New Orleans Review

New Orleans Review LOYOLA UNIVERSITY VOLUME 19 NUMBERS 3 & 4/$18.00 Cover: "TI1e Paradox of William Tell" (llomage to Archimboldo The Marvelous) By jose Mnrta C!mdf11 Polychromated Polywestem , New Orlea11S 1992 Height: 31 i11chcs New Or leans Review Fall & Winter 1992

The New Orleans Review will be on sabbatical during the 1993 calendar year. No submissions will be accepted until further notice. Editors John Big u e net John Mosier

Editorial Assistant & Design Kimberly St. germain

Contribut ing Editors Bert Card u llo David Estes Jacek Fuksiew icz A lexis Gonzales, F.S.C. Andrew H o rto n Peggy M cCo rmack Rainer Schulte

Founding Editor Miller Willia m s

The N ew O rleans Review is published by Loyola University, New Orleans, Lou isiana 7011 8, United Sta tes. Cop yrig ht © 1992 by Loyola University.

Conte nts listed in the PMLA Bibliography a nd the index of American Period ical Verse. US ISSN 0028-6400

The N ew O rleans Review w ill be on sabba tical d uring the 1993 ca lend ar year. No s ubmissions will be accepted until further no tice. NEW ORLEANS REVIEW CONTENTS FALL & WINTER 1992 VOLUME 19 NUMBER 3 & 4

Alice Guy: Forgotten Pioneer of the Narrative Cinema Wheeler Winston Dixon 7

Alba Barry Spacks 16

Still Life Daniel Bourne 17

Sunday Afternoon, Sunday Evening M.E. Liu 18

Midnight Jan Rejzek/tr. Dominika Winterova and Richard Katrovas 24

If I Could Svetlana Burianovaftr. Dominika Winterova and Richard Ka.trovas 25

The Swans of Prague Zdena Bratrsovskfi/tr. Dominika Winterova and Richard Katrovas 26

Prague Fisherman Josef Simonjtr. Dominika Winterova and Richard Katrovas 27

Troja at Eight in the Evening Karel Sys/tr. Dominika Winterova and Richard Katrovas 28

Night at the Singles Dorm Jirf Zdcek/tr. Dominika Winterova and Richard Katrovas 29

A Walk Around the Brewery Ivan Wernisch/tr. Dominika Winterova and Richard Katrovas 30

Learning French Robert Hildt 31

Under the Williamsburg Bridge Stanley H. Barkan 37

Sunflower Claudio Rodriguez/tr. Elizabeth Gamble Miller 38

Armentrout Robert Clark Young 39

Lacuna Phyllis Sanchez Gussler 48

The Follower Mark SaFranko 50

Caracole Lucinda Roy 58 Manzoni's Dead Daughters Rita Signorelli-Pappas 60

Balboa in Spring Katherine Soniat 61

Nights Max Gutmann 62

Let Me Tell You About Happiness Peter Cooley 67

Lines on the Winter Solstice Christopher Merrill 68

Out of the Past: The Private Eye as Tragic Hero Jam es F. Maxfield 69

Fishing The Black Branch Sandra Nelson 76

Carl's World George Angel 77

The Voice, Resumed Yves Bonnefoy/tr. Lisa Sapinkopf 81

On Snow-Laden Branches Yves Bonnefoyjtr. Lisa Sapinkopf 82

Italy or Florida MaryEllen Beveridge 84

The Hidden Structure of Wise Blood Erik Nielsen 91

The Poet as Woman Karl Precoda 98

Parting at Kalemegdan Milos Crnjanskijtr. David Sanders and Dubravka Juraga 108

A Bintel Brief Aaron Retica 109

Watersong Michael Spence 117

The Year of Living Dangerously: An East-West Dialectic Linda C. Ehrlich and David Dungan 118

Quiet Saul Yurkievichjtr. Cola Fran zen 125

Seeking Out the Absent One of Samuel Beckett's Film Jean Walton 126 The Limits of Translation T. Alan Broughton 136

Shaky Ground Ron MacLean 137

Two Poets by an Open Window Stanley H. Barkan 144

Mr. Overton's Solution: On Systems in Thought Bruce E. Fleming 146

The Gentleman of the Footprints Vivian Lamarqueftr. Renata Treitel 153

The Idea of Disagreement in the Criticism of Martin S. Dworkin Bernard f. Looks 154

Yes Joe Bolton 161

Hurt into Poetry: The Political Verses of Seamus Heaney and Robert Bly Jeffery Alan Triggs 162

The Outlaw as Figure, The Figure as Outlaw: Narrativity and Interpretation in Sam Peckinpah's Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid Barry W. Sarchett 174

Recognitions T. Alan Broughton 182

Between Hysteria and Death: Exploring Spaces for Feminine Sagri Dhairyam 183

Crossing Trajectories in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter L. Ta etzsch 192 Alice G11y 8/aclu! Courtesy of tire Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

6 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Wheeler Winston Dixon

ALICE GUY: FORGOTTEN PIONEER OF THE NARRATIVE CINEMA

t has long been a source of wonder to there is, to date, not one mainstream film I me that many women have not seized history text which even mentions the work of upon the opportunities offered to them Alice Guy and her numerous contributions to by the motion picture art to make their the development of filmic narrative and syn­ way to fame and fortune as producers of tax. Her work is covered in Ephraim Katz's photodramas. Of all the arts there is prob­ Film Encyclopedia, it is true, and more exten­ ably none in which they can make such sively in Louise Heck-Rabi's recent Women splendid use of talents so much more Directors: The Critical Reception, as well as natural to a woman than to a man and so Anthony Slide's text, Pioneer Women Direc­ necessary to its perfection. tors. Alice Guy's Memoirs, translated by There is no doubt in my mind that a Roberta and Simone Blache, and edited by woman's success in many lines of en­ Anthony Slide, were finally published in this deavor is still made very difficult by a country only in 1986. strong prejudice against one of her sex But most widely circulated classroom texts, doing work that has been done only by such as Mast's A Short History of The Movies, men for hundreds of years. Of course ignore Alice Guy's life and works completely. this prejudice is fast disappearing and This is, I think, a major oversight. Guy is, there are many vocations in which it has according to Katz, "the world's first woman not been present for a long time. In the director, and possibly the first director of arts of acting, music, painting and litera­ either sex to bring a story film to the screen" ture, woman has long held her place (Katz 519-20). The latter claim is based on her among the most successful workers, and production of La Fee Aux Chaux (1896), a one­ when it is considered how vitally all of reel version of a French fairy tale in which these arts enter into the production of children are "born" in a cabbage patch, much motion pictures one wonders why the in the manner of the "stork delivering ba­ names of scores of women are not found bies." Guy's work was registered with the among the successful creators of French copyright office as a Gaumont pro­ photodrama offerings. (Blanche, duction, which indeed it was, and stills of the "Woman's Place . .. ") film still survive today. I have seen produc­ In most cinema histories, the names of a tion stills of the film being shot, showing Ms. number of male directors figure prominently Guy standing between two of her y oung in the development of the narrative cinema. "stars" of the film, one of whom is Yvonne­ Edwin S. Porter, Cecil Hepworth, D. W . Mugnier Serand. Thus, with this 1896 film, Griffith, and other male filmmakers are al­ Ms. Guy becomes the first narrative director ways mentioned. Indeed, Edwin S. Porter is in motion picture history. Indeed, her film routinely given credit as the "father" of the predates Porter's Fireman by more than six narrative film for his 1902 Edison production years.1 of A Day in the Life of an American Fireman, Alice Guy was born to a bourgeois family, which also supposedly contains the first use on July 1, 1875. Her father was a bookseller, of a close-up (that of a hand pulling a fire while her mother tended the home. She was alarm) to advance the film's plot. Griffith's one of four daughters, and the youngest. At Biograph one-and two-reel films are usually the age of 16, she became a stenographer and covered in most film history texts in great typist for various firms, following the death detail, particularly such supposed stand-outs of her father, and in 1896 she went to work for of narrative and syntactical invention as A Leon Gaumont's film company. In that same Corner in Wheat and The Lonedale Operator. But year, Gaumont shifted his operations from

DIXON 7 the production of film equipment to the pro­ a director, her relative historical anonymity duction of films themselves, and Ms. Guy seems quite undeserved. became one of Gaumont's first directors. It is Alice Guy's first films used non-profes­ said that she was only allowed to direct films sional actors and actresses; now, she began to on the condition that she do the film during use those professionals who would consent "off hours," and that this work must not in­ to appear in the new, untried medium. The terfere with her "proper" duties as a typist only performers who would risk their careers and stenographer. In any event, Leon and reputations by working in the cinema Gaumont judged h er early directorial efforts were jugglers, acrobats, and vaudeville per­ a distinct success, and although he continued formers, such as Henri Gallet or Roulet­ to insist that she work in his office as a secre­ Plessis. Whomever she was able to induce to tary, he allowed h er to continue to direct as appear in her films, Ms. Guy went ahead, well, backing a number of one-reel shorts using what facilities were placed at her dis­ which Guy directed throughout 1896. posal, making films which cut across all ge­ In an interview with Francis Lacassin (151- neric limitations. Comedies, dramas, Gothic 4), shortly before her death, Ms. Guy claimed melodramas, religious spectacles: all of these that she began making films before the pio­ areas were grist for her fertile imagination. A neer French cinema artist, Georges Melies. brief sampling of the films she made from Inasmuch as Melies' own records of his pro­ 1896-1906 includes such titles as Faust and ductions during this period are open to a Mephisto, La Legende de Saint-Nicolas, La Fee good deal of interpretation, this places Alice Printemps, Charmant Froufrou, and Le Noe l de Guy at the very beginning of the cinema in­ Pierrot. dustry, along with Melies and the Lumiere By all accounts, Alice Guy worked very Brothers, and in view of the zeal with which quickly on the set, and urged her protagonist she began producing films after her debut as and extras to "BE NATURAL" (indeed, when she founded her own production company, 'It is only fair to note that a great deal of controversy Solax, a number of years later, Alice Guy had surrounds the date of this production. Francis Lacassin, a large sign made up with this admonition, in a n article in Sight and Sou nd ("Out of Oblivion: Alice Guy Blache" (S ummer 97): 151-4) s tates that the film and had it posted prominently above all the must have been produced in 1897 or 1898, although he sets she worked on as a director), as she notes that Gaumont had been producing 60mm cine ma strove to help her performers to break away cameras as early as 1896. More recently, in The Memoirs from artificial stage mannerisms and adapt to of Alice Guy Blache, Lacassin dates the film as being produced in 1900 (on pg. 136 of the Memoirs), despite the more intimate staging requirements of the vehement objections of Alice Guy's daughter, Simone the cinema. 2 (As we will see, she was not Blache, and the detailed recollection of Ms. Guy herself, entirely successful in eliciting "natural" p er­ as s he notes on pgs. 25-26 of the Memoirs. formances from her stage-trained stock com­ Having reviewed the evidence here, it seems to me that Lacassin is mistaken and has been misled by an pany, but the performances in Ms. Guy's films arbitrary cataloging system instituted by Gaumont, were always relaxed and enthusiastic.) Not which was created after-the-fact to catalogue its films . content with the standard staging practices The detail and accuracy of Ms. Guy's account of the of the day, Ms. Guy began experimenting production of the film , as well as the documented ve­ racity of her other claims in her Memoirs, lead m e to with close-ups early on, and by 1904, she was believe that La Fe e Aux Chaux was indeed produced in composing entire films in terms of close-ups, 1896, as she insists. Howe ver, if a copy of this film has such as her production of La Premiere Ciga­ been preserved in the Cinematheque Francais, as she rette (August 1904). This film shows, in a indicates, it has since been either lost or misfiled. There is also no copy .of La Fee Aux Chaux in the medium close-up, the reactions of a young Gaumont Archives in Joinville-le-Pont, France. Accord­ boy who is smoking his first cigarette; it has ing to Assistant Curator Manuela Padona, Gaumont often been mis-attributed to Emile Cohl, as does possess copies of the March, 1906 version of La Vie Lacassin points out (152). Du Christ (Length: 600 meters; a remake of Guy's 1898 or 1899 production of the sam e name [length of the From these early, modest projects, Ms. Guy original film, 220 m eters]), Sur La Barricade (a lso known advanced to more ambitious productions. She as L' Enfant de Ia Barricade [88 meters]), and three other began turning out one-reel comedies at a pro- titles. None of these films are currently available for rental. This informa ti on was provided to me by Dr. Dana Polan; I am grateful for his assistance in the 2Letter from Frank Leon Smith, Film s in Review (April, preparation of this article. 1964): 254-5.

8 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW digious rate, often two a week, and up to in one year, all of which she p ersonally di­ 1905, according to Ms. Guy herself, all of the rected (Blache, M emoirs 30, 43-6). It was also Gaumont films ca n be correctly attributed to in 1906 that Ms. Guy met and fell in love with her direction (Lacassin 152). (There are a few Herbert Blache-Bolton, an English camera­ exceptions during this p eriod, which were man who worked for Gaumont. They were directed by Ferdinand Zecca, a familiar name married after a whirlwind courtship, and in to film historians. It is interesting to note here late 1907, Leon Gaumont placed Herbert that Ferdinand Zecca got his job at Gaumont Blache (the "Bolton" was dropped when the through the kindness of Ms. Guy. Once the couple came to the United States) in charge of star director of the Pathe film, Zecca had Gaumont's New York office. In 1908, Alice fallen on extremely hard times, even working Guy's only daughter, ·Simone, was born in as a door-to-door salesman of household Flushing, New York (Wanamaker 12). The wares, when Ms. Guy rescued him with the cou pie also had a son, Reginald, born in 1912 offer of a job directing at Gaumont (Lacassin (Blache, Memoirs 76). 152).) Zecca directed a number of short films Going against her nature, Ms. Guy decided for Gaumont during his tenure there, includ­ to give up the production and direction of ing Les Mefaits d'u ne Tete de Veau, which was motion pictures to accompany her husband a considerable success for the firm, but his to the United States, and from 1907-10, she importance in the career of Alice Guy can spent her time at home. But Alice Guy soon best be summed up by the fact that working became bored and restless with her self-im­ with him, Ms. Guy realized that she needed posed domesticity. On September 7, 1910, an assistant to help her turn out her films. Alice Guy formed her own film company in Public demand for her shorts had become Flushing, New York, called the Solax Com­ enormous; there was simply no way she could pany, of which she was the President and satisfy the demand by herself. Thus, by be­ Chief Operating Officer. The company had coming the "Executive" and "Line Producer," business offices in New York City at 147 in effect, for Gaumont's films, Alice Guy be­ Fourth Avenue, in Manhattan, but all the came the first director to realize that there shooting for the films was done in and around was a need for something of a "factory sys­ Flushing (Lacassin 153). Members of the Solax tem" in the production of films for the com­ "stock company" of actors included Blanche mercial marketplace, thus predating the as­ Cornwall, Marion Sweyne, and Gladdon sembly line procedures of Thomas Ince by James. Marc Wanamaker notes that "eight more than a decade. As she tackled such am­ year old actress Magda Foy was billed as the bitious projects as La Vie Du Christ (1906), Solax Kid"(12). The first film under the Solax which used hundreds of extras, many lavish banner went into production on October 21 , sets, and ran some 40 minutes in length, Alice 1910 (Lacassin 153) (A Child's Sacrifice, star­ Guy hired an assistant director, Victorian ring Magda Foy, and personally directed by Jasset, to assist her in handling the extras. As Alice Guy) and from then until June, 1914, a result of this, many years later, Jasset would Solax produced 325 films of varying lengths be credited with the direction and produc­ which were directed by Ms. Guy, or else by tion of the film, when in fact he functioned Edward Warren or Harry Schenk, who would solely as Ms. Guy' s assistant (Lacassin 152). follow Ms. Guy's scenarios faithfully (again It was also in 1906 that she directed Le Fee in the manner of Thomas Ince, who would Printemps in an early Gaumont color process blueprint his productions down to the last (Wanamaker 12) . detail and then order the films to be shot as h e In 1906 (and through 1907), Gaumont put had specifically described). It is certain that Ms. Guy in charge of producing films for his Alice Guy directed at least 35 of these films new Chronophone process, which used wax herself (Wanamaker 12; Lacassin 153). It is cylinders to reproduce sound that was also sad to note that both Leon Gaumont and roughly synchronized to the projected image Herbert Blache refused to support Alice Guy's on the screen. Sensing the enormous possi­ new company financially; presented with the bilities of the talking picture, Ms. Guy plunged opportunity to invest in Solax, both men re­ into directing shorts for the Chronophone fused to do so (Wanamaker 12). process, completing more than 100 short films The Solax films mirrored Ms. Guy's earlier

DIXON 9 work for Gaumont, in that they encompassed Grace Burleston, a young woman, wishes to thrillers, horror melodramas, comedies, ro­ marry the man she truly loves, but is tempo­ mances, and even operatic subjects, which rarily thwarted in this ambition by her father, she filmed in lavishly mounted three-reel who wishes he r to marry "Count Laking productions using a process similar to Coyne" ("lacking coin"). However, the Gaumont's Chronophone. Such films as The Count's moustache makes him easy to imper­ Pit and the Pendulum (1913), The Shadows of the sonate, and Grace's true love, Jack, does ex­ Moulin Rouge (1913), Mickey's Pal (1912), and actly this. No split-screen work of any kind is many, many others established Ms. Guy's used to carry off this "duplication of iden­ second undeservedly ignored contribution to tity" ; two actors with similar features are the history of the cinema. During the same employed to stage the scenes. The highlight time that Griffith was making films for of the film is a pantomime sequence in the Biograph, Ms. Guy was making similarly hallway of the Burleston home, as Jack, stand­ ambitious narratives, and in many of them, ing in for a conveniently missing mirro~ , cop­ she used the naturalistic techniques which ies the Count's actions p erfectly. At the con­ Griffith is often credited as first introducing clusion of the film, Jack, in disguise as the to the medium. A few examples of this in­ Count, is married to Grace. Immediately af­ clude her penchant for shooting exterior shots ter the wedding ceremony, Grace's father dis­ on location whenever possible (although she covers the deception, and is furious. The min­ would revert to the studio for historical spec­ ister, however, admonishes him, and points tacles), her demand for more "natural" per­ to the "Eleventh Commandment" in a Bible formances from her actors, a love of authentic he has used to conduct the ceremony: "thou action (Wanamaker notes that for her 1912 shalt not swear when thou are outwitted." At film The Sewer, Alice Guy used real sewer rats length, the father relents, and agrees to the to attack the film's hero on cue (13)), and a duplicitous marriage. Most of the action in desire to surprise and amuse her audience in His Double is staged in a single set, the living all she attempted. For her three-reel produc­ room of the Burleston home. A wide angle tion of Dick Witting ton And His Cat, released lens is used, and close-ups are almost nonex­ March 1, 1913, Alice Guy spent $35,000 to istent, except in the mirror sequence discussed produce the film, and used "a cast of 200, an above. Exteriors are photographed with natu­ army of rats, and 26 sets of period England" ral light; interiors are obvious stage sets. In (Wanamaker 13). To all of this, only Herbert these strategies, Alice Guy mirrors the work Blache offered any real opposition, forbid­ of her contemporaries, particularly D. W. ding Alice Guy to use dynamite in one of her Griffith, who intercut obvious studio sets with films, and directing scenes of The Yellow Traf­ near neo-realist exteriors in many of his early fic which he thought too perilous for his wife films. to handle (Lacassin 154). In A House Div ided, the best known of the Although only a handful of Ms. Guy's films Solax films, similar visual strategies are em­ survive, in those films that do still exist, we ployed, with the only significant difference can see Alice Guy exploring a number of being the number of sets that are used. In the interesting visual and syntactical strategies. latter film, there are at least four major sets As will be later noted in this paper, precise that are in tercu t to tell the story, that of a directorial attribution of the Solax films is young couple who, due to a series of misun­ often difficult. We do not know for certain derstandings, refuse to speak to each other that Alice Guy personally directed any of the except through notes. The film also offers a surviving Solax films; and they may have caustic commentary on the place of attorneys been the work of either Edward Warren or in the marital contract, as the couple's jointly­ Harry Schenk (Lacassin 153). Nevertheless, shared lawyer enthusiastically approves of as the guiding force behind the Solax Com­ this domestic rupture, as long as he is paid to pany, Alice Guy's directorial vision must cer­ draw up the documents to enforce it. There tainly be said to have informed, to some de­ are a few more close-ups used in the film, but gree, the construction of all Solax films. on the whole, the direction is straightforward His Double, a tale of romance and mistaken and unadorned. The camera stays approxi­ identity, is typical of the surviving Solax films. mately 12 feet from the subjects, photograph-

10 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW ing them head on in a conventional master­ scenes in the broadest possible manner, with shot. the result that some sections of Guy's shorts However, even within the confines of such have much in common with episodes of the traditional visual choreography, Solax films television series I Love Lucy, or other contem­ often display a flair for deep-focus staging porary situation comedies. The subject mat­ and the use of simultaneous planes of action. ter in The Girl in the Arm Chair is much more In The Girl in the Arm Chair, which has been serious, h owever , and as a consequence, the preserved in its original color tints (these film verges on the melodrama tic. The loan tints were accomplished by a machine pro­ shark, in particular, is a caricature rather than cess, and not by hand), the main set of the a genuine creation, rubbing his hands to­ film is the drawing room of a well-to-do sub­ gether in glee at the amount of money he will urban home. Much of the action of the film realize on his short-term loan, and conduct­ takes place in the foreground of the shot, but ing his business dealings in the manner of a exits, entrances, and instances of eavesdrop­ conventional 19th century stage "villain." Of ping are often confined to a staircase which all of the surviving Solax shorts, The Girl in dominates the rear of the set. This main set is the Arm Chair is easily the most stagebound, seen for more than two-thirds of the com­ using the minimum number of camera set­ pleted film; in view of this strategy, it is a ups possible to realize the narrative, with tribute to the ingenuity of the director that most of its action confined to a single set, and the film still holds audience interest. one camera set-up. Still, with the added en­ In The Girl in the Arm Chair, Frank, a young hancement of the color tints, the film effec­ man who is betrothed to Peggy Wilson, is tively captures our imagination, and for a "forced into stealing $500 from his father-in­ project realized in one or two days of shoot­ law-to-be's safe. Frank's descent from respect­ ing, it is certainly an admirable effort. ability begins when he falls in with a group of Other surviving Solax productions such as card sharps, who swindle him during a Officer Henderson (a comedy involving two crooked game. The direction here is particu­ undercover cops who dress in women' s cloth­ larly astute, as the card sharps (in the fore­ ing to catch purse-snatchers), Burstup Homes' ground, left) contemplate Frank, their victim Murder Ca se (a parody of the Sherlock Holmes (to the right of the shot), while a sleazy bar­ stories), Matrimony's Speed Limit (in which a tender (in the extreme rear of the set) chuck­ young man must marry by n oon of a certain les with obvious amusement at Frank' s na­ day in order to gain an inheritance) The ivete. These dubious companions then in­ Detec tive's Dog (in which the detective him­ duce Frank to borrow money from a loan self is tied to a log in a saw-mill for the film's shark to cover his losses. When the loan­ climax, thus neatly inverting the generic re­ shark's note falls due, "at 500% interest," quirements of con ventional melodrama), A Frank, in desperation, steals the money. As House Divided, and Canned Harmony (a young he does so, Peggy watches him, unobserved , man pretends to play the violin, with the aid from the "armchair" mentioned in the film's of a hidden phonograph, to win the hand of title, to the extreme right of the frame. In the the girl he loves over the objections of her wake of his crime, Frank endures a h orrible father) display an engaging sense of relaxed nightmare, effectively suggested with blue chara.cter development, and an air of cheerful tints and swirling superimposed cards which haste in their often improvised construction. hover over his bed. The next morning, Peggy Nevertheless, in these brief films, Guy dem­ covers for him, but Frank makes a clean breast onstrates a level of daring and sophistication of it and is forgiven. In the final red-tinted absent from other American shorts of the scene, Peggy and Frank contemplate matri­ period. In Officer Henderson, the cross-dress­ mony, as Peggy's parents look on approv­ ing policemen adapt easily to their roles as ingly. "women": after arresting several criminals, The performances in The Girl in the Arm the two men return to the police station, where Chair are rather exaggerated, a trait para­ they amuse their comrades w ith demonstra­ doxically typical of Alice Guy's films. While tions of "womanly" hand gesture, bearing, she strove to get "natural" p erformances out and manner. The other policemen la u gh up­ of her actors, Alice Guy often let them play roariously, but the scene is still a sharply

DIXON 11 observed comment upon the role of dress and day. presentation in the creation of one's sexual Much of Matrimony's Speed Limit is taken up identity. It is one of the structural conceits of with the man's desperate search for a mate, the film that when the two policem en wear any mate, in order to beat the twelve o'clock wigs and skirts, their true gender is effec­ d eadline. (There is one unfortunate racist tively concealed; even though their faces are "joke" u sed here: one of the women the young clearly masculine, the o ther characters refuse man accosts is heavily veiled. When she re­ to recognize them as m en, so long as they moves h er ha t, we see that she is black. The wear traditional "feminine" clothing. young man reacts with horror, and runs away. One of the policemen is m a rried; Guy in­ The "joke" is all the m ore distressing because serts a sub-plot in which the d etective's wife, of its inclusion in a film created under the sure that her husba nd is being unfaithful, supervision of a woman who knew first-hand returns home to h er mother with som e of the of the d eleterious effects of sexism.) Predict­ clothing her husband is u sing to realize his ably, the man m eets his true beloved in time, disguise. The other policeman spends time in and the two are married just before the stroke an up-scale restaurant, attracting the atten­ of noon. The new bride then reveals her de­ tions of a Fatty Arbuckle-like admirer, with ception and is immediately "forgiven" by her whom he makes a date for a rendezvous for n ew husband. One of the titles in His Double the following day. Both of these situations assures the viewer that "everything is fair in are d eveloped in an innocent fashion, neatly love and war"; this them e is repeated again skirting any serious issues of gender-identi­ and again in the Solax comedies. This preoc­ fi cation and sexual placement the two sub­ cupation with marriage is all the more ironic plots might have raised. Ye t one still gets the when one considers that in her own affairs of feeling that Alice Guy knew precisely what the heart, Alice Guy did not experience the she was exploring in Officer Henderson, even satisfaction and sense of fulfillment she grants if she chose not to d evelop her material in to the protagonists of her films. more serious directions. Solax films were pri­ Yet in many respects, the heroines of Solax marily popular entertainments, and Guy and films are. far more individual than those of­ h er co-directors strove to satisfy the Ameri­ fered by Griffith during the same period, and can appetite for primitive comedy; this does Solax films seem in every way more modern not mean, however, that Ms. Guy was any in their values than Biograph films. No doubt less adventurous in her choice of the material this was due in large m easure to Alice Guy's for these films. energy and vitality as a filmmaker, and as a Matrimony is a persistent theme in the sur­ woman who refused to be left in the back­ viving Solax films; often, the h eroine must ground, at least at this point in h er career. overcome the objections of either her hus­ For her own part, Ms. Guy never played up band-to-be, or a doltish patriarch, to effect the fact that she was a "woman director" in the requisite happy ending. In Canned Har­ an otherwise male-dominated industry. When mony and His Double, it is the father who the trade publications found out about her objects to the proposed match; in both cases, "unique" p osition, they rushed in to exploit the woman refuses to marry anyone but the h er as some sort of curiosity, and Ms. Guy desired object of her affection. Throug h a went along with the publicity pragmatically, combination of aural and visual d eception understanding that it was good for selling (the wig and moustache in Double; the sam e the films at the box office. She even went so disguise, with the addition of a prop violin far as to allow herself to be photographed in and the aid of an off-screen phonograph, in the electric chair at Sing Sing (Lacassin 154), Harmony), the woman is at last able to marry while she was visiting the prison to gather the man of her choice. In Matrimony's Speed background material for an upcoming pro­ Limit it is the husband-to-be who objects to duction, and she treated the press with what the match, but only because of his compara­ I might best d escribe as a sort of cheerful tive poverty. Realizing this, the young woman detachment. She recog nized that all of the concocts a flimsy ruse, inventing a mysteri­ "ballyhoo" would h elp sell Solax films, and it ous relative who will leave the young man a did; with her husband, H erbert, serving as fortune, but only if he marries by noon of that chief marketer for Solax product, while still

12 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW working for Gaumont as well, Solax had sev­ become subjugated to her husband's whims eral very profitable years. It was during this and that in the name of continuing their rela­ period as well that Herbert Blache also be­ tionship, she had sacrificed her own vision of came involved in the fight against the Edison the cinema. It is significant that in the struc­ Trust Companies, which sought to obtain a ture of this new company, Alice Guy was monopolistic stranglehold on the film pro­ listed simply as "vice president" (Lacassin duction, distribution, and exhibition busi­ 154). As Ms. Guy herself noted of this p eriod, ness. To aid in this, he founded his own dis­ "I had become his [her husband's] assistant" tribution exchange, the Film Supply Com­ (Blache, Memoirs 93). pany, which helped to distribute Solax Films, In 1915, Alice directed a number of features and which eventually merged with the Mu­ for her husband that were ultimately distrib­ tual Company in 1914 (Lacassin 154). uted through Metro Pictures, which would However, in October, 1913, Herbert Blache la ter, of course, metamorphosize into Metro­ formed another new company, Blache Fea­ Goldwyn-Mayer. In the summer of 1917, she tures, Inc., which almost immediately sup­ lectured on film at Columbia University (Slide planted Solax. Blache Features product was 28), but unhappily, h er career was about to be much more narrowly defined. It did not pro­ cut short. In 1920 she directed her last film, duce nearly as many films as Solax did, al­ Tarnished Repu tations, starring Dolores though for awhile after its inception, Blache Cassinell (Slide 29) while her husband con­ Features distributed films originally made tinued to direct such films as The Untamed under the Solax banner, but as yet unreleased. (1923), The Wild Party {1923), High Speed (1924), All Blache Features films were a minimum of Secrets of the Night (1925), and his last film as four reels long. In all, the company made 14 director, Burning the Wind (1929), co-directed films from November 1913 to November 1914, with Henry MacRae (Katz 123-4). nine of which were directed by Alice Guy But by then, the couple had long since given herself (Lacassin 154). up any hope of continuing their relationship; Reading between the lines, it seems obvi­ they were divorced in 1922. Around this time, ous to me that Herbert Blache was somewhat Alice Guy was offered the direction of Tarzan jealous of his wife's success. Although an of the Apes, on the condition that she advance astute businessman, Herbert Blache was by $50,000 to help fund the picture. Although no means as adventurous artistically as Alice Ms. Guy was not attracted to the project, it Guy was. When Blache Features folded in might have revitalized her career, but as she November, 1914, Herbert set up a new com­ put it, "happily, it was out of the question. I pany, The U.S. Amusement Corporation, didn't have fifty thousand dollars" (Blache, founded in April, 1914 with a $500,000 line of Memoirs 95). Alice Guy returned to France credit (Lacassin 154). This company pro­ with her two children, but she was never duced what were then known as "art films," again allowed to direct a film, major or mi­ staged dramas filmed in an unimaginative nor, short or feature-length. This is not be­ "proscenium arch" manner. Th e Mystery of cause she did not make numerous attempts to Edwin Drood (1914) and The Chimes (1914) do so; she had many projects in mind, and were simply "canned theater," and repre­ certainly, with her credentials, one would sented a gigantic step backwards in the de­ think that she would have found work fairly velopment of cinema as a visual medium easily. But, no, she "retired" to a series of with its own syntactical language. These films humdrum jobs, and it was not until1953 that were mostly directed by Herbert Blache, and the French Government suddenly remem­ they represented a tragic corruption of the bered her contributions to the beginnings of vitality and imagination of Alice Guy's own cinema, and a warded her the Legion of Honor work. During this period, Alice directed a (Katz 519). She was 80 at the time. Subse­ number of five-reel films for The Popular quently, she returned to the United States in Players and Plays Company, also adapted 1964 to live with her daughter, Simone, in the from stage productions, on which her hus­ latter's home in Mahwah, New Jersey. She band served as producer, but these films died there on March 24, 1968, at the age of 95 added little of importance to her career. They (Blache, Memoirs 99). show, rather that she had allowed herself to In sum, what can one say of the career of

DIXON 13 Alice Guy? It is clear tha t she is an inescap­ herself; what records a ttended the shooting ably major fig ure in the development of cin­ of these films have long since been los t or ema as both a comm ercial and artistic art d estroyed. The Museum of Modern Art in form, but it is equally clear that posterity has New York has at least one Solax film in their n o t been kind, or even just, to her many ac­ collection , A House Divided (1913), but again, complishments. Because she was relatively this m ay or may not be directed by Alice Guy modest concerning h er work she received h er self. Prints of Alice Gu y's Solax produc­ little notoriety even in h er h eyday. As I m en­ tions Officer Henderson, Canned Harmony , His tion ed at the beginning of this paper, gen eral Double, A House Divided, Burs tup Homes ' Mur­ survey texts on the history of film ignore her der Case, and Th e Girl in the Arm Cha ir (this work completely. Making m a tters worse, m ost last with color tinting) are available from Em of h er early films (more than 90% of her work) Gee Films in Reseda, Cali fornia.3 Certc;~inly , are los t, des troyed or d ecomposed (shot, as these excell ent and his torically invaluable they were, on early cellulose nitrate film). films should be a regular part of most film The Library of Congress has so me Solax prints courses. It is surely no t too much to ask that including a copy of The Detec tive's Dog that Ms. Guy's work sh ould be shown in conjunc­ does not seem available elsewhere. In 1973, tion with the work of her more celebrated the First Los Angeles International Woman's contemporary, D . W. G riffith, as an alterna­ Film Festival, spon sored by the group tive to Griffith's inescapably male-centrist Cinewom en, organized a centennial screen­ vision . It is only through the twin exigencies ing of Alice Guy's films. In 1985, the Museum of inadequate preservation a nd the patria r­ of Modern Art ran a program of her surviving chal ins tinct inherent in current film history films. Writing in The New Republic, critic that Ms. Guy's work is no t more widely Stanley Kauffman commented: shown, and recognized as the work of a mas­ I saw four of h er short films in the ter filmmaker. museum's prog ram-my first view of The bulk of Ms. G uy's work seems to have G uy-Blache's work ... sh e was certainly b een irretrievably lost. There may be addi­ well up to the level of h er contemporar­ tional films d ep osited and mis-attributed in ies. She had wit, a sense of pace, a good The National Archives. There may be other eye for casting, a nd she did some experi­ films by Alice Guy available in private collec­ m enting. (One of the films uses a split tions that we don' t know about. But for the screen with two p eople on the telephone mos t part, unless and until Alice Guy's m ajor and a view of the la ndscape between films can be found, we will have to content them.) But in the his torical view, the ourselves with second-hand accounts of her quality of her work is not the prime point. major works, and surviving production stills She may or may not have been the very from long-lost films. This does not detract in first maker of fiction film, as some have an y way, however, from the fact that the contended; but no one has yet disproved b eginnings of cinl:}ma history must now be that she was the first woman director. rewritten. Alice Guy was there, and arguably And her oddly, sadly truncated career ther e first, and it is long overdue for u s to only makes her claim o n our memory acknowledge her con sid erable contributions more pressing (Kauffman 26) . to the art, and the his tory of motion pictures. 4 More recently The American Museum of 0 the Moving Image in Astoria, New York, ran 3 a retrospective of Solax films. However, pre­ Em Gee Films, 6924 Canby Avenue, Suite 103, Resed a, Ca lifornia 91335. Telepho ne: (8 18) 981-5506. cise attribution of Solax films to individual directors is, in m any cases, impossible. As ' Portions of this article w ere presented in earlier Cecile Starr of the W om en's Independent Film versions at the Conference o n Gender, Tallahassee, Exchange noted on the p rogram notes for the Florida, 1986; the Midwest Mode rn Language Associa­ tion Annu al Conference, Chicago, Illino is, 1986; and at AMMI screenings, the films that have sur­ the Society for C inem a Studies Annual Conference, vived may or may n o t be directed by Ms. Guy Iowa C ity, Iowa, 1989.

14 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Wh ee ler Dixon is chairperson of th e Fi lm Studies Program Katz, Ephra im. The Film Encyclopedia. New Yo rk: Tho­ at the Uni versity of Nebra ska, Lincoln. mas C rowell, 1979. Kauffman, Stanley. "Stanley Kauffman on Films: Hell a nd Other Matters." Th e New Republic, 14 October 1985: 26. WORKS C IT ED Lacassin, Francis. "Out of Oblivion: A li ce Guy Blache." Blache, Alice Guy. "Woman's Place in Photopla y Pro­ Sight and Sound Summer, 1971: 151 -4. duction." Moving Pi cture World, 11 Jul y 1914: unpaginated. Mast, Cera Id. A Short History of th e Mo vies . 4th ed. New Yo rk: Macmillan, 1986. Bla che, Alice Guy. Th e Memo irs of A lice Guy Blac/u!. Trans. Roberta and Simo ne Blache. Ed. Anthony Slide, Anthony. Early Wom en Direc tors. London: A.S. Slid e. Metuchen, NJ: Sca recrow Press, 1986. Barnes, 1977.

Heck-Rabi , Louise. Wom e11 Direc tors: Th e Critical Recep­ Wanamaker, Marc, "Ali ce Guy Blache," Cinema Ma ga­ tion. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1984. zine 35 (1976): 12.

DIXON 15 Barry Spacks

ALBA

Olove

we've been here

many times

but not before

so early

in the morning

16 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW ,...

Daniel Bourne

STILL LIFE

o one in the room. No hot tea N on the counter. Only the broken spring of the couch. The sharp vengeful tongue of a plant on the sideboard.

No more fires in the stove. No more crumbs on the table. The chairs all face the wall. Rugs abandoned in a heap.

The calendar not turned forward. The clock with rusted hands. The stain from the dripping faucet draws a map in the blue enamel.

The pictures stare at each other. The wallpaper dark from the leak upstairs. A newspaper flung in all directions. The date on all its pages.

BOURNE 17 M.E. Liu

SUNDAY AFTERNOON, SUNDAY EVENING

pstairs, in her room, my daughter writes My wife would have approved of my U poetry, hoping for publication in the daughter's poetic efforts. I like to think that school paper. I hear the keys of her type­ poetry and gardening share a common spirit writer tentatively slap the page, one timid of patience. On any other Sunday my daugh­ letter at a time. Earlier they came in cascades ter would be working on her college applica­ and I imagined the words tumbling down. I tions, but this w eekend is an exception. She expect they will spill out more generously offered to read me the work she has amassed again, for I have recognized a rhythm. these past two days later, at dinner, but I We are alone, my daughter and I. It is early reminded her that tonight I will be having a afternoon, beautiful and autumnal. I have guest. opened the French doors leading out onto the "Dr. Kagon," I said. "Dr. Kagon will be patio where we attempted to eat breakfast here. Remember?" together. It was too cold then, the blue sky Dr. Kagon is a woman. A psychiatrist. It is belied cold weather. A brisk wind blew the ironic that my daughter has forgotten since napkins about and drove us inside. Now, the dinner has come about only as a result of hours later, it is still brisk, but not so windy her relentless prodding. A modern girl, she is that the doors can't be left open. These doors convinced that since my wife passed away I stand at the end of the library and the library should begin "dating" (her word). The din­ opens beyond the living room where I now ner will be my third "date" with Dr. Kagon, sit. I can see over the paper through the series but the preceding "dates" were tennis / lunch of rooms out the door to the garden and the dates and I'm not sure they count in my great outcropping of granite on which the daughter's estimation. house is founded and in which my wife Dr. Kagon belongs to the tennis club my planted all sorts of attractive bulbs last sum­ wife and I joined five years ago. I estimate her mer, plants whose names I do not know, but age at thirty-seven. She is easily lobbed and whose beauty I nonetheless appreciate. There has a weak serve. The tennis club is filled is a fault which runs down the center of this with single women in their mid to late thirties outcropping which, no doubt, follows the and, like most of them, Dr. Kagon's principal course of its form into the ground and under interest seems to be aerobics, not tennis. My the foundation. Above ground, my wife wife, one of the few women I've ever known packed the fault with earth so that every with a really hard top spin forehand, used to spring the most beautiful vines and flowers make fun of these aerobicly-minded women would sprout from it. My daughter has be­ and in particular, the metallic, skintight lycra gun typing again and, as I look out through body suits that some would wear. I myself the series of rooms to my wife's handiwork never expressed an opinion. outside I can, by the exercise of a little imagi­ My wife and I played mixed doubles with nation, experience contentment. More than Dr. Kagon on two or three occasions. I cannot the smart jackets and wool skirts which hang remember Dr. Kagon's partners, but there on the right side of the closet and still bear were several, which is not surprising since her fragrance, these plants remind me of my the games were very occasional, separated by wife and convince me of her continuing pres­ months. In any case, I had not spoken to the ence. I can, without difficulty, imagine that doctor for over a year until I met her again at she is out there now, unseen in a section of a club-sponsored cocktail party. I had been the garden not visible from my position on standing alone at a side table when Dr. Kagon the couch, stooping to transfer a shoot which approached and, after a long conversation she nurtured on a sill, into the earth. which lasted almost the entire evening, gave

18 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW me her card and suggested I call. For all that there and I said I might show up." talk I cannot remember any specifics, I can "What football game?" only remember topics. We talked about the "Come on, Dad, can't you hear it?" ozone, the greenhouse effect, AIDS, and ulti­ I listen. In the rustling of the leaves, in the mately, my wife's death. It was a conversa­ lull between gu sts of wind, I h ear the sound tion devoted entirely to disaster, public and of distant drums. Three-quarters of a mile of personal. I was, I remember, surprised when woods separate our house from the munici­ she gave me her card. When I told my daugh­ pal field where the high school home games ter about it she wouldn' t let up. are played, yet in the right wind, the beat of "Why don' t you call her?" drums and blare of martial brass make their "Now?" way over the treetops bearing fragments of "That's what she gave you the card for, "Hey, Big Spender." Dad." "You want to take the Toyota?" I ask, dig­ So I called her for singles the following ging for the keys in my pocke t. The Toyota Sunday and, after an unvigorous and lop­ was my wife's car and now, for reasons not sided sixty minutes, we had lunch at the club entirely clear to me, I get pleasure from my cafe. Dr. Kagon offered bland apologies for daughter' s use of it. her uneven game, and I sensed that she re­ "Actually, I thought I' d ride my bike. Un­ garded the tennis as a somewhat unnecessary less you want me to pick something up on my pretext for having lunch together. Such elabo­ way back. Are you sure you have everything rate arrangements in order to flirt are the you need for the dinner?" instinct of a married man, and must have "I'm all set." seemed quaint and clumsy to a veteran of She leaves through the library and out the single life like Dr. Kagon who, as far as I open doors onto the patio, a sudden breeze know, has never been married . In my mind lifting her hair from her shoulders, a patch of there are two kinds of married couples: those sunlight catching it as it blows apart. She like my wife and I who get married very disappears beyond the vista framed by the young and those who get married late. If Dr. French doors into those unseen regions of the Kagon were to marry she would, of course, garden where I imagine my wife tending her fall into this latter category. I have observed flowers or simply enjoying the day. that couples like my wife and I who marry young so affect the way the other matures that they become inseparable by the simple I have never been one of those w ho enjoy force of long-term mutual accommodation. cooking as a past-time, and therefore I know Couples who marry late often seem more like few "fancy" dishes beyond the ordinary fare business partners. These late-marriage types my daughter and I make for each other. After are accustomed to independent action; they I extended the invitation to Dr. Kagon I real­ consult one another out of considered defer­ ized I should h ave suggested a restaurant ence rather than as a natural ins tinct. Perhaps instead. In this particular context a restau­ that is an obvious observation, but what rant would have made more sense, seemed would a couple be like if you mixed the two more natural. But my wife and I almost never halves? What would happen if you matched invited our friends to meet us at restaurants. an early-marriage type like myself with an We had them to dinner, or they had us to independent, late-marriage type like, say, Dr. dinner, and so a restaurant simply did not Kagon? occur to m e. Of course, Dr. Kagon and I have My daughter stops typing and I h ear her on alread y had lunch together a t the club cafe, the stairs, a confusion of pounding feet, which but that was different, that was an adjunct to sounds like she is falling, rather than walk­ tennis. ing. She arrives safely nonetheless, standing My few fancy dishes include a chicken dish, before me, apparently satisfied with this a lamb dish, a nd a beef dish. I have decided to morning's effort. make the chicken dish since it is the easiest. "I got to a natural stoppin g point so I There was some cutting and marinating which thought I'd go to the football game," she I accomplished after my daughter left for h er says. "Charles and the others are going to be football game and now all the components

LIU 19 are ready to be put in the oven and I am free "She has a terrible serve." to brood over Dr. Kagan's arrival. I wipe my "Come on, Dad." hands and return to the living room where I What is she like? It's a hard question to attempt to read the remaining sections of the answer. I don't know her very well after all. newspaper, but I find I am distracted. Curi­ She strikes me as one of those people who's ously, I am not distracted by the impending always monitoring their own feelings. Some­ date, but by the weekend project I have not one quick to defend themselves with the emo­ been able to begin. Six weeks ago I resolved tional jujitsu of Assertiveness Training. to clean out my wife's possessions for stor­ "She's medium-small, about five-five. Short age, beginning with the clothes in the master brown hair sort of brown dry. About like bedroom closet. The resolution coincided with this." I hold my hands out around my head to the club cocktail party and my new social proximate the volume of space occupied by campaign. Six weekends have passed and Dr. Kagan's hair. still I have not begun. I put down the newspa­ My daughter struggles to draw an impres­ per, go upstairs, and peer into the closet as if sion. After a moment of concentration she to confirm for myself that nothing has says, "I was tempted to tell Charles to pick changed. The skirts, dresses, blouses, and me up a little later so I could meet her, but I shoes remain, as always. Perhaps I will begin figured you wouldn't want me around." the project later. "Very considerate." I turn and undress, replacing the authenti­ I have a secret problem with Dr. Kagan, a cally casual clothes I have worn all weekend problem which has nothing to do with the with pleated trousers and a cashmere sweater. woman who is intelligent and attractive. Her I am not accustomed to dressing for dates, name is also the name of an industrial cleanser and I selected this particular combination of I remember from college days when I worked trousers and sweater in consultation with my as a janitor. The associations are distracting. daughter. As I examine the effect in the wall When the doorbell rings I am fooled into mirror, I hear her at the door downstairs. I thinking that Dr. Kagan is early. wash my face and shave and by the time I "That's Charles," says my daughter. Sure return to the living room, I find her sitting on enough, his second-hand station wagon is in the back of the couch, looking out the picture the drive. My daughter answers the door. I window to the street. hear them murmuring to one another across "We won," she says. the threshold. She is probably saying things I ask the score, but she doesn't know. like, "Oh come on in and say hello to Dad for "We don't ever really follow the game," she just two seconds, it won't kill you." And he is says. "We mainly sit in the stands and eat hot probably reluctant, understandably hoping dogs and goof off." for a quick getaway. They emerge from the I notice that she has changed clothes too, vestibule so that Charles may shake my hand, exchanging her ordinary bicycle-riding jeans smiling, deferential, putting on his best man­ for designer corduroys with zippers at the ners for his girlfriend's father. Charles is a ankles. Her hair is pulled back with a comb likeable kid, I'm sure, though I'll never know and she wears the long, silver earrings her what he's really like because he's always so mother bought for her on our trip to Spain. self-consciously presentable when I meet him. "I guess you don't need the Toyota." He's tall and a little thin, sandy haired and "No, Charles is picking me up. Thanks any­ freckled, a member of the soccer team, but way." not what you would call a jock. In truth, my I remind her that tonight is a school night daughter strikes me as much more of woman and not to stay out too late. than Charles is a man. Made up with her hair "Oh, Dad," she rolls her eyes, "when do I in a comb, her silver earrings and jean jacket, ever go out on a Sunday night? I'm going out she has an air of youthful sophistication while tonight so you and the doctor can have a little Charles looks a bit goofy and awkward by privacy." comparison. They have been seeing each other "Thanks." since the middle of their junior years and "Of course, I would like to meet this doctor. now they are seniors. Among their friends What is she like?" they are thought of as a couple. If I wish to

20 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW torture myself, I can speculate on the extent reflect that on any other night I could be lying of their sexual activities, an exercise which, on the couch, reading a book. like touching a sore tooth, is hard to resist. I The window panel of the front door is so am especially leery of Charles' station wagon high that I can see only the top of Dr. Kagan's and the blanket which is folded over the tool head. I fiddle with the lock and open the door box in the back. Sometimes I catch myself with a jerk, admitting a gust of dry leaves. Dr. looking for evidence of sexual activity al­ Kagon stands on the welcome mat wearing a though I'm not sure what I'm looking for. It stylish leather jacket, her lips red with lip­ comes out in undignified ways, like an urge stick and stretched across a broad smile. She to check on the snow tires which are stored in bears a bottle-shaped package in wrapping a back closet off the den when they are down paper which she waves. there late on a Friday night watching televi­ "Hel-lo, hel-lo!" she exclaims. I usher her in sion. My wife used to suggest I call the "sex with one hand on her shoulder, but the physi­ police" whenever I got into one of these antsy, cal contact makes m e uncomfortable, and I protective moods. It was our private joke. allow her to move on into the living room, out The "sex police" would tap the phone, exam­ of my reach. ine the garbage for sexual debris, seize pro­ "What a beautiful house you have. I had a phylactics and other sexual paraphernalia, hard time finding it. Of course I missed the slip saltpeter into Charles' cheeseburgers. last turn where the road forked . But look at it, "So where are you two off to?" I ask, my it's gorgeous." voice infused with good cheer. I note, with "We've made a lot of improvements," I say. chagrin, that I am as artificial as Charles. The word "we" comes automatically, refer­ "We thought we' d see a movie," he says, ring to years of domestic partnership in house­ his voice in equal parts friendly, polite, and hold labor. Every window had a t least one deferential. cracked pane when we bought it. The grass He names a movie I cannot identify. I scan stood knee high. The foundation sill plate my mental database for review information. had succumbed to carpenter ants. My forte Newspapers, Siskel and Ebert, radio critic ... was rough carpentry and some plumbing. I'm stumped. I have nothing to offer in the My wife took the lead in painting, window way of conversation. puttying, paper hanging, and, of course, gar­ "What time are you going to be back?" I dening. ask. We go to the living room where I prepare "What time do you want me back, Dad?" cocktails. Dr. Kagon has drawn one leg up my daughter replies, her grin full of mischie­ underneath the other in an attitude which vous intent. She exchanges a glance with suggests girlish athleticism and Eastern phi­ Charles, prompting him to speak. losophy. As we chat she dangles one pump "I hear you have a date tonight, too ... ," he from the end of a foot. It is easy to imagine her says. The line, guilelessly conceived, provokes in a metallic, lycra aerobics outfit. By the embarrassment in us both. Only my daughter merest flexing of my imagination, I can envi­ seems undisturbed. sion her doing leg lifts on the Persian rug. "Not just a date. A first date," she says. We talk about the house. It is a subject "That's not true. I had lunch with her twice. which does not require a great d eal of my And don' t forget those tennis games." I am attention. I can recite the litany of improve­ smiling, but I am uncomfortable with this ments by rote, expand to detail the process banter. I walk them to the door and wave necessary to replace a window or a toile t, the them off. Charles goes on to the station wagon hardships encountered on the way. It is a while my daughter stops halfway down the subject which leaves my mind free to explore front steps to run up again and give me a kiss the curious relationship between clothes and on the cheek. corporal substance, particularly in connec­ "Don't wait up for me Dad," she whispers. tion with Dr. Kagon. It is easy to tell, how­ "Good luck." ever, that the house talk is just formality; Dr. Back inside, I set the table and make the Kagon has no real interest in the subject of final preparations until, at last, the doorbell home improvement, and I suspect her mental rings. I pause, adjust a plate, count to ten, and discourse follows a separate track. Perhaps it

LIU 21 is running parallel to my own. ing room where I lig ht the candles, sheepish "Exactly where do you live?" I ask, turning and apologetic as I dim the lights, embar­ the conversation in new directions. rassed at the romantic trappings. She names the street. It is not far, maybe "It makes the food look better," I say. three miles. I eat slowly, listenin g to Dr. Kagon discuss "An apartment house, one-bedroom, but h er Club Med vacation last spring. It was, she it's big and it's rent-controlled," she says. said, a terrific release from the tension she "It's good for now," she adds apologetically. had built up at work. She tells stories of tur­ We discuss the cleaning service she hires quoise water and 13 volleyball nets, tennis once a week, an extravagance, I think, for courts and aggressive single men. The place someone living in a one-bedroom apartment, was idyllic, the sports challenging, but the but I do not share this with Dr. Kagon. people ... she describes them with disdain, "Forty dollars a visit, but it's really worth and yet I sense that she did not find them half it," she says. so objectionable as she now claims. I myself have n ever considered hiring a We discuss her own counselor, a wonderful cleaning service. The possibility has never sympathetic woman from the South Shore. occurred to m e. My daughter and I divide Every psychologist doing this kind of work chores in the same democratic fashion that goes to some kind of therapy, she says. I we divided chores when m y wife was alive envision legions of p sychiatrists, psycholo­ except that now we don' t seem to use as much gists, and psycho-analysts, each pouring their of the house as before. Last week my daugh­ p sycho-burdens out to a professional counse­ ter suggested I sell and move into an apart­ lor who in turn imparts those burdens to ment. After all, she reasoned, next year she another counselor and so on, an infinite chain will be in college. When she said it the idea of psychic unloading .... struck me like a blow, a betrayal, but she was We discuss her next vacation, an Austrian only trying to be h elpful. ski trip. She plans to go with another woman "A professional cleaning service ... ," I from the club, an excellent skier. The only repeat. problem is that this other woman suddenly "I usually get home late from work," says wants to bring her n ew lover, also a member Dr. Kagon, "and I' m jus t too exhausted to do of the club. I recognize the name. He is an" A" anything but watch television. The job's re­ tennis player, a man with an accent who wears ally stressful," she adds, shaking her h ead . his collars up. This man, says Dr. Kagon, is a I take the cue and ask about the job. Her typical European with a macho need to score specialty is substance abuse counseling. Most with every attractive woman he meets, his of her clients are alcoholic, married to alco­ accent ever thick with sexual innuendo. If she holics, or have alcoholic parents. They all insists on bringing him, says Dr. Kagon, she have her home phone number and call in will ski with her parents in Chamonix in­ their frequent times of crisis. She spends her stead. Her father, sh e says, was in an elite day receiving and diffusing the psychic bur­ mountain corps during the war. It is always d en of dozens of troubled people and natu­ fun, she says, to ski with him. The problem rally, the pressure takes its toll. The club is a with this arrangement is her mother. Her release, of course. Aerobics, twenty vigorous mother is afraid on skis and her father will be flights on the Stairmaster, a half a mile in the reluctant to leave her on the easy trails. He pool . .. tension is shed in sweat, but still you will ski beside h er all day long and if Dr. can't get rid of it_all, she admits. I pour her Kagon tempts him away her mother will be­ another drink. come cranky and difficult. It is always the She tells the war stories of her work, tales of same behavior, even when they are not ski­ misguided passion, incest, beatings, hospi­ ing. Her mother demands constant attention talization. Through them all there runs a com­ from her father and Dr. Kagon finds herself mon theme of injustice borne beyond reason: competing for his time. We discuss Dr. the wife who stays with the abusive husband, Kagon' s mother .... the father's sexual harassment of a daughter. But now we are back in the living room, The tales of misery are fascinating, but the sitting on the couch. The dishes are in the chicken is ready so we withdraw to the din- sink and a single cushion separates us. Dr.

