Zdzisław Najder’s Aesthetic and Hermeneutic Reading of Lord Jim in the Light of Roman Ingarden’s Phenomenology
Zdzisław Najder’s Aesthetic and Hermeneutic Reading of Lord Jim in the Light of Roman Ingarden’s Phenomenology

Author(s): Jolanta Dudek
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Summary/Abstract: The aim of my paper is to show that Zdzisław Najder’s approach to Conrad was at leastin part inspired by the phenomenology of Roman Ingarden.The point of departure for Ingarden’s phenomenology is the rejection of abstractphilosophical speculation in favour of first-hand sensual contact with reality. Thiswould seem to concord with Conrad’s conviction that the artist’s task is “by thepower of the written work to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all tomake you see.”Ingarden makes a very clear distinction between the schematic literary work of art(which abounds in so-called places of indeterminacy) and its aesthetic concretizationby a particular reader. He observes that aesthetic qualities—which may be valued asbeing positive or negative—are dependent on the artistic qualities which are to befound in each of the “layers” or “strata” of the work and in each of its sequential parts.The four “layers” or “strata” are those of sound, meaning, represented objects (designatedby means of “states of affairs,” which in turn are determined by the meaningsof words and sentences) and schematized aspects (through which the representedobjects manifest themselves).Ingarden analyses various aspects of interior and exterior reality that have beentransformed within literary works and observes that in real life this reality manifestsitself to us not as a ready-made and ordered collection of objects, events and relations,but, as we read in the preface to The Nigger of the “Narcissus,” rather as a riot ofmulticoloured phenomena of various shapes and forms—individual phenomena thatengage the artist’s senses and feelings, demanding of him “A single-minded attemptto render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe by bringing to light thetruth manifold and one, underlying its every aspect. … Their one and illuminatingquality—the very truth of their existence.” Ingarden’s way of saying this would beto speak of experiencing those particularly important aesthetic qualities—which hecalled “metaphysical qualities”—that “illuminate” the situations and events whichare represented in the work. One of them is the tragic element of Lord Jim, which—asNajder has shown—permeates the overall structure of Conrad’s novel, including theconstruction of the narrative time perspective.This process of discovering simple or derivative metaphysical qualities—whichpermeate and illuminate the situations and events that are shown in the literary workof art—therefore exhibits the characteristics of hermeneutic cognition as understoodby Heidegger (whom Ingarden cites in this regard), since it reveals the deeper meaningof our existence (and culture) as well as its hidden primary fabric.

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