There is the manner.The manner in laughter,in tears,in irony,in indignations and enthusiasms,in judgments--and even in love.
The manner in which,as in the features and character of a human face,the inner truth is foreshadowed for those who know how to look at their kind.
Those who read me know my conviction that the world,the temporal world,rests on a few very simple ideas;so simple that they must be as old as the hills.It rests notably,among others,on the idea of Fidelity.At a time when nothing which is not revolutionary in some way or other can expect to attract much attention I have not been revolutionary in my writings.The revolutionary spirit is mighty convenient in this,that it frees one from all scruples as regards ideas.Its hard,absolute optimism is repulsive to my mind by the menace of fanaticism and intolerance it contains.No doubt one should smile at these things;but,imperfect Esthete,I am no better Philosopher.
All claim to special righteousness awakens in me that scorn and danger from which a philosophical mind should be free.
I fear that trying to be conversational I have only managed to be unduly discursive.I have never been very well acquainted with the art of conversation--that art which,I understand,is supposed to be lost now.My young days,the days when one's habits and character are formed,have been rather familiar with long silences.Such voices as broke into them were anything but conversational.No.I haven't got the habit.Yet this discursiveness is not so irrelevant to the handful of pages which follow.They,too,have been charged with discursiveness,with disregard of chronological order (which is in itself a crime),with unconventionality of form (which is an impropriety).I was told severely that the public would view with displeasure the informal character of my recollections."Alas!"I protested,mildly."Could I begin with the sacramental words,'I was born on such a date in such a place'?The remoteness of the locality would have robbed the statement of all interest.I haven't lived through wonderful adventures to be related seriatim.I haven't known distinguished men on whom I could pass fatuous remarks.I haven't been mixed up with great or scandalous affairs.This is but a bit of psychological document,and even so,I haven't written it with a view to put forward any conclusion of my own."
But my objector was not placated.These were good reasons for not writing at all--not a defense of what stood written already,he said.
I admit that almost anything,anything in the world,would serve as a good reason for not writing at all.But since I have written them,all I want to say in their defense is that these memories put down without any regard for established conventions have not been thrown off without system and purpose.They have their hope and their aim.The hope that from the reading of these pages there may emerge at last the vision of a personality;the man behind the books so fundamentally dissimilar as,for instance,"Almayer's Folly"and "The Secret Agent,"and yet a coherent,justifiable personality both in its origin and in its action.This is the hope.The immediate aim,closely associated with the hope,is to give the record of personal memories by presenting faithfully the feelings and sensations connected with the writing of my first book and with my first contact with the sea.
In the purposely mingled resonance of this double strain a friend here and there will perhaps detect a subtle accord.
J.C.K.
