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Home , Chance (Conrad novel), The Arrow of Gold

Women and the Enlightenment of Seamen in Conrad's , and The Rescue

The shipwrecked sailor of Venus in the deep, naked, destitute. Porfyrius Love has turned my wits. Lope de Vega

It is a convention of Conrad criticism that Chance marks a critical landfall by Camille La Bossiere in the charting of his alleged artis• tic decline. According to Thomas Moser, in his highly influential : Achievement and Decline (1957), Conrad's failure results from a lack of "realism" in his dealing with love between man and woman. The convention, which owes much to Moser, argues that Conrad's art founders on sentimentality: in Chance (1913) and the bulk of his subsequent work, the sea. In the dream-world of his fiction, one-time master of the OTAGO fails to flotation in the sea is akin, in the make us see below the surface, and manner of a 'metaphysical' conceit, to presents us with black and white melo• immersion in the 'glasses' or 'well' dramatic portrayals of heroes and of a woman's eyes. Conrad, in a gen• heroines. This view, focusing mainly eral way, suggests the analogy in his on Chance, The Arrow of Gold, and The second novel, An Outcast of the Rescue, survives as a consequence of Islands (1896). On the same page as the failure of critics to take suf• the optical metaphor for the sea, "the ficiently into account the literal restless mirror of the Infinite," we facts in these fictions; and, inverse• read: "like a beautiful and unscrupu• ly (not without some irony in view of lous woman, the sea. . . was glorious Conrad's definition of humanity as in its smiles, irresistible in its "the intimate alliance of contradic• anger, capricious, enticing, illogical, tions,") (l)to discern the pervasive• irresponsible; a thing to love, a ness of the ironic logic of contraries thing to fear." (p. 12) And in Al- underlying the surface of facts, events mayer's Folly (1895), Conrad's first and characters in Conrad's fictional novel, Dain Maroola, an adventurous universe. Cosmo's reflection in Sus• Malay mariner, declares in the manner pense, Conrad's uncompleted final work, of a Renaissance sonneteer: "The sea, might serve to mark the way for such 0 Nina, is like a woman's heart." (p. critics: even "facts appraised by 174) The analogy is repeated in ex• reason" preserve "a mysterious com• plicitly optical terms in Chance: "He plexity and a dual character." (p. 38) [Anthony] plunged into them [Flora's The question considered here is wheth• eyes] . . . like a mad sailor taking a er Conrad's treatment of women, par• desperate dive . . . into the blue un• ticularly in Chance, The Arrow of Gold fathomable sea so many men have exe• and The Rescue, is simply melodramatic crated and loved at the same time." —and, by extension, whether Conrad's (p. 332) In (1900), the pro• portrayal of women in relation to sea• tagonist "plunge[s]" his "gaze to the men and to their enlightenment is also bottom of an immensely deep well," (p. simply sentimental. The facts and the 307) that is, Jewel's eyes, an action logic governing these facts will sug• analogous to his earlier infamous jump gest, I hope, a revision of a conven• from the PATNA "into a well—an ever• tion given authority by a critic who lasting deep hole." (p. Ill) Comment• considers Conrad "most convincing when ing on his having surrendered to Eros, he is most ironic."(2) the narrator in "A Smile of Fortune" uses a similar comparison: "To meet At the core of Conrad's vision of the her [Alice's] black stare was like way to truth lies woman and/or the looking into a deep well. ..." ('Twixt Land and Sea, p. 70) Monsieur reason; he falls "into the darkness," Georges confesses in The Arrow of Gold there to be granted "a vision of (1919) : "Woman and the sea revealed heaven—or hell." (p. 89) themselves together; " (p. 88) and the young mariner's comparison—in love, Woman in Conrad's fiction thus becomes he has "fallen as into a vague dream" a mirror of infinity, expressed as sea, (p. 93)—echoes Stein's Calderon-like well, dream and jungle. Like the mir• pronouncement in Lord Jim: "A man that rors in Stein's darkened house in Lord is born falls into a dream like a man Jim, women reflect "unfathomable who falls into the sea." (p. 214) depths," in which men come to see "Truth" and, at times, "Beauty," (p. This sea/woman/dream complex of analogy 216) as in the mirror of Dona Rita, a is also associated with the jungle. It double of La Gioconda and bearer of is in the jungle, for example, that an "arrow of gold" reflected in a Nina's "dreamy eyes" (Almayer's Folly, mirror. Both mirror and artifact p. 16) and Aissa's apparition to symbolically reconcile primitive Willems evoke a "dream" behind a "veil savagery and civilization. Extended woven of sunbeams and shadows." (An to reflect mirror, well, dream and Outcase of the Islands, p. 70) By jungle, the commonplace sea/woman extension, the wilderness becomes a analogy takes on a more complex sig• mirror of the Infinite, a jungle which nificance in Conrad's work, one which closes upon Conrad's protagonists "as perhaps for the very reason that it is the sea closes over a diver," in the a common-place and appears simple, has words of "." (p. 92) received little consideration in The savage woman in this last work studies of Conrad's achievement. Work• offers a mirror-image of this jungle/ ing within such an analogical context, sea: "And in the hush that had fal• we may discern in Chance, The Arrow of len suddenly upon the whole sorrowful Gold and The Rescue the ironic dream- land, the immense