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The Nigger of the “Narcissus”: A Re-Examination

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

James E. Miller Jr.
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Extract

The position of Joseph Conrad's The Nigger of the “Narcissus” among his own works, or among contemporary classics, has been an ambiguous one. A brief glance at current Conrad criticism confirms its uncertain status : F. R. Leavis, whose opening statement of his book, The Great Tradition (New York, 1948), asserts, “The great English novelists are Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James and Joseph Conrad,” gives a comprehensive treatment of Conrad without once mentioning Nigger, even among the so-called minor works; however, Morton D. Zabel, who reprints the whole of Nigger in his The Portable Conrad (New York, 1947), states (p. 291), “The book remains, if not Conrad's greatest or most ambitious, one of his most perfectly realized and poetically conceived works.” In view of the silence on the one hand, and the somewhat lavish praise on the other, by these two important critics, a reconsideration of the novel at this time is perhaps not out of place.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 66 , Issue 6 , December 1951 , pp. 911 - 918
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1951

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References

Note 1 in page 911 The Twentieth Century Novel (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1932), pp. 349, 350. Not much need be added to Beach's discussion of the point of view of Nigger, although it should be pointed out that the first person is used several times before p. 36 (see p. 7 of Nigger, New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1945). I do not believe that the ambiguity of the status of the narrator (he seems at times to be an officer, at other times a member of the crew) serves any real purpose. It is interesting to note, however, how little this defect actually detracts from the novel.

Note 2 in page 911 Joseph Conrad (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1941), pp. 15–16.

Note 3 in page 912 The Craft of Fiction (New York: Peter Smith, 1945), p. 41: “A subject, one and whole and irreducible—a novel cannot begin to take shape till it has this for its support. It seems obvious; yet there is nothing more familiar to a novel-reader of to-day than the difficulty of discovering what the novel in his hand is about. What was the novelist's intention, in a phrase?”

Note 4 in page 912 Conrad, Life and Letters, by G. Jean-Aubry (New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1927), ii, 342.

Note 5 in page 912 See note 1, above. Page references to this edition of Nigger follow all quotations in my text.