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Last year, on a trip to Rome, I took, as perhaps any first-time visitor to any city does, a guided tour. One of the sites we passed was the Protestant Cemetery – which I had planned to visit later on my own to pay my homage to Shelley and Keats, the two great Romantic poets who died in Italy. Thoughts of Henry James were far from my mind at that moment. But the tour guide reminded me of him by noting that we would not find Daisy Miller’s grave there. Afterwards, I bought a walking guide to Rome where the same words were entered; Daisy Miller’s grave was not in the Protestant Cemetery.
   Anyone who has read Henry James’s Daisy Miller will remember that, after Daisy Miller dies – of malaria caught while she is seeing the Colosseum by moonlight – she is buried in the Protestant Cemetery. Daisy Miller, like Isabel Archer afterwards, is emblematic of the fate of the innocent American confronted by decadent Europe. The conflict and contrast between Europe and America was a theme that Henry James would return to several times, creating what are undoubtedly his best-known works. Henry James was himself an expatriate, travelling to Europe with his family several times as a child, then later alone as an adult, staying for a number of years in Paris, until finally settling down in England. (Henry James’s initial lengthy stay in Paris was with his father, who wanted him to learn French. It was not an experience that Henry James enjoyed. Was there something oedipal in Henry James’s dislike and fascination for Europe?)
   On July 28, 1915, a few months before his death, Henry James became a naturalized British citizen, turning his back upon America which had not joined the First World War. He would be followed a dozen years later by his compatriot T. S. Eliot – for different reasons. Like Eliot who found Europe a wasteland, James found much to dislike in Europe, but he could not stop talking about Europe, rather about Americans in Europe.
   James’s first piece of writing on the European theme, based on the contrast between the innocence of the New World and the corruption and experience of the Old, was the novella Daisy Miller (1879). Though this novella is generally read as the tragedy of the young and innocent American Daisy who finds her values in conflict with European sophistication, it may also be read as the story of how Europe corrupts the young American Winterbourne, through whose eyes we read and misread Daisy.
   The earlier novel The Europeans, though set in New England, is also about the contrast between Europe and America. In this novel, however, the ‘Europeans’ are a cultured but nearly destitute sister and brother raised in Europe. The siblings arrive in America where they hope to get financial stability. Eugenia tries to attract Robert Acton while her bohemian brother, Felix, is attracted to Gertrude Wentworth. The puritanical Acton is attracted to Eugenia, but cannot trust her overt, ‘European’ sensuality.
   The theme of Daisy Miller is repeated in The Portrait of a Lady (1881), which is also about a young American woman in Europe. James revised this novel a number of times, its definitive version appearing in 1908. The ‘lady’ is Isabel Archer, an orphan who goes to England to stay with her aunt and uncle, and their son, Ralph – through whose perspective we see Isabel. Isabel is left a legacy which enables her to travel to Europe, where she meets and marries Gilbert Osmond, a middle-aged widower with a young daughter, Pansy. Later Isabel discovers that Pansy is Osmond’s illegitimate daughter with a woman called Madame Merle and that it was Madame Merle’s plot to marry Isabel to Osmond so that he and Pansy could enjoy Isabel’s wealth. Caspar Goodwood, who had proposed to Isabel earlier, tries to persuade Isabel into leaving Osmond, but Isabel has made her choice and stands by it.
   The Wings of the Dove (1902) also plays on the theme of Americans in Europe. Kate Croy and Merton Densher are in love but are too poor to marry. When Kate meets a young American heiress, Milly Theale and discovers that Milly suffers from a mysterious and fatal illness, she conceives a plan that will make it possible for her and Merton to marry. She and Merton will accompany Milly to Venice. There Merton is to seduce the ailing heiress so that when Milly dies, she will leave her fortune to Merton. However, complexities arise when Milly discovers the plot shortly before her death and Merton finds himself falling in love with Milly. (Had Agatha Christie read The Wings of the Dove?)
   The Ambassadors (1903), which James considered his most ‘perfect’ work of art, is also based on the conflict of New America and Old Europe. The novel narrates the story of Lambert Strethers who is sent to Paris to persuade Chad Newsome, who is having an affair with an unacceptable woman, to return to the United States. Strethers discovers that Chad is truly in love and that the woman, although perhaps not socially acceptable, is charming. Moreover, he finds life in Europe very attractive. A new set of ambassadors is sent off, this time to bring both Chad and Strethers home.
   The Golden Bowl (1904), the last of James’s major novels, involves four central characters: Adam Verver, an American billionaire and widower, his daughter Maggie, Prince Amerigo, an impoverished Italian nobleman, and Charlotte Stant, Maggie’s school friend. Adam and his daughter are staying in Europe, where he is collecting art. Maggie falls in love with and marries Prince Amerigo. She invites Charlotte to her wedding, not knowing at this point that Charlotte and Amerigo were once lovers.
