| | 1 | Author: | Conrad, Joseph, 1857-1924 | Add | | | Title: | A Personal Record  | | | | Published: | 1919 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | | | | Description: | BOOKS may be written in all sorts of
places. Verbal inspiration may enter
the berth of a mariner on board a ship
frozen fast in a river in the middle of a town;
and since saints are supposed to look benignantly on humble believers, I indulge in the
pleasant fancy that the shade of old Flaubert
—who imagined himself to be (among other
things) a descendant of Vikings—might have
hovered with amused interest over the docks
of a 2,000-ton steamer called the Adowa, on
board of which, gripped by the inclement winter
alongside a quay in Rouen, the tenth chapter
of "Almayer's Folly" was begun. With interest, I say, for was not the kind Norman giant
with enormous mustaches and a thundering
voice the last of the Romantics? Was he not,
in his unworldly, almost ascetic, devotion to
his art, a sort of literary, saint-like hermit? | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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