Western Writers in Bangkok: Joseph Conrad

Polish sailor Teodor Korzeniowski first visited Bangkok in January 1888 when he was an officer in the British Merchant Navy. He was from the Seaman's Lodge sent to the Siamese capital in Singapore to take command of the Otago, a rusty barque whose captain had died suddenly and most of the crew had been hospitalized with malaria.

After a four-day journey, he passed the Pub, the great sandbank in the mouth of the Chao Phraya: 'One morning early, we crossed the bar and while the sun was rising splendidly over the flat spaces of land, we steamed up the innumerable bends, passed under the shadow of the great gilt pagoda, and reached the outskirts of the town.' He dutifully presented himself to the British Consul-General, as was proper in those days, with this safe-conduct handed to him at his port of departure:

'The person I have engaged is Mr. Conrad Korzeniovsky. He bears a good character from the several vessels he had sailed out of this port. I have agreed with him that his wages at 14 Pounds per month to count from date of arrival in Bangkok, ship to provide him with food and all necessary articles…'

Until he found a fit crew and a pilot, he mostly passed the time in the Billiard room of the Oriental Hotel, the only truly comfortable hotel to be found in the Siamese capital in those days, which had first opened its doors in 1876. However, he did not stay or dine there because his salary was just a little too modest for that. And that's a good thing, because his stay would not last - as he had originally thought - days, but weeks.

Plagued by arthritis, Korzeniowski was forced to say goodbye to life on the turbulent seas a few years later and started under his pen name Joseph Conrad to write. It didn't take long for him to make a name for himself as the author of bestsellers like Lord jim en Heart of Darkness. His experiences in Africa and Asia proved to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration for travelling in itself was often a metaphor for a journey into the interior of the human mind. His masterful narrative style and highly imaginative anti-heroes profoundly influence an entire generation of English-language authors.

Conrad had traveled to Southeast Asia three times and this experience left a deep impression on him. Not entirely wrongly, he was described by some academics as 'the writer who made Southeast Asia known to the World'. Falk, The secret sharer en The shadowline are three of Conrad's works that were inspired by Bangkok. He described in The shadowline how he chose the wide tidal inlet from Chao Phraya. Unforgettable was his description of the city, baking under the Copper Ploert, a fine example of the masterfully stylized prose that was his hallmark:

'There it was, spread largely on both banks, the Oriental capital which has yet suffered no white conqueror. Here and there in the distance, above the crowded mob of low, brown roof ridges, towered great piles of masonry, king's palaces, temples, gorgeous and dilapidated crumbling under the vertical sunlight'…