The Black Corsair | a Review
originally published on 03/12/2023;
Hello everyone, I am the native explorer, G.E.M.Simov, a truly independent pirate with a conscience and a heart of gold, and I've come to tell you about Emilio Salgari's "The Black Corsair".
Simple review details - I rank books on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
It is important to point out that the edition I read was a translation and was not in English, so there might be a slight difference in the process of reading and understanding.
Content
The Black Corsair is a very strange book, when it comes to its content. Partially, that is so because of the inconsistency of the target audience, or at least the appearance of such an inconsistency.
It is a book that is incredibly simple in most regards - mainly when it comes down to the concepts it explores, but also the way it presents itself. That might be something that relates to its Richness of Expression, but it also applies to the contents of the book. It is somewhat simple and accessible, with there being a profound lack of deep contemplation and a focus on things happening. That kind of approach suggests a desire to appeal to younger audiences, but then one must consider that this book was written in the end of the 19th century, which brings with itself a profound lack of that concept - a target audience.
As a result, it is similar to "Robinson Crusoe", in the sense that it is somewhat simple, evidently written as something meant to reach the broadest audience possible, but also something, the simplicity of which makes it appealing for children - as they are far more interested in reading books that feature things happening.
However, it is not a children's book. It is also quite improper to call it a book for youths, because it features a few concepts and themes that are very unnerving, while also featuring gratuitous, almost, descriptions of violence. As a result of that it suffers from some sort of tonal dissonance - owed up to just how simple it appears, but also due to how unfit for children it's themes are.
I say this because that book is marketed as a book for youths and children, while having absolutely nothing good for either youths or children within itself (with only one exception), and that is problematic.
The Black Corsair is a book that does two things - it presents the world of central America, which is part of Latin America, to audiences not aware of it, and it talks about revenge. There is an almost profound amount of introductions to native plant species, and an intense focus on the description of locales in relation to the natural setting.
That, coupled with the simplicity of its prose, winds up making it a very easy to digest means of acquainting oneself with a number of exotic things that relate to that land - which is, to this day, quite alien to a lot of people. However, it also makes a mistake when it comes to presenting the world as it was during the age of the titular Black Corsair, the filibusters and the buccaneers - and that is the very fact that it approaches it with this simplicity.
The descriptions of exotic plants are somewhat vague, unable to properly paint the picture that is being attempted, and they only provide the name of the plant - which is either something in Spanish or a slightly modified version of a native word - and, if the reader is lucky, something relating to its properties, such as the fact that it is very unpleasant to consume or that it produces a liquid similar to milk.
With that, though, the descriptive element reaches its pinnacle, and then it wanes. There are a few descriptions of ships that manage to satisfy, there are a few descriptions of characters that happen to successfully capture the imagination or that convey some historical curiosities, but everything else is very… Lackluster. Again, this could relate to the book's Richness of Expression, but it also affects the content of the book - for when speaking of a city, such as Maracaibo, there is no proper painting that is created, instead offering only a few broad descriptors.
It not only fails at providing context and elaborating upon the history of the locations, or straight up describing them in more detail so as to function as a means of revisiting that time, it also fails to make them interesting.
Then there's also the fact that the filibusters and buccaneers are being characterized, with great effort, as good elements, or as justified people, who are not pirates or thieves, but then these same buccaneers are shown committing atrocities one would associate with pirates. They kill and take that, which is not theirs. Admittedly, there is the fact that the story surrounding them - or, rather, the real history - is quite interesting, what with them being encouraged entities by the governments of France and England, and their function as disruptors of Spanish operations in the New World, or how many of them were initially settlers who were forced to turn to piracy by the ruthless assaults of the Spanish, whose goal was to drive them out so that they could take over.
However, this attempt at depicting the filibusters and buccaneers as noble fails miserably, when the very book that attempts it also shows them assaulting cities and committing atrocities, many aimed at non-combatants, with the goal of procuring riches. It shows them extorting seemingly ordinary people who are trying to live their lives, it heavily implies that they are doing non-consensual things to certain people, or literally torturing others with the goal of making them reveal the location of their riches.
It somewhat handwaves it away by making the main Character have a very great disdain for these actions, but it also somewhat defends them by normalizing them - this is how it is done, or something along those lines - which appears greatly contradictory to me.
