Joseph Conrad a polska cisza romantyczna. Próba zbliżenia

Abstract

The article attempts to extend the existing Polish-language research on the semantics of silence in Joseph Conrad’s works, and to interpret this semantics, in the view of the Polish literary tradition, to which Conrad indicated his debt subtly but quite unambiguously (e.g. in an interview with Marian Dąbrowski from 1914). The author highlights the perspective of the so-called Ukrainian school in the Polish Romantic Literature, suggesting that it was from this imagination (more than from Mickiewicz’s) that the author of Almayer’s Folly could adopt specific figures: “the cosmic night” and “the ontological silence”. It is visible both in the construction of events (Nostromo, Almayer’s Folly, The Shadow-Line) and in the narrative strategies (Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Chance).