The Secret History of Costaguana

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Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Conrad was keenly conscious of tragedy in the world and in his works. In 1898, at the start of his writing career, he had written to his Scottish writer-politician friend Cunninghame Graham: "What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it. [A]s soon as you know of your slavery the pain, the anger, the strife—the tragedy begins." But in 1922, near the end of his life and career, when another Scottish friend, Richard Curle, sent Conrad proofs of two articles he had written about Conrad, the latter objected to being characterised as a gloomy and tragic writer. "That reputation... has deprived me of innumerable readers... I absolutely object to being called a tragedian." [163]

He helps the town get rid of thieves and protects the Violas (i.e., the family he lives with), and he's instrumental in helping to get Don Vincente out of Costaguana before the rebel forces can seize him. His name sounds a tad occult, but he's a good dude with a sound head on his shoulders. Tensions that originated in his childhood in Poland and increased in his adulthood abroad contributed to Conrad's greatest literary achievements. [43] Zdzisław Najder, himself an emigrant from Poland, observes: Conrad was born 150 years ago and his birth is being commemorated throughout the region by a growing number of Latin American intellectuals with essays, articles and even with a bestselling novel ( Historia Secreta de Costaguana: A Secret History of Costaguana by Colombian young writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez). They all concur in declaring Nostromo, a novel set in the second half of the 1th century, as a key bequeathed to us by a British writer of Polish aristocratic origins, to a best understanding of Latin America’s present.

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In December 1867, Apollo took his son to the Austrian-held part of Poland, which for two years had been enjoying considerable internal freedom and a degree of self-government. After sojourns in Lwów and several smaller localities, on 20 February 1869 they moved to Kraków (until 1596 the capital of Poland), likewise in Austrian Poland. A few months later, on 23 May 1869, Apollo Korzeniowski died, leaving Conrad orphaned at the age of eleven. [34] Like Conrad's mother, Apollo had been gravely ill with tuberculosis. [35] Tadeusz Bobrowski, Conrad's maternal uncle, mentor, and benefactor In this world—as I have known it—we are made to suffer without the shadow of a reason, of a cause or of guilt.... T]he easy massacre of an unsuspecting enemy evoked no feelings but those of gladness, pride, and admiration. Not perhaps that primitive men were more faithless than their descendants of to-day, but that they went straighter to their aim, and were more artless in their recognition of success as the only standard of morality. (327) Originally published as a two-volume serial in T.P.’s Weekly, Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard is the 1904 epic adventure novel written by Polish-British author Joseph Conrad. Set in the fictional South American country of Costaguana during a violent revolution, the story concerns an Italian longshoreman named Nostromo, who becomes entrusted to safeguard a priceless silver mine owned by an Englishman named Charles Gould, aka The King of Sulaco. Nostromo accepts the challenge as means of heightening his profile, but when he fails to reap the rich benefits he was promised, he becomes resentfully outraged and greedily corrupt. In 1998, Nostromo was ranked 47th on the list of the 100 Greatest English-language Novels of the 20th Century by the Modern Library. It is hailed as one of Conrad’s finest pieces of long-fiction. F. Scott Fitzgerald once noted of the book, “I’d have rather written Nostromo than any other novel.”

Muriel Bradbrook, Joseph Conrad: Poland’s English Genius, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941

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Edward Garnett, a young publisher's reader and literary critic who would play one of the chief supporting roles in Conrad's literary career, had—like Unwin's first reader of Almayer's Folly, Wilfrid Hugh Chesson—been impressed by the manuscript, but Garnett had been "uncertain whether the English was good enough for publication." Garnett had shown the novel to his wife, Constance Garnett, later a translator of Russian literature. She had thought Conrad's foreignness a positive merit. [65] Despite their obtuseness towards the sentiment of the populace (they learn “with stupefaction” that their unprepossessing dictator has been deposed), the Europeans represent imperialism at its finest. Yet—in spite money, probity, and good fortune—they only save the Occidental Province by violently severing it from the rest of Costaguana and erecting a new ineffectual government. Worse, it is augured that “ I have never [found] in any man's book or... talk anything... to stand up... against my deep-seated sense of fatality governing this man-inhabited world.... The only remedy for Chinamen and for the rest of us is [a] change of hearts, but looking at the history of the last 2000 years there is not much reason to expect [it], even if man has taken to flying—a great "uplift" no doubt but no great change.... [113] At Cape Town, where the Torrens remained from 17 to 19 May, Galsworthy left the ship to look at the local mines. Sanderson continued his voyage and seems to have been the first to develop closer ties with Conrad. [59] Later that year, Conrad would visit his relatives in Poland and Ukraine once again. [49] [60] Writer [ edit ] Conrad, 1916 A pivotal episode in the novel takes place at night, when Nostromo, together with an escaping French journalist Decoud, sets out at sea to save the silver – not realising he has a stowaway on board. His boat is in collision with a ship bringing the rebels, and he is forced to scuttle his boat and bury the silver on an island.

T. E. Lawrence, one of many writers whom Conrad befriended, offered some perceptive observations about Conrad's writing:

Harold Bloom (ed), Joseph Conrad (Bloom’s Modern Critical Views, New Yoprk: Chelsea House Publishers, 2010 Quoted in Introduction by Martin Seymour-Smith. Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard. Ed. Martin Seymour-Smith. New York: Penguin, 1990. 7. Conrad, like other artists, faced constraints arising from the need to propitiate his audience and confirm their own favourable self-regard. This may account for his describing the admirable crew of the Judea in his 1898 story " Youth" as " Liverpool hard cases", whereas the crew of the Judea's actual 1882 prototype, the Palestine, had included not a single Liverpudlian, and half the crew had been non-Britons; [175] and for Conrad's transforming the real-life 1880 criminally negligent British captain J. L. Clark, of the SS Jeddah, in his 1900 novel Lord Jim, into the captain of the fictitious Patna—"a sort of renegade New South Wales German" so monstrous in physical appearance as to suggest "a trained baby elephant". [176] Similarly, in his letters Conrad—during most of his literary career, struggling for sheer financial survival—often adjusted his views to the predilections of his correspondents. [177]

Living away from one's natural environment—family, friends, social group, language—even if it results from a conscious decision, usually gives rise to... internal tensions, because it tends to make people less sure of themselves, more vulnerable, less certain of their... position and... value... The Polish szlachta and... intelligentsia were social strata in which reputation... was felt... very important... for a feeling of self-worth. Men strove... to find confirmation of their... self-regard... in the eyes of others... Such a psychological heritage forms both a spur to ambition and a source of constant stress, especially if [one has been inculcated with] the idea of [one]'s public duty... [44]Unlike many authors who make it a point not to discuss work in progress, Conrad often did discuss his current work and even showed it to select friends and fellow authors, such as Edward Garnett, and sometimes modified it in the light of their critiques and suggestions. [169] In late 1877, Conrad's maritime career was interrupted by the refusal of the Russian consul to provide documents needed for him to continue his service. As a result, Conrad fell into debt and, in March 1878, he attempted suicide. He survived, and received further financial aid from his uncle, allowing him to resume his normal life. [33] After nearly four years in France and on French ships, Conrad joined the British merchant marine, enlisting in April 1878 (he had most likely started learning English shortly before). [33]