heart of darkness
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Joseph Conrad & heart of darkness
One of the ironies of the twentieth-century British literature is that many of its greatest writers were not conventionally British. In the case of Joseph Conrad, arguably the first modern British writer, the irony is even more extreme, because Conrad was born a Pole. As a matter of fact, Conrad was an only child born into nobility as Jozej Teodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski near Berdychev (now in Ukraine), apart of Russian Poland at the time, on December the 3rd 1857. During that time the Poles were fighting the Russian ruler for independence. Both of his parents were strongly involved in the effort; his father (Apollo Nalecz Korzeniowski), a writer, poet and translator, was arrested for revolutionary activity when Conrad was only four years old. As a result, the entire family was exiled to the remote Russian city of Vologda. On the way, Conrad caught pneumonia; fortunately he recovered, although not fully. He remained a sickly child and suffered from ailing health for the rest of his life. As far as his mother (Evelina Bobrowski), she suffered from poor living conditions and eventually died of tuberculosis; Conrad was only seven years old at that time. His father's spirit was broken so he consequently suffered from ill health...