CONRAD’S JOURNEY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 37, Issue 953, 15 November 1957, Page 12

CONRAD’S JOURNEY

THE SEA DREAMER, a definite biography of Joseph Conrad, by Gerard Jean-Aubry, translated by Helen Sebba; George Allen and Unwin, English price 25/-.

(Reviewed by

A.

M.

RITISH readers of Joseph Conrad naturally think of him as the product of Polish and British cultures, but this man who’ became a great writer in an alien language was steeped in French culture as well. Poland had many ties with France. Conrad spoke French fluently from childhood, whereas when he first landed in England he knew no English. From Poland he went to France. A turn of fate might have made him a French citizen and a French novelist, though he did say in after years that if he had not written in English he would never have written at all. So this biography by a

French friend (so close that Conrad willed him his personal papers) has a special interest of origin. This: is Conrad’s centennial year: he was born on December 3, 1857. The late M. Gerard Jean-Aubry spent more than 20 years on this work, and it is significant that there are 17 pages of bibliography. Thirty years ago he published Life and Letters of Joseph Conrad in two volumes, with an introduction, and later, from these, wrote in French the volume now issued in an English translation. The main interest of the story is psychological. In the form of a literary "log" (the author uses this ship word), he follows Conrad’s life from birth to death, with, many illustrations from letters and some from the books. Perhaps no account of Conrad’s young days is so illuminating, with its mingling of cultivated

aristocratic life and Russian oppression.. His father. a striking figure,

suffered exile and imprisonment for his political activities. His lovable uncle became his devoted guardian. These early experiences profoundly affected Conrad’s future, According to his biographer, it was not the sea, which he had never seen, that drew him away. It was the thought of open spaces, where, in contrast to his native land, there was freedom. Hugh Walpole expressed a similar opinion that, growing up under unlawful tyranny, Conrad "may well have contemplated the sea as the one unlimited monarchy of freedom." Conrad. was a capable seaman, and but for ill-health might have stayed at sea. The story of his wrestles with physical and mental ills is moving. A writer trying to mould his native tongue to his needs may be torn to pieces inside, as Dickens was. Writing in an acquired medium, Conrad was racked also by gout and malaria (the second a legacy from the Congo, his "Heart of Darkness"), and by poverty. Nor could he forget Poland. Indeed, the theory was advanced by a Polish writer, and supported by Jean-Aubry, that Conrad, to whom fidelity was the supreme virtue,

felt he had acted badly by Poland, hence the desertion-from-duty theme, or its treatment, in Lord Jim. The effect of all this, on top of his Slav temperament, was to give him a sombre view bf life. To my mind, the book does not say enough about his love for England. It omits his formative emotion on seeing the Red Ensign for the first time, and does not mention the splendid apostrophe to England in The Nigger of the Narcissus. How Conrad succeeged makes a wonderful and perhaps unequalled story. He was given some ease through a Civil List pension (amount not stated, but it seems to have been £250), and lived to see his work popular. Today he is rated as one of the giants of his time. This is a valuable source book about

a great writer who, amid the torture of jJife and art, never lost touch with nobility.