American literature after 1917

The October Revolution ushered in a new era. Under the impact of the October Revolution, advanced workers took action in Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Switzerland, the USA. William Forster wrote "As in other countries, the masses in the USA were swept by the spirit of the Great Russian Revolution. The broad strata of the American proletariat realised that the great victory in Russian was also their victory."

Councils of workers, soldiers and sailors were set up in a number of towns. "Hands off Russia" organizations were founded in many parts of the USA.

Lenin wrote: "In America, the strongest and youngest of the capitalist countries, the working people have a great sympathy for the Soviets."

The Socialist Revolution rendered the labour movement in America more revolutionary. In 1918—1920 it continuously gained in strength and scope. Numerous strikes took place all over the country in which millions of workers took part. In 1919 the Com­munist Party and the Labour Party of America were founded by Charles Ruthenberg and John Reed. In May 1921 those two pro­gressive parties merged into one — the Communist Party of America.

The great changes caused by the October Revolution in the peoples¹ life naturally found reflection in their literature. Like the literature of many countries, progressive American literature was influenced by the October Revolution in Russia.

^TTheodore Dreiser declared that the Socialist Revolution in Russia changed the direction of American literature and ope'ned a new period in its development. The Revolution in Russia divided literature into two trends. On the one hand there was the novel that reflected the thoughts and sentiments of the elite, on the other hand there was the social novel, reflecting the problems of the working people.¹ Together with the books, the only purpose of which was to entertain the reader and try to avoid social problemsJ books appeared the purpose of which was to show the necessity of changing the social order (for example Theodore Dreiser]/.

In his novel "Ten Days That Shook the World" John Reed hailed the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia as a liberating force fostering the creative abilities of the working people.

Another proletarian writer, Albert Maltz, introduced a new type of hero in American literature, a communist, a staunch fighter for the worker's rights against the big monopolies.

. The radial economic and social changes in American life during the proletarian twenties and the hungry thirties marked a distant period in the history of American literature. It was a fruitful time not only for the proletarian writers but also for the critical realists. New themes, plots and heroes appeared in their novels and stories, reflecting the new realities of American life.

The fiction of the critical realists is distinguished by a height­ened, interest in social conflicts, attacks on accepted -values and myths and criticism of the American way of life.

The critical realists reflected the moral degradation of an indi­vidual in capitalist society (S. Lewis's "Babbitt", "Main Street"; Sh. Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio") ,(the tragic fate of young Ameri­cans, crippled physically and spiritually in World War j (E. Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises", "A Farewell to Arms"; F. S. Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby", "Tender is the Night"; W. Faulkner's "Soldier's Pay"), the economic and moral waste of the depression of the thirties, the growth of social protest and class consciousness (J. Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath"), the struggle with fascism (S. Lewis's "It Can't Happen Here"; E. Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls"; W. Faulkner's "Light in August") and the spiritual emptiness, alienation and growing violence in American society (J. Steinbeck's "The Winter of Our Discontent").

THEODORE DREISER

(1871—1945)

Theodore Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana. His family was poor, and his childhood was blighted by misery and humilia­tion. His father was a religious bigot who saw his family escape from him into the world at the earliest possible opportunity. The farrtily moved constantly from town to town but Theodore Dreiser spent most of his childhood in Warshaw, Indiana, where he at­tended public school. Later his teacher enabled him to gofor one year (1888—1889) to the Indiana University, which he had to leave because of money difficulties. He moved to Chicago, where he supported himself by doing odd jobs. Working in an estate office, in a laundry and as a rent collector for a wholesale furniture com­pany, he had the possibility to store up impressions which later appeared in his novels.

In 1892 Dreiser turned to journalism working as a newspaper reporter and editor in Chicago, St. Louis, Cleveland and Pittsburg. Then he moved to New-York, where he attained work, as a magazine editor.

From the very beginning of his literary career Dreiser was a fervent humanitarian and an enemy of capitalism. He wrote articles exposing slums and industrial conditions and spoke out

warmly in defense of labour. That is why many of Dreiser's works were boycotted by publishers and persecuted by the law.

The first significant work by Dreiser was his novel "Sister Carrie" (1900). This novel is a study of Carrie Meeber, an innocent Wisconsin girl, who co£nes to Chicago to find work and falls into an intricate network of temptation.

The book, being realistic and true, mercilessly exposed bourgeois
society. Hardly had the book appeared when it was pronounced
immoral and withdrawn. Dreiser started his long fight against
censorship and for the right of the novelist to present life as he
sees it. . - '

Only after a lapse of ten years in 1911, was Dreiser's second novel "Jennie Gerhardt" published. Like "Sister Carrie" this novel was a challenge to the moral claims of the American bourgeoisie. The publishing of "Jennie Gerhardt" roused further storm of criti­cism from readers and publishers who declared it immoral.

"The Financier" (1912) and "The Titan" (1914) together with "The Stoic" (published posthumously in 1947) form "The Trilogy of Desire", a.complete life story of an American capitalist, showing the unscrupulousness of the big capitalists. These three novels are the most highly documented and detailed of Dreiser's works; they are also interesting as a panoramic picture of the industrial triumph at the end of the XIX century in America.

The "Genius" (1915) was banned soon after, like "Sister Car­
rie" and "Jennie Gerhardt". It is the tragic story of a young painter
Eugene Witla, who breaks down under the cruel injustice of the
capitalist system. In Eugene Witla we can easily recognize the
author himself, with the difference that Eugene finally broke down,
while Theodore Dreiser continued his struggle to the last days of
his life. . .

"An American Tragedy" (1925) is Dreiser's best known novel. ■It is the story of a young American who is gradually corrupted by the morals and manners of American capitalist society and the lust of gain which reigns in the USA until he becomes a criminal and murderer.

The significance of the novel is in the exposure of the American way of life with its contrast of poverty and wealth, corrupt bour­geois morals and a reactionary political system.

In 1927 Thedore Dreiser visited the Soviet Union where he wit­nessed the celebrations of the tenth anniversary of the Great October Socialist Revolution. He expressed his admiration for the Soviet Union and the Soviet people in .a book entitled "Dreiser Looks at Russia" (1928) and.in a series of articles for the New York World, praising the Soviet system.

