Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 1996. Vol. 1. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 24)
Tibor Tóth: Conrad's 'Secret Garden'
T. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets" convincingly reinstate the love of God as the very meaning of life and to support his search for divine love, Eliot insists on a similar interpretation of time, space and morality, emphasising the validity of the Heraclitean 'river of stream' and continuous flux. Or say that the end precedes the beginning, And the end and the beginning were always there Before the beginning and after the end. And all is always now. ( T. S. Eliot: East Coker) The meaning of the two discourses can be only interpreted through their retroactive assessment, and in this reassessment we have to accept Marlow's help. There are 'mouse-traps,' that is, moments which dramatise the required strategy of interpretation in the novella itself. For example when Marlow realises that the man he thought to be divine is a monster, he has to search back and reinterpret both discourses. When he realises that the idol he has created has the power to deconstruct him, Marlow disclaims authority over him, but later he revises his attitude both intellectually and practically. The third discourse offers a vision of past in present with the definite ambition to contain future. It is essentially modernist in that it discloses the knowledge that we cannot know the truth about heaven and hell or ourselves, and warns us about the dangers of ignoring our limitations. However, the progressive and regressive quality it assumes tells us that we still need to believe that we can know. References Achebe, Chinua: "An Image of Africa" The Massachusetts Review , 18 (1977) 785-792. Baines, Joycelin: Joseph Conrad , London: Macmillan, 1960. Brantlinger, Patrick, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830-1914 , Itacha: Cornell University Press, 1988. Frye, Northrop: The Great Code, Toronto: Academic Press Canada, 1982. 177
