In 1972, Dr Najder invited me to attend a conference on Joseph Conrad to be held in Warsaw, Kraków and Gdańsk. I accepted the invitation with alacrity. I was an admirer of Conrad's Polish Background: Letters to and from Polish Friends (London: Oxford University Press, 1964), which he had edited with such scholarly skill. My edition, Joseph Conrad's Letters to R. B. Cunninghame Graham, had been published by Cambridge University Press in 1969, and this had prompted the invitation.

I was 35, and this was the first time I had been invited to a conference abroad. The Polish organisers were remarkably hospitable, paying for the journey to Poland and for all the travel, meals and accommodation within Poland. Spanning nine days, the conference, under the aegis of the Neophilological Committee of the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, was lavishly planned and executed; and I remain grateful to the Polish people whose taxed labours paid for it. Dr Najder himself greeted the British guests on our arrival in Warsaw: he was a handsome, stylish figure, with his overcoat worn loosely over his shoulders in a style I associate with Polish officers.

I was delighted to find that other guests at the conference included some famous figures: among them, Borys Conrad, the author's elder son, to whom The Shadow-Line is dedicated, Ian Watt, Thomas Moser, Gustav Morf, René Rapin and Norman Sherry. I was also introduced to Edward Said, Andrew Busza, Hans van Marle, Mario Curreli, Przemysław Mroczkowski, Róża Jabłkowska and Barbara Kocówna, among others. The conference was “gate-crashed” by some people who had attended a Conradiana conference in London and decided to invite themselves to the Polish event: these included Edward Bojarski, Eloise Knapp Hay and Juliet McLauchlan. The Polish hosts, at first understandably disconcerted, gallantly accepted these newcomers. Dr Najder I found to be urbane, keenly intelligent and observant, and genially tolerant of my unfamiliarity with the ways of conferences. As a result of that Polish conference, the Joseph Conrad Society (UK), with its journal The Conradian, was founded in 1973.

Later in his career, Dr Najder was sentenced to death in absentia by the régime of General Jaruzelski, so he worked in the West (and during that time accepted my invitation to give a guest lecture at my university, the University of Sussex).

1

Początki polskiej refleksji nad twórczością Josepha Conrada-Korzeniowskiego sięgają okresu przed I wojną światową i miały miejsce jeszcze za życia pisarza. Tworzyły ową refleksję artykuły informacyjne i pewna liczba recenzji. Pisali wówczas tacy autorzy jak Kazimierz Waliszewski, Wiktor Gomulicki, Maria Komornicka, Maria Rakowska, Stanisław Brzozowski czy Józef Hieronim Retinger, by wymienić ważniejsze nazwiska. Ale prawdziwy program badawczy studiów nad biografią i twórczością autora Lorda Jima sformułowany został po odzyskaniu przez Polskę niepodległego bytu państwowego, w pierwszych latach międzywojnia. Szczególna rola przypadła tutaj Stefanowi Żeromskiemu, który osobiście poznał Conrada w sierpniu 1914 roku w Zakopanem. Pisał autor Ludzi bezdomnych już po śmierci Conrada:

I dodawał:

Apel Żeromskiego nie pozostał bez echa. Najwcześniej na wezwanie to zareagowało środowisko ,,Wiadomości Literackich” i powiązana z tym tygodnikiem grupa literacka Skamander. Właśnie to pismo przez całe międzywojnie poświęcało Conradowi szczególnie wiele miejsca. Jest rzeczą zrozumiałą, że na jego polski wizerunek duży wpływ miały badania cudzoziemskie. Dwa nazwiska znawców Conrada wysuwają się tu na plan pierwszy. Będą to: czołowy ówczesny biograf Conrada, autor fundamentalnej pracy Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters (1927), a zarazem przyjaciel pisarza, Jean-Aubry oraz szwajcarski psychiatra, uczeń Carla Gustawa Junga, Gustaw Morf, autor książki The Polish Heritage of Joseph Conrad (1930). Obaj autorzy bywali w Polsce, a ich prace budziły dość szerokie zainteresowanie krytyków i badaczy polskich.

