“The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary: men alone are quite capable of every wickedness”
Well, I plunged into it, and--do you know--there isn’t much
that one can do in there. No, indeed--at least as long as there are
Ministries of Finances and such like grotesque horrors to stand in the
way. I suppose I would have gone mad there just trying to fight the
vermin, if it had not been for a man. It was my old friend and
teacher, the poor saintly apple-woman, who discovered him for me, quite
accidentally. She came to fetch me late one evening in her quiet way. I
followed her where she would lead; that part of my life was in her hands
altogether, and without her my spirit would have perished miserably. The
man was a young workman, a lithographer by trade, and he had got
into trouble in connexion with that affair of temperance tracts--you
remember. There was a lot of people put in prison for that. The Ministry
of Finances again! What would become of it if the poor folk ceased
making beasts of themselves with drink? Upon my word, I would think that
finances and all the rest of it are an invention of the devil; only that
a belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone
are quite capable of every wickedness. Finances indeed!”
Hatred and contempt hissed in her utterance of the word “finances,” but
at the very moment she gently stroked the cat reposing in her arms.
She even raised them slightly, and inclining her head rubbed her cheek
against the fur of the animal, which received this caress with the
complete detachment so characteristic of its kind. Then looking at Miss
Haldin she excused herself once more for not taking her upstairs to
Madame S-- The interview could not be interrupted. Presently the
journalist would be seen coming down the stairs. The best thing was to
remain in the hall; and besides, all these rooms (she glanced all
round at the many doors), all these rooms on the ground floor were
unfurnished.
“Positively there is no chair down here to offer you,” she continued.
“But if you prefer your own thoughts to my chatter, I will sit down on
the bottom step here and keep silent.”
Miss Haldin hastened to assure her that, on the contrary, she was very
much interested in the story of the journeyman lithographer.
“We live, as we dream alone”
Well, I went near enough to it by letting the young fool
there believe anything he liked to imagine as to my influence in
Europe. I became in an instant as much of a pretence as the rest of the
bewitched pilgrims. This simply because I had a notion it somehow would
be of help to that Kurtz whom at the time I did not see—you understand.
He was just a word for me. I did not see the man in the name any more
than you do. Do you see him? Do you see the story? Do you see anything?
It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream—making a vain attempt,
because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that
commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of
struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible
which is of the very essence of dreams....”
He was silent for a while.
“... No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the
life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes
its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is
impossible. We live, as we dream—alone....”
He paused again as if reflecting, then added:
“Of course in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me,
whom you know....”
It had become so pitch dark that we listeners could hardly see one
another. For a long time already he, sitting apart, had been no more to
us than a voice. There was not a word from anybody. The others might
have been asleep, but I was awake. I listened, I listened on the watch
for the sentence, for the word, that would give me the clue to the
faint uneasiness inspired by this narrative that seemed to shape itself
without human lips in the heavy night-air of the river.
“... Yes—I let him run on,” Marlow began again, “and think what he
pleased about the powers that were behind me. I did! And there was
nothing behind me! There was nothing but that wretched, old, mangled
steamboat I was leaning against, while he talked fluently about ‘the
necessity for every man to get on.’ ‘And when one comes out here, you
conceive, it is not to gaze at the moon.
“Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love - and to put its trust in life.”
He admitted that he ought to have gone ashore at once; but everything
was perfectly dark and absolutely quiet. He felt ashamed of his
impulsiveness. What a fool he would have looked, waking up a man in the
middle of the night just to ask him if he was all right! And then the
girl being there, he feared that Heyst would look upon his visit as an
unwarrantable intrusion.
The first intimation he had of there being anything wrong was a big
white boat, adrift, with the dead body of a very hairy man inside,
bumping against the bows of his steamer. Then indeed he lost no time in
going ashore--alone, of course, from motives of delicacy.
"I arrived in time to see that poor girl die, as I have told your
Excellency," pursued Davidson. "I won't tell you what a time I had with
him afterwards. He talked to me. His father seems to have been a crank,
and to have upset his head when he was young. He was a queer chap.
Practically the last words he said to me, as we came out on the veranda,
were:
"'Ah, Davidson, woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young
to hope, to love--and to put its trust in life!'
"As we stood there, just before I left him, for he said he wanted to be
alone with his dead for a time, we heard a snarly sort of voice near the
bushes by the shore calling out:
"'Is that you, governor?'
