Dictionary of Literary Influences

Preface

Muhammad Ali—but not many, and the number obviously does not represent the collective influence of sport in modern society. Only four acts from the rock era of popular music have been treated: Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, and The Beatles. This selection understates the collective cultural power of popular music, but without pandering to simple popularity.2

The English-speaking world is undoubtedly privileged in the selections; but then the twentieth century was an age in which English was the principal international medium of intellectual, economic, political, and scientific expression. For good or ill, the United States, and to a lesser degree Britain, had more to do with changing the world—with shaping Western culture—than the other way around. The current wave of anti-Americanism reflects the reality of a widespread belief in Anglocentric cultural encroachment. On the other hand, one must not forget that some three dozen of the cultural figures associated with the United States or Britain were firstor second-generation immigrants from countries around the world, combining their unique cultural perspectives with the freedoms and opportunities afforded in their adoptive homelands. Many others were inspired by and connected to the cultures from which their forbears had come decades earlier. The demographic landscape of Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Twenty-first Century will look considerably different than that of the current volume. The past 20 years have already demonstrated the increasing cultural vitality of Latin America and postcommunist eastern Europe, and a considerable number of entries from these areas are included.

There are at least twice as many worthy figures who might have been included; I hope there are not many who positively should not be here. I cannot claim completeness for this work, but I believe there are enough entries—drawn from a broad range of cultural influences—to suggest both the influence of literature upon our lives and the need for continued exploration of the relationship between reading and culture. By bringing together research on the literary influences on such a variety figures, I believe that scholars will be encouraged to ask fresh questions about the sometimes surprising ways in which literature affects the lives of us all.

NATURE OF THE ENTRIES

The considerable variation in the length and content of the articles in the main reflects the quality of both relevant archives and the degree to which scholars have previously undertaken research in the area. In every case, however, it has been our goal to include enough information on each figure so that the reader may (1) identify key literary influences, (2) assess the possible impact of such reading, and

(3) continue research in the most significant published and archival resources. In each case we have encouraged contributors to identify educational and other early literary influences, the most important specific printed works read, and key archival and secondary materials relating to literary influences. What the entries sometimes lack in detail we hope will be made up for in suggestive context and practical bibliographical guidance.

When the text refers to an individual who has his or her own entry, a crossreference is indicated by boldface type.

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NOTES

1.Bloom himself has been characterized by Michael Dirda of the Washington Post as one of the three most important twentieth-century literary critics writing in English (along with F. R. Leavis and Edmund Wilson). Still, only Wilson is included in this work. “‘Greatest Living Poet’ Lets Words Slide,” CNN.com/Entertainment, posted 8 December 2002, http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/books/12/wkd.john.ashbery.ap/index.html, accessed 9 December 2002; “Dirda on Books,” Washington Post Live Online, 7 June 2001, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/01/books/dirda060701.htm, accessed 13 December 2002.

2.Elvis Presley was voted greatest rock star of all time in a 2002 ABC poll, more than 30 percentage points ahead of Jimi Hendrix. More importantly, however, 90 percent of the 1,023 adults polled believed he “had a lasting impact upon culture.” “Poll: Elvis Greatest Rock Star of All Time,” CNN.com/Entertainment, posted 15 August 2002, http://www

.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/08/15/ep.elvis.poll.ap/index.html, accessed 15 August 2002. On the other hand, of artists having one or more of the 20 best-selling albums of all time, only the Beatles made our list: apologies to the Eagles, Michael Jackson, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Billy Joel, AC/DC, Shania Twain, Fleetwood Mac, Whitney Houston, Boston, Alanis Morissette, Garth Brooks, Hootie and the Blowfish, Bruce Springsteen, Guns ’n Roses, and Elton John.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It has been a pleasure to once again work with the editorial team from Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Nineteenth Century, 1800–1914 (Greenwood, 2001). I wish to thank Derek Blakeley for his efforts on this volume, particularly in the area of Britain, Ireland, and the countries of the old British empire. Tessa Powell once again has proven her worth, and I appreciate her work in the preparation of the manuscript. I am grateful to several contributors who devoted considerable time to the project, providing numerous articles, advice, and expertise in their fields of study, among them Eric v. d. Luft, Greg Schnurr, and Yves Laberge. Any editorial shortcomings are, however, my own. The editorial team at Greenwood Press has been superb, as usual. Finally, my best thanks to the contributors, who usually found it necessary to do a great deal more work than is generally thought necessary for such articles.

