Theodore Dreiser’s novel “An American tragedy”
MINISTRY OF HIGHER AND SECONDARY SPECIAL EDUCATION
OF THE REPUBLIC OF UZBEKISTAN
GULISTAN STATE UNIVERSITY
"Theodore Dreiser’s novel «An American tragedy», its translation into Uzbek and Russian"
Gulistan 2006
1. Theodore Dreiser
1.1 Some notes on Theodore Dreiser’s literary activity
The writer provides a third approach to this all absorbing social-biological problem of Clyde Griffiths is totally lacking in either the artistic gifts (of Witla) or the strong personality of Cowper wood. He is more like Carrie and Jennie in that his attitude toward life is passive; but he lacks their inner poise. From start to finish of his short career he is a victim of the social and biological forces which operate upon him. His instinct for fulfillment is not only thwarted by the forces without himself; his inner weakness makes even the development of a Carrie or a Jennie impossible. Thus, by choosing for his central character a boy who had practically no strength within himself through which mastery could be achieved, Dreiser in this novel throws all his emphasis on those forces of biological and social necessity which had shaped the careers of his stronger characters in spite of their protests. But by removing the only opposition that the individual can supply, the force of his own will for mastery, Dreiser here descends to the lowest possible plane of pure mechanistic determinism. The scene of the downing of Roberta Alden is carefully planned in order to remove the factor of will as an instrument. Clyde plots his act with the greatest care and carries it to its climax with apparently self-directed intention. But his hesitancy at the final moment transforms the murder into an accident, and his swimming away makes his act passive. The description of this story as a «tragedy» is almost ironic, even though Dreiser probably intended no irony. For the Fate of classical tragedy there were now sub>stituted the necessities of social and biological mechanisms. But result is less tragic, in the classical sense, than are almost any other of Dreiser’s novels because the opposition of man to his destiny, in whatever terms, is not even provisional. To raise necessity to the level of tragedy there must be at least the illusion of possible mastery. In Carrie and Jennie and Cowper wood this illusion is present; in Witla and Clyde it is not. The unknown creative force in life, The force that drove Cowper wood to the heights of power, that tore the soul of Eugene Wilta, that sent Clyde to the electric chair is now revealed as universal love.
An American Tragedy was written about a man's life. If you read this book you can learn that you should make your general behaviors better. This story was based on his general behaviors. It was written about from his childhood to his death. Of course, he had experiences of sympathy to his family, bad behaviors, loving someone and the atonement. This book was very interesting on human living. You will be able to enjoy reading it. Because I think that you have seen people like him. If you not so, at least you have had to hear about them like him. This book consists of three sections. First section explained his poor childhood and what he was as a young man: As his family was very poor they earned living by singing in the street. Then he longed for being rich. He had shown bad behavior. He also had loved a girl for the first time. Second section accounted for his growth to adulthood and love to some girls: For his first love he had the heart which was very pure. But he was getting used to love girls. For that reason he could even love, two girls at the same time. So, he had not only made many good memories with them in love but also so many accidents with them. Third section was written about his atonement: he was arrested for his girl-friend's death by officer. I think that anyone must has shown bad behaviors in the past. For example, telling a lie, hurting a person and deceiving one. Considering to this story, he was very loose, as it were, he did not have distinctions. The reason was why he became very crazy to separate her and he atoned for his crime of killing her. I think that if he had had distinctions he would have not committed a murder. Shortly, if his regular behaviors were better such a happening would have surely never occurred. When you read this book you will look at your regular behaviors over again. So, if you find something wrong you should try to change the parts of your thoughts. You will make yourself better. That is why I think you should read this book.
In minor characters, Dreiser reveals the plight of the individual in American society; but that society itself is not static. The span of years encompassed in his novels and short stories coincides with a period of tremendous social change in America. «The Financier» opens before the Civil War. In it, as in «Sister Carrie», The «Cenius», and other novels dealing with an alder form of American society, success comes early to those who use what abilities they have. There is no contradiction between their careers and their inner natures, because society itself is plastic. But Clyde and the younger generation in «The Bulwark» are their dialectic opposites. Clyde is the most pathetic failure in Dreiser even more so than Hurstwood, Carrie’s second lover. In order to get ahead, he has to pretend, to tell social lies, and to act deceitfully. In his time the path of opportunity is no longer open, there have been alterations in the American Dream. In the early works, this dream operates as a motivation to rise on the basis of one’s talants, energies, and capacities; in the later, the dream becomes one of success by marriage in order to have a life of leisure and enjoyment. Clyde is an ambitious youth in an America more stratified than that of Cowper wood and Witla. Thus Dreiser not only reveals the meaning of American social ideals in his own lifetime and during the period immediately preceding his birth; his works also mirror the changes in those ideals, and the change in the social structure of Americans life.
1.2 The place of «An American tragedy» in Theodore Dreiser works
Dreiser’s methods of characterization are consistent with these attitudes and social revelations. Just as he does not conceive the individual as individual, so his characterizations are not mere representations at atomized men and women straggling in the American society of their time. They appear in their social roles, and their natures as well as their actions are involved in the functions which they perform in society. Carrie’s first lover, Drout, is one of the most successful and attractive of Dreiser’s minor characters. He is jolly, genial, superficial, yet he is strikingly different from the salesmen of, for example, Sinclair Lewis. Drogue does not sub>ordinate himself to the «fetish of commodities»; a successful salesman, he is concerned with a life of pleasure, he feels secure in his world. He appears in a social role which is an integral feature of his «individuality», similarly. Hurst wood has the charm, the savoir-faire, the sophistication of the professional major-domo in a high-class saloon, concerned with meeting important personages, when he loses this position, he lasses also the personality that goes with it. His character is social rather than individual, and his defeat is that of a man who has lost his function and place in society. The tragedy in Dreiser’s novels is social tragedy. His characters do not merely represent themselves; they speak for their classes and their occupations. «An American Tragedy» would remain a tragic work even if Clyde and Roberta had not died; but it is tragic in a new sense. In Dreiser, the old terms of art are reset by the social thinking of his day. He wrote what he knew what he was. His many colloquialisms were part of the coinage of his time, and his sentimental and romantic passages were written in the language of the educational system and the popular of his formative years. In his style, as in his material, he was a child of his time, of his class. Self-educated, a type or model of the artist of plebeian origin in America, his language, like his sub>ject matter, is not marked by internal inconsistencies. As a style, in the formal sense, it never developed at all, and he frequently permitted his novels to be revised by others before publication.
There are many passages in these novels that rise to high levels of passionate writing. In Dreiser the sub>ject matter is always more important that the expression. Because he reveals the very nerves of American society he has exerted a more profound, a more lasting influence than any other novelist on twentieth century realistic fiction in America. Several generations of writers are already his debtors. His influence is discoverable in a seriousness of approach to the material of American life, in a greater freedom of theme, in the parallelism of ideas and phenomena. Dreiser desorbed the broad patterns of modern American experience; his successors have been more intensive in their treatment. Because he was faithful to his art and made no compromises with the censors and the pudes, his work gives a sense of totality and finality.
1.3 The Aims and task of the papers
American literature is very rich and unlimited. We know it well. Its role in world literature is huge. One of its great representatives is Theodore Dreiser (1871–1945). He is known in Uzbekistan mainly as the author of «Sister Carrie» and «An American Tragedy». Both these nice novels are translated into Uzbek language. The fifth novels was translated from Russian into Uzbek in 1971 by Erkin Nosirov. The first part of «An American Tragedy» was also translated into Uzbek by Erkin Nosirov but it was done in 1976. But these books are not studied in Uzbek literature. While to study these books and their Russian and Uzbek translations have valuable significance not only for Uzbek but for American literature as well. The interrelations between the culture as well as the literature of the Republic of Uzbekistan and America is developing day by day. There are still a lot of things to do in these branches. One of these problems is to study the peculiarities of Theodore Dreiser’s literary activity on the one hand and his works on the other. Fictional translation plays a great role in the development of Uzbek literature as well. Fictional translation has a great importance in the churchmen of our national literature, our social views. We must learn Theodore Dreiser’s depiction methods and it will feel our world views.
In our final graduation paper aims at studying Theodore Dreiser’s creative mastery skill. For this purpose we analyzed Russian Translation of «An American Tragedy» as the Uzbek translator chose for his brave the Russian translation. We must study the translation comparing English-Russian-Uzbek versions.
For fictional translation every author, every text should be carefully selected. When translated any work becomes the spiritual heritage of the people into whose tongue it is transferred as a Russian text we have the translation made by Vershinina and N. Gall. (Some Notes on Theodore Dreiser’s literary activity)
Теодор Драйзер «Американская Трагедия» Часть первая (книга первая и книга вторая) Часть вторая. Оба они печатались по изданию «Художественная литература» Москва, 1978 год, в издательстве «Узбекистан» 1984 года.
Once Sherwood Anderson wrote that Theodore Dreiser’s feet were paving a path, those feet were heavy, cruel feet. They are walking among the steppe of lies and self ling heavy steps paving the path. We must mention that Sherwood Anderson was Theodore Dreier’s follower Theodore Dreiser widened the horizons of American realistic literature, while bourgeois America was always setting bars and hard slaps before him.
Theodore Dreiser left broad and picturesque trays. His literature, his works are quite different from those of other writers. He is brave, he never shattered shivered. He worked hard, he tailed, he hoped, he believed. We try to see such Courageous.
Dreiser not in the original, not in Russian, but also in Uzbek too.
On writing our final graduation papers we have the following aims and tasks:
To speak about American literature in Connection with Theodore Dreiser’s literary activity.
To enlighten specific features of Theodore Dreiser in connection with the creation of «An American Tragedy».
To talk about «An American Tragedy» not only in Theodore Dreiser or in American but both in the world and Uzbek literatures.
To study the characters of Clyde Griffith and its reproduction in Uzbek. To see Clyde’s attitudes to Hortense, Roberta and Sondra.
Each of the character takes separately and in connection with the main hero. To study ways and principles of reproductively of every image.
To pay attention to the fact how the characters examined are reflected in the Uzbek language.
To express our point of view about the texts translated.
Americans literature is wide and endless. It’s great role in the development of world literature is also an ocean self evident. One of the greatest representatives of this literature is Theodore Dreiser. His literary activity is not studied specially. Theodore Dreiser as an author of a number of novels holds his strong position in the history of the American literature of the XX century.
