Literary Occasions_ Essays Part 7

Make a European society with India's religion. Become an occidental of occidentals in your spirit of equality, freedom, work, and energy, and at the same time a Hindu to the very backbone in religious culture, and instincts.

This is not Chaudhuri. It is Vivekananda, the Vedantist, writing at the turn of the century. A Bengali, like Chaudhuri, a reformer, a product of the Anglo-Bengali culture; and the message, with all its imprecisions and contradictions, is like Chaudhuri's. The Anglo-Bengali culture survives. To its pa.s.sionate introspection The Continent of Circe The Continent of Circe is a late addition, quirky, at times wild, but rich and always stimulating. is a late addition, quirky, at times wild, but rich and always stimulating.

1966.

Theatrical Natives THE KIPLING revival is curious. It seems to be mainly academic-and therefore self-perpetuating-and its interest seems to be less in the work than in the man. Kipling is more complex than his legend. It is easy for the critic to be made possessive by this discovery and to go through the work just looking for clues. It can be shown, for instance, from a story like "The Bridge-Builders," that Kipling was not insensitive to the subtleties of Hindu iconography. The fact is interesting, but it doesn't make the story any less obscure or unsatisfactory. The fact is also awkward: it doesn't fit with other facts. And so it happens that attempts to set the legend right often end in simple tabulation, of matter and motif. This is the method of Mr. Stewart's revival is curious. It seems to be mainly academic-and therefore self-perpetuating-and its interest seems to be less in the work than in the man. Kipling is more complex than his legend. It is easy for the critic to be made possessive by this discovery and to go through the work just looking for clues. It can be shown, for instance, from a story like "The Bridge-Builders," that Kipling was not insensitive to the subtleties of Hindu iconography. The fact is interesting, but it doesn't make the story any less obscure or unsatisfactory. The fact is also awkward: it doesn't fit with other facts. And so it happens that attempts to set the legend right often end in simple tabulation, of matter and motif. This is the method of Mr. Stewart's Rudyard Kipling, Rudyard Kipling, which does little more than celebrate a reading of the Kipling canon. which does little more than celebrate a reading of the Kipling canon.

The legend survives. "The Kipling That n.o.body Read"-the t.i.tle of Mr. Edmund Wilson's essay-is still the Kipling n.o.body reads. Kipling revaluations are self-defeating, since they lead back more surely to the only Kipling of value, which is the Kipling of the legend. It is the legend of the brief serene decade of British India, when the Mutiny finally became a memory and nationalism was still to come: a moment of order and romance, vanis.h.i.+ng even as it was apprehended, later to embarra.s.s, sadden, anger and be explained away, until it became historical. The legend can be accepted now. Mr. Cornell accepts it: it is one of the merits of his book. Kipling in India Kipling in India is the most balanced a.n.a.lysis I have read of Kipling's literary achievement. Mr. Cornell says that his subject is Kipling's apprentices.h.i.+p, which contained the legendary achievement: the fixing, for all time, of that moment of British India. is the most balanced a.n.a.lysis I have read of Kipling's literary achievement. Mr. Cornell says that his subject is Kipling's apprentices.h.i.+p, which contained the legendary achievement: the fixing, for all time, of that moment of British India.

It was the unlikely achievement of a very young man who took his unimportant journalistic work seriously; who abandoned the graver literary ambitions of his school-days to become a kind of club-writer; who aimed at ordinariness, and feared above all to offend. The club was at first the Punjab Club, of which Kipling became a member at seventeen. Soon it was all British India. This artificial, complete and h.o.m.ogeneous world did not require explanations. "Dedication," Mr. Cornell says, "walked hand in hand with triviality." The triviality was the triviality of "good-fellows.h.i.+p, not savage mockery"; there were limits to self-satire. Kipling followed the rules and didn't sink. Like the Lama in Kim, Kim, he acquired merit. he acquired merit.

Mr. Cornell is right to stress the club, for it is from his function as a club-writer that Kipling's virtues came, and especially that allusive, elliptical prose, easy but packed, which, almost one hundred years later, still seems so new. Mr. Cornell's account of the development of this prose is fascinating. This is Kipling at seventeen, describing a Hindu pageant in Lah.o.r.e: To the great delight of the people, Ramachandra and his brothers, attired in the traditional costume and head-dress, were mounted aloft and held the mighty bow, the breaking of which shook the world to its centre. But it must be admitted that Sita, uncomfortably astride a broad-backed wicker-work bull, supported by an uneasy Rama, buried in tinsel and attended by bearers ... was a spectacle more comic than imposing.

This, as Mr. Cornell says, is cheap, obvious and anonymous. It is without Kipling's later "visual clarity." It is also the work of an outsider: the Anglo-Indian was closer to the country. But two years later the tone changes. Here is another fair scene: Presently the bolder spirits among them would put out a h.o.r.n.y finger, and carefully touch one of the bullocks. Then as the animal was evidently constructed of nothing more terrible than clay ... the whole hand would be drawn gently over its form; and, after an appreciative pat, the adventurous one would begin a lengthy dissertation to the bystanders at large.

The outsider has drawn closer. And sixteen months later the prose is like this: Suddhoo sleeps on the roof generally, except when he sleeps in the street. He used to go to Peshawar in the cold weather to visit his son who sells curiosities near the Edwardes' Gate, and then he slept under a real mud roof. Suddhoo is a great friend of mine, because his cousin had a son who secured, thanks to my recommendation, the post of head-messenger to a big firm in the Station. Suddhoo says that G.o.d will make me a Lieutenant-Governor one of these days. I daresay his prophecy will come true.

This is the accomplished club-writer. He has mastered his subject and he knows his audience. He deals in an irony so private it might be missed by an outsider. To the Anglo-Indian, as Mr. Cornell points out, simple phrases like "a great friend of mine" and "a real mud roof" would have precise meanings. On the difference between the first and last quotations, he writes: In the earlier piece, Indian life appeared as no more than a pa.s.sing show to be judged and dismissed on its aesthetic merits by a superior-and very young-English spectator. In the 1886 story, however, Kipling has penetrated to the heart of the Anglo-Indian's historical dilemma with amazing swiftness and economy.

The judgment is typical of Mr. Cornell's balance and perception. He has not been tempted to make use of "The House of Suddhoo" to amend the legend; he makes a literary literary judgment, and it is correct. judgment, and it is correct.

