Joseph Conrad (born: Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski) was a Polish-British writer. He is considered one of the greatest novelists of the English language. Until his twenties, he was not able to speak English properly. He became a master prose stylist and brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. Conrad wrote novels and short stories that have a nautical setting. His works depict the tests of human spirits in the middle of an impassive and inscrutable universe.
Even though the works of Joseph Conrad contain the elements of realism of the 19th century, he is regarded as the early modernist. Numerous writers have been influenced by the anti-heroic characters and narrative style of his works. His works also inspired many films. Various writers and critics are of the view that the works Conrad wrote in the first two decades of the 20th century appear to have to foreshadow the events of the world that happen in the later part of the century.
Conrad wrote during the peak of the British Empire. He also wrote about the national experiences in his country Poland. He also wrote about his personal experiences in British and French merchant navies. He created novels and short stories that reflect the characteristic features and aspects of the world, which is dominated by Europe. The main topics of his writing were colonialism and imperialism. Through his writings, he intensely explores the human psyche.
A Short Biography of Joseph Conrad
Joseph Conrad was born on 3rd December 1857 in Berdichev, Ukraine. His mother, Evelina Korzeniowski, and his father, Apollo Korzeniowski, belongs to the Polish noble class. They were known as highly patriotic people who conspired against the Russian rule that caused extreme oppression. As an outcome of this conspiracy, his parents were sent to Russian province Vologda along with their 4-years-old son. Several years later, Conrad’s parents died. He was then raised by his uncle in Poland.
The education Conrad received in his early life was not consistent. Initially, he was tutored by his educated father. He then attended school in Krakow. Afterward, he received private schooling. Conrad, when he was 16 years old, left Poland and went to Marseilles, France. In the port city, he started working as a mariner.
Conrad introduced himself to a merchant who was his uncle’s friend. Through this introduction, Conrad navigated on numerous commercial ships of French. He first sailed as an apprentice and then as a warden or steward. He journeys to South Africa and the West Indies. It is also speculated that he might have participated in the international smuggling of guns.
Conrad spent a period in debt. He also attempted suicide and failed. He then joined the merchant marines of the British. There, he was employed for sixteen years. With time, his rank increased and attained British citizenship. He voyaged around the world, including countries such as Australia, Africa, Singapore, and India. These voyages gave him the experiences which he portrayed in his works of fiction.
When his years of seafaring ended, Conrad started digging his roots in his country. He started his literary career in 1895. In the year, he published his first novel Almayer’s Folly. The novel is based on an adventure tale with the setting of Borneo jungles.
In 1896, Conrad married Jessie Emmeline George. Emmeline was the daughter of a bookseller. Together they had two sons. Conrad also had a good friendship with the eminent writers of his time, such as H.G. Wells, Ford Madox Ford, and John Galsworthy.
In 1900, Conrad wrote one of his most famous and enduring novels, Lord Jim. This novel is based on the story of a young castaway sailor who overcomes his past cowardice and ultimately becomes a leader of a country.
In 1902, Conrad published a novella Heart of Darkness. This novel is based on the protagonist’s journey to the Con of Africa. In Congo, he meets a European trader Kurtz who has recognized himself as a ruler of the people there.
Both these novels Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim contain characteristic elements of the writings of Conrad. These characteristic elements contain remote settings, the intensive conflict between the forces of nature and human characters. The themes they talk about are the violent side of human nature, individualism, and racial prejudice. Joseph Conrad was more focused on showing the psycho-political situations of people. These conditions compare the inner lives of a character and the stroke of human history.
Conrad established his literary success with the publication of more novels such as Nostromo, The Secret Agent in 1904, and 1907 respectively. Conrad also published the collections of short stories and a memoir, A personal Record in 1912.
In the last twenty years of his life, Conrad published more autobiographical novels and writings. These include The Rescue and The Arrow of Gold. He published in the last novel The Rover, in 1923. On 3rd August 1924, Joseph Conrad died of a heart attack in Canterbury, England.
The later writers of the 20th century were greatly influenced by the works of Joseph Conrad. T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner, and Graham Greene are all among the category of writers for Conrad was a source of inspiration. His works have been translated in a number of languages and taught at the schools and universities.
Joseph Conrad’s Writing Style
Conrad’s Major Themes
Joseph Conrad belonged to the part of Poland, which was ruled by Russia during his time. In order to keep his family under eye and observe their political activity, they were sent to Russia when Conrad was four years old. His parents died a few years after in exile.
