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Yu.
Kovalev Theodore Dreiser discovers America 1
If we compare foreign writers of the XX century by the degree of their popularity in Russia, then Theodore Dreiser will probably take one of the first, if not the first place.
Our acquaintance with his works happened in 1925, and it began in a strange way not with his famous novels, but with the story "Negro Jeff", now almost forgotten.
Almost sixty years have passed since then.
The number of Dreiser's publications in Russian is growing uncontrollably, without revealing a tendency to decrease.
In 1928, the first collection of his works began to be published (in 13 volumes), in 1950 - the second (in 12 volumes), in 1955 the third, in 1973 the fourth...
The number of editions of individual works, collections, journal publications is almost impossible to account for: the circulation is estimated in millions of copies.
Today, publishers who undertake the production of Dreiser's works will not need a computer to find out how many copies are required to meet the reader's demand.
No matter how much you publish, it's not enough.
Paradoxically, we have every reason to believe that we value Dreiser more and understand him better than the Americans.
And, in any case, we read it more and more often.
For us, Dreiser is the founder of new paths in literature, the discoverer of new worlds in life, a writer who is recklessly brave, honest and uncompromising.
We can only agree with G. Mencken, who wrote after Dreiser's death in 1945: "He was a great artist, no other American of his generation left such a strong and beautiful trace in our national literature.
American literature before and after his time differs almost as much as biology before and after Darwin."
"Russian Dreiser" is a significant and important phenomenon in our spiritual world.
The books of the great American are still read with unflagging interest, helping us to understand America, the world, man and delivering high artistic pleasure.
If we try to express in one word our idea of Dreiser the artist, then, perhaps, it is difficult to find anything more successful than the title of one of his novels - "Titan".
2
Theodore Dreiser (1871-1945) lived a long life, almost entirely devoted to literary creativity.
His legacy is striking in its vastness and diversity.
Dreiser wrote poems, plays, articles, essays, essays, short stories, novellas, novels, reports, reviews and critical notes.
His writings are numerous and unequal.
As a poet and playwright, Dreiser left no trace in literature.
Many of his stories and essays are rightly forgotten.
Today, only biographers and literary historians turn to them.
It is obvious that the central core in Dreiser's creative heritage, which has an enduring historical, literary and aesthetic value, are his novels.
There are only eight of them: "Sister Kerry" (1900), " Jenny Gerhardt "(1911), "The Financier" (1912), "The Titan" (1914), "The Genius" (1915), "American Tragedy" (1925), " The Bulwark "(1946, published posthumously)," Stoic " (1947, published posthumously).
The appearance of each of Dreiser's novels caused a storm in American literary criticism.
The writer refused to follow the "rules of the game", violated all the generally accepted "norms" of literary creativity.
He wrote about what was supposed to be forbidden for art, wrote with a frankness that made decent critics shudder, allowed himself to reveal the true content of moral values axiomatically accepted in bourgeois society.
He expressed judgments and assessments that plunged the respectable audience into a state of shock.
Dreiser spared no one and nothing.
He asserted the fundamental tragedy of the fate of every ordinary American and blamed the social system for this.
In search of solutions to the cardinal problems of national life, the writer approached the ideology of the proletariat, which logically led him to join the Communist Party of the USA - a step that even today American criticism cannot forgive him.
3
If we take a general look at the history of assessments of Dreiser's works in American bourgeois criticism, it is easy to see that it splits into three stages: 1900-1917, 1917-1945 and from 1945 to the present.
Let's say right away that at no stage could criticism ignore Dreiser's work.
Each of his novels was too significant a phenomenon, caused too powerful a public response to be ignored.
Dreiser could never complain about the lack of interest from critics.
But this interest, as a rule, was unfriendly.
At the first stage, Dreiser's novels were subjected to scathing criticism, based mainly on moral considerations.
Dreiser could not be forgiven for invading forbidden areas, for brutally exposing the falseness, hypocrisy, and hypocrisy of the moral foundations of bourgeois society.
At the second stage, the criticism focused mainly on the ideological aspects of the writer's work, on his social theories, political sympathies.
