Voyaging in Joseph Conrad’s Major Works

By Latef S. N. Berzenji

Joseph Conrad is one of the most intriguing and important modernist novelists and short story writers, whose writing continues to preoccupy readers. Conrad combined his unique personal background as a Polish emigre, his personal experiences and voyagings as a seaman and his literary readings with the tradition of his adopted country to produce literary works and fictions, which blended with his distinctive taste, gave the English novel a further originality and development. This study, which primarily concentrates on four of Conrad's major works - Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, “The Secret Sharer,” and The Shadow Line shows that Conrad conceives voyaging as a symbolic means, an insight and vision into the human psyche. It becomes a journey into the inner-world of man’s psychological diving into his inner world of the self in quest of truth, of self-identity, self-knowledge, and self-control.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jul 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781728374420

Latef S. N. Berzenji

Mariwan N. H. Barzinji is a lecturer at English Department, College of Basic Education, University of Sulaimani. He has achieved his both certificates, BA in English Language and Literature in 2005 and MA in Modern English Poetry in 2010 in Sulaimani University. He has also taught English Literature at English Department, College of Languages, University of Sulaimani. He is the author of two books: The Image of Modern Man in T. S. Eliot’s Poetry (2012) and Modernism: A Critical Introduction (2015). He has been writing on Eliot’s poetry and his critical essays intensely for the last seven years. His interest lies in researching about modernist literature, literary stylistics and comparative literature. Latef S. N. Berzenji (PhD) is Assistant Professor of English Literature at Department of English, College of Education, Kirkuk University. He has also taught English Literature at Universities of Halmstad in Sweden, Taiz and Sana’a in Yemen and Salahaddin in Erbil, Iraq. He has published literary articles and essays in journals and periodicals and is the author of Reality -Ideal Conflict in Joseph Conrad’s Works.

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VOYAGING IN

Joseph Conrad’s

MAJOR WORKS

LATEF S. N. BERZENJI

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2022 Latef S. N. Berzenji. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse  07/20/2022

ISBN: 978-1-7283-7443-7 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-7442-0 (e)

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TO MY PARENTS

MAY GOD BLESS THEM

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Preface

Chapter 1 CONRAD in the CONTEXT of TRAVEL LITERATURE

Chapter 2 VOYAGING, EXPERIENCE, and FICTION

Chapter 3 A. HEART of DARKNESS: QUEST and DISCOVERY

Chapter 4 The SECRET SHARER and The SHADOW LINE: COMMANDSHIP and SELF-CONTROL

Conclusion

Bibliography

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

It is my greatest pleasure to express my sincerest gratitude to the invaluable and unfailing support of my brother, Dilshad, my wife, and children whose love and understanding has accompanied me throughout my research and writing process. It would not have been possible for me to have finished this study without their support.

PREFACE

Although English was his third language, Joseph Conrad combined his unique personal background as a Polish emigre, his personal experiences and voyagings as a seaman and his literary readings with the tradition of his adopted country to produce literary works and fictions, which blended with his distinctive taste, gave the English novel a further originality and development. Influenced by the flood of travel literature, which was in the vogue then, and under an apparent impact of his predecessors like Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, S.T. Coleridge, and other numberless writers who have used journey as a theme in their works, Conrad has utilized voyaging in his works as a principal vehicle to convey his ideas and expose his psychological conflicts through those of his characters. The study, which primarily concentrates on four of Conrad’s major works - Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, The Secret Sharer, and The Shadow Line shows that Conrad conceives voyaging as a symbolic means, as an insight and vision into the human psyche. It becomes a journey into the inner-world of man’s psychological diving into his inner world of the self in quest of truth, of self-identity, self-knowledge, and self-control.

The Study consists of four main chapters and a conclusion. The opening chapter examines the theme of voyaging in literature in general, trying to trace the origins of its use following up the way it came to develop and be used as an independent theme iin literature, referring to specific representative works in in English literature, like Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver’s Travels, The Rime of The Ancient Mariner, besides The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Odyssey. Moreover, the chapter, after clarifying the various phases in which journeying is used in literature, turns to the way it is used by Conrad, and concludes that Conrad has, depending on his predecessors’ experiences in. this field, used it in a more artistic and more profound way in his works. In addition, a particular attention is paid to Conrad’s biographical circumstances which have activated the idea of his going to sea and taking up sailing as a career. Finally, the significance of the sea to Conrad is pointed out, and the world he has created to substitute the one he had deserted.

The second chapter examines the use of voyaging as a theme in the works with which this study deals, as authentic-literal voyages. It attempts to study each work in its relation to Conrad’s personal experiences and demonstrates that each work is Conrad’s history for a certain period in his life-journey. The chapter aspires to show that the works mirror the writer’s psychic dilemma and represent a kind of cure or justification for his psychic state to enable him to achieve self-integration and self-control.

