Victory

VICTORY

Joseph Conrad

Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook published by William Collins in 2015

Life & Times section © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

Gerard Cheshire asserts his moral right as author of the Life & Times section

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases adapted from

Collins English Dictionary

Cover by e-Digital Design. Cover image: The Meeting Place, 1915 (oil on canvas), William Strang (1859–1921)/Private Collection/Photo © Christie’s Images/Bridgeman images

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Source ISBN: 9780008110482

Ebook Edition © January 2015 ISBN: 9780008110499

Version: 2014-12-18

History of Collins

In 1819, millworker William Collins from Glasgow, Scotland, set up a company for printing and publishing pamphlets, sermons, hymn books, and prayer books. That company was Collins and was to mark the birth of HarperCollins Publishers as we know it today. The long tradition of Collins dictionary publishing can be traced back to the first dictionary William published in 1824, Greek and English Lexicon. Indeed, from 1840 onwards, he began to produce illustrated dictionaries and even obtained a licence to print and publish the Bible.

Soon after, William published the first Collins novel, Ready Reckoner; however, it was the time of the Long Depression, where harvests were poor, prices were high, potato crops had failed, and violence was erupting in Europe. As a result, many factories across the country were forced to close down and William chose to retire in 1846, partly due to the hardships he was facing.

Aged 30, William’s son, William II, took over the business. A keen humanitarian with a warm heart and a generous spirit, William II was truly “Victorian” in his outlook. He introduced new, up-to-date steam presses and published affordable editions of Shakespeare’s works and The Pilgrim’s Progress, making them available to the masses for the first time. A new demand for educational books meant that success came with the publication of travel books, scientific books, encyclopedias, and dictionaries. This demand to be educated led to the later publication of atlases, and Collins also held the monopoly on scripture writing at the time.

In the 1860s Collins began to expand and diversify and the idea of “books for the millions” was developed. Affordable editions of classical literature were published, and in 1903 Collins introduced 10 titles in their Collins Handy Illustrated Pocket Novels. These proved so popular that a few years later this had increased to an output of 50 volumes, selling nearly half a million in their year of publication. In the same year, The Everyman’s Library was also instituted, with the idea of publishing an affordable library of the most important classical works, biographies, religious and philosophical treatments, plays, poems, travel, and adventure. This series eclipsed all competition at the time, and the introduction of paperback books in the 1950s helped to open that market and marked a high point in the industry.

HarperCollins is and has always been a champion of the classics, and the current Collins Classics series follows in this tradition – publishing classical literature that is affordable and available to all. Beautifully packaged, highly collectible, and intended to be reread and enjoyed at every opportunity.

Life & Times

About the Author

Joseph Conrad had a highly imaginative and creative mind, given to bouts of emotional distress and apathy, but also incredibly driven by his desire for self-expression. Throughout his life his mood would swing back and forth from elation to depression and it has been said that in his darkest moments he contemplated suicide and even attempted it on one occasion, by shooting himself in the chest, although he made a full recovery. On the other hand, his lucid periods resulted in English prose of the first order and an ability to befriend and entertain those around him. With our modern knowledge of the interior psyche, it seems reasonable to conclude that Joseph Conrad may have displayed classic symptoms of bipolar disorder, or what used to be described as ‘manic depression’.

Conrad had a less than desirable childhood, which may account for his psychological profile. He was born into Polish nobility in a region that is now part of Ukraine. Despite this promising start his father was arrested for political activism and exiled to the Russian town of Vologda, northeast of Moscow. One thing led to another and Conrad – at that time named Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski – found himself orphaned at the tender age of 11. He spent the next five years in the charge of his uncle, but left home at 16. His first port of call, quite literally, was Marseille, France, where he enlisted into the French merchant navy and his seagoing adventures began. Conrad spent a 20-year period at sea and his experiences provided the foundation for his literary career. His travels took him to South America, Africa and Asia and he eventually married and settled in England, by now fluent in English and choosing to write in that language, making his prosaic achievements all the more remarkable. At this time he also anglicised his name to Joseph Conrad.

