2,541: 1,001 Book Challenge - The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

When the Classics Circuit announced that its latest tour was to take in pre-1840 gothic literature, a lightbulb went on (dimly, it must be said) above my head.  Here was a chance both to participate in the tour and to tick off another of the 1,001 books I must read before I die.  So I was pretty enthused about reading Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto.  After all, it is acknowledged to be the first gothic novel and, if it is in the 1,001 books list, it must be good – right? And I loved Dracula and Frankenstein so the genre can appeal to me.

Well, it didn’t quite work out like that.  On reflection, just because something is the first in its field, it doesn’t necessarily make it the best, or even any good and I suspect it is the book's place in literary history that gets it the nod for the 1,001 books list rather than any inherent merit.

The Castle of Otranto purports to be a late medieval manuscript that the author has discovered in the home of a prominent northern English catholic family (although Walpole admitted his authorship in later editions). The manuscript tells the story of Manfred, Lord of Otranto and the calamities that befall his family following the mysterious death of Manfred's only son on his wedding day, caused by a gigantic helmet falling on him from nowhere.

Manfred, whose sole raison d’être is to retain power in Otranto for him and his family, then determines that, since his wife Hippolita is unlikely to bear him another heir, he must divorce her and marry Isabella, his late son’s fiancée, who, as well as being the daughter of another powerful noble with a claim to Otranto, just so happens to be young and beautiful, which I am sure played no part at all in Manfred’s thinking.  Young Isabella isn’t overly keen on the idea of becoming the randy old goat’s wife and so does a runner from the castle, abetted by a curiously chivalrous and brave peasant, Theodore.

From here on in, Walpole throws a slew of gothic tropes at the reader, rather like an over-enthusiastic cook thinking that “just one more” ingredient will render a dish perfect.  So, we have doors opening with no human presence, supernatural artefacts suddenly appearing, damsels in distress, masked knights, long-lost family members, noblemen masquerading as peasants, the madness and hubris of princes and, of course, the satisfaction of an ancient prophesy, which leads to the extinction of Manfred’s bloodline and a happy ever after ending for Theodore and Isabella who marry and become rulers of Otranto.

Looking on the positive side, it’s short.  I read it on my Kindle but, in print, I suspect it must be less than a hundred pages.  This means that I didn’t waste too much time reading it.  To be fair, I did still keep turning the pages, although this was more to confirm that I was correct in my plot forecasts than out of any sense of intrigue as most of the plot twists are pretty obvious.  It is also funny in parts, sometimes intentionally, as with the character of Bianca, one of the servants of Matilda, Manfred’s daughter, who is clearly the designated comic relief, but, generally, unintentionally, through its excessive melodrama and the rollercoaster nature of the characters’ reactions such as Hippolita’s spontaneous flip-flopping on whether she should fight Manfred’s desire to divorce her and pack her off to a convent.

Unfortunately, that’s about everything on the credit side of the ledger.  On the debit side, as I have already mentioned, the characters have a habit of not just changing their minds but seemingly changing their entire moral outlooks within the space of a few pages.  Now I know it is a gothic novel and as such, has a great deal of inbuilt implausibility but this adds so much to it that it destroys any tension that might otherwise have been in the book.  It's also not helped by the fact that the plot is dependent on a number of unlikely occurrences that fortuitously beocme public knowledge at just the right time.

Added to this is the way Walpole treats his female characters.  Even allowing for the fact that he was writing in the 18^th Century, they are amongst the drippiest and most sanctimonious collection of females that I have ever come across in a book.  Just to give you two examples, Hippolita, faced with divorce and confinement to a convent, refuses even to criticise her husband and when Manfred stabs his daughter, Matilda, to death, she forgives him and says how much she loves him!  All of the women, with the honourable exception of Bianca, behave as if they are mere chattels of their husbands and fathers and brook no criticism of their male relatives.  I know the book is set in the medieval period but, to this modern reader, it was truly annoying.  Let’s just say that if mini-Falaise were to grow up like them, I would be slitting my wrists in despair.

The Castle of Otranto is also predictable, over-melodramatic and completely lacking in horror or tension.  It actually reminded me of the episode of Dallas in which Pam Ewing wakes up and realises that Bobby hadn’t really died in the previous season but that she had, in fact, been dreaming all along.  Not so much jumping the shark as pole vaulting the aquarium.

It was an interesting read because it is possible to see the genesis of some of the staples of the genre in it and it does give some context to better and later examples of gothic literature so, to that extent, it was worth reading but it certainly won’t be qualifying for a re-read.