wilderness, the logic of infinity at work in the en• colossal body of the fecund and mys• lightenment of seamen by way of im• terious life seemed to look at her, mersion in Eros. pensive, as though it had been look• ing at the image of its tenebrous and Conrad's popular success was estab• passionate soul." "Heart of Darkness. " lished by Chance. A love interest and (p. 136) And it is significant that, what readers perceived as simple as Willems, enshrouded in vines, sur• Dickensian melodrama readily account renders to his desire for Aissa in for the reception. "Figures from An , he is Dickens—pregnant with pathos" (p. likened to a "swimmer" (p. 81) in un• 162) act their parts on stages similar to those of Bleak House and Little father-in-law. Also, Anthony's gener• Dorrit. A seriocomic trial; a nig• osity is difficult to distinguish from gardly relative (a cardboard manu• folly. His absurd goodness, like Mac- facturer) and his vulgar, unfeeling Whirr's insane reason in "," is family; a kind, simple and sympathetic equivocal; in the words of Marlow, his middle-aged couple; a heartless father; "simplicity. . . wears the aspect of a motherless child put upon by a cruel perfectly satanic conceit." (p. 351) world; and a rescue of a Damsel in Furthermore, to consider Chance as but distress by a Knight in shining another example of heightened Victor• armour—all are here in what appears ian melodrama is to ignore the central to be simply the tale of Flora's jour• position of Marlow's intellect in the ney from riches to rags to happiness. novel; to overlook Conrad's overt pre• occupation with the 'doubleness' or A good number of critics have focused words as analogues of the self and of attention on this ostensibly simple experience, a concern signalled by the and thus melodramatic aspect. Douglas ambivalent title; and to render sense• less the epigraph provided by the Hewitt, for example, finds in Chance, a Baroque Metaphysical physician, Sir "division of mankind into the camp of Thomas Browne, on the subject of for• good and bad."(3) Thomas Moser j udges tune, chance and providence.(6) that the "hero" and "heroine" are "sin• ned against, themselves unsinning," Chance is essentially a witty drama• and that the novel offers "an intended tization of the power of words. We moral of a rather dubious nature: love are invited early (p. 8) to sharpen between man and woman is the most im• our wits, as Marlow inverts the philo• portant thing in life."(4) And Flora sophical meaning of "substance" and according to Laurence Lerner, is "the "accident" in speaking of accidental simple and chivalrous idealization of similarities between Powell's name• the sailor."(5) The complex facts of sake, one of the five shipping-masters the tale, however, suggest another view. presiding in the basement of St. Flora, though she initially does not Katherine's Dock House, and Socrates: love Anthony, marries him for two con• "I mean he resembled him genuinely; tradictory motives: out of selfless• that is in the face. A philosophical ness (generosity to the lonely mind is but an accident." And Mar• Anthony) and out of selfishness (to low, who on at least four occasions provide a home for herself and her explicitly distinguishes the literal father once he leaves prison). Her from the figurative sense of a word presence on board the FERNDALE, (e.g., pp. 56, 73, 251, 282), revels, Anthony's ship, is nothing short of much like a Renaissance poet, in puns disastrous for the groom and his on "start" and "pedestrian," and in oxymora such as "brightly dull." (e.g., marrying him for security for herself pp. 37, 70, 42, 93) On one occasion, and her father; Mr. Fyne relays this he becomes a bilingual punster: "a information to Anthony, who proposes propos des bottes" (without rhyme or marriage to Flora by saying that he reason) offers a literal transfer to will marry her for her father's sake, "a propos of some lace." (p. 165) In a proposal which confirms Flora in not quite so lightly playful a vein her feeling of being unlovable. Other "horribly merry," p. 171), the reader words singled out for treatment as is reminded: "We live at the mercy of words—"sagacity," "simplicity," "com• a malevolent word." (p. 264) It is punction," "enthusiastic," "hopeless• by virtue of the word "Thrift" that ly," "intoxicated," and "marriage"— Flora's father, de Barral, builds a find their multiple meanings mirrored comic economic empire, which, in fail• in human action. And the failure of ing, deposits him in jail and leaves Flora and Mr. Fyne to distinguish be• his daughter vulnerable. "Tiff," tween "generosity" and "folly" (p. "convict," "pauper," "odious," "un• 251) ironically prefigures the foolish lovable," and "unfortunate" are desig• generosity ("imbecility ... or in• nated "words" with power over Flora's nocence," p. 158) of Captain Roderick destiny, (pp. 167, 263, 385) "That Anthony of the FERNDALE. The Damsel hostile word 'jailer'" gives the ab• and her Knight, like the novelist, are surd situation aboard the FERNDALE immersed in a "grey sea of words, "an air of reality," (p. 407) accord• words, words,"(7)there to experience ing to Powell. the ambiguities of "good" and "evil," "chance" and "design" in love: as The words of Flora's letter to Mrs. Marlow reflects, "the incapacity to Fyne, a feminist in the view of Mar- achieve anything distinctly good or low "as guileless of consequences as evil is inherent in our earthly con• any determinist philosopher," (p. 63) dition," (p. 23) a view not shared by when misread, wreak havoc on shore a number of Conrad critics. and at sea, while the empty, dangerous