Although Conrad set his stories in exotic places and spun a good yarn, his primary agenda was to use his fiction as a vehicle for investigating human nature – specifically the human condition. Having lost both of his parents, experienced unrequited love and witnessed hardship and cruelty on his journeys, he was perplexed by his own species. He saw that the world is unfair and that people can possess complex ideas and behaviours that can, by turns, make the world a wonderful place or a living hell. He wanted to express his feelings about such contradictions in his books. Perhaps unsurprisingly, his sombre and sobering words were not well received by the novelbuying public and commercial success was not forthcoming. He was, however, praised by literary critics who saw the genius in his intentions and recognised that a lighter touch would be inappropriate. As a result he developed a kind of cult following with those ‘in the know’ – especially fellow writers, who admired his uncompromising and deeply moralistic style.

Lord Jim

In Lord Jim (1900) Conrad investigated selfishness, cowardice and dishonour. The eponymous Jim is a member of the crew of a ship who commit the shameful crime of abandoning a boat and its passengers, rather than remaining onboard as ethical law would have expected of them. He finds himself professionally castigated for his misconduct and has to move on from one job to the next whenever his ignominy is discovered. Eventually he finds employment in a place where his past does not catch up with him, so his opprobrium ends, except that he is perpetually troubled by his own conscience. In his new environment he makes an impression and becomes known as ‘Lord Jim’, such is the respect and adoration he receives from the locals. However, events unfold that lead to the killing of the son of a tribal leader. Haunted by his past shame, Jim decides to take the blame and is executed as retribution. Thus, he goes to the grave at peace with himself.

Conrad demonstrates his interest in human psychology in much of his writing. It is his signature style to delve deep into the human soul. Lord Jim addresses the issue of conscience above all else. Jim makes a mistake and pays a heavy price due to society’s view; however, the central issue is that Jim realizes his mistake is an expression of the very way his mind works – he is intrinsically unheroic and selfish, and he therefore has to live with disliking himself. Ultimately his torment reaches a point where he is willing to die so that he can leave the world having done something honourable. Some scholars also see Lord Jim as a comment on the values of ‘civilized’ societies and ‘primitive’ societies in juxtaposition. That is to say, one might think that issues of honour and etiquette are the product of high culture, but in fact they are fundamental components of all cultures. Jim realizes this and that is why he is compelled to do the right thing. Wherever he hides in the world, his failings will inevitably come to the surface and let him down in the eyes of others, whoever they happen to be.

At the time that Lord Jim was published, anthropologists were just beginning to study non-Western cultures and beginning to realize that it was a mistake to view them as primitive in comparison. Although they did not possess the same levels of scientific and technological progress, that did not mean that their societal rules were any less sophisticated. The Golden Bough (1890) by James George Frazer was an insightful investigation of the evolution of cultures and societies that greatly influenced the thinkers of the period.

Heart of Darkness

Conrad’s most celebrated work, Heart of Darkness (1902) was inspired by time spent as a river boat captain in the Congo in 1889. The region was in a state of warfare over slavery at the time, leading to massacres and atrocities that Conrad bore witness to. This experience coloured his view of humanity and crystallized his own views, allowing him to become more complete as a personality. It also erased the romantic vision of Africa that he had developed as a child and which led him there in the first place. He came away with the nucleus of a story, painting Africa as a primal, dangerous and unprepossessing continent, hence the chosen title.

In essence, the central character of Charles Marlow is Conrad himself. The narrator is recounting the adventures of Marlow in the Congo, to a crew of boatmen on the Thames. As Marlow’s story unfolds and things become more baleful so dusk envelops the narrator’s audience, only adding to the general sense of claustrophobia, oppression and atrociousness of the scenario.

The axis of Heart of Darkness is Marlow’s struggle to deal with a shadowy figure named Kurtz, who holds influence over local tribesman. Kurtz’s motive is trade in ivory, which the authorities want for themselves. As a result, Marlow’s boat is sabotaged and his crew is attacked, making Marlow’s job difficult and dangerous. Ultimately, Marlow finds himself taking Kurtz into his protection due to his declining health. Aboard the boat Marlow is struck by the charisma of Kurtz, but also sees a dying mortal, in marked contrast to the god-like status he has among the Congo natives.

