John Galsworthy's In Chancery (#1920Club)

"Their hearts were full of feeling, but they could give it no expression--Forsytes that they were."

In Chancery (1920) is the second novel of John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga. The Man of Property (1906) was the first; I read that recently as well.

In the new novel, Irene Forsyte is separated from her husband Soames Forsyte; she's retaken her maiden name, calling herself Mrs. Irene Heron, but they aren't divorced. 

Irene at 37 is just as beautiful as ever, but Soames, at 44, is feeling the winds of time at his back. He and Irene never had a child; he wants one, a son in particular. Should he, can he, reconcile with Irene? It's not too late. But he's also attracted by Annette, the daughter of the French proprietor of a restaurant he likes. Its Soames' dissatisfaction and yearning that sets the main thread in motion.

Jolyon Forsyte, Soames' cousin, is administering a fund the income of which goes to Irene. It was set up by Jolyon's father (the events happen in the interlude/short story "Indian Summer of a Forsyte") so Jolyon has occasion to see or at least correspond with Irene regularly as he pays out the income. Jolyon is now widowed for the second time.

At the same time Winifred Dartie, Soames' married sister is abandoned by her husband. After years of gambling and fast living, he's run off with a dancer to Buenos Aires. Should she accept the scandal and divorce him? Marriage, and property in marriage, is a theme in the new novel as well.

But also, between the composition of the two novels, World War I happened; significant years, and I thought this novel was much more political than the first. In the world of the saga about the same number of years have passed, but it's all still before the war: the events of The Man of Property take place in 1886; those of In Chancery in the years from 1899 to 1901. But the (Second) Boer War stands in the place of World War I, and thoughts about the Boer War, already ironic enough, become doubly ironic when the Great War is taken into account:

"His grandfather, [Nicholas Forsyte] of course, pooh-poohed the notion, too thoroughly educated in the feeling that no British war could be other than little and professional,..."

James Forsyte, Soames' father, is not so sanguine about the conflict. There are ironic comparisons between the acquisitiveness of the Forsytes and the imperial acquisitiveness of the British empire.

Or, in a lighter vein:

"And, sick with nervous anxiety, he [Soames] sent out for one of the 'new-fangled' motor cabs...The cab was passing villas now, going a great pace. 'Fifteen miles an hour now, I should think!' he mused; 'this'll take people out of town to live!'" 

The land speed record was already over 120 MPH in 1920. And one that's amusing for us, though not yet ironic in 1920:

"Never again would a queen reign so long!" [at the death of Victoria]

Not at least until the very next reigning queen...

So I thought this was a very good follow up in the series. In comparison to the first, it shows the same satirical wit overlaying a family drama with feeling and sadness. It adds a political layer, not surprising in a novel written in 1920; one had to either completely ignore the events of the world, as escape, or deal with them. I did think the portrayal of Soames was a bit less rounded in this one: in The Man of Property, one feels for Soames a certain amount of pity, though in the end he behaves badly. He behaves badly from the start in In Chancery, but I thought the deck was a bit stacked against him. For instance,

"...he had spent five hot weeks in Italy--looking into the Renaissance--not so much in it as he had been lead to expect--..."

In the first volume that sort of dig that would have been made about a generic Forsyte; here it's about Soames.

Also, seriously, what the world needs is a non-spoilerific Forsyte family tree.

On to the next interlude, and then volume, of The Forsyte Saga!

For another #1920Club review of In Chancery, see Ruthiella's here. Thanks to Kaggsy and Simon for hosting!

Poem For A Thursday (Special #1920Club edition)

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!--An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning. 

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

-Wilfred Owen

This poem was first drafted in October of 1917, but then revised. It only appeared before the public in Owen's first book of poetry of 1920, edited by Siegfried Sassoon. By then Owen was dead, having died in action in France in the last week of World War I at the age of 25. I've used the text given in edition shown, edited by C. Day Lewis.

'Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori' is from Horace's so-called Roman odes (III.ii) and the old Latin lie means, "It's sweet and honorable to die for one's country." Interestingly the other poet I was considering for today was Ezra Pound, whose volume Hugh Selwyn Mauberley also comes out in 1920. In it Pound, too, goes after Horace: "Died some pro patria, non dulce not et decor..."

There are so many things one can note, but I find it particularly terrifying that he rhymes drowning with itself in the center of the poem.

The idea of blogging a poem on Thursdays comes from Jennifer at Holds Upon Happiness. She's much more reliable than I am. This week she's featuring Peter Everwine.

Karel Čapek's R.U.R. (#1920Club)

"Well, the story begins in 1920,..."

A rather cool poster for a 1939 production.

