Joseph Conrad ( Polish pronunciation: Ã, ['juz ?? f? k? n.rad ] JÃÆ'³zef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski <3 December 1857 - August 3, 1924) is a Polish-English writer who is considered one of the greatest novelists who write in English. Although he does not speak English fluently until his twenties, he is a prime positioning director who brings non-English sensitivity into English literature. Conrad wrote stories and novels, many with nautical settings, depicting human soul trials in the midst of what he saw as an unshakable and incomprehensible universe.
Conrad is considered to be an early modernist, though his work contains elements of 19th century realism. Narrative style and anti-heroic character have influenced many writers, and many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, his works. Many writers and critics have commented that Conrad's fictional works, written mostly in the first two decades of the 20th century, seem to have anticipated the events of the world later.
Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad is fascinating, among other things, on his national experience in Poland and his own experience in the French and British navy, to create short stories and novels reflecting aspects of the world dominated by Europe. - including imperialism and colonialism - and it severely explores the human psyche.
Video Joseph Conrad
Life
Initial years
Conrad was born on December 3, 1857 in Berdychiv, Ukraine, part of the Russian Empire; this region was once part of the Polish Empire. He is the only child of Apollo Korzeniowski - a writer, translator, political activist, and revolutionary candidate - and his wife Ewa Bobrowska. He was baptized by Jod Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski after the maternal grandfather of JÃÆ'³zef, the grandfather of Teodor's father, and the heroes (both named "Konrad") of two poems by Adam Mickiewicz, Dziady > and Konrad Wallenrod , and known to his family as "Konrad" instead of "JÃÆ'³zef".
Although most of the surrounding population is Ukrainian, and most of Berdychiv's population is Jewish, almost all rural areas are owned by Polish szlachta (royals), where the Conrad family is the bearer from Na'z fur coat. Polish literature, particularly of patriotic literature, is highly regarded by the Polish population of the area.
The Korzeniowski family has played an important role in Polish efforts to regain independence. Conrad's father, Teodor, had served under the prince JÃÆ'³zef Poniatowski during the Napoleonic Russian campaign and had formed his own cavalry squadron during the November 1830 Rebellion. Conrad's highly patriotic father, Apollo, was a member of the "Red" political faction, whose purpose was to rebuild border of Poland's pre-partition, but also advocated land reform and the abolition of slavery. Conrad's subsequent refusal to follow in the footsteps of Apollo, and his choice to seclude himself above the resistance, was a source of Conrad's lifelong plea of ​​guilt.
Due to his father's efforts in farming and his political activities, the family repeatedly moved. In May 1861 they moved to Warsaw, where Apollo joined the resistance against the Russian Empire. This led to his imprisonment in Pavilion X of the Warsaw Fort. Conrad will write: "[I] in the Castle page - which is typical for our nation - my childhood memories begin." On May 9, 1862, Apollo and his family were exiled to Vologda, 500 kilometers (310 mi) north of Moscow and known for its poor climate. In January 1863, the penalty of Apollo was commuted, and the family was sent to Chernihiv in northeastern Ukraine, where conditions were much better. However, on 18 April 1865 Ewa died of tuberculosis.
Apollo did his best for Conrad public school. The boy's early reading introduced him to two elements that later dominated his life: in Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea he discovered the sphere of activity he would use for his youth; Shakespeare took him to the orbit of English literature. Most importantly, he reads Polish Romantic poetry. Half a century later he explained that "The authenticity in my work comes from Mickiewicz and S? Owacki." My father read [Mickiewicz's] Pan Tadeusz aloud to me and made me read it aloud.... I used to choose [Mickiewicz's] Konrad Wallenrod [and] Gra yna .Then I prefer S? owacki.You know why S? owacki?... [He is the soul all Polish] ".
In December 1867, Apollo took his son to Austria-held Poland, which for two years had enjoyed internal freedom and self-government. After the sojourns in LwÃÆ'³w and some smaller areas, on February 20, 1869 they moved to KrakÃÆ'³w (up to 1596 Polish capitals), as well as in Polish Austria. A few months later, on May 23, 1869, Apollo Korzeniowski died, leaving Conrad an orphan at the age of eleven. Like Conrad's mother, Apollo was seriously ill with tuberculosis.
The young Conrad was placed in the care of Ewa's brother, Tadeusz Bobrowski. Conrad's poor health and unsatisfactory schoolwork caused his uncle to constantly experience problems and endless financial costs. Conrad is not a good student; despite tutoring, he excels only in geography. Since the boy's illness was obviously from a nervous breakdown, doctors suspect that fresh air and physical work will harden it; his uncle hopes that clearly defined tasks and hard work will teach him discipline. Because he showed little desire to learn, it was important for him to learn to trade; Her uncle sees him as a seaman-cum-entrepreneur who will combine maritime skills with commercial activities. In fact, in the fall of 1871, the thirteen-year-old Conrad announced his intention to become a sailor. He later recalled that as a child he had read (apparently in French translation) Leopold McClintock's book of the 1857-59 expedition in Fox, in search of the lost Sir John Franklin ships > Erebus and Terror . He also recalled reading books by American James Fenimore Cooper and England Captain Frederick Marryat. A teenage playmate remembers that Conrad spun the fantastic threads, always placed in the sea, presented so realistically that the listeners thought that the action took place before their eyes.
In August 1873, Bobrowski sent the fifteen-year-old Conrad to LwÃÆ'³w to a cousin who ran a small boardinghouse for children orphaned by the 1863 Rebellion; group conversations are in French. The owner's daughter told me:
He stayed with us for ten months... He's intellectually advanced but he does not like school routines, which he finds tiring and boring; he often said... he... was planning to be a great writer.... He did not like all the restrictions. At home, at school, or in the living room he would be lying unceremoniously. He... suffered [headaches] from severe headaches and nervous attacks...