The economic crisis of 1929—1932 in America ,was justly con­sidered by Dreiser as a sign of the inevitable doom of American capitalism and he set forth his view in "Tragic America" (1931), a masterly description of the gross injustice of American capitalism.

He became an active participant in the struggle of the progressive forces of АтепсаЛНе was one of the first to tell the Americans the truth about the Soviet Union. It was quite natural, therefore, that Dreiser became a member of the Communist Party in America (1945)Л

In his letter to Mr. Foster, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the US, he wrote: "I have believed intensely that the common people and first of all the workers — of the United States and of the world — are the creators of their own future. I have endeavoured to live by this faith, to clothe it in words and symbols, explore its full meaning in the lives of men and women ... Belief in the greatness and dignity of man has been the guiding prin­ciple of my life and work. The logic of my life and work leads me therefore to apply for membership in the Communist Party."

A survey of the development of the American novel would be incomplete if it failed to give considerable attention to the work of Theodore Dreiser, a pioneer of the realistic school in American literature. Exposure of the moral, political and economic criteria of his native land animated all of his notable novels. In them de­vastating influence and the inhumanity of American capitalism upon the life of the people is laid bare. Yet Dreiser's path was not always a straight one.

The years preceding World War I and those that followed it were marked by a crisis of his ideology and the dominant ten­dency of naturalism. Influenced by the growth of progressive forces throughout the world and the victory of socialism in the USSR Dreiser gradually overcame the crises and reached a higher stage of realism. From social prdtest against the evils of capitalism to the acceptance of the principles of communism — such was the road traversed by Theodore Dreiser.

^■Dreiser's most popular works besides the already mentioned include: "£ree and Other Stories" (1918), "A Book about Myself" (1922), "The Color of a Great City" (1923), "A Gallery of Women" (1929), "America is Worth Saving" (1941), "The Bulwark" (1946).

"An American Tragedy" (1925).This novel may be regarded as the climax of Dreiser's literary career. The plot of the novel is partly based on court records of an actual trial. But although the bare details are thus borrowed from reality, the implications and moral conclusions of the story are Dreiser's own.

The novel is a criticism of the "American Dream" — the un­limited opportunity and quick success in a new country, where social barriers are flexible. The novel is a study of social classes and of a individual's effort to rise from one into another; it in­volves also a moral analysis of guilt in the manner of Dostoyev-sky's "Crime and Punishment".

Clyde Griffiths is a sensitive and unhappy youth whose parents are Kansas City street evangelists. Humiliated by his sordid family

life and by the narrow bigoted morality his parents force upon him, he tongs to escape into a finer and more rewarding environment.

He works for a while as a bell-hop in a Kansas City Hotel, where he is vividly impressed with the contrasts between his own poverty and the opulence and importance of the hotel guests. Meanwhile a moral crisis presents itself. His sister Hester runs off with an actor who presently deserts her; she returns home pregnant, mis­erable, and without means. Clyde is moved by her plight, but instead of helping her he turns weakly to spend his money on Hortense Briggs, a vain and shrewdly calculating girl.

One day Clyde, several other bell-boys and several girls set off on an escapade in a borrowed car. The driver runs down a little girl and wrecks the car trying to escape from the police. Clyde flees the scene, quits his job and changes his name in an effort to, avoid his part of the responsibility for the incident.

Then an opportunity appears: while working at a hotel in Chicago he meets his wealthy uncle Samuel Griffiths, who offers him a job in one of his collar factories in Lycurgus, New York. For a time Clyde's fortunes seem to rise. But after a while he finds himself in a curiously frustrating social situation. He is embarras­sed in the company of his snobbish relatives, yet he is forbidden to approach the lower-class shopgirls who work in his department. One of the girls, Roberta Alden, attracts him, and after a time he falls in love with her; their relations become intimate. But Clyde's attention is soon transferred to another girl, the wealthy and socially prominent Sondra Finchley. Sondra is the key to all his ambitions; by the single stroke of marriage with her he imagines all his problems to be solved. At this critical moment Roberta discovers she is pregnant; she piteously demands Clyde to marry her. He is faced with a cruel moral dilemma: shall he stand by Roberta thus abandoning what may be his last chance to rise into the world? At that critical moment he reads a news account of a boating accident in which a girl is drowned while her com­panion's body is not found. Horrified at his own thoughts, he half-resolves to free himself by ending Roberta's life. He lures her to a remote resort and rents a boat for a lake excursion. His prepara­tions for the crime, however, are hopelessly incompetent. He has registered under two different false names at hotels, and now he betrays by several signs the fact that he does not intend to return to the hotel. At the moment of decision he almost loses his nerves. Noticing his perturbation, Roberta reaches toward him;'the boat capsizes accidentally and she is. drowned.

Clyde swims ashore and flees in guilty terror across the country­side. It is not certain, whether he is guilty of Roberta's death, but he knows in his own mind that he did not exert himself to save her during the seconds she floated on the water. Arrested, he is tried for murder. The defense argues that he is a morally deficient person who is not responsible for his acts.

But after he is found guilty and is awaiting his execution, Clyde begins to understand the moral implications of his act. Encouraged by his mother and by a sympathetic minister, he looks upon his death as a necessary expiation¹ for the moral cowardice he showed in refusing to accept the responsibilities life thrust upon him. ■

Clyde's fate is characteristic from the point of view of the world he was brought up. He understands that when a man becomes rich nobody dares to investigate the source of his wealth, but the crimes of the poor are always ruthlessly punished. Thus this is not Clyde's personal tragedy, it is the tragedy of an average American, a typical case of American reality.

Extracts from "An American Tragedy"_;

Clyde now was actually part and parcel-of this local winter social scene. The Griffiths having introduced him to their friends and connections, it followed as a matter of course that he would be received in most homes here. But in this very limited world, where quite every one who was anything at all knew every one else, the state of one's purse was as much, and in some instances even more, considered than one's social connections. For these local families of distinction were convinced that not only one's family but one's wealth was the be-all and end-all of every happy union meant to include social security. And in consequence, while con­sidering Clyde as one who was unquestionably eligible socially, still,because it had been whispered about that his means were very slender, they were not inclined to look upon him as one who might aspire to marriage with any of their daughters. Hence, while they were to the fore with invitations, still in so far as their own children and connections were concerned they were also to the fore with precautionary hints as to the inadvisability of too numerous contacts with him.

