Review of the sea of discourses in Conrad’s texts : Marek Pacukiewicz, Dyskurs antropologiczny w pisarstwie Josepha Conrada (…)

Abstract

Numerous dissertations, monographs and articles have been written on Conrad and it would be difficult to find a blank space in the fi eld of Conradian studies that could be filled with impressive meanders of interpretation. Yet Marek Pacukiewicz has achieved what seems almost unachievable: he has discovered a new relation between Conrad and the sea – or, to be precise, between Conrad and the sea of discourses. With great erudition Pacukiewicz outlines the semantic area that the sea has occupied in European culture. As early as in ancient Greece, people tried to capture and describe the essence of ‘sea-ness’. This was done by means of three concepts: pelagos (the open sea, space), pontos (a bridge) and hals (saltiness). However, from the very beginning the nature of the sea eluded the formal and curbing bridle of language and one more notion – of older Cretan etymology – appeared, namely thalassa (the sea). From the onset, then, within the fabric of language, which was engaged in naming reality (and thus ordering it, making it submissive to Man), there occurred a covert fissure – a difference of contexts. It clearly demarcated the boundaries or the hiatus of two cultures and two diverse cultural contexts: that of the Greek mainland and that of thalassic Crete (Pacukiewicz 11) [...]. Recenzja: Dyskurs antropologiczny w pisarstwie Josepha Conrada / Marek Pacukiewicz. - Kraków : Towarzystwo Autorów i Wydawców Prac Naukowych Universitas, 2008. - 299, [1] s. ; 24 cm.