Why Read the Classics?

by Italo Calvino

  [1972]

  Henry James, Daisy Miller

  Daisy Miller came out in instalments in 1878 and was published as a book in 1879. It was one of the few stories (perhaps the only one) by Henry James that one can say enjoyed instant popular acclaim. Certainly in the context of the rest of his work, which is typified by evasiveness, by what is not said, by reticence, this stands out as one of his clearest tales, with a female character who is full of life and explicit aspirations to symbolise the openness and innocence of young America. And yet it is also a story that is no less mysterious than others by this introverted writer, steeped as it is in the themes that appear, though always in chiaroscuro, throughout his entire oeuvre.

  As with many of James’ short stories and novels, Daisy Miller takes place in Europe, a Europe that is also in this tale the touchstone against which America measures itself. An America reduced to a single, typical specimen: the colony of carefree American tourists in Switzerland and Rome, that world to which James himself belonged in his youth after turning his back on his native land but before putting down roots in Britain, his ancestral homeland.

  Far from their own society and the practicalities that determine the rules of behaviour, they are immersed in a Europe which represents on the one hand the attractions of culture and nobility, and on the other a world that is promiscuous and somewhat unhealthy, which they must keep at a distance. In such circumstances these Americans of James are prey to an insecurity that makes them double their puritan rigour and the safeguards of convention. Winterbourne, the young American studying in Switzerland, is destined — according to his aunt — to make mistakes since he has been living in Europe too long and does not know how to distinguish his ‘decent’ compatriots from those of low social extraction. But this uncertainty about social identity applies to all of them — these voluntary exiles in whom James sees a reflection of himself — whether they are ’stiff or emancipated. Stiff rigour, both American and European, is represented by Winterbourne’s aunt, who not by chance has taken up residence in Calvinistic Geneva, and by Mrs Walker, in a sense the aunt’s foil, who is down in the softer atmosphere of Rome. The emancipated ones are the Miller family, who are cut adrift in a European pilgrimage which has been imposed on them as a cultural duty concomitant with their status. Provincial America, perhaps with new millionaires of plebeian origin, is exemplified in three characters: a dyspeptic mother, a petulant young boy, and a beautiful girl whose only strengths are her lack of culture and her spontaneous vitality, but who is the only one who manages to fulfil herself as an autonomous moral being, and to construct for herself a kind of freedom, however precarious.

  Winterbourne glimpses all this, but too much of him (and of James) is in thrall to society’s taboos and the dictates of caste, and above all too much of him (and all of James) is afraid of life (in other words, of women). Although at the beginning and the end there is a hint of the young man having a relationship with a foreign woman, from Geneva, right in the middle of the tale Winterbourne’s fear at the prospect of a real confrontation with the opposite sex is openly stated; and in this character we can easily recognise a youthful self-portrait of Henry James and of the fear of sex which he never denied.

  That imprecise presence which ‘evil’ was for James — vaguely connected with sinful sexuality or more visibly represented by the breaking of a class barrier — exercised over him a feeling of horror mixed with fascination. Winterbourne’s mind — that is to say that syntactical construction which is all hesitation, delay and self-irony — is divided: one part of him ardently hopes that Daisy is ‘innocent’ in order to make up his mind to admit to being in love with her (and it will be the post-mortem proof of her innocence that will reconcile him to her, like the hypocrite he is), while the other part of him hopes to recognise in her an inferior creature relegated to a lower class, whom he might no longer ‘be at pains to respect’. (And apparently this is not at all because he feels impelled to ‘disrespect’ her but perhaps only for the satisfaction of thinking of her in these inferior terms.)

  The world of ‘evil’ that competes for Daisy’s soul is represented first by the courier Eugenio, then by the urbane signor Giovanelli, the dowry-hunting Roman, and in fact by the whole city of Rome with its marble, moss and malarial miasma. The most poisonous gossip which the European Americans aim at the Miller family are the constant, dark allusions to the courier who travels with them and who, in the absence of Mr Miller, exercises a vaguely defined authority over mother and daughter. Readers of The Turn of the Screw will know just how much the world of domestic staff can embody for James the shapeless presence of ‘evil’. But this courier (the English term is more precise than our ‘maggiordomo’ and does not really have an Italian equivalent: the courier was the servant who accompanied his masters on long journeys and who had to organise both their travel and their accommodation) could also be quite the opposite (for the little one sees of him), that is to say the only one in the family who represents the father’s moral authority and respect for manners. But already the fact that he has an Italian name prepares us for the worst: we will see that the descent of the Millers into Italy is a descent into the underworld (as fatal, though perhaps less fated than Professor Aschenbach’s visit to Venice, in the story which Thomas Mann will write thirty-five years later).