However, the mood of Sondra and her group being friendly toward him, and the observations and comments of their friends and parents not as yet too definite, Clyde continued to receive in­vitations to the one type of gathering that most interested him — that which began and ended with dancing. And although his purse was short, he got on well enough. For once Sondra had interested herself in him, it was not long before she began to realize what his financial state was and was concerned to make his friendship for her at least as inexpensive as possible.

However, no opportunity for further intimacies occurred until one night about two weeks after the New Year's Eve party. They were returning from a similar affair at Amsterdam, and after Bella

¹ penalty 282

Griffithsand Grant апй"Вет\\тге respective homes, Stuart Finchley had called back: "Now we'll take you home, Griffiths." At once Sondra, swayed by the delight of contact with Clyde and not willing to end it so soon, said: "If you want to come over to our place, I'llmake some hot chocolate before you go home. .Would you like that?"

"O, sure I would," Clyde had answered gayly.

"Here, goes then," called Stuart, turning the car toward the Finchley home. "But as for me, I'm going to turn in. It's way after three now."

"That's a good, brother. Your beauty sleep, you know," replied
Sondra. :

And having turned the car into the garage, the three made their way through the rear entrance into- the kitchen. Her brother having left them, Sondra asked Clyde to be seated at a servants' table while she brought the ingredients. But he, impressed by this culinary equipment, the like of which he had never seen before, gazed about wondering at the wealth and security which could sustain it.

"My, this is a big kitchen, isn't it!" he remarked. "What a lot of things you have here to cook with, haven't you?"

And she, realizing from this that he had not been accustomed to equipment of this order before coming to Lycurgus and hence was all the more easily to be impressed, replied: "Oh, I don't know. Aren't all kitchens as big as this?"

Clyde, thinking o£ the poverty he knew, and assuming from this that she was scarcely aware of anything less than this, was all the more overawed by the plethora¹ of the world, to which she belonged. What means! Only to think of being married to such a girl, when all such as this would become an everyday state. One would have a cook and servants, a great house and car, no one to work for, and only orders to give, a thought which impressed him greatly. It made her various self-conscious gestures and posings all the more entrancing. And she, sensing the importance of all this to Clyde, was inclined to exaggerate her own inseparable connection with it. To him, more than any one else, as she now saw, she shone as a star, a paragon o! luxury and social supremacy.

JOHN REED

(1887—1920)

John Reed has left to future generations a truly immortal memorial — the book "Ten Days That Shook the World". He has provided a noble example of a revolutionary of bourgeois extrac­tion who regarded Russia his second home.

¹ over-supply

John Reed was born into a wealthy family in Portland on the Pacific shore. His father was a businessman and bailiff, a courage­ous man with an independent outlook. The future writer had in­herited his father's honesty and truthfulness.

John Reed attended a private school at Morristown and then spent four years at the Harvard University preparing himself for a journalistic career. He liked history, literature and languages, was a keen athlete, and conducted a student choir.

Having graduated in 1910, Reed travelled over Europe. When he returned to New York he began to write poems and short stories for the American Magazine and Century and became quite popular. But Reed was too self-critical, particularly about his accomplish­ments to be lured away by easy money and prosperity. Life for him was an exciting book, and he read it avidly, amassed experience, analysed events, and drew conclusions.

His early life in New York was associated with Greenwich Vil­lage, a neighbourhood of painters and poets. Reed was struck by New York, a huge city of glaring contrasts. His first stories: "The Capitalist¹', "Where the Heart Is", "Another Case of Ingratitude", etc. described its slums and doss-houses, the homeless and the unemployed. His characters were vagrants, callgirls, people in bad luck. The stories of that period bore a journalistic imprint and were written in the form of brief "interviews". Reed exposed the reverse side of the much publicised "prosperity" and the seamy side of the so-called "American way of life".

A textile workers' strike in Paterson in 1913brought the young writer into his first contact with the America of working people. He went there to report on the strike, and got himself arrested and was tried in court, and spent a few days in jail, where he met ordinary American workers. After publishing his story "War in Paterson" (1913), Reed made a stage adaptation of the events. The play was a tremendous success. Live, direct contact with the revolutionary movement became the backbone of his work.

A prominent landmark along this road was Mexico, where in 1910 a revolutionary upheaval and peasant civil war broke out Reed arrived there in the fall¹ of 1913 as a correspondent and re­mained for nearly four months. His articles from the front were later published in the book "Insurgent Mexico". His unforgettable battle scenes produced a tremendous impression and won him the reputation of an outstanding war correspondent. Reed's most re­markable discovery in "Insurgent Mexico" was the mass scenes in which he portrayed the revolutionary people and the leader of the rebellious peasants, Francisko Villa.

When in April, 1914, it was reported that in Colorado, in the Rockfeller mines, mercenary guards and scabs had set fire to the camp of workers' families evicted from home, Reed hastily de-

¹ autumn 284

parted for Colorado. His article "The Colorado War" (1914) con­tained merciless conclusions and revived the picture of the crimes comitted step by step.

When four months later, Europe found itself in the grip of the First World War, Reed published a vigorous anti-militarist article entitled "The Trader's War".

In the autumn of 1914 Reed arrived in Europe as Metropolitan's war correspondent, visiting Paris, London and Berlin, and recent battlefields. In his articles from the front Reed displayed traits of a new journalist type — he found his heroes in trenches.

In a new series of stories in 1914—1916 ("Daughter of Revo­lution", "The Rights of Small Nations", "The Last Clinch") his social awareness became increasingly acute, attitudes were expres­sed with greater vividness and clarity. A gallery of typical characters passed before the readers' eyes.

He revisited Europe in the spring of 1915, travelling in Greece, Serbia, Russia, Bulgaria and Turkey. His impressions which he gave in "The War in Eastern Europe" (1916) are full of bitterness and anguish at people suffering in the war turmoil. Reed returned to America a convinced antimilitarist, and found the doors of bourgeois magazines shut to him, for good.