Finally, I’d like to thank Rebecca and everyone who helps out with the Classics Circuit tours both for another fascinating topic but for all the work they put in on this fantastic idea.

If you’d like to read more on pre-1840 gothic literature, today’s other tour stops are:

·        A Striped Armchair - The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve or Wieland by Charles Brockden Brown

·        Devouring Texts - Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

·        Birdbrain(ed) Book Blog - The Devil’s Elixir by E.T.A. Hoffman

2,552: Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck

“When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch.  When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.  In middle age I was assured that greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job.  Nothing has worked.”

Travel writing and I have a bittersweet relationship.  In a world in which I didn’t have to work for a living, didn’t have responsibilities and didn’t have a penchant for luxury hotels with cool, Egyptian cotton bed linen and cocktail bars, I would be a traveller, dragging Mrs F and mini-Falaise to all parts of the compass, just to see what’s there.  Deep down though, that kind of lifestyle wouldn’t really work for me.  I’m always glad to get home from a trip, I don’t deal well with the discomforts of travel and I don’t have the social skills that seemingly enable travel writers to get into story-worthy situations.

All that means that I love reading about travel but always suffer the contradictory pangs of wanderlust and inner knowledge that I’m just not cut out for that kind of life.  Nevertheless, travel writing remains one of my favourite genres and Travels with Charley has been a part of my collection since I first read it in the mid-1990s.  So, when the Classics Circuit announced its Steinbeck tour, I took the opportunity to reacquaint myself with it.

In 1960, a depressed and ill Steinbeck, having long moved away from his roots and feeling a need to reconnect with America, bought a pick-up truck and had a small cabin built on its flat bed.  He then set off on a long loop around America with only his French poodle, Charley, as a companion.  Never revealing his own identity, he sought to meet and engage with people throughout the country.

What emerges is part travel journal, part memoir and part opinion piece.  Steinbeck notes a decline in local cultures as cities expand, with a homogenous culture spreading its wings.  He sees the beginnings of the destruction of the environment, the iniquities of racism and the growth of consumerism.

His emotional journey is a little like a drive through gentle, rolling hills.  He has moments of joy, such as his love of Montana, his pleasure at the variable weather of New England, his new impressions of San Francisco and the kindness of many of the strangers he met, like the garage owner in a nameless town in Oregon who searched and searched to find him new tires on which to continue his journey.

Of course, like the hills, his journey had valleys as well as peaks and there are episodes of palpable sadness like the visit he makes to an old hangout, Johnny Garcia’s bar in Monterey, which descends from joy to bitter recrimination as both he and Johnny realise that people change as time passes and nothing stays the same forever. He also experiences the nostalgic ache of looking into the valley where his parents’ ranch was in Northern California and remembering old times.

There is also anger, most explicitly in his description of the demonstrations against the integration of a school in New Orleans, where a gaggle of middle-aged matrons, known as the Cheerleaders, orchestrate the taunting of a tiny black child and of the white father and child who dared to defy the mob by going to school.

“But now I heard the words, bestial and filthy and degenerate.  In a long and unprotected life, I have seen and  heard the vomitings of demoniac humans before. Why then did these screams fill me with a shocked and sickened sorrow?”

The contrast between the powdered, supposedly God-fearing matrons of Louisiana and the tiny, frightened children, both black and white, is almost visceral.

There’s an overarching sense in Travels with Charley of the impermanence of things, of the ever-changing nature of people and places.  Maybe this is so obvious because of the changes that Steinbeck had sensed in himself with his depression, his illness and his alienation from that part of America that had driven his writings.  Steinbeck had always been a physical man and, maybe, his physical decline affected his view of the changes in America since he had last been rooted in the land:

"I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment."

Indeed, according to Steinbeck’s son, he made his trip because he sensed he was dying and wanted to see his country one last time.  Fortunately, he was to live for another eight years and would see himself awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Earlier this year, a writer in the USA retraced Steinbeck’s journey and wrote a piece, claiming that much of Travels with Charley was made up, including the amount of time he spent apart from his wife, the amount of time he spent in his truck, Rocinante and most of the dialogue.  Indeed, there is something very stagy and artificial about many of his encounters.

But, does this matter?  I’ve always suspect that much of the best travel writing has something of the fictional about it.  I don’t really believe that all of the reported conversations can be word for word accurate or that every single encounter happened.  It doesn’t matter.  Unless a book sets out to be a factual description of a place or a piece of journalism, I’d rather read a better book that has been “enhanced” than a more mundane book that remains strictly accurate.

