The Excursion of the Dead Girls

I've been continuing my reading project but haven't found time to blog. Here's what I've been reading to coincide with Woman in Translation Month. This short story, published in 1946, is a largely autobiographical account of a school excursion by the Rhine prior to the First World War. The narrator has a vision of the excursion while in exile in the mountains of Mexico. She enters a ranch garden and hears her childhood name being called. As she observes the excursion, she reflects on the experiences of the teachers and pupils during the First World War and what she knows of their fate in the Second World War. Her lucid memory of this event perhaps comes from the fact that she was given that day an assignment to describe the excursion carefully.

The author, Anna Seghers (née Reiling, born 19 November 1900), grew up in the Rhineland city of Mainz. Her secondary education was interrupted by voluntary war service. On completing her schooling in 1920, she went to university in Heidelberg. There she met Hungarian writer László Radványi and they married in 1925. Both a Jew and a Communist, her safety was already in doubt when she began her career as a writer. Her first publication, Grubetsch (a Kafkaesque short story), was written in 1926 and published the following year. Her first novel, Revolt of the Fishermen of Saint Barbara, was published in 1928, and was concerned with the struggle of working people against injustice. Her first collection of short stories appeared in 1930. Having been arrested in 1933 by the Nazis, she fled to France and continued her literary and political activities there. Her 1939 novel, The Seventh Cross, is an account of an escape from a concentration camp. Published in 1942, it sold well in several languages and was adapted into a 1944 film directed by Austrian emigré Alfred Zinnemann. In 1941, she fled Nazi-occupied France with her family and settled in Mexico City where her husband taught in a university. In 1947, she returned from exile and settled in Berlin. She was a key member of East Germany's literary movement, writing numerous short stories and novels. Towards the end of her life, she served for several years as president of the Writers Association of the German Democratic Republic.

The narrator recalls the devastating impact the First World War had on the innocent girls on the school excursion and their young male friends. Ida, for example, “charming with her countless natural curls”, has to abandon her “loose way of life”:
“She never did get married... because her fiancé was killed in action at Verdun. This great sorrow drove her to a nursing career so that she could at least help the wounded.”
Similarly, "the dark blond, lanky youth of 17" Otto Fresenius and the narrator's friend Marianne did not marry:
“Otto Fresenius had already confided in his mother, with whom he shared his secrets, his attraction to Marianne. Since his  mother... was pleased about his happy choice, she said that... after a proper waiting time, nothing would prevent a marriage. They did get engaged but there never was a wedding because the groom was killed in action in 1914 in a battalion of students in the Argonnes.”
The two accounts pre-war (reminiscence) and post-war (history) become intermingled in the narrative in such a way that you imagine Otto in military uniform while behaving like an amorous boy:
“Now Otto Fresenius, whose belly would be torn apart by a bullet in the First World War, was the first to come down the gangplank and towards the restaurant, urged on by his love. Marianne... stretched out her free hand and placed it in his.”

Fanfare for a Tin Hat

This memoir, published in 1970, is described by the author as “a third essay in autobiography”. In his introductory chapter, he explains what he feels he needs to write in addition to his previous two memoirs, including that he wants to add a little to what he previously wrote of his service in the First World War. He described the war as “a competition in cruelty, a contest of horrors”. In later chapters, he gives an account of his first forays into writing fiction and then traces hid development as a writer. Through the writer Edward Garnett, he met Seán Ó Faoláin, an exact contemporary of his: “I became very fond of Seán” who “was foremost among the young men on whom Garnett was bestowing the avuncular benison of affection and good advice”.

The author, Eric Linklater (born 8 March 1899), though born in Wales, was the son of an Orkney man and grew up in Aberdeen. Prior to studying at the University of Aberdeen, he served as a private in the First World War with the Black Watch and was wounded at the Somme. He worked as a journalist in India from 1925 to 1927, returning to Aberdeen to serve as an assistant to an English literature professor. It was at this point in his career that he wrote his first novel. From 1928 to 1930, he worked at universities in the United States and while there his first published writings appeared. His third novel, Juan in America, was very popular. He went on to write more than 20 novels as well as many works of non-fiction. His children’s novel, The Wind on the Moon, won the Carnegie Medal in 1944.

