Nost/algia as a Mode of Reflection in the Autobiographical Narratives of Joseph Conrad and Henry James

Acknowledgements

The present study is a result of several years of research which, at the beginning, centred around the history of the pastoral convention. This field of investigation was perhaps not unexpected for a classical scholar who was always fascinated by the development of European civilisation and literature. The initial spark of interest was ignited by my first classics professors, Włodzimierz Appel and Hanna Appel, NCU, Toruń, Poland, who expertly drew the attention of a young student to ancient Greek epic and lyric poetry, and Augustan Rome, respectively. This provided a solid foundation for my future studies of English and Italian literatures under the wise direction of professors Hans Ulrich Seeber and Jarmila Mildorf at Stuttgart University, Germany. I am deeply indebted to both of them, as professor Seeber initiated me into the intricate patterns of the pastoral, the Arcadian, and the utopian themes and motifs, with professor Mildorf introducing me to the unique atmosphere of Victorian and late-Victorian England. The present study seems only a step away from the fields enumerated above, with both Joseph Conrad and Henry James linking the Victorian and the modernist sensibilities in their prose writings. A special word of gratitude is reserved for professor Mirosława Buchholtz, NCU, Toruń, Poland for her perceptive guidance during my doctoral and post-doctoral research; without her, my knowledge on Henry James would be decidedly narrower. Also, I would like to thank my colleagues at the Ignatianum Jesuit University in Krakow, Poland, for their help and understanding, and, particularly, to Ann Cardwell, who has assisted my writing skills with her expertise and perseverance. Finally, I would like to thank my dear parents, Krystyna and Marian Jóskowski, as well as my husband, Jerzy, and my children, Julia, Jan, and Zofia, for their constant belief in me – without them I would not be the scholar who I am. Thank you all.

List of Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used in parenthetical references in the study:

Joseph Conrad

Henry James

Introduction

In the 21^st century, nostalgia has become almost omnipresent as a phenomenon shaping not only literary tastes, but also the contemporary aesthetic sensibility,¹ which reflects, or perhaps follows in the footsteps of, the positive stance regarding the so-called retro culture. “Nostalgic (…) are the times in which we live. And, indeed, nostalgia is everywhere!” Stephanie Armbruster, somewhat ironically, notes while observing that, interestingly, a significant mark was also left by nostalgia on the culture and literature of the 20^th century (2016: 11). As an all-embracing term, which seems familiar, but in actuality appears to be insufficiently defined and examined,² nostalgia has entered our lives, homes, books, television, and even the political discourse as an inconsequential, cover-all term – a “dirty word,” as Tammy Clewell remarks (2013: 7). Little wonder that it generates mixed responses since, as Elisabeth Outka pointedly argues, this “dubious enterprise” may appear “at best a distraction and at worst a dangerous mask for serious problems” (in Clewell 2013: 255). As an exemplification, the scholar adverts to an array of nostalgia-marked, 20^th-century accounts which, while varying in depth, style, and the perspective adopted, characteristically, deploy popular nostalgia as a mode, often interlaced with the pastoral.³ Following the lines of investigation drawn in Paul Alpers’s brilliant inquiry into, literally, What Is Pastoral?,⁴ the study intends to first define, however tentatively, and then ←11 | 12→investigate nostalgia as a mode of perception which invites, and indeed requires, an appropriate style and rhetoric – a mode that renders the re-envisioning of home as a more serious subject than that suggested by the inconsequential name of the phenomenon, and consequently of interest to readers.

