Edith Worton - and who is it?

Until recently, I had no idea that there was such an American writer-Edith Warton (1862-1937). I don’t even remember something in the books to her books ...

Since the Filfak, the “English” prevailed among my friends, although I was at first a Spanist, and then we quickly made the “Frenchmen”. In the early 60s, we produced the “Alexandrian quartet” by truth and by crook, “for whom the bell calls” (actually prohibited in the USSR-now they do not believe it at all), then Iris Murdok’s novels.

There were special good luck - so I got the “other country” of Baldwin. But Henry James seemed to be studied according to a university program, but I don’t remember someone trying to open it for pleasure. And I read it recently - of course, thanks to the Internet.

Henry James and Edith Warton were connected by close friendship; She considered him her literary mentor; They traveled a lot together in Edith's car - in particular, in France. I found a mention of these trips in the remarkably interesting essays of J. Barnes about France.

But the truly Edith Warton was interested in the fact that, as it turned out, her talents were not at all limited to literature itself: her first large book “The Decoration of Houses” (together with the architect Ogden Codman, Jr.], 1897) was a professional guide to design the interior! And she wrote about what they write about today, criticizing the “Victorian” aesthetics - about the unnecessary of velvet tablecloths and heavy draperies, the redundancy of non -functional inacts, etc. This book not only had an unexpected success, but also reprinted - judging by the memoirs of Warton, almost annually.

Given this context, it is especially interesting to see the decoration of the house and the couple of Warton in their estate Mount (Loxes, Massachuzets), where Edith Warton embodied “in the material” of his aesthetic credo ( www.edithwharton.org/gallery3/index.php/interiors0?page=3 ).

Warton also wrote a book about Italian villas - “Italian Villas and Their Gardens”, 1904 (“Italian Villas and their parks”) www.archive.org/stream/atalianvillasthe00whar

Open this book at least for the sake of the cover - however, the text also gives the master's hand. Here is the beginning of the book: Throw It is an Exaggement to Say that are no flowers in Italian Gardens, Yet To Enjoy and AppredeTeTa Garden-Craft Always Bear in Mind that it is Independent of Floriculture. The Italian Garden Doges Not Exist for Its Flowers; Its Flowers Exist for it . [We will not exaggerate, saying that there are no colors in Italian parks. However, in order to truly appreciate the Italian garden art and be able to enjoy it, it must be taken into account that it is not connected with floriculture. The Italian park is not broken for the sake of flowers planted there; On the contrary, the flowers in it exist for the park.]

Nevertheless, Edith Warton went down in the history of English-speaking literature precisely as a prose writer, the author of numerous and very popular novels, stories and stories.

Edith Jones was born in 1862 in New York and belonged to the highest American society-not just “rich and famous”, but also enlightened. She received an excellent home education and at the age of 23 married Teddy Warton, a young man of the same circle.

This marriage was unsuccessful: some sources emphasize that Teddy Worton was mentally unstable; Others - that with all that he also led a “multiple lifestyle” that does not correspond to the obligations of a married person. Apparently, it is true that Teddy Warton suffered from so severe depression and so obvious mania that he had to be repeatedly placed in the clinic for mentally ill and ultimately withstand its incompetence.

In fact, parting with her husband, Edith Warton continued to take care of him for many years and officially divorced him only in 1913.

While Teddy was relatively healthy, the couple traveled a lot together. Since the 1890s, Warton lived for a long time in France, and since 1907 she spent most of her time in Paris, where representatives of the French (and not only French) intellectual and art elite gradually became her environment. This is Paul Bourget, Anna de Noille. Andre Jew, Jean Cocteau, as well as Henry Adams, Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt.

Edith Warton was a man who was accustomed to work methodically, and skillfully combined writing with a passion for travel, in particular to traveling by car. She had her own driver - Charles Cook, and Henry James was the most faithful and permanent satellite of Warton on these trips. .

J. Barnes wrote in essays about France that the passion for traveling by car was characteristic of many, in particular, Ford M. Ford, Konrad, Kipling, and that Edith Warton returned this to the "romance of wanderings", to which her ancestors were introduced in postal carriages.

