Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad's Novels

Traci ng t h e Aesth etic Pr inciple in Conrad’s Novels

This page intentionally left blank

Traci ng t h e Aesth etic Pr inciple in Conrad’s Novels

Yael Levin

tracing the aesthetic principle in conrad’s novels Copyright © Yael Levin, 2008. All rights reserved. First published in 2008 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-0-230-60986-0 ISBN-10: 0-230-60986-4 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: January 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

To Aryeh and Aliza

This page intentionally left blank

It is otherwise with the artist. —Joseph Conrad, NN

This page intentionally left blank

Contents

Acknowledgments

xi

Abbreviations

xii

1

Introduction

1

2

Seeing Otherwise: From Almayer’s Folly to Lord Jim

23

3

A Spectral Temporality: The History of Nostromo as Perpetual Return

53

4

Signifying Absences in Under Western Eyes

73

5

The Arrow of Gold: An Exercise in Procuring Absence

105

6

To End with Suspense

139

7

Conclusion

169

Notes

175

References

191

Index

199

This page intentionally left blank

Ack nowledgments

My sincerest thanks and gratitude to Professor Robert Hampson whose comments, observations, and suggestions greatly benefited this study. I feel honored to have had the chance to work with such an enviably knowledgeable and insightful Conrad scholar. A further debt is due to Professor Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan, a dear mentor and friend who not only introduced me to my first Conrad novel, Under Western Eyes, but also indulged me in my early absent-present obsessions. I would like to thank my parents, Aryeh and Aliza, two truly inspiring role models. I am and forever will be grateful for their unwavering encouragement and support. I also wish to express my gratitude to my husband, Ruben, for his invaluable input and love. I would like to thank the editors of the Conradian, Conradiana, and Partial Answers for their kind permission to reprint parts of the papers published in their journals.

Abbreviations Co nr ad’s Work s AF

Almayer’s Folly

AG

The Arrow of Gold

HD

Heart of Darkness

LJ

Lord Jim

OI

An Outcast of the Islands

N

Nostromo

NN

The Nigger of the “Narcissus”

NLL

Notes on Life and Letters

PR

A Personal Record

ASS

A Set of Six

SL

The Shadow-Line

S

Suspense

TH

Tales of Hearsay

TU

Tales of Unrest

TLS

‘Twixt Land and Sea

UWE Under Western Eyes V

Victory

All page references to Conrad’s works refer to the Dent editions (J. M. Dent & Sons, 1945–55). The author’s ellipses appear in brackets. An ellipsis without brackets appears in Conrad’s text.

This page intentionally left blank

4

Chapter 1

I ntrodu ction

All through the languid stillness of that night he fought with the impalpable; he fought with the shadows, with the darkness, with the silence. He fought without a sound, striking futile blows, dashing from side to side; obstinate, hopeless, and always beaten back; like a man bewitched within the invisible sweep of a magic circle. —OI, 157

W

illems’s solitude is absolute, but he does not battle alone. Whether it is Almayer, Willems, Jim, Decoud, Heyst, Razumov, or any one of Conrad’s protagonists, man’s struggle with the forces of the impalpable recurs as this thematic preoccupation obsessively haunts the Conrad canon. The “invisible sweep of a magic circle” thus becomes one of the determining locales in the psychic topography of the Conradian text. Within the confines of this enchanting circle, the human senses are rendered obsolete; one cannot hear, see, or touch the enduring enemy. This is a metaphysical battle, a war waged against shadow, idea, thought, or illusion. At the same time, the threat of the impalpable, the unnamable, and the invisible—be it vague or evanescent—is real; caught in the “magic circle,” man must prevail or perish. The underlying lack that comes of an absolute negation of sound, light, sight, and touch metamorphoses into a living, menacing presence that indubitably vanquishes he who dares challenge it. In 1948, F. R. Leavis famously reflected that, for Conrad, it is “the vague and unrealizable” that “is the profoundly and tremendously significant” (199). Leavis’s words suggest that the struggles of Conrad’s

2

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

fictional characters are mirrored in his literary aesthetic. In this sense, Conrad’s fiction is itself a “magic circle” where, as Leavis argued, the unknowable or inconceivable overshadows the easily defined present. Needless to say, Leavis was not impressed by Conrad’s theatrics of the “unspeakable” and the “inconceivable.” Alleging an undue recourse to what he coined “adjectival insistence,” he criticized Conrad’s repetitious occupation with “the presence of what he can’t produce” (Leavis, 199). Leavis noted further that in Conrad’s writing, “the same vocabulary, the same adjectival insistence upon inexpressible and incomprehensible mystery, is applied to the evocation of human profundities and spiritual horrors; to magnifying a thrilled sense of the unspeakable potentialities of the human soul” (196–97). Leavis’s final sentence is clear: “the actual effect is not to magnify but rather to muffle” (197). In the wake of Leavis’s strict appraisal, critical attempts have been made to redeem Conrad’s “insistences,” thereby recuperating Conrad’s seemingly obsessive preoccupation with the representation of the unspeakable. James Guetti notes that due to the failure of language, “reality” in Conrad’s stories “exists not in the positive but in the negative” (59). He consequently proposes that Conrad is “dramatizing the very inability that Leavis describes as a weakness of the prose” (5). Striking on a different path of interpretation, Allon White argues that the achievement of Heart of Darkness lies in the very technique that Leavis had earlier questioned which “preserves the aura of the work whilst simultaneously tantalizing the reader with an offer of initiation into mysteries” (119). Perhaps more in line with Guetti’s reading, Jeremy Hawthorn once again draws our attention to the inadequacy of words. In a study of Conrad’s language, he notes that “where something is too deep for words then you leave words out,” concluding further that “it is not too outrageous to suggest that Conrad is using a comparable technique in his ‘adjectival insistence’” (Language, 31). We see, then, that Guetti, White, and Hawthorn recover Conrad’s “insistences” as the markers of a profound engagement with the deficiencies inherent to language, an engagement that elicits, regardless of the debilitating limits constitutive of its very terms, a “tantalizing” dramatization of that which cannot be expressed. Although these readings provide a welcome reevaluation of Conrad’s style, it is clear that Leavis’s dissatisfaction does not arise from those moments where, as Conrad senses that “something is too deep for words,” he “leaves words out.” Rather, Leavis’s criticism is incited by the phenomenon in Conrad’s writing whereby words are not left out but rather proliferate in the void left by that which cannot be

Introduction

3

expressed or represented. Hawthorn addresses this and notes that Conrad’s prose is marked not only by verbal elimination but also by words that “draw attention to their own inadequacy” (Language, 31). As their prefixes repeatedly show, the “unspeakable” and the “inconceivable,” but also the recurring “irrealizable,” “inscrutable,” “invisible,” and “impossible,” are all adjectival negations. As such, they may indeed be said to mark the paucity and inadequacy of a language that cannot be made to represent the infinite range of impressions known to man. At the same time, it is clear that Conrad’s frequent negatives may be indicative not of a literary necessity that stems from the constraints of a limited language but of an artistic choice. Conrad paints a picture not by affirming what is seen but by indicating what is not. In this sense, Conrad’s “adjectival insistence” provides an alternative aesthetic to the realism of nominal affirmation or naming. While Hawthorn concludes that presence is inevitably distorted by its representation in language, I would like to argue that it is the very conception of presence that undergoes a radical transformation in Conrad’s writing.

Th e O therwis e Pres ent Conrad’s tales evolve and develop around a central contradiction: shadow, silence, and darkness—and other such indelible markers of lack—are invested with the power of presence. The clear categorical distinction between absence and presence is thus subverted as the impalpable is conjured up, fleshed out, and transfigured. As such an attempted subversion plays havoc with the categorical boundaries of language, the critical reader cannot address these transfigurations within the Conradian text without reverting to contradiction. As Leavis wrote, Conrad insists on the “presence of what he can’t produce” (199, my emphasis). If such is the case, it may be important to inquire whether Conrad actually succeeds in producing this “presence” or whether this insisted presence is, in fact, a nontractable nonbeing. Are we to address Conrad’s “insistences” from within the ontological framework of presence—or rather absence? In his acclaimed Narrative Discourse, Gérard Genette informs his readers, “Absence is absolute, but presence has degrees” (245). Genette’s statement depends on the assumption that there is a qualitative distinction between the binary poles. Absence and presence do not complement each other but rather correspond to two distinguishable essences. Whereas absence is uncountable, an unchanging and indivisible constant, presence is quantifiable, a variable in flux. While such an

4

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

exercised demarcation may prove intuitively alluring, we find that it does not necessarily correspond to the pseudoscientific laws of structuralism. It may therefore be instructive to consult the Oxford English Dictionary definition of absence. In marked contrast to Genette’s approach, here absence is defined in terms of its categorical opposite. The absent, we learn, is that which is nonpresent.1 We find that absence is not essentially other to presence (as good is to bad) but rather its diametrical opposite.2 The difference between the binary poles is therefore not necessarily qualitative, as Genette suggests, but quantitative. Absence and presence are inextricably tied in a relationship of diametrical exclusivity. As in a mathematical equation, the one complements the other in perfect opposition. If such is the nature of their relationship, the modification of one binary opposite inevitably leads to a complementary change in the other. If presence comes in degrees, absence follows suit. A cup half full is always half empty. We have so far discussed two distinct definitions of the binary opposites—the essentialist approach on one hand and the mathematical on the other. Regardless of their underlying difference, the two approaches share a fundamental precept: to think of absence and presence is to think disjunctively; we may think of either one or the other, but we may never think of both at one and the same time. Whether we make a qualitative or a quantitative distinction between the two, absence remains that which is not present; presence remains that which is not absent. It is precisely the binary nature of their relationship that will not allow us to think of absence and presence together. This disjunctive approach is instructive in elucidating Leavis’s criticism. Like Genette, Leavis holds an essentialist approach to the binary poles. If absence is always already absolute, then the impalpable, silent, and invisible “sweep” can be nothing but a technical flourish intended to mask an irremediable lack. Conrad’s method of representation through negation can be but a decoy—a play of signifiers bereft of referents. Like the tale of “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” the specialized garments are, in actuality, a psychological trick designed to hide nothingness; what is believed to be a full-fledged presence is mere absence. Appearing to assume the role of the brave lad, Leavis unmasks the hoax: Conrad, he tells us, makes “a virtue out of not knowing what he means” (199). Interestingly, it would appear that the disjunctive approach is shared not only by Genette and Leavis but also by those critics who attempt to contradict Leavis’s literary indictment. We have already touched on the manner in which they suggest that the perceived problematic stems not from Conrad’s intentions but from the medium in which he represents them. As Edward Said writes, “To

Introduction

5

have chosen to write, then, is to have chosen in a particular way neither to say directly nor to mean exactly in the way he had hoped to say or to mean” (World, 90). Said does not recuperate Conrad’s literary absences but rather excuses them through reference to the signifying barrier of language, as the inevitable casualty of a constraining medium. It seems that in order to address Conrad’s writing, we must cast off not only the folk tale but also the premise it shares with Western metaphysics. For in order to reread Conrad’s absent presences and present absences, we must renounce the rigidly dichotomous and disjunctive view of the binary poles and transcend our inexorable bias toward presence. We must rethink the relationship between absence and presence from within a more flexible interpretative frame. By introducing an alternative, conjunctive approach, we are ultimately admitting a third category into the discussion: an intermediary position that exists between the two absolutes. Inevitably, such an understanding necessitates the rather forbidding task of grappling with a language that does not readily embrace the intermediate. Fortunately, such a task has already been undertaken. In his writings, Jacques Derrida challenges precisely “the limit which has always constrained us, which still constrains us—as inhabitants of a language and a system of thought—to formulate the meaning of Being in general as presence or absence, in the categories of being or beingness” (Margins, 10). The project of deconstruction is relevant here, as it initiates a probing and testing discourse that questions the very foundations of our understanding and perception and, in so doing, allows for the rethinking of such set categories as absence and presence. As we will see, Derrida’s work and, more specifically, the notion of “différance” illuminate Conrad’s transgression of the boundaries between absence and presence and the consequent upheaval of the separateness and discreteness of the binary poles. While it is my contention that deconstruction offers valuable tools of analysis for the reading of Conrad, the conditions of fin-de-siècle writing may appear to be at odds with the precepts of a theoretical movement born in the 1960s. Thus, for example, where Conrad notes that his readers yearn to be “set at rest” and to achieve a sense of “finality” (NLL, 19), the notion of “différance” entails the “temporal and temporizing mediation of a detour that suspends the accomplishment or fulfillment of ‘desire’ or ‘will’” (Derrida, Margins, 8). Clearly, these underlying motives appear to be contradictory: where one calls for closure, the other prescribes an endless slippage—an indelible openness. It will nevertheless be shown in the course of this study that, in the spirit of deconstruction, Conrad’s awareness of certain set

6

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

limitations (in terms of reader expectations) does not signal an unqualified acceptance of their terms. Repeatedly, Conrad does not set us “at rest”; he does not provide us with a sense of “finality.” We will see, then, that in Conrad’s writing, there is a certain sense of “différance,” if we may be so reckless as to borrow the term, as the possibility of closure is undermined by an underlying openness and the fulfillment of desire by a tantalizing “irrealizability.”3 As we have seen, it is nevertheless clear that the frustration of expectations does not necessarily produce original critical solutions. Those readers who uphold the dichotomous view that Conrad challenges readily assign his intermediary creations to the order of either presence or absence, as they are not willing to suspend their disbelief in order to view them as both absent and present at one and the same time. Thus, for example, we have seen that Leavis rationalizes and subsequently dismisses his incomprehension as a product of absence. As he states, “The insistence betrays the absence, the willed “intensity” the nullity” (199). The association of the enigmatic with the absent, however, may stem from an erroneous leap to judgment. It is precisely such a leap to judgment that is challenged by Geoffrey Bennington in his attempt to correct the suspicion readers may harbor in relation to Derrida’s work. He argues that “we must not suppose that because Derrida questions presence he must therefore be a thinker of absence, emptiness, nothing” (Bennington, 75–76). Bennington’s defense of Derrida is useful here, if only vicariously, in its suggestion that there may be an additional interpretative solution to such a challenging of our preconceptions. A questioning or negation of presence does not unequivocally imply an endorsement of absence. Bearing this in mind, we now turn to a discussion of the collapsing of categorical boundaries in Conrad’s texts where it seems that neither absence nor presence can be deemed “absolute.” Conrad repeatedly questions the possibility of an essential opposition between the two terms. Rejecting the relationship of exclusivity that we associate with the binary poles, Conrad chooses rather to exercise an interrelationship that is characterized by flux and interchangeability. The two categories are always already contaminated by their opposing counterpart. Transgressing and transgressed, absence and presence, are boundaryless, and their distinctiveness and uniqueness forever undermined. This introductory elaboration of the terms absence and presence has provided a necessary framework for what is, in effect, a close textual reading of a selection of Conrad novels and short stories. It is the analysis of the textual manifestation of absence and presence that provides the focus of this study and directs my reading of Lord Jim,

Introduction

7

Nostromo, Under Western Eyes, The Arrow of Gold, and Suspense. Within these novels—and other Conrad texts to which I will refer more briefly—the fluid meeting of the binary poles lends itself to an accumulation of misleading signification, as signified and signifier are repeatedly mismatched in the attempt to represent the two terms. Such an exercise culminates in a chiastic crossover effect that is, in most instances, suffused with irony. Thus, in The Arrow of Gold, George tells Rita, “When I have you before my eyes [. . .] I fail to see you distinctly” (AG, 298). George’s revelation relies precisely on an inverted signification. Although faced with a distinct presence, George’s perceptive powers cannot but translate the manifest into absence. If she is there, he cannot see her. While this mystifying turn may be relegated to the hyperbole of a lover’s words of seduction, we find a counter example at the outset of Under Western Eyes. Here, in a much less romantic interlude, Haldin tells Razumov, “I understand your silence” (UWE, 65). Taking an inverse form, we have, once again, an example of a crossover of signification. Haldin transforms silence—an absence of speech—into meaning or presence. That is to say that what he understands is precisely what he cannot hear. These examples are indicative of an underlying problematic that would inevitably permeate our attempt to distinguish or to essentialize absence and presence in Conrad’s texts. The categories are not only enmeshed and blurred but also deceptive. In place of the distinct binary opposites, we have a play, a deferral, and a continual oscillation between two categorical extremes. Both absent and present at one and the same time, this dynamic entity is what I have termed “the otherwise present.” Recalling the Derridean trace, this nonentity “is not a presence but the simulacrum of a presence that dislocates itself, displaces itself, refers itself, it properly has no sites— erasure belongs to its structure” (Derrida, Margins, 24). As the elusively indeterminate, the study of the otherwise present may appear to be affiliated to analyses of Conrad’s obscurity or ambiguity. Conrad’s complex and complicating literary methods have long been the focus of critical readings of his work. Indeed, for over fifty years, Conrad has been notorious for his resistance to affirmation, his skeptical treatment of all absolutes, and a literary style that invests highly in suggestion rather than explicit naming. Today there are several important studies of Conrad’s obscurity or ambiguity that offer a systematic analysis of Conrad’s elusive methods, highlighting their contribution to modernist modes of writing and tracing their roots within the philosophical and literary traditions of Conrad’s developing career.4

8

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

These existing studies are indicative of the serious and multifarious critical attention already devoted to the ambiguous and mystifying aspects of Conrad’s poetics. Despite the diversity of their philosophical and theoretical frameworks, their interpretative strategies in addressing Conrad’s texts, their definition of ambiguity (and its derivatives), and their interpretation of its usage and motivation, I find that they all exercise a preliminary interpretative leap. The textual phenomenon that provides the focus of their study—be it absence, contradiction, or negativity—is soon converted into a more alluring substitute, namely obscurity, ambiguity, the sublime, or, as the case may be, “learned unknowing.” In coining such a term as the otherwise present, I may be accused of a similar conversion. Here, too, the unexplained is transformed into a convenient alternative—a reductive substitute. And, yet, the “otherwise present,” which will shortly be defined precisely as a substitute, does not attempt to blur, classify, or explain away the inherent oddities of the Conradian text. By choosing a neutral term that does not connote a hermeneutic impossibility or an interpretative occlusion, I attempt to resist a teleological reading that focuses on an end product—ambiguity, obscurity, or any other such term. Rather than signify a result, the otherwise present marks a process: the oscillation between presence and absence as it is represented in the text. As such, the process is discernable both in the thematic design of Conrad’s works and in their stylistic form. The mapping of the otherwise present will therefore allow us to compare not only the representation of different thematic strands (such as spectrality, love, and guilt) but also different stylistic methods (as, for example, the embedded narrative structure, repetition, the protagonist narrator, and so forth). Significantly, the otherwise present does not allude only to that which is not understood or comprehended, the indelible oddities in Conrad’s texts. Rather, we will see that it permeates both the odd and the transparent, both the mysteries of an occluded representation and the less problematized motifs of love and desire. It is thus crucial to note that this neither is nor wishes to become a study of Conrad’s ambiguity. And, yet, if we are to address the point in which the two analyses are affiliated, it would seem that it is in the introduction of the problematic conjunction “both” that the otherwise present may be perceived as a sibling or counterpart to the term ambiguity. In The Concept of Ambiguity, Shlomith Rimmon addresses the problem at the heart of this conjunction as she writes that the human mind is not capable of double perception: “rabbit or duck, urn or two profiles [. . .] are all impossible objects. Impossible, because they keep

Introduction

9

our imitative faculty constantly busy; impossible also because they are outside the range of our experience” (XI). As Rimmon describes, a double interpretation leads to an “impossible situation” that engenders ambiguity. Like Rimmon’s ambiguity, the otherwise present tests the boundaries of absence and presence by creating precisely such an impossibility in the meeting of the binary poles. Human perception is challenged and frustrated as the reader attempts to make sense of the coexistence of two opposites. The two terms, however, are not interchangeable. Rimmon explains that the reader of The Sacred Fount or “The Figure in the Carpet” is caught between two—and only two— mutually exclusive interpretations. Ambiguity thus signals a closing up of hermeneutic potential. Such is not the case with regard to the otherwise present. In Conrad’s texts, the otherwise present does not limit hermeneutic potential but rather increases it. Much in this vein, in 1922 Conrad wrote to Richard Curle that “explicitness, my dear fellow, is fatal to the glamour of all artistic work, robbing it of all suggestiveness, destroying all illusion” (Conrad, Letters, 89). Conrad’s aim is not so much to create ambiguity but rather to avoid the destructive effect of the explicit on the imagination. While the difference between ambiguity and “suggestiveness” may appear to be tenuous (for ambiguity is one of the effects of a resistance to explicit representation), it is nevertheless of fundamental importance. Whereas the first is liable to limit perception to a choice of the two mutually exclusive interpretations that create an “impossible situation,” the latter provokes and thereby promotes the workings of the imagination. Rimmon’s definition of ambiguity relies on the coexistence of mutually exclusive interpretations. The “impossible situation” is such precisely because it remains within the confines of an ontological framework: there is a figure in Vereker’s carpet, or there is not. That is to say that while both possibilities are viable, we must finally choose between them. The otherwise present collapses such a formal relationship, thereby resisting such a dichotomous ontology. There are no two interpretations to choose from, but rather an unlimited imaginative potential. Similarly, while the otherwise present may produce obscurity, this is merely one of a host of possible effects that it produces. Rimmon’s conception of ambiguity is a category of logic, but the otherwise present can be perceived only outside such a framework. Before launching a detailed discussion of what I term the otherwise present, I feel that two methodological observations are needed. First, in coining such a term as the “otherwise present,” I may be charged

10

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

with a reassertion of Genette’s initial claim; the otherwise present is a presence by degrees, an essential other to the absolute absent. My reading, however, does not deal with essentialist absolutes, nor does it deal with mathematical degrees. The term “otherwise present” is a provisional one, a product of the limitations of an ontological language that has been challenged but not replaced. We have still to invent a language in which absence and presence are not diametrically opposed, and a third term—perhaps a meeting of the two poles— exists. Hence, if there appears to be a privileging of presence in such a formulation as the “otherwise present,” it should be noted that it is neither more correct nor apt than the interchangeable alternative, the “otherwise absent.” My choice of the former stems from my belief that many readers still intuitively agree with Genette’s distinction and do not recognize the possibility of a relative absence, that is to say, an absence that comes in degrees and is therefore, to some extent, present. Finally, it is important to note that my analysis does not focus on either one of the binary poles. The perpetual oscillation between the two does not render either absence or presence victorious or superior in the Conradian canon. In following this textual practice, my emphasis is on neither one of the two categories but on the “otherwise,” that is, the process whereby the two categories overlap, interrelate, and interchange—the method in which they are made to be otherwise. Second, it is important to note that in the transition from world to text, an interesting reversal occurs with relation to both absence and presence. Presence is represented, thereby creating a removal, an absenting, as it were, of its original physical manifestation. What we have is now its textual counterpart, a simulacrum that inevitably marks the disappearance of the model on which it is based. Whereas presence is in this matter absented, the textual manifestation of absence results in precisely an inverse process. In the process of signification, absence loses its defining principle, that is, its nonpresence. Rather, the textual representation of absence is a method of making present. It is in this manner that the text produces and reproduces both absence and presence, thereby a priori blurring the boundaries between the two poles. The process of textualization evidently problematizes the terms central to my analysis. Tzvetan Todorov faces a similar challenge in his treatment of the real and the imaginary in The Fantastic.5 Despite the centrality of the two terms to his argument, he concedes that “by its very definition, literature bypasses the distinctions of the real and the imaginary, of what is and what is not” (Todorov, 167). If, from the outset, we are unable to distinguish absence and presence within the confines of a textual space, it would be difficult to then claim that

Introduction

11

my analysis traces the collapsing of the boundaries in Conrad’s works. This, however, is precisely what I wish to undertake. As Todorov has done before me, I concede that my use of the terms “absence” and “presence” is provisional. As he writes, “in order to deny an opposition, we must first of all acknowledge its terms; in order to perform a sacrifice, we must know what to sacrifice” (Todorov, 168). Consequently, although already textualized, ellipsis, silence, and what is essentially a presented “nonpresence” will be addressed as absence in my critical treatment of them. The inverse is true of any represented, and therefore removed, textual presence that will be discussed. Interestingly, this textualizing “contamination” or “corruption” of the two terms provides a fitting analogy to the processes that take place within Conrad’s novels. Conceding, then, that the terms of this discussion are always already haunted by the traces of inverted commas, we may now go on to formulate a definition of the otherwise present. As we have seen, the Conradian otherwise present is a palpable nonentity that resists ontological classification. Neither absent nor present, it is the indeterminate, a product of a constant oscillation between the visible and the invisible, the tangible and the intangible, the constant and the elusive. In this sense, it is a corruption, a unique phenomenon that is a result of the contamination, as it were, of either absence or presence by its binary opposite. In turning to the text, we find that this collapsing of the binary boundaries and their cocontamination follows two possible trajectories of substitution. The first of these two processes comes from a textual lack or gap that demands completion. Here, the otherwise present fulfils the role of a substitute that is created to fill, complete, or veil absence. As such, it functions as an intermediary replacement that shuttles between absence and presence. To illustrate, we may return to Under Western Eyes where we find two key examples of this process. As we have noted, Razumov’s taciturnity provides one of the formative gaps from which the story develops. Interpreted as a sign of seriousness and trustworthiness, Razumov’s silence propels the action, bringing Haldin to his doorstep. This original interpretative error is then repeated as Razumov’s taciturnity colors his relations with all the characters he meets throughout the novel. His reserve is noted in relation to his social encounters at the university, in his encounter with Haldin and later Nathalie, and in his response to the English teacher and to the revolutionists. From the start, however, Razumov’s silences are forever filled in as they are hermeneutically transformed into present meaning. In an act of interpretation, Haldin, Nathalie,

12

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

the English teacher, and the revolutionists all transform silence into speech, absence into presence. As each of them procures an interpretative substitute, they manage to cover up the noticeable lack that comes of their encounter with Razumov. A further example that I wish to outline is not precisely of the order of interpretation. Earlier in the novel, Razumov performs a similar transformation. In place of the gap left in Haldin’s wake, Razumov conjures up a moral specter, a substitute that is brought into being by a guilt-evoking absence. Haldin’s ghostly presence, another otherwise-present substitute, subsequently haunts Razumov and the reader until the novel’s conclusion. In The Arrow of Gold, George’s encounter with “the woman of all time” (AG, 67) allows Conrad to experiment with an inverse technique. Although George is faced with an actual, living presence, he, too, conjures up a substitute. Helplessly besotted, George imaginatively transforms the living, present-to-being Rita into a shifty and evanescent construct. In place of the woman of flesh and blood, George concentrates his infatuation on an imagined substitute, a woman so extraordinary that she cannot exist in corporeal form. Presence is thus absented, usurped by an imagined projection. To borrow Conrad’s awkward but nevertheless telling neologism, Rita is represented as the “irrealizable,” an otherwise-present construct that provokes desire and perpetuates it by barring its appeasement.6 These two examples show that whether the process of substitution takes on the form of a “presencing” of absence or the absenting of presence, the text resists the binary extremes, forever providing a substitutive mediation in the form of the otherwise present. The two processes demonstrated above arise from an essentially spatial interpretation of the binary opposites. Absence is that which is not there; presence is that which is. Conrad’s pitting of the two diametrical opposites against one another, however, follows not only a spatial but also a temporal trajectory. Chapter 3 of this study is devoted to the latter phenomenon, whereby the present is represented as a chronological impossibility—a conjunction of the now and the new, that is, of that which is present and that which was never present. The complex temporal machinery of Nostromo is one of a present that is stripped of a contemporaneity with itself—one that collapses the linearity of historical progression with the present-less circularity of repetition. The coincidence of absence and presence here results in the subversion and reinvention of historical discourse. We have seen, then, that the otherwise present is a product of an oscillation between the binary poles, a play or slippage between two no longer defined but fluid extremes. As the above examples show,

Introduction

13

one of the primary textual spaces in which we find this construct is the diegetic level where the play between absence and presence is often psychologically motivated. Here the otherwise present takes the form of a subjective construct in the minds of the participating characters, a metaphysical object that enjoys the limitless potential of the imagined. As such, it is not time bound, nor is it subjected to the rules of logic or reality. One of the recurring manifestations of this otherwise-present form is the illusion. We find a fitting tribute to its power in “Karain”: “Karain stared stonily; and looking at his rigid figure, I thought of his wanderings, of that obscure Odyssey of revenge, of all the men that wander amongst illusions; of the illusions as restless as men, of the illusions faithful, faithless; of the illusions that give joy, that give sorrow, that give pain, that give peace; of the invincible illusions that can make life and death appear serene, inspiring, tormented, or ignoble” (TU, 40). These lines pay homage to the infinite potential of illusion. Although internal, its control over man is in many ways greater than that of external reality. Man is motivated not by the immediate, surrounding present but by a constructed, unattainable image that, like the “invisible sweep of a magic circle,” has no external form. This citation contributes further to the understanding of the Conradian illusion in its suggestion that the illusion comes in many distinct forms, eliciting guilt (Razumov), shame (Jim), desire (George), and hope (Almayer). Although such characters as Jim and George are not usually compared—we do not often classify Lord Jim and The Arrow of Gold as comparable texts—I will demonstrate that there is a fundamental similarity in their psychological makeup. The two are both made and destroyed by their illusions. We find in Conrad’s texts a cluster of terms that are associated with the concept of illusion and likewise exert an enormous influence on the subject in which they are fixed. Karain’s “tormented weariness” is a result of “the anger and the fear of a struggle against a thought, an idea—against something that cannot be grappled, that never rests—a shadow, a nothing, unconquerable and immortal, that preys upon life” (TU, 23). Recalling Willems’s struggle, Karain’s torment is the result of an idea—a thought. Like the illusion, the idea— but also, by extension, the dream, belief, despair, honor, shame, guilt, and desire—affects the subject in an almost interchangeable manner. The inner voice that comes of these psychological constructs overshadows reality; its subjective otherwise-present projections lead to a misrepresentation of reality. While the ghostly and the spectral may be seen to coincide with the illusory, otherworldly apparitions extend the application of the otherwise present: the impossible conjunction that

14

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

they represent is not only spatial but also temporal—both there and not there, they are also both past and present. As such, they provide an especially evocative manifestation of the otherwise present. If the illusion, the ghostly, and their derivatives provide the locale for the otherwise present in the minds of Conrad’s protagonists, an objective correlative for these terms is readily found in Conrad’s miseen-scène. Repeatedly, Conrad alludes to shadow, mist, darkness, fog, and so forth. Outside and inside become mirror images as the subjective inability to see beyond the mind’s projections translates into an objectively occluded reality. Moreover, these natural phenomena undergo a transformation akin to the one discussed so far. In Conrad and Impressionism, John G. Peters perceives the pervading darkness in The Shadow-Line as an “absence” (47) of context. And, yet, the terms used to describe it denote a tangible presence. It is like a “wall” that has to be “penetrated” (SL, 112). Similarly, the fog in The Tale grows “denser and as if solid in its amazing dumb immobility” (TH, 67). Presence is thus made to be otherwise both internally and externally. We have seen that the otherwise present proliferates in the life of Conrad’s characters and their represented surroundings. There is a strong sense, however, that the clashing of binary poles exceeds this thematic level, influencing not only what but how Conrad writes. Conrad’s stylization mirrors this thematic preoccupation, thereby exhibiting a technical parallel of the play between absence and presence. This is made evident in the manner in which the Conradian text is constructed of two warring forces: the first propagates distance and doubt; the second breeds proximity and assurance. If the first suggests absence, the second evokes presence. Conrad’s use of the narrative frame technique provides one of the most obvious methods associated with the first of these two dynamics. Through the piling up of narrative levels, the embedded narrative structure produces an illusion of distance both in time and space, which are both altered in the shift from one narrative level to the other. In the rendering of a story through a mediating, distancing frame, Conrad undermines the reality or presence of that which we encounter in the inner frame (the diegesis). As Marlow famously tells his listeners aboard the Nellie, “Of course in this you fellows see more than I could then. You see me, whom you know” (HD, 83). Marlow’s reassuring words point to the alleged transparency of the outer narrative frame: his listeners are not enveloped in darkness, neither literally nor metaphorically. However, in the following sentence the narrator nevertheless informs the reader that darkness has indeed engulfed Marlow’s listeners and that he cannot see Marlow at all. The narrator’s

Introduction

15

words thus disprove Marlow’s, showing, in effect, that the darkness Marlow experienced in the Congo is contagious and has spilled over from the inner to the outer narrative. The story and its living presence (“the dream sensation” HD, 82) are therefore twice removed. Although the embedded narrative technique is of an altogether different method of representation than that used by Marcel Proust in In Search of Lost Time, Genette’s writing on the latter offers a relevant summary of this effect. He writes, “What we are dealing with is not the story, but the story’s ‘image,’ its trace in memory” (Genette, 167–68). Genette’s words are doubly significant. The “trace” is by nature temporally distant; its lack of accuracy is indicative of the effects of erosion in time. Furthermore, the trace is housed in the mind—in memory. The erosion is therefore produced not only by time but also by the mutations brought about by the subjective interpretative frame exercised by the beholder. Indeed, with the passing of time, the details become more inward than they are outward; the memory becomes as much a product of the self as it is of the object, furthering the apparent distance between the tale and its readers. These factors are often reinforced by another of Conrad’s stylistic measures, namely the introduction of a narrator—not necessarily the protagonist but an onlooker of sorts—who offers a subjective prism of interpretation that often leads to an occlusion of the facts or a disruption of the narrative chronology. Relating to this type of narrator, and more specifically to Marlow who is a very appropriate representative, Moser notes that such a narrator “acts as a barrier or screen between the reader and the action” (38). And, yet, while “the extreme and overt break with the distance, impersonality, and omniscience of third person narration” (Watt, 205) may be said to result in a narrator that is often considered to be as confused as he is confusing, Conrad is not deterred from reinvoking him again and again in Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Chance. It is not only in his exploration of Marlow’s character, however, that Conrad creates a distorting narrating voice that acts as a barrier or screen between the reader and the narrated story. In The Arrow of Gold, the first-person narration is in many ways put in question by the anonymous narrator’s opening and concluding narrative frames. Furthermore, even in those cases in which the narrator’s story is not circumscribed by an outer narrative, his account is nevertheless undermined by biases and distortions that attest to an underlying unreliability. Thus, for example, in Under Western Eyes, the English teacher’s digressions, concessions, and excuses all suggest that we have here a case of the narrator who “doth protest too much.” The distance

16

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

between teller and told, reader and text, is further supplemented by additional representational techniques. As we have seen, Leavis claims that Conrad’s “adjectival insistence” suffices to induce a distancing obfuscation. Furthermore, through the use of ambiguity, competing narratives, irony, and, to use Ian Watt’s term, “delayed decoding” (techniques that produce suspicion and incomprehension in the reader), Conrad contributes to the underlying sense of distance that the reader experiences in his or her reading of the text. Interestingly, while Conrad appears to distance the readers from the text, he simultaneously invests in an attempt to bring them closer. This is apparent in the recurring representation of an oral transmission in his narratives.7 Tony Tanner suggests that the manner in which Conrad reintroduces “the hesitations of the speaking voice, the uncertainties and fadings of memory” serves to “undermine the illusory finality and exactitude of the written text, to unstabilise its silent impersonal unquestionable authority,” to get the language “off the page and back into the mouth” (“Bones,” 34). Michael Greaney perceives this as a sign that “Conrad’s fiction endeavours to negate its own writtenness, usually by ventriloquizing a raconteur [. . .] behind whose garrulous personal presence the text silently effaces itself” (2). By simulating a speaking narrator, Conrad draws his readers into an intersubjective group of involved listeners and readers, thereby overcoming the isolating effect of the written word. Conrad’s unreliable narrators often undermine the readers’ sense of trust and instill in them a distancing skepticism. An opposing dynamic is at work, however, in the recurrent use of tools of reliability and validation. Referring to the Author’s Notes, Said suggests that the “unusual attention paid to the motivation of the stories being told” derives from a “felt need to justify in some way the telling of a story” (World, 90). I would argue that it is the need not only to justify the telling but also to endow the story with a certain credibility, to present it not as fiction but as a part of living reality. As Conrad writes in the preface to Tales of Unrest, “as for the story itself it is true enough in its essentials. The sustained invention of a really telling lie demands a talent which I do not possess” (TU, ix). Similarly, Conrad’s tendency to furnish his narrators with a reliable source for their story—whether written document or eyewitness report—furthers the paratextual effect. Even the dizzying chronological foreground of Nostromo is supported by the rigorous—if elusive—historical document provided by Don José Avellanos’s “Fifty Years of Misrule.” The alleged transparency of the tale’s origin, both textual and paratextual, is designed

Introduction

17

to inhibit the readers’ barrier of suspicion and skepticism and bring them closer to the text. Said provides a useful summary of the tension between the written and the oral in Conrad’s texts, which we may read by extension as an apt summary of the stylistic tension between the binary poles: “We can conceive of Conrad’s narratives abstractly as the alternation in language of presence and absence. The presence of spoken words in time mitigates, if it does not make entirely absent, their written version; a speaker takes over the narrative with his voice, and his voice overrides the fact that he is absent (or unseen) to his listeners as he speaks” (World, 95). Said focuses here on the tension between the oral and the written, the present and the absent in time and space. The perpetual oscillation between representational tools of distance and proximity relates not only to the form of transmission but, as I have suggested, to a wide range of technical devices. From the outset, the tension between the real and the imaginary, the objective and the subjective, the oral and the written repeatedly draws attention to the otherwise-present quality of the text. We have seen that the diegetic level of the text features a psychologically motivated otherwise present, a “magic circle” within which the protagonist is trapped that is then translated into an objective correlative narrative setting.8 It is possible to claim, however, that the “invisible sweep of a magic circle” that permeates the thematic content of Conrad’s work does not originate in the work but outside it. Said writes, “Both in his fiction and in his autobiographical writing Conrad was trying to do something that his experience as a writer everywhere revealed to be impossible” (World, 90). Insofar as Said points to the underlying impossibility of the writer’s work, the “magic sweep of an invisible circle” may be regarded as a textual emblem of Conrad’s own difficulties, a circle that holds the author as well as his characters. Guetti and Said discuss Conrad’s despairing battle with his artistic medium.9 We may refer back, then, to the citation that opens this introduction, a passage that could readily translate into a self-reflexive description of Conrad’s own struggle with an impalpable opponent. While we may have traced in this a possible origin for the otherwisepresent quality of Conrad’s texts, whereby Conrad’s struggles with writing are reflected both thematically and stylistically in his work, it is important to note that this line of analysis will not be pursued here. The “invisible circle,” then, will be read not so much as the cage in which the author finds himself but rather as his method of entrapping his readers. This phenomenon recalls what Shoshana Felman, in her

18

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

analysis of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, terms the “reading effect.” Such an effect occurs when a critical interpretation “not only elucidates the text but also reproduces it dramatically, unwittingly participates in it” (101). A survey of critical responses to the works analyzed in the course of this book suggests that a similar dynamic infects readers of the Conrad canon. The snares that inevitably trip us up are integral to Conrad’s artistic aesthetic, an aesthetic motivated by his wish to captivate his audience and engage his readers.

Th e O th erwi se-pres ent Aestheti c The otherwise present is an aesthetic of deferral, a means to intensify the readers’ desire for the written word by protracting or withholding its satisfaction. In formulating this aesthetic, Conrad was greatly influenced by Henry James who, as Philip Sicker posits, “realized that we create love-images, not out of what we see, but out of what we fail to see” (30). It is my claim that “the failure to see” is not the result of the author’s underlying negativity or skepticism or his futile struggle with the inadequacy of words but an intended aesthetic effect. Conrad’s “adjectival insistence” points to a reluctance to name, a reluctance to “destroy the illusion,” to rob the artwork of its “suggestive glamour.” A “failure to see” may be the effect of an aesthetic principle that is defined in Conrad’s words to Curle. However, such an effect would seem to undermine Conrad’s ars poetica contemplation in the preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus where he famously states that the task of the artist is, “before all, to make you see” (NN, xiv, Conrad’s emphasis). While we may choose to dismiss this incongruity as another example of Conrad’s contradictory thoughts on art, I believe that this particular statement merits closer scrutiny; in addition to being one of Conrad’s most sustained engagements with the role of art and of the artist, it has also become something of a topos in critical readings of his works. It is therefore important to note that despite its slogan-like immediacy, this phrase is embedded in an extremely complex preface that problematizes the very principles it seems to assert. In keeping with this supposed immediacy, the preface attests to Conrad’s participation in the Western metaphysical privileging of presence. What the artist wishes to represent must be “conveyed through the senses” (NN, xii), rendering it, according to Platonic thought, a vestige of the world of Forms. This is a presence that is tangible, visible, material, and, as such, always already temporal and transient. At the same time, the terms with which Conrad refers to this presence and the

Introduction

19

method whereby it is to be reproduced are evocative of that which cannot conform to phenomena. The artist, he writes, must “descend within himself”; he must appeal to our “less obvious capacities” that are “kept out of sight.” His appeal is “less loud [. . .] less distinct” (xi–xii). This ambivalence is amplified by the manner in which Conrad begins by invoking not the world of Becoming but the world of Being—the world of Ideas. He writes, “Art itself may be defined as a single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its very aspect” (xi, my emphasis). Once again, what we encounter is a conjunction that collapses the two distinct worlds. Conrad wishes to embody what cannot be embodied; he wishes to flesh out the universal truth and make it present. A close reading of the preface not only problematizes its embedded motto but also brings to light two crucial aspects of Conrad’s aesthetics. First, although Conrad begins by describing the object of art (the truth), most of the preface is devoted not to the object but to the process whereby it is attained. Moreover, the relationship between the two is tellingly counterintuitive. Marlow demonstrates this in one of his metaliterary remarks in Lord Jim: “Try as I may for the success of this yarn I am missing innumerable shades—they were so fine, so difficult to render in colourless words. Because [Jim] complicated matters by being so simple” (LJ, 94). It is the method, then—the war of the words—that is enchanting, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding. It is not the “simple” object but its representation that will determine the success of the story. To return to the preface, the emphatic repetition of such words as “attempt,” “appeal,” “aspire,” and so on necessarily foregrounds the artistic process and produces a slippage whereby the object is overshadowed by its representation. The artistic method is thus transformed into an end or object in itself. The second principle comes to light in the concluding words: “To arrest, for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and colour, of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile—such is the aim, difficult and evanescent” (NN, xvi). No longer a need to bring to light the universal truth, the aim of art here is to tantalize the readers, to draw their attention and arrest their gaze. Conrad wishes not only to make them see or understand but to make them stop and take notice. What he wishes to provoke is his readers’ desire, a desire that he maintains cannot and will not be easily satisfied. It is this desire that contributes to the “glamour” of the work, a

20

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

glamour achieved not through explicit naming but through an evocative suggestiveness. Conrad’s aesthetics, then, are not transparent. They jar and arrest the reader as they draw attention to themselves and to their inherent difficulty, prefiguring, as it were, Shklovsky’s notion of defamiliarization. In a curiously fitting tribute to a concept that was yet to be formulated, Conrad writes that “it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance [. . .] that the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage” (xiii). It is precisely because the preexisting methods of artistic depiction can no longer arrest the readers and elicit their desire that Conrad must innovate, enchant, and jolt us out of our habitual and habituated processes of reading and experiencing. For us to see better we must see otherwise. As it is beyond the capacity of this work to proffer an analysis of the complete Conrad canon, I have limited my selection to the five texts mentioned above. My reading of these novels, however, finds intertextual support in other Conrad novels and short stories that will be referenced throughout the course of this study. Despite this delimitation, my contention is that the object of this study relates to a phenomenon that pervades the Conrad canon in its entirety. The discussion herewith is not exhaustive but exemplary, thereby propounding a more general perspective on Conrad’s works. The selection of Lord Jim, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes, The Arrow of Gold, and Suspense—five considerably different novels that correspond to various periods in Conrad’s writing career, different thematic and stylistic preoccupations, and a diverse range of critical esteem—is programmatic.10 The variation in style and theme allows me to address different manifestations of the otherwise present. While we will see that Conrad uses a similar technique in his otherwise-present representations, its effect alternates as it elicits not only guilt, fear, and a chronological vertigo but also desire and suspense. Furthermore, my choice to include three esteemed novels alongside two lesser known and less appreciated works is driven by a need to renegotiate the critical biases that underlie and consequently explain the conspicuously uneven attention devoted to different works of the Conrad canon. While the “achievement and decline” theory conventionally holds that such a novel as Lord Jim cannot be classified alongside The Arrow of Gold and Suspense, my analysis highlights the manner in which the different novels are indeed the products of a shared aesthetic.

Introduction

21

Chapter 2 presents an analysis of Lord Jim. By addressing both thematic and stylistic concerns, this chapter outlines the application of the aesthetic of the otherwise present to the characterization of both the protagonist and the narrator. We will see how an otherwisepresent representation corresponds to a unique method of reading or seeing that, by way of an irremediable contagion, infects not only Jim and Marlow, the two main characters, but also the readers of the novel. In addition, we will test the clashing of ethics and aesthetics in a reevaluation of Marlow’s unique method of storytelling. Chapter 3 is devoted to an analysis of the representation of historical progression in Nostromo. While the novel is manifestly devoted to a setting down of the history of Sulaco and its people, a deep-seated generic ambivalence is suggestive of an underlying resistance to such a project. The project of objective documentation is usurped by the atemporal circularity of a performative reiteration that is associated with a language of fairy tales, myth, ghost stories, and folklore. Obsessed with the spectral remnants of historical figures and historical traumas, these generic borrowings undermine the notion of a chronological presence. Turning to Under Western Eyes, Chapter 4 traces the similarities underlying the storytelling methods of the English teacher and Marlow, indicating that here, too, the otherwise-present aesthetic results in a transgression of ethical concerns. The chapter proceeds with an analysis of the tribulations of a taciturn personality in a world in which silence exists not as absence but as present meaning. It then follows the motif of haunting that pervades the novel, a parallel theme in its transformation of absence into the otherwise present, and traces the trajectory that brings phantoms—both literal and metaphorical— into being. In The Arrow of Gold, we see that the motif of haunting serves an altogether different purpose—the creation of desire. Here the tantalizing play between absence and presence serves to create an effect—both aesthetic and psychological—of “irrealizability.” The chapter then focuses on two further manifestations of the oscillation between the binary opposites, both in a discussion of covert and overt plotting and in the treatment of the motif of Pompeii in the novel, a motif that metaphorically encapsulates the categorical enmeshment of absence and presence. Finally, in Suspense, the otherwise present is translated into an obsession with endings. By introducing the possibility of a “solution by rejection” (NLL, 18), we will engage with the manner in which the novel’s conclusion is rendered otherwise, as it adopts the form of a final suspension. Throughout, I wish to demonstrate how an attentiveness to the otherwise-present features of the text allows for a reinterpretation of

22

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

even the most canonical of Conrad’s texts, novels that have inspired a host of critical readings over the decades. A close reading of these texts and an examination of their method of construction show that the prejudices and conventions that inevitably inform our reading in many ways transgress their evocative openness. One of the key motivations underlying this analysis is a wish to reopen the text for those who have become overhabituated or desensitized to it; my readings are meant to defamiliarize the text in order to coax the reader into rereading the novels and reappreciating their elusive but nevertheless captivating “glamour.”

4

Chapter 2

S eeing Oth erwise Fro m A L M AY E R ’ S F O L LY to L O R D J I M

“Idealism,” Jeremy Hawthorn explains, “is a form of overestimation

of the self: the idealist imposes his own mental images on the world in preference for the real nature of that world” (Language, 47). Hawthorn’s account of Jim’s character reaffirms the substitutive power of a self-perpetuating fiction: “the real nature” of the world recedes before the wondrous imaginings of the mind. It is precisely within such a moment of imaginative reflection that Jim is described to us during his watch on board the Patna, before the fateful collision: At such times his thoughts would be full of valorous deeds: he loved these dreams and the success of his imaginary achievements. They were the best parts of life, its secret truth, its hidden reality. They had a gorgeous virility, the charm of vagueness, they passed before him with a heroic tread; they carried his soul away with them and made it drunk with the divine philtre of an unbounded confidence in itself. There was nothing he could not face. He was so pleased with the idea that he smiled, keeping perfunctorily his eyes ahead. (LJ, 20)

Throughout these deep imaginings, Jim “perfunctorily” keeps his eyes ahead as his duty requires. What he sees, however, is not the sea but the hidden truths of his heroic existence. The “idea” born of his immersion in romantic sea literature overshadows the truth of his physical surroundings. Following a long line of characters from Dante’s Paolo and Francesca through Don Quixote and Madame Bovary, Jim’s objective reality is usurped by the projection of an imaginary alternative born in romantic fiction.

24

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

With the collision, the “real nature” of Jim’s existence brutally intrudes, pulling him back into the world of harsh fact, a world most poignantly encapsulated in the courtroom. Here, too, however, Jim actively resists the “serried circle of facts that had surged up all about him” and attempts to find “some opening” (LJ, 31) through which he may escape. Furthermore, we here witness not an isolated drama of evasion but yet another of Jim’s habitual departures from the harmful potential of an unmerciful reality. Among these repetitive escapes, we may count the training ship incident, Jim’s actions on board the Patna, his repeated employment-related disappearances, the move to Patusan, and finally, although this can be contested, his choice of death. The world of fact that was first displaced by his valorous imaginings is later replaced by the haunting memory of the Patna affair, then by the glory of his new name in Patusan, and finally by the demands of honor. C. B. Cox connects this last act of heroism to Jim’s heroic— but fictional—vision, suggesting that “perhaps at the last Jim felt himself metamorphosed into a hero suited to the fancies of Scheherazade” (43). To the very end, it seems, Jim’s perception of reality is colored by his imagination; throughout, Jim sees otherwise.1 The method whereby Jim integrates external stimuli into the maps of his illusory existence is not new to the Conrad canon. A similar dynamic is apparent in his earlier novels and short stories, most notably, perhaps, in the psychological makeup of his protagonists Almayer and Willems. Unlike Lord Jim, Almayer’s Folly stages a rude awakening for its main character in its very first words: “The well-known shrill voice startled Almayer from his dream of splendid future into the unpleasant realities of his present hour” (AF, 3). Almayer dreams of traveling to Europe and establishing a respectable and comfortable life for himself and for his half-caste daughter, Nina. And, yet, this is a novel of passivity, futility, and stasis. The incongruity between his ambitions and his actions is due precisely to his inability to rid himself of his illusions, his insistence on seeing otherwise. Through a perverted sense of loyalty to his imaginings, Almayer repeatedly defers action. Exasperated by his captivity in Sambir and his unfortunate marriage, he “[thinks] of everything; even [plans] murder in an undecided and feeble sort of way, but [dares] do nothing—expecting every day the return of Lingard with news of some immense good fortune” (26). Similarly, although he longs to see Nina in Singapore, he delays his voyage “from year to year, always expecting some favourable turn of fortune” (29). Almayer’s fortune does not turn. This, however, does not awaken him from his imaginative obsessions but rather propels him into a

Seeing Otherwise

25

new form of blindness, a “smooth, round, black thing” (AF, 99) into which he gradually descends. Much like his fantasy of a life in Europe, his mourning of a lost future interferes with his reading of the present: “those signs of his daughter’s emotion Almayer did not see, for his sight was dimmed by self-pity, by anger and by despair” (103). The ensuing loss of his daughter deals the final deathblow. Without her, he has no future. A similar psychological blindness afflicts the protagonist of Conrad’s second novel. In the last pages of An Outcast of the Islands, Willems is portrayed as a shell of his former self. Like Almayer, his fantasies have propelled him into a life of incarceration and isolation, a far cry from his former vision of a great future. On the threshold of a tragic end, Willems surveys the “unattainable shore” (OI, 339). He looks, however, “without seeing anything”; “thinking of himself,” he sees “nothing” (340). Although somber, this scene is but a reworking of a theme that is present from the novel’s outset. Willems is repeatedly rendered insensible to his reality by the projections of his imagination. At the start, Willems’s delight in his moral superiority results in his misreading of the hatred and contempt that is harbored toward him by Mr. Vinck and by Joanna and her family. A false conviction in the imperviousness of his career leads to his betrayal of Mr. Hudig’s hard-earned trust. In Sambir, Willems commits a similar error as his desire for Aïssa—a desire that is itself based on a false image, a fantasy2—leads to his betrayal of Lingard and ultimately of himself.

