Jeremy Hawthorn, Joseph Conrad: Language and Fictional Self-Consciousness, London: Edward Arnold, 1979 At Cape Town, where the Torrens remained from 17 to 19 May, Galsworthy left the ship to look at the local mines. Sanderson continued his voyage and seems to have been the first to develop closer ties with Conrad. [59] Later that year, Conrad would visit his relatives in Poland and Ukraine once again. [49] [60] Writer [ edit ] Conrad, 1916

It is the story of a silver mine in the Occidental Province of “the imaginary (but true)” [7] Latin American country of Costaguana, and the crisis by which the province passes from the chaos of post-colonial misrule to the unquiet prosperity of Anglo-American imperial capitalism. Though the time-frame stretches from colonization and a Bolívarian War of Independence to a future of cosmopolitan modernization and possible Marxist revolution, the major action occurs over the space of less than a month, during which the Europeans’ puppet dictator is overthrown by a popular military leader and the province braces for invasion.

Zagórska introduced Conrad to Polish writers, intellectuals, and artists who had also taken refuge in Zakopane, including novelist Stefan Żeromski and Tadeusz Nalepiński, a writer friend of anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski. Conrad aroused interest among the Poles as a famous writer and an exotic compatriot from abroad. He charmed new acquaintances, especially women. However, Marie Curie's physician sister, Bronisława Dłuska, wife of fellow physician and eminent socialist activist Kazimierz Dłuski, openly berated Conrad for having used his great talent for purposes other than bettering the future of his native land. [93] [note 19] [note 20] Daphna Erdinast-Vulcan, Joseph Conrad and the Modern Temper, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991. Faith is a myth and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of to-morrow....

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: Carabine, Keith, Owen Knowles, and Wiesaw Krajka, eds. Contexts for Conrad. Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 1993. Helpful for understanding Nostromo as part of nineteenth century colonialism, capitalism, and frontier exploration. The piece focusing on the novel shows the relationship of Nostromo to nineteenth century criticism of capitalism. 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. Except for several vacations in France and Italy, a 1914 vacation in his native Poland, and a 1923 visit to the United States, Conrad lived the rest of his life in England. Throughout almost his entire life Conrad was an outsider and felt himself to be one. An outsider in exile; an outsider during his visits to his family in the Ukraine; an outsider—because of his experiences and bereavement—in [Kraków] and Lwów; an outsider in Marseilles; an outsider, nationally and culturally, on British ships; an outsider as an English writer.... Conrad called himself (to Graham) a "bloody foreigner." At the same time... [h]e regarded "the national spirit" as the only truly permanent and reliable element of communal life. [171]

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In its engagement with politics and imperialism, Nostromo is a logical bridge between Conrad’s earlier and later work. It is set (like Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim) within the realms of overseas empire, but Costaguana is post-colonial and the key players are, by culture if not always by birth, English, French, Italian, and Spanish, so that the situation that plays out resembles in some ways the European turmoil of The Secret Agent and Under Western Eyes. As in earlier work, the plot is told largely from the point of view of the powerful, though Conrad’s deepening engagement with the revolutionary mindset is betokened by Nostromo himself, who is transformed from an ignorant servant of the capitalists into an Marxist: he becomes a self-aware, if not particularly intelligent, “Man of the People.”