Conrad, Joseph

Joseph Conrad und China.
Heliéna M. Krenn : The image of the Chinese which Conrad draws in individual works roughly corresponds with the stereotypes found in other writing of the time. His interest in China had various origins. In addition to his childhood reading, which whetted his appetite for the distant and the unknown, there was his father's literary activity, which acquainted him with Victor Hugo, an enthusiastic admirer of the Chinese. Later, his life as a sailor offered chances for personal contact with Chinese individuals. Conrad never reached China. His acquaintance with the Far East was limited to the brief periods he spent in eastern seaports. An important stimulus were England's imperialist policies and increased trade relations with Asia, especially China, in the nineteenth century.
A less obvious but more basic and therefore more important explanation for Conrad's sentiment about China can be found in his approach to his creative activity which may well have been affected by Schopenhauer's philosophy and Oriental concepts.
If Conrad's creative genius experiences an affinity with China because of the aura of mysteriousness that surrounded that country, her people's self-understanding as constituting the center of civilized humanity, and the potential for good and evil which that vast country then held for Western minds, it also explains the great variety of images of the country and her people in his writings. To be sure, contemporary stereotypes of the Chinese occur in Conrad's work : among the most frequently mentioned occupations are those related to trade and business, food culture, and the earning of money as coolies and 'boys' by any kind of labor, and Conrad's 'Chinaman' wear pigtails, have 'almost' eyes, are 'yellow', speak pidgin English, and several of them smoke opium. Despite this compliance with stereotypes, Conrad presents individualities, traits, and situations that reflect the changing Western opinions of China which, as the reader discovers, resulted from the change of attitudes toward that country and her people at different periods of Western history.
The discovery that for Conrad the way of speaking and thinking about the Chinese is a subtle device to reveal character is confirmed when those personalities are considered who hold outspokenly positive views of them.
The Chinese are obscure, mysterious, and of a doubtful nature to Westerners, they are in danger of being wrongly seen and misunderstood. The oral mode of presentation of narrative details enables the author to forestall misinterpretations of what is shadowy and enigmatic in his tales by allowing for rival versions to what any one speaker puts forward at any one time.
The Chinese are seen through different eyes and from different angles. The reader experiences one utterance as standing against another, recognizes misinterpretations and misrepresentations of the Chinese as welcome means for revealing the characters of those who incur them, and is warned against jumping to rash conclusions. To the degree to which the informative value of whatever is being said about China and the Chinese is recognized as relative to the character of the speaker the likelihood of Conrad's self-identification with those utterances decreases.
The mere fact of allowing for alternatives proves Conrad's divergence from the prevailing negative opinions of his time. Likewise, the frequent coupling of disagreeable characters with negative opinions about China and the Chinese can be taken as suggestive of the author's sympathetic attitude toward them.

Conrad, Joseph. Almayer's folly [ID D27529].
Then the stranger was dragged in, in a tempest of yells, the door was shut, and the usual noises refilled the place; the song of the workmen, the rumble of barrels, the scratch of rapid pens; while above all rose the musical chink of broad silver pieces streaming ceaselessly through the yellow fingers of the attentive Chinamen…
After those twenty years, standing in the close and stifling heat of a Bornean evening, he recalled with pleasurable regret the image of Hudig’s lofty and cool warehouses with their long and straight avenues of gin cases and bales of Manchester goods; the big door swinging noiselessly; the dim light of the place, so delightful after the glare of the streets; the little railed-off spaces amongst piles of merchandise where the Chinese clerks, neat, cool, and sad-eyed, wrote rapidly and in silence amidst the din of the working gangs rolling casks or shifting cases to a muttered song, ending with a desperate yell…
When, turning round, he beheld the pretty little house, the big godowns built neatly by an army of Chinese carpenters, the new jetty round which were clustered the trading canoes, he felt a sudden elation in the thought that the world was his…
He did not know what the crazy-looking maze of the Chinese inscription on the red silk meant. Had he asked Jim-Eng, that patient Chinaman would have informed him with proper pride that its meaning was : "House of heavenly delight"…