Fro m P rotag oni st to Reader Almayer, Willems, and Jim are thus caught in a “magic circle,” blind to what is and haunted by what is not. However, unlike Almayer’s Folly and An Outcast of the Islands, Lord Jim extends this dynamic, infecting not only the character but the reader, too. Harold Bloom’s puzzlement is exemplary of the quizzical responses Jim’s character typically elicits. Bloom asks, “Is Jim merely the spirit of illusion, or does there linger in him something of the legitimate spirit of romance? Marlow cannot answer the question, and we cannot either, no matter how often we read Lord Jim. Is that a strength or a weakness in this novel? That Conrad falls into obscurantism, particularly in Heart of Darkness, is beyond denial. Is Lord Jim simply an instance of such obscurantism on a larger scale?” (5). Bloom’s reading upholds two mutually exclusive interpretations. In attempting to decipher Jim’s character, Bloom’s hermeneutic capacities are divided by what he experiences as an incessant oscillation between the framework of

26

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

illusion and of romance. Moreover, the problematic is not exhausted in Bloom’s inability to commit to one of the two generic frameworks. For in addition to this underlying dilemma, Bloom finds that the novel will not allow its reader to conclude whether Jim’s inherent ambiguousness points to Conrad’s artistic weakness or to his strength. The suggested ambivalence with which Conrad treats his protagonist leads Bloom to believe that, like Heart of Darkness, the writing of Lord Jim deliberately brings about a perpetuation of an obscuring haze. Bloom is not alone in his inability to subscribe to one interpretative possibility. Engaging with a similar contradiction, John Batchelor posits that Jim “is both transparent and opaque, both an everyman and a single person, whose individuality is too rare to be definable, both richly accessible to Marlow and baffingly distant from him” (111–12). Although he expresses similar bafflement, Batchelor’s statement marks a progression from the disjunctive to the conjunctive; no longer “either/or,” Jim is now double. We might accordingly say that while Batchelor exposes a confusion that is comparable to Bloom’s, his argument is grounded in a more affirmative syntax. If Jim appears to challenge the reader with an unsupportable contradiction, this does not imply that Jim is impossible but that he is multifaceted—layered and complex. J. H. Stape similarly broaches this duality of subject, expressing it in spatial terms. Jim, he argues, is “both at the novel’s centre and on its periphery” (Stape, 63). Whether the representation of Jim is of the order of the disjunctive or of the conjunctive, whether it is topographical or tropological, it is clear that we do not see Jim very clearly. Thus, as opposed to Almayer and Willems, Jim not only sees what is otherwise present but is also seen as such. In the transition from Conrad’s earlier novels to Lord Jim, then, we may say that there is a certain unsettling of the camera lens. Seeing otherwise becomes not only the key psychological method whereby Conrad’s protagonists grapple with an unbending and at times merciless fate but also a way in which readers experience the story. Such a contagion or ripple effect is the result of Conrad’s increasingly performative method of writing. The thematic obsession with an impossible conjunction of two realities that we have traced so far increasingly haunts Conrad’s stylization. It is no longer merely what but how he writes. In tracing this burgeoning aesthetic, it is useful to note that the critical debate attested to here (articulated, as I have shown, in a divide between a discourse of either/or and one of doubling/accumulation) is in many ways prefigured by critical responses to The Nigger of the Narcissus. Published in 1897, The Nigger inaugurated Conrad’s first

Seeing Otherwise

27

foray into the innovative narrative technique that was later to become one of the defining characteristics of his art. The perplexing duality here arises when the first thirty pages of uninterrupted omniscient narration are suddenly subverted by the transition from “led their busy and insignificant lives” to “kept our noses to the grindstone” (NN, 31, my emphases). Omniscience is subsequently restored but only for a short space, for several pages later it is reported that “the setting sun dipped sharply, as though fleeing before our nigger” (34, my emphasis). John Lester writes that from the scathing criticism of Marvin Mudrick to Albert J. Guerard’s compelling defense, “critical opinions have diverged sharply on the question of narrative suitability, for in that work what appears to be a standard third person omniscient narrator becomes, it seems, a member of the crew, and the narration fluctuates between first person plural and third person thereafter, until, in the final pages, first person singular pilots the novel to its conclusion” (163).3 It is even here, though, that the narration oscillates between “us” and “they,” as the “I” of the final pages is itself reluctant to take sides, shuttling between an objective viewpoint that offers the reader a last glimpse of the crew as “they” sway “on the broad flagstones before the Mint” and the subjective viewpoint, as he reminisces, “Haven’t we, together and upon the immortal sea wrung out a meaning from our sinful lives” (NN, 173, my emphases). Critical responses to The Nigger indicate that, although suggestive of a similarly perplexing duality, the difficulty here lies not in grasping the subject of the tale—the ship and its crew, both collectively and individually—but in attempting to pinpoint the source of the narrating voice. The question, in other words, is not what is being narrated but who is narrating. Articulating the inherent difficulty in determining the narrative voice, Jakob Lothe defines seven different narrative situations found in the novel.4 The challenge to the reader, however, lies not only in the multiplicity of narrating voices but also in the abrupt and unmarked shifts between them. As Katherine Isobel Baxter writes, Conrad alternates between perspectives “without signposting these shifts” (122). While Guerard holds that these “changes in point of view” are made “unobtrusively and with pleasing insouciance” (107), it is my contention that they grate and inevitably impede the reading process. The reader must grapple with the coincidence of such passages as, “It was just what they had expected, and hated to hear, that idea of a stalking death, thrust at them many times a day like a boast and like a menace by this obnoxious nigger,” and—three sentences later—“We hesitated between pity and mistrust, while, on the slightest provocation, he shook before our eyes the bones of his

28

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

bothersome and infamous skeleton” (NN, 36). Such narrative shifts defamiliarize; they arrest our attention by subverting our expectations and challenging our comprehension. Guerard’s suggestion that these shifts “admirably [reflect] the general movement from isolation to solidarity to poignant separation” (107) can only be a retrospective application of an interpretative solution to a baffling literary technique. Such a solution begs the question of why Conrad wishes to baffle his readers by proposing, as an underlying assumption, that Conrad’s technique does not baffle at all. In the light of the critical controversy incited by the experimental handling of narrative viewpoint in this novel, it seems that Guerard’s reading disposes of a central aspect of Conrad’s evolving literary technique. The stylistic method in The Nigger achieves not only an impressive coordination of theme and style but also a transition from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the transparency of a nondramatized and unobtrusive narrative voice to the opacity of a representation that constantly draws attention to itself. Whether successfully or not, in shuttling between “I” or “us” and “they,” Conrad stages a performative articulation, a game, as it were, that perpetuates the tension between proximity and distance, between objectivity and subjectivity, between absence and presence. The otherwise present that we traced in Almayer’s Folly, An Outcast, and Lord Jim is here transferred through narrative technique from the experience of the protagonist to that of the reader. No longer represented to us as the frustrating experience of a character caught between two worlds, it is now the reader who is confronted with an impossible concurrence of a narrating voice that paraleptically shuttles between the limited viewpoint of an eyewitness and the all-knowing perspective of an omniscient narrator. The critical debate prompted by the later novel, as demonstrated above, is concerned not with an attempt to locate the narrating voice but with an attempt to decipher its subject. While the terms of the debate may consequently appear to be at odds with one other, it is nevertheless clear that they stem from a similar literary effect. As Brooks intimates, Jim is himself the product of a perpetuated tension between proximity and distance, objectivity and subjectivity, absence and presence. The two debates are thus similarly embroiled in a perplexing duality—whether it is that of Jim in Lord Jim or that of the narrative stance in The Nigger. Critical disputes such as those incited by The Nigger of the Narcissus and Lord Jim would suggest that whether or not Conrad’s artistic aim is “to make [us] see” (NN, xiv), we do not, in fact, see very well. I wish to argue that this effect is the product of

Seeing Otherwise

29

Conrad’s otherwise-present aesthetic with which I will engage more closely in my reading of the latter novel.

Mar low The performative turn of the shifting pronouns in The Nigger of the Narcissus may be said to prefigure not only Conrad’s method of amassing competing narratives or viewpoints in the latter novel but also the aesthetic impulse underlying the creation of the Marlovian narrator.5 Marlow’s positioning in the text is an embodiment of the ambiguously located narration in the earlier novel. He is both protagonist and narrator, agent and eyewitness, and, insofar as he is both inside the diegetic world and outside it, present and absent. Jim is for him both “one of us” and an inscrutable other “under a cloud” (LJ, 416). It is Marlow who enumerates the incriminating evidence against Jim alongside an elaboration of the extenuating circumstances and who both records his testimony and colors it with a hint of irony. Marlow’s character thus allows for a performative oscillation between solidarity and discord, between identification and detachment, between “us” and “him,” “I” and “they.” But if, as Baxter suggests, the narrative innovations employed by Conrad in The Nigger mark an attempt at a more objective representation, it is clear that the development of a comparable technique in Lord Jim creates quite the opposite literary effect. While critical opinion holds that the transition from the first two novels to the third signals a movement from subjectivity to objectivity, it is clear that the transition from chapter 4 to chapter 5 in Lord Jim (marking the transition from omniscience to Marlow’s narration) is suggestive of an inverse trajectory. That is to say that the represented shifts in focalization and narrative voice that are associated with a more well-rounded and objective picture of the Narcissus and its crew create a contradictory effect in the later novel where they increasingly distance us, as it were, from Jim. Although contradictory, this effect is once again the product of a jarring shift in the narrating voice. Recalling the tone and stylization of Conrad’s first two novels, the first four chapters of Lord Jim offer a lucid and accessible representation of its protagonist. Once the omniscient narrator has proffered Jim’s biographical details, he narrates the events as they happen. The representation of Jim in the present moment enhances the transparency of the omniscient narrator’s account. Without chronological involutions, the reader is given an unmediated view of the protagonist. We soon find, however, that the

30

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

first chapters are but an exposition that occupies only a brief moment in the scope of the narrative. Jim’s present moment is soon dismissed. The change in the narrating voice at the end of the fourth chapter brings about a change of perspective. No longer subject to the associated transparency of an omniscient narrator, Jim is now represented through the reported account of an eyewitness. This transformation is augmented by the temporal shift that accompanies the change of narrative voice. As Marlow displaces the omniscient narrator, the progression of an intensely present action is circumvented by the imposition of a consuetudinal future.6 To formulate this differently, a report in the present moment is cut short only to be replaced by the future repetitive telling of a past event; the singular present is replaced by a reiterated past. In this manner, the transition from the omniscient narrator’s account to Marlow’s produces a doubly removed representation of the protagonist. Both the lucidity and immediacy of representation in the first chapters are forgone. Jim is recreated as a spirit from the past brought forth through the subjective prism of a witness. As Batchelor argues, once Marlow takes over the narrative, Jim begins “to recede from us” (84). In place of his initially uniform representation, Jim is now composite—as much a product of Marlow’s distortions as of his own evasions. It is thus clear that the displacement of an omniscient narrator’s voice with that of a subjective second person does more than “ensure that Jim’s debate with himself does not degenerate into mere self-justification” (Berthoud, 79). Insofar as it displaces the relatively translucent narration of the preceding chapters, Marlow’s narrative serves to confound rather than to clarify. Guerard sums up the matter in his claim that “not very much may seem left of Jim, after we have discounted Marlow’s partialities and distortions” (140). Jim, whom we have so far characterized as “seeing” that which is otherwise present, is himself represented to us as such. Recalling the response to The Nigger, critical readings of Lord Jim often attempt to justify Conrad’s innovative or baffling narrative strategies by way of a thematic interpretation. Thus, the transition to Marlow’s narration may be explained as a transition from a tale of innocence to a narrative of guilt. Whereas the omniscient narrator is presented with—and may therefore be said to present—a transparent subject, Marlow inherits Jim’s error and culpability. The transition between narrators and their very different manners of representation may be seen to function as an objective correlative to the changes consequent upon Jim’s jump. Once Jim is thrown into “an everlasting deep hole” (LJ, 111), the possibility of a transparent narrative is undermined. We may say that the moral implications of Jim’s fall

Seeing Otherwise

31

necessitate the introduction of an otherwise-present characterization. If Jim cannot bring himself to admit or recognize his culpability, surely Marlow will not take the responsibility of such an affirmation upon himself. Jim remains inscrutable throughout, and, as Marlow suggests at the end of the novel, it is we who must decide whether we wish Jim to be redeemed or damned. Alternately, J. H. Stape argues that the significance of Marlow’s ambiguous depiction lies not in a signaling of Jim’s culpability but rather in warning “the reader against a leap to judgement” (77). Stape believes that Jim’s elusiveness does not mark his culpability but rather his complexity. We are not in a position to judge that which we do not see very clearly. While Stape’s reading is morally appealing, it is in contradiction with one of the key elements of the narrative: the drawnout withholding of the details of the Patna’s fate. Such a formidable ellipsis would suggest that the reader is not warned against a “leap to judgment” but is rather forced to commit one.7 A thematic explication of the transition to an otherwise-present representation of Jim may also draw on a character analysis of Marlow, the newly appointed narrator. As we recall, Hawthorn suggests that “the idealist imposes his own mental images on the world in preference for the real nature of that world” (47). Jim is an idealist; the fiction he writes for himself supersedes the reality that surrounds him. Jim, however, is not the only such idealist in the novel. Edward Said writes, “Marlow’s generosity toward Jim is rooted in precisely that same tendency to romantic projection because of which Jim so embarrassingly prefers courageous voyages in projective inspiration to voyages in actuality. Neither man, whether hearer or storyteller, truly inhabits the world of facts” (World, 102–3). Marlow’s obvious dissatisfaction with the court proceedings alerts the reader to the fact that his account does not seek the “superficial how” but the “fundamental why” of Jim’s case. That Marlow’s alternative investigative technique is of an altogether different nature to the court proceedings further motivates the interpolation of his voice in the transition between chapters 4 and 5, by indicating that it is precisely such a mediator that is needed to ensure a more just and intimately profound analysis of the case at hand. If the transition subsequently results in some unsettling of the camera lens through which Jim is captured, we understand that this is a necessary evil that comes with the process of bringing to light additional insights into the mystery at the heart of Jim’s character. In the previous section, I outlined the manner in which Jim’s subjective projections contaminate his ability to perceive the reality in which he is immersed. Like Jim, Marlow possesses a unique method

32

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

of perception. Not a great believer in fact, he, too, sees beyond objective reality. Jim is the first to draw our attention to this characteristic of Marlow. When he first lays eyes on him in the courtroom, Jim notes that Marlow appears to be staring not at him but behind him, “as though he could see somebody or something past [his] shoulder” (LJ, 33). Marlow looks at Jim, but he sees beyond surface truth, beyond a man’s flesh and bones. Intuiting this, Jim feels that “[Marlow] seemed to be aware of his hopeless difficulty” (33). Perhaps Marlow’s habit of looking beyond surface reality, beyond the concrete, is suggestive to Jim of his own habit. Whether or not this scene prepares the ground for Jim and Marlow’s subsequent comradeship, it is clear that the novel sets a certain parallel between the two. Marlow and Jim are both idealists; both see what is otherwise present. From chapter 5 onward, Jim’s story is recounted in Marlow’s voice; henceforward, the reader sees Jim through Marlow’s eyes. If Marlow sees otherwise, so must we. By focusing on the multifarious thematic motivations for the introduction of Marlow’s voice in chapter 5, we inevitably neglect the stylistic significance that underlies such a seismic shift in the narrative makeup. That is to say that by enumerating what are essentially the ethical ramifications of the otherwise-present representation of Jim, we fail to do justice to the aesthetic aspect of this shift. Although confessor, friend, father, and, conversely, an eyewitness whose analysis is prey to the pitfalls of a highly partial and motivated prism of interpretation, Marlow is also a narrative device, a tool needed to perfect Conrad’s art. We have seen that the stylistic innovations present in the narrative makeup of The Nigger are improved upon in the later novel, where the duality infecting the narrating voice is made to cohere with the subjectivity of a single, identifiable eyewitness. The accumulation of narrative stances (homodiegetic and extradiegetic, first-person and third-person narration) that is associated with a heightened objectivity in the earlier novel is here part and parcel of a highly partial interpreting agent. Recalling the pronoun shifts in The Nigger, Marlow’s narration is fed by the tension produced by an oscillation between proximity and distance, between identification and difference. The object of Marlow’s scrutiny is subsequently recreated or re-presented in the text (as of chapter 5) as an otherwise-present construct; for Marlow, Jim is, at one and the same time, tantalizingly close and exasperatingly other. With the introduction of Marlow, Conrad presents a new narrative perspective, one that he could not explore in earlier narratives in

Seeing Otherwise

33

which he relied on omniscient narration or the complementing viewpoints furnished by seemingly unmotivated pronoun shifts. In this sense, Marlow may be seen as an expression of Conrad’s evolving literary aims. This is true, moreover, not only of the narrator of Lord Jim but also of that of “Youth,” Heart of Darkness, and Chance. Developed and changed to fit the needs of his creator, Marlow may be seen as a figure for that very evolution. As such, his method of storytelling offers the reader a system of self-reflexive strategies from which Conrad’s aesthetic principles may be extrapolated. Before turning to Lord Jim, it is therefore important to take stock of the considerable modifications made to Marlow in the course of Conrad’s writing career, modifications that reflect the development of his artistic vision. In “Youth,” the first of the Marlovian narratives, Marlow is fashioned in a manner reminiscent of Walter Benjamin’s storyteller. According to Benjamin, a storyteller is a man of wisdom who conveys the lessons of his experience to his listeners. The storyteller’s task is to draw from his history a moral, a proverb, or valuable practical advice in order to better the lives of those who will listen.8 Indeed, Marlow’s narrative aim appears to be his wish to expound to his audience the lessons of personal experience—a meditation on youth inspired by the story of his first voyage to the East. We may say that, in this narrative enterprise, Marlow trespasses on the interests of a second party only insofar as his younger self becomes a source of wonder and fascination, an other to the more experienced and mature sailor. In the latter narratives, and perhaps most distinctly in Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, it is possible to discern a certain straying away from the Benjaminian definition. Such a definition would appear to be increasingly contradicted by Marlow’s intensifying narrative mystification and the gradual transformation of the notion of personal experience.9 We may recognize the onset of this change in Heart of Darkness where a journey that begins as an exploration of the self is gradually displaced by a witnessing of the experience of another.10 To formulate this differently, what initially appears to be the story of firsthand experience is gradually revealed to be the relation of vicarious experience. Marlow informs his listeners, “It is [Kurtz’s] extremity that I seemed to have lived through. True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot” (HD, 101). Marlow’s “hesitating foot” does not affect his eye for dramatic effect; nor does the embracing of a vicarious experience go without its rewards. We may find one of the advantages of this unique form of storytelling in critical readings of the novel. Moser, for example, hails Marlow as one of Conrad’s

34

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

“perceptive heroes.” Such a hero, he writes, “is the kind of man who follows the simple seaman’s code, yet has the imagination, skepticism, and self-doubts of the betrayers. He meets his crisis with success; Marlow keeps his place in the ranks” (23). Clearly, Marlow meets his crisis with success precisely because he will not leave “his place in the ranks”; he will not step over the edge. Such success, moreover, is artistically predetermined: the storyteller must live to tell the story. As he himself is not willing or unable to undergo the ordeal of failure, betrayal, or death, he must find a subject who is. Thus we have it that if in “Youth” it had been the younger Marlow who provided the center of attention, in Heart of Darkness, it is Kurtz who faces “the horror” and perishes; in Lord Jim, it is Jim who betrays the code and jumps off the Patna; in Chance, Marlow’s involvement diminishes even more as Flora and Captain Anthony struggle alone in their attempts to find love and independence. In these three texts, Marlow is repeatedly transformed from a participant into a witness. Moser writes that “the simple betrayer such as Jim or Nostromo cannot really understand what he has done, let alone express it. For this reason, he requires an interpreter, someone more subtle to explain the failure to the reader. Jim has Marlow” (21). It is my contention that this coupling is not one-sided. Marlow is similarly in need of the “simple betrayer” for his enterprise of interpretation. By shifting the narrative focus to another, Conrad redesigns Marlow’s function in the story. Increasingly, the emphasis is no longer on what befalls him but on his interpretation of what befalls another. Although he remains within the narrative, or at least on its border—as a frame to the new subject of the story—his repositioning is reflective of a certain ambivalence. Both inside and outside the diegetic level, Marlow is transformed into a figure for the storyteller and the listener, author and reader. Much like his innovations in The Nigger of the Narcissus, Conrad’s fashioning and development of Marlow’s character as storyteller and framing device follow a process of accumulation. At first, Marlow is presented to the reader as a hardened sailor who recounts his adventures and extrapolates their hidden moral. That is, he is a device used to simulate presence and proximity by way of the represented voice of an experiencing subject. Gradually, however, Marlow’s character and his implication in the story undergo a telling transformation. The reporting subject is now entrusted with the additional duties of an objective observer, a duality inevitably infected by the trademarks of an unreliable narrator. Both implicated and distant, an eyewitness and a participant in a game of Chinese whispers, Marlow is as absent as he

Seeing Otherwise

35

is present. By infecting the very source of the story with this duality, Conrad ensures that Marlow’s accounts are always already haunted by this reverberating ambivalence. The oscillation between proximity and distance, assurance and doubt, are conditioned by the manner in which the stories are told. The introduction of the other’s experience and the consequent displacement of Marlow as subject result in an increasing reliance on hermeneutics in Marlow’s project of narration. Thus we have it that after “Youth,” the lessons of personal history are displaced by a web of conjecture on the experience of an impenetrable other. Marlow’s stepping back therefore instills his narratives not only with the safety of “keeping his place in the ranks” but also with an irreparable doubt. The source of Marlow’s inspiration is equally a source of angst as his reliance on the experience of the other ultimately infuses his narratives with incertitude and indeterminacy. As he himself explains, “It is when we try to grapple with another man’s intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun. It is as if loneliness were a hard and absolute condition of existence; the envelope of flesh and blood on which our eyes are fixed melts before the outstretched hand, and there remains only the capricious, unconsolable, and elusive spirit that no eye can follow, no hand can grasp” (LJ, 179–80). If the frustration attested to here is a product of distance—between a subject and the object of his scrutiny—this distance is further augmented by the temporal shift that is associated with the onset of Marlow’s narration. Marlow’s subject is not external but an internalization, the memory of his experience of Jim. He must look within himself to tell his tale. As a memory trace, Jim can no longer be represented mimetically. Guerard’s contention that “not very much may seem left of Jim” (140) is therefore deceptive, for devoid of Marlow’s partialities and distortions, Jim hardly exists at all. Of the forty-five chapters in the novel, Jim is represented to us through Marlow’s narration in all but the first four expository chapters. Jim does not exist despite but rather due to Marlow’s narration. What Guerard fails to recognize is that although the commencement of Marlow’s narrative effects an absenting, as it were, of Jim, it simultaneously introduces a new character to take his place. As Marlow has it, the subject of his tale is not hindered by his narration but is produced by it in the same way that, as we learn from Walter Benjamin, the “traces of the storyteller cling to the story the way the handprints of the potter cling to the clay vessel” (91). Indeed, once the reader accepts that the subject of Marlow’s narration

36

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

is other—it is not that of the first four chapters—it becomes clear that Marlow’s obstructions create as much as they conceal. From the end of chapter 4 onward, Jim is inextricably tied to the vessel that holds him in the form of a memory trace. As Marlow tells his audience, “[Jim] existed for me, and after all it is only through me that he exists for you” (LJ, 224). From chapter 5 onward, the novel assumes the form of a retrospective narrative. Jim is now a past present, a memory trace—precisely a composite of the distortions and partialities that are part and parcel of living memory. Interestingly, Marlow does not allow his audience to overlook this crucial fact. Although Marlow admits to being nothing more than a “receptacle of confessions” (LJ, 34), his repeated allusion to memory and its characteristic transience are not only apologetic concessions in response to the inaccuracy of the depiction but also affirmations that, to us, Jim’s existence is dependent on Marlow’s narration. Before leaving Patusan, Marlow reports, “When to-morrow I had left it for ever, it would slip out of existence, to live only in my memory till I myself passed into oblivion” (323). To this effect, Marlow tells his listeners that he is “the only one to whom it is a memory” (138) and that “all this was in the past, but I knew the story of his life” (203). The threat of forgetfulness, transience, and dissipation emphasizes the fact that Marlow remains the sole living testimony to Jim’s story. These asides repeatedly call attention to the significance of Marlow’s part in the transmission. The attention paid to memory and testimony serves an additional purpose. Marlow’s claim that he is compelled to speak on behalf of his younger brother from the “realm of forgetful shades” (LJ, 316) suggests to his listeners that it is his compassion and care for his friend that compels him to speak out. Marlow thus ennobles his narrative enterprise by enclosing it within a framework of ethical responsibility. The full scope and profundity Marlow associates with such an undertaking is revealed to the reader at a later point in the novel. Relating to Jim’s respect for the memory of Jewel’s mother, Marlow remarks, “There is in his espousal of memory and affectation belonging to another human being something characteristic of his seriousness. He had a conscience” (276). We may assume that Marlow thinks of himself in similar terms. His commendation of Jim is a clear indication of his belief in the seriousness of his own narrative task. He, too, has a conscience. With these frequent evocations, Marlow gradually shows himself to be unique and indispensable—both by virtue of his questioning methods and the priceless content of his memory. It is precisely these

Seeing Otherwise

37

two characteristics of Marlow’s narration, however, that contribute to the elusive representation of Jim. With the highlighting of Marlow’s narrative project he himself is brought to the fore and Jim increasingly grows dimmer to the audience. Ultimately, Marlow’s repeated assertions of his power to evoke the memory of his friend undermine the sense of Jim’s actuality. Jim is only a memory, and regardless of Marlow’s ability to conjure up the dead or the absent, the living man is lost.11 Marlow himself laments, “I shall never hear his voice again, nor shall I see his smooth tan-and-pink face with a white line on the forehead, and the youthful eyes darkened by excitement to a profound, unfathomable blue” (LJ, 343). As in this instance, Marlow’s narration produces a continuous oscillation between a conjured presence and an indelible absence. Paul Armstrong comments that “the young man may be figuratively bodied forth in the substance of Marlow’s speech and given a semblance of dramatic presence when he is quoted in dialogue. But this only ironically emphasizes his absence from the scene. His absent presence re-creates the distance that makes him enigmatic to Marlow and that even direct conversation cannot fully bridge” (123). There is a sense, then, that Marlow’s attempts to save his subject from oblivion suffer from Marlow’s insistence on his own presence and on the importance of his own narrative responsibility. By drawing attention to himself (and the present moment in which he is speaking), Marlow creates an unbridgeable temporal and spatial gap between his audience and his subject. Marlow’s loyalty thus seems to be divided between his responsibility to his subject and his own interests. Although his enterprise is tied to Jim, it is also his own voice that, with each repetition of Jim’s story, is saved from oblivion.12 Marlow’s stated unease as to the constant threat of transience and forgetfulness thus relates not only to the subject of his tale but also to his own self. Insofar as Marlow assures his own presence through the reiteration of Jim’s story, his fate is as dependent on Jim’s story as the latter is dependent on his narration. And so, Marlow tells and tells again. As we recall, the very first words that introduce Marlow specify that “later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly” (33). But why is Marlow so willing to remember? Perceiving Jim’s constant and apparently unconscious evasions, Marlow tells his listeners, “No man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge” (80). As Marlow himself is such a “finished artist,” as his narrative is overflowing with the artful dodges he associates with Jim, it is inevitable that we should attribute this

38

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

observation to his own narrative enterprise. Royal Roussel suggests that, like Jim, Marlow’s artistry, his “own kind of portraiture,” allows him to “live on the visible surface of life” (104–5), thereby permitting a balancing of sorts between the underlying darkness epitomized in the Patna affair and the envisioned order and decency inherent in “the honour of the craft” (46). Thus, it is possible to understand the effects of Marlow’s encounter with Jim as an echo—a diminished parallel—of Jim’s experience aboard the Patna. Daniel Schwarz writes, “Just as the Patna elicited the hidden part of Jim’s character, Jim represents for Marlow a collision between his own soul and the circumstances beyond his control that inevitably have a stake in shaping his destiny” (Almayer’s, 91–92). Although the experience of betrayal cannot be said to be directly Marlow’s own, Jim’s class and upbringing create an indelible connection between the two. Andrzej Gasiorek posits that Marlow’s “interest in Jim is from the outset acutely personal, since Jim belongs to his own social group, reminds him of the now lost illusions of his youth and represents the collapse of the values he has all his life sought to uphold” (85). Marlow’s vicarious experience of Jim’s betrayal therefore leaves him haunted by its implications. C. B. Cox therefore concludes that “Marlow’s whole narrative is a form of evasion. His attempt to understand, his obsession with Jim, reflects his desire to escape from the horror in the thought that he would not trust Jim in charge of his deck” (36). These critics seem to suggest that Marlow cannot tell Jim’s story simply, because such a rendering would force him to address professional, psychological, and ethical questions that he would rather repress.13 By attempting to pinpoint the origins of the otherwise-present representation of Jim, we have followed a shift in focus from Jim— his elusiveness of vision and presence—to Marlow. We recognize that Marlow’s otherwise vision (and consequent otherwise-present representation of Jim) may be the result of a number of factors: his probing techniques, Jim’s status as a memory trace, and finally Marlow’s own psychologically motivated evasions. This list, however, is not exhaustive. Of the numerous lessons the novel teaches us, one of the most pronounced concerns the reciprocal nature of the narratives of self-perpetuation. The act of transmission entails not only a teller (a sender) but also a listener (a recipient). Such an idea, advocated in Conrad’s choice of epigraph,14 is suggestive of Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory that holds that “the most important acts, constitutive of self-consciousness, are determined by their relation to another consciousness” (311). Indeed, we must not assume that the epigraph relates to Jim alone; after all, he is not the primary teller in the novel. If Marlow’s

Seeing Otherwise

39

identity is so bound to his story (much as Jim’s identity is bound to his own story), we can only presume that, as a storyteller, Marlow too yearns for the willing acceptance of an audience. Admittedly, he tells them, “Try as I may for the success of this yarn, I am missing innumerable shades—they were so fine, so difficult to render in colourless words” (94). Recalling Jim’s inability to adequately express himself in court, Marlow struggles in the formulation of his own speech. However, where Jim vainly wishes to correct his perceived culpability, it is for the “success” of his yarn that Marlow struggles. A competing interpretative solution to Marlow’s “artful dodges” thus presents itself. It is possible that one need not resort to psychologically motivated evasions in order to explain Marlow’s unique form of storytelling. It is possible, then, that the transition from chapter 4 to chapter 5 furnishes the narrative not only with a prism of interpretation that mimetically encapsulates the biases and faults associated with human subjectivity but also with a self-reflexive turn. Without relinquishing the evolution of Jim’s complex and later tormented persona, Conrad admits into the mix a struggling storyteller, a character responsible not only for the understanding of Jim’s inner recesses and a reportage of his history but also for the “success” of the story. Interestingly, the manner in which Marlow composes and transmits his narrative would suggest that, like his creator, he too subscribes to an otherwise-present aesthetic. Jim’s “simple” character expands under Marlow’s treatment, for he does not limit the characterization of Jim to what he is. Rather, Marlow constantly enhances the picture through a description of what Jim is not. This is a typical passage: “I don’t pretend I understood him. The views he let me have of himself were like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a thick fog—bits of vivid and vanishing detail, giving no connected idea of the general aspect of a country. They fed one’s curiosity without satisfying it; they were no good for purposes of orientation” (76). This passage evidently contributes more to the portrayal of the thick fog than it does to Jim’s character. If Jim is unclear and inscrutable, he is so partly as a consequence of Marlow’s method of depiction. Jim is represented not only through his ephemeral appearances but also through his episodic disappearances. In the making of his narrative, Marlow relies heavily on absence. In effect, Marlow’s characterization of his subject corresponds to a continuous oscillation between the binary opposites. The conflation of absence and presence is confusing and exasperating; it is, in Marlow’s words, “no good for purposes of orientation.” This, however, is precisely the effect Marlow achieves to ensure the continual interest of his listeners. It feeds “one’s curiosity without

40

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

satisfying it.” We recall Bloom’s observation: “Is Jim merely the spirit of illusion, or does there linger in him something of the legitimate spirit of romance? Marlow cannot answer the question” (5). Bloom’s accusation may be off the mark. It is not so much that Marlow cannot answer the question but rather that he does not wish to. Anxious as to the success of his yarn, anxious to elicit his listeners’ curiosity, Marlow forgoes the limiting potential of affirmation. Armstrong suggests that “by reinforcing our effort to reach a global understanding at the same time as they frustrate our search for clarity and consistency, Marlow’s commentaries set up an opposition in the reader between a heightened desire to know and a heightened inability to understand. This opposition parallels Marlow’s own experience with Jim” (134). Indeed, the turn to the otherwise present arises from Marlow’s suspicion that a successful narrative does precisely what Jim does to Marlow; it feeds one’s curiosity without appeasing it. Evidently, the need to artistically perfect his narrative does not necessarily coincide with an ethical responsibility to Jim. We may subsequently ask whether Marlow’s trials do not at times contradict his care and loyalty to Jim. Marlow himself entertains this suspicion. Standing by Jim’s side in Patusan, Marlow reflects, “I don’t know whether it was exactly fair to [Jim] to remember the incident which had given a new direction to his life, but at that very moment I remembered very distinctly. It was like a shadow in the light” (265). Indeed, there are moments when it seems that Marlow’s keen memory does not serve his subject as well as it does himself. The evocation of the jump at this particular moment in time in which Jim observes his realm and basks in its glory may add a dramatic flare to Marlow’s story, but it only deflates a moment of triumph in the progression of Jim’s life. In the scene of Jim’s triumph—the meeting of the two men on a Patusan hilltop—Marlow exemplifies his ability to deflect the surrounding presence, which is at this point in the narrative a clear actuality, and to resurrect in its stead shades of a past history. By weighing Jim’s guilt against his triumph, Marlow plays with absence and presence, bringing the former forward in an artistic disregard for the latter. True, we may attribute this artful digression to Marlow’s assertion of the ethical, his unwillingness to forgive and forget Jim’s insurrection. At the same time, Marlow’s chronological displacements can be interpreted as an integral part of his ongoing attempt to arrest his audience. By recalling the long forgotten past, Marlow introduces a certain tension to the narrative, a complication that can be construed as a proleptic warning: Jim’s sin is not forgotten; his guilt taints his

Seeing Otherwise

41

successes with the threat of an impending punishment. Marlow’s play with absence and presence may thus be attributed to an overall attempt to transform Jim into an overtly complex and contradictory subject. This may relate to the motif of the fog and mist that are forever enveloping the subject of Marlow’s narrative. Although these motifs may pertain to the objective correlative rendering of Jim’s occluded morality, it is possible that this mystification is yet another symptom of Marlow’s attempts to enthrall his audience in order to ensure the success of his yarn. In this, Marlow’s aesthetic responsibility to his audience appears to overshadow his ethical responsibility to Jim. As Guerard suggests, “imagery of nebulosity may magnify and glamorize Jim (as fog magnifies Wordsworth’s sheep), and also may be partly responsible for our first impression that Jim is an exceedingly mysterious person” (162). By presenting Jim as a person enveloped in a perpetual fog, always an elusive mystery, shifty and unknowable, Marlow creates an enduring subject, one that cannot be classified and forgotten. The invading mist that is forever obstructing Marlow’s vision cannot but furnish Marlow’s subject with a more mysteriously attractive aura. If Jim, as Marlow suggests, complicates things “by being so simple” (94), these narrative flourishes further complicate his character for the benefit of the beholder. The increasing reliance on hermeneutics, the temporal shift, and Marlow’s evident preoccupation with the artistic merit of his narrative increasingly distance the object of the tale from the narrator and his readers. As Marlow repeatedly confirms, however, Jim is not only the symbolic other—a mystery forever beyond comprehension, a tantalizing absence—but also a symbolic self. Marlow’s reiteration that Jim is “one of us” (LJ, 78, 93, 106, 224, 331, 361, 416) thus offers an inverted assertion, a claim to knowledge, familiarity, and proximity. “Don’t forget,” Marlow tells his listeners, “I had him before me, and really he was too much like one of us not to be dangerous” (106). Marlow does not mince words. He tells his audience that it is precisely because of Jim’s ties with the community of which Marlow and his audience are part that Jim’s case cannot but implicate and taint them all in its guilt. Jim is one of them, and they cannot sit back and enjoy the narrative as one enjoys an inconsequential fiction. Jim’s story is Marlow’s story; it is the story of each member of his audience. Tony Tanner drives this point further and writes, “We become so caught up in Marlow’s hovering interest and delicate probing that when he asserts that Jim was ‘one of us’—meaning a western seaman— Jim becomes, by extension, one of ‘us,’ the readers” (Conrad, 13).

42

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

Whether Marlow’s involvement is psychological, moral, or fraternal is irrelevant; Jim is too much like him to allow a safe distance. Marlow’s reiterations thus effectively deny us the possibility of viewing him as a narrator who practices cool detachment. The subject of Marlow’s narration is too close to allow Marlow to stand “behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, pairing his fingernails” (Joyce, 233). Revealingly, the expression “one of us” is taken up by Conrad in his Author’s Note to the novel, written almost twenty years after its first publication. Echoing his narrator’s sentiment, Conrad writes, “It was for me, with all the sympathy of which I was capable, to seek fit words for [Jim’s] meaning. He was ‘one of us’” (IX). This proposed mission, moreover, is juxtaposed to a contrasting one that Conrad fervently denies: Jim, Conrad assures his readers, is not a product of “coldly perverted thinking” (IX) on his part. Clearly, a process of appropriation, of capitalizing on the suffering of the protagonist or sensationalizing his pain, forever underlies the storyteller’s project. Both Marlow and his creator, however, preempt such allegations by vouching for the sincerity of their intentions. By presenting a curiosity that is guided by a sympathetic and almost symbiotic familiarity, they emphasize an involvement that goes beyond morbid interference, beyond a detached appropriation. Jim is “one of us.” In this section, we have followed the manifest strategies of an otherwise-present aesthetic, the methods whereby the absenting, as it were, of the subject of the tale is accompanied by the inverse trajectory of making him acutely present. There is a sense, however, that the terms of the analysis are increasingly suggestive of a growing disparity between an ethical and an aesthetic approach to storytelling. This incongruence is marked by the sense that if Jim’s story is indeed ours to tell, then it is ours to tell well. Is Marlow, then, an exponent of Conrad’s evolving vision of an otherwise-present aesthetic and its associated glamour and thrall, or is he a compassionate but nevertheless objective interpreter entrusted with the responsibility of aiding and understanding a younger, fallen self? The following section examines the meeting of ethics and aesthetics in the work of a narrator committed to an otherwise-present method of storytelling.

43

Seeing Otherwise

A Wil l i ngnes s to Rememb er As if the initial word of each our destiny were not graven in imperishable characters upon the face of a rock. —LJ, 186

On shipping Jim off to Patusan, Marlow makes the terms of the “agreement” or “experiment” (LJ, 231) quite clear: “I could make him a solemn promise that [the door] would be shut behind him with a vengeance. His fate, whatever it was, would be ignored. [. . .] Once he got in, it would be for the outside world as though he had never existed.” Marlow promises Jim oblivion, and Jim could not be happier: “Never existed—that’s it, by Jove” (232). It is soon made evident, however, that Marlow does not adhere to the terms of their agreement. In fact, this breach is made known to the reader many pages before the terms of the pact are presented. It suffices to read the introduction to Marlow’s narrative in order to comprehend the gravity of his transgression. We are informed that “later on, many times, in distant parts of the world, Marlow showed himself willing to remember Jim, to remember him at length, in detail and audibly” (33, my emphases). In utter disregard of his promise to Jim, Marlow is indeed “willing to remember.” Needless to say, Jim’s oblivion is hardly secured by Marlow’s repeated tellings. At the outset, Marlow suggests that he is no more curious of the details of the affair than are the others who come to the trial to be “enslaved by the fascination of [Jim’s] voice” (29). Marlow is a storyteller, and it appears that the Patna story is the one circulating item of interest at the time when Marlow first lays eyes on Jim. Naturally, his curiosity is aroused. Marlow explains that “the affair had been notorious for days, ever since that mysterious cable message came from Aden to start us all cackling.” He then adds that “the whole waterside talked of nothing else” (35). Marlow’s propensity to weave yarns and his delight in their telling cannot but contribute to his fascination with Jim. Hence, it is possible that Marlow’s obsession with Jim goes further than his need to affirm his sense of self or his belief in the “sovereign power.” For a renowned storyteller such as Marlow, the inherent value of a story cannot be overlooked.15 Marlow’s admissions of interest in the scandalous details of the affair are not, however, articulated in such terms. At first, he adopts the guise of a socioethical interest. We recall that it is “for the honour of the craft” (46) that he wants to see Jim “squirming like an impaled beetle” (42). We would be mistaken, however, to infer from

44

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

these textual clues the true reason underlying Marlow’s interest in Jim, for, soon after his commitment to these claims, Marlow is caught in an interesting contradiction. After admitting to his initial curiosity, Marlow suddenly feigns lack of interest and abandons his former stance altogether. Foregoing his wish to see Jim, as it were, “impaled,” Marlow characterizes his initial encounter with Jim as one of active resistance. Not only does he not want to know of Jim, he wants nothing to do with him. Thus, in sharp contrast to his initial curiosity, in utter abandon of his psychological project to redeem his belief in the “sovereign power,” Marlow expounds to his audience his sense of abhorrence at the prospect of being made a “receptacle of confessions” (34): “[The devil] is there right enough, and, being malicious, he lets me in for that kind of thing [. . .] the kind of thing that by devious, unexpected, truly diabolical ways causes me to run up against men with soft spots, with hard spots, with hidden plague spots, by Jove! And loosens their tongues at the sight of me for their infernal confidences” (34). Marlow protests too much. His asserted unwillingness to know not only contradicts his initial socioethical interest but also contradicts the fact that, as the omniscient narrator has already reported, Marlow is later very “willing to remember” (33). His resistance is indeed so pronounced that no less than the devil himself is invoked in Marlow’s attempt to convey his sheer horror in facing his role as “a receptacle of confessions” (34). While such a strong asseveration serves to emphasize Marlow’s aversion, it ultimately proves detrimental. For later we see that a similar infernal invocation underlies Jim’s unwillingness to accept his responsibility for the fateful jump. There is a touch of irony in Marlow’s explanation that Jim believes that his jump from the Patna had not been an act of volition but rather that he “had suffered himself to be handled by the infernal powers who had selected him for the victim of their practical joke” (108). Thus, we have two instances of “infernal powers” acting out against two unsuspecting individuals. Inevitably, with such mirroring, Marlow’s insightful asides help to shed light not only on Jim’s evasions but on his own. As with Jim, there is something of an “artful dodge” in Marlow’s self-portrayal as a man helpless in the face of a higher power. It is Marlow acting on his own volition who goes to the trial to seek out Jim’s story. And yet, with these accumulating claims of passivity, he is in effect saying (much in Jim’s vein), “He had talked—it seems.” In his engagement with Jim, Marlow’s actions further undermine the veracity of his self-characterization as a “receptacle.” We recall that Marlow informs his listeners that it is by “devious, unexpected, truly

Seeing Otherwise

45

diabolical ways” that he “run[s] up against men” (34) like Jim. We soon see, however, that it is not so much the forces of “darkness” that force him into such encounters but his own, active volition. Thus, following the “wretched cur” incident, Marlow reportedly decides “to trot” (75) in hope of catching up with Jim. Marlow’s endeavor is not, however, limited to a mere “trot.” Later, we see that Jim acquiesces to Marlow’s “pressing” (76) invitation to dinner. And still Marlow’s efforts are not exhausted. Marlow informs his listeners that “a little wine opened Jim’s heart and loosened his tongue” (77). Having trotted and beseeched, the man who so hates to hear another man’s confessions proceeds to administer alcohol to his interlocutor. If Marlow tells his audience that it is the devil that loosens the tongue of those who would make of him “a receptacle of confessions,” in administering the wine to Jim, Marlow is undertaking a very uncomplimentary role. Moreover, it finally seems that Marlow’s efforts had been unnecessary, for Jim retorts, “Don’t you think I can tell you what there is to tell without screwing myself up?” (116). Armstrong writes, “It is sheer accident that Jim and Marlow should establish a lasting relation on the basis of a misunderstanding about a dog in the courthouse” (114). While contingency is a prominent motif in the novel, the developing friendship between Marlow and Jim is not a matter of pure chance. We may assume that had Marlow’s aversion for his role as “receptacle” been true to his character, he would not admit to “prying” (51); he would not listen to Jim’s tale with a “concentrated attention”; and he would not reiterate his need “to know” (79). In fact, he finally takes responsibility for his involvement and claims that “one has no business really to get interested. It’s a weakness of mine” (94). Marlow thus finally confesses that he is intrigued: Jim is “too interesting or too fortunate to be thrown to the dogs” (177). It is precisely this interest that motivates Marlow to follow Jim, to detain him, and to plead, “You must let me help you” (183). Even Marlow’s stated wish to “to dispose of [Jim]” (221) assumes the form of an active intervention. Before returning to England, he seeks a meeting with Stein in the hope that such an encounter will furnish him with an opportunity to do so. Subsequently, this interview provides Marlow with just such an opportunity—not only for Jim but for himself. Thus, even in wishing to rid himself of Jim, Marlow must be an active participant. Cox accordingly notes that “like a novelist, Marlow wonders where next to send his hero [. . . . Jim’s] fictional roles shrink or expand, as under some optical toy, through Marlow’s manipulations” (25).

46

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

Stein’s assertion that Marlow does not know “what it is for a collector to capture such a rare specimen” (LJ, 208) is misleading. Marlow’s belated explanation that he has come “to describe a specimen” (211) is not merely a rhetorical flourish; Jim is indeed a valuable find for Marlow. “Should I let him go,” Marlow ponders, “I would never forgive myself” (180). Marlow’s interview with Stein is, in this sense, an important juncture in the novel, not only in its exploration of the fate of the romantic hero, but also in bringing together the two collectors. Marlow and Stein share a habit of appropriation. Stein’s catacombs and glass encasings mirror, to some extent, Marlow’s narratives. Like Stein’s custom, Marlow preserves the memory of his own specimen so that it may be brought out in the form of a narrative when a willing audience occasions it. We have seen that Marlow wonders on one occasion whether it is “fair to [Jim] to remember the incident” (265). This ethical probing does not develop further. Despite moral scruples, Marlow is ever ready to administer the details of Jim’s story. We see, for example, that Marlow is quite ready to furnish Egström with the details of Jim’s transgressions. Marlow even attempts to justify his revelation, suggesting that he felt that he “owed some explanation” (196). Ironically, Marlow wonders that the affair “had an extraordinary power of defying the shortness of memories and the length of time: it seemed to live, with a sort of uncanny vitality, in the minds of men, on the tips of their tongues” (137). Yet only several sentences later, Marlow finds that his own telling furthers the evidence of the pervasiveness of the story. He asks his audience, “Has [Jim’s story] not turned up to-night between us?” (138). Marlow then adds, “I am the only one to whom it is a memory” (138). Indeed, Marlow is the only one to whom Jim’s story is a memory, and, insofar as he repeatedly enlivens this memory through his narrative, he is in a certain manner following Schomberg’s lead. Schomberg, we recall, is the innkeeper who would, “with both elbows on the table, impart an adorned version of the story to any guest who cared to imbibe knowledge along with the more costly liquors” (198). As I have already noted, both Greaney and Hampson underline the distinction between the storytelling ethics exercised by Schomberg and Marlow. Marlow’s adorned version may indeed be distinct from the one proffered by Schomberg, but “the casual crowd that frequented Schomberg’s establishment” (198) may not be very different from those who lend an ear to Marlow’s tale. Although they recognize the difference between the two storytellers, Greaney and Hampson both agree that Marlow’s methods do not precisely conform to the image of the Benjaminian

Seeing Otherwise

47

storyteller. Greaney writes that Marlow is “the hypersensitive eavesdropper at large in the text, the uninvited guest lurking on the fringes of other people’s conversations” (69); Hampson reminds us that Marlow writes “gossipy letters” at the time of Jim’s crisis (Cross-Cultural, 132). We can say that both storytellers may be seen to turn a blind eye to the ethical implications of their story. Furthermore, while Schomberg’s tales are classified as gross gossip, we cannot say that he shares in the responsibility Marlow has undertaken in his befriending of Jim. It is Marlow and not Schomberg who has committed to help and support Jim. Such an obligation raises the question whether Marlow’s oral transmissions are not as objectionable in their own way as Schomberg’s gossip. As we have seen, Marlow’s ethical probing is arrested; he does not go further in questioning the legitimacy of his tellings. In fact, it seems that Marlow succeeds in actively avoiding their implications. When Marlow and Stein “hove [Jim] over the wall” (229), that is, transport him to Patusan, Marlow symbolically removes Jim from his world and his word. Here, the circulating gossip cannot harm Jim. In Patusan, it is no longer Marlow’s word that prevails. Patusan is “the land without a past, where [Jim’s] word was the one truth of every passing day” (272). Effectively, Patusan is a land without Marlow, a veritable shelter from Marlow’s narrative obsession. With the removal of Jim from the world in which his story is narrated, the question as to the fairness of remembering “the incident” is blurred, offering some relief to Marlow’s scruples. For as long as Jim is physically present to Marlow, the question is indeed a troubling one. And yet, if we look more closely, we find that it is not so much that Marlow is plagued by scruples but rather that he suffers from a certain anxiety about “ownership rights.” Prior to Jim’s move to Patusan we find several textual moments in which Marlow is forced to acknowledge that Jim’s fate is not precisely a possession of his own. This realization immediately effects a loss of composure on his part. Thus, for example, when Jim reassures Marlow that the trouble is, “after all,” his own (154), Marlow finds that he is at a loss for words: “I opened my mouth to retort, and discovered suddenly that I’d lost all confidence in myself; and it was as if he, too, had given me up” (154). The master of rhetoric does not often confess to such a state. And yet we would have already perceived such a loss of composure on Marlow’s part on an earlier occasion when Jim had first wished to take leave of him. After Jim attempts to walk off following the “wretched cur” incident, Marlow attempts to detain him. As he does so, however, he is suddenly and uncharacteristically at a loss

48

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

for words: “Anxious not to lose him, I said hurriedly that I couldn’t think of leaving him under a false impression of my—of my—I stammered” (75). These examples show us, quite revealingly, that Marlow appears to be most vulnerable when Jim asserts his independence. These isolated glimpses of Marlow’s insecurity highlight the manner in which Marlow is empowered by the appropriation of Jim’s story. When this appropriation is jeopardized or in some way questioned, so is Marlow’s sense of mastery. While several critics see the relationship between Marlow and Jim as a rewarding partnership, I believe that Marlow’s narrative enterprise introduces a clear sense of power into the equation. Jewel’s belief that Marlow possesses some dark power over Jim emphasizes this aspect of the relationship. Marlow explains that, to her, “[he] belonged to this Unknown that might claim Jim for its own at any moment. [He] was, as it were, in the secret of its nature and of its intention;—the confidant of a threatening mystery;—armed with its power perhaps!” (308). While Marlow here downplays his power, portraying its immensity with a slight touch of sarcasm, it is clear that the secret he possesses does, in effect, give him power over Jim. “The onlookers,” we recall, “see most of the game” (LJ, 224). Despite a self-characterization that insists on an irrevocable involvement, Marlow is indeed an onlooker, and, as such, he secures a full and comprehensive perspective on all the proceedings. Furthermore, as we have seen, Marlow’s befriending of Jim allows him a unique glimpse of Jim’s adventures, a look so intimate that it sets Marlow apart from all those others who were, from the very first, similarly interested in Jim’s case. We remember that “everybody connected in any way with the sea was [at the inquiry]” (35). Although there is this multitude of onlookers, Marlow is the one man who becomes Jim’s friend and confidant, and he remains in sole possession of the knowledge and memory of the secret details of Jim’s fate. Finally, it appears that there is yet another benefit to the association with Jim. Jim’s romantic vision makes up for what Marlow claims to be an imaginative lack in himself, a complaint dire indeed for an avid storyteller. Marlow’s confession that he has “no imagination” (223) is reiterated when he tells his listeners that he “mistrusted [his] want of imagination” (224).16 Jim, who is noted for his extraordinary capacity to imagine, thus provides an extremely alluring subject of fascination. Here, too, Marlow benefits from distance. For, as we know, Jim’s imaginative faculty is double-edged: the source of his fame and his downfall. Marlow subsequently makes do with nothing but an interrogation of such a destructive power. Stepping back in fear of falling

Seeing Otherwise

49

over the edge, he refrains from a firsthand experience of Jim’s insatiable imagination. The otherwise-present aesthetic does not entail sacrifice; Marlow will forever receive more than he surrenders. If Marlow “peeps over the edge,” he nevertheless “remains in the ranks.” Such, of course, is not the case for the subject of his narrative. As was the case in Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s narrative ends with the death of its subject. As Guerard concludes, Marlow’s narratives end when “the double is exorcised, whether to die or to go free” (114). The life that propels the narrative is Jim’s. By transforming this life into a narrative, Marlow figuratively “feeds” off Jim until, with the conclusion of the narrative and the death of its subject, Marlow is rid of his host. To the very end, Marlow is at a remove from the action. Marlow looks on, participates, but does not perish. Indeed, he is sheltered to such a degree that he derives the final part of the narrative from Brown and Stein—at a safe distance (both temporal and spatial) from the violent events that conclude Jim’s story. It further appears that this distance is augmented, for as we reach chapter 36, we learn that Marlow’s oral transmission is displaced by written document; his audience is dismissed only to be replaced by a single individual. Marlow, it would seem, specializes in disappearance acts. First, he surrenders the spotlight by taking leave of his listeners. Second, by turning to written communication, he literally effaces his presence from the novel. With this concluding invisibility, Marlow performatively repeats the representation of Jim’s gradual disappearance, a representation that begins with Jim’s removal to Patusan and ends with his death. This is then followed by an additional mirroring when, like Jim before him, Marlow finally dedicates his narrative to an individual. We recall that Jim’s first rendition of the events takes place in court. This, however, is a failed telling; by focusing on the facts of the event, the court proceedings do not allow Jim to win the approval or recognition for which he hopes. Subsequently, Jim retells his narrative to Marlow in a second attempt to fall on a more receptive ear. Marlow notes this, finding that Jim had “burrowed deep, deep, in the hope of [his] absolution” (97). Marlow’s repeated tellings of Jim’s story are directed toward an audience. Marlow, too, however, finally cuts the tale short and turns from the public eye to a solitary individual. As Marlow is the sole possessor of the knowledge of Jim’s history, so for Marlow “there was only one man of all these listeners who was ever to hear the last word of the story” (337). The performative repetition is complete. As Jim is first removed from Marlow’s world to Patusan later to leave only a trace in writing, Marlow is removed from his audience, leaving behind nothing but a written document. As Jim turns from the public to the

50

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

private, so Marlow rids himself of his audience in his search for solace and understanding in the figure of one, lone individual. We find in this mirroring a series of retreats; repeatedly, presence is undermined by absence. Hampson traces this process: “Marlow’s invocation of Jim’s voice emphasises Jim’s absence. Jim’s voice is displaced by writing, and these documents are all that is left to gesture towards the life that has passed [. . . .] Marlow’s written text resurrects Marlow’s speaking voice and produces the illusion of Marlow’s presence. However, the condition of that ‘speaking’ remains the irremediable absence of Jim and the temporary absence of Marlow” (Cross-Cultural, 152). As Hampson suggests, the displacement of the oral by the written and the public by the private brings about a tantalizing play of absence and presence. What we have, finally, is an accumulation of illusory presences, each bringing the reader further away from both the subject of the story and its narrator. This final play of the binary poles provides further evidence for the pervasiveness of Conrad’s otherwise-present aesthetic. We have seen the manner in which it affects the representation of Jim both as subject and object. In addition, we have traced a similar effect in the creation of Marlow, once again both as subject and object. The all-encompassing effect of Marlow’s storytelling practice is yet to be exhausted, however, as we find that its effects exceed what has so far been the focus of our discussion, namely the characters of Jim and Marlow. An equally important aspect of this art is located in the critical reader’s response to the novel, an aspect to which we have already alluded in different parts of this chapter. Although Peter Brooks’s words refer to Heart of Darkness, his summary is extremely relevant to this discussion. He writes, any future retelling of Marlow’s tale of Kurtz’s story will have to be narrative in nature because there is no way to state its kernel, its wisdom, directly: this can only be approached metonymically, through a tryingout of orders, through plotting. And these will never take you there, they will only indicate where “there” might be located. Meaning will never lie in the summing-up but only in transmission: in the passing-on of the “horror,” the taint of knowledge gained. Meaning is hence dialogic in nature, located in the interstices of story and frame, born of the relationship between tellers and listeners. (Brooks, 260)

The story of Heart of Darkness begins, as we have seen in the introduction to this chapter, with a pseudowarning. “The meaning” of Marlow’s stories lies “not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping

Seeing Otherwise

51

the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze” (HD, 48). Brooks alerts us to what is, perhaps, the most frequently discussed problematic that underlies our response to Marlow’s storytelling practice. Marlow’s plottings “will never take you there, they will only indicate where ‘there’ might be located” (Brooks, 260). There is no “kernel” in Marlow’s narrative—only an enveloping “haze.” We have seen the manner in which this metonymic aesthetic affects the rendering of his subject. Jim is no longer present, but a memory trace. Consequently, this subject cannot but be elusive, a mystery enveloped in shade and mist. We have also noted that Marlow undergoes a similar retreat and, subsequently, a similar reliance on what is, in effect, a metonymic representation. The otherwise-present aesthetic allows for the coming together of distance and proximity, experience and safety. The subversion of the concept of presence in Marlow’s poetics therefore affects the manner in which he exercises both seeing and being; the presence of both the object and the narrator is undermined. Finally, it is the story itself—its meaning and its message—that is otherwise present. In Heart of Darkness, the introductory words show us that it is not only the narrator and the subject of the story but also the tale itself that is enveloped in a hazy screen, a narrative obstruction that limits the readers’ comprehension and knowledge. This, too, may be attributed to Marlow’s particular storytelling practice. Marlow’s elusive representations are not merely a consequence of his skeptical outlook and the accumulation of his subjective conjecture. The turn to the otherwise present follows Marlow’s artistic and ethical stance as a storyteller, an aesthetic that is not motivated by a narrative endeavor to provide an unequivocal affirmation. Marlow informs his listeners that this is an impossible goal; it is impossible to know the inner recesses of the other’s soul. The telling, then, is propelled not by the answers but by the search for them, a process of investigation and contemplation that is dear to Marlow’s narrative enterprise. His narrative feeds our curiosity but neither wishes nor attempts to satisfy it. The narrative is not informative but rather, as Brooks suggests, experiential. Miller writes, “The overabundance of possible explanations only inveigles the reader to share in the self-sustaining motion of a process of interpretation which cannot reach an unequivocal conclusion” (39). As the novel concludes without affirmation, without a final sentence, Marlow’s fascination with Jim, his curiosity and his bewilderment, must be transferred to his audience. With this transferal, Marlow’s narrative effects an ironic subversion: the critical and rational reader must accept that it is not only the imaginative and youthfully romantic Jim whose perception is affected

52

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

by the play of absence and presence. Nor is it only the cunning (or bewildered) narrator. In an attempt to make sense of the novel, we, too, become implicated in its action; and our vision, like Marlow’s and indeed like Jim’s, cannot but be distorted. Marlow’s narrative teaches us that as onlookers, reality always already recedes before us. The onlooker—be he Jim, Marlow, or the reader—cannot but be implicated. As such, we can perceive only that which is otherwise present. Conrad’s experimentation with Marlow’s character is suggestive of his growing understanding that the otherwise-present aesthetic forms an integral part of the very act of storytelling. Telling a story involves a performance of the oscillation between absence and presence, between knowledge and skepticism, between success and failure. The story is a product of the tension between binary extremes, a tension that sanctions a proliferation of meanings and interpretations, an open-endedness that allows the story to continue even after the last word has been spoken.

