I
The poet in Conrad is lyrical as well as philosophic. The lyrical side
is absent in certain of his works, as, for example, _The Secret Agent_,
and _Under Western Eyes_, or such short stories as _The Informer_,
or _Il Conde_, but the philosophic note sounded poetically, as an
instrument of music as well as a philosophy, is never absent.
Three elements in the work of Conrad the poet as distinct from Conrad
the novelist deserve consideration--style, atmosphere and philosophy.
In the matter of style the first point that must strike any constant
reader of the novels is the change that is to be marked between the
earlier works and the later. Here is a descriptive passage from
Conrad's second novel, _An Outcast of the Islands_:
"He followed her step by step till at last they both stopped, facing
each other under the big tree of the enclosure. The solitary exile
of the forests great, motionless and solemn in his abandonment, left
alone by the life of ages that had been pushed away from him by those
pigmies that crept at his foot, towered high and straight above their
leader. He seemed to look on, dispassionate and imposing in his
lonely greatness, spreading his branches wide in a gesture of lofty
protection, as if to hide them in the sombre shelter of innumerable
leaves; as if moved by the disdainful compassion of the strong, by the
scornful pity of an aged giant, to screen this struggle of two human
hearts from the cold scrutiny of glittering stars."
And from his latest novel, _Chance_:
"The very sea, with short flashes of foam bursting out here and there
in the gloomy distances, the unchangeable, safe sea sheltering a man
from all passions, except its own anger, seemed queer to the quick
glance he threw to windward when the already effaced horizon traced
no reassuring limit to the eye. In the expiring diffused twilight,
and before the clouded night dropped its mysterious veil, it was the
immensity of space made visible--almost palpable. Young Powell felt
it. He felt it in the sudden sense of his isolation; the trustworthy,
powerful ship of his first acquaintance reduced to a speck, to
something almost undistinguishable. The mere support for the soles
of his two feet before that unexpected old man becoming so suddenly
articulate in a darkening universe."
It must be remembered that the second of these quotations is the voice
of Marlowe and that therefore it should, in necessity, be the simpler
of the two. Nevertheless, the distinction can very clearly be observed.
The first piece of prose is quite definitely lyrical: it has, it cannot
be denied, something of the "purple patch." We feel that the prose is
too dependent upon sonorous adjectives, that it has the deliberation of
work slightly affected by the author's determination that it shall be
fine. The rhythm in it, however, is as deliberate as the rhythm of any
poem in English, the picture evoked as distinct and clear-cut as though
it were, in actual fact, a poem detached from all context and, finally,
there is the inevitable philosophical implication to give the argument
to the picture. Such passages of descriptive prose may be found again
and again in the earlier novels and tales of Conrad, in _Almayer's
Folly, Tales of Unrest, The Nigger of the Narcissus, Typhoon, Youth,
Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim_--prose piled high with sonorous and
slow-moving adjectives, three adjectives to a noun, prose that sounds
like an Eastern invocation to a deity in whom, nevertheless, the
suppliant does not believe. At its worst, the strain that its sonority
places upon movements and objects of no importance is disastrous. For
instance, in the tale called _The Return_, there is the following
passage:--
"He saw her shoulder touch the lintel of the door. She swayed as if
dazed. There was less than a second of suspense while they both felt
as if poised on the very edge of moral annihilation, ready to fall
into some devouring nowhere. Then almost simultaneously he shouted,
'Come back,' and she let go the handle of the door. She turned round in
peaceful desperation like one who has deliberately thrown away the last
chance of life; and for a moment the room she faced appeared terrible,
and dark, and safe--like a grave."
The situation here simply will not bear the weight of the words--"moral
annihilation," "devouring nowhere," "peaceful desperation," "last
chance of life," "terrible," "like a grave." That he shouted gives a
final touch of ludicrous exaggeration to the whole passage.
Often, in the earlier books, Conrad's style has the awkward
over-emphasis of a writer who is still acquiring the language that he
is using, like a foreigner who shouts to us because he thinks that
thus we shall understand him more easily. But there is also, in this
earlier style, the marked effect of two influences. One influence is
that of the French language and especially of the author of _Madame
Bovary_. When we recollect that Conrad hesitated at the beginning of
his career as to whether he would write in French or English, we can
understand this French inflection. Flaubert's effect on his style
is quite unmistakable. This is a sentence of Flaubert's: "Toutes
ses velléités de dénigrement l'envanouissaient sous la poésie du
rôle qui l'envahissait; et entrainée vers l'homme par l'illusion du
personnage elle tâcha de se figurer sa vie, cette vie retentissante,
extraordinaire, splendide ..." and this a sentence of Conrad's: "Her
hands slipped slowly off Lingard's shoulders and her arms fell by her
side, listless, discouraged, as if to her--to her, the savage, violent
and ignorant creature--had been revealed clearly in that moment the
tremendous fact of our isolation, of the loneliness, impenetrable and
transparent, elusive and everlasting."
