Notes on My Books | Page 4

express the spirit in which I
was entering on the task of my new life. That preface on advice (which
I now think was wrong) was never published with the book. But the
late W. E. Henley, who had the courage at that time (1897) to serialize
my "Nigger" in the New Review judged it worthy to be printed as an
afterword at the end of the last instalment of the tale.
I am glad that this book which means so much to me is coming out
again, under its proper title of "The Nigger of the Narcissus" and under
the auspices of my good friends and publishers Messrs. Doubleday,
Page & Co. into the light of publicity.
Half the span of a generation has passed since W. E. Henley, after
reading two chapters, sent me a verbal message: "Tell Conrad that if
the rest is up to the sample it shall certainly come out in the New
Review." The most gratifying recollection of my writer's life!
And here is the Suppressed Preface.
JOSEPH CONRAD.
1914.

PREFACE
A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should
carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be defined as a

single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the
visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one,
underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its forms, in its
colours, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and in the
facts of life what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and
essential--their one illuminating and convincing quality--the very truth
of their existence. The artist, then, like the thinker or the scientist, seeks
the truth and makes his appeal. Impressed by the aspect of the world
the thinker plunges into ideas, the scientist into facts--whence,
presently, emerging, they make their appeal to those qualities of our
being that fit us best for the hazardous enterprise of living. They speak
authoritatively to our common-sense, to our intelligence, to our desire
of peace or to our desire of unrest; not seldom to our prejudices,
sometimes to our fears, often to our egoism--but always to our credulity.
And their words are heard with reverence, for their concern is with
weighty matters: with the cultivation of our minds and the proper care
of our bodies, with the attainment of our ambitions, with the perfection
of the means and the glorification of our precious aims.
It is otherwise with the artist.
Confronted by the same enigmatical spectacle the artist descends
within himself, and in that lonely region of stress and strife, if he be
deserving and fortunate, he finds the terms of his appeal. His appeal is
made to our less obvious capacities: to that part of our nature which,
because of the warlike conditions of existence, is necessarily kept out
of sight within the more resisting and hard qualities--like the vulnerable
body within a steel armour. His appeal is less loud, more profound, less
distinct, more stirring--and sooner forgotten. Yet its effect endures for
ever. The changing wisdom of successive generations discards ideas,
questions facts, demolishes theories. But the artist appeals to that part
of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a
gift and not an acquisition--and, therefore, more permanently enduring.
He speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of
mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and
pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation--and to the
subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the

loneliness of innumerable hearts, to the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in
sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to
each other, which binds together all humanity--the dead to the living
and the living to the unborn.
It is only some such train of thought, or rather of feeling, that can in a
measure explain the aim of the attempt, made in the tale which follows,
to present an unrestful episode in the obscure lives of a few individuals
out of all the disregarded multitude of the bewildered, the simple and
the voiceless. For, if any part of truth dwells in the belief confessed
above, it becomes evident that there is not a place of splendour or a
dark corner of the earth that does not deserve, if only a passing glance
of wonder and pity. The motive, then, may be held to justify the matter
of the work; but this preface, which is simply an avowal of endeavour,
cannot end here--for the avowal is not yet complete.
Fiction--if it at all aspires to be art--appeals to temperament. And in
truth it must be, like painting, like music, like