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Pub One Info - Joseph Conrad

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197 pages

English

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pubOne.info thank you for your continued support and wish to present you this new edition. When this novel first appeared in book form a notion got about that I had been bolted away with. Some reviewers maintained that the work starting as a short story had got beyond the writer's con-trol. One or two discovered internal evidence of the fact, which seemed to amuse them. They pointed out the limitations of the narrative form. They argued that no man could have been expected to talk all that time, and other men to listen so long. It was not, they said, very credible.

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Publié par	Pub One Info
Date de parution	23 octobre 2010
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9782819918561
Langue	English

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AUTHOR'S NOTE
When this novel first appeared in book form a notiongot about that I had been bolted away with. Some reviewersmaintained that the work starting as a short story had got beyondthe writer's con-trol. One or two discovered internal evidence ofthe fact, which seemed to amuse them. They pointed out thelimitations of the narrative form. They argued that no man couldhave been expected to talk all that time, and other men to listenso long. It was not, they said, very credible.
After thinking it over for something like sixteenyears, I am not so sure about that. Men have been known, both inthe tropics and in the temperate zone, to sit up half the night'swapping yarns'. This, however, is but one yarn, yet withinterruptions affording some measure of relief; and in regard tothe listeners' endurance, the postulate must be accepted that thestory was interesting. It is the necessary preliminary assumption.If I hadn't believed that it was interesting I could never havebegun to write it. As to the mere physical possibility we all knowthat some speeches in Parliament have taken nearer six than threehours in delivery; whereas all that part of the book which isMarlow's narrative can be read through aloud, I should say, in lessthan three hours. Besides - though I have kept strictly all suchinsignificant details out of the tale - we may presume that theremust have been refreshments on that night, a glass of mineral waterof some sort to help the narrator on.
But, seriously, the truth of the matter is, that myfirst thought was of a short story, concerned only with the pilgrimship episode; nothing more. And that was a legitimate conception.After writing a few pages, however, I became for some reasondiscontented and I laid them aside for a time. I didn't take themout of the drawer till the late Mr. William Blackwood suggested Ishould give something again to his magazine.
It was only then that I perceived that the pilgrimship episode was a good starting-point for a free and wanderingtale; that it was an event, too, which could conceivably colour thewhole 'sentiment of existence' in a simple and sensitive character.But all these pre-liminary moods and stirrings of spirit wererather obscure at the time, and they do not appear clearer to menow after the lapse of so many years.
The few pages I had laid aside were not withouttheir weight in the choice of subject. But the whole was re-writtendeliberately. When I sat down to it I knew it would be a long book,though I didn't foresee that it would spread itsetlf over thirteennumbers of 'Maga'.
I have been asked at times whether this was not thebook of mine I liked best. I am a great foe to favouritism inpublic life, in private life, and even in the delicate relationsbipof an author to his works. As a matter of principle I will have nofavourites; but I don't go so far as to feel grieved and annoyed bythe preference some people give to my Lord Jim. I won't even saythat I 'fail to understand. . .' No! But once I had occasion to bepuzzled and surprised.
A friend of mine returning from Italy had talkedwith a lady there who did not like the book. I regretted that, ofcourse, but what surprised me was the ground of her dlslike. 'Youknow,' she said, 'it is all so morbid.'
The pronouncement gave me food for an hour's anxiousthought. Finally I arrived at the conclusion that, making dueallowances for the subject itself being rather foreign to women'snormal sensibili-ties, the lady could not have been an Italian. Iwonder whether she was European at all? In any case, no Latintemperament would have perceived anything morbid in the acuteconsciousness of lost honour. Such a consciousness may be wrong, orit may be right, or it may be condemned as artificial; and,perhaps, my Jim is not a type of wide commonness. But I can safelyassure my readers that he is not the product of coldly pervertedthinking. He's not a figure of Northern Mists either. One sunnymorning, in the commonplace surroundings of an Eastern roadstead, Isaw his form pass by - appealing - significant - under a cloud -perfectly silent. Which is as it should be. It was for me, with allthe sympathy of which I was capable, to seek fit words for hismeaning. He was 'one of us'.
J.C.
1917.
LORD JIM
CHAPTER 1
