The Early 20th century English Literature 10 страница
He could smite the rocks as under,
He could grind them into powder,
He had moccasins enchanted,
Magic moccasins of deer-skin,
When he bound them round his ankles,
When upon his feet he tied them,
At each stride a mile he measured!
When Hiawatha learns, how his father deserted his mother, he decides to punish him. In the land of the West Wind, he and Mudjekeewis fight for three days. Being a god, Mudjekeewis is immortal. However, he acknowledges Hiawatha's courage and nobility and sends him to the earth to fight evil, to do deeds of valour and unite the Indian peoples. On his way Hiawatha stops in the land of Dako-tahs [da'kautsz] and meets a lovely girl, the daughter of the arrow maker, Minnehaha ['ттэ'ЬлЬл], and takes her home as his bride.
1 lore — знания
2 fleetness — быстрота
3 Ere [еэ] — поэт, до, перед
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Among Hiawatha's heroic deeds is the defeat of Mondamin [man'dcumm], the Corn Spirit, whose death teaches Hiawatha and his people how to grow maize. Together with his good friends, Chibiabos ['tfaibfeibas], "the best of all musicians and the sweetest of all singers", and Kwasind fkwrxzmd], "the strongest of all mortals", Hiawatha kills Pearl-Feather, who brings death and diseases on the Indians, clears the rivers and streams, so that his people can sail on them in safety, teaches them to follow trail, collect herbs and use medicine. "Buried is the war-club", peace rules among the Indian tribes, and happy days follow in the Ojibway land. Hiawatha and Minnehaha have a gay wedding party at which the guests relate stories and legends, and the reader learns of many interesting Indian customs.
Then evil times come to the Indians. Chibiabos perishes, breaking through the ice into a lake. Strong Kwasind, too, is killed by the evil dwarfs who conquer him using the cone of the blue fir-tree. With winter, the famine and fever come. Hungry are the women and the children.
О the long and dreary Winter!
О the cold and cruel Winter!
Ever thicker, thicker, thicker
Froze the ice on lake and river,
Ever deeper, deeper, deeper
Fell the snow o'er all the landscape,
Fell the covering snow, and drifted
Through the forest, round the village.
Hardly from his buried wigwam
Could the hunter force a passage;
With his mittens and his snow-shoes
Vainly walked he through the forest,
Sought for bird or beast and found none,
Saw no track of deer or rabbit,
In the snow beheld no footprints,
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In the ghastly, gleaming forest
Fell, and could not rise from weakness,
Perished there from cold and hunger.
О the famine and the fever!
О the wasting of the famine!
О the blasting of the fever!
О the wailing of the children!
О the anguish of the women!
All the earth was sick and famished,
Hungry was the air around them,
Hungry was the sky above them,
And the hungry stars in heaven
Like the eyes of wolves glared at them!
Minnehaha dies of starvation. Hiawatha sails to rule over the land of the Northwest wind.
At a time, when the Indians were considered a lower race, Longfellow managed to show the beauty of their character, their valour, their closeness to nature, the charm of their customs and legends.
The Songs of Hiawatha was translated into many European languages. The Russian translation was made by I. A. Bunin. The originality and novelty of its literary form, the unknown poetic world of Indian folklore surprised everyone and attracted world attention.
Vocabulary
| ghastly ['ga:sth] а мрачный grind [gramd] v (ground) молоть herb [пз:Ь] п трава lodge [ЬсЭД п хатка (бобра) maize [meiz] n кукуруза nobility [nsu'biliti] n благородство seek [si:k] v (sought) искать similar ['simils] а подобный, похожий smite [smart] v разбить sought [so:t] past и р. р. от seek source [so:s] n источник stride [straid] n шаг valour ['vasls] n доблесть |
acknowledge [эк'поЬф] v признавать
acorn ['eiko:n] n желудь
ankle ['aenkl] n лодыжка
asunder [s'sAnda] adv на куски
beaver ['bi:va] n бобер
beheld [bi'held] past и р. р. от behold
behold [bi'hauld] v (beheld) смотреть
bow-string [baustnn] n тетива
craft [kra:ft] n ремесло
drift [drift] v плыть
dwarf [dwo:f] n карлик
enchant [m'tfaint] v заколдовывать
famine ['faemm] n голод
famished ['faemift) а изголодавшийся
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Questions and Tasks
1. Where was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow born?
2. What played a great role in the life of young Longfellow?
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3. Where was Longfellow educated?
