現代性及其失落:康拉德作品中的內在/外在流亡 - 政大學術集成

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(1)Modernity and Loss: the Internal/External Exiles in Joseph Conrad’s Works. 治 A Dissertation 政大 Submitted to 學. ‧ 國. 立 Department of English,. National Chengchi University. ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v. In Partial Fulfillment Of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy. By Pei-Wen Clio Kao June 2015.

(2) 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v.

(3) To My Parents. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. iii. i n U. v.

(4) Acknowledgement I would like to give my most sincere thanks to my co-advisors Dr. Duncan McColl Cheseny and Dr. Brian David Phillips. Dr. Cheseny is like a friend and a brother to me, always generous to instruct me along the course of my academic pursuit and patient to give me advice when I am in difficulty.. I owe too much to him. 政治大. and my gratitude goes far beyond words. Dr. Phillips is a humorous mentor, who. 立. gives me moral as well as intellectual supports during the later part of my PhD. ‧ 國. 學. program.. I am a lucky student to have such great instructions and warm concerns. from two beloved professors.. ‧. I have to thank several teachers who guided me. sit. Nat. feedback in reading my dissertation.. y. I also have to thank my committee members for their invaluable comments and. n. al. er. io. at different stages of my literary and personal development: Prof. Jonathan Yeh, Prof.. i n U. v. Tom Sellari, Prof. Eva Yin-I Chen, Prof. Tsui-fen Jiang, Dr. Dira Berman, Prof.. Ch. engchi. Michael Keevak, Prof. Ching-jung Chiu, and late Prof. Huei-keng Chang.. My. friends are also my best supports no matter how far they stay away from me: Angelia Kuo, Maya Wu, Yu-Yun Wang, Lois Lu, Małgorzata Stanek, Ed Chamberlain, Yumiko Iwashimi, Silvana Fernandez, Anna Cheng and Heinrich Wilke. I am especially grateful for the friendship of Dr. Joe Eaton, whose timely and beautiful arrival in my life is a miracle to save me from a period of emotional crisis. Lastly I have to give my best love to my family and my three cats – they are always there for me and tolerate all my faults in my life. iv.

(5) Table of Contents. Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………...iv Chinese Abstract …………………………………………………………………...vii English Abstract ……………………………………………………………………ix Introduction ………………………………………………………………………….1. 政治大 1.1 The Paradox and “Janiformity” of the “Homo Duplex”..………..…27 立. Chapter I. “Homo Duplex” and Conrad’s Relationship to Modernity……………...25. 1.2 The History of European Technology and Modernity……..……….34. ‧ 國. 學. 1.3 Conrad’s Modernist Dissatisfaction……………………………..….45. ‧. Chapter II. Losses and Sufferings in the Modern Administered World………….....57. sit. y. Nat. 2.1 Adorno’s Thesis of the Dialectic of Enlightenment……...……........59. io. er. 2.2 Adorno’s Interrogation of the “Culture Industry”……………..……80 2.3 The Representation of the Disasters of Modernity in Conrad’s. al. n. v i n Ch Works…………………………………………………………….94 engchi U. Chapter III. The Possibility of Redemption amidst the Darkness of Modernity.…135 3.1 Kołakowski’s Theory of the “Myth of Exile”……………….…...136 3.2 Conrad’s Inheritance of Polish Romanticism and Messianism.…151 Chapter IV. The Internal/External Exiles and the Return to the Lost “Home”…...165 4.1 Motifs of Exile and Home-coming: Suffering, Enduring, and Redeeming…………………………………………………….…169 4.2 The Trajectory of the Ethical Visions in Conrad’s Writings……..204 v.

(6) Conclusion:. Conrad. as. a. Multicultural. Writer. Transcending. European. Universalism………………………………………………..……...227 Works Cited……………………………………………………………..…………235 Biographical Sketch………………………………………………………..……...248. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vi. i n U. v.

(7) 國立政治大學英國語文學系博士班博士論文提要論文名稱：現代性及其失落:康拉德作品中的內在/外在流亡共同指導教授：齊東耿先生，羅狼仁先生研究生：高珮文論文摘要內容：. 政治大. 喬瑟夫‧康拉德(Joseph Conrad)自稱為「雙面人」，因為在他的人生及作. 立. 品中處處展現了「無法妥協的對立面」，而且充滿了似是而非的矛盾與隱晦。這. ‧ 國. 學. 位以其作品複雜、雙面著稱的跨世紀作家結合了對立的元素，例如：希望與懷疑，道德觀與憤世嫉俗。基於這樣的特色，我的論文旨在探討康拉德作品中現代性帶. ‧. 來的災難與其後救贖可能性的關聯。一方面，我會聚焦於康拉德如何於作品中呈. y. Nat. sit. 現現代性的負面，尤其是如洪水猛獸般襲來的工業化科技、殖民事業、以及資本. n. al. er. io. 主義式的經濟體系等等，這些現代性的負面性同時催毀了來自歐洲的殖民者與殖. i n U. v. 民地居民的生活。另一方面，我會嘗試發掘康拉德筆下堅忍的角色，如何於現代. Ch. engchi. 性所造成崩壞的人群關係後，所產生的悲觀與失敗的表面之下，仍然懷抱希望與救贖。我的中心論點在於闡釋康拉德小說中的人物在面對現代性的暴力所造成的災難與失落時，如何選擇以外在流亡（離群索居）以及內在流亡（心智孤獨）來救贖原本和諧而受到現代性催毀及剝奪進展的人群關係；這些堅忍的角色最終以英雄式的救贖之姿承受痛苦、歷經告白懺悔、甚至是接受死亡痛楚，以達到最終的救贖理想，並贖回曾喪失的人性尊嚴。我的方法論主要取經於阿多諾(Theodor Adorno)以及可拉考斯基 (Kołakowski)兩位學者的現代性理論。這兩位學者對於現代性所帶來的危機抱持 vii.

(8) 迥異的態度─如此的差異正恰如其份的展現康拉德於作品中處理現代性問題時所抱持的矛盾態度。阿多諾哀悼現代性的啟蒙文化已倒退至充滿迷思的野蠻思維，並且反對經由宗教尋求可能的出路。相對地，可拉考斯基求援於基督教精神，以解救啟蒙文化免於墮落。阿多諾精確地檢視現代啟蒙文化所隱含的極權主義傾向，但卻只於他的論述中模糊指出一個經由否定現狀而實現烏托邦未來的可能性（通常是經由美學的途徑來完成），並未明確指出具體的方法以達到這樣的烏托邦社. 政治大. 會目標。藉由引用兩位學者的方法理論，我的論文將先援引阿多諾的論述以檢視. 立. 康拉德作品中所描述現代性所帶來的種種災難，尤其是經由科技發達、資本主義. ‧ 國. 學. 競爭以及官僚體制帶來的悲劇。其次，我將援引可拉考斯基的「流亡神話」理論以闡釋康拉德作品中所隱含的救贖可能性，以突破現代性所造成的悲慘現代社會. ‧. io. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. 的狀態。. Ch. engchi. viii. i n U. v.