Również w latach międzywojennych rozpoczęła się w Polsce naukowa refleksja nad Conrada. Twórczość tego pisarza stała się przedmiotem wykładów monograficznych Stefana Kołaczkowskiego na Uniwersytecie Jagiellońskim i Józefa Ujejskiego na Uniwersytecie Warszawskim. Z czasem pojawiły się poważne pozycje o charakterze naukowym. Rzecz osobliwa – ich autorami byli historycy literatury romantycznej: Józef Ujejski, znawca romantyzmu polskiego, i Rafał Marceli Blüth, badacz romantyzmu polskiego i rosyjskiego.

Conradowski Korsarz, bardzo wymownie nazwany w liście do Edwarda Garnetta z 21 listopada 1923 roku ,,książką sentymentów – wielu sentymentów” (,,a thing of sentiment – of many sentiments”), niemal nigdy nie był odczytywany w perspektywie polskiego zaplecza pisarza. Nic dziwnego, zabrakło bowiem w tym przypadku zupełnie zasadniczych punktów zaczepienia: zarówno skojarzeń, momentów fabuły mogących ewokować polskoromantyczną intertekstualność, jak i śmiałości, wyobraźni, ażeby owe ewentualne asocjacje artykułować lub przynajmniej zasugerować bądź zainspirować. Najdalej posunął się Gabriel Wilfrid Stephen Brodsky, wskazując możliwość oddziaływania na Conrada schematu rewolucji kresowych na Ukrainie, formułując w Joseph Conrad's Polish Soul zdecydowanie najbardziej intrygującą paralelę między przedstawieniem Wielkiej Rewolucji Francuskiej a wyniesionym przez Conrada z domu rodzinnego obrazem koliszczyzny.

Bezsilności interpretacyjnej towarzyszył powrót do figuralnych prób odczytań powieści, w tym aluzyjno-archetypalnych, jednak z zastrzeżeniem, że Conrad nie wcielił z pełnym sukcesem swojej intencji twórczej w życie, Korsarz zaś pozostał nieudaną próbą epopei. Idąc tym właśnie tropem, David Leon Higdon dostrzegał w zrewoltowanym rzezimieszku Scevoli figurę antycznego Polifema, natomiast w estetyzowanych, pobudzających wyobraźnię obrazach osieroconej przez rewolucję Arlette – ,,nimofopodobnej Galatei”. Higdon oczywiście nie miał prawa wiedzieć, że sposób przedstawiania dziewczyny Conrad mógł zapożyczyć z wielu źródeł naraz – w tym polskoromantycznych – w charakterystyczny dla siebie sposób rozmywając je, a potem kontaminując. Dla Arlette z Korsarza zasadniczym intertekstem byłby w podobnej sytuacji nie ten uniwersalny, mitologiczny, a lokalny, Mickiewiczowski, odsyłający do postaci Zosi z Pana Tadeusza, zwanej przez Juliana Przybosia soplicowską ,,boginką złotej pogody”. Wszystkie jej atrybuty wymienia Higdon, raczej błędnie przypisując cechy mitycznej nimfie, Galatei:

Ktokolwiek ma w pamięci wersy Mickiewiczowskiej epopei, łatwo da się przekonać, że zauważone i opisane przez Higdona denotacje poetyckie to przeniesione niemal w skali jeden do jednego jakości obrazowania Mickiewiczowskiej Zosi. ,,We wszystkich tych wypadkach – jak przekonuje Andrzej Paluchowski – ważne jest współgranie konkretu i motywu bardziej ulotnego”. W księdze pierwszej Zosia ,,wleciała przez okno, świecąca / Nagła, cicha i lekka jak światłość miesiąca” – po czym? – ,,po desce opar tej o ścianę komnaty” [podkr. – K.S.]. Julian Przyboś posuwa się w swoim widzeniu młodej bohaterki Pana Tadeusza najdalej, nadając jej funkcję nimfy-boginki równej nie tylko Galatei, lecz także bóstwom miłosnym i opiekuńczym, takim jak Wenera i Hestia. Stwierdza śmiało: ,,rolę świata bogów przejęła przyroda ojczysta – a jedyną jej boginką jest Zosia”.