The writer's activity in support of the American working class, in defense of Soviet Russia, his irreconcilable speeches against fascism (European and American) caused particular displeasure on the part of bourgeois criticism.
The persistent interest in Marxism, in the ideas of the socialist reconstruction of society, which Dreiser discovered in the declining years of his life and which eventually led him to join the Communist Party, led many American critics, even those who had previously been benevolent towards the writer, to indescribable rage.
The third stage begins from the moment of Dreiser's death.
The writer has completed his journey.
Now it was useless to polemize with him, to refute him or to instruct him on the "true path".
It became obvious that Dreiser's work, taken as a whole, is a phenomenon of great importance in the history of American culture of the XX century.
This phenomenon should have been studied, and the criticism became more academic.
Moreover, bold intrusions into forbidden areas (for example, the physiological aspects of human existence) could no longer irritate critics, since these areas themselves were no longer forbidden.
What can I say, Dreiser, with his "delicate" descriptions of the love adventures of Frank Cowperwood or Eugene Witla, looks like a timid provincial against the background of current literature, teetering on the verge of pornography.
Today, the study of Dreiser in the United States is mainly in two directions - biographical and aesthetic.
It is now clear that, for the most part, American critics have not achieved success.
You can name two or three successful studies, similar to the monograph of Francis Matissen, and that's all.
Biographers carefully collect small details of Dreiser's life, information about his friends, relatives, about the state of his financial affairs, about his wives and mistresses, about various kinds of quarrels and disputes in which oi was involved.
The biographies they wrote contain everything, including the smallest details of everyday life, but, as Malcolm Cowley, an elder of American critics, rightly noted, there is no main thing - Dreiser himself.
They do not help us at all to understand the "Dreiser phenomenon".
An eloquent example of this kind of biographies can be considered the work of W. Svanberg, published in 1965.
Critics of the "aesthetic" of direction focused its efforts on "utilitarianist" creativity Dreiser, to the establishment of errors in the language of his works, their style and complexity of the subjects, imperfect characters, etc.
They are quite convincingly demonstrated that Dreiser negligent in the language, up to errors of grammar against his lack of taste that he is not at odds with the logic that the style of his compositions devoid of grace and glazed that he lacked the education that in many cases, the actions of his characters are insufficiently motivated, and even the psychology of it, things are no matter what, in some of its concepts and judgments Dreiser primitive.
They willingly and often contrast Dreiser with his outstanding contemporaries - from James and Howells to Anderson and Hemingway, and invariably come to the conclusion: Dreiser lacked talent.
At the same time, they all refer to the words of Dreiser himself, who noted that he was dissatisfied with his books and that all of them, in fact, should have been rewritten.
They, of course, objected to the connoisseurs of Dreiser's creativity: for God's sake,how is that?
Dreiser is one of the most widely read American authors of the XX century.
His books laid the foundation for a new development of national literature, determined its direction for many decades to come.
All the major writers of modern times recognize their duty to Dreiser!
This dispute, in its own wise, was resolved by Malcolm Cowley, who in his review of Swanberg's book put it something like this: do not quarrel, gentlemen.
Dreiser is an "uncut" genius, not ennobled and not supported by talent, but a genius.
He is our great primitive!
About the" primitive " Cowley, perhaps, overdid it, but on the whole he was right.
Ol just didnot say what exactly Dreiser's genius is.
4
Dreiser's genius, for all its originality and strangeness, was generally traditional for America.
The history of American national culture was formed in such a way that for many decades the main task of the great American writers was to "discover America".
Recall that the American state was created by immigrants from different European countries who settled along a narrow strip of the Atlantic coast in separate colonies.
They retained their customs, customs, language, culture, did not know each other well, and did not know the vast territories of the continent west of the Allegheny Mountains at all.
Mountain ranges, canyons, forests, deserts, prairies, rivers and waterfalls remained for a long time a great mystery, shrouded in a haze of legend.
They knew little about the native Indians of the country, with whom they waged a bloody war of extermination.
The population of America grew mainly due to the influx of immigrants from Europe.
The newly arrived immigrants were even more ignorant about their new homeland, they knew even less about it.
And this concerned not only the" geography " of the continent, but also the history of America, its socio political institutions, state structure, mores, etc.