The October Revolution in Russia dispelled all his doubt con­cerning the creative powers of the proletariat which he had voiced in his unfinished autobiography "Almost Thirty" (1917). His second journey to Russia ushered a new period into his life. Reed arrived in Petrograd in August 1917, with his wife journalist Louise Bryant. He sided openly with the Bolsheviks. Ceasing to be only an observer he participated actively in the revolutionary events, joining the 12th army near Riga. He heard Lenin proclaim decrees on peace, land and the Soviet power. He was a translator of the Revolutionary Propaganda Bureau.

He returned to America in May 1918 — to tell the truth about the Russian Revolution; to give an appreciation of the current historical events. In 1918 the left wing press published a series of his articles on Soviet Russia. Reed travelled about the country delivering lectures on the same theme, and.was repeatedly arrested. In autumn he took up his abode in a small cottage and in feverish haste wrote his book about the October Revolution "Ten Days That Shook the World". It was completed in January 1919.

iMany episodes in the book appeared perfectly fit for stage pre­sentation, so Reed tried his hand successfully at writing one-act plays. The best one "The Peace That Passeth Understanding" (1919) was a biting satire directed at the "imperialist" heroes.

In August 1919, John Reed took part in the foundation of the US Communist Party and led the life of a professional revolu­tionist, in the party underground. In the autumn of 1919, after a risky voyage he reached Russia to work at the Comintern and write

another book. He started collecting material and travelled as far as the Volga and the Urals. In 1920 he made an attempt to enter the US illegally, but was jailed in Finland. He was released thanks to Lenin's personal intervention. He was full of creative plans when his life was suddenly 'cut short by typhoid fever. He died in October 17, 1920 and was burried in Moscow, Red Square. "John Reed (1887—1920)" runs the inscription on a grey granite plaque in the Kremlin Wall.

John Reed was one of the founders of documentary fiction; he belonged to the new-type artists because of the revolutionary spirit that filled his books. The heritage he left establishes him as the founder of socialist realism in the US literature. His life will always remind us that a writer must be a citizen, a seeker of truth. His writings and life were directed towards the future. His followers in American literature were. Linkoln Steffens, Theodore Dreiser, William Dubua.

"Ten Days That Shook the World" (1919).This book has often been described as the clearest and most dramatic account of the victory of the Socialist Revolution in Russia. Lenin said, that there was a book which he would like to see published in millions of copies and translated into all languages for its truthful and vivid exposition of the events ..."

The book was written by an artist, documentarist and historian and is a piece of classical documentary fiction. In describing the events in Petrograd in 1917 he chose the most epic, typical revo­lutionary episodes: Petrograd on the eve of the uprising, the Smolny, the crowded Newsky Avenue, columns of Red Guards filling the corridors and stairs in the Winter Palace; women and children marching to protect the city from Kerensky's gangs, funeral proces­sions on Red Square; Lenin addressing the II Congress of the Soviets,

Reed referred to the "Days" as a piece of intensified history. He gave strikingly precise political evaluations and appraisals. A sober analyst, he revealed the decisive role of the revolutionary masses. A fiery, gifted artist, he traced the painstaking and difficult process of moulding a new outlook and moral in average people.

Contrary to traditional rules of prose writing, the live images peacefully "coexisted" in Reed's writings with documentary "dis­seminations" in the form of quotations from speeches and appeals, decrees and announcements.

Documentary passages were followed by dramatic scenes, episodes, pictures and almost short-hand recordings of meetings and rallies.

His portrayal of the leading characters was purposeful and showed deep emotion; the characters were arrayed to achieve..maxi-mum contrast and to accentuate the battle between the clashing worlds.

John Reed gave a truthful and vivid portrait of Lenin as the inspirer and organizer of the Revolution. He showed that the source of Lenin's strength was his unusual intellect, theoretical knowledge and his talent for organization.

The action of the Revolutionary Committee was coordinated by the tactical plan worked out by Lenin. John Reed considered Lenin to be a very uncommon leader for he was extremely modest, with­out -&Щ ■pn&ettefc, Vefc. ъЧ %ife "saswt Vemt >ашзда!&$ 1&йшзх^, vu. ?l\V his deeds and judgements. He knew how to explain the most com­plicated ideas in the simplest way and could always give a deep analysis of the concrete situation.

Reed proved in his novel that all characteristic features of the great leader were rooted in his close links with the masses in which he saw the creative force of history. .

In his first speech in Petrograd after the Revolution Lenin expressed his firm belief in the final victory of- the new socialist country. Attentively penetrating into the future of the country he simply and clearly defined to the working people their main task: to build up a socialist state controlled by the proletariat.

Because of the conditions in which John Reed was compelled to. collect the materials for his book he had no opportunity to study thoroughly the activities of the Centre of the Bolshevik Party, for they were working illegally until the start of the uprising. That is why he could not so profoundly reflect the persistent struggle of Lenin and his companions-in-arms against the capitulators and the tactical opportunist policy of Trotzky.

For all these limitations, the political value of this documentary fiction cannot be denied for Reed presented truthfully the events of the Revolution being greatly inspired by the ideas of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party.

Reed's friend and comrade Albert Rhys Williams, wrote in an article entitled "An Idea whose Time has Come" that in Reed's book there "was dynamite enough to shake the world and we may add to continue to shake it to this day".

An Extract from "Ten Days that Shook the World"

When the grave thunder of applause had died away, Lenin spoke again:

"We propose to the Congress to ratify this declaration. We ad­dress ourselves to the Governments as well as to the peoples, for a declaration which would be addressed only to the peoples of the belligerent countries might delay the conclusion of peace. The con­ditions of peace, drawn up during the armistice, will be ratified by the Constituent Assembly. In fixing the duration of the armistice

at three months, we desire to give to the peoples as long a rest as possible after this bloody extermination, and ample time for them to elect their representatives. This proposal of peace will meet with resistance on the part of the imperialist governments — we don't fool ourselves on that score. But we hope that revolution will soon break out in all the belligerent countries; that is why we address ourselves especially to the workers of France, England and Germany..."