He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet,powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slightstoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under starewhich made you think of a charging bull. His voice was deep, loud,and his manner dis-played a kind of dogged self-assertion which hadnothing aggressive in it. It seemed a necessity, and it wasdirected apparently as much at himself as at anybody else. He wasspotlessly neat, apparelled in immaculate white from shoes to hat,and in the various Eastern ports where he got his living asship-chandler's water-clerk he was very popular.
A water-clerk need not pass an examination inanything under the sun, but he must have Ability in the abstractand demonstrate it practically. His work consists in racing undersail, steam, or oars against other water-clerks for any ship aboutto anchor, greeting her captain cheerily, forcing upon him a card -the business card of the ship-chandler - and on his first visit onshore piloting him firmly but without ostentation to a vast,cavern-like shop which is full of things that are eaten and drunkon board ship; where you can get everything to make her seaworthyand beautiful, from a set of chain-hooks for her cable to a book ofgold-leaf for the carvings of her stern; and where her commander isreceived like a brother by a ship-chandler he has never seenbefore. There is a cool parlour, easy-chairs, bottles, cigars,writing implements, a copy of harbour regulations, and a warmth ofwelcome that melts the salt of a three months' passage out of aseaman's heart. The connection thus begun is kept up, as long asthe ship remains in harbour, by the daily visits of thewater-clerk. To the captain he is faithful like a friend andattentive like a son, with the patience of Job, the unselfishdevotion of a woman, and the jollity of a boon companion. Later onthe bill is sent in. It is a beautiful and humane occupation.Therefore good water-clerks are scarce. When a water-clerk whopossesses Ability in the abstract has also the advantage of havingbeen brought up to the sea, he is worth to his employer a lot ofmoney and some humouring. Jim had always good wages and as muchhumouring as would have bought the fidelity of a fiend.Nevertheless, with black ingratitude he would throw up the jobsuddenly and depart. To his employers the reasons he gave wereobviously inadequate. They said 'Confounded fool!' as soon as hisback was turned. This was their criticism on his exquisitesensibility.
To the white men in the waterside business and tothe captains of ships he was just Jim - nothing more. He had, ofcourse, another name, but he was anxious that it should not bepronounced. His incognito, which had as many holes as a sieve, wasnot meant to hide a personality but a fact. When the fact brokethrough the incognito he would leave suddenly the seaport where hehappened to be at the time and go to another - generally farthereast. He kept to seaports because he was a seaman in exile from thesea, and had Ability in the abstract, which is good for no otherwork but that of a water-clerk. He retreated in good order towardsthe rising sun, and the fact followed him casually but inevitably.Thus in the course of years he was known successively in Bombay, inCalcutta, in Rangoon, in Penang, in Batavia - and in each of thesehalting-places was just Jim the water-clerk. Afterwards, when hiskeen perception of the Intolerable drove him away for good fromseaports and white men, even into the virgin forest, the Malays ofthe jungle village, where he had elected to conceal his deplorablefaculty, added a word to the monosyllable of his incognito. Theycalled him Tuan Jim: as one might say - Lord Jim.
Originally he came from a parsonage. Many commandersof fine merchant-ships come from these abodes of piety and peace.Jim's father possessed such certain knowledge of the Unknowable asmade for the righteousness of people in cottages without disturbingthe ease of mind of those whom an unerring Providence enables tolive in mansions. The little church on a hill had the mossygreyness of a rock seen through a ragged screen of leaves. It hadstood there for centuries, but the trees around probably rememberedthe laying of the first stone. Below, the red front of the rectorygleamed with a warm tint in the midst of grass-plots, flower-beds,and fir-trees, with an orchard at the back, a paved stable-yard tothe left, and the sloping glass of greenhouses tacked along a wallof bricks. The living had belonged to the family for generations;but Jim was one of five sons, and when after a course of lightholiday literature his vocation for the sea had declared itself, hewas sent at once to a 'training-ship for officers of the mercantilemarine.'
He learned there a little trigonometry and how tocross top-gallant yards. He was generally liked. He had the thirdplace in navigation and pulled stroke in the first cutter. Having asteady head with an excellent physique, he was very smart aloft.His station was in the fore-top, and often from there he lookeddown, with the contempt of a man destined to shine in the midst ofdangers, at the peaceful multitude of roofs cut in two by the browntide of the stream, while scattered on the outskirts of thesurrounding plain the factory chimneys rose perpendicular against agrimy sky, each slender like a pencil, and belching out smoke likea volcano. He could see the big ships departing, the broad-beamedferries constantly on the move, the little boats floating far belowhis feet, with the hazy splendour of the sea in the distance, andthe hope of a stirring life in the world of adventure.
On the lower deck in the babel of two hundred voiceshe would forget himself, and beforehand live i