In praise of peasants : ways of seeing the rural poor in the work of James Agee, Walker Evans【翻译】

In Praise of Peasants focuses on two sets of collaborators whose photo-textual
depictions of the rural poor have been widely hailed on either side of the Atlantic but
rarely discussed together. The British writer John Berger has acknowledged that the key
inspiration for his projects with Swiss photographer Jean Mohr was Let Us Now Praise
Famous Men (1941/1960) by James Agee and Walker Evans. As in that encomium to
Alabama tenant farmers, Berger and Mohr straddle a line between social documentation
and artistic expression in their own unclassifiable books: A Fortunate Man (1967), about
a doctor’s relationship with his patients in an English forest; A Seventh Man (1975),
about the experience of migrant workers across Europe; and Another Way of Telling
(1982), about the lives of Alpine peasants. All four of these cooperative endeavors brim
with unresolved conflicts between ethics and esthetics, as well as authorial ambivalences
toward rusticity and poverty. Manifold affinities in the two creative partnerships demand
a transatlantic assessment that might view Agee and Evans as “unpaid agitators” for other
artists and witnesses beyond an American ambit.
From among the many sensitive portrayals, including Berger’s Into Their Labours
trilogy, that constitute a rich literature of rural poverty, these collaborative enterprises are
set apart not only by their interdisciplinary nature and fierce solidarities but by the equal
weight they accord to images and words. Both pairs of authors develop innovative means
for conjoining photography and writing. Both worry over the effects of their pictures and
text on their subjects in addition to pondering how their distinct yet coordinated mediums
might affect their viewers and readers. The enduring relevance of their representational
techniques and motifs emerges from a productive dialectic between witness and artistry.
Agee, Evans, Berger, and Mohr ingeniously explore how an ethical responsibility to bear
witness for the exploited without inflicting further exploitation is enhanced or subverted
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by an esthetic impulse to translate, verbally and visually, such marginalized lives into art.
Their multifaceted ways of seeing the rural poor ultimately engender a means of praising
their protagonists, transforming moments of witness into monuments of artistry.
Following a comparative analysis of these authors’ attitudes, consistencies, and
contradictions over the span of their careers, I offer chapters on their likeminded works.
“Abashed Ambition” scrutinizes the contest deliberately staged between intentions and
performance in Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, while “A Continuous Center” examines
how Agee’s effusive text and Evans’s austere photographs suspend instead of synthesize
a pivotal tension between centripetal and centrifugal forces. “A Sense of Measure” looks
at why Berger and Mohr increasingly empathize with the rural poor, and how their three
ventures generate “imaginative documentaries” or “narrative dialogues” between images
and words. My epilogue knits together Agee, Evans, Berger, and Mohr by concentrating
on a handful of their creative peers or heirs who have been inspired or agitated by their
collaborations and whose own books similarly probe the ethical jeopardies and esthetic
challenges of representing rural life or poverty through both prose and pictures.
Abstract Approved: ________________________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
________________________________________________
Title and Department
________________________________________________
Date
________________________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
________________________________________________
Title and Department
________________________________________________
Date
IN PRAISE OF PEASANTS:
WAYS OF SEEING THE RURAL POOR
IN THE WORK OF
JAMES AGEE, WALKER EVANS,
JOHN BERGER, AND JEAN MOHR
by
Andrew Crooke
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the
Doctor of Philosophy degree in English
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
May 2013
Thesis Supervisors: Professor Emeritus John Raeburn
Professor Phillip Round
Copyright by
ANDREW CROOKE
2013
All Rights Reserved
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
____________________________
PH.D. THESIS
____________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Andrew Crooke
has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement
for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in English at the May 2013 graduation.
Thesis Committee: _________________________________________
John Raeburn (Thesis Supervisor)
__________________________________________
Phillip Round (Thesis Supervisor)
__________________________________________
Linda Bolton
__________________________________________
David Hamilton
__________________________________________
Shelton Stromquist
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To Nidhi and Avantika
iii
The only universal is the local as savages, artists and—to a lesser extent—peasants know.
William Carlos Williams
He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide by what his ears hear; but with
righteousness shall he judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.
Isaiah 11:3-4
The relation of photography and language is a principal site of struggle for value and
power in contemporary representations of reality; it is the place where images and words
find and lose their conscience, their aesthetic and ethical identity.
W. J. T. Mitchell
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanking those who have contributed to this dissertation, whether tangibly or
intangibly, is humbling as well as gratifying. Without the cogent critiques and frequent
encouragement of John Raeburn, I would not have had the will to complete this project.
Our shared enthusiasm for Let Us Now Praise Famous Men brought me to Iowa City,
where he offered not just mentorship but friendship. John’s continued engagement with
my work from afar testifies to the intensity, forbearance, meticulousness, and perspicacity
with which he has always responded to his students’ writing. Any peccadillos evident in
mine are likely the result of my obstinately not taking some sound piece of his advice.
