Adam Gillon

Abstract

PresidentJoseph Conrad Society of America1975-1995Senior and Founding EditorJoseph Conrad Today1975-1983Adam Gillon Giant ExileG. W. Stephen BrodskyWith the passing of Professor Adam Gillon on 22 November last, the community of Conrad scholars has lost a comrade who was more of exile, than many of us are our lands of origin. One may find proleptic our Adam's birth on 1 7 June, 1921, only weeks before Conrad midwifed The Rover. A serendipitous near-twinning it was, too. With his own origin the same unrestful borderland as Conrad's, Adam would grow up to know as few have, the soul of the rover-author who would become his life's work. But we shall leave a compendium of achievement for a later Tribute our Society's learned journal, and offer there an account of the extraordinary lives of this Peyrol-Xenophon who, even before becoming a scholar, had fought two wars, on a life's anabasis with his devoted Isabel rarely far from his side.That first life was already their remembrance of times past, by the time Adam had emerged as a pioneer the early years of Conrad scholarship's take-off phase. Indeed, his bellwether master work, The Eternal Solitary (1960), was the very first critical biography pressed on a neophyte colleague learning his Conradian bends and hitches, by Adam's fellow Conrad pioneer, Professor (emeritus) and Master Mariner Gerald Morgan.Ever the gentleman, Adam had an ineffable Presence, yet with the common touch of one who had mange de la vache enragee. Many were the conferences graced by that muted bienseance. Especially memorable to this eulogist was that first chance after glasnost over a score of years ago now, at the First International Joseph Conrad Conference sponsored by Marie Curie- Sklodowska University, for Adam and Isabel to live their own Revisited. Their pasts met their present amid brooding portraits of Poland's magnatial great (their luxuriantly drooping moustaches reflecting Adam's), the great hall of Baranow Sandomierski Castle on the Vistula; at uplands Zakopane; at Cracow's Florian Gate and Wawel Castle; and ghastly Majdanek.An engaging teacher and mentor, our Adam Gillon had his own way lived - painfully and courageously - the literature he taught. But he also transcended the tragedy and triumphs of his history. Countless are the scholarly careers launched by his inspiration. Freedom fighter, editor, author, teacher, mentor, film director, and wise guide. We can say no better giving him his due, than to quote an old friend of his and ours: he has done his possible. Port after stormie seas.In Memoriam Adam GillonZdzislaw NajderI met Adam for the first time exactly half a century ago, on 8 January 1963, at some mutual friends. I am holding my hand the copy of his novel Cup of Fury: that day he signed it to me, Polish, in the memory of a NYC. I lived Poland, and a visit US was for me an unusual experience. Professor Gillon, teaching at the New York State University, invited me immediately to give a lecture on Joseph Conrad at New Paltz. He had by then published his first book, The Eternal Solitary: A Study of Joseph Conrad.I read both books. The study of Conrad was not a result of new source research nor a proposal for novel interpretations, but I liked Gillon's general approach, that of placing Conrad's artistic personality within its international context, with the first-hand knowledge of his Polish cultural background (a rarity at that time English-language scholarship). As to the novel, it was for me a painful read. Adam had been brought up Poland and steeped Polish literature and culture general - and by the same token had been exposed both to the murderous brutalities of Germans and the widespread (although far from universal!) anti-Semitism of Poles. I myself could observe that at a close distance: I grew up a Warsaw proletarian district that was one third Jewish. …