Sacrifice Post

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Of the 20's-30's of the 20th Century

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Windsor Castle. (This photo of the Castle dates to 2001)

Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the British Queen, was repaired in 1998 after a fire in 1992.

By the 193O's the British economy had recovered, especially in the South and in the Midlands. A great number of small houses had been built along main roads.

The War influenced the cultural development of the country. In the work of many 20th century English writers it is possible to see not only the products of the individual experience, but also several general tenden­cies. The writers had much in common.

In the 20's a sharp division of literary tendencies was noticeable. Modernism became the leading trend of English literature of postwar period, as a result of the crisis of bourgeois culture caused by the War.

At that time the works of Zigmund Freud (1856-1930), an Austrian psychoanalyst, professor of neurol­ogy, became very popular in England, and had a great influence on the development of Modernism. Among Freud's followers was a group of English intellectuals, which became widely known as the "Bloomsbury Group" headed by Virginia Wool!. Bloomsbury was the name of a suburb of London where the group met and discussed their- theories.

Virginia Woolf wrote in her essay "Modern Fic­tion": "English fiction from Steme to Meredith bears witness to our natural delight in humour and comedy, in the beauty of earth, in the activities of the intellect, and in the splendour of the body. Their masterpieces certainly have a strange air of simplicity... Materialists '... write of unimportant things,... they spend immense skill... making the trivial... But sometimes, more and more often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as the pages fill themselves in the customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this?... The novelist at present... has to have the

courage to say that what interests him is no longer 'this' but 'that'... For the moderns 'that' (the point of interest) lies very likely in the dark places of psychology... We do not come to write better,... the modern practice of the art is somehow an improvement upon the old. We have to admit that we are exacting, and, further, that we find it difficult to justify our discontent by explaining what it is that we exact."

The name of David Herbert Lawrence is worthy of attention. He was an admirer of Freud too. At the same time, however, he stood very near to the realistic principles of Art, he brought to the novel a fresh strain of vitality.

A complicated political situation in Europe at that period could not but affect England both in politics and economy.

In 1933 Hitler came to power in Germany. In 1932 "The British Fascists' Union" was organized. This caused great disturbances of the wide popular masses of England. The Civil War in Spain brought about the protests of the English common people. The English workers showed their solidarity with the Spanish Re­publicans. The dockers refused to load arms for the fas­cists, they organized meetings of protest calling to resistance against fascism. At the end of 1929 a general economic crisis seized all the world, continuing up to 1934. Richard Aldington, John Priestley, Archi­bald Cronin were the writers who together main­tained the realistic principles in Art in the 30's.

James Joyce and Virginia Wool! altered novelis-tic technique through the development of the stream of consciousness style of writing.

James Joyce (1882-1941)

James Joyce was born on 2th Fet шагу, 1882 into a well-to-do family a small town not far from Dublin. Hi father, John Joyce, was well-educat€ and very musical. James inherited hi father's talent. He had a good ear for music and a pleasant voice. If John Joyce had paid attention to his son's abilities, James Joyce might have become a talented singer. Unfortu­nately, his bad eyesight caused him much suffering. He had undergone surgery, enduring twelve surgical oper­ations on his eyes. At the end of his life Joyce was almost blind.

It was his father who taught James to respect the heroic past of Ireland. It was his aunt who made a true Catholic of him. Joyce was educated in Dublin and afterwards in Paris where he studied foreign languages and French literature.

Joyce spent most of his adult life in Europe, mainly in France, Italy and Switzerland. He knew twenty-two languages. Russian was among them.

James Joyce devoted himself to literature. He worked thoroughly, corrected his manuscripts atten­tively and didn't allow the publishers to alter his ere-* ations. His first great book, "Dubliners" (1905) is a collection of stories dealing with the life in Dublin. The idea of hopelessness passes through all of them as a kind of leitmotiv. The stories are written in a frank manner, and the author reveals his deep interest in psycholog­ical matters. There are fifteen stories in the collection. The last story, "The Dead", is the longest one.

THE DEAD

This is a story about Gabriel Conroy, a prosperous teacher and talented journalist who is shocked out of his self-satisfaction by discovering his wife's love for a dead man, Michael Furey, whom she knew many years before. Gabriel Conroy is a self-confident pomp­ous journalist, the "soul" of a local society, who de­livers his speeches brilliantly and, moreover, who is fond of his wife Gretta: "A wave of yet more tender joy escaped from his heart and went coursing in warm flood along his arteries. Like the tender fire of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illumined his memory. He longed to recall to her those moments, to make her forget the years of their dull existence togeth­er and remember only their moments of ecstasy."