"'Yes, it's me.'
"'Jeeminy! I thought the beggar had done for you. He has started
prancing and nearly had me. I have been dodging around, looking for you
ever since.'
"'Well, here I am,' suddenly screamed the other voice, and then a shot
rang out.
"'This time he has not missed him,' Heyst said to me bitterly, and went
back into the house.
"I returned on board as he had insisted I should do. I didn't want
to intrude on his grief. Later, about five in the morning, some of my
calashes came running to me, yelling that there was a fire ashore. I
landed at once, of course. The principal bungalow was blazing. The
heat drove us back. The other two houses caught one after another like
kindling-wood. There was no going beyond the shore end of the jetty till
the afternoon.
“A mans most open actions have a secret side to them.”
It was a particularly impudent form of lunacy--and
when it got loose in the sphere of public life of a country, it was
obviously the duty of every good citizen....
This train of thought broke off short there and was succeeded by a
paroxysm of silent hatred towards Haldin, so intense that Razumov
hastened to speak at random.
“Yes. Eternity, of course. I, too, can’t very well represent it to
myself.... I imagine it, however, as something quiet and dull. There
would be nothing unexpected--don’t you see? The element of time would be
wanting.”
He pulled out his watch and gazed at it. Haldin turned over on his side
and looked on intently.
Razumov got frightened at this movement. A slippery customer this fellow
with a phantom. It was not midnight yet. He hastened on--
“And unfathomable mysteries! Can you conceive secret places in Eternity?
Impossible. Whereas life is full of them. There are secrets of birth,
for instance. One carries them on to the grave. There is something
comical...but never mind. And there are secret motives of conduct. A
man’s most open actions have a secret side to them. That is interesting
and so unfathomable! For instance, a man goes out of a room for a walk.
Nothing more trivial in appearance. And yet it may be momentous. He
comes back--he has seen perhaps a drunken brute, taken particular notice
of the snow on the ground--and behold he is no longer the same man. The
most unlikely things have a secret power over one’s thoughts--the grey
whiskers of a particular person--the goggle eyes of another.”
Razumov’s forehead was moist. He took a turn or two in the room, his
head low and smiling to himself viciously.
“Have you ever reflected on the power of goggle eyes and grey whiskers?
Excuse me. You seem to think I must be crazy to talk in this vein at
such a time. But I am not talking lightly. I have seen instances. It has
happened to me once to be talking to a man whose fate was affected by
physical facts of that kind. And the man did not know it. Of course, it
was a case of conscience, but the material facts such as these brought
about the solution.
“Its only those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose”
He became very serious after awhile, and added, "If
it hadn't been for the loss of the Flash I would have been here three
months ago, and all would have been well. No use crying over that. Don't
you be uneasy, Kaspar. We will have everything ship-shape here in a very
short time."
"What? You don't mean to expel Abdulla out of here by force! I tell you,
you can't."
"Not I!" exclaimed Lingard. "That's all over, I am afraid. Great pity.
They will suffer for it. He will squeeze them. Great pity. Damn it! I
feel so sorry for them if I had the Flash here I would try force. Eh!
Why not? However, the poor Flash is gone, and there is an end of it.
Poor old hooker. Hey, Almayer? You made a voyage or two with me. Wasn't
she a sweet craft? Could make her do anything but talk. She was better
than a wife to me. Never scolded. Hey? . . . And to think that it should
come to this. That I should leave her poor old bones sticking on a reef
as though I had been a damned fool of a southern-going man who must have
half a mile of water under his keel to be safe! Well! well! It's only
those who do nothing that make no mistakes, I suppose. But it's hard.
Hard."
He nodded sadly, with his eyes on the ground. Almayer looked at him with
growing indignation.
"Upon my word, you are heartless," he burst out; "perfectly
heartless--and selfish. It does not seem to strike you--in all
that--that in losing your ship--by your recklessness, I am sure--you
ruin me--us, and my little Nina. What's going to become of me and of
her? That's what I want to know. You brought me here, made me your
partner, and now, when everything is gone to the devil--through your
fault, mind you--you talk about your ship . . . ship! You can get
another. But here. This trade. That's gone now, thanks to Willems. . . .
Your dear Willems!"
"Never you mind about Willems. I will look after him," said Lingard,
severely. "And as to the trade . . . I will make your fortune yet, my
boy. Never fear. Have you got any cargo for the schooner that brought me
here?"
