nettels, 'the grotesque in conrad's fiction

8/3/2019 Nettels, 'the Grotesque in Conrad's Fiction'

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The Grotesque in Conrad's FictionAuthor(s): Elsa NettelsSource: Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Sep., 1974), pp. 144-163Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2933288 .

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he Grotesque inConrad's FictionELSA NETTELS

C ONRAD has yet to be nameda masterof the grotesque.Inrecent books on the grotesque in literature by Wolfgang Kayser,Arthur Clayborough, and Philip Thomson, Conrad is not evenmentioned.' Critics have analyzed the grotesque in the works ofDickens, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Golding, and Sherwood Anderson,among others, but no one has made an extended study of the gro-tesque in Conrad's fiction.2 This is surprising in view of the im-portance in Conrad's fiction of characters and situations to whichthe novelist himself applied the term "grotesque" and which ex-emplify qualities by which twentieth-century scholars have identi-fied the grotesque in literature. The distortion of persons and ob-jects, the yoking of incompatibles, the fusion of the fearsome andthe ludicrous, inducing in the reader a sense of dislocation andinsecurity-those elements stressed by Kayser and Clayboroughand others in their definitions of the grotesque-are pervasive inConrad's fiction from Almayer's Folly to Victory and The Arrowof Gold.The grotesque is of essential importance in Conrad's treatment

1 Wolfgang Kayser, The Grotesque in Art and Literature, trans. Ulrich Weisstein(Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1963); Arthur Clayborough, The Grotesque inEnglish Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965); Philip Thomson, The Grotesque(London: Methuen, 1972).2 Stanton de Voren Hoffman touches on the grotesque, but his main purpose isto analyze scenes of low comedy as symbolic of disorder, principally in "Heart ofDarkness" and Lord Jim. His emphasis throughout is on burlesque, not the grotesque.See his Comedy and Form in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad (The Hague: Mouton,1969). Donald C. Yelton discusses a number of images which produce effects of thegrotesque in Conrad's novels. It is not his purpose to make a systematic study of the

grotesque in the novels, however, and his discussion of the subject is limited to a fewpages. See his Mimesis and Metaphor: An Inquiry into the Genesis and Scope ofConrad's Symbolic Imagery (The Hague: Mouton, 1967).[144]


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The Grotesque in Conrad's Fiction 145of his central subject: the experience of the protagonist who suffersthe destruction of those illusions of self and the world in which heonce found security. To the protagonist, the grotesque usuallymanifests itself in two forms: in the appearance and actions ofcharacterswho contribute to the destruction of his illusions; andin the sinister or dreamlike quality which the world assumesin hiseyes once his sense of security has been destroyed. In the novels,one manifestation of the grotesque is of course closely related tothe other. It is helpful, however, to make the distinction: to con-sider firstthe characterswhom Conrad identifies as grotesque; thento examine the way he portrays the protagonist's consciousness ofa grotesque world, particularlyin the two novels, The SecretAgentand Under Western Eyes, in which grotesqueness of character inConrad'sfiction takes its most extreme form and in which the pro-tagonist's sense of the world as dislocated and bizarre is most acute.

The qualities and effects that Conrad associates with the term"grotesque"can be most readily seen by examining a few passagesf-rom he novels that portray charactersidentified as grotesque.The earliest such passage, from Conrad's first novel, Almayer'sFolly, depicts a protagonistwhose inflated view of himself, so littlein harmony with his ineffectual character, is shown to be grotesquewhen it is symbolized by the shadow which exaggerates his sleepingfigure.In the increasing ight of the moon that had risennow abovethe nightmist, the objectson the verandahcameout stronglyoutlined in blacksplashesof shadowwith all the uncompromisingugliness of their dis-order,and a caricatureof the sleepingAlmayerappearedon the dirtywhitewashof the wall behind him in a grotesquelyexaggerateddetailof attitudeand featureenlargedto heroicsize.3

3 Almayer's Folly, The Works of Joseph Conrad, Kent ed., 26 vols. (Garden City,N.Y.: Doubleday, Page, 1925), pp. 157-58. Citations in my text are to this editionand appear in parentheses in the text, abbreviated as follows: AF, Almayer's Folly;AG, The Arrow of Gold; C, Chance; LJ, Lord Jim; N, Nostromo; NLL, Notes on Lifeand Letters; NN, The Nigger of the "Narcissus"; SA, The Secret Agent; SL, TheShadow-Line; UWE, Under Western Eyes; V, Victory; "HD," "Heart of Darkness,"in Youth and Two Other Stories; and "ITW," "The Inn of the Two Witches," inWithin the Tides: Tales. Doubleday, Page has issued various sets of the collectedworks-the Concord, the Canterbury, the Memorial, the Sun-dial, etc.-which aresubstantially the same as the Kent, though the volume numbers may differ.