  Unlike Switzerland, Rome has no natural power of landscape, protestant traditions and austere society, that could inspire self-control in American girls. Their rides in carriages to the Pincio is a vortex of gossip, in the midst of which one cannot tell whether the American girl’s honour has to be protected in order to save face in front of Roman counts and marquises (the heiresses of the Mid-West are now starting to want coats-of-arms) or to avoid descending into the morass of promiscuity with an inferior race. This presence of danger becomes identified not so much with the gallant Signor Giovanelli (for he too, like Eugenio, could be the protector of Daisy’s virtue, were it not for his humble origins), but much more with a silent but nevertheless crucial character in the tale’s mechanism: malaria.

  The marshes that surrounded nineteenth-century Rome would, every evening, breathe their deadly exhalations all over the city: this was the ‘danger’, an allegory of all possible dangers, the deadly fever that was ready to seize girls who went out in the evening on their own or not suitably accompanied. (Whereas going out at night in a boat on the salubrious waters of Lake Geneva would not have presented such risks.) Daisy Miller is sacrificed to malaria, that obscure Mediterranean deity: neither the puritanism of her compatriots nor the paganism of the natives had succeeded in winning her over, and it is for this very reason that she is condemned by both groups to be sacrificed right in the middle of the Colosseum, where the nocturnal miasmas gather in an enveloping, impalpable swarm like the sentences in which James always seems to be about to say something which he then omits.

  [1971]

  Robert Louis Stevenson,

  The Pavilion on the Links

  The Pavilion on the Links is above all a story of misanthropy: youthful misanthropy, born of self-satisfaction and savagery, misanthropy which in a young man actually means misogyny, and which spurs the protagonist to ride alone over the Scottish moors, sleeping in a tent and existing on porridge. But a misanthrope’s solitude does not open up many narrative possibilities: the narrative develops from the fact that there are two misanthropic, or misogynistic, young men, hiding from each other, spying on each other, in a landscape which by its very nature evokes solitude and savagery.

  We can say, then, that The Pavilion on the Links is the story of the relationship between two men who resemble each other, two brothers almost, bound by their common misanthropy and misogyny. It is also the story of how their friendship is transformed, for reasons which remain mysterious, into enmity and strife. But traditionally in the novel rivalry between two men presupposes a woman. And a woman who forces a change of heart in two misogynists must be the object of a love that is uncontrollable and unconditional, one t
hat forces the two to outdo each other in chivalry and altruism. It must therefore be a woman threatened by danger, by enemies before whom the two ex-friends now turned enemies find themselves united and on the same side once more, even though still rivals in love.

  We can, then, add that The Pavilion on the Links is a huge game of hide-and-seek played by adults: the two friends hide from and spy on each other, and the prize in their game is the woman. In addition, the two friends and the woman on one side hide from and spy on their mysterious enemies on the other, and the prize in their game is the life of a fourth character who has no other role but that of hiding, in a landscape which appears to be the perfect setting for hide and seek.

  So, then, The Pavilion on the Links is a story that emerges from a landscape. From the desolate dunes of the Scottish coasts the only story that can emerge is one of people who hide and seek. But in order to bring out a landscape’s contours there is no better method than that of introducing an extraneous, incongruous element. That is why Stevenson brings on to the Scottish moors and quicksands to threaten his characters none other than that murky, Italian secret society, the Carbonari, with their black conical hats.

  Through this series of definitions and deductions I have tried to isolate not so much the secret nucleus of this story — which, as is often the case, contains more than one — as the mechanism which guarantees its hold over the reader, that fascination which never wanes despite the rather chaotic mixing of the different story plans that Stevenson takes up and then abandons. Of these, the most powerful is certainly the first one, the psychological tale about the relationship between the two friends/enemies, perhaps a first draft for the enemy brothers in The Master of Ballantrae, and which here hints vaguely at an ideological divide between Northmour, a Byronic free-thinker, and Cassilis, the champion of Victorian virtues. The second is the love story, and it is the weakest of all, saddled as it is with the two very conventional characters who are involved: the girl who is the model of every virtue, and the father who is a fraudulent bankrupt, driven by squalid avarice.

  It is the third plot which triumphs, the one that is typically novelistic, which takes for its theme the elusive conspiracy which spreads its tentacles everywhere, a theme which has never been out of fashion from the nineteenth century to our own day. It triumphs for various reasons: firstly because Stevenson’s hand which with just a few strokes suggests the menacing presence of the Carbonari — from the finger squeaking down the rain-soaked window to the black hat skimming over the quicksands — is the same hand that, more or less at the same time, was recounting the approach of the pirates to the ‘Admiral Benbow’ inn in Treasure Island. In addition, the fact that the Carbonari, however hostile and frightening they may be, enjoy the author’s sympathy, in line with British romantic traditions, and are clearly in the right against the universally loathed banker, introduces into the complex game that is already being played this internal contrast, which is more convincing and effective than the others: the two friendly rivals, bound together by honour to defend Huddlestone, nevertheless in their conscience are on the side of the enemy, the Carbonari. And finally it triumphs because it immerses us more than ever in the spirit of childhood games, with sieges, sallies, and attacks by rival gangs.

