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The Floating Press - Joseph Conrad

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290 pages

English

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Although Joseph Conrad is now regarded by many critics as one of the most important twentieth-century writers, popular acclaim proved hard for the Polish-born writer to achieve during his lifetime. It was Victory, a psychological thriller of sorts, that finally broke through and helped the writer gain the mass readership his writing deserves.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 février 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775451518
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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VICTORY
AN ISLAND TALE
* * *
JOSEPH CONRAD

*

Victory An Island Tale From a 1920 edition ISBN 978-1-775451-51-8 © 2011 The Floating Press
While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike.
Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Note to the First Edition Author's Note PART ONE Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven PART TWO Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight PART THREE Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten PART FOUR Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen
Note to the First Edition
*
The last word of this novel was written on 29 May 1914. And that lastword was the single word of the title.
Those were the times of peace. Now that the moment of publicationapproaches I have been considering the discretion of altering thetitle-page. The word "Victory" the shining and tragic goal of nobleeffort, appeared too great, too august, to stand at the head of a merenovel. There was also the possibility of falling under the suspicion ofcommercial astuteness deceiving the public into the belief that the bookhad something to do with war.
Of that, however, I was not afraid very much. What influenced mydecision most were the obscure promptings of that pagan residuum ofawe and wonder which lurks still at the bottom of our old humanity."Victory" was the last word I had written in peace-time. It was the lastliterary thought which had occurred to me before the doors of the Templeof Janus flying open with a crash shook the minds, the hearts, theconsciences of men all over the world. Such coincidence could not betreated lightly. And I made up my mind to let the word stand, in thesame hopeful spirit in which some simple citizen of Old Rome would have"accepted the Omen."
The second point on which I wish to offer a remark is the existence (inthe novel) of a person named Schomberg.
That I believe him to be true goes without saying. I am not likely tooffer pinchbeck wares to my public consciously. Schomberg is an oldmember of my company. A very subordinate personage in Lord Jim as farback as the year 1899, he became notably active in a certain short storyof mine published in 1902. Here he appears in a still larger part, trueto life (I hope), but also true to himself. Only, in this instance, hisdeeper passions come into play, and thus his grotesque psychology iscompleted at last.
I don't pretend to say that this is the entire Teutonic psychology; butit is indubitably the psychology of a Teuton. My object in mentioninghim here is to bring out the fact that, far from being the incarnationof recent animosities, he is the creature of my old deep-seated, and, asit were, impartial conviction.
J. C.
Author's Note
*
On approaching the task of writing this Note for Victory, the firstthing I am conscious of is the actual nearness of the book, its nearnessto me personally, to the vanished mood in which it was written, and tothe mixed feelings aroused by the critical notices the book obtainedwhen first published almost exactly a year after the beginning of thewar. The writing of it was finished in 1914 long before the murder of anAustrian Archduke sounded the first note of warning for a world alreadyfull of doubts and fears.
The contemporaneous very short Author's Note which is preserved in thisedition bears sufficient witness to the feelings with which I consentedto the publication of the book. The fact of the book having beenpublished in the United States early in the year made it difficultto delay its appearance in England any longer. It came out in thethirteenth month of the war, and my conscience was troubled by the awfulincongruity of throwing this bit of imagined drama into the welterof reality, tragic enough in all conscience, but even more cruel thantragic and more inspiring than cruel. It seemed awfully presumptuous tothink there would be eyes to spare for those pages in a community whichin the crash of the big guns and in the din of brave words expressingthe truth of an indomitable faith could not but feel the edge of a sharpknife at its throat.
The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable both by his powerof endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems tobe that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and toomysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgementto sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go onwith his performance of Beethoven's sonata and the cobbler at hisstall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of theleather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves bedisturbed by an angel's vengeful music too mighty for our ears and tooawful for our terrors? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenlyby the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the bookpleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty ofdetachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and which isyet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods.
It is only when the catastrophe matches the natural obscurity of ourfate that even the best representative of the race is liable to lose hisdetachment. It is very obvious that on the arrival of the gentlemanlyMr. Jones, the single-minded Ricardo, and the faithful Pedro, Heyst, theman of universal detachment, loses his mental self-possession, that fineattitude before the universally irremediable which wears the name ofstoicism. It is all a matter of proportion. There should have been aremedy for that sort of thing. And yet there is no remedy. Behind thisminute instance of life's hazards Heyst sees the power of blind destiny.Besides, Heyst in his fine detachment had lost the habit of assertinghimself. I don't mean the courage of self-assertion, either moral orphysical, but the mere way of it, the trick of the thing, the readinessof mind and the turn of the hand that come without reflection and leadthe man to excellence in life, in art, in crime, in virtue, and, for thematter of that, even in love. Thinking is the great enemy of perfection.The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the mostpernicious of all the habits formed by the civilized man.
But I wouldn't be suspected even remotely of making fun of Axel Heyst. Ihave always liked him. The flesh-and-blood individual who standsbehind the infinitely more familiar figure of the book I remember as amysterious Swede right enough. Whether he was a baron, too, I am not socertain. He himself never laid claim to that distinction. His detachmentwas too great to make any claims, big or small, on one's credulity. Iwill not say where I met him because I fear to give my readers awrong impression, since a marked incongruity between a man and hissurroundings is often a very misleading circumstance. We became veryfriendly for a time, and I would not like to expose him to unpleasantsuspicions though, personally, I am sure he would have been indifferentto suspicions as he was indifferent to all the other disadvantages oflife. He was not the whole Heyst of course; he is only the physical andmoral foundation of my Heyst laid on the ground of a short acquaintance.That it was short was certainly not my fault for he had charmed me bythe mere amenity of his detachment which, in this case, I cannot helpthinking he had carried to excess. He went away from his rooms withoutleaving a trace. I wondered where he had gone to—but now I know.He vanished from my ken only to drift into this adventure that,unavoidable, waited for him in a world which he persisted in lookingupon as a malevolent shadow spinning in the sunlight. Often in thecourse of years an expressed sentiment, the particular sense of a phraseheard casually, would recall him to my mind so that I have fastened onto him many words heard on other men's lips and belonging to other men'sless perfect, less pathetic moods.
The same observation will apply mutatis mutandis to Mr. Jones, who isbuilt on a much slenderer connection. Mr. Jones (or whatever his namewas) did not drift away from me. He turned his back on me and walked outof the room. It was in a little hotel in the island of St. Thomas inthe West Indies (in the year '75) where we found him one hot afternoonextended on three chairs, all alone in the loud buzzing of flies towhich his immobility and his cadaverous aspect gave a most gruesomesignificance. Our invasion must have displeased him because he got offthe chairs brusquely and walked out, leaving with me an indelibly weirdimpression of his thin shanks. One of the men with me said that thefellow was the most desperate gambler he had ever come across. I said:"A professional sharper?" and got for an answer: "He's a terror; but Imust say that up to a certain point he will play fair. . . ." I wonderwhat the point was. I never saw him again because I believe he wentstraight on board a mail-boat which left within the hour for otherports of call in the direction of Aspinall. Mr. Jones's characteristicinsolence belongs to another man of a quite different type. I will saynothing as to the origins of his mentality because I don't intend tomake any damaging admissions.
It so happened that the very same year Ric