Mr. Conrad has no ideas, but he has a point of view, a “world”; it can hardly be defined, but it pervades his work and is unmistakable.
—T. S. Eliot, “Kipling Redivivus”
He [James] had a mind so fine no idea could violate it.
—T. S. Eliot, “On Henry James”
From T. S. Eliot, no praise for a novelist could be higher, one must conclude, than to be found without ideas. These two Eliotic quotations, along with manifold affinities, lash Henry James and Joseph Conrad together. As for their affinities, both James and Conrad were precursors of modernism in their profound contemplation upon the endless questions of form in literary creation. In the work of each writer, plot never supersedes artistic purpose and artistic purpose is never separated from moral vision. James invoked one to be a person on whom nothing was lost and, what comes close to the same thing, Conrad affirmed that, in the moral realm, ignorance is no excuse. James loved complication, and Conrad seemed unable to avoid it. Both would be out of business without the extensive use of irony. So many qualities do the two writers share that it is possible to think of Joseph Conrad as Henry James for people who prefer to read about the out-of-doors.
Neither James nor Conrad was unacquainted or unconcerned about ideas, but both felt that the important truths for artists occurred above, beyond, in any case well outside the realm of
