The Secret Sharer and Other Stories [antikvár]

Note The novelist and short-story writer Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) was born Józef Teodor Konrád Korzeniowski, of Pohsh parents hving in the Ukraine. Before his first novel was accepted for pubhcation in 1894, he worked for nearly twenty years as a sailor, joining the British merchant navy in 1878 and becoming a British citizen in 1886. His fiction, which for the most part depicts the world of the seaman in the second half of the nineteenth century, particularly in Africa and the Far East, takes as its preeminent themes human isolation and solidarity, the relation—always complex and never resolved—between established moral codes and personal needs and desires, and the sometimes enlightening, sometimes devastating, effects on the individual of extreme physical and psychological stress. Conrad also shows a deep and troubled awareness of the nature of colonialism, and in particular the questions raised about Western values and self-understanding by contact with African and Asian cultures. The three short stories included in the present volume all draw heavily on Conrad's own experiences at sea, and are generally considered among his finest achievements in the genre. Youth: A Narrative This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of breadwinning. We were sitting round a mahogany table that reflected the bottle, the claret glasses, and our faces as we leaned on our elbows. There was a director of companies, an accountant, a lawyer, Marlow, and myself The director had been a Conway boy, the accountant had served four years at sea, the lawyer— a fine crusted Tory, High Churchman, the best of old fellows, the soul of honor—had been chief officer in the P O. service in the good old days when mailboats were square-rigged at least on two masts, and used to come down the China Sea before a fair monsoon with stun'sails set alow and aloft. We all began life in the merchant service. Between the five of us there was the strong bond of the sea, and also the fellowship of the craft, which no amount of enthusiasm for yachting, cruising, and so on can give, since one is only the amusement of life and the other is life itself Madow (at least 1 think that is how he spelt his name) told the story, or rather the chronicle, of a voyage: "Yes, 1 have seen a little of the Eastern seas; but what 1 remember best is my first voyage there. You fellows know there are those voyages that seem ordered for the illustration of life, that might stand for a symbol of existence. You fight, work, sweat, nearly kill yourself, sometimes do kill yourself, trying to accomplish something—and you can't. Not from any fault of yours. You simply can do nothing, neither great nor little—not a thing in the world— not even marry an old maid, or get a wretched 600-ton cargo of coal to its port of destination. "It was altogether a memorable affair. It was my first voyage to the East, and my first voyage as second mate; it was also my skippers first command. You'll admit it was time. He was sixty if a day; a little man, with a broad, not very straight back, with bowed shoulders and one leg more bandy than 1