THE ART OF MR. JOSEPH CONRAD.
TO a small—a still inexplicably small—circle of readers the publication of a new book written by Mr. Joseph Conrad ranks as a notable event, an event the comparative infrequency of which makes it all the more remarkable in an age when many of our authors have an "output" as regular, and almost as copious, as a Welsh coal-mine. " Almayer's Folly," Mr. Comsd's first novel, appeared early in. 1895, and "Youth," the most recent addition to his works, is only the fifth book which has come from his pen during the last eight years. That, as such matters are reckoned to-day, is slow production, and an examination of any one of the volumes which bear this author's name upon their title-pages will serve to convince that these books, at any rate, are written —really written—as are but few of the works with which each succeeding publishing season inundates us. It is not merely that by no conceivable effort of fancy can the reader conjure up a picture of Mr. Conrad shouting his "copy" into a phonograph, or dictating it to a breathless stenographer; nor is it only that his work is honourably dis- tinguished by its author's care, sincerity, and conscientious determination to give the public naught save his best, though these things are manifest in every line. Much more is meant., for indeed Mr. Comsd's stories resemble nothing so nearly as some elaborate piece of mosaic. Each of them is made up of an immense number of minute atoms, one and all of which bear witness to the skill and finished work- manship brought to their fashioning, one and all of which, apart from their individual beauty, are essential to the whole whereof they form the parts, so that that whole, lacking any tiniest fragment, would be marred and incomplete. This is why Mr. Conrad's books, to be appreciated at their full worth, must not only be read, but must be read more than once. The mind of their author is so subtle, he has put into them so much thought, so much delicacy of touch, so much that is at once allusive and elusive, that at every reperusal some hitherto undetected nicety is revealed. And in this very fact, perhaps, is to be sought the secret not only of Mr. Conrad's success, but also of his failure. His success, within limits, has been undoubted ; for his work cannot fail to make a deep impression upon every lover of literary technique, and to afford keen pleasure to all who are capable of prizing, as its rarity deserves, a creative and imaginative talent which in this case is surely not far removed from genius. On the other hand, however, the very refinements and subtleties in- separable from his habit of thought and literary method have caused his books to make but a faint appeal to the girreral public.iive a dog a bad name, and hang him ; call a book
"stiff tea • and let it go by the board! This, seemingly, has been the attitude of the majority of readers towards Mr. Conrad's works in the past. It remains to be seen whether his new book, "Youth, and Two other Stories," just published by Messrs. Blackwood (6s.), will succeed in effecting anything in the nature of a wholesale conversion.
It is to be feared that the chances in favour of any such result are not over great, for " Youth," it must be confessed, furnishes as much "stiff reading" as any of its predecessors. That is to say, the book makes a constant, insistent appeal to the intelligence of the reader : it cannot be taken up idly to while away an hour ; it cannot be skimmed or skipped; it must be read word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, if it is to create the impression which the author has designed to produce. Also, to be quite honest, the admission must be made that Mr. Conrad's style is occasion- ally difficult. It does not run in any well-worn groove, for its owner is no apostle of the obvious ; to the casual reader it may at times appear to be laboured, even self-conscious. A closer study of it, however, should lead to the conviction that this style is individual, instinctive, moulded on no ready-made model; that it is the one and only mode of expression adapted to the purposes of its author, or indeed possible to him ; that it is in no sense an affectation ; and, moreover, that it is exactly suited to the subjects of which he treats.
Enough, perhaps, has been said concerning Mr. Conrad's manner, for though with him mere manner is of more account than with any writer of our time (Mr. Henry James alone excepted), his matter, after all, is of greater significance and of even higher value. "Description," said Byron at a time when his genius was at its ripest, "description is my forte " ; and the same might be said with truth by Mr. Conrad. Description unquestionably is his forte, and the most re- markable of his gifts is the power which his strength in this direction gives him for the absolute creation of atmosphere. He is a realist in that he writes of a real world which he has seen for himself with his own eyes; but lie rises superior to the trammels of ordinary realism because he has not only looked long and thoughtfully upon land and sea, so that he can write of them with the truth and certainty born of sure knowledge, but because also he has caught the very spirit of them, and has the art so to breathe it into his pages that his readers become imbued with it too. Those who have struggled round the Cape with Mr. Conrad on board the Narcissus' have felt the sting of the salt spray on their cheeks, the winds of all the world buffeting them ; those who have wandered with him through the mazes of the Malay Archipelago have gasped and sweated in the stifling heat and the dense forests of tropical Asia, though in body they have never even touched the hem of the East; and those of us who know the lands of which he writes have been carried back to distant scenes with so much vividness that we have awakened with a shock of surprise to find the fogs of London gripping us by the throat and dimming our eyesight. But in no one of his books, in the opinion of the present writer, has Mr. Conrad displayed his peculiar genius with more triumphant success than in that which has just seen the light. It contains three stories- " Youth," " The Heart of Darkness," and " The End of the Tether "—all of which have appeared serially in the pages of Blackwood's Magazine, a publication that still maintains its ancient reputation for preferring good literature to names that look well upon the bills.
