Joseph Conrad: Writing as Rescue

96 Pages·1977·8.368 MB·English

by  Jeffrey Berman

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JOSEPH CONRl\D:
!Friling as Rescue
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JOSEPH
CONRAD:
7rriting
,,
as
Rescue
by Jeffrey ~erman
ASTRA BOOKS NEW YORK -
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For Barbara
Univ.-lli!!Jio1hel
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Regensburg
Cop}Tight © 1977 by Astra BCXJks
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· Acknowledgments
"Immature poets borrow, mature poets steal," T. S. Eliot wryly affirmed; and
my own critical "maturity," or simply premature critical aging, depends upon
the knowledge I have happily stolen from those with whom I have worked. To
my former Cornell professors, James Mcconkey and Walter Slatoff, I owe my
greatest intellectual debt. Apart from first guiding me in my Ph.D. dissertation
and then encouraging me to write this book, they did a bit of other rescue
work for me as well. Special thanks also go to Phillip Marcus. My friend and
colleague Michael Kaufman never wavered in his support, and the first chapter
in particular bears his unique imprint. I am grateful to Professor Adam Gillon
both for his early critical study, The Eternal Solitary, which was the first book
to point out the thematic significance of self-destruction in Conrad's fictive
,, world, and for his expert editorial supervision of my manuscript. A SUNY Fa
culty Research Fellowship and Grant-In-Aid offered timely assistance in the
final stages of the writing. My four parents tirelessly asked me whether this
book was finished yet. And finally, my greatest appreciation goes to my wife
Barbara, whose sensitive refusal to participate in my forebodings over this pro
ject did the most to hasten its conclusion.
Three chapters of Joseph Conrad: Writing as Rescue have been published
elsewhere in literary and psychoanalytic journals.-I am grateful to the following
journals for their kind permission to reprint:
'"'Writing as Rescue: Conrad's Escape from the Heart of Darkness." In Utera
ture and Psychology, Vol. 25, No. 2, 1975.
"Conrad's Lord Jim and the Enigma of Sublimation." In American Imago, Vol
33, Issue No. 4, Winter 1976. Reprinted by permission of the Wayne State
University Press.
"Joseph Conrad, 'The Figure Behind the Veil'" Scheduled for publication in
the]ournal of Modem Literature.
In adrution, I wish to thank the following publishers,
Joseph Conrad, Edition of the Complete Works. Reprinted by permission of
Doubleday, Page & Company and by permission of the Trustees of the Conrad
estate.
Joseph Conrad's Lette;s to R. B. Cunninghame Graham, edited by C. T.
Watts. Reprinted by permission of Cambridge University Press.
Joseph Conrad: Letters to William Blackwood and David S. Meldrum, edited
by William Blackburn. Copyright 1958 by Duke University Press.
Conrad's Polish Background, edited by Zdzi.Sl'aw Najder and translated by
Halina Carroll. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press.
Joseph Conrad As I Knew Him, by Jessie Conrad. (London: William
Heinemann, 1926). Reprinted by permission of Borys Conrad.
Joseph Conrad, A Psychoanalytic Biography, by Bernard C. Meyer, M.D.
Copyright 1967 by Princeton University Press. Reprinted by permission of
Princeton University Press.
Contents
~ove~fhotdo is fro~ "The Wor~s of Sir Jacob Epstein," from the collection of
· r. war P. Schmman. Repnnted by permission.
Cartoon by Al Ross, The New York Times (Book Review)
printed by permission ofThe New York Times. ' May 7, 1967. Re-
WRITING AS RESCUE
11
Conrad's Escape from the Heart of Darkness
29
The Figure Behind the Veil
41
The Incurable Wound
"MORITURl TE SALUTANT":
""
53
Marlow's Wrestle with Death in Heart of Darkness
68
Lord Jim and the Enigma of Sublimation
85
Life in the "New Era'' of N ostromo
-THE SECRET AGENT:
llO
"This Act of Madness or Despair?"
"CONFESS, GO OUT-AND PERISH":
129
Under Western Eyes and the Therapeutic Efficacy of Art
The Psychology of Self-Destruction:
149
"Farce or Tragedy" in Chance?