Conrad had been in the place for more than a year when in September 1874, for an uncertain reason, his uncle transferred him from school in LwÃÆ'³w and took him back to KrakÃÆ'³w.
On October 13, 1874, Bobrowski sent the sixteen-year-old boy to Marseilles, France, to plan a career at sea. Although Conrad has not finished high school, his achievements include fluency in French (with correct accent), some knowledge of Latin, German and Greek, perhaps a good knowledge of history, some geography, and perhaps interest in physics. She is well read, especially in Polish Romantic literature. He belonged only to the second generation in his family who had to earn a living outside the family plantation: he was a member of the second generation of intellectuals, a social class that began to play an important role in Central and Eastern Europe.. He has absorbed quite a lot of history, culture and literature from his native land to finally be able to develop a distinctive world view and make a unique contribution to his adoptive British literature. The tension that comes from his childhood in Poland and grown in his adult years overseas will bring about Conrad's greatest literary achievements. Zdzis? Aw Najder, himself a Polish immigrant, observes:
Living away from one's natural environment - family, friends, social groups, language - even if it is the result of conscious decisions, usually raises... internal tension, as it tends to make people less confident, more vulnerable, less certain... their position and... value... Poland szlachta
It has been argued that when Conrad left Poland, he was anxious and forever with his past in Poland. In this denial, Najder quotes from the letter of 14 August 1883 Conrad to family friend Stefan Buszczy? Ski, written nine years after Conrad left Poland:
... I always remember what you said when I went [KrakÃÆ'w:] Remember, "You say-" wherever you can sail, you sail for Poland! "
That I never forget, and will never forget!
Citizenship
Conrad is a Russian citizen, born in the former Russian part of Poland-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In December 1867, with the permission of the Russian government, his father, Apollo, had taken him to the Austrian part of the former Commonwealth country, which enjoys internal freedom and self-government level. After his father's death, Conrad's uncle, Bobrowski, tried to secure Austrian citizenship for him - it was useless, probably because Conrad did not get permission from the Russian authorities to remain abroad permanently and had not been freed from Russian subjects. Conrad can not return to Ukraine, in the Russian Empire - he will be in charge of military service for many years and, as the son of political exiles, to be harassed.
In the letter of August 9, 1877, Uncle Conrad, Bobrowski alluded to two important subjects: Conrad's naturalization abroad (the same as breaking away from the Russian subject) and Conrad's plan to join the British merchant ship. "[You] speak English?... I never expected you to be naturalized in France, mainly because of conscription... I think, however, you get naturalized in Switzerland..." mail, Bobrowski supports Conrad's idea of ​​searching US citizenship or "one of the more important South Republicans".
Finally Conrad will make his home in England. On July 2, 1886 he applied for British citizenship, granted on August 19, 1886. However, despite being the subject of Queen Victoria, Conrad did not cease to be the subject of the Tsar Alexander III. To reach the latter, he had to make many visits to the Russian Embassy in London and politely repeated his request. He will then recall the Embassy home in Belgrave Square in his novel The Secret Agent. Finally, on April 2, 1889, the Russian Ministry of Interior issued a "son of a Polish man made up of letters, captains of English merchant ship" of Russian subject status.
Merchant marine
In 1874, Conrad left Poland to begin his career as a marine merchant. After nearly four years in France and on French ships, he joined the British marine traders and for the next fifteen years served under the Red Ensign. He worked on various ships as a crew member (flight attendants, interns, able-bodied sailors) and then as the third, second and first couple, until finally reaching the rank of captain. For 19 years since Conrad left KrakÃÆ'³w in October 1874 until he signed Adowa in January 1894, he had worked on the ship, including a long time at the port, for 10 years and almost 8 months. He spent more than 8 years at sea - 9 this month as a passenger.
Most of Conrad's stories and novels, and many of their characters, were taken from his sailor's career and the people he had met or heard. For his fictional character he often borrows the real name of the real person. The historic trader William Charles Olmeijer, whom Conrad met on four short visits to Berau in Borneo, appears as an "Almayer" (probably a simple misspelling) in Conrad's first novel, Almayer's Folly. Other real names include Captain McWhirr (at Cyclone ), Captain Jenggot and Master Mahon ( Youth ), Captain Lingard ( Almayer's Folly and elsewhere ), and Captain Ellis ( The Shadow Line ). Conrad also maintains, in The Nigger of 'Narcissus', the real name of Narcissus, a ship on which he sailed in 1884.
During a brief call in India in 1885-86, the 28-year-old Conrad sent five letters to Joseph Spiridion, an eight-year-older Pole he had accompanied in Cardiff in June 1885 just before sailing to Singapore on a cutting ship. > Tilkhurst . These letters are Conrad's first preserved text in English. His English is generally correct but rigid to artificial; many fragments show that his thinking goes along the lines of Polish syntax and phraseology. More importantly, the letters indicate marked changes in view from the implied in the previous correspondence of 1881-83. He has gone from "hope for the future" and from the arrogance of "sail [ever] to Poland", and from his Panslavic ideas. He was left with the pain of despair of Polish questions and British acceptance as possible protection. Although he often adjusts his statements to some extent with the views of the recipients, the theme of despair about the prospects for Polish independence often occurs authentically in correspondence and work before 1914.
Conrad's three-year relationship with Belgian trading company includes service as a steamboat captain on the Congo River, an episode that will inspire his novel, The Heart of Darkness. During this period, in 1890 in the Congo, Conrad met and made friends with the Republic of Ireland and advocated for human rights, Sir Roger Casement.
When Conrad left London on October 25, 1892 aboard the Torrens clipper, one of its passengers was William Henry Jacques, a consumptive Cambridge graduate who died less than a year later (September 19, 1893) and, according to Conrad's < i> A Personal Record , the first reader of his unfinished manuscript Almayer's Folly . Jacques encouraged Conrad to continue writing novels.
