Quest of the Spirit: From Suffering to Acceptance

84. An Blind & Endless Journey: Conrad's The Nigger of the Narcissus!

                                                               Joseph Conrad's Moment of Vision

           "And so it is with the workman of art. Art is long and life is short, and success is very far off. And thus, doubtful of strength to travel so far, we talk a little about the aim—the aim of art, which like life itself, is inspiring, difficult—obscured by mists. It is not in the clear logic of a triumphant conclusion; it is not in the unveiling of one of those heartless secrets which are called the Laws of Nature. It is not less great, but only more difficult." This passage from Joseph Conrad's Nigger of the Narcissus (Doubleday 1914), describes the author's theory of art. In this preface, Conrad's ideas parallel the thoughts of other famous literary figures. Like Aristotle, he suggests that art should be "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 every aspect" (Conrad 11). In essence, Conrad envisions an inherent moral intent within works of art that is, a reflection of universal truth. Just as Hamlet's revelation of Claudius' sins became a mirror of truth to Gertrude, so does art, like mimesis, reflect the truth to its observers, though at times it too speaks daggers to men's minds. According to Conrad, "The artist then, like the thinker or the scientist, seeks truth and makes his appeal. Impressed by the aspect of the world the thinker plunges into ideas, the scientist into facts—whence, presently, emerging they make their appeal to those qualities of our being that fit us best for the hazardous enterprise of living." In this respect, art serves as a light or a guide that directs the course of human behavior through the trials of everyday life. Conrad best expresses this sentiment in the following passage: "They speak authoritatively to our common-sense, to our intelligence, to our desire of peace or to our desire of unrest; not seldom to our prejudices, sometimes to our fears, often to our egoism—but always to our credulity" (Conrad 11). Ironically, the struggle of the artist to depict these universal truths in an external reality commences deep within the internal psyche of the writer. As in Plato's concept of the archetype; Freud's , of sublimation; or even Jung's collective unconscious; the writer must seek truths by delving deep within his own subconscious, to those ancient symbols or "archaic remnants," as Freud calls them. Conrad expresses a similar notion in his Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus: "Confronted by the same enigmatical spectacle the artist descends within himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal is made to our less obvious capacities: to that part of our nature which, because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily kept out of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities—like the vulnerable body within a steel armor." For Freud, this duality of impulse and reason expresses itself in a constant tension between the spirit and the flesh, and must be ever repressed, or sublimated into more productive channels. Ironically, men most often employ reasonable arguments to rationalize, or even disguise, their impulsive behavior. In Why Men Fight (1916), Bertrand Russell aptly describes the paradoxical nature of this duality: "In all the more instinctive part of our nature we are dominated by impulses to certain kinds of activity, not for desires for certain ends. Children run and shout, not because of any good which they expect to realize, but because of a direct impulse to running and shouting." Tragically, the same principle hold true for most adults. Russell says, "Grown men like to imagine themselves more rational than children and dogs, and unconsciously conceal from themselves how great a part impulse play in their lives." Here Freud's ideas on repression and dream censorship take form. As Russell suggests, "This unconscious concealment always follows a certain general plan . . . Most men, when their impulse is strong, succeed in persuading themselves, usually by a subconscious selectiveness of attention, that agreeable consequences will follow from the indulgence of their impulse" (Russell 8-9). Conrad next alludes to the artist's ability to capture a sense of the sublime, when he suggests that the artist "speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives, to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation—and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity—the dead to the living and the living to the unborn" (12). Like Coleridge and Wordsworth, Conrad finds meaning through the mystery and wonder of man's natural surroundings. The similarity is apparent in the following passage: "Sometimes, stretched at ease in the shade of a roadside tree, we watch the motions of a laborer in a distant field, and after a time, begin to wonder languidly as to what the fellow may be at. We see the movements of his body, the waving of his arms, we see him bend down, stand up, hesitate, begin again. It may add to the charm of an idle hour to be told the purpose of his exertions. If we know he is trying to lift a stone, to dig a ditch, to uproot a stump, we look with a more real interest at his efforts; we are disposed to condone the jar of his agitation upon the restfulness of the landscape; and even, if in a brotherly frame of mind, we may bring ourselves to forgive his failure" (15). For Conrad, even the seemingly most insignificant places in nature evoke feelings of wonder and pity, feelings strongly reminiscent of Aristotle's notion of ethos and pathos or Oedipus' tragic quest for truth. In this sense, the artist's idea of truth manifests itself as a moral, or what Conrad calls "the emotional atmosphere of the place and time.""Fiction," accordingly, "if it at all aspires to be art—appeals to temperament. And in truth it must be, like painting, like music, like all art, the appeal of one temperament to all the other innumerable temperaments whose subtle and resistless power endows passing events with their true meaning, and creates the moral . . . an impression conveyed through the senses, " not logic or reason. Ironically, it is this element of truth derived from the senses that enables the artist to employ what he defines as logic or reason in uncovering these universals. Here again, as did Aristotle, Conrad alludes to the necessity of a balance between form and substance, saying that "it is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending " of the two elements, "through an unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to color, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage." The purposeful life, for Conrad, hinges upon his theory of heroism. According to the author, "To snatch in a moment of courage, from the remorseless rush of time, a passing phase of life, is only the beginning of the task. The task approached in tenderness and faith is to hold up unquestioningly, without choice and without fear, the rescued fragment before all eyes in the light of a sincere mood. It is to show its vibration, its color, its form; and through its movement, its form, and its color, reveal the substance of its truth—disclose its inspiring secret: the stress and passion within the core of each convincing moment" (14). This is Lord Jim's moment of courage, on the Patna when he makes the choice to abandon the ship. This event marks the turning point in the subject's life, a new awareness of truth in what Conrad describes as "a moment of vision, a sigh, a smile—and the return to an eternal rest" (16).