Axel Heyst : An Island Entire of itself

Axel Heyst : An Island Entire of itself Zeynep Ergun Istanbul University

Joseph Conrad's Victory begins with the words 'There is..." and ends with the word "Nothing," pointing out to the reader the insignificance of individual lives within the context of the wider universe. The novel revolves around Axel Heyst, a character who, after his father's death, resolves to lead a life free of commitment, refusing to take roots in any specific place. The father's last advice to his son, to enable him to avoid pain, is: "'Look on make no sound."(1). Hence Heyst decides to travel and not to form any attachment with either piace or others, thus putting into practice the tenets of his father's teachings: to remain uninvolved in society, to be a mere observer and not a participant in societal activities. The endeavour, however, is doomed to fail, since "No man is an island entire of itself" and for all his attempts not to be involved, Heyst continually experiences the impossibility of absolute detachment. The onlooker, when among his fellow-men, finds it unavoidable to speak, and the very action of speech leads to communication and involvement.

In the novel, Heyst makes three impulsive attempts to form relationships: two with human beings, Morrison and Ima, and one with a place, when he decides to take up residence on the island of Samburan. He becomes the indirect cause of the deaths of the first two, and is himself annihilated by the island.

Heyst's ultimate decision to settle on Samburan coincides with his impulsive involvement in the life of the bankrupt merchant Morrison. His attempt to save Morrison is thwarted by the reality of England, that other island, and a materialistic and increasingly imperialistic social structure. This active and impulsive participation in social life (it is no coincidence that his name is the phonetic equivalent of the word 'haste') constitutes an unconscious rebellion against his father's admonitions which are based on Schopenhauer's philosophy. From that point on, in his relationships with Morrison, and, later, Lena, he becomes a usurper of God's prerogative, the giving and shaping of life. His interference with the existence of Morrison, to whom he gives a new chance in life through the materialistic medium that money is, only results in the annihilation of the latter. His attempt to create a new woman out of Lena, which is a re-enactment of the creation of Eve, but by Adam himself, is defeated by forces triggered by society in the shape of Schomberg, the hotel-keeper. His attitude to the place he chooses to settle in, Samburan island, shows parallels with his dealings with human beings. Motivated by idealistic intentions, which at heart echo the missionary spirit of Western culture, he causes the colonization of the island, reshaping it in the image of industrial Western society. Whereas initially his purpose had been to be a wanderer with no specific abode, by settling down in Samburan, he not only becomes the colonizer, an integral member of the community, but also introduces into the place that he so drastically alters, the alien and destructive forces of an exploitative society. For all the well-meant rebellion inherent in Heyst's activity, he cannot withstand or evade the chaotic, disorderly world of contingencies which ultimately arrives to engulf him, in the form of a demonic trinity consisting of Satan, Sin and Death, personalized in the guise of Mr. Jones, Ricardo and Pedro respectively, The island thus becomes a Garden of Eden infected by not only societal corruption, but also by a more primeval form of evil.

When the reader first meets Heyst, the character's fall has already taken place, and that fall is reminiscent of that of Adam, since, in his attempt to integrate himself into society, Heyst has disobeyed his father. The reader is also reminded of Frankenstein, since his action is fundamentally an experiment in the re-creation of a human being. The difference is that Eve has not yet been created, and Heyst is "-..out of everybody's way, as if he were perched on the highest peak of the Himalayas, and in a sense as conspicuous."(2) The island has become a parody of the Garden of Eden, and the fallen Adam/Frankenstein figure ironically reminds us of Andrew Marvell's words, "Two Paradises 'twere In one / To live in Paradise alone." (3) Only Heyst's garden is now a centre for corruption. As in Paradise Lost, nature in Samburan has suffered from man's transgression, and death has become not an attribute of man alone, but a universal reality that prevails in the environment in which he exists:

That black jetty, sticking out of the jungle into the empty sea; these roof-ridges of deserted houses peeping dismally above the grass! Ough! The gigantic and funeral blackboard sign of the Tropical Belt Coal Company, still emerging from a wild growth of bushes like an inscription stuck above a grave figured by the the heap of unsold coal at the shore end of the wharf, added to the general desolation.

