CONRADS CINEMATIC HOMELESS HUMAN SUBJECT

Ttiis work makes a comparative reading ofjoseph Conrad's Under Western Eyes(1911) andTlie SecretAgent (1907) usingMarcAuges notion oftlie "unplace". KEYWOItDS: literatwe; socialantivropology; comparativism.


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n his "Prcfaccto The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' " (Conrad J., 1897) Conrad strcsscs thc bejief that "ali art appcals primarily to thc sensos" and "thc artisticaim whcn cxprcssing itsclf in written words must also makc its appcal through thc senses" in order to rcach thc secret springofthe responsive emotions" (p.12) of his readers.He alsosaysin his writing, thc task which hc is trying to achieve is, "by the powcr of thc written word to makc you hcar, to makc you fccl -it is abovc ali to makc you sec" (p.13).Thc descriptions givcn throughoutConradlswork ofcxotic placcs, urban scttings, seascapes and cxistcntial situations cxpericnccd by his characters confirm Conrad's commitmcnt to thc powcr of thc written word.**lhe French scholar MarcAuge in thc essay Introduction à une anthropologie de Ia sumodernité (Auge M., 1992) dcvclops the notion of thc "unplacc" in describing thc contemporary human condition.By "unplacc" Auge means thc spaces of transition created by circunstances of cvcryday lifc.Thus, "unplaces" are bestrepresented by public spacesof fast circula-Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte.
tion such as airports, trains and underground stations and otherdifferent means oftransportation.They also include hotéis and supermarkets.
For Auge the space of the traveller builds up the archetype of the "unplace".Thetraveller isnotonly theindividual who goes from onecountry to another but also anyone who iscaught bythe proliferation ofadvertisement linked to travelling and movement within theindividuais owncoun try.
Tlie vast stimulation provided by hotéis, travei agencies and air companies, announced on private radio stations and billbords creates a wide consumerism space and turns the individual into a "stranger in passing", a new humanity that can only meet in the anonymity of the motor-ways, petrol stations, department stores or hotel chains (Auge M., 1992: 96-97).
ForAuge thetopography ofthe"unplace" produces the condition of But what do Conradand Auge havein common?Conrad wroteliis fíctional works mostly in the first decades of the present century, while Augé's writings portray an etlmology ofsolitude brought about by the circumstances of the social development of theWestern world, now approaching the next millennium.However, a close reading ofthe novéis Under Western Eyes (Conrad J., 1911) and The Secret Agent (Conrad J., 1907) shows that Conrad's concern to approach the homelessness ofthe human subject (Kaplan C. M., 1997) predates Augé's view of the "unplace".
In Under Western Eyesthe main protagonista search for an identity makes thenotion ofthe "unplace" pivotal to theunderstanding ofthe noveFs major narrative concern.
Shown as a foreigner inhisown native Rússia, Razumov isportrayed as the epitomy of loneliness.Razumov is a "young man of no parentage", immersed insuch a lonely existence thatlieiscomparaito"a manswimming inthedeep sea" (p.17).Although hetries tocompensate liis utterloneliness by thinking that "hisclosest parentage was defined in the statementthat he was a Russian" (p.17), the interference ofthe autocratic forces in his life turn him into a stranger in hisowncountry and placehim in the dynamics of the "unplace".
After betraying the revolutionary student Viktor Haldin, by giving him up to the secret police, Razumov believes he would be able to get his silver medal and to isolate himselffrom the political conditionsof his time.He is forced to act as a spy amongst the Russian revolutionaries who have emigrated to Geneva.
His condition ofbeinga man ofthe "unplace"is shown immediately after the act of betrayal as Razumov walks on the snowy streets of St. Petersburg, when, placed in a conditionof "unplacedness", "Razumov received an almost physical impression of endless space of countless millions" (p.35).
