The Modern Novel

The Modern Novelالرواية الحديثة
The Most Popular genreأكثر أنواع الأدب إنتشاراً
Every age has a certain form of literature most suited to its spiritكل عصر له شكل معين من الأدب يكون أكثر مناسبةً لروحه , and this form is not something on the surface,وهذا الشكل ليس شيئاً يظهر على السطح some outer shape to swaddle an inner realityبعض الأشكال الخارجية تقيد بالحقيقة الداخلية . The form determines and is in perfect tune with the way of thought peculiar to a particular agesإن الشكل يقرر وفى لهجة مثالية بطريق الفكر الخاص لعصور معينة . Poetic drama was not suited to the Elizabethansالدراما الشعرية لم تكن مناسبة للعصر الإليزابيثي. Satiric poetry in heroic couplets embodies the spirit of the eighteenth century neo-classicismالشعر الهجائى فى ثنائى بطولى يجسد روح القرن الثامن عشر الكلاسيكية( التقليدية) الحديثة . And the twentieth century is the age of novelالقرن العشرين هو عصر الرواية . Ever since the days of Richardson and Fielding,منذ أيام فيلدينج وريتشاردسون the novel has been gaining popularityالرواية تكتسب شعبيةً , but in the twentieth century it has eclipsed and outgrown all other forms of literature.لكن فى القرن العشرين نما وتفوق على كل أشكال الأدب The nineteenth century too was an age of great novelistsالقرن التاسع عشر أيضاً كان عصر الروائيين العظماء but it also had its powerful poets in Tennyson, browning, Matthew Arnold and some of the Pre-Raphaelitesلكنه أيضاً كان لديه قوته الشعرية ممثلة فى تينيسين ، براوننج ، ماثيو أرنولد والبعض من قبل رافايلتس . It had a galaxy of prose writers tooكان به أيضاً حشدٌ من كتاب النثر أيضاً . But in the twentieth centuryلكن فى القرن العشرين , with the exception of Yeatsباستثناء ييتس , Eliot and Auden in poetryإليوت وأودين فى الشعر , and Shaw in dramaوشاو فى الدراما , it is the novelists all the wayكان الروائيون على طول الطريق . We have had, since the days of Thomas Hardyكان عندنا منذ أيام توماس هاردى , such eminent novelists asالروائيين البارزين مثل Henry Jamesهنرى جيمس , H.G. Wellsويلز , Arnold Bennettأرنولد بينيت , Johnجون , Galsworthyجالاس ورثى , Joseph Conradجوزيف كونراد . D.H. Lawrenceلورنس , Virginia Woolfفرجينيا وولف , James Joyceجيمس جويس ,-3-
Aldous Huxleyألدوس هكسلى , Graham Greeneجراهام جرين and a host of others ho are still trying to establish themselvesومجموعة كبيرة من الآخرين الذين لا يزالون يحاولون تأسيس أنفسهم . Twentieth century is really the age of novel.القرن العشرين فعلاً هو عصر الرواية
The revolt against the Victorian novelالثورة ضد الرواية الفيكتورية
The modern novelists launched a kind of literary revolt against the Victorian novelالروائيين المعاصرين أطلقوا نوعاً من الثورة ضد الرواية الفيكتورية . The Victorian values were rooted in a belief in materialism and progressالقيم الفيكتورية كانت متأصلة فى الإعتقاد بالمادية والتقدمية . They were 'bourgeois, complacent and relatively stableكانوا برجوازيين معجبين بأنفسهم ومستقرين نسبياً . The Victorians were optimistic by natureالفيكتوريين كانوا متفائلين بالطبيعة and they had not allowed the growing skepticism of the age to dampen their spiritsولم يسمحوا لشكوك العصر أن تحبط أرواحهم . Howeverعلى أى حال , the strong wave of skepticism could not be stayedالموجة القوية للشك لا يمكن أن تكون باقية . Literary artists were soon disillusioned with the vulgar commercialismالفنانون الأدبيون تحرروا سريعاً من الوهم بالإهتمام الزائد الفظ بالكسب التجارى , the bourgeois disregard of artistic valuesالبرجوازيين أهملوا القيم الفنية , and the self-satisfied الرضا عن النفس complacencyالرضا الذاتى ( الإعجاب بالنفس ) of the age. All old valuesكل القيم القديمة ; including religious faithمتضمناً العقائد الدينية, were discardedطُرح جانباً . In the absence of any new valuesفى غيبة أى قيم جديدة , a kind of vacuum was createdأُنشئ نوع من الفراغ . Conrad, Lawrence and Joyceكونراد ولورنز وجويس , all had to find new areas of faith in art itself or in a religion of their own makingكانوا لابد أن يجدوا مناطق جديدة من الإيمان فى الفن نفسه أو فى الدين الذى صنعوه بأنفسهم . They also had to discover new terms of artistic exploration.