The Novella Archives

Baroque Concerto

January 17, 2015 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, plot, and web links

Baroque Concerto (Concierto barroco) was first published in Mexico by Siglo Ventiuno Editiores in 1974. It is one of a number of novellas written by Alejo Carpentier in which he uses the literary conceits of magical realism to explore the relationships between Europe and Latin-America, to compare historical periods with the present, and to mix realism and fantasy, producing a hybrid narrative style for which he coined the term ‘magical realism’.

Baroque Concerto – commentary

The theme

A major theme in the work of Alejo Carpentier is the history and relationship of ‘Old World’ Europe with ‘New World’ America – and that is, largely South (Latin) America. Of course the ‘New World’ was only new in the sense that it had not yet been ‘discovered’ by Europeans. This tension (and conflict) was most dramatically symbolised by the expeditionary force of Hernan Cortes in his conquest of Mexico in 1519.

This event brought into sharp conflict the ideals and values of the European renaissance (The Age of Enlightenment) with those of the so-called ‘primitive’ values of the natives of Latin America – and the social and cultural mix was also given a further degree of complexity by the presence of slaves in the region.

Carpentier explores the clash of civilizations in many of his major works, such as The Kingdom of this World – El reino de este mundo (1949), Explosion in a Cathedral – El siglo de las luces (1962), and The Harp and the Shadow – El arpa y el sombra (1978).

In Baroque Concerto this idea is examined almost in reverse. A rich Mexican is visiting the ‘Old World’, and encounters European culture in the form of three of its most distinguished musical composers – Scarlatti, Handel, and Vivaldi.

It should be obvious from even the most cursory reading of Baroque Concerto that Carpentier was fascinated by two subjects – music and architecture. He studied architecture and musical theory, wrote a book on the history of Cuban music (La musica en Cuba 1946), and composed an opera La Passion Noire which was performed in Paris in 1924.

Carpentier’s own life also straddles these two worlds. He was born in Lausanne, Switzerland to Russian and French parents, but he grew up in Havana, Cuba. He also spoke French but wrote in Spanish. For all these reasons he seems to have allegiances with the cultures of both the ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Worlds.

In the novella Scarlatti, Handel, and Vivaldi perform their Baroque Concerto in the Ospedale dell Pieta, but Filomeno (representing the less harmonically developed but no less vigorous musical heritage of the slaves of African descent) performs his own energising supplement on whichever percussion instruments are to hand. He also takes up the military-based instrument – the trumpet – ready to articulate the clarion call to freedom (“The trumpet shall sound / And we shall be saved”) and is last seen watching somebody from the same ethnic background doing the same thing – Louis Armstrong raising the roof in his own concerto at the imaginary theatre performance.

Magical realism

It was Alejo Carpentier who first coined the term ‘magical realism’ (lo real maravilloso) to describe the literary style that combines realism with fantasy, and which characterises much of the Latin-American fiction that emerged from the period of experimental modernism in which he was an active participant in the 1920s and 1930s. This was an approach to narrative that combined the very realistic tendency to give object and matters of nature and history their true names, with fanciful notions and imaginative inventions that telescoped time, defied logic, and overturned rational explanations.

In Baroque Concerto the fictional character of the rich Mexican burger meets the historical figures of Scarlatti, Handel, and Vivaldi at the highpoint of the European renaissance in the early eighteenth century. After their imaginary concert performance in Venice they repair to the cemetery island of San Michele. There they picnic on the grave of Igor Stravinsky, who did not die until 1971 and is indeed buried there, alongside other twentieth century artists such as Serge Diaghilev, Joseph Brodsky, and Ezra Pound.

This mixture of realism and fantasy was very much a popular feature of Latin-American fiction in the post-war years, and it reached the height of its influence with the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in 1967. It also has an ‘Old World’ parallel with the work of writers such as the Russian novelist Mikhail Bulgakov whose The Master and Margerita was first published in the West at exactly the same time.

This influence is to be seen in the work of Gunter Grass’s The Tin Drum – Die Blechtrommel (1959) which in its turn can easily be seen as the source of many scenes in Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981). These novels seemed like innovative works at the time of their first publication (and were enormously successful in commercial terms) but it should be noted that both of these authors have suffered steep declines in their critical reputations ever since. It is as if the fanciful literary devices of Latin-American magical realism do not sit easily with the empirical realist traditions of the English and the European novel.

In Baroque Concerto we can easily accept the idea of a rich Mexican burger meeting three European composers on a journey to Italy – where all three of them worked at one time or another and actually did meet each other in 1709. It can be taken as a fanciful idea which is given a realistic historical substance to make it credible. But jerking temporally forward to also include Igor Stravinsky and Louis Armstrong snaps the thread of our suspended disbelief. It is as though we have been tricked or had the carpet pulled from under our feet.

At least that is the negatively critical view on this matter. Other readers might choose to focus on the thematically congruent issue of music in the Vivaldi-Stravinsky-Armstrong continuum and regard the tale as a meditation on the transformative power of works of art. As the Negro servant Filomeno says to his Master as they go their separate ways at the end of the novella:

of what good is the illusion of theatre if not to remove us from where we are and take us to where we can’t get to on our own? Thanks to the theatre we can go back in time and live in periods forever gone – something impossible for us in our present flesh.

Baroque Concerto – study resources

Baroque Concerto – at Amazon UK – (Text in English)

Concierto barroco – at Amazon UK – (Text in Spanish)

Baroque Concerto – at Amazon US – (Text in English)

Concierto barroco – at Amazon US – (Text in Spanish)

Baroque Concerto – plot summary

Part 1. The Master, a rich Mexican burger, is taking stock of his house prior to embarking on a journey to Europe. He drinks wine with his servant and is visited by his mistress. Other visitors arrive with requests that he bring back various luxury items from his excursion.

Part 2. He travels from Veracruz to Cuba where the ship has to be repaired. Havana is in the grip of a plague. When his servant dies he takes on Filomeno, a freed Negro, as his replacement. Filomeno relates a story of European adventurers pillaging in the Caribbean who were defeated by his grandfather, who was given his freedom as a reward. The victory was celebrated for two days with primitive musical instruments.

Part 3. When he arrives in Madrid, the Master finds the capital squalid, the cuisine boring, and cultural life poor in general compared with his homeland. He and Filomeno travel to Valencia, then on to Barcelona, where they prepare to continue their journey to Italy.

Part 4. When they arrive in Venice, the Carnival is in full swing, with people taking opportunities for licentious behaviour behind their costumes and masks. The Master is dressed as the Aztec king Montezuma, and he meets Vivaldi, Handel, and Scarlatti who decide they are overwhelmed with the celebrations and wish to play some music.

Part 5. They repair to the Ospedale della Pieta, where the young abandoned girls under Vivaldi’s tutelage provide the orchestra for a grand concerto – with Handel at the organ and Scarlatti at the harpsichord. After this, Filomeno leads a primitive bachannalian song and dance around the church. At dawn, they leave in gondolas with picnic hampers.

Part 6. They repair to an island cemetery where the Master recounts the story of Montezuma, which Vivaldi thinks will make a good plot for an opera. They discuss the plots of Shakespeare’s tragedies whilst breakfasting around the grave of Ivor Stravinsky. Then they return to St Mark’s Square.

Part 7. Next day the Master and Filomeno attend a performance of Vivaldi’s opera Montezuma at the Teatro Fenice. The story of the conquest of Mexico by Cortes has been changed in its historical detail and accuracy. There is a re-enactment on stage of battles, the capture of a princess, and then a happy finale when Cortes forgives and pardons all his prisoners. The Master protests at the lack of historical accuracy, but Vivaldi argues that artifice has its own rules of logic and aesthetic structure.

Part 8. Afterwards the Master and Filomeno discuss the relationship between history and art, and the differences between a European and (Latin) American view of the world. They visit a music shop where they see copies of The Four Seasons and The Messiah. They part company at the railway station, after which Filomeno stays behind to visit the theatre again, where there is a recital given by Louis Armstrong.

Alejo Carpentier

Alejo Carpentier – other works

The Kingdom of This World is a marvelously compressed account of the slave uprising and first revolution of the early nineteenth century in San Domingo – now Haiti. Carpentier uses ‘magical realism’, long before it became fashionable, to depict the contradictions between political reality and religious or mythical beliefs. The story passes rapidly in a series of vivid scenes from the early unsuccessful uprising led by Macandal, then Bouckman who led Haiti in its fight for independence from France, and finally to Henri Christophe the revolutionary leader who later became Emperor of Haiti, and who built Sans Souci and La Ferrière Citadel.
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The Lost Steps (1953) is a story told twice. A disillusioned north-American musicologist flees his empty existence in New York City. He takes a journey with his mistress to one of the few remaining areas of the world not yet touched by civilization – the upper reaches of a great South American river (which we take to be the Amazon). The novel describes his search, his adventures, the revival of his creative powers, and the remarkable decision he makes about his life in a village that seems to be truly outside history. This novel offers a wonderful evocations of Latin America from the founder of ‘Magical Realism’.
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Alejo Carpentier weblinks

Carpentier at Wikipedia
Background, biography, magical realism, major works, literary style, further reading

Carpentier at Amazon UK
Novels, criticism, and interviews – in Spanish and English

The Kingdom of this World
Lecture by Rod Marsh – University of Cambridge

Carpentier at Internet Movie Database
Films and TV movies made from his novels

Carpentier in Depth
Spanish video documentary and interview with Carpentier (1977)

More on Alejo Carpentier
More on the novella
More on literary studies
More on short stories

Benito Cereno

August 3, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Benito Cereno (1856) was published in the collection The Piazza Tales which Melville wrote after the disappointing reception of his masterpiece Moby Dick which had appeared in 1851. Like many of his other works Benito Cereno is rich in ambiguities, symbolism, and profound meanings beneath its surface narrative. It’s based upon a documentary record of historical events written by the real Amasa Delano in 1817, but of course Melville dramatises ‘the capture of a ship’ to make it richer in suggestive allusion.