Conrad completed his last long-distance voyage as a sailor on July 26, 1893 when Torrens docked in London and "J. Conrad Korzemowin" (according to the return certificate) argued. When Torrens abandoned Adelaide on March 13, 1893, passengers included two young Englishmen returning from Australia and New Zealand: a 25-year-old lawyer and future novelist John Galsworthy; and Edward Lancelot Sanderson, who will help his father run a preparatory school boy at Elstree. They were probably the first Englishman and non-seafarer to be Conrad's friendship; he will keep in touch with both. The protagonist of one of Galsworthy's first literary efforts, "The Doldrums" (1895-96), Armand's first pair, was clearly modeled on Conrad. In Cape Town, where Torrens remained from 17 to 19 May, Galsworthy left the ship to see the local mine. Sanderson continued his voyage and appears to have been the first to develop closer ties with Conrad.
Writer
In 1894, aged 36, Conrad reluctantly gave up the sea, partly because of poor health, partly because of the unavailability of the ship, and partly because he was so fascinated with the inscription that he had decided on a literary career. His first novel, Almayer's Folly , made on the east coast of Borneo, was published in 1895. His appearance marked the first use of the pen name "Joseph Conrad"; "Konrad" is, of course, the third of the names given by Polish, but its use - in an anglicised version, "Conrad" - may also be a tribute to the poetry of the patriotic narrative of the Polish Romantic Poet Adam Mickiewicz, Konrad Wallenrod .
Edward Garnett, a young publisher and literary critic who will play one of the key supporting roles in Conrad's literary career has been - like the first reader of Unwin about Almayer's Folly, Wilfrid Hugh Chesson - impressed by the manuscript, but Garnett "not sure if English is good enough for publication." Garnett has shown the novel to his wife, Constance Garnett, who later became a renowned Russian literary translator. He thought that Conrad's uniqueness was a positive good.
While Conrad has only a limited private acquaintance with people in Southeast Asia Maritime, the area looks great in his early work. According to Najder, Conrad, exile and wanderer, realizes the difficulty he admits more than once: the lack of common cultural background with his Anglophonenya reader means he can not compete with English-speaking authors who write about the English world. At the same time, the choice of non-British colonial arrangements freed him from an embarrassing division of loyalty: Almayer's Folly , and then "An Outpost of Progress" (1897, in Congo exploited by King Leopold II of Belgium) and The Heart of Darkness (1899, also in the Congo), contains a bitter reflection on colonialism. The Malay States came theoretically under the authority of the Dutch government; Conrad did not write about the English dependencies of the area, which he never visited. He "seems attracted by... a struggle aimed at defending national independence, the productive and destructive wealth of the tropical nature and the gloom of human life in it in accordance with the pessimistic mood of his early work."
Almayer's Folly , along with his successor, An Outcast of the Islands (1896), laid the foundation for Conrad's reputation as an exotic fairy tale romance - a misunderstanding of his purpose frustrated him for the rest his career.
Almost all of Conrad's writings were first published in newspapers and magazines: influential reviews such as The Fortnightly Review and North American Review ; avant-garde publications such as Savoy , New Reviews , and The English Review ; popular short fiction magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post and Harper's Magazine; women's journals such as Pictorial Review and Romance ; large circulars such as Daily Mail and New York Herald ; and pictorial papers such as The Illustrated London News and Illustrated Buffalo Express . He also wrote for The Outlook , the imperialist weekly magazine, between 1898 and 1906.
Long financial success has been avoided by Conrad, who often asks for magazine publishers and books for down payments, and acquaintances (especially John Galsworthy) for loans. Finally, a government grant ("Civil Pension") of £ 100 per year, given on August 9, 1910, eliminates some of the financial worries, and when collectors start buying the manuscripts. Despite his early talents acclaimed by the British intellectual elite, popular success escaped him until the 1913 publication of the Opportunity - ironically, one of his weaker novels.
Edward Said described the three phases of Conrad's literary career. First and longest, from the 1890s to World War I, Conrad wrote most of his great novels, including The Nigger of 'Narcissus' (1897), Heart of Darkness ( 1890), Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904), Secret Service (1907) and Under the Western Eyes (1911). The second phase, embracing war and following the popular success of Chance (1913), was marked by the emergence of Conrad's public persona as a "great writer". In the third and final phase, from the end of World War I to the death of Conrad (1924), he finally found an unpleasant peace; it is, as C. McCarthy wrote, as if "War has enabled Conrad's soul to rid itself of terror and anxiety."
Personal life
Temperament and health
Conrad is a quiet person, afraid to show emotions. He insults sentimentalitas; his attitude illustrates the emotions in his books full of self-control, skepticism, and irony. In the words of his uncle Bobrowski, as Conrad's youth was "very sensitive, arrogant, reserved, and otherwise eagerly in short [...] all the defects of the family Na'cz ."
Conrad suffered throughout life from poor health, physical and mental. A newspaper review from a biography of Conrad suggested that the book could have been substituted for Thirty Years of Debt, Gout, Depression, and Angst . In 1891 he was hospitalized for several months, suffering from gout, neuralgic pain in his right arm and recurrent malaria attacks. He also complained of a swollen hand "which makes writing difficult". By accepting the advice of his uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski, he rested at a spa in Switzerland. Conrad has a dentist phobia, ignoring his teeth until they have to be extracted. In one letter he says that every novel he has written has teeth teeth. Conrad's physical suffering, if any, is less irritating than his mental. In his letters he often describes symptoms of depression; "the proof", writes Najder, "is so strong that it is almost impossible to doubt it."
Suicide attempt
In March 1878, at the end of the Marseilles period, 20-year-old Conrad attempted suicide, shooting himself in the chest with a pistol. According to his uncle, who was called by a friend, Conrad fell into debt. Bobrowski described his nephew's "study" in an extensive letter to Stefan Buszczy? Ski, his own ideological opponent and a friend of Conrad's father, Apollo. The extent to which the suicide attempt is done in earnest, is likely never to be known, but it indicates a situational depression.