In the end, regardless of the facts, Travels with Charley is a beautiful, melancholic, piece of writing with flashes of humour and some serious opinions that still ring true today.

If you’d like to read more posts on Steinbeck’s works, the other tour participants today are:

Bibliographing on The Acts of King Arthur

Becky's Book Reviews on either The Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden

2,568: The Enormous Room by E.E. Cummings

This is the third Classics Circuit Tour in which I’ve participated.  So far, I’ve written about an unfamiliar book by an author with whom I’m familiar (Trollope) and a familiar work by a familiar author (Aristophanes).  Today, I’m going to talk a little about an unfamiliar book by an author who is unfamiliar to me – E.E. (or e.e.) Cummings.

Cummings was a fully paid-up member of the Lost Generation.  The phrase was, according to Hemingway, coined by a garage owner who serviced Gertrude Stein’s car in France. As originally used, it refers to that entire generation of young men who came of age in the First World War.  Hemingway later popularised the phrase by using it as an epigraph in his novel, The Sun Also Rises.  Technically, the Lost Generation encompasses not only those young Americans such as Cummings, John Dos Passos and Hemingway but also young Britons, Frenchmen and Germans who had their innocence and hope stripped away in the trenches of Northern France and Belgium.

It has slipped into common usage, however, as a short hand phrase for the generation of young American writers who spent time in Paris just after the end of the First World War.  Cummings, like Hemingway, was a volunteer ambulance driver and, although he is much better known as one of America’s greatest modern poets wrote an autobiographical novel, The Enormous Room, telling of his time in war-time France.

There isn’t actually anything much about his experiences of the war in the book as, almost from the beginning, this is a book about prison life.  Cummings was close to another young American volunteer, William Slater Brown.  The two of them were seen as being rather odd by the other members of their unit as they had learned French and preferred the company of their French colleagues to their fellow Americans.  Brown had written a number of letters in which he expressed “war weariness” and other pacifist sentiments.  Intercepted by the censors, these were enough to have him arrested.  Cummings too was detained, apparently on the grounds that, as Brown’s friend, he must also be a suspicious character.

Cummings was given the opportunity to win his freedom by disavowing his friend and by declaring his hatred for all Germans.  Friendship won out over personal liberty and Cummings refused to take his chance.  He, therefore, followed Brown to La Ferté-Macé, a kind of purgatory in the French prison system, where unconvicted prisoners were sent, pending the decision by a commission on whether they should be convicted or released.  Both Cummings and Brown have the misfortune to arrive just days after the commission has left and so are condemned to spending several months locked up until the commission is due to return.

The major part of the Enormous Room deals with Cummings’ life in La Ferté-Macé.  All of the male detainees are kept in the titular enormous room under pretty dreadful coniditions – straw pallets for beds, buckets of urine lined up against a wall, inedible food and a cold bath once a week.  They are also physically separated from the female prisoners who include not just suspects but also the wives and families of male prisoners who have elected to stay with them.

There is no real plot to this section of the book.  It centres around descriptions of everyday life, anecdotes about events that took place during his stay there and a number of picaresque character sketches of his fellow inmates and the detention centre staff.  Men such as Judas, the Fighting Sheeny, Rockyfeller, Mexique and, most notably, Jean le Nègre all flit across the pages of The Enormous Room to be described in energetic and vivid prose.

Cummings’ writing is very distinctive here.  It is the voice of the privileged young American who, despite his unfortunate circumstances, is determined to rise above it all and to treat everything as a bit of a joke, safe in the knowledge that things will turn out well in the end.  It is even vaguely reminiscent in tone (if not in language) to upper-class English literary heroes of the 19^th and early 20^th Centuries, determined to face insurmountable odds with a joke and a stiff upper lip.  The grammar is also slightly unorthodox and the language use is quirky, foreshadowing his later poetry.

Yet, underlying the lighthearted tone, Cummings is scathing of the French bureaucracy and the conditions in which the detainees are kept. It is shocking to read about the physical state of the detention centre and the treatment of the inmates when one considers that these are people who have not been convicted of any time.  If the commission does convict a prisoner, they are immediately sent off to a true prison and one hesitates to even try and imagine what the conditions there must have been like.

There is a happy ending to all of this.  On the commission’s return to La Ferté-Macé, Cummings was permitted a supervised release to any place he chose in France.  At the same time, his father, a well-known minister in Boston and a former lecturer at Harvard who had been writing letters to try and obtain his son’s release, finally managed to get a letter to the President.  Diplomatic intervention ensued and, as Cummings was about to leave for Oloron-Sainte-Marie, news of his unconditional release arrived and, instead, he was put on a train to Paris.