(9) Abstract As a “homo duplex” (the double man), Joseph Conrad in his life and works displayed the “irreconcilable antagonisms” that feature in paradoxes and ambiguities. Drawing on the complexity and janiformity characteristic of the works of this border-crossing writer that combine the contradictory senses of hope and skepticism, of moral vision and cynicism, my dissertation aims to explore the relation of the disasters of. 政治大. modernity and the consequent possibility of redemption in Conrad’s works. On the. 立. one hand, I will focus on Conrad’s representation of the underside of modernity –. ‧ 國. 學. especially its monstrous manifestations in industrial technology, the colonial enterprise and the capitalist economic world system – that destroys the lives of both. ‧. the European whites and the colonial natives in the modern world. On the other. y. Nat. sit. hand, I will attempt to tease out the possibility of hope and redemption demonstrated. n. al. er. io. by Conrad’s stoical and enduring characters beneath the pessimistic surface of defeat. i n U. v. and downfall of all human relationship that modernity entails. My central argument. Ch. engchi. is to demonstrate how, when faced with the disasters and losses brought about by the violence of modernity, Conrad’s characters either choose external exile of physical separation or internal exile of mental solitude to redeem the evils of modernity that disrupt the harmony of human relationship and deprive the rights of living a better life, culminating in the stoical characters’ heroic act of atonement through suffering, confession, or even death to achieve the ideal of redemption and recover the lost sense of human dignity. My theoretical approaches are mainly borrowed from Theodor Adorno’s and Leszek ix.

(10) Kołakowski’s theories of modernity. The two sources are very different in their attitudes toward the crisis of modernity, which in a sense shows the contradiction inherent in Conrad’s treatment of the problems of modern world in his works. Adorno laments the regression of the modern Enlightenment culture toward mythical barbarism and denies a possible solution based on a religious framework; while Kołakowski resorts to the thoughts of Christian religion to rescue the Enlightenment. 政治大. culture from its degradation. Adorno gives trenchant analysis of the totalitarian. 立. tendency inherent in the enlightened modern culture, but only proposes a vague hope. ‧ 國. 學. in the realization of a utopian future as a negating of existing situation, hinted at the aesthetic realm, but without pointing out a concrete way to reach such a goal in. ‧. society.. Accordingly, in my application of the two approaches, I shall first rely on. y. Nat. sit. Adorno’s theory to examine the disastrous consequences of modernity in terms of its. n. al. er. io. technological advances, capitalist competition and bureaucratic regime as represented. i n U. v. in Conrad’s works; then secondly turn to Kołakowski’s theory of the “myth of exile”. Ch. engchi. to expound the possibility of redemption embedded in Conrad’s works as a way out of the miserable condition of modernity.. x.

(11) Kao 1. Prof. Duncan Chesney & Prof. Brian Phillips Pei-Wen Clio Kao 高珮文 Modernity and Loss: the Internal/External Exiles in Joseph Conrad’s Works Introduction As the “homo duplex,1” or the double man, Joseph Conrad in both his life and works displays features of paradox and contradiction – “irreconcilable antagonisms” – that defy any simplistic definition or interpretation. Cedric Watts attempts to capture the “janiformity” of Conrad by describing the man as “moralist and sceptic; traditionalist and modernist; … pessimistic and humane,” endowed with “a. 政治大 moral affirmations and 立 radically sceptical insights” (Joseph Conrad 1).. commitment to solidarity and preoccupation with isolation” as well as “traditional A. ‧ 國. 學. remarkable artistic technique wielded by Conrad in his major phase is “janiformity.” A “Janiform Novel” is set in the image of the two-face Roman god Janus and. ‧. characterized by “paradoxical or self-contradictory” natures (Watts, The Deceptive. sit. y. Nat. Text 13). Watts gives the prime example of “Heart of Darkness” as Conrad’s. n. al. er. io. “Janiform Novel” which has a janiform figure – Mr. Kurtz – at the center of its plot. i n U. v. development. The personality and meaning of Kurtz are torn by the pressure of. Ch. engchi. thematic paradox, so that he can been seen both as “a contemptible hollow man” and “an impressively full man” (13-4). The janiformity of Kurtz’s character lies in the central “moral paradoxicality” of the tale itself (22). Marlow’s interpretation of Kurtz vacillates between a “hollow sham” and a “remarkable man” as the former is torn by the diverse ideologies of “liberal moral values” and more subversive and 1. Conrad in a letter to his Polish friend called himself a “homo duplex,” which becomes a widely used. term to describe Conrad’s works and personality by critics after Cedric Watts’ extensive discussion of it in A Preface to Conrad.. The “homo duplex” is blessed by the Roman god Janus, who looks in the. opposite ways at the same time to capture the paradoxical nature of the world.. Henceforth, Conrad’s. works are featured in the characteristics of paradox, ambiguity, and the irreconcilable conflicts that makes him a janiform writer..

(12) Kao 2. alternative view of morality (22).. Conrad’s duplexity or janiformity serves not only. as contradiction in the formation of the writer, but complementary parts that become a wholeness of his aesthetics. The positive and negative, sceptical and humanist, pessimistic and hopeful – those dialectical parts, or opposite elements, are combined and in necessary struggle to the making of the complicated moral nature and the sophisticated writing of Conrad.. It is this paradoxical sense of humanity and. skepticism in Conrad’s vision and his mixed world-picture of nihilism and hope that form the core of this project’s engagement with Conrad’s complex and ambivalent. 政治大 As a border-crossing writer at the turn of the century, Conrad was situated in a time 立 relationship to modernity, especially its manifestations in science and technology.. characterized by “the burgeoning of European industrial technology” backed up by. ‧ 國. 學. the dominant “capitalist economies” that were transforming the shape of civilization. ‧. and the foundation of human relationships (Watts, A Preface to Conrad 64). Faced. sit. y. Nat. with the atrocities of two world wars – the first one experienced by Conrad himself –. io. er. people came to realize that “advances in science” do not necessarily contribute to “advances in civilization” and that “human kindness” matters more than “scientific. al. n. v i n C hof human life (Watts, qualification” for the betterment A Preface to Conrad 64). engchi U. Concomitant with the burgeoning of modern technology is the prevalence of scientific or pseudo-scientific theories, for example, the post-Darwinian science and Lord Kelvin’s “second law of thermodynamics” (or “law of energy dissipation”) and social Darwinism, which influenced Conrad’s pessimistic sense of a godless universe and skeptical view of human progress, as well as his recognition of “the limitations of scientific methodology when applied to human problems” (Rubery 239, 240). This dissertation aims to dissect Conrad’s works in which disasters are caused by the technology of modernity, and Conrad’s characters, who consequently choose self-exile in isolation and solitude in a complex manner..

(13) Kao 3. The works of Conrad usher in the beginning of “Anglo-American literary modernism” in experimental innovation of narrative techniques as well as thematic concern with “epistemological skepticism” that focuses on the changing relationship between “self and other” in the modern world based on what Andrea White describes as the “insular metropolitan assumptions [that] were being challenged increasingly from within and without” (White 163, 164). Conrad’s “searing skepticism” pioneers the “fragmentation, contingency, and provisionality that [underlie] the main Modernist writings of the 1920s” (Graham 206).. Conrad’s pessimism and. 政治大 that was caused by a sense of crisis permeating turn-of-the-century Western society 立 skepticism can be traced back to the “fin-de-siècle cosmic bleakness” (Davies 149). undergoing dramatic change. This is a rapidly changing society characterized by. ‧ 國. 學. urbanization, industrialization, capitalization, and technological innovation.. In the. ‧. face of the phenomena of modernization grounded on technology and capitalist. sit. y. Nat. economies, the artists as well as intellectuals entertained two opposite sentiments. io. er. toward modernity – one is exemplified by the Futurists led by F. T. Marinetti that embrace the technological progress of industrialism; the other is represented by the. al. n. v i n C hwho reject the impact “Primitivist” artists and writers of modernization and engchi U. technology, and celebrate the “primitive” images of the noble savage in the colonized people or aspire a return to the golden age of the European past (Lewis 11-12). Conrad falls in the group of the “modernist Primitivism,” which turns its back on the modernizing European and American societies, while drawing inspiration from “an encounter with pre-industrial, pagan and non-European peoples” in his overseas exploration in the far-away territories of Southeastern Asia and Africa during his life as a seaman (Levenson 185). Although in reaction to the losses and disasters brought about by modernity Conrad inevitably expresses a deep sense of pessimism and skepticism characteristic of the general intellectual ethos of the fin-de-siècle, his.

