What Silenus Knew: Conrad's Uneasy Debt to Nietzsche

George Butte

Comparative Literature, Vol. 41, No. 2. (Spring, 1989), pp. 155-169.

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GEORGE HUTTE

What Silenus Knew: Conrad's Uneasy Debt to Nietzsche

DESCRIBING CONRAD'S relation to Nietzsche has generally ltren an act of speculation based on Conrad's isolated and rare

rrf'rrences to Nietzsche, and on echoes of IVirtzscllean themes in Con- rad's fiction. I t is not speculation that Conrad knew of Nietzsche and disliked what he knew or had heard, but specific historical connectior~s ha\-e been elusive. The echoes of Nietzscllean themes are difficult to trace securelv, sinlilar as the\ ar-e to other strains in late ninrteenth- crntur!- culture, ancl distorted as they would be by Chnrad's complex irony about both avant-garde thought and conservative response to such thought. Rut I believe there 15 persunsive cvidrnce that T h e Jt.ctei Agen t (1907) b e t l a ~ s a close kno~z.leclge or Nietzsche's T h e B ~ r t h qf Tt-c~gehj(1872) .This re;tsoning is not grounded in any one conclusive historical linkage, but in an accumulation of probabilitics, cil-cumstan- tial ancl textual. The nature of these probabilities suggests furtherinore that Conrad's responses to Nictzschc Tverc* contradictory, and included unwilling sympathy and hostility, inlitation and parody, as Conrad seems to argue ~v i th Nietzsche about the best human response to know- ing the worst of our condition '

'l'he most important Nietzschean trace in T h e Se( ie t i l c e t ~ t , I shall-argue, is the mythological figure Silenus. Silenus appears primarily in

' l:cl\\~ard Said ma)- l ~ c correct to note that "trrrning zip circn~~istantial e \ idc~icc of' :~ctual borrowings" from Siet~sclrc in Conrad is not the most "useii~l way of' considering tlre two \\ ritrrs together" ir<(ij.I3ut lnstorical ri.srarclr can help clarifi the I-elation I-wt~veen tlre c\vo wr i t~ rs , and so undcr\vrile some knlds of' larger retlcction. ,Jolrn Burt I.'ostcr ~riakcs cvcelli.nt nse of "cases of' direct contact" (ii)1)etween S i r ~ t ~ s ( . l i c and inrasinative .ii;l.itersto csplore larqer conctrns. Xl t l~or r~h Poster docs not consider Conrad (his major fisures arc Lawrcncc, \Ialrarrs. and I'lionras \ I ; ~ n n ) . he is as candid as I want to he a1)ont 'till: inncc~i.tainticsof' inilucnci" (23) .

a complex association with the eating ancl drinking establishment where the anarchist Professor al;d Cornrade Ossipon frequently meet. This restaurant and bar is the site for two or the novel's central scenes, in Chapters 4 ancl 13. 'The conversations that constitute t l l ~ s e chapters occupy thern almost completely. One conversation at the beginning of Chapter 13 begins in the Proressor's room but then moves to the beer- hall. Except for the brief incident at the beginning of Chapter 5 in which the Professor encounters Inspector Heat, these are the only scenes in which the inrarnous Professor appears. These chapters also hold crucial positions in the narrative: Chapter 4 enacts the leap forward beyond Stevir's death and infornls us indirectly ori t , while Chapter 13 concludes the novel. Most importantly, the conversations between the Professor ancl Ossipon dramatize more articulately than any other parts of the novel the darkness of nihilism as understood by Conrad's charac- ters. The location of these significant scenes and conversations is the Silenus bar, ~vhose name Conrad repeats five times (66, 75, 247, 248, and 252), twice emphasizing it as "the renowned Silrnus" (66,252). I t is this naming which seerns to have a Nietzschran origin and signifi- cance.

An important logic connects Silrnus in his Nietzschran guise to the darkest issues of Conrad's novel. In the dominant version of classical mythology, Silenus was llionysus's tutor and cornpanion in his travels ancl revels. He was apparently a cornnlon figure in satyr plays, ancl appears in Euripides's Qc1o;D.r as a drunken slave.' This cluster orassoci- ations would suggest a simple irony for Conrad: in a bar, naturally named after a devotee or the vine, the Professor expounds a new kind of madness ancl intoxication. However, another, more obscure tradition connects Silenus with the Proressor of death and his companion, An important element of the Silenus story concerns his meeting with Miclas, of which two versions exist. In the more cornnlon version, Miclas cap- tures Silenus, entertains him and is entertained in turn with tales of the strange lands Silenus has visited with Dionysus.' Because h'Iiclas has been so gracious to Silenus, Dionysus rewards him with a wish, by which c1evic:e Midas receives the touch of gold, and the better-known story continues Gom here. Rut another account of the meeting between Midas and Silrnus exists, in a little-known corner of Plutarch. This account stresses the wisdom of Silrnus in a peculiar way:

So, for example, the! say that Silenus, after the hunt in \\ hich ;\lidas of! ore had captured Iri111. \\.hen ;\lidas qucstionccl him and inquired of hi111 what is the hest thing for rnankincl

' Foi a sumrnar> of the tradition, see Robcrt Gra\.cs 2:281-85, and the cntr\- "Sat\-rs and Silcni" in the Ot/o~u,d CYl:lnrritnl Ditlionni:, (93(ii.

' Ovid. .Ilctnnzo~pliorcr ST,and Xclian, T'n~in Hi i iu~ia 111, cited l,y Gra\es, are t\\o of the most colnon SOLISCCS.

156

C:O_\TR;1D'S DEBT T O N1ETZSC:HE

and \\hat is the most pref'ral~le ofall things. Tvas at first uii\iilling to tcll, but maintained ;L stubhorn silence. But ~vlrcn at last. I,\- e lnplo~ing ever) d c ~ i c c , XIidas induced lrinr to say something to him, Silenus, forccd to speak, said: "Ephemeral offspring o f a travailing genius and of harslr fortunc. \vti\- do )on force nrc to spcak what it .ii;crc bettcr for !on Inen not to k n o ~ i ? For a life spent in ignorance of one's o1vn \toes is most free of grief. But for Inen it is utterly inipossible that the) should ohtain the best t t i i n ~ of all, or c\.en have an) share in its nnturc (for the hest thing for all Inen and Lionren is not to he l,orn); ho.ii;cvcr, tlrc nrxt bcst thing to this, ancl the first of those to which nran can attain, but nevertl~eless onl! the second best, is, after being horn, to die as cjuickly as possible.'

The response to Midas's qurstion occurs often in Greek litrrature; perhaps the brst-known exarnple is Sophocles's Oetlipus at Colonu.~, lines 1224 ff. Rut the appearance orthis traditional saying as Silenus's rrluc- tant reply gives a remarkably different tone to his character, one more fitting for thr grnius presiding over the Professor's prssimistic reflrctions to Ossipon. My hypothesis proposrs that Conrad's use of Silenus in this way must, in all probability, derive rrom Nirtzschr's The Birth oJ Engedy , since that is thr one book in which Conrad could reasonably have come across this rare version of thr Silrnus motif. This proposal is rrinrorcecl by what seems to br The Secret Agent's sprcific parody or the idea or the Dionysian in The Birth o j Tragedy. Conrad's rrlation to Nietzsche, in othrr words, is not simply that of clay to its mold; this tanglrd relation involvrs annoyance ancl antagonism as well as sym- pathy. But the novel's often ambivalent treatrnrnt or the Silenian and Dionysian material suggrsts evrn more credibly an intiinate connection brtween The Birth of Eagedy and The Secret dgext . At issue are variant readings of what Silenus knrw and of its value.

Nietzsche's variant appears in Silrnus's small but essential role in The Birth oJ Tragedy. In srction 3 Nirtzsche trlls thr "ancient story that King Midas hunted in thr forrst a long time for the wise Silenus, the cornpanion or Dionysus" ("clir altr Sagr, das Kiinig Midas lange Zeit nach den1 ~veisrn Silen, den1 Begleiter des Uionysus, im LYalde gejagt habe").' Sincr Nietzsche's account follo~vs Plutarch's precisely, his source is unambiguous, though Nirtzschr adds sonlr trlling rmphasrs. "\Visen as an attribute of Silenus is new, as is the triplr statenlrnt of Silenus's answrr: "\$'hat is best of all is utterly beyond your rrach: not to br born, not to he, to be nothir~g," 42 ("'Uas Xllerbestr ist fiir clich ganzlich unerrrichbar: nicht gerborrn zu srin, nicht zu s e i n, n i c h t s zu sein," 31), ~vllrn "not to be born'' was adequate for l ' l u t a r ~ h . ~ For

' "A Lctter to Xpollonius," in l'lularc/z'~ A\lumlia 2: 176-70. I am gratcfnl to Professor O ~ v c nCrarncr of the Classics Department at Colorado College for dra~ving m\- attention to this exccrpt, ~vhich is rnorc cornmonly called "The Consolation to Xpollonins."

' 42;i l % i A e I I I / l : 31. Futurc references to the English and Gerlnan tcxts ~vill occur in tlrc salnc sequence.

"aiautinann's note on thc traditional epigram 142) rciirs to Soplroclcs's Ovilipilr at C~ulunzrj.not Plutarclr, althouglr it is Plntarch 15-lro inibeds the sa! i ~ l g in the Silcnus story.

Nietzschc this story cortd(msed "the terrible wisdom of Silenus," 45 ("clie schreckliche \Yeisheit des Silen," 35), to which Grecik mythology and art were a response. "The Greek knew and felt the terror and horror of existence. . . it was in order to by able to live that the Greeks had to create these gods Gonl a most proround need," 42 ("Dcr Griechr kannte und rnlpfand die Schreckrn und Erltsetzlichkriten drs Da- seins. . . u ~ nleben zu konnen, rnussten die Grirchen diesc (;otter, aus tiefster Niithigung, schaf'f'en," 31-32). 'l'he subtlety or illusion must be great, however, for the dark knowledge always threatens. Even Diony- sian excess, contrary to the cornrnorl misreading or this text, is no ~x-otection,ror its cycles lead inevitably to Silenian nausea: "an ascetic, will-negating mood is the fiuit of these [rapturo\~s] states. . .; now [the Dionysian] man understands what is symbolic in Ophelia's fate; now he understands the wisdom orthe sylvan god, Silenus: he is nauseated," 60 ("rinc asketische, ~villrnvernrinrnde Stimmung ist die Frucht jenrr Zustande [der Ve~ziickung]. . .,jctzt vrrsteht [der dionysischr Mensch] das Symbolische im Schicksal der Ophelia, jetzt erkennt er die \Yeisheit des i't-aldgottes Silen: es ekelt ihn," 52-53). Silenus's function has changed between Plutarch and Nietzsche. 'l'hr Plutarch text uses the story to console a bereaved man with the idea that death is after all not such an rvil, since life's attractions are illusory: "\Ye are not therefore to lament those who clie in the bloorn or their years, as if' they are spoiled of things ~vhich we call enjoyments in a longer life: for it is uncertain, as we have often said, whether they are deprived orgood or cvil, for the rvil in the ~vorltl far exceeds the good." The rhetoric is cornrorting, the language relaxed: "as we have often said," and "1 could bring rnillions of examples to justil'y this topic."' Nietzschr, however, finds no consolation in the story. His Silrnus knows that human life is a horror, and that this knowledge in human brings produces nausea. This figure is distant indeed Gorn the merry, wine-loving tale-teller of l'irgil and Ovid.

