Conrad’s ‘nostromo’: a choice of nightmares | thearticle

A stranger and afraid In a world I never made. E. Housman Several modern writers have noted how Conrad brought his European origins and political experience into _Nostromo: A Tale of the

Seaboard_ (1904).  In a letter to Conrad, Henry James emphasized his Polish background, cosmopolitan insight and years at sea: “no one has _known_ –for intellectual use—the things you know,

and you have, as the artist of the whole matter, authority that no one has approached.”  George Orwell agreed that Conrad brought the European novel into English literature: “I regard Conrad

as one of the best writers of this century. . . . [He had] a sort of grown-upness and political understanding which would have been almost impossible to a native English writer.”  V. S.

Naipaul, Conrad’s leading disciple, stressed his penetrating outlook and dark view of colonialism in Africa and South America: “I found that Conrad—sixty years before, in a time of great

peace—had been everywhere before me.  Not as a man with a cause, but a man offering, as in _Nostromo_, a vision of the world’s half-made societies as places which continuously made and

unmade themselves.”  Scott Fitzgerald praised the silent, brave and impressive character, Nostromo: “He’s always made a haunting and irresistible appeal to me.  So I would rather have

dragged his soul from behind his astounding and inarticulate presence than written any other novel in the world.” Between December 1874 and February 1877 the young Conrad took the three

voyages from Marseilles to the Caribbean coast of South America that would inspire _Nostromo_.  Conrad’s fictional Costaguana (“Bird-shit coast”) is mainly based on Venezuela, with

additional geographic details from the mountains in Chile, and the tropical weather in Panama and Mexico.  But he remained mostly aboard ship, spent only a few days outside Caracas and, he

said, only “a few hours in a few other places on this dreary coast.” In a new edition of _Nostromo _for Cambridge University Press (edited by Roger Osborne, 817 pp, £95), Hugh Epstein writes

in a long and useful Introduction, “The origins of _Nostromo_ can be traced to four aspects of Conrad’s life and times: his early experiences; his immediate situation as a novelist and man

of letters in 1902; what he discovered about South America in his reading; and contemporary political events.”  Conrad was also strongly influenced by his close friend Robert Bontine

Cunninghame Graham, who’d spent many adventurous years in South America and had written several books about that tumultuous continent.  Many scholars have identified the books on travel,

political and military history, and contemporary South American affairs that Conrad used in his novel.  Epstein notes, “As always, Conrad is eclectic and _Nostromo_ extraordinary in its

synthesis: it is as if Conrad had ten books open on his desk at once.” This complex and difficult book had an unclear title that did not help its sales.  Few readers knew that Nostromo, a

contraction of the Italian _Nostro Uomo_, meant “Our Man”.  Like _Lord Jim, _the title of Conrad’s previous novel, Captain Fidanza, the man’s real surname, would have suggested his faithful

character and been more effective.  The geographical location of “the Seaboard” in the subtitle was also unclear. Conrad worked on _Nostromo_, his longest and most ambitious novel, from

December 1902 until August 1904.  In his memoir _A Personal Record _he described how he created the whole world of Costaguana: the mountains, the town and _campo_; the history, geography,

politics and finance; the wealth of the silver-mine owner Charles Gould, the idealism of his wife Emilia, the cynicism of the journalist Martin Decoud, the bitterness of the physically

tortured Dr Monygham, and the pride of Nostromo, captain of the stevedores, whose name “dominated even after death the dark gulf containing his conquests of treasure and love”. Of this

process, Conrad wrote: “It is difficult to characterize the intimacy and the strain of a creative effort in which mind and will and conscience are engaged to the full, hour after hour, day

after day, away from the world, and to the exclusion of all that makes life really lovable and gentle—something for which a material parallel can only be found in the everlasting sombre

stress of the westward winter passage round Cape Horn.” The Introduction to this edition does not mention Ford Madox Ford’s silent contribution.  He’d collaborated on two novels with Conrad,

was a fluent writer and could easily imitate his master’s style.  Ford explained to the collector, who’d bought the manuscript of the novel, that he’d written sixteen manuscript pages of