So does this book have much value as a means of exploring the past? Perhaps it can awaken one's interest in the filibusters and buccaneers, or the colonization of Latin America, though there is also a very real possibility for it to wind up being completely uninteresting. I have already made the comparison to "Robinson Crusoe" once, and I will do so again - this book is a lot poorer in regards to what it gives the reader than Dafoes' tale.
What, then, of revenge, and how is it treated? It is the main driving force behind the main Character, the titular Black Corsair, and it is exclusively good and noble. As the book presents it, this is a pursuit of justice and a means of setting things right, rather than an engine leading towards self destruction. There is a description of the great drive and purpose that the want for vengeance gives to a person, there is a profound focus on how it affects someone's personality, but those are all treated as good things.
The Black Corsair is feared and respected because of just how driven for revenge he is, and many wish to join him due to the fact they want to share in his revenge, for even though he seeks one particular man's death, that man represents the Spanish Empire, which has wronged all buccaneers and filibusters, thus giving the cause to pursue revenge.
Yet the description of revenge as something just is rotten, even if it is done by this book. It is such, because it is not a drive for vengeance, but a drive for justice - that retributive, punitive justice, which demands an eye for an eye, that wrong and truly unjust type of justice.
And while the book does manage to convey just how dreadfully painful and self-destructive the pursuit of vengeance and that type of justice is, it constantly affirms that it is right and good to pursue it, still. For, had the brothers not decided to seek vengeance for their brother's death, there would have still been three of them, not only one. And had they not sought that vengeance, the Black Corsair would have been able to find love and live with that love.
Here comes another concept that permeates the book in a mixed capacity. First, the gentlemanly mean of the Black Corsair. He is a cavalier by all accounts, and he is an honorable man who does not particularly enjoy murder. He is gallant and polite, and a lot of that is owed to his strict adherence to a set of rules (that are not explicitly stated but can be derived from the text). That gallantry, which originates from aristocratic upbringing, makes him a morally good character, or at least allowed him to appear as such.
However, that same strict adherence to rules is bound to another problematic element that the book runs into - oaths, and how those oaths relate to justice, and how that justice is, as mentioned, rotten to the core. This gallant and honorable man, the Black Corsair, prides himself on the value of his word. That is, generally, a good thing - not going back on your word. But, then, his word is mixed in with oaths that are unbelievably cruel and wrong. In his pursuit of vengeance, he swears to kill all members of the murderer of his brothers' family, for, somehow, that would be just and they are guilty by simply being relatives of the murderer.
The most obtuse thing about this is that he adheres to that oath, even if it is entirely wrong for him to do so, even if the entirety of his crew is in agreement that it is wrong for him to adhere to it. And, by doing so, he kills the love of his life. Revenge is very bitter, indeed, but then somehow one is not allowed to change the rules of a contract he has signed, be it with himself or another, by giving his word, when the conditions surrounding said contract were murky, at best? Is it not unjust to be forced to comply with a contract that did not uncover all of the details pertaining to the agreement? Is it not unjust to be unable to modify the contract?
And, lastly, two things that left a sour taste in my mouth. One of them is the treatment of black people - or rather the one black person - and how the Character of Moko is actually one that does a lot of stuff, and is a good guy and is quite neat, but then there's something off-putting about the way the book treats him. It appears as though all the value put into him is purely based on how useful he can be for the other Characters. In a sense, he is a tool - and he is referred to not with his name, by the book, but as "the black man", when there is no reason for that to be done.
Another group of people who get portrayed in an unnerving manner are women. Particularly women who are at the cusp of womanhood, which implies that they are not yet adults, being anywhere between 14 and 17 years of age. They are described as objects of desire - the Black Corsair, who is, at the minimum, in his mid-thirties, falls in love and is infatuated with one such "woman" (girl) not quite at the cusp of womanhood. It gave off bad vibes, it got me thinking about grooming and pedophilia, but then it also wound up conveying the way women were seen in that day and age - more as objects (of desire) or tools for reproduction, rather than proper people.
And then it got me thinking about how weird everything relating to the constitution of adulthood is and how it could just as easily be brought down to 16 as it could be brought up to 25, because the reasons for it to be as it is are so varied that they almost contradict each other.
