Transcript Joseph Conrad Lord Jim

Joseph Conrad
Lord Jim
Title: Lord Jim
Author: Joseph Conrad
Format: Audio CD
Language: English
Pages: 200
Publisher: , 0
ISBN: 0786157887
Format: PDF / Kindle / ePub
Size: 8.2 MB
Download: allowed
Description
This is a novel about a man s lifelong efforts to atone for an act of instinctive cowardice. Young
Jim, chief mate of the Patna, dreams of being a hero. He has taken to the seas with the hopes
of adventure and the chance to prove his mettle. When the Patna threatens to sink and the
cowardly officers decide to save their own skins and escape in the few lifeboats, Jim despises
them. But at the last moment, dazed by horror and confusion, he joins them, deserting the eight
hundred Muslim passengers to apparent death.
Tormented by this act of cowardice and desertion, Jim flees west after being stripped of his
rank. Living among the natives in Patusan, a remote trading post in the jungle, he is able to
cease sacrificing himself on the altar of conscience. When he defends Patusan against the evil
Gentleman Brown, his efforts create order and well-being, thereby winning the respect and
affection of the people for whom he becomes Tuan, or Lord Jim.
With its rich descriptions of an unknown, exotic world and beautifully constructed prose, Lord
Jim is considered one of Conrad s greatest works."
Insightful reviews
Matt: Lord Jim is an incredibly frustrating book. It's part imperial adventure, part psychological
study, in the vein of Joseph Conrad's most famous work, Heart of Darkness. However, whereas
Heart was brief and elegant, Lord Jim is a repetitive slog. I spent as much time trying to figure
out who was telling the story as I did actually enjoying the story.
The book tells of the eponymous Jim, who is a mate aboard the merchant ship Patna, which is
carrying hundreds of Muslim pilgrims. Mid-voyage, the ship has engine trouble, and then starts
taking on water. A squall is coming. The captain and crew is convinced that the Patna is going
to sink. They are equally convinced that telling the pilgrims of this fact will start a panic resulting
in all their deaths. So the brave captain and his hearty men depart the ship in a lifeboat. Jim
follows suit.
The only problem: the ship doesn't sink. Later, it is towed into harbor, with no loss of life. The
crew of the Patna, Jim included, go on trial before the shipping board. Eventually, he loses his
sailing certificate. Of all the men, only Jim seems ashamed. And he is really ashamed. I mean
pathological. Most of this book is devoted to his all-consuming wallow.
The story is told in typical Conrad fashion, by which I mean it utilizes every contrivance known
to LOST. The first section of the book is written in the third-person. This was my favorite part. It
was fast-moving, uncluttered, and clear. Then Marlow, the loquacious raconteur from Heart of
Darkness shows up and starts spinning his story. Apparently recovered from the jaundice he got
searching for Kurtz, Marlow is in the mood to talk. And talk. And talk. He's the quintessential
drunk uncle on Thanksgiving. Long after everyone else has fallen asleep watching the Dallas
game, he's still there, wine in hand, telling you the same thing for the fourth time.
This was my first view of Jim. He looked as unconcerned and unapproachable as only
the young can look. There he stood, clean-limbed, clean-faced, firm on his feet, as
promising a boy as the sun ever shone on...
The next roughly two-thirds of the book is told in first person by Marlow. This section utilizes
nested dialogue, so that Marlow will be relating a story in which a person within that story is also
relating a story. (The number of unreliable narrators in Lord Jim is astounding). When you look
at a page, you see a mass of quotation marks. It all gets very confusing. Just to make it more
confusing, every once in awhile the book will jump back to third-person. Then the book ends
with a letter(!) written by Marlow to an unnamed man who'd been listening to the original story.
