Reviews
John Stape, Joseph Conrad [The several lives of Joseph Conrad], tłum. Jacek Chmielewski, Świat Książki, Warszawa 2009.
Conrad’s biography written by John Stape, a distinguished Canadian Conrad scholar and editor of Conrad’s prose and letters. According to the author, it is a concise presentation of the several lives of Joseph Conrad: a Pole, Catholic and nobleman, officer and captain, husband, father and writer. Considerable attention has been paid to Conrad’s health and financial problems. It is very important that Poles should take the opportunity to read Stape’s book. Nevertheless, there has been some negligence on the part of the translator: the Polish title has been shorn of the notion of the variety of Conrad’s life roles: instead of “the several lives of Joseph Conrad” there is only “Joseph Conrad.” Another translation oversight is presenting Conrad first as Bobrowski’s “siostrzeniec” (a son of his sister) and then as “bratanek” (a son of his brother). Luckily, such mistakes cannot spoil the pleasure of reading Stape’s book.
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Zdzisław Najder, Życie Josepha Conrada-Korzeniowskiego [Joseph Conrad. A Chronicle], vol. 1-2, Gaudium, Lublin 2006.
This new edition of Conrad’s biography has been revised, enlarged and enriched with new material and reflections. The result of extensive research by Zdzisław Najder ― one of the world’s leading authorities on Joseph Conrad ― these studies present various aspects of Conrad’s life and letters. The book is based on Conrad’s rich correspondence and the recollections of people who knew him. It reveals the circumstances of Conrad’s writing and presents his life from various perspectives, thus bringing Conrad ― a Pole who became an English writer ― closer to the reader.
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Polskie zaplecze Josepha Conrada-Korzeniowskiego [Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski's Polish background], ed. Zdzisław Najder and Joanna Skolik, vol. 1-2, Gaudium, Lublin 2006.
The most extensive collection of texts connected with Conrad’s Polish background published to date. As well as Conrad’s family correspondence and Poles’ recollections of Conrad, it contains all the known documents pertaining to Konrad Korzeniowski that were written before 1874, when the writer left his native land. It also contains all the known letters sent by Conrad to Polish addressees.
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Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech, „Lord Jim” Conrada. Interpretacje [Conrad’s “Lord Jim”. Interpretations], Universitas, Kraków 2007.
This is a kind of a guide presenting various interpretations of Lord Jim. The book not only organizes the interpretations, but also classifies them. It invites us to read the interpretations in a creative way and allows us to find an appropriate perspective for each work. The author distinguishes several basic interpretative perspectives, namely: personal realities, situational, topographical, (auto)biographical-psychological, ethical and artistic.
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Stefan Zabierowski, W kręgu Conrada [Conrad’s Circle], Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, Katowice 2008.
The volume sums up the achievements of the celebrated Polish Conrad scholar Stefan Zabierowski. It presents various relations between Conrad and Polish culture: Conrad’s Polish biography and personality seen through Conrad’s eyes and through the eyes of literary critics. It also presents a review of Polish interpretations of Lord Jim and texts on Conrad’s reception in Poland. The last section of the book presents a portrait of Leszek Prorok and his relations with Conrad.
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“Lord Jim” w krytyce i mediach [Lord Jim in criticism and the media], ed. Stefan Zabierowski, Biblioteka Śląska, Katowice 2008.
The book contains conference materials (the conference was held on 19th October 2007). The articles discuss the reception of Lord Jim in Poland and abroad. There are also articles presenting the opinions of Polish émigrés and present adaptations of Lord Jim for the cinema and the theatre.
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Marek Pacukiewicz, Dyskurs antropologiczny w pisarstwie Josepha Conrada [Anthropological discourse in Joseph Conrad’s literary output], Universitas, Kraków 2009.
Marek Pacukiewicz discusses Conrad’s literary output from the perspective of cultural anthropology. It is an attempt to present anthropological discourse in Conrad's work. Universal cultural categories such as time, name, voice and “common sense” are the starting point for the author’s considerations.
Reviewer: dr Joanna Skolik
Joanna Skolik, The Ideal of Fidelity In Conrad’s Works, Toruń: Adam Marszałek Publishing House, 2009.
The Ideal of Fidelity in Conrad’s Works by Joanna Skolik is an interesting and highly competent introduction to the writings of Joseph Conrad ― not the easiest of authors ― and will no doubt be of great help to younger readers and budding Conrad scholars alike. Although the author exhibits a thorough knowledge of the huge number of books which to date have been written on Conrad, her own book is both eminently readable and inspiring in its own right.
The “fidelity” to which Joanna Skolik refers in the title of her book was a key concept in Polish literature of the Romantic period and ― perhaps not surprisingly ― also in the Polish reception of Conrad from the outbreak of the Second World War right up to the end of the twentieth century. For the last sixty years or so Conrad has inspired those Polish writers and critics who have sought to preserve Poland’s cultural identity, sandwiched as it has been between two hostile ideologies. This can be seen, for example, in an essay entitled Conrad i kryzys powieści psychologicznej / Conrad and the Crisis of the Psychological Novel (1935) by Ludwik Fryde; in Gustaw Herling-Grudzinski’s essays entitled Żywi i umarli / The Living and the Dead (1946); in Czesław Miłosz’s A Treatise on Poetry (1957), in Maria Dabrowska’s Szkice o Conradzie / Essays on Conrad (1959); in Zbigniew Herbert’s poem The Envoy of Mr Cogito (1974) ― and, of course, in Zdzisław Najder’s Essays on Art and Fidelity (1997).
Joanna Skolik sees fidelity as one of the basic concepts of anthropology and axiology, as well as being one of the principal foundations of European civilization. Analysing the concept of fidelity succinctly and with great clarity against a vast backdrop of tradition, culture, philosophy, religion, morality and ethics, she writes that “In European tradition the concept of fidelity is, as Zdzisław Najder says: most closely associated with the ethics of mediaeval chivalry’ which survives as a moral force ‘because in every age there are men who love courtesy, faithfulness, courage, truth and moderation” (p. 16).
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Joanna Skolik’s review of the various possible actualisations of the concept of fidelity leads us to the human and social dimension of Conrad’s ideal of fidelity, which always goes hand in hand with a feeling of solidarity with other people ― be they alive, dead or not yet born. This has always been Conrad’s message. In the preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ he speaks of the invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: [ ... ] the solidarity in dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity ― the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.
From a review by Jolanta Dudek, Yearbook of Conrad Studies (Poland), vol.IV 2008 - 2009, pp. 171 - 173.
