Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Note on the text
- Introduction
- Part I Conrad's French literary and cultural background
- Part II Conrad's debt to French authors
- 2 The early fiction
- 3 The first phase of maturity
- 4 The second phase of maturity
- 5 The third phase of maturity & the last decade
- 6 Critical writings
- Part III Conrad's philosophical and aesthetic inheritance
- Part IV Conclusion
- Appendix Conrad's knowledge of French writers
- Notes
- Bibliography
- General name index
- Index of Conrad's links with other writers
5 - The third phase of maturity & the last decade
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Acknowledgements
- List of abbreviations
- Note on the text
- Introduction
- Part I Conrad's French literary and cultural background
- Part II Conrad's debt to French authors
- 2 The early fiction
- 3 The first phase of maturity
- 4 The second phase of maturity
- 5 The third phase of maturity & the last decade
- 6 Critical writings
- Part III Conrad's philosophical and aesthetic inheritance
- Part IV Conclusion
- Appendix Conrad's knowledge of French writers
- Notes
- Bibliography
- General name index
- Index of Conrad's links with other writers
Summary
‘A Smile of Fortune’
Conrad started to write ‘A Smile of Fortune’ in May 1910 as he was beginning to recover from the severe breakdown he suffered on the completion of Under Western Eyes. As he was finishing it at the end of August, he wrote a letter to Galsworthy which shows how painful and unsatisfactory his first attempts had been: ‘I did not really start till July. June's work was mere fooling, – not on purpose, of course. I was still too limp to grasp the subject and most of the pages written then have been cancelled in typescript. It was strangely nerveless bosh’ (LL, II, p. 114). Paul Kirschner has shown that at this very difficult time, Conrad turned again for assistance to Maupassant, making extensive use of his novella ‘Les Soeurs Rondoli’ (1884). *
‘Les Soeurs Rondoli’, a story devised chiefly to titillate the readers of the Echo de Paris, relates the amorous adventure of the narrator Pierre Jouvenet with an Italian girl, Francesca Rondoli. After a visit to the buffet-car, Pierre and his friend Paul Pavilly, who are travelling to Italy, find their compartment occupied by a young woman.
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- Information
- The French Face of Joseph Conrad , pp. 112 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990