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ასპერნის წერილები

Henry James

3.72 · Rating details · 4,511 ratings · 454 reviews

ჰენრი ჯეიმზი (1843-1916) ამერიკული წარმოშობის ბრიტანელი მწერალია, რომელიც 30 წლის ასაკიდან ცხოვრობდა ევროპაში, სიკვდილამდე ერთი წლით ადრე კი ბრიტანეთის ქვეშევრდომობა მიიღო. თავისი ლიტერატურული მოღვაწეობის 51 წლის მანძილზე მან 20 რომანი, 112 მოთხრობა და 12 პიესა დაწერა.
ჯეიმზის ერთ-ერთი საუკეთესო ნაწარმოებია "ასპერნის წერილები", სადაც დიდი გონებამახვილობითა და იუმორით არის ...more

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Paperback, 205 pages

Published 2013 by არტანუჯი (first published September 29th 1888)

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Nov 03, 2015 Glenn Russell rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

In the section of his Moral Discourses entitled How a person can preserve their proper character in any situation the Stoic philosopher Epictetus says “You are the one who knows yourself – which is to say, you know how much you are worth in your own estimation, and therefore at what price you will sell yourself; because people sell themselves at different rates. Taking account of the value of externals, you see, comes at some cost to the value of one’s own character.”

I cite this quote since, in ...more

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Oct 16, 2013 Kalliope rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: jamesian, italy, fiction-english, american, classics

I generally do not like to discuss the plot in a review. And I will not in this one either. But apart from delighting in James’ prose and in his superb ability to characterize and develop personalities, reading this novella has made me think about what makes a good story.

For I was captured by the suspense James created out of a relatively simple situation.

What makes a good plot? It certainly needs a structure, a kind of frame that gives it independence and self-sufficiency. That means it demands ...more

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Jun 02, 2017 Jola rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What did I think?
It's really hard to think feeling weak in the presence of sheer beauty, having your breath taken away and being hypnotised!

Two weeks later
Not much has changed since I finished reading. I still feel almost as infatuated with this novella as the nameless narrator was obsessed with Jeffrey Aspern's papers. I am constantly not capable of ‘Jola thinks rationally’ mode, so instead of sharing logical musings I will tell you what happened when I was reading this amazing book by Henry J ...more

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Oct 13, 2017 Beverly rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended by Michael, The Aspern Papers is a remarkable short story/novela by James who wrote my favorite ghost story of all time--The Turn of the Screw. As with the Turn of the Screw, much is left unsaid, the reader has to determine through extremely minute variations of conversation and subtle action what is really going on. The main character is morally deficient and we witness his further descent into a quagmire.

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Jul 20, 2009 Eric rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: themaster, ficciones

I must admit that Nabokov is completely spot-on in his criticism of The Aspern Papers, about which he complains in 1941 letter to Edmund Wilson:

Yesterday I read The Aspern Papers. No. He writes with a very sharp nib and the ink is very pale and there is very little of it in his inkpot…The style is artistic but it is not the style of an artist…He has charm (as the weak blond prose of Turgenev has), but that’s about all.

I had recalled, while reading The Aspern Papers, a negative reference to it in I must admit that Nabokov is completely spot-on in his criticism of The Aspern Papers, about which he complains in 1941 letter to Edmund Wilson:

Yesterday I read The Aspern Papers. No. He writes with a very sharp nib and the ink is very pale and there is very little of it in his inkpot…The style is artistic but it is not the style of an artist…He has charm (as the weak blond prose of Turgenev has), but that’s about all.

