"An Outpost of Progress" is a short story written in July 1896 by Joseph Conrad, drawing on his own experience in Belgian Congo. It was published in the magazine Cosmopolis in 1897 and was later collected in Tales of Unrest in 1898. [1]
"An Outpost of Progress" is a short story written in July 1896 by Joseph Conrad, drawing on his own experience in Belgian Congo. It was published in the magazine Cosmopolis in 1897 and was later collected in Tales of Unrest in 1898. [1]
The story deals with two European men, named Kayerts and Carlier, who are assigned to a trading post in a remote part of the African jungle. There they take part in ivory trading, seeking financial benefit both for the company and for themselves. With no specific tasks or important things to be done, they both become increasingly isolated and demoralized as time goes by. At one point in the story, the native Makola, serving as Kayerts and Carlier's bookkeeper, initiates an exchange of slaves for ivory. Initially Kayerts and Carlier are stunned and scandalized by the idea, yet eventually they accept the deal and aid Makola for his huge profit. Both men are plagued by disease and grow very weak physically toward the end of the story. Finally, a seemingly trivial matter—sugar—sparks an irrational, uncontrolled, and violent conflict between them, which ends tragically as Kayerts accidentally shoots and kills Carlier. At the end of the story, just when the company steamboat approaches the station two months later than it should have, Kayerts hangs himself out of desperation. [2] [3]
Conrad, who favored the journal Cosmopolis to publish his early work, came into conflict with the editors over what they considered the excessive length of “An Outpost of Progress.” Conrad wrote a confidant on the matter:
It is too long for one number they say. I told the unspeakable idiots that the thing halved would be as useless as a dead scorpion. There will a part without a sting - and the part with the sting - and being separated they will be both harmless and disgusting. [4]
Conrad placated when he discovered that Comopolis was providing a generous fee for the story: 50 £ [5]
Conrad served his “apprenticeship” under the influence of the French author Gustave Flaubert and British author Rudyard Kipling. [6] [7]
The two ivory dealers portrayed in “The Outpost of Progress” closely resemble the chief protagonists in Flaubert’s novel Bouvard et Pécuchet (1881), “as classic revelation of bourgeois stupidity and pretension.” [8] Literary critic Laurence Graver writes:
In fact, one episode in “An Outpost of Progress" parallels a fine scene in Flaubert’s novel. Once settled in their posts, Kayerts and Carlier find novels left my their predecessors: ‘in the center of Africa they made the acquaintance of Cardinal Richelieu and D’Artagnan, of Hawk’s Eye and Father Goriot...they discounted their virtues, suspected their motives, decried their successes; were scandalized at their duplicity or were doubtful about their courage.’ Similarly, Bourard and Pecuchet mention Richelieu and read Dumas and Balzac in an uncomprehending way.” [9]
Graver also reports that “An Outpost of Progress” is highly derivative of the works of Rudyard Kipling, in particular his “The Man Who Would Be King” (1888).” [10] Conrad’s irony is conveyed through “a playful mixture of the jaunty and macabre”, an unmistakable feature of Kipling’s fiction. [11] Graver observes that “Conrad keeps falling back on humor typical of Kipling, particularly euphemized substitution to mask the ugly facts of life.” [12]
Conrad described “An Outpost of Progress” as “the lightest part of the [literary] loot that I carried off from Central Africa.” [13]
Biographer Joycelyn Baines comments on Conrad’s sojourn in the Belgian Congo during the early 1890s and the misanthropic elements evident in his literature.: [14]
"An Outpost of Progress”, for all its irony and macabre humor, and “Heart of Darkness” (1899), with its tone of outraged humanism and its consciousness of evil, show how deeply he was affected emotionally by the sight of such human baseness and degradation; moreover, his Congo experience devastatingly exposed the cleavage between human pretensions and practice, a consciousness of which underlies Conrad’s philosophy of life. [15]
Literary critic Albert J. Guerard notes that “An Outpost of Progress” is of interest chiefly as “a cold adumbration…offering a significant variant on “Heart of Darkness” and the only stories Conrad based on his experiences in Central Africa. [16] [17] Guerard writes:
“An Outpost of Progress” is carefully, ploddingly, plausibly constructed to throw a full expository light on its theme…There are no signs of subjective involvement,,,the story comes to us in plain, efficient, unevocative prose.” [18]
As such, “the most personal voice of the early Conrad is lacking.” The work is “perfectly devoid of familiarity between author and reader…” [19]
Literary critic Edward W. Said locates the theme of “An Outpost of Progress” in the shame Conrad felt at “allowing [his] personal ideals to be corrupted” and in particular, “the shame of fear.” [20] Said declares that Conrad experienced a sense of guilt at his renunciation of the “ideals of his Polish heritage” and “the capricious abandonment” of his life as a mariner. [21] Said writes:
Conrad had become, like Kayerts and Carlier, a creature of civilization, living in reliance upon the safety of his surroundings…When the story, he found, like the two unfortunate disciples of progress…he had laid himself open to a terrifying invasion of the unknown…When the two Europeans kill each other for a lump of sugar, their degradation is complete. The fraudulent machinery of social camouflage in which they had placed their unexamined faith has destroyed them. [22]
The full text can be found at Gutenberg
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Gustave Flaubert was a French novelist. He has been considered the leading exponent of literary realism in his country and abroad. According to the literary theorist Kornelije Kvas, "in Flaubert, realism strives for formal perfection, so the presentation of reality tends to be neutral, emphasizing the values and importance of style as an objective method of presenting reality". He is known especially for his debut novel Madame Bovary (1857), his Correspondence, and his scrupulous devotion to his style and aesthetics. The celebrated short story writer Guy de Maupassant was a protégé of Flaubert.
