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Conrad's Eastern Expatriates: A New Version of His Outcasts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 2020

Lloyd Fernando
Lloyd Fernando*
Affiliation:
University o f Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
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Abstract

Conrad’s knowledge of the Malaysian Archipelago was that of a sensitive expatriate, not of a native. But he balanced his lack of intimate knowledge with profound “suggestions” drawn from his Malaysian experiences. The events in his fiction reveal the historical disarray of a region invaded by colonial powers, and serve as an inclusive metaphor for the discovery by his characters that no life pattern. Eastern or Western, has any final validity. In this sense nearly all the characters, European and Malaysian, are expatriates, not outcasts. They are mocked by the folly of seeking to master the infinite possibilities of human development revealed to them. In The Rescue, for example, Hassim and Lingard, both expatriates, have an ideal vision of successful intercultural commingling before their defeat by the abstractness of this objective. Such “nebulous ideas” or “suggestions” largely account for both the obscurities of Conrad’s style and the greatness of his vision.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 91 , Issue 1 , January 1976 , pp. 78 - 90
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1976

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References

Notes

1 I. P. Pule, “Andrzej Braun's Visit to Atjeh,” Conradicma, 5. No. 2 (1973), 86–94. See also Andrzej Braun, “In Conrad's Footsteps,” Conradiana, 4, No. 2(1972), 33–46. All references to Conrad's works are to the Dent Collected Ed.. 21 vols. (London: Dent, 1946–55).

2 Sherry, Conrad's Eastern World (Cambridge. Eng. : Cambridge Univ. Press, 1966) and Conrad's Western World (Cambridge. Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1971); Allen, The Sea Years of Joseph Conrad (London : Methuen, 1967).

3 G. Jean-Aubry, Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters (New York: Doubleday, 1927), ii, 212.

4 “The Genius of Mr. Joseph Conrad,” North American Review. 178. June 1904. 842–52.

5 See Jessie Conrad, Joseph Conrad and His Circle (London : Jarrolds, 1935), pp. 76–77.

6 William Blackburn, ed., Joseph Conrad: Letters to William Blackwood and David S. Meldrum (Durham : Duke Univ. Press, 1958), p. 34. Hereafter cited as Blackburn.

7 Author's Note to The Shadow Line, p. xii.

8 Richard Curie, ed., Conrad to a Friend (New York: Doubleday, 1928), p. 113. Curie's article, “Conrad in the East,” eventually appeared in Yale Review, 12 (April 1923), 497–508.

9 See Sherry, Conrad's Eastern World, Chs. xiv and xv.

10 Joseph Conrad: A Critical Biography (London: Weiden-field, 1959), p. 88.

11 Joseph Conrad: Giant in Exile (New York: Macmillan, 1962), pp. 97. 117–18. See also Adam Gillon, The Eternal Solitary: A Study of Joseph Conrad (New York: Bookman, 1960), pp. 104–05.

12 “The Eastern Matrix of Conrad's Art,” Conradiana, 1, No. 2 (1968), 1–13.

13 John A. Gee and Paul J. Sturm, eds.. Letters of Joseph Conrad to Marguerite Poradowska 1890–1920 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1940), p. 64. Letter dated “29 March or 5 April (?) 1894.” Hereafter cited as Gee and Sturm.

14 Author's Note to An Outcast of the Islands, p. vii.

15 C. T. Watts, ed., Joseph Conrad's Letters to R. B. Cumtinghame Graham (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1969), p. 71. Hereafter cited as Watts.

16 The Rhetoric of Shifting Perspectives : Conrad's Victory, Pennsylvania State Univ. Studies, No. 32 (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ.. 1971).

17 Edward Garnett, ed., Letters from Joseph Conrad 1895–1924 (1928; rpt. New York: Charter Books, 1962), p. 33. Hereafter cited as Garnett.

18 Moser, Joseph Conrad: Achievement and Decline (Ham-den, Conn.: Archon, 1966), p. 145. Cf. “A Disillusioned Romantic,” Times Literary Supplement, 1 July 1920, p. 419; rpt. in Norman Sherry, ed., Conrad: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge, 1973), pp. 332–35. Albert Guerard, Conrad the Novelist (Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard Univ. Press, 1958), p. 84, endorses this view too.

19 See Osborn Andreas, Joseph Conrad: A Study in Nonconformity (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), p. 163.

20 See Gillon, Ch. i.

21 Letters dated 2 June 1896, 5 Dec. 1897, and May 1898; Garnett, pp. 54, 120, 139.

22 See, e.g., F. R. Leavis. The Great Tradition (London: Chatto, 1948), p. 183 et passim; Moser, pp. 146–50, 219; Guerard, pp. 84–85; and Gurko, pp. 255–62.

23 One of G. A. Henty's works of popular fiction is entitled In the Hands of the Malays.

24 See letters dated Sept. 1897, 15 July 1920; Blackburn, p. 10; and Watts, p. 210.

25 A Personal Record (London: Dent, 1948), p. 15.

26 Letters dated 29 March 1898, May 1898, and Aug. 1898; Garnett, pp. 135, 139, 141. Conrad's italics.

27 Saturday Review, 16 May 1896, pp. 509–10; excerpted in Sherry, Conrad: The Critical Heritage, pp. 73–76.

28 Sherry, Conrad: The Critical Heritage, p. 346.

29 This essay was completed during sabbatical leave granted by thé Univ. of Malaya at the end of 1973. Thanks are also due to the Director, Institute for the Arts and Humanistic Studies, Pennsylvania State Univ., for a Fellowship awarded at the same time, and to the Curator of the Rare Books Room, Pennsylvania State Univ., Charles Mann, for making his personal library freely available for my use.