So, too, in "Youth." A tale of the
spirit's triumph, of youth besting destiny? I do not see it so. To me
its significance, like that of "The Shadow Line," is all subjective; it
is an aging man's elegy upon the hope and high resolution that the years
have blown away, a sentimental reminiscence of what the enigmatical gods
have had their jest with, leaving only its gallant memory behind. The
whole Conradean system sums itself up in the title of "Victory," an
incomparable piece of irony. Imagine a better label for that tragic
record of heroic and yet bootless effort, that matchless picture, in
microcosm, of the relentlessly cruel revolutions in the macrocosm!
Mr. Follett, perhaps with too much critical facility, finds the cause of
Conrad's unyielding pessimism in the circumstances of his own life--his
double exile, first from Poland, and then from the sea. But this is
surely stretching the facts to fit an hypothesis. Neither exile, it must
be plain, was enforced, nor is either irrevocable. Conrad has been back
to Poland, and he is free to return to the ships whenever the spirit
moves him.
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