Conrad's sentence reads like a direct translation from the French,
It is probable, however, that his debt to Flaubert and the French
language can be very easily exaggerated, and it does not seem, in
any case, to have driven very deeply into the heart of his form. The
influence is mainly to be detected in the arrangement of words and
sentences as though he had, in the first years of his work, used it as
a crutch before he could walk alone.
The second of the early influences upon his style is of far greater
importance--the influence of the vast, unfettered elements of nature
that he had, for so many years, so directly served. If it were not for
his remarkable creative gift that had been, from the very first, at its
full strength, his early books would stand as purely lyrical evocations
of the sea and the forest. It is the poetry of the Old Testament of
which we think in many pages of _Almayer's Folly_ and _An Outcast of
the Island_, a poetry that has the rhythm and metre of a spontaneous
emotion. He was never again to catch quite the spirit of that first
rapture.
He was under the influence of these powers also in that, at that time,
they were too strong for him. We feel with him that he is impotent to
express his wonder and praise because he is still so immediately under
their sway. His style, in these earlier books, has the repetitions
and extended phrases of a man who is marking time before the inspired
moment comes to him--often the inspiration does not come because he
cannot detach himself with sufficient pause and balance. But in his
middle period, in the period of _Youth, Typhoon, Heart of Darkness_
and _Nostromo_, this lyrical impulse can be seen at its perfection,
beating, steadily, spontaneously, with the finest freedom and yet
disciplined, as it were, by its own will and desire. Compare, for a
moment, this passage from _Typhoon_ with that earlier one from _The
Outcast of the Islands_ that I quoted above:
"He watched her, battered and solitary, labouring heavily in a wild
scene of mountainous black waters lit by the gleam of distant worlds.
She moved slowly, breathing into the still core of the hurricane the
excess of her strength in a white cloud of steam, and the deep-toned
vibration of the escape was like the defiant trumpeting of a living
creature of the sea impatient for the renewal of the contest. It ceased
suddenly. The still air moaned. Above Jakes' head a few stars shone
into the pit of black vapours. The inky edge of the cloud-disc frowned
upon the ship under the patch of glittering sky. The stars too seemed
to look at her intently, as if for the last time, and the cluster of
their splendour sat like a diadem on a lowering brow."
That is poet's work, and poet's work at its finest. Instead of
impressing us, as the earlier piece of prose, with the fact that the
author has made the very most of a rather thin moment--feels, indeed,
himself that it is thin--we are here under the influence of something
that can have no limits to the splendours that it contains. The work
is thick, as though it had been wrought by the finest workman out of
the heart of the finest material--and yet it remains, through all its
discipline, spontaneous.
These three tales, _Typhoon, Youth_ and _Heart of Darkness_, stand
by themselves as the final expression of Conrad's lyrical gift. We
may remember such characters as McWhirr, Kurtz, Marlowe, but they are
figures as the old seneschal in _The Eve of St Agnes_ or the Ancient
Mariner himself are figures. They are as surely complete poems, wrought
and finished in the true spirit of poetry, as Whitman's _When Lilac
first on the Door-yard bloomed_ or Keats' _Nightingale_. Their author
was never again to succeed so completely in combining the free spirit
of his enthusiasm with the disciplined restraint of the true artist.
The third period of his style shows him cool and clear-headed as to
the things that he intends to do. He is now the slightly ironic artist
whose business is to get things on to paper in the clearest possible
way. He is conscious that in the past he has been at the mercy of
sonorous and high-sounding adjectives. He will use them still, but
only to show them that they are at his mercy. Marlowe, his appointed
minister, is older--he must look back now on the colours of _Youth_
with an indulgent smile. And when Marlowe is absent, in such novels
as _The Secret Agent_ and _Under Western Eyes_, in such a volume of
stories as _A Set of Six_, the lyrical beat in the style is utterly
abandoned--we are led forward by sentences as grave, as assured, and
sometimes as ponderous as a city policeman. Nevertheless, in that
passage from _Chance_ quoted at the beginning of the chapter, although
we may be far from the undisciplined enthusiasm of _An Outcast of
the Islands_, the lyrical impulse still remains. Yes, it is there,
but--"Young Powell felt it." In that magical storm that was _Typhoon_
God alone can share our terror and demand our courage; in the later
experience young Powell is our companion.