Lord Jim (3 page)

Lord Jim
is, famously, two novels in one: the psychological drama of the
Patna
episode gives way to the exotic romance of its Patusan sequence. Reflecting the divided obligations of the hero, to society and to himself, the genres of literary Modernism and Romance are forced into a correspondence that questions their individual logic and coherence. In his ‘Author's Note', Conrad confessed that his original intention was to write a short story based on the pilgrim-ship episode; he only belatedly recognized its potential as a ‘good starting-point for a free and wandering tale', and the novel grew far beyond his or his publisher's expectations. Serialized in fourteen issues of the conservative and widely read monthly
Blackwood
'
s Magazine
(October 1899–November 1900), the final version runs to more than 130,000 words. While Conrad conceded that the novel's division into its
Patna
and Patusan halves was its ‘plague spot', Blackwood's literary advisor, David Meldrum, defended the work's expansion, arguing that it transformed
Lord Jim
into ‘a more important story', even ‘a great story' (
Collected Letters
, vol. II, p. 302).
⁸

The novel's epigraph, a translated aphorism from the German Romantic poet Friedrich Leopold, Baron von Hardenberg (1772–1801), who wrote under the pen-name Novalis, has obvious relevance for the relationship between Jim and Marlow, and, more generally, for the theme of community in which the reader, too, is implicated: ‘It is certain my conviction gains infinitely, the moment another soul will believe in it.' The claim might also be seen to voice the concerns of an emergent author, writing in his third language (after Polish and French) for an English readership. To Marlow, the character-narrator whose perspective is simultaneously challenging and perceptive, Jim remains ‘one of us' – but he also recognizes that ‘of all mankind Jim had no dealings but with himself' (
XXXVI
). As Marlow is often viewed as Conrad's alter ego, so Jim becomes
his, for Marlow, too, is looking for a faith, not for the self-ideal of his romantic ‘very young brother' (
XXI
) but for ‘the sovereign power enthroned in a fixed standard of conduct' (
V
), thrown into doubt by Jim's transgression. Jim's attempts to redeem himself in his own eyes are thus entangled with Marlow's need ‘to keep up the illusion of my beginnings' (
XI
) and reaffirm the social claims of solidarity. They are also intimately related to the late-Victorian search for moral certitudes in a universe recently deprived of transcendent meaning. If God, as Nietzsche declared, was dead, substitutes were quickly sought out.

Dramatized as an after-dinner tale that Marlow has told ‘many times, in distant parts of the world' (
IV
), Jim's story emerges through the various meetings between the two men and, since Marlow is ‘always eager to take opinion on it… individual opinion—international opinion' (
XIV
), it includes chance encounters with a host of characters associated with or interested in Jim's case. This penchant for opening up dual perspectives, matched by an enthusiasm for filling the work with doubles and alter egos, results in a shifting portrait of Jim, one that emerges from a process of disputation and critique. Jim's ‘exquisite sensibility' (
I
) is thus subject to contrasting interpretations: for the imaginative pragmatist Chester, the fact that Jim takes the court's verdict ‘to heart' means he is ‘no good' (
XIV
); diametrically opposed to this, Stein, who defines Jim as ‘romantic' (
XX
), advocates sending him to ‘a totally new set of conditions for his imaginative faculty to work upon' (
XXI
). Mediating between these extreme views of Jim is Marlow, for whom ‘those who do not feel do not count'. His verdict is that ‘in virtue of his feeling he mattered' (
XXI
).

No less than Marlow, the reader is thus made to take ‘a definite part in a dispute impossible of decision' (
VIII
). For instance, Captain Brierly commits suicide shortly after presiding as one of the judges at the Court of Inquiry where, according to Marlow, ‘he was
probably
holding silent inquiry into his own case. The verdict
must have been
of unmitigated guilt' (IV; emphases added). Jim gains by the comparison of the two ‘cases': not even ‘Big Brierly' could be certain that he would
have remained at his post had he been in the
Patna
. But Marlow never actually states – or proves – this. Instead, the juxtaposition of the two incidents is designed to steer the reader towards this conclusion. Composed over time and through a series of chance collocations and comprised of a host of perspectives of varying authority, a delicately shaded, highly impressionistic portrait of Jim emerges. The reader shares Marlow's dilemma: ‘The views he let me have of himself were like those glimpses through the shifting rents in a thick fog' (
VI
). One is reminded of Claude Monet's response to the critical reaction that greeted
Impression, soleil levant
(1872): ‘Poor blind idiots! They want to see everything clearly, even through the fog.'
⁹
Marlow's repeated description of Jim as ‘under a cloud' has both psychological and perspectival force.