4

Chapter 3

A S pectral Temporality Th e Hi s to ry o f N O S T R O M O as Perpet ua l R et u r n

I

n the previous chapter, I traced the manner in which the transition from chapter 4 to chapter 5 in Lord Jim marks a significant shift in Conrad’s developing aesthetic. The surrendering of the narrative to a first-person narrator signals more than an attempt at a mimetic representation, one that highlights the partialities and distortions of living memory and the social and normative constraints that are associated with subjectivity. The casting off of omniscience is also integral to an aesthetic choice, a search for a specifically literary type of glamour that is produced by an indelible slippage of binary opposites that colors the representation with an aura of mystery and, in so doing, creates a self-perpetuating reading effect. The transition from chapter 4 to chapter 5 is a transition out of a spatial and temporal presence that, once abandoned, allows for the proliferation of paradoxical conjunctions that we associate with the otherwise present. The spatial and chronological involutions that I have traced in the novel form part of the machinery that allows Conrad to achieve both aims—the mimetic and aesthetic as one. In turning to Nostromo, we turn to a work that has been traditionally perceived as the apex of Conrad’s experimentation with chronology, a novel that is frustratingly “out of joint.” Articulating a widely held view, Edward Said writes, “We are never really certain about the novel’s time scheme” (Beginnings, 121). This perplexing uncertainty, the sensation that, as Leona Toker senses, “some tantalizing pattern seems to be there—just beyond our reach” (43) is a product of the coincidence of conflicting temporal strategies throughout the novel. As I will presently show, the novel’s temporal arrangement rests on the

54

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

tension between the iterative and the singular, between the cyclical and the linear, between repetition and the originary moment. Once again we have an instance of an impossible conjunction of binary opposites; the story told in Nostromo is otherwise present. Critical attempts to negotiate the text’s complex machinery have identified different sets of oppositions, all suggestive of a similar conjunction of warring forces that lends the novel its temporal uniqueness. Jameson describes the movement from the individual to the transindividual as characteristic of a historical evolution whereby the actions of the subject facilitate the creation of a new institutional and collective space. Claire Rosenfield differentiates between political temporality and traditional atemporality, between the originality of human ambition and the determinism of historical recurrence. Toker delineates the opposition between expositional material and historical occasion. In an analysis of the pseudoiterative form so pervasive in the novel, Jeremy Hawthorn describes the tension between individual agency and passivity, between a conservative and a liberal view of historical progression.1 These extremely insightful analyses of the text share a telling find—although pertaining to different strategies or ideological frameworks, the various studies all draw attention to the difficulty in attempting to isolate the different temporal strategies. As Hawthorn writes: This paradoxical marriage of repetition and change, of being “every day alike” while simultaneously being instrumental to the bringing-about of enormous changes, is central to the thematics of Nostromo. When we turn to the narrative techniques used by Conrad in the novel, then, it should not surprise us to find that the iterative and singulative modes are frequently set in competing proximity with each other, and that the pseudo-iterative or the pseudo-singulative often mark the fault-line between repetition and change, that point at which “being oneself” becomes “being different,” where rehearsing a set speech is ushering in an era—or conversely, where doing something different turns out to be doing the same old thing. (“Repetitions,” 136–37)

The difficulty of interpretation or comprehension, then, lies in the coincidence of two or more frameworks that lead the reader to commit to opposing interpretative conclusions at once. In Nostromo, repetition and change are inexorably tied; recurrence is both self-same and other, identical and new. As such, the novel will allow for a substantiation of a cyclical, nonchanging view of history as it does a linear, evolving progression. The effect, then, is of an open-endedness

A Spectral Temporality

55

that promotes multiple interpretative solutions, none of which may be deemed exclusive or definitive. A possible interpretative solution for this inherent temporal paradox is to read conjunctively. Rather than opt for one of several interpretative solutions or isolate the different temporal constructs within different narrative frameworks (i.e., politics/tradition, private/public, setting/occasion), we should identify the duality apparent in each isolated narrative strand, whether it pertains to a lone character or to the complex historical machinery of Sulaco. Such an elusive time frame, one that neither adheres to our preconceived notion of a chronology that follows a linear progression from past to present to future nor allows us to exercise our bias toward presence, will once again have to be grasped with the help of a deconstructive language. In a reading of Hamlet that is inspired by the legacy of Karl Marx, Jacques Derrida defines a phenomenon whereby the singular and the iterative are conjoined: “repetition and first time, but also repetition and last time, since the singularity of every first time makes of it also a last time. Each time it is the event itself, a first time is a last time.” “Altogether other,” such is the alternate ontology of the specter, which Derrida refers to as a “hauntology” (Derrida, Specters, 10). Although I have no wish to encumber upon Nostromo by attaching to it yet another impossible time frame, it is my contention that the notion of a “hauntology” is pertinent to a discussion of the novel’s temporality and will help to illuminate its dizzying dynamics. To embrace the spectral—clearly a supplement to human thought and experience—is not, however, to neglect the human. Rather, the terms Derrida uses to elaborate upon the notion of a hauntology relate precisely to the intensely human experience of “learn[ing] to live with ghosts, in the upkeep, the conversation, the company, or the companionship, in the commerce without commerce of ghosts. To live otherwise, and better. No, not better, but more justly. But with them. No being-with the other, no socius without this with that makes being-with in general more enigmatic than ever for us. And this beingwith specters would also be, not only but also, a politics of memory, of inheritance, and of generations” (Specters, xviii–xvix). The attempt, then, is not to comprehend the other as other, a unique entity separate from the self, but as the other within that self. Inheritance, memory, and haunting are all suggestive of the incorporation within the subject of the experience of the other. Such an exercise is inevitably accompanied by an inherited duality. Living otherwise or living with the other necessarily entails living in two worlds—two temporalities—at once. Derrida perceives this as

56

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

a “spectrality effect,” one that “consist[s] in undoing the opposition, or even this dialectic, between actual, effective presence and its other” (Specters, 40). Living otherwise, then, brings about a skewed synchrony between what is present and what was never present, a synchrony that robs temporality of its clear linear progression, marking a time that is “out of joint.” Moreover, such a skewed synchrony afflicts not only the experiencing subject who in mourning is confronted with a command from beyond the grave but also with a collective, a politics in a state of flux that is haunted by its own history of former revolutions, symbols, traumas, and triumphs. Specters of Marx opens with a conjuration. Reading The Communist Manifesto and Hamlet side by side, Derrida finds that both works “[open] with the apparition of a specter. More precisely by the waiting for this apparition” (Specters, 4). Thus, beginning marks a process of awaiting a temporal interruption, a disassociation that strips presence of a contemporaneity with itself. Tellingly, Nostromo, too, begins with a scene of haunting. The narration starts not in but outside Sulaco, with a bird’s eye view of the neighboring peninsula of Azuera. Here, “two gringos, spectral and alive, are believed to be dwelling to this day amongst the rocks, under the fatal spell of their success. Their souls cannot tear themselves away from their bodies mounting guard over the discovered treasure” (N, 5). Conrad’s choice to begin outside is clearly essential from a topographical and geographical point of view, by way of establishing Sulaco’s sequestered remoteness, a key factor in the staging of its political life. The legend of the two gringos, however, is no less significant. In addition to formulating the inexorable psychological and discursive link between the material and the spiritual that will pervade the novel in its entirety, it also introduces the condition of “being-with specters,” or, in Derrida’s terms, a “hauntology,” which establishes the unique temporality of the novel from the outset. Nostromo appears to begin by drawing a line of demarcation between the chronicled event and the ongoing haunting of the nonevent. It is stressed (through reiteration) that the story of the two wandering sailors and their exploits is “within men’s memory” (4)—a remark suggestive of the possibility of chronicling the event in time (as opposed to such likely substitutes as “once” or “a long time ago”). At the same time, the event itself—the event that marks the transformation of the mysterious gringos into beings both “spectral and alive”—is a nonevent; it is not chronicled: “The impious adventurers gave no other sign. The sailors, the Indian, and the stolen burro were never seen again” (5). Haunting, as Derrida writes, “is historical, to

A Spectral Temporality

57

be sure, but it is not dated, it is never docilely given a date in the chain of presents, day after day, according to the instituted order of a calendar” (Specters, 4). We could hypothesize, then, that the time scheme that Conrad’s narrator attempts to establish pertains to the historical event; it is the so-called expedition to uncover the treasure on Azuera and that portentous spiral of smoke that are “within men’s memories.” The act of haunting, however, cannot be situated in time. Insofar as it marks a revisitation, a return, haunting marks a perpetual reoccurrence, a nonchanging present. The transition from the event to the spectral nonevent, from a completed reproducible narrative to a constant recurrence, is signaled by a grammatical transition from the past to the present tense: “the tenacious gringo ghosts” are “now rich and hungry and thirsty” (5, my emphasis). Seemingly in opposition to one another—a past event that was once witnessed and an ongoing present that remains unseen—the two time schemes are nevertheless linked. “Within men’s memories” remains an ahistorical denomination; it is too vague a phrase to be suggestive of an honest attempt to chronicle an actual event. Indeed, the emphasis on memory, even if the notion of intersubjectivity lends it a more factual, verifiable tone, contrasts with written, documented time. Fittingly, the manner in which the tale is presented, that is, “the story goes also” (4) is hardly an appropriate opening for the setting down of history but is rather suggestive of popular belief, superstition, and word-to-mouth folklore that may, in fact, never have been an actuality. The past event once witnessed is itself a type of nonevent, a competing narrative that by its very definition cannot be factual. The event that precedes the spectral and indeed heralds it is itself riddled by a temporal elusiveness. By playing out the tension between the impulse to record the past and the prevalence of a discourse that is at odds with the premises of historical documentation, the exposition introduces an ambivalence that will pervade the novel in its entirety. If a language of haunting seems inappropriate within a discussion of styles of historical reportage, there is nevertheless a sense that it neatly complements the metaphysical and spiritual symbols that dominate the narrative. A justification for the insertion of the otherworldly strand of images that haunts the novel is provided at the outset, where it is stated that “the poor” associate “by an obscure instinct of consolation the ideas of evil and wealth” (4). This obscure instinct is translated into a proliferation within the narrative of allusions to evil, the ghostly, spells, and curses—all inexorably connected to a literary and psychological exploration of material interests.

58

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

The discursive link between the spiritual and the material that is here established is repeatedly invoked throughout. To illustrate, we are told that Charles Gould falls “under the spell of the San Tomé mine” (59) and desires its “redemption” (78), and that, in agreeing to take the silver, Nostromo senses that he is “taking up a curse” (259). It is worth noting, however, that the prevalence of this lexical set goes beyond this ironic link. The ghostly pervades not only the material but all facets of life in Sulaco. Guzman Bento is resurrected in the form of a “sanguinary land-haunting spectre” (47); Mrs. Gould’s heart is prey to “the silent work of evil spirits” (222); and Dr. Monygham is “the slave of a ghost” (373). Nostromo casts “a spell on [Linda and Giselle]” (518), and Giselle’s love, in turn, casts on him “a spell stronger than the accursed spell of the treasure” (540–41). It is perhaps inevitable, then, that such discourse would infect not only the novel’s content but also its style, not only what is reported but how it is reported. Through a subtle slippage, the clear discursive link that connects the spiritual and the material and then the spiritual and the psychological thus infects the very method of representation—the way in which history is not only viewed or grasped but also told. We thus find that the very history of Sulaco is prey to a spectrality effect and that it is consequently rendered resistant to conventional methods of documentation. Said argues that the “narrative’s reluctance to pin down the present” may owe itself to Conrad’s attempt to mimetically render subjective perception or creatively represent “a hesitation to being” (Beginnings, 121). If, however, we are to view the novel’s style as a performative expression of its thematic concerns, it should be possible to locate the origins of this stylistic turn within the diegesis.

Livi ng with G hosts In Almayer’s Folly, Almayer’s nostalgia for Europe, on which he has never set eyes, is inherited from his mother who, as it is reported, would “from the depths of her long easy-chair [bewail] the lost glories of Amsterdam” (AF, 5). The inheritance of an idea, a desire—an obsession—is, in effect, an incorporation of otherness that infects the experienced present with the virtual experience of a past that was never present. As the example of the earlier novel shows, this lacuna has a powerful hold over the subject, a motivator that is at times stronger than external, present-to-being stimuli. In Nostromo, the condition of living with ghosts is a given; it is a way of life. A powerful testament to this is provided in the first part

A Spectral Temporality

59

of the novel, in the tale of Charles Gould’s history and his return to Sulaco, a return that is predetermined by a life not his own. Having no choice but to accept the government’s offer of the perpetual concession of the San Tomé mine, Charles Gould’s father “swallowed the pill, and it was as though it had been compounded of some subtle poison that acted directly on his brain. He became at once mine-ridden, and as he was well read in light literature it took to his mind the form of the Old Man of the Sea fastened upon his shoulders. He also began to dream of vampires. [. . .] [S]ince that time he began to suffer from fever, from liver pains and mostly from a worrying inability of think of anything else” (55–56). The poison swallowed by the father cannot but infect his progeny. Charles Gould, we are told, fell “under the spell of the San Tomé mine” “by the time he was twenty” (59). This inheritance, however, is presented not in the form of a passive, unconscious incorporation but rather as a deliberately self-appointed project.2 It is for the “dead man’s memory” that he takes up the mission of redeeming the mine, of transforming it from an “absurd moral disaster” into a “serious and moral success” (66); it is “the dead man” that “must be put completely in the wrong” (75). Inevitably, however, the taking up of the cause of the San Tomé mine creates a reenactment of his father’s tortured existence. Like his father before him, he, too, can think of nothing else. Decoud notes this when he asks Emilia, “Are you aware to what point [Charles] has idealized the existence, the worth, the meaning of the San Tomé mine?” (214). Indeed, toward the end of the novel, the narrator informs us that “the mine had got hold of Charles Gould with a grip as deadly as ever it had laid upon his father” (400). In closing, the silver of the mine, which Gould had perceived as a beacon of hope to the wretched natives of Sulaco, is fittingly transformed into that which “shall weigh as heavily upon the people as the barbarism, cruelty, and misrule of a few years back” (521). Regardless of his lofty aspirations, the curse of the mine can be lifted neither privately nor publicly and consequently appears to be assimilated back into the history of a nation caught in a perpetual cycle of revolt and injustice. It is not only the inheritance of a family curse, however, that calls for a fragmentariness of a present that is always already doubled by the claims of a haunting specter. Old Giorgio Viola—or the Garibaldino, as he is aptly called—was “one of Garibaldi’s immortal thousand in the conquest of Sicily” (20); Garibaldi and Liberty are his only “divinities” (16). As he adheres to and, in a sense, perpetually lives in that glorious past, he cannot but look with scorn at the social upheavals taking place outside the very walls of his house, at revolutions devoid

60

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

of ideals and led not “by people striving for justice, but thieves” (20). In the throes of a great danger to himself and to his family, he consequently turns “to the picture of his old chief, first and only” (21). Like Charles Gould, old Viola leads his family to Sulaco as a direct result of his idealistic aspirations. Although demonstrating a markedly different character, their wives inevitably become subjugated to these ideas; they are secondary to the values that dictate their husbands’— and consequently their own—lives. Emilia is first enthralled by the mine, investing in the silver “something far-reaching and impalpable, like the true expression of an emotion or the emergence of a principle” (107). It is only later that she becomes aware of the harmful potential of its magic: “It was a long time since she had begun to fear it. It had been an idea. She had watched it with misgivings turning into a fetish, and now the fetish had grown into a monstrous and crushing weight” (221). Emilia’s realization remains unspoken; she is unable or unwilling to attempt to tear her husband away from a devolutionary obsession with the mine. Unlike the latter’s resignation, Teresa admonishes her husband for his inability to fully devote himself to the demands of the present: “leave Cavour alone and take care of yourself now we are lost in this country all alone with the two children, because you cannot live under a king” (24–25). Charles Gould’s and old Viola’s pacts with an idea born in the past ultimately create a rift between themselves and their wives. Giorgio loses his wife to an illness that seems dictated by his inability to “live under a king.” In Teresa’s mind, her pain is directly related to her husband’s decision to leave their homeland. The pain “had come to her first a few years after they had left Italy to emigrate to America and settle at last in Sulaco after wandering from town to town;” “its gnawing had been part of the landscape embracing the glitter of the harbour under the wooded spurs of the range” (25). If it were not for his “living in the republicanism of his young days as if in a cloud” (319), Giorgio may have been more attentive to his wife’s suffering. The fate of the Gould’s marriage similarly forebodes separation, if only of a metaphoric nature. Emilia finds that “the inspiration of their early years had left her heart to turn into a wall of silver-bricks, erected by the silent work of evil spirits, between her and her husband. He seemed to dwell alone within a circumvallation of precious metal, leaving her outside with her school, her hospital, the sick mothers and the feeble old men, mere insignificant vestiges of the initial inspiration” (221–22). Emilia and Teresa thus serve as the elusive traces of a living and breathing present that remains inaccessible to their husbands.

A Spectral Temporality

61

Like Charles Gould and old Viola who experience life through the prism of a different time, of a different present, the old doctor furnishes the narrative with yet another temporally dissociated character. Haunted by Father Beron’s phrase “Will you confess now?” a constant reminder of an unpardonable transgression committed in the past, Dr. Monygham becomes “the slave of a ghost” (373). The memory that will not fade is identity forming; it makes “of him what he was [. . .] a man careless of common decencies, something between a clever vagabond and a disreputable doctor” (372). Once a respectable surgeon in the Royal Army, in the wake of what he perceives as his betrayal he forfeits his Europeanism. Feeling that it is “impossible to take his knowledge of Father Beron home to Europe” (374), his disgrace binds him to Sulaco “more than any amount of success and honour could have done” (375). Interestingly, it is precisely the “doctor’s sensitiveness about that far-off episode of his life” of which Charles Gould disapproves. “So much memory” we are told, “shocked [him]” (408). Such revulsion seems at odds with the fact that Gould’s present is as much the product of memory as is his compatriot’s. The disparity between the two characters’ emotional responses to memory is noteworthy in that it is reflected in their contrasting approaches to history. Dr. Monygham, who remembers his past “against all the forces of his will striving its utmost to forget,” refuses to “believe in the reform of Costaguana” (370). The deterministic role played out by his own history thus influences his outlook on public affairs, on the fate of the country to which he is so tragically bound. Believing only in the power of what is already past, he feels that “a frank return to the old methods [is] the only chance” (370). In his eyes, Decoud’s separationist plan is a “wild scheme” (370), and Charles Gould’s endorsement of it is suggestive of his being “hopelessly infected with the madness of revolutions” (376). Contrastingly, Charles Gould’s belief in his ability to transform a family curse into a project of national redemption is indicative of his belief in the active role of the individual and in his ability to change the past both privately and publicly. Regardless of their outlooks and their actions, both characters appear to be caught in a self-perpetuating cycle whereby a pattern created in the past always already determines what is yet to come. Where Gould’s resolve “to disobey the solemn wishes of the dead” nevertheless leads to a reenactment of his father’s obsessive captivity, by courting the new Decoud’s separationist plan marks an openness toward real change, an opportunity to truly shed the “appalling darkness of intrigue, bloodshed, and crime that [hangs] over the Queen

62

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

of Continents” (83). What distinguishes Decoud’s plan from those of Dr. Monygham and Gould is not a lack of personal motivation— indeed, Decoud readily admits that his public enlistment is due solely to his love for Antonia—but the terms in which it is addressed. Tellingly, true change—be it in the guise of love or a breaking away from the endless cycle of revolution and bloodshed—is cloaked in impossibility. We are told that Decoud’s “only aspiration was to a felicity so high that it seemed almost unrealizable on this earth” (192). It is perhaps this radical aspiration that meets with the incredulity or suspicion of his audience. Reporting on their initial reaction to the plan of revolution, the engineer-in-chief tells Monygham that “[Decoud] had arguments which should have appeared solid enough if we, members of old, stable political and national organizations, were not startled by the mere idea of a new State” (315, my emphasis). An openness to the new calls for a willingness to accept what is wholly other, that which is entirely unforeseeable. The relinquishment of control called for by Decoud’s vision naturally inspires fear in individuals whose very identity is ingrained in the old and the familiar—their moral or institutional demerits notwithstanding. Ironically, however, the eruption or interruption of the wholly other—in the form of an absolute solitude and silence—“the first [Decoud] had known in his life” (496)—provides too great a challenge for he who appears to epitomize the radically new. “The spoiled darling of the family, the lover of Antonia and journalist of Sulaco,” we are told, “was not fit to grapple with himself single-handed” (497). Decoud’s suicide subsequently colors that hopeful “almost” with yet another instance of a piercing Conradian irony. The creation of the New Republic, a project envisioned and designed by Decoud, is consequently carried out by the “members of [the] old, stable political and national organizations” (315). Assimilated into the discourse of the “old and stable,” the “new” becomes something of an empty signifier, nothing but a recurring moment in the perpetuum mobile of history. It marks not a new era but another new era, one that is haunted from its inception by the cycles of success and failure that pervade Sulaco’s tumultuous past. The inscription on Don José Avellanos’s bust reads, “died in the woods of Los Hatos worn out with his lifetime long struggle for Right and Justice at the dawn of the New Era” (477). We recall a similar formulation in an ironic ventriloquizing of Mitchell’s likely response to the news of the vote conferring a five-year mandate upon Ribiera: “Captain Mitchell, had he been there, would no doubt have made an apt remark about the dawn of a new era” (141). The use of the phrase in the earlier part

A Spectral Temporality

63

of the novel instills it with a certain irony and strips it of its historical significance. Through the frequency of its use, the temporal epithet ornamenting the bust is nothing more than a cliché. Fittingly, the transition from the Ribiera Republic to the Occidental Republic is conveyed through Captain Mitchell’s report to his privileged guest on the changing façade of the town, a metonymic representation of the changing face of its politics. Such a transformation is noted primarily on the level of town symbols and names—revolving signifiers that often pertain to a shared signified. The Ribiera Republic is now the Occidental Republic, the Intendencia, the President’s Palace. The equestrian statue—an “anachronism” (482)—is to be replaced by “a marble shaft commemorative of Separation, with angels of peace at the four corners, and bronze Justice holding an even balance” (482). The symbols of the New Republic’s heroes are already erected in the form of the bust depicting Don José and the medallion devoted to the memory of Decoud. If repetition is integral to the formation of the Occidental Republic, Captain Mitchell’s report nevertheless shows it to be a repetition with a difference. He assures his guest that “such a sight” as the marching of the miners upon the town, lead by Don Pépé on his black horse and “their very wives in the rear on burros, screaming encouragement [. . .] and beating tambourines” “will never be seen again” (477). That it is Captain Mitchell, however, who ultimately articulates this difference serves to detract from its significance. His is not a reliable narration; his project of recording, or rather, telling history, is colored throughout by his partiality, his limited understanding, and a tendency toward hyperbole. The two political visionaries who are associated with the hope of actual renewal—Don José Avellanos and Decoud—have been silenced and cannot pass judgment. At the same time, to attribute the corrosion of the new in the formation of the Occidental Republic to the loss of Decoud is problematic at best. Such an interpretation is undermined by its privileging of agency, a notion that the novel repeatedly challenges. We have already seen that Charles Gould’s professed exercising of his free will in his self-appointed project of redeeming the San Tomé mine is called into question by the manner in which the past commands and manipulates his actions; similarly, the man who symbolizes the possibility of accepting the radically new, the man who manages the significantly named Porvenir, is daunted and undone by that very encounter. More grave, perhaps, are the ramifications of the engineer’s words to Monygham when he suggests that even in the figure of Decoud we have nothing more than a performative reenactment of past events, a performative

64

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

emulation of past leaders: “all at once [Decoud] began to talk, like an expert revolutionist” (316). If we are to forfeit agency as a possible locus for the generation and eruption of the new, we must return once again to its inception within historical patterns of evolution. Derrida identifies in the phenomenon of revolution a paradoxical meeting of temporalities: “the more the new erupts in the revolutionary crisis, the more the period is in crisis, the more it is ‘out of joint,’ then the more one has to convoke the old, ‘borrow’ from it” (Specters, 109). Revolution, then, is linked to a process of mourning, of assimilating the specters of the past. Such an assimilation involves both a conjuring and an abjuring—making the past present and then putting it to rest. Derrida explains that the latter is achieved thus: “Once the revolutionary task is accomplished, amnesia sets in. [. . .] Anachrony practices and promises forgetting” (Specters, 111). We see an example of this in Nostromo’s belated attempt to uncover the fate of Decoud. Glimpsing the unmanned dinghy afloat in the gulf, he disregards Barrios’s injunction and jumps overboard. In this embracing of crisis, of an unscheduled return to the moment of trauma, the past is brought back to life. As Nostromo sets foot on board the boat in which Decoud had committed suicide, he is transformed into Decoud’s double, living in both temporalities at one and the same time: “streaming from head to foot, with his hair and whiskers hanging lank and dropping and a lusterless stare fixed upon the bottom boards, the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores resembled a drowned corpse come up from the bottom to idle away the sunset hour in a small boat” (492). The temporal conjunction is made evident here through a language of possession: “Subsequently, without a limb having stirred, without a twitch of muscle or quiver of an eyelash, an expression, a living expression came upon the still features, deep thought crept into the empty stare—as if an outcast soul, a quiet, brooding soul, finding that untenanted body in its way, had come in stealthily to take possession.” (493). However, “after spending a night of sleeplessness as tormented as any known to Decoud” (501–2), Nostromo once again directs his thoughts to the needs of the present moment. The ghost of the past is dismissed, and in its place a plan to grow rich “very slowly” (503) is formed. These two examples, the creation of the Occidental Republic and Nostromo’s return to the Great Isabel, would both suggest that in Nostromo the eruption of the new is quickly assimilated into the old order. The will and the propensity to forget allow Nostromo and the people of Sulaco to engage in endless cycles of repetition, patterns

A Spectral Temporality

65

of recurrence in which the new seemingly has no place. Such a dynamic of historic progression may seem highly deterministic in its readiness to preclude the new or its ability to dismantle and neutralize it. Nostromo, however, contains not one but two types of mourning. The interpretation of history as a deterministic force considers only a successful mourning, a trajectory of loss, assimilation and forgetting. Such a trajectory neither takes into account nor accounts for the novel’s hauntology. The ghostly insistence throughout—in the lives of the characters and in the life of the patria—is suggestive of an unsuccessful mourning, a process of endless repetition that resuscitates and animates the past by bringing it into the present. Through a haunting that pervades the narrative from beginning to end, the novel appears to reject the notion of a proper present, a present that is self-same and contemporaneous with itself. Such a time—a time dislocated, doubled, unhinged—is marked by an openness to the new. This is the time of revolution, an event that, as Derrida explains, “never takes place in the present” (Specters, 111). That is to say that the otherwise present, as signaled by the novel’s hauntology, provides a locus for the new. The effects of this wholly other are noted through eruption and interruption; resistant to assimilation or signification, it is only by way of a chronological anomaly that it can be recognized. While the revolution is finally represented through a barrage of empty signifiers, in the moment of its inception it takes effect as an interruption of history, an outside force that breaks the homogeneous course of historical progression.

Th e Ah is to ry o f “ The Story Als o Goes” The thematic problematization of the very notion of presence, a product of the novel’s hauntology, contaminates, or if seen differently, is performatively reenacted in the stylization of its historic representation. Much like the recurring patterns of spectrality that inform the exposition, the novel’s writing down of history is pervaded by a sense of the “always already”; there is no originary moment—only reverberations, both singular (in the sense of a variation on a theme) and iterative, of a past that was never present. While we may contend that such a manner of representation is commensurate with the negotiation of poltergeists, a stylistic method that is part and parcel of the machinations of a good ghost story and lends it an even greater sense of mystery and foreboding, the same cannot be said of historical accounts. And still, this amorphous time frame is carried into chapter 2 where the unraveling of Sulaco’s history is colored from the

66

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

very first by what Hawthorn terms “a conspicuousness of the iterative mode” (“Repetitions,” 129). This mode, Hawthorn explains, “is used to convey a sense of repeated actions, events, or experiences” (126). Thus, although he does not return to the present tense used in reporting the story of the specters on Azuera, the narrator here slips into a grammatical form that is similarly evocative of an ongoing presence. The repetitive patterns that make up this part of the narrative are not dated but rather circumscribed within a generalizing time frame. We are informed that “the political atmosphere of the Republic was generally stormy in these days” (11), “these days” being a possible reverberation of the time scheme presented in the exposition, a present (“these” rather than “those” days) that spans from “within men’s memories [. . .] to this very day” (4–5). One may hazard the interpretation that the time span is more limited, as it centers on the time of the Ribiera Republic and its consequent demise. This, however, is not a time of one republic or one revolution. It is a time of “frequent changes of government brought about by revolutions of the military type”—a time in which “fugitive patriots of the defeated party had the knack of turning up again on the coast with half a steamer’s load of small arms and ammunition” (11). This method of historical summary eliminates the assurances of a linear chronology, offering in its stead the achronology of the spectral projections of the past. Jameson provides a cogent summary of this phenomenon where he argues that the Ribierist revolution “never really happens at all, for the initial discursive reference to it—not as scene but as fact or background— dispenses Conrad from having to ‘render’ it in all its lived presence later on. This central event is therefore present/absent in the most classic Derridean fashion, present only in its initial absence, absent when it is supposed to be most intensely present” (272). That is to say that the revolution occurs only insofar as it is fragmentarily repeated. Its actual and dated occurrence is displaced by the intersubjective memory of the event, represented by the occasional resurfacing of its haunting remnants. This section, then, is devoted to an analysis of the manner whereby the clashing of the competing narratives of historic progression—the linear and the cyclical, change and stasis, the unforeseen and the deterministic—is metonymically represented in the war waged between the conflicting styles of transmission that permeate the narrative of Nostromo. In its very conception, the notion of a hauntology calls upon methods of telling or narrating that are incompatible with a chronological summary. A resurfacing of haunting fragments relies heavily on memory and performance, two concepts that negate the process of

A Spectral Temporality

67

scientific documentation associated with the writing down of history. Correspondingly, one of the significant aspects of this stylistic conflict is present in the novel in the dynamic pairing of written document and oral performance. In his reading of Nostromo, Michael Greaney distinguishes between the two, between the “totalizing gaze of the novelist-as-historian” and “the novelist-as-storyteller” (129). Greaney thus divides the text into two opposing literary impulses or drives, between the oral presentation of legend and a written handling of history, between traditional modes of transmission and modernist écriture. His premise is that while “folklore and popular legends of the region are occasionally sampled [. . .] the novel’s marginal storytellers never seem likely to challenge [the narrator’s] control of the novel’s language”(115). “Marginal” seems key here, for in concluding, Greaney reasserts that although continuing “to exert complex pressures on the novel’s central cast [. . .] storytelling and oral culture have been displaced to the margins of the text” (134). Such a claim is problematized by the sense that the novel is organized around Captain Mitchell’s oral account of Sulaco’s history, beginning with the account of Ribiera’s timely escape and concluding with the commentary on the new face of the Occidental Republic. Furthermore, Mitchell is not the only storyteller in the novel. A further setting for oral performance is staged in Old Giorgio Viola’s home where, triggered by “some slight incident, a chance word would set him off talking” (32). Perhaps an equal if not more significant mimicking of oral speech is found in the narrator’s turns of phrase, which are very often at odds with the objective rigor of historical documentation. Chronological transitions such as “eighteen months before” (34), “at that time” (44), “those of us whom business or curiosity took to Sulaco in these years” (95), and so forth give a sense of a setting familiar to Conrad readers, of a storyteller speaking in front of a live audience. Although recognizing the effects of orality on writing and the “endlessly intricate dialogue between” them, Greaney’s reading nevertheless relies on a tangible separation—on an evident and hierarchical distinction between two of the narrative impulses that underlie the text. As I have previously shown, an attempt to construct a clear line of demarcation between two distinct textual forces inevitably results in an underplaying of the permeability of the border between them. That is to say that while the novel indubitably sets up an opposition between writing and orality, it simultaneously gives rise to a slippage that not only challenges such a distinction but also contaminates the respective discourses in a way that invokes a third category—one that

68

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

lies between history and story, between orality and writing. Such, we can say, is the category of the “historical anecdote” (402)—a notion that pertains to both registers at one and the same time and yet cannot neatly conform to either one or the other. Such conflations not only subvert the categorical opposition but also challenge suppositions as to their implied hierarchy. To this effect, the collapsing of the written and oral traditions is complemented by the frequent borrowing from genres that are ingrained in the oral tradition. Throughout the novel, a language of and allusions to myth, legend, fairytales, and folklore not only haunt but redefine the written tradition. Before turning to the use of competing genres in the novel, it is important to take stock of the collapsing of writing and orality. By virtue of his excessive letter writing, Gould senior is identified by Greaney as one of the novel’s representatives of the power of the written word. At the same time, Greaney notes that the letters are “full of references to “the Old Man of the Sea, vampires and ghouls,” and with the “flavour of a gruesome Arabian Nights tale” and concludes that they “are a kind of epistolary version of the Azuera legend” (130). The Arabian Nights Entertainment, one of the most recognized vestiges of an oral tradition dating back to the tenth century, permeates Gould’s letters. The written is thus infected by the oral, truly infected, for, as we have seen, the power of the written word on the son’s mind is itself charged with a power more closely associated with orality than with writing—that of spells, magic, and enchantment. A similar conflation occurs in the father’s mind as the “infamous” or “iniquitous” Gould Concession, epitomized in a piece of paper that he repeatedly desires to “‘tear and fling into the faces’ of presidents and members of judicature, and ministers of State” (58), is perceived as an eternal “curse” (57)—suggestive, once again, of a clear link to speech. It is thus evident that the written word is pregnant with a power linked to orality. Further evidence for this inexorable link is found in Decoud’s character. Despite being one of the novel’s principle agents of writing, he is nevertheless tested by means of the spoken word. The question of his public influence is exerted most forcefully by way of speech when reading aloud his “draft of a proclamation” he talks “very well for two hours about his plan of action” (315). His daring rendezvous with Antonia on the Gould’s balcony settles the matter of their engagement, and finally his death is the product of a lack not of writing but of speech. The cruelty of the isolation on the Great Isabel is noted first and foremost by an oppressive silence: “The solitude appeared like a great void, and the silence of the gulf like a tense, thin cord to which he hung suspended by both hands, without

A Spectral Temporality

69

fear, without surprise, without any sort of emotion whatever. Only towards the evening, in the comparative relief of coolness, he began to wish that this cord would snap” (498). Decoud’s sense of reality is shaken by his immersion in such an absolute silence. His memory of actual people, of actual emotions, seems suspect—unreal; his faith in himself, in his tangible actuality, is spent. The oscillation between writing and orality—a dynamic that pervades the Conrad canon in its entirety and, as I have shown in the introduction, has often been associated with an attempt, on the author’s part, to revitalize and animate the written word and its elusive and alienating command—is here complemented by an additional stylistic concern. In Nostromo, the attempt to revolutionize the terms with which we comprehend and internalize historical progression, signaled by the turn to the oral, is tellingly linked to the question of genre. Repeatedly, we find that the coming to terms with historical events or the demands of the hour are portrayed not in terms of objective comprehension but rather by a turn to the fanciful. Charles Gould, we are told, “could not believe his own motives if he did not make them first a part of some fairy tale” (215); Decoud’s plan of separation, in the words of the chief engineer, not only sounds “like a comic fairy tale” but “may come off; because it is true to the very spirit of the country” (315). In a further example, the history of Sulaco, as recounted in the words of Captain Mitchell to those privileged few whom he happened to introduce to that part of the country, is “imperfectly apprehended [. . .] like a tired child [listening] to a fairy tale” (487). By borrowing from the ahistorical genres of ghost stories and fairy tales, genres in which variation overshadows the need for accurate reproduction, where each oral presentation is in itself an originary moment, the novel challenges the very principles of historical reconstruction. That is to say that although suggestive of an attempt to chronicle a certain period in the life of Sulaco and its people, Nostromo’s use of historical discourse is playfully deconstructive. We may say that the generic profusion is but a further symptom of the ongoing conflict between history and ahistory, between the impulse to document and the impulse to invent. The borrowing from the tradition of ghost stories and fairy tales does not exhaust the generic intertextuality evident in the novel. The Homeric epic, according to Erich Auerbach, “knows no background”; forever in the foreground, even those details pertaining to Odysseus’s past are given in the moment in which they occurred, that is, in their present moment. While such a technique resonates with Conrad’s use of the pseudoiterative and with his frequent allusions to

70

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

genres in which such a method of transmission is customary, it is clear that the early modernist agenda is not one with the epic. As Auerbach writes, “the basic impulse of the Homeric style” is “to represent phenomena in a fully externalized form, visible and palpable in all their parts, and completely fixed in their spatial and temporal relations [. . .] nothing must remain hidden and unexpressed” (6). While the narrative impulse in Nostromo may be said to be of a contrasting nature, it is clear that the epic inspires its ambitious structure. The use of the epithet provides one of the most salient indications to that effect. In addition to Nostromo; the “Capataz de Cargadores”; and Charles Gould, “the King of Sulaco,” a host of characters’ names are repeatedly ornamented with a recognizable label. Thus we have “the beautiful Antonia” (149) and “our excellent Senor Mitchell,” who, known as such by the business and official world of Sulaco, is also referred to as “Fussy Joe” (10–11) by the commanders of the company’s ships. Claire Rosenfield’s suggestion that Nostromo’s and Decoud’s night journey signals a use of the topos of a descent into the underworld and of a consequent rebirth is suggestive of a further borrowing from the genre.3 In addition, allusions to Greek myth (and their Roman counterparts) are ample in connection with the O.S.N. fleet as testified in a passage that encapsulates the very essence of intertextuality: “their names, the names of all mythology, became the household words of a coast that had never been ruled by the gods of Olympus” (9). The Juno, Cerberus, Minerva, Ceres, and Pallas thus adorn the narrative regardless of Sulaco’s remoteness from the Ionian Sea, contributing a true deus ex machina to the account of Ribiera’s escape: “Captain Mitchell succeeded in taking everybody off in his own gig to one of the Company’s steamers—it was the Minerva— just then, as luck would have it, entering the harbour” (12). Finally, much like the reiterations of the tales told by Homer’s bards, Captain Mitchell’s oral account is itself something of an epic cycle that opens in the second chapter of “The Silver of the Mine” and ends in chapter 10 of “The Lighthouse” with the words, “The cycle was about to close at last” (489), only, we may assume from the use of the iterative, to be reproduced later.4 Referring to the work of Paul Ricoeur and Roland Barthes, Erdinast-Vulcan writes that “myth and history are usually conceived of as contradictory modes of discourse” (69) differentiated by their relationship to truth, verifiability, and time. If the first offers a “myth of origins,” a tradition that relies not on a verifiable truth but on a belief in a primordial past, the latter offers an authentic documentation of a recordable history. More significant in this context is the manner in

A Spectral Temporality

71

which myth, like ghost stories, fairy tales, and folklore, is defined by its inception within the oral tradition. The mnemonic devices that I have enumerated—epithets, topoi, repetition, and so forth—highlight the importance of creative agency and memory in the reproduction of the story. That is to say that where history relies on the transparency of evidence and verifiable subject matter, the transmission of tales and myth highlights the significance of variation, entertainment, and effect. Where historical discourse aims to provide a finished product, storytelling revels in the dynamics of an evolving process. Where the first must provide an iterable result, one that with each reproduction must be self-same, the second relies on a performance that is always unique, always new. What I have so far explicated as the contamination of the stylistic handling of the novel by the thematic germinations of a chronological instability—a hauntology that strips presence of a contemporaneity with itself—thus further invests the narrative handling of the story with that same glimmer of the new, that same possibility for change and evolution that we uncovered in the theoretical underpinnings of revolution. This is made evident in the concluding part of the novel where it is possible to distinguish the represented consequences of the subversion of historical discourse. Here, the very building block of the novel’s history—the “memorable occasion” that we have come to associate with history, forming events such as the dramatic escape of Ribiera, the loss of the silver, and the death of Decoud—undergoes a radical transformation. Toward the end of Captain Mitchell’s cycle, the focalization attaches to his listener: “‘Abominable Pedrito! Who the devil was he?’ would wonder the distinguished bird of passage hovering on the confines of waking and sleep with resolutely open eyes and a faint but amiable curl upon his lips, form between which stuck out the eighteenth or twentieth cigar of that memorable day” (487). “That memorable day,” now measured out in cigars, has thus been transformed into the day of Captain Mitchell’s oral performance—the reciting of the cycle. No longer marking a historical occasion, the memorable day now marks the time in which history is narrated, in which the tale is transmitted. The novel thus concludes with a telling reversal: the significance of the past is undermined by its performative reiteration. While the novel is clearly devoted to the setting down of a national past—albeit a fictional one—it is nevertheless pervaded by a discourse that is resistant to such a project, one that subordinates accuracy and veracity to haunting, invention, folklore, and myth. In the course of this chapter, I have attempted to trace the battle between the

72

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

binary opposites of linearity and circularity, death and life, the selfsame and the new. By pitting the conflicting discourses of history and storytelling against each other, the novel stages an impossible conjunction that is made manifest in a tantalizing interplay between the novel’s thematic concerns and its stylistic methods. In a novel beset by repetition and circularity, the staging of the otherwise present allows for the interruption and eruption of the evolutionary potential of radical otherness.

4

Chapter 4

S i gni fy ing Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

I

n Shakespeare’s King Lear, the old king admonishes his youngest and most beloved daughter for her refusal to speak on command, a silence he wrongfully perceives as a sign of defiance. Enraged by her insubordination, he commands her to undo her offence: “Nothing will come of nothing, speak again” (1.1.85). Refusing to humor him, Cordelia opts for a scant but conscientious response, and the drama of injustice follows. Only after trials and tribulations, humiliation and suffering, the King learns that the power of truth, innocence, and purity lies in Cordelia’s silence and that the speech of Gonerill and Regan is fraudulent, strategic, and dangerous. “Words,” King Lear will learn, “are the great foes of reality” (UWE, 3). This chapter examines the manner in which King Lear’s maxim is subverted in Conrad’s Under Western Eyes. In the Conradian confusion of the binary opposites, “nothing” does not and cannot come of “nothing.” Rather, “nothing” is always already something—it speaks and it resonates. The manner in which absence is always already perceived as presence thus provides the focus of this analysis.

C a p ita l izi ng on an Elli ps i s In his attempt to sum up the essence of Russian autocracy and revolt, the English teacher who narrates Razumov’s record offers the reader the catchy but perhaps ill-chosen mantra of “cynicism” (67). Hoping

74

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

to offer a more accurate principle that may guide us in reading the novel, I would like to point to a formulation put forth by Derrida in the “Exergue” to Archive Fever: “According to a proven convention, the exergue plays with citation. To cite before beginning is to give the tone through the resonance of a few words, the meaning or form of which ought to set the stage. In other words, the exergue consists in capitalizing on an ellipsis” (7). We have in Under Western Eyes a series of such “capitalizations.”1 Both to the readers of the novel and the characters within, the novel presents a series of ideas, key words, and citations, all of which are immersed in a deceitful silence that inevitably carries the interpreter into a mistaken path of understanding. The force behind the novel, then, is to be found in the heuristic and impetuous character of the human mind. Reading is a process whereby we overwrite silence or absence with an unceasing and unconscious process of interpretation. The characters in the novel offer a perfect example of this hermeneutic activity as they constantly appropriate and transform Razumov’s silences from the very outset, constantly replacing absence with a meaningful presence. We find a clear example of such an exercise in Natalia’s reading of her brother’s letter. Haldin writes to her of Razumov’s “unstained, lofty and solitary existence” (135). There is no mention of a bond of friendship between the two; indeed, there is no allusion to any standing relationship between them. This omission, however, does not in any way influence Natalia’s interpretation of the letter. The effect of Haldin’s words corresponds to the process Derrida describes in the quoted passage. Natalia informs the narrator, “these are the words which my brother applies to a young man he came to know in St. Petersburg. An intimate friend, I suppose. His is the only name my brother mentions in all his correspondence with me. Absolutely the only one—and would you believe it?—the man is here” (135). Based on this short citation and the fact that he mentions no other name in his correspondence to her, Natalia surmises that Razumov is Haldin’s “intimate” and loyal friend. Haldin’s words subsequently become something of a leitmotif to Razumov’s character. That Haldin had never actually mentioned Razumov’s friendship is soon forgotten. In Natalia’s mind, her interpretation is fact. Given the loss she has suffered, it is, perhaps, inevitable that she would want it to be so. This inherent need may be said to explain her striking resistance to the reception and comprehension of Razumov’s confession. The narrator explains, “Utterly misled by her own enthusiastic interpretation of two lines in the letter of a visionary, under the spell of her own dread of lonely days, in the overshadowed world of angry strife, she

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

75

was unable to see the truth struggling on his lips” (354). The narrator informs the reader that what we have here is a capitalization on ellipsis, an “enthusiastic interpretation of two lines in the letter of a visionary” (354). Natalia’s difficulty in accepting Razumov’s confession stems from the fact that the truth struggling on his lips entails an inevitable contradiction of her initial interpretative leap in reading her brother’s letter, an interpretative mistake that, for obvious psychological reasons, she strenuously wishes to maintain. In order to accept his silent confession (for, after all, it is not through words but by gesturing to himself that he conveys his culpability to her), she must relinquish her imagined projections, the interpretative presence with which she displaced the original ellipsis in Haldin’s letter.2 The manner in which Natalia comprehends Haldin’s letter thus provides us with a cogent example of the process whereby citation produces an inflation of meaning. This example is instrumental in demonstrating that the power of citation derives not from presence but from absence: not from what is said, but from what is not said. Furthermore, we find in this powerful citation the origination of not only a rational error but an emotional one, as Natalia’s surmise produces a budding romantic interest in Razumov before she has actually made his acquaintance. The quoted excerpt from Razumov’s journal interestingly shows that his interest in Natalia was similarly sparked by Haldin’s elliptical allusion to her. Razumov tells Natalia, “Of you [Haldin] said that you had trustful eyes. And why I have not been able to forget that phrase I don’t know” (349). Haldin’s words are, in this manner, indelibly etched not only in Natalia’s but also in Razumov’s consciousness. Their mutual attraction is thus yet another product of absence, the effect of a citational substitute in lieu of presence.3 Offering a neat summary of this phenomenon, the narrator concludes, “It was manifest that they must have been thinking of each other for a long time before they met. She had the letter from that beloved brother kindling her imagination by the severe praise attached to that one name; and for him to see that exceptional girl was enough” (347, my emphasis). As the temporal category of “before” substitutes that of “after,” with which we have so far associated the ramifications of an effective ellipsis, we see that strategies of interpretation are replaced by those of anticipation. Absence undergoes a metaphysical conversion into an imagined presence not only through the application of meaning but also through the projection of fantasy. We find evidence of this process, an additional method of capitalizing on an ellipsis, from the very outset.

