Entries tagged with “XIX century”.
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Fri 13 Aug 2010
I just didn’t feel the need to write even a short note on The Turn of the Screw after finishing it a few weeks back — I was so impressed with it, I felt at the time (and still do) that it was just going to stay forever as present in my mind as it was right after reading it. Of course, I know that’s how I feel, not what will happen — experience has shown repeatedly that even the most loved books will fade away from my memory. In fact, the more I loved a book, the more I’m likely to begin rewriting it in my mind, slowly or not-so-slowly turning it into something completely new.
It seems that it would be difficult to do this with James. The story is simple and quite conventional (a young governess in a deserted mansion with two young children to protect from evil supernatural influences), the motives are unsurprising for the time and type of literature (repression and sexuality, nature and culture, feminism and religion for instance). In fact, something that worked very well for me was that reading The Turn of the Screw almost felt like rereading it. I had both the pleasure of being surprised and that of noticing details I’m usually only able to see on re-read: the importance of silence, of vision and the play on all the meaning of what can/ cannot be said or viewed, for instance (including oneself — for instance, the governess notes, on first arriving at the house, “the long glasses in which, for the first time, I could see myself from head to foot“, which I would usually be inattentive enough a reader to not pay attention to beyond what is necessary for the sake of description and to remark the difference time has made in the possibility/ impossibility to not constantly see our image). James also uses a lot of expressions hinting at things under the surface of things, mostly in his early descriptions (certain traits of the house, for instance, are described as “embodying a few features of a building still older, half-replaced and half-utilized”). James brings in these allusions early on in his narration, when things still look innocent enough, and tones them down when things start to go bad. The same thing goes for loaded sentences on education or imagination, for instance. Flesh is pretty much an exception, as desire pervades the book throughout.
And of course there’s the genius in not lifting the story’s central ambiguity: did the events unfold as they are told, are they distorted slightly by the retelling, or is the story, as told, entirely the product of a crazy mind? I have my own hypothesis (neither of these three), of course, but I could not see a single point where James had faltered and given more strength to one explanation or the other, nor (and that, to me, is even more extraordinary) does it feel that he is resorting to heavy-handed trickery to give each their own credibility. The different solutions just are all possible because they are all possible, not thanks to some crazy last-minute twist. I’ve seen the story celebrated many times for that one trait, and I couldn’t agree more. In fact I think it’s quite a shame so many scholars seem to have spent so much effort into making a definitive call on that point. Can’t we just agree to have a little magic in a book, and to marvel at it? “My equilibrium depended on the success of my rigid will, the will to shut my eyes as tight as possible to the truth“, says the governess at one point; we don’t even need to be as hard on ourselves to let the book be a success, so why would we insist on the truth, all the truth, and (even worse) nothing but the truth?
Finally, there’s also the issue of the Jamesian sentence, an outrage by all modern standard as it is vague, convoluted, full of generic adverbs and imprecise meanings. Which of course works well for me in general, and perfectly in the context of this book. I’ll admit however that I wonder how burdensome it might become in a longer book, or in one more serious in subject.
All in all — just writing this little note lifted the reading-funk-induced pessimism I was expressing three days ago off my shoulders. I’m not sure what the next book will be to make me feel like this again, but I cannot wait to read it! And — I have now added more James, and Fielding to my must-read-soon list. James mentions Amelia in The Turn of the Screw, and I’m quite curious to find out how they communicate.
Tue 3 Aug 2010
Posted by Charlotte under A Literary Education, Out of this world
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Et oui, j’ai lu en français un livre écrit en anglais… Certes cela va à l’encontre de tous mes principes (ou du moins à l’encontre du principe de lire dans leur langue d’origine les livres écrits dans une langue que je parle, CQFD), mais la raison en est toute simple : ce livre m’a été offert comme cadeau de départ de France par un ami, a voyagé dans mes bagages pour New York il y a quatre ans (quatre ans!), puis m’a suivi de Manhattan à Brooklyn, et de Brooklyn en Indiana. Je n’avais pas du tout envie de le lire, aucune idée de ce dont il s’agissait, et la gravure à connotation religieuse qui l’illustrait me faisait craindre le pire dans l’ésotérisme bidon.