He inherited a sense of patriotism from his parents, and he never lost it during his whole life. However, his early experiences in exile and loss of family make him lonely. This loneliness and need for community turned out to be the major occupation of Conrad’s life. These elements are reflected in his careers: his life as an author and his job of the seafarer.
Joseph Conrad lived at sea from 1875 to 1894. He faces loneliness. This loneliness is then depicted in his novella Heart of Darkness. In his literary career, he lonely dedicated his life to art without gaining much of appreciation until his novel Chance was published in 1914.
Cosmopolitanism in Conrad’s Works
The cosmopolitan awareness of Joseph Conrad is one of the distinguishing qualities. Cosmopolitanism is the notion that all humans must, should, or could form a single community. This community must be formed by emphasizing moral values, political structures, economic practices, and cultural forms.
The cosmopolitanism views of Joseph Conrad suggest that nations do not exist in the form of complete entities from which one can easily detach themselves. However, the cosmopolitanism that Conrad imagines is critical and dialectical: national communities are formed through practices of cultural mobility and immigration.
Joseph Conrad appeared to be more cosmopolitan than his predecessor Henry James. As a seafarer, Conrad came across many people belonging to different countries in Asia and Europe. Moreover, Conrad appears to be a European writer than British or polish, even though he gave his deepest loyalties to his English traditions.
The works of Conrad are based on colonel Cosmopolitanism are Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim. In these works, Conrad emphasizes on the human psyche that is formed as the result of cultural differences and colonialism.
Intentness in Conrad’s Works
Intentness is another distinguishing quality of Joseph Conrad’s writing style. The term intentness signifies something different from the concentrative quality that is often found in the novels of great writers.
In the works of Conrad, the intentness is a little bit less than the works of another novelist. Conrad focuses less on giving minute details about human behavior. However, this quality gives a feeling of ceaseless watchfulness to the readers.
Conrad Preoccupation with Moral Ordeal
The preoccupation of Joseph Conrad with moral suffering is shown in his characterization. Unlike Henry James, Conrad does not employ the analytical method in his writing style in which the characters unfold in the process of discovery. Furthermore, unlike Balm and Dickenson, Conrad does not display the rich galley of type.
In his novel, Conrad deals with the style of his characters more than the type of his characters. He deals with the style of the behavior of a character when he/she faces suffering. This method is best illustrated in his novel The Nigger of the “Narcissus.”
Characterization of Joseph Conrad
One of the main characters of the novel The Nigger of the “Narcissus” is Donkin. Donkin is the destructive and base character who cannot commit any moral impartiality. Donkin turned out to be the familiar style of character in the works of Conrad.
Similarly, another character Singleton in the novel is simple-hearted and perfectly minded. He has unshakable integrity. However, there is a limitation to the character of Singleton. Even though the moral significance of the style Single can be universal, his human capacity is limited to seamanship. One of the convictions of Conrad appears to be that with specific functions, integrity is rare enough.
Other than these, Conrad also focuses on the other functions humans perform in their social life and complex activities. This includes the eroticism of humans, which he portrayed as universal in all humans and universally destructive.
Another style of Conrad’s characterization is the man of imagination who attains “self-knowledge. The chief protagonist of Conrad’s best stories is the man of imagination. His works that employed this style of protagonist include Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Under Western Eyes, The Shadow-Line, Victory, and The Secret Sharer.
In Heart of Darkness, The Shadow-line, and The Secret-Sharer, the protagonist of the novel, is also the first-person narrator of the story.
By employing the characters that have a sense of ordeal that Conrad has experienced in his life, Conrad thought that his works would achieve a realistic effect. He wants to achieve this realistic effect by the presence of a character that is able to show the influence of the ordeal of his personal life, either by getting close to the person who is undergoing the ordeal or by observing him closely.
For example, in the novella, Heart of Darkness, Conrad created a character Marlowe, a retired English sailor. The experiences of Marlowe resembles the personal experiences and temperament of Joseph Conrad as a sea sailor. However, Marlowe is distinguished from Conrad in being an Englishman and the way he characterized himself in the eyes of other observers in the play. This method of characterization is much evident in the novella Heart of Darkness.
Similarly, the novel The Nigger of the “Narcissus” is based on the personal experiences of Joseph Conrad when Conrad commanded a ship in 1890 in Congo. Therefore, it had personal
importance to Joseph Conrad.
Conrad’s Philosophy of Life
Joseph Conrad is the most pessimistic writer on the English Language next to Thomas Hardy. However, Conrad does not challenge the inspirations of humans for a living. His works, such as “Youth,” do justice to the happiness of living, and his short story “Typhoon” celebrates the victory of the human spirit over the physical risks.