(14) Kao 4. visions of modernity are much more complex and contradictory than the generalization of a fin-de-siècle ennui or langor.. Michael Levenson points out the. tensions and contradictions prevalent in Conrad’s works. On the one hand, he registers a skeptical view toward humanity and solidarity originating in his “post-religious, post-metaphysical, post-Darwinian bewilderment” (Levenson 185). On the other hand, he insists on the ethical importance of “certain root values – honour, fidelity, work” that may resist the external world of despair and skepticism (Levenson 185). Conrad’s paradoxical insistence on both individual free will and. 政治大 and ambivalence (Graham 203-6). Bearing in mind Conrad’s paradoxical nature and 立 determinism of fate is his great contribution to the modernist sensibility of ambiguity. the “janiformity” in his engagement with modernity, this dissertation will investigate. ‧ 國. 學. the complex ways of reaction against the technology of modernity displayed by his Inundated by the losses and sufferings brought about by modern science. ‧. characters.. sit. y. Nat. and technology, the heroes and heroines are not defeated by their sense of nihilism. io. er. and skepticism, but undergo torturous and chastising internal and external exiles to confront adversity and to seek redemption. Kenneth Graham indentifies Conrad’s. al. n. v i n C hof the nineteenth-century contradiction in his inheritance “images of heroism and engchi U. meaningful action” and his acceptance of the twentieth-century modernist “distrust of action” (205, 204), which may explain the “irreconcilable antagonisms” at work in his fictions. In his study of the dissatisfaction of European intellectuals with modernization in European society, Robert Pippin intensely examines the dangers of Western Enlightenment culture while severely interrogating and questioning claims of progress based on modern science and technology. Contrary to the perceived progress of Western civilization, Enlightenment culture only produced the experiences of “modernization as a kind of spiritual failure, of modernity as a loss” (Pippin xi)..

(15) Kao 5. Pippin attributes the “problems” of modern society to its total recourse to “rationalization and productive efficiency,” which in turn produced the destructive effects of “anomie, consumerism, alienation, disaffection, … [and] a commercialized culture of kitsch” (Pippin 7).. Confronted with the disasters brought about by. modernity, European high cultures in the name of “aesthetic modernism” voiced their intense dissatisfaction with the “bourgeois form” of social modernization (Pippin 29-38). The “masters of suspicion” served as the vanguard to criticize the undersides of Enlightenment culture, aiming their arrows at its failed attempts to build. 政治大 distinguished dissenting voice, Nietzsche denounced the institutions of modernity as 立 up “social or existential self-direction and autonomy” (Pippin 38). As the. degraded for a kind of “herd society” with “failed independence,” causing a feeling of. ‧ 國. 學. “worthlessness and enervation” that is called “nihilism” (Pippin 39, 83).. In reaction. ‧. against the debasement of Enlightenment culture and the servitude of the masses, the. sit. y. Nat. high priests2 of modernism created “figures of the ever alienated artist” with his. io. er. imaginative independence to combat the evils of modernity, only at the price of “loneliness and isolation” (Pippin 39). Conrad’s lonely figures in practice of internal. al. n. v i n Ctohthis category of theU“alienated artist” in the spiritual and external exile are likened engchi sense in their dissatisfactions with the technological dominance in modernity.. However, Conrad’s characters are not mere “masters of suspicion” imbued with nihilistic worldviews – they are more active and stoical heroes and heroines in the hope of redemption, however futile or illusory, in contrast to the cynical renunciation lamented by Nietzsche. Since the high-water mark of theoretical impact on literary studies in 1980s, 2. Those Modernist high priests include novelists like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf and the poet T. S.. Eliot, whose major works were published around 1920s to 1930s.. This period is also known as “High. Modernism” as distinguished from the continuous tradition of Modernism in the later period..

(16) Kao 6. Conrad criticism has been influenced and enriched by the contemporary theories (Purssell 83). Generally, the field of Conrad studies is split between the text/context divide. On the one hand, critics focus on Conrad’s techniques drawing on the theory of dialogism by Mikhail Bakhtin and the narrative discourse of Gérard Genette, for example, Aaron Fogel’s study of “socio-political elements of language production” in Coercion to Speak: Conrad’s Poetics of Dialogue (1985), and Jakob Lothe’s Conrad’s Narrative Method (1989) which “[situates] Conrad narratologically in his ideological context” (Purssell 85). On the other hand, starting with Fredric Jameson’s. 政治大 Unconscious (1981), much of the critical attention has been paid to the contextual 立. provocative poststructuralist Marxist study of Lord Jim and Nostromo in The Political. dimensions of Conrad’s ideology and politics. Tim Middleton categorizes. ‧ 國. 學. contemporary theoretical analysis of Conrad’s works into four thematic concerns:. ‧. nation and location, colonialism and postcolonialism, politics and revolution, and. sit. y. Nat. gender and sexuality (158-67). “Nation and location” is mostly associated with the. io. er. biography studies of Conrad regarding his Polish heritage and his adopted Englishness. The most established critic in this specific area is the Polish scholar. al. n. v i n C h Polish Background Zdzisław Najder, whose Conrad’s (1964), Conrad Under Familial engchi U Eyes (1983) and Conrad in Perspective (1997) lend trenchant insight into Conrad’s engagement with his Polish inheritance in his work and life. “Colonialism and postcolonialism” has become a heated topic since Chinua Achebe’s controversial essay “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness’” (1977) that calls Conrad a “bloody racist.”. Later critical studies on Conrad’s relation with empire and. colonialism take more diversified stances, some questioning his imperialist ideology (Benita Parry’s Conrad and Imperialism (1983)) while others affirm his attempts to demythologize colonialist discourse (Andrea White’s Joseph Conrad and the Adventure Tradition (1993) and Christopher GoGwilt’s The Invention of the West:.

(17) Kao 7. Joseph Conrad and the Double Mapping of Empire (1995)) as well as his legacy to postcolonial writers (Gail Finchman and Myrtle Hooper’s Under Postcolonial Eyes: Joseph Conrad after Empire (1996)).. “Politics and revolution” is the arena where. Conrad’s political attitude toward anarchy and revolution is intensely interrogated, especially during and after the period of global Cold War, such as Eloise Knapp Hay’s The Political Novels of Joseph Conrad (1963) and Avrom Fleishman’s Conrad’s Politics: Community and Anarchy in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad (1967).. “Gender. and sexuality” draws on gender studies, especially its inflection of queer theory, to. 政治大 which the ground-breaking studies include Susan Jones’s Conrad and Women (1999) 立. address the long-neglected issues of women and homosexuality in Conrad’s works, of. and Andrew Michael Robert’s Conrad and Masculinity (2000).. ‧ 國. 學. Compared to the popularity of contemporary theoretical approaches to Conrad as. ‧. aforementioned, the theoretical area of this dissertation is untapped based on I will at the. sit. y. Nat. Theodore Adorno’s and Leszek Kołakowski’s theories of modernity.. io. er. same time combine the insights from biography studies of Conrad in my interpretive process. This dissertation is aimed to make the most of the contemporary theories to. al. n. v i n Ch address the conflicting and self-contradictory nature of Conrad’s works on the topic of engchi U modernity and technology as well as their potential implication with redemption.. In the critical studies of Conrad’s relationship to modernity and the lonely and isolated figures in his fictional worlds who seek for interpersonal ties and ethical values, a few works are noteworthy and will contribute to the formation of ideas in this dissertation. Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan’s Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper (1991) explores Conrad’s relationship to modernity from the angle of a pre-modernity/modernity dichotomy manifested in Conrad’s works in the form of a Copernican (scientific) worldview in opposition to a Ptolemaic (poetic) one. Erdinast-Vulcan argues that the core of Conrad’s project is to “suspend the.

