt with in the chapter which follows. CHAPTER XIV THE INN OP THE TWO WITCHES, BECAUSE OF THE DOLLARS, THE PLANTER OF MALATA THE INN OF THE TWO WITCHES The Inn of the Two Witches, one of the stories for which Conrad could never find a good word,'*’ at first sight appears to have very little in it to interest this dissert ation. Certain features, however, encourage one to come back for a second look. In the first place, there are the elaborate efforts that Conrad has made to disclaim it as a personal experience. He goes to considerable trouble to handle his alleged sources in broad daylight, as it were. He makes it clear that the whole thing happened over a century ago, and that he came on the story by the strangest kind of coincidence. He found the manuscript In an old box of books in a second-hand shop. The manuscript had a very prosaic appearance, the writing was painfully method ical and some of the pages had been useid as jam covers or wads for cartridges. In short, it is only after realism, skepticism, and boredom have deliberately stripped the story of romance that he consents to begin his narration. ■ * ■ Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad as 1^ Knew Him, p. 119* 316 In the second place, there is this strange antipathy of the author to a very artistically written story. The third fact of interest is that despite its dusty wrappings the story has a strange power. Mrs. Conrad says that she 2 could not sleep for nights after she had copied it. And lastly, it is pervaded by a dream-like quality which is as convincing as anything that Conrad has written. It is the kind of thing that one recalls in fragmentary form years after reading it and wonders if it is part of his own nightmares. Why, one feels impelled to ask, did Conrad dislike this story so much? Was it because it was so much like nightmares of his own? Or did he feel that he had given himself away too much? In any case, one feels instinctively that it is one of the stories that welled up very naturally from the unconscious. The emotions seem too vivid to be synthesized. Plot. The essential facts of the plot are these: Edgar Byrne, a young officer in His Majesty’s navy, exper ienced guilt and remorse because he had not taken all the precautions he might have done when he sent Tom Corbin on a mission over the mountains of Spain. He had an especial affection for Corbin, because this sturdy sailor had pro- 2 Ibid., p. l l j . 3 317 tected him and taught him his business when he entered the navy as a midshipman. Indeed, Tom had been like a father to him. When these feelings of remorse got the better of him, Byrne himself went inland to find Corbin and share his fate. After a long nightmare journey through wind, and darkness, and desolgtion, Byrne reached an inn where he discovered that Tom had been smothered as he slept. A rescue party arrived in time to save Byrne and take him safely back to sea. Dream power. What strikes one about the story is its almost occult power. It is like a nightmare. There are long periods when the imagery is vague and shadowy, and the emotions are low-pitched but sounding all the over tones of fear. Then suddenly everything rises to an almost unbelievable intensity of vividness and terror, till the urge to escape reduces ByrneTs very personality to incoher ence. When everything gives way before the tension, and Byrne flees, the dream vanishes, for the dreamer'becomes unconscious. What one feels convinced of is that Conrad made use of the emotions of his own dreams in weaving this story. Whether he did that consciously or not is not of importance to this study. In either case it is worth while to look at these emotions and the means they have taken to express 318 themselves. A father figure has been abandoned in enemy terri tory. Byrne feels remorse and a powerful urge to return from the sea to share his fate. He travels back over the most desolate route in the wind and darkness. He finds himself locked up in a confined space with the menace of suffocation--an enemy against which his weapons are futile. He has a sensation of complete impotence. He suffers agonies of fear, and yields to an overwhelming urge to flee. Others deal with the enemy, and he escapes back to sea. Both the emotions and the dream activity through which they have found expression are strongly reminiscent of Conrad's neurotic situation. Indeed, the story is pre cisely the dream expression one would expect these emotions to find during his years at sea. Menace. Poland, where he had left his father, must have held for Conrad much of the vague menace that Byrne felt as he looked at the Spanish Coast: It stretched away, lengthening in the distance, mute, naked, and savage, veiled now and then by the slanting, cold shafts of rain. The westerly swell rolled its interminable angry lines of foam, and big dark clouds flew over the ship in a sinister procession.3 3 Within the Tides. p. lij.3* 319 Far away the harsh and desolate mountains raising their scarred and denuded ridges seemed to wait for him menacingly. * 4 - The struggle with a sense of duty. There is an interesting picture of Byrne and the captain trying to repress their feeling of guilt with respect to Tom. Then suddenly it shows on the surface of consciousness with startling effect, and Byrne feels impelled to go in search of Tom Corhin. Who knows how often Conrad had resisted the urge to return to his homeland and put himself at the service of the revolutionary movements that were always there? In, his waking moments there was.no solution to this conflict, but in his dreams he went back. Childhood fears. As soon as the dream decision was made, all the fears that he had repressed for so long were free to stalk him. They brought in their ragged train vague childish fears now long since forgotten--fears that had bothered the tiny boy in Russia. Thus in the story, Byrne feels the menace of the desolate country and the roaring wind, and the long hours of darkness Just as Conrad felt the menace of Russia as a great occult force that followed his every move with a kind of grim surveil lance. Byrne feels his littleness, his impotence, his ^ 4 - page l l j . 5. 320 lost condition: The lowering daylight died out quickly, leaving him faced by a broken bridge. He descended into the ravine, forded a narrow stream by the last gleam of rapid water, and clambering out on the other side was met by the night which fell like a bandage over his eyes. The wind sweeping in the darkness the broadside of the sierra worried his ears by a con tinual roaring noise as of a maddened sea. He suspected that he had lost the road. Even in day light, with its ruts and mudholes and ledges of out cropping stone, it was a difficult to distinguish from the dreary waste of moor interspersed with boulders and clumps of naked bushes.'5 In the mysterious inn that he suddenly stumbles upon in the weird darkness, Byrne comes across the two witches, dream figures that arethe very incarnation of childhood*s fears. From that point onward fear takes con trol. The emotional storm rises through every pitch of terror to the breath-taking three-word paragraph that heralds the discovery of Tom*s body: ”He was there. It rivals the physical storm of Typhoon for intensity, and its marvellously sustained crescendo finds its climax in Byrne*s temporary insanity. It is the kind of fear that belongs to dreams and dreams alone. It is worth while to trace the emotive phrases by which it rises: "agitation... nameless death...incomprehensible...dreadful import...rigid immobility...austere silence...awful knowledge...dry-eyed, fierce...cold heart...terror...terror, hot terror...»I can*t £ Page l i } -6. 6 Page 156. 321 bear it*...thin stream of half-frozen blood...complete terror, nameless terror which had turned his heart to ashes...mysterious and appalling vision...unreasoning terror...he was no longer Edgar Byrne...chilly languour... grotesque, monstrous...affiliated to the devil...motionless and stony." At this stage when one would think it impossible to raise the pitch of emotion the least bit, Conrad goes on easily in a new plane: Byrne, who thought the world could hold no more terrors in store, felt his hair stir at the roots. He gripped the arm of his chair, his jaw fell, and the sweat broke out on his brow, while his dry tongue clove suddenly to the roof of his mouth. Again the curtains stirred but did not open. ’Don’t Tom," he said to the corpse . . . he felt his brain going . . . stammered awful menaces .... bereft of reason . . . forgetting his weapons he rushed downstairs with a wild cry . . . flew with bare hands at the throat of the first man he saw . . .* Conrad’s impotence, his sense of the futility of the struggle against Russia, is expressed in Byrne’s awful fears of death by smothering, and his conviction that his weapons were useless in such a struggle. He feels the world closing in on him, and suddenly he panics and runs. Others take care of the problem for him and he escapes into unconsciousness. When he awakens, he is once more safe at sea. 7 Fages l58-6l 322 BECAUSE OP THE DOLLARS Because of the Dollars is one of the two stories that Conrad was able to shape up into plays without much difficulty.^ The fact of the matter is that it is a story with very little of that Conrad atmosphere which refuses obstinately to be reproduced on the stage; and for that very reason it is a story without much significance to this dissertation. It seems to have been fashioned by the earnest workman of the conscious mind rather than by that temperamental genius that exploited the literary talents of the ex-captain so unpredictably and that explosed his inner conflicts so ruthlessly. The interesting thing is that Conrad has used, perhaps from habit, a motif that became second-nature to him: the remorse of a man who felt, without very much ground for doing so, that he was guilty of the blood of another. In kind and degree this guilt reminds one of the feelings of Byrne in The Inn of the Two Witches. But Conrad did not pause to dream about this story. He was mildly interested in the action, and some what superficially interested in the people, but he did not identify himself very thoroughly with anyone. 8 The play was called Laughing Anne. The other story was Tomorrow, converted into a play as One More Day. 323 Plot. Captain Davidson had been warned or a plot to rob and murder him at a time when he was collect ing old currency in the East just prior to a new issue. Davidson was so absorbed in thwarting the attempt that he forgot to take sufficient precautions for the safety of Laughing Anne, the woman who warned him. He paid in full for her death, however. Not only did he suffer all the agonies of remorse, but he lost his wife, who was suspici ous of the care he took of the child left by Anne. She became convinced that it was Davidson*s child, and she left her husband and returned to her parents in Western Australia. Davidson even lost the boy through his thorough ness in educating him. The lad became a missionary and, as the narrator tells us, "so Laughing Anne’s boy will lead a saintly life in China somewhere; he may even become a martyr; but poor Davidson is left out in the cold. He will have to go downhill without a single human affection near him because of those dollars.”^ Thus in familiar style, the story ends in pity for a sufferer who was, like Lord Jim, guilty to a certain degree, but over-faithful to his 'idealistic conscience. The story is one more link (if that is needed) in the evidence that Conrad loved to 9 Page 211. 32k contemplate tlie theme of guilt that merited pity because its punishment was greater than was fitting. THE PLANTER OF MALATA. The Planter of Malata was written while Victory was in course of composition. Even so the themes of the two stories are surprisingly similar. They are both stories of isolated islands and men cut off from their fellows by the habit of solitude. They are both stories of women whose very need made them vulnerable, and who came to live on the isolated islands with the men. In each case a shadowy figure from the past came between the man and the woman he loved and they had to pay for tempting the anger of the gods. One sought dissolution in, the flames, and the other in the placid ocean. Plot. During one of his rare visits to civili zation, Renouard, a planter of Malata, met Felicia Moorsom, a girl who was searching for her ex-fiance. She had reject ed this fiance when he was accused of fraud; but now that he had been proved innocent, she desired to make repara tions. Renouard fell desperately in love with Felicia, and became jealous of this unknown man to whom she was prepared to devote herself. When it was suddenly discovered that the man was Renouard1s ex-partner, the girl with her 32^ party planned to visit him on the island. Renouard allowed the party to come without disclosing that his partner was dead. It was the only way he knew to prolong his associa tion with the girl. When the party arrived, Renouard per petuated the falsehood by pretending that his partner had gone on a tour of the Islands. The burden of his deceit, however, eventually became more than he could bear, and he confessed the truth. The girl and her party left the island in haughty displeasure. As for Renouard, no one saw him again. He swam out into the bosom of the ocean and lost himself In her vastness. The details that give significance to the plot are these: 1) Renouard desired only one woman, and she was forbidden him, because she had belonged to a man who was now dead. 2) The woman remained obstinately loyal to the memory of her man. 3) Renouard tried to keep her for himself, and as a result, suffered from feelings of guilt and the desire to confess. I } _ ) He found that life had no t meaning without this woman, so he swam out to sea. In view of the content of Chance and Victorv one feels sure that Conrad was here following a track that he had somehow stumbled upon in his emotional confusion--a track that led back into the deep obscurity of his uncon scious desires. It is doubtful if this path led to any kind of insight about these desires, but it led him to revealing dream activity. The woman. One is interested to notice that Felicia had some, at least, of the familiar features that one learns to look for in Conrad*s woman, the forehead like a statue, the vague eyes, the inscrutability, the inacces sibility: And indeed on stealing a glance he would see her dazzling and perfect, her eyes vague, staring in mournful immobility with a drooping head.1^ He did not know what there was under that ivory forehead so splendidly shaped, so gloriously crowned. . . He felt himself in the presence of a mysterious being in whom spoke an unknown voice, like the voice of oracles, bringing everlasting -unrest to the heart.^ He left her with her eyes vaguely staring beyond him, an air of listening for an expected sound, and the faintest possible smile on her lips. A smile not for him evidently, but the reflection of some deep and inscrutable thought.3-2 There seems to be little doubt that the figure of Felicia Moorsom was associated after the fantastic manner of the unconscious with the mother-image that grew up in Conrad*s mind in a way that is suggested in Karain. The remarkable dream that Renouard1- * had of her has already been 1 10 Page 36. 11 Page 35. 12 page 31. ^ Pages 35-36. 327 treated in Chapter IV of Part I, where it was traced back to Conrad*s early memories* Like Renouard, Conrad had been isolated frcm association with women for years. He desired only that mother-image, but it was probably a wish that never came close enough to the surface of consciousness to recognize In terms that were more explicit than dream images. In any case, the unconscious had catalogued this image as forbidden— something belonging to another man, now dead. Loyal to the memory of her man. From the very be ginning of Renouard* s acquaintance with Miss Moorsom, she was untouchable. She Inspired in him a deep longing, but her loyalty to her lost fiance insulated her from Renouard*s desires. There was a certain morbid recklessness about his efforts to keep her for himself on his island. It was fore doomed from the beginning. He never had any more of her than her abstracted longing for her absent lover: Felicia Moorsom remained near the house. Some times she could be seen with a despairing, expression scribbling rapidly in her lock-up diary.- * - 4 - When Thaddeus Bobrowski made it an issue for young Conrad to follow his mother or his father, Conrad seems to have convinced himself that, whereas his father would have had him take up the torch of liberty, his mother would have ^ Page 65. V 328 advised him to think as Thaddeus thought. Thus the image of his mother became a source of support. He thought of her as being his alone. But deep down he must have recog nized that she had given herself whole-heartedly to the cause of her husband and Poland. Thus the mother-image he i reached after must have had emotions of hopeless longing associated with it. She was obstinately loyal to her man. Conrad had tried to hold her for himself on false pretenses. He felt that he had wronged his father, had been disloyal to him. He want.ed to confess. Indeed, the moral poison of his falsehood had such a decomposing power that Renouard felt his old per sonality turn to dead dust. Often, in the evening when they sat outside conversing languidly in the dark, he felt that he must re,st his forehead on her feet and burst into tears.”15 His confession did not bring him peace. It only brought him darkness and defeat: Slowly a complete darkness enveloped Geoffrey Renouard. His resolution had failed him. Instead of following Felicia Into the house, he had stopped under the three palms, and leaning against a smooth trunk had abandoned himself to a sense of immense de ception and the feeling of extreme fatigue. This walk up the hill and down again was like the supreme ef fort of an explorer trying to penetrate the Interior of an unknown country, the secret of which is too well defended by Its cruel and barren nature. De coyed by a mirage, he had gone too far--so far that there was no going back. His strength was at an end. For the first time in his life he had to give up, and with a sort of despairing self-possession he tried to understand the cause of defeat. Pages 65-66 16 Pages 79-80 329 Suicide. One of the strangest things about this story is the morbid satisfaction that Conrad has somehow managed to bring to Renouard*s suicide. It almost seems like such a victory as Lena and Heyst achieved in death. ’ ’For to whom would it have occurred that a man would set out calmly to swim beyond the confines of life— with a steady stroke— his eyes fixed on a star?"^ The fact of the matter is that it isn*t a suicide in the accepted sense of the term. It wasn't suicide as an antidote to an unbear able sorrow. It seemed like a mission. It was as if a mysterious power were calling to him, an occult knowledge that what he longed for was obtainable beyond this world of time and sense and moral taboos. For Renouard*s action was regressive. The sea, as psychologists recognize, is a 1 f t primitive symbol for the womb. And Renouard swam back to the infinity from which he came. It is an image that occurs several times in Conrad's works. Almayer longed to float down the river into the sea. lostromo watched the sun in a glorious act of ’ ’self-immolation” as it buried ' itself in the sea. Decoud was seduced by the silence to ^■7 Page 85. See, for instance, A. A. Brill, trans. and ed., Basic Writings of Sigmund Freud, p. 395. 330 move out into the placid gulf and sink into the silent depths. Who knows the source of the power that drew Conrad so mysteriously to the sea in the first place? Who knows how often, when the sea was in its mood of inviting calm, he felt the power of this same impulse that drew Decoud and Renouard, and which he has described with such convic tion? It is significant that the urge came to Renouard twice in this s t o r y , and both times the emotions that accompanied it are such as are associated with a regressive atti tude: Renouard set his direction by a big star that, dipping on the horizon, seemed to look curiously, into his face. On this swim back, he felt the mourn ful fatigue of all that length of traversed road, which brought him no nearer his desire. It was as if his love had saved the invisible supports of his strength. There came a moment when it seemed to him that he must have swum beyond the confines of life. He had a sensation of eternity close at hand, demand ing no effort— offering its peace. It was easy to swim like this beyond the confines of life looking at a star. 0 s©e page 62, and page 65 ^ Page 62. CHAPTER XV VICTORY- Plot.. Victory is the story of Axel Heyst, a Swedish, gentleman whose power to partake of life had been destroyed by the philosophical viewpoint foisted upon him from boyhood by his father. Long ago he had learned to think of man with all his social, economic, and Judicial relationships as something quite futile. He had learned to shun all intercourse with his fellows lest he should experience the bitterness of betrayal or disgust at having to watch all the pettinesses and futilities of human be havior. Heyst decided to slip through life, as It were, without letting it touch him. He wandered for years in uncivilized or unpopulated parts, knowing nothing of the emotions that give life in society its flavor: ambition, love, triumph, disdain, hate, and a thousand others. One day, however, he came upon a man in distress, and his sym pathy betrayed him into an act of benevolence from which there was no retreat. He was forced to accept gratitude and friendship, and before he knew where he was, he was sharing in business transactions, and stirring up envy and resentment and hate. He had begun to participate in life. The episode closed, however, with the death of his 332 partner, and lie was free to return to his solitary island. A second episode followed on the heels of the first. During a brief visit to civilized parts, he found a girl in distressing circumstances, and he took her back to the island to live with him. In this new intimate association, he found his philosophy crumbling under the combined attack of a growing fascination for the girl, and her almost desperate efforts to break through the in sulation with which the years had coated him, for she yearned to win her way to complete intimacy of soul- with him. When they found their very existence endangered by three desperadoes who had landed in the belief that Heyst was concealing a treasure, the girl, Lena, decided to make a supreme effort to master the situation and thus win Heyst’s undying affection. She felt that It was only by some great sacrifice that she could win her way to real intimacy with him. The effort cost her her life, but she died believing that she had won the strange spiritual bat tle that she was fighting so earnestly. -Unable to face his new loneliness and his feelings of guilt, Heyst fired the house In which Lena had died and sought death along side her body in the flames. 