Where Is Poland? | Joseph Conrad

Intro
Chapter 1 Where Is Poland?
Chapter 2 A Nation Without a State
Chapter 3 Literature and Censorship
Chapter 4 Poland Outside of Poland
Chapter 5 The Ambassadors
Chapter 6 Women and Emancipation
Chapter 7 Who Is Polish?
Chapter 8 Poland Imagined
Chapter 9 The Road to Independence

Chapter 5

Joseph Conrad

The most famous Polish emigrant of the nineteenth century also experienced deportation. He eventually became a citizen of the United Kingdom and one of the greatest English writers of all time. Read More

Writer
1857-1924

Joseph Conrad with his sons and publisher, 1920. Photo: Polona.pl

Joseph Conrad

The future classic author of British literature was born as Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in 1857 in Berdyczów (Berdichiv in present-day Ukraine). When he was four years old, his father – a Polish political activist plotting a national uprising – was arrested and the whole family was deported to Russia; soon afterwards his mother died.

Upon his return to Poland, the boy was brought up by his uncle in Kraków. In 1874 the seventeen-year-old Conrad left Poland and then set sail aboard a French ship from Marseille. Thus began his twenty-year seafaring career. Many of his experiences from this time inspired his later stories and novels, including Heart of Darkness (1899) and Lord Jim (1900).
Throughout his life Conrad remained interested in the Polish national cause, even if also remaining quite disillusioned about the possibility of putting the country back on the map. It was actually only in 1914, during his stay in Poland, that such hope returned. His Note on the Polish Problem (1916) and The Crime of Partition (1919) remain his most daring forays into political discourse.

Read more on Culture.pl:

11 Reasons to think of Joseph Conrad as a Polish Writer, After All

About the project

Concept, scripting, textual & visual content

Mikołaj Gliński & Patryk Zakrzewski

Design & development

Translators

Daniel J. Sax, Marcin Gozdanek, Michał Wieczorek

English content editor

Daniel J. Sax

Research

Olga Tyszkiewicz

Additional research

Zofia Łękawska-Orzechowska, Przemysław Gliński

Sources

Digital Film Repository (CRF), CYRYL – Digital Repository of the City of Poznań, Danish Film Institute (DFI), Emigration Museum in Gdynia, European Institute of Jewish Music, FORUM Polish Photography Agency, Fototeka, Gallica (gallica.bn.fr), HBO, Institute of Art of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IS PAN), Library of Congress, Museum in Sosnowiec, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź (MSL), National Museum in Kraków, National Museum in Wrocław, National Museum in Poznań, National Museum in Warsaw, National Film Archive - Audiovisual Institute (FINA), National Digital Library Polona (polona.pl), Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in Kraków (PAU), Royal Danish Library (KB), Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Poster Museum at Wilanów, Tatra Museum in Zakopane, Zebra Film Studio.

Video materials

‘Poświęcenie Dworca Towarowego’, ‘Legiony wkraczają do Warszawy’, ‘Dla Ciebie, Polsko’ - courtesy of National Film Archive - Audiovisual Institute (FINA). Excerpt from ‘Brandes giving lecture at the Copenhagen University’ - courtesy of Danish Film Institute.

With special thanks to

Alan Lockwood, Michalina Petelska, Włodzimierz Karol Pessel, Adam Zulawski

This project was organised in co-operation with the Adam Mickiewicz Institute as part of POLSKA 100, an international cultural programme celebrating the centenary of Poland’s regaining independence in 1918.

Financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, as part of the multi-annual programme NIEPODLEGŁA 2017–2022.

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