English Literature

“Araby” & “The Dead ”. The stories are arranged in successive sequences –

childhood, adolescence, mature & public life. Mood is gloomy, imagery is

dark & malignant. People are incurably lonely, their hopes are doomed to

disappointment & frustration.

In the full form the collection was published in 1914 together with his

autobiographical novel “The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”, which

was to be called “Stephen-Hero”. This book explores the story of the

formation of the artist’s consciousness. In criticism it is called “a

gestation of the soul”, for he tries to penetrate into people’s mind. It is

deeply psychological work. In form it is “buildungsroman” (German word

meaning “educational novel”). Life is shown chronologically. The main hero

– Stephen Dedalus. The process of his maturing is shown in the development.

In the first part the language is very simple. Then some glimpses of

family life are given. The disagreement between its members has political

roots. Another stage is school & college. Stephen does not participate in

boys’ games. He longs for the moment when he can be alone, he is weak &

suffering. The Jesuit college bred an aversion for religion in the young

artist. Everything was repulsive in the college: sermons, system of

punishment, religibility + hypocrisy. It was an anguish experience. Stephen

learnt to build a wall between him & all the rest of the humanity.

The book has an open ending – we don’t know Stephen will do. It ends

with the decision to leave Ireland. This exile, solitude are the ways in

which Stephen opposes to the oppressing influence of the society. He

rejects what life suggests to him – his choice is loneliness. The problem

of correlating of artists & society is solved by Joyce from highly

individualistic standpoint. The last pages express Stephen’s understanding

of form & time categories. “The past is consumed in the present & the

present is living because it has force in the future”. The name “Dedalus”

is symbolic. It is a symbol of new art which is liberated from restrain of

old art… He discovers & explores the possibilities of new art. Its aim is

to create a new labyrinth of forms of new art.

In 1922 ”Ulysses” was published. It started as another short story for

“The Dubliners” but grew into the massive novel. Joyce recreates the action

of “Odyssey” in a single day – July 16, 1904 (it was a significant day for

Joyce: he decided to leave Ireland & met his future wife). Since two plains

run parallel. The main characters are associated with certain people in

“Odyssey” by Homer: the main characters are 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

place throughout this day – butcher’s shop, post office, cemetery, printing

house, library, pub, hotel, again pub, shop, his poor house, cheap pub… his

adventures has nothing in common with adventures of Odyssey. They are down

to Earth, petty. In Bloom Joyce tried to show wandering of “eternal…”. He

has unheroic adventures & finally meets Stephen who becomes his spiritual

son. This is a plot.

In form the book is mostly a never-ending stream of Bloom’s

consciousness (he is not an intellectual person, his impressions are very

incoherent). The book has a very rigid form. Joyce describes in many

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’s mind, 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.

It witnesses that Joyce was a virtuous of the English language. ”Ulysses”

has 18 episodes, each of them tracing the deeds & the thoughts of three

people during one day in Dublin. The book is a mosaic. It consists of

different & not quite linked together parts. There is almost no plot. Joyce

still puts the idea in it to describe symbolically man’s wandering in the

chaos of life & floating with the stream of his thoughts. The humanity is

lost & confused about all the contradictions of modern life, people waist

their lives in this chaos, their existence is sensless & purposeless. The

three main characters present three 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.

The book caused a storm of outrage. It was banned in Britain & America

for more than ten years. Now it is praised for technical experimentation &

stylistic brilliance. The book attracted attention to the stream of

consciousness technique. In general it evoked controversial responses.

Even before completing “Ulysses” Joyce wrote “Finnegan’s Wake” – a

novel. If “Ulysses” is considered to be a daybook, “Finnegan’s Wake” is a

night book. Joyce tried to present the whole human history in a dream of a

Dublin innkeeper Earwicker by name. The style is appropriate to a dream,

the language is shifting & changing, the words blur & glue together, this

suggests the merging of images in a dream. This technique enables Joyce to

present history & myth as a single image. The characters stand for eternal

types, identified by Earwicker himself, his wife & the three children.

The work masks the limit of formal experiment in the language.

“Finnegan’s Wake” is considered to be a closed book. It is very

sophisticated. Joyce loses the thread of narration sometimes… attempted in

the sound of words, construction of a sentences, to render the meaning of

what he was talking about (e.g. images of woman & the river are merging;

the rhythm – gurgling, flowing water). What unifies these two books – both

of them express Joyce’s positive credo: he asserts that life is eternal,

human society does change but the change has a circular character.

Everything is renewed, nothing can be destroyed. Joyce starts the work with

the continuation of thoughts & the beginning of them is at the end. Man

must believe in the city (symbol of Dublin).

Thomas Stearns Eliot (1889 – 1965)

Thomas Stearns Eliot is considered today’s genius in poetry.

Quintessence: refine sensibility – the essential quality of the poet. “Our

civilization comprehends great variety & complexity; & this variety &

complexity playing upon a refined sensibility must produce various &

complex result. The poet must become more & more comprehensive, more & more

allusive, more indirect in order to force, to dislocate if necessary

language into his meaning” – said Eliot. This is an account of what a

modern poet should do. He must be finely tuned to the world to be able to

express the various & complex. The poet can distort the language, to use it

figuratively.

Extremely was influential figure in literary circles. Editor, poet,

playwright, critic – he came from a prosperous American family, his father

was a rich manufacturer & his mother wrote poetry. He was brought up in St.

