Edith Worton. When America was innocent

Book Review of Marina Efimova

Alexander Genis: The movement against sexual harassment grew into a new round of feminism. Within the framework of this current, a female contribution to culture is reassessed. For example, the Nyt newspaper now places the obstacked obstacles to outstanding women who have not been honored with this honor at one time. Ach is also involved in this process, thanks to the portrait gallery of writers performed by the host of our column "Book Review" Marina Efimova.

Marina Efimova: Writer Edith Worton is a classic of American literature. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize three times and once received the Pulitzer Prize - for the 1920 romance "Age of Innocialness". The works of Edith Worton are popular all over the world, starting since 1905 (from the novel "The Abode of Joy") to this day. Many of her things are filmed, a reception several times, directors of different generations: the same “abode of joy”, the story “Ethan Frome”, the novels “RIF”, “Moon Blinds”, “Pirates” and the most famous - “Age of innocence”. But what is especially interesting in the figure of this wonderful writer - she was the last representative of the "century of innocence" of American literature, blown up by the First World War. She wrote just at this line (15 years before and 19 years after the war). She died in 1937. 80 years ago, this year is the anniversary.

Warton belongs to a small galaxy of American “aristocrats” writers, like her senior contemporary and friend novelist Henry James. Her family is the cream of New York society, the inhabitants of the mansions on the fifth Avenue. Edith Warton hid her first publications, because on the fifth Avenue it was considered indecent for a girl from a good family to devote herself to literature. Warton with the mouth of one of the characters of the story "False Dawn" expressed the generally accepted opinion of her circle:

Announcer: "Culture is the property of Europe, and America did not have time to educate its artists. And the local Parnassus occupied the blasphemous rhympletes, forever non -bay, half -starved losers, boasting of Kabatsky glory, which their poetic crazy were awarded."

Marina Efimova: In indifference to the culture of the inhabitants of the fifth Avenue, it was impossible to blame. On the pages of the autobiographical book, “experienced” Edith Warton recalls two principles, revered there the most important: “Enlightenment, coupled with good manners” and “scrupulous honesty in business”. The concept of enlightenment included the indispensable and solid knowledge of the classics. Trips to Europe and visiting the famous monuments and museums recommended by the guide to Bedecker were required. Books of recognized authors were delivered through the ocean with still smelling typographic paint. But only recognized. Anatoly Zverev wrote in the preface to the Russian edition of the collection "Edith Warton. Favorites":

Announcer: “Modern trends reached the fifth Avenue and were perceived with caution. The character of the story“ False Dawn ”Mr. Rasey, who sent his son to Italy to buy the works of Karlo Dolchi and other great artists, was shocked by the fact that his son, succumbing to friends from the circle of pre -REPARALITS, gave preference to Pierrot Della Franchko, which is not yet The London’s catalogs were mentioned by the leader of the Pre-Raphaelis, John Reskin was already a charlatan because he was born in the old New York, first of all, by the environment from which he came out of this connection. It is not a creativity to create it, but the business and no one assumed that children can rebel against such a strong, balanced order of life, choosing a free sense instead of a business career, instead of a reliable prosperity - the ascetic of a creative path. ”

Marina Efimova: According to Edith Worton, it was an era of "incurable moral timidity." Mark Twain hid the sunk pamphlets from his relatives and crossed entire pages from the autobiography. This is how Warton describes the literary atmosphere at the turn of the century:

“ It was an era when the most read literary magazine in America announced that he would not accept a single story containing mention of religion, politics, love, alcoholism and perversions ... A well -known editor, offering me a large amount for a future novel, set the only condition - not a word about“ illegal ties. ”Dante's translator Elis anxiously reminded that he did not know a great great work, that he did not know a great great work. depicting criminal passion. "

Marina Efimova: A step to the left, a step to the right from unshakable moral principles was punished in a New York good society with one punishment-ostracism. And we, readers, emphasized that feeling of hopelessness, the pain of orphans that the rejected victims of traditions in Edith Warton’s novels. But neither Lily Bart - the heroine of the novel “The Abode of Joy”, nor the heroes of the “Age of Innocialness” by Ellen Olenskaya and Newland Archer - had no choice but to transfer the crash of his fate, to leave the country or to accept the cross of self -sacrifice.

