I am paralyzed by doubt and have just enough sense to feel the agony but am powerless to invent a way out of it… I knock about blindly in it till I am positively, physically sick-and then I give up saying-tomorrow! And tomorrow comes-and brings only the renewed and futile agony. I ask myself whether I am breaking up mentally… Everything seems so abominably stupid. You see the belief is not in me-and without the belief-the brazen thick headed, thick skinned immovable belief nothing good can be done.
Decoud's suicide, nihilism, and self-hate objectify qualities that Conrad despised in himself.
Conrad's narrator undermines the heroic pretensions of his characters and disabuses the reader of the notion that materialism has its heroes. By using such legendary material as a quest for treasure and by including isolated acts of courage by those who are potential heroes, Conrad raises expectations of heroic behavior. But he deflates them as he gradually reveals the limitations and ineffectuality of his potential heroes: Gould, the king of Sulaco; Nostromo, the Adamic man; and Mrs. Gould, whose innocence and moral purity suggest the Madonna. The bathetic denouement of the romance plot which comprises the last three chapters is itself a comment on the possibility of reinvigorating -705- the larger-than-life world of love and heroism embodied in romance or epic. Indeed, the heroic image that a man creates for himself-for example, Gould's image of himself as the bringer of justice and security, and Nostromo's image of himself as the man of incorruptible reputation-really has little to do with the basic interests of the community. Rather than heirs to a heroic tradition where men risked everything to save the community, these are men whose acts are corrupted by their motives.
The Secret Agent depends upon a tension between disintegration of content (Conrad's perception of turn- of-the-century London) and integration and cohesion of form (the language and the tightly unified narrative). Conrad creates a language that is moral, civilized, and rational, and a narrator with the intelligence and moral energy to suggest alternatives to the cynicism, amorality, and hypocrisy that dominate political relationships within London. Although the narrator, to whom the entire language of the book is assigned, at first seems isolated and detached from a world he abhors, he gradually reveals himself as a multidimensional figure whose concern and sympathy for those trapped within the cosmic chaos become part of the novel's values. The major character is the narrator; his action is to attack a world he despises. The satire in The Secret Agent depends upon the immense ironic distance between a civilized voice that justifiably conceives of itself as representing sanity, rationality, and morality, and the personae of London who are for the most part caught in a maelstrom of violence and irrationality beyond their control.
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The narrator stresses that those who should protect society are as oblivious to the objective world outside themselves as those who would -706- destroy it. Ethelred, the 'great man' and 'presence,' is handicapped by poor vision; he expresses himself in a vigorous manner, but in his haughtiness refuses to concern himself with-has indeed a physical horror of-details. A not entirely unsympathetic caricature of an Edwardian progressive, Ethelred takes seriously his business as a reformer and lives as if time were measuring progress toward social goals. Whatever our present attitudes toward ecology, Conrad would have wished us to see that the energy devoted to the bill for the nationalization of fisheries was misspent and that Ethelred, with his obvious leadership capacities-his «powerful» touch and vigorous tone are stressed-is exhausting himself with trifles. (In three of his short stories of this period, we find that Conrad's fastidious and ineffectual counterparts are the Count and narrator of 'Il Conde' and the narrators of 'An Anarchist' and 'The Informer.')
It may be that the fundamental importance of Under Western Eyes, the last of Conrad's major political novels, is its rejection of political commitment in favor of personal relationships and private commitments. The language teacher's retrospective narrative re-creates the process of coming to terms with the terrifying Dionysian world he has confronted. By the conclusion of part 1, we have learned enough about the fanaticism, mysticism, and irrationality of the Russians to begin to appreciate the intelligence and perspicacity with which the narrator has edited Razumov's record. In contrast to the revolutionary frenzy and the autocratic regime's fanaticism, the narrator's detachment and effort to discover the moral aspect of the tale become attractive.
Autocratic politics create a world in which personal lives are distorted by the political abstractions served by proponents and antagonists. Russia finally emerges as primitive and atavistic, a kind of European version of the Congo where possibilities exist that have all but been discarded by Western countries. On the other hand, Geneva is a civilization where the libidinous energies and the atavistic impulses may be squelched, but violence and anarchy are under control. It is very much to the point that the people who reside in Geneva, other than the revolutionaries, are engaged in shopkeeping, teaching, picnicking, walking; and that these quite ordinary activities can take place in Geneva, unlike Russia, without bombs and intimidation. Geneva may have its materialistic aspect, epitomized by the rather tasteless Chateau Borel that now stands abandoned by its absentee owners, but it makes possible the civilization of personal affections and the fulfillment of private -707- aspirations that the autocratic and violent Russian world blunts. Conrad deliberately depicts Geneva as tediously geometric and rather claustrophobic. Razumov is contemptuous of its decorum; he regards the view of the lake as 'the very perfection of mediocrity attained at last after centuries of toil and culture.' The novel confirms the value of the mind's own interior space, of personal communication and private relationships; it rejects historical and geographical explanations that seek to place moral responsibility beyond the individual conscience. The humanity and perspicacity that the narrator brings to his reminiscence «contain» and undermine the Russian conception of a world of vast objective space.
We can divide Conrad's career after 1910 into three distinct phases. In the first, Conrad wanted to demonstrate that he was an English novelist, not a Slav writing in English, as some reviewers implied. The diffident, self-effacing narrator of Under Western Eyes owes something to this impulse. In a sense, Under Western Eyes, Chance (1912), and Victory (1915) are Conrad's English trilogy. Thus Chance and Victory focus explicitly on personal relationships and manners, and allude to contemporary issues in England. He had to prove to his audience and perhaps to himself that he had become an English writer. Chance and Victory represent Conrad's attempt to write English novels of manners and to explore the intricacies of personal relationships in the context of contemporary customs and values. He regarded Victory as a 'strictly proper' work 'meant for cultured people,' and he thought that 'The Secret Sharer' was English 'in moral atmosphere, feeling and even in detail.'
In the great 1910 story 'The Secret Sharer,' the captain-narrator, separated by a 'distance of years' from the meeting with Leggatt, recounts a tale of initiation in which he successfully overcame debilitating emotional insecurity to command his ship. Like those of Eliot's Prufrock and Joyce's Gabriel Conroy, the integrity of the captain's personality is threatened by a disbelief in the authenticity of self. The significance of the events for the sensitive and intelligent captain is that he discovered within himself the ability to act decisively that he had lacked. As a younger man, the captain doubted himself, felt a «stranger» to the community to which he belonged, and wondered if he should 'turn out faithful to that ideal conception of one's personality every man -708- sets up for himself secretly.' His concern now is to present the issues in terms of what Leggatt meant to him. Although he certainly knows that harboring an escaped murderer represents a threat to a maritime civilization and a violation of his own legal and moral commitment, his retelling ignores this.
The captain's interpretation of his experience dramatizes the process of his coming to terms with what Leggatt symbolizes. In reductive terms, Leggatt is a man of unrestrained id and underdeveloped superego. The captain, an example of hyperconscious modern man who fastidiously thinks of the consequence of every action to the point where he cannot do anything, is his opposite. Self-doubt and anxiety create an illogical identification with Leggatt as his 'double.' He risks his future to hide the man he regards his 'other self.' To avoid discovery, he begins to act desperately and instinctively without conscious examination of the consequences of each action. Leggatt's presence creates situations where the luxury of introspection is no longer possible. Symbolically, the captain completes himself. He finds within himself the potential to act instinctively and boldly that his «double» exemplifies. It can be said that his adult ego is created by appeasing the contradictory demands of the id and the superego.
