Joseph Conrad.” Outlook (New York), 134 (23 May 1923): 14–15
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Abbott, Lawrence F.1 “Joseph Conrad.” Outlook (New York), 134 (23 May 1923): 14–15. Abbott was present at JC’s reading of Victory [10 May 1923, New York], which lasted about an hour. “The complete detachment with which he described his work” (5) was refreshing. JC speaks English with such a European accent that it is sometimes difficult to understand him. Adams, Elbridge L. Joseph Conrad: The Man [and] Zelie, John Sheridan A Burial in Kent. 1925; rpt., New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1972. [All references are to Adams’s article.] Adams2 met JC in early September 1916, at Capel House. He spoke warmly of Walter Hines Page and Stephen Crane, and said of Fenimore Cooper that his artistic instinct was genuine and unerring, although his style had the beauties and defects of its age. He loved Henry James and read him repeatedly, for he was “the historian of fine consciences” (10). The Preface to The Nigger of the “Narcissus” was written to express “his intimate feelings about the aim of the art of fiction” (12). JC was delighted that Adams liked Some Reminiscences best, for “some of my literary friends have told me it was too unconventional and informal to be good autobiography, and too remote from English and American 1 Lawrence F(raser) Abbott (1859-1933) spent 32 years as the President of the Outlook Company, resigning in 1923 to become Contributing Editor. He edited Impressions of Theodore Roosevelt (1919) and wrote Twelve Great Modernists (1927). 2 Elbridge L(apham) Adams (1866–1934), New York bibliophile, publisher, and lawyer. JC stayed for a couple of days at Adams’s country house in the Berkshire Hills of Massachusetts during his visit to the US. Adams’s article first appeared as “Joseph Conrad – The Man,” Outlook (New York), 18 April 1923: 708–12. On 20 November 1922, JC had written to him that “The idea of your writing an article, of a more intimate character than anything that has been written before on me in America, pleases me vastly; for I do really believe that you understand me better than anybody from your side that I ever met” (CL7 594). 2 associations to be very interesting” (13). It was a faithful record of his “feelings and sensations” (13), and was a “human document which would, to those who can see eye to eye, reveal the personality behind the books” (13–14). JC never thought of writing in French: “When I began to write it came as natural for me to write English as if it had been my own native tongue. […] English seems to be a part of my blood and culture” (15). “I think I must have some talent for language” (14). He had read Dickens, Shakespeare, and much other English literature in Polish translation. JC hated the war-time restriction on the sale of alcohol; what would become of the boasted freedom of Englishmen if such paternalism became the accepted policy of the English Government, he asked. On a later visit [September 1921], JC outlined “my very early conviction that a representative government is but a poor guaranty of liberty. Yet I do not see what else we could put in the place of it. I am afraid that most hu- man institutions are poor affairs at best, and that even a Heaven-sent constitution would not be safe from the distorting force of human passions, prejudices, hasty judgments, emotional impulses, or from mere plausible noise raised by an active and determined minority” (23–24). [Adams showed his MS of this article to JC before publication, and he includes in footnotes the marginal annotations JC made. JC explained that on leaving Poland he was “fit to take care of myself intellectually” (5), and he described his education and maritime examinations. Later, he said he preferred to be described as a “creative writer” rather than as a “writer of romance” (25). Finally, he repeated his dislike of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, to whom James Huneker had compared him (26). Adams’s article has February 1923 as the date of composition. This volume also prints Adams’s “The American Visit”: 27–38: JC stayed overnight with Adams in Massachusetts, following his trip to Boston in May 1923. He did not, contrary to newspaper reports, visit the homes of Herman Melville or the poet William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878). JC sat and listened to Brahms in a rapt mood.] Alcorta, Gloria “Saint-John Perse en voyage de noces.” Nouvelle Revue Française, 47 (February 1976): 8–15. .