The Complete Works of Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer

Author: Henry Miller
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-03-01
Features: "Life is change, movement, moving forward to embrace the unknown" is an excerpt from the controversial masterpiece Tropic of Cancer by the renowned writer Henry Miller. Whether loved or hated, it evokes extreme emotions in readers, making them unable to put it down.
Preface to the General Translation
Henry Miller was a controversial writer. His first autobiographical trilogy—Tropic of Cancer (1934), Black Spring (1936), and Tropic of Capricorn (1939)—was first published in France. Due to the explicit sexual content in his works, English-speaking countries long refused to publish them, so he remained obscure in the English-speaking world at first. When readers in English-speaking countries finally read these works, they first had to thank the Allied forces for arriving in Paris after 1944. American and British soldiers and their accompanying personnel discovered Henry Miller's books in the Paris market, eagerly shared them, and secretly brought them back to England and the United States. Henry Miller's works unexpectedly gained a wider readership than those of popular literary elites, but many still regarded him as a writer of "obscene works," and his major works could not be publicly published in the United States. After years of effort, the United States finally lifted the ban on Tropic of Cancer in 1961, allowing it to be published publicly. Two years later, it was also made available for public publication in the UK. With the lifting of bans on his other works, Henry Miller's name became widely known in the United States and the world, and he was revered by the counter-culture movement of the 1960s as a prophet of freedom and sexual liberation. However, Henry Miller's significance did not stop there. As a literary figure, the style and characteristics he pioneered were praised by some outstanding literary figures of the time from the very beginning. T. S. Eliot, the author of The Waste Land, called Tropic of Cancer "a truly outstanding book," "a rather magnificent work," and "far superior in depth of insight and in actual creation to Lady Chatterley's Lover." Some of Eliot's friends, including the British poet, scholar, and art critic Herbert Read and the American poet and Imagist representative Ezra Pound, also highly praised Henry Miller. Read claimed that it was precisely because Henry Miller defied traditional expectations in aesthetics, morality, religion, and philosophy that he was able to make "one of the most significant contributions to the literature of our time." Read acknowledged that Henry Miller might be "the most obscene writer in literary history," but he saw this as an absolute compliment to Henry Miller, believing it to be a key marker of his vitality. Read argued that "what sets Miller apart from other modern writers is his unambiguous ability to combine aesthetic function and prophetic function." Pound, on the other hand, believed that Tropic of Cancer was "probably the only book one can derive pleasure from," and though it might not surpass Joyce's Ulysses, it was at least a part of "permanent literature" far superior to the "sticky, half-baked work" written by the "intellectually limited woman, Woolf." The British poet and novelist Lawrence Durrell once said, "Contemporary American literature begins and ends with what he (Miller) has done in significance." The contemporary American poet and critic Carl Shapiro called Henry Miller "the greatest living writer in the world," and the contemporary American Jewish writer Norman Mailer, in the mid-1970s, enthusiastically compiled a collection of Henry Miller's works, calling Tropic of Cancer one of the "most important American books of the 20th century."
It is no coincidence that Henry Miller received such praise from renowned literary experts, writers, and scholars, but it is also a fact that his works are highly controversial. So, how should we understand and grasp his creation? We should first see him as a critic of Western modern civilization. The era in which Henry Miller lived was one of major crisis in Western modern civilization. By the early 20th century, Western society had established a solid material foundation, with science, technology, and industry reaching unprecedented levels of development, and the day when humanity would overcome poverty and suffering seemed near. Yet, at precisely this time, Western society faced a profound crisis. The high level of material civilization led people to excessively pursue material satisfaction, but social productivity had not yet reached the point where everyone's desires could be met, and political systems were far from making social distribution fair. As a result, Western imperialist powers erupted into World War I over the scramble for the world and unequal division of spoils, and the polarization of society led to revolutions in many countries. While the major developed countries in the West did not experience direct revolutions, they were riddled with internal conflicts and crises, particularly spiritual ones, which swept across the continent. This spiritual crisis was fundamentally a crisis of faith. Westerners began to doubt the God they had always believed in, the "freedom, equality, and fraternity" vigorously promoted since the rise of the bourgeoisie, and even the individual and self. If Westerners could thank God for modern material civilization, they painfully discovered that God could not save them from disaster and suffering, and God's authority was shaken. With the decline of God's authority, people, more painfully than the Romantics a century earlier who had agonized over the failure of the "Enlightenment's rational kingdom" to fully materialize, realized that the slogans of "freedom, equality, and fraternity" that the bourgeoisie had once proudly proclaimed had not only failed to become reality but had instead become a veil for rulers to shamelessly cover up sharp class contradictions, vast wealth disparities, and brutal exploitation and suppression. People became distant, indifferent, even hostile to one another, and the Western society, which had always valued the individual, found itself deeply confused in such interpersonal relationships, leading to doubts about its own position and circumstances, and even an inability to recognize itself. Against this backdrop, the new generation of Westerners yearned to reclaim their homeland and their sense of self, but traditional culture made them feel suffocated and desperate, leading them to wander and rebel against Western cultural traditions. Henry Miller was one such rebel.
Dear senses, mysterious sexuality, love in the body and the body in love. Henry Miller is the only enlightened one among writers, his greatness transcending that of mere writers. No one else could more appropriately bear the title of a literary saint. His wit, confusion, and profundity give Tropic of Cancer a magical charm that can only burst forth from the thoughts and imagination of a genius. Henry Miller (1891–1980) was born in Brooklyn, New York, and worked in many different jobs in his youth. Encouraged by his second wife (he had five wives in total), Joan, he began writing. In 1930, he moved to Paris, and over the next decade, he mingled with impoverished émigrés and unrestrained Parisians, gathering rich material for his writing.