Louis Missouri. He was educated in private school & attended Harvard to get

his degree in philosophy in 1906. Then left for 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

symbolist movement was one of major influences upon his poetry. The goal of

art is to express the unique personal emotional responses to a certain

moment in human life through indefinite illogical, sometimes private in

meaning symbols. Eliot returned to Harvard & there he read widely in

Sanskrit & oriental philosophy (had a powerful influence on him). In 1915

he decided to give up philosophy to remain in England & to begin writer’s

career. In 1916 he completed his Ph.D. theses, but never received a degree.

He married & settled in England permanently.

The beginning of his literary career starts from 1910 when he wrote “The

Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”. It was published in 1915 in magazine

“Poetry”. The poem is written in a very simple style. Then he made a

collection “Prufrock & Other Observations”. This was compared with “Lyrical

Ballads” of Wordsworth & Coleridge. This work inaugurated the age of

modernism in poetry. There is no plot in the story. It’s a dramatic

monologue but of the new kind. It sounds like a stream of consciousness of

a person who walks up the street of London. The protagonist is Alfred

Prufrock. He is an antiromantic hero, rather timid, self-centred. The tone

is very ironic, images are startlingly fresh. The title suggests that some

feeling should be shown to the other person. The poem starts as a dialogue:

Let us go out – you & I…

Critics argue that you & I are two sides of one & the same person. Eliot

says that “YOU” is a companion of Prufrock. We should pay attention to the

epigraph: “The truth will remain under”. This means that the speaker can

persuade himself to talk only if this will never be heard. It is his own

dramatic monologue. Prufrock is intensely preoccupied with himself.

Probably he signs his love song to himself… (though it doesn’t matter much)

We can understand “love-song” in ironic sense because the whole poem is

an elaborate rationalization for not seeking love. Love cannot exist in

this ugly senseless chaotic world. It is a miracle, hopeless yearning of

person for the vitality. The whole scene makes us see that love is not

possessive in this world. Repulsive attitude of the narrator towards what

he sees – images of a pair of ragged claws, mermaids singing each to each.

Leitmotif:

В гостиных дамы тяжело

Беседуют о Микеланджело.

It means that they talk of what they pretend to know.

The poem is full of allusions. The epigraph is quite important, taken

from Dante’s “The Divine Comedy”. The end of poem is pessimistic. It is one

of the most understandable of his poems.

“The Waste Land” (the poem (1922) in ”Dial” & “Criteria”[GB]). The poem

consists of 5 parts & their titles speak for themselves:

“The Burial of the Dead”

“A Game of Chess” – an allusion of a medieval play, where the action was

as if in two playings.

“The Fire Sermon” – the postulates of oriental religion.

“The Death by the Water”

“What the Thunder Said”

In terms of forms the poem is a collage of fragments of memories,

overheard conversations, quotations put together only by the implied

present of a sensible person (= a refined sensibility = a modern poet),

upon whom all these complexibilities & varieties of human world are hipped

& who staggers under the burden of them. We can say that the mind of the

poet is heavily packed with cultural tradition. A poem abounds in highly

sophisticated allusions:

. “The Tempest”

. Anthropological account of “Grail”(“Грааль”) legend– a legend

connected with Christianity – a cup from which Christ drank;

. from “The Divine Comedy”;

. alluded & used words from operas of Wagner;

. refers to the story of crusification;

. uses French symbolists;

. as well as scraps of popular culture – music-hall songs, slang

words, contemporary fashion;

He hips everything together. This bits & pieces are set into a matrix of

flowing stream of consciousness of a man. The dramatic portrait of a single

mind becomes the portrait of an age. Eliot provided 52 notes for “The Waste

Land” when it was first published. The poem was opposed violently but there

were also admirers. They said that Eliot gave a definite description of

their age. Now terms “lost generation”, “post-war disillusionment”, “jazz

age”, “waste land” are used parallelly For many contemporary writers &

critics “The Waste Land” was a definite description of the age.

Civilization was dying. Critics regarded it as the disillusionment of a

generation. Eliot protested against that. The term “waste land” is used in

literature alongside with the term “lost generation”.

He also employed the myth of dying & reviving king – what the poem

expresses is the need of salvation & this is expressed in 3 Sanskrit words

(give, sympathize & control). There are many barbarisms in the poem.

In 1925 he published another poem in the same tonality. “The Hollow 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 is a set of recurrent symbols. The meaning depends on

cumulative effect of the individual images. The idea of spiritual sterility

in the image of Hollow Man – grotesque caricature of man, their behaviour

is mimicry of human activity. The poem is very short. It is easily read but

not so easily understood. There are 5 parts in the poem. Other images –

Death of the Kingdom. The life of the Hollow Man – is more shadowy & less

real than the life beyond the grave. Religion is substituted by simple

rituals devoid of all 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:

This is the way the world ends,

Not with 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 in religion he developed more composed

lyrical style.

His mature masterpiece is “Four Quartets” (1944) which is based on the

poetic memories of certain localities of America & Britain. This is a

starting point for his probing in the mystery of time, history, eternity,

the meaning of life. It deals with one single question of what significance

in our lives are ecstatic intense moments when we seem to escape time &

glimpses of supra-ordinary reality (it resembles Joyce’s “Epiphanies”.

There are two epigraphs that give clues to the answer. The epigraphs are

very important.

The first comes from Heroclitus. It contrasts the general wisdom of the

race with moments of private individual insight. It shows the dualism of

individual existence. First of all individuality is apart of a body of

mankind, located in history & tradition. Secondly, it is a unique

personality. Each person embraces both & this predetermines the reaction to

intense moments.

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.

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