Themes and Issues

Abstract

One of Conrad’s clearest statements of the view he holds of the world, the outlook that underpins his social and political thinking, occurs in a letter of 1897 to Cunninghame Graham. Graham, a friend of Conrad, held radical, socialist opinions very different from Conrad’s. In response to Graham’s belief in the idea of progress, Conrad wrote: ‘you are a most hopeless idealist, — your aspirations are irrealisable.’ He continued:

There is a, let us say, a machine. It evolved itself (I am severely scientific) out of a chaos of scraps of iron and behold! — it knits. I am horrified at the horrible work and stand appalled. I feel it ought to embroider, — but it goes on knitting. You come and say: ‘This is all right: It’s only a question of the right kind of oil. Let us use this, — for instance, — celestial oil and the machine will embroider a most beautiful design in purple and gold.’ Will it? Alas, no! You cannot by any special lubrication make embroidery with a knitting machine. And the most withering thought is that the infamous thing has made itself: made itself without thought, without conscience, without foresight, without eyes, without heart. It is a tragic accident, — and it has happened. You can’t interfere with it. The last drop of bitterness is in the suspicion that you can’t even smash it.