There is a strong correlation between Joseph Conrad's experience of having been part of two historic and cultural communities—or “qualitative frameworks”—and his execution of literary techniques, even if inspired by skepticism towards “community, and the validity of the notion of shared values and meaning.” In this finding, I am especially indebted to John Peters's remarkable monograph Conrad and Impressionism. Taken philosophically, impressionism presumes a world, in which “no universal certainty exists, only the certainty of individuals.” However, if impressionism implies a world inhabited by atomized individuals without shared values, then it diverges from the idea of a “qualitative framework” which, according to Charles Taylor, constitutes identity. Identity “plays the role of orienting us, of providing the frame within which things have meaning for us, by virtue of the qualitative distinctions it incorporates.” A person's identity “exists and is maintained within a language community”—even if that community also gives rise to limitations. As Serajul Islam Choudhury observes, “race, memories, early associations, and all the essential conditions of one's origin” form a “circle of isolation … around one's life.” Since the phrase “qualitative framework” has axiological significance, I propose to encapsulate the frameworks that shaped Conrad's identity, in a broader term “language circles.” A “language circle” does not mean a specific language, Polish, French, or English but discourse at large, including literary tradition, historical experience, and certain dynamism of historical and political thinking that tradition and that experience prompt. In Conrad's case, the language circle of the imperial West overlapped the language circle of the partitioned Poland (still bearing traces of its own imperial past); Conrad himself took pains to stress that Polish culture is “Western in complexion.”

This essay attempts to answer the question, how do Conrad's particular language circles determine or alter his use of impressionistic techniques? It seems helpful at this point to evoke the tenets of impressionism as the “epistemological standpoint.” As such, John Peters observes, the trend saw “all phenomena filtering through the medium of human consciousness at a particular place and time, thereby representing knowledge as an individual rather than a universal experience.” Impressionism appeared in literature by late nineteenth century, signifying the resistance of writers to the positivist “religion of science”; though in fact its methodology was “essentially scientific in its attempt to reproduce exactly the way human beings apprehend objects of consciousness.”

Joseph Conrad's relation to Lev Tolstoy was complex. Although he considered “Turgenev (and perhaps Tolstoy) the only two worthy” of Constance Garnett's talent as a translator, Tolstoy's works were judged severely by the English writer. He could not see any merit in Tolstoy's “The Death of Ivan Ilych” and The Kreutzer Sonata. In a letter to Galsworthy, Conrad wrote of “the gratuitous atrocity” of the deathbed repentance of Ivan Ilych and “the monstrous stupidity of such a thing as the Kreutzer Sonata.”

The idea of “The Death of Ivan Ilych” (1886)—“the incomparably brilliant” and one of Tolstoy's most powerful short stories—was suggested to Tolstoy by the death of Ivan Ilych Mechnikov in May 1881, who was a public prosecutor of the Tula District Court. “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” like The Kreutzer Sonata, depicts the experience of one individual. Both stories are semi-autobiographical dramatizations of lives lived largely on false premises.

Apparent authorial absence, an artful documentary objectivity, naturalistic dialogue, and well-paced narrative drive turn Tolstoy's stories into the embodiment of his definition of the purpose of art, which is to be found in chapter five of What is Art? (1898). There the Russian writer claims that art is a human activity in which one man transmits to others the feelings he has experienced so that others are infected by them. Inevitably, an air of emotional sterility suggests withdrawal of sympathy, a literal defamiliarizing of the subject matter, and, to that extent, a degree of alienation.

