Russian Short Stories Part 2: Leo Tolstoy in the 1880s

The midlife crisis that seized Tolstoy after the massive popularity of War and Peace (1869) and Anna Karenina (1877) led him to disavow his literary successes and pursue a very different course, prompting him to reevaluate how to best use his literary gifts for the benefit of mankind. 

Beginning in the 1880s until the end of his life in 1910, he would write stories and religious and philosophical tracts that sought to express a moral point of view in line with the actual teachings of Christ. The moral standard he espoused rejected adherence to religious and civil authority in favor of individual conscience. He insisted that the actions of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Tsarist state should be held accountable to the Gospels which they officially endorsed, although their actions frequently contradicted the core of Christ's teachings of social equality, compassion and nonviolence. Publicly calling out Russia's ruling class as a bunch of hypocrites cost him dearly, resulting in his excommunication from the church and raising the ire of the government. By the end of his life, he was hailed as a hero by the people and a reviled as a pariah by those in power. 

Although his priorities and literary voice changed, he was still Tolstoy, a man of incredible gifts and insight. He was an idealist, and however utopian his ideals may seem to us now, his writings from this period had very real, far reaching influence. Mohandas Ghandi and Martin Luther King took him seriously, successfully putting Tolstoy's belief in nonviolence to the test against imperial power and the tyranny of racial segregation. 

These real world successes lend some credence to his convictions. Tolstoy took up the cause of the Russian peasant and oppressed peoples everywhere, pleading for tolerance and understanding. His philosophy was passionate, erratic, sometimes contradictory, but the man's heart was in the right place. His writerly skill. firm conviction and purity of intention can disarm our skeptical impulses and sometimes suspend our disbelief. In the hands of a lesser writer, the fruits of such zeal would be disastrous, but even in service to a philosophical agenda, however flawed, his literary gifts never failed him. Tolstoy's rawness of feeling draws us in.

Both of these collections are short reads, and with one exception, are ideal for lunch hour perusal. They are so deftly and thoroughly written that it's hard to discuss them without spoiling them before you've had the chance to read them, but I've attempted to do so here.

1901 Russian edition of The Kreutzer Sonata

The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories (1889) by Leo Tolstoy

In the very famous title story (actually a novella), Posdnicheff, an aggrieved man on a train, confides in his fellow passenger of how he came to murder his wife--a crime for which he was acquitted. His story is a diatribe that skewers the hypocrisy of gender roles, social rites, the mysterious transformative power of music, declining morals and the state of the institution of marriage. Although many of his points are difficult to argue with, his remedy for these ills is perfect abstinence from some enormously popular and time-honored human pastimes, like drinking, smoking, eating meat and engaging in premarital sex.

"The Kreutzer Sonata" is a cautionary tale about the evils of unrestrained sensuality, the double standards imposed on men and women regarding morality, and the perils of living a life not in accordance with Christian spiritual and moral principles, but the message I took away from this story is that it's best to exercise caution when engaging a fellow train traveler in conversation because he might just turn out to be a crazy person.

But from the opening dialog between various passengers about the changing social status of women, men and marriage to the final, violent crescendo of his wife's murder, "The Kreutzer Sonata" is masterfully written. In Posdnicheff's confession, Tolstoy maintains a focused, maniacal intensity that never lets up. In fact, you might have to take a break after reading this one.

"Ivan the Fool" is a fairy tale that paints a picture of a Christian anarchic utopia in which those who toil for money and power are brought to ruin and those who work for the betterment of themselves and their neighbors live happy lives. Well wrought, but as with many fairy tales (and like all propaganda), one gets the feeling that the message is laid on a bit thick. ."A Missed Opportunity" is based on the parable of the unforgiving servant from the Gospel of Matthew. Both are beautifully crafted and both offer points of view that, like most utopian philosophies, are tinged with truths that are easy to grasp and equally difficult to practice. 

"A Lost Opportunity" is a tale in simple language about two peasant farming families who once lived in harmony, sharing resources and helping each other. But relations between the two families rapidly break down when a squabble about a chicken laying an egg in the neighbor's yard escalates to a dizzying height of pettiness, litigation, destruction and violence that extends to the surrounding village. All of this could have been avoided by a simple act of forgiveness. A point well taken in any age. 

"Polikushka" dates from 1863 and while the straightforward style fits in with the other stories in this collection, its fatalism is a little out of place. It is a tale of redemption thwarted by circumstance when a servant with a reputation for thieving is summoned by his noblewoman for an errand to collect a large sum of money and return it to her. Determined to prove himself trustworthy, he sets out to fulfill his duty. Therein lies the spoiler. We will tiptoe past it now...

