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Conrad's Language Circles and His Impressionistic Techniques
- 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 91-104
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Summary
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.”
A Note of Gratitude
- 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 219-220
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Summary
My contacts with Professor Zdzisław Najder have been of three kinds: faceto- face encounters, correspondence, and readings. Since I am a US resident (from 1988), my personal meetings with prof. Najder were but a few, on the occasion of Joseph Conrad conferences in Vancouver (2003), Opole and Kraków (2004), and Amsterdam (2005). When I had the honor of meeting prof. Najder for the first time (in Vancouver), I was at the initial stage of working on my doctoral thesis. After being introduced to prof. Najder I was struck by his kindness in showing genuine interest in my work. I guess every student knows what a great encouragement it is to meet an expert in the field you study and have him or her talk to you about your work, as if you were their equal! That wa s a great encouragement. That is what I remember the most: the handshake and prof. Najder's kind, polite interest in my work.
Then there followed the encounters of the second kind, the email correspondence. That exchange was specific because prof. Najder had kindly agreed to be on my dissertation committee. I called my advisor, prof. Donald Marshall, then the Head of the English Department at the University of Illinois at Chicago, “I got Najder on my committee!” For me it was a great joy and honor. Prof. Marshall was happy to engage Zdzisław Najder's exquisite expertise in guiding me through the thickets of the things Conradian. As for Professor Najder, I am sure for him all that meant extra work! There followed endless drafts, wandering chapter after chapter through the cyberspace. The chapters always came back full of yellow highlights, diligent corrections, comments. There are simply no words to express my gratitude for this. Ironically, the timing of my thesis defense fell at the time when Professor Najder could not have taken the trip from Poland to the United States. By my University's regulations every member of the committee, all five of them, had to be physically present during the defense. Hence prof. Marshall was unable formally to put prof. Najder's name in the required paperwork. But in fact Professor Zdzisław Najder had generously supported me throughout the entire process of my writing the doctoral thesis.