22 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Kagon inclines toward me. I am dizzy after says Dr. Kagon, "and yet she had twenty-one following her through the headlong rush of years of marriage and a daughter and a topics. Her shoulders tilt forward, her head is house." cocked upright, she rests her arm along the " ... And a garden." back of the couch, fingers extend in my direc­ "Yes. A garden. Those are all things I as­ tion. sumed I would have one day and yet they "How long were you married?" she asks. haven't arrived. It's like I've always been My head clears; I am suddenly sober. waiting for my 'real' life to arrive .. . . " "Twenty-one years," I say. I pause, expecting Dr. Kagon to continue, "That is such a long time to be with some­ but she doesn't. Abruptly, she says, "Call one that I can hardly imagine it." me," and walks down the steps, into the night, "I can hardly imagine anything else." towards her car. Dr. Kagon's hair is unnaturally stiff as we Upstairs I push the door to the big closet off bridge the cushion between us and I hold the the master bedroom and let it swing into the back of her head in my hand. Her lips, slip­ cedar space. I breathe the fragrance that still pery with lip gloss, impart a peculiar and mingles with my own, the two sets of clothes unwelcome waxiness to my mouth. Her free hanging on either side as they have, in vari­ hand come across and rests on my shoulder. ous closets, for twenty-one years. From the One of her shoes drops to the floor with a high shelf I stretch to pull down a large suit­ bump. The embrace feels as unnatural as if I case and remove a single silk blouse from its were kissing a department store manikin. hanger. I recognize this blouse. I lay it on the "My daughter will be home soon," I say. bed, fold it carefully, and place it in the suit­ Dr. Kagon suggests I see the excellent job case. I zipper the suitcase shut, and return it the cleaning service has done with her one­ to the closet. That is enough for now, enough bedroom apartment. When I decline she says for a beginning. 0 she can understand my difficulty after twenty­ one years. We talk a little more, we kiss a little more, but my mind is absent. The talk­ M.E. Liu ha s been published in several literary and po litica l ing and kissing are polite formalities. At last magazines including Commentary, C razyhorse and the we rise together and I see her to the door. Crescent Review. H e is presently at work on a crime "You know, I imagine your wife wasn't so adventure novel. M.E. Liu makes his living as an architect in Bo ston. much older than I am now when she died,"

LIU 23 SEVEN CZECHOSLOVAKIAN POETS

Translated by Dominika Winterovd and Richard Katrovas

Jan Rej:Zek

MIDNIGHT

utside the winebar on the Lesser Town Square O two men totter on the brink of falling. Fullthroatedly they sing about nothing. Then snow appears. No way can it snow in September! In a half-opened window above them, planted, it seems, among the fuchsia, they spy a little girl in a nightgown, such a one as is so impatient for miracles, she creates them herself, issuing bubbles onto the night. They puff through the Square like argosies into Levanta; they wander with the indeterminacy of a failed expedition to the Pole; they stray like mailmen on strange, new routes; and the largest of them reflects, obliquely, the quiet men, and the clock with its hands clasped onto midnight, when the bubble girl greets good evening.

24 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Svetlana Burianova

IF I COULD

'd move my ass, I grab my backpack by the neck and ride it out of this coughing Prague, out of this pub where bodies keep sitting even after the beer is gone. I'd pinch my nose and follow it out jus t to see the sun diminish like a kid's sucker, that I might be diminished down to the sweet stick and stand a while, before returning on the dawn train.

SEVEN CZECHOSLOV A KlAN POETS 25 Zdena Bra trsovska

THESWANSOFPRAGUE

hey gave notice to the ponds of Bohemia, T for what is Love or Leap or Bird Moors to them? Their little brains on snake-long necks finally comprehended that the bare sky would toss no bread. So joyfully they multiply in the hollows of Prague spillways, slowly turning gray from the ash of Prague chimneys, and do not teach their young to fly, but to pester people under bridges.

I imagine I draw m y hands over their greasy bodies, feeling my life to be such as theirs. I gave notice to the flooded quarries of home in which cramps I thought meapt love afflicted me, and to the random caverns of Cerna Nisa where from time to time one discovered human bones gnawed to the marrow. In daylight I examine the base of m y life, sprinkling the superstructural crumbs of verses and hopes into the winds over Botic, such m a tters being too ingenious for experts and too starkly honest even for the curious . . .

26 N EW ORLEANS REVIEW Josef Simon

PRAGUE FISHERMAN

ave you ever observed Prague fisherman, H those reticent inquisitors of water, those censors of dampness and rheumatism; have you observed them pitch their bait into the dirty waters of the present? They hook the worm, which wriggles passionately like the truth, and tie the line to leaden prospects for the future, then toss out between Prague bridges and wait for the line to tremble in their fingers, while around the red-and-white bobbing floats, wild ducks cavort, and bloated rats spin in the currents like miscarried thoughts flushed out through the sewers. And they wait for the darkness to tremble in their hands, before slowly packing up to leave ...

SEVEN CZECHOSLOVAKIAN POETS 27 Karel Sys

TROJA AT EIGHT IN THE EVENING

he pigeons still languish T on the pillars of the bridge which is slated for destruction in a year. The citizen of Greater Prague, who tomorrow will twitch in the throes of a heart attack, today is purchasing imperishable foods. And you, who don't accept that poems will die from the molecular crumbling of the crystalin structure of paper, are writing this poem.

28 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW v Jiff Zacek

NIGHT AT THE SINGLES DORM

ow may I leap from this boxing ring H onto the floating gardens of poesy when behind the wall a strange woman sings her passion like a dying animal, and that which I know but do not see pounds blood through the convolutions of my ears.

Viciously, she moans into my solitude as I gaze upon the slow, post-coital cuddling of my shoes.

SEVEN CZECHOSLOVAKIAN POETS 29 I van Wernisch

A WALK AROUND THE BREWERY

long the wall and to the left A along the wall and to the left along the wall and to the left along the wall and to the left

The smell of grain is diminishing The dust is rising The smell of grain is diminishing

There's still some time before dark To the left along the wall and to the left along the wall

along the wall along the wall

As far as that house there the hidden gardens

30 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Robert Hildt

LEARNING FRENCH

ou strike a deal with Martine. When you "It's a dirty job, mister, but somebody' s got Yare alone together, you will speak only to do it." English. When you are with her French You leave some change on the zinc counter friends, you will speak only French. You tell and haul your groceries down the quai. her you would have to do this anyway. Yes, she smiles. Her English is good. Your French is improving. The concierge. Martine talks to you in mock American. She You court Madame Graf. You give her pot­ calls it movie American. "So what brings you ted plants for her courtyard: geraniums and to these parts, eh, kid?" Her accent makes the spring bulbs. You stop to chat about her health corn fresh. and make jokes about your bad French. When You are both awake. The apartment is cold you come back from Mont St. Michel, you and you put off getting out of bed. Last night, will bring her a souvenir cushion. In return, Martine told you she hates Germans more Madame Graf does not declare war on the than Americans, but not much. This morning, American. She likes Martine. you say, "If you hate Americans, why am I Madame Graf is a small woman. She is waking up next to you?" strong and direct. Her eyes do not evade. She "Because I didn't dust you off during the has seen hurt and stupidity and has no pa­ night." tience for these things. Her husband was killed a long time ago, in the Resistance. She tells you they were two children. When you and Martine go shopping, you stay Madame Graf's cat, black with a white on the island. She does the talking and the snout, is named Gaspard. Gaspard is fat and merchants give better prices. There are no spends his life snoozing in the courtyard. supermarkets on the Ile St. Louis. You shop in Your courtship of Madame Graf includes a hole-in-the-wall stores tucked in along the present for Gaspard, a small plastic ball with rue St. Louis en L'Ile. You go into the compact a bell inside. He bats it a couple of times with cremerie. The walls are clean white tile. White his paw, then pads back to his nap. enamel shelves stand stocked with regional cheeses. The aroma, contained inside the small space, is rich. You pick fresh, warm eggs out Madame Graf tells you Marc Chagall used to of a stone crock. The eggs are layered in live on the third floor, his stopping spot in yellow straw. You buy milk in graceful green Paris. She tells you le maitre was a kind man. bottles, with the heavy cream on top. At the She still offers prayers for his safekeeping in charcuterie, you pick up some black, oily Mo­ the arms of the Lord. Heading upstairs, you roccan olives wrapped in waxpaper. When greet Chagall' s door. "Hi, how' s it going?" the net carrying bags are filled, you stop at When you go out, you tell the door "Be right the corner bar-tabac for a cold beer. back" or "Take care." Martine says this is "I visit my family this weekend," Martine dangerously dumb. says. "I told you this." "''m being neighborly." "I know." "His work is overrated." "Will you behave?" "Maybe I'll look for someone else." "Maybe you'll find someone else." A letter from your brother in the fifth form at "Do you have to go home?" Choate.

HILDT 31 He is applying to Dartmouth, Brown and on a tall chair, like a frog on his pad, grinning Chapel Hill, and wants Chapel Hill. He is on dimly at his cash register. During the time the squash team. He is dating Pam, a Rose­ you have left on the island, Cabano will be­ mary Hall girl. Pam posed for a shampoo ad come your hangout and occasional escape last year. He is playing drums in a rock band, hatch. The Driving Stupid. He signs off: The Voice of America. You have been invited to a dinner party in Neuilly, friends of Martine. Aperitifs are You find Cabano the way you would find a served in the living room. The room is soft coin on the sidewalk. You have walked past and warm, cushioned with brocade the yel­ Cabano often, not knowing it was there. One low of young daffodils. Elizabeth, your host­ night, walking through the dark block, you ess, is also American. Elizabeth is married to hear the music and voices inside. Curtains Max Roth-le-Gentil, a member of the French are pulled across the front window. There is financial establishment. Max has two chil­ no sign, only a dim light over the front door. dren from an earlier marriage, a seat on the You watch from across the street, a stakeout. Bourse, and a hunting lodge in Normandy. Some people come out and go off towards the Martine has alerted you that you and she will river. While the door is open, you see more be invited out to Normandy for Ia chasse, people inside, lamplight, a bar. You decide to unless you behave rudely at table or do not go go in. along when Elizabeth flirts with you. Martine The barman is built like a wrestler. He nods. rides with Elizabeth twice a week in the Bois. You have come into his bar, he has never seen She tells you Elizabeth is having an affair you before, he pours you a drink. A jug lamp with one of the stable boys. In the living with a parchment shade gives low light to room, Elizabeth talks to you about America, your end of the bar. The place is crowded, Sondheim, the Mets, Cambridge, people you voices compete. Music comes out of a room in might both know. She introduces you to her back. The back room looks like the inside of a friends as man copain. You are seated next to thatched hut. Kids pack the low tables, some Elizabeth at dinner and she rests her hand on dance crammed onto a tiny dance floor. The your leg during the fish course. Across the barman comes back, refills your glass, then table, Martine is radiant in the candlelight moves on down the bar. and you are proud. From the head of the After a while, the crowd thins out. When table, Max brings you into his conversation. you ask for your tab, the bar is almost empty. Does he know his wife's left hand is moving The kids in the back room have gone home. up the inside of your right leg? Max asks, "Tu You pay, start for the door. One of your legs joue au golf?" has gone to sleep. The voice, a deep bark, surprises you. "Monsieur." You turn. The bar­ man reaches across the bar, shakes hands. One night, coming back late, you stop at "Jean-Paul," he says. "A demain." He is not Chagall's door. You say what you like and expecting you. He is only saying you are what you do not like about his work. You say welcome back tomorrow, if you like. goodnight and continue upstairs. You are glad you cleared the air.

You will go back to Cabano often. You will become friends with Jean-Paul and Pierre, The Voice of America. the brothers who own and work the bar. Pierre He is going to bum around the Cape this says they are "the bosses of the bar." When summer with some of the guys from school, Jean-Paul and Pierre were younger, they were crash where they can, get odd jobs if they paratroopers in Algeria. Now they are mar­ have to, hack around. Dartmouth and Chapel ried, with their own families. Their father Hill look good. Is it true what they say about also works in the bar. Like his sons, the old French girls? man is big, and not to be crossed. He handles What do they say about French girls? You the money. Every night, papa sits plumped do not know. You write back, a postcard lifted

32 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW from Lipp. Of course it's true. Do you want Martine points a slow sweep of the horizon. Polaroids? "Someday, my boy, this will all be yours." A chill comes up off the water. You hold each other, sharing warmth. Even together, La chasse. you feel alone and insignificant inside the Following the hunt in a car is easy, Martine immense peace of where you are. tells you. Just listen for the dogs, track the In the morning, you check out of the inn sound, you will meet up with the hunters. It early. You go to Mere Poularde for Sunday makes sense. It doesn' t work. You get lost. omelets and oversize cups of scalding coffee. Martine becomes confused. Every time you Going back down .the steep cobbled street, hear the hounds, they are so mew here else you shop for souvenirs. Back at sea level, you and farther away. You follow miles of single­ get the car and return to the mainland. The track dirt roads through brittle winter woods. tide is out and gulls pick their way across the You don't catch up with the hunt until the wet sandbar. end of the day when you drive back to the house. The horses have been stabled and the hunters are belting back Calvados. You stop for lunch in a small farm village. Dinner in the timber-beamed dining room The cafe faces a dusty square, across from the is a loud and extended affair. Max is one of church. You take a table outside in the shade the masters of the hunt. His house is filled of an old plane tree. The flat spring leaves with friends. He glistens with the pace and shuffle softly in a light breeze. Bikes and release of the event. Elizabeth tells you the mopeds lean against the mottled trunks of house is always cold. She says it's the the trees. On the far side of the square, people goddamn stones. linger in front of the dark stone church. The Dinner lasts late. After midnight, you tell little girls look delicate in their Sunday Elizabeth your day playing hound-and-hare dresses. The farmboys look scrubbed, in the woods has wiped you out. Would she starched, and restless. You spend almost two excuse you? Elizabeth clucks your chin. "Bien hours over a plate of local cheeses, a bowl of sur, man copain." She busses Martine, asks fresh fruit, warm bread with good tough crust, when Martine is leaving for Grasse. Martine and two carafes of red country wine. When tells her two weeks. Upstairs, you ask Martine you walk across to the car, the families have what Grasse was about. She tells you her gone home to their Sunday dinners and the grandpa.rents have a house in Grasse. She square is empty. visits them every year. It is not important. On the road back to Paris, Martine tells you "C'est pas grave." She meant to tell you. she is making out her Christmas list. "I want you to give me a Norman farmboy." 'Til be back in the States." You and Martine leave the house after break­ "I keep forgetting," she says. "Tan.t pis." fast and drive out to the coast. "Comment?" Mont St. Michel is a sequence of slides. "Tough shit, sweetheart." You head across the straight strip of road that connects the mainland to the island. The place approaches, a jumbled pile on top of a Martine is running errands, getting ready for sandbar. You are disappointed. It looks like Grasse. You go shopping alone. You are the pictures in school books and travel bro­ ripped off, the street stinks, the bar-tabac is chures. You had expected more. closed because of a death in the family, the After dinner, Martine says she wants to groceries are heavy. Gaspard watches you climb the fortress. come in. He snorts. Before starting upstairs, "Now?" you tell him to chill out or you will kick his "Our night to howl." hairy ass across the river and into the Marais. Near the top, you discover a cloistered gar­ He emits a quick sneeze, turns and trots back den snuggled into a corner of one of the ram­ to the courtyard. parts. In the white light of a full moon, you can follow the coast of France for miles.

HILDT 33 You and Martine are tired. You have night­ is one couple inside, facing away from you. caps before turning in. Martine takes her glass The man is well-tended, with salt-and-pep­ out to the pantry. You excuse yourself, come per gray hair. The woman is Martine. It is not back a few minutes later. Martine asks, "What Martine, of course. Martine is in Grasse. She was that?" called night before last to tell you she will be "Something I forgot to tell Chagall on the back next week. This has happened to you way up." before. You recognize somebody from the "What?" back, you call, they turn, you apologize to a "I forgot to say goodnight." stranger. You order a beer and watch the Martine says she is worried about you and people going past on the sidewalk. Late after­ Chagall. noon sunlight filters through the new leaves. You tell her not to concern herself. "What The women look wonderful, so assured and we have is between us." contained, like gentle mysteries. You do not "I wish I felt more sure about you." notice the couple when they come outside "Me, too." onto the terrace. When you look up, they are out at the curb. The man gives the woman a quick kiss, then ducks into a taxi. As the cab While Martine is in Grasse, you come down pulls away from the curb, Martine waves. with the flu. A cold snap has hit the city and the wind off the river numbs. Madame Graf tells you to stay inside until your fever breaks. Cabana. Each day, she climbs the five flights to bring Jean-Paul asks when Martine gets back. You you a small tureen of hot soup. When you feel tell him next week. You feel you are stuck in better, you buy her a bunch of spring flowers a bad boulevard farce, popular in France, a and a glazed clay vase. bomb in the States. You sit at the far end of the bar. Lepere is perched behind you, study­ ing his ancient cash register. The famous American novelist has become a It is after hours, the clubs are closed. The Cabana regular. He comes in alone, leans kids in the back room are getting ready to go forward on the bar like a boxer in his corner, home. They come up front, settle their tab drinks Scotch. Pierre tells you he expatriated with Papa and go out, chattering like morn­ to Paris a couple of years ago and lives down ing birds. You hear them outside in the street, the block on Quai Bethune. One night, late, laughing, then they are gone. you talk to him. He is not unfriendly, you are Cabana is empty. The old man says an American. He asks about you, but will not goodnight. The frog lids have almost closed talk about himself or his work. He does talk down over his bulbous eyes. He shuffles out. about his wife, also American, tells you she Jean-Paul goes around shutting off the lights. has a drinking problem. He talks about He leaves the dirty glasses and crumpled women and men as abstractions. As the napkins where they are. Pierre will clean up rounds go down, he becomes the Hemingway when he comes in this afternoon. Jean-Paul joke, macho, vulnerable. Behind the tough takes a bottle of the house red from behind stance, he seems fragile and frightened. the bar, puts some paper cups in his jacket Drunkenly avuncular, he tells you to get it pocket, says, "Allons-y." down before you lose it and stay clear of the fucking sharks. When Pierre cuts him off, he pays up and goes out. You imagine him turn­ Rue le Regratier is still in shadow but it is ing up his collar and walking home in the starting to get light out. At the end of the rain. block, you and Jean-Paul cross the quai and walk down the ramp to river level. You settle onto the old stones. Soon the sun will come It is an impeccable spring day. Paris is post­ up behind you and burn the mist off the card perfect. You stop at Flore and luck into a water. Now there is only the gray softness table outside. While you are adjusting your and the quiet. chair, you look in through the window. There Jean-Paul pours two cups of wine. You talk

34 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW about what you have been doing. Jean-Paul asks questions about America. You ask about France, the French, and he tells you things You stop at the bar-tabac for coffee with warm you do not know. You tell Jean-Paul you lied, milk. You are surrounded by a confusion of that Martine is in Paris, you saw her in Flore morning voices, arguing, laughing, swapping with an older man. Jean-Paul says he guessed. stories about last night. Beyond the lace half­ He pours you a refill. He reminds you that curtains, steam condenses and runs in long you will be going back to America soon. trickles dow n the glass. You remember leav­ Martine will be staying here. He speaks as a ing the windows open in the apartment. The friend. He says you have finished college, place will be cold when you get back. You now maybe you will start to learn. You are finish your coffee, push through the crowd, lucky. You are young and you have the ad­ go out. vantage. Also, you are a big jerk. He tells you The island is a wake now. People pass, mov­ not to worry about something you do not ing in the direction of the bridges, headed off know. He shrugs. He says he is embarassed to to work in the city. You start down Quai talk like a guru, un savant. Martine will b e d' Anjou, walking on the river side. First sun back from Grasse when she gets back. warms the fronts of the houses. The river is The mist is lifting. Across the channel, a calm, like dull slate. On the far bank, moored dust gray cat watches you from the embank­ barges are coming to life. A burly woman ment of lie de Ia Cite. Jean-Paul looks back heaves up out of a cabin, hauls out a flat of and growls softly, a low warning growl. You potted geraniums and sets the plants on deck wait for him to start barking. Instead, h e in the sun. A couple of kids play tag in the sticks out his tongue. The cat cocks its head. cramped stern. A mutt is curled up, asleep on Jean-Paul tells you Paris is a city of cats. You top of the cabin. tell Jean-Paul you think cats suck. Gaspard stretch es in the back shadows and "Vraiment?" comes across the stone walk to greet you . He has decided to be friendly, a new tactic. He rubs against your leg and you can feel the Le clochard. rattle of his purr. Inside, you hear Madame He looks like Victor Hugo on the skids. He Graf sin ging as she bangs the pots and china is very old, but there is accumulated stren gth in h er kitchen, making breakfast. in his face . He has a white beard, like Hugo, but it is knotted and matted with particles and crumbs. His skin is like rubbed oak, deep­ "Hey go, Marc, how' s it hanging?" baked by the sun and dark with g round-in grime. You realize he was a young m an once, trim and fresh-scrubbed. Now he is worn, You let yourself into the sweet freshness of like the stones, and old as the river. You h ave the apartment. The front room is filled w ith seen him before. Last week, you and Jean­ sunlight. There is a n ote on the h all table, next Paul came down for a morning snort and the to the mail. You recognize Madame Graf's old man shambled over from the base of the hand writing, the careful, angular script of footbrid ge to cadge a wake-up cup. He recog­ French sch oolgirls. She greets you , trusts you nizes you and is back. Jean-Paul pours out are well, asks when you will be leaving. The some wine. Hugo nods, moves a few feet owner has telephoned and would like to know away and sits at the ed ge of the river, facing when you decide. There is no hurry, of course. across the water at the hind end of the ca the­ She, Madame G raf, would be h appy if you dral. stayed. Would you do h er the kindness to Jean-Paul says he wants to get home b efore reply at your convenience. Sh e thanks you his little girl leaves for school. You h ave and, once again, trusts you are well. achieved a significant wine buzz and are ready You go hollow inside. Lines are being cut. to turn in. Jean-Paul gives what is left of the You will be going home soon. When Jean ­ wine totheclochard. You walk Jean-Paul back Paul said you would be going back to America, to his car, say good morning, and start across you resented the idea, the fact that he a nd the the island. others would still be here after you left. You

HILDT 35 have achieved squatter's rights, staked claims. bed , lean back. She does not wake up. Her You ta ke the mail into the front room. It is not easy breathing lulls, reassures. You take in cold. You notice the windows have been her familiar, d elicate fragrance. Reaching closed. Either Madame G raf closed them or across, you give her s houlder a soft kiss, then you did not open them. You take off your turn on your side, your back to her. You face clothes and leave them in a pile on the church the window, look out at the rooftops. Some­ chair. You sit naked in a slab of sunlight and body is arguing down in the courtyard. go through the mail. A note from Elizabeth Martine shifts in her sleep behind you. Her invites you to N euilly for a quiet evening to breathing shifts, too. You lis ten while she celebrate Martine's return from Grasse. Let­ stretches awake. "Howdy, s tranger," she says, ters from the States ask when you are coming a sleep y drawl. "Where y' all been?" You tell b ack . The Voice of America wants to know . her, "Cabano." Martine rests against your why you don' t stay. The squash team beat back, brings her arm around your chest. She Kent and they have disbanded The Driving whispers at the back of your neck. "1 brought Stupid. you a present from Grasse." [] You go back to the b edroom. The old floor feels good under your bare feet. The window in the bedroom is open wide. Martine is back. Robert Hildt's short f iction ha s appeared in Chelsea, Fi c­ She is sprawled across the bed, asleep in a ti on, North Atlantic Review, and Other Voices. He lives in N ew York City. ta ngle of sheets. You settle carefully onto the

36 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Stanley H . Barkan

UNDER THE WILLIAMSBURG BRIDGE (jar M enke Katz and Yussel Greenspan)

"People died not so much from hunger as from despair." -About the Great Depression

arging under B the Williamsburg Bridge -over the river of forgetfulness­ the stacks of bodies of the faceless dead on the way to potter's field .

Who knows them­ these strugglers against days without work nights without hope?

Even the masters of the sky-pricking towers are stretched out nameless picked from the waters of Babylon.

We sit and wonder under the Williamsburg Bridge, hatless, coatless, shivering in the wind and spray, mouth agape for apples and hard rolls purchased five for a nickel.

Between bites of bread and apple, we shout out poems for these passing piles laid out like heaps for dumps.

After the slashed-white wake, we startle at our selves reflected in the glass-black waves.

BARKAN 37 Claudio Rodriguez

SUNFLOWER

Translated by Elizabeth Gamble Miller

his pretty face, T this lap that was a flower and is so soon pregnant and I love it and now I pull it to me and its simple luminous revolution, its dance, that is a harvest, for the soul's sake comes into me this September afternoon, to my good fortune, because now, you, brave sunflower, with so blind a gaze, you were what I badly needed with your posture of pardon, after that sunny campaign of pride, head bowed to earth, conquered by so much grain, such a mad endeavor.

38 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Robert Clark Young

ARMENTROUT

rmentrout stood on the terrace, sixteen wash all twenty-seven windows, and mop all A floors up, his hands on the rail, and ten floors on his knees with a bucket and rag. looked out over the lights of Alexandria. His They lived on the best avenue of the city, a gaze moved along a million red and yellow street called Kafer Abdu, which, despite its Arabian lanterns, up and down the brilliant palatial consulates flying European flags, was arc of the Mediterranean, across the silver still Egypt, was still piled with garbage and streaks of light in the harbor, over the blue roamed by goats and horse-drawn carts and diamond of Fort Keyt Bey, down the golden yellow starving dogs. Across the street, two lights of Avenue Horreya, and onto the faint doors down, stood one of Alexandria's ten pearly lights of the Nile delta-a fist in the thousand mosques. It was a small, neighbor­ sea, twenty miles away. All of it pleased him, hood version, no minarets-except for the pleased him down to his hands on the rail, stained glass, it could have been a post office. pleased him in a way that filled his chest. The Kafer Abdu Mosque possessed, however, He was at the Sheraton-Montazah Hotel­ one of ten thousand loudspeakers, and five had just returned a group of Australian tour­ times a day the nasally amplified call to prayer ists to their rooms-had decided to go up, came exploding through the windows, open afterwards, to the observation patio on the or shut. sixteenth floor. The best view of the city. There was another Alexandria, one which He felt eyes on his back. Crazy: His happi­ interested Armentrout and his clients more ness fell out of his chest and tumbled down than the Arab city. This more-interesting city the side of the building, and he thought he was altogether different-no mosques or could hear it bounce off a moving taxi and die goats or peeling British mansions-the city of under another's tires. It was only the sounds interest had been dead for fifteen hundred of the city-he knew that-just as he knew he years, was Greek, with columned avenues would turn and find nothing, no one behind and Pia tonic scholars and a famous library. him. But he believed it was there! He felt the He could stand at the corner of Nebi Danyel thing, and for a long, paralyzed moment he and Horreya and cross the centuries in his was terrified. It was a creeping horror from mind. These streets, intersecting for 2300 an Egyptian cave. years, had formed the Times Square of west­ ern history, culture and thought, had bor­ * * * dered the famous Mouseion and its library. Armentrout had stood- how many times?­ He had been living in Alexandria, with at that corner, blocking out the hundred rac­ Nancy, for seven weeks. For fifty dollars a ing black-and-orange taxis, their horns, the week, they rented the top floor of a three­ masses of white-robed men and black-robed story house on consular row. Ten rooms women, the concrete and the asphalt, the rusty were theirs, done in French-diplomat, with semaphore nobody heeded. He would con­ mahogany desks and gilded chairs and heavy centrate on the rise of Nebi Danyel as it went chandeliers and baroque couches and a sag­ north: No one had ever excavated here, but ging, canary-yellow, canopy bed. For twelve there was a definite rise, there was something dollars a week a huge Arab woman, Mrs. there, under a million ignorant feet. Was it Habeel, cooked their meals and did the laun­ the ruins of the library? Or the lost tomb of dry. For another five her nephew, Ekram, Alexander the Great? came in on Thursdays to dust all ten rooms, Armentrout would close his eyes, cover his beat all nine rugs on one of three balconies, ears, and listen for the footsteps and quiet

YOUNG 39 talk of Apollonius of Rhodes, Callimachus frightened now than she had been, lay awake and Theocri tus, Eratosthenes and for an hour. Archimedes. They were dust, and their lost When he was five and six and seven, Steve manuscripts were dust, under the asphalt of Armentrout used to dream of a creature with a congested third-world boulevard. a man's body and a dog's head. The dream But he enjoyed standing there. It had be­ was always the same. Hound Man would come, over seven weeks, more and more in­ come to him, arms extended, dog's head as teresting than any spot in his forgotten Ohio. lacquered as a black stone. Stevie was curi­ It didn' t matter what anyone thought of him ous, strangely not afraid, expectantly numb. here; he could be the generic American, Hound Man would pick him up and throw twenty-five years old, standing on a street him in the air, up, up, and Stevie would not comer. If someone were to ask him, in tenta­ come down-he would continue going up tive, awkward English, why he was standing until he woke up-sitting up. there, he could give an answer, and no one After a few months there was nothing. star­ would call him any of those words he had tling or frightening about it ... an odd but been called in high school, or even college, no routine experience ... he would go back to one would make him feel stunted, unnatural, sleep without effort. too bright. One day he mentioned the dream to a group He had always been Armentrout, never of neighborhood children. Steve. They had addressed him by his last "Yes, yes," said a nine-year-old girl, " that's name for so long that he, for years now, had Hound Man." thought of himself as Armentrout. "Who's Hound Man?" Armentrout. It was better than anything "Everybody dreams about Hound Man. He else they had called him. And now they were throws you up high, over the clouds. It's half a life and half a world away. He had fun." finally found a place where he would never The dreams stopped before he was ten. One have to think of them again. He was a guide­ afternoon, at the age of twelve, he was sitting Nancy was, too-for Hercules Tours Interna­ in a seventh-grade history class, turning a tional, and the clients listened carefully to, page in the fat textbook. There, in color, was were seriously interested in, the little por­ a gold statue of Hound Man. The caption tions of history and literature and philoso­ read "ANUBIS-EGYPTIAN GOD OF THE phy he spoke to them among Egyptian ruins. DEAD." He liked the tourists; wealthy, well-edu­ He experienced a bone-knocking terror: his cated Europeans, mostly. They would never jaw felt as though it had locked, and his knees call him a nerd. banged up loudly on the underside of the desk. * * * He knew then. The next time he dreamt of Hound Man-Anubis- he would not wake One night, in the canopy bed, Nancy had up. clutched him so fiercely he a woke in an in­ He never told Nancy that he had had dreams stant. similar to the one she'd told him about; it "What's wrong?" would frighten her, he was sure. After a few She was trembling against him. "I had a days he forgot her nightmare. A month went nightmare." by. And then, this afternoon-on the day he "It's okay," he said sleepily, and stroked had finished by going up to the sixteenth her hair. He began to drift back to sleep as floor of the Sheraton-Montazah to look at the she told the dream, but then she came to a city lights, to try to forget, only to feel it on point that jolted him awake again, jolted him his back again-it had all come back with a harder than her arms had a minute ago. terrifying intensity. "He had a body and shoulders like a man, Hercules had added a new stop on its Alex­ and a head like a dog-he was eight feet tall andrine Tour. These were the catacombs at and he was coming for me-l woke up." Kam-el-Shuqqafa. To prepare himself, he had Talking about it calmed her, and she fell read E. M. Forster's description of the fa­ asleep in his arms while Armentrout, more mous caves, and made a preliminary visit

40 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW with an Arab guide. He felt ready. He went thing in the cave. Twenty minutes later, when down with a group of Australians; he showed the Australians came to find him, he was them the banquet cavern, where the Romans walking in an anxious circle, kicking at stones, had stretched out on pillows to enjoy their his heart still pounding stupidly. funereal feasts; he showed them the empty That night, when Nancy called from Cairo­ crypts, the three rooms with long cool hol­ she was with a group of Belgians-he said lows in the walls, long ago robbed clean; he nothing about Anubis. The ten-room apart­ showed them the small hole in the ceiling, ment felt twice as big without her. After where the wheel of a donkey cart had broken heating the chicken and pot a toes Mrs. Ha beel through in 1915, bringing the catacombs into had left, after eating at the head of the table in the twentieth century; he showed them the the formal dining room, in the semi-dark with great pile of bones the Egyptian government candles, he had gone to the French parlor, at had put behind glass, bones of Romans mixed the far end of the house, with the Mid-East hopelessly with bones of North African edition of Newsweek. horses- men and stallions had been buried An apartment this large had its creaks, its together-no one knew why; he led his tour­ false footsteps, but before tonight they had ists further down, until they were walking on never bothered him. Tonight there were grem­ sagging planks, for the floor was covered lins up in every comer, armies of sprites in with water. the kitchen-annoyed at his anxiety, he shut And then he had brought them to the cen­ the double doors of the parlor. One of them terpiece, a huge, alabaster-colored sarcopha­ was crookedly set, and it-slowly, silently gus. It lay in its own crypt, a room exquis­ opened as he read. He watched it peripher­ itely carved from the rock, with hieroglyphic ally, disturbed, disgusted with himself. Fi­ friezes on the walls, Romanized pharaohs­ nally he rose to shut it again. in togas-carved into the entablature, and He paused in the doorway, looking across classical pillars to either side of the entrance. the apartment, which was dark. He could see "Two hundred A.D.," he explained, his about eighty feet to the opposite end, into voice echoing against the rock walls, and Nancy's dressing room. The mirror over her gave them the details of the chamber's com­ vanity was reflecting the light from the French position, inscriptions, and ritual use. The parlor-the mirror appeared to be floating in Australians nodded soberly, perhaps begin­ the dark, a smoky baroque shape, ghostly ning to feel the squall of their Egyptian silver. It appeared, almost, to be emitting the lunches, and turned for the next cavern. light, rather than reflecting it. This upset He was the last out, and that was when he Armentrout. had come nose-to-nose with it-he had missed He turned, then stopped. It was with him. it in Forster, had missed it with the Arab Its eyes and heat were there in the dark, guide-it stood against the far side of a pil­ behind him. He could hear it breathing. It lar-it was a three-dimensional carving of was living in his house-had always lived in Anubis, Hound Man, the horror from dreams, his house, always would, but now it had jutting from the stone with square human materialized-he was afraid to look. He knew shoulders and a life-size jackal's head, a dog­ it was an eight-foot man with immense shoul­ gish nightmare deep down in an ancient cata­ ders and the black pointed face of a dog. He comb, one large eye looking directly into his. felt fear on his skin like a moving scarab. At He had run up the 247 hand-carved steps, the same time, he was almost hysterically forgetting the Australians, up into sunlight, angry-at the insolence of the monster, its the circle of tenements like black warehouses, creeping invasion, its stupid childish hiding. multi-colored laundry flapping from the con- Of course when he finally turned there was crete balconies .. . the braying loudspeakers nothing there, nothing but a lit mirror float­ of a mosque . . . the late afternoon moon like ing in the dark. a skull with grey sockets. He thought his His mind was useless. He felt as lost and heart would erupt from his chest and fall to confused as the boy Alexander, who had the rocky ground, a red hopping frog. He struggled to comprehend Aristotle. The ques­ stood with his hands on his knees as he caught tions of life, of existence, seemed infinitely his breath and thought shudderingly of the more mysterious, to Armentrout now, than

YOUNG 41 any treatise of the Greek School. Northwood-where had he heard the name? Why, for instance, after majoring in phi­ Hadn't Northwood been at the Dayton semi­ losophy at the University of Cincinnati, had nar? Wasn' t he an angular and officious­ he gone to work in a travel agency? Why had looking travel agent with gold glasses and a he stayed at the job until he was twenty-five, gold tie clip? Didn't he actually wear gold suffering four enervating years behind a cufflinks and have an office in Shaker Heights, phone bank and a computer? Why, when the and send wealthy Ohioans on tours to agency had finally offered him the opportu­ Scandinavia and the Bahamas? And when nity to travel, had they sent him all of sev­ Armentrout had been in Minneapolis, trudg­ enty-two miles, to a tour-marketing seminar ing through an ice storm on his way to work­ in Dayton? Why, while there, had he met and shops-"Ice Fishing for Large Groups" and fallen in love with Nancy, why had he taken "Is Your Convention too Conventional?"­ her back to Cincinnati and why, only a month Nancy had flown to Bermuda, for the week­ later, had they accepted jobs with Hercules end, with Dennis Northwood. She had gone Tours International, and gone to live in Alex­ there and she- andria, Egypt? When he could read no further, he lay the And then he thought, senselessly and fright­ notebook carefully on the pile of underwear fully, I've come here to die. and brochures. He felt as though an animal had been rooting fiercely in his stomach, had * * * left him aching and hollow. He walked dazedly back to the telephone. On a Saturday morning, the gold French He took up the receiver and looked at it for a telephone rang in the apartment, and moment. Then he laid it gently in its cradle. Armentrout picked up the receiver. It was Nancy, calling from the police station. A Ger­ * * * man tourist had been mugged in an ocean of people in Saad Zaghloul Square; the man had He went for an aimless walk, and in the lost his wallet and passport. Could streets of Alexandria his feelings came back Armentrout look in her spiral notebook-she to him. He felt lost, bewildered. His life had believed it was sitting on her vanity-and been obliterated, had been revealed as a sum find the name and home number of the Ger­ of zero. All the things he had enjoyed-the man ambassador? She had scrawled them luxurious apartment, the parties at the Ameri­ hurriedly in a margin, she said, two weeks can Consulate, the cocktails with fellow ex­ ago at a party at the Uruguayan Consulate. patriates at the Windsor Palace Hotel, Nancy "Hang on," he said and went to look. Her stretching smoothly toward him in the dark, vanity was a mess-bras, perfume bottles, pressing her hot mouth and body on top of hotel brochures, any number of tattered spi­ him-now it was nothing. He walked along ral notebooks. He smiled at one of their the crooked streets, past tin-roof shops with differences: he had a large office next to the naked sheep hanging on hooks, past wooden French parlor, with two immaculate ma­ stands proffering amoebic lettuce or fish dried hogany desks and-after only seven weeks- to the consistency of bark, past the tiled sym­ 1 09 file folders alphabetized in three draw­ metry and pointed minaret of a great mosque, ers. He grabbed the first notebook he saw past men in dirty white robes and women in and quickly began to flip through it. head-toctoe black. He felt followed. He turned, It was her diary. He hadn't known she kept but saw only a meter-square portrait of Presi­ one. Here were their lives, set down in blue dent Mubarek. Again he felt followed, turned ink on lined paper. His eyes fell like magnets and found only a grey, urinating dog. Once on the words, and he read quickly here and more he felt followed, but was afraid to turn: there, ashamed of himself and aware of her he had the idea that the dog was standing on waiting on the phone in the other room. its hind legs, shoulders square, face pointed He was reading about the weekend he had and serious-walking behind him like a man. gone to Minneapolis for the Winter Vacation Seminar. Nancy had driven up to Cleveland­ * * * he was learning this only now-to see Dennis There were many lonely pillars and col-

42 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW umns in Alexandria. He had seen them stand­ board, carved from ancient rock, surrounded ing singly, inexplicably, in the yards of French by a chain-link fence, by brown tenements, colonial mansions, or lying like immense for­ but it was still imposing on its knob of a hili­ gotten bones between the tenements, or slant­ a seventeen-hundred-year-old shaft going ing out of yellow earth which had been, ten straight up, ending in the sky. If you could centuries ago, moving mud. It was as though climb to its flat-corniced top, you would see the hands of God had descended upon the the whole city. classical city, gathered up the columns of its "Is tall," said Unter, looking too hot in his palaces and temples and pillared avenues, three-piece suit, getting his shoes dusty as he shaken the columns as though they were the strode around the immense blocks of the urim and thummim, then sent them scatter­ pillar's base. "The man who builds this is a­ ing across the ruins of the old metropolis. is a Genie-Genie-" He looked up and down He was riding with Unter Leichtenstiener, the pillar for the English equivalent. a Swiss tourist, in the back seat of a taxi, on "A jinni? You mean, like from Aladdin's the way to Porn pey' s Pillar. U n ter claimed to lamp?" have brain cancer, but he was tall and strong "Nein, nein. Not Aladdin. A Genie. How and blond-he did not look ill. do you say in English? A man like me. A man "The Arabs is stupid people," Unter had who is more intelligent than others." said at their first meeting. "They find a piece "What, a genius?" of papyrus, they wrap a fish in it. Ja, is so." "Ja, ja, a yeenius." It was unfair to resent the Arabs, Armentrout walked away a short distance, Armentrout thought as he and Unter rode foregoing the tour monologue. He did not wordlessly in the taxi. The Arabs had con­ approve of self-appointed geniuses; he would quered the rubble of Alexandria in 642 A.D., keep the pillar's history to himself. He looked had changed the name to El Iskandreya, had back at Unter, who was angling his squat­ built mosques over the ruins of the library, potato nose in the air as he appraised the had treated the stray columns as though they ancient column. He was looking at it, were meaningless stones. But hadn't the Armentrout thought, as though history had French and British been worse? They had recorded that Unter Leichtenstiener had built carted pillars, statues, mummies and gold to Pompey's P~llar, Unter Leichtenstiener in a Paris and London. At least the Arabs had left different life, when he was an Egyptian engi­ everything intact, under the ground-they neer. had failed to molest, in thirteen hundred Armentrout reached down and picked up a years, the dozens of columns which lay along toe-sized piece of clay. The red-brown frag­ the ancient streets. ments were tangled everywhere in the short The most famous pillar in Alexandria was knotty grass; he always liked to pick up, when the only one which had been erected to stand here, one or two pieces to play with; some­ alone. Armentrout reviewed, for the fiftieth times they would be half-buried in the earth time, the tour monologue for Pompey's Pil­ and he would have to pry them out. Who lar. Third century A. D. Not built by Pompey knew what they were pieces of? The grass at all, but by Diocletian. Commemorating- was thick with them, and there were prob­ " We will go," said Unter, "to Kam-el­ ably thousands more in five feet of dirt, all Shuqqafa?" the scattered pieces of Roman and Greek and Armentrout's stomach tightened. He could Egyptian pots, bricks, tiles-the rubbish of not force himself to say, No way, there's a dog­ centuries. Occasionally he would find a white headed man waiting down there in that crypt for or blue fragment with part of a painted de­ me. Armentrout found himself saying, stu­ sign on it, red or black or yellow shapes, pidly, "I'm the tour guide." corners of color, rounded edges of a floral "Ja, but I am der client!" pattern, straight lines suggesting a grand, "Kam-el-Shuqqafa," said Armentrout, "has forgotten symmetry. He would walk for a been closed for repairs." while with the thing in his hand, in his pocket, then take it out and look at it again, one last * * * time, before throwing it as far as he could up Pompey's Pillar. It was the color of card- the hill.

YOUNG 43 Two millennia of d a ily life lay buried in inside him, a worm as brown as Egypt, and that hill, he knew-and under the city-an la rge enough to bend his intestines to its immense life which had been so thoroughly worming will. An en orm o us earthworm, the ground, mixed, and scattered by time that a slow muddy Nile, was m oving through him, thousand archeologists, working with a thou­ pressing on his bowels. What had he had for sand tweezers and a thousa nd bottles of glue lunch ? for a thousand years, would never be able to "Yes. There's one more thing on this hill to put toge ther more than a few daisies from a show you." clay jug. Walking back up toward the pillar, he felt He looked at the sm a 11 triang ular piece h e lig ht-head ed, almost dizzy. He had eaten the had just picked up. It was fl a t, thin, curved, stuffed grape leaves Mrs. Habeel had left in as tho ugh it h a d b een s hape d on the the refrigerator. There was a blue liquid poi­ craftsman's knee-th e method for roof tiles son with which she was supposed to wash all in the classical world. He held the piece on the vegetables; there were times, he. feared , his flat open palm; he w ondered at the two­ when she forgot. Even older than Egyptian thousand-year-old hand which had molded monuments were Egyptia n germs, bacteria it. The fragment was the color of mummy­ which had survived six thousand years of wrap, papyrus, the worn earthen steps lead­ civilization, and which could often survive ing down to the catacombs at Kam-el­ six hours of cooking. Shuqqafa. Everything in Egypt was a dusty "Also on this site," h e said, s peaking brow n, from the interior of the oldest burial throug h a rising veil of nausea, "are the base­ chamber to the exterior of the newest con­ m ent ruins of the last library of Alexandria. crete-block tenement. Not the large, famous on e, but the smaller The long artery of the land, which had on e which was set up here, above the city, snaked four thousand miles for forty million after the first one burned." years, the Nile, was brown. "Ja, I read books about this. Let us see!" The paper money, etch ed with tombs and He led Unter around the sid e of the hill. m onuments, was brown. Armentrout felt, all at once, solid as a horse. The desert road to Cairo opened a flat world Since his arrival, he could never tell about his of m erciless brown. stomach-he might be sick for a day, an hour, Everything looked ready to collapse into or only a few moments. brown dirt, yet everything was as sturdy as It was a large, square hole in the ground, the hard edge of clay h e held in his palm. He with a stairway, carved out of rock, leading pressed the curved under side of the tile down. "Hyapatia," he said as they went down, against his cheek. It was remarkably cool, "was the priestess who presided over this almost cold-at the touch, something moved last intellectual community. The manuscripts in his stomach. He felt an unexplainable re­ which had survived the fire at the first library vulsion. Shivering, h e fought back a spasm of were brought here, were kept in these nooks diarrhea. The clay fragment-he could not in the rock." He lay his hand in one of the unde rstand why-was suddenly the most nooks-there were a d ozen square holes in odious thing he had ever seen or touched, a the wall. "Of course, this was just the base­ thing which had died in agony twenty centu­ m ent; there was space for hundreds of papy­ ries ago, but which still carried the germs, the rus rolls in the building which stood above disease which had killed it- h e had rubbed it us." on his face!-he threw it as far as he could up Unter lay his hand in a nook. "Who has the hill, toward the pillar of Pompey. d estroyed this place?" The clay landed on hard bare ground, ten "In 415 A.D., Hyapatia was taken by a mob. feet from Unter. H e turned around. "Alexan­ They d estroyed the library and led h er dria," he said, "is very beautiful. It is a good through the streets, accusing her of pagan­ place for a man to die, for the reincarnation. ism. Finally they killed her-by stripping her This pillar is very nice. You will show me skin off with sea sh ells." other things?" "The Muslims do this?" Odd movements continued in Armentrout's "No, the Christians." stomach. He felt as thoug h a worm slithered Unter clasped his hands. "Be always aware

44 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW ofdas christlich people," he told Armentrout. tiona! edition of Time under an arm, as a "They have destroyed the Zivilisation in m any protective male with an arm around Nan cy in places. They have cut all the h ead s from the the back seat, as an impatient American with statues in Egypt, in Griechenland-" an arm hanging out the window. Now he "G reece." rode with his arms crossed over his stomach, "-and many other countries. They m ake his h ead lolling. In his n au sea, he wondered war against the intellectualism. It is also true that h e could be so many people. in America. I have wrote many books about "Your stomach is not so strong," said Unter. this subjec t, I will give them to you." "You have never lived in Egypt? Before?" Armentrout frowned. Nancy was a Chris­ "Course not." tian, an Episcopalian. He couldn' t understand "My stomach is very strong-in past lives, how someone who called herself a Christian, I have lived in Egypt many times. My cancer who claimed to love him, could have been is in the h ead , not the stomach. My hea d is this cruel and calculating, could have gone to not so strong . You are the opposite. The head Bermuda with Dennis Northwood, something is strong, but the s tomach is t schwach­ which she must have known would wound schwach-" H e looked out the side window, him terribly if he found o ut. out the front window, for the word. A hot-and-sour nausea rose from his stom­ "You are schwach," Unter said finally. ach, making his head warm and dizzy, his "I feel schwach. That's the perfect word." hands and fe et tingly, then he was on his The pain stuck to his stomach like a bloated knees. "Oh Jesus," he said, fighting the waves tapeworm, a n aching weight too large to pass from below, but they ripped up through him, from below, too spongy to erupt from above. and he sat there vomiting with his hands on He thought he would carry it forever; he his thighs. In horror, he imagined h e must be thought his face and forehead and eyes would splattering Unter' s trousers. Two, three, four burn forever; he thought the cab would rock waves. and slam and skitter forever. Out its greasy "Mein Gott!" windows, a world of crumbling European "Oh my God," said Armentrout. ''I'm towers fluttered and swayed, the colonial sorry." Vomiting had not relieved him; he world collapsing onto the heap of the Roman felt as though a serpent lay bunched in his world, which had collapsed upo n the heap of stomach, stretching and writhing, wanting a the Hellenic, which had collapsed upon all way out. the forgotten worlds preceding it. The world "You have been drinking?" said Unter. was falling; he was falling. Only the drone of "I have been eating." the mosques, beginning now across the city, "Ah, you are sick. You have the sickness of mixed with the whirling-dervish music of the Egypt." taxi's radio, spoke an ancient living tong ue. "Yes." He thought he would throw up again, and "We will go to Kam-el-Shuqqafa," said placed an unsure hand on the window crank. Unter, "one other day." He was sure the world was spinning a hun­ dred times faster than normal, that he was * * * dying. "You are white," said Unter, "like paper." He was propelled, slammed, rocked, car­ Unter filled a lot of space in the back seat, legs ried gracefully, sometimes lulled in slow traf­ out, an arm out the window and another on fic by the taxis, the dusty black-and-yellow the back rest, shoulders and hips bulging in Fiats, which took him from one appointment the three-piece suit-even his face seemed to the next. The next, today, was with the bed wider than usual, all eyes and nose and teeth, on the third floor of the apartment house on a great smile. Kafer Abdu Street, a target seven crooked Armentrout said, "I'm glad you're enter­ miles from Pompey's Pillar. His legs and arms tained." were tingly and weak, his forehead wet, as "I have never become sick in other coun­ Unter helped him into the cab. tries. I am strong! I have strongness from my On other days, Armentrout had ridden as a many lifetimes." hurried well-dressed man with the interna- He was hating Unter like a wounded lion

YOUNG 45 hates the man stalking it. "Would you like the second floor, would com e running out to some stuffed grape leaves? The ones that find him kneeling in his vomit, so he picked made me sick? We have a few at home." himself up with shaking arms and legs and "I will eat them all!" continued up the stairs, a desperate grip on The weight in his head was growing heavier the handrail. than the one in his stomach. He shivered; his At last-the square mahogany door which head was a hot balloon, light and expanding, signaled wealth-imported from Brazil to making the rest of him feel cold and insub­ treeless Egypt- stantial. He twisted his fists into his eye sock­ He found the other key, threw the door ets. The world was black and red, black and open, ran through seven rooms to the bath­ red, empty of all but a feverish head and a room, where he fell before the toilet, releas­ lumbering stomach, the music, the car horns, ing the weight h e had carried from Pompey's the lurching. Would they never arrive! He Pillar. said nothing the rest of the way. The taxi glided into the shade at #32, Kafer * * * Abdu. Armentrout opened his eyes, relieved to see the twin date trees standing beside the The seas continued to toss in his stomach, iron-rod door of the walled garden. He but the expanse of the canopy bed was a reached into his pocket, but Unter was al­ larger sea, a welcoming ocean of lace and ready handing the driver a twenty-pound satin, with many warm eddies into which he note. could stretch his shivering limbs. Crawling "That's twenty times too much," into bed , h e shut his burning eyes, cooled his Armentrout said. "You'll never get change." forehead a gainst the pillow, and disappeared "It is okay. Come, I will help you." beneath the firestorm of fever blazing through "No need, " he said, though he doubted he his mind. could crawl out of the cab. "I'm not like you, He slept a long while. I'm not dying. He popped the door open, In the darkness, in the void of time, cool stepped out, went around the back of the cab hands came toward him. They moved over with his hands on the trunk. He was dizzy his chest and down his side. He awoke, turn­ with fe ver. Before Unter could suggest any­ ing in their direction. thing, Armentrout reached the driver' s open "Nancy." w indow and to ld him, "El ragel-Hotel "M1nm," she said. Cecil-alatool!" For a moment he was aware "What time is it?" The room was dark and of Unter' s protesting face, a grey skull behind cool .. . a window was open .. . soft Arabic glass, sputtering helpless German as the taxi voices from the apartments across the alley clattered away. Trembling, h e found the key in his pocket, "Eleven -thirty. I went to the reception at unlocked the iron door, and passed quickly the Swedish Consulate. Odvarssen invited through the cool, green garden with its round me. They wanted you, too, but I called and foot-stones, into the doorless foyer, up the there was no answer. I think there' s some­ stairs. He was sure he would faint, crack his thing wrong with this goddam Egyptian h ead on the steps. His sudden activity, com­ phone again. This morning, we were cut off." ing after fifteen sedentary minutes in the taxi, Odvarssen ... a h yes, the Swed es. H ad had dislodged pools, la kes, oceans of rebel­ there been a telephone ringing in his limbo? lion in his stomach, arid a storm of nausea "Were you out late," she said, "with your exploded upward, hot and numbing and be­ German?" yond control. He ran up the stairs vomiting "He's not German- h e ' s Swiss." into his hands; he tripped, landing on his Armentrout was fully back in the world again, elbows. and feeling, again, the hot storm in his head, "Nancy!" he called from the second-floor the painful w eight in his stomach. "I got sick landing . But no- she had taken a group of and came home early." Swedes to the Roman Amphitheater, would "Sick? What kind of sick?" She moved not be home till la te afternoon. He was afraid away, an arm coming up between them, cov­ the Echegarays, the Spanish couple who had ering h er face. Sh e had a fear of contagion,

46 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW would keep him beyond the sneeze-range duplica ted and echoed dozen s of times. whenever he had a cold. Nancy had learned to sleep through it; the "Did Mrs. Habeel disinfect the g rape voices always woke him. H e did not know leaves?" what the words meant, but recognized the Moving close again: "I had a whole plate­ five daily intrusions as a powerful manifesta­ ful. I didn't get sick." tion of God-the idea of God-of p eople's "Well, it must be something else. Or you're common condition, their plight, their mortal­ stronger than me." ity. He felt this especially a t four in the She moved a hand across his chest. "Poor morning; he felt it especially now, with his Steve." She embraced him and he shivered guts in a tangle a nd his head n o more rested , from fever. Her arms felt strong. "I wonder after twelve hours oJ sleep , than a cabbage what you ate." which had been kicked to pieces, then left in "Nothing dangerous." a summer field to burn and rot. "I wonder what's the matter, then." He no longer thought of, no longer blamed , "I'm dying, that's the matter." the g rape leaves-pain had no logic- the She moved away again. "Don't exagger­ amplified voices were m eant for him, w ere ate." Even in the dark, he could make out the talking to him, were corning for him-he could straight edges of annoyance on her round believe this at four in the morning. face . There were other things he could b elieve: Th ey lay there, on their backs, silent, for a there was something m oving in the house, in few sullen moments. His stomach was an the faraway kitchen, in the dark rooms sur­ aching ball, his head hot coal, his tongue a rounding him, in the la rge blackness between dry wad of paper. In his pain, in the dark, in the French parlor and the bedroom door, his odd loneliness, he thought of h er as a which was open. The thing moved without stranger, and he was awed. It was impossible footsteps. It glided through the seamless that the Nancy lying next to him could b e the night, opening, he imagined, a cold path sam e woman with brown hair, blue sweater, through the air. In the kitchen , where the soft round hips in a scotch skirt, whom he thing moved among the poison o us pots, it loved. That was another person, a woman he had a d evil' s tail which clacked and pinged had invented, a woman he had seen a long against the metal; wafting through the dining tim e ago- no, not that long ago, but a long room, the thing had a d emon's reptilian wings; time all the same-at a to urism convention in walking on air into the black square of the Dayton, Ohio. What did he know about her? bedroom door, it was upright, tall, silent, What she looked like, what h er passport said, with eyes which would have glowed a dog­ the feel of her hands on him in bed . Now, as gish yellow, he was certa in, if h e were to look he lay there, even these superficial certainties there too long. Fear was stronger than sick­ disappeared, and she could have been any­ ness- in his stomach, a rising yellow panic one lying beside him in the dark, another overwhelmed the purple knot of pain, and he woman, perhaps a man, someone h e could shut his eyes, furrowed beneath the blanke ts, not know or trust, who might reach out for and inched across the bed, which was sud­ him-yes-but with what intent? denly huge, toward the long, unknown, sleep­ ''I' m sorry," she said, "that you're sick," ing shape of a woman whose presence reas­ and snuggled against him again, an arm across sured him only in daylight. 0 his chest, a thigh across his legs.

