English Literature
in the 20-30’s of the XX c.
Thecentury is characterized by great diversity of artistic values &methods. This age had a great impact on the literary process. Varietyof social, ethic & aesthetic attitudes. New achievements inscience have their impact on literature. Literature absorbs &transforms the material of their influences:
TheFirst World War
RussianRevolution
Freud’spsychoanalysis
Bergson’sphilosophy of subjective idealism
Einstein’stheory of relativity
Existentialiststhought
Economiccrises 1919-1921 & consequent upheaval of social movement
Marxistideology
Strike1926
Allthese factors lead to literature of social problematics. Thereexisted three trends: critical realism, beginning of social realism,modernism. The writers revolutionized, changed literary form, as wellas continued the traditional forms. This inter… is adistinctive feature of the XX c. English literature reflectedBritain’s new position in the world affairs. By the end of theXIX Victorian tradition began to deteriorate. The desire to liberateart & literature from the contents of the Victorian society.Thus, criticism is the dominant mood in the beginning of the XX c.Criticism took different forms. Some of them – modernist,others – spiritual exploiters. Artist’s duty was toreflect truly thoughts of people. Realists in the beginning of the XX– Hardy, Galsworthy, Shaw, Wells, Conrad, Mansfield, Bennett,etc.
GeorgeBernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Heintroduced intellectual play in the English theatre. He was muchinfluenced by Ibsen. “In 1889 British stage came into collisionwith Norwegian giant Ibsen. He passed as a tornado & left nothingbut ruin.” Everybody wanted to create something like Ibsen.Shaw also experienced Marx’s influence especially “DasKapital”. The society was in crisis. The article “TheQuintessence of Ibsentism”. Here he underlines his belief thatthe real slavery of today is the slavery to ideas of goodness. Ibsenwas accused of being immoral. But it implies the conduct that doesn’tconform to current ideals. The spirit of is constantly outgrowing hismoral ideals & that is why conformity to those ideals producesresults not less tragic than thoughtless violation of them. The maineffect of Ibsen’s plays on public is that his plays stress theimportance of being always prepared to act immorally. He insists thatliving will, humanistic choice are more important than abstract law,abstract moral norms. Ibsen: “The Doll’s House” leteverybody refuse to sacrifice. There is no formula how to behave.
Englishdrama of the passed years was centered on some imaginary event. Ibsendid not write about accidents, he wrote about “slice oflife”(life experience). He introduced open play – a playthat has no end (if you show a slice of life you obviously have openplay). Shaw objected “art for art’s sake”. It meansonly money’s sake. Every great artist has a message tocommunicate. His role is to interpret life, to create mind. All artis didactic. “HeartbreakHouse”reflects the state of Europe before the war.
GeorgeHerbert Wells (1866-1946)
Anovel was also developing. In the beginning – a time of crisisfor English novel. The XIX model was not acceptable any more. Thenovel of the past years developed to describe a social hierarchy. Inthe beginning of the century the dominant belief was that theVictorian society fell apart. Wells was attempting to escape thetraditional novel forms. The novel was seen as a means to createfuture.
Hislecture – “The ContemporaryNovel”.
Wellswas a very prolific writer. He wrote more than 100 books, he is bestknown for his science fiction. He had a very definite aim –political & social. He was trying to combine critical analysis ofpresent civilization to the picture what it might be in future. Hebelieved in science. But he understood that it can be dangerousbecause the power for destruction is huge.
“TheWar of the Worlds”. He wasconsidered utopiographer. To build utopic they needed to destroy therelics of the past – class distinction (unenlightenment). Heanalyzed the feelings of the present in the life of nation’sfuture.
“AnnVeronica: A Modern Love Story”depicts the problem of emancipation. The novel was written as areaction to eugenics movement. He affirmed the need of giftedindividuals to find the appropriate patterns & the choice mustnot be constrained by any social restrictions.
“Tono-Bungay”is a novel about the life of gentry in the rural England. It combinesscience fiction & realistic novel. Bladesover – a place,where George Pondervo (the main character) grew up. It becomes asymbol of dominant influence of the past models of life. The novel isepisodic in form, doesn’t have classical structure. Wells wasthe first person who ushered in English literature the theme of lostgeneration.
“Mr.Britling Sees It Through”(1916) wascalled by him “the history of his own concern”. Theresponsibility of everyone for the war. It is autobiographical. Triedto write about the evolution of consciousness of his contemporaries.Concentrates on the inner life of his heroes. Fantasy & realitymingles here. As to the reasons of the war – he brings hisheroes to the conclusion that wars are inherited in human nature. Hestarted as an optimistic liberalist but as he lived on he was verymuch disappointed.
“YouFools” is his last word tohumanity.
* * *
Thereare many novels & poetry about war. These writers are known as“lost generation” writers. The term was introduced byGertrude Stein. She uses it metaphorically: old values & beliefswere lost in the war but unfortunately new moral values were notformed yet. Majority of these writers went through the warthemselves.
Thiswas a certain tendency in poetry – Trench poetry. They wroteabout war. Young people who served as soldiers expressed theiroutcry: Wilfred Owen ”Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”,Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac Rosenberg. Many of the poems have pacifistcharacter. They were among the first to create the true picture oftrench life. They gave rather naturalistic pictures, the imagery wasvery vivid & appalling, scenes of massacre, they wrote about thesmell of the corpses, heavy job, gas attacks, deaths of young &promising people. They created the image of war as very ugly &senseless deed. Other writers responded to that huge catastrophe.
Theclassical example of novel about lost generation is “TheDeath of a Hero” by R. Aldington.
RichardAldington (1892-1962)
Hestarted as a poet close to decadence, aestheticism, he belonged toimagist poets (formalism). He published “Old& New Images”- his firstcollection of poems. He propagated the doctrine escapism –movement to escape in to the world of beauty (in Ellinism) from theugliness of the world. This ideal world was shattered by the WWI. Hecame from it another man, he broke with imagists & continued towork in realistic trend.
In1929 “The Death of a Hero”was published. The novel was started after the war but had not beencompleted until 15 years later. It’s a social novel disclosingtragic consequence & reasons of war. He made readers see that thewar was inevitable. But the protagonist tries to find the answer forthe question – who is responsible for that? Everybody was!Everybody is guilty for the rivers of spilt human blood. This book isa cry for redemption for the writer.
Itis a novel of big generalization. There are many autobiographicaltouches in the book. He starts farther in the war to unmask thehypocrisy of the English society, respected English families.Aldington wants to show that this is a pack of lies that the war is anoble deed, a salvation. He tries to show that lies started muchearlier. His ideals are truth & beauty. Aldington says that thisgeneration was lost before the war started. War was not the source ofthe tragedy but rather result of it.
The life story of George Winterborne is given in areverse order. We see Winterborne family in which all relations arebased on deceit & lies. Later we see George at school where he issupposed to develop into a strong & aggressive individual, thedefender of imperialism. He tries to escape from the influence ofsociety & turns to art in search of his place under the sun. Hemoves to London but among “intellectual” people he foundonly hypocrisy. He is inherently lonely, his ideas of truth &beauty are frustrated by snobs, who pretended to be leaders ofartistic movement. He sees all their cynicism. In that period of hisLondon life he still shows his early tendency to resist tocircumstances. He expresses his disillusionment in angry talks but hecannot achieve peace. He remains passive.