(18) Kao 8. Copernican and reinstate the Ptolemaic system” – which seems a kind of “Sisyphean task” considering Conrad’s “temperamental skepticism” and the cultural legacy of Nietzsche regarding the crisis of civilization in the nineteenth century (3). Nevertheless, Erdinast-Vulcan also points out the ambiguity of Conrad as a “homo duplex,” a “modernist at war with modernity” (5) who heroically rejects a Nietzschean outlook and pursues instead an ethical awakening.. In Conrad’s revolt. against the modern temper and his determination to reinstate an “integrated and anthropocentric” Ptolemaic universe, he is deeply influenced by his Polish Romantic. 政治大 part of the writer (Erdinast-Vulcan 4, 20). Thus it can be understood why Conrad 立. heritage that treats “writing as an act of redemption” – the moral responsibility on the. chooses to reject modernity and defy Nietzschean nihilism at the same time.. ‧ 國. 學. Erdinast-Vulcan’s emphasis on Conrad’s return to the Ptolemaic system lends support. Her suggestion of the Polish Romantic sensibility in Conrad. sit. y. Nat. problems of modernity.. ‧. to my argument regarding Conrad’s ethical concerns in his confrontation with the. io. perspective of his Polish inheritance.. al. er. also gives inspiration to my study of Conrad’s relationship to modernity from the. n. v i n C h Conrad (2001)Uaims to address Conrad’s works Daniel R. Schwarz’s Rereading engchi. through an approach based on “humanistic cultural criticism” (12). While insistent on the humanistic poetics of studying literature – “literary works are by humans, about humans, and for humans” (7) – Schwarz is attentive to the contemporary theoretical approaches (such as deconstructive reading, feminist reading, and postcolonial reading) that he integrates theoretical ideas in his rereading of Conrad. In this book’s essays on Conrad’s individual works, Schwarz engages on a form of “empathetic” as well as “resistant” reading that not only encompasses multiple cultural assumptions but also challenges the traditional views by authoritarian interpretation through say, feminist, ethnic, and gay perspectives (8). Schwarz also.

(19) Kao 9. pays great attention to the historical background of literary work so that he attempts to contextualize Conrad’s life and works in a historical as well as literary period characterized as modernism. The thrust of this dissertation is greatly inspired by this book’s agenda.. I also read Conrad through the lens of contemporary theoretical. approach aiming to reach a humanistic conclusion of the writer’s life and works. Although traditionally contemporary theory and humanistic approach are in conflict with each other in their methodology and aim of interpretation, in this dissertation I will benefit from this contradiction to highlight the complicated “janiformity” and In doing so, I hope to combine the grandeur of 政治大 Conrad’s ethical and humanistic concern with the critical as well as skeptical sparks 立 “duplexity” of Conrad’s visions.. cherished human values.. 學. ‧ 國. of contemporary theory, culminating in a sophisticated interpretation relevant to our. ‧. Zdzisław Najder’s Conrad in Perspective: Essays on Art and Fidelity (1997) is a. sit. y. Nat. project that attempts to transcend the limitation of biographical study on literary. io. er. works to encompass the breadth and depth of a study of culture. Accordingly, Najder contextualizes both Conrad and his works in the legacy of Polish literature and. al. n. v i n C hfrom both his patriotic culture the writer had inherited parents and his guardian-uncle. engchi U We found the repeated ethical as well as moral themes in Conrad’s novels abound in. Polish literary tradition, including the “motifs of fidelity and solidarity, of obligations, of honor defended or lost, of treason, escape and political double-dealing, of confession, patriotism, sacrifice and exile” (Najder 15). The complicated Polish history of consecutive partition by foreign empires has cultivated a unique Polish mentality among its people – they set in high regards of communal values and national belongings. The exile of Conrad’s parents from Poland ruled by Russian autocracy made the writer distrust of any form of authority and recognize the nobility of sacrifice, which can be detected in the ethical concerns in his works. Najder is.

(20) Kao 10. among the pioneering critics who first points out the importance of Conrad’s Polish background and his Polishness that makes the him an “anachronistic writer” transcending the bounds and limitation of English parochialism or European universalism, as manifested in the writer’s unusual treatment of colonial issues that is ahead of his times (9).. Najder’s essays contribute to my inquiry into Conrad’s. inheritance of Polish Romanticism and Messianism that in turn fosters the writer’s noble sense of suffering, sacrifice and consequent redemption. The central task of this dissertation is to demonstrate how Conrad’s characters,. 政治大 rationality of modernity – in the fields of science and technology, the capitalist 立 after experiencing the losses and disasters brought about by the instrumental. economy, and bureaucratic administration – choose to exercise either internal exile in. ‧ 國. 學. moral solitude and mental isolation, or external exile in separation from homes and. ‧. motherland in quest of the possibility of redemption realized by confession, sacrifice,. sit. y. Nat. atonement, or death. My theoretical framework is mainly borrowed from two. io. er. sources. One is from Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer’s elaboration of the dangers of enlightenment culture in the name of progress and civilization, and its. al. n. v i n C hof the “culture industry” manifestations in the workings from their collaborative engchi U Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944). The other is from Leszek Kołakowski’s. examination of modernity and the crisis of humanism and enlightenment to turn into a condition of “moral nihilism” when severed from religious origins.. In my attempt to. combine these two heterogeneous approaches, it is necessary to clarify their different positions toward the issues of human suffering and the consequent possibility of redemption in the modern world that are central to this dissertation’s argument. From Adorno’s perspective, it is the responsibility of works of art to depict the suffering of the world; but unlike Kołakowski, he rejects any direct solution to the problems through a religious framework. Adorno contends that the aesthetic truth.

(21) Kao 11. lies in the art’s autonomy, which denies “immediate accessibility and popular impact” (Jay 159).. The notions of “radical evil” and “death” exemplified by Auschwitz. impel Adorno to dismiss traditional religion and deem it as a “false attitude” (Hammer 65, 75). Take the concept of “epic death” for example, Adorno does not believe in the Christian justification of a heroic death or stoical suffering, which renders the miserable events of the death camp “sacrilegious” (Hammer 71). Adorno’s stance is totally opposed to Kołakowski’s vision of a Christian redemptive framework that seeks meaning in death and suffering. Nevertheless, this does not mean Adorno Overwhelmed 政治大 by the modern experience of “negativity,” Adorno is attuned to the “metaphysical 立 accepts the dismal status quo and gives up the hope for social change.. need” that envisions the “alterity” or “otherness” which might confront and resist the. ‧ 國. 學. evil situation of an administered and instrumentalized late-capitalist society (Hammer. ‧. 72, 67). This distinguishes Adorno from the postmodernist thinkers, whose. The distinctiveness of Adorno’s. io. er. hope amidst despair and negativity (Hammer 74).. sit. y. Nat. celebration of “meaninglessness” is apart from the former’s call for resistance and. hope for an alternative to modern experience is grounded on the redemptive vision of. al. n. v i n C his quite different from the aesthetical artworks, which Kołakowski’s one based on engchi U Christian religion. Although Adorno is often criticized for his “negative” and. “minimalist” ethics that degrades the possibility of living a good and right life in modern capitalist society, (Freyenhagen 109-11), he is not totally adverse to my project designed to tease out the “redemptive” and sacrificial aspects in Conrad’s works. Notwithstanding Adorno’s apparent objection to a reconciliation brought about by the Christian belief of redemption, he affirms the value of human solidarity generated within the context of “physical suffering” witnessed by fellow human beings (Freyenhagen 108). Adorno anchors his hope on the “identification-based solidarity” to confront the evils of “bourgeois coldness” (Freyenhagen 108), which is.