Romantic and wedding
Little is known about any intimate relationship that Conrad might have before his marriage, which reinforces the author's popular image as an isolated bachelor who prefers friends with male close friends. However, in 1888 during a stop on Mauritius, Conrad developed some romantic interest. One of them will be described in his 1910 story "A Smile of Fortune", which contains an autobiographical element (for example, one of his characters is the same Chief Mate Burns that appears on The Shadow Line). The narrator, a young captain, teases ambiguously and quietly with Alice Jacobus, the daughter of a local merchant living in a house surrounded by magnificent rose gardens. Research has confirmed that in Port Louis at that time there was 17-year-old Alice Shaw, whose father, a shipping agent, had the only rose garden in town.
More knowledgeable about the other Conrad, the more open temptation. An old friend, Captain Gabriel Renouf from a French marine merchant, introduced him to his brother-in-law's family. Renouf's sister is the wife of Louis Edward Schmidt, a senior official in the colony; together with them two other sisters and two brothers. Although the island had been taken over in 1810 by the British, many of its inhabitants were descended from the original French invaders, and French manners were excellent and Conrad perfectly opened up all the local salons for him. He became a frequent guest at Schmidts', where he often met with Misses Renouf. A few days before leaving Port Louis, Conrad asked one of Renouf's brothers to hand over Eugenie's 26-year-old sister. He has, however, been engaged to marry his pharmacist's cousin. After the rejection, Conrad did not pay for a farewell visit but sent a polite letter to Gabriel Renouf, saying he would never return to Mauritius and added that on the wedding day his mind would be with them.
In March 1896 Conrad married an English woman, Jessie George. The couple has two sons, Borys and John. The older, Borys, proved disappointing in terms of scholarship and integrity. Jessie is an unsophisticated working-class girl, sixteen years younger than Conrad. For his friends, he is an unexplained wife's choice, and the subject of some rather disparaging and unfriendly comments. (See Lady Ottoline Morrell's view of Jessie in Impressions.) However, according to other biographers such as Frederick Karl, Jessie gave Conrad what needed, a "straightforward, faithful, competent" companion. Likewise, Jones stated that, regardless of any difficulty borne by the marriage, "there can be no doubt that the relationship sustains Conrad's career as a writer," which may be far less successful without him.
The couple rented a series of houses in a row, sometimes in France, sometimes briefly in London, but mostly in the English countryside, sometimes from friends - to close friends, to enjoy the rural peace, but at over all because it is more affordable. Except for several holidays in France and Italy, the 1914 holiday in Poland, and a 1923 visit to the United States, Conrad lived the rest of his life in England.
The 1914 holiday with his wife and children in Poland, at the urging of JÃÆ'³zef Retinger, coincided with the outbreak of World War I. On July 28, 1914, the day war broke out between Austro-Hungarian and Serbian, Conrad and Retingers arrived at KrakÃÆ'³w (then in the Empire Austro-Hungary), where Conrad visited a childhood. Since the city lies just a few miles from the Russian border, there is a risk of being stranded in the battle zone. With Jessie's wife and young son John sick, Conrad decides to take refuge in the resort town of Zakopane mountain. They left KrakÃÆ'³w on 2 August. A few days after arriving in Zakopane, they moved to the pension KonstantynÃÆ'³wka operated by Conrad's cousin Aniela ZagÃÆ'³rska; has been frequented by celebrities including the famous acquaintance JÃÆ'³zef Pi? sudski and Conrad, the young concert pianist Artur Rubinstein.
ZagÃÆ'³rska introduced Conrad to the Polish writers, intellectuals and artists who also took refuge in Zakopane, including the novelist Stefan? Eromski and Tadeusz Nalepi? Ski, a friend of the anthropologist Bronis? Aw Malinowski. Conrad aroused interest among Poles as a famous writer and an exotic compatriot from abroad. He fascinates new acquaintances, especially women. However, two Nobel laureates Maria Sk? Odowska-doctor Curie's sister, Bronis? Awa D? Uska, scolded him for using his great talents for purposes other than improving the future of his native land.
But the thirty-two-year-old Aniela ZagÃÆ'³rska (the daughter of the pensione), Conrad's nephew who would translate his work into Polish in 1923-1939, idolized him, accompanied him, and gave him books. She is very happy with the stories and novels from the more recently decade Boles death? Aw Prus, reading it all by fellow victims of the Polish Revolt of 1863 - "my dear Prus" - that he could get his hands, and announce he was "better than Dickens" - a favorite British novelist Conrad.
Conrad, known to his acquaintances in Poland to be fluent in his native tongue, participated in their vigorous political discussions. He stated seriously, like Pi? Sudski earlier in 1914 in Paris, that in the war, for Poland to regain independence, Russia must be beaten by the Central Block (Austro-Hungarian Empire and Germany), and the Central Block must be in turn beaten by France and England.
After much activity and change, in early November 1914 Conrad managed to bring his family back to England. Upon his return, he was determined to work to swing British opinion to restore Poland's sovereignty.
Jessie Conrad later wrote in her memoir: "I understand my husband much better after those months in Poland, so many strange and unexpected characteristics to me before, taking, as it were, the proportion of their rights.I understand that temperament is belonging to his people. "
Politics
Conrad [writes Najder] is very concerned with politics. [This] is confirmed by some of his works, starting with Almayer's Folly . [...] Nostromo expresses his concern with these things more fully; it is, of course, a natural enough concern for a person of a [Polish] country where politics is a matter not only of everyday life but also of life and death. In addition, Conrad himself comes from a social class that claims exclusive responsibility for state affairs, and from a very politically active family. Norman Douglas summarizes it: "Conrad is the first and most important, Polish, and like Polish, a politician and moralist. malgrà © Å © lui [France:" regardless of himself "]. " [What makes] Conrad sees the political problem in terms of the continuous struggle between law and violence, anarchy and order, freedom and autocracy, material interests and noble individual idealism [...] is Conrad's historical consciousness. His Polish experience blessed him with a remarkable perception, in Western European literature of his time, of how winding and ever-changing is the front line in this struggle.