    Adam Verver is attracted to Charlotte and proposes to her. However, Amerigo and Charlotte have also renewed their old affair. When Maggie discovers the truth about their previous relations, she allows her father to return to America with Charlotte.
   The golden bowl is a gold-encrusted crystal bowl that Charlotte first considers as a wedding present for Maggie, but which Maggie later buys as a gift for her father. The bowl has a flaw in it which Maggie does not know about. As Gore Vidal notes, ‘James has . . . made the golden bowl emblematic ... of the relations between the lovers and their legal mates. To all appearances, the world of the two couples is a flawless rare crystal, all of a piece, beautifully gilded with American money.’
   James’s novels are densely written and ambiguous. The characters and the relationships between them are revealed indirectly, through hints, insinuations, symbols. There is also in James something of the ambiguity that we find in Hawthorne – whom James admired and wrote about.
   James also wrote other novels and novellas – one of his most famous being a twist on Charlotte Bronte’s tale of the governess – but his novels and novella on the European theme seem to dominate and linger longest in the memory. The contrast between Old Europe and New America was, of course, not new, nor did it end with James. De Crevecoeur talked about it; it inspired the Transcendentalists; it continues to manifest itself in George Bush’s speeches. James, of course, resolved the conflict by turning his back on both America and Europe by settling down in England – which, even today, despite the European Union, is separate from Europe.
   The greatest irony, however, is that James was not allowed to rest in the home he had chosen. His ashes were transported to America by his sister-in-law Alice, widow of his brother William James (who coined the phrase ‘stream-of-consciousness’) and buried in the cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts next to the graves of his family members.
   Readers interested in Henry James will find some of his writings in major book stores. Others interested in James, but not interested in tackling his prose, may view the Merchant-Ivory productions of The Golden Bowl and The Europeans.

The reconstructed Globe Theatre, located near the site of the original Globe on the south side of the river Thames, allows present-day audiences an opportunity to travel back in time to Shakespeare’s day. The theatre itself represents an attempt to replicate as closely as possible both the interior and the exterior of the original Globe Theatre, which opened in 1599. It was rebuilt in 1613 after being destroyed by a fire said to have been set off by the firing of a cannon in a production of Henry VIII. Fire-retardant materials have been used in the construction of today’s Globe, but otherwise the materials are those that were used in Shakespeare’s time: oak wood, lime plaster, water reed thatch.
   The Globe is essentially an open-air theatre, and a large section of the audience stands under the open sky regardless of the weather. In Shakespeare’s day it cost a penny to stand in the area in front of the stage platform; today it costs five pounds for the privilege of being a ‘groundling’. The audience is very much a part of the theatrical experience here. In Shakespeare’s time plays at the Globe would have taken place during the day in natural light. Evening performances at the Globe today do use lighting but not, as is usually the case, to set the actors on stage apart from an observing and largely silent audience. In fact, flood lights light up the entire theatre and the observers are also among the observed. Far from watching in silence, members of the audience eat, drink, converse, come, and go, giving the whole proceedings something of the quality of street theatre.
   Not all plays presented at the Globe try to approximate productions of Shakespeare’s day. Those that do are described as ‘original practices’ productions. These attempt to reproduce the conditions of the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries as faithfully as possible. Strictly speaking, of course, this would require modern-day productions to use all-male casts as was the practice in the past. In fact, the Globe has on occasion produced plays with both all-male and all-female casts.
   The ‘original practices’ production for the 2005 season is The Winter’s Tale, one of Shakespeare’s later romances. The first part of the play is set in the court of Leontes, king of Sicily. Leontes, played by Paul Jesson, becomes convinced that his wife Hermione (Yolanda Vazquez) has been having a sexual relationship with his friend Polixenes, the king of Bohemia (Peter Forbes). She is thrown into prison, and when she bears a child there, Leontes orders that the child be abandoned in the wilderness.
   Sixteen years elapse, and the action shifts to Bohemia. There is a corresponding shift from tragedy to comedy, with the focus now on young lovers attempting to overcome the obstacles placed in their path by their elders. The abandoned child, Perdita, has grown up as a shepherdess and is the object of the affections of Florizel, son of Polixenes. Juliet Rylance plays the role of Perdita with great energy and charm. Also a great hit with the audience is Colin Hurley, who plays the part of the roguish clown Autolycus.
   Key elements in the ‘original practices’ productions include music and dance, and in The Winter’s Tale these elements are of crucial importance. The world of Bohemia may be seen as an idyllic pastoral world, one in which princes and courtiers play at being shepherds and shepherdesses. The music and dance associated with Leontes’ court had been formal and austere; it is replaced in the pastoral world by music and dance that is joyful and exuberant. Even in the instruments used, the principle of following ‘original practices’ may be seen, and period instruments such as the ‘sackbut’ and ‘hurdy gurdy’ are used.