(4)

Such exploitative activities create a wilderness, a waste overpowered by the ascendancy of death, that changes Samburan's location in the world. On the new map

Samburan was represented as the central spot of the Eastern Hemisphere with its name engraved in enormous capitals. Heavy lines radiated from it in all directions through the tropics, figuring a mysterious and effective star - lines of influence or lines of distance, or something of that sort.

(5)

Re-mapping the island, Heyst is transforming it into a. kind of star from which his utopian ideals will supposedly be diffused to the rest of the region, and leave no place uncontaminated by his lethal utopia.

It is not a coincidence that Samburan should be an island. It not only reminds us that the source of corruption lies in that other island, England, but it also functions as a metaphor for the self. The desolation depicted implies that the island has become a mirror image of Western industrial areas. The black jetty is a phallic indication of man's violation of the integrity of the island, which significantly is round, as well as suggesting that both the island's and Heyst's integrity and insularity have been irrevocably broken. The blackness of the jetty is echoed in the colour of the coal for which the Tropical Belt Company decided to mine in the area, and that very action of mining is reminiscent of Manimon in Paradise Lost, "by [whom] first / Men also, and by his suggestion taught, / Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands / Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth / For treasures better hid- "(6) With industrialization, however, the quest for gold and treasure has relegated its place to a more prosaic quest for the commodity ensuring the perpetuation of industrial activities. The irony is that the Tropical Belt Coal Company's project falls and the result is that the entire process initiated by Heyst to remodel or recreate Samburan in the image of its European conquerors has been futile as far as the colonialists are concerned. Hence, it is the gigantic sign announcing the proprietary rights of the Western capitalist power, and the wasted mount of coal that form the grave in which the natural order of the environment has been buried.

The island and nature, however, have the potential for violence and vengeance: the red glow of the cigar smoked by Heyst, the destructive colonizer, is reflected by a similar "red glow, expanding and collapsing spasmodically like the end of a gigantic cigar puffed at interrnittently in the dark." (7) This depiction not only reinforces the image of the island as a metaphor for the self; but it also reveals that Samburan, and by extension, nature, has a reality and an existence of its own. Revenge, therefore, when it comes at the end of the novel, will unsurprisingly materialize in the form of fire.

The impulse that initially leads Heyst to the ultimate destruction at the end of the novel is not a villainous one. As the narrator puts it:

We doubted whether he had any visions of wealth - for himself, at any rate - he seemed most concerned for was the 'stride forward', as he expressed it, in the general organization of the universe apparently. He was heard by more than a hundred persons in the island talking of a 'great stride forward for these regions'. The convinced wave of tile hand which accompanied the phrase suggested tropical distances being impelled onwards.

(8)

So, Heyst's motives echo the widespread Western attitude that sees its own way of life as the only correct one and that endeavours, peacefully or forcibly, to impose the same lifestyle upon what it deems to be the alien, the unknown, and therefore the unnatural, that which needs to be reformed and restrained, since the unknown at liberty is threatening and frightening. In that sense, Heyst is a new, early Twentieth-Century version of Thomas Gradgrind, intent upon the reform of a structure he believes to be less than perfect: "Facts," broke in Heyst in his courtly voice. "There's nothing worth knowing but facts. Hard facts! Facts alone Mr. Tesman." (9) Belief in facts implies a belief in the stability of reality and the universality of knowledge, and Heyst's fascination with facts intimates a quest for kilowledge, which connects him with Adam. Heyst's denial of the existence of a regulating power further associates him with the first man. One of the contradictions inherent in his nature lies in the fact that this fierce believer in hard facts also functions as an artist who returns from his travels with "a portfolio of sketches under his arm." (10) His artistic nature is another setback in his relationship with society; if pure detachment from society turns out to be unattainable, a life of pure art is equally unachievable and Heyst's efforts as the indifferent artist are fated to be abortive.(11) Likewise, the artist's attempt to create, exemplified in Heyst's endeavour to give Morrison a new life, Samburan a new identity, and Lena a new existence, is doomed to failure. A transcendental power, be it God, the Immanent Will, or nature herself, inevitably interferes, wreaking havoc in man's petty plans to usurp its prerogatives, and a purging destruction follows. Heyst's 'stride forward', therefore, can only result in tragedy since the unnatural actually resides in the very stride that he is aiming at. The fact that he comes from Sweden enhances his alienation from the tropical region he has chosen to settle in and reform. His aristocratic lineage removes him further from the bourgeois, mercantile frame of mind of the Westerners who do survive in the tropics, albeit with a little help from alcohol and gambling.

