His pathos is deep, sure, and strong, never degenerating into mawkishness or sentimentality. The conclusion of Tess of the d’Urbervilles is a pattern of the dignified expression of sorrow:
Upon the cornice of the tower a tall staff was fixed. Their eyes were riveted on it. A few minutes after the hour had struck something moved slowly up the staff, and extended itself upon the breeze. It was a black flag.
“Justice” was done, and the President of the Immortals, in Æschylean phrase, had ended his sport with Tess. And the d’Urberville knights and dames slept on in their tombs unknowing. The two speechless gazers bent themselves down to the earth, as if in prayer, and remained thus a long time, absolutely motionless: the flag continued to wave silently. As soon as they had strength they arose, joined hands again, and went on.
(e) His Style. Like many other great novelists, Mr. Hardy has no outstanding tricks of style. The general impression given is one of immense strength and dignity. His vocabulary is copious, but handled with scholarly care and accuracy. He is apt in phrase and pithy in expression, and in moments of emotion his prose moves with a strong rhythmic beauty. In his poetry the style may sometimes be crabbed and unorthodox, but only to suit a definite satiric purpose. We may sum up by saying that in his style, as in all the other constituents of his writing, he is always the sane and catholic artist.
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.