...
Sec. 3
My business, however, is not with the culture of Anglo-Saxondom, but
only with Conrad's place therein. That place is isolated and remote; he
is neither of it nor quite in it. In the midst of a futile meliorism
which deceives the more, the more it soothes, he stands out like some
sinister skeleton at the feast, regarding the festivities with a
flickering and impenetrable grin. "To read him," says Arthur Symons, "is
to shudder on the edge of a gulf, in a silent darkness." There is no
need to be told that he is there almost by accident, that he came in a
chance passerby, a bit uncertain of the door. It was not an artistic
choice that made him write English instead of French; it was a choice
with its roots in considerations far afield. But once made, it concerned
him no further. In his first book he was plainly a stranger, and all
himself; in his last he is a stranger still--strange in his manner of
speech, strange in his view of life, strange, above all, in his glowing
and gorgeous artistry, his enthusiasm for beauty _per se_, his absolute
detachment from that heresy which would make it no more than a servant
to some bald and depressing theory of conduct, some axiom of the
uncomprehending.
Pages:
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35