"Joseph Conrad. Twixt land and sea" is an exhibition arranged by The Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw to commemorate the 150th anniversary of birth of Konrad Korzeniowski (Joseph Conrad), Polish noble and English writer and sailor.
TWIXT LAND AND SEA. JOSEPH CONRAD 1857-1924
To follow the dream, and again to follow the dream
- and - so always - usque ad finem..."
("Lord Jim")
The title of the exhibition, derived from a collection of Conrad's short stories Twixt land and sea (1912), is meant to serve as a metaphor. However, it does not intend to refer only to life choices of the writer and places where his characters function. The title opens the space between the land and the wide sea for dreams, feelings, moral choices, remembrances and - above all - the art. Conrad will guide you through this realm with fragments of his works and letters.
Room I. Cracow 1914
On July 30th, 1914 Joseph Conrad visited Cracow with his wife Jessie and sons Boris and John. He left that city forty years before, in 1847, "bound away for the sea". Later, he wrote in "Poland revisited": "My eyes were turned to the past, not to the future; the past that one cannot suspect and mistrust, the shadowy and unquestionable moral possession the darkest struggles of which wear a halo of glory and peace."
Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, 1863 | Joseph Conrad, 1923 |
In the first room, visitors get acquainted with Teodor Jozef Konrad Korzeniowski, born on December 3rd, 1857 in a small town of Berdichev (now Ukraine). Korzeniowski recollects dramatic events of his childhood and early youth occurring in the oppressive shade of the great Russian empire.J.T.K. Korzeniowski, 1874
Later, Joseph Conrad became a keen interpreter of the society, world of politics and economic interests of his times. The exhibition presents his three political novels Nostromo, The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes. Economic imperialism, capitalist social "order" which lures with the illusion of revolutionary "justice," terrorism and tragic condition of Russia caught between despotic czarism and destructive activities of anarchists are themes which still appeal to vast numbers of Conrad's readers worldwide; it seems that issues emphasised by the writer hardly lost their urgency nowadays.
Room II. "The Spirit of Liberty Flies over the Waters"
A map of Conrad's sea voyages, an authentic piece of sheathing from the "Otago" at which Conrad was the captain, photographs and quotations recount twenty years of Conrad's life on the sea (1874-1894).
"Otago" | Marseille. Port, approx. 1874 | "Roi des Belges" |
Room III. Captain Marlow's Stories
Joseph Conrad created a brilliant character of Captain Marlow, the teller of various appealing stories. This presentation focuses on two novels narrated by Marlow: Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness, in an attempt to create a visual interpretation of Conrad's literary world.
Instead of offering any ready to use solutions, however, it refers to notions of faithfulness, duty, discrepancy between dream and its fulfilment in human world, the arrogance of the white Übermensch with his "civilised progress" imposed over colonised countries which is in fact nothing else but brutal exploitation and, finally, the theme of the defeat of white man faced by strange culture. The exhibition serves as a memento that each of us, sooner or later, faces life choices and that no decisions that we make are free of ramifications.
Room IV. "The Hospitable Shores of Britain"
Family photographs, fragments of letters by Conrad, photographs of houses in which he lived and worked are combined there to tell a story of life of the writer from the moment in which he left the sea in 1894 until his death on August 3rd, 1924.
Conrad's house in Oswalds | John Alexander and Borys Alfred Conrad | Joseph Conrad, Karola Zagorska |
His friend Bertrand Russell emphasised how lonely was Conrad at that time - as a man, emigrant and artist:
"The two things that seem most occupy Conrad's imagination are loneliness and fear of what is strange. 'An outcast of the Islands' like 'The Heart of Darkness' is concerned with fear of what is strange. Both come together in the extraordinarily moving story called 'Amy Foster'. In this story a South-Slav peasant, on his way to America, is the sole survivor of the wreck of his ship, and is cast away in a Kentish village. All the village fears and ill-treats him, except Amy Foster, a dull, plain girl who brings him bread when he is starving and finally marries him. But she, too, when, in fever, he reverts to his native language, is seized with a fear of his strangeness, snatches up their child and abandons him. He dies alone and hopeless. I have wondered at times how much of this man's loneliness Conrad had felt among the English and had suppressed by a stern effort of will."
Room V. "Author-Compatriot"
Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski was frequently evaluated and interpreted, as a personality and a writer. The exhibition presents selected opinions which are often quite partial, starting from outraged Polish writer Eliza Orzeszkowa, including the first Polish interview with Conrad, made by Marian Dabrowski and ending with a discussion on Conrad's concept of faithfulness which was the core of Polish debate over Conrad conducted in the years 1945-1949.
Lord Jim [Warszawa 1904] | Nostromo [London and N.Y. 1904] | 'Twixt land and Sea. Tales [London 1912] |
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The Arrow of Gold [London 1919] | Youth. A Narrative... [London and Toronto 1922] | Wykolejeniec ("An Outcast of the Islands") [Warszawa 1936] |
Photographs and other items on display from the collection of: Archiwum Dokumentacji Mechanicznej / The Archive of Audio-Visual Records in Warsaw, Beinecke Library (Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library) - Yale University (New Haven, Connecticut, USA), Biblioteka Narodowa / National Library in Warsaw, Biblioteka Jagiellonska / Jagiellonian Library in Krakow, Biblioteka Polskiej Akademii Nauk / Polish Academy of Science Library in Krakow, Centralne Muzeum Morskie / Central Maritime Museum in Gdansk, National Maritime Museum in London, Panstwowe Muzeum Etnograficzne / National Ethnographical Museum in Warsaw, Muzeum Literatury im. Adama Mickiewicza / The Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature in Warsaw, Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego / The Warsaw Rising Museum, Muzeum Rzezby Alfonsa Karnego / The Alfons Karny Museum of Sculpture in Bialystok and Zdzislaw Najder's archive.
Exhibition concept: Elzbieta Szymanska
Academic consultant: prof. Zdzislaw Najder
Curator: Katarzyna Jakimiak, Elzbieta Szymanska
Visual design: Adam Orlewicz
Exhibition assistant: Ewa Wygnanska
Exhibition opening: 28 February 2007, at noon.
Information provided by The Adam Mickiewicz Museum of Literature | |