Although it has become popular in recent years (Cook 2005; Outka 2012: 3–10; Armbruster 2016), nostalgia had entered the public discourse decades, if not centuries, earlier. In fact, its first recorded occurrence coincides with the abrupt termination of peace and prosperity that was experienced during the Enlightenment, thus marking a moment of transition into the era of total wars – in this case the Napoleonic Wars.5 In contrast to what may be presumed with regard to nostalgia, its origin appears to be inextricably linked with first-hand experience of war and transformation (Dodman 2018: 32–39, 70–75). It would seem that nostalgia is defined through its symptomatic nature: as a token of change, it not only depends on, but indeed results from, a re-definition of reality as perceived and determined by the individual. With this consideration in mind, it is argued that nostalgia may be viewed as a token of transition, fuelled by serious concerns and involving more than mere escapism or reactionary tendencies. Thus, the present study investigates the concept as partaking in the cultural and social transformation that occurred at the turn of the 19^th and 20^th centuries – a transformation, I posit, reflected in the autobiographical narratives by the two authors under consideration, namely Joseph Conrad and Henry James. The selection of these particular authors is by no means accidental since not only are they enumerated among the major representatives of early modernism in Britain, but also approach European culture from two divergent perspectives, namely Eastern and Western, respectively. Reflecting deeply upon the transition they witnessed, Conrad and James evaluated and commented upon the social and cultural transformation in a similar indirect manner resulting, I argue, from the nostalgic tensions between far/near, absent/present, or familiar/unfamiliar.

The unusual transcription of the term on the title page, that is as Nost/algia, is intended to suggest a puzzle: whereas what is considered to be popular nostalgia might connote an idealised, or perhaps idealising, memory of the past, the ←12 | 13→word when written with a slash between the two Greek components, i.e., nostos and algos, is meant to suggest a new essentialising of the familiar phenomenon. Strange and provocative, Nost/algia is intended to imply a novel approach which, as argued in the subsequent discussions, exposes the conceptual precedence of the first constituent, nostos (the return), over the second, algos (the pain), as being crucial in certain narratives. Examined through the prism of nostos, i.e., the return to a lost home, nostalgia may be viewed as being unburdened of emotions and sentiments, instead appearing as a mode of insight into the re-envisioning of home – with home implying more than the common spatial connotations. This study approaches nostalgia as a modal tool which helps re-envision the past through images and concepts rather than emotions, though, with nostalgia, the latter cannot be completely evaded. With the focus transferred onto nostos, however, sentiments may be restricted to the minimum,6 which allows the analysis to centre around certain (re)visions of the past that remain related to the present rather than severed from it. Considered a token to change, nostalgia may thus be regarded as a modal stance enabling an indirect interpretation of contemporaneity, with the minimum of emotions.

Since the present study is focused on nostalgia as deployed in autobiographical prose, the first two chapters offer a range of theoretical considerations. As argued in Chapter 1, nostalgia is, perhaps surprisingly, a relatively recent phenomenon. Often associated with the pastoral and the elegiac, both of which have been present in the literary tradition since antiquity, nostalgia is considerably more recent. The term was only coined during the Enlightenment (Hofer 1688). It is perhaps worth noting, however, that conceptually an intense longing for long-lost happiness has inspired literary accounts over the ages (Seeber 2022), which resulted in the recognisability of nostalgia as a part of the pastoral tradition. Significantly for the present discussion, the interlacement of nostalgia, the pastoral, and the elegiac is viewed as being particularly pronounced in British literature and culture at the cusp of the 20^th century (Outka 2012: 8). Elisabeth Outka posits that “while nostalgia for a pastoral tradition had long been a staple of British culture, the turn of the [20^th] century witnessed an especially intense revival of such nostalgia” (2012: 8). Thus, the fundamental dichotomy between the simple and complex versions of nostalgia proposed in Chapter 1 of this study, a chapter entitled “The nostalgic design: Simple and complex nostalgia,” is proposed as a viable extension of the theories on the pastoral (Empson [1935] 1974; ←13 | 14→Marx 1964; Alpers 1996).7 While simple nostalgia resides with an emotional and idealising longing, complex nostalgia, I argue, is open to serious concerns which become visible, and indeed highlighted, by virtue of the tensions activated in the direct juxtaposition of the past with the present, the distant with the near, or the idealised with the real. Discussed with reference to the pastoral, nostalgia is thus rendered both familiar and unfamiliar: in its simple version, it may connote the familiarity of the “gentle pastoral scene[s]” (Outka 2012: 8), and its complexity only emerges when sentimentality yields to a dispassionate stocktaking of the extent and scope of the loss. The combination of both versions of nostalgia, that is simple and complex, termed the nostalgic design in the subsequent discussions, is, in fact, a direct (re)adaptation of the analytic scheme propounded in the 1960s by Leo Marx in order to facilitate an efficient examination of the mechanisms of representation discernible within American literature, culture, and politics. As Marx explains, by employing the term design “a larger structure of thought and feeling” is suggested, a structure of which “the ideal is [only] a part” (1967: 24). I claim that the interlinking of the ideal and the critical within the design is also applicable, with certain adaptations effected, to critiques of nostalgia. Indeed, nostalgia is a mode of which the ideal is a part. As the ideal-nostalgic emotionality is not included in the present discussion, the focus of this study instead concentrates upon complex nostalgia within the nostalgic design as applied in autobiographical prose.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the intertwinement of nostalgia and autobiographical narration is viewed as being symptomatic of the early-modernist transformation within British literature at the beginning of the 20^th century. Although primarily focused upon the autobiography, Chapter 2 of the present study, entitled “Auto/bio/graphical narration: Genre, mode, and nostalgia,” discusses this form of narration from the perspective of nostalgia critiques. With due attention initially paid to the genre, the discussion attempts to underline the multiplicity of possible approaches and stances which might be adopted in a discussion on the autobiography (Smith, Watson 2010; Wagner-Egelhaalf 2019), or alternatively, life writing.⁸ Gradually, however, the focus placed on the autobiography is restricted ←14 | 15→to a narrower reading of the form as a modal category (Olney 1980: 250);9 hence, the subsequent preference for the application of the adjectival instead of the nominal lexeme, with “the autobiography” being replaced by “the autobiographical” in the following chapters.

