joseph conrad :: essays research papers

Joseph Conrad was born in Berdichev, in the Ukraine, in a region that had once been a part of Poland nevertheless was then under Russian rule. His father Apollo Korzeniowski was an aristocrat without lands, a poet and translator of English and French literature. The family estates had been sequestrated in 1839 following an anti-Russian rebellion. As a boy the issue Joseph read Polish and French versions of English novels with his father. When Apollo Korzeniowski became embroiled in political activities, he was sent to exile with his family to Volgoda, northern Russia, in 1861.After being weakened in a duel or of a self-inflicted gunshot in the chest, Conrad continued a career at the seas for 16 years in the British merchant navy. He had been deeply in debt, but his uncle discharged his debts. This was a turning point in his life. Conrad rose through the ranks from common seaman to root mate, and by 1886 he obtained his master mariners certificate, commanding his own ship, Otago. In the same year he was given British citizenship and he changed officially his name to Joseph Conrad. Witnessing the forces of the sea, Conrad essential a deterministic view of the world, which he expressed in a letter in 1897 "What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are advised of it. To be part of the animal kingdom under the conditions of this earth is very well - but soon, as you know of your slavery, the pain, the anger, and the strife. The tragedy begins."Conrad sailed to many parts of the world, including Australia, non-homogeneous ports of the Indian Ocean, Borneo, the Malay states, South America, and the South Pacific Island. In 1890 he sailed in Africa up the Congo River. The journey provided much material for his novel midpoint of Darkness. However, the fabled East Indies particularly attracted Conrad and it became the setting of many of his stories. By 1894 Conrads sea life was over. During the long journeys he had started to write and Conrad decided to devote himself entirely to literature. At the age of 36 Conrad settled down in England. In his famous preface to THE NIGGER OF THE NARCISSUS (1897) Conrad crystallized his often quoted goal as a source "My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you fell - it is, above all, to make you see.