The structure of
Lord Jim
proves deceptive, particularly on first reading. The novel begins in the third person (almost certainly a hangover from its origin as a short story), continues in the first person with Marlow and, despite charting Jim's progress from the world of the
Patna
inquiry to Patusan, ends with Marlow still unsure as to whether Jim has exonerated himself in his own eyes. The first four chapters are presented by an omniscient narrator who recounts Jim's history up to his exile in Patusan but withholds the ‘fact' of his deserting the
Patna
. That this narrator offers an incomplete summary of Jim's life – not, for instance, extending to Gentleman Brown's arrival in Patusan – implicitly questions the nature of authority: what does it mean – indeed, is it possible – to claim to know another person? At this point, Marlow takes up the story as an involved narrator, assuming the role of ‘an ally, a helper, an accomplice' (
VIII
). In the light of the compositional history of
Lord Jim
, the transition from third- to first-person narration involves a further questioning of authority: that between the author and the text. The Gentleman Brown episode was not, in fact, part of Conrad's original conception of this run-away novel.
¹⁰
Described by Conrad as a ‘most discreet, understanding man',
¹¹
Marlow immediately redirects the narrative away from the ‘well-known fact' of Jim's transgression as it concerns the Court of Inquiry: ‘Its object was not the fundamental why, but the superficial how, of this affair' (
VI
). Instead, Marlow's interest centres on Jim himself: his concern is the felt, subjective experience behind the objective, outward facts, or what we might today term the situation's psychology and its meanings.

The reader, listening over the shoulders, as it were, of Marlow's after-dinner audience, receives the fruits of a lengthy personal inquiry involving a diverse roll-call of characters drawn from the maritime fraternity who, in their words or deeds, directly or indirectly pass comment on Jim. In the novel's first half, these include the
Patna
's European crew, Captain Brierly, the Malay helmsman, Bob Stanton of the
Sephora
, the French Lieutenant, Chester, Mr Denver and a host of minor characters, before Marlow calls upon Stein to ask his advice. Marlow's narration is both composed of and provides a forum for competing interpretations of Jim. The narrative's apparently random shape typifies the experimental and formal concerns of Modernism shared by Conrad's friends and contemporaries including Henry James and Ford Madox Ford.

Jim's exile from the sea after his trial is characterized by itinerancy: each spell of employment is cut short by a reminder of the infamous
Patna
affair, when ‘he would throw up the job suddenly and depart' (
I
). His certificate cancelled, Jim has been expelled from the maritime community whose laws he has broken. Himself first and foremost a merchant seaman, Marlow fashions Jim's transgression in social terms: ‘The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind' (
XIV
). Appropriately, the
Patna
half of the narrative is dominated by the social consequences of Jim's jump and the practical necessity of continuing to live in society (though Jim remains markedly an outsider in Patusan). But Marlow is forced to admit that his young friend requires something beyond practical help: ‘I had given him many opportunities, but they had been merely opportunities to earn his bread' (
XIX
). In the eyes of the marine fraternity, Jim's desertion of his ship brands him a coward; to him, the incident is a wasted
opportunity to save 800 people single-handedly, to show his mettle and shine in the world's eyes: ‘My God! what a chance missed!' (
VII
). Hardly surprisingly, Marlow recognizes that Jim, engaged in the workaday world – as a ship chandler's water-clerk or as manager of a rice-mill – is an aspiring hero with no stage for his desired actions: his ‘adventurous fancy was suffering all the pangs of starvation' (
XIII
).

Central to the
Patna
section is Marlow's meeting with the French Lieutenant in a Sydney café, ‘by the merest chance' (
XII
). Involved in the
Patna
's rescue, the French naval officer stayed aboard her for thirty hours. His rank, uniform and scars – the ‘effect of a gunshot' (
XII
), Marlow concludes – identify him as ‘one of those steady, reliable men who are the raw material of great reputations' (
XIII
), and as someone whose views on duty are pertinent to Marlow's inquiry. According to the French Lieutenant, whose very personality is subsumed by his social function, human frailty is innate: ‘Given a certain combination of circumstances, fear is sure to come' (
XIII
). Yet he appreciates the consequences of being found out: ‘One truth the more ought not to make life impossible… But the honour—the honour,
monsieur
!… The honour… that is real—this is! And what life may be worth when… when the honour is gone—
ah
,
ça! par exemple
—I can offer no opinion. I can offer no opinion—because—
monsieur
—I know nothing of it' (
XIII
). To Marlow, the Lieutenant has ‘pricked the bubble' (
XIII
). While the gulf between what we actually do and what we should do seems self-evident, a logical crux remains. The honour on which life depends for its ‘worth' is dependent on situations that expose innate human fear and, in extreme cases, cowardice. But if honour is contingent on circumstance, what price any absolute standard of conduct? Significantly, when Marlow asks a question typical of what are called ‘shame cultures', where chivalric modes prevail – ‘Couldn't it reduce itself to not being found out?' – the Frenchman replies, ‘This,
monsieur
, is too fine for me' (
XIII
).