"The revolution of November 6th and 7th," he ended, "has opened the era of the Social Revolution... The labour movement, in the name of peace and Socialism, shall win, and fulfil its des­tiny. .."

There was something quiet and powerful in all this, which stir­red the souls of men. It was understandable why people believed when Lenin spoke...

By crowd vote it was quickly decided that only representatives of political factions should be allowed to speak on the motion and that speakers should be limited to fifteen minutes.

First Karelin for the Left Socialist Revolutionaries. "Our fac­tion had no opportunity to propose amendments to the text of the proclamation; it is a private document of the Bolsheviki. But we will vote for it because we agree with its spirit..,"

For the Social Democrats Internationalists Kramarov, long, stoop-shouldered and near-sighted — destined to achieve some notoriety as the Clown of the Opposition.'Only a Government com­posed of all the Socialist parties, he said, could possess the authority to take such important action. If a Socialist coalition were formed, his faction would support the entire programme; if not, only part of it. As for the proclamation, the Internationalists were in thorough accord with its main points ...

Then one after another, amid rising enthusiasm; Ukrainian Social Democracy, support; Lithuanian Social Democracy, support; Populist Socialists, support; Polish Social Democracy, support; Polish Socialists, support — but would prefer a Socialist coalition; Lettish Social Democracy, support... Something was kindled in these men. One spoke, of the "coming World-Revolution, of which we axe advance-guard"; another of "the new age of brotherhood, when all the peoples will become one great family..." An indi­vidual member claimed the floor. "There is contradiction here," he said. "First you offer peace without annexations and indemnities, and then you say you will consider all peace offers. To consider means to accept...-'

Lenin was on his feet. "We want a just peace, but we are not afraid of a revolutionary war ... Probably the imperialist Governments will not answer our appeal — but we shall not issue an ultimatum to which it will be easy to say no ... If the German proletariat realises that we are ready to consider all offers of peace,

that will perhaps be the last drop which overflows the bowl — revolution will break out in Germany..."

"We consent to examine all conditions of peace, but that doesn't mean that we shall accept them... For some of our terms we shall fight to the end — but possibly for others we will find it impos­sible to continue the war,.. Above all, we want to finish the war..."

It was exactly 10:35 when Kameniev asked all in favour of the proclamation to hold their cards. One delegate dared to raise his hand against, but the sudden sharp outburst around him brought it swiftly down ... Unanimous.

Suddenly, by common impulse, we found ourselves on our feet, mumbling together into the smooth lifting unison of the Inter­nationale. A grizzled old soldier was sobbing like a child. Alexandra Kollontai rapidly winked the tears back. The immense sound rolled through the hall, burst windows and doors and soared into the quiet sky. "The war is ended! The war is ended!" said a young workman near me, his face shining. And when it was over, as we stood there in a kind of awkward hush, someone in the back of the room shouted, "Comrades! Let us remember those who have died for liberty!" So we began to sing the Funeral March, that slow, melancholy and yet triumphant chant, so Russian and so moving. The Internationale is an alien air, after all. The Funeral March seemed the very soul of those dark masses whose delegates sat in this hall, building from their obscure visions a new Russia — and perhaps more.

SINCLAIR LEWIS

(1885—1951)

Sinclair Lewis ['sirjklea 'luiis], the first American to win the Nobel Prize for literature, was born in Sauk Center, Minnesota in the family of a provincial doctor. On graduating from the Yale University in 1907, he took up journalism, working first as a re­porter, later on the editorial staff of various publishers, magazines and newspapers, including the influential bourgeois Saturday Evening Post

He began to produce fiction in 1912, publishing numerous magazine stories and unsuccessful commercial novels. In 1916 he abandoned journalism to turn to fulltime writing, and in 1920 he published his first serious novel "Main Street" revealing the spiritual emptiness of small-town life all over America, Other novels followed at the approximate rate of one every two years. He refused the Pulitzer Prize when it was offered to him in 1926, but accepted a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930.

19 988 289

Sinclair Lewis is a chronicler of American life and a satirist whose barbs have been directed at practically every element of modern American society. He has analysed suburban life, small­town society, the medical profession, organized religion, big busi­ness and fascism.

Sinclair Lewis's mature period starts in the twenties which was a period of sharp intensification of public antagonisms in the whole capitalist world. Under the influence of such events as World War I, the Great October Socialist Revolution in Russia and the upsurge of the Labour Movement in the USA American literature of those years underwent considerable changes boldly exploring important social issues. These events exerted also a certain influence upon Sinclair Lewis's literary activities although he was not as enthusiastic about the October Revolution as John Reed was. He was too scared of violence to welcome the Revolu­tion. Yet it helped him to become aware of the contradictions of capitalist society. Unlike Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis does not deal with great financiers, capitalist exploitation, the precarious position of the working people or the Labour iMovement. He exposes the evils of capitalist society by directing his criticism against the petty bourgeois from which his main heroes stem.

The writer's satirical novels destroy the myth built around the American way of life. He exposes the corruption in society and its crippling effect on all the healthy, creative and noble aspirations of the individual. Sinclair Lewis's main theme is the soul-destroying standardization of cultural values under capitalism.

Sinclair Lewis's best novel is "Babbitt" written in 1922.

"Babbitt". The central character of the novel George F. Babbitt is a real estate salesman in the town of Zenith. He is a typical businessman, a representative of middle-class commercial circles. The author underlines that "standard" predominates in Babbitt's life. His house resembles thousands of other well-to-do houses. He wears a standard suit, standard boots, standard glasses. He is awakened by a standard alarm-clock, lights his cigarettes with a standard electric cigarette lighter not because they are good for practical purposes but because he can flaunt his material security.

Standard predominates not only in Babbitt's surroundings but also in his inner life. Babbitt and his friends utter banal jokes, pronounce standard phrases, read cheap comic books and are convinced that instead of Shakespeare schoolchildren should be taught "Business English" or how to write advertisements or "letters that would pull". Pictures, books, works of art surround these people, but they are rather a matter of form than a delight in beauty. The aim of education for Babbitt is not a full and har­monious development of the individual but only material advan­cement. Babbitt is a snob and recognizes only people from the upper classes.