Kipling's prose was later to go beyond this. It was to become a superb instrument of narration, concise, full of flavour and speed, and wonderfully pictorial. But the club-writer always needed the club, the common points of reference; he needed the legend, which perhaps his own stories had helped to create. Kipling can best be savoured in a group of related stories: to this extent the tabulators are justified. A story by Chekhov is complete in itself; a story by Kipling isn't. It is either too slight or too long-windedly anecdotal. A legitimate delay in an Indian story would lose its point elsewhere.

There were the usual blue-and-white striped jail-made rugs on the uneven floor; the usual gla.s.s-studded Amritsar phulkaris phulkaris draped to nails driven into the flaking whitewash of the walls; the usual half-dozen chairs that did not match, picked up at sales of dead men's effects ... The little windows, fifteen feet up, were darkened with wasp-nests, and lizards hunted flies between the beams of the wood-ceiled roof. draped to nails driven into the flaking whitewash of the walls; the usual half-dozen chairs that did not match, picked up at sales of dead men's effects ... The little windows, fifteen feet up, were darkened with wasp-nests, and lizards hunted flies between the beams of the wood-ceiled roof.

"William the Conqueror," from which the pa.s.sage is taken (it is quoted by Mr. Stewart), is not a good story. It is pure comic-strip and-it is a love story set against a background of famine and corpses-it is horrifying to some. But details like these make it a true and acceptable part of Kipling's Indian work. In another setting comparable details would tell less. They wouldn't be as intimate; the "usual" would have less meaning; and "dead men's effects" would not speak of that dedication which was part of the Anglo-Indian's myth. Kipling's Anglo-Indians are always slightly embarra.s.sing when they are on leave in England; there is a similar embarra.s.sment, of ordinariness, it might be said, even in an Indian story like "The Gadsbys," from which India is almost totally subtracted.

Just as in that pa.s.sage detail adds to detail, and we would be without none of them, so each of Kipling's Indian stories adds to the others and is supported by them. Kipling's stories are not like Chekhov's; they are like Turgenev's hunting sketches or Angus Wilson's stories of the late forties. They make one big book; they have to be taken together. They catch-or create-a complete society at a particular moment. It is in its search for the independent, good Kipling story that Kipling criticism becomes aggressive and tabulatory. Even Mr. Cornell succ.u.mbs. He notices the frequency of disguises, hoaxes and frauds in the stories; and he makes much of this. He should have ignored it. The fact would have been important if Kipling were more interested in people than in the types with whom he filled his club, never allowing himself satire, mockery or anger beyond what the club permitted. As it is, such tabulation shows up the limitations of the too h.o.m.ogeneous club as a source for material, and it shows up the limitations of the club-writer, whose closest literary friend, later in England, was to be Rider Haggard.

The irony, like the legend, remains. The "long-coated theatrical natives discussing metaphysics in English and Bengali"-threats to order and romance, and therefore to be ceaselessly satirized-were to lead to a writer like Nirad Chaudhuri and a film-maker like Ray. The club has disappeared. By becoming its spokesman and jester, by brilliantly creating its legend, Kipling made the disappearance of the club certain.

1966.

Conrad's Darkness and Mine IT HAS TAKEN me a long time to come round to Conrad. And if I begin with an account of his difficulty, it is because I have to be true to my experience of him. I would find it hard to be detached about Conrad. He was, I suppose, the first modern writer I was introduced to. It was through my father. My father was a self-taught man, picking his way through a cultural confusion of which he was perhaps hardly aware and which I have only recently begun to understand; and he wished himself to be a writer. He read less for pleasure than for clues, hints and encouragement; and he introduced me to those writers he had come upon in his own search. Conrad was one of the earliest of these: Conrad the stylist, but more than that, Conrad the late starter, holding out hope to those who didn't seem to be starting at all. me a long time to come round to Conrad. And if I begin with an account of his difficulty, it is because I have to be true to my experience of him. I would find it hard to be detached about Conrad. He was, I suppose, the first modern writer I was introduced to. It was through my father. My father was a self-taught man, picking his way through a cultural confusion of which he was perhaps hardly aware and which I have only recently begun to understand; and he wished himself to be a writer. He read less for pleasure than for clues, hints and encouragement; and he introduced me to those writers he had come upon in his own search. Conrad was one of the earliest of these: Conrad the stylist, but more than that, Conrad the late starter, holding out hope to those who didn't seem to be starting at all.

I believe I was ten when Conrad was first read to me. It sounds alarming; but the story was "The Lagoon"; and the reading was a success. "The Lagoon" is perhaps the only story of Conrad's that can be read to a child. It is very short, about fifteen pages. A forest-lined tropical river at dusk. The white man in the boat says, "We'll spend the night in Arsat's clearing." The boat swings into a creek; the creek opens out into a lagoon. A lonely house on the sh.o.r.e; inside, a woman is dying. And during the night Arsat, the young man who is her lover, will tell how they both came there. It is a story of illicit love in another place, an abduction, a chase, the death of a brother, abandoned to the pursuers. What Arsat has to say should take no more than fifteen minutes; but romance is romance, and when Arsat's story ends the dawn comes up; the early-morning breeze blows away the mist; the woman is dead. Arsat's happiness, if it existed, has been flawed and brief; and now he will leave the lagoon and go back to his own place, to meet his fate. The white man, too, has to go. And the last picture is of Arsat, alone in his lagoon, looking "beyond the great light of a cloudless day into the darkness of a world of illusions."

In time the story of "The Lagoon" became blurred. But the sense of night and solitude and doom stayed with me, grafted, in my fantasy, to the South Sea or tropical island setting of the Sabu and Jon Hall films. I have, unwillingly, looked at "The Lagoon" again. There is a lot of Conrad in it-pa.s.sion and the abyss, solitude and futility and the world of illusions-and I am not sure now that it isn't the purest piece of fiction Conrad wrote. The brisk narrative, the precise pictorial writing, the setting of river and hidden lagoon, the nameless white visitor, the story during the night of love and loss, the death at daybreak: everything comes beautifully together. And if I say it is a pure piece of fiction, it is because the story speaks for itself; the writer does not come between his story and the reader.

"The Lagoon" was parodied by Max Beerbohm in "A Christmas Garland." Writers' myths can depend on accidents like that. "The Lagoon," as it happens, was the first short story Conrad wrote; and though later, when I read the parody, I was able to feel that I was in the know about Conrad, from my own point of view "The Lagoon" had been a cheat. Because I was never to find anything so strong and direct in Conrad again.