I had recalled, while reading The Aspern Papers, a negative reference to it in the The Nabokov-Wilson Letters, but not until I consulted the letters did I realize how perfectly Nabokov nailed the anemia of the novella’s conception and composition. Nabokov is especially relevant because the situation of The Aspern Papers is so similar to that of Lolita, and the differences in handling are, to use a word that abounds in James’s prefaces, “signal.” Both works have as their first-person narrators duplicitous men-of-letters who lurk as lodgers in homes of the unwitting - both hoping, through familiarity and proximity, to secure treasures harbored by the proprietors. Humbert wants his landlady’s daughter; the narrator of The Aspern Papers hopes to get his hands on a cache of letters written to his landlady, in her distant youth, by a famous poet of whose works the narrator is editor and idolater. Both are exquisitely attuned to the movements within the house, and seek to orchestrate fortuitous “chance” encounters with some residents and avoid run-ins with others. Both pretend to be absorbed in innocent work (Humbert’s “learned opus”, the Aspern narrator’s gardening) while keeping a sly eye on their quarry. With imaginative abandon Nabokov unleashes Humbert’s wicked humor and mad lyricism. By contrast James is annoyingly sedate; his narrator is certainly obsessive and imposing and scheming, but all that is gently screened from the reader by the poise and gentlemanliness of the voice James gives him. James does at a few points give the narrator one or two sardonic internal asides, juxtaposed with the hilariously unctuous flattery he dispenses in order to ingratiate himself with the proprietress - but he doesn’t ever let the him fully inhabit the cynicism and unreasonableness of his quest for Jeffrey Aspern's papers. Lacking any of the idiosyncratic imagination, cracked humor and eloquent blind-spots of an unreliable, unreasonable narrator, The Aspern Papers struck me as staid, and not a little pointless: the narrator's relative inoffensiveness leaves the issues at stake - Americans in the Romantic era, the conditions which heighten or diminish our subjective appreciation of the past - to be treated with greater liveliness and personal slant in James’s preface than in the novella itself. ...more

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Aug 06, 2013 Lynne King rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: definitely-to-read, us-authors, novella

I have very mixed feelings about this novella. I have never read any of Henry James’ books before but upon advice it was suggested that I start with one of his novellas. So I decided upon this book as there are only eighty pages and it seemed as good a place as ever to start.

I actually don’t like Venice as a place and so I’m sure I’ll be called a philistine. I went in the month of December, many years ago, with an aged aunt which did not auger well. It was windy, the pigeons in St Mark’s square ...more

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Jul 18, 2020 Chrissie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audible-uk, 2020-read, classics, italy, relationships, victorian

The Aspern Papers is a fictional story inspired by the letters Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to Mary Shelley's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, who saved them until she died. (Source Wiki)

I find it interesting to observe what Henry James’ imagination has then invented. All the characters are fictional. He draws a story where two literary critics, believing that letters written by the famed but long-time deceased poet Jeffrey Aspern, are in the keeping of the poet’s former lover. They invent a plan to The Aspern Papers is a fictional story inspired by the letters Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to Mary Shelley's stepsister, Claire Clairmont, who saved them until she died. (Source Wiki)

I find it interesting to observe what Henry James’ imagination has then invented. All the characters are fictional. He draws a story where two literary critics, believing that letters written by the famed but long-time deceased poet Jeffrey Aspern, are in the keeping of the poet’s former lover. They invent a plan to get their hands on them. The first critic writes a letter to the poet’s lover. He is rebuffed. They agree the second critic should go and visit the now very old lady. She is living in a huge, decrepit old mansion in Venice, with her niece. The mansion may be huge, but the two women are short of funds. Through deception, the second of the two critics, it is he who is the narrator of the story, sets himself up as boarder in the women’s residence. Will he get his hands on the letters before she dies? This is the gist of the story.

There is a surprising twist at the very end of the tale.

What makes the story interesting is one’s growing awareness of why the three characters, the boarder, the lover and her niece, do what they do. What motivates each? Memories of a past love affair and bygone days. Money--but for what purpose? Loneliness and the need for a companion. The thrill of possessing original documents written by a famed author, an author whose work you more than admire. And guilt—guilt pushes a person to do what had not been planned.

The audiobook is very well narrated by Adam Sims. The words spoken are clear and easy to follow. Four stars for the narration.

I like this, but do not love it. It’s easy to follow, but it drags in parts. It is the ending that makes the story worth reading. It is at the end the character’s motivations are made glaringly evident.

