It’s been a bit difficult falling in with the rhythms of the novel – at least a hundred or so pages in – but I think I’ve begun to realize why. Of course, Conrad’s irony and the jumbled sense of chronology lend themselves to all sorts of fruitful (and sympathetic) confusion on the readers’ part. But I think there’s a larger tension between the sheer level of detail, the building up of a world brick-by brick, and what I can’t help laughing at, the farcical tone approaching Waugh’s Black Mischief with only a more levelling pessimism. For the former, my edition notes a passage from Conrad’s A Personal Record (1912) that might prove useful: writing Nostromo, Conrad relates how he had
like the prophet of old, ‘wrestled with the Lord’ for my creation, for the headlands of the coast, for the darkness of the Placid Gulf, the light on the snows, the clouds in the sky, and for the breath of life that had to be blown into the shapes of men and women, of Latin and Saxon, of Jew and Gentile … The whole world of Costaguana … men, women, headlands, houses, mountains, town, campo (there was not a single brick, stone, or grain of sand of its soil I had not placed in position with my own hands), all the history, geography, politics, finance ….
Now there’s undoubtedly a remarkable level of detail and what might be called landscaping, all belonging in part to what’s been called a fictional ‘surplus’ seeming somehow truer to life. (Curiously enough, I personally find that the more Conrad delineates the picture, the harder it is for me to visualize it but perhaps that’s a paradox of my own tastes and faults.) But it seems like an awful expenditure of talent and energy for throw-aways such as the account of the bandit Hernandez and his adversary, the Fiscal of Tonoro “kicked all over the body and rowelled with sharp spurs about the neck and face because of the great sensitiveness of his military colleague” (Everyman edition, pg. 101). I’m enjoying the book too much to call it overwritten; yet the dark humor of the story (e.g. the hackneyed sort of Italian interlude à la James) and Conrad’s style (e.g. the repetition of “letters to Don José Avellanos, his maternal uncle”, pg. 103) nearly undercut all these grand descriptions of mountains and even his psychological hair-pin turns. How do you reconcile these two currents of reality and farce, the former of the world and the latter banana republics? As a simple matter of reading, I feel like little spurts of speed separate what amount to set-pieces of a sort, however masterful. It’s a bit disorientating, really; in part, even sententiousness would make more sense. (See “The material apparatus of perfected civilisation ….”, pg. 90).
On something of a related note, Donald, I’d ask your opinion on the purposes of elaborate, ‘geographical’ descriptions like those of the novel’s opening. This kind of landscaping always seems to reflect some symbolist significance (like I mentioned in my first post) or lay the physical stage for later events. In the Goulds’ study, for instance, all those firearms are laid about on shelves just begging to be used. (Shades of Hedda Gabler!) But if you’re keeping the description broad enough – say covering a mountain range – and the reader feels there can’t be much more at stake than invoking sheer physical beauty, is that enough? Of course it is, I believe, but still I have a niggling feeling that I’m either missing something or this book could be about a hundred pages shorter. Until it takes off for me, I’m beginning to fear Nostromo might call for even cursory rereadings chapter-by-chapter. This is certainly a difficult world to enter.
I agree with everything about the difficulty of entering this world! But I'm way behind you in reading it, so I'll just go through some of the points you raise, bit by bit.
ReplyDeleteThe problem for me is the diffusion of attention. I blame this problem, in part, on reading too much contemporary fiction where the incidental and the trivial tend to be jettisoned in favor of focused portrayals of the matter at hand. So some of the problem is finding myself in the midst of what may be Conrad's most expansive novel. So, on the one hand: the problem with the expansive novel, in and of itself, as something to keep my attention on (fitful at present); on the other: Conrad's handling of that genre -- and I have to admit I'm not sure if this really is his forte, and that leads to the 'set-pieces' and vacillating tone you speak of. He seems best, to me, when he bears down on his characters and gives us something of their natures. The backstory explications sometimes seem not wholly integrated with the forward exposition.
A favorite moment occurs in Chapter 8, about pg. 102 in mine, where JC walks through "the drawing-room of the Casa Gould" to give us each of the major male characters involved with mine, so as to sum up much of characterization. At such moments, the "logic" of the novel comes into relief for me, but for much of the time I find myself processing words simply for glimpses of incidents that don't quite "add up." There is a garrulousness to the telling that would be better suited to a character/narrator.
About the opening landscape descriptions: I found them brilliant in the way I associate with JC from HofD: "On the rare clear mornings another shadow is cast upon the sweep of the gulf"; "The wasting edge of the cloud-bank always strives for, but seldom wins, the middle of the gulf"; "Sky, land, and sea disappear together out of the world when the Placido--as the saying is--goes to sleep under the black poncho."
This sort of thing is immensely entertaining, as well as suggestive. I like the mix of "it is said" hearsay and the kind of twists that come from the narrator's own mind's eye. But when we get to the more "factual" aspects of Costaguana itself, this tone starts to disappear in something a bit more belabored, though I don't doubt the competence of this narrator to relate what we need to know; I just have the feeling he wants to tell us much more than we might care to know, and the motives of this "comprehensiveness" aren't clear, to me.
Working backwards to you, Donald! Thanks for this note. I agree with you on the drawing room scenes: I like it when a physical setting reflects both character and plot, to be rather crude about it. That is, the cavalry sword belongs to Gould's great-uncle (?) and seems a bit out of place in the drawing room - all of which suggests something about the fellow. But when you start pushing nature itself as a metaphor for one character, rather than all say (let's think of certain strains of Romanticism here), it just seems overblown. I'm not sure Nostromo himself can bear that sort of pressure up, even at the end. And maybe I'm anal but the fact that he's not even from the place originally would bother me on that count.
ReplyDeleteTo finish up, what was your reading of the statue of Mary in the Gould household? I'd maybe argue it's a reflection of the social tensions penetrating into the sanctum, if anything; religion doesn't seem to be at play here even as a counterbalance to Decoud's secularism.
I'm not sure what you mean about "nature as a metaphor for one character"; you seem to be suggesting that the landscape is used for Nostromo and that he's not equal to it. But I haven't noticed that happening. Nostromo is not representative of the place; the place, as presented in the opening, creates an environment in which Nostromo's character will be revealed, let's say. But I'm not reading this novel as at all a character study of Nostromo per se, so I don't attach the landscape descriptions to him particularly. Unless perhaps you have in mind some other particular use of landscape to evoke Nostromo?
ReplyDeleteAbout the statue of Mary: I only remember one occurrence, at the conclusion of II.5 after Hirsh "the Israelite" has been sent packing by Gould and the engineer, and Gould makes a reference to Holroyd's comment about "trust in God." The statue seemed to me simply an ironic touch, bringing in the notion of lip service to faith, but also, perhaps, implying that Latin America, with its cults of the Virgin, has an investment in a different sense of God than the Englishmen do. Also, it could be linked to Corbelan and his defence of the Church; if there's a place where the statue is set in more direct contrast to Decoud, tell me where.