2020-05-11
126John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California, and from his early youth tried his hand at different jobs working on ranches, on sugar beet farms, as a carpenter and as a labourer. But it doesn’t mean that he wasn’t an educated person, actually John went to high school and then to Stanford University in between various jobs. Besides, he was an athlete and a nice sportsman in general, and he was respected by his schoolmates who elected him a president of his class. While working John Steinbeck learned to know the poor, in particular the migrant farm workers, American and Mexican and he started to write from their point of view.
Though Steinbeck was a contemporary of Sinclair Lewis and Scott Fitzgerald he seemed to be from a different world – the world of the Great Depression.
His first published novel “Cup of Gold” (1929) was a historical romance, followed by a book of stories “The Pastures of Heaven” (1932) and a novel “To a God Unknown” (1933) that tell of the life of Californian farmers. “Tortilla Flat” (1935) won Steinbeck popular attention with its humorous description of the life of the joyful town of Monterey. “In Dubious Battle” (1936) the story of a strike of migratory fruit pickers, was the first of his novels concerned with the living conditions of the people deprived of home and work. Then followed “Of Mice and Men” (1937), a touching and popular tale of two farmhands, migrants, who walk along the roads of the USA in search of work and whose fate is that of thousands of others. Steinbeck portrayed their odd friendship with great sympathy and undertaking. By the way, later this work has been made into an equally successful play and then into movie.
John Steinbeck’s great success came in 1939 with “The Grapesof Wrath”. This is the saga of a family of Oklahoma farmers named Joad who are driven by drought to migrate to California to seek work because they lost their farm during the Depression. Family members suffer conditions of oppression and exploitation by rich landowners. Yet somehow Ma Joad, the head of the farm, always manages to hold the family together. The book gives the feeling which Steinbeck wanted to instill – that the poor can endure by helping one another, and perhaps also that they can export to help from anyone else. In the novel “The Grapes of Wrath” John Steinbeck managed to depict the great economic crisis in the USA and subsequent depression brilliantly. In 1940 he was awarded Pulitzer Prize for this work. During the World War II John Steinbeck published “The Moon is Down” (1942) which deals with the occupation of the little Norwegian town by Germans. His interpretation of the war is recorded in the series of stories reprinted much later in “Once There Was a War” (1959). In 1948 Steinbeck produced “The Pearl”, a story of a Mexican pearl diver; it’s really beautiful in character and description. So Steinbeck became a mature writer and he polished his style. Some others of his novel deal with the problems of ethics and morals “The Wayward Bus” (1947), “East of Eden” (1952). In 1967 Steinbeck published a book of travel “Travels with in Search of America”. In 1963 John Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature.
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Afro-American Literature
During the 1920s Harlem, the black community situated uptown in New York City, sparkled with passion and creativity. The sounds of its black American jazz musicians and composers like Duke Ellington became the stars beloved across the United States and overseas. Harlem had a rich variety of talents. For instance, Ethel Waters, the black actress triumphed on the stage. Actually black poets and writers appeared in the United States. They were the poet Countee Cullen (1903-1946), a native of Harlem, African American fiction writer and poet Jean Toomer (1894-1967), the first African American novelist Richard Wright (1908-1960). His best autobiographical novel “Black Boy” (1945), “Native Sin” (1940) brought him fame. And it goes without saying, one can’t forget the name of the first black woman in American literature Zora Neale Hurston (1903-1960). Her beautiful stories “Tell My Horse” (1938) and her impressive novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (1937) were highly appreciated by all the Americans, the blacks and the whites it doesn’t matter.
And now let’s get down to the 20th century American drama. During the 19th century the melodramas with the democratic figures and clear contrast between good and evil had been popular. Plays about social problems such as slavery also drew large audience; sometimes these plays were adaptations of novels like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (H.B. Stow). Very often American drama imitated English and European theatres. Plays from England or translated from European languages dominated theatre seasons.
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Nevertheless talented dramatists appeared in 20s and 30s in American literature. They were Eugene O’Neil (1888-1953), Thornton Wilder (1897-1975), Clifford Odets (1906-1963).
Eugene O’Neil (1888-1953)
Eugene O’Neil is the greatest playwright that the United States has ever produced. Some would call him one of the dramatists of the world ranking him with the great classics Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw. But he was quite different indeed. He wasn’t, for example, a writer of high poetic expression. An experimentalist, he produced his share of bad plays. But there was something impressive even about his failures. Part of his greatness consists in the fact that he represented a complete break with traditional theatre. O’Neil made the theatre deal with life. He was the first American playwright to do this. In his plays he struggled with the largest problems of contemporary man, such as alcohol, drugs and the like. But when I tell you his biography you will understand the reasons. Let’s start from the very beginning.
