Bookneedle 003 / Embracing the Destructive Element
“In the destructive element immerse.”
Book: Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad
“Go where the pain is!” An idea that would seem counterintuitive to most but for athletes in combative sports, it is a violent and aggressive path to confound the predatory mindset of defenders. Typically, an offensive mindset is to avoid defenders in order to achieve access to the goal whereas those on defense try to punish any attempt to thwart offensive success. To go where the pain is is a strategic move to become the bringer of pain, attacking the defender directly without avoiding contact. There will be pain but with the pain, success, if not initially but mentally to put the defender on notice that the offense will be direct and punishing. Is this what Joseph Conrad was getting at in referring to the the “destructive element” in the Bookneedle?
Destructive Element?
In Lord Jim, the character Stein, a wealthy and respected merchant who is also an entomologist—collecting beetles and butterflies—utters the Bookneedle: “In the destructive element immerse.” It is ambiguous what this “destructive element” is, but there are several interpretations. One critic states that the “destructive element” is “the malevolent Universe or Fate” that is necessarily part of life: “To climb successfully out of the element would be to climb out of life.” (Kenneth B. Newell, Conrad’s Destructive Element). Another, describes the “destructive element” as that which is contained in one’s life’s dream of glory: “the dream is ‘the destructive element’ because it blinds us to a reality that is full of dark powers.” (Bernard J. Paris, Conrad’s Charlie Marlow). A third can simply view it as an allusion based upon an earlier usage by Stein:
A man that is born falls into a dream like a man who falls into the sea. If he tries to climb out into the air as inexperienced people endeavour to do, he drowns—nicht wahr? [trans.: Isn’t that so?] . . . No! I tell you! The way is to the destructive element submit yourself, and with the exertions of your hands and feet in the water make the deep, deep sea keep you up.
It alludes to one swimming, where if you fight with the water and grasp for air, you will sink. Likewise, if you do nothing you will also sink. The key is to swim, to use the water as a means of propelling forward and as a result staying afloat. So, the “destructive element” could be the sea. But there is one additional consideration and that is the story Stein tells before making reference to the “destructive element.”
Stein’s Story
Amidst a traders’ war, Stein is summoned by his friend for a meeting away from his “fortified house.” He leaves his wife with “a brown leather belt over her left shoulder with a revolver in it” and sets off on his horse “for four or five miles” when “[s]uddenly somebody fires a volley—twenty shots at least it seemed to me. I hear bullets sing in my ear, and my hat jumps to the back of my head.” Realizing he walked into an “ambush,” he formulates a plan (”This wants a little management.”) and so fell “slowly forward with my head on his mane,” acting dead. “I get hold of my revolver with my right hand—quiet—quiet. After all, there were only seven of these rascals.” Those rascals emerged to get Stein’s horse, thinking he is dead “and then bang, bang, bang . . . and there are the bodies of three men lying on the ground.” Remaining calm and still, he observes the ruin and notices “something like a faint shadow pass over his forehead.” It is a butterfly—”a rare and so extraordinary perfect specimen,” one he has sought after for many years. He then lost sight of it. He dismounts and slowly searches, “leading my horse and holding my revolver with one hand.” “At last I saw him” and “let go my horse, keep[ing] my revolver in one hand.” Using his “felt hat . . . Flop! I got him!” “[M]y head went round and my legs became so weak with emotion that I had to sit on the ground. . . . Here suddenly I had him in my fingers—for myself!”
Shadows and Light
In Stein’s story, he images a dichotomy between a shadowy depth of reason (run away and be safe and stay still to avoid detection) and a blinding light of passion (get the butterfly regardless of danger), while carefully treading the middle path, holding his revolver in one hand and his felt hat in the other, which parallels the swimming allusion, each dip or grasp teetering on ruin.
For reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction. (Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet)
The light and dark images further reveal the extent of this immersive destruction. Shadows need light to exist so their presence indicates a source of light. “[A]s lights and shadows in pairs that cling.” (Kahil Gibran, The Prophet). Something emerges: “beauty is found in the existence of tension; light and shadow; sound and silence; simplicity and detail; sublime and ordinary; presence and absence; freedom and restraint; wabi and sabi.” (Beth Kempton, Wabi Sabi). There is this potential emergence of positive wonderment out of destructive shadows:
If you catch a whiff of violets from the darkness of the shadow of man / it will be spring in the world, / it will be spring in the world of the living; / wonderment organising itself, heralding itself with the violets,stirring of new seasons. / Ah, do not let me die on the brink of such anticipation! / Worse, let me not deceive myself. (D.H. Lawrence, Look! We Have Come Through!)
It is with this that the butterfly emerges.
The Butterfly
Stein proclaims that the butterfly is a “masterpiece of Nature—the great artist.” Like nature, butterflies epitomize this masterpiece through destruction and immersion. Within a chrysalis, the humble caterpillar liquefies into a yellow goo, a cellular soup, that reconstitutes itself into a butterfly. Does that inform what the “destructive element” Conrad is getting at, to go where you lose yourself for the opportunity to change into something completely different? The juxtaposition between light and dark, pain and pleasure are within the butterfly.