Je ne l’avais cependant pas oublié, notamment grâce aux merveilleuses étagères à l’entrée de notre logis actuel, assez vastes pour que TOUTE notre collection de livres (ou presque) puisse s’étaler reliures visibles, et non plus en doubles rangs d’oignon comme à New York. Il m’a en revanche fallu lire plusieurs fois son titre au fil de mes lectures sur les romans noirs de l’Angleterre au tournant du XIXe pour que je m’aperçoive que c’était cela, que je cachais parmi mes bouquins : rien de moins que l’une des œuvres “majeures” de cette mineure “gothic lit” dont Ann Radcliffe fut la star absolue, la faiseuse de best-seller, le nom par lequel tout est arrivé… mais dont Lewis fut un des artisans majeurs (et un des gros succès de vente, lui aussi). Il paraît d’ailleurs que Le Moine a inspiré L’Italien, le dernier roman publié (hors une poignée d’apocryphes) par Radcliffe ; j’en reparlerai sûrement lorsque j’aurais lu ce dernier !
Revenons cependant pour l’heure à notre moine, frère Ambrosio, un capucin dont la piété et les oraisons fougueuses font l’admiration du tout-Madrid. Il est présenté comme une sorte d’idole des femmes, le dernier confesseur à la mode, le Brad Pitt de l’homélie, à la fois passionné, beau et vertueux. Abandonné à un couvent depuis sa plus tendre enfance, Ambrosio est né en effet avec toutes les qualités qui auraient pu en faire un parfait gentilhomme. Du fait de sa réclusion, il n’a cependant jamais affronté aucune vraie tentation, et manque de compassion pour les faiblesses des autres. Avec l’adulation de belles et riches jeunes femmes et la flatterie constante de l’opinion publique, il se trouve devoir pour la première fois livrer bataille à deux démons, l’orgueil et la concupiscence.
En parallèle progresse l’histoire d’Antonia, une de ces parangons de perfection typique des héroïnes du genre : sa grande beauté va sans dire, mais elle est également d’une bonté si immodérée que je vais me permettre de faire une entorse à la charité chrétienne et d’appeler une bécasse une bécasse, cultivée sans connaître le mal (visiblement Lewis se rendait bien compte du problème, puisqu’il a recours à des explications savoureusement ironiques du type “sa maman lui faisait lire la Bible, mais dans une version qu’elle avait entièrement recopiée à la main pour en purger les torrents d’immondices qui s’y déversent” — ce qu’il dit bien mieux, appelant notamment la Bible “le livre qui trop souvent enseigne les premières leçons du vice, et donne l’alarme aux passions encore endormies“). Bref, Antonia est plus une fonction narrative qu’un personnage à proprement parler, et en tant que telle elle remplit parfaitement son rôle : éveiller l’amour d’un “Don de” prêt à s’abaisser jusqu’à elle et à l’épouser, veiller sur la santé vacillante de sa digne mère, susciter le désir interdit d’Ambrosio, et ensuite, pleurer, crier et s’évanouir à répétition alors que les événements se précipitent autour d’elle.
Difficile sans révéler toute l’histoire de vous dire comment la magie et le merveilleux s’invitent dans le roman, mais puisque nous sommes en roman “gothic*”, il faut bien qu’il y ait du fantastique, et il ne manque pas. Il a même la supériorité énorme sur celui de Radcliffe de ne pas s’excuser, d’être franc et sans explication (d’où le terme de merveilleux plus approprié que celui de fantastique), et dans sa critique sociale (notamment son anticléricalisme). Bien sûr, l’histoire reste conventionnelle, et la subtilité n’est pas vraiment de mise (on est loin de James et de Turn of the Screw), mais j’ai également trouvé une puissance fantasmatique remarquable. Puisque mon principal point de référence est Udolpho, donc Radcliffe, je dois dire que je me demande dans quelle mesure le sexe de l’auteur joue sur cette capacité à évoquer la puissance du désir charnel et du goût du pouvoir, que ce soit à cause du dicible ou du connaissable. Il se peut bien sûr que la froideur de Radcliffe soit personnelle, mais c’est un point que je voudrais garder à l’esprit pour des lectures ultérieures. J’aurais volontiers rajouté James à l’équation ici aussi (lui va encore plus loin, car chez lui le désir semble compris et intégré à la trame même du texte d’une façon incroyablement perceptive pour quelqu’un écrivant avant Freud), mais Turn of the Screw date de la toute fin du siècle, ce qui fausse la comparaison.