* * * Robert Clark Young w as rece ntly nominated for a Pu shcart The four a.m. call to prayer woke him. Prize. His work ha s appeared in Black Wa rrior Re view, "Waaa l/ah , waaadahaa , waadfut!" Across the A WP C hro nicle, Buffalo Press, Onionhea d , San Diego city, the loudspeakers, including the unit Review, San D iego Magazine, and the Houston Post. He lives in Athens, Ohio. down the street, began the familiar chant,

YOUNG 47 Phyllis Sanchez Gussler

LACUNA

here are places in the river T where one can touch its thick tongue where one can feel the spread of its blood.

If you found yourself on this river in a small boat at night in winter you might pause at the way the water streams like tissue over the prow. At how the river, pushing its restraining walls, opens its warm mouth to you.

But the water which looks black is a deception caused by dwindling light.

When you lift your eyes from the river it is the snow slanting across a pane of light in a hotel window which seizes you.

Slowly, a man waltzes round his room, nude torso, hair combed back exposing his brow. His mouth moves without sound. Each gesture is light as a dried moth. You think: A world of perfect sensation.

48 NEW ORLEANS REV lEW He floats in and out of soft light, youthful, but as he turns from the shadows you see lines chained to the corners of his eyes. Turning again, you see the skin giving itself over to the skeleton, the song overspending its movements.

You turn away, you see yourself watching snow fall on the water. The river rises to receive it, crying like two knives.

You know one day you will lower your body into the current. Your hair will swirl until your mouth fills with the river and your limbs descend, spent.

Somewhere on the bank there is music, then a pause. Somewhere on the bottom a body matching yours exactly stirs the mud, extends its arms.

GUSSLER 49 Mark SaFranko

THE FOLLOWER

y name is Victor Jenson. I am a follower. behind for a few blocks. How could I be M Not in the conventional sense-that of blamed for needing amusement? My job had one who pursues fads or succumbs to the long ago gone stale. Moreover, Mitchell de­ pressures of a peer group but litera lly. Put manded-and continues to demand-a sti­ most simply, for there is no other way to put fling conformity: clean suits, pressed s ~irt s, it, I follow p eople. It is my true destiny in life, shined shoes. As far as he's concerned , we' re this furtive obsession, and I indulge it when­ all representatives of the Grand Eastern In­ ever possible. surance Company when we' re on the pre­ It is never difficult to find an object for my mises. He doesn't approve of socializing and attention since I live in the city. As soon as I shenanigans during working hours, either. set foot on the street, any street-Broadway, Such frivolities, in his eyes, are for that part Amsterdam, Houston-! have a veritable of the day when the company is not paying horde of diverse specimens to choose from. our salaries. Philosophically, I' m compelled At times I've been nearly paralyzed b y the to go along with him on these points, and I vast range of possibilities, while at others I covet my job because it allows me to support know at once- a p eculiar gait may catch m y myself in this most callously exp ensive of eye, or extraordinary beauty, or, perhaps, the cities, thus avoiding the fate of the army of unmistakable look of desperation. beggars on the streets. Yes, I elect to play by When I' m not engaged in this, my real vo­ the rules, suffocating thou gh they are . . . . cation, I work for a large life insurance com­ And there' s som ething else. When I get p any. M y office is on the East Side, not far home in the evenings, m y apartment is very from the river. All day long, from eight until quiet, that is, devoid of a human voice, and five, five days a week, fifty weeks out of the instead all I have are the sounds of bleating year, I sit behind a desk in a cubicle and car horns, and the ubiquitous police and am­ calculate the risks and rates of Grand Eastern bulance sirens. So that's how it all began, you Insurance Company policy-holders. I p erform see, as a n exus to life ... . my duties well, if I might put aside modesty for the moment, though it's not the most * * * stimula ting work. Rarely am I reprimanded by Mitchell, m y superior, for rarely do I com­ My wife-Karen was her name-left a long mit an error. They do occur, I admit-when time ago, thirteen years to be exact. We you're responsible for three hundred and fifty. weren't married for very long, only one year. Moriarty's," for instance, som ething is bound She was leaving, she told me near the end, to go wrong on occasion. But I' m still here, because I was "showing p eculiar sign s." I and after fifteen years, retain m y good sta nd­ n ever understood w ha t she meant by that, ing- and not once h av~ I not deserved my but she let slip tha t she saw what was com­ cost of living increment. ing-" ad ull existence, or something worse"­ and she wanted more, she believed that some­ * * * thing b etter was possible for h er. I don' t know w hat became of her. She took At first it was only a mild diversion: after everything she own ed, which was most of the bein g cooped up for eight or ten h ours and furnishings in our apartment, and moved out hardly speaking with anyone, it w as a relief before I returned h ome from the office one to stretch my cramped legs on Third. Av­ rainy autumn evening . Only her attorney enue, pick out a n interesting face, and trail showed up for the court proceedings.

50 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW That's when it really started in earnest. I days. We came together insouciantly and had to find something to do in order to fill the parted in the same fash ion, with-scarcely a void. At first I tried other things that I h oped thought for consequences. might turn the trick. I saw films. I read books. It all came to an end with Simone, h owever. Occasionally I visited a museum. But I dis­ I picked up h er scent on Forty-fourth Street covered that such diversions were not fulfill­ one spring afternoon after I left the office, ing, not fulfilling at all. In fact, they seemed and by the time we reached Columbus Av­ only to fuel the desire to be elsewhere. If I enue we'd s truck up a conversation. At her took in an exhibit of Zuni Indian artifacts, I place, w hich was som ewhere in the West Six­ longed for the Southwest. If I saw a film set ties, w e mauled each other, falling to the floor against the backdrop of Africa, I wanted Af­ in the process. I ad mit to being completely rica, and so on. It got so th a t I could hardly ta ken with h er aggressiveness, h er fearless­ concentrate on my work at the office. At ness with m y body, her raw d esire. I' d n ever times I still want to be som ewhere else, but had anyone like her before. not with the agony I once endured. I have But afterwards-afterward s when I had no only to wish now, and I a m where I want to stren g th for anything but leaving-sh e m e ta­ be- Algeria, Japan, Swed en- right here in morphosed into another being a ltogether. Her Manhattan. The fissu re between reality and black eyes were terrifying in the u gly d epths what exists solely in my mind h as closed . of their anger. Froth sprayed from her mouth . My imagination has won out, you see . ... Her t o n g u e s hot out like a venomo u s Parenthetically, I must add that this strange serpent' s. syndrome was the result of a deep-seated "Now that you got what you wanted, you ambivalence towards this, my native city. It think you ' re jus t going to walk away? No, was always so easy to abhor it, especially on I' m afraid n ot, Buster. Oh, I know your type, an unbearably h ot summe r day w h e n I and you 're n ot going to have it your way with boarded the 6 train for home. Just walking m e. I' ll hound you until you can ' t take it down those grimy steel a nd concrete steps to anymore, I'll blackm ail you, I' ll h ave your the platform in my satura ted clothes was tan­ manhood , tha t lousy, stinking little cock of tamount to descending into Hades. Watch­ yours . . . . " ing a homeless wom an vomit on a Ninth A v­ I ran for m y life . . . through the hall, down enue sidewalk put murder into my h eart. A the stairs, out to the street- sweating, gasp ­ tank-like rat propelling itself across Delancey in g for breath, with Simon e in hot p ursuit, Street in the early morning hours was enough threatening, imprecating me, commandin g to- m e to stop, begging for attention, until I lost Need I say more? Such are the actualities of h er som ewhere in the Times Square hurly­ this metropolis. Even now I make infrequent, burly . . . . quixotic vows to m yself- tha t one d ay I' ll It turned out tha t I was right to h ave given follow in Karen's footsteps, tha t I' ll pack up h er a false n am e. Even so, for a lon g time and move to another part of the country, afterward I kept m y eyes peeled for her, fear­ maybe even to Mexico-but it's just then that ful that she might single me out in a p ublic I come upon someone wonderful to follow, place when I least expected it. But I was and I realize anew that the city does indeed lucky. And also sm art . I learned m y lesson. offer its own singular rewards . ... * * * * * * . . . I can't recall when I last touch ed som e­ In the early d ays, things happened, espe­ on e. W omen look a t m e still, m en too, but I cially when I followed wom en. With any luck, don' t respond. I' m content in m y self-con ­ I would be noticed and invited into their structed cocoon. There are fewer com plica­ homes, which were mostly on the Upper East tion s this w ay: no risk of enta n glem ent, no Side. Something of a carnal na ture might or threat of the dreaded diseases. I am free, free might not occur, but all tha t is by the by now to recede into the shadows, into precious since I've forsworn sex altogether. I had the a n onymity. I am a t liberty to p a rtake in other pleasure of some beautiful creatures in those people's lives w ithout their know ing so much

SAFRANKO 51 as my name .... chased. I escaped my irate pursuer, a large, hirsute man in a dark suit, by dashing into * * * Central Park at Seventy-second Street and running helter-skelter through the brush un­ Scene: Summer. The rapid-fire flapping of til I shook him off .. . . pigeons' wings ... the screams of children at Shortly thereafter I switched to a miniature afternoon street-play ... a sickish, putrescent Pen tax Sport model-much less conspicuous. breeze wafting through the heavy atmosphere On certain auspicious days, when I'm not noticed at all, I can shoot up to two or three An elegant pin-striped suit, a swarthy man, rolls and take the seconds necessary to empty about forty, inside it, his head lowered in an the instrument and reload. I've become re­ attitude of determination, hurrying along markably adept at it, if I do say so myself.... First Avenue. Appears to be of Semitic ex­ What I've come to call the deeper process traction. He dabs at his forehead with a hand­ begins after the film is developed. I. spread kerchief. I fall quickly into step behind him, the snapshots over my work table and study and the chase is on .... them painstakingly through the magnifying It's an instinct, really, my method of selec­ glass. Those numbers which bear closer scru­ tion, the most pristine intuition, and of course tiny I order blown up, sometimes to as many I haven't the faintest notion where the subject as five times their original dimensions, and I will lead me. then fasten them to the cork board which In the above case, my pursuit terminated hangs on my bedroom wall. It's remarkable, abruptly and without incident at the man's what's discovered when the evidence is in­ automobile, a white BMW with diplomatic spected more closely-the scar on the wrist, tags, which was parked in a lot on Fortieth the incipient bald spot, the telltale tear in the Street, and I was left as usual to fill in the sleeve. All these fine details contribute in details on my own .. . . some way to our relationship, to our strength­ Moroccan, most likely. Longs for the Sahara, ening bond. It's vital to the process, you see the blue Mediterranean, the luculent magic of Tangier. Despises America from the bottom of his Of course, as in the case of the Moroccan, heart, its vulgarities, its demonic compulsion to most of my forays lead into dead-ends. The buy and sell, but is committed to the execution of quarry does nothing, say, but shop for hours his official duties. Left his wife and young chil­ in Macy' s, or sit at the bar and drink himself dren in Africa, and has succumbed only twice to into a stupor, or some other such prosaic illicit affairs in the year he's been billeted in New thing, so that very little of interest is revealed. York. Can't wait to be recalled to a post closer to But sometimes, when a peculiar ether suf­ home .... fuses the air, what happens can be momen­ But then again, maybe I'm way off the mark. tous. Maybe what I've got here is a Soviet double Let me relate one or two such occasions .... agent, a man whose life is suspended above the edge of a razor, whose every movement is * * * a lie, who would betray his own mother in order to reach the desired end ... . One magnificent October day not very long It will take some time for me to decide. ago I settled on a well-dressed, good-look­ ing, fiftyish woman as she left an office build­ * * * ing in Wall Street and walked in the direction of the Brooklyn Bridge. Call it a hunch, but I In most cases the photographs help. knew I was onto something out of the ordi­ For the first few years I used a Nikon EM, nary from the patrician but world-weary the smallest and most compact of the line, but manner in which she moved. I kept waiting even that became entirely too cumbersome for her to take a cab or meet a friend, but no, and obtrusive. I always aimed discreetly, of she made for the great span, and as she did so course, but on occasion I was found out, chas­ my pulse quickened-! believed I could read tised-in one case, near the Hungarian Con­ the exceptional intent evident in her every sulate on East Seventy-Fifth Street, even step. Halfway across the walk she stopped

52 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW and looked with wistful longing towards the name I ascribed to her-never wanted for a southern horizon. In my excitement and solitary thing in the material sense, but is shock, I was unable to prevent her from slip­ assailed periodically by fits of black despair, ping quietly and without hesitation over the which even her French fiance, Jean-Pierre, is cables into the abyss. A prize photograph of powerless to palliate. And, of course, so much mine, that poor soul in mid-flight. Naturally, more, secrets which I am constrained not to I never said a word to the police about what reveal .... I'd witnessed. It didn't surprise me in the I loved her for a long time, until I could no least to Jearn from the newspapers when her longer. I knew there was no hope, and she body was finally retrieved that she was the understood that too. But I was part of her life wife of a senior partner in one of the city's for at least a short while, and she was part of most prestigious Jaw firms. Hers must have mine. And that was enough. It is always best been a horribly barren existence .... to maintain one's distance, even during the More recently, in the spring of last year, I course of such a feast of intimacy. fell in love at first sight. I found her on Forty­ I was part of all their lives, even if they were second Street, leaving Grand Central Termi­ not aware of it. If one partner is unconscious nal, having just disembarked, probably, from of merging, does it follow that the merging a Connecticut train. She walked briskly, al­ hasn't taken place? No, I think not, even if lowing me to photograph her secretly for some cynical tongue calls it rape. So, you see, fifteen blocks, until she ducked into an it can't be said that I was unsatisfied, no, it unmarked building on Twenty-seventh Street. can't be said at all . .. . She must have been in her mid-to-late twen­ Call me insane if you like. I know better. ties, although she possessed a natural sophis­ tication which made her appear to be some­ what older. I don't know why I say this, II because I never saw her again, never spoke with her to get the facts. (Although I tried. I went back to that building again and again to But the great enemy Time gnaws its way find her, at all times of day and night, but through the entrails of contentment like a without success. Was it her one and only visit starving jackal, and one day a man awakens to that location?) She was in the full bloom of with the thought that what once brought him her beauty: tall, blonde, with strong, perfect happiness does no longer. Upon closer ex­ legs showing beneath a lightweight violet amination, this idea is an illusion. The truth outfit, and a statuesque-almost cold-bear­ is that it's taken years for a certain morbid ing. Ah yes, I repeated to myself, she has the attrition to become manifest, and only an right to such painful aloofness . . . . instant for lightning to strike and show it up. I hung all the pictures I took of her, every Yes, something was missing after all; I am last one. I'd caught her in mid-stride, her able to concede that now. At any rate, a new ring-less left hand thrust out before her as if hunger had lurched into existence inside me, she were reaching for something-and and it was not simply a craving for what I stopped at the curb, waiting for the light to understood I would never have- nor want. change, the man beside her staring at her face If I were obliged to put it into words, I would with scarcely-concealed desire-and my fa­ say that it was something ... beyond the ken vorite, when she paused to peer into the win­ of everyday life, something ultimate, that I dow of a shop which specialized in exotic was after. The voyage into outer space, the rugs. There was something about the beauty drug rush, the dive from the vaults of the of her face in profile . . . . I could not stop sky-that's what I needed. This isn't to say looking at that one-indeed I carried it with that I actively searched for such an experi­ me everywhere-for months afterward. ence, because the thought never crossed my I surmised, it goes without saying, the par­ mind. But the kernel was there just the same, ticulars of her entire history: Greenwich ... skulking beneath the surface, undiscovered, her father a stockbroker ... her mother de­ like a tumor about to erupt into savage malig­ ceased, a former dancer in the ballet, toured nancy. the world in her early years. Astarte-the Because, as the years wore on, I had become

SAFRANKO 53 so empty . ... click, click . ... I know that my explication is feeble, that it He led me all over the Village, up Jones falls short of the mark. Words are inadequate Street, down Cornelia, never stopping for until a need is perceived for what it is in its anything other than auto traffic. He kept up purest essence, until the floodgates of the such a steady pace in his meandering that I soul are thrown open. hesitated to stop for anything, even so much Until the great transformation is experi­ as a drink at a bodega, for fear I' d lose him. enced in all of its glory . ... Eventually I forgot that it was past my usual And that, finally, is what happened to me time for dinner. Along the way I had the opportunity to study him more closely. His clothes were * * * clean and fairly new, and his hair was neatly cut and styled, so I discounted him as one of The miracle began as nothing, less than the city's legion of hard-core bums. · In the nothing. (Of course the most profoundly sig­ main, he seemed to not take notice of the nificant events often begin in such fashion, stream of humanity which flowed continu­ quietly and without fanfare.) ally around him, but on the other hand paused I was strolling on Seventh A venue, down­ with curiosity whenever he encountered a town, on a warm evening near the end of this small child. At such times, he would turn his past June ... . head after the tyke, who was usually in the I don't remember what I was thinking about. presence of a parent, or at least someone Nothing, probably, my mind is often a com­ older, and stare, as if he were looking for plete blank. Then I had the idea of following someone in particular. When the child passed a body, but as I looked around, I saw no one out of sight, he would continue on his way, as remarkable enough to focus my attention on: if nothing were out of the ordinary .. . . the boulevard was filled with people I'd al­ He noticed me for the first time in SoHo, on ready followed and known. Old men, young Greene Street, after I'd followed him for more women, the freaks and outcasts-all of them than two hours and the sun had shifted far to seemed familiar, exhausted. I was about to the west, behind the tall buildings uptown. call it quits and turn for home when suddenly Nothing more than a glance, mind you, but I had an inspiration. Rather than rebel against his head came to a twitching stop-an almost circumstance, I would simply let my gaze imperceptible stop, granted-but I knew then wander where it might-preferably to the that he knew. most common type-and lapse easily into I sensed that his step quickened ever-so­ step behind him or her .... slightly, and that perhaps he was trying now He was about ninety feet away, leaning on to shake me off. Nevertheless, after all this the outdoor sill of a pizza stand, wiping his wandering up and down the twilit streets, mouth with a napkin, a man in his mid-for­ past art galleries, antique shops, chic restau­ ties, dressed in a blue velour, half-sleeve shirt rants, he ducked into a pub on Prince Street, and gray slacks. His slate-colored hair was stood at the long, uncrowded bar, and or­ spotted with white, and there was spare dered a beer from the tap. weight around his peasant-like trunk. On his I sat a few stools away and did the same, feet were new track shoes. being careful not to stare at him too overtly. Certainly I would not have picked him out Was he throwing a challenge into my face? under my standard routine. But there was a I evaluated him obliquely. The intelligent quality in his posture, an easy lack of imme­ eyes were tinged with melancholy-even de­ diate purpose which stood out upon tighter spair. The finely-chiseled nose and full lips scrutiny. When I pulled up next to him, I were somehow incongruous beneath the caught the otherworldliness in his hazel eyes, heavy black brows, but lent a regal quality to a condition that as far as I could tell did not the total effect of his bearing. seem to be drug-induced. He paid up. I tossed a few bills onto the bar I fell back a good ten paces. Surreptitiously and followed him out into the street. He I pulled the camera from my inside breast stopped on the pavement and looked swiftly pocket and began to shoot, click, click, click, in either direction.

54 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW He checked for m e over his left shoulder, door into the blackness. I waited, with m y then headed northwest, back towards the breath throttled in my windpipe. His figure Village. He moved even faster now, and I had evaporated , and when I stepped forward I to strain in order to keep up .. .. saw that h e'd left the d oor open for me. The madness of the hunt, the excitement of I was suddenly afraid, but I suppressed the the city-with its smells of rot and ludicrous thought that came next. Because I under­ sights and discordant sounds-was on me in stood that this m oment was the culmination all its fury. The camera thumped against m y of all that had come before, of the totality of ribs, out of rhythm with my pounding h eart, my life-tha t I must gather whatever courage recalling itself to me, but it was fa r too dark I possessed in order to follow through before for pictures now. All at once, nig ht ha d the opportunity passed. dropped its foggy shroud . .. . I took the steps one a t a time, slowly, cau ­ We arrived at the historic district of Green­ tiou sly, refusing to countenan ce the weari­ wich Village, near the Hudson, where I rarely ness in m y bones. As soon as I p assed into the ventured. Suddenly I felt the moorings slip. vestibule, I saw, shining like a beacon, a light The buildings all looked the sam e, a nd I wasn't at the crest of the long staircase. familiar with the names on the street sign s. He was standing up there, waiting, his arms He turned a corner sharply . .. the blue motionless at his sides. flourescent tube lights of a Caribbean eatery "Com e up," he inton ed softly, then h e sliced into the shadows . . . a toothless bum turned and disappeared again. hissed at me, d emanded money, called me a I obeyed. Reaching the apex, I looked to my foul name ... I jogged along, sucking for air, right. He was seated on a burgundy sofa in a and tracked my man down a n oth er street small parlor w hose contents-bookcase, tele­ which terminated at the silent black river. He vision, coffee table, knick-knacks, Tiffany passed beneath the ancient, corroded elevated lamp r eflecting warmly off th e window fac­ trestle, his head tilted toward the p avement, ing the street-suggested a n existence lived his shoulders squared as if he were battling a n ormally, predictably, comfortably . I let out storm. There were even fewer lights here, an involuntary sigh of relief. and in the d eepening obscurity I stumbled "Sit," h e whispered when I entered the over a broken slab of concrete .. .. room. I was stricken for the first time with a pow­ Th e door fell shut behind m e. I took an easy erful sense of dread. What if he never stopped chair a nd faced him. His arm s rested flac­ walking? I'd been following him for hours, cidly on his knees, his fingers interlocked in after all. I didn' t honestly know at this point a fleshy web. He looked at the floor when he how long I could keep up. Was he trying to opened his mouth to speak. simply wear me out? Did he have some idea "I always knew that one day someone would of what I wanted? catch up with m e. It was only a matter of And then, all at on ce- it was over. He time. W orkin g alon e as I h ave, in secret, the halted at the foot of a walk-up in the m eat­ strain h as been too much . It was bound to packing district, in the spray of light cast out happen." from a street lamp. He search ed m y eyes and shook his h ead He looked up at the building and pondered , with admiration. anxiously trying to make up his mind about "W h at mistake did I make? How d id you something. know?" He peered frantically u p a nd down the I could not answer, and h e repeated the street. Then he walked up the steps a nd second question, rhetorically. stopped again . He pulled the sleeve of his "You must be very good , the best there is," shirt across his foreh ead. He looked over his he stated matter-of-factly, all the w hile watch­ shoulder at me, smiled faintly, a nd nodded. ing m e with fascination. He indicated with a slight movement of his "I don't know," I said at last, truthfully. "I head that I should follow. After produ cing a just did it, that's all." ring of keys from h is pocket, h e threw open a He nodded w ith resignation. For what series of locks. seemed to be a long time, n either of us spoke. He twisted the knob and pushed the h eavy "I suppose I should sh ow you," h e said a t

SAFRANKO 55 length. He got up and retreated into a room that he'd followed me back to my apartment, at the rear of the flat. that he knew where I lived. I couldn't forget, Perspiration brimmed out of the pores of and I couldn' t bring myself to notify the au­ my scalp and rolled down the sides of my thorities. I was in a state of impotence, skull. My teeth began to chatter . Before I feelinglessness, half-deadness. could make up my mind to leave, his bulky I had no inclination, not the slightest urge, form reappeared. to follow anyone. In the street I saw nobody At first I could not comprehend what it was who attracted me, and, truthfully, I could he held in his hands, and as my brain went hardly look. What, after all, had following rapidly through its various calculations of done for me but lead me to the border of possibility, my impulse was to laugh. madness, the far reaches of sanity? But when he came closer . . . my hair stood The days stretched into weeks. My nerves straight up on end. tightened to the breaking point, even though The tiny polo shirt ... the little cap .. . the there was nothing, a complete void in my toddler's shorts ... . life-even less than before. I understood. I thought it out over and over, and came to I wagged my head like an idiot, then no conclusion, except for the nagging, struggled to my feet. Something rose up in unadmitted certitude that no one I might ever my stomach in feeble protest. follow in the days to come-for the re st of my He dropped the items of clothing onto the life-could bring me what the middle-aged coffee table and touched my forearm. man in the blue velour shirt and gray slacks "Where are you going?" he asked. had brought me on that balmy night at the "1-don' t-know .. .. " end of June ... . "You won't go to the police?" I choked on something I tried to say. * * * "I would give you a reason," he pleaded, "but I don't have one. It's something I have to After work one day at the beginning of do. I've been like this for so long. It must be, autumn I set out walking because of the ex­ that's all . . . . " ceptional fineness of the weather. There The longer I stood immobilized before him, seemed to be a new life in the people around the more confidence he seemed to gain: he me after the torpor of the long summer, and was beginning to understand that my inten­ somehow I, too, was infected with it. tion had not been to put him into harm' s way. I thought neither about what I was doing "You know, there was something about you nor where I was going, but I found myself . .. I thought I could trust you," he went on. ambulating in the direction of the Hudson, "Sometimes . . . sometimes I need help dis­ and gaining momentum as I went .. .. posing of things ... . " Then I was close, only a few blocks away. I At that I broke away and groped for the got dizzy. My knees went weak. I tried to door. I ripped it open and started down the stop myself, propel myself in the opposite stairs. direction, but my legs would only go back in From over my shoulder I heard him calling time to that one, supreme moment. out: I recognized the buildings now in the expir­ "You'll come back? You 'll come back, won't ing daylight. There was the Tiffany lamp in you? .. . ." the second-floor window, beneath a half-low­ ered shade, just as it was the first time .. . . * * * I climbed the steps and pushed the buzzer. Tingling with exhilaration now in every cell Days passed. I was unable to sleep, com­ of my being, I waited. Then, like some holy pletely unable to work, for the first time in gong, I heard the heavy footsteps on the stairs my life. I tried to force myself back into my routine, but the hard tactic was ineffective. I The door opened slowly. One icy eye peeked could not even bring myself to develop the out, and it gleamed with the victory of recog­ roll of Fujicolor in my camera .. . . nition. I didn' t know what to do. I was petrified He pulled the door in all the way, a broad

56 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW smile creasing his coarse, handsome features. He opened his arm s to m e in a gesture of Mark SaFranko has published a no vel, The Favor (1987, Aeg i11a Press), and short stories in th e fo ll owing magazines: paternal fealty. C ima rron Re view, Art Times, Pig lro n, The MacGuffin, "My friend," he said. "I knew you'd be back Seem s, Soundings East, Thin Ic e, Accent On Fi ctio n " (1989 best story), NRC, Mind ln Mo tion, Mark, and Ba ll He was right. The sky, the moon, the stars, State U niversity Forum. His plays have reg ularly been the world- everything was as it should be. see 11 in such Ne w York theaters as th e Sa muel Becket t, Harold Clu rman, and Rian t in rece 11t years. I'd waited a long time for this moment. D

SAFRANKO 57 Lucinda Roy

CARACOLE

n my garden, by the planted vegetables, I the snail's back carries the curve of the world; the patterns on babies' head; Yeats' causal

stairway; a million other claims for what we see .... She knows, this snail-her worm body inside secrets, signs, all appropriated-how she is, most utterly, a snail.

Yet I have learned there's no significance in DNA fingerprints, that a thing is as far removed from its symbol as a snail's inedible shell is from its tender succulence.

In my garden, the snails dance snotty networks across the crazy paving. On a good day, I twirl with them up and over, round and up, into the buried stars.

We have spent our centuries looking for the door at the top of the stairway, imposing manifestation on the simple things we see, making our words reverse back onto themselves with deeper meaning.

We have made the snail's dance. Really, she is sluggish. Underneath the broad leaves of tomatoes, by heady cucumbers, ghastly squash, in slower motion, she squats and squats and squats.

Years ago, my mother's tortoise, Albert, was bombed in London's Blitz. Shrapnel in his shell, the old campaigner inched along through peace without complaint. My mother's eyes well

58 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW when she speaks of this absurdity. Before I knew the fragility of all shells, I used to laugh. A shell-shocked tortoise! A thing of little worth.

Now it seems to me (and please don't laugh) as though the hump of his tiny paving stones pitted with fragments of war is a part of that crazy dance of other shells. Not that, in some way, we are all Albert, pitted and crawling back into the earth, victims of other people's wars. No. Too crude.

But finding the whorls of snails around the things we eat, remembering the backs of tortoises in the slabs of stones which lead me from my house down to the street there is a sense of how abstraction limits itself to symbol if we let it. And all I can offer now is resistance to created myth, and sign, and metaphor. All I can do is join the spiralling dance to nowhere, step on things which break as easily as we allow them to, in yards where all extraordinary drama is played out in half turns to the right and to the left, then lost.

ROY 59 Rita Signorelli-Pappas

MANZONI'S DEAD DAUGHTERS

he was unlucky, that daughter. SNowhere, nowhere could he hide from the wild, delicate bells of her sleeping sighs. Wherever he turned, he still saw her mute palomino eyes, the chin poised quick to rear, the silvery mists of her bones shifting like lost messages. Then her fear flung so faithfully here under his door, the grief neatly folded, neatly pressed into the frail, muffled shriek of those hopelessly pink letters.

They were all unlucky, those daughters. All his thin, pale darlings falling one by one. And each time the same cold request: that old necessity for words. Though it was rage-rage not love-that wrote those wry, bloodless epitaphs. Then suddenly he could write no more. Behind the shut door of his study he would sometimes pray for them. Dawn still amazed him. He had thought the ghostly, stuttering sun was only another dead thing.

60 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Katherine Soniat

BALBOA IN SPRING

hese are the flashing green days Twhen clouds rush with March, and the man over the back fence shouts happily in Spanish like Balboa on his peak.

He breathes the same air the flowering fields dance with.

It's summed up by the sleepy dog, rolling in the sun, measuring out his lazy whine over the new spring mint, motioning yes in all but Spanish.

SONIAT 61 Max Gutmann

NIGHTS

'He get up again last night?" have to worry about it, huh?" Aaron stared at the flowers on the kitchen "Okay, fine." She dropped her fork onto wallpaper, their stems intertwining in circles her plate. "What do you think we should he didn't remember noticing before. His do?" mother's French toast crackled in the skillet. "Can you keep your voice down, here?" It took him a moment to realize she'd asked a She glared, but answered quietly. "Well, question. "Hm?" what should we do?" She turned from the stove, pulling the col­ He wiggled his fork into the French toast, lar of her pink robe up across her neck. "He cutting a dry double-layered square. "I could kept you up again." take a semester off school." He looked at his Annoyed at her volume, Aaron glanced plate and shoved the bread into his mouth. through the doorway at his grandfather's "I knew this was coming." blanketed feet and whispered, hoping she The soft toast momentarily caught at the would take the hint. "Not really. An hour or back of his throat as he swallowed too quickly. so." "What?" "Why does he do that? If he'd get up dur­ "Copping out again." ing the day, maybe he'd sleep through." She "Copping out? How?" raised the pan, flipping the toast with her "A year off to work, now a year off for Papa, spatula, and dropped it back onto the burner. and then another and another. And in the "He's trying to sleep, Mom." meantime, what?" "We shouldn't let him. Then he wouldn't He shrugged, trying to look as though he keep you up all night." hadn't thought about it. "Larry' ll keep me His cereal was becoming mush. Aaron on." She raised her eyebrows and he added, scooped at it in brief crescents. "What hap­ "If I ask him." pens when I go off to school?" "Wonderful. Selling tropical fish. Great "That's two months away," she said over career." her pink shoulder, guiding the toast down "Can you please talk quietly?" the sloping pan to a plate. "This is your life," she said, leaning toward "But what's going to happen?" him. She looked down, watching her fork "We'll handle it. Aunt Lucy will help me." poke and nudge a slice of yellow toast. "Papa She pushed Aaron's cereal box aside to make already had his." room on the table, and sat, gesturing at the Aaron slammed his hand down on the table French toast. and just stopped himself from shouting. "He "I told you. I don't want any." can hear you." "I can't eat all four." He exhaled, pushed his bowl aside and forked the top two pieces onto his plate. "I He sat up in the cot and looked at his grand­ thought the reason you needed me here was father, uncertain whether he'd heard the old Aunt Luce couldn't help enough." man move. Papa had tipped slightly to one "Aaron, we'll cross that bridge when we side on the pillow, the hospital bed in a low come to it. It may not turn out to be an issue, reclining position. His arms lay flat against okay?" his sides, on top of the blanket, and his fea­ "Oh, great." He'd spoken louder than he tures looked thoughtful. Aaron imagined intended, and looked at Papa, then back. him deep in thought, bleakly contemplating "Let's just hope he dies soon, so we don't the life that was nearing its end. Night

62 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW thoughts, the visiting nurse had called them; handle the stairs, had done so daily to lie in a no one around, everything dark and quiet. bath so hot it left every surface in the bath­ Better to have him up during the day: human room sopping with condensation. But a week contact, distraction, a reason to keep living. had passed. The cancer had moved into Papa's "Papa?" Aaron considered asking softly, but throat; he was not eating. in the darkness, he couldn't be sure that Papa's Steadying the handle against his hip, Papa eyes were open, and didn't want to risk wak­ swung the cane forward. To keep from top­ ing him. He lay back down, trying not to let pling him, Aaron le t go of the elbow. He the cot creak too loudly, and stared at the still looped his arms around Papa's waist, feeling blades of the ceiling fan, listening. the pressure of Papa's ribs straining forward, He'd made himself sick once, looking up at then looked down at the tangled white hair this fan, a week after his father had walked and chuckled uncomfortably. "Papa, it's late, out. Seven-year-old Aaron and his mother huh? Go back to bed , here? I'll give you a spent most of that week, and several weeks to bath tomorrow. Okay?" follow, here with his grandparents. (This was Papa relaxed his arms. "Tomorrow?" before Gram died, before Papa sold the brown­ "Promise." stone duplex to Mom.) Harassed by Gram "You work." and Mom's complaints of the heat, Papa had Aaron noticed that Papa needed a shave. relented and installed the fan, and Aaron, Two startling black hairs stood out among that very afternoon, staring up from the floor the sparse white stubble. "After work." where he lay, tried to separate the blades Papa pivoted again, to the other side. Aaron within the rocking, humming circle until nau­ held him lightly beneath the arm, relieved sea rose in his chest. that he was heading back to bed, but he poked Now he opened his eyes to the definite the cane forward before working his way squeak of bedsprings and propped himself around far enough for that. on an elbow. Papa sat hunched on the side of "Where you going now?" the bed, his back to Aaron, steadying himself "Kitchen." with two palms pressed to the mattress. Aaron "What do you want?" Aaron pinched the stood, flipping his blanket onto the floor. bridge of his nose, thinking of sleep. "Morning, Papa." "Peaches? I can get them." The old man turned to look at him, his Papa swung the cane ahead again. In a few white hair standing up in back. deliberate steps, he made it to the threshold ''I'm going to turn on the light, here. Okay?" of the kitchen, where Aaron had to stand Papa shrugged, then caught himself on the behind him, his hand still cupped under the bed. When the overhead came on, he gri­ arm. Papa passed the cane across his body maced, squinting. and gave the light switch a knock. The fluo­ Aaron patted the blue plastic lid of the rescent bulb flickered and popped on. Not portable toilet in the corner. "Need this?" until the old man had worked his way around Papa shook his head and lifted his cane the oven was there enough room for Aaron to from against the wall. get beside him again. "You 're doing pretty "Where you going?" good." "Take a bath." He set the rubber tip of the Papa pulled open the cupboard above the cane on the carpet and focused an effort on oven and took out a loaf of whole wheat the handle, raising himself to his feet. His bread. pajama top had come unbuttoned to below "What do you want? A sandwich?" his chest. Taking a moment to establish his "Toast." balance, he switched the cane to the other "I'll make it. Sit down." Aaron tried to take hand and leaned on it, shuffling to pivot the bread, but Papa stepped away from him, toward the main section of the living room. to the toaster, leaving the cupboard door open. Aaron reached out for his arm, recoiling a bit He leaned his cane against the counter, bal­ at its fragility, a bone loosely wrapped in skin ancing his hips at its edge, and twisted the and pajama sleeve. red tie sealing the bag. After several slow "A bath? Papa, the stairs." When Aaron turns, he started twisting the other direction, first moved back in, Papa had been able to then pushed the bag along the counter to

GUTMANN 63 Aaron, who fussed at it with quicker turns, "How is it?" yawned, finally twisted the tie off. Papa took He nodded and lifted another cube, resting the bag back. Hand trembling, he dropped his elbow for a moment on the table. two slices into the toaster, then depressed the "There you go. Taste good?" black handle and stared down as the coils He brought the second cube to his mouth, reddened. sliding the spoon from between closed lips. "Think the Brewers'll catch the Jays?" Aaron A drop of clear nectar clung to the whiskers asked. on his chin. "Ah." Papa twisted his mouth and waved a Then Papa's elbow was in the peaches, his palm at him. hand at the tissue box. He pulled a balled "Hey, they clobbered the Sox tonight." tissue to his mouth and made a pair of strained "No pitching." He was still looking down coughing sounds, clenching his eyes with each into the toaster. A small gray globule hung in cough. the corner of his eye, a splinter of blood break­ "You okay, Papa?" ing the white above the iris. The old man convulsed, all the energy in "Higuera pitched a hell of a game." his body focused on his neck and hunched "Get shelled next time." shoulders. With a guttural hack, he vomited The toast shot up and Papa, with Aaron clear liquid beneath the tissue onto his chest. sticking beside him, carried it on a plate to "Shit. You okay?" the kitchen table. He raised a butter knife Papa hacked again, turning his head, spew­ and pointed at the refrigerator, his shirt now ing this time on the shoulder of his blue paja­ skewed, exposing a deep crevice between his mas and on the base of his own shoulder. The collar bone and neck. "Oleo," he said. Aaron water pooled in the depression above his took it out and placed it in front of him. Papa collarbone with two mashed but whole cubes scraped the knife across the top, then pressed of pale fruit. the margarine into the light toast. When he Aaron unbuttoned Papa's top, wiping his had smoothed it as evenly as he could, he chest with a dishtowel. "I shouldn't have pulled the other slice from under and but­ madeyoueatthatstuff. I'msorry. Youbetter tered it in the same thorough manner. Then, now?" with slow apparent purpose, he bit into a "Water," Papa rasped, quietly. piece, put it down, chewing slowly, lifted the "What? Glass of water?" plate to his chest, and let a ball of mush fall "Water." from his mouth. Aaron drew a glass from the tap. The old "No good?" man looked down at the table, his head quiv­ "Don't taste right." He pushed the plate ering back and forth. into a corner of the table. "Here you go." As Papa gulped the water, "Want some peaches instead?" Aaron ran the towel across his shoulder, but Papa shook his head minutely, his eyes drying Papa's belly, he saw that there was focused on the table. still liquid behind the collarbone. Papa set "Mom says you got to eat more. Let me get the water glass, nearly full, on the table. "Bet­ you some peaches." While he spooned the ter?" peaches into a shallow china bowl, Papa raised Papa nodded. himself to tilt the toast into the garbage bag. "Let me get this off of you, here." He pushed Aaron brought him the bowl and a spoon. the damp pajama top off his grandfather's Papa stirred the cubes around, then set the shoulders and helped him lift his arms from spoon face down against the bowl. the sleeves. He wiped the corner of the "What you thinking about?" dishtowel twice more into the gap, but Papa Papa shrugged. They both stared at the was already lifting himself from the chair peaches, which Papa had pushed into a small when he tried to wipe again. pile. Bubbles of nectar adhered to the smooth round edge of the largest chunk at the top. "Try one, Papa. You got to eat." "You getting enough sleep?" Papa spooned a peach cube into his mouth "I don't know." Aaron sliced the duct tape and swallowed. across the top of the box with an accelerating

64 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW cardboard zip. "Why?" Papa pushed the covers down to his knees. Crouching, clipboard on his knee, Larry Already it was nearly dark outside, a light waved his pencil at boxes of fish food on a drizzle on the windows as a bald weather­ lower shelf. A reflection of the bare back­ man described the storm front moving in room bulb shone on his bald spot. He flipped from the lake. Mom was reading up in her the board around and made a notation. "You room to give Papa some illusion of privacy. look tired." Aaron draped the towel across the tray and "I was up a little with my grandfather." soaped the large, coarse hospital sponge. Papa Aaron cut into the tape at one edge. twisted his legs out from under the covers. "Your grandfather. Yeah. How's he do­ "Where you going?'~ ing?" "Bath." He leaned for the bathrobe at the "The same. He gets around pretty well at foot of the bed and poked an arm into it, night." He bent the flaps back and squeezed searching for the sleeve. his fingers in around the aquarium, lifted it a "No, Papa. Sponge bath. There's still the few inches and jiggled until the box slid down stairs." so he could adjust his grip. Papa continued to fuss with the robe. Larry bounced the eraser end of his pencil "Papa, I'm going to give you the ba th right on the clipboard. "So listen. What's the deal? here. Like the nurse did. Remember?" You really want to stick around here after Papa shoved his arm through the sleeve. summer?" Aaron ran around the bed to in front of him. "I told you: I don't know. I don't know "The water's nice and hot. Let me help you what's going to happen." before it gets cold." "Yeah. But see, I got to know. Do I hire Papa jerked the other arm through the robe, somebody or not?" avoiding Aaron's eyes. He lifted his cane, but "Now?" He balanced the aquarium on his Aaron grabbed it before he could get the base knee, scooting the box and styrofoam against to the ground. "Don't do this, huh? How are the shelves. "You got two months." you going to get up the stairs?" "Okay, so not right away. But you got to Papa glared, the lines in his forehead deep­ make a decision." ening, and let go of the cane, leaving Aaron "I will." Aaron stood to carry the tank into holding it like a vaudeville performer. the shop, but Larry's voice stopped him. "Look, Aaron. Don' t jerk me around, huh? You're going to college. So go." That night, Aaron dreamt of Papa getting "''m going, Larry. There isn't any rush." out of bed. He walked without his cane to­ "Yeah. But see, there is. I mean, the classes, ward the stairway and Aaron dove from the sure, you could do that bit when you're sixty cot to support him. Together they glided up­ if you want to . But that's just the half of it. ward, Papa determined, unconcerned, Aaron Not even. The dorms, the parties. You got to nervously willing them safety. What if they go when you're young." fell? What if Mom woke up? The bathroom "I'm not sixty. Somebody' s got to take care door loomed closer and closer, their ascent of Papa." effortless but teasingly slow. As they reached "Yeah. For how long? I got an uncle's had the top step with a reassuring squeal of bed­ cancer five years now. Still hanging on. Some springs, Aaron relaxed; Papa was safe and people are fighters." would have his bath. But before they could Aaron pulled the aquarium tight against open the door, fear seeped through him again. his chest. "Papa's a fighter." Somehow, they would have to get back down. "So good. Let him fight. You put your life The bedsprings sounded again, and Aaron on hold, you're betting against him. Or against awoke. Papa was perched on the edge of the you." bed, looking back at him. "Kitchen again?" "Yep." Papa lifted the cane and was on his "Okay, Papa." Aaron set the plastic wash feet by the time Aaron untangled himself basin on the t.v. tray by the head of the bed. from the covers. "Bath time." Aaron rubbed his eyes. "You okay on your

GUTMANN 65 own?" and looked at Aaron, and again Aaron feigned Papa nodded and took a step forward. sleep. "Give a holler if you need anything." "Yep." Holding the tube end of the siphon low He rearranged the covers and settled back over the bucket, Aaron scooped its cylinder onto the cot. He could watch Papa from full in the aquarium and raised it to start the where he was. water flowing. He clamped his thumb over Papa worked his way through the kitchen the opening and the tube sucked at a circle of doorway and shuffled around the corner of his skin. Plunking his arm into the water, he the oven. Aaron listened, but couldn't hear dug the cylinder into the gravel, then let go Papa's footsteps. The kitchen light pulsed. A with his thumb. Pebbles of turquoise and car horn whined in the distance. The long green swirled within the clear plastic col­ silence from the kitchen worried Aaron. He umn. The pale, bottom-heavy cichlid puck­ would hear it if Papa fell, but what was the ered and unpuckered its mouth at the intru­ old guy doing? sion, its tiny pectoral fins fluttering to main­ Aaron was about to get up when the pantry tain its stillness at the bottom of the tank. door creaked open. A moment later, the front Aaron shifted his back toward Larry, at the of the dish cabinet wobbled on its rollers and counter, and rested his eyes. He'd spent forty­ Papa took out a plate with a long sliding five minutes long distance that morning so scrape. He traveled the long way around the some nasal voice could read to him that no table, establishing a balance at each new rest­ fees would be refunded if he postponed his ing point, and sat angled away from the door­ enrollment. way. Not until he raised a cookie to his mouth "I told you," his mother said. "You're just could Aaron tell what he had fixed himself. shitting away that college fund." Good, Aaron thought, he's eating something. "See? I should have stuck with UWM. Then But after the first bite, the cookie sat un­ it'd be my money and my plans could change touched. Papa stared expressionlessly at the if they had to." kitchen wall. Occasionally Aaron rested his Aaron bumped something with the siphon eyelids. and opened his eyes. The cichlid hurried to Now and then Papa glanced over his shoul­ the far corner of the tank. He raised the der to look at him in the cotand Aaron would siphon and let the water drain into the bucket. smile. Once, uncertain whether his smile could be seen in the darkness, he slid his arm from under the covers and waved. The pounding rain made even the clock's buzz inaudible. Aaron squirmed in the cot, dreaming of himself squirming in the cot. The next night Papa was in the kitchen His dream self strained for sounds of Papa doorway before Aaron woke up. Steadying rising from bed, cracked eyelids to watch him himself on the door frame, he turned to look eating a sandwich in the kitchen, only to at the cot. Too sleepy to think clearly, Aaron recognize that he was dreaming and listen closed his eyes. again. In a corner of his mind he cursed the He listened for the sound of Papa's progress, cycle, convinced that it was robbing him of wondering vaguely if Papa would try to sneak sound sleep. Twice, to shake the dream, he past him toward the stairs and a bath; all he threw the covers off and sat up, but found could hear was the soothing buzz of the din­ that this action, too, was only dreamt. Rain ing room clock. He knew he should sit up, let thrummed against the windows. Bedsprings Papa know he was awake, but he didn't want see-sawed a brief rhythm. A hunched form to shake the soft half-sleep. He cracked one moved past him in the darkness. D eyelid, trying not to wake completely. Papa slid his way toward the kitchen table, hooked Max Gutmann lives and works in San Francisco. His stories the cane onto it and lowered himself into a have appeared in Ascent, The Fiction Review, The Mary­ land Review, and elsewhere. chair, both hands on the table top. He turned

66 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Peter Cooley

"LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT HAPPINESS"

uick, let me have it, I need the word. Q But mine, not yours you soaked in honeysuckle, then delivered to the front door this morning where, unsuspecting, I answered in pajamas to catch you unaware: shining, baby-blue gabardine suit, blue tie, a little blue book in your hands, the shiny gold letters promising secrets within for those who admitted you. I didn't, of course. But after I slammed the door I squinted through the curtains to take in the '65 Ford, its back seat a swarm of kids swaddled in blue you would have let loose on my own and on my wife had I given an inch. And her beside you, a blue snood streaming with fuchsia ribbons, shot me her index finger three times (I thought of Him three times raising the Cross before He ascended) and stuck her tongue out thrice. And so began another Sunday in our funny kingdom.

COOLEY 67 Christopher Merrill

LINES ON THE WINTER SOLSTICE

day of creaks and croaking! Ice in the skylight, A Three ravens in the apple tree the migrants missed, Lengths of seasoned aspen crackling in the stove -So much has changed. The irises were never planted, . And squirrels ate the poppy seeds saved for the border. Mice feed on the wires; rows of onions buckle under Another foot of snow; n ext spring the frozen garden Hoses, unwound, will crack .... A raven flaps away, The branches shake, and a half-eaten apple plops Into the kindling pile: if only you were here.

68 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW James F. Maxfield

OUT OF THE PAST: THE PRIVATE EYE AS TRAGIC HERO

or many (among whom the present writer must h ave done something to deserve both Fincludes himself) Jacques Tourneur's Out her hatred and his wounding. This conclu­ of the Past is the masterpiece of fi lm nair. It sion is still possible a t the end of the film includes all the classic elements of the genre: when Whit lies dead on his living room floor a convoluted but not entirely impenetrable after havin g been shot by Kathie a second plot, atmospheric night scenes, a wise-crack­ time, but by then it is clear that the woman ing private detective as protagonist, an ex­ kills purely out of self-interest and does not tremely seductive and totally devious belle require any other emotional incentive. dame sans merci, and various stock supporting Tom Flinn has pointed out that the hero of characters (thugs, a secondary femme fatale, a Out of the Past, Jeff Bailey (the surname taken good girl to contrast the evil ones, and a by Markham after the ending of his initial sidekick for the hero). Out of the Past also involvement with Kathie), occupies "a niche contributes some interestingly novel ele­ somewhere between Philip Marlowe and ments: the classic nocturnal city and interior Walter Neff (Double Indemnity)." 1 The con­ scenes are contrasted by brightly lit exteriors nection with the screen portrayals of Marlowe in ruggedly beautiful mountainous areas; the is more obvious b eca use screenwriter hero's chief sidekick is a deaf-mute-who Geoffrey Homes (Daniel Mainwaring) appar­ employs a highly unusual method to dispose ently "tailored [the part of Jeff Bailey] to fit of a gunman menacing the protagonist (pull­ the screen personality of Humphrey Bogart"; ing him off a cliff with a cast fishing line). But and when Bogart was unavailable for the the chief merits of the film reside in its con­ film, RKO first assigned the role to Dick ceptions of its male protagonist and his fe­ Powell b efore fina lly giving it to Robert male antagonist. Mitchum. 2 Like Marlowe, Bailey is a private It is perhaps only my personal tastes that detective who at the beginning of his flash­ lead me to conclude that Jane Greer is most back has the reputation of being "smart" and attractive female lead of all the nair films of "honest," but like Walter Neff he succumbs the forties (at age 66 she still looked good to to the temptation to betray the ethics of his me when she appeared on Twin Peaks late in profession because of his attraction to a 1990); but certainly the character she plays in woman. However, Markham/Bailey does not this film, Kathie Moffett, is a more plausible fall morally to n early the same degree as deceiver of men than earlier fatal females Neff. Walter commits murder for Phyllis such as Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indem­ Dietrichson in an attempt to d efraud his in­ nity)orHelenGrayleMurder,My Sweet). While surance company: Jeff merely fails to fulfill it is difficult to imagine any man with reason­ his contract with Whit Sterling to return able intelligence and a survival instinct being Kathie to him. Although he is later hunted by taken in by the hard, obviously experienced, the police as a murderer, he never actually dyed blondes, Phyllis and Helen, it is much kills anyone in the course of the film. He was easier to believe that an otherwise intelligent a mere bystander when Kathie shot his former private detective like Jeff Markham would partner, Jack Fisher-and even when the deaf accept the word of a soft, young, natural brunette like Kathie. Although early in the film she admits to having shot h er former 'Tom Flinn, "Out of the Past," Velvet Lig ht Trap 10 lover and only attempts to justify the act by (1973): 43. saying, "I hate him," it is relatively easy for 2George Turner, "Out of the Past," American Cinema­ both Jeff and the viewer to think that Whit tographer 65 (1984): 33.