Dreiser critical as a great writer social conditions of the society of his time, as namely these social conditions are the bearers of hardships which Clyde was to overcome in order to become a man of his own ideal. The reasons of Clyde’s fall are shown in the book clearly. One of the reasons of his fall should be thought the social surrounding in which he had grown up. But we must hot barged one more truth; «The creator of each man’s or woman’s fate, first of all, he or she only. Clyde became the sacrifice, not a winner in an American society because he had not been brought up in proper way.1 The tragedy should be sought in Clyde first of all, because he could not stop himself in time. He let the life to load him towards his tragedy. He moved forwards happiness without difficulties. He didn’t pay attention, did not take into consideration the proverb «There is no sweet without sweat». He wanted to get the sweat from heaven.
Sometimes we feel sorry for Clyde, but unfortunately we understand that are not right.
The thing that most interested Clyde at first was how, it at all, he was to keep the major portion of all this money he was making for himself. For ever since he had been working and earning money, it had been assumed that he would contribute a fair position of all that he received at least three fourths of the smaller salaries he had received up to this time-toward the upkeep of the home.
Больше всего занимала Клайда мысль, как сохранить для себя львиную долю денег, которые он зарабатывал. С тех пор как он впервые начал работать, установился такой порядок, что большую часть своего заработка, по крайней мере, три четверти Клайду приходилось вкладывать в общее хозяйство.
Клайдни хаммасидан хам топган пулиленинг анга мунчасини кандай килиб узимда олиб колсамикин, деган уй купрок бошни котиради. У иш бошлаганидан бери дастёрлар орасида вужудга келган келишувга кура, пулнинг купрок кисмини, кам деганда туртдан учини умумий харажатга бериш керак эди.
Clyde did not set before himself great aims. His dreams were huge but his acts were on the contrary too small. If he worked properly; if he behaved well himself towards people who surrounded him he would may be, achieved success, but instead of it he wanted to kill two girls with one stone and it is impossible to do it. Clyde’s case should be taken into consideration by Clyde like youth.
«What we mean is that instead of working for good things his starvation burned towards any form of pleasure».
We know that everything ought to be in necessary portion. But Clyde wanted more pleasure. We want the author to centime our thoughts «from the first he listened with all too eager ears to any account of anything that spelled of adventure or pleasure. Not that he approved of these types of adventures».
«…being invited by them to a joy night supper a «blow-out»
His knowledge about adventure was too little before and he tried to seize every hint about the pleasure with great thirst. And the next «blow-out» was to take place at Frissel’s. Clyde looked forward to it with interest, with anxiety.
The aim of the author is given by Russian and Uzbek translators well. They read Dreiser truly. The main hero’s intentions are reproduced both in Russian and Uzbek translations adequately. Dreiser’s realism probably finds its roots in his drifting childhood and in the poverty of his family background his father was a ruined and brooding man. These experiences had their effects on his brothers and sisters: one of his brothers was imprisoned for forgery (подлог, подделывание, фальшивые деньги), one of his sisters had an illegitimate child and was east out by the family. As a reaction, Dreiser lauded for money, success, and power and developed a fatalistic vision of life; men are not responsible for their actions of feelings, but are determined by the saltine in which they grow up and by biological factors which leave then powerless to resist temptations and impulses. In his own words, they are «more chemists», «helpless in the clutch of relentless: неумолимый, неослабевающий, безжалостный, непреклонный, fate». His reading of Nietzsche, Darwin, Spencer, Thomas Hurley and Machiavelli reinforced this determinism and tinged it with cynicism. As he wrote, «success is what counts in the world, and it is little mother how success is won.»
Dreiser’s aim was to show life as it was, its poverty and sordidness, its vice and misery. He was fascinated by cities, the way they could make and unmake a man, the wealth of experiences they could provide hutted, her naturalism was much influenced by the work of Balzac. He also attacked the hypocrisy he saw everywhere and debunked the American myth, believing that work and good morals do not necessarily lead to success. Towards the end of his life Dreiser turned to political commitment and joined the Communist party. Dreiser’s first novel, «Sister Carrie», is the story of the successful ascent of an actress, paralleled by the downfall of her lover, Hurstwood, who had tricked her into an illegal marriage. The book shocked its American readers who could not find any morality in it and who did not accept that Carrie should go unpunished. «The Trilogy of Desire» related the soaring career of an unscrupulous and ruthless magnate. An American Tragedy was inspired by a true murder case. Driven by his ambition and eager to marry into opulent society, Clyde Griffiths plans the death of his pregnant girlfriend and is executed at the end of the novel, even though she probably dies accidentally. Here again, the author does not take sides, does not try to justify or to condemn the ultimate fate of Griffiths.
Though Dreiser’s prose is often ponderous, repetitive and full of clichés, he nonetheless succeeds in painting a simple and powerful, if sometimes brutal, portrait of his time.
Theodore Dreiser wrote on the city: The failure of an individual is as characteristic of the city, and of life as a whole. Nature is so grim. The city, which represents it so effectively, is also so grim. It does not care at all. It is not conscious. The passing of so small an organism at that of a man or woman is nothing to it. Beside a star or a great force at any kind the beginning or end of a little body is so ridiculous and trivial, that it is almost like that of an insect or a warm. And yet to the individual who is thus ground between the upper and the nether millstone of circumstance, the indifference of the city, and of the world and of life, comes as a terrible revelation. He learns that one way really die of starvation in a great city full of wealth, full of power, in a way, full of sympathy (misdirected, perhaps). The houses with which the streets are lined may be full of the comfort which attaches to happiness: the stores and offices crowded with those who are industriously bettering their fortune. On every hand are piled up the evidences of wealth great structures, well stocked stores, energetic factories, and the masses of material for sale, which can only be had for a price, and yet you may die.
(«The Man on the Sidewall,» in Bohemian, XVII, October 1909)
Theodore Dreiser once wrote on his art: The sum and sub>stance of literary as well as social morality may be oppressed in three words tell the truth. It matters not how the tongues of the critics may wag if the voices of a partially developed and highly conventionalized society may complain, the business of the author, as well as of other workers upon this earth, is to say what he knows to be true, and, having said as much, to abide the result with patience.
Truth is what is; and the seeing of what is, the realization of truth. To express what we see housel and without sub>terfuge (увертка, отговорка): this is morality as well as art.
What the so-called judges of the truth or morality are really inveighing against most of the time is not the discussion of were sexual lewdness, (кокетливый, распутный, непристойный) for no work with that as a basis could possibly succeed, but the disturbing and destroying of their own little theories concerning life, which in some cases may be nothing more than a quite acceptance of things as they are without any regard to the well being of the future. Work for them is made up of a variety of interesting but immutable forms and any attempt either to picture any of the wretched results of modern social conditions or to assail the critical defenders of the same is naturally booked upon with contempt or aversion.
It is true that the rallying cry of the critics against so called immoral virtue of the reader must be preserved: but this has become a house of refuge to which every form of social injustice hurries for protection.
The influence of intellectual ignorance and physical and moral greed upon personal virtue produces the chief tragedies of the age, and yet the objection to the discussion of the sex question is so great as to almost prevent the handling of the theme literary. Immoral! Immoral! Under this cloak hide the vices of wealth as well as the vast unspoken blackness of poverty and ignorance: and between them must walk the little novelist, choosing neither truth nor beauty, but some half-conceived phrase of life that bears no honest relationship to either the whole of nature or to man.
The impossibility of any such theory of literature having weight with the true artist must be apparent to every clear reasoning mind. Life is not made up of any one phase or condition of being nor can man’s interest possibly be so confined.
The extent of all reality is the realm of the author’s pen, and a true picture of life, honestly and reverentially set down, is both moral and artistic whether if offends the conventions or not.
Dreiser, DRY seer, Theodore (1871–1946), ranks as the foremost American writer in the naturalism movement (a pessimistic form of realism) Dreiser’s characters are victims of apparently meaningless incidents that result in pressures they can neither control nor understand. He based such novels as «Sister Carrie» and «An American Tragedy» on events from real life. He condemned not his villains, but repressive, hypocritical society that produced them. Dreiser’s style lacks grace, but his best stories are powerful and sobering.
Theodore Dreiser grew up in a large, poor family in Terre Haute, Indiana.
Several of his brothers and sisters would later rescue Dreiser at low points in his career – two of his protagonists were based on sisters, and his brother, Paul, sent Dreiser to a resort when he was broke. A high school teacher paid to send him to Indiana University for one year, but Dreiser did not fit in, and he left college to become a reporter. News papering took him to Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and New York City, where he gathered his first observations of the American cities that would play large roles in his upcoming novels.
Dreiser's novels are prime examples of literary naturalism, with characters driven by selfish motives and influenced by the privileges and limitations of social class. He was often criticized for telling amoral tales that could outrage readers or convince them that bad decisions would be rewarded. Among his most significant influences are Herbert Spencer and Honore de Balzac. Dreiser was a finalist for the Nobel Prize in 1930; when Sinclair Lewis won, he acknowledged Dreiser in his speech.
His first novel, «Sister Carrie,» based on the misadventures of his own sister, sold very poorly at first, and Dreiser lashed out against the publisher, Doubleday Page. Dreiser despaired of ever succeeding as a writer and resigned himself to life as a laborer in the Brooklyn slums. During these dark days Dreiser wrote a journal; although he intended it for personal use only, it was discovered and published in 1983. When his brother, a composer, found out about Dreiser's bad luck, he plucked him out of his tenement and, much to Mrs. Dreiser's relief, sent him to a resort for the wealthy. Dreiser regained his courage and wrote «Jennie Gerhardt,» based on the life of another sister. «Jennie» was a hit, and led readers to rediscover «Sister Carrie.» Just as his writing career was taking off, Dreiser separated from his first wife, Sara Osborne «Jug» White. His books after this point convey his philosophy more clearly, because Dreiser had always depended on the suggestions and criticism of Jug (who was also a reporter) and other friends. He married once more, in 1944, the year before he died.
Another of Dreiser's best-known novels is «An American Tragedy» (1925), which was adapted for the screen in 1951. «American Tragedy» is the story of a man driven to commit murder by the desire for financial gain, which he believes is the central part of the American dream. Clyde Griffiths wants to kill his poor, pregnant lover so he can marry his rich, beautiful lover. When the poor woman dies accidentally, Clyde's plot comes to light, and a jury finds him guilty of murder. Dreiser was born in Terne Haute Ind. His older brother was Paul Dreiser who wrote the song «On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away», Dreiser’s family was very poor, and he soon saw a profound difference between the promise and the reality of American life. This realization was a major source of Dreier’s discontent and an important influence on his works. Dreiser attended Indiana University for a year. In the 1890’s he worked as a newspaperman in Chicago and st. Louse, by 1907, he was the successful editor of the very sort of woman’s magazine whose sentimentality and super facility he despised. Dreiser’s first novel, «Sister Carrie», was partly based on the experiences of one of his sisters. The novelist Frank Norris, on editor at Doubleday, Page, and Co., enthusiastically accepted the manuscript for publication. But Nettle Doubleday, wife of the president of the company, was chocked by the manuscript’s amorality, and the publisher tried to cancel the contract to publish the book. Dreiser insisted the agreement be honored. Doubleday printed the book in 1900, but did not advertise or distribute in. The novel became generally available in 1912, after another publisher is sued it. «Sister Carry» is the story of Carries Muber, a poor girl alone in Chicago. She likes with a traveling salesman and then runs off to New York with George Hurstwood a prosperous married man. Hurstwood’s fortunes decline, and he becomes a bum and commits suicide. Carrie find’s success, but not happiness, as an actress. Dreiser wrote «Jennie Gerhardt» (1911y) another novel of desire and fate. However, his reputation was assured with the publication of «The Financier» (1912), the most purely naturalistic of his works. It is the story of an industrial tycoon who claws his way to great power; Dreiser intended the novel as the beginning of a «Trilogy of Desire». But the second volume, «The Titan» (1914) was a failure, and the third volume. «The Stoic», was not published until two years after his death.
