The Available and the Unavailable "I": Conrad and James

13? THE AVAILABLE AND THE UNAVAILABLE "I"» CONRAD AND JAMES By Roger Ramsey (Rockford College) Joseph Conrad must have read the famous Henry James's latest story in Collier's Weekly. February 5 through April 16, Ι898. It was a strange tale, a memoir and yet a mystery, too, gaining much of its impact from the distancing effect of narrator on narrator on narrator . It was a tale within a tale, both told by an enigmatic "I." Conrad was familiar with the story-telling technique, the kind favored by sailors since the Phoenicians, but he had never adopted it for his own fiction. According to his biographer, Jocelyn Baines, Conrad was at this time cramped by the unwieldy form and subject of what was to become, many years later. The Rescue; in order to escape "the impasse into which The Rescue had led him."1 Conrad turned to a story about a young man "sailing to the Orient. The story came easily; "Youth" was finished by June, I898, and published in Blackwood's Magazine in September of that year. On its heels came "Heart of Darkness" (Blackwood's. February to April, I899) and Lord JIm (Blackwood's. October 1899 through November 1900).2 As if overnight, Conrad had achieved greatness and Marlow was the reason. The discovery of this wise and wizened narrator was. It Is clear, crucial to Conrad's career . Morton Dauwen Zabel says that Marlow "filled a need of Conrad 's imagination at this decisive stage of his development - became a necessary persona of his thought as well as a salient agent of his drama."3 The format was congenial to his genius. It would be pretty much speculation to argue that James's story which was, of course, "The Turn of the Screw" - specifically inspired Conrad to create Marlow or even influenced the format of any of the Marlow stories. I will not insist on this, even though the close proximity of dates is telling; there is also the circumstantial fact that Conrad was preparing to move his family to Pent Farm, near Rye, James's home, and did so In early October of 1898.^ What I wish to suggest is not so tantalizing as direct influence, but more important, I think, for an understanding of the way two brilliant literary men put to use a basically similar structure. To this purpose, I will first indicate the similarity of intent, as stated by each author, in the stories "The Turn of the Screw" and "Heart of. Darkness." Unfortunately, the immense batch of commentary on each one of these stories has so garbled the plainest facts about their basic make-up that I will have to clarify, secondly, the form of each. Then thirdly I am ready to draw some conclusions about the differences between the two stories. Even so, though I am claiming caution as my companion throughout, I am reminded that in 1898 Conrad was still learning his craft and that James had already proven his mastery. Much later, Conrad was to write of "some twenty years of attentive acquaintance" with James's work, which would have placed his original interest in about 1895,5 In the back of my mind, I am still tempted to wonder if Conrad didn't learn his Marlow lesson from the master. 138 "Mystery stories, I call these fictions of James and Conrad."" Joseph Warren Beach said that as long ago as 1932 and few would challenge it today. He was speaking expressly of "The Turn of the Screw" and "Heart of Darkness." Any regular mystery-novel reader would recognize familiar elements: the small collection of people, gathered at fireside or on the veranda, with nothing to do but listen to a long story. The story-teller has an immediate obligation, to turn the mundane setting into an arena of the fantastic, the bizarre, the unholy. Marlow's first words are these: "'And this also has been one of the dark places of the earth.'"? And Douglas, who possesses the governess' manuscript, says of it, "'Nobody but me, till now, has ever heard. It's quite too horrible .... It's beyond everything. Nothing at all that I know touches...