Vol.12

2017

Publication date: 16.05.2018

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Editorial team

Editor-in-Chief Andrzej Juszczyk

Issue reviewers Prof. dr hab. Jolanta Dudek, D.Phil. (Oxon)

Issue content

Rafał Marceli Blüth as a Conrad Scholar

Stefan Zabierowski

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 7 - 26

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.001.8658

The aim of the present article is to present the achievements of Rafał Marceli Blüth (1891-1939) in the field of Conrad scholarship. During the period between the First and Second World Wars, Blüth was a prominent Catholic intellectual and—along with Prof. Józef Ujejski and the well-known writer Maria Dąbrowska—was one of Poland’s foremost Conrad critics. As well as interpreting Conrad’s novels, Blüth researched the writer’s biography, particularly with regard to the role played by family tradition in the Polish eastern borderlands. He also put forward a detailed interpretation of the factors which might have influenced Conrad’s decision to leave Poland while he was still in his teens. Blüth’s greatest achievements as a literary critic include interpretations of novels such as Victory, The Rover and Nostromo, an attempt to classify the main characters of Conrad’s novels and a study comparing Conrad’s writing and view of the world with those of Dostoevsky.

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Refractions, Adaptations, and Simplifications of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness in the Polish Culture in the Twenty-first Century

Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 27 - 45

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.002.8659

The paper aims at a comparative analysis of four Polish retranslations of Heart of Darkness, not to show the differences but to reveal the procedures and techniques by means

of which translators, editors, and publishers refract (manipulate) the translated text. It is my contention that particular versions of Heart of Darkness function in diverse ways in Polish culture and each rendition is targeted at a different audience. The retranslations will be analysed using the methodology of the Manipulation School and its development by André Lefevere.

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The Sinister Oracle. Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and Virgil’s Aeneid

Joanna Pypłacz

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 47 - 58

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.003.8660

The aim of this article is to re-examine the links between Heart of Darkness and the Aeneid—the Latin epic which is already known to have served as the main hypotext for Joseph Conrad’s novella. The transformation of several important motifs—such as those of the sacrifice, white worsted, the ivory gate and, finally, that of the prophetic voice—reveals that Conrad has shifted the focal point of Virgil’s dark tale, placing the figure of the Oracle—who has been disguised and transformed in a highly sophisticated manner—to its very centre.

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Jim “Under a Cloud”: The Career of a Leitmotif

Nic Panagopoulos

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 59 - 69

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.004.8661

The present paper begins by arguing that, unlike the omnipresent phrase “one of us” in Lord Jim which has two easily identifiable primary sources, namely Genesis 3:22 and Poetics II, the source of the related poetic leitmotif which imagines grief or shame as a clouded sky is multiple and protean. What Conrad called “the common expressions, ‘under a cloud’” (LJ 259) is shown to have travelled through such grand narratives as Homer’s Iliad (750-700 BC), Sophocles’ Antigone (442-441 BC), and Euripides’ Hippolytus (428 BC), before gracing the pages of Lord Jim. In the shame culture of epic, the clouded-sky motif is identified as signaling the warrior’s rising ire through the pathetic fallacy. In tragedy, on the other hand, the same motif in conjunction with the convention of the theatrical mask is said to signify the opaqueness and inaccessibility of the human psyche which necessitates the construction of identity while facilitating the production of scapegoats. However, in keeping with the anti-Gnostic pessimism that Conrad shares with the Greek tragedians, Lord Jim presents the ontological and moral fog surrounding the protagonist as a blessing in disguise since, as Oedipus’ fate illustrates, there may be more danger finally in being understood than in being misunderstood. Thus, given that Jim is “one of us”, his clouded countenance—akin to a mask shielding an actor’s face from himself as much as from the audience—is presented by the novel as humanity’s last line of defense against tragic knowledge.

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Life as Reading: Razumov’s Interpretative Situation in Under Western Eyes

Joanna Kurowska

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 71 - 86

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.005.8662

This essay analyzes the interpretative situation of Razumov, the main hero of Conrad’s novel Under Western Eyes (1910). Challenged by a fellow student named Victor Haldin, Razumov must navigate through his internal experiences (past, present, and those anticipated by him in the future), as well as through external stimuli—which he has little experience to understand fully—in order to arrive at morally meaningful decisions. Communicative aspects of Razumov’s encounters, first with Haldin, then with his sister Natalie, are discussed in greater detail; particularly Razumov’s use of speech and silence, first to conceal but ultimately to reveal the truth.