«An American Tragedy» (1925) is possibly the most impressive of Dreiser’s books. It concerns a weak young man who in executed for the murder o f his pregnant girl friend, again Dreier did not condemn his villain but the society that produced and destroyed him.
After having denounced Dreiser’s «barbaric naturalism» in 1915, he had the courage in 1925 to accept «An American Tragedy» as «the worst written great novel in the world» – but none the less great for its moral integrity and it’s final mastery of the novel form. With «The Genius» he bucked the censorship of the press and again held back his novels except for «An American Tragedy» (1925), the story of a boy who, like Carrie and Jennie, failed to come to workable terms with American society.
His father was an immigrant German, is mother the daughter of German parents who belonged to a small religious sect in a farming region of Pennsylvania. Dreiser has described his father as a fanatically religious man, honest, hard – working, plodding. He might have been an American success on a small scale but was devoid of will and too persistently concerned with trying to avoid the fires of a theological hell. In Dreiser’s writing he emerges as a strangely appealing and rather pathetic figure.
For his mother, Dreiser felt a lifelong devotion. His description of her in Dawn reveals her as a deeply emotional woman who gave to her large family maternal affection, warmth, and security, but for her, his life might have been as ineffectual as that of some of his own characters. In boyhood he was shy, eager, timid, brooding, bewildered, and slow to develop. He has himself confessed how important his mother’s love and some measure of security were to him as well as to his brothers and sister.
His childhood and youth were not happy. His father was almost continually poor, and this family moved constantly from house to house, from one Indiana community to another; they spent one period on the crowded west side of Chicago. Besides poverty, the usually faced social ostracism. With each move, their hopes of economic and of social betterment reawakened, only to be disappointed, and again the Dreiser’s children were rejected by their fellows. Theodore’s suffering was further aggravated, when he passed the age of poverty, by severe fear of castration and impotence, which intensified his shyness and coursed sexual panic in the presence of girls. These difficulties, with the rigid conceptions of hell taught in the Catholic parochial school and reinforced by his father, played their part in his relative slowness of mental development. He was an inconsistent pupil, responding well only when his teachers took a sympathetic interest in him a brooding, groping boy and youth who had to learn everything for himself.
The brooding and groping style which he often used in his novels was a reflection of these inner struggles, and they provided him with one of the chief motives of his fiction; the conflict between what was then loosely termed «instinct» by the psychologists, and convention. The biological needs of his characters lead them to actions, particularly in love affairs, which result in infringements on the social code. His autobiographical writings tell us that he experienced this conflict constantly and poignantly in his own early life. The bewilderments of his teenage period of drifting from job to job he worked in a Chicago restaurant, drove for a laundry, collected for an easy payment furniture company, helped in a real estate, office, in the stockroom of whole sake hardware company, and soon suggest the later fictional wanderings of Clyde Griffiths in «An American Tragedy». His characters usually receive their education in life itself, in a real and savage struggle for place, money, and social prestige, rather than in schools.
Dreiser was educated, like his characters, not so much by his schooling as by hi repeated moves with their resulting contrasts of urban and rural life. From the farm lands and the many towns of Indiana, he came to know the vigorous young city of Chicago in the seventies and eighties. The moral and social consequences of the triumph of town over country were impressed upon him. In his early stories his characters, whenever they move to the city, find it an exciting adventure. The growth of cities is an integral motif of all his studies of youth. The decade of the nineties, when Dreiser was a youth in Chicago, was a crucial period in its history. By the time of the world’s fair it was beginning to play an increasingly important role in national life, especially in finance and politics. No wonder he wrote, in Newspaper Days.
To me Chicago at this time seemed with a peculiarly human or realistic atmosphere. It is given to some cities, as to some lands, to suggest romance, and to me Chicago did that hourly. It sang, I thought, and …I was singing with it.
There he saw the contrasts of grandeur and misery which he was later to describe so movingly; there his dreams and hopeless of love, success, knowledge, prestige was born. It seemed to be a world city in the mating, a center of gravity for the American Success Dream.
Dreiser as a boy absorbed this dream of social power and easy money as if by osmosis, at the some time that he saw poverty, failure, ignorance, and defeat all about him, even in his own family. Attending popular lectures and reading Eugene Field, he determined to understand it and to report it faithfully; to become a newspaperman. He inescapably was that Norris, Crane, and Carlen envisioned the modern American to be.
There has been much debate among the critics as to whether Dreiser was a «naturalist» after the manner of Zola. Only when it serves to confine creative genius within a formula must it be rejected, for Dreiser belonged to no school, studied no sources with intent to obey, knew little of literary movements at home or abroad.
He was an objective realist who gathered his facts impersonally, but he was more. He lived in his dreams, his hopes, his brooding. For this reason, he absorbed both the realistic method and the new conceptions of the universe from science into his thought and his writing. His views are loose in formulation, and inconsistent. For example, his theory of the relativity of morals is as inconsistent as it is challenging. But such views of man and native as he had, however ill formed, are essential parts of his writing; without them, his works would be entirely different. They helped to deeper his imagination; they contributed toward the feeling of awe he creates concerning the condition of man, they served him in his very construction of theme, of story, of character. He was an artist, not a philosopher.
The absence of money means defeat; it means the back of education, of beauty. It means that one is a victim, like Clyde Griffiths, of the rich, of one’s relationships with others. Dreiser directly described the pitilessness and the hierarchical character of capitalistic society by showing that just as the poor are the victims of the rich, the weak of the strong, so are women, inferior to men, usually victims. American tragedy, like all tragedy, is the consequence of weakness. The impulses, the passions of man pitilessly drive him to satisfy himself; the force of social circumstance, the force nature of the social struggle, toward him and produce both social and biological tragedy.
2. The main part
2.1 Clyde Griffith’s character and its reflection
We meet a little band of six, a man of about fifty, shout, stout, with bushy hair protruding from under a round black felt hat, a most unimportant, looking person, who carried a small portable organ as in customarily used by street preambles and singers. And with him a woman perhaps five years his junior, taller, not so broad, bur solid of frame and vigorous, very plain in face and dress, and yet not homely, leading with one hand a small boy of seven and in the other carrying a Bible and several hymn books. With these three, but walking independently behind, was a girl of fifteen a boy of twelve and another girl of nine, all following obediently, but not too, enthusiastically in the wake of the others.
It was not, yet with a sweet languor about it all.
The man the father as he chased to be looked about him with seeming will eye assurance. The third of the family is Hester-the oldest girl, who until now had attempted to appear as unconscious and unaffected as possible, bestowed her rather slim and as yet undeveloped figure. This family was an unimportant looking (невзрачное семейство). The father had rather dubious baritone. Impractical materially inefficient feature of the father, whose weak black eyes and rather flabby but poorly clothed fissure bespoke more of failure than anything else.
At the group the mother alone stood out as having that force and determination which, however blind or erroneous, make for self-preservation, if not success in life… She stood up with an ignorant, yet somehow respectable air all conviction.
A tall and as yet slight fissure, surmounted by an interesting head and face while skin, dark hair he seemed more keenly observant indeed to resent and even to suffer from the position in which he found himself. Plainly pagan rather than religious, life interested him, although as yet he was not fully aware of this. All that coned be truly said of him now was that there was no definite appeal in all this for him. He was too young, his mind much to responsive to pleases of beauty and Theodore Dreiser fought for life and for justice and in these fields he opened new era of a prose and publicist writer. He paved the path for Sinclair Lewis, Sherwood Anderson, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway and others. If he could save some success in his youth he achieved it thanks to his hard looking, he studied in the University of Life. He worked hard for newspapers. Only from 1887 he turned into writing.
The future writer felt that there existed an invisible wall between real life out the society of journalism and literature. He wrote that he became indignant because of the contradictions which existed between what he read and the things which he had experienced. In the books everything was beautiful, quiet. But the real life consisted of hardships; it was rule, low, there even was no hint of the beautiful. Theodore Dreiser chose facts well-known for him. The life described in «An American Tragedy» is very much like Dreiser spent in his youth. This book may be considered to be Dreiser’s the masterpiece, it is rich, and it penetrated deep American life. The events are true to life, there are much dark and light as well, and they are full of contradictions, conflicts, disappointments. True is one of true critics who consider that if even Dreiser’s main heroes hadn’t died. The fact would not b e able to hide the tragedy of the Clyde Griffith like youth. This book the life full of served as a mirror put before. Americans and later before the people of all world, because the novel is translated into many languages of the world. The novel may be thought to be the most important, valuable for Dreiser. We feel pettiness according to Clyde. Sometimes we want him to achieve the desired, but unfortunately he is not to cope with the tasks put before him. We sympathies with him, but real life dictates him its own laws and these laws are heavy. Clyde is too passive in An American life one must be very strong willed. We can’t be simple spectator or observer of Clyde’s fate. We are sorry for him when he is sentences to death to an electric chair. We don’t like his behavior; he falls down little by little. He is not eager to help himself, he is not honest. At the some time we understand that the society in which is born is also responsible for his failure. The problem of Clyde like people failure is put not only in «An American Tragedy» but in Dreiser’s other things as well.
The book exposes that the idea as if «American has great opportunities» is not so in reality. Material wealth does not comprise the base of happiness. An individual’s interests are criticized when they are private interests.
The author opposes the characteristic features of a common people from humanistic point of view. We are quoting citing this passage in order to show yare how poor was Clyde Griffith’s childhood. He is from a poor family. He «appeared indeed to resent, and even to suffer from the position in which he found himself», the family was always «hard up», never very well clothed, and deprived of many comforts and pleasures which seemed common enough to others. Hester or Esta the older daughter was called by the family.
Asa Griffiths – the father, was one of those poorly integrated and correlated organisms, the product of an environment and a religions theory, but with no guiding or mental.
