Młodość Josepha Conrada

Abstract

In his interpretation of Joseph Conrad’s Youth, Stefan Zabierowski examines those episodes in the author’s biography which were an inspiration for the story’s plot and which chiefly had to do with the ill-fated voyage of the Palestine. The scholar draws attention to Conrad’s narrative technique and to its links with the very Polish genre of gawęda, or an oral tale. The central part of the article has been devoted to the story’s main idea. What from a pragmatic viewpoint looks as the protagonist’s defeat – an ordeal that takes him through fire and water on the way to his dreamland, the East – turns out to be a victory: he has attained the dream of his youth.