The poetics of Stephen Crane’s late novels” I. Introduction. II. The contribution of S. Crane to the development of American naturalism

3 . 1 “Naturalism in Maggie “
When Mark Twain published his ” Adventures of Huckleberry Finn “ in 1884, it was seen as he the most important representative of a new literary movement: the realistic literature in America . Though at the beginning nobody thought of the novel as a “masterpiece” , it became more famous and significant in the following decades. Ernest Hemingway even called it “the one book that all modern American literature comes from . Taken at face value, this statement implies that also Stephen Crane's Maggie – A Girl of the Streets has been influenced by Twain's writing. Since both authors belong to the same period in American literature they naturally adopted literary styles, topics and devices that were typical for that era. Though both novels belong to the realistic period they vary in certain aspects.
Stephen Cranening “ Meggie” asari ko’plab tanqidchilar tomonidan naturalizm yo’nalishida yozilgan ilk amerikancha roman deb e’tirof etilgan . Adib o’zidan oldin yaratilgan romantizim va realism yo’nalishida yozilgan asarlardan farqli ravishda , haqiqiy xayotni o’zi ko’rgani va bilganicha yozishga harakat qilgan . Buning natijasi shu bo’ldiki , Maggie nafaqat bosmaxonalar tomonidan , balki omma tomonidan ham keskin rad etildi. Nashriyotlar asarni bosib chiqarishda hukmron sinf rahbarlaridan qo’rqqan bo’lsalar , o’quvchilar hali bunday asarlarni hazm qilishga tayyor emas edilar. Chunki o’sha payt uchun kitobning ko’tarib chiqqan mavzusi hamda asarda foydalanilgan dialect kutilmagan yangilik bo’ldi. Yozuvchi romani orqali New Yorkning Boweri qismidagi jirkanch ko’chalar va u yerda yashaydigan aholining og’ir – mashaqqatli turmushini hech qanday bo’yoqlarsiz boricha ochib tashladi. Asarni yana muvafaqqiyatsizlikka uchrashiga yozuvchining bu sohada yosh ekanligi hamda naturalistic asarlarning o’sha davr adabiyoti uchun yangiligida bolsa ajab emas. Koplab tanqidchilar qatori yozuvchining yaqin do’stlari bo’lgan Hamlin Garland hamda W. Howells Maggieni yaxshi asar deb e’tirof etgan bo’lsalar ham , romanning yozilish uslubi va yoritgan mavzusi ularni hayratga solgan.
“This [Maggie] is of more interest to me, both because it is the work of a young man, and also because it is a work of astonishingly good style. It deals with poverty and vice and crime also, but it does so, not out of curiosity, not out of salaciousness, but because of a distinct art impulse, the desire to utter in truthful phrase a certain rebellious cry. It is the voice of the slums. It is not written by a dilettante; it is written by one who has lived the life.[ H. Garland ,1893 ] . Once Hamlin Garland asked Stephen crane why he tried to write such kind of novel , he answered “ I had no other purpose in writing “ Maggie “ than to show people to people as they to me . If that be evil , make the most of it “
Stephen Cranening yozishmalarini va esdaliklarini o’qish davomida shuni anglab yetamizki , yozuvchi “Maggie “ romaniga syujetni ancha oldindan rejalashtirib yurgan. “ Tribun “ gazetasida muhbir bo’lib ishlayotgan paytida , bir joydagi ish tashlash jarayonini yoritishiga to’g’ri keladi . U ishchilarning og’ir mehnati va turmushi haqida ro’y-rost maqola tayyorlaydi. Shundan so’ng uni ishdan bo’shatishadi. Hamlin Garland bilan suhbatda u bundan so’ng yana shu kabi narsalarni yozishdan qaytmasligini aytib o’tadi. Yuqoridagilardan kelib chiqib yozuvchining haqiqat yo’lida hech narsadan qo’rqmasligini , ko’rgan kechirganlarini boricha yoritishni istaganligini anglab yetishimiz qiyin emas. Shu tariqa “ Maggie “ asari tug’ilishiga turtki bo’lgan voqealar va insonlar orasida yashab , Stephen Crane ijod namunasini yaratdi. The twenty-one-year-old Crane was forced to publish the novel at his own expense in 1893; even then, he thought it advisable to use a pseudonym, Johnston Smith. It was only in 1896, with the success of Crane's masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage that Crane's publisher agreed to publish a revised version of Maggie.