The Enormous Room is an interesting and unusual part of the canon of novels and poems that were born out of the First World War.  It tells of what must have been an extremely unpleasant experience in a deceptively light-hearted fashion and is an often amusing read. 

Although not a commercial success, it was hailed by critics and reviewers as a unique novel.  Writing in 1926, F. Scott Fitzgerald commented:

“Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives—The Enormous Room by e e cummings....Those few who cause books to live have not been able to endure the thought of its mortality.”

For this tour, I wanted to read something new to me.  Neither Cummings nor this type of novel spring naturally to mind when one is thinking about the US expat writing scene in 1920s Paris and I am really glad I did choose this – it’s always a pleasure to discover and enjoy a new writer and book.

I shall be following the tour as it progresses and I hope that you will visit the blogs of the other tour participants.

2,577: Lysistrata by Aristophanes

I had a really hard time deciding what to write about for this month’s Classics Circuit tour – the Ancient Greeks.  You see, I have history with the ancient Greeks.  I studied both Latin and Ancient Greek at school until I was 18 and, as part of that, had to read great chunks of the classics in the original.  Virtually all of Homer, most of Thucydides, significant bits of Xenophon, Herodotus, Sophocles, Aeschylus and Euripides – all was grist to my mill.  I debated discussing Herodotus, the Father of History, which would have married my love of classics with my love of history.  I almost went with Xenophon but decided against it.  I thought lots of my fellow “tourists” would write about Homer so opted for something else.  I was stumped.  And then I noticed the calendar and remembered.

You may or may not know that every three years, students and alumni of Cambridge University (Britain’s second best university – guess who went to Oxford!) put on a play in the Cambridge Arts Theatre.  It’s a very special play, one of the ancient Greek classics, performed in the original Greek.  They’ve been doing this since 1882, with breaks only for those minor inconveniences of the First and Second World Wars. 

And that’s where my reference to the calendar comes in.  Because 25 years ago, almost to the week, young Falaise and his colleagues from the Upper Sixth Greek set were sat in the Cambridge Arts Theatre, plotting how many illicit drinks we might be able to consume before being hauled back to school.  We were there to watch  the subject of this post, the 1986 Cambridge Greek play, Lysistrata, by Aristophanes.

The plot of Lysistrata is well known.  In (very brief) summary, the men of Greece have been fighting the Peloponnesian War for years.  Lysistrata, a woman of Athens calls a meeting of women from all the Greek city-states, at which she persuades them to swear an oath to withhold sexual favours from their husbands until they agree to end the war.   At the same time, the old women of Athens seize the state treasury and barricade themselves inside the Acropolis to deprive the men of the funds they need to fight the war.  After the old men of Athens try but fail to recapture the Acropolis, a magistrate appears and, after reflecting on "the problem with women", he is humiliated by them before being lectured to by Lysistrata on the frustrations that women have with war.

Next, having foiled a mutiny by the womenfolk, who are desperate for sex, Lysistrata persuades Myrrhine, the husband of Cinesias, a Spartan, to tease him until he is in a state of sexual frustration and then to refuse him until he agrees to try and seek peace.  The men, suffering from large and panful erections, then call a peace conference and, after a certain amount of squabbling, peace is declared and the play ends with a big celebration and a sing-song.

As a school boy, I have to confess that the thing that amused me most about the production we saw was the unfeasibly large wooden penises that the men began to sport as their sexual frustration mounted.  Childish I know but it was very funny.   Otherwise, the most striking thing was just how funny a 2,400 year old play could be, even when performed in its original language.

Behind the comedy, I suppose I took away the view that this was, in essence, a play which portrayed an unconventional view of women for its time, a play that could even be described as feminist in its outlook, as well as anti-war.  I think this is probably a common view of Lysistrata.  But, is this view correct?

Well, up to a point, Lord Copper.  Lysistrata is, indeed, a strong woman, prepared to challenge male hegemony and the view that men should have total control of politics and the finances of the city.  The play does also, it is true, spell out the message of the cost of war, not just in lives lost and money spent but also the impact it has on those left behind.

But this is only half the story.  Lysistrata’s fellow conspirators are not all portrayed as emancipated women.  Aristophanes can’t help painting the generality of women as being feckless, uncontrolled creatures in need of protection by men, even protection from their own worst instincts.  Even Lysistrata is only driven to revolt when she realises that the men aren’t strong enough to being an end to the war themselves.

