Henry James: At The Threshold of Modernism - Appunti di letteratura inglese

Henry James: At the threshold of modernism

Henry James (1843-1916) chronologically belongs to the 19th century. He was born in 1843 and died in 1916. He was one of the first authors to show a modernist sensibility. We are dealing with prose and fiction, novels and tales, far ahead of Romanticism. There are some connections with Romanticism.

Henry James and Venice

The main theme is Henry James and Venice: the relationship between the romantic author and Italy. Most of the modernist authors wrote later, so Henry James comes before: he’s at the threshold of Modernism. He’s a forerunner, pioneer, and goes beyond Modernism. He was even more modernist than the modernists, he stands by himself, he is a unique case. He was in love with authors like Dickens, Thackeray, Trollope, George Eliot, and other Victorian period authors. He was already interested in aspects of the novel, which are distinctively modernist.

«As modernism sinks in, or fades out – as it recedes into a kind of latterday archaism, Cubism turned antiquated, the old literary avant-garde looking convincingly moth-eaten – certain writers become easier to live with. It is not only that they seem more accessible, less impenetrable, simpler to engage with, after decades of familiarity: the quality of mystery has (mysteriously) been drained out of them. Joyce, Proust, Woolf, surely Pound and Eliot – from all of these, and from others as well, the veil draws back. [...] Yet one of the great avatars of modernism remains immune to this curious attrition: in the ripened James, and in him almost alone, the sensation of mysteriousness does not attenuate; it thickens. As the years accumulate, James becomes, more and more compellingly, our contemporary, our urgency.» (Cynthia Ozick, What Henry James Knew, London: Jonathan Cape, 1993, pp. 99-100)

Cynthia Ozick said that even Modernism is somehow old now, because we have assimilated it. This is a contradictory definition, avant-garde compared to moth-eaten. Henry James is still mysterious somehow, he’s not been totally understood. His sentences are very long and complex, but once you read them closely you get a clearer picture. There is a tridimensional meaning.

Modernism features

• Awareness of the present: feeling of being modern, coming to a new age. Never separated from the awareness of the past.
• The poetic of the unfinished: the idea that a work of art is never finished, it is a work in progress. Unfinished because it never tells you everything about something. The work of art is very aware of its techniques, its forms, but at the same time the perfection of form is only desired, never obtained.
• Fragmentation: the modern world is a fragmented world, all the time we try to make sense of fragments of reality. There is a tale, “In the cage”, that tells the story of a telegraphist behind the counter, she receives telegrams, writes telegrams. The cage is the office, she never goes out; she tries to build up stories of all the people who go to the office through these fragments of information, telegrams. This is a modern experience. For example, you can’t get a whole picture of a city, it’s a fragmentary experience. The mediums that reflect this aspect are photography and cinema (born at the end of 19th century reflected a fragmented vision of the world).
• Loss of sense: the modern age is an age in which old certainties are lost, ideologies, the sacredness of life is endangered.
• The autonomy of the work of art: the work of art is self-conscious and self-reflective main feature: questioning of the forms of arts, techniques. Novelists started to discuss narrative techniques, so it was no longer about telling a story, but investigating how the story could be told. Example: paintings are no different, painters started to question themselves about the techniques (impressionism, cubism...). Started to talk about the art from technical points of view.
• New insights from the emerging fields of psychology and sociology: psychology is the most important field for Henry James. James goes very deeply into the psychology of his characters. Novelists are not only interested in facts, events, in the plot; novelists are interested in the character’s psychology, psychological reasons behind facts. Small events in everyday life, the psychological insight is important.

Awareness of the present: American vs European way of life

Henry James is American, born in New York. A year before he died he took British citizenship. Contrast between America and Europe. It is also called the international theme. His novels, tales are full of American expatriates. He talks about the contrast between the new world (America) and the old world (Europe). Henry James chose the old world because a great art could flourish only where the soil was rich. Europe was much richer in terms of history, art, culture, and civilization.

«This is the fag-end (fine del sigaro) of a rather busy morning. [...] In the good old world one’s morning are sacred – and that is my letter-writing time. But here, as you know, we have abolished a good many of the sanctities, and the busy world marks you for its own before you have left the matutinal couch. [...] I should like to put America in a nutshell for you; but [...] it has «swallowed all formulas». Things go very fast here, and the change that has taken place in the last ten years is almost incredible. [...] I won’t answer for what the country may have become in this way a hundred years hence.» (Henry James, Letter to John Clarke, 1882)

It’s a moneymaking world. Good old world = Europe. The new world is profane, the old world is sacred. He believes in the sacredness of leisure, it’s not a waste of time. Marks for its own = the busy world catches you. Connected to the loss of sense. It is impossible to describe, define modern America in few words.