Once Gabriel notices that Gretta is thinking about something, and he is extremely surprized when he realizes that the reason of her depression is the song, "The Lass of Aughrim". He "stood stock-still for a moment in astonishment". Gretta tells him that the song makes her cry, because she is thinking about a person who used to sing that song when she lived with her grandmother.

The subject-matter of the story lies in the change of Gabriel's attitude to his wife's reminiscences of the past. Gradually, step by step, his light irony turns into "dull anger", and then "a vague terror seized Gabriel". After he has found out that Michael Furey is already dead, he "felt humiliated by the failure of his irony and by the evocation of this figure from the dead... A shameful consciousness of his own person assailed him. He saw himself as a ludicrous figure,... a nervous, well-meaning sentimentalist, orating to vulgarians

and idealizing his own clownish lusts, the pitiabl<J| fatuous fellow he had caught a glimpse of in the] mirror." It is the climax of the story. "Instinctively h<|| turned his back more to the light lest she might sal the shame that burned upon his forehead." It is th«most important moment, when all his illusions are ruined, and Gabriel experiences a new, fresh feeling; of sympathy, understanding and tenderness towards his wife: "Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had] never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love."

The publication ofi
"Dubliners" was held
up for years, because^:
both Irish and English^
publishers had changed
words and sentences
without Joyce's permis-
sion. He could publish
Dublin his book only in 1914.

"A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' ap­peared in 1916. This story presents Joyce himself as a young man in the character of his hero, Stephen Deda-lus, who is formed by the powerful forces of Irish na­tional, political and religious feelings, and shows how he gradually gets rid of the influence of these forces to follow his own fate.

James Joyce introduced a new literary method into English literature. In his two great master novels, "Ulysses" (1922) and "Finnegan's Wake" (1939), Joyce broke completely with traditions of the Victorian novel. He greatly influenced the way English novels were written, with his use of unusual and invented words

and different styles of writing, such as the stream of consciousness — expressing thoughts and feelings as they pass through the mind. "In contrast with those whom we have called materialists, Mr Joyce is spiritual; he is concerned at all costs to reveal the flickerings of that the brain" (Virginia Woolf. "Modern Fiction").

This method is revealed in "Ulysses" in which there are no links with objective reality. The plot of the book unfolds on a single day in 1904 in the life of three people: an Irish Jew, his wife and Stephen Dedalus (the hero of "A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man"). His method makes this book rather difficult to understand.

But this method "has the merit of bringing us closer to what we were prepared to call life itself... Any method is right, every method is right, that expresses what we wish to express, if we are writers; that brings us closer to the novelist's intention if we are readers... Several young writers, among whom James Joyce is the most notable, attempt to come closer to life, and to preserve more sincerely and exactly what interests and moves them..." (Virginia Woolf. "Modern Fiction")

Virginia Woolf (1882-1941)

Virginia Woolf has been regarded as one of the principal exponents of Modernism which distinguished the modern experimental novels of the 20th century from the descriptive and profound manner of the 19th century writing.

Adeline Virginia Woolf was born in London in 1882. After her father's death in 1904 the

family moved to the suburb of London, Bloomsbur where the followers of Freud gathered to discuss the theories. The Bloomsbury set of the intellectuals was called "The Bloomsbury Group". The leader of thfl group was Virginia Woolf. (Her husband was Leonard Woolf, one of the members of the set of writers and artists.) The ideas of Freud, who discovered the uncon«scious, were appreciated within the Bloomsbury society.

In 1917 Virginia Woolf and Leonard Woolf managed to set up a publishing house, the famous Hogarth Press. Meanwhile, Virginia Woolf suffered from her! mental illness, but during the calm periods she wrote! her books. Her first novel "Voyage Out" was written in 1915. It was not a success. But her "Jacob's Roomik published in 1922, established her as a highly experi­mental novelist.

She attempted to explore the consciousness of her 1 characters. Like James Joyce, she was an aesthet. She showed life "as it is". She only depicted life. "Life escapes; and perhaps without life nothing else is wortr while... Life is a. luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding us from the beginning of con­sciousness to the end" (Virginia Woolf. "Modern Fic­tion").

