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David Wilson's Literary Quiz
A new literary quiz each week or so, usually with a theme. This week: One of the very greatest writers the English (or
any other) Language has ever known, Joseph Conrad, has been dead now for eighty years, but his reputation is still increasing.
During his lifetime, and beyond, he was usually thought of as a purveyor of exotic settings and adventures, but in the last
half-century it has become increasingly clear that he was at once the most poetic and the most profound writer of English
prose. Nine of these extracts are from his works, which you must identify: the other (No. 9) is the impression Conrad made
on one of his acquaintances. Name that acquaintance!
The quotations in these quizzes reflect my own tastes - Dead White Males, for the most part (Jane Austen,
of course, counts as an honorary DWM). There will never be anything wilfully obscure. If you're the sort of person who sneers
at the naïveté of the reviewers in the TLS and New York Review of Books, you'll recognize them at once. I welcome
suggestions and insults. You'll find an e-mail tag lying around somewhere. Please put QUIZ in the subject line.
David J Wilson.
Quiz No. 52
1)
Don José Avellanos loved his country. He had served it lavishly with his fortune during his diplomatic
career, and the later story of his captivity and barbarous ill-usage under Guzman Bento was well known to his listeners. It
was a wonder that he had not been a victim of the ferocious and summary executions which marked the course of that tyranny;
for Guzman had ruled the country with the sombre imbecility of political fanaticism. The power of Supreme Government had become
in his dull mind an object of strange worship, as if it were some sort of cruel deity. It was incarnated in himself, and his
adversaries, the Federalists, were the supreme sinners, objects of hate, abhorrence, and fear, as heretics would be to a convinced
Inquisitor. For years he had carried about at the tail of the Army of Pacification, all over the country, a captive band of
such atrocious criminals, who considered themselves most unfortunate at not having been summarily executed. It was a diminishing
company of nearly naked skeletons, loaded with irons, covered with dirt, with vermin, with raw wounds, all men of position,
of education, of wealth, who had learned to fight among themselves for scraps of rotten beef thrown to them by soldiers, or
to beg a Negro cook for a drink of muddy water in pitiful accents. Don José Avellanos, clanking his chains amongst the others,
seemed only to exist in order to prove how much hunger, pain, degradation, and cruel torture a human body can stand without
parting with the last spark of life. Sometimes interrogatories, backed by some primitive method of torture, were administered
to them by a commission of officers hastily assembled in a hut of sticks and branches, and made pitiless by the fear for their
own lives. A lucky one or two of that spectral company of prisoners would perhaps be led tottering behind a bush to be shot
by a file of soldiers. Always an army chaplain - some unshaven, dirty man, girt with a sword and with a tiny cross embroidered
in white cotton on the left breast of a lieutenant's uniform - would follow, cigarette in the corner of the mouth, wooden
stool in hand, to hear the confession and give absolution; for the Citizen Saviour of the Country (Guzman Bento was called
thus officially in petitions) was not averse from the exercise of rational clemency. The irregular report of the firing squad
would be heard, followed sometimes by a single finishing shot; a little bluish cloud of smoke would float up above the green
bushes, and the Army of Pacification would move on over the savannas, through the forests, crossing rivers, invading rural
pueblos, devastating the haciendas of the horrid aristocrats, occupying the inland towns in the fulfilment of
its patriotic mission, and leaving behind a united land wherein the evil taint of Federalism could no longer be detected in
the smoke of burning houses and the smell of spilt blood.
Don José Avellanos had survived that time.
Answer
2(Names changed)
An hour or more later she took the green baize apron off her brother Willie, and instructed him to
wash his hands and face in the peremptory tone she had used in that connection for fifteen years or so - ever since she had,
in fact, ceased to attend to the boy's hands and face herself. She spared presently a glance away from her dishing-up for
the inspection of that face and those hands which Willie, approaching the kitchen table, offered for her approval with an
air of self-assurance hiding a perpetual residue of anxiety. Formerly the anger of the father was the supremely effective
sanction of these rites, but Mr Weller's placidity in domestic life would have made all mention of anger incredible - even
to poor Willie's nervousness. The theory was that Mr Weller would have been inexpressibly pained and shocked by any deficiency
of cleanliness at meal times. Mollie after the death of her father found considerable consolation in the feeling that she
need no longer tremble for poor Willie. She could not bear to see the boy hurt. It maddened her. As a little girl she had
often faced with blazing eyes the irascible licensed victualler in defence of her brother. Nothing now in Mrs Weller's appearance
could lead one to suppose that she was capable of a passionate demonstration.