Awareness of the present: the emergence of a new “city consciousness”

«My dear Du Maurier, I should have been to see you again long ago if I had not suddenly been called to America (by the death of my father) in December last. The autumn, before that, I spent altogether abroad, and have scarcely been in England since I bade you good-bye, after that very delightful walk and talk we had together last July, an episode of which I have the happiest, tenderest memory. Romantic Hampstead seems very far away from East 25th St: though East 25th St. has some good points. I have been spending the winter in Boston and am here only on a visit to a friend, and though I am ‘New Yorkais d’origine’ I never return to this wonderful city without being entertained and impressed afresh. New York is full of types and figures and curious social idiosyncrasies, and I only wish we had someone here, to hold up the mirror, with a 15th part of your talent. It is altogether an extraordinary growing, swarming, glittering, pushing, chattering, good-natured, cosmopolitan place, and perhaps in some ways the best imitation of Paris that can be found (yet with a great originality of its own.)» (Letter to George Du Maurier, April 17, 1883)

He spent a lot of time in Europe. His father wanted to take his children to Europe at a very early age. Hampstead in London. Very familiar with French language. Often uses impressions, life and experience are made of impressions. Lots of writings are on impressions he receives from things. New York: modern and interesting city. Americans are vulgar, but he thought that American people had a lot of good policies, one of them was their being innocent compared to the Europeans, more good-natured, more straightforward, less sophisticated. Hold up the mirror: represent this world, write about America. More available to experience and receive experience. He was an outsider on both continents. Best thing to do was to see the contrast.

James chose Coburn to illustrate his collected works, collected edition, known as the New York edition: every volume had a photograph by Coburn. This shows how aware he was about modern forms of art (he didn’t choose a painting, but photographs).

«All that is solid melts into air» (Marx quoted by Marshall Berman in the title of his book published in 1982) → Venice is very different from New York, but they have something in common: evanescence, fragility. They are somehow ephemeral. Nothing is more solid than a skyscraper, but even this can be evanescent. Venice is old and New York is new. No city is immune to decay. Venice is considered as the symbol of decay, end of civilization. He compares Venice to modern American cities. Also, American cities might become like Venice in the future; they’re not immune from the passing of time.

The American Henry James

To write well of American things you need to be a master. «The face of nature and civilization in this our country is to a certain point a very sufficient literary field. But it will yield its secrets only to a really grasping imagination... To write well and worthily of American things one need even more than elsewhere to be a master.» (Letter to Henry James Sr. (26 October 1869))

The international theme

James didn’t write about America; few of his works are set in America, most of his novels are set in Europe. However, his characters are often Americans abroad. He was interested in showing the impressions of Americans in front of the old world: they are fascinated by this world, but they often fail to understand it.

«My choice is the old world – my choice, my need, my life.» He lived in Europe, travelled a lot to Europe since he was a child and his first impression when he visited the Louvre it was like tasting the fruit of knowledge. Idea that once you lose your innocence it is lost forever. One single experience can produce your loss of innocence. This theme will reappear over and over again in his works. You can never go back to the past when you’ve tasted the fruit of knowledge, when you have an experience that changes your life forever. Europe has a very complex culture, civilization, so he thought there was more material for the novelists to write about «It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.»

He wrote “The Bostonians” set in America, Boston incredibly modern, talks about clubs, circles of intellectuals. There were a lot of philosophical movements, feminists.

Awareness of the present, but a sense of the past, the “visitable past”

The Aspern Papers provides a link to Romanticism. It was born from an anecdote that he developed. A literary critic finds out that an old lady had been the lover of a romantic poet, Aspern; he found letters; based on a true story. In the real story, the letters are from Shelley and Byron.

«I delight in a palpable imaginable visitable past—in the nearer distances and the clearer mysteries, the marks and signs of a world we may reach over to as by making a long arm we grasp an object at the other end of our own table. The table is the one, the common expanse, and where we lean, so stretching, we find it firm and continuous. That, to my imagination, is the past fragrant of all, or of almost all, the poetry of the thing outlived and lost and gone, and yet in which the precious element of closeness, telling so of connexions but tasting so of differences, remains appreciable.» (Henry James, preface to The Aspern Papers)

Preface to the Aspern Papers: he doesn’t think there is a complete gap between the past and the present. Image of the table: we don’t perceive the gap, but it is still imaginable we can reach the past like we can reach an object at the end of our table. For Henry James, the past made sense because it was still visible (palpable imaginable visitable past), even if he was aware that a new age is started.

Photography

Idea of having a copy of reality. For Henry James, it was an unsolved problem, something he constantly questioned. Photographs single out a detail, but they can never show, according to him, the drama of things. He was interested in dramatic techniques. His novels had to show rather than tell all the inner relations of things.