"The shed is full of rattans," answered Almayer, "and I have about
eighty tons of guttah in the well.
“I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more /the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort /to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires /and expires, too soon, too soon /before life itself.”
Next day I
sat steering my cockle-shell--my first command--with nothing but water
and sky around me. I did sight in the afternoon the upper sails of a
ship far away, but said nothing, and my men did not notice her. You see
I was afraid she might be homeward bound, and I had no mind to turn back
from the portals of the East. I was steering for Java--another blessed
name--like Bankok, you know. I steered many days.
“I need not tell you what it is to be knocking about in an open boat. I
remember nights and days of calm when we pulled, we pulled, and the
boat seemed to stand still, as if bewitched within the circle of the sea
horizon. I remember the heat, the deluge of rain-squalls that kept us
baling for dear life (but filled our water-cask), and I remember sixteen
hours on end with a mouth dry as a cinder and a steering-oar over the
stern to keep my first command head on to a breaking sea. I did not know
how good a man I was till then. I remember the drawn faces, the dejected
figures of my two men, and I remember my youth and the feeling that
will never come back any more--the feeling that I could last for ever,
outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that
lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort--to death; the
triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of
dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold,
grows small, and expires--and expires, too soon--before life itself.
“And this is how I see the East. I have seen its secret places and have
looked into its very soul; but now I see it always from a small boat, a
high outline of mountains, blue and afar in the morning; like faint mist
at noon; a jagged wall of purple at sunset. I have the feel of the oar
in my hand, the vision of a scorching blue sea in my eyes. And I see a
bay, a wide bay, smooth as glass and polished like ice, shimmering in
the dark. A red light burns far off upon the gloom of the land, and
the night is soft and warm. We drag at the oars with aching arms, and
suddenly a puff of wind, a puff faint and tepid and laden with strange
odors of blossoms, of aromatic wood, comes out of the still night--the
first sigh of the East on my face. That I can never forget. It was
impalpable and enslaving, like a charm, like a whispered promise of
mysterious delight.
“We had been pulling this finishing spell for eleven hours. Two pulled,
and he whose turn it was to rest sat at the tiller.
“Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.”
besides--this, remember, is the place and the moment of perfectly
open talk--I think that all ambitions are lawful except those which
climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual
and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limit
of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one. If they are mad, then so
much the worse for the artist. Indeed, as virtue is said to be, such
ambitions are their own reward. Is it such a very mad presumption to
believe in the sovereign power of one's art, to try for other means, for
other ways of affirming this belief in the deeper appeal of one's work?
To try to go deeper is not to be insensible. A historian of hearts is
not a historian of emotions, yet he penetrates further, restrained as he
may be, since his aim is to reach the very fount of laughter and tears.
The sight of human affairs deserves admiration and pity. They are
worthy of respect, too. And he is not insensible who pays them the
undemonstrative tribute of a sigh which is not a sob, and of a smile
which is not a grin. Resignation, not mystic, not detached, but
resignation open-eyed, conscious, and informed by love, is the only one
of our feelings for which it is impossible to become a sham.
Not that I think resignation the last word of wisdom. I am too much the
creature of my time for that. But I think that the proper wisdom is to
will what the gods will without, perhaps, being certain what their will
is--or even if they have a will of their own. And in this matter of life
and art it is not the Why that matters so much to our happiness as the
How. As the Frenchman said, "_Il y a toujours la maniere_." Very true.
Yes. There is the manner. The manner in laughter, in tears, in irony, in
indignations and enthusiasms, in judgments--and even in love. The manner
in which, as in the features and character of a human face, the inner
truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind.
Those who read me know my conviction that the world, the temporal world,
rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as old as
the hills. It rests notably, among others, on the idea of Fidelity. At
a time when nothing which is not revolutionary in some way or other can
expect to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in my
writings.
“He was obeyed, yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was it!”
That, and the repairs when I brought the pieces
to the station, took some months.