Much is said about his love because love was the onlyharbour for other “lost generation” heroes. It is not sofor G.Winterborne. These relations are coloured with cynicism(realization of Freud’s ideas of free love between George’swife & her lover). When he tried to put these ideas intopractice, he faced with constant quarrels & was eventually turneddown by both his women. Then the war starts. He volunteers to thefront. War becomes a period of his maturity. He finds himself side byside with common soldiers & this confrontation with simple peoplemakes him aware of real human values – those of courage,friendship, support. Nothing can be more precious than pure trust inman. Life in the trenches makes him think about life in general &he started to ask questions. How does it happen that government findshuge amount of money to kill Germans in the war but cannot find it tofight poverty in London. He becomes aware of social contradiction &antagonism. He thought that social hostility broke through in theoutburst of hatred. He still feels very much lonely & isolated.He feels that he differs from others, he is very much of anindividual soul. He doesn’t belong to the soldiers, theirroughness makes him feel very uncomfortable. He is completely lost.With all these problems he doesn’t see any way out but toterminate his life by his own free will (he commits a suicide). Byall the narration Aldington makes us see that this way is the logicalending for the person who was lost before the war started.
It is a sarcastic book. Aldington waseager to tell the truth about the society openly. But it wasimpossible to overcome individualism, the author is not objective, heshows the whole range of feelings. That’s why the end of thebook is so bitter & hopeless. The title itself is very sarcastic.His death is also a symbol how senseless the war is, it’s justa torture. His satire has many shades, but also a definite target &purpose. Sometimes it reminds Swift’s “Gulliver’sTravels”because of the social character of satire. “Deathof a Hero”is an absolutely disillusioned novel. Aldington called this book “ajazz novel”. This jazz effect is achieved by kaleidoscopicchange of contrasted images. The novel is characterized by multitudeof emotional states. The style is rather nervous. He is easilyovercome by despair & negation, carried to the very extreme.These feelings are the features of the lost generation people. “TheDeath of a Hero”is the first big & most successful of all his works. His othernovels are:
“Colonel’sDaughter”
“All Men Are Enemies”
“Very Heaven”
All are about those people who came back from the waralive but still couldn’t find their place in life. The maincharacters are akin to George Winterborne. The critics say thatAldington predominantly is the writer of one theme & one hero, &that he just treats this topic in different aspects.
He also wrote some critical works on D. H. Lawrence, &other writings.
He died in 1962.
Modernism.
Theword “modern” means “up-to-date”. Critics &historians used it to denote roughly the first half of the XXcentury. The representatives of this movement were anxious to setthemselves apart from the previous generations. They totally rejectedtheir predecessors. The term was suggested by the authors themselves.The difference between past & present tradition is qualitative.Modernist writers clearly defined the borderline between Victorianage & modernism: in 1910 – the death of king Edward &the first post-impressionist exhibition in London (Virginia Woolf),in 1915 – the first year of World War I (D. H. Lawrence). Theyhad a deep conviction that modern experience is a unique one. Theytried to point the change in modernism. This change was –massive disillusionment, destruction of faith in a number of basicsocial & moral principles, which laid the foundation of Westerncivilization. This change was to some degree intellectual as theresult of late XIX theories & discoveries.
Karl Marx “DasKapital”.He shaped the imperialistic ideology, he showed it was not thepattern of progress. He believed that the world would not bedominated by enlightened bourgeoisie. The struggle is inevitable.
Charles Darwin“OnOrigin of Species”(1859)& “TheDescent of Man”(1871).A human being was placed in the animal world. The forces thatdetermine human behaviour are not of intellect & reason but isdetermined by the need of physical survival.
James Frazer’s“TheGolden Bough”(1890-1915)showed similarities between primitive & civilized cultures. Theprimitive tribes appeared to be not so savage as they seemed to be.They were just like the civilized ones.
Nietzsche’s“Birthof Tragedy”.In this book he exposes dark sides of human psyche, glorified thebelief in ancient heroic philosophers.
Max Planck’s“QuantumTheory of Atomic & Subatomic Particles”.This model of discreet beats of energy behaving in apparentlyunpredictable ways seize the imagination of people so much that theyextrapolated it beyond the limits of physics. They believed thathuman behaviour was also chaotic, disorderly & unpredictable.
Freud’s“Interpretationof Dream”.This work created a new model of human personality itself as acomplex, multilayed & governed by irrational & unconscioussurvival of fantasies.
These theories were in fact not very new they were knownin the XIX but in XIX they never destroyed the general principles &ideas.
Modern writers after the WWI found themselves inso-called “empty world”. Their world was deprived of itsstability. Nothing can be taken for granted. They didn’tbelieve that life they were living. Being disillusioned &contemplating the society & cosmos most of them looked withinthemselves for the principles of order. They turned to eternalthings. For that matter we see modern literature being pre-occupiedwith its own self, process of perception, nature of consciousness. Inits extreme subjectivity modern literature went parallelly with othermodern arts (e.g. painting).
The main feature – subjectivity &self-interest. Modernist aesthetics was formed under the influence ofFrench symbolist poets :
CharlesBaudleъr
ArthurRimbaut
PaulVerlaine
StephanMallarmй
Theiraim was to capture the most perishable of personal experience inopen-ended & essentially private symbols, to express theinexpressible, to express the slightest movements of the soul, or atleast evoke it subtly if not express, create the atmosphere of thesoul. The symbolist concentration upon single moments of individualperception. Life in their reproduction was reduced to small fragmentsof experience. This fragmentation influenced not only composition ofthe work but also the character. The character was disassembled infragmentary pieces & these pieces of human character were notheld together by any theory of human type, like a collagй,juxtaposition – all transitions are removed. You just put thefragments together. The widely used technique “stream ofconsciousness” takes the form from a fluid associations, oftenillogical moment to moment sequence of ideas, feelings &impressions of a single mind. Traditional literary forms & genresmerged & overlapped. The introduction of poetry into prose becamepossible, imagery characteristic of poetry – into prosaic text.The forms of the past were also employed but to produce the satiricaleffect.
Anequally important principle – “the stream ofunconsciousness” – the use of irrational logic of dreams& fantasies, denies ordinary logic (“exhaustedrationality”). They employed the shadowy structure of dream.The idea “time & space” didn’t exist & theimagination was only slightly grounded in reality but generally itcreated new patterns by combining previous experiences, etc.
Theauthors employed myth very much as a kind of collective dream.Modernist’s myth was stripped of its religious & magicalassociations. Joyce’s “Ulysses” isbased on the ground of Homer’s ”Odyssey”.Eliot said: “In using the myth, in manipulating the contentiousparallel between contemporaniety & antiquity Mr. Joyce ispursuing the method which others must persue after him. It is simplya way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape &significance to an immense panorama of futility & anarchy whichis contemporary history”. Myth is the way of organizinghistory. The writers’ quest for order lead to theirpreoccupation with the artist himself & with the artisticprocess. The imaginary character stood for the author himself:
MarselProust “Remembrance of the Things Past”
Lawrence“Sons & Lovers”
Joyce“The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”
We can’tsay that the artist became modernists’ hero. Not all writers ofthat period were modernists. There was the co-existence of differentstyles.
JamesJoyce (1882 – 1941)
Hewas born in Ireland (Dublin). Although he spent many years not inIreland he is considered one of Irish writers. Primarily he wroteabout himself, transforming his experiences in his books, &relatives & friends – into symbols. His works are said tobe “expansive & inclusive”. Expansive – becausehe gave a very wide panorama of Dublin life at the turn of thecentury, inclusive – because his works seemed to include allthe human history. These novels still are the stories & novelsabout life in general.
