Leszek Prorok as one of Conrad’s successors. On being enraptured

Abstract

The work of Leszek Prorok (1919-1984) has long been of interest to Polish Conrad scholars. Not content with writing commentaries on Conrad’s novels and stories, Prorok also made references to them in his own original fi ction. In this paper I discuss three issues. First I recall Prorok’s Inicjacje conradowskie (Conradian Initiations) and in particular the chapter entitled Naturaliter Christiana, in which Christianity is shown to be an indispensable context for Conrad’s writing. Moving on to the intertextual links between the two writers, I present a comparative interpretation of Conrad’s Freya of the Seven Isles and Prorok’s short play entitled Freja – zimna bogini milości (Freya – the Cold Goddess of Love). Both authors use the romantic theme of an unsuccessful elopement in order to concentrate the reader’s attention on those forces which stand in opposition to human happiness. Whereas Conrad’s story is set in the islands of the Indian Ocean, Prorok’s play is set in the stark realities of the Second World War. I then go on to compare two other works: Conrad’s The Shadow Line (Smuga cienia) and Prorok’s Smuga blasku (The Radiance Line / The Radiant Line). The links between the two novels have been discussed by Adam Gillon and others. The question I would like to pose here is whether Prorok, by writing a ‘continuation’ of The Shadow Line, was trying to highlight Christian thematic threads, which is something that would have been in conformity with a suggestion to be found in the relevant chapter of his own book entitled Inicjacje conradowskie (Conradian Initiations).