The incipient force that originates Heyst's inability to survive in modern society lies in his failure to choose between the alternatives presented to him. One option for survival is to integrate himself in "the flow of life's stream, where men and women go by thick as dust, revolving and jostling one another like figures cut out of cork and weighted with lead just sufficiently to keep them in their proudly upright posture," (12) puppets for Hardy's President of the Immortals to have his sport with, but also participants in society. That, in fact, is what he attempts to do when he decides to become the manager in the tropics for the Tropical Belt Coal Company. He is hampered, however, by the attraction of the other alternatives, refusing to establish bonds and obligations that would result in active participation in communal life. Heyst's father's admonition had been one of non-involvement. But, like God the Father and Adam, Heyst's father is inadequate because he refuses to supply his son with an explanation for his instructions: when Heyst asks, "Is there no guidance?", his fattier's response is, "'You still believe in something, then?... You believe in flesh and blood, perhaps? A full and equable contempt would soon do away with that too," (13) This inability on the part of the father to justify himself is caused by the fact that he is already fallen. While God undoubtedly believes in His own Godliness, there is nothing that Heyst's father finds worthwhile to have faith in. He dies, therefore, this "destroyer of systems, of hopes, of bellefs,"(14) curled up in the foetal position, isolated from the 'proudly upright' people crowding the streets of London. The problem, as far as Heyst is concerned, is that he has been badly equipped by his father to make the necessary choices in the outside world: "The dead man had kept him on the bank by his side. And now Heyst felt acutely that he was alone on the bank of the stream. In his pride he determined not to enter it."(15) The key word there is of course the word "pride", with its Satanic implications. It also indicates disobedience to the patriarch, since his father's advice had been to remember that he himself is as pitiful as the rest of humanity. It is therefore his pride that leads to Heyst's failure to follow his father's admonition. Although he does attempt to become rootless, and free of anchor and bonds, a stance which would involve his total freedom from allegiance to a specific place, he nevertheless fails:

Roughly speaking, a circle with a radius of eight hundred miles drawn round a point in North Borneo was in Heyst's case a magic circle. It just touched Manila, and he had been seen there. It just touched Saigon, and he was likewise seen there once. Perhaps these were his attempts to break out. If so, they were failures. The enchantment must have been an unbreakable one.

(16)

The individual's endeavour to free himself from anchorage, be it in the form of human relationships or attachment to a place, is doomed to failure. Since place also represents the self, escape, even in absolute isolation, is impossible. Furthermore, since man does not live in a vacuum, Heyst, for all his loneliness, finds himself obliged to come into contact with society, to go to Timor, where he meets Morrison, and since he is a gentleman, to talk to him:

"Heyst crossed over, and said ..., in the manner of a prince addressing another prince on a private occasion: "What an unexpected pleasure."

(17)

It is this casual encounter that triggers off the ensuing tragedy. Morrison, who pines in London for his brig the Capricorn, cannot survive in the English climate and dies when he goes to his native country to promote Heyst's coal mining project.

