The Secret History of Costaguana

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Gould Concession. Silver mine located about ten miles from the town, that has been run by the Gould family for three generations. Not only has the mine been a curse to Charles Gould’s father, it is the cause of much bloodshed, bribery, and political maneuvering. However “pure” its silver, and however efficiently the mine is run, Conrad uses this notion to question whether material wealth can ever be a civilizing force of itself, or only ever a corrupting, sapping one. The novel’s central dialogue over the nature of imperialism focuses on the mine. Conrad is relentless in his willingness to confront every unpleasant truth. He will not even admire a beautiful edifice: "The heavy stonework of bridges and churches left by the conquerors", he writes, "proclaimed the disregard of human labour, the tribute-labour of vanished nations." It is in the totality of his realism that the author--a Pole who knew Russian tyranny as a boy and later spent fifteen tough years in the merchant marine--achieves fairness. (In one sentence he demolishes North and South: "There is always something childish in the rapacity of the passionate, clear-minded, Southern races, wanting in the misty idealism of the Northerners, who at the slightest encouragement dream of nothing less than the conquest of the earth.") And it is in his sympathy for individuals, rather than for groups, that Conrad achieves humanity. For Nostromo, like any great story, is about individuals and their desperate need for love. In a 23 October 1922 letter to mathematician-philosopher Bertrand Russell, in response to the latter's book, The Problem of China, which advocated socialist reforms and an oligarchy of sages who would reshape Chinese society, Conrad explained his own distrust of political panaceas:

Mr. Deas, a distinguished British historian is also a well respected specialist in Colombian history who in 1964 helped to found the Latin American Center (LAC) at St. Antony’s College, Oxford. He thinks that Nostromo, first published in 1904, is still one of the few novels ever written that has successfully dealt with all the ambiguities of late 19th century’s imperial politics, possibly the most knotty subject matter for a work of imagination to broach.

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." Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, Polish: [ˈjuzɛf tɛˈɔdɔr ˈkɔnrat kɔʐɛˈɲɔfskʲi] ⓘ; 3 December 1857– 3 August 1924) was a Polish-British novelist and short story writer. [2] [note 1] He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the English language; [5] though he did not speak English fluently until his twenties, he came to be regarded a master prose stylist who brought a non-English sensibility into English literature. [note 2] He wrote novels and stories, many in nautical settings, that depict crises of human individuality in the midst of what he saw as an indifferent, inscrutable and amoral world. [note 3] Perhaps there’s a post in this for you?! ‘How to read ‘the greats’ for a post-50 Shades generation’! Reply

For the next fifteen years, he served under the Red Ensign. He worked on a variety of ships as crew member (steward, apprentice, able seaman) and then as third, second and first mate, until eventually achieving captain's rank. During the 19 years from the time that Conrad had left Kraków, in October 1874, until he signed off the Adowa, in January 1894, he had worked in ships, including long periods in port, for 10 years and almost 8 months. He had spent just over 8 years at sea—9 months of it as a passenger. [48] His sole captaincy took place in 1888–89, when he commanded the barque Otago from Sydney to Mauritius. [49]

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) Dr. Monygham, an expatriate English doctor in Costaguana, understands all of this and is determined to help Gould--not because he likes Gould, but because he admires Gould's wife, Emily, who, he realizes, intuits the reality of the country to which her husband appears deaf and dumb. Dr. Monygham is the dark cynic of Nostromo, whose very morality is thought to be in question. Dr. Monygham has met "the impossible face to face", through the eyes of dying patients whom he cannot save. He sees through the seductive lie that all situations are clean slates open to broad possibilities. He is wise because he has had experience: the experience of undergoing torture under a previous Costaguanan regime. Torture, Conrad explains, was like a "naturalization" procedure, since it allowed Dr. Monygham to understand life like a true Costaguanan. Indeed, he has become the psychological "slave of a ghost": the ghost of the inquisitorial priest who abused him. (The author alludes to a bright future for torture in the twenty-first century, because as man's passions grow more complex, helped by technological development, his ability to inflict pain on his fellow man will grow infinitely more refined--just look at the twentieth century! Torture may be but an offshoot of progress.) Though Dr. Monygham himself might be beyond redemption, as another character in the story concludes, "He saved us all from the deadly incubus of [the war-lord] Sotillo, where a more particular man might have failed." 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.

