American author, outstanding representative of naturalism, whose novels depict real-life subjects in a harsh light. Dreiser's novels were held to be amoral, and he battled throughout his career against censorship and popular taste. This started with SISTER CARRIE (1900). It was not until 1981 that the work was published in its original form. Dreiser's principal concern was with the conflict between human needs and the demands of society for material success.
«A woman should some day write the complete philosophy of clothes. No matter how young, it is one of the things she wholly comprehends. There is an indescribably faint line in the matter of man's apparel which somehow divides for her those who are worth glancing at and those who are not. Once an individual has passed this faint line on the way downward he will get no glance from her. There is another line at which the dress of a man will cause her to study her own.» (from Sister Carrie)
Theodore Dreiser was born in Sullivan, Indiana, the ninth of ten children. His parents were poor. In the 1860s his father, a devout Catholic German immigrant, had attempted to establish his own woolen mill, but after it was destroyed in a fire, the family lived in poverty. Dreiser's schooling was erratic, as the family moved from town to town. He left home when he was 16 and worked at whatever jobs he could find. With the help of his former teacher, he was able to spend the year 1889–1890 at Indiana University. Dreiser left after only a year. He was, however, a voracious reader, and the impact of such writers as Hawthorne, Poe, Balzac, Herbert Spencer, and Freud influenced his thought and his reaction against organized religion.
In 1892 Dreiser started to write for the Chicago Globe, and moved to a better position with the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. In 1898 he married Sara White, a Missouri schoolteacher, but the marriage was unhappy. Dreiser separated permanently from her in 1909, but never earnestly sought a divorce. In his own life Dreiser practised his principle that man's greatest appetite is sexual – the desire for women led him to carry on several affairs at once. His relationship with Yvette Szekely Eastman is recorded in Dearest Wilding by Yvette Eastman (1995) – she was 16 and Dreiser 40 years older when they met.
As a novelist Dreiser made his debut with Sister Carrie, a powerful account of a young working girl's rise to success and her slow decline. «She >yas eighteen years of age, bright, timid and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterized her thoughts it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in the throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken.» (from the 1981 edition) The president of the publishing company, Frank Doubleday, disapproved of the work – Dreiser illuminated the flaws of his characters but did not judge them and allowed vice to be rewarded instead of punished. No attempt was made to promote the book. Sister Carrie was reissued in 1907 and it became one of the most famous novels in literary history. Among its admirers was H.L. Mencken, an aspiring journalist, whom Dreiser had hired as a ghost-writer in his paper. William Wyler's film version, starring Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Jones, was made at the height of the Cold War and McCarthy era. Paramount executives delayed the releasing of the film – they thought the picture was not good for America and it was a flop. «It was a depressing story», said Wyler, «and it might not have been a success anyway.»
The 500 sold copies of his first novel and family troubles drove Dreiser to the verge of suicide. He worked at a variety of literary jobs, and as an editor-in – chief of three women's magazines until 1910, when he was forced to resign, because of an office love affair. In 1911 JENNIE GERHARDT, Dreiser's second novel, appeared. In the story a young woman, Jennie, is seduced by a senator. She bears a child out of wedlock but sacrifices her own interests to avoid harming her lover's career. A passage in which Jennie's lover Lester Kane, the son of a wealthy family, tells her about contraceptives, was removed by Ripley Hitchcock, the editor at Harper & Brothers. Jennie Gerhardt was followed by novels based on the life of the American transportation magnate Charles T. Jerkes, THE FINANCIER (1912), and THE TITAN (1914), which show the influence of the evolutionary ideas of Herbert Spencer and Nietzsche's concept of the Ubermensch. Last volume of the trilogy, THE STOIC, was finished in 1945.