Hestarted to attend an expensive private boarding school but his fatherbecame bankrupt & he continued his education at home. Then heattended “University College” in Dublin. He read verymuch & began to write seriously. He produced critical articles,essays but also poems & notebooks of epiphanies (theological term– an intense moment in a human life when the truth of a personor some thing is being revealed). He studied in Paris, then returnedto Ireland & in 1904 left it. He lived in different places inEurope. First, he earned money by giving English lessons. In 1905 hesubmitted to the publisher his first version of the collection ofstories “Dubliners”. But it was repeatedlyrejected & even after acceptance it was subjected to severecensorship for sexual frankness & use of obscenities & use ofreal names & places. This collection consists of 15 storiesdevoted to childhood, mature life & public life. All are unifiedby the theme of person’s loneliness & hopelessness. Joycedescribes life with all naturalistic details. Everything suggeststhat life is dead. All the stories explore the paralysis of Irishlife. The most famous stories are “Araby” &“The Dead ”. The stories are arranged insuccessive sequences – childhood, adolescence, mature &public life. Mood is gloomy, imagery is dark & malignant. Peopleare incurably lonely, their hopes are doomed to disappointment &frustration.
Inthe full form the collection was published in 1914 together with hisautobiographical novel “The Portrait of the Artist as aYoung Man”, which was to be called “Stephen-Hero”.This book explores the story of the formation of the artist’sconsciousness. In criticism it is called “a gestation of thesoul”, for he tries to penetrate into people’s mind. Itis deeply psychological work. In form it is “buildungsroman”(German word meaning “educational novel”). Life is shownchronologically. The main hero – Stephen Dedalus. The processof his maturing is shown in the development.
Inthe first part the language is very simple. Then some glimpses offamily life are given. The disagreement between its members haspolitical roots. Another stage is school & college. Stephen doesnot participate in boys’ games. He longs for the moment when hecan be alone, he is weak & suffering. The Jesuit college bred anaversion for religion in the young artist. Everything was repulsivein the college: sermons, system of punishment, religibility +hypocrisy. It was an anguish experience. Stephen learnt to build awall between him & all the rest of the humanity.
Thebook has an open ending – we don’t know Stephen will do.It ends with the decision to leave Ireland. This exile, solitude arethe ways in which Stephen opposes to the oppressing influence of thesociety. He rejects what life suggests to him – his choice isloneliness. The problem of correlating of artists & society issolved by Joyce from highly individualistic standpoint. The lastpages express Stephen’s understanding of form & timecategories. “The past is consumed in the present & thepresent is living because it has force in the future”. The name“Dedalus” is symbolic. It is a symbol of new art which isliberated from restrain of old art…He discovers & explores the possibilities of new art. Its aim isto create a new labyrinth of forms of new art.
In1922 ”Ulysses” was published. It started asanother short story for “The Dubliners” but grew into themassive novel. Joyce recreates the action of “Odyssey” ina single day – July 16, 1904 (it was a significant day forJoyce: he decided to leave Ireland & met his future wife). Sincetwo plains run parallel. The main characters are associated withcertain people in “Odyssey” by Homer: the main charactersare Stephen Dedalus & Leopold Bloom, an advertising solicitor &in a certain way an eternal Jew both figuratively & literally.Minor characters are the people whom they meet in different places.Dedalus acts as Telemachys & Leopold Bloom is modern Odyssey &his wife Molly is modern Penelope. Bloom wanders from place to placethroughout this day – butcher’s shop, post office,cemetery, printing house, library, pub, hotel, again pub, shop, hispoor house, cheap pub… his adventures has nothing in commonwith adventures of Odyssey. They are down to Earth, petty. In BloomJoyce tried to show wandering of “eternal…”. Hehas unheroic adventures & finally meets Stephen who becomes hisspiritual son. This is a plot.
Inform the book is mostly a never-ending stream of Bloom’sconsciousness (he is not an intellectual person, his impressions arevery incoherent). The book has a very rigid form. Joyce describes inmany details every moment of the day: actions, feelings &thoughts. But apart from it Joyce deepens into human consciousness…he tries to render something which doesn’t depend on people’smind, he tries to penetrate into human psyche, impulses which govern,move them. Each chapter corresponds to the certain episode in Homer’s“Odyssey” & each chapter has its own style. Itwitnesses that Joyce was a virtuous of the English language.”Ulysses” has 18 episodes, each of themtracing the deeds & the thoughts of three people during one dayin Dublin. The book is a mosaic. It consists of different & notquite linked together parts. There is almost no plot. Joyce stillputs the idea in it to describe symbolically man’s wandering inthe chaos of life & floating with the stream of his thoughts. Thehumanity is lost & confused about all the contradictions ofmodern life, people waist their lives in this chaos, their existenceis sensless & purposeless. The three main characters presentthree eternal types of human beings – common person, an artist,a woman. Bloom stands for the symbol of a typical bourgeois person.He is very limited & content with down-to-earth pleasures.
Thebook caused a storm of outrage. It was banned in Britain &America for more than ten years. Now it is praised for technicalexperimentation & stylistic brilliance. The book attractedattention to the stream of consciousness technique. In general itevoked controversial responses.
Evenbefore completing “Ulysses” Joyce wrote “Finnegan’sWake” – a novel. If “Ulysses” isconsidered to be a daybook, “Finnegan’s Wake” is anight book. Joyce tried to present the whole human history in a dreamof a Dublin innkeeper Earwicker by name. The style is appropriate toa dream, the language is shifting & changing, the words blur &glue together, this suggests the merging of images in a dream. Thistechnique enables Joyce to present history & myth as a singleimage. The characters stand for eternal types, identified byEarwicker himself, his wife & the three children.
Thework masks the limit of formal experiment in the language.“Finnegan’s Wake” is considered to be a closedbook. It is very sophisticated. Joyce loses the thread of narrationsometimes… attemptedin the sound of words, construction of a sentences, to render themeaning of what he was talking about (e.g. images of woman & theriver are merging; the rhythm – gurgling, flowing water). Whatunifies these two books – both of them express Joyce’spositive credo: he asserts that life is eternal, human society doeschange but the change has a circular character. Everything isrenewed, nothing can be destroyed. Joyce starts the work with thecontinuation of thoughts & the beginning of them is at the end.Man must believe in the city (symbol of Dublin).
ThomasStearns Eliot (1889 – 1965)
ThomasStearns Eliot is considered today’s genius in poetry.Quintessence: refine sensibility – the essential quality of thepoet. “Our civilization comprehends great variety &complexity; & this variety & complexity playing upon arefined sensibility must produce various & complex result. Thepoet must become more & more comprehensive, more & moreallusive, more indirect in order to force, to dislocate if necessarylanguage into his meaning” – said Eliot. This is anaccount of what a modern poet should do. He must be finely tuned tothe world to be able to express the various & complex. The poetcan distort the language, to use it figuratively.
Extremelywas influential figure in literary circles. Editor, poet, playwright,critic – he came from a prosperous American family, his fatherwas a rich manufacturer & his mother wrote poetry. He was broughtup in St. Louis Missouri. He was educated in private school &attended Harvard to get his degree in philosophy in 1906. Then leftfor Paris. There he attended lectures of Henry Bergson –“Subjective Idealism Philosophy, Theory of Intuitivism”.Being in Paris he read much on French symbolist poets. The symbolistmovement was one of major influences upon his poetry. The goal of artis to express the unique personal emotional responses to a certainmoment in human life through indefinite illogical, sometimes privatein meaning symbols. Eliot returned to Harvard & there he readwidely in Sanskrit & oriental philosophy (had a powerfulinfluence on him). In 1915 he decided to give up philosophy to remainin England & to begin writer’s career. In 1916 he completedhis Ph.D. theses, but never received a degree. He married &settled in England permanently.