There is a story, "Karain," written not long after "The Lagoon." It has the same Malayan setting and, as Conrad acknowledged, a similar motif. Karain, inspired by sudden s.e.xual jealousy, kills the friend whose love quest he had promised to serve; and thereafter Karain is haunted by the ghost of the man he has killed. One day he meets a wise old man, to whom he confesses. The old man exorcises the ghost; and Karain, with the old man as his counsellor, becomes a warrior and a conqueror, a ruler. The old man dies; the ghost of the murdered friend returns to haunt Karain. He is immediately lost; his power and splendor are nothing; he swims out to the white men's s.h.i.+p and asks them, unbelievers from another world, for help. They give him a charm: a Jubilee sixpence. The charm works; Karain becomes a man again.

The story is, on the surface, a yarn about native superst.i.tion. But to Conrad it is much more; it is profounder, and more wonderful, than "The Lagoon"; and he is determined that its whole meaning should be grasped. All the suggestions that were implicit in "The Lagoon" are now spelled out. The white men have names; they talk, and act as a kind of chorus. So we are asked to contemplate the juxtaposition of two cultures, one open and without belief, one closed and ruled by old magic; one, "on the edge of outer darkness," exploring the world, one imprisoned in a small part of it. But illusions are illusions, mirage is mirage. Isn't London itself, the life of its streets, a mirage? "I see it. It is there; it pants, it runs; it rolls; it is strong and alive; it would smash you if you didn't look out; but I'll be hanged if it is yet as real to me as the other thing." So, romantically and somewhat puzzlingly, the story ends.

The simple yarn is made to carry a lot. It requires a more complex response than the plainer fiction of "The Lagoon." Sensations-night and solitude and doom-are not enough; the writer wishes to involve us in more than his fantasy; we are required-the chorus or commentary requires us-to stand outside the facts of the story and contemplate the matter. The story has become a kind of parable. Nothing has been rigged, though, because nothing is being proved; only wonder is being awakened.

In a preface to a later collection of stories Conrad wrote: "The romantic feeling of reality was in me an inborn faculty." He hadn't deliberately sought out romantic subjects; they had offered themselves to him: I have a natural right to [my subjects] because my past is very much my own. If their course lies out of the beaten path of organized social life, it is, perhaps, because I myself did in a sort break away from it early in obedience to an impulse which must have been very genuine since it has sustained me through all the dangers of disillusion. But that origin of my literary work was very far from giving a larger scope to my imagination. On the contrary, the mere fact of dealing with matters outside the general run of every day experience laid me under the obligation of a more scrupulous fidelity to the truth of my own sensations. The problem was to make unfamiliar things credible. To do that I had to create for them, to reproduce for them, to envelop them in their proper atmosphere of actuality. This was the hardest task of all and the most important, in view of that conscientious rendering of truth in thought and fact which has been always my aim.

But the truths of that story, "Karain," are difficult ones. The world of illusions, men as prisoners of their cultures, belief and unbelief: these are truths one has to be ready for, and perhaps half possess already, because the story does not carry them convincingly within itself. The suggestion that the life of London is as much a mirage as the timeless life of the Malayan archipelago is puzzling, because the two-page description of the London streets with which the story ends is too literal: blank faces, hansom cabs, omnibuses, girls "talking vivaciously," "dirty men ... discussing filthily," a policeman. There isn't anything in that catalogue that can persuade us that the life described is a mirage. Reality hasn't fused with the writer's fantasy. The concept of the mirage has to be applied; it is a matter of words, a disturbing caption to a fairly straight picture.

I have considered this simple story at some length because it ill.u.s.trates, in little, the difficulties I was to have with the major works. I felt with Conrad I wasn't getting the point. Stories, simple in themselves, always seemed at some stage to elude me. And there were the words, the words that issued out of the writer's need to be faithful to the truth of his own sensations. The words got in the way; they obscured. The n.i.g.g.e.r of the Narcissus The n.i.g.g.e.r of the Narcissus and and Typhoon, Typhoon, famous books, were impenetrable. famous books, were impenetrable.

In 1896 the young H. G. Wells, in an otherwise kind review of An Outcast of the Islands, An Outcast of the Islands, the book before the book before The n.i.g.g.e.r, The n.i.g.g.e.r, wrote: "Mr Conrad is wordy; his story is not so much told as seen intermittently through a haze of sentences. He has still to learn the great half of his art, the art of leaving things unwritten." Conrad wrote a friendly letter to Wells; but on the same day-the story is in Jocelyn Baines's biography-he wrote to Edward Garnett: "Something brings the impression off-makes its effect. What? It can be nothing but the expression-the arrangement of words, the style." It is, for a novelist, an astonis.h.i.+ng definition of style. Because style in the novel, and perhaps in all prose, is more than an "arrangement of words": it is an arrangement, even an orchestration, of perceptions, it is a matter of knowing where to put what. But Conrad aimed at fidelity. Fidelity required him to be explicit. wrote: "Mr Conrad is wordy; his story is not so much told as seen intermittently through a haze of sentences. He has still to learn the great half of his art, the art of leaving things unwritten." Conrad wrote a friendly letter to Wells; but on the same day-the story is in Jocelyn Baines's biography-he wrote to Edward Garnett: "Something brings the impression off-makes its effect. What? It can be nothing but the expression-the arrangement of words, the style." It is, for a novelist, an astonis.h.i.+ng definition of style. Because style in the novel, and perhaps in all prose, is more than an "arrangement of words": it is an arrangement, even an orchestration, of perceptions, it is a matter of knowing where to put what. But Conrad aimed at fidelity. Fidelity required him to be explicit.

It is this explicitness, this unwillingness to let the story speak for itself, this anxiety to draw all the mystery out of a straightforward situation, that leads to the mystification of Lord Jim. Lord Jim. It isn't always easy to know what is being explained. The story is usually held to be about honour. I feel myself that it is about the theme-much more delicate in 1900 than today-of the racial straggler. And, such is Conrad's explicitness, both points of view can be supported by quotation. It isn't always easy to know what is being explained. The story is usually held to be about honour. I feel myself that it is about the theme-much more delicate in 1900 than today-of the racial straggler. And, such is Conrad's explicitness, both points of view can be supported by quotation. Lord Jim, Lord Jim, however, is an imperialist book, and it may be that the two points of view are really one. however, is an imperialist book, and it may be that the two points of view are really one.

Whatever the mystery of Lord Jim, Lord Jim, it wasn't of the sort that could hold me. Fantasy, imagination, story if you like, had been refined away by explicitness. There was something unbalanced, even unfinished, about Conrad. He didn't seem able to go beyond his first simple conception of a story; his invention seemed to fail so quickly. And even in his variety there was something tentative and uncertain. it wasn't of the sort that could hold me. Fantasy, imagination, story if you like, had been refined away by explicitness. There was something unbalanced, even unfinished, about Conrad. He didn't seem able to go beyond his first simple conception of a story; his invention seemed to fail so quickly. And even in his variety there was something tentative and uncertain.

