Kazimierz Waliszewski, "Un Cas de Naturalisation Littraire (Joseph Conrad)",

La Revue (formerly Revue des Revues), vol. 47, 15 December 1903, p. 734-748.

Towards the end of 1903, the first major article on Conrad appeared in a French
publication, La Revue, by a Polish historian living in Paris, Kazimierz Waliszewski. 1
Waliszewski entered into correspondence with Conrad in preparation for his article, and the
first response that he received shows Conrads unwillingness to dwell on details of his former
life. These would not, he imagines, interest the public dlite of Waliszewskis audience;
whats more, as Conrad says: franchement, je naime pas paratre comme une espce de
phnomne des lettres.2 As it was, the article did indeed present him as a phenomenon, but
less for the fact of his having exchanged the life of a sailor for that of a writer, as for his
astonishing facility and literary success in what was not his native language, as the title
chosen demonstrates: Un Cas de Naturalisation Littraire. However, Conrad states his
willingness to get over his reservations for the sake of publicity, and, especially, to give up
this whim in order to have a study from the hands of Waliszewski. The critic and the writer
exchanged several letters in the following few weeks, with Conrad, for example, attempting to
justify Romance to his interlocutor,3 and outlining another collaborative project with Ford, or
arranging with his publishers to send copies of the works of his that are missing from
Waliszewskis collection.4 In that last letter he also pleaded with his critic not to use the word
phenomenon; Waliszewski, however, would do just that, though he notes Conrads

1 K[azimierz] Waliszewski, "Un Cas de Naturalisation Littraire (Joseph Conrad)",

La Revue (formerly Revue des Revues), vol. 47, 15 December 1903, p. 734-748.
2 Conrad letter to Waliszewski, 27 October 1903, Conrad Letters 3, p. 69.
3 Conrad letter to Waliszewski, 8 November 1903, Conrad Letters 3, p. 75.
4 Conrad letter to Waliszewkski, 15 November 1903, Conrad Letters 3, p. 78-79.

opposition to the term. Conrads longest letter to Waliszewski is an interesting one, 5 written in
Polish, and filling in many details of his life, reflecting on his time as a sailor: Everything
about my life in the wide world can be found in my books. I never sought for a career, but
possibly, unaware of it, I was looking for sensations. His sense of the passing away of a
whole world, with the death of sail, and his effort to render homage to it are dwelt on: As a
work of fiction The Nigger puts a seal on that epoch of the greatest possible perfection which
was at the time the end of the sailing fleet. He also discusses the English, and his complex
feelings towards his own Englishness; the people never made me feel a foreigner, he
says, but now he has acquired an English way of seeing things: 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. 6
Clearly, there has been much room for fruitful discussion of that last sentence in Conrad
studies.7 As he had argued to Davray, his feelings about his adoption of English aspects to his
character and his work, without fundamentally changing his un-English self, are nuanced and
even somewhat conflicted.
He has, he tells Waliszewski, some talent, but knows deep down that he is achieving
nothing. All I know is that I am striving after a writers honesty. If achievement is
impossible, then intention is all: absolute sincerity is always possible I mean sincerity of
intention. One does what one can. Thus Conrads striving for sincerity in the face of the
impossibility of art is once more recorded.
5 Conrad letter to Waliszewski, 5 December 1903, Conrad Letters 3, p. 88-90.
6 See Ibidem, p. 89, n. 3 for the origins of the phrase "homo duplex".
7 For example, Cedric Watts takes it as one of the themes of his book: Cedric
Watts, A Preface to Conrad: Second Edition, Routledge, 2014. The phrase
provides some grist to the mill of so many studies of Conrads life and work that it
has become a commonplace; doublings, both in biographical and literary senses,
are another way that links can be drawn with Stevenson, who is of course also
ripe for such analysis.