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146 Nineteenth-Century FictionIn its representation of the vanity of Almayer's dreams, this sceneunites physical distortion with the theme of illusion so prominentin Conrad's later novels. This picture of disorder and distortion,rendered in sharp detail, also exemplifies Conrad'smethod of pre-senting grotesque figures such as those depicted in the followingexcerpts. Each figure is a caricature of "uncompromising ugliness"who assists in the destruction of the protagonist, a man rendereddefenseless against evil forces, as Almayer is, by his effort to sustainillusions about himself in his own and others' minds.The passagebelow, from Lord Jim, presents Marlow'svision ofthe skipper of the Patna, a man whose cowardice, made comic hereby his effort to force his enormous bulk into a small gharry,intensi-fies the horror of the scene on the disabled ship, the scene whichreveals the illusory nature of Jim's ideal for himself.The little machine shook and rocked tumultuously,and the crimsonnape of that lowered neck, the size of those straining thighs, the im-mense heavingof that dingy, stripedgreen-and-orange ack, the wholeburrowingeffectof that gaudy and sordidmasstroubled one's sense ofprobabilitywith a droll and fearsomeeffect, ike one of those grotesqueanddistinctvisions that scareand fascinateone in a fever. (LJ,46-47)In the next passage, from Under Western Eyes, the protagonistRazumov encounters Nikita Necator, who is, like Razumov, apolice spy masquerading as a revolutionary and who at the endmaims Razumov when Razumov, unable to sustain a false identity,confesses his deception.The squeaky tressput on the name"Razumov-Mr.Razumov"piercedthe ear ridiculously, like the falsetto of a circus clown beginning anelaborate oke. .. . The stolidity of his attitude, the big feet, the lifeless,hanging hands, the enormous bloodlesscheek, the thin wisps of hairstragglingdown the fat nape of the neck, fascinated Razumov into astare on the verge of horrorand laughter. . . how could that creature,so grotesqueas to set town dogs barking at its mere sight, go about onthosedeadlyerrandsand slip throughthemeshesof the police? (UWE,266-67)And in a final example, from Victory, Heyst watches as the mancalled Mr. Jones, who has destroyed the illusory safety of Heystand Lena's island refuge, discovers that he himself has been be-trayed.


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The Grotesque in Conrad's Fiction 147"On the track!On the scent!"he cried, forgettinghimself to thepointof executinga danceof ragein the middleof the floor.Heyst looked on, fascinatedby this skeletonin a gay dressing-gown,jerkily agitated like a grotesque toy on the end of an invisible string.

(V.388-89)The reader familiar with the fiction of Dickens and Hoffmannand with analyses of the grotesque by their contemporaries seesthat Conrad is working within traditions well established in thenineteenth century.4In the passages ust quoted and elsewhere oneobserves characteristicsby which Ruskin, Victor Hugo, and othersidentified the grotesque: the physical distortion like that of a cari-cature; the comic incongruity of action and appearance whichcalls to mind images of clowns and puppets; the impression of theoutlandish confounding one's sense of reality. All Conrad's gro-tesque characters are physically abnormal; many are diseased ormoribund.5 In most of these figures, the physical distortion andthe diseased condition are the outward signs either of spiritualemptiness or of moral depravity. Impotent grotesques like the engi-neers on the Patna and Michaelis are ludicrous by virtue of theenormous disparity between their aims or pretensions and theirmental and physical capacities. Others like Gentleman Brown,

Ortega, and Mr. Jones are acknowledged outlaws-renegades andmurderers.Like Almayer sleeping on the verandah, these physically gro-tesque figures are presented in precise detail (we recall the con-junction of "grotesque" and "distinct" in the passage from LordJim). Often they appearclose-up, in glaring sunlight, which rendersvisible the stripeson their clothes and the hairs on their faces. Thereis nothing vague or shadowy about Conrad's grotesque figures, norare they divorced from the everyday world. In their physical ab-normality, however, they appear devoid of humanity. To those whoobserve them, the grotesque figures seem like apparitions or phan-

4 Twice in his novels Conrad acknowledges his debt to literary sources in his por-trayal of grotesque figures. To Razumov, Madame de S-- is "like a galvanized corpseout of some Hoffmann's Tale" (UWE, 215); de Barral and his child at the side of hiswife's grave are "figures from Dickens-pregnant with pathos" (C, 162). Also, seeYelton, pp. 83-84, 125. Yelton emphasizes the importance to Conrad of Flaubert'ssense of the grotesque triste as well as the importance of Dickens' example.5 A list of the most important of these characters includes James Wait and Donkin,NN; Kurtz, "HD"; the chief engineer of the Patna and Gentleman Brown, LJ;Michaelis and Yundt, SA; Madame de S--, UWE; Mr. Jones, V; and Ortega, AG.


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The Grotesque in Conrad's Fiction 149elephant (LJ, 37); Ortega is like a "little Prometheus" at whoseliver sparrowspeck (AG, 111).Perhaps the chief source of the contempt and fear inspired byConrad's grotesque figures lies in the impression they create ofpersons not in control of themselves-an impression reinforcedparticularlyin the later novels by comparisonof charactersto mech-anisms or automata: Madame de S - talks compulsively like a"galvanizedcorpse" (UWE, 215); Ortega'sperformance before thelocked room seems "almost inconceivable . . . like the effect of atrick or of a mechanism" (AG, 318-19). In Ortega and others, themachinelike motion is the sign of obsession, almost to madness, bya fixed idea or passion. When the narrator of The Arrow of Goldunderstands Ortega'sinsane passion for Rita de Lastaola,he graspsthe key to that "grotesque and sombre personality" (AG, 309); the-key o the "grotesquepsychology"of Schomberg (V, viii) is his madhatred of-Heyst. Not only Ortega and Schomberg, but Kurtz, Gen-tleman Brown, Mr. Jones, de Barral (Chance), and Scevola (TheRover) illustrate the observation of Wolfgang Kayserthat "the en-counter with madness is one of the basic experiences of the gro-tesque which life forces upon us."8With few exceptions, Conrad's grotesque figures, even the mostdeadly, areviewed from a vantage point from which they are judgedfitting objects of scorn and contempt. Incompetents full of self-importance, like Montero's followers, are satirized,as are predatorswho mouth noble sentiments, like Peter Ivanovitch (Under WVest-ern Eyes).Although lacking the satirist'sdetachment, observers ikeJim, Razumov, and Heyst consistently view their adversaries asbeing of a nature different from their own. Their very applicationof the word "grotesque" to such figures as Nikita and Mr. Jonesindicates their sense of distance from and superiority to them.Nevertheless, one of the most important functions of the grotesquefigures is to body forth in distorted form, as the shadow of Almayeris a distortion of the body, qualities and impulses present in theprotagonistbut repressedand often unrecognized by him. The factthat Conrad frequently locates the origin of grotesque figures inthe irrational and unconscious-Donkin is a "startlingvisitor froma world of nightmares" (NN, 10), the Patna skipper belongs to thevisions of delirium, Mr. Burns in The Shadow-Line is "grotesque

