Both Joseph Conrad’s parents were Polish and were members of the local szlachta, the landowning gentry-nobility (in Poland there was no legal distinction between these two classes); both were devout Roman Catholics. Until the partition of Poland between Russia, Austria-Hungary and Prussia at the end of the 18th century, central and western Ukraine was an integral part of the multinational Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth; most of the szlachta there were ethnic Poles; most town-dwellers were Jewish; most of the peasantry Ukrainians (or “Ruthenians”). Conrad’s paternal and maternal ancestors settled there in the late 17th century.
Conrad’s paternal grandfather, Teodor Korzeniowski, was a captain in the Polish army during the 1830 Insurrection against Russian rule and lost his estate in the ensuing political turbulence of his partitioned country. He had one daughter, Emilia, who in 1864 was sent into exile in Russia, and three sons: Robert, who was killed in the 1863 Insurrection, Hilary, who died in 1878 after being exiled to Siberia following the same insurrection, and Apollo, who was born in 1820. Apollo had a gift for languages and writing. He studied at St. Petersburg University and later supported himself by administering landed estates, writing satirical comedies (his satire, tempered by censorship, was patriotic and democratic in spirit and was directed against the materialism and political opportunism of Polish landowners) and making translations from English (Dickens and Shakespeare), French (Victor Hugo and Alfred de Vigny) and German (Heine). He also wrote patriotic and religious poems which he circulated in manuscript and in which he expressed his sympathy for the oppressed Ukrainian peasantry as well as exhorting Poles to maintain unswerving fidelity to the cause of their national independence.
Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski (he was to use only his third given name), the only son of Apollo and Ewa, was born in Berdyczów (now Berdychiv) on 3rd December 1857.
In April 1861 Apollo Korzeniowski moved to Warsaw, ostensibly to start a cultural periodical, but in fact to organise underground resistance to the Russian authorities. In October 1861 he formed a clandestine “Committee of the Movement” which was the kernel of the underground National Government of 1863. A few days later he was imprisoned in the Warsaw Citadel.
Ewa Korzeniowska and her son followed Apollo to Warsaw in October 1861 and witnessed his arrest. Ewa was also charged and questioned, but not taken into custody. Little Conrad would accompany his grandmother, who took parcels to his imprisoned and ailing father. He wrote later: “In the courtyard of this [Warsaw] Citadel ―
characteristically for our nation ― my childhood memories begin.” The military tribunal’s investigation of the Korzeniowskis lasted until April 1862, but the verdict, issued in fact by the viceroy of Poland (a Russian general) preceded the official decision of the court by two weeks. Although only circumstantial evidence was produced against Ewa and Apollo, they were both sentenced to exile in northern Russia, “under strict police supervision”. The viceroy added in his own hand: “Mind that they do not stop on the way.” They were dispatched to Vologda, which was known for its harsh climate.
In January 1863, for health reasons, they were allowed to move to Chernihiv, in north-eastern Ukraine. There Ewa Korzeniowska died of tuberculosis in April 1865. Apollo was also gravely ill and was released from exile in January 1868. He left with his son for Lwów (Lviv) ― an important Polish cultural centre which was then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire ― and subsequently moved to Cracow, the former capital of Poland, where he died in May 1869.
Konrad’s maternal uncle, Tadeusz Bobrowski, became his guardian and benefactor. Konrad was first educated by his father; a sickly boy, he never attended schools on a regular basis and had to be coached by private tutors. He passed his formal exams first in Cracow and later in Lwów. In the autumn of 1874 he was sent ― in part at least for health reasons ― to southern France, with a view to starting a maritime career.
Initially Korzeniowski does not seem to have had any intention of leaving Poland permanently, though in 1883 he assured one of his father’s friends that he remembered the injunction that “wherever he may sail, he is sailing towards Poland”. But as a Russian subject and the son of convicts he was liable for lengthy military service and it was only in 1889 that his attempts to be released from his official allegiance to the Russian State were successful. By then he had transferred from the French to the British merchant service (in 1878) and passed his examinations for the rank of master mariner (in 1886 ― he became a British subject the same year). He never officially changed his original name and only assumed the pen-name of Joseph Conrad in 1895, when he published his first novel, Almayer’s Folly, dedicated to the memory of T[adeusz] B[obrowski].
He kept up his correspondence with his uncle. His letters to him were destroyed during the Bolshevik Revolution but Bobrowski’s letters to Conrad have survived and constitute the most important biographical source for Conrad’s earlier years. He visited his home country in 1889 and 1893. The following year his uncle died and so Korzeniowski’s main personal link with Poland was gone.