MAXFIELD 69 and dumb boy pulled the thug Stefanos off hat driving a convertible with top down into the cliff. Jeff therefore seems far less deserv­ the town. Although we do not immediately ing of being shot to death by Kathie (as he is learn his name, the dark intruder is Joe at the end of the film) than Walter Neff did to Stefanos, seeking out Jeff Bailey (Markham) be fatally wounded by Phyllis. Because Jeff's on behalf of the gambler, Whit Sterling. fate is obviously not poetically just, we should Stefanos learns from the deaf-mute boy at the consider whether it might not in some sense gas station that Bailey is somewhere outside deserve to be regarded as tragic. of town, and we and he learn from gossip at Although Jeff Markham/ Bailey is not the the local restaurant that Jeff has gone fishing sort of prosperous and renowned individual with a girl named Ann, object also of the Aristotle considered suitable to tragedy, he romantic interest of the young game warden, does quite well fit the Greek philosopher's Jim. description of the moral character of the tragic When we first see Jeff Bailey he is walking hero: he is neither "a perfectly good man" nor along the shore of a rippling lake, a fishing an "utter villain"; instead he is a "character rod in his hand, mildly complaining to Ann, between these two extremes-... a man who "They're just not feeding today." This is just is not eminently good and just, yet whose the first of a series of increasingly severe misfortune is brought about not by vice or frustrations Jeff will experience in the course depravity, but by some error or frailty." 3 In of the film as he fails to achieve the exact this respect Bailey / Markham probably seems goals he has set out to accomplish. Ann en­ more "tragic" to contemporary viewers of vies Jeff's experience of the world and says to Out of the Past than he would have to many him, "You've been a lot of places, haven't members of the original 1947 audience, who you?" (She seems to be probing in an attempt were conditioned to judge his out-of-wed­ to find out something about his background.) lock relationship with Kathie as a manifesta­ His reply- "One too many" -indicates there tion of depravity or vice. But in an era of less is one particular thing in his past that he stringent sexual ethics Markham's sin seems regrets. He offers no further comment on his to reside more in his deceiving of his em­ previous experiences but tells Ann of his de­ ployer than in the affair with Kathie, which is sire to build a house on the lake and live there less a moral error than an error in judgment with her. This aspiration, like his decisions to issuing from his faulty perception of her char­ live in this remote part of the country and to acter. It is of course Jeff's error in becoming have a relationship with an innocent girl like involved with Kathie that ultimately dooms Ann, reveals Bailey's pursuit of sanctuary­ him. Like many tragic heroes, though, Jeff his impulse to take refuge from a world, from Bailey struggles against his fate until the very other people that have proved too difficult end; and this struggle, though it does not for him to deal with. (Ann displays her com­ save him, gives him a dignity almost com­ plete subservience to Jeff in almost every­ pletely lacking in a defeated nair protagonist thing she says, but perhaps most notably in like Walter Neff. her action of lighting his cigarette for him as The opening of the film chiefly does two they are leaving the lake. She apparently things: establish a vague sort of threat to Jeff doesn't smoke herself but carries rna tches for Bailey's current existence and indicate what him.) At this moment the arrival of the deaf­ he values in that life- the things he will later mute with the news of Stefa nos's arrival dem­ struggle to avoid losing. The credit sequence onstrates just how futile such a desire is for opens with shots of mountain scenery, then Jeff. an aerial view of a cultivated valley, a ground Jeff's interview with Stefanos that follows level shot of road signs, a dark car passing a at the gas station is full of unspoken menace. sign reading "Bridgeport," and finally-with Stefanos makes clear to the audience that Jeff the camera apparently mounted above the is living under an assumed name ("Of course, back of the car-a man in dark overcoat and there's a different name up on the [gas sta­ tion] sign") and says that his employer, Whit, wishes to see him. Stefa nos's words depict 3Aristotle, Poe tics, XIII , A ristotle's Th eory of Poetry and Fi ne Art, 4th ed., trans . S. N. Butcher (London: Whit as a generous, thoughtful, forgiving in­ M a cMillan, 1907): 45. dividual but of course imply the exact oppo-

70 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW "Whit never steered you to anything sional gambler, an "operator" (Jeff's word) did he? Why he never even squawked would treat a woman who shot him and stole you blew the best thing he ever gave from him with similar mercy? Even before he Seeming to acknowledge that he did meets and falls in love with Kathie, Markham something and that he owes Whit as a must have qualms about completing this as­ Jeff agrees to drive up to Tahoe to talk signment from Sterling. the man. But as soon as he does meet h er, any im­ In the next scene Jeff is clad differently- in pulse to satisfy his professional obligation hat and trench coat-where in the earlier simply melts away. He first sees Kathie­ he was bareheaded and wore a short wearing a broad-brimmed hat and a lig ht As Tom Flinn remarks, the change in dress-as she enters a cafe (La Mar Azul) in is "an important iconographic clue Acapulco. She passes from the bright sun­ (Jeff) is about to resume his former pro­ light outside into the dark shadow under the of private investigator (39). He drives arched doorway and back into the light as she to Ann's house and honks for her. As she sits at a table next to Jeff's. His comment on out to the car, her mother's voice can be her appearance-" And then I saw her ... complaining about "a man who won't coming out of the sun" -invests her with an come to the door," and Ann then feels otherworldly, almost transcendent quality (as must reassure Jeff not to "worry about" does his description of h er second entran ce: parents. But the mere fact that Jeff does "And then she walked in out of the moon­ go to the front door and have a friendly light-smiling"). He will later say-after their with her parents before going affair has continued for some time-"There with Ann shows that in some sense he was still that something about her that got that he is not respectable enough for me-a kind of magic or whatever it was." ,.. ""'"-'"''u perhaps for her. His behavior of Only after she shoots Fisher, does Jeff p er­ up and honking for h er is that of a ceive the magic is black rather than white­ from the wrong side of the tracks and her otherworldly quality d emonic rather a girl he knows to be out of his class, than divine. that of the mature man Jeff should be at To an extent Jeff is not deceived by Kathie present age. His immature attitude sug­ even at the outset of their relationship. When that his struggle in the latter part of the she recommends a little bar to him he knows is not merely for survival, but for matu­ she won't show up on the first night h e goes prove he is man enough to control there. But he goes anyway and remarks of own destiny. himself, "I knew where I was and what I was In the car Jeff tells Ann the story of the doing-I just thought what a sucker I was." he had alluded to earlier in his Knowledge of how she has manipulated him too many" comment. In Jeff's account, doesn't make him any less manipulable. When Sterling hires him to find and bring she admits that she shot Whit but claims she to him a woman, Kathie Moffett, who didn' t steal the money from him and cries out shot and wounded the gambler as well as to Jeff, "Don't you believe me?" -he offers no $40,{)00 of his money. In his own eyes opinion on h er honesty or lack thereof, but probably begins compromising his moral merely says, "Baby, I don't care," and em­ when he first accepts the offer of braces her passionately. This is perhaps the from Whit to undertake the search for definitive moment of h is fall: when he de­ Markham must realize that he may be cides that such things as truth, justice, inno­ part in a vendetta. If he finds the girl cence, or guilt are much less important to him brings her back, "What happens to her?" than his passion for Kathie. Whit. "I won't touch her," Whit claims, The setting in which Jeff d ecides to em­ ng already told an altogether brace Kathie ra ther than his principles is a lso story about how h e lost $40,000 highly significant. They are sitting together a race horse that finished d ead last, then on a moonlit beach next to a group of hanging sed the horse and put it out to pasture fishing nets. Jeff has presumably come to it lived happily ever after. Can Jeff Mexico to capture or n et Kathie for Whit, but any reasonable confidence that a profes- he has actually become ensnared in her web.

MAXFIELD 71 In a later scene Kathie and Jeff are driven moves slightly as if she were groping for back to her cottage by a gathering rain storm. something in her purse down below the bot­ Inside, she picks up a towel, tosses it to him, tom edge of the frame. But the camera is on and then goes over to dry his hair (roughly) the two men when a shot rings out and Fisher with it. After she puts on a record, he takes collapses to the floor. On first viewing, the the towel and starts to dry her hair in the audience is probably as surprised as Jeff (in same manner, but winds up flinging away his slackjawed close-up) to see Kathie stand­ the towel and knocking a lamp to the floor as ing calmly, holding a smoking automatic at he kisses her. The wind from the storm blows waist level. When he is able to speak, Jeff the front door open, and the camera tracks expresses dismay: "You didn't have to kill toward the opening. There is a cut to the him." But Kathie coolly explains, "Yes, I did. outside with the camera tracking and pan­ You wouldn't have killed him. You would ning a bit to watch the rain, then a cut to the have beaten him up and thrown him out .... inside with Jeff walking over to close the You wouldn't have killed him." She has per­ door. Although the viewer is entitled to be­ ceived Jeff's flaw as her protector against lieve there is no significant time gap between Whit: the detective is not ruthless enough. It JefPs flinging of the towel and his rising to is undoubtedly this realization rather than close the door (the shots are connected by any revulsion against the murder she has straight cuts without any fades or other stan­ committed that determines Kathie to flee the dard indicators of passage of time), it is also scene at this moment (carelessly leaving be­ easy to imagine an elided scene of violent hind her bankbook recording the $40,000 de­ love-making upon the couch or floor in which posit that informs Jeff she indeed did steal the participants were so swept away by their Whit's money). emotions that they neglected to observe the The murder of Fisher and the discovery of open door (and fallen lamp) until their pas­ the bankbook completely disillusion Jeff sions were spent. In any case, the storm clearly about Kathie so that he treats her with ironic symbolizes the violence of passion and the contempt when he next meets her at Whit's blown open door the loss of defenses against house at Lake Tahoe. He characterizes her as it. Jeff's shutting of the door comes too late, "a leaf that the wind blows from one gutter to for as the scene proceeds he asks Kathie to another," and responds to her protestations run off with him, undeterred by her warning of helplessness with the comment, "You can't that Whit "won't forget." help anything you do-even murder." Al­ After a suspenseful interlude in which Whit though she claims to him that she has told no and Joe Stefanos turn up in Acapulco right as one about the death of Fisher, he knows he Jeff and Kathie are about to leave together has no reason to believe she is telling the (but just miss seeing her and therefore go off truth about this. believing she has taken a ship to South Jeff also knows he has no reason to trust America), the couple move up to California, Whit. When they meet at Tahoe, Whit says, "I where they hide out successfully until by always remember what any man did for me." chance Jeff is seen by his former partner, Jack Jeff says, "Or didn't." Whit says, "Perhaps." Fisher, at a race track. Jeff and Kathie split The exchange indicates that both Whit and up, and Jeff endeavors-effectively, he Jeff know the detective betrayed his employer thinks-to shake Fisher from his tail; but in the matter of the pursuit of Kathie. Why Fisher has followed Kathie instead. This is then does Jeff accept a job from Whit, know­ merely one of many instances in the film in ing the gambler has ample reason to desire which Jeff ta)

72 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW late himself from betrayal; in that case h e will murderer of both Fisher and Eels, and he probably die- but then, too, h e w ill no longer must d evise a new strategy to avoid prison ha ve to run. and the gas chamber. The deal he finally The job Jeff accepts-stealing incriminat­ strikes with Whit involves the exchange of ing ta x papers of Whit from his former law­ the gambler's tax papers for his incrimina­ yer, Leonard Eels-is not one tha t an honest tion of the recently deceased Stefanos for the private detective would take. But once he is murder of Eels, and Kathie for the killing of on the job in San Francisco, it becom es appar­ Fisher, plus $50,000 getaway money for Jeff. ent that Jeff like Spade and Marlowe before He also succeeds in utterly disillusioning Whit him is merely pretending to cooperate with about Ka thie-to the p oint where the gam­ the criminals in order to mislead them. H e bler tells h er tha t if sh e doesn ' t "take the rap attempts to warn Eels tha t his secretary, Meta and play along," h e will person ally kill h er Carson, is part of a plot involving both him and make sure her death is extrem ely slow and Jeff ("It could be that I' m the patsy, and and exceedingly painful. you're on the spot"); but when he returns to But when Jeff returns the following night, the lawyer's apartment to explain the situa­ he finds Whit lying face up, d ead on his living tion more fully, he finds the man dead. H e room floor. Kathie then enters from the back then hides the body next d oor in an ap art­ to say, "You can't m ake deals w ith a dead ment that is being redecorated and sets about ma n, Jeff." For this simple reason, his plan to trying to scotch what he now p erceives as a save himself has failed. H e now h as no one to plot to frame him for murder. back up his contention that Kathie killed In her willingness to set up for murder a Fish er or Stefanos killed Eels. Should he go to man who loves her and to steal Whit's tax the police, it would m erely be his w ord against papers from her employer's office, Meta Kathie's, and he knows she was probably Carson is obviously a sort of double for Kathie. correct in h er earlier contention: "They'll b e­ It is not surprising, therefore, tha t Jeff en ­ lieve m e." Although they have jockeyed for counters Kathie in Meta's apartment and over­ power all through the second half of the film, hears her call up Eels' apartment house and Jeff is forced to acknowledge tha t Kathie is identify herself as the lawyer's secretary. "running the show now." Kathie explains to Jeff the founda tion for the Kathie's exact a ttitude toward Jeff in the frame: in a safe in Eels' office is a d ocument, latter part of the m ovie is probably difficult written by her, charging him with the murder for both him and the v iewer to gage. She of Fisher ("They mad e m e sign it," she as­ seems quite content to frame Jeff for the mur­ serts). Jeff is not deeply impressed by Kathie's d ers of Fisher and Eels until he starts mount­ new helpfulness ("You' re wonderful. You' re ing an effective resistance to the scheme. Even magnificent. You ca n ch a n ge s ides so after sh e has aided h er former lover to the smoothly."), but he uses the information she extent of telling him w h ere he could find has given him to steal the tax papers from the Whit's papers, sh e sends Stefanos after th e gambling club where Meta has deposited them d eaf-mute, packing a .45 to shoot Jeff w h en and informs Whit's underlings tha t h e will the boy joins him. (This incident la ter in­ trade them for the letter in Eels' office accus­ spires a typical exch an ge: Kathie [half hurt, ing him of murder. U nfortuna tel y, just before half indignant]: "You think I sent Joe?" Jeff Meta and Kathie arrive together to pick up [ironic]: "Oh, you ' re wond erful, Kathie." ) But the letter at the office, the police drive up even though she is willing to have Jeff either with the superintendent of Eels' apartment sent to prison or murdered, Kathie also seems house- a consequence of the d iscovery of the still to be in love w ith him. When they m eet in body. On the other hand, given the amply Meta's apartment, she tells him, "We can go demonstrated unreliability of Kathie a nd back to Acapu lco and start all over as though Meta, neither Jeff nor the audience could have nothing h ad happened." It is easy in the con­ complete confidence the result would have text of the scene to think that she is m erely been better for him if the women had got to trying to con him, to deflect his an ger at h er the letter first. betrayal of him. But even after sh e has killed Because of the discovery of the letter by the Whit, sh e still expresses th e dream of return­ police, Jeff Bailey is publicly proclaimed the ing to the love she and Jeff once sh ared : "I

MAXFIELD 73 want to go back to Mexico. I want to walk out the possibility-as the film seems to want us of the sun again and find you waiting." She is to-of her being a hypocrite, pretending to willing to acknowledge that their earlier love Jeff and p erhaps herself as well to be far more was flawed, but says that was because Jeff innocent than a woman in her early twenties failed to perceive her realistically: "I never has any right to be, we have to view her as told you I was anything but what I am. You essentially childlike in her naivete. Jeff's re­ just wanted to imagine I was. That's why I left lationship with her seems, therefore, more you." Despite her villainy Kathie shares the like that of father and daughter than that of dream of most normal women (and men): she man and mate. Certainly his relationship with wants to be loved for what she truly is. the deaf-mute boy seems more nearly one If Jeff finds that hard to do, she'll give him between equals than that with Ann. Jeff was further incentive by threatening that if he probably attracted to Ann by her stark con­ doesn't go off with her, she'll pin all of the trast with Kathie; but her stark contrast with murders on him (including that of Whit): him as well probably would eventually have "Someone has to take the blame," she ob­ doomed the relationship, even if Kathie had serves. But her clinching argument, the one not polished it off more quickly. he yields to in the end is this: "You're no good Ann's virtue is so extreme she even defends for anyone but me. You're no good, and nei­ her rival, Kathie: "She can't be all bad. No one ther am I. ... We deserve each other." Al­ is." Jeff replies, "Well, she comes the closest." though he doesn't initially respond to this But Kathie's badness is only an extension of argument, a minute or two later when she Jeff's own badness. He is shocked to discover says they "deserve a break," he acknowl­ she has killed Fisher and then Whit, but he edges, "We deserve each other." certainly didn't like either of these men him­ He is willing to accede to her opinion in this self. He clearly derived satisfaction both from matter because it echoes one he has heard beating up Fisher and from blackmailing earlier that evening. Jim, Ann's other suitor, Whit. In each case his hostility toward the has told him, "I don't know whether I'm good other man was largely based on fear-fear enough for her, but I know you aren't." At that Fisher would report his and Kathie's that time he parried Jim's criticism by saying, whereabouts to Whit, fear that the gambler "That's one difference. The other is that she would exact dreadful revenge. But the physi­ loves me." But this rejoinder is not so effec­ cal beating of Fisher and the successful black­ tive if Jim is actually right and Jeff is unwor­ mailing of Whit were at best only temporary thy of Ann-something he must have begun solutions, offering immediate emotional sat­ to suspect in their final tryst, if not before isfaction but no long-term relief. Beaten up then. The blond Ann is the diametric oppo­ and thrown out, Fisher would merely stagger site of the brunette Kathie in numerous sig­ off to a telephone and call Whit. Once he got nificant ways other than hair color. Where hold of his tax papers, Whit would have no Kathie is sly, manipulative, deceitful, Ann is reason not to send other agents forth to track the epitome of honesty and trust. On the last down and destroy Jeff. Kathie's solutions to occasion Jeff meets her, he at one point says her similar problems-killing both Fisher and to her (with near incredulity), "You believe Whit-were considerably more effective al­ everything I say, don't you?" To which Ann beit ruthless. She at least got these enemies replies with a perfectly straight face and shin­ off her back once and for all. What she has ing eyes, "Everything you say to me I be­ done in both cases is what Jeff secretly de­ lieve." A moment later he mutters, "I don't sires but is prevented from doing by his moral know why I do this." The reference of the censor. His recognition of this fact is prob­ "this" is obscure, but Jeff could very well be ably what makes him admit to Kathie in the wondering why he is striving to maintain a end that "We deserve each other." relationship with a woman so totally unlike Jeff's goals in the second half of the film not merely his previous lover, Kathie, but undergo a progressive modification. His origi­ himself as well. nal goal when he arrives at Tahoe is to square For any viewer of the film with some expe­ things with Whit by doing a job for him. He rience and a measure of common sense Ann knows there will be risks involved, but is seems far too good to be true. But if we ignore willing to take them because he is "tired of

74 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW running." After he meets Kathie at Whit's the embodiment of the evil he now recog­ house and knows she has told the gambler nizes within himself. about their relationship, he also knows the The film ends with a brief coda. Screen­ job he has been given must in some way be a writer Geoffrey Homes (Daniel Mainwaring) booby trap for him. His goal at that point is has said in an interview that he had intended the one he expresses to Meta Carson: "Just the movie to end with the deaths of Jeff and remember, I'm coming out of this in one piece, Kathie, but the studio protested: "Well, the Miss Carson." After he find Eels' body, he front office said, 'Jesus you can't end with realizes his chances of coming out of the whole them dead there. You've got to put some­ affair intact are not good, so h e revises his thing on it."'4 This endin.g-in which the deaf­ goal. When Kathie tells him, "I don't want to mute boy nods "yes" when Ann asks if Jeff die," he replies, "Neither do I, Baby; but if I was going away with Kathie and then salutes have to, I'm gonna die last." But in the end he Jeff's name over the gas station as Ann drives is not successful in achieving even this lim­ away with Jim-is obviously a sentimental ited goal, for Kathie shoots him at the road­ touch, but in a way it is perfectly appropriate block before the state trooper machine-guns to the rest of the film. When Jeff betrayed his her. principles to go off with Kathie that first time We are to assume tha t Jeff has set up the down in Acapulco, h e in effect condemned road-block because he is previously seen go­ himself to go with her all the way. He shows ing over to the downstairs phone and picking resilience and ingenuity in the second half of it up as Kathie goes upstairs to complete her the film as he struggles to extract himself packing, even if we do not actually hear him from the net Kathie and Whit have cast upon making the call. He could obviously have him; but his efforts, although heroic, are fu­ performed other actions that would have tile. The only way h e can ultimately be free of proved less immediately fatal to him (e.g., Kathie and her influence upon him is by truly knocking out Kathie, tying her up, and then going with her all the way-to death. Jeff's calling the police to collect them both at ultimate heroism is his willingness to accept Tahoe-she might ultimately have succeeded this fate. D in framing him for the murders, but he would seem to have a better chance with the legal ' Danie l Mainw a ring, ·· s cr eenwrite r Da n iel system than at the road-block). One must Mainwa ring Discusses OUT OF THE PAST,"' Velvet Light conclude, therefore, that Jeff quite deliber­ Trap 10 (1973): 45 . ately chooses the method of stopping Kathie that is most likely to prove fatal to both of them. This seems to him anappropriate fate James F. Maxfield is Professor of English at Whitman because not only has Kathie become to him College. His essays on film have appea red in Literature / Film Quarterly, Film C riticism , and Post Script. the embodiment of evil, she has also become

MAXFIELD 75 Sandra Nelson

FISHING THE BLACK BRANCH

inch its five hearts and it comes P loose. Its saw-edged tail rakes wet newspaper pulling up friends, family, lovers. Its cold body dents the hills deep within your warm fist. In the dark it noses between two fingers as if you were nothing but roots in the earth. You juggle and giggle to hold the flesh ringing your finger still while you push your hook through. A living knot unties and ties curling up to feel itself feeling the air-the light, the light air, swaying in it. The blue sky and hard cattails skate like a photograph behind the tiny worm. Up through heaven it draws an arc down, punches through the chipped surface-silencing the scraping leaves and effervescent sizzle of rain on the pool. Cool and late the water turns to molten gold and silver held within the black reed fence, boats buzz above our heads. Our eyes print black dots of bobbers inside bright red lids. I take the cool oars and row.

76 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW George Angel

CARL'S WORLD

he amazing thing is that light can b e The house has all kinds of windows but still Tpushed . It can exist in a substance, and is d ark som eh ow. I try to stay out in the op en . that substance can be tou ched a nd prodded . To m e, the h ou se is too full of th ings. I like It ca n be maneuvered in shapes to com e the garden because the gard en breathes. In around the head of a girl, to lay the sunlight the house every counter and drawer seem there upon her forehead and face. A coat of like a place to sleep. light. The garage is not ours to u se. I p a rk m y car And yet light is a living m oving thing . It on the sidestreet. Th e la ndlord parks his car tilts over the place w here I sta nd like a slow in the garage. He lets m e keep my tools there. pendulum. There are sou rces of light there There are steps up to the top part of the and there and then every thing is reflection. garage tha t h as been m ad e into a loft. Light moves. My wife left me. She sat at the table and Here I stand in the garden . M y name is Carl. looked across the room. She is a very nervou s My feet are in black rubber boots. My face is wom an and I worried ab out h er as sh e p acked any face that is a man's face. It is a bright d ay. the car. She cries often a nd needs to m ove. My hands hang at my sid es as I look a round People say, "Carl, oh yes Carl, Carl is a good me. My back aches and so I have stopped for gu y." Sh e calls me a t times n ow and we lau gh a moment. I bend d own again. Th e w h eel­ talkin g . Sh e is a fine w oman and still lives in barrow is almost full with rocks. The garden town som ewhere. is coming along. There is a y oung woman, a kid really, w ho It is not a big garden by any m ean s, stretch ­ rents the loft in the garage. Sh e doesn ' t live ing as it does between the house and the there, sh e just visits there. Sometimes you garage. Its fl ower bushes are up and throu gh can see the light on a t all h ou rs. I wonder the white fence tha t encloses it. Th e fence is sometimes w h at it is she d oes u p th ere. Sh e not a picket fence. It runs along the inner p arks her car right b ehind mine. I d on ' t talk edge of the sidewalk, from the hou se to the to h er because I figure it's n one of m y busi­ garage. There is an other fen ce behind where n ess. It's no t as if I d on ' t have thin gs to attend I am standing to w h oever has the n ext yard, to. but it is indiscrimina te and high and things Light is fastenin g to things. Ca tching on end there. The garden is rou ghly square a nd the surface of objects in its pa th. It is a has rose and other fl ower bush es rising u p on current tha t renders every thing sta tion ary by little mounds along its perimeter. In its middle contrast. Com ing to the tall bush es and fas­ I make straight rows and try different veg­ tening itself there for a m om ent tou ching etables, gotten som etim es from friends a nd before slipp ing off a nd continuing . Continu­ others from a gard ening store n earby. This ing out. Th e grey street p ales a nd the bush es garden gets p lenty of sun, bein g back h ere grow dus ty . The sha ke roof on the garage where it is, open and on d isp lay almost . seem s to glisten . Light is n ot a heav in ess or a The house where w e live is on a corner. It lightness so much as a polish . Whether tu rned wouldn't mean anything to anyb od y if I w er e h eavy or light by tha t tou ch, everything be­ to name the streets. Just som e corner, tha t's n eath the light is reord ered . The light h old s how I think of it. We live in the back half of and holds still, a falling bandage. Ba thing the the house and our landlord w ho is older and small m e b eating h ere w ithin it sta tion ary . keeps to himself Ji ves in the front. Our d oor­ Light orna m ents th ese sh a p es w ith its slip ­ way fa ces the side of the garage. Th e garage falling. I toss ano ther rock in the w h eelbar­ empties out onto the side street. This is where row a nd feel m yself u nbending in light again. everything is. As if I float in this m ovement tha t is just the

ANGEL 77 slow get-ting used to it. I move slowly over there and the smell of the paint brings the the floor of the garden. I make a space away light within my face and brain there too. My from the light, beneath me as I go. With the eyes are either opened or closed but my sight hours I feel the light on my back paling the moves about the tank of light. Then I tried to shirt there, wearing with passage. The red think. I ran my fingers over the surfaces. patch of curtain in the kitchen window, l Thinking: think. I become smaller, and noth­ watch it out of the corner of my eye as I work. ing here but paint on something where light I watch it stay there, staying red and staying comes off of it. I became smaller and was bright too. It touches the light back. I maneu­ outside in the yard without believing I am ver as I move so that it remains flashing in the here or in outside still standing and about to corner of everything and the light is pollinat­ enter the house and the child's supper and ing. his dying. I am a janitor. I work at the hospital. I am You take the big logs first because those are not a custodian. I know what I do. Other the important ones. Two or tl)ree only. It's people notice the clean halls sparkling where there that you guess the rough shape. Usu­ I notice the dull surface immobile drawing a ally pyramided up into the corner since this is human film to it. I ride the bus to work, and easier and works better than a tepee or a box. most of the time I get a ride home. It's not far. Then you begin to figure the path. A series of I walk it sometimes, deciding whether it is spaces for the kindling to burn out of and the better to have a system or not. I have one air to chase itself through. Even with the when it occurs to me to think about it. I try kindling all in, there has to be enough space not to hold my breath when I'm at work. Each to get it going. The smaller logs should break job and the order they are to be done. The in around the big one like ribs around a spine. hospital is a territory I discover even though The child looks over. The flame takes right I pass over it every night. Palaces. away and needs no nursing this time because The child is dying. In the dark of the house, you have just cleaned the fireplace the night where he is the only thing living. I pass my before. I sit in a chair watching the child hand over his forehead and he looks at me. sleep. This is the only time I like being in the Nothing the hospital can do. I stay in the house. The flame uses the ladder I have made house for him. He lies on the pink sofa, hum­ for it. ming tunes to pass the time. He always has Peggy sits at the kitchen table looking across enough blankets. The furniture in the house the room. Her arm rests on the surface of the gathers around him. I hover in the house and table from her elbow to her wrist. Her face is his voice. My wife, Peggy, won't speak about turned away from the cup of coffee before her him over the phone and I don't ask her to. as if she has forgotten it. She is motionless. The child has small hands. He can't sleep Most of all her eyes. When she is about to unless I've got a fire going. The sofa is across move or when she has stopped for good it is the room from the fireplace. Otherwise he always in her eyes.first. Her eyes are heavy remains awake. We talk to each other as if and not pointing at anything. She sits at the something is going to happen soon. table almost touched by morning and I am I'm in the garage putting things away. I already walking, humming to myself a few look at the stairs to the loft. She is not up blocks away. there because her car isn't on the street and I rise up to the studio again. The paintings the garage is silent. I finish hanging things up press against my sense of something happen­ on their pegs. I am at the stairs and walking ing. I would say blue and green because these up them. I flip open the door in the floor of are words that mean undersea, though the the loft and pause to listen at nothing before paintings are not these colors but more often poking my head through. shades of yellow, white, and brown. I return I put my head through and am underwater. up the steps again. I go into the garage and The light came apart. I came up the rest of the up to the loft. It is a small room with two steps. It is warm here. The light rises on windows feeding, or off of, light. The walls panels and substance comes apart. It pressed on two sides slide open and contain dark on everything of me in that tank. I say some storage places. The paintings are stacked word and then I close my eyes. I was still against all four walls, so the smell. I leav·e the

78 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW garden and enter the garage, begin up the Light begins to move in and my hand glows stairs and put my hand on the trap door that orange up to it, my eyelids, my mouth. flips up into the studio. There are jars and The sound of her car and the engine turning tubes and the high rectangles where the con­ off. The sound of her opening the side door to tents have flattened out almost, carrying the garage. Her feet on the steps. things. Small ridges touching half a color I have crawled into a storage area and closed with another and topography of blindness the sliding door behind me. I sit in the dark­ and no more directions. The lowest step on ness of the small space listening to her mov­ the stairs to the loft is broken nearly in half ing about in the studio. She is humming to and gives a little too much when I step on it. herself, moving things around. I keep my I open the side door to the garage knowing breathing even and quiet. I·don't move. At she isn't up there before I enter. The stain first the darkness is like a bee or a mask, just that is there begins to open up red in my something hovering close to my face, getting throat and hounds my head. in the way. Then it begins to move out over Here, the outside has come here and opened the plane of my face, a dark stone slate deep­ up its belly. Now the outside is gone and I am ening, revealing the small lint lines of light the only moving thing here in the world. The still upon my eyes. Silent, I sit with my face panels of color have closed behind me and pressed up into the dark. My slight move­ the dingy rugs have become counterweights ments I can only guess at. Sitting within a to vibrancy. I am still standing and not sus­ cool smooth jug, my inhaling slowly pulling pended because of the dust rising from them. shapes into my mouth. I am not in the bottom The cans full of pencils and brushes are of something, I am in the crown of a building. anemones and there is nowhere to go, having I am pressing at the inside of the top of its come up these stairs there is nothing left to skull. I am only guessing at where I am. do. This makes now dangerous. Cutting my­ Maybe somewhere in the dark of the child's self away from this density again and again breathing filled with unseen forks and spoons. with less success each time I move and dis­ I can only guess at my shape. I am not sleepy. place light. The dust rising shows me how There is dust and some smells here some­ solid the light between its flecks remains. where. Trying to remember the look of the Pigment can become warmth and the smell of paintings, but I can't, like trying to make up alcohol. I can't make a list of colors, I can't old bones. I listen for her and hear something find an order to them just lipping up to each miles away. When will I know if she's gone. other. Yellow finds an avenue, a crack or I won't. The dark is an arrow suggesting river. Yellow, the color at the center that has itself. Keep the breathing quiet and slip into split itself open where green and brown, the muscles relaxing into the bottom of a though with less force, converge on it. Yel­ sack. My face is upturned but remains un­ low opening like a shell around its white gut. touched. I don't feel anxious but more like One instance that has commandeered the powder in water. I open my eyes and close other walls of light as if they were mirrors. them. There is slightly more light when they The wick of yellow reflected to the center of are closed. My face is upturned as if I am the room. Removing my spine from it where sunning myself with darkness. I feel hollow it has left its imprint. My movement brings and imagine my arms filling with dark water. about others and the balance of color changes My heart bends in the out somewhere in my and everything is overgrown with vines cov­ imagined chest. A wreath of something hov­ ering the walls as snakes around light and ers around my ears, making them ring. I brush darkening the ceiling where red has begun to up against things I don't know anything burn the green, changing it. There is no­ about. I sit inside my head and think briefly where to go and no way to watch. Light de­ about spiders. I tingle in the dark along my stroys me as it always comes down and out. legs and neck like a bag of spiders. My eyes The immobility is becoming complete. There remain closed. My head is in my hands. There is no hiding a statue when the world turns is a large round object in my hands. I am new. Describe any shape and I am in trouble turning it over, feeling the soft contours on without trying to describe it I cut it out of the the tips of my fingers. I am the light in the light reducing me. There is nowhere to go. veins softly pulsing from some heart of things

ANGEL 79 in the dark, bent in then out in the dark, that looked exactly as when I came. What sh pushing light away from itself and into the had touched was back where it was before. eyelids and legs growing out from it like slow tripped and fell over something before flip­ rivers of mud. I am caking out more of my­ ping the trap door up and scrambling down self, stuck and then after a moment slipping the stairs. I couldn' t see a thing, not the rugs, further out to where. To fill all the dark in the not the paintings and I made my way by sock and the face and this here where the only touch. Feeling each stair with one foot first. sounds are muffled. Then I become solid as a I was scared she might still be in the garage brick with nothing around it. A single piece beneath me and I stood without moving in of stone propped up cold. Holding there with­ the middle of the studio, listening. I broke the out breath. Stuck and without insides. At the bottom stair as I came down without thinking center of everything imagined out around it. putting all my weight on it not feeling any­ Without waiting or sound. In the middle of thing as it snapped. Here I stand in the gar­ something that could be anywhere because it d e n. will never crack open. Still. And then becom­ Carl stands still in the garden. Frozen there ing flesh again. First a hum, and then a rumpled . He has been filling the wheelbar­ feverishness making the floor feel and the air row with rocks and he stops for a moment. full of things. Sitting there without place The moment holds as the baggy man stands single for how long. Opening my eyes to find still for a moment in the garden. He is ca lm lines of light describing the edges of the door. and graceful. Not somebody running hold­ Lines of light cutting straight across nothing ing his head full of bees in his hands as he until nothing begins to fill in with dark shapes runs. He is trapped by his grace into one around me. Shapes that with only outline moment. His feet are in black rubber boots. seem like places to go. These shapes huddle His jeans and shirt have been paled by wear around me. I could easily fall into one of and sunlight. The house's color presses up them. I look again at the lines like the shape against his outline. Up to about his knees can of some doorway fooling me into another be seen the brown of the dirt behind him. It darkness. I listen and the dark around me is taken over by the pale green of last year's inhales. I listen and the shapes crowd around garden further up. Where the green meets the me humming, touching my arms. I listen and brown it has been flattened out so that the make up what I hear. I listen and the floor perspective is lost in favor of texture. The begins to fall away beneath me. I put my color used for his face and arms is unspeak­ fingers into the line of light, the crack in the able. Upon the simple lined face there is an door. I pull it across and everything comes in area touched by light. Here it is impossible to or out at once and I can't see and I listen and tell whether the artist has abandoned realism hope. or not. The side of the face where the light I ran down the stairs and out into the gar­ touches it seems perhaps a bit too humble den. Moving the painting leaning against the beneath the baseball cap. D door I looked around the studio and quietly slipped out from behind the door. I didn't see George Angel lives in San Fran cisco . His sto ries have a thing and suddenly I was outside. Looking appeared in several magazines. one way and then the other I left the studio

80 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Yves Bonnefoy

THE VOICE, RESUMED Translated by Lisa Sapinkopf

" Have you come out of need For this deserted place, this ravine, this door set up Above sunrise and sunset Like the p assing of a boat from another world, Enter, I'll allow you a brief rest.

"Have you come to be, if only once, The threshold' s master, to push the weight Of the door nailed on its sleeping hinge, To trouble this dream- though you know Every threshold to be a dream, and this iron To indeed be the sign, but without promise, I'll allow you the key to the heavy door.

"Have you come to hear the hammers Echoing beneath the archways, though you've already Moved on, your color fading, seeing No light now but that in dreams, lowering Your tear-filled eyes toward the sky That u sed to welcome you from terrace to terrace Among the almond trees and bright oaks, Look, I' ll lift up again, I' ll give you This newborn earth, for it is nothing less."

BONNEFOY 81 Yves Bonnefoy

ON SNOW-LADEN BRANCHES

Translated by Lisa Sapinkopf

rom one snow-covered branch to the next, from those years FThat passed without any wind frightening their leaves, Scatterings of light will appear Now and then, as we walk on in the silence.

And the powder as it falls is only infinite, We can no longer tell if a world still exists Or if, in our damp hands, we've gathered A perfect crystal of the purest reality.

Colors denser with the cold, blues and purple That call to us from further off than the fruit, Are you our dream so persistent That you become our prescience, our path?

It's the sky itself that has those clouds Whose evidence is child of the snow, And if we turn toward the white road The light, the peace will be the same.

82 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW II

Except, it's true, that all images in this world Are like the flowers that pierce The March snow before spilling, adorned, Into our daydreamt festival.

And rna y one bend down there, to carry Armfuls of their joy into our lives, They'll be dead soon-less in Their faded colors' shadows than in our hearts.

Beauty is arduous, an enigma almost, Ever rebeginning the apprenticeship Of its true meaning on the flowering meadow's flank, Covered here and there by patches of snow.

BONNEFOY 83 MaryEllen Beveridge

ITALY OR FLORIDA

er young Italian man took the change they turned away, the light shifted back, the H Lena placed on the counter and mas­ space around her was neutral again, calm. saged it in his broad palm. His stained white Lena sat down and exhaled. She looked apron emphasized his small waist and the quickly at her young Italian man, guiding a muscled arms crossed over his chest. He widening circle of dough on one straight fin­ would not speak English to her and he would ger. The two men sat at the counter now, their not meet her eyes. But he had her order ready Coke cups in their hands. Lena rolled the as she walked into the pizza stand: a slice waxed paper into her empty cup and threw it steaming on waxed paper and a Coke with­ in the trash on her way out the door. Her out ice, even on the cusp of summer. When young Italian man avoided her eyes as she she turned to find a seat he pressured paying left. customers out of a booth with a few overbear­ It was a long trip uptown; Lena could never ing gestures of a dirty Handi Wipes. Lena understand how four miles took forty-five knew that if she tried to talk to him she would minutes. The air outside was no relief from break some centuries-old Mediterranean code the tunnel air of the subway. She walked of conduct and she would be in danger. So farther east, almost to the river, but she was she said Thank you and he nodded to her dressed for it, sneakers and cotton socks, good without looking at her and she was very care­ for a sprint if that became necessary. AT­ ful. shirt and a pair of loose pants, dark, so the She took a bite of the best pizza in lower subway soot wouldn't show, or the places Manhattan. The room was warm and yeasty. where strangers had touched her. The oven door slammed and the ceiling fan She rang a buzzer and climbed five flights whirred and Lena, mesmerized, sipped her of stairs in an even-tempered brownstone uniced Coke and closed her eyes. She concen­ which had been converted to apartments, two trated on the place behind her eyelids, orange to every floor. Ivy grew up the facades of all as opium poppies, while the noise and move­ the buildings on the block, except the high­ ment of the pizza stand surged by her like rises on each corner, a reminder of how the black dots in her vision. city was going. Before she knocked on the A shift in the light in the room; Lena opened door she lifted her hair from the nape of her her eyes. Two men stood near her, an unbro­ neck and pulled her clothes from her body ken silhouette. An arm was draped over the where they had stuck to it. Then she smoothed back of her booth; a hand, with a dull metal everything down again. ring on one finger, held a cup of Coke. The The man who answered was brown, like men breathed her air, waiting. She looked up Lena: brown hair, brown eyes, brown joint into two pairs of eyes, green, green-blue, at a hanging between his lips. It was unlit. He faint curl at the turn of a mouth. "What do kept one there most of the time, except when you want," she said, not knowing whether he was smoking cigarettes or eating or mak­ she said it out loud or said it to herself: What ing love. Lena had come to believe it was his do you want. The heat made her lightheaded; talisman against all he had found himself the small booth became even smaller. The among lately, as a fur coat (with a moth-eaten muscles in her back tightened. One of the sweater worn underneath) or late-night mov­ men moved to flank her and she stood, de­ ies on TV were to others. He was just a few fending her booth against them, defending inches taller than Lena, so they fit together herself against them. "We didn't see you," he nicely, while he still claimed the masculine said, one of them said. "Sorry," he said, and advantage of size. He took her face in his

84 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW hands and kissed her, as if she had delivered have children of h er own somewhere, say in herself to him, a present. He d id not forget to Italy or Florida or some other place where she remove the half-burned joint from his lips. had left any number of troublesome d esires. Craig's body had gone som ewhat to soft­ Craig filled buckets with water a nd fertiliz­ ness around the chest but it was good to lean ing compound and they walked the len gth of into, unlike the slantboard chest of exagger­ the apartment to the living room. ated health. He was a mostly out-of-work The once beautiful rooms had gone to ruin. carpenter. He had thick wrists and forearms, Craig bought the apartment when the build­ not from pounding nails and hauling lumber ing went co-op, and with the pride of owner­ but because his family was big-boned. Even ship he tore it apart, installing, rem oving, though his life was falling d own around him widening, lengthening . Now nothing was fin­ and he did nothing tha t she could see to ished. The kitchen cabine ts had no d oors and remedy it, she felt from him a protectiveness were stuffed with odds and ends that didn't that came from an unlimited decency toward belong in kitchen cabinets, and with sm all her, or a decency whose limits she had not yet round paper bags from the h ealth food store pushed. marked "raisins" and "whole wheat pancake Craig traced a line at Lena's temple with his mix." The stainless-steel sink worked , but the fingertips, and gave her a beer, already sweat­ butch er-block counter ended abruptly, and ing, from the refrigerator. "We have a half dirty baking pans, frying pans, dishes, cups, hour to ourselves," he said. "How are you? and utensil crowded off it in an ingenious "Hot. Dirty. Summer in the city. How are arrangement which had assured, so far, that you?" they didn' t fall to the floor. "Good. Good to see you ." The pile of clean laundry on Craig's b ed What startled Lena was tha t she was quite sagged toward the pile of dirty laundry on capable of forgetting this man for weeks a t a the floor. Enlarged closet spaces, Sheetrocked time, then coming to when he called h er. On and taped, were abandoned without paint or Friday he had whispered roughly into the doors. The bathroom sink was missing. The mouthpiece of his telephone at the other end surfaces of the furniture were littered, and of the line. "''ve been drinking Glenlivet drawers were half-opened and bulging w ith Scotch today," h e said. "Quite good. papers, string, store coupon s, T -shir ts, safety Unblended. Will I see you tomorrow?" pins. A m ong all this a pot of bean s simmer ed They sat close together on Craig's feather on the stove. couch with their beers. Lena settled her shoul­ In the living room h eavy black cloth cov­ ders against his chest and was empty of ev­ ered the windows, secured to the m olding b y erything but warmth and calm. H e put his two-p enny nails. Scores of thriving marijuan a hand around hers. "The trouble is," he said, plants, set into portable wooden fram es, were "I'm lonely without them, and I can't do a nurtured by frequ ent waterings and eight­ ,. .... ,.... .,;.... thing with them . Cut off till they're foot fluorescent light bulbs suspended from back with their mother." the ceiling by a maze of w ires, more of Craig' s ha ndiwork. Lena b ent over the plants and t visiting. His children terrified h er. admired the brush-stroke, orien tal quality of one person she knew in New York h ad the leaves; Craig caressed them as if they except Craig. Working a t jobs the were alread y the wad of hundred-dollar bills found for her under lights tha t hurt they would becom e. eyes, she stood in front of the office Xerox "After they get this tall," h e measured the and sterilized herself. H ips pressed air, "I tran splant them to an esta te in New it, discreetly, not su ggestively. Every Jersey. Nobody w ill find the land I cleared. the light flashed one of her woman cells The woods go on a nd on." Craig' s eyes went curse, oh joy), like a purey marble, rolled dark, as if he were thinking of anoth er kind of woods altogether. "I h ave to walk about a wanted her to see his plants and sh e mile through the brush to get there. If I work glad because she was tired of thinking steady through the night, I' m on the hig hway children. When she thought too much again by dawn." children she began to think she might He lifted a bucket and wet the dark soil.

BEVERIDGE 85 "When I got back and couldn't find work," he wore white trousers and a yellow sports shirt said, "a buddy of mine hired me to harvest and exuded an oppressive health. He looked his plants. It's the most dangerous time. at Lena from the doorway with detached cu­ You're red-handed if you're caught. He paid riosity. She went back to her beer as Craig me five-hundred dollars a day. I bought a box exchanged a few words with him, took of rubber bands and snapped one around Roseann in his arms, and rested his hand on every hundred-dollar bill I earned. By the Abby's glorious yellow hair. Suddenly all the time the harvest was in, I'd used up the whole other objects among the chaos claimed Lena's box ." vision-dolls, blocks, coloring books, pick­ He trusted her now with this. Down pay­ up sticks, children's clothes, the smell of baby ment for a co-op. Craig was one of the elect powder. whose selvice in Vietnam had later given him Craig smiled at his children through the an almost regular source of income. He sur­ joint in his mouth as if they, not it, had veyed his healthy green living room and drugged him. The man said something to sighed. "The Garden State doesn't do too Craig and stepped around the clutter to the badly by those seeds from Nam," he said. kitchen sink, where he washed his hands of Craig finished watering the plants while everything, and left. Lena went to the refrigerator and tried to Craig took his children to Lena. He filled decide between beer and orange juice, its Roseann' s bottle with orange juice, and they only contents. They took fresh beers to the all sat on the couch in a row. He said, "Abby, couch. Craig switched on a fan at their feet Roseann, you remember Lena, don' t you?" and cleared a space at the table. Lena threw Rose ann attended to her bottle; Abby smiled newspapers and crumpled cigarette packs to at Lena openly, guilelessly. Lena smiled back. the floor and lay in luxury on the couch. Abby shifted her weight closer to her father Craig's chaos was inviting and so pervasive while Lena told her how they had met. "I took all she could do was give in to it, maybe coax your daddy's phone number from a notice on it along. His chaos had overwhelmed him to a bulletin board. He brought his tools to my inertia, although he said he had stopped work­ apartment-" ing on the co-op only until the divorce settle­ "His hammer?" ment; there was a chance it would go to his "Yes. And his tape measure, and level, and wife, and then she could have it, he said, the paint. Do you know what he did then? He whole damned thing. tore down a wall, so I'd have more room to Lena moved her legs and the fan ruffled her pace." This was lost on Abby. She shifted her pants. Craig pulled around a bulging trash weight again and Lena sensed danger, but it bag full of shake and rummaged through it. was Abby who was threatened, who did not "There are some buds in here, I know it," he want to hear that the man she was so errati­ said into the trash bag. The crop in the living cally dependent upon lived in ways that ex­ rom was his hope for the future. cluded her. Abby said, "I'm hot, Daddy, I'm He crumpled the buds into cigarette papers hungry." while Lena laid down a row of neatly rolled Lena said to her, "Would you like me to joints. They smoked the fint joint and he told help you find another dress?" her how many plants would flower, how tall "No." they would grow, what they would be worth. Craig took his children to their room. Lena He puffed tenderly on the joint, then looked went to the stove and stirred the beans, at the room abstractedly. "Most of it will checked the hydrator and sliced a carrot into probably go to my lawyer, though," he said. the pot. The steam made her face sweat. Ten­ The buzzer rang; he stood heavily and drils of hair stuck to her skin. She wound her buzzed back. They heard high, excited voices hair in her hands, a nervous gesture justified on the stairs, two of them, and a third, a by the heat. She trailed down the hallway and man's, saying, "Come on, Abby, come on, asked Abby if she could borrow a few bar­ Roseann." Craig gave Lena a split-focus look, rettes. Craig was buttoning her into another the pride of a father and the regrets of a lover, dress. Abby smiled at Lena again, a feminine and opened the door. The man on the other complicity. Lena stood patiently while Abby side of it was taller than Craig, leaner; he paired all of her barrettes and finally handed

86 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW over the red ones. adults walked down the carpeted aisles, some Lena sat on the bed while Abby tried to with five or six children in tow. Other adults fasten them to her hair. Lena took a strand somewhere in the neighborhood were relieved from each temple to hold the rest back and for the afternoon; it would be their turn next. showed Abby how to fasten them. Abby There were single men, single women with a smoothed Lena's hair, patting it. It was full of child or two or three, a few bona fide sets of snarls, long and full of snarls; Lena just parents (Lena checked eyes, hair, thickness of washed it and let it go. bones), some like Craig and Lena. Lena felt She waited in front of the fan until Craig unseen, flattened out. was ready. The children followed him every­ Craig was on the aisle seat with Roseann on where, breathless little shadows in collision his lap, and Lena sat between Craig and Abby. with each other. He disappeared down the "Catherine," Abby said, "may I trade places hallway in search of his keys, returned to the with you?" table, brushed stray marijuana into the trash "Her name is Lena, Abby," Craig said. "You bag, and ripped the paper off the top of a pack know that." of Camels to insert the joints into the pack. "No," Lena said, on principle, quite clearly Abby was at his heels, calling "Daddy, through her mouthful of popcorn. Who was Daddy," and Roseann lagged behind, corning Catherine? upon the last maneuver just as the next was "Catherine!" about to begin. Now Lena was having an argument with a Craig shut the flame under the pot of beans. five-year-old. Abby let go with a beautifully With silent apologies to Lena, he lifted his modulated whine, punctuated by little sobs. children into his arms and carried them out It is like a song, Lena thought; musical de­ the door, quiet now, content. Lena shut the spair. Abby spilled Coke on Lena's pants. door and followed them downstairs. Craig and Lena moved over one seat, and Craig set Abby down on the sidewalk. She Abby sat triumphantly next to her father. tried to force his attention with a rush of Lena took his hand, fearing she would lose words, high and insistent. A flywheel carne herself in the tiny urgencies of the children loose in Lena's brain. Abby suddenly aban­ who surrounded them, but he was off in a doned the argument she was trying to have haze of marijuana. He wrapped his hand with her father, leaving them in a low-pres­ around hers. Roseann settled against his chest, sure zone absent of sound. Craig said," Abby, dreamily sucking her bottle. take my hand." She took the hand he had put Abby paid close attention to Snow White. around Lena's waist, and they all straggled Lena frowned into her popcorn. Craig said up the street. nothing. If one woman had divided his fam­ Lena swept her hair meditatively over one ily, surely he wouldn't allow it again. Abby shoulder. The noise of the traffic became an­ knew this, instinctively. other layer of heat. Yellow taxi cabs rolled Lena carne to Craig from the cool extrava­ down Second Avenue, distorted by the wave gance of her neighborhood, where she had a of heat rising from the asphalt. Enough of the lover who was quite glamorous in the source cabs were empty. If she walked to the curb of his income, the vintage of bis drinks, the and raised her arm, one would stop for her. If cut of his clothing. He was unaware of how Craig had blond hair, their foursome might well he entertained her. He was expert at look more authentic. Or if she had blond hair. arranging dinner, hailing a cab, buying a Or if one of the children had brown hair. newspaper and folding it under his arm, all at Craig finished another joint. But no one was a half-run, just so. He was quite upset at the looking at them. Lena was protected by these look of her apartment. How could she possi­ children and this man, isolated by them. For bly entertain? he asked her in his meticu­ a while she was safe. lously cultivated Eastern voice. He wagged The movie house vibrated with the noise of certain ancestral bones at her, like the barrel children, a thick hum that trebled down when of a rifle. He was often disappointed in her. the lights began to dim. In the lobby Craig Lena eased her hand from Craig's and balanced tickets, popcorn, candies, soda, chil­ drifted into the lobby. A sizable ebb and flow dren. Lena's arms were empty, a burden. The of little bodies, sometimes accompanied by

BEVERIDGE 87 bigger ones, giggled and fretted there. She a part, their T -shirts clung together, then fell had seen enough of the film-betrayal, flight, back. rescue, revenge, salvation. A room full of "Wh en do your children sleep?" Lena said. unendings watched the happy ending. The "It's only afternoon." Prince kissed Snow White and as she gazed They must take naps? Young bodies tire into his eyes an infant screamed in the front quickly, I understand. Just go and go and row. then practically drop to the floor." Softly she They straggled into the afternoon heat and was pulling the hair at the nape of his neck. a low, humid sky. Lena bumped along n ext to "First they get cranky," he said, standing Craig, slow to regain her equilibrium. He up. "I' ll be right there, Abby. They'll know said, "You have Coke on your pants," and when they're tired." grinned at his children. He started acting Craig did underdogs with Abby, pushing dopey and sh y, like Dopey, and caught each her swing hard and running under it on the of them in his big arms, planting Bronx cheers upswing. She shrieked convulsively. Lena sat on the soft skin of their n ecks. Their voices at the edge of the sandbox. Sand glued by pierced Lena's eardrums as they struggled sweat streaked Roseann' s face and arms. She away from him and returned for more. walked unsteadily to Lena, a toy shovel in "Kiss me, Daddy," Abby said. "Kiss me like her hand, and said, "Mama," but it was not the Prince kissed Snow White." Her arms Lena. "Yes, I know," Lena told her. wrapped possessively around his thighs. Her Upstairs the fan barely moved the air. Lena smile was more enchanting than Lena imag­ set the beans on simmer again, found an on­ ined hers could ever be. ion in a doorless cabinet and sliced it into the "Abby, Abby," Craig said, helpless. He pot. She settled again on the feather couch. didn' t seem to have the strength to take her The beans were done, and all was quiet arms away. Lena was afraid Abby would bury downstairs. Maybe, Lena thought, they have her face in his loins. "Ish, ish," Roseann dropped to the ground in the heat, circled breathed , catching her fingers in Craig's pants around each other. She drew a bath and lay in leg. front of the fan while the tub filled . Lena stood back, pretending she was just Abby found Lena in her room, pinning her passing by. Craig picked up Roseann a nd hair with Abby's barrettes. She looked at Lena kissed h er cheek, brushing her d elicate skin with her beatific smile and said, "Are you a with his rough face. Then he kissed Abby, friend of my daddy' s?" who no longer clung to his legs. Craig pulled Lena thought for a moment. "Yes," she said. Lena to him and kissed her. Impulsively, Abby She could say that. Until she found herself drew Lena's face to h ers. Lena kissed h er in knocking up against his stoned , peaceful si­ return. She leaned against Craig, comforted len ces and he said, Come in, and she did, and by the texture of his hair and skin, then gath­ there was nothing . Nothing but his guerrilla ered herself together and wandered down farming and beer, and Glenlivet Scotch the the avenue with Craig and his children, day before the children arrived. But for now blessed for the moment, if not saved. it was all right. "Yes," she said again. "''m a They went to the courtyard behind Craig's friend of your daddy' s." She finished pin­ apartment building, where h e had built, a ning h er hair . swing set and a sandbox among the weed They had dinner in front of the fan. Beans trees that thrived in all the untended corners stu ck to the couch, the children's skin. Craig of the city. The children fanned out through took Lena's bath for the children. He helped stunted shrubbery and wilted hollyhocks to Roseann out of her clothes; Abby undressed play on the swings. Roseann couldn't climb fluidly and flitted about the room, her long onto a swing by herself so sh e walked instead hair falling to h er s turdy golden bottom. with giant baby steps to the sandbox. Abby Roseann wriggled from Craig's lap and ran paid h er no mind. Craig led Lena to a bench with Abby, looking seductively back at him under unclipped hed ges and kissed h er hands, while h er mouth pulled at her bottle. Abby her mouth. With a child' s prescien ce Abby flirted with her father, rocking her body in called throug h the h edges to h er father, front of him and running off w hen he tried to Daddy, Daddy. As Craig and Lena moved take h er arm, a n ymph with perfect, un-

