The Year that Launched Modernism

The World Broke in Two: 

Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, 

D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster

 and the Year that Changed Literature 

by Bill Goldstein

"In 1922, Eliot, Forster, Lawrence, and Woolf each discovered a private literary way to recapture and to bridge the lost time that the (Great) war represented."



Willa Cather stated in 1936 that "the world broke in two in 1922 or thereabouts," and since then, college freshmen have been fretting about it like a soup-bone. With its leave-nothing-to-the-imagination subtitle, "Virginia Woolf, T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, E. M. Forster, and the Year That Changed Literature," Bill Goldstein's book, The World Broke In Two, which focuses on some of the major figures in the Western literary world in the year 1922, has that unsettling idea at its core. 

The professional and personal lives of Goldstein's key characters and a large cast of others are described with insightful detail ("Hearing of Virginia's latest relapse in May, Tom wrote in sympathy to Leonard"), the founding editor of the New York Times Books website. The year 1922 was indeed "a great literary period," as Ezra Pound wrote to T. S. Eliot. The book was meaningful to me personally as a reminder of the enjoyment I have had reading the books discussed, especially with the added biographical background of E. M. Forster and the others. The book is a tribute to the birth of modernism in literature.

Daunted Beginnings

Sons and Lovers 

by D.H. Lawrence

“Night, in which everything was lost, went reaching out, beyond stars and sun. Stars and sun, a few bright grains, went spiraling round for terror, and holding each other in embrace, there in a darkness that outpassed them all, and left them tiny and daunted. So much, and himself, infinitesimal, at the core of nothingness, and yet not nothing.”  ― D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers




On this day in 1885 D. H. Lawrence was born in Eastwood, outside Nottingham, the fourth of five children. Lawrence's autobiographical novel, Sons and Lovers, made famous the tortured conditions of his upbringing: his uneducated father's pit-and-pub life, his mother's contempt for this and her self-sacrifice to escape it, Lawrence's own conflicted feelings about both of them. It initially incited a lukewarm critical reception, along with allegations of obscenity, it is today regarded as a masterpiece of modernism. It certainly established some of the themes that Lawrence would explore in his subsequent novels.

Lawrence began working on the novel in the period of his mother's illness, and the autobiographical aspects of the novel can be found in his letters written around the time of its development. Torn between his passion for two women and his abiding attachment to his mother, young Paul Morel struggles with his desire to please everyone--particularly himself. The story develops against the backdrop of the author's native Nottinghamshire coal fields. The sensitivity of Paul is highlighted by the rough edges of the town and the other men in the family. When economic forces go against the family and their mining community his mother experiences even greater need to see young Paul break free. Lawrence's own personal family conflict provided him with the impetus for the first half of his novel — in which both William, the older brother, and Paul Morel become increasingly contemptuous of their father — and the subsequent exploration of Paul Morel's antagonizing relationships with both his lovers, which are both incessantly affected by his allegiance to his mother. Other women intrude on his life and in Lawrentian fashion the passions rise. This is his first successful novel and key in the development of modern fiction.

The issue of free will is important for Lawrence. He asks to what extent his characters’ environment influences their characters’ choices. We can see this made explicit in his descriptions. For example, when Paul begins to look in the newspapers for work, the narrator writes, “Already he was a prisoner of industrialism . . . He was being taken into bondage. His freedom in the beloved home valley was going now.” The modern industrial world, specifically as it manifests itself in the effect mining culture has on the Morel family, shapes the characters’ desires. This theme and his approach to it reminded me of the naturalism of Zola and Dreiser.

Even in this early novel Lawrence was explicitly depicting human sexuality. He flouted the moral conventions of the genre and of society, and his notoriety grew. At least one publisher refused Sons and Lovers because of its sexual content. Lawrence’s theories about human behavior revolved around what he called “blood consciousness,” which he opposed to “mental and nerve consciousness.” Lawrence also explores the class conflicts as they pertain to life in the coal community. Morel's mother, a school teacher, is sensitive to this and tries to protect her sons from becoming bound to the coal fields.