For the first twenty years of his writing career Conrad struggled with debts: his royalties fell far below his modest expenses. Only in the summer of 1914 was he able to take a longer vacation ― and so he took his wife and two sons to Poland. The outbreak of the First World War caught them in Cracow. After a few days they moved south to the relative safety of the Tatra Mountains, where they stayed for two months. While in Cracow and Zakopane, Conrad met several Polish writers, artists and intellectuals. This was to be the last visit to his native country.
The reminiscences of his relatives and friends testify to Conrad’s continued emotional involvement in the affairs of Poland and the traditions of her culture (e.g., at his country home in Kent he organised private concerts of music by Chopin).
Conrad died in Canterbury on 3rd August 1924. The only official personage who came to his funeral was a representative of the Prime Minister of Poland.
From the letters of Apollo Korzeniowski to his friends and other sources we know that the young Conrad was an avid reader. He was certainly well acquainted with classical Polish literature, beginning with the work of the great 16th century poet Jan Kochanowski, whom he mentions in his letters. Most probably the poetry, drama and fiction of Polish Romantic writers (of which his father was an epigone) formed the main body of his readings in his native language. “I have taken Polonism into my works from Mickiewicz and Słowacki”, he declared in 1914, mentioning by name the two greatest writers of Polish Romanticism, who in the eyes of their compatriots also enjoyed great moral and political standing.
Ideas of moral and national responsibility pervaded this literature, whose favourite subjects were fidelity and betrayal, honour and shame, duty and escape. The moral problems of an individual were typically posed in terms of his obligations to Society, while ethical principles ― formed under the influence of a decidedly chivalric ethos ― were founded on the idea that an individual, however exceptional he may be, is always a member of a community. A poet was a typical example of an exceptional individual, entrusted with special duties towards his nation. The passage ‘from alienation to commitment’, recognised as a frequent theme in Conrad’s fiction, was a staple subject of Polish Romantic literature (as in Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz and Forefather’s Eve). One of the more popular literary forms was the tale ― gawęda ― a story told by a personal narrator, who as often as not is himself one of the protagonists; it is easy to find a continuation of this form in Conrad’s narratives.
Apart from the general presence of important elements of Polish cultural tradition in Conrad’s writings, critics have identified many thematic, artistic, and verbal motifs taken from particular works of Polish literature. The Polish language itself has also left its mark on Conrad’s prose. Not only in the form of polonisms (words and idioms used in their Polish rather than in their English sense), and errors committed here and there in the use of tenses. The occasional looseness of Conrad’s syntax and the rhetorical, rolling rhythm of his phrases can easily be traced back to the influence of his native speech.
In his essay Autocracy and War (1905) ―
Conrad’s most important political statement ― Poland is mentioned as a victim of German and Russian imperialism, which links them in their “common guilt”.
A Personal Record (1912) contains long and moving fragments telling about his early Polish experiences and about the members of his closest family. Prince Roman (1910), included in the posthumous volume Tales of Hearsay, is a tale about Prince Roman S[anguszko] who ― out of conviction ― joined the forces of the Polish uprising against Russian power in November 1830 and, after being captured, was sentenced to hard labour in the Siberian mines. We read there about Poland as “That country which demands to be loved as no other country has ever been loved, with the mournful affection one bears for the unforgotten dead and with the inextinguishable fire of a hopeless passion which only a living, breathing, warm ideal can kindle in our breast for our pride, for our weariness, for our exultation, for our undoing.”
In 1914, having renewed his contacts with his friends in Poland, Conrad wrote a Memorandum outlining his plan of action in the UK to support Polish interests. His essay Poland Revisited ( included later in his Notes on Life and Letters, 1921) describes Conrad’s journey to Poland and reflects his depression in the face of the British insistance that the future of Poland was a Russian internal affair. Two years later, in a special Note on the Polish Question (published also in Notes...) ― addressed to the British Foreign Office ― he proposed the reconstruction of Poland as a protectorate of Great Britain and France (“Quite impossible. Russia will never share her interests in Poland with Western Powers” ― was the negative reply).