Insight of his own, yet sensitive and therefore highly emotional, and without any practical sense whatsoever. Indeed it would be hard to make clear just how life appealed to him, or what the true full of his emotional responses was.
The creator of the novel is interested in Asa Griffiths and his wife because of their relation to Clyde, who was only twelve years old.
2.2 Clyde Griffiths is a typical character of capitalist society
Клайд Гриффитс существенно отличается от героев предыдущихпроизведений писателя своей обыденностью, обычностью, заурядностью. Керри обладала актерским дарованием, Дженни Герхард поражала душевным богатством, Каупервуда писатель даже уподобил Люциферу, у Витлы был талант художника. У Клайда нет талантов Витлы ели Керри, нет изворотливости и силы Каупервуда, нет душевной красоты я частоты Дженни. Он самый обычный и заурядный американский юноша, «средний молодой американец с типично американским взглядом на жизнь». Трагедия Клайда похожа в не похожа на трагедию Витлы или Дженни. Буржуазная Америка растаптывает душевную чистоту Дженни, глумятся над ее самыми сокровенными и искренними чувствами; буржуазная Америка губит талант Витлы; судьба же Клайда трагична именно потому, что он усваивает законы буржуазной Америки и по мере своих сил и возможностей следует ям, и оттого страшнее его трагедия, трагедия простого американца, американская трагедия.
Клайд – само олицетворение обычности, и в этом смысле он так же типичен. Иллюзии и мечты, привитые ему в детстве, определяют дальнейшую судьбу молодого человека, охваченного непреодолимым желанием во что бы то ни стало добиться легкой жизни, В образе Клайда писатель акцентировал неустойчивость, податливость влияниям среды. Повествование строится таким образом, что Клайд все время в центре внимания, и вместе с тем четко видны силы, формирующие его характер. «Одних только разговоров в вестибюле, – пишет Драйзер, – не говоря, уже о сценах в баре, в ресторанах я номерах, было достаточно, чтобы внушить каждому неопытному, и не очень разборчивому существу, будто главное занятие в жизни для всякого, у кого есть кой-какие деньги и положение в обществе, – это ходить в театры, детям посещать стадион, танцевать, кататься в автомобиле, угощать друзей обедами и ездить для развлечения в Нью-Йорк, Европу, Чикаго или Калифорнию».
Так раскрывается социальная обусловленность поведения Клайда, который проникается стремлением попасть в этот мир роскоши и богатства. Эти-мечтания определяю и его отношение к Роберте Олден. Вот размышления Клайда: пусть эта девушка бедна и ей, по несчастью, пришлось стать простой работницей, он все равно был бы очень счастлив с нею, но только при одном условии: чтобы не нужно было жениться. Что касается брака, тут честолюбивый Клайд был словно под гипнозом: он женится на девушке из круга Грифитсов! Брак с богатой девушкой казался Клайду путем к исполнению его сокровенных желаний. Карьера для него дороже тех чувств, которые он испытывал к Роберте, – в его сознании любовь неотделима от пышности, удовольствий, богатства, видного положения в обществе. Так создаются предпосылки для трагедии Клайда и Роберты.
В «Американской трагедии» достигается та удивительная художественная цельность, которая отличает истинные произведения искусства. И заглавие романа, и его композиция, в пейзаж, и авторские отступления, и логика развития характеров, и их психология в «Американской трагедии» раскрывают ответственность американского буржуазного общества за трагедию Клайда Грифитса.
Широта социального замысла «Американской трагедии» выявляется и композиция романа, Драйзер писал о композиции «Американской трагедии» в апреле 1931 года: «Этот роман должен представлять в трех различных социальных и экономических сферах карьеру очень чувствительного, но умственно не очень развитого парня, который обнаруживает, что жизнь его в самом начале затруднена бедностью и низким социальным положением, из которых, повинуясь присущим ему желаниям и служащим побудительной силой, он и пытается вырваться». Разъясняя затею своей мысли, Драйзер отмечает, что первая часть книги была посвящена изображению таких социальных невзгод, какие могут естественно подавить, «держать, и расстроить, а следовательно, и усилить эмоции в желания очень чувствительного парня, плохо приспособленного для великой жизненной борьбы, с которой сталкивается любой юноша.
Часть вторая, по словам Драйзера, была специально предназначена, чтобы показать, что такой темперамент может случайно быть поставлен лицом к лицу с гораздо более удачливым мирон, который разовьет в нем стремление к роскоши в любви, я проследить, как в неравном состязании между бедностью, невежеством великими соблазнами мира он может легко в помимо своей воли оказаться побежденным и даже обвиненный в убийстве, как эта и происходит с Грифитсом.
Часть третья была тщательно спланирована Драйзером таким образом, чтобы продемонстрировать, пак такой слабый человек – сначала пленник своих мечтаний, а потом закона – может легко 'стать жертвой одержимых предрассудками и мстительных провинциальных политиканов, которые, в свою очередь, по причине социальной в религиозной ограниченности никак не могут воспринять смягчающие обстоятельства преступления и поэтому, как отмечает Драйзер, судят его куда более жестоко, чем это могли сделать люди более проницательные и умные.
2.3 Clyde’s attitude towards to
a) Hortense
Итак, первая книга – экспозиция романа – посвящена формированию характера Клайда, вторая – трагической гибели Роберты, третья – гибели Клайда. В основу сюжета положено развитие характера и личности Клайда в его взаимоотношении с обществом. Клайда водит за нос ветреная продавщица Гортензия Бриге. После нескольких встреч Гортензия стала казаться Клайду воплощением всего, что он всегда мечтал найти в девушке. Она была такая живая, гордая, обаятельная и такая хорошенькая. В её глазах казалось ему, плясали огоньки. У неё была необыкновенно соблазнительная манера сжимать и вновь раскрывать губы, равнодушно глядя прямо перед собой, словно вовсе и не думая о Клайде, а его от этого бросало в жар и дрожь. В такие минуты он ощущал слабость, голова шла кругом; по жилам жестко обжигая, пробегали огненные струйки, – это было осознанное желание, мучительное и безысходное.
Развлечения в Канзас-Сити кончаются для Клайда печально, – во время возвращения с вечеринки автомобиль, в котором находились Клайд и его друзья, сбил девочку, а потом, когда напуганные молодые люди пытались скрыться от полиции, произошла автомобильная катастрофа. До смерти перепутанный Клайд бежит из Канзас-Сити, Так заканчивается юность Клайда, который, покинув родительский дом, вступает в самостоятельную жизнь.
b) Roberta Olden
Во второй книге Клайд после мытарств и лишений, которые ему пришлось претерпеть во время странствий по различным городам Америки, попадает под опеку богатого дяди фабриканта. Клайду кажется, что он может, наконец, сделать карьеру. На его пути оказывается Роберта Олден которая работает под его началом и зависит от него, и хотя Роберта отнюдь не относится к числу девушек нестрогих правил, Клайду удается достигнуть того, чего он не смог добиться от многоопытной Гортензии Бриге ни ухаживаниями, ни щедрыми подарками.
Клайд не собирался жениться на Роберте с начала их знакомства. Встреча же с богатой Сандрой Финчли внушила Клайду мысль о возможности вступить в столь желанный для него мир в заставила искать пути отделаться от мешавшей ему. Роберты. Подчеркивая расчетливость Клайда, Драйзер отмечает, что «Роберта больше нравилась ему. Она нежнее, мягче, добрее, не такая ледяная». В то же время Сандра «воплощала и неизмеримо увеличивала в его глазах значение своего круга», и Клайд относился в ней иначе, – «в отличие от того, что он с самого начала испытывал к Роберте, его мысли о Сандре не были чувственными». Если отношение Клайда к Роберте диктовала страсть, то к Сандре его влекли расчет, мысль о богатстве, преклонение перед тем, что он считал высшим светом.
c) Sondra
Удивительная девушка!
Какая красавица!
И как богата, и такое видное положение занимает в обществе!
Мышление Клайда всегда было языческим, чуждым всяких условностей; и теперь он всерьез спрашивал себя, почему бы ему не перенести свое внимание с Роберты на Сондру, раз мечты о ней доставляют ему больше удовольствия. Роберта не должна об этом знать. Она не может прочитать его мысли, не может узнать о том, что с ним происходит, если он сам ей не скажет, а он, разумеется, ничего не собирается говорить. Да и что ту! плохого, если он, бедняк, стремится попасть в высшие круги общества? Ведь бывали случаи, когда такие же бедняки женились на богатых девушках вроде Сондры.
Новая встреча с Сондрой, так внезапно ставшей на его пути, подстегнула его и без того пылкое воображение. Эта безмерно восхищавшая Клайда богиня в своем украшенном позолотел и мишурой храме соблаговолила вспомнить о нем и так открыт и прямо предложила его пригласить. И она сама, несомненно, будет там, мысль эта волновала его безумно.
Страсть к Роберте была убита страстью выбиться в мир богатых.
2.4 The significance of the novel. «An America Tragedy»
Драйзер подчеркивает сходство характеров Клайда в Роберты. Клайд для наивной Роберты олицетворяет мир роскоши я, богатства, «Встретив Клайда, Роберта увлеклась им и притом вообразила, что он принадлежит к некоему высшему обществу. И в душу ей проник тот же яд беспокойного тщеславия, который отравлял и Клайда». Поэтому она так настойчиво добивалась, чтобы Клайд женился на ней, и пошла даже на связь с ним, хотя и считала, что это нехорошо, безнравственно.
Клайд и Роберта не опытны в житейских делах, даже инфантильны, «Клайд по своему характеру, – отмечает Драйвер, – неспособен был когда-либо стать вполне взрослым человеком». Их отношения заканчиваются трагической гибелью Роберты.2
Скрупулезно, как бы под увеличительным стеклом рассматривая все обстоятельства трагедии на озере Большой Выпи, Драйзер мотивирует все поступки, которые совершил Клайд, стремясь избавиться от Роберты.
Клайд читает газетное сообщение о несчастном случае на озере Пасс, где утонули мужчина и девушка, причем тело девушки обнаружили, а тело мужчины не нашли. Далее Драйзер передает ход мысли Клайда, который привел его к роковому выходу! «…итак, он и Роберта плывут в лодке и лодка опрокидывается» и как раз теперь, когда его так терзают все эти ужасные осложнения. Вот и выход! Как просто разрешилась бы эта головоломная, мучительная задача! Однако… стоп!., не спешить. Может ли человек, хотя' бы в мыслях, допустить для себя такой выход из тупика, не совершая преступления в своем сердце – поистине ужасного, чудовищного преступления? Нет, нельзя даже и думать об этом. Это скверно… очень скверно, ужасно! И, однако, если бы – разумеется, нечаянно – несчастье все же случилось? Ведь это был бы конец всем его тревогам из-за Роберты…»
Внешний повод, вызывающий такое смятение в мыслях Клайда, как
будто «не очень значителен, но он ведет за собой цепь событий, завершающихся гибелью Роберты и осуждением Клайда.
