As far back as the late fifties, I remember the day when our English teacher raised a question: How many of you have not read RL Stevenson? It looked as if we have all read at least one work of Stevenson. Most of them happen to be our supplement and readers as well as works that appeared either in Sinhala or Tamil as translations. The Treasure Island, The Kidnapped and Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde were works well known for their readability as well as the subtitles of human experiences embedded. In our school library then, happened to be a row of books by Stevenson. But as far back as I remember, I had not seen his last work titled The Beach of Falesa rediscovered and edited with notes by Barry Menikoff. On reading the printed work, I found that RL Stevenson (1850-1894) and his last narrative is not only a rediscovery of new work but a rewritten version on the part of Barry Menikoff.
In the hands of Menikoff, the printed version goes as Robert Louis Stevenson and the Beach of Falesa, a study on Victorian Publishing with the original text. Menikoff had engaged in this project while he was a Professor of English at the University of Hawaii, Manoa.
As a general reader and a lover of Stevenson’s works, I felt that Menikoff had spent quite some time delved into this creative literary project that disseminated fresh energy to stimulate scholars on the aspects of creativity and anthropology. A sufferer from tuberculosis, Stevenson with his US wife had sailed to the South Pacific (1888) and settled in Samoa where he continued to write.
Human experiences
As the editor cum researcher Menikoff points out, Stevenson had spent quite some time in Samoa jotting down various types of human experiences, events, rituals, roles of individuals, customs akin to inhabitants in the island leaving no stone unturned during his time of stay. Thus, the culmination of his activities had been the birth of a different kind of narrative detouring from his other works.
The Beach of Falesa rests on several layers of narrative forms. There is no visible rounded plot or structure. There are quite a number of dialogues that ensues between the narrator, unnamed, but a westerner speaking English and tries to collect all the possible experiences culminating in an intrinsic love affair with a young girl named Falesa resulting in a marriage. But this is also treated in a mild manner devoid of any sensation or suspense.
On reading the printed text as edited by Barry Menikoff and published by Stanford University Press (1984), the work The Beach of Falesa is a variant from the rest of the Stevenson narratives. The narrator, an American trader is shown as a writer of notes and journals for his personal satisfaction. Set in the Western Pacific using Pidgin and rough slang of the region and as told by a trader who is seen as relaxing for the most of his time watching and waiting something to happen.
Intimate experience
In this mood of existence, he meets a native girl named Falesa with whom he makes the intimate experience of love and then he decides to marry her in order to settle down with the others in the region. But to what extent it is a success or failure is the series of thoughts the reader may have in the process of reading the pages.
The original as written by Stevenson had never appeared in print according to the editor cum discoverer Menikoff. The language found in the original text has been revised to suit the average English reader.
Whether one could agree or disagree with the fact remaining that the learned editor Menikoff who had been the Professor of English at the University of Hawaii, the format is given to suit the Stevenson flavour of expression. As a reader, I found that the changes are for the benefit of the global reading patterns devoid of any particular group.
The fact remains that the publishing project of this work has not come out as a posthumous work. But Stevenson, it is noted, had commented that it is not his original text and now remains as some of the ruins of his journal writings. Henry James has commended the work as an art brought to perfection and one of the masterpieces of novella writing in English literature.
For some other critics of the calibre of Edmund Wilson, the last creative narrative work of Stevenson runs counter to various deeply held political, sexual and religious convictions of the later Victorian publishing climate. In many ways, the Beach of Falesa is a variant of other Victorian works.
Original author
A lover of Stevenson’s creativity could faithfully engage in the transformation process exploring the visions of the original writer. As a reader of Falesa may observe, there is no strict storyline in the narrative. Instead, a series of interlinked observations as experiences, sensitively captured possibly by a sensitive creative writer. Perhaps a new reader of the work The Beach of Falesa may find that this is one of the original works as written by Stevenson. But Menikoff the editor shows that is faithfully transcribed from the original notes left behind by Stevenson for later recreation.
The trader who enters the settlers’ scene on the island is shown no longer as a stranger, instead of a gradual explorer of human events so far unknown to him. This may happen in many historical events that we have seen as recorded in various colonial periods of our own history. But the recreator of the notes of Stevenson attempts to transcend the mere barriers of various colonial rules and roles. The narrator no longer exists as a stranger. He too identifies himself with the original inhabitants of the island.
The character of Falesa is shown as a life-giving force for a person to live from moment to moment amidst varying forms of calamities and sufferings.
A reader may say in the end that mother happens but at the same time, something seems to happen introspectively.
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