Is Conrad Anti-Russian? [Volume: 7(1988), pp. 231-249]

INTRODUCTION TO "IS CONRAD ANTI-RUSSIAN?"
231
This is not analytical criticism, that is, criticism as hermeneutic practice. Rather, it is criticism as conversation-as conversation with the absent
and the dead; or, to put it in a slightly more formal way: "criticism as a
language for discussing representations of the way people live and think
and feel." (David Bromwich, "Recent Work in Literary Criticism," Social
Research 53.3 [Autumn 1986]: 416)
Conrad would have immediately found a common language with
Vincenz, Tarnawski and Kreuza. Dr. Johnson would have felt quite at home
at the table under the sour cherry tree at La Combe. But many present-day
literary specialists would feel distinctly out of place there.

IS CONRAD ANTI-RUSSIAN?
Stanislaw Vincenz
A= Vincenz
B = Tarnawski
C = Kreuza/Rzewuski
A. It seems to me that Conrad's book, Under Western Eyes, wellknown in its day and now so carefully, almost devoutly, translated again
into Polish by Wit Tarnawski and thus saved from oblivion-as if intended
especially for the emigration in England, although quite a few of the readers
have easy access to the English text-should have created a much greater
response and discussion. It would be worth considering at the beginning
why that didn't happen.
B: Actually I'm a little surprised at that too. Maybe it's because Conrad
expresses what all Poles already know about Russia, at least what they think
they know.
A: That's just it. But with sincere respect for the genuine value of the
translation, for the deeply considered intentions of the translator in the
choice of this work (not to mention his value as a matchless Conradian
critic), I must say that the translator contributed to the indifference to
the work with his own preface, as if intending to make up the readers'
minds for them.
B: What respect! I almost have the impression that, in saying this,
you take away from the translator considerably more than you appeared
to be granting him from the heart a moment ago.