g, lies
two-thirds of Conrad's art, or his craft, or his trick, or whatever you
choose to call it. What he shows us is blurred at the edges, but so is
life itself blurred at the edges. We see least clearly precisely what is
nearest to us, and is hence most real to us. A man may profess to
understand the President of the United States, but he seldom alleges,
even to himself, that he understands his own wife.

In the character and in its reactions, in the act and in the motive:
always that tremulousness, that groping, that confession of final
bewilderment. "He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart...."
And the cloud enshrouds the inner man as well as the outer, the secret
springs of his being as well as the overt events of his life. "His
meanest creatures," says Arthur Symons, "have in them a touch of honour,
of honesty, or of heroism; his heroes have always some error, weakness,
or mistake, some sin or crime, to redeem." What is Lord Jim, scoundrel
and poltroon or gallant knight? What is Captain MacWhirr, hero or simply
ass? What is Falk, beast or idealist? One leaves "Heart of Darkness" in
that palpitating confusion which is shot through with intense curiosity.
Kurtz is at once the most abominable of rogues and the most fantastic of
dreamers. It is impossible to differentiate between his vision and his
crimes, though all that we look upon as order in the universe stands
between them. In Dreiser's novels there is the same anarchy of
valuations, and it is chiefly responsible for the rage he excites in the
unintelligent. The essential thing about Cowperwood is that he is two
diverse beings at once; a puerile chaser of women and a great artist, a
guinea pig and half a god. The essential thing about Carrie Meeber is
that she remains innocent in the midst of her contaminations, that the
virgin lives on in the kept woman. This is not the art of fiction as it
is conventionally practised and understood. It is not explanation,
labelling, assurance, moralizing. In the cant of newspaper criticism, it
does not "satisfy." But the great artist is never one who satisfies in
that feeble sense; he leaves the business to mountebanks who do it
better. "My purpose," said Ibsen, "is not to answer questions; it is to
ask them." The spectator must bring something with him beyond the mere
faculty of attention. If, coming to Conrad, he cannot, he is at the
wrong door.

Sec. 5

Conrad's predilection for barbarous scenes and the mor