part II, chapter 5: “Whilst I was living in London and Conrad almost next door and coming in practically every day for meals, he was taken with so violent an attack of gout and nervous

depression that he was quite unable to continue his installments of _Nostromo_” that had been contracted for _T. P.’s Weekly_. “I therefore simply wrote enough from time to time to keep the

presses going—a job that presented no great difficulties to me.” A vivid image in _Nostromo_ captures the vulnerability of the people of Costaguana and the cruelty of their oppressors:

guerrillas with “huge iron spurs fastened to their naked heels.”  All the main characters are corrupted and ruined, some killed, by the quest for silver in the San Tomé mine.  Conrad

establishes the violent spirit of the country, so different from the placidity of the sombre gulf, by relating the anarchy and chaos of its history.  The opening chapter, with its startling

description of the enlightened President Ribiera and his followers fleeing from the savage Monterist revolution, gives potent warning about the fate of progressive governments.  The brutal

torment of the kindly statesman Don José Avellanos and the ghastly torture of Dr Monygham and the hide merchant Hirsch, are testaments to the imbecility of political fanaticism with which

another dictator, Guzman Bento, tyrannized the country.  The history of Costaguana is written in blood and tears.  As the Liberator Simon Bolívar declared, “South America is ungovernable;

those who have served her revolution have ploughed the sea.” _Nostromo_ continued Conrad’s attack on colonialism, which began in _Heart of Darkness,_ and developed the themes of absolute

power, individual responsibility and social justice.  In the novel the country and hero are cut off from civilisation, dominated by greed, exploitation and the quest for wealth.  _Nostromo_

portrays the violent threat of nature, the sense of unreality, the moral darkness, the disintegration of humane values, the choice of nightmares and the redemptive woman, Emilia Gould.

Though a great supporter of the British Empire, whose colonialism he saw as relatively benign, Conrad was strongly opposed to American imperialism.  In the Spanish-American War of 1898,

America won Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.  By treaty in 1903 the “Yankee Conquistadores” gained control of the Panama Canal.  Conrad expressed his anti-imperialistic ideas in the

novel through his hostile portrait of the American financier Holroyd, who puts up the money to start the fatal San Tomé mine. Charles Gould pretends to be altruistic.  Despite the failure

and warning of his father, he believes that colonialism combined with capitalism would solve all the problems of Costaguana.  His ambitions, summarised in his ironic declaration early in the

novel, are twofold and opposed to each other: “What is wanted here is law, good faith, order, security.  Any one can declaim about these things, but I pin my faith to material interests. .

. . Money-making is justified here in the face of lawlessness and disorder.  It’s justified because the security which it demands must be shared with an oppressed people.  A better justice

will come afterwards.  That’s your ray of hope.”  But a “better justice” never comes, and nothing but chaos is ever bound to come.  The security of the mine is dependent upon the political

stability of the country, and history has repeatedly proved that permanent stability is impossible to achieve.  Emilia realises that her husband’s obsession with the wealth pouring out of

the mine has crushed his feelings, and that she’s being robbed of both affection and children. Martin Decoud, a sophisticated journalist recently returned from Paris, articulates the

problems of the country.  He shows that European values cannot survive in the wilds of Costaguana.  He recognises the conflict between  the two worlds but cannot reconcile them: “There is a

curse of futility upon our character: Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, chivalry and materialism, high-sounding sentiments and a supine morality, violent efforts for an idea and a sullen

acquiescence in every form of corruption.”  Decoud’s values are tested in the greatest scene of the novel, when he finds himself threatened by the overwhelming silence and solitude of the

Golfo Placido: “It was a new experience for Decoud, the mysteriousness of the great waters spread out strangely smooth, as if their restlessness had been crushed by the weight of that dense

night. . . . The solitude could almost be felt.  And when the breeze ceased, the blackness seemed to weigh upon Decoud like a stone. . . . Intellectually self-confident, he suffered from

being deprived of the only weapon he could use with effect.  No intelligence could penetrate the darkness of the Placid Gulf.” Overcome by the sense of human weakness as he struggles against

the forces of nature, Decoud shoots himself and uses the silver to sink his body in the gulf.  His death and the missing ingots seal Nostromo to the treasure and make him its slave. 