76

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

At the start of Under Western Eyes, Razumov is portrayed as a young man who believes that he has nothing but the power of his intellect. The silver medal that he so wishes to win symbolizes for him “a solid beginning” (14). Ironically, however, this “solid” beginning is, in matter of fact, nothing but an object of desire or, as Razumov remarks, “a shadow” (14). Again, potential lies in an absence, an absence that is here clothed in an imagined future. “The winner’s name,” Razumov muses, “would be published in the papers on New Year’s Day” (14). It is through writing, he believes, that he can create an identity for himself. And yet, Haldin’s unexpected visit indicates that if Razumov finally capitalizes, it is not on his intellect but on his silence. For, as we recall, “a comparatively taciturn personality is naturally credited with reserve power” (6). This gain, however, is apparently unintentional. Horror-struck by Haldin’s visit and the consequent discovery of this accidentally earned credit, Razumov wishes to be rid of both and thus resume the life he had planned for himself. However, by betraying and thereby ridding himself of Haldin, Razumov ironically creates an inflation of this credit. While his own silence had installed in his peers the notion that he is a man of superior ideas, a man that can be trusted, Haldin’s disappearance augments this image. In Haldin’s absence, Razumov becomes his double in crime and heroism. Indeed, one could argue that the power of his initial silence is so great that Razumov is consequently forced to capitalize on silence throughout a large part of the novel. He must be silent so as not to disclose the betrayal and, as the reader later learns, his role as a police spy as well. By addressing both the “before” and the “after” of Razumov’s betrayal of Haldin, I have shown that the signifying potential of absence is effective not only in a moment of subsequent (mis)understanding or (mis)interpretation but also in the prior moment of anticipation (as in Razumov’s dream of winning the silver medal). Regardless of the temporal circumstance, the process whereby absence is transformed into a virtual presence is one of projection: the mind replaces lack with a desirable alternative. In essence, the projection of speech onto another man’s silence is an extenuation of fantasy. In this context, Haldin’s misinterpretation of Razumov is not unlike Razumov’s dream of winning the medal. In both cases, the mind sees what it wishes to see. We have focused so far on the manner in which, by way of the projections of the hearer, omission contains the potential of limitless meaning. We should note, however, that fantasies and daydreams are usually subject to an inborn ability to distinguish fact from illusion. Thus, Razumov’s daydream of winning the silver medal is cut short

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

77

by an abrupt awakening: “This is but a shadow” (14), he tells himself. At the same time, there is a sense that the associated tendency to attribute meaning to omission is not checked as easily. As it elicits an automatic and often unconscious process of interpretation, omission often goes undetected; in the mind, absence is always already transformed into a conjectural presence. That is to say that while it may be possible to detect the fantasy that displaces a nullity, it may be more difficult to acknowledge the blatant omission that underlies interpretation. The artfully elliptical transition between Part First and Part Second of the novel is exemplary of this effect. In conducting the transition, the English teacher does not state the outcome of the meeting between Razumov and Mikulin with which he concludes the first part of his narrative. Despite this obvious omission, the reader may all too readily assume that the narrator has no additional information to disclose and may thus be tempted to trust in his or her own interpretative strategies. As the narrative unfolds in Part Second, we find that Razumov has been released from the hands of the Russian police and that he subsequently finds refuge in the Russian community in Geneva. The reader is guided into believing that no important detail has been overlooked: Razumov’s betrayal remains a secret, and his refuge is a voluntary one. In lieu of the disclosure of Razumov’s secret mission, the temporal and spatial gap that is opened in the narrator’s transition is soon bridged in the mind of the reader who performs (whether consciously or unconsciously) a displacement of this textual absence with a conjectural presence. Such a hypothesized interpretation quickly transforms into fact in the reader’s mind. The deception has gone unnoticed. It is only in the final pages of the novel, where the truth of Razumov’s mission is revealed, that the reader may become aware of his interpretative error. As we have seen, it is precisely in this fashion, by way of an active filling in, that the characters in the novel transform absence into meaning. Natalia not only misinterprets Haldin’s omissions and Razumov’s silence but she remains oblivious to her own interpretative contribution. The mind, it would seem, abhors an absence. Before turning to a closer reading of the novel, we should take stock of the two principles that will subsequently guide our reading and thereby serve to illuminate several of the novel’s underlying deceptions. In Under Western Eyes, silence is transformed into a powerful and misleading signifier. Whether this metamorphosis is conducted within the text or in the process of interpretation that is integral to our reading, absence repeatedly assumes the guise of a substitutive presence. Furthermore, this principle is significantly supplemented by

78

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

the unconscious aspect of the transformation: we are oblivious to our interpretative leaps. We must therefore proceed cautiously, for, with every such transformation that takes place, we inherit a blind spot that effectively augments our confidence in our mistaken interpretations.4

S il enc ed E x ploi ts In what reads as a suspiciously overwritten introduction, the narrator effectively embarks on a very wordy project with the warning that “words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality” (3). Although demanding considerable attention, this provocative claim is soon foregone when, in turning to a presentation of Razumov, the narrator alludes to a rather different communicative trick—not, as he had done in relation to himself, of the talker or the writer but of the listener: “With his younger compatriots [Razumov] took the attitude of an inscrutable listener of the kind that hears you out intelligently and then—just changes the subject. This sort of trick, which may arise either from intellectual insufficiency or from an imperfect trust in one’s own convictions, procured for Mr. Razumov a reputation of profundity. Amongst a lot of exuberant talkers, in the habit of exhausting themselves daily by ardent discussion, a comparatively taciturn personality is naturally credited with reserve power” (5–6). To the word-wary reader, silence is intuitively (if implicitly) associated with promise, with profundity, with truth. If one does not speak, if one resists the temptation of words, one cannot lie. This being so, it may be that we do not take sufficient note of the manner in which the narrator’s resonating formulation (“words are the great foes of reality”) is questioned by the implications of this passage. Although Razumov’s silence is possibly (we are encouraged to speculate) the product of his “intellectual insufficiency” or “an imperfect trust in [his] convictions,” his revolutionary friends perceive it as a sign of profundity. Whatever its motivation, Razumov’s silence is not truth but a “trick” that misleads his compatriots. A mere “trick” (5), however, cannot be classified among “the great foes of reality.” Indeed, it is not a strong enough term to overshadow or even question the bond that has already been established between words and treachery. Moreover, the deceptive nature of silence is blurred, not only by the narrator’s emphasis on the harmful potential of words and by the categorical difference between “tricks” and “foes,” but also by the intimation of what we may allude to as the “extenuating circumstances” that pertain to Razumov’s taciturnity. In Russia, the narrator explains, “an opinion may be a legal crime visited by death or sometimes by a

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

79

fate worse than mere death” (6). This explication inevitably suggests to the reader that, in czarist Russia, silence is a form of self-preservation, a necessary exercise in the daily war of survival. In such a context, Razumov’s “trick” is readily disregarded: his silence cannot be so easily condemned. Significantly, these “extenuating circumstances” inform several influential critical readings of Razumov’s character. According to Guerard, Razumov is a character not unlike Jim, in that he is afflicted by a cruel and unmerciful fate.5 His courage, fidelity, loyalty, and fellowship are all tested by an arbitrary fate and checked by psychological pain. Offering a similar reading, C. B. Cox writes that Razumov’s “rational existence is destroyed by the sudden appearance of Haldin [. . . who] seems to Razumov like an emissary of the Fates” (108). These readings apparently follow this line of reasoning in Razumov’s reported thoughts. We recall that Razumov admonishes himself for receiving Haldin, thereby welcoming “the crazy fate” (84). Although this would appear to lend support to the interpretations of Guerard and Cox, it is clear that Razumov’s reported thoughts cannot be divorced from the narrator’s distorting mediation. Furthermore, the narrator’s commentaries to his Western readers clearly demonstrate the manner in which he himself emphasizes the arbitrary and even fateful nature of Haldin’s visit. Addressing the event of Haldin’s visit to Razumov, the narrator tells his readers that “it is unthinkable that any young Englishman should find himself in Razumov’s situation” (25). He further comments that such a reader “would not think as Mr. Razumov thought at this crisis of his fate” (25). The narrator informs his readers that the Russian man faces trials that they cannot even begin to fathom. These explanations serve to augment his original thesis, which showed that Razumov should not be seen as a perpetrator but rather as a victim in this affair.6 Silence, the narrator has informed us, is not a crime. If anything, it is a scrupulous and just alternative to words. It would thus seem that the readings of Guerard and Cox owe more to the narrator’s embellishments than to Razumov’s reported thoughts. As the narrator repeatedly argues, Razumov cannot be blamed for Haldin’s misreading of his intentions and beliefs. Guerard’s and Cox’s readings are, I believe, greatly affected by the narrator’s downplaying of the deceptive significance of silence. We know, however, that silence is not only a method of survival but also a deceptive “trick” employed by Razumov to gain social acceptance. If the narrator’s presentation of silence is misleading, perhaps Razumov’s vindication is not as easily achieved as Guerard and Cox suppose. If

80

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

silence is the double of words, as much a strategy and a falsification as is language, it may be that Razumov is culpable from the very start. Thus, for example, while deliberating his betrayal of Haldin, Razumov tells himself that he is not betraying him because he has done nothing to provoke his confidence: “Have I provoked his confidence? No. Have I by a single word, look or gesture given him reason to suppose that I accepted his trust in me? No!” (38). Razumov asserts his own innocence; after all, Haldin had no cause to turn to him; he never promised Haldin his undying loyalty and devotion “by a single word, look or gesture.” At the same time, however, the reader knows that Razumov has not given Haldin any indication to the contrary. Razumov’s silence—his failure to express his true sentiments—does indeed provoke Haldin’s confidence. This “fateful” test, then, is not an arbitrary one; it is Razumov who both creates and sustains the reputation that brings Haldin to his doorstep. As the narrative unfolds, we find further examples of Razumov’s strategic exploitation of silence. If, at the outset, the narrator would have us believe in the innocence of a mere “trick,” a survival strategy in the social landscape of Razumov’s life, we soon realize that it is this same allegedly innocuous silence that later dupes Mikulin, the revolutionists, the English teacher, and Natalia. Razumov’s experience shows us that, in the world of Under Western Eyes, silence cannot be regarded as a binary opposite to words; for here, silence speaks. The reader has already been given a foretaste of the rhetorical efficacy of silence in the introduction of Razumov and his strategic “trick.” A more powerful indication is evinced in the first words of exchange between Haldin and Razumov, after the latter hears that his unwanted visitor is none other than the assassin of de P—: Razumov kept down a cry of dismay. The sentiment of his life being utterly ruined by this contact with such a crime expressed itself quaintly by a sort of half-derisive mental exclamation, “There goes my silver medal!” Haldin continued after a while— “You say nothing, Kirylo Sidorovitch! I understand your silence. To be sure, I cannot expect you with your frigid English manner to embrace me.” (16, my emphasis)

Lacan writes, “There is no speech without a reply, even if it is met only with silence” (Ecrits, 40). Much in this spirit, Haldin’s “understanding” of Razumov’s silence is exemplary of a theme crucial to the development of the novel from the very outset: silence is always

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

81

perceived as a figure of signification. More importantly, however, Haldin’s words attest to the fact that silence is a deceptive mode of signification. Insofar as it is a signifier forever divorced of its signified, silence offers an inevitable and indelible source for the inception of erroneous interpretations. Interestingly, despite using this tool of deception, Razumov appears to resist the implications of his encounter with Haldin. Thus, while walking in the snow, his self-deliberation with regard to the betrayal hinges on his assertion that by not having given Haldin any reason to expect his loyalty, he has not committed himself to him. This reasoning is later repeated in his interview with Mikulin where Razumov states his protest against what he perceives as the latter’s insinuations regarding some form of allegiance between himself and Haldin with the following statement: “He talked and I listened. That is not a conversation” (92). If Razumov seems adamant in his refusal to acknowledge the signifying potential of silence in Part First of the novel, we see that later he is all too ready to embrace it in his attempt to survive in the world of the revolutionists.7 It is with silence, for example, that he greets Natalia’s dramatic welcome on the occasion of their unexpected first encounter. This decision proves to be a wise one: “He did not take [her] proffered hand. He even recoiled a pace, and Miss Haldin imagined that he was unpleasantly affected. Miss Haldin excused him, directing her displeasure at herself. She had behaved unworthily, like an emotional French girl” (171). Razumov’s mute reaction elicits Natalia’s admiration and respect. We further find that it is not only Natalia but also the English teacher who transforms Razumov’s silence into meaning. On hearing this extraordinary account of the events, he suggests that Razumov “must have been stern indeed, or perhaps very timid with women, not to respond in a more human way to the advances of a girl like Nathalie Haldin” (171–72). While Natalia interprets Razumov’s silence as a sign of an admirable reserve and great emotion, her teacher perceives it to be the product of social inhibition. The irony swells as Natalia reports that, on hearing her brother’s name, Razumov “positively reeled. He leaned against the wall of the terrace. Their friendship must have been the very brotherhood of souls!” (172). Clearly, both Natalia and the English teacher project their own beliefs, their own narratives, onto Razumov’s silence. Natalia’s erroneous reading of Razumov’s recoil indicates the perpetuation of her initial mistake in the interpretation of her brother’s letter. Natalia and the English teacher are not alone in pursuing a false path of understanding in response to Razumov’s silence. We had

82

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

seen such a hermeneutic exercise performed by Haldin and his comrades, an intersubjective circle that is then recreated in the form of the revolutionary group in Geneva. Razumov is thus caught between intersubjective circles that sustain and perpetuate his false identity. Szittya writes, “Everyone who comes into contact with Razumov has to struggle with the difficulty of interpreting him and almost everyone fails: Haldin, Natalia, all the revolutionists, Mikulin, and most important, the narrator himself ” (195). I believe, however, that these failed interpretations abound not so much because Razumov is a difficult character to interpret, but because his silences are all too readily appropriated by the motivated projections of those he meets. Terence Cave has suggested that “Razumov’s ‘personality’ is a void to which an arbitrary chain of signifiers attaches itself, creating a fiction of such power that it absorbs every new detail that comes to light” (242). As Cave suggests, by presenting the characters he encounters with a “void,” Razumov’s “personality” effectively attracts and hosts a chain of signifiers. The resulting fiction, however, is not an arbitrary one. Razumov’s silence, or “void,” provides a mirror to the projected fictions of all the characters he encounters. In his passive silence, Razumov effectively assumes the roles each character expects him to fulfill. In accord with Natalia’s projections, Razumov assumes the character of her brother’s dearest friend, an “unstained, lofty and solitary existence” (135). Conversely, to the English teacher, Razumov’s encounter with Natalia is suggestive of social inhibition. We recall that in Razumov’s silence, Haldin is not able to imagine shock or condemnation but merely confirms what he believes to be Razumov’s “frigid English manner” (16). Echoing Haldin’s “I understand your silence” (16), Sophia Antonovna informs Razumov: “I have understood you at the end of the first day.” We have in this phrase not only an allusion to Haldin’s phrase but also a repetition of his interpretative error. Sophia Antonovna does not in actuality understand Razumov but perceives in him a confirmation of her envisioned male stereotype. She tells him, “Ah! Kirylo Sidorovitch, you like other men are fastidious, full of self-love and afraid of trifles. [. . .] What you want is to be taken in hand by some woman” (243). The reactions of Haldin, Natalia, the English teacher, and Sophia Antonovna are exemplary of the manner in which silence is perceived as an invitation for and confirmation of the hearer’s assumptions. A similar episode unfolds in Razumov’s first encounter with Tekla. He tells her that “it is possible that later on [he] may . . .” Although he does not conclude his sentence or reveal his secret plan, Tekla appears ready to take on what she believes to be her intended role. Unable to

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

83

appreciate her error, Tekla completes his invitation thus: “Yes. If you were to get ill [. . .] or meet some bitter trouble, you would find I am not a useless fool” (233). With the novel’s conclusion, the projected fictions of Haldin, Natalia, the revolutionists, and the English teacher give way to the imaginings of Tekla, the propagator of self-sacrifice and invalid care. Natalia informs the English teacher of the manner in which Tekla undertakes the role of caregiver to Razumov. Tekla, she tells him, had affirmed to her that “there was some understanding between them—some sort of compact—that in any sore need, in misfortune, or difficulty, or pain, he was to come to her” (374). Although the reader is aware of the error that underlies this affirmation, the narrator accepts it as fact. He concludes, “It is lucky for [Razumov] that there was, then” (374). The extensive role-play Razumov undertakes can be said to be the unequivocal and direct result of his silences. If he is repeatedly informed that his silence produces “confidence,” it is precisely because his silence—falsely—confirms the projections and beliefs of his interlocutors. From his very first “trick,” silence thus appears to oust words from their position as the “great foes of reality,” for it allows not one, but an infinite number of possible interpretations and, consequently, an endless string of misinterpretations. We now return to the narrator. Bearing this conclusion in mind, it may be that his motive in presenting such a sweeping statement in relation to the nature of words upon embarking on his narrative enterprise is twofold. Recalling Marlow’s motivated concessions in Lord Jim, this statement is an integral (if paradoxical) part of a general attempt to vouchsafe his alleged impartiality, detachment, and reliability.8 As opposed to writers who are invested with talent, imagination, and the ability to create, he is merely a translator—he does not invent; he documents. Moreover, as opposed to those who would abuse and dupe their innocent readers with rhetorical fabrications, he apparently lives by the rule that “words, as is well known, are the great foes of reality” (3). In a modernist reworking of the modesty topos, both Marlow and the English teacher overstate their handicap as storytellers and admit neither the inclination nor the ability to invent. At the same time, however, the narrator’s criticism of words results in the implicit endorsement of what is increasingly revealed as a second, equally malevolent foe of reality—namely, silence. Michael Greaney addresses this phenomenon and suggests that “an important corollary of Conrad’s suspicion of language is his ambivalent conception of silence. [. . .] Language soon pours into any discursive gap left by silence” (5). The truth of this statement is revealed to the reader when

84

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

he or she learns that Razumov uses silence as a tool of deceit. The manner in which the narrator himself manipulates silence, however, is not as easily perceived. It may be that the narrator’s overwriting of his own silences with the reiteration of the all too well-known preamble with which he begins creates and sustains this critical blind spot. The narrator’s preamble offers the critic something of a diversion—not to say a provocative bullfighter’s red rag—and the critic cannot look elsewhere. Critics subsequently return again and again to the narrator’s “wordiness” in their wish to undermine his initial preamble. Thus, Lothe posits that the narrator’s introductory words introduce “serious reservations about the legitimacy and reliability of words right from the start” (Conrad, 266). Similarly, Rado writes that “language itself is shown to be as unstable and elusive as Haldin’s phantom, and is deconstructed as a center of meaning and stability” (93). Lothe and Rado inform us that, in reading the novel, we must be cautious of the highly deceptive nature of language. However, as we have seen, this conclusion ultimately reproduces the narrator’s stated philosophy. We should subsequently note that while the approach exercised by these critics is helpful, it is not exhaustive. In turning to Part Second of the novel, we see that it is not only in the hands of the protagonist that silence is utilized as a strategic trick. If Part First ends with Mikulin’s resonating question, “Where to?” Part Second begins with the narrator’s history of his acquaintance with the Haldin family in Geneva. The narrator here reworks his initial preamble thus: “Aware of my limitations and strong in the sincerity of my purpose I would not try (were I able) to invent anything. I push my scruples so far that I would not even invent a transition” (101). The claim is simply that it is better not to invent a transition than to invent one. That is, omission (silence) is preferable to elaboration (words). Again, the narrator’s asserted “scruples” serve to advance the merits of silence. The reader has already been instructed not to trust words. An ellipsis is offered as the safest alternative to invention. And yet, as various critics have remarked, this attested reluctance to feign a transition is itself a transitional passage that very artfully bridges Part First and Part Second of the novel. Guerard notes, “The teacher of languages again protests, at the outset of the second part, his lack of professional skill [. . .] while accomplishing with ease the major transition from Councillor Mikulin’s ‘Where to?’ to the society of Nathalie Haldin and her mother” (251). Moreover, his asserted reluctance to offer an explanatory transition is instrumental, for it offers a convenient camouflage for his striking omission. The narrator, as

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

85

quoted above, states that his scruples do not allow him the pleasure of inventing a transition. This is so, he claims, because he is unimaginative and untalented. At the same time, however, this self-reflexive transition makes no allusion to the outcome of the meeting between Razumov and Mikulin. By withholding the needed information (that Razumov undertakes the role of a spy), the narrator is able to play profusely and quite unscrupulously with irony (and this is especially evident in the encounter between Razumov and Natalia, which we have addressed). Furthermore, as Guerard writes, “By delaying as long as he does the formal revelation that Razumov is Mikulin’s agent, Conrad preserves a sympathy that would (with a more abrupt procedure) have been lost” (236).9 Indeed, it is only in the beginning of Part Four that the narrator admits that the omission was strategic. Here, he writes that his reluctance to divulge the incriminating fact arises from his belief in the “psychological value of facts” and his “desire of punctilious fairness” (293). However, by returning to the omitted truth, he effectively admits that the question that has been delayed, “throws a light on the general meaning of this individual case” (293), and thus exposes his own silent “trick.” For regardless of his motive, the fact that he decides “to throw light” on the case at this late moment suggests that, earlier, he had deliberately chosen to keep his readers in the dark. It is not only by way of an assertion of his moral concerns that the narrator downplays his apparently disingenuous narrative ploy. In an attempt to further reassure his readers of the purity of his motives, the narrator states that his reluctance to reveal the omitted fact “may appear absurd if it were not for the thought that because of the imperfection of language there is always something ungracious (and even disgraceful) in the exhibition of naked truth” (293). His initial preamble thus serves him here once more in his implicit claim that the exhibition of the naked truth is more “ungracious” or “disgraceful” than concealment. The deception of silence, then, is preferable to the “naked” truth. The ingenuity of the narrator’s tricks and rhetorical maneuvers is here marked by his artful orchestration of a clever metaphorical slippage. If we commonly associate truth with a sheltering atonement and omission with deceit (much as we may associate words with lies and silence with profundity), in the transition between the two parts, truth is transformed into a “naked” and “disgraceful” fact, while omission is represented in the light of a sheltering reprieve. Regardless of their new and elevated form, once again these claims ultimately blur and conceal the manner in which

86

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

the narrator’s choices effect a straying away from his formerly stated loyalty to the Russian document that is his source. It is only toward the end of the novel that the narrator allows the reader to be privy to the secret of Razumov’s espionage. The transition between the two parts thus exemplifies the narrator’s strategy. By constantly drawing the readers’ attention to his words, the narrator diverts our notice from significant omissions in the narrative. It seems, then, that the critical reader may do well to internalize the novel’s lessons in regard to not only words but also silence. We must not repeat Haldin’s error: when reading the narrator’s silences (that is, his omissions), it is best not to believe we “understand” but to seek out what has been lost or evaded. As we have seen, however, in order to protect his own ploys and tricks, the narrator undertakes the project of redeeming silence and thereby preempts a reading that associates omission with deception. We have already seen that the narrator’s preamble and his treatment of Razumov’s “trick” implicitly suggests that silence is a more desirable alternative to language. A closer examination of his treatment of the motif of silence shows that, from the very outset, the narrator subtly effects an intensification of this claim. Thus, for example, from the start, the narrator’s claim that Razumov’s reserve stems either from an intellectual insufficiency or from a mistrust of his convictions is reinforced by his description of Razumov’s external features. The narrator likens Razumov’s face to wax that is held close to a fire “till all sharpness of line had been lost in the softening of the material” (5). The implication is that Razumov’s ideological convictions, like his features, are not entirely shaped. Hence, if Razumov chooses not to speak, it is because he does not yet know what it is, precisely, that he must say. This, however, does not suggest that Razumov possesses a deceptive nature. Indeed, it suggests quite the opposite. After all, Razumov does not lie about his convictions; he merely remains silent because they are not yet fixed. Following this initial introduction to Razumov, the narrator increasingly highlights the positive qualities associated with silence. Thus, in a subsequent appraisal of Razumov’s character, the narrator once again represses the fraudulent nature of silence. Alluding once more to Razumov’s reserve, he remarks that this quality is, in his mind, “associated with sincerity” (173). Razumov’s silence is thus recovered as a mark of trustworthiness and candor. Although he writes retrospectively, the narrator suspends his retrospective knowledge and identifies with Haldin, Natalia, and the other comrades who read Razumov’s character as one of an “unstained, lofty and solitary existence” (135).

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

87

This feigned innocence is a strategy by which the narrator leads the reader into a reenactment of Razumov’s comrades’ initial interpretative mistake. In following his lead, we, too, must sympathize with Razumov, who is characterized as a victim caught in an unfathomable and arbitrary chain of events. The readings of Cox and Guerard offer performative examples of such a guided reading. As we have seen, Guerard posits that the narrator’s (or Conrad’s) decision to conceal Razumov’s employment as a police spy is instrumental in eliciting the reader’s sympathy. Implicitly, this is a necessary development for the success of his narrative. It is my contention, however, that the narrator’s wish to redeem Razumov’s silence is motivated not only by his wish to counterfeit his former ignorance in regards to the true significance of Razumov’s silences. By eliciting our sympathy and understanding, the narrator vindicates not only Razumov but himself. Although the narrator’s vindication of silence appears to serve the protagonist, we will see that it equally serves his own interests. Various critics have examined the underlying similarities between the characters of Razumov and the English teacher.10 Haldin’s remark to Razumov, which shows him to be “English-like” in his frigid and reserved manner, provides a common point of comparison. Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan develops this idea in her suggestion that “like Razumov, the old teacher of languages predicates his story from the very outset on the fact of his ‘otherness.’” She then adds that “both are initially the exponents of rationality, and both are, of course, in love with Nathalie” (120–21). Erdinast-Vulcan thus suggests that Razumov is a double of the English teacher, not only in mind and manners, but also in love. Although these are important elements of likeness (some of which, however, I contest shortly), I would like to draw the readers’ attention to an altogether different line of comparison. What has not yet been noted is the manner in which the narrator effectively and significantly repeats Razumov’s betrayal. The narrator’s relation to Natalia parallels Razumov’s relationship with Haldin. We recall that the relationship between Haldin and Razumov is founded on a deceptive silence. This feature is later shown to be an important part of the budding relationship between the teacher and his pupil. The narrator reflects on Natalia’s regard for him and remarks, “I do not know why she should have felt so friendly to me. It may be that she thought I understood her much better than I was able to do. [. . .] I am reduced to suppose she appreciated my attention and silence” (118). Like Razumov, the narrator uses silence as a social tool.11 We recall that the narrator (perhaps deceptively) proposes that Razumov uses silence to conceal a lack of knowledge

88

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

or conviction. Here, we find that he himself adopts this strategy, suggesting that his interpretation of Razumov’s conduct may have been influenced by his own experience. Like Razumov, the narrator wins favor through silence. Both Natalia and Haldin put their trust in their silent acquaintances. I contend further that both are finally duped by their misguided trust. Razumov and the narrator are both silent listeners. In Geneva, Razumov performs a twofold capitalization on silence. First, his silences allow for the active interpretation of those he encounters. By remaining silent, he allows the myth of his fellowship with Haldin to continue and unfold, thereby ensuring his personal safety. Razumov further utilizes silence to engage in his role as a police spy. In this role, Razumov does not speak so that he may listen. This double capitalization ends, however, with the annihilation of his capitalizing powers as, with his deafening, Razumov begins to talk and ceases to listen. Interestingly, Razumov’s deafening produces yet another form of capitalization. Although this silence is of a different nature—not an active but a passive one—it seems that there is still some profit to be made of it. The narrator informs the reader that “there was some compunction, too, in the charity extended by the revolutionary world to Razumov the betrayer.” The deafened Razumov is, as Sophia Antonovna tells the narrator, a “victim of an outrage” (380). Razumov’s deafening at the hands of the betrayer Nikita renders him a victim. Thus, the novel ends with yet another signifying silence. It is in this final silence that he is forced to inhabit that Razumov finds the compassion and charity of the revolutionists.12 Like Razumov, the narrator performs a double capitalization. We have seen that in his relationship with Natalia, his silence is used to suggest a profound understanding that is instrumental in promoting their friendship. Like Razumov, however, the narrator employs silence not only to mask an underlying ignorance but also to advance his operative listening. In his espionage mission, Razumov is the subordinate of his Russian supervisors; effectively, he is an extension of their impenetrable yet penetrating gaze. Alluding to General T—— and Mikulin, the narrator writes, “One can imagine them talking over the case of Mr. Razumov, with the full sense of their unbounded power over all the lives in Russia, with cursory disdain, like two Olympians glancing at a worm” (306). We must remember, however, that the narrator is himself a spy and that the tale he tells is always already subordinated to the equally crushing gaze of the Westerner. The narrator’s record is thus something of a spy report itself and, like Razumov’s, it is extorted under false pretences. While Razumov’s true

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

89

identity is concealed by his assumed role as a revolutionist, the narrator is shielded by the guise of an obtuse bystander. While we have seen that the critical reader is not often duped by this deceptive mask, the characters in the novel seem taken in by the narrator’s enacted persona. This should not be surprising, however, if we consider the number of times the narrator vocalizes his incomprehension. In response to Natalia’s political statement, the narrator states, “It is quite possible that I don’t understand” (104). Such communications abound in his exchanges with her, even if they assume a slightly embellished form, as, for example, in his comment, “Admitting that we occidentals do not understand the character of your people . . .” (105). Most likely in anticipation of such a remark, Natalia does not let him finish. The narrator repeatedly demonstrates his tactless incomprehension, and Natalia begins to take his obtuseness in relation to everything Russian for granted. We find an apt illustration of this in their conversation after the inception of the family’s fears for Haldin’s safety. Natalia informs her teacher, “I think [mother] is fretting because we have not heard from my brother for rather a long time.” Rather tactlessly, he answers, “No news—good news.” While the reader may appreciate the grossness of this proverbial retort, it necessitates Natalia’s reply, “Not in Russia” (108). Evidently, the narrator is old and foreign to the Russian nature and cannot possibly understand. This quality effectively lessens the degree with which he may be perceived as a security threat to the revolutionary circle, which does not seem to deplore the intrusiveness of his seemingly uncomprehending eyes. Indeed, to many of the participating characters, his existence is, as he himself claims, hardly noted at all. This may similarly explain how Razumov remains oblivious to the narrator’s presence throughout his confession to Natalia and acknowledges his presence only at the very end in his query, “How did this old man come here?” (355).13 Perhaps more so than his social encounters, the narrator’s “spy report” appears to rely heavily on Razumov’s diary. In his first mention of the diary, the narrator informs his readers that “it is inconceivable that [Razumov] should have wished any human eye to see [it]” (5). Regardless of this initial insight, the narrator not only publishes Razumov’s record but also fails to explain his decision to do so, making no attempt to justify the publication. Clearly, upon presenting him with the diary, Natalia does not request that he make it public. Indeed, the narrator has already informed the reader that Natalia appreciates his attention and silence. We may therefore assume that, as Haldin had put his faith in Razumov, Natalia trusts the narrator with the

90

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

journal because she credits him with discretion. The narrator’s capitalization on silence—like Razumov’s—results in the gift (or curse) of a secret. Where Razumov reveals Haldin’s secret by betraying him to the czarist authorities, the narrator makes Natalia’s secret (in the form of Razumov’s diary) similarly public by publishing his version of it. This may appear to be an extremely malicious reading of the character of the language teacher. The narrator’s own words, however, show that his interest goes beyond his personal attachment to his student and that his actions are propelled by an underlying current of self-interest. In the introductory notes to Part Second, the narrator informs the reader that his friendship with the Haldin ladies “gave [him] a standing in the Russian colony which otherwise [he] could not have had” (103). The narrator, then, is not only infatuated with the striking features of Natalia but also intrigued by the possibilities that such a contact promises. This “privileged” position reminds us of Razumov’s own contrived entry into the society of the revolutionary circle. Both Razumov and the narrator are introduced through the Haldins into a social circle that would not receive them under normal circumstances, and both make their own covert use of this special invitation. Interestingly, the narrator repeatedly shows himself to be overzealous in his readiness to accept such a unique summons. This enthusiasm appears not only to affect but also to heighten his interpretative abilities. Thus, for example, the narrator chooses to explain his lengthy stay with Natalia by informing the reader that he “would have retired quietly and returned later on, had [he] not met a peculiar expression in [Natalia’s] eyes which [he] interpreted as a request to stay” (126–27). The narrator is so eager to stay that his communication with his student becomes almost telepathic. It suffices that she glance in his direction for him to infer that his presence is required. It is more plausible, however, that the narrator’s interpretations of Natalia’s wishes are self-serving, for he repeatedly perceives some sign in her conduct that he believes to be suggestive of her need of his company. Thus, once more he remarks that he “intended to leave them to themselves, but Miss Haldin touched [me] lightly on the forearm with a significant contact, conveying a distinct wish” (179). The narrator is always at hand, always ready to assist and accompany Natalia. It remains for the reader to decide, however, to what extent this accompaniment is indeed called for. It is nevertheless evident that by appropriating Natalia’s silence, the narrator further capitalizes on an ellipsis. Although we are aware of the deceptive potential of such an exercise, the reader is repeatedly tricked into accepting the narrator’s

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

91

interpretation. We find such a trusting reader in Schwarz, who offers a reading that not only credits the narrator with reliability but also applauds his devotion: “[The narrator] involves himself in Natalie’s affairs, and befriends her with a sensitivity and responsiveness that her Russian acquaintances lack. To illustrate: when he arrived at the Haldins only to discover Peter there and ‘met a peculiar expression in [Natalie Haldin’s] eyes which [he] interpreted as a request to stay, with the view, perhaps, of shortening an unwelcome visit’ he dutifully remained’” (Almayer’s, 197). The reader already knows, however, that the interpretation of silence is distinctly problematic, often entailing a subjective projection rather than an objective deciphering. Perhaps, then, the narrator is motivated not by a sense of duty toward Natalia, as Schwarz suggests, but rather by his own voyeuristic interests. We may substantiate this claim by examining the last scene in which Natalia, Razumov, and the narrator are united. Here, the narrator no longer attempts to justify his presence by alluding to Natalia’s secret needs. On the occasion of Razumov’s final visit to Natalia, the narrator’s presence is not said to be required by any “peculiar expression” or “secret gesture.” Here, it is rather the absence of any such sign that the narrator interprets as an invitation to stay: “Had either of them cast a glance then in my direction, I would have opened the door quietly and gone out. But neither did; and I remained, every fear of indiscretion lost in the sense of my enormous remoteness from their captivity within the sombre horizon of Russian problems, the boundary of their eyes, of their feelings—the prison of their souls” (345). We are informed not only that the narrator is not needed but that his presence is obtrusive, an implication muffled in an elaborate assertion of Razumov’s and Natalia’s Russian “otherness” and his “enormous remoteness.” If the narrator cannot justify his presence, he feigns a figurative separation that is so vast that it colors his presence with an aura of absence. This idea is then extended as the narrator transforms himself from an observer to a captive: “My existence seemed so utterly forgotten by these two that I dared not now make a movement” (346). No more the intrusive eavesdropper, the narrator now shows himself to be in some way imprisoned by his own insignificance. In effect, these inflationary and supererogatory passages replace what he previously expressed as Natalia’s pressing need for his presence; they are an additional confabulation designed to give credence to his superfluous attendance. Exploiting Natalia’s and Razumov’s obliviousness to his presence, he witnesses a meeting that is anthropologically fascinating

92

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

to his incredulous Western eyes. The language he uses—“sombre horizon,” “the boundary of their eyes,” “the prison of their souls”— reveals how the narrator has already begun writing the story. It is quite clear that any sense of duty toward Natalia is overshadowed by his aesthetic appreciation of the writerly possibilities of this scene. In this important last encounter between Razumov and Natalia, the first confession is enacted, and the truth of Razumov’s betrayal is finally revealed. Royal Roussel regards Razumov’s confessions as the “alternative to the slavery of lies into which Razumov has betrayed himself” (148). Underlining the peril that such a feat as confession entails, Cox writes that Razumov’s “confession, his act of commitment, becomes a kind of suicide. As he himself knows, he must confess and perish” (116).14 Evidently, it is not only Razumov who feels that he must own up to a hitherto undisclosed truth. “Without fear of provoking a smile,” the narrator says, “I shall confess that I became very much attached to that young girl” (102). A confession more embarrassing than it is damning, the narrator admits that his regard for Natalia goes beyond friendship. Some critics have suggested that the narrator’s emotional withdrawal, his choice not to develop his reported infatuation, points to a personal failure on his part in the pursuit of happiness and fulfillment.15 Erdinast-Vulcan, for example, writes that “the emotional withdrawal from the role of a lover can only be understood against the background of the narrator’s withdrawal from life itself” (122–23). This may be true: the narrator’s detachment accompanies the relinquishing of love and emotion. At the same time, however, one must not overlook the fact that the narrator’s stoicism has its own reward—his own personalized glimpse of the lives of the Russians in Geneva. Finally, the narrator’s “dutiful” silence is rewarded by the gift of Razumov’s journal. His imaginative lack and weakness of invention are thus cured by Natalia’s gesture as he inherits a ready-made story. We may conclude that, despite the evident differences between the English teacher and Marlow (most importantly, in the medium of their delivery), both can be said to follow the dictates of the aesthetic of the otherwise present. Although the English teacher is, at one and the same time, both involved in and divorced from the action, he makes sure to keep a safe distance from the dangers of implication. His most common defense is, of course, his alleged incomprehension, which is a convenient method of maintaining an imagined boundary between himself and the action that he observes. At the end of Part Second we find a particularly evocative image of the narrator’s immunity. Taking his leave of the young man, the narrator observes as Razumov,

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

93

standing on a bridge, leans over the parapet and stares into its violent current. Walking away, the narrator comments, “The current there is swift, extremely swift; it makes some people dizzy; I myself can never look at it for any length of time without experiencing a dread of being suddenly snatched away by its destructive force. Some brains cannot resist the suggestion of irresistible power and of headlong motion” (197, my emphasis). Like Marlow’s observation of Kurtz and Jim, the English teacher watches as Razumov totters “suddenly on the very edge of the precipice” (LJ, 349) and falls, while he lives to tell the tale, free to “preserve or destroy” the memory of Razumov.16 This section thus concludes with an interesting twist. While we have come to associate Razumov’s character with the role of the spy, it appears that this role becomes emblematic of the narrator. Indeed, in his resistance to confession and atonement and his numerous manipulations and deceits, he is more true to his espionage duties than Razumov himself. Like a spy, the Conradian storyteller silences the narratives of his own motives and wishes and is thereby transformed into the receptacle of another man’s story. As opposed to Razumov, however, both Marlow and the English teacher are protected by the immunity that comes with the otherwise-present aesthetic. Avoiding the “edge of the precipice,” the Conradian storyteller will neither experience true dizziness nor suffer the wrath of retribution.

Exo rc is ing the Otherwi s e Pres ent In the previous section, I outlined the manner in which absence assumes the form of an active and meaningful signifier. Silence, as we have seen, is never construed as a negation of meaning but rather as an equivalent of projected speech. If we extend the lessons of Derrida’s formula of “capitalizing on an ellipsis” further, we find that one of the most striking examples of this phenomenon is found not only in omitted speech but in the omitted presence of the figure of Haldin. Although Haldin is absented from the novel at a very early stage, his nonappearance haunts the text throughout, much like the nonspeech of his betrayer. If, as we have seen, Razumov’s silences are transformed into words in the minds of the characters he encounters, Haldin’s absence is analogously metamorphosed into a living and menacing presence in Razumov’s consciousness. Razumov’s attempts to combat the effects of his haunting nemesis follow two distinct ontological trajectories. In the world of the manifest real, Haldin’s fate becomes an omitted truth that is utilized by Razumov to secure his safety. At the same time, however, Haldin’s nonpresence is made

94

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

manifest beyond the real, in the realm of nightmare and hallucination. Here, Razumov finds that truth cannot be combated by silence. In the world of the unreal, the absent takes on a living form. Haldin is subsequently no longer a nonpresence but a living phantom, an otherwise present. Accordingly, Razumov turns to a traditional mode of warfare: exorcism. The scope of this chapter does not allow for an etiological mapping of the practice of exorcism within religious tradition. Nor is such an elaborate explanation necessary for what is attempted here. While the novel is saturated with religious allusion, it is nevertheless a determinedly secularized version of its religious counterpart, Crime and Punishment. In the secular world, it is not the priest who combats phantoms but the psychologist, the doctor, and the philosopher. The example of psychoanalysis nevertheless shows that the secular world contains residues of former religious practice. While psychoanalysis perhaps inherits (and therefore displaces) the role of the church in combating evil, the psychoanalytic session quite clearly resonates with the traditional rites of confession and exorcism. The working through process is, in its intended effect, a form of exorcism. The analyst displaces the priest in the role of the exorcist; the analysand, in turn, becomes the subject on whom the procedure is performed; finally, the unwanted other that is exorcised is the unconscious material that possesses the analysand’s actions. Incomprehensible memory gaps and irrational, repetitious behavior are transformed into structured memory and conscious action. The acting out, which is construed as a possession of sorts, is annulled. At the end of the therapeutic process, the analysand is, in effect, dispossessed. My analysis in this section does not address the specter as an ontological reality pertaining to the world of diabolical manifestations but rather as a psychological projection. In an attempt to provide a brief explanation for this interpretative leap, I would like to point to a relevant passage from Conrad’s Author’s Note to The Shadow-Line. Conrad writes: All my moral and intellectual being is penetrated by an invincible conviction that whatever falls under the dominion of our senses must be in nature and, however exceptional, cannot differ in its essence from all the other effects of the visible and tangible world of which we are a self-conscious part. [. . .] No, I am too firm in my consciousness of the marvellous to be ever fascinated by the mere supernatural, which (take it any way you like) is but a manufactured article, the fabrication of minds insensitive to the intimate delicacies of our relation to the dead

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

95

and to the living, in their countless multitudes; a desecration of our tenderest memories; and outrage on our dignity. Whatever my native modesty may be it will never condescend so low as to seek help for my imagination within those vain imaginings common to all ages and that in themselves are enough to fill all lovers of mankind with unutterable sadness. As to the effect of a mental or moral shock on a common mind that is quite a legitimate subject for study and description. (SL, v–vi)

Bearing Conrad’s categorical statement in mind, my treatment of the phantasmal occurrences in the novel are attributed precisely to the “mental or moral shock” that Razumov sustains and battles in the aftermath of the betrayal.17 This interpretation may be substantiated further by the narrator’s suggestion that there is an element of the “talking cure” in Razumov’s writing project. He observes that “there must be a wonderful soothing power in mere words since so many men have used them for self-communion” (5).18 Razumov’s journal may indeed be therapeutic, as the narrator suggests.19 It is nevertheless clear that Razumov combats his demons not only through writing but through ritual. Before he turns to the soothing power of words, he turns to the soothing power of performance. Such a claim may ring false if we consider Razumov’s much-emphasized role as a man of letters. We must not neglect, however, that while Razumov is a rational being, he is, at the same time, superstitious. According to Erdinast-Vulcan, this paradoxical fusion may be explained by the manner in which his character is comprised of an enmeshment of the Western and the Russian stereotypes that are presented in the novel. She finds in Razumov’s character a split between “the Russian mode of perception, which recognizes and accepts the metaphysical, and the Western outlook, which is secular, rational and materialistic” (Erdinast-Vulcan, 114). It seems that these two opposing perceptual frameworks cannot be reconciled: one does not deal with specters rationally. As Derrida writes, “One does not know: not out of ignorance, but because this non-object, this non-present present, this being–there of an absent or departed one no longer belongs to knowledge” (Specters, 6). Reason must inevitably fail Razumov in his encounter with the “nonpresent present.” Paradoxically, however, it is precisely a rational and calculating language that pervades his ghostly encounters. Perhaps in accord with his personality “split,” Razumov reacts to the visitation of phantoms and hallucinations with a striking combination of reason and irrationality. Thus, we find that the odd combination of East and West in Razumov’s character produces a practice that combines both the irrational

96

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

and the rational. If the rational Razumov believes in detailed and logical thought, and his superstitious counterpart calls for irrational action, the two meet in the ritual. Regardless of the evident supernatural quality inherent in exorcism, Razumov does not relinquish reason but rather attempts to enlist it in battling that which is resistant to its laws. Derrida addresses this oxymoron-like fusion: “Without excluding, quite to the contrary, analytic procedure and argumentative ratiocination, exorcism consists in repeating in the mode of an incantation. [. . .] It proceeds by formulae, and sometimes theoretical formulae play this role with an efficacity that is all the greater because they mislead as to their magical nature, the authoritarian dogmatism, the occult power they share with what they claim to combat” (Specters, 48). This formulation provides a possible reading of Razumov’s behavior in Under Western Eyes. Although it is a “magical” use of the rational, it is with reason, with his “superior mind,” that Razumov attempts to combat Haldin’s phantom. We encounter such a pseudoexorcism ritual in one of the very first scenes in the novel. While engrossed in a lengthy self-deliberation about Haldin’s future and his own, Razumov comes across the phantom of Haldin lying on the snowy ground in his path. His first reaction to the image is a very rational one: namely, to check his pocket to make sure that his key is still there in order to reassure himself that Haldin could not have escaped from his room. This impulse, however, is soon checked “with a disdainful curve of his lips” (37). Razumov’s rational mind knows that this being is merely a hallucination, nothing but a projected simulacrum of the body of the man awaiting him in his room. The transition between thought and action in this scene is marked by a single word—Razumov “understood.” Thus, the supernatural and the rational are united. Razumov encounters a phantom, yet he knows rationally what he must do. He must annul the image of the phantom. By walking over the phantom of Haldin, Razumov performs his first exorcism: “Razumov tackled the phenomenon calmly. With a stern face, without a check and gazing far beyond the vision, he walked on, experiencing nothing but a slight tightening of the chest. After passing he turned his head for a glance, and saw only the unbroken track of his footsteps over the place where the breast of the phantom had been lying” (37). In this scene it is clear that Razumov does not abandon his meditative and calculating nature. He checks his impulses; he acts deliberately and consciously. The handling of the phantom is likened to the handling of a mundane problem. He assesses the situation and then decides on the course of action that is required. He thinks and only then performs. This scene thus

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

97

demonstrates the manner in which the rational is interpolated into Razumov’s encounters with the otherwise present. Assuredly, Razumov undertakes additional methods in his attempt to rid himself of Haldin’s phantom, not least of which is his turn to writing. Referring to the credo Razumov formulates after Haldin’s departure, H. M. Daleski suggests that “when Razumov writes his manifesto (which so impresses Councillor Mikulin), he formulates a mature, intellectual justification of the betrayal, but the ‘almost childish’ hand in which it is written reveals the emotional immaturity in which the betrayal is rooted” (200). Daleski thus perceives this written form as a sign of Razumov’s attempt to rationalize his betrayal. Whether, indeed, it is the effect of psychological defense mechanisms or rather a testament to a true philosophical commitment on his part (that may be strategically addressed to the police), Razumov’s manifesto has drawn much critical attention. While Cox suggests that this “is the credo of [Razumov’s] intellectual freedom” (109), Avrom Fleishman posits that this credo is important not only as “an antirevolutionary utterance but also an anti-individualistic one” (228). However, it is not only the content of the credo but also the manner in which Razumov handles the written document that proves to be intriguing. Razumov takes the written document and stabs it with a knife to the wall above his bed—the bed in which Haldin lay waiting for him. This political credo thus becomes yet another figure for the fusion of reason and the supernatural. On the one hand, this paper is allegedly an expression of his political beliefs, a necessary ratiocination in response to the act of betrayal.20 At the same time, however, this piece of paper becomes Razumov’s charm to ward off the phantom of Haldin. Much like conventionally ritualistic practices of pinning up an emblem of safety over the bed, like the obligatory cross or garlic wreath in the best of vampire movies, Razumov performs a ritualistic prevention.21 Ritual performances such as this characterize Razumov’s actions throughout, a phenomenon that is especially evident in the final scenes of the novel. In a repetition of the night of Haldin’s capture, Razumov leaves his room on the way to confess to the revolutionaries on the stroke of midnight. It is stated that “there was no reason for that choice except that the facts and the words of a certain evening in his past were timing his conduct in the present” (362). The past is timing his present in a way that clearly resonates with the idea of a psychological reenactment. Indeed, the narrator emphasizes the unconscious aspect of the proceedings. He writes that Razumov is “a puppet of his past” (362) and that he goes to Laspara’s house harboring an

98

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

“unconscious memory” (363) of a gathering that is to take place on that specific night. Despite the obvious emphasis on Razumov’s (figurative) loss of agency, it appears that he remains conscious and calculating even at this stage. He waits for the clock to strike midnight; he finds his way to Laspara’s house without delay; and he remains lucid and coherent throughout. Freud explicitly writes that reenactment is always unconsciously performed. One reenacts only insofar as one is not aware of the motivation that underlies the action. One reenacts in lieu of remembering.22 Razumov, however, remembers. Indeed, his memory is full of Haldin’s words and actions. The narrator writes that “every word uttered by Haldin lived in Razumov’s memory. They were like haunting shapes; they could not be exorcized” (167). Haldin and the events of the night of his betrayal are irrevocably etched into Razumov’s conscious memory. The term reenactment in this particular context therefore suggests a ritualistic, meditated action—not an acting out in the Freudian sense, but a meditated performance. It is Razumov’s final attempt to exorcise the haunting shapes. Various critical readings attempt to pinpoint the motivations underlying this final reenactment. Tony Tanner, for example, argues that what motivates Razumov is his need to atone for the betrayal through an active identification with Haldin. Tanner writes, “The only way to cleanse himself of the completely irrational pollution and untruth which has invaded his life since the betrayal of Haldin is to submit himself to a like fate. He re-enacts what he once made Haldin do, running out of his house at midnight, straight into the den of his judgers” (“Nightmare,” 183). Tanner neglects several important details that are at odds with his reading: Razumov’s situation is markedly different to that of Haldin. While the authorities are aware of Haldin’s actions, the revolutionists are oblivious to Razumov’s act of betrayal. It is only through confession that Razumov can place himself at the mercy of the revolutionists. Thus, it is only through a voluntary act of disclosure, an act Haldin actively resists throughout the police interrogation, that Razumov may undergo Haldin’s experience. The revolutionists cannot become Razumov’s “judgers” unless he confesses the truth. Although it is clear that the past is timing Razumov’s present, his final reenactment does not follow the chronology of one specific past event, nor does he identify with Haldin alone. The final scene is more significant, as it involves other scenes and other moments that Razumov must relive in order to conclude the cycle of exorcism. The first repetition is a reenactment of Razumov’s inability to keep silent: “I beg you to observe,” he tells the revolutionists, “that I had only to

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

99

hold my tongue” (368). As before, when Haldin entrusted his life to Razumov—and most importantly to Razumov’s discretion—Razumov’s inability to remain silent leads to betrayal. This time, however, it is himself that he is betraying. As Tanner notes, the second repetition occurs when Razumov identifies with Haldin and the experience of his capture, a recurrence that is implied by the symbolic stroke of midnight for which Razumov waits before leaving his room. Finally, there remains one more crucial scene that must be relived. To achieve the final exorcism that will lay Haldin’s ghost to rest, Razumov must enact a reversal of his own initial unsuccessful attempt to exorcise Haldin. Before his decision to betray Haldin, Razumov subordinates him, dehumanizes him, and annuls him through the ritual of stepping over his phantom. Now it is he who needs to be trampled, trod on, and effaced. And while the interjection of the chaotic retribution committed by the self-serving Nikita is an extremely ironic touch, it provides, at the same time, a conclusion to the cycle of exorcism: Razumov, overpowered, breathless, crushed under the weight of his assailants, saw the monstrous Nikita squatting on his heels near his head, while the others held him down, kneeling on his chest, gripping his throat, lying across his legs. [. . .] Razumov could struggle no longer. He was exhausted; he had to watch passively the heavy open hand of the brute descend again in a degrading blow over his other ear. [. . .] they [. . .] flung him out into the street. [. . .] He came to rest in the roadway of the street lying at the bottom, lying on his back, with a great flash of lightning over his face. (369)

Razumov, like the phantom of Haldin that he himself ritualistically crushed, is now crushed himself, left lying on his back in the street. Interestingly, however, this final ritual does not put an end to the haunting in the novel. As we have noted, Sophia Antonovna informs the narrator that Razumov “was a victim of an outrage. It was not authorized. Nothing was decided as to what was to be done with him. He had confessed voluntarily. And that Nikita who burst the drums of his ears [. . .] well, he has turned out to be a scoundrel of the worst kind—a traitor himself, a betrayer—a spy!” (380). Once Nikita’s true identity is revealed to the revolutionists, Razumov himself becomes a memory that haunts the collective revolutionary conscience. It is evident that a language of possession, dispossession, and ritual pervades the text, a discourse that naturally highlights the thematic obsession with the otherwise present throughout the novel. Interestingly, the turn to the otherwise present is accompanied once again (as

100

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

it was in Lord Jim) by an eclipsing of moral concerns. Action and ritual displace the question of guilt, conscience, and responsibility. The motif of exorcism thus transforms an inherently moral dilemma into a supernatural one. The following passage demonstrates the manner in which Razumov’s thought pertains to a supernatural rather than an ethical framework: “Every word of that friend of yours was egging me on to the unpardonable sin of stealing a soul. Could he have been the devil himself in the shape of an old Englishman? Natalia Victorovna, I was possessed!” (359–60). The profusion of religious and spiritual reference in Razumov’s language works to negate his power of choice, free will, and moral responsibility. As he is possessed, he is a puppet: he does not act but is acted upon. Similarly, the performance of ritual produces a deferral of the underlying moral questions. The first exorcism scene provides a fitting example. Ultimately, the decision to betray Haldin is a conscious one. It follows a soliloquy-like discussion of the nature of betrayal. However, it is important to note that this mental meditation follows, rather than precedes, the exorcism scene. Razumov decides to betray Haldin only after he has figuratively stepped over his body. It is the performance of the ritual that effectively determines Haldin’s fate. Following this ritualistic “stepping over,” it appears to Razumov that only one option remains feasible: he “shall give [Haldin] up” (37). Razumov concludes what he must do by consulting the phantom, as it were, and not the living man. In this sense, Razumov’s exorcism of the phantom marks a clear evasion of moral issues. Robert Hampson writes, “By means of these metaphors, Razumov depersonalises Haldin in order to minimise the act of betrayal he contemplates” (Betrayal, 172). It is only once he strips Haldin of his humanity, transforms him into a specter, and symbolically effaces him that Razumov can betray the living man. A consideration of the moral ramifications of betrayal is therefore deferred by the exorcism of Haldin’s phantom. While he does, in fact, address the ramifications of betrayal, he does so only after having walked over Haldin’s image, that is, after having transplanted Haldin into the realm of the otherwise present—the phantasmagoric. The supernatural therefore replaces, displaces, and defers questions of morality. An inherent paradox that is characteristic of the practice of exorcism is extremely relevant to this displacement: the supernatural preoccupation is exacerbated rather than alleviated by exorcism.23 Exorcism is not, as it might seem, a closure but rather a commencement of the discourse with the otherwise present. While the aim of exorcism is to silence and dispel the spirit, in practice, it is a dialogic encounter. The

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

101

exorcism of a phantom entails its conjuration; one must acknowledge and ontologize a phantom in order to expel it. As Erdinast-Vulcan notes, “the act of exorcism by trampling on the phantom’s breast is also, paradoxically, an admission of its existence by the ritualistic sacrilege” (116). Exorcism is thus a discourse with the otherwise present— not the annihilation of the spirit, but an interplay between its evasion and invasion. The first encounter with Haldin’s specter is supposedly an attempt to annul it. At the same time, it is an acknowledgment of its presence, and, as such, it symbolizes not the closing but rather the opening of the door on this other world. This paradox is evident throughout Razumov’s attempts to obliterate the phantom of Haldin. Despite pinning up his political credo, or talisman, to the wall above the bed in which Haldin lay, Razumov nevertheless avoids his bed and chooses to sleep on his sofa. A charm to ward off evil spirits inevitably suggests the possibility of their presence. Similarly, upon encountering the phantom of Haldin in his own room, Razumov, in yet another attempt to exorcise the ghost, “step[s] forward menacingly” (85). While the vision consequently vanishes, it is nevertheless clear that Razumov thus acknowledges the existence of the phantom. A vanquished phantom is a phantom nonetheless: “It was only the room through which that man had blundered on his way from crime to death that his spectre did not seem to be able to haunt. Not, to be exact, that he was ever completely absent from it, but that there he had no sort of power” (300). In lieu of a conscious engagement in what is, in essence, a moral struggle, Razumov must bear the burden of an unconscious and phantasmal war. The metaphysical battle waged against the unwitting protagonist thus seems to allow for a skirting of moral concerns and his betrayal of those who trust in him. Toward the novel’s end, however, we see that a similar dynamic results in a contradictory, self-atoning action. According to the excerpts from his diary, it is Natalia’s haunting presence that precipitates his decision to atone: “It was she who had been haunting him now. He had suffered that persecution ever since she had suddenly appeared before him in the garden of the Villa Borel with an extended hand and the name of her brother on her lips” (342). It would seem that the displacement of Haldin’s ghost by that of his sister leads to the dissolution of all lies. At the end, it seems, the supernatural does not defer the moral question but rather serves it. In the previous section, we outlined the similarities between Razumov and the narrator. Like Razumov, the narrator dabbles in espionage through recourse to the deceptive potential of silence. Interestingly, it seems that the narrator further emulates his subject by performing

102

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

his own ritualistic exorcism. Razumov’s story—the story the narrator means to publish—can be concluded only with the exit of its protagonist.24 Hence, we may say that much as Razumov had attempted to rid himself of Haldin’s haunting presence, as the novel comes to an end, the narrator, too, wishes to be rid of the presence that haunts him. As opposed to Razumov, however, the narrator cleverly conceals his secret rites. In the scene of Razumov’s confession, the narrator comments that his “existence seemed so utterly forgotten” (346) that he “virtually ceased to exist for both these young people” (347). Significantly, however, his presence is not effaced. Once Razumov’s confession comes to an end, we find that Razumov’s presence becomes, for him, “intolerable” (355). The narrator undertakes the role of the exorcist: “Incredulity, struggling with astonishment, anger and disgust, deprived me for a time of the power of speech. Then I turned on him, whispering from very rage—‘this is monstrous. What are you staying for? Don’t let her catch sight of you again. Go away!’” (355). Note that the narrator turns “on” rather than “to” Razumov. Much like a resistant specter, Razumov does finally leave, exercising a mode of departure that is more spectral than it is human: Razumov “seemed to vanish before he moved” (356). While it has not yet been shown, it is significant to note that we have, in this final departure, a repetition of the pivotal moment of Razumov’s betrayal of Haldin: “Haldin, already at the door, tall and straight as an arrow, with his pale face and a hand raised attentively, might have posed for the statue of a daring youth listening to an inner voice. Razumov mechanically glanced down at his watch. When he looked towards the door again Haldin had vanished. There was a faint rustling in the outer room, the feeble click of a bolt drawn back lightly. He was gone—almost as noiseless as a vision” (63, my emphasis). The similarities between the two passages abound. In the moment before their exit, Haldin and Razumov are presented in an immobile and statuesque-like manner (recalling General T——’s statuette); both are specter-like in their sudden disappearance. Similarly, both Razumov and the narrator are distracted at the moment of the other’s exit, and both are awakened to the effacement of the other by the noise of the closing door. A marked difference between the ramifications of these two scenes is nevertheless apparent. While Razumov has no control over Haldin’s haunting presence, the narrator rather exploits Razumov’s memory for self-promotion. Rather than battle Razumov’s phantom, the narrator chooses to frame and subordinate it to the Western eye.

