Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski; Berdychiv, Ukraine, 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924, Bishopsbourne, Kent, England) was a Polish author who wrote in English after settling in England. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties, and always with a marked Polish accent.
Before embarking on writing, he had a career sailing in the French, then the British, merchant marine. Of his 19-year merchant-marine career, about half that time was spent actually at sea.
Conrad wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an impassive, inscrutable universe. He was a master prose stylist who brought a distinctly non-English tragic sensibility into English literature.
Conrad is viewed as a precursor of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters have influenced many authors up to the present. Many films have been adapted from, or inspired by, Conrad's stories and novels.
Writing in the heyday of the British Empire, Conrad drew on his Polish heritage and on his personal experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world, while plumbing the depths of the human soul.
French voyages Arriving in Marseille in 1874, the not quite 17-year-old Joseph Conrad was to have been looked after by a Pole who sailed in French ships, but the sailor was temporarily away and ship pilots became Conrad's first instructors in sailing. He grew to love the Mediterranean, "the cradle of sailing." Conrad, who became a professional sailor, never learned to swim.
After two months at Marseilles, on 15 December 1874 Conrad, just turned seventeen, began his first sea voyage—as a passenger in a small barque, the Mont-Blanc, which reached Saint-Pierre, Martinique, in the Caribbean, on 6 February 1875. During the ship's return passage to Marseilles (31 March – 23 May) he may have been a crew member. His objectives for this maiden voyage were probably to promote his health and give him a closer look at sailors' work. A month later, on 25 June, he again left in the Mont-Blanc, now as an apprentice, arriving at Saint-Pierre on 31 July. After visiting several other Caribbean ports, the ship returned to France, arriving on 23 December at Le Havre.
In 1875 Conrad spent seven months at sea. This did not seem to have stirred his enthusiasm for the seaman's profession. He gave himself six months' rest from the sea, socializing and spending in excess of the generous allowance that he received from his maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski. The uncle indulged his nephew's financial demands but sent him lengthy letters of reproof that included his usual criticisms of Conrad's improvident paternal line.
On 10 July 1876 Conrad sailed for the West Indies as a steward (at a salary of 35 francs, equivalent to one-fifth the allowance he received from his uncle) in the barque Saint-Antoine, making Saint-Pierre on 18 August. The first mate was a 42-year-old Corsican, Dominique Cervoni, who would become a prototype for the title character of Conrad's Nostromo: "In his eyes lurked a look of perfectly remorseless irony, as though he had been provided with an extremely experienced soul; and the slightest distension of his nostrils would give to his bronzed face a look of extraordinary boldness. This was the only play of feature of which he seemed capable, being a Southerner of a concentrated, deliberate type." The Saint-Antoine, after visiting Martinique, St. Thomas and Haiti, returned on 15 February 1877 to Marseilles.
In his novel The Arrow of Gold, Conrad alludes to smuggling "by sea of arms and ammunition to the Carlist detachments in the South [of Spain]." This apparently involved Dominique Cervoni. Conrad's first biographer, Georges Jean-Aubry (1882–1950), built on this allusion a tale about Cervoni and Conrad smuggling arms to a Central American republic. The pre-eminent Conrad chronicler and scholar Zdzisław Najder (born 1930) is skeptical about the story and surmises that Conrad "might have heard... stories [about gun-running] from the experienced Cervoni."
In December 1877 it transpired that, as a foreigner and Russian subject, Conrad could not serve on French ships without permission from the Russian consul. And since Conrad was liable for military service in Russia, there was no chance of obtaining the consul's consent. In consultation with his uncle, "it was decided that he should join the English Merchant Marine where there are no such formalities as in France".
Conrad later described, in his essay collection The Mirror of the Sea (1906) and his novel The Arrow of Gold (1919), having, during his stay in Marseilles, smuggled arms to Spain for the Carlist supporters of Carlos de Borbón y de Austria-Este, pretender to the Spanish throne. Najder finds this, for a variety of reasons, virtually impossible. If Conrad did participate in running contraband to Spain, it likely would have involved something other than weapons. But in the two books written three and four decades later, he embellished his memories, probably borrowing from past adventures of Marseilles friends. To admit that his illicit activities had been conducted for profit would have conflicted with the position that he wished to occupy in literature. And attempts to track down the reality behind his accounts are complicated by Conrad's habit of using some external characteristics, and often the names, of actual people but of furnishing them with different life histories (as in the cases of Almayer, Lingard, Jim, and Kurtz). Najder writes:
Another Marseilles legend concerns Conrad's great love affair. The story is described only in The Arrow of Gold, a pseudo-autobiographical novel whose chronology is at odds with the documented dates in Conrad's life.