4. When did he write his first verses and stories?
5. What career did Longfellow dream of?
6. What did he begin doing on his graduation from Bowdoin College?
7. What was Longfellow's first book?
8. Name his other notable works published from 1839 to 1841.
9. What theme did he touch upon in his collection of verses Poems on Slavery?
10. Retell the contents on the poems The Slave's Dream and The Negro in the Dismal Swamp.
11. Comment on Longfellow's poem The Building of the Ship.
12. Dwell on his lyrics about nature.
13. Speak on the subject of Longfellow's masterpiece The Song of Hiawatha.
14. Retell in your own words The Song of Hiawatha.
15. What is the importance of Longfellow's work as a translator?
16. What was his contribution of American literature?
17. Prove that by the end of his life Longfellow had won recognition all over the world.
American Literature
in the Second Half
of the 19th centurv and
the Beginning of the 20th century
CRITICAL REALISM
Towards the middle of the 19th century the romantic trend in American literature gave way to new, realistic forms. Critical realism as a trend in American literature developed after the Civil War. The critical realistic literature differed greatly from that of the previous writers such as Irving, Cooper and Longfellow.
The romanticists wrote their stories about ideal individuals through which they showed their emotions. The realists understood that the people should be shown as a whole. They saw man on the background of social conflicts of the day and explained human feelings in relation to this background.
Among the most outstanding American realists in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century were Mark Twain, O. Henry and Jack London.
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Mark Twain depicted common American people with great sympathy and humour. At the same time he cruelly condemned hypocrisy, bigotry and greed.
Jack London and O. Henry created typical characters of the American common people — farmers, workers, intellectuals. They revealed the truth of American life in their works.
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American critical realism developed in contact with European realism. The works of Balzac [ 'Ьгекэк], Gogol, Turgenev and Tolstoy influenced it greatly. But American realism enriched world realism by introducing such problems as social injustice and Negro and Indian questions. American writers using the methods of critical realism created great works of art.
Vocabulary
background ['baekgraund] n фон relation [n'leifan] n отношение
bigotry ['bigstn] n фанатизм in relation относительно
reveal [n'vi:l] vразоблачать
Questions and Tasks
1. When did the romantic trend in American literature give way to realistic forms? *
2. How did the critical realistic literature differ from that of the romanticists?
3. Name the most outstanding American realists in the second half of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
4. Comment on the works of Mark Twain, Jack London and O. Henry.
5. The works of what writers influenced the development of American critical realism?
6. What problems were introduced by American critical realism?
7. Did it enrich world literature? Why?
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
Mark Twain [twem] is the pen-name of the Samuel Langhorne Clemens, one of the greatest representatives of American critical realism of the second half of the 19th century. He is known as a great humorist and satirist.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens was born on November 30, 1835 in a lawyer's family in a very small town called Florida in Missouri. The family soon moved to Hannibal on the banks of the Mississippi River and there Samuel Clemens spent his boyhood.
When Samuel was twelve, his father died
and the boy had to earn his own living. He
changed several professions: he was a type
setter in a district newspaper, a printer and
journalist in the office of the Haimibcd Jour
nal. While Samuel Clemens was a printer, Mark Twain
he began to write for newspapers, sending travel letters to them.
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| New Orleans during Twain's time |
In April 1857, while on the way from Cincinnati to New Orleans, Clemens apprenticed himself as a river pilot on board a Mississippi steamboat. It was one of Sam Clemens's dreams as a boy to pilot a steamboat. He was licensed two years later and continued in that profession until the Civil War closed the river (1861). It was at this period of his life that he made his first attempt at literature having written a number of sketches based on his experiences as a
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pilot. He signed his articles Mark Twain, i. e. "sounding two", a term used by the sailors to show a depth of the river. That meant the depth was two fathoms (12 feet), and that it was safe for the boat to move ahead (twain = two).
The breaking out of the Civil War stopped the traffic on the Mississippi and Clemens was out of job. His brother had been appointed as Secretary to the Governor of the State of Nevada, and Sam decided to go with him.
| Twain loved to wear his Oxford robes |
About this time silver had been found in Nevada, and a lot of fortune-seekers went to this area. Sam decided to try his luck too. He spent six years in Nevada, digging gold. He found no silver. On rainy days when the mines stopped working Sam wrote sketches which were published in the Territorial Enterprise, a daily paper of Virginia City. It was while working for the Enterprise that Clemens's career as a journalist really began. Here the writer's pen-name appeared for the first time.
In 1864 Twain went to San Francisco where he worked for the Golden Era and the Californian newspapers.
Here Mark Twain began to write sketches and stories. In 1865 Mark Twain won national fame with his story The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.
In 1866 A/fa California proposed Mark Twain to write a series of letters, and he went to Europe for the first time. Thus a series of letters was written as Mark Twain's first important book The Innocents Abroad (1869) — a tale of a tour in Europe and the East made by a group of Americans on board a steamer. The work was a great success. It is very interesting because Europe's scenes and customs are viewed through the eyes of an "innocent" American. After that Mark Twain got the reputation of the most famous American humourist.
Before the book appeared Mark Twain had met Olivia Lang-don, whom he married in 1870. In October 1871 Mark Twain moved to Hartford which remained his home for the happiest years of his life. The years 1874 to 1885 were very productive. In that period he
published the following works: The Guilded Age (1874), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), A Tramp Abroad (1880), The Prince and the Pauper (1882) and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885).
