Joseph Conrad: Nostromo

PART THIRD: THE LIGHTHOUSE 10. CHAPTER TEN (continued)

He spent the night open-eyed, and when the day broke he ate
something with the same indifference. The brilliant "Son
Decoud," the spoiled darling of the family, the lover of Antonia
and journalist of Sulaco, was not fit to grapple with himself
single-handed. Solitude from mere outward condition of existence
becomes very swiftly a state of soul in which the affectations of
irony and scepticism have no place. It takes possession of the
mind, and drives forth the thought into the exile of utter
unbelief. After three days of waiting for the sight of some human
face, Decoud caught himself entertaining a doubt of his own
individuality. It had merged into the world of cloud and water,
of natural forces and forms of nature. In our activity alone do
we find the sustaining illusion of an independent existence as
against the whole scheme of things of which we form a helpless
part. Decoud lost all belief in the reality of his action past
and to come. On the fifth day an immense melancholy descended
upon him palpably. He resolved not to give himself up to these
people in Sulaco, who had beset him, unreal and terrible, like
jibbering and obscene spectres. He saw himself struggling feebly
in their midst, and Antonia, gigantic and lovely like an
allegorical statue, looking on with scornful eyes at his
weakness.

Not a living being, not a speck of distant sail, appeared within
the range of his vision; and, as if to escape from this solitude,
he absorbed himself in his melancholy. The vague consciousness of
a misdirected life given up to impulses whose memory left a
bitter taste in his mouth was the first moral sentiment of his
manhood. But at the same time he felt no remorse. What should he
regret? He had recognized no other virtue than intelligence, and
had erected passions into duties. Both his intelligence and his
passion were swallowed up easily in this great unbroken solitude
of waiting without faith. Sleeplessness had robbed his will of
all energy, for he had not slept seven hours in the seven days.
His sadness was the sadness of a sceptical mind. He beheld the
universe as a succession of incomprehensible images. Nostromo was
dead. Everything had failed ignominiously. He no longer dared to
think of Antonia. She had not survived. But if she survived he
could not face her. And all exertion seemed senseless.