Victory

Victory

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Victory, by Joseph Conrad (#27 in
our series by Joseph Conrad)
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Title: Victory
Author: Joseph Conrad
Release Date: August, 2004 [EBook #6378] [Yes, we are more than
one year ahead of schedule] [This file was first posted on December 3,

2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, VICTORY
***

Transcribed by Tracy Camp.

VICTORY: AN ISLAND TALE

NOTE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The last word of this novel was written on 29 May 1914. And that last
word was the single word of the title.
Those were the times of peace. Now that the moment of publication
approaches I have been considering the discretion of altering the
title-page. The word "Victory" the shining and tragic goal of noble
effort, appeared too great, too august, to stand at the head of a mere
novel. There was also the possibility of falling under the suspicion of
commercial astuteness deceiving the public into the belief that the book
had something to do with war.
Of that, however, I was not afraid very much. What influenced my
decision most were the obscure promptings of that pagan residuum of
awe and wonder which lurks still at the bottom of our old humanity.
"Victory" was the last word I had written in peace-time. It was the last
literary thought which had occurred to me before the doors of the

Temple of Janus flying open with a crash shook the minds, the hearts,
the consciences of men all over the world. Such coincidence could not
be treated lightly. And I made up my mind to let the word stand, in the
same hopeful spirit in which some simple citizen of Old Rome would
have "accepted the Omen."
The second point on which I wish to offer a remark is the existence (in
the novel) of a person named Schomberg.
That I believe him to be true goes without saying. I am not likely to
offer pinchbeck wares to my public consciously. Schomberg is an old
member of my company. A very subordinate personage in Lord Jim as
far back as the year 1899, he became notably active in a certain short
story of mine published in 1902. Here he appears in a still larger part,
true to life (I hope), but also true to himself. Only, in this instance, his
deeper passions come into play, and thus his grotesque psychology is
completed at last.
I don't pretend to say that this is the entire Teutonic psychology; but it
is indubitably the psychology of a Teuton. My object in mentioning
him here is to bring out the fact that, far from being the incarnation of
recent animosities, he is the creature of my old deep-seated, and, as it
were, impartial conviction.
J. C.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

On approaching the task of writing this Note for Victory, the first thing
I am conscious of is the actual nearness of the book, its nearness to me
personally, to the vanished mood in which it was written, and to the
mixed feelings aroused by the critical notices the book obtained when
first published almost exactly a year after the beginning of the war. The
writing of it was finished in 1914 long before the murder of an Austrian
Archduke sounded the first note of warning for a world already full of

doubts and fears.
The contemporaneous very short Author's Note which is preserved in
this edition bears sufficient witness to the feelings with which I
consented to the publication of the book. The fact of the book having
been published in the United States early in the year made it difficult to
delay its appearance in England any longer. It came out in the thirteenth
month of the war, and my conscience was troubled by the awful
incongruity of throwing this bit of imagined drama into the welter of
reality,