VIII. Literature between the two world wars

LITERATURE OF THE 1920s

The tragedy of the First World War, the social and political upheavals in the world, of which the October Revolution in Russia was the greatest, had a marked effect on a!! English writers. In the 1920s a sharp division of literary tendencies was noticeable. Some writers were enthusiastic about the revolutionary changes in the world, others realized the failure of the old values, but did not know which way to choose and how to behave under the new circumstances.

The English -..,riters of the 20s were searching for new modes of expression but often fell under the influence of Decadence, which at the beginning of the 20th century acquired the new name of m o de r n is m. Modernism be­ carne the leading trend in English literature of post- World War I period.

At that time the works of Sigmund Freud ( 1856-1930),

112

an Austrian psycho-analyst, professor of neurology, be­ came very popular in England and had a great influence on the development of modernism.

The attitude of modernists to life and Man is different from that of realists. Modernism is characterized by an absolute disregard of social problems, by a strong empha­ sis on the hero's private world, his feelings, reactions, subconscious life. It refuses to depict characters as deter­ mined by concrete historical conditions. Man is pessimisti­ cally shown as a primitive and low creature guided by instinct.

It was then that a group of writers appeared whose views on Man and his role in life reflected the main prin­ ciples of modernism. The outstanding representatives of this group were James Joyce ( 1882-1941) and Virginia Woolf (1882-1941 ).

James Joyce was born in a well-to-do Irish family in a small town near Dublin. His father was interested in politics, his mother was very religious. The Irishness of his parents' outlook had a most important influence on his creative work. His education, in both school and university, was catholic. However, at the age of 16 he became a·n atheist.

His articles written when a student ( 1899-1902) give a good idea about the formation of his aesthetical views. It was then that he became utterly engrossed in the Dublin literary atmosphere which became a new Irish Renais­ sance. The leaders of that moveme11 t took a great interest in the ancient Irish traditions, in its folklore. They fought for the formation of national literature and the revival of national language which the English had endeavoured to do away with. His article The Day of the Crowd ( 1901) is tYf>ical of his further position. His point of view was thai a real artist could only create abroad, far from his native land.

After the university he went to Paris to study medicine. There he met Nora Barnacle, his future wife. His mother's sudden illness, however, made him return to Ireland.

His mother's death and the political situation in Ire­ land, which hl!d been strugglini! for many centuries for its liberation from Eni!lish oppression, forced him and his wife

to leave the country. However, Joyce missed his native land during all the thirty-seven years that he lived on the con­

tinent. He died in Switzerland, in January 194I and was buried there.

In 1914 his first book Dubliners appeared in print. The stories in it were true to life, they conveyed the gloomy atmosphere that ruined the hopes of the Irish intellectuals.

In 1916 A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man was published. Its plot is complicated and much of it is au­ tobiographical. Here we find the exposition of Joyce's aesthetic credo. The novel acquaints the reader with the difficult political situation in Ireland. It also shows the

author's sufferings after he broke with religion. The approach to the "stream-of-consciousness" method of which Joyce is supposed to be the initiator is obvious in the

last chapter of this novel. Here Joyce presents the reader with a new form of writing: short notes in which the main character Stephen Dedalus puts down his disconnected thoughts.

This method is again taken up and developed by the writer in the masterpiece of English modernism -'Ulysses

( 1922) As Joyce's biographers say the story of Odys­

seus* made a great impression on the young James. He considered the theme of Ulysses most beautiful and over­ whelming, greater in its philosophical essence than the themes of Hamlet and Don Quixote. Joyce was impressed by the character of Ulysses, by his humaneness, which he always opposed to human evil.

The action of the novel covers one specific day, June 16, in Dublin in the year 1904. Joyce shows life and history through fragments of thoughts, recollections, feelings of the main characters Leopold Bloom, Stephen Dedalus and Marion, Bloom's wife. This method of presenting the events resulted in an extensive novel. It consists of 18 epi­ sodes. Here is the essence of some of them:

I. Stephen Dedalus feels an outsider in his own house,

where an Englishman has settled.