*****************

*The Turn of the Screw4 stars
*Washington Square 3 stars
*The Portrait of a Lady 3 stars
*The Aspern Papers 3 stars
*The Golden Bowl TBR ...more

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Dec 02, 2017 Stephen P rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: henry-james

Though written eight years before James’ Figure in the Carpet, The Aspern Papers is a more sophisticated, richer work. Here James has set himself a larger stage in which to develop characters grown out of the intrigue of the tale. While reading I felt the stage growing, as though James was keeping up with the narration as it was told. The punctiliousness of his style set the perfect distance within which to watch the characters and to live with them. Here, the tension was strung with a fine thre ...more

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Aug 30, 2011 Ben Loory rated it really liked it · review of another edition

the more i read of henry james, the more i think he may be my favorite writer. it's weird, because he seems to be exactly all those things i most despise in writers-- he's long-winded, slow-moving, mostly humorless, always deeply embedded in real places, real people, real history, the real world-- really, i don't feel like i should like him at all! but then, somehow, underneath all of that, there is always in his writing a deep sense of mystery-- not just about the events in his stories, but abo ...more

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Jan 05, 2017 Peter rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: five-stars, favorites, literary

Originally published in 1888, this short novel reads like a contemporary mystery or thriller. James' prose is beautiful and complex like many of his peers of the day, but does not feel as weighted down. In fact, the use of candles and other time indicators aside, one could easily convince me Aspern was recently written by one of today's better writers. To be sure, James writes suspense and surprise endings as well as any genre author. If you've read Turn of the Screw, this won't come as a surpri ...more

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Apr 25, 2017 Michael rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: unreliable-narrator, gothic

Chilling, elegant, and dark.

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Dec 30, 2020 Bill rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobook, read-in-2020, 4-star, italy

A nameless narrator, a writer, travels to Venice with hopes of obtaining a trove of papers of the late, great poet Jeffrey Aspern, which he and a colleague hope to publish. They are in the possession of Juliana Bordereau, an elderly former lover of Aspern, who has spurned an earlier inquiry about them by the narrator's colleague.

Aware of Miss Bordereau's prickliness about the papers, the narrator mounts a complicated campaign to engage with her and the niece who attends her, Miss Tita, over the ...more

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Jan 15, 2020 Ivana Books Are Magic rated it really liked it · review of another edition

The Aspern Papers is a little gem of a book. Its plot is simple enough at first. An unnamed narrator sets to Venice, to find a woman who possibly still has love letters from a famous writer. The unnamed narrator is after those private letters and he feels justified in his quest- for he does it for the love of literature. However, where does the literature begin and the private life ends? Now, I'm pretty sure I had read this novella before I knew about the plot being based on the letters Percy By The Aspern Papers is a little gem of a book. Its plot is simple enough at first. An unnamed narrator sets to Venice, to find a woman who possibly still has love letters from a famous writer. The unnamed narrator is after those private letters and he feels justified in his quest- for he does it for the love of literature. However, where does the literature begin and the private life ends? Now, I'm pretty sure I had read this novella before I knew about the plot being based on the letters Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote to Mary Shelley's (his wife's!) stepsister, Claire. Miss Claire Clairmont kept them until she died and so did (it seems) the lady this novella introduces us with. Whether she will be willing to share them is altogether another matter!

This is a wonderful novella, that deals with (among other things) a very contemporary theme- issue of privacy. It is filled with suspense up to the very last page. The author ability to create suspense is quite impressive, but he does not stop at that as his writing is so much more then creating anxiety and uncertainty. Henry James writing is as beautiful and complex in this novella as it is in his novels.

Henry James fascinates me as a writer and this is why- I always feel that there is this ambiguity to his writing. At times I feel it to be both attractive and repulsive. It is as if there is some message that can never be fully grasped no matter how much you try. I admire the fact that here is a writer that does not try to simplify the world, that is not afraid to admit that we live in a complex reality.

Henry James' sophistication as a writer is worth praise, his style is elegant and his finesse seducing. However, I have to admit that sometimes I struggle with his writing. There is this feeling of expecting something and not finding it...yet that is what is fascinating about his writing, it's like a painting that is hard to decipher, and that perhaps portrays more then one reality.

