Notes on My Books
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Joseph Conrad >> Notes on My Books
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8 This "O-P Book" Is an Authorized Reprint of the Original Edition,
Produced by Microfilm-Xerography by University Microfilms, Inc., Ann
Arbor, Michigan, 1966
NOTES ON MY BOOKS
BY
JOSEPH CONRAD
GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
MCMXXI
COPYRIGHT, 1920, 1921, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
NOTES ON MY BOOKS
ALMAYER'S FOLLY
I am informed that in criticizing that literature which preys on
strange people and prowls in far-off countries, under the shade of
palms, in the unsheltered glare of sunbeaten beaches, amongst honest
cannibals and the more sophisticated pioneers of our glorious virtues, a
lady--distinguished in the world of letters--summed up her disapproval
of it by saying that the tales it produced were "de-civilized." And in
that sentence not only the tales but, I apprehend, the strange people
and the far-off countries also, are finally condemned in a verdict of
contemptuous dislike.
A woman's judgment: intuitive, clever, expressed with felicitous
charm--infallible. A judgment that has nothing to do with justice. The
critic and the judge seems to think that in those distant lands all joy
is a yell and a war dance, all pathos is a howl and a ghastly grin of
filed teeth, and that the solution of all problems is found in the
barrel of a revolver or on the point of an assegai. And yet it is not
so. But the erring magistrate may plead in excuse the misleading nature
of the evidence.
The picture of life, there as here, is drawn with the same elaboration
of detail, coloured with the same tints. Only in the cruel serenity of
the sky, under the merciless brilliance of the sun, the dazzled eye
misses the delicate detail, sees only the strong outlines, while the
colours, in the steady light, seem crude and-without shadow.
Nevertheless it is the same picture.
And there is a bond between us and that humanity so far away. I am
speaking here of men and women--not of the charming and graceful
phantoms that move about in our mud and smoke and are softly luminous
with the radiance of all our virtues; that are possessed of all
refinements, of all sensibilities, of all wisdom--but, being only
phantoms, possess no heart.
The sympathies of those are (probably) with the immortals: with the
angels above or the devils below. I am content to sympathize with
common mortals, no matter where they live; in houses or in tents, in the
streets under a fog, or in the forests behind the dark line of dismal
mangroves that fringe the vast solitude of the sea. For, their
land--like ours--lies under the inscrutable eyes of the Most High. Their
hearts--like ours--must endure the load of the gifts from Heaven: the
curse of facts and the blessing of illusions, the bitterness of our
wisdom and the deceptive consolation of our folly.
J. C.
1895.
AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS
"An Outcast of the Islands" is my second novel in the absolute sense of
the word; second in conception, second in execution, second as it were
in its essence. There was no hesitation, half-formed plan, vague idea,
or the vaguest reverie of anything else between it and "Almayer's
Folly." The only doubt I suffered from, after the publication of
"Almayer's Folly," was whether I should write another line for print.
Those days, now grown so dim, had their poignant moments. Neither in my
mind nor in my heart had I then given up the sea. In truth I was
clinging to it desperately, all the more desperately because, against my
will, I could not help feeling that there was something changed in my
relation to it. "Almayer's Folly" had been finished and done with. The
mood itself was gone. But it had left the memory of an experience that,
both in thought and emotion, was unconnected with the sea, and I suppose
that part of my moral being which is rooted in consistency was badly
shaken. I was a victim of contrary stresses which produced a state of
immobility. I gave myself up to indolence. Since it was impossible for
me to face both ways I had elected to face nothing. The discovery of new
values in life is a very chaotic experience; there is a tremendous
amount of jostling and confusion and a momentary feeling of darkness. I
let my spirit float supine over that chaos.