As well as relating his own experience of the First World War, the author mentions his first cousin. His grandfather, Magnus Linklater, of the West Mainland of Orkney, had four sons. Robert, the third of these was the author’s father but the eldest was John, who due to a dispute with his parents, left home, vowing that they would never see him again. The author explains that they never saw him or heard from him again:
“No word or whisper of him reached Orkney until 1918, when a private soldier in the uniform of a New Zealand rifle regiment — a young man with a dark complexion under a big pinched and pointed khaki hat — arrived in Kirkwall and said he hoped to find some relations. His father’s name was John Linklater.”

Thy Tears Might Cease

This semi-autobiographical novel, published in 1963, is largely set between 1911 and 1921, the key period of transition from an Ireland planning for Home Rule to a country fighting for full independence. The central character, Martin Matthew Reilly, has connections both with the countryside and with Dublin; provincial Ireland speaking to him of conservative tradition while Dublin calls him to radicalism. In 2007, the author Frank Delaney included Thy Tears Might Cease in his Top 10 Irish novels, along with The Last September by Elizabeth Bowen.

The author, Michael Farrell (born 19 September 1899), grew up in Carlow. He was educated in the prestigious Roman Catholic schools of Knockbeg College and Blackrock College. He then began a medicine degree in University College Dublin. His studies were interrupted by imprisonment for subversive activities and he didn't devote his life to medicine. Instead, he focused on writing. His output was largely journalistic but he started writing his one novel at a relatively young age. His friend and fellow writer Monk Gibbon explains that “it is difficult to say when Farrell first began to write the book. It may have been in the early days of his marriage [he married in 1930] but his brother Seán believes that it might have been considerably earlier”. In 1937, with the support of another writer friend, Seán Ó Faoláin, the book was accepted for publication by a London publisher but Farrell refused to release the book and continued to edit and revise his book for many years after that. It was finally published in 1963, the year after his death.

The outbreak of the First World War is described from a provincial Irish viewpoint:
“No one at Keelard had given much thought to it when the newspapers had headlined the murder of an Austrian archduke — whatever an archduke might be — at some unpronounceable place in the Balkans. Even Miss Clare had only seen in it an opportunity to point out that there were still a few corners of the world left which were not wholly civilised. She did not dream that the mask was going to drop from the face of the whole continent. And when it did drop... the general mood in all countries was one of elation rather than despondency. That mood touched Ireland as well as everywhere else. It too resounded with cries of ‘gallant little Belgium’. It too raised its hands in horror at the crime committed against Catholic Louvain. The flags of the Allies appeared on traps and asses’ carts... the British and the Irish flags hung, crossed in amity, in Irish streets.”

Lolita

This novel, published in 1955, is largely set in New England. The central characters are Humbert Humbert, a French academic born in 1910, and Dolores Haze, born in 1935. He encounters this girl (Lolita) in 1947 in the fictional town of Ramsdale and quickly becomes infatuated with her. When her mother is knocked down and killed, he contrives to become her guardian. They travel around the country together, driving all day and staying in motels. After a year of touring the United States, Humbert takes Dolores to settle in the fictional New England town of Beardsley and enrols her in a school. On a second road trip, Dolores abandons Humbert while in a town in Texas.

The author, Vladimir Nabokov (born 22 April 1899), grew up in Saint Petersburg. He was trilingual (reading and speaking English, French and Russian) from a young age. In 1916 his first book (a poetry collection) was published. While still a schoolboy, his family, being quite aristocratic, were forced to flee to Crimea by the October Revolution. From there, they moved to England after the war. Nabokov went to university in Cambridge and graduated in 1922. In the meantime, his parents had relocated to Berlin and Nabokov followed them there after his graduation. He lived there until 1937 when he and his Jewish wife moved to France as refugees from Nazi persecution. From there, they again emigrated in 1940, this time to the United States. He obtained American citizenship in 1945 and established himself in an academic career, teaching Russian and English literature at Cornell from 1948 to 1959. Due to the financial success of Lolita, he was able to move to Switzerland and focus on writing.He died there in 1977 while working on his ninth novel in English. His corpus includes ten novels written in Russian between 1926 and 1939; nine novels in English between 1941 and 1977; numerous poetry collections; and several plays.