T,et us begin by examining alternative possibilities: where else, besides Kirtzsche, could Conrad have encountered this darker version of the Silenus story? Among classical sources, l'lutarch tells the tale, quoting a lost rragmrnt of Aristotlr, in section 27 or the "Consolation to IZP- polonius."" Other ancient sources that refer to this version of Silenus's reply to Midas are even more obscure, and thus even less likely to have turned up in Conrad's limited rorrnal education or in his ranclonl read-

:"Consolation to Apollonius." in Plulnrtli', .Ilijrcllorricj n n d E ~ i n y s 1 : 327. 'l'lris Victorian edition, with its revisiou of at1 older translation, offers an especially striking contrast to Nietzsche's tone.

:! ;\ccorditlg to the O.Y/OI-d (:iussicul Dictronnti., the attrihutioil of' the "Conso1;~tion" to Plutarch is spurious (D,19). The Ll l~~ i -a l ia\\.as codlfied hv Alaximns Planuties around 1300 X.D. (1,esk) 825).

1-58

ing." The dominant, sunnier version is Ovid's, in Book XI of the ilIetamorjhoses, which echoes earlier accounts in Herodotus and Theopompus, though each varies in its location of the conversation with h~lidas ancl of the wanderings that Silenus retells. 'l'he Pluta~.ch version is not mentioned in many modern mythological handbooks, including Robert Graves's, though the O ~ f i r d Cla.tsical Dictionav cites it in its article in Rilidas (Ii86).I0

One possibility is that Conrad encountered Plutarch directly. The encounter could not have occurred in Greek, because Conrad learned little or no Greek in his early years of tutoring, nor in the three years of more formal lessons that followed the death of his parents. Between September 1870 and May 11373 he apparently was either a student a t St. Anne's or St. Jacek's Gymnasium in Cracow, or was tutored on a plan that fbllowed the curricula of these scllools." According to Gustav klorf, this would ha1.e meant six hours of Latin and four of German each week, but no Greek (72-73) ."Conrad could have read a nineteenth-century translation of Plutarch, in either French or English. One Amer- ican version, Plutarch? iI/iscellanies and E.o.qjls, in five volumes, with an introduction by E:mt.rson, went through six editions between 1870 and 1889. I t is possible that Conrad came across a random copy of such an edition, on shipboard or in a distant port, to be read in idle hours when other books were scarce. However, no specific evidence exists that Conrad read Plutarch, and as I have suggested, the tone of The Secret Agent is closer to Nietzsche's version than to Plutarch's; Conrad of course could have made the same transvaluation of Plutarch that

' 1V.H. Roscher agrees abont the obscurity of those ancient sources, though Roscher gives ronsiderable weight to the earlier tradition, found in Aristotle aild Theopompus anlong others. in which "die Betonung der ephemeren Existenz clrr hletlschetl war cllarakteristis~h fur seine [Silenus'sj Rede" ("the stress of the ephemeral existence of men was characteristic ofhis conx-ersation") (2:295G). Roscher heliex-es this older tradition makes itself felt in the Ox-idian foriu. ancl even in Alcihiades's conlparison of Socrates to Silenus in the Synzj~usirtrn1215-17): although the ~visclorn .ilcibiades attributes to Socrates is hardly io pessirnistic as that oL' the older Silenus. Roscher agrees howex-er that the later. dominant Silenus stor! abandons the "parildosen Fornl" of thc earlier, ancl that there is i1ow in Silenus "ICeine tief'e. \.erhorgene 11-eisheit" ("no decp. concealed ~\~isclom") (22936-37; m) translations in this note).

"' Other modern handbooks that ornit this ~ e r s i o n include Edith Hamilton's and C:athcrine Aver) 's.

" %. Najder 505. " hLorf heliex-es that C:onrad ~v;is probabl) a student at St. ~inne 's . bvherc the languages

\\ere Latin, German, ancl Polish. Najder argues that Conrad attended neither Cracow school, but was tutored pri\.ately on their model, and \\auld hax-e learned some Greek (31,38. 505).Still. Conrad was not a ~vell-disciplined student, and there is no evidence that he mailltailled any skill in Greek. Najder reports that in later life even his German was poor (4OYn.j. 111 a letter of 1922 Conrad recalls his schooling ill these Cracow years as "steeped in classicism"; but (hnrad's inernories are notoriously unreliable, and the letter's aim lierc is to show that (:onracl's Polish heritage was not Russian or Germanic (jeatl-.Auhry 2: 289).

