*This article looks at Joseph Conrad’s lasting legacy and influence on the literature that followed him. His unique background and Polish experience allowed him to look at the world in a unique way as compared to his contemporaries such as John Galsworthy. Conrad’s views on narrative, on colonialism, on the nature of universe, on the writing of political fiction, and his use of elements from popular fiction both directly and indirectly influenced the Modernism movement and many later writers, aspects of whose works reveal their origins in the works of Conrad.

* This is a revision of a Plenary Address given at the Conrad Our Contemporary Conference in Warsaw, 14th November 2017.

The eponymous question of the present address as well as its main premise concern the issue of reading Conrad as opposed to the issue of Conrad’s readings. Although the writer insisted on the priority of artistic expression in his oeuvres over their thematic content, he tends to be analyzed with a view to precedence of content over form. Moreover, his application in his less known short fiction of the then novel modernist device of denegation usually ascribed to Faulkner, is hardly given its due in criticism. What distorts Conrad is, likewise, ideological mediatization of his fiction and biography. And, last but not least, comes insufficient appreciation among Western Conradians of the significance for his writings of his Polish background, and especially his borderland szlachta heritage, where also Polish criticism has been at fault. As emphasized, in comparison with Conrad’s Englishness, which comes down to the added value of his home, family, friends, and career in England as well as the adopted language, his Polishness is about l’âme: the patriotic spirit of Conrad’s ancestry, traumatic childhood experience, Polish upbringing and education, sensibilities and deeply felt loyalties deriving from his formative years in Poland. Therefore, one of the premises put forward in the present address is that perhaps Conrad should be referred to as an English writer with his Polish identity constantly inscribed and reinscribed into the content and form of his oeuvres, rather than simply an English writer of Polish descent as he is now. The three eponymous aspects are thus hardly to be ignored in Conrad studies, even if a significant part of Conrad criticism to date has done precisely that. 

This article examines Conrad’s novel in the light of the Irish Fenian bombing campaign of 1881-1885. Conrad’s avoidance of any mention of their destructive methods and not unreasonable political objectives, allows him to focus on the absurdity of the Russian Nihilists, also resident in London at this time: their idle, parasitic and despairing devotion to indiscriminate destruction. While the first half of the novel is a metaphysical analysis of evil, where passive men do nothing, the second half is determined by its heroine, the active agent, Winnie, who invites comparison with Tess of the D’Urbervilles, shares with Lena in Victory the distinction of dying in a just cause, and satisfies the reader’s desire for a justice which neither the police nor the government is willing to offer. Conrad traces the roots of indiscriminate terrorism to Nihilist despair and Russian willingness to use London as a stage for its states-sponsored terrorism. His analysis of ‘the rules of the game’ agreed by security services, spies and terrorists, is as relevant today as it was in 1907. 

The aim of this paper is to analyze the spectral presence of J. Conrad’s  short story “The Duel” in Eustachy Rylski’s novel Warunek [The Condition] employing the methodology of hauntology. In the present paper the term hauntology will be used as an umbrella concept for the investigation of the interpretative possibilities offered by the figure of spectre and phantom text present in literary narratives. Analysing the  process of haunting or in other words, the process of  the text being re-visited by some other older story, new/hidden meaning arises. In this way  we can trace the action of opening of the text so that something from the past might enter and shutter its original structure.

The Shadow-Line represents a fundamental achievement in Conrad’s literary career and constitutes the peak of the author’s ethical reflection on the relationship between literature and life. By combining the autobiographical narration with the motives, atmospheres, and vocabulary of romance, Conrad presents the account of his personal experience of initiation to adulthood as a quest-like fiction of maturation through hardship. The key-figure of this merger is the “outsider,” who is an individual who learns how to endure hardship and failure by opening his or her soul to solidarity and respect for humanity, thus achieving wisdom and ethical worth.

The aim of the following study is to situate The Nigger of the “Narcissus” in a consistent constellation of Polish-Romantic references, as well as to demonstrate that even though Conrad’s plotline evokes reminiscences of his continuous readings of Mickiewicz’s epic Pan Tadeusz, his text overcomes Mickiewicz’s influence, in Harold Bloom’s sense. Numerous references to Juliusz Słowacki and Pedro Calderón de la Barca are evidenced here. Even though, formally speaking, James Wait is constructed in the image of Mickiewicz’s Jacek Soplica from Pan Tadeusz, these seeming influences are deceptive. The stylization of Calderón’s Don Fernando from The Constant Prince (which Juliusz Słowacki translated into Polish), and the martyr and Carmelite prophet, Marek Jandołowicz, from Słowacki’s play Father Marek[Ksiądz Marek], turn out to be more decisive and more deeply grounded influences on the Wait character.

Transl. Ewa Chruściel

The article presents a portrait of Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski, an English writer with a Polish soul. Conrad—the last Polish Romantic—did not only manage to introduce Polish dreams and longings into English (and Western) literature, but also transformed the Polish experience into a universal one. Writing about exotic, faraway places, he disseminated myths concerning Polish national identity, chivalric tradition and the Polish Eastern Borderland atmosphere and ethos. Conrad, a very demanding writer, never presents ready-made answers, nor does he offer simple solutions to the problems of his protagonists. Moreover, everybody can understand Conrad in their own personal way, for he is perceived as “one of us,” no matter who “we” are. 

Review of Maya Jasanoff, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, Penguin Press 2017, pp. 376, with Index, maps and illustrations