There was The Secret Agent, The Secret Agent, a police thriller that seemed to end almost as soon as it began, with a touch of Arnold Bennett and a police thriller that seemed to end almost as soon as it began, with a touch of Arnold Bennett and Riceyman Steps Riceyman Steps in that Soho interior, and a Wellsian jokeyness about London street names and cabbies and broken-down horses-as though, when dealing with the known, the written about, the gift of wonder left the writer and he had to depend on other writers' visions. There was in that Soho interior, and a Wellsian jokeyness about London street names and cabbies and broken-down horses-as though, when dealing with the known, the written about, the gift of wonder left the writer and he had to depend on other writers' visions. There was Under Western Eyes, Under Western Eyes, which, with its cast of Russian revolutionaries and its theme of betrayal, promised to be Dostoevskyan but then dissolved away into a.n.a.lysis. There was the too set-up fiction of which, with its cast of Russian revolutionaries and its theme of betrayal, promised to be Dostoevskyan but then dissolved away into a.n.a.lysis. There was the too set-up fiction of Victory: Victory: the pure, aloof man rescues a girl from a musical company touring the East and takes her to a remote island, where disaster, in the form of gangsters, will come to them. And there was the pure, aloof man rescues a girl from a musical company touring the East and takes her to a remote island, where disaster, in the form of gangsters, will come to them. And there was Nostromo, Nostromo, about South America, a confusion of characters and themes, which I couldn't get through at all. about South America, a confusion of characters and themes, which I couldn't get through at all.

A multiplicity of Conrads, and they all seemed to me to be flawed. The hero of Victory, Victory, holding himself aloof from the world, had "refined away everything except disgust"; and it seemed to me that in his fictions Conrad had refined away, as commonplace, those qualities of imagination and fantasy and invention that I went to novels for. The Conrad novel was like a simple film with an elaborate commentary. A film: the characters and settings could be seen very clearly. But realism often required trivial incidental dialogue, the following of trivial actions; the melodramatic flurry at the end emphasized the slowness and bad proportions of what had gone before; and the commentary emphasized the fact that the characters were actors. holding himself aloof from the world, had "refined away everything except disgust"; and it seemed to me that in his fictions Conrad had refined away, as commonplace, those qualities of imagination and fantasy and invention that I went to novels for. The Conrad novel was like a simple film with an elaborate commentary. A film: the characters and settings could be seen very clearly. But realism often required trivial incidental dialogue, the following of trivial actions; the melodramatic flurry at the end emphasized the slowness and bad proportions of what had gone before; and the commentary emphasized the fact that the characters were actors.

BUT WE read at different times for different things. We take to novels our own ideas of what the novel should be; and those ideas are made by our needs, our education, our background or perhaps our ideas of our background. Because we read, really, to find out what we already know, we can take a writer's virtues for granted. And his originality, the news he is offering us, can go over our heads. read at different times for different things. We take to novels our own ideas of what the novel should be; and those ideas are made by our needs, our education, our background or perhaps our ideas of our background. Because we read, really, to find out what we already know, we can take a writer's virtues for granted. And his originality, the news he is offering us, can go over our heads.

It came to me that the great novelists wrote about highly organized societies. I had no such society; I couldn't share the a.s.sumptions of the writers; I didn't see my world reflected in theirs. My colonial world was more mixed and secondhand, and more restricted. The time came when I began to ponder the mystery-Conradian word-of my own background: that island in the mouth of a great South American river, the Orinoco, one of the Conradian dark places of the earth, where my father had conceived literary ambitions for himself and then for me, but from which, in my mind, I had stripped all romance and perhaps even reality: preferring to set "The Lagoon," when it was read to me, not on the island I knew, with its muddy rivers, mangrove and swamps, but somewhere far away.

It seemed to me that those of us who were born there were curiously naked, that we lived purely physically. It wasn't an easy thing to explain, even to oneself. But in Conrad, in that very story of "Karain," I was later to find my feelings about the land exactly caught.

And really, looking at that place, landlocked from the sea and shut off from the land by the precipitous slopes of mountains, it was difficult to believe in the existence of any neighbourhood. It was still, complete, unknown, and full of a life that went on stealthily with a troubling effect of solitude; of a life that seemed unaccountably empty of anything that would stir the thought, touch the heart, give a hint of the ominous sequence of days. It appeared to us a land without memories, regrets, and hopes; a land where nothing could survive the coming of the night, and where each sunrise, like a dazzling act of special creation, was disconnected from the eve and the morrow.

It is a pa.s.sage that, earlier, I would have hurried through: the purple pa.s.sage, the reflective caption. Now I see a precision in its romanticism, and a great effort of thought and sympathy. And the effort doesn't stop with the aspect of the land. It extends to all men in these dark or remote places who, for whatever reason, are denied a clear vision of the world: Karain himself, in his world of phantoms; w.a.n.g, the self-exiled Chinese of Victory, Victory, self-contained within the "instinctive existence" of the Chinese peasant; the two Belgian empire builders of "An Outpost of Progress," helpless away from their fellows, living in the middle of Africa "like blind men in a large room, aware only of what came in contact with them, but unable to see the general aspect of things." self-contained within the "instinctive existence" of the Chinese peasant; the two Belgian empire builders of "An Outpost of Progress," helpless away from their fellows, living in the middle of Africa "like blind men in a large room, aware only of what came in contact with them, but unable to see the general aspect of things."

"An Outpost of Progress" is now to me the finest thing Conrad wrote. It is the story of two commonplace Belgians, new to the new Belgian Congo, who find that they have unwittingly, through their negro a.s.sistant, traded Africans for ivory, are then abandoned by the surrounding tribesmen, and go mad. But my first judgement of it had been only literary. It had seemed familiar; I had read other stories of lonely white men going mad in hot countries. And my rediscovery, or discovery, of Conrad really began with one small scene in Heart of Darkness. Heart of Darkness.

The African background-"the demoralized land" of plunder and licensed cruelty-I took for granted. That is how we can be imprisoned by our a.s.sumptions. The background now seems to me to be the most effective part of the book; but then it was no more than what I expected. The story of Kurtz, the upriver ivory agent, who is led to primitivism and lunacy by his unlimited power over primitive men, was lost on me. But there was a page which spoke directly to me, and not only of Africa.

