Chapter 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.