Book Review: The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, by Maya Jasanoff (2017)

The paperback cover of The Dawn Watch, by Maya Jasanoff. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Maya Jasanoff’s 2017 book The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, is a fascinating examination of Conrad’s major writings. Focusing on Heart of Darkness, Nostromo, Lord Jim, and The Secret Agent, Jasanoff makes the argument that Conrad’s writings contain themes that speak deeply to our own era, as well as Conrad’s.  

Joseph Conrad had a fascinating life: born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski to Polish parents in Berdychiv, in what was then the Russian Empire, and is now part of Ukraine. His parents were staunch Polish nationalists and were sent into exile by the Russian government. Jozef was 7 when his mother died, and just 11 when his father died. Sent to live with his uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski, Jozef dreamed of becoming a sailor, and he joined the French merchant marine at age 16.  

Korzeniowski eventually moved to England and joined the British merchant marine, becoming a British citizen and passing the master mariner examination—the highest examination level—in 1886. It would be nine more years before he published his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, written in English, his third language. It was not much of a change to go from Jozef Konrad to the Anglicized pen name Joseph Conrad.  

Conrad had a unique viewpoint through which to view the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His career in the merchant marine had taken him to Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Congo, to name just a few of his journeys. Conrad was better traveled than perhaps any other writer of his era, and his novels were set throughout the world.  

During his lifetime, Conrad’s world was becoming more interconnected. One of the major concerns of his fiction is what happens when different societies and cultures comes into contact with each other. You could argue that Conrad was not sufficiently attuned to indigenous peoples, but it’s clear that he was critical of European imperialism and colonialism.  

The Dawn Watch is a good book, but it’s a little odd. It’s part biography, part literary examination, but it might not be enough of either part to satisfy readers. You’d better make sure you’ve read all four of the major works that Jasanoff discusses, as she will take you through painstakingly detailed plot summaries. Jasanoff spends too much time detailing the plot points, and not enough time analyzing what makes Conrad’s writing great. I suppose that I am the target audience for The Dawn Watch: I’ve read the four books by Conrad, but I haven’t read any biographies of him.  

The narrative is not chronological, which fits with Conrad’s own writings, as they often jump forwards and backwards in time, but in a biography, the non-linear approach is tricky. For example, The Secret Agent is discussed first in the book, when it actually comes last in the chronology of the four major works that Jasanoff discusses.  

Conrad did not write much about his own childhood, which makes sense, given how painful the losses of his parents must have been. While I was reading The Dawn Watch, I happened to page through a novel by Dick Francis, the British mystery writer. Francis wrote in the foreword to the novel that people often speculated about his relationship with his parents, because so often his characters had difficult family lives. Francis wrote that he had a good relationship with his parents and enjoyed a good relationship with his two sons. He wrote, and I’m paraphrasing here, that because he had such good family relationships, he was able to write about dysfunctional families in his fiction. If he would have had bad family relationships, it would have been too painful to write about. That made me think of Conrad: he probably didn’t write about his parents because it would have been difficult.  

Conrad’s sailing career bridged the time between sail and steam, and he clearly preferred the former, which was quickly becoming a relic of the past. Conrad lived his life in a middle zone: the Polish side of him pined for a country that did not exist, and the English part of him perhaps sensed that he would never be “truly” English. Perhaps it was this push and pull that made Conrad such a great writer—he understood the displacement that all of his characters in Nostromo felt, for example.  

Conrad’s trip as a captain up the Congo River in 1890 was awful, and it provided much of the inspiration for Heart of Darkness. After his return to England, Conrad was still plagued by nightmares and poor health. He wrote in a letter: “I am still plunged in densest night and my dreams are only nightmares.” (p.215)  

Jasanoff pinpoints Conrad’s clear vision about the horrors of colonialism and imperialism in this passage: “What made the difference between savagery and civilization, Conrad was saying, transcended skin color; it even transcended place. The issue for Conrad wasn’t that ‘savages’ were inhuman. It was that any human could be a savage.” (p.224-5) This is exactly the point of Heart of Darkness: that Kurtz has been corrupted, not by the Africans, but by power, by the whole corrupt system of colonialism and imperialism.   

The Dawn Watch is a fascinating glimpse into the life and times of Joseph Conrad. After I finished reading The Dawn Watch, I pulled out my old Encyclopedia Britannica to read the entry on Conrad. The end of the first paragraph struck me as a wonderful summation of his talents: “A writer of complex skill and striking insight, but above all of an intensely personal vision, he has been increasingly regarded as one of the greatest English novelists.”  