Edith Warton herself went further: one of the first “apostates” in her circle, she became a writer and allowed herself a divorce (then almost unthinkable in her environment). True, she hid from the court of society in Paris. Only there, away from the dictatorship of the fifth Avenue, she was able to write her best things. But still, she did not go to the absolute gap, did not give up an open call to society: the divorce was perfect in France, secretly; Her connection with journalist Morton Fullerton was kept in a terrible secret, and her autobiography “experienced” critics is called a “book of defaults”. In a word, it was not a riot. A real rebellion began the post -war, so -called "lost" generation of American writers: Sherwood Anderson, Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos.

It seemed that Edith Warton should have recognized and love these bunters, ugly ducklings of American literature, ready to become swans. But she did not recognize them. The meeting of Warton is known with young Scott Fitzgerald in Paris in the mid-1920s. Journalists dubbed her "the most unsuccessful literary meeting in American history." Fitzgerald told a joke with a lunge against American provincialism - how the American couple spent three days in the Parisian brothel, thinking that it was a hotel. Warton said coldly: "But you have not yet told us what the couple did in this brothel." The conversation ended with mutual cobbles. The sensitive Fitzgerald was seriously experiencing failure, believed that he was bored, uninteresting and discredited all his generation. Warton wrote in the diary: "The young novelist Fitzgerald was a visit. Terrible!" Professor Zverev commented on this meeting so much:

“The business was not in the personality, but in the principles. Everything that Fitzgerald ’s generation caused bitterness and sarcasm - the same enlightenment, and business honesty, and“ good manners ”did not seem empty fetish Edith Warton (like many worthy people of its generation). Embroational and skepticism of post -war youth, spilled out into The pages of their books were alien to the author of the "century of innocence."

Marina Efimova: In the collection of “Four novels of the 1920s”, which came out this year to the 80th anniversary of the death of Edith Worton, her later novels are presented, which, in general opinion, do not belong to her best things (“Blagings of the Moon”, “Son at the front”, “Dream at Twilight” and “Children”). Warton could not understand and accept her post -war heroes. For example, she could not convincingly describe the ease with which in the 1920s women went to divorce, because for her herself was associated with severe experiences and painful memories. With irony and not without bitterness, she characterizes her heroes in the novel "Blinds of the Moon":

The announcer: "Suzi and nickname had a strong related rear in New York and Philadelphia, but they resolutely moved away from this old innocent world and enthusiastically joined the crowd deprived of nationality, in which young people easily fell into each other, easily married and just as easily diluted in view of the whole of Europe."

Marina Efimova: Warton did not leave the feeling that she had survived her time. “The world,” she wrote, “in which I grew up and formed, collapsed in 1914.” Even her 1922 novel “Son at the Front” was a clear failure, although Edith Warton was personally stuck on the First World War and deeply experienced her with all over France. Zverev writes:

“ Warton, Warton did not know how to depict current events. France, becoming her home, could not become a material for creativity. Isolation from America has stained the last and a half decades of her life in gloomy tones. From the other side of the Atlantic, the wreckage of the pre-war, old New York, who found Warton, his chronicle, analyst and poet, were visible through the smoke of bright, sad memories. And the pure lyrical note sounds clearly in her novels of the emigrant era: in the "custom of the country", in the "Age of Innocialness".

Marina Efimova: Maybe precisely due to the complexity and inconsistency of the feelings that Edith Warton experienced for the departed world, he comes to life in her books. And we still read about him with deep excitement. “Life,” Warton wrote, “does not look like an abstract ideas at all. It all consists of forced compromises with fate, of concessions to old traditions and beliefs.”