A French View of Conrad

The diary is not a stranger to us; it was used extensively by Lady Burne-Jones in the biography of 1904, and Penelope Fitzgerald referred to it almost ninety times in the biography of 1975. Some redundancy is thus unavoidable, but the overlap in no way reduces the value of this most interesting book. Michael Case Arizona State University 8. A FRENCH VIEW OF CONRAD Jacques Darras. Conrad and the West: Signs of Empire. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble, 1982. $26.50 M. Darras' book Is billed as "a study quite different from English Conradian criticism" in which "he makes new assertions which are startlingly refreshing as well as provocative." Surely it is unlike much English criticism of Conrad's works on either side of the Atlantic; that there Is little with which to compare it is by no means surprising. While it is far from dull and does provide fresh insights into Conrad's fiction, it is so replete with problems that the thought it provokes is often far from positive. Although it is a translation from M. Darras' French and one might therefore attribute some of the book's infelicities to the translator, M. Darras himself collaborated in the translation. Instead, I suspect that many of the problems stem from a different souce: the work contains no direct statement to this effect but internal evidence suggests to me that it represents translations of transcriptions of lectures on Conrad, lectures addressed to a fairly broad audience, possibly an audience just discovering Conrad and reading him in English for the first time. That the prose is frequently impenetrable, then, is not so much a difficulty caused by the translation of French to English as it is a problem created in the translation of an oral/aural experience to a textual experience. The dominant tone of the work, for example, is easily recognizable as that of the lecturer who pauses to ask rhetorical questions, to repeat significant items, to made asides to the audience/class, and to indulge in pun after pun throughout the entire proceeding . In short, this is a difficult text to read that simply need not have been so. Many of the far-flung metaphors, racing allusions, highly suggestive puns and sparkling bons mots designed to get and hold attention are surely the stuff exciting and provocative classes are made of. In cold print, however, they do not represent an entirely cohesive approach to or a sustained exegesis of the important Conrad texts M. Darras presents for consideration. This lack of sustained and fully elaborated arguments that might have followed Darras' highly original insights to their logical conclusions accounts for another very serious problem with the book qua book. Except for his treatment of Heart of Darkness (in chs. 47 ), his discussions of "Youth" (ch. 2), Lord Jim (ch. 3), The Secret Agent (ch. 8), Mostromo (ch. 9) and Under Western Eyes (ch. 10) are extraordinarily partial readings of some particular facets of the works. To take a representative example: His lecture/essay on Under Western Eyes entitled "The Power of Writing" contains fine speculative passages on the relationship hinted at in his "Introduction" between Conrad's writing and Razumov's 149 writing and on the relationship of writing to power and to truth. When he comes to discuss Conrad's description of Rousseau's island as seen by Razumov, Darras has this to say (p.132): "The image is a striking one. It is an almost surrealistic ankylosis (Switzerland is where automats originated), a contraction of historical and psychological aspects of the writer's art." Elsewhere in the same essay one finds the following paragraph (p. 126): In this novel, as In Nostromo, Conrad's major interest lies in flaws and faults, not In mending, in healing or ethical solutions. What we call a solution is really only a choice which produces further divisions and further mutilations. The Swiss downpour which ushers in Razumov's confessions is much more than a mere aesthetic solvent: "Razumov walked straight home on the wet glistening pavement. A heavy shower passed over him; distant lightening playing faintly against the front of the dumb houses with the shuttered shops all along the Rue de...