Fantastique et merveilleux version XIXe sont au programme cette année — ma dissertation de master 1 devrait porter sur un sujet qui me permettra d’y revenir. Depuis le temps que je promets du surnaturel sur le bandeau de ce blog !
* je n’aime pas du tout le terme consacré de “roman noir”, qui m’évoque les polars durs et la fameuse série noire. J’aimerais pouvoir dire “gothique”, et je le ferai sans doute tôt ou tard, mais c’est impropre en français. Dilemme…
Tue 20 Oct 2009
“un immense oiseau de nuit qui les regardait de ses yeux de braise, et qui semblait accroché aux cordes de la lyre d’Apollon!”
“an immense night-bird that stared at them with its blazing eyes and seemed to cling to the string of Apollo’s lyre (translation found at Classic Reader)
The Phantom as The Red Death — illustration from Castaigne
This week-end was near perfect: Chris and I went to Kentucky with our friends B and G, going from Bourbon distillery to horse racetrack (where I bet on the darkest horse I could find, in honor of The Black Stallion – and won!), from city to nature, and from activity to long breaks at the motel. I finished the Phantom of the Opera just before we went to visit the Lexington Cemetery, a peaceful place of nostalgic beauty. Its atmosphere is perhaps one of the reasons that the Phantom finally settled into my mind as a tragic figure rather than the monster he also is. There were interesting parallels to Frankenstein, in the “if only his creator – or men – had been a little more merciful”… (“peut-être l’eût-il été [un ange] tout à fait si Dieu l’avait vêtu de beauté au lieu de l’habiller de pourriture” — “), though in Leroux’s work there seem to be a greater fascination for the links between pain and genius, where Shelley seemed to have less sympathy for her creation.
The novel is both simple in its dynamics (a love triangle, a mystery to be solved) and ornate in its details; it mixes tragic romance with comedy, murder mystery and tragedy. It however never felt disorienting or labored thanks to fast facing, frequent comedic touches and what impressed me most – Leroux’s complicity with his readers. He shamelessly cultivates it by not only addressing them directly, but also including them in spirited mockery of some characters such as Mme Giry or the extremely secondary “juge d’instruction Faure”. How infinitely wiser, smarter, and better informed we feel! And how I wish Gaston was one of my friends, or even better, a coworker with whom to grab coffee and make fun of everyone else. Knowing full well, of course, that he’s probably had a few laughs at your expense too.
The story itself is that of the mysterious events that happened at the Opera between the time a director is found murdered and that a diva disappears with a viscount. The diva is Christine Daae, a young woman whose least secret is how her voice miraculously became more beautiful than any other; the viscount is Raoul, who loves her with all the stubborn passion of a man who cannot imagine anything beyond him; in-between them stands the long shadow of the Phantom, a creature of many talents and macabre taste who lives under the Opera. I must confess to liking him much better than that brute of Raoul (who is initially depicted as naïve, childish man, and who, like a rotten kid, throws jealous tantrums at the slightest provocation). The Phantom himself borders on the homicidal, and acts with a staggering mix of greed and disdain for others, but with such grandeur and such style that it takes incredible efforts to remember that this guy is a murderer and a torturer… I’m afraid I failed at it most of the time, and kept wishing for his triumph.
All in all, the Phantom was just delightful. Everything felt just right, down to the varied and colorful characters, down to the unrealistically sarcastic dialogue (“D. – Vous êtes superstitieux ? R. – Non, monsieur, je suis croyant” — “are you supersticious?” “No sir, I believe in God”). Leroux stops at nothing to entertain, not even at lifting lines almost straight out of Victor Hugo (“C’était l’heure tranquille où les machinistes vont boire”, “The peaceful hour where thirsty stage managers pass” switching the original lions with a more urban type of beast). Works for me.
Oh, and that ends my participation in the R.I.P. Challenge IV, I think, as I prepare to immerse myself in Proust for a few weeks!
Mon 5 Oct 2009
Posted by Charlotte under A Literary Education, Out of this world
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” Une goutte, rien qu’une petite goutte rouge, un rubis au bout de mon aiguille !… Puisque tu m’aimes encore, il ne faut pas que je meure… ”
“A drop, just a small little red drop, a ruby on the point of my needle! … Since you still love me, I cannot die…” (homemade translation)
Munch, Love and Pain
At the core of La Morte Amoureuse is the vision of Clarimonde, a light burning so bright it can never be looked at directly. Whoever dares to, like the narrator Romuald, risks never seeing anything else again. Various elements in the story show the impossibility of facing Clarimonde, most notably the chronology: the story is told by Romuald years after the facts; and at its most intense, their relation only ever happened in vivid dreams.
The warning against looking at Clarimonde can also be taken literally: the first time Romuald sees her, he is a young priest in the middle of being ordained. The moment his eyes fall on her, darkness engulfs everything – but her. Closing his eyes does not help: Clarimonde’s image just shines through his eyelids. From this moment on, Romuald is obsessed with her. He, who had never conceived greater happiness than being a priest, wants to renounce everything for her. He however proceeds mechanically with the ceremony, and soon after he is sent away to his new parish. His confessor, Sérapion, appears to suspect something and mentions Clarimonde as an immoral courtesan, exhorting Romuald to surmount his weakness.
Despite, or maybe because of the simplicity of his new life, Romuald cannot forget his obsession. One night, he is called to administer last rites to a woman – Clarimonde. He arrives too late to do anything for her soul – but as for her dead body, he calls it back to life with a kiss. Overcome by emotion, he loses consciousness.
When he wakes up, three days have passed and he is back in his priory. Soon after, his second life begins: a priest during the day, he dreams each night of an alternate life, in which he and Clarimonde have run away to Venice, and live a life of love and pleasures. After some time, Clarimonde starts to wither away, until Romuald accidently cuts his finger in her presence. Clarimonde is attracted to the blood and drinks a few drops of it, which restores her health. Soon after, Romuald realizes that she has taken to giving him a somniferous drink every evening so she can drink a few drops of his blood – but she is very careful never to exhaust him.
In Romuald’s day life however, things are coming to their denouement: Sérapion compels him to accompany to the tomb of Clarimonde. They exhume the perfectly preserved body and splash it with holy water, causing it to disintegrate immediately. She comes in a last dream to say goodbye to Romuald and predict that he will miss her – as of course he does for the rest of his life.
A couple of passage reminded me of the Snow White myth (especially when Clarimonde is woken up with a kiss), but contrary to Neil Gaiman’s vampiric retelling (Snow, Glass, Apples), whether or not this story is that of an evil vampire remains open for discussion. Clarimonde might be evil: she is, after all, renowned for her extreme immorality, feeds on blood, and even before her death presented some disturbing characteristics, such as a skin “cold as a snake’s”. Her love however is incontestable: she is protective, faithful and generous to Romuald. Her physical beauty, sensual and overpowering, is described by Gautier with perceptible delight – and the glamour of it is never lifted, contrary to what usually happens to monsters in early vampire stories. In comparison, her adversary Sérapion represents a Church cold and hard as stones, and words such as “occult” and “sacrilege” are attached to some of his acts. It could be an effect of the charm Romuald is under – or it could be a vision of the Catholic religion as barren and against nature.
And this is R.I.P. IV Challenge book #2!
Sat 26 Sep 2009
Posted by Charlotte under A Literary Education, Out of this world
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“Maintenant vos volontés seront scrupuleusement satisfaites, mais au dépens de votre vie. Le cercle de vos jours, figuré par cette peau, se resserrera suivant la force et le nombre de vos souhaits, depuis le plus léger jusqu’au plus exorbitant.”
