Joseph Conrad (1857–1924) died on a day like today. He was a Polish author who wrote in English, after settling in England. Granted British nationality at age 28 in 1886, he always considered himself a Pole and resented being classed by some critics with Russian novelists as a "Slavonic" writer. Conrad is regarded as one of the great novelists in English, though he did not speak the language fluently until he was in his twenties (here's some food for thought for all adult learners of a foreign language). He wrote stories and novels, often with a nautical setting, that depict trials of the human spirit in the midst of an indifferent universe.
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While some of his works have a strain of romanticism, he is viewed as a precursor of modernist literature. His narrative style and anti-heroic characters cast a "fiendish spell" on readers, as The Telegraph put it in this article. He was able to write about the sociopolitical landscape of his time (the heyday of the British Empire), while at the same time plumbing the depths of the human soul. I won't ever forget his novella Heart of Darkness (1899), which takes place one night on a steamer by the Thames, with the simple plot of one man's search for another, but throwing in the complexities drawn from his experience in the Congo nine years before. It is hard for the reader to forget the river, and the "heart of darkness" it penetrates. White civilization versus the jungle.
And to commemorate him, a poem by Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957) which makes reference to words, along with its translation into Spanish, from his book Selected Poems (1962), and which sort of reminds me, for some reason, of Alexandre Nerium, who also "requited sea-wariness" to grapple with words.
Joseph Conrad
This wrestling, as of seamen with a storm
Which flies to leeward - while they, united
In that chaos, turn, each on his nighted
Bunk, to dream of chaos again, or home -
The poet himself, struggling with the form
Of his coiled work, knows; having requited
Sea-wariness with purpose, invited
What derricks of the soul plunge in his room.
Yet some mariner's ferment in his blood
- Though truant heart will hear the iron travail
And song of ships that ride their easting down -
Sustains him to subdue or be subdued.
In sleep all night he grapples with a sail!
But words beyond the life of ships dream on.
Joseph Conrad
Esta lucha es similar a la de los marineros con la
tormenta
que se abate a sotavento - aunque ellos, unidos
en ese caos, recurren a su cucheta
para soñar nuevamente con el caos o con el hogar.
Lo sabe el propio poeta, que lucha con la intrincada
forma de su oficio; renunció a las faenas del mar
con el propósito de escribir, pero instaló en su cuarto
las torres de perforación que exploran el alma.
No obstante, un fermento de vida marinera en sus venas
- aunque el perezoso corazón escuchará los férreos
afanes
y los cantos de las tripulaciones que viajan al oriente-
lo anima a dominar o ser dominado.
¡Y en sueños lucha toda la noche para sujetar una vela!
Pero las palabras, más allá de la vida de los barcos,
sueñan.
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