Since the major focus of this study is the mode of nostalgia as employed in selected autobiographical narratives, special attention has been devoted to the theories concerning the phenomenon of nostalgia, which attempt to differentiate between its modal sub-categories. In this context, two critical typologies are referenced, namely a proposal within sociological studies put forward by Fred Davis in his Yearning for Yesterday (1979), and a more recent study by Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia (2001). Boym’s monograph, in particular, is regarded as the conceptual underpinning of the subsequent discussions since it proposes a fundamental distinction between two modal sub-categories of the phenomenon, namely restorative and reflective nostalgia. It is no coincidence that the latter resonates in the title of the present study: Nost/algia is viewed as a mode of reflection in Joseph Conrad’s and Henry James’s autobiographical narratives.

Nevertheless,¹⁰ the selection of the two famous writers for a discussion on the autobiography calls for a few words of explanation. To any critic of Joseph Conrad’s fiction, the linking with Henry James seems quite natural and unforced: the ←15 | 16→former never denied his utmost appreciation of the latter. Likewise, Henry James’s praise of Conrad’s The Mirror of the Sea openly betokens the author’s respect for a fellow writer (Glazzard in Stape 2015: 58).11 Upon closer examination, however, the slightly unequal nature of this mutual literary admiration becomes evident:¹² on the part of Conrad, the esteem for James was probably genuine (Said 1966: 10); in the case of James, it appears to be somewhat restrained and measured (Greaney in Stape 2015: 113). Perhaps the reason behind this was that Henry James had 14 years’ seniority over Conrad, a fact which was underlined by the esteem he already commanded as an established literary Master (Buchholtz 2011).¹³ In contrast, the reputation of Joseph Conrad appeared rather different, although this was not necessarily to his disadvantage. T. S. Eliot commented on Conrad’s special artistic abilities as follows: “[he] ha[d] no ideas, but he ha[d] a point of view, a ‘world’; it c[ould] hardly be defined, but it pervade[d] his work and [wa]s unmistakable” (Eliot in Watt 1979: 147).

In fact, Joseph Conrad left an extensive autobiographical legacy in the form of both prose writings and letters.¹⁴ Due to a lack of space, the present study only focuses on the former and mainly follows a publication by Stephen Brennan: Brennan’s 2014 volume, entitled An Autobiography of Joseph Conrad, includes fragments from Conrad’s A Personal Record (1912), The Mirror of the Sea: Memories and Impressions (1906), and the Introduction to “The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’” in the Appendix. Broad and wide-ranging, such an autobiographical corpus offers enough material for an academic discussion. Nonetheless, I selected books in their entirety for the subsequent analysis, that is the complete volumes of The Mirror of the Sea: Memories and Impressions (1906) and A Personal Record (1912), along with several autobiographical essays included in Conrad’s later volume, Notes on Life and Letters (1921).