Conrad, Joseph. Typhoon and other stories [ID D27531].
Kapitän MacWhirr und seine Crew befahren auf dem Dampfer Nan-Shan, im Auftrag einer englischen Reederei, jedoch unter der Flagge von Siam, das Chinesische Meer. Auf einer Reise gerät das Schiff in einen Taifun, und die Seeleute kämpfen ums Überleben. Die Situation wird dadurch erschwert, dass die Nan-Shan eine Gruppe chinesischer Kulis an Bord hat, die im finsteren und sturmbewegten Zwischendeck um ihre ersparten Silberdollars kämpfen, die aus den zerbrechenden Seekisten fallen. Es gelingt MacWhirr und seinen Leuten, die Ordnung wiederherzustellen und die Nan-Shan, wenn auch schwer gezeichnet, in den Hafen zu bringen.
Chap. 1
The Nan-Shan was on her way from the southward to the treaty port of Fu-chau, with some cargo in her lower holds, and two hundred Chinese coolies returning to their village homes in the province of Fo-kien, after a few years of work in various tropical colonies. The morning was fine, the oily sea heaved without a sparkle, and there was a queer white misty patch in the sky like a halo of the sun. The fore-deck, packed with Chinamen, was full of sombre clothing, yellow faces, and pigtails, sprinkled over with a good many naked shoulders, for there was no wind, and the heat was close. The coolies lounged, talked, smoked, or stared over the rail; some, drawing water over the side, sluiced each other; a few slept on hatches, while several small parties of six sat on their heels surrounding iron trays with plates of rice and tiny teacups; and every single Celestial of them was carrying with him all he had in the world -- a wooden chest with a ringing lock and brass on the corners, containing the savings of his labours: some clothes of ceremony, sticks of incense, a little opium maybe, bits of nameless rubbish of conventional value, and a small hoard of silver dollars, toiled for in coal lighters, won in gambling-houses or in petty trading, grubbed out of earth, sweated out in mines, on railway lines, in deadly jungle, under heavy burdens -- amassed patiently, guarded with care, cherished fiercely.
Chap. 6
The beggars stared about at the sky, at the sea, at the ship, as though they had expected the whole thing to have been blown to pieces. And no wonder! They had had a doing that would have shaken the soul out of a white man. But then they say a Chinaman has no soul. He has, though, something about him that is deuced tough.
Heliéna M. Krenn : The wisdom and patience of the Chinese are implied and simultaneously questioned by the repeated and strongly ironic references to them as 'Celestials'. 'Chinamen' are thus not entitled to the treatment white people expect for themselves.
The coolies on the 'Nan-Shan' are accommodated in the 'tween-deck', normally a hold for cargo.

Conrad, Joseph. Victory [ID D27532].
Pt. 1, chap. 4
His owner had a face like an ancient lemon. He was small and wizened—which was strange, because generally a Chinaman, as he grows in prosperity, puts on inches of girth and stature. To serve a Chinese firm is not so bad. Once they become convinced you deal straight by them, their confidence becomes unlimited.
Pt. 3, chap. 1
It was a curious case, inasmuch as the Alfuros, having been frightened by the sudden invasion of Chinamen, had blocked the path over the ridge by felling a few trees, and had kept strictly on their own side.
Wang in his native province in China might have been an aggressively, sensitively genial person; but in Samburan he had clothed himself in a mysterious stolidity and did not seem to resent not being spoken to except in single words, at a rate which did not average half a dozen per day. And he gave no more than he got. It is to be presumed that if he suffered he made up for it with the Alfuro woman. He always went back to her at the first fall of dusk, vanishing from the bungalow suddenly at this hour, like a sort of topsy-turvy, day-hunting, Chinese ghost with a white jacket and a pigtail. Presently, giving way to a Chinaman's ruling passion, he could be observed breaking the ground near his hut, between the mighty stumps of felled trees, with a miner's pickaxe. After a time, he discovered a rusty but serviceable spade in one of the empty store-rooms, and it is to be supposed that he got on famously; but nothing of it could be seen, because he went to the trouble of pulling to pieces one of the company's sheds in order to get materials for making a high and very close fence round his patch, as if the growing of vegetables were a patented process, or an awful and holy mystery entrusted to the keeping of his race.
Chap. 11
It would be useless, for instance, to tell me that your Chinaman has run off with your money. A man living alone with a Chinaman on an island takes care to conceal property of that kind so well that the devil himself—"

Heliéna M. Krenn : The narrator speaks of a 'wonderful intuition' with which the Chinese are gifted. Frequently their detachment affects Westerner as being an expression of sadness and consequently 'sad-eyed' is an often-used modifier.
Wang proves his share in the qualities of detachment and ghostlikeness by his ability to 'vanish' and 'materialize' and by his withdrawal into safety when elements enter the scene that present a challenge to action.
The positive presentation of despotism is obvious. Its splendor asserts itself in the 'unlimited confidence' that superiors in Chinese firms demonstrate toward subordinates from the West once they have become convinced of the latter's trustworthiness.