“My first interview with the manager was curious. He did not ask me to
sit down after my twenty-mile walk that morning. He was commonplace in
complexion, in features, in manners, and in voice. He was of middle
size and of ordinary build. His eyes, of the usual blue, were perhaps
remarkably cold, and he certainly could make his glance fall on one as
trenchant and heavy as an axe. But even at these times the rest of his
person seemed to disclaim the intention. Otherwise there was only an
indefinable, faint expression of his lips, something stealthy—a
smile—not a smile—I remember it, but I can’t explain. It was
unconscious, this smile was, though just after he had said something it
got intensified for an instant. It came at the end of his speeches like
a seal applied on the words to make the meaning of the commonest phrase
appear absolutely inscrutable. He was a common trader, from his youth
up employed in these parts—nothing more. He was obeyed, yet he inspired
neither love nor fear, nor even respect. He inspired uneasiness. That
was it! Uneasiness. Not a definite mistrust—just uneasiness—nothing
more. You have no idea how effective such a... a... faculty can be. He
had no genius for organizing, for initiative, or for order even. That
was evident in such things as the deplorable state of the station. He
had no learning, and no intelligence. His position had come to him—why?
Perhaps because he was never ill... He had served three terms of three
years out there... Because triumphant health in the general rout of
constitutions is a kind of power in itself. When he went home on leave
he rioted on a large scale—pompously. Jack ashore—with a difference—in
externals only. This one could gather from his casual talk. He
originated nothing, he could keep the routine going—that’s all. But he
was great. He was great by this little thing that it was impossible to
tell what could control such a man. He never gave that secret away.
Perhaps there was nothing within him. Such a suspicion made one
pause—for out there there were no external checks.
“For every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early, and the human race come to an end”
But for the excited trembling of his voice, and the
extraordinary way in which his eyes seemed to be starting out of his
crimson, hirsute countenance, such speeches had every character of calm,
unselfish advice--which, after the manner of lovers, passed easily into
sanguine plans for the future.
"We'll soon get rid of the old woman," he whispered to her hurriedly,
with panting ferocity. "Hang her! I've never cared for her. The climate
don't suit her; I shall tell her to go to her people in Europe. She will
have to go, too! I will see to it. Eins, zwei, march! And then we shall
sell this hotel and start another somewhere else."
He assured her that he didn't care what he did for her sake; and it
was true. Forty-five is the age of recklessness for many men, as if in
defiance of the decay and death waiting with open arms in the sinister
valley at the bottom of the inevitable hill. Her shrinking form, her
downcast eyes, when she had to listen to him, cornered at the end of an
empty corridor, he regarded as signs of submission to the overpowering
force of his will, the recognition of his personal fascinations. For
every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and
the human race come to an end.
It's easy to imagine Schomberg's humiliation, his shocked fury, when
he discovered that the girl who had for weeks resisted his attacks, his
prayers, and his fiercest protestations, had been snatched from under
his nose by "that Swede," apparently without any trouble worth speaking
of. He refused to believe the fact. He would have it, at first, that
the Zangiacomos, for some unfathomable reason, had played him a scurvy
trick, but when no further doubt was possible, he changed his view of
Heyst. The despised Swede became for Schomberg the deepest, the most
dangerous, the most hateful of scoundrels. He could not believe that the
creature he had coveted with so much force and with so little effect,
was in reality tender, docile to her impulse, and had almost offered
herself to Heyst without a sense of guilt, in a desire of safety, and
from a profound need of placing her trust where her woman's instinct
guided her ignorance. Nothing would serve Schomberg but that she must
have been circumvented by some occult exercise of force or craft, by the
laying of some subtle trap.
“He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of individuality which excites--and escapes.”
"Of course, why shouldn't you get tired of that or any other--company?
You aren't like anyone else, and--and the thought of it made me unhappy
suddenly; but indeed, I did not believe anything bad of you. I--"
A brusque movement of his arm, flinging her hand away, stopped her
short. Heyst had again lost control of himself. He would have shouted,
if shouting had been in his character.
"No, this earth must be the appointed hatching planet of calumny enough
to furnish the whole universe. I feel a disgust at my own person, as if
I had tumbled into some filthy hole. Pah! And you--all you can say is
that you won't judge me; that you--"
She raised her head at this attack, though indeed he had not turned to
her.
"I don't believe anything bad of you," she repeated. "I couldn't."
He made a gesture as if to say:
"That's sufficient."
In his soul and in his body he experienced a nervous reaction from
tenderness. All at once, without transition, he detested her. But only
for a moment. He remembered that she was pretty, and, more, that she
had a special grace in the intimacy of life. She had the secret of
individuality which excites--and escapes.