I use several narratological terms drawn from Gérard Genette’s Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method. “Metadiegetic narrative” refers to a story within a story, in this particular case the retelling of events by one of the characters of Nostromo.Conrad is considered a literary impressionist by some and an early modernist by others, [note 4] though his works also contain elements of 19th-century realism. [10] His narrative style and anti-heroic characters, as in Lord Jim, for example, [11] have influenced numerous authors. Many dramatic films have been adapted from and inspired by his works. Numerous writers and critics have commented that his fictional works, written largely in the first two decades of the 20th century, seem to have anticipated later world events. [note 5] 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: Charles Gould is a native Costaguanero of English descent who owns the silver-mining concession in Sulaco. He is tired of the political instability in Costaguana and its concomitant corruption, and puts his weight behind the Ribierist project, which he believes will finally bring stability to the country after years of misrule and tyranny by self-serving dictators. Instead, the silver mine and the wealth it has generated become a bone for the local warlords to fight over, plunging Costaguana into a new round of chaos. Among others, the revolutionary Montero invades Sulaco; Señor Gould, adamant that his silver should not become spoil for his enemies, entrusts it to Nostromo, the trusted ‘capataz de los cargadores’ (head longshoreman). During a brief call in India in 1885–86, 28-year-old Conrad sent five letters to Joseph Spiridion, [note 11] a Pole eight years his senior whom he had befriended at Cardiff in June 1885, just before sailing for Singapore in the clipper ship Tilkhurst. These letters are Conrad's first preserved texts in English. His English is generally correct but stiff to the point of artificiality; many fragments suggest that his thoughts ran along the lines of Polish syntax and phraseology.

Edward Said, Joseph Conrad and the Fiction of Autobiography, Cambridge Mass: Harvard University Press, 1966 As we know from the historical record, Panama gained its independence from Colombia in 1903 and José was there but he was not happy about it. He left immediately for London where he met Conrad, told him his story and the story of Colombia and was devastated that Conrad did use the story he had told him but created his own novel. Does it all work? The answer is more or less but we are left unsure as to whether Vásquez wants to tell the Conrad-Altamirano story or the history of Colombia/Panama. While not, of course, mutually exclusive, we do sometimes get the sense that Vásquez is not always sure where his focus is. Nevertheless, it is a fascinating account of one man’s perspective of Latin American turmoil. Publishing history I always remember what you said when I was leaving [Kraków]: "Remember"—you said—"wherever you may sail, you are sailing towards Poland!" Despite all Conrad’s stylistic peculiarities (and even some lapses in grammar) this is a magnificent novel which amply repays the undoubtedly demanding efforts required to read it. But that is true of many modern classics – from Mrs Dalloway to Ulysses and Remembrance of Things Past. Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.The story is set in the Occidental Province of Costaguana, a nation in Central America. Isolated behind an almost impassable mountain range and situated on a broad but windless bay, the Golfo Placido, Sulaco, the capital city of the province, has for centuries remained outside of events. Sulaco’s only importance comes from the riches of its nearby silver mine, known as the Gould Concession because it is operated by an English family of that name. The Goulds, who have lived in Costaguana for three generations, are permitted to work the mine so long as they pay sufficient bribes to whatever government happens to control Costaguana. Charles Gould, who has brought the mine to its greatest productivity, has grown tired of this endless extortion and resolves to throw his great wealth behind a revolution that will finally bring a responsible government to power in Costaguana. 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).