Gissing The Private Papers of Henry Reycroft

1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4553-5568-6
Verlag: Seltzer Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 482 Seiten

Classic novel.According to Wikipedia: 'George Robert Gissing (November 22, 1857 - December 28, 1903) was an English novelist who wrote twenty-three novels between 1880 and 1903. From his early naturalistic works, he developed into one of the most accomplished realists of the late-Victorian era. ... In 1880 when his first novel, Workers in the Dawn, proved to be an abject failure, he became a private tutor to keep poverty from the door. In 1883, he separated from his wife, now an alcoholic, but gave her a weekly income on what little money he had until her death in 1888. In 1884 his second novel, The Unclassed, which saw a marked improvement in style and characterisation, met with moderate critical acclaim. After this Gissing published novels almost on a yearly basis, but so little money did they bring him, that for several more years he had to continue working as a tutor. Although notoriously exploited by his publishers, he was able to visit Italy in 1889 from the sale of the copyright of The Nether World, his most pessimistic book. Between 1891 and 1897 (his so-called middle period) Gissing produced his best works, which include New Grub Street, Born in Exile, The Odd Women, In the Year of Jubilee, and The Whirlpool. In advance of their time, they variously deal with the growing commercialism of the literary market, religious charlatanism, the situation of emancipated women in a male-dominated society, the poverty of the working classes, and marriage in a decadent world. During this period, having belatedly become aware of the financial rewards of writing short stories for the press, he produced almost seventy stories. As a result he was able to give up teaching. ... The middle years of the decade saw Gissing's reputation reach new heights: by some critics he is counted alongside George Meredith and Thomas Hardy as one of the best three novelists of his day. He also enjoyed new friendships with fellow writers such as Henry James, and H.G. Wells, and came into contact with many other up and coming writers such as Joseph Conrad and Stephen Crane. ... In 1903 Gissing published The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, which brought him much acclaim. This is his most autobiographical work. It is the memoir of the last happy years of a writer who had struggled much like Gissing, but thanks to a late legacy had been able to give up writing to retire to the countryside.'