Involvement with another human being inevitably engenders duties and obligations. After an interval during which Heyst disappears from the community, "(he) became visible again rather suddenly, his eyes sunk in his head, and with a sort of guarded attitude, as if afraid someone would reproach him with the death of Morrison." (18). Any man's death diminishes us, and hence the skeletal appearance of the protagonist's head.

It is another impulse that leads to Heyst's involvement with Lena, the orchestra girl with the irresistibly seductive siren-like voice. Although she is a female, there is a certain amount of resemblance between the girl and her benefactor. They share an unrealistic romanticism, in that Heyst impetuously assumes the rote of the knight in shining armour rescuing the damsel in distress, and believes that he can save her from the fate worse than death that awaits her. Her name is indicative: "They call me Alma. I don't know why. Silly name. Magdalen too. It doesn't matter; you can call me by any name you choose." (19) In the sense that 'alma' means 'soul' in Latin, Lena's final action can be assumed to be positive, an actual victory. But, as Edward Said notes in the context of another writer's work:

Flaubert had read in lane about the almebs and the kawals, dancing girls and boys respectively... his imagination could immediately grasp... the almost metaphysical paradox of the alineh's profession and the meaning of her name. In Victory, Joseph Conrad was to repeat Flaubert's observation by making his musician heroine - Alma - irresistibly attractive and dangerous for Axel Heyst. Alernab in Arabic means a learned woman.

(20)

Alma's other name, Magdalen, reasserts Heyst's assumption that he is the saviour. The allusion to the Biblical 'fallen woman' reformed and given a new lease in life by Jesus Christ increases our sense of Heyst's pomposity.

Like Heyst, Lena is under a misapprehension too. She unquestioningly accepts the fiction of Heyst as a knight in shining armour, and, furthermore, as Hampson points out,

under the influence of her Sunday school lessons and Victorian constructions of femininity, she writes a script for herself in which erotic feelings are displaced into idealistic self-sacrifice. The intrusion of Jones and company onto the island to which Heyst and Lena have withdrawn gives her the opportunity to cast herself in a drama of redemption, but the terms and structure of feeling of this drama derive from sentimental romance."

(21)

Like Adam naming the creations of God, Heyst takes the nameless girl to his rather dilapidated Eden, and gives her a new identity: she is to be called Lena. Since she is misappropriated from her legitimate possessors, Zangiacomo and Schomberg, the two representatives of societal activity, it is fitting that the furious hotel-keeper should dispatch his avenging army to Samburan. But Jones, Ricardo and Pedro, as a Satanic parody of the Holy Trinity, are elements that have already been introduced into the island by the Western colonizer and that perhaps explains their surprising success in reaching Samburan. Like Heyst, they are Westerners foreign to the region and have come to exploit it, but unlike Heyst, who only causes the volcano to puff intermitently and threateningly, the different degrees of violence they bring with them unleash the ferocity latent in the island and in nature.

Since relationships between human beings are based on fictions created by individuals, since mankind has replaced the natural with the unnatural, and persists in believing that the unnatural is the natural, nature herself rages in the background through the final act of the tragedy, shivering, trembling and shuddering, much in the way that the natural elements in the Garden of Eden do as Adam progressively approaches his fall. The human beings fail to survive and like Morrison who in a way had sacrificed himself for the sake of his benefactor and died of gratitude, Lena is killed, presumably to save her own saviour, but Heyst's inability to face the prevalent destruction he has caused renders her rather quixotic sacrifice null and void. What is left is the island and nature, which have not only the ability to outlive human beings, but can also revitalize themselves. The volcano metaphorically erupts and Samburan takes her revenge through a purging fire that annihilates everything created by man, and nature obliterates all traces of the colonizers on the island. If victory there is, it is the ultimate victory of the island and of nature.

NOTES

1. Joseph Conrad, Victory, Penguin Books Ltd., Harmondsworth, Middlesex, 1966, p. 150.