88 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW back to his room to rummage through the arms across his chest. She lay a handful of clean -dirty laundry for a fresh T -shirt and a change on the counter and said, "Grazie." He pair of pants. He walked her to a cab, an nodded to her and said, "Niente." untranslatable silence between them. "Pensare, I come here to do that." The cabs were abundant, fast-moving. Lena "Si, pensare, I know." She saw his shoul­ wondered suddenly what she must look like. ders relax. Craig touched her face as a cab braked for She took what he had given her to her booth. them. "Your hair looks nice," he said, and She sipped her uniced Coke and thought. She shut the door of the cab securely for her. thought she would go back to her rooms now, Downtown she asked the driver to stop at she would think about Italy or Florida and the cross street just below the pizza stand. keep all her lights burning until they blazed Her young Italian man was there; when did out, like ash in a cold fire. Then stoke it once he sleep, play? He flourished his wooden again. 0 spatula and slammed the oven door behind him. The ceiling fan whirred slowly. He lay a steaming pie on the counter and artfully cut MaryEllen Beveridge received her M .F.A . from the Univer­ it into pieces. Then he slipped a slice onto a sity of Io w a W riters W orkshop. She ha s published in literary piece of waxed paper, filled a cup with Coke. magazines including The Georgia Review and is at work It fizzed over the lip of the cup. Lena reached on a collection of short stories to be titled Needle at Sea Bottom. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. for them and he stepped back, folding his

90 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Erik Nielsen

THE HIDDEN STRUCTURE OF WISE BLOOD

abeling Flannery O'Connor's first novel, for the first time in his life seen a naked L Wis e Blood (1952) , as a philosophical woman. At a long distance Haze's mother Bildungsroman means that its narrative fol­ immediately discovered -that her son had lows some traditional genre patterns which tasted the forbidden fruit. "What you seen?" become of practical importance for the the­ she asked him three times, rhetorically, be­ matic structures, the development of the fore she hit him with her stick, telling him protagonist's ideology and character, the or­ that Jesus died to redeem him. Haze was only ganization of the plot, and for the ending of ten years old then, but he was already filled the novel as well. with a strong sense of guilt and a conscious­ Let me begin with the beginning of the ness of sin. He felt himself unclean and mean, story, and not with that of the discourse. By and he chose the woods behind the house as means of the flashback technique the narra­ the ground for his conscientious penance. tor interrupts the progress of events on the Terrorized, he felt that Jesus was too big a story's level of the present to describe some burden for his soul to carry. Jesus is "so soul­ episodes that both give the reader some nec­ hungry," the grandfather told him, and he'll essary impressions of Haze's childhood and get you in the end. extend the temporal duration of the story About ten years later Haze got an opportu­ approximately fifteen to twenty years. This nity to neutralize that unChristian thread. happens twice.1 He was in a boot camp on the other side of the The two flashbacks depict Haze's first an­ earth. Some of his buddies wanted him to chorage in life as a bleak and gloomy place. join them on a visit to the local whorehouse. The boy is socialized into a stern Protestant Haze, as one might expect, declined, and look­ fundamentalism, where happiness only ing through his mother's fundamentalistic breathes with difficulty. Being a circuit glasses, he added that he did not want any­ preacher, Haze's grandfather, during his in­ body to "tamper with his soul." When his flammatory sermons, misuses his young de­ friends left him for the lust of the flesh, they scendant as a demonstration object, "even for carelessly asked him if he was sure he had that boy there [he used to shout from the nose one a t all. That remark caused Haze to a brief, of his Ford automobile to those few who were but extremely important, sequence of actually listening] for that mean sinful un­ thoughts, which signifies a metamorphosis thinking boy standing there with his dirty of the protagonist's consciousness. This piv­ hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, otal moment is so momentous that it must be Jesus would die ten millions deaths before seen as a point of determination in the novel: He would let him lose his soul." It is obvious that Jesus is used as a disciplinary means to He took a long time to believe them be­ cause fear. And Haze's most important and cause he wanted to believe them. All he "black" experience was, accordingly, that it wanted was to believe them and get rid was necessary to a void Jesus in order to a void of it once and for all, and he saw the sin. opportu-nity here to get rid of it without Previously he had already learnt from his corruption, to be converted to nothing mother what sin was. It happened on the day instead of to evil. (Wise Blood 12) he returned from the traveling circus, having Haze's calculation is captivatingly logical: 'Flannery O'Connor, Wi se Blood, Co llected Works, ed. if one can protect oneself against Jesus by Sally Fitzgerald (New York: The Library of America, avoiding the world of sin, it must be possible 1988) 9-11, 34-36. to get totally rid of sin by exchanging the soul

NIELSEN 91 which gives it shelter, and the morality which accordingly, the whole dream as a re-birth. gives it name. So, like Faust, Haze swaps his After his conscious meta morphosis, Haze's soul for nothingness. He is fully aware that unconsciousness has to be sworn in, too. His he simultaneously loses the contact with evil, transformation, one understands, is a change ie. with his sense of guilt, fear of Jesus, that also a ffects the deepest parts of his soul. consciou sness of sin, etc.-in one word, reli­ And r egarding Haze's future behavior, it is gwn. possible to take a further step in this direc­ Having deliberately waved good-bye to his tion, claiming that Haze has been re-born as religious educa tion means on a philosophical his own shadow (in the precise sense of the and ethical level that Haze in one stroke has term that C. G. Jung gives it).3 turned into an a theist without any moral ori­ Seen from a p sychological and ethical point entation, but with a noticeable d esire for blas­ of view the first part of the dream demon­ phemous behavior. This is the reason why strates how strong Haze's mother fixation Haze, coming to Taulkinham, is able to lie has been. Whereas the rebirth part of it con­ down in "the friendliest bed in town" on top firms and verifies that it is his consciousness of Mrs. Leora Watts, doing what h e could not that Haze trades away. This enables him to do in the army under any circums tances. experience his own subconsciousness for the When Haze fornicates h e only sets foot on a first time in his life. de-tabooed area, where sex has nothing to do It is, from this essay's point of view, more with the existence of sin or the world of God important to emphasize the incestuous and either. On the contrary, sex is not a sinful Oedipal contents of the dream-sequence than "evil" anymore, it is just "nothing." Haze can to point out its necrophilous implications, go in for sex, precisely because h e has bar­ which m ean nothing in the context. tered his soul away, so that both Jesus and sin These radical alterations naturally affect to Haze are words without any d eeper mean­ the protagonist's moral profile, too. Haze ing, representing something without real ex­ could have answered his friends in the boot istence. camp, "What do I need with a hooker? I have But having on ly '"reason ed' himself out of Jesus." Could have. But he did not. Now, his faith," as Kathleen Feeley puts it, Haze's having been changed, h e says to himself, transformation has not yet been artistically "What do I need with Jesus? I got Leora depicted in any convincingly visualized way.2 Watts." In the wake of his transformation So, wanting to make her poetry more con­ Haze has become selfish, arrogant, conceited, crete, O'Connor rewrites her hero's m eta­ egocentric, self-righteous, and, moreover, on 4 morphosis. Haze, falling asleep in a narrow the novel's litera l level (cf. Thomas Aquinas ) berth on the train, is a victim of a deep dream a murderer and a self-mutilator. about himself, b eing with his dead mother It is possible on the analogical level of Wi se inside her enclosed coffin on the day of her Blood (cf., once more, Thomas Aquinas) to burial. It is a terrifying nightmare, in which interpret Haze's rebirth in the train as the Haze experiences a genuine psychic regres­ Devil' s entrance into the novel. This is not sion to tl:e prenatal life in his mother's womb. crucial, however, but serves to expose what In the same movement the reader can witness has been called "an added dimension." how the protagonist is reborn, when he wakes The fact remains that Haze as a human up with a start and wedges "his head and being has undergone his formative years' first shoulders through it" ["it" being the "crack" ]. but mos t important transformation. That is On the literal level the "crack," of course, is the main thing. The pro tagonist's decisive nothing but the opening between the ceiling metamorphosis is artis tically well docu­ of the train and the curtain of the berth. And m ented in chapter one, but it does not take Haze's final cry only stresses his claustro­ place until the break between chapter one phobia. On a symbolic level the word "crack" can 3C. G. Jung, " Der Scha tten," A ion. Untersuchunge n zur be interpreted as the mother's vulva and, Symbolgeschichte (Zurich: Ra scher Verlag, 1951) 15-22. ' Thomas Aquinas, Basic Writings of Saint Thomas ' Kathleen Feeley, S.S.N .D., Voi ce of th e Peacock (New Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (New York: Random Yo rk: Fordham Unive rsity Press, 1982) 59. House, 1945)1: 16-17.

92 N EW ORLEANS REVIEW rejections of the existence of all that which the small body must, additionally, be seen as transcends the empirical world. He winds up the novel's gigantic symbol of the archetype his lecture in this way: of a false god, who, nevertheless, plays an important part in the story by linking to­ "Your conscience is a trick ... it don't gether the characters, by accelerating the exist though you may think it does, and speed of the narrative, and by being a crucial if you think it does, you had best get it component of the elements which push Haze out in the open and hunt it down and kill toward the brink of a precipice. it, because it's no more than your face in Although Haze has come to a zero point in the mirror is or your shadow behind Taulkingham he is still "charged with en­ you." (Wise Blood 93-94) ergy." During the night he decides to move to another city to continue his nihilistic ac­ This is literature and philosophy of religion tivities in a new place. He starts packing, and together, and O'Connor now has to show the while he is rummaging about in his_room, he concrete consequences of Haze's transforma­ finds his mother's glasses. He puts them on tion from an atheist to a value-nihilist and an and looks at himself in the mirror on the wall: apostate with a strong Camus-like sense of the meaninglessness of human life and with a He saw his mother's face in his, looking desperately profane disbelief in the divinely at the face in the mirror. He moved back sacred universe. quickly and raised his hand to take off So the plot, carefully prepared for it, ex­ the glasses but the door opened andtwo plodes in a display of fireworks which on the more faces flo a ted into his line of vision; literal level of the story is both violent and one of them said, "Call me Momma now." surprising, so that it may be seen as gro­ (Wise Blood 106) tesque. On the symbolic level, however, it is loaded with that kind of precise artistic signs The already once quoted "commandment" that furnish the novel with a vast potential of from Haze's nihilistic sermon can serve as a meaning which increases the significance of useful clue to the understanding of these the story and affects the readers strongly, strange sentences. The non-existing "con­ whether they see these signs or not. 5 science," Haze emphatically declared, is no The first thing Haze does is to make love more than "your face in the mirror" and de­ with Sabbath, the "ugly child dressed up in serves nothing but to be hunted down and woman's clothes." Formerly he had decided killed. to seduce her for strictly non-sexual reasons, Only by means of the improved vision pro­ but, ironically, as it turns out, it is the eroti­ vided by his mother's glasses Haze is capable cally experienced Sabbath who has the upper of experiencing how his repressed conscience, hand and therefore seduces Haze, teaching which now begins to stir, personifies itself to him "hew to like it." appear before him face to face in the shape of The next thing that happens is Enoch's theft his own mother. of the mummy from the MVSEVM in the City The tableau demonstrates how black Haze's Forest Park. To him "the shrunken man" rep­ shadow has become, and how both oedipally resents the new jesus Haze needs so badly. To and morally attached to his mother he still is, Haze the mummy is nothing but a heap of but also how little he has succeeded in nulli­ dust or a piece of trash. To Sabbath the dry, fying from his personality, in spite of his ugly scarecrow turns out to be an object she violent exertions. Last, but not least, the ex­ can use in practicing her parental instincts. perience makes plain how well-founded Having just received him from Enoch, she Haze's religious past with its guilt-creating con­ accordingly begins to rock him in her arms sciousness of sin was, and still is . With his own asking, "Who is your momma and daddy?" eyes wide open Haze has not been able to Besides all these noticeable significations realize all this. Only his mother's fundamentalistic glasses, not used since that day in the boot camp, are able to focus on the 5Flannery O'Connor, Mys tery and Manners: Occasional Prose, eds. Sally and Robert Fitzgerald (London, Bos­ lies and failures (which could be related to ton: Fa ber and Faber, 1984) 72. several distinctive levels of the interpreta-

94 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW tion of the novel). throws his mother's glasses out of the door. This analysis is verified and its ideological After that he breaks off the connection with significance supported by the next (quite Sabbath, slaughters Mr. Layfield in a puddle analogous) very dramatic episode. I am think­ of blood, tries to escape, and has his car de­ ing of the scene in which Haze kills Solace stroyed with the aid of an extremely officious Layfield, his own Doppelganger, who re­ cop. This last events show how skillfully­ sembles him so much in everything that a efficiently and humorously-Flannery woman earlier asked Haze, "Him and you O'Connor understands to close all doors and twins?" Haze, partly repeating his own words, to tighten the rope around her protagonist's indicates what is under way by answering, neck to bring the narrative toward an end. "If you don't hunt it down and kill it, it'll Finally Haze walks home, buys himself "a tin hunt you down and kill you" (Wise Blood 95, bucket and a sack of quicklime," goes into his cf. 93). house, and blinds himself. It is noteworthy that Haze, by using the word "it" instead of the expected "him", This final act is the protagonist's last, deliber­ depersonifies the question. The point is that ately accomplished, metamorphosis, which by correlating the twice mentioned word "it" for the third time takes place between two with the name Solace Layfield, and with the chapters. notion of "conscience," and, finally, with the Considering the relations between the fic­ idea of a "shadow," O'Connor makes the four tional characters Haze and Hawks, the blind­ terms equivalent to the reader. ing stands for Haze's final triumph over his Since Haze has already been reborn once as competitor. Hawks could not do what Haze his own shadow, the expression "the shadow did. Though this point is not very important behind him," meaning the shadow behind is has to be mentioned. the shadow or the shadow's shadow, must, Seen from a psychic point of view Haze's consequently, be seen as an indication that blinding of himself signifies that he is going Solace Layfield on the symbolic level of the to prevent his strong mother fixation, with its story is a personification of the protagonist's threatening memento of his suppressed life, not yet completely eradicated consciousness. from reappearing in another mirror. But now the time has come. So Haze, once On the thematic and symbolic level the and for all, kills the part of himself which he blinding-aesthetically so well prepared­ calls "it" and which represents what is still must, accordingly, be interpreted as Haze's left of his conscience, ie. of his consciousness final attempt to eliminate his "conscience" and religious past. He passes the sentence of and his troublesome and importunate past death by, suitably, saying, "You ain't true .. with its burden of religious "evil." The act .. You believe in Jesus." equals the destruction of the mummy, the Considering O'Connor's talent for wry and glasses, the prophet Layfield, and the Essex. reversed logic this means on the literal level But at the same time, having seen too much that the poor Layfield (by being a Christian) of the profane world Haze also mutilates his to Haze stands for the false prophet par excel­ eyes to be able to really see-to see, under­ lence. stand, and recognize-the greater, sacred On the novel's literal level, only, the mur­ world. der of Solace Layfield is a criminal, brutal, Having bartered his soul away, with its and culpable massacre that in addition has content of religiously colored "evil," and sold been written in such a way that one is really it for "nothing," Haze could but witness how thrilled while reading the passage. But the nothingness slowly became. emptiness, and realistic description needs an interpretation, how emptiness let evil reenter his mind and unless the reader contents himself by de­ behavior through the backdoor. In the mirror nouncing Haze as a pathological case. Haze must have realized how close he was to Haze reacts violently to all these develop­ an end. It is the old story about the unclean ments. After having broken the dried up new spirit who returns to his house just to find it jesus, so that "the trash inside sprayed out in "empty, swept, and garnished." "Then goeth a little cloud of dust," he throws him out of he [The Bible says] and taketh" seven other the window. He then, equally symbolically, spirits tougher and more wicked than him-

NIELSEN 95 self. They return, and "the last state of that bartering of the soul and the blinding, are man is worse than the first" (St. Matt., 12: 44- characterized by the protagonist's negation 45). of his previous stage. The transformation Haze, who all through the novel has repeat­ between atheism and nihilism, however, tells edly declared himself "clean", now begins to us a lot about O'Connor's poetic practice. lead a very piously atoning life, saying for The change of a person from being a non­ the first time ''I'm not clean," and, like believer to becoming a ruthless nihilist is Sophokles' Oedipus, after he had blinded him­ common in her works, because the latter is self between two acts, also saying, "I can see seen as implied in the former. To O'Connor now." This means that both of them, the atheism leads inevitably to nihilism, the con­ Greek and the Southern Oedipus alike, now, nection is always seen as a relation of impli­ in their state of physical blindness, finally cation. have become religiously seeing. And having In Flannery O'Connor's handling of pre­ removed their arrogance and self-righteous­ cisely this relation, or in plain words, of the ness, they have placed themselves in a situa­ destiny of a (temporary) non-religious per­ tion, where in the end they are able to see the son, her metaphysical rhetoric is really hard existence of the sacred world and recognize at work-and the result of it is often predict­ God's divine order of the universe. able (both Rayber and Francis Marion Tarwater from The Violent Bear It Away, Hulga The contrast between the profane and the sa­ from "Good Country People," and Sheppard cred constitutes the fundamental contrast in from "The Lame Shall Enter First" are all Wise Blood. Both the narrative course of events good examples of what I mean). and the them a tic structure of the novel are As a Scandinavian it is, furthermore, inter­ based on it. esting to note that Flannery O'Connor has Haze's religious point of departure is ex­ never created a fictional character whose place plicitly shown by means of the two flash­ would have been in the space of doubt be­ backs in the beginning of the novel, and it is tween the sacred and the nihilistic world. implicitly, artistically very impressively, in­ She was, obviously, never able to show the dicated by his difficulties in, or rather by his slightest interest in such lukewarm agnos­ inability to lead a non-religious life. tics. Having negated his Christian belief in the Her fictional characters, all of them, belong Faustian soul swapping, and during his cof­ seriously to the religious world, and they are, fin dream in the train, Haze enters on his without exception, fiery souls. All the ten­ atheistic (blasphemous) phase. He lives like sion, the thrill, and the humor in O'Connor's a fly inside a cheese-dish cover, and works depend upon the uncompromising dis­ O'Connor's gift for creating wry, funny, and crepancy between the sacred (rural) world, capsizing situations achieves great triumphs and that of the profane (urban). And when a in this part of Wise Blood. character like Haze transgresses the ideologi­ Haze reaches his goal, "nothingness," by cal borderline between the two he really gets the aid of a logical positivistic and existen­ more than he bargained for. tialist skepticism. But the nihilistic view, Every reader of Wise Blood knows that Haze whose actual emptiness could not prevent is the object of one more change. It is his violence and moral disorientation from in­ transformation from being alive to being dead. vading his thoughts and behavior, turns out And the ultimate question, whether Haze is to be the beginning of the end. redeemed or not, can be answered only on the Haze's final stage is his non-confessional, background of an interpretation of the novel's pious Christian life on Mrs. Flood's quiet very last word. front porch "past the railroad yards." His Mrs. Flood, who generally is an unreliable introverted piousness only now and then al­ narrator, tells us with a high degree of reli­ ternates with his dramatic and sanguinary ability that Haze, after he died, changed to a processes of purification, whose medieval "pin point of light." What does this mean? exaggerations give a hint of repentance-to The last word "light" makes in any case the put it mildly. end of the novel's ending an open affair. Both deliberately made transformations, the It cannot, of course, be proved in the math-

96 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW ematical sense of the word that Haze receives symbols to a standard of readability on sev­ the redeeming grace when he dies. The "light" eral levels of meaning. So considering Haze's might mean, as has been proposed, that it is complete philosophical pilgrimage I have no Mrs. Flood who is enlightened in the end. But doubt myself that on the analogical level of it can also mean that somebody passed by the story the last word "light" means that and turned on the electric light, or that the Haze has been redeemed. Nor have I any moon had just risen. Not being a religious doubt that this understanding corresponds propagandist, O'Connor, fortunately, has not with Flannery O'Connor's intentions. The furnished the ending with either non-fictional lame shall enter first, it has been said some­ or quasi-fictional commentaries. where else. Anyhow, the word "light" refers to the Finally, in the same way as atheism implies novel's frequent use of the idea of a "shadow." nihilism, leading the sort of pious life Haze Having first killed the "shadow behind" him did in chapter fourteen makes possible an­ by slaughtering the false prophet Solace other kind of life. To the dead protagonist Layfield (he who believed in God) and then that cannot mean anything else than eternal pushed back his own shadow (that which was life. Thus, it seems to me that structural criti­ born in the birth episode) by the blinding, cism leads naturally to an interpretation in Haze has made room for the light to reenter which the protagonist is in fact redeemed­ his hag-ridden psyche. From this structural, whether one is a Christian or not, and whether narrative, and psychic point of view, "light," one likes it or not. D then, means conscience and consciousness, signifying that Haze has ended his journey by returning to the divine world-a reading Erik Nielsen is as so ciate professo r of co mparative literature that gives relief to Mrs. Flood's words, "Well, at Odense University, Denmark. He ha s published books on Mr. Motes . . . I see you've come home!" Bertolt Brecht (19 81) and David Bowie (1986). His lates t book, Flannery O 'Connor's Novels, is expected to be pub­ But Flannery O'Connor would not have lished early in 1993. been O'Connor if she had not elaborated her

NIELSEN 97 Kar1 Precoda

THE POET AS WOMAN

ohn Crowe Ransom's 1938 collection, The analyze. When they perform the poetry, they World's Body, is considered one of the semi­ near anxiety. She then becomes their critic" Jnal documents in the formation of American (69) . With this ghostly presence hovering in New Criticism.1 In a seldom-noted chapter, a the background, Ransom declares that, with review essay on Edna St. Vincent Millay re­ respect to "The Poet as Woman,". "I shall printed from The Southern Review where it simulate perfect assurance," a construction had appeared the year before, the author pointing up the very lack of which he must records an apparently autobiographical per­ simulate. His simulation seeks to represent spective on "The Poet as Woman," that strange an empirical reality in which "a woman lives creature who "fascinates the male reviewer for love, if we will but project that term to but at the same time horrifies him a little cover all her tender fixations upon natural too." 2 His ambivalence is startling, as is the objects of sense, some of them more innocent mechanistic response to a figure who makes and far less reciprocal than men" ( WB 77) . him "oscillate between attachment and an­ From the play of gender difference emerges tipathy, the same attitudes perhaps as are this didactic conclusion: "Her devotion to provoked in him by generic woman in the ['natural objects of sense'] is more than gal­ flesh, as well as by the literary remains of lant, it is fierce and importunate, and cannot Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett, Christina but be exemplary to the hardened male ob­ Rossetti, and doubtless, if we only had enough server." Here then, in a state of mimetic of her, Sappho herself." By equating woman tumescence, the critic stretches for a consum­ poets in general with the sublimatory mas­ mation that, as between any reader and any terwork of "generic woman in the flesh," text, can only transpire off the page. Ransom inscribes for posterity his profound On the page, however, where the "critic" is anxiety in the presence of Emily Dickinson confined, his phallic presence signifies what and her sisters. a Lacanian feminist might describe as the An array of moments of gender-triggered "loss and lack" of the "maternal body."4 In instability far less obscure than this example the presence of the phallus, writes Toril Moi, make up Karl Keller's "Notes on Sleeping the subject's desire for his mother "must be with Emily Dickinson," which documents repressed," and this "primary repression several generations of male critics' attempts opens up the unconscious." Only one of in­ to "use" Dickinson for their own, presum­ numerable variations on the primal Fall, this ably ideological purposes.3 Keller argues that transformative moment is, as Lacan would Dickinson's anticipation of just this male read­ argue, the birth of language and the subject's ership "nears anxiety. She performs; they entry into the symbolic order. Of his particu­ lar prelinguistic paradise, Ransom owns to a

10n this, see Alexand~r Karanakis, Tillers of a Myth: set of "recollections of early childhood." Southern Agrarians as Social and Literary Critics (Madi­ which he has unfortunately "lapsed from" son: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1966) 193; also, Vincent ( WB 77). A more famous chapter from Th e B. Leitch, American Literary Criticism from the Thirties to World's Body, "Poetry: A Note on Ontology," the Eighties (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1988) 39. makes this lapse explicit: art, for which po­ ' The World's Body (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, etry is the paradigm in Ransom's cosmology, 1938) 77. is "second love, not first love. In it we make

3"Notes on Sleeping with Emily Dickinson," in Femi­ nist Critics Read Emily Dickinson, ed. Suzanne Juhasz ' Tori! Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary (Bloomington. Indiana Univ. Press, 1983) 67. Theory (New York: Methuen, 1985) 99.

98 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW a return to something which we had willfl:llly proval. The canonization of Miss Dickinson, alienated" (116). This "return," however re­ as the early New Critics were prone to ad­ pressed in its symbolic prison-house, none­ dress her, even as they sought to lure her into theless reveals the drive investments of the their intellectual boudoirs, was an anxiety­ author's unconscious as they struggle to evade laden process of mutual adaptation. In the those horrors of "generic woman in the flesh" statements of this nascent school, the poet as they have for so long "willfully alienated." woman comes to occupy a key nexus in Ameri­ Hence, "The Poet as Woman'"s Apollonian can literature and in the effort to reshape the tableau in which Ransom allows how "he American academy on an institutional level would much prefer if it is possible to find by redefining the study of literature on a poetry in his study, or even in his office, and theore tical level. Throughout this lengthy not have to sit under the syringa bush" (78). process, arguably the major event in literary The syringa's dangling bulbs and tall stalks, studies in this century, Emily Dickinson re­ not incidentally the source of the panpipe turns to haunt her male readership as both reed, suggest the true vector of Ransom's muse and medusa.7 anxiety. They fail, however, to prepare read­ The earliest and most important New Criti­ ers for his conclusion that "man, at best, is an cal response to Dickinson is Allen Tate's fa­ intellectualized woman," an assertion in mous essay, described by Keller as "probably which Ransom becomes, as it were, a daughter the most influential" as well as "one of the of Emily Dickinson. Only by the lapse, or fall, most blatantly chauvinistic" (76). In the origi­ the self-conscious process of intellectualiza­ nal version, published in The Outlook in 1928, tion signified by the application of words to Tate invokes Eliot to overlook, Tiresias-style, page, the critical act, can Ransom escape the the 29-year old Fugitive's tryst with his po­ seductive yet terrifying female corpus, an etic precursor. "If Miss Dickinson has not escape that leads tautologically from "the been understood," writes Tate, "it is because world of the simple senses" to the abstract we lack a critical tradition, a body of assump­ sensibilities of words like "integrity," "busi­ tions, passed on from generation to genera­ ness," and of course, "art." tion, which alters as the spirit of literature Ransom was not the only major critic of the alters yet, in its comprehension of the past 1930's to invoke Dickinson's gender. R. P. with the present, remains clear and funda­ Blackmur and Yvor Winters both figure mentally the same."8 And again, Eliot lurks prominently in Keller's schema. Blackmur behind Tate's analysis of Dickinson's extinc­ wrote that Dickinson was "neither a profes­ tion of personality: her unified sensibility is sional poet nor an amateur; she was a private that of a poet who "could not reason at all. poet who wrote indefatigably as other women She sees" (622). Dickinson's critics, notes Tate, cook or knit. Her gift for words and the are "perplexed" by her, plagued by an "un­ cultural predicament of her time drove her to certainty of judgment"; nonetheless, "her in­ poetry instead of antimacassars."5 In a re­ fluence on American poetry has been gradual, lated vein, Winters confesses to an ambiguity insidious, and profound" (623). Tate's po­ in one's feeling about her" that is "profoundly lemic opposes the prevailing biographical disturbing," but proceeds to assert that tendency in academic scholarship of the era, Dickinson is "one of the greatest lyric poets and leads him away from the "facts" and of all time." 6 In spite of their anxious ac­ toward the "meaning of her seclusion," counts of her gender, then, Blackmur and Dickinson's "only way of acting out her part Winters both valorize Dickinson by includ­ in the history of her culture" and "the fulfill­ ing her at all in their versions of literary ment of her life." And, although Tate insists history, as well as by flashes of genuine ap- that "the poet is the poetry," he seems princi-

' "Emily Dickinson: Notes on Prejudice and Fact," Th e 7The New Critical genealogy sketched here, it s hould Southern Review 3 (Autumn 1937): 346. be noted, is limited for reasons of both space a nd fo cus to North American texts and theoris ts. 'Maule 's Curse: Seven Studies in th e History of American Obscurantism (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, 1938) 8 "Emily Dickinson," Th e Outlook 149 (15 August 1928): 150, 165. 621.

PRECODA 99 pally concerned with removing her physical phor, in which redescription serves not tq corpus out of the way: "when she went up­ increase the truth-value of reality as such, stairs and closed the door she mastered life but to realign our understanding of reality by by rejecting it" (622). By maneuvering the creating more useful metaphors to describe woman poet upstairs, Tate cancels both his it, that more closely approximate the way we own anxiety and a backlog of biographical think. For a philosopher like Richard Rorty, and historical inquiry that has obscured, to for instance, the proper "use" of language is that point, the poems. These questions which to sketch utopias and to demystify each oth­ until now have virtually fetishized ers' differences; for Tate and Ransom, the Dickinson's (heterosexual) love-life, "may be contingency of language becomes an oppor­ the problem" he concludes, "yet the poetry, tunity to sketch another kind of utopia and to its immediate quality, is no problem at all. It institute a radical, though not a liberal, cul­ is there. It is this that creates all problems; tural agenda. prompts speculation; gives to all our discus­ Published precisely between the two ver­ sion form" (623). sions of Tate's essay on Dickinson was his Between this first version of Tate's essay and Ransom's manifesto I'll Take My Stand and its revision, published four years later, (1930), in which they sought to redescribe the author assimilated as critical touchstones Southern tradition and inspire into being a Donne and the metaphysicals, reflecting Southerner who was, in Ransom's phrase, Eliot's enormous influence. Tate's "Notes on "reconstructed but unregenerate." 10 In this Donne" appeared in The New Republic the context, Tate rethought and began to rede­ same month in 1932 that "New England Cul­ scribe his own roots, a process mirrored in ture and Emily Dickinson" appeared in Sym­ the revisions to "Emily Dickinson." The early posium, and both return in Reactionary Essays essay appeared simultaneously with Tate's on Poetry and Ideas (1936). Donne the poet, biographies of Stonewall Jackson (1928) and writes Tate in the former essay, is "not a Jefferson Davis (1929); an early reference to searcher after a universally valid truth," but the "Civil War" in the 1928 essay becomes in more like "a lawyer choosing the fittest argu­ 1932 "the War between the States" (RE 5) . By ments for the case at hand."9 This is the key manipulating the signifier, the signified con­ to Donne's "modernism" and also to our own, tent slides, for this "War between the States" our recognition of the contingency of truth denies the very "civil" -ness of the Union, and language in "the frustration of historical thus re-opening the conflict and hinting at an relativity." In his new opening paragraph on alternate outcome. Literary history is the Dickinson that same year, Tate now com­ new battlefield on which Tate re-fights the pares her with Donne, emphasizing the "re­ war, likening Dickinson to those expatriates markable ties" between them: "as in Donne, in Henry James for whom "honor became a we may detect a singularly morbid concern, sort of forlorn hope struggling against the not for religious truth, but for personal rev­ forces of 'pure fact' that had got loose in the elation" (RE 17). Thus, Dickinson's "modern middle of the century. Honor alone is a poor word," contingent, persuasive, and free-float­ weapon against nature, being too personal, ing, "is self-exploitation." Although this con­ finical, and proud, and James achieved a vic­ tingency represents "egoism grown irrespon­ tory by refusing to engage the whole force of sible" and "decadent in morals," for Tate it the enemy" (RE 11). Similarly, Tate' s also represents "the perfect literary situa­ Dickinson rehearses this conflict on a "vaster tion." What he is _hinting at here is made field," her enemy "Nature" or "Death," her clearer by Ransom's "Poetry: A Note on On­ struggle to create, a "clash of powerful oppo­ tology," which proclaims that "there is a sites" (RE 12). Against the "pure facts" of miraculism or supernaturalism in a meta­ industrialism which had not so long ago phorical assertion" (WB 139). These posi­ crushed Southern tradition beneath the boots, tions anticipate contemporary views of the hooves, and wheels of the North's modern history of language as the history of meta- armies, Tate arrays the fragile disciplines of

' Reactionary Essays on Poetry and Ideas (New York: "'Twelve Southerners, I'll Take My Stand (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936) 67. Harper and Brothers, 1930) 1.

100 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW literature and criticism. When the South in is rejective, a nd the d eath drive with its cycle his account refuses to "engage" the superior of negation and renew al, w hen it appears in forces of the Union, foregoing the attrition poetic language, as blasphemous to culture warfare that prevailed in 1865, the critic's as to life . Poetry, according to the Kristevan new metaphysical "victory" is directly analo­ model, "is the chora 's gu erilla war against gous to Dickinson's act of retiring to her up­ culture" (Bedient 809). By comparison , stairs room in defiance of culture and in de­ Dickinson's poetry, in Tate's words, is "blas­ fense of her mind: both critic and poet are phemous" and "almost obscene" (RE 25); now equally "purified by the triumphant "Only by violence" wrote Tate, notoriously, withdrawal from nature, by their power to in I'll Take My Stand, might the Southerner recover from Nature." Only a few years la ter, "take hold of his tradition" (174). Ransom would sp ecify tha t "the critic should Despite the outcry it aroused then and since, regard the poem as nothing short of a desper­ Tate' s "violence" slides easily from milita­ ate ontological or metaphysical manoeuvre," rism to metaphysics. He links Dickinson's and that, in what might stand as an anticipa­ New England theocracy to Priam's Troy (RE tory epigraph to the whole of the New Crit­ 7), and this association becomes in turn Tate's ics' achievement, "the poet wishes to defend magnificent act of redescription in "Aen eas his [sic] object's existence a gainst its en emies, a t Washington" (1933) of and the critic wishes to know wha t he is doing, and how" (WB 347-48). a time when civilization Tate's restaging of the Civil War "upstairs" Run by the few fell to the many . in literary history and the general polemic against culture his project entails resona te * with Shira Wolosky' s recent characterization Stuck in the w et mire of Dickinson's poetry as a "voice of w a r." In Four thousand leagu es from the ninth fact, over half of Dickinson' s poems date be­ buried city tween 1861 and 1865, and many directly ad­ I thought of Troy, what w e had built her dress the war through "martial imagery" and for.13 "backdrop." 11 And while only Whitman among Northern writers b ecame directly in­ The buried city, a classic Freudia n m e taph or volved in the war's events, Wolosky no tes, for the unconscious, becomes for Lacan the only Dickinson, in m astering her life b y re­ "cen sored cha pter," the "tradition" w hich jecting it, "entirely refused to emerge from must " transport" the history of the subject, her own home" (33). Because she questioned the "stock of words and acceptations" of a the divine plan behind the war, Dickinson "particular vocabulary," a nd the bod y, "the was torn by radical misgivings about the di­ hysterical n ucleu s of the neurosis where th e vine ord er. Wolosky writes tha t she is "fu ri­ h ysterical symptom reveals the structure of a ous with the God without whom sh e is unable Lan gu age." 14 Dickinson' s w orld h as also, for to conceive her universe, but who, if r espon­ Ta te, "some thing of the fascina tion of a bur­ sible for a universe so incomprehensible, ied city" (R E 21), and in his essay Laca n ' s claims her enmity. Her poetry becomes the diag nos tic discourses conve r ge throu g h field of combat with and against God" (xx). Dickinson's poetic corpus: tradition, red e­ And Dickinson's "p ervasive poetic mode" is scription or "self-exploita tion," and the per­ "blasphemy" (99). In Kristevan terms, this sistent an xiety over the "hysterical nucleu s," blasphemy might be fig ured by the "semiotic the ever-about-to-return corpus of the poet chora," the symbolic representa tion of the as wom a n . It is worth recalling of course tha t voice of instinct, the d eath drive that "sha t­ the "ninth buried city" w as h erself brought to ters" significa tion. 12 Kristeva' s semiotic char a ruin by the great price of one p earl, H elen, in

'' Em ily Dickinson: A Voice of War (New H aven: Yale '' Collected Poem s 1919-1976 (New York: Farrar, Strau s Univ. Press, 1984) 37. & G irou x, 1977) 166-67.

12See Calvin Bedie nt, "Kristeva and Poetry as Sh at­ " Speech and Language in Psychoanaly sis, trans !. An­ tered Signi fication," Critical Inquiry 16 (Summ er 1990): thony Wilden (Baltim ore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 807. 1986)21.

PRECODA 101 the flesh. Tate concludes that his intellectual Tate's rhetoric charts the turn from Agrarian predecessor Cotton Mather, with his unified to New Critic. A few years later in The World's Puritan anxiety, would have clearly perceived Body Ransom would make the famous state­ the subversive potential of the female corpus ment that" criticism must become more scien­ and the semiotic chora, a nd "would have burnt tific, and this means that it must be devel­ [Dickinson] for a witch" (RE 25). The civiized oped by the collective and sustained effort of critic, on the other hand, will seek to displace learned persons-which means that its proper his rather less acute (because dissociated) seat is in the universities" (329). The political anxiety away from the poet and onto the failure of Agrarianism had become apparent poetry itself. This interpretive "violence" by the later 1930's when, as one historian of then, becomes theoretically central to Ameri­ the movement writes, Ransom and Tate can New Criticism. "abandoned the sectional demand for a 'res­ Tate's displaced anxiety returns in the "sub­ toration' in favor of a more specific literary tly interfused erotic motive" he finds in "Be­ crusade-to win over criticism, the teaching cause I could not stop for death," which he of English, and American literature itself, to calls in pre-Johnson variorum style, "The theN ew Criticism" (Karanakis 135). 1fTate 's Chariot" (RE 14). He begins by quoting the "Emily Dickinson" marked the earliest New entire poem (minus a Johnson-restored fourth Critical reading on Agrarian ground, and The stanza that seems to account for most if not World's Body the principal theoretical turn, all of the "erotic motive" apparent to a mod­ then from a practical standpoint Brooks' and 15 ern reader) , and proceeds to the first recog­ Warren's Understanding Poetry (1938) had nizably New Critical reading of Emily without a doubt the w idest impact, "the first Dickinson. This is, Tate proclaims, "one of time in literary history that a textbook has the p erfect poems in English" (RE 17), and also been a potent force in criticism" "flawless to the last detail" (RE 14), but the (Karanakis 193). Understanding Poetry was terms are what make his argument radical: first a mass-scale defense of poetry in the the poem is "a construction of the human long tradition of that polemic so recently will" put, through the medium of poetic lan­ evoked by Ransom's "desperate ontological guage, "to the concrete test of experience" or metaphysical manoeuvre," and second a (RE 15). The images, h e insists, are "not merely codification of the n ew super-science that beautiful, but inextricably fused with the cen­ stressed "how much of our experience eludes tral idea," as if a heighten ed order of percep­ the statements science can m ake," arguing tion, expressed by the "concrete test" of quasi­ that we need look no further than "the fact scientific inquiry, the "fusing" and that this wide domain of human interests "interfusing" of linguistic materials and the exists to find a justification for poetry." 16 "cold vitality" of abstraction, had superseded Brooks and Warren foreground Dickinson the "merely beautiful" aesthetic realm. Never in their prefatory "Letter to the Teacher" as was poetry so systematically dissected. Here, an example of a poet w ho is chronically mis­ in Tate's strong reading, the desire to direct read (vi). As cure, they explicate"After great attention away from the poet and the node of pain a formal feeling comes," a poem whose anxiety her corpus marks and onto the poems title reflects with precision their own cultural themselves leads to poetry redescribed in the position: after the "great pain" of Southern newly-u seful language of science that would defeat, of Reconstruction, of financial panic have been anathema to the Agrarian ideo­ and rural devaluation, of the Great War, the logu es only a year or two before. disillusion of the 1920' s, and finally the Crash, From an institutio·nal perspective then, comes a desire to reunify a shattered sensibil­ ity by formalizing experience: After great pain a formal feeling comes­ 15Tate's versio n , quoted from Martha Dickinson The n erves sit ceremonious like tombs; Bianchi's 1924 edition of the Collected Poems, has the The stiff Heart questions- was it He that rather gallant effect of averting its gaze from the lady's corpus, which seem s to be o nly barely dressed. Johnson bore? restores the deshabille: And yesterday- or centuries before? The Dews grew quivering and chill­ For only Gossamer, my Gown- 16 Understanding Poetry (New Yo rk: H enry Holt and My Tippet-only Tulle- (P712) Co., 1938) 24.

102 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW The feet mechanical go round of Blackmur' s 1937 essay on Dickinson, A wooden way quoted in turn by Ransom, who declares that Of ground or air or Ought, "critical writing like this is done in our time." 18 Regardless grown, What transpires is in fact a striking technical A quartz contentment like a stone. advance on previous analyses of poetic lan­ guage: Blackmur argues that in the passage This is the hour of lead "only one word, piercing, is directly physical; Remembered if outlived something that if it happens cannot be ig­ As freezing persons recollect nored but always shocks us into reaction. It The snow- is the shock of this word_that transforms the First chill, then stupor, then phrase from a mere grammatical tautology The letting go. (UP 468) into a metaphorical tautology which estab­ The first stanza questions Christ-" He"­ lishes as well as asserts identity" (ix). This is outright; the second stamps out endless im­ the same stunning, numbing, shocking mo­ pressions of industrial modernity with its ment that Brooks and Warren found in" After "feet mechanical"; the critics conclude that great pain"; Blackmur' s virtuosity is in his the "quartz contentment" resulting is "crys­ redescription of the moment in scientific tallized . . . out of the pain" (470). Thus, they metaphor: "Some function of the word pierce inscribe their own "quartz contentment," an precipitates a living intrinsic relation between image that is "ironical," for the "contentment renunciation and virtue; it is what makes the arising after the shock of great pain is a con­ phrase incandesce"; and it is this "stress or tentment because of the inability to respond shock" the very word creates that "is carried any longer, rather than the ability to respond forward into and makes specific the general satisfactorily." Finally, they sum up the notion-physical but vague-of letting go." poem's formality and numbness as "an at­ The notion, first broached here, of motion tempt to hold in, the fight of the mind against "carried forward," of "letting go," works to letting go," and call it" a defense of the mind" shatter signification, and allows Blackmur to (471). 17 conclude that "the physical elements in the The precise moment of "letting go" that word pierce and the participial phrase letting closes "After great pain" is, as Brooks and go . . . make the other words available to Warren stop short of implying,more than the feeling," an effect that is a "continuing pro­ relaxation of giving up; it also signifies the cess" that "takes time, it may be infinite time, release into timelessness that underwrites the before the renounced presence transpires in New Critical defense of the mind, and of expectation in the 'Not now'. . . . " (x). poetry as a pragmatic counter-universe to the When he praises Blackmur's essay as criti­ seemingly interminable shocks of culture. A cal writing for "our time," Ransom means correlative Dickinsonian moment is noted in that Blackmur is up-to-date and modern, but Ransom's preface to the book that named the the latter's use of "time" and "infinite time" movement, The New Criticism (1941): point to a semiotic dimension Kristeva has Renunciation? called "women's time," which opposes "time Is a piercing virtue, as project, teleology, linear and prospective The letting go unfolding" and subverts the time of "lan­ A presence for an expectation­ guage considered as the enunciation of sen­ Not now tences (noun + verb)." 19 Blackmur's essay, This quotation appears as part of a large block like the balance of New Critical work, shares at this juncture an oppositional polemic against the relentless march of progress, mo­ "Brooks and Warren are unique among their peers dernity, and alienation, and a common lan­ for the lack of anxiety with which they confront the poet guage with not only Emily Dickinson the poet, as woman. "After great pain" becomes, in their read­ ing, a trope of consciou sness, and elements of Under­ standing Poetry's explication of this poem resurface as a motif in Warren's All the King's Men. On this, see Joseph 18Th e New Criticism (Norfolk, Conn.: New Directions, N. Satterwhite, "Robert Penn Warren a nd Emily 1941 ) viii, x. Dickinson," Modern Language Notes 71 (May 1956): 347- 49. 19"Women's Time," Signs 7.1 (1981): 17.

PRECODA 103 but especially, if unexpectedly, with contem­ An initial act of rejection, the methodical prob­ porary feminist readers of her poems.20 As ing of the "formal feeling" that follows, and Ransom writes in "Wanted: An Ontological the final, favorable comparison of interior Critic," "it is my feeling that we have in po­ and exterior landscapes, all work to evoke a etry a revolutionary departure from the con­ "Covered Vision" that metonymizes the se­ vention of logical discourse" (NC 280). And cret domain of poetry, the tiny circumference this particular revolutionary departure can that is ultimately significant only beyond the be traced to his figure of "the poet as woman" words on the page, beyond even language . and the assertion that "man, at best, is an itself . intellectualized woman," a sort of governor, Science and art then, are subsumed into the in the mechanical sense, who oscillates be­ "ontology" repeatedly invoked by Ransom: tween the utopian projection of"women's "the differentiation of poetry as discourse is time" signified by the semiotic chora, and the an ontological one. It treats an order of exist­ culture shock of a dystopia where the chora is ence, a grade of objectivity, which cannot be degraded as blasphemy. "The dense and treated in scientific discourse" (NC 281). brilliant yet obscure world of the modern Poetic language produces a "value density" poets," Ransom explains, returning to "The that is "unknown to scientific understand­ Poet as Woman"'s dialectic of attachment and ing" (NC 293), in which the poem's "ontologi­ antipathy, "resists mastery, is more mysteri­ cal density ... proves itself by logical obscu­ ous than intelligible, perhaps is more evil rity" (NC 335). Emily Dickinson's centrality than good. . . . as if they had knocked the to this metaphysic is evident by her most bottom out of history and language" (NC frequently used words: only "1," "as," and 335). "my" recur more often throughout her cor­ The program of an aesthetic order bounded pus than the ontological "be," with 719 us­ by and within self-contained, organically ages. And her ontological "bee," one of the complete literary texts is, as Tate hinted as strongest bridges between mind and nature, early as 1928, a nearly precise doubling of recurs 121 times. Dickinson's "willed Para­ Dickinson's rejection of and mastery over her dise" 22 is in fact closely related to that of own culture, the retreat into her own counter­ Ransom's idealized Agrarian of 1930, who universe. The last stanza of "Renunciation," "identifies himself with a spot of ground, and omitted from Blackmur' s discussion and this ground carries a good deal of meaning; it hence from Ransom's as well, contains the defines itself for him as nature. He would till purest expression of this movement: it not too hurriedly and not too mechanically Renunciation-is the Choosing to observe in it the contingency and the in­ Against itself- finitude of nature; and so his life acquires its Itself to justify- philosophical and even its cosmic conscious­ Unto itself ness" (I'll Take My Stand 20). Upon, or within When larger function­ this metaphysical pastoral, the New Critics Make that appear- erected their own, institutional "Sacred Smaller-that Covered Vision-Here-21 Wood." Reading a poem like "Renunciation" along­ 2°Contemporary critics, especially feminist, commonly side the cultural critique implicit in the writ­ array their evidence against the received wisdom of the ings of seminal New Critics like Ransom, New Critics, a practice that fails to recognize and ex­ Tate, and Blackmur should be more than ploit a shared oppositional stance. Alongside Eliot and enough to convince that, as one historian has the Agrarians' "Sacred Wood," one might usefully jux­ tapose Suzanne Juhasz on Dickinson's "retreat" to a recently shown, the conventional image of space where she could "select, apportion, focus, exam­ formalist close-reading as the "purely aes­ ine, explore, satiate herself exactly as she wished and thetic and rhetorical interpretation of texts" needed to do, such that poetry could result" (Feminist is in fact "misleading" (Leitch 32). The recog­ Critics Read Emily Dickinson 8), or Paula Bennett on Dickinson's " land of power, g lory, and dominion," in nition and canonization of Emily Dickinson My Life a Loaded Gun: Female Creativity and Feminist Poetics (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986) 94. 22So called by Louise Simons in "Emily Dickinson's 21 Th e Complete Po ems of Emily Dickinson, ed. Thomas Willed Paradise," American Ima go 42.2 (Summer 1985): H. Johnson (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1960) 366. 165.

104 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW is intimately related to the institutional mis­ At one point Brooks, Blackmur, Ransom , Tate, sion of the New Critics who rescued her from and Warren, along w ith a h ost of the biographical curiousity-shop and d id multidisciplinary luminaries, sat on the advi­ more than anyone else with the p ower to d o sory board for Perspectives U.S.A ., an arts so to place her at the center of American quarterly aimed a t the export m arket that ran literary history. Michael Zimmerman, m edi­ for four years on a lavish, so-called " terminal tating on literary revivalism , notes that grant" from the Ford Foundation. This coin­ Americans tend to "lose sight" of our greatest cidence of funding placed th e secessionist writers, to "s hy away from extremes of thought critics, at least tangentially, on the same team and emotion" and lapse into a "middlebrow as the Central Intelligence Agency, and the criticism" that simply fails to recognize the Con gress for Cultural Freed om , also h eavily "most characteristic course of our literary subsidized by Ford a t the time.24 imagination." 23 This charge has, p erhaps In the pages of Perspectives U.S.A., in its fairly, been levelled at the later d ecadent final year, Ransom at last en gages Emily flowerings of New Criticism , but fails to ac­ Dickinson again, after nearly two d ecad es of count for the boldness of the early statements. silence between them. His occasion is a re­ What makes for the proper revival of an aes­ view of Johnson's newly-arrived variorum thetically radical w riter, Zimmerman argues, edition in which h e writes that "the restora­ is the "extremism, flexibility, and polemical tion just now of an old poet" is " the principal intransigence of aesthetically radical critics" literary event of these last twenty year s." 25 In · whose "wide ranges of experience" equip these sam e years, and not at all incidentally, them "to deal successfully with a literary the Agrarian m ovem ent collap sed , the New imagination that was often extrem e, disrup­ Deal h ardened in to place, World War II came, tive and fragmentary" (85). Dickinson's cor­ was fought, and remained, residually, in the pus, in its multiple incarnations, thus repre­ permanent war economy of w hich the great sents the critique and subversion of not only foundations now represented the public face. the great New England Puritan theocracy, The sheer complexity of post-war American but also, in her appropriation by this group of life virtually d emanded its subjects be able "insurgent critics" seeking to capture the stra­ and w illing to counten ance unprecedented tegic high ground of the academy, a highly doses of ambiguity. Johnson' s variorum edi­ politicized institutional position instrumen­ tion of Dickinson responded to a someh ow tal to the formation of the discipline we in­ related situation, according to Ransom, in habit today. w hich "th e p ublic critic was very bold if h e As New Critical method s solidified insid e cared to offer much comm ent on the pub­ the academy however, the world outside was lish ed verse when he could not know if the changing rapidly. In 1937, Ransom jumped lines as they were printed were the lines as from Vanderbilt, the birthplace of the Fugi­ they h ad been written" (6) . Celebrating the tives, to Kenyon College in Ohio where, in act of faith implicit in Johnson's achievement 1948, the prestigious school of En glish was established by a generous grant from the Rockefeller Foundation. By the early 1950's, 24See Edward H. Berman, The Influence of the Car negie, Ford , and Rockefe ller Fou ndations on American Foreign Brooks had left Louisiana Sta te U niversity Policy: The Ideology of Philanthropy (Albany: State Univ. for Yale, and Tate was teaching at Minnesota; of New York Press, 1983) 143, 156, 177. Over time, as the Southern Agrarians d ecamped and dis­ writes Berman, the Foundations " perfected m ethods persed northward, their reactionary ideol­ w hereby their edu cational and cultural prog rams would complem ent the cruder and more overt forms of eco­ ogy was increasingly subsidized b y huge in­ nomic a nd milita ry imperia lism that are so easily iden­ dustrial fortunes. These years were notable tifiable" (3). For a n account of how, in typically inter­ for the New Critics', and eventually Emily ventionist fashion, Perspectives U.S.A. was pushed over­ Dickinson's, conscription into what h as b een seas at well below cost, thus undercutting its competi­ tion in the open m a rket a nd cau sing, like so many called, perceptively, the "cultural cold war." American exports, more friction than understanding, see Dwig ht MacDonald, The Ford Fo undation: The Men and the Millions (New York: Reyna! and Co., 1956) 86-87. 23"Literary Revivalism in America: Som e Notes To­ ward a Hypothesis," American Quarterly 19 (Spring 1967): 25"Emily Dickinson: A Poet Restored ," Perspectives 73. U.S.A. 15 (Spring 1956): 5 .

PRECODA 105 of textual certainty, Ransom xeprints in full cold war." In this final stage of appropria­ no less than ten poems, though with little tion, the critic as (intellectualized) woman New Critical analysis recognizable as such. merges with the poet as (absent, hence de­ Perhaps none is called for. The essay's con­ fenseless) woman into an emblem of imperi­ cern is not with interpretation per se, but with alist self-construction. And this composite is the problem of establishing the texts at all, truly, as Dickinson once wrote, "Ransom in a and into this discussion intrudes, once again, Voice" (CP 548). so many years later, Dickinson's anxiety-pro­ But where there is Ransom in a Voice, there voking corpus. also remains a Voice in Ransom, for Dickinson, Presenting the poems, Ransom constantly however denatured by ,repeated character­ invokes the poet's gender, calling her a "little ization as a "spinster," signifies a node of home-keeping person" (7) and a "shy spin­ anxiety even in this late essay. For although ster" (8), an epithet he repeats four times on the critic has seemingly capitulated to the a single page (17). He also notes, reiterating antithetical forces of foundation-sponsored the argument of his early review of Millay, internationalism, his is still an oppositional that "it is common belief among readers voice responsible for installing inside the in­ (among men readers at least) that the woman stitutional discourse a radically rejective poet as a type ... makes flights into nature counter-universe that negates, to some extent rather too easily and upon errands which do and on its own terms, the progressive not have metaphysical importance enough to hegemonic claims of the institution it speaks justify so radical a strategy" (10). And he all out of. In the prototypical New Critical strat­ but asserts outright that Dickinson's gender egy, Ransom "uses" Dickinson to defend not makes her too naive to be trusted in establish­ only poetry, but his own institutional posi­ ing her own texts. Thus, the editor, "honor­ tion; as Tate sought an alternative to the mis­ able" and "professional," will respect such fortunes of the Civil War, so Ransom now "flaws" as her "cryptic dashes" and capri­ seeks an alternative to those of the Cold War: cious capitalizations "even while he is re­ to create with poetry and criticism a space moving them," although he does this "reluc­ where the numbing shocks of contemporary tantly, because he will know that the poet consciousness, what Wallace Stevens called expected the sharp phrases to fall into their the "pressure of reality," cannot intrude. logical places for any reader who might be Thus, just as Ransom's voice privileges really capable of the quick intuitional pro­ Dickinson's poems, detaching her literary cesses of verse" (7). If we accept the conclu­ from her physical corpus in order to deflect sions of most contemporary scholars that the "blasphemy" of this specific woman in Dickinson's unique punctuation is in fact es­ the flesh, so Dickinson's voice marks the re­ sential to her "meaning" as a poet, as Ransom naturing of an institu tiona!, masculinist himself seems even to believe here, then the realm. And so she returns, medusa and muse. alterations he advocates are even more star­ In this, their last engagement, Ransom finds tling, subjecting the poetic corpus, "in order Dickinson's poems to be "autobiographical that my reader and I may have exactly the in the special sense of being true to an imag­ same poet before us," to an unwarranted and ined experience" (15), her triumph as an art­ systematizing discipline it is ill-served by. "I ist her claim to an "heroic history which ex­ give the poems," the critic declares loftily, hibited first a great passion, then renuncia­ "not quite as they were written, but altered tion and honor, and a passage into the high with all possible forbearance." The result is a experiences of a purified Soul" (17). And daring, even brazen act of cultural oversight here, finally, is Ransom's answer to the ques­ that comes to represent, metonymically, not tions Tate had posed thirty years before about only the New Critic's successful coup from the "meaning" of Dickinson's seclusion: the within the literary academy, but also the ulti­ Soul, he announces on behalf of Dickinson, mate objective of Perspectives U.S.A., as a cul­ the New Critics, and all those who toe the tural arbiter for those not fortunate enough tortuous line of poetic woman-hood, must to be born American, and on an even wider learn "how to do with a little of the world, scale, foundation efforts to shape foreign and make the most of it; how to concentrate, policy, and the entire range of the "cultural and focus, and come remorseless and speedy

106 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW to the point. That is a kind of renunciation; plines it into beauty?" (20). Indeed, we do, all all good poets are familiar with it. And crit­ of us. 0 ics, too, I believe. Do w e not all profess a faith in the kind of art which looks coaly upon the Karl Precoda is a Pres ident's Fellow i11 the Department of English at the University of Virgi11ia. turgid deliverance of sensibility and disci-

PRECODA 107 Milos Crnjanski

PARTING AT KALEMEGDAN

Translated by David Sanders and Dubravka Jura ga

We broke up

then went down to the village.

