Information About ™Joseph Conrad |
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.]] 47'' (47 New World Street), Warsaw , Poland , where Conrad stayed during a 1914 visit to Poland.]] Joseph Conrad ( December 3 , 1857 – August 3 , 1924 ) was a Polish-born British novelist. Some of his works have been labelled romantic, although Conrad's Romanticism is tempered with Irony and a fine sense of man's capacity for Self-deception . Many critics have placed him as a forerunner of Modernism . BIOGRAPHY Conrad was born (of the ''Nałęcz'' Coat Of Arms ) in Berdyczów (now Berdychiv , Ukraine ) into a highly patriotic landowning Polish '' Szlachta '' (noble) family. Conrad's father, a writer (best known for patriotic tragedies) and translator from French and English, was arrested by the Russian authorities in Warsaw for his activities in support of the 1863 Insurrection Against Tsarist Russia , and was exiled to Siberia . His mother died of Tuberculosis in 1865, as did his father four years later in Kraków , leaving Conrad orphaned at the age of eleven. He was placed in the care of his maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski , in Kraków — a more cautious figure than either of his parents. Bobrowski nevertheless allowed Conrad to travel to Marseille and begin a career as a seaman at age 17, after his uncle's failure to win Conrad Austro-Hungarian citizenship made him liable for 25-year conscription into the Russian army. Conrad lived an adventurous life, becoming involved in Gunrunning and political conspiracy, which he later fictionalized in his novel ''The Arrow of Gold'', and allegedly had a disastrous love affair, putting him into a state of despair. In 1878, after a failed attempt at suicide, Conrad took service on his first British ship. He learned English before the age of 21, and in 1886 gained both his Master Mariner's certificate and British citizenship. He first arrived in England at the port of Lowestoft , Suffolk , and later lived in London and near Canterbury , Kent . In 1894, at age 36, Conrad left the sea to become an English author. His first novel, ''Almayer's Folly'', set on the east coast of Borneo , was published in 1895 . The '', they may be regarded as native speakers in terms of their Syntax , Morphology and Lexicon . In fact, some of Conrad's stylistic originality in English may be attributable ''to'' his command of other languages, which offered him a richer palette of idiom and image from which to choose. Many of Conrad's early novels are set on board ships. His novel '' Nostromo '', his masterpiece, is a panoramic study of revolution in South America , while '' The Secret Agent '' and '' Under Western Eyes '' are among the first modern novels to treat the subjects of Terrorism and Espionage . His literary work bridges the gap between the Realist literary tradition of writers such as Charles Dickens and the emergent Modernist schools of writing. Interestingly, he despised Dostoevsky , (although ''Under Western Eyes'' arguably could not have been written without his influence) and Russian writers as a rule, due to his parents' deaths at the hands of the Russian authorities, making an exception only for Ivan Turgenev . Conrad is now best known for the Novella , '' Heart Of Darkness '', which has been seen as a scathing indictment of Colonialism and which gazes unflinchingly into the depth of despair, human exploitation and suffering which he witnessed on his command of a Congo steamer; it also foreshadows the start of Conrad's "golden period", which starts with '' Lord Jim '' ( 1901 ) and includes ''Nostromo'', ''The Secret Agent'' and '' Under Western Eyes ''. '' Chance '' is considered Conrad's last important novel, after which the quality of his output declined; paradoxically, ''Chance'' was also Conrad's first popular success. In 1923 Conrad declined the offer of a British Knight hood, on the grounds that he already possessed a (hereditary) Polish one. Joseph Conrad died of a Heart Attack , and was interred in Canterbury Cemetery , Canterbury , England . STYLE Conrad, an emotional man subject to fits of depression, self-doubt and pessimism, disciplined his Romantic temperament with an unsparing Moral judgment. As an artist, he famously aspired, in his preface to '' The Nigger Of The Narcissus '' ( 1897 ), "by the power of the written word to make you hear, to make you feel... before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand — and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask." Writing in what to the ''; in the "melancholy-mad elephant" and gunboat scenes of '' Heart Of Darkness ''; in the doubled protagonists of '' The Secret Sharer ''; and in the verbal and conceptual Resonance s of '' Nostromo '' and '' The Nigger Of The Narcissus ''. CRITICISM , probably due most to his first few novels, which lack any insight into the natives he describes. Conrad associated the wild with despair, death, and savage inhuman acts; nevertheless, Conrad in his depiction of London and industrial man paints a similarly gloomy picture. He uses this symbolism in many of his novels, but most potently in ''Heart of Darkness''. Another oddity in Conrad's work is his characterisation, showing his evil characters as either emaciated, as in the case of natives, or as obese, describing a character from ''Lord Jim'' as "an enigma carved from a block of fat". NOVELS AND NOVELLAS , Poland .]]
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