Pushkin, Mickiewicz, and “The Horse of Stone” in Nostromo

Abstract

AT THE BEGINNING of Part I, Chapter 6 of Nostromo, reader is struck by description of statue of Charles IV at entrance to Alameda ... known ... as Horse of Stone (48). Keith Carabine has suggested that statue recalls Manuel Tolsa's famous bronze statue of 1803 of Carlos IV of Spain (1748-1819) in Mexico City (1984: 579).1 Conrad's knowledge of that monument, however, is somewhat less likely than his acquaintance with famous equestrian statue of Peter Great in St Petersburg, which folk of country there call Bronze Horseman. Conrad, who alludes to that statue in his 1905 essay Autocracy and War,2 is likely to have known it through Pushkin's posthumously published poem Bronze Horseman (1837) or Adam Mickiewicz's Forefather's Eve (1832) as well as through popular or monthly press, statue being widely reproduced in photographs.The narrator describes the weather-stained effigy of mounted king, with its vague suggestion of a (49), a gesture thought to be enigmatic and leading to creation of its own lore and legend. The imposing figure takes on a symbolic temporal solidity amidst moving masses: a kingly cavalier reining in his steed on pedestal above sleeping [people] ... with his marble arm raised (48). Later, in Part III, Chapter IV, narrator describes the equestrian statue of King dazzlingly ... towering enormous and motionless above surges of crowd, with its eternal gesture of saluting (385).The Bronze Horseman in St Petersburg, like Conrad's fictional statue, originally stood in central square of a pre-revolutionary city, surrounded by seats of civil and religious power. Catherine Great commissioned monument, unveiling E. M. Falconet's masterwork to rapt crowds in August 1782. It clearly symbolized might of imperial Russia and continuity of t sardo m, and a legend arose that no enemy would take city whilst it stood in place. As in Nostromo, where Horse of Stone has pride of place in Sulaco's main plaza, square in which Bronze Horseman stands was a place of military exercise and public merry-making.Given that Pushkin's poem may figure in background to Nostromo, it seems necessary to consider statue's specific meaning. While Bronze Horseman was historically seen as protective and leading Russia to West while resisting Sweden and Finland, Pushkin's interpretation saw Peter Great in contemporary terms as representing Nicholas I; Russians, in other words, were being trampled under autocracy's hooves. Pushkin's treatment would probably have had signal appeal to Conrad, and subject of oppression and revolt has an allegorical power applicable to partitioned Poland. Additionally, subject of personal cost to revolutionaries of failure and guilt is part of Conrad's family background.Pushkin's poem treats flooding of Neva, which engulfed St Petersburg and base of statue itself in 1824. However, Pushkin also had friends among ill-fated Decembrists of 1825 who opposed tsar. A revolutionary flood, they were beaten back, and it can be said that Bronze Horseman was twice engulfed in a flood. Pushkin's horseman remains victor over both. Pushkin was fascinated by American democracy and may in poem cast contest between river and city in 1824 as a battle between forces of democracy and autocracy in Russia in 1825. Tsarist authorities, who banned poem during Pushkin's lifetime, found it anti-autocratic, and Russian censorship is a large issue here with Conrad remembering experience of post-partition Poland.In Nostromo, too, Sulaco's main square is eventually a site of revolutionary pilgrimage, site of key battle of revolution, a battle won through blood: Plaza. I call it magnificent. Twice area of Trafalgar Square. …