To
John Galsworthy
Author’s Note
“NOSTROMO” is the most anxiously meditated2 of the longer novels which belong to the period following upon the publication of the “Typhoon” volume of short stories.
I don’t mean to say that I became then conscious of any impending3 change in my mentality4 and in my attitude towards the tasks of my writing life. And perhaps there was never any change, except in that mysterious, extraneous5 thing which has nothing to do with the theories of art; a subtle change in the nature of the inspiration; a phenomenon for which I can not in any way be held responsible. What, however, did cause me some concern was that after finishing the last story of the “Typhoon” volume it seemed somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write about.
This so strangely negative but disturbing mood lasted some little time; and then, as with many of my longer stories, the first hint for “Nostromo” came to me in the shape of a vagrant6 anecdote7 completely destitute8 of valuable details.
As a matter of fact in 1875 or ‘6, when very young, in the West Indies or rather in the Gulf9 of Mexico, for my contacts with land were short, few, and fleeting10, I heard the story of some man who was supposed to have stolen single-handed a whole lighter11-full of silver, somewhere on the Tierra Firme seaboard during the troubles of a revolution.
On the face of it this was something of a feat12. But I heard no details, and having no particular interest in crime qua crime I was not likely to keep that one in my mind. And I forgot it till twenty-six or seven years afterwards I came upon the very thing in a shabby volume picked up outside a second-hand13 book-shop. It was the life story of an American seaman14 written by himself with the assistance of a journalist. In the course of his wanderings that American sailor worked for some months on board a schooner15, the master and owner of which was the thief of whom I had heard in my very young days. I have no doubt of that because there could hardly have been two exploits of that peculiar16 kind in the same part of the world and both connected with a South American revolution.
The fellow had actually managed to steal a lighter with silver, and this, it seems, only because he was implicitly17 trusted by his employers, who must have been singularly poor judges of character. In the sailor’s story he is represented as an unmitigated rascal18, a small cheat, stupidly ferocious19, morose20, of mean appearance, and altogether unworthy of the greatness this opportunity had thrust upon him. What was interesting was that he would boast of it openly.
He used to say: “People think I make a lot of money in this schooner of mine. But that is nothing. I don’t care for that. Now and then I go away quietly and lift a bar of silver. I must get rich slowly — you understand.”
There was also another curious point about the man. Once in the course of some quarrel the sailor threatened him: “What’s to prevent me reporting ashore21 what you have told me about that silver?”
The cynical22 ruffian was not alarmed in the least. He actually laughed. “You fool, if you dare talk like that on shore about me you will get a knife stuck in your back. Every man, woman, and child in that port is my friend. And who’s to prove the lighter wasn’t sunk? I didn’t show you where the silver is hidden. Did I? So you know nothing. And suppose I lied? Eh?”
Ultimately the sailor, disgusted with the sordid23 meanness of that impenitent24 thief, deserted25 from the schooner. The whole episode takes about three pages of his autobiography26. Nothing to speak of; but as I looked them over, the curious confirmation27 of the few casual words heard in my early youth evoked28 the memories of that distant time when everything was so fresh, so surprising, so venturesome, so interesting; bits of strange coasts under the stars, shadows of hills in the sunshine, men’s passions in the dusk, gossip half-forgotten, faces grown dim. . . . Perhaps, perhaps, there still was in the world something to write about. Yet I did not see anything at first in the mere29 story. A rascal steals a large parcel of a valuable commodity — so people say. It’s either true or untrue; and in any case it has no value in itself. To invent a circumstantial account of the robbery did not appeal to me, because my talents not running that way I did not think that the game was worth the candle. It was only when it dawned upon me that the purloiner30 of the treasure need not necessarily be a confirmed rogue31, that he could be even a man of character, an actor and possibly a victim in the changing scenes of a revolution, it was only then that I had the first vision of a twilight32 country which was to become the province of Sulaco, with its high shadowy Sierra and its misty33 Campo for mute witnesses of events flowing from the passions of men short-sighted in good and evil.
Such are in very truth the obscure origins of “Nostromo”— the book. From that moment, I suppose, it had to be. Yet even then I hesitated, as if warned by the instinct of self-preservation from venturing on a distant and toilsome journey into a land full of intrigues35 and revolutions. But it had to be done.
