Pendules, réveils, montres : l’objet et la poétique de l’intempestif dans Far from the Madding Crowd de Thomas Hardy et Lord Jim de Joseph Conrad

Abstract

Both Hardy and Conrad are fascinated by the concepts of timing and mistiming, of kairos (acting at the right time), delayed recognition (belatedness) and event (the irreversible split between before and after). In Far from the Madding Crowd and Lord Jim, timepieces stand out as misplaced or incongruous, like the chronometer watch Brierly leaves hanging on his ship’s rail, the broken clock Jim mends in Patusan, or Gabriel Oak’s momentous one-hand watch. Such timepieces might seem comedic; in fact, they embody representations of time, such as the strict timing of imperial trade and standardized Victorian Britain, as opposed to a more embodied, natural and intuitive perception of time. Jim mends Time when tinkering with a broken clock, while with his broken watch Gabriel Oak must peer through his neighbours’ windows and steer by the stars or the clues given by Nature. In both cases, Conrad and Hardy engage with kairos, the right time, the moment when an action should be performed, an opportunity seized. The inability to act in time triggers the irreversible split between before and after, the wound of that which cannot be changed, materialized by the imp of the clock when Fanny waits in the wrong church, or by the gold watch hanging in Lord Jim, signalling a temporality of despair and chaos rather than measured order.