358
Jude the Obscure.
Jude has been finished. A poor little fellow. So, eventually, I would say that I’m totally satisfied with the book after spending for about 40 hours on it. Strictly speaking, it’s a tragedy, and, like any good tragedy, this one produces strong impressions. Even if its characters are not quite realistic—as the author wants them to be—the entire story looks pretty real. A boy wanted to be something and worked hard for that till he met a girl, was thrown by her aside from his way, and eventually with his broken heart was tortured to death. A girl wanted to be free and learned lots of unusual stuff for this purpose till she met a boy, made him her slave, became dependent on him, and then lost her mind under some fatal circumstances.
I think Hardy was familiar with Schopenhauer and his pessimistic view was determined to some degree by the latter. Though, I would rather say that the novel represents combined observations, and calling the author pessimist is not right. So it’s actually very well-known that at the end of 19 century there were many glimpses of awakening of nihilism, and the novel in some sense may be considered as an attempt to discover where these glimpses came from.
Another point is the absurdity of life where noble souls are suffering and going through all possible challenges, which actually make them noble, whereas the crowd and all sorts of low spirited creatures live joyfully doing carelessly endless crimes either active or passive. The old moral story! The worse things happen with the best men. I don’t mean that Jude was the best man, of course, but in many ways my feelings, and partly my reason, are on his side.
Now, I’m going to see a movie. Perhaps it’ll be annoying because movies are usually much worse than books, but anyways.
To the beginning: http://www.proza.ru/2018/03/10/1530
Next: http://www.proza.ru/2019/06/23/652