France, Alternative Libertaire AL #250 - Conventional
subversion: Jack London "Martin Eden" (fr, it, pt) [machine
translation] (a-infos-en@ainfos.ca)
The story of Martin Eden, written by Jack London and published in 1909, is largely
autobiographical since Jack London is largely transposes into the character. Like him, he
is from the proletariat, has traveled through its marine business, and is also animated by
a deep curiosity about the world around him and the reason of things. This led him to
playing and leading to another, philosophy, art and politics (Jack London was a socialist
activist), and of course, literature. ---- Martin Eden is a beefy sailor, accustomed to
fighting and drinking, as well as drag, where it is very comfortable, an expert in female
psychology and rather handsome. His life is shattered by an event that will forever
change: it saves a citizen who threatened to being beaten by thugs near a port. This last,
grateful, invite to take a meal home to his family, and it is the meeting of two worlds
that collide head on. He comes from a harsh environment and there he falls into a refined
environment, cultivated, or no one raises his voice and calm debate about art, politics,
and where vulgarity is absent. We realize from reading this novel that the boundaries
between classes are much stronger then and now in terms of cultural capital, language and
way of life.
More than anything, is the daughter of the family, three years his senior, that will cause
a shock in him. He falls deeply in love and will make every effort to conquer her heart.
It's their relationship that is the subject of this book, a relationship.
For fear of ridicule and challenge, but above all love, new feeling for him, Martin,
transported and highly motivated to seduce Ruth, will move the walls. Accustomed to the
effort of its worker's condition and type of worker, it will make sure to educate, enrich
their vocabulary and Ruth will help in this learning.
The latter, by its bourgeois condition, has never worked and actually know anything to
practical things in life. It nevertheless shows comely and stunned one day discovers that
what she felt for him previously thought to be of pity, turns really be love.
Completely clumsy in its infancy in this new universe codified and neat, Martin, Prodigy
and passionate, avid reader, enriches knowledge, discovers this virgin territory for him
is that of knowledge and disinterested reflection, and spends his days totally engulfed in
reading. Soon he is able to understand conversations bourgeois and wondered how he could
live if primary way in his workman past. One day it is the revelation: he will in turn
become a writer! But this is not the route that wanted her friend Ruth, who hope to see it
become a lawyer, boosted by his father.
The interest of this book is the reality of the speech: the story revolves around a lot of
money, no smoky idealism because Martin is constantly in financial hassle. Survival and
wage labor and toil, the work to earn money and thus the freedom to write, to learn, to
rise, marks every page of this great proletarian literature novel, is really a must.
François (Brest)
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Les-classiques-de-la-subversion,6364