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”Twixt Land and Sea” in Conrad's Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories

Joanna Skolik

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 87 - 99

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.006.8663

The article aims at discussing the interdependence of the marine and the land spaces in Conrad’s works. Although they serve the same purpose—they constitute the background, and set the scene for Conrad’s tales, the marine space works quite frequently as a catalyst for human actions. The Youth: A Narrative and Two Other Stories volume is analysed in order to present the image of land and sea as created by the writer. Moreover, the voyage, the element joining the tales, will be considered from the perspective suggested by Juliet McLauchlan in her inspiring article Conrad’s ‘Three Ages of Man’: The ‘Youth’ Volume.

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“The Perfect Communion”: The Significance of the Body in The Secret Sharer

Yoko Okuda

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 101 - 111

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.007.8664

This paper examines the sense of physical presence in The Secret Sharer, and analyzes how the narrator matures into a seaman worthy of a command by developing this sense. The paper is part of my research on the emotional sub-text of Conrad’s works. According to Najder, the work is based on Conrad’s “specialist knowledge as a seaman.” Seamanship demands a developed sense of physical presence. This theme is also important in Under Western Eyes, written during the same period. However, according to Jeremy Hawthorn, Conrad’s concern with “communicative and expressive potentialities of the physical human body” has not been given sufficient attention, and the same can be said about this work. In this paper, first, I will discuss the theme of physical presence; second, I will analyze the captain’s relationship with Leggett from this perspective; and, finally, I will argue that the captain’s relation with the ship changes as he develops his physical sense.

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“[A] glowing gold tinge on the waters of the Pantai”: Conrad’s Challenge to the Narrative of Economic Success in Almayer’s Folly

Agnieszka Setecka

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 113 - 122

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.008.8665

The exotic setting of Conrad’s Almayer’s Folly suggests the novel’s affinity to the adventure romance, a genre popular in the final decades of the nineteenth century. However, readers expecting a story of dangerous exploits in the remote lands (or seas) must be disappointed. As Andrea White showed in Joseph Conrad and the Adventure Tradition, Conrad challenges the romance convention by contrasting a life full of adventures, which can only be glimpsed from afar, with the protagonist’s mundane existence. The aim of my paper is to take White’s argument further, and to present Conrad’s first novel not only as a challenge to the late-Victorian romance tradition but also to any narrative of (economic) success which accompanied colonial ventures. Conrad exposes both the myth of the adventurer, whose luck coupled with daring enables him to find a treasure, and the myth of a self-made man, whose perseverance and hard work in the colonies ensure his financial success.

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The Theme of Patriotism in Prince Roman

Joanna Kurowska

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 123 - 132

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.009.8666

This essay explores Conrad’s assessment of the moral state of Europe as well as post-

Enlightenment European divisions, as reflected in the writer’s treatment of the theme of patriotism in his short story Prince Roman. The story’s unique, seemingly “un-Conradian” features are discussed in the context of the influence of Polish Romanticist ideas on Conrad. The motifs of unselfishness and sacrifice for a “greater cause” recurring in Prince Roman are shown as determinants of the quality of the protagonist’s moral choice.

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The Conradian 'Shadow-line' in Selected Works by Stanisław Lem

Daniel Vogel

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 133 - 149

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.010.8667

Joseph Conrad wrote The Shadow-Line. A Confession at the end of 1916, when Europe was in the middle of the Great War. As he mentions in the “Author’s Note” (written in 1920), the purpose of the work was to present certain events connected with the passage from youth to maturity. However, in the course of time the expression “shadow line” gained more universal meaning, and now the phrase “to cross the shadow-line” refers not only to crossing the border between youth and maturity, but to passing from one period of life into another. The literary output of Joseph Conrad, had considerable influence not only on his contemporaries or immediate followers, but on the modern artists as well. One of them was Stanisław Lem—philosopher, essayist, author of excellent Science-Fiction novels and short stories, peopled with such characters as Ijon Tichy, Professor Tarantoga or the unforgettable Pirx the pilot. Although in his works Lem, save a few exceptions, does not make direct references to Joseph Conrad and his fiction, Conradian motifs can be traced in most of his novels. One of them is the motif of crossing the shadow-line, noticeable in such works as Return from the Stars, The Invincible, Tales of Pirx the Pilot. The article shows how the author of Solaris used the motif of Conradian “shadow-line” to present the difficult moments, decisions and dilemmas of his protagonists.

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Leo Tolstoy's and Joseph Conrad's: Relation to Music

Brygida Pudełko

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 151 - 158

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.011.8668

It is important to stress that Tolstoy’s and Conrad’s texts are to be understood to include not only literary, and thus verbal, texts but also elements of other media, such as music, theatre and visual arts. It should be noted that for Conrad music was also one of the arts that he greatly appreciated. Though Conrad’s main concern was to make us “see,” he was also concerned with making us “hear.” The use of music to accompany sexual desire, frustration and violence is a technique often used by the writer. Likewise, music had an enormous influence on Tolstoy. He was fascinated with its power, just as with the power of sexuality, beauty and war. His favourite composer was Chopin, but he also appreciated Mozart, Haydn, Weber, and Beethoven. In The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories Tolstoy expresses his complex and controversial views on marriage and sexuality, focussing on his protagonist Pozdnyshev and his wife, who performs Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata with a spirited violinist Trukhachevskii. The obsessive nature of Pozdnyshev’s jealousy is nowhere more obvious than in the sexual power he ascribes to music, and particularly to the initial part of the presto of Beethoven’s sonata.