Signifying Absences in UNDER WESTERN EYES

103

The conjuration of Haldin’s phantom may appear inappropriate within Conrad’s secularized rewriting of Crime and Punishment. I believe, however, that his use of the phantom does not signify Conrad’s employment of a Dostoevskian theme but rather a reworking of the primary thematic concern of the novel: the signifying potential of an absence. If we had earlier seen that Razumov’s silences are appropriated and displaced by the projected speech of the characters who encounter him, here the phantom is an effected displacement of Haldin’s absence. Through an unconscious projection, Razumov transforms the effects of his betrayal of Haldin—his guilt and the pangs of his conscience—into a haunting presence that is, perhaps ironically, the more psychologically acceptable alternative. The two transformational exemplars that we have outlined in the course of this chapter— both the transformation of silence into speech and the absent into a haunting presence—clearly testify to the unease that absence induces not only in the characters within the novel but also in us, the readers. We may consequently say that Under Western Eyes provides a powerful testament to an ingrained metaphysical bias: due to an evident preference, the Western mind repeatedly displaces silence, absence, ellipsis, and omission with the more tenable alternative of presence. We must conclude that, in writing a novel of absence, Conrad effectively shows us that, under our deceiving eyes, there can be no such thing.

This page intentionally left blank

4

Chapter 5

T H E A R ROW

OF

GOLD

A n Exerc ise i n Pro c u r i ng Ab sence

I

n Under Western Eyes the otherwise present is a conjuration, a substitute that comes into being in place of a gaping void. Ellipsis elicits endless conjecture; the dead returns in the form of a haunting specter. The central metaphysical transformation that takes place in The Arrow of Gold assumes an inverse form. Here, the development does not begin with absence but rather strives toward it. Whereas Under Western Eyes presents tantalizing gaps that are then filled by a falsifying substitution, The Arrow of Gold undertakes a more challenging metaphysical conversion: the creation of such gaps from an unqualified presence. Indeterminacy, insecurity, and absence are procured as presence is repeatedly disguised, obliterated, or hidden. The otherwise present thus comes into being not through an appropriation but rather an evasion of presence.

A Hau nting H eroi ne—The Di c tates of an “I r reali z abl e Desi re” Immobile and shadowy, statuesque, and elusive—Conrad’s leading heroine in The Arrow of Gold is a conflation of obfuscating contradictions. She is “an admirable find” (AG, 23), “an object of art from some unknown period” (36). And yet she is also a “shadow” (135), “a mirage of desire” (268), and “an insensible phantom” (296). Rita’s characterization thus oscillates between presence and absence, immobility and animation. Such a method of characterization ultimately poses certain interpretative difficulties for the critical reader. Daniel

106

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

Schwarz, for example, argues that “despite the plethora of descriptions, Rita remains vague. Conrad does not discover the objective correlative to present her” (Later, 133). While many critics subscribe to Schwarz’s criticism, there is a general disagreement as to the merit, or lack thereof, of Conrad’s characterization of Rita. The inherent ambiguousness of Conrad’s subject only exacerbates this critical divide, as Rita’s unfinished form provides equal substantiation to all the interpretative parties. Thomas Moser views Rita as nothing but a “splendid and thinly clad body enclosing sporadically violent and incomprehensible emotions” (188). A predecessor to Schwarz, Leo Gurko finds even less in her character, claiming that “Rita is a study not in life but in still life” and that, in attempting to animate his creation, Conrad “succeeds only in paralysing her with his rhetoric straining after universals” (253). The more positive appraisals of Conrad’s depiction studiously negate these charges. Paul Wiley contests Gurko’s reading, suggesting that it is precisely art and still life that Conrad wishes to depict in this novel.1 Similarly, where Schwarz testifies that Rita is “a woman without fundamental character,” Robert Hampson argues that Schwarz “fails to notice the skill with which Conrad paces his gradual revelation of the determinants of Rita’s character and the psychological insight or knowledge with which his presentation of her ‘case’ is imbued” (Betrayal, 271). Andrew Roberts finds further justification for Conrad’s artistic endeavor. While reasserting Gurko’s criticism, Roberts claims that Rita’s vagueness points not to a “weakness of characterisation” but rather to the represented “effect of the attitudes of the men who surround her, of their unwillingness to recognize her humanity” (Roberts, “Gaze,” 531). The interpretations of Wiley, Hampson, and Roberts show that even in commendation, critics are in disagreement. Despite an overall critical dispute as to the success or failure of Conrad’s efforts, the warring parties nevertheless share a fundamental precept. On both sides of the divide, critics assume that Conrad’s immediate challenge in the representation of his heroine is the portrayal of a well-rounded character, a credible woman of flesh and blood whose actions signal a well-constructed psychological makeup. This assumption underlies both the negative and the positive critiques of Conrad’s characterization. As we have seen, Schwarz and Gurko find fault with Conrad’s inability to cast a lifelike human image. Alternatively, Hampson redeems Conrad in his claim that the creator does indeed achieve a credible psychological study of Rita’s character, while Guerard defends Conrad’s creation in his assertion that Rita is “an

THE ARROW OF GOLD

107

imaginative and credible creation” (279, my emphasis). Roberts reiterates Schwarz’s and Gurko’s claims. However, he attributes the fault not to Conrad but to the men encircling Rita within their suffocating chauvinism. Whether positive or negative, the critical eye seeks completeness, humanity, and credibility. In essence, therefore, this critical debate can be seen as the product of a metaphysical bias. Rita’s elusiveness is always already marked as a negative feature. Contemporary Conrad criticism, however, does not always uphold this metaphysical bias. Conrad’s absences, ambiguity, and obscurity are often hailed as innovative literary techniques—the signs of a budding modernism.2 And yet, regardless of the overturning of Leavis’s criticism of the “adjectival insistence” and a fuller appreciation of Conrad’s literary technique, critics still default to a bias that privileges presence when confronting the characterization of a shadowy heroine. Are Conrad’s female subjects of an altogether different order of representation to be tested against the mimetic necessities of an ad hoc realism? Vincent Haussman offers a possible answer to this question. He writes, “The Arrow exposes the essential similarities of the images of mysterious Africa or unfathomable woman that would render the colonial adventurer or the courting lover an awe-struck child” (Haussman, 153). Haussman’s comparison may be extended further, beyond the rather claustrophobic space of woman and colonized territory (which are already equated in many literary and theoretical studies). Conrad’s represented male heroes often pose an analogous challenge. Of Jim, Marlow remarks, “The views he let me have of himself were like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a thick fog [. . .]. They fed one’s curiosity without satisfying it; they were no good for purposes of orientation” (LJ, 76). Kurtz is “very little more than a voice” (HD, 126). Michael Greaney registers this similarity and writes that “like so many Conrad characters, Rita is a ‘floating outline’ (p. 31) conjured up by the evocative words of the storyteller, a source of narrative fascination, like Kurtz or Jim, commanding the interest of an audience eager to know more” (48). We must therefore conclude that, in Conrad’s texts, the object of desire is not and never has been synonymous with woman. We find its seduction in blank maps and unconquered ground, in the figure of illustrious tradesman and innocent youth, in gold and in silver.3 The object of desire thus presents us with a category that subsumes gender. It nevertheless remains to formulate an alternative defining principle for this modified classification. Lacan offers a relevant thesis: “The very structure at the basis of desire always lends a note of impossibility to the object of human desire” (“Desire,” 36). Conrad’s

108

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

elusive depiction has its origin not in his treatment of the female subject but here in this psychologically bound aesthetic. The object of desire is created as an “impossibility”; it can be mastered neither allegorically, by way of an epistemological understanding, nor literally, through possession. Still, the inherent otherness of Conrad’s fictional women is at times perceived not as an extension of Conrad’s literary practice but as an indication of his inability to grasp, understand, or portray women. In this vein, Gustav Morf tells us that “Conrad could not identify himself with women. His motherless youth, his seafaring life, and a pronounced masculine nature are responsible for the lack of inner experience of the feminine character” (93).4 Gurko proposes an alternative historical context, suggesting that “the slight air of unreality that surrounds Conrad’s women is the product of the Polish chivalrous tradition in which he grew up and which his later immersion in the cautious gentility of late Victorian England did nothing to dispel” (249–50). There is no dispute that Conrad’s fictional women are, at best, awkward. We must nevertheless entertain the possibility that there is more to Conrad’s representation of women than his psychological or social inhibitions.5 In particular, we must consider the structuring of desire more generally and escape from a restricting focus on gender. The emphasis on gender in current literary trends may explain, to a certain extent, critics’ tendency to downplay the similarities between Conrad’s female subjects and his other elusive objects of desire. Today it is impossible to overlook gender without being found guilty of a political faux pas. As a result, critics are particularly concerned with the moral justification for Conrad’s mystification of women. Whereas the rifts in the fog that surround Jim may, as Guerard suggests, symbolize the “illusion of self or ego-ideal” (162), Allon White believes that in such works as The Arrow of Gold, Conrad uses the enigma “as a way of artificially generating value. In the end it is an inflationary procedure and by qualifying so many things as intrinsically unknowable it devalues them” (122). The intuition that Conrad’s literary aesthetic does not here serve a higher moral purpose thus results in a condemnation of the very same representational technique we choose to value elsewhere. Devoid as it were of moral justification, the literary coupling of the female subject and the enigma presents many pitfalls. A short story written almost ten years before The Arrow of Gold provides a rather crude example of the lurking dangers of such an exercise. In “A Smile of Fortune,” the protagonist states that he is growing attached to

THE ARROW OF GOLD

109

Alice “by the bond of an irrealizable desire” (TLS, 59). This “irrealizable desire” is essentially an extension of the principle of impossibility. Alice becomes the object of the protagonist’s desire precisely because she is inaccessible. She is a “wild animal” (44), “obstinate” (56), “indifferent” (57), exasperating, and “defiant” (63). Not only inscrutable, she is confounding. The Captain does not know whether to embrace her or to slap her. And yet, it finally appears that she is not impossible enough. Conrad shows us that an apparently “irrealizable desire” may be subject to a rapid dissipation: “I showered kisses upon her face and there did not seem to be any reason why this should not go on for ever. That thought flashed through my head, and I was on the point of desisting, when, all at once, she began to struggle with a sudden violence which all but freed her instantly, which revived my exasperation with her, indeed a fierce desire never to let her go any more” (70). “Irrealizable desire” is double edged. To sustain itself, a precarious balance between the impossibility and possibility of possession must be maintained. While the threat of loss elicits desire, the possibility of possession removes it. Much in this spirit, Stendhal suggests that “always a little doubt to set at rest, that’s what keeps one craving, that’s what keeps happy love alive” (Love, 109).6 In an apparent adoption of this principle, when the Captain contemplates the unending possession of the object of his desire, his desire dissipates; but once Alice struggles in his embrace, the Captain senses the possibility of losing her, and his desire is revived. Subsequently, Alice’s responsiveness cools the Captain’s emotion. In fact, it is her “hasty, awkward, haphazard kiss” that reinforces his realization that he is “no longer moved” (TLS, 70). Thus we have it that the attachment is threatened not only by the possibility of loss but also by possession. If the latter sparks desire, the former diminishes it. Thus, afraid to “fan that fatal spark” (87), the Captain never returns to Alice’s island. A close reading of “A Smile of Fortune” would thus suggest that the object of desire is a construct supported by an underlying impossibility. Here, much as in The Arrow of Gold, we may find Conrad’s application of this principle to be morally objectionable. Alice is effectively dehumanized, merely an effect within the overall psychology of Conrad’s protagonist. As Moser claims, “simply looking at Alice sufficiently satisfies the young captain, until she shows her indifference. This is such a blow to his vanity that he desires her, in order to prove his manhood” (98). We may consequently say that the translation of the “impossible” into an “irrealizable desire” transgresses two critical axioms. We have already touched on the first in our discussion of the

110

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

critical unease of readers in response to the objectification of a female character.7 The second is similarly evident, as we have seen in crude and vivid form how, in the case of “A Smile of Fortune,” the transformation process elicits a rather distasteful cliché. Man desires; woman requites; man desires no more.8 In The Arrow of Gold, the challenge of depicting a female heroine remains much the same, only here it seems Conrad does not wish to repeat the rapid dissipation of desire that is rehearsed in “A Smile of Fortune.” Hence, if we are to readdress Conrad’s representation of Rita from within the framework of the object of an “irrealizable desire,” it transpires that the essential problem he faces in her characterization is not that she is too vague (as a number of the critics cited above have suggested) but rather that she is too distinct. It is not her indeterminacy but her unequivocal presence that undermines her position as the object of desire. It is in this underlying problematic that we find the artistic germination of the turn to the otherwise present. In an attempt to elicit the precarious balance needed to sustain the desirability of his character, Conrad repeatedly transgresses the metaphysical boundary between presence and absence. By this means, the possibility of possession is repeatedly undermined by the threat of loss. If Rita appears inhuman—an artifact and a shadow at one and the same time—it is because this essential ambiguity (as I will show) elicits George’s, and perhaps our own, “irrealizable desire.” In The Arrow of Gold we find a more subtle treatment of the principle of impossibility than that manifest in “A Smile of Fortune.” Certain similarities remain, nonetheless. Recalling Alice, Rita’s responses exhibit an evident ambivalence. In parting after their first meeting, she offers her hand to George: “I took her hand and was raising it naturally, without premeditation, when I felt suddenly the arm to which it belonged become insensible, passive, like a stuffed limb, and the whole woman go inanimate all over!” (93). George is perplexed but challenged. Telling her that such an exercise is of no use to him, he informs her that he will wait for her to offer him her hand in earnest. Regardless of his pleas, Rita remains resistant to his charms and commands him, in one of their subsequent encounters, to forget his love for her. She demands, “Take this fancy out and trample it down in the dust” (224). Like Alice, she struggles. She embraces him; she pushes him away. Indeed, in a veritable rewriting of the climactic moment shared by Alice and the Captain, Conrad brings George and Rita together in an intimate embrace. Here, too, it seems that Rita will finally surrender to George’s charms. He reflects, “With every word urging me to get away, her clasp tightened, she hugged my

THE ARROW OF GOLD

111

head closer to her breast” (224). Her ambiguous responses are conducive to the maintenance of desire: her tightening embrace promises imminent possession, while her words maintain the possibility of loss. The magical moment is nevertheless broken when, in a reversal of the orchestration in “A Smile of Fortune,” Rita responds to his unexpected kiss by stepping away from him “as if she had been shot” (224). This ambivalence permeates their encounters to the very last, to the moment of her final surrender where her attempt to leave his room is circumvented by Therese’s presence at the door. With no evident possibility of escape, she returns to him. In the Second Note, this ambivalence is reinstated when the dynamic of separation and unification is repeated in reverse order, as she first retreats from the world and devotes her life to him but then leaves.9 Gurko emphasizes the inconsistency of Rita’s actions. He writes, “The structure of the novel is mechanical, not organic. Rita’s desertion of George after nursing him back to health is a purely arbitrary act; it would make just as much sense for her to stay” (Gurko, 254). We may alternatively suggest, however, that this “inconsistency” is the inevitable consequence of the attempt to maintain the precarious balance necessary to sustain the allure of the object of desire. This, however, does not exhaust Conrad’s machinations in maintaining the prescribed balance. The novel exceeds the short story in its extended exploration of the psychology of the lover. The provision of the prescribed balance between loss and possession demonstrated in Rita’s actions is thus further augmented by the characterization of George. As if conscious of the threat of consummation, George concentrates his desire not on Rita but rather on an imaginary substitute for which his desire cannot be realized. This, too, recalls one of Stendhal’s commands to the prospective lover. According to Stendhal, one must “obstinately deny [one]self her real presence, in trying to be more closely with her in mind” (Love, 78). George focuses his emotions on a conjured image, an imaginary construct, and this process of substitution subsequently takes on immense proportions, recalling the hallucinatory experiences of Razumov, to whom Haldin’s “body seemed to have less substance than its own phantom” (UWE, 96). The image that haunts George and Razumov does not exist as an empirical reality, but its illusory presence nevertheless appears more tangible than its living counterpart. For George, “the true memory” of Rita is “almost more penetrating than the reality” (AG, 163). Indeed, his conjured image of Rita is so lifelike, so believably “real,” that it overshadows the model on which it is based. Hence, when George finally encounters the woman he desires, he is confounded: “I see you now

112

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

lying on this couch but that is only the insensible phantom of the real you that is in me” (296). Despite being faced with a woman of flesh and blood, George is unable to part with the illusion, the irrealizable object of his desire. He attempts to explain this phenomenon to Rita: “When I have you before my eyes there is such a projection of my whole being toward you that I fail to see you distinctly [. . .]. I never saw you distinctly till after we had parted and I thought you had gone from my sight forever. It was then that you took body in my imagination [. . .] a definite form” (298–99, my emphasis). We recall the lessons of “A Smile of Fortune.” It is only in her absence that Rita is distinct, for “irrealizable desire” feeds on absence, not presence. Presence holds the threat of consummation and dissipation. Hence, George’s imaginative powers supply a more desirable object of love than that of flesh and blood. An imaginary construct holds infinite potential, whereas the real is always finite. Rita herself contributes to the maintenance of George’s illusory substitute. In an exchange with George, she remarks, “I don’t exist” (224). True to his illusion, George inevitably replies, “You do exist. You exist in me” (224). There is no end to the allure of the imagined, while the threat of consummation is so overpowering that the command of the “irrealizable” even invades George’s dreams. Thus, he tells Rita, “I dreamed of you sometimes as a huntress nymph gleaming white through the foliage and throwing this arrow like a dart straight at my heart. But it never reached it. It always fell at my feet as I woke up. The huntress never meant to strike down that particular quarry” (332). Significantly, George always awakes before Rita’s arrow strikes him. In his waking life, Rita’s arrow finally does strike home. The narrative ends with Rita’s active shattering of George’s illusion. Rita tells George, “I shall seal your lips with the thing itself” (336). The preceding line would suggest that the “thing itself” is love. The procuring of the “thing itself,” however, also signals the return of that which has been evaded throughout the narrative—Rita’s actual presence. Rita’s kiss inevitably dismisses the conjured substitute; the reassertion of the “thing itself” means the active obliteration of the illusion. The closing sentences of the narrative thus suggest that absence has been vanquished and that presence ultimately prevails. The critical bias toward presence thus appears to have been justified. In Deceit, Desire and the Novel, Girard writes, “The moment the hero takes hold of the desired object its ‘virtue’ disappears like gas from a burst balloon. The object has been suddenly desecrated by possession and reduced to its objective qualities, thus provoking the famous Stendhalian exclamation: ‘Is that all it is?!’” (88).10 Girard’s

THE ARROW OF GOLD

113

formulation is an extremely apt description of the note of disillusion that pervades the concluding pages of The Arrow of Gold. The conquest of the “thing itself” in the closing lines of George’s narrative proves to be a deceptive happy end. As Girard forewarns, the “thing itself” inevitably upsets the precarious balance maintained throughout and consequently brings about the rapid dissipation of desire. If “irrealizable desire” is to be salvaged once again, absence must be reasserted. Accordingly, in the concluding pages, absence once again takes precedence over presence, providing a further rehearsal of the exercised metaphysical preference that runs throughout the novel. After hearing of Rita’s departure, George does not make any plans to retrieve her. His suggestion that Rita’s man of affairs will know where to find her is not pursued. George progresses from the oblivion of sickness to bitterness to nostalgia within the space of one meager page. It is still the wounded man who remarks that Rita “was supremely loveable,” speaking of her “as if she were lying dead already on his oppressed heart” (351). George is extremely accepting—he accepts the loss of Rita without question, as he later accepts the loss of the only item she leaves him. Afraid of realizing that he is “no longer moved” (TLS, 70) George prefers to cherish her memory—yet another image that he can mold in his imagination. This, too, echoes the words of Stendhal, who instructs his readers that “in love, the recollection of what you have had and lost is always better than what you can hope for in the future” (Love, 44). Erdinast-Vulcan writes that “M. George’s easy resignation to the ultimate separation from ‘the woman of all time’ (67) is difficult to reconcile with his former passion for her” (190). I disagree. Much like the Captain’s decision never to return to Alice and much in the spirit of Stendhal’s insight, George’s easy resignation is precisely what should be expected of a man who is bound by an “irrealizable desire.” George is not alone in his efforts to sustain the precarious balance. Indeed, the whole cast of characters contributes to this effect. In attempting to elicit George’s desire, Mills and Blunt do not portray Rita as human but as an object of art, an inaccessible being—“unique and indefinable” (AG,36). George, in turn, internalizes precisely the correct image. He comments, “All these things were dominated by a feminine figure which to my imagination had only a floating outline, now invested with the grace of girlhood, now with the prestige of a woman; and indistinct in both these characters. For these two men had seen her, while to me she was only being ‘presented,’ elusively, in vanishing words, in the shifting tones of an unfamiliar voice” (31). George’s emphasis clearly suggests that it is Rita’s tantalizing

114

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

absence that produces her overpowering allure. “Elusive,” “vanishing,” and “shifting”—Mills and Blunt, in their presentation of Rita, clearly subscribe to the principle of impossibility.11 Paul Wiley supports this view in his claim that “Blunt and Mills, Rita’s lieutenants in the Carlist plot who are attempting to enlist George’s aid, complete the mischief for him by their cunning evocation of Rita as a phantom of desire” (168). Exercising a more feminist perspective, Roberts notes this as the denial of Rita’s humanity in the men’s circulating discourse about her. He writes that they “resolutely, persistently, stubbornly insist on her acting as a mirror for their fantasies, a counter in their psychoeconomical transactions, and an object constituted by their desires” (“Gaze,” 529–30). We must recall, however, that it is not only the men who contribute to Rita’s extraordinary otherness. Rita herself confesses “a sense of unreality” (AG, 55), later stating that she does not exist. But, while Rita may indeed be influenced by the circle of projecting and inhibiting men around her, Madame Léonore is not. Independently of Mills’s and Blunt’s efforts, she too joins in the characterization of Rita as a ghostly being. It is she who warns George of the impossibility of possessing her, no doubt further sparking his desire to do so. This impossibility is further emphasized by the triangular desire that comes of Blunt’s constant presence and his manifest intimacy with Rita. George is both threatened and jealous, and his desire is only heightened by this added dynamic. Conrad thus enlists all his characters in the making of his haunting heroine, and Rita is consequently transformed into “the woman of all time” (67), a composite of shifting images. As such, she is a perfect object of desire. This, however, does not exhaust the “irrealizable desire” elicited by Conrad’s heroine, for her suggestive elusiveness appears to transcend the text. Critical dispute in the matter of Rita’s characterization shows that she haunts us to this day. In this respect, Roberts’ charge that Rita acts as a mirror for fantasies, an object constituted by desire, is true of the intersubjective gaze that focuses on Rita’s character not only within but outside the text. As we have seen, Rita’s characteristic vagueness and openness allow the critical reader to project his own desires onto her character. As a result, there appears to be as wide an array of interpretations of her character as the number of critics willing to attempt such an interpretation. Just to name two such views, Stephen Brodsky sees Rita as a “parodic Galatea sculpted in living alabaster” (134), whereas Albert Guerard asserts that Rita is “one of Conrad’s very few heroines worth listening to” (279). It appears that Madame Léonore’s words are prophetic. Rita “is for no man! She

THE ARROW OF GOLD

115

would be vanishing out of their hands like water that cannot be held” (135). Well aware of the pitfalls of any critical assertion, I nevertheless believe that it is precisely as an object of an “irrealizable desire” that Conrad’s Rita may be hailed a success. The novel’s replacement of the living Rita with a contrived, composite image of shifting appearances illustrates a new form of the otherwise present. Here, the otherwise present is not merely a stopgap that provides an illusory solution to a break within the signifying chain. Rather, it is precisely the wish to forgo closure and to undermine narrative presence that brings the otherwise present into its elusive nonbeing. Whereas the otherwise present in Under Western Eyes creates a spectral solution, here it is an obstruction necessary for the creation of desire. A haunting love provides a more alluring substitute for a woman of flesh and blood. It follows that the otherwise present that comes into being in The Arrow of Gold is conjured not from lack but from presence. The substitute displaces and subsequently absents the original. In this fashion, substitution does not fill lack but creates lack. Thus, while the previous chapter focused on the necessity to encompass lack within the signifying chain, this chapter introduces a need to disrupt the signifying chain by introducing absence. The first maneuver introduces substitution as an attempt to resolve an obstructive absence, whereas the second presents substitution as a means to escape such resolution. Such an otherwise-present construct is suggestive of the creation of an “irrealizable desire.”

Pompeii: A Par adi gm of Di s appearance As we have seen, there is in The Arrow of Gold an underlying favoring of absence; presence is repeatedly problematized: blurred, masked, doubled, or concealed. The text does not strive to fill gaps in but rather to create them. The otherwise present comes into being not through an appropriation but through an evasion of presence. It is precisely this procedure that is encapsulated within the motif of Pompeii. In the year 79 CE, a fierce eruption of Mount Vesuvius resulted in the complete burial of one of the most opulent cultural centers of the Roman Empire. Life and art were buried underneath mounds of ash, dust, and lava. The image of Pompeii thus provides Conrad with a perfect figure for an absented presence. No longer “realizable,” Pompeii is emblematic of a buried presence, of the loss and separation we have come to associate with the dictates of an “irrealizable desire.” While the fate of Pompeii prefigures the tragic end that brings Conrad’s novel to an end, we find that Pompeii can also be seen as an

116

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

image of the repressed, an entity that unconsciously exerts its power over an external surface. It is precisely such a symbolic interpretation that underlies Freud’s treatment of this motif in his reading of Wilhelm Jensen’s Gradiva: A Pompeiian Phantasy.12 Jensen’s story recalls Conrad’s text not only in its treatment of the Pompeiian motif but also in its deliberation of a similar dynamic of desire. In turn, Freud’s reading of this text, his handling of the notion of an “irrealizable desire,” and his interpretation of the image of Pompeii shed light on Conrad’s poetics. Freud’s text illuminates Conrad’s novel through difference: whereas Conrad emphasizes loss as a means to fix the impossibility of the object of desire, Freud stresses recovery, a process whereby the absent is made present, and the obsession is cured. In an attempt to explain these divergent views, we turn to Derrida’s Archive Fever, which further negotiates these contradictory operations within a theoretical framework that, I believe, is more in line with Conrad’s text. The image of Pompeii surfaces once again as Derrida engages with Freud’s text and questions its fundamental dynamic: the constant attempt to uncover and reveal. Derrida questions the metaphysical implication that comes with such a practice, namely the transformation of the indeterminate (the repressed, or the absent present) into the determinate (the present). Like Conrad, Derrida does not prioritize presence; the indeterminate is not treated as inferior, as a means to an end, but rather as an end in itself.13 This section thus offers a comparative reading of Freud and Derrida in attempt to further illuminate Conrad’s turn to the otherwise present. Conrad’s use of the motif of Pompeii in The Arrow of Gold is most interesting.14 Manifestly, the use of the motif is strictly descriptive, presented as the extravagant décor of Rita’s dining room. Such décor may be seen as characteristic of the kind of residence Conrad describes. As Zanker, author of Pompeii: Public and Private Life, writes, the Pompeiian style is indeed apparent in neoclassical Europe.15 However, if we consider Conrad’s interest to be strictly descriptive, the repeated allusions to Pompeii seem excessive. Once the style of the artistic décor is established, there is no apparent need for further repetition. In illustration, following no less than five allusions to the particular décor, Conrad adds the following phrase: “A dim lamp (of Pompeiian form) hanging on a long chain left the hall particularly dark” (225). This parenthetical remark is so strikingly redundant at this juncture that it cannot but draw the reader’s attention. We suspect that there must be an added motive to this excessive repetition, in addition to the call for an accurate rendering of the details in the room. Conrad goes so far as to mention Pompeii six times in this short section

THE ARROW OF GOLD

117

(part 4, chapter 5), a repetition even more striking as it follows four parts of the novel in which Pompeii is never mentioned. In the remaining chapters, Pompeii is mentioned only once—and this, too, in reference to this very localized scene in Part Four. We suspect that the significance of the décor runs deeper than an artistic fancy. The motif of Pompeii is introduced at a very late moment in the novel and interlaces the scene in which George’s feelings for Rita are unmasked. This scene is the first of a series of extremely intimate encounters between the two and marks the transformation of their friendship into a romance. The introduction of a new motif so late in the novel suggests that this is, indeed, a textual turning point. Seemingly, the coming together of the two characters brings the love story to a climactic point: George’s tortuous yearnings are finally requited. The disclosing of the new motif nevertheless colors the portrayed atmosphere with an ominous foreboding that resonates with the Pompeiian tragedy. The feeling of an impending doom that underlies this passage is evoked by George’s realization that “dusk was beginning to steal into the house” (214), a fact that is soon reiterated with mention of a light that is “ebbing slowly.” As darkness begins to engulf the room, George lists its effects. Rita begins “to grow shadowy” (218), and, as the last traces of light vanish, the figures that lace the Pompeiian décor are completely effaced. George, too, is affected by this consuming environment. While the power of the enveloping darkness suggests death and termination, his closeness to Rita elicits a dreamlike state of bliss. George makes note of this curious state: “It was a dreamlike state combined with a dreamlike sense of insecurity [. . .]. I rested lost in bliss but ready for any catastrophe [. . .]. I felt the world close about me; the the world of darkened walls” (219).16 Once again, George’s reported feelings indicate that the promised “bliss” that comes with the possibility of consummation cannot be maintained without the balancing threat of doom and transience. If it appears that the application of the “irrealizable” here takes a macabre turn, we must recall that, in the closing pages of the novel, George exhibits a similar emotion in the light of Rita’s departure. It is thus possible that this passage offers a proleptic account of a later scene in the novel where we encounter, in Erdinast-Vulcan’s words, George’s “easy resignation” (190). In the Second Note, it appears that George is all too willing to imagine his beloved “as if she were lying dead already on his oppressed heart” (351). Moser perceives this as an oddity, observing that “[George’s] rhetoric is not only sentimental, but sentimental at times in a very peculiar way, and one that associates

118

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

love and death” (283). It may well be, however, that, in this image of death, George perfects the method of substitution whereby his living flesh-and-blood lover is transformed into a nonpresent object of desire—nothing but an image in his memory. A similar dynamic may be at work in the earlier scene. Enveloped in the somber darkness of an anticipated catastrophe, George appears to welcome the impending disaster as it harbors the promise of an established unattainability. The world that closes in about George and Rita would ultimately cover the two lovers in a petrifying layer of ash and dust that would fix the “irrealizable” quality of their desire forever. Conrad’s coupling of love and loss within the suffocating atmosphere of impending destruction recalls an earlier text. In The Last Days of Pompeii, Lord Lytton depicts a similar situation: “Darkness once more wrapped them as a veil; and Glaucus, his bold heart at last quelled and despairing, sank beneath the cover of an arch, and, clasping Ione to his heart—a bride on that couch of ruin—resigned himself to die” (411).Whether Conrad had indeed read his predecessor’s novel or whether he simply held a similar intuitive grasp of the symbolism of Pompeii (perhaps his visit to Naples contributed to this), the two passages quoted above are in close agreement in their tone of finitude and resignation. Here, the scene of near consummation of a marriage-like union (note the word “bride”) is a scene of mourning. Much like Glaucus, George clutches his love to him in a world of enveloping darkness. In both novels, love and transience, fulfillment and loss, are tied irrevocably. As George leaves the room, he remarks, “I could hardly see [Rose] standing by the closed door of the Pompeiian room with extended hand, as if turned to stone” (227). Much like Lytton’s novel, the scene culminates in an image of a Pompeiian-like ruin as darkness engulfs the petrified ruins. The Pompeiian scene marks a perceptible rift in the application of the “irrealizable.” While George clearly wishes to remain within it, anticipating the onset of a figurative destruction and death, Rita rings for the light, thereby reinstating a similar yet different form of loss and separation. As opposed to George, she does not wish to be engulfed by the menacing darkness. The scene consequently ends not in the realization of George’s desire for the union of love and death but in Rita’s choice of love and separation. Due to Rita’s interruption of George’s fantasy, the “irrealizable” is reasserted not in death but in life. On his return to the villa in Rita’s absence, George wishes to recapture the atmosphere of a Pompeiian doom. In reporting to the Marquis of Villarel, George feels that “the thought of entering that room,

THE ARROW OF GOLD

119

out of which she was gone as completely as if she had been dead, gave me such an emotion that I had to steady myself against the table till the faintness was past” (249, my emphasis).17 While the Pompeiian room is associated with death and loss, George nevertheless yearns for it, for this doom promises a petrified fixing of his “irrealizable desire.” George subsequently becomes “irritated as at a treason when the man in the baize apron instead of letting [him] into the Pompeiian dining room crossed the hall to another door not at all in the Pompeiian style [. . .] and introduced [him] into a big, lighted room full of very modern furniture” (249). The modern, lit, and spacious room—a stark contradiction of the “precarious bliss” that is promised in the image of Pompeii—leaves George cold and unfeeling. It is precisely this world of impending doom that he longs to recapture. This, however, he cannot have. The reunion of the two lovers with which the novel concludes appears to induce further attempts on their part to fix the “irrealizable” quality of their desire for one another. The differing applications of the “irrealizable” are therefore rehearsed once more at the novel’s end. Once more, Rita opts for separation and, as we have noted, “heroically” leaves George. Conversely, in undertaking a duel with Blunt, George begins by inviting his own death (and we recall that the skilful Blunt poses a real threat), and then, in response to the news of Rita’s desertion, he (once more) imaginatively falsifies her death. True to the all-encompassing disappearance of Pompeii, George not only mourns the loss of Rita as if she were dead but also rids himself of the one item she leaves him, the arrow of gold, which “is lost to him in a stormy catastrophe” (351, my emphasis). The novel thus concludes with George’s active reinstatement of the “irrealizable.” In turning to Wilhelm Jensen’s novel Gradiva, we find that a similar psychological force propels the protagonist. Like George, Hanold is haunted to distraction by an overpowering sense of “irrealizable desire.” Like George, he seeks the impossibility of fulfillment in a Pompeiian ruin. A comparative reading nevertheless shows that, significantly, the two texts offer two distinct forms of resolution. In the first section of this chapter, we traced the manner in which Conrad displaces his heroine with the object of George’s desire. Rita is otherwise present; she is portrayed as a composite of shifting images, an unattainable fantasy. Jensen handles this problematic in a different manner. His hero, a young archaeologist named Norbert Hanold, becomes obsessed not with a living woman but with an artifact that depicts the bas-relief image of a young woman.18 Hanold purchases a plaster cast of the relief and hangs it in his workroom, and, as his

120

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

obsession for the young woman intensifies, he names her Gradiva. While the motif of Pompeii figuratively laces George’s romance, it assumes a more literal dimension in Jensen’s text. Haunted by images of the terrible eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Hanold gradually comes to believe that Gradiva perished in the burial of Pompeii. Setting out on a scientific journey to Italy, he finds himself drawn to Pompeii, where he realizes that he has come in search of his love. Here, Hanold encounters a living, German-speaking Gradiva and, through a number of exchanges with her, is gradually cured of his illusion. Gradiva, he realizes, is no other than his childhood friend Zoe whose image his mind had repressed and subsequently projected onto the bas-relief. Once his obsession is cured, the two fall in love and are subsequently to be married. Freud’s reading of Jensen’s Gradiva was (interestingly) translated into English only two years before The Arrow of Gold was published.19 Despite obvious plot differences, the narrative treatment of the motif of love in The Arrow of Gold closely resonates with the earlier work.20 Jensen’s narrative begins with the introduction of an inanimate love object: “On a visit to one of the great antique collections of Rome, Norbert Hanold had discovered a bas-relief which was exceptionally attractive to him, so he was much pleased, after his return to Germany, to be able to get a splendid plaster-cast of it” (3). Hanold’s love object is thus first introduced in the tale as an “it”—an exceptionally attractive bas-relief. George’s desire is sparked in a similar manner. Perceiving that George’s eyes continually turn toward the corner of the room where the dummy stands, Blunt remarks that George seems “to be attracted by the Empress” (22). Like Gradiva, Rita is first presented as an inanimate object, a model of her living self. When Rita is finally named, she is once again alluded to as an object, much like the dummy and much like Hanold’s bas-relief. Mills remarks that she is “without doubt the most admirable find of [Allègre’s] amongst all the priceless items he had accumulated” (23). Andrew Roberts rightly comments that “M. George sees the dummy (a substitute for Rita) before he sees Rita, so that the relationship of substitution is reversed; the dummy occupies a subject-position between the three men into which Rita is then inserted” (Conrad, 183). Freud’s analysis of Hanold’s character suggests that the protagonist of Jensen’s story possesses a certain psychological disposition toward the inanimate as a result of the intermixing of the materials he is familiar with at work and his inability to actualize his feelings toward a living woman. Freud explains that “marble and bronze alone were truly alive for him” (Jensen’s, 14). It is thus inevitable that Zoe,

THE ARROW OF GOLD

121

Gradiva’s living counterpart, should be transformed into a mere effigy in bronze and marble in the protagonist’s mind. The opening of Conrad’s novel foreshadows a similar fate for Rita. George’s transformation of Rita’s living character into a shadowy, elusive figure follows the introduction provided by Mills and Blunt. Their exposition of Rita’s character objectifies her, presenting her much like an inanimate work of art. She is “manifest and mysterious, like an object of art from some unknown period” (36). By way of this mediation, George becomes infatuated not with the living woman but with the image of an inanimate simulacrum. Old Doyen’s words further reinforce this predisposition. Recalling Hanold’s bias, the old sculptor tells Rita that it is “bronze and marble that you want” (43). Clearly, both Hanold and George are predisposed toward bronze and marble. This is all the more striking in relation to Conrad’s novel, where Rita, despite her objectification, is clearly a living woman of flesh and blood. It is only at the dénouement of Jensen’s tale that we realize that here, too, the object of the protagonist’s desire is not in actuality a marble figure but a living woman—a friend from the past.21 There is an underlying similarity in the manner in which the protagonists deal with their emotions. Their obsession is not channeled toward a living woman but toward a substitute figure—whether a woman of marble or shadow. While marble and shadow adhere to antithetical poles on a continuum of textual depiction (once again marking a negotiation between presence and absence), the text of The Arrow of Gold does not draw a clear line of demarcation between them. As we have seen, Rita is portrayed at the same time as animate and inanimate, tangible and intangible, sensible and insensible. A solution to this abundance of seemingly contradictory images materializes in George’s reported thoughts. For George, stone and mist are one and the same. As he tells Rita, “Essentially it’s the same thing. . . . Granite too, is insensible” (298, my emphasis). One is reminded that this characteristic insensibility similarly underlies the object of Hanold’s obsession. Freud asks, “Was not our hero’s infatuation for his Gradiva sculpture a complete instance of being in love, though of being in love with something past and lifeless?”22 As I mentioned earlier, the distinction between the living Rita and Hanold’s bas-relief diminishes in the light of the extreme objectification of Rita’s character. Whether it is due to the introduction provided by Mills and Blunt or to his own unique psychological makeup, Conrad’s protagonist views his own love object in very similar terms. For him, “the last of the light gleamed in her long enigmatic eyes as if they were precious enamel in that shadowy head which in its immobility suggested a creation of a

122

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

distant past: immortal art, not transient life” (93). We have, in short, not one but two “Gradivas.” Despite the fact that the object of their desire is modeled on a living, breathing woman, the image that haunts the protagonists’ minds is an imagined construct. The living woman who sparks the desire of the protagonist is replaced by the imaginings of the mind. Lacan has it that this phenomenon is deeply lodged in the psychology of desire. He writes, “Desire . . . finds in the fantasy its reference, its substratum, its precise tuning in the imaginary register” (Lacan, “Desire,” 14). The turn to the imaginative register is accompanied, perhaps inevitably, by a reported transformation of the protagonists’ perceptive powers. Hanold understands that, in order to see his beloved arisen from her grave, his scientific, objective eye does not suffice. Rather, he must stand “alone, the only living creature, in the hot silence of midday, among the relics of the past, and look, but not with bodily eyes, and listen, but not with physical ears” (Freud, Jensen’s, 16). Similarly, George notes that his “bodily eyes” fail him in his attempt to perceive the image of his love. It is to his “bodily eyes” (218) that Rita begins to grow shadowy. As the two protagonists become aware of the limitations of their physical eyesight in their attempt to capture the object of their desire, they look within rather than without. It is only the internalized image of their object of desire that never falters. Rita’s claim that she does not “exist” provides an affirmation of her dependence on George’s subjectivity. As he remarks in turn, she exists in him. Zoe, whom Jensen’s protagonist knows as “Gradiva,” provides a similar affirmation. We recall that Hanold believes Gradiva is the victim of a volcanic eruption of 79 CE. Gradiva appears to affirm this hypothesis. She remarks, “I have long grown used to being dead” (Freud, Jensen’s, 21). Despite Rita’s and Zoe’s initial undertaking of the roles fitted for them by the men who love them, both tales end with the forfeiting of this role-play as the two heroines finally assert their tangible presence. One of the catalysts in this transformation is touch. Hanold performs a scientific experiment to assert the true composition of the enigmatic figure standing before him. After he discerns a housefly on her left hand, he attempts the following experiment: “Suddenly Hanold’s hand was raised in the air and descended with a vigorous slap on the fly and Gradiva’s hand. This bold experiment had two results: first, a joyful conviction that he had without any doubt touched a real, living, warm human hand, but afterwards a reproof” (Freud, Jensen’s, 27). Once he assesses the true nature of Gradiva’s being, he is more psychologically apt to abandon the delusion and to accept the actuality of the women he desires.

THE ARROW OF GOLD

123

Physical contact plays a similar role in Conrad’s text. In the very last words of the framed narrative, Rita banishes her haunting counterpart by way of physical consummation. Realizing that she must physically block George’s ongoing exclamations of worship, she exclaims, “I shall seal your lips with the thing itself” (336). Like Zoe, Rita believes that it is only through the surrender of the “thing itself” that she may rid her admirer of his illusion. This process assumes a similar course in the two tales: overshadowed by the living original, the haunting substitute finally dissolves. The living woman ultimately displaces her haunting image, and the protagonist’s love is requited. While the process is similar, it is only in Jensen’s tale that the consequent recovery is unequivocal. As we have seen, Conrad’s protagonist does not undergo such an unambiguous transformation. Rather, as I have suggested earlier, it appears that George carries his illusion to the novel’s end.23 Paul Wiley offers an alternative reading, suggesting that, like Hanold’s, George’s illusion is finally shattered. He finds that it is “in the climactic scene in the locked room with the threat of Ortega outside it [that] George recovers from the illness of the senses in abandoning the illusion that the aesthetic image of Rita suffices for contemplation to infinity” (Wiley, 172). Wiley posits that it is in the unmasking of her most intimate fears that George realizes Rita’s humanity. As I have shown in the second part of this chapter, I believe that the concluding pages of the novel undermine Wiley’s claim. Whereas Gradiva ends with an affirmation of romance, The Arrow of Gold culminates in its ultimate failure. The living woman takes her leave, allowing once again for the surfacing of her substitute. In Conrad’s text, it is the haunting image of the love object that finally prevails. The difference between the two texts signifies an essential disparity between Freud’s and Conrad’s symbolic interpretation of the image of Pompeii. As opposed to Conrad, Freud offers an essentially positivist interpretation. This is made clear in the following passage: “There is, in fact, no better analogy for repression, by which something in the mind is at once made inaccessible and preserved, than burial of the sort to which Pompeii fell a victim and from which it could emerge once more through the work of spades” (Jensen’s, 40).24 For both Conrad and Freud, Pompeii is a symbol of loss. For Freud, however, what is lost may, and in fact must, be retrieved. Whereas Conrad dwells on notions of transience and termination, Freud’s analysis clearly emphasizes the possibility of restoration. Although Pompeii was buried with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, it may be “dug out,” so to speak, with “the work of spades” (Jensen’s, 40). For a

124

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

psychoanalyst, the image of Pompeii is significant insofar as it provides a useful demonstration of the possibility of unmasking and bringing to light. Pompeii thus mirrors the psychoanalytic procedure whereby the latent is made manifest and the repressed is brought back to conscious memory. In opposition, Conrad views the motif of Pompeii as a symbol not of potential retrieval but rather of desired loss. Once Rita presents George with the “thing itself,” once her living body overshadows the haunting substitute, their romance is depleted. As the narrator of the Second Note remarks, “the surrender of those two beings to a precarious bliss has nothing very astonishing in itself; and its portrayal, as he attempts it, lacks dramatic interest” (337). The romance is intriguing only in its potentiality, not in its realization. The otherwise present proposes infinite potential. Once the potential materializes, however, it is inevitably circumscribed within visible boundaries. Such visible boundaries—a reasserted presence—cannot compete with the limitless power of the imagined, for the realization (or the becoming) breaches its “irrealizable” power. To remain limitless, the otherwise present must adhere to the form of a promise. It is this underlying understanding that informs Conrad’s interpretation of the motif of Pompeii. Here, the coming to light does not, in the spirit of a psychoanalytic cure, offer solace but rather separation, a reinstatement of the “irrealizable desire.” Unable to push George away, Rita rings for the light. Consequently, George is abruptly awakened from a state of “warm and scented infinity” (219) to the harsh world of responsible remembering: “But now I was recovering. And naturally the first thing I remembered was the fact that I was going to sea” (220–21).25 According to Freud, such a process of remembering is suggestive of a successful treatment: the repressed has been brought to consciousness, and the obsession has been cured. It is clear, however, that as opposed to Freud’s practice, the coming to light in this passage promises neither a recovery nor a making present but rather a reinstatement of the absent. Conrad does not seek the recovery of presence but rather absence, a negativity that is characterized by loss and separation. Although George effectively awakens from the Pompeiian world of catastrophe and doom, he awakens not into the “light” of a cured psyche but into yet another form of repression that comes with separation. We have further seen that this awakening does not rid him of his desire for the Pompeiian-like precarious “bliss” (219) but rather deepens it. For Conrad, Pompeii is symbolic of loss, an absence that is associated with a “precarious bliss”; for Freud, it holds the promise of a necessary recovery, an excavated presence.

