Mr. Conrad’s Latest

The Weekly Machen

In the follow book review, Arthur Machen brings his theory of “hieroglyphics” to the newspaper column. From Machen’s comments, it is clear that he places Joseph Conrad with Austin and Thackeray rather than alongside Cervantes or Twain. Most interestingly, he defines the stark difference between journalism and literature, which gives the reader a deeper insight into Machen’s own views concerning both his vocation and his occupation.

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Mr. Conrad’s Latest:
The Tropics—By a Great Artist in Prose
by
Arthur Machen
October 14, 1912

A day or two ago a friend of mine gave me Mr. Joseph Conrad’s latest book, “Twixt Land and Sea Tales.”

“I should like you to read this book,” he said. ‘‘It seems to me to have passages of quite extraordinary beauty: look at that; and that. Isn’t it wonderful? And yet. . . I don’t know how it is, but the stories somehow seem to fade away; one can’t grasp them and hold them, if you understand what I mean.”

I have been reading the three tales in the volume very carefully, and I find I do understand my friend’s criticism; and I cordially agree with it. Judging from “Twixt Land and Sea,” I would say that though Mr. Conrad is undoubtedly an admirable craftsman, he is not a great artist; he is a very good writer, but he is not a very good author. This sounds paradoxical; I will try to explain.

The three stories in the book are called “A Smile of Fortune,” “The Secret Sharer,” and “Freya of the Seven Isles.” Each, of course, is matter of those tropics which the author knows so thoroughly.

The Modes of Island Society

The narrator of “A Smile of Fortune” introduces himself, and explains how it was that he met the brothers Jacobus, merchants of the Pearl of the Ocean.

There is no story; there is a sketched study of the manners and conventions of tropical inland society. One Jacobus was universally respected; the other had been excommunicated from the society of all “decent” people for eighteen years. And the ease and the cause were thus: both brothers had illegitimate children. The good Jacobus, whom everybody respected, treated his illegitimate son with savage ferocity and brutality, did not acknowledge him as a son at all, but abused and beat him as his office slave.

The bad Jacobus, on the other hand, acknowledged his illegitimate daughter, and treated her with the greatest affection, so he was cast out of the pale of respectability. The trading captain who tells the story went to bad Jacobus’s house, and found the daughter a sort of beautiful tropical slut, with a strong dash of the virago.

The captain and the fair savage get on well together in an odd sort of way, and there is some kissing. Bad Jacobus is grateful to the captain for coming to his shunned house, and the captain, having done his business and got his freight, sails away, and makes up his mind never to return to the Pearl of the Ocean.

The “Secret Sharer” shows how a captain took a fugitive from justice aboard his ship, concealed him in it, and finally contrived the man’s escape. And “Freya of the Seven Isles” is a tragical history of a shaky and silly old father, his lovely and charming daughter, an excellent young sea-captain, and a spiteful naval officer in command of a Dutch gunboat. Heemskirk, the Dutchman, is violently in love with Freya, and finding that she is devoted to Jasper, the good trading captain, schemes the ruin of his rival by wrecking his beautiful brig, which was hardly second to Freya in Jasper’s affections. Jasper becomes hopeless, a madman almost, and Freya dies of a broken heart.

Realism Not Fine Art

It is this story that is adorned by some of the author’s most admirable prose. Here is a fine passage:—

Nothing, nothing could happen to the brig, he cried, as if the flame of his heart could light up the dark night of uncharted seas; as if the winds had to wait on his future, the stars fight for it in their course; as if the magic of his passion had the power to float a ship on a drop of dew or sail her through the eye of a needle—simply because it was her magnificent lot to be the servant of a love so full of grace as to make all the ways of the earth safe, resplendent, and easy.

And yet; I must repeat that I do not find that these tales are fine literature in the true sense of the term. My reason is that as one reads them one quite believes that the various events and incidents have happened. That story of the two Jacobuses, for example, is obviously true: no doubt the mate of the Sephora was goaded into manslaughter and hidden in the bathroom of a friendly captain; and Mr. Conrad could certainly gives us, if he liked to do so, the real name of that vicious brute Heemskirk, commander of the gunboat Neptun.

Exactly; we feel all that as we read, and therefore the book is not fine art. “Therefore?” Certainly, therefore.

I believe that at Mme. Tussaud’s famous exhibition there is a waxen man in police uniform who is occasionally addressed by visitors; and there is an old story about the Greek artist who painted grapes so well that the birds came and pecked at the fruit. The grapes were painted so well, in fact, that they were painted vilely.

So it is clear, is it not, that it is not the object of art to produce this sort of delusion; a statue that looks like a live man, a landscape that should cause visitors to the National Gallery to try to walk into it, a book that makes us say “no doubt this really happened,” are all examples of bad art. To use a phrase of American journalism, a story should not be a “news story.”

The True Mission of the Artist

For, to carry the argument a little deeper, art does not exist for the purpose of giving us correct information about anything. A painter does not paint a tree primarily and chiefly because he wants us to know exactly what that particular tree is like, but in order that he may communicate to us the mysterious emotion which the sight of that tree communicated to him.

And so with the ingredients that enter into a story or romance. If reading a tale we feel that we are reading “news items” out of an admirably written newspaper, then there is something radically wrong with that tale. In true literary art everything is significant; characters, incidents, dialogue are all there so that they may communicate to us the emotions experienced by the writer in his contemplation of the world.

In other terms; journalism which describes actualities is of science; literature is of art. If a reporter describes an actual event in such a manner that we say: “I don’t believe a word of it; the man made it all up out of his own head,” we have bad journalism. And, on the other lined, if a man of letters writes a tale in such a manner that we say: “I am quite sure all this must have happened; he has just altered the names of the people and the places,” then, in my judgment, we have bad art.

So, excepting always the fine tropical pictures, I do not see how we can give “Twixt Land and Sea” a high rank in literature. It is too true to be good.

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