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

The American writer and tourist is an embodiment of modernity by definition. He contemplates with “new

world” eyes the old European world, reacting and drawing comparisons. For James Venice is the epitome of

beauty. 

Italian Hours is full of observers, spectators Flaneur = observer who looks at the city in a sort of

daydream. Americans were fascinated by Europe, they contemplated it.

Venice vs. New York

«(…) not "Cab, sir!" but "Barca, signore!»

Parallel between Venice and New York, different cities, but typically modernist interest. Gondolier

compared to taxi driver: like him, he is the other self, an alter ego of his passenger.

Italian Hours: conclusion

Delay of the train, smell of the sea. There is no idealization of the past, time passes, Italy has changed.

Exploration of the visible world as it is today. Venice is exactly like any other city in the world, it changes.

Vision of the artist not only on the past, but also on movements, changes and potential future. No city is

immune from change.

James's idea about Americans

More naive than Europeans, more natural, less sophisticated. On one hand this is a disadvantage, on the

other hand they are more open to experience. American tourists: can't compare the old way of travelling to

the contemporary one. Grand Tour: people searched for art; it was something they had to do, go to Italy,

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France. This passion started in 18 century, than changed over time. These travellers had a guide with them.

It was a sort of initiation to art and beauty. Romantics: in Italy they looked for not just classical arts, interested

in the ruins, in sublime, mystery of art rather than perfection.

James travelled a lot to Italy. Venice because it is the city most written about by the romantics. It will allow

us to see the differences of approach between the romantics and the modernist Henry James.

In “Art of fiction” he said that the world is always the same, what counts is my impression of what I see. This

is modern. We can’t say anything new about places, about Venice most of all, there are no novelties. Another

idea: everything has been represented, reproduced; we are already in the age of reproduction, collection of

photographs. Photography is based on idea that reality can be captured, reproduced endlessly. Photography

born with idea that representation was better than reality.

Impression reality gives to the artist: is not simply facts he is interested in, but the aesthetic and

psychological impact on consciousness. Impressionistic technique.

The Aspern Papers (1888)

Most of Henry James’s works appeared in instalments, in magazines, and they were published in book form

only later. “The Aspern papers” was first published in the Atlantic, American magazine, then published by

Collier in book form, and finally it was published in the New York edition. He decided to collect all his works

and publish them. “The Aspern papers” was published in the same volume with “the turn of the screw”

which is a gothic novel. Two very different tales, but they have a point in common: both gothic tales. They

both contain at least potentially a supernatural element, they are fantastic tales, even if the setting is very

realistic.

For Henry James the novella/long tale was the best of forms, because it revolved around one single theme,

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The single anecdote – the novella or long tale as the form which best suited James’s “passion for

dramatic concentration”

«I not only recover with ease, but I delight to recall, the first impulse given to the idea of 'The Aspern

Papers'. It is at the same time true that my present mention of it may perhaps too effectually dispose of

any complacent claim to my having 'found' the situation. Not that I quite know indeed what situations the

seeking fabulist does 'find'; he seeks them enough assuredly, but his discoveries are, like those of the

navigator, the chemist, the biologist, scarce more than alert recognitions. He comes upon the interesting

thing as Columbus came upon the isle of San Salvador, because he had moved in the right direction for it –

also because he knew, with the encounter, what 'making land' then and there represented. Nature had so

placed it, to profit – if as profit we may measure the matter! – by his fine unrest, just as history, 'literary

history' we in this connexion call it, had in an out-of-the-way corner of the great garden of life thrown off a

curious flower that I was to feel worth gathering as soon as I saw it. I got wind of my positive fact, I

followed the scent.» (Aspern Papers, preface)

He got an idea from anecdote and developed it, transformed it into art. In the preface James tells the

reader how the idea of writing this tale was born. Complex prose to say that he almost found it. Compares

the writer to a navigator who finds something, but also the chemist and the biologist. Work of art was like

an organism, original idea like a germ. Case of serendipity, find something because you’re lucky. He finds a

subject almost by chance. Subjects are like flowers in the garden of life. Writer is like a dog following a

synth.

«It was in Florence years ago; which is precisely, of the whole matter, what I like most to remember. The air

of the old-time Italy invests it, a mixture that on the faintest invitation I rejoice again to inhale – and this in

spite of the mere cold renewal, ever, of the infirm side of that felicity, the sense, in the whole element, of

things too numerous, too deep, too obscure, too strange, or even simply too beautiful, for any ease of

intellectual relation.» (AP, preface)

Henry James was in Florence when he got the idea of writing this. Italy gives too much to the artist, too

much material, too obscure, too strange, sort of excess of experience. Italy is so beautiful and rich that it is

almost impossible to explain it rationally.