THE ARROW OF GOLD

125

In Archive Fever, Derrida’s reading of Freud’s analysis provides a broader theoretical framework for the understanding of the distinction between Conrad’s and Freud’s textual treatment of the image of Pompeii. As he does not share in Freud’s deterministic positivism, Derrida’s rereading opens up the discussion precisely where Freud appears to have brought it to a close. In Derrida’s thesis, Freud’s “repression” takes on a figurative dimension, subsequently contributing to the formation of a notion that is both other and same: “The concept of the archive must inevitably carry in itself, as does every concept, an unknowable weight. The presupposition of this weight also takes on the figures of ‘repression’ and ‘suppression,’ even if it cannot necessarily be reduced to these” (Derrida, Archive, 29–30). In the transition from “repression” to the “archive,” Derrida brings us closer to Conrad’s poetics. Whereas Freud’s prognosis (delusion brought about by repression) necessitates a subsequent unmasking, Derrida’s prognosis does not. Hanold, Derrida claims, suffers from “archive fever” (Archive, 98). The Derridean “archive” is an evolving impression or notion that is at the same time technological and psychoanalytic, material and virtual, here and to come. Derrida’s “archive” encapsulates the characteristics we have come to associate with the otherwise present. The archive does not exclude but includes the “unknowable” and the irreducible. The archive is otherwise present. Derrida posits that the structure of the archive is spectral. That is, “it is spectral a priori: neither present nor absent ‘in the flesh,’ neither visible nor invisible” (Archive, 84). The archive thus augments the host of spectral images that we have so far discussed. Again, we return to that which is positioned between absence and presence—an indeterminate entity that is persistent in its resistance of categorization: “The archive, if this word or this figure can be stabilized so as to take on a signification, will never be either memory or anamnesis as spontaneous, alive and internal experience. On the contrary: the archive takes place at the place of originary and structural breakdown of the said memory” (Derrida, Archive, 11). Derrida deconstructs Freud’s conception of recovery, for the psychoanalytic “working through” relies precisely on the repetition of a spontaneous, alive, and internal experience. Freud explains this process: “From the repetitive reactions which are exhibited in the transference we are led along the familiar paths to the awakening of the memories, which appear without difficulty, as it were, after the resistance has been overcome” (“Remembering,” 154–55). For Freud, repression marks not a permanent but a temporary loss; the repressed must be excavated with the “work of

126

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

spades.” It is this theoretical understanding that guides the psychoanalyst in his rapport with the analysand or, as the case may be, in his analysis of a character in a text. Hence, it is precisely the excavated Pompeii that provides Freud with a suitable metaphor for repression. For Freud, Pompeii is the epitome of the notion of recovery: what was entombed is uncovered; that which was lost is found. Derrida claims that there is an apparent contradiction in Freud’s theoretical grasp of the unconscious. Freud, Derrida argues, does not uphold the notion of an “originary” memory in his conceptualization of repression. Rather, Freud’s study of the unconscious proffers an archive that “cannot be reduced to memory: neither to memory as conscious reserve, nor to memory as rememoration, as act of recalling” (Derrida, Archive, 93). And yet, as Freud remains, in Derridean terms, a “classical metaphysician,” he cannot but uphold a bias toward the very living present, which quite understandably is occluded from the unconscious, the substrate that he studies. Derrida writes that Freud “maintains a primacy of live memory and of anamnesis in their originary temporalization.” Derrida therefore concludes that psychoanalysis is fixed within a cycle in which “it always attempts to return to the live origin of that which the archive loses while keeping it in a multiplicity of places” (Archive, 92). Derrida shows that Freud’s approach to Hanold’s repression is an attempt to uncover the relevant aspects of his unconscious by making the past speak in the present: “The archaeologist has succeeded in making the archive no longer serve any function. It comes to efface itself, it becomes transparent or unessential so as to let the origin present itself in person. Live, without mediation and without delay” (Archive, 93). Freud’s bias is manifested primarily in his turn from archivist to archaeologist. Derrida writes, “Freud was incessantly tempted to redirect the original interest he had for the psychic archive toward archaeology” (Archive, 92). This, however, is soon overshadowed by a further charge against Freud. The crux of Derrida’s argument is not merely in the collision of the two concepts of the archive and archaeology. Rather, Derrida makes an even stronger claim in showing that in praxis, Freud outbids both: When he wants to explain the haunting of the archaeologist with a logic of repression, at the very moment in which he specifies that he wants to recognize in it a germ or a parcel of truth, Freud claims again to bring to light a more originary origin than that of the specter. In the outbidding, he wants to be an archivist who is more of an archaeologist than the archaeologist. And, of course, closer to the ultimate cause, a

THE ARROW OF GOLD

127

better etiologist than his novelist. He wants to exhume a more archaic impression, he wants to exhibit a more archaic imprint than the one the other archaeologists of all kinds bustle around, those of literature and those of classical objective science, an imprint that is singular each time, an impression that is almost no longer an archive but almost confuses itself with the pressure of the footstep that leaves its still-living mark on a substrate, a surface, a place of origin. (Archive, 97)

Freud searches for an empirical impossibility; he seeks a living presence among the ruins. It is thus that Freud’s science ultimately repeats Hanold’s represented desire—to excavate not the dead but the living. Derrida challenges Freud’s methodological approach to repressed material. This, I believe, similarly questions, if only by association, Freud’s understanding of the motif of Pompeii. To formulate differently, once Derrida problematizes Freud’s approach to repression, he cannot but challenge Freud’s handling of Pompeii, insofar as Freud has himself stated that the latter is an emblem of the former. Thus, too, the tragedy of Pompeii is to become “transparent or unessential” in Freud’s mind, in the light of the city’s inevitable excavation. Freud does not address the fact that the excavated Pompeii remains a ruin—a city not merely resurrected but, in its unnatural unearthing, always both dead and alive. Whereas Freud strives to obliterate this indeterminacy, Conrad dwells on it. It is this incommensurability that colors both his portrayal of Rita and his textual handling of the developing love affair. The Freudian “bias” uncovered by Derrida may further account for the disparity between the attitudes of Conrad and Freud to the motif of Pompeii. We have already seen that the difference is one of visibility: whereas Conrad’s Pompeii is treated as an engulfing darkness, Freud’s Pompeii provokes an examining illumination. This difference is similarly discerned in their handling of the temporal. While Conrad exercises deferral, which is at times void of consummation, Freud seeks the living, speaking present. In delaying the consummation of the love affair between George and Rita, in portraying Rita as both granite and mist, Conrad attempts to evade rather than embrace the affirmation of a resounding presence. Hence, while Freud’s spades are busy unearthing the obstructing layers, Conrad allows these layers to persist in their clouding effect. It is thus that the comparable differences in their approach to the symbolism of Pompeii are not coincidental but stem from two very distinct poetics. Freud’s writing is guided by the motive of bringing to light, of uncovering the past

128

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

and making it present. And yet, as innumerable examples in his fiction show, it is precisely in mediation and in delay that Conrad exults.26 Derrida’s writing suggests that he, too, prefers the technique of deferral. Like Conrad, he finds an inherent allure in an “irrealizable” subject. It is possible to read in one of his comments a confession of his own resistance to the process of unveiling and mastery. In attempting to enumerate the different associations and connotations that arise from his use of the word “impression,” he speaks of themes, figures, and conceptual schemes “that are familiar to [him] to the point of obsession and yet remain no less secret, young and still to come for [him]: writing, the trace, inscription” (AF, 26). This short passage does not suggest a mere investigation—a mystery to be solved. Derrida speaks of these themes, figures, and conceptual schemes in terms that remind us of the lexicon with which the infatuated George speaks of Rita. George, too, is familiar to the point of obsession. For him, too, the elusive Rita remains young, shadowy, and mysterious. Her allure is fixed precisely in this temporal dimension, in the “still to come.” It is the promise of mastery and possession—the unrealized and unrealizable potential of this promise—that holds the tension, that supports the obsession. This infinite promise provides the temporal dimension of a future to come that both sustains and creates the otherwise present. It is precisely in this time frame, in the “still to come,” that Derrida attempts to define the archive. The archive is not merely a place of conservation, a memory aid, but a “domesticated” exterior that shapes memory as it happens. The structure of the archive not only preserves but forms its content as it comes into being. As Derrida explains, “The archivization produces as much as it records the event” (AF, 16). The archive is therefore very much tied to the notion of promise, to the future that is yet to come. Derrida writes that “a spectral messianicity is at work in the concept of the archive and ties it, like religion, like history, like science itself, to a very singular experience of the promise.” Conrad suffuses his text with the otherwise present precisely to elevate its significance through the infinite power of a promise that resembles Derrida’s notion of the “still to come” (AF, 36).27 That which remains to be consummated—whether it is a story that is yet to be told (of Mills’s shipwreck), a lover who is to become tangibly real, or a love affair that is to take place—has an infinite power of allure that can only be depleted with its materialization. Hence, after the kiss that ends the narrative, the Second Note can only explain away, apologize, find excuses, and be humbled in the face of a love affair that is no more to be but is a “has-been.”28

THE ARROW OF GOLD

129

The reader is inevitably disappointed to encounter the distanced and somewhat cynical words of the narrator of the Second Note who so easily deflates the climactic consummation. It is possible, however, that the narrator (not to say Conrad himself) is, after all, a strategist. There may be a hint of redemption in the attempt to efface or part the lovers, once more, so as to recover the power of the promise that has been spent with the consummation. The novel concludes with a cancellation of what “has been.” Once again, Conrad leaves his readers and his protagonist nothing but the pleasure of the limitless potential of the imagination. In our discussion of Under Western Eyes, we considered the overpowering effects of absence. Ellipsis elicits endless conjecture, a polyphony of interpretative voices that incessantly attempt to make something of nothing. We find a similar capitalization on absence in The Arrow of Gold. Here, however, the process is reversed: absence comes to replace presence. “Irrealizable desire” is produced by the obliteration of the “thing itself”; the covert plot undermines the ontological precepts of the overt plot. The novel thus follows the process of a volcanic eruption. The manifest present is lost: hidden, obliterated, or disguised. Security gives way to the insecurity of doubt, indeterminacy, and absence. George’s “dream-like state” of bliss can be maintained only when “combined with a dreamlike sense of insecurity” (AG, 219) As we had seen in the earlier novel, loss or absence provides limitless capital because it holds within it limitless potential and promise, an infinity of imagined possibilities. However, whereas the earlier novel finally ends in the filling in of the absent, Conrad here exults in the potential and nonfinitude of an evaded presence till the end.

Th e U ntol d Story In The Deceptive Text, Cedric Watts introduces us to an interesting textual structure. He writes: Some narratives have a covert plot: another purposeful sequence, but one which is partly hidden, so that it may elude readers (including some “professional” readers, the literary critics and commentators) at a first reading, or at the first and second readings, or even at the first and second and subsequent readings, and may even elude them for decades. When it is eventually seen, the covert plot proves to organize and explain those elements of the text which at first may have seemed odd or anomalous, obscure or redundant; and the whole text is in various ways transformed. (Watts, 30)

130

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

In his formulation of the covert plot, Watts defines a narrative structure that, like the otherwise present, resists classification. As obvious to some readers as it is undetectable to others, the covert plot oscillates between attainability and intangibility, visibility and invisibility, absence and presence. Hidden and elusive, the covert plot thus resonates with other shifting constructs that we have so far examined. A spectral twin to the overt plot, the covert plot affects our reading through its nonpresence: it troubles and seduces us but nevertheless eludes our grasp. In the following section, I will outline the traces of this vanishing structure and subsequently suggest a revised reading of the novel. The discussion thus turns to an otherwise-present form that we have not yet discussed—the covert plot. The overt plot, apparent to all readers, is the focus of George’s narrative. The story is clear. George reports that a chain of chance events leads to an emotional attachment to Rita de Lastaola, a figure caught in a web of Royalist conspiracy. By way of this attachment and despite a real aversion to politics, George finds himself deeply entangled in a life-or-death mission to support the Carlists. His task finally comes to its end in shipwreck and injury, allowing a more concentrated attention to his budding romance with Rita. Finally, however, the Carlist enterprise collapses, and his romance follows suit, leaving George wounded and grieving for his lost love. The novel ends with George’s recovery and his return to his true and constant love, the sea—a return haunted by the cherished memory of Rita. While the overt plot appears simple, it is nevertheless colored, as Watts suggests, by the obscure and the anomalous. These oddities are seen most clearly through the juxtaposition of George’s narrative with the anonymous narrator’s account as it is presented in the First and Second Notes. Gurko finds fault with this narrative framing and writes that “the story seems hardly to need the notes, the account of Monsieur George being entirely able to stand by itself. But Conrad, perhaps out of sheer habit, proceeds with this sort of double narration anyway” (252). It is my contention that, quite to the contrary, Conrad’s choice is neither habitual nor redundant but rather significant in its presentation of a competing narrative. A closer look at the narrator’s words in the First and Second Notes offers a glimpse of the traces of a spectral, untold, and therefore otherwise-present plot. Whereas the overt plot reads as a love story, the covert plot unravels as a political intrigue.29 In The Arrow of Gold, we encounter once again a narration that originates in “a pile of manuscript” (3).30 As opposed to the English

THE ARROW OF GOLD

131

teacher, the narrator here is not personalized, and his presence is restricted to the First and Second Notes that frame the narrative. As he does not take part in the action (he is an extradiegetic narrator), he is neither as obtrusive nor as troubling as his earlier counterpart. The English teacher and the anonymous narrator nevertheless possess several shared artistic habits. While their narrative is based on “documentary evidence,”31 they exercise certain liberties in the compilation of their material. Like the teacher of languages, the anonymous narrator molds the story in accordance with what he deems to be of interest and importance. Thus, for example, the narrator informs the reader that the presented story “has been pruned of all allusions to their common past, of all asides, disquisitions, and explanations addressed directly to the friend of his childhood” (4). This recalls the selective process exercised by the English teacher who is noted for the occasional suppression. He states, for example, that he does not make note of that “which [has] been already made use of in the building up of this narrative, or add[s] nothing new to the psychological side of this disclosure” (UWE, 330). The anonymous narrator is similarly wary of repetition, and he, too, is ready to provide plot summaries and short cuts. Thus, for example, he writes, “From certain passages (suppressed here because mixed up with irrelevant matter) it appears” (5). The manner in which the English teacher effects and affects Razumov’s story has been discussed in the previous chapter. It is sufficient to recall that one of the methods in which he subverts and impinges on Razumov’s story is through immediate contact and participation. The anonymous narrator of The Arrow of Gold does not participate in the action. He remains aloof and distant, and his presence is not acknowledged in the inner narrative. His two framing notes nevertheless suffice not only to color George’s account with a certain cynical detachment but also to undermine the fundamental presuppositions of his story, namely George’s agency in his entanglement and the true motivations underlying the triangular desire that George’s narrative unfolds. The narrator’s notes provide the reader with an indication that lurking in the shadows of the reported romance lies a story that is not told but envelops and indeed determines George’s story, allowing for both its commencement and conclusion. The narrator remarks that “it may seem that [George] was plunged very abruptly into this long adventure” (5).32 Contradicting the premise underlying George’s narrative, the narrator reveals that the initial encounter with Mills and Blunt is not brought about by chance. George’s adventure is not accidental but rather the product of a

132

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

Carlist conspiracy. Mills’s having heard of George’s existence, “it occurred to [him] that this eccentric youngster was the very person for what the legitimist sympathizers had very much at heart just then” (5). Indeed, on the night of the carnival, that fateful night in which George was seemingly “plunged” into adventure, Mills and Blunt were “looking everywhere” (5) for him. They had already decided between themselves that “he should be drawn into the affair if it could be done” (5). This report is markedly different to the one the reader encounters in the first pages of George’s narrative, in which he conveys the impression that it was he who was seeking Mills out; it was he who was hoping for a chance encounter. Mills’s and Blunt’s secret purpose colors not only George’s initiation into the Carlist smuggling enterprise but his relations with Rita as well. As we have seen, prior to the “chance” meeting at the café, Mills and Blunt decide that George should be drawn into the affair “if it could be done” (5). Several paragraphs later, this cryptic note is decoded: “Their purpose explains the intimate tone given to their first conversation and the sudden introduction of Doña Rita’s history. [. . .] It was Doña Rita who would have to do the persuading; for after all, such an enterprise with its ugly and desperate risks was not a trifle to put before a man—however young” (6). This passage is, at best, ambiguous. The reader is not explicitly told what it is precisely that Mills and Blunt are prepared to do in order to lure their young candidate to action; Rita’s role in the process of persuasion is similarly unclear. The unfolding tale, however, shows that Rita does not initiate a political argument in order to persuade George to join the enterprise. She does not attempt to enlist George through rhetoric; nor does she enumerate the ideological justifications for the illegal initiative that she is backing. George is enlisted through Rita by force of an infatuation with her. There is no doubt that Mills and Blunt are aware of the role Rita must play in enticing George to embark on a life-threatening mission. The narrator strengthens the reader’s suspicion by suggesting that Mills “seems to have acted somewhat unscrupulously” (6). While the narrator does not explicitly state in what manner Mills wrongs George, the reader is told that “Mills, with his penetration, understood very well the nature he was dealing with” (6). Mills’s objective is to create a psychological snare for his victim; Rita is his bait. Much in this vein, the First Note concludes with the narrator’s claim that “thus lightly was the notorious (and at the same time mysterious) Monsieur George brought into the world; out of the contact of two

THE ARROW OF GOLD

133

minds which did not give a single thought to his flesh and blood” (6). It is thus evident that within the space of four pages George has been transformed from the self-made subject of an autobiography to the object of another man’s story. Such an observation is substantiated by an accompanying grammatical transition. At first, with the evocation of the “documentary evidence,” the narrator alludes to George in the first person as he cites his letters to his correspondent. Clearly, it is George who assumes the subject position in all the following sentences: “I believe you are the only one now alive who remembers me as a child. I have heard of you from time to time, but I wonder what sort of person you are now (3). By page 5, however, we find that the subject and object positions have changed radically. Replaced by Mills, George is no longer the subject of the narrative and is consequently relegated to the object position. Thus, for example, the narrator writes, “Mills had already gathered, in various quarters, a definite view of the eager youth who had been introduced to him.” And “it occurred to Mills that this eccentric youngster was the very person for what the legitimist sympathizers had very much at heart” (5). We may consequently conclude that, although the First Note begins as an exposition of the overt plot, George’s “great adventure” (4), it ends with an exposition to the covert plot, Mills’s story, in which George is not an agent but a pawn, not a subject but an object. Similarly, whereas George narrates his story from within the framework of the romance genre, the narrator posits that, unbeknownst to George, his narrative conforms to the altogether different genre of political intrigue. George’s infinite receptivity provides Mills with the perfect victim. The “beautifully unthinking” (8) George is easy prey for Mills and his scheming entourage. This is made evident in George’s first encounter with Mills. Despite his manifest interest in the story of Mills’s shipwreck, Mills refuses to divulge the details, suggesting that other circumstances may be more appropriate for such subject matter. A meeting is not arranged; instead, Mills appears confident that the two will meet on the “Cannebière.” Mills’s complacency may appear odd to the reader in the light of the First Note, where the reader has been made aware of Mills’s interest in George and his immediate realization that this “eccentric youngster” is “the very person” for his smuggling enterprise (5). However, Mills is not complacent in his encounter with George but rather artful. He arouses George’s curiosity as a means of turning the situation around; he does not wish to seek George but rather to be sought.

134

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

Mills’s resistance to George’s questioning, and his temporary absence when George awaits a further meeting, recalls the terms we discussed in relation to the object of desire. To stimulate his interest, Mills appears to vanish, leaving George in a state of rapt attention. George confirms that it is precisely Mills’s absence that elicits his desire. He writes, “It was not precisely because of that shipwreck. He attracted me all the more because he was not to be seen” (12). Mills is thus transformed into an object of desire, a transformation that is duly noted by George’s friends. They demand to know “whether she, whom I expected to see, was dark or fair; whether that fascination which kept me on tenterhooks of expectation was one of my aristocrats or one of my marine beauties” (11). Perceiving George’s distraction, his friends assume that the object of his evident desire must be a woman. George’s enthrallment, however, is not caused by a woman but by a man: it is a trial orchestrated by Mills to test George’s response to seduction. Confirmed by this success, Mills repeats this experiment, once more producing nothing but a suggestive image, to initiate George’s seduction at the hands of Doña Rita. As George writes, the represented image of Rita is nothing but “a floating outline” (31), a perfect object of desire.33 As we have seen, the onset of George’s unmediated narration in Part First further reinforces the covert plot, for George repeatedly, if indirectly, attests to his susceptibility to manipulation. The disappearance of the narrator’s voice nevertheless primarily allows for a reassertion of the precepts of the overt plot, as George once again assumes his role as an independent agent who undergoes a very personal and unmediated adventure. The textual absenting of Mills, whom we may see as the creator of Monsieur George’s character approximately one hundred pages into the novel, further increases the sense of George’s independence.34 In the absence of the two most striking representatives of the covert plot (Mills and the anonymous narrator), the reader is allowed to forget Mills’s role in the ensuing tale. The reader is further desensitized to the workings of the covert plot as he or she becomes engrossed in the romance between George and Rita. As it becomes increasingly clear that the story concerns itself with George and Rita and not much else, any suspicions as to the conspirational origins of the tale are overshadowed. The story between the two notes is undoubtedly a tale of romance. And yet, once the reader has grown accustomed to this notion, the anonymous narrator returns in the Second Note and overturns the reader’s expectations. The Second Note baffles the reader with its negligent comments about the outcome of the romance, its censoring

THE ARROW OF GOLD

135

of the facts, and its general distaste for matters of the heart. The narrator explains that he chooses to suppress the events that take place with the onset of the affair, for “the sentimental interest could only have a fascination for readers themselves actually in love” (337). This logic seems suspect after three hundred pages of longing, yearning, and desire. Indeed, by this logic, the narrator should have suppressed not only the conclusion but the story in its entirety. If the narrator believes that affairs of the heart lack interest to a large part of his public, it is unclear why he chooses to narrate a love story. A large number of critical readings of the novel attempt to explain the tone of disappointment that characterizes the final pages of the novel. Autobiographical readings of the novel are perhaps the most prevalent. These simply interpret the concluding note as a transcription of Conrad’s own history.35 The romantic depletion can, however, be better explained by reference to the spectral story—the story that has been repressed. For this, too, is concluded in the Second Note. The narrator’s overt displeasure in conveying the details of the love affair is an effect of his manifest lack of interest in the overt plot—the subject of George’s narrative. As we recall from the First Note, the narrator’s real interest lies in the covert plot, and it is the conclusion of this other plot on which the narrator wishes to focus. The Second Note therefore recalls the members of the conspiracy (as noted earlier, Mills is absent throughout a large part of George’s narrative) and delineates the Carlists’ fate. On his second and fateful visit to Marseilles, George hears talk of the collapse of the Carlist enterprise. This collapse (which is consequential for the covert plot) is introduced before the demise of the romance. As I will show, there is an underlying significance to this chronology. Despite having taken every precaution to avoid any social contact, despite choosing a restaurant in which he is not likely to meet any of his acquaintances, and despite having turned to face the wall, George suddenly feels “a hand laid gently on his shoulder” (342). We recall George’s “chance” meeting with Mills and Blunt, who were, in fact, actively searching him out at the start of the narrative. Here again we have another “chance meeting.” The reader soon realizes, however, that this, too, is not an accidental encounter. The man “had come to the station with the hope of finding [George] there” (342). There is an underlying symmetry to these chance encounters, which critics have not observed. While George’s adventure is launched by a chance meeting with Mills and Blunt, a second chance meeting with a member of the Royalist club initiates its closure. For it is this meeting that engenders the duel and subsequently the dissipation of the

136

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

romance. The young Royalist who is allegedly alarmed by the damage caused to his friend’s reputation informs George that a certain Captain Blunt has been spreading the word that Rita has “become the prey of a young adventurer who was exploiting her shamelessly” (344). George is astounded: “How Blunt had got enough information to base that atrocious calumny upon, Monsieur George couldn’t imagine” (344). Blunt’s slur is particularly interesting, as it recycles the already existing rumors of Rita’s character. Once again we are told that a man shamelessly exploits Rita. George thus becomes yet another in a long line of men who have allegedly abused her—each after his own fashion.36 The slander inevitably harms George more than it does Rita (Rita already possesses such a history before her encounter with George) and puts him in a position where he has to defend his honor in a duel with Blunt, a man we know to be a martial expert. Rumors are a powerful tool in the hands of the Carlists. Initially, gossip about Rita sparks George’s desire and consequently implicates him in a life-threatening enterprise. In the concluding note, it is gossip again (that here focuses on a new abuser) that forces George into another life-threatening situation and consequently brings the love story to an end. The Carlists thus could be seen to use rumors both in the creation of George’s fictional character and in the precipitation of its demise. The young Royalist’s initiative (both in finding George and informing him of the alleged gossip) prompts the duel. While this appears to be an ill-fated coincidence in George’s love story, it may very well be the planned outcome of the initial conspiracy. Once the Carlist enterprise is crushed, Monsieur George is of no further use. The fictional character created by Mills at the outset must be removed. Rita’s “persuasion” is no longer necessary. Instead, Blunt’s skill with a revolver finally serves its purpose. The narrative ends with absolutely no epistemological assurances, as all the ensuing scraps of information derive from facts George learns after the events. It is Mills who imparts this information, the same Mills who in the First Note is commended for his power of creation. It is Mills who reports that Rita “went away yesterday” (349) (quite an extraordinary coincidence that Rita should leave just one day before her lover regains consciousness); and it is he who explains that Rita has left George in order to assure his safety. No doubt telling him what he wants to hear (for it proves her love for him), Mills informs George that Rita had “heroically” sacrificed love for the integrity of his life (350). Again he reiterates that Rita is “elusive” but reassures George that he will always have the other love of his life—the sea. Once again, George is taken by Mills’s power of suggestion. Thus,

THE ARROW OF GOLD

137

Mills needs merely to allude to the sea to elicit George’s readiness to “go to it” (351). It is not only George who accepts Mills’s version of the events. In much the same spirit, Michael Begnal concludes that “the destruction of the lovers’ relationship [. . .] is basically a victory for the forces of bitterness and failure.” George and Rita awake not “to any kind of brave new world, but to an illusionless existence which society deems mature and rewarding” (Begnal, 38). Begnal thus repeats Mills’s concluding remarks to George. Similarly, Gary Geddes writes that George and Rita “remain, to the end, star-crossed lovers, too innocent for their love to survive intact in a world of political intrigues and cultural caprice” (133–34). Begnal and Geddes reaffirm the tragic conclusion of the overt plot. Much like George, these critics fully and unquestionably embrace Mills’s hypnotic conclusion—that tragically “this world is not a world for lovers” (AG, 350). This, however, is but one of two readings, one of two conclusions. The narrator’s repeated allusions to Rita’s foreknowledge, alongside her reported appearances and disappearances throughout the Second Note, suggest that Rita is not as ingenuous as we may wish to believe.37 The covert plot is a negation of its overt counterpart; it is an absence displaced by a surface presence. In the First Note, George is presented as a character initiated into the story under false pretences. In the Second Note, George is presented as a character making a similarly delusional exit. The real story is not a love affair but a conspiracy; George is not its protagonist but a pawn drawn into its action. The true storyteller is Mills; it is he who creates and destroys the character of Monsieur George. Thus, the two framing notes undermine George’s account. The inner narrative stands revealed as nothing but a delusion, a story set up in the service of the Carlist conspiracy, which both produces and terminates it. With the collapse of the Carlist enterprise, there is an attempt to eliminate Monsieur George; when this fails, he is relocated, diverted to the “faithful austerity of the sea” (351); Blunt and Rita both vanish, and Mills is left to tie up the loose ends. In order to substantiate the existence of this covert plot, this section has involved itself in a process of a textual unmasking. In doing so, however, we have inevitably transformed the covert plot into an overt plot and, in that sense, confined the otherwise-present secrets of the text to the extremely binding metaphysical category of presence, an exercise I have warned against in the first section of this chapter. With the completeness of such a consummation, there is a danger of a depletion of interest, the loss of potential that comes with finality. I therefore want to stress that this process is not found in the text but

138

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

is rather fabricated here for the sake of clarification. As opposed to Under Western Eyes, such an unveiling is not contained within the narrative but is rather intimated (as I hope to have shown) in the framing notes.38 Furthermore, we have seen in the course of this section that there is a proliferation of covert plots in the novel. While we have focused on the political intrigue, we have similarly encountered additional smaller-scale covert plots in Rita’s struggle for independence, Blunt’s financial motives, and the method whereby the author acquires George’s letters and gains access to Mills’s inner thoughts.39 A closer reading will no doubt reveal others. We may therefore conclude that, as we had encountered a plurality of images in the composite nature of Conrad’s haunting heroine, here, the stylistically performative tension between a covert and an overt plot, between manifest and latent possibilities, creates an analogously heterogeneous narrative: one that feeds our desire but does not wish to satisfy it.40

4

Chapter 6

To En d with S U S P E N S E

T

he previous chapter presents the otherwise present as an elusive object of desire; a living woman is transformed into a haunting heroine in order to sustain her allure. In The Arrow of Gold, a physical reality is annulled and subsequently substituted by an imaginary construct; the present is made absent. In this, we witness a reversal of the process that takes place in the earlier Under Western Eyes, where omission is transformed into meaningful speech and the dead Haldin returns in the form of a moral specter, a nemesis to his betrayer. In Suspense, Conrad’s last and posthumously published novel, we are confronted once more with a haunting presence. The trajectories of absenting and presenting that we have traced so far cannot, however, be applied here, for the haunting hero in Suspense is not even a part of the acting cast. Through recourse to an intertextuality that combines history, autobiography, Gospel, and fiction, Conrad’s Napoleon is transformed into the “unseen presence” that haunts the novel. Neither absent nor present, Napoleon is outside the text and, as such, exerts a godlike influence over the events that take place in the novel.1 The first part of the chapter explores how the otherwise-present aesthetic is, in this manner, both reworked and reinvented in Napoleon’s character. The second part of the chapter concerns itself with the apparent clash between the necessities of closure and the demands of an otherwise-present representation. Closure imposes a cessation of the oscillation between the binary poles and, as such, entails a collapse of artistic potential that, as we have seen in The Arrow of Gold, cannot but cause a certain deflation of the unlimited possibilities and

140

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

potentialities of the imagination. In Suspense, the meeting of Conrad’s artistic practice of inconclusiveness and the necessities of artistic closure elicits a thematic preoccupation with improper ends that, much like the figure of the Emperor, haunts the text throughout. In a veritable performative reenactment, this obsession transcends the text as it infects the critical responses to the novel, which, following Richard Curle’s introduction to the first edition of the novel, often regard— and therefore disregard—the novel as a fragment, a “snapped thread.” Contrary to this prevalent approach, my reading will suggest that the novel offers “a solution by rejection,” an otherwise-present conclusion that is made manifest in the form of a suspension. This final arrest impresses upon the reader not only an indication of premature severance but also a sense of the life “still going on.” Although it seems that nothing has ended, it is evident that “everything’s ended already” (150).

Th e O mni-wi se Present Who is the third who walks always beside you? When I count, there are only you and I together But when I look ahead up the white road There is always another one walking beside you. —Eliot, 65

For Joseph Conrad, the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte had always been associated with the legacy of his great uncle Nicholas and the tragic demise of one “luckless Lithuanian dog” (PR, 46) in a dismal forest during the retreat of the great army from Moscow. In A Personal Record, where he attempts to convey the full import of the tale, Conrad writes, “[Nicholas] had eaten him to appease his hunger, no doubt, but also for the sake of an unappeasable and patriotic desire, in the glow of a great faith that lives still, and in the pursuit of a great illusion kindled like a false beacon by a great man to lead astray the effort of a brave nation” (35). The impenetrability of this phrase is a product not only of a dizzying proliferation of hyperbole but also of the contradictory pairing of “great faith” and “great man” with “a false beacon” and “a nation led astray.” While this difficult and overloaded phrase is not the only one of its kind in the Conrad canon, I would like to argue that the confusion attested to here is indicative of what is, for the writer, a peculiarly Napoleonic predicament.

To End with SUSPENSE

141

Much has been said of Conrad’s divided loyalties and mixed impressions of the Emperor. However, these autobiographical details do not consider an additional difficulty arising from the clashing of the two interpretative frames with which Conrad tries to tackle the historic figure: the aesthetic and the political. Where we have seen that Conrad’s art famously demonstrates a noted preference for delay and concealment, an evocative haze rather than a tangible kernel, politically Conrad finds fault in the generation of frustration. As he writes, “It was morally reprehensible for that great captain to induce a simpleminded Polish gentleman to eat dog by raising in his breast a false hope of national independence” (PR, 46). The figure of Napoleon thus creates a writerly conundrum. On the one hand, by fostering noble aspirations, romantic ideas, and unappeasable desire, it offers Conrad a rich canvas on which to create a tantalizing work of fiction. On the other, there is a sense that this evocative image is always already contaminated by a moral outrage, an outrage addressed in “Autocracy and War,” where Conrad writes that Napoleon was “like a sort of vulture preying upon the body of a Europe which [. . .] very much resemble[d] a corpse” (NLL, 86).2 Despite this deep-seated ambivalence, the long pondered and much anticipated Napoleonic novel Suspense may be seen as a reaffirmation of Conrad’s vehement belief that “explicitness [. . .] is fatal to the glamour of all artistic work” (Conrad, Letters, 89). As he explains in a letter to H. D. Davray written in 1913, the novel is written in the shadow of the Emperor, who “will not appear, even for an instant.”3 The decision is to capitalize once again on the limitless potential of a nonpresent figure—a life disembodied, as it were, that exists in the imagination and not in the flesh. Conrad’s words clearly testify to the fact that we have, in the character of Napoleon, a further investment in the literary power of the otherwise present. While a characterization or a fleshing out of the historical figure could have served his stated abhorrence and detracted from its mythical promise, Conrad’s choice to avoid such a representation is suggestive of his commitment to an aesthetic rather than a political framework. Gene Moore comments on this turn, suggesting that in this aesthetic preference, Conrad is indebted to the legacy of Henry James. He writes, “Conrad seems to have regarded the evocative dramatic potential of the Emperor’s ‘shadow’ as standing in inverse proportion to his fictional presence, which could only result in ‘weak specifications’” (Moore, “Defense,” 109).4

142

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

A certain difficulty nevertheless arises if we compare James’s ghostly apparitions in The Turn of the Screw to Conrad’s very real historical figure in Suspense. James’s preference for generalization over “weak specifications” relates to the injurious effect of the literary handling of specters, a consideration that is not necessarily applicable to a fictional fleshing out of historical personages. Earlier attempts at a literary undertaking of Napoleon are instrumental in showing that, in attempting to represent his character, the author does not always share in a Jamesian-like intuition where the readers are left to supply themselves with “all the particulars” through the use of their own “experience,” “imagination,” and “sympathy” (James, Turn xxi–xxii). Thus, for example, if we turn to Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, we find that, as opposed to Conrad’s guiding aesthetic, an anxiety about “weak specifications” is not evident in this earlier literary endeavor:5 The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom, he was finishing his toilet. With snorts and grunts of satisfaction, he was turning first his stout back and then his plump, hirsute chest towards the fleshbrush with which a valet was rubbing him down. Another valet, holding a bottle with one finger on it, was sprinkling eau de cologne on the Emperor’s pampered person with an expression which seemed to say that he alone knew where and how much eau de cologne must be sprinkled. Napoleon’s short hair was wet and matted on his brow. But his face, though puffy and yellow, expressed physical satisfaction. “Go on, hard, go on . . .” he said, shrugging and clearing his throat, to the valet brushing him. (726)

This voyeuristic, derogatory, and almost perverse picture of the Emperor’s “puffy” flesh stands in sharp contrast to Conrad’s novel, where, true to his words to Davray, Conrad forbids his readers a glimpse of the Emperor with but one exception. Moore addresses this short aberration, suggesting that “the fact that Napoleon’s one brief appearance in Suspense is a direct ‘borrowing’ from the memoirs of the Comtesse de Boigne may be taken here as a sign of Conrad’s fidelity to history, and his reluctance to put his own fictional words in the great man’s mouth, let alone turning him into a ‘character’” (“Defense,” 109).6 Moreover, Conrad’s reluctance to “put his own fictional words in the great man’s mouth” is made evident not only in his handling (or rather evasion of the handling) of Napoleon’s character in Suspense but also in “The Duel” (A Set of Six), “The Warrior’s Soul” (Tales of Hearsay), and The Rover, where Napoleon is historically present but never fleshed out.7 It would seem that Conrad’s

To End with SUSPENSE

143

fictional treatment of the Emperor consistently favors the aesthetic over the political framework. The marked difference between Tolstoy’s and Conrad’s literary treatment of the figure of Napoleon may be suggestive of the two authors’ opposing literary, and perhaps ideological or political, agendas. Much as we may interpret these opposing depictions as an indication of two contrasting literary styles (Tolstoy’s realism as opposed to Conrad’s impressionism8), we may argue further that the artistic choices made by both Tolstoy and Conrad were in many ways conditioned by their national or personal inclinations. Where Tolstoy did not, perhaps, wish to glorify or deify the historical enemy of his people, Conrad may have harbored certain sentiments for the figure that was considered by the Polish people to be a potential liberator as well as an enemy to their oppressors.9 And, yet, while it is tempting to attribute these differences to the authors’ social heritages, we run the risk of opting not only for a reductive solution but possibly an erroneous one. Clearly, Conrad’s sentiments for Napoleon were colored not only by his Polish heritage but also by his English identity. It is not precisely blind admiration for Napoleon that we find in “Autocracy and War.” Here, Conrad’s allegiance clearly lies elsewhere, for he states that “the subtle and manifold influence for evil of the Napoleonic episode as a school of violence, as a sower of national hatreds, as the direct provocator of obscurantism and reaction, of political tyranny and injustice, cannot well be exaggerated” (NLL, 86). Furthermore, by attributing Conrad’s unusual handling of the figure of Napoleon to his sentiments or his respect for the historical figure, we inevitably neglect what we have already established as an integral part of Conrad’s writing. Regardless of his personal sentiments, we may say that Conrad’s particular handling of the figure of the Emperor is indebted to a long list of characters through which Conrad perfected his unique method of representation. Like Kurtz, Jim, Haldin, and for that matter all Conrad’s shadowy heroes and heroines, Napoleon, too, in order to maximize his narrative potential, must not be fully “there.” We have seen that Conrad’s turn to the otherwise present is associated with his wish to heighten the artistic potential of what is represented. The application of this artistic principle to the handling of Napoleon’s character also allows for a resolution of the discrepancy between Conrad’s respect for the mythical figure, on the one hand, and the demands of fictional plotting, on the other. That is to say that while Napoleon’s presence provides the novel’s setting by suggesting a very specific historical moment, his absence allows Conrad, as

144

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

Moore suggests, to avoid the “weak specifications” that a characterization of the Emperor would inevitably entail. Although Conrad’s treatment of Napoleon resembles earlier otherwise-present characters that we have discussed, it is nevertheless clear that we have in this figure a representational innovation. If we have so far seen that the otherwise present is effected through an absenting of the present (as, for example, Jim and Rita) or a presenting of the absent (as, for example, Haldin), here we have neither one nor the other. Rather, Conrad treats the Emperor’s character by collapsing the two binary poles from the very outset: Napoleon is both present and absent at one and the same time. Napoleon’s absence is effectively orchestrated: he is not only twice but thrice removed from the novel’s action. Evidently, Napoleon is not a part of the acting cast; he does not participate in the novelistic drama. This apparently does not suffice, however, because Conrad goes so far as to depict a historical moment in which Napoleon is removed not only from the private drama that takes place in Suspense but also from the public and political sphere that, at the time of the Vienna Congress, symbolically marks his absence, as it takes place during his exile on Elba.10 Moreover, here too, as the Marquis tells Cosmo, “Bonaparte remains shut up for days together in his private apartments.” The Marquis then drives the point further in his remark that, in the sequestered environment of his Elban exile, Napoleon “is not visible” (S, 107). From the start, Napoleon is not only removed but “unseen.” As with other typical Conradian absences, however, we find that the nonpresent is empowered: the unseen Emperor assumes a vital role in the novel. As Martel tells Cosmo, “everything in the world [. . .] is affected by this feeling of suspense that man’s presence gives rise to: hope, plans, affections, love affairs” (194, my emphasis). Martel’s words would suggest that although Napoleon is excluded from the cast of characters, he is very much present. Adèle’s life story clearly testifies to Napoleon’s all-pervasive and inescapable effect. Alluding to his successes and failures, she tells Cosmo that her family’s “daily crust of bread seemed to depend on political events in Europe” (131). Sir Latham’s comment on learning that the beloved Adèle is to marry an “upstart” further confirms this belief as he grieves that “Austerlitz had done it” and that “a battle had destroyed the fairness of [Adèle’s] life” (36).11 Adèle’s history is not unique in its close association with the haunting presence of the Emperor. Although seemingly coincidental, the first scene in the novel is similarly tied to the Emperor’s fate, for

To End with SUSPENSE

145

Attilio’s objective in mounting the tower is to convey a secret message to Elba. On Cosmo’s return to the inn, it is made clear that Napoleon’s influence is pervasive not only outside but also inside the Austrian-occupied town, as Spire informs Cosmo that he had seen a man quite publicly and carelessly toast “the Destructor of the Austrians” (52). Though Cantelucci reassures Spire that the man is “a little mad,” we nevertheless realize as the novel progresses that Cantelucci, too, is a loyal follower of the Emperor and that throughout his life he had been “an active conspirator against the old order of things” (198). Interestingly, we find that Cantelucci’s benefactor, Martel, is “employed on secret political work by the statesmen of the Alliance” (184), while, regardless of his claim that the contact is “the most innocent thing in the world,” Count Helion is “in direct touch with people from Elba” (127). Finally, even Cosmo seems to be drawn into the Napoleonic drama, as the novel’s denouement depicts his willing assistance in the smuggling of important documents to the south. Clearly, then, it is not only the Royalists who are “mere play things” (120) in the hands of the Emperor. The characters and events that are narrated in the novel indicate that in this particular historical moment “when anything may happen any day” (192), Napoleon’s influence is omnipresent, and consequently it seems that “no man [is]—a free agent” (270). It is important to note, however, that despite the impressive extent of his influence, Napoleon remains (as we have seen, almost entirely) an “unseen presence” (93). It is in his absence that he elicits the reported sense of “uneasy suspense” (106) or anxious anticipation that, much like the effect of Haldin’s phantom in Under Western Eyes, is suggestive of a powerful presence. The metonymic extensions of Napoleon suggest further that it is precisely the force of the invisible, the mysterious, and the ambiguous that augments his power. Thus, the flag of the Elban ship that is sailing toward Elba is, much like Napoleon’s presence, “undistinguishable” (2), while the mystery that surrounds Elba and its famous inhabitant induces “a fascination now about everything connected with that island” (5). We may consequently suggest that it is precisely the inability to see Napoleon or to predict the course of events that contributes to this sense of fascination. Such fascination is not strictly in line with the effect of the haunting Haldin in Under Western Eyes but is rather suggestive of the powerful anticipatory potential of that which is yet to come. We may say, then, that the influence of the “Man of Elba” recalls the power of Conrad’s haunting heroine in The Arrow of Gold. Indeed, Napoleon’s shadow

146

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

has several attributes that pertain to the object of desire. Martel’s attempt to understand the Italian fascination with Napoleon underscores this similarity. In reply to Martel’s interrogation, Cantelucci asserts that it is “the idea” that suffices to invoke his loyalty and love for Napoleon. Clearly, this recalls George’s enthrallment with the image of Rita, that is, the “idea” of her being, which is more vivid and alluring than the reality. Martel sums up by invoking the very essence of the object of desire. He exclaims, “Devil only knows what that idea is, but I suspect it’s vague enough to include every illusion that ever fooled mankind” (182). Like the “idea” of Rita, the “idea” of Napoleon provides limitless promise through nonpresence or nonconsummation. We recall that Cosmo regards his father’s French friends “as shadowy figures on the shifting background of a very poignant, very real, and intense drama of contemporary history, dominated by one enormously vital and in its greatness immensely mysterious individuality” (38). This recalls George’s predicament. Although Rita is a woman of flesh and blood, he tells her, “I never saw you distinctly till after we had parted and I thought you had gone from my sight forever. It was then that you took body in my imagination” (AG, 298–99). To George, the actual, living Rita becomes a “definite form” (299) only after she has gone and become embodied in his imagination. Similarly, for Cosmo, the immediate presence of his father’s friends remains “shadowy” in comparison with the removed and distant figure of Napoleon who appears “real,” “vital,” and “immense.” Thus, the apparent distinction between a composite woman and a historical figure is blurred. The substitution of reality with virtuality, presence with absence, actuality with “the idea,” allows for the proliferation of fantasy and speculation that ultimately augments the power of the limit-bound and finite individuality. If the clashing of the political and the aesthetic interpretative frames thus seem to be settled in Conrad’s all-encompassing commitment to the latter, it is important to note that a close reading of the novel nevertheless reveals that, in some cases, Conrad does not shy away from the “weak specifications” that herald morally and aesthetically damning content. In Suspense, Napoleon is not only “the only man of his time” (38) but also a “vanquished fat figure in a little cocked hat” (176). A “sorcerer” terrifying all great folk, he is also “a miserable shrimp of a man in big boots and with lank hair hanging down his yellow cheeks” (26). Unlike the earlier works that evolve around the imperial figure, Conrad’s treatment of the Emperor in Suspense

To End with SUSPENSE

147

oscillates between spirit and flesh, greatness and inconsequence, the elusive and the grotesque. The ambivalent treatment of Napoleon in the novel may be attributed to Conrad’s attempt to represent the divergent loyalties and political convictions of the characters. The Royalists’ fear of “the Man of Elba” (108) stands in sharp contrast to Cantelucci’s “love” (182) for him. For Adèle, the Empire is “like a dreadful overdressed masquerade,” and the “frightful” man “with his short thick figure and the clumsiness of his movements” is “like a mock king” (146). Cosmo himself articulates a range of emotional responses and intellectual reflections that often mirror his interlocutors’ sentiments for Napoleon. In the presence of the Royalist-born Adèle, Cosmo diplomatically states that his feelings for the Emperor are “contradictory” (93)12; in the company of Attilio, he shares in the affirmation of Napoleon’s greatness. In both cases his willingness to conform to their views may owe something to the psychology of infatuation. And yet, Cosmo’s infatuations cannot solve this inherent ambivalence; for they, too, like the attitude toward the Emperor, are in perpetual flux. The sequestered and therefore unseen Napoleon performs the role of a floating signifier that commands both the threatening potential of a repressed phantom and the thrall of an object of desire, both of which are firmly set in the Lacanian imaginary. At the same time, the intermittent glimpses of his physique and Dr. Martel’s remarks on the weakness of his constitution pollute the fantasy with the carnivalesque, a product of a competing set of images that are deeply rooted in the body and its functions. The clash between an aggrandizing absence and a condemning presence seems nevertheless to be resolved in Conrad’s choice to pursue an allusion to Scripture. Cosmo’s remark to Adèle that “whenever three people come together [Napoleon] is the presence that is with them” (93) colors the Emperor’s absence with an aura of omnipresence. The allusion is to Matthew 18:20, where Jesus tells his disciples, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” Unlike a comparable intertext in Victory,13 in Suspense the biblical allusion offers more than an ironical flourish. This particular textual borrowing and its wealth of associations would suggest that Conrad finally opted not only for the reinstatement of the artistic glamour that is associated with the otherwise-present aesthetic but also for its radical intensification. The analogy to Christ serves to recreate Napoleon as both absent and present, everywhere and nowhere at one and the same time.

148

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

Cosmo’s comment to Adèle similarly resonates with the Emmaus episode depicted in Luke, which, due to its close intertextual association with the novel, merits a closer reading: And it came to pass, that, while they communed together and reasoned, Jesus himself drew near, and went with them [. . .]. And he said unto them, What manner of communications are these that ye have one to another, as ye walk, and are sad? And the one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answering said unto him, Art thou only a stranger in Jerusalem, and hast not known the things which are come to pass there in these days? And he said unto them, What things? And they said unto him, Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people: And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel: and besides all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. Yea, and certain women also of our company made us astonished, which were early at the sepulchre; And when they found not his body, they came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, which said that he was alive. (Luke 24:15–22)

The evident similarities that the novel shares with this text would suggest that, in his handling of Suspense, Conrad may have derived some inspiration from the story of the resurrection. Indeed, Conrad’s “Napoleonic Novel” reads to a certain extent as an analogous drama. The “things that pass” that are related in the novel concern a “prophet mighty in deeds” who has been “condemned” by the “rulers.” Second, as Cantelucci’s adoration and Spire’s experiences in the inn show, the Italians “trust” in Napoleon to “redeem” Italy from the oppressive Austrian occupation. Most significant, however, is the time frame within which Conrad chooses to circumscribe the events related in the novel. As Hans Van Marle and Gene Moore have pointed out, “the action of Suspense takes place during three days immediately prior to Napoleon’s return” (“Sources,” 149). The narrated events in Genoa correspond to the period of three days prior to Napoleon’s return to power. This threeday period of anticipation is itself a reworking of the Christian account of the resurrection, which takes place on the third day following the crucifixion: “Thus it is written and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day” (Luke 24:46). This correlative effects a further inflation of the anticipated event of the return, which is colored not only by our foreknowledge of the historical turn

To End with SUSPENSE

149

of events but also by the story of the resurrection, which marks the third day as a time of ascendance, commencement, and miraculous transformation. In “The Duel,” Conrad writes that “the triumphant return from Elba” was a “historical fact as marvellous and incredible as the exploits of some mythological demi-god” (ASS, 220), suggesting that the analogy in Suspense is not a coincidence but rather a longcogitated literary effect. Although it is my contention that Conrad capitalizes on this theological topos, it is also clear that he does not finally represent the “marvellous” events of the third day but rather chooses to suspend the representation prior to its “incredible” consummation. In the final pages of the novel, Napoleon does not set sail for Southern France; Conrad does not allow Napoleon to leave Elba. Rather, the novel is suspended a day before Napoleon’s return to France. It seems that after having so carefully and laboriously constructed Napoleon’s character, the representation of the third day and subsequently the fulfillment of the textual analogy would have run counter to Conrad’s intended effect, as it would have ultimately depleted Napoleon’s mythical potential. For where Scripture marks the third day as a day of resurrection, Napoleon’s return to power heralds the one-hundredday period that concludes with the defeat at Waterloo and his reexpulsion.14 The comparison between such a grim denouement and the marvel of the story of the resurrection could only serve to derogate and detract from the Napoleonic myth, an effect that Conrad may not have wished to embrace. By suspending the action before the inevitable historical outcome, Conrad rather fixes and thereby reasserts the analogy. While these intertextual analogies (to both the New Testament and to Conrad’s earlier novels) illuminate the attempt to avoid a representation of Napoleon and thereby augment, rather than deflate, the literary potential of his character, we have already noted that the novel encompasses other, subversive elements that parody this hyperbolic manipulation. The allusion to the Gospel is also cleverly subverted. On the boat with Attilio in the novel’s closing scene, Cosmo thinks to himself, as before, that “whenever two or three meet [Napoleon] is a third.” Now, however, he appends to this thought the conclusion that “one can’t get rid of him” (261). The New Testament correlative is certainly checked by this addition. And yet, even if we construe it as a parodic distortion of the New Testament, there is an underlying significance to Cosmo’s realization. Regardless of his image, an image that may be affected by love, hatred,

150

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

or ridicule, Napoleon cannot, as it were, be exorcised; whether it is desired or feared, his influence cannot be dismissed. Moreover, Cosmo’s realization can be read as a self-reflexive remark on the author’s part, for the final part of the novel shows that Conrad, too, cannot “get rid of him” (S, 216). Indeed, the final part of the novel shows that Conrad prefers to dismiss Adèle rather than dispel the shadow of the Emperor.15 The derogatory remarks voiced by the other characters in the novel against Napoleon may by symptomatic of a wish to arouse sympathy for Adèle’s plight and, with regard to the transformation that takes place within Cosmo himself, a sign of his developing infatuation with her. If this is the case, Conrad’s decision to depart from this plotline, to abandon Adèle’s character and, instead to develop the conspiracy story and the relationship between Attilio and Cosmo may be indicative of the final repression of these subversive or derogatory anti-Napoleonic voices. As this dialogue between Attilio and Cosmo shows, the novel concludes with a reassertion of Napoleon’s unseen presence: “I believe there is a man greater than you or I who believes he has a star of his own.” “Napoleon, perhaps.” “So I have heard,” said Cosmo, and thought, “Here he is, whenever two men meet he is a third, one can’t get rid of him.” “I wonder where it is,” said Attilio, as if to himself, looking up at the sky. “Or yours, or mine,” he added in a still lower tone. “They must be pretty close together.” [. . .] “Yes, it looks as if yours and mine had been fated to draw together.” “No, I mean all three together.” “Do you? Then you must know more than I do [. . .]. But don’t you think, my friend, that there are men and women, too, whose stars mark them for loneliness no man can approach?” “You mean because they are great.” “Because they are incomparable.” (261)

In the closing pages of the novel, the dissenting anti-Napoleonic voices are silenced as Cosmo and Attilio discuss once more Napoleon’s greatness and incomparability. Conrad thus concludes his novel not by remaining within the Royalist atmosphere commanded by the Marquis, Adèle, and Martel but by returning to the opposing voices of the revolutionaries at work to restore Napoleon to power. Finally, as we have seen, by ending the temporal progression on the third day,

To End with SUSPENSE

151

Conrad ensures that the immanence of Napoleon’s return to power remains untainted by his fated failure. In his evaluation of the novel, Moser writes that “Conrad, at the end of his career, was using history not as an adventure into a new kind of writing, but as a crutch for exhausted creativity” (203). Whether or not we agree with Moser’s criticism, it draws our attention to Conrad’s literary innovation in Suspense. Napoleon is not a character within the novel but outside it, a composite of historical fact and eyewitness experience (that is, the Memoirs), an inspired borrowing from the New Testament together with a reworking of the traces of earlier characters from the Conrad canon.16 In this sense and as we have seen in the course of this section, history is not, as Moser has it, a “crutch” for Conrad’s “exhausted creativity” but rather a rich source of material that is artistically molded to augment the otherwise-present quality of his fiction. By exploiting an already existing source of material, an intersubjective pool of historical knowledge, Conrad here extends the limits of the otherwise present: he represents Napoleon by not representing him; he writes him into his novel by hardly writing of him at all. That is to say that Napoleon is present more in our minds than he is in the novel; it is our knowledge and familiarity with this mythical figure that fleshes him out and promotes his “unseen presence” throughout. In this sense, Conrad is indeed following James’s example in The Turn of the Screw. In his preface to the novella, James describes the manner whereby, in opting for “good” rather than “correct” apparitions, he effectively saves his story from “the comparative vulgarity” of “the offered example, the imputed vice, the cited act, the limited deplorable presentable instance” (xxi). James further writes that “recorded and attested ghosts are as little expressive, as little dramatic, above all as little continuous and conscious and responsive, as is consistent with their taking the trouble—and an immense trouble they find it, we gather—to appear at all” (xix). For James, the recorded and attested, then, is to be left out: specificity gives way to suggestion. In Conrad’s hands, the recorded provides a peripheral text that envelops the story: what remains inside is merely a hint—in the form of a word, a text, or a nonpresence—of what exists elsewhere. In creating his “unseen” Napoleon, Conrad embarks on an artistic undertaking that is made evident in the shifts and turns of one of his recurring literary methods: the capitalization on the readers’ foreknowledge. We have encountered this technique in Lord Jim, where our reading is informed, at an early stage, by our knowledge of Jim’s

152

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

jump off the Patna. Similarly, our reading of Under Western Eyes is guided from an early moment in the text by our awareness of Razumov’s betrayal of Haldin. In Suspense, Conrad employs an analogous technique. Here, however, it is on our possession of a historical fact that he capitalizes—a fact that is not within but outside the text. Like and unlike Razumov’s betrayal and Jim’s jump, the historical knowledge of Napoleon’s liberation and return to power hovers over our reading and produces an inevitable irony, a product of the discrepancy between the readers’ and the characters’ knowledge. Dr. Martel wonders as to the consequence of an armed battle between the armies of Napoleon and England: “I wonder if [the Duke] could have beaten the other in a fair fight. Well, that will never be known now” (65). The irony that is created here does not, as it had in earlier texts, rely on a detail present at an earlier or later moment in the text. It is by way of turning to the intertext of history that the reader knows that Martel’s answer will be answered only months later in the battle of Waterloo. Similarly, it is our historical foreknowledge that allows for an appreciation of the underlying wisdom of Cosmo’s sense that Napoleon stands for “many things [. . .] some which we cannot see yet” (38). In Suspense, then, the use of history contributes to the creation of a multilayered tale that admits competing narratives and chronological shifts, irony and suspense. Here, Conrad neither frames the narrative, conjures up a distorting eyewitness account, nor reverts to “adjectival insistence.” Almost entirely excluded from the drama, Napoleon inhabits the broader intertextual space that lies outside Conrad’s novel. As such, he is always already otherwise present. Suspense is written in the shadow of Napoleon; he is the “unseen presence” that haunts the text, a nontreatment that is fixed by the novel’s final suspension, which admits neither a fleshing out of his character nor a representation of his return to power. As such, his figure does not finally conform to one binding and defining metaphysical category; the concluding paragraphs of the novel offer neither an exorcism nor a conjuration. In concluding this discussion we should nevertheless note that it is not only Conrad’s wish to avert “weak specifications” in his representation of the Emperor that is served by this nonresolution. Rather, Conrad’s refusal to embody Napoleon and most notably his refusal to represent his return to power correspond to a textual paradigm that underlies Suspense in its entirety, a paradigm that will be discussed in the next part of this chapter. Both terminable and interminable, this otherwise present manifests itself in the form of a temporal suspension that hovers between continuation and finitude.

