The utmost surrealism in a realisticly told tale about unreal world ...

I just finished "Nostromo" by Joseph Conrad...
I do not know what to say. This is ulitmate book, the ultimate literature experience.
Through all the book the shiver of someting out-of-this- earth pierced my ears and my mind...

I hope, I will write a true review, but I just wanted to tell you now that this great book is a must...

What connects Conrad to Naipaul ?

A dedicated reader cannot get any better prize when his own discoveries are confirmed by giants of literatures.

From the beginning on my reading of "A Bend of the River" I was sure there must be a connection between Joseph Conrad and VS Naipaul. In fact, after reading "Heart of Darkness" I switched to "A Bend ..." which was long on my "next reading" list.

These two books are linked on many levels. Both play their action on or close to Kongo river, yet both don't name it. Both don't name the country identity nor its figures. Both deal with human nature more then with anything else....

So, imagine my joy when I read the following words from Nobel prize committee, when, in 2001, VS Naipaul was selected to win:

Naipaul is Conrad's heir as the annalist of the destinies of empires in the moral sense: what they do to human beings. His authority as a narrator is grounded in the memory of what others have forgotten, the history of the vanquished.

"A Bend in the river" is the story of Salim, a Muslim of Indian origin, who lived in unnamed city on Africa East. At some moment in time he bought a store in the midland of the continent on "a bend in the river". His story is from now on related to the political turmoil of the country (possibly Congo) caused by its dictator - the Big Man - most likely Mobutu Sésé Seko. What is the most important in the book, is the impact the dictatorship had on the people - how it changed their minds. How it attracted people, and how it betrayed the in the end.

The book shows, how troubled Africa is. How difficult it is for Africa to emerge the democracy, to disavow violence and corruption - how deep these problems are - and how they cast shadow on human souls.

The book has also a beautiful love story plot....

VS Naipaul forms a conclusion and writes his conclusion ... at the very beginning of the book:

"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it."

I was first shocked by the sentence, and by some interpretation of the book - as totally pessimistic. It seemed to me that there was a lot of hope in the book.

I thought like this, until I read about "Second Kongo War" ... it claimed almost 6 million victims...

What is Africa today? Can you tell me ?

Darkness of the Soul in the Heart of Darkness

I must admit that the second reading of "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad was extraordinary experience. As it was with "Lord Jim" it is hard to write a review about the book that deserved and rightly received tens of thousands of reviews.

So let me point only these matters, that were so important to me.

"Heart of Darkness" to me is about the nature, the human condition and the dark side of our souls. It is also one of best written short novels I ever read, using intense, suspended language - with many symbolic connotations and special constructions related to its form of "frame narrative". For all language lovers - those who like the pure construction of phrases - this book is like good poetry.

Nature - Conrad shows how important nature is for us, the nature that is almost forgotten today - it was already almost forgotten in the beginning of XX century:

The dusk came gliding into it long before the sun had set. The current ran smooth and swift, but a dumb immobility sat on the banks. The living trees, lashed together by the creepers and every living bush of the undergrowth, might have been changed into stone, even to the slenderest twig, to the lightest leaf. It was not sleep--it seemed unnatural, like a state of trance. Not the faintest sound of any kind could be heard. You looked on amazed, and began to suspect yourself of being deaf--then the night came suddenly, and struck you blind as well.

The pervasive nature is contrasted with human affairs and our constant jabbering:

The smell of mud, of primeval mud, by Jove! was in my nostrils, the high stillness of primeval forest was before my eyes; there were shiny patches on the back creek. The moon had spread over everything a thin layer of silver--over the rank grass, over the mud, upon the wall of matted vegetation standing higher than the wall of a temple, over the great river I could see through a somber gap glittering, gittering, as it flowed broadly by without a murmur. All this was great, expectant, mute, while the man jabbered about himself.

or in this fragment:

The pilgrims could be seen in knots gesticulating, discussing. Several had still their staves in their hands. I verily believe they took these sticks to bed with them. Beyond the fence the forest stood up spectrally in the moonlight, and through the dim stir, through the faint sounds of that lamentable courtyard, the silence of the land went home to one's very heart,--its mystery, its greatness, the amazing reality of its concealed life.