“The Death of Ivan Ilych” opens with the aftermath of Ivan Ilych's death when the meaning of his life is reduced to such mundane issues as the likelihood of promotion among his surviving colleagues, their unadmitted self-satisfaction at still being alive, and his widow's concern for her future in a financial sense. Ivan's whole story is designed to reveal the self-deluding, self-aggrandizing pretentiousness of his life, which “had been most simple and most ordinary and therefore most terrible.” Ivan Ilych “was le phenix de la famille … an intelligent, polished, lively and agreeable man.” He studied “at the School of Law,” and “finished the course well.”

“It all begins,” Marlow tells us, “with a remarkable exploit of a man called Brown, who stole with complete success a Spanish schooner out of a small bay near Zamboanga.” Gentleman Brown bursts upon the scene of Lord Jim with such raw force that he initiates a new beginning: “It all begins…” Yet at this moment in the story, the opening of chapter 37, with less than one-fifth of the text remaining, Brown's arrival in Patusan marks the beginning of the dénouement, the final act of Jim's drama, as recorded in a thick packet of papers that Marlow sends to a “privileged” recipient. This testimony consists for the most part of events related by Brown on his deathbed in Bangkok, not as a confession but as an anti-confession, a declaration of impenitence.

As Jacques Berthoud noted, the very names of “Lord” Jim and “Gentleman” Brown solicit comparison. Both combine common English names with titles signifying superiority: Jim, whose surname remains secret, is a Lord without a manor, and only by an error of translation; while Brown, whose given name is never given, is a most un-gentle man. Indeed, if Brown is truly the son of a baronet, he is more of a “lord” than Jim, while Jim's “gentlemanly” qualities or pretensions receive comment throughout the novel. Both men are vagabonds or stragglers whose accomplishments have earned them a kind of notoriety, a greatness registered in the pseudo- aristocratic epithets that take the place of their original names: Jim becomes a “lord” and Brown becomes a “gentleman,” thus realizing the dream of countless heroes of nineteenth-century British novels. But what unites them also divides them, in a manner that raises the issues of fidelity and solidarity that worry Marlow throughout the novel: is Gentleman Brown also “one of us”? In Brown, Jim confronts (again in Berthoud's phrase) “a nightmare vision of himself,” a dreaded mirror-image which can best be understood—like a nightmare—not in terms of similarities and differences, but of identities and alterities.

“What is a novel if not a conviction of our fellow-men's existence strong enough to take upon itself a form of imagined life clearer than reality?” (PR, 15). Yet at the beginning of Under Western Eyes the Teacher of Languages avers, “Words as is well known are the great foes of reality” (WE, 11), and many critics have taken this scepticism as Conrad's own. But these are far from the only such pronouncements. Late on in Chance, with Flora and her father, “Mr Smith,” installed in the Ferndale, young Powell listening to the mate Franklin's grievances finds “that hostile word ‘jailer’ had given the situation an air of reality” (C, 407). And in The Mirror of the Sea, Conrad himself, in propria persona, lauds “technical language” as “created by simple men with keen eyes for the real aspect of the things they see in their trade” (MS, 21). Conversely again, the version of Conrad that writes to Cunninghame Graham insists that “Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit” (CL, 2:17). Is it then possible to find a coherent or consistent viewpoint as to the relation between words and “reality” that we find expressed in Conrad's fiction, essays and letters? There have been many fine studies of Conrad's language and Conrad and language—most recently a volume of essays Conrad and Language, which is devoted to “a questioning of the relation of words and things and a recognition of language's approximate representation of reality.” Here I focus simply on Conrad's extensive, sometimes obsessive, use of the word “word” and the sorts of reality that it summons.

The “Note to the First Edition” of Victory opens, “The last word of this novel was written on the 29th of May 1914. And that last word was the single word of the title,” and then goes on to consider the appropriateness of “the word Victory … the last word I had written in peace time” (V, 5). Such repetitions of “word,” six or seven times in a single paragraph, reoccur in Lord Jim, Under Western Eyes, Chance, Victory itself, and The Arrow of Gold.