A history of English literature

by Edward Albert

JOSEPH CONRAD (1857–1924)

1. His Life. “Joseph Conrad” is the pen-name of Teodor Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski, who was born in the south of Poland in 1857. His father was implicated in the Nationalist plots of the Poles, and the son shared some of his father’s wanderings and exile. For a time the boy was educated at Cracow, but very soon an obstinate love of the sea manifested itself; and in 1874, in spite of all obstacles, he shipped as a seaman at Marseilles. His earliest seafaring was done in the Mediterranean. In 1878 he satisfied a lifelong desire by visiting England and making his first practical acquaintance with the English language. He had long wished to sail under the English flag, and for the remainder of his career he continued to do so. Till 1894 he led the life of a deep-sea sailor, rising from the position of an ordinary seaman to that of a master-mariner in the Mercantile Marine. Bad health, partly occasioned by a voyage up the Congo, stopped his seafaring; and then his first novel was accepted by a London publisher. Henceforth he was able to devote himself to writing novels, for his books, after a moderate beginning, have brought him a rapidly widening circle of readers.

2. His Novels. Mr. Conrad’s first novel, Almayer’s Folly, was begun about 1889 and not finished till 1894, when it was published. In some respects the novel is immature, for it is halting in plot, and there is a tendency to fumble in the handling of some of the characters; but the power and originality of the work are unquestionable. The scene is that of an Eastern river, fatally beautiful, haunted with disease, death, and the destinies of mysterious men. The principal characters are wild and diabolical, of strange race and stranger desires. Over the whole of the book hangs the glamour of a style quite new to English prose: rich and exotic as a tropical blossom, subtly pervasive and powerful, languorous and debilitating, but most fascinating. The book is typical of the remainder of Mr. Conrad’s novels; he was to improve upon it; but only in degree, not in substance. We have space to mention only the more important of his later works: An Outcast of the Islands (1896), a kind of sequel to the first book; The Nigger of the Narcissus (1898), a brighter tale, full of the glory of the deep seas; Lord Jim (1900), an astonishing story, detailed with microscopic care, of a broken sailor who “makes good”; Youth (1902), perhaps Mr. Conrad’s masterpiece—briefer, more direct, and instinct with the beauty of romantic youth; Nostromo (1903), a tale of South American politics and treasure-hunting; The Secret Agent (1907), in which the novelist leaves his favorite Eastern scenes for the grimmer purlieus of London; ’Twixt Land and Sea (1912), three short stories, containing some of his best work; Chance (1914); Within the Tides (1915); Victory (1915); The Shadow Line (1917); The Arrow of Gold (1919), in which the interest shifts to Spain and the Carlist plotters; and The Rescue (1920). In addition there are several other volumes of short stories; two volumes of memories and impressions, extremely valuable as specimens of the Conrad manner, called The Mirror of the Sea (1906) and Some Reminiscences (1912); and two volumes written in collaboration with Ford Madox Hueffer, The Inheritors (1901) and Romance (1903).

3. Features of his Novels. (a) Their Exotic Quality. Just as Mr. Hardy is probably the most English of the greater novelists, so Mr. Conrad is, in no disparaging sense of the term, the most un-English. No other novelist can so well convey the charm and repulsiveness of alien regions. The impression is borne upon the reader through every constituent of the novels. The setting, in the best examples, is among tropical islands, or upon the deep seas. The characters are men and women thoroughly in tune with the scene: nautical people, generally of mixed or alien breed—Danish, Malay, or Italian. Even when Mr. Conrad introduces English scenes and people in some fashion they always succeed in conveying the impression of being un-English.

(b) The style of the books, moreover, adds to the prevailing feeling. It is haunting and beautiful, sumptuous in detail, delicate in rhythm, but curiously and decidedly exotic.

A brief extract cannot do justice to the style of Mr. Conrad, but we shall quote two passages in illustration. The first shows his prose in its less happy mood: somewhat mechanical and cumbrous in its imagery, and forced and overloaded with epithet. The second is much better. Here every word is necessary and appropriate, the rhythm is free, and the music sweet and persuasive.