Conrad, Joseph. Notes on life and letters [ID D27533].
Autocracy and war (1905).
This despotism has been utterly un-European. Neither has it been Asiatic in its nature. Oriental despotisms belong to the history of mankind; they have left their trace on our minds and our imagination by their splendour, by their culture, by their art, by the exploits of great conquerors. The record of their rise and decay has an intellectual value; they are in their origins and their course the manifestations of human needs, the instruments of racial temperament, of catastrophic force, of faith and fanaticism.
The censor of plays : an appreciation (1907).
This Chinese monstrosity, disguised in the trousers of the Western Barbarian and provided by the State with the immortal Mr. Stiggins's plug hat and umbrella, is with us.
But then M. Jules Lemaître is a man possessed of wisdom, of great fame, of a fine conscience—not an obscure hollow Chinese monstrosity ornamented with Mr. Stiggins's plug hat and cotton umbrella by its anxious grandmother—the State.
Well done (1918).
Of non-European crews, lascars and Kalashes, I have had very little experience, and that was only in one steamship and for something less than a year. It was on the same occasion that I had my only sight of Chinese firemen. Sight is the exact word. One didn’t speak to them. One saw them going along the decks, to and fro, characteristic figures with rolled-up pigtails, very dirty when coming off duty and very clean-faced when going on duty. They never looked at anybody, and one never had occasion to address them directly. Their appearances in the light of day were very regular, and yet somewhat ghostlike in their detachment and silence.

Song, Yu. Xin jin qu shi de hai yang wen xue jia [ID D27468].
Zum Todestag von Joseph Conrad. Erste chinesische Erwähnung von Conrad.
Gloria Lee : A sketched portrait of the writer appears at the centre of the page. The report includes an account of Conrad's life and a brief introduction to his works. Only three titles were mentioned: Almayer's Folly, his first piece, Some Reminiscences, and The Mirror of the Sea, the last one being a collection of his autobiographical writings.

Fan, Zhongyun. Kanglade ping zhuan [ID D27467].
Er schreibt : "What Conrad tackles is not pieces of evidence, but questions awaiting resolution. He elaborates on them from different perspectives, trying to expose the mystery at the core of the issue. That is what he wants to achieve, but in practice, he is not able to come up with an answer himself. He puts forward only his assumptions and observations. He does not attempt to make any subjective assertions. When addressing an issue, he always adopts a difficult and skeptical attitude as if it could never be resolved. It is for this reason that modern day readers, who are after substance above all else, find his work difficult to understand, and this is why his books are less welcomed than other mediocre novels."

Gloria Lee : Fan Zhongyun explains that Conrad had struggled to escape Russian authoritarian suppression and 'the pain he suffered in reality'. His biographical details are given in full, including the school from which he graduated and the people he met on his voyages, names which later appeared in his work and in the review of his first book in the Spectator. His novels are listed in chronological order from the earliest publication released in 1895 to the last, the Rover, which was printed in 1923. Conrad is compared with writers who were already well-known in China such as Zola and Hardy. References are made to the plots of his stories. Comments on his style are general in nature. The article does not include any major excerpts from his novels for illustration and instead quotes paragraphs and sentences from his works in an effort to explain the author’s views on art and life. Conrad is characterized as a realist and is praised for his powerful narrative style, for his descriptions of emotional and psychological states of mind, and for the environment and atmosphere created by his language. The article refers to Conrad's technique of describing objects from a subjective perspective through a third-person narrator to give the reader a clear picture of events. Fan also tries to explain why Conrad had not become popular. He points out that Conrad's work is filled with skepticism : facts are presented as intangible and the questions he raised are often left unanswered at the end of the story, as in Lord Jim and Victory. This unsettling atmosphere, Fan observes, does not match the current trend whereby hard facts were demanded.

[Conrad, Joseph]. Qing chun. Jia Xuekai yi. (Shanghai : Nan hua tu shu ju, 1929). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. Youth. In : Conrad, Joseph. Youth : a narrative, and two other stories. (Edinburgh : W. Blackwood, 1902). (Library of English literature ; LEL 12841).
青春

[Conrad, Joseph]. Qing chun. Liang Yuchun yi zhu. (Shanghai : Bei xin shu ju, 1931). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. Youth. In : Conrad, Joseph. Youth : a narrative, and two other stories. (Edinburgh : W. Blackwood, 1902).
青春

[Conrad, Joseph]. Jimu ye. Yuan Jiahua, Liang Yuchun yi. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1934). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim : a tale. (Edinburgh : W. Blackwood, 1900). (Blackwoods' colonial library).
吉姆爺

[Conrad, Joseph]. Ming chao. Wu Xianyu yi. In : Shen bao zi you tan ; Nov. 27-Dec. 20 (1934). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. To-morrow. In : Conrad, Joseph. Typhoon and other stories. (London : W. Heinemann, 1903). (Heinemann's colonial library of popular fiction). [Serialized in The Pall Mall Magazine January–March 1902].
明朝