Her modernist approach of using the "stream of] consciousness", when the characters, not the author,! are shown as judging, is reflected in her novels "Mrs Dal- 1 lowaf (1925) and "To the Lighthouse" (1927),! "Mrs Dalloway" gives a description of one day in June 1923 as it was experienced by Mrs Dalloway. It is permeated with the stream of thoughts and emotions.! Virginia Woolf used her narrative method, her "interior monologue" to describe the inner movement of con-

sciousness in Mrs Dalloway's mind: "She went up­stairs, paused at the window, came to the bathroom." As soon as she enters the bathroom, she feels "an emptiness about the heart of life... She could see what she lacked. It was not beauty; it was not mind. It was something central which permeated... It was a sudden revelation, a tinge like a blush which one tried to check and then, as it spread, one yielded to its expansion, and rushed to the farthest verge and there quivered and felt the world come closer..."

The "stream of consciousness" helps the author to engage our attention and the essential fibre of our soul: "The brain must wake,... the soul must brave itself to endure..." Mrs Dalloway loves life. She connects life with a "perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi; cabs; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dan­gerous to live, even one day... Her only gift was know­ing people almost by instinct, she thought..."

In "Orlando" (1928) Woolf presents the main char­acter who begins as a man in the 16th century and ends as a woman in 1928, still only thirty-six years old. "The Wave" (1931) takes six characters at different moments of their lives and shows how each is influenced by the death of a person they all knew well. "To the Light­house" is considered to be Virginia Woolf's best novel, based on depiction of her parents. But in her stories plot is not of great importance. The reader's attention is drawn by the inner monologues and the author's extraor­dinary perception of the world. "The proper stuff of fiction does not* exist; everything is the proper stuff of fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss" (Virginia Woolf. "Modern Fiction").

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE

"To the Lighthouse' presents the story of the Ram* says which begins in September 1910 in Scotland.

"The Ramsays were not rich, and it was a wonc how they managed to contrive it all. Eight children! Tc feed eight children on philosophy". They were critical and "talked such nonsense." The youngest son James ] Ramsay, who is only six, wants to go by boat to the Lighthouse, but is stopped by his father. Mr Ramsay realizes that "this going to the Lighthouse was a passion of his" (son), nevertheless, "he (Mr Ramsay) said it| would be rain... The wind blew from the worst possible direction for landing at the Lighthouse. Yes, he did say disagreeable things...". "What he said was true. It was' always true,... never altered a disagreeable word to suit the pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, least of all of his own children, who sprung from his loins, should be aware from childhood that life is difficult".

Mrs Ramsay is "fifty at least", she is "ten thousand times better in every way than he (Mr Ramsay) was" (James thought).

The novel ends with the same family in the same house ten years later when "the house was deserted. It was left like a shell on a sand hill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it".

"...The place was gone to rack and ruin. Only the Lighthouse beam entered the rooms for a moment, sent its sudden stare over bed and wall in the dark­ness of winter...". James remembers his father's words: "You won't be able to go to the Lighthouse."

"The Lighthouse was then a silvery, misty-looking tower with a yellow eye, that opened suddenly, and softly in the evening. Now —"

Now James goes to the Lighthouse, but this time he hates his father for making him go as much as he earlier hated him for preventing it. "James looked at the Lighthouse... So that was the Lighthouse, was it? No, the other was also the Lighthouse. For nothing was simply one thing. The other Lighthouse was true too. It was sometimes hardly to be seen across the bay".

The novel centres on the study of human feelings and experience. The plot is used as a background against which the emotions and thoughts of the char­acters are revealed.

Not only do all the events pass through their minds, but all the personages entirely depend on their own perception of the events which are closely connected with the subconscious level of mind. The "shift of sensibility" is valued by the author. The writer appreciates the hero's personal experience, which deserves the readers' attention and thus ac­quires a great importance: "And that was what now she often felt the need of — to think; well, not even to think. To be silent, to be alone... When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed...". The key phrases in the book are: "She thought", "She had in mind", "She focused her mind on...".

Mental depression of the writer led her to a tragic end. Virginia Woolf drowned herself in 1941. Besides her novels she wr.ote many critical studies on literature, such as "Modern Fiction" and "The Russian Point of View".

Her style of writing caused a stream of publications, though she was never popular with the reading public.

