Out of Context

While yesterday was our 60th Out of Context reading, today is our 70th post overall.

Lord Jim
Joseph Conrad

Such was the history of the man whom I had come to consult upon Jim’s case without any definite hope. Simply to hear what he would have to say would have been a relief. I ws very anxious, but I respected the intense, almost passionate, absorption with which he looked at a butterfly, as though on the bronze sheen of these frail wings, in the white tracings, in the gorgeous markings, he could see other things, an image of something as perishable and defying destruction as these delicate and lifeless tissues displaying a splendour unmarred by death.

“Marvellous!” he repeated, looking up at me. “Look! The beauty–but that is nothing–look at the accuracy, the harmony. And so fragile! And so strong! And so exact! This is Nature–the balance of colossal forces. Every star is so–and every blade of grass stands so–and the mighty Kosmos in perfect equilibrium produces–this. This wonder; this masterpiece of Nature–the great artist.”

“Never heard an entomologist go on like this,” I observed cheerfully. “Masterpiece! And what of man?”

“Man is amazing, but he is not a masterpiece,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the glass case. “Perhaps the artist was a little mad. Eh? What do you think? Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should he want all the place?”