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Cover: "Chair" By William f. Kitchens Lithograph, 11'/s" x 14'/4" New Orleans Review Fall1991 Editors John Biguenet John Mosier Managing Editor Sarah Elizabeth Spain Design Vilma Pesciallo Contributing Editors Bert Cardullo David Estes Jacek Fuksiewicz Alexis Gonzales, F.S.C. Andrew Horton Peggy McCormack Rainer Schulte Founding Editor Miller Williams The New Orleans Review is published by Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118, United States. Copyright© 1991 by Loyola University. Critical essays relating to film or literature of up to ten thousand words should be prepared to conform with the new MLA guidelines. All essays, fiction, poetry, photography, or related artwork should be sent to the New Orleans Review, together with a self-addressed, stamped envelope. The address is New Orleans Review, Box 195, Loyola University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118. Reasonable care is taken in the handling of material, but no responsibility is assumed for the loss of unsolicited material. Accepted manuscripts are the property of the NOR. Rejected manuscripts without self-addressed, stamped envelopes will not be returned. The New Orleans Review is published in February, May, August, and November. Annual Subscription Rates: Institutions $30.00, Individuals $25.00, Foreign Subscribers $35.00. Contents listed in the PMLA Bibliography and the Index of American Periodical Verse. US ISSN 0028-6400 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW CONTENTS FALL 1991 VOLUME 18 NUMBER 3 Edna Pontellier and the Myth of Passion Lloyd M. Daigrepont 5 Andre Bazin: Three Original Reviews Translated by Alain Piette and Bert Cardullo 14 An Amherst Pastoral Lewis Turco 27 Snow Robert Olen Butler 28 The Teacher Michael Burns 33 The Fundamental Unfinalizability of Absalom, Absalom! Minghan Xiao 34 Gyro Gearloose Jack Butler 48 Freedom and Its Discontents: Johnathan Demme's Something Wild Wayne B. Stengel 54 Assignation Kenneth J. Emberly 61 The Wild Bunch: Scourges or Ministers? Jeffery Alan Triggs 64 The Return of the Cinema: Cannes 1991 John Mosier 70 Off Peyton Bridge Kevin Evans 94 Lloyd M. Daigrepont EDNA PONTELLIER AND THE MYTH OF PASSION [Doctor Mandelet] observed his hostess attentively from her persistent belief in the possibilities of love under his shaggy brows, and noted a subtle change which between man and woman. Admittedly, the had transformed her from the listless woman he had known novel offers only a mild affirmation of the into a being who, for the moment, seemed palpitant with possibility of such love in its glimpses into the forces of life. Her speech was warm and energetic. There the understanding and friendship shared by was no repression in her glance or gesture. She reminded the Ratignolles. However, The Awakening him of some beautiful, sleek animal waking up in the sun. relentlessly illustrates how certain customs and conceptions of long standing in Western culture * * * * * inhibit true understanding between men and women by misleading them about the nature of It was the first kiss of her life to which her nature had really passion and its relation to love and marriage. responded. It was a flaming torch that kindled desire . .. Portraying in its story of frustrated lovers Edna cried a little that night after Arobin left her . ... But among the conflicting sensations which assailed her, there 'To Donald A. Ringe, "Romantic Imagery in Kate Chopin's The Awakening," American Literature 43 (1972): 582-88, was neither shame nor remorse. There was a dull pang of Chopin's heroine illustrates complications inherent in the regret because it was not the kiss of love which had romantic quest for selfhood, namely, loss of ability to love inflamed her . ... and a tendency toward perverse defiance. Suzanne Wolkenfeld argues that Edna Pontellier is lost because of "a romantic incapacity to accommodate herself to the * * * * * limitations of reality"; see "Edna's Suicide: The Problem of the One and the Many," The Awakening: An Authoritative "The trouble is," sighed the Doctor, grasping her meaning Text, Contexts, Criticism, ed. Margaret Culley (New York: intuitively, "that youth is given up to illusions. It seems to Norton, 1976) 218-24. James H. Justus, "The Unawakening be a provision of Nature; a decoy to secure mothers for the of Edna Pontellier," Southern Literary Journa/10.2 (1978): 107- race." 22, similarly views the novel as a study in the pathology of romanticism, particularly the tendency toward solipsism. Otis B. Wheeler's "The Five Awakenings of Edna Pontellier," Southern Review 11 (1975): 118-28, provides excellent analysis n passages such as these, The Awakening-its of Edna's realization, first, that sexuality may be Ifrank and deterministic view of human independent of love and, second, that