Even at the turn of the XVIII and XIX centuries, when the country was already freed from colonial dependence, when a new independent state - the United States was formed, there was still no general concept of America in the minds of Americans as a single complex of naturally geographical, ethnological, socio historical, political and moral psychological moments that form the very concept of "America".
This, by the way, was associated with the complexity and slowness of the formation of the nation and the formation of national consciousness in the United States.
It is not surprising that at the early stages of its existence, American literature was involved in a powerful stream of "nativism" - a cultural and literary movement, the meaning and pathos of which consisted in the artistic and philosophical development of America, its nature, history, social and political institutions, mores and customs.
The great "nativists" were Irving and Cooper, Hawthorne and Melville, Bret Garth and Twain, and many other geniuses of the XIX century.
Each of them discovered "his" America, which became a part, an aspect, an element of national life, national consciousness.
In the second half of the XIX century, however, it became obvious that it was impossible to" discover America " once and for all.
The pace of development of the economic, social, and political life of the country, especially after the Civil War of 1861-1864, was so high that in just a few decades America changed unrecognizably and very little resembled the America of Irving, Cooper, or Hawthorne.
By the end of the century, it had become a country of concentrated production and capital, a country of banks and monopolies, trusts and cartels.
There was a rapid concentration of wealth at one pole and monstrous poverty at the other.
A multimillion strong army of factory factory proletarians has emerged.
Unemployment has become a national disaster.
The first significant organized demonstrations of the American proletariat also belong to this time.
Corruption in public authorities - from city municipalities to the federal Congress - has reached monstrous proportions.
In other words, American capitalism has entered a monopolistic stage of development.
It was already a different," new "America, and it should be "rediscovered" anew.
The task was not easy.
The transition was made quickly, but not simultaneously.
To grasp the nature of the changes, their significance, to assess their importance, to separate the main from the secondary, to look at the whole picture and see the" new " America in its typical features, a special gift was required, a unique mindset capable of analysis, synthesis and generalization.
Moreover, it was necessary not only the ability to see and understand, but also the ability to recreate what was seen in artistic images, to build an artistic world that would adequately and prominently reflect the real world.
All this was possessed by Theodore Dreiser.
This, in fact, was his genius.
Discovering and artistically recreating the "new" America, Dreiser, figuratively speaking, "worked with an axe".
He was not up to the subtleties of stylistic decoration, not to the in depth psychological development of characters and motivations, not to poetic descriptions or the organic balance of the narrative structure.
And it's not that he "couldnot".
Dreiser's many years of editorial experience, as well as some of his writings, indicate that he was able, when necessary, to be an excellent stylist, a virtuoso who owned every imaginable set of artistic means.
It's just that he didnot strive for this in his large canvases.
What he created in his novels was life itself.
It didnot need a special finish in the name of verisimilitude.
It was described roughly, ungraciously, sometimes carelessly, but it was still life.
Dreiser best defined the literary specifics of his method himself when he said about "Sister Kerry": "This is a book that is close to life.
It was created not as an example of literary skill, but as a picture of social conditions, outlined as simply and strongly as the English language allows...
When it gets to the people, they will understand, because it is a story about real life, about their life."'
Dreiser was not alone in his efforts to discover, show and expose the "new" America.
Alongside him worked Frank Norris, Stephen Crane, Hamlin Garland, Jack London, Upton Sinclair and a whole company of "mud rakes" led by Lincoln Steffens.
American critics call them "naturalists", which x although it is not entirely accurate, but in general it is not without reason.
They were "naturalists" in the spirit of Emile Zola, with his sharp social vision, revealing pathos and desire to reveal the nature of human social behavior.
Dreiser was undoubtedly the largest figure among his associates.
He did not do everything that he could, but he paved a new path in literature.
We can safely say that the American realism of the XX century begins with Dreiser.
Already during the First World War, many American writers recognized him as a patriarch and a pioneer.
In April 1916, Sherwood Anderson wrote about him:
"Theodore Dreiser is old - he is very, very old.
I do not know how many years he has lived, maybe thirty, maybe fifty, but he is very old...
