Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the texts
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction, or confession of a mastodon
- 2 Conrad's Polish background, or from biography to a study of culture
- 3 Joseph Conrad's parents
- 4 Joseph Conrad and Tadeusz Bobrowski
- 5 The Sisters: a grandiose failure
- 6 Lord Jim: a Romantic tragedy of honour
- 7 The Mirror of the Sea
- 8 A Personal Record
- 9 Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, or the melodrama of reality
- 10 Conrad, Russia and Dostoevsky
- 11 Conrad and Rousseau: concepts of man and society
- 12 Conrad and the idea of honour
- 13 Joseph Conrad: a European writer
- 14 Joseph Conrad after a century
- 15 Joseph Conrad in his historical perspective
- 16 Fidelity and art: Joseph Conrad's cultural heritage and literary programme
- Notes
- Index
4 - Joseph Conrad and Tadeusz Bobrowski
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Note on the texts
- List of abbreviations
- 1 Introduction, or confession of a mastodon
- 2 Conrad's Polish background, or from biography to a study of culture
- 3 Joseph Conrad's parents
- 4 Joseph Conrad and Tadeusz Bobrowski
- 5 The Sisters: a grandiose failure
- 6 Lord Jim: a Romantic tragedy of honour
- 7 The Mirror of the Sea
- 8 A Personal Record
- 9 Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, or the melodrama of reality
- 10 Conrad, Russia and Dostoevsky
- 11 Conrad and Rousseau: concepts of man and society
- 12 Conrad and the idea of honour
- 13 Joseph Conrad: a European writer
- 14 Joseph Conrad after a century
- 15 Joseph Conrad in his historical perspective
- 16 Fidelity and art: Joseph Conrad's cultural heritage and literary programme
- Notes
- Index
Summary
I cannot write about Tadeusz Bobrowski, my Uncle, guardian and benefactor, without emotion. Even now, after ten years, I still feel his loss. He was a man of great character and unusual qualities of mind. Although he did not understand my desire to join the mercantile marine, on principle, he never objected to it. I saw him four times during the thirty [!] years of my wanderings (from 1874–1893) but even so I attribute to his devotion, care, and influence, whatever good qualities I may possess.
So wrote Conrad in 1903 to Kazimierz Waliszewski. He paid homage to his uncle and guardian not only in his private letters. He dedicated his first book, Almayer's Folly, ‘To the memory of T.B.’; and in A Personal Record wrote: ‘[My uncle] had been for a quarter of a century the wisest, the firmest, the most indulgent of guardians, extending over me a paternal care and affection, a moral support which I seemed to feel always near me in the most distant parts of the earth.’
Even if Conrad were less effusive in his statements about Bobrowski, the latter would have to attract the attention of Conrad's biographers and critics for purely factual reasons. For over twenty years, most of Conrad's money came from Bobrowski's purse, and during all these years Bobrowski was also Conrad's main link with his home country and his faithful (if grumbling) adviser. Bobrowski's influence on his nephew is undeniable.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Conrad in PerspectiveEssays on Art and Fidelity, pp. 44 - 67Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997