The writer himself supposedly treasured this book, I have to agree with him, it is a beautiful and delicate piece of writing. As a said, I found the theme to relevant and fascinating. The protagonist is a man in search of love letters written by his favourite poet. He is in for some trouble since the object of love letters in question is advanced in years and she not willing to part from them for the world.

The novel makes me think about an interesting questions about human nature- why do we feel right to take what we want? Why do we feel that if we love something or somebody that thing or person must belong to us? Why do we feel we have right to have something just if we happen to want that? Why is love such a good justification for selfish acts? I remember this feeling of guilt I always have when I read Kafka's private letters- and I absolutely cannot help myself? Where is the line? Should we sometimes leave the artist alone. All in all, this book posses some really interesting questions. Moreover, the characters are well developed. The plot is well executed and the writing is beautiful. I definitely recommend it. A must read for a Henry James fan.
...more

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Dec 18, 2019 Claire Admiral rated it liked it · review of another edition

★★★☆☆ 3 stars

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Jan 02, 2021 Vesna rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommended to Vesna by: Katia N

Shelves: read-in-2021-classics, usa, modern-classics, classics, fiction

This is my first James and, as wisely advised by my friend Katia, it indeed turned out to be the perfect choice for a James novice. I read the original (1888), not later stylistically revised version. In his introduction, Michael Gorra, a Jamesian scholar, advises:

I have chosen here to stay with the first book versions of these works. With 'The Portrait of a Lady' I prefer the New York Edition; it deepens the novel’s shadows, and its language has an extra degree of metaphorical richness. But

...more

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Aug 21, 2016 Jo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

4.5 Stars

Every time I pick up a Henry James novel, I open it with trepidation. For some reason, I think I’m going to find his writing intimidating, stretching the limits of my comprehension with lengthy sentences and elaborate metaphors. Then I start reading, and remember that not only is he a master of the written word, but he is accessible, perhaps especially so in this short novella which I finished in a couple of days - good going for a slow reader such as myself.

The story is simple, man ado 4.5 Stars

Every time I pick up a Henry James novel, I open it with trepidation. For some reason, I think I’m going to find his writing intimidating, stretching the limits of my comprehension with lengthy sentences and elaborate metaphors. Then I start reading, and remember that not only is he a master of the written word, but he is accessible, perhaps especially so in this short novella which I finished in a couple of days - good going for a slow reader such as myself.

The story is simple, man adores dead poet and wants to get his mitts on the letters he wrote to an ex, who is very old and lives in Venice with her niece –ta da! Synopsis done. But of course, this is James whose characters are rarely so simple and who conjures up a sense of place so effortlessly. The fact that this novel is set in Venice is a treat for someone who loves the city, with a wonderful, and accurate, description of it as ‘an immense collective apartment’. There is another perfect description of the palace where the two women live;

‘It was not particularly old, only two or three centuries; and it had an air not so much of decay as a quiet discouragement, as if it had rather missed its career.’

These type of witty descriptions are part of the enjoyment of James’ writing but it is the relationships between the characters that are at the heart of his novels, and the way in which they play out here provides the suspense. Ultimately, there is one question running through the book; will the narrator get the letters or not? Regardless of the answer, the reading pleasure is not in question; biased though I may be, I would recommend this for anyone who wants to dip their toe into the Henry James oeuvre.

NOTE: Just wanted to share this quote that has as much resonance now, as it did back in 1888.

‘When Americans went abroad in 1820 there was something romantic, almost heroic in it, as compared with the perpetual ferryings of the present hour when photography and other conveniences have annihilated surprise.’
...more

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Oct 24, 2017 Jeanette rated it really liked it · review of another edition

To be completely honest I would not have continued this (off and on 5 pages at a time, I must admit) if it had been many more pages than the novella length shorty that it is. People complain about Faulkner sentence structure and length! Well, James' ornate and convoluted thought patterns are much more difficult, IMHO. Not normal English in any modern sense of how you define "normal". Some passages are so obtuse that after reading and rereading I still only got a nuance for mood or tone and not a ...more

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Dec 07, 2019 José Cruz Parker rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

The works of Henry James have an eerie, almost ghostly quality. When reading The Aspern Papers, for instance, I was reminded at times of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories The Fall of the House of Usher and The Assignation. Like Poe, James only hints at sex, he never mentions it explicitly (which, at least for me, is a good thing).

