Stanisław Lem’s Conrad. A chosen, albeit problematic filiation
Stanisław Lem’s Conrad. A chosen, albeit problematic filiation

Summary/Abstract: Stanisław Lem betrayed his fascination with Joseph Conrad’s writing relatively early. The first references to Lord Jim can be found in his first novel, entitled Szpital Przemienienia (Hospital of the Transfiguration). However, the nature and the extent of this Conradian inspiration was based on Lem’s reading of Jan Józef Szczepański’s well known study entitled W służbie Wielkiego Armatora (In the Service of the Great Shipowner) and his much less well known List do Juliana Stryjkowskiego (A Letter to Julian Stryjkowski), in which he presents his understanding of the Conradian principle of “meting out (not ‘doing’) justice to the visible world”. Indeed, it would seem that Lem follows Szczepański in adopting the Conradian principle of axiological absolutism. Unlike Szczepański, however, Lem sees this principle not as the result of a broadly understood rational procedure, but instead detracts from its rationality by bringing within its scope the problem of the so-called randomness of supra-universal and supra-global cosmic reason. For Szczepański, the most important phase of his own approach to reading Conrad was undoubtedly Lord Jim. Although Lem betrays a partiality for Conrad’s short (and longer short) stories, he does not single out one particular story. In the present article, I venture to suggest that given Lem’s belief in “radical solitude in the cosmos”, the story whose import would best correspond to this conviction is The Shadow Line.

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