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- Barely Veiled References
to
Felix Paul Greve’s
- Munich Days in 1902
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3
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- This unpublished novel exists in the Frederick Philip Grove Collecti=
on
in the UM Archives
- Unlike in many other cases, no manuscript version is extant
- A second typescript in a brown cover has surfaced a few years ago in=
the
A. L. Phelps Collection
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- There are no indications when Grove composed this novel
- Indirect indications, however, permit to date it within 1920-1925
- Grove's first novel was Settlers of the Marsh in 1925
- In many ways, Jane Atkinson is a counter-piece to Settlers
- As always, both novels are loaded with references to FPG's Past
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- The extravagant author held this brain-child of his in high esteem
- He liked to present himself, as had Virgil in his time, as contemptu=
ous
of his entire oeuvre, and on
several occasions he threatened to burn all his creations…
- However, this typescript has escaped destruction, as have at least f=
ive
or six others
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- Early in 1998, my friend & colleague, Jan Horner & I applied
successfully for a Program Development Grant
- The objective was to e-publish an unpublished novel from uniquely he=
ld
local sources in the Grove Collection, and an out-of-print book
- The intention was then & still is to make other such FPG sources
available to the scholarly community
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- For this two-pronged project we opted for Jane Atkinson & A Sear=
ch
for America respectively
- Jane Atkinson existed only in a rather ungainly format & had to =
be
transcribed electronically
- Of Grove's autobiographical 1927 fiction, we didn't yet own a 1st
edition -- fortunately, one could be located & acquired in time =
with
support from the FPG Endowment Fund
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- The substantial typescript, occupying four folders in Box 13, was sp=
read
over 284 leaves of poor & thin "onion-skin" paper
- Here, as an example, is the Title Page -- in case I'm not connected,=
we
hopefully can view this graphic:
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- The critical attention Jane Atkinson has received is next to none
- This may have been directly related to
restrained access options to the text
- -- who , after all, is willing to read a fat document in the
constraints of the Archives' Hours of Operation?
- Professor Nesbitt was at the University of Manitoba at the time he
presented his paper at a memorable Grove Symposium in Ottawa in 1973=
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- Incidentally, i973 was the =
25th
anniversary year of Grove's death in 1948, though the Symposium
organizers did'nt mention this at all
- Professors Spettigue & Riley were revealing details of FPG's
identity
- Nesbitt had also brought along Grove's three German poem -- on of t=
hese
had been published by Greve in 1907
- This is why this crucial evidence of FPG's two lives found only a
meagre place in Spettigue's 1973 FPG book
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- There is perhaps another reason for Jane Atkinson's obscurity:
- The novel is eminently boring
- The setting is Brandon, Maniboba
- The time is roughly contemporary to Grove's tenure in Rapid City fr=
om
1922-1929
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- There is more:
- The heroine is ALL GOOD… So is her Neighbour Arthur
- Her husband Jim is ALL BAD, though he is Arthur's brother
- There is not much going on over a couple of decades. Even the impli=
ed
triangle fails to hold the reader's interest
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- There is yet more:
- When the end nears, we see Jim, gripped by unexplained repentance,
commit suicide
- All he wants in his agony
"…to feel [Jane's] soft hands on his brow…"
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- http://www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/collections/fpg/ete=
xts/Jane-Atkinson/htmlmore/chap17.htm
- p. 241: Jim "...hoped to feel her hand on his brow, if only fo=
r a
moment, cool, soothing, forgiving..."
- When Jim drives his car over a cliff, Jane is, by some kind of unlik=
ely
coincidence, present & witnesses the gruesome event. She rushes =
down
& bathes his head with the water of the creek (p. 251), asking h=
is
forgiveness for having "been harsh" to him...
- p. 252: Then, concluding this dramatic chapter, comes the punch-lin=
e.
It reads: "In death he had his last great wish. Her hands were
touching his brow."
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- Still more is to be said:
- This fits in perfectly with what has been recognized as a ca.1900
STYLE, namely Kitsch
- Though respectable authors like Hermann Hesse indulged in it, and l=
ess
eminent ones like Karl May did too, the genre is almost identical w=
ith
Harlequin- or Dime novels
- It is interesting that Grove is perfectly in line with this popular
genre which was often serialized for mass-consumption -- something
Grove considered more than once for his books
- This bleak assessment begs the Question:
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- For FPG's dual-track lives, it provides two major links to Grove's P=
ast
as Greve:
- It confirms Grove's early plans to use the "Rutherford"
Pseudonym, which was in line with the fabricated family background =
he
used in both of his autobiographies of 1927 (ASA, e-©2001) & 19=
46 (In
Search of Myself, ISM)
- It has, some thirty pages into the text, an uncanny cameo self-quote
from Greve's 1905 novel about his companion Else's life, Fanny Essl=
er
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- To the first point:
- Grove scholar Desmond Pacey in his fine edition of the author's Let=
ters
in 1976, mentioned that Grove proposed this pseudonym in 1919 to the
publisher of his first Canadian book, Over Prairie Trails (1922)
- Pacey also correctly identified the Scottish Judge Andrew R.
