The Secret History of Costaguana

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Jeremy Hawthorn, Sexuality and the Erotic in the Fiction of Joseph Conrad, London: Continuum, 2007.

Such irony, an essential trait of Conrad, runs strongly through Nostromo. Not only do the characters engage in actions whose importance and results they cannot comprehend, their very names signal a gulf between perception and reality. Most notable, of course, is the title character himself. Nostromo, as he is called by his supposed masters, is anything but “one of ours,” and his real name, Fidenza, or “Faithful,” becomes a cruel joke when he steals the silver he has been entrusted to preserve. Charles Gould is a native Costaguanero of English descent who owns the silver-mining concession in Sulaco. He is tired of the political instability in Costaguana and its concomitant corruption, and puts his weight behind the Ribierist project, which he believes will finally bring stability to the country after years of misrule and tyranny by self-serving dictators. Instead, the silver mine and the wealth it has generated become a bone for the local warlords to fight over, plunging Costaguana into a new round of chaos. Among others, the revolutionary Montero invades Sulaco; Señor Gould, adamant that his silver should not become spoil for his enemies, entrusts it to Nostromo, the trusted ‘capataz de los cargadores’ (head longshoreman). Indeed, Nostromo is a remarkable achievement. It has been long recognized that it is, by far, a vivid and, above all, a most credible literary re-creation of a newly-formed South American nation—the Republic of Costaguana. Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, Polish: [ˈjuzɛf tɛˈɔdɔr ˈkɔnrat kɔʐɛˈɲɔfskʲi] ⓘ; 3 December 1857– 3 August 1924) was a Polish-British novelist and short story writer. [2] [note 1] He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language; [5] though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he came to be regarded a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. [note 2] He wrote novels and stories, many in nautical settings, that depict crises of human individuality in the midst of what he saw as an indifferent, inscrutable and amoral world. [note 3] Bloom, Harold, ed. Joseph Conrad’s “Nostromo.” New York: Chelsea House, 1987. Seven essays discuss irony, Conrad’s philosophy of history, and different views of the hero.

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Some critics have suggested that when Conrad left Poland, he wanted to break once and for all with his Polish past. [45] In refutation of this, Najder quotes from Conrad's 14 August 1883 letter to family friend Stefan Buszczyński, written nine years after Conrad had left Poland: Perhaps there’s a post in this for you?! ‘How to read ‘the greats’ for a post-50 Shades generation’! Reply F. Scott Fitzgerald on Authorship. Ed. Matthew J. Brucolli with Judith S. Baughman. Columbia: U South Carolina P, 1996. 87.

Jean-Aubry, Georges. Joseph Conrad: Life and Letters. 2 vols. London: Heinemann, 1927. Includes Conrad’s notes on the sources for characters and episodes in Nostromo. Continues Najder: "[H]e can never be accused of outright plagiarism. Even when lifting sentences and scenes, Conrad changed their character, inserted them within novel structures. He did not imitate, but (as Hervouet says) 'continued' his masters. He was right in saying: 'I don't resemble anybody.' Ian Watt put it succinctly: 'In a sense, Conrad is the least derivative of writers; he wrote very little that could possibly be mistaken for the work of anyone else.' [173] Conrad's acquaintance George Bernard Shaw says it well: "[A] man can no more be completely original [...] than a tree can grow out of air." [174]It knits us in and it knits us out. It has knitted time space, pain, death, corruption, despair and all the illusions—and nothing matters. [182] Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. There’s also a great deal of geographic uncertainty. As reports come in from one end of the country to the other, and the loyalty of one province and its leaders is mentioned in relation to another – as well as its strategic position on the seaboard – readers might begin to wish for a map to conceptualise events.