5. Bloom's wanderings about the city and looking at

the shopwindow ot the tea-selling firm bring to his im­

agination pictures of the East and its people.

10. Dublin in the afternoon. Each of the characters meets a lot of acquaintances, and friends.

15. Midnight. Stephen is at a students' drinking party. Bloom goes after Stephen to take care of him.

17 Night. Bloom takes Dedalus home and they go over

the adventures of the day.

18. 3 a. m. Marion is in bed. She calls to mind the

114

• Ulysses is a variant name of Odysseus.

fragments of her life, the images of her relatives.

All the episodes of the novel correspond to the 18 in­

cidents of Odyssey, and its characters have prototypes in Homer's epic. Bloom's wanderings about Dublin are compared to Odysseus' homecoming. If Bloom stands for Odysseus, Stephen resembles his son Telemachus and Marion is like Odysseus' wife Penelope, then the 14th epi­

sode where Bloom finishes his travels and meets Stephen becomes the culminating point of the whole novel. The reunion of father and son symbolizes their comprehension of truth and of the sense of life, it is the moment of en­ lightenment for both of them.

According to Joyce, Bloom, Stephen and Marion sym­ bolize the eternal features of man's character, Bloom is the embodiment of "everyman": primitive, limited, ever wandering, lonely and suffering. The character of Stephen Dedalus conveys the author's idea of the intellectual side of human nature. He is educated, well-read, free from low instincts, yet never at peace either Marion incarnates perpetual womanhood. And Dublin symbolizes the whole world. Ulysses represents Joyce's notion of contemporary life, chaotic and senseless.

Joyce's contemporary, Virginia Woo If, in her turn, showed through the "stream-of-consciousness" the tragic aspects of human life and the way people were bound together by mE'mories, reactions and obsessions.

Woolf brought together English intellectuals who were followers of Freud in a literaty circle known as the

,Bloomsbury group"

Virginia Woolf's best work, Mrs. Dolloway (1925) is an outstanding example of psychological prose of the 20th century. The novel shows Clarissa Dalloway spending one day of her life preparing for an evening party. This begins at nine in the morning when she goes out to buy flowers for her party, and finishes at dawn the next day. Here Woolf portrays the English society: the nobility, the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the middle classes. She depicts every detail of a situation with vivid, impressionistic strokes. However, she never arranges these strokes rationally, but makes them ,stream" through the minds of her characters.

Owing to their complicated form and plot, Woolf's

• Virginia Woolf lived in the suburb of London, called Bloomsbury

There the members of the group met and discussed their works.

115

novels could only be enjoyed by a small group of intelec­

tuals.

The name of D. H. Lawrence(l885-1930) is worthy

of special attention. He was an admirer of Freud, too. At the same time, however, he adhered to realism in art.

The son of a Midland miner, brought up in a working

class environment, Lawrence, for the first time introduced in English literature the working man in his everydily life, paying much attention to his inner, private world. The working people in Lawrence's novels are described as respectable, sensible, shrewd men.

The major novel that brought him success is Sons and

Lovers ( 1913). Like the author the main character Paul

Morel was brought up in a working class environment. His

life is greatly affected by the conflict between his pa­ rents- a rough, unambitious father and an intelligent and refined mother. Paul's mother has one passion in her life- a passion for her sons. And this strong feeling affects Paul's private life. He realizes that he cannot really Jove any woman. When his mother dies he finds himself quite alone. Much attention is given to the detailed and precise descriptions of men's feelings, the subconsci­ ous, to the world of natural human instincts. Lawrence's firm belief was that all the social injustice in the world could only be overcome by love and happiness.

The development of English critical realism continued.

The realistic tradition of the older generation (B. Shaw, J. Galsworthy, H. Wells) was followed by such writers as A. Coppard, K. Mansfield and others who paid much attention to social problems in their works.