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“Fidelity to Race” in Conrad's Lord Jim
- Edited by Jolanta Dudek, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Andrzej Juszczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Skolik, Uniwersytet Opolski
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- Book:
- Essays on Joseph Conrad in Memory of Prof. Zdzisław Najder (1930-2021)
- Published by:
- Jagiellonian University Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 25 April 2023, pp 79-90
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Summary
“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.
Zdzisław Najder and Hans van Marle
- Edited by Jolanta Dudek, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Andrzej Juszczyk, Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Joanna Skolik, Uniwersytet Opolski
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- Book:
- Essays on Joseph Conrad in Memory of Prof. Zdzisław Najder (1930-2021)
- Published by:
- Jagiellonian University Press
- Published online:
- 01 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 25 April 2023, pp 221-222
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Summary
The Hans van Marle Collection, catalogued in Special Collections at Senate House Library, University of London, preserves the letters and papers of Hans van Marle, including his extensive correspondence with Zdzisław and Halina Najder over a period of forty years. The letters to and from the Najders fill twenty-three archive folders and represent the second-largest correspondence in the collection, exceeded only by Hans's epistolary exchanges with John Stape. The correspondence with the Najders covers a multitude of Conradian subjects and many other topics, and provides a unique and permanent record of a remarkable and warm friendship.
When Hans realized in the summer of 2001 that he would not be leaving the hospital, his wish was that his friend Zdziś should have the first choice of any books or materials from his collection that he might find useful. I well remember how the Najders made a special detour to Amsterdam on their return from France back to Poland, stopping their car in front of Hans's house on the Weteringschans and filling every available nook and cranny in the vehicle with Hans's (thoroughly annotated!) copies of Conrad journals and periodicals destined for the library of the new Joseph Conrad Study Centre that would open that December at the University of Opole.
A selection from Hans's letters (including eight letters to Najder) was published in 2005 as a special issue of The Conradian (vol. 30, no. 2) entitled A Joseph Conrad Archive: The Letters and Papers of Hans van Marle. Finally, in December 2009, thanks to the unflinching help and support of the Joseph Conrad Society (UK), the library of the Polish Social and Cultural Centre (POSK) in Hammersmith, and the library staff at Senate House, the remainder of Hans's archive—enough to fill twenty-three archive boxes—was catalogued and delivered to Special Collections in the massive tower just behind the British Museum where Hans and I had enjoyed doing research, especially in the (then) open periodical stacks. A detailed catalogue of the Hans van Marle Collection (MS1169) is available online at: https:// archives.libraries.london.ac.uk/resources/MS1169.pdf.
The Archivist at Senate House Library, Richard Temple, has told me that the Hans van Marle Collection is one of their largest and most frequently consulted collections, which bodes well for its future preservation.
10 - Peace of Mind in Parade's End
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- By Gene M. Moore, Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature at the Universiteit van Amsterdam until his retirement in 2013
- Edited by Ashley Chantler, Rob Hawkes
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- Book:
- War and the Mind
- Published by:
- Edinburgh University Press
- Published online:
- 15 September 2017
- Print publication:
- 02 June 2015, pp 159-170
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Summary
In the late summer of 1924 – between the publication of Some Do Not … and the writing of No More Parades – Ford Madox Ford observed:
A great many novelists have treated of the late war in terms solely of the war: in terms of pip-squeaks, trench-coats, wire-aprons, shells, mud, dust, and sending the bayonet home with a grunt. For that reason interest in the late war is said to have died. But, had you taken part actually in those hostilities, you would know how infinitely little part the actual fighting itself took in your mentality.
In the series of novels that would become Parade's End, Ford examines not so much the ‘actual fighting’ as the psychological effects of war on the mind, and explores the various strategies developed by men suffering stress to preserve their sanity and self-control under wartime conditions. In this context, Christopher Tietjens stands out as a prime example of the Good Soldier: he is an effective and capable officer who not only does his duty but manages without fail to help his fellow soldiers even when they are handicapped by alcohol, prejudice or fits of madness. Tietjens is severely tested by the trauma of war and the threat of insanity, yet he emerges from the test with his values strengthened and clarified. What is it in Tietjens’ character or constitution that enables him to withstand the hell of Armageddon?
Ford was literally ‘shell shocked’ during the Battle of the Somme, when he was, as he described the moment to his daughter Katherine: ‘blown up by a 4.2 & shaken into a nervous breakdown which has made me unbearable to myself & all my kind’. He suffered a concussion, loosened teeth, and a severe but temporary loss of memory; but in his various accounts of this near-death experience, like Tietjens, he was always careful to distinguish its physical from its psychological effects, noting, for example: ‘I have been lifted off my feet and dropped two yards away by the explosion of a shell and felt complete assurance of immunity.’