A phrase of Edward Garnett's is, as a matter of fact, responsible for
this book. The first of the friends I made for myself by my pen it was
but natural that he should be the recipient, at that time, of my
confidences. One evening when we had dined together and he had listened
to the account of my perplexities (I fear he must have been growing a
little tired of them) he pointed out that there was no need to determine
my future absolutely. Then he added: "You have the style, you have the
temperament; why not write another?" I believe that as far as one man
may wish to influence another man's life Edward Garnett had a great
desire that I should go on writing. At that time, and I may say, ever
afterwards, he was always very patient and gentle with me. What strikes
me most, however, in the phrase quoted above which was offered to me in
a tone of detachment is not its gentleness but its effective wisdom. Had
he said, "Why not go on writing," it is very probable he would have
scared me away from pen and ink for ever; but there was nothing either
to frighten one or arouse one's antagonism in the mere suggestion to
"write another." And thus a dead point in the revolution of my affairs
was insidiously got over. The word "another" did it. At about eleven
o'clock of a nice London night, Edward and I walked along interminable
streets talking of many things, and I remember that on getting home I
sat down and wrote about half a page of "An Outcast of the Islands"
before I slept. This was committing myself definitely, I won't say to
another life, but to another book. There is apparently something in my
character which will not allow me to abandon for good any piece of work
I have begun. I have laid aside many beginnings. I have laid them aside
with sorrow, with disgust, with rage, with melancholy and even with
self-contempt; but even at the worst I had an uneasy consciousness that
I would have to go back to them.
"An Outcast of the Islands" belongs to those novels of mine that were
never laid aside; and though it brought me the qualification of "exotic
writer" I don't think the charge was at all justified. For the life of
me I don't see that there is the slightest exotic spirit in the
conception or style of that novel. It is certainly the most _tropical_
of my eastern tales. The mere scenery got a great hold on me as I went
on, perhaps because (I may just as well confess that) the story itself
was never very near my heart. It engaged my imagination much more than
my affection. As to my feeling for Willems it was but the regard one
cannot help having for one's own creation. Obviously I could not be
indifferent to a man on whose head I had brought so much evil simply by
imagining him such as he appears in the novel--and that, too, on a very
slight foundation.
The man who suggested Willems to me was not particularly interesting in
himself. My interest was aroused by his dependent position, his strange,
dubious status of a mistrusted, disliked, worn-out European living on
the reluctant toleration of that Settlement hidden in the heart of the
forest-land, up that sombre stream which our ship was the only white
men's ship to visit. With his hollow, clean-shaved cheeks, a heavy grey
moustache and eyes without any expression whatever, clad always in a
spotless sleeping suit much befrogged in front, which left his lean neck
wholly uncovered, and with his bare feet in a pair of straw slippers, he
wandered silently amongst the houses in daylight, almost as dumb as an
animal and apparently much more homeless. I don't know what he did with
himself at night. He must have had a place, a hut, a palm-leaf shed,
some sort of hovel where he kept his razor and his change of sleeping
suits. An air of futile mystery hung over him, something not exactly
dark but obviously ugly. The only definite statement I could extract
from anybody was that it was he who had "brought the Arabs into the
river." That must have happened many years before. But how did he bring
them into the river? He could hardly have done it in his arms like a lot
of kittens. I knew that Almayer founded the chronology of all his
misfortunes on the date of that fateful advent; and yet the very first
time we dined with Almayer there was Willems sitting at table with us in
the manner of the skeleton at the feast, obviously shunned by everybody,
never addressed by any one, and for all recognition of his existence
getting now and then from Almayer a venomous glance which I observed
with great surprise. In the course of the whole evening he ventured one
single remark which I didn't catch because his articulation was
imperfect, as of a man who had forgotten how to speak. I was the only
person who seemed aware of the sound. Willems subsided. Presently he
retired, pointedly unnoticed--into the forest maybe? Its immensity was
there, within three hundred yards of the verandah, ready to swallow up
anything. Almayer conversing with my captain did not stop talking while
he glared angrily at the retreating back. Didn't that fellow bring the
Arabs into the river! Nevertheless Willems turned up next morning on
Almayer's verandah. From the bridge of the steamer I could see plainly
these two, breakfasting together, tete a tete and, I suppose, in dead
silence, one with his air of being no longer interested in this world
and the other raising his eyes now and then with intense dislike.