The steamer is going upriver to meet Kurtz; it is "like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world." A hut is sighted on the bank. It is empty, but it contains one book, sixty years old. An Inquiry into Some Points of Seamans.h.i.+p, An Inquiry into Some Points of Seamans.h.i.+p, tattered, without covers, but "lovingly st.i.tched afresh with white cotton thread." And in the midst of nightmare, this old book, "dreary ... with ill.u.s.trative diagrams and repulsive tables of figures," but with its "singleness of intention," its "honest concern for the right way of going to work," seems to the narrator to be "luminous with another than a professional light." tattered, without covers, but "lovingly st.i.tched afresh with white cotton thread." And in the midst of nightmare, this old book, "dreary ... with ill.u.s.trative diagrams and repulsive tables of figures," but with its "singleness of intention," its "honest concern for the right way of going to work," seems to the narrator to be "luminous with another than a professional light."

This scene, perhaps because I have carried it for so long, or perhaps because I am more receptive to the rest of the story, now makes less of an impression. But I suppose that at the time it answered something of the political panic I was beginning to feel.

To be a colonial was to know a kind of security; it was to inhabit a fixed world. And I suppose that in my fantasy I had seen myself coming to England as to some purely literary region, where, untrammelled by the accidents of history or background, I could make a romantic career for myself as a writer. But in the new world I felt that ground move below me. The new politics, the curious reliance of men on inst.i.tutions they were yet working to undermine, the simplicity of beliefs and the hideous simplicity of actions, the corruption of causes, half-made societies that seemed doomed to remain half-made: these were the things that began to preoccupy me. They were not things from which I could detach myself. And I found that Conrad-sixty years before, in the time of a great peace-had been everywhere before me. Not as a man with a cause, but a man offering, as in Nostromo, Nostromo, a vision of the world's half-made societies as places which continuously made and unmade themselves, where there was no goal, and where always "something inherent in the necessities of successful action ... carried with it the moral degradation of the idea." Dismal, but deeply felt: a kind of truth and half a consolation. a vision of the world's half-made societies as places which continuously made and unmade themselves, where there was no goal, and where always "something inherent in the necessities of successful action ... carried with it the moral degradation of the idea." Dismal, but deeply felt: a kind of truth and half a consolation.

To understand Conrad, then, it was necessary to begin to match his experience. It was also necessary to lose one's preconceptions of what the novel should do and, above all, to rid oneself of the subtle corruptions of the novel or comedy of manners. When art copies life, and life in its turn mimics art, a writer's originality can often be obscured. The Secret Agent The Secret Agent seemed to be a thriller. But Inspector Heat, correct but oddly disturbing, was like no policeman before in fiction-though there have been many like him since. And, in spite of appearances, this grand lady, patroness of a celebrated anarchist, was not Lady Bracknell: seemed to be a thriller. But Inspector Heat, correct but oddly disturbing, was like no policeman before in fiction-though there have been many like him since. And, in spite of appearances, this grand lady, patroness of a celebrated anarchist, was not Lady Bracknell: His views had nothing in them to shock or startle her, since she judged them from the standpoint of her lofty position. Indeed, her sympathies were easily accessible to a man of that sort. She was not an exploiting capitalist herself; she was, as it were, above the play of economic conditions. And she had a great pity for the more obvious forms of common human miseries, precisely because she was such a complete stranger to them that she had to translate her conception into terms of mental suffering before she could grasp the notion of their cruelty ... She had come to believe almost his theory of the future, since it was not repugnant to her prejudices. She disliked the new element of plutocracy in the social compound, and industrialism as a method of human development appeared to her singularly repulsive in its mechanical and unfeeling character. The humanitarian hopes of the mild Michaelis tended not towards utter destruction, but merely towards the economic ruin of the system. And she did not really see where was the moral harm of it. It would do away with all the mult.i.tude of the parvenus, whom she disliked and mistrusted, not because they had arrived anywhere (she denied that), but because of their profound unintelligence of the world, which was the primary cause of the crudity of their perceptions and the aridity of their hearts.

Not Lady Bracknell. Someone much more real, and still recognizable in more than one country. Younger today perhaps; but humanitarian concern still disguises a similar arrogance and simplicity, the conviction that wealth, a particular fortune, position or a particular name are the only possible causes of human self-esteem. And in how many countries today can we find the likeness of this man?

The all but moribund veteran of dynamite wars had been a great actor in his time ... The famous terrorist had never in his life raised personally so much as his little finger against the social edifice. He was no man of action ... With a more subtle intention, he took the part of an insolent and venomous evoker of sinister impulses which lurk in the blind envy and exasperated vanity of ignorance, in the suffering and misery of poverty, in all the hopeful and n.o.ble illusions of righteous anger, pity and revolt. The shadow of his evil gift clung to him yet like the smell of a deadly drug in an old vial of poison, emptied now, useless, ready to be thrown away upon the rubbish-heap of things that had served their time.

The phrase that had struck me there was "sinister impulses which lurk in ... n.o.ble illusions." But now another phrase stands out: the "exasperated vanity of ignorance." It is so with the best of Conrad. Words which at one time we disregard, at another moment glitter.

But the character in The Secret Agent The Secret Agent who is the subject of that paragraph hardly exists outside that paragraph. His name is Karl Yundt; he is not one of the figures we remember. Physically, he is a grotesque, a caricature, as are so many of the others, for all Conrad's penetration-anarchists, policemen, government ministers. There is nothing in Karl Yundt's dramatic appearance in the novel, so to speak, that matches the profundity of that paragraph or hints at the quality of reflection out of which he was created. who is the subject of that paragraph hardly exists outside that paragraph. His name is Karl Yundt; he is not one of the figures we remember. Physically, he is a grotesque, a caricature, as are so many of the others, for all Conrad's penetration-anarchists, policemen, government ministers. There is nothing in Karl Yundt's dramatic appearance in the novel, so to speak, that matches the profundity of that paragraph or hints at the quality of reflection out of which he was created.

My reservations about Conrad as a novelist remain. There is something flawed and unexercised about his creative imagination. He does not-except in Nostromo Nostromo and some of the stories-involve me in his fantasy; and and some of the stories-involve me in his fantasy; and Lord Jim Lord Jim is still to me more acceptable as a narrative poem than as a novel. Conrad's value to me is that he is someone who sixty to seventy years ago meditated on my world, a world I recognize today. I feel this about no other writer of the century. His achievement derives from the honesty which is part of his difficulty, that "scrupulous fidelity to the truth of my own sensations." is still to me more acceptable as a narrative poem than as a novel. Conrad's value to me is that he is someone who sixty to seventy years ago meditated on my world, a world I recognize today. I feel this about no other writer of the century. His achievement derives from the honesty which is part of his difficulty, that "scrupulous fidelity to the truth of my own sensations."

