Victory?

I have just finished reading Joseph Conrad’s ‘Victory’, so here is a selection of quotes from it that caught my imagination. It’s not the best Conrad novel I have read, it has most of his signature concerns, including the brutality that lays just beneath the surface of civilisation, and of secularised Christian meanings – for instance the individualistic and alienated main character, Heyst, is transfigured by being loved, and by falling in love. A love that for both Heyst and for his beloved Lena is self-sacrificial, leading to the bloody and ambiguous ‘victory’ of the final pages.

Perhaps Conrad is better at writing male characters than females ones, anyway…those quotes,

On the creative power of idleness, this from the Author’s Preface on how Conrad came by the character of Lena having wandered into a café in the South of France and found his attention captured by a particular woman,

“This attention originated in idleness for which I have a natural talent.”

I think idleness is an underrated virtue.

This from the narrative, a description of a touring orchestra that played arrangements of popular tunes…made me smile,

“The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simply murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy.”

This on the subjectivity of reason,

“For the use of reason is to justify the obscure desires that move our conduct, impulses, passions, prejudices, and follies, and also our fears.”

This on the way our faces may as easily mask our emotions as betray them,

“…in most cases the body is the unalterable mask of the soul.”

This on how through the successive ages of our lives desire keeps us going, even if in futility (a sort of Romanticism gone bad)

“For every age is fed on illusions, lest men should renounce life early and the human race come to an end.”

A description given by the villainous character Ricardo (named after the economist?) on the nature of wage labour,

“They give you wages as they'd fling a bone to a dog, and they expect you to be grateful. It's worse than slavery. You don't expect a slave that's bought for money to be grateful. And if you sell your work--what is it but selling your own self? You've got so many days to live and you sell them one after another. Hey? Who can pay me enough for my life?”

The last line of that reminds me of Psalm 49, verses 7 and 8, in that way that Conrad often seems to allow the narrative of the bible to cast shadows into his writing,

No one can redeem the life of another

or give to God a ransom for them—

the ransom for a life is costly,

no payment is ever enough…

And finally, this splendidly sceptical and satirical line spoken by Heyst,

“A diplomatic statement, Lena, is a statement of which everything is true, but the sentiment which seems to prompt it.”

A book for the careworn who still half hope that redemption may be possible.