Existential tropes in the prose of Joseph Conrad

The work of Joseph Conrad falls between last years of the 19th century and first two decades of the 20th century. Whilst this was the time of great historic changes, the socio-political phenomena, which provided foundations for such changes, emerged earlier. Stanisław Brzozowski traces origins for the modern approach in the Romanticism era, since, even back then, a conscious in his distinctiveness individual is embroiled in a conflict with the idea of progress subjugating the world. Conrad’s approach is somewhat ambivalent. His Romanticism was in a way ‘filtered through’ British culture – he acquired a rational outlook and a distance to any ideology, whilst cognitive scepticism marked the writer’s attitude towards the world and individual. Conrad recognised undefeated solitude of the individual in an amoral world as a trait enabling one to continue individual existence. The awareness of these conditions, prevalent among Conrad’s characters, generate feelings of absurd and existential tragedy so characteristic for existential philosophy