Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad.

Joseph Conrad (3 December, 1857 – 3 August, 1924) was a Polish-born British novelist, one of the most important and well-respected of all novelists of the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries. Conrad's works emerge out of the confluence of three literary currents prominent in the Europe of Conrad's time: Romanticisim was in full bloom in the Poland of Conrad's early years; Realism had emerged as the dominant mode of literary writing by the time of Conrad's adolesence; and Modernism had, by the end of Conrad's career, become the inescapable style of the 20th century. Conrad no doubt drew on all of these influences; his works draw on the heavy symbolism of the Romantics as well as the matter-of-factness and psychological acuity of the Realist and Modernist schools. Despite these clear affinities, Conrad defies categorization at every turn.

Conrad is perhaps one of the most unique authors in the English literary canon. Born and raised in Poland, Conrad spent part of his youth in France and the majority of his early life at sea; only in his mid-thirties would he settle down, in England, to start a career as a writer, writing not in Polish or in French, but in English, his adopted third language. Few English authors, with the possible exceptions of Henry James and Vladimir Nabokov, were as widely-traveled and broadly educated as Conrad. And few authors, with the exception of the aforementioned novelists, together with Samuel Beckett have been as proficient in a second, much less a third language. His knowledge of languages and cultures, gleaned not only from his European experiences but also from his decades spent as a sailor at sea, can be seen in the eerie glimmering style of his prose, and the enormity of the themes which he constantly brings to the surface. Conrad is virtually a literature unto himself, and his works have inspired writers throughout the twentieth century; the sheer uniqueness of his position in international literary history has made him a focal point for literary studies, and his impact continues to keep his works at the center of scholarly attention.

Biography

Conrad was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski (of the Nałęcz coat-of-arms) in Berdyczów (now Berdychiv, Ukraine) into a highly patriotic landowning noble family. Conrad's father, a writer best known for patriotic tragedies and translator from French and English, was arrested by the Russian authorities in Warsaw for his activities in support of the January Uprising, and was exiled to Siberia. His mother died of tuberculosis in 1865, as did his father four years later in Kraków, leaving Conrad orphaned at the age of eleven.

He was placed in the care of his maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, in Kraków — a more cautious figure than either of his parents. Bobrowski nevertheless allowed Conrad to travel to Marseille and begin a career as a seaman at the age of 17, after the failure to secure Conrad Austro-Hungarian citizenship made him liable for a 25-year conscription into the Russian army. Conrad lived an adventurous life, becoming involved in gunrunning and political conspiracy, which he later used as material for many of his novels.

In 1878, after a failed suicide attempt, Conrad took service on his first British ship. He had learned English before the age of 21, and in 1886 gained both his Master Mariner's certificate and British citizenship. He first arrived in England at the port of Lowestoft, Suffolk, and later lived in London and near Canterbury.

In 1894, aged 36, Conrad put his life at sea behind him in order to become an author. His first novel, Almayer's Folly, set on the east coast of Borneo, was published in English in 1895. He continued to write prolifically, although he largely wrote in obscurity until late in his career, when the publication of the novel Chance finally brought him into fame and success. Ironically, scholars generally agree that the novels written after Chance's publication in 1913 are lesser works than the dark novels Conrad wrote in his earlier years. Conrad continued to write and publish up until his death from a heart attack in 1924, aged 66.

Works

Heart of Darkness

Heart of Darkness, published in 1902, is considered by most to be Conrad's greatest achievement. It was originally serialized in three parts in Blackwood's Magazine (1899). The highly symbolic story is actually a story within a story. The narrator is man whose name we never learn, whose is traveling up the Thames river in the middle of the night with a group of passengers, among them a mysterious traveller named Charlie Marlow. Marlow, without almost any prompting at all, recounts a story of his adventures to the other passengers. Marlow tells the tale of how he was hired by a Belgian trading company to travel up what presumably is the Congo River (although the name of the country Marlow is visiting is never specified in the text) to investigate the work of Kurtz, a Belgian trader in ivory who apparently has gone insane.