Richard Aldington (1892-1962)

Richard Aldington was born in 1892 in Hampshire. He was educated at Dover College and the University of | London. In 1913 he was a literary ed­itor of the journal "The Egoist". In 1916 he joined the Army and fought in World War I as a private in the infan­try; later he became an officer. He was demobilized soon, however, for he was badly wounded. The War experiences caused his hatred and anger which were well described in his early books. His atti­tude to those who sent people to death on the battlefield is vividly reflected in his two volumes of stories: "Roads to Glory" (1930) and "Soft Answers" (1932). After the First World War the so-called "lost genera­tion" appeared in Europe and European literature. The mood of the young generation was that of profound pessimism and disillusionment. They participated in the War hoping to find their lost ideas; instead, they only suffered from its effects.

His narrative "Sacrifice Post" is one of the stories from "Roads to Glory". It is about the tragic fate of a young man, Lieutenant Davison, who is sent "straight into the worst job on the battalion front". He doesn't like his position, "a sacrifice post", where "your job was to get killed if the enemy attacked. You weren't allowed to retreat." Davison "saw that the war had been wearing him down." Once he is asked to report to the Orderly Room, and there, in the Head-

quartes, he gets an appointment to the Corps Signal­ling School. "It wasn't as good as going home on leave, but the next best thing — three weeks out of the bally line." The duties of the Corps Signal School are in­teresting, and Davison enjoys his training there. Only the swiftness of the days disappoints the Lieutenant. He is thinking a lot and writes down his thoughts and feelings in his notebook. He thinks that "the real war of the world was not between the Bill Davisons and the Jean Duvals and the Hans Mullers, but between the kind of men who wanted to create and the kind of men who could only assert themselves by destruc­tion." Then he writes down, "Patriotism is not enough... What is patriotism in an Englishman is nationalism, imperialism, arrogance in a German and vice versa. All nations teach their children to be "patriotic", and abuse the other nations for fostering nationalism. [...] And, if we must fight, let us fight those who exploit and destroy mankind."

Bill Davison understands that his ideas and feel­ings will be displeasing to the authorities. But he can't help feeling and thinking. He even makes a decision to ask his father to send him to Oxford where "he could learn all about everything [...] and then spend the rest of his life trying to help to put the muddle straight." "He dreaded the idea of going back" to the Sacrifice Post. But he has to return to the Post, like a punishment for his thoughts written down in his notebook. His carelessness is mortal. The authorities are afraid of Davison's way of thinking and "report the matter". As soon as he reaches the Post he is hit by bullets and dies. "Eyen the Army couldn't stop a man's thinking, though apparently it might object to a private notebook."

DEATH OF A HERO

"Death of a Hero" (1929) is Aldington's first and the most important novel. The novel contains a pas­sionate protest against the war and the bourgeois social order. The style of the book is tense and uneven. From the very beginning we come to know that the death of the main hero, George Winterbourne, is not heroic at all. The attempts of the bourgeois society to create a strong military character of him fails. George is a kind-hearted, peaceful young man, he can't withstand the existing order of things. He is alone with his misery and his doubts. His disillusionment in private life goes side by side with his dissatisfaction in Art to which he' devotes all his life. Neither his wife Elizabeth, nor his pretentious parents understand George. Thus the only way out for Winterbourne is to volunteer for the Front, to find his ideas and aim in life there. But seeing the terrible sufferings of the rank and file who have to give their lives for the enrichment of others, George can't bear the injustice of the world, preferring death to shameful life. This work of Aldington is anti-military; the style of the novel makes the reader see and feel war as the cameramen do. The author reveals his anti-military theme through his characters, their thoughts and actions.

Archibald Cronin (1896-1981)

Archibald Cronin was born at Cardross, Dumbartonshire. He was educated at Dumbarton Academy and in 1914 began to study medicine at Glasgow University. In 1919 he grad­uated from it with honours, then worked as a surgeon on a ship. On his return to Britain Cronin settled in' South Wales where he worked as a general practitioner. In 1925 he started practice in the West End of London.

But in 1930 his health broke down, and while con­valescing in the West Highlands of Scotland he wrote "Hatter's Castle" (1931). It caused a sensation in literature and literary circles. Thus Dr Cronin decided to take up writing. In 1933 he won a gold medal for the best historical essay of the year. His literary career was a success. His next book "The Stars Look Down" (1935) presents the relations between the miners and their masters. The major conflict of the book is a social struggle that arises from the clash of "two nations". The author's satire is directed against upper classes. The injustice, the social contradictions are well described.

Aldington is a master of battle-scene descriptions. His language abides in military terms, it is expressive, dy­namic and helps to create realistic images and pictures.

But the problems of the "lost generation" bring George Winterbourne and the author to a deadlock, for they can't find the way out.

Aldington didn't live much in his own country. The last years of his life he spent in America and France.

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