The events of the story are an exercise in sustained irony (a device also used by another mariner-novelist, Joseph Conrad). The first time reader is invited to see circumstances exactly as Captain Amasa Delano encounters them, as he goes from his own ship to offer help to a striken fellow captain. Everything he confronts is baffling, contradictory, and uncertain. He struggles to interpret what he finds, but is hampered by his own inclination to believe the best of everybody he meets. The truth of the situation is only revealed very dramatically at the very last minute.

Benito Cereno – critical commentary

Narrative

Most of Benito Cereno is told from the point of view of Amasa Delano. We encounter the puzzling conditions on board the San Dominick as he does; we have things presented to us as he sees them, and we do not have any other point of view by which to achieve a fictional triangulation to assess what is going on (except in a second or subsequent reading).

Melville’s narrative technique sometimes takes us into Delano’s thoughts, almost in a form of interior monologue, and at times Delano even addresses himself, as if thinking out loud.

The novella is set in 1799 – only a few years after the start of the slave uprising in San Domingo (now Haiti).

Present day readers cannot fail to notice that two of the Spanish crew of the San Dominick are killed by what is now called ‘friendly fire’. That is, when the Americans attack the San Dominick in order to recapture it from the rebel slaves, they mistakenly kill two Spanish sailors who are on their own side in the conflict.

The Novella

Benito Cereno was published as part of The Piazza Tales (1856); it is about 25,000 words long; and it could be regarded as a long short story – but it fulfils many of the criteria for being classed as a novella.

Unity of place

Almost the whole of the story takes place in one location – on board the San Dominick. Captain Delano goes to inspect the ship, climbs aboard alone, and stays there until his boat comes (for the second time) to take him back to the Bachelor’s Delight.

Even the depositions in court (which constitute the ‘explanation’ for what happened) are scenes which took place on board the San Dominick prior to its encounter with the Bachelor’s Delight.

Unity of action

The essential drama of the story unfolds in more or less one continuous action. Moreover, these events are compressed into the shortest possible chronological sequence – less than one whole day. Captain Delano goes on board the San Dominick in the morning, He takes a ‘frugal’ lunch with Captain Cereno. And when his boat ‘Rover’ comes back for the second time to take him back, he returns to the Bachelor’s Delight. The action of the story is concentrated in an almost Aristotelian manner to produce unity of time and action.

Unity of atmosphere

The whole of the narrative is shrouded in mists, becalmed seas, and symbols of mystery and ambiguity. The skies are gray, the San Dominick looks like a ‘white-washed monastery after a thunder-storm’. Nothing is quite what it seems. Delano is constantly baffled by the contradictions and mysteries he encounters. The ship’s figurehead is wrapped in a shroud; Captain Cereno shows no gratitude for being given help on his doomed ship; the slave Atufal is still in chains when others have been released. The tension and sense of menace increase until the moment in the ‘Rover’ that Captain Delano realises what is happening.

Even the events described in the court depositions intensify this atmospheric unity – since they enhance the macabre and grotesque nature of what has taken place aboard the doomed ship.

Unity of character

There are a number of minor named characters in the story – but essentially the whole drama is focussed on three people – Delano, Cereno, and Babo. Captain Delano is the naive, good natured protagonist, seeking to interpret the ambiguities of the world he encounters – and failing to do so at every turn until the truth is finally thrust upon him. Cereno is a good man totally in thrall to an evil power – almost a warning of what Delano’s naivety can lead to if he doesn’t wake up. And Babo is that evil power incarnate. He has been ruthless in taking control of the San Dominick; he has murdered his former ‘owner’, and had his skeleton nailed to the prow with an ironic warning inscribed ‘Follow your leader’. Babo orchestrates events on board the ship, including the menacing shave for Cereno.

The main issue

The event is one from many curious incidents recounted by mariners and others from events at sea. Melville’s work as a novelist draws on many of these recorded events. But these particular events are more than just curious: they embrace large scale political issues. The relationship between America, Europe, and colonialism for instance. America at the time of the story had just fought a war of independence, changing itself from a colony of Britain to an independent state. It had also been engaged in conflicts with England, Spain, and France regarding the slave trade.

The first successful slave uprising had started in San Domingo (now Haiti) in 1791. Slavery was not abolished formally in Great Britain until 1833 and in the USA until 1865, and it is interesting to note that the practice of slavery was first begun in the Spanish colonies around 1500.

So the story does not deal with small scale accidental matters, but forces of great geo-political importance. Benito Cereno, a Spaniard is in charge of a ship whose primary cargo is slaves, ‘owned’ by another Spaniard (Alexandro Aranda).

We do not know where the slaves are from, but it is significant that immediately after seizing control of the San Dominick the rebellion leader Babo wants to be taken back to Senegal – on the west coast of Africa. In other words, he has enough ‘race memory’ to know where he might have originally come from.

Benito Cereno – study resources

Benito Cereno – Oxford World Classics edition

Benito Cereno – Dover Thrift edition

Benito Cereno – Penguin Classics edition

Benito Cereno – Cliffs Notes

Benito Cereno – Norton Critical Editions

Benito Cereno – free eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Benito Cereno – Kindle eBook edition

Herman Melville at Wikipedia

Benito Cereno – plot summary

Amasa Delano is the good-natured captain of the Bachelor’s Delight, an American sealing ship sailing off the western coast of Chile in 1799. His ship is approached by another, the San Dominick, which is drifting aimlessly and appears like a ghost ship. Delano goes to inspect it and discovers a puzzling state of affairs on board. The captain, Don Benito Cereno appears to be in a state of collapse, there are very few crew members on board, and a cargo of ‘negro slaves’ has been let loose to act in a somewhat menacing fashion.

Benito Cereno explains to Delano that most of the crew were lost during terrible storms at sea, which also damaged the ship; but his explanation doesn’t entirely satisfy Delano, who nevertheless sends his boat back to the Bachelor’s Delight to fetch emergency supplies for the survivors.

Throughout Delano’s visit to the San Dominick, Benito Cereno is accompanied by a very attentive negro servant who never leaves his side. Indeed, he is so solicitous of his master’s wellbeing that Delano at one point offers to buy him for his own use.

Delano continues to be disturbed by the inexplicable goings-on around him – such as a group of slaves who are sharpening hatchets, and Benito Cereno’s lack of thanks for the assistance he is being offered. But Delano repeatedly interprets what he see in a positive and generous light.

When the relief supplies have been distributed, Delano sends the boat back to the Bachelor’s Delight, leaving him alone with the members of the San Dominick. He watches Babo shave Benito Cereno, then dines with them, the servant being present throughout. Delano then takes charge of the San Dominick and steers it towards the Bachelor’s Delight in a safe mooring. He invites Benito Cereno to join him on board for coffee – but Benito Cereno refuses.

When a boat arrives to collect him Delano is still puzzled by Cereno’s coldness and lack of response to a generous offer of help. But when Delano gets into the boat, Cereno suddenly leaps from the San Dominick, closely followed by Babo bearing a knife. Delano is convinced they are going to kill him, but it quickly becomes apparent that Babo intends to kill Benito Cereno.

Babo is seized, they regain the Bachelor’s Delight, and then a party of men sets off and recaptures the San Dominick, which is taken to investigative governmental courts in Lima, Peru.

The second part of the story is a sequence of depositions made to the court which record the true sequence of events regarding the San Dominick and the fate of those on board. Starting with a general revolt of the ‘cargo’ of slaves, Babo and his henchman Atufal take charge and command Benito Cereno to sail for Senegal, which is half way round the other side of the world, in West Africa. Members of the Spanish crew are murdered or thrown alive into the sea.

Alexandro Aranda (the ‘owner’ of the slaves) is murdered, and his skeleton is nailed to the front of the ship as a figurehead. After storms and damage to the ship, they arrive at Santa Maria at the same time as the Bachelor’s Delight. Babo arranges the deceptive appearance on board the San Dominick and threatens everybody on board with instant death if they reveal the truth of what has happened. He even puts Atufal in chains as a deceptive ploy, and plans to seize arms and capture the Bachelor’s Delight.

The tribunal recognises Babo as the principal culprit, and sentences him to death. Benito Cereno retreats to a monastery, where he dies three months later.

Principal characters

Amasa Delano	American captain of the Bachelor’s Delight, a sealing and general trading ship
Don Benito Cereno	young captain of the San Dominick, a first-calss Spanish general trading ship
Babo	former slave and ‘attendant’ to Benito Cereno
Don Alexandro Aranda	‘owner’ of the slave ‘cargo’ on the San Dominick
Atufal	Babo’s assistant, a slave and ‘former king’

Theatrical adaptation

Poster for 1965 play by the poet Robert Lowell

Billy Budd

September 28, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Billy Budd is the last (and uncompleted) prose work of Herman Melville. In 1856, disenchanted with the sales and critical reception of his novels, he gave up writing fiction and turned instead to poetry (just as Thomas Hardy was to do fifty years later, for slightly different reasons). Melville became, in the words of Robert Milder, ‘a major nineteenth-century poet and a chronicler of the Victorian crisis of belief to be set alongside Arnold, Tennyson, and Browning’. And yet towards the end of his life it was a concentrated prose narrative to which he returned, writing and re-writing Billy Budd, Sailor so many times it was 1962 before the complete and authoritative version of his text could be assembled for publication.

Billy Budd – critical commentary

The text

Billy Budd was started in 1888 and left unfinished by Melville at his death in 1891. In fact the manuscript wasn’t discovered until 1924 by Raymond. Weaver who was working on papers for the Constable edition of Melville’s Complete Works, Then in 1948 a new revised version appeared, and in 1962 there was a complete re-examination of the materials to produce what is now regarded as the definitive text, complete with its full title – Billy Budd, Sailor: An Inside Narrative.

The Novella

The narrative is about 25,000 words long; and it could be regarded as a long short story – but it is almost universally recognised as a novella – because it fulfils many of the criteria for being classed as such. These are mainly a tight focus on unity of time, place, action, and character.

Unity of place

Apart from the opening sections meditating on mutinies and recounting Billy’s transfer from the Rights of Man, almost the whole of the story takes place in one location – on board the Bellipotent.

Unity of action

Once Billy is on board the Bellipotent the essential drama of the story unfolds in more or less one continuous movement. The action of the story is concentrated in an almost Aristotelian manner to produce a single narrative arc. Billy arrives on board, Claggart denounces him, and Vere condemns him to death. Apart from Melville’s quasi-philosophic meditations on the themes of his story, there are no other issues or sub-plots in the narrative.

Unity of atmosphere

The whole of the story takes place against a backdrop of the absolute nature of naval law and the threat of mutiny against its injustices. Melville meditates on two famous episodes in naval history – the revolts at Spithead and the Nore in 1897, the latter of which resulted in hanging of twenty-nine leaders.

Vere faces a moral dilemma as captain of the ship and arbiter of justice, but he evades the moral ambiguities of his position by reverting to a crude interpretation of traditional maritime law. ‘The father in him, manifested towards Billy thus far in the scene, was replaced by the military disciplinarian’. Even before he summons the drumhead court he declares ‘Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!’

Unity of character

There are a number of minor named characters in the story – but essentially the whole drama is focused on three people – Captain Vere, John Claggart, and Billy Budd.

Captain Vere is kind-hearted and well disposed towards Billy, but when confronted with a choice between humane compassion and the military rule of law, he chooses the latter. He is known as ‘Starry Vere’ because of his dreamy disposition; he is an intellectual, an aristocrat; and as a ship’s captain he has absolute rule. He is therefore in a God-like position of authority over the entire crew.

The text makes it clear that he has the option to delay any proceedings against Billy until rejoining the squadron and reporting the incident to the admiral of the fleet. The senior officers on board agree that this would be the right course of action. But Vere opts for the crude absolute rule of law – and thus precipitates the tragedy.

John Claggart is the embodiment of ‘depravity according to nature’. He encounters Billy, and as his absolute antithesis, immediately takes against him. He accuses him of the worst possible crime in the naval rule book – fomenting mutiny.

Billy is innocent, naively good, young, untainted, and blessed with good looks and a disposition that makes him popular. He is therefore a target of envy to the malicious Claggart. An older, more experienced sailor such as the Dansker knows that such opposing natures will attract each other.

The three characters are locked into an unholy alliance. The spirits of Good and Evil have a God-like character wielding absolute power of decision over their conflict, and the tragedy is precipitated by Vere’s inability to make sufficiently subtle distinctions.

It is easy to see why so many critics have explored the biblical parallels – with Vere the father or God-like figure who has the Satan-like figure of evil present in his sadistic master-at-arms, Claggart. And Billy, the innocent Adam-like figure, must be punished for his transgression of the absolute laws which Vere represents.

Billy Budd – study resources

Billy Budd – Oxford World Classics edition

Billy Budd – Dover Thrift edition

Billy Budd – Penguin Classics edition

Billy Budd – Norton Critical Editions

Billy Budd – free eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Billy Budd – free audioBook version at Project Gutenberg

Billy Budd – Kindle eBook edition

Billy Budd – Unabridged audio download

Herman Melville at Wikipedia

Billy Budd – film trailer

Peter Ustinov, Terence Stamp and Robert Ryan (1962)

Billy Budd – plot summary

William (Billy) Budd is a handsome and popular young sailor, serving on a merchant ship The Rights of Man. He a great favourite of his ship’s master, Captain Graveling. In 1897 however, Billy is impressed into service on the HMS Bellipotent which is commanded by the aristocratic Edward Fairfax (‘Starry’) Vere. Billy is a figure of innocence and good nature. He is an illiterate foundling (an abandoned and presumably illegitimate child) and is popular with other crew members. But the ship’s master-at-arms John Claggart is fuelled by a malevolent impulse to harm Billy. He reports him to the captain, falsely accusing him of fomenting a mutiny.

When the Captain confronts Billy in front of his accuser and asks for an explanation, Billy becomes tongue-tied. He strikes Claggart with a blow that kills him. Although Captain Vere is well disposed towards Billy, he feels he must uphold the rules of military discipline.

A hurried drumhead ‘court’ is summoned and Vere more or less prejudges its conclusions. Billy is found guilty of assaulting a superior officer, and condemned to death. He is hanged the next morning.

Principal characters

William (Billy) Budd	a 21 year old ‘Handsome Sailor’,
Captain Graveling	the commander of the Rights-ofMan
Edward Fairfax Vere	the commander of HMS Bellipotent
John Claggart	master-at-arms on the Bellipotent
Dansker	veteran Danish sailor

Billy Budd – complete opera version

Benjamin Britain (1951)

Carmilla

March 31, 2011 by Roy Johnson

the first lesbian vampire story?

Sheridan Le Fanu was an Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels who came from the same tradition which produced Oscar Wilde and James Joyce. Indeed, he went to the same university – Trinity College Dublin. But his work is less well known, with one exception – the long story (or maybe novella) Carmilla which was to influence Bram Stoker when he came to write his classic Dracula. However, Carmilla (1871) is not only a vampire story – it’s a lesbian vampire story – plus all the usual trappings of the Gothic horror tale.

The setting is, as usual, a remote part of central Europe. Laura (the damsel to be in distress) lives with her elderly father in a castle situated miles from anywhere in the middle of a forest. As a youngster, she has a frightening nocturnal experience when she dreams she is visited in bed by a beautiful girl. Some years later a mysterious woman travelling with her daughter Carmilla has a coach accident nearby. She leaves the girl in their care and continues her journey.

Carmilla reveals to Laura that they have met before, and recounts to her an identical childhood dream. They agree that the experience was memorable and significant for both of them. Carmilla subsequently becomes passionately attached to Laura, acting towards her like a lover – but also displaying erratic mood swings. She insists on sleeping in a locked room, and doesn’t get up until the afternoon.

There is an outbreak of mysterious deaths in the district, and an ancient oil painting of a Countess Mircalla Karnstein turns out to be an exact likeness of Carmilla. Laura is flattered but also slightly disturbed by the sexual advances Carmilla makes towards her. She has another nocturnal attack – this time by a giant black cat.

Following this she begins to fall ill – but in a manner which she feels is not altogether unpleasant. Further nocturnal visions make her fear Carmilla is in danger, but when the servants go to check in the middle of the night, Carmilla is not in her room – which is locked.

Laura and her father then accompany a grieving neighbour to the old ruined estate of the Karnsteins, where he intends to avenge his niece’s death. En route he tells them the story of a mysterious woman who leaves her beautiful daughter Millarca in his care. Millarca exerts a malign influence on his niece, who dies. The story of course is a close parallel to that of Laura and her father.

The neighbour has traced back the history of evil in the locality to the Karnstein family, whose tombs they visit in a Gothic chapel. The grave of Millarca Countess Karnstein is opened, and even though she has been dead for one hundred and fifty years, her features are ‘tinted with the warmth of life’, her eyes are open, and she is still breathing. There is only one possible solution: she is despatched in the manner prescribed for all vampires.

It’s a marvelously condensed tale, full of thematic parallels, doubling, incidents which echo and repeat each other, and repeated motifs all centred on the principal theme of vampirism – which is why it can reasonably be described as a novella. Of course it has all the conventional features of the Gothic horror story – the remote castle setting, a motherless heroine who is threatened by evil forces, a mysterious and beautiful stranger with very sharp teeth, inexplicable deaths, locked doors, and transmogrification.

In order to understand some of the perplexing mysteries, it’s helpful if you know the rules governing vampires and their behaviour, but these have become reasonably well established in the last two hundred years:

they escape from their graves and return to them for certain hours every day, without displacing the clay or leaving any trace of disturbance in he state of the coffin or the cerements … The amphibious existence of the vampire is sustained by daily renewed slumber in the grave. Its horrible lust for living blood supplies the vigour of its waking existence. The vampire is prone to be fascinated with an engrossing vehemence, resembling the passion of love, by particular persons.

It is this aspect of ‘fascination’ which will be of particular interest to contemporary readers. The appearance of figures such as old men in tall black hats, a hunchback with a fiddle, and even a black servant with a turban and large white eye-balls are easy enough to fit into the iconography of the Gothic romance – but the overtly sexualised relationship between Carmilla and Laura is unusual, especially by nineteenth century standards.

Carmilla gets into bed with Laura, she is repeatedly kissing her, stroking her hair, and declaring both the passion that she feels and her belief that they destined for each other. Laura in her turn is excited by the magnetism between them, and also a little disturbed by it. Her description of their encounters is couched in distinctly orgasmic terms.

Sometimes there came a sensation as if a hand was drawn softly along my cheek and neck. Sometimes it was as if warm lips kissed me, and longer and more lovingly as they reached my throat, but there the caress fixed itself. My heart beat faster, my breathing rose and fell rapidly and full drawn; a sobbing, that rose into a sense of strangulation, supervened, and turned into a dreadful convulsion, in which my senses left me and I became unconscious.

And the story is ripe for other approaches to interpretation. It is drenched with instances of ‘the double’ for instance. Almost every character is twinned with another. The two female lead characters appear to be the same age (Carmillia is of course one hundred and fifty years older) and they have identical and simultaneous dreams. Even the landscape and the architecture is doubled.

In the Oxford Classics edition (which also contains Le Fanu’s other tales of the supernatural) there are two other interpretations explored. One which sees the novella in terms of social anxiety regarding the decline of the protestant ‘acendency’ in Ireland, and another focussing on Le Fanu’s own insecurities with an ailing wife and unpaid debts. Whichever interpretation you wish to pursue, this is undoubtedly a significant text in the history of the Gothic horror story – and of vampires in particular.

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Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.347, ISBN: 0199537984

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Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

July 18, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a guide to Conrad’s classic critique of imperialism

Joseph Conrad retired from the sea and started writing romantic adventure stories. His first works were popular but light, but then in 1899 he produced a novella which struck such dark tones and offered a reading of European imperialism so profound, that it still strikes deep resonances today. Heart of Darkness, which is aimed at students and general readers who might wish to extend their understanding of Conrad and what he has to offer. The first chapter puts Conrad into historical, intellectual, cultural, and literary context. He was of the nineteenth century, but he signalled many of the concerns and even the literary techniques of twentieth century modernism. And of course, even though he is now regarded as a pillar stone of English Literature, he was Polish.