«At the height of his success, when he had settled old scores and could easily have become the smiling public man, he chose instead to rip the whole fabric of American civilization straight down the middle, from its economy to its morality. It was the country that had to give ground.» (Nelson Algren, in Nation, 16 May, 1959)
Dreiser's semi-autobiographical novel THE 'GENIUS' (1915) was censured by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The book remained off the market until Live right reissued it five years later. Dreiser's commercially most successful novel was AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY (1925), which was adapted for screen for the first time in 1931, directed by Josef von Sternberg. Dreiser had objected strongly to the version because it portrayed his youthful killer as a sex-starved idle loafer. The second time was in 1951 under the title A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Cliftand Elizabeth Taylor. During the filming the stars became attached to one another, which is reflected in the tenderness of their performance. The director George Stevens won an Academy Award, as did the writers Michael Wilson and Harry Brown for Best Screenplay. However, Robert Hatch in the New Republic (September 10,1951) dismissed the film. «Unfortunately, the power and bite of the book have been lost in the polite competence of the screen. These are such nice, such obviously successful people, they must be playing characters… there doesn't seem much use in dragging Dreiser's classic off the shelf just to dress it in this elegant, ambivalent production…» The book made Dreiser the champion of social reformers, but his later works did not attain similar notice.
An American Tragedy tells the story of a bellboy, Clyde Griffiths, indecisive like Hamlet, who sets out to gain success and fame. After an automobile accident, Clyde is employed by a distant relative, owner of a collar factory. He seduces Roberta Alden, an employee at the factory, but falls in love with Sondra Finchley, a girl of the local aristocracy. Roberta, now pregnant, demands that Clyde marry her. He takes Roberta rowing on an isolated lake and in this dreamlike sequence 'accidentally' murders her. Clyde's trial, conviction, and execution occupy the remainder of the book. Dreiser points out that materialistic society is as much to blame as the murderer himself. Dreiser based his study on the actual case of Chester Gillette, who murdered Grace Brown – he hit her with a tennis racket and pushed her overboard at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondack in July 1906. An American Tragedy was banned in Boston in 1927.
Much of Dreiser's works evolved from his own experiences of poverty. Among his rare excursions into the realm of fantasy is the ghost story The Hand1 (1920). It is a tale of murder and the haunting of the killer, but again behind the nightmare of the protagonist are the familiar themes of Dreiser's novels – fear of losing ones social position, feelings of moral guilt arising during the unrestrained struggle for success.
The second book of «An American Tragedy» opens with the description of the Home of Samuel Griffiths in Lucurgys, New York, a city of some twenty-five thousand inhabitants midway between Utica and Albany (p 157)
We set the acquaintances of Myra – the oldest daughter, Gilbert Griffiths, the only son of this family, and Bella, who wasn’t like her sister Myra. Let’s have an information about them, Myra was not beautiful, but Bella;
«Contrasted with her sister, who was tall and dark and rather sallow, Bella, though shorter, was far more gainfully and vigorously formed. She had thick brown almost black hair, a brown and alive complexion fainted with red, and eyes brown and genial, that blared with an eager, seeking light addition to her sound and light physique, she possessed vitality and animation. Her arms and legs were graceful and active. Plainly she was given to liking things as she found them enjoying life as it was and hence, unlike her sister, she was unusually attractive to men and boys to men and women, old and young-a fact which her mother and father well knew» (p 158)
«Indeed she was his pet, the most pleasing and different and artistic thing, as he saw it, that all his years had brought to him – youth, health, intelligence and affection – all in the shape of a pretty daughter» (p 165)
Дом Сэмюэл Грифитса в Ликурге (город с двадцатью пятью тысячами жителей, расположенный в штате Нью–Йорк, на полпути между Утикой и Албании) (стр. 164)[5]