words ("poisonous pills," p. 61) of At the conceptual centre of the tale Mrs. Fyne's feminist manifesto find lie "chance" and "accident," verbal their consequences in Flora's actions: analogues of the fate of Flora and "no scruples should stand in the way Anthony. Marlow, the skeptical lexi• of a woman . . . from taking the cographer in this fiction, with shortest cut towards securing for her• Powell and "I" one of the three nar• self the easiest possible existence." rators, offers the pivotal definition" (p. 59) Flora writes to the Fynes "I don't mean accident in the sense that she does not love Anthony and is of a mishap. . . ," he specifies to Powell. "By accident I mean that or "intelligent design") from death which happens blindly and without in• by mishap and murder (both related to telligent design." (p. 36) Like its Flora's selfishness), he dies in an partial synonym "chance," "accident" accident. "Chance," like "accident," is "incalculable." (p. 100) The sig• may also be blind. Significantly, nificance of this definition for the "chance," in its ambivalent meaning entire tale becomes clear as Marlow, of "good luck" and "accident," is echoing a distinction in the Preface twice repeated on the final two pages to The Nigger of the NARCISSUS, dis• of the tale. criminates between "information" and "knowledge": the former is a deliber• Thus, like the FERNDALE, by analogy a ate acquisition of "facts;" the latter, "world . . . launched into space," "a chance acquisition." (p. 206) Like afloat on "a sheet of darkling glass belief in "the consoling mysteries of crowded with upside-down reflections," Faith," "knowledge" never comes by way (pp. 273, 274) Flora, twice immersed of "reason." (p. 206) It is "by in a mirror,(pp. 265, 384) and chance" that Flora's "ignorance" of Anthony, a once-"doubled" captain, the ways of the world is shattered, (p. 265) plunging into the "sea" of that she suffers "a sort of mystic Flora's eyes, (p. 332) are immersed wound," and that she comes to an "in• in "the complicated bad dream of formed innocence." (pp. 99, 118, 196) existence." (p. 443) They come to But is is also ironically by "chance" their respective ends, reversed reflec• (now in the sense of "good luck" or tions of "Chance," expressed in "opportunity") that, by two misfor• tunes (her father's suicide and her equivocal words. Their plunge is as husband's death in a marine mishap), much the result of inner compulsion as Flora comes to a happy ending. "Acci• it is of external circumstances: they dent ," in her case, may not have been are part of the dream-rlife of pervasive without intelligent design. ambiguity. As Conrad notes in a letter to Captain Edward Noble, "events are the outward sign of inward feelings." The fate of the absurdly virtuous (8) Immersed in this "doubleness" Anthony provides a reverse image. It ourselves, we may, in the manner of is "not by chance" (p. 216) ("good Marlow, a man given to "chasing some luck" and "accident" as defined by notion or other round and round his Marlow) that he meets Flora and enters, head," (p. 33) both confirm and deny out of selfishness (he is lonely) and (the narrator "I" observes: "with generosity (Flora is an orphan), a Marlow one could never be sure," p. "whirlwind" (p. 331) of passion ana• 94) the Elder Brother's assertion in logous to MacWhirr's typhoon. Though Comus: saved by "chance" ("good luck" and/ Of. . . that power The reader will recall that Powell's Which erring men call Chance, this start in his career, his initial I hold firm: "chance" or "opportunity," came as a Virtue may be assailed, but never result of duplicity (the two Powells hurt, gave Anthony the impression that they Surprised by unjust force, but not were nephew and uncle). The entire enthralled; novel illustrates the ambivalence of Yea, even that which Mischief "chance." The mirror of Chance, like meant most harm the mirror of Flora's eyes, the mu• Shall in the happy trial prove tually-reflecting mirrors of de most glory.(9) Barral and Anthony, and the doubling mirror of Flora's and Anthony's fate, To share with Moser the view that reflects complex ambiguities. The Chance is merely a didactic work of novel itself, as Conrad notes, is a sentiment is merely to confirm the as• "dream,"(10)a metaphor which might sertion in Comus. Marlow's celebrated be extended to the sea, "a sheet of sermon on love and life is, in part, darkling glass crowded with upside- ironic: down reflections." If there is a Of all the forms offered to us by message in this tale of "equivocal life it is the one demanding a situations," (p. 328) it is that couple to realize it fully, which within every thesis there is reflected is the most imperative. Pairing an inseparable antithesis. In drama• off is the fate of mankind. And tic terms, this dream-fiction may be if two beings thrown together, described as "a tragi-comedy," (p. mutually attracted, resist the 272) "slipping between frank laughter necessity, fail in understanding and unabashed tears," (p. 310) an and voluntarily stop short of the appropriate coincidence of opposites —the embrace, in the noblest in a tale controlled by the intelli• meaning of the word, then they are gence of a character fond of circular committing a sin against life, the logic, of "chasing some notion or call of which is simple. Per• other round and round his head." haps sacred, (p. 426) The irony implicit in this passage is Negative criticism of Chance, it seems drawn out some twenty pages later as to me, is more appropriately and more Marlow queries Powell on his inten• accurately based on the issue of tions toward Flora: "And the