He jumped up and began to walk to and fro. Presently his hidden fury
fell into dust within him, like a crazy structure, leaving behind
emptiness, desolation, regret. His resentment was not against the girl,
but against life itself--that commonest of snares, in which he felt
himself caught, seeing clearly the plot of plots and unconsoled by the
lucidity of his mind.
He swerved and, stepping up to her, sank to the ground by her side.
Before she could make a movement or even turn her head his way, he took
her in his arms and kissed her lips. He tasted on them the bitterness
of a tear fallen there. He had never seen her cry. It was like another
appeal to his tenderness--a new seduction. The girl glanced round,
moved suddenly away, and averted her face. With her hand she signed
imperiously to him to leave her alone--a command which Heyst did not
obey.
CHAPTER FIVE
When she opened her eyes at last and sat up, Heyst scrambled quickly to
his feet and went to pick up her cork helmet, which had rolled a little
way off.
“He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense.”
gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: A Personal Record
Author: Joseph Conrad
Release date: January 9, 2006 [eBook #687]
Most recently updated: January 8, 2016
Language: English
Credits: Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A PERSONAL RECORD ***
Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger
A PERSONAL RECORD
By Joseph Conrad
A FAMILIAR PREFACE
As a general rule we do not want much encouragement to talk about
ourselves; yet this little book is the result of a friendly suggestion,
and even of a little friendly pressure. I defended myself with some
spirit; but, with characteristic tenacity, the friendly voice insisted,
"You know, you really must."
It was not an argument, but I submitted at once. If one must! . . .
You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put
his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of
sound has always been greater than the power of sense. I don't say this
by way of disparagement. It is better for mankind to be impressionable
than reflective. Nothing humanely great--great, I mean, as affecting a
whole mass of lives--has come from reflection. On the other hand, you
cannot fail to see the power of mere words; such words as Glory, for
instance, or Pity. I won't mention any more. They are not far to seek.
Shouted with perseverance, with ardour, with conviction, these two by
their sound alone have set whole nations in motion and upheaved the dry,
hard ground on which rests our whole social fabric. There's "virtue"
for you if you like! . . . Of course the accent must be attended to. The
right accent. That's very important. The capacious lung, the thundering
or the tender vocal chords. Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever.
He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination.
Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give
me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.
“All a man can betray is his conscience”
His thought, concentrated intensely on
the figure left lying on his bed, had culminated in this extraordinary
illusion of the sight. Razumov tackled the phenomenon calmly. With a
stern face, without a check and gazing far beyond the vision, he walked
on, experiencing nothing but a slight tightening of the chest. After
passing he turned his head for a glance, and saw only the unbroken track
of his footsteps over the place where the breast of the phantom had been
lying.
Razumov walked on and after a little time whispered his wonder to
himself.
“Exactly as if alive! Seemed to breathe! And right in my way too! I have
had an extraordinary experience.”
He made a few steps and muttered through his set teeth--
“I shall give him up.”
Then for some twenty yards or more all was blank. He wrapped his cloak
closer round him. He pulled his cap well forward over his eyes.
“Betray. A great word. What is betrayal? They talk of a man betraying
his country, his friends, 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
contrary--every obligation of true courage is the other way.”
Razumov looked round from under his cap.
“What can the prejudice of the world reproach me with? Have I provoked
his confidence? No! Have I by a single word, look, or gesture given him
reason to suppose that I accepted his trust in me? No! It is true that
I consented to go and see his Ziemianitch. Well, I have been to see him.
And I broke a stick on his back too--the brute.”
Something seemed to turn over in his head bringing uppermost a
singularly hard, clear facet of his brain.
“It would be better, however,” he reflected with a quite different
mental accent, “to keep that circumstance altogether to myself.”
He had passed beyond the turn leading to his lodgings, and had reached
a wide and fashionable street. Some shops were still open, and all the
restaurants.
“It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility”
‘It must be this miserable
trader—this intruder,’ exclaimed the manager, looking back malevolently
at the place we had left. ‘He must be English,’ I said. ‘It will not
save him from getting into trouble if he is not careful,’ muttered the
manager darkly. I observed with assumed innocence that no man was safe
from trouble in this world.