Thebeginning of his literary career starts from 1910 when he wrote “TheLove Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. It was published in1915 in magazine “Poetry”. The poem is written in a verysimple style. Then he made a collection “Prufrock &Other Observations”. This was compared with “LyricalBallads” of Wordsworth & Coleridge. This work inauguratedthe age of modernism in poetry. There is no plot in the story. It’sa dramatic monologue but of the new kind. It sounds like a stream ofconsciousness of a person who walks up the street of London. Theprotagonist is Alfred Prufrock. He is an antiromantic hero, rathertimid, self-centred. The tone is very ironic, images are startlinglyfresh. The title suggests that some feeling should be shown to theother person. The poem starts as a dialogue:
Letus go out – you & I…
Criticsargue that you & I are two sides of one & the same person.Eliot says that “YOU” is a companion of Prufrock. Weshould pay attention to the epigraph: “The truth will remainunder”. This means that the speaker can persuade himself totalk only if this will never be heard. It is his own dramaticmonologue. Prufrock is intensely preoccupied with himself. Probablyhe signs his love song to himself… (though it doesn’tmatter much)
Wecan understand “love-song” in ironic sense because thewhole poem is an elaborate rationalization for not seeking love. Lovecannot exist in this ugly senseless chaotic world. It is a miracle,hopeless yearning of person for the vitality. The whole scene makesus see that love is not possessive in this world. Repulsive attitudeof the narrator towards what he sees – images of a pair ofragged claws, mermaids singing each to each. Leitmotif:
В гостиныхдамы тяжело
Беседуюто Микеланджело.
Itmeans that they talk of what they pretend to know.
Thepoem is full of allusions. The epigraph is quite important, takenfrom Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”. The end of poemis pessimistic. It is one of the most understandable of his poems.
“TheWaste Land” (the poem (1922) in ”Dial” &“Criteria”[GB]). The poem consists of 5 parts & theirtitles speak for themselves:
“TheBurial of the Dead”
“AGame of Chess” – an allusion of a medieval play,where the action was as if in two playings.
“TheFire Sermon” – the postulates of oriental religion.
“TheDeath by the Water”
“Whatthe Thunder Said”
Interms of forms the poem is a collage of fragments of memories,overheard conversations, quotations put together only by the impliedpresent of a sensible person (= a refined sensibility = a modernpoet), upon whom all these complexibilities & varieties of humanworld are hipped & who staggers under the burden of them. We cansay that the mind of the poet is heavily packed with culturaltradition. A poem abounds in highly sophisticated allusions:
“TheTempest”
Anthropologicalaccount of “Grail”(“Грааль”)legend– a legend connected with Christianity – a cupfrom which Christ drank;
from“The Divine Comedy”;
alluded& used words from operas of Wagner;
refersto the story of crusification;
usesFrench symbolists;
as wellas scraps of popular culture – music-hall songs, slang words,contemporary fashion;
Hehips everything together. This bits & pieces are set into amatrix of flowing stream of consciousness of a man. The dramaticportrait of a single mind becomes the portrait of an age. Eliotprovided 52 notes for “The Waste Land” when it was firstpublished. The poem was opposed violently but there were alsoadmirers. They said that Eliot gave a definite description of theirage. Now terms “lost generation”, “post-wardisillusionment”, “jazz age”, “waste land”are used parallelly For many contemporary writers & critics “TheWaste Land” was a definite description of the age. Civilizationwas dying. Critics regarded it as the disillusionment of ageneration. Eliot protested against that. The term “waste land”is used in literature alongside with the term “lostgeneration”.
Healso employed the myth of dying & reviving king – what thepoem expresses is the need of salvation & this is expressed in 3Sanskrit words (give, sympathize & control). There are manybarbarisms in the poem.
In1925 he published another poem in the same tonality. “TheHollow Man” develops the major themes & images of“The Waste Land” – problems of spiritual bareness,the problem of loss of faith in contemporary generation. The poem isa set of recurrent symbols. The meaning depends on cumulative effectof the individual images. The idea of spiritual sterility in theimage of Hollow Man – grotesque caricature of man, theirbehaviour is mimicry of human activity. The poem is very short. It iseasily read but not so easily understood. There are 5 parts in thepoem. Other images – Death of the Kingdom. The life of theHollow Man – is more shadowy & less real than the lifebeyond the grave. Religion is substituted by simple rituals devoid ofall true feelings & emotions. The end-of-the-world (apocalyptic)motive is very strong in the poem. The picture is very pessimistic.The poem ends hopelessly:
Thisis the way the world ends,
Notwith a bang but a whimper…
Eliot’s development after “The Waste Land”was in the direction of literary, political, religious conservatism.Classicist in literature, royalist in politics & Anglo-Saxon inreligion he developed more composed lyrical style.
Hismature masterpiece is “Four Quartets”(1944) which is based on the poetic memories of certain localities ofAmerica & Britain. This is a starting point for his probing inthe mystery of time, history, eternity, the meaning of life. It dealswith one single question of what significance in our lives areecstatic intense moments when we seem to escape time & glimpsesof supra-ordinary reality (it resembles Joyce’s “Epiphanies”.There are two epigraphs that give clues to the answer. The epigraphsare very important.
Thefirst comes from Heroclitus. It contrasts the general wisdom of therace with moments of private individual insight. It shows the dualismof individual existence. First of all individuality is apart of abody of mankind, located in history & tradition. Secondly, it isa unique personality. Each person embraces both & thispredetermines the reaction to intense moments.
Thesecond is short – “The way up & the way down are one& the same”. This is another duality, two ways ofapprehending the truth. The first one is an active embrace ofecstatic experience (the way up), the second one is a passivewithdrawal from experience into self (the way down).
Thepoem got a reputation of a great obscurity due to a philosophicalrichness but at the same time it is intensely musical. He tries tomake it closer to music by the motives that return like the tones inmusic. It is not by chance that the poem is called “FourQuartets” – 4 instrumental voices in the quartet. In hisessay “The Music of Poetry” he explainedthis usage of recurrent things.
From1926 he experimented with poetic drama “The CocktailParty”. But his dramas remain unpopular because dramaneeds plot.
Eliotreceived the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949 as recognition of hisinnovations in modern poetry. He also wrote critical works “TheSacred Wood”, “The Use of Poetry & theUse of Criticism”, “On Poetry& Poets” – most influential literarydocuments.
DavidHerbert Lawrence (1885-1930)
Lawrencewas very much influenced by Freud’s conception of humanpersonality. He is considered to be a modernist but he didn’texperiment with form. On the outside he worked within the confines ofEnglish novel tradition but he broke from the understanding of humanrelations that were accepted in critical realism. He was the firstwho touched upon the problem of marrying, the relations betweensexes, he didn’t hush down the contradictions between them. Hismain concern was to liberate a person from all the constrains whichwere put by the society upon him. There was so much taboos, hush-hushattitudes to this topic, that …
Heis compared to Eliot. Both started from similar points thatcivilization threatens human beings, it is hostile to man.Civilization is sick, it destroys people morally & bodily. WhatLawrence can suggest instead? His religion was belief in blood &flesh as being wiser than the intellect. This belief became one ofhis main themes. He interpreted human behaviour & character fromthis standpoint. All his writings were underlined with a deepdiscontent with a modern world. And this fact unites him with othermodernists. Civilization is on the wrong track. Science,industrialization produced a race of robots. Civilization is evil.The only way out – the way back – to re-awaken ouremotional, irrational layers of consciousness. He was littleconcerned with social problems. Lawrence’s treatment ofcharacter is based on the assumption that 7/8 are submerged &never seen. He explored the unconscious mind that was not always seenbut was always present. He is fumbling for the words to describestrictly indescribable. He enjoyed popularity in his lifetime. Hisfirst works are:
“TheWhite Peacock” 1911
“Sons& Lovers” 1913
Theywere well received. Critics thought that there appeared one moreworking-class writer. His late works were received with shock &opposition because of his frankness to the questions of sexuality,relations of men & women. These themes suffered from lateVictorian prudishness. He was the first to describe sexual relationsusing common words not…
“Sons& Lovers” is considered to be autobiographical.Lawrence was brought up in miner’s family in Nottinghamshire.His mother was cultivated ex-school teacher. She married beneathherself & so she tried to develop ambitions in her children. Thebook centers around Paul Morel & his mother’s relations.His mother made him fatally unable to love another woman. “Therewas something in his life that blocked his intentions.” Therelations that he explores within the Morel family remind us of therelations in his own family. He must get it clear & get away withit. By giving this story a form of a novel Lawrence tried to liberatehimself of his ties with the past. Sometimes it is considered anillustration of Freud’s theory of Oedipus complex.