As Marlow travels upriver, he witnesses more and more atrocities, becoming utterly disgusted with the imperialist Belgians who have employed him. These fictionalized accounts almost certainly draw on Conrad's own experiences. Eight years before he wrote the novel he had served as a captain aboard a Congo steamer; on a single trip up the river, he witnessed so many atrocities that he quit on the spot. The Belgian Congo of that time, under the rule of the tyrannical King Leopold, was notorious even among imperial colonies for its brutality and oppression. Marlow's travel up the river follows a similar descent, and by the time Marlow reaches Kurtz — who has indeed gone insane and installed himself as a tyrannical god-king among the natives — he is no longer sure whether fulfilling his mission of bringing Kurtz to the authorities would do any justice at all in such a lawless place.

Themes

The title suggests the main theme of the novel, darkness. Conrad's darkness alludes to the unknown and the barbarous, contrasted with the "light of civilization". But moral issues are not clear-cut; that which ought to be on the side of "light" is often in fact mired in darkness. The contrast of barbarity and civilization cuts both ways. Perhaps the most apt (and vexing) image contained within the text for this muddling of light and darkness can be found in the form of a painting which Marlow discovers along his journey: the painting is of the traditional figure of the blindfolded goddess of Justice; but instead of holding a scale, she carries a torch, and is painted on a background of tremendous darkness. Marlow, holding a candle, moves closer to the painting, to try to make sense of it; but at the moment the candle goes out. The painting, as it turns out, was painted by none other than Kurtz a year before he departed for the Congo. The irony and peculiarity of the scene — with an image of blind Justice bringing light to darkness, and Marlow bringing a light to the image, only to have it go out at the moment he thinks he can discern the meaning of the picture — all reflect on the manifold levels of lightness and darkness as they ripple throughout this anomalous text. In the end, this sense of darkness also lends itself to a related theme of obscurity, reflecting the ambiguousness of the work as a whole.

Elsewhere, early in the novella, the narrator recounts how London, the largest, most populous and wealthiest city in the world, where Conrad wrote and where a large part of his audience lived, was itself in Roman times a dark part of the world much like the Congo is now. The theme of darkness lurking beneath the surface of even "civilized" persons is further explored through the character of Kurtz and through Marlow's passing sense of understanding with the Africans.

Legacy

It is remarkable to many readers that Conrad wrote in his third language, English. Not only did he forego writing in French (which, in Conrad's time, was the lingua franca of the educated classes), but he adopted English with such a fluency of command that most readers are surprised to learn that the author of such marvelous fictions was not writing in his native language. This phenomenon is the basis of what some linguists (e.g., T. Scovel, 1988) refer to as the "Joseph Conrad effect": while some language learners may easily be discernible from native speakers by their non-standard phonology pronounciation, they may be regarded as native speakers in terms of their syntax, morphology and lexicon. Although Conrad may have been noticeably foreign when speaking aloud, his mastery of the grammar and style of English was so thorough that his writing is indistinguishable from that of any native English author. In fact, some of Conrad's stylistic originality in English may be attributable to his command of other languages, which offered him a richer palette of idiom and image.

Conrad's literary work bridges the gap between the realist literary tradition of writers such as Charles Dickens and Honore de Balzac and the emergent Modernist schools of writing. His prose is not nearly as abstruse as the likes of pure Modernists such as Joyce or Woolf. Although Conrad deploys some of the modernist techniques (most notably, the interior monologue) he still retains all the trappings of a standard, realistic narrative. Nevertheless, his works, like those of Henry James, effuse a certain ethereal quality, suggesting a symbolic resonance of layers of meaning that go beyond the level of the plot. Heart of Darkness is perhaps Conrad's most masterful display of this strange aspect of his fiction: on the one hand, at the level of the narrative it is a rather straight-forward story of a man traveling up the river of the Congo to apprehend a lunatic; but in the symbolic register, there are layers of uncanny detail: the way the tale of going up the Congo river is being related by a narrator going up another dark river of his own; the way the novel itself is a story within a story, with the real narrator never being named nor ever identified, and the veracity of all the story's narrators left open to murky doubt.