The final piece, "The Candle", depicts the era of brutality and degradation of Russia's serfs as the setting for a simple story about good triumphing over evil. But there is a healthy dose of irony and darkly tinged humor here, elevating this piece above the deceptively simple morality tale it pretends to be. That's all you get, else the stories are in danger of being spoiled. I suggest you read the last two stories back to back to see how his style and perspective had changed in twenty years.  

Download The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories from Project Gutenberg

Post-midlife-crisis-era Leo Tolstoy

What Men Live By and Other Tales (1885) by Leo Tolstoy

Of these two collections, this one is the most overtly religious in tone. All of the stories are good, all are parables, and the last of the stories is a knockout masterpiece. These stories were written to be understood by people from peasants to kings, and their beauty and potency is in their simplicity. 

"What Men Live By" is the story of a shoemaker named Simon who encounters a man named Michael who is naked, cold and hungry, while on an errand to collect money owed for his services and buy himself a sheepskin coat. In an act of Christian charity, he takes the man home to his wife, feeds and clothes him and takes him on as an apprentice. There are several hints that reveal to us that Michael is not of this world, and not surprisingly, he turns out to be an angel send back to Earth by God to learn a lesson for his disobeyance while going about the business of collecting a soul. At the end, it is revealed that the lessons he learns are what dwells in man, what is not given to man and what men live by. Enough said.

"Three Questions" contains a message that pretty much anyone of any time, age or culture can understand. A king summons all who would advise him to ponder three questions. The story begins:

"It once occurred to a certain king, that if he always knew the right time to begin everything; if he knew who were the right people to listen to, and whom to avoid; and, above all, if he always knew what was the most important thing to do, he would never fail in anything he might undertake."

Yeah? No kidding! Who among my readers wouldn't like to know the answer to these questions? Not surprisingly, everyone he consults has differing answers to his queries, so the king ventures out to seek the advice of a reclusive wise man. Long story short with no spoilers: He finds out, and the answers he gets are good ones.

In "The Coffee-House of Surat" we find a banished Persian theologian whose considerable scholarly efforts have only led him to question the existence of God. After drinking a cup of opium, he openly asks his African slave if he believes in God. This exchange is heard by the establishment's diverse coterie of foreign travelers, leading to a discussion that reveals many different viewpoints on the subject. This story is a concise, eloquent plea for tolerance. Nicely written with an easily digestible message.

Which brings us to "How Much Land Does One Man Need?", a perfectly drawn tale that I can't tell you too much about without spoiling the experience of reading it. James Joyce thought that this story is one of the greatest in all of literature and I thoroughly agree with him. A farmer and landowner, tempted by the Devil into pride and greed, seeks to acquire more land to improve his family's stature and standard of living. But how much is enough and to what lengths will he go to get it? Sorry…you'll have to read this one for yourself. because I'm not going to give it away. What an ending!  But don't take my word for it. click on the link below and enjoy it.

Download What Men Live By and Other Tales from Project Gutenberg

Next time, we'll look at stories by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, the father of Russian literature in the 19th century.

If you'd like to know more about Tolstoy, here is an excellent documentary film from the BBC. It's really fabulous and I can't recommend it enough. In fact, this film provided much of the biographical detail I've included in these posts.

As always. if you read eBooks prepared by Project Gutenberg, please make a donation to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. 

Russian Short Stories Part 1: Leo Tolstoy 1852-1859

"It does not matter much where you begin with him; you feel instantly that the man is mighty, and mighty through his conscience; that he is not trying to surprise or dazzle you with his art, but that he is trying to make you think clearly and feel rightly about vital things with which "art" has often dealt with diabolical indifference or diabolical malevolence." --William Dean Howells (Introduction to Sebastopol, 1887 edition)

I agree with W. D. Howells. Discovering Tolstoy has been one of the great joys in life for me. Tolstoy stirs the reader's moral sense without condescension, telling truths about human experience in a voice so powerful yet so personal and confiding. But I disagree with Howells on one point; It really does matter where one begins with Tolstoy. Instead of ripping right into the borscht-intensive main course that is War and Peace, there are several smaller but still rich and satisfying delicacies by Leo Tolstoy to graze upon. 

My first taste of Tolstoy was the same book that introduced Howells to his work. The Cossacks (1863), is about a Russian socialite who, in an attempt to flee his from his social obligations (and a few outstanding gambling debts) to find meaning, joins the army and lives among the people in the Caucasus mountains at the beginning of the Crimean War. It was a revelation to me. Disarmed by the novel's enormous heart, I fell in love with it instantly. It is a novel that is sensitive, brutal and intensely personal in a way I hadn't encountered before in literature. When I was finished reading it, I felt a longing that I can't define. I felt so close to it that writing about it for the blog proved difficult. Only through reading have I been able to achieve such a heightened mental and emotional state. I was hooked and had to learn more.