The writer describes only one year of Babbitt's life, but it is sufficient to judge of the hero's whole life which is monotonous as his sole interest is to make money. He has lost his individuality and has become a parasite cheating people into buying houses lor more than they are worth.

However, Babbitt was different in his youth. There was a time when he dreamed of great things, of defending the poor against the "Unjust Rich". This lofty decision of his college years, however, never materialized. Also later in his life, under the influence of S. Doane, a progressive social worker, Babbitt for a short time lends support to the strikers. He refuses to join the reactionary Good Citizen's League but soon gives in, for the League threatens to ruin him. After a few days he forgets his radical, opinions, ex­presses his condemnation of the crimes of the Trade Unions and returns to his former views.

In fact, Babbitt is not happy. Sometimes he becomes aware of the uselessness and barrenness of his life. When his son Ted rebels against his school life and elopes, Babbitt tells him of the emptiness of his own life and encourages him to seek a finer existence than his own.

Babbitt is a product and a victim of his environment, a typical industrial town, with its standard comfort and empty entertain­ments. Babbitt embodies the characteristic features of the American businessman, and is a fine example of the spiritual impoverish­ment of bourgeois society.

In his artistic method Lewis is predominantly a realist and a satirist. "Babbitt" is a satiric novel which contains a wealth of authentic facts. Lewis achieves his effect by piling up detail upon detail drawn from ordinary everyday life. Newspaper cuttings, business,, slogans, advertisements, popular songs, excerpts from speeches, sermons, trade circulars make up a\; large part of the book.

As most of Lewis's other characters, Babbitt is a type. Just as Balzac portrayed the miser, the ambitious youth, the neglected father, so does Lewis create the middle-class businessman, the hypocrite, the small-town intellectual. He conveys his personages not so much through external description but through internal detail: nuances of speech, mannerisms and characteristic actions. That is why being typical, Sinclair Lewis's personages are at the same time highly individual. In addition to the standard traits of the class to which they belong, they bear the stamp of their own unique, unmistakable personality.

Lewis is a master of caricature, suggesting in a few slightly sketched features the essential traits of apperance and character.

Lewis's favourite literary device is parody, which he applies to the most typical aspects of American "culture".

19* 291

On the whole, the language of "Babbitt" is modelled on the living colloquial speech with all its racy and picturesque imagery, teeming with Americanisms, slang and idiomatic expressions.

S. Lewis's other famous novels include "Arrowsmith" (1925) revealing the conflict between the idealism of a true scientist and the sordid avarice and cynicism of many members of the medical profession; "It Can't Happen Here" (1935), a social utopia con­centrating on the methods, by which a hypothetical American fascist dictator rules the country after he manages to seize power, and "Kingsblood Royal" (1947), an indictment of race discrimina­tion flourishing in America.

Extracts from "Babbitt"

There was nothing of the giant in the aspect of the man who was beginning to awaken on the sleeping-porch of a Dutch Colonial house in the residential district of Zenith known as Fioral Heights.

His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in April, 1920 and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.

His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His face was babyish in slumber, despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on the slopes of his nose. He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed; his cheeks were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon the khaki-colored blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous, extremely married and un-romantic; and altogether unromantic appeared this sleeping-porch, which looked on one sizable elm, two respectable grass-plots, a cement driveway, and a corrugated iron garage.

His first adornment was the sleeveless dimity B.V.D. under­shirt, in which he resembled a small boy humorlessly wearing a cheesecloth tabard¹ at a civic pageant. He never put un B.V.D.'s without thanking the God of Progress that he didn't wear tight, long, old-fashioned undergarments, like his father-in-law and partner, Henry Thompson. His second embellishment² was combing and slicking back his hair. It gave him a tremendous forehead, arching up two inches beyond the former hair-line. But most wonder-working of all was the donning of his spectacles.

¹ a coarse, short outer coat with loose sleeves, or sleeveless; hist, a herald's
mantle blazoned with his lord's arms

² ornament, adornment

There is character in spectacles — the pretentious tortoise-shell, the meek pince-nez¹ ['pe:nsnei] of the school teacher, the twisted silver-framed glasses of the old villager. Babbitt's spectacles had huge, circular, frameless lenses of the very best glass; the ear­pieces were thin bars of gold. In them he was the modern business man; one who gave orders to clerks and drove a car and played occasional golf and was scholarly in regard to Salesmanship. His head suddenly appeared not babyish but weighty, and you noted his heavy, blunt nose, his straight mouth and thick, long upper lip, his chin overfleshy but strong; with respect you beheld him put on the rest of his uniform as a Solid Citizen.

The gray suit was well cut, well made, and completely undis­tinguished. It was a standard suit. White piping on the V of the vest added a flavour of law and learning. His shoes were black laced boots, good boots, honest boots, standard boots, extra­ordinarily uninteresting boots. The only frivolity was in the purple knitted scarf. With considerable comment on the matter to Mrs. Babbitt (who, acrobatically fastening the back of her blouse to her skirt with a safety-pin, did not hear a word he said), he chose between the purple scarf and tapestry effect with stringless brown harps among brown palms, and into it he thrust a snake-head pin with opal eyes.

A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party. They included a fountain pen and a silver pencil (always lacking a supply of new leads) which belonged in the righthand upper vest pocket. Without them he would have felt naked. On his watch-chain were a gold penknife, a silver cigar-cutter, seven keys (the use of two of which he had forgotten), and incidentally a good watch. Depending from the chain was a large, yellowish elk's-tooth — proclamation of his membership in the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks.

Most significant of all was his looseleaf pocket note-book, that modern and efficient note-book which contained the addresses of people whom he had forgotten, prudent memoranda of postal money-orders which had reached their destinations months ago, stamps which had lost their mucilage, clippings of verses by T. Cholmondeley Frink and of the newspaper editorials from which Babbitt got his opinions and his polysyllables, notes to be sure and do things which he did not intend to do, and one curious inscription — D.S.S.D.M.Y.P.D.F.

But he had no cigarette-case. No one had ever happened to give him one, so he hadn't the habit," and people who carry cigarette-cases he regarded as effeminate.

eyeglasses kept on by a spring on the nose

Last, he stuck in his lapel the Booster's Club button. With the conciseness of great art the button displayed two words, "Boosters-Pep!" It made Babbitt feel loyal and important. It asso­ciated him with Good Fellows, with men who were nice and human, and important in business circles. It was his V.C., his Legion of Honor ribbon, his Phi Beta Kappa¹ key.