(22) Kao 12. compatible with Conrad’s ethical vision of human solidarity conveyed in his aesthetical manifesto. Adorno holds in high regard of those works of art that render suffering through a specific kind of aesthetic technique, or form, such as the drama of Beckett or the atonal music of Schoenberg.. By contrast, in his critique, Kołakowski calls. enlightenment culture a “reconsidered Christian heritage,” whose “humanist or reactionary shape” in the form of “Reformation” is reduced to a kind of “non-Christian or anti-Christian” status (“Looking for the Barbarians” 30). The. 政治大 human beings are treated as “instruments to be manipulated” (Kołakowski, “Looking 立 outcome is the “moral nihilism” of the Enlightenment in its last stage, in which. for the Barbarians” 29).. In reaction against the dire condition of modernity and its. ‧ 國. 學. dilemma between “total perfection” (of Enlightenment) and “total despair” (of moral. ‧. nihilism), Kołakowski proposes recourse to the “tradition of Christian teaching” for. sit. y. Nat. human beings to be situated in this world where there are “cares without end, Bearing in mind. io. er. incompleteness without end” (“Looking for the Barbarians” 31).. the contradiction between Adorno’s critical theory and Kołakowski’s philosophy set in. al. n. v i n C h to the contradiction a religious frame, which corresponds in Conrad’s works engchi U. themselves, in this dissertation I shall first apply Adorno and Horkheimer’s critique of enlightenment to my examination of the dangers and threats posed by the technology of modernity in Conrad’s works. Then I shall appropriate Kołakowski’s ideas on the Christian tradition in the modern world to dig out the possibility of redemption embedded in Conrad’s works. My attempted reading of the redemptive meanings in Conrad’s works is also inspired by the biography of Conrad’s assimilation of Polish Romanticism and Catholicism in his life and vision. In the late nineteenth century, the advances in science and technology encouraged the circulation of the belief in the “universe as a vast mechanism” and.

(23) Kao 13. “man himself not as the image of God with an immortal soul but as [a] mechanism endowed with consciousness” (Watts, The Preface to Conrad 49). This widespread belief contributed to the growth of skepticism, and in turn, Conrad’s deep sense of personal pessimism.. Leszek Kołakowski in “Modernity on Endless Trial”. denounces the “destructive effects” of modern science on Western civilization that result in the “progressive evaporation of our religious legacy, and the sad spectacle of a godless world” (7). Kołakowski attributes the survival of totalitarian systems in the twentieth century, in which human beings are reduced to “machinery” and. 政治大 solve the dilemma, Kołakowski proposes the third alternative to either total agreement 立 “instruments,” to the “triumph of rationality” (“Modernity on Endless Trial” 13). To. or total disagreement with modernity by maintaining a critical distance from the. ‧ 國. 學. rampant development of technology in modernity (12). This claimed third way out. ‧. of the predicament of modernity corresponds to Conrad’s mentality as a “homo. sit. y. Nat. duplex” in his complex and ambivalent attitude toward the modern temper.. io. er. Central to Adorno’s system of thought is his negative critique of mass culture, bureaucratic domination and technological, instrumental rationality (Jay 17). The. al. n. v i n Ch main thrust of Dialectic of Enlightenment lies in the critique of instrumental engchi U. rationality embraced by Enlightenment culture which ends in regression and barbarity instead of progress. Adorno in his “Introduction” to the book calls for a self-examination of the Enlightenment, which is aimed to “prepare the way for a positive notion of enlightenment which will release it from entanglement in blind domination” (xvi). The “pernicious effect of rationality” in Enlightenment is caused by the espousal of the “exchange principle” based on calculated interests and instrumental rationality, and by a “domination of nature” that leads to the “domination.

(24) Kao 14. of subjects through reification” (Jay 37, 38).3. Enlightenment’s self-proclaimed. “progress” brings about its opposite of “barbarism” in the society’s blatant use of technological control – “Science, rather than being an unequivocal force for human betterment, proved to contain the seeds of a new form of dehumanization” (Jay 38). In Conrad’s Marlovian tales4, we encounter a series of technological advances that brings about not “progress” but “degeneration” of human nature as well as social reality.. In Lord Jim, the steamship supposed to be the technological invention that. furthers mankind’s outward journey and his conquest of nature only accelerates the. 政治大 In “Heart of Darkness,” the use of modern-day firearms by the European 立. deterioration of the protagonist’s inward journey and a “reification” of his body and soul.. “pilgrims” in Africa brings about not “progress” of the colonized people, as claimed. ‧ 國. 學. by the “civilizing mission” but generates the spiritual “darkness” of the European. ‧. colonizers. The Europeans’ intended domination of the colonial land and control of. sit. y. Nat. its resources by the use of modern technology only exacerbates the European. io. more ivory.. er. colonizers’ “reification” and enslavement by the capitalist endeavors in accumulating In Chance, Mr. de Barrel’s financial speculation and Mrs. Fyne’s. al. n. v i n voracious feminist campaignCboth contribute to theUsufferings of the heroine Flora hengchi rather than her marital happiness.. In the Malay trilogy (Almayer’s Folly, An Outcast. of the Island, and The Rescue), Captain Lingard’s use of technological tools and capitalist calculations to set up his trading post in the Far East does not improve the social conditions of the colonial land through his paternalistic rule, but disintegrates the reciprocal relationship of mutual benefits between the Europeans and the natives. 3. Here “reification” means the objectification of the human consciousness through commodity. fetishism based on exchange-value, so that human labor lost their use-value as a thing-in-itself and has become the commodity to be sold in the marketplace. 4. Here the “Marlovian tales” refer to the novels whose framing narrators are the same Conradian. character Charlie Marlow, serving as a mouthpiece of Conrad the writer..

(25) Kao 15. Adorno’s critique of the “culture industry” is targeted at the dark side of contemporary mass media based on the “calculation of effectiveness” and “the techniques of production and distribution,” whose manipulation and distortion of bourgeois psychology ends in the “idolization of given existence and of the power which controls technology” (xvi). Here I shall appropriate and slightly modify Adorno’s critique of the “culture industry” as “mass deception” in my application of it to Conrad’s works. The criticism takes the example of mass media of the “culture industry” as a springboard to encompass any field of the “administered society”. 政治大 culture, colonial enterprise, and bureaucratic regimes. The technology of the 立. propelled by technological industry and capitalist interests, such as the maritime. “culture industry” is grounded on the “standardization and mass production,. ‧ 國. 學. sacrificing whatever involved a distinction between the logic of work and that of the. ‧. social system” (Adorno 121). The produced effects of “standardization” and. sit. y. Nat. “pseudo-individualization” precipitate the individuals to the state of victimhood in an. io. resistance was virtually eliminated” (Jay 38).. al. er. “administered world” in which “the permeation of ideology had gone so far that all In Conrad’s political novels, the. n. v i n bureaucratic regime, like theC “culture industry,” also h e n g c h i U thrives on the “standardization” and “pseudo-individualism” of the mass consciousness, which in the long run will lead to the horrors of the totalitarian systems.. In Under Western Eyes and The Secret. Agent, the political struggles of the different partisans as well as political entities have reduced the individual lives to standardized mechanical parts in an “administered world.”. In Nostromo, the capitalist competition for the material interests embodied. in the San Tomé silver mine has enslaved everyone involved in the trade so that they lose their individuality and are controlled and “reified” by the materialist regime buttressed by calculations and instrumental rationality. In spite of Adorno’s pessimism in the face of the manipulation of the “culture.