Lysistrata has to govern the women with a fist of iron, forcing them to take an oath to withhold sex and having to whip them back into line when the revolt starts to waver and some of the women want to go home to sleep with their husbands.  As a general rule, with the exception of Lysistrata, the women of the play are painted as sex-crazed and only interested in fun, being content to leave serious matters to their husbands. This is not a play about the strength and wisdom of women overcoming the stupidity and aggression of men.  It is a play about a single, strong woman manipulating others of her gender to achieve her goal.

Lysistrata is a very funny play to watch but, as a reading experience, depends heavily on the quality of the translation.  I read an online version that wasn’t great but I am sure there are some good ones out there.

And one final question:  can anyone enlighten me on the nature of the “Lioness on the Cheese Grater” sexual position?  And is it as uncomfortable as it sounds?

Other stops on the Ancient Greeks tour today (Thursday 27th January):

• Shelf Love writes about The Oresteia by Aeschylus
• The Literary Rapport writes about the character Electra in Euripides and Sophocles

Please do visit them and all of the other Ancient Greek tourists.  Let's keep the classics alive.

2,592: The West Indies and the Spanish Main by Anthony Trollope

In November 1858, Trollope, in his day job as British civil servant, boarded the good ship Atrato and sailed from Southampton to Jamaica to begin a lengthy trip to the Caribbean.  The official reason for his journey was to carry out a land survey for Her Majesty’s Government but, along the way, he found time to pen one of his several works of travel writing, focussing not on his official business but on the impressions he has of the places he visits and the people he meets.

As opposed to his novels, the West Indies and the Spanish Main is not an easy book to find.  It has often been out of print and seems to be kept alive largely in facsimile editions by specialist publishers.  I have a feeling I know why this is.  For, you see, there is a very big elephant in the West Indies and Spanish Main room – race.

Let’s make no bones about this.  Trollope is a racist and he’s not afraid to show it.  Not for him the subtle sneer or the coded comment.  No, sir.  He believes that Afro-Caribbeans are, although impressive in their ability to undertake manual labour in the West Indian heat, lazy, slovenly and not very bright.  He laments the fact that they will not work more than is needed to satisfy their immediate needs and, although he claims to approve of the abolition by the United Kingdom of slavery throughout the Empire (in 1833), he can’t help commenting that pre-Emancipation times were the “good old days”.  He ruminates extensively on the decline in the economic fortunes of the West Indies since abolition and seems frustrated that fertile land is left unexploited.

I was going to say that Trollope’s views on race (which he himself describes as the “useful and true” part of the book) are not all black and white, but that would be crass even by my low standards.  Instead, let us say that his views are slightly more nuanced than the above paragraph might suggest.  You see Trollope, like legendary ‘70s pop band Blue Mink, believes in miscegenation.  He wants to see the West Indies being populated by what Blue Mink described as, “coffee coloured people by the score”.  Or, as Trollope put it, “Providence has sent white men and black men to those regions in order that from them may spring a race fitted by intellect for civilisation and by physical organisation for tropical labour.”  He thinks that this will then enable Britain to withdraw from the region and allow it to be self-governing. 

The uncompromising way in which he expresses himself on race is very uncomfortable to the ears of the 21^st Century reader.  I think that this has been a major reason for the lack of popularity of the West Indies and the Spanish Main.  It is a shame because, leaving this aside, it is a work which would otherwise sit comfortably in the Trollopian canon.  I also believe that it is foolish for the reader to be indignant that a mid-Victorian Englishman would or should have had the same outlook as we do today.  Instead, we should look upon his views as useful historical evidence of societal beliefs and values in the Victorian period and not rage at the fact that he shared them.

Anyway, leaving this aside and having given you due warning, if you decide to go ahead and read the West Indies and the Spanish Main, you will find it a witty book, full of acute observations and clever character sketches of some remarkable individuals whom he meets on his travels, including servants, local dignitaries and British colonial officials.  There is a wonderfully acerbic passage on the vicissitudes of travelling by sea from England to Jamaica and from Jamaica onwards.  He is amusing on exotic food, Cuban cigars and Central American railroads.  On the downside, his penchant for talking directly to the reader is, as in his novels, on show here and it really irritates me.

In conclusion, this is a worthwhile read if you are interested in 19^th Century attitudes to race, the state of the West Indies at that time, how middle class Britons were accustomed to travel or you are an avid Trollopian.  Otherwise, you could probably give this one a miss without regretting it.