Weconsider Lawrence a modernist not because of his innovations in form& style but by his attitude to human beings (human behaviour isbiologically determined). “Blood & flesh being wiser thanintellect”.
Lawrenceis a very prolific writer but his books were uneven in quality –15 novels & volumes of short stories. The best of them are:
“TheRainbow”(was also condemned as obscene one)
“Womenin Love” 1920
“Kangaroo”1923
“ThePlumed Serpent” 1926
“LadyChatterley’s Lover” (1929) was subjected toobscenity trial. It was banned for oscine vocabulary till 1960. “Hisurgency in seeking out the deepest core of his characters’being lead him to employ a language overfraught with portentousvocabulary – repeatedly, ineffectually gesturing at dark,mystic, passionate, but ultimately vague & ungraspable emotions.”Critics considered this work to be his greatest one.
Sexualaspect wasn’t the only one though very important. It was a partof his concept of personal development.
AmericanModernism.
Itappeared in the first decade of the XX when the group of poetsappeared in the USA who tried to bring modernists’ ideas. Themost active of these poets were Ezra Pound & Thomas Eliot.American modernism doesn’t mean geographical terms. ManyAmerican writers created their works in Europe (mainly in Paris).Ezra Pound said: “Paris is a lab of ideas”. Modernists:
EzraPound
GertrudeStein
JohnDos Passos
Ernest HemingwayPartially William Faulkner
Francis Scott Fitzgerald
EzraPound (1885 – 1972)
Afamous poet, publicist & translator. He studied in the Universityof Pennsylvania (studied Roman languages). But he had a very briefcareer as a teacher & in 1908 he left for Europe. He walked allthe way from Gibraltar to Venice where the first collection of hispoems appeared – “A Hume Spento”.During 2 years from 1908 he gained his popularity. His collectionswere:
“Canzoni”– songs
“Ripostes”– leisure
“Lustra”– light
The poemsimpressed the readers by the original form, new expressiveness &metrical faction. He is the founder of imagist’s school(opposed traditional Victorian verse). The poets’ aim was to beprecise & clear in word usage. They did not accept thematiclimitations, were responsible for exploding the traditional form,tried to find form to substitute it. There was a trend in imagism –wordism – the model for the XXth century poetry. Itsfeatures:
Mechanistism
Technisism
Specificrhyme
Muchattention was paid to the metaphorical images. These ideas influencedyoung poets like Robert Frost, Thomas Eliot, and W. Butler.
Poundedited magazine “Little Review” where new names &works were introduced. It is believed that he revolutionized Englishversification. He tried to capture the intonation of monologicalspeech. His poems have a peculiar form of masques. His poetry isdressed in the bright clothes of Latin, Greek, Japanese, Anglo-Saxon,etc poets.
Translationsare the best part of his legacy. They were also thoroughly polishedmasques. He developed interest Japanese poetry. He liked the Japaneseway of presenting the most abstract idea through a concrete image. Sohe introduced idiomatic poetry when any nation could be renderedthrough the combination of concrete images. This principle wasemployed in “The Cantos” epic poem, whichhe started in 1925 & continued almost up to the end of his life.He called it “неисчерпаемыйсвод стихотворныхформ”. The synthesis of hisideas of works, autobiography, aesthetic & poetic principles &reflection of the urgent & poetic issues. “TheCantos” are uneven in quality. Some fragments aredifficult to understand. To facilitate the process of reading “TheIndex of Cantos” was published. In 1925 Pound moved toItaly & became interested in politics & economics. He devotedmuch time & effort to discuss economics & politics.
“TheABC of ECONOMICS”
“WhatIs Money For?”
He supportedthe fascist regime. After the war he was arrested & charged inprison, but was considered to have mental disease & spent 22years in mental hospital. In late 50’s he was let free &went to Italy where he died. But he continued to write even inhospital. “The Cantos of Pizza” is a verypainful reevaluation of the things passed. The famous critic Malisonsaid: “He chose a wrong position above the society & that’sthe problem”. He was the poet who transformed the form ofEnglish verse – thus his achievement was great.
GertrudeStein (1874-1946)
GertrudeStein is remembered because of her influence on the writers to come,not for her works. She doesn’t enter anthologies of English orAmerican literature. She was born in USA, her childhood was spent inEurope. She studied psychology in Harvard. Her teacher was WilliamJames. She conducted several experiments on automatic writing but shewas interested only from psychological point of view. However, shedid not become a psychologist yet this influenced her writing. In1903’s she left for Paris & remained there almost all herlife. In 1909 she published the novel “The Three Lives”.It consists of three parts describing the lives of three women. Thework was unnoticed in that time. But that time she got acquaintedwith famous artists: Picasso, Matisse. New tendencies in painting(cubism, abstractionism) impressed her very much.
Abstractiontendencies dominated in her artistic works. She claimed that onlySpanish & American writers were able to realize abstract notionsin literature. This abstraction must be expressed by the deformity ofthe form. She was the only representative of literary abstractionism.Her desire was to get rid of the content of words (of the meaning) sothat she could be able to concentrate on the plastic properties ofthe language & its syntax. She was going to capture inner &outer reality in the most precise & objective form.
Literaturemust not awake any associations: associative emotions are invalid.Everything that is the result of emotions cannot be the gist ofliterary work, cannot be material for prose & poetry. They mustconsist in the precise rendering of internal & external reality.The words must express the reality directly, she tried to devoid themof any meaning. But she forgot that the painter & the writer usedifferent media for their arts. But if colours have no meaning thewords obviously possess it. She wanted to create pure literature byusing pure words, no one else tried to do that before. She emptiedthe words of the thought & created almost her private language &that was the extreme. It showed how far one could go in violating thelanguage.
Anothernovelty – the new concept of time. She tried a new method ofnarration – “continuous present”. Instead of thenarration she creates a composition where a story is presented as ifhappening at the present moment, not as a consequent unfolding of thetheme as we perceive reading. She did acknowledge that such acategory as time in literature would transform into continuousperception of the present moment. So she tried to put this theoryinto practice in her book “The Making of Americans”.
In“The Making of America” describing thehistory of the Gestlandfamily she tries at the same time to give a picture of Americanhistory. She tried to describe individual & generalsimultaneously. And that resulted in the style, which was veryawkward. She also tried to use the technique that she borrowed fromcinematography, like in a film each next shot presents a slightvariation from the previous one. Each next sentence differed from theprevious one only insignificantly (regularly-repeated phrases, keywords). It may look ridiculous, stupid, but many modern writers tookthis repetition from her.
