Page 33 - DIVA3 2021_final_CORR_reduced

culture

3
but passive and unintentional. Häusermann
maintains that for Conrad Geneva is a
harsher place than Siberia or the east coast of
Borneo. Through the eyes of his protagonist
Razumov, Conrad describes the city as
“indifferent and hospitable in its cold, almost
scornful toleration – a respectable town of
refuge to which all these sorrows and hopes
[of the exiles] were nothing”. For Razumov
Geneva is “the respectable and passionless
abode of democratic liberty, the serious-
minded town of dreary hotels, tendering the
same indifferent hospitality to tourists of all
nations and to international conspirators of
every shade”. Conrad contrasts the tranquil, delay. He had nervous breakdowns and wrote The plate on the
orderly, and content city - a “town, comely several short stories in between. When reading wall of the house
without grace, and hospitable without it, one can feel that it was not an easy piece. on avenue de
sympathy” - with his flamboyant Slavic The torments of the characters somehow la Roseraie 25,
characters. Those characters are devoured by transpire from the text. The novel was finally commemorating
passions, still cherishing the broad harmony published in 1911. At the time, the Russian Joseph Conrad.
of spirit and belief in the brotherliness of all revolution of 1905 was already history and The inscription
human beings, which we see in their hopes called for one reading of the novel. Six years in Latin reads,
and sorrows. later, the Bolsheviks’ October Revolution “Geneva hid up”.
Conrad starts his novel Almayer’s Folly: A called for a different reading. Today, after the Photo by the
Story of an Eastern River with an exclamation end of the Cold War and the Soviet Union, author.
by Henri-Frédéric Amiel – the Genevan poet after the Snowden revelations and similar
and moral philosopher - qui de nous n’a eu sa stories originating in Geneva, one can read
terre promise, son jour d’extase et sa fin en exil? the novel in a new light.
Conrad himself, like his father and many of his
family, was an exile. Whether in the western
world or under tropical skies, the exiles are
alien to the land that gives them refuge.
They always feel the difference, a sense of
unwantedness, if not enmity. The fate of many
characters in Conrad’s stories broadens into a
symbol of the destiny of mankind. The sorrow Bibliography:
of exile is deep inside the psyche of so many Conrad, Joseph. Almayer’s Folly: A Story of an Eastern River,
people in this globalized world, dissolving Guttenberg Project 2006, online https://www.gutenberg.org/
their hopes and pride of achievement, making files/720/720-h/720-h.htm
them suffer from that distress altogether. The Conrad, Joseph. The Heart of Darkness, Guttenberg Project 2006,
frontiers that have the strongest impact and online https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/526/pg526.html
are most difficult to tackle are in the minds of Conrad, Joseph. Selected Short Stories, Ware, Wordsworth
men, as the French geographer Jean Gottmann Classics 1997, xxvii-238 p.
once put it. Describing the pain of living with Conrad, Joseph. Under Western Eyes, Guttenberg Project 2006,
these mental frontiers is one of the important https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2480/2480-h/2480-h.htm
achievements of Conrad. Hochschild, Adam. “Stranger in Strange Lands: Joseph Conrad
Conrad finalized Under Western Eyes with and the Dawn of Globalization”, Foreign Affairs, March/April
2018, pp. 150-155.
Häusermann, H. W. The Genevese Background, Studies of Shelley,
Häusermann, H. W. The Genevese Background,
Studies of Shelley, Francis Danby, Maria Edge- Francis Danby, Maria Edgeworth, Ruskin, Meredith, and Joseph
worth, Ruskin, Meredith, and Joseph Conrad in Conrad in Geneva, London, Routledge 2016, xiii-224 p.
Geneva, London, Routledge 20 6, p.2 .

w w w. d i va i n t e r n at i o n a l . c h