This is one of the best early modernist novels. The growth of young Paul Morel, both mentally and emotionally, combined with the depiction of the mining community and his family relationships makes this an enjoyable and entertaining read.

Books, Maps and the Reading Life

Islands
 

 I was reminded of the importance of islands in literature while reading an article by Robert Macfarlane in the latest issue of Intelligent Life Magazine.  Like Macfarlane I had a love of cartography from an early age; "maps fire my mind" as he puts it. One of the possible sources of this love, for me and certainly for him, was a reading of Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson.  Stevenson became one of my favorite authors and Treasure Island is among his books that I have read a reread since. But there are other authors who have enthralled me with their islands. The following compilation of reviews includes four of these "island" books, but there are others that I have enjoyed including Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, Island by Huxley and Golding's dark morality tale, Lord of the Flies.  

"In the beginning was the map. Robert Louis Stevenson drew it in the summer of 1881 to entertain his 12-year-old stepson while on a rainy family holiday in Scotland. It depicts a rough-coasted island of woods, peaks, swamps and coves. A few place-names speak of adventure and disaster: Spyglass Hill, White Rock, The Graves. The penmanship is deft—at the island’s southern end is an intricate compass rose, and the sketch of a galleon at full sail. There are warnings to mariners: "Strong Tides", "Foul Ground". And in the heart of the island is a blood-red cross, by which is scrawled "Bulk of treasure here".

Stevenson’s map was drawn to set a child dreaming, but it worked most powerfully upon its grown-up author, inspiring Stevenson to write his great pirate novel "Treasure Island" (1883). Poring over the map, he began to populate his landscape with characters (Long John Silver, Captain Flint), and to thicken it with plot. Up from that flat page sprang one of the most compellingly realised of all imaginary places. Countless children have made landfall upon its blonde beaches, moved cautiously through its grey woods and seen sunlight flash hard upon the wild stone spires of its crags. Once visited, the island inhabits you."  -  Robert Macfarlane, "A place that inhabits you", Intelligent Life Magazine September/October 2013.




Treasure Island 
by Robert Louis Stevenson

“Sometimes the isle was thick with savages, with whom we fought, sometimes full of dangerous animals that hunted us, but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange as our actual adventures.”  ― Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island  

  This is a foundational book for me. I read it originally around 1960 and along with Kidnapped is has cemented Stevenson's place in my reading life. Traditionally considered a coming-of-age story, it is an adventure tale known for its atmosphere, character and action, and also a wry commentary on the ambiguity of morality—as seen in Long John Silver—unusual for children's literature then and now. The influence of Treasure Island on popular perception of pirates can be seen in media portrayals, including treasure maps with an "X", schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen with parrots on their shoulders. This adventure tale is one of conflicts, with the principal one being that between the virtue of advanced civilization versus the indiscipline of man in his savage state. Jim Hawkins, Dr. Livesey, and Captain Smollett, among the principal heroes, stand for virtues such as loyalty, truthfulness, thrift, discipline, religious faith, and temperance (especially with alcohol). The pirates suffer from drunkenness, impiety, and mutual betrayal, and tend to seize immediate gratification on the premise that life is short and uncertain. Long John Silver occupies a middle ground in this conflict: he shares the heroes' virtues of temperance, thrift, and deferred gratification, but only to aid him in achieving his ends, for which he is also willing to lie, betray, and murder. Most of the pirates can not even achieve Long John's level, which gives him a natural advantage in their company.