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INTRODUCTION

The study of literary influence is in some ways a very old one. It has often been practiced in relation to novelists, poets, philosophers, and men of letters generally. Because they write, it has been supposed, they are greatly influenced by others who write. Literary influences are less often studied in relation to painters, architects, athletes, musicians, scientists, economists, and businessmen. As they too read, and have in large measure been educated both formally and informally by literature, the impact of the printed word on these cultural figures should be explored. The relationship between their achievements and their reading will not only tell us a great deal about the history of our culture, it will inspire us with a new appreciation for the possibilities of its future.

Because Western civilization in particular has prized the written word, it is not uncommon to find studies of great men and women that pay attention to their reading. One need only note the persistence of Alexander’s passion for Homer as an explanatory mechanism, well known in the ancient world and still central to our understanding of his restless energy and unbridled ambition. As Edwyn Bevan wrote at mid-century, when Aristotle came to Pella to tutor the young Macedonian prince, he brought with him a powerful force—literature:

The great literary achievements of the Greeks . . . lay already far enough behind to have become invested with a classical dignity; the meaning of Hellenic civilization had been made concrete in a way which might sustain enthusiasm for a body of ideal values, authoritative by tradition.1

Such stories regarding the power of literature are abundant.

The problem is that while almost everyone agrees that reading plays a fundamental role in the transmission of knowledge and values, in the acquisition of practical and mental skills, and in the fashioning of new ideas, scholars often write as if it were a matter of little consequence. Thus, one authoritative biographer will devote many pages to a subject’s reading, while another will ignore it altogether.

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One’s reading, however, like one’s physical appearance or religious attitudes, is essential in coming to appreciate the distinctive personality of a person we will never meet. For the larger purposes of this work, knowledge of the reading habits of those whom we honor as culture-builders is fundamental to understanding the entire process of cultural development. If someone today imagined that J.R.R. Tolkien had drawn his inspiration from the late Victorian revival of medieval romances and “fairy stories,” they might well imagine that secondhand knowledge is sufficient in transmitting truth. As Richard Follett has observed in this volume, however, “Middle Earth was not inspired by the works of such predecessors as William Morris or George MacDonald. Rather, Tolkien drew his creative breath directly from the classical epics, from the Norse and Icelandic Sagas, and from Anglo-Saxon poetry.” This truth about texts helps to explain the persistence of Tolkien amid the welter of fantasy rip-offs, and why we are still drawn to the cultural mirror he holds to our faces. There is no obvious solution to the determination of some to see the world as they will, regardless of the way it is, but it helps to get useful information before the public.

Another problem one faces in the study of literary influences is one of focus. Should we study the broad realm of ideas contained in published literature, literary texts, the physical books themselves, or the means of distributing them? Each of these areas will suggest important insights; taken together they create the impression of a mechanistic, rather than humanistic, enterprise, an anthropology of literature. In the nineteenth and most of the twentieth centuries, the whole work was generally considered in the context of its creation; more recently the primacy of the text alone has been fashionable. A new group of scholars is now suggesting the need for a broader field of “book studies,” that will bring together “specialists in book history, printing history, the book arts, publishing education, textual studies, reading instruction, librarianship, journalism, and the Internet.”2 According to Jonathan Rose:

It is perfectly legitimate to ask how literature has shaped history and made evolutions, how it has socially constructed race, class, and gender, this, that, and the other. But we cannot begin to answer any of these questions until we know how books (not texts) have been created and reproduced, how books have been disseminated and read, how books have been preserved and destroyed.

All of this is important for understanding the direct relationship between books and culture; it is less important for appreciating the ways in which literature influences men and women to accomplish great things, and thus to transform their cultures.