During the First World War, Edith Worton concentrated his activity on the help of refugees; She also regularly wrote reports on the course of hostilities for American newspapers.

In 1921, Warton was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for the Roman "The Age of Innocence", 1920). Edith Warton died in 1937 in France.

I read the four big novels Warton and the story "Ethana Frrom." She, of course, is a wonderful descriptor of life and morals. I caught myself that even after Henry James, I did not have such a colorful idea of ​​the daily life of the “rich and famous” in New York and Boston of the late last century. I will briefly talk about two novels.

The “era of innocence” (1920), a composition crowned with the Pulitzer Prize, seemed to me somewhat simplified in the plot and superficial in the interpretation of female images - apparently, therefore, the film by Martin Scorsese according to this novel (1993) does not cause rejection - in some way it is almost equal to the novel.

A mysterious woman is inevitably a stamp, which means a trap for the writer. But it is not so difficult to show it .

In my opinion, the novel “The House of Mirth”, 1905 is more interesting, in my opinion. The title sends the reader to the Ecclesiastes 7: 4: The Heart of the Wise Is in the House of Mourning; But the heart of Fools in the House of Mirth - the text is apparently quite alive for the then reader audience; It is no coincidence that 140 thousand copies of the book diverged in the first two months.

This is the story of Lily Bart, a young beautiful girl from a secular society who does not have her own means and focused on a profitable marriage - and partly to receive. The inheritance of his already very elderly aunt.

Lily Bart's life tactics resembles the behavior of the scout, but not in the camp of the enemy, but in an unfriendly environment, which should be used in the best way, without finding his true intentions. Accordingly, such a heroine cannot have sincere friends, but only people can be useful and useless. Otherwise, Lily Bart Mila, good, is naive and vulnerable.

The heroine is collapsing because she cannot pay her card debt without losing female honor. Lily does not accept this path, but her reputation is hopelessly undermined. She even tries to earn a living with her labor, but she does not know how. Meanwhile, the aunt dies, leaving the inheritance to another relative, and Lily gets only an amount equal to her card debt. Then the heroine takes a mortal dose of sleeping pills - either intentionally, or in a half -scribble.

As you can see, the plot of the "monastery of joy" is unpretentious. But the novel was written excellently; The heroine is charming and sparkling for the time being, then a misery in her helplessness ... to the social society, as they say, “gets” - but Warton never drops to the caricature or to a moralizing tone.

However, a truly strong impression was left not by Warton’s novels, but by a small story “Ethan Frome” - a story about the poor and unknown. I thought everything - which of the authors of the Russian tradition is like this? Tonality, perhaps, on Turgenev? ... in Russian, Ethan Frrom was published back in 1981 in the translation of I. Komarova; However, it is worth reading this story in the original (it is on the Internet).

The plot of the story is simple, but it is just as pointless to retell it as for example Carmen Merim. (Who today can boast that he read the novel’s herself, and not the libretto of the opera Bizet? I had a merima in Russian-there is Carmen translated by M. Lozinsky, engravings of V. Favorsky; Academia, M.-L., 1936.)

I read Ethan Frrom in one gulp, forgetting that I have not a book in my hands, but Rider, and not without trepidation, waiting for a denouement, which, of course, should have been tragic - but which one?

Everything turned out to be even worse. And again, I remembered my favorite saying of Schenberg, "There is still a lot of new ones can be said in D-Major ..."

Edith Warton wrote the memoirs “Looking back” (“A Backword Glance”, 1934) - I also found this book on the network. In them, she spoke in great detail about her ancestors, about her childhood, about how she began to read, and then write; About friendship with various outstanding people of that time. At the same time, Warton chastely lowered the story of her relationship (apparently, this was her only great love) with the journalist Morton Fullerton, the addressee of her lyrical verses in 1910 and the large number of letters that Fullerton preserved, although he gave Warton the word to destroy them (this correspondence was closed for researchers until 1968).

Read Edith Worton is interesting: how many we know about the daily life of American society of the late XIX-early XX century? No matter how you understand this everyday life in order to “look into it”, it is worth reading the so -called “writers of the second row”. Try at your leisure.