Russian Rhizome of American Modernism: Concerning the Problem of Henry Miller’s Anarchism

Abstract

The paper examines the way in which the completely different trend represented by Henry Miller emerged within the framework of Anglo-American modernism, which was aimed at literature and focused on impersonality and the creation of auto-reflexive texts (T.S. Eliot, E. Pound, J. Joyce). Having emigrated to France in 1930, Miller found himself in the context of European modernism; at the same time, he worked on the novel "The Tropic of Cancer" and became a practiced writer. He started to oppose modernism and held the position of a literary layman. Using the stylistic techniques of modernism, Miller dealt not with the text but with his own identity, following the traditions of Henry Thoreau and Walt Whitman. This article attempts to prove that this interpretation of the use of literature, which made Miller return to the basics of American literary art, was formed under the influence of the ideas of Russian anarchism, as well as those of Peter A. Kropotkin and his American follower Emma Goldman, in particular. Their ideas about the world, state, history, education and criticism of the bourgeois world dramatically influenced Henry Miller

Keywords

• henry miller
• peter kropotkin
• emma goldman
• modernism
• anarchism