©hrissie ❁ [1st week on campus-somewhat run-down]'s review of Youth (original) (raw)

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©hrissie ❁ [1st week on campus-somewhat run-down]'s Reviews > Youth

Youth by Joseph Conrad

Youth
by

49071166

'Pass the bottle', please! 🍷

One of Joseph Conrad's early short stories, 'Youth' (1902) tells the tale of Marlow's account of his youthful adventures on board of the Judea, as registered by the narrator of the story, who makes up -- together with Marlow and three other experienced seamen -- the small party gathered around a mahogany table in companionable rapture at Marlow's narration. While drinking glassfuls of claret, of course.

Thematically, the story hinges on two points of interest:

➡️ the shared identification, of those gathered, with the charms and terrors of the Sea, which is considered to be an emblematically English experience or condition.

‘This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak--the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning.’

Their attachment to the sea is such that the latter is equated with ‘life itself’, and this shows emphatically in Marlow’s narration, and through the characters -- of Captain Beard, for instance -- which he portrays as being immanently bound by loyalty and duty to their ship. So much so that they would readily forfeit their lives so long as they do not leave her -- the ship -- unattended in the ‘mysterious’ moment of her ‘magnificent’, graceful death. Indeed, ‘she’ is extendedly personified, and there is touching tenderness in the late moments of Marlow’s narration, particularly when they are saving its remains and watching her go, but also throughout, as attested by their kindness and affection towards her.

Related to the ‘interpenetration’ between sea and its companions is also the idea of the men and the ship's entangled, mutually affecting and mirroring fate:

‘It was our fate to pump in that ship, to pump out of her, to pump into her; and after keeping water out of her to save ourselves from being drowned, we frantically poured water into her to save ourselves from being burnt.’

➡️ through Marlow's story, which takes up the entirety of this narrative space, there is a constant echoing of that sense of naïve anticipation and always forward-looking gaze associated with youth, filtered through a registered sense of knowing and acquired maturity -- but also of nostalgia -- brought on by the twenty years that separate the actual experience on the Judea -- the dream of setting eyes on the East, with Bankok ‘waiting’ for him, as a ‘vision of [his] youth’ -- and the present moment of wistful evocation.

At one point, the crew tirelessly engages in ‘pumping’ water out of the ship for long hours and begins losing heart, but they carry on. Later, Marlow asks himself: was the ‘ship doomed to arrive nowhere?’ Indeed, implicit in all of this is the theme of frustrated hopes; the desire of self-fulfillment and a general sense of loss (of innocence, but also of the possibility of self-fulfillment).

‘You fellows know there are those voyages that seem ordered for the illustration of life, that might stand for a symbol of existence. You fight, work, sweat, nearly kill yourself, sometimes do kill yourself, trying to accomplish something--and you can't.’

Youth is apostrophised many a time -- ‘O, youth!’ -- and receives a range of adjectival attributions: 'The silly, charming, beautiful youth.' There are recurring allusions to its idealistic visions of ‘glamour’, while references to its ‘fire’ further link the experience of youth -- indeed, 'her youth' (the ship's) is also referenced -- to the image of final death that concerns both ship and seafarers. What to Marlow appeared as a moment in time boundlessly full of possibility proved merely to be ‘the romance of illusions’, punctured by the reality of transience and death.

‘youth, strength, genius, thoughts, achievements, simple hearts--all die…No matter.’

‘[…] quenched by time, more cruel, more pitiless, more bitter than the sea--and like the flames of the burning ship surrounded by an impenetrable night.’

‘while it is expected is already gone--has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash--together with the youth, with the strength, with the romance of illusions.’

‘with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires--and expires, too soon--before life itself.’

‘I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more--the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort--to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires--and expires, too soon--before life itself.’

Conrad's storytelling -- like the sea -- has its charms. I suspect that it is not for everyone -- when I say that the sea dominates, I mean that the sea dominates his literary imaginary -- but the allure is imposing in its subtlety, and it takes us back to the idea of a kind of fine, unembellished storytelling that is perhaps harder to come by today. Conrad is happy to tell the story, and the reader is gently nudged to partake of that. At the same time, the simplicity charts notions that remain relevant to us as human beings, particularly when it comes to our ways of remembering, interpreting, and responding to experiences from our youthful days. Its insights are unassumingly interspersed with the undulations of the sea-narration, with short asides from present-time Marlow, and his requests -- addressed to his fellow seamen -- to be 'passed the bottle'.

Conrad's short stories are certainly a very engaging and fulfilling way of exploring this highly acclaimed author. He has much to tell and teach readers and the creatives amongst us. The solidly beautiful and beautifully solid -- dependable almost, I would say -- writing says it all. Indeed, the narrative structure frames and foregrounds the pleasures of storytelling.

Personally, I should also be thanking McEwan and his novel Lessons (2022), whose drawn parallelisms to Conrad’s ‘Youth’, in the early stages of Roland’s narration, convinced me that I was, quite simply, missing out. Indeed, I was.

Note: There are some vague racial undertones, with references to Abraham’s figure as a ‘mulatto’ or ‘brown nations’, for instance. Nevertheless, the story cannot really be held accountable for this, given the time and contexts in which it was written.

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Reading Progress

September 18, 2022 –Started Reading

September 18, 2022 – Shelved

September 25, 2022 –Finished Reading

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