Sống tại: Anh Sinh tại: Berdichev Sinh năm: 3 – 12 - 1857 Năm mất: 3 – 8 - 1924 Gia đình: Bố là trí thức quý tộc tiến bộ Ba Lan tham gia khởi nghĩa 1963 nên bị lưu đầy biệt xứ. Thể loại sáng tác: - Truyện ngắn - Tiểu thuyết - Phê bình văn học. Sự nghiệp văn chương: Trường. | NOSTROMO A TALE OF THE SEABOARD By Joseph Conrad So foul a sky clears not without a storm. SHAKESPEARE TO JOHN GALSWORTHY Prepared and Published by Ebd AUTHOR S NOTE Nostromo is the most anxiously meditated 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 impending change in my mentality and in my attitude towards the tasks of my writing life. And perhaps there was never any change except in that mysterious extraneous 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 vagrant anecdote completely destitute of valuable details. As a matter of fact in 1875 or 6 when very young in the West Indies or rather in the Gulf of Mexico for my contacts with land were short few and fleeting I heard the story of some man who was supposed to have stolen single-handed a whole lighter-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 feat. 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-hand book-shop. It was the life story of an American seaman 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 schooner the .