(1) Shaw tried to speak. He swallowed great mouthfuls of tepid water which the wind drove down his throat. The brig seemed to sail through undulating waves that passed swishing between the masts and swept over the decks with the fierce rush and noise of a cataract. From every spar and every rope a ragged sheet of water streamed flicking to leeward. The overpowering deluge seemed to last for an age; became unbearable—and, all at once, stopped. In a couple of minutes the shower had run its length over the brig and now could be seen like a straight grey wall, going away into the night under the fierce whispering of dissolving clouds. The wind eased. To the northward, low down in the darkness, three stars appeared in a row, leaping in and out between the crests of the waves like the distant heads of swimmers in a running surf; and the retreating edge of the cloud, perfectly straight from east to west, slipped along the dome of the sky like an immense hemispheric iron shutter pivoting down smoothly as if operated by some mighty engine. An inspiring and penetrating freshness flowed together with the shimmer of light through the augmented glory of the heaven, a glory exalted, undimmed, and strangely startling as if a new universe had been created during the short flight of the stormy cloud. It was a return to life, a return to space; the earth coming out from under a pall to take its place in the renewed and immense scintillation of the universe.

The brig, her yards slightly checked in, ran with an easy motion under the topsails, jib, and driver, pushing contemptuously aside the turbulent crowd of noisy and agitated waves. As the craft went swiftly ahead she unrolled behind her over the uneasy darkness of the sea a broad ribbon of seething foam shot with wispy gleams of dark discs escaping from under the rudder. Far away astern, at the end of a line no thicker than a black thread, which dipped now and then in its long curve in the bursting froth, a toy-like object could be made out, elongated and dark, racing after the brig over the snowy whiteness of her wake.

The Rescue

(2) The Narcissus, left alone, heading south, seemed to stand resplendent and still upon the restless sea, under the moving sun. Flakes of foam swept past her sides; the water struck her with flashing blows; the land glided away, slowly fading; a few birds screamed on motionless wings over the swaying mastheads. But soon the land disappeared, the birds went away; and to the west the pointed sail of an Arab dhow running for Bombay rose triangular and upright above the sharp edge of the horizon, lingered, and vanished like an illusion. Then the ship’s wake, long and straight, stretched itself out through a day of immense solitude. The setting sun, burning on the level of the water, flamed crimson below the blackness of heavy rainclouds. The sunset squall, coming up from behind, dissolved itself into the short deluge of a hissing shower. It left the ship glistening from trucks to water-line, and with darkened sails. She ran easily before a fair monsoon, with her decks cleared for the night; and, moving along with her, was heard the sustained and monotonous swishing of the waves, mingled with the low whispers of men mustered aft for the setting of watches; the short plaint of some block aloft; or, now and then, a loud sigh of wind.

The Nigger of the Narcissus

(c) Their Graphic Power. The strongest appeal of Mr. Conrad’s novels is to the eye and the ear. His pictures of seafaring life and of life connected with the sea have never been surpassed. Their veracity and beauty are due to his personal acquaintance with the subject; to a scrupulous and artistic selection of detail, often of the technical kind that the sailor loves; and, once more, to the charm of the expression. In addition, his faculty of graphic description is often revealed in the deft manner in which he can outline some personality that flits across the pages of a story:

He held up his head in the glare of the lamp—a head vigorously modelled into deep shadows and shining lights—a head powerful and misshapen with a tormented and flattened face—a face pathetic and brutal: the tragic, the mysterious, the repulsive mask of the nigger’s soul.

The Nigger of the Narcissus

(d) Their Narrative Method. Mr. Conrad has evolved a narrative method of his own, which, while it is usually successful in his own hands, would probably be disastrous in hands less careful and adroit. The method is, first, indirect. The author’s favorite device is to create some character (a Captain Marlow often appears for this purpose) who relates the story, or part of the story, in his own words. Often another story crops up in the original story, adding complications, with, as can be seen in Lord Jim, results that are a little bewildering. Secondly, the greatest attention is given to details. The motives and impressions of the characters are discussed and analyzed, and their trivial actions faithfully recorded. Moreover, Mr. Conrad delights in leading his characters into morasses of doubt and hesitation. He may be called the novelist of doubt and hesitation, so skilled is he in the elaborate suggestion of such emotions. Consequently many a Conrad story, like one of his ships, is becalmed in its career, and stirs uneasily without making much progress. Hence he who runs must not read Conrad. This author demands a reader who is patient and wary, and who follows the course of the narrative very carefully, for he has a troublesome habit of inserting important matter in the midst of less essential details. If the reader will but observe these cautions, he will be led, deviously perhaps, but none the less certainly, into many regions of delightful romance.