Overall, though, the Black Corsair fails to impress with its content. 1/3
Richness of Expression
The Back Corsair's richness of expression is quite poor, for it extends as far as the words that are not of English origin and those related to ship sailing, as well as the few archaic words that no longer see much, if any, use.
When it comes to the way sentences are structured and ordered, things are very simple - as mentioned in the Content section of this review - but that simplicity fails to be a strength for the book. It does not describe things all that well, it does not describe Characters, safe for one or two, and even then their descriptions are interpretable as ones that seek to display how valuable an object the Character in question is - be it as a woman, as an object of hate or as a servant.
This is also accompanied by some odd, or rather interesting, choices. The way a pair of Characters refer to Moko - the black man - is by calling him "best man", which I found very interesting and amusing. Naturally, that was so, due to the fact the word for "best man" in both Spanish and the language I read the book in is a single word, which rolls off the tongue a lot better than "best man" does.
Then the odd choices present themselves in their full capacity when mistakes appear. Those could be connected to the translation, but then they could also be independent. Sometimes, words are just missing. Other times, it is not entirely clear who is talking, or other times the way speech is exchanged, with Character 1 saying something and then Character 2 saying something only for Character 1 to reply and so on and so on, is off, because Character 2 says something and then replies to himself, as though what he has said was said by Character 1.
In addition to that, there were some strange means of punctuating - such as putting a question mark at the end of a normal sentence meant to convey to the reader which Character said something, leading to such a sight as: "Jumping upright, he said?"
It does, however, do something quite well, and that is move swiftly, or rather manage to keep pace. Even in situations that are incredibly odd and challenging to write about, such as the midst of a battle, the Black Corsair manages to somehow breeze through and fail to linger for too long. That swiftness of everything allows it to remain slightly detached from what it is saying, and that lack of details lends itself to the idea that this is a tale about the Black Corsair, rather than THE tale of the Black Corsair.
The translation was dreadful, though - translating the name of the Black Corsair's ship "Thunder" as "Lightning". That's… That's just whacky. Even so, the book itself is relatively decent, though it does leave a lot to be desired. 2/3
Story
The Black Corsair is about the Black Corsair, who has a couple of adventures which, ultimately, lead to him crying. Oddly enough, that was not the direction in which I thought the story was going, due to the fact that it was so wrapped up in revenge, and then there was also a plot device about a prophecy that foretold the death of a certain Character, that by the end of it I was left befuddled, for neither revenge had been exacted nor did the Character in question wind up dead.
However, at the same time, the Character in question did die in a certain manner, and revenge did get gotten in a particular, indirect way.
I would like to spoil the story, so be warned that that will occur, but prior to that I would like to take a moment to talk about the Characters, and the story, in broader terms. Simply put, the Black Corsair features one Character - the Back Corsair - who gets relatively fleshed out and manages to be a Character, and then a number of Characters who go through an arc of some sort, as well as a large number of Characters who are just there.
The fact that the Characters who are just there are as numerous as they are, and that they play the role of plot devices, rather than being people, is very bothersome. Exemplary would have to be Carmaux, Van Stiller and Moko, who are simply there to move the story along. Carmaux and Van Stiller provide information and act as boat rowers for the entirety of the story, while Moko carries things around (because he is strong) and provides a bit of information (as well as his hut).
It would have been more interesting to get to know these Characters, but they really are just one dimensional entities that simply exist to get the story told. They might have quips and interactions, but they do not go through arcs, they do not experience development of their characters, they just are.
Then there are Characters like the Catalonian and count Lerma, who show up and actually have arcs - with the Catalonian starting off loyal to the villain, but transitioning into an ally as the story progresses, and count Lerma being spared by the Black Corsair only to return the gesture and then promptly perish in a subsequent encounter. Those two were interesting, but then they were also very rough around the edges - they had the opportunity to be Characters, and they almost were, but they suffered from the same problems that Carmaux or Van Stiller did - they somewhat were, rather than being and becoming. They were more reminiscent of plot devices than not.
The same applies to the villain, van Guld, and the love interest - Honoratta. In fact, theirs is to be just plot devices. Van Guld barely appears and he's just there, whereas Honoratta is present, but in a most unnerving fashion (what with her being implied to be underage) and has some interactions with the Black Corsair, though the romance, if it can so be called, is very forced and disingenuous.
