The 2014 Joseph Conrad Conference at the Jagiellonian University: “Poland and the Conrad problem

Skolik, Joanna

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THE 2014 JOSEPH CONRAD CONFERENCE 
AT THE JAGIELLONIAN UNIVERSITY: 
“POLAND AND THE CONRAD PROBLEM”
Joanna Skolik
The University of Opole
The conference was organized by the Jagiellonian University Joseph Conrad 
Research Centre and the Joseph Conrad Society (Poland) to mark the 100th anniver-
sary of Joseph Conrad’s return visit to Cracow in 1914 and the 90th anniversary of his 
death in 1924 – as well as the 650th anniversary of the founding of the Jagiellonian 
University. The venue of the conference was the Michał Bobrzyński Room, which is 
located on the second fl oor of the Collegium Maius. Needless to say, its historic inte-
rior made the atmosphere of the conference quite unique and special.
The main aim of the conference was to recall the evolution of Conrad’s reception 
in Poland and to stress the importance of its historical and political context. However, 
apart from papers dealing with typically Polish matters, there were also papers on 
other subjects presented by Conradians from abroad. 
The welcoming address was delivered by the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of 
Polish Language and Literature Prof. Anna Łebkowska, while the opening address 
was delivered by the director of the Jagiellonian University Joseph Conrad Research 
Centre Prof. Jolanta Dudek, who greeted all the guests and presented the idea of the 
conference. 
The fi rst day was dominated by papers concerning Conrad’s reception in Poland. 
As well as presenting interpretations by Polish critics and writers, contributors also 
presented interpretations of their own. The fi rst paper – Conrad’s Visit to Cracow 
under Polish Eyes – was by Agnieszka Adamowicz-Pośpiech of the University of 
Silesia (Katowice), who discussed “the way in which Polish translators ‘manipulated’ 
the English texts” about Conrad’s 1914 visit to Cracow in order to tailor them to the 
needs of Polish readers and to the times in which they were living.
In a paper entitled ‘Oh, I hope he won’t talk!’ – Confronting the Other in “Amy 
Foster” – analysing the motif of the Other in Conrad’s “Amy Foster” – Agata Kowol 
of the Jagiellonian University argued that the Conradian character Yanko Goorall 
exemplifi es a human loneliness that is universal owing to the impossibility of really 
understanding one’s fellow individuals. There are always barriers between people, of 
which the linguistic and cultural “are but a small fraction”.
Yearbook of Conrad Studies (Poland)
Vol. IX 2014, pp. 127–130
 doi:10.4467/20843941YC.14.010.3082
128 Joanna Skolik
Andrzej Juszczyk of the Jagiellonian University discussed utopian elements in the 
political novels of Joseph Conrad, i.e. Under Western Eyes, The Secret Agent and 
Nostromo. The speaker concentrated on the last novel, showing similarities between 
Conrad’s texts and the classical utopias of Thomas More, Francis Bacon and Tomaso 
Campanella. According to Juszczyk, “Conrad’s political novels can be interpreted as 
being both a positive and a negative vision of social development” – i.e. as utopias or 
dystopias.
Brendan Kavanagh of the University of Cambridge analysed “vibrational conver-
gences between thermodynamics and information theory in The Secret Agent.” The 
aim of this paper was to show “how Conradian depictions of vibration merely pro-
vide a mirage of structure for the ghostly representation of gestural communication 
(as opposed to discursive communication)” and also that such a representation “serves 
to structure The Secret Agent as a ‘media assemblage’ of various media forms.”
The next session brought a paper delivered by Anna Szczepan-Wojnarska of the 
Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University (Warsaw) who characterised the famous 
Polish Conradian Rafał Bluth. The author recalled that – as a literary critic and spe-
cialist in Russian literature and literary history – Bluth made a comparative analysis 
of the works of Conrad and Dostoevsky in the context of Polish and Russian 
Romanticism. Bluth not only admired Conradian values, but also presented Conrad 
himself as an admirer of true virtues and as a writer who offered the hope that human 
life was meaningful. According to Szczepan-Wojnarska, such a description of Conrad 
should be taken into account in discussions of Conrad’s reception in Poland during 
the Second World War. 