science words. For the reader who does not of life consists in seizing every find solving cryptograms congenial, the chance that presents itself. ... Do novel is certainly unsatisfying (un• you believe that?" to which Powell less, of course, the reader fond of replies: "Oh, quite!" (p. 446) sentimentality finds only melodrama in Chance). There are many words about ness of love." (The Rescue, p. 224) experience, relatively few portraying Georges and Lingard share the fate, it. With the metaphysical punster not of Guillaume de Lorris' Dreamer, Marlow as its controlling wit, Chance but of his Narcissus gazing into a is a refined verbal puzzle. While mirror: some readers may derive pleasure from this sort of complexity, others may . . . for when he knew find it a sterile exercise. Regardless Such passion must go e'er unsatis• of the decision the reader may reach as fied, to the quality of the complexity, its Although he was entangled in presence removes the novel far from Love's snare, mere melodrama. And that never could sure com• fort find . . . , The theme of the enlightenment of a He lost his reason in but little mariner by way of immersion in the un• space.(12) reason of love is more explicitly Immersed analogically in the mirror articulated in The Arrow of Gold of the infinite expressed as woman, (1919) and The Rescue (1920). Genetic• both Lingard and Georges leave the ally linked in terms of dates of con• world of logic and surface fact, and ception, the novels dramatize in wes• enter a world of contradiction and terly and easterly locations, centered illusion.(13) on Marseilles and Carimata Strait, respectively, the "initiation" of two The Arrow of Gold is generally con• sailors "into the life of passion," sidered the worst of Conrad's novels. (11) each involved in clandestine It is, in the opinion of Douglas operations for the taking of a king• Hewitt, "a work which his admirers do dom. While Monsieur Georges, by way well to overlook;"(14)"material for of Dona Rita, and Captain Lingard, by the gossip of biographers," according way of Edith Travers, are carried to to Albert Guerard;(15) "a tedious disaster and disillusionment in a sea best seller," in the judgment of of crosscurrents, dreams of kingdoms Lawrence Graver.(16) Frederick Karl, in Spain and Celebes are exploded. As (17)Thomas Moser(18)and Neville New- we read in The Rescue, Lingard "would house (19) concur in the reason for the go with the mysterious current; he verdict: Conrad's melodramatic, sen• would go swiftly—and see the end, the timental treatment of love. While the fulfilment both blissful and terrible." final verdict on this novel's literary (p. 219) The Psychomachia lost by two value in relation to Conrad's other dreamers in the "Garden of the Rose" long fictions is sound, the reason ad• is doubled in the body politic: "the duced for the verdict is not, I think, madness of battle: is like "the mad• quite as sound. Georges is not, in Moser's phrase, "the impeccable hero," overall impression of super-added sym• (20)nor is Rita the innocent heroine. bolism. The Arrow of Gold reads like As Ortega's grotesque paroxysm of a compendium of Conrad motifs. In anguish (in which there is "truth. . . addition, the use of an extended diary enough to move a mountain," p. 318) as a narrative device too easily leads reveals, Rita "is more than fit to be to the discursive rendering of emo• Satan's wife," (p. 318) and, as the tional states. The diarist tends to reader is reminded throughout the write about his experience. Corres• novel, Rita is "both flesh and pondingly, the symbols thus rendered shadow," a "real" being and a mimesis, are entirely too obtrusive. But it is (p. 135) She is a femme fatale (not also for the above reasons that The innocente), a living double of La Arrow of Gold is useful to the student Gioconda, (p. 211) "the principle of of Conrad: the pattern of Conrad's life charged with fatality." (p. 268) analogical thought as it relates to And Georges' naivete is indistinguish• the enlightenment of a mariner may be able from ignorance; he lacks "know• more readily perceived here than in ledge of evil," (p. 70) an ignorance any other of his fictions. which, as Conrad noted a year before the publication of The Arrow of Gold, Georges' spiritual odyssey begins is itself evil.(21)Georges is a double with his introduction to unreason. A of "Young Ulysses," (p. 12) to be en• young gentleman-sailor "in a state of lightened by immersion in the contra• sobriety" and of "refreshing ignor• dictions mirrored and reconciled in ance," (p. 31) for whom "life. . . Rita. His ignorance of the "dreadful [is] a thing of outward manifestation," order ... in the darkest shadows of (p. 87) enters the Cannebiere in Mar• life," (p. 283) his blindness to the seilles at carnival time. It is a nightmare-logic of existence, betrays street, like Marlow's river in "Heart Rita at a critical moment: his naivete of Darkness," "leading into the un• is itself part of this dark order. known." (p. 7) In a scene of bedlam and masks, he enters by analogy a A reading of The Arrow of Gold within "jungle," in which he meets "Night" the frame of dreams, analogical thought and "Faust." (pp. 9, 13) This hell• and enlightenment in infinity-as- like atmosphere serves as a prelude to woman suggests another reason for the the mariner's experience. During a novel's failure. Conrad's attempt to drinking bout in the midst of decaying work into this one piece virtually splendour, Georges comes to learn of every major motif found in his other Dona Rita, a Basque peasant converted works, in the hope, it would seem, of