Contributors
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- By Basem Abdelmalak, Joseph Abdelmalak, Alaa A. Abd-Elsayed, David L. Adams, Eric E. Adelman, Maged Argalious, Endrit Bala, Gene H. Barnett, Sheron Beltran, Andrew Bielaczyc, William Bingaman, James M. Blum, Alina Bodas, Vera Borzova, Richard Bowers, Adam Brown, Chad M. Brummett, Alexandra S. Bullough, James F. Burke, Juan P. Cata, Neeraj Chaudhary, Michael J. Claybon, Miguel Cruz, Milind Deogaonkar, Vikram Dhawan, Thomas Didier, D. John Doyle, Zeyd Ebrahim, Hesham Elsharkawy, Wael Ali Sakr Esa, Ehab Farag, Ryen D. Fons, Joseph J. Gemmete, Matt Giles, Phil Gillen, Goodarz Golmirzaie, Marcos Gomes, Lisa Grilly, Maged Guirguis, David W. Healy, Heather Hervey-Jumper, Shawn L. Hervey-Jumper, Paul E. Hilliard, Samuel A. Irefin, George K. Istaphanous, Teresa L. Jacobs, Ellen Janke, Greta Jo, James W. Jones, Rami Karroum, Allen Keebler, Stephen J. Kimatian, Colleen G. Koch, Robert Scott Kriss, Andrea Kurz, Jia Lin, Michael D. Maile, Negmeldeen F. Mamoun, Mariel Manlapaz, Edward Manno, Donn Marciniak, Piyush Mathur, Nicholas F. Marko, Matthew Martin, George A. Mashour, Marco Maurtua, Scott T. McCardle, Julie McClelland, Uma Menon, Paul S. Moor, Laurel E. Moore, Ruairi Moulding, Dileep R. Nair, Todd Nelson, Julie Niezgoda, Edward Noguera, Jerome O’Hara, Aditya S. Pandey, Mauricio Perilla, Paul Picton, Marc J. Popovich, J. Javier Provencio, Venkatakrishna Rajajee, Mohit Rastogi, Stacy Ritzman, Lauryn R. Rochlen, Leif Saager, Vivek Sabharwal, Oren Sagher, Kenneth Saliba, Milad Sharifpour, Lesli E. Skolarus, Paul Smythe, Wolf H. Stapelfeldt, William R. Stetler, Peter Stiles, Vijay Tarnal, Khoi D. Than, B. Gregory Thompson, Alparslan Turan, Christopher R. Turner, Justin Upp, Sumeet Vadera, Jennifer Vance, Anthony C. Wang, Robert J. Weil, Marnie B. Welch, Karen K. Wilkins, Erin S. Williams, George N. Youssef, Asma Zakaria, Sherif S. Zaky, Andrew Zura
- Edited by George A. Mashour, Ehab Farag
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- Book:
- Case Studies in Neuroanesthesia and Neurocritical Care
- Published online:
- 03 May 2011
- Print publication:
- 03 February 2011, pp x-xvi
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12 - Conrad's influence
- Edited by J. H. Stape
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- Book:
- The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad
- Published online:
- 28 May 2006
- Print publication:
- 27 June 1996, pp 223-241
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Summary
If it is true, as Conrad once wrote, that 'A man's real life is that accorded to him in the thoughts of other men' (UWE, p. 14), then the real life of Joseph Conrad is manifest throughout modern and contemporary literature, and has become a living part of our cultural self-awareness. His works have been translated into more than forty languages, from Albanian and Yiddish to Korean and Swahili. Conrad is one of the defining founders of literary Modernism, and his influence has been acknowledged by writers as different from him, and from each other, as Andre Gide, Ralph Ellison, Graham Greene, Jorge Luis Borges, V. S. Naipaul, William S. Burroughs, and Italo Calvino, to name only a few. Some of his works have been taken as models for the development of new literary genres. The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes were among the first studies of spies who cannot come in from the cold, Nostromo is the first panoramic epic of South American colonialism, and 'Heart of Darkness' is frequently invoked as a cultural token signifying the 'horror' at the heart of modern Western civilization. The life and works of Conrad have inspired films, journeys, sculptures, comic books, Conrad societies and journals, and well over one thousand academic books and articles.