Nothing is rigged in Conrad. He doesn't remake countries. He chose, as we now know, incidents from real life; and he meditated on them. "Meditate" is his own, exact word. And what he says about his heroine in Nostromo Nostromo can be applied to himself. "The wisdom of the heart having no concern with the erection or demolition of theories any more than with the defence of prejudices, has no random words at its command. The words it p.r.o.nounces have the value of acts of integrity, tolerance and compa.s.sion." can be applied to himself. "The wisdom of the heart having no concern with the erection or demolition of theories any more than with the defence of prejudices, has no random words at its command. The words it p.r.o.nounces have the value of acts of integrity, tolerance and compa.s.sion."

EVERY GREAT writer is produced by a series of special circ.u.mstances. With Conrad these circ.u.mstances are well known: his Polish youth, his twenty years of wandering, his settling down to write in his late thirties, experience more or less closed, in England, a foreign country. These circ.u.mstances have to be considered together; one cannot be stressed above any other. The fact of the late start cannot be separated from the background and the scattered experience. But the late start is important. writer is produced by a series of special circ.u.mstances. With Conrad these circ.u.mstances are well known: his Polish youth, his twenty years of wandering, his settling down to write in his late thirties, experience more or less closed, in England, a foreign country. These circ.u.mstances have to be considered together; one cannot be stressed above any other. The fact of the late start cannot be separated from the background and the scattered experience. But the late start is important.

Most imaginative writers discover themselves, and their world, through their work. Conrad, when he settled down to write, was, as he wrote to the publisher William Blackwood, a man whose character had been formed. He knew his world, and had reflected on his experience. Solitariness, pa.s.sion, the abyss: the themes are constant in Conrad. There is a unity in a writer's work; but the Conrad who wrote Victory, Victory, though easier and more direct in style, was no more experienced and wise than the Conrad who, twenty years before, had written though easier and more direct in style, was no more experienced and wise than the Conrad who, twenty years before, had written Almayer's Folly. Almayer's Folly. His uncertainties in the early days seem to have been mainly literary, a trying out of subjects and moods. In 1896, the year after the publication of His uncertainties in the early days seem to have been mainly literary, a trying out of subjects and moods. In 1896, the year after the publication of Almayer's Folly, Almayer's Folly, he could break off from the romantic turgidities of he could break off from the romantic turgidities of The Rescue The Rescue and not only write "The Lagoon," but also begin "An Outpost of Progress." These stories, which stand at the opposite ends, as it were, of my comprehension of Conrad, one story so romantic, one so brisk and tough, were written almost at the same time. and not only write "The Lagoon," but also begin "An Outpost of Progress." These stories, which stand at the opposite ends, as it were, of my comprehension of Conrad, one story so romantic, one so brisk and tough, were written almost at the same time.

And there are the aphorisms. They run right through Conrad's work, and their tone never varies. It is the same wise man who seems to be speaking. "The fear of finality which lurks in every human breast and prevents so many heroisms and so many crimes": that is from Almayer's Folly, Almayer's Folly, 1895. And this is from 1895. And this is from Nostromo, Nostromo, 1904: "a man to whom love comes late, not as the most splendid of illusions, but like an enlightening and priceless misfortune"-which is almost too startling in the context. From 1904: "a man to whom love comes late, not as the most splendid of illusions, but like an enlightening and priceless misfortune"-which is almost too startling in the context. From The Secret Agent, The Secret Agent, 1907, where it seems almost wasted: "Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation, a systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious." And lastly, from 1907, where it seems almost wasted: "Curiosity being one of the forms of self-revelation, a systematically incurious person remains always partly mysterious." And lastly, from Victory, Victory, 1915: "the fatal imperfection of all the gifts of life, which makes of them a delusion and a snare"-which might have been fitted into any of the earlier books. 1915: "the fatal imperfection of all the gifts of life, which makes of them a delusion and a snare"-which might have been fitted into any of the earlier books.

To take an interest in a writer's work is, for me, to take an interest in his life; one interest follows automatically on the other. And to me there is something peculiarly depressing about Conrad's writing life. With a writer like Ibsen one can be as unsettled by the life as by the plays themselves. One wonders about the surrender of the life of the senses; one wonders about the short-lived satisfactions of the creative instinct, as unappeasable as the senses. But with Ibsen there is always the excitement of the work, developing, changing, enriched by these very doubts and conflicts. All Conrad's subjects, and all his conclusions, seem to have existed in his head when he settled down to write. Nostromo Nostromo could be suggested by a few lines in a book, could be suggested by a few lines in a book, The Secret Agent The Secret Agent by a sc.r.a.p of conversation and a book. But, really, experience was in the past; and the labour of the writing life lay in dredging up this experience, in "casting round"-Conradian words-for suitable subjects for meditation. by a sc.r.a.p of conversation and a book. But, really, experience was in the past; and the labour of the writing life lay in dredging up this experience, in "casting round"-Conradian words-for suitable subjects for meditation.

Conrad's ideas about fiction seem to have shaped early during his writing career. And, whatever the uncertainties of his early practice, these ideas never changed. In 1895, when his first book was published, he wrote to a friend, who was also beginning to write: "All the charm, all the truth of [your story] are thrown away by the construction-by the mechanism (so to speak) of the story which makes it appear false ... You have much imagination: much more than I ever will have if I live to be a hundred years old. Well, that imagination (I wish I had it) should be used to create human souls: to disclose human hearts-and not to create events that are properly speaking accidents accidents only. To accomplish it you must cultivate your poetic faculty ... you must squeeze out of yourself every sensation, every thought, every image." When he met Wells, Conrad said (the story is Wells's): "My dear Wells, what is this only. To accomplish it you must cultivate your poetic faculty ... you must squeeze out of yourself every sensation, every thought, every image." When he met Wells, Conrad said (the story is Wells's): "My dear Wells, what is this Love and Mr Lewisham Love and Mr Lewisham about? What is all this about Jane Austen? What is it all about? What is all this about Jane Austen? What is it all about about?" And later-all these quotations are from Jocelyn Baines's biography-Conrad was to write: "The national English novelist seldom regards his work-the exercise of his Art-as an achievement of active life by which he will produce certain definite effects upon the emotions of his readers, but simply as an instinctive, often unreasoned, outpouring of his own emotions."