It was clear that in those days Willems lived on Almayer's charity. Yet
on returning two months later to Sambir I heard that he had gone on an
expedition up the river in charge of a steam-launch belonging to the
Arabs, to make some discovery or other. On account of the strange
reluctance that everyone manifested to talk about Willems it was
impossible for me to get at the rights of that transaction. Moreover, I
was a newcomer, the youngest of the company, and, I suspect, not judged
quite fit as yet for a full confidence. I was not much concerned about
that exclusion. The faint suggestion of plots and mysteries pertaining
to all matters touching Almayer's affairs amused me vastly. Almayer was
obviously very much affected. I believe he missed Willems immensely. He
wore an air of sinister preoccupation and talked confidentially with my
captain. I could catch only snatches of mumbled sentences. Then one
morning as I came along the deck to take my place at the breakfast table
Almayer checked himself in his low-toned discourse. My captain's face
was perfectly impenetrable. There was a moment of profound silence and
then as if unable to contain himself Almayer burst out in a loud vicious
tone:
"One thing's certain; if he finds anything worth having up there they
will poison him like a dog."
Disconnected though it was, that phrase, as food for thought, was
distinctly worth hearing. We left the river three days afterwards and I
never returned to Sambir; but whatever happened to the protagonist of my
Willems nobody can deny that I have recorded for him a less squalid
fate.
J. C.
1919.
NIGGER OF THE 'NARCISSUS'
TO MY READERS IN AMERICA
From that evening when James Wait joined the ship--late for the muster
of the crew--to the moment when he left us in the open sea, shrouded in
sailcloth, through the open port, I had much to do with him. He was in
my watch. A negro in a British forecastle is a lonely being. He has no
chums. Yet James Wait, afraid of death and making her his accomplice,
was an impostor of some character--mastering our compassion, scornful of
our sentimentalism, triumphing over our suspicions.
But in the book he is nothing; he is merely the centre of the ship's
collective psychology and the pivot of the action. Yet he, who in the
family circle and amongst my friends is familiarly referred to as the
Nigger, remains very precious to me. For the book written round him is
not the sort of thing that can be attempted more than once in a
life-time. It is the book by which, not as a novelist perhaps, but as an
artist striving for the utmost sincerity of expression, I am willing to
stand or fall. Its pages are the tribute of my unalterable and profound
affection for the ships, the seamen, the winds and the great sea--the
moulders of my youth, the companions of the best years of my life.
After writing the last words of that book, in the revulsion of feeling
before the accomplished task, I understood that I had done with the sea,
and that henceforth I had to be a writer. And almost without laying down
the pen I wrote a preface, trying to express the spirit in which I was
entering on the task of my new life. That preface on advice (which I now
think was wrong) was never published with the book. But the late W. E.
Henley, who had the courage at that time (1897) to serialize my "Nigger"
in the _New Review_ judged it worthy to be printed as an afterword at
the end of the last instalment of the tale.
I am glad that this book which means so much to me is coming out again,
under its proper title of "The Nigger of the _Narcissus_" and under the
auspices of my good friends and publishers Messrs. Doubleday, Page & Co.
into the light of publicity.
Half the span of a generation has passed since W. E. Henley, after
reading two chapters, sent me a verbal message: "Tell Conrad that if
the rest is up to the sample it shall certainly come out in the _New
Review_." The most gratifying recollection of my writer's life!
And here is the Suppressed Preface.
JOSEPH CONRAD.
1914.
PREFACE
A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should
carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be defined as
a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the
visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one,
underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its forms, in
its colours, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and
in the facts of life what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and
essential--their one illuminating and convincing quality--the very truth
of their existence. The artist, then, like the thinker or the scientist,
seeks the truth and makes his appeal. Impressed by the aspect of the
world the thinker plunges into ideas, the scientist into facts--whence,
presently, emerging, they make their appeal to those qualities of our
being that fit us best for the hazardous enterprise of living. They
speak authoritatively to our common-sense, to our intelligence, to our
desire of peace or to our desire of unrest; not seldom to our
prejudices, sometimes to our fears, often to our egoism--but always to
our credulity. And their words are heard with reverence, for their
concern is with weighty matters: with the cultivation of our minds and
the proper care of our bodies, with the attainment of our ambitions,
with the perfection of the means and the glorification of our precious
aims.
