Conrad, Joseph (1857–1924), the most outstanding contributor of fiction to
marine literature in the 20th century. He was born Josef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Poland, when that country was part of the Russian empire, and his parents were Polish patriots who longed for national independence. His father Apollo Korzeniowski, a poet and translator by profession, was exiled to northern Russia in 1861 for subversive activities, and Conrad and his mother went with him. His mother died when he was 7 and his father when he was 11, and he was then put in the care of his uncle Thaddeus Bobrowski, who befriended and advised him. As a child he was a great reader in Polish and in French, having been first introduced to English literature when his father was working on a translation of Shakespeare. But at school, in Poland and then Switzerland, he was bored and expressed his desire to go to sea. Through family connections in Marseille he was allowed to migrate there in 1874 and began his experiences of the sea in French ships, visiting Mauritius once and the West Indies twice. On the second West Indian voyage he may have become involved in a gun-running episode, described later in
The Arrow of Gold (1920), and a voyage down the Venezuelan coast was later vividly recalled when he wrote
Nostromo (1904).
On his return Conrad ran heavily into debt and it is possible that he may have attempted suicide. He felt insecure in France and his uncle urged him to try and become a British citizen. With this aim in view he joined the crew of a British ship, which eventually landed him at Lowestoft, and it was then that he began to learn English. He subsequently worked on a
coaster between Lowestoft and Newcastle before joining a
square-rigger, the
Duke of Sutherland, for a voyage from London to Sydney and back. On his return in 1879 he made one voyage to the Mediterranean and then sat, and passed, his examination for second
mate in London before sailing as a junior officer to Australia.
On his return in 1881 he began a series of voyages to eastern, especially Malayan, waters which deeply influenced his later thought and writing. In 1883 he was, for instance, second mate of the 425-ton
Palestine, loaded with a cargo of coal for Bangkok, when her cargo caught fire and she was abandoned off Java Head, which became the basis for his story ‘Youth’ (1902). He also sailed from Bombay as second mate of the
Narcissus, the name and some features of which he used in
The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ (1898).
After obtaining his first mate's certificate in 1884 and his certificate as a
master in 1886, the year he became a naturalized British citizen, he then made more voyages to the Far East. Most notably in 1888 he took command of the
barque Otago at Bangkok whose master had died at sea—an experience described in
The Shadow Line (1916), which is almost pure autobiography. Then in 1889 he sailed for the Congo to take up the command of a river boat he had been promised. He was disgusted by the oppression of Africans that he witnessed there, and when the command failed to materialize he returned home disillusioned, though with material that he afterwards used in the short story ‘Heart of Darkness’ (1899). By then he was writing his first novel, but still considered himself a seaman, and between 1891 and 1893 made two further voyages as the mate of the 1276-ton
clipper Torrens, from London to Australia.
On his return he still tried to obtain work at sea, but he settled in London with the ambition of finding a publisher for his novel. Throughout his career at sea he had been known by his Polish name, but when the novel (
Almayer's Folly) was published in 1895, the year he married, he used the name Joseph Conrad, and continued to do so throughout his writing career. His second novel,
An Outcast of the Islands (1896), had a similar theme and setting, and both show his remarkable command of English. However, his style in these books was not seamen's English but was based rather on his wide reading in English and French—he acknowledged his debt to Balzac and de Maupassant. With his next books,
The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’ and
Lord Jim (1900), he developed a freer and more individual style.
He wrote later: ‘In the
Nigger I give the psychology of a group of men and render certain aspects of nature. But the problem that faces them is not a problem of the sea, it is merely a problem that has arisen on board a ship where the conditions of complete isolation from all land entanglements make it stand out with a particular force and colouring.’
This is typical of Conrad's attitude to the sea, which he regarded as the great testing and proving experience. In some men, and frequently among Conrad's characters, a fatal flaw or weakness leads to self-betrayal, as in
Lord Jim when Jim, against his better instincts, joins the other white men in abandoning the
Patna, leaving a shipload of Malayan pilgrims to their fate—though ironically she did not founder and Jim could have stayed on board.
Typhoon and Other Stories (1902) contains in the title story a classic of marine literature in which the unimaginative master ignores good
seamanship by taking his ship through the
eye of a typhoon (see
tropical storms). Next Conrad published his great novel
Nostromo, followed by
The Mirror of the Sea (1906), which contains some of his best work on subjects relating to the sea. Then came
The Secret Agent (1907),
Under Western Eyes (1911),
Chance (1914),
Victory (1915), and a collection of short stories called
Within the Tides (1915). He also collaborated with his novelist friend Ford Madox Ford ( F. M. Hueffer) in writing two novels,
The Inheritors (1901) and
Romance (1903), and his later works include
The Rescue (1920) and
The Rover (1923). He died in 1924 before he could finish his final work of fiction,
Suspense (1925).
Conrad's early years as a writer were marked by poverty and lack of public recognition, and it was not until
Chance was published in 1914 that he became established and sufficiently famous to be offered a knighthood, which he refused. His remarkable personal experiences of the sea and the Far East, and his unique ability to render it in works of literature in a language not his mother tongue, make him one of the outstanding novelists of the 20th century. Najder, Z. ,
Joseph Conrad: A Chronicle (1983).
Tennant, R. ,
Joseph Conrad (1981).