I also wish to thank the other members of my committee: Phillip Round, whose
passion for the land and for literature pushed me to explore how these entities intertwine;
Linda Bolton, whose insightful devotion to ethics is indivisible from her infectious zeal
for esthetics; Shelton Stromquist, whose historical rigor nonetheless tolerates those who
suffer from literary fervor; and David Hamilton, whose own example of merging critical
and creative sensibilities reminded me how fruitfully they can coexist within one unified
consciousness. Additionally, among the other professors who helped shape my thinking
for this study, I owe particular debts to Ed Folsom, Loren Glass, and Claire Fox.
Beyond the faculty and staff support of the English Department at the University
of Iowa, I am grateful to the Graduate College for awarding me a Presidential Fellowship
which made residence in the Midwest both productive and pleasurable while allowing me
to maintain ties back East. Library services at Iowa and at the University of Pennsylvania
ably facilitated research. I benefited, too, from a teaching position at Temple University.
My project was enhanced by serendipitous opportunities to interview John Berger
and Jean Mohr. For getting the ball rolling in America and for passing the word along in
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Europe, I am indebted to Lamar Herrin and Timothy O’Grady. Mr. Berger and Mr. Mohr
each spoke with me affably and discerningly about their collaborations. I thank them for
agreeing that I might record our conversations and use material from the transcripts.
A considerably different and much shorter version of my third chapter appears
under the same title, “A Continuous Center,” in Agee at 100: Centennial Essays on the
Works of James Agee, edited by Michael A. Lofaro (Knoxville: University of Tennessee
Press, 2012). For his acceptance of and suggestions about this article, Michael deserves
my gratitude, as does Jesse Graves for organizing panels of the James Agee Society on
which I presented or will present portions of this study at the 2009 and 2013 conferences
of the American Literature Association.
My interest in rural experience and agricultural hardship springs less from reading
than from living, from my rearing on a small dairy farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. I
thank my paternal grandparents, Leonard and Elizabeth Crooke, for establishing the place
where I learned my most enduring lessons; my maternal grandparents, Raymond and the
late Rachel Gross, for keeping their own family farm going into its third century; and my
parents, David and Christine, for teaching me to see what I am looking at, whether on the
page or in the strip cup. Likewise I thank my brothers, Peter, Matthew, John, Benjamin,
and Joshua, for sharing all the work, exhaustion, exuberance, and remembrances of our
agrarian upbringing, as well as the many aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends sympathetic
to my persistent weddings of agriculture and literature, photography and memory.
After my own wedding midway through graduate school, an already large family
circle expanded not only to the adjacent state of New Jersey but also to India. I thank my
in-laws, Prem and Madhu Mehta, for welcoming me into their lives and cultural heritage,
and my brother-in-law Manish, for proving that you can indeed finish a dissertation.
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My daughter Avantika was born just before I began to write this thesis. Although
it may have been done sooner had she not arrived at that precise juncture, these past two
years have been such a joy because she did. Therefore I dedicate it to her and to my wife
Nidhi, who motivated me to stay at my desk when I least wanted to and who inspired me
through her own resilient commitment to her calling. To my mind there will only ever be
one doctor in our household. For the daily gift of sharing her life with me I thank not her
but the stars.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION MOMENTS OF WITNESS AND MONUMENTS
OF ARTISTRY: INTERDISCIPLINARY
APPROACHES TO RURAL POVERTY 1
Notes 14
CHAPTER ONE WAYS OF SEEING AS MEANS OF PRAISING:
AGEE, EVANS, BERGER, AND MOHR ON
REPRESENTING THE RURAL POOR 18
Notes 80
CHAPTER TWO ABASHED AMBITION: INTENTIONS VERSUS
PERFORMANCE IN LET US NOW PRAISE
FAMOUS MEN 108
Image vs. Word 113
Writer vs. Reader 124
Art vs. Life 134
Beauty vs. Utility 145
Success vs. Failure 157
Notes 177
CHAPTER THREE A CONTINUOUS CENTER: CENTRIPETAL AND
CENTRIFUGAL TENSIONS IN LET US NOW
PRAISE FAMOUS MEN 190
Notes 242
CHAPTER FOUR A SENSE OF MEASURE: IMAGE AND WORD IN
A FORTUNATE MAN, A SEVENTH MAN, AND
ANOTHER WAY OF TELLING 259
Taking the Measure of A Fortunate Man 276
Finding a Form for A Seventh Man 296
Building the Story in Another Way of Telling 325
Notes 357
EPILOGUE THE LOOK OF FACT AND THE FEEL OF FICTION:
IN THE WAKE OF AGEE, EVANS,
BERGER, AND MOHR 377
Notes 396
BIBLIOGRAPHY 411

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