Conrad used Heart of Darkness as a vehicle for his exploration of human mores – morals and ethics. He was intelligent enough to understand that qualities considered virtuous are relative and subjective. Kurtz manipulates the belief systems of the natives for his own gain, but becomes morally bankrupted by the atrocities committed in his name, where villages are ransacked and their inhabitants slaughtered to access the valuable ivory. By the time he dies, Kurtz is horrified and ashamed by what he has affected. Conrad’s point is that civilization, knowledge and education are easily used by Kurtz to control the behaviour of those who exist in a primitive culture, but the outcome shocks Kurtz because they place less value on life and have different ideas about right and wrong.

In effect, Kurtz is hoisted by his own petard. Marlow, in contrast, is the moral leveller. He initially wishes to perform his duty as river boat captain and arrives with an optimistic outlook on his new life. The events that ensue serve to adjust his outlook, but he remains on an even keel, despite the unpleasant things he is exposed to. He comes away with a wiser and more considered comprehension of the human animal. He has been irrevocably jaded and scarred by his experience in the Congo, but he is also tougher and more tolerant; accepting even.

Victory

The novel Victory, published late in Conrad’s career (1915), is a good example of his shifting style as he disregards any attempt to maintain consistency in the narrative voice. As a result the story is narrated in various ways – from the perspective of a sailor, and that of an omniscient main character. This use of different narrative voices creates an increasingly claustrophobic feel to the story as the world progressively closes in on the main character.

The novel is both an adventure and a tragedy, and the book gave Conrad a belated flush of popular success. Victory is set among islands in Indonesia, which was then known as the Dutch East Indies. The region had been a colony for two centuries, and the population was a mix of indigenous and foreign people. Conrad drew on the cultural tensions that resulted from this environment, where lawlessness made the atmosphere both exciting and dangerous. As a result, the feel of the place easily switches from utopia to dystopia.

It would seem that Conrad was writing a moral tale disguised as an exotic adventure. There is certainly the sense that the ever-decreasing circles of their lives are the result of living in an archipelago where social rules and conventions cannot easily be policed. In this setting, criminality and villainy are an ever-present threat to peace and harmony. As a result, people take what pleasure they can from life when they can, knowing that it is likely to be short-lived.

In essence, Victory is a thriller, imbued with a pervading sense of menace and uncertainty. The reader knows that the moments of happiness and calm will be fleeting and that, ultimately, the central characters are doomed by their circumstances.

Conrad and Humanity

In the modern world we now understand scientifically that all organisms are nothing more than evolved life support systems for DNA, be they human, beast or plant, and that morals and ethics are therefore constructs of the human imagination. When Conrad was alive such strictly secular ideas were not yet formulated, so even atheists tended to believe that there must be some purpose to life. They also acknowledged that society needed people to adhere to behavioural rules based on notions of right and wrong to prevent anarchy and chaos.

Conrad was interested in what happens when different societies overlap, so that contrasting mores are juxtaposed and blended together. His underlying message was that the one cannot judge the other, because they are borne on cosmologies (world views in anthropological terminology) that are each constructs, but an amalgamation can result in outcomes that are reprehensible to both parties. In a way, Conrad’s writing was a portent of the complications that have arisen in modern societies where people from different cultures attempt to homogenize but often realize that cultural isolation or segregation are the best ways to find social harmony and accord. We may all belong to the same species biologically, but socially and culturally we can be so disparate as to seem like different species. In essence modern nations immerse peoples of ‘primitive’ culture within populations of ‘developed’ culture, so that incompatibilities and antitheses cause people to foment. No one is right, no one is wrong, but the results can be unfortunate and unpleasant whatever one’s precepts.

In this way Conrad was a kind of literary social anthropologist. Study of the human as a moral being was his interest, because he himself had encountered a plethora of specimens of humanity over the years and witnessed all manner of extreme behaviours, including his own. He wanted to understand what it means to be human and the novel became the chosen conduit for expounding his ideas in a non-academic and creative way. It would be a few years before other novelists dared to delve so deeply into what might be described as the human soul in such an exposing and revelatory way. As is so often the case with pioneers, Conrad remained largely unsung until other writers began citing him as an influence.

Dedication

TO

PERCEVAL

AND

MAISIE GIBBON

Calling shapes and beckoning shadows dire And airy tongues that syllable men’s names On sands and shores and desert wildernesses.

COMUS

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

History of Collins

Life & Times

Dedication

Epigraph

Note to the First Edition

Author’s Note

Part One

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part Two

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Part Three

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Part Four

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Classic Literature: Words and Phrases

About the Publisher

NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The last word of this novel was written on 29 May 1914. And that last word was the single word of the title.

