[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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