“Henceforward, your wishes will be accurately fulfilled, but at the expense of your life. The compass of your days, visible in that skin, will contract according to the strength and number of your desires, from the least to the most extravagant.” (all translations lifted from project Gutenberg’s online edition).
It must be the Eugénie effect — no sooner had I finished putting together my reading list for the RIP IV Challenge that I began reading La peau de chagrin, hungry for more Balzac. I know I read it as a child, but could not remember anything except the story’s basic premises and how much I love the French title (unfortunately translated either by The Magic Skin or The Wild Ass’s Skin in English – “Chagrin” has a double meaning in French, one shagreen – a rough, exotic type of leather that emphasizes the skin’s natural grain - the other grief, the French word chagrin being derived from shagreen via the sensation of the material’s roughness). Very poetic, and not giving away the true nature of the skin.
This famous skin comes to Raphaël de Valentin in a scene evocative of other literary pacts with the devil. His heart broken by the courtesan Feodora, his meager fortune dissipated in desesperate debauchery, the young man is on his way to throwing himself in the Seine when he stops in a curiosity shop to wait for the cover of the night. There, he is offered the talisman by an old man who sternly warns him against accepting it, explaining that for every wishes it grants, it will shrink, and so will Raphaël’s life.
The young man jokingly wishes for a feast and for wealth; however, he does not believe in the skin, and still intends to commit suicide. Leaving the shop, he runs into a few friends who have been looking for him all over Paris: Raphaël has been chosen to head a new magazine, and the launch party is about to start. The festivities are wild, and at their close, Raphaël miraculously finds out that he has inherited a fortune. His two wishes are granted. The skin has shrunk. Doubt is no longer possible.
From this moment, Raphaël’s motivations change drastically: he no longer wishes to obtain the love of his cruel mistress, he no longer tries to prove his genius, and most of all – he passionately wants to live. Is it because live is so much worthier when one is rich, is it the newly-perceived reality of death, is it a change wrought by the skin? The story does not explain, content with showing a rich Raphaël now living a life sheltered of any desire in a semi-retreat from the world. Love however will reach out to him again in the form of Pauline, the angelic girl Raphaël could not bring himself to love when they were both poor. Now also become fabulously rich, Pauline captures Raphaël’s heart. The two lovers are happy for a while, but passion soon means the end for Raphaël, who dies in the arms of his love.
While I choose this story for the fantastic element, the supernatural is not what will stay with me. There’s indeed a central mystical element, and it stubbornly resists scientific explanation: the skin is at some point brought by Raphaël to famous scientists, but they fail to understand anything about it. Later, the doctors who examine Raphaël also fail him – but their failure is a more familiar one (they come across as learned charlatans Molière would be proud of). Balzac even leaves the dubitative reader a way to deny the supernatural entirely: Raphaël falls asleep just before the skin is given to him, making it a possibility that everything that follows is a dream. Much as in a dream, echoes of his former life are woven through the rest of the narrative: a small example is that of a fanciful prediction made by Pauline’s mother, which is realized to T; a more significant one is that the whole question at stake in Raphaël’s life with the magic skin is that of the will – precisely the subject on which he had written his philosophy masterpiece. That would furthermore explain his otherwise mysterious change of life goals after obtaining the skin.
Also substracting from the skin’s interest is its unimpressive appearance and lack of “special effects”. Balzac is an author with incredible descriptive abilities, and he revels in them: his light touch with the skin has to be deliberate. It comes across a pure narrative device, the touch of a writer still learning his craft.
What does come across with incredible force is the fascination of the material world: the accumulation of exotic objects in the shop, the banquet scene, the tiny details of Raphaël’s life as a rich men are just fascinating. They can at times get overwhelming, but the sensuality of things through Balzac’s eyes has incredible power. It also stands in stark contrast to this Hemingway-esque observation at the beginning of the book: “Où trouverez-vous, dans l’océan des littératures, un livre surnageant qui puisse lutter de génie avec ces lignes: Hier, à quatre heures, une jeune femme s’est jetée dans la Seine du haut du Pont-des-Arts.” (Where will you find a work of genius floating above the seas of literature that can compare with this paragraph: “Yesterday, at four o’clock, a young woman threw herself into the Seine from the Pont des Arts.”) Brevity is not what Balzac made his name with – and from me, that is not a complaint!