Those were the times of peace. Now that the moment of publication approaches I have been considering the discretion of altering the title-page. The word “Victory”, the shining and tragic goal of noble effort, appeared too great, too august, to stand at the head of a mere novel. There was also the possibility of falling under the suspicion of commercial astuteness deceiving the public into the belief that the book had something to do with war.

Of that, however, I was not afraid very much. What influenced my decision most were the obscure promptings of that pagan residuum of awe 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 last literary thought which had occurred to me before the doors of the Temple of Janus flying open with a crash shook the minds, the hearts, the consciences of men all over the world. Such coincidence could not be treated lightly. And I made up my mind to let the word stand, in the same 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 (in the novel) of a person named Schomberg.

That I believe him to be true goes without saying. I am not likely to offer pinchbeck wares to my public consciously. Schomberg is an old member of my company. A very subordinate personage in Lord Jim as far back as the year 1899, he became notably active in a certain short story of mine published in 1902. Here he appears in a still larger part, true to life (I hope), but also true to himself. Only, in this instance, his deeper passions come into play, and thus his grotesque psychology is completed at last.

I don’t pretend to say that this is the entire Teutonic psychology; but it is indubitably the psychology of a Teuton. My object in mentioning him here is to bring out the fact that, far from being the incarnation of recent animosities, he is the creature of my old deep-seated, and, as it were, impartial conviction.

J. C.

1915

AUTHOR’S NOTE

On approaching the task of writing this Note for Victory, the first thing I am conscious of is the actual nearness of the book, its nearness to me personally, to the vanished mood in which it was written, and to the mixed feelings aroused by the critical notices the book obtained when first published almost exactly a year after the beginning of the war. The writing of it was finished in 1914 long before the murder of an Austrian Archduke sounded the first note of warning for a world already full of doubts and fears.

The contemporaneous very short Author’s Note which is preserved in this edition bears sufficient witness to the feelings with which I consented to the publication of the book. The fact of the book having been published in the United States early in the year made it difficult to delay its appearance in England any longer. It came out in the thirteenth month of the war, and my conscience was troubled by the awful incongruity of throwing this bit of imagined drama into the welter of reality, tragic enough in all conscience, but even more cruel than tragic and more inspiring than cruel. It seemed awfully presumptuous to think there would be eyes to spare for those pages in a community which in the crash of the big guns and in the din of brave words expressing the truth of an indomitable faith could not but feel the edge of a sharp knife at its throat.

The unchanging Man of history is wonderfully adaptable both by his power of endurance and in his capacity for detachment. The fact seems to be that the play of his destiny is too great for his fears and too mysterious for his understanding. Were the trump of the Last Judgement to sound suddenly on a working day the musician at his piano would go on with his performance of Beethoven’s sonata and the cobbler at his stall stick to his last in undisturbed confidence in the virtues of the leather. And with perfect propriety. For what are we to let ourselves be disturbed by an angel’s vengeful music too mighty for our ears and too awful for our terrors? Thus it happens to us to be struck suddenly by the lightning of wrath. The reader will go on reading if the book pleases him and the critic will go on criticizing with that faculty of detachment born perhaps from a sense of infinite littleness and which is yet the only faculty that seems to assimilate man to the immortal gods.

It is only when the catastrophe matches the natural obscurity of our fate that even the best representative of the race is liable to lose his detachment. It is very obvious that on the arrival of the gentlemanly Mr. Jones, the single-minded Ricardo, and the faithful Pedro, Heyst, the man of universal detachment, loses his mental self-possession, that fine attitude before the universally irremediable which wears the name of stoicism. It is all a matter of proportion. There should have been a remedy for that sort of thing. And yet there is no remedy. Behind this minute instance of life’s hazards Heyst sees the power of blind destiny. Besides, Heyst in his fine detachment had lost the habit of asserting himself. I don’t mean the courage of self-assertion, either moral or physical, but the mere way of it, the trick of the thing, the readiness of mind and the turn of the hand that come without reflection and lead the man to excellence in life, in art, in crime, in virtue, and, for the matter of that, even in love. Thinking is the great enemy of perfection. The habit of profound reflection, I am compelled to say, is the most pernicious of all the habits formed by the civilized man.