   Critics have on occasion questioned the Globe’s ‘original practices’ productions, suggesting that they stifle innovation. The ‘innovations’ of some modern Shakespearean productions, however, have sadly become clichés themselves: settings in the American Wild West or actors on trapezes. It is almost a refreshing change to see a Shakespeare play that comes as close as possible to an original performance, and if that is what one wishes to see, then the Globe is the best place to see it. And when all is said and done, while not all members of the audience at The Winter’s Tale might have appreciated the finer points of the ‘original practices,’ they all certainly had a great time.
   Raza Ali resides and works in Toronto. In the early sixties he was a member of The Prometheans which staged The Winter’s Tale at the British Council, Dhaka.

My interest in Japanese littérateurs started with Kazuo Ishiguro but became more intense after my visit to Japan last year. Over the past few days I have been gorging myself on delicate fare – well-known Japanese fiction. It has been an extraordinary experience absorbing the facets and nuances that help to shape the Japanese psyche.
   This latest effort to comprehend and appreciate Japanese literature has been possible only through some excellent translations. The works were borrowed from the local library maintained by the Japanese Embassy in Dhaka. Special thanks are due in this regard to Mrs. Hiroko Horiguchi, charming wife of the distinguished Japanese Ambassador in Dhaka. The books read included three modern classics: A Wife in Musashino by Ooka Shohei (translated by Dennis Washbum), Botchan by Natsume Soseki (translated by J.Cohn) and The Box Man by Kobo Abe (translated by E.Dale Saunders).
   Rabindranath Tagore visited Japan and made a very revealing comment. He met
   many Japanese poets and authors and stated that Japanese literature was not only ‘sensitive’ but also ‘elegant and appealing’. The aforementioned books proved him right.
   A Wife in Musashino, published in 1950, was a major critical and commercial success, and was quickly adapted to the screen by Mizoguchi Kenji in 1951.  It recounts the story of the ill-fated love between a demobilized soldier, Tustomu, and his married cousin Michiko. The treatment of the plot and the gradual evolution of the story are both examples of the impact of French writers such as Stendahl and Radiguet on Ooka, the author. His technique of detailing human emotions, pastoral landscapes, social customs and conventions help to open windows in the heart of Japanese society.
   Any reader will greatly enjoy the subtle portrait of class conflict and family tensions that emerged in the tumultuous Japanese post-war period. I found in the story similarity of elements that impacted on Bangladeshi society and on individual lives after our own devastating War of Liberation in 1971. The realities, breakdown of order and values and perceptions of social upheaval have been dealt with great frankness. It is a complex work- but it is that of an artist, working within an intellectual climate that saw nothing but unbridled egoism in the consciousness of Western modernity. Ooka pays close attention as well to the physical, spatial settings in which human relationships are situated. Through this he draws a picture of war and defeat that reflects contemporary history. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in tradition, delusion, class consciousness, prejudice, perverse mischief and moral awareness.
   Botchan is a hilarious tale about a young man’s rebellion against ‘the system’ in a country school. It has enjoyed great popularity over the years and appears to have a ‘timeless appeal’. The work is set in Japan’s deep south, where the author himself spent some time teaching English in a boys’ school. Into this conservative arena (very similar to that of an English Grammar School), with its social proprieties and established order, comes Botchan, from the big city. He brings with himself very little respect for either his elders or his noisy young charges. The result, quite understandably is a chain of calamitous episodes that provides uninterrupted entertainment. From this point of view, critics have been correct in comparing it with The Catcher in the Rye and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
   This book assumes special importance given the fact that it was written about one hundred years ago. I enjoyed it because of its light hearted satirical spirit and also the connotations of the darker, deeper quality that hint at the psychological consequences of modern life that was to appear later on in his novels.
   Novelist Kobo Abe has already been acclaimed as a contemporary master of philosophical thrillers. Box Man, a chilling work, half-way between Beckett and Vonnegut captures the reader’s imagination because of its surreal brilliance. The interesting aspect is the manner in which Abe creates the portrait of his main character. He is on one side a typical man-in-society, intensely vulnerable, obsessively self-protective, and on the other hand, an outcast who exists in a hallucinatory but completely credible world. The clever thing is that every reader will probably discover a bit of himself in the delineation of the plot. It is a finely drawn masterpiece.
   These works were translated and published in English with the active assistance of the Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs. I wish similar efforts could be undertaken to translate some of the important and serious contemporary Japanese fiction and poetry into Bengali so that it could also be enjoyed by millions of Bengali speaking people.
   Muhammad Zamir, a former Secretary and Ambassador, is the President of Bangladesh Center for Folklore Research – any response to mzamir@dhaka.net