Драйзер не стремится превратить Клайда в законченного злодея, негодяя, убийцу и вместе с тем не оправдывает его. Он хочет показать истинных виновников смерти Роберты, показать степень морального падения Клайда, который, впитывая индивидуалистический дух американского буржуазного общества, становится преступником, еще не совершив преступления. Ведь Клайд понимает, что если он избавится от Роберты, утопив ее в озере, то превратится в убийцу. Он колеблется, размышляя о возможных последствиях своего поступка. В Клайде Грифитсе происходит внутренняя борьба, свидетельствующая о его душевном смятении. И «Драйзер выносит приговор не столько Клайду, сколько тем, кто морально подготовил его к преступлению.
«A certain emotionalism and exotic sense of pronouns which characterized him, which he took more from his father than from his mother».
The profession career of Clyde’s parents was the shabby, trivial thing that it appeared to be in the eyes of others. Mrs. Elvira Griffiths was an ignorant farm girl. The one thing that really interested Clyde in connection with his parents was the existence somewhere in the cast in a small city called Lycurgus, near Utica a brother of his father uncle Samuel Griffiths who was rich and could do help Clyde. But here in Kansas City they were living in toe some wretched and hum-drum hand to month state that had always characterized their lives.
But he understood that he had to do everything to live better only himself, nobody could help him but himself. He had a straight, well-cut nose, high white forehead, wavy, glossy, blank hair, eyes that were black and rather melancholy at times.
He envied richer people. He envied young people who were of his age. The example shows that tie Clyde Griffiths too connected family is not fight; on the contrary it is too stock «lightly».
Esta’s going away from the paternal house before him showed that she was probably dissatisfied, just as Clyde was. He was also thinking of going away somewhere himself. Their going away world cause his father and mother misery. At any rate their leaving world not be anything worth. «It was only another something which hinted that things were not right here. Mission work was nothing. All that religious emotion and talk was not so much either.
«It hadn’t saved Esta Evidently, like himself, she didn’t believed so mush in it, either»
«At last Clyde had to girl up his work help in the mission. He saw that his condition might be better if he found another job, meanwhile» he was sixteen and old enough to make his own way, he ought to be getting out of this. And yet he was earning almost nothing not enough to like on, if he were alone and he had not as yet developed sufficient skill or courage to get anything better.
Let’s see the translation of the above cited thoughts in the Russian language.
«Но теперь ему уже шестнадцать лет, он достаточно взрослый, чтобы жить по своему, и должен избавится от такой жизни. Однако он слишком мало зарабатывал недостаточно, чтобы прожить одному, и ему не хватало ещё уменье и смелости для того, чтобы устроиться лучше (стр. 43)3
So he began to look for any opportunity which would supply him with «better» life seeking for a job, he entered the drag store. Interested by his tentative and uncertain manner as well as his deep and rather appealing eyes, and instinctively judging to do, she observed: «Why, Mr. Seear, there, the manager of the store?»
We are interested in this example because we see me other beaters of the main hero’s character. His manner are «factitive and uncertain» «робкий и неуверенный»; His eyes are «deep and appealing» «глубокие и словно
умоляющие глаза»
«Унинг қурқа-писа ва ботилмай турганлигига, шунингдек, чуқур ва илтижоли бокишларига қизикиб қолган кассир жувон иш қидириб юрганлигини сезиб олди».
Магазин бошқарувчиси мистер Синор-ди, – деди у (27 бет)
In Russian the translator used one word – «словно» «as if» concerning. Clyde’s eyes. The word in the Russian sentence is not necessary at all. If the Uzbek translator would have translated it as «гуё» – what would not very nice, as this word is not necessary at all. Because his eyes were «realy», «very» appealing. So he appeared in at an institution as the Green Davidson. One more details Clyde’s characters.
«And as he hurried on about his various errands now, it occurred to him as a final and shrewd and delicious thought that he need not go home on such night as he wished to go to a theatre or anything like that.
He could just stay down town and say he had to work. And that with free meals and good clothes think of that!
And it was «astonishing and entrancing» in this perfectly marvelous-marvelous realm»
И пока он бегал по всяким делам, ему пришло на ум ещё одна лукавая и восхитительная мысль; он может не приходить домой в те вечера, когда захочет пойти в театр или ещё куда – ни будь. Он просто останется в городе, а после скажет дома, что ему пришлось работать.
И к тому же даровать стол и форменную одежда! Подумать только «Все это было так поразительно, так увлекательно» «в этом чудесном, чудесном царстве» (стр. 53–54).4
«У турли-туман ишлар билан югуриб юраркан, хаёлига Яна бита мугамбирона ва ажоиб фикр келиб келди: У театрга ёки бошка бирор жойга бормокчи булган окшомларда уйга келмаслиги хам мумкин, шунчаки шахарда колаверди, кейин эса уйдагиларга ишладим, деб қуя қолди. Хаммадан хам овкат Билан формали кийимнинг текинлигини айтмайсизми? Буни каранг а!
Буларнинг барии нихоятда хайратомиз ва қизикарли», «бу ажойиб ва гароиб оламда» нималарга эриша олишини куриши керак.
Ха, шундай килиш лозим (36 бет.).
Herman Theodore Dreiser, son of German immigrants, was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, on August 27, 1871. He was the ninth in a family of ten children. In 1869, his father's woolen mill was destroyed by fire, and the family remained in poverty and was forced to move numerous times out of financial necessity. Dreiser was a sensitive child, stuttered, and was often humiliated by his family's poverty. All these experiences had a profound effect on his writing. Because he came from a poor family, he developed a preoccupation with wealth and success at an early age. Many of his novels describe the moral decay of people who become obsessed by a desire for wealth. He was educated at various public and parochial schools in Indiana. When he was twelve years old, the family moved briefly to Chicago and Dreiser developed a fascination with the city that lasted his entire life. As a young man, he attended Indiana University, however, he only remained in college for one year, from 1889 to 1890.
For a while, Dreiser drifted from job to job; he worked as a driver for a laundry, in a real estate office, and as a collector for a furniture store. He began his writing career by working for the St. Louis Globe Democrat. He also worked for newspapers in Pittsburgh, Chicago, and New York, where he finally settled in 1894. He was a voracious reader and was influenced by the writings of Poe, Hawthorne, Balzac, Freud and philosopher, Herbert Spencer. He eventually came to view people as helpless victims of indifferent natural forces. In 1898 he married Sara White, a school teacher from Missouri, however, Dreiser found it very difficult to remain faithful to one woman. He had numerous affairs, sometimes several at once. During these years he earned a living as an editor for several magazines for women. He also published accounts of his travels through the United States and abroad. A Traveller at 40 was published in 1931. A Hoosier Holiday was published in 1916; and his articles about Russia, Dreiser Looks at Russia, which were originally published in the New York World, was published in 1928. In 1932 he published Tragic America, in which he applauded the achievements of Russia. This book was followed by America is Worth Saving, published in 1941. Later his writing took him out west where he died in Hollywood, California on December 28, 1945.
American author, outstanding representative of naturalism, whose novels depict real-life sub>jects in a harsh light. Dreiser's novels were held to be amoral, and he battled throughout his career against censorship and popular taste. This started with SISTER CARRIE (1900). It was not until 1981 that the work was published in its original form. Dreiser's principal concern was with the conflict between human needs and the demands of society for material success.
«A woman should some day write the complete philosophy of clothes. No matter how young, it is one of the things she wholly comprehends. There is an indescribably faint line in the matter of man's apparel which somehow divides for her those who are worth glancing at and those who are not. Once an individual has passed this faint line on the way downward he will get no glance from her. There is another line at which the dress of a man will cause her to study her own.» (from Sister Carrie)
Theodore Dreiser was born in Sullivan, Indiana, the ninth of ten children. His parents were poor. In the 1860s his father, a devout Catholic German immigrant, had attempted to establish his own woolen mill, but after it was destroyed in a fire, the family lived in poverty. Dreiser's schooling was erratic, as the family moved from town to town. He left home when he was 16 and worked at whatever jobs he could find. With the help of his former teacher, he was able to spend the year 1889–1890 at Indiana University. Dreiser left after only a year. He was, however, a voracious reader, and the impact of such writers as Hawthorne, Poe, Balzac, Herbert Spencer, and Freud influenced his thought and his reaction against organized religion.
In 1892 Dreiser started to write for the Chicago Globe, and moved to a better position with the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. In 1898 he married Sara White, a Missouri schoolteacher, but the marriage was unhappy. Dreiser separated permanently from her in 1909, but never earnestly sought a divorce. In his own life Dreiser practised his principle that man's greatest appetite is sexual – the desire for women led him to carry on several affairs at once. His relationship with Yvette Szekely Eastman is recorded in Dearest Wilding by Yvette Eastman (1995) – she was 16 and Dreiser 40 years older when they met.
As a novelist Dreiser made his debut with Sister Carrie, a powerful account of a young working girl's rise to success and her slow decline. «She >yas eighteen years of age, bright, timid and full of the illusions of ignorance and youth. Whatever touch of regret at parting characterized her thoughts it was certainly not for advantages now being given up. A gush of tears at her mother's farewell kiss, a touch in the throat when the cars clacked by the flour mill where her father worked by the day, a pathetic sigh as the familiar green environs of the village passed in review, and the threads which bound her so lightly to girlhood and home were irretrievably broken.» (from the 1981 edition) The president of the publishing company, Frank Doubleday, disapproved of the work – Dreiser illuminated the flaws of his characters but did not judge them and allowed vice to be rewarded instead of punished. No attempt was made to promote the book. Sister Carrie was reissued in 1907 and it became one of the most famous novels in literary history. Among its admirers was H.L. Mencken, an aspiring journalist, whom Dreiser had hired as a ghost-writer in his paper. William Wyler's film version, starring Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Jones, was made at the height of the Cold War and McCarthy era. Paramount executives delayed the releasing of the film – they thought the picture was not good for America and it was a flop. «It was a depressing story», said Wyler, «and it might not have been a success anyway.»
The 500 sold copies of his first novel and family troubles drove Dreiser to the verge of suicide. He worked at a variety of literary jobs, and as an editor-in – chief of three women's magazines until 1910, when he was forced to resign, because of an office love affair. In 1911 JENNIE GERHARDT, Dreiser's second novel, appeared. In the story a young woman, Jennie, is seduced by a senator. She bears a child out of wedlock but sacrifices her own interests to avoid harming her lover's career. A passage in which Jennie's lover Lester Kane, the son of a wealthy family, tells her about contraceptives, was removed by Ripley Hitchcock, the editor at Harper & Brothers. Jennie Gerhardt was followed by novels based on the life of the American transportation magnate Charles T. Jerkes, THE FINANCIER (1912), and THE TITAN (1914), which show the influence of the evolutionary ideas of Herbert Spencer and Nietzsche's concept of the Ubermensch. Last volume of the trilogy, THE STOIC, was finished in 1945.
