Volume 26, Number 2 · February 22, 1979
Moralist of Exile
By V.S. Pritchett
Joseph Conrad: The Three Lives
by Frederick R. Karl
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1,008 pp., $25.00
To the eminent father-figures—Galsworthy, Edward Garnett, Wells—who were in fact uncle-figures, as we shall see, and who nursed and praised him through the years when the great public ignored him, Joseph Conrad had the magnetism of a shaman risen from the ocean. In London literary circles he passed as the mysterious Romantic Slav—all the go at that time—a typical misrepresentation; there was nothing of the Russian exalté and deplorable Dostoevsky about him, as he firmly pointed out. Surely the British had realized that the Poles despised 'the Russian soul' and were Westerners to a man. Flatteringly he had gone through the British mill and become a British master mariner, had even read Marryat when he was a boy; it had been noticed that he was a shade standoffish on the decks of clippers and avoided the crew when ashore. In a very thick and explosive accent, he would talk about Pater and Flaubert to the rare officer who had literary tastes.
Review, 3308 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |