English Literature

English Literature

English Literature in the 20-30’s of the XX c.

The century is characterized by great diversity of artistic values &

methods. This age had a great impact on the literary process. Variety of

social, ethic & aesthetic attitudes. New achievements in science have their

impact on literature. Literature absorbs & transforms the material of their

influences:

V The First World War

V Russian Revolution

V Freud’s psychoanalysis

V Bergson’s philosophy of subjective idealism

V Einstein’s theory of relativity

V Existentialists thought

V Economic crises 1919-1921 & consequent upheaval of social movement

V Marxist ideology

V Strike 1926

All these factors lead to literature of social problematics. There

existed three trends: critical realism, beginning of social realism,

modernism. The writers revolutionized, changed literary form, as well as

continued the traditional forms. This inter… is a distinctive feature of

the XX c. English literature reflected Britain’s new position in the world

affairs. By the end of the XIX Victorian tradition began to deteriorate.

The desire to liberate art & 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 to reflect truly thoughts of

people. Realists in the beginning of the XX – Hardy, Galsworthy, Shaw,

Wells, Conrad, Mansfield, Bennett, etc.

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)

He introduced intellectual play in the English theatre. He was much

influenced by Ibsen. “In 1889 British stage came into collision with

Norwegian giant Ibsen. He passed as a tornado & left nothing but ruin.”

Everybody wanted to create something like Ibsen. Shaw also experienced

Marx’s influence especially “Das Kapital”. The society was in crisis. The

article “The Quintessence of Ibsentism”. Here he underlines his belief that

the real slavery of today is the slavery to ideas of goodness. Ibsen was

accused of being immoral. But it implies the conduct that doesn’t conform

to current ideals. The spirit of is constantly outgrowing his moral ideals

& that is why conformity to those ideals produces results not less tragic

than thoughtless violation of them. The main effect of Ibsen’s plays on

public is that his plays stress the importance of being always prepared to

act immorally. He insists that living will, humanistic choice are more

important than abstract law, abstract moral norms. Ibsen: “The Doll’s

House” let everybody refuse to sacrifice. There is no formula how to

behave.

English drama of the passed years was centered on some imaginary event.

Ibsen did not write about accidents, he wrote about “slice of life”(life

experience). He introduced open play – a play that has no end (if you show

a slice of life you obviously have open play). Shaw objected “art for art’s

sake”. It means only money’s sake. Every great artist has a message to

communicate. His role is to interpret life, to create mind. All art is

didactic. “Heartbreak House” reflects the state of Europe before the war.

George Herbert Wells (1866-1946)

A novel was also developing. In the beginning – a time of crisis for

English novel. The XIX model was not acceptable any more. The novel of the

past years developed to describe a social hierarchy. In the beginning of

the century the dominant belief was that the Victorian society fell apart.

Wells was attempting to escape the traditional novel forms. The novel was

seen as a means to create future.

His lecture – “The Contemporary Novel”.

Wells was a very prolific writer. He wrote more than 100 books, he is

best known for his science fiction. He had a very definite aim – political

& social. He was trying to combine critical analysis of present

civilization to the picture what it might be in future. He believed in

science. But he understood that it can be dangerous because the power for

destruction is huge.

“The War of the Worlds”. He was considered utopiographer. To build

utopic they needed to destroy the relics of the past – class distinction

(unenlightenment). He analyzed the feelings of the present in the life of

nation’s future.

“Ann Veronica: A Modern Love Story” depicts the problem of emancipation.

The novel was written as a reaction to eugenics movement. He affirmed the

need of gifted individuals to find the appropriate patterns & the choice

must not be constrained by any social restrictions.

“Tono-Bungay” is a novel about the life of gentry in the rural England.

It combines science fiction & realistic novel. Bladesover – a place, where

George Pondervo (the main character) grew up. It becomes a symbol of

dominant influence of the past models of life. The novel is episodic in

form, doesn’t have classical structure. Wells was the first person who

ushered in English literature the theme of lost generation.

“Mr. Britling Sees It Through”(1916) was called by him “the history of

his own concern”. The responsibility of everyone for the war. It is

autobiographical. Tried to write about the evolution of consciousness of

his contemporaries. Concentrates on the inner life of his heroes. Fantasy &

reality mingles here. As to the reasons of the war – he brings his heroes

to the conclusion that wars are inherited in human nature. He started as an

optimistic liberalist but as he lived on he was very much disappointed.

“You Fools” is his last word to humanity.

* * *

There are many novels & poetry about war. These writers are known as

“lost generation” writers. The term was introduced by Gertrude Stein. She

uses it metaphorically: old values & beliefs were lost in the war but

unfortunately new moral values were not formed yet. Majority of these

writers went through the war themselves.

This was a certain tendency in poetry – Trench poetry. They wrote about

war. Young people who served as soldiers expressed their outcry: Wilfred

Owen ”Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori”, Siegfried Sassoon, Isaac

Rosenberg. Many of the poems have pacifist character. They were among the

first to create the true picture of trench life. They gave rather

naturalistic pictures, the imagery was very vivid & appalling, scenes of

massacre, they wrote about the smell 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.