«At the height of his success, when he had settled old scores and could easily have become the smiling public man, he chose instead to rip the whole fabric of American civilization straight down the middle, from its economy to its morality. It was the country that had to give ground.» (Nelson Algren, in Nation, 16 May, 1959)
Dreiser's semi-autobiographical novel THE 'GENIUS' (1915) was censured by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. The book remained off the market until Live right reissued it five years later. Dreiser's commercially most successful novel was AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY (1925), which was adapted for screen for the first time in 1931, directed by Josef von Sternberg. Dreiser had objected strongly to the version because it portrayed his youthful killer as a sex-starved idle loafer. The second time was in 1951 under the title A Place in the Sun, starring Montgomery Cliftand Elizabeth Taylor. During the filming the stars became attached to one another, which is reflected in the tenderness of their performance. The director George Stevens won an Academy Award, as did the writers Michael Wilson and Harry Brown for Best Screenplay. However, Robert Hatch in the New Republic (September 10,1951) dismissed the film. «Unfortunately, the power and bite of the book have been lost in the polite competence of the screen. These are such nice, such obviously successful people, they must be playing characters… there doesn't seem much use in dragging Dreiser's classic off the shelf just to dress it in this elegant, ambivalent production…» The book made Dreiser the champion of social reformers, but his later works did not attain similar notice.
An American Tragedy tells the story of a bellboy, Clyde Griffiths, indecisive like Hamlet, who sets out to gain success and fame. After an automobile accident, Clyde is employed by a distant relative, owner of a collar factory. He seduces Roberta Alden, an employee at the factory, but falls in love with Sondra Finchley, a girl of the local aristocracy. Roberta, now pregnant, demands that Clyde marry her. He takes Roberta rowing on an isolated lake and in this dreamlike sequence 'accidentally' murders her. Clyde's trial, conviction, and execution occupy the remainder of the book. Dreiser points out that materialistic society is as much to blame as the murderer himself. Dreiser based his study on the actual case of Chester Gillette, who murdered Grace Brown – he hit her with a tennis racket and pushed her overboard at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondack in July 1906. An American Tragedy was banned in Boston in 1927.
Much of Dreiser's works evolved from his own experiences of poverty. Among his rare excursions into the realm of fantasy is the ghost story The Hand1 (1920). It is a tale of murder and the haunting of the killer, but again behind the nightmare of the protagonist are the familiar themes of Dreiser's novels – fear of losing ones social position, feelings of moral guilt arising during the unrestrained struggle for success.
The second book of «An American Tragedy» opens with the description of the Home of Samuel Griffiths in Lucurgys, New York, a city of some twenty-five thousand inhabitants midway between Utica and Albany (p 157)
We set the acquaintances of Myra – the oldest daughter, Gilbert Griffiths, the only son of this family, and Bella, who wasn’t like her sister Myra. Let’s have an information about them, Myra was not beautiful, but Bella;
«Contrasted with her sister, who was tall and dark and rather sallow, Bella, though shorter, was far more gainfully and vigorously formed. She had thick brown almost black hair, a brown and alive complexion fainted with red, and eyes brown and genial, that blared with an eager, seeking light addition to her sound and light physique, she possessed vitality and animation. Her arms and legs were graceful and active. Plainly she was given to liking things as she found them enjoying life as it was and hence, unlike her sister, she was unusually attractive to men and boys to men and women, old and young-a fact which her mother and father well knew» (p 158)
«Indeed she was his pet, the most pleasing and different and artistic thing, as he saw it, that all his years had brought to him – youth, health, intelligence and affection – all in the shape of a pretty daughter» (p 165)
Дом Сэмюэл Грифитса в Ликурге (город с двадцатью пятью тысячами жителей, расположенный в штате Нью–Йорк, на полпути между Утикой и Албании) (стр. 164)5
Белла была совсем не похожа на свою сестру – высокую, болезненно бледную брюнетку. Она была ниже ростом, но грациознее и в тоже время крепче. У нее были густые, почти черные волосы, смуглый оливковый цвет лица с горячим румянцем, веселые карие глаза, сверкавшие жадным интересом ко всему на свете, гибкое тело и красивые ловкие руки и ноги. Жизнь била в ней ключом. Она попросту любила все вокруг, наслаждалось жизнью такой, как она есть, и по этому, в отличие от сестры, неудержимо привлекала к себе всех – мужчин, и юношей, и женщин, старых и молодых – что, конечно, прекрасно замечали ее родители (стр. 165)
Разумеется, она была его любимицей. Он считал ее очаровательной, несравненной, своего рода произведением искусства, лучшим, что подарила ему жизнь; юность; здоровы, веселы, ум и любовь – все воклощалось в образе прелестной дочери. (стр. 172)
Самуил Грифитснинг Ликургда (бу ахолиси йигирма беш минглик шахар булиб, Нью – Йорк штатида, Утика Билан Олбэнининг уртасидаги уйи) (бет – 143)
Белла опасига сира хам ухшамаган киз эди. Опаси новча рангпар ва кора соч булса, у пастакрок, нозанинрок ва Айни пайтда пишик қиз эди. Сочлари калин корамтир, зайтун тусли бугдой ранг юзлварида қирмизи ранг хам купчиб турар, оламдаги хар бир нарсага сабрсизлик Билан қизиқувчи куй кузли, танаси новдадекгина, оек – қуллари хам бенихоя латиф ва эпчил эди. Уни олов киз деса буларди. Теварак – атрофидаги нарсаларнинг барини куш курар, бор хаетдан завкланар, шунинг учун хам опасидан фаркли равишда хаммани – эркаклару усмирларни хам кексаю еш аелларни хам узига жалб килар, бу нарса унинг ота – онасига хам яхши маьлум эди. (бет – 144)
Белла унинг арзандаси эди, албатта. У Беллани хает узига иньом этган мафтункор, бекиес узига хос саньат дурдонаси деб карар, бу ажойиб кизи тимсолидаешлик, соглик, қувноклик, ақл ва мухаббат, хуллас, хама – хаммаси жамулжам булган эди. (бет – 151)6
For ever since he had fled from Kansas City, and by one humble device and another forced to make his way, he had been coming to the conclusion that on himself alone depended his future. They were too impractical and too poor – his mother, father.
Esta, alb of them (p. 171)
И это особенно отличала его от Клайда прежних дней, удравшего из Канзас – Сити в товарном валлоне – он стал гораздо осторожнее и сдержаннее. Ибо с тех пор как он бежал из Канзас – Сити и должен был пускаться на всяческие украшения, чтобы просуществовать, он понял, что его будущее зависит только от него самого. Его родные – в этом он окончательно убедился – ничем не могли ему помочь. Все они и мать, и отец, и Эста – были слишком непрактичны и слишком бедны. (стр. 179)
У энди анча эхтиёткор ва босик булиб колган, уни Канзас-Ситидан товар вагонида кочиб кетаётган пайтидагидан бошкача курсатиб тургани хам шу эдию Зероб Клайд Канзас – Ситидан кочганидан бери тирикчилигини утказиш учун кирмаган кучаси колмаган, шунинг учун хам келажаги факат узига боглигини тушиниб олганди. Ота-онаси унга ёрдам кулини чузиша олмас, бунга у тула-тухис ишонч хосил килганди. Нега дегандаб онаси хам, отаси хам, Эста хам кули киска ва жуда камбагал эдилар. (157–158 бет.)
Clyde writes to his mother that he became different after the auto accident, «I’ve got a lot more sense now, anyone I see things different than I used to. I want to be successful. I only have a fair place now, not as good as I had in K.C., but fair, and not in the same like. But I want something better, though I don’t want to go back in the hotel business either if I can help it. It’s not so very good for a young man like me too height flying, I guess. You see I know a lot more than I did back there. They like me all right where I am, but I got forget on in this world. Besides I am not really making more than my expenses here now, just my room and board and clothes, but I am trying to save a little in order to set into some line where I can work up and lean something. A person has to have a like of some kind this day, I see that now» (p 174)7
Теперь я кое-чему научился и лучше всё понимаю. Я хотел бы добиться какого-то положения в жизни. Надеюсь, что мне повезёт. У меня теперь довольно хорошее место, правда, не такое, как в Канзас – Сити, но всё-таки вполне приличное, хотя и в другом роде. Но я хочу добиться чего-нибудь лучшего. Только я постараюсь больше не работать в гостиницах. Это не подходящее дело для таких, как я. По-моему не стоит забираться так высоко. Видишь, я теперь поумнел. Там, где я служу, мною довольны но я хочу достигнуть лучшего положения. Кроме того, зарабатываю я не так много, хватает только на самое необходимое; комната, стол, одежда. Но я все-таки стараюсь понемножку складывать потому что хочу найти себе какое не будь подходящее занятие что бы можно было чему – не будь научиться. В наше время каждый человек должен иметь специальность, теперь я это понимаю. (181–182 стр.)8
Мен энди оқ-қорани анча-мунча ажратиб, у буларга дурустрок тушунаяпман. Дурустрок одам булишни истайман, омадим келишига ишонаман. Хозирги ишим Казас-ситидагидай булмай, бошка сохада булса хам, хар холда ёмон эмас. Мен булсам ундан яхширогига интилмокчиман. Факат мехмонхоналарда бошка ишламасликка харакат киламан. Бу менга ухшайдиганларга тугри келмайдиган иш. Менимча, бунчалик баландга чикиб кетиш ярамайди. Курдингизми анча аклим кириб колган. Хозир ишлаётган жойимдагилар мендан хурсанд, бирок мен дурустрок мавкега эришсам дейман. Хозирча, топадиган пулим унча куп эмас, хона, овкат, кийимга етарли. Шундай булса хам озгина – озгинадан чегириб коляпман, нега деганда, узимга бирорта муносиб иш топиб, у-буни ургансам дейман. Бизнинг Давримизда хар бир одам уз мутахасислигига эга булиши керак, буни энди тушунаман.
Clyde’s mother wrote to her son asking him not to drink wine. She also asked her son to write a letter to Samuel Griffiths, of Licurgys, as that was rich and successful.
And he met Kettener. Both of them were happy to meet each other. Letterer helped him a message (about a vacancy) which real: See Mr. Light all at the Great Northern before noon to morrow. There’s vacancy over there. It the very best, but it’ll get you something better later. (p 178)
The work in a new place, very different from the «Great Northern» and superior from a social and material point of view, as Clyde saw it, to even the Great – Davidson, he was able once more to view at clone range a type of life that must effected, unfortunately, his flump of position and distinction. (p 179).