163
The Ambiguities of Victory
181
Bibliographical Notes
187
Selected Bibliography
189
Index
1
Writing as Rescue:
Conrad's Escape from the Heart of
Darkness
The cartoon I came across several years ago illustrates, with star
tungly literal gallows humor, the grim predicament of a man at the end
of his tether. As he glumly piles one bock upon another to reach the
noose that dangles ominously above his head, he accidentally gazes
down upon an opened page. He pauses. Riveting his attention upon
the book, he stays his self-execution. By losing himself in the story, he
seems paradoxically to have rescued himself from the anguish that
prompted him to repudiate his life. The noose continues to dangle
above his head, serving as a reminder of his vulnerability to self
destruction; the man's interests, however, are now elsewhere-at least
until he completes the book.
Few novelists would admit that a picture, much less a cartoon,
equals a thousand words, but this metaphor of a work of art interven
ing between life and death raises a number of disturbing questions
which most readers have prudently avoided. Is the man reading for
pleasure, for escape, or for self-discovery? Why the smile on his face?
Is he escaping from "reality" into an illusory world that can but
momentarily palliate his grief? Is he perhaps identifying with a fictive
character whose situation resembles· his own and in the process ex
periencing a relief in shared community, even if this community de
pends upon the essential selfishness of misery-loves-company? Or
·rather, is he discovering a major insight from literature that he can
then apply therapeutically to his life: discovering, in short, the truth of
,'. fiction? ·
h. 11
13
12 Joseph Conrad: Writing as Rescue',:, Conrad's Escape from the Heart of Darkness
What would happen, however, if we reversed the plot of the car of authority, thus tending to weaken the social fabric by loosening
toon? Imagine a smiling man unsuspectingly picking up a novel whose long-held values of community, faith, and belief in an afterlife; the wars
vision irretrievably darkens his own life? Would he then head for the that shaltered man's most cherished illusions of human nature; and the
noose? After such knowledge, what forgiveness? growing leisure time with which most people were not equipped. to
But even if we do not tamper with the cartoon, we still need to deal. The artist faithfully mirrored this change. For the Enghsh
explore other implications derived from its deceptively siIIlple story. Romantics, life became a quest for an impossible trans~endence that
What fate will .befall the man after he completes the book? Will he re often culminated in extinction. Shelley's poetry in particular bums with
turn again to the noose if and when his former depression overcomes a cold incandescence, as if its maker were hovering near the source of
him? Or will he perhaps head for another book? And what specific the flame. The seemingly indomitable Victorians inherited the longing
story is he reading? Does its anonymity to us suggest the impossibility for a brighter vision but gradually a life-weariness, ~m from .a growiog
of ever locating it? pessimism, dimmed their energies. Thomas Carlyle s dramallc ~ccount
IJ). short, can and should literature attempt to rescue the reader frOm of "The Everlasting No" in Sartor Resartus; John Stuart Mills near
what Marlow calls in Lord Jim the "'legitimate terrors of life?" Or fatal melancholia at the age of twenty-one that forms a central part of
should this precarious task be restricted to the minister, social worker, the Autobiography; Tennyson's congenital exhaustion and longing for
or psychoanalyst, who often remains more con!.cl.ent than the artist release, as expressed in "The Lotus'Eaters," "Tithonus," ahd "The Lady
ab?.ut the poss\?ility of devising unambiguous solutions to the problem of Shalott"; Arnold's joyless limbo in which his characters find them
of How to be? · . selves "Wandering between two worlds, one dead/ The other powerless
Before finally dispensing with the cartoon, suppose we ask whether to be born"; Swinburne's dreamy hymns to the goddesses of sleep and
it uncannily evokes the doffiinant themes of a major novelist's fictive death; Hardy's ble'ak Wessex, in which Eustacia Vye, Jude the
world. And to add a biographical complication, suppose both the au Obscure, and Young Father Time all succumb to self-destructive _urges,
thor and his characters share in this vulnerability, and that his art rep the latter representing "the beginning of the coming universal wish not
resents his most profound efforts to hold in check this impulse. Will to live"-in short, much of the art of the nineteenth century stands as
the fictionalization of a self-destructive impulse have a cathartic effect an ever-darkening mirror into which the modems, despite their need
upon the artist? Will it, to use a traditional metaphor, exorcise the for self-definition, cannot help peering, often with the result of immo-
de~on or _demiurge driving him on? Or will the creative process mys bility. . .
