A number of cultural events are taking place in Kyiv to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the birth of Joseph Conrad, the famous Polish-British writer with Ukrainian roots.
The exhibit “Between Earth and the Sea,” which opened at the National Literature Museum, is dedicated to the life and creativity of this writer of sea novels (born Jozef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski), whom earlier critics called a “Polish genius from the shores of England.”
Conrad was born on Dec. 3, 1857, in Berdychiv, in Zhytomyr oblast, into an aristocratic Polish family bearing the Nalecz coat-of- arms. Conrad’s ancestors and relatives took part in the struggle for Polish independence, and his father Apollo Korzeniowski, a well-known man of letters and a translator, was imprisoned by the tsarist authorities. Conrad lived with his parents in exile from the age of four until nine. The family returned to Poland only in 1868. Conrad’s childhood was clouded first by his mother’s death and then his father’s, after which he was placed into the care of his uncle Tadeusz Bobrowski.
Since childhood Conrad dreamed of traveling, and as soon as he turned 16 he went to Marseilles and signed up as a seaman of the British Merchant Navy. His uncle was amazed that his ward, being of noble birth, wanted to be a sailor. Conrad, however, consciously chose an emigre’s destiny because, as a Russian subject and son of a convict, he refused to serve in the Russian army. The novel Almayer’s Folly marked a Rubicon in his life. Later he would write about his dreams and harsh realities in The Shadow Line. The main hero of this novel, a young officer, takes command of the ship after the captain’s death. The crew experiences a number of ordeals on the journey from Bangkok to Singapore. In many of his works this neoromantic author studied the innermost aspects of life, seeking answers to such complicated questions as, “What drives a person in his most difficult moment?”, “What is the price of power?”, “Does a person feel guilty after someone dies at his hands?”
At first, both readers and critics regarded him as a romantic teller of exotic tales so interesting were his descriptions of exotic parts of the world, stories about intrepid people. With time, however, his works became subtly psychological. His most popular novels and stories are Almayer’s Folly, “A Smile of Fortune,” Lord Jim, The Shadow Line, and Under Western Eyes. Since 1919, until today, his works have repeatedly inspired filmmakers from various countries (50 productions to date).
A film festival devoted to Conrad’s works will be held at the Kyiv Movie Theater on Nov. 21-24. It will include The Shadow Line produced by the well-known Polish film director Andrzej Wajda. The festival program also includes Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes (Aguirre: the Wrath of God) by the noted German director Werner Herzog (set in the Peruvian Andes during the 16th century, when the early Spanish explorers were trying to find El Dorado, the treasure city of the Incas); Patrice Chereau’s psychological drama Gabrielle about a rich French bourgeois family (starring Isabelle Huppert), and finally the best screen version of Conrad’s Heart of Darkness: the legendary Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, winner of the Golden Palm (Cannes) and Oscar (awarded to Vittorio Storaro for Best Cinematography). This production featured such famous actors as Marlon Brando, Martin Sheen, Dennis Hopper, Robert Duvall, and others.
Coordinator Olena Babii told The Day that the exhibit “Between Earth and Sea” was created at the Mickiewicz Literature Museum in Warsaw (Katarzyna Jakimiak, Grazyna Grochowiakowa, and Lukas Kosowski). For the show in Ukraine it was translated into Ukrainian by Andrii Bondar, and the entire project was financed by Poland’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Conrad exhibit has been shown in Odesa, Lutsk, and Kharkiv and is scheduled to arrive soon in other Ukrainian cities. Officials of the US Embassy, the French Cultural Center, and the Goethe Institute helped launched the Conrad film festival.
UNESCO has proclaimed 2007 the Year of Joseph Conrad- Korzeniowski. On Dec. 15, 2007, the Polish Institute will hold the Joseph Conrad-Korzeniowski Award ceremony.