This is a study guide to that work, Allan Simmons then takes you straight into an analysis of the story via his consideration of Conrad’s use of English (which was his third language) his narrator Marlow, and his use of the novella as a literary form. A level students and undergraduates will find his analyses of the details thought-provoking – and the process should lead them towards the complexities of investigation they might be making on their own behalf. At the same time, anyone teaching the novella will find his approach useful.

The central part of the book is a reading of the novella, tracing the narrator Marlow’s journey from Europe, into the ‘dark continent’, and back out again – an ambiguously changed man. Simmons traces all the subtle allusions, symbols, and thematic parallels in the narrative.

Despite the ultimate pointlessness of comparing fiction with what might have been its real life inspiration, I think a map of the Congo would have been useful here.

In the two final chapters Simmons traces Conrad’s reputation as a writer from the publication of Heart of Darkness to the present, then he looks at the adaptations – nearly ninety films and even a piano concerto.

There is still interpretive work to be done on many aspects of Conrad – not least his attitude to women – but studies such as this help to provide the means whereby this work will be done.

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Allan Simmons, Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, London: Continuum, 2007, pp.132, ISBN: 0826489346

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Daisy Miller

November 4, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Daisy Miller is one of Henry James’s most famous stories. It was first published in the Cornhill Magazine in 1878 by Leslie Stephen (Virginia Woolf’s father) and became instantly popular. It was reprinted several times within a couple of years, and it was even pirated in Boston and New York. On the surface it’s a simple enough tale of a spirited young American girl visiting Europe. She is a product of the New World, but her behaviour doesn’t sit easily with the more conservative manners of her fellow expatriates in Europe. She pushes the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to the limit, and ultimately the consequences are tragic.

the Colosseum in moonlight

Daisy Miller – critical commentary

Story or novella?

Daisy Miller represents a difficult case for making distinctions between the long short story and the novella. Henry James himself called it a ‘short chronicle’, but as a matter of fact it was rejected by the first publisher he sent it to on the grounds that it was a ‘nouvelle’ – that is, too long to be a short story, and not long enough to be a novel.

It should be remembered that the concept of the novella only emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, and publishers were sceptical about its commercial appeal. This was the age of three-volume novels, serial publications, and magazine stories which were written to be read at one sitting.

If it is perceived as a long short story, then the basic narrative line becomes ‘a young American girl is too forthright for her own good in unfamiliar surroundings and eventually dies as a result’. This seems to trivialize the subject matter, and reduce it to not much more than a cautionary anecdote.

The case for regarding it as a novella is much stronger. Quite apart from the element of length (30,000 words approximately) it is a highly structured work. It begins with Winterbourne’s arrival from Geneva, and it ends with his return there. It has two settings – Vevey and Rome. Daisy travels from Switzerland ‘over the mountains’ into Italy and Rome, one of the main centres of the Grand Tour. And it has two principal characters – Winterbourne and Daisy. It also has two interlinked subjects. One is overt – Winterbourne’s attempt to understand Daisy’s character. The second is more complex and deeply buried – class mobility, and the relationship between Europe and America.

Class mobility

Daisy’s family are representatives of New Money. Her father, Ezra B. Miller is a rich industrialist. He has made his money in unfashionable but industrial Schenectady, in upstate New York. Having made that money, the family have wintered in fashionable New York City. This nouveau riche experience has given Daisy the confidence to feel that she can act as she wishes.

But the upper-class social group in which she is mixing have a different set of social codes. They are in fact imitating those of the European aristocracy to which they aspire. In this group a young woman should be chaperoned in public, and she must not even appear to spend too long in the company of an eligible bachelor because this might compromise her reputation.

Daisy has the confidence and the social dynamism provided by her father’s industrial-based money back in Schenectady, but she is denied permanent entry into the upper-class society in which she is mixing because she flouts its codes of behaviour.

Conversely, Winterbourne is attracted to Daisy’s frank and open manner, but he does not understand her – until it is too late. In fact he fails to recognise the clear opportunities she offers him to make a fully engaged relationship, and as she rightly observes, he is ‘too stiff’ to shift from his conservative attitudes. The text does not make clear his source of income, but he obviously feels at home with the upper-class American expatriates, and his return to Geneva at the end of the novella to resume his ‘studies’ underscores his wealthy dilettantism.

He is trapped in his upper-class beliefs in a way that Daisy is not in hers. She has the confidence of having made a transition from one class into another at a higher level. She has a foot in both camps – but her tragedy is that she fails to recognise that she cannot enjoy the benefits of the higher class without accepting the restrictions membership will impose on her behaviour.

Daisy Miller – study resources

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon UK

The Complete Works of Henry James – Kindle edition – Amazon US

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon UK

Complete Stories 1874—1884 – Library of America – Amazon US

Daisy Miller – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Daisy Miller – Wordsworth Classics edition – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller – Penguin Classics edition – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller – Cliff’s Notes – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller – DVD film version – Amazon UK

Daisy Miller – eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

The Cambridge Companion to Henry James – Amazon UK

Henry James at Wikipedia – biographical notes, links

Henry James at Mantex – tutorials, biography, study resources

Daisy Miller – plot summary

Part I. Frederick Winterbourne, an American living in Geneva is visiting his aunt in Vevey, on Lake Leman. In the hotel garden he meets Daisy Miller via her young brother Randolph. He is much taken with her good looks, but puzzled by her forthright conversation. He offers to show her the Castle of Chillon at the end of the lake.

Part II. Mrs Costello, his rather snobbish aunt warns him against the Miller family on the grounds that they lack social cachet. When he visits the castle with Daisy she teases him, offers to take him on as tutor to Rudolph, and is annoyed when he reveals that he must leave the next day. Nevertheless she invites him to visit her in Italy later that year.

Part III. Some weeks later on his arrival in Rome, Winterbourne’s friend Mrs Walker warns him that Daisy is establishing a dubious reputation because of her socially unconventional behaviour. Daisy joins them, and Winterbourne insists on accompanying her when she leaves to join a friend alone in public. He disapproves of the friend Signor Giovanelli who he sees as a lower-class fortune hunter, and Mrs Walker even tries to prevent Daisy from being seen alone in public with men.

Part IV. The American expatriate community resent Daisy’s behaviour, and Mrs Walker then snubs her publicly at a party they all attend. Winterbourne tries to warn Daisy that she is breaking the social conventions, but she insists that she is doing nothing wrong or dishonourable. He defends Daisy’s friendship with Signor Giovanelli to her American critics. Finally, Winterbourne encounters Daisy with Giovanelli viewing the Colosseum by moonlight. Winterbourne insists that she go back to the hotel to avoid a scandal. She goes under duress, but she has in fact contracted malaria (‘Roman Fever’) from which she dies a few days later. At the funeral Giovanelli reveals to Winterbourne that he knew that Daisy would never have married him. Winterbourne realises that he has made a mistake in his assessment of Daisy, but he ‘nevertheless’ returns to live in Geneva.

Henry James – portrait by John Singer Sargeant

Daisy Miller – principal characters

Frederick Forsyth Winterbourne	a young (27) American expatriate of independent means who purports to be studying in Geneva
Ezra B. Miller	a wealthy American industrial businessman (who does not appear in the story)
Mrs Miller	his wife, who is a hypochondriac
Annie P. (‘Daisy’) Miller	their spirited daughter
Randolph C. Miller	her outspoken nine-year-old brother
Eugenio	tall and distinguished courier and factotum to the Millers in Europe
Mrs Costello	Winterbourne’s snobbish aunt in Vevey – a ‘widow of fortune’
Mrs Walker	Winterbourne’s friend in Rome
Sig Giovanelli	Daisy’s friend in Rome – a solicitor

Daisy Miller – film adaptation

Directed by Peter Bogdanovich (1974)

Starring Cybill Shepherd and Barry Brown

Daisy Miller – further reading

Biographical

Theodora Bosanquet, Henry James at Work, University of Michigan Press, 2007.

F.W. Dupee, Henry James: Autobiography, Princeton University Press, 1983.

Leon Edel, Henry James: A Life, HarperCollins, 1985.

Philip Horne (ed), Henry James: A Life in Letters, Viking/Allen Lane, 1999.

Henry James, The Letters of Henry James, Adamant Media Corporation, 2001.

Fred Kaplan, Henry James: The Imagination of Genius, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999

F.O. Matthieson (ed), The Notebooks of Henry James, Oxford University Press, 1988.

Critical commentary

Elizabeth Allen, A Woman’s Place in the Novels of Henry James, London: Macmillan Press, 1983.

Ian F.A. Bell, Henry James and the Past, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1993.

Millicent Bell, Meaning in Henry James, Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1993.

Harold Bloom (ed), Modern Critical Views: Henry James, Chelsea House Publishers, 1991.

Kirstin Boudreau, Henry James’s Narrative Technique, Macmillan, 2010.

J. Donald Crowley and Richard A. Hocks (eds), The Wings of the Dove, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978.

Victoria Coulson, Henry James, Women and Realism, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Daniel Mark Fogel, A Companion to Henry James Studies, Greenwood Press, 1993.

Virginia C. Fowler, Henry James’s American Girl: The Embroidery on the Canvas, Madison (Wis): University of Wisconsin Press, 1984.

Judith Fryer, The Faces of Eve: Women in the Nineteenth Century American Novel, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976

Roger Gard (ed), Henry James: The Critical Heritage, London: Routledge, 1968.

Tessa Hadley, Henry James and the Imagination of Pleasure, Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Barbara Hardy, Henry James: The Later Writing (Writers & Their Work), Northcote House Publishers, 1996.

Richard A. Hocks, Henry James: A study of the short fiction, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1990.

Donatella Izzo, Portraying the Lady: Technologies of Gender in the Short Stories of Henry James, University of Nebraska Press, 2002.

Colin Meissner, Henry James and the Language of Experience, Cambridge University Press, 2009

Richard Poirer, The Comic Sense of Henry James, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967.

John Pearson (ed), The Prefaces of Henry James, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993.

