THE ROVING SPIRIT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LX, Issue 18577, 8 December 1923, Page 4 (Supplement)

THE ROVING SPIRIT.

A MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY.

'-'- There is splendid aesthetic pleasure to be derived from the writing of a man who has by some miracle become a supreme master of a languaee which was not originally his own. There is an immense interest in his philosophy and his point of view. But the philosophy and the point of view have very little application to the dreams, the disappointments and the aspirations of other men, because Conrad's experience has been unique, and life, as tie sees it, can exist only for himself." vTlia. delicate invisible strands of kindred and fellowship which bind a man to the country of his birth may be deliberately severed, but they cannot be woven afresh in a new land. The soul of the denationalised alien must be a lonely soul and Conrad is twice denationalised since he has given up the sea, his spiritual home. _ ' For this reason his latest book, The Rover " (T. Fisher Unwin) has an added interest and pathos, for it is the story of an old " Brother of the Coast" who after a stormy and adventurous career up and down strange tropical seas seeks a peacetul haven at a lonely farm-house in a quiet fishing village on the shores of the Mediterranean. The period is 1802-1804 when the English, under Lord Nelson, were maintaining a distant blockade of the French pons. Though by birth a Frenchman, Peyrol, the old sea-rover, is at first conscious of no patriotic aspirations and we are nade witnesses of the gradual breaking up of this cosmopolitan attitude of detachment, until at last we see " the disinherited soul of that rover ranging for so many years a lawless ocean . . . come back to its crag, circling like a seabird in the dusk and longing for a great sea-victory for its people." In many ways he recalls the lovable character* of "old " papa " Barlasch in Merriman's fine novel of that name, but the manner of his death is his own. "A blown sea-top flicked his face noisily, followed by a smooth interval, a silence of the waters. He beheld in a flash the days of his manhood, of strength and adventure. Suddenly an enormous voice seemed to fill the -whole of the empty sky in a mighty shout: "Steady!" And with the sound of that familiar English word Kinging in his ears Peyrol smiled to his visions and died."