It is otherwise with the artist.
Confronted by the same enigmatical spectacle the artist descends within
himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be
deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal is
made to our less obvious capacities: to that part of our nature which,
because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily kept out
of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities--like the
vulnerable body within a steel armour. His appeal is less loud, more
profound, less distinct, more stirring--and sooner forgotten. Yet its
effect endures for ever. The changing wisdom of successive generations
discards ideas, questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist
appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to
that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition--and, therefore, more
permanently enduring. He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder,
to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and
beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all
creation--and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that
knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity
in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in
fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all
humanity--the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.
It is only some such train of thought, or rather of feeling, that can in
a measure explain the aim of the attempt, made in the tale which
follows, to present an unrestful episode in the obscure lives of a few
individuals out of all the disregarded multitude of the bewildered, the
simple and the voiceless. For, if any part of truth dwells in the belief
confessed above, it becomes evident that there is not a place of
splendour or a dark corner of the earth that does not deserve, if only a
passing glance of wonder and pity. The motive, then, may be held to
justify the matter of the work; but this preface, which is simply an
avowal of endeavour, cannot end here--for the avowal is not yet
complete.
Fiction--if it at all aspires to be art--appeals to temperament. And in
truth it must be, like painting, like music, like all art, the appeal of
one temperament to all the other innumerable temperaments whose subtle
and resistless power endows passing events with their true meaning, and
creates the moral, the emotional atmosphere of the place and time. Such
an appeal to be effective must be an impression conveyed through the
senses; and, in fact, it cannot be made in any other way, because
temperament, whether individual or collective, is not amenable to
persuasion. All art, therefore, appeals primarily to the senses, and the
artistic aim when expressing itself in written words must also make its
appeal through the senses, if its high desire is to reach the secret
spring of responsive emotions. It must strenuously aspire to the
plasticity of sculpture, to the colour of painting, and to the magic
suggestiveness of music--which is the art of arts. And it is only
through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form
and substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care
for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to
plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be
brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface
of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless
usage.
The sincere endeavour to accomplish that creative task, to go as far on
that road as his strength will carry him, to go undeterred by faltering,
weariness or reproach, is the only valid justification for the worker in
prose. And if his conscience is clear, his answer to those who in the
fulness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand
specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who demand to be promptly
improved, or encouraged, or frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must run
thus:--My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the
written word to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to
make you _see_. That--and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed,
you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement,
consolation, fear, charm--all you demand--and, perhaps, also that
glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.
To snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of time, a
passing phase of life, is only the beginning of the task. The task
approached in tenderness and faith is to hold up unquestioningly,
without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes in
the light of a sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its colour,
its form; and through its movement, its form, and its colour, reveal the
substance of its truth--disclose its inspiring secret: the stress and
passion within the core of each convincing moment. In a single-minded
attempt of that kind, if one be deserving and fortunate, one may
perchance attain to such clearness of sincerity that at last the
presented vision of regret or pity, of terror or mirth, shall awaken in
the hearts of the beholders that feeling of unavoidable solidarity; of
the solidarity in mysterious origin, in toil, in joy, in hope, in
uncertain fate, which binds men to each other and all mankind to the
visible world.
It is evident that he who, rightly or wrongly, holds by the convictions
expressed above cannot be faithful to any one of the temporary formulas
of his craft. The enduring part of them--the truth which each only
imperfectly veils--should abide with him as the most precious of his
possessions, but they all: Realism, Romanticism, Naturalism, even the
unofficial sentimentalism (which, like the poor, is exceedingly
difficult to get rid of), all these gods must, after a short period of
fellowship, abandon him--even on the very threshold of the temple--to
the stammerings of his conscience and to the outspoken consciousness of
the difficulties of his work. In that uneasy solitude the supreme cry of
Art for Art, itself, loses the exciting ring of its apparent immorality.