Rutherford, as the the maternal grandfather of Greve's friend Kilia=
n --
who had him arrested & sentenced for fraud in 1903/4
- This means that Grove appropriated his friend-&-foe's social
conditions whole-sale for himself…
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- To the second point:
- The cameo from the 1905 Fanny Essler novel concerns a minor &
detailed account of the heroine Fanny/Jane's "maiden aunt"
who, in her sparse grey hair, sports tortoise-shell combs which are=
a
remnant from a shop she used to own on a major street --
Friedrichstrasse/Yonge Street -- in a big city, Berlin/Toronto
- The significance of this scene is still unknown. For some reason I
believe that it is a kind of hommage to Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks=
--
Mann became famous over night with this family chronic in 1901. Gr=
eve
is known to have shared an address with Mann in Munich's Pension
Gisela for a few weeks in 1902, & two 1939 letters by Mann to
Grove are extant in the UM's FPG Archives
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- Unexpected support for Grove's pseudonym for Jane Atkinson surfaced =
in
1990:
- I was preparing a comprehensive edition of FPG's German & Engli=
sh
poetry from the archive's collections when I found in Grove's
manuscript notebook "Poems" the following:
- On the verso of a poem on pasted scrap-paper it said "Jane
Atkinson / by / Andrew R. Rutherford." (compare with tp of
typescript). This evidence is one of the reasons why I believe that
this novel may have been around the same time as its pendant, Sett=
lers…
- It is for all those reasons outlined above that we decided to e-publ=
ish Jane
Atkinson in 1998
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- For FPG's dual-track lives, it provides two major links to Grove's P=
ast
as Greve:
- It confirms Grove's early plans to use the "Rutherford"
Pseudonym, which was in line with the fabricated family background =
he
used in his autobiographies of 1927 (ASA) & 1946 (In Search of
Myself, ISM)
- It has, some thirty pages into the text, a cameo self-quote from
Greve's 1905 novel about his companion's life, Fanny Essler For FPG=
's
dual-track lives, it provides two major links to Grove's Past as Gr=
eve
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- For FPG's dual-track lives, it provides two major links to Grove's P=
ast
as Greve:
- Karl Wolfskehl in guise of a Montreal banker It confirms Grove's early pla=
ns to
use the "Rutherford" Pseudonym his autobiographies of 1927 (A=
SA)
& 1946 (In Search of Myself, ISM)
- Jane's description to a friend:
"… like Michelangelo's Moses" FPG's dual-track lives, it pr=
ovides
two major links to Grove's Past as Greve
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- As to the model:
- Karl Wolfskehl was the son of a rich banking dynasty, and kept a
"salon" where everybody met everybody… At the Deutsche
Literatur-Archiv in Marbach, Germany, some 80 letters by Greve to
Wolfskehl surfaced in the 1990s while preparing a Gide Symposium
- These letters show that Greve affected the mannerisms of his idol O=
scar
Wilde, I.e., an indepently rich decadent…
- In a letter to "The Master" poet Stefan George, Wolfskehl
warns that the young man has created some uphieval due to his
"Münchhausiaden" -- that is, as an imposter
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- As to Michelangelo:
- Karl Wolfskehl really did look like the famous sculptor's statue wh=
ich
was commissioned by Pope Sixtus & completed in ca. 1511: see the
slides below
- Greve, who had studied archaeology and Classical philology in Bonn
between 1898 & 1900 had taken a course on the Renaissance artis=
t --
this course & another in Oceanography were the only exotic fare=
on
an otherwise bland menu
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- As to the book's significance:
- What is interesting in these texts we chose for our e-publishing Pi=
lot
Project are the manyfold connections of FPG's two lives:
- In Jane Atkinson, they are relatively minor, and yet they are like=
the
raisins in a cake. They do nothing to improve the aesthetic level =
of
an overall dull & pretentious narrative.
- In relation to its counter-novel, Settlers, where the depraved her=
oine
Clara Vogel (Else) is pitched against a virtuous & virginal Ni=
els
(FPG himself), Jane represents the Faustian blond & blue-eyed
Gretchen ideal FPG turned to when he married his fellow teacher
Catherine Wiens in 1914
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- As to the book's significance:
- Far more impressive in every respect is the Search for America: it
stands out as Grove's master-piece & it is still very readable
today without the biographical givens that are Jane Atkinson's only
redeeming quality
- The book has also allowed to identify three major pointers to the t=
hree
obscure years Greve spent in America before he came to Manitoba as
Grove
- the Bonanza Farm he describes was the Amenia & Sharon Land Com=
pany
near Fargo -- found at the NDSU Archives in March 1996
- his tenure in Pittsburgh as a book agent ties him to the crooked
publishers he works for -- found in 1994 & 2000
- FPG's long elusive passage from Liverpool to Montreal took place
exactly as Grove paints it in ASA, though his alleged time-frame w=
as
1892 when he was but 13 years old, rather than 30 in 1909 -- found=
in
October 1998
- In a letter to "The Master" poet Stefan George, Wolfskehl
warns that the young man has created some uphieval due to his
"Münchhausiaden" -- that is, as an imposter
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- The Ending of Jane Atkinson:
- http://www.umanitoba.ca/libraries/units/archives/collections/fpg/et=
exts/Jane-Atkinson/htmlmore/chap17.htm
- A Definition of the Term Kitsch:
- http://www.onemedia.com/resources/kitsch.html
- An Article on Kitsch & M. Kundera:
- (by David J. Birnbaum UPittsburgh)
- http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~djb/aatseel/1999/abstract-28.html
- "Harriet: a Journal of Popular Kitsch":
- http://geocities.com/BourbonStreet/4133/Harriet.htm
- A Site Devoted to Kitsch:
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