The novel can also be read as a bildungsroman which has become one of my favorite genres including such classics as David Copperfield and Of Human Bondage. In Treasure Island Stevenson writes of the development and coming-of-age of its narrator, Jim Hawkins. Jim's moral development culminates when he promises Silver not to attempt an escape. The novel includes exciting adventures but it also demonstrates ethical lessons in loyalty, truthfulness and temperance. The combination is presented in an exciting and suspenseful prose that never falters. It is one of the great adventure novels of my experience. 
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The Magus 
by John Fowles


"It came to me…that I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world at that moment, that what I was feeling at that moment justified all I had been through, because all I had been through was my being there. I was experiencing…a new self-acceptance, a sense that I had to be this mind and this body, its vices and its virtues, and that I had no other chance or choice.”  ― John Fowles, The Magus

While his novel The Collector was my introduction to the work of John Fowles I was not nearly as impressed with that novel as I was with The Magus. In it I found an intense, engrossing novel that maintained my interest in several ways including its setting on a Greek island.

The plot of the novel is a story of a young unhappy man who considers himself a poet and a philosopher. He takes a job at an English boarding school on a Greek island to escape what could become a complicated situation after a young woman with whom he is involved falls in love with him. Having used up his "charm with women," as one of the characters puts it, he sees this a better alternative. On this Greek island, he meets a millionaire named "Conchis" who tells the young man, Nicholas, stories of his life. To Nicholas' surprise, the characters in the stories begin to appear on the estate in what Fowles (in the prologue to the revised edition) describes as a kind of magical realism. While the novel seems to explore the ideas of conflict in mythology and philosophy, it rapidly turns into a kind of psychological mystery as Nicholas becomes more and more enmeshed in Conchis' mind games and it becomes more difficult for him--and the reader--to tell the difference between reality and fiction.

While, I found a certain resonance with Le Grand Meaulnes, by Alain-Fournier, in the showing of a secret hidden world to be explored along with reference to Charles Dickens's Great Expectations, the novel seems as much about the idea of "freedom" in the twentieth century. It also explores the definition of meaningful experiences, both inter-personal and intra-personal. While always artistic even while it sometimes seemed a bit bewildering it was ultimately a great read due to the uniqueness of its structure and its exploration of ideas. Combined with Fowle's beautiful prose that proved to be the right potion for a great novel. 
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The Island of Dr. Moreau 
by H.G. Wells

"The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low, dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing glory of the sun, went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside like some luminous curtain, and at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity which the sunshine hides, and saw the floating hosts of stars. The sea was silent, the sky was silent. I was alone with the night and silence.”  ― H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau 

  Over the period of a decade beginning with The Time Machine in 1895, H. G. Wells created some of his most popular fictions in the form of scientific romance novels. These books have captured the imagination of readers ever since and are arguably as popular today as they were more than one hundred years ago. Among these perhaps the strangest and best is The Island of Dr. Moreau. Undoubtedly influenced by Robinson Crusoe, but also by Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island which was published only thirteen years earlier, this book goes far beyond those deserted island tales and looks forward to the twenty-first century and beyond. In its day it was considered blasphemous, but in the age of cloning its depiction of vivisection takes on new meaning while the blasphemy recedes into the background. Above all this is a good story with suspense that holds even after the first breathless reading that it usually inspires. The story is of such a suspenseful nature that I am reluctant to share any plot details for fear of spoiling the experience for the reader.

As with all great books the levels of meaning and reference in this book are many and the structure, a lost narrative found only after the author's death (reminiscent of Poe among others) is a nod to the era of the unreliable narrator for before his death Edward Pendrick, the narrator, claims to have no memory of the events which it described. Peter Straub, in his "Foreword" to the Modern Library edition, commented:

Given its infusion of the adventure tale with deep, pervasive doubt, Dr. Moreau can be seen as a unique and compelling alliance of Treasure Island and Joseph Conrad. (p. xvi)

I certainly agree with this assessment and believe that Wells, who was a good friend of Conrad as well as Henry James, Stephen Crane and Ford Madox Ford, might also agree with it. Like the best of Conrad reading this book was an exhilarating experience due both to its narrative and its deep meaning. 
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The Man Who Loved Islands 
by D.H. Lawrence