In this series, we'll begin to explore Russian short stories with a look at two collections by Tolstoy written in the period between 1852 and 1859. I think modern readers will be pleasantly surprised by the tightness and even pacing of his prose. Though a towering giant in the world of literature, Tolstoy is very readable. Whatever knowledge of nineteenth century Russia you may lack will be answered by brief and helpful footnotes. The universality of the themes easily overshadows most of the historical and cultural particulars, and his compassionate voice draws our attention to haunting, uncomfortable truths about ourselves. Here are two very good places to start.

A Russian Proprietor and Other Stories (1888) by Leo Tolstoy

This volume collects some early short stories of the twentysomething Tolstoy. I know that I've warned readers of The Overleaf to avoid introductions in the past, but in this case, the preface by translator Nathan Haskell Dole is actually useful, giving us a few contextual clues without spoiling anything. 

"A Russian Proprietor" is an unfinished novel that, as Dole points out, stands well on its own. It's the story of an idealistic young Russian landowner who drops out of college to manage his property and attend to his serfs' needs in the hopes of improving their lives. He soon discovers that his education and idealism have done little to prepare him for the reality of their conditions and temperament. The clash between his ideals and their reality makes for some awkward and often comic situations that force him to rethink his plans and to sort his altruistic intentions from his egotistic impulses. Dole tells us that these stories have many parallels with Tolstoy's own life, which explains much. The autobiographical character of his writing is perhaps what makes his words feel so intimate. One gets the sense that Tolstoy has learned many of the lessons in these stories for himself.

Breaking through social barriers in search of a genuine human connection is a theme shared by a few of these stories. "Lucerne" finds a well-to-do traveller at a Swiss resort, is irritated by the cold formality of English tourists and craves a real conversation with a real human being. He notices and befriends a street musician whose mere presence in the hotel drinking champagne causes a chain reaction of snobbery, from the rich hotel guests to the waiters and kitchen servants. In "Albert", an aristocratic man brings home a brilliant but troubled violinist from a party in the hopes of reforming him only to find that Albert is incapable of fitting in with his new friend's plans for him. "Three Deaths"  tells of two consumptive people of different social classes who befall the same fate under markedly different circumstances. No spoiler from me on the third death, however.

There are two stories in which gambling and roguery figure prominently--subjects that Tolstoy knew of firsthand in his younger days. "Recollections of a Scorer" tells  of a man's downfall from the perspective of a scorekeeper in a pool hall. In an almost naturalist narrative style (an extreme rarity for Tolstoy), the scorer relates without judgement a nobleman's pathetic demise and ruination from compulsive gambling. 

"Two Hussars" is an engaging tale that contrasts two generations of cavalrymen. The elder Count Turbin, whose pleasing good looks, formidable dancing skills and penchant for wild times that costs him his life contrasts favorably with his more sensible but less remarkable son. It's interesting to see Tolstoy's developing style; The pacing of the first half is very effective, but the resolution in the second half is abrupt. One gets the feeling he's trying to apply various approaches to express the ideas in his head. Plenty of good stuff there, though.

"A Prisoner in the Caucasus" is an adventure story written for children about a Russian soldier who is captured and held for ransom by a group of Tartars.  The simplicity of Tolstoy's prose and the quick-moving story can turn any willing reader into an eleven-year-old kid. A little violent by today's standards and the Tartars are certainly not treated as heroes, but a pretty gripping read.

Download A Russian Proprietor & Other Stories from Project Gutenberg

The young soldier Leo Tolstoy in 1854

Sebastopol (1887) by Leo Tolstoy

Between 1853 and 1856, France and Britain waged war against Russia's Tsar Nicholas I, who attempted to salvage the bedraggled remains of the Ottoman Empire in an effort to control the Mediterranean Sea, the holy grail of European conquest and influence. Things did not go as planned. This book of three short stories gives us a view of the conflict from the point of view of Russian soldiers in the city of Sebastopol on the Black Sea in what is now the Ukraine where Tolstoy served in the army. 

In the first piece, "Sebastopol in December, 1854", Tolstoy describes in vivid detail what he must have seen upon his arrival. We see a bubbling cauldron of human activity in the army encampment very close to the front lines, the piles of artillery, the horses, the tattered refugees trying to get passage away from the carnage by boat, and busy soldiers in transit. Tolstoy doesn't spare the reader the grim nightmare that is the makeshift hospital with its mutilated soldiers howling in dire agony, awaiting help as they lay on stretchers next to the corpses of their comrades. We see the town itself as soldiers and locals frequent restaurants and shops with the eerie pretense of normality. We hear the sound of gunfire and cannons of the fourth bastion where the fiercest fighting takes place. We see the trenches on the front lines where thousands of young men, full of courage and patriotism, met with their doom.  The first of the three sketches is patriotic in tone, but underscored by chilling visions of the reality of war.