(and since we’re on the subject of the fantastic: for the francophones out there, Les nouveaux chemins de la connaissance on France Culture has a recent podcast on anguish in Maupassant. The guest speaker seems to overventilate with excitement at several points in the show, but aside from this minor complaint, it is well worth listening to.)
Sat 19 Sep 2009
Posted by Charlotte under A Literary Education
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“l’épouvantable éducation de ce monde, où, dans une soirée, il se commet en pensées, en paroles, plus de crimes que la Justice n’en punit aux Cours d’assises, où les bons mots assassinentles plus grandes idées, où l’on ne passe pour fort qu’autant que l’on voit juste; et là, voir juste, c’est ne croire à rien, ni aux sentiments, ni aux hommes, ni même aux événements“
“the abominable education of this world where, in an evening, more crimes are committed in thoughts, in words than the Law punishes, where soundbites murder the highest ideas, where one is only considered as strong as he sees clearly; and there, seeing clearly means believing in nothing, neither feelings nor men, nor even events” (quick and dirty translation)
Eugénie Grandet by Danielle Scarpa Kos
With perhaps the exception of Thomas Hardy, I am unfamiliar with non-French authors as preoccupied with questions of class and the major social changes of the 18th and 19th century as the holy trilogy of Flaubert, Zola and Balzac. Of these, Zola was long my favorite, probably because of his more easily understood idealism; re-reading Eugénie Grandet, however, was a great occasion to let Balzac grow on me – the elegance of his writing, the delicate irony married to acuity of observation (“ce combat secret… occupait passionnément les diverses sociétés de Saumur” – “this secret battle… engrossed the diverse societies of Saumur“), the neatness of the book structure where every scene felt necessary.
There are very few characters to like here: le père Grandet, the formidable shadow hovering over the entire book, is probably the most detestable of all. A devoted miser, he has built a huge fortune on ruthless cunning, breaches of trust and tireless exploitation of his fellow humans. For all this he is enormously admired in his home town of Saumur. The man lives like a pauper with his wife, his daughter Eugénie and his maid Nanon, an outcast he opportunistically rescued. Some vague reasons are provided for his greed: a destitute childhood, a predator’s taste for victory in business matters – but most of all, the picture is that of a man obsessed beyond reason or understanding, for whom is impossible to feel sorry.
Grandet has only one child, his daughter Eugénie, whose prospects attract suitors whose only charms are money and ambition. She herself is quite oblivious to all things romantic, until one day her cousin Charles is sent to spend some time in Saumur. They fall in love. Alas, the true motive for Charles’s visit is that his father, on the verge of bankruptcy, has sent him away while he commits an “honorable suicide”. Grandet arranges to have his nephew sent to the colonies to try and remake his fortune – and to keep this poor suitor away from his daughter. Charles gone, life goes back to its mean routine, with Grandet descending ever more into avarice while Eugénie endlessly waits for her lover’s return.
It will be years before Charles comes back to France. By then he has become the Grandet he was always meant to be, a selfish, obdurate man who dismisses his past promises to contract a marriage he thinks more advantageous. Eugénie discovers the truth at the same time she learns that the disgraceful bankrupcy is still looming. She decides to settle her cousin’s debts and resigning herself to a loveless, sexless marriage to one of her suitors. The rest of her life will be spent in quiet resignation, first at the sideof her callous husband, then as an even-richer widow. While she will do some good with her immense fortune, she will remain a prisoner to it to the end – isolated from every true feeling and living in the barren existence that is all she has ever known.
Quite peculiar to Balzac is his extremely harsh indictment of individuals. Society, place, circumstances – these are understood to play a role in the human tragi-comedy, but Balzac’s cynicism is unmissable. Individuals are despicable and society heinous; this is made worse by the growing fascination with money he denounces, but he doesn’t see human barbarity as either new or receding. The only admirable characters, individuals touched by a true idea of religion, are represented by Eugénie and her mother; they are frankly so angelic as to lack nerve. Nanon is an exception, the only other character who is overall positive despite some flaws – and my favorite in the book, with her obstinacy to make the best of life and her readiness to compromise for it.