Eugene Gladstone O’Neil (1888-1953) was born in 1888 in a New York hotel room in the very heart of the theatre district. His father James O’Neil was an actor whose looks and manners made him popular. He made a fortune traveling around the country performing in a play adapted from Alexandre Duma’s novel “The Count of Monte Cristo”. But the family life wasn’t happy at all. The mother, Ella, a lively fragile figure whom Eugene and his father adored was ill, she took drugs. Besides, and elder brother of Eugene, Jamie, was an alcoholic. Eugene loved his parents, his only brother, but actually he as well as his father suffered greatly all the life. Later Eugene O’Neil described his childhood like this: “...Traveling about from town to town – father performing, brother drinking, mother drugs and failing cures – a horrible boyhood”.
The only home Eugene O’Neil knew in his youth was a large house in New York, Connecticut, which his father had purchased for the family. O’Neil called it “Monte Cristo Cottage”. It stood near the sea and was quite handsome in new London, at that time a popular resort. Eugene spent his vacations there. He was in place, but he wasn’t happy. He missed his parents. Living with parents, he was not happy again, he missed peace in “Monte Cristo Cottage”.
As a result, at the age of 18 Eugene fell under the influence of his drinking brother and began drinking himself. His father begged him to give up drinking, his father believed in his son. And he turned out to be right.
The years between 1907 and 1916 were the most crucial in his life, years of suffering, searching, despair, conflict, but also years of growth. During this period Eugene O’Neil married, became a father of a son, was divorced, went on a gold expedition to Honduras, spent two years at sea as a merchant sailor. The experience of that time, the strange islands, the exotic characters, the wide variety of life he met – he used throughout his working career. Eugene O’Neil studied at Princeton College and in 1912 he started working as a reporter for the New London Telegraph. And that very year he discovered that he had tuberculosis. He was sent to sanatorium in Wallingford, Connecticut, where at 24 he sat down to consider his life. His stay in the sanatorium was highly significant for his development as a playwright. Over a period 1912-1913 he wrote both long plays and eleven one-act plays. His father supported him greatly. James O’Neil’s plan was to save Eugene from the fate of his alcoholic brother. It was his father who encouraged him to enter Harvard University, to learn drama conducted by John Baker. Eugene O’Neil was determined to write plays that were not artificial but true to life. He helped to bring reality to the theatre. But he didn’t start working immediately. Again for some period of time he was in touch with undesirable companies and drinking. In spring 1916 under the influence of his father he gave up drinking forever. Eugene O’Neil left for Provincetown, Massachusetts and in that village he started his life anew. There his plays were first performed, beginning with “Bound east for Cardiff”. Eugene O’Neil and his company offered the plays of sharp realism for the first time. It was like a revolution in American theatre. His next plays were about his years of wandering, his journeys to strange lands.
In 1920 he produced the play “Beyond the Horizon” and he won Pulitzer Prize. Eugene O’Neil became famous. His father was really happy. In 1921 for the play “Anna Cristie” he again received Pulitzer Prize.
One of the most intense plays he ever wrote was “Desire under the Elms”. Eugene O’Neil sets a classic conflict in rural New England with strict morality and hardness of life. The tragedy involves the young third wife of a Bible-reading farmer and his son by his second wife.
The next play “Emperor Jones” deals with the Caribbean dictator. Imagination and reality are mixed together in it. In other plays, such as “Great God Brown” he touched upon profound social problems in American life. But to his mind, not people but fate or evil (or lost God) are to blame.
In 1924 Eugene O’Neil bought a large estate in Ridgefield in Connecticut where he lived for a couple of years and then left for Bermuda. There he fell in love with Carlotta Monterey and they moved to Europe.
After traveling about Europe with his wife he built a house in Georgia and then in San Francisco. Meantime, three new plays of his appeared on Broadway: his only comedy among them “Ah, Wilderness”.
In 1936 O’Neil was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, the first American playwright to be so honoured. In ten years Eugene O’Neil began to suffer from Parkinson’s Disease. Eugene O’Neil died in 1953.
After his death O’Neil’s second career emerged. His wife published his plays which he kept utill his death. In 1958 “Long Day’s Journey Into Night”, an autobiographical play, “A Moon for the Misbegotten” (1958), “A Touch of the Poet” (1962), and later in 1960s “Hughie”. Of all the later plays, two are superb: “Long Day’s...” and “Hughie”. Both deal with his family: the first with the father, mother and two boys; the second, with alcoholic brother Jamie. Scott Fitzgerald called them “the wise and tragic sense of life”. The last plays of Eugene O’Neil proved that he is the great figure of American theatre indeed.
