The Phrenological Journal & Haunted Typebox Blog

According to Stein, the esteemed entomologist, Jim’s problem is an inability to match his deeds with his romantic notions. It’s not so much that he jumps ship and violates the moral code, but that he fails his own ideals.

Stein sits in a wunderkammer, surrounded by beetles and butterflies. Chapter XX takes on a gothic cast: shallow pools of light, “the graves of butterflies,” endless hallways, mirrors and flickering candles. The German entomologist, after exulting in the beauty and fragility of the butterfly, says, “We want in so many different ways to be.” The only way to save ourselves from ourselves is Hamlet’s cure, notes Stein: “Or not to be.”

I hover on the edge of this cut-rate exegesis. I want to admit my own faults, my own weakness. I find myself at the end of Stein’s pronouncement, “I tell  you, my friend, it is not good for you to find you cannot make your dream come true, for the reason that you not strong enough are, or not clever enough.”

It’s in these shadowy halls that they ponder Jim’s “to be.” Perhaps it’s a hypothetical one, or perhaps it’s one that results from that strange gothic milieux: is he? This question of existence is hard to grapple, rather like those flickering shadows. We’ll leave it now, maybe it will become more tangible.

Stein and Marlow end on the subject of dreams, those achieved and those let go. Stein is a success, Jim is a failure. Jim seems to wait for an opportunity (and so do I!), and Stein has a biography that asserts that he did not. But his own admission, he too has let things go.

…would that all this were truly ephemeral! How dare it live? It surrounds us, defies us, demands categorization, display, analysis. In a fit of madness we nearly decided to throw it all away. Only then would it fit its definition as ephemera (even as we lose our place as curators!). Then would we be free of this desire to accumulate, to hold on to the past. In our most optimistic moments we say we are making peace with the past, but in our more honest ones? Well, we are opening wounds, suckling on nostalgia, escaping into a labrynth of ever more elaborate construction…

Why does Bierly jump? Why does Jim? For all the latter’s expulcation, we hardly know. We can posit that Bierly jumped because of Jim. Jim seems to stir in all sailors conflicting feelings of guilt and duty. Everyone recognizes the wrong, yet there’s an understanding too, a recognition of the imperfection of man. In short: some mix of duty, indecision, and fear.

Bierly would have Jim vanish, to save the collective soul of mariners all. The Frenchman would excuse the fear, yet not the dishonour. And Marlow? His aims are conflicted (as are Jim’s deeds). He seems to want to salvage some sense of himself, some sense which only unfolds in his telling.

Marlow interogates Jim. But who interogates Marlow? We are invited to his table, and we seek the truth–Marlow’s truth–about Jim. Marlow may be scoundrel or savior; we don’t know. But we are subject to his report, his judgement. A judgement which even Marlow is unsure of.

Die Todesfahrt: The Ride to Death. Whenever we examine a new acquisition we are drawn into its drama, its interplay of symbols and themes. Immediately we look for our humanity in it. In extreme hubris we decide we are the cyclists! Yes! We circle bravely above a pit of danger for the enjoyment of others. We risk life and limb! But no, that is not who we are.

Next we consider ourselves the lion tamer. Surely that is our position. Are we not always between things? Are we not always somehow orchestrating some fierce menagerie? We are truly the center, lamely defended by the barest of threads—but again we are wrong.

I said we look for our humanity—but in such anthropocentrism are we not deceived? The truly observant have found themselves already among the lions.We mistakenly believe we are above, or at the centre, when in truth we are always part and parcel the maelstrom itself! We find ourselves trapped, tormented. And while the crowd gasps at the bravery of the cyclists, what of us? What should befall us if one should in fact fall upon us? Fifteen pounds of metal frame, and bloody well-tailored pulp we dare not eat. And yet we cannot leave. We can only posture our rage.

You thought perhaps we were the spectators? Not all postcards invite us as tourists. Do you see bars in front of you? No, my friend, you and I are always, and only, enclosed.

Newly acquired for the Museum of Unexceptional Ephemera: Die Todesfahrt. Meaning, literally, the death ride. A woodcut postcard, date unknown, probably c. 1900. Verso says “Postekarte”, has address lines and a box for a stamp, but is otherwise blank.

Rigorous analysis to follow.

The Pequod, she is sunk. The whale lives, and all are drowned except Ishmael. This should come as no surprise, as all in Moby Dick is foretold. But never mind. For more reflections on that tome, reference the moleskin in my pocket. It’s all written there.

Lord Jim, the book, is another matter. As is Lord Jim himself. Lord Jim is rather like me, which is to say he’s rather like Don Quixote, filling his head with adventure stories, manufacturing his vision of himself out these legends. Lord Jim is caught in a moment of fear, out of that fear he salvages indifference, strong, wonderful indifference. An indifference that shall gird him, guide him in times of danger. I do the same. I count myself as above that howling mess (whatever mess that is), but am in fact subject to it, until it rears its terrible head. As is Lord Jim. Until Lord Jim can invent himself anew.

Oh sure, I’m mad to go to sea again, to sail again those same treacherous east Indian waters that I’ve only just come up from, ragged clothes barely dry. But as those who know me know, I’m rarely every dry (with the exception of my wit, which is nearly sun-baked).

Back to Lord Jim. Even if the waters are the same, the winds are decidedly different. Moby Dick, steeped as it is in a kind of agnostic fate, still shows a hand, some directing intelligence (maksed variously as pagan, Christian, narrative, mystic). Lord Jim (the person) is decidedly more his agent. His universe more at the whims of cruel irony, than any higher power. We the secularists, we prefer that cruel irony. But that is just the inverse of fate, of divine intelligence.

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