Conrad and Piłsudski

• Authors: Stefan Zabierowski
• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

PL

Although there would seem to be no apparent link between the English novelist Joseph Conrad and Marshal Józef Piłsudski, who restored the Polish State after World War I, they did in fact have much in common. Both hailed from the Polish eastern borderlands and both came from patriotic noble families. Both had been nurtured on the Polish Romantic poets – and Słowacki in particular. For both of them the failure of the 1863 January Uprising was a traumatic experience and both of them suffered exile in Russia. However, whereas Conrad did not believe that Poland would ever be able to regain her independence, Piłsudski led a successful armed struggle for the Polish cause, thus earning the writer’s unstinting admiration. Piłsudski for his part took pleasure in reading Conrad’s Lord Jim.

Keywords

PL

Polish eastern borderlands, Conrad, Piłsudski, January Uprising, 1863 Uprising, Polish independence

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Jagielloński
• Journal: Yearbook of Conrad Studies
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 9

Dates

published

2014

online

2015-05-19

Contributors

author

Stefan Zabierowski