Like two tears rolling down a wrinkled face

side by side.

Boats waited for us on the river.

Yours sailed first.

Mine disappeared around the islands.

I sat black and bent in silence,

forlorn,

like a shadow on the moon.

108 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Aaron Retica

A BINTEL BRIEF

rs. Wolf wore a red w indbreaker to pro­ AI ways in Bin tel Briefs cns1s. On! y Mrs. Mtect against drafts. Her tapered face Wolf realized this wasn ' t true. Often the Briefs looked out like a periscope. told of reunion s or new found love, but the She drew Forverts closer. It was all failin g desperate ones h ad stayed with her . During health, memory, light, Yiddish. Even Forverts each of Bea's feints a t conversion, Mrs. Wolf itself, once a proud daily. Not that Mrs. Wolf had begun a letter to Forverts. She had never was complaining. It took her the week to get been able to get one sent off w hile the conver­ through the paper. With its Hebrew letters, sion r em ained a threat. learned well only by the boys, written Yid­ Mrs. Wolf thou ght of the letter she might dish had always given her trouble. write this evenin g. Sh e w h ispered to h erself On this night, yes, different from each other in a deliberate American accent: night, Mrs. Wolf could not concentrate on the I have not suffered the trials so many of you r news stories. She was distracted by a ques­ letter-writers have, but I must make a decision tion. Could she submit to the tyra nny of her and turn to you. Before I relate my story, I need daughter's taste? For example, just last week to ask: how could you cancel Bintel Briefs? Bea had criticized Mrs. Wolf's couch. Everybody's so successful noone needs help any­ "All leafy green and blue," Bea had argu ed, more? "it's like you're squ atting on a lily pad." Nine months ago, my husba nd, a faithful reader Mrs. Wolf had countered in a tired voice, of your newspaper, died of stomach cancer. So "You were almost nam ed Lily." Hearing this, painful. I live alone in an apartment which was Bea had slipped out of Mrs. Wolf's line of too big for two. I ha ve a daughter and so does she. sight, into a box of shadows. If sh e decided to I am ashamed to say I do not know my daughter, move into her daughter's, would Mrs. Wolf' s Bea, very well. After many years of what she every comment mottle Be a' s features so? called religious experiment, with Catholicism no She pushed the h ot reading lamp away. less, she has become a university professor . "Those Forverts no longer carried Bintel Briefs, but who can , pray," she tells me. "Anthropology is these were what Mrs. Wolf wanted to read. for those who can't. " She still remembered many of the raw letters Last summer, we traveled to Europe, even to from immigrants asking advice. When she Germa ny, and on this trip my daughter offered me thought of them now, her memory corrected a room in her brownstone. My daughter is blunt. the grammar. Her daughter is like this too , by nature, but also I have recently arrived here from three years in because she is a teenager. Ravensbruck, to find my daughter, who I helped I am capable but lonely. I was once a character escape from Galicia , taken up with thugs in the actress in the smaller Yiddish and American the­ garment district. They spotted her sewing a dress atres and like to have life around me. M y charac­ and have corrupted her. What should I do ? . . . ter was the lady of the house. Yet I am old and find My one son is an anarchis t. Last week, he was my daughter very ha rd. To say nothing of what it just a socialist, so it wasn't so much trouble for is like to talk to my granddaughter, although I us. We were our own little group. N ow he won't cannot stand not to. Do you have any advice for eat meals at a regular time. He must eat, he sa ys, me? when it strikes him to eat. A nd with work it is the P.S. I angered my daughter by disliking her same! Th ough he is often struck with a des ire for attempt at a husband, but she has forgiven me chicken livers or kugelah , he seems never to have now that she has divorced him. this feeling for work . Yo u at Fo rverts are social­ To h elp herself think w ha t she sh-ould do, ists, do you think you could bring him back into M rs. Wolf rehearsed the stages of her life. the fo ld ? Supers;titious, she did not w ant the remem -

RETICA 109 bering to finish her off. her daughter in league with nuns. Everyone She thought only of Bea. Bea was a kite on the ferry could sense h er bad luck. They Mrs. Wolf often lost to the wind. She stood on were daughterless. They had sired a thou­ shore trying to reel her daughter in. Bea sand sons. cartwheeled uncertainly over the waves. The spit and whorl of the river over the Was it failing memory or the thinness of life edge of the boat threatened Mrs. Wolf. Mr. together which made the number of Mrs. Wolf's rare letters, packed with dramatic tales Wolf's images of her daughter small? of lifesaving culled from the Navy's Pacific Horizon, always seemed bloated to her, as if they' d been submerged in water for part of * the trip home. She saw her husband sinking down. The sound of hostile voices screaming incomprehensibly cracked the air as the Japa­ Ten-year-old Bea was close by her side. The nese strangled him. Once the American ship midday sun parched Mrs. Wolf's throat. She sank, there were no more boats, only soldiers. began to cough. Her coughing attracted the These Nips could walk on water. attention of the tourists and worshippers who The swelling and crashing of the waves climbed the marble steps of St. Patrick's Ca­ seemed generational to Mrs. Wolf. The move­ thedral. Bea looked up at her mother. Mrs. ment of the water imitated the movement of Wolfyelled, "No. Don'tbeembarrassed. The time. Long dead relatives, their faces made Catholics would think it was a sin for some­ of white foam, splashed against the prow, in one to cough near a church, but God knows and out of her mind. Before the war, Mrs. we are no Mrs. Wolf such thing !" Wolf's family had visited her in dreams. In Mrs. Wolf began to cough again and though the first months after death, they were jerky her pride would not have it, she was forced to and silent, a celluloid reel from the teens. A look for a drink of water in St. Patrick's. quiet year would go by; but then unveiling "They must have more than they need, Bea, released them from the spell of dumbness. since every time you see a priest he's drench­ They h ad crammed Mrs. Wolf's night full of ing himself in holy water or drowning babies prediction and commentary. Triumphantly in a pool." Bea did not comprehend, but Mrs. they had warned her of Mr. Wolf's posting in Wolf was pleased with the joke. Asia. Yet they gave no hint of Bea' s conver­ Her thirst gave way in the cool, damp sion. Following Hitler's invasion of Poland, church. She rasped out a cough to keep Bea they reverted to silence. Mrs. Wolf assumed from noticing. On the far wall hung shining they served relatives far more troubled than Christ. Mrs. Wolf's urge to shield her she. daughter's eyes came and went. They did not Mrs. Wolf could just make out her lanky stay very long. It was dank. Her cough was daughter. The ferry moored abruptly. There cured. Nothing amazed. Bea was on the dock, an open narrow black How was it then her daughter had fallen, if car b ehind her in the middle distance. Who only in spasms, for this same church? Had drove her? The sun, low in autumn, dropped she caught a bug there which showed itself over Bea's head to the right. She wore simple later? Mrs. Wolf wondered if her glancing clothes Mrs. Wolf had bought her. No uni­ involvement with the theatre had cursed her form yet. daughter to a life of role-playing . Or had it Bea sagged forward a bit, as if she felt her been Bea who threw a shield in front of her mother's p ursuit like a weight on her back. mother's eyes as she-took the streaming light Even crimped this way, she looked younger, of Jesus through the stained glass into her standing in the wild air at the edge of the heart? island. Perhaps they should flee to the sub­ urbs and escape the bombs if New York be­ * cam e London. Mrs. Wolf ran to h er daughter past the half-unhooked chain. Mrs. Wolf felt her h ead lifting out of her "Oh Ma, oh Ma, oh Ma," Bea said. She body, she was so enraged. Rich!, is what it settled her arms around her mother's neck was. H er husband gone off on his warship, and shoulders. "I didn't mean it."

110 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW "Didn't mean running away? It's not like of balance, as in a picnic game. They kept it you said something wrong." up until they reached the Manhattan side of "I just couldn't stand to be with you, OK?" the ferry. "Bea!" What they saw yanked them apart. Man­ "I didn't mean that either. But you hover hattan was unlit. Blackout curtains hung over me like, like I don't know what. Leave it everywhere. Up and down its blocks and to you to find me in a convent." curves, the city was draped in darkness. There "I didn't. They called me. If you'd run were a few lamps and towers still blazing, but away to join the circus instead of the Catho­ these reinforced the effect, like the moon in lics, I might never have heard from you the night sky. again." 'Trn going to try to explain." "Oh, I should tell them you're here," Bea "Did I ask?" · said. She spun a semicircle on her heels. The dock lights clicked off behind them. 'Tm sure they can see us," Mrs. Wolf said, "When we get horne I'm going to stay con- too late. Bea skipped toward the car. Mrs. verted." Wolf felt the wet air against her neck. She "Later, Bea." pushed off her toes to gain an inch and "But what we're seeing is so beautiful it's watched her daughter's every movement. She got to be made by God." wanted to know why Bea was at once giddy "Not God, Hitler." and pliant. Was she still taken with the joy of "Ma. A few weeks ago in shu/, we were flight? Mrs. Wolf thought she might ask the talking about Eve. What did she really want figure in the car, but a foghorn tooted and out of biting the apple? To get out into the refocused her attention. She turned to see the world, to see what it was like." ferry launch. This left one returning. "That rabbi is such a red." "Bea!" called Mrs. Wolf. "We have to go. "You're the one who doesn't listen." The blackout." "A theological discussion I have to have in Bea stood in the street, the car gone, facing the dark? Are we Yeshiva boys?" away from her mother. Staten Island was "That's just it, Ma, in the convent I'd get to before her. "Don't insult me, Bea. Corne back talk about these things seriously." here. I'm only calm because you're alive." "What do you care about them? What you When Bea faced her an eye twitched. don't know is a bible in itself." "Have you slept? What possessed you? Mrs. Wolf could hardly see her daughter, Are you crazy? Do you have any idea?" but felt her turn away. Then, like the fire inching forward on a fuse: "You don't want to know why I need to be "What a trek! You couldn't hide out in St. a Christian?" Patrick's? You had to take a ferry? How can "I was just thinking I should never have I punish you? Did you learn anything from been an actress. Or told you about it anyway. them I could use? You're too much like me, a push here, a pull "Stop laughing. Stop twitching. Bea! You there, all gesture. Even in the midst of a don't look like you're listening. I know the war." lights are going out in Manhattan behind me. "But living in America as a Jew is a kind of If you don't listen to me, you-your father's circumcision. They chop off the natural end­ not going to think this is funny, in Honolulu ing of your name, just the way grandpa be­ or Shanghai, wherever he hears about it he's carne Wolf from Vogelrnan." not going to be laughing. "I hear that rabbi in your voice again. Still, "Why are you treating me like this? Noone's he does have a point. You can't see Ellis here to help me. At your age your grand­ Island now, sweetie. We were lucky. Others mother was married, out of her mother's hair. became Small, Polsky if they were from Po­ Gott in Himmel the ferry!" land, Shiner if they hadn't cleaned their noses. Mrs. Wolf caught her trembling daughter You know the rabbi won't like your running by the neck and pulled with all her might. away any better than I do." Bea resisted, gave in. They scampered down "You're talking to yourself," Bea said. the dock tugging at each other, moving for­ "I know you've heard all this. I want to ward two steps for every one lost to their lack make a point out of it. God counteracts His

RETICA 111 gifts of freedom, Bea. Doesn't the rabbi ever what value was this cascade of untrusted say this? For every Jew here, another one's memory? Could episodes lifted from a life­ there. More are there. I have you, I don't line tell her what was right? Speak to her as have a son. It's pitch black. It's a few blocks the dead could? Mrs. Wolf felt herself falling home. I do have you." asleep, but only far enough to see a waking The captain cut the engine to land the boat. dream. Mrs. Wolf and her daughter swayed and rocked. The ferry was a cradle. The dream had first appeared to her the night of Bea's engagement. Her daughter had * deserted her for the Moor. Mrs. Wolf had been a great Yiddish Desdemona. "I am one, sir, that comes to tell Dredl, dredl, dredl, I made it out of clay, and you, your daughter and the .Moor are now when it's good and ready, oh dred l we shall play! making the beast with two backs." Mrs. Wolf Hey! The English words to the song did not remembered that the Iago speaking these fit the Yiddish music. The melody roused lines, a greenhorn unfamiliar with modern Mrs. Wolf. Not from sleep: she had closed English, had made a grotesque construction her eyes to see her youth. Odd that at this of them in Yiddish. The players never saw a distance there were two youths to picture. translation. What difference did it make that one woman Her dream began with the fat knobs of an she had been and one made? old radio, unable to delicately tune to an old If tomorrow Mrs. Wolf carried herself show, For The People . Bea's note lay open in through Bea's door, looking side to side like Mrs. Wolf's hand, written in letters large a runway model, would it mean the end of enough to be read from the sky. I have run her independence? Would it be all right to away with Him. Mrs. Wolf listened for the entertain an overnight visitor or two? Would call-in number. Evelyn think her grandmother carried on Founded by Jeffersonians to help citizens shamelessly? negotiate the minutiae of governmental bu­ Of one thing Mrs. Wolf was sure. She hated reaucracy, For The People had turned into a her neighborhood. It had long since emptied question and answer show concerning the of anyone she knew well. After her husband trivia of everyday existence. A touch of the died, she felt stronger drafts of wind. It was old anti-Federalism remained, but it often as if she had begun as the owner of a store sounded like the crude racism Mrs. Wolf did stuffed with merchandise and then watched not favor. as every day a new item was taken out by Mrs. Wolf had turned to For The People when someone else she knew, until the store was a the dictionary failed her. She had been sur­ hollow rectangle. prised to find Webster's useless for matching These reflections tired Mrs. Wolf. Surely the appropriate word to a nameless but well they made it clear she should join her daugh­ defined feeling. The show's host sniffled. Or ter. Yet she remained uneasy. Going to her was that the poor quality of her reception? daughter's would be like entering a home for Dialing the number, she tried to listen for the the mentally frivolous. To give herself pause, radio. She heard ringing everywhere. The Mrs. Wolf merely had to remember Bea's ex­ man screening calls did not let her on the air. husband. Bea had been as capricious in her Mrs. Wolf heard her voice doubled, though, choice of a husband as she had been during and his, on the phone and on the radio. He her many near-conversions. Several years listened politely when she said she could see had passed since Mrs. Wolf had seen Bea's the whiteness draining out of the faces of her wet, goofy dog of a man. She recalled her grandchildren. He told her the word she was son-in-trouble-with-the-law dimly. That Bea looking for was miscegenation. had loved a Baptist con artist, was this enough The Moor lived in a cave on Staten Island, to keep Mrs. Wolf at home? though her daughter had gone to California. Mrs. Wolf did not like her own haphazard Mrs. Wolf traveled on a burning ferry, desti­ way of taking such an important decision. Of nation Cyprus. The other women on the trip

112 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW had long coiled hair, red like Medusa. Like ling the volume of her voice was broken, the whore Bianca, in whose part Mrs. Wolf which wasn't necessarily a good thing. Mrs. had once been miscast. Wolf felt a crowd gathering above her. "Adam Clues! clues! clues! Expecting at worst to and Eve lived in a closed community. You find a souvenir of her daughter's overnight would not have been allowed inside the forts trip floating unattended in the water, Mrs. of Venice. Military leader! They wouldn't Wolf was shocked to see a black man emerge have let you be the Merchant!" from the frothy wake of the ferry. A scout for "When you scream Christian at me what the Moor? He did not catch fire. He was not you want to be saying is nigger!" Curtis bloated or wrinkled. He appeared to be very shouted. old nonetheless. From the limited point of Thin and sharp, the bodies hanging over view available to Mrs. Wolf at the back of the the railing above were no longer women but bottom deck of the ferry, no blond or brunette knives. protector showed herself among the women. "No," Mrs. Wolf said. "No. It's the Chris­ It was a redhead's world. tianity. What else were you baptized in the "My name is Curtis, but my better friends river for?" call me Courteous." "You think I'm here to satisfy a need out of "Stay back," Mrs. Wolf yelled. A wave of my past life? It's you I'm here for. You are Curtis's hand unvoiced her. not prepared to face your daughter." "I see no one will call you any such thing." Mrs. Wolf lunged at the ghost. He was very Mrs. Wolf's face turned so white it felt old. Under pressure he might vanish as bleached. She noticed a few strands of hair quickly as he had emerged. The cave-like hanging in front of her face too, colored an hull of the ferry offered very little room for autumnal red, not quite so loud as her wind­ Curtis and Mrs. Wolf to fight. Water threa t­ breaker. ened from every direction save the upper "It's simple enough if you ' ll let me explain. deck. Curtis and Mrs. Wolf might topple Don't be afraid. This is my job, Mrs. over the edge of the boat. The groundlings Vogelman. They even showed me you, rained noise in distinct voices, each its own younger, singing in a Sunday night revue on radio channel. They rooted for Curtis. Staten Stanton Street. We're not the only ones with Island neared. soul. You see, I'm a fairy." As she and Curtis flung each other around Mrs. Wolf wasn't sure how to take that the yellow and black shell, Mrs. Wolf could either. "Go on," she said, hoarse. "They see that he did not want to hurt her. She let go wouldn't waste a fairy on me." when he shoved her toward the chain fence "You want credentials?" Curtis asked. He which protects passengers while the ferry is sounded each word out as though he were in motion. The rusty chain ripped h er red reading it from a cue card. "I was killed windbreaker. building one of the tunnels. I drowned in the From thesteeldeck,Mrs. Wolf begged: "You East River and went uncollected. Gradually, have taken my daughter and thrown me to painfully, the water nurtured me back to the ground! What blessing do you have to health. As repayment for the medicine, I offer in exchange? advise people, women mainly, who cross the "Curtis! Curtis! Where are you?" Mrs. river in anxious states of mind. For you I was Wolf could h ear h er own words, barely. "You called out by the younger generation." were right to leave m e. This is not my terri­ Curtis's familiarity appalled Mrs. Wolf. She tory either. But they could make a very nice was a Jew; no hocus-pocus devotions for her. voyage of the damned out of this ferry, Curtis, No friendly strangers. And he had been a if they wanted to. Look at the fiery island, the construction worker! Nearing the edge of the sun rising! If they want to expand the opera­ boat lost in thought, Mrs. Wolf felt a lick of tion, they could do it out there. The Staten ftame wash over her like spray. Even in a Island ghetto, just like in Venice. I should not dream, it seemed supernatural. h ave com e this far this late without my hus­ "I don't want your charity, you goddam band. I will go back and try to reach my Christian. That's what you are, no matter daughter by telephone. Now I am terrified to what you look like." Curtis' s spell control- move."

RETICA 113 Frenzied by the thought that it was adulter­ to nettle us. They weren't reasonable. Now ous for her to address such pregnant words to I try to think reasonably and am interrupted another man, Mrs. Wolf had to open her eyes by fears." to remember her husband was dead. Always "What?" going to Bea and for what? Mrs. Wolf remem­ "It's old age. I' m half free, half a slave. bered that she had caught the first plane to miss your father, Bea." California when her daughter eloped, only to "Steel yourself. Come live with me." turn around and catch the redeye back. Cold, "You remember when I volunteered as a she pulled the hood of the red windbreaker secretary for the NAACP, it must be twenty over her head. five years ago. I did it to please you, Bea . I did it because I had a dream. I was on the The telephone rang. ferry searching for you. I had to decide "Were you calling me?" whether to get off and hunt for you like I'd "On the phone? No." planned or stay on the boa t and go home. I "It was busy. Evelyn and a friend were just got through replaying it. " yapping. Evelyn's grounded. Are you sleep­ "Not your black ghost dream." ing?" "That's the one. He said, stay together, "I was dreaming." even if you can't understand each other. The "I 'm sorry I called so late. But I needed to part you don' t know is that I was in Califor­ know, are you coming tomorrow or not?" nia the night you left. I did not feel like I "It's not that late. We already agreed. I'm could speak to you, speak nicely anyway, so going. I'm coming." I went home. There were moments from "You said you had to think about it more, Othello, too, but I'm sure you remember that remember? You weren't sure. Not that the much." life you're leading leaves much of a choice." "Evelyn was so excited to hear you had "Bea!" played Desdemona. You w ere her show-and­ "It's true. If you don't come I'm assuming tell in drama class. Whatever old costumes it's because you don't love your own grand­ we had over here, she took in." daughter. So she stays on the phone too long. "Costumes? The Yiddish theatre had no I' ll order you your own line." costumes which would keep. I want to know "Why are you angry with me?" Evelyn better than I know you." ''I'm sorry, Ma. I can't stand the wavering. "Goodnight, Ma. For once I'll be patient. I made you this offer six months ago. I Sweeter dreams. I'll call you in the morning could've been collecting rent." for your final decision." "I told you already I'd pay for the time I "Yes." took deciding." "I thought that meant you were taking it." * "I don' t particularly want to go anywhere. Do you still have your collection of shrines?" "You're not senile, Ma. You know I mainly Three months after her father's death Bea have plants now." had waited long enough. She sprung the idea "At least you didn't ever somehow manage loose: would her mother wish to join her on a to have a Catholic wedding. That your late working tour of the cathedrals and syna­ husband wouldn' t have gone in for." gogues of Europe? Evelyn had been Bea's "Very funny, but you didn't think he was unwilling companion the summer before and funny then. I can still see Dad, may he rest in would spend this one with her father. peace, dressed in solemn brown, sitting with Mrs. Wolf had hesitated. She knew from his new son-in-law. They talked to us it was city-to-city train tours with the Yiddish the­ so hard for them to talk to each other." atre what working and traveling were like "How your father hated him!" combined. The vehicles may have changed, "We were crying, Ma. Our arms around but the crass frenzy of the traveler would not. each other were like a circle. They hung over Yet Florida was an old-age home and New u s, Dad and-" York without her husband an empty vessel. "Like birds. With moronic jokes they tried Could she refuse to see her daughter's ges-

114 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW ture? city where graveyards were stuffed like the Bea had given up her husband for graduate holds of immigrant ships. In the corner a n­ school at Berkeley studying comparative reli­ other man recorded the sights with a video gion. She had made her reputation on the camera. He panned across the cemetery in essay "Against Subtlety." She argued that loops. Mrs. Wolf and Bea followed the move­ scholars should focus not on the doctrines ment of the camera. They saw charred tomb­ which separated religions but on what was stones piled grotesquely. What did he intend common in their rituals. "I want to know," to do w ith such a film? Mother and daughter she joked, "not just why they kneel, but where could tell that the gravestones had been and how." ripped from the earth in a fury, whether of Traveling through the world, she had come German prejudice or Allied bombing they to feel movement was a cure for grief. To the did not know. The ground itself was covered small child in a car, it brought sleep. It would with black ash. A few tombstones stood up­ calm her mother. So: London, back and forth right. Neither Mrs. WoH nor Bea could read through France, Granada, Madrid, every the Hebrew written on them. Mrs. W olf grotto in Italy- plus an extra week traipsing thought the cameraman might be able to. He along Venetian canals, up through Austria could be a member of a memorial project, onto German soil, which Bea and Mrs. Wolf sent through Mitteleuropa much like Bea to intended to use as a foothold for the East. recover what was left of a religion and its Europe was familiar. American-born Mrs. people. Wolf knew it from every angle. In childhood "I hope he makes it silent," Mrs. Wolf said. her parents' tales made Germany seem the "It would be awful w ith words." center of the universe, the promised land of "Of course if it's silent we'll never know if culture. Even after the war they continued to he' s German." speak about the language this way. Yiddish "We'll never know in any event. What does was cheap and guttural, German fine, ex­ it matter?" tending, like piano lessons. Knowing that "I can't distinguish between Germans." she spoke German with a Jewish accent not "Ma. " an American one made Mrs. Wolf feel distant "We cannot forgive." from herself. Bea seemed happy when her "Th at's not why I' m saying, Ma. I want to other told her this. What kind of daughter ask you a question." ad Mrs. Wolf raised, who saw her mother's Mrs. Wolf walked closer to the slanting ulnerability as a green light? Always going headstones. "If we were more observant, we omewhere! Staten Island, California, Eu­ could read these," she said. ope every year. Perhaps it was not odd of "Do y ou want to live with me?" ea to drag Mrs. Wolf to the center of theN azi "This is a time to ask me?" mpire to ask for her love. Mrs. Wolf thought "And with Evelyn ." he understood her daughter: one must keep "Certainly I want to go back to New York. oving to see the earth in its true state. It was Forget Europe. I have had enough of these s if Bea were a physi-cist. people . That man is filming us now. Does he Bea's idea of a rest from the church es, ca­ think we' re survivors? We don' t look it, we edrals and synagogues was a visit to an look American. Does the camera h ear w hat bsolete Jewish cemetery in East Berlin. It w e'r e saying? I've never felt so much like I as Saturday so Mrs. Wolf and Bea had to was on a stage." ibe the cemetery's caretaker to let them in. "Nonsense." a rush, why have religious scruples? Any­ e who might care had moved on to one of ree fates: death, America, Israel, in that The cemetery might grow darker and d arker der of likelihood. in counterpoint to the glowing light of Mrs. "That was kind," Bea said. Wolf' s apartment. It might grow. What u se "What, kind? He just wa nted m e to ta ke was m emory if she could toss and turn it on a re of him." dime? he cemetery was dark and woodsy. Mrs. Mrs. Wolf lost herself to blank sleep. She olf and her daughter had traveled from a awoke to a mixed first light. The sun outside

RETICA 11 5 and the lamp inside lit one another up, like Mrs. Wolf undressed quickly and took a decoding solutions for in visible ink. bath. She stepped out while the water was Mrs. Wolf was hot. She wore all yesterday's still hot. She wanted to be gone from the clothes. The material of the couch had creased house when her daughter called. She would her face. She felt her forehead for fever. present herself at Bea's door, earlier than Mrs. Wolf recalled a question she had asked newspaper delivery. Bea, half-asleep, would her daughter in an earlier conversation about look softer and younger. This would reflect her plans. "If my memory gets worse and well on Mrs. Wolf. And Evelyn, oh Evelyn. worse, how can I let my sense of family, and Who could blame her if when she took her yours, and Evelyn's, depend on it?" Bea had grandmother's ratty red windbreaker from informed her, "Who cares if you remember her grandmother's rattling hand, she low­ exactly what happened? It's what you think ered her eyes and wondered: where should I about it that matters. Like in Wittgenstein. hang this rag? D The words I use to describe my memory are my reaction to the memory." How it thrilled Mrs. Wolf to hear Bea speak like a professor! Her daughter was the son Aaron Retica li ves in San Fr ancisco , but grew up in New Yo rk City. ""A Bin te l Brief" is his first published short story. she never had.

116 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Michael Spence

WATERSONG

n your hand I You can hold me, though I slip Over the side Of your palm, though I escape Between your fingers To the earth where you stand.

When released, Like your anger I will seek The lowest depths. I fall from the sky to wake The rivers underground, Bursting levees, tearing loose

Any bridge You lay over me. For I Am your bridge: I hold you To life, give the dust you are-dry As your touch-the power To move. Did you feel my rage

When the light Lured you up, out of my oceans? Only one way You could leave: in your veins, In your flesh and muscle, You carry me. I lie in wait

For the day Something leaves you that you hold Close, as you left me. I will fill your eyes till the world You once knew Blurs and melts away.

SPENCE 117 Linda C. Ehrlich and David Dungan

THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY: AN EAST-WEST DIALECTIC

" ... The power of wonder moves all things­ [false] dividing lines ... In the West we live puppets in a play of shadows-whirling them in the midst of artificial dividing lines be­ onwards in the stream of time" (Bhaghavad tween right and left, good and evil." 2 It is as Gita XVII.61) if Weir saw in C. J. Koch's novel (of the same name) a worthy attempt to describe what happens when Westerners are compelled to interact with a culture and political system designed along lines radically unlike their eter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously own. In such a context, some Westerners Pcaptures to an extraordinary degree the must confront, perhaps for the first time, their nuances and ambiguities of the collision be­ internal contradictions in a way they never tween Asian and Western values and lifestyles would or could at home. The dramatic im­ in Sukarno's Indonesia. The film's title comes pact of such personal moments of self-dis­ from an Independence Day address of the covery is what forms the essence of this su­ same name given by Sukarno on August 17, perbly crafted film. 1964, when he predicted that the coming year Weir loses no time getting this theme be­ would be "the year of living dangerously," fore the audience. No sooner has Guy perhaps because he foresaw the looming Hamilton (Mel Gibson), the new ABS reporter, showdown with the Communist forces trying arrived and had a drink, than he goes for a to overthrow his government. Indeed, this walk in Jakarta's slums with photographer greater cataclysm in Indonesia's life plays a Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt) in order to "experi­ key role in the film, forming the backdrop ence the real Indonesia." On this initiatory and stage for the personal crises within the walk, however, Weir introduces a second fun­ lives of the Westerners who are the central damental theme. As we watch Guy's mouth focus of the film. Our discussion of the film drop open in shocked disbelief at the desper­ will focus on Weir's concerns as an artist, as ate Asian poverty he is seeing for the first expressed through his use of symbolism from time in his life, Billy's voice comes over in the 1 the Javanese puppet theatre (wayang kulit ), background: "Most of us become children Western operatic music, and the image of the again when we enter the slums of Asia. I gamin. watched you walk backward into childhood, with all of its opposite intensities: laughter Weir's dramatic interests and misery, the crazy and the grim, toy town Why did Weir choose this particular sub­ and the city of fear .. .. " ject matter? According to an interview after Weir described this idea at Cannes in these the Cannes Film Festival debut in 1983, the terms: "In film, you can penetrate [all sorts of director stated: "In film you can penetrate false] dividing lines ... In the West, we live in the midst of artificial dividing lines between right and left, good and evil .. . You must 1 Wayang kulit, a theatrical form that dates back to at become like a child [gamin]! That's exciting least the ninth century, is a play of light and darkness where shadows predominate. With the puppeteer and refreshing!" (Cinematographe 27). Weir's (dalang) seated behind a screen (kelir) lit by an oil lamp, suggestion is that it is the spirit of a young a mixture of historical and epic tales are enacted con­ tinuously from after sunset to just before dawn. The pace of Weir's film mirrors the pace of the wayang, which is traditionally divided into three parts without 2E. Decaux and B. Villien, "Entretien avec Peter Weir," breaks. Cinematographe 91 (July I August 1983): 27.

118 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW child-gamin suggests the sense of "street main characters to the audience. Throughout urchin," a playful, amoral child of six or the first half of the film we hear Billy K wan's seven-which is the true antidote for the all­ voice in the background or see him hammer­ too-serious, deadly, adult world, East or West. ing out file entries on his typewriter which The director intertwines these twin themes explains the various characters' actions and, throughout the movie in a striking way, bring­ as if he were omniscient, exposing their most ing the audience into the action by turning deeply hidden natures. Billy's role as a pho­ the movie itself into Javanese shadow theatre tographer contributes to his false sense of (wayang kulit). From the very beginning of omniscience; the person who holds the cam­ the film when the credits scroll by a barely era looks out at others and is rarely the one discernible "tree of life" (kayon or gunungan) who appears in the picture. At times it al­ 3 puppet , we go back into childhood ourselves, most seems as if we are watching not a typical watching a wayang performance to the ac­ Western film, but a true wayang drama, fol­ companiment of traditional Javanese gamelon 4 lowing its own mythological rules and tradi­ music, and other musical scores. tions. As Billy says early in the film: In the film, the gamelon provides the musi­ cal motif of the scenes in the slums of Jakarta, "Here on the quiet page, I am master, the "markets of the poor," filled with those just as I am master in the darkroom. I seemingly endless throngs of people whose shuffle like cards the lives I deal with. lives spill out onto the streets. This serves as Their faces stare out at me. People who a counterpoint to the bursts of Western music will become other people. People who that punctuate the films's narrative: rock will become old." music at the house party, bagpipes at the British ambassador's party, and above all, (The camera pans over the montage of photos the aria from Richard Strauss' Vier Letzte Lieder on Billy's wall until it comes to rest directly that appears at two key junctures in the film's on a photo of Guy next to one of Jill Bryant, a action . These musical themes-the flowing, young member of the British Embassy staff.) cyclical notes of the gamelon and the "verti­ "They will become ghosts, betray their dreams cally'' ascending notes of the Strauss aria­ " express two very different desires: a detached As the director I dalang creating the entire act of succumbing to the cosmic order, and an film, Weir quickly introduces the supporting impassioned will to transcend this order. We cast-a wonderfully malicious characteriza­ shall comment on this aria later. tion of Western stereotypes found in Asian Weir reinforces the wayang sense of the cities, including the jaded, fat, homosexual movie by giving to his central character, Billy Englishman and the loud, sex-crazed "Ugly Kwan, the role of the master puppeteer American." After the opening airport scene, (dalang). 5 The dalang both causes the action the new Aussie reporter is introduced to Billy and interprets the hidden motives of the play's Kwan and these two journalists. They are to be his colleagues in the elusive pursuit of truth in Sukarno's Indonesia, and they all 'This p ppet is also used to mark the end of scenes, or gather at the end of each day in the signifi­ is used as a symbolic obj ect, such as a forest, palace, cantly named "Wayang Bar" in the Hotel In­ gate or mountain. As the puppeteer causes the kay on to donesia. tremble, rotating it on its axis, the audience is reminded In the role of dalang, Weir has Billy give the by the paintings on the puppet of both the nurturing and the destructive aspects of the cosmos. audience critical information for the better understanding of the main characters and 'The gam e/on is an ensemble of two sets of instru­ also to point in the direction from which the ments made of bronze, brass or iron, and tuned to unexpected moment of crisis and danger will different scales. Gam e/on music is cyclic and there is no 6 break between repetitions or between melodies. come to each one. The audience begins to

5ln the waya ng, th e dalan g can be compared to a god, as he sits cross-legged before the screen which symbol­ izes Heaven . He is at once storytell er, conductor of the 6ln the Javanese waya ng, spoken dialog u e (gin em) game/on, master of puppet movem ent techniques and occupies a secondary role to the dalang's na rra tion-a (according to some sources) sha m an and exorcist. pattern which is carried over in Weir' s film .

EHRLICH/DUNGAN 119 wonder, however, just who this pretentious Arjuna in his file together while Billy says, yet mysterious Billy Kwan himself is, and "You are capable of betrayal. Is it possible I what will happen to him. was w rong about you ? .. . Why can' t you In The Year of Living Dangerously, Weir is, in learn to love?" Later, as Guy leans over the essence, presenting us with a wayang p erfor­ dying Billy, the young man's u sual proud mance. The key feature of the early wayang gaze assumes the profile w ith lowered gaze 9 scen e in Billy's bungalow is to link explicitly of the refined (a lu s ) Arjuna, the god who has the two courtly Javanese d ei ties Arjuna and now learned humility as well as inner Srikandi with Guy a nd Jill, while Billy him­ strength. self is linked with Semar, the dwarf-god. The n ames "Gu y" and Jill" are, in a n Australian Jill /Srikandi context, stereotypic names meaning "m ale" The connection between Jill Bryant and the and "female," thus reinforcing the sense that Princess Srikandi is a lso explicitly made in the unfolding drama transcends the sm a ller, the bungalow scene. After Billy finishes ex­ individual conflicts of specific characters plaining about Arjuna, he picks up the pup­ during a sp ecifi c histo rica l p eriod. As Gar y pet of Princess Srikandi and says, "She is Hentzi notes, one of Weir's favorite them es is n oble and proud and yet headstrong . . . " the p ersistence of primitive forces ben eath Arjuna will fall in love with her . . .. " During the surface of a repressively rationalized this speech the camera m oves away from m odern existen ce." 7 Billy's face to drift over to a photo of Jill which is a ttached , a long with a collage of Guy /Arju na photos of fac es of Indonesia, on Billy's wall. The connection between Guy H a milton and A lthough Billy does not explain further, it Arjuna is made explicitly during an impor­ would be obvious to a viewer knowledgeable tant scene in Billy's bungalow early in the about the wayang that Srikandi must be film when Billy explains to Guy his collection viewed in contrast to Sumbadra, the model of of sacred wayang kulit puppets. Holding up the reserved , elegant woman who is loyal to the puppet of Arjuna, Billy states: her husband and is "seen but not heard." Later in the movie we learn more a bout Jill / This is Prince Arjuna. He's a h ero but he Srikandi. Billy is typing additional material can also be fickle a nd selfish. Krishna into her file after h e has successfully maneu­ says to him, "All is clouded by desire, vered Guy and Jill together at the Embassy Arjuna, as fire by smoke, as a mirror by p arty. Like children about to indulge in so me dust. These blind the soul." (Bha gha va d mischievou s act, Guy and Jill dash away in Gi ta 3.37-39 [van Buitenen ed., pp. 84- Guy's car, braving the road guards' gunfire 85])8 on their way back to Billy's bungalow. Later we hear Billy's voice uttering, in a strikingly Crosscuts between Guy's face and the pup­ omniscient m a nner, "Bryant, Juliet Edith. p et of Arjuna in Billy's hand leave little doubt Nationality: British. Born 1938. Occupation: tha t Billy sees in the journalist an embodi­ attache, British embassy. Little religious feel­ m ent of this third Pandawa brother, known ing. Ye t has a reverence for life. This is a in Java for his elegance, heroism, sexual at­ spirit like a wavering flame that only needs tractiveness and fickleness. Later in the film, care to burn high . If this does not happen (the after Guy has betrayed Jill's trust, the connec­ camera pans to a moody, sideways pouting tion is suggested explicitly. As Billy leafs photo of Jill), sh e could lapse into the promis­ through his file, w e see cutouts of Guy a nd of cuity and bitterness of the failed romantic."

The gamin motif 7Ga ry H e ntzi, "Pete r We ir a nd New Age Huma n ism ," As noted earlier, Weir emphasized in his Fi lm Quarterly 44.2 (Winter 1990-9 1): 4. 9 Wayan g ku lit cha racte rs a re traditionally d ivid ed in to 80 ur appreciation to Professor James Fitzgera ld's (De­ thea/us (re fined , d e li cate, s ubdued) and the ka sar (rough, partment of Religious Studies, U niversity of Te nnes­ la rge a nd loud). This dis tinction also exte nds to mem­ see/Knoxville) for his expla na tions of these passages be rs of Javanese society in genera I, a nd , by ex tension, to from the Bhaghavad Gita. a ll people.

120 NEW O RLEANS REV fEW interview about tl1e film that he especially popular wayang performances, however, wanted to find a way past the sterile and Semar is a clown character (punaka wan), yet superficial Western dichotomies by going he is also known for his wisdom. Unlike back to the amoral, prerational mind of the Arjuna, who is of the more elevated satrya child (gamin). There are a number of occa­ class, Semar is a man of the people and is sions where Guy and Jill suddenly find them­ beloved of the people. Indeed, wayang kulit is selves spontaneously acting like boisterous basically an egalitarian art and wayang per­ children, beginning with the race at the Em­ formances often mark major events in the bassy pool. Then there is the scene showing lives of the common people-birth, circumci­ Guy and Billy delightedly filming while pre­ sion, marriage; or major. communal events cisely in the midst of the rebel PKI demon­ such as pla nting and harvest. Both in stature stration in front of the U.S. Embassy. (Note and in temperament, Billy Kwan resembles that Weir stages the demonstration itself as a this central wayang character. bewildering medley of beauty, danger and excitement-a microcosmic view of his por­ Billy/Semar's Crisis and Enlightenment trayal of Asia.) Billy / Semar' s transition from omniscient Another example of this ga min theme is the dalang to vulnerable participant is triggered hilarious downpour scen e at the harbor, when Guy writes a story about the secret where Guy and Jill drink "green stuff" and shipment of arms for the rebel PKI group get soaking wet. Finally, there is the wild, which Jill (in her concern for her lover's safety) impulsive dash through a hail of gunfire after has revealed to him. Billy is shocked by they suddenly bolt a way from the party at the Guy's betrayal of Jill in order to enhance his British Embassy, laughing like boisterous own career. children all the way back to Billy's bungalow. After this, Billy and Guy part ways. Billy is (In Weir' s script notes, he writes: "Th eir learning of other problems: In the role of laughter is crazy, intoxicating.") At these dalang I shaman, Billy hopes to help exorcise moments, Guy and Jill seem to be rising into Indonesia of its plethora of problems, assist­ a kind of fearless playfulness, ready to do ing the mas ter dalang, Sukarno. Billy's efforts anything. The viewer is drawn into these consist not of political actions of a grand magic moments through our longing to be scale, but of more personal acts of kindness to like our heroes. Our wonder is aroused; could need y individuals, like the poor woman lbu we do anything so outrageous and fun? If (literally "woman") and h er baby, who serve only we could! Perhaps this sense of longing as a microcosmic example of all of that is the "refreshing" quality of children that nation's poor. On a visit to this adopted Weir stated he wanted to convey through this Indonesian family, Billy learns that lbu's in­ film. fant boy has just died. Shocked with a second grief, Billy staggers back to his bungalow Billy/Semar past enormous posters of Sukarno. As Billy After Billy has explain ed the first two pup­ realizes that Sukarno is not the neutral dalang pets, Arjuna and Srikandi, Guy suddenly but rather the evil and monstrous puppet kneels and holds up a third puppet. It is the figure (rakshasa ) who manipula tes others, he dwarf Semar. Still kneeling so that h e must glares wordlessly at the posters with rage look up at Billy, Guy asks the identity of the and loathing. There immediately ensues a puppet. For once Billy is ta ller than Guy. A mob scen e of hungry people scrabbling for special moment of eye contact takes place rice, giving added focus to Billy's mounting between Guy and Billy as Billy says, "This is frustration a nd rage. Semar ... he serves the Prince." Billy and Guy confront each other in a trash­ Semar, the dwarf servant of the five littered alley illuminated b y moldering, Pandawa brothers, is in actuality the most smoky fires. In the scenario, Weir writes: "In powerful of the indigenous Javanese gods, the half-light they both cast huge grotesqu e Ismaja. His outward appearance does n o t shadows on the wall as they sta nd, facing reflect his true nature. In Javanese mythol­ each other, trying to regain control of their ogy, Semar receives his u gly, stunted shape brea thing," a clear allusion to a wayang scene. as punishment for a past wrong-doing. In Here are Prince Arjuna and Semar, his dwarf-

EHRLICH / DUNGAN 121 advisor, facing each other in a moment of song is called "Spring," the second "Septem­ anguished crisis. "I believed in you," Billy ber," the third "On Going to Sleep," and the screams. "I thought you were a 'Man of fourth "Dusk." The use of the third song by Light.' I made you see things .. . I made you Weir at this precise point in Billy / Semar's feel something about what is right ... I crea ted moment of supreme agony is both intentional you!" and mysterious. As he stares at the haunting The next scene finds Billy back in his bun­ eyes in the montage of photographs on his galow, staring desperately at the wall, at the wall, Billy hears these words of the Western photographic montage of suffering Ja vanese song: faces. He whispers, "My God . . . Oh my God .. . My God, My God." At this precise point Now that the day has wearied me, an amazingly lush soprano voice begins sing­ My ardent striving should welcome ing something we have heard once before in Starry night like a sleepy child. the film. The music is never explicitly identi­ Hands, drop all you're doing, fied but in fact it is the second of Richard Brow, forget all you ' re thinking. Strauss' "Four Last Songs." As the soloist All my senses just want to sink into sleep (Kiri Te Kanawa) begins singing "Und die And my unguarded soul Seele ... " from the third stanza, Billy groans Wants to soar away, flyin g freely, in pure agony. He mutters, "What then must To live intensely in ways unimaginable we do?"-a quote from Luke 3:15 with which In night' s magic circle.10 he had earlier taunted Guy Hamilton for be­ ing an "uninvolved journalist." On that occa­ Is it possible that this voice is calling to sion Billy had told Guy that it was a quote Billy / Semar to give up all his striving? If so, which Tolstoy had asked himself when con­ the song would represent Billy's moment of fronted with Moscow's poor: "What then must ultimate temptation. Billy, on the other hand, we do?"-that is, we rich, who are in a posi­ terrified by this seductive voice, is pounding tion to do something to help the poor. furiously on his typewriter, vocally repeat­ Billy / Semar's moment of truth is upon him. ing each word he is typing, as if to drown out, All of his "puppe ts," and the master da lang by motion and by his own voice, what the himself, have failed. His great pretense at music is encouraging him to do. WHAT THEN being both Chinese and American, function­ MUST WE DO? WHAT THEN MUST WE ing equ ally well in Javanese and Western DO??? cultures, has come to naught. Nothing is We should note that Weir used this power­ working. Billy stares in agony at the eyes ful technique in another film as well. In staring back at him. He begins pounding Gallipoli (1981), the night before the fateful furiously on his typewriter. WHAT THEN charge, the Captain listens to an aria ("Au MUST WE DO WHAT THEN MUST WE DO Fond du Temps Saint" from Bizet's opera The WHAT ... . Meanwhile a stunningly beauti­ Pea rl Fishers (L es Pecheurs de Perles, 1863). In ful Western voice is singing in the back­ his interview following the Cannes Film Fes­ ground, adding powerful emotional weight tival, Weir explained that, in the case of The to the scene. Our understanding of the power Year of Living Dangerously, he would regu­ of this scene is enhanced considerably if we larly assemble the actors and tell them to take a slight digression and examine the word s listen to the music, stating: "This is the pas­ and circumstances under which Strauss wrote sion I want to communicate through the the music. fi lm" (Cinema tographe 27). What we may conclude from this excursus Strauss' Aria is that, at the peak moment of Billy's crisis, he In his old age, the composer Richard Strau ss is longing to give it all up a nd die, to escape took one last trip to his beloved Italy, where into the "magic circle of the night." It is a h e wrote a few last songs (Vier Letzte Lieder) which were, in effect, his farewell to music. 10We a re grate ful to Professor John Osborne, Depart­ Shortly after h e wrote them, h e died , without ment of Germanic and Slavic Lang uages, University of even hearing their premier performance a t Tennessee / Knoxville, and to Ms. Ulrike Frazier for this the Royal Albert Hall in London. The first tra nslation.

122 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW moment of suprem e temptation and irony. Billy says to Guy, "I thought you were a Man of Light!" or when Billy asks himself during Billy's denouement one of the scenes in the bungalow darkroom, Th e next scene shows Billy determinedly "Could he be the Unmet Friend?"-we are making his way through the lobby of the confronted by language which can only be Hotel Indonesia up to Guy's room. In the called symbolic. Has Weir, having launched fast-paced action of Billy going into the hotel, Guy and the others as Javanese noble charac­ getting the key, riding up in the elevator with ters, also begun to cautiously work in care­ two suspicious-looking men, walking down fully chosen Christian religious motifs as their the hall to a room, the cam era seems to linger Western counterparts? There is a temptation for a split second on the number of the room: to interpret Billy's self-sacrifice, and his ear­ 719. It is Guy's room; why the specific num­ lier sense of creating dramatic situations (and ber? Perhaps an answer can be found from even characters), in this light. Then again, several clues: the way in which Billy seems to perhaps this is nothing more than a skillful look upon Guy as the "Unmet Friend," a "Man da/ang (Weir) who, following the nature of of Light," but above all in the curious way in both the puppet theatre and the cinema, feels which, at the very beginning of the movie, compelled to add improvisational, and con­ Billy explicitly quotes from the Gospel of temporary, touches to the basically allegori­ Luke, citing chapter 3 verse 10 for the phrase cal story being enacted on the screen. "What then must we do?" Does Weir intend Just like the audience of a traditional wayang this second number to refer to Luke 7:19: kulit performance, the viewer of Th e Year of "Are you he who is to come or should we wait Living Dangerously can concentrate on the for another?" The room number is not in puppets (the characters themselves) or on Koch's novel, so Weir has clearly inserted it their shadows (Billy's interpretations, his files himself. on each character), both of which are only No sooner has Billy entered room 719, and partially true. The dramatic play of opposite hung from the balcony the sign for Sukarno­ tensions in Billy /Semar's d enouement is ex­ "SUKARNO FEED YOUR PEOPLE" - then quisitely painful for us as adults. In the end, security thugs break in, shoot him and hurl Billy must accept both sides of his nature­ his body out of the window. Chinese and Australian, dwarf and god, male Billy /Semar has finally taken on the great and female-in order to reach a spiritual master da/ang of Indonesia himself, Sukarno, peace. Just as Guy and Billy are "divided and in a moment of supreme personal sacri­ men" (each with parents of different nation­ fice , he has spoken the truth to Sukarno. Yet, alities) and hence "not quite at home in the his great moment seems utterly pointless; the world," so is Linda Hunt divided between sign is hauled back inside just before the male role she assumes in the film and her Sukarno's motor cavalcade sweeps by. On own persona as an actress. Through her the mundane level, Billy's noble action, re­ memorable performance, she truly becomes sulting in his d eath, is a wasted one, as the androgynous Semar, both god and ser­ Sukarno never sees the sign. But on the level vant, clown and sage. In general, women of the wayang, there is nothing that is not play pivotal roles in this film as motivating seen. (What is of primary import in this factors for the male leads, but they remain communal event of the wayang is the fact that incompletely drawn characters in themselves. the play is being p erformed, since the perfor­ Weir manages to skirt some of this dichoto­ mance itself is viewed as efficacious.) Billy's mous structure through the brilliant decision last act was that of the master dalang who to cast a woman (Linda Hunt) in the role of alone is allowed to conduct the exorcism cer­ the male photographer, Billy Kwan. emony (ruwatan) to summon and subdue the The film, like the wayang, opens and closes evil spirits, of which Sukarno himself was with a kind of kayon, a tree of life. The closing one. This may help explain Billy's ambigu­ of the door of the plane, as Guy I Arjuna and ous smile before he dies. Jill / Srikandi are united inside, is similar to There are other signs and hints that Weir the kind of "wipe" the kayon would perform intends for the viewer to be reminded of Chris­ at the end of a wayang performance, with the tian motifs and concepts. For example, when completion of one cycle. The puppets "rest"

EHRLI CH/DUNGAN 123 until awakened by the dalang for their ap­ opposites in the world which, as the Gita pearance as flickering s hadows against a says, motivates all things. 0 screen. We, the viewers, leave the film / wayang performance like little children, struck Linda C. Ehrlich, ass istant professor of japanese and Cin ­ by the deep sense of wonder at the powerful erna at th e University of Tenn essee/K noxville, has published articles on A sian cinema in East-West Film Journal, Jour­ na l of Fi lm and Video, Post Script, C ine maya, Journa l of David Dungan is professor of Religious Studies at th e Asian Studies and Ja pan Forum . Site received her do ctor­ Un iversity of Tennessee, Knoxv ille. His field of study is in ate f rom the Department of Drama and Theatre at th e Ancient Mediterran ean Religion. University of Hawaii, under an Ea st- Wes t Center grant.

124 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Saul Yur kievich

QUIET

Translated by Cola Franzen

The door opens slightly you hear steps

a silhouette you see through

the curtain and you don't know if it is

the one who gives

or

the one who collects and you stop and your heart beats

quietly quiet I wait

YURKIEVICH 125 Jean Walton

SEEKING OUT THE ABSENT ONE OF SAMUEL BECKETT'S FILM

"E sse est Percipi": thus Beckett opens the he imagines his mirror image to be more scenario for his only cinematic venture, complete, more perfect than he experi­ the 22 minute, black-and-white film entitled ences his own body. (60) (predictably enough) Film (1964). But, lest In this way, the child can trade in, as it were, philosophically inclined readers of the script his inadequate and powerless experience of are tempted to attribute great significance to self for a more complete (though always illu­ the Berkeleian dictum that "to be is to be sory and inaccurate) sense of identity. The perceived," the author hastens to assert that mirror stage, according to Lacan, "[n]o truth value attaches" to it. Rather, it is is a drama whose internal thrust is pre­ to be "regarded as of merely structural and cipitated from insufficiency to anticipa­ dramatic convenience" (11). To the psycho­ tion-and which manufactures for the analytically inclined reader, however, such a subject, caught up in the lure of spatial disclaimer beckons irresistibly. What, indeed, identification, the succession of phanta­ can be made of an author's first foray into sies that extends from a fragmented body­ visual media which takes as its starting point image to a form of its totality, ... and to a formulation of subjectivity that locates iden­ the assumption of the armour of an alien­ tity precisely at the level of the visual?1 ating identity, which will mark with its What occurs to this reader is that Beckett rigid structure the subject's entire men­ was not the only 20th Century theorist to tal development. (4) have been captivated by Berkeley's proposi­ In this drama, in other words (a drama which tion. In the field of psychoanalysis, Jacques plays itself out continuously for the rest of Lacan was appropriating a version of it into the subject's life) a felt insufficiency must his theory of subjectivity even as Beckett was always be compensated for by anticipating writing his major novels of the thirties and the moment when the perceived image of forties. For Lacan, the necessity of being per­ oneself can be assumed. But this assumed ceived (by oneself) in order to be at all be­ image will always be "alien" insofar as it came the nucleus of his mirror stage essay. In comes from outside rather than inside the his paradigm of how the self is constituted, subject. The account of the child's the pre-linguistic infant is held up to a mirror misrecognition of himself in the mirror is a in which he sees himself and thereby (retro­ kind of "originary" paradigm of an actively) comes to understand himself as a individual's ongoing relationship to the world subject in the world. Since this mirror image in which he or she perpetually becomes a is always more replete than the child's expe­ subject. The image perceived in the mirror is rience of his fragmented and as yet succeeded by a never-ending series of images uncoordinated body, his imaginary identifi­ understood to be self-reflections as they are cation with the replication he sees of himself perceived in the mother's face, others' faces is necessarily a "misrecognition." As Laura and more generally in the various screens by Mulvey has noted: which a culture represents itself to itself. The mirror phase occurs at a time when Kaja Silverman (1989) has elaborated the child's physical ambitions outstrip La can' s theorizing of the "screen" in such a his motor capacity, with the result that way as to emphasize how a culture's domi­ nant ideologies are internalized and consti­ 'Silvie Debe vec Henning (1981), in her study on Film tuted simultaneously with an individual's and its textual doubles, includes an illuminating dis­ subjectivity. The "alien" assumed image, in cussion of how Becke tt both relies upon and d e parts other words, is always permeated by, indeed, from Berkeley's philosophy.

