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Polish-born writer Joseph Conrad's novels and short stories usually involve grizzled sailors past their prime battling their inner demons. The story Youth: A Narrative represents something of a departure from the formula that made Conrad famous. It's a semi-autobiographical tale that features Marlow, the same character that stood in for the author in Heart of Darkness recounting an early sea voyage that went terribly awry.
ari.joki: In Masefield's "Bird of Dawning" and Conrad's "Youth" we find a young naval officer with infinite enthusiasm for seafaring and deep love of the seas. This enthusiasm and love persist even in the face of banalities of life and disastrous events.
"Youth! Ah me, youth! the splendour and the mad beauty of youth! Too soon fled, too quickly wilted, is there any mountain we would not climb to get just one more sweet hit of that hangoverless ambosia called YOOOOUUUUTH!?!" Etc. ( )
The way Conrad reflects a raging inferno off a still ocean, the impatient youth off tired old age, the contrasts all... prepare the reader to wonderfully appreciate the serenity of tropical nature and the imagery that glides along like the scented breeze off a luscious island.
This could have occurred nowhere but in England, where men and sea interpenetrate, so to speak—the sea entering into the life of most men, and the men knowing something or everything about the sea, in the way of amusement, of travel, or of bread-winning.
Quotations
O youth! The strength of it, the faith of it, the imagination of it! To me she was not an old rattle-trap carting about the world a lot of coal for a freight--to me she was the endeavor, the test, the trial of life. I think of her with pleasure, with affection, with regret-- as you would think of someone dead you have loved. I shall never forget her. . . . Pass the bottle.
Last words
And we all nodded at him: the man of finance, the man of accounts, the man of law, we all nodded at him over the polished table that like a still sheet of brown water reflected our faces, lined, wrinkled; our faces marked by toil, by deceptions, by success, by love; our weary eyes looking still, looking always, looking anxiously for something out of life, that while it is expected is already gone--has passed unseen, in a sigh, in a flash--together with the youth, with the strength, with the romance of illusions.
This work contains the single story Youth. Some editions titled simply Youth also contain Heart of Darkness or another story as well, and should be separated out.
Polish-born writer Joseph Conrad's novels and short stories usually involve grizzled sailors past their prime battling their inner demons. The story Youth: A Narrative represents something of a departure from the formula that made Conrad famous. It's a semi-autobiographical tale that features Marlow, the same character that stood in for the author in Heart of Darkness recounting an early sea voyage that went terribly awry.