ABSTRACT
KIPLING and Conrad were the only great authors who wrote of imperialism during the zenith of its power and influence, and both derived a breadth and vitality from their colonial experience that surpassed all of their pre-War contemporaries. Because of Conrad’s unfamiliar subject matter and exotic settings, and his concern with devotion to duty and self-discipline, his first critics labelled him a spinner of sea yarns and the Kipling of the Malay Archipelago. Conrad disliked these epithets and wrote that he hoped “to get freed from that infernal tail of ships and that obsession of my sea life… I do wish that all those ships of mine were given a rest.” 1 And in the last year of his life Conrad was still defending stories like “Youth” and “Typhoon” against the inappropriate tag. Conrad justly thought his works were more ambitious and profound than Kipling’s and resented the comparison with him. Comparing his own works with Kipling’s Conrad writes that “Un écrivain national comme Kipling par exemple traduit facilement. Son intérêt est dans le sujet, ľintérêt de mon oeuvre est dans ľeffet qu’elle produit. II parle de ses compatriotes. Moi j’écris pour eux.” 2