In 1889 Mark Twain wrote A Connecticut Yankee in the Court of King Arthur. It is a biting satire on the political and social system of day against the background of a fantastic plot placed in England of the 6th century.
Mark Twain went abroad several times and visited different parts of the world. Three honorary degrees were given to Mark Twain by American universities, and in 1907 Oxford University in England gave him an honorary Doctorate of Letters1. His last novel The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg was published in 1899. Mark Twain attacks the hypocrisy and corruption of contemporary bourgeois society in it.
In the last years of his life Mark Twain wrote several political articles and pamphlets. Till his dying day Mark Twain did not stop his literary activities and continued working on his Autobiography.
Vocabulary
biting ['baitirj] а острый innocent ['mssant] л-простак
corruption [кэ'глр/эп] п моральное раз- license flaisans] v давать разрешение
ложение sound [saund] v измерять глубину воды
fathom [ Тзебэт] л морская сажень (лотом)
(=6 футам) (для измерения глуби- typesetter ftaipsets] л полигр . наборщик
ны воды) view [vju:] v рассматривать
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Mark Twain's famous novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer won the hearts of millions of readers, both young and old. Mark Twain wrote about his book as follows: "Most of the adventures in this book are real. One or two were my own experiences, the rest of boys' who were my schoolfriends. Becky Thatcher is Laura Hawkins, Tom Sawyer is largely a self-portrait but Tom Blankenship, who lived just
Doctorate ['doktsnt] of Letters — степень доктора литературы
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over the back fence, is the immortal Huckleberry Finn who slept on doorsteps in fine weather and in empty hogsheads in wet. John Biggs was the real, flesh-and-blood version of Joe Harper, the Terror of the Seas. My book is mainly for boys and girls to enjoy, but I hope, men and women will also be glad to read it to see what they once were like".
The plot is full of adventures of smart youngsters and is full of sparkling humour. With Tom's adventures we learn about the life on the Mississippi and that of the provincial town of the USA in the 19th century.
Tom Sawyer, a plain American boy, lives with his younger brother Sid and aunt Polly in St Petersburg, a remote town on the banks of the Mississippi river. Sid is an obedient boy, and he is satisfied with his school and the life of the little town. Tom is quite the opposite of his brother. His close friend is Huck Finn, a boy left by his drunkard of a father. Tom does not like school because of the teachers who beat the pupils. He misses lessons, plays tricks on his teachers, fights his brother Sid. Tom is tired of aunt Polly who wants to make a decent boy of him. From books about Robin Hood, robbers and hidden treasure Tom Sawyer has created an imaginary world which differs from the one he lives in. The novel combines the elements of realism and romanticism. The realistic picture of the small town with its stagnant life is compared with the romantic world of Tom and his friends. The author praises humanism, friendship, courage and condemns injustice, narrowminded-ness and money worship.
Vocabulary
| obedient [a'bMjsnt] а послушный plain [plem] а простой remote [n'msut] о отдаленный self-portrait ['self'point] n автопортрет smart [smart] а умный sparkling ['spa:klirj] а блестящий stagnant ['staegnant] а инертный worship ['\V3:Jip] n поклонение youngster ['JAnsta] n подросток |
condemn [кэп'ёет] v осуждать decent ['di:snt] а хороший drunkard ['drAnkad] n пьяница fence ['fens] n забор hogshead ['Irngzhed] n бочка immortal [i'mo:tl] а бессмертный largely [ 'lard^i] adv в значительной
степени narrowmindedness ['naereu'mamdidnis]
n ограниченность
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is a story of a little tramp. His father is a drunkard. When he becomes so violent that Huckleberry fears him, the boy runs away from him. Huck finds a canoe and gets into it and paddles to an island on the other side of the river. He thinks he is alone on the island, but he meets there a young Negro slave Jim. Huck is glad to see him there because he always considers him to be his friend. But when he learns that Jim has run away from his owner, he is very sad because it is a sin to help a runaway slave. But Huck promises not to tell anybody about him.
Huckleberry and Jim are the main characters of the book. They sail down the Mississippi, passing big and small towns, numerous villages and farms. The author and his heroes critically view everything they see. They seldom meet good people. Most of all they come across are robbers, murderers, rogues. They do not wish to earn their living honestly.
The white boy and young Negro become very good friends. They help each other in all the troubles. Huck finds Jim to be a kind, brave and good man.
Mark Twain compares the friendly relations between Huck and Jim with the corruption they see in the towns and villages on the shores.
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| The raft on the Mississippi |
It is to Twain's credit that he has depicted Jim as an honest, kind, sincere and selfless man at the time when the Negroes were
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considered inferior to the white people. From the time Jim enters the story in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn the book becomes a social novel. It is a judgement of a certain epoch in America.
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