The Great Tradition by Leavis. F. R

Author:Leavis. F. R
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: LANGUAGE. LINGUISTICS. LITERATURE, Literature, Literature
Publisher: George W. Stewart, Publisher Inc.
Published: 1950-06-17T16:00:00+00:00

The sinister spell that holds the ship is characteristically felt in terms of contrast with the tradition and its spiritual values, these being embodied in the crew, a good one, who carry on staunchly against bad luck and disease. The visiting doctor himself is 'good* in the same way. The story ends, it will be noted, on the urexpected parting with the faithful Ransome, the exquisitely rendered seaman with a voice that is 'extremely pleasant to hear* and a weak heart:

'"But, Ransome," I said, "I hate the idea of parting with you."

'"I must go/' he broke in. "I have a right!" He gasped and a look of almost savage determination passed over his face. For an instant he was another being. And I saw under the worth and the comeliness of the man the humble reality of things. Life was a boon to him—this precarious, hard life— and he was thoroughly alarmed about himself.

'" Of course I shall pay you off if you wish it."

******

'I approached him with extended hand. His eyes, not looking at me, had a strained expression. He was like a man listening for a warning call.

'"Won't you shake hands, Ransome ?" I said gently. He exclaimed, flushed up dusky red, gave my hand a hard wrench —and next moment, left alone in the cabin, I listened to him going up the companion stairs cautiously, step by step, in mortal fear of starting into sudden anger our common enemy it was his hard fate tc\ carry consciously within his faithful breast/

These things are worth many times those descriptions of sunsets, exotic seas and the last plunge of flaming wrecks which offer themselves to the compilers of prose anthologies.

MINOR WORKS AND NOSTROMO This is at any rate to confirm the accepted notion of Conrad to this extent: that his genius was a unique and happy union of seaman and writer. If he hadn't actually been himself a British seaman by vocation he couldn't have done the Merchant Service from the inside. The cosmopolitan of French culture and French literary initiation is there in the capacity for detachment that makes the intimate knowledge uniquely conscious and articulate. We are aware of the artist by vocation, the intellectual who doubles the seaman, only when we stop to take stock of the perfection of the rendering and the subtle finish of jhe art.

But this fine balance, this identity, isn't always sustained. In Mario w, who (as remarked above) has a variety of uses, the detachment is separated off. As a main participant in events though, by his specific role as such, a detached one, he gives his technical function a dramatic status in the action, and the author a freedom of presence that, as we have seen, constitutes a temptation. Elsewhere Mario w is frankly a method of projection or presentation—one that we learn to associate with Conrad's characteristic vices and w^ak-nesses. In Youth, for instance, one of the best-known of the tales, though not one of the best f he

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.