JOSEPH CONRAD
Last Essays. Joseph Conrad. (Dent. 7s. 6d.) Tuts collection of essays and letters to the Press is the last gleaning from the field of Conrad's exotic genius. We have a purpose in calling it exotic, believing that this word is the corner-stone to the whole fabric of a right estimation of Conrad's work and its relation to and position in the city of English literature.
. The external details of the man's career arc in themselves an astounding mystery ; but with them we shall have no opportunity to deal now. It is sufficient to remind ourselves that here is the incredible fact of a child born into a territorial, mid-European aristocratic family, to the tradition of static feudalism set by the Central Empire over its own vast realms; and 'also over its occasionally independent minions, since the fabulous days of King Wenceslas. Such a child, we imagine, would be at home in the very heart of the European habit of mind, with its only eccentricities arising from an Eastern and Slavonic infusion of blood. What madness or superhuman frenzy might on occasion raise the temperature of that ordered life and culture should be born of dimly remembered steppe-fears, or lurking memories of forest dark- nesses. It is inconceivable to think of a child of that tradition as having any strand of his being capable of responding to the sea-call, the gull scream, the tang of salt spray. Yet almost from his babyhood Conrad was haunted by these western ocean-voices. This impossible assurance must again and again come ringing in on our critical appreciation of the man's work,- reminding us, when we are at a loss, how his hold on our literature has nothing earthy or rooted about it, but only a sporadic grip, fungoid and wholly inexplicable.
In the first essay in this book he tells us how the strange fever settled upon him. We see him, too, groping after some elucidation of the problem which we are now seeking to solve. He speaks of the delight of geography, and as he dwells on the lure of-travel we seem to see in him an accidental concentra. Xion of that racial urge westward, which brought Erse, Gael, • Kelt and Aryan in successive waves from the Himalayan well-spring of Mankind. It is as though the slowing pulse of that tide surged up momentarily in this individual and forced him, a whole stratum in miniature of the race, towards the sunset fields of the world. . • That was the dynamic of Conrad ; and because it was so isolated, so unaccountable, it had always about it the quality of desperation which descends upon those people who are sought out by some external and incomprehensible Force. 1t accounts for his attraction to the Flying Dutchmen of the world, the pariahs and social outcasts. His Lord Jim was a portrait of himself, for both were expatriated by the illogical power of chance.
In his essay on Geography, Conrad tells us how this in- fluence " exposed me to the derision of my school-boy chums. One day, pinting my finger on a spot in the very middle of the then white (unexplored) heart of Africa, I declared that some day I -would go: there. -My.chums' chaffing was perfectly justifiable. I myself was ashamed of having been betrayed into mere vapouring. Nothing was further from my wildest hopes. - Yet it is •a fact that, about eighteen years afterwards, a wretched little steam-boat I commanded lay moored to' the bank of an African river." He describes— .here his genius is at its freest—how in the tremulous tropical .night, as he stood alone, the only sleeplesS 'one, on deck, the memory of that.boyhood boast came back to him.
A great melancholy descended on me. Yes, this was the *very spot. What an end to the was realities of a boy's ";day-dream I wondered what I was doing there, for indeed it "Was only An unforeseen episode, hard to believe in now, in 'my seaman's life." - • . We can,. picture him, too, standing . amidst English :institutions and English . literature, " wondering what I was :doing there," and it is a wonder which will never be satisfied, fac the cause of his , spiritual travel is one of the greatest enigmas in that eternal mystery, the flood and ebb of human *temperament.
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