JOSEPH CONRAD (1857-1924)

-A search for the real truth of man's existence: about it he said that every man communicate his inner nature only after the impact of a unexpected events; in particular a civilized European, far from his world and confronted with an alien background, will give you an idea about his real moral fiber.

-Love for the sea and for the exotic places: the sea, with its calm and storms, is a character in itself. In Conrad's work it has the function to isolate the leading character in the story from the society of men, so that he may look into his innermost self in a bitter self-confrontation.

-Symbolism: the sea, the jungle, all natural elements are real in themselves, but at the same time they are symbols of the feelings end emotions of man. Such images as steam, clouds, darkness represent the subconscious, a world of darkness and ambiguity, while the consciousness is the world of light. A tempest, usually, represents the coming of a crisis, of a final self-confrontation.

-The use of a narrator (generally the master Marlow), as a speaking ad reflecting medium, who is psychologically and emotionally implicated, but who lives and thinks in accordance with a range of normal values. Conrad represents him as a man who was a romantic in youth , but has become conscious of the practical inefficiency of romanticism. The writer is no longer the single omniscient commentator.

-The conventional time-sequence is often manipulated, and Conrad goes back and forth through time, following reflection and remembrance. His method influenced for example writers as Virginia Woolf, James and Joice.

-The presence of a "double character" in the novel, who is a real man, but at the same is the symbol of the worst side of the main character. The double is the unconscious part of the hero, what he might be, what he might became in particular circumstances.

LITERARY CAREER: his first novel, Almayer's Folly, was published in 1895, it was followed by many other novels.

His most important work include: Heart of darkness (1899),Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904) and The shadow line (1917). He has been considered one of the main MODERNIST writers in English literature.

[A label for the predominant features of the 20^th century arts which tend to be experimental and formally complex, to underline the notion of the artist's freedom from traditional genre and form, to associate elements of deconstruction as well as creation. The major modernist writers are Conrad, Woolf, Joice.]

HEART OF DARKNESS

The novel is based on Conrad's personal experience of a trip as a river-boat pilot, on the Congo in 1889-1890; but it's at the same time a spiritual voyage into comprehension of is inner nature.

The title of the novel refers then both to Africa, the dark continent, and to the darkness of the human heart.

Marlow is the narrator, he is sent to the Congo to rescue Kurtz, a mysterious ivory trader. Kurtz, in Europe, was a able man, rich in ideals, believing in civilization and progress; but in Africa, in complete isolation, he is defeated by the dark power of wilderness. He enslaves the natives, he commits all sort of crime. He is driven by ambition and thirst for power. Marlow has to face difficulties connected with the wild of the nature and the hostility both of the white and black people he meets. At the end he is not fighting the wilderness outside, but to be more precise the spell that the personality of Kurtz has over him.

Marlow did not transgress his limits and came back without fully understanding his experience, and although the heart of darkness tried to exercise it's influence on him, too, he was able to restrain himself, he accepted it's fascination and it's abomination, but resisted his desire to join in those unspeakable rites. Marlow was saved because his aim was self- knowledge, the mystery of existence, which demands a great humility. The heart of darkness evoked by Conrad is hard to understand, since the story has different levels.

Heart of Darkness ends with the suggestion that truth is unendurable in the context of everyday life, that what one needs in order to maintain an assurance of safety and comfort is some sustaining illusion to which one can be faithful. The story closes with the frame-narrator looking over the tranquil waterway of the Thames, which seemed to lead into the heart of an immense darkness.