into an objet d'art by the aesthete multiplying levels of meaning and of Henri Allegre and now an heiress and broadening ranges of effects in an a Carlist agent. Leaving a house of mirrors reflecting fantastic plants, 88, 93) Under the spell of an "En• the mariner passes through a chequered chantress" "as old as the world," (pp. "black-and-white hall;" (p. 60) he is 105, 101) Georges enters a timeless in a state akin to that of ,Decoud in element similar to the jungle in , his "head. . . full of con• "Heart of Darkness." fused images." (p. 61) Subsequently, Georges learns of the The mutually-reflecting symbols of tension of opposites at work in Dona mirror, jungle, woman and sea, anal• Rita and art. Unlike an objet d'art, ogues of infinity, are all obviously Rita possesses a personal history which deployed as Georges descends further she relates, a history focusing on a into unreason. The significance of series of brushes with savage passion; his first meeting with Dona Rita is the initial episode is prefaced by a marked by a mirror: they walk on a gaze in a mirror, symbol not only of "floor inlaid in two kinds of wood self-knowledge, but also of art as a . . . , reflecting objects like still reflection of life. With the light of water." (p. 68) At once, Georges love for Rita, "both flesh and sha• feels a "stranger" in the "moral dow," (p. 135)(23)comes over his life region" of "incomprehensible emotions." a darkness, "the inseparable companion (p. 69) He becomes, like Renouard in of all light" (p. 125)—a union of "The Planter of Malata," an "explorer" opposites reflected in Rita herself. of "an undiscovered country;" (p. 69) Like the crew of the NARCISSUS(24)and also, somewhat like Marlow in "Heart the chief mate of the PATNA,(25)he of Darkness," he is compared to a finds himself "hot and trembling" in "stranger. . . stumbling upon a hut of the midst of "absurdities and contra• natives" possessed of secret "know• dictions." (pp. 141-142) Thus en• ledge of evil." (pp. 69-70) In addi• chanted by "a fateful figure seated at tion, like Pearl in "A Smile of For• the very source of the passions that tune," this country is the land of have moved men from the dawn of ages," "fairy tale," (p. 96) a place entered (p. 146) he experiences "unspeakable "for good or evil." (p. 87) Meeting bliss and inconceivable misery." (p. Rita, the young mariner enters an "in• 151) Love, art and savage passion are finite reverie," "a vague dream," in mutual reflections, all three recon• which he is at once both "hot" and ciled in the mirror of the infinite "cold like ice." (e.g.: pp. 77, 86, which is a woman's eyes: "She was that 105, 93, 106, 99).(22) "Immortal art," which is to be contemplated to all In• in which are reconciled "gleams" and finity." (p. 288) This phase of en• "shadows," is reflected in Dona Rita's lightenment ends with Georges gazing "enigmatic eyes," which, like the sea, into the "enigmatical . . . black are "unfathomable," "illimitable." (pp. glass" (p. 152) of Rita's eyes. Like Willems in the jungle of An Out• for it reflects, like Rita's eyes, cast of the Islands, Georges is left "the brilliance of sunshine together as if "wrestling with a nightmare," with the unfathomable splendour of the (p. 154) during which he meditates on night." (pp. 242-243) And following his feelings before a looking-glass. a shipwreck, Georges returns to Mar• And, like Willems, he yearns for an seilles and a carnival of bedlamites, escape from "dreams," only to see with• an objective manifestation of his own in the mirror of the self that he is in loss of "lucid thinking." (p. 272) He love with La Gioconda, the femme fatale has come full circle in a twelve• of the "inscrutable smile." (pp. 163, month period likened to "a daydream 169, 211) In the arms of Rita, he . . . containing the extremes of lives in "a dream-like state," "that exultation, full of careless joy and warm and scented infinity, or eter• of an invincible sadness." (p. 62) nity." (p. 219) But this dream is For Georges there is no refuge from shattered as his love is rejected by unreason on land or at sea. Dona Rita. As a consequence, Georges suffers "inner destruction" in a time• Having returned to land, Georges now less state, signalled as in The Nigger enters the final phase of his en• of the NARCISSUS(26)and Lord Jim,(27) lightenment. And it is only in this by a reversal of optical perspective: part of The Arrow of Gold that Conrad "The small flame had watched me let• avoids a pastiche effect. Georges ting myself out." (pp. 229-230) His descends "into the abyss," where he state approaches madness as he shivers comes to perceive: "... I had given violently in a warm night. up the direction of my intelligence before the problem; or rather that the The next phase of enlightenment finds problem had dispossessed my intelli• Georges seeking refuge from the infin• gence and reigned in its stead side by ite. He returns to sea in the hope of side with a superstitious awe. A finding in the "occupation, protec• dreadful order seemed to lurk in the tion, consolation, the mental relief darkest shadows of life." (p. 283) As of grappling with concrete problems, a result of his accident at sea, he the sanity one acquires from close had met Baron H., who, in turn, had contact with simple mankind." (p. 242) put him in touch with the courier The young mariner finds comfort in the Ortega, a double-agent seeking the des• sight of "perfectly sane" ship• truction of Rita and the Carlists, who, wrights, (p. 245) But the sea itself, in turn, thanks to a letter—a "mirror" as Captain Anthony in Chance and the in which "she could see her own image" captain-narrator of The Shadow-Line (p. 264)—from Georges to Rita, has a had learned, is an equivocating mirror, chance to contact her. The perception of this design suggests to Georges a of his lust. Georges, for a moment a satanic logic: "It is only the Devil, "drowning man," (p. 289) his brain "in they say, that loves logic." (p. 283) a whirl," (p. 308) regains command of Though he does not see himself as "a himself, "working in a logical succes• victim of the Devil," (p. 283) the sion of images," (p. 309) but, iron• sequence of events in which he and ically, the self-possession proves un• Rita are ensnared suggests a dark order: necessary. Ortega, the mad, primitive "all that was enough to make one "warrior" surrounded by art, seriously shudder—not at the chance, but at the wounds himself. And, soon after, in a design." (p. 283) This insight proves double objectification of the coinci• futile to Georges, however, as he dence of savagery and refinement in 1 love and art, Georges hurls the arrow takes Ortega to Rita s house, where, of gold at Rita, and she returns it. unknown to the unexpected visitors, In the end, Georges retains the arrow, she is hiding. On entering the house like Karain's Jubilee sixpence in "full of disorder" Georges is cast Tales of Unrest, a counterfeit yet true "adrift in the black-and-white hall as talisman for the prevention of "dream• on a silent sea;" he then crosses "an ing." (p. 350) Thus armed, Georges enchanted place" of mirrors and crys• returns to the sea, his "other love." tal to the mutually-surprising discov• (p. 351) He has come to experience ery of Rita, ironically "an insensible art and truth in an odyssey likened to phantom" of the "real" Rita that is in "a day-dream." (p. 62) him—the physical Rita is an "image." (pp. 284-288, 296, 299) In an extra• ordinary stroke of artistic expression, The stage shifts to the East (Carimata Conrad has her "arrow of gold," a deli• Strait, the setting) for The Rescue cate pin, an objet d'art and, symbol• (1920), under way in 1896 and not com• ically, a deadly weapon and a talisman pleted until 1919, the year of the of love, reflected in a mirror, (p. publication of The Arrow of Gold. 307) The images suggest a union of While the political complexity of this savagery and refinement in the infin• novel may suggest comparison with Nostromo, the action here is focused ite expressed metaphorically as art on one character, Captain Lingard of and love, manifestations of the coin• the brig LIGHTNING. It is significant cidence of opposites. that Conrad's only comment on the sub- ject matter of The Rescue in a letter Next, Therese, Rita's sister, likened to William Blackwood has to do with to a "sleep-walker" in the grip of Lingard and, specifically, with his passion, (p. 279) reveals Rita's loca• enlightenment: "It is only at the very tion to Ortega, who, armed with a last that he is enlightened."(28) And primitive weapon, would kill the object it is a woman who provides the medium with a boat commanded by Carter, second of this knowledge. mate of the HERMIT, a British schooner- yacht gone aground off the coast of In The Rescue, as in The Arrow of Gold, Borneo. the full Conradian complex of dream- motif, mirror-symbol and the ironic The significance for Lingard's en• logic of contradiction or inversion lightenment of the decision to rescue coincide in the expression of a voyage the HERMIT is marked analogically by to enlightenment in a timeless state. immersion in a pitch black deluge, in On the first page of the first chapter, which men, by an optical illusion, we read of the LIGHTNING in Carimata fall "out of the universe," and in Strait: "... the brig floated tran• which "words" and "every sound" are quil and upright as if bolted solidly, effaced, leaving "nothing free but the keel to keel, with its own image re• unexpected." (Part I, Chapter III) In flected in the unframed and immense the past, the rescue of Hassim and mirror of the sea." (p. 5) Her thirty- Immada, political exiles befriended by five year old captain, Lingard, "in Lingard, had been prefaced by a similar dreamy stillness," gazes on "the image encounter with a messenger in a of the brig." (pp. 6, 10) He also sees "dream," a deluge of fire and water, the upside-down image of his head and in which Lingard had been "deafened shoulders in this mirror of the infin• and blinded." (Part II, Chapter III) ite, but he is "blind to the myster• Suspended in aboundless world, Lingard ious aspects of the word." (pp. 6, 11) now experiences the loss of his ex• Albeit ignorant of life and its logic ternal senses, a prefiguration of the of inversion, he is not insensitive. coming descent within himself. Much to the consternation of his pain• fully useless first mate, Shaw, Lin• Now, with the rescue of the HERMIT, gard is also susceptible to "absurd both still and moving (again by an fads," moments of "awakened lyricism," optical illusion), Lingard comes to when his heart is uplifted "into enter another deluge, the abyss of regions charming, empty, and dangerous" Edith Travers' eyes, reflected in and —"bottom-upwards notions," in the reflecting the sea, in which "the estimation of Shaw. (pp. 11, 12) This whole universe and even time itself susceptibility to unreason is the root apparently come to a standstill;" (p. cause of coming catastrophe and en• 144) he comes to "the contemplation of lightenment. And such a notion takes vast distances." (p. 148) Thus en• possession of Lingard shortly after thralled, like Georges, in a "mystic his being startled by an improbability, grip," (The Arrow of Gold, p. 140) he