A Century of Nostromo

Abstract

It was in 1951 that Robert Penn Warren, leading American writer of the time, in his Introduction to the Modern Library edition of Nostromo proclaimed this novel to be Joseph Conrad's masterwork, the center- piece of his output (viii-xi). And indeed, we can view Nostromo as at Conrad's summa, almost an anthology of his typical narrative tech- niques, his favourite themes and motifs, as well as the epitome of his political concerns. Some weary readers would also add: this is Conrad's difficult work, with its reputation of novel one cannot read unless one has read it before. Well, let's admit that it is not exactly piece of light literature. But undoubtedly Nostromo is Conrad's ambitious and formi- dable artistic endeavour, the only one with truly epic scope and sweep—which is rare distinction by itself. 1 John Galsworthy called it his most sheer piece of creation (qtd. in Keating 138). Among Conrad's novels it is the only one whose action takes place in an imag- ined country. All the others can be located on actual maps: of Borneo, of England, Switzerland, Russia or France. The whole unforgettable topography of Nostromo, from its Golfo Placido sheltered from the ocean by two peninsulas to the snowy peaks of Higuerota, is product of Conrad's imagination. Similarly, the actors who people this exotic stage—a hybrid population made up of the indigenous dark-skinned Indios, of the descendants of Spanish colonizers, and of various immi- grants from Europe, notably the Italians like the eponymous protago- nist of the novel—are all Conrad's creations. This imagined land and its people are, however, firmly rooted in the realities of Latin America. Costaguana represents, in Conrad's own words, a S(outh) Am(eric)an state in general; thence the mixture of customs and expressions 2 —with Venezuela, Mexico, Chile and Ecuador providing the main source materials. Its history and politics, too, are synthetic and representative. Although some critics place the action of the novel in the last decade of the nineteenth century, the exact dating, based on allusions to real