tenously, rnadvertently, unlock the demon, allowing it to dominate and ' Perhaps it has taken a century for life to catch up with art, for if
perhaps destroy the artist even as he struggles to resist the noose in manv of the nineteenth-century artists were killing _off their fictional
real life that he has created in his fiction? ·proj~ctions, many of the twentieth-century artists wer~ killi~g. o_ff
themselves. Of the poets and novelists writing in English, Virg1ma
"Before the twentieth century," writes A. Alvarez in The Savage Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Hart Crane, Sylvia Plath, John Berryman,
God, a study of the frightening suicide rate among artists, "it is possi and most recently Anne Sexton, constitute the most conspicuous
ble to discuss cases individually, since the gifted artists who killed suicides, not to mention the more ambiguous examples of Dylan
themselves or were even seriously suicidal were rare exceptions. In the Thomas, Brendan Behan, and Randall Jarrell.
twentieth century the balance suddenly shifts: the better the artist, the Alvarez omits in The Savage God any mention of Joseph Conrad.
more vulnerable he seems to be. "1 Suicide, of course, is neither an The omission does not strike us as unusual: quite the opposite. Living
exclusively modern phenomenon nor the characteristic ending of to be sixty-six years old, Conrad survived a multitude of dangerous ad
twentieth-century artists; nevertheless, something began to occur to ventures and serious illnesses, and finally died of natural causes-a
ward the end of the eighteenth century that fearfully accelerated a "victim" not of self-destruction but self-fulfillment. Furthermore, if, as
movement which has not yet been stayed. It is not difficult to list the Alvarez suggests, silence for the artist can represent a kind of
sociological explanations for the disruption of traditional patterns of liv suicide-an insight Conrad anticipated in his essay on Henry James in
ing and the consequent rise of the suicide rate among civilized coun Notes on Life and Letters: "The artist in his calling of interpreter
tries: the drift toward increasingly urbanized settings; the advent of creates .... because he must. He is so much of a voice that, for him,
technological dehumanization; the assault on religion and other forms silence is like death" (p. 14)-then certainly he does not belong to the
14 Joseph Conrad: Writing as Rescue ~onrad' s Escape from the Heait of Darkness 15
tradition of the self-destructive artist. Few English novelists were more ted. ..." 2 Though the details of the remark remain cry~tic to us, th:
prolific than Conrad: his novels, short stories, critical essays, and au metaphor of taking one's life appears again , and agam m. Bobrowski s
tobiographical reminiscences number twenty-six volumes. And he letters, probably echoing the tone of Conrad s letters to him: A\m any
wrote, moreover, nearly four thousand letters. In terms of this produc as fifteen vears later, Thaddeus continued to cha;,tise hhi; gory
tivity he continued working resolutely to the end, avoiding both E. M. h . , this preachy but well,meaning manner: To p i os~p,. ize
Forster's self-imposed silence and Thomas Hardy's abandonment of his nebp lewd nt1h ,·11 such ·a wav as to maintain that 'en fin de comr pte ' it is
a on ea , d d· one
career as a novelist. And because Conrad never revealed to his wife, better to die young as in any case one is boun to ie some rme ' • ·t
children, friends, or biographers information that he had ever seriously must feel 'profondement decourage' or ill-or both? At your age, SO!