The classical example of novel about lost generation is “The Death of a

Hero” by R. Aldington.

Richard Aldington (1892-1962)

He started as a poet close to decadence, aestheticism, he belonged to

imagist poets (formalism). He published “Old & New Images”- his first

collection of poems. He propagated the doctrine escapism – movement to

escape in to the world of beauty (in Ellinism) from the ugliness of the

world. This ideal world was shattered by the WWI. He came from it another

man, he broke with imagists & continued to work in realistic trend.

In 1929 “The Death of a Hero” was published. The novel was started after

the war but had not been completed until 15 years later. It’s a social

novel disclosing tragic consequence & reasons of war. He made readers see

that the war was inevitable. But the protagonist tries to find the answer

for the question – who is responsible for that? Everybody was! Everybody is

guilty for the rivers of spilt human blood. This book is a cry for

redemption for the writer.

It is a novel of big generalization. There are many autobiographical

touches in the book. He starts farther in the war to unmask the hypocrisy

of the English society, respected English families. Aldington wants to show

that this is a pack of lies that the war is a noble deed, a salvation. He

tries to show that lies started much earlier. His ideals are truth &

beauty. Aldington says that this generation was lost before the war

started. War was not the source of the tragedy but rather result of it.

The life story of George Winterborne is given in a reverse order. We see

Winterborne family in which all relations are based on deceit & lies. Later

we see George at school where he is supposed to develop into a strong &

aggressive individual, the defender of imperialism. He tries to escape from

the influence of society & turns to art in search of his place under the

sun. He moves to London but among “intellectual” people he found only

hypocrisy. He is inherently lonely, his ideas of truth & beauty are

frustrated by snobs, who pretended to be leaders of artistic movement. He

sees all their cynicism. In that period of his London life he still shows

his early tendency to resist to circumstances. He expresses his

disillusionment in angry talks but he cannot achieve peace. He remains

passive.

Much is said about his love because love was the only harbour for other

“lost generation” heroes. It is not so for G.Winterborne. These relations

are coloured with cynicism (realization of Freud’s ideas of free love

between George’s wife & her lover). When he tried to put these ideas into

practice, he faced with constant quarrels & was eventually turned down by

both his women. Then the war starts. He volunteers to the front. War

becomes a period of his maturity. He finds himself side by side with common

soldiers & this confrontation with simple people makes him aware of real

human values – those of courage, friendship, support. Nothing can be more

precious than pure trust in man. Life in the trenches makes him think about

life in general & he started to ask questions. How does it happen that

government finds huge amount of money to kill Germans in the war but cannot

find it to fight poverty in London. He becomes aware of social

contradiction & antagonism. He thought that social hostility broke through

in the outburst of hatred. He still feels very much lonely & isolated. He

feels that he differs from others, he is very much of an individual soul.

He doesn’t belong to the soldiers, their roughness makes him feel very

uncomfortable. He is completely lost. With all these problems he doesn’t

see any way out but to terminate his life by his own free will (he commits

a suicide). By all the narration Aldington makes us see that this way is

the logical ending for the person who was lost before the war started.

It is a sarcastic book. Aldington was eager to tell the truth about the

society openly. But it was impossible to overcome individualism, the author

is not objective, he shows the whole range of feelings. That’s why the end

of the book is so bitter & hopeless. The title itself is very sarcastic.

His death is also a symbol how senseless the war is, it’s just a torture.

His satire has many shades, but also a definite target & purpose. Sometimes

it reminds Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” because of the social character of

satire. “Death of a Hero” is an absolutely disillusioned novel. Aldington

called this book “a jazz novel”. This jazz effect is achieved by

kaleidoscopic change of contrasted images. The novel is characterized by

multitude of emotional states. The style is rather nervous. He is easily

overcome by despair & negation, carried to the very extreme. These feelings

are the features of the lost generation people. “The Death of a Hero” is

the first big & most successful of all his works. His other novels are:

“Colonel’s Daughter”

“All Men Are Enemies”

“Very Heaven”

All are about those people who came back from the war alive but still

couldn’t find their place in life. The main characters are akin to George

Winterborne. The critics say that Aldington 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.

The word “modern” means “up-to-date”. Critics & historians used it to

denote roughly the first half of the XX century. The representatives of

this movement were anxious to set themselves apart from the previous

generations. They totally rejected their predecessors. The term was

suggested by the authors themselves. The difference between past & present

tradition is qualitative. Modernist writers clearly defined the borderline

between Victorian age & 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). They had a deep conviction

that modern experience is a unique one. They tried to point the change in

modernism. This change was – massive disillusionment, destruction of faith

in a number of basic social & moral principles, which laid the foundation

of Western civilization. This change was to some degree intellectual as the

result of late XIX theories & discoveries.

Karl Marx “Das Kapital”. He shaped the imperialistic ideology, he showed

it was not the pattern of progress. He believed that the world would not be

dominated by enlightened bourgeoisie. The struggle is inevitable.

