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Show THE CITIZEN 6 jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiuniiiiiiiiiiiiiib THINGS BOOKISH I I Edited By WILUAM C. WINDER, Jr. Joseph Conrad The sea and the earth are unfair-fu- l to their children: a truth, a faith, a generation of men goes and is forgotten, and it does not matter! Except, perhaps to the few of those who believed the truth, confessed the faith or loved the men. In this short declaration from The NiggeroMheNarcissasisself-reveal-e- d the basic theme of all the writings of Joseph Conrad. He stands unafraid, awed yet admiring, before the immensity of night, and admits that life's secrets he will never know. He is not crushed down with agony nor does he curse fate or the unknown God. He accepts the facts of life as he finds them, and his heart goes out in pity; a great ironic pity, to the multitudes of d men. struggling, hoping, He, too, has been young and hoped for a ray of light. He, also, has grown old and the mystery has only deepened. He recognizes that all men, great and small, are puppets in the human comsoul-starve- He admires with intensity the few who dare to challenge the unknown, but he knows full well what the end will be. Does he not say in Karain, Nothing could happen to him unless what happens to all failure and death. Conrads' love is with his fellow men he understands their heart desires but he is oppressed by the seeming futility of their struggles with nature. Nations and individuals of great power come pnd go; they astound, for a moment, with their strength or their wisdom yet, tell me, have they been able to change, or even stay for a second, the power of heat and cold, wind or water, lightning or earthquake, and final death? Why do so many people condemn this writer because in his great love and pity for men, he pictures the world as he sees it? Why not face the facts and then proceed to make the best of existence as it is? edy. It is a coward and a groundling who , 1 dares to plead special providence in time of disaster that he had a premonition to not sail on a ship which went down with many a braver heart on board. We were born; we are here to enjoy a splendid life if we so will it; we will die. These things wTe must know; then why not call upon every art to give us joy and satisfaction while we live? It is not the outward show of the things we daily do that are the best parts of life; rather our dreams and thoughts are its secret truth, its hidden reality. And the artistic inspiration for such thoughts can come only from a deep understanding of life and its limitations. Such an understanding has Joseph Conrad, and this is his summing up of art and its purpose. To arrest for the space of a breath, the hands busy about the work of the earth, and compel men entranced by the sight of distant goals to glance for a moment at the surrounding vision of form and color, of sunshine and shadows; to make them pause for a look, for a sigh, for a smile such is the aim, difficult and evanescent, and reserved only for a very few to achieve. But sometimes, by the deserving and the fortunate, even that task is accomplished. And when it is accomplished, behold! all the truth of life is there: a moment' of vision, a the return to an slghr eternal rest. grow old. Lord Jim (1900) is to us now as new as The Rescue (1920). Art is eternal, so what matters twenty years! After Allmay ers Folly came An Outcast of the Island (1896), The Niger of the Narcissus Tales of Unrest (1898), (1898), Lord Jim (1900), The Inheritors (1901). Among these there are two of his finest works, yet he had received little recognition and his books were almost without sale. Then came Youth (1902), and the critical world shrieked its praise; yet the public did not buy. This public was impressed by the official recognition of his genius, but the books themselves remained unread. It is surely a sad commentary on our culture even now to compare -- the were sales-t)f-twabuoksr- which published near the same time Conrads The Rescue and the trashy tions since. I have seen the mysten ous shores, the still water, the land stir of brown nations, where a stealthy the Nemesis lies in wait. . . But form9 Dpt the east is contained in that vision 0f my youth. I came upon it from a tussle with the sea and I was young- -, and I saw it looking at me. . . Only a moment; a moment of strength, of M romance, of glamour, of youth! flick of sunshine upon a strange shore; M the time to remember, the time for a bn good-by- e Goosigh, and Night h Heart of Darkness the human element plays a smaller part. Here Ian you feel the immensity of land and fo- I J rest, as in Typhoon you feel the terri-- ! In fying power, the malignant anger, of lie The water" There is life in the of Conrads nights; there is eter- nal sound in his silences. Through his men and women Con-- ! rad does not try to enforce any doc-- ; trine upon you. He is one of the pur--' lo est artists we know. He does not argue; he does not dictate; he paints' gorgeous word pictures, and leaves one to find, if possible, the answers to the riddle. After you have read and re-read, you wonder if these characters have a meaning, or perhaps many; meanings. You follow the story ofr Kurz in Heart of Darkness