British voyages On 10 June 1878 Konrad Korzeniowski set foot on English soil for the first time, at Lowestoft, having arrived on the small British steamer Mavis, which he had boarded on 24 April 1878 at Marseilles. He had probably joined the ship not as a crew member but as an unofficial apprentice. It is not clear whether he had been on board during the Russian leg of its itinerary, which would have been hazardous for the Tsar's Polish subject. He still planned to return to France and enlist in the French navy. A conflict with Captain Samuel William Pipe prompted Conrad to leave the ship. He departed for London, where he quickly went through half his ready cash. Appealing to his uncle, he received additional funds, along with a long letter exhorting him to "think for yourself and fend for yourself... don't idle; learn, and don't pretend to be a rich young gentleman.... If you have not secured yourself a position by the age of 24, do not count on the allowance... I have no money for drones and I have no intention of working so that someone else may enjoy himself at my expense..."
Conrad returned to Lowestoft and on 11 July 1878 signed on to a coastal coal schooner, the Skimmer of the Sea. He won popularity with the crew by bearing the cost of entertainment and treats, not paid out of his shilling-a-month ordinary seaman's earnings (the lowest permissible) but out of his uncle's allowance, 160 times higher. "In that craft I began to learn English from East Coast chaps, each built as though to last for ever, and coloured like a Christmas card." Having made three voyages to Newcastle upon Tyne and back in the Skimmer, after only 73 days, on 23 September, Conrad left the schooner.
On 15 October 1878, in his first genuine service at sea, Conrad sailed in the clipper ship Duke of Sutherland on his longest voyage till then, around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia, arriving on 31 January 1879 at Sydney Harbour. He gained knowledge of local conditions and even of the slang, revealed later in his short story "To-morrow". It was then that he became acquainted with the works of Flaubert, through Salammbô, and read a one-volume edition of Shakespeare. In Sydney—Bobrowski wrote Buszczyński—Conrad met a captain famous for his knowledge of Maritime Southeast Asia. The unnamed captain may have become a partial prototype of Tom Lingard in Almayer's Folly, An Outcast of the Islands and The Rescue, whose namesake Conrad never met. The Duke of Sutherland left Sydney on 6 July 1879 on its homeward voyage, and Conrad arrived in London on 19 October.
Having evidently for the moment lost desire for long-distance voyages, on 11 December 1879 Conrad enlisted as an able-bodied seaman in the iron steamer Europa. The next day the ship departed for Genoa, Naples, Patras and Palermo, returning to London on 29 January 1880. Soon after, Conrad met George Fountaine Weare Hope, an ex-merchant-service officer, then director of a London commercial firm. This was apparently Conrad's first close contact in England and it developed into a long-lasting friendship.
Urged on by his uncle, Conrad applied to take the examination for second mate in the British Merchant Marine. Applicants were required to document at least four years' service at sea. In reality, he had served only seventeen months. But, armed with a document from Delestang that amplified his period in French service, and giving augmented figures for his British service, he signed a declaration of his statements and of the enclosed documents, risking indictment in the event that the fraud were discovered. He attended a cram course for the examination and passed it on 28 May 1880, aged 22.
Second mate On 21 August 1880 Conrad enlisted as third mate on an iron clipper ship, the Loch Etive. The next day the ship left London, arriving in Sydney on 24 November. The return voyage began on 11 January 1881. In The Mirror of the Sea (1906) Conrad would give a story, of uncertain basis, relating to this voyage—the rescue of the crew of a Danish sailing ship. The Loch Etive arrived in London on 25 April 1881. There Conrad's allowance from his uncle awaited him: 46 pounds for six months—over twice his earnings on the Loch Etive.
While waiting to enlist for another voyage, Conrad again engaged in some kind of disastrous speculation, which cost him at least his entire half-yearly allowance. This probably gave rise to a fantastic story, with which he regaled his uncle in a letter of 10 August 1881, about an accident aboard the clipper Annie Frost (with which Conrad had no link), loss of luggage, and several days spent in hospital.
Conrad had trouble finding a berth as second mate. Eventually he signed on to a small, rickety old barque, the Palestine, for a voyage to Bangkok at pay of 4 pounds a month. From 15 October 1881 uncle Bobrowski was to send him only half the previous allowance, rounded up to 50 pounds a year—slightly over his new, highest salary to date. The Palestine was manned by three officers and ten hands and commanded by 57-year-old Captain Elijah Beard. Conrad was not too pleased with his new appointment. The Palestine left London on 21 September 1881 and, after a stop at Gravesend, sailed north on 28 September. Due to gales, the passage to Newcastle upon Tyne took 22 days.
Conrad later described his adventures on the Palestine, renamed Judea, in his short story "Youth" (1898), which he was to call "a feat of memory" and "a record of experience." Though he preserved the names of the captain and first officer, and though the general course of events and many details correspond with the facts, as usual a number of things are creations of Conrad's imagination. Thus, there is no documentary evidence of a collision with a steamship at Newcastle; the story's hero is four years younger than Conrad; there was only one attempt, not several, to leave Falmouth, Cornwall, as the ship was continuously under repair; and there are other, more striking discrepancies.