8 Kayser, p. 184.


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150 Nineteenth-Century Fictionbeyond the fantasies of mad dreams" (SL, 90)-suggests that thegrotesque figures are to be seen as distorted shadows cast by theprotagonists. James Wait, whom Conrad defined as "the centre ofthe ship's collective psychology" (NN, ix), is able to exert a "subtleand dismal influence" (NN, 34) because he incarnates a horror ofdeath shared by most of the men on the Narcissus. The skipper ofthe Patna, "the incarnation of everything vile and base that lurksin the world we love" (LJ, 21), symbolizes potentialities in all men,including Jim, although Jim can never acknowledge this. Theresemblances between Heyst and Mr. Jones, both of whom haverejected sanctions for action and have detached themselves fromsociety, have often been noted.9 Schomberg, too, with his "low-spirited stoicism" (V, 119), his conviction that "life [is] a hollowsham" (V, 109), and his disposition to "let things take their course'^(V, 109), also emerges as a gross caricature of the man he hates.The arrival of Mr. Jones only intensifies Heyst's sense of power-lessness and futility, which has called forth its grotesque embodi-ment in the spectral presence of his enemy. When Heyst's oppor-tunity comes to kill Mr. Jones, "his very will seem[s] dead of weari-ness" (V, 390). Several of Conrad's protagonists-notably Marlowand Monsieur George, the narrator of The Arrow of Gold-are,however, able to resist and to triumph over their grotesque adver-saries. Monsieur George, in recognizing "a most horrible fellow-ship" with Ortega (AG, 274), and Marlow, in accepting his bondwith the appalling Kurtz, both gain a measure of control not onlyover their adversariesbut over the irrational impulses within them-selves. But Jim, who can admit his guilt but never accept his imper-fection, is defenseless against all his grotesque counterparts, fromthe engineer whose blubbering "I am one of them fearless fellows"is a travestyof Jim's self-confidence (LJ, 26) to the satanic Gentle-man Brown with his lago-like gift of divining his victim's weakness.The precise shades of emotion evoked by Conrad's grotesquefiguresdiffer from novel to novel. The words used in conjunctionwith "grotesque"-for example, "appalling" (Wait), "vile" (Cor-nelius in Lord Jim), "atrocious" (Montero), "terrible" (General

9 See, for instance, Bruce Johnson, Conrad's Models of the Mind (Minneapolis:Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1971), pp. 170-73; John A. Palmer, Joseph Conrad's Fiction:A Study in Literary Growth (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 178-79;Paul Wiley, Conrad's Measure of Man (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1954),p. 156.


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The Grotesque in Conrad's Fiction 151T-- in Under Western Eyes), "shocking" (de Barral), "horrible"and "monstrous"(the two witches)-in themselvessuggest the rangeof meaning of "grotesque" in Conrad's fiction. Despite the differ-ences, however, it is possible to summarize the main characteristicsand functions of Conrad's grotesque figures. Presented from theoutside, they are set apart by their physical abnormality, usuallythe outward sign of spiritual deformity and often of madness. Intheir resemblance to nonhuman forms-animals or mechanisms-they seem both fearful and comic. In their relation to the protag-onists, they have two important functions: they body forth in dis-torted form the dark irrational side of the protagonist's nature;and they also create the situations by which the integrity andstrength of will of the protagonist are tested.

The bond between Conrad's protagonists and their grotesquecounterparts indicates that Conrad shared Victor Hugo's beliefthat the portrayalof the grotesque is essential to a complete pictureof life.'0 This belief finds expression in one of the most notableelements of Conrad's fiction: the creation of scenes tragic in theirconsequences but farcical in effect. The most memorable exampleof an episode grotesque in its incongruities is perhaps the scene of"low comedy" (LJ, 101) on the Patna which culminates in Jim'sdesertion of the ship and his jump into an "everlasting deep hole"(L1, 111).1"During the twenty-seven minutes upon which Jim'sfuture life depends, the captain and his two engineers, in vainefforts to launch their lifeboat, engage in struggles "fit for knock-about clowns in a farce" (LI, 104). Utterly at odds with all Jim'sdreams of heroic action, the scene confounds him as much by its"burlesque meanness" (LJ, 121) as by the images of disaster itevokes. To Jim, the situation is like a grotesque being with featuresand facial expression animated, as Gentleman Brown will laterappear to be, by "a directing spirit of perdition that dwelt within,like a malevolent soul in a detestable body" (LJ, 31).The scene on the Patna indicates that Conrad's concern is notwith grotesque characters in themselves but with their effect upon

10 La Preface de Cromwell (Paris: Societe franSaise d'imprimerie et de librairie,1897), pp. 191, 195.11 For the fullest discussion of this scene, see Hoffman, pp. 56-47.