Interestingly, Conrad despised Dostoevsky, another Slavc writer often cited as marking the transition between realist and modern fiction. Conrad despised Russian writers as a rule, due to his parents' deaths at the hands of the Russian authorities, and he made an exception only for Ivan Turgenev.

In addition to Heart of Darkness, which has been seen as a scathing indictment of colonialism and which gazes unflinchingly into the depths of despair, Conrad's "golden period" of novels begins with Lord Jim (1901) and includes Nostromo, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes, all of which deal in one way or another with the extremely problematic history of imperialism and colonialism in the 19th century. These novels are all notable as the highest exemplars of Conrad's nebulous, psychological style where the minds and voices of characters intermingle freely with the loose prose of the narrative.

Style

As an artist, Conrad famously aspired, in his preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897), "by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel... before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand — and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask."

Writing in what was the age of Symbolism in poetry and Impressionism in the visual arts, Conrad showed himself in many of his works a prose poet of the highest order: thus, for instance, in the evocative Patna and courtroom scenes of Lord Jim; in the "melancholy-mad elephant" and gunboat scenes of Heart of Darkness; in the doubled protagonists of The Secret Sharer; Conrad created a style that was at the same time deliberate and measured while at the same time nebulous. Hence, one might suggest that Conrad was perhaps a sort of prose Impressionist, in that, like the painters of France with whom he was familiar, he strived to create works that duplicated the sense of impressionisme — that sense, as he articulates above, of seeing, ever so briefly, a glimpse of the sudden, ephemeral truth.

Criticism

Chinua Achebe has argued that Conrad's language and imagery is inescapably racist, probably in large part on account of his first few novels, which show little insight into the natives he describes. Conrad associated the wild with despair, death, and savage, inhuman acts; nevertheless, in his depiction of London and industrial man he paints a similarly gloomy picture. He uses this symbolism in many of his novels, but most powerfully in Heart of Darkness, where he shows, as many readers will agree, that the racist imperialism of the British made them into far worse savages than any of those they ever colonized.

Europeans and Africans are portrayed as being at different stages in their cultural development, which does not necessarily mean that Conrad felt Africans to be inferior. Anyone aware of Conrad's other work will know how critical he is of modern civilization. Indeed, Kurtz's savage African truths are presented as almost attractive and superior to modern European civilization. Conrad seems to imply that what Imperial Rome once did to northern Europe, imperial Europe was doing to the whole world; whether this was a good or a bad thing, remains ambiguous in Conrad's assessment of history.

Novels and novellas

1895	Almayer's Folly
1896	An Outcast of the Islands
1897	The Nigger of the 'Narcissus'
1899	Heart of Darkness
1900	Lord Jim
1901	The Inheritors (with Ford Madox Ford)
1902	Typhoon (begun 1899)
1903	Romance (with Ford Madox Ford)
1904	Nostromo
1907	The Secret Agent
1911	Under Western Eyes
1913	Chance
1915	Victory
1917	The Shadow Line
1919	The Arrow of Gold
1920	The Rescue
1923	The Nature of a Crime (with Ford Madox Ford)
	'The Rover
1925	Suspense (unfinished, published posthumously)