attempted suicide, until recently we had no apparent reason to think dit' at the age of thirty-four-such a philosophy. does ~ot even en;er
otherwise. the head of anybody young and healthy, and this worries me great .Y,
Now we know differently. Ever since the publication in 1957 of a d . I d "3 Still distressed at what must have been a perS1S-
my ear a · · · · , d Th dd us wrote
lost letter written in 1879 by Conrad's uncle and guardian, Thaddeus tently threatening tone of Conrad s correspon ence, a e
Bobrowski, scholars have conceded, though som.e of them reluctantly,
one month later:
that the novelist did indeed attempt suicide in 1878, when he was
twenty years old. Bobrowski' s letter constifutes · the chief biographical I be . as usual -though I should perhaps begin with "My Dear Pes
disclosure in the ,decades following Conrad's death. In the next chapter . . ~ because that at least suggests the aroma which your letters have
~1m1s ti. b en brinaing me and that and no other is the proper way
we shall examine more closely the letter and Conrad's ambivalence to 1or some me e ~· d . h t t f nind and
ward suicide. Adding to the complexity of the suicide attempt are the to a_d dre ss yo...,. . .I can. 't dsa v'-t thfoart Iw rhuant pilte aissh e itw iist dyifofiucruslt af oer o mI e to , con-
havmg now recogmze 1 h k for your
mysterious and still partly obscure details of this painful moment of his J.emplate your future with equanimity; owever, 1 t anl you f . d
past, especially the reasons which compelled him subsequently to en ' ss and I ask vou not to hide from me your rea state o mm
openne , . Id b d
shroud the action in complete silence and secrecy, which he never while this mood persists;-that wou e angerous. .~ .e :. !n. ;~. :~heI find I
broke. Paradoxically, though he revealed to no one in later life the real After deliberating on the 1:ossib.~e cau~;s of {~id thirty
can't call it either symptomatic of youth or o o g . . . t
origins of the visible gunshot wound on his breast, he nevertheless f l'fe with all its vicissitudes doubly bear witness agams
mythologized the wo.1md in a purportedly autobiographical novel called £o ur years o your 1 £ bl' d t all it "a sickness", and I
that interpretation; I am there ore o ige o c . . Africa and
The ATTow of Gold. Monsieur George, the hero of the novel and the feel i·ustified in doing so because of your recent expenenc.es m£ b
actual name Conrad called himself while living in Marseilles in the late your ensuing il In ess d un.n g w h.I Ch v•.o u. ha. d plenty bo ft tIim the inkor thsoamt y orue
1870' s, incurs the wound as a result of engaging in a duel to defend the med1·t a11·ons .... Perhaps mv• supp.os1.t10 n 1s wr·onng, .u ·go-onI ytha t
fr d the same pessimistic disposit10n m Marse1 es yea:s a :Ol.f J
honor of a shadowy woman named Dalla Rita. No mention of suicide
w:S against the background of your youth-and th!s re~nrorces my
appears in the novel. Although we must not limit a novelist to record f . w that being endowed with a melancholy d1spos1hon, you .s ~u.
ing only the factual details of his life, Conrad did insist, with surprising o v~e , . . nvthin likelv to brir1-g you to pess1m1st1c
avo1ld ~01~deroumgshoo:Ici 1;ad a ~wre a~tive life and possibly seek to lead
defensiveness in his tone, upon the strict autobiographical accuracy of cone us1ons--y
The Arrow of Gold. a rather jollier one.4 (my italics)
Conrad's abortive suicide attempt in 1878 was neither an entirely
Thaddeus' letter implies that Conrad's depression in 1890-91~ iw°was h se
unpredictable nor an isolated incident in his life. Two years earlier,
vere enough to suggest another serious battle against smc1de. e~e
Thaddeus Bobrowski had expressed alann at the morbid letters his
does Bobrowski. mention the word, but the allusion to ~ars:.1 es, t e
nephew was writing to 'him from Marseilles. Although Conrad's letters
alarm over "your real state of mind while this moo~ .per~1sts,. and the
to Bobrowski perished in the 1917 revolution, we do have, fortunately,
fear of continued melancholia, all intimate a cns1s s1tuat10~~: f tF~r
the uncle's letters- to Conrad, which reveal a persistent worry about
thermore, the urgent tone of Thaddeus' letter appears to con:a Co:~
young Joseph's state of mind. In October of 1876, for instance, Thad
. d C Mever' s conclusion m his psychoanalyllc b10grap y . -
B
deus chided his not-yet nineteen-year-old nephew for living a purpose raedm tahra t th. e1 po,s sibility of a secon d sui.ci d e at t empI d oes nan,e.e mr.o
less existence which, from the uncle's point of view, would surely lead
to disaster. «Certainly, there is no reason for one to take one's life or to h ave trou ble d Bobrows, ki · Rather than treating the 18I 78 sh·o otmg m
Marseilles in Mever's words, "more as a tempora.r,:,5 apseb m pkr.oper
go into a Carthusian monastery because of some folly one has commit- ' ' f ··1 t cem Borowsiap-
conduct than as a cause for uture v1gi an con '
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16
Joseph Conrad: Writing as Rescue Conrad's Escape from the Heart of Darkness 17
pe.a~-s- to-_.~£:tve been genuinely 1 d h
smc1de attempt. a arme at t e possibility of ano_ther crowded more experiences into his thirty four years of life than most
men do in a lifetime. It would therefore seem apparent-and we shall
Significantly, Conrad felt com elled h· .
