Zostaje nam więc jako busola te “kilka prostych prawd,”
będących zarazem wytworem, sublimacją doświadczeń niezliczonych pokoleń ludzkiej wspólnoty, której powinniśmy być wierni.
ZDZISŁAW NAJDER, O CONRADZIE — DZISIAJ1
In 1980 The New York Times Book Review conducted an inquiry among well-known critics and writers on both sides of the Atlantic asking them which of the books published after the World War II were, according to them, the most important ones in Western literature. Under the Volcano was among the few most often mentioned together with such masterpieces as D oktor Faustus, Lolita, G ravity’s Rainbow, The Unnamablej. M olloyj. Malone Dies/., and several others.2
The book has indeed become famous now. Much has been written about its immaculate formal perfection, its intricate symbolic network, its depths of meaning, etc.3 The amazing thing, however, is that even if you do not dig into the novel in search of these meanings, its significance still remains conspicuous.
Lowry himself admits that all the depths, though they are there enriching the novel, are not so much important to the understanding of the book.4 What is it then that makes Under the Volcano so meaningful and appealing?
Geoffrey Firmin, H.M. ex-consul to a small Mexican town, is an unprecedented, portentous drinker. The novel reflects the fact most vividly. It is basically lyrical in its design5 and the images, on which its progression
1 Res Publica 4 (1988), p. 95.
1 Literatura na kwiecie 6 (1980), p. 334.
3 Up to now about 150 Ph.D. dissertations on Lowry have been completed.
4 Cf. Lowry’s letter to Jonathan Cape after his refusal to publish Under the Volcano.
J Cf. ibid. and S. Makowiecki, Malcom Lowry and the Lyrical Convention o f Fiction (Poznań:
Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza, 1977).
is based, are either presented through the Consul’s liquor-soaked con
sciousness or often, when coming from other sources, connected with the Consul anyway and thus contributing to the atmosphere of all-pervading drunkenness. Even Geoffrey’s handwriting seems to be drunk. When Laruelle finds his letter, he gets this impression:
... the hand, half crabbed, half generous, and wholly drunken, of the Consul himself ... the words themselves slanting steeply downhill, though the individual
characters seemed as if resisting the descent, braced, climbing the other way.6
And yet alcohol is not Geoffrey’s problem, not the major one at least. “It isn’t drinking somehow,” 7 says Yvonne to Hugh when they try to find a way to help the Consul. He himself makes occasional, half-hearted attempts as if to prove he is not a drunkard: “I have resisted temptation for two and a half minutes at least: my redemption is sure.” 8 It does sound ironical but whether it is ironical within the context of the novel remains an open question.
Geoffrey’s predicament can perhaps be better understood when seen in a wider perspective. Particularly interesting is a comparison to the situations in which Joseph Conrad entangled his protagonists.
David Daiches wrote in his essay on Conrad that the 19th century novel was set in a world in which the author agreed with the reader about the traditional scale of human values.9 A Victorian writer, though he often heavily criticized contemporary society, never went so far as to reject the commonly accepted criteria of human behaviour. This is seen clearly in Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot. Conrad is said to have been the first novelist in England who did not make use of all these standards and principles while creating his works: the essence of the moral and psychological problems of the hero can be revealed only when we stop looking at him through the distorting prism of traditional morality and try to learn the truth about him in a situation of real or symbolic isolation.
A very good example of such a situation is Heart o f Darkness. The jungle there is of course highly symbolic but we must not forget that it is real as well.
It is, for a European, a place unfit to live in, and the hostility of the environment enables us to realize the powerful impact isolation exerts upon human beings:
It is hard to take a reasonable view of people and things in the tropics because of the aura of colour
* M. Lowry, Under the Volcano (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983), p. 41.
7 Ibid., p. 121.
■ Ibid., p. 74.
* D. Daiches, “Joseph Conrad,” in D. Daiches, Krytyk i jego światy. Szkice literackie, ed.
M. Sprusiński (Warszawa: PIW, 1976), pp. 175—217.
which envelopes them. Things and colours are in a haze.
The doctor, who examines Marlow before he leaves for Africa, says: “ ‘In the tropics one must before everything keep calm.’ ...He lifted a warning forefinger... ‘Du calme, du calme. Adieu.’ ” Later Marlow witnesses the gradual disintegration of reason: the warship senselessly shelling the bush, the bones of the captain who got killed during a quarrel about some hens, the agents in the Central Station, and finally Kurtz.
Lowry expands the theme of hostility and isolation. The book ends with the inscription which Geoffrey sees earlier several times as a notice placed on the edge of a garden:
iLE GUSTA ESTE JARDIN?
iQUE ES SUYO?
jEVITE QUE SUS HIJOS LO DESTRUYAN!11
It is striking that a novel which for the most part concerns itself, in a most subjective manner, with the consciousness of one man ends with a message so general---- the word “jardin” stands for both the Garden of Eden and the world. It is, however, a clue as well.
The 20th century with its two world wars and the atomic bomb (all the three cataclysms loom large throughout the novel) has made considerable changes within the so far widely accepted systems of values. Lowry pictures the impact of these changes on an individual: hostility and isolation are no longer restricted to certain places on earth; they have become worldwide.
Geoffrey is bewildered. He does not know how to react to the situation because he is aware that the forces released in our age often turn your activities against you no matter which course of action you decide to follow. His deeds fill him with dismay. It is suggested that he is at least partly responsible for an appalling murder of a few German navy officers. The Consul is very critical of Hugh, who is going to take part in the Spanish Civil War, because he seems to understand that his younger brother became entangled in a similar situation. It is November 1938 and by that time it had already become clear that the war,
as we learned from George Orwell, was a double failure: not only did fascism have its victory but it also turned out that the forces which dominated the other side were of exactly the same kind. Geoffrey tries to explain:
Not long ago it was poor little defenceless Ethiopia.