'Look,' said Arkady suddenly, 'a dry maple leaf has come off and is falling to the earth; its movement is exactly like a butterfly's flight. Isn't it strange? Gloom and decay—like brightness and life.' (Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons)
It is the butterfly that is a reminder that even amongst the shadows there is light. One example comes from the movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, a story of a man succumbed to locked-in syndrome (paralyzed but fully intact mentally), struggling to redefine his life and the power of thought. From the movie script there is a passage comparing the character’s medical situation with the steel encasement of a diving bell used to submerge into the depths of water (like the swimming analogy), and that within that depth there can be a butterfly:
JEAN-DO’S VOICE
My diving bell has dragged you down to the bottom of the sea with me.
CUT BACK TO:
EXT. ABOARD A SMALL FISHING BOAT - DAY
CLAUDE
Jean-Do, there is no place I have ever been, that is more beautiful than your thoughts. And if sometimes I am at the bottom of the sea with you, you are also my butterfly.
The scene in the movie leaves out the idea of beauty in thought, but is still impactful:
Another example comes from a painting by Hieronymus Bosch, who placed a butterfly in his depiction of hell.
The Garden of Earthly Delights
But if this destructive element is to lead to ruin and the delusion of a dream as the critics point out, why than did Conrad not kill off Stein as he did with Jim? An answer can be found in Stein quoting Goethe in reflecting on his acquisition of the butterfly:
So halt' ich's endlich denn in meinen Handen, Und nenn' es in gewissem Sinne mein. (Trans.: ‘So I finally hold it in my hands, And call it mine in a sense'.) (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Torquato Tasso)
“Mine” signifies that the beauty in the world can be yours “in a sense” just as the patron of a literary work in Torquato is able to hold an author’s “masterpiece” as a personal wonderment. There is a certain amount of illusion in obtaining a dream - where the butterfly once captured must die to be preserved and the masterpiece can only live if read. This contingency is either accepted (Stein) or refused, becoming the death knell of the “romantic” (Jim). Jim, unlike Stein, will never catch the butterfly because for him, he refuses to let the real poison the ideal.
What About that Pain?
“Go where the pain is!” is immersing yourself in the “destructive element,” where the pain is that force that impedes your personal journey and that force, whether it be physical or mental is yours to overcome in order to reach that which you desire. This does not mean that the amount of pain experienced translates into success or is some kind of measure of effort, rather the pain highlights the accomplishment, making—those final steps in a marathon—the last answer you give to an exam—hitting the submit button on something you write—scoring that goal—realizing the beauty of life after an illness, or capturing that butterfly—the timber, concrete, or steel that forms the pillars of stability in the “destructive element,” which is always there, from the tiger to the mouse:
A man traveling across a field encountered a tiger. He fled,the tiger after him. Coming to a precipice, he caught hold of the root of a wild vine and swung himself down over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Trembling, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger was waiting to eat him. Only the vine sustained him. Two mice, one white and one black, little by little started to gnaw away the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted! (“A Parable” Writings from the Zen Masters).
Do not let the pain become the shadow that shades the dream . . .
Now he felt a certain bitterness, a dark shadow, such as come when moments of destiny pass us by without touching us and the noise of their passing dies away in the distance while we remain alone amid a swirl of dead leaves lamenting the great – and terrible – opportunity we have lost. (Dino Buzzati, Tartar Steppe)
. . . or blind your vision. . .
What shall I say of these save that they too stand in the sunlight, but with their backs to the sun? They see only their shadows, and their shadows are their laws. And what is the sun to them but a caster of shadows? (Kahil Gibran, The Prophet)
. . . instead, go forth, “to the destructive element submit yourself” and find your butterfly.
Books Mentioned
“A Parable” Writings from the Zen Masters. Compiled by Paul Reps. London, Penguin Books, 2009.
Buzzati, Dino. Tartar Steppe. Edinburgh, Conongate Books, 2018.
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim. New York, Bantam Books, 1981.
Eliot, T.S. The Waste Land and Other Writings. New York, Modern Library, 2002.
Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1978.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. “Torquato Tasso” Collected Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Hastings, Delphi Classics, 2013.
Harwood, Ronald. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Adapted Screenplay. Harper Perennial, 2007.
Kempton, Beth. Wabi Sabi: Japanese Wisdom for a Perfectly Imperfect Life. Harper Design, 2018.
Lawrence, D.H. “Look! We Have Come Through!” The Complete Poems of D.H. Lawrence. edited by Vivian de Sola Pinto and F. Warren Roberts, New York, The Viking Press, 1971.
Newell, Kenneth B. Conrad's Destructive Element: The Metaphysical World-view Unifying Lord Jim. Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011.
Paris, Bernard J. Conrad’s Charlie Marlow: A New Approach to “Heart of Darkness” and Lord Jim. Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Turgenev, Ivan. Fathers and Sons. Translated by Constance Garnett, Los Angeles, Enhanced Media, 2016.