When Dreiser leaves, we will write books, many books.
The books that we will write will have all the qualities that Dreiser lacked.
We will have a sense of humor, and everyone knows that Dreiser has no sense of humor.
Moreover, we will have grace, lightness of brushstroke, dreams of beauty breaking through the shell of life.
Yes, those who follow Dreiser will have many things that he did not have.
The miracle and beauty of Dreiser is that we will have all this thanks to him...
Theodore's legs are heavy.
How easy it is to smash his books "to the nines", to laugh at him.
But... top, top, top - this is Dreiser walking, heavy and old.
Dreiser's feet are paving the way for us, rough, heavy feet.
They are walking through the desert, making a path.
Over time, the path will turn into an avenue with arches above your head and elegant spires piercing the sky.
And the children will run along this street, shouting to each other: "Look at me!", forgetting about Theodore's legs.
The people who will follow Dreiser have a lot to do.
Their journey will be long.
But, thanks to Dreiser, we in America will not have to build a road through the desert.
Dreiser did it."
5
In the concept of America proposed by Dreiser, two poles are clearly exposed - the pole of poverty and the pole of wealth.
The internal dynamics of his novels are invariably associated with the movement of the characters from one pole to the other - up and down, down and up, from poverty to wealth, from wealth to poverty.
The convincing reproduction of national reality, subordinated to this dynamic principle, assumed as a prerequisite a penetrating knowledge of the life of the poor and the life of the rich, not only in its external, everyday manifestations, but also in its deep socio psychological and moral essence.
Understanding the" sphere of poverty " could not pose any difficulties for Dreiser.
The son of a poor man and a poor man himself, he knew the taste of poverty, as they say, from a young age.
The writer's father, Johann Paul Dreiser , a young German weaver and a zealous Catholic, emigrated to America in 1846 in the hope of getting out of poverty and finding prosperity in a "free country".
Like many immigrants, he did not stay on the Atlantic coast and after long migrations settled in the Midwest, in the small town of Fort Wayne, where he received a position as head of production at a woolen fabric factory.
He was hardworking, knew his job perfectly, earned good money.
America seemed to have given him everything it promised.
He quickly went up and after a while already got his own factory in Sullivan.
At the same time, Johann Paul married, and his wife bore him eleven children.
The prosperity, however, was short lived.
The take off curve broke in the middle, and the life of a large family went downhill.
The fire destroyed the factory with all
stocks of raw materials, for which Johann Paul has not yet had time to pay with suppliers.
He tried to start recovery work, but was seriously injured and was out of action for a long time.
During his illness, the well being of the Dreisers disappeared like smoke.
They were left penniless and had to move to the small village of Terre Haute.
The Dreisers fell into hopeless poverty, from which they never managed to rise again.
The family moved from place to place, separated, reunited and finally finally broke up.
The parents died, the children scattered around the world.
Dreiser's working life began at an age when normal children still play with toys.
He sold newspapers, worked as a farmhand, washed dishes in restaurants, delivered hardware to customers, delivered laundry from the laundry, collected rent from slum residents in Chicago...
It is difficult to list all the professions that young Dreiser tried.
Often he found himself completely out of work.
He had a chance to taste the charity soup and spent the night in flophouses.
It was a difficult life experience, but useful for the future writer.
The beginning of Dreiser's journalistic activity dates back to 1892.
He worked as a reporter for newspapers in Chicago, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Toledo, New York.
Cooperation in newspapers contributed to a wider acquaintance with the national reality.
Later, he recalled this period of his life: "I went to work for newspapers, and from that moment my real encounter with life began - with murders, arson, violence, bribery, corruption, fraud and perjury in any form imaginable."'
Dreiser learned another lesson from his newspaper work: he realized how unscrupulous, immoral and corrupt the bourgeois press is.
In 1895, he gave up reporting and began collaborating in magazines.
He wrote for * marks, sketches, essays, in which even then a remarkable literary talent was revealed.
Soon he managed to break into the largest American magazines of that time.
Dreiser's magazine work was diverse, but it still shows a commitment to a certain genre.
Dreiser preferred a portrait essay based on an interview.
