John Conrad Essays - International PEN, Joseph Conrad,

John Conrad One of the finest stylist of modern English literature was Joseph Conrad, was a Polish-born English novelist, short story writer, essayist, dramatist, and autobiographer. Conrad was born in 1857 in a Russian-ruled Province of Poland. According to Jocelyn Baines, a literary critic, "Conrad was exiled with his parents to northern Russia in 1863 following his his parents participation in the Polish independence movement". (Baines 34). His parents' health rapidly deteriorated in Russia, and after their deaths in 1868, Conrad lived in the homes of relatives, where he was often ill and received spradic schooling (35). Conrad's birth-given name was Jozef Tedor Konrad Valecz Korzeniowski, however, his name was legally changed (39). Conrad died of a heart attack, August 3, 1924, in Bishopsbourne Kent, England (34). With such an innovative style, Joseph Conrad was perhaps one of Britain's most remarkable authors of modern English literature. Throughout Conrad's career, his works have became influential as well as remarkable. Cited by Ted E. Boyle, a short story analysis, "Conrad's novels are complex moral and psychological examinations of ambiguous nature of good and evil" (Boyle 93). Conrad's characters are repeatedly forced to acknowledge their own failures and the weakness of their ideals against all forms of coruption; the most honorable characters are those who realize their fallibility but still struggle to up hold the dictates of conscience (99). Early in life, Conrad pursued a career as a seaman, sailing to Martinique and the West Indies. In 1894, he began a career as a writer, basing much of his work on his experience as a seaman (100). Throughout his career, "Conrad examined the impossibility of living by a traditional code of conduct". His novels "postulate that the complexity of the human spirit allows neither absolute fidelity to any ideal nor even to one's conscience" (Baines 49). Conrad's work failure is a fact of human existence, and every ideal contains the possibilities for its own conniption (Boyle 34). Most of Conrad's greatest works take place on a ship or in the backwaters of civilization. After assessing Conrad's works, Douglas Hewitt, a renown critic, claimed that " a ship or a small outpost offered an isolated environment where Conrad could develop his already complex moral problems without unnecessary entanglements that might obscure the concentration of tragedy". Nostromo is widely recognized as Conrad's most ambitious novel. An account of a revolution in the fictitious South American country of Costaguana, Nostromo examines the ideals, motivations, and failures of several participants in that confict (Hewitt 60). Conrad himself referred to "Nostromo" as his "largest canvas", and many critics consider the novel as one of the greatest in twentieth century (Boyle 90). Conrad's current reputation rests with such relatively early works a "Lordd Jim", "Heart of Darkness", and "Nostromo", in which imagery, symbolism, and shifts in time and perspective combine to create an intriguing, mystical series of fictional settings. The two greatest examples of moral tragedy in his work are "Lord Jim" (1900), which "examines the failures of a man before society and his own conscience, and "Heart of Darkness" (1899), "a dreamlike tale of mystery and adventure set in central Africa that is also the story of a man's symbolic journey into his own inner being" (Hewitt 68). In his own preface to the Niger of the "Narcissus" (1897), an essay that has been called his artistic credo, Conrad expressed his intention of forcing the reader's involvement in his work: ...my task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you feel -- it is, before all to reach his audience. That-- and no more, and it is everything. (Conrad 3) Bruce Johnson, a renown essay critic, stated that "Conrad's examination of the ambiguity of good and evil is generally considered too stylized and heavy-handed". Johnson claimes that Conrad's most highly regarded works, however, are acknowledged as masterpieces of English literature and continue to generate significant critical commentary. Conrad produced thirteen novels, tow volumes of memoirs, and twenty-eight short stories, athough writing was not easy or painless for him (Johnson 11). In most of Conrad's writings his outlook is bleak. He writes "in a rich, vivid prose style with a narrative technique that makes skillfull use of breaks in linear chronology" (Boyle 80). His character development is powerful and compelling. Conrad's life at sea and in foreign ports furnished the background for much of his writing, giving rise to the impression that he was primarily committed to foreign or alien concerns (Johnson 11). According to editor Zdzislaw Najder, Conrad's major interest was the human condition (Najder