Volume 1, Number 6 · November 14, 1963
Conrad's Politics
By Tony Tanner
In the Shadow of the Pillar: The Political Novels of Joseph Conrad
by Eloise Knapp Hay
Chicago, 350 pp., $6.00
Conrad systematically avoided all political commitment. He never voted in a British election in spite of his respect for English institutions; nor would he involve himself in Polish affairs. He distrusted socialism—as leading inevitably to 'Caesarism'—yet loathed capitalism; autocracy and revolution he saw as alternate faces of a base coin. Although he sailed in an English ship when the navy was the vanguard of British imperialism, in private he despised the 'appalling fatuity in this business.' Yet when asked by his friend Cunninghame-Graham to support a plan of 'international brotherhood' he answered with bitterness: 'Fraternity means nothing unless the Cain-Abel business. That's your true fraternity.'
Review, 1815 words
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