the sudden meeting in pitch darkness becomes, by analogy, a "swimmer" being taken to sea by an "undertow" of a he sees that "he did not know his mind "dark and inscrutable purpose flowing himself," (p. 210) that he has been to the end, the fulfilment both bliss• decoyed from his purpose by a "con• ful and terrible." (p. 219) The sen• flict within himself": sation of being immersed in contra• Conflict of some sort was the dictions is also expressed as a whirl• very essence of his life. But wind—Lingard has "the sensation of this was something that he had being whirled high in the midst of an never known before. This was a uproar" (p. 179)—and as "a destroying conflict within himself. He had flood," "an obscurity . . . without to face unsuspected powers, foes limit in space and time." (p. 241) He that he could not go out to meet enters the boundless universe of un• at the gate. They were within, reason, twice referred to as "a world as though he had been betrayed by of improbabilities." (pp. 244, 352) somebody, some secret enemy. He Here, he cannot distinguish between was ready to look round for that reality and illusion, waking and subtle traitor. A sort of blank- dreaming. Waking from a brief sleep, ness fell on his mind and he sud• he thinks, "So it was only a deception; denly thought: 'Why! It's my• he had seen no one." (p. 171) In self.' (p. 329) fact, he had returned from a meeting Moser's assertion that Conrad "con• with Edith some few moments before. siders evil to be external" to Lin- To Lingard, caught in the intrigues of gard(29)is clearly mistaken. In the politics and love, the entire universe conflict between allegiance to Hassim seems to glide smoothly through space and infatuation with Edith, Lingard as the tide stands still, (p. 200) can no longer distinguish between truth and illusion. An actor in an Immersion in an obscurity, expressed as objectified Psychomachia, an "exotic woman and deluge-sea, is disastrous opera," he meditates on this conflict; for Lingard. The good seaman-like he comes to ask himself the Calderdn- sense of Carter ("I am a sailorman. My like questions: "Who could tell what first duty was to the ships," (p. 220) was real in this world?" "Am I dream• he writes to Lingard), now first mate ing? Am I in a fever?" (pp. 295, 431, of the LIGHTNING, in the sinking of 229) Daman's praus, an action made possible by Lingard's imprudent decision to In this dream-performance, Lingard is leave the brig on Edith's request that deceived and betrayed by Edith, who, he rescue d'Alcacer and Mr. Travers, selfishly, to retain him, does not seriously compromises Lingard before relay a vital message to him from Has• his would-be allies. Lingard awakens sim and Immada. Contrary stresses to the "truth"; looking within himself, produce in Lingard as in Belarab, his ally, a stillness, a kind of "mystic visited upon the heart of Lingard, a suspense between the contrary specu• reader of the Iliad.(31) The captain lations. . . disputing the possession of the LIGHTNING, whose cabin is of his will." (p. 281) And, at a ironically dominated by a gilt sheaf critical moment, when his personal of thunder-bolts darting between the action is imperative for the salvaging initials of his name, the man who had of Hassim's and Immada's fortune and "calculated every move" and who had of his own plans, he is paralyzed by "guarded against everything," (p. 104) a dream-vision of his beloved, who is by way of another Helen, has come, in once likened to "a creature of dark• a manner similar to d'Alcacer's, a ness." (p. 313) Lingard is literally Spaniard fond of musical glasses, to and figuratively awakened only by the descend "into the innermost depths of explosion of the EMMA, his supply his being," (p. 411) there to learn depot, to the loss of many lives, in• something of himself. This tale of cluding Hassim's and Immada's. the enlightenment of a mariner con• Moser's claim that Conrad "sees man's veys, in its own words," an effect of greatest good as complete repose" "in a marvellous and symbolic vision." a love that will blot out all awareness (p. 320) of the world"(30)seems not to take these facts into account. Love in the From the above readings of Chance, Conradian universe "exalts or unfits, The Arrow of Gold and The Rescue, it sanctifies or damns." (p. 415) In it• becomes clear that these fictions do self, it is equivocal; and, in Lin• not suffer from a deficiency of irony gard 's case, it unfits and damns: he as a consequence of melodramatic dis• is "undone by a glimpse of Paradise." tinctions between good and evil and (p. 449) Nor is Lingard's self- of a sentimental treatment of love. deception and betrayal of his allies, As William Blake comments on his illus• and Edith's deception and betrayal of trations of Dante's Inferno, where Lingard the stuff of sentimental melo• fire and ice unite, "In Equivocal drama. His partner, Jorgenson, a Worlds Up S Down are Equivocal."(32) "dead" captain of a "dead" ship, a Similarly, in Conrad's world, dis• "somnambulist of an eternal dream," tinctions between opposites are am• (p. 382) has provided an objective biguous and obscure once the reader manifestation of the coup de foudre perceives the facts and the underlying of love: the explosion of a powder logic governing those facts, the logic magazine. of "the innermost frozen circle of Dante's Inferno," in the words of Con• The truth of Shaw's observation— rad 's "The Warrior's Soul." (Tales of "Women are the cause of a lot of Hearsay, p. 1) Marlow's words in Lord trouble" (p. 22)—has ironically been Jim, seeming to anticipate the tack of Hewitt, p. 2.

