English Literature

The second is short – “The way up & the way down are one & the same”.
This is another duality, two ways of apprehending the truth. The first one is an active embrace of ecstatic experience (the way up), the second one is a passive withdrawal from experience into self (the way down).

The poem got a reputation of a great obscurity due to a philosophical richness but at the same time it is intensely musical. He tries to make it closer to music by the motives that return like the tones in music. It is not by chance that the poem is called “Four Quartets” – 4 instrumental voices in the quartet. In his essay “The Music of Poetry” he explained this usage of recurrent things.

From 1926 he experimented with poetic drama “The Cocktail Party”. But his dramas remain unpopular because drama needs plot.

Eliot received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1949 as recognition of his innovations in modern poetry. He also wrote critical works “The Sacred
Wood”, “The Use of Poetry & the Use of Criticism”, “On Poetry & Poets” – most influential literary documents.

David Herbert Lawrence (1885-1930)

Lawrence was very much influenced by Freud’s conception of human personality. He is considered to be a modernist but he didn’t experiment with form. On the outside he worked within the confines of English novel tradition but he broke from the understanding of human relations that were accepted in critical realism. He was the first who touched upon the problem of marrying, the relations between sexes, he didn’t hush down the contradictions between them. His main concern was to liberate a person from all the constrains which were put by the society upon him. There was so much taboos, hush-hush attitudes to this topic, that …

He is compared to Eliot. Both started from similar points that civilization threatens human beings, it is hostile to man. Civilization is sick, it destroys people morally & bodily. What Lawrence can suggest instead? His religion was belief in blood & flesh as being wiser than the intellect. This belief became one of his main themes. He interpreted human behaviour & character from this standpoint. All his writings were underlined with a deep discontent with a modern world. And this fact unites him with other modernists. 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 our emotional, irrational layers of consciousness. He was little concerned with social problems. Lawrence’s treatment of character is based on the assumption that 7/8 are submerged & never seen. He explored the unconscious mind that was not always seen but was always present. He is fumbling for the words to describe strictly indescribable. He enjoyed popularity in his lifetime. His first works are:

“The White Peacock” 1911

“Sons & Lovers” 1913

They were well received. Critics thought that there appeared one more working-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 late Victorian prudishness. He was the first to describe sexual relations using 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 beneath herself & so she tried to develop ambitions in her children. The book centers around Paul Morel & his mother’s relations. His mother made him fatally unable to love another woman. “There was something in his life that blocked his intentions.” The relations that he explores within the Morel family remind us of the relations in his own family. He must get it clear & get away with it. By giving this story a form of a novel Lawrence tried to liberate himself of his ties with the past. Sometimes it is considered an illustration of
Freud’s theory of Oedipus complex.

We consider Lawrence a modernist not because of his innovations in form
& style but by his attitude to human beings (human behaviour is biologically determined). “Blood & flesh being wiser than intellect”.

Lawrence is a very prolific writer but his books were uneven in quality
– 15 novels & volumes of short stories. The best of them are:

“The Rainbow”(was also condemned as obscene one)

“Women in Love” 1920

“Kangaroo” 1923

“The Plumed Serpent” 1926

“Lady Chatterley’s Lover” (1929) was subjected to obscenity trial. It was banned for oscine vocabulary till 1960. “His urgency in seeking out the deepest core of his characters’ being lead him to employ a language overfraught with portentous vocabulary – repeatedly, ineffectually gesturing at dark, mystic, passionate, but ultimately vague & ungraspable emotions.” Critics considered this work to be his greatest one.

Sexual aspect wasn’t the only one though very important. It was a part of his concept of personal development.

American Modernism.

