Preface to The Nigger of the "Narcissus"
in The Manitoba Free Press (Winnipeg, Canada) (Sep 3, 1904): (Page imagery not yet available)
- Collected as Preface to "The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'" in The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897)
- First serialized as Author's Note in The New Review (London, UK) (Dec 1897)
- Subsequently extracted as The Art of Fiction in The New York Times (New York, NY, USA) (Aug 13, 1904)
- Subsequently extracted as His Literary Creed in The San Francisco Call (San Francisco, CA, USA) (Aug 21, 1904)
- Subsequently serialized as Joseph Conrad's Literary Creed in The San José Mercury News (San José, CA, USA) (Sep 4, 1904)
- Subsequently serialized as Joseph Conrad's Literary Creed in The Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta, GA, USA) (Sep 11, 1904)
- Subsequently serialized as The Art of Fiction in The Evening News (Glasgow, UK) (Mar 13, 1905)
- Subsequently serialized as The Art of Fiction in Harper's Weekly (New York, NY, USA) (May 13, 1905)
- Subsequently serialized as The Art of Fiction in The Literary Digest (New York, NY, USA) (May 27, 1905)
- Subsequently serialized as The Art of Fiction in The Editor; the Journal of Information for Literary Workers (New York, NY, USA) (Jul 1905)
- Subsequently extracted as Fiction as an Art in The Lewiston Evening Journal (Lewiston, ME, USA) (Jul 18, 1905)
- Subsequently extracted as Preface to "The Nigger of The Narcissus" in Waterloo Evening Courier (Waterloo, IA, USA) (Aug 24, 1928)
- Subsequently extracted as The Task of the Artist in Carnegie Magazine (Pittsburgh, PA, USA) (Jan 1959)
View in Internet Archive BookReader (experimental). Click here to read Jeremy Hawthorn's featured page essay on the serialization The Nigger of the "Narcissus".
p.8. Passage reads:
"Joseph Conrad has achieved what is probably the most noteworthy descriptive style of any author writing in English. He has recently allowed himself to be quoted in regard to his literary creed as follows:
'It is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage. The sincere endeavour to accomplish that creative task, to go as far on that road as his strength will carry him, to go undeterred by faltering, weariness or reproach, is the only valid justification for the worker in prose. And if his conscience is clear, his answer to those who in the fulness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who demand to be promptly improved, or encouraged, or frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must run thus:--My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see. That--and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm--all you demand--and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.'"
"Joseph Conrad has achieved what is probably the most noteworthy descriptive style of any author writing in English. He has recently allowed himself to be quoted in regard to his literary creed as follows:
'It is only through complete, unswerving devotion to the perfect blending of form and substance; it is only through an unremitting never-discouraged care for the shape and ring of sentences that an approach can be made to plasticity, to colour, and that the light of magic suggestiveness may be brought to play for an evanescent instant over the commonplace surface of words: of the old, old words, worn thin, defaced by ages of careless usage. The sincere endeavour to accomplish that creative task, to go as far on that road as his strength will carry him, to go undeterred by faltering, weariness or reproach, is the only valid justification for the worker in prose. And if his conscience is clear, his answer to those who in the fulness of a wisdom which looks for immediate profit, demand specifically to be edified, consoled, amused; who demand to be promptly improved, or encouraged, or frightened, or shocked, or charmed, must run thus:--My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel--it is, before all, to make you see. That--and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm--all you demand--and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.'"