love may be delusion sexuality balanced by the understanding of the or a form of biological enslavement; Edna's final existential man of science and the repose of a seemingly despair signals Chopin's rejection of the "Romantic dream of the unlimited outward expansion of the self" (128). non-judgmental narrator-dearly reveals Kate Kenneth Eble, "A Forgotten Novel: Kate Chopin's The Chopin's tendency toward naturalism.1 In recent Awakening," Western Humanities Review 10 (1956): 261-69, decades much insightful criticism has explored views Edna as a tragic heroine, comparable to Euripides' the author's ironic portrayal of characters Phaedra in her inability to distinguish eros from sentimental seeking to realize romantic destinies in a love. In "Beyond Sex: The Dark Romanticism of Kate Chopin's The Awakening," Ball State University Forum 19.1 universe governed by forces beyond their (1978): 76-80, Mark Casale treats Edna "sympathetically as a control or comprehension, the universe of person rightfully testing the limits of self, as a justified naturalism.2 However, emphasizing Chopin's seeker of a fuller life" perilously and tragically yearning for naturalism may fail to explain completely her epiphany (77). Along similar lines, Sandra M. Gilbert casts vision of the romanticism of her characters as the novel as a new "feminist and matriarchal myth of Aphrodite"; Chopin's effort is "to valorize and mythologize well as her frank view of human sexuality and femaleness" which concludes not in suicide but in a return to the "imaginative openness of ... childhood" ("The Second 'The Complete Works of Kate Chopin, ed. Per Seyersted Coming of Aphrodite: Kate Chopin's Fantasy of Desire," (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1969) 2: 952, 967, Kenyon Review 5 [1983]: 42-66, rpt. Kate Chopin, ed. Harold 996. Bloom [New York: Chelsea House, 1987]91-93, 104). DAIGREPONT 5 virtually every aspect of the ages-old myth or portray the sacrifices of a knight who remains cult of passion, The Awakening issues a subtle yet faithful to but separated from an equally forceful warning against the pernicious effects of devoted, unattainable lady in whose name he erotic yearning self-consciously pursued and seeks trial and hardship.) Courtly love often pathetically confused with both love and proves adulterous despite its idealism, for, as transcendent fulfillment. the literature of medieval romance amply The cultivation of passion as pseudo-religious testifies, the lovers' own practices and exercise, as "true love," and as a (primarily conventions too often provide overwhelming aristocratic) social activity and entertainment temptations. (Thus Lancelot's courtly has persisted as a constantly developing obligations to Arthur's queen ironically lead to phenomenon of Western civilization, with roots the kingdom's dissolution, and Gawain's deep in such ancient and early medieval accustomed "courtesy" in Sir Gawain and the practices as Gnosticism and Manichaeanism. In Green Knight severely compromises his chastity.) Love in the Western World, Denis de Rougemont Though the Enlightenment suppressed the explains the phenomenon as fundamentally an practices and the literature of courtly love, attempt to fulfill-through stimulation of passion and romance were revived as the passion or feeling-the vague erotic human eighteenth century drew to a close and the self yearning for complete self-realization through conscious cultivation of sentiment and god-like union with the cosmos. The pernicious sensibility increased. Romanticism, particularly effects of such practice are manifold. To begin the darkly passionate and willful Romanticism with, what is mere passion or feeling is confused of Germany, resurrected for the nineteenth and with inspiration or love. Moreover, the twentieth centuries a powerful and unsettling cultivation of passion or feeling proves morbid, conception of love as essentially passionate, encouraging hatred for the world of created rebellious, and tempestuous. Especially in the being viewed in contrast with some idealized Sturm und Orang of the German Romantics, who vision of erotic harmony and simultaneously "without exception ... revived the courtly fostering preoccupation with death as the theme ... of unhappy mutual love," "the supposed gateway to union with "the All." Western mind ... [again] adopted the old heresy Medieval culture and succeeding eras have of passion and sought to achieve the ideal produced several additional features transgression of all limitations and the negation inconsistent with common sense. First, the so of the world through extreme desire."3 called courts of love-reactions against arranged Though written in an era of developing marriages and the Church's subordination of Realism and Naturalism, Chopin's The sexual passion to procreation-fostered belief