333 Comparison with Chance. For all their superficial dissimilarities, Chance and Victory have certain fundamental elements in common. Both stories move towards the achieve ment of intimacy between two troubled souls, and it is the father in each case who stands between them and this in timacy. In both books there is an undefined curse that hangs over their heads, and it is only dissipated by death. ln VIctory this matter is dealt with more directly. Gonrad identifies himself with a man who had a great deal in common with himself. Heyst was a foreigner in his sur roundings, and therefore under suspicion long before he had an opportunity to display any of his idiosyncrasies* His father had been "a thinker, a stylist and a man of the world,” a disillusioned and unhappy man at that. ”His mother, Heyst had never known, but he kept his father1s pale, distinguished face in affectionate memory."1 Appar ently Heyst never experienced conscious hostility towards his father, but Conrad makes it quite clear that it was his father's influence that ruined Heyst's life, and made him unfit to take his place in society. After his father's death, Heyst was left with the conviction that, "man on this earth is an unfortunate accident which does not stand close investigation," and that life paid wages in counterfeit 1 Page 91 2 Page 196 33k money. Accordingly he decided to insulate himself from lif-e lest it bring him pain.': "It was the very essence of his life to be a solitary achievement accomplished . . . by a system of restless wandering, by the detachment of an impermanent dweller amongst changing scenes. In this scheme he had pereeived the means of passing through life without suffering and almost without a single care in the world— invulnerable because elusive."3 His efforts to achieve this state of existence form the subject of the first part of this book. Comparison of Heyst with Conrad. Conrad, who had been haunted by the ghost of his father’s patriotic phil osophy for many years, would have little difficulty in identifying himself with Heyst. He, too, had been a rest less wanderer. Indeed, when one reads of his endless changes of ships and of his reserved one wonders how far this behavior reflected a conscious philosophy like Heyst*s. One cannot but notice the regressive attitude manifested by Heyst. He did not want to master his problems. He simply wanted to escape from life, to withdraw to the silent loneliness of an uninhabited island, and, protected by the 3 page 273. ^ See Anon., "Conrad at Thirty-One," Living Age, CCCXLIII (September,- 1932), 82-83. " “ 335 infinite vastness of the salt sea, enjoy an existence ■undisturbed by responsibility or the possibility of being hurt in any way. It has been demonstrated over and over again that this idea had taken root in Conrad*s unconscious a long while before he wrote Vietory. Very few novelists could have made a hero out of such a man as Heyst* The very negativeness of his philosophy tends to unfit him for such a role. But Conrad had lived a long time with such a man. Calumny. It was Heyst1s tragedy that he could not maintain this attitude of detachment. Life caught up with him. He found himself making attachments and drawing com ments and criticism from men. Finally to his horror, he discovered that he was being pursued by a horrible calumny people were saying that he was responsible for the death of his partner, Morrison. Strangely enough, though he was not in the least to blame, he had felt guilty about this matter long before his reputation caught up with him. He went about, we are told, with "his eyes sunk in his head, and with a sort of guarded attitude as if afraid someone would reproach him with the death of Morrison."^ What strikes one about this whole episode is that ^ Page 23. 336 Conrad has pushed his story aside a little to make room for it. He seems to have felt a real urge to express re sentment against this kind of calumny, and he does so very effectively through his treatment of Schomberg, the man who started the rumor. Furthermore, he makes it quite clear that the only way to escape this kind of thing is to keep away from one’s fellow men. All this is very in teresting in view of Conrad’s sensitivity to the criticism of his fellow countrymen, and his very real anxiety to avoid contact with them. There is no doubt about Conrad’s own guilt feelings, and apparently he had often tried to rationalize them away as mere projections of this criti cism. Heyst was not guilty, but he felt guilty and kept out of people’s way to avoid their censure. It is the same feeling exactly that Conrad had expressed in the story, I_1 Conde. And one is reminded of the following passage from Chance: For my own part I’ll tell you that once, many years ago now, it came to my knowledge that a fellow I had been mixed up with in a certain tran saction— a clever fellow whom I really despised— was going around telling people that I was a con summate hypocrite. He could know nothing of it. It suited his humour to say so. I had given him no ground for that particular calumny. Yet to this day there are moments when it comes into my mind, and involuntarily I ask myself, ’What if it were true?'° ^ Chance, p. 261j. 337 Similar feelings were betrayed in Victory when Heyst learned the story of this calumny from Lena: ’No, this earth must be the appointed hatching planet of calumny enough to furnish the whole uniyersel I feel a disgust of my one person, as if I had tumbled into some filthy hole. Pah!17 The relationship with Lena. The latter part of the book is largely concerned with the relationship between Lena and Heyst. Lena is a strangely seductive figure prob ably because her model was seductive to Conrad. There is something fascinating about the description of their meet- O ing in Conrad*s Author’s Note.0 What seduced Conrad was the girl’s wide, unseeing eyes, her air of detachment, her lovely voice, her seeming defenselessness, her air of inscrutability. He capitalized on all these impressions in creating Lena. It Is strange how many of Conrad’s women have these qualities. They are thrown into the arms of their men by their very defenselessness. It would almost seem that the men suffered from some sort of inhibi tion and needed the appeal of a woman in need to spur them on. Flora, Lena, Mrs. Travers and Arlette are all illus trations of such an appeal. ^ Victory, p. 215. O ° Pages xv-xvi. In this case, one feels sure that the orchestra girl whom Conrad saw in the continental cafe somwhow be came associated with the image described in Karain--the image of a helpless, frightened woman who listened to the words of Karain, "You shall not die," with smiling contentment. Prom the Author* s Note it seems pretty cer tain that this image initiated the whole day-dream of Victory just as the vision of Flora carried the day-dream of Chance to its conclusion. The shadow of the father figure. The interesting thing about the relationship between Heyst and Lena is this Although Heyst felt for the girl an affection that posi tively startled him— a feeling that she more than recipro cated— and although they were virtually alone on their island in circumstances naturally conducive to the great est intimacy, that intimacy was precisely what they could not achieve. Two things came between them: the shadow of Heyst1s father, and the conviction of guilt. Heyst was no sooner alone after their arrival on the island than he began to feel the reproach of his father. His father1s reproach: "And I, the son of my father, have been caught too, like the silliest fish of them all," Heyst said to himself. He suffered. He was hurt by the sight of his own life, which ought to have been a masterpiece of 339 aloofness. He remembered the thin features, the g great mass of white hair, the ivory complexion . . .7 The association of his father with Heyst’s absurdly sensitive guilt complex is subtly achieved through the • solemn picture that seemed to brood over the room in which so much of the drama took place. HeysBt sat down under his father’s portrait; and the abominable calumny crept back into his recol lection. The taste of it came on his lips, nause ating and corrosive like some kinds of poison. He was tempted to spit on the floor, naively in sheer._ unsophisticated disgust of the physical sensation,10 Guilt. Then to reinforce such an impression, the reader’s attention is drawn apparently apropos of nothing to a passage from his father’s book that Heyst happened to be reading; Men of tormented conscience, or of a criminal imagination are aware of much that minds of a peace ful, resigned cast do not even suspect. It is not poets alone who dare descend into the abyss of in fernal regions, or even who dream of such a descent. The most inexpressive of human beings must have said to himself at one time or another: ’Anything but this I’ We all have our instants of clairvoyance. They are not very helpful. The character of the scheme does not permit that or anything else to be helpful. It was not merely that Heyst felt that he had been false to his father’s philosophy in taking this girl. He 9 page 17^. Page 219. 10 Page 218 3^0 was made to feel guilty through, the girl’s own conscience: At the very edge of the forest she stopped, con cealed by a tree* He Joined her cautiously. "What is it? What do you see, Lena?" he whispered. She said it was only a thought that had come into her head. She hesitated for a moment, giving him over her shoulder a shining gleam of her grey eyes. She wanted to know whether this trouble, this evil, whatever it was, finding them out in their retreat was not a sort of punishment . . . He saw her pale face darken in the dusk. She had blushed. Her whispering flowed very fast. It was the way they lived together--that wasn’t right, was It? It was a guilty life.^-2 Atmosphere. The most significant expression of guilt, however, lies in the mood of the story. It Is sig nificant because it is probably an unconscious expression. It was difficult for Conrad to look on nature objectively. He saw it through the colored glass of his emotions. From the mood that he projected upon this story, it is very evi dent that a feeling of guilt was one of the dominant emo tions that Conrad experienced during this day-dream of Heyst and Lena: She looked round and as if her eyes had Just been opened, she perceived the shades of the forest sur rounding her, not so much with gloom, but with a sullen, dumb, menacing hostility.^3 Beyond the headland of Diamond Bay, lying black on a purple sea, great masses of cloud stood piled up . and bathed In a mist of blood. A crimson crack like 12 Pages 353-5*4-. Page 3^3. 3if-l an open wound zigzagged between them, with a piece of dark red sun showing at the bottom * • . ’ ’That does not look much like a sigh of mercy," she said slowly, as if to herself.14- All through the final scenes the heavens are angry. Thunder is muttering overhead, and vivid streaks of light ning are cutting stripes across the black face of the night. At the very last, when Lena gets possession of the knife and it appears as if she and Heyst are to triumph after all, there is this significant passage that brings all the images of retribution together in one: "Unheard by them both, the thunder growled distantly with angry modulations of its tre mendous voice, while the world outside shuddered incessantly around the dead stillness of the room where the framed profile of Heystfs father looked severely into space. Lest it should be thought that all this is mere coincidence, Conrad adds the powerful effect of silence after Lena is shot and her debt to the gods is paid: Over Samburan the thunder had ceased to growl at last, and the world of material forms shuddered no more under the emerging stars. The spirit of the girl which was passing away under them clung to her triumph, convinced of the reality of her victory over death. ^ Page 355. Page Jj.01, ^ Page 406. 3i|£ Nature of the inhibition. ¥tfhat strikes one about the books written during the period between the production °** Chance and The Arrow of Gold, is the curiously vague nature of the inhibition that seems to exist in Conrad’s mind when he seeks to bring a man and a woman together. In Victory he begins by removing all the obstacles to in timacy. The woman is needy. She wants to love. Every thing is eliminated from the physical surroundings that is likely to get in the way. Yet It is in vain. There Is something wrong. The Image of Heyst’s father is always there to whisper that it is wrong. The girl’s conscience is uneasy. The heavens themselves shout against it. And though the couple make the most elaborate efforts to with draw from life together, fate finds them out, and the end is death for them both. What is the nature of this inhibition? One can only conclude that somehow images of this mother figure had be come entangled with all Conrad’s ideas of love and tinged his emotions with vague sensations of guilt. He could not desire love without desiring something of that mother re lationship. Lena herself has several characteristics that tend to support this view. To begin with, she had characteristics of appear ance that become familiar to the reader of Conrad--charac teristics that seem to be reflected from the author’s 3k3 memory of his mother. In particular there are the candid eyes, the seductive voice, the "good form of the brow, the dignity of its width, the unshining whiteness. It was a sculptural forehead.”^ Above all, there are the inscrutable depths that lie behind those fascinating eyes of cool grey: She raised her eyes to him? and if nature had formed them to express anything else but blank candour he would have learned how terrified she was by this talk . . .18 That girl, seated in her chair in graceful quietude, was to him like a script in an unknown language, or even more simply mysterious; like any writing to the illiterate. As far as women went he was altogether uninstructed and he had not the gift of intuition which is fostered in the days of youth by the dreams and visions,— exercises of the heart fitting it for the encoun ters of a world in which love Itself rests as much on antagonism as on attraction. His mental attitude was that of a man looking this way and that on a piece of writing which he is unable toQ decipher, but which may be big with revelation.1° Another indication of the role that Lena plays In giving release to Conrad’s elusive dream emotions lies in Heyst’s anxiety to know how Lena is relating herself to the calumny that has been pursuing him. He studies those steady grey eyes, but it is impossible to be sure. He feels his uncertainty as "a moral stab in the back," "Bhe only half disbelieves it’, he thought with hopeless humil- 20 iation." It has already been suggested in this dissert- 17 Page 252, 18 page 302. !? page 222 20 Page 259 3 1 * ation that Conrad as a lad had probably looked long at his mothers image and tried to imagine what she would think of his attitude and decision— whether she would agree with her brother, or whether she would reproach her son for not following in the footsteps of his father. If that were indeed the case, it is easy to understand that these feelings were expressed in regard to Lena. Likewise, it is significant that for all her help lessness, Lena gave Heyst the satisfaction of playing the mother role in the end. She looked on Heyst as someone to be protected from evil. He must not be soiled by blood. She determined to play the role of killer for him. She risked everything to get hold of the knife while Heyst took the passive role with Jones. Her name. There may even be some significance in the nameis she bore. We unconsciously attach names by a kind of emotive association that very often we could not explain if we tried. Conrad thought of Lena by names that evidently displeased him, for‘they displeased both Lena and Heyst. She had been called Alma and Magdalene. The first of these names has natural mother associations, by virtue of its meaning of nourishing, and its place In the familiar phrase "Alma Mater." Magdalene has associations of sin from the Bible. All these things may be mere 3k$ coincidences, but it is interesting that in the mind of Conrad the thought of Mother should be associated with Sin in this way, and that the desire to suppress these thoughts by changing the name to Lena should so exactly reflect the feelings that other aspects of the novel sug gest. Beyond death. Quite in line with all this is Conrad1s unconscious conviction that the perfect union that Lena was so anxious for could be achieved only beyond the barrier of death after purification by fire. Lena, it is true, had the illusion of achieving this union on the very borders of death. That illusion was her "Victory”: Exulting, she saw herself extended on the bed, in a black dress, and profoundly at peace; while, stopping over her with a kindly, playful smile, he was ready to lift her up in his firm arms and take her into the sanctuary of his innermost heart--for ever I The flush of rapture flooding her whole being broke out in a smile of innocent, girlish happiness; and with that divine radiance on her lips she breathed her last, triumphant breath, seeking for his glance in the shades of death. As for Heyst, he could not free himself from his inhibitions till the very last: Heyst bent low over her, curing his fastidious soul, which even at that moment kept the true cry of love from his lips in its infernal mistrust of all life. He dared not touch her, and she had no longer the strength to throw her arms about his neck. 21 Page l j . 0 7. ^ Page i 4_o6 . 31*6 But Heyst, too, enjoys his victory. To the normal being it is not easy to understand, but it is perfectly in keeping with the neurotic attitude that is discernible in all these books. Heyst purged Lena and himself by fire, and then, beyond the reach of all earthly mores, they were united forevermore. The strange thing is that Conrad has managed to make it seem like a happy ending. CHAPTER XVI THE SHADOW-LINE The Shadow-Line is probably the most convincing of all Conrad’s stories. One is very likely to accept it as a literal account of the first weeks of Conrad's cap taincy. That, however, can hardly be so. Indeed, one has only to read the Author’s Note and compare that note with those at the head of the other volumes to be con vinced that it is not so. Conrad says: Prom my statement that I thought of this story for a long time under the title of "First Command" the reader may guess that It is concerned with my. personal experience. And as a matter of fact, It is the personal experience seen in perspective with the eye of the mind and coloured by that af fection one can’t help feeling for such events in- one’s life as one has no reason to be ashamed of. What Conrad probably meant was that there was suf ficient factual basis in the story to give the dream work authentic foundation, and the dream was true to his feel ings at the time. As a matter of fact, It was quite Im possible to know what actually happened In any of Conrad's experiences. Mrs. Conrad tells us that he never told the same story in the same way twice, and that she was always a fascinated listener to all his stories, because she Page ix. p never knew what fresh details were going to emerge.It is not at all important to this dissertation to discover how much of this story is transcription of actual fact, and how much of it is projection of actual feelings into an imaginative setting. One feels sure, however, that once Conrad began to write, he did nothing to restrict his dream activities. Anxiety. Conrad wrote three stories that begin * in the memories of that tremendous experience when he re ceived his first command. They are all, it should be noted, expressions of anxiety. How strange he felt coming as an outsider into a group of men who had already been welded by time and experience into a unitt Suppose any thing should happen to prevent his winning their confid ence i The Secret Sharer was born out of that anxiety. The tug owner was a queer fellow. Conrad felt his enmity. Suppose he should refuse to take him out to seal That anxiety grew into Falk. There were sick men amongst his crew. Suppose things were to get worse instead of better when he got to seal That was the fear that dramatized itself into The Shadow Line. "The shadow-line" that Conrad refers to is the 2 Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad as I_ Knew Him, p. 17. 