Anti-Heroics and Epic Failures: The Case of Nostromo

Abstract

CONRAD MADE several voyages to French Antilles when scarcely out of his teens, claiming to have glimpsed South America and to have been briefly in Venezuela.1 Only in year before he died did he set foot in United States. Although his relationships with Old World were somewhat tangential, as a true European he maintained a wary distance from New. Not remaining exclusively Polish, or French, or British, he used his writings to create a pan-European perspective towards interconnections of Europe's empires. Arguably first internationalist novelist, Conrad saw old European colonialism as dying. But far from feeling his present to be dawn of a world order, his diagnosis of Zeitgeist - before, during, and after Great War - corresponded roughly with description of crowd gathered at Schomberg's in Surabaya, as the age in which we are camped like bewildered travellers in a garish, unrestful hotel (Victory 3).Conrad made one early literary journey to the Americas in form of his masterpiece Nostromo. The epic scope and detached narrative perspective of this least personal of his novels (to that date) involved considerable self-distancing. According to Conrad's Author's Note of 1917, Nostromo, set in an imaginary Latin American republic, was assembled out of a few personal memories from his earlier Marseilles period (1874-78) and much reading.2 The novel marginalizes British imperial power at same time that Conrad himself was taking up permanent residence in heartland of middle-class England. Set in what was, strictly speaking, a post-colonial Latin America, Nostromo describes forms of imperialism based on multinational capitalist interests and projects a vision of empire beyond demise of European colonialism. Well before Old World colonialism had run its course, it descries on its furthest horizon dim outlines of a future global economic system dominated by American capital.The social and political realities of Costaguana are approached in terms that go beyond dualism of colonizer/colonized nexus. In 1823, President James Monroe had told Congress of need to remain aloof from European colonial wars but also insisted that Europe stay out of Americas. This had long-term effect of leaving Latin America to United States to manage. Nostromo catches that history on very cusp of change: moment of American intervention in Panama/Columbia, which coincided with construction of Panama Canal. That event opened way to further new worlds. At time of Nostromo's Costaguana, with canal not yet built and a United States controlled Canal Zone yet to be established (both were just around corner), Conrad situates his backwater province on Pacific side of South America, thus doubly removed for a moment longer from mainstream.3Early in novel Charles Gould comments: There's a good deal of eloquence of one sort or another produced in both Americas (83). The critical edge of this remark can be felt if one recalls Conrad's endemic mistrust of eloquence, whether that found in Mr Kurtz's infamous humanitarian report or rhetoric of billionaire businessman Holroyd:Now, what is Costaguana? It is bottomless pit of 10 per cent, loans and other fool investments. European capital had been flung into it with both hands for years. Not ours, though. We in this country know just about enough to keep indoors when it rains. We can sit and watch. Of course, some day we shall step in. We are bound to. But there's no hurry. Time itself has got to wait on greatest country in whole of God's Universe. We shall be giving 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 North Pole. And then we shall have leisure to take in hand outlying islands and continents of earth. …