William T. Stafford (ed), James’s Daisy Miller: The story, the play, the critics, New York: Scribner, 1963.

Hugh Stevens, Henry James and Sexuality, Cambridge University Press, 1998.

Ruth Yeazell (ed), Henry James: A Collection of Critical Essays, Longmans, 1994.

Other works by Henry James

Washington Square (1880) is a superb early short novel, It’s the tale of a young girl whose future happiness is being controlled by her strict authoritarian (but rather witty) father. She is rather reserved, but has a handsome young suitor. However, her father disapproves of him, seeing him as an opportunist and a fortune hunter. There is a battle of wills – all conducted within the confines of their elegant New York town house. Who wins out in the end? You will probably be surprised by the outcome. This is a masterpiece of social commentary, offering a sensitive picture of a young woman’s life.
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The Aspern Papers (1888) is a psychological drama set in Venice which centres on the tussle for control of a great writer’s correspondence. An elderly lady, ex-lover of the writer, seeks a husband for her daughter. But the potential purchaser of the papers is a dedicated bachelor. Money is also at stake – but of course not discussed overtly. There is a refined battle of wills between them. Who will win in the end? As usual, James keeps the reader guessing. The novella is a masterpiece of subtle narration, with an ironic twist in its outcome. This collection of stories also includes three of his accomplished long short stories – The Private Life, The Middle Years, and The Death of the Lion.
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The Spoils of Poynton (1896) is a short novel which centres on the contents of a country house, and the question of who is the most desirable person to inherit it via marriage. The owner Mrs Gereth is being forced to leave her home to make way for her son and his greedy and uncultured fiancee. Mrs Gereth develops a subtle plan to take as many of the house’s priceless furnishings with her as possible. But things do not go quite according to plan. There are some very witty social ironies, and a contest of wills which matches nouveau-riche greed against high principles. There’s also a spectacular finale in which nobody wins out.
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Henry James – web links

Henry James at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides, tutorials on the Complete Tales, book reviews. bibliographies, and web links.

The Complete Works
Sixty books in one 13.5 MB Kindle eBook download for £1.92 at Amazon.co.uk. The complete novels, stories, travel writing, and prefaces. Also includes his autobiographies, plays, and literary criticism – with illustrations.

The Ladder – a Henry James website
A collection of eTexts of the tales, novels, plays, and prefaces – with links to available free eTexts at Project Gutenberg and elsewhere.

A Hyper-Concordance to the Works
Japanese-based online research tool that locates the use of any word or phrase in context. Find that illusive quotable phrase.

The Henry James Resource Center
A web site with biography, bibliographies, adaptations, archival resources, suggested reading, and recent scholarship.

Online Books Page
A collection of online texts, including novels, stories, travel writing, literary criticism, and letters.

Henry James at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of eTexts, available in a variety of eBook formats.

The Complete Letters
Archive of the complete correspondence (1855-1878) work in progress – published by the University of Nebraska Press.

The Scholar’s Guide to Web Sites
An old-fashioned but major jumpstation – a website of websites and resouces.

Henry James – The Complete Tales
Tutorials on the complete collection of over one hundred tales, novellas, and short stories.

Henry James on the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations of James’s novels and stories for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production features, film reviews, box office, and even quizzes.

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Death in Venice

February 21, 2010 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, study resources, video, further reading

Death in Venice (1913) is a classic novella – half way between a long story and a short novel. It’s a wonderfully condensed tale of the relationship between art and life, as well as love and death. Venice provides the background for the story of a famous writer Von Aschenbach who departs from his usual routines, falls in love with a beautiful young boy, and gets caught up in a subtle downward spiral of indulgence. The unity of themes, form, and motifs are superbly realised – even though Mann wrote this when he was quite young.

Thomas Mann

Death in Venice – plot summary

Gustav von Aschenbach is a famous author in his early fifties. He is a widower, dedicated to his art, and disciplined to the point of severity. While strolling outside a cemetery in his native Munich he has a disturbing encounter with a red-haired man, after which he resolves to take a trip. He reserves a suite in the Grand Hôtel des Bains on the Lido island of Venice. While en route to the island by vaporetto, he sees an elderly man with a wig, false teeth, makeup, and foppish attire, which disgusts him. Soon afterwards he has a disturbing encounter with a gondolier.

At dinner in his hotel he sees an aristocratic Polish family at a nearby table. Among them is an adolescent boy in a sailor suit. Aschenbach is startled to realize that the boy is beautiful. His sisters, however, are so severely dressed that they look like nuns.

The hot, humid weather of Venice begins to affect Aschenbach’s health, and he decides to leave early and move to a more salubrious location. On the morning of his departure however, he sees Tadzio again, and a powerful feeling of regret sweeps over him. When he reaches the railway station he discovers his trunk has been misdirected. Secretly overjoyed; he decides to remain in Venice and wait for his lost luggage. He returns to the hotel, and thinks no more of leaving.

Over the next days and weeks, Aschenbach’s interest in the beautiful boy develops into an obsession. He watches him constantly, and secretly follows him around Venice. One evening, the boy directs a charming smile at him. Disconcerted, Aschenbach rushes outside, and in the empty garden whispers aloud, “I love you!”

Aschenbach next takes a trip into the city of Venice, where he sees a few discreetly worded notices from the Health Department warning of an unspecified contagion and advising people to avoid eating shellfish. He smells an unfamiliar strong odour everywhere, and later realises it is disinfectant. However, tourists continue to wander round the city, apparently oblivious.

Aschenbach at first ignores the danger because it somehow pleases him to think that the city’s disease is akin to his own hidden, corrupting passion for the boy. During this period, another red-haired, disreputable-looking man crosses Aschenbach’s path – a street singer who entertains at the hotel one night. Aschenbach listens entranced to songs that, in his former life, he would have despised – all the while stealing glances at Tadzio, who is leaning on a nearby parapet in a classically beautiful pose.

Aschenbach decides to uncover the reason for the health notices posted in the city so he can warn Tadzio’s mother. After being repeatedly assured that the sirocco is the only health risk, he finds a British travel agent who reluctantly admits that there is a serious cholera epidemic in Venice. Aschenbach, however, funks his resolution to warn the Polish family, knowing that if he does, Tadzio will leave the hotel and be lost to him.

One night, a dream filled with orgiastic imagery reveals to him the sexual nature of his feelings for Tadzio. Afterwards, he begins staring at the boy so openly and following him so persistently that the boy’s guardians finally notice, and take to warning Tadzio whenever he approaches too closely. But Aschenbach’s feelings, though passionately intense, remain unvoiced; and while there is some indication that Tadzio is aware of his admiration, the two exchange nothing more than the occasional glance.

Aschenbach begins to fret about his aging face and body. In an attempt to look more attractive, he visits the hotel’s barber shop almost daily, where the barber eventually persuades him to have his hair dyed and his face painted to look more youthful. Freshly dyed and rouged, he again shadows Tadzio through Venice in the oppressive heat. He loses sight of the boy in the heart of the city; then, exhausted and thirsty, he buys and eats some over-ripe strawberries and rests in an abandoned square, contemplating the Platonic ideal of beauty amidst the ruins of his own once-formidable dignity.

A few days later Aschenbach feels ill and weak, and discovers that the Polish family plan to leave after lunch. He goes down to the beach to his usual deck chair. Tadzio is there accompanied by an older boy. Tadzio leaves his companion and wades over to Aschenbach’s part of the beach, where he stands for a moment looking out to sea; then turns around to look at his admirer. To Aschenbach, it is as if the boy is beckoning to him: he tries to rise and follow, only to collapse back into his chair. His body is discovered a few minutes later. When news of his death becomes public, the world decorously mourns the passing of a great artist.

Death in Venice – study resources

Death in Venice – Vintage Classics – Amazon UK

Death in Venice – Vintage Classics – Amazon US

Death in Venice – Kindle eBook edition – Amazon UK

Thomas Mann – biographical notes

Der Tod in Venedig – eBook (in German) at Project Gutenberg – [FREE]

The novella – study notes

The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Mann – Amazon UK

Death in Venice – the 1971 Luchino Visconti film – Amazon UK

Death in Venice – unabridged audioBook edition – Amazon UK

Thomas Mann at Wikipedia – biographical notes and web links

Thomas Mann at Mantex – tutorials, web links, and study resources

Death in Venice – film adaptation – I

Luchino Visconti – 1971

Visconti produced a visually glamorous version of Mann’s novella which captures the original very faithfully. Shimmering scenes of the Venice lido are interspersed with menacing glimpses of the impending plague. The film is famous for two features – the spectacular use of a slowed-down version of the adagietto from Mahler’s fifth symphony as a sound track, and the outstanding performance of Dirk Bogard as the ageing Gustav von Aschenbach – one of his last and greatest screen performances. Visconti takes the liberty of transforming Aschenbach from a writer into a composer, but the film as a whole is a visually spectacular rendering of the original story.

See reviews of the film at the Internet Movie Database

Mont Blanc – Thomas Mann special edition

Opera adaptation

Benjamin Britten 1973

Classical references

Achelous	chief river deity
Cephalus	one of the lovers of the dawn goddess Eos
Cleitos	officer of Alexander the Great
Elisium	final resting places of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous
Eros	the primordial god of sexual love and beauty
Hades	the ancient Greek underworld, and its God
Hyacinthus	a beautiful young man admired by the god Apollo and the West Wind, Zephyr
Kritobulous	son of Crito, who was friend of Socrates
Mercury	a messenger, and god of trade, profit and commerce
Narcissus	a beautiful youth, changed by Echo into a flower
Orion	a giant huntsman
Phaeax	son of Poseidon and Cercyra
Phaedrus	a friend of Socrates
Poseidon	god of the sea – and earthquakes
Zephyr	god of the west wind

Other works by Thomas Mann

Mario and the Magician
Using settings as varied as Germany, Italy, the Holy Land and the Far East, these stories explore a theme which always preoccupied Thomas Mann – “the two faces of things”. Written between 1918 and 1953, they offer an insight the development of his thought. The title story concerns a German family on holiday in Italy who fall under the hypnotic spell of a brutal magician. It is often seen as a warning against the seductive power of fascism.