The article, appearing on 15 December 1903, is a laudatory one, in which Waliszewski

attempts to analyse the phenomenon of Conrads literary naturalisation in England. In that
country, the critic says, he has conquered un public dlite, with the tools that he has created
in this language not his own. Il sest forg, en moins de huit ans, une langue lui, nerveuse
et musculeuse, oserais-je dire, trs prcise et pourtant infiniment nuance, trs difficile,
croirais-je volontiers, mme pour les lecteurs du pays, trs correctement anglaise pourtant.8
Conrad is pitched therefore, for the readership of La Revue, also considered to be elite, as a
writer for the inner circle: difficult, subtle, with a perceptible force of language at his
command; a language, moreover, that is not only perfectly English, but also has been forged
by a master, and made perfectly his own. Not only is the language itself irreproachable, but
Conrad also has some of that national quality in his subject-matter previously only identified
in Kipling. On a pu dire quil a fait pour les marins du Royaume-Uni ce que Kippling [sic] a
fait pour les soldats et il nest mme pas Anglais !
For Waliszewski, the phnomne (tant pis, je mets le mot) that is Conrads
naturalisation is one that he had previously considered impossible, but that he must now admit
is decisively proven, in this cas. However, Conrad is not only remarkable as a phnomne
littraire, but is also, among all world literature of the previous ten years, most worthy of
renown: je ne connais pas duvre plus digne dtre connue. For this reason, Waliszewski is
particularly motivated to rectify this situation in France: cette uvre reste peu prs ignore
en France et [] on me saura gr sans doute de ce que je tenterai pour la mettre en lumire et
en valeur.9
Conrads own comments on the Age of Sail have had their impact, and Waliszewski
notes the coincidence of the end of the sailors career with the ending of this world; et cest

8 K[azimierz] Waliszewski, op. cit., p. 734.

9 Ibidem, p. 735.

lhistoire, ou lpope, de ce monde, aujourdhui disparu, quil sest appliqu retracer. 10

Like Davray, he notes the skill with which Conrad evokes this world, and the world of the
East, and the intensity of the impressions and beings native to them. Il nous y plonge; il nous
fait vivre et palpiter avec les tres quil met en action. 11 However, he is not merely a sailor
recounting his adventures; as with the best of the new wave of literary adventure novels, his
talents lie also in the direction of psychology. Et voici encore que derrire le marin
professionel, peintre exacte et mu des lments en furie, le psychologue a paru, jetant un
coup de sonde dans linfini mystre du cur humain, et les dessous obscurs de laltruisme.
Note once again the mention of the exactness of his painting, a key image in echoing his own
words in the Preface to The Nigger of the Narcissus, to which novel this criticism indeed
refers. The image of the painter and his picture is carried further, and here Waliszewski
underlines the discretion of the author, his ability to step back and let his creation speak for
itself, once more, in the silences of the narrative: Le tableau est dailleurs indiqu seulement.
Lauteur ny insiste pas. Il ninsiste jamais sur le trait final [] Encore moins soccupe-t-il de
dgager lui-mme le sens ou leffet de lpisode et de le faire valoir. Nulle trace de pathos
sous sa plume. As in Davray, the Flaubertian distance from his creation is seen as the mark of
an elite author; his lack of authorial intrusion to provide interpretation saves him from any
accusation of injecting pathos into his drama here indicating that he is in no way
melodramatic, as might the author of popular fiction on similar subject matter be.
In discussing the Englishness of Conrads work, Waliszewski remains somewhat
superficial, taking slight umbrage at the fact that while the men of the English navy are une
ou deux exceptions prs, invariablement honntes et invariablement hroques, those of other
nations are often depicted as rotters. While Conrad is thus seen to be a little biased in his
treatment of the topic, Waliszewski makes it clear that la diffrence des races et [] la
10 Ibidem.
11 Ibidem, p. 736.

