Produced by Judith Boss and David Widger

A PERSONAL RECORD

By Joseph Conrad

A FAMILIAR PREFACE

As a general rule we do not want much encouragement to talk about ourselves; yet this little book is the result of a friendly suggestion, and even of a little friendly pressure. I defended myself with some spirit; but, with characteristic tenacity, the friendly voice insisted, "You know, you really must."

It was not an argument, but I submitted at once. If one must! . . .

You perceive the force of a word. He who wants to persuade should put his trust not in the right argument, but in the right word. The power of sound has always been greater than the power of sense. I don't say this by way of disparagement. It is better for mankind to be impressionable than reflective. Nothing humanely great--great, I mean, as affecting a whole mass of lives--has come from reflection. On the other hand, you cannot fail to see the power of mere words; such words as Glory, for instance, or Pity. I won't mention any more. They are not far to seek. Shouted with perseverance, with ardour, with conviction, these two by their sound alone have set whole nations in motion and upheaved the dry, hard ground on which rests our whole social fabric. There's "virtue" for you if you like! . . . Of course the accent must be attended to. The right accent. That's very important. The capacious lung, the thundering or the tender vocal chords. Don't talk to me of your Archimedes' lever.

He was an absent-minded person with a mathematical imagination. Mathematics commands all my respect, but I have no use for engines. Give me the right word and the right accent and I will move the world.

What a dream for a writer! Because written words have their accent, too. Yes! Let me only find the right word! Surely it must be lying somewhere among the wreckage of all the plaints and all the exultations poured out aloud since the first day when hope, the undying, came down on earth. It may be there, close by, disregarded, invisible, quite at hand. But it's no good. I believe there are men who can lay hold of a needle in a pottle of hay at the first try. For myself, I have never had such luck. And then there is that accent. Another difficulty. For who is going to tell whether the accent is right or wrong till the word is shouted, and fails to be heard, perhaps, and goes down-wind, leaving the world unmoved? Once upon a time there lived an emperor who was a sage and something of a literary man. He jotted down on ivory tablets thoughts, maxims, reflections which chance has preserved for the edification of posterity. Among other sayings--I am quoting from memory--I remember this solemn admonition: "Let all thy words have the accent of heroic truth." The accent of heroic truth! This is very fine, but I am thinking that it is an easy matter for an austere emperor to jot down grandiose advice. Most of the working truths on this earth are humble, not heroic; and there have been times in the history of mankind when the accents of heroic truth have moved it to nothing but derision.

Nobody will expect to find between the covers of this little book words of extraordinary potency or accents of irresistible heroism. However humiliating for my self esteem, I must confess that the counsels of Marcus Aurelius are not for me. They are more fit for a moralist than for an artist. Truth of a modest sort I can promise you, and also sincerity. That complete, praise worthy sincerity which, while it delivers one into the hands of one's enemies, is as likely as not to embroil one with one's friends.

Table of contents (by pages)

• 1: A Personal Record by Joseph Conrad
• 2: When I published The Mirror of the Sea
• 3: Should the open display of emotion fail to move
• 4: A historian of hearts is not a historian of emotions
• 5: Have been charged with discursiveness
• 6: I could not have told him that Nina had said
• 7: Captain Froud did not see why the Shipmasters' Society
• 8: It's a second officer's berth and
• 9: But never an emigrant turned up in Rouen of which
• 10: Till one dreary day I suggested
• 11: Always with Almayer's Folly among my diminishing baggage
• 12: And Jacques put his feet upon the couch
• 13: Yet in my anxiety I was not thinking of the MS
• 14: The sledge was a very small one
• 15: That very evening the wandering MS
• 16: This is a far cry back from the MS
• 17: Certainly more than ten years younger than myself
• 18: As Valery afterward related to me
• 19: Recalling the horror and compassion of my childhood
• 20: He had eaten him to appease his hunger
• 21: Condemned justly the conduct of the ingenious hidalgo
• 22: Not one of them looked like a tourist
• 23: His white calves twinkled sturdily
• 24: But he had been crushing me slowly
• 25: We began the descent of the Furca Pass conversing merrily
• 26: He kept his habits of solitude and silence
• 27: He turned out an affectionate and careful stepfather
• 28: This was the beginning of a lawsuit
• 29: Alexander and Nicholas in their various ways
• 30: Even such intimates as my paternal grandfather
• 31: With a couple of tall bookcases
• 32: Still arguing with the peasants
• 33: Yelled the ex soldier blacksmith
• 34: But I remember well the day of our departure back to exile
• 35: Direct underlined to the prison hospital in Kiev
• 36: I lounged between the mantelpiece and the window
• 37: It was an autumn day with an opaline atmosphere
• 38: Shadowy shape with the blurred bulk of a house behind him
• 39: With Almayer one could never tell
• 40: Almayer again raised his head and
• 41: The kalashes skipped out of the way
• 42: The kalashes lining the rail all had their mouths open
• 43: Almayer told me he wanted to see you very particularly
• 44: The handsomest and most sympathetic of Chinamen
• 45: In your earthly life you haunted me
• 46: I should have been secretly saddened
• 47: The rest is our affair the laughter
• 48: The most eloquent and just of French prose writers
• 49: And then the criticism becomes a mere notice
• 50: But for the mere winning of a longitude
• 51: The whole world of Costaguana the country
• 52: Not fully conscious conviction
• 53: But here is the dog an old dog now
• 54: A good equipment for a writing life
• 55: Rustling under my reverent touch
• 56: The very word sober must be written
• 57: And the doorkeeper in his glass cage
• 58: They were not resourceful enough to save them
• 59: What's your idea of a jury rudder now
• 60: The era of examinations was over
• 61: Where an excellent fellow called Solary
• 62: Wrinkled sea eyes of the pilot breed
• 63: Beneath lofty ceilings with heavily molded cornices
• 64: I saw the tiny light of a lantern standing on the quay
• 65: My fingers itched for the tiller
• 66: Being an impudent little shaver
• 67: We would land before sunrise on a small islet that
• 68: Glassy sky of that cold sunrise