Apollo Korzeniowski

Apollo Korzeniowski (21 February 1820 – 23 May 1869) was a Polish poet, playwright, translator, clandestine political activist, and father of Polish-British novelist Joseph Conrad.

Life Apollo Korzeniowski was born on 21 February 1820 in the Imperial Russian village of Honoratka, then in Lypovets Uyezd, Kiev Governorate, now Vinnytsia Oblast, Ukraine. He was the son of Teodor Korzeniowski, an 1831 Polish Army captain, an impoverished nobleman who made a living running leaseholds, and Julia née Dyakiewicz.

After graduating from secondary school in Zhytomyr, Apollo studied law and Oriental studies at the University of St. Petersburg, then returned to Ukraine, where in 1852 he became an estate manager in the Podole village of Łuczyniec.

In 1854, during the Crimean War, Apollo took an active part in preparations to organize in Ukraine—in the rears of the Russian armies fighting in Crimea—a Polish uprising. It came to nought due to British and French reluctance to get involved in the Polish cause.

In April 1856, Apollo married Ewa Bobrowska, sister of Tadeusz Bobrowski and Stefan Bobrowski. Together with his mother-in-law, Apollo leased the village of Derebczynka. On 3 December 1857 the Korzeniowskis welcomed into the world their only child, Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski—who would be referred to by Polish family and friends as Konrad—the future English-language novelist, Joseph Conrad. Church of St. Stanisław, in Orativ, Ukraine, where Apollo Korzeniowski married Ewa Bobrowska In early 1859, after losing all their fortune on the leasehold, the Korzeniowskis moved permanently to Zhytomyr, where Apollo for a time served as secretary of a bookselling and publishing association and became a member of the board of directors of a Polish theatre.

It was Apollo Korzeniowski's years at Łuczyniec, Derebczynka, and Zhytomyr that saw the greatest flowering of his literary creativity. His first substantial work was a manuscript cycle of religious-patriotic poems, Purgatorial Songs (Czyśćcowe pieśni, 1849–54), which came into being under the clear—and none too fortunate

In 1854 Korzeniowski wrote his chef d'oeuvre, the drama Komedia (Comedy), its beginning parts modeled after Aleksandr Griboyedov's comedy, Gorie ot uma (Woe from Wit). In Comedy, Korzeniowski severely criticized the Polish nobility in Ukraine and opposed it to two positive heroes—Henryk, a revolutionary-conspirator, and the Secretary, a cowed plebeian who, as the action develops, rebels against his employer. The play's 1855 publication (together with a lyric cycle, Stray Strophes—Strofy oderwane) became a social scandal. Comedy, severely treated by the critics, could gain a stage production. Nowy Świat 47, Warsaw, where Apollo Korzeniowski lived in 1861 with his wife and three-year-old son Konrad (the future novelist Joseph Conrad). In front is a "Chopin's Warsaw" bench. In May 1861, hearing of a patriotic movement developing in Warsaw, Korzeniowski traveled from Zhytomyr to Warsaw. There he sought the right to publish a radical socio-literary Biweekly (Dwutygodnik). Initially he associated himself with K. Majewski, who would later name him in testimony as his deputy in a "triumvirate." Korzeniowski, however, distanced himself from Majewski due to the latter's contacts with the "Whites" and became close to more radical groups, especially to youth in the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych) and to the "Red" representative, Ignacy Chmieleński, However, a few manuscripts and a series of letters written before and during his exile to his most intimate friends survived in the possession of others.