This paper first examines what kind of texts Conrad cites in his novels, and how they function and goes on to ask why Hamlet and the Bible are so significant in Lord Jim. We will argue that Hamlet and Lord Jim have something in them that will not be transformed into art and that accounts, in part, for Conrad’s saying that he has been “satanically ambitious” in writing this novel, which analyses the human condition, its hopes and shames, courage and cowardice, to a profound depth at the limit of language and artistic expression. The intertext, indirectly, enables Conrad to bestow a heightened rhetoric onto his protagonist, which he would otherwise have found impossible in the Modern period. Conrad frequently states his difficulty in finding language to express the reality of Jim; he also has recourse to different narrative genres – adventure, gothic, romance – to give consolation to those looking for narrative closure. The intertext of Hamlet and the Bible enable the reader to perceive beyond closure that there are areas of existence that cannot be expressed in words. However, whether we perceive the silence beyond the text as ineffable or unsayable must, finally, depend on the individual reader. Conrad loads Jim’s presence with Christian imagery in order to show that this very young, flawed, incoherent seaman is fated to atone for sin in self-sacrifice. Society hangs together in terms of inter-dependent community, but in another sense our common fate is to “hang together” for, in a post-lapserian world, we are all of us guilty and “under a cloud”.

This article consists of excerpts from two chapters of Margreta Grigorova’s monograph entitled Joseph Conrad – the Creator as Seafarer. The titles of the chapters are: “The Captain and the Sea” and “Locating Heart of Darkness. A Journey to the Centre of Africa. The Belgian Congo in Conrad’s Works.” These chapters focus on the figure of the captain in Conrad’s works and on one of its particular manifestations in Heart of Darkness. The figure of the captain provides crucial insights into Conrad’s work. It shapes his narratives biographically and is at the core of their creative design. Conrad’s dream of captainship dominates both his real-life and creative quests. It is related both to the romantic heroism of sailing and to the sober responsibility and art of ship navigation. The triumph of this dream represents one of the force lines that draw Conrad’s readers to his works. The “heart” of “darkness” represents one of the emblematic topoi in his work. Confronting the empirical manifestations of “darkness” and its metaphysical significance is a salient feature of Conrad’s fiction, but it acquires its innermost and universal meaning in the eponymous novella, which demonstrates the culmination of his creative eloquence. It is a work that invites the critical reader to undergo a remarkable hermeneutic journey into a world which is under the gravity force of powerful insights and word gestures.

This article examines the trends in Bulgarian critical appraisals of Conrad’s writing and the transformations they have undergone over the last hundred years. Though few in number, these appraisals are nevertheless profound and perceptive, keeping in focus the most essential messages of Conrad’s works, as well as the facts of the author’s remarkable life. The scope of these critical endeavours has long been of a rather limited nature, but in some of the articles there has definitely been a noticeable trend towards a monographic approach. The growing fascination with Conrad in Bulgaria became particularly evident during the celebrations to mark the 150th anniversary of the writer’s birth. The Polish Institute in Sofia contributed significantly to this event, organizing university lectures and film projections – not only in the capital, but also in other parts of the country. In addition, the Warsaw 150th anniversary exhibition entitled “Twixt land and sea” was invited to Sofia (the co-author of the present article being one of those who took part in the opening ceremony). This heightened interest in Conrad – the man and the writer – is partly the result of current trends towards intensive cultural interaction and also a growing fascination with migrant writers coming from multicultural backgrounds. It may well be that these recent developments have contributed to the publication of two monographs on Conrad: Stefana Roussenova’s comparative study entitled Dialogues in Exile: Joseph Conrad, Vladimir Nabokov, Eva Hoffman (2010) – which addresses the problems of exile and migration in some of Conrad’s works – and Margreta Grigorova’s monograph entitled Joseph Conrad – the Creator as Seafarer (2011), which not only reviews the seminal achievements that have contributed to the expansion of Conrad studies in Bulgaria, but also builds on them and takes them to completion.

A perusal of Conrad’s novels and Norwid’s Civilization easily allows us to discern a similarity of ideas. Both authors analyse the social consequences of technological progress and are particularly disturbed by the illusionary feeling of security that it brings, coming from a conviction that the forces of nature have finally been subdued. Modernity deprives Man of his greatness — it “takes the spell away”. With the disappearance of the common toil that holds people together comes a loosening of social bonds. Norwid wrote his Civilization in reaction to the news of the sinking of the Pacific — a steamship on which he had once returned from America. Conrad for his part was fascinated by the greatest sea disaster of his times: the sinking of the Titanic. The reluctance of both authors to acknowledge progress as an absolute entity may be explained by their shared Romantic view of the world, which was incompatible with any order based solely on “material interests”.

During the years immediately after Poland regained its independence in 1918 the country could boast few literary periodicals. One of them was Wiadomości Literackie (Literary News), which appeared for the first time on 6th January 1924 in Warsaw. Wiadomości Literackie serialized several translations of Conrad’s work, including: “Dusza przeciwnika” (“The Character of the Foe” [collected in The Mirror of the Sea]), “Conrad w Krakowie w r. 1914” (“First News”) and “Książę Roman” (“Prince Roman”). The present article focuses on one translation of “The Character of the Foe” by Józef Brodzki. It explores the strategies used by the translator to domesticate Conrad’s text. These comprised explication, addition, substitution and omission – none of which, however, should be perceived as a limitation. On the contrary, these modifications served the purpose of introducing Conrad’s maritime fiction to the Polish reading public and were a necessary procedure during the early stages of his reception in Poland. They are in line with the Retranslation Hypothesis formulated by Antoine Berman. On the whole, Brodzki’s translation is very effective and conveys the major features of Conrad’s prose by using simpler sentences, paraphrases and neutral language.

