CC BY
156PHILOLOGICAL SCIENCES
SATIRICAL AND HUMOROUS MOTIFS IN THE STORIES OF O. HENRY
Bekeeva A.
G. Tsdasa Institute of Language, Literature and Art of Dagestan, Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
Makhachkala, Russia
ABSTRACT
The article analyzes the features of the novelistic manner of the American writer O. Henry (William Sidney Porter), defines the novel as a variety or synonym of the story. It is noted that the novel is a narrative prose genre, which is characterized by brevity, a sharp plot, a neutral style of presentation, lack of psychologism and an unexpected denouement. The purpose of this study is to analyze the features of the novelistic manner of the American writer O. Henry (William Sidney Porter) and to define a novel as a variety or synonym of a short story. For this study, the novels of O. Henry are mainly «Little Speck in Garnered Fruit» and «The Romance of a Busy Broker» are analyzed. The work uses a set of research methods, including theoretical analysis of scientific sources, contextual and interpretative analysis, linguistic and stylistic analysis. As a genre of a short story, the novel became widespread in the literature of Americans in the middle of the XIX-early XX century. Representatives of the «shot story» were Washington Irving, Edgar Poe, Mark Twain. O. Henry, without violating the traditions of his predecessors, continues to write short stories, giving them an individual style based on irony, comic grotesque and satire. O. Henry's short stories are often characterized by a comic, tragic or sentimental plot. In this article, we will consider the humorous motives in the stories of O. Henry, the system of images, as well as stylistic techniques and expressive means that contribute to the creation of a humorous effect. In the works considered, his irony is a mood and love for people, good-nature and deep respect for human values. His favorite characters are people who have preserved humanity, conscientiousness and ease. The short stories of O. Henry are also distinguished by genre diversity, among them: a satire novel, a parody novel, a grotesque novel, etc.
Keywords: American literature, short story, poetics, plot, love, devotion, humor, irony, humanity, good nature.
A short story is a narrative prose genre that is characterized by brevity, a sharp plot, a neutral style of presentation, a lack of psychologism and an unexpected denouement. As a genre of short stories, it became widespread in the literature of Americans in the mid-XIX - early XX century. The representatives of the «shot story» were Washington Irving, Edgar Poe, Mark Twain. O. Henry, without breaking the traditions of his predecessors, continues the writing of short stories, giving them an individual style based on irony, comic grotesque and satire. The novel is a literary genre, a form of a small epic narrative, comparable to a short story.
According to the study of Abdullayeva D. B., «for the first time, the word «novel» received the meaning of a certain genre of narrative artistic creativity in Italy, where already in the XIII century there were small stories from everyday life, sometimes combined into collections». In the XIV century, this genre of literature and its very concept was approved by Boccaccio in his famous «Decameron»; hence this term, together with translations or retellings of the «Decameron» and the independent developments of the genre that arise in connection with this, passes into all European literatures [1, p. 38].
Its main weapon, fighting the reader, was considered emotional impact. Some scholars identify the literary concepts of «novel» and «short story». The novel requires a special, its own specific compressed intense plot. The pure form of a short story is the narration of a single event. The peculiarity of the composition is in the plot of the novel: the middle part of the plot is occupied by a single event, which has a preliminary part
that gives a semantic preparation for the event, and a final part that gives a semantic conclusion to the event. Features of the presentation of the novel is that the story is conducted with a high degree of tension. «Among the features inherent in the novel genre, psychologism occupies a special place. The image of the inner world of the hero in the short story creates a leading emotional background, the atmosphere of the psychology of the hero at the moment» [2, p. 2].
