The Aspern Papers by Henry James

After finishing War and Peace I was looking to read something shorter before I tackle another long read. The Aspern Papers was a perfect choice: a fun, light, read. It’s novella length: 80 pages in the edition I read. I read it in a single sitting.

The “Aspern” of the title is Jeffrey Aspern, a fictional poet of the early 19th century. Aspern, though, doesn’t appear in the novella. Instead, the novella is set about 60 years after Aspern’s death. The “papers” of the title are letters and such owned by a woman named Juliana who had been a lover of Aspern when she was a young woman. Now, as an old woman, Juliana lives with her niece, Tina, in a grand but rundown, and nearly empty, palazzo in Venice. The protagonist and narrator of the novella, who is unnamed, is a literary critic, obsessed with Aspern, who is determined to get his hands on the material in Juliana’s possession. There’s more than a little homosexual subtext in the narrator’s interest in Jeffrey Aspern who he calls, “a god” and “handsome” more than once.

Juliana clings to the papers for sentimental reasons, but she refuses to part with them. The critic’s literary partner had earlier tried to get Juliana to relinquish the papers by sending letters requesting access, but he was rebuffed, tersely. The women don’t admit that the papers even exist. Now, plan B, is for the critic to move to Venice and present himself as a lodger looking for a room to rent for the summer. The plan works. The critic moves into rooms in the Palazzo. Juliana and Tina are happy to have the rent money and at first have no idea of their new lodger’s true motive.

The Venice setting put me in mind of Death in Venice, Thomas Mann’s short story that I read a few months ago, and is included in the same volume of novellas where I read this novella of James. The contrivance of a man taking up lodging in a house in order to give him access to a secret obsession matches the same device Nabokov uses in Lolita. As in Lolita, we have a man sharing a house with two women and, once again, the man uses romance as a tool to manipulate affairs toward his purpose.

That Juliana would willingly share the papers is out of the question, nor is the critic willing to stoop to outright theft. But, fortunately, Juliana is quite old, and in ill-health, and there’s a good chance she might actually die within the several weeks of that summer. If Juliana dies, Tina might inherit the papers, and if the critic can befriend Tina during the summer he might be able to convince Tina to give up the papers to him after Juliana’s death, provided, of course, that Juliana doesn’t simply destroy the papers before she dies, or instruct her niece to destroy them after she does.

The novella, then, unfolds somewhat like a mystery story. Do the rumored papers actually exist? How much can the critic reveal of his true identity and purpose without scaring away his targets? As the critic begins to befriend Tina he is aware of the duplicity of his position. He offers new life to a middle-aged spinster who has been living in isolation and near-poverty for years, or at least Juliana and Tina believe that’s what he offers. But the more he holds out hope to Tina, and gets closer to the papers, he is also ensnaring himself in a trap where he will either have to betray the poor woman, or follow-through with a marriage he doesn’t seek.

Because this is a 19th-century work, published in 1888, featuring characters of a high social class (all Americans, as was James, although it feels very English) the action is tightly bound by moral considerations. The dialogue is similarly elliptical. The critic never simply asks for what he wants nor attempts a negotiation. We know Juliana is reluctant to share the papers but she must have some price. The women need money obviously. Juliana cares about securing a comfortable future for her niece. Perhaps Juliana would be attracted to the idea of bringing wider public recognition to her former poet/lover, and/or preserving her own place in his story if she could be assured the papers would be handled by a responsible, respectful critic.

But none of that happens. Instead the wheels slowly turn. The characters are tentative when they’re not entirely passive. The story ends along with the summer. Juliana dies. The situation between the critic and Tina comes to a conclusion in the final pages. Their fate, and the fate of the papers, is sealed.

I’ve only read a little Henry James. I read The Ambassadors many years ago. I was traveling alone on a bus tour of Europe and looking for something to read when I tired of looking out the bus window. The Ambassadors was one of the few books in English I could find in the little bookshop in Paris I visited. I’ve read The Turn of the Screw more than once. (I love the Britten opera based on it). Both The Turn of the Screw (1898) and The Aspern Papers come from James’ middle period when he turned to short fiction. James feels closed-up, to me, his characters too timid, too proper. It’s hard to believe that The Aspern Papers, from 1888, was written 10 years after The Brothers Karamazov. Of course they are very different novels, but they are also very different writers. And I prefer fiction that’s more daring, more far-reaching.

I’ve been thinking about Tchaikovsky, lately, and how his closeted sexuality effected his music, and probably led to his early death, in 1893, at age 53, five years after The Aspern Papers was published. James, also homosexual, born three years after Tchaikovsky (in 1843, in New York) lived to 1916. Both artists are firmly tied to 19th-century forms and sensibilities even as others around them are pushing forward (Doestoevsky, Wagner). In both artists the surfaces are lovely, while the real action is going on behind the scenes, in secret “programs” (like Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony) or repressed passions (The Turn of the Screw) or buried under the bounded lives of female characters (Tatiana in Eugene Onegin, or so many women in James’ novels). There’s a sadness in Henry James that makes even a basically comic work like The Aspern Papers, bittersweet, and a frustration with characters who won’t, or think they can’t, simply declare what they want and go after it. That’s the closet.