The Nigger of the Narcissus

The Nigger of the ''Narcissus''

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Title: The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" A Tale Of The Forecastle
Author: Joseph Conrad
Release Date: February 9, 2006 [EBook #17731]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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NIGGER OF THE "NARCISSUS" ***

Produced by David Widger

THE NIGGER
of THE NARCISSUS
A TALE OF THE FORECASTLE
BY JOSEPH CONRAD

COPYRIGHT, 1897, 1914,
BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY

TO
EDWARD GARNETT
THIS TALE
ABOUT MY FRIENDS
OF THE SEA

TO MY READERS IN AMERICA
From that evening when James Wait joined the ship--late for the muster
of the crew--to the moment when he left us in the open sea, shrouded in
sailcloth, through the open port, I had much to do with him. He was in
my watch. A negro in a British forecastle is a lonely being. He has no
chums. Yet James Wait, afraid of death and making her his accomplice
was an impostor of some character--mastering our compassion,
scornful of our sentimentalism, triumphing over our suspicions.
But in the book he is nothing; he is merely the centre of the ship's
collective psychology and the pivot of the action. Yet he, who in the
family circle and amongst my friends is familiarly referred to as the
Nigger, remains very precious to me. For the book written round him is
not the sort of thing that can be attempted more than once in a life-time.
It is the book by which, not as a novelist perhaps, but as an artist
striving for the utmost sincerity of expression, I am willing to stand or
fall. Its pages are the tribute of my unalterable and profound affection
for the ships, the seamen, the winds and the great sea--the moulders of
my youth, the companions of the best years of my life.
After writing the last words of that book, in the revulsion of feeling

before the accomplished task, I understood that I had done with the sea,
and that henceforth I had to be a writer. And almost without laying
down the pen I wrote a preface, trying to 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.
1914.
JOSEPH CONRAD.

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