155)

Nietzsche did, but this is unlikely. An intriguing alternative classical source w~oulcl be a note to Plutarch in an edition of Oedipus at C~olonz~s, but the standard late-nineteenth-century annotated Sophocles, R.C. Jel~b's, contains no such reference; it connects Sophocles's lines ( i 224-29) only to 'I'ennyson's "The Coniing of Arthur" (2: 193-93).1'

Another possibility is that Conrad encountered the Plutarchian ver- sion of Silenus's story indirectly, in mythological studies or handbooks. In fact, however, nineteenth-century mythological handbooks in English generally do not refer to this version. Rullfinch's il)O)tholog~l,first published in 1855, gives only the Ovidian story, as do I'v1.A. Dwight's Greek arzd Roman h[ytl~o/ogy (1849), H.A. Guerber's LQth.c of Greece and Rome (1893), and Charles Gayley's The Classical i l )Qth~ in English Literature arzd Art (1893). 'I'he Britannica's Eleventh Edition (191 1) also oKers only Ovid's version. The older, more pessimistic story does appear in three late-nineteenth-century German mythological studies: in two books by Erwin Rohde, published in 1876 and 1890-94, and in the first installments of W.H. Roscher's multi-volume A4z~.~iilzlichesLexikorz der G'riechischerz z~rzd h'omiscl~erz Ll'b)thologie, 1894-97 (under "hlidas" in volume 2, part 2). But Rohde's P.yclze (11390-94) was not translated into English until the 1920s, ancl Conrad's German would not have been adequate to read either Rohde or Roscher, eT:en if he had had the inclination to track down their books and use them.

The older version of Silenus's story was well-kno\vn in German class- icist circles during Conrad's maturity. This German tradition could somehow have filtered into Conrad's world, and the earlier objection would not hold: Rohde's use of Silenus, for example, in P.yche is fully as pessimistic as Nietzsche's, so much so that it is easy to fbrget that Rohde's subject is ancient Greece, not modern Europe: "hlore distinctly and bitterly, in this age of advancing civilization and gro\ving sensibility, sounds the wail over the pain and amiction of life, the obscurity of its ways, ancl the uncertainty of its outcome" (41 1-12). I t is worth noting that Rohde had been Nietzsche's close friend since the 1860s, and wrote the 1872 pamphlet defending The Birth of Tragecl_,) against its critics." However, an alternative to these lines of influence, classical or German, seems more probable-that Conrad read Nietzsche. In response to both other possibilities-that Conrad read Plutarch's L210ralia (or a t least "The Consolation to Apollonius") in translation and/or that he read the other German classicists (besidcs Nietzsc11e)no conclusive proof or disproof is possible. But Conrad's limited classical education reduces

" The lines also drew the attention of two writers l?om opposite ends of 1-ictoria's reign, hlacaula) and \'eats; hIacaulay made his note in 183.5. and \'eats published his poem ";\ hIan Youilg and Old" in 1 9 8 . See RichartiJetlk)ns 96.

011 Rohde's friendship with Nietzsche, see Ro~iald Ha)nian 176 and pnlsini.

COKR,\D'S DEBT TO NIETZSC:Hl+:

the probability of the first, ancl his poor German reduces the probability of the second.

'l'he treatment of Silenus that associates him with the despairing wisdom, "'Tis better not to be" is so rare in the nineteenth century that, outside rhe German classicists and translations of Plutarch's illoralia, it is virtually non-existent. Therefore Nietzsche's The Birth o j

Tragecl_,),that product of German classicism that achieved a European notoriety, and that made so much of "the terrible wisdom of Silenus," is a more likely source. But how can one argue that Conrad knew this test in any detail, since it was not translated into English until 1909, and Conrad's high-school German no more prepared him for Nietzsche than for Rohde?

That Conracl knew of Nietzsche has never been in doubt; between 1899 ancl 1919 Conracl refers to him in several letters and in one pub- lisl~ccl essay. The most interesting of these references, all of which are unflattering, is the acerbic aside in an unpublished letter about "the mad inclividualism of Nietsche [sic]."" But dislike for Nietzsche is no argument that Cjonrad did not read him. Previous scholarship has outlined the general shape of Conrad's contacts with Nietzschean in- terests in England in the late 1890s; we know, for example, that he read Ecl\vard Garnett's 1899 esay on Nietzsche.'" One could reasonably suppose that he read Havelock Ellis's essays in The S'aog), numbers 2,3, and 4, since Conrad's own story, "The Idiots," appeared in number 6 (October 1896), and he admired Arthur Symons, The LS'arlo$s editor.'; Rut none of these facts can explain so specific an inheritance as The Secret Agerzt's use of Silenus, nor is it sufticient to appeal to the general currents offin-de-sidcle culture, fiorn which Conracl could have picked up Nietzschean themes (like the "overman" to whom he refers in the Hueffer letter) without in fact reading any books that Nietzsche wrote.

