The
Joseph Conrad
Foundation
News, Notes and Queries
Michael Gregory, San Francisco State mgregory@concentric.net recently asked the ModBrits discussion group
Can anyone point me to the Conrad quote about "an art that is lost is like the last song of a vanished bird," or thereabouts? It was on one of the old MS Bookshelfs, which is no longer at hand.We at the JCF don't recognize the quote. Anyone?
ANTWERP QUESTION: Willem Kurstjens, a Dutch scriptwriter working on a documentary about Belgium and the Congo in the nineteenth century asks about the city of Antwerp in Conrad's works, journals, letters, etc. Nothing specific occurs so we offered contact with a professional widely experienced South African American scriptwriter if he needed that kind of help, reminded him of Conrad's Congo diary, told him about the segment on Conrad and the Congo from The Learning Channel which we'd shown at the University of Lodz and tried to show at Cerritos College in California and Penn State University but failed, Mark Twain's writings on the Congo, Hunt Hawkins' dissertation on the subject, that the JCF National Editor for South Afrca, Mitzi Anderson, had given a paper on the subject at Potchefstroom University during the 1998 Conrad conference in South Africa and referred him to the JCF's National Editor for the Netherlands, Gene M. Moore of the University of Amsterdam, editor of the 1992 Rodopi of Amsterdam book, Conrad's Cities: Essays for Hans van Marle. The book had been reviewed by Stephen E. Tabachnik in English Literature in Transition (ELT), 36:2 (1993), 258-262. by J. Bel in Script, 16-17 (March, 1993), 14-15, by Keith Carabine in The Conradian, 18-4 (Autumn, 1993), 49-55, by Barbara Koc in Ruch Literacki (Literary Activity) 6/201 (1993), 819-822, with an English version in The Conrad News (10) (1995), 27-30 and noted in Anglistik und Englischunterricht (English and English Teachilng) 48 (1992), 165-166 and in NCL. Gene Moore will no doubt confer with his old friend, Hans van Marle and the problem should be solved. We have, of course, expressed our interest in seeing Kurstjens' finished product. Any reader suggestions?
NEW MODERNISMS II: On February 8th Cassandra Laity of Drew University posted on ModBrits a second call for papers for the "New Modernisms II" conference to be held at the University of Pennsylvania this October. Since the JCF and the Queens University, because of timing, missed a joint effort at hosting a reception at the first such conference, held at Penn State University last October, it is hoped that with this much lead time a reception can be arranged in Philadelphia. Stephen A. Ross, a graduate student at the Queens University in Canada has sent us the Conrad papers read at the first conference for publication in Conrad Concepts. He has also made some tentative arrangements for a JCF reception and exhibit at the conference. He can be reached at 6sar@qlink.queensu.ca. Ms. Laity can be reached at claity@drew.edu.