[전기] John Stape - The Several Lives of Joseph Conrad. Pentheon

3. Crisis: Finding a Home (1890-1895)

62) Johannes Freiseleben의 죽음 (Fresleven)

- Mary Kingsley : there is no other region in the world that can match West Africa for the steady kill, kill, kill that its malaria works on the white men who caome under the influence.

- 콘래드처럼 nervous하고 어릴 적 병력이 있는 사람이 버티기에는 적합하지 않은 지역.

- Even as he was preparing to leave Europe, the international "Brussels Conference relative to the African Slave Trade', which concluded in July 1890, was hammering out a statement declaring the Congo's slave trade illegal and making provisions for international cooperation in the area.

- Whatever Conrad expected on his departure, he was striking out for 'the dark places of the earth full of the habitations of cruelty'. His experience of the depths of rapacity, inhumanity, and cynicism was to alter his views of life for ever, and his contact with the climate permanently damaged his health.

(63) 이 당시에 쓴 일기가 유일한 일기.

- Conrad and Casement[철도 회사 the Congo Railway Company에서 일] worked together, rounding up labours to build the railway.

(64) Kayaerts - may have mutated into Kurtz

(65) Having suffered from fever on the trip upriver, Conrad was now felled by an attachk of dysentery, followed by depression.

- He now thoroughly regretted his decision to come to Africa; was getting on badly with his employers, particularly with Delcommune; and saw no possibilities for advancement, or, indeed, even of any work that would draw on his professional training.

(66) the company changed its plans, making him out for more mundane tasks, less glorious and much in keeping with his previous assignments, such as packing ivory in casks, which he disliked: an 'Idiotic employment'.