Seminar 13: Joseph Conrad: Between Sea and Sky
Saturday 6 October 2007
1.30pm-5.00pm (including 30 minute afternoon tea)
Metcalfe Auditorium
State Library of NSW,
Macquarie Street, Sydney
Cost: $15
Bookings Essential: Tel. (02) 9273 1770
The Writing and Society Group at the University of Western Sydney, the State Library of NSW in conjuction with the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland present:
Joseph Conrad: Between Sea and Sky
2007 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Conrad, one of the most important novelists in English of the late 19th and early 20th century. Conrad’s work marks a transition between 19th and 20th century styles of fiction and has been and continues to be profoundly influential.
One of his best known works, Heart of Darkness, explores problems of power that relate not only to the dark underbelly of the colonial period, but which remain all too relevant now, both in regard to understanding the horrors which might lurk at the core of the self as much as within processes of political and economic exploitation. Francis Ford Coppola, for example, adapted this story, shifting it from the Belgian Congo to Vietnam in his important 1979 film Apocalypse Now. Yet this novella is only one aspect of Conrad’s achievement as a writer, which includes masterpieces such as Lord Jim (1900), Nostromo (1904) and The Secret Agent (1907).
Conrad was Polish, but having gone to sea as a young man, he eventually joined the British merchant navy, with which he made numerous voyages, including a number to Australia. Having mastered the English language, and about to retire from life at sea, he set about becoming one of the most important writers in that language (both technically and in terms of the themes he traces which explore the human condition fearlessly).
This event, sponsored by the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland, the State Library of NSW and the Sydney Seminar for the Arts and Philosophy, will bring together a number of experts who will discuss aspects of Conrad’s life and work, including his links both to Poland and Australia. Speakers will include the distinguished Polish Conrad scholar Wieslaw Krajka (the head of the Centre for Conrad Studies at the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University in Lublin, Poland) and Australian Conrad experts Terry Collits (whose book on Conrad won the 2006 NSW Premier’s Prize for Literary Scholarship) and Roger Osborne (who is currently preparing a scholarly edition of Conrad’s novel Under Western Eyes).
Order of Speakers:
1.30pm Welcome: Ryszard Sarkowicz (Consul General, Republic of Poland)
1.40 pm Introduction: Anthony Uhlmann (University of Western Sydney)
1.50 pm Terry Collits (La Trobe University, Melbourne)
2.40 pm Roger Osborne (University of Queensland)
3.30 pm Afternoon Tea
4.00 pm Wieslaw Krajka (Maria Curie-Sklodowska University, Lublin, Poland).
