'The mind of man is capable of anything - because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, rage - who can tell? - but truth - truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder - the man knows, and can look on without a wink'
Joseph Conrad (originally J zef Teodor Konrad Nalecz
Korzeniowski) was born in the Ukraine in 1857 and grew up under
Tsarist autocracy. His parents, ardent Polish patriots, died when
he was a child, following their exile for anti-Russian activities,
and he came under the protection of his tradition-conscious uncle,
Thaddeus Bobrowski, who watched over him for the next twenty-five
years.
In 1874 Bobrowski conceded to his nephew's passionate desire to go
to sea, and Conrad travelled to Marseilles, where he served in
French merchant vessels before joining a British ship in 1878 as an
apprentice.
In 1886 he obtained British nationality and his Master's
certificate in the British Merchant Service. Eight years later he
left the sea to devote himself to writing, publishing his first
novel, Almayer's Folly, in 1895. The following year he married
Jessie George and eventually settled in Kent, where he produced
within fifteen years such modern classics as Youth, Heart
of Darkness, Lord Jim, Typhoon, Nostromo,
The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes.
He continued to write until his death in 1924. Today Conrad is
generally regarded as one of the greatest writers of fiction in
English - his third language. He once described himself as being
concerned 'with the ideal value of things, events and people'; in
the Preface to The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' he defined his
task as 'by the power of the written word ... before all, to make
you see'.
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