The American writer O. Henry was a talented master of a short story with the deepest meaning. The work of the writer, full of deep humanism, is popular all over the world. O. Henry's works have been translated into most of the languages of Europe, Asia and America and are published in huge circulations. In the Soviet Union, O. Henry's work enjoyed constant popularity. Soviet literary critics devoted hundreds of large and small articles to the writer. O. Henry's stories, which were readily published in newspapers and magazines, brought great profits to the publishers, and fame to the writer. Critical literature about O. Henry in the United States and other countries includes dozens of large books and hundreds of newspaper and curial articles. The first mention of the writer's name appeared in several New York newspapers in 1904. Of particular interest is an article by Henry James Foreman, a columnist for the North American Review, published in the May issue of the journal. The critic gave a high and versatile assessment of the writer's work: he noted the social orientation of O. Henry's works, the high skill of writing technique, bright energetic language, brilliant wit, observation, and original national humor.
The first monograph devoted to the work of O. Henry was written in 1916. Its author A. Smith gave the writer an exceptionally high rating, putting him on a par with the greatest masters of American prose E. Poe, B. Garth, M. Twain. Critics of the 20s-30s could not find a worthy place for the work of O. Henry in American literature. Nevertheless, the 30s are a new, rather significant stage in the study of the writer's work, since it was at this time that new materials about the early period of his literary activity were published. A collection of his works of that time is published, as well as his first and so far, only bibliography in English. It was compiled by Paul Clarkson, who wrote several analytical articles. During the same period, books of the memoir plan appeared, written by people who knew the writer closely, in which a moral, psychological and literary portrait of O. Henry is created.
Unexpected denouements captivated readers and gave the writer exceptional popularity. The irony of the simplest life phenomena, interpreted by the author, disposes, inspires confidence, and makes reading inseparable. As a rule, «irony is used as a means of characterizing the situation and forming the reader's attitude to the described conflict»[4, p. 236] and «it is usually interpreted as an expression of an objectively existing contrast between the perceived and the declared, hiding the subjectivity of the assessment» [8, p. 52]. The novels of O. Henry are characterized by essentially simple, but unpredictable endings. His humor is good-natured and does not have rudeness and cynicism. T. A. Voro-byova writes that to the spread of the American short story contributed «literary traditions brought from Europe, an oral story that arose on national soil, a periodical press that stimulated the development of short prose, and specific conditions of American life that contributed to the assertion of the original features of the short story genre» [ 3, p. 98].
The literary heritage of O. Henry has a great role due to social criticism, which occupies a significant place in the writer's short stories, although it does not always speak openly. The works of O. Henry are distinguished by moral and ethical principles, which the American author ironically demonstrates to the reader. «The sources of O. Henry's short stories are the oral folk art of the Wild West with its humor, the genre of fiction, pamphlet humor of Mark Twain, as well as the experience of American journalism» [9, p. 211].
According to E. E. Zhuk, «the dynamism of the stories is aggravated by the characteristic aggravation of the plot, in which the usual <...> the logic of events is confused, broken, and the reader goes from one surprise to another» [5, p. 27]. Plot is a characteristic feature of the novel. When the dominance of naturalism in the literature of Europe led to the disintegration of the traditional novelistic genre, to the fragmentation, indistinctness of composition, to the fascination, sometimes excessive, with psychologism, the writer attached serious importance to the plot side of his works. His novel is dynamic, entertaining, characterized by an increase in dramatic conflict to the finale, a clear structure; the
final surprise is a classic requirement of the poetics of a short story gets a deep meaning from O. Henry. This is not always a happy ending, but it is always unexpected. But the author sought to justify the behavior by the «truth of character», wherever the character acted. And the unexpected ending was only for the readers, but not for the character. This is the peculiarity of the psychologism of O. Henry's stories.
«Little Speck in Garnered Fruit»1 is an adventure romantic novel written in 1905 and first published in the collection «The Voice of the City». «O. Henry is characterized by the fetishization of chance. Fate, acting under the mask of chance, is the reason for everything that happens in his novels. The author skillfully chooses everyday situations for the plots of his works» [7, p. 204]. From the very first lines, O. Henry draws the reader's attention to the interior and begins the story with a description of the apartment of the newlyweds: "There was a flat with the reddest of new carpets, tas-selledportieres and six steins with pewter lids arranged on a ledge above the wainscoting of the dining-room". Immersing the reader in a cozy atmosphere, O. Henry conveys to the reader the mood of his characters: love, looseness and ease in relationships. The novel, like many other works of O. Henry, is realistic, its characters are a young couple who, while waiting for a child, are faced with what is familiar to millions of people who fulfilled their wishes during the happy months of waiting for a new addition to the family. The author does not mention the name of the girl, so he allows his reader «to complete» this image.
We can see the artistic wordplay in the sentence: «She was wrapt in rosy dreams and a kimono of the same hue», which conveys a sense of calmness and dreaminess of the heroine. Surrounded by the care and love of boxer Kid McGarry, she says him the desire to eat a peach. "Love, when it is ours, is the other name for self-abnegation and sacrifice," says O. Henry narrating the story. Indeed, finding peaches in winter in New York is a kind of adventure with an unknown ending. However, the desire of the beloved for Kid is mandatory, because their love has no seasonal or climatic barriers.
The wit and ingenuity of O. Henry in creating the endings of short stories are amazing. Even more surprising and varied is the way in which he leads the reader to this denouement. Sending the hero in search of the desired peaches, O. Henry characterizes the Kid as a serious, sentimental and resourceful person: thanks to these qualities, he persistently searches for the fruit at the seller, in the restaurant and in the central store. When the boxer offers to replace the peach with an orange, the hero responds: "It's a peach proposition right from the ring of the gong". For the sake of the "overseas gift" (as the newlywed herself calls it, whimsically thinking about whether she will still bring her favorite peach), the Kid decides on a desperate and fearless act: he helps the captain to close the Denver Dick's gambling establishment, located in the police station. The young boxer, using his professional skills, personally
1 O. Henry. Little Speck in Garnered Fruit. URL: https://americanHterature.com/author/o-henry/short-story/Ht-tle-speck-in-garnered-fruit (дата обращения: 05. 06. 2021)
participates in the raid of the brothel and defeats the owner himself. The peach, which the lovesick Kid would soon take to his wife, was here - "one lone, last peach that had escaped the epicurean jaws of the followers of chance. Into the Kid's pocket it went, and that indefatigable forager departed immediately with his prize".
The author raises the problem of selfless love; the Kid mentally compared himself to the Knights of the Round Table, who returned to Camelot after a huge number of dangers and performed many feats in the name of their ladies: "The Kid's lady had commanded him and be had obeyed. True, it was but a peach that she had craved; but it had been no small deed to glean a peach at midnight from that wintry city where yet the February snows lay like iron. She had asked for a peach; she was his bride; in his pocket the peach was warming in his band that held it for fear that it might fall out and be lost".
The noble irony of O. Henry, which many researchers of his work write about, is often expressed in the secondary actions of the characters: the main goal is to get a peach, the Kid has achieved. On the way home, he stops by the drugstore to check his ribs, if they aren't broken. O. Henry introduces a dialogue between the owner of the pharmacy and his hero in order to show how much effort it cost the boxer to get a southern fruit on a February day, while his beloved suddenly calls this desire "some slight thing" - "a flower, a pomegranate, a - oh, yes, a peach ". She is all in anticipation and ready to admire his courage and desire to fulfill her whims. Hyperbole in the speech of the apothecary is another method from the author, which gives drama, epicness and at the same time comicality to what happened: "It isn't broken», <... > «butyou have a bruise there that looks like you'dfallen off the Flatiron twice". The Flatiron Building is a twenty-two-story skyscraper located in Manhattan, New York City. It has an elongated triangle that resembles an iron.
The reader feels a humorous effect and at the same time sympathy for the heroic image of the Kid when, instead of exultant joy, the newlywed spoils out that she would rather eat an orange instead of a peach. O. Henry does not consider it necessary to end the story with a description of the boxer's despair, the reader already understands that Kid loves her and will definitely forgive her. Instead, the author exclaims: «Blest be the bride».