3^9 line between youth and maturity, between gay irresponsi bility and stem responsibility. However, it is doubtful if Conrad saw very clearly what he really meant by this shadow-line. Indeed, the Author’s Note and the title, "The Shadow-Line, a Confession," suggest that the particu lar fear behind this story was the fear of stepping away from the protecting figure of his captain to stand alone. Seen as a dramatization of that fear, the book takes on a new interest. It is a significant step for any young man when he leaves the ranks to take command, and most people do not make the change without anxiety; but Conrad reveals here a more than ordinary anxiety. His is a morbid fear. There are three features of the book that emphasize the morbid nature of this fear: the dream quality that magnifies and distorts events to give expression to the tremendous nature of the spiritual experience; the idea that Conrad had incurred the anger of his predecessor and of the gods themselves; and the exaggerated sense of guilt exhibited by the captain. The tremendous nature of the experience. Whatever were the experiences that Captain Korzeniowski passed through on this occasion, there can be little doubt from this story that their spiritual intensity was out of all proportion to their physical significance. Conrad, however, in his 350 endeavor to be true to his own impressions, has undoubt edly heightened and exaggerated the physical conditions in an effort to dramatize these emotions. The essence of what is dramatized is that child-like feeling of in security that comes to the neurotic when his customary supports have been removed. There is the image of im potence in the endless days and nights without a breath of wind, and in the sailors so completely stricken by illness that they cannot bend a sail. The realization that he no longer has a father figure to lean upon for support is dramatized in the delirium and illness of the mate, and in the conviction that their last resort is gone when the quinine gives out. Most powerful of all, however, is the feeling of being utterly lost in the dark ness of a starless sea: The impenetrable blackness beset the ship so close that it seemed that by thrusting one's hand over the side one could touch some unearthly sub stance. There was in it an effect of inconceiv able terror and of inexpressible mystery . . . When the time came, the blhckness would overwhelm silently the bit of starlight falling upon the ship, and the end of all things would come with out a sigh, stir, or murmur of any kind, and all our hearts would cease to beat like run-down clocks.^ An awful feeling of inadequacy came over him. He felt convinced that the task was too much, that he had 3 Fage 108. 351 never been made to lead in this way against such, odds: And what appalls me most of all is that I shrink from going on deck to face it. It’s due to the ship, it’s due to the men who are there on deck--some of them ready to put out the last remnant of their strength at a word from me. And I am shrinking from It. From the mere vision. My first command. Now I understand that strange sense of insecurity in my past. I always suspected that I might be no good. And here is proof posi tive. I am shirking it. I am no good.k- The anger of his predecessor. One of the strangest aspects of this s tory Is the conviction that Conrad’s pre decessor was angry with him, and that that anger was sym bolical of the anger of the gods. It comes to us in a most subtle form. While Conrad himself disclaims any be lief in such a suggestion, It comes powerfully through the delirium of the mate. It is an impression that is made to dominate the story to such an extent that critics hailed the first edition of The Shadow-Line as a story of the supernatural.-* The mate was convinced that his former captain was just below them throughout all thed. r trouble and that he was responsible for the preternatuhally calm sea, the darkness, and the sickness, and the awful silence. Guilt feelings. The feeling that is most often ^ Page 107. ^ See p. vii. 352 referred to in this stony is the awareness of guilt that continually assailed the newly appointed captain. He was in no sense to blame for the predicament in which his crew found themselves. Nevertheless he suffered--he actually suffered from a sense of guilt. This feeling was associated with the fact that he had failed to dis cover that the quinine bottles had been tampered with. He accused himself in a way that is quite absurd in view of the fact that he had had a doctor make a personal check of his medical supplies. One gets the impression that the sense of guilt was deep within the author and that it had to find some superficial excuse for expres sion. One has to quote only a few passages to show how ! morbidly exaggerated this feeling was. The person I could never forgive was myself. Nothing should ever be taken for granted. The , seed of everlasting remorse was sown in my breast. ♦I feel itfs all my fault,' I exclaimed, 'mine and nobody else's. That's how I feel. I shall never forgive myself.'' t No confessed criminal had ever been so oppressed by his sense of guilt . . . I would have held them justified in tearing me limb from limb. The silence which followed upon my words was almost harder to bear than the angriest uproar. I was crushed by the infinite depth of its reproach.^ 6 Page 95. 7 Page 95. ® Page 96. 353 I waited for some time fighting against the weight of my sins, against my sense of unworthi- ness . . ,9 He sighed. There was no complaint in his tone, but the bare words were enough to give me a horrible.Q pang of self-reproach. It held me dumb for a time. . . my heart would sink awfully at the thought of that forecastle at the other end of the dark . deck, full of fever-stricken men--some of them dying. By my fault. But never mind. Remorse must wait.^3- It was awful. They passed under my eyes one after another— each of them an embodied reproach of the bitterest kind, till I felt a sort of re volt wake up in me.-^ In its deeper significance, the book dramatizes an attitude that is clearly neurotic. In view of what has already been pointed out in this dissertation, it is not surprising that Conrad should find it a tremendous step to take the father position in his little social circle. Nor is it surprising that he should feel anxiety, and guilt, and develop vague feelings that he was trans gressing taboos and that the father figure that he had displaced was angry with him, and that nature herself was supporting this figure in his anger. Indeed, one could almost anticipate these feelings after studying Conrad t thus far. 9 Page 109* 10 Page 111. 11 Page 126. 12 Page 129. CHAPTER XVII TALES OP HEARSAY THE WARRIOR'S SOUL At tine present stage of this investigation, it is only necessary to set down the bare facts of The Warrior's Soul to suggest something of their significance to this dissertation. Plot. Tomassov was a mere boy in the Russian army. While he was in Paris attached to the Russian Em bassy, he was mothered by a brilliant and fascinating woman In a French salon. There he had to watch a much older man enjoy a closer, more lover-like Intimacy with * her. One day, however, news of a break between the Russ ians and the French came, and the woman persuaded her lover to arrange for the escape of the young soldier. In his gratitude, Tomassov placed his very life at the future service of his older rival. The time came when Tomassov was called upon to fulfill bis obligations to, this man. During the awful retreat from Moscow, his erstwhile pro tector surrendered to him, starving and nearly frozen. He begged for a merciful shot to end his agony, and became bitter and scornful when Tomassov hesitated. The boy even tually complied with the Frenchman's request, but his action 355 brought criticism from his own countrymen, and gradually a vague calumny arose around his name. The boy was forced to retire frcm the army and bury himself in his obscure province. Emotions. One can see that this story is directed by some of the neurotic emotions that give life to many of Conrad1 s stories. Here is the mother figure, and the tri umph of gaining intimate access to her, and holding her regard and affection. The woman is not described, but she was brilliant and accomplished and beautiful. Tomassov* s emotions were by no means the nornal emotions that a man has for a woman. There was too much of childish triumph, and of contentment and worship about it. Besides, there is the consciousness of something wrong about it, because it brou^it sadness and torment: He considered himself a sort of privileged per son^ not because a woman had looked at him with favour, but simply because, how shall I say it, he had had the wonderful illumination of his worship for her, as if it were heaven itself that had done this for him. She was the very joy and shudder of felicity, and she brought only sadness and tormdnt to the hearts of'men,^ Imagine amongst them a nice boy, fresh and simple like an apple just off the tree, a modest, ^ Tales of Hearsay, p. 7. 2 Page 9« 356 good-looking, impressionable, adoring young barbarian • • • He became artlessly, unconditionally, her de voted slave. He was rewarded by being smiled upon and in time being admitted to the intimacy or her house.3 There is the father figure and Tomassov*s jealousy of him: Tomassov could not help being struck by the dis tinction of his movements, the ease of his manner, his superiority to all other men he knew, and he suffered from it. It occurred to him that these two r brilliant beings on the sofa were made for each other.4" The final scene in the Russian snows made a power ful impression on Cunninghame Graham.^ It is, Indeed, a wonderful dream creation. It seems like a weird tableau arranged especially to give expression to someof the con flicting emotions that stemmed from Conrad’s flight from f Poland. Sometimes, as in Kara in and other day-dreams, he felt that he had killed his father in choosing his mother’s side of the conflict. That feeling brought deep convic tions of guilt. At other times, as in The Informer, his dream stressed the feeling that all the world should know that he acted from ’ ’conviction.” It was natural that the i _ * father figure should be visualized as dying and in pain. In this stoxy Tomassov had to kill the father figure. It was his duty. It was the only way he could be true to ^ Page 9. ^ Preface, p. xv. ^ Page 12. 357 his warrior1s soul. The feeling that Conrad’s action in fleeing from Poland brought him the immediate criticism of his countrymen is reflected in the fact that the fellow soldiers of Tomassov frowned on his action. But in spite of his rationalizations, the deep sense of guilt,' of cowardice that followed Conrad could not be exorcised. To Tomassov like all the rest of Conrad’s guilty men had to suffer. He had to suffer more than he deserved to suffer, too. A vague calumny pursued him and he had to leave the army and isolate himself frcm his r fellows: But it was poor Tomassov’s lot to be the pre destined victim. You know what the world’s justice and mankind’s judgment are like. They fell heavily on him with a sort of inverted hypocrisy. Why! That brute of an adjutant, himself, was the first to set going horrified allusions to the shooting of a pris oner in cold bloodt Tomassov was not dismissed from the service of course. But after the siege of Danzig he asked for permission to resign from the army, and went away to bury himself in the depths of his prov ince, where a vague stoiy of some dark deed clung to him for years,® PRINCE ROMAN Prince Roman is quite unique amongst Conrad’s short stories. As Cunningham© Graham remarks in his pre face to Tales of Hearsay, this story is "the only one of 6 Page 26 all his tales that deals directly with the country of his birth or touches politics . . • In every word there breathes the spirit of the Polish patriot, the burning sense of resentment . . .”7 It is also the only story in which patriotism becomes a truly noble and unselfish thing, quite ■untouched by the corroding influences of material interests. It is Interesting, too, to notice that Conrad feels no need to disguise either the country or the sentiments expressed. Probably Conrad found It difficult to give expression to simple, straightforward wmotions like these. Usually they could only peep out guardedly from behind the barrier of rationalizations in I whose shadow stories like The Secret Agent or The Informer grew into life. For Prince Roman played the part that Conrad, in his secret soul, would have loved to play. Surely there is significance in the fact that Prince Roman lay for thirteen years In Conrad’s desk, and was not even then given into the hands of the publishers by Its author. Perhaps he felt that such an expression as Is found in this story would betray him— would'falsify the secret messages breathed by many other books. Here Conrad opens the inner door. Intimate de sires that he recognized only in the inner sanctum of his 7 Pages x-xi 359 soul, for one© find creative expression. They find it in the story of Prince Roman, who was dealt a heavy blow by fate, and who in the twilight of his grief was able to r look past the shadowy shapes of personal living to the long perspective of his country* s need. He dedicated himself to this need in an entirely unreserved and name less service that accomplished little for Poland and brought him almost a lifetime of suffering in Siberia, but that gave him the right to walk with uplifted head and unflinch ing eyes. Sometimes one feels that Conrad would gladly have shared the fate of the prince for the privilege that i was his* The atmosphere of the story is one that is hard to describe because it has so many elements. One is re minded of a service that commemorates the sacrifice of i heroes. There is a sense of twilight, of majesty, of re gret, of numbness, of the flatness that follows great events, of the interval that comes just before one stoops to pick up the broken pieces and start again. What is completely lacking is the sense of triumph. It is pushed out of its place by the disappointment and disillusionment of a little boy who was seeing a much talked of figure, a prince, for the first time, and finding him a drooping figure from the past, deaf and incredibly old. 36o The simple majesty of the sacrifice is there all right. It is constantly speaking to us in words like these: "Thus humbly, and in accord with the simplicity of the vision of duty he saw when death had removed the brilliant bandage of happiness from his eyes, did Prince O Roman bring his offering to his country.” But somehow Conrad does not seem to be able to identify himself very closely with the prince. Nor can he close the door against the repressed emotions that seek to enter into every story. What we are made to feel is the hopelessness, the futility of the sacrifice. We see the little trickle of Polish soldiery and the whole might of Russia. The prince’ hero ism was a grand thing, but when one blinked one’s eyes a- gainst the colored scintillations of romance, and looked steadily with the eyes of common sense, it even looked a little foolish. The reader’s last glimpse of him shows the prince as a figure from another generation, old and deaf, and needing the influence of a friend in little things because his son-in-law and his daughter did not trust his judgment. One cannot but feel convinced that Conrad would have found it easier to identify himself with the friend of Roman who accidentally blurted out information that 8 page 361 betrayed the prince and itio 1 1 suffered years of life'em bittered by remorse” to pay for ”this momentary lack of self-control.”^ It is curious how Conrad must find one such ex pression for these emotions of guilt and remorse from the neurotic stream in even such a story as this. THE TALE In 19lij- Conrad visited Poland. That event i s of tremendous psychological importance. All his life Conrad had avoided Poles. But he had recently met the Retingers, and his contact with them prepared him for the visit which they arranged. He was able to stay only a short time, be cause the war broke out ishile he was there, but the effect of the visit must have been something like the effect on a frightened child when he is finally persuaded to look under the bed. The Tale is a reflection of his changed state of mind. He had found that his visit caused him no embarrass ment. The one or two old friends that he met welcomed him in a way that took him across the bridge of years to his happiest recollections. Besides, he found that he was after all thoroughly English in his sympathies, and he could cross that bridge as one crosses into a pleasant, unreal 9 Page 1*9 fairyland. The Tale is a story of uncertainty. Conrad’s hero is no longer a guilty soul who is trying to hide his guilt from himself. He is a man who is frankly trying to face his problem and he does not know if he is guilty or not. But he feels he did the best thing under the circumstances. That is a tremendous change. , Plot. During the first world war, a British commander found evidence suggesting that enemy * submarines were being refueled by neutral ships. Shortly after making this discovery* he was forced by fog to take refuge in a f nearby cove. There he came upon a neutral ship in what he regarded as suspicious circumstances. He boarded and made what investigations'he could; but, though he felt sure that this was one of the ships engaged in refueling operations, he could prove nothing. The captain of the neutral ship excused himself by declaring that he had no I idea where he was. To test this man’s truthfulness, the British commander gave the captain a course to follow. It led to a submerged reef. To the surprise of the English captain, the other ship followed this course and sank with all hands. Henceforth the captain had to live with his tormenting conscience and his uncertainty. For relief he had the doubtful privilege of telling this tale. 363 Atmosphere. The atmosphere of this story is one of dismal uncertainty* It is symbolised by the dimness of the room in which the story is told: Outside the large single window the crepuscular light was, dying out slowly in a great square gleam without colour framed rigidly in the gathering shades of the room. It was a long room. The ir resistible tide of the night ran into' the most distant part of it • . .^0 It is suggested, too, by the fog In which almost 4 the whole of the action of the story takes place: The ship was stopped, all sounds ceased, and the. very fog became motionless, growing denser and as if solid in its amazing dumb immobility. The men at their stations lost sight of each other. Foot steps sounded stealthy; rare voices, impersonal and remote, died out without resonance. A blind white stillness' took possession of the world.3-^ Yet, after all, it seems a tired rather than a poignant emotion. It lacks the power to animate the story completely. It is as If Conrad were waiting in vain for his dream. He'had called upon his guilt emotions to usher „ 4 ^ him into the dream world and they had somehow lost their potency. 5 Another point of interest is this: The story is told as a kind of confession to a woman— a woman who offered the commander a mother-like sympathy. Yet this man un clasped the hands of the woman and went back to his duty, gloomy, but unbowed by his trouble. He does not seem to 10 Page 59• 11 Page 67 : 3 6 i | . > < be a Conrad figure at all: ’Yes, I gave that course to him. It seemed to me a supreme test. I believe--no, I don’t know. At the time I was certain. They all went down; and I don’t kpow whether I have done stem retribution-- or murder; whether I have added to the corpses that litter the bed of the unreadable sea the bodies of men completely innocent or basely guilty. I don’t know. I shall never know.’ He rose. The woman on the couch got up and threw her aims round his neck. Her eyes put two gleams In the deep shadow of the room. She knew his passion for truth, his horror of deceit, his humanity. ’Oh, my poor, poor . . .’ ’I shall never know,’ he repeated sternly, dis engaged himself, pressed her hands to his lips, and went out.12 THE BLACK MATE The Black Mate is not of very much interest to this dissertation. It is a story that depends very largely on a most un-Conrad-like denouement. According to Cunning- hame Graham, it belongs to about the year 1881j ..13 it is allegedly a stbry that Conrad offered for publication as a kind of amatpur effort while he was still essentially a sailor^ longs before his Congo experience. i Plot. The story is the experience of Mr. Bunter of the "Sapphire.” Fearful of losing his job with his i f 1 skipper who considered a man old when he was grey, Bunter 1^ Pages 80-81. 13 page ix. 365 dyed his hair a jet black* Unfortunately, however, his hair dye was destroyed during one voyage and he had to invent an experience with a ghost to account for his grey i hair. There is absolutely nothing in the plot or the sym bolism of importance. Indeed, the story has no real emot ive drive behind it. It shows what Conrad could do when he was working as a mere man of talent without his neurotic drive. However, there is one fact which is of‘interest though it is on the periphery of-the story, as it were: Bunter had lost a ship before he was derated. It was not his fault, but he suffered from an absurd sensitiveness. In short, quite gratuitously, as It were, the reader is served up on the edge of the plate the usual Conrad guilt i complex. There Is no power in this emotion. It imparts nothing by way4 of life to the story, but it is certainly there. A few quotations will suffice to illustrate this point: / As to his remorse in regard to a certain secret action of his life, well, I understand that a man . of Bunter’a fine character would suffer not a little.3-4- They had agreed that she should not come down to the dock to see him off. ’I wonder you care to look at me at &11*’ said the sensitive man. And she did not laugh.- * * 5 34 Page 95. ^ Page 96 • • • but as the poor fellow harped a bit on it, I told him that there were skeletons in a’good many honest cupboards and that, as to his own part icular guilt, it^wasn’t writ large on his face for/ everybody to see — so he needn’t worry as to that.-*-® ♦No; I can’t tell you what it was like 1 Every man has his own ghosts. You couldn’t conceive . . . ’No, I can't. I wouldn’t. It would be no use if I did. That sort of experience must be gone through. Say I am being punished. Well* I take my punishment, but talk of It I won’t.’18 16 Page 96. 17 Page 110. 18 Page 111. CHAPTER XVIII THE ARROW OP GOLD The Arrow of Gold cannot be expected to contribute very much to this dissertation. If one can place any faith in the word of Conrad, it is not a product of his dream-activity. It is a record of literal truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. ". . . the only assurance I can give my readers,” he says, "is that, as it stands here with all its Imperfections, it is given to than complete."^" "in the case of this book," he adds, "I was unable to supplement these deficiencies by the exercise of my inventive faculty. It was never very strong and on this occasion its use would have seemed exception ally dishonest."