The most extensive and ambitious political statement Conrad ever made was the 1905 essay, "Autocracy and War," whose starting point was the Russian-Japanese War (he completed the article a month before the Battle of Tsushima Strait). This essay begins with a statement about Russia's incurable weakness and ends with a warning against Prussia, a dangerous aggressor in future European wars. For Russia he predicted an outburst of violence in the near future, but the lack of Russian democratic traditions and mass backwardness made it impossible for the revolution to have a beneficial effect. Conrad considers the formation of representative government in Russia as improper and predicts the transition from autocracy to dictatorship. He sees Western Europe as being marred by the antagonism generated by economic competition and commercial self-interest. In vain, the Russian revolution sought the counsel or assistance of a materialistic, selfish Western Europe that armed itself for the preparation of a war much more brutal than the past.
Conrad's distrust of democracy arises from his doubt whether the spread of democracy as an end in itself solves any problem. He thinks that, given the weakness of human nature and the "criminal" character of society, democracy offers unlimited opportunities for demagogues and swindlers.
He accused the social democrats of acting to undermine the "national sentiment, the preservation of which he is concerned" - trying to dissolve national identity in an impersonal smelter. "I see the future from a very dark depth of the past and I find that there is nothing left for me except loyalty to a lost excuse, for an idea without a future." It was Conrad's hopeless loyalty to Polish memories that prevented him from believing in the idea of ​​"international fraternity," which he considers, in that situation, only verbal practice. He hates some socialist talks about freedom and world fraternity while remaining silent about his partitioned and oppressed Poland.
Prior to that, in the early 1880s, letters to Conrad from his uncle Tadeusz showed Conrad apparently expecting improvements in the Polish situation not through the liberation movement but by building alliances with neighboring Slavic countries. This is coupled with a belief in Panslavic ideology - "shocking", Najder writes, "in a man who then emphasized his hostility towards Russia, a belief that... [Polish] civilization and... historic... traditions will ] he played a leading role... in the Panslavic community, [and] his doubts about Poland's chances of becoming a sovereign nation state. "
Conrad's isolation from the political partisan goes along with the sense inherent in the burden of human thought imposed by his personality, as described in the Conrad letter of 1894 to a relative-by-marriage and fellow author Marguerite Poradowska (< i> nÃÆ'Â © e Gachet, and cousin Vincent van Gogh's doctor, Paul Gachet) from Brussels:
We must drag our chains and the ball of our personality to the end. This is the price to pay for divine and divine privileges; So in this life only the chosen person is a prisoner - a noble band who understands and complains but who treads the earth in the midst of many ghosts with crazy and dumb movements idiots. Which one would you prefer: idiot or inmate?
In a letter of October 23, 1922 to the mathematicians of Bertrand Russell, in response to the last book, The Chinese Problem, which advocated socialist reform and the oligarchy of the wise that would reshape the Chinese community, Conrad explained their own unbelief in political panacea:
I never [find] in someone's book or... talk anything... to stand up... fight the deep guilt that governs the world inhabited by humans... The only remedy for the Chinese and for the rest of us is the [a] change of heart, but looking at the history of the last 2000 years there is not much reason to expect [it], even if humans have flown - "great rapture" no doubt but not major changes....
Leo Robson menulis:
Conrad... adopted a broader ironic attitude - a kind of blanket distrust, defined by the characters in Under Western Eyes as the negation of all beliefs, devotions, and actions. Through tone control and narrative detail... Conrad shows what he considers to be an ill-fated movement such as anarchism and socialism, and self-serving logic from historical phenomena but "naturalization" as capitalism (piracy with good PR), rationalism (defense) complexity of our innate irrationality), and imperialism (a magnificent front for rape and plundering of old school). To be ironic must be awake - and be wary of the prevailing "Somnolen". In Nostromo ... journalist Martin Decoud... mocking [es] the idea that people "are confident to influence the fate of the universe." (H. G. Wells recalls Conrad's astonishment that "I can take social and political issues seriously.")
Tapi, tulis Robson, Conrad bukan nihilis moral:
If there is any irony to suggest that there is more to it than meets the eye, Conrad further asserts that, when we give close attention, "more" can become endless. He does not reject what his [Marlow] character introduced in Youth describes the "utilitarian lies of our civilization" does not support anything; he rejected them for "something", "some saving truths", "some exorcisms against ghost doubts" - a cue from the deeper order, which is not easily reduced to words. Authentic, self-aware emotions - feelings that do not call themselves "theory" or "wisdom" - become a kind of standard bearer, with the closest "impression" or "sensation" you get with solid evidence.
In August 1901 letter to the editor of The New York Times Saturday Book Review Conrad wrote: "EGOism, which is a moving force of the world, and altruism, which is its morality, are both opposite instincts, the very simple and the other so mysterious, can not serve us except in an irreconcilable dispute of antagonism. "
Death
On August 3, 1924, Conrad died at his home, Oswalds, in Bishopsbourne, Kent, England, possibly due to a heart attack. He was buried in Canterbury Cemetery, Canterbury, under a misspelled version of his real name Poland, as "Joseph Teador Conrad Korzeniowski". The inscription on the headstone is a line from Edmund Spenser The Faerie Queene which he has chosen as an inscription for his final full novel, The Rover :
Sleep after toyle, port after stormie seas,
Convenience after warre, death for life, is great fun
Conrad's simple funeral took place in a crowd. His old friend Edward Garnett tells a bitter story:
For those who attended Conrad's funeral in Canterbury during the 1924 Cricket Festival, and drove through crowded streets adorned with flags, there was something symbolic in British hospitality and in the ignorance of the crowd about even the existence of this great writer. Some old friends, acquaintances and journalists stood near his grave.