In "Sebastopol in May, 1855", we return to the battle scarred city and the tone changes from one of patriotism to one of disillusionment. Amidst the carnage, soldiers try to carry on with the business of warfare, focusing on their appointed jobs to keep the insanity of their situation at bay. We see white gloved officers putting on airs of gentility and asserting their civilian social status--one of many incongruities in a place where all men potentially face the same fate. The officers are to an extent detached from the reality of their surroundings yet still experience the horrors of war. Tolstoy criticizes their vanity and pettiness and notes an ambivalent mixture of good and evil in men. Truth, he concludes, is the true hero of the story of the war.

In "Sebastopol in August, 1855", the idealism and disillusionment of the two previous sketches are brought together. Volodiya Koseltzoff, a young ensign, volunteers to leave his quiet post at St. Petersburg to join his older brother Mikhail  at Sebastopol. We follow him as he reunites with his brother and travels on to find his new post. He is filled with idyllic visions of fighting alongside his brother as they journey towards the front lines, but the sight of a ward full of gruesomely wounded soldiers and the sound of gun and cannon fire fill him with terror and dread. He is at first appalled by what he perceives as his own cowardliness, but as he meets the men with whom he will serve--apparently oblivious to the horror of their situation and more concerned with griping about their gambling debts--he begins to feel more at ease. The closer he gets to battle, the braver he becomes.

That's all I can tell you without being a rotten spoiler, so you'll have to find out for yourself the fate of these two brothers. Tolstoy's descriptions of war, his firsthand understanding of the psychology of war and the terror felt in men's hearts, and his moral outrage at the senseless loss of human life make these stories compelling and unforgettable. Technically, the writing becomes more focused as the stories progress. Not an easy read, but an excellent example of the young writer's growing talents. Very moving.

Read Sebastopol online at Google Books

The short stories are a good way to get to know Tolstoy. In fact, short stories are a good way to become familiar with Russian literature. Don't forget to have a look at my piece on Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches, which is another superb collection of Russian short fiction. Next time, we'll look at some stories by Tolstoy written after War and Peace and Anna Karenina that reveal a very different voice.

By the way, if you read eBooks downloaded from Project Gutenberg, I'd like you to consider making a small donation to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. They're doing very important work by digitizing great literature and making untold volumes of human knowledge and expression available to everyone for free. That's worth a few bucks, surely.

Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola

 Émile Zola 1840-1902

Despite being a loud-mouthed American who writes a blog about electronic editions of precious works of world literature, I feel it is my calling--nay, my duty--to try to write well-reasoned, insightful and penetrating observations about the great books I encounter. If I can't say something constructive, I will usually withhold comment. I don't trash books here, and I don't define my literary tastes in terms of what I don't like. The Overleaf  is a place for inclusiveness that seeks to make literature accessible, not to show off how cool and fancy my tastes are. I like to think of my readers coming along for the ride as we discover books together.

To respect, admire and enjoy a work of literature is the trifecta of a fulfilling reading for me.  If I finish a book and I'm able to apply those three words to the experience, I know that something truly speaks to me. Not that I expect books to consistently deliver on all three levels; sometimes the story or plotting aren't so hot, but the characters are brilliantly rendered. Now and then I'll encounter a work where the language may be a little stilted and the dialog somewhat stiff, but the theme is compelling. One can admire execution while expressing reservations about the overall result (or vice versa) without trashing a book. If I read something that I just don't care for, I usually keep mum about it here.

For the past couple of months, we have been looking at the development and influence of naturalism in the works of Ivan Turgenev, Theodore Dreiser, George Moore and James Joyce. I couldn't justify covering this topic without exploring at least one book by one of the granddaddies of naturalism, Émile Zola. French authors can be intimidating because it seems like those guys really enjoyed composing dense, grand, seemingly impenetrable, multi-volume novels it would take you a lifetime to read. And Émile Zola has a doosey--the Rougon-Macquart series, a twenty volume novel about life under Napoleon III. I'm sure it's wonderful, but no thanks! I just wanted a taste so I could put what I had learned about naturalism into broader perspective.