The tragic human nature is projected onto the nature, but Conrad does not make it dull and naive. He does not meditate on humans thrown on the nature. Rather he is able to show the authentic tragedies, deceptions and deep unshaken love:

'Yes, I know,' I said with something like despair in my heart, but bowing my head before the faith that was in her, before that great and saving illusion that shone with an unearthly glow in the darkness, in the triumphant darkness from which I could not have defended her--from which I could not even defend myself.

Finally, the book shows how easy is to lost our own inborn sagacity, how easy is to deprave oneself. What we usually need - is just a bit too much power, too much wealth and too much domination over others...

I tried to break the spell--the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness--that seemed to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions. This alone, I was convinced, had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush, towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations.

I know that there are many more interpretations of this incredible book, some even accusing Conrad of racism. Nothing is more far from the truth and from the author intentions. His portrait of the relations between whites and blacks in the book are in fact, accusations of imperial era. As it is in the most famous movie adaptation of the book: "The Apocalypse Now" ....

The Heart of Darkness - harbinger of my third reading review ...

". . . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the
life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence,--that which
makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating essence. It is
impossible. We live, as we dream--alone. . . ."

The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad.

I'm deeply moved by this book. I did not think, my third reading of it in my life, would bring such shocking experiences and thoughts...

Full review to come soon...

Depths of conscience - Lord Jim

Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim is such an icon of classical English literature that it makes no sense for reviewer to relate to the book's plot - almost all of us know it well.

I first read it, when I was in school, at the age of 15... I must admit - I'm sure I did not understand it by then....

What I wanted to stress now, is the book's expression of unexpressible power of human conscience. To me, the entire plot of Lord Jim is the description of doomed struggle to forget about the cardinal sin of the hero life. The sin that is almost illusive, almost pardoned by circumstances - yet persistent...


Conrad teaches us, that very often, when we make horrible things, unpardonable acts, unforgivable steps - things, that resist any simple classification of evil deeds, we are not punished in a literal sense of the word. But that's only the surface.

Under scrutiny, it was revealed that Lord Jim did not make any obvious crime or offence, when, together with the crew, he abandoned the ship (Patna) being sure it is sinking. But it did not sink, and Jim's life, to its very end, became marked with the guilt of negligence and abandonment...

What Conrad says is the simple truth: sometimes one may do something bad, yet still internally and socially tolerable, but the thing one will always regret, and - this way or another, will always pay for the sin of doing it - in all moments of his life. Even if the only punishment is the fiery fire of our own conscience ....

And sometimes, only at the moment of death after so much pain and struggle, it seems, our sins are forgiven ...:

"And that's the end. He passes away under a cloud, inscrutable at heart, forgotten, unforgiven, and excessively romantic. Not in the wildest days of his boyish visions could he have seen the alluring shape of such an extraordinary success! For it may very well be that in the short moment of his last proud and unflinching glance, he had beheld the face of that opportunity which, like an Eastern bride, had come veiled to his side."

When it comes to the book's narration - I must say I'm deeply by the incredible method Conrad applies. He treats the plot of the book as almost already known to the readers or as real as the facts of life, and slowly, in a kind of nonchalant narration, he uncovers its details and flow of events. This is also what makes the reading of Conrad difficult and deeply engaging.

And, last but not least, the language itself. See this:

The line dividing his meditation from a surreptitious doze on his feet was thinner than a thread in a spider's web.

Honestly - I can not comprehend, how, knowing English as his third language (after Polish - his mother tongue and French - lingua Franca of his times), he could get to such mastery of the expression, expression where the language and its poetry plays irremovable role:

"Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into the past, as if falling into an abyss for ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship, lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smouldering in a luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.
The nights descended on her like a benediction."

Or this:

"A brooding gloom lay over this vast and monotonous landscape; the light fell on it as if into an abyss. The land devoured the sunshine; only far off, along the coast, the empty ocean, smooth and polished within the faint haze, seemed to rise up to the sky in a wall of steel."

Incredible.

The last note. It is almost inexplicable to me, how would it happen that I found the same person, Christopher Marlowe in two books in row I read. The first was Christoper the real - Shakespeare largest competitor to literary greatness - in Bill Bryson book. The second, Captain Marlow, the mythical narrator of so many of Conrad's books...