The most probable solution is in fjct simple: Conracl, like some of his friends, could have read Nietzschc in French. David Thatcher's

" Xajcler 233. The letter's dalc, 22 June 1899, is identified on page 5.16. For other references in letters, sce ,Jean-.iubry, I: 313. for the letter to Ford hl . Huefl'er that mentions the "overman." ancl C:onracl's I.etteli 157-58. Thc Carnett letters describe Con- rad's response to Carnett's Xictzsche essa). which had originally appeared in Olitlook, 8 Jul) 1899, and is reprinted in E. Garnett 15-22, C:onrad is much more interested in his friend's achievement ("You ha\^ stirred some brains!") than it1 Nietzsche's. Thc 1919 essa) is "The Crime of Partition." in .\,tn on l i / e und lxttel-s: the Kiet~sche aside occurs on pages 124-25.

Sec Lee M. kvhiteheacl for a n argument based on Conrad's acqnaintance wit11 Gar- tlett's essa). Eloise Knapp Ha! makes use of the same contlectio~l it1 her c l i s c ~ s s i o ~ ~ of Heart of /)arkriel> (153).

' Fredcrick Karl 349. T h e two began to correspond in 1908. and they finall) met in 1911 (Karl 631). On the procrss by which "?'he Idiots" came to appear in Tile , Sang , see Stanlev kveintraub xxx\.iii tT.

12i'et~.tclze in England, 1890-1914 collates the essential information, al- though Thatcher does not mention Conrad. But he does list the first French translations of Nietzsche, and the date fbr Tlze Birth of T r a g e 4 is 1901. Furthermore, he discusses English intellectuals and writers who read Nietzsche in French, among them Arthur Symons, who had read Tlze Birth of T r a g e 4 , and Arnold Bennett, who had read Also Spraclz Zamthu.ctm, in 1902.18 This information tells us two things: first, that French translations were circulating in English literary circles after 1900, and second, that Conrad could easily have learned of their exis- tence, given his admiration for Symons and his connection with the circle of Bennett, G.B. Sl~aw, and H.G. IVells." IVith his fluent French Conrad could easily have read The Birth oJ'Trage4 in the detail necessary to make use of the Nietzschean LS'1i enus.

The accumulation of probabilities-the unlikelihood that Conrad would have encountered the Plutarchian version of Silenus's reply to hlidas outside Nietzsche, the existence of copies of Tlze Birth of T r a g e 4 that Conrad could have read before he wrote The Secret Agent-gives license to a new range of reflections on Conrad's relation to Nietzsche. The notion that it night be better not to be was not new to Conrad in 1902 or 1907."' Rut Nietzsche's story may well have given him a new vehicle for exploring this notion, as the text of The Secret Agent itself suggests.

The Silenus motif is the most vivid trace by which to begin measuring the impact of Tlze Birth oJ'Trage411 on The Secret Agent. "The renowned Silenus beer-hall" is a critical element in the dramatic structure through which Conrad examines the nature of nihilism. Here the Professor articulates his most important ideas, the "really intelligent detonator" and his superiority to convention (66-67) in Chapter 4, his political and ontological rebellion in the toast "To the destruction of what is" (249), and his new gospel, "hladness and despair! Give me that for a lever, and I'll move the world" (251) in Chapter 13. But the Silenus beer-hall is more than a neutral space in which to observe the Professor's madness and, finally, Ossipon's despair. I t also participates in absurcl- ity.

The bar's decor is traditional pastoral ("the fresco paintings ran flat and dull all around the walls without windows, representing scenes of

p~-~

'" See 11. x for translation dates, 39 for English readers. "'O n C:onrad's friendship xcitll Bennett. see Karl 327,389 and 72311. n'ajder gi1.e~ a

description of a dinner xcitlr LVells, Sha\\.. and Bennett (318). C:onrad met Shaxc, \\~lrose interest in Nietcsclre is xcell-documented, in 1902 (Najder 283).

"' See Jocelyn Baines 98, for a serio-comic example; idled in hZauritius in 1888, Conrad ansxcered a host's daughter's pla>ful questionnaire (\\,it11 items like these. "\'ous croyez-vous ainii.?" ["Decline to state"] and "Quel est le principal trait de votre caractPrel" ["Laziness" 1 ) : "Que dPsirerec-vous etre?" "Slrould like not to be."

the chase and of outdoor revelry in mediaeval costumes," 61), yet the room is sealed underground, cut on'lirorn the natural world. I t is dorni- nated in the novel by an absurdist, "lonely" piano (75) which at random intervals bursts "with aggressive virtuosity" (62) into music which just as randomly ceases. In this underworld, music exists only as fragments of formerly-whole harmonies. Most importantly, the "black hole" which lurks within this scene appears to the imaginative Ossipon when he is stimulated to nightmare 1,). the Professor's ideal ofa perfect detonator.

Tlre piano a t the foot oi'the staircase clanged through a m>~zurkaxvitlr brazen impetuosity, as tirough a \ulgar and impudent glrost \ccLrc showi~lg r r f f . Tlre ke)-s sank and rose m)-steriously. Tlren all became still. For a moment Ossipon imagined tire o\~erliglrted place changed into a dreadful black hole belciring horrible fumes choked ~citlr ghast1)- rubbish of srnaslred hrick\cork and mutilated corpses. He hzid such a distinct perccption of ruin and death that Ire shuddered again. (66)

The piano's impudent ghost somehow communicates to Ossipon the Silenian reality, as if it knew that the victim of the Professor's very imperfect detonator has been the gentle Stevie. The reference to Silenus in these scenes amplifies dramatic ironies, one of whose subjects is the nature of nihilism. Such a function is inappropriate to the traditional figure of Silenus, but is both profound and appropriate to Nietzsche's prophet of despair. The value of Conrad's Silenian imagery is even clearer if we consider the only other example of this image in The Secret Agent. I t occurs in Chapter 8, applied to the cabman at the end of the grotesque journey to Mrs. \'erloc's mother's charity home.

