-
Henry James
亨利
詹姆斯
(1843-1916)
,
noted American-born English essayist, critic, and
author of the realism movement
wrote
The Ambassadors
《奉使记》
(1903),
The
Turn of the Screw
《螺丝在拧紧》
(1898), and
The Portrait of a Lady
《淑女画像》
(1881);
were not allowed; you were
punished for your wish. You were ground in the
very mill of the conventional!
James's
works, many of which were first serialised in the
magazine
The Atlantic
Monthly
include narrative romances with
highly developed characters set amongst
illuminating social commentary on politics, class,
and status, as well as
explorations of
the themes of personal freedom, feminism, and
morality. In his short stories and novels he
employs
techniques of interior
monologue and point of view to expand the readers'
enjoyment of character perception and insight.
Often comparing the Old World with the
New, and influenced by
Honore de
Balzac
,
Henrik
Ibsen
,
Charles
Dickens
, and
Nathaniel
Hawthorne
of whose work he wrote
James would become widely
respected in North America and Europe,
earning honorary degrees from Harvard and Oxford
Universities, in 1911 and 1912
respectively. He was acquainted with
many notable literary figures of the day including
Robert Browning
,
Ivan S. Turgenev
,
Emile Zola
,
Lord
Alfred Tennyson
, and
Gustave
Flaubert
. American-born and never
married, James would live the majority
of his life in Europe, becoming a
British citizen in 1915 after the outbreak of
World War I. Many of his works have inspired
other author's works and adaptations to
the stage and screen.
Henry James was
born on 15 April 1843 in New York City, New York
State, United States, the second of five children
born
to theologian Henry James Sr.
(1811-1882) and Mary Robertson
nee
Walsh. Henry James Sr.
was one of the most wealthy
intellectuals of the time, connected
with noted philosophers and transcendentalists as
Ralph Waldo Emerson
and
Henry
David
Thoreau
, as well as
Nathaniel Hawthorne
,
Thomas Carlyle
, and
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
;
fellow friends and
influential thinkers
of the time who would have a profound effect on
his son's life. Education was of the utmost
importance
to Henry Sr. and the family
spent many years in Europe and the major cities of
England, Italy, Switzerland, France, and
Germany, his children being tutored in
languages and literature.
After several
attempts at attending schools to study science and
law, by 1864 James decided he would become a
writer. He
was always a voracious
reader and he now immersed himself in French,
Russian, English, and American classic literature.
He ventured out on his own travels to
Europe, wrote book reviews, and submitted stories
to magazines such as the
North
American Review
,
Nation
,
North
American Tribune
,
Macmillan's
, and
The Atlantic Monthly
which
also serialised his first
novel
Watch and Ward
(1871). James
left America and lived for a time in Paris, France
before moving to London, England
in
1876. He continued his prodigious output of short
stories and novels including
Roderick
Hudson
(1875),
The
American
(1877),
The Europeans
(1878),
Confidence
(1879),
Washington Square
《华盛顿广场》
(1880),
The Pension Beaurepas
(1881), and his extended critical
critical essay
Hawthorne
(1879). He also wrote the novella
Daisy
Miller
《黛西
密勒》
(1879) which he later
based a play on; one of many that proved
unsuccessful.
A Little Tour In
France
(1884) was followed
by
The Bostonians
(1886),
The Aspern Papers
《阿斯本文件》
(1888),
The Reverberator
(1888),
The Tragic Muse
《悲哀
的缪斯》
(1890),
The Pupil
(1891),
Sir Dominick Ferrand
(1892),
The Death of the Lion
(1894),
The Coxon Fund
(1894),
and
The Altar of the
Dead
(1895).
In 1897 James
retired from the hectic city of London to the
quieter town of Rye in East Sussex, where James
bought
House
What Maisie
Knew
(1897),
In The
Cage
(1898),
The Awkward
Age
(1899),
The Wings of the
Dove
《鸽翼》
(1902),
The
Beast in the Jungle
(1903),
The Golden Bowl
《镀金碗》
(1904),
Italian Hours
(1909), and
The
Outcry
(1911). Autobiographies include
A Small
Boy And Others
(1913),
Notes
Of A Son And Brother
(1914), and
The
Middle Years
(1917).
In 1904 James travelled to
America where he embarked on a cross-country
lecture tour, which inspired his series of essays
first published in
North
American Review
,
Harper's
,
The
Fortnightly Review
then in 1907 as
The American Scene
. When
World War I broke out, being an
American ex-patriate, James was not happy with
America's reluctance to join the war and
became a British Citizen in 1915. In
1916 he was awarded the Order of Merit by King
George V.
After several years of
decline and a stroke a few months earlier, Henry
James died of pneumonia on 28 February 1916. His
ashes were interred at the Cambridge
Cemetery in Massachusetts, United States, his
stone inscribed
Two
Countries, Interpreter of His Generation On Both
Sides Of The Sea
. A memorial stone was
placed for him in the
Poets' Corner of
Westminster Abbey, London, England in 1976.
you haven't had that what
have
you had?--from the
Preface of
The Ambassadors
Joseph Conrad
约瑟夫
康拉德
(1857-1924)
,
Polish-born English author and master mariner
wrote
Heart of Darkness
《黑暗的心灵》
(1902);
―.
. . No, it is impossible; it is impossible to
convey the life
-
sensation of
any given epoch of one‘s
existence
—
that which makes
its truth, its
meaning
—
its
subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible.