It was the nested dialogue that did me in. There's really no reason why you have to use
quotation marks as Marlow tells his story. It would've been much simpler to just shift the book
from third to first person while Marlow talks, instead of working Marlow's extended monologue
into the third-person format, requiring the use of quotation marks inside quotation marks. For
whatever reason, Conrad is insistent on jamming these essentially first-person narratives into
third-person. This choice wasn't a big deal in Heart of Darkness because the framing device
was much simpler: start by introducing Marlow; Marlow tells his story; end with Marlow finishing
story. In Lord Jim, it's a much bigger problem, because the narrative is jumping all over the
place. There are stories told within stories; at times it's like opening a Russian nesting doll.
There are dozens of tangents and digressions and trying to keep straight who's doing the talking
- whether it's Marlow or Jim or some other characters - requires constant attention.
I was also disappointed by how repetitive this book was. Marlow takes an interest in Jim, for
reasons I can only surmise (old man obsessed with young man...oh I'll just stop), and tries to
get him a job. Jim takes the job, does a good job, then quits whenever the Patna is brought up.
So Marlow gets Jim another Job, Jim does a good job...etc.
Finally, Marlow, through the help of his friend Stein, finds Jim employment on the island of
Patusan, in the Malay Archipelago. Here, Jim becomes a benevolent Kurtz and earns his
honorific "Lord." He falls in love with a mixed-race girl named Jewel, becomes friends with Dain
Waris, a chief's son, and generally seems content (though he will never stop brooding about his
moment of cowardice, to the point where I wanted to slap the taste right out of his mouth). The
finale comes when a buccaneer named Gentleman Brown invades Patusan and Jim shows that
a man's character is indeed his fate.
There are parts to like about Lord Jim. Conrad is a great writer, and it almost goes without
saying that if you read this book, you will find masterful descriptions, colorful imagery, and
incisively wielded similes.
Every morning the sun, as if keeping pace in his revolutions with the progress of the
pilgrimage, emerged with a silent burst of light exactly at the same distance astern of the
ship, caught up with her at noon, pouring the concentrated fire of his rays on the pious
purposes of the men, glided past on his descent, and sank mysteriously into the sea
evening after evening, preserving the same distance ahead of her advancing bows...The
awnings covered her deck with a white roof from stem to stern, and a faint hum, a low
murmur of sad voices, alone revealed the presence of a crowd of people upon the great
blaze of the ocean. Such were the days, still, hot, heavy, disappearing one by one into
the past, as if falling into an abyss of ever open in the wake of the ship; and the ship,
lonely under a wisp of smoke, held on her steadfast way black and smoldering in a
luminous immensity, as if scorched by a flame flicked at her from a heaven without pity.
The nights descended on her like a benediction.
Simona Bartolotta: "Si vedeva nell'atto di salvare i marinai di una nave pericolante, di tagliare
alberi e pennoni nella furia di un uragano, di nuotare nella risacca reggendo una cima, […]
esempio, sempre e dovunque, di dedizione al dovere, forte e adamantino come l’eroe di un
romanzo."
Uno è il grande pregio di Jim -o difetto, chissà: a volte mostra aspetti di sé che rendono sin
troppo facile riconoscersi in lui. Questo diventa ancor più vero per un assiduo lettore
d’avventura; e visto che è proprio a lui che il romanzo è indirizzato, non sta a me raccontarvi
della strage di cuori che esso, con colpevole facilità, si lascia dietro. Inevitabile complice del
misfatto, lo stile di Conrad, che non saprei descrivere in altro modo se non come una di quelle
penne di cui ci si innamora a pagina dieci, a pagina cinque se ci si trova in condizioni di
particolare vulnerabilità.
Ora, se da un lato, come ho appena detto, la prosa di Conrad non lascia scampo, dall'altro
neppure la sua bellezza ed il suo magnetismo riescono a far scorre indolori alcuni passaggi, che
paiono addirittura piazzati strategicamente per farti fumare quei quattro neuroni che ti è riuscito
sinora di salvare dall’angoscia causata da questa benedettissima vicenda.
Scusate lo sfogo.