An old friend of Conrad, Cunninghame Graham, wrote Garnett: "Aubry told me... that Anatole French died, all of Paris will be at his funeral."
Twelve years later, Conrad's wife Jessie died on December 6, 1936 and was buried with her.
In 1996 his tomb was designated as a Class II registered structure.
Maps Joseph Conrad
Writing style
Themes and styles
Though there are opinions even from some who personally know Conrad, like the co-author of Henry James's novel, Conrad - even when writing only elegant letters to his uncle and acquaintances - has always been the heart of a sailing writer, rather than a sailor who wrote. He uses his sailing experience as the background for much of his work, but he also produces works of the same worldview, with no maritime motives. The failure of many critics to appreciate this caused him to be very frustrated.
He writes about life in the sea and in the exotic part rather than about life on British soil because - unlike, for example, his friend John Galsworthy, author of The Forsyte Saga - he knows little about the daily life of relations in England. When Conrad's Mirror of the Sea was published in 1906 with critical acclaim, he wrote to French translator: "The critics have vigorously swung the censer to me.... Behind the concert of praise, I can hear something like a whisper: "Keep on the open sea! Do not land! "They wanted to drive me out into the ocean."
Writing to his friend Richard Curle, Conrad says that "public minds are tied to external things" such as "sea life", no matter how the author changes their material "from special to general, and attracts universal emotions with personal emotional handling. experience".
Nevertheless, Conrad found many sympathetic readings, especially in the United States. H.L. Mencken was one of America's earliest and most influential readers to recognize how Conrad conjured up "the generals of the special." F. Scott Fitzgerald, writing to Mencken, complained about being omitted from Conrad's list of con artists. Since Fitzgerald, dozens of other American writers have admitted their debt to Conrad, including William Faulkner, William Burroughs, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Joan Didion, and Thomas Pynchon.
A visitor October 1923 to Oswalds, Conrad's house at the time - Cyril Clemens, cousin Mark Twain - quoted Conrad as saying: "In everything I write there is always one intention that does not change, and that is to capture the reader's attention."
The famous Conrad artist aspires, in the introductory words for The Nigger of 'Narcissus' (1897), "with the power of a written word to make you hear, to make you feel." , to get you view . That - and nothing more, and that is everything. If I succeed, you will find there according to your desert: encouragement, comfort, fear, charm - everything you demand - and, perhaps, a glimpse of the truth you forgot to ask. "
Writing in what the visual art is the era of Impressionism, and what music is the age of impressionist music, Conrad shows itself in many of his works of prose poets of the highest order: for example, in evoking Patna and the courtroom scene > Lord Jim ; in the scene of "mad melancholy elephant" and "French battleship shooting into the continent", in the Heart of Darkness; in the double protagonist of The Secret Sharer ; and in the verbal and conceptual resonances of the Nostromo and The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' .
Conrad uses his own memories as literary material so often that the reader is tempted to treat his life and work as a whole. His "world view", or elements, are often described by quoting at once his personal and public statements, portions of his letters, and quotes from his books. Najder cautions that this approach produces incoherent and misleading images. "An... uncritical linking of two fields, literature and personal life, changing each.Conrad uses his own experience as a raw material, but the finished product should not be confused with the experience itself."
Many of Conrad's characters were inspired by the people he actually met, including, in his first novel, Almayer's Folly (finished 1894), William Charles Olmeijer, the spelling of the Conrad family name might be changed to "Almayer" intentionally. The historic Olmeijer trader, whom Conrad met on four short visits to Berau in Borneo, then haunted Conrad's imagination. Conrad often borrows the real name of the actual individual, for example, Captain McWhirr ( Cyclone ), Captain Jenggot and Master Mahon ("Youth"), Captain Lingard ( Almayer's Folly elsewhere), Captain Ellis ( The Shadow Line ). "Conrad," writes J. I. M. Stewart, "seems to have attributed some mysterious meanings to such a relationship with actuality." Equally curious is "a lot of ignorance in Conrad, requires some minor skill to defend." Thus we have never learned the family name of the protagonist Lord Jim. Conrad also defended, at The Nigger of 'Narcissus', the ship's real name, Narcissus, where he sailed in 1884.
Regardless of Conrad's own experience, a number of episodes in his fiction are suggested by past or contemporary events of known public or literary works. The first half of 1900's novel Lord Jim (episode Patna ) was inspired by the true story of 1880 about SSÃ, Jeddah ; the second part, to some extent by the life of James Brooke, the first White Rajah of Sarawak. The 1901 short story "Amy Foster" was inspired in part by an anecdote at Ford Madox Ford The Cinque Ports (1900), where sailors were stranded from a German merchant ship, unable to communicate in English, and driven away by people local people, finally found shelter in pig pens.
In Nostromo (completed 1904), the theft of massive silver submissions was suggested to Conrad by a story he heard in the Gulf of Mexico and then read in "volume taken outside the second - used bookstore." Political strands The novel, according to Maya Jasanoff, relates to the creation of the Panama Canal. "In January 1903," he wrote, "just as Conrad began writing Nostromo, the US and Colombian foreign ministers signed a treaty giving the United States a one-year lease that could be extended on a six-mile strip flanking the canal... While the [news] newspaper mutters about the revolution in Colombia, Conrad opens a new section of Nostromo with clues of dissent at Costaguana ", a fictional South American country. He planned a revolution in the port of Costegradi fiction Sulaco that reflects the real life secession movement in Panama. When Conrad completed the novel on September 1, 1904, Jasanoff wrote, "he left Sulaco in Panama." When Panama gained independence it was instantly recognized by the United States and the economy supported by American investment in the canal, so Sulaco had its independence directly recognized by the United States , and its economy is borne out by investing in my [San fionional] San TomÃÆ' [silver]. "
Secret Agents (completed 1906) was inspired by the anarchist Martial Bourdin's death in France in 1894 when it appeared to be trying to blow up the Greenwich Observatory. Conrad's story "The Secret Sharer" (completed 1909) was inspired by the 1880 incident when Sydney Smith, the first pair of Cutty Sark, had killed a sailor and escaped from the court, assisted by the ship's captain. The plot of Under Western Eyes (completed 1910) begins with the murder of a brutal Russian government minister, who is exemplified after the 1904 real-life murder of Russian Interior Minister Vyacheslav von Plehve. The almost completed (Freya of the Seven Isles) novel (completed in March 1911) was inspired by a story told to Conrad by the old hands of Malaya and Conrad fans Captain Carlos M. Marris.