We live, as we dream
—alone. . . .‖
(Part 1)
With haunting verse
Conrad has crafted a chilling tale laden with lush
imagery and symbolism describing the ambiguity
between good and evil.
“He was obeyed,
yet he inspired neither love nor fear, nor even
respect. He inspired uneasiness. That was
it!”
—
(ibid) With characters
as anti-
hero he examines man‘s moral
complexities and capacity for corruption and evil,
and the dark depths of the human
psyche;
Anything approaching the change
that came over his features I have never seen
before, and hope never to see again. Oh, I
wasn
‘t touched. I was
fascinated. It was as though a veil had
been rent. I saw on that ivory face the expression
of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of craven
terror
—
of
an
intense and hopeless despair. Did he live his life
again in every detail of desire, temptation, and
surrender during that supreme moment of
complete knowledge? He cried in a
whisper at some image, at some
vision
—
he cried out twice, a
cry that was no more than a breath. (ibid, Part
3)
While it
addresses the timeless struggle of man‘s
self
-
deception and inner
conflicts, influenced by Conrad‘s own sense of
isolation from his past,
th
e
story of Marlow‘s journey into the Congo also
exposes the clashes, exploitation and barbarity
between European and African
societies
during
19th Century colonial
expansionism. Controversial in his time and even
today, some of Conrad‘s works including
Heart of Darkness
have
inspired filmmakers and such authors as
F. Scott Fitzgerald
, Gabriel
Garcí
a Má
rquez,
D.H. Lawrence
, Joseph
Heller, Albert Camus, and
Virginia
Woolf
. He has also been grouped with
other such esteemed authors as his friend
Stephen Crane
and
Robert Louis Stevenson
. As a
young man Conrad, becoming
disillusioned and having abandoned his native
Poland after his parents sacrificed their lives in
the fight for their
country‘s freedom,
became a worl
d traveller on the high
seas. He gained by his own sweat and blood as a
seaman the life experience and
sensitivity for insight into the human
condition needed to produce the dozens of famous
short stories and novels he wrote, many that are
still in
print today.
Jó
zef Teodor Conrad
Korzeniowski was born on 3 December 1857 in the
Russian occupied city of Berdyczó
w,
Ukraine. He was the only child
born to
Evelina Bobrowska
(1832
–
1865) and Apollo
Korzeniowski, (1820
–
1869)
patriot, writer, and translator of such
authors‘ works as
Victor
Hugo
‘s and
William Shakespeare
‘s.
Joseph would also read their works as well as
those of
Charles Dickens
,
among many others‘. As members
of the
Polish noble gentry
szlachta
living in the Ukraine under Tsarist
autocracy was a turbulent time politically and the
Korzeniowski‘s were
under constant
surveillan
ce. In 1861 Joseph‘s
nationalist father, who was an outspoken supporter
of the serfs and critic of Poland‘s oppressors,
was arrested along with his wife for
being involved with the Polish National
Committee‘s anti
-Russian activities.
They and four-year old Joseph
were
exiled to the province of Vologda in Northern
Russia. The living conditions and harsh climate
took their toll on Joseph‘
s parents:
they both
contracted tuberculosis,
Evelina dying of it in 1865, Apollo in 1869. He
was celebrated at his death by the Poles in
patriotic honour.
Shaken from their
deaths and also suffering from various health
problems that would plague him for the rest of his
life, at the age of twelve
Joseph
became the ward of his maternal uncle Tadeusz
Bobrowski (d.1894), a landowner who lived in
Cracow, Poland. He would be a great
support to Joseph morally and
financially for many years to come.
He
was then sixty-two years old and had been for a
quarter of a century the wisest, the firmest, the
most indulgent of guardians, extending over
me a paternal care and affection, a
moral support which I seemed to feel always near
me in the most distant parts of the
eart
h.‖ (
A Personal
Record
, Ch. 2)
As
well as speaking Polish, Joseph had been taught
French by his governess Mlle. Durand and received
some schooling from his father. Now his
uncle hired a student from Cracow
University to continue his education, tutoring him
in Latin, Greek, geography, and mathematics
although
Joseph disliked the formality
of lessons. He was by nature full of nervous
energy and physically active. His frustrated tutor
soon learned that
from an early age he
yearned to travel on the seas and go to the ?dark
continent‘ of Africa. In 1874 with his uncle‘s
blessin
g and as a way of
avoiding conscription by the Russians,
Conrad travelled to the bustling port town of
Marseilles in southern France. As an important hub
of the
French Merchant Marine, Conrad
was soon able to find employment with several
French vessels over the next four years. It was
the beginning of
his fifteen year
career as seaman during which he would meet so
many of the men who would figure largely in his
works.
Life at sea was challenging but
full of thrills and adventure and suited Conrad
well who at times had a tempestuous personality.
He visited many
o
f the major
ports of the world and worked on every kind of
vessel possible including the ?Sainte Antoine‘,
?Duke of Sutherland‘ ?Palestine‘,
?Otago‘ and ?Tremolino‘. He was
involved with gunrunning and smuggling for a time,
and in the off hours incurred a
number
of gambling debts.
When he could not
repay them he attempted to commit suicide by
shooting himself in the chest. He survived and his
uncle paid off his debts but
he lost
his position with the French merchants so joined
the English ship ?Mavis‘ in 1878. Two years later
he passed his third mate‘s exam and in
1886 earned his Master‘s certificate in
the British Merchant Service and became a British
Citizen. It was at this time that h
e
changed his name to
Joseph Conrad. His
next few years of service took him to various
ports of call including the Malay Archipelago, the
Gulf of Siam and the