some future critics, are perhaps ap• Albert Guerard, Conrad the novelist (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), p. 284.

propriate here: "All this may seem to Lawrence Graver, Conrad's Short Fiction (Los Angeles, 1969), p. 170,

you sheer sentimentalism; and indeed Frederick Karl, A Reader's Guide to Joseph Conrad (New York, 1960), pp. very few of us have the will or the 277-279. capacity to look under the surface of Moser, pp. 185, passim. familiar emotions." (p. 222) Conrad's Neville Newhouse, Joseph Conrad (London, 1966), pp. 73, 138. later tales of the enlightenment of Moser, p. 149. sea-dreamers in the infinite ironies Notes on Life and Letters, p. 194. of love represent a continued effort The Logic and imagery here suggest comparison with Donne's in "Sonnet 19" of Divine Meditations: "contraries meet in one," "cold and hot," as the to probe below such a surface. poet contemplates his relationship to the Infinite as in a "fantastic ague.

The Pygmalion myth enters explicitly in , p. 212.

The Nigger of the NARCISSUS, p. 93: "like men driven by a merciless dream to toil in an atmosphere of ice or flame."

Lord Jim, pp. 94-96.

The NARCISSUS sails beneath "the moon rushing backwards with frightful speed over the sky" (p. 55).

"Had the earth been checked in her course?" Jim asks as the PATNA strikes a capsized hulk beneath the placid surface of the sea (p. 26).

1. , p. 36. All references to Conrad's works are to the Blackburn (ed.), p. 10. Letter of 6 September 1897. Collected Edition, London: Dent, 1946-1950, 21 volumes. Moser, p. 145. 2. Thomas Moser, Joseph Conrad: Achievement and Decline (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), p. 138. Ibid., pp. 145, 143.

3. Douglas Hewitt, Conrad: A Reassessment (Cambridge, 1969) , Second Edition The Rescue, p. 22. Moser, arguing for a simple Lingard, calls him "unlet• tered." (p. 67) The critic confuses the Lingard of An Outcast of the Islands, whom, we are told by Conrad, does not read, (p. 198) with the pro• tagonist of The Rescue. Moser, pp. 141, 105.

"Conrad the Historian," Listener, LXXIII (1965), 555. The Portable Blake, ed. Kazin (New York, 1968), p. 594. Blake, however unlike Conrad, rejoices in the infernal; Conrad approaches it with ironic "Those that hold that all things are governed by fortune had not erred, had they not persisted there"—Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Part I. This epigraph, like that provided by Boethius for The Mirror of the Sea, is found in a critique of man's reason as an instrument for the knowing of "the Providence of God."

7. William Blackburn (ed.), Joseph Conrad: Letters to William Blackwood and David S. Meldrum (Durham, 1958), p. 133. Letter of 26 August 1901 to William Blackwood.

8. G. Jean-Aubry, Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters (London, 1927), Vol. I, p. 183. Letter of 2 November 1895.

9. The Portable Milton, ed. Douglas Bush (New York, 1949), p. 94. Comus pro• vided the epigraph of Conrad's .

10. Author's Note to Chance, p. viii.

11. Author's Note to The Arrow of Gold, p. ix.

12. The of the Rose, trans. H.W. Robbins (New York, 1962) p. 31. Cf. The Rescue: "... something has happened which has robbed him of his power of thinking." (p. 414)

13. Chaucer's Franklin's Tale, a rhetorical and logical tour de force on the theme of love, provided the epigraph of The Rescue.