Wiesław Ratajczak of the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań sketched a por-
trait of Leszek Prorok, whom he sees as Conrad’s Polish successor. Commenting on 
Prorok’s Conradian Initiations, he recalled the chapter Naturaliter Christiana, in 
which Christianity is presented as the key to an understanding of Conrad’s writing. 
Ratajczak also analysed Prorok’s connections with Conrad – not only as a critic, but 
also as a writer, presenting a comparative interpretation of two pairs of works, the 
fi rst pair being Conrad’s Freya of the Seven Isles and Prorok’s Freja – the Cold 
Goddess of Love and the second pair being Conrad’s Shadow Line and Prorok’s
The Radiance Line.
The last paper presented on the fi rst day of the conference was The image of 
women in Conrad’s prose – the case of Winnie Verloc, given by Monika Malessa 
Drohomirecka of the Jagiellonian University. The author recalled Winnie Verloc’s 
story and discussed various interpretations which critics have put forward to explain 
the motives for Winnie’s actions, which are seen in the light of the socio-political 
contexts in which her life has been analysed. Winnie’s fate may be interpreted from 
a social, psychological or political perspective, as a consequence of the disintegration 
of the bourgeois world, inborn predispositons, the emancipation of women or “her 
unwitting involvement in a complicated political game.”
The second day of the conference began with Polish interpretations of Conrad, 
although there were also papers discussing high culture and pop culture or connec-
tions between art and literature in relation to Conrad’s works. Marek Pacukiewicz of 
129The 2014 Joseph Conrad Conference at the Jagiellonian University...
the University of Silesia presented a paper entitled Climbing Mountains with Conrad: 
Jan Józef Szczepański’s Mountaineering Stories. The speaker followed mountaineer-
ing threads in the works of Jan Józef Szczepański, who was an admirer of Conrad as 
well as being a great mountaineer. In Szczepański’s stories we can fi nd traces of the 
Conradian model of ethics. Marek Pacukiewicz also presented parallels between the 
experience of climbing and that of sailing. He concluded by saying that the ethos of 
the seaman was very similar to that of the mountaineer.
Margreta Grigorova of the St. Cyril and St. Methodius University of Veliko 
Turnovo (Bulgaria) searched for traces of Joseph Conrad’s seafaring philosophy and 
poetics in The Life of Pi (the book and the fi lm), pointing to the “cinematic potential 
of Conrad’s works and its realisation in fi lm interpretations.” This potential arouses 
widespread interest in the original, i.e. in Conrad’s books. Another fi lm presented by 
the author was All is lost, directed by J. C. Chandor. 
Katarzyna Koćma of the Jagiellonian University spoke about the importance of 
Conrad’s works for popular culture. Focusing on transtextual relations between 
Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and science fi ction and fantasy novels, she showed how 
the novella has infl uenced not only popular literature, but also the cinema, the theatre, 
music and even computer games. She analysed Robert Silverberg’s Downward to the 
Earth as the best example of such a transposition, pointing out the complexity of the 
connections between the two texts.
Karol Samsel of the University of Warsaw gave a paper on Stanisław Lem’s 
Conrad. Discussing Stanisław Lem’s complicated affi nities with Conrad, he noted 
that it was his friend Jan Józef Szczepański who introduced him to this English au-
thor. Samsel described the relations between the two writers, showing “the way in 
which [Lem] and his philosophy – including his versions of axiological absolutism 
and anthropological pessimism – were infl uenced by the Conradian ethic.”
Before the last session of the conference, all the participants had an opportunity to 
take part in a guided tour and also to visit the Jagiellonian University Museum in the 
Collegium Maius, which – being the oldest university building in Poland – has a his-
tory which begins in the year 1400. The College is on the corner of Jagiellońska 
Street and St. Anne’s street – the same streets which Joseph Conrad walked along as 
a young teenager and later as a famous author during his return visit to Cracow in 
1914. When Conrad was still a child, St. Anne’s grammar school was housed in the 
Nowodworski College (Kolegium Nowodworskiego), which is literally next door to 
