HENRY JAMES
BIOGRAPHY
Henry James was born in New York the year 1843 in the bosom of a wealth
and cultured family with Irish roots. He received an eclectic and cosmopolitan
education developed mainly in Europe. He analysed the conflict between
the Europe and North American cultures in most of his novels, from his
first one "Roderick Hudson" (1875), to the trilogy which culminate his
career, "The Wings of the Dove" (1902), "The Ambassadors" and "The Golden
Bowl" (1905). He found a remarkable success in "SHORT STORIES", in which
he is considered a master. He ended his days in London the year (1916).
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Although Henry James was American, he was by temperament and taste, long residence, and passionate devotion to the country of his adoption, and Englishman and his work occupies a pivotal position in the development of the 20-Century novel.
James came of the well-to-do, erudite, and highly individualistic family of which he wrote afterwards in "A Small Boy and Others" (1913) and "Notes of a Son and a Brother" (1914). Visits to England, France and Italy roused in his "famished" American soul a yearning to become part of an old culture, richer than his native land could provide. In this age he altered wanderings abroad with sojourns in the USA, until the desire to regain the lost heritage of the past led him in 1880 to settle permanently in England.
He never married, took no part in public affairs, and never evidenced understanding of the economic and social changes that were shaking the foundations of this world. Even he remained and spectator of the world of international society with centres like London or Paris.
From the beginning his fiction was restricted to the novel of manners, the manners of wealthy, leisurely, sophisticated people, steeped in tradition, trained in a code, so subtle in their reactions one to another that they appear to belong not in the rough work-a-day world but in a world created by the imagination of the author, where motives are more complex and the discrimination of values more microscopic than in what we call reality. His attention is located in the ultimate definements of sensibility and of moral and social scruple, life was a fine art for him as it is seen in his reliance upon exquisite taste, tact, fineness of perception and his tortuous exploration of mental states.
THE FIRST PHASE
The typical theme is the clash between transatlantic Puritanism and
European tolerance. He was interested in serious social contrasts not in
the comic aspects of situations, developing from these antagonist traditions
which James rarely explored. There was a gradual diminution of emphasis
upon the theme of the expatried American, as we see in "A Portrait of a
Lady" (1881), the masterpiece of this period, which displays the fact that
Isabel Archer is an American is an almost immaterial consideration in her
story. Another novels rom this period with Americans abroad are "Roderick
Hudson" (1875), and "The American" (1887).
THE SECOND PHASE
A note of disillusion is characteristic of James’s middle years as
the original glamour faded such as in "The Princess Casamassina" and in
"The Tragic Muse" (1890). In the first one he showed himself dimly and
disturbingly aware of restlessness beyond the boundaries of this world,
while in the second one he quite obviously champions the cause of the artist
against aristocratic society.
This change of tone is due to the resentment of the fact that he had failed to win any popular success. For some years after 1890 he neglected fiction, other than the short story in favour of the drama although he had not success. However, these experiments were profitable as they helped him to solve problems of craftsmanship in fiction, the approximation to the dramatic form, the selection of those aspects of experience to be presented and the complete separation of the author from his work.
THE THIRD PERIOD
It deals with a changeable state of mind, which consists in a determination
to write only to please himself and his limited clientele because of the
gradual assumption of a stoical indifference to popular neglect. There
was a limitation of the field of vision while problems of selection, approach,
arrangement and emphasis were more important. Therefore broad and superficial
evocations of the social scene were abjured in favour of an intimate concentration
upon situations composed out of innumerable truches of finesse in a kind
of literary pountillisme. To many readers the subjects of these books seem
to be crushed by the weight of technique.
Novels of this period are: "The Spoils of Poynton" (1897), this one is in comparison with the former novels, restricted in scope but gained in profundity and insight.
"What Maisie Knew" (1897) is a display of technical virtuosity, the lives of corrupt worldings being seem through the eyes of an innocent little girl.
"An Awkward Age" (1899) is an attempt to apply the dramatist’ technique to fiction, the action being conducted entirely in dialogue.
