Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
- perhaps one of the most remarkable figures
in the whole history of English literature
- his life and the two careers he embraced
mark him out as being different from any
previous and more recent novelists, as a
man of the whole world:
...he is a man of travel and experience in many
parts of the world... He has been right up the
Congo and all around Malacca and Borneo
and other out of the way parts, to say nothing
of a little smuggling in the days of his youth.
(John Galsworthy, 1893)
- Conrad and Galsworthy were to become
lifelong friends
- Among his writer friends also Ford
Maddox Ford and H.G Wells
- critics regard him as the best writer about
the sea and seamen who has ever lived
- H. James, a great admirer of Conrad,
argued that the best of his writings were
not sea stories , but rather political stories
- more importantly, he participated actively
in the daily life of humankind
- the two exiles served to affect his
perception of Western European life
and culture
- profound influence of French masters,
especially Flaubert and of Russian
novelists, mainly Turgenev
- from about 1903 onwards, Henry James
was to influence him most
Life
- born into a noble Polish family, at
Berdiczew, in an Ukrainian province of
Poland under Tsarist rule, in 1857
- his real name was Jozef Teodor Konrad
Nalecz Korzeniowski
- first exile – at the age of four- was a
political banishment to a remote area of
Russia (Vologda province)
- his views on politics, patriotism, sacrifice
were influenced by these sad experiences
- his family was imbued with the literary
culture of its time
- grandfather and father aspired to being
men of letters
- when aged eleven – became an orphan
- his uncle Thaddeus Bobrowski became his
guardian and mentor
- at the age of sixteen – left Poland for
France
- his second exile was chosen by himself
and led to his first career, that of a seaman
- when seventeen he joined a ship in
Marseille, became a French sailor
- he spent four unsettled years travelling to
and from the West Indies
- attempted suicide by shooting himself
- 1878 joined the British Merchant Navy
- he started to gain marine career
qualifications
- at the age of twenty-nine he became
Master Mariner
- he travelled widely to Singapore,
Australia, the Belgian Congo, Bombay,
the East Indies
- in 1886 he became a naturalized Briton
- in 1895 he married Jessie George
- she gave him two sons: Borys and John
- in 1897 he formally dropped his Polish
name on the occasion of the publication of
his first novel Almayer’s Folly
- at the age of forty-five he was one of the
greatest English writers
- but he always felt close to Poland and
Polish troubles
- he revisited his country several times
- he died in Kent, in 1924, leaving his last
novel Suspense unfinished
- his Polish name was inscribed on his
gravestone
- his career as a sailor marks him out
from the mainstream of novelists in the
canon of English literature: by the length
of his first career, its nature, the world
perspective it enabled Conrad to bring to
English literature, and his writing in
English, his third language (besides Polish
and French)
Work
- Almayer’s Folly (1895)
- An Outcast of the Islands (1896)
- The Nigger of the Narcissus (1897)
- Lord Jim (1900)
- Heart of Darkness (1902)
- Nostromo (1904)
- The Secret Agent (1907)
- Under Western Eyes (1911)
- Chance (1911)
- Victory (1915)
- The Rescue (1920)
- The Rover (1924)
- his friend and biographer G. Jean-Aubrey
is the author of The Life and Letters of
Joseph Conrad (1927)
Heart of Darkness
- it appeared first as a three-part serial novel
- the novel/novella is based on historical
truth: Congo was under Belgian
dominion until 1960, during the reign of
Leopold II
- it is based on Conrad’s experience as
captain of a steamer up the Congo River
- the writer was determined to avoid both
simple-mindedness and the dullness of
conventional epic narratives
- he developed uncommon narrative
techniques: threefold frame story
- he uses narrators who are also
characters, Marlow – appears in several
works – and the Anonymous Narrator
- he also uses time in a disorienting,
ambiguous manner in a number of novels
and short stories
- in Heart of Darkness the narrative
structure is based on an older Marlow
telling incidents of his earlier life
- the main narrator is one of the listeners
- the story is filtered through the
memories of the narrators: nothing can be
taken for granted, the narrators themselves
have to be questioned, the story is
inconclusive
- in this way the reader is confused,
constantly involved intellectually
- his novels cannot be read passively, simply
for the plot
- the reader has to work hard at times in
order to understand Conrad’s intentions
- ambiguity and symbolism, at times
absurdity make the novel hard to interpret
- Kurtz’s last words, The horror! The
horror! can be interpreted in more than
one way
- Marlow’s lie to Kurtz’s Intended also
leaves room for interpretation
- The novel can be interpreted from different
perspectives:
1.the author makes use of a host of
symbols the most representative being
the alternation of black and white,
dark and light
- ‘the heart of darkness’ in Freudian terms is
the unconscious/ id; from a Jungian
perspective the ’shadow’, the evil in all of
us
- the connotations of the different symbols
are reversed on purpose: white doesn’t
mean pure any longer, and black is
significant of the oppressed:
They were dying slowly – it was very clear.