Asar birinchi bor paydo bo’lganda , undagi qahramonlar nomi keltirilmagan. Masalan Maggie –“ bir qiz”, Mary – “ qizning onasi”, “ Jimmi- “ bir bola” va boshqalar. Crane akasi va o’zining yaqinlari tanqidchi do’stlarining masalahati bilan qahramonlarga ism qo’ygan hamda ba’zi bir joylariga o’zgartirish kiritgan.
If Maggie was unappreciated at the time of its publication--and even virtually unnoticed, with the exception of a few favorable reviews by a few influential critics, among them William Dean Howells--it has since become recognized as a powerful social novel and a profoundly important contribution to American literature. In 1871, when Stephen Crane was born, the generation of writers who composed America's first great novels--a generation that included Nathaniel Hawthorne and Herman Melville--had died or passed its peak. Crane grew to maturity in what has become known as the Gilded Age (at least in the Northeast United States, where Crane's highly religious parents made their home in New Jersey). It was a time of unprecedented prosperity in the industrial Northeast, and popular novels of the time depicted the city of New York spinning dizzily in its increasing wealth and importance. To the skeptical young Crane, the novels that appealed to the public seemed largely sentimental and romantic. Popular novels overlooked the grim poverty that scarred the underbelly of industrial New York in places like the squalid tenements of the Lower East Side, where Crane got his artistic education. And the popular novels' moral landscapes were painted in black and white, peopled with prim and proper heroes and heroines motivated by only the purest of morals, villains with no redeeming features whatsoever. With Maggie, Crane reacted to this romanticized and homogenized perspective on American life by showing the New York that he had seen himself. It was a New York inhabited by the poor, the drunken, and the desperate, people blinded by hypocrisy or driven by need, profane and corrupted. Crane considered this portrait of New York to be necessary honesty; most of his contemporaries considered it improper, even scandalous. Crane had to publish his novel himself to almost no critical acclaim and even less public notice, because no editor was willing to take a risk on a novel that seemed both crass and disturbingly pessimistic about American society and human nature. Crane was a prodigy, bringing the literary movement of realism to America before Americans were really prepared for his unflinching honesty. In an era that has been labeled the Gilded Age Crane was prepared to expose the misery, hypocrisy, and sentimentalism that he believed lay beneath the gilt. In this sense, his novel is "realistic": it refuses to accept platitudes about the goodness of human nature, and about the prosperity of American society.
Largely ignored, Maggie paid a price in its time for being revolutionary. And it is precisely because Maggie was so revolutionary that it continues to pay a certain price. After a century of novels that have responded to Maggie by broadening their perspectives and telling stories in greater depth and at greater length than the story told in this novella, it is easy to question Maggie's contemporary importance; after all, for all its historical importance, it now seems merely a slim example of a literary genre. But Maggie was not simply first it was, and remains, one of the best American realist novels.
Maggiening Amerika adabiyotidagi ilk naturalistik ruhda yozilgan asarligini inobatga olgan holda keling undagi naturalistizm hususiyatlarini ifodalab beruvchi belgilarini ko’rib chiqaylik. Stephen Crane's first novel, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is in some respects barely a novel at all. It is very short in most editions, barely 60 pages long. The novel is short because the narrative it conveys is, in important ways, a slight narrative. Adib sevimli yozuvchilaridan biri Lev Tolstoyning “Urush va tinchlik “asarini oz’ xatlaridan birida “ Texasga o’xshab uzun …davom etaveradi “ deb yozadi. Bunga ko’ra uzundan uzun romandan ko’ra , yozuvchining o’zi qisqa hikoyalarni sevib o’qishni afzal bilgan. As a young author who was yet to find a public interest he was cautious about immediately identifying himself with a work that he himself regarded as shocking. Once Emirson said : “ Congratulate yourself if you have done something strange and extravagant and broken the monotomy of a decorous age “ He did it , however neither public no critics of that time paid much attention due to its extraordinary theme and language . Predicting what was going to be happen Stephen crane wrote this quote on the first page of the first edition of “Maggie a girl of the streets” .
“ It is inevitable yhat you be greatly shocked by this book but continue , please with all possible courage to the end. For it tries to show that environment is a tremendous thing in the world frequently shapes lives regardless … It is probably that the reader of this small thing may consider the author to be a bad ,man , but ,obviously,this is of small consequence to the author” " ( Ziff Larzer). It is a story that has become a cliché, a story about a virtuous and naïve girl who becomes ruined by forces larger than she. The setting is unremarkable. The characters are barely distinguishable from any number of sordid types who serve as stock and secondary characters inhabiting the alleyways of numerous longer novels. If it were not so deeply troubling, Maggie would be so banal as to be forgettable.
List of Characters