According to folklore traditions, Kid symbolizes the image of a prince, more than once he was given the opportunity to buy oranges instead of peaches, but he faithfully follows the goal. In this way, O. Henry conveys the strength of the spirit and the sincerity of the man's feelings, his reliability and care. It is important to note that the writer begins and ends the novel with a description of the apartment for a reason: the details of the interior are expositionally correlated to the character of the lady and the romantic relationship of the lovers.
For O. Henry, the values of ordinary people, whose lives are filled with the colors of daily life, are
paramount. He is surprisingly attentive to details, and the reader dreams of meeting his characters in real life. Bright speech, rich in tropes and figures is the first distinctive feature of the works of O. Henry. The humorous core forms the basis of most of his stories, and the main advantage of the language tool of the American writer is considered to be his masterful and unique mastery of artistic and stylistic means. O. Henry's humor is most often associated with comic situations, which he demonstrates to the reader through parody and paradox. His irony is unusually rich in shades, swift and whimsical, his author's speech never gives a chance to predict the end of the story. «The story of O. Henry is often built according to the following scheme: a certain situation happens in the fate of the characters, the reader assumes from the very beginning how the story will end, but the denouement turns out to be unpredictable, the reverse of the reader's expectations. This is the charm and originality of [his] short stories» [6, p. 11]. «Humor and irony are closely intertwined in the narratives of O. Henry; it is here that the skill of the pen of the American writer is revealed. O. Henry feels the word, he shows his virtuoso ingenuity with the help of unexpected comparisons, metaphors, personifications, litotes and hyperbole. The skill of this American writer with the greatest brilliance and talent is shown in the creation of fascinating plot structures and in the surprising endings. His favorite principle of parabola gives the narrative the effect of the comic.
Other examples of a humorous story include «The Romance of a Busy Broker»2 of the collection «The Four Million», 1906. This is the story of stockbroker Harvey Maxwell, who, in the routine of everyday work, is like a machine «... working like some high-geared, delicate, strong machine»), loses his power over time and, for a while, even over the mind: «The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man; it was a busy New York broker, moved by buzzing wheels and uncoiling springs».
Sometimes, behind the irony of O. Henry, there is a sadness associated with the system of life that creates spiritual difficulties in a person. Such notes of sadness are characteristic of the humor of humanist writers, who depict both funny and tragic grimaces of life. And so, distracted for a second from the exchange process, he decides to make an offer to the stenographer, whose eyes "they glittered dreamily, their cheeks were like a peach in bloom, memories glided over their happy face," as O. Henry describes her at the beginning of his novel. He hastily tells Leslie that he has no time to court her, but still has feelings for her and wants to get married. The author contrasts the image of the hero with the gentle image of Miss Leslie: «At first she seemed overcome with amazement; then tears flowedfrom her wondering eyes; and then she smiled sunnily through them, and one of her arms slid tenderly about the broker's neck». The moment of longing and reader expectation comes instantly, but it does not last long. Her answer is the same unpredictable denouement that O. Henry traditionally follows: we suddenly read that they were married yesterday. To enhance the expressiveness, the
2 O. Henry. The Romance of a Busy Broker. URL: https://americanliterature.com/author/o-henry/short-
story/the-romance-of-a-busy-broker (gaTa o6pa^eHHa: 20. 06. 2021)
writer uses details: the place and time are this joyful event that the exchange «pushed» out of Garvey Maxwell's head, took place the day before at eight o'clock in a Small Church around the corner.
In the above novel, O. Henry is still as democratic and loyal to his characters as in the story «Little Speck in Garnered Fruit». Through laughter and irony, he raises the social problems of ordinary people, the undoubted merit of the writer is that he realistically describes the everyday life of a big city and the place of a person and his experiences in it. O. Henry's short stories are genre-diverse: short stories-satire, short stories-parody, short stories-grotesque, etc. But not always in the works of O. Henry there is a sense of noble laughter. For example, in the novel «Girl» (1906) by O. Henry the venality of American statesmen is ridiculed. In many stories he exposes public hypocrisy and philistinism: «Elsie in New York» (1905), «A Double-dyed Deceiver» (1909), «The Hiding of Black Bill» (1908) etc.
On the example of the novel «Little Speck in Garnered Fruit», we see that the characteristic feature of the artistic manner of the American writer is humor, irony and comic grotesque. The dynamism of the story is given by the eventfulness, the use of colloquial slang in speech, and the use of comparisons, epithets, contrasts, metaphors, and other expressive means that form the basis of O. Henry's artistic style. The peculiarity of the composition of the novel «Little Speck in Garnered Fruit» is in its plot. In the beginning, the author prepares us for the possible adventures of the hero, in the middle of the work, the event for which O. Henry prepared us is accomplished (the hero finds a peach), and in the final part, the very end of the story occurs, which is peculiar exclusively to O. Henry. Sibirtseva E. I. notes that «O. Henry often has a wonderful combination of circumstances. It is on the basis of this feature that the stories of the American writer are called short stories-fairy tales» [10, p. 171]. American writer and socialist figure of the XX century, Upton Beall Sinclair believed that for the exploited masses of New York, for the waiters, hat irons and other small people, O. Henry became a favorite writer, because he knew their lives, loved them, and they felt his love under the mask of laughter.
O. Henry was one of the few talents of the world's literature of a satirical and humorous nature. The ability to see an object, a phenomenon, a person from an unexpected side, in an unexpected connection, the ability to bring together the most unexpected facts by association or contrast, to see their ridiculous or comic side, the ability to make the terrible and incomprehensible funny and easy to perceive, a sense of humor determine a very special color of the writer's works, create an element of the comic, truly comprehensive. The forms of humor and its functions in the work of O. Henry are diverse: this is both the form of conversation with the reader and the principle of analyzing reality; the source of the comic is life itself, situations, characters, and their collisions. The gradation of laughter-from a joke about a self-confident cowboy to an evil parody of a social phenomenon. In O. Henry's laughter, there is a lot of Western folklore, with its exaggerations and
comic absurdities, practical jokes and a mixture of lexical layers of speech, euphemisms and sharp untranslatable words. The writer has extraordinarily enriched the arsenal of expressive means of American satire. We see, that O. Henry creatively used the poetics of the oral folk story, anecdote, parody, and entertaining intrigue. He never hints or even indirectly warns the reader about his plans. Nevertheless, the details in the novels are not accidental, and thus the writer asks for special attention to them. In the works considered, his irony is the mood and love for people, good nature and deep respect for human values. His favorite characters are people who have preserved humanity, conscientiousness and ease. From all that has been said before, it also follows that the author of these stories is a more complex figure than it may seem to the reader at first acquaintance. Charm, intelligence, observation, this cheerful American with a sad fate had as much as you want. Endowed with a rare gift for seeing the funny, he faced the tragic and sad in life, but in most cases chose to keep silent about it. Anatole France was absolutely right that the incorruptibility of writing lies in the love of people. This is confirmed by the example of the work of the American short story writer for all time O. Henry.
References
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4. Dudukalo A. O. Means of verbalization of irony in the stories of O. Henry. // Formation of professional competence of a philologist in a multicultural educational environment. Materials of the scientific and practical conference. Under the general editorship of I. B. Kamenskaya, 2017, pp. 234-240. Available from: https://elibrary.ru/download/eli-brary_32392222_91467416.pdf (accessed 14. 08. 2021)
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8. Redkozubova O. S. The structure of the laughing culture / O. S. Redkozubova. // Analysis of cultural studies, 2009, № 3, pp. 51-55.
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TRANSLATION OF ZHAMBYL ZHABAYEV'S POETRY INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES AND ITS
RECEPTION ABROAD
Mashakova A.
PhD Philology, Leading researcher M.O. Auezov Institute of Literature and Art, Almaty, Kazakhstan
ABSTRACT
The article deals with translation of Zh. Zhabayev's poems into foreign languages. In Soviet times, his works have been translated into German, English, Spanish, Albanian, Slovak, Czech, Polish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Chinese, Korean, Mongolian languages, and in the period of independence of Kazakhstan - into the Turkish language. Special attention was paid to the book «Jambil'in eserlerinden segmeler», published in Ankara in 1996.
Keywords: the Kazakh literature, translation, foreign languages.
This year, Kazakhstan is widely celebrating the 175th anniversary of the famous Kazakh poet-impro-viser Zhambyl Zhabayev (1846-1945), whose creativity was recognized not only in Kazakhstan, but also abroad.
The international recognition of Zhambyl Zhaba-yev took place thanks to the literary translation of his works into foreign languages. People in foreign countries began to learn about Zhambyl Zhabayev's creativity in the late 1930s, when some of his poems appeared in magazines and anthologies of Soviet poetry in many languages of the world [1]. In those years, significant work was carried out in the field of translating Zhambyl Zhabayev's poetic works into German. In 1938-1939 in the newspaper "Deutsche Zeitung" such poems as "Evening", "Happy New Year!", "I sing a song in the radiant Kremlin", "Song of Moscow", "My Moscow" have been published. In 1952 in Vienna in the newspaper "Oesterreichische Zeitung" the poem "We think by that day" was published. A number of Zhambyl's poems were included into the book "Rhythmen der Steppe", which was published in German in 1976, translated by H. Huppert, F. Bolger, R. Zhakmien.
In 1943, Zhambyl's poem "For our native country" was included into the book "War poems of the United Nations", which was published in New York by the "Dial press" publishing house. Prior to that, in 19381939, the poems "Our sunny country", "Song of Lenin", "Leningraders, my children!", "Song of the big caravan", "Horse", "Glory in songs, USSR!" have already been translated into English and published in magazines in the series "International Literature", "Soviet Literature", which were published in Moscow. Moreover, translations were done not only by Soviet translators, but also by foreign ones (V. Jacques, J. Lindsay). During the war period in the series "La Literatura international", Zhambyl's poems "Friendship of Peoples" (1942), "Spanish Brothers" (1945), "Leningraders, My
Children!" (1945) have been published in Spanish. Thanks to these magazines, which were spread all over the world, foreign readers got the opportunity to get acquainted with the creativity of many Soviet writers and poets.
In the 1950s, poems by Zhambyl Zhabayev in Albanian were published in the magazines «Zëri i rinise», «Letrari i ri», «Bashkimi» in the Albanian capital Tirana, in Slovak language in the magazine «Kulturny zi-vot» in Bratislava, in Czech - in the magazine "Svet Sovetu" in Prague. In addition, Zhambyl's poems were translated into Polish and Romanian. Selected poetic works of Zhambyl in Bulgarian and Hungarian were published in Sofia and Budapest. In Bulgaria, the translations were done by D. Vasilev, A. Germanov, A. Todorov, K. Konyarov, and in Hungary - A. Khidas, I. Trencheny-Waldapfel, L. Nadzhi, L. Kardos.
Translated Kazakh literature appeared in foreign eastern countries, mainly in China, Korea and Mongolia. So, in 1952 Zhambyl's poetry collection "Selected" in the translation of Sha Jin was published in the Chinese language in Shanghai, in 1957 Zhambyl's poems were published in the "Shikan" magazine in the translation of Ge Bao-Quan, in 1958 -in the "Ywen" magazine. Zhambyl's poetry in Korean was published in Pyongyang in 1958 and 1963, and in Mongolian - in Ulaanbator in 1958, 1966, 1972.
Literary translation plays an important role in the process of foreign reception of Kazakh literature. The study of the perception of Zhambyl Zhabayev's creativity by foreign literary critics is of great importance in the process of international popularization of Kazakh literature. Zhambyl Zhabayev's poems published in foreign languages have caused positive reviews in the world.
Sh.K. Satpayeva in the book "Kazakh literature in the assessment of foreign criticism" writes that "Zham-bul was the first among the artists of the word, whose