Such optimistic themes are also included in the novel Nostromo. However, this novel and other works emphasize and intensify the response to life due to their deep concerns with the moral sufferings that provide a state of grandeur to the characters of Conrad, even if they face defeat. Moreover, in his works, the characters are not always shown defeated like Thomas Hardy.
For example, in the novel The Secret Agent, Conrad shows the victory of the Assistant
Commissioner, the man of self-knowledge over corruption, shortsightedness, corruption, egotism, and fanaticism. These things are joined together in this novel to show a society that is controlled by the tyranny of policed and destabilized by nihilism.
In the works of Conrad, there is no technique for the recovery of society. Conrad builds up the faith of his readers in the stern and final reality of humans as primarily moral beings.
Complex Influences on Conrad’s Style
Joseph Conrad’s literary style appears to be greatly influenced by Henry James and Russian novelists. Conrad wrote adventurous novels and combined with the French naturalist objective spirit. The method and movement of psychology, the way Conrad employed various points of view, the way his narration crosses and recrosses one another is something which owes to Henry James.
Conrad also displays the slay sensibility background and the spirit of Russian novelists in his works. These complex influences in Joseph’s works are dominated by his own temperament, which makes his style rich, original, and unique.
The Richness, Diversity, and Vividness of Conrad’s Descriptions
Joseph Conrad asserts that a novelist must make sure to highlight all resources of art, whether it is the art of shape, color, and sound. He held that the novels must have the bright colors of paintings, the harmony and rhythm of music, and the solidity of sculpture. The works of Conrad are fully up to his beliefs.
The richness, diversity, and vividness of the description of Conrad employed in his literary works are unmatchable to any other writer. The scenes which Conrad describes in his works are very vivid. His scenes are all naturally centered on the image on the sea. He unrolls the sights of the world from the deck of the ship. The description is all based on the furies and smiles of the sea, the dramas of shipboard, the manners and landscapes of different countries, the remote shores, and seaports.
All these scenes make an intensely vivid show, which makes the readers imagine it if he has experienced it by himself.
The sounds, lighting, odors, tastes, and colors of the characters of Conrad are constant. It is their automatic activity that is not interrupted by the feelings and emotions of life. Conrad is a novelist who has employed so many sensations in his works and expresses them with the most suitable word. His style of writing and choice of words widen the descriptive range of the English language.
The Depiction of Inner Life of the Characters
The way Conrad depicted the inner life of his characters is real to the inner life of all human beings. However, Conrad does not focus on the inner life with spontaneity. Conrad has put some efforts to depict the inner life of his characters. On one side, Conrad created his characters that have firm outlines and moral personalities like their physical features. This makes readers consider the basic truth. However, on the other hand, the psychological complexity of Conrad’s characters makes room for slow reflections and analysis of the dim souls which are complicated and subtle. In the mind of the character, his insight of life stands him in a good position.
However, when confronted with the material world, his perception is neither new nor definite.
Conrad’s desire for objectivity in the plots of the novels leads him to present the facts as echoing in one or several minds. The vision is inculcated in the minds of readers, which he or she has to follow and harmonize. This method of the depiction of the inner life of characters gives rise to some uncertainty in the novels even though it also produces high and rare effects.
Conrad’s Depiction of Human Suffering in his Works
In his works, Conrad appears to be a raw and realist writer. He is a poet and thinker. His works are filled with humor and pathos. His works also chiefly present the sense of mystery of fate along with implicit and deep ethical elements. The mood of Conrad’s works is pessimistic.
Almost all of the works of Conrad are based on the numerous sufferings of humans. The protagonists and heroes he employed in his works are nor idealistic. He made them face their weakness of nature. The selfishness in the nature of man makes him worse than animals in spite of the struggles of the best people.
Joseph Conrad was the son of parents who were politically exiled. He belongs to the country whose nationality was persecuted for a period of time. Therefore, in his works, he revealed himself persistently suggesting pity, union, and solidarity. In the novels of Joseph Conrad, there is the mystic spiritualization of life, which instantly casts light on the poverty and suffering of people over the landscape and actions of people. The personal experiences of Conrad and the symbolism he employed in his works are the depiction of human sufferings. His temperament is naturally found in his works and is tuned to it.
Conclusion
To conclude, the style of Conrad is like a sheer miracle that has shaped mismatched elements in a strong synthesis. Conrad, in a learned language, created an appealing style that is loaded with stem realities. These realities are then carried over with the rhythm, which not only increases the hard precision but also immerses it in meditative music, which is caught by the soul in an undertone of soft harmonies.
