Russian Rhizome of American Modernism: Concerning the Problem of Henry Miller’s Anarchism
- Issue:
- УДК / UDK: 82(091)
- DOI:
- Abstract:
The paper examines the way in which the completely different trend represented by Henry Miller emerged within the framework of Anglo-American modernism, which was aimed at literature and focused on impersonality and the creation of auto-reflexive texts (T.S. Eliot, E. Pound, J. Joyce). Having emigrated to France in 1930, Miller found himself in the context of European modernism; at the same time, he worked on the novel "The Tropic of Cancer" and became a practiced writer. He started to oppose modernism and held the position of a literary layman. Using the stylistic techniques of modernism, Miller dealt not with the text but with his own identity, following the traditions of Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman. This article attempts to prove that this interpretation of the use of literature, which made Miller return to the basics of American literary art, was formed under the influence of the ideas of Russian anarchism, as well as those of Peter A. Kropotkin and his American follower Emma Goldman, in particular. Their ideas about the world, state, history, education and criticism of the bourgeois world dramatically influenced Henry Miller
- Keywords: : Henry Miller, Peter Kropotkin, Emma Goldman, modernism, anarchism.
- References:
[Antliff 1998] – Antliff, Mark. “Cubism, Futurism, Anarchism: The 'Aestheticism' of the ‘Action d'art’ Group, 1906–1920.” Oxford Art Journal 21: 2 (1998): 101–120.
[Antliff, Leighten 2001] – Antliff, Mark, Leighten, Patricia. Cubism and culture. London : Thames & Hudson, 2001.
[Ashbolt 2003] – Ashbolt, Anthony. “Love and Hate in European Eyes: Emma Goldman And Alexander Berkman on America.” Australasian Journal of American Studies 22: 1 (July 2003): 1–14.
[Aubery 1968] – Aubery, Pierre. “The Anarchism of the Literati of the Symbolist Period.” The French Review 42: 1 (Oct., 1968): 39–47.
[Avrich 1988] – Avrich, P. Anarchist portraits. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University, 1988. [Avrich 1995] – Avrich, P. Anarchist voices: an Oral History of Anarchism in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995.
[Berkman 1970] – Berkman, A. Prison memoirs of an anarchist, introd. comm. by Hutchins Hapgood, new introd. by Paul Goodman. New York: Schocken Books, 1970.
[Brassai 1995] – Henry Miller. The Paris Years. New York: Arcade Publishing, 1995. [Creagh 1983] – Creagh, R. L'anarchisme aux Etats-Unis. Berne: P. Lang, 1983. [Crowder 1991] – Crowder, G. Classical Anarchism. The Political Thought of Godwin, Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.
[Decker 2005] – Decker, J. Henry Miller and Narrative Form: Constructing the Self, Re- jecting Modernity. New York and London: Routledge, Taylor& Francis Inc, 2005.
[Dodge 2004] – Dodge, Chris. “Emma Goldman, Thoreau, and Anarchists.” The Thoreau Society Bulletin 248 (Summer 2004): 4–7.
[Dowling 2007] – Dowling, Robert M. “On Eugene O'Neill's ‘Philosophical Anarchism’.” The Eugene O'Neill Review 29 (2007): 50–72.
[Durell, Miller 1963] – Durrell, L., Miller, H. A Private Correspondence, ed. by G. Wickes. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1963.
[Ferguson 1993] – Ferguson, Robert. Henry Miller: A Life. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1993.
[Fine 1955] – Fine, Sidney. “Anarchism and the Assassination of McKinley.” The American Historical Review 60: 4 (Jul., 1955): 777–799.
[Frankel 1996] – Frankel, Oz. “Whatever Happened to ‘Red Emma’? Emma Goldman, from Alien Rebel to American Icon.” The Journal of American History 83: 3 (Dec., 1996): 907–913.
[Gifford 2010] – Gifford, J. “Anarchist Transformation of English Surrealism: The Villa Seurat Network.” Journal of Modern Literature 33: 4 (2010): 57–71.
[Goldman 1969] – Goldman, Emma. Anarchism and Other Essays. New York: Dover Publications, 1969.
[Hassan 1967] – Hassan, Ihab. The Literature of Silence: Henry Miller and Samuel Beckett. New York: Knopf, 1967.
[Ibargüen 1989] – Ibargüen, R.R. Narrative Detours: Henry Miller and The Rise of New Critical Modernism. PhD, diss. Yale University, 1989.
[Jackson 1971] – Jackson, P.R. “Henry Miller, Emerson and the Divided Self.” American Literature 43: 2 (May, 1971): 231–241.
