Apollo Korzeniowski and Eva Bobrowska finally got married on May 10, 1856. The only child of the couple was Józef Theodor Konrad Nalecz Korzeniowski, who was born on December 3rd, 1857 in Berdyczew and who was to use the pen-name Joseph Conrad later. 1857: This was the year in which the first public libraries opened in England and Germany and the year Flaubert published his 'Madame Bovary'. If one searches for the town of Berdyczew in Poland today, one will not find it. The town belongs to the Ukraine and is located approximately 150 kilometers west of Kiew. Now it is spelled 'Berdychiv'. A poem from Apollo - written for the birth of his son - clearly tells us about the patriotic spirit of Apollo, who could not offer a real homeland to his son:

'Baby son, tell yourself

You are without land, without love,

Without country, without people,

While Poland - your Mother is in her grave.'

Conrad later described his father very affectionate, but also somehow critical. In his autobiographical book 'A Personal Record' he writes:

The Russians themselves called them "rebellions," which, from their point of view, was the exact truth. Amongst the men concerned in the preliminaries of the 1863 movement my father was no more revolutionary than the others, in the sense of working for the subversion of any social or political scheme of existence. He was simply a patriot in the sense of a man who believing in the spirituality of a national existence could not bear to see that spirit enslaved.

and in a letter he wrote:

A man of great sensibilities; of exalted and dreamy temperament; with a terrible gift of irony and of gloomy disposition; withal of strong religious feeling degenerating after the loss of his wife into mysticism touched with despair.

It looks like Conrad had recognized - at least later - his father's dreaming spirit, who was not always able to prepare for reality. His guardian Tadeusz Bobrowski, the older brother of his mother, with his pragmatic and disciplined way of living, seemed to be more prepared for 'the real life'. Conrad was aware of this contradiction between the tempers of his father and his uncle. He knew it would make sense 'to have both feet on the ground', but escaping into dreams was the blood of his father, which he could not deny, as well as the caring attention from his mother.