On Henry James's Stories of Artists [by David Lehman]

<<< The long New England winter is finally thawing, and here at The Common, we’re gearing up to launch our newest print issue! Issue 29 is full of poetry and prose by both familiar and new TC contributors, and a colorful, multimedia portfolio from Amman, Jordan. To tide you over, Issue 29 contributors DAVID LEHMAN and NATHANIEL PERRY share some of their recent inspirations, and ABBIE KIEFER recommends a poetry collection full of the spirit of spring. Click here for more.

Henry James’ short works; recommended by Issue 29 contributor David Lehman

I’ve been reading or rereading Henry James’s stories about writers and artists: “The Real Thing,” “The Lesson of the Master,” “The Death of the Lion,” “The Tree of Knowledge,” “The Figure in the Carpet,” “The Aspern Papers,” et al. His sentences are labyrinthine, and you soon realize how little happens in a story; the ratio of verbiage to action is as high as the price-earnings ratio of a high-flying semiconductor firm. Yet we keep reading, not only for the syntactical journey but for the author’s subtle understanding of the artist’s psyche—and the thousand natural and artificial shocks that flesh and brain are heir to.

All that happens in “The Death of a Lion” may be the loss of a manuscript— or was it a theft?—at a time when there were no copying machines and the burning of a manuscript in a fireplace could mark the dramatic climax of a play. The paradox at the center of the story is that the author toiling in obscurity may produce masterpieces, but when they are recognized as such and he achieves belated success it comes with all the defects of celebrity: his time and solitude are taken from him. He dies two ways.

The stories are parables, but the lessons are ambiguous. That artists have defects, including egos that cannot bear the knowledge of their own mediocrity, is a subordinate theme of “The Tree of Knowledge,” a story about illusions.  That the relationship between mentor and student may include an unexpectedly competitive element is one theme of “The Lesson of the Master.” At the end of both these stories, a major character is gobsmacked by actuality.

Anyone who imagines that scholars and biographers are admirably virtuous will not survive a reading of “The Aspern Papers.” Anyone contemplating a career as an English teacher will profit from the fruitless pursuit of the key to an author’s lifetime work in “The Figure in the Carpet.”

What happens when reality and appearance are flipped? In “The Real Thing,” the aristocratic couple hired to model for a portrait of an aristocratic model look less plausible than the married couple who has been hired as servants. Sooner or later the painter has little choice but to flip their roles. The poor pass as noble; their visual appearance conforms to the Platonic patrician ideal. The rich are content to serve them with tea. Is the point that reality and appearance are often at odds? Can we justify fakery as the means to accuracy, itself an illusion? Does the inversion of the classes in “The Real Thing” have a secret subversive meaning? I have long believed that a good essay can be written about this much anthologized story in relation to the greatest Coke commercial of all time, the one proclaiming the soft drink to be “the real thing.” If I were teaching the story, I would give that assignment.

https://www.thecommononline.org/what-were-reading-april-2025/

Comments

[Boris Dralyuk]

Inspiring entry! There is a handy selection of Henry James’s Stories of Writers and Artists from 1944, edited by F. O. Matthiessen and put out by New Directions.