For nature around the high seas, the Malay Islands and South America, which Conrad clearly describes, he can rely on his own observations. What can not be given by porcupine is a thorough understanding of exotic culture. For this he was forced, like other writers, to literary sources. While writing Malay stories, he consulted Alfred Russel Wallace of The Malay Archipelago (1869), James Brooke's journal, and books with titles such as Silver and Malay , My Journal in the Malaya Waters , and Life in the Far East Forest . When he began writing his novel Nostromo , set in South American fictional country, Costaguana, he switched to War between Peru and Chile ; Edward Eastwick, Venezuela: or, Sketch of Life in the Republic of South America (1868); and George Frederick Masterman, Seven Years of Use in Paraguay (1869). As a result of relying on literary sources, in Lord Jim, as JIM Stewart writes, "Conrad's need to work to some extent from the second hand" causes "a certain thinness in Jim's relationship with... people... from Patusan... "This prompted Conrad at some point to change the nature of Charles Marlow's narration into" the distance [e] an uncertain order about the details of Mr. Jim's kingdom. "
In line with his skepticism and sadness, Conrad almost always gives lethal counts to the characters in the novel and the main story. Almayer ( Almayer's Folly , 1894), abandoned by his beloved daughter, took opium, and died; Peter Willems ( An Outcast of the Islands , 1895) was killed by AÃÆ'¯ssa's jealous lover; The ineffective Nigger James Wait (The Nigger of 'Narcissus', 1897), died on a ship and was buried at sea; Mr. Kurtz ( Heart of Darkness , 1899) expired, saying the words, "Horror! Horror!"; Mr. Jim ( Mr. Jim , 1900), who inadvertently triggered the massacre of his adopted community, deliberately walked to his death at the hands of community leaders; in Conrad's short story in 1901, "Amy Foster", a pole transplanted to England, Yanko Goorall (English translation of Polish Janko GÃÆ'³ral, "Johnny Highlander"), fell ill and suffered fever, rave in his native language, frightening his wife, Amy, who fled; The next morning Yanko died of heart failure, and it happened that he only asked in Poland to get water; Captain Whalley (1902), betrayed by his failing vision and an immoral partner, drowns himself; Gian 'Battista Fidanza, the famous Italian-respected immigrant Nostromo (Italian: "Our Man" ) of the novel Nostromo (1904) illegally acquired the silver treasures mined in the "Costaguana" state of South America and was shot to death by misidentification; Mr Verloc, Secret Agent (1906) of divided loyalty, attempted a bombing, to blame for the terrorists, who accidentally killed Stevie's mentally ill sister-in-law, and Verloc himself was killed by his desperate wife, who drowned himself by jumping from a channel ship; in 1913), Roderick Anthony, the captain of the sailing ship, and the philanthropist and husband of Flora de Barral, were subjected to poisoning by jealous and jealous jealous fathers, when detected, swallowed the poison itself and died [ several years later, Captain Anthony drowned in the sea); in Victory (1915), Lena was shot dead by Jones, intent on killing his accomplice Ricardo and then managed to do so, then he perished along with another plot, after which Lena protector Axel Heyst sets fire to his bungalow and dies at next to Lena's body.
When Conrad's main character ran away with his life, he was sometimes not much better. In Under Western Eyes (1911), Razumov betrayed fellow University of St. University students. Petersburg, revolutionary Victor Haldin, who has killed a highly repressive Russian government minister. Haldin was tortured and hanged by the authorities. Then Razumov, sent as a government spy to Geneva, the center of anti-tsar intrigue, met Haldin's mother and sister, who shared Hald's liberal beliefs. Razumov fell in love with his sister and admitted his betrayal of his brother; then he made the same confession to the gathered revolutionists, and their professional executioners blew his eardrums, making him deaf for life. Razumov staggered away, dropped by tram, and finally returned as a disabled person to Russia.
Conrad is well aware of the tragedy in the world and in his works. In 1898, at the beginning of his writing career, he had written to his Scottish political-writer friend Cunninghame Graham: "What makes men tragic is not that they are victims of nature, it is that they are aware of it.] As soon as you know slavery Your pain, anger, disagreement - the tragedy begins. "But in 1922, near the end of his life and career, when another Scottish friend, Richard Curle, sent Conrad evidence of two articles he had written about Conrad, the last objection to be characterized as a grim and tragic writer. "That reputation... has robbed me of innumerable readers... I really do mind to be called tragedy ."
Conrad claims that he "never kept a diary and never had a notebook." John Galsworthy, who knew him well, described this as "a statement that is not surprising to anyone who knows the resources of his memory and the contemplative nature of his creative spirit." However, after Conrad's death, Richard Curle published a highly modified version of Conrad's diary illustrating his experience in the Congo; in 1978 a more complete version was published as The Congo Diary and Other Uncollected Pieces .
Unlike many writers who make it a point not to discuss ongoing work, Conrad often discusses his current work and even shows it to select friends and coauthor, such as Edward Garnett, and sometimes change them in light of their criticism and suggestions..
