Joseph Conrad’s Adventure with English

This article discusses Conrad’s Anglophone linguistic identity to show how writing became his “promised land” and fictional homeplace. This fictional retreat reflects his childhood experience, (connected with his Polish background), hopes, and fears, but it is likewise refracted through episodes of his later life. Conrad’s own articulation of his complex relation to English, England, and his own nationality, reveals his outlook on literature and language: “When speaking, writing or thinking in English the word Home always means for me the hospitable shores of Great Britain” (Collected Letters 1:12) and “Both at sea and on land, my point of view is English, from which the conclusion should not be drawn that I have become an Englishman. That is not the case. Homo duplex has in my case more than one meaning” (Najder, Conrad’s Polish Background 240).