last three decades of th . p h to s are his thoughts during the return to this later-that Conrad disregarded his uncle's counsel, for
e nmeteent ce t · h h'
Bobrowski who though d f 1 ury w,t ,s uncle Thaddeus within the decade he had established himself as a full-time novelist, a
I
, , separate rom him bv th d f
profession traditionally associated with contemplation rather than ac
rea d his letters carefully and d d h . ousan s o miles,
. respon e wit the s th d
· smearvtiecd u tnhdaetr stota nBdoibnrgo w'11o srk ·w hh i' c h Co dn r"a d was searc h·m gy.m Cp oan rYad a nla tepr roabg-- tion.
o f a nephew." Equall,v u. i npeo rst taonot T hm aodrdee in th e rte· la t·,o dn o f a son than "No man paid more for his lines than I have,"6 Con;-ad admitted to
reading audience. In a wav h ' _us cons itute Conrad's first
Arthur Symons in 1908: few novelists if any found the process of artis
rad' s deadlv . . . ' t_ ose confess1onal letters anticipated Con-
. senous commitment to w ·t· Th tic creation more torturous. Cunninghame Graham once remarked that
changed ' of course ' as d1'd the rr orm an. d co nt mtg . f h' e audience later writing was so arduous for Conrad that he «almost needed a Caesarean
fully protected his priv·a cv- b v preservm. g thne e n ·ot , ISf ia rt; he also care- operation of the soul before he was delivered of his masterpieces, "7 a
veil of fiction. What re1;1ai1;ed t· h wn er s gure behind the
metaphor that aptly characterizes hi§ ambivalence toward art.
writ~ng as rescue. cons ant, owever, was the need for
Conrad's vision of artistic creation was incurably romantic; unlike
Fearing that excessive introspection m "gh . ''t those artists who maintain a classical detachment from their work, he
state of health , Thadde us-m. true MarloIv iant wfoeramK en dan . alrde aCd.v fragile invoived himself to the point where he suffered and experienced some
immerse himself in unreflectiv t· y -a vise onrad to thing akin to a loss of life. The mysteries of creation involved the neces
that up to this point C e dac h10nd. let surely he must have known
, onra a ed a vi l . sity of surrendering completely to the demon within him, a demon that
Moreover action-tho h " ,, gorous Y active life.