Conrad greeted the re-emergence of an independent Poland in1918 (after 123 years of partition) with joy, relief and also embarrassment, caused by his own lack of faith. He wrote an emotional appeal in support of the new country and in remembrance of its sufferings: The Crime of Partition (1919, included in Notes...). In 1920, while the Polish army was fighting for the survival of the country in the face of a Soviet invasion, he sent a cablegram in support of the Polish Government Loan: “For Poles the sense of duty and the imperishable feeling of nationality preserved in the hearts and defended by the hands of their immediate ancestors in open struggles against the might of three Powers and in indomitable defiance of crushing oppression for more than a hundred years is sufficient inducement to come forward to assist in reconstructing the independence, dignity and usefulness of the reborn Republic.”
Some Polish intellectuals accused Conrad of betraying his native country by writing in English. The most important expression of this charge was an article published in 1899 by a well-known and respected Polish lady novelist, Eliza Orzeszkowa. Conrad took this greatly to heart and a couple of years later, writing in 1901 to the Cracow librarian Józef Korzeniowski (who was no relative), he declared: “I have in no way disavowed either my nationality or the name we share [...] It is widely known that I am a Pole and that Józef Konrad are my two Christian names, the latter being used by me as a surname so that foreign mouths should not distort my real surname [...] It does not seem to me that I have been unfaithful to my country by having proved to the English that a gentleman from the Ukraine can be as good a sailor as they, and has something to tell them in their own language. I consider such recognition as I have won from this particular point of view, and offer it in silent homage where it is due.”
He was by then becoming more and more well known in Poland: the first ever translation of his work ― An Outcast of the Islands ― had been published in a Warsaw periodical in 1897 and other translations followed.
In 1914 he gave his first ever interview ― to the Polish journalist Marian Dąbrowski (the husband of Maria Dąbrowska, who was later to become one of the most distinguished Polish 20th century novelists and the author of a volume of essays on Conrad). He confessed that his father read Mickiewicz’s long poem Pan Tadeusz to him, “not just once or twice”, and also made him read it out loud. He “used to prefer Konrad Wallenrod and Grażyna”, Mickiewicz’s shorter poetic tales. “Later I liked Słowacki better. You know why Słowacki? Il est l’âme de toute la Pologne, lui [He is the soul of all Poland, he is].”
Conrad’s contacts with Polish writers and readers became closer after 1920. He corresponded with several authors and with his translators and in 1921 himself translated a comedy by Bruno Winawer (The book of Job, published posthumously) from Polish into English. The most eminent Polish writer of the time, Stefan Żeromski, the moral leader of Polish liberals and socialists, wrote an enthusiastic introduction to a collected edition of Conrad’s works, calling him a “writer-compatriot”. Conrad responded with a letter, writing: “I confess that I cannot find words to describe my profound emotion when I read this appreciation from my country, voiced by you, dear Sir ― the greatest master of its literature.”
In the nineteen twenties and thirties Conrad became a very influential writer in Poland and was much read and discussed both by intellectuals and the broad reading public, who were particularly fond of his sea fiction. He reached the peak of his importance in the darkest hours of modern Polish history ― during World War II, when Poland had again been invaded by its German and Soviet neighbours. Conrad, and particularly the Conrad of Lord Jim, then became one of the chief role models for the young members of the Polish underground army and civil resistance.
The first ever full edition of Conrad’s works (27 volumes) was published in Poland in 1972 - 74; a supplementary volume, containing material which had been excised by the communist censors, was published by Polish émigrés in London.
The hospital in which Conrad was born in Berdyczów (Berdychiv) does not exist. A small Joseph Conrad museum in the premises of a magnificent Carmelite monastery there ― where Conrad was baptised ― will be opened in December 2009 (a temporary exhibition was opened on 3rd December 2008). A commemorative plaque in the centre of Warsaw (Nowy Świat Street) was placed on the house next to the one in which the Korzeniowskis rented their flat in 1862. The cell in the Warsaw Citadel in which Conrad’s father was imprisoned still exists, as does the house in which he lived with his father in Cracow in Poselska Street and the buildings where he stayed as a boarder in Lwów (Lviv) and Cracow (Floriańska Street and Szpitalna Street).
Two volumes of manuscripts by Conrad’s father, most of them unpublished, are preserved in the Jagiellonian Library in Cracow. Several important letters and documents concerning Conrad himself are to be found in the PAN Library, also in Cracow. The National Library in Warsaw has Tadeusz Bobrowski’s letters to Conrad and several of Conrad’s letters in Polish. Outside Poland, the most important collections of Conrad manuscripts connected with his Polish background are at the Beinecke Library, Yale University and the Polish Library in London.