To End with SUSPENSE

153

“A S o lutio n by Rej ec ti on” I have suggested that, as opposed to concrete reality, the “idea” is limitless. It must be recalled, however, that the promise of the otherwise present exists in relation to a future to come, as a potential prior to consummation. To formulate differently, the “idea” (or the otherwise present) exists only insofar as it remains in a state of suspense. As we have seen, its consummation entails an inevitable disappointment, for the realization of an existing potential ultimately brings about its depletion. The principle that we have reiterated here that both forms and underlies the artistic germination of the otherwise present becomes intensely problematic when applied to the practice of endings. As many narratological studies have shown17, the conventions of closure that regulate narrative endings in classical realist fiction demand an affirmative and harmonizing note, one that arrests the oscillation between absence and presence. In this sense, the novel’s end is similar to a consummation of sorts, entailing a similar collapse of imaginative potential. In ending, “suggestion” gives way to affirmation. Although a large part of his literary creations embrace this rule, it is nevertheless possible to discern an attempt on Conrad’s part to combat this prescribed sacrifice. We find an indication of this in Lord Jim, where Marlow concludes his narrative with a series of speculations on the implications of Jim’s life and death, which remain unresolved in his finalizing yet nonaffirmative “Who knows?” (LJ, 416). Similarly, the contradictory ending in The Arrow of Gold that concludes with the unification of the lovers but then concludes—a second time— with a subversion effected by a tale of violence and separation is indicative of a certain resistance to a conclusive Aristotelian-like finish. As Conrad famously writes, “The last word is not said,—probably shall never be said. Are not our lives too short for that full utterance which through all our stammerings is of course our only and abiding intention?” (LJ, 225). In turning to Suspense, we will see that, both on a thematic and biographic level, Conrad’s last published novel attests to an intensification of his perceptible unease with the notion of resolution and finitude. Suspense does not offer its readers the conclusion they expect. Rather than accept this as an innovative strategy, however, critics have understood this as evidence to the fact that the novel is unfinished. Richard Curle, Conrad’s literary executor, established this tradition in his introduction to the first edition of the novel, where he asserted that the novel is incomplete, a thread cut short by Conrad’s death.

154

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

For several decades, critics have accepted Curle’s assertion and consequently neglected or dismissed this “unfinished” text, which, as F. R. Leavis opines, “so little lives up to its title that the published part of it is hard to get through” (247). Leavis’s severe criticism contrasts with Curle’s conciliatory introduction. It is evident nonetheless that whether the novel was regarded sympathetically, as the unfinished product of many years of preparation, or with great criticism, as a failed artistic creation, the result has been one and the same: the novel has met with limited critical appreciation—indeed, with very little critical attention. Finding that “neglect of this novel has been virtually absolute” (“Defense,” 99), Moore notes that even critical works that specifically address Conrad’s later fiction do not offer a serious reading of the novel. Moore offered a true challenge to the underlying cause for this prevalent disregard in 1993 in his suggestion that, contrary to existing belief, Conrad’s last novel is “more ‘finished’ than one would expect.” Moore finds support for this claim not only in the novel’s conclusion, which offers “a memorably complete description of Cosmo’s dramatic escape from Genoa” (“Defense,” 100), but also in the biographical circumstances surrounding its composition. “Conrad,” Moore notes, “wrote no new material during the final eighteen months of his life, but only edited and revised what he had already written” (105). More recently, Moore has written that “if Conrad did not completely ‘finish’ Suspense, he came very close,” and that “given Conrad’s declining health and energy, the difference between the last of these versions and a hypothetical ‘finished’ version was very small” (“Unfinished,” 243). The disparity between Curle’s and Moore’s readings is indicative of the existence of yet a further critical divide that arises from clashing interpretations of Conrad’s texts. Like the otherwise-present characters of Rita and Jim, the conclusion of Suspense inspires a continuous critical debate. Where Curle introduces the novel by lamenting its nonending, Moore reintroduces it with his claim that the threads were not at all snapped. “Conrad’s final novel,” he writes, “is composed of a finished frame within which unfinished matters remain in a state of suspension: it is finished but lacks closure” (“Unfinished,” 241). Today it seems that one cannot read the novel without being entrapped in the question of its ending. In reading the novel, we are all too quickly drawn into the general attempt to discern whether or not the novel was completed, whether or not it came to its intended conclusion. As the ongoing debate demonstrates, however, such a deliberation does not necessarily yield conclusive answers. Moreover,

To End with SUSPENSE

155

by focusing on this question we neglect the equally, if not more pertinent, concern with the deliberation on endings and finitude that is present throughout the novel. Before turning to the text, it should be noted that it is our preexisting understanding of the notion of closure that will influence the manner in which we set about to read Conrad’s last novel. In this vein, it is possible that Moore perceives an ending where Curle does not, not only due to his disinterested—or rather, differently interested—reading of the novel,18 but also due to his very different conception of the nature of a literary conclusion. Effectively, then, we cannot hope to tackle this aporia before we address the question, what is an ending? As our question concerns itself specifically with the Conradian conclusion, we may do well to turn to Conrad’s own meditations on the subject. In Notes on Life and Letters, Conrad addresses the Jamesian finish. This passage, written in 1905, testifies to Conrad’s appreciation for Henry James’s ability to resist his readers’ demands for an artificial sense of finality in the fashioning of his conclusions. Conrad writes, It is obvious that a solution by rejection must always present a certain lack of finality, especially startling when contrasted with the usual methods of solution by rewards and punishments, by crowned love, by fortune, by a broken leg or a sudden death. Why the reading public which, as a body, has never laid upon a story-teller the command to be an artist, should demand from him this sham of Divine Omnipotence, is utterly incomprehensible. But so it is; and these solutions are legitimate inasmuch as they satisfy the desire for finality, for which our hearts yearn, with a longing greater than the longing for the loaves and fishes of this earth. Perhaps the only true desire of mankind, coming thus to light in its hours of leisure, is to be set at rest. One is never set at rest by Mr. Henry James’s novels. His books end as an episode in life ends. You remain with the sense of the life still going on; and even the subtle presence of the dead is felt in that silence that comes upon the artistcreation when the last word has been read. It is eminently satisfying, but it is not final. Mr. Henry James, great artist and faithful historian, never attempts the impossible. (NLL, 18–19)

A careful examination of this short passage complements our reading of Suspense, as it furnishes us with a number of key terms that are crucial for addressing the mystery of its conclusion, or rather its nonconclusion. In his appreciation, Conrad broaches several apparent paradoxes that lie at the heart of the artistic finish. First, Conrad suggests that

156

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

James’s conclusions are fashioned through a “solution by rejection”: the “energetic act of renunciation,” all too often committed by James’s heroes and heroines, which ultimately displaces the “usual methods of solution” that bring the novel to its end through punishment or reward. The casualty, then, is the Aristotelian ending, which like punishment, reward, love, fortune, or death “naturally comes after something else, either as its necessary sequel or as its usual [and hence probable] sequel, but itself has nothing after it” (Aristotle, 832, my emphasis). As opposed to this closed model, which clearly demarcates not only the textual ending but also its beginning and middle, Conrad here voices his appreciation for a conclusion that “lacks” a sense “of finality,” a conclusion that allows for the continuation of “the sense of the life still going on.” Significantly, Conrad does not treat such an ending as corrupt or false but rather views it as the natural outcome of the artistic process. A lack of finality, Conrad instructs us, is not at odds with an artistic conclusion. Rather, the Jamesian conclusion is commendable, as it does not set one “at rest” but produces a lifelike effect of continuity and flow. As we have seen in the course of this book, the need to tantalize rather than “set” his audience “at rest” may be associated not only with James but also with Conrad. Indeed, such an artistic practice abounds in the Conrad canon. It recalls, to state just one example, our discussion of Marlow’s representation of Jim in Lord Jim. This representation, not unlike that of Rita in The Arrow of Gold and Napoleon in Suspense, feeds “one’s curiosity without satisfying it” (LJ, 76). Conrad’s appreciation for James’s endings would thus indicate that he associates the aesthetic of the otherwise present not only with the representation of character but also with the practice of concluding. To end by feeding the readers’ desires rather than satisfying them is to create an otherwise-present conclusion. Allan Simmons reads Conrad’s appreciation as a method of “associating [James and himself] with defining features of the modern experience” (“Conrad,” 103). While Conrad may indeed be associating himself with the “modern experience”—which, as Simmons has it, “tries to preserve that sense of ‘life still going on’” rather than negate it “by means of some imposed end-point” (“Conrad,” 98)—it is nevertheless possible to discern a note of hesitation in Conrad’s words. His mention of the reading public’s likes and dislikes is suggestive of his awareness of the risks involved in the embarking on a literary innovation. Conrad perceives that, in encountering an inconclusive finish, the unsatisfied reader might feel deceived, for, to him or her, a conclusion appears to be wanting; the final moment of resolution seems to have been cut short. Such a reader will not be content with

To End with SUSPENSE

157

“a solution by rejection” but will demand a homogenizing and finalizing end procured by a “sham of Divine Omnipotence” (NLL, 18). Clearly, a conclusion inspired by the otherwise-present aesthetic does not offer a comparable sense of relief. Conrad’s appreciation is thus instructive in its description of his developing understanding of the significance of an artistic conclusion. Its implications, however, have yet to be applied to a critical reading of Suspense, since criticism to date has concerned itself not so much with the nature of endings per se but rather with the question of whether the novel is finished. The appreciation is further relevant to a study of Conrad’s aesthetics in its mention of the needs of a “reading public” that “yearns to be set at rest” (NLL, 18–19) and the manner in which these needs affect the composition and reception of the artistic work. Perhaps it is here that we may find the key to bridging the gap between the readings of Curle and Moore. It may be that, throughout a large part of the twentieth century, Conrad’s reading public did not perceive an ending in his last novel, a novel that apparently did not meet with the demands of a resolution procured by a “sham of Divine Omnipotence.” The reading public has undoubtedly changed in recent years, as has fiction itself. Frank Kermode notes that “in their general character our fictions have certainly moved away from the simplicity of the paradigm; they have become more ‘open’” (Sense, 6). We may conjecture, then, that the development of a more tolerant reading public (one that is, perhaps through habituation, more ready to accept an open ending) has brought about a transformation in the critical approach to the novel. As yet, however, this hypothesis must remain unchecked, for despite Moore’s rereading, the novel remains relatively unpopular among Conrad scholars.19 Rather than remain within the confines of this polemic, this section will now address the manner in which Suspense offers a Conradian reworking of the notion of an artistic ending and the underlying challenges that an otherwisepresent conclusion poses for both the artist and his reading public. I will begin by taking Richard Curle, in his introduction, as a suitable representative of this “reading public.” In the case of Suspense, it is common practice to begin at the end. Thus, it is a concern with the question of endings that furnishes Curle with a starting point for his introduction to the first edition of the novel. Perhaps inevitably, the circumstances in which the introduction was composed—Conrad’s recent death and Curle’s role as his literary executor—contribute to the style in which it was written. In the shadow of Conrad’s sudden death, Suspense takes on the pathetic form of an unfinished work. Curle accordingly bids farewell not only to its

158

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

author but to its possible conclusion—he mentions “one of five or six lines of treatment” (S, vi) that Conrad takes with him to the grave. In his introduction, then, Curle simultaneously grieves for Conrad’s premature death and for the novel’s consequent nonending. He mourns the loss of Conrad and the loss of Conrad’s last artistic conclusion. In attempt to locate the origin of Curle’s assertion of the novel’s unfinished state, we need to examine two distinct trajectories that are mapped out in the introduction. Primarily, Curle’s reading of the novel follows what he perceives to be the authorial intent; he interprets the novel’s content as a direct extension of the author’s will. Conrad, he writes, “hoped, at least, to finish this long-pondered novel of Napoleonic times” (vi). It is with much sorrow, then, that Curle concludes that “the wish was not fulfilled” (vi). In line with this underlying belief, Curle states that the title of the novel is “more symbolic than the narrative suggests,” for with Conrad’s untimely death, “the threads were snapped” (v). Curle has it that what he perceives as the snapping of the narrative thread was brought about by an external act and not by a deliberate artistic decision on Conrad’s part. Hence, Curle’s reading presents Suspense as a coincidentally apt title that will forever be contaminated by an unintentional irony. As Curle writes, “the suspense will last forever” (v). A second line of reasoning would suggest that Curle’s assertion was influenced further by his pronounced favoring of an Aristotelian-like conclusion, a hypothesis that is clearly justified by the sense that the novel’s last pages hold the key to his discomfiture. Here Curle conflates the completion of the writing process with the ending of the narrative. Alluding to the final part of the novel, he writes that “the threads were snapped when the climax had still to be unfolded, when the characters had yet to come together in the harmony of completed action, and when the whole story hung, as it were, between the darkness and the dawn” (v). We may say, then, that the problem of the snapped thread signifies for Curle the absence of a harmonizing knot: the characters have not come together; the protagonist has not fulfilled his promise; and the reader is left with unanswered questions. The mystery, in short, is not solved with the culmination of the novel. In the absence of such a familiar finish, the novel appears to be suspended. Curle thus positions himself as part of the reading public that concerned Conrad in his appreciation of James, one that would demand an Aristotelian finish even at the expense of a “sham of Divine Omnipotence.” Rather than grapple with a new unresolved form of closure, Curle reassures both himself and the readers that the conclusion that was to be written

To End with SUSPENSE

159

was finally and accidentally deferred. Clearly, there can be no artistic fault in the untimely intervention of death (indeed, more often than not death augments the worth of the artist and his creation). Whether Curle’s assertion of the novel’s unfinished state derives from his focus on authorial intent or from his conflation of the writing process and the necessities of closure, it is clear that this assertion is self-serving insofar as it provides a psychologically reassuring explanation for the novel’s actual state of indeterminacy. Psychologically reassuring though it may be to those readers who demand a finalizing and harmonizing finish, Curle’s introduction supports a suspect logic. Opening with the assertion that the title “suspense” does not match the content, Curle writes that “Conrad chose a title even more symbolic than the haunting, breathless air of the narrative suggests” (v). What follows, however, is the concession that the inconclusive ending leaves the reader in too much suspense. “The suspense,” we are told, “will last forever” (v). It seems, then, that Curle is exasperated not only because the novel does not live up to its title but, paradoxically, because it invests too heavily in suspense. For Curle, there is both too much suspense and not enough. Despite his apparent dissatisfaction with Conrad’s last novel, Curle closes his introduction with an array of superlatives. Clearly, Curle had to offer a fitting tribute to Conrad’s life and art in the introduction to his last novel. Moore’s suggestion that Curle exploits the pathos of the novel’s mystery seems justified in the last lines of the introduction where the writer appears to derive the worth of Conrad’s last novel from its unfinished state: “Perhaps its very incompleteness adds to the sense of mystery which enshrouds its pages, giving to this mighty fragment a more august significance than would be found in the pellucid beauty of a finished work of art” (vii). Curle’s concluding words contain a hint of one of Conrad’s most fundamental aesthetic principles: the sense of mystery and beauty that comes with the incomplete, the not yet consummated, or the still to come. Whether intentionally or inadvertently, then, Curle’s final words reinvoke the precarious balance with which Conrad had experimented in his earlier novels. By associating the incomplete with the unfinished, however, Curle may have nevertheless transgressed the Conradian aesthetic of the otherwise present, which, although pertaining to the “unconsummated,” is not at all the same as the “unfinished.” In his invocation of the beauty of the “mighty fragment,” Curle’s introduction reads very much like a Conradian conclusion. Indeed, his final words of lament recall the manner in which Conrad concludes

160

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

Lord Jim. To Curle, it is Conrad who is finally “gone, inscrutable at heart” (LJ, 416). He writes, “The exotic, moving quality in Conrad’s gift is brought home to us impressively by his sudden passing away with this last mystery unsolved. He came to us, fully armed for his task, a mysterious figure: he departed as suddenly and as silently; and it seems somehow fitting that he should have left behind him, not alone the ample accomplishment of his high genius, but, so to speak, a witness to the abiding mystery of his fascinating and enigmatic personality” (vii). This summing up—the “sudden passing away,” “the abiding mystery”—recalls Marlow’s representation of Jim, which, as we have seen, feeds our desire but does not satisfy it. Curle thus transforms Conrad into an object of desire, bidding him farewell here as Marlow bids Jim farewell, through the assertion of the unresolved mystery of his life and his character. In this, Curle takes on the role of a Conradian narrator who not only mystifies his object but also claims to speak on his behalf, for his object can no longer speak for himself. Curle speaks on behalf of Conrad as Marlow speaks on behalf of Jim. After all, it is Conrad’s final wish with regard to his plans for the novel that is ventriloquized in Curle’s introduction. Much like Marlow, however, Curle is not merely a “receptacle of confessions.” As he listens, he also interprets. While Curle attempts to redeem what he believes to be a fragment by pointing out its beauty, we may redeem Curle’s possible unreliability by pointing, as we have done, to his “Conradianess.” Curle’s invocation of the mystery of this unsolved fragment may nevertheless be detrimental to Suspense, as it invests every new reader with a prejudiced sense of the novel’s incompleteness. Due to Curle’s explicit words of introduction, the reader cannot read the novel without a sense of its unfinished state. The reading therefore becomes both over- and predetermined from the very outset, affecting the manner in which the novel is received. The long neglect of the novel may be a sign of the infectious quality of this effect and its creation of an intersubjective critical circle that all too readily dismisses the novel as an incomplete fragment. If, as we have seen, Curle’s introduction is very much in the Conrad spirit, it is clear that from a more rigorous point of view Curle does not do justice to the novel, as his claims are based on his ideas about the intended rather than the written text. Clearly, Curle places his foreknowledge before the novel; he favors what he conceives to be authorial intent over the text itself. This creates an interesting dissociation between the introduction and Conrad’s text. While Curle claims that the novel is cut short, Part IV of the novel actually ends very

To End with SUSPENSE

161

neatly, in a moment of peace and fraternity and with a philosophical deliberation on death. Allan Simmons suggests that the closing pages offer both a symmetrical closure and an underlying moral. He writes that “the combination of repeated references to guiding stars in those closing pages and the formal symmetry, which balances the death of Atillio’s father at the beginning with the death of the unnamed helmsman at the end, suggests that the individual is ultimately defined by forces beyond his control” (Simmons, “Later,” 277). Like Moore, Simmons finds closure in the novel’s last scene, a reading that undermines the premises of the introduction. The title, then, cannot be reduced to an ironic anticipation of the author’s death. Before turning to my own analysis of the text proper, it should be noted that my reading is guided by Moore’s suggestion that the novel’s frame is complete. If I allude to the novel’s ending as a suspension of sorts, I do so thematically, not formally. That being so, I would like to argue that the suspension that closes the novel not only offers closure but also performatively repeats an obsessive thematic preoccupation with the notion of improper endings, a final articulation of a network of motifs and themes that are present throughout the novel and uphold indeterminacy rather than closure. The title accordingly has relevance not only to the final page but to the content throughout. My reading argues that the final suspension does not undermine but rather reinstates the textual paradigm that is present throughout. It needs to be emphasized, then, that the title of the novel is not coincidental. True, the novel concludes in a moment of indeterminacy; the story remains “hanging.” But it is precisely this indeterminacy that interests Conrad in his final novel and fashions the selection of its title and its conclusion. Conrad’s choice of a very short and specific historical moment, between Napoleon’s exile and his return to France, is itself telling. Cosmo writes to Henrietta, “You can form no idea of the state of suspense in which all classes live here from the highest to the lowest, as to what may happen next. All their thoughts are concentrated on Bonaparte” (189). Cosmo describes this “state of suspense” as all-encompassing, and, indeed, all the characters in the novel appear to be caught in this suspended historical moment. Attention is in perpetual oscillation between Elba and Vienna for a glimpse of what is to come. Thus, the moment of the narrative constitutes an intersubjective waiting, the general expectation of a final event. To be sure, it is not only in ending that the novel broaches the possibility of an untimely or problematic end. From the very outset, there is a constant deliberation upon, experimentation with, and metaphorization of the question of improper endings. Thus, the unresolved

162

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

critical debate about the conclusion—or, rather, nonconclusion—of the novel is a mirroring of a motif that interlaces the novel in its entirety. This obsessive preoccupation gives rise to the manifestation of two distinct forms of improper ends within the text: the premature end and the interminable; the untimely finite, as it were, and the untimely infinite. Interestingly, this recalls Conrad’s words on James’s conclusion. To reiterate, Conrad notes that when reading James’s novels “you remain with the sense of the life still going on; and even the subtle presence of the dead is felt in that silence that comes upon the artist-creation when the last word has been read. It is eminently satisfying, but it is not final” (NLL, 19). Conrad has it that James’s “solution by rejection” encompasses two seemingly contradictory forces—the untimely finite (or the premature finish) and the sense of endlessness, or infinity. We note an identical duality in Suspense. Conrad’s final suspension holds the terminable and the interminable at one and the same time. In lieu of a final event, the intersubjective waiting goes on.

To End Otherwi se We do not have a name for the phenomenon of improper endings. Curle’s introduction nevertheless furnishes us with a useful metaphoric substitution: the snapped thread. By imposing a metaphor of his own, however, Curle merely supplements an entire network of metaphoric substitutions already present in the text. The introduction is therefore misleading insofar as it preempts a question that it claims to broach. Clearly, the notion of a nonending should not be derived from the introduction but from the novel itself, which is beset with the threat of corrupt ends. Moreover, this threat promises not only the possibility of a premature cessation but also the equally perplexing and vexing possibility of nonending or endlessness.20 The textual handling of the notion of improper ends is split, engendering two similar yet distinct categories of metaphoric substitutions. We may classify one of these two categories as the cluster of snapped threads. The most prominent motif belonging to this group is the image of the unfinished palace. Dr. Martel explains, “It’s an unfinished palace, I mean as to its internal decorations, which were going to be very splendid and even more costly than splendid. The owner of it, I mean the man who had it built, died of hunger in that hall out there” (65). Much like the novel, the palace was to have been a glorious testament to the owner’s riches and opulence, but, due to

To End with SUSPENSE

163

the untimely intervention of death, it was never completed. Thus, we have an instance of a snapped thread but also one that is marked by a typically Conradian irony—the man dies of hunger with gold pieces in his pockets. It is interesting to note that a certain anxiety lurks within the shades of this anecdote, for as Martel tells Cosmo, the unfinished palace “remained boarded for years because the heirs didn’t care to have anything to do with that shell of a palace” (66). The unfinished artistic creation remains disregarded by the heirs. To leave behind nothing but a “shell” of a work may therefore elicit some anxiety on the part of he who labors to create it—that the incompleteness will lead to neglect by those who follow.21 While the “unfinished palace” offers a powerful image for the “snapped thread,” a closer reading of the novel provides further examples of the constant deliberation upon the threat of a premature termination. One such example occurs after Cosmo’s interview with Adèle. Her harrowing story haunts Cosmo as he retires to his room later that night. Suffering a disturbed state of mind, Cosmo resolves to conclude what should be done before going to sleep. This plan is nevertheless circumvented as the following morning Cosmo awakens to the realization that he has done absolutely nothing. Rather than act on his resolution, he had fallen asleep: “He had no time yet to decide what to do. He had gone to sleep. A most extraordinary thing!” (176). Once again, the thread is snapped: action is suspended and resolve dispersed. This pattern recurs as the resurgence of the haunting memory of Adèle on the following evening is once again evaded. On envisioning the picture of the woman whose heart is pierced by a dagger, Cosmo has “a horror of the room, of being alone within its four bare walls on which there were no pictures except that awful one which seemed to hang in the air before his eyes” (196). Clearly, what haunts Cosmo is Adèle’s fate and his sense that he must save her from it. This, however, is precisely what he does not do, for we are told that “Cosmo snatched up his cloak and hat and fled into the corridor” (196). Once more, Cosmo does not act on the impulse to save Adèle but rather abandons it. Interestingly, as Cosmo actively suspends his feelings for Adèle and escapes from the haunting confines of his room, the motif of the unfinished palace returns. Leaving the inn, he does not see “as much as a fleeing shadow on the bare rough walls of the unfinished palace awaiting the decoration of marbles and bronzes that would never cover its nakedness now” (196). As Cosmo leaves the room and figuratively

164

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

leaves Adèle to her fate, the allusion to the nonexistent décor emphasizes the harsh and inescapable reality of nonendings. The motif of the unfinished palace here transforms into an explicit mise en abîme: much as the shell of the palace is doomed to its unfinished state, Cosmo is fated to forsake his role as knight to Adèle. This thematic chain of snapped threads loads the reader with the idea of premature severance, an impression that is complemented by a second group of motifs that enhances the sense of impossibility that permeates the notion of closure. Here, the Aristotelian conclusion, which “has nothing after it” (Aristotle, 832) and as such is the evident alternative to a snapped thread, is questioned, problematized, and subsequently undermined. We find evidence of this in Cosmo’s interview with Adèle where he shows himself to be at a loss in evaluating the implications of what has already passed—the world after Napoleon. He asks Adèle, “What has it done? The smoke hangs about yet and I cannot see” (143). A conclusion has been reached, but it is not clear what this conclusion signifies. Adèle’s words to Cosmo prove to be similarly mystifying. She tells him, “The play is over, the stage seems empty” (90). The word “seems” alerts the reader to a determining perplexity. The play is over—the emptiness of the stage would suggest this; but perhaps the stage only “seems” empty; perhaps the play has not ended. It “seems,” then, that one cannot discuss closure without reverting to speculation. Furthermore, if these exchanges suggest that the underlying impossibility of endings is associated with the political rather than the private, we soon discern a parallel problematic in relation to the latter. Thus, when Cosmo asks Adèle whether she has “thought how [her story] is going to end,” she replies, “Everything’s ended already” (150). What for Cosmo appears to be an unfinished tale has, in the mind of his interlocutor, already ended. These examples show that it is not only the snapped thread but also the Aristotelian conclusion that provides an epistemological challenge, for even given conclusions are not only difficult to recognize but also impossible to comprehend. It is in this manner that the text shows that it is not only a “snapped thread” but also a given “Aristotelian” conclusion that provides the reader with an epistemological dilemma that cannot be resolved. We thus find that even in those cases in which we are offered an ending, we cannot make it out, for it is as mystifying and enigmatic as its counterpart, premature cessation. If this were not enough to test the boundaries of the literary conclusion, the possibility of closure is further exposed to an overriding skepticism as it is implied that a conclusion is not an objective but a

To End with SUSPENSE

165

subjective construct. To one, the action is still taking place, whereas to another, it has already ended. This thematic preoccupation thus shows that not only is it a challenge to understand the implications of closure once it has been recognized but that the process of recognition is itself shrouded in an obfuscating haze. The reader is subsequently endowed not only with the fear of a premature cessation but also with a skeptical attitude toward any possibility of closure. It is thus made apparent that a conclusion need not be withheld in order to create disorder, for, in the world of Suspense, even a solution derived by a “sham of Divine Omnipotence” proves to be bewildering. Even a given conclusion does not always allow for the resolution of mystery and the construction of meaning. If the prevalence of these two complementary clusters of improper ends is indicative of an underlying anxiety that runs through the novel with regard to the possibility of ending, Moore posits that there is in this obsessive preoccupation a mirroring of Conrad’s struggles to conclude the novel.22 Conrad’s correspondence testifies to the underlying truth of this hypothesis. Only six months before his death in February 1924, Conrad wrote to his friend John Galsworthy who had just concluded the writing of one of his own novels: “So there are novels that can be finished,—then why not mine?” (Jean-Aubry, 340).23 Conrad complains that he cannot conclude the writing of this work, his “runaway” novel (339–40).24 Interestingly, however, it is not only the “unfinished palace” and the unfinished tale that reflect Conrad’s struggles. While Moore notes the manner in which the author’s obsession is mirrored in the novel, he neglects to mention that the character of Cosmo offers a veritable reenactment of his creator’s struggles and anxieties. We have already seen that Cosmo cannot see the significance of the historical situation. Conrad, too, writes that he is “altogether in the dark as to what [Suspense] is about” (Jean-Aubry, 257), suggesting that he, too, is blinded by a figurative “smoke” (S, 143).25 Cosmo’s question to Adèle—“How it is going to end?” (150)—may be said to resonate with the reflections of Conrad himself, who, like his protagonist, does not know in what manner the story is to end. Finally, in what is perhaps the most reflexive scene in the novel, the reader encounters Cosmo’s struggles in his attempts to write to his sister. Uninspired and reluctant to write home, Cosmo laments his “rash promise” to write, for “the difficulty in keeping it” (70). He thinks of several possible articles of information he can send home but wonders whether they are “worth while” (72). Finally, he concludes that he “wouldn’t write home at all that evening” (72). Cosmo’s inability

166

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

to write recalls Conrad’s complaints to John and Ada Galsworthy. Conrad admits to Mrs. Galsworthy that he, too, cannot write and has “done no work to speak of for months—such is the dreadful truth” (Jean-Aubry, 265).26 Moreover, when Cosmo does finally write the promised letter to Henrietta, his writing experience mirrors that of his creator. Much like Conrad, he struggles with the pressure of time and reflects that “at this rate I will never arrive in Genoa” (S, 188). He professes an uncertainty about the truth of his own statement and neglects to include mention of Napoleon in his letter. Where Conrad admits the character of Napoleon into his novel only by way of a direct borrowing from the Comtesse de Boigne, Cosmo hastily adds a short postscript with regard to the Napoleonic affair for his sister’s benefit. Conrad, then, was himself in a state of suspense when writing this novel. As he wrote in February 1924, “the end seems as far as ever. It’s like a chase in a nightmare,—weird and exhausting” (Jean-Aubry, 339–40).27 We have seen that this nightmarish chase transforms into a web of themes in the text that are suggestive of a double-edged threat: the constant danger of a premature end is complemented by the equally menacing possibility of an irremediable nonending, or endlessness. This apparent resistance to resolution is finally translated not into an Aristotelian conclusion but into an otherwise-present substitute that manifests itself in the form of a suspension. Here, too, the otherwise present is marked by the intercollapsing of binary opposites as it encompasses both the terminable and the interminable at one and the same time. The conclusion to Suspense, then, confronts the reader with both the terminable, or the untimely finite—a feature we have come to associate with Curle’s snapped thread or premature ending— and, on the other hand, the infinite—an ending that leaves one with the sense of “the life still going on”; and that, in concluding, nevertheless raises Cosmo’s question, how is it going to end? I would suggest that the ambiguity of the final pages not only mirrors and extends the textual preoccupation throughout but also brings the novel to a close by way of a “solution by rejection.”28 Although the novel ends and, in this sense, “the play is over,” we, too, feel that “the stage” only seems “empty.” In our consequent attempt to make sense of this otherwise-present conclusion, we cannot but echo the questions of Cosmo and Adèle. While we wonder how it is all to end, we know that everything has ended already. The provision of an otherwise-present conclusion thus results not in the resolution of Conrad’s nightmarish chase but in its transferal onto the readers who, like Conrad, conclude the novel with a sense that “the end is as far as ever.”

To End with SUSPENSE

167

As mentioned in the introduction, in her reading of Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw, Shoshana Felman addresses a comparable phenomenon whereby the reader’s response assumes the form of an inadvertent or unconscious repetition of the novel’s content. The reader is seemingly entrapped and duped by the text as he or she is caught in a cycle of repetition. To reiterate, Felman explains that this “reading effect” occurs when “the critical interpretation [. . .] not only elucidates the text but also reproduces it dramatically, unwittingly participates in it. As a reading effect, this inadvertent ‘acting out’ is indeed uncanny: whichever way the reader turns, he can but be turned by the text, he can but perform it by repeating it” (101). Our reading of Suspense elicits an analogous effect. The manner in which Curle introduces the novel by reproducing its fundamental problematic suggests that the textual preoccupation with the threat of a corrupt or “wrongful” ending is infectious. We may say, then, that Curle’s response to the novel is an inevitable one, for the “reading effect” ultimately influences every reader who attempts to make sense of the novel’s conclusion and its implications. This is significant insofar as it shows that Suspense not only plays with the repetition of an absence—an absent conclusion—but also transfers this play to its readers. The repetition of the improper end can therefore be said to affect several different layers simultaneously—both inside and outside the text. We have already seen that the text traces the nonconclusion within, in its presentation of a host of themes that address this phenomenon, such as the unfinished palace. The choice of the historical moment, which encapsulates the sense of transition and anticipation that offers no resolution—as in Cosmo’s “sudden sense of an epical tale with a doubtful conclusion” (65)—supplements this. The absence here is one of an inevitable historical outcome—Napoleon’s return to power and defeat at Waterloo—that, as such, cannot yet be revealed. We have already seen, however, that it is not only the yet-to-come future that confounds Cosmo. In fact, he is similarly at a loss in evaluating a conclusion that pertains to that which has already passed. The absence of a conclusion, then, is not merely the outcome of the historical setting but also the outcome of the novel’s deliberation on the epistemological impossibility of closure. Our reading of the novel subsequently shows that there is a twofold repetition of this absence, for it is no longer restricted to the confines of the text but outside it, in what becomes a reenactment staged by the reader. Curle’s introduction provides the first such reenactment as he unwittingly takes on the part of Cosmo and articulates his perplexity at

168

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

what appears to be an unfinished history. Although this introduction is essentially the product of a reader’s response, Curle’s introduction has inevitably transformed into an integral part of the text, creating a liminal zone between the novel and its readers. The reader becomes another link in this chain of repetition (which is no doubt reinforced by Curle’s introduction) as he or she internalizes the textual obsession and is consequently caught in an attempt to decide whether the text is finished or unfinished, thereby reproducing the textual obsession. In contradistinction to Curle’s words of introduction, it is clear that one need not read the last pages of the novel to experience a feeling of “unfinishedness.” From the very outset, Suspense is based on indeterminacy and on the anxiety that it entails. The plot, the characterization, the historical setting, the thematic and the metaphoric preoccupation all point to the same underlying paradigm of irresolution. The final suspension that closes the novel does not transgress the rules of its narrative. Rather, it is a performative extenuation of the paradigm on which the text is modeled. We may say, then, that what to Curle appears a “snapped thread” readdresses the motif of irresolution and consequently encloses the text by way of a return to (or of) its one pervasive theme.29 Such closure does not bring about a process of metaphysical conformation; we remain with neither a clear presence nor a clear absence. As the novel concludes, the suspense is not resolved but transformed into a final suspension. Both finite and infinite, such an otherwise-present conclusion neither allows nor strives toward ontological certainty. As in Lord Jim, Nostromo, Under Western Eyes, and The Arrow of Gold, the otherwise-present quality of Suspense would suggest that, within the Conradian aesthetic, significance lies not in closure but in openness, not in explicitness but in the artistic glamour of suggestion.

4

Chapter 7

Conclusion

W

e have defined the otherwise present as an effect of the literary shuttling between absence and presence, a continual oscillation between two binary extremes. In the course of this study, however, we have seen that the intermediary otherwise present is not merely produced by the tension between the absent and the present. Both similarly and differently, the otherwise present is an effect of the constant tension between the real and the imagined, between the fulfillment of desire and renunciation, between the explicit and the implicit, proximity and distance, singularity and repetition, linearity and cyclicality, suspense and suspension. The effect of this oscillation or tension between opposing poles (all of which relate in various ways to absence and presence) manifests itself as the otherwise present: a substitute of sorts that pertains equally to both extremes but never conforms to either one or the other. The substitute does not terminate the shuttling process but rather encapsulates it. To illustrate, Marlow’s otherwise-present portrait of Jim is composed of a host of subjectivities and, as such, pertains to the real but is never actual; the evolution of the Occidental Republic of Constaguana is encompassed within recurring patterns of narrative; continually fleshed out and interpreted, Razumov’s silences are transformed into an illusory speech; the object of desire is nothing but a psychological projection, a need for that which cannot be possessed, transposed into a figment of the imagination; an otherwise-present conclusion encapsulates both suspense and suspension; it brings the action to a close without offering a harmonizing closure. It is thus that the substitute

170

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

represents both the effect and the process, for although it arises from the oscillation between the binary poles, by maintaining its ongoing shuttling, it offers not only a result but also a continuation. As such, the otherwise present remains at a remove both spatial and temporal; it is never here and now but only a promise, a fleeting image that can never be grasped. In the second chapter, I presented the process whereby, within the Conradian text, the otherwise present becomes a condition of reading, a contagion that afflicts the onlookers both within the text and without—characters and readers alike. If the effected confusion focused on is articulated in spatial terms, the chapter on Nostromo shows that it is also the temporal dimension that becomes undone in the complex machinery of the Conradian tale. That is to say that by subverting our ability to comprehend not only the what but also the when, the otherwise-present aesthetic defies readers’ attempts to close the text by way of an all-encompassing interpretation. What we grasp are merely ripples—the original object is perceived through the reflecting projections of other subjectivities, other times. It is precisely these ripples with which the next two chapters grapple in their analysis of two distinct yet complementary methods of a subjective conjuration of the otherwise present. In our discussion of Under Western Eyes, we reviewed the motivated origins of the creation of the otherwise present: a desire for comprehension, for solace, and for gain. Our analysis of The Arrow of Gold similarly traced a process motivated by desire. Here, however, we discussed a desire that feeds on uncertainty, the desire for the “precarious bliss” that is sustained by an “irrealizable” love object. While our study of Under Western Eyes illuminated the metaphysical bias against absence, a bias we had anticipated at the start of this study, our discussion of The Arrow of Gold brought to light a complementary prejudice—the human resistance to presence. Thus, if we had seen that the human mind abhors a vacuum and therefore transforms absence into a conjured presence, we then noted that presence is similarly corrupted in the mind as it is challenged by the libidinal imagination. The otherwise present thus offers both a tenable and a desirable alternative to the two binary extremes. In our discussion of Lord Jim and Under Western Eyes, we saw that, through recourse to vicarious experience, the Conradian storyteller capitalizes on these ingrained human biases. His tales are permeated by an ongoing tension between absence and presence, an effect that necessitates the readers’ interpretative participation at the same time as it elicits their desire to know more. In my reading of Suspense, I tried to show that the autobiographical and biographical legacy to the

Conclusion

171

novel in many ways displaces the Conradian storyteller by providing an interpretative frame that is insistent on, to reinvoke Leavis’s words cited in the introduction, a presence that it cannot produce—the novel’s conclusion. Before his death, Conrad allegedly discussed the novel’s unfinished state with his friend Richard Curle. By focusing on this exchange in the introduction to the novel, Curle effectively states that the novel is incomplete, thereby including a Marlow-like nonaffirmative summary to the novel in its very preface. Fortunately, such an externally framing epitaph ultimately repeats the novel’s preoccupation with improper endings and, as such, unintentionally serves the novel’s thematic interest at the same time that it perhaps misguides its readers. Clearly, then, the otherwise present is not only a condition of the text that defines its thematic and stylistic makeup but also an integral part of the reader’s response. The critical views we have reviewed here show that Conrad’s otherwise presences continue to haunt the intersubjective critical circle to this day, as diverging and sometimes contrasting interpretations appear to be equally valid and therefore sustain an ongoing polemic. It would seem that the textual oscillation between extremes lends itself to multiple interpretations of which none are granted an exclusive textual confirmation. In the course of this study, we have already acknowledged Conrad’s literary debt to Henry James, whose art clearly foreshadows some of the fundamental principles of Conrad’s poetics. Alluding to an important feature of Henry James’s writing, Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan writes that “the various features of the ‘figure’ prevent stasis, maintain gaps and indeterminacies and consequently the desire to fill them in, gesture toward the inaccessible without either making it accessible or giving it a definable identity; in short, they keep alive the dynamics of reading” (“Figure,” 96). It is suggested that James keeps the narrative alive precisely through “suggestion,” a principle that we have seen imbues his successor’s technique. Much like the Jamesian “figure,” the Conradian otherwise present does not simply mean; it cannot be encapsulated in the here and now. While this would indicate a clear artistic affinity between the Jamesian “figure” and the Conradian otherwise present, the latter is not to be confused with the former. The otherwise present is not a figure (although the figure accounts for one of its possible manifestations) but an artistic principle that, as we have seen, pertains not only to what we read and see in the text but to how we read and see. The full effect of this Conradian poetic comes to light not only within the chapters of the unfolding narrative, in its intricate themes and intertwined narrative levels, but also in a stylistic

172

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

mirroring of the content, in the interstices between the text and the reader, between the text and the intertextual. Conrad’s artistic debt to James, however, is not exhausted in their relative capitalizations on “suggestion.” While it is beyond the scope of this work to draw a comparative analysis between the two, I would nevertheless like to call attention to a related concept that has been closely associated with the otherwise present throughout this study. Desire—its generation and oftentimes frustration—is a central feature in both the Jamesian and the Conradian aesthetic. Both authors are cunning manipulators in their literary handling of desire, both in its thematization and, as Rimmon-Kenan writes, in its structural use for maintaining “the dynamics of the reading.” In the fifth chapter of this work, we discussed the affinity between James’s “unappeased desire” and Conrad’s “irrealizable desire.” We may say that James’s “unappeased desire” transforms, in Conrad’s texts, into the “irrealizable,” a neologism that significantly marks a temporal and an emotive shift. Increasingly, the emphasis is no longer on a lost promise that can only be mourned but on an ongoing and motivating force that can never be exhausted. As I have attempted to show, within Conrad’s work, the significance of desire goes beyond his literary debt to James. Conrad’s attempted representations of the unpresentable rely on and indeed elicit a desire to recover, to grasp, or to comprehend what appears to be deferred, concealed, or in some way obscured, a desire that is experienced both by the characters and by the readers. The otherwise present, then, is a product of desire, for it is precisely the desire to see and to understand that transforms it into such a tantalizing artistic principle. Desire thus informs the different otherwise-present manifestations that we have discussed: a desire for presence and a desire for absence, a desire for possession and a desire for loss. Taking into consideration the predominance of desire in Conrad’s aesthetic, it is interesting to note that it is precisely in its thematization that Conrad is most severely criticized by his readers. Thus, for example, the “achievement and decline” theory notably hinges on Conrad’s handling of the themes of love and desire. Thomas Moser writes, “The early Conrad’s apprentice work and his failures strikingly resemble each other in subject matter and in symbolic imagery. Almost all deal in a major way with love” (50). Guerard follows Moser’s critical view of Conrad’s handling of love. In his reading of The Arrow of Gold, he observes that “[George’s] rhetoric is not only sentimental, but sentimental at times in a very peculiar way, and one that associates love and death” (Guerard, 283). Guerard thus reinforces

Conclusion

173

Moser’s earlier claim that “by the end of 1913, Conrad’s surrender to the association between love and death is fairly complete” (144). More recently, Daniel R. Schwarz has similarly suggested that Conrad’s last novels—Chance, Victory, The Shadow-Line, The Arrow of Gold, The Rescue, and The Rover—are “symptoms of Conrad’s inability to deal with love and sexuality on a mature level” (Later, 33). To Moser, Guerard, and Schwarz, Conrad’s coupling of the themes of love and desire signals a return to the chivalric tradition of unrequited love. Conrad’s suggested “immaturity,” then, can be interpreted as a historical immaturity, a sign of his failure to align his treatment of the themes of desire and love with the characteristically experimentalist mode of writing of the first decades of the twentieth century. By introducing a “precarious bliss” into his represented romances, Conrad is perceived as reinstating a long-standing literary tradition of desire that does not appear to be aligned with his earlier works, which, devoid of such clichés, appear to be more faithful to the modernist agenda. In the fifth chapter, I attempted to show that, as opposed to these prevalent views, Conrad’s “peculiar” handling of the motifs of love and desire should not be perceived as a sign of his literary traditionalism. In The Arrow of Gold, the coupling of love and death signals not a return to the chivalric tradition of unrequited love but rather an application of the aesthetic of the otherwise present to the representation of desire. The association between love and death marks the attempt to ascertain the precariousness of the bliss of consummation and thus to maintain the necessitated balance between absence and presence. That is to say that the representation of the “unknowable,” a motif present in such works as Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, is of the same order as the “irrealizable” in The Arrow of Gold, for the two motifs are created through a capitalizing on the potential that arises from the tension between what is given and what is withheld, between what is represented and what is concealed. The critical distaste for the “irrealizable,” then, is more thematic than it is aesthetic, as the coupling of an otherwise-present representation with the motif of love is readily elided with and recuperated through long established literary conventions. Hence, it is not common practice to classify the “irrealizable” with the profoundly “unspeakable” or “unknowable.” Jim’s feats of the imagination cannot be compared to George’s, and we would not dream of comparing the representation of Jim to that of Rita. In the chapter on Suspense, we discussed a similar dismissal of what may be interpreted as Conrad’s aesthetic choice. Richard Curle’s introduction to the novel clearly testifies to the fact that he prefers

174

Tracing the Aesthetic Principle in Conrad’s Novels

to view—and to sell—Suspense as an unfinished novel, rather than contemplate the possibility of its intended inconclusiveness. The aesthetic value of “a solution by rejection” (NLL, 18) is undermined by what is perceived as a “proper” literary conclusion. Like the “irrealizable,” the inconclusive is classified as “a snapped thread,” a mere “fragment” (S, v–vi), and the precise nature of Conrad’s aesthetics is ignored, displaced by (in this case) conventional notions of the proper conclusion. I would like to conclude by suggesting that the critical downplaying of Conrad’s aesthetic choices is unjustified. Conrad’s letter to Richard Curle provides an appropriate point of departure: “Explicitness, my dear fellow, is fatal to the glamour of all artistic work, robbing it of all suggestiveness, destroying all illusion [. . .] nothing is more clear than the utter insignificance of explicit statement and also its power to call attention away from things that matter in the region of art” (Conrad, Letters, 89). Conrad’s letter testifies to the injurious effect of the explicit, not to the representation of his moral relativism, ideological skepticism, doubt, or linguistic difficulty but rather to the achievement of an artistic “glamour.” Conrad was working to create an artwork that would be attractive and enticing, a text that would be, first and foremost, desirable. It seems, then, that by asking whether we have been justified in conflating the moral with the aesthetic, the pangs of conscience with the agony of desire, we are neglecting the “things that matter” most “in the region of art.” Rather than neglect the glamour and desire inherent to the finished work of art, we must realize that, in Conrad’s canon, the unknowable, the inconceivable, and the unspeakable are always already irrealizable. By attempting an aesthetic rather than a moral reading of Conrad’s novels, I have attempted to trace the manner in which his technique is continuous, that is, the manner in which his otherwise-present representation not only joins different thematic strands but also connects his selection of themes and his choice of narrative techniques across the range of his career. Desirable and elusive, Conrad’s otherwise present “invisible sweep of a magic circle” is as applicable to the depiction of a lover’s passion as it is to a betrayer’s guilt, to an illustration of ingrained human biases, and to the exploration of literary convention.

Notes

C hapter 1 1. “Absence,” Oxford English Dictionary, 1989 ed. 2. To complete the example, although good and bad are opposed, we cannot automatically say that what is good is not bad and vice versa. Yet, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, this is a valid formulation for the characterization of the relationship between absence and presence. 3. It is important to note that Derrida’s notion of différance is not simply a deferral, as it may be understood here, but rather combines both deferral and difference. He writes, “The other sense of différer is the more common and identifiable one: to be not identical, to be other, discernible” (Derrida, Margins, 8). 4. To name just a few, Allon White’s The Uses of Obscurity, Allan Simmons’s “Ambiguity as Meaning,” Camille R. La Bossiére’s Joseph Conrad and the Science of Unknowing, Sandra Dodson’s “Conrad and the Politics of the Sublime,” and John G. Peter’s Conrad and Impressionism. 5. Today, the “real” holds a multitude of different connotations, of which only a few refer to its pre-Lacanian origin as that which is “actual.” In Conrad, too, the significance of the term is unstable, as it shuttles between the actual and the imagined. Thus, for example, in The Arrow of Gold, George tells Rita, “I see you now lying on this couch but that is only the insensible phantom of the real you that is in me” (AG, 296). Here the “real” is not the actual but what is perceived or imagined as true or actual. 6. The “irrealizable” is a Conradian neologism or distortion that I borrow from “A Smile of Fortune” (TLS, 59). The term is discussed in Chapter 5. 7. By doing so, Conrad provides a preemptory contradiction to Benjamin’s claim that “what differentiates the novel from all other forms of prose literature—the fairy tale, the legend, even the novella—is that it neither comes from oral tradition nor goes into it” (87). 8. The objective correlative setting often permeates not only the diegetic level but also the extradiegetic level, that is, both the level of the plot events and the level of the narration. This is true of the example from

176

Notes

Heart of Darkness where we have seen that the darkness spills over from the inner to the outer narrative. 9. See Guetti, 59–60, and Said, World, 90. 10. The “achievement and decline” theory argued by Moser and echoed in a large number of critical assessments of Conrad’s works draws a line of demarcation between the early and late Conrad, holding that more esteemed works (such as Lord Jim and Nostromo) are followed by a string of artistic failures. See Moser, Joseph Conrad: Achievement and Decline; Hewitt, Conrad: A Reassessment; Guerard, Conrad the Novelist; and Meyer, Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography. This model has since been contested by Hampson in Betrayal and Identity, Jones in Conrad and Women, and Roberts in Conrad and Masculinity.

Chapter 2 1. This opinion has been contested. John Batchelor, for example, suggests that “Jim loses his honour by an act of cowardice and recovers it when he surrenders his life” (210). 2. The object of desire and its otherwise-present quality are addressed in Chapter 5. 3. Where Mudrick maintains that Conrad commits “a gross violation of point of view,” Guerard avers that “the changes in point of view are made unobtrusively and with pleasing insouciance” (Mudrick, 292, and Guerard, 107, respectively). 4. Lothe, “Variations,” 221–22. 5. William Deresiewicz does not regard Marlow “as an opportunity to engage in narrative experimentation or metanarrative reflection” (221). Tracing the development from The Nigger of the Narcissus to Lord Jim from within a biographical rather than an aesthetic framework, Deresiewicz suggests that Marlow offered Conrad a solution to the problem of identity and audience, a method of integrating imaginative identification and communal identity. 6. I borrow the term “consuetudinal” from Ian Watt. Watt explains that “English has no special form of the verb for habitual, consuetudinal, iterative, or frequentive usages; instead, it relies on modal auxiliaries, as in Conrad’s ‘perhaps it would be’” (Watt, 296). The relinquishing of the present moment apparent in this shift prefigures the handling of time in Nostromo, which is the subject of the following chapter. 7. A similar technique underlies the transition from the first to the second part of Under Western Eyes. Here a strategic omission once again purposefully leads the reader to commit an erroneous leap of interpretation. By withholding information at this crucial juncture, the English teacher allows the reader to assume that Razumov flees the country in order to escape the clutches of the czarist police. The reader has no reason

Notes

8. 9.

10.

11. 12. 13.

14. 15.

16.

177

to believe that he has been commissioned by the police to spy on the revolutionary circle in Geneva. Benjamin, 83–109. This is not, strictly speaking, a contradiction of the Benjaminian definition, which holds that “the storyteller takes what he tells from experience—his own or that reported by others” (Benjamin, 87). This is, of course, a most literal qualification. I do not contest that Marlow is psychologically implicated by his doppelganger. However, if we take the psychological implications into account, it is evident that even this figure of the doppelganger drops out of the narrative in Chance. Jim is dead at the time of narration. In Heart of Darkness, Marlow asserts, “I have a voice, too, and for good or evil mine is the speech that cannot be silenced” (HD, 97). Interestingly, Michael Greaney writes, “Marlow recognizes that embarrassment is contagious, that the story of Jim’s failure of nerve makes for desperately uncomfortable listening; accordingly, his version of the story is oblique to the point of evasiveness” (78). Greaney connects Marlow’s desire for a successful story with the aversive psychological implications of Jim’s story. The novel’s epigraph is cited from Novalis: “It is certain my conviction gains infinitely the moment another soul will believe in it.” If my analysis of Marlow here reverts to a positivistic language, transforming an otherwise-present character into a verifiable presence, it does so only provisionally for the sake of clarifying the question at hand. These concessions recall those made by the English teacher in Under Western Eyes. The implications of such claims (and their relevance to Marlow) will be discussed in more depth in Chapter 4.

C hapter 3 1. See respectively Jameson, 278; Rosenfield, 48–55; Toker, 46; and Hawthorn, “Repetitions,” 143–46. 2. Distinguishing between Platonic and Nietzschean forms of repetition, Barrett Fisher suggests that Charles Gould’s involvement with the mine is representative of the latter. See Fisher, II, 20. 3. Rosenfield, 65. 4. For a more extensive survey of the epic elements in the novel and a summary of the critical discussions of this particular generic borrowing, see Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan’s chapter “The Failure of Myth” in ErdinastVulcan, Joseph Conrad, 25–27, 70–78.

