Politics and Archetypes: Two Reviews

217 POLITICS AND ARCHETYPES: TWO REVIEWS Claire Rosenfleid, Paradise of Snakes: An Archetypal Analysis of Conrad's Political Novels. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1967~ $6.50. Among the many different book-length considerations of Joseph Conrad and his works produced by recent commentators, we must now Include the archetypal analysis along with such widely divergent subjects as investigations of Conrad's sources by Jerry Allen and Norman Sherry, the employment by Edward Said of Conrad's letters to reach an understanding of his mind and art, a psychoanalytical biography by Bernard C. Meyer, an examination by Robert R. Hodges of Conrad's "dual heritage" from his father and his maternal uncle, an inspection by Avrom Fleishman of "community and anarchy" in Conrad's political thought and action, and a study of the political novels by Eloise Knapp Hay. In spite of a somewhat precarious attempt to combine myth and politics. Miss Rosenfleid brings some important perceptions to our knowledge of Conrad's vision of life. On the debit side, one may readily demur when Miss Rosenfield confesses - In her Preface that "When I begin to think of my debt to Northrop Frye, confusion overwhelms me" (p. vil); she may well be confused for failing to note that even though Professor Frye recognizes the validity of employing different approaches to literature , he also resolutely opposes taking any single position in criticism, affirming that "one's 'definite position' [like Miss Rosenfleld's] is one's weakness, the source of one's liability to error and prejudice" (Anatomy of Criticism, p. 19). In this book, some such error or prejudice weakens the general effectiveness of a sound analysis of some of Conrad's novels. Then, too, the term "Political Novels" in the subtitle must be questioned: Since Mrs. Hay in The Political Novels of Joseph Conrad (from whose work Miss Rosenfield quotes) analyzes five novels, one wonders why Miss Rosenfleld restricts herself, with no explanation, to three. And one also wonders why she applies the archetypal approach to political novels only: Why does she not include such books as Lord Jim and Victory? Then there is the problem, Insufficiently clarified, of the relationship between myth and politics. And one more small point is disturbing: Is Giorgio Viola in Nostromo an "actual historical personage" (p. 47), as Miss Rosenfleld indicates? The first chapter of this book is an instructive account of the nature of myth and Its relationship to literature and of the general movement that has gradually taken place from myth, the sacred, to art, the profane. The last part of the chapter, however , in conjunction with the very brief last chapter, arouses some dismay because of the author's unquestioning acceptance of the popular concept that modern man Is fragmented and that the contemporary novel manifests "openly and honestly the genuine despair, the impotence, the frustration and failure, the social and self-estrangement which Is the burden of the twentiethcentury hero" (p. 174). (This concept, which undoubtedly exists 218 in the works of many contemporary novelists, may easily be questioned and, in fact, has recently been refuted with some success by Rubin Rabinovitz in The Reaction Against Experiment in the English Novel. 1950-1960.) Seeing Conrad entirely in this light may be, then, a prejudice, a weakness, even an error. For Conrad the novelist, life may be more than a "paradise of snakes" as Miss Rosenfield sees it in Nostromo. more than the "cosmic chaos" which she finds in The Secret Agent, and something other than the nightmarish "mirror of a double quest" revealed in Under Western Eyes. The archetypal approach used alone seems to restrict the critic, at least in this instance, to conclusions which are preordained by the ends she has in view, namely, that Conrad, along with Mann, Faulkner, Gide, Joyce, Lawrence, Camus, and Dostoevsky, displays, both in the form and the content of his novels, an "intense and frustrated quest for identity" and an "equally intense and equally frustrated desire for some community and understanding " (p. 42). The three chapters of analysis of specific works thus appear to be forced into the mold set by the framework of the first and last chapters. Miss Rosenfield...