I was pleased to have found Thérèse Raquin, a stand-alone novel and his first to attract attention to his talents. This novel seemed the best place to start, and indeed it was; it gave me a great deal of insight as to how naturalism originated and evolved as well as into why this guy is so lauded as one of the great French novelists. After reading it, I can honestly say that he was a heck of a writer. But did I enjoy the book and the experience of reading it? Like a relationship in flux on Facebook, "It's Complicated"…

Thérèse Raquin (1867) by Émile Zola

Consider Madame Raquin. a widow who adopts Thérèse, a niece in need of a home after the death of her mother. She raises her with her son, Camille, a boy whose sickliness causes her mother to smother him with affection and care. Consider also that, despite Thérèse's good health, her aunt treats her the same as Camille--forcing her to take the boy's medicine along with him, despite her strength and health. Thérèse plays the part of an obedient, compliant daughter and companion to her cousin. Consider also that it is expected for these first cousins to marry someday so that Madame Raquin can have peace of mind knowing that her son will be looked after when she dies. As this destiny is fulfilled, so the trouble begins in Thérèse Raquin.

Forced to play a role in her family that is the exact opposite of her nature, it is no surprise that she avails herself of the first opportunity to feel real passion as Laurent, a co-worker of Camille's, becomes a weekly guest for dinner and dominoes every Thursday night in the apartment above Madame Raquin's mercery shop. Captivated by one another, they soon secretly seek each other's company and carry on a lusty affair. Dissatisfied with having to sneak around, Thérèse and Laurent decide that the best way to ensure their continued happiness is to kill Camille so they can be married.

And so they do. They drown Camille and claim it was an accident, fool everyone around them and get away with it. But they are then seized with ferocious guilt for their actions and are haunted nightly by visions of Camille's drowned body. Those visions don't go away after they're married, either; things get considerably worse. As their fear intensifies, the passion that brought Thérèse and Laurent together fades, and the now married couple descends into a nightmare of fear, hatred and self destruction. I won't spoil the ending for you, but I don't need to tell you that all of this doesn't end well.

In his preface to the second edition of this novel (quoted in the preface to the 1901 edition available on Project Gutenberg), Zola says that temperament rather than character was his primary interest in creating this novel. He treats his characters as though they are subjects in a scientific experiment. Yet the narrator isn't entirely disinterested, as he freely refers to his protagonists as murderers, brutes and fools throughout the novel. But indeed, every character present acts out of selfishness or at least self interest. As a result, there's no one really likable in this novel, and those who seek characters they like and identify with (all too common these days) will be sorely disappointed--at least not those who are unwilling to plumb the depths of their souls to find affinity with people who have committed acts for which they are ashamed and horrified. And we all have at least one or two of those, even if they are acts we have only committed in our hearts. 

I can see why Victorian England was uncomfortable with racy French books like this one. Compared to George Eliot, Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and W. M. Thackeray, this stuff is really off the hook. Zola speaks to the common undercurrent of guilt and fear that lurks in all human beings, and if you can't identify with that, you are probably fooling yourself. That's precisely why this novel works; it forces readers to confront their own unpleasant attitudes and experiences. That's one of the things truly great art does. Bravo to Émile Zola for using the medium of the novel so ingeniously, but one really wouldn't call the experience of reading it "fun". This book is well crafted, forward looking and disquieting. Worth reading? Definitely. But perhaps only once.

It would be easy to dismiss if it weren't so brilliantly written. The opening chapter that describes Madame Raquin's mercery shop and the greasy Paris neighborhood that surrounds it really draws the reader in with dark, exquisite detail. A gruesome chapter in which Laurent visits the morgue to see if his victim's body has been found is genuinely disturbing. The horrifying sights he sees are distressing enough to provide fodder for Laurent's nightmares and our nightmares as well. Zola describes the hideously bloated and mangled remains of drowning victims as they are observed by callous or indifferent onlookers. It is both chilling and a tremendous piece of writing. And the tension is maintained throughout the final third of the book leading to the final climax with meticulously well-metered prose. This guy knew how to write.

Thérèse Raquin depicts human beings at their absolute worst. Beneath the veneer of these middle class people lurk the hearts of savage beasts. Indeed, middle class gentility is scathingly rebuked to the point of being so over the top that it becomes almost comic. Maybe I'm a jaded twenty-first century reader who sees the middle class as too easy a target for such savage treatment. Perhaps I'm a bit nonplussed by Zola's oversized, overflowing coffers of boiling vitriol. I can't deny that Thérèse Raquin is an important novel that helped pave the way for modernism, the psychological novel, Jean Paul Sartre and Film Noir, but I can deny myself the anguish of a second read without much hesitation. My official verdict: Very good, but sheesh!

Download Thérèse Raquin from Project Gutenberg

"Dubliners" by James Joyce

 

James Joyce 1882-1941

For several weeks, we've been tracing the development and influence of naturalism, a literary movement that broke with the conventions of Victorian prose style. Naturalism is a crucial link between nineteenth century prose and the development of modernism that defined literature in the twentieth century. Naturalist prose introduced a more streamlined writing style and explored taboo themes and portrayed people, their motivations, behavior and the environment in which they exist in a more objective and realistic way.

