Conrad sails on an open
sea, tamed by wireless and conquered by steel. Mystery for him
lies not beyond the horizon, but in his fellow passengers. On them
he broods. His achievement is more complete than Melville's; his
scope is less. When the physicists have resolved, as apparently
they soon will do, this earthy matter where now with our
implements and our machinery we are so much at home, into
mysterious force as intangible as will and moral desire, some new
transcendental novelist will assume Melville's task. The sea,
earth, and sky, and the creatures moving therein again will become
symbols, and the pursuit of Moby Dick be renewed. But now, for a
while, science has pushed back the unknown to the horizon and
given us a little space of light in the darkness of the universe.
There the ego is for a time the greatest mystery. It is an
opportunity for the psychologists and, while we are thinking less
of the soul, they have rushed to study the mechanics of the brain.
It was Conrad's opportunity also to brood upon the romance of
personality at the moment of man's greatest victory over dark
external force.
THE NOVELIST OF PITY
To those interested in the meaning of the generation that has now
left us quivering on the beach of after war, Thomas Hardy's books
are so engrossing that to write of them needs no pretext; yet the
recent publication of an anniversary edition with all his prefaces
included is a welcome excuse for what I propose to make, not so
much an essay as a record of a sudden understanding.
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