In search of shadow, in search of wind

text published on C3 Magazine, n.327

versione italiana

Glowing shadow

Only the young have such moments. I don’t mean the very young. No. The very young have, properly speaking, no moments. It is the privilege of early youth to live in advance of its days in all the beautiful continuity of hope which knows no pauses and no introspection.

One closes behind one the little gate of mere boyishness – and enters an enchanted garden. Its very shades glow with promise. Every turn of the paths has its seduction. And it isn’t because it is an undiscovered country. One knows well enough that all mankind had streamed that way. It is the charm of universal experience from which one expects an uncommon or personal sensation – a bit of one’s own.

One goes on recognizing the landmarks of the predecessor, excited, amused, taking the hard luck and the good luck together – the kicks and the half-pence, as the saying is – the picturesque common lot that holds so many possibilities for the deserving or perhaps for the lucky. Yes. One goes on. And the time, too, goes on – till one perceives ahead a shadow-line warning one that the region of early youth, too, must be left behind.

Joseph Conrad, The Shadow-Line, 1917

The words that open Joseph Conrad’s novel describe the crossing of thresholds that, in the course of life, force the man to cope with major inner changes, and to move in a clear and conscious way, from very young, to young, and then to adult.

Conrad’s preamble is also a short eulogy for an age that brings a contemporary sense of hope, a happy and natural acceptance of one’s own condition of life. In youth the man is able to distinguish good from evil and to place them on an equal footing, not as a consequence one of each other or in opposition, but as elements that are simultaneously necessary to give fullness to the self.