[Jahshan 2001] – Jahshan, P. Henry Miller and the Surrealist Discourse of Excess: A Post- Structuralist Reading. New York: Peter Lang, 2001.
[James 1979] – James, J. The Anarchists. London: Routledge, 1979.
[Kropotkin 1989] – Kropotkin, Petr. Mutual Aid. A Factor of Evolution. Montreal–New York: Black Rose Books, 1989.
[Mailer 1971] – Mailer, Norman. The Prisoner of Sex. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1971. [Marshall 1993] – Marshall, P. Demanding the Impossible. A History of Anarchism. London: Fontana, 1993.
[Martin 1953] – Martin, James J. Men Against the State: The Expositors of Individualist Anarchism in America, 1827-1908. DeKalb, IL: Adrian Allen Associates, 1953.
[Masuga 2011] – Masuga, K. Henry Miller and How He Got that Way. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.
[Millett 1970] – Millett, Kate. Sexual Politics. Urbane and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1970.
[Miller 1945a] – Miller, Henry. The Air-Conditioned Nightmare. London: Heinemann, 1945.
[Miller 1957] – Miller, Henry. Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. New York: New Directions Publishing, 1957.
[Miller 1968] – Miller, Henry. Black Spring. London: Jupiter Book, 1968.
[Miller 1969] – Miller, Henry. The Books of My Life. New York: New Directions, 1969. [Miller 1945b] – Miller, Henry. The Colossus of Maroussi. London, Secher and Warburg: 1945.
[Miller 1939a] – Miller, Henry. “An Open Letter to Surrealist Everywhere.” Miller, Henry. The Cosmological Eye. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1939: 152–153.
[Miller 1961a] – Miller, Henry. Tropic of Cancer. New York: Grove Press, 1961. [Miller 1961b] – Miller, Henry. Tropic of Capricorn. New York: Grove Press, 1961.
[Miller 1939b] – Miller, Henry. “The Universe of Death.” Miller, Henry. The Cosmological Eye. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1939: 107–134.
[Miller 1941] – Miller, Henry. The Wisdom of Heart. Norfolk, CT: New Directions Books, 1941. 1976.
[Miller 1959] – Miller, Henry. The World of Sex. P.: Olympia Press, 1959.
[Miller 1976] – Miller, M.A. Kropotkin. Chicago; London : University of Chicago Press
[Nelson 1988] – Nelson, Bruce C. Beyond the Martyrs: A Social History of Chicago’s An- archists, 1870-1900. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988.
[Nesbit 2005] – Nesbit, Th. Rivers of Ecstasy: Henry Miller’s Affair With Religion. Sub- mitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Ann Arbor, 2005.
[Osofsky 1979] – Osofsky, S. Peter Cropotkin. Boston, MA : Twayne Publishers, 1979. [Parkin 1990] – Parkin, J. Henry Miller, the Modern Rabelais. Lewinston, NY: Edwin Mell-
[Reichert 1976] – Reichert, W.O. Partisans of Freedom: A Study in American Anarchism. Bolwing Green, OH: Bowling Green University, Popular Press, 1976.
[Rosenquist 2009] – Rosenquist, R. Modernism, the Market and the Institution of the New. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
[Russel 1985] – Russel, Ch. Poets, Prophets and Revolutionaries: The Literary Avant-Gar- de from Rimbaud through Postmodernism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
[Schleuning 2013] – Schleuning, Neala. Artpolitik. Social Anarchist Aesthetics in an Age of Fragmentation. New York: Autonomedia, 2013.
[Temple 1977] – Temple, F. Henry Miller. P.: Regine Deforges, 1977.
[Turner 2011] – Turner, F. Renegade: Henry Miller and the Making of Tropic of Cancer. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2011.
[Washton 1987] – Washton, Rose-Carol. “Occultism, Anarchism, and Abstraction: Kandin- sky's Art of the Future.” Art Journal 46: 1 Mysticism and Occultism in Modern Art (Spring, 1987): 38–45. [Wickes 1966] – Wickes, G. Henry Miller. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1966.
[Williams 1968] – Williams, J. “Henry Miller: the Success of Failure.” Virginia Quarterly Review (Spring, 1968): 225–45.
[Woodcock 1989] – Woodcock, G. “An Introduction.” Kropotkin, P. Mutual Aid. A Factor of Evolution. Montreal–New York: Black Rose Books, 1989.
[Woolf 1989] –Woolf, M. “Beyond ideology: Kate Millett and the case for Henry Miller.” Perspectives on Pornography and Literature: Sexuality in Film and Literature, eds. G. Day and C. Bloom. London: Macmillan, 1989: 113–28.