^ In other words, the plot is not a prod uct of the naive unconscious that is so ready to give it self away. It Is the product of memory at whose gates there stands a shadowy sentinel with a sword that turns every way, lest feelings and images escape with their pitiful revelations. It is not surprising, therefore, that the first editions were received with "suspicions of facts concealed, of explanations held back, of inadequate Page ix. 2 Loc. cit. 368 motives.” One feels very much, in sympathy with these criticisms. Conrad has not told the whole truth, possibly because he did not know it himself, or possibly because the dusty years lay too think upon his memories, but most likely because the censor into whose safe keeping the in timate treasures of his soul were given had been busy be hind his back, deleting, changing just a little here and there * Contents. The book seems to have two aims: to present the person of Dona Rita as she appealed to 1, George, and to trace the progress of their love affair from the moment when they first met till Rita surrendered herself to M. Goerge. Dona Rita was the daughter of Basque peasants. In childhood while she was tending goats in the hills near Tolosa, her cousin Jose Ortega, fell desperately in love with her. Later, when she went to Paris, she was discovered by a wealthy painter, Allegre, who gave her an informal education and made her his mistress. When Allegre died, Rita inherited his wealth, and she soon had many suitors and became the1center of scandalous gossip. Her interest in the Carlist movement made her a favorite of the princefs, 3 Loc. cit. 369 and she became involved in a great deal of secret activity. When M. George (Conrad) met her, he was immediately infatuated with her, and he was easily persuaded, to devote himself to the Carlist cause for her sake. He undertook the dangerous work of gun-running with the "Tremolino." Between trips he became more and more intimate with Rita, but their love affair made little progress. Strange hesi tations and quarrels and a general air of tentativeness seemed to keep the doors between them barely ajar. One night, however, soon after the loss of the "Tremolino," M. George found himself locked in a room with her while Ortega, her crazed childhood lover, battered on the doors and screamed awful curses at her. Ortega was joined by her pious sister, Therese, who called on her to repent from her life of sin. In her confusion, and humiliation, and distress, Rita surrendered herself to M. George and they lived for a brief idyllic period in seclusion. M. George, however, found himself drawn into a duel with a former lover of Rita’s, and he was wounded seriously. Rita nursed him till he was out of danger, but she fled into seclusion before he was on his feet. M. George made no move to follow her. He returned to the sailor’s life that he had abandoned for her sake • The plot is of no consequence here, because it is simply the record of waht happened. There are, however, 370 some aspects of the love affair that are worth noting. Insecurity. It is by no means uncommon for lovers to suffer uncertainties and misunderstandings before more stable relationships are achieved; but the attitude of Monsieur George does seem to be peculiarly inhibited. In the face of Rita’s frankness, he is strangely perverse, and seems anxious to torture himself by putting the worst construction on all Rita says and does. One Is continu ally aware of certain shadowy conflicts in M. George that he wants to project upon Rita. Because of this, he seems to take a peculiar pleasure In quarreling with her and in making her suffer with him. In short, one is impressed by the fact that Rita could have been won much more direct ly and much more easily had he not felt the need to give expression to these conflicting feelings. Indeed, it was only after Ortega had literally beaten Rita to her knees by the terrible force of his abuse that Monsieur George lowered his defenses enough for Rita to be able to give herself to him. Nothing less than the act of giving her self to him seemed to satisfy the young man. She was most acceptable to him when she was most completely humbled by her sense of guilt. One feels something fascinating about all this, but one peers in vain. There is not enough light. One thing, however, is clear: M. George reveals t 371 a personality that was quite insecure. Part at least of Rita’s attraction seemed to lie in the fact of her past. She was beautiful, but she was unworthy. There seems to be a relation to Conrad’s own developing feelings of guilt here . Maternal ccanfort. It is interesting to notice that at the climax of M. George’s emotional storms he did not feel the urge to males love to the girl in the normal way. He adopted the attitude of a child seeking maternal ccmfort, and he revelled in the silence and the sense of timelessness and inactivity. Such emotional climaxes occur only twice in the book and each time the reaction of M. George is the same. One cannot pass It by lightly, because there is something morbid in the language used: I felt suddenly extremely exhausted, absolutely overcome with fatigue since I had moved, as if to sit on that Pompeiian chair had been a task almost beyond human strength, a sort of labour that must end in collapse. I fought against It for a moment and then my resistance gave way. Not all at once, but as if yielding to an irresistible pressure (for I was not. conscious of any irresistible attraction) I found myself with my head resting.on Dona Rita’s shoulder which yet did not give way, did not flinch at all. A faint scent of violets filled the tragic emptiness of my head and it seemed impossible to me that I should not cry from sheer weakness. But I remained dry-eyed I only felt myself slipping lower and lower and I caught her round the waist, clinging to her not from any Intention but purely by instinct. All that time she hadn’t stirred. There was only the slight movement of her breathing 372 that showed her to be alive; and with closed eyes I imagined her to he lost in thought, removed, by an incredible meditation while I clung to her, to an immense distance from the earth. The distance must have been immense because the silence was so perfect, the feeling as of eternal stillness.. I had a distinct impression of being in contact with an infinity that had the slightest possible rise and fall, was pervaded by a warm, delicate scent of violets and through which came a hand from some where to rest lightly on my head. Presently my ear caught the faint and regular pulsation of her heart, firm and quick, infinitely touching in its persistent mystery disclosing itself into my very ear— and my felicity became complete. It was a dreamlike state combined with a dream like sense of insecurity. Then in that warm and scented infinity or eternity, In which I rested lost in bliss but ready for any catastrophe, I heard the distant, hardly audible, and fit to strike ter ror into the heart, ringing of a bell. At this sound the greatness of spaces departed. I felt the world close about me; the world of darkened walls, of very deep grey dust against the panes.T- In the last scene in the house of Therese, Mon sieur George took the same position and again the language is of striking psychological import: » In one place a bit of fur coat touched my cheek softly, but no forgiving hand came to rest on my bowed head. I only breathed deeply the faint scent of violets, her own particular fragrance enveloping my body, penetrating my very heart with an incon ceivable intimacy, bringing me closer to her than the closest embrace, and yet so subtle that I sensed her existence In me only as a great, glowing, In determinate tenderness, something like the evening light disclosing after the white passion of the day, infinite depths in the colours of the sky and an unsuspected soul of peace in the protean forms of life. I had not known such quietness for months; ^ Pages 218-19* 373 and I detected in myself an immense fatigue, a longing to remain where I was without changing my position to the end of time. Indeed, to re main seemed to me a complete solution for all the problems that presents— even as to the very death itself.5 One cannot escape intimations in this language of deep regressive wishes that rather strikingly confirm sug gestions that appear in the imagery of some of his novels. Inscrutability. There are two points relating to the personal description of Rita that are worthy of note. She made an impression of inscrutability upon Conrad. Perhaps this is the basis of the inscrutability in so many of the women of his books. On the other hand, it may have been a projection of something within himself--a feeling of frustration arising from his own muddled Impulses, a reaching after an understanding of what such women did to him. There are a great many references that one might call on, but here are three that are full of suggestive phrases: She listened to me, unreadable, unmoved narrowed eyes, closed lips, slightly flushed face, as if carved six thousand years ago in order to fix for ever that something secret and obscure which is in all women. Not the gross immobility of the Sphinx proposing roadside riddles but the finer immobility, almost sacred, of a fateful figure seated at the very source/- of passion that have moved men from the dawn of ages. £ Pages 29l|.-95. See also p. 220. ^ Pages lij.5-14-6. 37k And besides being haunted by what was Rita on earth I was haunted also by her waywardness, her gentleness, and her flame, by that which the high gods called Rita when speaking of her amongst themselves . . . With her one could not tell. Sorrow, indifference, tears, smiles, all with her seemed to have a hidden meaning. Nothing could be trusted. ' Par or near all was one to me, as if one could not get ever any further but also never any nearer to her secret; the state like that of some strange wild faiths that get hold of mankind with the cruel mystic grip of unattainable perfection, robbing them of both liberty and felicity on earth.o The other point is Rita’s voice. Like nearly all of Conrad’s women she had an entrancing voice. Again this voice may have been the source ‘for all the other lovely voices. In any case, the references to it are almost legion. Renunciati on. Another point of interest about this love affair is that It ended in a renunciation. In ' i The Arrow of Gold it i s Rita who renounced George*. She felt that she would bring him only heart ache and distress. She felt that she was accursed, and doomed to blight the lives of those she linked with her. That is interesting in the light of what is told us of Lena and Flora and ^ Page I6I 4 -. ® Page lij-0. Arietta, but the whole story of this renunciation seems false. It puzzled Richard Curie. He could see no ade quate reason for the termination of their love associa tion. When, 'however, he questioned Conrad about the mat ter, he was met with a surly reticence.^ Conrad has ob viously not told us the facts here. One feels that it was probably Conrad who renounced the love affair. He sailed away to sea to escape the girl who had given her self to him. In the booj: there is competition between Monsieur George’s love for Rita and his love for the sea. It is probable the Conrad found no real satisfaction in the kind of intimacy that they had together after they t fled from Marseilles, and perhaps he was glad to use the sea once more as his avenue of escape. Perhaps his emo tions were not unlike the emotions of the captain in The Smile of Fortune. In any case, one feels sure from the fact that he had to return to these memories after so many years that he fled with contrary emotions warring within him, and a curiosity about himself that he did not ever sati sfy. 9 R. Curie, The Last Twelve Years of Joseph Conrad, 8!. " CHAPTER XIX THE RESCUE The Rescue Is the most unreal of all Conrad's stories. It is like a dream thatibegins with clear images and moves forward purposefully, till quite suddenly it reaches the troubled regions where time and sequence have no meaning. The action slows down and stops, and one finds oneself peering with puzzled earnestness at a spectacle whose significance is just beyond one's understanding. It Is as if life had begun to run backwards, and though one has the certainty of coming disaster, one cannot ranember what It is. As a dream, the book has extraordinary power, but as a spectacle of life it is not convincing. In spite of the Author's Note, it is evident that Conrad had a great deal of difficulty with this story. He laid It aside for twenty years, and when he took it up to finish it towards the end of his life, he re-wrote what he had written earlier. According to Mrs. Conrad, the book that finally emerged was quite different and without the 1 power of the original. There is no evidence of the exact nature of Conrad’s difficulty, but perhaps he hesitated to follow where the dream was leading him. In any case, as ^ Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad as 1^ Knew Him, pp. lii.8-^9. 377 the story stands at present, Lingard does not fit his role at all well* He is by nature a man of action, fear less, objective, and decisive. It is difficult to believe that anything could change him into the introvert of this story who does little but wait for fate to catch up with him. Plot. Captain Tom Lingard was pledged to help his Malay friend and benefactor, Hassim, to regain his lost kingdom. When the former arrived with his brig at what was to be the theatre of war, he found an English yacht stranded on a mudbank. The owner, Mr. Travers, and his friend, DfAlcacer, were kidnapped by natives of the vicinity, and Lingard had to decide whether he would be true to his pledge or risk all in an attempt to rescue the Europeans. Unfortunately, he came under the spell of Mrs. Travers, and while he temporized, his enemies stole a march on him. Hassim and his sister, Immanda, were destroyed and Lingard found himself a broken man, no longer trusted by his friends, and despised by himself. He sailed away from the little party that he had rescued with his burden of remorse lying heavily upon him. Lack of action. It is a curious thing that a book with such a dynamic title as The Rescue should have 378 so little action. The stage is set Tor fierce fighting and energetic intrigue, but the reader waits in vain. Indeed, the curtain is quickly lowered on any scene that promises action, and where It cannot be avoided, it is t told in retrospect. As a matter of fact this lack of action is a key to the understanding of the story. It is the essence of the theme. The atmosphere of the story and the principal emotions are related to it also. Essence of the story. The essence of the story is this: Lingard was faced with a problem that brought duty and inclination Into sharp conflict. He delayed making a painful decision by sharing his problem with a woman who seemed to have been sent him for that purpose. After that it seemed unnecessary to decide at once. In deed, the volitionless state was doubly attractive to him, because it enabled him to keep the woman for himself a little longer. He retreated with her up the dark sinuous stream into the Jungle solitude, and drifted on the smooth surface of featureless days till fate caught up with him, and his •whole world was destroyed. Chief emotions. The principal emotions are a longing to regress to a state of complete passiveness and irresponsibility, and a troubled recognition that there was i disaster in yielding to such, a desire. Significance. The psychological significance of all this can best be understood by looking a little more closely into the elements of the story. There is a king dom at stake, and an obligation that rests heavily upon Lingard to help regain it. Then a woman is presented to his attention. He longs to tell her of his problem so that he might have the eomfort of her understanding. Curiously enough, Mrs. Travers is very sympathetic, and though her husband’s life is at stake, she is much more interested in Lingard’s problem. Lingard, however, is conscious that this woman is not for him. He feels that another man, and indeed, a whole world lie between them; but he yields to the temptation to reach after her for a little while at least. He goes with her up the secret river and remains on the stranded "Emma” as upon some vessel on the Styx between time and eternity. There he shares with her the strange luxury of actionless waiting— a pleasure that is spoiled by his constant awareness of the shadowy figure of Travers that is never far away. It is significant that Travers is throughout most of the story a captive in the hands of the enemy, and that Mrs. Travers desires to join him purely from a sense of duty, a fact that wins Lingard’s admiration. 380 It is difficult to avoid the conviction that this dream was stimulated by emotions that had remained poten tially active in Conrad's unconscious since the troubled days before he left Poland.' They are all present in this story. There was the urgent need to decide the great ques tion that was to shape his destiny, balanced by a contrary desire to put off the decision as long as possible. There were the emotions which centered In the mother image pre sented to his eager imagination by his uncle: admiration for the courage that led her to share her husband's cap tivity, and the warmth of the neurotic conviction that she was more interested in her son's problem thah in her husband's fate. And above all these things there was the memory of the patriotic ceremony that literally took the decision out of his hands, and drove him into a vast, friendless world to carry forevermore the burden of the remorse that comes to those who have failed in a sacred trust• All these things are written large upon the story, but It is the desire to remain with the woman and avoid the necessity for a decision that is stressed. The desire is linked by the unconscious with that regressive wish that keeps cropping up in Conrad's fiction. It is in the imagery of the jungle, In the prevailing mood of silence 381 and darkness and the dreary desert of duration that is not cut up into intelligible intervals of time. It is in the strikingly regressive attitude of Lingard when he surrenders to Mrs. Travers. Space will be taken to illus trate each of these points in turn. The jungle. Like some of Conrad's earlier works, The Rescue is dominated by the jungle. The most casual reader is impressed by the amount of emotive language that Conrad uses in this connection. He cannot escape the con viction that the jungle has, in Conrad's mind, some symbolic meaning. Even Guerard, who denied the unconscious nature of most of Conrad's symbolism, felt the power of the jungle in this early worl?, and in The Rescue. He says: The jungle is primarily the enemy of conscious ness. It Is for Corirad, as for Aldous•Huxley and William Faulkner, the embodiment of nature *s in human energy--and one may only speculate as to whether it was for him (as It appears to be for them) associ ated with an almost pathological fear of the myster ies of sex and birth. In any case, Conrad uses the jungle as a deliberate symbol for the savage and the subconscious mind. The deteriorated Lingard 'loved the narrow and sombre creeks, strangers to sunshine; black, smooth, tortuous— like byways of despair.1 The darkness of the forest enfolded Mrs. Travers 1 like the enervating caress seduced her soul into surrender.' The mystery which Willems through 'the fantastic veil of creepers and leaves' was the mystery of savage life, the surrender of convention and consciousness, enchanting, subduing, beautiful. The jungle was for Conrad as symbolic of the preconscious or the subconscious as the sea was for Melville.2 382 There is little doubt that Conrad did, as Guerard suggests, associate the jungle with the mysteries'of birth. One is continually coming upon passages like this: "He looked into that great dark place, odorous with the breath of life, with the mystery of existence, renewed, fecund, indestructible."3 in The Rescue, however, the jungle seems to take a role in the plot. Lingard Is introduced to the reader as a man of action, purposeful— a man without in hibitions or hesitations. Then he disappears into the jungle, and he becomes a creature without a will or the power to act. He leans upon a woman. He surrenders to an attitude of passive waiting, of stunned Immobility. Then a dimly foreseen disaster drives him forth once more into life. He emerges like a man, bom again into a strange world where only time and suffering can bring him a new adjustment. Who can doubt that in Conrad’s unconscious, the trauma of his Polish experience had somehow become as sociated with the trauma of birth and that this strange plot of Lingard and his problems, his regressive attitude, his forfeited trusts, his betrayed friends, and the disas ter of the "Emma" was a re-enactment In dream foim of the past? O j A. Guerard, Jr., "Joseph Conrad," Direction, I (1947), pp. 35-36. --------- ^ Outcast of the Islands, p. 337. 383 Silence, darkness. The atmosphere of the story is made up very largely by impressions of silence and darkness and timelessness, and though these things are sometimes pervaded by a sense of menace, they are more often brooded over by a feeling of peaceful surrender. There is, for instance, the impression of absolute stillness in^which the story opens: The night following from the eastward the retreat of the setting sun advanced slowly, swallowing the land and the sea; the land broken, tormented and abrupt, the sea smooth and inviting with its easy polish of continuous surface to wanderings facile and endless . . . The calm was absolute, a dead, flat calm, the stillness of dead sea and of a dead atmosphere. As far as the eye could reach there was not a thing but an impressive immobility. Nothing moved on earth, on the waters, and above them the unbroken lustre of the sky. On the unruffled surface, of the straits the brig floated tranquil and upright as if bolted solidly, keel to keel with its own image reflected in the unframed and immense mirror of the sea. To the south and east the double islands watched silently the double ship that seemed fixed amongst them forever, a hopeless captive of the calm, a helpless prisoner of the shallow sea.n- Or there is the silence of the night in which Lingard came to Mrs. Travers to open to her his very heart and find a secret intimacy of soul that changed his life: After a time this absolute silence which he al most could feel pressing on her on all1sides induced in Mrs. Travers a state of hallucination. She saw herself standing alone, at the end of time, on the brink of days. All was unmoving as if the dawn would ^ Page j?. 381}. never come, the stars would never fade, the sun would never rise any more; all was mute, still, dead— as if the shadow of the outer darkness, the shadow of the uninterrupted, of the everlasting night that fills the universe, the shadow of the night so profound and so vast that the blazing suns lost in it are only like sparks, like pin-points of fire, the restless shadow that like a suspicion of an evil truth darkens everything upon the earth on its passage, had enveloped her, had stood ar rested as if to remain with her forever.