Answer
3)
While his crew of half-starved scarecrows, hard as nails and ravenous as so many wolves for the
delights of the shore, swarmed aloft to furl the sails nearly as thin and as patched as the grimy shirts on their backs, Peyrol
took a survey of the quay. Groups were forming along its whole stretch to gaze at the new arrival. Peyrol noted particularly
a good many men in red caps and said to himself - “Here they are.” Amongst the crews of ships that had brought
the tricolour into the seas of the East, there were hundreds professing sans-culotte principles; boastful and declamatory
beggars he had thought them. But now he was beholding the shore breed. Those who had made the Revolution safe. The real thing.
Peyrol, after taking a good long look, went below into his cabin to make himself ready to go ashore.
Answer
4)
A slight clinking behind me made me turn my head. Six black men advanced in a file, toiling up the
path. They walked erect and slow, balancing small baskets full of earth on their heads, and the clink kept time with their
footsteps. Black rags were wound round their loins, and the short ends behind waggled to and fro like tails. I could see every
rib, the joints of their limbs were like knots in a rope; each had an iron collar on his neck, and all were connected together
with a chain whose bights swung between them, rhythmically clinking. Another report from the cliff made me think suddenly
of that ship of war I had seen firing into a continent. It was the same kind of ominous voice; but these men could by no stretch
of imagination be called enemies. They were called criminals, and the outraged law, like the bursting shells, had come to
them, an insoluble mystery from the sea. All their meagre breasts panted together, the violently dilated nostrils quivered,
the eyes stared stonily up-hill. They passed me within six inches, without a glance, with that complete, deathlike indifference
of unhappy savages. Behind this raw matter one of the reclaimed, the product of the new forces at work, strolled despondently,
carrying a rifle by its middle. He had a uniform jacket with one button off, and seeing a white man on the path, hoisted his
weapon to his shoulder with alacrity. This was simple prudence, white men being so much alike at a distance that he could
not tell who I might be. He was speedily reassured, and with a large, white, rascally grin, and a glance at his charge, seemed
to take me into partnership in his exalted trust. After all, I also was a part of the great cause of these high and just proceedings.
Answer
5)
On a bright sunshiny day, with the breeze chasing her smoke far ahead, the Nan-Shan came into
Fu-chau. Her arrival was at once noticed on shore, and the seamen in harbour said: “Look! Look at that steamer. What's
that? Siamese - isn't she? Just look at her!”
She seemed, indeed, to have been used as a running target for the secondary batteries of a cruiser.
A hail of minor shells could not have given her upper works a more broken, torn, and devastated aspect: and she had about
her the worn, weary air of ships coming from the far ends of the world - and indeed with truth, for in her short passage she
had been very far; sighting, verily, even the coast of the Great Beyond, whence no ship ever returns to give up her crew to
the dust of the earth. She was incrusted and gray with salt to the trucks of her masts and to the top of her funnel; as though
(as some facetious seaman said) “the crowd on board had fished her out somewhere from the bottom of the sea and brought
her in here for salvage.” And further, excited by the felicity of his own wit, he offered to give five pounds for her
- “as she stands.”
Answer
6(Name changed)
Climbing slowly the four flights of the dark, dirty staircase in the house where he had his lodgings,
he felt confident of success. The winner's name would be published in the papers on New Year's Day. And at the thought that
“He” would most probably read it there, Arnold stopped short on the stairs for an instant, then went on smiling
faintly at his own emotion. “This is but a shadow,” he said to himself, “but the medal is a solid beginning.”
