The Elm Student Newspaper
Keith Carabine gives talk on Joseph Conrad
Faith Hayden
Dr. Keith Carabine lectured on the travels of
Joseph Conrad.
Jonas Johnson, Elm photographer
Wednesday May 2, Dr. Keith Carabine visited Washington College to give a lecture on nineteenth century author Joseph Conrad. Conrad wrote such works as Heart of Darkness, The Shadow Lane, and The Arrow of Gold. He is the author of over twenty works of fiction, an autobiography and is widely known throughout the world.
Carabine, the chairperson of the Joseph Conrad Society, originally entitled his lecture "Joseph Conrad: The Life and Works," but changed it due to the title's tediousness. He rewrote and renamed the lecture "Joseph Conrad: The Romance of Travel," in which he discussed Conrad's fascination with exploration and how it pertained to his most famous work, Heart of Darkness.
"I originally had entitled [the lecture] 'the Life and Works,' but I felt as though it would be in some manners, cheating," said Carabine during his lecture. "I also felt that just going over the life of Conrad would be rather tedious, so I decided to rewrite [the lecture] and focus on his love of travel."
Carabine has edited a number of Conrad's works for the Oxford World Classics series, as well as edited Crime and Punishment and Uncle Tom's Cabin.
The lecture ran just over an hour. Carabine gave a brief overview of Conrad's life and background.
"Conrad lived one of the most extraordinary lives of any English writer," said Carabine.
Conrad was born in the Ukraine in 1857 to a Polish poet. His mother died when he was eight, and his father when he was twelve, leaving him to fend for himself.
Conrad had a duel life; one half of it consisted of a love for the sea, and the other half consisted of a love for writing. He often found himself the first mate of several exploration ships, and at those times he wrote about his experiences in his diary.
During his talk, Dr. Carabine passed out handouts that consisted of a chronological order of major events from Conrad's diary, a map of the African Congo, which Conrad later traveled by, and portions from the last essays that Conrad wrote.
"I found the lecture to be engaging and intelligent," said Lea Svendsen. "Dr. Carabine came across as a highly educated man."
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