His jovial purple cheeks bristled \+it11 xcirite hairs; and likr \'irgilts Silenus. \\711o, iris face smeared \\,it11 the juice of berries. discoursed of 01)mpian Gods to tirr innocent slreplrerds of Sicily, ire talked to Stevie of domestic matters and the atTzlirs of men \+lrose sufferings are great and immortalit)- b> no means assured. (142)

The Silenus of Virgil's Sixth Eclogue is the Silenus of the dominant classical tradition: merry, wine-loving, Sull of charming songs about the creation of the world and tlic n~ctarnorphoses of gods. The driver of what Conrad later imagines to be thc "Cab of Death" (145) is most remarkable for the ways in which he differs from Virgil's Silenus: Con- rad's cabman is "maimed" (he has an iron hook for a left hand), his voice is "extinct" (there is some blockage in his throat), his horse is an emaciated "steed of apocalyptic misery," his landscape is urban, traversed by night, his tales concern only a mortal proletariat, and he is not merry or charming (134,142). This is Silenus modernized with a vengeance.

One difficulty arising here could be expressed in the cluestion, why do we need Plutarch and Nietzsche, when Virgil would be enough? The answer helps to illuminate the function of Conrad's Silenian irnag- ery. If Clonrad's point were only an inversion of Virgil, his machinery

would be too elaborate and clumsy for that task. I t would be dispropor- tionate to go to such lerlgths simply to reverse a classical stereotype, especially since the merry, juice-besmeared Silenus is such an easl-target. Conrad's strategy in Chapter 8 makes more sense as an emptying of the Sixth Eclogue in order to revise Virgil into Nietzscl~e.~' That is, Nietzsche's version of Silenus lies behind this instance as it lies behind the earlier ones. After all, the cabman unconsciously reinforces for Stevie the novel's sense that human misery is inconsolable. No one cares about the misery of the horse or the night cabman except Stevie, who we know has already died (since Chapter 8 is a flashback), and whose remedy, to take the cabman and horse to bed with him, is futile, as Stevie well knows himself. Stevie perceives all too intensely the futility and misery around him, and the result for him is a kind of nausea. Even here, then, Conrad at the least draws together both ver- sions of Silenus, as Kohde thought Theopornpus did, though the effect there, Rohde believed, was to off'er the later story, with its tales of distant lands, as a "radiant anti-type" ("strahlendes Gegenbild") to the older, more pessimistic t r a d i t i ~ n . ~ ' Conrad's text moves in the opposite direction. The essential implications of Conrad's Silenian irn- agery are not only the emptying of the pastoral tradition, but also the articrtlation of a despair that amicts both country and city. The Secret Agerzt gives us so much of a Silenus so closely associated with the misery of being that we inevitably discern Nietzsche's Silenus, wise unto nausea, lurking at the bottom of Conrad's black hole.

Besides the Silenus rnotiC one further set of details in T h r Secret Agent seems to evoke this Nietzsche text, and constitutes a different kind of revision of Niet~sdle . 'The characterization of Clomrade Ossiporl col- lects together enough classical elements to suggrst a pointed parody of Nietzsche's presentation of Dionysus in T h r Birth of T r a g e h . Conrad associates Ossipon with Greek divinity generally in the description, repeated throughout the novel, of his "ar~!i,rosial locks" (252Q. The specific poLver that Ossipon's magical locks signal is Dionysian: he attracts, fascinates, hypnotizes and -he thinks -maddens women. The Professor refers sarcastically to "your collection of women" (247), and Ossipon reflects, in his final paralysis, on the loss of "his revolutionary career, sustained by the sentiment and trustfulness of many wornen" (252). Ossipon is indeed only a papier-m2ch6 Dionysus.

" .411 examination of tile '~nxieties of revision is he>ond tile scope of this essay. But, gi\.en Conrad's expressed dislike for Nietzsche. the stress of influence was likel>- to be great, and \could llavc a complex life in Conrad's texts. Harold Bloom's case lristories ofsuclr lives, in Poefg 0110h'c/ie~.rionfor example. offer one model for such an examination.

"Rollde 220. I am also indebted to Professor Cramer of Colorado College for drawing this pas"" to m> attention.

C<ONRXD'S DEBT T O NIETZSCHE

Ossipon may of'course be a version of the Greek god without recalling Nietzsche's Dionysus. The best indication that Tlze Birth of Tragerbl may lie behind The Secret Agetit's Dionysian imagery is Conrad's combination of Dionysus a d Xpollo. The Xpollorliarl theme appears first in Conrad's description, frequently repeated, of Ossipon's "Apollo-like ambrosial head" (252), but it is reinforced by Ossipon's medical-scientific talent. As an "ex-medical student Lvithout degree," "nicknamed the Doctor" (50,232), Ossipon is a follower of Xsclepius and of Xpollo, father of medical arts. Ossipon practices his healing art informally, and also studies scientific theory informally, applying 120rnbroso's ideas about the criminal brain finally, and self-destructively, to his own. To combine Xpollo and Dionysus in this pseudo-medical I3on Juan who becomes impotent in an encounter with madness or despair is to suggest an intriguing parody of Nietzsche's conception of the forces that produced Greek tragedy.