It sounds far off. It has ceased to be a cry, and is heard only as a
whisper, often incomprehensible, but at times and faintly encouraging.
Sometimes, stretched at ease in the shade of a roadside tree, we watch
the motions of a labourer in a distant field, and after a time begin to
wonder languidly as to what the fellow may be at. We watch the movements
of his body, the waving of his arms, we see him bend down, stand up,
hesitate, begin again. It may add to the charm of an idle hour to be
told the purpose of his exertions. If we know he is trying to lift a
stone, to dig a ditch, to uproot a stump, we look with a more real
interest at his efforts; we are disposed to condone the jar of his
agitation upon the restfulness of the landscape; and even, if in a
brotherly frame of mind, we may bring ourselves to forgive his failure.
We understood his object, and, after all, the fellow has tried, and
perhaps he had not the strength--and perhaps he had not the knowledge.
We forgive, go on our way--and forget.
And so it is with the workman of art. Art is long and life is short, and
success is very far off. And thus, doubtful of strength to travel so
far, we talk a little about the aim--the aim of art, which, like life
itself, is inspiring, difficult--obscured by mists. It is not in the
clear logic of a triumphant conclusion; it is not in the unveiling of
one of those heartless secrets which are called the Laws of Nature. It
is not less great, but only more difficult.
To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of
the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to
glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour, of
sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a
smile--such is the aim, difficult and evanescent, and reserved only for
a very few to achieve. But sometimes, by the deserving and the
fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is
accomplished--behold!--all the truth of life is there: a moment of
vision, a sigh, a smile--and the return to an eternal rest.
J. C.
1897.
TALES OF UNREST
Of the five stories in this volume The Lagoon, the last in order, is the
earliest in date. It is the first short story I ever wrote and marks, in
a manner of speaking, the end of my first phase, the Malayan phase with
its special subject and its verbal suggestions. Conceived in the same
mood which produced "Almayer's Folly" and "An Outcast of the Islands,"
it is told in the same breath (with what was left of it, that is, after
the end of "An Outcast"), seen with the same vision rendered in the same
method--if such a thing as method did exist then in my conscious
relation to this new adventure of writing for print. I doubt it very
much. One does one's work first and theorizes about it afterwards. It is
a very amusing and egotistical occupation of no use whatever to any one
and just as likely as not to lead to false conclusions.
Anybody can see that between the last paragraph of "An Outcast" and the
first of The Lagoon there has been no change of pen, figuratively
speaking. It happens also to be literally true. It was the same pen: a
common steel pen. Having been charged with a certain lack of emotional
faculty I am glad to be able to say that on one occasion at least I did
give way to a sentimental impulse. I thought the pen had been a good pen
and that it had done enough for me, and so, with the idea of keeping it
for a sort of memento on which I could look later with tender eyes, I
put it into my waistcoat pocket. Afterwards it used to turn up in all
sorts of places, at the bottom of small drawers, among my studs in
cardboard boxes, till at last it found permanent rest in a large wooden
bowl containing some loose keys, bits of sealing wax, bits of string,
small broken chains, a few buttons, and similar minute wreckage that
washes out of a man's life into such receptacles. I would catch sight of
it from time to time with a distinct feeling of satisfaction till, one
day, I perceived with horror that there were two old pens in there. How
the other pen found its way into the bowl instead of the fireplace or
waste-paper basket I can't imagine, but there the two were, lying side
by side, both encrusted with ink and completely undistinguishable from
each other. It was very distressing, but being determined not to share
my sentiment between two pens or run the risk of sentimentalizing over a
mere stranger, I threw them both out of the window into a flower
bed--which strikes me now as a poetical grave for the remnants of one's
past.
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