[Vwoolf] Woolf, Conrad, and bosse

Jeremy Hawthorn jeremy.hawthorn at ntnu.no
Wed Apr 22 04:43:25 EDT 2020


Stuart -

Yes, This could very well be the "bosse" referred to in the French 
saying. Apart from anything else, the examples you show are round, and 
thus could be rolled. (I had wondered if a long cord of knots was to be 
rolled up, but this makes much better sense.)

Because of the lockdown I don't have access to specialist French 
dictionaries of idioms, but I will pester my French friends on this.

Going back to Woolf, there was a discussion on the list a bit back in 
which I suggested that Woolf's writing of a novel in which the central 
character is of less interest than the characters with whom s/he 
interacts (/Jacob's Room/) might have been partly inspired by her 
reading of Conrad. I found a couple of comments in Conrad's letters in 
which he suggests that the title characters in both /Lord Jim/ and 
/Nostromo/ are of limited interest compared to their interaction with 
others. There is that passage in /Mrs Dalloway/ presenting Clarissa's 
thoughts that begins: "to know her, or any one, one must seek out the 
people who completed them; even the places," and goes on in 
Pirandello-like fashion to suggest that thus parts of a person might 
survive "attached to this person or that, or even haunting certain 
places, after death." Compare that to these comments by Conrad in 
letters about the characters Jim and Nostromo.

    And this brings me naturally to /Jim/. Perfectly right! Your
    criticism is just and wise but the whole story is made up of such
    side shows just because the main show is not particularly
    interesting – or engaging I should rather say. I want to put into
    that sketch a good many people I've met – or at least seen for a
    moment – and several things overheard about the world. It is going
    to be a hash of episodes, little thumbnail sketches of fellows one
    has rubbed shoulders with and so on. I crave your indulgence; and I
    think that read in the lump it will be less of a patchwork than it
    seems now. (13 December, 1899 to Hugh Clifford)

    But truly N[ostromo] is nothing at all – a fiction – embodied vanity
    of the sailor kind – a romantic mouthpiece of "the people" which (I
    mean "the people") frequently experience the very feelings to which
    he gives utterance. I do not defend him as a creation. (To R.B.
    Cunninghame Graham, 31 October, 1904.)

Both letters can be found in the 9-volume Cambridge edition of Conrad's 
letters.

Jeremy H



On 21.04.2020 23:02, Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf wrote:
>
> This “corde à noeuds”, could it be what we call a turk’s head knot?:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turk%27s_head_knot

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