NEW NAPOLEON NOVEL

Hokitika Guardian, 25 June 1921, Page 4

NEW NAPOLEON NOVEL

MR CONRAD’S STUDIES IN CORSICA.

Mr Joseph Conrad, the novelist, lias just returned from a long visit to Corsica, which is likely to be as important an occasion'in literary history, as, say Kingslake’s visit to the East. He has been studying in the library at Ajaccio and composing a novel on the Napoleonic centenary.

Air Conrad spoke to me with great imaginative zest both of Corsica and the times of which he is writing. The novel occupies about 6 weeks during 1815, when Napoleon at Elba, in Mr Conrad's fine phrase was “a spiritual presence” all round tbe Mediterranean—in Spain. Alberia, Barbary, and Italy. The mere fact that lie was there was an active ferment all round tbe circle of the shores, and that, ferment should give unprecedented scope for Air Conrad’s rich and imaginative prose. Some of those Mediterranean shores lie described as crowded with Englishmen, trippers as well as people of distinction. eager to catf-li a glimpse of the prisoned scourge. British vessels were in Genoa, and one of tbe important characters in the novel is. an Englishman stationed there.

EARLY IMAGINATION STIRRED. Mr Conrad lias personal connections with Napoleon who stirred his early imagination. His paternal grandfather, whom he remembers, was an officer under Napoleon in Russia. He lias family letters of the period, and when he himself was a boy in Poland (he was born in 1857) the Napoleonic tradition was still strong.

An interesting point in the novel is that he discussed, though in a vague and general manner, the attractions of a Western Mediterranean story as long ago as 1904 with Col Harvey, the new American Ambassador, then connected with Harper’s. But the idea of this novel—which he disclaims altogether as an historical novel in the usual sente —came *nly three years ago. P .-<e that he had found no very deknuc peg or centre, and he always winni, as he says, “to a climate,” v t •'i, whatever changes occur in th course of the writing, is clear in ' w head before he starts.

CORSICA • UTRTVALS KIVIERA. “But " he continued, “my primary c’ ' • i- always to write a page of ’wvp,” with emphasis on the prose. He needs for that a story of some sort, something that gives full scope for the prose. “In that sense I am it story teller.” He could not, he said, write a purely analytic novel, because it would not give the scope; but even the congenial theme he works “from pnragrnph_jto_ about th e Atlantic and about the Pacific,” hrsaid, “'and felt that T should like to write about the Mediterranean.” j j i j ! !