Edward Said was struck by Conrad's many correspondences with friends and fellow authors; in 1966, it "amounted to [ed] up to eight published volumes". Edward Said comments: "For me, if Conrad writes about himself, about the problem of self-definition, with such sustained urgency, some of what he writes must have meaning for his fiction. [I] t [It is hard to believe that a man will be it is uneconomical to pour himself in letter after letter and then not to use and redefine his insights and discoveries in his fiction. "Edward Said found a very close connection between the Conrad letters and his shorter fiction. "Conrad... believes... that artistic distinction is more clearly shown in a work shorter than a longer work.... He believes that life [itself] is like a series of short episodes... because he himself has so many people different...: he is a Pole and an Englishman, a sailor and a writer. "Another scholar, Najder, wrote:
Throughout most of his life, Conrad is an outsider and feels himself to be one. Outsiders in exile; an outsider during his visit to his family in Ukraine; an outsider - because of his experience and grief - in [KrakÃÆ'³w] and LwÃÆ'³w; outsiders in Marseilles; outsiders, national and cultural, on British ships; an outsider as an English writer.... Conrad calls himself (to Graham) "bloody foreigner." At the same time... [h] e regards "national spirit" as the only element of communal life that is truly permanent and reliable.
Conrad borrowed from other Polish and French writers, to some extent blocking plagiarism. When the Polish translation of his 1915 Victory novel appeared in 1931, the readers noted a striking similarity to Stefan's novel by eromski, The History of a Sin Dzieje grzechu , 1908), including their endings. The comparative literature expert, Yves Hervouet, has shown in the Victory texts all mosaic influences, loans, equations, and figures. He further lists hundreds of concrete loans from other writers, mostly French in almost all of Conrad's works, from the unfinished "Almayer's Folly" (1895) to Suspense . Conrad seems to have used the texts of a distinguished writer as the same raw material as the contents of his own memory. Materials borrowed from other authors often serve as metaphors. In addition, he has a phenomenal memory for texts and memorable details, "but [writing Najder] is not a memory that is strictly categorized by source, organized into a homogeneous entity; rather, a large container of images and pieces from which he will draw. "
But [writing Najder] he can never be accused of overt plagiarism. Even when lifting sentences and scenes, Conrad changed their character, putting it into a new structure. He does not imitate, but (as Hervouet says) "go on" his master. He rightly said: "I do not resemble anybody." Ian Watt put it briefly: "In a sense, Conrad is the most unimportant writer, he wrote very little that could possibly be misinterpreted as the work of others."
Conrad, like other artists, faces obstacles that arise from the need to attract listeners and confirm his own favorable price. This might explain that he described the amazing crew of Judea in his 1898 "Youth" story as "Liverpool's hard case," while the crew of Judea's actual 1882 prototype, Palestine , has included none of the Liverpudlian, and half its crew is not English; and to Conrad who transformed the real life of 1880, the inadequate British Captain JL Clark, of SSÃ, Jeddah , in his 1900 novel Lord Jim , became captain of the fictional Patna - "a kind of New South Wales German rebel" was so horrible in physical appearance to show "trained baby elephants." Similarly, in his letters Conrad - for most of his literary career, struggling to survive financially - often adjusting his views to the tendencies of his correspondents. And when he wanted to criticize the behavior of European imperialism in what came to be called the "Third World", he turned his gaze to the Dutch and Belgian colonies, not to the British Empire.
The weirdness of the universe depicted in Conrad's novels, especially compared to those of his contemporaries like his friend and often generous to John Galsworthy, is like opening them to similar criticisms that were later applied to Graham Greene. But where "Greenland" has been characterized as a recurring and recognizable atmosphere regardless of its arrangement, Conrad strives to create a sense of place, either on a boat or in a remote village; often he chooses that his characters play their destiny in isolated or limited circumstances. In the view of Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis, it was not until the first volume of Anthony Powell's sequence, A Dance to the Music of Time, published in the 1950s, that British novelists achieved the same thing. atmospheric commands and language accuracy with consistency, a view supported by future critics such as AN Wilson; Powell confessed his debt to Conrad. Leo Gurko, too, commented, as "one of Conrad's special qualities, his awareness of abnormal places, an enlarged consciousness to almost a new dimension in art, an ecological dimension that defines the relationship between earth and man."
T. E. Lawrence, one of the many authors who Conrad befriended, offered some perceptive observations about Conrad's writing:
He is really the most haunting thing in prose that ever existed: I wish I knew how every paragraph he wrote (... they are all paragraphs: he rarely writes one sentence...) continues to be heard in waves, like a tenor bell tone , after quitting. It is not built in the usual rhythm of prose, but on something that exists only in his head, and since he can never tell what he wants to say, all his things end up with some kind of hunger, suggestions of something he can say or do or think. So, his books always look bigger than them. He is as big as subjective because Kipling is his goal. Do they hate each other?
Irish novelist-critic Colm TÃÆ'³ibÃÆ'n captures something similar:
Hero of Joseph Conrad is often alone, and close to hostility and danger. Sometimes, when Conrad's most fertile imagination and command in English at the most appropriate time, danger comes from within. But at other times, it comes from what can not be named. Conrad seeks later to awaken rather than describe, using something close to the language of prayer. While his imagination is sometimes filled with small details, sharp, and perfectly observed, it is also nurtured by the need to suggest and symbolize it. Like a poet, he often leaves space between strange, empty lures.
His own vague term - words such as "indescribable," "infinite," "mysterious," "unknowable" - as close as he can achieve our destiny in the world or the essence of the universe, a feeling that transcends time he describes and goes beyond the state of his character. This "surpass" idea satisfies something in his imagination. He works as if between a complicated ship system and the vast horizon of the vast ocean.
An irreconcilable distance between what is precise and what is shimmering makes it more than an adventure novelist, a troublemaker who haunts his day, or an author who dramatizes moral questions. This makes it open to interpretation - and indeed to attack [by critics such as novelist V.S. Naipaul and Chinua Achebe].
In a letter of December 14, 1897 to his Scottish friend Robert Bontine Cunninghame Graham, Conrad wrote that science tells us, "Understand that you
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