the Collegium Maius. During this year’s Conrad conference, the door of the old pas-
sageway which connects the two buildings was opened so that participants could see 
just how easy it must have been to go from one quad to the other.
The fi rst paper of the closing session – entitled The concept of the gentleman in 
the works of Joseph Conrad – was given by Olena Tkachuk of the Taras Shevchenko 
National University of Kyiv (Ukraine). Discussing the notion of the gentleman in 
Conrad’s works, the speaker presented Conrad as the descendant of an old Polish 
noble family who saw himself not as a Slav (in the tsarist Pan-Slavonic sense), but as 
a European who claimed that Poland belonged to the Western World. At the end of 
her paper, the speaker noted that “The British hereditary Earl Bertrand Arthur William 
130 Joanna Skolik
Russell and the Polish nobleman Józef Teodor Konrad Nałęcz-Korzeniowski were 
united by those values which were otherwise known as the aristocratic code of hon-
our.”
The last two papers dealt with the subject of Conrad being “one of us”, though 
each presented the issue from a different perspective. Joanna Skolik of Opole 
University analysed Conrad’s reception in Poland by noting the attitudes of scholars, 
critics and general readers towards Conrad over the years, concentrating on the peri-
od between 1945 and 1989, when Poland was under communist rule. Because of 
political conditions – censorship in particular – Conrad was perceived as a classic 
who was not much preoccupied with the problems of the modern world. The speaker 
argued that Conrad is still “one of us” and that – although he is a diffi cult and de-
manding author – he is very much needed in present-day Poland.
Stefan Zabierowski of the University of Silesia presented a paper in which he 
summed up Polish critical reception of Joseph Conrad’s life and letters in the years 
1897-2014. As well as describing the importance of Conrad’s reception in partitioned 
Poland and in the interwar period, the speaker stressed the role played by Conrad’s 
writing during the Second World War and discussed Marxist condemnations of 
Conrad after the war. He recalled that the political “thaw” of 1956 brought a relative 
liberalization which enabled Polish editions of Conrad’s works to be published once 
again and that – after the next political “thaw” of 1970 – Zdzisław Najder “played 
a leading role in the process of publishing, interpreting and popularizing [Conrad’s] 
works.” He concluded by saying that although young Conrad scholars offering new 
interpretations had appeared in Poland after the restoration of democracy in 1989, it 
had to be admitted that the general reading public was on the whole not interested in 
Conrad, who nevertheless has always been considered to be “one of us” on account 
of his Polish heritage and his own considerable infl uence on Polish culture.
At the end of the session Prof. Jolanta Dudek made her closing remarks, summing 
up the conference and thanking all those who had contributed to the event – both the 
speakers and those who had taken part in what at times had been heated discussions. 
The conference ended with dinner at the Grand Hotel, where Conrad had stayed 
with his family a whole century earlier during their famous and eventful visit to 
Cracow in 1914. In the highly congenial atmosphere of the hotel’s “mirrored” dining 
room, Conradian discussions were continued and Conrad’s spirit was surely present 
among those who were at table that evening. During dinner, our thanks went to the 
organizers for having created a wonderful atmosphere for the conference: above all 
to Prof. Jolanta Dudek – who had been the driving force behind the project – and to 
Monika Malessa Drohomirecka, who had managed the logistics and had taken good 
care of all of us.


The 2014 Joseph Conrad Conference at the Jagiellonian University: “Poland and the Conrad problem”

Biblioteka Nauki - repozytorium artykuÅÃ³w

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The 2014 Joseph Conrad Conference at the Jagiellonian University: “Poland and the Conrad problem”

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The 2014 Joseph Conrad Conference at the Jagiellonian University: “Poland and the Conrad problem”

Abstract

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Full text

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Portal Czasopism Naukowych (E-Journals)

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