Yeats's notion of the anti-self or Mask, his theory that creativity is a matter of constructing a dream-identity antithetical to the natural self and the natural world, seems to me very profound and helpful - in fact, just true. 'A writer must die every day he lives, be reborn, as it is said in the Burial Service, an incorruptible self, that self opposite of all that he has named "himself".' The theory certainly most beautifully fits Conrad, that least stoical, most volatile and hypochondriacal of men, who nevertheless created imperishable images of phlegmatic endurance and unquestioning fidelity. 'One admires what one lacks,' he wrote with self-knowledge to his Polish 'aunt' Poradowska. 'That is why I admire perseverance and fidelity and constancy.'

LRB 3 May 1984 | PDF Download