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The Magic Mountain
This is a curious but impressive novel, written on either side of the First World War. The setting is a sanatorium in the Alps – a community organized with exclusive reference to ill-health. There the characters discuss love, politics, and philosophy. Much of the novels ‘activity’ is intellectual debate between characters such as Settembrini and Naphta (who are said to represent Mann’s brother Heinrich and the Hungarian Marxist critic Georg Lukacs respectively). It’s an intellectual drama of the forces which play upon modern man. Don’t expect tension or plot in the conventional sense. The novel also marks a transition in Mann’s political philosophy – from a conservative to a more liberal ideology.

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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

April 3, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) became very popular as soon as it was first published under its real title of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Since then it has been repeatedly adapted for the stage and the cinema – usually to provide a starring role for a male actor who can deliver a bravura performance playing both major parts. It has also entered popular culture as a symbol of the ‘dual’ nature of the human personality – with the potential for good and evil in a permanent state of tension, battling against each other in the same person.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – 1920 film version

Full length 1920 movie – with John Barrymore

Dr Jeckyll and Mr Hyde – critical commentary

The Novella

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a narrative of only 26,000 words in length – which is the same as some long short stories. But the composition has all the hallmarks of a novella, based on the usual criteria for distinguishing this literary genre that lies half way between a long story and a short novel.

The story is densely compacted, with all its elements focussed on the single issue of the mystery of the Jekyll/Hyde duality. There are no digressions, no extraneous characters, and not even any lengthy descriptive or atmospheric passages.

There is a consistency of mood and tone throughout the tale which contributes to its unity of effect. Once again, nothing distracts from

There is a unity of location throughout the drama, with particular focus on Dr Jekyll’s house and its symbolic division into quarters which are public and private, open and locked, known and secret. Although the action of the novel moves a little around the locality, almost all of it is centred upon the doctor’s rooms, and in particular his ‘cabinet’, which is an inner sanctum within the ‘dissecting rooms’ where he carries out his practice.

The recurring motifs in the story reinforce its central concern with the duality of human nature. Jekyll has a large cheval mirror in which he inspects his transformations. A mirror is designed to reflect the object before it, but of course it also produces a ‘double’. The austere Utterson is contrasted with his cousin Enfield who is a man about town.

Letters

Much of the plot hinges on documents and letters generated by the principal characters.

1. The story begins with Jekyll’s puzzling will which he has entrusted to Utterson.

2. Hyde writes a letter of reassurance to Jekyll.

3. Lanyon leaves behind a letter revealing what he knows of Jekyll.

4. Lanyon’s letter itself contains a letter written to him by Jekyll

5. Hyde writes letters to both Poole and Jekyll.

5. Jekyll leaves behind a confessional letter.

And almost like a reflection of the doubled and interlocking nature of the main narrative, these letters are sometimes contained within each other.

The Double

Stevenson’s tale is part of the long and honourable tradition of ‘the double’ in fiction. This includes examples such as Shelley’s Frankenstein, Poe’s ‘William Wilson’, Dostoyevski’s The Double, Conrad’s The Secret Sharer, James’ ‘The Jolly Corner’, and Nabokov’s The Eye. In most of these cases there is deliberate ambiguity concerning the second person or identity. The story appears to be about two separate people who are completely unlike each other, or may be very similar. In some cases the first character feels a rivalry with, dislikes, or even wishes to kill the second. But they are in fact one and the same person.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a perfect example of this literary trope. Jekyll and Hyde are polar opposites. Jekyll is tall, upright, honest, and philanthropic. Hyde is small and misanthropic to the extent that he commits murder. They are like representations of the conscious and the unconscious mind – the Ego and the Id.

Almost every element within Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has a parallel or a double. Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde are two aspects of the same man. Jekyll’s house has two entrances – one the respectable public front entrance, the other a partly hidden, secret, and locked rear entrance. Dr Lanyon leaves behind two letters. And the novella ends with two explanations in two letters for the mystery and how it came about.

For further discussion of this theme, see our tutorial – The Double

Narrative progression

It is often said that Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde is a story told backwards, and it’s quite true that the novella ends with an account of how Dr Jekyll came to take up his dangerous experiments with drugs. But it would perhaps be more accurate to say that it is a story with a mystery, the explanation for which is delayed. The actual sequence of events is as follows.

1. Jekyll’s behaviour has become erratic and poses a problem for his friend Utterson.

2. Tension and mystery ensue in the search for Mr Hyde.

3. There is a dramatic finale when Hyde commits suicide.

4. The narrative ends with two explanations of the mystery and its origins.

The missing participles

The full title of the novella is Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. It is hardly surprising that it has become more widely known in its truncated form as Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because the missing definite article (The) creates an unnatural gap or absence in the title. This might be a stylistic quirkiness on Stevenson’s part, because it is repeated in some of the chapter titles which similarly lack a definite article – Story of the Door, Search for Mr Hyde, Incident of the Letter, Remarkable Incident of Dr Lanyon, and Incident at the Window

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – study resources

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Oxford Classics – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Oxford Classics – Amazon US

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Penguin Classics – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Penguin Classics – Amazon US

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Audiobook CD – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Audiobook CD – Amazon US

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Cliffs (study) Notes – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – York (study) Notes – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Spark (study) Notes – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – 1932 film version (DVD) – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Norton Critical edition – Amazon US

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – Kindle edition

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – 2002 TV version (DVD) – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – 1981 film version (DVD) – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – 1931 & 1941 film versions (DVD) – Amazon UK

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – eBook versions at Gutenberg

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – audiobook at LibriVox

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – plot summary

Mr Utterson, a lawyer, has the disturbing task of dealing with the will of his friend Dr Jekyll, who in the event of his death or disappearance wishes to leave all his money (a quarter of a million pounds) to his friend Edward Hyde. Utterson learns that Hyde has bought his way out of trouble after attacking a young girl, using a cheque signed by Jekyll. Discomforted by suspicions of possible blackmail and wrong-doing, Utterson tracks down Hyde, but then Jekyll reassures him that all is well.

When another brutal and fatal attack is carried out on one of Utterson’s clients, the circumstantial evidence points to Hyde as the perpetrator, but when sought out he has disappeared. Jekyll reassures Utterson that Hyde will no longer be a problem, and shows him a letter to that effect from Hyde. However, the handwriting is similar to that of Jekyll.

After a period of relative normality, Dr Jekyll begins to cut himself off from Utterson and the rest of society, and their friend Dr Lanyon dies in odd circumstances, leaving behind a letter. Dr Jekyll’s butler Poole reports in alarm to Utterson that something is wrong with Jekyll. Utterson and Poole break into Jekyll’s inner rooms and find Hyde dead from cyanide poisoning.

Utterson then goes home to read both Lanyon’s letter and a signed confession from Dr Jekyll. These explain how Jekyll has experimented with ‘transforming’ drugs which have allowed him to turn at will into Edward Hyde and lead a double existence. Having explored the evil side of his own nature, he has become addicted to the drugs and no longer able to control the transformations. He has therefore committed suicide whilst in the persona of Edward Hyde.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – principal characters

John Gabriel Utterson	a middle-aged lawyer
Richard Enfield	his younger cousin, a man about town
Edward Hyde	a savage, rancorous man who commits murder
Dr Henry Jekyll	a respected man of medicine
Dr Hastie Lanyon	fellow doctor and friend of Utterson
Sir Danvers Carew	an MP and client of Utterson’s
Mr Guest	Utterson’s head clerk
Poole	Dr Jekyll’s butler

Film version

1931 film starring Frederick March

More on literature
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Ethan Frome

July 12, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Edidth Wharton wrote the first version of Ethan Frome in French, as an exercise for her tutor and gave it the title Hiver (1907). It consisted of only a few pages, and was abandoned unfinished. But she returned to the story in 1911 and added the structural device of the outer narrator. Some people see the story as a reflection of Wharton’s own life, since it was around this time that she brought to an end both her own unhappy marriage and her love affair with W. Morton Fullerton. However, it is also possible to see in the story elements of her much earlier novel The House of Mirth (1905).

Edith Wharton

She regarded the novella as a significant turning point in her career as a writer – the end of her ‘apprenticeship’ as she called it. And for both its form and its brevity it has become a classic in the teaching of American literature, though it’s not so well known in Britain and the rest of Europe. However, it is an amazingly powerful story, and is told in a stark stripped-down style which suits both its subject and its setting of poor New England farming country.

Ethan Frome – critical commentary

Structure

The bulk of the narrative concerns events which take place within the space of only two or three days. But the story is ‘framed by a brief introduction and afterward which reveal the state of affairs twenty years later. The dramatic effect of this framing device is to both create narrative tension and to emphasise the fact that the events of these few days have an effect which lasts for the remainder of the characters’ lives.

In the introduction an unnamed narrator (an engineer or project manager) stays in the local town whilst he is working nearby. He learns something of Ethan’s background from the locals, and hires him as a driver. One night they are cut off by a snow storm, and Ethan offers him accommodation for the night. This is related in first person narrative mode.
Part two is a flashback in third person omniscient narrative mode recounting events that took place twenty years earlier. This includes Ethan’s unhappy marriage to Zeena, his passion for Mattie, and the events leading up to their fateful sledge ride.
The afterward returns in first person mode to the morning after the introduction, in which the tragic consequences of the sledge ride are revealed to the narrator.

Narrative

The narrator claims that he has pieced together the story from scraps of information related to him by the local inhabitants. However, much of the story’s substance consists of the thoughts and feelings of Ethan and Mattie which only they could have known. Ethan is characterised as a taciturn and remote person who has been damaged by his life experiences, and the implication of the tale is that Mattie has been reduced to an almost vegetative state: so it is very unlikely that they would have given the narrator an account of their personal lives.

This is a weakness of narrative logic, but it is amply compensated by the concentrated drama of the main story itself.

The novella

You might wonder why Ethan Frome is generally regarded as a novella rather than a long short story. It’s because it possesses all the classic features of a novella.

Unity of place
Everything in the story takes place in Starkfield. The narrator arrives there; the events of twenty years earlier all took place there; and all the characters concerned are still there when the story ends.