It appeared in the first decade of the XX when the group of poets appeared in the USA who tried to bring modernists’ ideas. The most active of these poets were Ezra Pound & Thomas Eliot. American modernism doesn’t mean geographical terms. Many American writers created their works in
Europe (mainly in Paris). Ezra Pound said: “Paris is a lab of ideas”.
Modernists:

Ezra Pound

Gertrude Stein

John Dos Passos

Ernest Hemingway

Partially William Faulkner

Francis Scott Fitzgerald

Ezra Pound (1885 – 1972)

A famous poet, publicist & translator. He studied in the University of
Pennsylvania (studied Roman languages). But he had a very brief career as a teacher & in 1908 he left for Europe. He walked all the way from Gibraltar to Venice where the first collection of his poems appeared – “A Hume
Spento”. During 2 years from 1908 he gained his popularity. His collections were:

“Canzoni” – songs

“Ripostes” – leisure

“Lustra” – light
The poems impressed 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 be precise & clear in word usage. They did not accept thematic limitations, 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.
Its features:

V Mechanistism

V Technisism

V Specific rhyme
Much attention was paid to the metaphorical images. These ideas influenced young poets like Robert Frost, Thomas Eliot, and W. Butler.

Pound edited magazine “Little Review” where new names & works were introduced. It is believed that he revolutionized English versification. He tried to capture the intonation of monological speech. His poems have a peculiar form of masques. His poetry is dressed in the bright clothes of
Latin, Greek, Japanese, Anglo-Saxon, etc poets.

Translations are the best part of his legacy. They were also thoroughly polished masques. He developed interest Japanese poetry. He liked the
Japanese way of presenting the most abstract idea through a concrete image.
So he introduced idiomatic poetry when any nation could be rendered through the combination of concrete images. This principle was employed in “The
Cantos” epic poem, which he started in 1925 & continued almost up to the end of his life. He called it “неисчерпаемый свод стихотворных форм”. The synthesis of his ideas of works, autobiography, aesthetic & poetic principles & reflection of the urgent & poetic issues. “The Cantos” are uneven in quality. Some fragments are difficult to understand. To facilitate the process of reading “The Index of Cantos” was published. In
1925 Pound moved to Italy & became interested in politics & economics. He devoted much time & effort to discuss economics & politics.

“The ABC of ECONOMICS”

“What Is Money For?”
He supported the fascist regime. After the war he was arrested & charged in prison, but was considered to have mental disease & spent 22 years in mental hospital. In late 50’s he was let free & went to Italy where he died. But he continued to write even in hospital. “The Cantos of Pizza” is a very painful reevaluation of the things passed. The famous critic Malison said: “He chose a wrong position above the society & that’s the problem”.
He was the poet who transformed the form of English verse – thus his achievement was great.

Gertrude Stein (1874-1946)

Gertrude Stein is remembered because of her influence on the writers to come, not for her works. She doesn’t enter anthologies of English or
American literature. She was born in USA, her childhood was spent in
Europe. She studied psychology in Harvard. Her teacher was William James.
She conducted several experiments on automatic writing but she was interested only from psychological point of view. However, she did not become a psychologist yet this influenced her writing. In 1903’s she left for Paris & remained there almost all her life. In 1909 she published the novel “The Three Lives”. It consists of three parts describing the lives of three women. The work was unnoticed in that time. But that time she got acquainted with famous artists: Picasso, Matisse. New tendencies in painting (cubism, abstractionism) impressed her very much.

Abstraction tendencies dominated in her artistic works. She claimed that only Spanish & American writers were able to realize abstract notions in literature. This abstraction must be expressed by the deformity of the form. She was the only representative of literary abstractionism. Her desire was to get rid of the content of words (of the meaning) so that she could be able to concentrate on the plastic properties of the language & its syntax. She was going to capture inner & outer reality in the most precise & objective form.

Literature must not awake any associations: associative emotions are invalid. Everything that is the result of emotions cannot be the gist of literary work, cannot be material for prose & poetry. They must consist in the precise rendering of internal & external reality. The words must express the reality directly, she tried to devoid them of any meaning. But she forgot that the painter & the writer use different media for their arts. But if colours have no meaning the words obviously possess it. She wanted to create pure literature by using pure words, no one else tried to do that before. She emptied the words of the thought & created almost her private language & that was the extreme. It showed how far one could go in violating the language.

