Editing Joseph Conrad (section)

===Sojourn in Poland===
[[File:Willa Konstantynówka.JPG|thumb|upright=1.5|In 1914 Conrad and family stayed at the [[Zakopane]] ''Willa Konstantynówka'', operated by his cousin Aniela Zagórska, mother of his future Polish translator of the same name.{{sfnp|Najder|2007|pp=462–63}}]]
[[File:Aniela Zagórska, Karola Zagórska and Joseph Conrad 02.jpg|thumb|upright=1.5| Conrad's nieces [[Aniela Zagórska]] (''left''), Karola Zagórska; Conrad]]
The 1914 vacation with his wife and sons in Poland, at the urging of [[Józef Retinger]], coincided with the outbreak of World War I. On 28 July 1914, the day war broke out between [[Austria-Hungary]] and [[Serbia]], Conrad and the Retingers arrived in [[Kraków]] (then in the Austro-Hungarian Empire), where Conrad visited childhood haunts. 

As the city lay only a few miles from the Russian border, there was a risk of being stranded in a battle zone. With wife Jessie and younger son John ill, Conrad decided to take refuge in the mountain resort town of [[Zakopane]]. They left Kraków on 2 August. A few days after arrival in Zakopane, they moved to the Konstantynówka ''[[pension (lodging)|pension]]'' operated by Conrad's cousin Aniela Zagórska; it had been frequented by celebrities including the statesman [[Józef Piłsudski]] and Conrad's acquaintance, the young concert pianist [[Artur Rubinstein]].{{sfnp|Najder|2007|pp=458–63}}

Zagórska introduced Conrad to Polish writers, intellectuals, and artists who had also taken refuge in Zakopane, including novelist [[Stefan Żeromski]] and Tadeusz Nalepiński, a writer friend of anthropologist [[Bronisław Malinowski]]. Conrad aroused interest among the Poles as a famous writer and an exotic compatriot from abroad. He charmed new acquaintances, especially women. 

However, [[Marie Curie]]'s physician sister, [[Bronisława Dłuska]], wife of fellow physician and eminent socialist activist [[Kazimierz Dłuski]], openly berated Conrad for having used his great talent for purposes other than bettering the future of his native land.{{sfnp|Najder|2007|pp=463–64}}{{NoteTag|Fifteen years earlier, in 1899, Conrad had been greatly upset when the novelist [[Eliza Orzeszkowa]], responding to a misguided article by [[Wincenty Lutosławski]], had expressed views similar to Dłuska's.{{sfnp|Najder|2007|pp=292–95}}}}{{NoteTag|On another occasion, in a 14 February 1901 letter to his namesake Józef Korzeniowski, a librarian at [[Kraków]]'s [[Jagiellonian University]], Conrad had written, partly in reference to some Poles' accusation that he had deserted the Polish cause by writing in English:  "It is widely known that I am a Pole and that Józef Konrad are my [given] names, the latter being used by me as a surname so that foreign mouths should not distort my real surname—a distortion which I cannot stand. It does not seem to me that I have been unfaithful to my country by having proved to the English that a gentleman from the [[Ukraine]] [Conrad had been born in a part of [[Ukraine]] that had belonged to [[Crown of the Kingdom of Poland|Poland]] before [[Second Partition of Poland|1793]]] can be as good a sailor as they, and has something to tell them in their own language."{{sfnp|Najder|2007|pp=311–12}}}}

But thirty-two-year-old [[Aniela Zagórska]] (daughter of the ''pension'' keeper), Conrad's niece who would translate his works into Polish in 1923–39, idolised him, kept him company, and provided him with books. He particularly delighted in the stories and novels of the ten-years-older, recently deceased [[Bolesław Prus]]{{sfnp|Najder|2007|p=463}}{{sfnp|Najder|1984|p=209}} (who also had visited Zakopane<ref>Krystyna Tokarzówna and Stanisław Fita, ''[[Bolesław Prus]], 1847–1912: Kalendarz życia i twórczości'' ([[Bolesław Prus]], 1847–1912: A Calendar of His Life and Work), edited by [[Zygmunt Szweykowski (historian)|Zygmunt Szweykowski]], Warsaw, Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1969, pp. 232, 235, ''et passim''.</ref>), read everything by his fellow victim of Poland's [[January Uprising|1863 Uprising]]—"my beloved Prus"—that he could get his hands on, and pronounced him "better than [[Charles Dickens|Dickens]]"—a favourite English novelist of Conrad's.{{sfnp|Najder|1984|pp=215, 235}}{{NoteTag|Conrad's enthusiasm for Prus contrasted with his low regard for other Polish novelists of the time, including [[Eliza Orzeszkowa]], [[Henryk Sienkiewicz]], and [[Stefan Żeromski]].{{sfnb|Najder|2007|pp=403, 454, 463}}}}

Conrad, who was noted by his Polish acquaintances to still be fluent in his native tongue, participated in their impassioned political discussions. He declared presciently, as [[Józef Piłsudski]] had earlier in 1914 in Paris, that in the war, for Poland to regain independence, Russia must be beaten by the [[Central Powers]] (the Austro-Hungarian and German Empires), and the Central Powers must in turn be beaten by [[French Third Republic|France]] and [[United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland|Britain]].{{sfnp|Najder|2007|p=464}}{{NoteTag|Soon after World War I, Conrad said of Piłsudski: "He was the only great man to emerge on the scene during the war." Conrad added: "In some aspects he is not unlike [[Napoleon]], but as a type of man he is superior. Because Napoleon, his genius apart, was like all other people and Piłsudski is different."{{sfnp|Najder|1984|p=239}}}}

After many travails and vicissitudes, at the beginning of November 1914 Conrad managed to bring his family back to England. On his return, he was determined to work on swaying British opinion in favour of restoring Poland's sovereignty.{{sfnp|Najder|2007|p=464–68}}

Jessie Conrad would later write in her memoirs: "I understood my husband so much better after those months in Poland. So many characteristics that had been strange and unfathomable to me before, took, as it were, their right proportions. I understood that his temperament was that of his countrymen."{{sfnp|Najder|2007|p=466}}