Charles Darwin “On Origin of Species”(1859) & “The Descent of

Man”(1871). A human being was placed in the animal world. The forces that

determine human behaviour are not of intellect & reason but is determined

by the need of physical survival.

James Frazer’s “The Golden Bough”(1890-1915) showed similarities between

primitive & civilized cultures. The primitive tribes appeared to be not so

savage as they seemed to be. They were just like the civilized ones.

Nietzsche’s “Birth of Tragedy”. In this book he exposes dark sides of

human psyche, glorified the belief in ancient heroic philosophers.

Max Planck’s “Quantum Theory of Atomic & Subatomic Particles”. This

model of discreet beats of energy behaving in apparently unpredictable ways

seize the imagination of people so much that they extrapolated it beyond

the limits of physics. They believed that human behaviour was also chaotic,

disorderly & unpredictable.

Freud’s “Interpretation of Dream”. This work created a new model of

human personality itself as a complex, multilayed & governed by irrational

& unconscious survival of fantasies.

These theories were in fact not very new they were known in the XIX but

in XIX they never destroyed the general principles & ideas.

Modern writers after the WWI found themselves in so-called “empty

world”. Their world was deprived of its stability. Nothing can be taken for

granted. They didn’t believe that life they were living. Being

disillusioned & contemplating the society & cosmos most of them looked

within themselves for the principles of order. They turned to eternal

things. For that matter we see modern literature being pre-occupied with

its own self, process of perception, nature of consciousness. In its

extreme subjectivity modern literature went parallelly with other modern

arts (e.g. painting).

The main feature – subjectivity & self-interest. Modernist aesthetics

was formed under the influence of French symbolist poets :

Charles Baudleъr

Arthur Rimbaut

Paul Verlaine

Stephan Mallarmй

Their aim was to capture the most perishable of personal experience in

open-ended & essentially private symbols, to express the inexpressible, to

express the slightest movements of the soul, or at least evoke it subtly if

not express, create the atmosphere of the soul. The symbolist concentration

upon single moments of individual perception. Life in their reproduction

was reduced to small fragments of experience. This fragmentation influenced

not only composition of the work but also the character. The character was

disassembled in fragmentary pieces & these pieces of human character were

not held together by any theory of human type, like a collagй,

juxtaposition – all transitions are removed. You just put the fragments

together. The widely used technique “stream of consciousness” takes the

form from a fluid associations, often illogical moment to moment sequence

of ideas, feelings & impressions of a single mind. Traditional literary

forms & genres merged & overlapped. The introduction of poetry into prose

became possible, imagery characteristic of poetry – into prosaic text. The

forms of the past were also employed but to produce the satirical effect.

An equally important principle – “the stream of unconsciousness” – the

use of irrational logic of dreams & fantasies, denies ordinary logic

(“exhausted rationality”). They employed the shadowy structure of dream.

The idea “time & space” didn’t exist & the imagination was only slightly

grounded in reality but generally it created new patterns by combining

previous experiences, etc.

The authors employed myth very much as a kind of collective dream.

Modernist’s myth was stripped of its religious & magical associations.

Joyce’s “Ulysses” is based on the ground of Homer’s ”Odyssey”. Eliot said:

“In using the myth, in manipulating the contentious parallel between

contemporaniety & antiquity Mr. Joyce is pursuing the method which others

must persue after him. It is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of

giving a shape & significance to an immense panorama of futility & anarchy

which is contemporary history”. Myth is the way of organizing history. The

writers’ quest for order lead to their preoccupation with the artist

himself & with the artistic process. The imaginary character stood for the

author himself:

Marsel Proust “Remembrance of the Things Past”

Lawrence “Sons & Lovers”

Joyce “The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man”

We can’t say that the artist became modernists’ hero. Not all writers of

that period were modernists. There was the co-existence of different

styles.

James Joyce (1882 – 1941)

He was born in Ireland (Dublin). Although he spent many years not in

Ireland he is considered one of Irish writers. Primarily he wrote about

himself, transforming his experiences in his books, & relatives & friends –

into symbols. His works are said to be “expansive & inclusive”. Expansive –

because he gave a very wide panorama of Dublin life at the turn of the

century, inclusive – because his works seemed to include all the human

history. These novels still are the stories & novels about life in general.

He started to attend an expensive private boarding school but his father

became bankrupt & he continued his education at home. Then he attended

“University College” in Dublin. He read very much & 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 person or some thing is being revealed). He studied in

Paris, then returned to Ireland & in 1904 left it. He lived in different

places in Europe. First, he earned money by giving English lessons. In 1905

he submitted to the publisher his first version of the collection of

stories “Dubliners”. But it was repeatedly rejected & even after acceptance

it was subjected to severe censorship for sexual frankness & use of

obscenities & use of real names & places. This collection consists of 15

stories devoted to childhood, mature life & public life. All are unified by

the theme of person’s loneliness & hopelessness. Joyce describes life with

all naturalistic details. Everything suggests that life is dead. All the

stories explore the paralysis of Irish life. The most famous stories are

“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”.

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