It took the best part of the years 1903-4 to do; with many intervals36 of renewed hesitation37, lest I should lose myself in the ever-enlarging vistas38 opening before me as I progressed deeper in my knowledge of the country. Often, also, when I had thought myself to a standstill over the tangled-up affairs of the Republic, I would, figuratively speaking, pack my bag, rush away from Sulaco for a change of air and write a few pages of the “Mirror of the Sea.” But generally, as I’ve said before, my sojourn39 on the Continent of Latin America, famed for its hospitality, lasted for about two years. On my return I found (speaking somewhat in the style of Captain Gulliver) my family all well, my wife heartily40 glad to learn that the fuss was all over, and our small boy considerably41 grown during my absence.
My principal authority for the history of Costaguana is, of course, my venerated42 friend, the late Don Jose Avellanos, Minister to the Courts of England and Spain, etc., etc., in his impartial43 and eloquent44 “History of Fifty Years of Misrule.” That work was never published — the reader will discover why — and I am in fact the only person in the world possessed45 of its contents. I have mastered them in not a few hours of earnest meditation46, and I hope that my accuracy will be trusted. In justice to myself, and to allay47 the fears of prospective48 readers, I beg to point out that the few historical allusions49 are never dragged in for the sake of parading my unique erudition, but that each of them is closely related to actuality; either throwing a light on the nature of current events or affecting directly the fortunes of the people of whom I speak.
As to their own histories I have tried to set them down, Aristocracy and People, men and women, Latin and Anglo-Saxon, bandit and politician, with as cool a hand as was possible in the heat and clash of my own conflicting emotions. And after all this is also the story of their conflicts. It is for the reader to say how far they are deserving of interest in their actions and in the secret purposes of their hearts revealed in the bitter necessities of the time. I confess that, for me, that time is the time of firm friendships and unforgotten hospitalities. And in my gratitude50 I must mention here Mrs. Gould, “the first lady of Sulaco,” whom we may safely leave to the secret devotion of Dr. Monygham, and Charles Gould, the Idealist-creator of Material Interests whom we must leave to his Mine — from which there is no escape in this world.
About Nostromo, the second of the two racially and socially contrasted men, both captured by the silver of the San Tome Mine, I feel bound to say something more.
I did not hesitate to make that central figure an Italian. First of all the thing is perfectly51 credible52: Italians were swarming53 into the Occidental Province at the time, as anybody who will read further can see; and secondly54, there was no one who could stand so well by the side of Giorgio Viola the Garibaldino, the Idealist of the old, humanitarian55 revolutions. For myself I needed there a Man of the People as free as possible from his class-conventions and all settled modes of thinking. This is not a side snarl56 at conventions. My reasons were not moral but artistic57. Had he been an Anglo-Saxon he would have tried to get into local politics. But Nostromo does not aspire58 to be a leader in a personal game. He does not want to raise himself above the mass. He is content to feel himself a power — within the People.
But mainly Nostromo is what he is because I received the inspiration for him in my early days from a Mediterranean59 sailor. Those who have read certain pages of mine will see at once what I mean when I say that Dominic, the padrone of the Tremolino, might under given circumstances have been a Nostromo. At any rate Dominic would have understood the younger man perfectly — if scornfully. He and I were engaged together in a rather absurd adventure, but the absurdity60 does not matter. It is a real satisfaction to think that in my very young days there must, after all, have been something in me worthy1 to command that man’s half-bitter fidelity61, his half-ironic devotion. Many of Nostromo’s speeches I have heard first in Dominic’s voice. His hand on the tiller and his fearless eyes roaming the horizon from within the monkish62 hood63 shadowing his face, he would utter the usual exordium of his remorseless wisdom: “Vous autres gentilhommes!” in a caustic64 tone that hangs on my ear yet. Like Nostromo! “You hombres finos!” Very much like Nostromo. But Dominic the Corsican nursed a certain pride of ancestry65 from which my Nostromo is free; for Nostromo’s lineage had to be more ancient still. He is a man with the weight of countless66 generations behind him and no parentage to boast of. . . . Like the People.
In his firm grip on the earth he inherits, in his improvidence67 and generosity68, in his lavishness69 with his gifts, in his manly70 vanity, in the obscure sense of his greatness and in his faithful devotion with something despairing as well as desperate in its impulses, he is a Man of the People, their very own unenvious force, disdaining71 to lead but ruling from within. Years afterwards, grown older as the famous Captain Fidanza, with a stake in the country, going about his many affairs followed by respectful glances in the modernized72 streets of Sulaco, calling on the widow of the cargador, attending the Lodge73, listening in unmoved silence to anarchist74 speeches at the meeting, the enigmatical patron of the new revolutionary agitation75, the trusted, the wealthy comrade Fidanza with the knowledge of his moral ruin locked up in his breast, he remains76 essentially77 a Man of the People. In his mingled78 love and scorn of life and in the bewildered conviction of having been betrayed, of dying betrayed he hardly knows by what or by whom, he is still of the People, their undoubted Great Man — with a private history of his own.