Anotherside the so-called portraits in literature were created on the basisof rhythmic principle. Every person has his own rhythm & inportraying a person’s life she tried to combine & matchthese rhythms – literary expressionism. The result of this wassimplification of syntax, foregroundingof the verbs, minimal punctuation & omission of nouns &adjectives. “Tender Buttons” is acollection of poems, examples of this technique. The reaction was notunanimous. They accused the style for deintellectualization. Forexample, Malcolm Kowly saidthat “reading her style annoys us…”. Stein’sexperiments are not so important by itself because they warned otherartists against taking the same route. Her works are fruitless &senseless – they distract the communication. But herexperiments are noticeable in Hemingway’s syntax, Faulkner’s“continuous present” (=past does exist in the present),Sherwood Anderson’s principles of cinematography. Hersignificance – she was the first English writer who expressedthose tendencies which were the distinctive features of theavant-garde movement.
JohnDoss Passos (1896-1970)
Hewas born in Chicago. He lived a long life but his most productiveperiod was in the 20-30’s of the XXth century. Hereflected the progressive ideas of the time, produced the epic ofAmerican life within the framework of a literary experiments. Hegraduated from Harvard. In 1916-17 studied architecture in Spain &this background can be felt in his works in their architecture.Participated in the war & after that he began to write. His firstbook – “One Man’s Initiation”(1920).It was the first book in American literature, which treats the wartopic. It is a lost generation book because it was motivated bypost-was disillusionment that young people experienced. The pathos isclearly antiwar. It is autobiographical. The pacifist motives arevery strong here. The style doesn’t differ much from that ofhis mature works. Dos Passos chose the fragmentary way oforganization of material, which is to his mind, more expressive. Thebook is in the form of interior monologue – to express moreprecisely the crash of a young American world in the war.
Hecontinued the same technique in “Three Soldiers”.He attacks the corruption of the world, socialist motives become moreexplicit in his work. Here he experiments with writing technique –plot. The lives of three young people – Americans – arein the focus of his attention. At first their lives are connected,they met each other on the same boat but this is the only point wheretheir fates are close. As they arrive in Europe their ways diverge.Each one follows his own path. The plot decenters, follows the lifeof each of three heroes. All of them are ruined at the war, feellost, disillusioned. It is a typical lost generation novel written inthe modernist technique. John Andrews is a painter, he dreams toexpress his protest against the war by artistic means. Both J.Andrews in the book & J. D. Passos fear capitalist tyranny &revolutionary enthusiasm. Antibourgeois pathos is rather strong.
Thesetendencies increase in his next works. “ManhattanTransfer” (novel) is a kaleidoscope of numerousepisodes, names, dates where the reader can hardly find thecharacters. It consists of independent stories, which are all mixed.The only similar feature is the place & the time. Dos Passosconsidered that such composition will enable him to show the realityobjectively, a stream of New York life. Characters representdifferent social layers. The author introduces clips from newspapers,some glimpses of literature, which are not connected with the novel.It produces disorder. But it was his intention – city is achaos; life is a chaos. Reaction to the novel was contradictory. Somethought that it was a collectivist novel. Dos Passos was not in theindividual lives, troubles or joys. A collectivist writer wasinterested in social relations but the paradox was that socialrelations were abstract from his work. He didn’t disposesocial. His attitude to the events is not clear. The lack ofobjective conclusions was intentional but the writer can’t dothat. He tried to produce such works where the generalization shouldbe.
Hewas popular in 20-30’s in Soviet Union, unfortunately hispopularity was short-lived for political reasons. As soon as he beganto criticize & warn against totalitarianism he fell out of grace.He lived through the economic crises of 1929 & this found itsexpression in the novel “USA”.
DosPassos wrote “USA” – a big epic wherehe paid more attention to generalization. He wrote it for 20 years.It consists of 3 novels: “The 42 Parallel”,“1919”, “The Big Money”.Dos Passos tried to be more precise with the composition, developed ascheme of it. It is a big panoramic work. The real hero is Americansociety, the country. It is shown against the social background ofthe nation. It is an epic of American life. The structure is verylogical & coherent. Each chapter falls into several parts, whichare made up of for components & the combination of thesecomponents is very different. These four components are:
novel -the portraits of literary characters
biographiesof historical personalities
news-reel,i.e. news of the day
cameraobscure (eye) – inner monologue of the author
Each piecehas a title & a number. The biographies of historical personalitywere intended to create the historical background, dedicated tofamous people of political, social, scientific, artistic activities.It included the stories about the outstanding people.
Newsof the day was to documentarize the specific moments in the USAhistory to create the historical colouring & objective picture ofthat epoch. It included popular songs, headlines from papers. Herethey try to follow the stream of consciousness of the newspaperreader.
Cameraobscure were to show the author’s attitude to life, to bring anindividual lyrical touch to the story, personal meditations uponcertain subjects, reminiscences of the things passed, expression ofauthor’s ideas upon various aspects of life. It gave a pictureof the author’s evaluation for 30 years.
Novelsare fictions. The portraits of literary characters were imaginaryliterary heroes. There were 11 of them – typicalrepresentatives of all the layers of the American society. Thecentral characters John Wool McHouse. The author tries to trace hisrelations with other characters but it doesn’t mean that heknows all of them.
Fromthe unique combination of these elements the unique picture ofAmerican life springs up. The general mood is that of confusion,tension, tumult, frustration of hopes, feeling that the present isugly & intolerable. People are too fussy about their dailyroutine. In this work he showed how life was lived on the nationalscale.
DosPassos was concerned with the history of the country primarily. Thewriter must be an architect of history. His work was a literaryconclusion – different elements were assembled. The work isconsidered to be an achievement in the American literature. Theauthor tried to use cinematographic principles in writing: close up,precision in details, the art of assembly. He also used the techniqueof montage or juxtaposition. In his later works he perfected thistechnique & achieved quite a success in it. Later he became aradical writer. He was a passionate individualist & individualfreedom was most important to him.
FrancisScott Fitzgerald (1896-1940)
Hebelongs to the lost generation but he gave his own name to it –“jazz age”. Jazz was representative of the generalatmosphere of the years – the feeling of instability in life.Age of transition of social values. To his mind jazz beat ideallyexpressed that feeling of hopeless despair with which his young men &women tried to experience the every passing moment of their lives,their age. There is a recurrent “capre diem”(ловимомент) theme in hisnovels. His heroes indulge & overindulge. Jazz age expressesinstability & changebility of life present in mind of many peoplewho tried to flee from the feeling of being lost, for they no longerbelieved in life, so they tried to live it to their full. Fitzgeraldwas not very rich but was educated in Princeton. He dropped out of itbecause of poor health & poor performance, he didn’t get tofront though he enlisted. He was painfully aware of the differencebetween himself & rich students. He had hatred for the rich. Themain topic of his work – money & its corruptive influence.For him money & wealth were social categories. He regarded therich to be another race, whose habits & moral principles differvery much. He looked into the phenomenon of being rich. For him arich person is one for whom everything is permitted & they lackhuman qualities, he tried to penetrate to the very heart of thematter. So, money & wealth for him were not economic categoriesbut social phenomena. He regarded rich as another race, alien kind ofpeople whose habits, moral principles, views were not as the habitsof the ordinary people. They are the people to whom everything ispermitted & consequently they lack certain human qualities thatof pity, compassion, and sympathy. In his works Fitzgerald stripedthis world of this mysterious veil. He tried to penetrate to the verydepths exploring the ethics of the rich world. Wealth hasdehumanizing impact on human personality. He had a feeling thatsomething awful is coming. “All the stories that come to myhead have touch of disaster”. He produced the collection ofshort stories “All the Sad Young Men”,“Tales of the Jazz Age”. They arepermeated with appocaliptical feeling of tragedy of American life.Fitzgerald was not the only one who treated this topic –Theodore Dreiser in “American Tragedy” did the same.