Book Review: Heart of Darkness (1899) and The Secret Sharer (1910) by Joseph Conrad

Paperback cover of the Signet Classics edition of Heart of Darkness and The Secret Sharer, by Joseph Conrad.

Author Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924. English was his third language.

While reading King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild, which I reviewed here, I decided that I needed to finally read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Hochschild devotes a fair number of pages in King Leopold’s Ghost to examining Conrad’s 1890 trip to the Congo Free State. Conrad was a sea captain then, and not yet a novelist. This 1890 journey up the Congo River would inspire one of Conrad’s most famous works, the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness. Hochschild does an excellent job detailing Conrad’s experiences in the Congo Free State, and he profiles several colonial officials who may have been the models for Kurtz in Heart of Darkness. 

Joseph Conrad had a very interesting backstory. He was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski to Polish parents in Berdychiv, in what is now the Ukraine. English was his third language, after Polish and French, and he didn’t start to learn English until he was in his twenties. Pretty impressive, as he is now considered one of the greatest novelists of the English language. After a career at sea, Conrad published his first novel Almayer’s Folly: A Story of an Eastern River in 1895, when he was thirty-seven years old. Conrad devoted himself to writing for the rest of his life, and he produced a substantial body of work. 

The Signet Classic edition that I read pairs Heart of Darkness with the short story The Secret Sharer. The Secret Sharer was first published in 1910. It’s the tale of a young man who is making his first voyage as a captain. He is insecure as he takes command, as he thinks: “I wondered how far I should turn out faithful of that ideal conception of one’s own personality every man sets up for himself secretly.” (p.5) He has the opportunity to face a moral test right away, as while he is on watch, he finds a young man clinging to the ship’s ladder. The young man’s name is Leggatt, and he has escaped from his ship after killing a fellow crew member. The captain makes the dangerous decision to shield Leggatt from danger. 

The captain and Leggatt resemble each other physically, and this is remarked on many times during the story. It may be the reason why the captain decided to hide Leggatt in the first place. It seemed to me that there was a fair amount of sexual tension between the captain and Leggatt. I have no idea if that was intentional on Conrad’s part, of it that’s simply me reading too much into it. However, the captain and Leggatt are always in close quarters, as Leggatt must be hidden at all times in the captain’s cabin. Just after he has discovered Leggatt, the captain narrates, “I was extremely tired, in a peculiarly intimate way, by the strain of stealthiness, by the effort of whispering and the general secrecy of this excitement.” (p.21) There are other times when the two men are very close together: “…we took up our position side by side, leaning over my bed place.” (p.32) “I conveyed that sincere assurance into his ear.” (p.33) “At night I would smuggle him into my bed place, and we would whisper together, with the regular footfalls of the officer of the watch passing and repassing over our heads. It was an infinitely miserable time.” (p.35) Infinitely miserable? The captain doth protest too much, methinks.

One of my favorite quotes from The Secret Sharer is from the beginning of the story, as the captain is conversing with Leggatt for the first time. After hearing Leggatt say that he had two choices: keep swimming until he drowned, or come on board the ship, the captain narrates, “I should have gathered from this that he was young; indeed, it is only the young who are ever confronted by such clear issues.” (p.10) So very true. 

Heart of Darkness isn’t very long, just about 100 pages in the Signet Classics edition, but it’s a dense book that packs a powerful punch. It’s a strong indictment of imperialism and colonialism, specifically as practiced in the Congo Free State. (Although the colony Marlow travels to is never identified by name in the text, it’s obviously meant to be the Congo Free State.)

Marlow has a brilliant quote at the beginning of the story: “The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.” (p.58) Marlow then relates what he has seen.

Heart of Darkness is a very impressionistic piece of writing. We don’t learn specifics, like other character’s names. All we get is Marlow’s vision as we listen to him tell his story. The only other name in the text that matters is Kurtz. Kurtz is in charge of one of trading stations in the colony. He is mentioned many times by many different characters, and he becomes a figure of mythic importance. Fortunately, I knew from watching Apocalypse Now that Kurtz’s appearance in the narrative would inevitably be anticlimactic. Thanks, late-period Marlon Brando. 

I wonder if Samuel Beckett was influenced by Joseph Conrad? There were definitely characters in Heart of Darkness, like the brick-maker and the Russian disciple of Kurtz, who could easily crop up in Beckett’s barren landscapes, waiting for a Godot who will never come, occupied by nonsensical rituals that hold meaning only for them.