Humbert Humbert, the narrator of the novel, has a jealous, rather hypocritical, dislike for the boy who first had sex with Dolores while she was at camp. Several years later, he mentions the boy's activities to a neighbour, mother of Phyllis Chatfield, one of Dolores's friends:
“I remember Phyllis. Phyllis and  Camp Q. Yes, of course. By the way, did she ever tell you how Charlie Holmes debauched there his mother’s little charges?”
Mrs Chatfield’s response was one of horror:
”For shame, for shame, Mr Humbert! The poor boy has just been killed in Korea.”
There must have been thousands of villains killed in the First World War but many of them are remembered as innocent because of their deaths in action.

The Flame of the Forest

This pseudo-autobiographical novel, published in 1955, is largely set in Kolkata. The narrator has left university and is looking for work; among his jobs is contributing to an American-style weekly called Life in Technikolor. At the same time, he's pursuing an interest in Myna, a dancing girl termed ‘the Flame of the Forest’. He is torn between urban modernity with international culture and the rural traditional culture. This traditional India is impersonated by Myna; she attracts him away from Western intellect and towards mystery and myth.

The author, Sudhindra N. Ghose (born 30 July 1899), grew up in West Bengal. After studying at the University of Calcutta, he moved to Europe to study for a doctorate at the University of Strasbourg. He subsequently was a research scholar in universities in England, France, Germany and Switzerland. Alongside his studies, he served as a foreign correspondent for The Hindu newspaper from 1924. In 1931, he joined the information secretariat of the League of Nations. He fled to England with his Jewish partner in 1940 and lived there until 1957. Though he spent his entire writing career outside of India, all of his books were set in his home country. He is best remembered for his tetralogy of autobiographical fiction comprising And Gazelles Leaping (1949), Cradle of the Clouds (1951), The Vermilion Boat (1953) and The Flame of the Forest (1955). R.K. Narayan regarded the quartet as an allegorical work; a “20th-century Pilgrim's Progress”.

Myna, one of the central character's of the novel, believes that “no one dies... save on his own choice and in his own time”. “Only when a man supplicates for death then alone does he receive the visitation of Death’s messenger. And he must call out for his own dissolution not once, nor twice, but three times.“ In her mind, “death... comes to him as a solace, a benediction to him and his relations.” This prompted me to think of wounded soldiers on the battlefield who plead for death.

Children at the Shop

This novel, published in 1967, is set in Kent. Although presented as an autobiography, it is for the most part a fictional memoir. The 'shop' referred to in in the title is the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. Although the author did live near Woolwich for some of her childhood, her depiction of a childhood in this military setting was informed more by her imagination than by experience. The narrator befriends a cadet called Myers, son of a doctor in Salisbury, and she gives an account of his experiences in the First World War: "He survived the perils of the First World War, won the D.S.O. and bar, married a daughter of a rich industrialist, eventually became a brigadier-general, and retired to the south of France." With the exception of that snippet, the account ends in August 1914 with mobilisation interrupting a family seaside vacation.

The author, Ruby Ferguson (née Ashby, born 28 July 1899) was the daughter of a Methodist minister. She grew up in Yorkshire and was educated in Bradford. Her first cousin, Spencer Ashby, of the Middlesex Regiment, was killed in action on 2 July 1916. She studied at Oxford, where she did a degree in English. She started work as a secretary in Manchester but quickly began writing as a sideline. Her first novel was published in 1926; it and most of her early output were in the crime genre. Her ninth book, the 1937 romantic novel, Lady Rose and Mrs Memmary, was her most successful novel for adults. She is best known for her Jill Crewe books, a series of nine pony-riding books primarily written for her step-granddaughters, published between 1949 and 1962.