Sun 13 Sep 2009
Posted by Charlotte under A Literary Education
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“Poor fellow, poor fellow! thought I, he don’t mean anything; and besides, he has seen hard times, and ought to be indulged.”
Fenêtre sur mur (Gimli_36/ flickr)
I recently wrote of starting a Jane Austen book full of questions, only to end up oblivious to anything but the story one third of the way into the book. With Bartleby, it was the opposite: questions started to overwhelm me at the end.
The story is told from the point of view of an unnamed Lawyer, a man of experience who professes to look for tranquility foremost in life. His stated intent is curiously at odd with reality: out of three clerks in his employ, one (Turkey) is irate every morning, the second (Nippers) incensed in the afternoon, and the third (Ginger Nut) a rather distracted young boy. The situation and the way the Lawyer describes it make it clear that behind pompous manners and an appearance of respectable bourgeois greed lies a generous heart kept in check just enough to fit in the Wall Street society, with an innate sympathy for his misfit employees. The Lawyer keeps finding reasons to “excuse” his not firing his employees, a behavior the reader could see as either weakness or kindness; because of the story of a few charitable acts, I decided for the second, but reading comments on amazon.com, I might be in the minority.
Yet I was touched by the decency of the character, and not surprised that when he needed to hire a fourth clerk and Bartleby presented himself looking “pallidly neat, pitiably respectable, incurably forlorn” – he should be engaged on the spot. But where the other clerks regularly erupt (against their copyist lives?) and move on, Bartleby soon starts resisting fulltime. He starts by refusing to read aloud his work, debuting the famous phrase – “I would prefer not to” – which soon will come to characterize his entire behavior, including the most basic of his work duty, copying. The man also settles at the Lawyer’s office. The occupation is discrete but firm; the Lawyer is refused entrance when he stops by out of business hours.
After some struggle, the Lawyer comes to accept Bartleby’s unexplainable conduct, and probably would have let him stay forever in his chambers where every window opens on a wall, were it not for social pressure. His patience for lunacy threatens his reputation, maybe ultimately his business, and the Lawyer is not foolish (or strong enough) to dismiss the concern. He tries to dismiss Bartleby, but when the later resists; his reserves of “fight” exhausted, the Lawyer decides to flee to new offices, leaving Bartleby behind.
Even then, the Lawyer doesn’t really desert Bartleby: when the office’s new occupant has him arrested and sent to the Tombs, the Lawyer traces him and attempts to make his life there more comfortable, notably by buying Bartleby food privileges. But ever refusing, Bartleby has ceased to eat whatsoever. He dies, probably of starvation, eyes wide open on another wall.
My confusion (mostly at Bartleby’s behavior) was not allayed by a “potential explanation” the Lawyer offers (that Bartleby had been a clerk in the office of the Letter of the Deads, opening for the administration the last missives of the now-defunct, and that this dreadful occupation might have damaged him in some way). Some further reading however helped. Two interpretations in particular seemed illuminating, “Bartleby as criticism of the then-emerging office life”, and “Bartleby as a mirror of Melville’s depression at the time of writing”. It seems to me that the presence of other angry clerks and of a judgmental society of lawyers might give credence to the first. The second, richer interpretation is based on the fact that when Melville wrote Bartleby, he was at a difficult time professionally. After a number of successful adventure books, he was encountering harsh criticism and low sales for books dearer to him (including Moby Dick). Bartleby represents the temptation to curl up in a corner and just stop –stop writing first, then stop living. The Lawyer would be another aspect of the writer – the well-educated, well-adjusted man with an unexplainable sympathy for the quirks of mankind, the one whose tolerance might (or not)have enabled Bartleby’s refusals. The absurdity of the story might reflect the one Melville would have felt in his own life; in that sense, the story would be interesting to confront to Kafka’s work.