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152 Nineteenth-Century Fictionthe protagonist and with his experience of what Wolfgang Kayserhas termed the grotesque or "estranged"world.'2 In novel afternovel, Conrad makes his focus the mind of a protagonist who under-goes, as a result of the intrusion of grotesque figures, the suddentransformation of a world, familiar and secure, into a place of dis-order and terror. Confounded like Jim when his confidence in the"everlasting security" (LJ, 17) of his world is shattered, Conrad'sheroes confront, in Kayser'swords, an "alienated world" in whichelements "familiar and natural to us . . . suddenly turn out to bestrange and ominous."'3 Whether or not the protagonist triumphsover his adversaries,the effect of grotesque charactersand situationsis to rob him of his mental equilibrium and to threaten his powerto choose and act. Sensations like those suffered by Heyst when"everything round him had become unreasonable, unsettled, and

vaguely urgent" (V, 258) are experienced by most of Conrad's.protagonists.In his discussion of the grotesque in French and German litera-ture, Kayseranalyzesa number of themes, motifs, and devices whichare also important in Conrad's portrayalof the estranged or alien-ated world: scenes of ruin and decay; remote exotic settings likejungles and tropical islands; social groups disrupted by such forcesas storms, pestilence, famine, and war; mechanical objects whichassume a life of their own; human beings reduced to mechanisms,as if they were "agentsof something strange and inhuman";'4 andapparently illogical sequences of events, triggered by irrational ortrivial acts, which make the whole world appear to be a demonicmechanism. Although Conrad, unlike Poe, Hoffmann, or Dostoev-sky,never makes an insane consciousness the reflector of his action,he does evoke in most of his novels the impression of a world men-aced by or on the verge of chaos. Pictures of corruption or disinte-gration are created by many of his settings: the ruinous houses ofsinister quiet in Under Western Eyes and The Arrow of Gold; therotting structures of the defunct coal company on Heyst's island;and the nightmare landscapeof Patusan, fecund and spectral,wherewhite coral shines like bleached skulls and graves are garlanded byflowersof shapes "foreign to one's memory" (LJ, 322). The terrify-

12 Kayser, p. 185.13 Ibid.14 Ibid., p. 197.


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The Grotesque in Conrad's Fiction 153ing sensation of tottering at the edge of an abyss beyond which liesunimagined horror overwhelms a number of Conrad's characters,from Nina Almayer to Marlow and Razumov.Almayer's dream, in which his next step into nothingness willbring the "crashingfall" (AF, 158) of his universe and the "anguishof perishing creation" (AF, 159), foreshadows Conrad's later evo-cation of dreamlike worlds of impending collapse. Not until "Heartof Darkness,"however, does Conrad sustain through a whole storya protagonist'sconsciousnessof moving through the fantastic land-scape of a dream. Repeatedly Marlow stresses the unnerving effectsof the nightmare journey through a "strangeworld of plants, andwater, and silence" ("HD," 93). 'Whatmost oppresseshim is not theconstant struggle against physical obstacles-terrible though theseare-but the sense of being cut off from normal life, of losing one'sown reality in a world of insane distortion: "We were cut off fromthe,comprehension of our surroundings; we glided past like phan-toms, wondering and secretly appalled, as sane men would bebefore an enthusiastic outbreak in a madhouse" ("HD," 96). Gro-tesque sights-the natives with faceslike "grotesquemasks"("HD,"61); the emaciatedbody of Kurtz, "pitiful and appalling," animatedby "grotesque jerks" ("HD," 134); the fabulous harlequin figure,grotesque because his very presence in the jungle is a fantasticincongruity-all work to create what Marlow calls the "dream-sensation" of the experience, "that commingling of absurdity, sur-prise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt" ("HD,"82).Among Conrad's characters, Marlow is the most accessible tosudden glimpses into infernal regions, to sudden visions of a uni-verse drained of light and bereft of order. Such visions come inLord Jim as well as in "Heart of Darkness": Marlow, in Patusan,listens to Jewel's story and feels "a sudden dread-the dread ofuiiknown depths.... For a moment [he] had a view of a world thatseemed to wear a vast and dismal aspect of disorder" (LJ, 312-13).It is of the essence of Marlow'scharacter, however, that he will notlose himself in "the chaos of dark thoughts," and the vision lastsonly a moment: "I went back into my shell directly. One must"(LL, 313). Without exception, Conrad's protagonists, even theweakest like Almayer and Willems, struggle to keep their hold on-whatMarlow calls "the sheltering conception of light and order


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154 Nineteenth-Century Fictionwhich is our refuge" (LL, 313). In The Secret Agent and UnderWestern Eyes, however, the protagonist is engaged in consciousdeception by maintaining a false identity and is, as a result, morevulnerable to the power of grotesque charactersand situations andmore ready to feel the world as hostile and alien.'5 As if to reflectthe malaise of the protagonist, the world in which he moves per-manently wears the "vast and dismal aspect of disorder" that Mar-low glimpses only for a moment. It is in these two novels, then, thatConrad's methods of creating an estranged world in which char-acters are confounded, trapped, and destroyed can be most fullystudied.