كان لابد لهم أيضاً أن يكتشفوا مصطلحات جديدة للإستكشاف الفنى This allowed a good deal of literary experimentationوهذا سمح بمقدار كبير من التجارب الأدبية . Howeverعلى أى حال , in their zest for the new, the differentفى استمتاعهم بالجديد والمختلف , the novelists did not reject their tradition completelyالروائيين لم يرفضوا العرف ( التقاليد ) بشكل كامل . They subjected their tradition to a close scrutiny أخضعوا تقاليدهم لفحص وتمحيص سرى , rejected whatever they found -4- Obstructive to progressورفضوا أى معوق للتقدم , assimilated the acceptableأستوعبوا المقبول and thusوهكذا gave a happy blending of tradition experiment.قدموا خلطاً مواتياً لتجربة العرف ( التقاليد)

The problem of realityمشكلة الواقعية
Modern fiction is pre-occupied with the problem of objective realityالقصة الحديثة كانت مشغولة بمشكلة الواقعية الموضوعية . Reality is an elusive termالحقيقة تعبير مراوغ . Novelists of al ages have been trying to depict the reality of life الروائيون فى كل العصور حاولوا تصوير حقيقة الحياة . Defoe's Robinson Crusoeديفوز روبينسون كروز was the first flower of realismكان أول ثمرة للواقعية . But Defoe was content with the portrayal of mere external reality.ولكن ديفو كان مقتنعاً وراضياً بتصوير الحقيقة الخارجية المجردة Fielding فيلدينج and later Jane Austenجين أوستن tried to probe into the minds of their characters to discover the motives and desires hidden there in and thus came nearer to the reality حاولوا ( جس) التحقيق فى عقول شخصياتهم ليكتشفوا الدوافع والرغبات المخفية هناك وهكذا جاءت أقرب إلى الحقيقة . Dickens ديكنز gives the impression of a great realistأعطى إنطباع عظيم للواقعية , but unfortunately he romanticizes the realityولكن لسوء الحظ جعل الواقعية رومانتيكية . The novelists referred to above die not have the benefit of the modern theories of psychologyالروائيون المشار إليهم آنفاً ماتوا ولم ينتفعوا بالنظريات الحديثة لعلم النفس , nor did they ever realize the importance of the subconscious mind in determining human behaviorولم يدركوا أهمية العقل الباطن ( اللاشعوري ) فى تقرير سلوك الإنسان . So right from Defoe to Bennett and Galsworthyمن ديفو إلى بينيت وجالسورثى , the novelists concentrated on the depiction of the external realityالروائيون ركزوا على تصوير الحقيقة الخارجية . In contrast, the modern novelists asseverated their belief in the inner reality and expressed their dissatisfaction with the earlier depiction of character. Virginia Woolf complained that the earlier novelists had not given the reader a sense of the character1, had not reached into the 'substance of their people. They had described familiar objects and suggested ordinary-5- Relationships. They had given us a house in the hope that we may be able to deduce the human beings who live there, "wrote Virginia Woolf. But this is not enough. The modern novelists grappled with the problem of reality in their own way. The various experiments in the twentieth century novel are a result of the novelists' desire to portray the reality as sincerely as possible.