(26) Kao 16. industry” and his doubts of the possibility to challenge “the total reification of consciousness” (Jay 121), in my reading of Conrad’s works the latter’s attitude toward the disastrous domination of science and technology is relatively redemptive and hopeful.. In the face of the losses caused by the technology of modernity, Conrad. chooses to celebrate the golden age5 preserved in the thinking of “anti-rational primitivism” (Watts, A Preface to Conrad 74-9).. In fact, Conrad’s thoughts of. primitivism and anti-rationalism are in conflict with Adorno’s on this issue.. In his. criticism and lamentation of the separation of subject and object in modern world,. 政治大 return on the part of the human subject to the pre-lapsarian oneness with Nature (Jay 立 Adorno neither holds a naïve hope of a reunion of the two concepts, nor envisions a. 63-8). Kołakowski criticizes Adorno’s “negative dialectics” as a kind of theoretical. ‧ 國. 學. “helplessness and despair” that gives an “overpowering impression of sterility” in that. ‧. its claimed “non-reified freedom” neither lies in a former golden age nor looks. sit. y. Nat. forward to a utopian future in human history (Main Currents of Marxism 369, 366).. io. er. However, regarding the dilemma of subject-object separation, Adorno himself proposed a possible “reconciliation” realized in a status of “peace.”. n. al. Ch. n U engchi. iv. Adorno defines. it as “the realization of peace among men as well as between men and their Other. Peace is the state of distinctness without domination, with the distinct participation in each other” (Adorno, “Subject and Object” 500).6. In his elaboration of Adorno’s. idea of “peace,” Jay emphasizes the “restoration of difference and non-identity to their proper place in the non-hierarchical constellation of subjective and objective forces”. 5. The “golden age” refers to the pre-capitalist status of the native society, where social harmony has. not been destroyed by the force of technological advancement and colonial enterprise based on the interest-driven instrumental rationality of capitalist system. 6. Adorno’s phrasing of “participation in each other” means the mutual recognition and identification of. the subject and the object, where their co-existence is realized with their disparate entities maintained and respected..

(27) Kao 17. (68).. In an important way, the consideration of both the concepts and praxes of. “difference” and “non-identity” in a “non-hierarchical” status echoes Conrad’s concern with the intersubjective communion and mutual respect characterizing his later works that will be discussed below.. In such a connection of Adorno’s concept. of “peace” and Conrad’s vision of personal ties, the theoretical conflicts between Adorno’s criticism of the dialectics of enlightenment and Kołakowski’s redemptive framing of modernity may be reconciled at this particular juncture. Both Adorno and Kołakowski object to the totalitarian regime in the making of. 政治大 sameness or uniformity. Adorno’s negative dialectics emphasizes on the concepts of 立 modernity, which turns human beings into instrumental machine based on rules of. non-identity, heterogeneity, and particularity to spell out the importance of individual. ‧ 國. 學. differences.. Likewise, Kołakowski calls for the tolerance and respect of differences. ‧. in terms of culture, race and nation. Both of them resort to the importance of. sit. y. Nat. differences and individuality in the face of modernity grounded on instrumental. io. er. rationality which aims to unify individual consciousness. Another aspect that Adorno and Kołakowski overlap is their philosophy about the intervention or. al. n. v i n C hto propel the moveUof human history and to reach truth. mediatedness of external force engchi For Adorno, he believes in the dialectical movement of thesis and antithesis to reach reconciliation – through the process of negative dialectic to negate the negative present situation, to change the status quo, and to reach the utopian negativity. As for Kołakowski, his religious framing stresses on the intervention of divine force in human history, through Christ the Redeemer to save human beings from their dire situation. Both of them object to the giveness or immediateness of truth, and hold belief in the necessary change to move human history forward. Adorno’s possible answer to Kołakowski’s critique of his “moral nihilism” may start from the belief of utopian negativity, which is not a nihilistic belief in the unchangeable dire situation of.

(28) Kao 18. the status quo. There is always the dialectical force behind human history to negate the negative presence in order to reach a utopian world, although Adorno envisions its happening only in an aesthetical sense. Although I have spent some space to clarify the possible reconciliation of Adorno and Kołakowski, this does not mean their disparate approaches to the problems of modernity need to be absolutely compatible with each other. Their contradiction and divergence may well reflect the self-contradictory nature of Conrad himself, whose “janiformity” explains the inner struggle and conflict of the phenomenon of modernity in the process to find a way out. 政治大 In Adorno’s philosophy of negative dialectics, the final reach of a utopian world 立. of its disasters.. seems to be never fulfilled but only in the realms of aesthetics and literature.. In this. ‧ 國. 學. regard, Adorno’s theory is relatively pessimistic compared to Kołakowski’s theory of. Due to their disparate attitudes toward the possibility of. sit. y. Nat. the universal human fate.. ‧. “myth of exile,” which confirms the final reach of reconciliation and redemption as. io. er. redemption, I have found Kołakowski’s philosophy is more congenial with Conrad’ ethical visions as conveyed along the course of his three phases.. n. al. Ch. n U engchi. iv. Although like. Adorno in his distrust and criticism of the evils of capitalist system based on instrumental rationality, Conrad still believes in the root values of moral commitment and communal love as the hard-won gain through men’s sufferings and consequent sacrificing. Accordingly, in this dissertation I shall resort to Kołakowski’s philosophy to find a solution for the moral dilemmas experienced by Conrad’s characters in their endurance of all the sufferings and tortures under the context of modernization. Cedric Watts states that Conrad holds to a “hard version” of primitivism that identifies the Golden Age in the “location of toil and austerity” (A Preface to Conrad 76). Accordingly, Conrad’s characters are able to entertain a kind of stoical heroism.

(29) Kao 19. in their practice of self-exile to confront losses and adversity. We encounter a series of heroes and heroines in their solitary internal and external exiles, ranging from Jim’s retreat in the out-of-way Patusan to redeem his disgrace; Captain Antony’s recoil from marital consummation to spare his bride’s conflicted feelings; Razumov’s intense confession and moral solitude to repent his past guilt; Nostromo’s suicide to compensate his avarice and his betrayal of his class; to Heyst’s isolation in the deserted island to come to terms with his agonies over existential grimness and quest for a romantic ideal with his beloved. According to Kołakowski, there are two. 政治大 of earthly reality; the other is the Judaeo-Christian version that treats exile as a 立. interpretations of the “myth of exile”: one is the Buddhist resignation in its contempt. prelude to the return to the lost paradise (56-7).. The exiles practiced by Conrad’s. ‧ 國. 學. characters resemble the latter version in that being outsiders or misfits in modern. ‧. society, his characters endure sufferings and losses in this world in quest for. sit. y. Nat. redemptive meaning, however futile or illusory this sense of redemption might be.. io. er. Echoing the theme of the “felix culpa,” Conrad’s characters have to tread the hell of exile to find the way toward redemption. Watts points out the contradictory. al. n. v i n C hon the one hand, heUaccepts the “deterministic paradigms espoused by Conrad: engchi. paradigm” that laments the universe as a soulless machine; on the other hand, he retains the “solipsistic paradigm” that confirms the individual will in its solitary practice of isolation (A Preface to Conrad 79-82).. In fact, exile can be either. “misfortune” or “challenge” – the former being the existentialist gloomy insight of exile as “despondency and sorrow,” the latter being the “painful encouragement” that is similar to Conrad’s inherited sensibility of Polish Romanticism in the individual’s willed, or “solipsistic,” practice of exile. Conrad’s heroes and heroines must endure, must suffer, must conquer; they cannot indulge in cynicism or nihilism to avoid losses and sufferings in their experience of modernity, but have to confront it bravely and.