Among Conrad'snovels, The Secret Agent is unique in its pictureof charactersat the mercy of a chain of events initiated by humanacts but seemingly beyond human control. To a greater degree thanelsewhere in Conrad's fiction, the characters' sense of their worldas grotesque or estranged emerges from their plight as victims ofwhat appears to be an infernal mechanism, empowered by theirrational fears it produces, working to no logical or foreseeableend. The very act which sets the mechanism in motion-Mr. Vlad-imir's command that Verloc bomb the Greenwich Observatory-is, as Mr. Vladimir states, intended to result in a deed of insaneferocity "so absurdas to be incomprehensible, inexplicable, almostunthinkable" (SA, 33). As Conrad observes in his Author's Note,it is an outrage that "could not be laid hold of mentally in anysort of way" (SA, x). The act of "shocking senselessness" (SA, 33)confounds all the characters and ultimately subjects three of them-Verloc, Winnie, and Ossipon-to the terrifying experience offeeling the supports of their existence suddenly give way and lifebecome a nightmare.The impression of the city as unhuman and hostile to man isevoked for the readerin the opening sceneasVerloc begins his walktoward death through a "town without shadows" under the cor-rosive light of a "bloodshot" sun (SA, 11). The effect of Mr. Vlad-15 In the dramatized version of The Secret Agent, the Assistant Commissioner de-scribes the existence of a secret agent as "the nearest thing to living under a curse"(Scene 3, Act III). See The Secret Agent: A Drama in Three Acts (London: T. W.Laurie, 1923), p. 116.


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The Grotesque in Conrad's Fiction 155imir's instructions is to waken the somnolent Verloc to the horrorof such a world, to induce in him a powerful sense of alienationand estrangement. His obsessive dread of the act he must performrendersthe city to his haunted eyes an "inhospitable accumulation"of mud and bricks and stones, an "enormity" so unfriendly tohuman life that he apprehends it with a force "approaching topositive bodily anguish" (SA, 56). Eventually, the fear that pro-duces the ghastly hallucination of Mr. Vladimir's face, pressed likea luminous seal on the "fataldarkness"(SA, 57), infects every partof Verloc's being. The "blackcare" that becomes his "fatal attend-ant" (SA, 186) not only isolates him from his wife and every otherhuman being but also imposes itself like a wall or a veil betweenhimself and the universe, cutting him off from the world appre-hended by the senses (SA, 154, 174) and transforming the worldof his "mental vision" into the "solitude of a vast and hopelessdesert" (SA, 179).No less than her husband, Winnie Verloc suffers the disintegra-tion of her world, but whereasVerloc experiences a slow mountingdread that paralyzeshim, Winnie, when she learns of her brother'sdeath at Verloc's hands, receives a shock that instantly destroys hermental equilibrium. Estrangement,which in Verloc takes the formof isolation from the outer world of appearances, in Winnie isregistered as violent disjunction within the self: "Her personalityseemed to have been torn into two pieces, whose mental operationsdid not adjust themselves very well to each other" (SA, 254). Forher, asfor Verloc, shockalters"even the aspectof inanimate things"(SA, 249), but unlike Verloc, who shrinks from action, Winnie isimpelled to action by grief and rage. Once her murderous passionhas spent itself in the killing of Verloc, however, she too succumbsto an overpowering sense of the city as an alien world, "a blackabyss"from which she is powerless to escape (SA,271).With the appearance of Ossipon in the final scenes, Conradintroduces the last link in the chain created by the impact of onecharacter'sacts upon the mind of another. As Mr. Vladimir's com-mand destroysthe mental balance of Verloc, as Verloc's act shattersthe moral nature of Winnie, so Winnie in turn destroys the equi-librium of Ossipon, who comes upon her as she leaves the houseafter the murder of Verloc. Like a number of Conrad's charactersconfounded by a situation that defies comprehension, Ossipon has


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156 Nineteenth-Century Fictionthe sensation of sinking into depths where he struggles to keep hisfooting (SA, 279). When the truth of the situation finally flashesupon him, he, like Winnie, suffers an overwhelming shock, whichin him registers itself as an insane terror,recalling at its height thedelirium of the Patna engineer: Ossipon "positively saw snakesnow. He saw the woman twined round him like a snake, not to beshaken off" (SA, 291). Ossipon is successful in shaking off Winnie,asWinnie is successfulin killing Verloc, but Ossipon too is a victimof the "madness and despair" that destroys the others. "He wasmenaced by this thing in the very sources of his existence" (SA,307). The impending degeneration of Ossipon is merely stated,not vividly rendered as are the mental statesof Verloc and Winnie,but his fate is clearly meant to be another piece in the patterncreated by the successiveacts of Mr. Vladimir, Verloc, and Winnie.Throughout the novel, the impression of characters powerlessto control a mechanism they have set in motion is reinforced whenthey themselves seem like machines.'6 Verloc answering the shopbell not only moves like an automaton but also has "anautomaton'sabsurd air of being aware of the machinery inside him" (SA, 197).Terror reduces Ossipon to a mechanism whose words come "asthough he had released a catch in order to speak" (SA, 294). Thenews of Winnie's suicide transformshis brain into a machine whichhe cannot control but can only observe as if it were "suspendedin the air before him ... pulsating to the rhythm of an impenetrablemystery" (SA, 310). Conversely, machines assume a terrifying lifeof their own: the speaking tubes with "gaping mouths" (SA, 97)menace the Assistant Commissioner; the broken-down cab subjectsWinnie and her mother to such violent motion that the world out-side seems to collapse behind them (SA, 156); and the explosivemechanism of the bomb blows up Stevie. The sinister life in suchmechanisms beyond human control is perfectly represented bythe player piano in the Silenus bar which twice executes a tunewithout human agency when the deaths of Stevie and Winnie areannounced.The violence of the incongruity of the trivial music and theghastly deaths indicates the chief source of the grotesque in The

16 For a detailed discussion of the implications of the images of mechanisms, seeDavid L. Kubal, "The Secret Agent and the Mechanical Chaos," Bucknell Review,15, No. 3 (1967), 67-77.