SHERWOOD ANDERSON

(1876—1941)

Sherwood Anderson ['Jaiwud 'asndssn], often alluded to as the American Chekhov, was born in a poor family in Camden, Ohio. Forced to start working at eight, the boy received almost no formal education. After a period of service in .the army, Sh. Anderson worked in an advertising company in Chicago and afterwards as a manager of a paint factory in Elyria, Ohio. Hating- business and commercial writing, he suddenly left his job and his family and moved to Chicago to become a writer. His early writings were un­successful.

In 1916, at the age of forty, he produced "Windy Me Pherson's Son", a novel about a man who, like the author himself, abandons his business in order to find truth. The novel was only moderately successful. Anderson's following novel "Marching Men" (1917) had the same fate, The writer found his natural literary form, in the genre of the short story. When his short story collection "Wines-burg, Ohio¹' appeared in 1919, he was widely recognized as a writer of talent. His other famous story books are "The Triumph of the. Egg" (1921) and "Horses and Men" (1923). Anderson's subsequent novels "Poor White" (1920) and "Dark Laughter" (1925) mark a deterioration of his realistic art. Sh. Anderson's essays on the craft of fiction "A Story-Teller's Story" (1924), "The Modern Writer" (1925) and "A Writer's Conception of Realism" (1939) reveal his aesthetic views on realistic art.

Together with Theodore Dreiser, Jack London and Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson belongs to the important group of American critical realists first to face the consequences of the new American imperialist state in the XX century. Their fiction can be characterized as a literature of revolt against the great illusion of American civilization, against the illusion of optimism with all its childish evasion of harsh facts, its cheerfulness, whose inevitable culmination was the school of cheap, sentimental books, so popular in the twenties.

^! honorary scholarship society of college undergraduates. Its name is said

to derive from the initials of its Greek motto, translated as "Philosophy, the guide of life".

Sharing the same negative attitude to the American way of life with Dreiser and Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, however, chose a different manner of presentation of his material. While Dreiser and Lewis expose₍d the evils of capitalism by painting a vast and de­tailed canvas of social environment, Sherwood Anderson achieved the same effect by recording the subtle shades and shifts of the spiritual atmosphere of American society.

"Winesburg, Ohio"is a highly poetic and dramatic set of sketches about a small imaginary provincial town Winesburg. The town is seen through the eyes of its inhabitants who are alienated, frustrated and lonely individuals. They are the victims of circum­stances in which they were born and raised and from which their souls could not escape. The writer presents the stagnant atmo­sphere of narrow smugness and intolerance of middle-class life. Some of Sh. Anderson's characters are old, borne down by failure, others are restless adolescents. But both young and old are unhappy and puzzled people. They have been misunderstood, they seek to be understood, they long for warmth, love and recognition. Yet, engulfed by petty talks, petty sentiments and the conventional and superficial routine of small-town life, they cannot break through the cell of their loneliness. Lacking fullness of life, these people have turned into grotesques, cranks tortured by frustration, pas­sions and bitterness. All of them are confused people. Unable to get at the root of their misery, they turn against each other.

Anderson's characters seem to be asking one insistent question, which American literature had hardly begun to ask in the twenties, "Why are we so unhappy with all that material well-being and splendour around?" Sh. Anderson's personages express his bitter social condemnation of the governing system in which the misfits of society are mostly created by the very social groups which show the most intolerant cruelty toward their confused and twisted souls. The author has a deep compassion, sympathy and pity for those brooding provincial men who, like "thetwisted apples" which were not worth picking in the town's orchards, still had their sweetness. By making the reader share the secret dreams of his characters, — dreams of the excitement and beauty of har­monious life, the author emphasizes his heroes' moral superiority over the narrow, conventional small-town inhabitants.

Each of his stories reflects some town character high-lighting some particular aspect of crippled life. Unity is achieved by the common setting of the separate sketches. Most people in Winesburg know each other. It is also achieved by a common tonality of sad­ness, dissatisfaction and longing for beauty. The presence of a young town reporter, George Willard ['d3Did3 'wilad], who enters the stories sometimes as an active participant and sometimes as a confidant, helps to collect the sketches in a youth's vision of life.

"Winesburg, Ohio" is like a wheel of many colours, which has only to revolve to give harmony to all the parts. These separate fragments of small-town society combine to make a generalized statement on American life. Sh. Anderson once pointed out that he wrote the book in Chicago, a big town, taking his neighbours for prototypes, many of whom had never lived in a small town. To the writer all Americans were alike, homeless seekers in a hostile world.

The stories in "Winesburg, Ohio" tend to follow a consistent pattern. First the protagonist is shown in some crucial stage of his life and the attitude of the town toward him is told. Then little by little the author reveals to us the factors which have made a human wreck out of this person.

Sherwood Anderson does not base his stories on exciting plots. Like Chekhov, he presents a fragmented picture of ordinary events in people's Jives. However, by the very lack of excitement, signi­ficance and beauty, he hints at the tragic sense of these ordinary lives.

The writer is interested in human character. He probes beneath the surface of the lives of his frustrated individuals. The portraits of his heroes are presented not so much through their actions as throught detailed portrayals of their inner world. By letting the reader glimpse the secret and confused thought streams of his characters, the writer leads him together with the character to some subtle revelation about life, society and human nature.

The poetic meaning of Sh. Anderson's stories is never forced on the reader. It is brought out by implication — in the dominant mood of the heroes, in the lyric descriptions of nature which serve to emphasize the main tonality of the story and in the cumulative effect of images and important details underlining the central point of significance.

Thus, by presenting the drab everyday experiences of un­happy and lonely people, Sh. Anderson manages to impart his stories with a deep lyric tone of longing "for beauty and innocence in the midst of the most terrible clutter" and call forth a warm response in the reader.

