Abstract
Kipling himself noted that in Conrad’s fi ction “the intensity of fear and terror” is above the English norm (Najder, 197). Unlike articulate feelings, such affects are not socially coded: they are “mute,” and yet essential to the communicative function of art, for example in tragic catharsis – but, as we shall see, this is a special communication. Conrad also liked to portray himself like a man “without ideals”, a “poseur of brutality” who carved his words out of dark inchoate substance: a physical writer who did not hesitate to use the metaphorics of quantum physics, when claiming that all creative art is “evocation of the unseen” composed of “the most insignifi cant tides of reality” (NLL, 13), including linguistic. This may be due to his own linguistic condition; but maybe also to an artist’s concern for “the haunting terror, the infi nite passion” in the spectacle of this world (APR, 92), where the classic aesthetic transcendental categories have lost their relevance. Yearbook of Conrad Studies vol. III/2007 Jagiellonian University Krakow, Poland © Jagiellonian University
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