One more figure of those stirring times I would like to mention: and that is Antonia Avellanos — the “beautiful Antonia.” Whether she is a possible variation of Latin-American girlhood I wouldn’t dare to affirm. But, for me, she is. Always a little in the background by the side of her father (my venerated friend) I hope she has yet relief enough to make intelligible79 what I am going to say. Of all the people who had seen with me the birth of the Occidental Republic, she is the only one who has kept in my memory the aspect of continued life. Antonia the Aristocrat80 and Nostromo the Man of the People are the artisans of the New Era, the true creators of the New State; he by his legendary81 and daring feat, she, like a woman, simply by the force of what she is: the only being capable of inspiring a sincere passion in the heart of a trifler.
If anything could induce me to revisit Sulaco (I should hate to see all these changes) it would be Antonia. And the true reason for that — why not be frank about it? — the true reason is that I have modelled her on my first love. How we, a band of tallish schoolboys, the chums of her two brothers, how we used to look up to that girl just out of the schoolroom herself, as the standard-bearer of a faith to which we all were born but which she alone knew how to hold aloft with an unflinching hope! She had perhaps more glow and less serenity82 in her soul than Antonia, but she was an uncompromising Puritan of patriotism83 with no taint84 of the slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her scathing85 criticism of my levities86 — very much like poor Decoud — or stand the brunt of her austere87, unanswerable invective88. She did not quite understand — but never mind. That afternoon when I came in, a shrinking yet defiant89 sinner, to say the final good-bye I received a hand-squeeze that made my heart leap and saw a tear that took my breath away. She was softened90 at the last as though she had suddenly perceived (we were such children still!) that I was really going away for good, going very far away — even as far as Sulaco, lying unknown, hidden from our eyes in the darkness of the Placid91 Gulf.
That’s why I long sometimes for another glimpse of the “beautiful Antonia” (or can it be the Other?) moving in the dimness of the great cathedral, saying a short prayer at the tomb of the first and last Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco, standing92 absorbed in filial devotion before the monument of Don Jose Avellanos, and, with a lingering, tender, faithful glance at the medallion-memorial to Martin Decoud, going out serenely93 into the sunshine of the Plaza94 with her upright carriage and her white head; a relic95 of the past disregarded by men awaiting impatiently the Dawns of other New Eras, the coming of more Revolutions.
But this is the idlest of dreams; for I did understand perfectly well at the time that the moment the breath left the body of the Magnificent Capataz, the Man of the People, freed at last from the toils34 of love and wealth, there was nothing more for me to do in Sulaco.
J. C.
October, 1917.
October, 1917.
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1
worthy
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| adj.(of)值得的，配得上的；有价值的 | |
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meditated
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| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
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impending
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| a.imminent, about to come or happen | |
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mentality
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| n.心理，思想，脑力 | |
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extraneous
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| adj.体外的；外来的；外部的 | |
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vagrant
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| n.流浪者，游民；adj.流浪的，漂泊不定的 | |
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anecdote
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| n.轶事，趣闻，短故事 | |
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destitute
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| adj.缺乏的；穷困的 | |
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gulf
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| n.海湾；深渊，鸿沟；分歧，隔阂 | |
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fleeting
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| adj.短暂的，飞逝的 | |
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lighter
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| n.打火机，点火器；驳船；v.用驳船运送；light的比较级 | |
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feat
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| n.功绩；武艺，技艺；adj.灵巧的，漂亮的，合适的 | |
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13
second-hand
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| adj.用过的，旧的，二手的 | |
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seaman
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| n.海员，水手，水兵 | |
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schooner
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| n.纵帆船 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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implicitly
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| adv. 含蓄地, 暗中地, 毫不保留地 | |
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rascal
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| n.流氓；不诚实的人 | |
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ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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morose
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| adj.脾气坏的，不高兴的 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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cynical
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| adj.(对人性或动机)怀疑的，不信世道向善的 | |
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sordid
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| adj.肮脏的，不干净的，卑鄙的，暗淡的 | |
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impenitent
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| adj.不悔悟的，顽固的 | |
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deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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confirmation
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| n.证实，确认，批准 | |
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evoked
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| [医]诱发的 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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purloiner
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| [法] 小偷，窃盗者 | |
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rogue
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| n.流氓；v.游手好闲 | |
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twilight
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| n.暮光，黄昏；暮年，晚期，衰落时期 | |
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misty
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| adj.雾蒙蒙的，有雾的 | |
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toils
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| 网 | |
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intrigues
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| n.密谋策划( intrigue的名词复数 )；神秘气氛；引人入胜的复杂情节v.搞阴谋诡计( intrigue的第三人称单数 )；激起…的好奇心 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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hesitation
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| n.犹豫，踌躇 | |
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vistas
