Becoming Visionary: Reading and Living in the Existential Mode
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University of New Hampshire University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository Doctoral Dissertations Student Scholarship Fall 1994 Becoming visionary: Reading and living in the existential mode Michael Anthony Reardon University of New Hampshire, Durham Follow this and additional works at: https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation Recommended Citation Reardon, Michael Anthony, "Becoming visionary: Reading and living in the existential mode" (1994). Doctoral Dissertations. 1809. https://scholars.unh.edu/dissertation/1809 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of University of New Hampshire Scholars' Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. 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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 s* BECOMING VISIONARY: READING AND LIVING IN THE EXISTENTIAL MODE BY Michael Reardon BA, Boston University, 1972 MA, University of New Hampshire, 1985 Dissertation Submitted to the University of New Hampshire in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English September, 1994 This dissertation has been examined and approved. —lear^ f^&nna-^d p i Dissertation Director, Jean Kennard, Professor of English JktL^P^Jl Michael DePorte, Professor of English .*>•> ,»gt-<^J Patrocinio Schweickart, Professor of English MJAjtl^,^Ja.i Kathrine Tarbox, I/ecturer of English Pa~thL) Brockelman, Professor of Philosophy Things are because we see them, and what we see, and how we see it, depends on the Arts that have influenced us. Wilde, "The Decay of Lying" iii To My Wife Ann Whose Love and Support Made This Project Possible TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION iv ABSTRACT vi CHAPTER PAGE I. THE CONSEQUENCES OF READING 1 II. THE BRINK OF VISION: AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE PROBLEM OF BECOMING OURSELVES 45 III. FIGURING THE GROUNDS OF EXISTENTIAL BEING: FAITH IN TWO VISIONARY FICTIONS 81 IV. READING IN THE CAVE: VIRGINIA WOOLF AND THE DRAMA OF BECOMING VISIONARY 136 V. BECOMING LORD JIM 199 Bibliography 254 Appendix 264 v ABSTRACT BECOMING VISIONARY: READING AND WRITING IN THE EXISTENTIAL MODE by Michael Reardon University of New Hampshire, September, 1994 This study identifies, defines and analyzes a sub-genre of modern Anglo-American fiction distinguished by the presence of "visionary" characters, who possess the ability to see acutely into the contingency and anguish of the human condition in this world rather than—as with the popular conception of "visionary"—our potentialities in another. Their experience of vision flows from an "existential moment," a type of epiphany which discloses the essential Nothingness that exists beneath the systems, structures, attitudes and assumptions through which we attempt to order our daily lives. Most importantly, the visionary's heightened consciousness leads to an existence defined by individual choice, responsibility for oneself and toward others, and passionate commitment to the pursuit of Sartrean authenticity—and as such marks an ontological evolution from the "quotidian," a state of "bad faith" characterized vi by "blindness" to the unsettling truths with which the visionary confronts us. It is my contention that visionary characters, who are invariably themselves readers, enact paradigmatic possibilities for being for their readers, and in so doing, demonstrate art's most essential function: the ability to rouse the faculties to act. This study deals with, in order, five texts: Ivor Winter's "The Brink of Darkness," Miss Lonelyhearts, Irwin Shaw's "Act of Faith," The Voyage Out and Lord Jim. The study's frame of "Brink" and Lord Jim provides a contrast between a character who recoils from the implications of vision and one who comes to be defined by his pursuit of them. ML and "Act" demonstrate the coherence of visionary narratives through the juxtaposition of a modern masterwork and a relatively obscure short story. Finally, Voyage, in reflecting the perspective of a woman visionary, offers perhaps the most intense experience of vision in the study. vii CHAPTER I THE CONSEQUENCES OF READING "That is the question...How to be!" (Conrad, Lord Jim) "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide." (Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus) The goal of this study is the identification, definition, and analysis of what I feel to be a significant subgenre of modern fiction which portrays characters I call "visionaries." While the thematic and formal similarities of these disparate texts are in themselves compelling, their true value and power, I will argue, lie in their depiction of the problem of and strategies for attaining authentic being within an existential universe1. Now, having at the outset placed equivocal terms like "visionary" and "existentialism" on the table, I realize definition is essential. My primary goal in this chapter, however, is to establish a conceptual, historical, literary and ethical framework for the analysis of visionary 1By "authentic being" I mean, first, that we are what we choose, or to look at this from the other end, we are the sum of our decisions. This is not to state something equivalent to, say, the United States Army's recent recruiting slogan, "Be all that you can be," which implies the presence of a kind of ontological blueprint which the individual can either choose to fulfill or not. Rather the experiences adumbrated in visionary texts show authenticity to be contingent on freedom. As John Macquarrie summarizes the point, authentic individuals "become truly themselves only to the extent that they freely choose themselves." This freedom, I will argue, results from two prominent manifestations of visionary experience: the question and the existential moment. Such freedom is also as rare as it is frightening. I hope to make this point most clearly through a consideration below of one small, dark corner of the Holocaust. I would also point out the cogency of the concept of authentic being in our everyday lives. For example, the emergence over the past decade of the Hip Hop culture and rap music is spoken of as a desire for "authenticity" among black inner city youths. The best example I have encountered recently was the observation that Vice President Albert Gore is who George Bush would be if the former President were "authentic." 2 characters. This frame begins with two "existential" questions which visionary texts address and which visionary heroes answer. The first of these—"how to be?"—appears in Lord Jim (1900) and epitomizes the profound ontological displacement caused by the social, economic, and scientific changes of the nineteenth century while simultaneously acting as prologue to the existential tenor of the twentieth. It will be recalled that in that passage the portentous Stein, in responding to Marlow's request for guidance in relation to Jim, is offering an imprecise paraphrase of Hamlet's meditation on suicide: "Ja! Ja! in general, adapting the words of your great poet: That is the question.. .How to be! Ach! How to be!" (199). Stein's linguistic awkwardness and consequent "adaptation" is a conscious move by Conrad to invest Jim's quest for identity with archetypal and personal2 significance. In doing so the second frame question is also prefigured: Camus's philosophical imperative (if I, too, may adapt)—"whether to be"—which opens The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) 3. Stein's and 2Conrad, too, with English as his third language, was prone to the infelicitous phrase. 3Conrad himself attempted suicide by placing a gun against his breast and pulling the trigger. He survived only because the bullet missed his heart by a fraction of an inch. See chapter five for context. The opening of Camus' work reads: "There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging