Conrad's first fame was made by his sea-novels, and the sea is never
quite out of any of his books. Who, before or since, could have evoked
this picture of heat, stillness and solitude?
In _Typhoon_ we are cast into the midst of a terrible outrage of the
destructive force of nature:
something formidable and swift, like the sudden smashing of a vial of
wrath. It seemed to explode all round the ship with an overpowering
concussion and a rush of great waters, as if an immense dam had been
blown up to windward. In an instant the men lost touch of each other.
This is the disintegrating power of a great wind; it isolates one from
one's kind. ... The motion of the ship was extravagant. Her lurches had
an appalling helplessness; she pitched as if taking a header into a
void, and seemed to find a wall to hit every time. ... The seas in the
dark seemed to rush from all sides to keep her back where she might
perish. There was hate in the way she was handled, and a ferocity in the
blows that fell. She was like a living creature thrown to the rage of a
mob! hustled terribly, struck at, borne up, flung down, leaped upon. ...
At last she rose slowly, staggering, as if she had to lift a mountain
with her bows.
There have been many writers about the sea, but only Conrad has loved it
with so profound and yet untrustful a love. His storms have sublimity,
made out of intense attention to detail, often trivial or ludicrous, but
heightened into tragedy by the shifting floor and changing background on
which is represented the vast struggle of man with the powers of nature.
And as he loves the earth only in its extravagances, so he loves the sea
most in storm, where love and fear mingle. The tropics, the Malay
Archipelago, and the sea in a continual tempest, the ship suffering
through a typhoon, or burning itself out on the waters: these are his
scenes, these he cherishes in his faithful and unquiet memory. How much
is memory, how much is imagination, no one need know or care. They are
one; he does not distinguish between them.
Once, in one of the pages of _Lord Jim_, Conrad has confessed himself
with perfect frankness. He represents himself receiving a packet of
letters which are to tell him the last news of Lord Jim. He goes to the
window and draws the heavy curtains.
The light of his shaded reading-lamp slept like a sheltered pool, his
footfalls made no sound on the carpet, his wandering days were over. No
more horizons as boundless as hope, no more twilights within the forests
as solemn as temples, in the hot quest for the Ever-undiscovered Country
over the hill, across the stream, beyond the wave. The hour was
striking! No more! No more!--but the opened packet under the lamp
brought back the sounds, the visions, the very savor of the past—a
multitude of fading faces, a tumult of low voices, dying away upon the
shores of distant seas under a passionate and unconsoling sunshine. He
sighed and sat down to read.
That is the confession of one who, of foreign race, is an alien,
solitary among his memories.