A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z
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Life and Works: Polish-born English novelist and short-story writer. Among Conrad's 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. Conrad often fictionalized the historical moments of liberation of the oppressed, but he focused on the colonists, especially those not already committed to liberation. Joseph Conrad was born Josef Teodore Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, in Podolia, Ukraine, in 1857, a large, fertile plain between Poland and Russia that had once been a part of Poland but was then under Russian rule. It was a divided nation, with four languages, four religions, and a number of different classes. A fraction of the Polish-speaking inhabitants, including Conrad's family, belonged to the szlachta, a hereditary class below the aristocracy, which combined qualities of gentry and nobility. They had the political power, despite their impoverished state. Conrad's father, Apollo Korzeniowski, belonged to this class. His father was a poet and translator of English and French literature. 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 against the Tsarist domination of their country, he was sent to exile with his family to Volgoda, northern Russia, in 1861. They were sustained by their Roman Catholic faith. The young Conrad developed pneumonia on the journey and his mother died of it in 1865. Apollo tried to educate his son himself, he introduced him to the work of Dickens, Fenimore Cooper and Captain Marryat in either Polish or French translations. By 1869 Conrad's both parents had died of tuberculosis, and he was sent to Switzerland to his maternal uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski, who was to be a continuing influence on his life. Conrad attended schools in Kraków where he was disobedient and troublesome and persuaded his uncle to let him go to the sea. In 1874 he moved to France, where he spent the next few years, mastering his second language and the fundamentals of seamanship. The author made acquaintances in many circles, but it was his so-called "bohemian" friends who introduced him to drama, opera and theatre. In the meantime, he was strengthening his maritime contacts, and soon enough he became an observer on pilot boats. The workers he met on the ship, and all the experiences they thrust upon him, laid the groundwork for much of the vivid detail in his novels. In the mid-1870s he joined the French merchant marine as an apprentice, and made three voyages to the West Indies between 1875 and 1878. This may have been partly to avoid conscription into the Russian army. During his youth Conrad also was involved in arms smuggling for the Carlist cause in Spain, which ended in disaster. He subsequently gambled away his money and then tried to shoot himself in the chest, an incident that left him with a scar for life but did no serious injury. His uncle bailed him out and advised him to join the British merchant marines and gain British citizenship. Conrad continued his career at the seas for 16 years in the British merchant navy. He rose through the ranks from common seaman to first mate, and by 1886 he obtained his master mariner's certicicate, commandig his own ship, Otago. In the same year he was given British citizenship and was released from Russian citizenship in 1889. This enabled him to visit Poland again safely. He changed officially his name to Joseph Conrad. In 1890 Conrad took a job as captain of a river steamer in the Congo, where he suffered from malaria and dysentery. This experience gave him material for his novel Heart of Darkness (1902). His outrage and condemnation of colonialism were well-documented in the journal he kept during his visit. In the following years 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 Pasific Island. By 1894 Conrad's 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 Contad settled down in England. His first novel, which he had been working on for five years was finally published in 1895 as Almayer's folly, The story depicted a derelict Dutchman, who traided on the jungle rivers of Borneo. It was well reviewed but sold badly. 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, the first of his books narrated by Marlow, reflected the ideal of an English gentleman and a sailor Conrad wanted to be. In Youth (1902) the title story recorded his experiences on the sailing-ship Palestine. In 1896, Conrad married Jessie George. She was a typist, living in Peckham with her widowed mother. The Conrads moved to Kent, where the completion of Nostromo (1904), an imaginative novel which again explored man's vulnerability and corruptibility, took its toll on Conrad. It includes one of Conrad'smost suggestive symbols, the silver mine. In the story the Italian Nostromo is destroyed for his appetite for adventure and glory but with his death the secret of the silver is lost forever. It was viewed as a masterpiece, but people did not buy it and he needed to sell books to live. The period between The Nigger of the "Narcissus" (1897) and Under Western Eyes (1911), a suprisingly Dostoevsky-like novel, is considered artistically Conrad's most productive. The completion of Under Western Eyes (1911) produced another collapse, this time a nervous breakdown. Although Conrad was prolific, his financial situation wasn't secure until 1913 with the publication of Chance (1914), that ecstatically received and had substantial sales. By 1919, Conrad was so acclaimed as a writer that he could sell film rights for the enormous sum of £3,080. Last years of his life were shadowed by rheumatism. He refused an offer of knighthood in 1924 as he had earlier declined honorary degrees from five universities. His days were consumed with writing, trying to find the right word in every sentence. His struggle was no doubt accentuated by the gaps in his knowledge of the English language. Conrad had a true genius for companionship, and his circle of friends included talented authors such as Stephen Crane and Henry James. Always writing, the future years brought him back to Poland, and finally, to America, where he remained until a heart attack took him at the age of sixty-seven.Conrad died on August 3, 1924, and was buried in Canterbury. Conrad's books were read at the time as simple sea stories but are now viewed as serious novels. He is considered to be one of the finest modern novelists
writing in English. Selected works:
Films:
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