For Nietzsche, the relation between Apollonian and Dion). 7sia11was'

tense and mysterious. "The strife of these two hostile principles" ("Kampf jener zwei feindseligen Principien") leads nonetheless, in Greek tragic art, to a "mysterious union" ("geheimnissvolles Ehebiind- niss") born partly of a recognition that the two incompatible forces are nonetheless interdependent (47, 38). 'l'he Nietzschean terms of this strife are not precisely reason and emotion, but an Apollonian drearn-re- straint-objectivity and a Dionysian intoxication-excess-subjectivity. For Nietzsche, the conIlict between and irltertleperlderlce of these two Lvays o i being lie a t the heart of Greek tragedy. He celebrates both Dionysian rapture and "the bright image projections of the Sophoclean hero-irl short, the Xpoilonian aspect of the mask- [which] are necesssary eKects or a glance into the inside and terrors of nature," 67 ('tjene Lichtbil- derscheinungen des sophokleischen Kelden, kurz das Xpollinische der Maske, rlothwendige Erzeugungen eines Rlickes in's Innere und Schreckliche der Natur," 61)." In Conrad the Apollonian and Dionysian aspects of Ossipon suggest different terms, closer to the traditional reason versus emotion, something like sciencelgolden light versus erotic passionldarkness. But the terms are close enough to Nietzsche's to illuminate Conrad's pt=ssirnisrn: no mysterious union of contrary, interdependent forces occurs. \\'here Nietzsche was hopeful, Conrad is not. Ossipon cannot, any more than \\:innie, endure "a glance into the inside and terrors of nature." \\:innie, Conrad tells us, "felt profoundly that things do not stand much looking into" (150-51), and Ossipon learns that she is right. To make matters worse: neither she nor Ossipon is capable of an Apollonian dream-art which might

" Foster's lleirr to Uionysus discusses cxtrnsix el? the impact on it.; xcriters of Nietzsclrc's famous rategories and tile stratcgics rrf tho~lght the) ernhod>. Foster sees inlitation. resistance, and distortion in his 1iter;rr) trxts as 1 do in Tile Secret Agent.

comfort them. And not only is a Guitful strife between Xpollo and 13ionysus not possible in the world of this text, but Dionysian energy, to the degree that Ossipon is c'q~able of it at all, dissipates in a failure which plunges Ossipon into nausea and Silerliari despair. The Professor, perhaps a follower of Nietzsche or even a parody of the Nietzschean, understands: "A11 passion is lost no\\.. The world is mediocre, limp, \vithout force. . .You [Ossipon] have no lorce" (251). " Tlle novel's irony locates in the Professor the combination of erotic and redemptive energies that had previously belonged to the papier-rn2che Dionysus. "His thoughts caressed the imagcs of ruin and destruction" as he, in his imagination, calls "rnadness and despair to the regeneration of the w!orld" (252-53).

In Ossipon's character, then, the terms of conflict between 13ionysian and Apollonian forces seem especial11 suggestive of Tlze Bzrtlz of Tmge4. The tone of Conrad's suggestion is, however, problematic. Does Conrad mock Nietzsche's admiration lor Dion)sus and his belief in a tension between Xpollo and Dionysus which could stimulate great tragic art.' Does he mock a fallen modern ~vorld in which the noble Oedipus is replaced b) the ignoble Ossipon, thus sidirlg \tit11 Nietzsche? Perhaps Conrad is doing both. The generall) ambivalent, often self-dismantling ironies of this novel seem to commun~cate a divided response to

The theme of Silenus's dark ~ t i sdom is the connecting thread among the Nietzschean details in Tlze Secret Agent and therefore has a large significance for this dark n o ~ ~ e l . I t bears for example on the debate over Conrad's pessimism." In Niet~sche, Silenus's terrible knowledge can be fruitful, for as it "cried '\\'oe! woe!' to the serene Olympians" ("rief \Yehe! \Yehe! aus gegerl die heiteren 01)mpier"), it contributes to the Dionysian understanding that the life of the Apollonian man "rested on a substratum of suffering" ("ruhte aufeinern verhullterl Untergrunde des I,eidens"), that "Xpollo could not live without 13ionysusn ("Apollo

" The Professor's language often appeass to echo Nietrsclre's later books. as in this: "[The \teak] are our sinister masters-the ~ceak, tlre fl:~hb!, tllc sill>-, lllc co\carclly, the Faint of heart, and the sla\~islr of mind. Tlrey have po\+er. . . " (246). Rut e\-en tlresc echoes. if that's \\~lrat they are, could he third-hand. or e\.en Conrad's generali~ecl parod! of a certain intellectual st)-le. A dependence on vague echoes of terms and "existential" ethics suhstantiall>- \\.eakensJohn Saveson's argument, \vlrich contcnds that Conrad read \+iclely in tlre Englislr translations of Nietzsche \+lren the)- became available. " See lan \\'att: "Neitlrer C:onracl nor ;\Iarlo\c stands for tlre position that darkness is

irresistible; their attitude. rather, is to enjoin us to defend ourselves in full kno\vledge of tile clilficulties to \\~lliclr \ce Ira\ e been blinded h>- the illusions of ci\ i l i~at ion" (233) \Vatt's immediate sul>,ject is Ilcart of Di~rh-nelr,hut Iris larger interest is to refute tllc claim that Conrad's \cork is nihilistic. J. Hillis hIiller, to \\711om among other critics IYatt is repl>-ing. de\.elops this claim in a \cell-kno\vn chapter ol'Poeh qf Kecdip, \+Iierc lle considers Ttic Secret .,lgcni to he the purest expression of Conrad's nihilism: "Tlre tileme of The Ser.rel Agent is the uni\.ersal cleat11 \\-llich underlies life" (66).

