Lectures 5-6.

English Literature in the Period of the Decline of the Empire.

Joseph Conrad (Joseph Theodore Konrad Korzenovsky, 1857-1924) made himself conspicuous at the beginning of the century with his political and adventure books, in which he used the form of the novel in a challengingly difficult way. He had served in the navy for about 20 years and traveled much around the world. His most known novels are: “Lord Jim” (1900), “The Heart of Darkness” (1902), “Nostromo”(1904), “The Secret Agent”(1907), “Under Western Eyes” (1911). His later works are “Victory” (1915), “The Rescue” (1920), “The Rover” (1923).

Conrad made himself conspicuous with his political novels “Nostromo” and ”Under Western Eyes”. “Nostromo” (1904) is a complex study of human behaviour in extreme situations. The action takes place in a small South American country, involving its history, politics and economic life. “Under Western Eyes” (1911) takes place among Russian revolutionaries in Switzesland, which depicts them unfavourably. It shows how the participation in this movement ruins a young man’s life.

Already in his life time J. Conrad was regarded as a major innovator in literary modernism. Writing in what to the visual arts was the age of Impressionism, Conrad showed himself in many of his works a prose poet of the highest order: thus, for instance, in the evocative Patna and courtroom scenes of Lord Jim; in the gunboat scenes of Heart of Darkness; in the doubled protagonists of The Secret Sharer.

Conrad’s most famous work is his short novel “Heart of Darkness” (1902). A central character is Mr. Curtz, a successful colonial trader in Africa, who has a mysterious power over local people. Kurtz gets seriously ill and a man called Marlow sets out to find and rescue him. Marlow expects to meet an apostle of Western altruism, but the truth about Curtz becomes clear, when Marlow sees, that the posts outside his hut are decorated with human heads. Marlow remains with him until his death. His deathbed cry “the horror! the horror!” may be the cry of fear or self-knowledge, but they echo through the years, becoming the refrain of the twentieth century ,especially after Eliot made them to preface his poem “The Hollow Men” in 1925.

The singularity of the universe depicted in Conrad's novels, especially compared to those of near-contemporaries like John Galsworthy, is such as to open him to criticism similar to that later applied to Graham Greene. But where "Greeneland" has been characterised as a recurring and recognisable atmosphere independent of setting, Conrad is at pains to create a sense of place, be it aboard ship or in a remote village. Often he chose to have his characters play out their destinies in isolated or confined circumstances.

In the view of Evelyn Waugh and Kingsley Amis, the novelist achieved the brilliant command of atmosphere and precision. This is the more remarkable, given that English was Conrad's third language.

The colonial theme appears in the works of Edward Morgan Forster (1897-1970), whose greatest achievement was his book “A Passage to India” (1924), which is a subtle fictional analysis of the effect of colonialism on rulers and ruled.

Here the tensions are between the cultures of East and West. The story of “A Passage to India” is centered on an Englishwoman, Adela, who has gone to India to marry a colonial official, but who quickly makes friends with the local Indian people. Once, when on a trip to Marabar Caves, she believes she is sexually attacked by an Indian doctor. She changes her mind later and withdraws her accusation. But the episode illustrates the difference between the beliefs and attitudes in the two cultures.

V. Woolf associated E. Forster with herself, J .Joyce and D. H. Lawrence. But the bulk of his fiction was written before Wolf and Lawrence were writing at all. E. Forster is a man, telling his story in his own voice in the older English traditions, which begin with Fielding and end with Meredith. His plots are realistic and melodramatic as in many Victorian novels. His novels are the triumph of a personal attitude. But what was this attitude? Outside his fiction he was a spokesman of a liberal tradition, agnostic, anti-imperialist, concerned with social justice.

His first novels were “Where the Angels Fear to Tread” (1905), “A Room with a View’ (1908), “Howard’s End” (1910).His reputation of a novelist was firmly established, but since 1924 he devoted himself to lecturing and public activity, becoming the first president of the National Council for Civil Liberties in 1934.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) was widely admired as the essential voice of the twenties. His early novels are light-hearted and witty, such as “Crome Yellow” (1921) and “Antic Hay” (1923). “Point Counter Point”, published in Italy in 1928, is different as it shows a man as a creature, too much divided by passion and reason to be happy. His most famous book is “Brave New World” (1932), satirizes brilliantly Wellsian Utopias and shows the society of scientific totalitarianism.

In 1937, when it became clear, that the fascism in Europe cannot be stopped, A.Huxley moved to California. His latest works “After Many a Summer” (1939), “The Genius and the Goddess” (1955) are marked with Swiftean despair and disgust.