Nostromo by Joseph Conrad

Nostromo by Joseph Conrad is a true classic, one of the greatest English language novels ever written.

Not far into the tale, I came across these lines about a silver mine owned by one Charles Gould, a proper Englishman by ancestry and disposition, a gent who lives with his wife in a mansion inherited from his father located in Conrad's fictional country of Costaguana in the northwest quadrant of South America, a country sharing much geography with real-life Colombia:

"Mrs Gould knew the history of the San Tomé mine. Worked in the early days mostly by means of lashes on the backs of slaves, its yield had been paid for in its own weight of human bones. Whole tribes of Indians had perished in the exploitation; and then the mine was abandoned, since with the primitive method it had ceased to make a profitable return, no matter how many corpses were thrown into its maw."

Vintage Joseph Conrad: powerful language, powerful images, powerful statement on culture and society.

Here's a quote from author/critic Eduardo Galeano: "If the material bases of a country belong to foreigners and its society is organized along concentration-camp lines, what national culture can flourish and breathe freely, shared by all?"

I have the Wordsworth Classics edition with a scholarly introduction by Robert Hamson. The professor emphasizes Nostromo is one of the few novels written in English during the early 20th century "that adequately registers the dynamics of a society; one of the earliest English novels to engage with the rhetoric and practices of American imperialism that have come to dominate the twentieth century; and one of the few English novels that deals, with any sophistication, with the world of multi-national corporate enterprise that we all inhabit."

Later in his essay, Prof. Hamson goes on to say, "The silver of the mine is the novel's symbol for 'material interests' - the Dickensian phrase that Conrad uses for what we now call 'market forces'. Conrad explores their operation in relation to imperialism: 'material interests' represent not the obvious extermination of local people and exploitation of local resources that characterized the first wave of South American colonization, but the more subtle exploitation of people and resources through North American and European penetration and domination of the economy."

So, based on "the more subtle exploitation of people" coupled with the frequent characterization of all colors and races of the indigenous population as barbarous, it appears I have the answer to the question Eduardo Galeano poses as it relates to native cultures in the novel - none! The natives are there only to provide the needed hard labor until they drop dead.

I highlight the cultural and economic conditions underpinning the tale's unfolding drama to underscore any high adventure, any gain in prestige and wealth enjoyed by Charles Gould, Nostromo and others in the novel will be achieved on the dark copper backs of a dying native population.

If only Costaguana shared the same air and atmosphere as the island in Michal Ajvaz's novel, The Golden Age: upon landing, preparing to launch their attack, each wave of Conquistadors immediately undergo a complete softening of the brain: their mindset replicates the islanders - thoughts of conquest vanish, replaced by a desire to do nothing more than listen to the hidden music of wind and water from dawn to dusk, to luxuriate in warm feelings of the present moment.

Nope, no Michal Ajvaz supernatural elements in Joseph Conrad's ferociously realistic novel. But the great Polish author does pepper his adventure yarn with humor. For example, strolling a corridor in their mansion, Charles Gould speaks to his dear wife, refined, cultured, English-born Doña Emilia, about their amassing stupendous wealth and his command of Costaguana, both thanks to the reopening of his silver mine:

"They had stopped near the cage. The parrot, catching the sounds of a word belonging to his vocabulary, was moved to interfere. Parrots are very human.
"Viva Costaguana!" he shrieked, with intense self-assertion, and, instantly ruffling up his feathers, assumed an air of puffed-up somnolence behind the glittering wires."

Sounds like Charles Gould's Costaguana parrot could be the ancestor of the parrot mentioned in Juan Gabriel Vásquez's The Sound of Things Falling, a famous parrot kept in Pablo Escobar's zoo that could recite the entire lineup of the Colombian national soccer team.

Back on material interests driving action in Nostromo. Here's an excerpt from an exchange between Charles Gould and Holroyd, an American baron of industry reminding one of John D. Rockefeller or J. P. Morgan. Holroyd agrees to provide vast sums of money needed to reopen Gould's silver mine. Holroyd speaks with pride of his country, the United States: "Time itself has got to wait on the greatest country in the whole of God's Universe. We shall be giving the word for everything: industry, trade, law, journalism, art, politics, and religion, from Cape Horn clear over to Smith's Sound, and beyond, too, if anything worth taking hold of turns up at the North Pole. And then we shall have the leisure to take in hand the outlying islands and continents of the earth. We shall run the world's business whether the world likes it or not."

Keep in mind Joseph Conrad wrote these words in 1904, as if his could see with crystalline sight and insight into the future, even the distant future stretching all the way to our present day. Astonishing.

As reviewer, I'm well to stress economic and social context but I also need to emphasize Joseph Conrad writes Nostromo at the height of his literary powers and creates a vivid Costaguana filled with memorable, fully-developed characters. An entire essay could be composed on at least a dozen of their number but I'll conclude with a brief portrayal of three:

Antonia Avellanos
Twenty-six year old daughter of one of the most prominent families in Costaguana, Antonia is a highly educated, poised, polished lady, the envy of all the woman who have had the opportunity to set eyes on her. And what man could gaze on her ravishing beauty without falling deeply in love with Antonia?



Martin Decoud
Refined intellectual and journalist, Decoud is native to Costaguana but received his education in Paris. "Martin Decoud, the dilettante in life, imagined himself to derive an artistic pleasure from watching the picturesque extreme of wrongheadedness into which an honest, almost sacred, conviction may drive a man. 'It is like madness. It must be because it's self-destructive,' Decoud had said to himself often. It seemed to him that every conviction, as soon as it became effective, turned into that form of dementia the gods send upon those they wish to destroy. But he enjoyed the bitter flavour of that example with the zest of a connoisseur in the art of his choice."

Now why would a man like Decord return from Paris and remain in the hinterland of Costaguana, a land he scorns? Answer: he's fallen madly in love with Antonia.



Giovanni Battista Fidanza aka Nostromo
"This Nostromo, sir, a man absolutely above reproach, became the terror of all the thieves in the town." So proclaims Captain Mitchell, influential representative of the shipping company for Costaguana. And this from Martin Decoud, "You have seen him pass by after his labours on his famous horse to dazzle the girls in some ballroom with an earthen floor. He is a fortunate fellow! His work is an exercise of personal powers; his leisure is spent in receiving the marks of extraordinary adulation. And he likes it too. Can anybody be more fortunate? To be feared and admired."

As readers, we have an opportunity to behold Nostromo exercising his extraordinary, dazzling powers when he's charged with transporting silver on a large sailboat at night and encounters multiple dangers. To echo Captain Mitchell, "A man in a thousand!"



If you were to read only one English language classic in your lifetime, you could do no better than Joseph Conrad's Nostromo.


Joseph Conrad, 1857-1924