With those ideas of industry in his head the warmth of his room was agreeable and encouraging. “I
shall put in four hours of good work,” he thought. But no sooner had he closed the door than he was horribly startled.
All black against the usual tall stove of white tiles gleaming in the dusk, stood a strange figure, wearing a skirted, close-fitting,
brown cloth coat strapped round the waist, in long boots, and with a little Astrakhan cap on its head. It loomed lithe and
martial. Arnold was utterly confounded. It was only when the figure advancing two paces asked in an untroubled, grave voice
if the outer door was closed that he regained his power of speech.
Answer
7)
“At all events, the next time I saw him he was ill - lung trouble. He was tough, but I daresay
he was not acclimatised as well as I had supposed. It was a bad winter; and, of course, these mountaineers do get fits of
homesickness; and a state of depression would make him vulnerable. He was lying half dressed on a couch downstairs.
“A table covered with a dark oilcloth took up all the middle of the little room. There was a
wicker cradle on the floor, a kettle spouting steam on the hob, and some child's linen lay drying on the fender. The room
was warm, but the door opens
right into the garden, as you noticed perhaps.
“He was very feverish, and kept on muttering to himself. She sat on a chair and looked at him
fixedly across the table with her brown, blurred eyes. ‘Why don't you have him upstairs?’ I asked. With a start
and a confused stammer she said, ‘Oh! ah! I couldn't sit with him upstairs, Sir.’
“I gave her certain directions; and going outside, I said again that he ought to be in bed upstairs.
She wrung her hands. ‘I couldn't. I couldn't. He keeps on saying something - I don't know what.’ With the memory
of all the talk against the man that had been dinned into her ears, I looked at her narrowly. I looked into her short-sighted
eyes, at her dumb eyes that once in her life had seen an enticing shape, but seemed, staring at me, to see nothing at all
now. But I saw she was uneasy.
Answer
8(Name changed)
And at last Roderigo looked astern where the other pointed with maniacal insistence. He saw a silent black squall which had
eaten up already one-third of the sky. You know how these squalls come up there about that time of the year. First you see
a darkening of the horizon - no more; then a cloud rises opaque like a wall. A straight edge of vapour lined with sickly whitish
gleams flies up from the southwest, swallowing the stars in whole constellations; its shadow flies over the waters, and confounds
sea and sky into one abyss of obscurity. And all is still. No thunder, no wind, no sound; not a flicker of lightning. Then
in the tenebrous immensity a livid arch appears; a swell or two like undulations of the very darkness run past, and suddenly,
wind and rain strike together with a peculiar impetuosity as if they had burst through something solid. Such a cloud had come
up while they weren't looking. They had just noticed it, and were perfectly justified in surmising that if in absolute stillness
there was some chance for the ship to keep afloat a few minutes longer, the least disturbance of the sea would make an end
of her instantly. Her first nod to the swell that precedes the burst of such a squall would be also her last, would become
a plunge, would, so to speak, be prolonged into a long dive, down, down to the bottom. Hence these new capers of their fright,
these new antics in which they displayed their extreme aversion to die.
Answer
9)
Conrad's point of view was far from modern. In the modern world there are two philosophies: the one
which stems from Rousseau, and sweeps aside discipline as unnecessary, the other, which finds its fullest expression in totalitarianism,
which thinks of discipline as essentially imposed from without. Conrad adhered to the older tradition, that discipline should
come from within. He despised indiscipline, and hated discipline that was merely external.
In all this I found myself closely in agreement with him. At our very first meeting, we talked with
continually increasing intimacy. We seemed to sink through layer after layer of what was superficial, till gradually both
reached the central fire. It was an experience unlike any other that I have known. We looked into each other's eyes, half
appalled and half intoxicated to find ourselves together in such a region. The emotion was as intense as passionate love,
and at the same time all-embracing. I came away bewildered, and hardly able to find my way among ordinary affairs.