Modernism in Henry James: the concern for form and a theory of the novel

Henry James is a modernist because he’s interested in the theory of the novel. Questions about form, narrative techniques "[...] questions of art are questions (in the widest sense) of execution” (The Art of Fiction, 1884). He shows a different awareness of the problems of fiction compared to the Victorian novelists. He liked Victorian novels, but he felt that they lacked form. James wrote short tales, novels, but his best narrative form was the novella, which is something in-between the tale and the novel, longer than a tale, shorter than a novel. The novella revolves around one single theme. He introduced this complex theory of the novel in “The Art of Fiction” and also in his prefaces to the New York Edition. Main idea: novel aspires to completeness; he uses words like “roundness” (Tridimensional object). Flat characters never change, round characters have a deeper psychology and they change. A novel is a “picture” of life, it has to present compositions. “Foreshortening”: a picture acquires tridimensionality because there is perspective. “Organic whole”: novel as an organism, rather than a machine. “Diamond, prism, saturation”: novel had to be saturated with life. It’s more like an aspiration than an achievement.

The poetics of the unfinished, the work of art as a work in progress

«The critical faculty hesitates before the magnitude of Mr. Henry James’s work. [Yet] in the body of Mr. Henry James’s work there is no suggestion of finality, nowhere a hint of surrender, or even of probability of surrender, to his own victorious achievement in that field where he is a master. Happily, he will never be able to claim completeness; and, were he to confess to it in a moment of self-ignorance, he would not be believed by the very minds for whom such a confession naturally would be meant. It is impossible to think of Mr. Henry James becoming ‘complete’ otherwise than by the brutality of our common fate whose finality is meaningless — in the sense of its logic being of a material order, the logic of a falling stone.» (Joseph Conrad, Henry James: An Appreciation, 1905)

«Action in its essence, the creative art of a writer of fiction may be compared to rescue work carried out in darkness against cross gusts of wind swaying the action of a great multitude. It is rescue work, this snatching of vanishing phases of turbulence, disguised in fair words, out of the native obscurity into a light where the struggling forms may be seen, seized upon, endowed with the only possible form of permanence in this world of relative values — the permanence of memory.» (Joseph Conrad, Henry James: An Appreciation, 1905)

Joseph Conrad was very aware of this problem in Henry James, he said that this was the beauty of his art, that it’s never finished. The work of art is always a work in progress, unfinished. “There is no suggestion of finality”. “Happily, he will never be able to claim completeness”. The novelists try to rescue experience from the flow of life, but their work is never completely achieved.

Fragmentation and loss of sense

«Life being all inclusion and confusion, and art being all discrimination and selection, the latter, in search of the hard latent value with which it alone is concerned, sniffs round the mass as instinctively and unerringly as a dog suspicious of some buried bone. The difference here, however, is that, while the dog desires his bone but to destroy it, the artist finds in his tiny nugget, washed free of awkward accretions and hammered into a sacred hardness, the very stuff for a clear affirmation, the happiest chance for the indestructible. It at the same time amuses him again and again to note how, beyond the first step of the actual case, the case that constitutes far him his germ, his vital particle, his grain of gold, life persistently blunders and deviates, loses herself in the sand. [...] Hence the opportunity for the sublime economy of art, which rescues, which saves, and hoards and "banks," investing and reinvesting these fruits of toil in wondrous useful "works" and thus making up for us, desperate spendthrifts that we all naturally are, the most princely of incomes.» (Preface to The Spoils of Poynton)

Describes what he means by rescuing a fragment and turning it into art. “Life is all inclusion and confusion, art is discrimination and selection”. The art is like a dog that sniffs a buried bone, an interesting fragment. Difference: dog wants to destroy the bone; artist should not just take a fragment of life and reproduce it in his art but take its meaning and reduce it to its essence. Idea of novel as something that reproduces a slice of life did not agree with that. The artist has to work on the fragment, has to clean it from what is not necessary, essential. Metaphor with a sculptor. This fragment cleaned, reduced to the essential, this seed is planted in the garden of art where it can grow and bloom. The process is not direct. A text has a structure that shows an economy of form. Life gives a lot and it is the task of the artist to rescue the essence, the important fragment and transform it into art.

A novel is an organism

«A novel is a living thing, all one and continuous, like every other organism, and in proportion as it lives will it be found, I think, that in each of the parts there is something of each of the other parts.» (AF)

Not a machine, where pieces are all different and can be assembled and dissembled, it is an organic whole. In each part, there is something of another part. But this organic whole is never complete, is not an achievement, it is just an aspiration, the goal of the artist, it’s an ideal. We find this theme in two works: “The figure in the carpet” and “The sacred fount”.

The figure in the carpet (1896)

«For himself, beyond doubt, the thing we were all so blank about was vividly there. It was something, I guessed, in the primal plan, something like a complex figure in a Persian carpet. He highly approved of this image when