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gissing, George

Leseproben

AUTUMN
  I    This has been a year of long sunshine.  Month has followed upon month with little unkindness of the sky; I scarcely marked when July passed into August, August into September.  I should think it summer still, but that I see the lanes yellow-purfled with flowers of autumn.   I am busy with the hawkweeds; that is to say, I am learning to distinguish and to name as many as I can.  For scientific classification I have little mind; it does not happen to fall in with my habits of thought; but I like to be able to give its name (the "trivial" by choice) to every flower I meet in my walks.  Why should I be content to say, "Oh, it's a hawkweed"?  That is but one degree less ungracious than if I dismissed all the yellow-rayed as "dandelions."  I feel as if the flower were pleased by my recognition of its personality.  Seeing how much I owe them, one and all, the least I can do is to greet them severally.  For the same reason I had rather say "hawkweed" than "hieracium"; the homelier word has more of kindly friendship.    II    How the mood for a book sometimes rushes upon one, either one knows not why, or in consequence, perhaps, of some most trifling suggestion.  Yesterday I was walking at dusk.  I came to an old farmhouse; at the garden gate a vehicle stood waiting, and I saw it was our doctor's gig.  Having passed, I turned to look back.  There was a faint afterglow in the sky beyond the chimneys; a light twinkled at one of the upper windows.  I said to myself, "Tristram Shandy," and hurried home to plunge into a book which I have not opened for I dare say twenty years.   Not long ago, I awoke one morning and suddenly thought of the Correspondence between Goethe and Schiller; and so impatient did I become to open the book that I got up an hour earlier than usual.  A book worth rising for; much better worth than old Burton, who pulled Johnson out of bed.  A book which helps one to forget the idle or venomous chatter going on everywhere about us, and bids us cherish hope for a world "which has such people in't."   These volumes I had at hand; I could reach them down from my shelves at the moment when I hungered for them.  But it often happens that the book which comes into my mind could only be procured with trouble and delay; I breathe regretfully and put aside the thought. Ah! the books that one will never read again.  They gave delight, perchance something more; they left a perfume in the memory; but life has passed them by for ever.  I have but to muse, and one after another they rise before me.  Books gentle and quieting; books noble and inspiring; books that well merit to be pored over, not once but many a time.  Yet never again shall I hold them in my hand; the years fly too quickly, and are too few.  Perhaps when I lie waiting for the end, some of those lost books will come into my wandering thoughts, and I shall remember them as friends to whom I owed a kindness--friends passed upon the way.  What regret in that last farewell!    III    Every one, I suppose, is subject to a trick of mind which often puzzles me.  I am reading or thinking, and at a moment, without any association or suggestion that I can discover, there rises before me the vision of a place I know.  Impossible to explain why that particular spot should show itself to my mind's eye; the cerebral impulse is so subtle that no search may trace its origin.  If I am reading, doubtless a thought, a phrase, possibly a mere word, on the page before me serves to awaken memory.  If I am otherwise occupied, it must be an object seen, an odour, a touch; perhaps even a posture of the body suffices to recall something in the past.  Sometimes the vision passes, and there an end; sometimes, however, it has successors, the memory working quite independently of my will, and no link appearing between one scene and the next.   Ten minutes ago I was talking with my gardener.  Our topic was the nature of the soil, whether or not it would suit a certain kind of vegetable.  Of a sudden I found myself gazing at--the Bay of Avlona. Quite certainly my thoughts had not strayed in that direction.  The picture that came before me caused me a shock of surprise, and I am still vainly trying to discover how I came to behold it.   A happy chance that I ever saw Avlona.  I was on my way from Corfu to Brindisi.  The steamer sailed late in the afternoon; there was a little wind, and as the December night became chilly, I soon turned in.  With the first daylight I was on deck, expecting to find that we were near the Italian port; to my surprise, I saw a mountainous shore, towards which the ship was making at full speed.  On inquiry, I learnt that this was the coast of Albania; our vessel not being very seaworthy, and the wind still blowing a little (though not enough to make any passenger uncomfortable), the captain had turned back when nearly half across the Adriatic, and was seeking a haven in the shelter of the snow-topped hills.  Presently we steamed into a great bay, in the narrow mouth of which lay an island.  My map showed me where we were, and with no small interest I discovered that the long line of heights guarding the bay on its southern side formed the Acroceraunian Promontory.  A little town visible high up on the inner shore was the ancient Aulon.   Here we anchored, and lay all day long.  Provisions running short, a boat had to be sent to land, and the sailors purchased, among other things, some peculiarly detestable bread--according to them, cotto al sole.  There was not a cloud in the sky; till evening, the wind whistled above our heads, but the sea about us was blue and smooth. I sat in hot sunshine, feasting my eyes on the beautiful cliffs and valleys of the thickly-wooded shore.  Then came a noble sunset; then night crept gently into the hollows of the hills, which now were coloured the deepest, richest green.  A little lighthouse began to shine.  In the perfect calm that had fallen, I heard breakers murmuring softly upon the beach.   At sunrise we entered the port of Brindisi.    IV    The characteristic motive of English poetry is love of nature, especially of nature as seen in the English rural landscape.  From the "Cuckoo Song" of our language in its beginnings to the perfect loveliness of Tennyson's best verse, this note is ever sounding.  It is persistent even amid the triumph of the drama.  Take away from Shakespeare all his bits of natural description, all his casual allusions to the life and aspects of the country, and what a loss were there!  The reign of the iambic couplet confined, but could not suppress, this native music; Pope notwithstanding, there came the "Ode to Evening" and that "Elegy" which, unsurpassed for beauty of thought and nobility of utterance in all the treasury of our lyrics, remains perhaps the most essentially English poem ever written.   This attribute of our national mind availed even to give rise to an English school of painting.  It came late; that it ever came at all is remarkable enough.  A people apparently less apt for that kind of achievement never existed.  So profound is the English joy in meadow and stream and hill, that, unsatisfied at last with vocal expression, it took up the brush, the pencil, the etching tool, and created a new form of art.  The National Gallery represents only in a very imperfect way the richness and variety of our landscape work. Were it possible to collect, and suitably to display, the very best of such work in every vehicle, I know not which would be the stronger emotion in an English heart, pride or rapture.   One obvious reason for the long neglect of Turner lies in the fact that his genius does not seem to be truly English.  Turner's landscape, even when it presents familiar scenes, does not show them in the familiar light.  Neither the artist nor the intelligent layman is satisfied.  He gives us glorious visions; we admit the glory--but we miss something which we deem essential.  I doubt whether Turner tasted rural England; I doubt whether the spirit of English poetry was in him; I doubt whether the essential significance of the common things which we call beautiful was revealed to his soul.  Such doubt does not affect his greatness as a poet in colour and in form, but I suspect that it has always been the cause why England could not love him.  If any man whom I knew to be a man of brains confessed to me that he preferred Birket Foster, I should smile--but I should understand.    V    A long time since I wrote in this book.  In September I caught a cold, which meant three weeks' illness.   I have not been suffering; merely feverish and weak and unable to use my mind for anything but a daily hour or two of the lightest reading.  The weather has not favoured my recovery, wet winds often blowing, and not much sun.  Lying in bed, I have watched the sky, studied the clouds, which--so long as they are clouds indeed, and not a mere waste of grey vapour--always have their beauty. Inability to read has always been my horror; once, a trouble of the eyes all but drove me mad with fear of blindness; but I find that in my present circumstances, in my own still...