Victory (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

Victory is the last of Conrad's novels set in the Malay Archipelago. A young Axel Heyst emerges from the unhappy shadow of his father, a controversial philisopher, and embarks on self-imposed exile, not only from London, but from humanity. He moves stubbornly in his separate orbit until a chance meeting with a girl who is leading a miserable life with an itinerant orchestra. They elope and try to resume Heyst's habitual seclusion, but the outside world intrudes with brutal and fatal inevitability.

Conrad, as always, writes vividly of the turmoil of man set against the terrible beauty of Nature. His style might seem faintly quaint now, but Victory is in many respects a modern novel. There is a playfulness with which Conrad presents Heyst at first in a slightly ridiculous light, but then peels away the layers of his character to reveal a complex man who is deeply misunderstood. The narrator is elusive and peripheral, which emphasizes the dream-like quality of Heyst's fugue, and rather than unfolding the narrative in a linear fashion, he passes backwards and forwards over events from a constantly shifting perspective.

Conrad comments in the preface that he wrote the last word of the book - its title - in the dying moments of peace before the outbreak of the First World War. Victory, with its skilful blending of the classical and the modern, is is some ways a great novelist's epitaph to a passing age.

I am writing this review of the OUP Oxford World's Classics paperback edition. I gather from the editor's preface that there may be minor textual differences between various editions. The base text is the English first edition with the current editor (Mara Kalnins) overseeing a process of correcting misprints, misspellings and inconsistencies of punctuation. Any residual ambiguities are made the subject of clear editorial notes to be found at the end of the book. In addition the notes explain references in the text which the general reader might not immediately appreciate. There is a short glossary of technical nautical words and words specific to the South East Asian setting of the book with which 21st century readers are likely to be unfamiliar.

This edition also has an informative, lively yet scholarly introduction also by Mara Kilnins which I certainly found helpful in explaining the circumstances in which this book came into existence and Conrad's ideas and experiences which went into the form and substance of the novel.

Victory, as other reviewers have explained, is in essence a simple story. A reclusive Swedish man of some 35 years of age Axel Heyst lives on a small island in the archipelago that stretches between Java and Timor (now Indonesia but then a Dutch Colony called the Dutch East Indies). On the island is a dormant volcano. It is the turn of the 19th/20th centuries. Axel Heyst is a Swede of modest but independent financial means. He spent formative years in London under the tutelage of a father who was a philosopher with a philosophy that any student of Schopenhauer will recognise. Under the influence of this pessimistic Schopenhauerian world view the young man seeks to avoid involvement in life.

However Heyst cannot remain aloof and uninvolved. He cannot suppress his compassion for the suffering of others and in particular he is moved to action by the suffering of a young English girl called Alma, later she and Axel decide on a new name - Lena. She is 19 years old, without family or friends save for a father residing in a home for incurables following a severe stroke. She earns her living playing in an all female touring orchestra. She is cruelly mistreated by those around her. Axel and Alma/Lena meet at a hotel in Surabaya run by the noxious and noisone Wilhelm Schomberg. They form a close bond of compassion and affection. They do what I suppose one might call a "moonlight flit" back to Suraban, the Island where Axel lives.

Can Axel and Lena escape from the cruelties of the world in general and fellow human beings in particular? Well, this is Conrad so I imagine you will be able to supply the answer. I will say no more about how the story unfolds as I do not want to spoil the story for people coming to this novel for the first time. Suffice it so say, this novel gripped me back when I read it at the age of 17 and it has gripped me again at the age of 52.

I found the story of Axel and Alma/Lena touching. ALma/Lena is one of Conrad's most convincingly drawn female characters. In Axel Heyst we find an essentially good man who has the seeds of destruction already within him. Anyone who has experienced the deep and pervading sorrow of existence (and which of us has not?) will, I think, closely empathise with these two brave good people. This is a great novel which for me at least is the pinnacle of Conrad's great achievement.

Just as footnote can I quote a comment about bad music which I, as a music lover, treasure? We meet Alma/Lena when she is playing in a decidedly lacklustre all woman orchestra at the hotel run by the loathsome Schomberg. Conrad observes "The Zangiacomo band was not making music; it was simply murdering silence with a vulgar, ferocious energy."

If any reader wants a quick insight into the Schopenhauerian philosophy that is such an influence on the novel, can I suggest Christopher Janaway's "Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction" OUP 2002? In the alternative R J Hollingdale's introduction to the Penguin "Schopenhauer "Eassys and Aphorisms" covers the ground very well. An in depth study of Schopenhauer is quite an undertaking but these two excellent brief studies will equip any reader with enough Schopenhauer to appreciate his role in this novel or others like Tess, War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Buddenbrooks, any of Borges' novels etc etc

Schopenhauer: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Essays and Aphorisms (Classics)

Although rarely considered Conrad's greatest achievement - and I do rate other novels of his as even better myself - this is my favourite Conrad work. Heyst is an extremely complex and subtel character; his relationship with the woman he "rescues" is sublimely erotic, yet doomed to a plausible, moving and haunting end.
The vindictive hotelkeeper makes for a banal, believable fatal prime mover in the plot; and Mr Jones and his henchmen are successfully portrayed as hilarious and frightening. The enigmatic Chinese servant that floats around Heyst is another memorable minor character.

If you love Conrad, please do read this extraordinary novel.