Czesław Miłosz on Conrad’s Polish stereotypes

In an essay entitled Conrad’s Stereotypes – published in 1957 – Miłosz sees Conrad as “the typical old Polish nobleman who remained faithful to the way in which he had lived and thought as a young man.” Miłosz speaks of his own affinity with Conrad (and Mickiewicz), explaining that it derives from a set of shared emotional and historical experiences that were deeply ingrained in the minds of the inhabitants of the ‘Eastern Borderlands’of the old Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth. This ‘Eastern Borderlands’ cultural identity may well have enabled Conrad to give an authentic portrayal of the Russian characters in Under Western Eyes. The counterpart to Mickiewicz’s and Conrad’s condemnation of autocracy and the fairness of their attitude towards Russians was Miłosz’s willingness to maintain friendly relations with contemporary Russian ‘dissidents’ who had stood up against the oppressive political system of the Soviet Union. Surprisingly, however, he does not draw any parallels between the Polish stereotype of Russia and the portrayal of Russia which is to be found in Russian political literature. Miłosz concludes by observing that in Under Western Eyes it was only through the purely artistic merits of his writing that Conrad could have hoped to win over his English-speaking readers, while at the same time remaining “faithful to a tradition that would have seemed exotic to anyone living in another country” – and for this achievement he deserves praise.