“The current was more rapid now, the steamer seemed at her last gasp,
the stern-wheel flopped languidly, and I caught myself listening on
tiptoe for the next beat of the boat, for in sober truth I expected the
wretched thing to give up every moment. It was like watching the last
flickers of a life. But still we crawled. Sometimes I would pick out a
tree a little way ahead to measure our progress towards Kurtz by, but I
lost it invariably before we got abreast. To keep the eyes so long on
one thing was too much for human patience. The manager displayed a
beautiful resignation. I fretted and fumed and took to arguing with
myself whether or no I would talk openly with Kurtz; but before I could
come to any conclusion it occurred to me that my speech or my silence,
indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility. What did it matter
what any one knew or ignored? What did it matter who was manager? One
gets sometimes such a flash of insight. The essentials of this affair
lay deep under the surface, beyond my reach, and beyond my power of
meddling.
“Towards the evening of the second day we judged ourselves about eight
miles from Kurtz’s station. I wanted to push on; but the manager looked
grave, and told me the navigation up there was so dangerous that it
would be advisable, the sun being very low already, to wait where we
were till next morning. Moreover, he pointed out that if the warning to
approach cautiously were to be followed, we must approach in
daylight—not at dusk or in the dark. This was sensible enough. Eight
miles meant nearly three hours’ steaming for us, and I could also see
suspicious ripples at the upper end of the reach. Nevertheless, I was
annoyed beyond expression at the delay, and most unreasonably, too,
since one night more could not matter much after so many months.
“I would not unduly praise the virtue of restraint. It is often merely temperamental. But it is not always a sign of coldness. It may be pride. There can be nothing more humiliating than to see the shaft of ones emotion miss the mark of either laughter or tears. Nothing more humiliating! And this for the reason that should the mark be missed, should the open display of emotion fail to move, then it must perish unavoidably in disgust or contempt.”
I would fain claim for myself the faculty of so
much insight as can be expressed in a voice of sympathy and compassion.
It seems to me that in one, at least, authoritative quarter of criticism
I am suspected of a certain unemotional, grim acceptance of facts--of
what the French would call _secheresse du coeur_. Fifteen years of
unbroken silence before praise or blame testify sufficiently to my
respect for criticism, that fine flower of personal expression in the
garden of letters. But this is more of a personal matter, reaching the
man behind the work, and therefore it may be alluded to in a volume
which is a personal note in the margin of the public page. Not that
I feel hurt in the least. The charge--if it amounted to a charge at
all--was made in the most considerate terms; in a tone of regret.
My answer is that if it be true that every novel contains an element of
autobiography--and this can hardly be denied, since the creator can only
express himself in his creation--then there are some of us to whom an
open display of sentiment is repugnant.
I would not unduly praise the virtue of restraint. It is often merely
temperamental. But it is not always a sign of coldness. It may be pride.
There can be nothing more humiliating than to see the shaft of one's
emotion miss the mark of either laughter or tears. Nothing more
humiliating! And this for the reason that should the mark be missed,
should the open display of emotion fail to move, then it must perish
unavoidably in disgust or contempt. No artist can be reproached for
shrinking from a risk which only fools run to meet and only genius dare
confront with impunity. In a task which mainly consists in laying one's
soul more or less bare to the world, a regard for decency, even at
the cost of success, is but the regard for one's own dignity which is
inseparably united with the dignity of one's work.
And then--it is very difficult to be wholly joyous or wholly sad on this
earth. The comic, when it is human, soon takes upon itself a face of
pain; and some of our griefs (some only, not all, for it is the capacity
for suffering which makes man August in the eyes of men) have their
source in weaknesses which must be recognized with smiling com passion
as the common inheritance of us all. Joy and sorrow in this world pass
into each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight
of life as mysterious as an over shadowed ocean, while the dazzling
brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the
distant edge of the horizon.
“The offing was barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil water-way leading to the uttermost ends of the earth flowed somber under an overcast sky--seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.”
‘Don’t you understand I
loved him—I loved him—I loved him!’
“I pulled myself together and spoke slowly.
“‘The last word he pronounced was—your name.’
“I heard a light sigh and then my heart stood still, stopped dead short
by an exulting and terrible cry, by the cry of inconceivable triumph
and of unspeakable pain. ‘I knew it—I was sure!’... She knew. She was
sure. I heard her weeping; she had hidden her face in her hands. 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....”
Marlow ceased, and sat apart, indistinct and silent, in the pose of a
meditating Buddha. Nobody moved for a time. “We have lost the first of
the ebb,” said the Director suddenly. I raised my head. The offing was
barred by a black bank of clouds, and the tranquil waterway leading to
the uttermost ends of the earth flowed sombre under an overcast
sky—seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.