Unity of action
The essential drama of the story unfolds in more or less one continuous action. Ethan realises he is attracted to Mattie – and so does Zeena. He enjoys his chaste dinner with her. And Zeena returns the following day with her plan to break up the relationship – at which Ethan rebels and takes Mattie on the fateful sledge ride.

These events are compressed into the shortest possible chronological sequence – which is framed by the narrator’s introduction and conclusion.

Unity of atmosphere
The events take place in winter, and the grim cold blanketting of snow remains present throughout as a unifying feature and a reminder of the emotionally life-supressing forces at work in the story.

Unity of character
There are a number of named characters in the story, but all of the drama is focussed on the three principals – Ethan, Zeena, and Mattie – who are locked together in a desperate power struggle.

They are locked into a triangle of rivalry at the start of events. Both Ethan and Mattie wish to escape from the bitter dominance of Zeena. But the power nexus is given an ironic twist be the events of the denouement: both Ethan and Mattie become entirely dependent on Zeena, who is forced to look after them.

Use of symbols
The persistent presence of cold and snow reflects the sexual repression which pervades the entire story.

Ethan’s house has lost part of its previous shape, just as he has become permanently injured as a result of the big ‘smash-up’ in the sledge ride.

Zeena has a glass bowl (a wedding present) which she never uses – but it is broken during the meagre supper that Ethan and Mattie share on their evening together.

The main issue
A short story is often a small incident from life which illuminates a character, or presents a moment of revelation. But a novella deals with a subject which stands for a much larger and all-important statement about the larger issues of life. It might contain a similar number of characters, but they represent more universal forces at work.

Ethan Frome deals with the entire adult lives of its three principal characters. The actions they take in the few crucial days which form the crux of the story turn out to determine the rest of their lives.

Ethan Frome – study resources

Ethan Frome – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Ethan Frome – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – Wordsworth Classics – Amazon US

Ethan Frome – Cliffs Notes – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – Spark Notes – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – York Notes – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – Norton Critical Editions – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – free eBook formats at Project Gutenberg

Ethan Frome – free audioBook version at Project Gutenberg

Ethan Frome – DVD of 1993 movie adaptation – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – DVD of 1993 movie adaptation – Amazon US

Ethan Frome – Kindle eBook edition

A Historical Guide to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Introduction to Edith Wharton – Amazon UK

Ethan Frome – plot summary

Ethan Frome is a poor working farmer who lives in a small remote town in Massachusetts. He exists in a state of near poverty with his wife Zeena (Zenobia), a grim, prematurely aged woman who makes hypochondria her hobby and his life a misery. Ethan has travelled as far as Florida and has intellectual aspirations, but he has never been able to develop or fulfil them. Living with them as an unpaid household help is Zeena’s cousin, Mattie Silver, a young woman who has lost her parents.

When Ethan escorts Mattie home from the local dance, he realises that he is deeply moved by her presence. This is something his wife is aware of, and she plans to be rid of the girl. When Zeena goes away overnight to consult a doctor, Ethan plans to enjoy a rare evening together with Mattie. They eat a humble supper together, and nothing except good feelings pass between them.

Next day Zeena returns to announce that she has ‘complications’ that will require a full time servant who she has already hired, and that Mattie must leave. Ethan is horrified by the prospect and makes plans to leave Zeena, but realises that he hasn’t the money or the prospects to support Mattie.

Nevertheless, he defies his wife and insists on driving Mattie to the station. On the way there he and Mattie declare their love for each other. Before the train arrives he fulfils a promise to take her sledging. After one very exhilarating run down a dangerous slope, Mattie proposes a suicide pact so that they will spend their last moments together. Ethan agrees, but instead of being united in death, they are both horribly injured.

Ethan and Mattie spend the rest of their lives in the care of Zeena.

first edition 1911

Principal characters

I	an unnamed outer narrator who works in engineering
Ethan Frome	a poor farmer with aspirations for a better life
Zeena (Zenobia)	his grim, prematurely aged wife, who makes a career of hypochondria
Harmon Gow	a Starkfield resident
Mrs Ned Hale	the narrator’s landlady
Michael Eady	Irish store owner
Denis Eady	his son, who dances with Mattie
Mattie Silver	Zeena’s cousin
Andrew Hale	a builder
Jotham Powell	a hired hand who does work for Ethan

Film adaptation

1993 film adaptation starring Liam Neeson

Other works by Edith Wharton

The Age of Innocence (1920) is Edith Wharton’s most famous novel, written immediately after the end of the First World War. It’s a brilliantly realized anatomy of New York society in the 1870s. Newland Archer is charming, tactful, and enlightened. He accepts society’s standards and abides by its rules, but he also recognizes its limitations. His engagement to the impeccable May Welland assures him of a safe and conventional future – until the arrival of May’s cousin Ellen Olenska puts all his plans in jeopardy. Independent, free-thinking, and scandalously separated from her husband, Ellen forces Archer to question the values and assumptions of his narrow world. As their love for each other grows, Archer has to decide where his ultimate loyalty lies.
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The Custom of the Country (1913) is Edith Wharton’s satiric anatomy of American society in the first decade of the twentieth century. It follows the career of Undine Spragg, recently arrived in New York from the midwest and determined to conquer high society. Glamorous, selfish, mercenary and manipulative, her principal assets are her striking beauty, her tenacity, and her father’s money. With her sights set on an advantageous marriage, Undine pursues her schemes in a world of shifting values, where triumph is swiftly followed by disillusion. This is a study of modern ambition and materialism written a hundred years before its time.
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The House of Mirth (1905) is the story of Lily Bart, who is beautiful, poor, and still unmarried at twenty-nine. In her search for a husband with money and position she betrays her own heart and sows the seeds of the tragedy that finally overwhelms her. The book is a disturbing analysis of the stifling limitations imposed upon women of Wharton’s generation. In telling the story of Lily Bart, who must marry to survive, Wharton recasts the age-old themes of family, marriage, and money in ways that transform the traditional novel of manners into an arresting modern document of cultural anthropology.
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Edith Wharton – web links

Edith Wharton at Mantex
Biographical notes, study guides to the major novels, tutorials on the shorter fiction, bibliographies, critiques of the shorter fiction, and web links.

Edith Wharton at Gutenberg
Free eTexts of the major novels and collections of stories in a variety of digital formats – also includes travel writing and interior design.

Edith Wharton at Wikipedia
Full details of novels, stories, and travel writing, adaptations for television and the cinema, plus web links to related sites.

The Edith Wharton Society
Old but comprehensive collection of free eTexts of the major novels, stories, and travel writing, linking archives at University of Virginia and Washington State University.

The Mount: Edith Wharton’s Home
Aggressively commercial site devoted to exploiting The Mount – the house and estate designed by Edith Wharton. Plan your wedding reception here.

Edith Wharton at Fantastic Fiction
A compilation which purports to be a complete bibliography, arranged as novels, collections, non-fiction, anthologies, short stories, letters, and commentaries – but is largely links to book-selling sites, which however contain some hidden gems.

Edith Wharton’s manuscripts
Archive of Wharton holdings at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

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Falk: A Reminiscence

November 23, 2011 by Roy Johnson

tutorial, commentary, study resources, and web links

Falk (1903) is not one of Joseph Conrad’s better-known stories, yet it deserves to be. It is just as successful as Heart of Darkness in exploring powerful and extreme situations. It was first published in the collection Typhoon and Other Tales (1903) and is the only one of Conrad’s stories which did not first appear serialized in magazine publication. This was because the editor objected to the fact that the very powerfully evoked central female character never speaks.

Joseph Conrad

Falk – critical commentary

Inter-textuality

Falk (1903) is composed of many elements Conrad used in his other novels and novellas. The story begins with a group of mariners dining in a small river-hostelry in the Thames estuary discussing seafaring matters – a situation he had already used in Heart of Darkness, which was written the year before. He even uses a similar comparison of the narrative present with a distant past – not that of the Roman invasion, but of primeval man telling tales of his experience.

An unnamed outer-narrator sets the scene, and then the story is taken up by a second and equally unnamed inner-narrator – a type rather like Marlow, the inner-narrator of Heart of Darkness and other Conrad tales. He is recounting events which took place when he was a younger man.

The young man is taking up his first assignment as a captain – a plot device Conrad had used in Heart of Darkness and was to use again in both The Shadow-Line and The Secret Sharer. The location of events is not specified, but it corresponds in many details to Bangkok, which appears in the two later novellas. He is also taking over from a rather dubious previous captain who has died, and his ship is held up in port with a sickly crew.

Characters from other Conrad tales appear in the story: Schomberg the gossipy Alsatian hotel owner who appears in Lord Jim (1900) and Victory (1915); Gambril, the elderly sailor who also appears in The Shadow-Line. And of course Falk’s dreadful experiences drifting powerless on a doomed ship towards the South Pole carries unmistakable echoes of The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and The Flying Dutchman legend.

A Darwinian reading

It’s possible to argue that Falk is concerned with the elemental forces which man needs in order to survive. In the animal world there are three basic instincts which combine to form a will to prevail – that results in ‘the survival of the fittest’. These are the hunt for food, the urge to procreate, and the fight for territory.

Falk himself embodies all of these forces to a marked degree. He fights to stay alive, and he is even prepared to confront one of society’s most sacred taboos – he will kill and eat human flesh in order to endure and prevail.

His yearning for Hermann’s niece is a powerful, all-consuming physical passion. Despite all his sufferings on board the Borgmester Dahl, his unfulfilled desire for her hurts him more deeply. It is a more painful feeling to endure. ‘This is worse pain. This is more terrible’ he exclaims. It’s interesting to note that when Falk tows away Hermann’s ship by force, the narrator observes ‘I could not believe that a simple towing operation could suggest so plainly the idea of abduction, of rape. Falk was simply running off with the Diana‘.

He gets what he yearns for in the end. And it’s interesting to note that he also asserts his dominance in terms of territory. With his tug boat on the river he has a monopoly over navigation, and can charge whatever he wishes for piloting ships to the open sea. He does a similar thing in the struggle for survival on the stricken Borgmester Dahl by siezing control of the last firearm on board. The young captain reflects ‘He was a born monopolist’.