One of the novel's minor characters is Astrid, a Danish student who lives with them in an arrangement similar to an au pair. She agrees to marry a German and the narrator is horrified:
“Golly, Astrid. Do you have to go and marry a German?”
“That I cannot help. I meet him, we loff, it is fate. He is so nize.”
“When you get married, will you have to go and live in Germany?”
“In Bremen, yes.”
The narrator later mentions that Astrid wrote from Bremen to describe her new home —
“That was in the summer of 1914 and the last we ever heard of Astrid.”

The Quest

This novel, published in 1950, is set in the midsummer of 1945. It describes the journey of seven people leaving behind the devastated city of Berlin. They set off as individuals or in pairs but come together on the same eastward road outside the city and have a common destination (a village convent). The novel draws heavily from Greek mythology (its original title was Märkische Argonautenfahrt). Their journey is towards the village of Anastasiendorf, which is effectively a New Jerusalem. The object of their quest is wisdom; a way of understanding the meaning of life when coming from such devastation.

The author, Elisabeth Langgässer (born 23 February 1899) grew up in the Rheinhessen region of west-central Germany. She was educated in Darmstadt and qualified as a primary school teacher. Her first book, a poetry collection, was published in 1924. Having taught in the region for almost ten years, she moved to Berlin in 1929. She was active as a freelance writer of poetry and drama. She was awarded the main literature prize for German women in 1932. Her first novel was published in 1936. Being half-Jewish, she had to do forced labour for much of the Second World War. Her daughter, Cordelia, considered a full Jew, survived Auschwitz and was liberated to Sweden. In 1946, her major novel, The Indelible Seal, was published after nine years of writing. Several short story collections followed. Her final novel (this one) was published in 1950, soon after she had died of multiple sclerosis. She was posthumously awarded the Georg Büchner Prize, one of the two foremost literary prizes for German literature.

The depiction of the war-ravaged country is almost apocalyptic:
“The metropolis did not end, it shredded at the periphery. It became frayed like a flag, flapping and snapping in the wind, which ought long ago to have been taken down from its pole because the cause was lost which it had served... Remains of the tank blockades were still standing at the openings of the streets, mocking themselves. Army trucks — looking as though they had been mashed by the fist of some giant who had then shoved them up the embankment onto a heap of munitions — reared their horrible, charred posteriors. Still others, like cadavers disembowelled by jackals and vultures, had been so despoiled of their original substance by the fire of battle and the beaklike blows of the artillery that their skeletons, when one bumped against them, could bring forth only a rattle. Amid the fresh deposit of miserable old rubbish scarcely a speck of earth worthy of the name  was anywhere discernible.”

Lament for Agnes

This semi-autobiographical novel, published in 1951, is largely set in Antwerp. The narrator and central character is an alter ego of the author: whereas many of the events described in the novel occurred in the author's life, there are also many deviations from autobiography. The narrator is the second child of his parents, his sister Agnes having died before he was born. When as an adolescent he meets at the cinema a young woman called Agnes and experiences love at first sight, he merged the two Agneses in his mind: “She was Agnes. She was my dead sister. I do not know how I worked out this transference of the dead child into the living girl within myself. Just because of the name?”

The author, Marnix Gijsen (né Jan-Albert Goris, born 20 October 1899) grew up in Antwerp. He studied at the local Jesuit school but was effectively expelled in 1917 due to his Flemish nationalist activities. He subsequently studied at universities in Leuven, Freiburg, Paris and London. He worked in the civil service, at first in his home city and then for the Belgian state in Brussels. His first publications were expressionist poems. From 1939 to 1954, he served in the Belgian diplomatic service in New York. The majority of his published writings are works of non-fiction. His first novel was published in 1947. It was followed by several novels set in America. In 1974 he was awarded the Prijs der Nederlandse Lettren, the most prestigious accolade in Dutch literature.

The first five chapters of the novel are set during the First World War. Chapter 6 opens with an account of the aftermath:
“The war had ended without having affected Agnes’s family or mine seriously. We stood together on the market square when the foreign flag came down from the tower and our national colours were run up. Old people, who had waited six years for their sons who were stationed away at the war, burst into tears... Peace to us simply meant greater freedom of movement.”