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The Grotesque in Conrad's Fiction 157Secret Agent. Indeed, in no other novel does Conrad exploit incon-gruities so extreme and so numerous to produce a world and char-acters which confound the reader's sense of what is normal andrational. The physically monstrous figures, like Michaelis andYundt, are absurd beyond Conrad's other grotesques in theirespousal of changes they are utterly powerless to effect, and thegrotesque situations such as that of Winnie and Ossipon strugglingon the shop floor surpass scenes in the earlier novels in the enor-mity of the contrast of those elements, ghastly and farcical, whichare yoked to produce effects of grisly comedy. Finally, in no othernovel does Conrad so consistently create grotesque effects throughthe resources of the mock-heroic style. The extreme disparity be-tween the squalid lives of the charactersand the epic world evokedby references to Ulysses, Penelope, and Virgil's Silenus not onlyintensifies the desolate horror of the situation, but also makes thehorror bearable. The violent incongruities in scenes such as thecab ride-a "perfection of grotesque misery" (SA, 170) in whichthe grandiloquent style is most shockingly at odds with the pitifulmiseries it inflates-intensify the reader's sense of a world out ofjoint, in which nothing fits, everyone is at cross purposes, and thewhole chain of events confounds the reason.Like The Secret Agent, Under Western Eyes places its protag-onist in the midst of physically grotesque persons and subjects himto a sequence of events set in motion by a violent act and leadingto consequences no reason could foresee. The tone of this novel,however, is different from that produced by the sustained irony ofThe Secret Agent. In Under Western Eyes, the picture of anestranged world is created not primarily by physically grotesquecharactersand situations nor by mock-heroic style but by the pro-tagonist's consciousness of distortion and incongruity. Indeed, ofall Conrad's novels, Under Western Eyes gives the fullest, mostsustained picture of grotesque realities as they are reflected by atormented consciousness.The protagonist Razumov, whose mind is the stage of the actionin three of the four parts of the novel, is admirably conceived toserve as the mirror of the estranged world of the novel. Like Jim,he is at the mercy of a powerful imagination which, when his lifeis menaced, subjects him to intense visions of ruin; like Marlow,he struggles to resist the power of the irrational and the bizarre-


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158 Nineteenth-Century Fictionhe is one of those men who "keep an instinctive hold on normal,practical, everyday life" (UWE, 10)-and his very horror of thegrotesque strengthens its hold on him. Thus, when Haldin sud-denly appears, like an apparition, in Razumov's rooms, confessesthat he is the assassinof the Minister-President, Mr. de P--, andseeks Razumov's aid, Razumov succumbs to an overpowering sensethat his very existence has been undermined, that his life has been"permanently endangered" (UWE, 21). Not only does the appear-ance of Haldin, with whose ideas and acts Razumov has no sym-pathy, threaten Razumov with the loss of everything he has strivedto achieve-recognition as a scholar, a place in the hierarchy of theregime, his very identity, in fact-but this utterly unforeseen in-trusion also induces in Razumov a demoralizing sense of helpless-ness, a feeling that he has lost control of his life and is at the mercyof any "destructive horror" that might suddenly walk in upon him(UWE, 78). His sense of his world suddenly becoming unstableand sinister is expressed in familiar terms-in sensations of fallingto the bottom of an abyss(UWE, 23), of feeling the moral supportsof his life collapse (UWE, 76), and of living through the discon-nected sequences of a dream (UWE, 315). To contain Haldin inhis rooms is like "harbouring a pestilential disease that would notperhaps take your life, but would take from you all that made lifeworth living-a subtle pest that would convert earth into a hell"(UWE, 32).What transformsRazumov'sworld of sober realities into a night-mare realm peopled by phantoms and demons is not, however,simply the presence of Haldin but Razumov's betrayal of Haldin.It is not Haldin himself but Razumov's decision to give Haldinup to the police that inspires in Razumov a "suspiciousuneasiness,such as we may experience when we enter an unlighted strangeplace" (UWE, 35). It is the betrayal, by which he strikes at himselfas well as at Haldin, that renders the world phantasmagoric toRazumov's eyes, a place where a grotesque like the student with anose like "painted cardboard" seems "a vision out of a nightmare"(UWE, 72, 75). Even the trivialities of everyday existence becomestrange and menacing: "when he had got back into the middle ofthings they were all changed, subLlyand provokingly in their na-ture: inanimate objects, human faces, the landlady, the rusticservant-girl, the staircase, the streets, the very air" (UWE, 298).Far from easing his tortured state, his interviews with General