Another inescapable difficulty in preparing a biographical dictionary of literary influences is the dual nature of the result. Most researchers will probably approach the book wanting to know more about the reading habits of a particular cultural figure—what did Michael Collins read that encouraged him to embrace physical force in the cause of Irish nationalism, what literature enabled Margaret Sanger to imagine a culture that embraced birth control? It is equally valid, however, to examine the “hidden” influences at work on the familiar shapers of our culture— the kind of influence that can only be traced by a careful perusal of the index and resulting reference to a variety of entries. The search for hidden influences— “invisible giants” as they are called in a recent book exploring “formerly famous but now forgotten Americans”—is enjoying a measure of popularity now.3 This avenue

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will help one better appreciate the nature of fame and the longevity of influence. Sir Walter Scott, for instance, was clearly one of the most influential literary figures of the nineteenth century, read right across the Western world, from Russia to the United States, and one of the principal progenitors of modern nationalistic movements.4 Many modern readers will be surprised at his influence in the twentieth century. They will be less surprised that Charles Dickens continued to inspire readers throughout the twentieth century. And there are always surprises, “unknown” people who committed their thoughts to paper without much recognition, or the strange permutations of influence among the powerful. Who would have imagined Josef Stalin as a literary influence on Richard Wright?

Ubiquitous diversity, in terms of ethnicity, opportunity, education, and means of expression, presents its own problems for a study of literary influences in the twentieth century. Whereas there was something approaching a canon of essential literary works in the nineteenth century5—the Bible, Greek and Roman classics, Shakespeare, and Sir Walter Scott—it dissipated rapidly in the twentieth. Early reading experience remained important, but became more difficult to delineate. As the twentieth century progressed, early literary influences became embedded in the mental world of children increasingly accustomed to instantaneous aural and visual impressions, often purveying the same kinds of information traditionally found in books. The difficulty of unraveling the literary strand should not deter us from the important cultural exercise it entails. If one recognizes that Andrei Tarkovsky, the Soviet Union’s greatest filmmaker of the post–World War II era, was as much influenced by nineteenth-century Russian poets as by any filmmaker, it might encourage a renewed interest in poetry and a heightened appreciation of the role it has played in cultural development.

Two observations regarding literary influences on cultural development have not changed from the first volume. First, it was just as true in the twentieth as the nineteenth century that the motivation for reading varied widely, as did the results. Second, it remained true that individual readers responded uniquely to the written word and thus in unpredictable ways.

In preparing this volume, I wish to acknowledge my debt to many biographers who have carefully ploughed the literary ground in examining the lives of their subjects. These specialized treatments are not always well known outside the discipline of their subjects’ work and frequently are not available in local libraries. It is also true that one would need a continuous biographical study of influences from the beginning of written history to the present to establish all the discernible intellectual links involved in the process of cultural change. The Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Twentieth Century nevertheless will identify a number of important links and will serve as a first general guide for researchers, from a variety of disciplines, who seek an introduction to the reading habits and the related intellectual development of the most significant cultural figures in the Western world during the twentieth century.

NOTES

1. Edwyn Robert Bevan, “Alexander III,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 1 (Chicago, London, Toronto: Encyclopaedia Britannica, William Benton, 1960), p. 567. On Alexander and Homer, see “Alexander,” sec. 8, in Plutarch, Eight Great Lives, The Dryden Translation, rev. by Arthur Hugh Clough, ed. C. A. Robinson (New York: Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1960).

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2.Jonathan Rose, speech of January 27, 2001, accepting the American Printing History Association (APHA) Institutional Award for the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP), http://www.printinghistory.org/htm/mis/awards/ 2001-SHARP.htm, accessed 29 July 2002.

3.Mark C. Carnes, ed. Invisible Giants: 50 Americans Who Shaped the Nation but Missed the History Books (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

4.John Powell, ed. Biographical Dictionary of Literary Influences: The Nineteenth Century, 1800–1914 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001), p. 4.

5.Ibid., pp. 2–4.

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