Answer
10)
When I left him there to go back to my room the steward was finishing dusting. I sent for the mate
and engaged him in some insignificant conversation. It was, as it were, trifling with the terrific character of his whiskers;
but my object was to give him an opportunity for a good look at my cabin. And then I could at last shut, with a clear conscience,
the door of my stateroom and get my double back into the recessed part. There was nothing else for it. He had to sit still
on a small folding stool, half smothered by the heavy coats hanging there. We listened to the steward going into the bathroom
out of the saloon, filling the water bottles there, scrubbing the bath, setting things to rights, whisk, bang, clatter - out
again into the saloon - turn the key - click. Such was my scheme for keeping my second self invisible. Nothing better could
be contrived under the circumstances. And there we sat; I
at my writing desk ready to appear busy with some papers, he behind me out of sight of the door. It would not have been prudent
to talk in daytime; and I could not have stood the excitement of that queer sense of whispering to myself. Now and then, glancing
over my shoulder, I saw him far back there, sitting rigidly on the low stool, his bare feet close together, his arms folded,
his head hanging on his breast - and perfectly still. Anybody would have taken him for me.
Answer
1)
Nostromo. I begin with what is probably Conrad's finest novel, in which all the aspects of his genius are on show.
Guzman Bento! What a nasty geezer! You'd sooner give a hotfoot to Stalin, or offer Hitler a copy of Die Yiddische Zeitung,
than say “Good morning” to Guzman Bento.
Back to Question 1
2)
The Secret Agent. This novel is set in the most exotic of all Conrad's locations: London. Winnie Verloc loves one person
in the world, her brother Stevie. The impercipient Mr Verloc would have done well to realize this, but he will die as blindly
as he lived.
Back to Question 2
3)
The Rover. Give yourself triple points if you recognized this one: The Rover is one of Conrad's bread-and-butter
novels, rather lost in the brilliance of his major works.
Back to Question 3
4)
Heart of Darkness. One of the small number of perfect works of art that exist in the world. Belgium has pretty well
lived down the deserved obloquy of having committed one of the great crimes of the colonial era. Perhaps one day Belgium itself
(that invention of Lord Palmerston) will only be remembered because of Heart of Darkness.
Back to Question 4
5)
Typhoon. No-one has ever described a storm at sea as well as Conrad, but the true interest of this short novel is the
character of Captain MacWhirr, a man without imagination or initiative. These failings bring his ship into the path of the
eponymous typhoon: these strengths bring the ship safe to harbour. We can but hope that this will be Dubya's epitaph, also.
Back to Question 5
6)
Under Western Eyes. The nightmare begins for poor Razumov: the assassin and conspirator Haldin has selected him for
the privilege of giving him refuge .... Suddenly Razumov, through no fault of his own, finds himself on a greased downslope.
Whatever he does, whatever he does, he is ruined.
Back to Question 6
7)
Amy Foster. One of the most terrifying short stories ever written, a story which undoubtedly expressed Conrad's own
darkest fears. A foreigner speaking an unknown language manages, with difficulty, to make a home for himself in an English
village. He marries an English girl, and they have a child. The worst seems to be over - and then the man becomes ill, and,
in his delirium, starts to speak his own language again .... His wife, frightened out of her wits, takes the child and runs
away, leaving her husband to die alone. Brrrrrr!
Back to Question 7
8)
Lord Jim. Golly! What a book! Jim thought that his mistake - the mistake that had wrecked his life - was getting off
the Patna too soon. But in fact his only mistake was getting on her in the first place. He was a good man, a brave
man, a competent man - and as such he was alone on board. He wasn't a hero, though. A hero keeps his courage when all around
him are turning tail. That's why heroes are so scarce.
Back to Question 8
9)
Autobiography, Bertrand Russell. Russell knew the loneliness of the hyper-intellectual: Conrad that of the exile, and
of the artist. It ain't all beer and skittles, being a genius.
Back to Question 9
10)
The Secret Sharer. I end with Conrad's most famous short story, which, by a lucky chance, was the first piece of his
I ever read. Soon, it will be fifty years since I came across it in Fifty Great Sea Stories .... I couldn't tell you
much about any of the other stories in that book.
Back to Question 10
Don't bottle up your contempt and fury. Mail to davidjw@mindspring.com
Return to Start
Last Updated: 5 November 2004
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