Warren, Robert Penn. Introduction. Conrad, Joseph. Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard. New York: Random House, 1951. x, xxxix. 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. Poland had been divided among Prussia, Austria and Russia in 1795. The Korzeniowski family had played a significant role in Polish attempts to regain independence. Conrad's paternal grandfather Teodor had served under Prince Józef Poniatowski during Napoleon's Russian campaign and had formed his own cavalry squadron during the November 1830 Uprising of Poland-Lithuania against the Russian Empire. [25] Conrad's fiercely patriotic father Apollo belonged to the "Red" political faction, whose goal was to re-establish the pre-partition boundaries of Poland and which also advocated land reform and the abolition of serfdom. Conrad's subsequent refusal to follow in Apollo's footsteps, and his choice of exile over resistance, were a source of lifelong guilt for Conrad. [26] [note 8] Nowy Świat 47, Warsaw, where three-year-old Conrad lived with his parents in 1861. 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.... 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]

Writing near the peak of the British Empire, Conrad drew on the national experiences of his native Poland—during nearly all his life, parceled out among three occupying empires [17] [note 6]—and on his own experiences in the French and British merchant navies, to create short stories and novels that reflect aspects of a European-dominated world—including imperialism and colonialism—and that profoundly explore the human psyche. [19] Postcolonial analysis of Conrad's work has stimulated substantial debate; in 1975, author Chinua Achebe published an article denouncing Heart of Darkness as racist and dehumanising, whereas other scholars, including Adam Hochschild and Peter Edgerly Firchow, have rebutted Achebe's view.In his twenties, Conrad resolved to kill himself with a gun – but miraculously he survived. Joseph Conrad – born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski in Russian-occupied Poland in 1857 – was a bit of a gambler in his youth. In 1878, up to his ears in gambling debts, the young Conrad attempted suicide by shooting himself in the chest. The bullet missed his heart, and he lived for the next 46 years, long enough to become one of the most important writers of his generation, with novels such as Heart of Darkness, Lord Jim, Nostromo, Victory, and The Secret Agent earning him the respect of critics and fellow writers (of which more below). Almayer's Folly, together with its successor, An Outcast of the Islands (1896), laid the foundation for Conrad's reputation as a romantic teller of exotic tales—a misunderstanding of his purpose that was to frustrate him for the rest of his career. [note 14]

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.In a letter of 20 December 1897 to Cunninghame Graham, Conrad metaphorically described the universe as a huge machine: In March 1878, at the end of his Marseilles period, 20-year-old Conrad attempted suicide, by shooting himself in the chest with a revolver. [81] According to his uncle, who was summoned by a friend, Conrad had fallen into debt. Bobrowski described his subsequent "study" of his nephew in an extensive letter to Stefan Buszczyński, his own ideological opponent and a friend of Conrad's late father Apollo. [note 18] To what extent the suicide attempt had been made in earnest likely will never be known, but it is suggestive of a situational depression. [82] Romance and marriage [ edit ]

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 “ Literature, alas, may be the only salvation for the policy elite, because in the guise of fiction a writer can more easily tell the truth. And in literature's vast canon there is no book of which I am aware that both defines and dissects the problems with the world just beyond our own as well as Joseph Conrad's Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard, a 1904 novel about Westerners and indigenous inhabitants of an imaginary South American country, Costaguana. Nostromo is neither overly descriptive and moodily vague like Conrad's Heart of Darkness, nor is its ending entirely unhappy. For a civil society-in-the-making does emerge in Costaguana, but it is midwived by a ruined cynic of a doctor who has given up on humanity, a deeply skeptical journalist, and two bandit gangs, not by the idealist whose actions had helped lead to the country's earlier destruction. Conrad never denies the possibility of progress in any society, but he is ironic enough to know that "The ways of human progress are inscrutable", and that is why "action is consolatory" and "the friend of flattering illusions." Charles Gould, the failed idealist of the novel, who believes absolutely in economic development, "had no ironic eye. He was not amused at the absurdities that prevail in this world." During the war that ensues, Nostromo is asked to help the Goulds get one of their silver shipments out of Sulaco before rebel forces arrive in town, so they can't get their grubby rebel paws on it. As part of the same mission, he is supposed to get Martin Decoud out of town. Martin, a journalist who is really critical of Montero and his people, would have been in mortal danger once Montero got to town. The plan is to meet up with a passing boat and put Martin and the silver on there. An October 1923 visitor to Oswalds, Conrad's home at the time—Cyril Clemens, a cousin of Mark Twain—quoted Conrad as saying: "In everything I have written there is always one invariable intention, and that is to capture the reader's attention." [125]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:

Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. The character’s real name is Gian’ Battista Fidanza. “Nostromo,” the name given him by the other Europeans, is Italian “boatswain” (he was originally a Genoese sailor), but there is an apparently inadvertent pun on “nostro-uomo”—“our man.” 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. In an August 1901 letter to the editor of The New York Times Saturday Book Review, Conrad wrote: "Egoism, which is the moving force of the world, and altruism, which is its morality, these two contradictory instincts, of which one is so plain and the other so mysterious, cannot serve us unless in the incomprehensible alliance of their irreconcilable antagonism." [116] [note 25] Death [ edit ] Conrad's grave at Canterbury Cemetery, near Harbledown, Kent T. E. Lawrence, one of many writers whom Conrad befriended, offered some perceptive observations about Conrad's writing:Sojourn in Poland [ edit ] In 1914 Conrad and family stayed at the Zakopane Willa Konstantynówka, operated by his cousin Aniela Zagórska, mother of his future Polish translator of the same name. [91] Aniela Zagórska, Conrad's future Polish translator, with Conrad, 1914 Conrad's nieces Aniela Zagórska ( left), Karola Zagórska; Conrad