Conrad's commitment to reaching the reader's secret strings of emotion through the visual power of the written word is emphasized by the rich visual imagery of Razumov's lonely travelling in his own country: "Razumov stamped liis foot -and under the soft carpet of snow felt the hard groundofRússia, inanimate, cold, inert,like a sullen and tragicmother hiding her face under a widing sheet -liis native soil -lús very ownwithouta fireside, withouta hearth!" (Conrad J., 1911:34-35).
In explaining the constitution of the ephemeral nature of the "unpla ce", Auge mentions two distinct complementary realities: spacesformed in relation to certain aims (transportation, traffic, trade, entertainment) and the relationship that the individuais establish with these spaces and that the "unplace" creates a solitary transition (p.87).Razumov's transitory relation with the topography ofhisnative Rússia puts himin an "unplace", where his loneliness is equated with the vastness of the environment.He saysthat he is Rússia, but in his loneliness he islikethe desolation ofRussia's vast landscape: "The snow covered the endless forests, frozen rivers, the plains of an immense country (...) levelling everything under its uniform whiteness, like a monstruous hlank page awaiting the record of an inconceivable history" (p.35).
In depicting the rootlessness of Raumov's life his experiences of lo neliness cause a proliferation of "unplaces".Once in Geneva, where he is forced to work for the Russian autocracyhe occur>ies again the temporary space of a traveller.For him Geneva represents "a perfection of puerile neatness", an environment comparai to "painted cardboard", where "the most distant stretch of water [was] shining like a piece of tin" (p.241).
The narrator's visual depictionof Razumov's feelingof homelessness in Genevaisgiven throughscenes that resemble still photographs, as it can be noticed in the recollection of the grotesque revolutionaries he meets in Conrad's depiction of Razumov's being caught by the condition of "unplaceness"suggests that loneliness isa characteristicofthe human con dition.The visualdescriptions ofthe environment, which, as we have seen, resemblestill photographs, can also, at times gain movement, as "Geneva unrollsitselfcinematically beforeour eyesthrough the pedestrian displacements of the characters" (Krshner R, 1957:116).Thus, as the old teacher of languageswalks with Miss Haldin on Geneva's streets, the camera-like narrative liiglilights the view of "the low garden walls of modest villas doomed to demolition (...) boughsoftrees and massesof foliage, lighted from belowby gas lamps (...) a double lineof lamp lights [that] outlined a street as yet without houses (...) a solitary dim light [that] seemed to watch us with a weary stare", and the emptiness of the Boulevard des Philosophes immersedin "the verydesolation ofsluinbering respectability" (p.276-277).By building visions of the silent screen, Conrad is once again reaffirming his concern for the visual potentiality of the written word, something that as we have seen, is stated in his "Preface to TheNigger ofthe Narcissus'" and also emphasized by Conrad in an address inAmerica in 1923 when he said: "Fundamentally the creator in lettersaims at a movingpicture -moving to the eye, to the mind, and to our complexemotions wliich I willexpress with one word -heart" (Krschner P., 1957: 101).
Asecondexampleofthe "unplace"occursin Ttie SecretAgent.Augé's view of the topography of the "unplace", formed by spaces of transition, where the new humanity meets in the anonymity of public places, brings to mind the urban environment describedin The SecretAgent.Set inVictorian London, a place Conrad defined as "a monstrous town (...) a cruel devourer of the world light (...) [with] darkness enough to bury five millions of lives" (p.10).Conrad develops the idea of the "unplace" through the lives ofthe city's inhabitants, focusing on their loneliness and transitory existences.Although the novel is about secret agents and anarchists circulatingin London, the approach given to Winnie's isolation in domestic life is the element of the narrativethat best illustrates the idea of the "unplace".
In order to survive life's hardsliips Winnie adopts the attitude that "life doesn't stand much looking into" (Conrad J., 1907: 10-11).In so doing she survives a stale marriage, a relationship impoverished by the absence of affectionand intimacy.Winnie Verloc's behaviour puts her under the tlireat of losing the parameters ofrestraintand turns her into a foreigner in domestic life.