The first of these stories is simply a description of a voyage from London to Bangkok in a sailing ship. It is put into the mouth of Marlow, an officer in the British mercantile marine, who on that occasion, in all his new dignity as second mate, had been making his first visit to the East. Marlow, it will be remembered, was also the relater of the tragedy of " Lord Jim" ; and we find him later in the present volume telling, with more than his usual sombre force, the tale called " In the Heart of Darkness." The story of the mis- fortunes of the ill-fated Judea' is told with extraordinary power and understanding. There is knowledge here, real first-hand knowledge and experience, things of absolute value; but it needed something above mere knowledge to transport us, as Mr. Conrad transports us, half across the world, and to keep us aching and breathless with acute disquiet while we share with the ship's crew the dangers and vicissitudes of that journey. For this art and a sure mastery of art were required, and, above all, that special power of conjuring up
for the reader an alien environment to which reference has already been made. But beyond this there runs through the narrative, through this tale of an adventure that befel the teller in his boyhood, such a throb of yearning for the vanished joys of youth and the capacity for delight which makes youth what it is, such a passionate regret awakened by " the tender thought of a day that is dead," as cannot but strike an answering chord in every heart. The third story, "The End of the Tether," another tale of seafaring folk, men on board a steam " tramp " in the Malay Archipelago, is no less successful. It is instinct with pathos,—the cruel pathos of obscure struggle and unrecorded tragedy; it is told with the utmost restraint ; every character in it, as well as every scene, is real, and not only real, but essen- tially true to the life described. Those who have seen reason to doubt the penetration of Mr. Colmar s psychological insight— as many may have done whose personal knowledge led them to distrust the analysis of Oriental character contained in his earlier books—will find here enough to convince them that it has sufficed to let its possessor see very deep into the souls of the men who go down to the sea in ships.
" The Heart of Darkness," the story which holds the central place in this enthralling book, has of set purpose been left to the last for mention, because to the present writer it makes a stronger appeal than anything which its author has yet written, and appears to him to represent Mr. Conrad at his very best. Space, however, forbids any detailed examination of the story. It is a sombre study of the Congo —the scene is obviously intended for the Congo, though no names are mentioned—in which, while the inefficiency of certain types of European " administrators " is mercilessly gibbeted, the power of the wilderness, of contact with barbarism and elemental men and facts, to effect the demoralisation of the white man is conveyed with marvellous force. The denationalisation of the European, the " going Pantee " of civilised man, has been treated often enough in fiction since Mr. Grant Allen wrote the story of the Rev. John Creedy, and before, but never has the " why of it " been appreciated by any author as Mr. Conrad here appreciates it, and never, beyond all question, has any writer till now succeeded in bringing the reason, and the ghastly unreason, of it all home to sheltered folk as does Mr. Conrad in this wonderful, this magnificent, this terrible study. Mr. Kurt; the victim of this hideous obsession, the man whom the wilderness had " found out," on whom it had taken a terrible vengeance, to whom it had "whispered things about himself that he did not know, things of which he had no conception till he took counsel with this great solitude," and to whom "the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating," makes his appearance very late in the story, and then only for a few moments. He is the climax, so to speak, up to which every word of the story has been leading, certainly, inevitably, from the very first; and this is how it comes to pass that when at last he is met with, the reader finds that he is utterly in accord with his surroundings,—in the innermost chamber of the Heart of Darkness.
It has not been possible in the space of a newspaper article to give more than the barest outline of Mr. Conrad's new book, and anything resembling a serious analysis of it is obviously out of the question. But it is hoped that enough may have been said to lead one or two readers, who else might have passed it by, to study the book for themselves. " I do not like work—no man does," says Mr. Conrad, speaking through the mouth of Marlow. " But I like what is in work, —the chance to find yourself. Your own reality—for your- self, not for others—what no .other man can know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means." That is profoundly true in the sense that a man's work always means far more to him than it can mean to any other living soul ; but Mr. Com.ad's work, at any rate, means very much to others, even to those who, to his thinking, can perhaps only " see the mere show."
HIJOR CLIFFORD.
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