Conrad’s letter to the critic Edmund Gosse explained his creation of the main character: “Nostromo is a man suffering intensely all the time from an exaggerated _amour propre.  _I present

him at first as complaining that, after he has brought the old American (rich enough to pay for a whole railway) from the mountains, he had not enough money in his pocket to buy himself a

cigar, because his wages were not due till next week.  He is a man with instincts for magnificence.  His prestige with the great populace is the very breath in his nostrils.” Nostromo’s

exploits are legion.  He saves Ribiera from the mob, rescues the Viola family, carries Father Corbelan’s message to the wild Hernandez, brings Holroyd over the mountains, finds a doctor for

the dying Teresa Viola and sails into the Golfo Placido with the silver of the mine.  But all these exploits divorce action from thought.  He is called upon, his reputation demands that he

accept the challenge and he acts—instinctively and without reflection.  One character defines Nostromo with an old Spanish proverb: “A man ought not to be tame.”  In Conrad’s _Victory_

(1915) the savage Ricardo, trying to capture the vulnerable Lena, tells her: “You are not tame.  Same here.” The extraordinary change in Nostromo begins with his possession of the silver,

and is symbolised by his Adamic awakening and rebirth into a new life at the ruined fort.  His physical and mental awareness occur simultaneously, initiate his thoughtful phase and confirm

his belief that he has been betrayed by the _hombres finos._  Deprived of reputation, Nostromo seeks compensation in wealth.  He has always lived amid splendid publicity, but waking up in

solitude makes him feel destitute: “on a revulsion of subjectiveness, exasperated almost to insanity, he beheld all his world without faith and courage.” Dr Monygham’s devastating

pronouncement to Emilia Gould, prompted by his devotion to her and answering her husband’s self-serving exploitation of the mine, expresses the central  tragedy of the novel: the

incompatibility of capitalism and moral values: “There is no peace and no rest in the development of material interests.  They have their law, and their justice.  But it is founded on

expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can only be found in a moral principle.”  _Nostromo_’s political perception, complex structure,

vivid characters and ambitious themes make it Conrad’s greatest novel. In his “Author’s Note” to the novel, Conrad, with a rare touch of humour, remarked: “my sojourn on the continent of

Latin America (famed for its hospitality) lasted for about two years.  On my return I found (speaking somewhat in the style of Captain Gulliver) my family all well, my wife heartily glad to

learn that the fuss was all over, and our small boy considerably grown during my absence.” Speaking of _Nostromo’_s influence, Epstein mentions Jorge Luis Borges’ story “Guayaquil,” named

after a port in Ecuador, that “interleaves history and fiction in a Conradian manner as the narrator recounts his failure to go to a library in Sulaco in order to make a copy of a letter by

Simon Bolívar.”  _Nostromo_ not only influenced Naipaul’s _Guerrillas_, but also his novel _A Bend in the River_, where the characters endure the horrors of Belgian colonialism and Mobutu’s

independent Congo. This edition does not mention the translation of _Nostromo_ into film.  The superb director David Lean once planned to make _Nostromo_ with scripts by Christopher Hampton

and Robert Bolt, and a Columbia Pictures budget of $44 million.  Marlon Brando, who’d played Emilio Zapata, would be the dictator General Montero; Basil Rathbone, Sotillo, the military

commander who joins Montero; Paul Scofield, Dr Monygham; and Isabella Rossellini, Emilia Gould.  But Lean died of throat cancer in April 1991, six weeks before the film was scheduled to

begin.  The television series that was made of _Nostromo_ (1997), an effective 3½-hour adaptation, had the necessary time to dramatise the rich novel.  It also had an excellent cast: Colin

Firth is Charles Gould; Albert Finney, Dr. Monygham; Brian Dennehy, Holroyd; Claudia Cardinale, Teresa Viola, wife of Giorgio, the old Garibaldino.  Shot in Cartagena, Colombia, it has a

vivid setting, an exciting plot and convincing characters. _Jeffrey Meyers has published Joseph Conrad: A Biography (1991), and introductions to editions of The Mirror of the Sea, The Secret

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