human im pulses both to explore and to familiari ty and comfort of shoreside places In voyage narratives, the return home, ir continues to regenerate and provides a full range of potential testsstrongest polarity is the itself in new transformations. James Joyce storm, fire, stranding, collision, falling from simultaneous impulse to sail took it ashore in rhe streets of Dublin to aloft or overboard, disease, starvation, sinkoutward set against the produce Ulysses, one of rhe boldes t experiing-all threatening injury or death. desire to return home. ments in 20th-century literature. Back at W hen the test becomes more menacing sea, rhe basic structure of the nostos or and the probabili ty of failure greater, the return, rhe long and difficult voyage home, stakes change from growing up to risking recurs in wo rks as different as Conrad's n ovel The Nigger of the moral destruction. This is the usual case in Conrad . In Heart of "Narcissus," Eugene O 'Neill's play "The Long Voyage H ome, " Darkness Marl ow nearly loses his own identi ty in rhe voyage up rhe John Barth's novel Sabbatical, and D erek Walcott's epic poem Congo River to Kurrz' s Inner Srarion. Lord Jim in the novel of rhe Omeros. same name discovers a faral "soft spot" in his character when he Such persistence of underlying themes in rhe Odyssey springs jumps from the bridge of a steamship that he thinks is sinking. And from the fundamentally unchanging nature of rhe ocean world. in "T he End of rhe T ether" Cap tain Whalley violates all of a The sea borh arrracrs and repels, calling us to high adve nture and captain's responsibilities when he continues to navigate his ship rhrearening to destroy us through irs indifferent powe r. In The while going blind. Sometimes rhe protagonist is an averaged Mirror of the Sea Conrad untangles rhe intertwined bundle of innocent like Captain M acWhirr in Typhoon, who can ignore and human attitudes generated by rhe sea: thereby survive exposure to the "destructi ve element" in rh e ocean For all that has been said of the love rhar certain natures (on world. T he usual archerype fo r such a dark initiation is descent, shore) have professed to feel for it, fo r all rhe celebrations ir had both obvious and natural as a ship sinks to the bottom of the sea. been the obj ect of in prose and song, the sea has never been In this way sinking is a psychic repetition of myths of visiting the friendly to man. At most it has been the accomplice of human underworld- Odysseus in H ades or Jonah carried down in the restlessness, and playing the part of dangerous abettor of belly of a whale. Such myths are usually displaced (i.e., made more world-wide ambitions . Faithful to no race after rhe mann er of naturalistic) in modern literature. T he central scene in the storm the kindly earth, receiving no impress From valour and to il and section of Conrad's The Nigger ofthe "Narcissus" is a descent into self-sacrifice, recognizing no fin ality of dominion, rhe sea has rhe deckhouse of a nearl y capsized ship to rescue its source of never adopted th e cause of irs mas ters like th ose lands where rhe di ssension, James W ait, and the climactic scene in Melville's White victorious nations of mankind have taken roo t, rocking their j acket is a spectacular fall from high in the rigging deep into the sea. cradles and setting up their gravesto nes. H e-man or peo pl eCo nrad's "Yo urh" represents rhe characteristic bifocal vision who, putting his trust in the fri endship of the sea, neglects the toward seafaring, here ensconced in a retrospective tale. T he strength and cunni ng of his right hand, is a foo l! As if it we re voyage of the old and rotten Palestine, loaded with combustible too great, too migh ty fo r common virtues, the ocean has no coal, had been a disas ter fro m the outset- raking a severe battering compassion, no faith, no law, no memory. Irs fickl eness is to be from a No rrh Sea gale, decaying in porr while waiting for repairs, held true to men's purposes only by an undaunted reso luri on finall y serring our fo r Bangkok, catching fire ar sea, and sinking and by a sleepless, arm ed, jealous vigilance, in which, perhaps, just short of her des rinarion . Conrad 's narrator and protago nist, th ere has always been more hare than love. Odi et amo may well Marlow, looks back on his yo unger self as he tells rhe tal e of the be rhe co nfession of those who consciously or blindly h ave voyage to older, shore-bound men who had once been seam en. surrendered their existence to rhe fasc ination of the sea. H ere is rh e peroration: ("Initiation," 135 (The Mirror ofthe Sea)) "Ah! T he good old rime-the good old rime. Yo urh and rhe Ir is not surprising that such co ndi tions of seafarin g, taken sea. G lamour and rhe sea! T he good, strong sea, the salt, bitter together, have generated a rich and las ting lirerarure. One imporsea, rhar co uld whisper to yo u and roar ar you and knock yo ur tant literary pattern developed in voyage narratives-initiationbreath our of yo u ... and, rel! me, was n' t rhar rhe best rim e, grows from a seco nd voyage within the Odyssey as T elemachus sails rh ar rim e wh en we were yo ung at sea; yo ung and had nothing, out in search of his fa th er. In its simples t fo rm, an initiation at sea on the sea that gives nothing, except hard knocks-and someputs a yo ung person (usually a boy until recent decades) into an times a chance ro feel yo ur srrengrh- rhar only-whar you un fa miliar situation, tests his or her wo rth in a crisis, and rewards regret?" And we all nodded ar him: rhe man of finance, the man of th ose who pass muster with full acce ptance as adults. T his is rhe design of O utward Bound schools, and iris reflected in much sea acco unts, rhe man of law, we all nodded ar him ove r the literature li ke Rudya rd Kipling's Captains Courageous. M ore com polished table rhar like a still sheet of brown water reflected our plex versions of the pattern are innumerabl e, including T obias faces, lined , wrinkled; our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, Smaller's Roderick Random, Frederi ck M arrya t' s Mr. Midshipman by success, by love; our weary eyes looking still, looking always, Easy, manyofJ amesFenimore Cooper's dozen sea novels, Richard looking anxiously fo r something out of life, th at while it is H enry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast, H erman M elville's expected is already gone-has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a Redburn and White j acket, Joseph Co nrad's "Yo uth," Jack London's flash- together with rhe yo uth, with the strength, with the Sea Wolf Stephen C rane's "T he O pen Boat," and sco res of less romance of illusions. well known bu t memorabl e sea stories. T he mul titude of examples ("Yo uth ," 42 (Garden C ity, 1959) is not surprising, since life ar sea removes rhe initi ate from the Thar final phrase, "the ro mance of illusions," brings us back to rhe
SEA HISTORY 96, SPRING 200 l
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