Another novelty – the new concept of time. She tried a new method of narration – “continuous present”. Instead of the narration she creates a composition where a story is presented as if happening at the present moment, not as a consequent unfolding of the theme as we perceive reading.
She did acknowledge that such a category as time in literature would transform into continuous perception of the present moment. So she tried to put this theory into practice in her book “The Making of Americans”.

In “The Making of America” describing the history of the Gestland family she tries at the same time to give a picture of American history. She tried to describe individual & general simultaneously. And that resulted in the style, which was very awkward. She also tried to use the technique that she borrowed from cinematography, like in a film each next shot presents a slight variation from the previous one. Each next sentence differed from the previous one only insignificantly (regularly-repeated phrases, key words). It may look ridiculous, stupid, but many modern writers took this repetition from her.

Another side the so-called portraits in literature were created on the basis of rhythmic principle. Every person has his own rhythm & in portraying a person’s life she tried to combine & match these rhythms – literary expressionism. The result of this was simplification of syntax, foregrounding of the verbs, minimal punctuation & omission of nouns & adjectives. “Tender Buttons” is a collection of poems, examples of this technique. The reaction was not unanimous. They accused the style for deintellectualization. For example, Malcolm Kowly said that “reading her style annoys us…”. Stein’s experiments are not so important by itself because they warned other artists against taking the same route. Her works are fruitless & senseless – they distract the communication. But her experiments are noticeable in Hemingway’s syntax, Faulkner’s “continuous present” (=past does exist in the present), Sherwood Anderson’s principles of cinematography. Her significance – she was the first English writer who expressed those tendencies which were the distinctive features of the avant- garde movement.

John Doss Passos (1896-1970)

He was born in Chicago. He lived a long life but his most productive period was in the 20-30’s of the XXth century. He reflected the progressive ideas of the time, produced the epic of American life within the framework of a literary experiments. He graduated 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 first book – “One Man’s Initiation”(1920). It was the first book in
American literature, which treats the war topic. It is a lost generation book because it was motivated by post-was disillusionment that young people experienced. The pathos is clearly antiwar. It is autobiographical. The pacifist motives are very strong here. The style doesn’t differ much from that of his mature works. Dos Passos chose the fragmentary way of organization of material, which is to his mind, more expressive. The book is in the form of interior monologue – to express more precisely the crash of a young American world in the war.

He continued the same technique in “Three Soldiers”. He attacks the corruption of the world, socialist motives become more explicit in his work. Here he experiments with writing technique – plot. The lives of three young people – Americans – are in 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 where their fates are close. As they arrive in Europe their ways diverge. Each one follows his own path. The plot decenters, follows the life of each of three heroes. All of them are ruined at the war, feel lost, disillusioned. It is a typical lost generation novel written in the modernist technique. John Andrews is a painter, he dreams to express 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.

These tendencies increase in his next works. “Manhattan Transfer”
(novel) is a kaleidoscope of numerous episodes, names, dates where the reader can hardly find the characters. It consists of independent stories, which are all mixed. The only similar feature is the place & the time. Dos
Passos considered that such composition will enable him to show the reality objectively, a stream of New York life. Characters represent different 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 a chaos; life is a chaos.
Reaction to the novel was contradictory. Some thought that it was a collectivist novel. Dos Passos was not in the individual lives, troubles or joys. A collectivist writer was interested in social relations but the paradox was that social relations were abstract from his work. He didn’t dispose social. His attitude to the events is not clear. The lack of objective conclusions was intentional but the writer can’t do that. He tried to produce such works where the generalization should be.

He was popular in 20-30’s in Soviet Union, unfortunately his popularity was short-lived for political reasons. As soon as he began to criticize & warn against totalitarianism he fell out of grace. He lived through the economic crises of 1929 & this found its expression in the novel “USA”.

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