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Poetry between the Wars
It goes without saying, in many ways, the first half of the 20th century was an age of prose. Nevertheless serious poetry continued to be written. The most widely accepted date for making a poetic renaissance in the United States as the beginning of modem American poetry is 1912, the year “Poetry”, a Magazine of Verse, was founded by Harriet Monroe and a group of subscribers. The first issue of the magazine started its purpose: “to give to poetry her own place, her own voice”.
A common attitude among the new poets was one of rebellion against Victorian poetry, again the conventional poetic techniques. The large wave of modernism gradually emerged both in Europe and the United States. Experimentation was common. Poetry of that period was without punctuation, capital letters, without phrase, epigram, coherence, logic and consistency. American poetry became more intellectual and more related to real life situation. Most of the poets fought for the recognition of free verse. Among them were the poets William Carlos Williams, Carl Sandburg and Wallace Stevens. Gradually free verse won acceptance, but after a period during which it was used increasingly, it began to decline in popularity. By 1941 many leading poets considered it rather old-fashioned. Nevertheless, free verse had important effects, for it offered new insights about possible variation in verse forms. Even such a classical poet as Robert Frost was not against verification.
“Poetry”, the magazine printed a great number of experimental poems. Young talented poets wrote for the magazine. They were Langston Hughes, Archibald McLeish and others. By the outbreak of World War II there appeared the nucleus of truly excellent poets. The poets who experimented in form were Ezra Pound (1885- 1972), Thomas Stearns Eliot (1888-1965), Robert Frost (1874-1963).
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Ezra Pound was one of the most influential poets of the 20th century. From 1908 to 1920 he resided in London where he associated with many writers. He was a link between the United States and Britain acting as contributing editor to Harriet Monroe’s important Chicago magazine “Poetry” and spearheading the new school of poetry known as Imagism. After Imagism he championed various poetic approaches Pound’s 1914 anthology of 10 poets “Des Imagister” offered examples of Imagist poetry by outstanding poets including William Carlos Williams, Hilda Doolittle and Ammy Lowel. His life-work was “The Cantos” which he wrote and published until his death. Pound’s poetry is best known for its clear visual images, fresh rhythms, intelligent, unusual lines such as:
“The apparition of these facts in the crowd;
Petals on a wet black bough.”
Thomas StearnsEliot (1885-1965)
Thomas Stearns Eliot was born in St. Louis, Missouri, to a well-to-do family with roots in the north-eastern United States. He received the best education of any major American writers of his generation at Harvard College, the Sorbonne and Merton College of Oxford University. He studied Sanskrit and Oriental Philosophy which influenced his poetry. Like his friend Pound, he went to England early and became a towering figure in the literary world there. One of the most respected poets of his day his modernist, seemingly illogical or abstract poetry had revolutionary impact. He also wrote influential essays and dramas, and championed the importance of literary and social tradition for the modern poet. Thomas S. Eliot is famous for such poems as “The love Song of Alfred Prufrock” (1915), “The Wasteland” (1922), “The Hollow Men” (1925), “Ask-Wednesday” (1930), “Four Quarters” (1943). His poetry influenced generations.
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Robert Frost (1874-1963)
Robert Lee Frost was born in California, San Francisco, but raised on a farm in the north-eastern United Stated until the age of 10. In fact, he liked farming very much, but like many other writers he had a brief brush with college and then supported himself by various means, ranging from shoe-making to editing a country newspaper. Most of all he liked to write, but could not support himself by writing. He was in his late 30s when he moved to England like Eliot and Pound where he issued his first book and found an appreciation for his work he had not found in America. His first book of poems “A Boy’s Will” was published in 1913. At the outbreak of the World War I Frost went back to farming in New Hampshire. Although he made many journeys and frequent visits elsewhere he considered to farm his home and its activities remained the focus of his poetry. He wrote of traditional farm life appealing to a nostalgia for the old days. His subjects are universal – apple picking, stone walls, fences, country roads. Frost’s verses became part of a great tradition, shaped by Roman poet Vergil – poetry about farming.
Like many poets of his time Robert Frost sometimes wrote in blank verse. But actually he used rhyme much more frequently and that appealed to the general audience.
Robert Frost continued to publish line poetry for fifty years. He reached the height of his popularity after World War II. If America had a national poet, it was Frost. He was chosen to read one of his poems at the inauguration of the late President John F. Kennedy, the first poet ever so honoured. Robert Frost’s works are often deceptively simple, but they suggest a deeper meaning (“Fire and Ice”, “Acquainted with the Night”).