[Conrad, Joseph]. Bu an de gu shi. Guan Qitong yi shu ; Ye Wei jiao zhu. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1936). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. Tales of unrest. (London : T. Fisher Unwin, 1898).
不安的故事

[Conrad, Joseph]. Hei shui shou. Yuan Jiahua yi ; Zhonghua jiao yu wen hua ji jin hui dong shi hui bian yi wei yuan hui bian ji. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1936). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. The nigger of the "Narcissus" = The children of the Sea : a tale of the forecastle. (London : W. Heinemann, 1897). In : The new review ; vol. 17, no 99-103 (Sept.-Dec. 1897).
黑水手

[Conrad, Joseph]. Tai feng ji qi ta. Yuan Jiahua yi. (Shanghai : Shang wu yin shu guan, 1937). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. Typhoon. Illustrated by Maurice Grieffenhagen. (New York, N.Y. ; London : G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1902). [Serialized in Pall Mall Magazine January–March 1902].
颱風及其他

[Conrad, Joseph]. A'ermaiye de yu chun. Kanglade ; Liu Wuji yi. (Chongqing : Gu jin chu ban she, 1943). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. Almayer's folly : a story of an eastern river. (London : T. Fischer Unwin, 1895).
阿尔麦耶的愚蠢

[Conrad, Joseph]. Fuliya. Kanglade zhuan ; Liu Wenzhen yi. (Shanghai : Wen hua gong zuo she, 1951). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. Freya of the seven isles. In : Conrad, Joseph. Twist land and sea : tales : A smile of fortune, The secret sharer, Freya of the seven isles. (London : J.M. Dent, 1912).
芙丽亚

[Conrad, Joseph]. Hei an de xin. Kanglade zhu ; Wang Runhua yi. (Taibei : Zhi wen chu ban she, 1970). (Xin chao wen ku ; 34). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. Heart of darkness. In : Conrad, Joseph. Youth : a narrative, and two other stories. (Edinburgh : W. Blackwood, 1902). (Library of English literature ; LEL 12841).
黑暗的心

[Conrad, Joseph]. Hei an zhi xin. Kanglade zhuan ; Chen Cangduo yi. (Taibei : Xian ren zhan, 1970). (Xian ren zhan wen ku ; 58). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. Heart of darkness. In : Conrad, Joseph. Youth : a narrative, and two other stories. (Edinburgh : W. Blackwood, 1902). (Library of English literature ; LEL 12841).
黑暗之心

[Conrad, Joseph]. Qing chun. Kangdela deng zhu ; Chen Sen yi. (Taibei : Aboluo chu ban she, 1970). (Aboluo wen cong ; 4). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. Youth. In : Conrad, Joseph. Youth : a narrative, and two other stories. (Edinburgh : W. Blackwood, 1902). (Library of English literature ; LEL 12841).
青春

[Conrad, Joseph]. Hei an de xin. Li Peng yi. (Tainan : Wang jia chu ban she, 1972). Übersetzung von Conrad, Joseph. Heart of darkness. In : Conrad, Joseph. Youth : a narrative, and two other stories. (Edinburgh : W. Blackwood, 1902). (Library of English literature ; LEL 12841).
黑暗的心

[Cross, Wilbur L.]. Yingguo dang dai si xiao shuo jia. Li Weinong, Zhang Shaolie, Jiang Shizhou yi. (Shanghai : Guo li bian yi guan chu ban, 1934). Übersetzung von Cross, Wilbur Lucius. Four contemporary novelists : J. Conrad, A. Bennett, J. Galsworthy, H.G. Wells. (New York, N.Y. : Macmillan, 1930).
英國當代四小說家

Yu, Cheuk Keung Peter. A psychoanalytic study of indecision in Lord Jim, Half of man is woman, and The French leutenant's women. (Hong Kong : Chinese University, 1999). Diss. Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999.

[Sherry, Norman]. Kanglade. Nuoman Xieli zhu ; Wang Meichun yi ; Liu Liangya shen ding. (Taibei : Mao tou ying chu ban, 2000). (Zuo jia yu zuo pin ; 10). Übersetzung von Sherry, Norman. Conrad. (New York, N.Y. : Thames and Hudson, 1988).
康拉德

[Stape, J.H.]. Yuesefu Kanglade. (Shanghai : Shanghai wai yu jiao yu chu ban she, 2000). (Jiao qiao wen xue zhi nan). Übersetzung von Stape, J.H. The Cambridge companion to Joseph Conrad. (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1996).
约瑟夫康拉德