"Conrad, Joseph - Tales Of Unrest" - читать интересную книгу автора (Conrad Joseph)

breast pocket when folded neatly. As for the story itself it is true
enough in its essentials. The sustained invention of a really telling
lie demands a talent which I do not possess.

"The Idiots" is such an obviously derivative piece of work that it is
impossible for me to say anything about it here. The suggestion of it
was not mental but visual: the actual idiots. It was after an interval
of long groping amongst vague impulses and hesitations which ended in
the production of "The Nigger" that I turned to my third short story
in the order of time, the first in this volume: "Karain: A Memory."

Reading it after many years "Karain" produced on me the effect of
something seen through a pair of glasses from a rather advantageous
position. In that story I had not gone back to the Archipelago, I had
only turned for another look at it. I admit that I was absorbed by the
distant view, so absorbed that I didn't notice then that the motif of
the story is almost identical with the motif of "The Lagoon." However,
the idea at the back is very different; but the story is mainly made
memorable to me by the fact that it was my first contribution to
"Blackwood's Magazine" and that it led to my personal acquaintance
with Mr. William Blackwood whose guarded appreciation I felt
nevertheless to be genuine, and prized accordingly. "Karain" was begun
on a sudden impulse only three days after I wrote the last line of
"The Nigger," and the recollection of its difficulties is mixed up
with the worries of the unfinished "Return," the last pages of which I
took up again at the time; the only instance in my life when I made an
attempt to write with both hands at once as it were.

Indeed my innermost feeling, now, is that "The Return" is a left-
handed production. Looking through that story lately I had the
material impression of sitting under a large and expensive umbrella in
the loud drumming of a heavy rain-shower. It was very distracting. In
the general uproar one could hear every individual drop strike on the
stout and distended silk. Mentally, the reading rendered me dumb for
the remainder of the day, not exactly with astonishment but with a
sort of dismal wonder. I don't want to talk disrespectfully of any
pages of mine. Psychologically there were no doubt good reasons for my
attempt; and it was worth while, if only to see of what excesses I was
capable in that sort of virtuosity. In this connection I should like
to confess my surprise on finding that notwithstanding all its
apparatus of analysis the story consists for the most part of physical
impressions; impressions of sound and sight, railway station, streets,
a trotting horse, reflections in mirrors and so on, rendered as if for
their own sake and combined with a sublimated description of a
desirable middle-class town-residence which somehow manages to produce
a sinister effect. For the rest any kind word about "The Return" (and
there have been such words said at different times) awakens in me the
liveliest gratitude, for I know how much the writing of that fantasy
has cost me in sheer toil, in temper, and in disillusion.