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The Grotesque in Conrad's Fiction 159T-- and Mikulin only intensify his torment, subjecting him tothe gnawing anguish of knowing himself suspect and forcing himto sustain a false identity as a revolutionary in the pay of the im-perial police. Naturally given to viewing his own thoughts withdetachment, he suffersas a result of the betrayal the sense of beingsplit into two persons:a frenzied actorand a dispassionate, sardonicobserver of the self whose sudden compulsions to speak can some-times but not always be controlled. This double consciousness,which makes him appear to the narrator at one point as though"he were turning the knife in the wound and watching the effect"(UWE, 351), subjects Razumov to the most horrifying of all thevisions that assail him, the vision of his own brain "suffering onthe rack-a long pale figure drawn asunder with terrific force inthe darkness of a vault, whose face he failed to see" (UWE, 88).Razumov is the victim of unenlightened egoism which impelshim to seek his own securityat any cost. At the same time, however,he is the victim of external forces: the revolutionary ardor em-bodied in Haldin and the power of the autocracy, equally de-structive and irrational, incarnate in General T--, "the embodiedpower of autocracy, grotesque and terrible" (UWE, 84). To Con-rad, both autocracyand the revolutionary passions it breeds wereabhorrent; therefore, he portrayed Razumov as a prisoner trappedbetween two intolerable alternatives, between the "lawlessnessofautocracy . . . and the lawlessness of revolution" (UWE, 77). Thedeathlike nature of the forces which have claimed Razumov isexpressed most obviously by the physical distortion which marksthe revolutionaries no less than the goggle-eyed General T-In Razumov's fevered vision, the abnormality of the grotesquefigures is heightened, but these figures seem macabre and bizarreto others besides Razumov. The sinister and ludicrous aspects ofPeter Ivanovitch are noted by Nathalie Haldin and the narratoras well as by Razumov; Madame de S--, to Razumov "a witch inParisian clothes" with a "grinning skull" (UWE, 215), is also seenby the narrator as a physical grotesque: "the painted, bedizened,dead-faced, glassy-eyed Egeria of Peter Ivanovitch" (UWE, 161).In fact, the presence of the narrator,who conveys Razumov's storyto us, confers upon the picture of the estranged world reflectedby Razumov's mind the authority of an impartial and detachedobserver.In Parts II, III, and IV, in which Razumov, Nathalie Haldin


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160 Nineteenth-Century Fictionand the narratorall serve as reflectors,what emerges is a compositevision of a world which seems in its distortion to mirror the tor-mented mind of Razumov but which is in its nature unstable andsinister, rendered grotesque by certain effects more pervasive inUnder Western Eyes than in any of Conrad's other novels. Razu-Dnov's sense of the world as sinister and strange is intensified whenordinary acts of speaking and listening appear to be distorted:when Peter Ivanovitch's voice seems to issue from beneath hisspectacles, not from his lips (UWE, 216); when the squeaks ofNikita's voice seem to come from his distended stomach (UWE,266); when Razumov's own voice appears to reach Sophia Anton-ovna through the pupils of her eyes (UWE, 257). Sounds proceedfrom unexpected places; at other times, the scenes are rendereddreamlike by unearthly silence: the city through which Razumovmoves in search of Ziemianitch, transformed by the falling snowinto a world without sounds; the "weird scene" (UWE, 30) of thebeating in which the violence of Razumov's blows only accentu-ates the silence and the immobility of the shadows on the wall;the room of General T--, in which Razumov has the sensationof the floor moving beneath him and in which a soundless clockpreserves the "grave-likesilence" (UWE, 46). Scenes in the novelnotable for their sharpcontrasts of black and white, their distortion,their qualities of silence and immobility, repeatedly suggest thedreamlike effects of surrealist painting. The descriptions of theChateau Borel, for instance, achieve effects remarkably similar tothose of Chirico's early metaphysical paintings. The sense of eeriesilence and of empty space that seems ominous is evoked by theappearance of the Chateau Borel as a place deserted yet guarded,with its windows shuttered, its door wide open. Inside, the empti-ness of the abandoned place is haunted by the sound of a voicewhich seems to Nathalie as though "left behind by the departedinhabitants to talk to the bare walls" (UWE, 144). Here, as inChirico's paintings of towers and streets and squares, the intensityof lines and shapes, rendered with supernatural clarity, enhancesthe strangenessof the world:The landingwasprolonged nto a barecorridor, ight andleft, desolateperspectives f whiteandgold decorationwithout a stripof carpet.Theverylight, pouring througha largewindow at the end, seemed dusty;and a solitary speckreposingon the balustradeof white marble-the


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The Grotesque in Conrad's Fiction 161silk top-hat of the great feminist-asserteditself extremely,black andglossy in all that crude whiteness. . . . [Razumov] stepped on the firststep and leanedhis backagainstthe wall. Belowhim the greathall withits chequeredfloor of blackand white seemedabsurdly arge and likesomepublic place wherea greatpowerof resonanceawaitsthe provo-cation of footfallsand voices. (UWE, 226).

