Joseph Conrad's Polish soul

Abstract

Joseph Conrad’s Polish Soul G.W. Stephen Brodsky Edited and with an Introduction by G. Gasyna M. Curie-Sklodowska UP / Columbia UP, 2016 416 pp. $60.00 Nihil novi nisi commune consensus (Nic o nas bez nas; Nothing of us without us) one may say about yet another book on the Polish background of Conrad, but this old Polish dictum does not apply to Brodsky’s monograph because he seems to be one of us, Poles . . . But first things first. The volume opens with a personal introduction by George Gasyna who appreciates Brodsky’s analyses of Conrad’s relationship with Poland because his “insider/ outsider tension reverberates” with Gasyna’s own position on Poland. “In many ways”—Gasyna clarifies —“I identify with Conrad’s decision (and Brodsky’s exposition of its consequences) to turn away from some more pathological manifestations of defensive Polishness, as he went on to forge a multidirectional composite cultural self’ (9). Gasyna sketches a short biography of Brodsky whose ancestors similarly to Conrad stemmed from Polish borderlands (for Brodsky it was the village Brody, for Conrad, a half day’s drive from it, Berdichev)