'A sudden passion of anxious impatience rushed
through my veins and gave me such a sense of the
intensity of existence as I have never felt before or
since.' link title to catalogue entry](exact
date?)Written in 1915, The Shadow-Line is based upon
events and experiences from twenty-seven years earlier
to which Conrad returned obsessively in his fiction. A
young sea captain's first command brings with it a
succession of crises: his sea is becalmed, the crew laid
low by fever, and his deranged first mate is convinced
that the ship is haunted by the malignant spirit of a
previous captain. This is indeed a work full of 'sudden
passions', in which Conrad is able to show how the full
intensity of existence can be experienced by the man
who, in the words of the older Captain Giles, is
prepared to 'stand up to his bad luck, to his mistakes,
to his conscience'. A subtle and penetrating analysis of
the nature of manhood, The Shadow-Line investigates
varieties of masculinity and desire in a subtext that
counterpoints the tale's seemingly conventional surface.
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