^ Almost all the important scenes take place in the darkness and stillness, the journey in the canoe, the long night inside the stockade right down to the last meeting on the sandbank: At their feet the shallow water slept profoundly, the ghostly gleam of the sands baffled the eye by the lack of fom. Par off, the growth of bushes in the centre raised a massive black bulk against the stars to the southward* Mrs. Travers lingered for a moment near the boat as if afraid of the strange solitude of this lonely sandbank and of this lone sea that seemed to fill the whole encircling universe of remote stars and limitless shadows.® Quite often this darkness and stillness are associ ated with emotions of maternal protection. For instance there is this passage: The darkness enfolded her like the enervating caress of a sombre universe. It was gentle and destructive. Its languor seduced her soul into surrender. Nothing existed and even all her mem ories vanished into space. She was content that nothing should exist.* £ Page 1$L . 6 page i}.6l. 7 Page 2if5. 385 Tim^lessness, The impression of timelessness, i of seemingly unending duration is perhaps the strongest impression of all. It is referred to over and over again. It is to be seen in passages already quoted to illustrate impressions of darkness and stillness, and it is brought to the reader almost ceaselessly through phrases like these: "Time with us has been standing still for ever so long,11® and: "The very stars seem to lag on their way,"^ and by such symbols as Travers’ watch with the broken hands, a watch that ticks on monotonously without ever dividing the day into hours or minutes, and perhaps most of all by the long scenes without any reference to day or night or date. Mother relationship. All these impressions achieve meaning in the light of the relationship that existed be tween Lingard and Mrs. Travers. One feels from the begin ning how morbid this relationship is, and how inappropriate it is to the personality of Lingard as he has been presented to us in this and other books. Theirs Is not the attitude of lovers at any stage of an attraction or courtship. It is true that the figure of the ineffectual Travers is al ways there to cast a shadow across this relationship. But 8 Page 336. 9 Page 389 386 the reader is made to Teel a more formidable barrier than Travers could ever be. Lingard seems to be reaching after a relationship that he does not understand, reaching across vague barriers that bewilder and frighten him. A whole world lies between them. As Lingard says on one occasion: "And now I've told you, and you don’t know. That's how it is between us. You talk to me and I talk to you— and we don't know."^® Physical contact cannot bridge the gulf. It only emphasizes it. Once Lingard took her in his arms, but it did less than nothing for their relation ship. "Never before had she seemed to him more unapproach able, more different, more remote."- * - 3 - Prom the beginning when he first surrendered to the magic fascination that was in Mrs. Travers, he heard the sound of doom— the voice of age-old taboos. "It seems as if I had sinned," he muttered vaguely on one occasion.1^ And immediately after the blissful surrender in the stockade, the brig "Emma" blew up, the sign that Jorgensen and Hassim had lost all faith in him. It was the end of the world, and he knew that he would have to pay for his sin by a lifetime of remorse. "Lingard walked to the beach by himself, feeling a stranger to all men and abandoned by the All-Knowing God."13 10 Page 219. 12 Page 362. 11 Page lf.00. 13 page i j J j i j . . The fact of the matter is that Lingard did not seem to know what he wanted from Mrs. Travers. He came to her at night like a child with a strange burden to tell her all about himself— the sign of one seeking understanding and sympathy. In her presence he felt an irresistible need, but with that need there came an instinctive warning of disaster: He felt like a swimmer, who, in the midst of sup erhuman efforts to reach the shore, perceives that the undertow is taking him out to sea. He would go with the mysterious current; he would go swiftly— and see the end, the fulfillment both blissful and terrible .3-4 This is fascinating language in view of what has already been pointed out in The Planter of Malata and elsewhere. The suggestion of regressive wishes is supported by the story as it proceeds. Lingard felt that his hold on this woman was precarious, and what he feared most of all was that any kind of action would separate him from her: "Every thought and action had become odious to Lingard since all he could do in the world now was to hasten the moment of his separation from the woman to whom he had confessed the whole secret of his life."1^ So he remained in blissful inaction at her side. And on the fateful Page 219 Page 1^26. 388 night when Hassim and his cause needed him most he reached a pinnacle of ecstasy by resting child-like with his head on her knee till dawn. The picture is so significant that it is worth quoting at length: But suddenly he scattered the embers with his foot and sank on the ground against her feet, and she was not startled in the least to feel the weight of his head on her knee, Mrs. Travers was not startled, but she felt profoundly moved. Why should she tor ment him with all these questions of freedom and captivity, of violence and intrigue, of life and death? He was not in a state to be told anything and it> seemed to her that she did not want to speak, that in the greatness of her compassion she simply could not speak. All she could do for him was to rest her hand lightly on his head and respond si lently to the slight movement which suddenly immob ilized her in an anxious emotion. ° And when he was roused at last: He looked about him dazedly; he was still drunk with the deep draught of oblivion he had conquered for himself. Yes--but it was she who had let him snatch the cup. He looked down at the woman on the bench. She moved not. She had remained like that, still for hours, giving him happiness without sound and movement, without thought, without joy; but with an infinite ease of content, like a world- embracing reverie breathing the air of sadness and scented with love. For hours she had not moved, ' In the light of passages like this the powerful atmosphere of the book becomes big with significance* The darkness, the stillness, the timelessness are all expressions of the same urge that'took hold of Lingard In his relation ship with Mrs. Travers. It was not her love that he wanted page lp.3. Page 431. 389 so much, as her motherly care, and the peace he craved was the morbid and regressive peace of the womb, the pro tection, the comfort, the freedom from responsibility, -I O "The reprieve," as he put it, "from thought." If stronger evidence is needed, it will be found in Conrad’s final com ment on the scene just referred to: He was seduced away by the tense feeling of exist ence far superior to the mere consciousness of life, and which in the immensity of contradictions, delight, dread, exultation and despair could not be faced and yet was not to be evaded. There was no peace in it. But who wanted peace? Surrender was better, the dreadful ease and slack limbs in the sweep of the enormous tide and In a divine emptiness of mind. If this was existence then he knew that he existed. And he knew that the woman existed, too, in the sweep of the tide, without speech, without movement, without heat I Indestructible— and perhaps immortal. Perhaps.' the most significant aspect of all this is the fact that Lingard was such an inappropriate figure upon whom to project all these neurotic feelings. It cer tainly shows how strongly Conrad felt impelled to give ex pression to them. As to the nature of this expression, there is little that is new In it, save the emphasis that is given to this desire to escape the conflict by regression to the most primitive of all situations where there is no movement, and no thought, only darkness and stillness and 18 Page 1 | . 3 9 19 page 14-32 timelessness and. slackness of limbs. An advance. It is an interesting thought that perhaps this emotion may be a carry-over from the period twenty years earlier when much of the book was written. In any case, it is well to remember that most of the writ ing followed Conrad’s visit to Poland, and there is one quite striking bit of evidence of an advancing attitude: at the very last, Lingard firmly turned his back on the experience with Mrs. Travers and set out to make for him- pn self the new life that one reads about in other books. He met Mrs. Travers on the sandbank for the last time, and though he met her in the dullness of his remorse, he did It for no other purpose than to reject her with firm- ness— a firmness that was later expressed by the last words In the book. Just as Travers’ yacht disappeared over the horizon he asked his new mate, Carter, in which direction she was sailing. The answer was, "South.” "Steer North," said Lingard. 20 Almayer’s Folly, Outcast of the Islands, for instance. CHAPTER XX THE ROVER One cannot help feeling that if the manuscript of The Rover had been found a century after Conrads death, the experts would have pronounced it f , in many respects a convincing forgery." The book deals with so many elements that one has learned to look for in Conrad: revolution, guilt, the sense of destiny, a woman who is somehow taboo, calumny, the fateful decision between a woman and duty, the significant atmosphere of silence, and dream-like trances. But there is a subtle difference in spirit. It is as if one of Chopin’s Etudes had got mixed up with a pile of Bach’s Fugues. And one is shocked into framing the question: What has happened to Conrad? To become aware of the reality of this change one has only to read in succession the closing paragraph of The Rover and that of another of Conrad’s books, say, The Secret Agent. One closes The Secret Agent with the feeling that death has ended the struggle of Winnie Verloc and her husband, but that nothing is really solved. The forces that work insidiously to corrupt society and spread anarchy at the expense of so many little lives like the Verlocs’ remain untouched. They are symbolised in the final picture 392 of tlie Professor: And the incorruptible Professor walked, too, averting his eyes from the odious multitude of mankind. He had no future. He disdained it. He was a force. His thoughts caressed the images of ruin and destruction. He walked frail, insignifi cant, shabby, miserable— and terrible in the simp licity of his idea, calling madness and despair to the regeneration of the world. Nobody looked at him. He passed on, unsuspected and deadly; like a pest in a street full of men. But the death of Peyrol in The Rover brings peace, and it is big with meaning. It solves everyone’s problems, and it "covers a multitude of sins" in his own life. For Winnie Verloe there is only a newspaper paragraph with its jargon of an unsolved mystery; there is the dampness of fog and the sudden swirl of dark waters. But for the Rover there is the benediction of a cool breeze and "the marvellous purity of a sunset sky," and on shore a mulberry tree with its sentinel steadiness and Its large leaves whispering of coolness and sleep: The blue level of the Mediterranean, the charmer and the deceiver of audacious men, kept the secret of its fascination— hugged to its calm breast the victims of all the wars, calamities and tempests of Its history, under the marvellous purity of the sun set sky. A few rosy clouds floated high up over the Esterel range. The breath of the evening breeze came to cool the heated rocks of Escampobar; and the mulberry tree, the only big tree on the head of the peninsula, standing like a sentinel at the gate of the yard, sighed faintly In a shudder of all its 1 The Secret Agent. p. 311. 393 leaves, as If regretting the Brother of the Coast, the man of dark deeds, but of large heart, who often at noonday would lie down to sleep under its shade.2 What happened to Conrad's genius that it should give him such a book? Wo one will ever know the whole truth, but in the light of actual events, the change Is pretty much what one would expect. In 191^4- Conrad visited Poland. He went eagerly, but it is probable, too, that it was somewhat of an ordeal for him. He had shown himself to be over-sensitive to Polish criticism. His traveling companion mentioned it..^ It is possible that they talked of it during the voyage. So it is likely enough that the voyage was not without its apprehensions, and that all Conrad’s images of Poland were associated with the feeling of guiltiness that pervades his works. But his fears were groundless. The years had swept away all that could have menaced his peace. He walked with the blessed isolation of a stranger, and yet with the familiar tread of an ini tiated spirit. He heard no Inimical voices. He found only memories that rose fresh from the soil with no taint of the neurotic values that had accumulated through the years between. It was like waking up to find the familiar things ^ T*16 Rover. p. 286. 3 u# Retinger, Joseph Conrad and His Contempor aries, p. 137. “ ~ 3 * one had dreamed of, stripped of their sinister dream values and looking sane and cheerful in the sunshine. There is real therapeutic value in such a visit. But quite apart from all this, the war established the independence of Poland. It no longer needed a patriot such as he had unconsciously wanted to be all these years. The voice of conscience lost its power. Ho doubt, too, his own active part in the war contributed something to his peace end to the spirit of The Rover. His trip on the Q boat, for instance, might well have ended like the Rover’s last voyage. It might have tricked the enemy and cost the lives of all on board. In short, it is not diffi cult to imagine the neurotic poisons gradually dispersing, and, indeed, that is exactly the effect of this book--a slow dispersal of the neurotic emotions. The very elements of the neurosis are distributed, as it were, haphazardly amongst the characters, and the author does not seem to identify himself very closely with any of these characters for long. As for the difficulties, the guilt, the conflict, between duty and inclination, the unfulfilled obligations— they are all satisfied one by one. Plot. . Jean Peyrol, an ex-Brother of the Coast, but now a chief gunner in the French Havy, and In charge of a prize of war, arrives- in the harbor of Toulon with his prize. He walks off the ship with a prize of his own. Beneath his seaman’s clothes he is wearing a vest lined with coins of gold that he has discovered in the cabin of his prize. He makes his report to the author ities, secures his discharge and makes his preparations to settle down. He is fifty-eight years old and he is going home. He slips out of town and secures a room in a large farmhouse not far from his birth-place. Escampobar, the place of his choice, stands on a small peninsula. It is occupied by a young woman called Arlette, her Aunt Catherine, and a certain Scevola, a former sana culotte, who was responsible for the death of Arlette*s parents during the French Revolution. He had spared Arlette because he expected to marry her when she grew up. However, the girl was so shocked by her ex periences during the revolution that up to the time of the story she was still in a pitiable state, unable to concentrate her bird-like attention for more than seconds at a time; and she was only half aware of the meaning of her surroundings. However, she developed a child-like trust in Peyrol, and, for the moment of his arrival, she began to improve. During the years that followed, Peyrol brought an old tartane and refitted it in the expectation of taking pleasant little fishing excursions in it. 396 However, his activities were somewhat hampered by the continued presence of a British sloop in the bay. One day a naval officer arrived to keep watch on this sloop, and gradually Arlette found herself falling in love with him. The experience brought back the full powers of her mind, and, when he showed his affection for her, her delight knew no bounds. She had long felt the burden of guilt as a result of her experiences during the revolu tion. While she was being dragged along day after day with the crowd, she had listened to herself, fascinated and horrified to find that she was shouting the same things as the crowd was shouting. Furthermore she discovered that she was accounted a good patriot by these people who had killed her own parents. Now she felt the need to be cleansed from this guilt, so she visited the priest and prayed in the chapel for her lover. Unknown to her, her lieutenant had been given a dangerous task. He had to allow himself to be captured by the sloop nearby so that certain papers that he was to carry would lead the enemy astray. He had decided to use Peyrol*s tartane for the purpose. At the last moment, however, Peyrol decided to play that role himself. He could not bear the thought of Arlette*s suffering when her lieutenant was captured. So the old Rover slipped 397 away while the lieutenant was off-guard. He aroused the suspicion of the sloop which immediately gave chase; he provoked the ship to fire upon him and upon his solitary old crewman. Thus he died, performing an important service for his country. As for the young couple, they were able to snatch a lifetime of happiness from this unexpected act of heroism. Dr. Morf has pointed out how much Conrad had in common with the old Rover.^ He had been a seaman, and ■when he returned to Poland he was almost the same age as Peyrol. He had lost his mother in early childhood, and his boyhood memories were darkened with horrible scenes. His patriot ism also had been in question. But what is so significant at this time is the fact that Conrad had here identified himself with such a stable, well-balanced man as Peyrol undoubtedly was. Peyrol was not haunted by a sense of guilt like Razumov, nor was he fighting for self-respect like Lord Jim. He was not struggling like Heyst on the border of reality. He was under no cloud like Flora de Barral, nor had he a psychological problem like Falk, nor a material problem like Whalley, nor an illusory one like Hagberd. Indeed, Peyrol was not one of Conrad's characters at all, as the reader comes to know them. It is true that G-. Morf, The Polish Heritage of Joseph Conrad, p. 180. 398 his past was not above reproach, but he had no regrets. On the contrary, his feelings were all warm, comfortable feelings. He had lived a full life, and now he was coming home with enough money to satisfy his needs to the end of his days. He enjoyed the sweetness of the thought that he was back on his native soil and that in the eyes of his fellows he was a superior being because he had seen so much of the world. He had neither unfulfilled ambitions nor obscure pathological drives to torment him. Instead, he had a quiet confidence in his strength and a healthy objective interest in the people and things around him. Nothing remained for him but to make the most of the years that were left him. The only shadows ahead of him were the shadows of age and feebleness, and it was his triumph that he had the courage to grasp the supreme opportunity that the gods offered him of fulfilling his destiny by a vicarious death in the days of his strength--a death for his friends and for his country. Thus from first to last there is not a neurotic emotion connected with Peyrol. And most significant of all, his death was not a penalty exacted by fate. It was a gift to his country and to his friends. Nature herself received it with a gracious smile, as the final paragraph demonstrates.^ ^ Quoted on page 3 2 i j . . 399 Neurotic emotions, however, do find expression in the book. But they have no sustained strength. It is as if the pressure had suddenly been removed and the emo tions were finding a dispersed outlet. GuiIt. There is, for instance, the sense of guilt with its concommitant conviction that fate would surely exact a toll. The nature and course of this emo tion are most significant here. This sense of guilt lies like a stone against the heart of Catherine. In her youth she fell in love with a priest. In her heart she abandoned herself to him. As a result she felt that the wrath of God was poured out on her head. Yet irrevocable as this emotion was, it was not Irreconcilable. Catherine felt that she was suffering for her sins--she and her family. She had borne the brunt of it alone and she had made her peace with God. All that belonged to the past. It was the guilt of Arlette that belonged to the present. But Arlette‘s sense of guilt lacked power. It was projected upon the girl by her aunt, who felt that Arlette was cursed because of her own sin in loving the priest. As Catherine told Lieutenant Real: ‘You will go. You know,* the voice continued inflexibly, ‘she is my niece, and you know that there is death in the folds of her skirt and blood about her feet. She is for no man.’6 l j .00 But all tliis had no effect on Real. And Arlette herself moved easily from under the shadow through her confession to the priest. Indeed, there was a child-like naivete about her story as she told it to the priest. After it was all over, the priest was shocked to find that she was not praying for repentance but for her lover: ’I ran in the midst of them, Monsieur l’Abbe,' Arlette went on in a breathless murmur. ’Whenever I saw any water I wanted to throw myself into it, but I was surrounded on all sides. I was Jostled and pushed and most of the time Scevola held my hand very tight. When they stopped at the wine shop, they would offer me some wine. Monsieur, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth and I drank. The wine, the pavements, their arms and faces, everything was red. I had red splashed all over me. I had to run with them all day, and all the time I felt as if I were falling down, and down, and down. The houses were nodding to me. The sun would go out at times. And suddenly I heard myself yelling exactly, like the others. Now you understand, Monsieur l'Abbe*? The very same words I* ’ I have heard something of that, ' he whispered stealthily. She affirmed with quiet earnestness: ’Yet all the time I resisted with all my might.’ ’Then, Monsieur l’Abbe,’ said Arlette, ’I let myself go at last. I could resist no longer. I said to myself: If It is so then it must be right. But most of the time I was like a person half asleep and dreaming things that it is impossible to believe.’• And after this confession Arlette seemed to shed her guilt effortlessly. She gave herself to Real without reserve, and, though the shadow of duty also came for a 6 Page 225. 7 Pages l5if--55 ii.oi little while between her and her happiness, it was not for long. After Peyrol*s sacrifice, she could see that her fear of him had been groundless, and she lived with / Real in perfect contentment to revere the memory of her old sailor friend. It must be admitted that love brought some morbid emotions to Lieutenant Real— emotions that are superfici ally quite absurd. There is more than a trace of that vague inhibition that keeps cropping up in Conrad’s men when they come in contact with women. It is true that Real’s duty to Prance made a love affair inadvisable, but that hardly justified suicide after he had kissed Arlette’s hand. Yet that is precisely what Real contemplated: ✓ Lieutenant Real had spoken the truth. While In Toulon he had more than once said to himself that he eould never go back to that fatal farmhouse. His mental state was quite pitiable. Honour, de cency, every principle forbade him to trifle with the feelings of a poor creature with her mind dark ened by a very terrifying, atrocious, and, as it were, guilty experience. And suddenly he had given way to a base impulse and had betrayed himself by kissing her hand! He recognized with despair that this was no trifling, but that the impulse had come from the very depths of his being. It was an awful discovery for a man who on emerging from boyhood had laid for himself a rigidly straight line of con duct amongst the unbridled passions and the clamour ing falsehoods of revolution which seemed to have destroyed In him all capacity for the softer emo tions. Taciturn and guarded, he had formed no In timacies. Relations he had none. He had kept clear of social connections. It was in his character. At first he visited Escampobar because when he took ~ his leave he had no place in the world to go to , . . And so quite seriously lie went about Ms prepara tions for suicide. He felt that that was all he could do. The inhibition itself Is best expressed in the fol lowing quotation: *1 shall begin to talk nonsense to people,* he said to himself. *Hasn*t there been once a poor devil who fell In love with a picture of a statue? He used to go and contemplate it. His misfortune cannot be compared with mine! Well, I will go to look at her as a picture too; a picture as untouch able as if it had been under glass.*9 Yet all these feelings were entirely dissipated before the end of the book. The claims of M s duty were / satisfied in Peyrol, and Real went on to claim M s love with no guilty feelings or morbid sentiments. But peihaps nothing illustrates the transition from morbid feelings to the natural lover*s reaction as does the passage describing the meeting in Real’s room: He came to life with a low and reckless ex clamation, felt horribly insecure at once as if he were standing on a lofty pinnacle above a noise as of breaking waves in Ms ears, in fear lest her fingers should part and she would fall off and be lost to him for ever. He flung Ms arms round her waist and hugged her close to Ms breast . . . ’She is exquisite,’ he thought with a sort of terror. ’It's impossible*’ Another point that is worth mentioning is the fact Q Pages 208-09. 9 Page 212. Page 216. of the revolution* Every now and then we are made to hear the sound of its tides sweeping past us in the background. We feel its futility, and its cruelty, but all these impressions come to us without conscious effort on the part of Conrad. He can leave revolution alone by this time. He no longer has an urge to exhibit it in all / its bitter futility. Likewise with solitude. Both Real and Peyrol are solitaries, but the reader is never oppressed by this fact. He is never called upon to offer his pity. In short, the neurotic poison seems to work its way out of the tissues of this book without touching the constitution of the principal character. As for the rest, they are all healed by Peyrol’s heroic sacrifice. The book opens in an afternoon atmosphere of coolness and peace. It closes under the glories of a sunset sky that is mirrored in the blue Mediterranean in a stillness that is neither sinister nor brooding, but peaceful like the* end of a perfect day. CHAPTER XXI THE SISTERS, SUSPENSE THE SISTERS The Sisters1 was begun in 1896, It was abandoned when Conrad commenced The Nigger of the Narcissus. The plot has not proceeded to the point where the principal characters have come together, but sufficient is sketched in concerning their lives individually to give the reader an idea of the nature of the sort of thing Conrad was at tempting. Plot. Stephen was the son of a Russian peasant who had gained his freedom fran. serfdom and had become quite rich. The boy was educated because It was hoped that he would become a general, Stephen, however, had only one passion: he wanted to learn the secret of genius as it exhibited itself In old masterpieces of the painter* art. It became an obsession with him. He painted and wandered all over Europe visi ting famous galleries and trying to probe the mystic secret. He wanted to find some principle, some essence, as it were, that all great art had in common. His parents died in sorrow feeling ^ This fragment was published in Bookman, LXVI (January, 1928), pp. 481-95. bo$ that Stephen was a lost son. The young man brooded over their end, but he felt impelled to pursue his search. Finally he took refuge in the upper floor of a picturesque house on the outskirts of Paris. It was owned and lived In by a Basque merchant and his wife. This man, Jose, had a brother who was a priest of fanatical zeal, and -when their sister died leaving orphan daughters, the priest took them and appealed to his richer brother Jose for help. Jose and his shrewish wife took one of the girls. The other was kept by the priest. He hoped to consecrate her to the church. Rita, the child taken by Jose was beloved of her uncle and ill- treated by his jealous wife. The stage is all set for the meeting of Rita and Stephen when the story breaks off. According to Ford Madox Ford, Stephen was to marry Rita and later fall in love with the younger sister who was to fail In her religious life. The guilty pair were to have a child and the priest was to slay both the woman and her child. Emotions. The story is strongly pervaded by that kind of dream atmosphere that characterizes so many of ^ Ford Madox Ford, ^.Tiger, Tiger," Bookman, UCVI (January, 1928), I|_97. - l * . o 6 the early books of Conrad. This atmosphere is the result of projecting upon the screen of nature the neurotic emotions of Stephen, or should one say Conrad? His feel ings were very complex. There was the vague feeling of dissatisfaction with the world at large. "The world appeared ugly, colourless and filled with the impertinent personal chatter of small imprudences."8 There was the depressing conviction that nothing could be done to change these things. Stephen felt that "the day was attuning itself slowly to the sorrowful note of his heart. Stephen, moreover, was harrassed by the feeling that he was responsible for the death of his parents. "Defense less, he was pierced by the venomous sharpness of remorse."-’ He was oppressed, too, by the conviction that somewhere just beyond his reach was the secret of happiness— a secret that would turn the ugliness of his life into the beauty of art, and he felt that it was out of his reach because he had sinned: "The dead will not speak. Why? I have offered to them the awful sacrifice of two human hearts 8 Page 487. ^ Page 487. ^ Page 486. ^ Page 487. koi Stephen’s feelings about nature reveal rather striking evidence of nostalgia for his childhood, and a fascination with the idea of vastness and the images of maternal care: The fabulous vastness of the country repeated itself day after day with the persistence of eter nal truth--sank into the child’s consciousness, coloured his childish thought,-his young feelings, carried persuasion into his ignorance— irresistible like an unceasing whisper of a voice from heaven,' Stephen, unwinking, looked on— smiled at Immen sity. In the day-time, from his mother’s aims, he scrutinized with inarticulate comprehension the vast expanse of the limitless and fertile black- lands nursing life in their undulating bosom under the warm caress of sunshine. In the shallow folds of the plain dammed streams overflowed Into an un ruffled glimmer of small lakes, placid as though soothed |ry whispering tenderness of encircling reeds. On their banks dark willow and slim, un steady birches stirred in the gentle and powerful breath of the indolent steppes. Here and there a clump of low oaks looked sombre and stolid, planted firmly above the dark patch of its own shade.' * • ” Another emotion worthy of note is Stephen’s feel ing about the sea. It has already been remarked that the sea has symbolic significance in Conrad. Stephen was fas cinated by the sea. He stood and gazed at it for days, and he felt convinced that in the sea was the secret of art and happiness that he was seeking so desperately. In ^ Page ® Page l j .08 the following extract two aspects of these feelings are prominent: the sea was like a mother to him, and the feelings she gave him seemed unlawful. There, the opening of a wide horizon touched him as an opening of loving arms in a welcoming embrace touches a way worn and discouraged travel ler. He was moved by the thought that there, at last, he stood on the threshold of the dwelling place of sublime ideas . . . He thought nobody could see in them what he saw and the snatching before the eyes of men of profound impressions Q had for him all the harsh joy of unlawful conquest.' A kindred emotion occurs in a passage of nostalgic childhood memories. It is rather obscure in its prose level meaning, but is quite striking as a poetic transla tion of an unconscious fear: Stephen, letter in hand, looked across space and time at the land of his birth. Prom afar it loomed up immense, mysterious — and mute. He was afraid of the silent dawn of life.3-0 All these impressions, the dissatisfaction with life, the conviction that there was somewhere a mysterious secret that would satisfy his Inarticulate longings, the sudden discovery that it was the sea that held this secret, the tendency to maternal Imagery, and the strange state ment about the fear of birth--all these things point to the unconscious regressive wish that has been noticed so often in Conrad’s books. These emotions are particularly 9 page i j . 88. Page i j .86 1|09 interesting in view of Ford Madox Ford’s contention that this story and Suspense were both to treat the theme of incest. After all, the theme of incest is the ultimate artistic goal of such a wish, for it is only natural that the unconscious should associate such desires as Conrad had with that most impossible of all passions, incestuous love; for this theme gives expression to all these emo- tions--the groping, inarticulate nature of the wish, the sense of guilt, the hopelessness of it all. In any case this is what Ford says: And he had that inhibition— that thwarted desire to write of the relationship between men and women. That he denied to himself as any church-warden and father of a family might have denied it to himself, and for the same reason . . . And what he curiously desired to write of was incest. I don*t mean to say that he proposed to write of the consummation of forbidden desires, but he did want to render the emotions of a shared passion that by its nature must be the most hopeless of all. At the end of his life when he felt his position secure, he began upon this task. Incest as a subject seems somehow predestined for treatment by Conrad. In Poland he had been brought Into contact with a number of tragic roman tic instances of unconscious union that were within the limits of the Canon law. And curiously enough "The Inheritors," the first of our collaborations to be published, has a faint and fantastic sugges- tion--of unrequited--love between brother and sister. It was as much as anything because of this, that Conrad fiercely— almost fanatically— Insisted on collaborating in this book and interrupting the course of "Romance" upon which we had been already laboring for several years. "The Sisters" was an early try at the same thing.^ Ford Madox Ford, o£. cit., p. I j . 97* SUSPENSE Suspense is only a fragment, and, as Richard Curie has said in his introduction to the book, "Nobody could even faintly guess how the novel would have ended," Nevertheless Suspense has a literary personality that is definite enough. It has its own individual atmosphere and emotive tone, and quite early in its development one can feel a current beginning to draw the whole story in a certain direction. Plot. Cosmo Latham, the son of an English noble man, was making the conventional tour of Europe while Napoleon was still a prisoner on Elba. Cosmo had just reached Genoa where his father’s old friend, the Marquis d'Armand, was acting as ambassador for Tallyrand. Some years earlier d’Armand with his wife and daughter, Adele, had spent a good deal of time in Cosmo's home. In his youth Cosmo's father, Sir Charles Latham, had fallen in love with Adele's mother. It was natural that he should come forward to give the family a home after their flight from the terrors of the revolution. It was natural, too, 12 pord Madox Ford, oj>. cit., p. ij-97. 13 Suspense, p. v. 411 that he should take a special interest in Adele. In any case, he experienced real distress when she offered to restore the family fortunes by marrying Count Helion Motevesso, a fabulously wealthy upstart. During the en suing years Adele suffered from the unreasoning jealousy of her middle-aged husband, and the whole of Genoa knew that the marri age was a f ai lure . Cosmo had been a schoolboy when Adele left the Latham home for the last time, and he had for her nothing more than a vague brotherly affection. He was not long in Genoa, however, before he had fallen hopelessly in love with her. It is quite evident that some complications were intended to develop out of this passion as the story proceeded. During his first evening in Genoa, Cosmo made the acquaintance of Attilio, a young adventurer who was en gaged in spy activities; and through a peculiar train of accidents, he found himself a few nights later on board a felucca with Attilio and his party, bound, it seems, for Elba. The story breaks off at this point. Destiny. If one emotive idea is stressed above another in this book, it is* the Idea of fate. As the book proceeds, the feeling grows in the reader that the course of events is directed by some occult power reaching across l j .12 the years with ruthless precision. One has a depressing sense of inevitability, of destiny that is foreordained. A good deal of the action takes place in the dark, or in the fog, and mysterious coincidences draw lives together. There is talk of destiny as a "draped figure with an averted head, wllj. and of stars that group into constella tions with mysterious influences. Indeed, the last words of the fragment speak of the stars and destiny. 1 * 5 Curie speaks of "the haunting, breathless air” of the book, and it is true that one does wait with a certain tenseness for dire developments; but the book lacks the power of earlier works. After all, these things that build up the sense of expectancy, of which Curie writes, are external. There is nothing of that depressing sense of inner conflict that Is deep down at the very roots of life, and as incurable as it is inaccessible. Remorse. Towards the end of the fragment, one comes upon a passage that gives a clue to the direction that the book was to have taken. It is this: "At that very moment while listening to the mysteriously low pitch of Attilio* s voice the thought flashed through his mind that there was something within him that made of him a Page lifif. lf> Page v. lp-3 predestined victim or remorse,” The source of this promised remorse is not hard to guess, Cosmo had already manifested a fascinated interest in Napoleon, And now, by a set of curious coincidences, he found himself com mitted to an enterprise whose exact nature was as yet un known to him. In a little while, one feels sure, he was to find himself intriguing on behalf of the man who had been, and was to be again, the most dangerous enemy Eng land had known in centuries. Incest. But that is not all; Cosmo had already detected in himself a deep fascination for Adele— a woman forbidden to him because of her marriage. But Pord Madox 17 Ford 1 declares that the real subject of this book was to be an incestuous love between Adele and Cosmo. There are indications of this intention in the fragment. Sir Charles had been desperately in love with Adele1s mother. She "had managed to put such an impress on his heart that H.3 later he did not care whom he married or where he lived.” And for Adele he seemed to have an understanding and af fection that was much more vivid than the love he bore his own children.1^ His distress at learning of her unfortun ate marriage was so great that his own daughter could not approach the citadel of his sorrow. It seems obvious Pages 265-66. Page 36. ^7 pord Mg.dox Ford, o£. cit., p. 498. 4 that Conrad was building up hints of a fact that was to be revealed later, namely that Adele was the daughter of Sir Charles. One keeps stumbling upon cryptic phrases like thisi "But on going out of the room he stopped by the embroidery frame and, bending down kissed the forehead of his daughter— his English daughter. One feels almost sure that the life of this normal young Englishman was to be broken by divided loyalties and by the horror of finding himself in love with his half-sister. It would, one feels, have been a powerful book if Conrad had written it twenty years earlier. In those days Cosmo would have been a strange neurotic crea ture like Lord Jim, or Razumov, and his agonized thoughts would have vibrated in harmony with the deep, unsatisfied urges within the author’s being. But these feelings were now, one feels, only a memory, and the figures that walked in Conrad’s dreams were men like Peyrol and Cosmo--men better fitted to carry a theme of adventure than a theme of neurotic conflict. It would be very interesting to see the finished work that Conrad would have given us had he had a little more time; but it is doubtful if it would have been one of his masterpieces. He had, by this time, almost emerged from the neurosis that opened the gates into the inferno where he found so much mental torture and so much, genius. k°c. cit. Loc. cit. CHAPTER XXII THE GENIUS OF JOSEPH CONRAD: SOME CONCLUSIONS Sine© when Gonrad died, his reputation has been, for the most part, on the wane. But few people have sought to deny the power of this strange Polish genius. "To read Conrad," said Arthur Symons on one occasion, "is to shudder on the edge of a gulf in silent darkness."1 What is the source of this mysterious power, this "occult form of mesmerism" that can create "worlds unknown, un imaginable, monstrous and most perilous"^ out of tropical jungles, Russian snows, or London streets? That is the question for which this dissertation has sought an answer, and here is a summary of its find ings : Genius and neurosis. A brief study into the nature of literary genius led to the conclusion that, in addition to marked literary talent, the greatest writers have a faculty that is denied the ordinary man. They have access to areas of cognitive and conative activity 1 A. Symons, Notes on Joseph Conrad with Some Unpublished Letters t p. 11. 