Conrad and Man’s Confidence

Joseph Conrad’s centennial is best observed in the reading, though the occasion will also serve to remind us that since his death in 1924 there’s been no one quite like him—no one who will speak to us in confidence of the great themes of the human spirit, in a voice familiar, respectful, engaging, like the voice of a friend heard over the years. There have been styles since Conrad, official and unofficial, and much ado about technique, but the vital innards have been missing—the life sources, the courage, the sympathy, the high purpose and nobility of vision, the permanent appeal to three generations of readers.

Gérard Jean-Aubry’s recently published biography (The Sea Dreamer, translated by Helen Sebba. Doubleday, $4.50) will confirm an impression conveyed by every line of Conrad’s best prose, namely: that Captain Korzeniowski had a genius for life as well as for letters. When examined in detail, a great life will reveal an inexorable logic from beginning to end. And so we say, “Yes, this is how it had to be. It could not have happened otherwise.” Then what are we to make of Conrad’s assertion that, had he not met Almayer, “there would never have been a line of mine in print”? I believe the answer can be found in the quotation from Sir Thomas Browne that Conrad selected for the title page of Chance: “Those that hold that all things are governed by Fortune had not erred, had they not persisted there.”

RH

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Robert A. Hunter

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Joseph Conrad’s centennial is best observed in the reading, though the occasion will also serve to remind us that since his death in 1924 there’s been no one quite like him—no one who will speak to us in confidence of the great themes of the human spirit, in a voice familiar, respectful, engaging, like the voice of a friend heard over the years. There have been styles since Conrad, official and unofficial, and much ado about technique, but the vital innards have been missing—the life sources, the courage, the sympathy, the high purpose and nobility of vision, the permanent appeal to three generations of readers.

Gérard Jean-Aubry’s recently published biography (The Sea Dreamer, translated by Helen Sebba. Doubleday, $4.50) will confirm an impression conveyed by every line of Conrad’s best prose, namely: that Captain Korzeniowski had a genius for life as well as for letters. When examined in detail, a great life will reveal an inexorable logic from beginning to end. And so we say, “Yes, this is how it had to be. It could not have happened otherwise.” Then what are we to make of Conrad’s assertion that, had he not met Almayer, “there would never have been a line of mine in print”? I believe the answer can be found in the quotation from Sir Thomas Browne that Conrad selected for the title page of Chance: “Those that hold that all things are governed by Fortune had not erred, had they not persisted there.”