James was in Florence and he met this lady Jane Clairmont, who was very very old, and she had been

Byron’s mistress. She was the mother of Byron’s daughter, Allegra. She was in possession of letters written

by Byron and Shelley. She had a lodger, captain Silsbee, American, who was an art critic and Shelley

worshipper. He wanted to get hold of the letters. Precious because they were rare and precious because he

was a worshipper. Niece falls in love with captain Silsbee, asks him to marry her if she gives him the papers.

He runs away in disgust. («“Will you marry me if I give you the papers?” He ran away in disgust.») James

decided to develop this and write a tale about this anecdote.

How deep he changed this anecdote?

 The setting becomes Venice (instead of Florence).

 It was enriched with details (old decaying palace, canals, gondoliers, Saint Mark, old lady wearing a

sort of green mask).

 The ending was changed: instead of running away the protagonist can’t get hold of the papers

because when he refuses to marry Tina she burns them, destroys them.

 

The poet is no longer Shelley or Byron but an American poet, Jeffrey Aspern emphasizes that

also America could have a great poet, not only Europe.

 Captain Silsbee becomes a journalist. The artist is more creative, the journalist is considered as a

basic version of the artist, not as high as art of writing. Journalist has a sort of predatory attitude,

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searches the news, he’s like a predator. The literary critic is also sometimes compared to a



predator. «You publishing scoundrel» because journalists write for money.

 Story could actually be set anywhere and in any period.

Venice in the Aspern Papers

«Without streets and vehicles, the uproar of wheels, the brutality of horses, and with its little winding ways

where people crowd together, where voices sound as in the corridors of a house, where the human step

circulates as if it skirted the angles of furniture and shoes never wear out, the place has the character of an

immense collective apartment, in which Piazza San Marco is the most ornamented corner and palaces and

churches, for the rest, play the part of great divans of repose, tables of entertainment, expanses of

decoration. And somehow the splendid common domicile, familiar, domestic, and resonant, also resembles

a theater, with actors clicking over bridges and, in straggling processions, tripping along fondamentas. As

you sit in your gondola the footways that in certain parts edge the canals assume to the eye the importance

of a stage, meeting it at the same angle, and the Venetian figures, moving to and fro against the battered

scenery of their little houses of comedy, strike you as members of an endless dramatic troupe.»

First thing you notice about Venice is that there are no cars, horses. First part of description compares the

city to a private house, we have corridors, rooms, Venice is like a big house, not like an outdoor place.

Second comparison with a theatre, extended metaphor, canals and footways are like a stage and the

people walking are compared to actors. Not a very original metaphor, was often compared to a theatre and

absence of noises makes the illusion even stronger.

Jeffrey Aspern

«the long-since dead poet ceases to belong to the end of the Romantic tradion of European literature and

becomes a figure at the beginning of the modern tradition of American literature. We shall never find a

satisfactory real-life model of Jeffrey Aspern because he is so triumphantly an invention of Henry James.

(…) Aspern is an affirmation on the part of Henry James that there were going to be great American poets

who would eventually become the objects of concupiscent research; he anticipates Eliot and Pound (…).»

(Anthony Curtis, «Introduction» to The Aspern Papers and The Turn of the Screw)



We no longer have Byron or Shelley, but Jeffrey Aspern American early modern poet. There is no real life

model of Aspern, he is an invention.

Contrast between past and present

In 1820s travellers were heroic, difficult to travel at the time. Photography annihilated surprise, experience

can be reproduced.

«When Americans went abroad in the 1820s there was something romantic, almost heroic in it, as

compared with the perpetual ferryings of the present hour, the hour at which photography and other

conveniences have annihilated surprise.»

Commodification: importance of money. Every object and person is a commodity (can be bought or sold).

Even Jane Clairmont, mistress of Jeffrey Aspern, wants money, asks for a very high rent.

«"You may have as many rooms as you like—if you will pay a good deal of money." I hesitated but for a

single instant, long enough to ask myself what she meant in particular by this condition. First it struck me

that she must have really a large sum in her mind; then I reasoned quickly that her idea of a large sum

would probably not correspond to my own. My deliberation, I think, was not so visible as to diminish the

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