2 Ibid., p. 7. lp-7 that are beyond the periphery of conscious controlk It is as if a window were opened into a secret theater of the mind where spontaneous dream activity is being rehearsed. Such dream activity is the expression of emotional drives which originated in the past, and which were banished from the area of conscious attention before they achieved satisfying expression. It follows that literary genius is often associated with neurotic drives. Conrad and neurosis. A study of Conrad*s per sonality as it is described by his wife and friends made it evident that Conrad was almost continually persecuted by neurotic emotions. He exhibited many of the common general symptoms of a neurotic personality: a morbid, pessimistic outlook, restlessness, anxiety, a sense of isolation and unreality, a conviction that life was too much for him, emotional storms, and such somatic symptoms as tics and the tendency to jump nervously at the slight est provocation. The neurotic situation. Prom a more detailed study of his early experience, his behavior during later years, and the dream activity of his books, it was con cluded that Conrad's neurotic emotions stemmed from a guilt complex that originated in his refusal to accept lp.8 the role of leadership in the patriotic movement in which he felt himself to be involved. The chief elements in the neurotic situation were as follows: While he was still a boy in high school, Gonrad came under conflicting influences that were struggling to shape his attitude to the national situation. Patriot ic groups of young people were looking to him for future leadership in their rather unrealistic schemes, and he was subjected to special urging from a certain girl with whom he fell in love. His Uncle Thaddeus, on the other hand, was endeavoring to counteract these influences by pointing out the futility of such uprisings as his parents had helped to plan. Under the influence of this propa ganda, Conrad*s veneration for his father received a rude shock. He began to see him as his uncle depicted him: a scion of a reckless, gambling, impractical family, a man of sudden, ill-founded enthusiasms, and wild, roman tic ideas, but singularly lacking in sound common-sense. Conrad was shocked to find deep within his heart an unexpected eagerness to accept this point of view. Vivid childhood memories were warning him awa^r from pat riotic leadership, and he quailed before the possibility of having to face these terrors again. His urge to es cape found an unexpected ally in a mysterious longing J+19 for the sea. Conrad saw in this longing an excuse behind which he could hide his fears. A sailor’s life had all the glamor of heroic adventure. He began to voice this positive desire and to repress the urge to run away from the conflict. This repression, which lay at the very heart of his neurosis, was more sinister than it appears at first sight. There is little doubt, for instance, that this mysterious longing for the sea that apparently reached across all those miles to lay hold of a boy in land locked Poland was of pathological origin. It was the blind expression of a deep, unconscious longing to es cape from the fierceness of the conflict and to regress to the safety of the womb of which the sea is often a dream symbol. In any case, all the emotions that later found expression in the dream activity of Conrad’s books seem to have stemmed from this repression. Prominent among these emotions traced by this dissertation are the following: (1) There are the guilt feelings associated directly with the secret never confessed to anyone but revealed over and over again in his books, the secret of his cowardice that he had hidden so carefully under the mask of a sailor’s career. (2) There was the furtive desire to accept his uncle’s view of Polish patriotic activity, and with this desire, a guilty need to discredit revolutions generally. (3) There was the morbid willing ness to replace the concept of his father as a national hero with the concept of his having been an impractical adventurer and reckless enthusiast, and there were feel ings of guilt and remorse for having thus rejected his father. (if) There was the strange need to reach after the image of the mother that his Uncle Thaddeus described so alluringly as a contrast to his father. Conrad1s early love experiences probably strengthened these de sires for the safe, comforting figure of his fantasies, and these feelings may well have caused a re-activation of his oedipal conflicts and brought in their train guilt feelings of their own. (5) There were the mixed feelings that he had for his uncle: comfort that came from the realization that his uncle and not he himself was the originator of these safe arguments about Polish patriotism; and feelings of hostility that originated from the shock of hearing his father depreciated by his uncle, and from having the whole conflict foisted upon him, too— a tendency to blame his uncle for tempting him the way he did. (6) Lastly, there were the mixed feelings that resulted from Conrad*s consciousness of having acted the part of a coward: a need to test himself l\21 out in dangerous situations, and on the other hand, a desire to excuse himself for his shrinking from the danger in Poland; a desire to prove to himself that this act of shrinking was not really typical of his,truest self; an urge to show that a man can re-instate himself in his own eyes and in the eyes of the world even though he has once given way to cowardice; a desire to make it plain that fate is often overwhelmingly cruel, and that cir cumstances can be too much for the best of men; and per verse, contrary desires to confess his sins, and to heap on himself more punishment than was due him, in order to buy reconciliation with his conscience. Significant events in the progress of his neurosis. Six important events seem to mark stages in Conrad's neur osis. They are reflected in his books, too. These are: (1) His reception of the Freedom of the City of Cracow when he was but a lad in high school This was a mark of recognition of the work of his father, and Conrad felt that a climax had overtaken him before he was ready for it. He felt that he must escape at all costs. (2) His active part in the dangerous Carlist adventure. This gave Conrad temporary relief from the self-accusations of cowardice that rang almost incessantly in the inner chamber of his soul. It permitted him to offer a substi If 2 2 tute service to another struggling country. (3) The sudden prospect of his uncle's death. This shoeked him into the realization that he was soon to be left without support in the stand he had taken on the Polish question. (If) The Congo experience with its deliriums and fevers. This seems to have taken him to the awful truth that he had hidden behind his repressions for so long. (5) The act of writing about this experience in The Heart of Darkness. This seems to have been in itself an important psychological factor in bringing him insight. It moved some of the more obvious aspects of his neurosis into focus. { '6 ) Conrad* s visit to Poland in 19llf» and establishment of Polish independence in 1919* These events did a great deal to resolve his conflicts and wash away his sense of guilt. C o n r a d 1s m e th o d o f w r i t i n g . I n s p i t e o f h i s I n t e r e s t i n q u e s t io n s o f t e c h n i q u e , C o n r a d d i d n o t h i n g t o i n h i b i t t h e d re a m a c t i v i t y t h a t w as t h e b a s i s o f a l l h i s f i c t i o n . H e c o n f e s s e d t h a t h e p r e f e r r e d t h i s d re a m a c t i v i t y t o t h e t o i l o f w r i t i n g . H e i n s i s t e d t h a t t h e w o r k o f c r e a t i o n w as a n u n c o n s c io u s p r o c e s s a n d t h a t h e c o u ld n o t a l t e r w h a t h e h a d s e e n t a k i n g p l a c e i n h i s m in d . F u r t h e r m o r e , h e d e c l a r e d q u i t e d e f i n i t e l y t h a t h e s t a r t e d , n o t w i t h a n a b s t r a c t i d e a , b u t w i t h im a g e s . kZ3 In short, there were no policemen from the conscious mind to censor the activities of the neurotic emotions as they expressed themselves on the stage of his imagin ation. The student has every right to interpret the dream activity of Conrad1s books in the light of the emotions which are achieving expression. In Part II of this dissertation this dream activity is studied in con junction with the hypotheses of Part I. The following general observations have been made: Some general observations concerning the dream activity of the books. 1. All the principal emotions and much of the dream activity of the books can be traced back to the situation outlined in Part I. 2. The most general and superficial emotions achieve expression in the early books. 3. Later more specific emotions appear In co herent relationships as dream activity that seems like a distorted reflection of the original neurotic situation. I f . . Later still Conrad seems to arrive at some measure of insight, and some of these emotions are dealt with in a peculiar dual attitude that is partly uncon scious and spontaneous, and partly conscious and cynical. k2k As the years go by, Conrad gradually finds his way to the least recognized and most deeply repressed emotions. 6. As Conrad brings these emotions one by one into the center of his stage, they have the general ten dency to fade a little in intensity from book to book. It is probable that there was therapeutic value in this exercise of wrestling with the emotions of his dreams. On the other hand, such external events as the visit to Poland in 19ll|-* and the establishment of Polish Indepen dence in 1919 niay have had a more potent influence. In any ease, his last two books, The Rover and Suspense, lack the morbid neurotic drive of the bulk of his other work. NEUROTIC OUTLET IN CONRAD’S FICTION The emotions that directed the dream-work of Conrad’s early books were vague and general. They often reflected the mood of the moment, and, where they became more specific as they did in Karain, for example, they retreated into the semi-darkness of a most unrealistic dream world. Almayer1s Folly seems to have been begun at the bidding of Conrad's emotions of bewilderment and distress 1*2$ as lie anticipated the death of his uncle. His dream solution was not very satisfactory. He saw himself through the figure of Almayer giving up and forgetting. The Outcast of the Islands gave dim and somewhat muffled expression to the most superficial of the guilt feelings that pertdned to Conrad's rejection of his father. This rejection was coupled with Conrad's longing for the sea which became at once his excuse and his shame. The longing for reconciliation with his father through pun ishment also received some attention. The IdiotB. The Outpost of Progress, and The Nigger of the Narcissus are all expressions of the mood of pessi mism and defeat that was associated with the need he sometimes felt to excuse his failure. All these books proclaim the fact that fate often buries a man's soul under a veritable avalanche of misfortune, that man was never made to cope with some of the circumstances in which he finds himself. Karain and The Lagoon are fascinating re-enact ments in dream form of a good deal of the complex emo tional experience that Conrad underwent during his hour of crisis in Poland. The Lagoon gives some expression of a desire to return and make restitution. The Return is the first superficial expression I j . 26 of tlie feeling that one cannot keep a guilty secret in definitely* It Is the feeling that later found a more satisfying outlet in The Heart of Darkness» Youth reaches back like a defeated spirit yearn ing for a vacation from its ceaseless conflicts to the halcyon days of youth when one’s courage was never in question and one’s neurotic emotions were yet to gain control. The Heart of Darkness seems to have brought Conrad’s guilty secret into the focus of awareness. Henceforth he was to be quite conscious of the fact that his plea for a career at sea had been largely an excuse,' and that fear had played the major role in taking him out of Poland. The series of tales that begins with Lord Jim and concludes with The End of the Tether is concerned almost wholly with the problem of cowardice. Lord Jim deals with the personality problem that arises out of the consciousness that one has acted the part of a coward. It explores the possibility of re-instatement. Typhoon deals with the obverse side of the same problem. In this story Conrad pleads that courage Is often nothing more than a sort of emotional blindness. Amy Foster is another excuse. It shows how a bewildered soul can be destroyed k27 when no one around him has enough light "to see his problem and help him. The End of the Tether and Falk both show how even the best of men can be forced by circumstances to commit crimes that are by no means representative of their truest selves. Both Tomorrow and Nostromo remember the girl patriot that Conrad left behind him in Poland. Tomorrow gives expression to some confused emotions arising out of his exodus from Poland. In particular it touches upon the pathos of leaving this girl with a suddenly awakened love in her breast. In Nostromo Conrad imagines what would have been the result of yielding to his sweetheart’s pleas to return and take an active part in the patriotic movement. It gives expression to a large number of con flicting emotions. The whole work lies in the shadow of a depressing conviction that Conrad’s life would have been wasted in a cause that was fundamentally unworthy. Even if the movement had succeeded in establishing Polish independence, the country would still have been in the bondage of materialistic interests. During the period between the writing of Caspar Ruiz and The Brute, Conrad developed the emotions that were associated with the conclusions arrived at in Nostromo. They were primarily feelings of self-pity and the bitter desire to show that revolution is a sordid and unworthy thing. In Gaspar Ruiz Conrad saw himself exploited by the patriotism of his Polish sweetheart. In The Informer he saw the patriotism of that girl as being thoughtless and shallow, a thing of sentiments and gestures. He saw himself pleading before her his own greater sincerity in withdrawing from the movement "from conviction." In The Anarchist he again saw himself as a poor unfortunate who was exploited by the revolutionists. He pitied himself in the exile they had forced upon him. The Secret Agent is dedicated primarily to the task of showing how futile and how disreputable revolutions really are. Conrad saw himself as a child sacrificed to the foolish ideas of his father. But he revelled in the thought that the mother figure reserved her pity and care for him. II Conde is another vehicle of self-pity. It reflects Conrad*s sensitiveness to the criticism of fellow coun trymen and expresses the need to go home as a martyr to this criticism. Both The Duel and The Brute give a rather weak expression to the feeling of a cruel fate spoiling his possibilities in life. The Duel, in parti cular, sees the figure of his father continually chal lenging him. The Secret Sharer and Under Western Eyes both i j . 2 9 take up the idea dealt with superficially in The Duel-- the idea that throughout Conrad’s life his father had been a secret sharer of his destiny, continually chal lenging him with his patriotic responsibilities. In The Secret Sharer there is an echo of the moment of ex ultation that came with the lad’s escape to sea. He found a way of disposing of the secret sharer and, at the same time, keeping his reputation for courage. Under Western Eyes mirrors feelings that came later in life. There he saw that his treatment of the seeret sharer was nothing short of a betrayal. And he felt the need to confess and be punished. But in the very moment of vis ualizing this punishment he yielded to the deeper and stronger urge to escape from the conflict and to regress to a state of being where all responsibility was taken from his shoulders and he was cared for like a baby. The Partner is a rather vague expression of the resentment Conrad felt against his uncle for tempting him to take the attitude he did. Smile of Fortune again takes up the guilty feeling that assailed Conrad when he aroused a girl’s love and left her unsatisfied. It may have associations with his experiences in Marseilles, too. In The Inn of the Two Witches Conrad dreams that i+30 he returned to Poland to take up the cause championed by his father. Out of his confused feelings fear emerges, as it did in the crisis hour before he left his homeland. It rose in intensity till he was ready to flee in terror. Because of the Dollars is another story that ex ploits the emotion of self-pity. It depicts a man whose slight guilt was magnified by rumor till his whole life was ruined. In the series from Chance to The Rescue Conrad reaches the most deeply repressed of his neurotic emotions: the desire for the mother-figure that seems to have be come confused with his re-activated oedipal conflicts, and the consequent feelings of hostility and guilt to wards his father. As each of his heroes reaches out to the woman he loves, there is an overwhelming conviction of guilt--of a broken taboo. Another man, a father-fig ure who has been wronged, comes like a shadow between the hero and his love. In Chance the father emerges from prison like a figure from the grave and the hero cannot pass that figure to take his bride. The marriage is not consummated till the woman in desperation crosses the gap that lies be tween them. In that moment the father figure sinks back, as it were, into the grave from which he has come. In Victory the lovers try in vain to find intimacy of soul under the grim painting of the father figure. They find it only after they have submitted to the supreme punish ment . In The Planter of Malata and The Rescue the man tries to keep a temporary hold on the woman by avoiding activity of all kind. In both books there are strong expressions of regressive wishes. In The Shadow-Line Conrad expresses the guilt that he felt in taking the father position in his little society. The Arrow of G-old is largely a record of actual events, but it gives some interesting indications of Conrad’s attitude toward women in even those early days. Last books . Apart from The Vt/arrior’s Soul, which gives a belated expression to the emotions of his guilt-complex, Conrad’s last books show evidence of the effect of his visit to Poland in 191^ and the establish ment of Polish independence. The Tale expresses doubt about his guilt. The Rover indicates a slow dispersal of the neurotic poison. It deals with the emotions that as sociated themselves with the dream of coming hime to spend his last years In the land of his birth. Suspense was evidently an attempt to make capital out of neurotic emotions that were now only a memory. It is an expression of feelings that he had wished to use many years earlier. Conrad’s treatment, however, indicates that he had been healed of his mental strife. The emotions that directed his dreams had escaped. It is interesting, however, to see in this book and in the unfinished short story, The Sisters, an indication that Conrad desired to treat the theme of incest, because this theme is the logical climax of such an emotional disturbance as troubled Conrad!s writing years. From the point of view of their psychological sig nificance, Conrad’s works may be compared with the records of a course of non-directive therapy in which the patient searches amongst the tangled skein of the past and the present for significant emotional threads that lead back to the time when he first began to establish unhealthy attitudes. There are periods of vague fumbling with the whole tangled skein; there are times when a certain emo tion is pursued for long periods with intelligence and persistence; there are periods of sudden insight when important new emotionsl associations are discovered and pursued. But there are also unexpected relapses when the patient slips back into patterns that seemed to have been worked through; and there are periods of vagueness and generality when nothing seems to be accomplished at all. On the whole, however, there is steady progress. Of course, it is difficult to get a true picture of Conrad’s progress because quite often short stories were written in conjunction with novels, and sometimes he had three or four works in his drawer at once. How ever, one has only to read through the foregoing summary of the emotive significance of his works to see the way he progressed from the vague to the precise, from the general to the particular, to see how he often stumbled upon a rich vein of ore in a superficial short story like The Duel, and later followed it up to the last ounce in stories like The Secret Sharer and Under Western Eyes. One can see, too, how as his eyes became used to the dark, he began to discern vague shapes of immense im portance in the deepest part of his artistic mine. The fascinating thing is that where the ordinary man, digging wearily among the rubble of his neurotic past, finds only broken and grimy fragments, Conrad found precious metals which glinted and gleamed as he fingered them wonderingly, and which became objects of rare exotic beauty as he hammered into them with technical artistry the impress of his strange craftsmanship. BIBLIOGRAPHY BIBLIOGRAPHY I. WORKS WHICH HAVE CONTRIBUTED DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY TO THIS STUDY A. THE WORKS OP JOSEPH CONRAD Conrad, Joseph, Complete Works. Canterbury Edition. 26 vols New York: Doubleday, Page and Company for ¥ta. Wise and Company, I92I 4-I926. All references to the works of Conrad in this disser tation are to this edition. Volume numbers are not used, as volume titles make references sufficiently clear. When a short story is treated, a footnote gives the title of the volume In which the story concerned is printed. B . P U B L IC A T IO N S ON CONRAD Books B e a c h , J o s e p h W a r r e n , T h e T w e n t i e t h C e n t u r y N o v e l : S t u d i e s in Technique. New York: Appleton-Century Company, 1932 Bendz, Ernst Paulus, Joseph Conrad: An Appreciation. Sweden N. J. Gumpert, 1923. Bridges, Horace James, The God of Fundamentalism and Other Stories. Chicago: P. Covine i” 1925>. Bradbrook, Muriel Clara, Joseph Conrad, Josef Teodor Konrad Nalacz Korzeniowski. Poland1s Engli sh Genius. New York The Macmillan Company^ I9I 4 -I. Conrad, Jessie, Joseph Conrad as _I Knew Him. New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1925. ________ Joseph Conrad and His Circle. New York: Dutton. 1935. Cooper, Frederic Tabor, Some English Story Tellers. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1912. if-36 Curie, Richard, Joseph Conrad, A Study. New York: Double- day, Page and Company, 191^. _______, Conrad to a Friend, One Hundred and Fifty Selected Letters from Joseph Conrad to Richard Curie, edited, with an introduction and notes by Richard Curie. New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 1928. ________ The Last Twelve Years of Joseph Conrad. New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1928. _______, Joseph Conrad: The History of His Books. London: J. M. Dent and Sons, Ltd., n. d. Cushwa, Frank W., Introduetion to Conrad. New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1933* David, M., Joseph Conrad; L' Homme et L 1 Oeuvre. Paris: Nouvelle Revue Critique, n. d. Follett, Wilson, Joseph Conrad; A Short Study of His Intel lectual and Emotional Attitude toward His Work and of the Chief Characteristics of His Novels. New York; Doubleday, Page and Company, 19197 Ford, Ford Madox, Joseph Conrad; A Personal Remembrance. Boston; Little, Brown and Company, 192l|_. Portraits from Life. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company^ 1937. Galsworthy, John, Castles in Spain and Other Screeds. New York; Charles Scribner's Sons, 1927- Gar nett, Edward, Letters from Conrad; 1 8 , 2 London: The Nonsuch Press, 1928. • ____, Friday Nights: Literary Criticisms and Apprecia tions , First Series. London^ Jonathan Cape, 1929. Gee, John A., and Paul J. Sturm, eds. and trans., Letters to Marguerite Poradowska. Oxford University Press. Gordan, John Dozier, Joseph Conrad; The Making of a Novelist. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 19^0- G u e r a r d , A l b e r t J r . , J o s e p h C o n r a d . N ew J e r s e y ; D u d le y K i m b a l l , I9I 4 . 