This post is part of the Classics Circuit's Trollope tour.  The next tour will be in January and will focus on Ancient Greek classics.  I am debating which of Lysistrata or the Anabasis to choose.

2,597: the Heredity of Taste by Soseki Natsume

On 8 February 1904, the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked the Imperial Russian Far East Fleet at Port Arthur in South East Manchuria.  In a foreshadowing of the events of December 1941, the Japanese government failed formally to declare war on Russia until several hours after the commencement of hostilities.  By the time the Treaty of Portsmouth was signed in September 1905, ending the war, two of the three main Russian naval fleets had been destroyed and the Imperial Japanese Army, led by General Nogi, had captured Port Arthur.  80,000 Japanese and 43,000 Russians lost their lives during the war, which saw the use of the mass human wave attack tactics that became the hallmark of the fighting on the Western Front during the First World War.

The conclusion of the war gave rise to mixed feelings in Japan.  There was pride that one of the great European powers had been defeated and that Japan was now recognised as a Great Power.  However, there was also anger at the number of casualties, which was compounded by the belief that Japan’s negotiators had failed to secure adequate concessions in the Treaty of Portsmouth.  In particular, Japan had not been granted territory and had been refused the payment of financial reparations when President Roosevelt had supported the Tsar’s objections to this.  These feelings of mixed pride, anger and humiliation were to colour the country’s foreign policy for decades to come and were significant factors in Japanese expansionism in East Asia in the 1930s and the subsequent War in the Pacific during the Second World War.

This is the background against which the Heredity of Taste is set.  Described as Soseki’s only anti-war novel, it tells the story of the narrator’s reactions to the death of his friend Ko-san, a junior officer in the Japanese Army, who is killed during a human wave attack on a Russian fort in Manchuria.  The story divides into two halves.  The first sets the scene, describing the death of Ko-san and witnessing the triumphal return of Japanese soldiers by train to Tokyo.  The second part changes gear and tells of how the narrator visits Ko-san’s tomb, sees a beautiful young woman laying a white chrysanthemum on it and determines to find out the identity of the young woman.

The story addresses the savagery of war and the waste of lives it causes.  The narrator has a vision at the beginning of the book where he envisages war as a pack of dogs, let loose by the gods to tear men limb of limb and to devour their flesh.  Soseki had spent two years in London, studying English literature and there is something Shakespearean about this – “Cry ‘havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war”.  In fact, later in the Heredity of Taste, Soseki makes explicit reference to Macbeth.

He also focuses on the sheer numbers who failed to return, using a repeated image of Ko-san being unable to climb out of the ditch in which he had died throughout the story to give a sense of more and more young men who would not return.  Another recurring image is that of Soseki’s mother who, lacking even a daughter-in-law to comfort her, will be lonely and bereft for the rest of her life.

For Soseki, the pity of war is not only the obvious one of the waste of lives but also the loss of individuality.  The body of troops of which Ko-san is a part is described as a long mass of black creatures and Ko-san can only be identified by the fact that he is carrying a standard.

The Heredity of Taste is held up as an anti-war piece but I think the truth may be a little more complex than this.  It is true that the book draws attention to the consequences of war on individuals and their families and how Ko-san’s death kills the budding love between him and the young woman the narrator sees at the tomb but even someone who believes that war is acceptable can have these views.  The book really needs to be seen in its historical context.  As I have mentioned above, the failure of Japan to gain territory or financial indemnity from Russia at the end of the Russo-Japanese War caused unrest in Japan and a deep sense of anger at the sacrifice of so many lives for so little tangible gain.  I believe that the Heredity of Taste can be read as a rebuke to the Japanese government for its failure.  Look at the pain you have caused, look at the waste and the sacrifice and what did we get for it?  This is not a repudiation of war, it is an indictment of political failure to exploit the war.  Now I need to caveat this – I am not a Soseki expert and I have no idea whether he wrote elsewhere about war or whether there is other evidence of his anti-war views.  I can only go on this book, which does not, to me, support an unequivocal statement that Soseki is anti-war.

The book itself is nicely written.  Amongst the sadness, there are occasional witty flourishes that lighten it as well as some very moving passages, especially the final paragraph.  Although I have read a few Japanese novels, I have never read anything from the Meiji period before but would be happy to read more.  One side-note:  Soseki, apparently, did not like mystery stories as a literary form, which is quite amusing as the second half of the story turns into what is, basically, a detective story.

This post is part of the the Classics Circuit's Meiji era Japanese literature tour.