Nostromo | Page 5

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 perfectly
credible: Italians were swarming into the Occidental Province at the time, as anybody
who will read further can see; and secondly, there was no one who could stand so well by
the side of Giorgio Viola the Garibaldino, the Idealist of the old, humanitarian
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 snarl at conventions.
My reasons were not moral but artistic. Had he been an Anglo-Saxon he would have tried
to get into local politics. But Nostromo does not aspire 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 Mediterranean 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 absurdity 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 worthy to command
that man's half-bitter fidelity, 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 monkish hood shadowing his face, he would utter the usual
exordium of his remorseless wisdom: "Vous autres gentilhommes!" in a caustic 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 ancestry from which my Nostromo is
free; for Nostromo's lineage had to be more ancient still. He is a man with the weight of
countless generations behind him and no parentage to boast of. . . . Like the People.
In his firm grip on the earth he inherits, in his improvidence and generosity, in his
lavishness with his gifts, in his manly 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, disdaining 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 modernized
streets of Sulaco, calling on the widow of the cargador, attending the Lodge, listening in
unmoved silence to anarchist speeches at the meeting, the enigmatical patron of the new
revolutionary agitation, the trusted, the wealthy comrade Fidanza with the knowledge of
his moral ruin locked up in his breast, he remains essentially a Man of the People. In his
mingled 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 intelligible 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 Aristocrat and Nostromo the Man of the People
are the artisans of the New Era, the true creators of the New State; he by his legendary
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