His essays form two series: "Life stories of people who have achieved success" and "Notes on Public Characters".
While preparing the material for the essays, Dreiser met and talked with a variety of (but always significant) people.
Among them we meet the great inventor Thomas Edison, the outstanding writer William Howells, the famous railway magnate billionaire J. P. Blavatsky.
Gould, Carnegie millionaires, Armor, Field...
Acquaintance with the powerful of this world significantly expanded Dreiser's horizons, allowed him to see up close what is usually hidden from the eyes of ordinary Americans.
Thus, we see that Dreiser's own life experience somehow prepared him for the role of the "discoverer of America".
Biographers have long drawn attention to the fact that autobiographical material is widely used in such novels as "Sister Kerry", "Jenny Gerhardt", "American Tragedy".
But, of course, it is impossible to reduce everything to the personal experience of the writer.
Personal experience alone was not enough.
This is clearly evidenced by his "Trilogy of Desire", which includes three novels - "The Financier", "Titan" and "Stoic".
6
During the rapid economic development of the United States after the Civil War, an intensive merger of financial capital with industrial capital began, which naturally led to the emergence of giant trusts, corporations, monopolies that concentrated huge wealth and unheard of power over millions of workers in their hands.
They cruelly dealt with competitors, mercilessly exploited workers and farmers, without knowing any restrictions.
They did not take into account either the law or moral principles.
Their morality was the morality of bandits who have nothing to fear, since they bought legislative and executive power at the root, taking advantage of corruption, which struck, like an epidemic, the state power at all levels.
In the popular consciousness of America, the activities of these corporations and monopolies were associated with the image of an octopus that knows no pity, from whose tentacles it is impossible to hide.
By the way, Frank Norris, who wrote a novel about the hopeless struggle of farmers with the railway trust, titled it "Octopus".
This was the " new " America that was to be "discovered" by American writers, and it gave rise to a new figure of the "master of life" - not just a rich man, the owner of factories or factories, not a merchant and banker, but a financier.
To depict this "new" America and the human type formed by it, Dreiser could no longer have enough personal life experience.
He had to sit down for books, documents, newspaper and magazine publications, archival materials.
In search of a "hero", he thoroughly examined the lives and activities of at least two dozen financiers, such as Morgan, Rockefeller, Gould, Harriman, etc.
In the end, he chose the fate of Charles Tyson Yerkes, who seemed to him the most suitable prototype for the hero of the trilogy.
The multi millionaire Yerkes began his financial activity in Philadelphia, then moved to Chicago, where he monopolized urban rail transport, and ended his life in London, where he almost succeeded in his intention to take over the entire London subway.
Yerkes was an active, energetic, courageous, shameless and dishonest man, devoid of any moral principles.
He devoted his life to the satisfaction of his three passions, which were money, women and painting.
The end of Yerkes ' life, however, turned out to be disastrous: he lost his taste for women and art, and his enormous wealth, mortgaged and re mortgaged for loans that were supposed to give him the opportunity to acquire a controlling stake in the London Underground and then become incredibly rich I, went under the hammer.
In the" Trilogy of Desire", Dreiser reproduces the life story of Yerkes quite accurately.
The first novel - "The Financier" - is dedicated to the Philadelphia period, the second - "Titan" - to Chicago, the third - "Stoic" - to London.
However, it should be borne in mind that, although on many pages of the trilogy Dreiser almost verbatim translates many documents and materials related to Yerkes ' career, he did not at all seek to write a biography of the famous financier.
His trilogy is not a description of a particular case, but a generalizing artistic creation aimed at analyzing a social phenomenon.
"The Financier" - the initial part of the trilogy contains not only a description of the early stage of the hero's activity, but is like an introduction to the world of financial transactions, frauds, transactions characteristic of a large American city in the second half of the XIX century.
The existence of this world was theoretically known to Dreiser's readers, but few people, in fact, understood the mechanics and principles of its functioning.
The author leads the reader to banks, trading offices, usurious "offices" , to the municipality and to the stock exchange, explains in detail the technique of speculative operations, the ways by which money is made from "nothing", shows how financiers take over the city government and get the opportunity to manage the city treasury as in their own pocket.