Before that, poor little defenceless Flanders.
To say nothing of course of the poor little defenceless Belgian Congo. And tomorrow it will be
poor little defenceless Latvia. Or Finland. Or Piddledeedee. Or even Russia. Read history. Go back a thousand years. What is the use of interfering with its worthless stupid course?12
As the story goes on Geoffrey’s attitude appears to be more and more nihilistic. He does not help the Indian dying by the roadside. Later he says:
I was talking about interference in general, I think.
Why should we have done anything to save his life?
Hadn’t he a right to die, if he wanted to?...13
Then he adds:
Or the fallacy of supposing a point proved or disproved by argument which proves or disproves something not at issue. Like these wars. For it seems to me that almost everywhere in the world these days there has long since ceased to be anything fundamental to man at issue at all... Ah, you people with ideas!14
Christianity, which for so long has been the main point of reference upon which the lives of societies were organized, seems to have lost much of its formative influence. The Consul realizes the fact and what is more he accepts it, which only deepens the impression of his nihilistic stand:
they had halted by a church from whose sooty wall a figure of Christ on the cross had been removed leaving only the scar and the legend.11
At the top of the Parson’s Nose you could walk home to tea over the hills if you wished, just as the actor in the Passion Play can get off his cross and go home to his hotel for a Pilsener.1*
The two images introduce Geoffrey’s final rejection:
iQuiere usted que Cristo sea nuestro Rey?
(Do you want Christ to be our Kingi?) 12 Ibid., p. 311.
13 Ibid., p. 311.
14 Ibid., p. 311.
15 Ibid., p. 156.
14 Ibid., p. 185.
He hears the question three times on the radio and each time his answer is:
“No.” 17
In spite of all that the Consul is not a nihilist. He realizes that man cannot make himself the foundation of his own existence. He is in desperate need of
He knows that she, her love, is his only chance. His life without her was an untold misery:
indeed such desolation, such a desperate sense of abandonment, bereavement, as during this last year without Yvonne, he had never known in his life...19
But Yvonne, though she loves the Consul, has once been unfaithful to him.
By that act she seems to have shattered the very foundation upon which he
This we may see as a reference to the New Testament story of Simon Peter denying Jesus three times. The situation here, however, is reversed: Peter denies Jesus in order to save his life while Geoffrey’s rejection only confirms the inevitability of his death.
11 Ibid., pp. 290—291.
19 Ibid., p. 201.
20 Ibid., p. 201.
** IMd, p. 228.
Picking up the tyre he flung it far ahead again, repeating this process, to the irreducible logic of which he appeared eternally committed, unitil out of sight22
The Consul is fully aware of the dangers threatening his existence but this awareness does not help him at all. It only worsens his situation. He deliberately refrains from action because he does not want to get involved in the fight in which all the forces are inimical to him. The 20th century, called by some “the age of ideology,” leaves no room for the individual. Inactivity, then, is not the result of Geoffrey’s attitude; it is forced upon him.
This is, however, not a “solution” the Consul might accept because it renders his existence inauthentic and futile. He is trapped: no matter what he does (or does not), he finds himself in the position of a madman flinging a bicycle tyre. Since there is no fundamental principle, acceptable to him, upon which he could base his life, Geoffrey’s act of self-determination at the end of chapter 10 no longer appears whimsical:
I choose ... Hell ... Because ... I like it.23
Geoffrey dies. He is shot by Mexican fascists but his death is not accidental. He looked for it all the time, it is almost a suicide. His conduct, which so inevitably led to the tragedy, does not seem to have stemmed from a morbid consciousness. It is rather a reaction of a desperate man to the morbidity that surrounds him.
Perhaps it is the vivid recognition of the grave danger created by our century that makes Under the Volcano a book so important and appealing. Lowry enables us to realize that the danger is in fact ontological because it reaches to the very foundation of our existence and may render it senseless at any time.
Geoffrey’s predicament is not that of some fictional character---- it is ours.
Marek Kulisz
GEOFFREY’A FIRM INA ŻYCIE BEZ ZASAD S t r e s z c z e n i e
Artykuł stanowi próbę określenia, na czym polega ważność powieści Malcolma Lowry Pod wulkanem. Jej formalna doskonałość i głęboka struktura symboliczna pozostają często — co
22 Ibid., p. 227.
23 Ibid., p. 316.
autor sam przyznaje — nieczytelne dla wielu czytelników. Książka daje jednakże głęboki wgląd w nową ontologiczną sytuację człowieka dwudziestego wieku. Lowry, świadomy zmian, jakie dokonały się w naszych czasach w ogólnie akceptowanych systemach wartości, przedstawia wpływ nowej sytuacji na jednostkę: wrogość i osamotnienie niszczące podstawę naszej egzystencji.
Марек Кулиш
ДЖАФРЕЯ ФЕРМИНА ЖИЗНЬ БЕЗ ПРИНЦИПОВ Р е з ю м е
В статье сделана попытка определить, в чем состоит значение романа Малькольма Лоури Under the Volcano. Его формальное совершенство и глубокая символическая струк
тура зачастую остаются (в чем автор сам признается) непонятными для многих читателей.
Однако кинга позволяет глубже познакомиться с новой онтологической ситуацией человека двадцатого века. Лоури, отдающий себе отчет в том, какие произошли изменения в наше время в общепринятых системах ценностей, представляет влияние новой ситуации на личность: вреждебность и одиночество, уничтожают основу нашего существования.