Nadjer - Conrad & Marlow [Joseph Conrad] 231

영문학과 영국에 속하고 싶었지만 그럴 수 없었던 현실

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Conrad wanted to belong to English literature and to England. This choice was unambiguous and explicit. But he did not want to, or did not know how to--it comes to the same thing--be fully immersed in the English environment. Even had he wanted to, it would have been made impossible by the English tendency to keep foreigners at arm's length--there are many allusions to this fact in Conrad's own books. He had his reservations about even a purely psychological immersion. Family memories rankled in his mind; he had a lively sense of Polish and continental cultural continuity. In short, he was aware of his own dissimilarity and strangeness(제시가 콘래드의 이해할 수 없었던 부분을 폴란드를 방문하면서 이해할 수 있게 되었다고 하는 부분 인용할 수 있을 듯)--yet he strove for the comforting sense of belonging. How many stories and reminiscences there are about Conrad's efforts to become a real English gentleman! They are always a bit comic or ironic: Conrad was never fully successful in his attempts; something would always give away his foreignness.(Amy Foster의 얀코 브릴의 이야기. 고립의 문제)

- Marlow, a model English gentleman, ex-officer fo the merchant marine, was the embodiment of all that Conrad would wish to be if he were to become completely anglicized. And since that was not the case, and since he did not quite share his heor's point of view, there was no need to identify himself with Marlow, either emotionally or intellectually. Thanks to Marlow's duality, Conrad could feel solidarity with, and a sense of belonging to, England by proxy, at the same tiem maintaining a distance such as one has toward a creation of one's imagination. Thus, Conrad, although he did not permanently resolve his search for a consistent consciousness of self-identity, found an integrating point of view that enabled him, at last, to break out of the worst crisis of his writing career.

for Conrad, Marlow is not only a main narrator and an important character, but a distancing device that helps the author control and shape his fictional material.  (Lothe. Narrative)