Heart of Darkness (1899) is a novella by Polish-English novelist Joseph Conrad in which the sailor Charles Marlow tells his listeners the story of his assignment as steamer captain for a Belgian company in the African interior. The novel is widely regarded as a critique of European colonial rule in Africa, whilst also examining the themes of power dynamics and morality. Although Conrad does not name the river on which most of the narrative takes place, at the time of writing, the Congo Free State—the location of the large and economically important Congo River—was a private colony of Belgium's King Leopold II. Marlow is given a text by Kurtz, an ivory trader working on a trading station far up the river, who has "gone native" and is the object of Marlow's expedition.
Joseph Conrad was a Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language; though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he came to be regarded a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. He wrote novels and stories, many in nautical settings, that depict crises of human individuality in the midst of what he saw as an indifferent, inscrutable and amoral world.
"The Secret Sharer" is a short story by Polish-British author Joseph Conrad, originally written in 1909 and first published in two parts in the August and September 1910 editions of Harper's Magazine. It was later included in the short story collection Twixt Land and Sea (1912).
"The Lagoon" is a short story by Joseph Conrad composed in 1896 and first published in The Cornhill Magazine in January 1897. The work was collected in Conrad’s first volume of short stories Tales of Unrest (1898).
“Youth” is an autobiographical work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad first published in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1898, and collected in the eponymous collection Youth, A Narrative; and Two Other Stories in 1902.
The Pall Mall Magazine was a monthly British literary magazine published between 1893 and 1914. Begun by William Waldorf Astor as an offshoot of The Pall Mall Gazette, the magazine included poetry, short stories, serialized fiction, and general commentaries, along with extensive artwork. It was notable in its time as the first British magazine to "publish illustrations in number and finish comparable to those of American periodicals of the same class" much of which was in the late Pre-Raphaelite style. It was often compared to the competing publication The Strand Magazine; many artists, such as illustrator Sidney Paget and author H. G. Wells, sold freelance work to both.
Tales of Unrest is a collection of five works of short fiction by Polish-British author Joseph Conrad. Four of the five works were previously published as serials in literary journals before appearing in the volume, published in 1898 by T. Fisher Unwin.
"The Idiots" is a short story by Joseph Conrad, his first to be published. It first appeared in The Savoy in 1896. The story was included in the Conrad collection Tales of Unrest, published in 1898.
"The Return" is a work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad, first published in 1898 in the collection Tales of Unrest by T. Fisher Unwin.
Youth, a Narrative; and Two Other Stories is a collection of three works of short fiction by Joseph Conrad, originally serialized in Blackwood’s Magazine. The volume was published in 1902 by William Blackwood and Sons.
“The Black Mate” is a work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad which first appeared in London Magazine in 1908, and was collected in Tales of Hearsay, published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1925.
‘Twixt Land and Sea is a collection of three works of short fiction by Joseph Conrad published in 1912 by J. M. Dent publishers.
"Falk: A Reminiscence" is a work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad. The story was completed in May 1901 and was collected in Typhoon and Other Stories in 1903, published by William Heinemann and Company.
“The Tale” is a work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad, first published in the Strand Magazine in October 1917. The story was collected in Tales of Hearsay in 1925 by T. Fisher Unwin.
A Set of Six is a collection of six works of short fiction by Joseph Conrad, each appearing in literary journals between 1906 and 1908. The works were collected in A Set of Six, published in 1908 by Methuen and Company.
"The Duel" is a work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad, first published in The Pall Mall Magazine in January–May, 1908. The story was collected in A Set of Six (1908) released by Methuen Publishing. It was adapted as the 1977 film The Duellists, directed by Ridley Scott.
Typhoon and Other Stories is a collection of short fiction by Joseph Conrad published in 1903 by William Heinemann and Company.
"The Inn of the Two Witches" is a work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad, first published in The Pall Mall Magazine in March 1913. The story was collected in Within the Tides (1915) published by J. M. Dent and Sons.
“Because of the Dollars” is a work of short fiction by Joseph Conrad, first published in The Metropolitan Magazine in September 1914. The story was collected in Within the Tides (1915) published by J. M. Dent and Sons.