' ug conso 1a tory d th " had to be alternately worshipped, cajoled-and always unleashed. The
and the friend of flattering illusion., (an e enemy of thought
experience of writing was for him a dangerous journey into the un
Nostromo )--does not ah . b as Conrad later wrote in
· vays prove eneficial to th b d' . known, similar in many ways to his audacious expedition into the Bel
\Ion. As a child Conrad h·a d w1· t nesse d hI'S nati.v e Pe I rodo mg nunl agina- gian Congo in 1890, out of which arose Heart of Darkness. Both jour
revo 1u tionary turbulence , a n d wi.t h h·i s parents he treok kan d conv Rse d i.n neys involved the exploration of uncharted territory far away from the
t o a concentration camp i'n S 'b . e across ussia safety he both demanded · and rejected. Moreover, the possibility of
I ena to which th K · k'
b een exiled for their poJ,·t·i ca l rad1'c a 1' i•s m Thep e tuor zemd owhs 1s had grave danger threatened both Conrad the explorer. and Conrad the
mother and father left h. h · rema re eat s of his
im an orp an at the age of I F h writer. For the explorer, with no guarantee of a return-trip home and
f,e w years he traveled fro I . e even. or t e next
m one re ative to anothe k' h with little possibility of outside help, success becomes dependent upon
hi ·sff i l atIe teens he served as an apprenti.c e sai.l or arf,t es eeh m·g a omd e. In literal survival. For the ,artist, also without certainty of precedents if he
dI cu t decision to leave his h H r avmg ma e the dares to experiment by rejecting well-trodden roads, the decision to
h h ome. e also journey d t M ii
t oug not before he sailed to th W I di e o arse. !es, become a pioneer m~y also involve peril. To change metaphors: the
of South America. Returning to ~ar::i~lt ·es and explored the coast
decision to gaze into the mirror may result in the possibility of a vision
bohemian life possibly b . I ds, he mdulged m a frenetic
, ecame mvo ve in polit· al . . too frightful to endure; or given the thesis that silence for the artist
gunsmuggling venture lost II h· IC m.tngue and a represents a form of suicide, the mirror may remain fatally blank, sig
l,ure t h rough his own h, and aN IS hm onev• gambling' an d nearI y lo st his
. l ext e went to Engl d h h nifying nothingness.
papers f,o r permanent citizenshi and b an w ere e filed
terwards he sailed to Singa p d h ecame a merchant seaman. Af- Conrad's early fiction dramatizes the real precariousness of the des
sor b ed their exotic rhythm poreh an d t e mdy sterio us E ast, w h ere he ab- cent for the explorer and artist alike. If this sounds melodramatic or
sas ea vance to the k f
And t h en he descended int Afr· h ran o master pilot. unduly metaphorical, we need only glance at his written correspon
continent which only a hand0f ul f1 cEa, w ere he beea me m· vo l ve d with a dence to understand how completely he lived in the world of his fic
The point is that Conrad h ~ . uropeans had dared to explore. . tion, and how dependent he was upon art to sustain his life. A vivid
Thaddeus Bobrowski' s advic ta imdmedrsed himself in action. And so example of this may be seen in a letter he wrote to Edward Garnett in
acti. ve li rr e must have see ed .o avo1 epression by cu1 ti· vatm. g a more 1899, while struggling to complete Heart of Darkness. Beginning with
me mcongruous to him. For thus far he had the characteristic complaint about the strains of writing, he informs his
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18 Joseph Conrad: Writing as f.escue Conrad's Escape from the Heart of Darkness 19
friend about a sudden attack of the gout that has virtually crippled him · climactic moments of a book and often culminated in a paralysis-like
~nd frustrated his most determined efforts to complete the story. Try stupor upon completion. Dr. Meyer has suggested that the "final thrust
mg to ignore the pain, Conrad labors to master the story, to impose a which brought him to the completion of a book would be followed at
coherent shape to it. The story, however, seems to be mastering him: once by a state of utter collapse, necessitating his taking to his bed for
days thereafter."9 At times, this pattern reached almost catastrophic
Th~ more I write the less substance do I see in my work. The scal~s are proportions. He suffered a long exhaustion after finishing N ostromo in
f~mg _off mv. eyes. It is tolerably awful. And I face it. I face it but the 1904 and a major breakdown after completing Under Western Eyes in
fnght is growmg on me. My fortitude is shaken by the view of the mon
1910. The latter collapse lasted three months and caused Jessie to fear
ster. . It d_oes not move; its eyes are baleful; it is as still as death itself
and it w.111 devour 1?e. _It~ stare has eaten into my soul already deep, for his life:
deep. I _am alone with 1t m a chasm with perpendicular sides of black
basalt. N~ver were sides so perpendicular a.Jd smooth, and high. Above, The novel is finished, but the penalaty [sic] has to be paid. Months of
your ?11x10us head against a bit of sky peers down-in vain-in vafn. nervous strain have ended in a complete nervous breakdown. Poor Con
Theres no rope long enough for that rescue. s rad is very ill and Dr. Hackney says it will be a long time before he is fit
for anything requiring mental exertion . ... There is the M. S. complete
The h~age of plunging into the black abyss, the obsessive trance-like but uncorrected and his fierce refusal to let even I touch it. It lays on a
repetitions, the fear of engulfment and resultant ioss of identity and table at the foot of his bed and he lives mixed up in the scenes and holds
converse with the characters.
