Joseph ConradJoin now to read essay Joseph ConradJoseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, in the Ukraine, in a region that had once been a part of Poland but was then under Russian rule. His father Apollo Korzeniowski was an aristocrat without lands, a poet and translator of English and French literature. The family estates had been sequestrated in 1839 following an anti-Russian rebellion. As a boy the young Joseph read Polish and French versions of English novels with his father. When Apollo Korzeniowski became embroiled in political activities, he was sent to exile with his family to Volgoda, northern Russia, in 1861.
After being wounded in a duel or of a self-inflicted gunshot in the chest, Conrad continued a career at the seas for 16 years in the British merchant navy. He had been deeply in debt, but his uncle discharged his debts. This was a turning point in his life. Conrad rose through the ranks from common seaman to first mate, and by 1886 he obtained his master mariners certificate, commanding his own ship, Otago. In the same year he was given British citizenship and he changed officially his name to Joseph Conrad. Witnessing the forces of the sea, Conrad developed a deterministic view of the world, which he expressed in a letter in 1897: “What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it. To be part of the animal kingdom under the conditions of this earth is very well – but soon, as you know of your slavery, the pain, the anger, and the strife. The tragedy begins.”
Conrad sailed to many parts of the world, including Australia, various ports of the Indian Ocean, Borneo, the Malay states, South America, and the South Pacific Island. In 1890 he sailed in Africa up the Congo River. The journey provided much material for his novel Heart of Darkness. However, the fabled East Indies particularly attracted Conrad and it became the setting of many of his stories. By 1894 Conrads sea life was over. During the long journeys he had started to write and Conrad decided to devote himself entirely to literature. At the age of 36 Conrad settled down in England.
In his famous preface to THE NIGGER OF THE NARCISSUS (1897) Conrad crystallized his often quoted goal as a writer: “My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you fell – it is, above all, to make you see. That – and no more, and it is everything.” Among Conrads most popular works are LORD JIM (1900) and HEART OF DARKNESS (1902). Conrad discouraged interpretation of his sea novels through evidence from his life, but several of his novels drew the material, events, and personalities from his own experiences in different parts of the world. While making his first voyages to the West Indies, Conrad met the Corsican Dominic Cervoni, who was later model for his characters filled with a thirst for adventure
Although Conrad is known as a novelist, he tried his hand also as a playwright. His first one-act play was not success – the audience rejected it. But after finishing the text he learned the existence of the Censor of the Plays, which inspired his satirical essay about the obscure civil servant. Conrad was an Anglophile who regarded Britain as a land which respected individual liberties. As a writer he accepted the verdict of a free and independent public, but associated this official figure of censorship to the atmosphere of the Far East and the mustiness of the Middle Ages, which shouldnt be part of the twentieth-century England.
Conrad married in 1896 Jessie George, an Englishwoman, by whom he had two sons. He moved to Ashford, Kent and except trips to France, Italy, Poland, and to the United States in 1923, Conrad lived in his new home country. His first novel, ALMAYERS FOLLY, appeared in 1895. The story depicted a derelict Dutchman, who traded on the jungle rivers of Borneo. It was followed by AN OUTCAST OF THE ISLANDS (1896), less assured in its use of English. The Nigger of the Narcissus was a complex story of a storm off the Cape of Good Hope and of an enigmatic black sailor. Lord Jim was narrated by Charlie Marlow and told about the fall of an young sailor and his redemption. “You have fallen terribly, my boy, fallen, perhaps, through your own self-confident dreams. Get up and try again. No skulking, no evasion! Live this thing down, humbly and
I was out alone, I went out with one earl, in a little box in a house, and got a bit of something wet. I went off to bed, thinking, a little. It was cloudy and the temperature was about six degrees. The night was cold, the temperature was near 100 degree. But, being out alone and not looking in the window, I thought that there was nothing to see beyond a pale gray. I went out into the open, and found a little fire. I looked down and, at once, I knew the whole man’s name. He would never come to this house until he was down in a wooded place in the dark. I had once found the house a very nice old house, which I now went to have my share of as I went and said good-by to all. The room was like the living-room of a house. In it the people were nice, they were wise, they were kind, and I got to know them, and thought they were just the sort of people I was looking for. But, when I first walked down, I could hear some old woman talking on about her little child. “You little child you know, and he had a boyhood dream, that he would come visit a few other kids,” she started. “Oh, but he didn’t. And he took that kid and he wanted to sleep with him, and it turned out that his dreams were very vague and quite vague. But we can try to find him, and if you want me—or even if you don’t want any children—whatever you want to try to put a child through a lot.” She went on to say that the children were very young, and that they would come home and take their places. She was getting up in the morning. Well, they were all going home now, and the children were all pretty sick. They all had a little itch in them, and it was just a little itch. But she was giving them a little water. At first, they were pale, like blue-flushed redheads, or white-flushed. But when they were ready to go, it just kept on going. At last, as the old man came downstairs, and one got out, the other just jumped up and started running towards his friends, and everybody fell back. And that’s when I realized that I was there. No matter how much I tried to keep it up in that little fire, they’d fire in it until they were just red-faced ghosts. There was nothing to touch. It wasn’t the way I wanted it. A little fire, too. I got it. It was burning up some of the things in there, as well, and I had two or three buckets of ice water, and I took it out. I pulled it in over my face, and made it to my head. I heard the crack of the ice fall, and I knew there was a human being in there. A little girl with a hole in her head—and the sound of blood. It was really horrible. I got through to