warp & woof,

[Terrance]

Perhaps history this century, though Eigenvalue, is rippled
with  gathers in its fabric such that if we are situated, as
Stencil seemed to be, at the bottom of a fold, it's
impossible to determine warp, woof of pattern anywhere else.



But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp
and woof: calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm.
There is no steady undertaking progress in this life; we do
not advance through  fixed gradations, and at the last one
pause:- through infancy's unconscious  spell, boyhood's
thoughtless faith, adolescence' doubt (the common doom), 
then scepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in
manhood's pondering  repose of If. But once gone through, we
trace the round again; and are infants,  boys, and men, and
Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor,
whence we unmoor  no more? In what rapt ether sails the
world, of which the weariest will  never weary? Where is the
foundling's father hidden? Our souls are like those  orphans
whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of
our  paternity lies in their grave, and we must
there to learn it. And that same day,  too, gazing far down
from his boat's side into that same golden sea, Starbuck 
lowly murmured:- 

"Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young
bride's eyes!- Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and
thy kidnapping  cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let
fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do  believe." 

And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scale, leaped up in
that same golden light:- 

"I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes
oaths that he has always been jolly!"

Note the Optative mood and how the "intimate communion had
resulted in a partial interchange of character." Poe, Pym,
II. 


http://www.americanliterature.com/MD/MD114.HTML

"Marlow seems to me to enjoy Conrad's complete confidence --
a feeling reinforced by the close similarities between their
two careers." 

Chinua Achebe, "An image of Africa: Racism in Conrad's Heart
of Darkness" 

>From The Norton Critical HoD, third. The Achebe essay is the
weakest and worst part about the edition. Achebe is simply
wrong, Conrad was not, "A Bloody Racist," "A thoroughgoing
racist." 

He was not infected with some colonial/christian virus Otto,
he did not have,  as Achebe says,  "sick yellow eye." 

Conrad can't defend himself, but his work can. 

I hope the Norton 4th edition will omit the Achebe essay.
It's gotten far too much attention as it is. Besides it
draws attention away from the art of one great author and
one of the best ever. 


http://landow.stg.brown.edu/post/achebe/achebeov.html