Hisfinest achievement is the novel “The Great Gatsby”which showed the contrast between material wealth & the spiritualpoverty of the heroes. Concerning this work in Soviet criticism theterm “поэзияотрицательныхвеличин” wasused. It means that he tried to show people who were real characters,strong individuals, but this all is directed not to a right channel –to make one’s life to the top, to get something from life,strive for the world success. For Gatsby wealth is not the purposebut means to have everything that money can give, a key to personalhappiness = relations between Jay Gatsby & Daisy whom he loves.In youth he suffered feeling of inferiority, for she was the daughterof rich parents & he was a poor soldier. He seeks to get money bybootlegging but it turned out that happiness could not be achievedeven with money because Daisy had changed, she is very deaf &blind spiritually, feeling of all-permissiveness increased in her.She doesn’t stop short in thefraud (car accident). Gatsby was killed, Daisy departed, fledwith her husband without any remorse. Gatsby’s tragedy lies inthe fact that he hoped to find happiness, sympathy, love in the worldwhere these feelings don’t exist. The tragedy is that moneychanges people & money changed him & Daisy & he didn’tunderstand this tragedy couldn’t foresee it.
Washe a positive or a negative character for the author? He possessesgood moral qualities but he is not the paragon of moral beauty, heobtained his wealth by not clear ways. It’s clear that he is atragic person. He wastes his talent for money. Very often he iscompared to Clyde Griffite (Dreiser’s). But Gatsby is apersonality.
Fitzgerald’sown story in a way repeats Gatsby’s story: he lived bohemianlife, gradually writing became an obligation. He appeared to be ahostage of his own success. He also had drinking problems, & hiswife whom he loved very deeply had some mental problems.
Theother works are “This Side of Paradise”,“Tender is the Night”, “TheLast Typcoon”, “The Beautiful & theDamned” where he developed the same topic. Fitzgeraldalso had a dilemma & he had to choose to write for money thatruined his health. He died in 1940.
WilliamFaulkner (1897-1962)
Aunique personality born in small town of Oxford (Mississippi) he grewup in an impoverished southern aristocratic family & it hadimpact on him (the spirit of the South). His education was notsystematic. He inherited the tragic confrontation of white &black. In 1925 he mat Sherwood Anderson, dropped out of theuniversity. He tried his hand in different areas. After anunsuccessful attempt to become a pilot (was wounded in the WWI), hedid different odd jobs, worked in a bank, had a published collectionof poems. He wrote a couple of books imitating lost generationnovels. He produces novels “Soldier’s Pay”,“Mosquitoes”. Though published they werenot welcomed by critics. Their words were rather hush: “Faulknerhas no voice of his own, he has nothing to say.” So he decidedto write in a unique style, did not bother himself with any literarytradition. If you don’t like it – it is your problem. Allhis life he lived in that small town &it became a background formost of his books. It is known as “Yoknapatawpha County”
Buthe found writing to be a pleasure for him. In 1929 he wrote “TheSound & the Fury”, “Sartoris”.This year was a turning point for him. He wrote as he pleaseddisregarding traditions. His perspective was to make things clear tohimself. He began to write about the things that he knew firsthand.Both these novels look into the decay of south’s families.Faulkner mercifully exposes the degradation of the South. There aremoral reasons for this: here the topic of slavery springs up, topicof incest, moral impurity of people living there, their sins. At thesame time one can feel Faulkner’s anxiety even hatred about thecivilization, contemporary life. The civilization did only harm. Thealternative is a patriarchal way of living. Much as he scorned thepast he still longed for those times.
Heneedn’t invent anything – “The Sound &the Fury” is taken from Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”.He alluded to the words that Macbeth said before his death:
Life’sbut a walking shadow, a poor player
Thatstruts & frets his hour upon the stage,
Andthen is heard no more. It is a tale
Toldby an idiot, full of sound & fury,
Signifyingnothing.
Itseems that the same feeling of confusion is familiar to Faulkner. Thestory is about the decay of the Compson’s family. The novelconsists of four parts. The first is told by Benjamin Compson who ismentally handicapped. He is that very idiot who tells the story oflife’s confusion. Events are given as fragments of hisperception as if through the stain glass. He doesn’t knowwhat’s going on, he is subconsciously aware of the conflict inthe family. Everything is blurred, mixed, no chronology. We canindicate time by the hints the characters drop now & then. Heuses device of interrelated temporal plains. The second part is toldby Quentin. He is a romantic type of a person who feels deeply &suffers deeply. He is too fragile, too frail. He cannot cope withthe harsh world (committed a suicide). The third – by JasonCompson. He is practical, persistent, knowing what he waits fromlife, a tenacious man. The fourth is told by Faulkner himself. Hetries to be objective, was to put everything their places. Everythingis centred round their sister Caddy. Use of subjective viewpoint,inner monologue, stream of consciousness – achieved a strikingeffect – highly individual characters become universal types:Bengy – childish perception, Quentin – adolescentconsciousness, Jason – pragmatic. All of them are contrasted toauthors representation of things – combining particular &general. The degradation of one family is the symbol of the declineof the South in general. He shows that the family graduallycollapses, people are driven to death & despair. Life is chaos ofsound & fury. Another message was that Faulkner himself didn’tput up with darkness & gloom. Positive note is present in thebook. His intentions are realized in the fourth part.
Thefollowing works treated the same topic. In 1945 he produced thechronological supplement to the work “Light in August”,“Absalom! Absalom!”, “TheSanctuary”, “ As I Lay Dying”.
Thedecline of the South, race conflict & the constant overlap of thepast & the present, loss of human values are the themes of hisworks. A line of descendants of formerly rich South families. Thevalues of the past generation became corrupted in the modern world.Atmosphere of doomed despair. He got a Nobel prize in 1950. Thevalues for him are courage, honour, pride, hope, sympathy,self-sacrifice, compassion.
In30’s his style changed. These works are easy to read. He turnsto another topic – the trilogy “The Hamlet”,“The Town”, “The Mansion”.He thought he had spotted a disease in American society called“snopecism” (from Flem Snopes – the main characterof one of the parts of the trilogy). Snopecism is evil, the productof capitalist civilization, lust for money, put on the pedestal ofAmerican society. Money dominates American life. It is people’sGod. The trilogy is written in a realistic key. It deals with thesnopes – former poor white people. Flem is the first in therank who by cunning, corruption, bribe, general unscrupulousnesselevated himself to a ruling financial class. It is shown how thislust for money leads Flem to come over his friends, family to power.Faulkner shows that a collision with Snopes ruins people, especiallyif they are not of his kind. He is to blame for many deaths. Hedidn’t do it with his own hands but he drove them to suchcircumstances. He is not human. Makes him socially dangerous. Peoplefall victims of his thirst for money. The character who opposes Flemis his stepdaughter Linda. Faulkner makes her a communist (probablyhe saw no other force in the society that could oppose snopecism as asocial phenomenon).
Thechange in Faulkner’s outlook resulted in the structure of thenovel. Chain of associations is not so unruly as previously.
Faulkneris also famous for his short stories collected into two volumes:
“Knight’sGambit”
“CollectedStories”
Theirtheme is decline & deterioration o South. Here we meet the sameheroes or allusions to the characters & events of earlier novels.Every book is interrelated. “The Bear” is a perfectexample of Faulkner’s style. It illustrates his concerns.Faulkner had a reputation of a writer for intellectuals.
