Joseph Conrad was an English writer of Polish descent; his most famous works include Heart of Darkness. In 1857, he was born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Berdichev in the Ukraine, at that time in the Russian Empire. His father was an ardent Polish patriot and was exiled to Northern Russia where he died in the harsh climate. The father also worked as a translator and as a child Conrad read many English novels before coming under the guardianship of his uncle but in 1874 he left school to work as a sailor in the French merchant navy. Thus he travelled widely including voyages to the West Indies and the coast of Venezuela, then moved to England and worked for the British merchant navy travelling to Sydney, the Indonesian archipelago, South East Asia and the Congo. In 1895, his first novel was published and he married, settling in Southeast England into a life of poverty and ill health until in the early part of the twentieth century when he gained success and financial security as a writer. Conrad died in Canterbury, Kent in 1924.
Admired as writer of adventures at sea and in exotic places, he drew inspiration from his extensive journeys. However, his novels are essentially tragedies. Almayar’s Folly and An Outcast of the Islands (1896) focus on the same tragic theme of a foolish and blindly superficial hero figure suffering the consequences of his failings in a tropical location, remote from fellow Europeans. The Nigger of the “Narcissus”(1897) records the deterioration and death of an egocentric black sailor aboard ship. Lord Jim (1900) is set amidst the jungle on an Indonesian island. Typhoon (1904) is another novel set in Southeast Asia. Later works focused on political intrigue and romance. Nostromo (1904) is about a South American republic and revolution, politics, economic vice and silver in which the characters are corrupted by their own ambitions. The London world of anarchists, police, politicians and spies is the focus of the ironic novel The Secret Agent (1907).
Conrad’s work is overwhelmingly pessimistic, forever returning to the theme of individual’s inevitable and tragic shift from idealism to corruption and degradation. Stylistically his prose is rich and he was admired for his portrayal of the sea, the exotic landscape and as a storyteller. However, his focus is more on the tragic individual and his inner conflicts. The sea or the jungles are settings for the isolation that drives the character to engage so deeply with common feelings of culpability, accountability and insecurity. Faith (in self, in ideals, in people etc) is all that divides the individual from the tide of evil and malevolence surrounding them.
Q