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Joseph Conrad and E. M. Forster in search of a transcultural space

Narugopal Mukherjee

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 159 - 172

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.012.8669

“Only connect,” this is the philosophy E. M. Forster popularizes in Howard’s End and it becomes the central idea in his subsequent writings. Both Joseph Conrad and E. M. Forster speak of crossing the boundaries of culture and reaching out to the ‘Other,’ thereby turning their fictions into grand narratives of transculturalism. Conrad, in his novella, Heart of Darkness, and E. M. Forster, in his novel A Passage to India, feel an urgency to bridge up the gap between European imperialists and the natives, between the colonizer and the colonized, the exploiter and the exploited, whites and blacks, between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ thus advocating obliteration of all binary oppositions. Achebe might have criticized Conrad for his ‘racist’ bias but throughout his novel the focus is on tansculturalism, going across boundaries. Kurtz failed because he could not ‘connect’ properly. Forster speaks of the same in A Passage to India on a larger scale but in a more explicit manner. There are several attempts to ‘connect’ at personal, social, cultural, political, and even spiritual levels in the book. In the course of the novel Forster is in search of a ‘lasting home’ (“The Hill of Devi”) under an open sky where people can come together on equal terms putting aside their racial and religious identities. Both Conrad and Forster are, thus, to be examined not just from a post-colonial perspective but from a broader philosophical one, where all lines of demarcation become dissolved and human entity is upheld. In this respect, both writers cross temporal and spatial boundaries and become universal.

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Sternness as a Source of Levity in Joseph Conrad, James M. Barrie, and Charles Dickens

Anne Keithline

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 173 - 182

https://doi.org/10.4467/20843941YC.17.013.8670

It is a small but important feature of Conrad’s work that “sternness” as a character trait is almost never used to build the atmosphere that its definition of strictness and severity suggests. Instead, acting sternly tends to undercut the authority and sense of personal awareness of characters who attempt it, often contributing to moments of levity or outright comic relief. Conrad was not alone in this use of sternness but, like his contemporary Barrie, he absorbed it from Victorian writers, including Dickens, whose work he read and admired. This paper traces the uses of sternness through Conrad’s canon, showing how its manifestations help to create Conrad’s singular sense of humor. Special attention is paid to the use of the word “sternly” in the last line of “The Tale,” where its interpretation is critical to readerly projections of the story’s future action. Selections from Dickens and Barrie are also discussed in order to contextualize and illuminate Conrad’s own uses of sternness.

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In Memoriam Halina Najder (1926-2017)

Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech

Yearbook of Conrad Studies, Vol. 12, 2017, pp. 183 - 185

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Słowa kluczowe: Rafał Marceli Blüth, Polish Conrad scholarship between the wars, Joseph Conrad’s biography, Joseph Conrad’s writing, Joseph Conrad’s novels, Heart of Darkness, refraction, simplification, adaptation, retranslation, Heart of Darkness, Aeneid, Conrad, Virgil, oracle, Sibyl, Kurtz, katabasis, death, night, Lord Jim, “under a cloud”, intertext, Homeric epic, shame culture, kleos, poetic formulas, Greek tragedy, theatrical mask, construction of identity, recognition, pessimism, tragic knowledge, interpretative situation, cognitive prejudice, community, tradition, the symbol of stranger, communication, speech, silence, moral choice, Joseph Conrad, Youth, Heart of Darkness, The End of the Tether, sea space, land space, The Secret Sharer, body, physical presence, seamanship, Almayer’s Folly, the imperial romance, Victorian realist conventions, self-made man, colonialism, Prince Roman, patriotism, Poland, Europe, sacrifice, messianism, nationalism, Polish Romanticism, Joseph Conrad, Stanisław Lem, the shadow line, first command, return from the stars, the invincible, Pirx the pilot, loneliness of the commander, responsibility of the commander, loyalty of crew, marine fiction, space voyage, Joseph Conrad, Leo Tolstoy, Beethoven, The Kreutzer Sonata, sexual desire, frustration, jealousy, violence, Heart of Darkness, A Passage to India, expansion, connection, transculturalism, grand narratives, Joseph Conrad, Charles Dickens, James M. Barrie, “The Tale”, sternness, characterization, irony, humor

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