TALES OF UNREST

BY
JOSEPH CONRAD

"Be it thy course to being giddy minds
With foreign quarrels."

-- SHAKESPEARE
TO

ADOLF P. KRIEGER
FOR THE SAKE OF

OLD DAYS
CONTENTS

KARAIN: A MEMORY
THE IDIOTS

AN OUTPOST OF PROGRESS
THE RETURN

THE LAGOON
AUTHOR'S NOTE

Of the five stories in this volume, "The Lagoon," the last in order,
is the earliest in date. It is the first short story I ever wrote and

marks, in a manner of speaking, the end of my first phase, the Malayan
phase with its special subject and its verbalsuggestions. Conceived

in the same mood which produced "Almayer's Folly" and "An Outcast of
the Islands," it is told in the same breath (with what was left of it,

that is, after the end of "An Outcast"), seen with the same vision,
rendered in the same method--if such a thing as method did exist then

in my conscious relation to this new adventure of writing for print. I
doubt it very much. One does one's work first and theorises about it

afterwards. It is a very amusing and egotistical occupation of no use
whatever to any one and just as likely as not to lead to false

conclusions.
Anybody can see that between the last paragraph of "An Outcast" and

the first of "The Lagoon" there has been no change of pen,
figuratively speaking. It happened also to be literally true. It was

the same pen: a common steel pen. Having been charged with a certain
lack of emotionalfaculty I am glad to be able to say that on one

occasion at least I did give way to a mental" target="_blank" title="a.感伤的；多愁善感的">sentimentalimpulse. I thought
the pen had been a good pen and that it had done enough for me, and

so, with the idea of keeping it for a sort of memento on which I could
look later with tender eyes, I put it into my waistcoat pocket.

Afterwards it used to turn up in all sorts of places--at the bottom of
small drawers, among my studs in cardboard boxes--till at last it

found permanent rest in a large wooden bowl containing some loose
keys, bits of sealing wax, bits of string, small broken chains, a few

buttons, and similar minute wreckage that washes out of a man's life
into such receptacles. I would catch sight of it from time to time

with a distinct feeling of satisfaction till, one day, I perceived
with horror that there were two old pens in there. How the other pen

found its way into the bowl instead of the fireplace or wastepaper
basket I can't imagine, but there the two were, lying side by side,

both encrusted with ink and completely undistinguishable from each
other. It was very distressing, but being determined not to share my

sentiment between two pens or run the risk of mental" target="_blank" title="a.感伤的；多愁善感的">sentimentalising over a
mere stranger, I threw them both out of the window into a flower bed--

which strikes me now as a poetical grave for the remnants of one's
past.

But the tale remained. It was first fixed in print in the "Cornhill
Magazine", being my first appearance in a serial of any kind; and I

have lived long enough to see it guyed most agreeably by Mr. Max
Beerbohm in a volume of parodies entitled "A Christmas Garland," where

I found myself in very good company. I was immensely gratified. I
began to believe in my public existence. I have much to thank "The

Lagoon" for.
My next effort in short-story writing was a departure--I mean a

departure from the Malay Archipelago. Without premeditation, without
sorrow, without rejoicing, and almost without noticing it, I stepped

into the very different atmosphere of "An Outpost of Progress." I
found there a different moral attitude. I seemed able to capture new

reactions, new suggestions, and even new rhythms for my paragraphs.
For a moment I fancied myself a new man--a most exciting illusion. It

clung to me for some time, monstrous, half conviction and half hope as
to its body, with an iridescent tail of dreams and with a changeable

head like a plastic mask. It was only later that I perceived that in
common with the rest of men nothing could deliver me from my fatal

consistency. We cannot escape from ourselves.
"An Outpost of Progress" is the lightest part of the loot I carried

off from Central Africa, the main portion being of course "The Heart
of Darkness." Other men have found a lot of quite different things

there and I have the comfortable conviction that what I took would not
have been of much use to anybody else. And it must be said that it was

but a very small amount of plunder. All of it could go into one's
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 expensiveumbrella 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.
J. C.

TALES OF UNREST
KARAIN A MEMORY

I
We knew him in those unprotected days when we were content to hold in

our hands our lives and our property. None of us, I believe, has any
property now, and I hear that many, negligently, have lost their

lives; but I am sure that the few who survive are not yet so dim-eyed
as to miss in the befogged respectability of their newspapers the

intelligence of various native risings in the Eastern Archipelago.
Sunshine gleams between the lines of those short paragraphs--sunshine