Белла была совсем не похожа на свою сестру – высокую, болезненно бледную брюнетку. Она была ниже ростом, но грациознее и в тоже время крепче. У нее были густые, почти черные волосы, смуглый оливковый цвет лица с горячим румянцем, веселые карие глаза, сверкавшие жадным интересом ко всему на свете, гибкое тело и красивые ловкие руки и ноги. Жизнь била в ней ключом. Она попросту любила все вокруг, наслаждалось жизнью такой, как она есть, и по этому, в отличие от сестры, неудержимо привлекала к себе всех – мужчин, и юношей, и женщин, старых и молодых – что, конечно, прекрасно замечали ее родители (стр. 165)
Разумеется, она была его любимицей. Он считал ее очаровательной, несравненной, своего рода произведением искусства, лучшим, что подарила ему жизнь; юность; здоровы, веселы, ум и любовь – все воклощалось в образе прелестной дочери. (стр. 172)
Самуил Грифитснинг Ликургда (бу ахолиси йигирма беш минглик шахар булиб, Нью – Йорк штатида, Утика Билан Олбэнининг уртасидаги уйи) (бет – 143)
Белла опасига сира хам ухшамаган киз эди. Опаси новча рангпар ва кора соч булса, у пастакрок, нозанинрок ва Айни пайтда пишик қиз эди. Сочлари калин корамтир, зайтун тусли бугдой ранг юзлварида қирмизи ранг хам купчиб турар, оламдаги хар бир нарсага сабрсизлик Билан қизиқувчи куй кузли, танаси новдадекгина, оек – қуллари хам бенихоя латиф ва эпчил эди. Уни олов киз деса буларди. Теварак – атрофидаги нарсаларнинг барини куш курар, бор хаетдан завкланар, шунинг учун хам опасидан фаркли равишда хаммани – эркаклару усмирларни хам кексаю еш аелларни хам узига жалб килар, бу нарса унинг ота – онасига хам яхши маьлум эди. (бет – 144)
Белла унинг арзандаси эди, албатта. У Беллани хает узига иньом этган мафтункор, бекиес узига хос саньат дурдонаси деб карар, бу ажойиб кизи тимсолидаешлик, соглик, қувноклик, ақл ва мухаббат, хуллас, хама – хаммаси жамулжам булган эди. (бет– 151)[6]
For ever since he had fled from Kansas City, and by one humble device and another forced to make his way, he had been coming to the conclusion that on himself alone depended his future. They were too impractical and too poor – his mother, father.
Esta, alb of them (p. 171)
И это особенно отличала его от Клайда прежних дней, удравшего из Канзас – Сити в товарном валлоне – он стал гораздо осторожнее и сдержаннее. Ибо с тех пор как он бежал из Канзас – Сити и должен был пускаться на всяческие украшения, чтобы просуществовать, он понял, что его будущее зависит только от него самого. Его родные – в этом он окончательно убедился – ничем не могли ему помочь. Все они и мать, и отец, и Эста – были слишком непрактичны и слишком бедны. (стр. 179)
У энди анча эхтиёткор ва босик булиб колган, уни Канзас-Ситидан товар вагонида кочиб кетаётган пайтидагидан бошкача курсатиб тургани хам шу эдию Зероб Клайд Канзас – Ситидан кочганидан бери тирикчилигини утказиш учун кирмаган кучаси колмаган, шунинг учун хам келажаги факат узига боглигини тушиниб олганди. Ота-онаси унга ёрдам кулини чузиша олмас, бунга у тула-тухис ишонч хосил килганди. Нега дегандаб онаси хам, отаси хам, Эста хам кули киска ва жуда камбагал эдилар. (157–158 бет.)
Clyde writes to his mother that he became different after the auto accident, «I’ve got a lot more sense now, anyone I see things different than I used to. I want to be successful. I only have a fair place now, not as good as I had in K.C., but fair, and not in the same like. But I want something better, though I don’t want to go back in the hotel business either if I can help it. It’s not so very good for a young man like me too height flying, I guess. You see I know a lot more than I did back there. They like me all right where I am, but I got forget on in this world. Besides I am not really making more than my expenses here now, just my room and board and clothes, but I am trying to save a little in order to set into some line where I can work up and lean something. A person has to have a like of some kind this day, I see that now» (p 174)[7]
Теперь я кое-чему научился и лучше всё понимаю. Я хотел бы добиться какого-то положения в жизни. Надеюсь, что мне повезёт. У меня теперь довольно хорошее место, правда, не такое, как в Канзас – Сити, но всё-таки вполне приличное, хотя и в другом роде. Но я хочу добиться чего-нибудь лучшего. Только я постараюсь больше не работать в гостиницах. Это не подходящее дело для таких, как я. По-моему не стоит забираться так высоко. Видишь, я теперь поумнел. Там, где я служу, мною довольны но я хочу достигнуть лучшего положения. Кроме того, зарабатываю я не так много, хватает только на самое необходимое; комната, стол, одежда. Но я все-таки стараюсь понемножку складывать потому что хочу найти себе какое не будь подходящее занятие что бы можно было чему – не будь научиться. В наше время каждый человек должен иметь специальность, теперь я это понимаю. (181–182 стр.)[8]