"even islands like to keep each other company. " - D. H. Lawrence

Yes, more than men, that is the man of the story who loved islands, islands liked to keep each other company. This is a story from the pen of D. H. Lawrence who wrote many wonderful stories. In this story he has incorporated several themes and many layers of meaning all in less that twenty-five pages. The man who "loved islands" appears Quixotic as he attempts to create an imaginary island world around himself as he sequesters his being in his book-laden library to write about the birds of the classical world. But his dreams were quickly corroded as the corruption of humanity tainted his imaginary Eden. Suggestions of Milton's Paradise Lost - yet can Satan have corrupted humanity so thoroughly that few are honest or loyal enough to continue the journey with the man?
Imaginary though it was it reminded me of Rousseau's attacks on civilization while he wrote of an imaginary state of nature. This state of nature seemed to be close to the reincarnation of our man's island as he tried yet a second time to accomplish his dream. Ultimately the man who loved islands inherits a nightmare as the story veers into a snowy dystopia. What meaning does this hold for the reader? I am not sure, but the thoughts for which the story is a catalyst will continually remind me of this strange world.

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Love and Ideas Down Under

Kangaroo 
by D.H. Lawrence

“I am a fool," said Richard Lovat, which was the most frequent discovery
he made. It came, moreover, every time with a new shock of surprise and
chagrin. Every time he climbed a new mountain range and looked over, he
saw, not only a new world, but a big anticipatory fool on this side of
it, namely, himself.”  ― D.H. Lawrence, Kangaroo 

Kangaroo is an account of a visit to New South Wales by an English writer named Richard Lovat Somers, and his German wife Harriet, in the early 1920s. This appears to be semi-autobiographical, based on a three-month visit to Australia by Lawrence and his wife Frieda, in 1922. 
 The titular kangaroo is the central image of this novel. Somers travels to Australia in search of traditional cultural values. He finds, based on his experience there, a dichotomy between the spirit of the place and the character of its people. In spite of strange place names and the strangeness of the sky and seasons he does not sense the cultural differences from modern Europe for which he is searching. "Kangaroo" is the fictional nickname of one of Lawrence's characters, Benjamin Cooley, a prominent ex-soldier and lawyer, who is also the leader of a secretive, fascist paramilitary organization, the "Diggers Club". Cooley fascinates Somers, but he maintains his distance from the movement itself.
 While rejecting Cooley Somers finds what he is looking for in the Australian kangaroo - an image that embodies his ideals. The novel is rich in ideas epitomized by the awareness of the sovereignty of the individual's power over self, his "extraordinary privilege of responsibility". Nietzsche's influence is seen in the idea of "master and slave" found in the Genealogy of Morals and its relation to the discussions in the novel. This is a somewhat disorganized novel, but one rich in ideas which carry the reader forward throughout.

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D. H. Lawrence's
The Man Who Loved Islands

"even islands like to keep each other company"
(The Complete Short Stories, p. 723)

Yes, more than men, that is the man of the story who loved islands, islands liked to keep each other company. This is a story from the pen of D. H. Lawrence who wrote many wonderful stories. In this story he has incorporated several themes and many layers of meaning all in less that twenty-five pages. The man who "loved islands" appears Quixotic as he attempts to create an imaginary island world around himself as he sequesters his being in his book-laden library to write about the birds of the classical world. But his dreams were quickly corroded as the corruption of humanity tainted his imaginary Eden. Suggestions of Milton's Paradise Lost - yet can Satan have corrupted humanity so thoroughly that few are honest or loyal enough to continue the journey with the man?
Imaginary though it was it reminded me of Rousseau's attacks on civilization while he wrote of an imaginary state of nature. This state of nature seemed to be close to the reincarnation of our man's island as he tried yet a second time to accomplish his dream. Ultimately the man who loved islands inherits a nightmare as the story veers into a snowy dystopia. What meaning does this hold for the reader? I am not sure, but the thoughts for which the story is a catalyst will continually remind me of this strange world.

The Complete Short Stories: Vol. Three by D. H. Lawrence. Penguin Books, New York. 1977 (1961)