Czech author Karel Čapek's play R.U.R. is famous, as much as it is, because it's the origin of our word robot, which is related to the Czech word for serf or slave. It's a four act play about a company that makes a fortune building robots for industrial production. Those robots have already, when the play starts, transformed the world through low-cost labor. R.U.R., the name of the play, is the name of the company, that is, Rossum's Universal Robots (English even in the original Czech.)

In Act I, Helen Glory arrives at the remote island location where the robots are made. She's the daughter of the famous Sir Edward Glory (and is very beautiful) so she's immediately shown in to see Harry Domin the managing director of the company. Domin--and all the other directors, Alquist, Busman, Fabry, Gall, Hallemeier--comically fall in love with her on the spot, and so, even though they see right through her scheme to liberate the robots, they don't care and show her all their secrets.

But it isn't Helen who convinces the directors; it's the directors who convince Helen. That opening quote is Harry Domin starting to explain the history of Rossum's Universal Robots and all the great things they've achieved. In 1932, Old Rossum (Old Reason in the version I just read) discovers the key to manufacturing life. He putters around with his discovery, but young Rossum sees the potential and makes a fortune. In Act I, around the year 2000, both Rossums are dead, but the company is a worldwide powerhouse. People don't have to work any more; the world is rich; robots do everything.

Act II finds us ten years later: Helen is married to Harry Domin, the director, but not everything is Utopian in this Utopia. Humans, including Helen, are no longer having babies. Robots are breaking down faster. Worse there's a new manifesto calling for robot liberation making the rounds.

By Act III, the robots are in active rebellion, and in Act IV? Well, you'll just have to see for yourself what happens in Act IV.

It's definitely a case where the road to whatever that outcome was is paved with good intentions. Čapek writes of his play:

"General Director Domin shows in the play that the development of technology frees man from heavy physical labor, and he is right. Alquist, with his Tolstoyan outlook, believes that technology demoralizes man, and I think he is right, too. Busman believes that only industrialism is capable of meeting modern needs, and he is right. Helena instinctively fears all these human machinations, and she is quite right. Finally, the robots themselves revolt agains all these idealists, and it seems they are right, too."

So with everybody being right, how can anything go wrong?

I read the play in the pink volume on the right (tr. by Peter Majer and Cathy Porter) from Methuen Press, but I'd read it previously in Catbird Press edition translated by Claudia Novack-Jones. I think I now prefer the Majer and Porter translation, but as far as I can tell with no Czech, both are fine. One major difference between the two is that the Majer and Porter translation makes clear the impact of the name Rossum for a Czech by changing the founder's name to Reason. (Rozum is the Czech word for mind/reason/intellect.) I'm not entirely sure how I feel about that; it seems a little heavy-handed, but maybe I'm just used to the name Rossum in the play.

Of course, why not have both? I do! With the exception of the play R.U.R., there's not much overlap between the two volumes. The Čapek quote above comes from the Catbird Press edition. Čapek died young, in 1938, of pneumonia; he'd suffered a crippling problem with his spine for his entire life. But not before he became world-famous and had been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

And the other thing that must be mentioned is that R.U.R., great in its own right, is also a first crack at themes that Čapek revisits in his brilliant (brilliant, brilliant, brilliant!) novel, War With The Newts. Don't miss it. I've probably just talked myself into rereading it in the the near future.

The play was first printed in Czech in 1920 (though the first production wasn't until January of 1921) and as such it's my first contribution to Simon and Kaggsy's #1920Club. Thanks to them for hosting!

#1920Club

Monday is the start of Kaggsy's and Simon's 1920 Club and as usual for such an occasion, I've heaped up a pile of books which I will not entirely read...

Starting with the book next to Hubert, that's:

James Gibbons Huneker's Painted Veils - 

Huneker was an American critic who died in 1921. I've read a good deal of his non-fiction--he's unjustly neglected, I think--writing well on classical music, painting and literature, with tastes that are quite progressive and European-oriented for his time. I've never read his novel, though I've had it for years. His autobiography Steeplejack also came out in 1920 and it's available online. Just in case I haven't got enough to read...

John Galsworthy's In Chancery - 

Another volume I've had for years. In Chancery is the second book in The Forsyte Saga and came out in 1920. I can't read that without reading The Man of Property, the first volume first, right? So I'm in the middle of that currently. I was going to have finished it earlier, but oh, well. I'm enjoying it.

Joseph Conrad's The Rescue -

One of three novels about Captain Lingard, together with Almayer's Folly and An Outcast of the Islands. It's the last composed and late in Conrad's career, but chronologically the first of the three stories about Lingard.

Karel Čapek's R.U.R. -

Czech author Karel Čapek's play is the origin of the word robot. The play was published in 1920, though the first production was in 1921. I've read this before but not (I think) in this translation. I read Act I standing in line outside the grocery store earlier today (sigh) and it's everything I remembered.

What looks good to you?

Thanks to Simon and Kaggsy for hosting!