Extracts from "The Teacher"

Snow lay deep in the streets of Winesburg. It had begun to snow about ten o'clock in the morning and a wind sprang up and blew the snow in clouds along Main Street. The frozen mud roads that led into town were fairly smooth and in places ice covered the mud. "There will be no good sleighing," said Will Henderson, standing by the bar in Ed Griffith's saloon. Out of the

saloon he went and met Sylvester West, the druggist, stumbling along in the kind of heavy overshoes called arctics. "Snow will bring the people into town on Saturday," said the druggist. The two men stopped and discussed their affairs. Will Henderson, who had on a light overcoat and no overshoes, kicked the heel of his left foot with the toe of the right. "Snow will be good for the wheat," observed the druggist sagely.

It was past ten o'clock when Kate Swift set out and the walk

was unpremeditated. It was as though the man and the boy, by thinking of her, had driven her forth into the wintry streets. Aunt Elizabeth Swift had gone to the county seat concerning some busi­ness in connection with mortgages in which she had money in­vested and would not be back until the next day. By a huge stove, called a base burner, in the living room of the house sat the daughter reading a book. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and, snatching a cloak from a rack by the front door, ran out of the house.

At the age of thirty Kate Swift was not known in Winesburg as a pretty woman. Her complexion was not good and her face was covered with blotches that indicated ill health. Alone in the night in the winter streets she was lovely. Her back was straight, her shoulders square and her features were as the features of a tiny goddess on a pedestal in a garden in the dim light of a sum­mer evening.

During the afternoon the school teacher had been to see Dr. Welling concerning her health. The doctor had scolded her and had declared she was in danger of losing her hearing. It was foolish for Kate Swift to be abroad in the storm, foolish and per­haps dangerous.

The woman in the street did not remember the words of the doctor and would not have turned back had she remembered. She was very cold but after walking for five minutes no longer minded the cold. First she went to the end of her own street and then across a pair of hay scales set in the ground before a feed barn and into Trunion Pike. Along Trunion Pike she went to Ned Winter's barn and turning east followed a street of low frame houses that led over Gospel Hill and into Sucker Road that ran down a shallow valley past Ike Smead's chicken farm to Water­works pond. As she went along, the bold, excited mood that had driven her out of doors passed and then returned again.

There was something biting and forbidding in the character of Kate Swift. Everyone felt it. In the schoolroom she was silent, cold, and stern, and yet in an odd way very, close to. her pupils. Once in a long while something seemed to have come over her and

she was happy. All of the children in the schoolroom felt the effect of her happiness. For a time they did not work but sat back in their chairs and looked at her.

With hands clasped behind her back the school teacher walked up and down in the schoolroom and talked very rapidly. It did not seem to matter what subject came into her mind. Once she talked to the children of Charles Lamb' ['tja:lz 'laem] and made up strange intimate little stories concerning the life of the dead writer. The stories were told with the air of one who had lived in a house with Charles Lamb and knew all the secrets of his private life. The children were somewhat confused, thinking Charles Lamb must be someone who had once lived in Winesburg.

On another occasion the teacher talked to the children of Ben-venoto Cellini² [Ьэпуэ'пэЬ 'tje'limi]. That time they laughed. What a bragging, blustering, brave, lovable fellow she made of the old artist! Concerning him also she invented anecdotes. There was one of a German music teacher who had a room above Cel­lini's lodgings in the city of Milan that made the boys guffaw. Sugars McNutts, a fat boy with red cheeks, laughed so hard that he became dizzy and fell off his seat and Kate Swift laughed with him. Then suddenly she became again cold and stern.

FRANCIS SCOTT FITZGERALD

(1896—1940)

Francis Scott Fitzgerald ['framsis 'skot _ffits'd3erald], one of the most outstanding American writers of the lost generation, was born in St. Paul, Minnesota in the family of an unsuccessful busi­nessman. Yet the money, inherited from Fitzgerald's grandfather, a wealthy grocer, enabled him to attend Princeton, a university for well-to-do Americans. The cult of success, popular at Princeton, lies at the basis of Fitzgerald's dual attitude to the rich. Influenced by the spirit of competition ruling at the university, he tried to join the most fashionable and respectable students' clubs, enjoying their carefree, aristocratic, idle atmosphere. He was fascinated by the independence, privileges and elegance that money gave. Money gave style and ease and beauty. Poverty was mean, gray and nar­row. It is much later that he found out the falseness of his belief.

Fitzgerald left Princeton without a degree because of illness and poor grades. However, his literary career started at the univer­sity. He wrote pieces for the Tiger, the university magazine, and contributed texts to several campus variety shows.

¹ English writer and literary critic (1775—1834)

² Italian artist in metal (1500—1571).

In 1917 he joined the army as a second lieutenant. All his life he regretted the fact that he spent his time in service in American training camps and was never sent to the war in Europe. At the same time he fell in love with Zelda Laure, the daughter of a wealthy lawyer from Alabama, whom he married only two years later when his first work "This Side of Paradise" became a suc­cess. Zelda did not want to connect her life with a poor unknown man. The bitter truth that the rich get the most beautiful girls made Fitzgerald think of social injustice and forever after he would view the world of the rich with a sense of admiration and contempt which he never completely lost. The lack of a consistent world outlook and a unifying idea is felt in the looseness of the structure of his novels.

This duality finally ruined his talent, because Zelda's demands for fashionable and extravagant life abroad in Paris and especially on the French Riviera, the expensvie hotel suites and endless parties led him into hack-writing for popular magazines which paid up to 4,000 dollars for a story.

Yet, having talent, "as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on the butterfly's wings", as his friend Hemingway spoke of him, he managed to write some serious novels and stories between the drinking bouts and the fashionable and sentimental trash he was writing for the Saturday Evening Post.

His major novels appeared from 1920 to 1934: "This Side of Paradise" (1920), "The Beautiful and Damned" (1922), "Great Gatsby" ['gastsbi] (1925) and "Tender is the Night" (1934). Fitz­gerald's best stories have been collected in four volumes: "Flappers and Philosophers" (1920), "Talesof the Jazz Age" (1922), "All the Sad Young Men" (1926) and 'Taps at Reveille" (1925).

The main theme of almost all Fitzgerald's fiction is the atraction and the corrupting force of money. Once he said to Hemingway, "The very rich are different from you and me."