02 Joseph Conrad

JOSEPH CONRAD.
JOSEPH CONRAD
(1857-1924)
Conrad’s special status

in British literature
• born in Poland and learnt the English language quite late
in his life, when he was approaching his thirties
• chose English, rather than Polish or French, as the
language of his writing (mistakes in pronunciation,
grammar and vocabulary)
• because of having lived in Poland, France and England
and because of his travels to many other countries
during his service in the British navy, Conrad was
exposed to many different cultures and was the first
famous English writer to have a very diverse cultural
background.
Conrad’s special status

in British literature
• Conrad’s writing shows a number of affinities with Polish
culture and literature, most notably Polish romanticism:
his fiction stands apart from the tradition of British
writing. Also, there are big differences in the way in
which Conrad is read and interpreted by Polish and
Anglo-Saxon readers.
• Conrad’s fiction as one of the most difficult in English
literature.
• Conrad as the first great modernist of the English
language.
Conrad’s life
• born in Poland’s south-eastern borderlands (kresy),
which now belong to Ukraine and which at the time of his
birth were under Russian occupation.
• His real name was Teodor Józef Konrad Korzeniowski
but at home and in his family he was called by the name
Konrad (supposedly this name was given to him after
Konrad from Mickiewicz’s Dziady).
• His father, Apollo Korzeniowski: a landowner who was
also a man of letters (translated literature, wrote political
essays, poems and plays) and a political activist (took
part in preparations for the January Uprising).
Conrad’s life
• Shortly before the outbreak of the January Uprising,
Apollo was arrested and exiled to the north of Russia,
where he was accompanied by his wife and little son.
• Conrad’s mother died there and his father suffered from
serious health problems. As a result, he was allowed to
move to Kraków, where he died when Conrad was a
young teenager.
• Conrad was taken care of his uncle, his mother’s
brother, who became his guardian and supported him
financially for a long time after Conrad left Poland.
Conrad’s life
• The great impact of the tragic events of Conrad’s early
years on his psychology and vision of life:
− serious mental problems: a number of mental
breakdowns and a very neurotic personality
− pessimism about human life
− two conflicting outlooks: Romantic and idealistic
(represented by his father) and Positivist and pragmatic
(represented by his uncle)
Conrad’s life
As a teenager, Conrad decided to emigrate to France,
where he became a sailor.
Later on, he began his career in the English navy and
rose to the rank of captain.
As a sailor Conrad travelled to many different parts of
the world, including the Far East and Africa, which
provided an important inspiration for some of his writing.
At the age of 29 Conrad became a British subject and a
few years later he settled permanently in England, where
he got married to an English woman and had two sons.
The most important themes in

Conrad’s fiction
• The sea
The false stereotype of Conrad as a writer of sea stories:
- abandoned the tradition of adventure literature, in which
the sea provided a background to characters’ adventures
in exotic lands, presented against the background of the
sea.
- the sea as a symbolic representation of life itself:
seamen’s life on board a ship as a metaphorical
representation of man’s existential struggle in the hostile
world.

Conrad’s fiction
• The colonial theme
− Conrad’s travels to many exotic lands as an important
inspiration for his writing.
− New perspectives on the issue of colonialism:
 the problem of the cultural clash: the lack of
understanding between coloniser and colonised
 questioning colonial ideology
 exposing the unfairness and cruelty of colonial practices

Conrad’s fiction
• Pessimism and ways of overcoming it
− Human life appears absurd and insignificant in the
godless universe.
− Yet, man must fight for his dignity and never give up:
 The ethics of work, which Conrad owed his positivist
uncle, his service at sea and Victorianism.
 A sense of duty and fidelity to one’s commitments
 The saving power of illusion (the opposition between
illusion and reality)

Conrad’s fiction
• Human isolation
− cultural differences
− racial differences
− ambiguous actions
− non-conformist convictions
− psychological problems

Conrad’s fiction
• The psychological theme
− Conrad as a master of psychological realism: perhaps
the first English writer to give a thorough, in-depth
presentation of the human psyche.
− Conrad’s interest in psychology as a result of his own
unresolved mental problems
− Psychoanalysis as one of the best developed
approaches to Conrad’s fiction
− Psychoanalytic readings of Conrad’s texts as
sublimations of his own personal experience (e. g. Lord
Jim)

Conrad’s fiction
• The political theme
− Conrad as a political conservatist (against socialism and
revolutionary ideologies)
− Conrad’s hatred of Russia and things Russian
(autocratism and Russian mysticism as represented by
Dostoevsky)
− Conrad’s political novels:
 Nostromo (criticism of revolution);
 The Secret Agent (criticism of anarchism);
 Under Western Eyes (criticism of Russia)
Conrad’s literary form

• Narration
− Charles Marlow
 Conrad’s story-teller who appears in a number of his
novels and short stories, such as “Heart of Darkness,”
Lord Jim or “Shadow Line.”
 Marlow as a mediator between the author and the reader
(Conrad’s alter ego?)
 Marlow as an unreliable narrator

− Multiple points of view
 This technique is most clearly seen in Lord Jim in which
the novel’s central episode (Jim abandoning the ship) is
presented and commented upon by many different
characters.
 Actually, we see Jim through many eyes, and Marlow
gives up pretence to pass any ultimate judgment on this
character.

• Impressionism
− The moral ambiguity of characters’ actions.
− The relative nature of reality, no clear-cut divisions
between certain moral and semantic concepts (e.g. the
distinction between light and darkness blurred in “Heart
of Darkness”).
− Very suggestive, painting-like quality of his descriptions
of the setting (the sea), with different shades of colour
and varying degrees of light operating.

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JOSEPH CONRAD.

Conrad’s special status

Conrad’s special status

The most important themes in

The most important themes in

The most important themes in

The most important themes in

The most important themes in

The most important themes in

Conrad’s literary form

Conrad’s literary form

Conrad’s literary form

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