G.W. Stephen Brodsky – författare

Brodsky contends that three factors--constitutional, commercial, and technological--in turn, have caused Britain to raise large citizen forces. Because Britain traditionally has been an unmilitary state which has not maintained large standing armies, this ethos of amateurism merged with the professionalism of the Regular Army. He argues that it is this unique influence of amateurism which historically has been central to the British profession of arms and vital to its spirit of service. A wide range of prose and poetry illustrates that spirit and the military cultural experience in which it evolved in Great Britain from the Restoration through World War II. In an overview of later developments, including the Falklands War, Brodsky enunciates the challenge facing the traditional ethos in the nuclear age. Analyzing the effect of the literary idiom, he questions the future direction of representative literature.

Joseph Conrad and Honor: Victory in Defeat explores the idea and themes of honor both explicit and implicit in Conrad’s life, letters and oeuvre, and its origins in Conrad’s Polish, French and English philosophical, historical and cultural contexts. Focusing on Conrad’s family history, his lives in Poland, England, at sea, and as a writer, the book also explores the idea of honor in Conrad’s novels and stories, with especial focus on the Napoléonic era tales (e.g., “The Duel”, “The Warrior’s Soul”, The Rover and Suspense), and from Conrad’s eastern experience (e.g., Almayer’s Folly and “Karain”). In Conrad’s tradition true honor lies, not in material victory but in the victory of spirit even in defeat.In this new monograph, author GW Stephen Brodsky shows that Conrad’s understanding of honor was shaped by the Polish szlachta (nobility) of clan and class, which emphasised conviction, courage, solidarity and fidelity to duty. For Conrad, honor was not merely a personal virtue but a communal ethic, grounded in disinterested service to one’s class, nation, family and faith. This ethos contrasted sharply with what he saw as the fraudulent and ego-driven codes of honor in other cultures, such as the French cult of military glory, the English obsession with conformity, and the aristocratic fixation on aesthetics over ethics.Conrad’s convictions are shown to contrast markedly with the moral decay and semantic degradation of honor in his era, where such terms as “duty” and “fidelity” had lost their sacred significance. An apparent neglect of honor in most Conrad scholarship is addressed—particularly in Western criticism focused on Conrad’s perceived alienation and guilt—by emphasising the affirmative aspects of Conrad’s art and his aristocratic vision through Polish and post-Glasnost perspectives.

Master mariner and pioneer author of Modernist technique Joseph Conrad (1857-1924) achieved such eminence in his lifetime that his presence, explicit or implicit, could be found in the lives and works of several contemporaries of consequence. Through the century since his death he has lived on as a presence in the works of later authors to the present day. A collection spanning fifteen years of the present author’s sightings of Conrad’s presences are not only literary, but also memorial. Monuments, sculpture, ships, plaques, the performing arts, cabinetry and even a pub find a place. Each sighting is described in its context—a couple of certain or likely sightings by Conrad, such as Molière and Matthew Arnold, and the rest sightings or ambient intimations of Conrad’s presence –fiction and social commentary in novels and film by significant authors who carry on his legacy, from contemporaries such as H.G. Wells, Ford Madox Ford and F. Scott Fitzgerald to moderns George Orwell, Albert Camus, John Le Carrée, Ian MacEwan and John Banfield, among others.  Presented in a clear yet poetic prose style, this record of Conrad’s influence on these contemporary and later writers brings a significant dimension to their interpretation; conversely Conrad’s place may be perceived more precisely in the historically broadening canon from Modernist to Postmodern. Together with its illustrations, Intimations of Joseph Conrad is a novel and unique concept, as entertaining as it is informative.