7. k-31 Housman, Alfred Edward, The Name and Nature of Poetry. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1930* Jean-Aubry, Georges, Joseph Conrad in the Congo. Boston: Little, 1926. Lynd, Robert, Books and Authors. London: Richard Cobden- Sanderson~ 1922. Mann, Thomas, Past Masters and Other Papers. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1933* Maurois, Andre, Prophets and Poets. New York and London: Harper and Brothers, 193^* Megroz, R. L., A Talk with Joseph Conrad; And a Criticism of His Mind and Piethod. London: Elkins Mathews, Ltd., 192£7" Mencken, Henry Louis, A Book of Prefaces. New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 192?. Morf, Gustav, The Polish Heritage of Joseph Conrad. New York: R. R. Smith, 1931. O’Connor, William Van, editor, Forms of Modern Fiction. Minneapolis, Minnesota; University of Minnesota Press, 19lf.8. Retinger, Joseph Hiermonin, Conrad and His Contemporaries. New York; Roy Publisher's^ I"9^3. Stauffer, Ruth Matilda, Joseph Conrad, His Romantic-Realism. Boston: The Four Seas Company, 1922. Symons, Arthur, A Note on Joseph Conrad; With Some Unpub lished Letters. London: Myers and Company, 1925. Walpole, Hugh, Joseph Conrad. London: Nisbit and Company. 1916. Waugh, Arthur, Tradition and Change: Studies in Contemporary Literature. London; Chapman and Hall,"Ltd., 1919. Wells, Herbert George, Experiment in Autobiography: Dis coveries and Conclusions of a Very Ordinary Brain (Since~T866 j. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1939-. k-3Q Weygandt, Cornelius, A Century of the English Kovel. New York: The Century Company, 192^. Wilson, E. A., Joseph Conrad; A Sketch with Bibliography. New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, I92I 4 -. Periodicals Anon.. "Conrad at Thirty-One," Living Age, CCCXLIII (Septem ber, 1932), 82-83. A b b o t t , L a w r e n c e P., " J o s e p h C o n r a d , " O u t l o o k , CXXXIV (M a y 23, 1932), Il*.-15. Adams, Elbridge L., "Joseph Conrad: The Man," Outlook, CXXXIII (April 18, 1923), 708-712. Anthony, Irvin Whittington, "The Illusions of Joseph Con rad," Bookman, LXXIV (March, 1932), 61p8-653. Jean-Aubry, Georges, "Joseph Conrad au Congo: d’apres les Documents Inedits," Mercure de Prance, CLXXXIII (Octo ber 15, 1925), 289^33^ — -----, "Joseph Conrad’s Confession," Fortnightly Review, CXV (May , 1921), 782-790. Austin, Mary, "Sermon in One Man," Harper’s Weekly, LXIII (May 16, 19llp), 20. Conrad, Jessie, "Earlier and Later Days," Saturday Evening Post, CXCVII (September 13, 192lp), 12-13. -----------------, "W hy Lie?" B o o k m a n , LX ( O c t o b e r , 192l|.), I79-I8O. -------, "Reply to ’Joseph Conrad in the Congo’ by I. Lut- ken," London Mercury, XXII (July, I93O), 26I-263. Cooper, Frederic Tabor, "Representative English Story Tel- lers," Bookman. XXXV (March, 1912), 6l-?0. Cross, Wilbur, "The Illusions of Joseph Conrad," Yale Review, New Series, XVII (March, 1928) ipbip-i^. Curie, Richard, "Joseph Conrad: Ten Years After," Virginia Quarterly Review, X (July, 193ip), l 4 . 2O-ij.35. * - 1(39 Curie, Richard, "The Personality of Joseph Conrad,” Edinburgh Review, C C X L I (January, 1925), 126-138. , " J o s e p h C o n r a d a n d V i c t o r y , ” F o r t n i g h t l y R e v ie w , " C IV ( O c t o b e r , 1915), 670-678. , " C o n r a d i n t h e E a s t , ” Y a l e R e v ie w , H ew S e r i e s , XII (April, 1923), 497-508. . . Donlin, Goerge Bernard, "The Art of Joseph Conrad," Dial, LXI (September 21, 1916), 172-174. Doubleday, Frank Helson, "Joseph Conrad as a Friend," World Today, LII (July, 1928), l45-l47. Douglas, Robin, "My Boyhood with Conrad," Cornhill, LXVI (January, 1929), 20-28. Drabowski, M., "An Interview with Joseph Conrad," American Scholar, XIII, Ho. 3 (July, 1944), 371-375. Ferguson, John De Lancey, "Plot of Conrad's 'The Duel,*" Modem Language Hotes, L (June, 1935), 385-90. F o l l e t t , W i l s o n , " J o s e p h C o n r a d — 1907,” B o o k m a n , L X V I I ( A u g u s t , 1928), 64.O-I4 . 7. Follet, Helen T. and Wilson, "Contemporary Hovelists: J o s e p h C o n r a d ," A t l a n t i c M o n t h l y , C X IX ( F e b r u a r y , 1917), 233-43. Ford (Hueffer), Ford Madox, "Decennial," London Mercury, XXXII (July, 1935), 223-31. , "Working with Conrad," Yale Review, Hew Series, XVIII (June, 1929), 699-715^ , " J o s e p h C o n r a d ," E n g l i s h R e v ie w , X ( D e c e m b e r , 1^11), 68-83. _, "Thus to Revisit: Some Reminiscences," English Review, X X X I (July, 1920), 3-13. , " C o n r a d a n d t h e S e a , " A m e r ic a n M e r c u r y , XX XV ( J u n e , 1935), 169-76. . _______, "Three Americans and a Pole," Scribner's Magazine, XC (October, 1931), 379-86. kko Ford (Hueffer), Ford Madox, ’ ’Tiger, Tiger,” Bookman, LXVI (January 28), lf-95-98- Gardiner, Monica Mary, ”Joseph Conrad as a Pole” Specta tor , CXXXV (August 1, 1925), 190-91. G a r n e t t , E d w a r d , " J o s e p h C o n r a d , ” C e n t u r y M a g a z i n e , CXV ( F e b r u a r y - M a r c h , 1928), 385^92* Gordon, John Dozier, "Rajah Brooke and Joseph Conrad,” Studies In Philology, CCCV (October, 1938)* 813-3^5 XXXVII (January, 19^0), 130-32. H i c k s , G r a n v i l l e , " C o n r a d a f t e r F i v e Y e a r s , ” N ew R e p u b l i c , L X I ( J a n u a r y 8 , 1930), 192-9^-. Lynd, Robert, "Mr. Conrad at Home,” Living Age, CCCIX (April 23, 1921), 221-2^. Lutken, I. Otto, "Joseph Conrad in the Congo," London Mercury, XXII (May, 1930), lj.O-ij.3. __________ , " J o s e p h C o n r a d i n t h e C o n g o ," R e j o i n d e r t o r e p l y b y M r s . J e s s i e C o n r a d . L o n d o n M e r c u r y , X X I I ( A u g u s t , 1930), 350. McFee, William, "Conrad’s Letters to a Literary Relative," Yale Review, New Series, XXX, No. 3» (March, 19ll~L), 606-O W. Mencken, Henry Louis, "Freudian Autopsy upon a Genius," American Mercury, XXIII (June, 1931)> 251-53. * Megros, R. L., "Joseph Conrad: Man and Artist," Bookman (London), LXX (August, 1926), 238-lj.l. Morf , Gustav, "Conrad and Cowardice," Living Age, CCCXL (August, 1931), 571-76. M o r l e y , C . , " N o t e o n C o n r a d ," S a t u r d a y R e v ie w o f L i t e r a t u r e , IV ( J a n u a r y , 1928), 5l9* Phelps, William Lyon, "Advance of the English Novel,” Bookman. XLIII (May, 1916), 297-301}.. P r i e s t l y , J o s e p h B . , " M o d e m E n g l i s h N o v e l i s t s : J o s e p h Conrad," English Joumal, XIV (January, 1925) , 13-21. Pritchett, Victor Sawden, "Malayan Novels," New States man and Nation, XXIII (January 31, 19^2), 78. Putman, George Palmer, "Conrad in Cracow," Outlook, CXXIV (March 3, 1920), 382-83. Tittle, Walter E., "Conrad Who Sat for Me," Outlook, CXL (July 1-8, 1925), 333-314-- Tomlinson, H, M., "Joseph Conrad," Saturday Review of Literature, IV (October 15, 192?), 191-92. Zabel, Morton Dauwen, "Conrad In His Age," New Republic, CVII (November 10, 19^2), ________, "Conrad: Nel Mezzo Del Cammin," New Republic, CIII (December 23, 19^0), 873-7^. , "Conrad: The Secret Sharer," New Republic, CIV CApril 21, 191* 1), 567-68. . “ ________, "Chance and Recognition," Sewanee Review, LIII (January, I9I 4 . 5), 1-22. Zeromski, Stefen, "Joseph Conrad," Nineteenth Century, Cl (March, 1927), 406-16. Young, Vernon, "Joseph Conrad," The Hudson Review, II (March, 19^9), 5-19. G. PUBLICATIONS ON GENIUS AND DREAMS Brill, Abraham Arden, trans. and ed., The Basie Writings of Sigmund Freud. New York: Random House, 1938. Ellis, Havelock, The World of Dreams. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1925• Hirsch, Nathaniel David, Genius and Creative Intelligence. Cambridge, Mass: Sci-Art Publishing Company, 1931. Jacobson, Arthur Clarence, Genius, Some Revaluations. New York: Greenberg, 1926. Lombroso, Cesare, The Man of Genius. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, l88l. Marks, Jeannette Augustus, Genius and Disaster; Studies in Drugs and Genius. New York: Adelphi Company, 192b. Prescott, Frederick Clarke, The Poetic Mind. New York; The Macmillan Company, 1922. Smith, Logan Pearsall, Four Words. The Romantic History of Four Words; Romance, Originality, Creative, Genius. Society for Pure English, Tract No. XVII. Oxford University Press, 1924» II. PUBLICATIONS ON CONRAD CONSULTED BUT NOT USED A. Books Bancroft, William Wallace, Joseph Conrad: His Philosophy of Life. Boston: The Stratford Company, 1933. Bjorkman, Edwin August, Voices of Tomorrow. London: Mitchell Kennerley, 1913* Bridges, Horace James, The God of Fundamentalism and Other Studies. Chicago: Pascal Govici, 1925^ Capes, H. M., Wi3dom and Beauty in Conrad. New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1923* Crankshaw, Edward, Joseph Conrad: Some Aspects of the Art of the Novel. London: John Lane, 1936. Cross, Wilbur L., Four Contemporary Novelists. New York: The Macmillan Company, 193b. Cunliffe, John W., English Literature During the Last Half Century. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1919* Douglas, Norman, Looking Back: An Autobiographical Ex cursion. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, T 9 W . Fernandez, Ramon, Messages. London: Jonathan Cape, 1927. kk3 Forster, Edward Morgan, Ablnger Harvest. New York: Ear court, Brace and'Company"^ 1936. Freeman, John, The Moderns: Essays in Literary Criticism. New York: The Crowell Company, 1917. Goldring, Douglas, The Last of the Pre-Raphaelites, A Record; of the Life and Writings of Ford Madox Ford. London: Macdonald, 1958. Gissing, Algernon and Ellen, eds., Letters of George Gissings to Members of His Family. London: Con stable and Company, 1927* Hopp&, A. J., ed., The Conrad Reader. London: Phoenix Souse, I9I 4 . 6. Huneker, James G., Ivory, Apes, and Peacocks. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915. Hunt, Violet, The Flurried Years. London: Hurst and Blackett, 1925^ H u x l e y , A l d o u s , e d . , T h e L e t t e r s o f D. H. L a w r e n c e . New York: The Viking Press, 193^. J a c k s o n , H o lb r o o k , T h e E i g h t e e n N i n e t i e s : A R e v ie w o f A r t a n d I d e a s a t t h e C lo s e o f t h e N i n e t e e n t h C e n - F u r y " — New Y o r k T S T T r S d '- X . - T E o p T TWT* ' --------------- James, Henry, Notes on Novelists: With Some Other Notes. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 191^-. Khopf, Alfred A., Joseph Conrad: The Romance of His Life. Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1915. Leslie, Shane,~The Passing Chapter. New York: Charles S cribner' s S ons"7 1934 • L u c a s , E d w a r d V e r r a l l , R e a d in g , W r i t i n g , a n d R e m e m b e r in g : A L i t e r a r y R e c o r d . L o n d o n : M e th u e n a n d C o m p a n y , L i m i t e d , 1932. " Mason, John Edward, Joseph Conrad. Exeter, England: Wheaton, 1939* McFee, William, A Conrad Argosy, New York: Doubleday, Doran and Company, Inc., 19lj-2. 0*Flaherty, Liam, Joseph Conrad; An Appreciat1on. London: E. Lahr, 1930* Perry, F. J., Story Writing. New York; Henry Holt and Company, 1926. Powys, John Cowper, Essays on Joseph Conrad and Oscar Wilde. Girard, Kansas: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1923. Price, Arthur J., An Appreciation of Joseph Conrad, with an Introduction by David W. Oates. London: Simpken, Marshall, Ltd., 1932. Salton, E. F., The Romantic Story of Joseph Conrad. Garden City, New York: D o u b leday, Page and Company, 1915. Sutherland, John George son, At Sea with Jos eph Conrad. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company,.1922. Swinnerton, Frank, The Georgian Scene: A Literary Panor ama. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 193^-» Woolf, Virginia, The Common Reader. London: The Hogarth Press, 1929. B. D1 s s ert at I oils Carroll, Wesley B., The Fiction of Joseph Conrad. Cornell, 1931).. . Potter, Norris W., Jr., The Critical Theory and Literary Practice of Joseph Conrad. Boston, 191^+1 C. Periodicals Anon., ’ ’Meeting Conrad at the Ship,’ ’ Literary Digest, LXXVII (May 19, 1923), 361|_. _______, ’ ’ More About Conrad," Literary Review, V (August 27, 192J 4 .), 8. Anon., "Story of an Indomitable Captain," (Told by Joseph Conrad), Current History, VIII, Part 1, (May, 1918), 292. , "Joseph Conrad1s Heroic Pessimism," Current Opinion, LXXVII (November, 192ij.). ' ____, "Conrad Compared with Dostoevsky and Other Masters Current Opinion, LXVII (December, 1919)> 320-31. _______, "Conrad Reveals his Literary Loves and Antipathies Current Opinion, LXX (June, 1921), 819-21. , "Nostr'omo /sic/," New Republic, XXXIX (August 27, 193^), 391. _______, "Conrad*s Profession of Artistic Faith," Current Literature, -LII (April, 1912), ij.70-72. , "Conrad Coming into His Own," Bookman, XXXVII (August, 1913), 59^-9$. , "Notes on Conrad," Bookman, XXXVIII (December, I$13), 352-5lj-. , ~ ______ "Conrad's Implacable Comprehension Interpreted by Arthur Symons," Current Opinion, LXIV (January, 1918), 52. , "Secret of Joseph Conrad's Appeal," Current Opinion, LXXIV (June, 1928), 677-79. “ _____, "Kipling et Conrad," Mereure de France, CCLXVI (February l£» 1936), 218-19. _______, "Joseph Conrad," Outlook (London), LIV (August 9, 192if), 101. , "A Reviewer’s Puzzle," The Academy, Fiction Sup plement, LIII (January 1, 1898), 1. _______, "The Letters of Joseph Conrad to Stephen and Cora Crane," Bookman, LXIX (May, I929), _______, "Joseph Conrad: The Gift of Tongues," The Nation, CXVI.(May l6, 1923), 56l. ¥ j-6 Austin, Hugh P., "Joseph Conrad and the Ironic Attitude," Fortnightly Review, CXXX (September, 1928), 376-88. Aldington, Richard, "Conrad and Hardy," Literary Review, V (September o, I92I 4 .), 8. Armstrong, Mary, "Joseph Conrad," Bookman (London), LXV (February, 192If), 237-39. Aronberz, E., "Joseph Conrad," Literary Review, IV (Aug ust 16, 192^), 97k-. Jean-Aubry, Georges, and Edward Blunden, "A Conrad Repos itory: Review of Joseph Conrad," London Mercury, XVII (December, 1927), 179-86, , "Spannung Joseph Conrad’s Nachlass Roman," Neue Rundschau, XLVII, Part 1, (March, 1936), 325-351 _______, "The Inner History of Conrad’s Suspense," The Bookman’s Journal, XIII (October, 1925), 3-10. Aynard, Joseph, "Joseph Conrad," Journal des Debats, XXXI, Part 2, (August 22, 192lj_), 3 3 3 -3 % . Becker, May Lamberton, "Read This One First," Scholastic, XXXI (October, 1937), 22. _ Bellessort, Andre, "Le Premier Roman de Conrad: La Folie Almayer," Revue Politique et Litteraraire, LVIII (October 2, 1920), 599-803. : Bendz, Ernst Paulus, "Joseph Conrad, Sexagenarian," Englische Studien, LI (January, 1918), 391-i|.o6. Binsse,. H. L., "Polish Picture," Commonweal, XLII (April 27. 1*5) , k3*5. " Bjorkman, Edwin August, "Master of Literary Colour," Review of Reviews, XLV (May, 1912), 557-60. Boynton, Henry Walcott, "The Work of Conrad," Nation, XCVIII (April 9, 1934), 395-97. ----- - Braybrooke, Patrick, "Joseph Conrad: An Appreciation," Dublin Review, CLXXXIX (October, 1931), 318-25. 447 Brown, Edward Killoran, "James and Conrad," Yale Review, New Series, XXXV, No, 2, (December, 1945) > 265-857 Brown, Robert Carlton, "Conrad by Chance," Literary Digest, CXXV (December 5, 1938), 15. Burt, H. T., "Joseph Conrad: An Appreciation," Hibbert Journal, XXIII (October, 1924), lif.1-57. Clifford, Hugh, "The Genius of Mr. Joseph Conrad," The North American Review, CLXXVIII ( June, 1904), 81j_2. Colbron, Grace I., "Joseph Conrad’s Women," Bookman XXXVIII (January, 19llf), 476-79. Colenutt, Richard, "Joseph Conrad— Twelve Years After," Comhill, CLIV (August, 1936), 129-40. Cornish, W. Lorne, "Joseph Conrad: A Dedicated Soul," London Quarterly Revi ew, CLXV (January, 19^ 4 - 0), 75-77. Cransfield, Lionel, "Joseph Conrad," New Statesman and Nation, XXXI (January 12, 194- 0)," 26. Curie, Richard, "The Last of Conrad," The Mentor, XIII (March, 1925), 13-19. Curran, Edward P., "Master of Language," Catholic World, XCII (March, 1911), 796-805. Cutler, Prances Wentworth, "Why Marlow?" Sewanee Review, XXVI (January, 1918), 28-38. Dargan, Edward Preston, "Voyages of Conrad," Dial, LXVI (June 28, 1919), 638-41. Davidson, Donald, "Conrad’s Directed Indirections," Sewanee Review, XXXIII (April, 1925), 163-77. Dawson, Ernest, "Some Recollections of Joseph Conrad," Fortnightly Review, CXXX (August, 1928), 203-12.. Pord, Ford Madox, "The Genius of Joseph Conrad," The English Review, X (December, 1911), 66-83. Franzen, Erich, "Uber Joseph Conrad," Neue Rundschau, XXXXV, Part 1, (January, 1934), 122^67 Freissler, Ernst W., "Joseph Conrad: Der TJntergang der Tremolino," Neue Rundschau, XLI, Part 1, (June, 1930), 799-821. Galsworthy, John, "Disquisition on Conrad," The Fortnightly Review, X (December, 1911), 66-83. , "Reminiscences of Joseph Conrad," Scribner’s Magazine, LXXVII (January, 1925), 3-10. Gibbon, Perceval, "Joseph Conrad: An Appreciation," Bookman (London), XXXIX (January, 1911), 177-79* Graham, Stephen, "Dat Ole Devil Sea," Saturday Review of Literature, I (September 6, I92J 4.), 190* Oray, H., "Conrad’s Political Prophecies," Life and Let ters Today, XXIV (February, 194-0), 134--39* Gwynn, Stephen L., "The Novels of Joseph Conrad," Edin- burgh Review, CCXXXI (April, 1920), 318-39. Hall, James Norman, "My Conrad," Atlantic Monthly, CLXIX (May, 194-2), 583-87. Harley, Janies, "Minority Report," Fortnightly Review, CLIX (June, 194-3), 4-19-22. Hoffman, Richard, "Proportion and Incident in Joseph Conrad and Arnold Bennett," Sewanee Review, XXXII (January, 1924.), 79-92. Hoggarth, Henry, "The Novels of Joseph Conrad," London Quarterly Review, CXLIII (April, 1925), 205-L6Z Huneker, James Gibbons, "The Genius of Joseph Conrad," North American Review, CC(August, 1914-), 270-79.. Kallen, C., j"Joseph Conrad," Contemporary Revi ew, CXV (January, I92I 4 -), 54--6l. Keller, E. E., "Note on Joseph Conrad," London Mercury, XIII (March, 1926), 4-85-93. Littell, Robert, "Arriving with Hoseph Conrad," New Republic, XXXIV (May l6, 1923), 319. Mi-9 Lovett, Robert Morss, "The Realm of Conrad," Asia, XXIII (May, 1923), 325-27. Lowther, P. H., "Conrad After Twenty Years," London Quar terly and Holbom Review, CIX (April, 19!^-), 5>2. MacCarthy, Desmond, "Anarchists: Criticism," Mew States man, XX (November 11, 1922), 17lj--75. Macv. John Albert, "Kipling and Conrad," Dial, LXII (May 17, 1917), W.l-1+3. Marquet, Jean, "Sur les Traces de Conrad." Mercure de France, XXLXXII (December, 1936), Martin, Dorothy, "Two Aspects of Joseph Conrad," Freeman, VIII (September 12, 1.923), 10-12. Mencken, Henry Louis, "Joseph Conrad," Nation, CXIX (Aug ust 20, 192if), 179, McFee. William, "Sea— and Conrad," Bookman, LIII (April, 1921), 102-08. , "The Ideal Wife of a Genius," American Mercury, XXXVII (January, 1936), 116-19. Moore, E., "A Note of Mr. Conrad," Living Age, CCCIV (January 10, 1920), lOl-Oij.. Morley, Christopher, "Conrad and Stevenson," Catholic World, CXXXV (July, 1932), lj.72-73. _______, "Granules from an Hour-Glass: Longest Paren thesis," Saturday Review of Literature, V (May 11, 1929), 9977 , "A Word about Joseph Conrad," Mentor, XIII (March, ”1925), 2I 4 .-26. Morrell, Otoline, "Joseph Conrad: An Impression," Nation (London), XXXV (August 30, 192lf), 066. Moult, Thomas, "The Life and Work of Joseph Conrad," Yale Review (New Series), XIV (January, 1925) 295- 30BT ' 450 Moult, Thomas, "Joseph Conrad," Bookman (London), LXVI (September, 1924), 301-04. Overton, G., "In the Kingdom of Conrad," Bookman, LVII (May, 1923), 275-8^. _______,"Lord Jim: Do You Remember It?" Mentor, XXII ("October, .1930), 34-35. Pease, Frank, "Joseph Conrad," Nation, CVII (November 2, 1918), 510-13. Reilly, Joseph John, "Short Stories of Joseph Conrad," Catholic World, CIX (May, 1919), 163-75. Reynolds, Stephen, "Joseph Conrad and Sea Fiction," Quarterly Review, CCXVII (July, 1912), 159-80. Rhys, Ernest, "Interview with Joseph Conrad," The Bookman, LVI (December, 1922), 402-08. Roberts, Cecil, "Joseph Conrad: A Reminiscence," Bookman, (London), LXIX (November, 1925), 95-99. , "Joseph Conrad," Bookman (London), LVIII (August, 1920), 160-62. Robertson, John M., "The Novels of Joseph Conrad." North American Review, CCVIII (September, 1918), 439-55. Roditi, Edouard, "Trick Perspectives," Virginia Quarterly Review. XX (October, 1944), 545-49. Rotherstein, William, "Genius at the Turn of the Century," Atlantic Monthly, CXLIX (February, 1932), 233-43. Sanger, Vincent, "Bibliographies of Younger Reputations," Bookman, XXXV (March, 1912), 70-71. Shanks, Edward Buxton, "Mr. Joseph Conrad," London Mer cury, IX (March, 1924), 502-11. Sholl, Anna McLure, "Joseph Conrad," Catholic World, CXIX (September, 1924), 799-806. Stawe11, F. M., "Joseph Conrad," English Assoclation, Essays and - Studies , VI (I920I , dB-llHTI 45i Strawson, H., "Joseph Conrad, Master Mariner and Master Novelist,” London Quarterly Review, CLIX (July, 1934), 3l5-2l}7 Stresau, Hermann, "Der Junge Joseph Conrad," Neue Rund schau, XLVIII (April, 1937), 345-79. Suskind, Wilhelm E., "Joseph Conrad," Neue Rundschau, XLIX, Part 1, (March, 1938), 292-3057 Symons, Arthur, "Conrad," Forum, LIII (May, 1915), 579- 592. Thomas, J., "Joseph Conrad," Annales Politiques et Lit- teraires, CXIII (June 10^ 1939), 585-86, Thompson, Alan Edwards, "The Humanism of Joseph Conrad," Sewanee Review, XXXVII (April, 1929), 204-20. Willard, L., "A Conrad Heroine in Real Life; Background of Suspense," Living Age, CCCXXVIII (March 20, 1933), 637-39. Voisins, de A. Gilbert, "Joseph Conrad," Revue de Paris, XXV, Part II (March 1, 1918). £-l6. Waddell, Helen, "Mass-Penny," New Statesman, X (February 1, 1918), 375-76. Whiting, George Wesley, "Conrad's Revision of Six of His Short Stories," MPLA, XXXXVIII (June, 1933), 552- 557. _______, "Conrad's Revision of the Lighthouse in Nostromo," PMLA, LII (December, 1937), 1183-90. Yifood, M. H., "The Source of Conrad's Suspense: Memoirs of the Comtesse de Boigne," Modern Language Notes, L (June, 1935), 390-94. ' Woolf, Leonard, "Mr. Conrad: A Conversation," Nation (London), XXXIII (September 1, 1923), 68-82. , "Joseph Conrad," Nation (London), XXXV (August 9, 1924), 595. ” i i - 5 2 Wright, Walter P., "Conrad’s The Rescue from Serial to Book,” Research Studies of the State College of Washington, XIII (December, 1943TT# ^63-24- , "How Conrad Tells a Story," Prairie Schooner, XXI (1947), 290-95. Z&lie, John Sheridan, "Burial in Kent," Christian Cen tury , XLI (October 23, 192i}-), 13o3-64« , "Evening in Joseph Conrad," Christian Century, XLII (February 19, 1925), 251-53. ©f goutfism CxUfami*

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