Joseph Conrad 3 December 1857 3 August 1924

Joseph Conrad 3 December 1857 - 3 August 1924 - was born as a son of Apollo Korzeniowski - both parents were Polish, members of the local landowning gentry-nobility - He never officially changed his original name, and assumed the pen-name of Joseph Conrad only when publishing in 1895 his first novel, Almayer's Folly.

• His father was a Polish patriot who was exiled to northern Russia, and Conrad was an orphan by age 12. He managed to join the French merchant marine and in 1878 the British merchant navy, where he pursued a career for most of the next 15 years; his naval experiences would provide the material for most of his novels.

• He was well acquainted with classical Polish literature • the poetry, drama and fiction of Polish romantic writers, Mickiewicz and Słowacki, formed the main body of his readings in his native language

Important elements of Polish cultural tradition in Conrad´s Novels • Ideas of moral and national responsibility pervaded this literature. • Fidelity and betrayal, honour and shame, duty and escape were frequent subject. • The moral problems of an individual were typically posed in terms of communal obligations; and • ethical principles, formed under a decisive influence of chivalric ethos, were grounded in the idea that an individual, however exceptional he may be, is always a member of a community.

• His first novel, ALMAYER'S FOLLY (1895) was about a derelict Dutchman, who trades on the jungle rivers of Borneo • It was followed by AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS (1896), - it has a close relationship to Almayer, because it deals with some of the same characters and events. • It is a tale of intrigue in an eastern setting. Love and death are the major players in this parable of human frailty - the story of a man unable to understand others and fated never to possess his own soul. he novel details the undoing of Peter Willems, a disreputable, immoral man who, on the run from a scandal in Makassar, finds refuge in a hidden native village, only to betray his benefactors over lust for the tribal chief's daughter. The story features Conrad's recurring character Tom Lingard, who also appears in Almayer's Folly (1895) and The Rescue (1920)

• The NIGGER of the 'NARCISSUS ' - a complex story of a storm off the Cape of Good Hope and of an egocentric, enigmatic black sailor- the story of sailor’s deterioration and death aboard ship. • All life on board the Narcissus revolves around James Wait, a dying black sailor. Other members of the crew include the strong Captain Allistoun; Craik, an Irish religious fanatic; and Donkin, an arrogant, lazy Cockney. The superstitious sailors cater to Wait, even steal food for him, and rescue him when the ship capsizes during a fierce storm. However, he is also the cause of dissension aboard ship, leading to a near mutiny. The novel is notable not only for its vivid picture of life at sea but also as a study of evolving relationships between men in the most extreme circumstances.

• LORD JIM, narrated by Charlie Marlow, tells about the fall of a young sailor and his redemption. • LORD JIM was originally intended as a short story, but was then enlarged into a novel. It is partly based on true events: in 1880 a British captain and his crew abandoned the steamship Jeddah, carrying Muslim pilgrims, when the ship started to leak.

• The protagonist of Lord Jim is a British naval officer, who is haunted by guilt of cowardice, when he left his ship, Patna, in a storm without taking care of the passengers • Contrary to the crew's beliefs, the ship did not sunk and Jim is left to stand in front of the Court of Inquiry. After disgrace Jim moves through a variety of jobs ashore and finds work as an agent at the remote trading post of Patusan.

• The misjudged Jim gains the confidence of chief Doramin and becomes a respected figure, proving that he is "inscrutable at heart” • Jim promises Doramin that Brown and his men will leave the island without bloodshed. He is wrong, Doramin's son is killed, and Jim is finally forced to face his past - he allows himself to be shot by the grieving Doramin.

• HEART OF DARKNESS was partly based on Conrad's four-month command of a Congo River steamboat. The book was written in 1899 and published in 1902 • Conrad had learned about atrocities made by Congo "explorers", and created in the character of Kurtz the embodiment of European imperialism • in the novel the journey become analogous with a quest for inner truths

• In 1889 the Congo Free State was four years old as a political entity and already notorious as a sphere of imperialistic exploitation. Conrad’s childhood dream took positive shape in the ambition to command a Congo River steamboat Using what influence he could, he went to Brussels and secured an appointment. What he saw, did, and felt in the Congo are largely recorded in “Heart of Darkness” his most famous, finest, and most enigmatic story, the title of which signifies not only the heart of Africa, the dark continent, but also the heart of evil—everything that is corrupt, nihilistic, malign—and perhaps the heart of man.

• The story is central to Conrad’s work and vision, and it is difficult not to think of his Congo experiences as traumatic. He may have exaggerated when he said, “Before the Congo I was a mere animal, ” but in a real sense the dying Kurtz’s cry, “The horror!” was Conrad’s. He suffered psychological, spiritual, even metaphysical shock in the Congo, and his physical health was also damaged; for the rest of his life, he was racked by recurrent fever and gout.

Themes • • • 1. The corrupting influence of power 2. Man’s inhumanity to man 3. Racial inequality 4. Gender inequality 5. Nature as adversary

• YOUTH (1902) recorded Conrad's experiences on the sailing-ship Palestine, which repeats theme of a foolish and blindly superficial character meeting the tragic consequences of his own failings in a tropical region far from the company of his fellow Europeans. • NOSTROMO (1904) was an imaginative novel which again explored man's vulnerability and corruptibility. It includes one of Conrad's most suggestive symbols, the silver mine. In the story the Italian Nostromo ("our man") is destroyed for his heroism like Lord Jim. With his death the secret of the silver is lost forever.

• THE SECRET AGENT (1907) took a bleak view of prophets of destruction and utopians • one of Conrad’s finest works, deals with the equivocal world of anarchists, police, politicians, and agents provocateurs in London. • UNDER WESTERN EYES (1911) the novel takes place in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Geneva Switzerland, and is viewed as Conrad's response to themes explored in Crime and Punishment Conrad being reputed to have detested Dostoevsky. • full of cynicism and conflict about the historical failures of revolutionary movements and ideals.

• CHANCE (1913)- it is narrated by Conrad's regular narrator, Charles Marlow, but is characterised by a complex, nested narrative in which different narrators take up the story at different points. The novel is also unusual among its author's works for its focus on a female character: the heroine, Flora de Barr • Victory (1915) describes the unsuccessful attempts of a detached, nihilistic observer of life to protect himself and his hapless female companion from the murderous machinations of a trio of rogues on an isolated island.

• With Ford Madox Ford he wrote three books: THE INHERITORS (1901), ROMANCE (1903), and THE NATURE OF CRIME (1924

• Conrad’s influence on later novelists has been profound both because of his masterly technical innovations and because of the vision of humanity expressed through them. • He is the novelist of man in extreme situations. • “Those who read me, ” he wrote in his preface to A Personal Record, “know my conviction that the world, the temporal world, rests on a few very simple ideas; so simple that they must be as old as the hills. It rests, notably, among others, on the idea of Fidelity. ”

• For Conrad fidelity is the barrier man erects against nothingness, against corruption, against the evil that is all about him, insidious, waiting to engulf him, and that in some sense is within him unacknowledged. But what happens when fidelity is submerged, the barrier broken down, and the evil without is acknowledged by the evil within? At his greatest, that is Conrad’s theme. Feminist and postcolonialist readings of Modernist works have focused on Conrad and have confirmed his centrality to Modernism and to the general understanding of it.