Joseph Conrad

 Joseph Conrad was born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski on December 3, 1857 in Berdyczow, Russia to parents of Polish nobility.  Orphaned at age eleven, he lived with relatives in Krakow until he was sixteen, when he began a maritime career.  Josef learned English while sailing on British flag vessels.  By 1886, he had both acquired his master mariner certificate and become a British citizen – officially changing his name to Joseph Conrad in the process.  He served on both sailing vessels and steam ships during his 21 years at sea.  Conrad came ashore in 1894, determined to try his hand as a writer.  Almost all of his writing were set aboard ship or in some exotic land that he had visited as a mariner.  Most of his stories were fictionalized accounts of his actual experiences.  The novels, though, were much deeper than traditional sea stories.  He delved into the human psyche, exploring the depths of despair, the nobility of character, and the chances of fate.  In part because English was his third language (after Polish and French), Conrad wrote with a style and preciseness seldom encountered.  His most acclaimed work, Heart of Darkness, was based on a short stint in which he served as master of a riverboat on the Congo.  It is a foreboding story of the atrocities he witnessed in the Belgian Congo in 1889 and a damning indictment of the colonial system of that era.  Many of Conrad’s novels have been made into motion pictures, most famously “Lord Jim” and “Apocalypse Now”.  Joseph Conrad died of a heart attack on August 3, 1924.  On the anchor-shaped monument in Gdynia to one of Poland’s favorite sons are inscribed (in Polish) the following quote from him: “Nothing is so seductive, so disillusioning or so enthralling as life on the sea.”