Frank treatment of the sex themeالمعالجة الصريحة لموضوع الجنس
An important aspect of realism in the modern novel is the free, uninhibited treatment of the sex theme. The Victorians were a badly inhibited set of people. Thackeray did not have the courage to deal frankly with the sex involvements of Becky in Vanity Fair, although it would have enabled him to portray her character more convincingly. The modern novelists do not care for such inhibitions. After Freud declared sex to be the basic human instinct, they felt free to discuss is fully and to re-interpret human relationships in the light of his discoveries. D.H. Lawrence felt that sexual harmony was an essential condition for the attainment of happiness in life. In fact, he regarded sex as a great spiritual passion that could lead one even to the realization of God. His novels were declared to be obscene and he was often dragged to the court on charge of producing pornography. Time has, however, fully -6- Exonerated him and he is now acknowledged to be a great novelist.
The decay of storyاضمحلال القصة
Professor Edwin Muir has rightly pointed out that story seems to have died out from the modern English novel. For the Victorian novelist, life easily fell into the mould of a story but for the modern novelist it refuses to do so. Story has a pattern, a formula, whereas it is impossible to reduce life to a well-defined, neatly drawn pattern. The recognized literary genres of comedy, tragedy and epic had an organic plot that sustained their structure. But the modern novelist believes that the reality of life cannot be depicted in such a Regular plot. Virginia Woolf in The Common Reader says: If a writer were a free man and not salve, if he could write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon his own felling, and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted sense.... Mrs. Dalloway and Ulysses are two great novelists of modern times. And they do manage to tell a story. But the story in these novels is rather flimsy. It is free from the usual cliches and refuses to conform to any set pattern. Both these novels cover one day in the life of their of their chief characters, Clarissa Dalloway and Leopold Bloom, with -7- nothing consequential happening to them. Professor Edwin Muir thinks that 'the modern novel is like a sentence that sets out confidently; the grammatical construction is ingenious; we admire the writer1 skill in insinuating explanatory and qualifying clauses and all sorts of parentheses; but the sentence remains hanging in the air. He infers that the modern novelist has an imaginative grasp of origins but not of ends. The fact, however, is that the modern novelist never aims at telling a story. His purpose is to portray the reality of life in the most authentic manner, and if he discovers a well-defined plot to be a hindrance, he does not hesitate to dispense with it.
The death of the heroموت البطل
The hero in the traditional sense of the term has disappeared from the modern English novel. This may be attributed to the influence of the various scientific theories of the last century. Darwin destroyed man's pride and egocentricity and made him merely a speck in the historical sweep of biological changes a transitional figure in an evolutionary process1. Max Planck's quantum theory endorsed this notion. Einstein's theory of relativity proved that man cannot see the objective reality clearly; he distorts reality in the very process of observing it. All these theories, along with Freud's emphasis on the role of the irrational in -8 - man's conduct shattered the concept of a romantic hero who could manipulate a stable world that responded to his strong will. Now we get characters that are mentally maimed and crippled. In James Joyce's Ulytses, Stephen Dedalus is incomplete and Leopold Bloom lacks manhood. Conrad's Nostromo is destroyed by his pride and greed; his Jim runs from his fears. Lawrence's Paul Morel in Sons and Lovers cannot love Miriam because of the Oedipus complex he suffers from. These characters cannot be called heroes; they are in fact anti-heroes.
