Conrad i Chesterton
Conrad and Chesterton

Towards Personalism

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents the ideological connections between Joseph Conrad’s and Gilbert Keith Chesterton’s output and between social-political activities of the two figures. Regardless of a manifest worldview discrepancy (Conrad’s agnosticism versus Chesterton’s Christian fideism), a strong spiritual link can be found between the writers. Their works are marked by interest in the man—deliberate and morally responsible creative subject, thus personalistic anthropological assumptions, while in journalism they shared devotion to modernly understood Latin tradition seen as a fundament of European civilisation. The two writers were distinguished by antiutopian sensitivity and sophisticated criticism of technocratic ideas of social reforms developed in the Fabian Society. As regards political issues, they supported the Poles’ aspirations to independence. Critically speaking about pan-Germanic militarism and about the Zionistic politics led upon alliance contracted with Germany at the expense of Poland, they forcibly wrote about destructive impact of Bolshevism and communism.

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