the desperate need to be rescued, all suggest that Conrad has in:olun
I have been up with him night and day since Sunday week and he,
tanly proJected his imagination back into the heart of darkness. He
who is usually so depressed by illness, maintains he is not ill, and ac
now seems to be literally entrapped in the self-negating vision that has cuses the Dr. and I of trying to put him into an asylum.10
defeated ,;he fictional Kurtz. But whereas Kurtz .could at least thrill at
his own exalted and incredible degradation"-an oxymoron that de During the height of this delirium the only words that his wife could
picts_ both the heights and depths of his impassioned existenc,,.__:.no sav recognize were the Anglican burial service that he kept muttering
at,
-mg !oy qualifie: ~onrad' s horror here. Indeed, the subsequent act perhaps his own ironic commentary on the failure of Under Western
~nting about his Journey seems more precarious than the actual exper Eyes to provide him with cathartic relief. After his illness he told Nor
ience ten years before. The letter to Garnett, moreover raises a man Douglas, in words reminiscent of Marlow at the end of Heart of
n~mbe~ of disturbing ·-questions-questions implicitly re1at~d to our Darkness or of Razumov in the middle of Under Western Eyes, "I am
d1scuss10n of the cartoon earlier in this chapter. What specific fright all of a shake yet; I feel like a man returned from hell and look upon
worries the _author here: the fear of artistic failure or a more immediate the very world of the living with dread."" Jessie later described her
threat to his health? Who is that monster whose baleful eyes seem husband's writing room as a "torture-chamber"; no doubt his impris
read'. to dissect Conrad? And how can he escape its deadly stare? The onment was partly self-imposed, just as his physical suffering was partly
Belgian Congo had cast its heavy spell over Conrad in 1890 and a simi psychosomatic. For what is a psychosmnatic illness but a grim affinna
lar force frightens Marlow in Heart of Darkness, hut now an even more tion of the imagination? Quite literally, then, when Conrad created a
~em~nic_ po~er seems to stalk the artist, ready to devour him for his fiction he would often relive it to the point where his actual health suf
1magmative mtrusion into its forbidden realm. Conrad's view of art fered. A fictional metaphor often became literal reality to him, causing
then, stands antithetical to more traditional visions that imply olympia~ the distance between art and life temporarily t<> diminish. His imagina
aloofness or. a contemplative recreation of completed experience. The tion would create an image of terror that the artist could neither dis
Wordsworthia~ th_~m:y: ~f :motion recollected in tranquility gives way miss nor rationalize as· insubstantial fantasy, for the image possessed an
to the Comadian theory ot adventure relived in turbulence. appalling reality that literally terrified the mind that had created it.
Writing also exerted excruciating strains upon his physical and meil Conrad's letters poignantly confirm the extent of his suffering over
tal health. The cries of pain that he uttered in his letters were neither his art. First, however, a note of caution. The thousands of letters he
exaggerated rhetoric no,: casual pleas for help. Jessie Conrad's two penned in his lifetime cover a wide variety of topics and tones; when
biographies of hed,nsband indicate that he often developed painful' at reading these letters we must not reduce an animated symphony to a
tacks of the gout wh,1,, <>ngaged in writing, the same afiliction that had gloomy solo. Chatty gossip about friends and family, occasional com
first attacked him in Africa. The crippling sieges intensified during ments on art and politics, shrewd shop talk and hard-headed business