Short stories

• "The Idiots" (Conrad's first short story; written during his honeymoon, published in Savo 1896 and collected in Tales of Unrest, 1898).
• "The Black Mate" (written, according to Conrad, in 1886; published 1908; posthumously collected in Tales of Hearsay, 1925).
• "The Lagoon" (composed 1896; published in Cornhill Magazine 1897; collected in Tales of Unrest, 1898).
• "An Outpost of Progress" (written 1896 and named in 1906 by Conrad himself, long after the publication of Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, as his 'best story'; published in Cosmopolis 1897 and collected in Tales of Unrest 1898; often compared to Heart of Darkness, with which it has numerous thematic affinities).
• "The Return" (written circa early 1897; never published in magazine form; collected in Tales of Unrest, 1898; Conrad, presaging the sentiments of most readers, once remarked, "I hate it").
• "Karain: A Memory" (written February–April 1897; published Nov. 1897 in Blackwood's and collected in Tales of Unrest, 1898).
• "Youth" (written in 1898; collected in Youth, a Narrative and Two Other Stories, 1902)
• "Falk" (novella/story, written in early 1901; collected only in Typhoon and Other Stories, 1903).
• "Amy Foster" (composed in 1901; published the Illustrated London News, Dec. 1901 and collected in Typhoon and Other Stories, 1903).
• "To-morrow" (written early 1902; serialized in Pall Mall Magazine, 1902 and collected in Typhoon and Other Stories, 1903).
• "The End of the Tether" (written in 1902; collected in Youth, a Narrative and Two Other Stories, 1902)
• "Gaspar Ruiz" (written after "Nostromo" in 1904–1905|05; published in Strand Magazine in 1906 and collected in A Set of Six, 1908 UK/1915 US. This story was the only piece of Conrad's fiction ever adapted by the author for cinema, as Gaspar the Strong Man, 1920).
• "An Anarchist" (written in late 1905; serialized in Harper's in 1906; collected in A Set of Six, 1908 UK/1915 US.)
• "The Informer" (written before January 1906; published in December 1906 in Harper's and collected in A Set of Six, 1908 UK/1915 US.)
• "The Brute" (written in early 1906; published in The Daily Chronicle in December 1906; collected in A Set of Six, 1908 UK/1915 US.)
• "The Duel" (aka "The Point of Honor": serialized in the UK in Pall Mall Magazine in early 1908 and in the US periodical Forum later that year; collected in A Set of Six in 1908 and published by Garden City Publishing in 1924. Joseph Fouché makes a cameo appearance)
• "Il Conde" (i.e., 'Conte' [count]: appeared in Cassell's [UK] 1908 and Hampton's [US] in 1909; collected in A Set of Six, 1908 UK/1915 US.)
• "The Secret Sharer" (written December 1909; published in Harper's and collected in Twixt Land and Sea 1912)
• "Prince Roman" (written 1910, published in 1911 in the Oxford and Cambridge Review; based upon the story of Prince Roman Sanguszko of Poland 1800–1881)
• "A Smile of Fortune" (a long story, almost a novella, written in mid-1910; published in London Magazine in Feb. 1911; collected in Twixt Land and Sea 1912)
• "Freya of the Seven Isles" (another near-novella, written late 1910–early 1911; published in Metropolitan Magazine and London Magazine in early 1912 and July 1912, respectively; collected in Twixt Land and Sea 1912)
• "The Partner" (written in 1911; published in Within the Tides, 1915)
• "The Inn of the Two Witches" (written in 1913; published in Within the Tides, 1915)
• "Because of the Dollars" (written in 1914; published in Within the Tides, 1915)
• "The Planter of Malata" (written in 1914; published in Within the Tides, 1915)
• "The Warrior's Soul" (written late 1915–early 1916; published in Land and Water, in March 1917; collected in Tales of Hearsay, 1925)
• "The Tale" (Conrad's only story about WWI; written 1916 and first published 1917 in Strand Magazine)

Memoirs and Essays

• The Mirror of the Sea (collection of autobiographical essays first published in various magazines 1904-6 ), 1906
• A Personal Record (also published as Some Reminiscences), 1912
• Notes on Life and Letters, 1921
• Last Essays, 1926

External links

• The Joseph Conrad Society (U.K)
• Conrad First: a digital archive of every newspaper and magazine in which the work of Joseph Conrad appeared between 1896 and 1935
• The Complete works are available from eBooks@Adelaide
• Works by Joseph Conrad. Project Gutenberg
• Free audiobook of The Secret Agent from LibriVox
• Penn State's Electronic Classics Series has 26 Works of Joseph Conrad available for free Joseph Conrad at Penn State's Electronic Classics
• Joseph Conrad at kirjasto.sci.fi
• Heart of Darkness text at American Literature
• Chinua Achebe: The Lecture Heard Around The World
• Collected Letters, vol. 6 (1917-1919) - PDF
• Find-A-Grave profile for Joseph Conrad
• Conrad's page at Literary Journal.com-a number of research articles on Conrad's work

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