The effective presenceofthe sense ofthe "unplace" in Winnie's life is emphatically shown in the narrative when Wnnie murders her husband Adolf Verloc, the secret agent ofthe novel's title, after Stevie'sdeath in the Greenwich Park explosion.From that point on there is a proliferation of "unplaces" in the narrative.Winnie Verloc's condition as a foreigner in the world becomes two-fold.Her dwelling and the town she lives in provide her with utter sensations of estrangement: "there was a silence, while the mist fell, and darkness reignedundisturbed over Brett Place.Not a sound, not even the vagabond, lawless and anonymous soul of a cat, carne near ... " (p. 226).
As she becomes a murderer Winnie abandons "the prudent reserve (...), whichhad been the foundation oftheir [theVerlocs'] respectablehome life" (p.213) to become a free woman"enjoying her complete irresponsibility and endless leisure, almostin tlie manner ofa coqise" (p.213), and London is reduced to a claustrophobic depiction of the externai view of her home place.Thus she is engulfedby "the darkness and solitude of Brett Place, in which ali sounds of life seemedlostas ifin a triangular wellof asphalt and bricks of blind housesand unfeeling stones" (p.223).
Winnie's despair and utter loneliness are described using cinematic imagery, as in the visual descriptions of Brett Place, like the ones given above, and most specifically in detailed descriptions of the murder scene, as PaulKrischner's pioneering article, " Conrad and film" (1957), demonstrates.Krschner analyses the way "Conrad edits" the detailed and unforgeatable murder scenein The Secret Agent (Krschner R, 1957: 346) showing, for instance, that when Conrad visualizes "Mrs.Verloc's approacliing face changing into the face of the dead brother she is about to avenge" (Krschner R, 1957: 345), Conrad is actually using an effect ideally suited to die capacityoffilm superimposition and dissolve (KrschnerP, 1957: 348).
The feeling of the "unplace" is an important feature of Conrad's major fíction and in liistwo autobiographical books, The Mirror ofthe Sea (Conrad J., 1906) and A Personal Record (Conrad J., 1917).It can be noticed in the alienationof the protagonists of liismajor novéis and in the portrayal ofConrad leaving forexile withhismother in hisclúldhcod (Karl E, 1979: 57).

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The senseofhecomingroodess alreadyat the earlyageof6 is recalled by Conrad inAPersonal Record.Tliere he tells us about his feelings at the time he had to leave the home of his uncle Tadeuz Bobrowski, where both he and his mother Ewa were fora short stay beforereturning to Chernikov where his mother was to die: "But I rememher wellthe day ofour departure hack to exile.The elongater1 bizarre, shabby travellingcarriage with four posthorses, standing before the long front of the house with its four columns on each side of the broad flight of stairs.On the stepsgroupsofservants, a fewrelations, oneor two friendsfromthe nearest neighbourhood, a perfect silence on ali the faces an air of sober concentration..." (KarlF., 1979: 57-58).
As for the Mirror ofthe Sea the sense of the "unplace" of Conrad's life is conveyed by the written record ofConrad'sexperiences at sea.In the introduction to this second biographical account Conrad says: "Beyond the line of the sea horizon the world for me did not exist, as assuredly it does not exist for the mystics who take refuge on the top of the high mountains" (Conrad J., 1906: XXXIV).
The condition of being a man who left Poland to join the English merchant navy and his ultimate decision to live in England, where he wrote his fictional works in English, perpetuate the sense of rootlessness in Conrad, providing his own existence with a condition of "unplacedness" which in Augé's viewcharacterizes the life of contempora- supermodernity.

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Later on, much later on, at the time of the newspapers rumors (...) of an abortive military conspiracy in Rússia, I remembered the glimpse I had of the motionless group with its central figure" (p.273).