- 262
Conrad, Joseph
Estimate
5,000 - 7,000 GBP
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Description
- Conrad, Joseph
- Exceptional autograph letter signed, to Arthur Symons
- ink on paper
expressing the "special pleasure the recognition of my work by a man like you was certain to give me", cautioning that he does not merit all of Symons's praise but providing a remarkable explanation of his artistic and ethical intentions and his frustration at the misunderstanding of his ironic and detached moral stance ("...I've been called a heartless wretch a man without ideals, and a poseur of brutality..."), then apologising that Symons has drawn from him such outspoken claims about his work ("...I have been living as it in a cave without echoes. If you come shouting gloriously at the mouth of the same you can't really expect from me to pretend I am not there..."), 5 pages, 4to, lined notepaper torn from a pad, [Someries, Luton,] 29 August 1908, upper edges jagged, a few small nicks
The poet, critic and author of the highly influential The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) Arthur Symons (1865-1945) had been a leading figure in the fin de siècle symbolist school of the 1890s, which had exerted a powerful influence on Conrad – indeed Jessie Conrad claimed that Symons was the only poet her husband read for pleasure (Karl, p.349). As editor of The Savoy, Symons had published Conrad's first short story, 'The Idiots', in 1896, but two years later he had written an unfavourable review of The Nigger of the Narcissus. Personal correspondence between the two men began in August 1908, when Symons sent Conrad a draft of a profoundly sympathetic essay on Conrad's work, and a friendship soon developed between the two men. They met regularly as near neighbours in Kent during the period 1909-12, a time when both men suffered severe nervous collapses, with Symons enduring extended hospitalizations in a private London asylum. Nevertheless, given Conrad's own fragility at this time the novelist was slightly guarded in his involvement, with John Conrad remembering that “my father rather tended to keep [Symons] at 'arms length'...He seemed to me to be a lonely person who lacked the ability to become a companion...” (Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered, p.60). Conrad used a stanza of Symons's as an epigraph for 'Twixt Land and Sea.
The poet, critic and author of the highly influential The Symbolist Movement in Literature (1899) Arthur Symons (1865-1945) had been a leading figure in the fin de siècle symbolist school of the 1890s, which had exerted a powerful influence on Conrad – indeed Jessie Conrad claimed that Symons was the only poet her husband read for pleasure (Karl, p.349). As editor of The Savoy, Symons had published Conrad's first short story, 'The Idiots', in 1896, but two years later he had written an unfavourable review of The Nigger of the Narcissus. Personal correspondence between the two men began in August 1908, when Symons sent Conrad a draft of a profoundly sympathetic essay on Conrad's work, and a friendship soon developed between the two men. They met regularly as near neighbours in Kent during the period 1909-12, a time when both men suffered severe nervous collapses, with Symons enduring extended hospitalizations in a private London asylum. Nevertheless, given Conrad's own fragility at this time the novelist was slightly guarded in his involvement, with John Conrad remembering that “my father rather tended to keep [Symons] at 'arms length'...He seemed to me to be a lonely person who lacked the ability to become a companion...” (Joseph Conrad: Times Remembered, p.60). Conrad used a stanza of Symons's as an epigraph for 'Twixt Land and Sea.
Provenance
Kenneth A. Lohf (1925-2002), librarian and collector; Christie's, New York, 20 November 1992, lot 39
Literature
Collected Letters, IV, pp.113-114
Catalogue Note
"...One thing that I am certain of, is that I have approached the object of my task, things human, in a spirit of piety. The earth is a temple where there is going on a mystery play childish and poignant, ridiculous and awful enough, in all conscience. Once in I've tried to behave decently. I have not degraded the quasi religious sentiment by tears and groans; and if I have been amused or indignant I've neither grinned nor gnashed my teeth. In other words I've tried to write with dignity, not out of regard for myself but for the sake of the spectacle, the play with an obscure beginning and an unfathomable denoûment [sic]..."