The stream of consciousness techniqueتدفق تقنية الوعى ( الشعور )
In order to portray the reality of character and incident more faithfully, Dorothy Richardson, Virginia Woolf and James Joyce introduced the stream of consciousness technique in their novels. This technique is based on the psycho-analytical theories of Freud, Adler and Jung and on Bergson, s concept of time. The novelists mentioned above believe that the external event can never be a complete manifestation of the inner mind. What a person speaks or does is not the whole truth about him. All ideas and emotions, howsoever trivial that are present in his consciousness before he expresses himself must be taken into consideration to understand and evaluate his character. They also point out that one's character is not something -9- Static, something fixed; it is a process; it is always in a state of fluidity; and in order to portray it successfully, one had to depict the process. Hence they conclude that successful delineation of character is possible only through the depiction of the stream of consciousness.
Robert Humphrey defines the stream of consciousness novel as a type of fiction in which the basic emphasis is placed on the exploration of the pre-speech level of consciousness for the purpose primarily of revealing the psychic being of the character's. This technique has also been described as 'a direct quotation of the mind-not merely of the language area, but of the whole consciousness. In a novel written in this technique, everything is presented through an apparently unorganized succession of images and ideas connected by association rather than by logical argument or narrative sequence.
Symbolismالرمزية
An important French movement that influences the modern English novel is symbolism. The movement actually began in poetry. The great French poets Mallarme, Verlaine, Baudelaire and Rimbaud revolted against objective realism and insisted on a world of ideal beauty. Mallarme said that 'Poetry should not inform but suggest and evoke, not name things but create their atmosphere'. Arthur Symons also wrote. "To name is to destroy, to suggest is to create". From poetry, this movement spread to the other fields also. The aim of symbolism was to give recognizable external images a spiritual or symbolic value1. Since a symbol represents without actually reproducing, the novelists use it to embody and to reveal the infinite, or at least to blend the infinite with the finite. We can find dozens of such symbols in the modern English novel. The silver mine in Conrad's Nostromo, and the Marabar caves in Forster's A Passage to India are such symbols. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers employs flowers as symbols. There is a very profuse use of symbols in Virginia Woolf. These symbols definitely enrich the meaning of the novels and bring to them a certain degree of depth. But often the novelists resort to a very private system of symbols that only baffle and perplex the readers. Joyce's Ulysses- the epitome of the symbolic novel-remains, even today, almost unintelligible to a number of readers.
Myth-makingصناعة الأسطورة
Freud had held sex as the basic psychological drive in man. But on of his great disciples, Jung did not agree with him. Jung believed 'the collective unconsciousness of the race' to be the repository of mankind's taboos. This theory of -I I- the collective unconscious- the inheritance of everyone-forms the origin of neurosis and myth. According to Jung, modern man is related to the primitive man by common cultural ties. This led the novelists to dredge up old myths and re-interpret them in the light of modern experience. These myths gave the novelists a ready-made frame- work through which they could comment. James Joyce was the most famous of the myth-makers. His Ulysses contains constant parallels to Homer's Odyssey. A concern with myth also runs through Lawrence's novels, particularly The Plumed Serpent. In his The Man Who Die, Jesus is resurrected and converted to life. Forster's Where Angels Fear to Tread and the Longest Journey also follow certain mythical patterns. Aldous Huxley, in Brave New World, tried to create a myth of the modern man.
Variety of themes تنوع المواضيع
An important characteristic of the modern novel is its diversity of themes. Practically no sphere of life has been left untouched by the modern novelists. H.G. Wells and Aldous Huxley have written on scientific subjects. Time Machine, The First Man in the Moon, and The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells and Point Counter Point and Brave New World by Aldous Huxley are scientific in character. Galsworthy's Forsyte Sage and Arnold Bennett's Clay -12- Hanger and trilogies dealing with domestic life. Huxley's Crome Yellow and Antic Hay are satirical in tone as are George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm. G.K. Chesterton, Edgar Wallace, Dorothy L. Sayers and Agatha Christie have written good detective novels and stories. P.O. Wodehouse is a great humonst. Thus there is a novel to satisfy every taste.