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“What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-mens existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride of documentary history?”
The events of the ninth are
inextricably mixed up with the details of the proper management of a
waterside warehouse owned by a certain city firm whose name does not
matter. But that work, undertaken to accustom myself again to the
activities of a healthy existence, soon came to an end. The earth had
nothing to hold me with for very long. And then that memorable story,
like a cask of choice Madeira, got carried for three years to and fro
upon the sea. Whether this treatment improved its flavour or not, of
course I would not like to say. As far as appearance is concerned it
certainly did nothing of the kind. The whole MS. acquired a faded look
and an ancient, yellowish complexion. It became at last unreasonable
to suppose that anything in the world would ever happen to Almayer and
Nina. And yet something most unlikely to happen on the high seas was to
wake them up from their state of suspended animation.
What is it that Novalis says: "It is certain my conviction gains
infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it." And what is a
novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough to
take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality and whose
accumulated verisimilitude of selected episodes puts to shame the pride
of documentary history. Providence which saved my MS. from the Congo
rapids brought it to the knowledge of a helpful soul far out on the open
sea. It would be on my part the greatest ingratitude ever to forget the
sallow, sunken face and the deep-set, dark eyes of the young Cambridge
man (he was a "passenger for his health" on board the good ship Torrens
outward bound to Australia) who was the first reader of "Almayer's
Folly"--the very first reader I ever had.
"Would it bore you very much in reading a MS. in a handwriting like
mine?" I asked him one evening, on a sudden impulse at the end of a
longish conversation whose subject was Gibbon's History.
Jacques (that was his name) was sitting in my cabin one stormy dog-watch
below, after bring me a book to read from his own travelling store.
"Not at all," he answered, with his courteous intonation and a faint
smile. As I pulled a drawer open his suddenly aroused curiosity gave him
a watchful expression. I wonder what he expected to see. A poem, maybe.
“I have wrestled with death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes place in an impalpable grayness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing around, without spectators, without clamor, without glory, without the great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat.”
Suddenly the manager’s boy put his insolent black head in the doorway,
and said in a tone of scathing contempt:
“‘Mistah Kurtz—he dead.’
“All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with my
dinner. I believe I was considered brutally callous. However, I did not
eat much. There was a lamp in there—light, don’t you know—and outside
it was so beastly, beastly dark. I went no more near the remarkable man
who had pronounced a judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this
earth. The voice was gone. What else had been there? But I am of course
aware that next day the pilgrims buried something in a muddy hole.
“And then they very nearly buried me.
“However, as you see, I did not go to join Kurtz there and then. I did
not. I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my
loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life
is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.
The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes
too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with
death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes
place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing
around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the
great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly
atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right,
and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of
ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it
to be. I was within a hair’s breadth of the last opportunity for
pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have
nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a
remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped
over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare,
that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to
embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts
that beat in the darkness. He had summed up—he had judged. ‘The
horror!’ He was a remarkable man. After all, this was the expression of
some sort of belief; it had candour, it had conviction, it had a
vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a
glimpsed truth—the strange commingling of desire and hate.
“Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose -- as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to sniveling and giggles.”
I, who have never
sought in the written word anything else but a form of the Beautiful--I
have carried over that article of creed from the decks of ships to the
more circumscribed space of my desk, and by that act, I suppose, I have
become permanently imperfect in the eyes of the ineffable company of
pure esthetes.
As in political so in literary action a man wins friends for himself
mostly by the passion of his prejudices and by the consistent narrowness
of his outlook. But I have never been able to love what was not
lovable or hate what was not hateful out of deference for some general
principle. Whether there be any courage in making this admission I know
not. After the middle turn of life's way we consider dangers and joys
with a tranquil mind. So I proceed in peace to declare that I have
always suspected in the effort to bring into play the extremities of
emotions the debasing touch of insincerity. In order to move others
deeply we must deliberately allow ourselves to be carried away beyond
the bounds of our normal sensibility--innocently enough, perhaps, and
of necessity, like an actor who raises his voice on the stage above the
pitch of natural conversation--but still we have to do that. And surely
this is no great sin. But the danger lies in the writer becoming the
victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity,
and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too
blunt for his purpose--as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent
emotion. From laughter and tears the descent is easy to snivelling and
giggles.