First, we looked at Irish author George Moore's novel Esther Waters, a book that took a frank, unflinching look at the life of a single, illiterate mother in nineteenth century London. Moore questioned entrenched cultural beliefs about poverty, morality, religion and the social and economic hardships faced by the poor. We also explored Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie, a rags-to-riches story (and vice versa) that openly questioned the American dream of economic and social mobility that equates ambition with virtue and poverty with moral failing.

Then we backtracked to explore A Sportsman's Sketches, a collection of short stories by Russian author Ivan Turgenev, a book that explored the harsh realities of life for Russian peasants during the waning days of Russia's feudal landowning system. After that, we traced the naturalist influence to another of George Moore's works, The Untilled Field (1903), another collection of short stories about life in Ireland about twenty years before independence that was directly influenced by Turgenev's book. In this work, Moore's stories show us a nation searching for its identity as the Catholic church's intrusive influence on the everyday lives of Irish peasants, deeply rooted economic problems and widespread emigration to America threatened Ireland's future.

Now we come to another collection of stories that follow the naturalist thread in James Joyce's Dubliners (1914), a book that helped to secure Joyce's reputation as one of the world's most accomplished and influential authors while putting Ireland on the world cultural map. George Moore set the table for the emergence of a unique, distinctly Irish literary voice which turned out to be that of James Joyce. His work helped pave the way for modernism, a stylistic tide that spilled well beyond Ireland's geographical and cultural borders to influence world literature. Not bad for a guy who struggled for a decade to even get his stories published.

Dubliners (1914) by James Joyce

The mere mention of his name puts fear in the hearts of undergraduates, but don't worry; Dubliners is the most readable of James Joyce's works, although his prose is densely packed with meaning more implied than stated. By withholding information through the literary device of gnomon, the parts that are missing tell the real story. As a result, these stories break with narrative tradition by not resolving dramatically. He doesn't tell you what to think of the characters he draws, but relies on your ability to draw your own conclusions. Joyce would further shed conventions as his stream-of-consciousness narrative style became more pronounced in the novels Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake. a brilliant but notoriously difficult and inscrutable work that still confounds even the most adventurous of readers. Nine out of ten people who claim to have read it are trying to impress and/or seduce you. (Just for the record, I haven't read it. I glimpsed a few pages once and became a little dizzy for a day or so, but I'm okay now.)

Whereas Turgenev's Sketches depicted the Russian peasantry as oppressed by an inherently unjust feudal system and Moore's book targeted the Catholic church's stranglehold on the mind and soul of the Irish peasant and explored the roots and consequences of Ireland's cultural identity crisis, Joyce concentrates on the day-to-day life of those in the urban Irish middle class. Many of the same forces are at work in Dubliners, but the conflicts are played out in psychological terms as each story gives us a view of the world from the main character's limited but revealing perspective. Joyce's protagonists wrestle with existential problems like inertia, crises of conscience, mental illness, alcoholism, family dysfunction and abuse, political conflicts, social ambition, piety, marriage and death--a veritable laundry list of issues dealt with in the next hundred years of fiction.

Dubliners contains thirteen unrelated stories, but taken linearly, these stories span the major stages of life from childhood to old age.  Each major character undergoes an epiphany about themselves and their circumstances, Sometimes these personal revelations are realistic, sometimes misguided, but always profound. I could write an essay about each of the stories, but here I'll limit myself to an overview of some of the stories and their themes.

Right from the get go, there's something distinctive about Joyce's words, as though his stories were pieces of sculpture. In Dubliners, fiction, like sculpture, is a subtractive medium, and we are to make sense of what the author hasn't taken away.. In "The Sisters", the passing of a mentally ill priest gives a young boy who was close to him his first experience of death and family and friends speak only indirectly about the man's troubles. Two boys encounter an odd. possibly perverted old man while playing hookey from school in "The Encounter", which deals with childhood friendships. Gnomon is consistently at work. We're as much in the dark about what befell the dying priest as the young boy, although as readers, we pick up on clues that he would miss; something sinister is implied in a way that has greater impact than explicitly stating it.

Young, idealistic love is the subject of "Araby", in which a teenage boy experiences the painful self consciousness of infatuation in a culture of sexual repression. His trip to a fair to buy her a gift ends in frustration and he returns home empty handed. The depth of his disappointment is in proportion to his unrealistic idea of love. This is the first of several foiled journeys that bring characters back full circle when they try to leave or change their circumstances.