"The Wings of the Dove" (1902) suggests an underlying symbolism and an obscure obsession with evil.
The problems of moral obliquity fascinated James, and there is a theory which explains that this was due to a "guilt-complex" as he as a young man took part in the war between the States. Rather he had a special interest in all the varieties of the mental experiences.
The author reverted to his old interest in international social relations in his last books such as in "The Ambassadors" (1903), where an American is brought into contact with French traditions of the richest texture, and the chief protagonist is the reflector of the situation and the leading actor at the same time.
"The Golden Bowl" (1905) is the most mellow and exquisitely sensitive of his books as many devotees of James consider.
The change from the Victorian to the modern novel is characterised by the weakening of traditional values with the consequence that the novelists came to depend more and more upon his own individual experiences rather than to rely on truths based on social conventions. Thus, James was confident in the stability and enduring value of his world, the personal sense of truth replaces the formulas of a civilisation, and the quest of objectivity ends in James and his successors in complete subjectivity.
James expounded the principles of the art of fiction with the following words:
² The reader is required to focus his attention not upon the mere, "fable" but, increasingly, upon the manner of presentation and the point of view² . The effort is to have the author as a separate individuality, cease to exist and to impart to the reader the illusion of being present at the moment of the action. Regarding introduction, James substituted a gradual unfolding of characters by means of a multitude of fine touches. Occasionally he preferred the fitting together of parts of a tale known fragmentarily to various witnesses.
James seems always to be demanding of his reader not that he listen
to what is being told but that he observe with unflagging attention how
it is being told. He turned the course of the novel into new directions.
His influence was remarkable in such successors like Conrad, Mansfield
or Woolf, although with the disappearance of his "world", his theories
became into mere documents in the history of a phase of a European sensibility
remote from today’s actuality.
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SUBJECTIVE OPINIONS ABOUT THE WORK OF HENRY JAMES
Gore Vidal said: ² Nothing in James revealed in him an English man, and neither an American. He was a whole New World, a "terra incognita" which map would last the rest of his days in drawing so that we could see it² .
James Conrad’s opinion about "A Portrait of a Lady", one of the most important novels James wrote was- The profiles appear so clear and the characters so perfect that it seems they are made of stone. Nothing at all. I believe the characters are of flesh and blood, perfectly described. His narrative comes from delicate details. It never pulls us to obscure depths nor in violent brilliances, but it makes us feel truly every detail. One couldn’t ask for more.
From the point of view of a translator, Fernando Jadraque argues that the prose of Henry James is possibly the most complex one written up to now. His extremely long and complicated sentences, his meticulous election of vocables, the forgotten archaisms and rustic vulgarisms which cohabit in the language allowing word games and his special eagerness in caring the musicality of the text make all together a hard work regarding translation although the job is worth bothering.
In chiselled words of Graham Greene, Henry James is only in the history
of novel as Shakespeare in the history of poetry.
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LATE FILMOGRAPHY BASED ON HENRY JAMES’S WORKS
" Washington Square" (1997). Directed by Agnieszka Hollands.
"The Wings of the Dove" (1997). Directed by Ian Softley.
"A portrait of a Lady" (1996). Directed by Jane Champion.
In the last few years Hollywood has created a series of adaptations
from novels of the author. The most fortunate one, according to critics
has been "A Portrait of a Lady", mainly because of the magistral labour
of an Australian woman called Jane Champion, the woman who signed "The
Piano", one of the most sensitive films in the present decade. Therefore
she was capable enough to show the world of the American-English writer
on the screen with absolute dignity.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
A critical history of English literature. David Daiches. London, Secker-Warburg.
History of English literature. Emile Legouits. Dent.
Relatos. Henry James. Catedra, Letras Universales.
Retrato de una dama. Henry James. Seix Barral-biblioteca breve.
Washington Square. Henry James. Alianza editorial.
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SERGIO AULA MONRABAL 1999
NARRATIVA I