The information devoted to these aspects of Philadelphia life occupies a significant part of the novel and helps the reader to turn a general concept into concrete knowledge.
The writer tears off the veil of mystery from "big money" and exposes the immorality of the titans of the financial world.
In the center of this world, Dreiser put his hero - Frank Algernon Cowperwood, a complex, ambiguous and, so to speak, multifunctional character.
In a sense, Dreiser followed the tradition of the "novel of success" already ingrained in American literature, most clearly represented by the writings of Horatio Alger, whose heroes, starting "from below" (bootblacks, newspaper sellers, errand boys), invariably reached the heights of fame and wealth thanks to diligence, hard work, enterprise and ingenuity.
However, unlike Alger, Dreiser did not write an apology for the hero, but rather his exposure.
The writer tells the story of Cowperwood, starting from childhood.
He initially gives his hero physical strength, beauty, energy, a sharp mind, charm, the ability to inspire confidence - human qualities that Cowperwood retains to the end.
In this sense, Cowperwood's character is static and invariably attracts the reader's sympathy.
If we talk about the evolution of the image, it will be concentrated mainly in two interrelated areas - professional and moral.
Cowperwood gains professional experience, and in this process the moral foundations of his personality are destroyed.
He does not become a "villain".
He simply becomes a person devoid of morality.
It is replaced by a primitive ethical system, which is based on the principle: "my desires first of all".
Hence, by the way, the name of the entire cycle - "The Trilogy of Desire".
Having set out to expose the bigwigs of "big business", Dreiser could, of course, make his hero a geek, a misanthropist, obsessed with a pathological passion for profit, etc., that is, in other words, turn him into a"villain".
But the "villain" is always a deviation from the norm.
The writer was interested in the norm itself, expressed in"zero morality".
The America that Dreiser was now "discovering" for his readers was an America with "zero morality".
The difficulty of the writer's task was connected with the fact that business America carefully concealed this lack of moral principles.
There were moral systems in use, going back partly to the commandments of Christ, partly to the educational ethics embodied in the" Declaration of Independence " and the works of Benjamin Franklin.
They served as a "facade", a cover, a mask hiding "zero morality".
Hence the monstrous hypocrisy that permeates the public and private lives of Americans, a hypocrisy so familiar that it was not even realized as hypocrisy.
Many business people sincerely believed in their own virtue and just as sincerely believed in the need to commit immoral acts, without even thinking about their immorality.
A typical example in this: the meaning can be served by Butler - one of the characters of the "Financier", who accuses Cowperwood of being "a bankrupt, a fraudster and a thief", and even appeals to the law.
At the same time, it does not occur to him for a moment that oi is exactly the same fraudster and thief, and that, strictly speaking, "prison is crying for him, too."
One of the important functions of the image of Cowperwood in "The Financier" is that in this character the absence of a moral principle inherent in all the financial aces of Philadelphia derived in the novel (Mollenhauer, Butler, Simpson, etc.) is presented in a concentrated and open form.
Of course, Cowperwood does not proclaim from the pulpit that he does not recognize generally accepted morality, but neither does he deceive himself and others.
In a conversation with his beloved Eileen, he speaks quite frankly on this subject: "In order to succeed... it is necessary for a person - even outwardly - to reckon with generally accepted norms.
Nothing else is required."
Cowperwood easily lies to others, but he never lies to himself.
He does not hide the true motives of his actions and, unlike others, does not wear a mask with constancy, thanks to which it sometimes grows to the face.
Dreiser's strength, his genius, lies in his ability to see life with a piercing vision, in his ability to discover, comprehend and reproduce new, important layers of national reality in artistic images of enormous generalizing power.
He had the gift of analysis and foresight.
The images created by him and the circumstances surrounding them are not just typical.
They concentrate in themselves such features of the social life of America that were not yet dominant, but were supposed to become so after a while.
It was this ability that made Dreiser the leader of the literary development of the United States at the beginning of the XX century.
Note, however, that the strength of Dreiser's artistic insight was accompanied by a weakness in the philosophical interpretation of reality.