In the Aspern Papers, the nameless narrator is a man who rents a room in a Venetian palazzo. He thinks that there he will find the late Jeffrey Aspern’s letters and unpub ...more

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Aug 06, 2013 Sketchbook rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

To get what you want, would you pay a price -- or bolt?

James handles the sexuality v sedately, as expected. But it's compelling nonetheless. And sex is a metaphor for Anything. I've now read 3xs. ...more

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Dec 19, 2017 Jon rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

As a Goodreads friend says, this has the pace and timing of a detective novel. It also has a somewhat ghoulish narrator who is intent on convincing himself and the reader that he is not greedy and amoral in his relentless search for some suspected revelatory "papers" of a poet of whose work he is a published scholar. He almost convinces himself that some fairly pitiless actions on his part are actually noble scholarly efforts in the advancement of knowledge. The descriptions of the two old ladie ...more

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Nov 12, 2016 BAM Endlessly Booked rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: short-stories, own, classic-literature

3.5-4 I debated the rating
Perfect study of a manipulator being manipulated
The right length for this story-not too much development; it wasn't needed. The focus is the Papers and the obsession they inspire.
...more

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Aug 09, 2020 Andrea Zuvich rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Whoa! What an ending. I felt my heart go into my throat. Researchers and historians will definitely understand the protagonist's drive to locate the missing personal papers of the celebrated poet Aspern. His plan is quite good, but ultimately he is faced with an unpalatable offer—and his decision has irrevocable consequences. Another brilliant, but short, work from the great Henry James. ...more

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Feb 02, 2015 Duane rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: mystery-crime, reviewed-books, rated-books, 2015-book-challenge, american-classics

For once the book Blurb here on GR does a good job of prefacing this book, so I won't take the time to repeat that. If you like Henry James verbose yet provocative writing style, then you won't be disappointed. James was fond of this short novel, ranking it ahead of The Turn of the Screw.The use of Venice as the setting for this novel was a nice touch that fit this story perfectly. ...more

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Jan 07, 2020 Elizabeth (Alaska) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nineteenth-century, library, from-friends, 5-star-reads, author-james-henry

We are presented with an unnamed narrator in the canals of Venice. He is speaking with a Mrs. Prest about two old women, one of whom was the paramour of the fictional poet Jeffery Aspern. We learn that another Aspern researcher has determined Miss Bordereau has the papers of this celebrated poet who died more than 50 years previously. Ah, but the very elderly Juliana Bordereau is very protective, and has said no such papers exist. Now our unnamed narrator will use a false name and gain access to ...more

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Oct 08, 2008 kabukigal rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 30, 2007 Ben Rutter rated it liked it · review of another edition

Classic James: you climb a hundred unremarkable pages to watch a single painful, surprising scene unfold.

