Books and Writers

Northern Advocate, 11 July 1925, Page 9 (Supplement)

Books an d Writers

PBECIOUS EELICS OF CONEAD. ROMANCE AND REALISM. "When one whom wo have looked on as immortal puts on mortality and leaves us we feel a sense of wrong." There is in Mr. Cunninghame Graham's foreword to Joseph Conrad's "Tales of Hearsay" the reticence of profound bereavement. Those (they were not few) whom the tragic news of last August stirred with a feeling of irreparable loss will understand the serenity of tins regret, and fall all the more readily from such aptness to reading these relics of the artist whose mortality aroused it. 1 ' Sincerity, frankness, passion— three words of your gospel," a woman accuses her lover in the third of these tales of hearsay. She might -"well have bo accused Conrad himaelf; but over these motolG emotions, fruit ' of the minds of heroes, there holers always in his work a pendent serenity, like a

translucent pall, softening their crudity but Adt blurring their ardent outlines—as the ejbareat sheet of water shows lilffc in the depths, for all its distinctness, with some queer intangible difference. Perhaps it is this interposition which separates Conrad from both the Tomantie and the realist. The realist will have none of the veil which hangs between mortal ahd mortal, between life and life; he rips it rudely away, and tears the decent winding-sheet from the body of death. As for the romantic, the many-coloured coat of Joseph would have seemed to him a sombre garment wherewith to clothe his loves. He takes as a draping the passion which should be of the essence of things, and dyes it with all the pigments of sentiment; and so sets hi 3

creatures in a remoteness of light or dark, where the questing eye finds no clarity. It is interesting to find, in these posthumous stories of Conrad, this distinguishing quality more noticeable than ever. The nature of the tales, indeed, emphasises it. "In three of them the violence of action and climax is tempered almost into the static by Olympian writing. The fourth, "The Black Mate,"" written before "Almayer's Folly," and consequently among the earliest of Conrad's works, startles by its farcical theme. The contriaet between subjeet and handling gives prominence to the handling rather than to the subjeet. "... Reading the story through again, after the shock of the conclusion, one adm'ireß the significance of every detail, the absence of loose fends. But long acquaintance with Conrad in tragic mood invests this eomedy of hair-dye and. spiritualism with ft distasteful incongruity. A .black mate who owes his name to his dyed hair, and on the loss of his chemist's prescription accounts for his return hoariness by tales of

a ghostly apparition! W. W. Jacobs would have created a humorous masterpiece with such an idea, but the lover of "Lord Jim" or "Chanee" is impotently distressed "when Conradeven an inexperienced Conrad—uses his mysterious harmonies on such a theme. The mate on duty is pestered by the spiritualistic confidences of his captain: "Justpicture to yourself that ship in the Indian Ocean, on a clear tropical night, with her sails full and still the watch on deck stowed away out of sight: and on her poop, flooded with moonlight, the stately black mate walking up and down with measured, dignified steps, preserving an awful silence, and that grotesquely mean little figure in striped flannelette, alternately creaking and droning of personal intercourse beyond the grave."

The sentence gives a foretaste of things to come; already we are in the presence of that vast, impenetrable serenity which hushes the cries of ngony and wraps agout with mute irony the convulsions of passion—for Conrad is nothing if not comical. That humour, rather than the comedy of situation, is expected from him; the spiritual humour which makes the Rover say of man's gods: "There must be something in the idea."

FLIGHT DREAMS IN LITERATURE,

PROPHETS OF TT T E AIR. Although in chapter seven of his "Rasselas" Doctor Johnson is a trifle scornful of the possibility of flying, he is at least consistent in his wisdom by making the intrepid experimenter an artist. Before the scientist can become practical, the artist in him must dream dreams. In "A Disserta'inn on tH> Art of Flying" Doctor Johnson ri 'icules the mechanically-mindc 1 arti°t who builds for himself bat-whips svd leaps from a promontory. Like Icarus, the adventurous man fails lamentably and is dragged, "half dond with terror

and vexation," from the water into which he has fallen.

The dreamer among our earlier ancestors must have dwelt upon the freedom enjoyed by bird life; he was, indeed, the forerunner of Jules Verno and our modern seer, H. Gr. Wells, whose prophecies have not only been colourful but also—in many instances —mechanically sound.

Although Jules Yerne preceded "Udells in writing a story about a navigable airship (vide "Clipper of the Clouds"), he had to rely more upon a vivid imagination than upon scientific reasoning. "War in the Air" is now a classic that indisputably proves Well's supremacy as a scientific prophet.

The artistry of flight has, nevertheless, appealed strongly to imaginations of all: ages, and it does not matter very much that the Majority of air prophets knew nothing of the value of x or of the importimee of stresses upon a plarife surface. Leonardo da Viftci is among the ehief of prephetsj and some authdrities say that he, too, had a very fair idea of what a flying machine should be like in order to achieve successful flight.

Eiblical references to flight are too numerous to mention. Milton, in the second book Of "Paradise Last," reveals the tftie vision of aerial achievement: Then with expanded wings he steers ihis flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky air That felt unusual weight; till on dty land he lights. Any flying man will grasp the reality of "the dusky air that felt unusual weight."

Tennyson's wonderful poetic prbphccv in "Locksley Hall" has the greatest appeal of all prophecies dealr ing with the future of man as conqueror of the air. It sums up what many people believe will be the final attainment of flight—world peace:

For I dipt into the Future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the -world, and all the wonder that woald be, Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with eostly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies, grappling with the central blue; Far along the world-wide whisper of the south wind, rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder storm; Till the war drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle flagß were furl'd In the Parliament of man, the Federation of the world.

The statesmen of the world, In iking the vision of poets, do not see thg,t far, but the time may come "when man will translate Tennyson's fancy into fact. Wells himself has stressed the importance of interns tional communications, and has already pointed out that instead of being a menace to the world's salvation the aeroplane and airship might well be valuable aids.

Peter Wilkins, an eariy romantic character of fiction, was wrecked on a desert island and came in contact with a nation of flying men and women; but apart from Wells, Veine, and Kipling there is little to distinguish the general run of air fiction, though much of it has been published in English and other languages. The same may be said of most of the air poetry, reams of which poured from the presses during tho war.

Perhaps we must wait until sorao poetic genius flies for the first time on some super-human adventure before we shall see the epic telling of man's endeavour and his final conquest of the most elusive and ruthless of olements. For the airman has yet to achieve much. He has to soar an ! indulge in wing-flapping, as the birds do unaided by motors and prope'lers.

PUBLISHING NOTES.

Our of the most satisfactory I'tcri nry tasks which Lord Morley did, as ho thought himself, was to foun:uul C''it the "English Men of Lottcs" Perils. Ho began it as long a.;.-" as ! the year IS7S, and gradually it :;f cumulated monographs on the lea i'ng English literary figiire9. Some, kwo'or, remain unmonographe;!. or, new ones calling for estimate in such a library have f • :>io i al'-i"_r. The Maemillans have. !••• re- • \<-d Mr J '■ t > < ] 'i a r , group of . ' ! "< is r\\ an I w'" ' ' : uf. ! : : soli.' \vil ■; ' .u:is i 'Vu,- r.vin. whi' . r n<l ! 'Aii l ite on S'on. a 1:.! : '-.ore j \s : . !■ othor e< ■ • : ater. •'' • exi (MTr'ioiiq,