In "Eveline", a young woman desperately seeking to escape her abusive father by marrying a sailor and sailing for Buenos Aires lacks the courage to follow through. Joyce draws our attention to descriptive details of her home and her possessions which give clues to her history and inner struggles.  In "A Little Cloud", unrealized dreams of a literary life haunt Little Chandler after dining with a friend who is a successful writer. He returns to his home in a foul mood, reminded of the shackles placed on him by his wife and child. Chandler's responses to his environment--in this case, drinking a bit too much in the presence of his former friend and being driven to the brink of brutality by his infant son's cries--tell us more than any explicit account of his state of mind. His fate, it would seem, was sealed by decisions he made long ago.

Three stories deal with social ambition. "The Race" is about a young man eager to impress his new, rich friends from school and to be successful in business. In "A Mother", Mrs. Kearny alienates those around her by being pushy as she zealously advocates for a promised performance fee at a charity variety show on her daughter's behalf. The proprietor in "The Boarding House" and her daughter craftily manipulate a lodger into marriage. It's interesting to note that he protagonists of these stories are, not surprisingly, the least inclined to struggle with the moral implications of their actions, and so we gain perhaps a little less insight into their thoughts and feelings.

Joyce's well chosen words evoke a nausea-free pathos that makes potentially melodramatic situations poignant rather than pathetic. Death, grief and guilt are dealt with squarely in "A Painful Case" when a circumspect middle aged man rebuffs a married woman's advances and is stricken with remorse when he learns of her pitiful, alcohol-fueled demise a few years later. His efforts to try to do the right thing result in doing a far greater injury. "Counterparts" depicts a scrivener's demise from drink and the resultant domestic abuse frankly and directly. He is a man paralyzed by his habits that endanger his job, his finances and his family. Anyone raised as an Irish Catholic, practicing or otherwise, can recognize the heavy burden of living with the moral implications of even well intentioned actions gone wrong, and no one portrays the psychological clash of intention versus consequences mixed with grief and alcoholism in quite the way Joyce does.

Three stories deal with community life, specifically the uncertainty and insecurity that arises when people see themselves in relation to those around them and whose actions fall well short of their ideals and beliefs. "Ivy Day in the Committee Room" deals most directly with the struggle for Irish independence as a small group of men campaigning for an upcoming election find themselves lacking in the looming shadow of deceased Nationalist leader Charles Parnell. "Grace" finds a group of middle class men giving lip service to the merits of temperance and spiritual values in the most agreeable, superficial and often erroneous ways. During a spiritual retreat intended to renew their commitment to spiritual values, even the priest reinforces their limited vision of themselves and their responsibilities. "The Dead", a novella-length story, is the most famous piece from this collection due to numerous adaptations for film and the stage. At a Christmas party (celebrating, in fact, the Feast of the Epiphany--get it?), Gabriel is painfully self conscious, so concerned with how others see him that after hearing his wife tell him the story of a former lover who died young, he considers whether dying young before having the chance to accrue more misdeeds and blunders is better than growing old.

This was a difficult work to put in a nutshell, but reading it is pure pleasure. Joyce's work has been analyzed to the hilt by many folks far more qualified that I am. There's no shortage of material about Joyce's works out there. If this book speaks to you, there are plenty of resources out there.

Next time, we'll conclude our series about naturalism by looking at Thérèse Raquin, the 1867 novel by naturalist granddaddy Émile Zola.

Download Dubliners from Project Gutenberg

"The Untilled Field" by George Moore

Last time, we traced the roots of realism and naturalism back to one of its sources, Russian author Ivan Turgenev. On this St. Patrick's Day, we're going to look at what  effect Turgenev's A Sportsman's Sketches had on the development of the Irish short story, specifically George Moore's 1903 collection of stories, The Untilled Field.


The Untilled Field (1903) by George Moore

First, a subjective opinion: This is an excellent collection of stories and it's a crying shame that George Moore's work has been so neglected. His prose is perfectly measured and his characters draw you in. There is subtle wit,  real compassion and outrage within its pages, and the way the stories dovetail one another gives a satisfying feeling of completeness. If it were a pop-up book, opening its pages would reveal an intricate, interwoven whole, like a piece of Irish literary origami.

George Moore was allegedly influenced by Ivan Turgenev's collection of short stories, A Sportsman's Sketches, a book focused on the plight of the Russian peasantry at the hands of landowners in a feudal system that was nearing its close. The narrator of those stories is detached, the characters are allowed to tell their own stories amidst lush natural surroundings, and the stories themselves are loosely connected by a single narrator.

By contrast, Moore's book centers around the plight of the Irish peasantry at the turn of the twentieth century--a time of great change as Ireland struggled for independence and to form its own identity. Turgenev's influence can be seen more in concept and form than in style. Both works center around the lives of oppressed rural people in a time of great economic and social change. The narrative voice shifts, although detachment is maintained, symbolism and allegory are frequently employed, and taken together, the stories are more cohesive. 