Were these ideas of Conrad's French and European? Conrad, after all, liked Balzac, most breathless of writers; and Balzac, through instinct and unreason, a man bewitched by his own society, had arrived at something very like that "romantic feeling of reality" which Conrad said was his own inborn faculty. It seems at least possible that, in his irritated rejection of the English novel of manners and the novel of "accidents," Conrad was rationalizing what was at once his own imaginative deficiency as well as his philosophical need to stick as close as possible to the facts of every situation. In fiction he did not seek to discover; he sought only to explain; the discovery of every tale, as the narrator of Under Western Eyes Under Western Eyes says, is a moral one. says, is a moral one.

In the experience of most writers the imaginative realizing of a story constantly modifies the writer's original concept of it. Out of experience, fantasy and all kinds of impulses, a story suggests itself. But the story has to be tested by, and its various parts survive, the writer's dramatic imagination. Things work or they don't work; what is true feels true; what is false is false. And the writer, trying to make his fiction work, making accommodations with his imagination, can say more than he knows. With Conrad the story seems to be fixed; it is something given, like the prose "argument" stated at the beginning of a section of an old poem. Conrad knows exactly what he has to say. And sometimes, as in Lord Jim Lord Jim and and Heart of Darkness, Heart of Darkness, he says less than he intends. he says less than he intends.

Heart of Darkness breaks into two. There is the reportage about the Congo, totally accurate, as we now know: Conrad scholars.h.i.+p has been able to identify almost everyone in that story. And there is the fiction, which in the context is like fiction, about Kurtz, the ivory agent who allows himself to become a kind of savage African G.o.d. The idea of Kurtz, when it is stated, seems good: he will show "what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by way of solitude." Beguiling words, but they are abstract; and the idea, deliberately worked out, remains an applied idea. Conrad's att.i.tude to fiction-not as something of itself, but as a varnish on fact-is revealed by his comment on the story. "It is experience pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case for the perfectly legitimate, I believe, purpose of bringing it home to the minds and bosoms of the reader." breaks into two. There is the reportage about the Congo, totally accurate, as we now know: Conrad scholars.h.i.+p has been able to identify almost everyone in that story. And there is the fiction, which in the context is like fiction, about Kurtz, the ivory agent who allows himself to become a kind of savage African G.o.d. The idea of Kurtz, when it is stated, seems good: he will show "what particular region of the first ages a man's untrammelled feet may take him into by way of solitude." Beguiling words, but they are abstract; and the idea, deliberately worked out, remains an applied idea. Conrad's att.i.tude to fiction-not as something of itself, but as a varnish on fact-is revealed by his comment on the story. "It is experience pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual facts of the case for the perfectly legitimate, I believe, purpose of bringing it home to the minds and bosoms of the reader."

Mystery-it is the Conradian word. But there is no mystery in the work itself, the things imagined; mystery remains a concept of the writer's. The theme of pa.s.sion and the abyss recurs in Conrad, but there is nothing in his work like the evening scene in Ibsen's Ghosts: Ghosts: the lamp being lit, the champagne being called for, light and champagne only underlining the blight of that house, a blight that at first seems external and arbitrary and is then seen to come from within. There is no scene like that, which takes us beyond what we witness and becomes a symbol for aspects of our own experience. There is nothing-still on the theme of blight-like "The Withered Arm," Hardy's story of rejection and revenge and the dereliction of the innocent, which goes beyond the country tale of magic on which it was based. Conrad is too particular and concrete a writer for that; he sticks too close to the facts; if he had meditated on those stories he might have turned them into case histories. the lamp being lit, the champagne being called for, light and champagne only underlining the blight of that house, a blight that at first seems external and arbitrary and is then seen to come from within. There is no scene like that, which takes us beyond what we witness and becomes a symbol for aspects of our own experience. There is nothing-still on the theme of blight-like "The Withered Arm," Hardy's story of rejection and revenge and the dereliction of the innocent, which goes beyond the country tale of magic on which it was based. Conrad is too particular and concrete a writer for that; he sticks too close to the facts; if he had meditated on those stories he might have turned them into case histories.

With writers like Ibsen and Hardy, fantasy answers impulses and needs they might not have been able to state. The truths of that fantasy we have to work out, or translate, for ourselves. With Conrad the process is reversed. We almost begin with the truths-portable truths, as it were, that can sometimes be rendered as aphorisms-and work through to their demonstration. The method was forced on him by the special circ.u.mstances that made him a writer. To understand the difficulties of this method, the extraordinary qualities of intelligence and sympathy it required, and the exercise of what he described as the "poetic faculty," we should try and look at the problem from Conrad's point of view. There is an early story which enables us to do just that.

The story is "The Return," which was written at the same time as "Karain." It is set in London and, interestingly, its two characters are English. Alvan Hervey is a City man. He is "tall, well set-up, good-looking and healthy; and his clear pale face had under its commonplace refinement that slight tinge of overbearing brutality which is given by the possession of only partly difficult accomplishments; by excelling in games, or in the art of making money; by the easy mastery over animals and over needy men." And it is already clear that this is less a portrait than an aphorism and an idea about the middle cla.s.s.

We follow Hervey home one evening. We go up to his dressing room, gaslit, with a b.u.t.terfly-shaped flame coming out of the mouth of a bronze dragon. The room is full of mirrors and it is suddenly satisfactorily full of middle-cla.s.s Alvan Herveys. But there is a letter on his wife's dressing table: she has left him. We follow Hervey then through every detail of his middle-cla.s.s reaction: shock, nausea, humiliation, anger, sadness: paragraph after ordered paragraph, page after page. And, wonderfully, by his sheer a.n.a.lytical intelligence Conrad holds us.

Someone is then heard to enter the house. It is Hervey's wife: she has not, after all, had the courage to leave. What follows now is even more impressive. We move step by step with Hervey, from the feeling of relief and triumph and the wish to punish, to the conviction that the woman, a stranger after five years of marriage, "had in her hands an indispensable gift which nothing else on earth could give." So Hervey arrives at the "irresistible belief in an enigma ... the conviction that within his reach and pa.s.sing away from him was the very secret of existence-its cert.i.tude, immaterial and precious." He wants then to "compel the surrender of the gift." He tells his wife he loves her; but the shoddy words only awaken her indignation, her contempt for the "materialism" of men, and her anger at her own self-deception. Up to this point the story works. Now it fades away. Hervey remembers that his wife has not had the courage to leave; he feels that she doesn't have the "gift" which he now needs. And it is he who leaves and doesn't return.