126 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW determined by, the ideologies of the culture alienating identity." which produces it. Silverman has also pointed Although Beckett might have been skepti­ out how it is possible to find in La can' s ac­ cal about the efficacy of "challenging" the count of the image/ screen the possibility for "dominant cultural screens," the drama of a contestation of dominant ideology, sug­ the Lacanian mirror stage is a familiar enough gesting that a person can (presumably through scenario throughout his writings, and most his or her own cultural productions, or per­ remarkably in The Unnamable, where a "suc­ haps even through a subversive reading or cession of phantasies" are indeed "manufac­ reception of existing cultural productions) tured" by external mirroring entities for the hold out before him or herself a different benefit or torment of a central consciousness screen, one which does not so much abol­ who proclaims his insufficiency as though to ish as challenge what, taking a necessary ward off the anticipation he is provoked into license with Lacan's formulation by in­ feeling. The promise of "armour" against the sisting upon its ideological grounding, I powerless experience of non-subjectivity in will call the dominant cultural screens. the world is apparently not enough to miti­ (75) gate the fact that any assumed identity will necessarily be an "alienating" one. The It is not surprising, given the obvious si­ Unnamable is the story of the subject who is militude between mirror and cinema tic not only wise to, but embittered by the banal­ screen, that the elaboration of Lacanian theory ity that any sense of self he can have in the of subjectivity should be carried out perhaps world must be predicated on a misrecognition: most insistently in the last two decades in the hence the repeated desire in Beckett's fiction context of film theory. Some of the most com­ for the "mirrors to shatter" (as one of his pelling film theory has focused on the cin­ narrators puts it) and for the image of his ematic screen specifically as cultural screen, body reflected in them to "vanish in the havoc and has tried to account for how film plays a of its images." part in the constitution of the subjectivity of But it is in Beckett's Film, with its emphasis its spectators. This is true, for example, of the on the relationship between perception (of suture theory of Oudart and Dayan, who tried others, of oneself) and identity and its depen­ to show how a film's ideology is locked in dence on and explicit manipulation of the through the mechanism of the shot/ cinematic screen, that he can be seen most countershot sequence. It is also true of the clearly to theorize subjectivity at the level of kind of feminist film theory "inaugurated" the look and the gaze. As Ruth Perlmutter has by Laura Mulvey, who, along with many oth­ suggested, the flight of Film's protagonist ers since, has analyzed cinema for the spe­ from percei vedness is cific ways in which it perpetuates certain really a flight from being entrapped by culturally dominant ideologies of gender. cinema, specifically, the system of looks Contextualizing film theory within the and responses on which the cinema is Lacanian account of the mirror stage, Mulvey based: the nature of looking and being has pointed out that looked at; the shifting points of view quite apart from the extraneous similar­ between subject, viewer, and omniscient Ity between screen and mirror (the fram­ narrator; the constituency of the cin­ ing of the human form in its surround­ ema tic image with its aura of presence. ings, for instance) the cinema has struc­ (86) tures of fascination strong enough to al­ By understanding Beckett's film within the low temporary loss of ego while simulta­ context of the two strands of film theory I neously reinforcing the ego. (61) have mentioned above, it becomes possible While watching a movie, in other words, one to explore his relationship to the ideologies enters into the imaginary (literally, the realm of gender that have been perpetuated by tra­ of images and identification with them) and ditional cinematic productions, even though thereby into the paradigmatic structure of film might not at first glance seem to have the mirror stage again, where, through anything to do with gender. 2 misrecognition of oneself on the screen, one can swap inadequacy for "the armour of an In "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,"

WALTON 127 Laura Mulvey p ersuasively d e monstrates when that visual agency (traversing as it in­ how traditional cinema has reproduced and evitably mus t the cultural screen) is the reinforced a dichotomization of perception subject's own. The cam era persp ec tive is en­ and identity, with men typically in the active tirely limited to, and alternates between, only position of looking, and women in the pas­ two subjective views: that of the protagonist sive position, and connoting "to-be-looked­ as Object (designated as "0" in the scenario) at-ness." If there is an implied viewer of most and as Eye ("E"). It should be pointed out cinema, then, that viewer is male·; for women that an equivalence between subject and eye to partake as subjects (rather than objects) of is already set up in this m anner of des ignat­ the gaze, they mus t undergo a masculiniza­ ing the two "halves" of the protagonist; the tion, thereby identifying with the male per­ opposite of Object in other words would seem spective. Kaja Silverman (1989) has elabo­ to b e Subject as Eye, or as that which per­ rated on Mulvey's initial formulation, point­ ceives, rather than that which is perceived. E ing out that women in cinema have come to pursues 0 as he has tens through a cityscape, be designated as the "objects" of desire only enters a building, climbs a s taircase and locks because desire has been so insistently di­ himself in a sparsely furnished room. On the rected towards them through the agency of way to the room, they encounter other char­ the male look. acters whose faces, when held in E' s gaze for If feminist theory has reason to lament a few moments, register what Beckett ca lls that system of representation, it is not the "agony of perceivedness" (16). Once in because woman so frequently functions the room, E continues to observe as 0 re­ as the object of desire (we all function moves all possible perceiving eyes from the simultaneously as subject and object), room (eyes belonging to pe ts, photographs, a but because the male look both transfers drawing on the wall) and then falls asleep in its own lack to the female subject, and a rocking chair. Most of the time, we share E's attempts to pass itself off as the gaze. perspective as he tries to gain access toO's The problem, in other words, is not that face. The occasional moments of 0' s perspec­ men direct desire toward women in tive are, by contrast toE's, vague and out of Hollywood films, but that male desire is focus. Since 0 protects his face from being so consistently and systematically im­ seen by keeping it averted from Eat all times, bricated with projection and control. (71- we never see 0 except from the back, and we 2). never see E at all, or not until the final mo­ As Beckett states in the general directives at ments of the film. Only when 0 falls asleep the beginning of his scenario, Film is a visual and E has circled around to face him is the dramatiz ation of a "sundered" protagonist's long awaited perception of O 's face attained "search of non-being in flight from extrane­ Described in this way, Beckett's Film seems ous perception breaking down in indeed to be, like his fiction, another docu­ inesca pability of self-perception" (11). A short mentation of a reluctant object (0) as he un­ synopsis of Film will demonstrate how it successfully resists the subjectivity offered to clearly posits subjectivity as depending upon him via the images in which he is invited to an explicitly external visual agency, even misrecognize himself: the series of eyes­ "animal, human, divine" (11)-that he en­ ' Ruth Perlmutter (1 977) is one of the few critics to counters and eliminates, until he is confronted take into account recent film theory in her analysis of by a bafflingly externalized version of him­ Film , a nd points o ut in a no te that Beckett's film is self. The suggestion would seem to be that "almost a textbook illumination of many of [the] critical concerns" of phenomenologis ts such as Ba z in, Mitry even one's perception of oneself, insofar as it and Merleau-Ponty (92n.). Enoch Brater (1 987) notes has been culturally constituted, is experienced Beckett's affinity with the Surrealist cin ema of the 1920's as an external reflecting screen. (especially that of Bunuel) as well as his ho m ages to Moreover, one might be tempted, given a C ha plin. Ray m o nd Federman (1966-7) call s Film a n "avant-garde effort" directed against a general tendency reading of Film that remains within the drama of avant-garde cinema to "achieve a confusio n of, the of E's pursuit of 0, to postulate that, in con­ multiple elem ents of the film " (276). As far as I know, trast to the Hollywood tradition Mulvey de­ however, there are no discussio ns of Fil m (in or out o f scribes, Beckett's Film interrogates and re­ the context of film studies) tha t include a trea tment of h ow gender is constructed in the film . sists the privileging of the male gaze in cin-

128 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW ema, insofar as its two subjective camera view­ and robs the spectator of his pleasure, points, both belonging to a "sundered " male Oudart proposes to call " the absent one." protagonist, eventually culminate in a fa ce­ (448) off that submits this protagonist to the This initia l plenitude, followed b y disillu­ "agony" of his own "perception." Related in s ionment and a sense of rivalry with an "ab­ this way, Film would seem to be the drama of sent one" all occurs during the course of one the male gaze turned back on itself, a cin­ s hot. The viewer's disgrun ti ed consciousness ematic mea cu lpa in which the masculine p e r­ of an absent o ne threa tens to disrupt the fic­ spective is withdrawn from the female im­ tional (and ideological) flow of the film, be­ ages upon which it had been conventionally cause he begins to ask who controls the im­ trained (and throug h which it constituted age, if it is not himself. As. though to forestall itself by attributing any felt lack to those such questioning, traditional cinema auto­ images), and focussed instead upon itself in matically mollifies the viewer by following an unmitigated admission of its simultaneous the shot in question with a "countershot," neurotic aggressivity and emotional bank­ that is, a cameral angle almost perfectly op­ ruptcy . Moreover, Beckett's Film would also posite to, or face to face with, the firs t cameral seem to deviate from conventional methods angle, so that what was missing from the first of "suturing" over the site of production of a field of vision (i.e., everything outside the film' s ideology; thus, one mig ht conclude that frame of the screen) is now filled in and ac­ the ideology of gender is exposed in Beckett's counted for. Moreover, the countershot also work rather than naturalized and covered characteristically reveals a human figure to over as it is in conventional cinema. How­ be looking in the direction that the camera ever, a closer analysis of the shot by s hot had been p ointing in the first shot: a charac­ sequences of Film, particularly in the context ter who seems to answer that ques tion about of Oudart and Dayan's account of cinematic who controls the image. Thus, as Dayan notes: suturing, begins to suggest how both suture The absent one's glance is that of a no­ theory and the drama of E' s pursuit of 0 are body, which becomes (with the reverse conspicuously m ale constructs which rely for shot) the g lance of a somebody (a charac­ their coherence on the unacknowledged but ter present on the screen). Being on the nonetheless structuring exclusion of a female screen, he can no longer compete with subjectivity. the spectator for the screen's possessio n. Consider, now, Dayan's account of how the (449) operation of suture manipulates the specta­ In this way, then, the reverse shot is said to tor of a film. Presented with a g iven shot on "suture" the "hole opened in the spectator's the cinematic screen, the viewer at first expe­ imaginary relationship with the film fi eld b y riences a fe eling of possession over the im­ his perce ption of the absent one" (449). age, and perceives himself as "fluidity, ex­ Thus, throug h this naturaliz ing process a pansion, elasticity" (448). Obviously this is a culturally constructed fiction comes to be p er­ pleasurable, proprietary feeling. But, accord­ ceived as a natural, universal truth. When the ing to Dayan (drawing from Oudart), this "absent one" is accounted for by a character feeling only lasts until at some point the on the screen, the viewer is fooled into forget­ viewer becomes conscious of the frame of the ting his question about who controls the im­ screen, at which point " the triumph of his age. As Dayan puts it: former possession of the image fades out" The character whose glance takes pos­ (448). Now he "distrusts" the camera, which session of the image did not produce it. seems to be "hiding things." He is only som ebody who sees, a specta­ The spectator discovers that this posses­ tor. The image therefore exists indepen­ sion of space was only partial, illusory. dently. It has no cause. It is. He feels dispossessed of what he was In other terms, it is its own cause. By prevented from seeing . He discovers that means of suture, the film-discourse pre­ he is only authorized to see what hap­ sents itself as a product without a pro­ pens to be in the axis of the glance of ducer, a discourse without an origin. It another spectator, who is ghostly or ab­ speaks. Who speaks? Things s peak for sent. This ghost, who rules over the frame themselves and of course, they tell the

WALTON 129 truth. Classical cinema establishes itself freely over the building facades. When 0 as the ventriloquist of ideology. (451) appears, however, then shrinks away and What makes Dayan's account so germane averts his face, we might suspect that at this to an analysis of Film is that it assumes for its point, the viewer becomes aware of the frame, efficacy a certain kind of viewing subject: one partly because a certain amount of time has who necessarily desires to possess what he passed, but more likely because 0 , by his sees; one who reads the frame of the cin­ gesture of self-protection, has just acknowl­ ematic screen as a delimitation which signi­ edged the presence of someone who seems to fies lack of possession, and posits, further­ be looking at him. The "absent one" at this more, possession by someone else; one who point makes his presence felt for the viewer. then enters into a competitive, rivalrous rela­ But (at least in the context of suture theory) tionship with that imagined "absent one" who this is an overdetermined "absent one," apparently possesses what he does not pos­ whose presence is reinforced repeatedly via sess. And finally, one who will be placated by the most overt and heavy-handed measures: the "suturing" movement of the countershot as 0 moves, so does the "absent one": it soon and who will be relieved when "a benign becomes clear that 0 is being "tracked" in no other steps in and obscures the presence of neutral way by a mere recording device, but the coercive and castrating Other" (Silverman by an entity that has a palpable presence in (1983), 204) . I am using the masculine pro­ the fiction of the film itself. This presence is noun here because I want to suggest that the soon confirmed by the reactions of the man spectator proposed by this theory of suture, and woman who, after being jostled by 0, and by Film, is a specifically male one: male in come into close up view as the camera ap­ his desire for mastery over the image, male in proaches them, and then direct at us the exag­ his experiencing of rivalry with another for gerated expression of horror which Beckett that mastery. And furthermore, the "absent has termed the "agony of perceivedness." one" is also, as projected rival, a male entity. Their reaction is echoed by the recoiling of an He has, as Silverman (1983) points out, "all elderly flower woman on a staircase, whom the attributes of the mythically potent sym­ the "absent one" confronts after following 0 bolic father: potency, knowledge, transcen­ into a building. dental vision, self-sufficiency, and discursive Film departs from the usual system of su­ power" (204) . Indeed, as Silverman notes else­ ture in classical cinema insofar as the antici­ where (1988) "what has not yet been ad­ pated countershot is delayed far beyond the equately acknowledged by the theory of su­ point at which it would function to pacify the ture is the degree to which the compensatory viewer's displeasure at being denied control representation [of a character within the over the image. This delay is due in part to profilmic world for the "absent one"] is coded the refusal of 0 to look towards the camera, as male" (13). and thus provide a plausible point from which How then might we describe, in Oudart a countershot could emanate. As 0 ap­ and Dayan's terms, the experience of the spec­ proaches the couple in the street some hope tator as Beckett's Film proceeds and as one arises that the couple will provide that plau­ shot yields to the next? After a static shot of sible perspective, and on some level, per­ an eye in close up, we are shown a pan across haps, the viewer anticipates the cut that will brick building facades in a city environment. inaugurate the desired countershot.3 The cut What seems to be an aimless meandering comes, but not with the expected effect. In­ gaze soon, as it moves obliquely downward stead of pointing back in the direction of the towards the sidewalk, becomes a concentrated "absent one," as though from the perspective directional gaze trained on a specific object: of the couple, the camera has merely moved 0, as he scrambles rapidly along the wall, up closer to this couple, and records them explicitly trying to avoid being seen. In the briefly from what we must assume is the terms presented by Dayan, we might suppose indistinct perspective of 0. It is doubly frus- that until 0 comes into the picture, the inno­ cent viewer is still experiencing a sense of control and possession over the field of vi­ 3 Enoch Brater has a lso noted how, by refusing to take up the perspective of the couple at this point, Beckett sion offered to the sweeping gaze as it passes "keeps the image they see from us" (81 ).

130 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW trating that this new persp ective is even Jess cover over their complicity. satisfying than the first, and certainly does If Beckett's characters could be said to be not compensate for what the first perspective playing with a "dominant cultural screen," could not see. that screen includes the convention of suture For the rest of the film, there are cuts, from in which a (male) audience's anxiety about shot to shot, but none of these cuts, at least lack is covered over by a countershot which until the final "investment" of the film, offers will quell the question of who controls the a suturing countershot. In fact, the cuts func­ cinematic image at the level of its enuncia­ tion rather to exacerbate a viewer's anxiety tion. E and 0 stand in for the conventional about who the "absent one" mig ht be. The human figures who inhabit the shot/ reactions of the couple and the flower woman countershot sequence. instead of mutually confirm only that this absent one is present to complying with the convention, however, one them in the world of the film, but insofar as entity avoids the suture, while the other one their perspectives are never taken up by the vigorously pursues it. Such a reading seems camera, we cannot see what they see, and so to inform Ruth Perlmutter's observation that thereby settle the question as to where, ex­ the real flight in Film has been from the actly, the controlling other is located: inside entrapment of cinema itself-the shot/ or outside the realm of the film. Is the viewer countershot wherein the character's gaze in competition with this other, or not? 4 is met by another; reflexive images which It is not insignificant that, at the enunciative duplicate him or extend his personal level of the film, no one except 0 and the as space; framed or graphic devices that yet unidentified entity behind the camera are remind him that all consciousness is allowed to become subjects in the visual dis­ structured and allusive. (91-2) course of the film. As soon as we are denied a I would suggest, however, that the "real countershot emanating from the couple, we flight" Perlmutter refers to h ere is not nec­ gather that this film is, as it were, a dialogue essarily the most centrally structuring ele­ (or dual monologue, since they do not mutu­ ment of the film. As we will see, the traces of ally address each other) of looks between the a denied subjectivity, indeed, of a subjectiv­ camera and 0. What then becomes clear is ity that must at all costs be excluded, abound that no suturing countershot can take place through Film. And here, I must sketch out the until the "absent one" succeeds in confront­ significance of another "absent one" who is ing the face of 0 . Only then will a cut from the not accounted for by the story of suture this first to the second perspective yield the pro­ film seems to posit. hibited field of view. The "absent one's" pur­ Once he thinks he is safely enclosed in the suit of 0 , then, in the context of suture theory, room, 0 sets about obscuring or removing becomes a dogged quest to bring himself into every pair of eyes which might threaten to visibility-for 0, and thus for us. Confront­ afford a countershot of him: he covers the ing 0 will be the means by which he will window and the mirror, puts out the cat and insert himself into the story of the film, and dog, rips up what appears to be a crude rep­ finally (he hopes) accomplish the work of resentation of a deity on the wall, veils the suture. And it is precisely the limitation of fish and the parrot, then sits down to look at the camera's subjectivity to 0' sand E' s view­ photographic records of his past life. Here, he points that makes the film so exclusively a rehearses the chronological story of the pro­ search for and flight from the suture that will cess that has presumably resulted in his present subjectivity.5 This process involves a 'Though approaching the issue from a phenomeno­ series of multiple subjections to the look of lo gical rather than a psychoanalytic perspective, Ruth Perlmutter has noted how Film is "continua lly circling around the central phenomenological notion at the heart 5Martin Dodsworth (1975) discu sses the way in which of both cinema and rea lity: absence. Film is about ab­ these photographs " invite u s to tell a story to our­ sence-the absence of the subject from the viewer a nd selves" about 0. For Dodsworth, Film is ultimately a th e means of production (God or any external authority disappointment; in it, he says, "there is a regrettable that produces meaning; the technica l processes of the return to the cockiness of youth ... an elevation above cinematic apparatus; direct experience) a nd , obversely, morality and human value which is objectionable a lso th e absence of the viewer from the means of production in Cage and is a blight on all anti-art that does not and the subj ect"(88). ironise its own aspira tions into comedy" (181).

WALTON 131 others, and each instance is coded according identical to the iconography that marks the to the social or cultural institution it repre­ other two female figures 0 has encountered sents. In the broadest terms, then, 0 passes on his way to the room: each is a mature, through the (both enabling and oppressive) intently perceiving woman wearing a flow­ apparatuses of the family, a formal educa­ ered hat. The representation of the mother in tion, marriage, military service, and parent­ these photos provides retrospectively for a hood, as we see him being looked at by his chain of observations and associations not mother, a pet dog, a schoolmaster handing quite accounted for by the would-be self­ him a diploma, his fiancee, and his daughter contained drama between E and 0. (the military service is connoted by a uni­ And here it ought to be acknowledged that form). In one of the photos, a curious dou­ a discussion of Film strictly according to su­ bling of the moment of recording is brought ture theory is an analysis that must artifi­ about by the presence in the foreground of an cially suppose for its account a viewer who arm and camera, taking a picture of 0 as a has not read Beckett's Grove Press scenario young man with his fiancee. The specularity for Film, or has not been lectured to about of this story of subjectivity is thus made ex­ Film, or has not in some way been pre-dis­ plicit-each of these photos is not just a record posed to experience the film as the referent of of a determining moment in the development the discourse that accompanies it. Indeed, of O's identity, but a record of the very act of most audiences of Film, given its relative un­ recording itself by which that identity comes availability, are made up of Beckett scholars into existence. This amounts almost to a kind and enthusiasts, and not of unsuspecting spec­ of overt dramatization of what Kaja Silverman tators whose interaction with the film as a (1989) has theorized as the "photo session," shot by shot sequence is innocent of the tex­ where the (cultural) gaze is felt like "the click­ tual matrix that coexists with Film's actual ing of an imaginary camera which photo­ materiality in the world.6 Thus, there are, for graphs the subject and thereby constitutes most of us, things we know about Film which him or her" (57). What we are watching is 0 it does not show us itself, not the least impor­ looking at himself being looked at and re­ tant of which is the information provided by corded by the eyes of specific people in his Beckett in his "Notes" to the Scenario, that life, the cultural institutions in which he is the room 0 occupies implicated, and the camera which reiterates obviously cannot be O's room. It may be these already wrought inscriptions. What is supposed it is his mother's room, which more, the slip in one of the photos that records he has not visited for many years and is the camera recording the couple acts as a now to occupy momentarily, to look af­ reminder that 0 is being watched (from over ter the pets, until she comes out of hospi­ his shoulder) by yet another set of eyes and/ tal. (59) or a recording camera. As though to extricate This apparently incidental detail is followed himself from this mise en abyme of constitut­ by a curious, but telling, disclaimer: that the ing looks, 0 moves backwards through this identification of the room as O's mother's series of photos and rips them up, one by one, room "has no bearing on the film and need until he is left with the "first" picture of the not be elucidated." The role of the mother in mother and infant. He must strain harder to Film, then, is a very intriguing one indeed: tear this photo into pieces, suggesting that it she is an explicitly recognized phenomenon has some originary or inaugural status as the earliest instance of perceptual subjection. 6Perlmutter has called the film "an allegorical visual That 0 must work harder to destroy the representation of its palimpsest, the filmscript"(83n.) eyes of the mother in his vain attempt to free and Ruby Cohn (1973) has noted that more people have himself from the "gaze" is only one symptom probably read the script than seen the movie. At least among many of an underlying hostility to­ two critics, in fact, appear to have written about the script without having seen the film: both Charles C. wards the mother that runs throughout Film. Hampton, Jr. (1968) and Ernst Fischer (1969) make ref­ What might not immediately be evident to erences to the opening scene of the script in which the viewer as 0 flips through and then de­ numerous people are seen going to work in the morn­ stroys these photos, is the way in which the ing. Neither critic seems aware that the scene was not included in the final print of Film, due to technical iconography distinguishing the mother is difficulties in the shooting.

132 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW in the scenario, but a disavowed, repressed symbolic, thereby restricting the subjects of presence in the film itself. The remark in the the narrative to the realm of the imaginary, script is not filmically incorporated; in fact, it and even perhaps to an endless reliance on forbids its own incorporation on the screen, specularity for self-affirmation. Such a read­ and must be kept below its consciousness. ing of this sequence in the film is supported Thus the presence of the mother becomes the by a comment made by Raymond Federman guilty secret of the film which can only be with regard to the man who has been shushed divulged like an hysterical symptom. Her by the film's only sound: presence on the screen has been suppressed, Forbidden to express his inner reaction but she nevertheless "returns" in her analogi­ in words, he stares agonizingly, mouth cal and representational forms: as the genteel gaping, into the camera. The same ex­ but stern lady of the couple in the street, as pression appears on the face of the flower­ the elderly flower woman on the stairs, and girl, when, unable to express her terror in the snapshots of herself in the family pho­ verbally, she transfers this fear to her tographs where, as the scenario again tells eyes. (282) us, her "severe eyes" are "devouring" the Clearly, here, Federman would seem to agree infant 0. that the "anguish of perceivedness" is a di­ What I am suggesting here is that the mother rect result of a d enial of access to the sym­ comes to be proposed to u s as the etiological bolic. source of O's ambivalence about With this in mind, it is not hard to see E' s perceivedness; his eagerness to flee all gazes pursuit of 0 as a kind of protective gesture: can be traced back to the coercive and severe 0' s blurred and passive vision is not strong gaze of the mother. If there is to be a reposi­ enough to vanquish the female obstacles in tory for male hostility in this story, then, that his path. E, on the other hand, ensures that repository will be (as it is, after all, in tradi­ these obstacles are decisively subdued: the tional cinema) the threatening, devouring woman in the street and her companion "has­ mother. 7 ten away" after experiencing the "agony of Note, after all, the role she plays in her perceivedness," and the flower woman "sinks manifestation as the woman on the street. Up to the ground and lies with her face in scat­ until she has been jostled by 0, we suppose tered flowers" (21). In an extended discus­ Film to belong anachronistically to the genre sion , before the actual shooting of Film, of the silent film. As h er male companion Beckett, his co-director Alan Schneider and prepares to complain about O ' s rudeness to cinematographer Boris Kaufman hashed out them, however, she turns to him and dra­ the technical difficulties they might encoun­ matically utters the film's first, and only, ter. 9 A good portion of the discussion (what sound: a fierce "Shhh." This interdiction has can be deciphered from the tapes of it on the effect of stifling not only the man, but d eposit at Syracuse University) circles obses­ everyone else in the film as welJ.B Moreover, sively around the elderly flower woman w h o it signals to us that this is not after all a silent is so d ecisively annihilated byE on the stairs film, but a "talkie" which has been silenced of the vestibule. Schneider, anxious about the by the mother whose presence it cannot ac­ amount of time the camera would spend knowledge, because she has been given just trained on this woman from O ' s perspective, enough voice to forbid it. As a disguised as h e crouches out of h er view beneath the revisitant, then, the mother gives the com­ s taircase, presses Beckett repeatedly for a mand that debars access to language and the

9! am Indebted to Stan Gontarski' s a rticle o n Film for having alerted me to the existence of the ta pes of the 'Perlmutter notes, for example, that "Oedipal fears pre-production discussion. Gon tarski' s studies of are implicit in the recoil from the fixed 'severe' stare of Beckett' s work are invaluable for their documentation the mother" (88) and that "O's furtive actions . .. can be of w hat he calls the realistic, psychological, even auto­ interpreted as a rejection of his m other's traces a nd a n biog raphical material that Beckett strips away from unwillingness to confront the primal relationship " (89). s u ccessive drafts of his works to achieve a more abstract a nd formalistic final product. What interest m e more 'Ruby Cohn suggests the "'Sssh' may ... sig nal than whether Beckett achieves the formalism he strives silence for realistic questions" (208) which can only be for, however, is what constitutes the (dangerous) con­ answered "metaphysically." te nt that must be edited out in the process.

WALTON 133 psychological explanation for this lengthy be obvious. 10 Schneider remarks, at a certain shot. Beckett is reluctant at first to supply point in the tapes, that everyone who has such an explanation, and seems in fact irri­ read the working script for the film thinks the tated that Schneider is posing the shot as room is 0' s. In other words, as far as Schneider problematic. Finally, Beckett rather impa­ can see, there is nothing in the script to sug­ tiently insists that it is normal for a man like gest that it could not be O's room. Beckett 0 (a man who never refuses to look) to want replies to the effect that a man like 0 would to scrutinize details of the objects that get in never live in a room (with a window, for his way. Later, Schneider circles back to the instance) in which he would be so vulnerable vestibule scene, and questions the presence to perceiving eyes. The corollary to this is, of the flower woman at all-anxious that she however, that such a room is precisely the will detract from the dynamic being built up kind of room O's mother would have, as between E and 0, thus reducing or weakening though she is, in contrast to the son, indiffer­ the intensity of their interaction. The ongoing ent to, or even satisfied with, the necessary drama between the protagonist's perceiving specularity of her identity. Wh~t differenti­ eye and his self as object of perception, or in ates son from mother, indeed, male from fe­ other words, his flight from and pursuit of male, according to the logic of Film, is the suture, must be maintained at all costs. To relation each bears to being in perception. On dwell too long on the flower woman, to have the side of the feminine would seem to be an her present at all, risks having her become acceptance and perpetuation of specularity; witness to the closed circuit of the on the side of the masculine, a denial of and protagonist's self-perception, risks, perhaps, resistance to it. If a man is made to feel that his her taking on a subjectivity of her own within subjectivity relies on the external agency of the film. As the discussion moves to what the cultural gaze, it is only because he is Beckett describes as the quality of the world inevitably caught within the (willfully of the film (that everything goes a bit slow, specular) mother's domain. Starting with the but not in slow motion), Schneider reassures mother's "severe" gaze, and extending Beckett that he has found the perfect gal for through the chain of institutions she inaugu­ the part of the flower woman: a very frail rates, identity is, for a man, a series of entrap­ looking old woman who seems as though she ments originating and ending in the maternal might collapse, and who will take a long time space (her womb, her room). to descend the stairway. Once the frailty of Is it the culpable mother who is identified this actress has been established, the film­ with the coerci1,1g "absent one," then, even makers are finally able to move away from and perhaps most explicitly, in the final cuts her and on to other topics. of Film, where the face-off between E and 0 What Schneider has emphasized in this dis­ does not quite answer that question of who is cussion is that the most troubling opposition in control of the perceptual apparatus? When in Film is not after all the one between E and O's face comes into full view, as he wakes to 0, but between them and the female "ob­ fine E confronting him, there is a cut to his stacles" that threaten to disrupt the "inten­ perspective. This effectively brings E's face sity" of their relationship. The compulsive­ into view, and we understand, for the first ness with which the filmmakers return to the time, that both hitherto hidden faces are the flower woman on the stairs in their discus­ same. But contrary to the rules of suture in sion reproduces the anxiety surrounding her conventional cinema, this shot/ countershot within the film. E and 0, in this respect, are not at odds with each other at all, insofar as E 10 Rosemary Pountney (1988) has also found an expla­ ensures that 0 is able to continue, unimpeded, nation in one of Beckett's early drafts of Film , where he on his journey to the mother's room, the scene writes, "It cannot be his (he would not keep pairs of eyes and a mirror). It may be supposed that it is hi s of the crime where he was brought into the mother's room" (126). This early draft testifies to th e world of perception in the first place. ambivalence Beckett felt about how explicit he should Although Beckett stipulates that this "obvi­ be in acknowledging the mother's presence in the film. ously" cannot be O's room in the Grove Press In it, he toys with the idea of including a photo of 0 on the wall, inscribed "To my Mother, without rancour, scenario, in the taped conversations he inti­ Xmas 1929" (126). This photo was apparently replaced mates why the ownership of the room should by the drawing of "God the Father."

134 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW sequence does not provide us with a slightly WORKS CITED over the shoulder view of the human figure whose perspective we are meant to be shar­ Beckett, Samuel. Film: Complete scenario/illustrations/ ing. As Dayan has explained, the purpose of Production shots. New York: Grove Press, 1969. the shot/ countershot in the fiction film is to Brater, Enoch. "Shades for Film and Video" in Beyond provide a character within that fiction who Minima/ism: Beckett's Late Style in the Th eatre. N.Y.: will account for the mechanism by which the Oxford University Press, 1987. camera sees what it sees. The cinematic im­ Cohn, Ruby. Ba ck to Beckett. Princeton: Princeton Uni­ versity Press, 1973. age must always be "reasserted as somebody' s point of view(447). Dayan asks us to take Dayan, Daniel. "The Tutor Code of Classical Cinema" note, however, that in Movies and Methods. Ed. B.ill Nichols. Berkeley: when this cinema adopts the personal University of California Press, 1976. form, it does so somewhat obliquely, Dodsworth, Martin. "Film and the Religion of Art" in rather like novelistic descriptions which Beckett the Shape Changer, Ed. Katharine Worth. use "he" rather than "I" for descriptions Lo ndon: Routledge and Kega n Paul, 1975. of the central character's experience. (44 7) Federman, Raymond. "Film" in Samuel Beckett: The Criti­ In other words, in order for the countershot ca l Heritage, Eds. Lawre nce Graver a nd Raymond to accomplish the work of suture, it must Federman. London: Routledge a nd Kegan Paul, provide for us not only the view seen by the 1979. Re printed from Federman' s a rticle in Film Quarterly (Winter 1966-7): 46-51. character whose perspective we take, but some evidence of that character (a fragment Fischer, Ernst. "Samuel Beckett: P lay and Film." Mosaic of head and shoulder, for example) within the 2, no. 2 (Winter, 1969): 96-116. frame of view, to stand in for the absent one Gontarski, S.E. " Film and Formal Integrity" in Samuel and encourage us to forget his presen ce. Beckett: H umanistic Perspectives. Eds. Morris Beja, Dayan notes that "[when the camera does oc­ S.E. Gontarski, Pierre As tier. Ohio State University cupy the very place of a protagonist, the nor­ Press, 1983. mal function of the film is impeded" (447). Hampton Jr. , Charles C. "Samuel Beckett' s Film" Mod­ Hence, even the long awaited countershot ern Drama 11 , no. 2 (December 1968): 299-305. of E's face at the end of Film fails to accom­ plish the suture he has sou ght, for the camera H enning, Silvie Debevec. "Samuel Beckett'S Film and La Derniere Ba nde: Intratextu a l and Tntertextual remains within the completely subjective Doubles." Symposium: Quarterly journal in Modern viewpoints of E and 0. Since the a ttempt at Foreign Literatures 35, no. 2 (Summer, 1981): 131- suture has failed, in Dayan's terms, the viewer 153. of Film must still presumably be uneasy about Lacan, Jacques. "The Mirror Stage as Formative of the who controls and orders the images on the Function of the I" in Ecrits. A Selection. Trans. Alan screen. Or to put it more precisely in the Sheridan. New York: W. W. Norton and Company, terms set up by Film, the viewer wonders 1977. who is it that maneuvers E and 0 into the ir Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cin­ specular relation to each other? If E and 0 are em a" in Feminism and Film Theo ry. Ed . Consta nce identical, then who submits this character to Penley. New York: Routledge, Chapman and Hall, his own gaze? This "absent one" is not ac­ 1980. counted for by the trick of the slightly ob­ Perlmutter, Ruth. "Beckett's Film and Beckett and Film." lique countershot, but it is, nevertheless, as­ journal of M odern Literature 6, no. 1 (Februa r y 1977): sociated with the ghostly traces of the 83-93. mother's influence. D Pountney, Rosem ary. Theatre of Shadows: Sa muel Beckett's Drama Gerrards Cross, Bucking hamshire: Colin Smyth e Ltd, 1988.

Silverman, Kaja. The Acoustic Mirror. Bloomington: In­ diana University Press, 1988.

Jean Walton is an assistan I professor of Eng/ ish at Fordham The Subjec t of Semiotics. N ew York: Oxford University University in the Bronx. Ti1is article is part of a book-leng th Press, 1983. study of Beckett entitled No Gender Where None In­ tended. "Fassbinder and Lacan: A Recons ideratio n of Gaze, Look and Image." Camera Obscura 19 (1 989): 54-84.

WALTON 135 T. Alan Broughton

THE LIMITS OF TRANSLATION

Yet in the decline and decadence of things, the cicadas dear to the good Socrates abide. And here certainly they still sing in ancient Greek. -Van Gogh, to his brother Theo.

lizard, the sun, broken stone A of an emperor's foot. Fig tree, sparrow, and rain on the purpled fruit. Cicadas singing in Greek, crickets in Hittite, hawk in Sumerian screech.

You know these tongues by their sounds but cannot speak back. Listen, but do not reply till you trust your own voice to carry its part.

The rampant lion clings to its crumbling arch while locusts burst their shells and rasp. Your world shows all the signs of being older than it was but how do you know what this says? Trajan heard gulls long before you were born, but still they mew and dive. The death you imagine is never the one you live.

136 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Ron MacLean

SHAKY GROUND

y memory of the earthquake has been east of Los Angeles. Wealthier than we can Mreduced to sounds: shattering glass and afford. We bought a house there the year cracking wood, the grinding of the earth, the after we were married;-the year after I de­ anguish in Beth's voice. That anguish is still cided to give up on art and get a responsible tangible to me weeks later, when wounds job; the year after the year after Mona. Beth's should have begun to heal. Instead, I've parents gave us the money for the down pay­ grown used to living with a certain level of ment. Two bedrooms. Ranch style. Be th tension, as if steeling myself against the con­ pointed out I could use one of the bedrooms stant possibility of danger will make me bet­ as a studio if I wanted. I didn't want. At the ter prepared. The city has patched itself back time I was tired of waiting for someone, any­ together. Store windows have been replaced, one, to recognize the brilliance of my paint­ lots plowed and debris cleared. Soon the ing. I was content as an art director at a small only traces of the earthquake will be in the advertising agency. memories of those who lived through it. I will remember the fear: the terrible knowl­ edge of how little I control my life. Thursday morning. The smell of drying rain. I rolled onto my back, sprawled across the bed, long legs tangled in the cool sheets. "Hi. It's Mona." My favorite time of morning is the short The recorded voice of the girlfriend that stretch after Beth gets up, when I can spread walked out on me five years before played out, fluff both pillows under my head and back at me from my answering machine as I pretend I don't have to go to work. I popped singed my finger on the English muffin I' d one eye open. Beth pulled a black camisole just burned in the toaster. Even on tape, the over her head and swished toward the closet. awkwardness was evident in Mona's voice. I The clock ticked relentlessly. Beth emerged was beginning to lose my appetite. from the closet in her gray pinstripe suit, "So how are you?" A laugh. "God, this is pink oxford blouse and paisley tie. awful ... Hard enough, but a recording." "Morning," she said. She leaned over to I tossed the charred muffin at a green plas­ kiss me on the forehead. She smelled of hair tic trash can. spray and toothpaste. "You getting up?" "Who's Beth? Wife? Girlfriend?" I opened the other eye. "Eventually." There I turned off the burner under the soup and was a silence during which I thought about felt my ears go red. Beth, my wife, was telling her that Mona was coming. Beth had working late again, making the world safe for always worried about Mona. She feared I had capitalism. married her on the rebound. I figured I'd tell "I'm coming to California," Mona's voice her later. Out of the corner of my eye I saw said. I stared at the machine. "Saturday. I the clock. "Shit. I'm late." thought it might be nice to see you. What do "David, not again." you think?" Pause. "Maybe this wasn't such I buried my head under a pillow. a good idea. Maybe I'll call Saturday." "Fine. You're on your own." Click. It was Tuesday night. On Thursday We were an hour away from the earth­ there would be an earthquake, 6.1 quake. Early morning sun peeked under the on the Richter scale. window shade and carved a rectangle of light in the room. Beth walked through it and out the door. Beth and I live in Arcadia, a sleepy suburb

MACLEAN 137 Beth is an economist. A financial whiz. Mona shook her head and chewed on the Immensely practical. Sometimes annoyingly end of a plastic stirrer. "Most of last year I so. She's passionate about her work. She worked on Senator Kerry's re-election cam­ used to be passionate about her hobbies. paign." Two red spots appeared on her Model trains. Hiking. Skiing. I fell in love cheeks. 'Tm still at the museum of science. with her energy and her love for the out­ Art director. I met Alan there." The spots on doors, with her d etermined belief that there her cheeks grew to the size of quarters. "We was more to life than work. That, and she's were together two years. It was great." beautiful-short and athletic, with silken A thirtyish man with a receding hairline blond hair. I remember her in t-shirt and and an expanding belly moved past us, carry­ hiking boots, hauling a 30-pound pack as if it ing two cups. A small woman followed him were nothing. I had a hard time believing she and they sat behind us. I leaned my forearm was a business type. on the table and raised my eyebrows. "Was?" "So what's an earthquake feel like?" Mona Mona ran a hand through a tangled mass of asked, stirring a cup of decaf cappucino with red hair. "I got pregnant right around the a miniature spoon. time I started working on the Kerry cam­ We sat inside a small coffee shop on Melrose paign. I was excited about the baby and the A venue, watching the Saturday shoppers go election. Alan thought I should give one of by. Electrical tape covered a long, jagged them up. I didn't. I got sick. Doctor told me crack which ran down the plate glass win­ I had to slow down." She flashed me a tired dow. On the radio, Ray Davies screamed the grin. "I lost the baby, won the election and lyrics to a 20-year-old Kinks song. lost Alan." I shuddered. "The sound is the worst part. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Like God grinding his teeth." My stomach The radio announcer said that the death toll started to rumble. "I don't want to think from the earthquake was up to forty-three. about it." "1'1n sorry." Two or three other tables were occupied, by She shrugged, rubbed red from her eyes people our age, late twenties, or younger, in and tried to Ia ugh. "There's a conference at shorts and t-shirts. A small line of people the Pasadena Civic. Museum wanted to send waited at the counter. Everyone talked about someone." She stirred her coffee. "Just wasn't earthquakes. I shut my ears to it. supposed to work out this way, you know?" "So who's Beth?" Mona asked. Her green "I know." eyes were as penetrating as I'd remembered A teenage boy with a flattop haircut rode a them. loud skateboard along the sidewalk. Talking "My wife, the economist." H eads sang on the radio, a song from 10 years "She working, or does she not want to meet ago. I felt old. me?" "Working," I said, feeling the tips of my ears go red. It was true, but it was also true I One night shortly after Beth and I were hadn't yet told h er Mona was coming. married I came upon my pallette, tucked in She nodded her head and sipped her drink the corner of a damp closet. It was late, after and I told her the story of Beth and I. Beth had gone to sleep. I sat on the floor, "No more painting? Not at all?" she asked holding it, and though the moonlight shed when I'd finished. only shadow on it, I could feel the colors, the I shook my head. "Seemed pointless. I had combinations of dried paint from past mo­ to make a living." ments of inspiration, in a way that unnerved "Miss it?" m e. I had removed a tube of paint as well; I I motioned to the waitress for more coffee. squeezed some out and rubbed it between a "No." thumb and forefinger. Within a few minutes "You could never give it up. I don't believe I had spread paint on my arms, my chest, my you." face. I looked down at the tube in my hand "You'll have to." The waitress filled my and felt exposed. I put things away and slunk cup. "What's your story?" off to the shower.

138 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW On Monday the stock market dropped 500 "So you're mad," sh e whispered , swallow­ points and Beth came home late, looking like ing. a punch drunk boxer. I didn' t know what to "Sh e's working too hard. I' m tired of not say. We sat on the couch for a while, just talking to her." I took a long drink, warming looking at each other. We went to bed, and up to my subject. An aftershock rattled the fell asleep watching t.v. theater. People gasp ed and whispered. On An eerie quality of light drips through the the screen a man walked d own a dark rainy windows at three a .m. I awoke to the ghostly street and the music said that something bad sound of an unfamiliar voice. The television. was about to happen to him. "Sh e's so I rubbed at my face, trying to push sleepiness wrapped up in her work. We sp end our time away. Beth slept fitfully beside m e. Th e maintaining a lifestyle :we don't have time to voice on the television cau ght my attention. enjoy." " ... the one seismologists expect will regis­ A bald man with a head like a chicken ter between eight and nine on the Richter hissed at us from three rows behind. I low­ scale." A thin, hawk-like m an with deep-set ered m y voice. "We used to do things to­ eyes leaned back, arms casually folded as h e gether. I can't remember the last time we spoke. "All routes out of the city would be went to the mountain s." jammed," he said, stroking his chin, a trace of A flashlight clicked on, and behind it I could a sadistic smile on his face. "Freeways would see the acn e-stained face of an adolescent become graveyards. Fires alone could be usher in a blue polyester su it and black bow expected to kill 10,000 p eople." tie. H e sucked in his breath like a m ember of I wanted to hold Beth. I wanted to tell her som e primitive tribe about to endure a rite of that the stock market would recover. I wanted passage. 'Tll have to take that." He pointed to tell her there wouldn' t be any m ore earth­ at the champagne in Mona's ha nd. quakes. I slid out of bed and switch ed off the Mona giggled in a way that sounded like t.v. There was a cracking sound as the house sh e was choking . Th e teenage u sh er blushed settled. It made my n eck freeze. I went and h eld out his hand. "This is perfect," she toward the spare bedroom. said . "We' ve b een caught." Shadows fell in long diagonals across the I gave the boy m y best responsible adult empty kitchen. A car drove past the h ou se; grin a nd tried to reason with him. "Come the fl oor shook a little and I felt ashamed for on," I said. "We're being quiet and we' re being jumpy. In the spare room closet I found keeping our feet off the chairs." Mona, as if to the paints that I hadn' t touch ed in two years, su pport me, sat up rigidly straight. and a canvas. I squeezed paint onto my pallet The man behind us hissed and cursed. On and stared at it a moment. The paint seemed the screen a girl screamed as her brother's to stare back at me, exp ectant, as though I arm was torn off at the shoulder. Mona was now had a responsibility to do som ething con vulsed w ith la u ghter. Our ush er was get­ with it. I dipped the tip of m y index finger ting angry. His voice cracked . "If you want and held it close to m y face, then swirled the to come to the lobby, you can talk to the tiny blob of color with my thumb. Inhaling manager." His eyes were determined. Some­ deeply, I wondered if I would find a scent one in front of u s cou ghed, and I followed the that awoke long-dormant passion. It sm elled sound until I saw Tony and Albert, two teen­ like an old friend. No more, no less. I wiped age boys from down the street. I shrunk into my fingers against the can vas, leaving blue my seat, feeling foolish and guilty. I took a smudges. Having thus begun, I found the long drink before handing the kid the nearly boldness to continue. empty bottle. "You 're right," I said to him. "You ' re abso­ lutely right." Mona and I sat toward the front in a half­ empty movie theater on a Tuesday nigh t, watching "The Undead." A night scen e ren­ One Friday afternoon when Beth a nd I were dered the theater nearly d ark. Mona e lbowed dating, I was stuck in traffic on I-5, on my me in the ribs and passed me a half-empty way to meet h er in Reno for some cross­ bottle of champagn e sh e'd snuck in . country skiing. I remember fuming, thinking

MACLEAN 139 I had better things to do with my time than sit ing my breath. This wasn't coming out right. in stalled traffic. After all, I was a promising I shrugged. "Why do you have to take this so artist; my time was important. I remember personally?" looking around me and seeing a whole lot of I fumbled with the papers on the table. people who also thought their time was im­ "Years of building a career." She snapped portant. And I felt small. I felt like it was her fingers. "It can go down the tubes like time to grow up. Shortly after, I stopped that." She looked like a shipwreck survivor painting. still treading water. "No control. No warn­ ing." My fingers, plunging through the pile of Dusk settled on a Wednesday night and I papers in nervous frustration, landed upon painted in the semi-darkness, in hiding, us­ something solid. A red cloth bound book, so ing glowing shades of purple. The front door old the title had worn off the cover. squeaked open and I heard Beth's footsteps "What's this?" on the wood floor. I put down the brush, She looked up, puzzled at having her wiped my hands on a dropcloth and went out thoughts derailed. She answered at the same to greet her, closing the door behind me. Beth time I saw the title page. dragged herself toward the kitchen table, "Complete Prophecies of Nostradamus." laden with manila folders, a frayed copy of All my blood raced to my toes. the Wall Street Journal tucked under one arm. ''I'm trying to find the date California is She unloaded the pile on the table and sighed. supposed to fall into the sea." "Hi," she said. Her eyes had a sunken, I searched her eyes for amusement. I didn't ghostlike quality. ''I'm exhausted." I kissed see any. her forehead, stroked her hair and pushed a cardboard container from Jack in the Box at her. There's a photograph tacked to my office "Chicken strips," I said, touching the side bulletin board. A P9lariod of Mona and I of the box. "Still warm." with a stuffed elephant she'd won at a shoot­ She began to wade through the ocean of ing gallery at the county fair. She loved the folders and papers. fair, especially the mutant vegetables: zuc­ I wanted to tell her about Mona. About chini the size of watermelons, tomatoes the painting. size of basketballs. She said such things were "Six hundred points in three days," she proof that anything was possible in life. Sev­ muttered. There was a desperate intensity in eral times I've started to take that photo down, her eyes and in the way she hovered over her feeling a vague sense of guilt, as though it work. "Do you know how many people have represented some small betrayal of my mar­ been ruined by this?" riage. Yet it's still up, and I ask myself what I shook my head. it is I love about that picture: the woman in it "Thousands. We got a call today. There's a or the bright future I thought it promised. good chance Japan is going to call in long- . term bonds." She rested her forehead on the table and took a deep breath. "Everybody's Beth agreed to go camping for the week­ talking about '29, about snowballing. I keep end. I talked her into it. I got home early thinking I should have seen it coming. But Friday night and started packing. Rummag­ how could you forecast that? How can you ing through the back of a desk drawer look­ tell people it's in their best interest not to ing for flares, I came upon a box of slides of sell? They think we're lying, trying to protect my old paintings, from two gallery shows I ourselves. Maybe they're right." She dragged had done. Warily, I opened the box and both hands through her hair, leaving it in a began to look through them. slightly disheveled state that I recognized The phone rang. It was Beth. She sounded from the days when I thought I knew her. tired. The stock market had dropped another "You're an economist, right? Not a stock­ hundred and fifty points. broker? I thought there was a difference." I 'Til be another half hour or so," she said. stopped, pushing my lips together and hold- "How about if we just grab dinner tonight

140 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW and leave in the morning?" I nodded . Six o'clock. I grabbed a beer from the re­ "The show at the Institute of Contemporary frigerator, opened a bag of Cheetos and sat Art. G reat party. Rem em ber?" down to wait. Just slightly. A chill crawled up m y sp ine Seven o'clock. to think ab out it. I was 24. I was h ot. I was Seven-thirty. The empty Ch eetos bag lay going places. "Tha t was on e of the best nigh ts crumpled on the floor next to four beer bottles. of m y life." At ten after eight the phone ran g. "Me too." "David, I've got a problem . All hell's break­ "Know w ha t I rem ember most about it?" ing loose here." Mona lean ed back against m e and I put m y "Yeah?" I wasn' t going to make this easy arms around h er waist. ·"No. Wha t?" for her. "Dan cin g with you until we were sweatin g ''I'm not going to be able to go this w eek- like pigs a nd then walking back to your ap ar t­ end. I'm really sorry." ment in the ra in." We lau gh ed together. A Silence. car drove by. "Tha t night was the first time "You're angry." w e made love." "Can't they get along without you?" "Yup." "I need to be here." I shivered, and Mon a looked back at me. More silence. I felt my face getting h o t. "Everyone sh ould get to feel like that- "Why don't you go anyway? It w ould be king for a night. Like all your dream s are good for you. " bound to come true." "That wasn' t the point." "Wha t d reams?" A hissing of voices in th e backgr ound. "A studio loft in the Village. Galleries clam­ "Look, David, I've gotta go. I' m sorry." oring for m y work." We laughed. "Selling I told myself I understood . I knew tha t the enou gh to keep p ainting. You ." circumstances called for understa nding . I Credit the beer and the p ower of n ostalgia. put the phone down gently a nd op ened a n­ Mona leaned up and we kissed a lon g, slow, other beer. In the d esk d rawer I found a patient kiss that crossed over a lot of time. portable slide viewer. I called Mona's h otel Sh e turned over on top of me an d I lost my and invited her over. bala nce, nearly cau sing u s both to slide off The broken bough of our front yard pine the tree. I sat up qu ickly, s traddling th e tree dropped low enou gh to p rovide a com­ bough, slightly apart from h er. fortable seat against the trunk. Slides, viewer She put a hand over her eyes. "Great, and beer rested on the branch in front of m e. Mon a ." Sh e blush ed. "Lu cky slip ?" !leaned against the trunk a nd watched the I sh ru gged. "En ou gh to make m e think sky. tw ice." I moved over b eside h er a nd put my A night-colored ren tal Chrysler p ulled u p arm around her sh oulder. We bo th stared at at the curb. I sipped my beer and watch ed our feet, which dan gled inches above the Mona get out. I could n' t see m u ch of her. A ground. silhouette; the texture of h er skin; the soft fall We talked until well after midnight. Sh e of her hair. She looked young . Sh e looked said sh e was going to go. like the person I'd fa llen in love with. "Wha t are you d oing this weekend?" "Hey," I said. "Over h ere." "I was thinking abou t the San Diego Zoo." Mona settled .i n beside m e on the tree. The m oon slipped behind a clou d. I felt "What'cha doin'?" inspired. "Let's go." I christened another six-pack, passed her a "Are you seriou s? You m ean now?" beer and the viewer. Sh e p ressed the black "Right n ow." button to click on the ba ttery-p owered bulb. Th e m oon was full. Th e Chrysler had a sun A smile played around the corners of h er roof and a V -8 en gine. I wrote Beth a note, mouth. "Brings back mem ories." then introdu ced Mona to I-15. We took th e "I haven't looked a t these in years." lon g way to San D iego, drivin g all nigh t along "I remember this one." The smile spread d esert hig hways, w indows open, Talking over Mona's face. "The first sale." Heads on the tape deck.