with a throbbing heart; you feel that with him you have faced darkness itself;; yet, bewildered, you ask, Was he a: devil or a builder of beautiful You paraphrase ONeills dreams? Hairy Ape and cry in anguish, God, wrhere does he and where do I belong? And out of the blackness of that immemorial Congo forest comes a mocking laugh, and you realize that your prayer is vain. The other books lack the sublime hopelessness of Heart of Darkness, so many prefer them on that account. I will admit that this tale holds for me In r Joseph Conrad, known to the world The Sheik. as one of the greatest of English To read the Conrad books, to take writers, is a Pole of noble lineage. His the short time necessary to read true name is Josef Konrad Karzeniow-ski- . Youth or Heart of Darkness, is A son of Poland, he to never again have quite the same became a British sea captain inhaled toward life. One becomes a the lasting magic of the deep felt the feeling little more tolerant toward mankind in urge of self expression and paused to all its struggles, realizing of what litconsider wTiich alien language, French tle consequence are the things of or English, would best recreate his which hatreds and strife are born thoughts. It is by mere chance, then, of the pettiness of our daily quibbles that we gratefully read his prose, un- and quarrels. Here you are not pitted defiled by crude translation. And such against another man, your equal, in richly colorful and expressive English conventional strife. You are naked it is! What an astonishing command before the elements, a pawn in the Could one ever, of splendid words! hand, of a reckless player to whom having once read Conrad, hear the your fate does not matter. The game words implacable, unattainable, must go on! How utterly unnecessary without inscrutable, inaccessible, the daily tragedies, the heartaches, the feeling that somehow they should only all caused by our intolerance be used concerning the elemental tears, and the smallness of our natures. things; do they not carry the mind Would we not all be mellowed if we from the finite into the illimitable? could but realize the powerlessness of His power over words is so complete cathat on a single one will fall the task the whole human race against the of expressing his slightest shades of tastrophic power of the universe. for an instant, our latest enfeeling. His every sentence has its Compare, vious thought with the grandeur of own rhythm and cadence, different acthese words from Chance, cording to its thought and mood; his It was one of those dewy, starry prose is equally facile, whether it be nights, oppressing our spirit, crushing lyric, majestic or tragic. our pride, by the brilliant evidence of Conrads materials are not new. His the awful loneliness, of the hopeless, themes are gorgeous, barbaric, violent obscure magnificence of our globe lost in the extreme, due largely to the exin the splendid revelation of a glitterperiences of his early life, for his ships ing, soulless universe. . . . Daytook him often into far eastern and light is friendly to man toiling under African ports. Force, brutality, vioa sun which warms the heart; and lent tragedy, the crushing of men like cloudy, soft nights are more kindly to atoms in the wars of the elements our littleness. all these subjects have been used over In Youth possibly Conrads best and over again by others, but Conrad known tale, he reawakens our apprebrings to them a new reasoning exciation of being young. It is of youth pressed in words that are different. challenging the elements, of the Thorough melodrama, as we know it, dreams and high hopes which we all he certainly w'rote, yet it was drama know. The glory that is given us for a of life as he had experienced it. The fleeting moment! The. morning that usual melodrama that we see is not is ours to dream away against the commore terrible than the actual tragedies ing of the night when we must face of life of which we know, but the fault the facts! There is in this the glamlies in the reasons given to explain our of youth and the deep conviction these deeds of violence. Conrad that youth and its dreams are the sensed the underlying reasons, undermemories which brighten the rest of stood the motives, of these tragedies, life yet even life and all its hopes and gave the world pictures of rare must pass into the inevitable. He truthfulness and intense interest. writes, I remember my youth and the Conrads first feeling that will never come back any Allwayers Folly, book, was published in 1895, the result more the feeling that I could last forof seven years of desperate, heartever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all as breaking toil, he, himself, is not men; the deceitful feeling that lures I ashamed to tell us. He was then 38 us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain years old. The other books followed effort to death. Again, in beautiful regularly from one to two years apaTt. imagery, he recalls his first visit to These are tales and novels that never the East, I have . known its facina- - s land-locke- d . Iter dbye! i roach IIO ITORI Supply Your Needs at AUERBACHS The Store That Saves You Money M FiMiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimiMii' 8m s s |