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| 长条形景色( vista的名词复数 )； 回顾； 展望； （未来可能发生的）一系列情景 | |
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sojourn
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| v./n.旅居，寄居；逗留 | |
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heartily
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| adv.衷心地，诚恳地，十分，很 | |
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considerably
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| adv.极大地；相当大地；在很大程度上 | |
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venerated
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| 敬重（某人或某事物），崇敬( venerate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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impartial
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| adj.(in,to)公正的，无偏见的 | |
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eloquent
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| adj.雄辩的，口才流利的；明白显示出的 | |
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45
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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meditation
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| n.熟虑，（尤指宗教的）默想，沉思，（pl.）冥想录 | |
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47
allay
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| v.消除，减轻(恐惧、怀疑等) | |
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48
prospective
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| adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的 | |
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49
allusions
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| 暗指，间接提到( allusion的名词复数 ) | |
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50
gratitude
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| adj.感激，感谢 | |
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51
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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52
credible
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| adj.可信任的，可靠的 | |
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53
swarming
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| 密集( swarm的现在分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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54
secondly
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| adv.第二，其次 | |
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55
humanitarian
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| n.人道主义者，博爱者，基督凡人论者 | |
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56
snarl
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| v.吼叫，怒骂，纠缠，混乱；n.混乱，缠结，咆哮 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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58
aspire
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| vi.(to，after)渴望，追求，有志于 | |
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59
Mediterranean
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| adj.地中海的；地中海沿岸的 | |
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60
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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61
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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monkish
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| adj.僧侣的，修道士的，禁欲的 | |
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hood
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| n.头巾，兜帽，覆盖；v.罩上，以头巾覆盖 | |
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caustic
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| adj.刻薄的，腐蚀性的 | |
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ancestry
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| n.祖先，家世 | |
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countless
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| adj.无数的，多得不计其数的 | |
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improvidence
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| n.目光短浅 | |
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68
generosity
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| n.大度，慷慨，慷慨的行为 | |
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lavishness
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| n.浪费，过度 | |
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manly
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| adj.有男子气概的；adv.男子般地，果断地 | |
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disdaining
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| 鄙视( disdain的现在分词 )； 不屑于做，不愿意做 | |
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modernized
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| 使现代化，使适应现代需要( modernize的过去式和过去分词 )； 现代化，使用现代方法 | |
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73
lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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anarchist
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| n.无政府主义者 | |
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75
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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76
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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mingled
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| 混合，混入( mingle的过去式和过去分词 )； 混进，与…交往[联系] | |
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79
intelligible
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| adj.可理解的，明白易懂的，清楚的 | |
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80
aristocrat
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| n.贵族，有贵族气派的人，上层人物 | |
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81
legendary
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| adj.传奇（中）的，闻名遐迩的；n.传奇（文学） | |
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82
serenity
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| n.宁静，沉着，晴朗 | |
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83
patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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84
taint
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| n.污点；感染；腐坏；v.使感染；污染 | |
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85
scathing
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| adj.（言词、文章）严厉的，尖刻的；不留情的adv.严厉地，尖刻地v.伤害，损害（尤指使之枯萎）( scathe的现在分词) | |
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86
levities
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| n.欠考虑( levity的名词复数 )；不慎重；轻率；轻浮 | |
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87
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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88
invective
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| n.痛骂，恶意抨击 | |
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89
defiant
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| adj.无礼的，挑战的 | |
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90
softened
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| （使）变软( soften的过去式和过去分词 )； 缓解打击； 缓和； 安慰 | |
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91
placid
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| adj.安静的，平和的 | |
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92
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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93
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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94
plaza
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| n.广场，市场 | |
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95
relic
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| n.神圣的遗物，遗迹，纪念物 | |
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