(30) Kao 20. stoically to seek the possibility of redemption.. In other words, the dark isolation in. Conrad’s works paves the way to solidarity and stability – losses and hopes form the complementary nature of Conrad’s conflicting visions. Throughout the three phases of Conrad’s writing career, we can follow a trajectory of his ethical vision: from the moral nihilism and skepticism in the early period to the commitment to human solidarity in the later period. There are divergent viewpoints among critics regarding the changed subjects and techniques in Conrad’s later fictions (Hampson 140). Among the critical voices, Thomas Moser. 政治大 the “uncongenial subject” of love and romance. On the other hand, an opposite 立. establishes the paradigm that treats Conrad’s later works as his unsuccessful foray into. voice comes from critics like Daniel Schwarz who spells out the “moral affirmation”. ‧ 國. 學. in these later works where “passionate love and deep feeling temporarily rescue life In this dissertation my reading of Conrad’s works is. ‧. from meaninglessness” (xiii).. sit. y. Nat. aimed to trace out the development of Conrad’s ethical vision and identify his In. io. er. formation of the motifs of redemption throughout the three phases of his writings.. the early phase, the first two of his Malay trilogy – Almayer’s Folly and An Outcast of. al. n. v i n Islands – are permeated withCa gloomy sense of moral h e n g c h i U despair and existential solitude. The external exiles of Almayer and Willems in the out-of-the-way colonial outposts fail to alleviate their agonies over lives damaged by capitalist enterprise and materialist competition. Even familial warmth and interpersonal affection cannot save them but only accelerate their mental as well as physical downfall in the end. The fictional world of the early period is a universe of existential darkness and insecurity where no light of redemption or hope is glimpsed. In Conrad’s middle phase in which his “major” works are written, we can sense the writer’s struggle to test his characters’ wills and consciences amid the turmoil of an “administered world.”. We encounter a series of heroes and heroines who take.

(31) Kao 21. pains to demonstrate their dignity and rectitude through losses and sufferings. Jim’s sacrifice of his life and his loss of political status in Patusan bring back the organic harmony of the native society and the mutual recognition among people. Nostromo’s refusal to be cured and his acceptance of death serve as the compensation for the disasters brought on by his avarice and corruption. His sacrifice is a victory of human dignity reinstated after the intrusion of modernity. Razumov’s confession to both Natalie and the revolutionary community redeems his past guilt as a double-dealing agent. Although his atonement brought about his separation from his. 政治大 identity as he lives as a recluse in the Russian countryside. 立. beloved Natalie and a broken physique, it endows him with a final sense of peace and Even in the seemingly. most grim and doomed Marlovian tale “Heart of Darkness,” we can glimpse a. ‧ 國. 學. glimmer of redemption in Marlow’s assumed responsibility for his fellow human. ‧. beings in the guise of a “Buddha preaching in European clothes.”. Thus we find his. sit. y. Nat. attempt to save Kurtz’s soul from degradation, his chivalric protection of the Intended,. io. er. and his ethical imperative to tell the story of his initiation into knowledge and wisdom, which are all the signs of redemption of his internal as well as external exile into the. n. al. darkness of human nature.. v i n CTheh one exception in U the middle phase is The Secret engchi. Agent, which ends with the disintegration of the family unit and the total despair of Winnie, the victim of the self-interested political struggle, who chooses to take her own life after taking revenge for her beloved brother. Conrad’s late phase is characterized by his employment of the subject matter of love and romance and by the influences of “novels of manners,” in which the emphasis on “personal ties” takes the lead (Schwarz xiii-xiv).. In works like Chance. and Victory the struggles of loss and the pains of suffering in the “administered world” prefigure the hope of redemption realized by interpersonal bonds and mutual understanding based on love and tolerance. Heyst’s mistrust of the modern world.

(32) Kao 22. and his distaste of its evil forces embodied in Mr. Jones and Ricardo are wiped out by Lena’s love in her sacrifice for the sake of her beloved’s well-being. Heyst’s sense of Nietzschean existential despair is defeated by this woman’s love and sacrifice. Flora first emerges as the helpless victim of the financial speculation and capitalist competition of the modern world, but later transforms into a heroine in her endurance of the difficulties and her insistence on marital love. The love between her and Captain Anthony saves both characters from degradation in a soulless “administered world” and boosts their spirit to undergo life’s pains and sufferings. When viewed in. 政治大 modern world from helpless surrender to persevering struggle, and finally to a 立. a big picture, Conrad’s works display the thematic evolution of man’s situation in the. hard-won status of solidarity and stability after losses and sufferings.. ‧ 國. 學. I have borrowed the materials of the biographical study of Conrad’s cultural. ‧. inheritance of Polish Romanticism to strengthen this dissertation’s argument, and I. io. y. sit. reading of his works.. I am trying to apply the Polish national characteristics to her. er. Nat. shall spare room to explore the relation between Conrad’s Polish background and my. people, in which case the national identity played an important part in the formation. al. n. v i n of its people’s mentality andC political visions. It U h e n g c h i is because Poland’s history of. partition and annexation by foreign powers that makes the oppressed people identify with the religion and culture of their lost nation, which is non-existent in a political sense.. In Conrad’s case the identification with Polish Romanticism and Messianism. enables him to combine the multicultural traditions of native country and adopted country to transcend the limited vision of European universalism. This is another example of the display of “janiformity” and “duplexity” in Conrad the man and the writer.. Zdzisław Najder calls Conrad an “anachronistic writer” who was ahead of. his time – being “steeped in tradition, he was not bound by fashions and conventions of his time” (9). Being an “émigré-writer,” Conrad was able to “bring to bear on the.

(33) Kao 23. culture a range of experience … which went beyond its parochial limits, and with which England could be fruitfully compared” (Eagleton 14). Thus in his works Conrad could transcend the worldviews of British imperialism and commercialism and European universalism, and examine the underside of Western civilization from the vantage point of an “émigré-writer.” The legacy of Polish Romanticism is characterized by the messianic vision of “Poland as the Christ of nations, as a country which by her martyrdom has opened the road to salvation” (Najder 20), which endowed Conrad’s works with a redemptive vision. Conrad’s father Apollo. 政治大 the “antithesis of [a] political Darwinist,” embraced the political ideals of “liberty, 立. Korzeniowski, a patriotic poet and political dissident against Russian authority, and. vision based on “ethical principles” (Najder 16).. 學. ‧ 國. human dignity, tolerance and piety,” which also greatly influenced Conrad’s political Conrad’s Polishness has become an. ‧. important factor in fashioning the “janiformity” and paradox of his life and writings. sit. y. Nat. that are able to examine the dark side of modern European civilization by. io. er. transcending the limitations of a British nationality, and also able to go beyond the prevalent Nietzschean skepticism of European high culture to deal with the losses and. n. al. Ch. sufferings in a tolerant and humane tone.. engchi. i n U. v. Chapter One, “‘Homo Duplex’ and Conrad’s Relationship to Modernity,” traces the biographical as well as historical backgrounds of Conrad’s paradoxical relationship to modernity that encompasses both dark sides and bright sides, which is different from the totally nihilistic outlook of the existentialist philosophers such as Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Sartre of his times. Chapter Two, “Losses and Sufferings in the Modern Administered World,” examines the representation of the disastrous world of modernity in Conrad’s works, based on Adorno and Horkheimer’s concept of the “dialectic of Enlightenment” and their criticism of the “culture industry” produced by the capitalist market system. Chapter Three, “the Possibility.

(34) Kao 24. of Redemption amidst the Darkness of Modernity,” combines Kołakowski’s theory of the “myth of exile” with Conrad’s inheritance of Polish Romanticism to explore the potential of redemption and reconciliation in Conrad’s works. Chapter Four, “the Internal/External Exiles and the Return to the Lost ‘Home’,” deals with the motifs of redemption in Conrad’s works through the lens of the Christian myth of exile and return, and identifies the development of Conrad’s ethical visions as represented in the three phases of his works.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i n U. v.