konnte nicht ohne 13ionysus leben!") (46, 36). And in Nietzsche the tragic drama born of the 13ionysian understanding oll"ers an undeniable "metaphysical comfort" 59 ("rnetapl~ysische Trost" 52). In The Bir th of Trage41 Silenus's wisdom thus has two aspects, first as a precondition to this metaphysical comfort, and second as the nausea which remains ~v11en "no comfort avails any more" 60 ('tjetzt verfangt kein Trost mehr" 53).

Silcnus's wisdom has a similar doul)lcness in 7 % e Secrct Agent, but of a kind that demonstrates Conrad's ambivalence to~vard Nietzsche. O n the one hand "taking notice of the inside of facts" (133) leads, as in Nietzsche, to an unbearable perception of misery and thus to the Sile- ilia11 conclusions that it is best not to have been born, and next best to die soon. The death force in \\:innie, Ossipon, and the Professor is a product of their education in these perceptions and principles; the security of Heat, the Assistant Commissioner, and the Secretary or State lies in their ignorance of them.

Yet the novel does orer, in Stevie, a conscious, compassionate re- sponse to Silenian knowledge. Stevie recognizes that it is impossible to provide the "supreme remedy" for suffering, to take all victims "into a bed of compassion," but he still feels a "tenderness to all pain and all misery" (143). The text specifically endorses Stevie's understanding: "for Stevie was not mad. . . ,he was reasonable" (143). Compassion is not part of Nietzsche's imagined response, in either Apollo or Dionysus, to Silenus's wisdom, but art is. And Stevie is the novel's paradigmatic artist (the w'ord is Conrad's), whose drawing at the deal table of "circles, circles, circles; innumerable circles, concentric, eccentric" traces the novel's image of "cosmic chaos" (49). Stevie inay thus be both an example of and a parodic revision of Nietzsche's tragic artist, one w!ho sees but ~ v h o is also an ineKectua1~ compassionate, pathetic descendent of Sophocles's race. For Stevie to die, as tl~oroughly dismembered as any victim of the Bacchantes, exprvsses a double value similar to Nietzsche's ecstasylnausea: Stevie's response to Silenus's knon4edge has become courageously humane or absurd. To view gentle Stevie as Conrad's response to his own Silenian consciousness is to ask how deep Conrad's pessimism inay be without becoming despair.

Conrad's ambivalent response to Silenus's Lvisdom is different from and in part hostile to Nietzsche's response. Ossiporl and the Professor define Conrad's distance from The Birth of '(itrge<l). Not only may Ossi- poll be a parody of Nietzsche's model for the relationship between Apollonian and Dionysian, but Conrad assesses the value of Silenus's wisdom in the Professor's chal-actcr as well as in Stevie's. C~onrad's pessimism, in other ~vords, may definc itself partly against Nietzsche's relative optimism in The Birth of Trage(+. Furthermore, Conrad's divided

167

CORIPARATI\'E LITERATURE:

response to Nietzsche-to adopt and parody, in Stevie, Ossipon, and the Professor, Nietzsclle's conception of tragic art's response to what Silenus knows-itself takes a Nietzschean form. The dual possibilities of metaphysical comfort or nausea in The Birth of R a g e 4 are curiously reflected in Conrad's uncertainty as to whetller the Nietzschean account of these possibilities is a diagnosis of tlle modern disease, or tlle disease itsell'.

Conrad's relation to Nietzsclle is then a mixed and unstable one; it includes attraction and suspicion, revision and distortion. Conrad may have been as much indebted to The Birth of Trczgeh for the resistance it provokcd in him as for the Silcnus image and for the connection of ~Zpollo to Dionysus. If the foregoing account of circumstantial prob- abilities and textual connections has becn persuasive, then The Secret Agent becomes, to a substantial degree, a conversation and a quarrel wit11 Nietzsclle about the value or knowing the worst in human ardirs, and about how to live nit11 that knowledge.

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P l i ~ t n r ~ h ' ~.Ilis~ellanies i~?ldEssn,.~. Ed. \\'illiani Grrcl\~in. 5 vols. 1870. Bustrrn: Little, 1889.

Rohclc, Erxvin. l )er Clrie~hische Ror~znn und Seine li~riili{/er.1876. I.ripzig: Breitkopf and Hartcl, 1911.

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Sophoclcs. Tire Plnas nnd Fri~,<rments. Ed. R. C . Jcbh. 7 xols. Cambridge: Calnbriclge University Prcss, 188:).

Thatcher, David. AVictzs~hcin Enginnd, 18961-1914. Torontu: Unix-ersit>- of Toronto Press, 19 70.

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