Somewhat furtive and appealing or seeking-that at once interested her, and reminded her, perhaps, since she was not much of success socially either, of something in herself (P.230).
He met Sondra Finchley and miss Cranston at his uncle’s house.
А вообще, я думаю, из него может получиться толк в качестве начальника цеха… пожалуй, по позже можно будет даже торгового агента из него сделать (стр. 211).
Умуман айтганда эса, ундан цех бошлигига ухшаган одам чикиши мумкин… кейинчалик уни эхтимол, савдо агенти килиш хам мумкин булар. (190 бет).
Она уловила во взгляда Клайда какое-то беспокойство, выражение не то мольбы, не то тревожного испуга и то её тронула: может быт, она почувствовала в нем что-то близкое, свое она ведь и сама пользовалась не слишком большом успехом в обществе (стр. 237).
У Клайднинг нигохида кандайдир асабийлик, илтижоли ё безовтакургами ухшаган бир ифодани укиб олганидан, унга кизикди-колди: Майра эхтимол, бунда узига якин ва маълум булган бир нимани сезгандир. Нега деганда, узи хам купчилик уртасида унча баланд юрмасди.
For, somewhat after the fashoin of Clyde in relation in his family and his life, she considered her life a great dis.
Nevertheless, her underlying thought in connection with all this, in so far as Clyde and his great passion for her was concerned – and hers for him – was thatshe was indeed trifling wiht fire and perhaps social disgrace into the forgain (p. 303).
About Roberta Clyde thought that he would never abandon her, but about their merriage no direct statement mentioned.
Подобно Клайду, недовольная своей семьей и своей жизнью, она думала о собсвенной судьбе с чуством глубокого разочарования (стр. 265).
У хам Клайдга ухшаб оиласи ва хаетидан кунгли тулмай уз такдирини уйлаб, эзилиб юрарди (243 бет).9
И все же, думая о Клайде и об их взаимной страсти, Роберта в глубине души созновала, что играет с огнем и может оказаться опозоренной (стр. 308).
Роберта шунда хам Клайд билануртадаги севгиларини уйлаганида ут билан уйнашаетганини ва шармандаси чикиши мукинлигини ичида сезиб турарди (285 бет).
«The effect of this so casual contact was really disrupling in more senses
than one. For now in spite of his comfort in and calisfaction with Roberta, once more and in this position and to him entrancing way, was posed the whole question of his social pessibilities here. And that strangely enough by the one girl of this upper level who head most materializid and magnificed for him the meaning of that upper level itself the beautiful Sondra Fichley (p. 325).
Влияние этой нечаянной встречи во многих отношениях оказалось поистине гибельным. Как ни много удовлетворения и радости давала, Клайду близость с Робертой перед ним теперь снова в упор стал волнующий вопрос: может ли он добиться положения обществе? И странно это произошло блогодаря встрече с боготой светской девушкой, которая воплащала и неизмеримо увилечивало в его глазах значение своего круга. Что за красавица эта Сандра Финчли! (стр. 328)
Бу нагохоний учрашувнинг таъсири жуда куп маънода чинакамига хатарли булди. Роберта билан якинлик Клайдга канчалик коникиш ва кувонч бахш этмасин, энди жамоат орасида дурустрок мартабага эга буламанми-йукми, деган хаяжонли масала яна унинг тинчини бузди. Кизиги шундаки, бу аёнлар доирасида киз билан учрашув туфайли юз берди, бу киз унинг куз унгида уша доиранинг тимсоли эди ва уша доиранинг ахамиятини бекиёс даражада ошириб курсатарди! (305 бет).10
On wiling our final graduation paper we have the following aims and tasks:
To speak about American literature in connection with Theodor Dreiser`s literary activity.
To enlighten specitic features of Theodor Dreiser in connection with the creation of «An American Tragedy».
To talk about «An American Tragedy» not only in Theodor Dreiser or american but both in world and Uzbek literatures.
To study the characters of Clyde Griffith, and its reproduction in Uzbek. To see Clydes attitudes to Hortense, Roberta and Sondra.
Each of the character taken seperatly and in connection with the main hero. To study ways and principles of reproducing punliaritics of every image.
To pay attention to the fact how characters examined are reflected in Uzbek language.
To express our point of view about the texts translated.
Conclusion
Theodor Dreiser compares two Griffits. Clyde`s father (twenty five years before) «short, fat and poorly suit mentally as as well as physically-oleagenous and a bit mushy, as it were. His chin was not firm, his eyes a pale watery blue, and his hair frizzled (p. 183).
Из опасения гибели Роберты нельзя сделать вывод, что юридически Клайд совершил убийство, если установить, степень его вины. О том, насколько запутаны события на озере Большой Выпав, говорил известный американский – юрист Клиренс Харроу, заявивший, что Клайда определить невозможно. В американских юридических школах специально изучалось убийство Робберты КАК трудный случай в правовой практике.
Над сценой на озере Большой Драйзер работал особенно. Он специально доехал ил озеро Большого Лося, где был, убит Грейс Браун, разговаривал с очевидцами убийства, ели плавал на лодке, но озеру. Эта сцена стоила Драйзеру больших душевных переживаний. Он признавался, что оплакивал, смерть Роберты,
В третьей, Заключительной, книге идет судебное разбирательство дела Клайда. Вновь проходят перед читателем обстоятельства, при которых было совершено преступление, вновь устанавливается виновность общества, американское правосудие, приговор Клайду, вину которого трудно установить и показать. То общество, которое толкнуло Клайда на преступление, посадило его на электрический стул.
Трагедия Клайда состоит не только в то», что он совершил преступление, но и в том, как его судят. Судьба Клайда была предрешена задолго до начала суда. Он стал игрушкой в предвыборной борьбе двух буржуазных партий. Продажность американского правосудия, его пристрастность, приверженность узкогрупповым интересам олицетворяют образы прокурора Менсона, следователя Хайта, многочисленных адвокатов. Среди романов Драйзера «Американская трагедия» выделяется глубиной я всесторонностью охвата явлений американской. «Роман Драйзера широк и безбрежен, как Гудзон; необъятен, как сама жизнь» – писал советский кинорежиссер С. Эйзенштейн, готовивший фильм «Американская трагедия» и не сумевший его поставить из-за сопротивления кинокомпании «Парашют». Если для более ранних романов, писатель в качестве эскизов своих использовал рассказы, очерки, вырисован, то для «Американской трагедии» такими эскизами была.
Описание трудного детства, и юности Клайда главы «Гения», посвященные мытарствам юного Ветлы; образы богатых Грифитсов заставляют, о «Трилогии желания» родители Клайда и родители Роберты вызывают в образы отца и матери Дженни Герхардт.
«Американская трагедия» развивает те глубокие гуманистические чувства и мысли, которыми были проникнуты предыдущие романы Драйзера. Это ощущение трагизма жизни простого американца, воплощенное в судьбах Герствуда и Дженни Герхард, это осуждение духа стяжательства, составляющее пафос «Трилогии желания» это, наконец, отстаиваемое в «Гении» кредо реалистического искусства, призывающее писателя изображать, те стороны жизни, которые вследствие своей обыденности считаются темой, недостойной художника.
Реалистичны в романе и пейзаж, и те символы я сравнения, к которым прибегает писатель. Квита начинается и кончается сценой сумерек. Глубоко символична сцена гибели Роберты на озере Большой Выпи. Со встречи на озере началась их близость. И теперь все ему напоминает о той прогулке, – «над головой плывет такое же пушистое облачко, как-то, что плыло над ним в тот роковой день на 1 озере Край». Он собирается «поискать здесь водяные лилии, чтобы убить время, прежде чем…» лилии вновь напоминают ту первую, случайную встречу на озере Край, когда счастливый Клайд «рвал цветы с длинными влажными стеблями и бросал к ее ногам». Эта деталь усугубляет драматизм ситуации, в которую попали Клайд и Роберта.
Драйзер-романист обращает пристальное внимание на психологию своего героя. С той же скрупулезностью, которая была характерна для пейзажа, портрета, для обрисовки деталей, Драйзер передает и анализирует душевные переживания Клайда в ожидавший смертной казни. Драйзер специально посетил в тюрьме Синг-Сивг Дом смерти, где разговаривал с приговоренными к смертной казни.
Драйзер часто использует внутренний монолог, особенно для воспроизведения смятенного состояния духа Клайда. Газетное сообщение наталкивает Клайда на мысль о возможности отделаться от Роберты. И его внутренний монолог передает всю путаницу «смятение чувств Клайда, загнанного и замученного, пытающегося выкарабкаться из пропасти, в которую его увлекают мысли об убийстве. Пристальное рассмотрение психологии Клайда неразрывно связано с раскрытием социальных причин тех потрясений, которые он переживает.
Большой смысл в романе имеет его заглавие, к которому Драйзер пришел не сразу. В первых вариантах книг весила назван «Мереж», оттенявшее призрачность внушаемых американскому народу престарелых. Тема американских иллюзий наиболее полно передана в образах родителей Клайда. Это в их доме на стене висят два десятка изречений и текстов, клеймящих пороки. Узнав о проступке Клайда в Канзас-Сити, мать заклинает его помаять афоризмом: «Вино–обманщик; пить – значит впасть в безумие; кто поддается обману – тот не мудр», просит не поддаваться дьявольским искушениям.
Люди, подобные родителям Клайда в Роберты, живут в верном, далеком от реальности мире, они «рождаются, живут а умирают, так ничего и не поняв в жизни. Они появляются, бредут наугад и исчезают во мгле». В этом Драйзер видит и суть американизма: «Родители Роберты были классическими представителями того беконного типа американизма, который отрицает, факты и чтит иллюзии». Золотой мираж губит Клайда, губит человеческую личность, но смысл романа был шире, – за распространение и поддержание этих губительных иллюзий ответственно американское общество. Окончательное название – «Американская трагедия» – отлично передавало пафос романа, но было не по душе издателям, которые считали, что своей резкостью оно не понравится американской публике, и пытались заставить Драйзера вынести в заглавие-фамилию главного героя, но Драйзер и здесь не сделал уступки.
«Американская трагедия» завершила очень важную главу в истории борьбы за реалистическое искусство в США, против ограничений, которых требовали буржуазная критика и издатели. Эти требования в конце девятнадцатого века признавал даже такой теоретик реализма, как американский писатель и литературный критик, друг Марка Твена Уильям Дин Хоуэллс.