As regards Henry James’s autobiographical narratives, the matter is more complicated. Although the Master disparaged the inquisitiveness of what he called “newspaperism” (Dupee 2014: IX), he did author two biographies, namely ←16 | 17→those of Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Wetmore Story. Both volumes were commissioned and written for pragmatic ends, with presumably little satisfaction behind the task since, as Buchholtz explains, James decried “auto/biographical exhibitionism” (2014: 78–80). The writer is thus remembered as being reluctant with regard to the idea of writing a conventional auto/biography (Buchholtz 2011: 128; Horne in James 2016: 767; Follini 2000: 107; Maunsell 2018: 39). Notwithstanding the ethical constraints, however, the Master produced an impressive corpus of autobiographical narratives. Edited by Philip Horne as Henry James. Autobiographies,15 his autobiographical legacy comprises three major volumes of reminiscences and several minor works: A Small Boy and Others (1913), Notes of a Son and Brother (1914), and The Middle Years (posthumously published in 1917), are followed by Other Autobiographical Writings, 1881–1910, which includes excerpts “ From the Notebooks,” several observations on men of letters – Walcott Balestier, Dumas the Younger, the Late James Payn, and Charles Eliot Norton – as well as two philosophical essays, “The Turning Point of My Life” and “Is There a Life After Death?” Probably in order to render the portrayal complete, the editor, Philip Horne, also appended a prose sketch by Theodora Bosanquent, James’s amanuensis, entitled “Henry James at Work.” By incorporating the Chronology, the Notes and the Index, Philip Horne’s comprehensive selection of texts affords an excellent opportunity to study Henry James’s autobiographical prose.¹⁶ Since the present analysis aims to be an unprejudiced juxtaposition of Joseph Conrad and Henry James, the primary material should be of comparable proportions. Hence, in the subsequent discussions, I follow Peter Collister’s annotated edition of the trilogy, i.e., A Small Boy and Others (1913), Notes of a Son and Brother (1914), and The Middle Years (1917), while occasionally also consulting the Notes in Horne’s extensive collection of James’s autobiographical prose. For the same reason, I do not address James’s rich and ←17 | 18→fascinating correspondence, and instead focus on what was intended by the author as his auto/biographical oeuvre.17

The analytical part of the present study is devoted to the interpretation of the narratives listed above in terms of their deployment of the mode of Nost/algia. The first analytical chapter in the present study, Chapter 3, which is entitled “Bios: Outer referentiality,” addresses what T. S. Eliot essentialised as Conrad’s “ a point of view, a ‘world’” (Eliot in Watt 1979: 147). Thus, the Greek term, bios, implies both a direct link to the auto/bio/graphical mode of narration and also, by virtue of its general recognisability, a broader field of reference, i.e., the world, with a range of possible references interpreted later in the chapter. The basic assumption embraced in this part of the study is a certain referentiality of the autobiographical prose¹⁸ which, after Eakin (1992) and Lejeune (2001), I discern in the portrayals of the past described by both Joseph Conrad and Henry James in The Mirror of the Sea and The Autobiographies, respectively. Since nostalgia involves various worldly concerns in its scope of reference (Clewell 2013), this chapter interprets the narratives by Conrad and James from the position of a nostalgia critique in order to account for the idiosyncrasy marking each author’s autobiographical prose. It is argued that the divergent approaches of the writers towards a world retrieved from the past occasion different accounts of the past: while the autobiographical persona in The Mirror of the Sea regards the sea space recalled from previous decades as “time perpetually past” (Olney 1980B: 240), the speaker in The Autobiographies retraces “time perpetually past [as] (re)present(ed),” which allows the past to appear processual in nature, with the telos placed at the moment of autobiographical reminiscence. This discrepancy in approach impacts on the nature of the literary representation of the past: in Conrad’s narrative, Nost/algia contributes to the re-establishment of the distance between the present and the past. By contrast, in James’s Autobiographies, ←18 | 19→a process is being re-traced, with the transitional status of a world remembered the focus of the narration. The discussions included in the chapter accentuate the divergence of representation and furnish appropriate examples of the characteristic, nostalgia-imbued tensions.