destine des peuples is a favoured theme of his, and notes quite rightly that M. Conrad juge
dune faon assez svre le rle que les races blanches de tous pays prtendent assumer vis-vis des races noires ou jaunes.12 Expanding on this colonial theme, he shows how the
individual drama of the civilised man in the savage setting attains universality in
Conrads treatment, referring particularly to An Outpost of Progress and Heart of Darkness.
Les deformations que les ides et instincts des hommes civilises sont susceptibles de subir
dans un milieu de barbarie et les reactions inverses fournissent M. Conrad une thse quil
dveloppe le plus volontiers, tout en faisant apparatre aussi luniformit et la permanence
dun certain fonds humain tous les degrs de dveloppement et travers toutes les
expriences.13 Thus Waliszewski recognises the transition from the particular to the universal
in Conrad, but also the authors recognition of the commonalities across barriers of race, and
across divisions such as civilised and savage, which his fiction does the work of
deconstructing, with his observation extrmement fine et profonde.14 Conrads themes go
beyond the colonial also, to such things as la puissance irrsistible et fatale de lamour, seen
in An Outcast of the Islands, Karain, and Falk. Indeed, a story such as The Return has
proved to Waliszewski that the writer is capable de se mouvoir en dehors mme du monde
exotique o il a jusqu prsent frquent le plus habituellement. 15 However, his return to
Occidental civilisation does not mean his adoption of that worlds decadent literary mores; as
so often, the writer of the adventure novel is seen as refreshingly masculine, but also as
invigoratingly free of the taint of sexuality. Conrads novels are said, by their nature, not to be
addressed to jeunes filles, and yet not to contain a page that a jeune fille could not read
with propriety. He thus avoids the lure of decadent realism, in which relationships are
12 Ibidem, p. 741.
13 Ibidem.
14 Ibidem, p. 742.
15 Ibidem, p. 743.

analysed, leading inevitably to female concerns, and adultery: laffreuse banalit de

ladultre qui fait neuf diximes du thtre et du roman contemporain. 16 Once again, realist
art, dealing with murs and sexuality, is seen as the decadence that is countered by the virile,
clean art of the man of action sa plume reste chaste and the English novel dealing with
the struggles of man against nature, or against himself, is seen as a necessary corrective to the
creeping immorality of French fiction.17
This literary novel of action, of crisis, is also necessarily a novel of ideas; it may not
be a roman danalyse, but it deals with an approach to life, with philosophical questions also.
It is here perhaps that Waliszewski is most critical of Conrad, accusing him of a certain
monotony of tone. Sur terre et sur mer [] les aspects de la vie, qui nous sont prsents par
lauteur, offrent la vue une tonalit galement monotone et uniformment sombre. Lord
Jim and An Outcast of the Islands are seen to be almost a restatement, each of the same
themes, presenting a very similar person in similar circumstances; one might object on the
grounds of the marked difference in character between the two protagonists, one who sins first
through greed, the other through cowardice, but the moral quandaries they are involved in do
have common themes. Waliszewski proposes that Conrads fundamental outlook is a bleak
and tragic one, characterised by Kurtzs final words, and Marlows misreporting of them to
his Intended. La conception que M. Conrad sest faite de notre destine est essentiellement
tragique, dsole et dsolante; Amy Foster and The Idiots, drawing on the life and
observations of the author, are seen as reinforcing this impression of his work. However,
16 Ibidem, p. 744.
17 On this point, and in comparison with Stevenson, see Unsigned review,
Glasgow Evening News, 30 April 1903, Conrad: the Critical Heritage, ed. Norman
Sherry, London, Routledge and K. Paul, 1973, p. 110. "Somebody said the other
day that Mr. Conrad seems intent on giving us fiction without sex in it, as
Stevenson wanted to do, and one might hazard the guess that we had here a hint
of the conscientious artist trying to keep himself clear of the debasing influence
of the love-story market. Mr. Conrad, however, knows as well as anyone that the
more profoundly a writer deals with the relations of the sexes, the less likely he is
to sink to the level of the love-story."