This article is an attempt to trace and determine the true relations that existed between Tadeusz Bobrowski and his nephew Joseph Conrad (then known by his Christian name Konrad or the diminutive form Konradek). Conrad’s parents died when he was only eleven years old and from that moment onwards the most important person in his life was his maternal uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski – his guardian, mentor and later his closest friend and confidant. Bobrowski’s role in Conrad’s life cannot be overestimated, for without his financial support Conrad quite simply could not have become a writer. Opinions differ widely, however, as to the extent to which he shaped Conrad’s personality or influenced his character and outlook. Conflicting theories, interpretations and speculations abound. Very often Bobrowski is presented as a cold man who is devoid of sympathy and understanding for his ward. This article argues that – deep down – Tadeusz Bobrowski was in fact and had always been a very emotional man. The shell of indifference in which he shut himself up was merely a shield that allowed him to survive in his social circle. By degrees, however, Bobrowski changed from being the reprimanding, grumpy and censorious guardian into a friend and spiritual guide. There were several reasons for this: Conrad’s increasing maturity, his professional achievements and the two men’s growing mutual attachment – if not mutual idealisation. They shared the same sense of humour, a predilection for sarcasm and a feeling of distance towards the world around them. What is more, a baggage of personal disasters brought them even closer together. They were very much alike. It would seem that only in his letters to Conrad could Bobrowski freely write about family matters and express his opinion about neighbours, knowing that his nephew would not only understand him, but would also appreciate his sarcasm, his sense of humour, his wit and his irony. Bobrowski treated Conrad as if he were his own son and only Conrad knew such an emotional, loving and warm-hearted Bobrowski.

The aim of the present article is to determine the extent to which Apollo Nałęcz-Korzeniowski (Joseph Conrad’s father) and Cyprian Norwid — both of whom can be linked to the development of European modernism — shared a common approach to literature and the main social questions of their times. To this end I have made an analysis of the translation and metadramatic strategies adopted by both writers, whose approach to the practical problems of translation is modern in every respect. Korzeniowski and Norwid draw attention to the difficulties involved in adapting a writer’s natural style not only to a different linguistic context, but also to the specific translatability limitations imposed by a different literary culture. Both authors cite the symptomatic example of the musicality of Shakespearean verse, which Korzeniowski examines in the case of A Comedy of Errors and Norwid in Julius Caesar. Unlike Korzeniowski, who treats the original text as a literary whole, Norwid strays beyond the bounds of his own theory of translation by adding a philosophical component based on neoplatonism — as well as his own theory of “reading idiolects” — thus assuming the position of a ‘modern fragmentarist’ who makes a creative selection of text to be translated.
The metadramatic ideas of Korzeniowski and Norwid found their fullest expression in the former’s Studya nad dramatycznością w utworach Szekspira (An Enquiry into Shakespeare’s Dramatic Art — 1868) and in the latter’s preface to his play entitled Pierścień Wielkiej-Damy (The Great Lady’s Ring — 1872). In their reinterpretations of Shakespearean drama, both writers sought to join in the literary ‘revisionism’ that took place in Europe after 1848 (and in Polish literature only after 1863) in order to lay the foundations of ‘modern comedy’. What they came up with was Norwid’s concept of the tragicomic (or ‘white tragedy’) and Korzeniowski’s concept of ‘flight into the realm of delusion’, both of which relate to the Shakespearean experience of ‘theatre within theatre’: in Norwid’s ‘actor’ and Korzeniowski’s ‘Man being in a state of delusion’ we have two models of a humanity that resorts to internal escapism in reverse, as it were — a Hamlet-like ‘flight into consciousness’. The legacy of the events of the 1863 January Uprising can be seen in the idea — put forward by both authors (albeit from differing standpoints) — of a synthesis of dramatic art and the life of the nation, in order that Society may take a long, hard look at itself.
 

This essay examines the ‘posthuman condition’ and its critical relevance to Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent (1907). It will be shown that oppressive examples of constitution-altering technologies find complex and recurrent depiction throughout the novel, often dismantling and redefining the physiques of their respective hosts. Most centrally however, it will be argued that Conrad criticises this notion of the posthuman condition through menacing depictions of ‘the Professor’, crucially emphasising the instability and endangerment potentially associated with the technologically-enhanced constitution. To this end, brief descriptions of The Secret Agent and contemporary conceptions of the posthuman condition will be provided. Thereafter, I shall explore the novel’s disquieting depictions of prosthetic technology and their detrimental effects upon the organic constitution, before then interrogating Conrad’s treatment of the posthuman condition and the devastation apparently inherent to this state of mechanical alteration. Finally, the novel’s ultimate denunciation of the posthuman condition will be considered, with particular reference to the death of Stevie and the numerous depictions of his fragmented body.

Margreta Grigorova: Joseph Conrad Korzeniowski. The Creator as Seafarer