Falk endures the most extreme conditions imaginable – hunger, deprivation, and the threat of death. As the Borgmester Dahl drifts aimlessly towards the south pole, he inhabits a microcosm of a Hobbesian world. His life is nasty, brutish, and is likely to be short. And he is surrounded by cowards and incompetents. Yet he wills himself to endure; he takes control of the ship; and he is prepared to fight back against man’s inhumanity to man when the carpenter attacks him. He triumphs and survives. ‘They all died … But I would not die … Only the best man would survive. It was a great, terrible, and cruel misfortune.’

The food and eating leitmotif

Imagery of food and eating occur repeatedly throughout the story. The narrative begins with men of the sea ‘dining in a small river-hostelry. And they are compared with their primitive counterparts telling ‘tales of hunger and hunt – and of women perhaps!’amongst gnawed bones.

The young captain dines on chops at Schomberg’s table d’hote and listens (whilst the hotelier eats ‘furiously’) to his complaints against Falk. These complaints are based of food an cooking. Falk refuses to dine at Schomberg’s hotel because he is a vegetarian. He has also stolen Schomberg’s native cook.

Schomberg regards Falk as unnatural because he does not eat meat: ‘A white man should eat like a white man … Ought to eat meat, must eat meat.’ But Falk even bans meat-eating from his own ship, and pays his crew a supplements to their wages for the inconvenience. The young captain reflects ruefully on the state of affairs:

I was engaged just then in eating despondently a piece of stale Dutch cheese, being too much crushed to care what I swallowed myself, let alone bothering my head about Falk’s ideas of gastronomy. I could expect from their study no clue to his conduct in matters of business, which seemed to me totally unrestrained by morality or even by the commonest sort of decency.

This is a wonderful example of the sort of ironic prolepses Conrad embeds in his text. Falk’s ideas of gastronomy have been formed by exactly the same extreme experiences which have influenced his moral attitudes to business and society. He has seen and endured the Worst, and he has survived in the most primitive struggle for existence. And his shock at finding himself forced to eat a fellow human being leads to his choice of vegetarianism. There is therefore a direct link between his gastronomy and his morality. But the young captain does not know that at this point of the narrative.

Falk’s final descent into cannibalism is reinforced by understatement. He tells his bride-to-be and father-in-law: “I have eaten man”.

Story or novella?

There is no clear dividing line between a long story and a novella – in terms of length. At approximately 20,000 words it would be possible to argue that Falk is a long story: The first part deals with a young captain and his experiences on shore in Bangkok: the second part recounts the shocking details of Falk’s experiences on board the Borgmester Dahl.

But the fundamental issues at stake in this story are so profound (the fight for survival – see above) and the concentrated imagery with which the story is articulated is so dense, that this narrative has all the qualities of a novella. It focuses on eating to stay alive, reproducing to continue the human race, and establishing dominance of a territorial space.

It’s true that there are a greater number of named characters in the story than normally appear in a novella – not all of them with important parts to play in the plot. But the focus of attention is largely on Falk, Hermann, and the narrator. Quite astonishingly, Hermann’s niece is also a vital part of the story – even though she is never named, she never speaks, and she does nothing except represent animal magnetism in its most vital form.

Falk – study resources

Falk – Oxford World Classics – Amazon UK

Falk – Oxford World Classics – Amazon US

Falk – Kindle eBook (annotated)

Falk – Tredition paperback – Amazon UK

Falk – Tredition paperback – Amazon US

Falk – eBook at Project Gutenberg

Joseph Conrad: A Biography – Amazon UK

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Routledge Guide to Joseph Conrad – Amazon UK

Oxford Reader’s Companion to Conrad – Amazon UK

Notes on Life and Letters – Amazon UK

Joseph Conrad – biographical notes

Falk – plot summary

A young mariner (‘not yet thirty’) takes charge of a ship in the far east (Bangkok) when the previous captain dies. The crew are sickly and unfriendly, the ship has no provisions, and there are delays in getting under way. He befriends Hermann, the captain of the Diana, a German ship which is moored nearby. Hermann lives on board with his wife, his four children, and his niece – who is a simple but physically attractive young woman. Hermann is planning to sell his ship and go back to Germany to retire. Also passing time with this family is Falk, the captain of a tug with a monopoly of navigation on the river leading out to the coast.

Falk is a remote, taciturn, and rather forbidding figure who is not popular with the local officials and traders. When the young captain’s and Hermann’s vessels are ready to depart, the young captain is annoyed to discover that Falk takes the Diana out first, damaging Hermann’s ship in the process. The captain tries to hire the one possible alternative navigator, but discovers that Falk has bought him off.

It transpires that Falk has taken this precipitate action because he is consumed with a passionate desire for Hermann’s voluptuous niece, and thinks the young captain is a rival. The captain confronts Falk, reassuring him that he has no designs on the girl. Falk asks for his diplomatic assistance in re-establishing good relations with Hermann, so that he can propose to the niece.

The young captain opens negotiations, and Hermann very reluctantly allows Falk to plead his case. But Falk explains that there is one thing the niece should know about him if she is to accept his offer of marriage – the fact that he had once eaten human flesh.

This sends Hermann into a explosion of outraged sensibility. The captain assumes that Falk has been involved in a shipwreck, but Falk explains to him the story of his experiences on a ship which is damaged beyond repair by storms at sea. It drifts helplessly into the Antarctic Ocean, and runs out of provisions. The crew and the captain are feckless, and start to die off or jump overboard. The ship’s carpenter tries to kill Falk, but Falk kills him instead, whereupon he and the remaining crew eat the man before eventually being rescued.

The young captain speaks on Falk’s behalf to Hermann, who eventually consents to the match – motivated partly by saving the cost of an extra cabin (for the niece) on the journey back to Bremen. When the young captain returns to the port five years later, Mr and Mrs Falk are no longer there.

Principal characters

—	the unnamed outer narrator
—	the unnamed inner-narrator
Hermann	a German ship master
Mrs Hermann	his wife
—	his physically attractive niece
Lena, Gustav, Carl, Nicholas	the Hermann children
Falk	a Danish or Norwegian tugboat captain
Schomberg	an Alsatian hotel-keeper
Mrs Schomberg	his grinning wife
Mr Siegers	principal in shipping office
Johnson	former captain, now a drunk who has gone native
Gambril	an elderly seaman

Biography

The Cambridge Companion to Joseph Conrad offers a series of essays by leading Conrad scholars aimed at both students and the general reader. There’s a chronology and overview of Conrad’s life, then chapters that explore significant issues in his major writings, and deal in depth with individual works. These are followed by discussions of the special nature of Conrad’s narrative techniques, his complex relationships with late-Victorian imperialism and with literary Modernism, and his influence on other writers and artists. Each essay provides guidance to further reading, and a concluding chapter surveys the body of Conrad criticism.

Joseph Conrad’s writing table

Joseph Conrad’s writing

Manuscript page from Heart of Darkness

Other work by Joseph Conrad

Nostromo (1904) is Conrad’s ‘big’ political novel – into which he packs all of his major subjects and themes. It is set in the imaginary Latin-American country of Costaguana – and features a stolen hoard of silver, desperate acts of courage, characters trembling on the brink of moral panic. The political background encompasses nationalist revolution and the Imperialism of foreign intervention. Silver is the pivot of the whole story – revealing the courage of some and the corruption and destruction of others. Conrad’s narration is as usual complex and oblique. He begins half way through the events of the revolution, and proceeds by way of flashbacks and glimpses into the future.
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The Secret Agent (1907) is a short novel and a masterpiece of sustained irony. It is based on the real incident of a bomb attack on the Greenwich Observatory in 1888 and features a cast of wonderfully grotesque characters: Verloc the lazy double agent, Inspector Heat of Scotland Yard, and the Professor – an anarchist who wanders through the novel with bombs strapped round his waist and the detonator in his hand. The English government and police are subject to sustained criticism, and the novel bristles with some wonderfully orchestrated effects of dramatic irony – all set in the murky atmosphere of Victorian London. Here Conrad prefigures all the ambiguities which surround two-faced international relations, duplicitous State realpolitik, and terrorist outrage which still beset us more than a hundred years later.
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Joseph Conrad web links

Joseph Conrad at Mantex
Biography, tutorials, book reviews, study guides, videos, web links.

Joseph Conrad – his greatest novels and novellas
Brief notes introducing his major works in recommended editions.

Joseph Conrad at Project Gutenberg
A major collection of free eTexts in a variety of formats.

Joseph Conrad at Wikipedia
Biography, major works, literary career, style, politics, and further reading.

Joseph Conrad at the Internet Movie Database
Adaptations for the cinema and television – in various languages. Full details of directors and actors, production notes, box office, trivia, and quizzes.

Works by Joseph Conrad
Large online database of free HTML texts, digital scans, and eText versions of novels, stories, and occasional writings.

The Joseph Conrad Society (UK)
Conradian journal, reviews. and scholarly resources.

The Joseph Conrad Society of America
American-based – recent publications, journal, awards, conferences.

Hyper-Concordance of Conrad’s works
Locate a word or phrase – in the context of the novel or story.

More on Joseph Conrad
Twentieth century literature
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Alejo Carpentier weblinks

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Benito Cereno – critical commentary

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Theatrical adaptation

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Billy Budd – critical commentary

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Billy Budd – film trailer

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Billy Budd – complete opera version

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the first lesbian vampire story?

a guide to Conrad’s classic critique of imperialism

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Daisy Miller – critical commentary

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Death in Venice – plot summary

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Death in Venice – film adaptation – I

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Opera adaptation

Classical references

Other works by Thomas Mann

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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – 1920 film version

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Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – study resources

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – plot summary

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – principal characters

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Film version

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Ethan Frome – critical commentary

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Film adaptation

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Other works by Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton – web links

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Falk – critical commentary

Falk – study resources

Falk – plot summary

Principal characters

Biography

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Joseph Conrad’s writing

Other work by Joseph Conrad

Joseph Conrad web links

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