(35) Kao 25. Chapter One: “Homo Duplex” and Conrad’s Relationship to Modernity In Joseph Conrad’s novels, we can discern his sense of skepticism toward technological progress and his distaste of technological dominance over human life. The most striking example could be the depiction of the explosion scene of the Greenwich Observatory in The Secret Agent – where the symbol of the “nation’s time” and its “transport, trade and industry across the world” is implicated with the manipulating force of the political intrigues that bring about the disruption of the. 政治大 in his colonial novels – where the “technological superiority in terms of weaponry and 立 family unit and personal ties (Rubery 237). Another example is the conquest scenes. transport” has destroyed the organic harmony of the native societies (Rubery 243).. ‧ 國. 學. An added example is the Kodak camera represented in The Inheritor that suggests the. ‧. author’s perception of artistic superiority over “mechanical reproduction” in capturing. sit. y. Nat. the “interior world” of human psyche (Rubery 238). Conrad’s pessimistic attitude. io. er. toward modern science and technology is worsened even more by the prevalence of the scientific theories such as Darwinism and the second law of thermodynamics as. al. n. v i n C hideas that proclaimUthe contingencies of human fate well as other pseudo-scientific engchi against the background of an indifferent and mechanic universe.. All these scientific. thoughts together with the historical disasters caused by the First World War contributed to Conrad’s pessimistic outlook of the modern world concerning its technological advances and scientific burgeoning. In fact, Conrad’s life and work doesn’t present a black and white world-picture that could be simplistically categorized as either skeptical or traditionalist. Conrad’s complexity lies in his position as a border-crossing figure that spans the periods of nineteenth-century Victorianism to turn-of-the-century fin-de-siècle and early twentieth-century Modernism. We can identify two forces in a tug of war.

(36) Kao 26. manifested in his works: on the one hand, there is a sense of “impersonal destiny and doom” characteristic of late nineteenth-century pessimism; on the other hand, a confidence in personal free will and “personal responsibility” inherited from nineteenth-century liberal tradition (Graham 205).. The contradictory combination of. an “insistence on the individual’s responsibility” and an acceptance of the “blanketing determinism” specifies Conrad’s “paradoxical contributions to Modernism” (Graham 206). When it comes to Conrad’s reaction to the technological progress and scientific advances of his day, his attitude exemplifies the “Conradian contradiction”. 政治大 “primary chaos that negates all order, duty, and solidarity” (Graham 215). 立. in his simultaneous “belief in order, duty, solidarity” and his perception of the Conrad. does not easily give up his faith in individual responsibility and human solidarity. ‧ 國. 學. when threatened by the dangers of modernity. Nevertheless, modern readers seem to. ‧. be more familiar with the other side of Conrad – his skepticism and pessimism over. sit. y. Nat. the modern crisis that represent the hallmark of Modernism continuing from. io. er. Schopenhauer and Nietzsche to later Modernist writers (Graham 206). As a writer who launched his literary career in the Nineties, Conrad inevitably assimilated the. al. n. v i n fin-de-siècle pathos and the C “narrative of degeneration” h e n g c h i U that “deplored the vulgarity and venality of contemporary life” (Davies 148).. The “world-weariness and sense of. decline and degeneration” of the fin-de-siècle sentiment is the factor that destabilizes the “Victorian belief in progress” and stimulates the growth of skepticism in early Modernism (White 164). To rectify the stereotyped impression of Conrad’s inveterate skepticism, Laurence Davies argues that Conrad’s work is neither an affirmation of the aesthetic banners of the Nineties nor a negation of its “motifs and cultural obsessions” (150).. In other words, he is neither a self-confident. “counter-decadent” nor a self-indulgent “aesthete,” but represents an amalgam of “indirection and unknowing” (Davies 153)..

(37) Kao 27. This chapter first introduces the contemporary intellectual background of Conrad’s times that has a great impact on the “janiformity” and paradox of the life and work of this “homo duplex.” Next is a review of the history of the development of technology in Conrad’s times in connection with men’s doomed fate in their confrontation with modernity as represented in his novels.. Lastly, I will present an. in-depth comparison of the prevalent Nietzschean thoughts on nihilism influenced by Schopenhauer’s philosophy and Conrad’s ambiguous outlook regarding the issues of the loss and sufferings of modernity.. 政治大 I. The Paradox and “Janiformity” of the “Homo Duplex” 立. The “epistemological ambiguity” of Modernism (Graham 213)7 defines. ‧ 國. 學. Conrad’s complex relation to modernity and the loss it brought on human life. When. ‧. faced with the undersides of the modern world that boasts of its progress and. Instead, he chooses to stand with the. io. er. “counter-decadent position” (Davies 150).. sit. y. Nat. civilization, Conrad eschews both the extreme poles of “aesthetic position” and the. “disregarded multitude of the bewildered, the simple, and the voiceless” with an. al. n. v i n C h … that binds together “invincible conviction of solidarity all humanity” (“Preface to engchi U The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’” 146).. In a time of modernity’s crisis, Conrad neither. smugly celebrates the progress of modern technology, nor nihilistically escapes from the disastrous scene of civilization’s ruin. Conrad’s faith in human solidarity and his respect for human dignity eventually lead him to go beyond skepticism and seek the possibility of redemption in his work, which makes him stand out as a complex writer 7. The term “epistemological ambiguity” refers to the philosophical relativism of worldview widely. spread during the Victorian Age due to the scientific inquiry and the loss of belief in a divinely controlled world. The philosophy of that time held that there is no possibility to reach objective and absolute truth; everything is relative and contingent, as determined and perceived by the different perspectives of different consciousness..

(38) Kao 28. of paradox and contradiction. The complicated reactions of Conrad’s characters in their response to the disastrous consequences brought about by the influences and progress of modern science and technology form the core my thesis argument. This can be explained by the author’s complexity as a “homo duplex” and the “janiformity” of his works combining the opposite qualities of “skepticism” and a “sense of humanity and beauty” that remove him from the “facile endorsement of absurdity and nihilism” as some critics contend (Watts, Joseph Conrad 1). As a “janiform writer,” Conrad in. 政治大 affirmation” that makes him seem “radically paradoxical or self-contradictory” (Watts, 立 his life and works displays pessimism, or even “pyrrhonism,” tempered with “moral. A Preface to Conrad 42). Terry Eagleton defines Conrad’s complexity as an. ‧ 國. 學. exhibition of “disjunction between fact and value, ideal and reality, matter and spirit,. ‧. Nature and consciousness” (qtd. in Watts, A Preface to Conrad 42). Cedric Watts. sit. y. Nat. suggests that Conrad’s “janiformity” – his ambiguity and paradox – cannot be. io. er. attributed to the author’s “uncertainty” or “ideological fence-sitting,” but can shed light on “an uncompromising commitment to the actual complexities of human. al. n. v i n C h 55). When challenged experience” (A Preface to Conrad by the losses in modernity, engchi U this hallmark of “janiformity” as well as “homo duplexity” spells out Conrad’s complicated attitude that transcends simplistic pessimism or nihilism. In the late nineteenth century, the prevalence of scientific ideas and empirical observation contributed to a sense of determinism.. Conrad’s pessimism is part of the. late Victorian and post-Darwinian worldview that laments the stark contrast between the lonely individual and an indifferent universe (Watts, A Preface to Conrad 44-7). Watts identifies the sources of Conrad’s pessimism in the “powerful sense of the universe as a soulless mechanism determining human lives” (A Preface to Conrad 65). In a much quoted letter to his socialist friend R. B. Cunninghame Graham, Conrad.