Mysterious words are repeated in this story-"enigma," "cert.i.tude, immaterial and precious." But there is no real narrative and no real mystery. Another writer might have charted a course of events. For Conrad, though, the drama and the truth lay not in events but in the a.n.a.lysis: identifying the stages of consciousness through which a pa.s.sionless man might move to the recognition of the importance of pa.s.sion. It was the most difficult way of handling the subject; and Conrad suffered during the writing of the eighty-page story. He wrote to Edward Garnett: "It has embittered five months of my life." Such a labour; and yet, in spite of the intelligence and real perceptions, in spite of the cinematic details-the mirrors, the bronze dragon breathing fire-"The Return" remains less a story than an imaginative essay. A truth, as Conrad sees it, has been a.n.a.lysed. But the people remain abstractions.

And that gives another clue. The vision of middle-cla.s.s people as being all alike, all consciously pa.s.sionless, delightful and materialist, so that even marriage is like a conspiracy-that is the satirical vision of the outsider. The year before, when he was suffering with The Rescue, The Rescue, Conrad had written to Garnett: "Other writers have some starting point. Something to catch hold of ... They lean on dialect-or on tradition-or on history-or on the prejudice or fad of the hour; they trade upon some tie or conviction of their time-or upon the absence of these things-which they can abuse or praise. But at any rate they know something to begin with-while I don't. I have had some impressions, some sensations-in my time ... And it's all faded." Conrad had written to Garnett: "Other writers have some starting point. Something to catch hold of ... They lean on dialect-or on tradition-or on history-or on the prejudice or fad of the hour; they trade upon some tie or conviction of their time-or upon the absence of these things-which they can abuse or praise. But at any rate they know something to begin with-while I don't. I have had some impressions, some sensations-in my time ... And it's all faded."

It is the complaint of a writer who is missing a society, and is beginning to understand that fantasy or imagination can move more freely within a closed and ordered world. Conrad's experience was too scattered; he knew many societies by their externals, but he knew none in depth. His human comprehension was complete. But when he set "The Return" in London he was immediately circ.u.mscribed. He couldn't risk much; he couldn't exceed his knowledge. A writer's disadvantage, when the work is done, can appear as advantages. "The Return" takes us behind the scenes early on, as it were, and gives us some idea of the necessary oddity of the work, and the prodigious labour that lay behind the novels which still stand as a meditation on our world.

It is interesting to reflect on writers' myths. With Conrad there is the imperialist myth of the man of honour, the stylist of the sea. It misses the best of Conrad, but it at least reflects the work. The myths of great writers usually have to do with their work rather than their lives. More and more today, writers' myths are about the writers themselves; the work has become less obtrusive. The great societies that produced the great novels of the past have cracked. Writing has become more private and more privately glamorous. The novel as a form no longer carries conviction. Experimentation, not aimed at the real difficulties, has corrupted response; and there is a great confusion in the minds of readers and writers about the purpose of the novel. The novelist, like the painter, no longer recognizes his interpretive function; he seeks to go beyond it; and his audience diminishes. And so the world we inhabit, which is always new, goes by unexamined, made ordinary by the camera, unmeditated on; and there is no one to awaken the sense of true wonder. That is perhaps a fair definition of the novelist's purpose, in all ages.

Conrad died fifty years ago. In those fifty years his work has penetrated to many corners of the world which he saw as dark. It is a subject for Conradian meditation; it tells us something about our new world. Perhaps it doesn't matter what we say about Conrad; it is enough that he is discussed. You will remember that for Marlow in Heart of Darkness, Heart of Darkness, "the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of those misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moons.h.i.+ne." "the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of those misty halos that sometimes are made visible by the spectral illumination of moons.h.i.+ne."

July 1974

POSTSCRIPT.

Two Worlds (The n.o.bel Lecture) THIS IS UNUSUAL for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true. It might seem strange that a man who has dealt in words and emotions and ideas for nearly fifty years shouldn't have a few to spare, so to speak. But everything of value about me is in my books. Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will-with luck-come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise. That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing-which is never an easy thing to do. for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true. It might seem strange that a man who has dealt in words and emotions and ideas for nearly fifty years shouldn't have a few to spare, so to speak. But everything of value about me is in my books. Whatever extra there is in me at any given moment isn't fully formed. I am hardly aware of it; it awaits the next book. It will-with luck-come to me during the actual writing, and it will take me by surprise. That element of surprise is what I look for when I am writing. It is my way of judging what I am doing-which is never an easy thing to do.

Proust has written with great penetration of the difference between the writer as writer and the writer as a social being. You will find his thoughts in some of his essays in Against Sainte-Beuve, Against Sainte-Beuve, a book reconst.i.tuted from his early papers. a book reconst.i.tuted from his early papers.

The nineteenth-century French critic Sainte-Beuve believed that to understand a writer it was necessary to know as much as possible about the exterior man, the details of his life. It is a beguiling method, using the man to illuminate the work. It might seem una.s.sailable. But Proust is able very convincingly to pick it apart. "This method of Sainte-Beuve," Proust writes, "ignores what a very slight degree of self-acquaintance teaches us: that a book is the product of a different self from the self we manifest in our habits, in our social life, in our vices. If we would try to understand that particular self, it is by searching our own bosoms, and trying to reconstruct it there, that we may arrive at it."

Those words of Proust should be with us whenever we are reading the biography of a writer-or the biography of anyone who depends on what can be called inspiration. All the details of the life and the quirks and the friends.h.i.+ps can be laid out for us, but the mystery of the writing will remain. No amount of doc.u.mentation, however fascinating, can take us there. The biography of a writer-or even the autobiography-will always have this incompleteness.

Proust is a master of happy amplification, and I would like to go back to Against Sainte-Beuve Against Sainte-Beuve just for a little. "In fact," Proust writes, "it is the secretions of one's innermost self, written in solitude and for oneself alone, that one gives to the public. What one bestows on private life-in conversation ... or in those drawing-room essays that are scarcely more than conversation in print-is the product of a quite superficial self, not of the innermost self which one can only recover by putting aside the world and the self that frequents the world." just for a little. "In fact," Proust writes, "it is the secretions of one's innermost self, written in solitude and for oneself alone, that one gives to the public. What one bestows on private life-in conversation ... or in those drawing-room essays that are scarcely more than conversation in print-is the product of a quite superficial self, not of the innermost self which one can only recover by putting aside the world and the self that frequents the world."

When he wrote that, Proust had not yet found the subject that was to lead him to the happiness of his great literary labour. And you can tell from what I have quoted that he was a man trusting to his intuition and waiting for luck. I have quoted t