Sceneslike these, and like those in which Razumov sees the phan-tom of Haldin, come as close as anything in Conrad to the fantasticand the supernatural. Like all Conrad's fiction, however, UnderWestern Eyes is realistic in the sense that action is always to beexplained in natural terms: in none of Conrad's works are naturallawssuspended. Charactersdo not awaken to find themselves turnedinto insects or their noses detached from their faces. Whereas Gre-gor Samsa and Major Kovalyov are grotesque in worlds in whichnormal reality has been displaced, Conrad's protagonists inhabita world in which pink toads exist only in the visions of deliriumand the distinction between sanity and madness is always made.All Conrad's novels are informed by a point of view which distin-guishes between the normal and the abnormal, whether the nar-rator is the omniscient author or a character like Marlow, whodeclares in Chance that "the normal alone can overcome the ab-normal" (C, 429).The existence of a point of view which distinguishes between ra-tional and irrational, sane and insane, allows Conrad to make an-other kind of distinction in his treatment of the grotesque. In eachof the novels, he renders experience from two perspectives: fromone viewpoint, grotesque characters and situations appear to besimply bewildering or frightening; from a second, the grotesque isseen to be part of a pattern or to assumemeaning in terms of a con-ception of the universe. In a number of the novels, the charactersarecapable of seeing their lives from only one perspective.Almayer,Willems, and Verloc, for instance, know themselves confounded ormenaced. They canregister frustration,bewilderment, and fear,butthey cannot register much more than their immediate emotions andsensations. Only the perspective of the omniscient author affordsaview of the pattern their experience of the grotesque creates. InChance, the two perspectives are maintained by different charac-ters within the novel. The principal actors, Flora de Barral, Rod-erick Anthony, de Barral,and young Powell, can feel the uneasiness


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162 Nineteenth-Century Fictionand fear bred by the peculiarities of their situation, but only thenarrator Marlow, who remains detached throughout the novel, canappreciate in the trial of de Barral "the cumulative effect of ab-surdity" (C, 82), recognize in Flora's life the pathos and absurdityof a "tragi-comical adventure" (C, 310), and provide what thelogical mind craves, "the evidence of rational linking up ofcharactersand facts" (C, 310).17Several of Conrad's protagonists,notably Marlow in "Heart of Darkness" and Razumov, can viewtheir situation from both perspectives, experience bewildermentand horror, and at the same time analyze their sensations and gen-eralize on their meaning. Razumov, who at one point feels himselfwatched by "another self, an independent sharer of his mind"(UWE, 230), is capable of generalizing on the precariousnature ofhuman existence even as his mind is defenseless against the suddenintrusions of the phantom vision of Haldin. Marlow, with the ad-vantage of retrospective vision, in "Heart of Darkness" is able si-multaneously to experience again the shocking impact of grotesquesights and to reflect on the idea of life-"that mysterious arrange-ment of mercilesslogic for a futile purpose" ("HD," 150)-to whichhis journey has led him.In an essayon The Secret Agent, Thomas Mann pointed to Con-rad's novel as illustrative of "the striking feature of modern art,"that it "sees life as tragi-comedy, with the result that the grotesqueis its most genuine style."18Several of Conrad's characters, notablyDecoud in Nostromo and Marlow in Chance, give the term "tragiccomedy" to the dramasthey observe. There are marked differencesin tone and mood from novel to novel, however, and the grotesqueis used to different ends. Conrad's fiction illustrates C. S. Lewis'sobservation that "the grotesque is a ridge from which one can de-scend into very different valleys." 9The "flabbydevil" ("HD," 72)which in "Heart of Darkness" produces conditions Marlow callsgrotesque inspires in him feelings of contempt and revulsion thatmake the folly and cruelty of European imperialism a "sordid farce"

17 Conrad indicates what is essential in maintaining a perspective like Marlow'swhen he notes of Gould in Nostromo: "He had no ironic eye. He was not amused atthe absurdities that prevail in this world" (375).18 Past Masters and Other Papers, trans. Helen T. Lowe-Porter, Essay Index ReprintSeries (1933; facsimile rpt. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1968), pp. 240-41.19 English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1954),p. 415.


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The Grotesque in Conrad's Fictioni 163("HD," 61). Likewise, grotesque charactersand situations help tocreate the impression of the "cruel futility of things" (N, 364) inNostromo, but in this novel the value to the characters of what issacrificed-the marriageof the Goulds and the lives of Decoud, Nos-tromo and Avellanos-turn a vain struggle into a "tragicfarce" (N,364). In contrast, the outcome of Chance is fortunate; the villain deBarral-grotesque in appearanceand in his morbid obsession withone idea-is an antagonist fit not for tragedy but for the "sinisterfarce" of the courtroom where the "grotesque details" of hisswindles, when revealed, excite laughter verging on hysteria (C, 81).Ortega pounding at the locked door at the climax of The Arrow ofGold likewise releases rather than intensifies the repressedemotionsof his hearers,and because, unlike de Barral,he is powerless to domore evil, he is a comic, not a sinister, figure in a "ferocious farce"(AG, 322).Different as are the effects created in Conrad's novels, however,all Conrad's narrators view a world in which elements of the ludi-crous, the pathetic, and the tragic are mixed; in which ignoblecharactersreveal the flaws of the potentially noble; in which scenesof low comedy mark moments of high tension; and in which hopesand aspirations, both generous and base, are defeated by humanweakness and folly and by the operation of what Conrad's charac-ters see as blind destiny or chance. Given the human condition,man's best recourse, according to Conrad, is to preserve a view oflife at once skepticaland compassionate. On occasion, observers ikeMarlow and Decoud attempt to assert their detachment by viewingmen's misfortunes as a kind of infernal joke. The vision which bestsustains the observer, however, is more complex: a vision of man asludicrous or pathetic in his pretensionsand ignorance but as worthyof respect in his struggle to maintain himself in the face of adversity.The feelings which such a view inspires in the characterswho shareConrad's powers of detachment are summed up by the AssistantCommissioner in The Secret Agent, who sees men's pretensions asvanity "deservingof scorn, wonder, and compassion" (SA, 100). Inevoking this complexity of feeling in Conrad'sfiction, the grotesqueplays an essential part.College of William and Mary

nettels, 'the grotesque in conrad's fiction

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