Sustained by conflicting visions of Jim, Marlow's narration is capable of registering the ambiguities about public and private codes of honour. For example, on Jim's response to the court's
verdict he comments: ‘the idea obtrudes itself that he made so much of his disgrace while it is the guilt alone that matters' (
XVI
). The issue of lost honour that provides the plot's mainspring is consequent upon Jim's feelings of disgrace at having betrayed a code of behaviour in which he continues to believe – quite a different thing from his guilt at having failed in his professional duty, for which he is duly punished by having his certificate cancelled. In essence, Jim has been judged twice: by the precepts of guilt culture, a matter of ‘face' in society, and by a shame culture, whereby he judges himself and finds himself wanting. Honour and what the French Lieutenant calls ‘the eye of others' (
XIII
) are shame culture concerns. Marlow's capacity to look beyond social formulations of Jim's (ironically, unnecessary) desertion of the
Patna
leads him to consult Stein, who re-envisions the problem as interior and private, sending Jim to a backwater symbolically cut off from the great world.

If the novel's
Patna
half is concerned with honour, a matter of public concern, the Patusan half reinstates the claims of conscience. The narrative split thus re-enacts the predicament of Jim himself, who is divided between social duty and personal responsibility. Marlow registers this division in his altered opinion. To begin with, he argues that Jim was ‘outwardly so typical of that good, stupid kind we like to feel marching right and left of us in life' (
V
). This opinion is most obviously realized in the French Lieutenant's stern, unquestioning sense of duty. But when, after his last meeting with Jim, Marlow returns to this view – ‘we must fight in the ranks or our lives don't count' (
XXXVI
) – he attributes it to the Privileged Man with whom he shares the conclusion of Jim's story. By contrast, Marlow's revised opinion is that ‘Jim had no dealings but with himself, and the question is whether at the last he had not confessed to a faith mightier than the laws of order and progress' (
XXXVI
). The distance between these two opinions reflects the degree to which his understanding of Jim has modified and grown, testifying to Marlow's suitability as a sympathetic narrator, while endorsing the novel's epigraph.

Marlow's interview with Stein is pivotal to the narrative and to the enlargement of his perspective. Stein is partly modelled
on Alfred Russel Wallace (1822–1913), a British naturalist whose travels in the Malay Archipelago led him, independently, to a theory of natural selection that hastened the publication of Darwin's
On the Origin of Species
(1859). Reputedly Conrad's ‘favourite bedside companion',
¹²
Wallace's
The Malay Archipelago: The Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise
(1869) variously influences the novel. Occurring about half-way through
Lord Jim
, the Stein chapter redirects the concern with honour, advancing the claims of personal autonomy above those of code and community. By contrast with the vision of honour promoted in the
Patna
narrative, where it is measured in terms of service and defined by a medley of European voices, Jim in Patusan is ‘in every sense alone of his kind' (
xxvii
).

Naturalist and scientist, romantic adventurer and island trader, Stein, like Jim, is uprooted, having fled his native Bavaria after the failure of the 1848 Revolution. Unlike Jim, however, he has successfully combined heroic adventure with practical ‘management' (
XX
), realizing his dreams and ambitions in the world. Recognizing a fellow romantic, Stein proposes a free rein to Jim's temperament by sending him to Patusan as his agent. In his deliberately gnomic formulation:

In this passage, a frustratingly intractable Conradian crux, Stein identifies Jim's romantic temperament as his ‘destructive element', but, in a supreme endorsement of individual identity over collective responsibility, he advocates ‘submission' to it. An entomologist keenly aware of the delicate balance of natural forces that make possible the infinite variety of life-forms, Stein lifts the narrative from a moral on to a philosophical plane. Chester's claim that one ‘must see things exactly as they are' (
XIV
) is countered in Stein's ‘experiment', which, implicitly,
demands a place in the world for those who ‘see things as they aren't', that is, for the man blessed (or cursed) with imagination.