judged by his best work. So it only remained for Heart of
Darkness, The Nigger of the "Narcissus," Lord Jim, and
Nostromo to be rediscovered, for Conrad to come into his
own. Now the resurgence of his fame is overwhelming.

Of course, the chief reason for this soaring popularity is
that Conrad is an artist who combines a great storytelling gift
with psychological insight and philosophical depth. He grips
our attention -- we want to learn what will happen next. He
interests us profoundly in the fate and nature of his characters,
as any successful novelist must do. But beneath the melo-
dramatic surface of the story is an ethical problem that worries
him, and that he would like to solve, and that soon also engages
the mind of the mature, thoughtful reader. A similar combina-
tion of story appeal and intellectual challenge and involve-
ment is found in Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. We follow
the fortunes of Hamlet and Pierre Bezukhoi and Raskolnikov
as heroes in a tragic adventure, and we also share the concern
of their author with their basic moral dilemmas. To his dismay,
Conrad was looked upon at first as a mere "sea-writer," a
romancer. But he himself has a character say, in Under West-
ern Eyes, "Moral discovery should be the object of every tale."
This is one of its many aspects that makes Lord Jim so reward-
ing to read a second time, to enable us to grasp its other
meanings, after our natural, primitive curiosity about the phys-
ical outcome of the plot is satisfied. Albert Guerard has coined
an excellent phrase for Lord Jim; he describes it as a "psycho-
moral drama."

But there are still other reasons for Conrad's new popularity.
Our age is greatly concerned with the protests and unrest of
colonial peoples; ours is also a violently revolutionary time.
To his Edwardian readers, in more serene days, Conrad's
material tended to seem somewhat remote. Today he is recog-
nized as having grimly foreseen the rebellion against imperial-
ism that has been sweeping our globe. His travels in the Congo,
set down so powerfully in Heart of Darkness, now have a
horrifying immediacy. He brings equally close to us the op-
pressed, exploited peoples of Southeast Asia, helping us to
understand them, as companions, friends, lovers, foes. Simi-
larly, his novels laid in European countries, Under Western

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