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Books and Persons: Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911, a non-fiction book by Arnold Bennett |
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Joseph Conrad & The Athenaeum |
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_ [_19 Sep. '08_] The _Athenaeum_ is a serious journal, genuinely devoted to learning. The mischief is that it will persist in talking about literature. I do not wish to be accused of breaking a butterfly on a wheel, but the _Athenaeum's_ review of Mr. Joseph Conrad's new book, "A Set of Six," in its four thousand two hundred and eighteenth issue, really calls for protest. At that age the _Athenaeum_ ought, at any rate, to know better than to make itself ridiculous. It owes an apology to Mr. Conrad. Here we have a Pole who has taken the trouble to come from the ends of the earth to England, to learn to speak the English language, and to write it like a genius; and he is received in this grotesque fashion by the leading literary journal! Truly, the _Athenaeum's_ review resembles nothing so much as the antics of a provincial mayor round a foreign monarch sojourning in his town. * * * * * For, of course, the _Athenaeum_ is obsequious. In common with every paper in this country, it has learnt that the proper thing is to praise Mr. Conrad's work. Not to appreciate Mr. Conrad's work at this time of day would amount to bad form. There is a cliche in nearly every line of the _Athenaeum_'s discriminating notice. "Mr. Conrad is not the kind of author whose work one is content to meet only in fugitive form," etc. "Those who appreciate fine craftsmanship in fiction," etc. But there is worse than cliches. For example: "It is too studiously chiselled and hammered-out for that." (God alone knows for what.) Imagine the effect of studiously chiselling a work and then hammering it out! Useful process! I wonder the _Athenaeum_ did not suggest that Mr. Conrad, having written a story, took it to Brooklands to get it run over by a motor-car. Again: "His effects are studiously wrought, _although_--such is his mastery of literary art--they produce a swift and penetrating impression." Impossible not to recall the weighty judgment of one of Stevenson's characters upon the _Athenaeum_: "Golly, what a paper!" * * * * * The _Athenaeum_ further says: "His is not at all the impressionistic method." Probably the impressionistic method is merely any method that the _Athenaeum_ doesn't like. But one would ask: Has it ever read the opening paragraph of "The Return," perhaps the most dazzling feat of impressionism in modern English? The _Athenaeum_ says also: "Upon the whole, we do not think the short story represents Mr. Conrad's true _metier_" It may be that Mr. Conrad's true _metier_ was, after all, that of an auctioneer; but, after "Youth," "To-morrow," "Typhoon," "Karain," "The End of the Tether," and half a dozen other mere masterpieces, he may congratulate himself on having made a fairly successful hobby of the short story. The most extraordinary of all the _Athenaeum's_ remarks is this: "The one ship story here, 'The Brute,' makes us regret that the author does not give us more of the sea in his work." Well, considering that about two-thirds of Mr. Conrad's work deals with the sea, considering that he has written "Lord Jim," "The Nigger of the _Narcissus_" "Typhoon," "Nostromo," and "The Mirror of the Sea," this regret shall be awarded the gold medal of the silly season. If the _Athenaeum_ were a silly paper, like the _Academy_, I should have kept an august silence on this ineptitude. But the _Athenaeum_ has my respect. It ought to remember the responsibilities of its position, and ought not to entrust an important work of letters to some one whose most obvious characteristic is an exquisite and profound incompetence for criticism. The explanation that occurs to me is that "A Set of Six" and "Diana Mallory" got mixed on the _Athenaeum's_ library table, and that each was despatched to the critic chosen for the other. * * * * * "A Set of Six" will not count among Mr. Conrad's major works. But in the mere use of English it shows an advance upon all his previous books. In some of his finest chapters there is scarcely a page without a phrase that no Englishman would have written, and in nearly every one of his books slight positive errors in the use of English are fairly common. In "A Set of Six" I have detected no error and extremely few questionable terms. The influence of his deep acquaintance with French is shown in the position of the adverb in "I saw again somebody in the porch." It cannot be called bad English, but it is queer. "Inasmuch that" could certainly be defended (compare "in so much that"), but an Englishman would not, I think, have written it. Nor would an Englishman be likely to write "that sort of adventures." Mr. Conrad still maintains his preference for indirect narrative through the mouths of persons who witnessed the events to be described. I dare say that he would justify the device with great skill and convincingness. But it undoubtedly gives an effect of clumsiness. The first story in the volume, "Gaspar Ruiz," is a striking instance of complicated narrative machinery. This peculiarity also detracts from the realistic authority of the work. For by the time you have got to the end of "A Set of Six" you have met a whole series of men who all talk just as well as Mr. Conrad writes, and upon calm reflection the existence of a whole series of such men must seem to you very improbable. The best pages in the book are those devoted to the ironical contemplation of a young lady anarchist. They are tremendous. _ |
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