They were not enemies, they were not
criminals, they were noting earthly now, -
nothing but black shadows of disease and
starvation, lying confusedly in the greenish
gloom. (p. 24)
2. social/ anti-colonial, anti-imperialist
overtones constitute an important part
of the novel
- Kurtz, the product of the whole of
Europe is the protagonist of the novel and
the embodiment of European greed and
atrocity in Africa (Europeans who
‘scramble for loot’)
- paradoxically, he is both the master and
ally of the natives
- symbolically, he dies on his way back to
the Central Station
- Marlow’s ambiguous, indecisive behavior,
a sign of the guilt of the whole of the
Western world
- ‘The grove of death’, a foreboding, and
anticipation of the Holocaust?
3.Some critics (Chinua Achebe, Edward
Said) consider the novel to be racist
- They argue that Conrad portrays natives as
primitives, savages, primordial creatures
that can be treated in a cruel murderous
way
- Achebe even insists that the book should
not be read at all, should not be part of the
literary canon
- Conversely, David Denby in “Great
Books” argues that the artist’s mission is
not to change the world
- the plot is a threefold frame-story:
Charles Marlow’s story, that of the
Anonymous Narrator, and Kurtz’s
nightmarish adventure at the Inner Station
- all of the narrators are unreliable,
inconclusive, the stories are often verging
on absurdity (the brick maker can’t make
bricks, Marlow can’t fix the boat because
of lack of rivets, the Russian is dressed like
a harlequin for no apparent reason)
Conclusion
- the nature of life at sea and the danger it
implies permeates most of Conrad’s work
- his first career determined a different
perception of life: he was able to grasp the
circumstances imaginatively, and extend
them into a metaphor of mankind
struggling with hostile elements
- Conrad wrote his novels from the
perspective of a man of the world
- with Conrad the Far East, South America,
Central Africa were no longer peripheral
areas, but at the core of human
experience
- his Polishness meant a different
perspective as to politics, culture, life
- he stressed the difference of foreign
cultures and a possible fundamental
unity of human experience
- was aware of the strange relationship he
had with the English language:
sometimes his language is ‘un-English’ ,
but he had a perception of language which
no other English writer could have had and
definitely mastered the language
wonderfully
- he was more aware of the power of words,
of the capacity to convey meaning, but
also of the failure to express meaning
- Conrad’s vocabulary and syntax are
unusual in order to make the reader think,
not only to create the story
- he moved away from the basic 19th
century notion of an objective,
omniscient narrator
- he created the narrator/character
Marlow, although not only Marlow’s
voice is actually heard
- this creates a distance in the relationship
writer-reader
- this is underlined by the time scheme: the
plot consists of remembered events – the
story may not be wholly trustworthy
- No, something human is dearer to me
than the wealth of the world (Youth) is a
quote which characterizes Conrad, too
- Marlow: We live as we dream – alone.
(Heart of Drkness)