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Jun 27, 2015 Elena rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I just re-read Henry James' novella the "Aspern Papers," again a second time after thirty years. It was first recommended to me in 1983 by Jean van Heijenoort, Leon Trotsky's secretary and, after the murder, his archivist, as the best depiction of an archivist's passion for finding the papers of a "great man." Even the first time around I certainly appreciated the fine description of a collector's monomania. While the story was written in 1887, I've seen modern archivists turn themselves inside I just re-read Henry James' novella the "Aspern Papers," again a second time after thirty years. It was first recommended to me in 1983 by Jean van Heijenoort, Leon Trotsky's secretary and, after the murder, his archivist, as the best depiction of an archivist's passion for finding the papers of a "great man." Even the first time around I certainly appreciated the fine description of a collector's monomania. While the story was written in 1887, I've seen modern archivists turn themselves inside out to ingratiate themselves with the "keeper of the flame" in hopes of scoring the spoils, and at time resorting to flattery, lies, deceptions, phoney friendship, and non-existent jobs. Looking at a small miniature painting of Aspern, the narrator thinks that it is not very well painted, but talking with the old lady, Juliana,the owner of the painting, he praises it highly, and then learns that it was painted by her father. The narrator's relief that he avoided a misstep by avoiding the truth is almost palpable. I've seen this kind of hypocrisy in action many times. Re-reading the story at leisure, I realize that the story is about much more, all about the treacherous moral ground that a biographer or really any historian treads, invading private lives and exposing them to the world. Who has the moral right to do such a thing? James was writing just as emerging technology enabled newspaper photographers to print photos without the permission of the subjects and expose unsuspecting people to the uncaring scrutiny of the masses. (James decries cameras a couple times even though they play no actual role in the plot.) James himself was secretive about his private life and his many intense friendships with women as well as men as he roamed Europe. He knew the terrain. The act of publishing is a violation of privacy as Juliana, the owner of the letters accuses the narrator:"Ah you publishing scoundrel!" The narrator is willing to lie, cheat and steal to see the content of the great poet Aspern's private love letters. The narrator knows to keep his own privacy: his real name is not revealed and not even the fictitious name he uses to gain entrance to Juliana's Venetian Palazzo. So he is definitely immoral. But there is more. From start to finish, the unnamed biographer makes snide gratuitous comments denigrating women, particularly Juliana's niece Miss Tina: "It was impossible to allow too much for her simplicity." It's up to the reader to decide what actually causes his defeat: greed, violation of privacy, or misogyny. There is an ironic, self-aware soap opera technique at work in the novella, with a cliff hanger or shocker at the end of each chapter, a relic I suppose of the way the book was serialized in its initial publication over several months in "The Atlantic." Chapter two ends in a parody of the serial style: "My emotion keeping me silent she spoke first, and the remark she made was exactly the most unexpected." Chapter ends. This understated self-aware humor is a sheer delight. He wrote under the spell of Florence and Venice, the initial impetus being an ancient English resident in Florence with letters of Byron and Shelley. He shifted the scene from Florence to Venice with all that eerie Venetian light and crumbling grandeur. And he shifted the subject from a fine English poet to a non-existent American, knowing well there never was an American poet in 1820 of the same stature as Byron. Ironic wishful thinking here.
There is clear foreshadowing, this is not a spoiler it's early in the story, that the papers turn to ashes...but the tension is in why and how....I love it...but then I'm an archivist. Then in a case of life imitating art, some years after writing the story one of his close friends, Constance Fenimore Woolson, the great niece of Fenimore Cooper, committed suicide, jumping out of the window of her Venetian apartment. Earlier James and Fenimore had shared the same cook and shared meals every night in Florence for weeks. It's known that she had wanted a closer relationship, rather like Miss Tina and the narrator. After her suicide, James ingratiated himself with her family by spending weeks sorting her papers. And her letters from James disappeared along with most of hers to him. Anita Feferman wrote a fine biography of my friend Jean van Heijenoort entitled "Politics, Logic and Love," but she published it after Jean's death. Privacy in legal terms is supposed to end at death. Editing his stories and his own papers, James ensured both his privacy and his fame way into the future.
(The first legal articulation of privacy law was published in 1890 by Brandeis motivated by newspaper and photographic intrusions: "Instantaneous photographs and newspaper enterprise have invaded the sacred precincts of private and domestic life; and numerous mechanical devices threaten to make good the prediction that "what is whispered in the closet shall be proclaimed from the house-tops." James knew the Boston family that had been so offended by newspaper accounts of their private lives in 1883 that they encouraged Brandeis to write his precedent setting opinion.) ...more

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Dec 01, 2014 Justin Evans rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I love late James, but there's also a lot to be said for this sweet spot in the middle period. The sentences unfurl in a slightly less complicated way, the ideas are more evident, the characters less opaque, their thoughts less interminable. The Aspern Papers is my ideal beach read: I can lie back and enjoy the plot and paragraphs, I don't have to parse the language, and at the end I still feel like I've done my brain some good and become a better person. Also a very Venetian book; I hope to rea ...more

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Oct 29, 2010 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: library-loan, hf-19th-century-europe, read-2011, italy, american-fiction, book-and-movie

An enjoyable reading in a very warm afternoon.

