The book "The Death of the Heart" - Elizabeth Bowen - " We are insignificant in everything except our passions"

The work of the English classic Elizabeth Boehun was not very lucky with translations into Russian, but finally, 81 years after writing her most famous (and perhaps the best) novel "Death of the Heart" was finally published in our country in the translation of Anastasia Zavozova. Whether the trend for a new sincerity helped or the personality of the translator who falls in love with the texts before starting to work with them, played a role, but Roman Bowen is with us, hooray.

The main character of "Death of the Heart" is a sixteen-year-old Portia (yes, not very much), who recently became an orphan. Portia, who lived mainly in France, moves to London, to the house of her older half-brother, whom she saw several times as a child.

My brother, Thomas, lives with his wife Anna and periodically friends-comrades come to their house, with whom they conduct small conversations, drink tea and something stronger. And then one day Portia meets a certain Eddie-a friend of Anna, an employee of Thomas's office, a very frivolous young man who is used to living at someone else's expense.

Eddie will be slightly hit on for a Portion, but the naive girl is already " Vanya, I'm yours forever!". Naturally, nothing good can come out of this... "Death of the Heart" is a classic novel about growing up, about how a cute naive child faces a big harsh world, leaving the custody of adults. Anna and Thomas perceive Portia as a child, while, of course, at sixteen, the girl's thoughts are no longer childish. What is growing up according to Bowen's idea?

This is the very "death of the heart" that is included in the title. Hardening, the loss of youthful illusions, putting on the mask of a cynic, the victory of reason over the fluttering of the heart.

All the adult heroes of the work have already experienced their" death of the heart", and since they have remained alive and well after that, they look at Portia somewhat condescendingly, without thinking about how unhealthy she is poor, and that, perhaps, it would be worth giving her something to suggest and protect her from something.

In fact, Anna is Portia 20 years later, respectively, Portia is Anna in the past, which is why it is so difficult for them to build a relationship, every look at her niece seems to make Anna remember her heart death, what happened before she met Thomas.

I have a strong association of "Death of the Heart" with Ivan Goncharov's novel "An Ordinary Story", only Bowen's version, of course, is English, female and somewhat simpler, in the sense that there are fewer themes in the work, everything focuses exclusively on Portia and Anna and revolves around this "heart dying".

I can't say that Bowen offered a fresh look at the familiar story of the deception of a young maiden by a frivolous rake, all this has already been in the novels of education a hundred times, unless the writer did not bring it all to the scale of a Greek tragedy, like some Archibald Cronin or Theodore Dreiser.

A judgmental view of English high society for the middle of the twentieth century is also not very new, but honestly, I can't say that Anna, Thomas or St. Quentin caused me negative emotions, and they are all so angry and cynical, not at all. In contrast to the naive Portia, of course, they seem to be hypocrites who have forgotten that people have feelings, and that they were also young once, but in general, but if we take not the heroine, who is still not very smart and quick-witted, as a starting point, then everything is not so bad.

In general, the content of "Death of the Heart" did not please me too much, I once overeated the classics and now I gravitate much more to the more complex plots of modern literature, but the language in the novel is really beautiful, just a breath of fresh air.

By the way, "Death of the Heart" is not a galim realism, closer to the finale, the text was filled with elements of modernism, and the final scene completely reminded me of Molly Bloom's monologue from Ulysses. But don't let this frighten you, Bowen is not a Joyce on minimals, but rather a mixture of Wolfe and Nancy Mitford. I somehow doubt about the transition link from Wolfe to Iris Murdoch, Murdoch slips only in the author's view of his characters, which (except for Portia) she doesn't like it.