The third chapter analyses the theme of voyaging in two of his works, Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim, as symbolic journeys taken by their protagonists into their souls, seeking self-discovery and self-integration .The Chapter concentrates on the use of voyaging as a symbolic means employed by the writer to reveal the divided selves of the heroes of both works, and pinpoints how each one achieves his aim of self-purgation, self-knowledge and self-integration by means of getting rid of his shadow self.

The fourth chapter is dedicated to the study of the symbolic use of voyaging as a vehicle to mirror the way each of the heroes of the two fictional works The Secret Sharer, and The Shadow Line, gains his self-mastery and self-control, as a result of successfully commanding his ship and facing the personality test. A kind of duality and split self are observed in the psychic states of the two heroes, which the chapter treats and highlights the way they are healed.

The last part of the study is a conclusion, which sums up the findings of the study and infers that Conrad has used voyaging in his works as an artistic device that involves all the means for which it has been used by his predecessors, and consequently contributed to the development of the English novel.

Abbreviations used in the text:

Chapter One

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CONRAD in the CONTEXT of TRAVEL LITERATURE

It is a useful guide for this study to define the term travel literature and pinpoint its major elements which can be reached at by consulting the various writings in this field from its beginnings in the myths and epics of ancient times till its more profound treatment on the hands of Joseph Conrad. Magdi Wahba defines it as the collection of literary writings which include the author’s impressions of his travels in various countries, in which he describes the habits, manners, and ethics which he observes, besides recording an exact account of the landscapes he sees; he may give a stage-by-stage account of his journey; or simultaneously he may relate all these together.¹ However, to trace its origins and major elements, and to point out its influence on the introduction and the use of the theme of journey in literature, this chapter shall, due to the vastness of the field, confine itself to the most prominent works that may be considered as the origin of travel literature, and those works which are written under an overt influence of the genre.

The Epic of Gilgamesh, which consists of a cycle of poems collected round the character of Gilgamesh, can be regarded as the earliest piece of literature dealing with a mixture of pure adventure, of morality, and of tragedy.² The epic concerns the conflict between the desires of the gods and the destiny of man.

The author recites two journeys taken up by the hero, Gilgamesh: The first is carried out by the hero with his friend Enkidu, to the dark forest (Cedar Mountain in Lebanon), which can be counted as journey to the dark forest of the soul. Enkidu may, if psychologically scrutinized, be looked at as the primitive and uncivilized side of the hero himself whom he wants to tame. Moreover, Enkidu may be studied also as an allegory of the stages by which mankind has reached civilization; demonstrating that man has come from savagery to pastralization, reaching at last the urban life of the city, i.e., civilization.³ This shows indirectly the journey of man to his present state. However, this first journey taken by the hero and his friend to the Cedar of Lebanon is, as W. Empson shows, a heroic expedition and adventure to that wild country to bring raw material to the alluvial plain, where they defeat the monster, Humbaba, which is guarding it.⁴ After the first journey of adventure and test of the self to get rid of the evil side and gain the self-purgation; and upon the death of Enkidu, Gilgamesh sets out on his second journey in search of ancestral wisdom. In fact, questing immortality takes him to the limits of the earth, as did Odysseus’ journey to find Tiresias.⁵

It is the psychological richness and profundity of the epic, which has urged Dr. T. Baqir to suggest naming it the Odyssey of the Ancient Iraq.⁶ In the second journey, which, in no way, can be considered as a repetition of the one taken to the Cedar of Lebanon, the romantic and spiritual adventures have coalesced; and though the epic is seen clothed in the appearance of primitive geography, it is a spiritual landscape as much as Dante’s Dark Wood, Mountain of Pit.⁷ After a long journey and wandering through wilderness, living like a hunter, wearing the skin of animals and killing lions, Gilgamesh reaches the magical boat by which he may be taken to Noah to learn the secret of eternal life;⁸ but his mission fails as the herb of immortality is eaten by a snake while Gilgamesh is bathing.

Thus, The Epic of Gilgamesh can be considered as the origin of literature of travel since it includes the essential elements of the later works of travel such as the journey to unknown places, carrying out hazardous tasks, seeking adventures and expedition.

Closely akin to The Epic of Gilgamesh is The Odyssey, the Greek Epic attributed to Homer, which is believed to have been composed near the end of eighth century B.C. The Odyssey, which has nourished the imagination of all times and countless generations of mankind, has stimulated numberless readers to test the worlds of sea and adventure, no wonder then, that we find Conrad one of those who identifies himself with Odysseus. Fredrick R. Karl shows that Conrad in his autobiographical novel The Arrow of Gold represents his Monsieur George as ‘Young Ulysses’ and then recites his own French adventures after he left Poland.⁹ Moreover, in The Mirror of the Sea, Conrad speaks of the Mediterranean as the stuff out of which a boy’s dreams are formed:

Happy he who, like Ulysses, has made an adventurous voyage; and there is no such sea for adventurous voyages as the Mediterranean - the inland sea which the ancients looked upon as so vast so full of wonders. Arid, indeed, it was terrible and wonderful;