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 “íåèñ÷åðïàåìûé ñâîä ñòèõîòâîðíûõ ôîðì”. 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