Free download at Gutenberg Project

A movie The Lost Moment (1947) was made on this book and it is available at You Tube, with Robert Cummings, Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead. ...more

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Aug 06, 2008 Martine rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: people who think they hate Henry James

Shelves: novellas, north-american, british, nineteenth-century, psychological-drama

'Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance. I'm sorry for it, but there's no baseness I wouldn't commit for Jeffrey Aspern's sake.'

So says the unnamed narrator of Henry James' The Aspern Papers, a literary scholar who is writing a book about the fictional poet Jeffrey Aspern (loosely based on either Keats or Browning, depending on whose theories you choose to believe). At the beginning of the novella, the narrator discovers that Juliana Bordereau, to whom the poet addressed some of his most beaut 'Hypocrisy, duplicity are my only chance. I'm sorry for it, but there's no baseness I wouldn't commit for Jeffrey Aspern's sake.'

So says the unnamed narrator of Henry James' The Aspern Papers, a literary scholar who is writing a book about the fictional poet Jeffrey Aspern (loosely based on either Keats or Browning, depending on whose theories you choose to believe). At the beginning of the novella, the narrator discovers that Juliana Bordereau, to whom the poet addressed some of his most beautiful love poems, is still alive, a very old lady who lives with a niece in a dilapidated house in Venice. Not unreasonably, he suspects Miss Bordereau of having mementoes (possibly even love letters from the poet), and since a colleague of his has already established that she won't part with them the regular way, he inveigles his way into her house as a lodger. And then he waits -- waits for an opportunity to get his hands on the papers, or to get hold of them some other way.

In many respects, The Aspern Papers is an ideal book for people who dislike James, or think they do. A product of his middle period, it doesn't feature the late-period characteristics with which so many people associate him: the stupendous subtlety, the ponderous tone and the endless sentences whose meaning is obscure even after rereading them. The Aspern Papers is neither ponderous nor obscure. It's a perfectly straightforward and easy-to-read story about hope and obsession and where they will lead us. As is often the case with James, it's also about people using each other, but exactly who is using whom here is unclear. Indeed, a case could be made for all three leads using each other, which adds a bitter dimension to the tale. And it's a pretty bitter story to begin with -- dark and cynical with a bit of well-handled tragedy thrown in for good measure.

Reading The Aspern Papers is an interesting experience. It's quite fascinating to follow the narrator's progress, seeing him plot, attempt to justify his actions, pity himself and check himself whenever he's aware that he is about to do something which may ruin his chances. He's a calculating monster, but in a way you want him to succeed, both because you feel he deserves something for his efforts and because he has to put up with two very difficult women to get at the papers. For Juliana and her niece are difficult. The former poet's mistress has turned into a cynical, sarcastic and avaricious old lady, and as for her niece, Miss Tina, well, she's a bit of a simpleton, albeit an interesting one (the narrator nastily describes her as 'a piece of middle-aged female helplessness'). So how should the narrator go about dealing with them? How should he manipulate them into giving him what he wants? Jeffrey Aspern never offered any advice on that, so the narrator is left to find out for himself. But of course the women have an agenda of their own, and it doesn't necessarily match his.

As a story about academic obsession, The Aspern Papers is a bit too detached to leave a lasting impression. However, as a story about cold ambition and ruthlessness -- about the corrupting influence of want and need -- it's very successful. It's an intense and suspenseful novella with a few short bursts of melodrama, some near-gothic moments and an impressive, well-written ending. If it's a tad light-weight by James' later standards, I daresay there will be readers who will consider that a good thing. I know I do. In my weaker moments. :-) ...more

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About Henry James

Henry James

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Henry James, OM, son of theologian Henry James Sr., brother of the philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James, was an American-born author, one of the founders and leaders of a school of realism in fiction. He spent much of his life in England and became a British subject shortly before his death. He is primarily known for a series of major novels in which he portrayed the ...more

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