Dicevamo, la difficoltà nel superare alcuni passaggi. Con ciò non intendo affatto dire che
risultino noiosi (nel caso non si fosse capito, lo ribadisco: Conrad maneggia le parole in modo
da far sembrare tutto così magnifico che la noia è sconosciuta), ma piuttosto che infastidiscano
con la loro inopportunità. Fanno sì che questo viaggio, che già per il suo significato e per il suo
valore è tutto in salita, si trasformi nella scalata del K2. Una volta giunti in cima, tuttavia, non si
può non ammettere che il paesaggio è valso la pena di qualunque sacrificio.
Nell'introduzione alla mia edizione, Conrad racconta di un parere riportatogli da un suo amico di
ritorno da un viaggio in Italia, dove aveva conosciuto una signora che aveva criticato Lord Jim,
definendo la sua una vicenda «troppo morbosa». Dopo un’ora di ansietà e incertezza, l’autore
giunge però alla conclusione che «la persona che aveva espresso quella critica non poteva
essere italiana», in quanto «un temperamento latino non avrebbe scorto nulla di morboso
nell'acuta, dolorosa consapevolezza dell’onore perduto». «Tale consapevole ipersensibilità»
continua Conrad difendendo paternamente la sua creatura, «può essere giusta o sbagliata, o
può essere considerata artificiale; e, forse, il mio Jim non è un tipo molto comune. Ma posso
assicurare i miei lettori che egli non è il prodotto di una fantasia fredda».
Ed eccolo qui, il cuore pulsante della questione. L’onore, la sensibilità, una fantasia che di
freddo non ha nulla: il romanticismo. Così Jim viene definito più volte nel corso della storia
(Romantico! Romantico!). E da qui, io credo, deriva la sua imperscrutabilità, il mistero che
aleggia miracolosamente intorno alla sua figura anche dopo cinquecento e rotte pagine di
romanzo. Perché nessuno, in questa vicenda, è riuscito a comprendere fino in fondo le ragioni
di Jim, per quanto in molti ci abbiamo provato, e mossi dai sentimenti più nobili: Stein, Gioia,
Marlow. Quest'ultimo arriva a dire, a seguito di una conversazione con lui: «Mi pareva di essere
sul punto di comprendere l'inconoscibile, e vi garantisco che nessuna sensazione è più penosa
di questa». Una semplice quanto criptica ammissione d'impotenza, questa, che non fa altro che
aprirci gli occhi sulla complessità e la vastità dell'animo di un protagonista unico nel suo genere,
qualità che, oltretutto, rendono ancora più significativo il breve periodo di piena soddisfazione
che Jim riesce a conquistarsi nella remota isoletta di Patusan.
Con la commozione e l'ammirazione nel cuore, arrivo alla fine proclamando a gran voce la
grandezza di Lord Jim, non perché è un classico, non perché è stato scritto da un maestro, ma
perché quella che ci narra è una storia vera. La storia di un uomo che Conrad, come attesta lui
stesso nella sopracitata introduzione, vide passare una mattina in una rada dell'Estremo
Oriente. Egli era uno dei nostri e la sua figura non chiedeva altro che di essere raccontata.
Conrad ha compiuto l'impresa. A noi goderne i frutti.
Lyn: If you are a serious student of Conrad, you must read Typhoon, Heart of Darkness, and
Lord Jim.
After reading Lord Jim, a comparison with Heart of Darkness is unavoidable. The two books
were published a year apart; Conrad began Lord Jim first, put it down to write and publish HOD,
and then finished the expanded Lord Jim. Much of the tone, themes, imagery and even
language are similar if not identical.
Heart of Darkness, I think, is the better literary work, and is on a short list of my all time favorite
novels. It is elegant, simple, focused, relentless and inevitable. Lord Jim, by contrast, is a more
ambitious work, complicated both in its telling and design, and ultimately more human.