Chapter 4 1. The term “capitalization” is obviously borrowed from Derrida. I would like to emphasize, however, that the term is used figuratively. In the

178

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

7.

8.

9.

10. 11.

Notes context of Under Western Eyes, it is not a matter of economic gain but rather an advantage in regards to personal safety and a social standing that is at issue. Interestingly, this passage contains a further illustration of “capitalizing on an ellipsis” as it provides the novel’s epigraph, which, in its cited form, is similarly misleading. Conrad not only misquotes the passage (Natalia says, “Snatch at a piece of bread” [UWE, 135], while the epigraph reads, “Snatch a piece of bread” [my emphasis]); he also promises, through the choice of this particular epigraph, a story rather different to the one we finally receive. While it anticipates the plight of a revolutionary fighting for liberty, we finally encounter a story of crime and punishment and a struggle for intellectual and moral survival. In this sense, the epigraph does not, as we may expect, provide a foretaste of the plot. In this vein, Penn R. Szittya suggests that a thematically adequate “epigraph might well be Razumov’s complaint to Mikulin, ‘I begin to think there is something about me which people don’t seem to be able to make out’” (196). This effect will provide the focus of the following chapter, which discusses the power of potential and promise that is associated with the object of desire, which must forever remain “irrealizable” or, in another sense, absent. Michael Greaney offers a complementary formulation in his suggestion that “any blind-spot in a given text can be the fulcrum against which interpretative leverage is obtained” (166). A similar view is presented by H. M. Daleski in “Dispossession and SelfPossession,” 193. This, of course, recalls the manner in which Jim characterizes himself as a victim in the Patna affair. Jim does not perceive his jump as an act of volition. As he tells Marlow, “I had jumped . . . It seems” (LJ, 111). It is significant, however, that here it is the narrator who undertakes a similar characterization of Razumov. Razumov’s words to Mikulin suggest that he is unaware of the signifying potential of silence. While it is impossible to conclude whether Razumov deliberately employs silence in order to deceive his fellow students, it is clear that in his interview with Mikulin he very consciously omits mention of his meeting with Ziemianitch in order to avoid self-incrimination. For a more extended comparative analysis of narrative strategies of Marlow and the English teacher, see Levin, “The Moral Ambiguity,” 211–28. Guerard refers to Conrad as the agent who delays the revelation of Razumov’s role as spy. As the narrator writes retrospectively, I assume we can say that he, too, is intentionally delaying the unmasking of this information. See Szittya, 187; Erdinast-Vulcan, 120–21. Szittya notes this but does not mention what I believe to be the necessary conclusion of the narrator’s betrayal. He writes, “The narrator’s reserve,

Notes

12.

13.

14. 15.

16.

17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

179

like Razumov’s, ‘inspires confidence’ and results in his close alliance with Natalia Haldin” (Szittya, 187). That is not to say that the revolutionists have no other interest in Razumov. Sophia Antonovna explains to the narrator that “he has ideas—he talks well too” (347). It should be noted that Leo Gurko regards this characterization in quite a different light, providing an interesting twist to the narrator’s initial preamble. He writes that the narrator “hears voices, the voices of Russia, whose formal words he understands well enough but whose emotional significance lies outside both his sympathies and imagination. To him, the tragedy of life is the tragedy of language and words, as he announces on the opening page, are a conspiracy to keep meaning and intention from being communicated” (Gurko, 218). Alternatively, Frederick R. Karl believes the confessions to be “the fruits of [Razumov’s] conversion” (217). See Anthony Winner, who regards him as a “somewhat Prufrockian teacher” (112), and Erdinast-Vulcan, 123–24; In contrast, Schwarz argues that although “one may attribute [the narrator’s] avoidance of passionate involvement to his own fastidiousness [. . .] his sense of propriety introduces a standard of conduct that implicitly comments on the self-indulgence exhibited by most of the Russians” (Almayer’s, 198). Compare this to Marlow’s thoughts on Kurtz in Heart of Darkness: “True, he had made that last stride, he had stepped over the edge, while I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot” (HD, 101). Frank Kermode objects to this practice whereby “the ghost and phantoms” are “subjected to the needs of clearness and effect” and are “buried in the psychology” (“Secrets,” 88). Although I may contend that the ghosts are a product of Razumov’s own projections, I do not attempt to bury them (and indeed, one cannot bury ghosts; after all, it is precisely from an improper burial that they rise) but rather demonstrate the manner in which Razumov responds to their haunting presence. If we assume that in this he is not contradicting his initial preamble, one must gather that the soothing power of words must be inherently deceptive. Incidentally, critics have suggested that the same could be true of Conrad’s writing of the novel: that it enacts a battle against his spiritual, literary, and historical demons. For a discussion of Conrad’s exorcism of Flaubert, see Lawrence Thornton, “Conrad, Flaubert and Marlow: Possession and Exorcism,” 146–56. In regard to the exorcism of his “Polish shades,” see Carabine, 99. We have seen that this is only one possible interpretation. As cited, Cox regards this as a sign of Razumov’s intellectual freedom, whereas Fleishman believes that it signifies Razumov’s anti-individualistic philosophy as well as his antirevolutionary beliefs. This is not Conrad’s first allusion to the ritualistic charm. We find a similar such token in “Karain” where Hollis creates a charm from a Jubilee

180

Notes

sixpence, a shred of his leather glove, and ribbon. Mark Conroy comments on the fusion of psychology and superstition from which the token derives its power. See Conroy, 6–7. 22. See Freud, “Remembering, Repeating and Working Through,” 150. 23. The Oxford English Dictionary offers two core definitions of the word “exorcism.” According to the first, exorcism is “the action of exorcising or expelling an evil spirit by adjuration or the performance of certain rites.” The second definition, albeit obsolete, is “the action of calling up spirits; the ceremonies observed for that purpose; conjuration.” Etymologically, the act of expelling a spirit already contains its conjuration. 24. Marlow’s narratives demonstrate a similar process. Guerard’s formulation (cited in the previous chapter) is apt. He suggests that Marlow’s narratives end when “the double is exorcised, whether to die or to go free” (114).

C hapter 5 1. Wiley, 163. 2. Thus, for example, see White, The Uses of Obscurity; Armstrong, The Challenge of Bewilderment; and Simmons, “Ambiguity as Meaning.” 3. Respectively, I refer to Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, An Outcast of the Islands (Lingard’s gold), Under Western Eyes (the silver medal), and Nostromo. These are but a few examples, but they suffice to show the diversity and range of the object of desire in the Conrad canon. 4. Susan Jones similarly writes, “Conrad had, at a very early age, witnessed, during his father’s vigil, a spectacle reminiscent of his later fictional idealisations of women, characterised, as they often are, by a sense of detachment, distance, and a passive, iconographic element” (49). 5. As we have seen in the writings of Hampson, Roberts, and Wiley, this is not always the case. My reading differs from theirs insofar as it proposes not so much to redeem Conrad’s literary treatment of Rita but rather to contextualize the literary treatment of his female characters within the broader literary aesthetic of his writing. 6. Stendhal’s novel is pertinent to this discussion in its analysis of the principles of love, which are in this book almost always equated with “irrealizable” desire. 7. Hence Morf’s and Gurko’s attempts to explain Conrad’s “inability” to portray women and, on the other hand, Moser’s and Schwarz’s criticisms cited above. 8. Distasteful or not, the notion of an “irrealizable desire” is indeed an enduring literary topos. While we may trace its roots back to the medieval and Renaissance literature of courtly love (Rougement’s Love in the Western World is a pertinent work on this subject), it is clear that this motif is characteristic of much nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature in the works of writers as diverse as Stendhal, Oscar Wilde, and

Notes

9.

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

181

Marcel Proust. In Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Algernon tells Jack that “the very essence of romance is uncertainty” (I.I). A more serious connection to the psychological turmoil that is associated with Conrad’s “irrealizable desire” can be found in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, where Marcel mourns the loss of Albertine. He reflects that “there is an extraordinary discrepancy between the boredom which she inspired a moment ago and, because she has gone, this furious desire to have her back again” (484). This grossly reduced account of Rita’s actions inevitably neglects the psychological development of her character as it is discussed in Hampson’s Betrayal and Identity. I hope to redeem this reduction in the next section of this chapter in which I argue that Rita’s interaction with George is colored by Mills’s plan to lure George into action on behalf of the Carlist cause. As opposed to Hampson’s reading, I argue that Rita’s actions may be affected not by her inner psyche but by Mills’s political machinations. It is important to note that for Girard there is no distinction between “irrealizable desire,” as we find in Conrad, and “desire.” For Girard, as for Lacan, desire is itself the product of an underlying impossibility. Hence, such a formulation as “irrealizable” or, as we would find in James, “unappeased” is, for them, a tautology. I believe that Conrad’s formulation of an “irrealizable desire” therefore correlates with Lacan’s and Girard’s “desire.” See Henry James, “The Figure in the Carpet,” 277. Blunt somewhat complicates the equation by harboring his own romantic interest in Rita. It suffices to note at this point that, whether or not Blunt and Mills exercise this principle in their own relationships (indeed, Blunt’s relations with Rita appear to be at odds with the dictates of the “irrealizable”), what is important here is the manner in which George perceives their attachment to Rita. Respectively, Wilhelm Jensen, Gradiva, A Pompeiian Phantasy and Sigmund Freud, “Jensen’s Gradiva and Other Stories.” As we recall, with the bringing forth of the “thing itself,” the conclusion of George’s narrative does indeed endow the shadowy Rita with a welldefined presence. This transformation, however, is only a momentary lapse, as Rita soon resumes her former indeterminacy. The motif of Pompeii is not new to Conrad. The story of “Il Conde” opens “in the National Museum in Naples, in the rooms on the ground floor containing the famous collection of bronzes from Herculaneum and Pompeii—that marvellous legacy of antique art whose delicate perfection has been preserved for us by the catastrophic fury of a volcano” (ASS, 269). While Pompeii is not specifically mentioned in Victory, Lena and Heyst are both said to have been to Mount Vesuvius. The mention of Vesuvius is not altogether arbitrary, as the smoking volcano that neighbors Heyst’s island receives frequent attention. Like the corresponding

182

15.

16.

17.

18. 19.

20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25. 26.

Notes motif in The Arrow of Gold, these motifs create a sense of ominous foreboding. Note that the motto that opens and concludes “Il Conde” is “Vedi Napoli e poi Mori.” Zanker writes, “During the last few decades before Pompeii’s destruction, a fashion developed for large paintings that often covered the entire surface of the garden walls. Not unlike travel posters of exotic places in our own day, they suggested lush gardens, rare plants, birds, and costly marble sculptures, or game preserves such as actually existed on great estates. Such garden painting became highly popular again in Europe in the neoclassical period. In the reconstructions of the early nineteenth century, the modest spaces take on a festive character” (183). Brodsky suggests that Conrad’s frequent use of the symbolism of ashes and dust may be indebted to Lord Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii. I find, however, that it is more than his allusion to ash and dust that recalls the earlier work. See Brodsky, 138. Compare “the thought of entering that room, out of which she was gone as completely as if she had been dead” (AG, 249) and “as if she were lying dead already on his oppressed heart” (351, my emphasis). This recalls the manner in which Rita is first presented in the novel. She is “an object of art from some unknown period” (AG, 36). Jensen’s Gradiva: A Pompeiian Phantasy was first published in German in 1903. Freud’s analysis was published shortly thereafter in May 1907. Interestingly, the first English translation of Jensen’s tale appeared in the 1917 edition of Freud’s Delusion and Dream. I do not offer here an independent reading of Jensen’s Gradiva but attend to Freud’s analysis of the tale. My citations therefore follow Freud’s text rather than the original tale. The “friend from the past” clearly resonates with the first words of The Arrow of Gold. George’s letters to an old friend provide the anonymous narrator with the information he needs to compile the narrative. My emphasis—compare “insensible” and “lifeless.” Freud, Jensen’s, 22. The novel ends with the loss of Rita and of the one emblem she leaves George. His illusion is consequently reaffirmed as he is left with nothing but the memory. On this same page, Strachey appends a footnote in order to alert the reader to the fact that Freud adopted Pompeii as a simile for repression in further studies as well (as, for example, in the “Rat Man”). This quotation demonstrates Freud’s “working through” process. Recovery entails a restoration of memory. This is a recurring thematic preoccupation that is found in the works discussed in this thesis as in other Conrad novels. This literary preference influences not only Conrad’s thematic interests but his technique, as in his frequent use of framing narratives (as is found in The Arrow of Gold and Heart of Darkness). Ian Watt discusses “delayed decoding,” yet another technical device that occasions deferral. This technique is

Notes

27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

32.

183

described as follows: “to present a sense impression and to withhold naming it or explaining its meaning until later” (175). Admittedly, Conrad’s delays and mediations often end in an unmasked presence, as in Watt’s examples of the explosion on the Judea in “Youth” and the arrow attack on Marlow’s boat in Heart of Darkness. Although the flying sticks are finally named (as arrows), it is clear that there is an important emphasis on the perceptual stage of indeterminacy that, as we see in The Arrow of Gold, foreshadows the final unmasking. It is crucial to point out, however, that as opposed to Conrad’s “irrealizable desire,” Derrida’s notion of promise is inextricably linked with ethical responsibility, “a responsibility towards tomorrow” (Archive, 36). Incidentally, the dictionary definition of a has-been is “one who or that which is no longer effective, successful, popular, etc.” (Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language). Erdinast-Vulcan’s reading of the novel underlines several of these “oddities” including the overtone of disillusionment that pervades the Second Note. While my reading adheres to the metaphysical interplay of the absent and the present (the covert and the overt plot), Erdinast-Vulcan’s focus is generic. She claims that there is a constant battle between the generic conventions of the romance and the forces that constantly transgress and undermine it. See Erdinast-Vulcan, 188. As opposed to The Arrow of Gold, the narrator in Under Western Eyes is an intradiegetic narrator (although he is initially presented as extradiegetic). His narration nevertheless includes quite a number of incidents that he does not witness. Hence, like the anonymous narrator in The Arrow of Gold, the English teacher bases his narrative on a “document [. . .] something in the nature of a journal, a diary, yet not exactly that in its actual form” (UWE, 55). The narrator tells the reader that his account is “extracted from a pile of manuscript which was apparently meant for the eye of one woman only” (3). In the explanations that follow, the reader learns that this woman is a childhood friend of the writer and that he tells her of his adventures in compliance with her request to hear them. This evokes a further comparison with several underlying features in Under Western Eyes. In the earlier novel, the narrator receives Razumov’s journal from Natalia, to whom it was addressed. While the dynamics of the relationship between George, the addressee, and the narrator are not discussed in The Arrow of Gold, we may nevertheless ask why the narrator chooses to publicize such private documents and in what manner he or she acquires them. This recalls Marlow’s and Stein’s plan to ship Jim off to Patusan. Marlow remarks that both he and Stein did not have “a clear conception of what might be on the other side when we, metaphorically speaking, took him up and hove him over the wall with scant ceremony” (LJ, 229). Like Jim, George is propelled into an adventure that is, at least initially, concocted by a scheming pair of older men.

184

Notes

33. This clearly relates to the overpowering seduction of the otherwise-present object of desire, which is discussed in the first part of this chapter. 34. Moser sees Mills’s disappearance as one of Conrad’s technical failures in the novel: “Beyond these fumbling attempts to create interest in four undeveloped and in fact unrelated situations, Conrad focuses upon minor characters and seems to promise that significant future events will involve them. So George talks at length about his feelings of rapport with Mills [. . .]. Yet Mills drops out of the novel on page 105 not to return until page 348, when he nurses the wounded George back to health” (187). My reading suggests that this is not a technical failure but rather a ruse that facilitates the reader’s involvement in George’s story. The development of the love affair diverts the reader’s attention from Mills’s immoral conduct in the managing of the conspiracy and, inevitably, in the orchestration of the romance. 35. See Moser, 179; Morf, 78; and Meyer, who believes Rita to be “a composite creation derived from a number of sources, and from various epochs in [Conrad’s] life” (52). Elizabeth Campbell suggests that Conrad rewrites his past (by transforming his suicide attempt into a duel) for the sake of psychological recuperation. See Campbell, “Auto-Mythology in The Arrow of Gold: Conrad’s folly or Conrad’s letter to a Friend,” 115–43. 36. This, too, may be seen as a covert plot. If George is indeed one among a long line of men who mistreats Rita, then this plot involves the manner in which Rita finally frees herself from her abusers and reasserts her independence. Such a reading is pursued by Roberts. He writes, “This is what George asks of Rita all along: that her personality disappear, leaving him with her body on which to project his own fantasy of the ‘woman of all times.’ This fantasy links George to Allègre, casting Rita in the role of the dummy on which Allègre draped the clothes denoting the roles that he imposed on it and Rita alike” (Roberts, “Gaze,” 531–32). Conrad’s letter seems to support this interpretation. He emphasizes that it is not his protagonist but Rita who provides the novel’s focus. He explains that the novel deals with “her private life: her sense of her own position, her sentiments and her fears. It is really an episode. . . . That it is also an episode in the general experience of the young narrator (the book is written in the first person) serves only to round it off and give it completeness as a novel” (Letter to S. A. Everitt, dated February 18, 1918, in JeanAubry, Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters, 201). While Roberts suggests that the overt plot of romance masks a covert plot of Rita’s attempted escape from male exploitation, I have chosen to focus on the overt plot of romance and the covert plot of conspiracy. 37. Her appearance at the place of the duel once it is concluded suggests that she is forewarned. However, as she leaves the hiding place, returns to her former residence, and arrives only once the duel has finished, it seems that she does not try to prevent George from participating in a

Notes

185

duel that is likely to result in his death. This may further substantiate Schwarz’s reading whereby “George does not fully arouse Rita’s passions.” As opposed to my reading, Schwarz focuses on the overt plot where he finds support for his interpretation in “the serendipitous nature of the beginning of their affair and by her leaving him after the duel” (Later, 131). 38. I have presented this chapter as dealing with an otherwise present that is created through a process inverse to the one we encounter in Under Western Eyes. This differentiation may appear false at this juncture, for it is clear that the earlier novel similarly hides a covert plot, namely, Razumov’s espionage mission. True, in both novels the covert plot is concealed; in both cases the readers are duped. And yet, whereas the covert plot is made overt in the fourth part of Under Western Eyes, it remains covert throughout The Arrow of Gold (although my contention is that the framing Notes allow a certain glimpse of the workings of the covert plot). If the initial ellipsis in the earlier novel elicits a constant attempt to fill in the gap, both by the participating characters and the readers, the text finally provides all with the correct solution: presence prevails. As we have seen, in The Arrow of Gold we encounter a search not for presence but for absence. This text does not require such a process of unveiling; the covert plot is nothing but a haunting suggestion throughout. Despite this underlying difference, we find that in both novels this haunting originates in a textual fissure. In Under Western Eyes this occurs with the transition from Part First to Part Second of the novel. Mikulin’s unanswered question at the end of Part First openly testifies to an ellipsis, warning the reader that an underlying question remains unanswered. Conrad does not provide such a clue in the transition from the First Note to George’s narrative in The Arrow of Gold. The reader may therefore attribute the discrepancies between the two sections to the changed style that comes with the transition from one narrator to the other, from a third person account to a first person experience (and vice versa in the transition to the Second Note). As opposed to Under Western Eyes, the unanswered questions generated by these transitions (if they are generated at all) remain implicit. 39. Needless to say, the covert plot is unmasked through a process of interpretation. Here, too, the text opens up a limitless number of possibilities, as one critical reading often negates the other. Recalling the critical polemic surrounding Rita’s character, we find that Michael Greaney proposes a contradictory reading of the novel to mine, suggesting that the incongruity between the inner narrative and the framing notes is a result of “the editor’s enthusiasm for narratives of male adventure [which] is itself resisted by the text: Don Carlos’s armed struggle, and M. George’s role in it as a gunrunner, function as an almost vestigial subplot, entirely subordinated to the social intrigues surrounding Doña Rita” (45).

186

Notes

40. We recall Marlow’s words at an attempt to explain Jim’s tantalizing allure: “The views he let me have of himself were like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a thick fog [. . .]. They fed one’s curiosity without satisfying it; they were no good for purposes of orientation” (LJ, 76).

C hapter 6 1. Significantly, the cover of the first edition of the novel, published in 1925, depicts a picture of the Genovese landscape, over which a godlike (both in its immense proportion and its shadowy-like appearance) Napoleon presides. Napoleon’s ghostly appearance on the novel’s jacket thus places him outside the text as part of the paratext. 2. Andrea White suggests that in writing his personal reminisces Conrad was preoccupied with the need to construct for himself an English identity (see White, 241–50). A similar claim could be made in relation to Conrad’s political writings, among them “Autocracy and War.” Such a hypothesis would then further complicate the question of Conrad’s shifting attitudes toward Napoleon. 3. My translation. Conrad writes, “L’action se passera autour de l’ile d’Elbe dans l’ombre de l’Empereur—car Il ne paraîtra pas, ou seulement pour un instant” (letter to H. D. Davray, dated April 6, 1913, in Conrad, Lettres, 126). 4. Moore refers to Henry James’s preface to The Turn of the Screw where James writes, “Only make the reader’s general vision of evil intense enough, I said to myself—and that already is a charming job—and his own experience, his own imagination, his own sympathy (with the children) and horror (of their false friends) will supply him quite sufficiently with all the particulars. Make him think the evil, make him think it for himself, and you are released from weak specifications” (xxi–xxii). 5. Stendhal’s The Charterhouse of Parma is similarly written in the shadow of the Emperor. As opposed to Suspense, however, Stendhal’s novel begins on the eve of Napoleon’s final defeat. The protagonist’s dream of fighting in Napoleon’s army is consequently realized only to be shattered. Here Napoleon does not haunt the text from his exile but is rather mimetically dropped, receiving no further mention in the predominant part of the novel. 6. I address this “borrowing” in greater detail in the course of the chapter. 7. With regard to the latter novel, Moore interestingly notes that “the presentation of Napoleon in Suspense bears comparison with [Conrad’s] treatment of Nelson in The Rover” (“Defense,” 109). 8. Fredric Jameson’s commentary on the transition from realism to modernism in Conrad’s writing may provide a relevant framework here. He writes that in Conrad’s writing, “we have not only the transition from the naïve naming of the outside world in realism to the presentation of the image, a transition to modernism and impressionism which is itself

Notes

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

187

dependent on the very ideology of the image and sense perception and the whole positivist pseudoscientific myth of the functioning of the mind and the senses; we also have a preselection of narrative material such that thought can be fully realized in images, that is to say, a rejection of the conceptual in favor of the two great naturalist psychic and narrative texts of daydreaming and hallucination” (Jameson, 212). The Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad notes that “many Poles without a country saw Napoleon’s victories over the powers that had partitioned Poland as a chance to reconstitute their vanished homeland, and a minimal Poland was briefly reconstituted under Napoleon as the Duchy of Warsaw” (268). With direct reference to the novel, it is significant that the Austrian occupation created a strong support for Napoleon among the Italians. Thus, for example, Spire’s anthropological observations lead to his comment to Cosmo that “[the Genoves] don’t like the Austrians, sir” (S, 50). These national feelings clearly run parallel to the hopes invested in Napoleon by the Polish people, suggesting that the political situation that Conrad depicts in Suspense may have been inspired by his own historical awareness of a very similar turmoil. The Vienna Congress was held between September 1814 and June 1815 with the object of remaking Europe after the downfall of Napoleon I. In its aim to restore the balance of power, the congress made numerous territorial adjustments, of which we should perhaps note the redivision of Poland (which Napoleon had created as the Duchy of Warsaw) between Russia and Prussia. Also relevant are the geographical division of Italy (dashing the Italians’ hope for a united Italy) and the restoration of the kingdom of Sardinia, which recovered Savoy, Nice, Piedmont, Liguria, and Genoa (“The Vienna Congress,” May 12, 2008, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Vienna-C.html). The Battle of Austerlitz, fought in 1805, is considered one of Napoleon’s greatest military victories. The battle between the French army and the Austrian and Russian forces led by Emperor Francis I and Czar Alexander was fought shortly after Napoleon seized Vienna. Both the Russians and the Austrians were defeated, the allied army disintegrated, and the Austrians were forced to negotiate peace with the French. One may argue that as a Royalist, Adele cannot be said to have “contradictory” feelings for the Emperor. A close reading of her life story will nevertheless reveal a certain ambiguity. She tells Cosmo, “They hated and despised the imperial power, but most of them were ready to cringe before it. Yes, even the best were overawed by the real might under the tinsel of that greatness. Our circle was very small and composed of convinced royalists, but I could not share their hatreds and contempts. I felt myself a Frenchwoman. I had liberal ideas” (142). Conrad seemed to be fond of the ironic potential of this biblical passage. Michael Greaney notes a comparable intertext in Victory, where it is said that “whenever three people came together in his hotel, [Schomberg]

188

14.

15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

Notes took care that Heyst should be with them” (Victory, 26). Here Greaney claims that the allusion “suggests that there is something not merely malicious but sacrilegious about Schomberg’s gossip” (40). In opposition, in “The Duel,” Conrad did not spare his readers a description of the Napoleonic downfall and its aversive implications (although, here, what is represented is the first downfall at the time of his expulsion to Elba). Here he writes of “the humiliating contacts and the perplexities of conduct which assailed the men of Napoleonic empire at the moment of its downfall” (ASS, 219). In addition, Moore suggests that Conrad’s choice to avoid the development of this plotline is related to its problematic nature. He writes, “Adèle is not only married, but may in fact be Cosmo’s half-sister, doubling the taboo against any manifestation of his romantic feelings” (Moore, “Sense,” 683). Alternatively, Susan Jones proposes that “after experimenting with the representation of women in the romance genre, Conrad himself retreated back into the scenario of his earlier work—into the narratives of man and male bonding” (“Stepping,” 321). Although I relate specifically to the New Testament and to the Memoirs, a more comprehensive list of possible texts that Conrad consulted in his writing is found in Van Marle’s and Moore’s “The Sources of Suspense.” See, for example, Frank Kermode’s The Sense of an Ending. Moore states that Curle’s treatment of Conrad’s last novel demonstrates an eagerness to “exploit the sentimental pathos surrounding a ‘great’ but mysteriously unfinished work” (“Unfinished,” 238). This prevalent neglect may nevertheless derive from an enduring wish for closure that haunts scholars to this day. As Kermode writes elsewhere, “We are in love with the idea of fulfillment [. . .]. In this we resemble the writers of the New Testament and their immediate successors, who were, though much more strenuously, more exaltedly, in love with fulfillment [. . .]. Such expectations of fullness survive, though in attenuated form, in our habitual attitudes to endings” (Genesis, 65). Moore has already noted the “surprising number of references to ‘unfinishedness’ in the novel” (“Sense,” 685). He does not, however, distinguish between the different trajectories of the finite and the infinite. In hindsight, this anxiety (if it indeed relates to Conrad’s own experience in the writing of his novel) appears to have been justified. We have already seen that, as Moore notes, “neglect of [Suspense] has been virtually absolute” (“Defense,” 99). Indeed, the heirs will have nothing to do with it. He writes, “Conrad often expressed doubts about his own ability to finish this last bit of work. And this concern is reflected in a surprising number of references to ‘unfinishedness’ in the novel itself” (Moore, “Sense,” 685). Conrad’s letter to John Galsworthy dated February 22, 1924.

Notes

189

24. In the same letter, Conrad describes his novel as “runaway,” “because I’ve been after it for two years (the Rover is a mere ‘interlude’) without being able to overtake it” (Jean-Aubry, 339–40). 25. Letter to Mr. and Mrs. Galsworthy, dated May 10, 1921. 26. Letter to Mrs. Galsworthy dated February 9, 1922. 27. This, too, from the letter to Galsworthy, February 22, 1924. 28. Which, more literally, would bring Conrad’s text closer to James’s through Cosmo’s renunciation of his feelings for Adèle. 29. We cannot decide whether we have here a return to or a return of the improper end without applying our own transgressive resolution to the text. In order to avoid doing so, we must allow this tension, too, to remain unresolved.

This page intentionally left blank

R eferences

Aristotle. Poetics. In The Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces. Edited by Maynard Mack. 6th ed. Vol. 2. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992. Armstrong, Paul B. The Challenge of Bewilderment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987. Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953. Bakhtin, Mikhail. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Translated by Caryl Emmerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. Batchelor, John. Lord Jim. London: Unwin Hyman, 1988. Baxter, Katherine Isobel. “The Rescuer Synopsis: A Transcription and Commentary.” Conradian 31, no. 1 (2006): 117–27. Begnal, Michael H. “The Ideals of Despair: A View of Joseph Conrad’s The Arrow of Gold.” Conradiana 3 (1971–72): 37–40. Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. Translated by Harry Zohn. London: Fontana, 1992. Bennington, Geoffrey, and Jacques Derrida. Jacques Derrida. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Berthoud Jacques. Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Bloom, Harold, ed. Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim. New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Bossiére, Camille R. La. Joseph Conrad and the Science of Unknowing. Fredericton, N.B.: York, 1979. Brodsky, G. W. Stephen. “Joseph Conrad and the Art of Unlove: Art, Love and the Deadly Paradox of Service.” Conradiana 31 (1999): 131–41. Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. Campbell, Elizabeth. “Auto-Mythology in The Arrow of Gold: Conrad’s Folly or Conrad’s Letter to a Friend.” Conradiana 25 (1992): 115–43. Carabine, Keith. The Life and the Art. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996. Cave, Terence. “Joseph Conrad: The Revenge of the Unknown.” In Joseph Conrad Critical Assessments. Edited by Keith Carabine. Mountfield: Helm Information, 1992.

192

References

Conrad, Joseph. Almayer’s Folly and Tales of Unrest. London: J. M. Dent, 1947. ———. The Arrow of Gold. London: J. M. Dent, 1947. ———. Heart of Darkness. London: J. M. Dent, 1946. ———. Lettres Francaises. Edited by G. Jean-Aubry. Paris: Gallimard, 1929. ———. Letters of Joseph Conrad to Richard Curle. Edited by Richard Curle. New York: Crosby Gaige, 1928. ———. Lord Jim. London: J. M. Dent, 1946. ———. An Outcast of the Islands. London: J. M. Dent, 1949. ———. The Nigger of the Narcissus. London: J. M. Dent, 1945. ———. Nostromo. London: J. M. Dent, 1947. ———. Notes on Life and Letters. London: J. M. Dent, 1949. ———. A Personal Record. London: J. M. Dent, 1919. ———. A Set of Six. London: J. M. Dent, 1954. ———. The Shadow-Line. London: J. M. Dent, 1950. ———. Suspense. London: J. M. Dent, 1954. ———. Suspense. London: William Heinemann, 1925. ———. Tales of Hearsay. London: J. M. Dent, 1955. ———. ‘Twixt Land and Sea. London: J. M. Dent, 1947. ———. Under Western Eyes. London: J. M. Dent, 1947. ———. Victory. London: J. M. Dent, 1948. Conroy, Mark. “Ghostwriting (in) ‘Karain.’” Conradian 18, no. 2 (1994): 1–16. Cox, C. B. Joseph Conrad: The Modern Imagination. London: J. M. Dent, 1974. Daleski, H. M. “Dispossession and Self-Possession.” In Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and Under Western Eyes. Edited by C. B. Cox. London: Macmillan, 1981. Deresiewicz, William. “Conrad’s Impasse: The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’” and the Invention of Marlow.” Conradiana 38, no. 3 (2006): 205–27. Derrida, Jacques. Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. Translated by Eric Prenowitz. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. ———. Margins of Philosophy. Translated by Alan Bass. Chicago: Harvester, 1982. ———. Specters of Marx. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. London: Routledge, 1994. Dodson, Sandra. “Conrad and the Politics of the Sublime.” In Conrad and Theory. Edited by Andrew Gibson and Robert Hampson. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. Eliot, T. S. Selected Poems. London: Faber and Faber, 1961. Erdinast-Vulcan, Daphna. Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper. Oxford: Clarendon, 1991. Felman, Shoshana. “Turning the Screw of Interpretation.” Yale French Studies 55/56 (1978): 94–207.

References

193

Fisher, Barret. “Narrative Form and Historical Understanding in Nostromo.” Conradiana 21, no. 1 (1989): 15–28. Fleishman, Avrom. Conrad’s Politics: Community and Anarchy in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967. Freud, Sigmund. “Delusions and Dreams in Jensen’s Gradiva.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Translated by James Strachey. Vol. 9. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1959. ———. “Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. Translated by James Strachey. Vol. 12. London: Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1958. Gasiorek, Andrzej. “‘To Season with a Pinch of Romance’: Ethics and Politics in Lord Jim.” In Conrad and Theory. Edited by Andrew Gibson and Robert Hampson. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998. Geddes, Gary. Conrad’s Later Novels. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1980. Genette, Gérard. Narrative Discourse. Translated by Jane E. Lewin. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1980. Girard, René. Deceit, Desire and the Novel. Translated by Yvonne Freccero. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1965. Greaney, Michael. Conrad, Language and Narrative. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Guerard, Albert J. Conrad the Novelist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1958. Guetti, James. The Limits of Metaphor. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1967. Gurko, Leo. Joseph Conrad: Giant in Exile. London: Frederick Muller, 1965. Hampson, Robert. Cross-Cultural Encounters in Joseph Conrad’s Malay Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000. ———. Joseph Conrad: Betrayal and Identity. London: Macmillan, 1992. Haussman, Vincent. “Joseph Conrad and the Arts of Letters.” Conradiana 31 (1999): 148–71. Hawthorn, Jeremy. Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness. London: Edward Arnold, 1979. ———. “Repetitions and Revolutions: Conrad’s Use of the Pseudo-iterative in Nostromo.” Revuedes Lettres Modernes: Histoire des Idées et des Littératures 1342–48 (1998): 125–49. Hewitt, Douglas. Conrad: A Reassessment Cambridge, UK: Bowes & Bowes, 1952. James, Henry. The Novels and Tales of Henry James. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1909. Jameson, Fredric. The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act. London: Methuen, 1981.

194

References

Jean-Aubry, G. Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters. Vol. 2. London: William Heinemann, 1927. Jensen, Wilhelm. Gradiva. Translated by Helen M. Downey. Los Angeles: Son & Moon, 1993. Jones, Susan. Conrad and Women. Oxford: Clarendon, 1999. ———. “‘Stepping Out of the Narrow Frame’: Conrad’s Suspense and the Novel of Sensation.” Review of English Studies: A Quarterly Journal of English Literature and the English Language 49 (1998): 306–21. Joyce, James. The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Penguin, 1992. Karl, Frederick R. A Reader’s Guide to Joseph Conrad. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997. Kermode, Frank. The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979. ———. “Secrets and Narrative Sequence.” In On Narrative. Edited by W. J. T. Mitchell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. ———. The Sense of an Ending. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Knowles, Owen, and Gene M. Moore, eds. Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Lacan, Jacques. “Desire and the Interpretation of Desire in Hamlet.” Translated by James Hulbert. In Literature and Psychoanalysis. Edited by Shoshana Felman. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1982. ———. Ecrits. Translated by Alan Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton, 1977. Leavis, F. R. The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1948. Lester, John. “Conrad’s Narrators in The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus.’” Conradiana 12, no. 3 (1980): 163–72. Levin, Yael. “The Moral Ambiguity of Conrad’s Poetics: Transgressive Secret Sharing in Lord Jim and Under Western Eyes. Conradiana 39, no. 3 (2007): 211–28. Lester, John. “Conrad’s Narrators in The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus.’” Conradiana 12, no. 3 (1980): 163–72. Lothe, Jakob. Conrad’s Narrative Method. Oxford: Clarendon, 1989. ———. “Variations of Narrative in The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus.’” Conradiana 16, no. 3 (1984): 215–24. Lytton, Bulwar. The Last Days of Pompeii. London: George Routledge, 1834. Meyer, Bernard C. Joseph Conrad: A Psychoanalytic Biography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967. Miller, J. Hillis. Fiction and Repetition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982. Moore, Gene. “How Unfinished is Suspense.” In The Ugo Mursia Memorial Lectures: Second Series. Pisa: ETS, 2005. ———. “In Defense of Suspense.” Conradiana 25 (1993): 99–114.

References

195

———. “The Sense of Non-Ending: The Suspension of Suspense.” In Joseph Conrad Critical Assessments. Edited by Keith Carabine. Mountfield: Helm Information, 1992. Morf, Gustav. The Polish Heritage of Joseph Conrad. New York: Haskell House, 1965. Moser, Thomas. Joseph Conrad: Achievement and Decline. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957. Mudrick, Marvin. “The Artist’s Conscience and The Nigger of the Narcissus.” Nineteenth Century Fiction 11 (1957): 291–92. Peters, John G. Conrad and Impressionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 2001. Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time. Translated by Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Revised by D. J. Enright. Vol. 5. London: Vintage, 1996. Rado, Lisa. “Walking Through Phantoms: Irony, Skepticism and Razumov’s Self-Delusion in Under Western Eyes.” Conradiana 24, no. 2 (1992): 83–105. Rimmon, Shlomith. The Concept of Ambiguity—The Example of James. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977. ———. “A ‘Figure’ in Iser’s ‘Carpet.’” New Literary History 31, no. 1 (2000): 91–104. Roberts, Andrew Michael. Conrad and Masculinity. London: Macmillan, 2000. ———. “The Gaze and the Dummy: Sexual Politics in The Arrow of Gold.” In Joseph Conrad Critical Assessments. Vol. 3. Edited by Keith Carabine. Mountfield: Helm Information, 1992. Rosenfield, Claire. Paradise of Snakes: An Archetypal Analysis of Conrad’s Political Novels. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967. Rougement, Denis de. Love in the Western World. Translated by Montgomery Belgion. New York: Pantheon, 1956. Roussel, Royal. The Metaphysics of Darkness: A Study in the Unity and Development of Conrad’s Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971. Said, Edward W. Beginnings: Intention and Method. New York: Basic Books, 1975. ———. The World, The Text, and The Critic. London: Faber and Faber, 1984. Schwarz, Daniel R. Conrad: Almayer’s Folly to Under Western Eyes. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1980. ———. Conrad: The Later Fiction. London: Macmillan, 1982 Shakespeare, William. The Tragedy of King Lear. Edited by Jay L. Halio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Sicker, Phillip. Love and the Quest for Identity in the Fiction of Henry James. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980. Simmons, Allan. “Ambiguity as Meaning.” Dissertation, University of London, 1991.

196

References

———. “Conrad on James: Open-endedness and Artistic Affiliation.” In Conrad, James and Other Relations. Edited by Keith Carabine and Owen Knowles. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998. ———. “The Later Novels: Chance (1913), The Arrow of Gold (1919), The Rescue (1920), The Rover (1923) and Suspense (1925).” In A Joseph Conrad Companion. Edited by Leonard Orr and Ted Billy. Wesport: Greenwood, 1999. Stape, J. H. “Lord Jim.” In The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Stendhal. The Charterhouse of Parma. Translated by Margaret R. B. Shaw. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1972. ———. Love. Translated by Gilbert and Suzanne Sale. New York: Penguin Books, 1975. Szittya, Penn R. “Metafiction: The Double Narration in Under Western Eyes.” In Joseph Conrad Critical Assessments. Vol. 3. Edited by Keith Carabine. Mountfield: Helm Information, 1992. Tanner, Tony. Conrad: Lord Jim. London: Edward Arnold, 1963. ———. “‘Gnawed Bones’ and ‘Artless Tales’—Eating and Narrative in Conrad.” In Joseph Conrad: A Commemoration. Edited by Norman Sherry. London: Macmillan, 1976. ———. “Nightmare and Complacency—Razumov and the Western Eye.” In Conrad: Heart of Darkness, Nostromo and Under Western Eyes. Edited by C. B. Cox. London: Macmillan, 1981. Thornton, Lawrence. “Conrad, Flaubert and Marlow: Possession and Exorcism.” Comparative Literature 34, no. 2 (1982): 146–56. Todorov, Tzvetan. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. Translated by Richard Howard. Cleveland: Press of Case Western Reserve University, 1973. Toker, Leona. Eloquent Reticence: Withholding Information in Fictional Narrative. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1993. Tolstoy, Leo. War and Peace. Translated by Constance Garnett. New York: Random House, n.d. Van Marle, Hans and Gene Moore. “The Sources of Suspense.” In Conrad: Intertexts and Appropriations: Essays in Memory of Yves Hervouet. Edited by Gene M. Moore, Owen Knowles, and J. H. Stape. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997. “Vienna Congress.” 15 May 12. 2008. http://www.encyclopedia.com/ doc/1E1-Vienna-C.html. Watt, Ian. Conrad in the Nineteenth Century. London: Chatto & Windus, 1980. Watts, Cedric. The Deceptive Text: An Introduction to Covert Plots. Brighton: Harvester, 1984. White, Allon. The Uses of Obscurity: The Fiction of Early Modernism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.

References

197

White, Andrea. “Writing from Within: Autobiography and Immigrant Subjectivity in The Mirror of the Sea.” In Conrad in the Twenty-First Century. Edited by Carola M. Kaplan, Peter Lancelot Mallios, and Andrea White. New York: Routledge, 2005. Wilde, Oscar. The Importance of Being Earnest. London: Methuen, 1912. Wiley, Paul L. Conrad’s Measure of Man. New York: Gordian, 1966. Winner, Anthony. Culture and Irony: Studies in Joseph Conrad’s Major Novels. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1988. Zanker, Paul. Pompeii: Public and Private Life. Translated by Deborah Lucas Schneider. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

This page intentionally left blank

Index

absence, 3–21, 28, 37, 39–41, 50, 52, 66, 73–77, 91, 93, 103, 105, 107, 110, 112–15, 118, 121, 124, 125, 128, 130, 133, 134, 143–47, 153, 158, 167–70, 172, 173 achievement and decline, 20, 172, 176n10 adjectival insistence, 2, 3, 16, 18, 107, 152 aesthetic, 2, 3, 18–21, 26, 29, 32, 33, 41, 42, 51, 53, 92, 108, 123, 139, 141–43, 146, 157, 159, 168, 172–74 analysand, 94, 126 Aristotle, 156, 164 Armstrong, 37, 40, 45 Auerbach, 69, 70 Bakhtin, 38 Batchelor, 26, 30 Baxter, 27, 29 Begnal, 136, 137 Benjamin, 33, 35, 46 Bennington, 6 Berthoud, 30 Bloom, 25, 26, 40 Brodsky, 114 Brooks, 28, 50, 51 capitalizing, 42, 73–76, 88, 90, 93, 129, 141, 149, 151, 152, 170, 172, 173, 177n1 Cave, 82

chronological, 12, 16, 20, 21, 29, 40, 53, 65–67, 71, 135, 152 cliché, 63, 110, 173 confession, 36, 44, 45, 48, 74, 75, 89, 92–94, 98, 102, 128, 160 Conrad’s characters: Almayer, 1, 13, 24–26, 58; Decoud, 59, 61–64, 68–71; English teacher, 11, 12, 15, 21, 73, 77, 80–84, 87, 89–93, 130, 131, 178n8; George, 7, 12, 13, 110–38, 146; Gould, 58–63, 68–70; Haldin, 7, 11, 12, 74–77, 79–84, 86–91, 93, 94, 96–103, 111, 139, 143–45, 152; Jim, 1, 13, 19, 21, 23–26, 28–52, 79, 93, 107, 108, 143, 144, 151, 156, 160, 169, 173; Marlow, 14, 15, 19, 21, 25, 26, 29–52, 107, 153, 156, 160, 169, 171; Razumov, 1, 7, 11–13, 73–103, 111, 131, 152, 169; Rita, 7, 12, 105–38, 144, 146, 154, 156; Stein, 45–47, 49; Willems, 1, 24–26 Conrad’s works: Almayer’s Folly, 7, 12, 13, 15, 20, 21, 24, 25, 28, 38, 58; The Arrow of Gold, 105–38, 146, 168, 170, 172, 173; Chance, 33, 34; Heart of Darkness, 2, 14, 15, 25, 26, 33, 34, 49–51, 107, 173; Lord Jim, 6, 13, 15, 18–21, 23–53, 83, 93, 100, 107, 151, 153, 156, 160, 168, 170, 173; The Nigger

200

Index

Conrad’s works: (continued) of the ‘Narcissus,’ 18, 19, 26–34; Nostromo, 7, 12, 16, 20, 21, 168, 170; Notes on Life and Letters, 19, 141, 143, 155, 157, 162, 174; An Outcast of the Islands, 1, 25, 28; A Personal Record, 140, 141; A Set of Six, 142, 149; The Shadow-Line, 14, 94, 95; “A Smile of Fortune,” 108–11; Suspense, 7, 20, 21, 139–68; Tales of Hearsay, 14, 142; Tales of Unrest, 13, 16; Twixt Land and Sea, 109, 113; Under Western Eyes, 7, 11, 15, 20, 21, 73–104, 105, 111, 115, 129, 131, 137, 139, 145, 152, 168, 170; “Youth,” 33–35 Cox, 24, 38, 45, 87, 92, 97 Crime and Punishment, 94, 103 Curle, 9, 18, 140, 153–68, 171, 173, 174 Daleski, 97 deconstruction, 5, 125 Derrida, 5–7, 55–56, 64, 65, 74, 93, 95, 96, 116, 125–28. See also Derrida’s works: Archive Fever; Margins of Philosophy; Specters of Marx Derrida’s works: Archive Fever, 116, 125–28; Margins of Philosophy, 5, 7; Specters of Marx, 55–57, 64–66, 95, 96 desire, 5, 6, 8, 12, 13, 18–21, 25, 38, 40, 58, 68, 76, 85, 105–41, 146, 147, 150, 155, 156, 160, 169–74, 180n8 diegetic, 13, 17, 29, 32, 34, 58, 131 différance, 5, 6, 175n3 discourse, 5, 12, 26, 57, 58, 62, 67, 69–72, 99–101, 114

Eliot, 140 ellipsis, 11, 31, 73–75, 84, 90, 93, 103, 105, 129 Erdinast-Vulcan, 70, 87, 92, 95, 101, 113, 117 ethic, 21, 32, 36, 38, 40–44, 46, 47, 51, 100 exorcism, 94, 96, 98–102, 152 fantasy, 25, 75–77, 118, 119, 122, 146, 147 Felman,17 Fleishman, 97, 167 Freud, 98, 116–27 Gasiorek, 38 Geddes, 137 gender, 107, 108 Genette, 3, 4, 10, 15 genre, 68–70, 133 ghost, 12–14, 21, 55, 57–58, 61, 64, 65, 69, 71, 95, 99, 101, 114, 142, 151 Girard, 112, 113 glamour, 9, 18–20, 22, 42, 53, 141, 147, 168, 174 Greaney, 16, 46, 47, 67, 68, 83, 107 Guerard, 27, 28, 30, 35, 41, 49, 79, 84, 85, 87, 106, 108, 114, 172, 173 Guetti, 2, 13, 17 Gurko, 106–8, 111, 130 Hampson, 46, 47, 50, 100, 106 haunt, 1, 11, 12, 21, 24–26, 35, 38, 55–59, 61, 62, 65, 66, 68, 71, 93, 98, 99, 101–3, 105, 111, 114, 115, 119, 120, 122–26, 130, 138–40, 144, 145, 152, 159, 163, 171. See also hauntology

Index hauntology, 55, 56, 65, 66, 71 Haussman, 107 Hawthorn, 2, 3, 23, 31, 54, 66 hermeneutic, 8 , 9, 11, 25, 35, 41, 74, 82 historical, 12, 16, 21, 54–57, 63–69, 71, 108, 141–67, 173. See also history history, 21, 33, 35, 39, 40, 49, 53, 54, 56–59, 61–63, 65, 67–72, 84, 128, 132, 135, 136, 139, 142, 144–67 illusion, 9, 11, 13, 14, 18, 24–26, 38, 40, 50, 76, 108, 112, 113, 120, 123, 137, 140, 146, 174 imaginary, 7, 10, 23, 107–36, 140–53, 169, 170, 173 irony, 7, 16, 29, 37, 44, 46, 51, 58, 62, 63, 76, 81, 85, 99, 103, 152, 158, 163 irrealizability, 6, 21 irrealizable, 3, 12, 105–19, 124, 128, 129, 170–74. See also irrealizability iterative, 54, 55, 65, 66, 69, 70 James, 18, 141, 142, 151–62, 167, 171, 172 Jameson, 54, 66 Jensen, 116–28 Joyce, 42 Kermode, 157 Lacan, 80, 107, 122, 147 Leavis, 1–4, 6, 10, 16, 107, 154, 171 Lester, 27 Lothe, 27, 84 love, 7, 8, 18, 23, 34, 58, 62, 82, 87, 92, 95, 107–37, 144, 146, 147, 149, 153–56, 170–74 Lytton, 118

201

memory, 15, 16, 24, 35–38, 40, 46, 48, 51, 53, 55–57, 59, 61, 63, 66, 69, 71, 93, 94, 98, 99, 102, 111, 113, 118, 124–130, 163 metaphysics, 5, 57, 75, 85, 95, 101, 103, 105, 107, 110, 113, 116, 126, 137 Miller, 51 modernism, 107 Moore, 141, 142, 144, 148, 154, 155, 157, 159, 161, 165 moral, 12, 25, 31, 33, 34, 40, 41, 42, 46, 59, 62, 85, 94, 95, 100, 101, 108, 109, 139, 141, 146, 161, 174 Morf, 108 Moser, 15, 33, 34, 106, 109, 117, 151, 172, 173 Napoleon, 139, 152, 156, 158, 161, 164, 166, 167 narrative, 3, 8, 14–17, 27–43, 46–52, 120, 123, 128–38, 143, 152, 153, 158–61, 168, 169, 171, 174 narrator, 8, 14–16, 21, 27–31, 33, 34, 41, 42, 44, 50–52, 124, 129–35, 137, 160 objective, 23, 27, 29, 30, 32, 34, 41, 42, 67, 69, 91, 106, 112, 122, 127, 132, 145, 164 object of desire, 76, 107–11, 114, 116, 118, 122, 133, 134, 139, 146, 147, 160, 169 oral, 16, 17, 47, 49, 50, 67–69, 70, 71 otherwise, 10, 14, 20, 21, 23, 24, 26, 32, 38, 55, 56, 90, 162 otherwise present, 3, 7–14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 26, 28, 30, 32, 40, 51–54, 65, 72, 92–94, 97, 99–101, 105, 110, 115,

202

Index

otherwise present (continued) 116, 119, 124, 125, 128, 130, 139, 141, 143, 144, 151–53, 156, 159, 166, 169–74. See also otherwisepresent aesthetic; otherwisepresent characterization; otherwise-present conclusion; otherwise-present construct; otherwise-present form; otherwise-present quality; otherwise-present representation; otherwisepresent substitute otherwise-present aesthetic, 18, 21, 29, 39, 42, 49–52, 93, 139, 147, 156, 157, 170, 173 otherwise-present characterization, 31, 144, 154 otherwise-present conclusion, 140, 156, 157, 166, 168, 169 otherwise-present construct, 11, 12, 32, 50 otherwise-present form, 13, 130 otherwise-present quality, 17, 151, 168 otherwise-present representation, 20, 21, 31, 32, 38, 139, 173, 174 otherwise-present substitute, 12, 166 performative, 21, 26, 28, 29, 49, 58, 63, 65, 71, 87, 138, 140, 161, 168 Peters, 14 phantom, 21, 84, 94–97, 99–103, 105, 111, 112, 114, 145, 147 Pompeii, 21, 115–127 Proust, 15, 181n8 Rado, 84 reading effect, 18, 53, 167

real, 1–3, 10, 12–14, 16, 23–26, 31, 32, 61, 69, 73, 78, 83, 93, 94, 107, 108, 111, 122, 128, 137, 139, 142, 143, 146, 153, 164, 169 reflexive, 33, 39, 85, 150, 165 Rimmon, 8, 9, 171, 172 ritual, 95–102 Roberts, 106, 107, 114, 120 Rosenfield, 54, 70 Roussel, 38, 92 Said, 4, 5, 16, 17, 31, 53, 58 Schwarz, 38, 91, 106, 107, 173 Shakespeare, 73 Sicker, 18 signification, 7, 10, 62, 63, 65, 77, 81, 82, 93, 115, 123, 125, 147, 158, 164 silence, 1, 3, 7, 11, 12, 21, 62, 68, 69, 73, 74, 76–94, 100, 101, 103, 122, 150, 155, 162, 169 Simmons, 156, 161 simulacrum, 7, 10, 96, 121 specter, 1, 2, 55, 56, 58, 59, 64, 66, 94, 95, 100–102, 105, 126, 139, 142. See also spectral; spectrality spectral, 13, 21, 53, 55–57, 66, 102, 115, 125, 128, 130, 135 spectrality, 8, 56, 58, 65 Stape, 26, 31 Stendhal, 109, 111–13 storyteller, 13–17, 31, 33–35, 39, 42, 43, 46–48, 51, 67, 83, 93, 107, 137, 170, 171 subjective, 27, 31, 51, 58, 66, 82, 91, 114, 151, 160–62, 165, 170, 171 substitute, 8, 11, 12, 23, 56, 75, 111, 112, 115, 120–24, 139, 166, 169 supernatural, 94, 96, 97, 100, 101 Szittya, 82

Index Tanner, 16, 41, 98, 99 temporal, 5, 12, 14, 15, 18, 21, 30, 35, 37, 41, 49, 53–57, 63, 64, 70, 75–77, 126–28, 150, 152, 170, 172. See also temporality temporality, 53–56, 64 Todorov, 10, 11 Toker, 53, 54 Tolstoy, 142, 143

203

transmission, 16, 17, 36, 38, 47, 49, 50, 66, 67, 70, 71 Watt, 15, 16 Watts, 129, 130 White, 2 Wiley, 106, 114, 123 written, 16–18, 42, 49, 50, 57, 67–69, 97, 141, 154–60