These may seem selfish considerations; but you can't, in sound morals,
condemn a man for taking care of his own integrity. It is his clear
duty. And least of all can you condemn an artist pursuing, however
humbly and imperfectly, a creative aim. In that interior world where
his thought and his emotions go seeking for the experience of imagined
adventures, there are no policemen, no law, no pressure of circumstance
or dread of opinion to keep him within bounds. Who then is going to say
Nay to his temptations if not his conscience?
And besides--this, remember, is the place and the moment of perfectly
open talk--I think that all ambitions are lawful except those which
climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual
and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limit
of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one. If they are mad, then so
much the worse for the artist. Indeed, as virtue is said to be, such
ambitions are their own reward.
“To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence”
Before one squall
has flown over to sink in the eastern board, the edge of another peeps up
already above the western horizon, racing up swift, shapeless, like a
black bag full of frozen water ready to burst over your devoted head.
The temper of the ruler of the ocean has changed. Each gust of the
clouded mood that seemed warmed by the heat of a heart flaming with anger
has its counterpart in the chilly blasts that seem blown from a breast
turned to ice with a sudden revulsion of feeling. Instead of blinding
your eyes and crushing your soul with a terrible apparatus of cloud and
mists and seas and rain, the King of the West turns his power to
contemptuous pelting of your back with icicles, to making your weary eyes
water as if in grief, and your worn-out carcass quake pitifully. But
each mood of the great autocrat has its own greatness, and each is hard
to bear. Only the north-west phase of that mighty display is not
demoralizing to the same extent, because between the hail and sleet
squalls of a north-westerly gale one can see a long way ahead.
To see! to see!—this is the craving of the sailor, as of the rest of
blind humanity. To have his path made clear for him is the aspiration of
every human being in our beclouded and tempestuous existence. I have
heard a reserved, silent man, with no nerves to speak of, after three
days of hard running in thick south-westerly weather, burst out
passionately: “I wish to God we could get sight of something!”
We had just gone down below for a moment to commune in a battened-down
cabin, with a large white chart lying limp and damp upon a cold and
clammy table under the light of a smoky lamp. Sprawling over that
seaman’s silent and trusted adviser, with one elbow upon the coast of
Africa and the other planted in the neighbourhood of Cape Hatteras (it
was a general track-chart of the North Atlantic), my skipper lifted his
rugged, hairy face, and glared at me in a half-exasperated,
half-appealing way. We have seen no sun, moon, or stars for something
like seven days. By the effect of the West Wind’s wrath the celestial
bodies had gone into hiding for a week or more, and the last three days
had seen the force of a south-west gale grow from fresh, through strong,
to heavy, as the entries in my log-book could testify.
Droll thing life is -- that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself -- that comes too late -- a crop of inextinguishable regrets.
He
leaned back, serene, with that peculiar smile of his sealing the
unexpressed depths of his meanness. A continuous shower of small flies
streamed upon the lamp, upon the cloth, upon our hands and faces.
Suddenly the manager’s boy put his insolent black head in the doorway,
and said in a tone of scathing contempt:
“‘Mistah Kurtz—he dead.’
“All the pilgrims rushed out to see. I remained, and went on with my
dinner. I believe I was considered brutally callous. However, I did not
eat much. There was a lamp in there—light, don’t you know—and outside
it was so beastly, beastly dark. I went no more near the remarkable man
who had pronounced a judgment upon the adventures of his soul on this
earth. The voice was gone. What else had been there? But I am of course
aware that next day the pilgrims buried something in a muddy hole.
“And then they very nearly buried me.
“However, as you see, I did not go to join Kurtz there and then. I did
not. I remained to dream the nightmare out to the end, and to show my
loyalty to Kurtz once more. Destiny. My destiny! Droll thing life
is—that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose.
The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself—that comes
too late—a crop of unextinguishable regrets. I have wrestled with
death. It is the most unexciting contest you can imagine. It takes
place in an impalpable greyness, with nothing underfoot, with nothing
around, without spectators, without clamour, without glory, without the
great desire of victory, without the great fear of defeat, in a sickly
atmosphere of tepid scepticism, without much belief in your own right,
and still less in that of your adversary. If such is the form of
ultimate wisdom, then life is a greater riddle than some of us think it
to be. I was within a hair’s breadth of the last opportunity for
pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have
nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a
remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped
over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare,
that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to
embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts
that beat in the darkness.
