Nostromo

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Nostromo is a complex political novel published in 1904 by the English-language writer Joseph Conrad .

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The novel is set in the fictional Republic of Costaguana . It stands for a cliché of South America, in whose history civil wars and dictatorships are constantly changing. The fictional character Decoud says of this republic “with a quote attributed to Simón Bolívar ” (Wolter) that it “cannot be governed. Those who worked for their liberation plowed the sea ”.

As a model for the city of Sulaco , which plays a special role in the novel as a port city, Conrad used the port city of Cartagena in Colombia, which he got to know briefly on his first voyages as a ship's mate on French ships to the Caribbean and South America.

Conrad obtained the material for the creation of the scenes in the novel mainly from personal advice and the books of his friend Cunninghame Graham , who had participated in various revolutions in South America.

In this political novel, Conrad creates a very complex outlook on the history of this fictional republic. The western province of Sulaco has a very profitable silver mine on the Golfo Placido. This becomes the object of material interests at home and abroad. A separatist revolution separates Sulaco from other parts of Costa Rica. The aim of the revolution was also to avoid a coup by a populist-led insurgency. The population of the republic is divided into layers. The lower class is made up of peasant mestizos and natives . From this class both the miners and the soldiers for the respective armies are recruited by force. The aristocratic "Blancos" from Spain belong to the upper class . They see themselves as the "long-established residents" of the country. A third layer are the immigrants, who are viewed as foreigners. These include mainly British and Italians. The development of the port, the railway and, last but not least, the silver mine are dependent on them. After the failure of the European revolutions of 1848 , Costaguana quickly became an important country of exile and a diaspora location, especially for the Italians . The group of exiled Italians is symbolized in the novel by the family of the old Giorgio Viola, a follower of Garibaldi .

The title character, the sailor Nostromo, is an Italian stranded in Sulaco. The Violas take Nostromo in like an adopted son. He is the foreman of the showmen at the port and is called "Capataz de Cargadores". He is portrayed as “a proud splendor and a violent man; a man of the people who rules over his cargadores in the service of his masters, the noble Blancos and rich Europeans in Sulaco ”(Wolter). Nostromo works for "his boss" Captain Mitchell. Mitchell heads the local office of an English shipping company, the OSN Company. OSN is the operator of the port of Sulaco. For Mitchell, Nostromo is "one of those priceless subordinates who are a reasonable cause for boasting to own." Mitchell describes Nostromo as "a kind of universal fact" that he willingly "lends" to allies. Wolter: "The master-servant dialectic of this figure is underlined by Conrad's ironic play on words with her name: Nostromo refers to his earlier occupation in the meaning of ship's mate and is at the same time a corruption of the Italian" Nostro Uomo "that can be traced back to his boss Mitchell (" Our man "), an allusion to his usefulness for the mighty."

Three-part TV series

Filmed in 1996 under the title "Nostromo - The Treasure in the Mountains". Actors and a. Colin Firth . The TV series was implemented shortly after David Lean's death, as the preparations for a movie had already progressed so far.

Literary effect

The names Nostromo and Sulaco were used for two spaceships in the films Alien and Aliens: The Return .

Colombian author Juan Gabriel Vásquez wrote a novel in 2007 entitled The Secret History of Costaguanas , which relates directly to Conrad's Nostromo.

In episode 38 of the radio play The Last Detective , the protagonist Jonas is stranded in the state of Costaguana .

In the Netflix series Colony , members of a resistance group use this book to code their messages.

Bibliographical information

  • Nostromo, a Tale of the Seaboard, (1904)

literature

  • Cedric Watts (1990): Joseph Conrad: Nostromo. London, New York.
  • Udo Wolter (2004): Exile of "material interests". In: jour fixe initiative berlin (ed.): Fluchtlinien des Exils , ISBN 3-89771-431-0

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