The presence of nature so prevalent in A Sportsman's Sketches is not as important here. Rather, priests and parishioners are engaged in a struggle of reason versus instinct that typifies Ireland's problems. Landlordism was outlawed in the year this book was published. Ireland had very little industrial infrastructure and much poverty, and its population seemed to move en masse to America for lack of opportunity and want of personal freedom. Incongruously, new churches were being erected as villages emptied. Clerical life was a way to escape poverty, but as the church acquired more and more land, built more churches and absorbed more of the remaining population into celibacy, the prospect of repopulating and rebuilding Ireland looked dim. Moore openly questions the church's role in Ireland's decline and looks at the lives of those who still remained.

There are thirteen stories here. "In the Clay" begins the collection, telling the story of John Rodney, a Paris-trained sculptor who has been commissioned by Father MacCabe to create a statue of the Virgin and Child for a new church. He enlists a nude model for the work, the beautiful seventeen-year-old Lucy Delaney, the daughter of a cheese-monger. Unaware that artists need to use live models for even sacred works, MacCabe, while visiting Rodney's studio, recognizes Lucy's face when he sees the work in progress and informs her parents. Rodney enters his studio to find the statue destroyed, suspecting the priest, but learning that it was in fact Lucy's brothers who defaced it after overhearing their parents and the priest discussing her involvement. Rodney, convinced that puritanical Ireland is no place for an artist, decides to leave his home country for good. This sets the tone of the book: As Ireland struggles for a new beginning, the best and brightest are driven from its shores by attitudes and practices out of step with the changing modern world. This story and "The Way Back" begin and end the collection, the latter providing some closure on what happened to the artist and his model after leaving Ireland for London.

"Some Parishoners" is about Father Maguire, an overly zealous priest who has taken it upon himself to police his parishioners, decrying their fancy for dance and drink from the altar, confronting and separating men and women from walking together and even arranging marriages between those in his care whom he considers to be disruptive to the moral order of the community--usually beautiful and outspoken single women.  Maguire charges impoverished villagers exorbitant fees for performing marriage ceremonies, mostly to raise money for the construction of a new church. Biddy, an elder chicken farmer, has managed to save enough money to pay for a stained glass window in the new structure. Her fixation on the new window is a source of irritation, but the rapturous visions she sees when the window is installed pays dividends by drawing attention and prestige to the parish. We see a priest detached those he serves and whose priorities are skewed away from their spiritual health and towards the solvency of his parish.

"Julia Cahill's Curse" is another story of one priest's failed plan to protect his parish from the influence of a beautiful and independent woman. "The Exile" and "Home Sickness" deal with the tantalizing allure of America and the beckoning of a new life that make the here and now of Ireland even more unbearable. "Letter to Rome" is a charming and dryly funny story of a priest who decides that the best solution to Ireland's problems is to allow priests to marry. Reasoning that a population with an inordinate number of celibates faces a very limited future, he writes a letter to the Pope asking to give his idea consideration. "So On He Fares" is a touching story of a little boy who leaves his abusive mother to become a river bargeman, only to return home a decade later to find another little boy with the same name living in his place, and "The Clerk's Quest" takes the form of a parable in which a middle aged office clerk is driven to ruin after becoming obsessed with a woman he knows only through her perfumed checks.

The longest and most engaging story is "The Wild Goose", in which the internal struggle of Ireland to come to terms with itself are embodied in the relationship between a man and a woman. Ned Carmady is an Irish American journalist who returns to Ireland with high hopes for reform after his experiences in Cuba fighting against the Spanish. He meets Ellen Cronin, a beautiful, educated and religious girl who sees in Ned the potential of being Ireland's political savior. They marry, and Ellen begins to prime him for public office, writing speeches for her husband. But a rift develops between them about religion. Carmody sees the clergy as the source of Ireland's troubles, and as his anticlerical viewpoint becomes more publicly pronounced, his marriage suffers. Their failed marriage is an apt allegory for the schism that troubles the country.

Through Moore's eyes, we see a nation unable to reconcile its Gaelic roots, language and traditions with a religion that seeks to blot out its proud pagan past at the expense of the present. Both the Catholic church and America cast long, imposing shadows over the Irish people, forcing them to move into the light by either embracing or abandoning their country and their faith.

The Untilled Field was written twenty years before Irish independence, giving us several views of complex economic and cultural forces in at the heart of Irish rural life. In 1914, James Joyce would publish Dubliners, another collection of short stories that looks at the urban middle class and their struggle to forge a new identity and understanding of itself. We'll look at that short story collection next time.

Download The Untilled Field from Project Gutenberg