Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

He left us some remarkable novels, some of them leading to important Holywood productions. Francis Ford Coppola transposed his "Heart of Darkness" with great success in time and place. The situation that was described by Conrad as a consequence of the Belgian behavior in Congo was changed to consequences of USA behavior in Vietnam and Cambodja. A century of difference and placing it at the other side of the world did not deminish the power of "The Horror".

Joseph Conrad was an adventurous guy. A remarkable man who was attracted by the sea and wanted to discover the world but as a consequence of that discovered his talent for writing and gave up the sea.

His novels are, like most ones, based on his experiences. Jospeh Conrad was a thinker and had a tendency towards conspiracy thinking. The brutal way of declaring Congo to his private property by Leopold II of Belgium and the consequences of this can still be seen today. It most certainly must have shocked Joseph Conrad while being there. The Anglo-Belgian rubber trade most probably can be seen as one of the seeds for his conspiracy thinking.

Again a quote from wikipedia:

"Writing during the apex of the British Empire, Conrad drew upon his experiences serving in the French and later the British Merchant Navy to create novels and short stories that reflected aspects of a world-wide empire while also plumbing the depths of the human soul."

Reading about Joseph Conrad you get the impression that it was an introvert man with very little friends. But he had at least one friend. Another Polish man who became of great importance for the world. This man, Józef Hieroniem Retinger, honored Joseph Conrad with a book: "Conrad and His Contemporaries" (London: Minerva, 1941; New York: Roy, 1942).

The friendship between those two extraordinary men seems to be remarkable because of their difference in age, but Retinger (1888-1960) was a man who extremely easy made friends. Not just friends, the mighty of the earth as well as the creative of the earth could be seen with him.