Heart of Darkness is full of Conrad’s beautiful prose. One of the sentences that stood out to me was Marlow’s description of one of the trading stations: “And outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck on the earth struck me as something great and invincible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion.” (p.80) 

Marlow’s view of life is beautifully, if harshly, summarized: “Droll thing life is-that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself-that comes too late-a crop of unextinguishable regrets.” (p.144-5) 

Heart of Darkness has become one of Joseph Conrad’s most famous works, and I found that it lived up to its reputation as a brilliant and important book.

Book Review: King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, by Adam Hochschild (1998)

Paperback cover of King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, by Adam Hochschild, 1998.

Author and historian Adam Hochschild.

Belgium! Just the name conjures up so many vivid images! Chocolate! Waffles! Beer! Wooden shoes! Wait, that last one is the Netherlands…cuckoo clocks? No, that’s definitely Switzerland…um, you know, all those other famous Belgian things…okay, so maybe Belgium is a bit of a blank spot on your mental map of Europe, but Adam Hochschild’s 1998 book King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa, will teach you a lot about the massive colony that Belgium used to own.

King Leopold’s Ghost is a superb examination of the Congo Free State as it existed under the rule of King Leopold II of Belgium from 1885 to 1908. Leopold had been aching for Belgium to have a colony, and thus transcend its status as just a place known for great waffles. Slowly and deliberately, Leopold acquired lots of land in central Africa, which eventually became the Congo Free State. The unique thing about the Congo Free State was that the land wasn’t owned by the Belgian government-it was owned by King Leopold himself. The Congo was his personal colony, and it was the site of terrible atrocities. Forced labor and slavery were common, as was the gruesome practice of cutting off hands of dead or living Congolese people. 

Leopold craftily set up a humanitarian pretext for his involvement in the Congo-supposedly the Belgians were driving out “Arab slavers.” This was enough to not arouse anyone’s suspicion as to what was really happening in the Congo. However, as Hochschild details, stories of atrocities eventually leaked out, and led to an international effort for reform of the Congo Free State, which ultimately culminated in Leopold selling the colony to the Belgian government. 

The Congo brought Leopold untold riches, as the territory had an abundance of many natural resources, including rubber, which was in high demand in the 1890’s. Leopold went out and squandered many of his riches on extravagant palaces for his teenage mistress. Many of the worst human rights abuses occurred because of the demand for rubber-Congolese men were often forced to extract a certain amount of rubber during a period of time otherwise their wives would be killed. Oh, and of course the Congolese weren’t paid for their labor. It’s brutal to read about the total disregard for human life during this period in history. Because there was no accurate census of the Congo until 1920, we will never know for certain how many Congolese died during the reign of the Congo Free State, but Hochschild puts the estimate at around 10 million people, or roughly half the population of the Congo Free State. 

Hochschild vividly brings his cast of characters to life, and his story is filled with fascinating people, including the odious King Leopold II, the egotistical explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who charted much of the Congo area for Leopold, the crusading shipping official E.D. Morel, who became one of the most vocal advocates for reform of the Congo, Polish shipping captain Joseph Conrad, whose 1890 voyage up the Congo River provided inspiration for his novella Heart of Darkness, and the mercurial Sir Roger Casement, who led an investigation for the British government into the abuses occurring in the Congo.

Although the Congo reform movement gathered many headlines in England and the United States more than a century ago, the atrocities committed during Leopold’s reign had not been the subject of much scholarship before King Leopold’s Ghost. Part of the reason for this was the Belgian government itself. Towards the end of the book, Hochschild details the struggles of Jules Marchal, a Belgian diplomat, to get access to government files relating to the Congo Free State. Marchal was blocked at nearly every turn as he attempted to research the Congo Free State in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Eventually the government made papers accessible to scholars and historians, and Marchal wrote a four volume history of the Congo Free State in French. Hochschild has done an important service by reminding the world of what happened in the Congo Free State. But he had a difficult time getting the book off the ground, as his proposal for the book was rejected by the first nine publishers he took it to.

King Leopold’s Ghost connects to the next two books that Hochschild wrote, 2005’s Bury the Chains, about the British anti-slavery movement, and 2011’s To End All Wars, which details the anti-war movements during World War I. All three of these books are concerned with crusades for social justice, and show the impact that protests can have, which is an important lesson for 2017.