EugeneO’Neill (1888-1953)
Helaid the foundation forAmerican drama. He comes form actor’sfamily, education was not systematic, he did different odd jobs –gold digger in Gonduras, sailor, journalist, etc. This enriched himwith knowledge of life firsthand. He developed interest for dramawhen he treated his tuberculosis in sanatorium. He read Ibsen. Thenafter he took a course in theory of drama in Harvard. 1914 is hisliterary debut “Thirst & Other One-Act Plays”.From 1919 O’Neill collaborated with Provincetown playerscompany. They staged his first works, & with this company hissuccess is associated. He worked with them up to 1924. The plays ofthis period:
“TheEmperor Jones”
“TheHairy Ape”
“AllGod’s Chillun Got Wings” (chillun = children)
Theseplays voiced his protest against racism & exploitation. His playsdiffered from typical Broadway production. They are veryexperimental. On the one hand, they are realistic dramas, showing thelife of people who never before were the subject of writers’interest. On the other hand, his plays exhibit his search for theadequate form to treat this topic. Traditional realism is combinedwith the elements of expressionist drama, touch of Ibsen’sinfluence; innovative approach to the use of the elements ofclassical drama & biblical motives. [Ibsen introduced the dramaof ideas, where not the events were important but ideas that werediscussed & disclosed by these events. He is very close toChekhov]
“TheHairy Ape” is a story of a young proletariat RobertSmith whom everybody calls Jank.He was offended by a daughter of a certain man of property & sohe is expressed his …to such a degree that he was put to jailwhere he absorbed certain socialistic ideas. But when he is releasedhe tries to find his “братьевпо духу” he is takenfor provocateur. He is very much shocked and baffled so he goes tothe zoo where he lets an ape out of the cage. Eventually this apekills him & he dies in the ape’s cage.
Hisremarks to the play are very important & he pays great attentionto the setting. First scene shows the worker’s dwelling. Itmust remind a cage by O’Neill. Then the scene shifts to astove-hall is shown. There must be a flame: the fire symbolizes thehell of capitalists exploitation. The next scene shows thefashionable hotel – the paradise of the rich. The last scene isalso an ape cage. It finishes the cycle.
Thenaturalistic symbolism conveys the idea of inhumanity of exploiters,shifts the accents from the conditions, turning man to a beast to thebiological characteristics.
Inhis work of 30-40’s experiment takes to realism.
“TheGreat God Brown”
“LazarusLaughed”
“StrangeInterlude”
Heresorted to various techniques of modern theatre –psychoanalysis, inner monologue, mask theatre.
Hismasterpiece is trilogy “Mourning Becomes Electra”.Here he develops classical notion of the tragic & transfers it toAmerican soil of the civil war period. He takes an eternal conflict &puts it to America. Histories of O’Neill’s characters arecompared to the lives of Electra, Orestas, Clitemnestra. But theenvironment is different.
Laterhe intended to write a saga about wealthy people. It materialized intwo plays:
“ATouch of the Poet”
“MoreStately Mansions”
O’Neillshowed how several generations of American families gradually losetheir values, their destines mingle. Individual lives become part ofnational history.
Theplays crowning his career are “A Moon for theMisbegotten”, “Long Day’s Journeyinto Night”. The latter is the most autobiographical.
TennesseeWilliams (1911-1983)
Heis a southerner born in Columbus, Missouri, where his grandfather wasthe Episcopal clergyman. When he was 12 his father who was atravelling salesman moved with his family to St. Louis, & both he& his sister found it impossible to settle down to the city life.He entered college during the Depression & left after a couple ofyears to take a clerical job in a shoe company. He stayed there fortwo years, spending the evenings writing. He entered the Universityof Iowa in 1938 & completed his course, at the same time holdinga large number of part-time jobs of great diversity. He received aRockefeller Fellowship in 1940 for his play “Battle of Angels”& he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1948 & 1955.
In1940 he started journey around the country & ended it up in NewYork. There he wrote poetry & short stories. 1945 – hisfirst success “The GlassMenagerie”.Autobiographical elements are very strong in the play. Williamsmanaged to create a special lyrical atmosphere of the Wickfieldfamily. It consists of three people – mother, crippled daughter& son. Each of them lives in his or her own glass menagerie i.e.imaginary world which has nothing to do with reality. They fear thereality, its hoarse & repulsive jungle for they cannot adjust tothe law of these jungles. Main idea is that kindness & goodfeelings are doomed in clash with reality. These people are toofragile, too sensitive.
Theplay introduced features of new plastic theatre. The principles ofthis theatre Williams formulated in the afterward to the play “Notefor Reproduction”. It is characterized by tense emotionalatmosphere, certain romanticism, masterly music & light effects,attention is given to cinography & attraction of expressive meansof other arts. In stage remarks Williams is scrupulous about detailsfor they bear important meaning. he calculated to produce certaineffect on the audience.
Hissecond play “A StreetcarNamed Desire” gained him areputation of leading stage writer & Pulitzer Prize. In this playthere is a clash between realism & imagination; physical forces,brutishness & helplessness; sexual drive &thirst for poeticlove; naked ugly truth & illusion, world of fantasy. The maincharacter is Blanche du Beau. The action takes place in New Orleansin French quarters (it is often compared to the “CherryOrchard” by Chekhov). Blanche visits her sister’s familyafter their parents died & the family estate is sold. Blanchewears old ridiculously looking dresses as a symbol of the world shelives in. Blanche meets her sister’s brute of a husband Stan.Her sister gets out of the way to the hospital to give birth to ababy. Blanche and Stan detest each other. He hates a woman who livesin Ivory tower & she hates his brutishness. She denies &longs for him at the same time. In the end he is taken into lunaticasylum.
Williamsplays with human subconsciuosness. But he finds that the core of theconflict is not inherent in the struggle between masculine &feminine but a complex interrelation of personal circumstances:social & others.
TennesseeWilliams’ human type is an outcast, lonely, constantly insearch of a relative soul with whom to share a burden of loneliness.But life is such that the outsider is doomed to defeat. The onlysalvation is love (but even this is questionable). Broken & lostpeople who are not able to defend themselves & their dreams canfind love that will help them to sustain.
Williamsis a prolific writer, he also wrote 2 collections of poems. Hecombined poetry & realism & this unique combination singleshim out from other writers.
“CaminoReal” is an allegoricdrama, very experimental. “This is my conception ofcontemporary world in which I live,” he said. The scene isdivided into two parts:
fashionablehotel in which people are bored & degraded
slumsin which people are weak, humiliated, apathetic
Thetown is in terror, free thoughts are persecuted, people are killed inthe streets, brainwashing is actively underway. All problems aresolved by an old gypsy woman who provides a certain entertainment.The city is called Camino Real[re’a:l], that is the way of hope& dream. It ends to sound real[ri:al], that is the way ofreality, dead end of civilization.
Killroyis an ordinary American who feels that atmosphere of social hysteria& he tries to make sense in life. Old literary characters (DonQuixote, Byron) come to rescue him. The play has an optimisticending: Killroy finally finds the way out of the city to terraincognita. Williams idealized past, his future is uncertain. His pastis good but dead, & the present is abhorrent.
Hisother plays “Baby Doll”, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”,“Something Unspoken”, “Suddenly Last Summer”,“Sweet Bird of Youth”, “The Milk Train Doesn’tStop Here Any More”, “The Night of the Iguana”,etc.
PostModernism.
Postmodernism can be regarded in two aspects:
as aliterary trend
as aphenomenon which doesn’t belong exclusively to literature –a certain mentality of post industrial age.
Postmodernism appeared after the second WW. In 50’s, especially60’s new type of fiction, new writing emerged, drasticallydifferent from previous writers. The idea that permeated this works:there is need to reevaluate old values, the values that lead Westerncivilization (idea of emancipation, enlightenment). But the WWIIshowed that the belief that a human is a reasonable creature who canbuild a reasonable society is inconsistent.