  The great resource that children have is that they know how to derive from the space that they have available for their games all the magic and emotion they need. Stevenson has retained this gift: he starts with the mystique of that elegant pavilion rising up in the middle of a natural wilderness (a pavilion ‘Italian in design’: perhaps this qualification already hints at the imminent intrusion of an exotic, unfamiliar element?); then there is the secret entry into the empty house, the discovery of the table already set, the fire ready for lighting, the beds prepared, though there is not a soul to be seen … a fairy-tale motif transplanted into an adventure story.

  Stevenson published The Pavilion on the Links in the Comhill Magazine, in the issues for September and October 1880; two years later, in 1882, he included it in his New Arabian Nights. There is one glaring difference between the two editions: in the first, the story appears as a letter and testament which an old father, as death closes in, leaves for his sons in order to reveal a family secret to them: namely, how he met their mother, who is already dead. In the rest of the text the narrator addresses the readers with the vocative, ‘my dear sons’, calls the heroine ‘your mother’, ‘your dear mother’, ‘the mother of my sons’ and calls that sinister character, her father, ‘your grandfather’. The second version, in book form, goes straight into narration from the first sentence: ‘I was a great solitary when I was young’; the heroine is called ‘my wife’ or by her name, Clara, and the old man is called ‘her father’ or Huddlestone. This shift usually means a completely different style, indeed a completely different kind of story; instead the corrections are minimal: the excision of the preamble, of the addresses to the sons, and of the more grief-stricken references to the mother. Everything else remains exactly the same. (Other corrections and cuts concern old Huddlestone, whose infamous reputation in the first version, instead of being attenuated later through familial piety, as one might have expected, was actually accentuated — perhaps because the conventions of the theatre and the novel made it quite natural that an angelic heroine should have a horribly avaricious father, whereas the real problem was making acceptable the terrible end of a blood relative, without the comfort of Christian burial, which could be justified only if this relative was thoroughly evil.)

  According to M. R. Ridley, the editor of the recent, ‘Everyman’s Library’ edition, The Pavilion on the Links really must be considered a flawed work: the characters fail to arouse any interest in the reader, and only the first version, which has the narrative start from the heart of a family secret, manages to communicate any sympathy and suspense. That is why, contrary to the rule that demands that the last edition of a work corrected by the author be definitive, Ridley reissues the text of the Comhill version. I have not followed Ridley’s practice. In the first place I disagree with his value judgment: I consider this tale, particularly in the New Arabian Nights edition, one of Stevenson’s finest. Secondly, I would not be so sure about the order in which these versions were written: I am more inclined to think of different layers of writing reflecting the uncertainties of the young Stevenson. The opening the author chooses as definitive is so direct and full of pace that it is easier to imagine Stevenson starting writing with its dry, objective thrust, perfectly suited to an adventure story. As he progresses in the tale, he realises on the one hand that the relations between Cassilis and Northmour are so complex as to require a psychological analysis much deeper than the one he intended to embark on, and on the other that the love story with Clara was turning out rather cold and conventional. Consequently he goes back and starts the story all over again, enveloping it in a smoke-screen of family affections: this is the version he publishes in the magazine; then dissatisfied with these mawkish overlays, he decides to cut them, but discovers that to keep the female character at a distance the best solution is to have her known from the start and to wrap her in reverential respect. That is why he adopts the formula ‘my wife’ instead of ‘your mother’ (except for one point where he forgets to alter it and garbles the text somewhat). This is all conjecture on my part, which only manuscript research could confirm or disprove: from a comparison of the two printed versions the only certain fact to emerge is the hesitancy of the author. His hesitancy is somehow consonant with the game of hide and seek with himself which he plays in this story about a childhood which he would like to prolong, even though he knows full well that it is over.

  [1973]

  Conrad’s Captains

  Joseph Conrad died thirty years ago, on 3 August 1924, in his country house at Bishopsbourne near Canterbury. He was sixty-six and had spent twenty years as a seaman and thirty years writing. He was already a success in his own lifetime, but his real fame in terms of European criticism began only after
his death. In December 1924 a whole issue of La Nouvelle Revue Française was devoted to him, with articles by Gide and Valéry: the remains of the old captain, a veteran of long sea voyages, were lowered into the sea with a guard of honour comprising France’s most sophisticated and intellectual literati. By contrast, in Italy, the first translations were only available in the red canvas bindings of Sonzogno’s Adventure Library, though Emilio Cecchi had already singled him out to readers of more refined tastes.

  Those few, bare facts are sufficient to indicate the different kinds of appeal that the figure of Conrad has inspired. He had lived a life of practical experience, travel and action, and he possessed the prolific creativity of the popular novelist, but also the fastidious attention to style of the disciple of Flaubert, as well as having links with the chief exponents of international Decadentism. Now that his critical fortune has been established in Italy, at least judging by the number of translations available (Bompiani is publishing the collected works, both Einaudi and Mondadori are bringing out translations of individual books, either in hardback or in paperback, while Feltrinelli’s Universale Economica has recently published two of his works), we are in a position to define what this writer has meant and still means for us.