Like many of his contemporaries Frank Norris, Jack London, Elton Sinclair and others - the writer was strongly influenced by the popular philosophy of positivism in its Spencerian version and the ideas of social Darwinism with a certain touch of Nietzscheanism.
In his mind, Dreiser subordinated social development to the natural law.
He found (and showed) the manifestation of this natural law both in general and in particular.
The simplest example is the scene that the writer draws on the very first pages of the novel: little Frank Cowperwood watches the battle of a lobster and a cuttlefish in an aquarium at a fish market.
The lobster, of course, devours the cuttlefish, since it has nothing to defend itself with.
This is, one might say, the simplest illustration of the Darwinian thesis about the survival of the fittest, or, if you like, the Nietzschean thesis that the fastest wins in a run, and the strongest wins in a fight.
Young Frank extracts from here "the answer to the riddle that has long tormented him: how does life work?
This is how all living things exist - one at the expense of the other.
Lobsters devour cuttlefish and other creatures.
Who eats lobsters?
Of course, a person... well, who eats a person?..
Yes, yes, of course!
Some people live at the expense of others."
This, if I may say so, is the whole philosophy, and nothing in the following pages of the novel contradicts it.
This, by the way, is connected with a funny curiosity that arises whenever critics try to interpret the image of Cowperwood.
They reproach the writer with the fact that, creating an image of a colossal revealing force, he "involuntarily admires", "admires" his hero.
At the same time, critics quite rightly refer to the fact that every reader who has read the novel feels a sense of sympathy for the hero and fully sympathizes with him even in his immoral deeds. .
It seems that there is an incorrect statement of the problem here.
The artistic image is the product of the writer's observations, passed through his creative imagination.
If a writer gives his hero some character traits, then you should not ask: "How so?
Why? "
It would be correct to ask:" Why?
For what purpose?"
And then everything immediately falls into place.
Frank Cowperwood is a financier, that is, a person who operates not so much with his own as with other people's capital, which he borrows from individuals, banks and commercial organizations.
He must inspire confidence, confidence that he will have enough intelligence, will, energy to properly dispose of funds and ensure profit.
Without this, he will not see capital, will not be a financier, will not be able to withstand the struggle with competitors.
His personal charm and other attractive qualities are, if you like, "claws" that ensure the victory of the lobster over the cuttlefish.
Working on the first novel of the trilogy, Dreiser proceeded from the idea that one cannot become a financier, they need to be born, that the ability to finance is akin to the beautiful voice of a singer or the talent of an artist - in the sense that it is a gift of nature.
Nature creates a financier and gives him a purpose.
No matter how vicious, immoral and inhumane the activity of a financier may be, it ultimately creates some positive values - the development of the railway network, the construction of cities, the development of minerals, etc. Dreiser believes that financial "titans" will never seize power over the people, the country, the world.
Again, nature will take care of this, which subordinates everything to the law of the "inevitable equation" and, in contrast to this category of people, creates others, no less energetic and gifted, pursuing opposite goals.
The general principle of Dreiser's "philosophy" is contained in his reasoning about the forest.
Nature does not care about individual trees.
She takes care of the forest.
Individual trees can grow to any height.
Eventually, they will die anyway.
And the forest will remain forever.
It is easy to see that the philosophy of the young Dreiser was eclectic, contradictory, inconsistent.
We can only agree with the Soviet researcher of Dreiser's creativity Ya.
Zasursky, who wrote: "The influence of bourgeois ideology, in particular the influence of Spencer's idealistic philosophy, prevented the writer from fully realizing the social problems that he saw, felt and depicted so deeply.
The contrast between the ruthless criticism of the foundations of capitalist America and the limitations of Dreiser's philosophical concept, the discrepancy between criticism and his conclusions is becoming more and more obvious," but let's not forget that, whatever the writer's philosophical errors, Dreiser remains a Dreiser, a genius who discovered the "new" America and showed it to the reader.
It is not surprising that the American critical realism of the XX century arose thanks to the efforts of the "naturalist" Dreiser.
And the writer was right, who noticed back in the twenties that wherever an American writer directed his efforts, no matter what area of life he touched, he would find traces left by Dreiser's "heavy feet" everywhere.
Dreiser led the way.
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