Whereas HOD is fable-like in its earnest minimalism, Lord Jim is intentionally complex, with an
almost Faulkneresque omnipresence. Both works present a dialogue between Marlowe and
another. In HOD, it is Kurtz, Elliot’s Hollow Man. In Lord Jim it is Jim, an idealistic, but tragic
hero; perhaps a nineteenth century Everyman, blessed and cursed alike by maritime European
imperialism.
Marlowe is a narrator to Kurtz’s story, while he is a central character and a sympathetic
observer of Jim. It is this interaction, between Marlowe and Jim that reminds me of The Great
Gatsby and there is some evidence that Fitzgerald was an admirer of Conrad’s.
Nick Black: it is demanding to make a decision which of Lord Jim and center of Darkness are
superior; I supply them either 5 stars for being absolute bulwarks of English literature (written
through a Pole!) shoring up the flatulent Romanticist interval (ugh, agrarianism! double ugh, preraphaelites!), and surroundings the level (along with Tolstoy, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Mallarmé,
Ibsen and Schopenhauer) for the good shift into Modernism. This used to be in all likelihood the
1st nice novel of the 20 th century (published from 1899-1900), and Conrad's shafting by means
of the Nobel committee, in addition to Tolstoy's, make up the 1st nice blunders of that body. i
am good conscious that i am rarely the main literate individual round -- of approximately one
hundred eighty semester hours to date, merely 10 got here from open air math and the
demanding sciences (History of Composers 1450-1750, HoC 1750-Present, the yank Novel,
and a James Joyce study) -- yet still, i am accustomed to yet a unmarried Nobelist from
1901-1919, and that the bucolic Kipling. What a host of crap.
Joshua Rigsby: My challenge with this booklet was once one in every of incorrect information
and stressed expectations.I've heard and skim plenty of references to Lord Jim as being
basically in regards to the sinking of the Patna, a real tale the place a Western-owned and
operated vessel choked with Muslims on their method to the Haj in Mecca was once believed to
be sinking, and used to be deserted through the crew. seems it did not sink, and everybody on
board used to be rescued via one other vessel. This, as you would imagine, was once rather
embarrassing for the crew. Conrad describes the Patna and its sinking gorgeously. i used to be
enthralled and excited. regrettably this simply take in the book's first third. the remaining follows
an unlucky and tortured crewmember from that voyage as he attempts to rebuild and reinterpret
his lifestyles in mild of this severe wish of ethical personality through the sinking. And, from the
crewmember's trial forward, I simply bought bored. a part of the matter also, used to be the
layers of narration Conrad places in place. At one aspect now we have 3 degrees of narration
the place the narrator tells the 1st individual account of the protagonist telling him a primary
individual account of a 3rd character. This used to be confusing, and subtle the urgency and
immediacy of the tale itself. The occasions within the latter 2/3rds of the booklet are mildly
interesting, yet fail to actually intersect with the first, which was once terribly good. they arrive off
as one of those faint echo of center of Darkness , which was once a stronger book, in my
opinion. Conrad will get after British imperialism and racist attitudes, that is nice, but when you
will want a greater written and extra fascinating remedy of those subject matters keep on with
center of Darkness.http://joshuarigsby.com
Jennifer: I in most cases in simple terms hassle to check books I enjoyed- in particular
considering i am not bothering a lot to return to study these I learn rather it slow ago. Lord Jim
calls for a review.Why did I detest this booklet so much... i used to be an English significant in
college. i've got a master's measure in English literature. i like books! This e-book is the one
novel i've got ever learn that placed me to sleep. i couldn't get entangled within the action.
Conrad's verbose English diction and excessively right grammar infuriated me. His sort annoyed
me, his plot used to be primarily non-existent, and that i hated the characters. I had no empathy
for them, I had no wish to learn it, and plogging via it killed mind cells.I admit that I learn this in
excessive school- it's completely attainable that i'd reject it much less now that i'm extra attuned
with Conrad's purpose. i do not quite care. If i need to hate one author, one book, with a
passion? this is often it!Nothing made me happier than the tragic ending.
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