As stated, this is a book about the Black Corsair. He is the most important guy and he is the only guy. But even he fails to go through an arc of his own - he starts off as this honorable, gallant swashbuckler, and ends up as an honorable, gallant swashbuckler. If anything, the theme of his word always being true is reinforced - he has sworn an oath and so he goes along with that oath, regardless of his wishes or the opinions of those who were present when he swore that oath. He does not change - aside from falling in love and crying.
Now, the story is, actually, very simple. The Black Corsair goes to Maracaibo to retrieve the corpse of the Red Corsair, his brother. There he is almost caught, if not for the offer chance that count Lerma winds up in a fight with him and is bested, but spared by the Black Corsair, which leads into them being able to escape and the count owing him a debt.
Then he captures a Spanish ship, aboard which is Honoratta (very pretty, falls in love at first sight) and goes to Tortuga. There, he plans an assault on Maracaibo with two other big deal buccaneers and sets off. Maracaibo falls, but the villain hiding therein - van Guld - has fled, so the Black Corsair, along with a Catalonian man (who was previously also spared by the Black Corsair), Carmaux, Van Stiller and Moko (a black man who hates the Spanish and has joined the Black Corsair's crew after helping out the first time in Maracaibo) give chase.
They travel through the jungles and encounter man-eaters, crocodiles and jaguars, and then they reach van Guld - but woe, he is helped in the last moment. After a day of playing cat and mouse, the Black Corsair and company are captured, and can Guld will be hanging them in Gibraltar, but the help that arrived is a ship belonging to count Lerma. Count Lerma, in the dead of night, repays his debt by freeing the Corsair and allowing him to escape.
Afterwards, the Black Corsair's allies arrive, ready to siege Gibraltar, and they do so. During the siege, the Black Corsair fights count Lerma once more, though he is forced, by the circumstances, to kill him. Van Guld has escaped again, however, and the Catalonian asks to join the Black Corsair. Upon getting back on the Black Corsair's ship, the Catalonian recognized Honoratta to be van Guld's daughter, and the Black Corsair puts her on a boat, alone, in the middle of a storm, and sends her to her death. He then has a cry about it, because he loved her.
The story ends abruptly and inconclusively, and had I not looked it up on the internet, I would not have known that the Black Corsair is only the first book in a lengthy series. It is odd that the version I am in possession of has no indication that it is part of a series, considering it has come out some 100 years after the book was originally written, but that’s somewhat beyond the point.
The actual point is that the story ends abruptly and inconclusively, while offering no character development or growth and, also, failing to really present any great changes to the world. The villain, van Guld, is free and relatively undamaged, the hero, the Black Corsair, is simply a bit sad, and everything that takes place over the course of the book is quite inconsequential.
Sure, Maracaibo and Gibraltar get sacked by the filibusters and buccaneers, but it feels as though it could have easily been anyone else taking the Black Corsair’s place, which undermines the supposed importance and achievement of the Character. Not only that, but the presence of a prophecy, which foretells that all of the Black Corsair’s brothers will die and he will be killed by a woman at sea, does not come true - it is also inconsequential, unless, of course, if we mean that his heart was broken, and that he was killed in that way.
It is a decently interesting adventure, filled with wonders - courtesy of central America being the setting and the average reader being one who does not travel and is not acquainted with the wonders of the world - with a resounding feeling of ease, originating from the intense capability of the Black Corsair. That could be treated as a reason to call the book a children’s book, or one for youths - it’s very simple and straightforward, very… Well, very middling. I can’t quite put a finger on it, but it’s just not there.
I did not grow attached to the Characters, because they were barely Characters. The Characters were never in any real danger, due to the fact that the Black Corsair is hyper-competent, as a result of which there was no tension at all. It was… Unsatisfying. 1/3
Legendary Point
Does this book get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time?
No, it does not. While it was interesting, at least conceptually, it failed to do anything with its concept. It was very middling and even bothersome at times, as a result of which it failed to ignite any kind of spark within me, aside from the one that asks: "what kind of dumbass do you have to be to do that kind of thing?" 0/1
Conclusion
4/10. The Black Corsair is a slightly below average read. It has some good qualities, but, alas, I would only recommend it to fiends for pirate-related literature or folks who want to read old books. I would definitely think twice before giving it to a child or even to a youth, as it’s got a very mixed message.
In the bag of mediocrity it goes. Not bad, not good, just covered in dust and forgotten.