В 1891 году Хоуэллс утверждал, что в Америке невозможны книги с сюжетом, подобным тому, который лег в основу «Преступления в наказания» Ф.М. Достоевского. Хоуэллс писал: «…одна из мыслей, на которую меня навело чтение романа Достоевского «Преступление и наказание» это то, что если кто-нибудь возьмет поту столь глубоко трагическую в американской литературе, то совершит ложный и ошибочный шаг. Наши романисты, поэтому занимаются более улыбчивыми аспектами жизни, которые являются и более американскими, ищут универсальное в личности, скорее, чем в социальных интересах».
Драйзер своим романом опроверг Хоуэллса, – недаром многие критики называли «Американскую трагедию» американским «Преступлением и наказанием», недаром в этом романе можно найти я черты влияния Достоевского, а о своем интересе к Достоевскому к роману «Преступление и наказание» неоднократно говорил и Драйзер, который наперекор, Хоуэллсу показал, что трагическая судьба человеческих лидерств: – неотъемлемое свойство американского общества и что «трагическое»» близкие понятия.
Драйзер выразил то стремление американских писателей к большим обобщениям, которое отличает литературу США в двадцатые и тридцатые годы. Оно проявилось в творчестве Эпсона Синклера и Синклера Льюиса, Шервуда Андерсена я Уильяма Фолкнера, Эрнеста Хемингуэя и Френсиса Скотта Фицджеральда не продолжено в книгах крупнейших современных писателей Америки. Каждый из них создал свою «Американскую трагедию» – по-своему рассказал о трагической судьбе американцев. Особенно показательна в этом отношении документальная повесть Трумена Капоте «Обыкновенное убийство», которая через сорок лет после выхода в свет романа Драйзера вновь выдвигает столь острую для американского общества 'Проблему преступления и наказания.
В этом смысле «Американская трагедия» стала знаменем критического реализма в американской литературе двадцатого века, Она определила основную магистраль дальнейшего развития американской литературы. С появлением «Американской трагедии» связан расцвет критического реализма в США.
Правда, «Американская трагедия» не смогла избежать стандартных для враждебной Драйзеру части американской критики обвинений в тяжеловесности стиля.
Отвечая на подобные нападки критика. Г. К. Уиппля в еженедельнике «New republic», Генри Миллер справедливо писал, что «сила романа Драйзера достигается не вопреки, а благодаря его стилю. Эти «дешевые, избитые и старые» приемы помогают ему 'представить нам мир, на который нам мог бы только намекнуть более элегантный и тонкий стиль. Он использует язык сознательно или несознательно, в манере, в которой современный авторы, например Джойс, пользуются им намеренно; то есть он идентифицирует свой язык с сознанием своих героев».
Еще определеннее высказалась Маргарет Чедер, которая сказала, что стиль Драйзера отличает то истинное изящество, с каким движется огромный слон, сохраняющий, несмотря на кажущуюся неуклюжесть, истинную грацию в своей походке.
Наиболее же точно этим критикам ответил Герберт Уэллс: «Это гораздо больше, чем простое и жизненное описание типичного бедного уголка американской действительности, освещенного вспышкой печальной трагедии… Она передает большую, суровую Реальную правду с силой, которой не может достигнуть никакая грамматическая точность».
Драйзер, писатель-гуманист, видевший враждебность капиталистического строя развитию человеческой личности, не мог не, искать путей, которые позволяли бы личности действительно бодро развиваться. Драйзер задумывается над путями содействовавших таким социальным условиям, которые сделают невозможными, а трагедии. Во время работы над «Американской три дней» Драйзер не видел возможности найти разрешения проблем развития общества. Он говорил: «Я не имею, каких теорий относительно жизни или какого-либо средства решить экономические или политические проблемы».
Поиски ответов на вопросы, затронутые в «Американской Трагедии», пробудили у Драйзера интерес к победе Октябрьской революции в России. Поездка писателя в СССР, о которой оп рассказал в. книге «Драйзер смотрит на Россию» (1928), способствовал коренным сдвигам в его мировоззрении. Писатель сблизив с революционным рабочий движением в США, написал боев публицистические, книги – «Трагическая Америка? (1931) и стоит спасать» (1941). В июле 1945 года Драйзер вступи; Коммунистическую; партию США. «Вся логика моей жизни и работы, – писал он в июле 1945 года, – побуждает меня вступить ряды компартии'», И по сей день автор «Американской трагедии остается крупнейшим мастером реалистической литературы Америки двадцатого века. Не случайно в шестидесятые годы возрос интерес к творчеству Драйзера. Поход против него критики, начатый сразу же после смерти писателя, последовавшей в 1045 году, литературоведом Лайояелем Триллингом, валился. О своем уважении к Драйзеру заявил Фолкнер.
Жизненность традиций Драйзера, открывшего новых эпох американской литературы, отмечена крупнейшими американским! писателями двадцатого века. Это традиции реалистического искусства; благодаря которым были созданы шедевры американской литературы двадцатого века – «Американская трагедия», «Прощай, оружие!», «Гроздья гнева». Несмотря на запреты реакцию вой критики, они продолжают жить и в тех произведениях современной американской литературы, которые отстаивают идеал! подлинной человечности.
«Американская трагедия» остается эпохальной вехой в истории литературы США, определяющей магистральное направление ее развития.
Dreiser, DRY suhr. Theodor (1871–1946), ranks as the foremost American writer in the naturalizm movement (a passimistic form of realizm) Dreiser`s characters are victims of apparently meaningles incidents that result in pressures, they can neither control understand. He based such novels as «Sister Carrie» and «An american Tragedy» on events from real life. He condemned not his villaines, but his best stories are powerful and sobering.11
«An American Tragedy» (1925) is possibly the most impressive of Dreiser`s books, it concerns a weak young man who in excuted for the meerden of the pregnant girl friend. Again Dreiser did not condem his villain, but the soceity that produced and destroyed him.
He was an objective realist who gathered his facts impersonally, but he was more. He lived in his dreams, his hopes, his broodings. For this reason, he absorbed both the realistic method and the new conceptions of the ceniverse from science into his thought and his writing. His kiews are loose in formulation, and inconsistent. For example, his theary of the realitivity of morals is as inconsistent as it is challenging. But such kiews of man and nature as he had, however ill formed, are essential parts of his writing; without them, his works would be interlay different. They helped to deepen his imagination; they contributed toward the feeling of awe he creates concerning the condition of man; they served him in his very construction of theme, of story, of character. He was an artist, not a philosopher.
The absence of money means defeat; it means the back of education of beauty; it means that one is a victim, like Clyde Griffiths, of the rich, of one’s relationships with others. Dreiser directly described the pitilessness and the hierarchical character of capitalistic society by showing that just as the poor or the victims of the rich, the weak of the strong, so are women, inferior to men, usually victims. American tragedy, like all tragedy is the consequence of weakness. The impulses, the passions of man pitilessly drive him to satisfy himself; the force of social circumstance, the fierce nature of the social struggle, toward him and produce both social and biological tragedy.
Dreiser’s methods of character Erabion are consistent with these attitudes and social revelations. Just as he does not conceive the individual as individual, so his characterizations are not mere representations of atomized men and women struggling in the American society of their time. They appear in their social roles, and their natures as well as their actions are involved in the functions which they perform in society. Carrie’s first lover, Drayed, is one of the most successful and attractive of Dreiser’s minor characters. He is jolly, genial, superficial, yet he is strikingly different from the salesmen of, for example, Sinclair Lewis. Drayed does not sub>ordinate himself to the «fetish of commodities», a successful salesman, he is concerned with a late of pleasure, he feels secure in his world. He appears in a social role which is an integral feature of his «individuality», similarly, Hurstwood has the charm, the savoir-faire, the sophistication of the professional major domo in a high class saloon, concerned with meeting important personage, when he loses this position, he loses also the personality that goes with it. His character is social rather than individual, and his defeat is that of a man who has lost his function and place in society. The tragedy in Dreiser’s novels is social tragedy. His characters do not merely represent themselves, they speak for their classes and their occupation. «An American Tragedy» would remain a tragic work even if Clyde and Roberta had no died; but it is tragic in a new sense. In Dreiser, the old terms of art are reset by the social thinking of his day. He wrote what he knew what he was. His many colloquialisms were part of the coinage of his time, and his sentimental and romantic passages were written in the language of the educational system and the popular of his formative years. In his style, an in his material, he was a child of his time, of his class. Self-educated, a type or model of the artist of plebeian origin in America, his language, like his sub>ject matter, is not marked by internal inconsistencies. As a style, in the formal sense, it never developed at all, and he frequently permitted his novels to be revised by others before publication.
In our final graduation paper aims at studying Theodore Dreiser’s creative mastery skills. For this purpose we analyzed Russian translation of «An American Tragedy» as the Uzbek translator chose for his morel the Russian translation. We must study the translation comparing English – Russian – Uzbek versions.
For fictional translation every author, every text should be carefully selected. When translated any work becomes the spiritual heritage of the people into whose tongue it is translated. As a Russian text we have the translation made by Вершинина and Н. Галь. Теодор Драйзер, «Американская Трагедия» Часть первая (книга первая и книга вторая) Часть вторая. Оба они печатались по изданию «Художественная литература Москва, 1984 год, в издательстве «Узбекистан», 1984 года
Bibliography
Theodore Dreiser «An American Tragedy» New American Library, New York and Toronto.
Theodore Dreiser «An American Tragedy» «Pravda» Publishing House, Moscow 1987.
Theodore Dreiser «An American Tragedy» Gofur Gulom Publishing House, Tashkent 1976.
N.I. Samohvolova. «The history of an American Literature» Part 2. «Proskusheniye» Publishing House, Moscow 1972.
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1 “American Tragedy" a Fallen Dream , 2002. a look at The concept of The American Dream through a review of "An American Tragedy" by THEODORE DREISER
2 Theodore Dreiser “An American Tragedy” “Pravda” Publishing House, Moscow 1987
3 Theodore Dreiser “An American Tragedy” “Pravda” Publishing House, Moscow 1987
4 Theodore Dreiser “An American Tragedy” “Pravda” Publishing House, Moscow 1987.с.53-58
5 Theodore Dreiser “An American Tragedy” “Pravda” Publishing House, Moscow 1987
6 Theodore Dreiser “An American Tragedy” Gofur Gulom Publishing House, Tashkent 1976
7 Theodore Dreiser “An American Tragedy” New American Library, New York and Toronto
8 Theodore Dreiser “An American Tragedy” “Pravda” Publishing House, Moscow 1987
9 Theodore Dreiser “An American Tragedy” Gofur Gulom Publishing House, Tashkent 1976
10 Theodore Dreiser “An American Tragedy” Gofur Gulom Publishing House, Tashkent 1976
11 Theodore Dreiser “An American Tragedy” New American Library, New York and Toronto