though there are undoubtedly philosophical elements that permeate his fiction, Waliszewski
finds it difficult to identify les ides gnrales of the author, his opinions, of which only
des lueurs can be perceived, unless it be a marked social conservatism: a fair observation,
one might say. The concentration on moral elements explored through lived experience is
seen to lead, at times, to incoherence: A force dobserver les valeurs morales, travers toutes
les experiences o elles peuvent se trouver engages, et danalyser leurs dcompositions
accidentelles, lauteur semble par moment avoir cess de croire leur consistance.18 In Lord
Jim, for example, the marked disdain for ideas expressed at certain points disconcerts
Waliszewski;19 while he attributes some of Conrads moral incoherence to his acute sens des
ralits humaines, he also wonders whether his Slav heritage, which gives him some of his
intellectual temerity, might not also bequeath him a congenital incoherence, which shows
through in his very personal art. Conrad, while glad to be considered highly individual, would
probably take exception to this characterisation as Slav of his incoherences.
Coming to his conclusion on Conrad, Waliszewski praises him for his art in the details,
on the level of the sentence and the character, but expresses reservations when it comes to the
whole: Dans le detail, cet art est presque toujours souverain [] Dans lensemble cet art
appelle des rserves. He goes on to elaborate on a comparison that had been made between
Conrad and Stevenson, who he is said to emulate to some degree:
Pour comparer le jeune romancier avec un de ses mules anglais,
Stevenson, un critique du pays a eu recours la double image dun torrent
imptueux des Alpes et dun limpide ruisseau coulant paisiblement dans la
campagne anglaise. Le torrent, cest luvre de M. Conrad, et sa course est des
plus capricieuses, avec des mandres sans nombre, des remous frquents, suivis

18 K[azimierz] Waliszewski, op. cit., p. 746.

19 For example: "Hang ideas! They are tramps, vagabonds, knocking at the back
door of your mind, each taking a little of your substance, each carrying away
some crumb of that belief in a few simple notions you must cling to if you want to
live decently and would like to die easy!" Joseph Conrad, Lord Jim: A Tale,
Heinemann 4, p. 52.

de cascades abruptes. M. Conrad ne va presque jamais droit son but. Il na aucun

souci de fatiguer son lecteur ou de lgarer en route.20
This is a double-edged criticism; certainly, Conrads way through a novel might be
tortuous, but surely we might prefer the power of the rushing torrent to the peaceful stream!
Interestingly, the word aventure returns here, but in the sense of laventure, at random:
Gnralement, lauteur procde par traits espacs et comme jets laventure, ddaignant de
les relier ensemble et imposant au lecteur un travail continu. 21 So Conrads touches, as of
paint, partake also of adventure; his very method of composition, dislocated and
impressionistic, difficult, requiring work, becomes an adventure of interpretation for the
reader. However, this continues to mark him as a writer for the elite reader, one who cares
little for loges quil ddaigne, who has been able to resister lappas des succs faciles et
la tentation de certains compromis avec le got du jour et la clientele des cabinets de
lectures.22 Like Davray, Waliszewski congratulates Conrad on his unwillingness to
compromise, on his difficulty, on his lack of popular appeal, thus reinforcing the notion of
him as an upper-class writer; the forum of La Revue lends itself to such signals of belonging
to the audience, reassuring them that they are indeed the elite to whom Conrads work is
addressed. However, in conclusion, Waliszewski warns that, despite his gifts, Conrad may
actually go too far in making his work impenetrable: M. Conrad a des dons merveilleux, et
nous avons un intrt gal avec lui ce quil nen abuse pas et ce quil en use avec plus
dgards pour la faiblesse de lintelligence humaine, et, jose ajouter, pour les rgles ternelles
et imperatives dun art o il est pass matre.23 This significant article thus ends on a warning
note: Conrad is a master, but the very intelligence and difficulty of his work risk transgressing

20 K[azimierz] Waliszewski, op. cit., p. 747.

21 Ibidem, p. 747-748.
22 Ibidem, p. 748.
23 Ibidem.

the rules of art; there is a limit to how exclusive one might make ones audience, for fear of it
being reduced, in the end, to nothing. As we have seen, Conrad was in no danger of being a
popular writer at this point, but perhaps the elliptical, impressionistic nature of his work was
in danger of posing too great a challenge even for the most elite of audiences. Conrad
admitted that Waliszewski had pointed to weaknesses that he had; in a letter expressing his
pleasure at reading the article, he says: Vous tes sympthique et indulgent [] Vos paroles
ont pntr dans ces plis profonds de lme o lhomme cherche cacher ses faiblesses mme
ses propres yeux.24

24 Conrad letter to Waliszewski, 16 December 1903, Conrad Letters 3, p. 93. In

the letter, Conrad also takes issue with some of the critics observations on his
harshness with other races than the English.