MACLEAN 141 Beth's face appears to me at odd moments. were special. That disappointment couldn't Particular expressions of hers are frozen in touch us." my mind. A February weekend in the moun­ "I dug out the paints the other night. A tains near Tahoe. We were cross country couple of times this week. After Beth has skiing, and Beth had fallen in a ridge between gone to sleep." two trees. Her skis were tangled above her Mona's smile had sadness in it. ''I'm glad and she was half sitting, half lying down, you're painting. Why so secret?" unable to get her balance to stand up. Fear "I don' t know. No pressure maybe. No mixed with laughter in her eyes. I released expectations." her skis and tried to pull her out, but ended We passed under the shade of a giant euca· up falling in on her. I held onto her, laugh­ lyptus tree. Our guide's amplified voice ing, relieved. From where we sat, it looked as crackled through the loudspeaker behind us. though the trees climbed for miles into the "Ostriches are very powerful. They can dis­ sky. The valley stretched before us, looking embowel a lion with one swift kick." An beautiful and harmless. Insulated by the ostrich walked across the enclosure, not look­ snow, I sat amazed at the power and the ing at all powerful, kicking up dust and bob­ strength and the fragile touch of life. bing its head like one of those toys in a car's back window. "You miss Alan?" The bus jerked forward Sun beat down on a Saturday afternoon. and moved up a small hill in the shade. "Sorry. From the upper deck of a two-tier bus I looked Stupid question." out through sunglasses and a sinus headache Mona stared forward. "When I lost the at three giraffes. Mona and I were at the San baby, I had this ache, like someone had blown Diego Zoo. We'd reached Balboa Park at six a hole in me. I'd be at work, I'd get these a.m., pulled into the parking lot and slept a pains that would double me over. I'd go into few hours in the Chrysler. the bathroom and just lean against the wall "Giraffes hearts grow to two-and-a-half feet and cry. Losing Alan made it even deeper." long," our tour guide said in a voice that The bus stopped again. "Some days I'm fine, practiced cheerfulness. She was probably a then all of a sudden I start to weep and I can't junior at San Diego State, studying account­ stop." Tears swelled her eyes. "But I don't ing or some equally practical subject. "They know what I would have done differently." have the highest blood pressure of any mam­ Two elephants below us stood in the shade mal." of a eucalyptus, nuzzling each other. The Mona sat stiffly beside me, her eyes hidden tour guide explained, "Elephants throw dirt behind impenetrable dark glasses. "Okay, so on their backs to protect their skin. It's very what's going on here. Are we getting in­ sensitive and they do get sunburned." volved in something?" I put a hand on Mona's shoulder. She I laughed. "I love you." smiled. "What about you?" "I love you too. That's not an answer." "I love Beth. I want to make it work." The bus engine groaned and we moved The bus swung around a corner and sun­ ahead to a dusty rectangular enclosure with light stabbed at our eyes. "I hope you do." five timid animals in the center. Because of a soldier of fortune convention "Kenyan gazelles practice springbok," our in town, we couldn't get Mona her own room guide said, "a herd exercise where they jump that night; but we slept on opposite edges of six or seven feet in the air for no apparent the bed. There might as well have been a wall reason." between us. We were downright noble. I turned toward Mona. "I want to punish I awoke with a warm, cloudy feeling in my Beth." head and the vague sense of movement "Not good enough." around me. I rolled over, momentarily disil­ "I know." I shrugged. "You make me feel lusioned, expecting to see Beth half-clothed successful. I haven't felt that way in a long in our bedroom. Instead I saw Mona in a!­ time." shirt, fumbling through an overnight bag. Sun picked out purple highlights in Mona's Through barely opened eyes, I watched her hair. "We were so confident. So sure that we move silently into the bathroom and shut the

142 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW door. bright white light surrounded by a vague An ill-fated urge prompted me to call Beth. halo shone out of the night sky. As sh e spoke, I waited anxiously as the phone rang, heard I thought I saw something metallic detach the distant sound of Mona humming in the itself and move away, leaving a cloud of shower. brightly colored gases that began to spread "Hello?" Beth's voice was groggy. rapidly. "Hi," I said. "I miss you." "Yeah." I felt the hairs of my neck grow "Thanks." She laughed softly, yawned. stiff. I tuned the radio to an all-news station. "What are you doing up so early?" Beth pulled the car to the side of the road. "W hat are you doing sleeping so late?" Others were doing the same .. She told me about her meetings, about the The cloud's white center began to expand market quieting down. I told h er I was glad. and, as thoug h the sky were a piece of litmus I was. paper freshly dipped in acid, its edges turned "Hey," she said. ''I'm really sorry about bright green, orange and purple in an ex­ this weekend. You enjoying yourself?" panding arc. It took me a minute to answer. "Yeah." ''I'm scared," Beth said, transfixed. A I don't remember hearing the water turn weight seemed to descend on us; the pres­ off. All I remember is hearing Mona's voice sures of the last few weeks gathering into this coming through the door. mysterious force that hung above us. "David ?" Thoughts ran through m y mind : nuclear mis­ I cringed. Her voice was right behind me. siles, d eadly gas, alien attack. The white orb "Hey, David, I thought .. . " grew like a balloon that would pop and take She stopped as soon as she saw the phone in our whole world with it. my hand, but it was too late. Then, just as suddenly as it started, it began Beth's voice pounded like a gavel in my ear. to fade. The colors weaken ed slightly. The "Who's that?" expansion stopped. Beth looked at me with a gaze that wanted to hope but didn't trust enough. The radio announcer cleared it up: Beth asked me to move out. There were an errant missile had gone off from things she wanted to think throug h. I wasn't Vandenburg Air Force Base and left a brightly in a position to argue. I didn't feel as inno­ colored cloud over the San Gabriel Valley. cent as technically I was. Mona promised There was no danger. I watched the tension she'd write. I reassured her it wasn't her flow out of Beth's face and I smiled. The fault. Not even close. cloud began to shrink and the colors to fade. I packed some clothes without thinking Beth pulled back into traffic, driving toward what, or for how long I'd be gone. I felt the bus station, toward indefinite separation. empty inside. Beth drove m e to the bus sta­ In another minute the cloud would be gone, tion. I was going to visit my brother in Se­ every trace erased from the sky, and we'd be attle. left with confusion, with a fear that we were At the side of the road, a fire hydrant, bent somewhat ashamed of, as thoug h the whole by th e earthquake, was surrounded by mud incident were something we'd imagined. D from a broken water line. A breeze blew through the car windows. "Do you see that?" Beth asked, pointing to Ron MacLean lza s published work in The Little Magaz ine and Other Voices. an object that had just caught my attention: a

MACLEAN 143 -

Stanley H. Barkan

TWO POETS BY AN OPEN WINDOW (for M~nke Katz and Yussel Greenspan)

Winter. Two poets and a candle lived in a room with an open window.

A wind came and blew out the candle, and there was no light for either poet to write by.

So the first poe t said: "I will speak my poem, and you will remember it; you will speak your poem, and I will remember it. Thus, we will b ecome each other's books."

The second poe t readily agreed, and both poets proceeded to speak their poems into the windy candleless dark by an open window.

144 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Time passed .. . and the second of the two poets -perhaps from a cold caught from a wind from an open win­ dow- sickened and died.

"Now," said the first poet, "who will be my memory? 0, dear friend, with you have I died too!"

Two poets for one, struck down by a single ruach- a wind come out of the crack of an open window to blow out both their lights.

BARKAN 145 Bruce E. Fleming

MR. OVERTON'S SOLUTION: ON SYSTEMS IN THOUGHT

he narrator of The Way of All Fl esh, Samuel two hypocritical parents by resorting to T Butler's now little-read coming-of-age narratorial omniscience when this fails.) To novel and spiritual autobiography, is a cer­ be sure, Ernest's liberation from his father is tain Mr. Overton , author of light theatrical in a sense effected by fate rather than himself, comedies and godfather to Ernest Pontifex, for it begins only when he is "sentenced to the young man whose life story he is writing. prison for propositioning a woman he had Overton's purpose in narrating Ernest's taken to be a prostitute but who, in fact, turns story-he makes very clear-is to lay bare the out to be an "honest woman." spirit-crushing aspects of Victorian patriar­ This prison sentence simultaneously alien­ chy and religious hypocrisy. For Overton, ates Ernest from his parents and causes him these two have combined to produce reli­ to abandon his own duties as priest, which he gious dogmatism. And religious dogmatism had dutifully taken up; he does not yet know thrives because it is based on systematic be­ that Mr. Overton is holding in trust for him a lief, a consciously erected system of thought large sum of money from a deceased aunt that repels all attackers and is continually that will make him financially independent. shoring up its defenses. In prison he had finally read the Bible for the It is for this reason that both Mr. Overton's first time with an "open mind," and had de­ identification of the problem and his pro­ cided that there was not sufficient justifica­ posed solution- which I will be considering tion to accept what it said as truth. Upon his here-are relevant to our intellectual situa­ release he therefore turns, for the first time in tion in the 1990s in America. For we cur­ his life, to other writings. Abandoning the rently find ourselves within a period rife with religious dogmatism of his father, he begins systems of thought, albeit what we might call searching for truth among what Butler re­ systems of the second degree: the systems gards as a series of competing secular dog­ that currently hold center stage in our intel­ matisms-systems of organized philosophy. lectual world are sceptical systems, systems­ Overton (and through him Butler) disap­ of-no-system. The issue for Mr. Overton is proves of this, on the grounds that no system that of systems of any sort, all of which he of thought can ever be impervious to dis­ rejects; the content of these systems of the proof: second degree is precisely this as well. Yet He was continually studying scientific since they too are systems, they too are ame­ and metaphysical writers, in the hope of nable both to Mr. Overton's criticism, as well either finding or making for himself a as, it may be, to his solution. philosopher's stone in the shape of a The bulk of this novel-written in the 1870s system which should go on all fours un­ and 1880s but not published until1903, a year der all circumstances, instead of being after the author's death-consists of the de­ liable to be upset at every touch and scription of Ernest's lam en table subservience turn, as every system yet promulgated both to his parents and to received religion as has turned out to be. (319) taught by his father, a Church of England Ultimately Ernest, digesting and discard­ priest. (This is also the most satisfying part of ing the Empiricist philosopher Bishop Berke­ the book in purely literary terms, because the ley, decides that "no system based on abso­ narrator's attack is two-pronged: he convinces lute certainty was possible," and is "con­ us simultaneously of his hero's inherent good­ tented," which pleases Overton a good deal ness through the adoption of Ernest's point more. of view, and of the utter vileness of Ernest's To my relief [says Overton] he told me

146 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW that he had concluded that no system write our perception of the world in which which should go perfectly upon all fours they first appeared. As a result it is senseless was possible, inasmuch as no one could to castigate the people of that time for not get behind Bishop Berkeley, and there­ seeing what was not yet the case, to scorn the fore no absolutely incontrovertible first critics who failed to "understand" the great­ premise could ever be laid. (319) ness of (say) Moby Dick, for it is we who have The Way of All Flesh is a deliciously didactic created that greatness. And this, ultimately, book, especially for post New-Critical read­ may be T .S. Eliot's perception (in "Tradition ers who are used to being told that they may and the Individual Talent") that literature of not identify author with either narrator or the present? actually changes the nature of hero. Of course these are not identical in that of the past. We know so much more than precise details, but certainly their point of our predecessors, he says-and they are what view is so, with Overton speaking for Butler we know. and Ernest being a "before" picture of them The value of a system of thought is clearly both. Clearly Butler means Overton's ap­ that it transcends the particularities of time proval of Ernest's somewhat belated discov­ and place-even (or especially) if it includes ery to serve as a recommendation for the determinations of time and place within it, reader. We are being told that systems in such as that of Heidegger for the former and thought are by definition untenable. that of Hegel for both. Of course, the inclu­ Yet who can d eny that we do erect and sion of time and place within the system of­ adopt such systems? Indeed contemporary ten has the appearance of acknowledging thought-to which I will be returning be­ these as external factors. The Marxist system, low-insists that all thought is created in the for example, has attempted to distance itself context of a system. Certainly mankind seems from other systematic thought precisely on impelled to search for a structure of ideas or the grounds that other systems are deter­ thoughts that underlie, are taken to be logi­ mined by the "ground" of all thought, which cally prior to, or otherwise substantiate all is to say the social conditions in which such others; to identify a limited set of principles thought develops. Yet insofar as the one set or .sentences that, once learned, allow us to of concepts held to be primary is precisely treat all others as subsidiary. The world is far that of the Marxist system, it too becomes no too complex and full of data to allow us to less systematic (and frequently dogmatic) take account of all of it; we deal with this than any other-as the application of this plethora of sensations by fore grounding some system to actual political systems in Eastern and refusing even to perceive others (as Ge­ Europe has shown. stalt psychology has shown) or by dividing it The intellectual history of the late twenti­ up into like groups which give structure to eth century in America may be understood as what we see and can ingest (as Foucault has a posing of the question of the validity of pointed out in The Order of Things, writing of systems of thought per se, which is another the way knowledge is organized b y our tax­ way of referring to the well-known self-re­ onomies, themselves contingent). flexive stance of most of our contemporary Certainly-to take a particular example of philosophies. One major strain of thought in this simultaneous organization and limita­ America; a strain dominant among many in­ tion of perception by our structures-no one tellectuals through the 80s (and showing signs who has dealt with the history of critical of strength even into the 90s) is that which reception of literary works can fail to be im­ insists upon the theoretical (rather than, with pressed by the way works "ahead of their the Marxists, temporal/geographical) contin­ time" (as we say, meaning works for which gency of all systems. As a result this consti­ there was no established type) are rejected as tutes a variant on skepticism: the denial that senseless or barbarous according to the un­ there can be a system in thought, a system-of­ derstanding of the permissible forms of lit­ no-system. The patron saint of this strain of erature and yet subsequently are "seen" to be thought is Ferdinand Saussure, with his per­ the precursors of other forms entirely. For ception (in the Course in General Linguistics) what this means is that a type has subse­ that reference is produced not by an inherent quently been established that allows us tore- unitary link between the sign and that which

FLEMING 147 it signifies, but instead by a system of inter­ Western worlds as creations by a dominant locking relations between the signs them­ culture of a shadowy Other world (as in V.Y. selves, so that the system of signs in fact Mudimbe's Th e Creation of Africa). For if all floats in a kind of hermeneutic limbo, some­ signification is contingent to the system of how referring to things outside of itself de­ which it is a part and has no inherent connec­ spite its inherently self-contained nature. And tion with a world outside, then it is tanta­ the evident conclusion we make from this is mount to fascism (as well as mistaken logic) that there is no moral (or societal, or episte­ to assert that any one system has inherent mological) imperative for one system of ref­ primacy over any other. We may think that erence over another: cubism is just as "real" we are right, but this is only within the value as the paintings of the Barbizon school, Stein system which holds certain things to be the as potentially valid as Dickens. criteria of being right, or other things to be This perception holds the key not only to identical with the good. With a different set semiotics-a term which still leaves many of values, a different conclusion will be contemporary thinkers somewhat in the reached . dark-but to the now-moribund structuralist Yet of course the problem is that all systems movement of the 30s to the 60s and to the of thought may in this sense be contingent on post-structuralism which is playing out its their presuppositions-save the system of final act on the stages of America's less than thought which tells us this. And those who avant-garde universities, where it has now defend such systems-of-no-system defend become orthodoxy. Semiotics, it seems to me, their own system no less vehemently than is best seen as a discourse whose very possi­ those of the old-time, "first-order" dogma­ bility was created by Saussure' s deflection of tisms such as that of Ernest Pontifex's father. attention from a relation between the sign Writers attempting to question this curious and the world to the relations between signs. systematizing of relativism, such as Allan Prior to Saussure's split of sign and signified, Bloom in his The Clo sing of the American Mind there was essentially nothing to say about the (which I will be considering briefly below) way meaning came to be: it could be shown, were tarred with the brush of right-wing as if with a wave of the hand, because it was reactionism- much the way those who held to be self-evident. After Saussure (or criticised the institutionalization of Marxist perhaps, after the criticism by the late thought in "socialist" countries were held Wittgenstein, in the Philosophical Inves tiga­ not only to be dangerous, but to have missed tions, of what he perceived to be the errors of the ineluctable sense of the system which was his earlier Tractatus logico-philosophicus), the prior to all others systems. attention was directed away from this rela­ The paradox we are faced with now, there­ tion about which there was nothing to say fore, is the construction, by thinkers of a hand­ towards relations that could be described in ful of various stripes, of systems of thought great detail: the relations between any given which themselves deny being systematic. In sign and other signs, descriptions of what the hands of a Derrida, this stance can be meant what rather than explanations of them. exhilarating, heady stuff-though the hard­ In a sense, the Saussurian revolution was a ening of the categories (to use Wayne Booth's turn away from theory to description, just as phrase) of Derridean deconstruction into a the Philosophical Investigations turned philoso­ methodology for doing literary criticism phy towards descriptions of the way lan­ shows us the way in which inherently nihilis­ guage actually worked. tic stances themselves inevitably take on sub­ The political implications of this insistence stance and come to control the centers of on the inherent contingency of all systems­ power that they once criticised. (Frank and hence by definition, of all systems of Lentricchia examines this phenemenon in thought as well as those of signification­ Beyond the New Criticism.) And the dogma­ were drawn by Foucault, working from tism of so many proponents of radical rela tiv­ Nietzsche, and in America through the ism in the 1980s and into the l990s-if one did Foucauldian works of writers like Edward not recite the credo of this relativism one was Said (Orientalism) and a spate of contempo­ racist, sexist, and philosophically stupid-is rary writers who treat perceptions of non- another context in which many people came

148 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW to see the divergence between wha t a phi­ d ents to study these cultures. What we losophy says and wha t it d oes, the curiou s are really d oing is a pplying a W estern way in which the d enial of a ll system s itself prejudice- w hich we covertly take to passes the invisible line into becoming a sys­ indicate the superiority of our culture­ tem, and in the ha nds of the right (w ron g) a nd d eforming the evidence o f those people, a stick to be u sed to beat others. other cultures to a ttest to its validity. In his much-discussed bestseller of the late (36) 80s, The Clos ing of the American Mind, Alla n Th e p a radox Bloom outlines consists in the Bloom discusses this situa tion of living in a fact tha t our very a ttempt to a void cultural world of relativisms quickly hardening into self-centeredness is its_elf culturally self-cen­ absolutisms. Much has been m ad e in the tered , ou r a ttempt to b e value-neutral in our critica l reaction s to this book of Bloom 's p erception eviden ce of our inability to escap e grousing against su ch givens of m od ern life the confin es of o ur p a rticula r intellectual sys­ as rock music and divorce on d em and. Yet it tem. (This particular d evelopment of West­ seems to me that the philosophically m ost ern thou gh t from its quite different Enlight­ potent subject in this entire book is to be enment bases is what Bloom d eplores, a nd it found not in the con sidera tion of precise fac­ is his d eploring this development that has ets of modern life of w hich the b od y of the acted as su ch a lightning rod for read er ire.) text is composed, but instead in the work's Wha t seem s saluta ry about this reminder on introduction, and tha t it offers an important Bloom's p a rt, it seem s to m e, is the insisten ce example of the p aradox I am referring to that there is a difference between systematic here. I mean Bloom's insistence that the rela­ thought an d the world outside-and tha t the tivism of perception w hich Westerners u se as m ost philosophica lly self-coh erent system the basis for their reaction to n on-relativ istic (su ch as that of universal d ou b t) ca n itself be Third World cultures is itself culturally sp e­ sh own to be limited in application by the cific- specific, precisely, to the Western cul­ introduction of eviden ce from this world ou t­ ture which provides the givens of p erception side (su ch as the p ercep tion th a t n ot every­ to those doing the considering. one on the earth thinks this way) w hich by Bloom is sp eaking of m a nda tory university d efinition could n ot h ave been foreseen b y courses in Third World cultures w hich inevi­ the system itself. tably, he says, have a "d em agogic intention ." In philosophical terms, of course, it m ay be Their point "is to force students to recogn ize tha t this is simply a working out of Godel's that there are other ways of thinking and tha t incomple teness theorem- which D ou glas Western ways are not better." Yet Bloom sees Hofstad ter, in turn, p erceives to b e a version a problem (or, as I w ould say, a paradox) in of the a n cient Creta n lia rs' paradox (wh erein this situation. For "if the students w ere re­ Epimenides, a Cre tan, m ad e the statem en t ally to learn som ething of the minds of a ny of tha t "All Cre ta n s are liars" ), and w hich he these non-Western cultures .. . they would para phrases as saying tha t "all consistent find that each and every one of these cultures axiom a tic formula tion s of n u mber theory in ­ is ethnocentric. All of them think their w ay is clude undecidable proposition s" (1 7). In tech­ the best way." Rela tivism , or self-doubt, then, nical terms this m eans that absolute certain ty is not universal, but p articular to the society in m a thematical system s can never be reach ed; doing the perceiving, the Western one . And h ere its practical equivalen t is a con sciou s­ Bloom makes this point clearly: n ess of the limitations of hum a n intellect, a Only in the Western n a tions, i.e., those kind of humility b efore the existen ce of oth er influenced by Greek philosophy, is there minds, other things. I would d escribe this some willingness to doubt the identifica­ humility as a willingn ess to accept tha t thou gh tion of the good with on e' s own w ay. w e may p olish the creation s of the m ind to One should conclude from the study of the point w h ere they are fiendishly p erfect non-Western cultures tha t not only to and self-enclosed, we can n ever be sure tha t prefer one's own way but to believe it the w orld w hich exists outside of u s m ay not best, superior to all others, is primary prove u s w ron g . Indeed , if I were to identify and even natural- exactly the o pposite on e single ch a racteristic of contem porary of what is intended by requiring stu- thou ght, it is that it su ffers from the sin of

FLEMING 149 superbia, pride-an intellectual version of the order; intellectual sophistication begins with notion that things must be a certain way be­ dogmatisms of the second order. Yet what cause we say they are so. are the implications of taking seriously a thor­ Of course, thinkers fond of the systematiza­ ough-going skepticism with regards to sys­ tion of no-systems approach would be quick tematic thought? Does this land us back in to situate this viewpoint itself in its proper the lap of first-order dogmatism? On one philosophical and temporal perspective: hand there is the assertion that all systems of presupposing as a given the Cartesian split thought are relative; on the other is the at­ between mind and matter (so that mind can tempt by others to take this seriously and say perfect something which nonetheless fails to that even systems such as these must there­ take account of the world), the scientific fore by definition be so, that relativism itself distantiation from the world that is taken as must have its limit. And here we are back at the basis for the empirical world view which the Cretan liar's paradox, or Godel: does the so many of these systems-of-no-system put latter prove or disprove the former? There into question, most notably Heidegger in Be­ must, in Hofstadter's gloss on Code!, be an ing and Time. (Indeed, Descartes is the big alternative to either true or false, and thought bogeyman of most contemporary thinkers, as alone will not d ecide the issue. he is of Heidegger.) These defenders of sys­ Leaving what? Perhaps a kind of Johnsonian tems-of-no-system, of course, would assert "realism" of action: every student of philoso­ that there is no value-free articulation pos­ phy knows the story of Dr. Johnson kicking sible, and hence no way to oppose a world the stone and saying "thus do I refute Bishop "out there" to a world as perceived by the Berkeley." Of course this both is, and is not, a individual. And even Peirce, who insisted on refutation, a refutation by action as opposed the capacity of the world to bump our fore­ to a refutation by thought. And from the heads and bruise our limbs and called it position of thought, this is no refutation at "Secondness" (as a twin to the mind's all. Was this what Ernest Pontifex meant by "Firstness" that somehow combined with it, "getting behind" Bishop Berkeley? in good Hegelian fashion, into a third term The orthodoxy regnant in Ernest's Victo­ that included them both), has been largely rian world was one of religion's absolutism, a read in the modern world as an idealist pure systematization of thought at the first de­ and simple, rather than the problematic hy­ gree: certain things are so, and no questions brid of idealist and realist that he was. are to be asked. Today, we find ourselves And of course, there is a dogmatic version having to question an orthodoxy whose sys­ of this attitude of humility with regards to tematization of thought is at least of the sec­ thought: it is precisely the organized religion ond degree: nothing is inherently so, and no against which Ernest Pontifex was rebelling, questions are to be asked. But the place we which insists that "Der Mensch denkt, Gott find ourselves may be the same-the more so lenkt": man proposes, God disposes. Indeed, in that both worlds constitute an attack on what I have called the sin of intellectual pride patriarchy and the institutions which sup­ is a sin only within the givens of religion, port it. At another point in the text than that which stands p erennially in danger of mak­ which I have quoted from above, Overton ing a content out of its the very insistence on describes the situation at the time through a the ineffability of a power beyond our com­ reflection on the situation of his hero on the prehension. As long as the church can keep day when he exits from prison. At this point its position of societal primacy, of course, in his life, Overton reflects, Ernest has a these two are synonymous: in a curious way changed and an unchanged part; these corre­ the Protestant Reformation had already won spond to changed and unchanged parts of the its points by the realization of its sheer possi­ world outside. And he continues: bility, based on the notion that there is more All our lives long, every day and every than one way of conceiving of these qualities hour, we are engaged in the process of of ineffability and transcendence. accommodating our changed and un­ All of which leaves us in something of a changed selves to changed and un­ quandary. Nowadays we have little diffi­ changed surroundings; living, in fact, is culty dealing with dogmatisms of the first nothing else than this process of accom-

150 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW modation . ... A life will be su ccessfu l up: that religion cannot be p roven logically, or not according as the p ower of accom ­ a nd must (if a t all) be accepted on faith. Th is modation is equa l to or unequal to the a t once robs religion of its impera tive and its strain of fusing a nd adjusting internal d ogm atism: we m ay well accept it, bu t this and external chan ges. must be an in d ivid u al decision, and cannot This, it seems, is a combina tion of Peirce's be eith er arbitra ted or legislated . "Firstness" with his "Secondness" - a nd It is a t this p oint tha t Butler/ Over ton pro­ seems to im ply the Ca rtesian point of d ep ar­ duces his summing-up, his denial of system ture that seem s so inescap able in m y reason ­ tha t a t the sam e time resists the impulse to be ing above. Yet this is not the end of Overton ' s m ad e into a system . An d it is this solution reasoning: w hich, I would like to p ropose, m ay provide The trouble is tha t in the end we shall a way for us tod ay out of the thicket of end­ be driven to admit the unity of the uni­ less self-referen ce in w h ich we find ourselves verse so comple tely as to be compelled to tod ay. deny that there is either a n external or an They say all road s lead to Rome, a nd all internal, but must see every thing both as philosophies that I have ever seen lead external and internal a t on e and the sam e ultimately either to some gross absur­ time, subject and object-external a nd dity, or else to the conclusion alread y internal- being unified as much as ev­ m ore than on ce insis ted on in these pages, erything else. tha t the ju st sh all live by faith, that is to Here Butler anticipates all of the anti-Carte­ sa y that sen sible p eople will get through sian, post-Hegelian thou ght I have been re­ life by rule of thumb as they may in ter­ ferring to above. Ye t he d oes not leave this pret it m ost con veniently without asking holding the p alm of victory m ore firmly tha n too m any qu estions for con science's sake. that which it has overthrown. Overton con­ Take a ny fact, a n d reason u pon it to the tinues cheerfully as follows: "This w ill knock b itter en d, and it w ill ere lon g lead to this our whole system over, but then every sys­ as the only refu ge from som e p alpable tem has got to be knocked over by som e­ folly . (296) thing." Life, therefore, in w h ich system s of thou gh t So here we are back a t the question of sys­ b ecom e objects of u se, things to be gon e tematization of thou ght per se w ith w hich I throu gh and disp osed of when circumstances opened above; clearly the question b eing mitigate for th eir b eing so. O f course, it will raised here concerns the validity of an y sys­ be objected, this is w hat m ost p eople d o w ho tem of thou ght, even of skepticism as a sys­ have n ever been instructed in philosophy, tem. And the solution O verton proposes eve n if they d o so without kn owing it: phi­ seems to go Dr. Johnson one better, as it were, losophy is precisely the a rt of developing out a Dr. Johnson who n either subscribed to of pr e ci s~ action s the implied bases on which Berkeleyen idealism , n or felt tha t kicking a it imp licitly rests. A nd yet Ernest knows this stone proved an ything a t all. is so, apologizing to Overton for having taken Much the best way ou t of this diffi­ so long to com e to the con clusion tha t m ost culty is to go in for sep ara tion b etween people know lon g before their twenty-sixth internal and external-subject and ob­ year. In deed , his h ero rem ains a certain ject-when w e find this con venient [tha t Tow n sley, a golden boy who is well-bred, is, Cartesianism as a p oint of d ep a rture], rich, good-looking, and perhap s rather stu ­ and unity between the sam e w hen we pid, so that h e has never gon e throu gh the find unity convenient. This is illogical, rigors of thou ght tha t have p lagu ed Ernest . but extremes are alone logical, and they (One thinks of the dumb blondes of both are always absurd, the m ean is a lone sexes that Thomas Mann' s quintessentially practicable and it is alw ays illogica l. It Roma ntic / M odernist gen tleman a rtist, Tanio is faith and not logic w hich is the su­ Kroger, idolized.) prem e arbiter. (295-296) It m ay be that this conclu sion of Ernest a nd This p osition, as it ha p pens, is tha t w h ich Overton will seem n o less d ogm a tic than the Ernest has ad opted w ith resp ect to the re­ received religion from w hich it is osten sibly a ceived religion with w hich he was brou ght diversion: Overton talks unembarrassedly of

FLEMIN G 151 "the just"-thereby proposing a system akin provide the justification for a system of to G.E. Moore's intuitionistic understanding thought. It gives us an orientation in life, but of "the good" whose effect was to valorize not a content to it. And it is this sense of the cliquishness of the Bloomsbury circles providing that Mr. Overton's solution may that received it so eagerly. be a viable one for us today, a way out of the Yet the relevant point here is surely that of paradoxes with which our urge to systematic Bloom: that we do not cease to talk of "the thought has presented us in the final years of just" -or indeed, cease to talk in any absolut­ the twentieth century. 0 ist terms whatever-because we understand that others hold different notions of these. Instead, we simply understand that all abso­ Bruce Fleming teaches English at the U .S. Naval Academy, Annapolis. He ha s published fiction and es says in many lutist terms are absolute only for a limited quarterlies and journals . H e won the 1991 Book Award for time and place, a particular set of circum­ comparative studies of the Northeast Modern Lang uage A s­ stances. Yet this realization is not in itself sociation for An Essay in Post- Romantic Lit ~ rary Theory sufficient to cause us to abandon them; for (Edwin Mellon Press). this to happen the situation in which they obtained must itself change. In short, we WORKS CITED conceptualize acG:ording to particulars in the world: when particulars change, our conceptualizations change. All words are Bloom, Allan. The Closing of the American Mind: H ow inventions, and this includes those that deny Higher Education Ha s Failed Democracy and Impover­ ished the So uls ofToday's Students. New York: Simon that all words are inventions. and Schuster, 1987. The realization of the contingency of hu­ man thoughts, the frailty (to use a religious Butler, Samuel. The Way of All Fl esh. Foreword by Carl term) of mankind in the face of the universe, Van Doren[1 945). N ew York: Books, Inc., n.d. is a realization that lies too deep for tears: it Hofstadter, Douglas. Godel, Es cher, Bach: A n Eternal may undergird a way of life, but it cannot Golden Braid. N ew York: Vintage, 1980.

152 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Vivian Lamarque

THE GENTLEMAN OF THE FOOTPRINTS

Translated by Renata Treitel

At five that evening in the light of the sky things looked looked so well outlined o would that the gentleman were there to see them with her the things of the universe outlined. Instead the gentleman wasn't there to see them? had he left? Yes, the streets had stolen his steps, had set his footprints in a line with the tips turning the other way.

LARMARQUE 153 Bernard J. Looks

THE IDEA OF DISAGREEMENT IN THE CRITICISM OF MARTIN S. DWORKIN

n the December, 1956 issue of The Progres­ only m a kes recommendations. Responding I sive, there is a letter to the editor, written by in the sam e issue to this observation, Dworkin Robert G. W eyant of Kent, Ohio, commenting states that "Mr. Michael-like Father Dulles4 upon a review by Martin S. Dorkin of Storm and other Catholics who recognize the offi­ Center (1956), "a film about a small town's cial bounds of the Legion's authority-may p ersecution of a librarian who refused on be underes timating the practical force of its grounds of civil liberty to remove a book classifications and recommendations." 5 Then, favoring communism from public libra ry following a description of how the Legion's shelves ." 1 The letter praises Dworkin for authority works in practice, he concludes that being "honest enough to b e critical of a mo­ " to raise the qualifications of its powers as tion picture with whose theme he is in obvi­ they are strictly defined, which Mr. Michael ous agreement," 2 and "courageous enough to h as done, may therefore b e more academic s tate a criticism of a minority than actually operative" ("Dworkin Re­ organization"(Weyant 29). The organization s ponds" 30). referred to by Weyant was the Catholic Le­ I have described in some detail an exchange gion of Decency, which, after sharply criticiz­ of letters, now over thirty-five years old, and ing Storm Center, had invoked the "Special" long after the name and function of the Le­ classification rather than outright condem­ gion of Decency have been changed, because nation. it exemplifies the application by Dworkin of Appearing in the same issue is another let­ an idea of disagreement that is central to an ter to the editor, from John Michael, of Mil­ understanding of his criticism. Before dea l­ waukee, Wisconsin, who d escribes himself a, ing with this idea, however, its place in his "a d evoted Fan" 3 of Martin Dworkin, and thinking, how it has been applied in his criti­ then proceeds to question a statement m a de cism and why it is of particular importance by Dworkin in his review of Storm Center, to today, at a critical juncture in the history of wit, that the film does not specifically "con­ education in this country, som e background front the problem for democratic countries of is necessary. the absolute obedience in Catholicism to the By 1952, the year he published an article d efinition by constituted agencies of the d ealing specifically with the subject of dis­ church of what may be read, seen, heard, or agreement, Martin Dworkin was alread y an otherwise exp e rienced without imperiling experienced professional writer, having pub­ e terna l salvation, ("The Hurricane's" 34). lished poems and short s tories as well as Michael points out that "while the Legion of numerous articles on a wide range of subject, Decency is a n agency of the Catholic Church, extending from photography to political it is not one to whose judgements Catholics theory. In addition, h e had already begun to owe 'absolute obedience'" (Michael29). The write film criticism regularly, which was to Legion, Michael adds, issues no orders; it continue throughout the d ecade of the fifties and into the early sixties for such journals as

'MartinS. Dworkin, "The Hurricane's Clouded Eye, The Progre ss ive 20. 10 (October 1956) : 34. ' Michael mentions in his le tte r tha t Fathe r Avery Dulles, S.J., had recently publis hed a n article on the 2Robert G. Weyant, "Le tter to the Editor," Th e Pro­ Legion o f Decency in the Ca tholic weekly, Arnerica (june gre ss ive 20 .1 2 (Decembe r 1956): 29. 2, 1956).

'John Michael, "Letter to the Ed itor, Th e Progressive ' Martin S. Dworkin, " Dworkin Res ponds," Th e Pro­ 20. 12 (Decembe r 1956): 29. gressive 20.1 (December1 956): 30.

154 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW The New Leader, The New Republic, The Progres­ automobile such as Mrs. Kaufmann had sive and The Canadian Commentator.6 just bought two weeks before. One could It was between 1945 and 1952, while both a study on the subway; he could always student and a professional writer, that shut out the surrounding noise by turn­ Dworkin hammered out the approach that ing off his h earing-aid. On the way to has informed his criticism to this day. Struck Riverdale, we compared the contents of by the persistence of disagreement among our briefcases, and then, said goodbye. philosophers (the ongoing search for a uni­ The next evening he was d ead , although versal methodology not withstanding), and m ost of us did not know of it until Sun­ stimulated after World War II and his return day, as the family characteristically had from the service to civilian pursuits by con­ not wished to·intrude upon the Christ­ tact with such outstanding teachers at the m as celebra tions of his m an y friends. New School for Social Research in New York Sacra tes had said that the true philoso­ as Felix Kaufmann, Kurt Riezler, and Leo pher is always d ying; but there is m ore. Strauss, his thinking was to bear fruit (all too Something of philosophy alway, dies as briefly, he has maintained) with the publica­ well; even as the endless seeking goes tion of "Disagreement: the Situation of Rea­ forward, the beloved seekers perish son." ("Felix Kaufmann" 14). The article was written as a reply to the Dworkin did not find a nother doctoral ad­ philosophical position of his doctoral adviser, viser, and so did not comple te his doctoral Felix Kaufmann, who had died suddenly in studies. Perhaps, after Kaufmann died, he December, 1949. Kaufmann had been work­ never really tried. ing in the field of scientific philosophy, at­ To return to "Disagreement: the Situation tempting, along with collaborators like Hans of Reason," it was from a point of view that Reichenbach and Herbert Feigl, to use the was more sharply critical of the conception methods of logical analysis scientifically in that there is one m ethod or doctrine to which order to clarify meanings. One gets an idea of all the others had to give way that Dworkin the caliber of this man as well as a brief wrote: indication of their disagreement in the mov­ That there is one truth to the adherent of ing tribute Dworkin wrote to his beloved an y particular religion, and many phi­ teacher, entitled "Last Conference," which losophies is the ineluctable circumstance was published as a part of "Felix Kaufmann: of reason- providi n g a continuing A Memorial." ground for entertaining a caveat against While many of us might have doubts what can b ecome an overweening admi­ concerning his conception of philosophy ration for philosphical method. as clarification, and of the history of For it is often a rgued , from one p hilo­ thought as a progress toward clarity, the sophical vantage or another, that the impact of his enthusiasm, of his sincerely p ersistence of m an y issu es in the agorae humble approach to thinkers and think­ of debate is attributable to nothing m ore ing carried far beyond this disagreement than that the protagonis ts w ill never ad­ or that.7 mit that they are w rong. Such an argu­ And more to the point being made here, ment builds upon an implicit assump­ We walked to the subway, talking of tion of a universal methodology, to w hose Mozart's. Magic Flute, still munching canons all must perforce adhere.8 grapes from a holiday basket that had Then, examining further the issue of the been in the office. H e enjoyed riding in one "true" philosophical m ethod, Dworkin the subway, he said, far more than in an points out how limited the logical arguments employed in any m ethodology are, w hen it is a question of altering an individual conv ic­ 6 See Bernard]. Looks, "An Impo rtant But Neg lected tion. Voice: The Film Criticism of MartinS. Dworkin," New Orlean s Review 15.3 (November 1988): 38-43. In the course of being convinced, or of

7Hans Reichenbach, H erbert Feigl, Martin Dworkin, 8Martin S. Dworkin, " Disag reem e nt: The Situ a tio n of "Felix. Kaufmann: A Memorial," edited by Howard Reason," Th e Scientific M onthly L XXV .2 (Augu st Bennett, 12th Streets: A Quarterly III. 2 (1950):14. 1952):118.

LOOKS 155 "changing his mind," a person is involved Thus, "the unconvinced character in the dia­ to an extent transcending the simple op­ log u e is revealed not as a representation of position of logical alternatives. He is a unresolvable dilemma and indecision, but as whole person, with a unique and ines­ an exemplified alternative, held up for scru­ capable past, and not simply the part of tiny on the part of the participating observer." his psyche responsive to logical order­ ("Disagreement" 118) ing. Although his private attitude m ay It was to be expected that a man who con­ b e of only ancillary relevance so far as sidered disagreement to be the necessary situ­ the purely logical validity of any state­ ation of reason, and had taken as his model ment is concerned, it is of the first sig­ for that situation the relationship between nificance to anyone whose concern is to Socrates the teacher-critic, and his audience, communicate with him. Choice from would, as a critic of film, regard that relation­ among contending alternatives is a mat­ ship as an indispensable guide in the forma­ ter of conviction; a person chooses one or tion of his own critical approach. Indeed , in another for reasons, and not simply as "The Suburbs of Criticism," one of a· series of the creature of an inevitable momentum articles written during the fifties in which he that alone determines which way he will explores the relationship between the film go, and when. ("Disagreement," 118) producer , the a udience and the critic, Finally, what is the significance of disagree- Dworkin defines criticism as "essentially a m ent in a world in which any person is free to discipline of rhetoric, of persuasion; its choose from among contending alternatives? method is analysis, and its highest function is I would suggest that Dworkin's entire critical the enrichment of the interior conversation." 9 approach rests upon the answer he gives to Clearly, he was writing for an audience of this question. educated readers, for individuals capable of As the great, uncharted dialogue goes choosing for them selves, as befits citizens in forward, as alternative confronts alter­ a d emocracy. native and yields or is transformed to In "The Money and the Message," another rise again, the issue of disagreement .is in the same series, Dworkin, eschewing po­ seen as not simply one of controversy, lemics, takes the movie industrialists of the but of conviction: of the perennial attain­ fifties to task, not, as one mig ht think, for m ent of individual convictions. Each b eing concerned, primarily about the box of­ particular person must be met, and given fice (indeed, he was alone among critics dur­ reason, why he should choose one view ing the fifties in arguing that it was not p os­ rather than another. A doctrine conceiv­ sible to understand film except through the ing its own validity as absolute, neces­ box office), but for accepting as "fact" the sary, and exclusive does not in its very idea that "message" films cannot be profit­ na ture take into account the vital unique­ able. The public chooses entertainment rather ness, of individual personhood, that can than to be propaga ndized , they claimed, and choose for itself to be more truly itself. is willing to pay for it. To this, Dworkin ("Disagreement" 119) replied that it is true "that the public prefers In dealing with the audience of those who to be entertained, rather than harangued . must choose for themselves, Dworkin takes Hence, it is not surprising that 'message' as his model the example in Plato's Republic, movies have failed to draw the public when and argues that it is not necessary for the their messages have been too poorly deliv­ success of the method of dialogue to per­ ered. There are enough examples of films suade all who participate. "It is for the ben­ which have stated their good intentions in efit of those who desire to learn and can yet terms of good cimema-good art, to point the do so" ("Disagreement" 118) that Socrates simple moral here: that what you say in films weighs reason "against unreason, truth takes on its life and interest from the way you against falsity, justice against injustice, real­ say it. A film that is merely a vehicle to ity against appearance" ("Disagreement" transport some m essage, however worthy, 118). For example, he doesn't hope to p er­ suade Thrasymachus, who remains adama nt 9Martin S. Dworkin, "The Suburbs o f Criticism," Th e in defense of the doctrine that justice is power. Progressive 20.6 (June 1956): 29.

156 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW will surely mire in boredom." 10 criticized the film producers for what they Having shown that he thinks good films were doing to it, and held up an idea of what can make a profit, Dworkin goes on, in the that audience ought to be, Dworkin deplored following passage, to challenge the assump­ the actual low level of concern on the part of tion made by the movie industrialists that the public with the quality of what it was because they design films to entertain that no seeing. This, he attributed to the widespread learning or uncritical habituation takes place: notion that entertainment is without signifi­ The really fundamental fact of the movie cance, and angrily asserted that "for an un­ business is not that the public demands derstanding of a world dominated by popu­ to be entertained, and will pay only rarely lar attitudes-tyranized in_fact, by 'the revolt to be informed . All films are "message" of the masses' -it should be obvious that the film s; all films make propaganda-if only popular arts may be the most significant of for daydreaming; all films take sides all" ("The Suburbs" 30). somehow on the issue of ideological in­ In 1954, the show business trade paper Va­ tentionality: whether the audience is to riety conducted a comprehensive survey of be treated as a mass, whose constituent the influence of film criticism on film audi­ units are assumed to have no individual­ ences. The survey of exhibitors revealed that, ity, and whose anonymity is to be se­ based upon admission sales, the mass audi­ duced to move in predetermined direc­ ence paid little attention to either film re­ tions-or whether it is to be treated as a views or to serious criticism. In commenting group of individuals, to be persauaded on these results, which seemed to others to be to choose freely. This is the underlying proof of the low state of film criticism, issue of all the mass media of our time, Dworkin develops further his idea of what a defining the responsibility of those in­ critic's relationship to his readers ought to volved . ("The Money" 34) be. Rejecting as a goal for criticism the re­ Thus, an important part of Dworkin's idea markable power over the American theatre of disagreement-that the audience be treated exercised at the time by a few New York as a group of individuals who are free to newspaper critics, which he describes as an choose-is, in effect, denied by the movie extreme case of what happens when criticism makers, who, Dworkin charges, are being ir­ affects the box office directly, Dworkin goes responsible and therefore undemocratic. on to say that Moreover, there would appear to be a close No matter how much people may use connection between Dworkin's idea of dis­ critical opinions as guides, critical judg­ agreement and his idea of education. In fact, ment may not refer to commercial suc­ it can be said that his idea of disagreement is cess or failure for proof of its validity. in essence an idea of education. In a truly The standards of the critic of films, as prophetic passage, making connections that those of critics of any other aspect of are not fully understood to this day, Dworkin culture, ought to provide leadership, to writes that be sure-but not in the sense of the To "give the public what it wants" in celebratedly typical revolutionary dema­ the bald sense of the market place gogue, who races after the mobs to find through the mass media is to give the out where they are going, in order to public no choice. The illusion of free­ lead them. ("The Suburbs" 29) dom in the creation and selection of all Finally, Dworkin cautions "against the false the manufactured experiences whth paradise of conscientious agreement" ("The which we are constantly bombarded is Suburbs" 30), arguing that "Jerusalem of in­ the truly dangerous narcotic of our times. telligent participation in the film experience, The freedom proffered by the industrial­ in fact, may be built only in ' suburbs of ists of the movies and the other mass dissent,' where critics and audiences eter­ media is too often the freedom of ad­ nally disagree, as those who see for them­ dicts, choosing among brands of opium selves eternally must" ("The Suburbs" 30). and flavors of lotus leaves. ("The Money" With this vigorous affirmation of his idea of 35) disagreement, Dworkin was placing himself As for the movie audience itself, even as he in admiring but critical opposition toW. H.

LOOKS 157 Auden's bitter view, as expressed in the poem further amplification in the distinction that "We Too Had Known Golden Hours, namely he drew between criticism and ideology in that "the suburb of dissent" 11 as something to his general editor, foreword to Lewis Jacob's which sensitive educated people had been collection of the film writings of Harry Alan reduced as a result of the destruction of an Potamkin, an important American ideologue earlier, presumably better society at the hands critic of film an he early thirties. of today' s demotic society .12 As we have seen, Dworkin had charged the At the urging of his friend and colleague, movie industrialists of the fifties with de­ Lawrence A. Cremin, Dworkin decided, by priving the public of a choice by creating an the early sixties, to give up writing film criti­ illusion of freedom which was no better than cism regularly and to continue what had al­ the freedom of addicts who choose from ready become a close association with Teach­ among different kinds of narcotics. With ers College, Columbia University. There, regard to the fundamental issue of ideologi­ throughout the sixties and into the late sev­ cal intentionality, the industrialists. who con­ enties, Dworkin was a lecturer in philoso­ trolled cinema and the other mass media were phy .13 He was also a research associate at the subverting democracy by treating audiences Institute of Philosophy and Politics of Educa­ as anonymous masses to be seduced and led tion 14 at Teachers College and editor of his in directions decided in advance, rather than own series, Studies in Culture and Commu­ as individuals to be persuaded to make free nication, published by Teachers College Press. choices. Creating a sense of great urgency for Among the books included in this series were Dworkin was the insight and conviction that a number of important works on cinema for the popular arts, and, in particular, cinema, which Dworkin wrote introductions which the most persuasive of those arts, were of are among the most profound commentaries decisive importance in a world more and on film and society written in this country more controlled if not tyranized by popular since the end of World War II. 15 attitudes. During the late seventies, at a time of grow­ This insight concerning the persuasive ing commitment to ideologically motivated power of cinema was to reappear in "Criti­ criticism in academic circles, Dworkin re­ cism and Ideology: A Note on Cinema," turned to the idea of disagreement, giving it Dworkin's foreword to the Potamkin book, where it is related first to the purposes of 10 Martin S. Dworkin, "The Money and the Message," religionists in this country, who discovered The Progressive 19.2 (February 1955): 34. this power well before the first World War,

11 W. H. Auden, Collected Shorter Poems 1927-1957 and then to those of ideologues of both the (New York:Random House, 1967) 318. "Left" and the "Right" following the war. So much and so deeply does cinema, 12A. L. Rowse offers this interpretation of Auden's for the sovereign example, involve indi­ poem in The Poet Auden: A Personal Memoir (New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988) 92, and says that the viduals in collective imagining, so fully poem certainly speaks for him. are the prepared and projected visions of motion pictures interiorized and assimi­ 13He originated courses at Teachers College in Aes­ lated into the mind and spirit, that it is thetics and Education, and in Education, Ideology, and no wonder that religionists take them Mass Communication. seriously at once. And it is no wonder 14Under the auspices of the institute, Dworkin di­ too, that the criticism, of the cinema in rected "studies of ideology in theories and practices of the years of political, social, and eco­ formal and informal education, focusing on modes of persuasion and propaganda, and cultural agencies of nomic cataclysm and depression, follow­ art, public ritual, and mass entertainment." ing the World War of 1914-18, should turn so fervently ideological, appropri­ 15See "National Images and International Culture," ating the language of earlier religious Foreword to Lewis Jacobs' The Rise of the American Film: concern and converting it to new dog­ A Critical History. With an Essay, Experimental Cinema 16 in America 1921-1947 (1968); "The Writing on the Screen," matic purposes. Foreword to Gene D. Phillips, Graham Greene: The Films Following logically from the realization of of His Fiction (1974); "Criticism and Ideology: A Note on the great persuasive power of cinema was the Cinema," Foreword to Lewis Jacobs, The Compound Cin­ ema: The Film Writings of Harry Alan Potamkin, (1977). fundamental issue of ideological intentional-

158 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW ity, which had remained central for Dworkin. An art open to untrammeled criticism, But it was now partisan cultural criticism, implying all the indeterminacies of man's that is, criticism limited by ideology, an ex­ reasoning for himself, is no longer invul­ tension of the politics of the new totalitarian­ nerable as ideologically orthodox and isms of the twentieth century, that he was therefore sacrosanct. An ideology open taking to task. "If one may speak at all of to criticism, to disagreement, is no longer cultural criticism in the totalitarian state," ideology ... . Dworkin writes, "its role is necessarily de­ Thus it is of the very nature of critical fined as inflexibly as is that of the arts, the reasoning that there is acknowledgment critic primarily performing a recognizably of and provision for disagreement-an sacerdotal function as guide to doctrinal or­ essentiality that actually empowers and thodoxy and official approval" ("Criticism even requires the reasoner to contend and Ideology" xvii). Specifically concerned with the most dogmatic positions. With in "Criticism and Ideology" with the impact these, of course, he would probably dis­ of Marxist ideology upon the artistic judg­ agree-or, if he did agree, it would nec­ ments in the criticism of Harry Alan Potamkin, essarily be for reasons , and not only in who died in 1933 at the age of thirty-three, accordance with dogmatic authority. Dworkin writes that even what Potamkin ("Criticism and Ideology" xix) waved as red flags in his film criticism were Let it be said, that in bringing out in his own often also banners for serious, critical under­ series a collection of the film writings of "per­ standing of the arts in general and the cinema haps the best, but unquestionably the most in particular- that is, given time sufficient influential, of American ideologue film crit­ for critical consideration, and the necessary ics, Harry Alan Potamkin" ("Criticism and condition of liberty" ("Criticism and Ideol­ Ideology" xx) and contending with him in ogy" xxi). And further, to the question being his admiring but critical general editor's fore­ raised here, word, Dworkin provides further evidence that For Potamkin to write the way he did, he practices the idea of disagreement that he and for us to be able to read him, in preaches. Moreover, it is a practice that may agreement or not, in his own time as now be followed with profit by scholar, today as calls for an openness; for argument and concern mounts over the destructive polar­ the publication of ideas that was .. . ization that increasingly afflicts the academic impossible-or accidental and very rare community. ... in the kind of society and political A third of a century has now passed since system for which he thought he was the launching of Sputnik in 1957. During this working. What this has to do with his time, American institutions of higher learn­ artistic judgments is a question we must ing have in-creasingly become battlegrounds ponder, one that brings up many of the of conflicting ideas of education. Questions most difficult problems of philosophy, of what should be taught, who should be religion, and politics, concerning the taught, and who should teach have been in nature of the arts and their function in bitter contention. A dangerous polarization the formation of consciousness, of divides academia's men and women of intel­ thought itself. (Criticism and Ideology" lect. Nor have other areas of our national life xxi) been spared these acrimonious divisions, Finally, regarding openness to disagree­ which inevitably involve issues of society, ment, which he situates at the heart of criti­ politics and culture as w ell as those of educa­ cism as distinguished from ideology, Dworkin tion. points out that Today's academic reformers, with roots deeply embedded in the reforming zeal of the 1960's, are often tenured professors as well as 16Martin S. Dworkin, "Criticis m and Ideology: A Note administrators, with power in academia. on Cine ma," Gene ral Edito r's foreword to The Com­ Many consider themselves part of a continu­ pound Cinema: The Film Writings of Harry Alan PotamkinL ing struggle for the advancement of social Selected , Arranged and Introduced by Lewis Ja cob; in the series Studies in Culture and Communication (New democracy in America. They understand the York: Teachers College Press, 1977) xvi. educational aspect of this struggle to require

LOOKS 159 radical changes in the hum ani ties to reflect ods of the literature department and the uni­ the educational needs and interest, of groups versity into fruitful relation and opposition." 17 that are perceived as "oppressed" by the re­ But this can only happen, I submit, if the formers. diversity of view, on the academic left as well It is not surprising that this movement of as on the academic right gradually manifests reform, with such comprehensive intentions, a new spirit, marked by a fuller acceptance of has produced a sharp reaction on the part of disagreement as being the situation of rea­ many of those who were already established son, requiring in a democracy, as Dworkin in the humanities and who now seek to con­ stated, such a d egree of openness to criticism serve traditional ideas and practices. The as to constitute a repudiation of ideological real danger in this growing confrontation is dogma. For, to accept a situation in which that as the traditionalists continue to react to our intellectuals consider themselves parti­ the assault of what is an avowedly ideologi­ sans in a historically determined clash of cal movement of reform they are tending to unalterably opposed ideologies is .suicidal, become ideological themselves, thus giving as so much of the history of the twentieth the appearance of subtance to the claim, so century amply demonstrates. Granted that widespread in academia today, that all criti­ many difficult questions remain and must be cism is ideological. pondered, yet, as Dworkin points out, the I for one can only regard this prevailing fact "that we are able to think and decide, tendency of our intellectuals to ideologize, applying criticism to the judgment of criti­ with foreboding. And one can only hope that cism, may itself be one kind of answer and a those in departments of literature and the considerable one" ("Criticism and Ideology many others undoubtedly who seek a middle xxi). D ground will succeed, as Gerald Graff put it, in bringing "the different ideologies and m eth- Bernard J. Looks is an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Humanities at the United States Merchan t Marin e A ca d­ emy. He holds a Ph.D . in modern European history from 17Gera ld Graff, Professing Literature: An Institutional Columbia University and ha s published articles on French History (Chicago: University of C hicago Press, 1987) educa tional reform as well as on Ameri can education. 250.

160 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Pedro Salinas

YES

r:ranslated by Jo e Bolton

verything says yes. E Yes the sky, the blue, and yes, the blue sea, seas, skies, blues with foams and breezes, joyful monosyllables repeating endless! y. One yes answers yes to another yes. Great dialogues repeated within our hearing above the sea from world to world: yes. The air reads like a text of yes after long yes, flashes of massive machinery, so much fallen snow, flake on flake, covering the earth with an enormous, white yes. Grand day. Today we can come near what is unspoken: thought, love, the bones behind our foreheads: they are the slaves of yes. It is the only word that grants the world today . Quick, love, to desire, to desire with the intensity of momentary madness, to desire those things impossible, yet longed for, left unsaid so many times, for so long, which today we cry out for. Certain today -today, nothing more than today­ that every no was false, an appearance, a delay, an innocent skin. And that it was secretly, quietly preparing itself for the measure of this longing, all we desire in vain, but with great delight: the yes.

SALIN AS 161 Jeffery Alan Triggs

HURT INTO POETRY: THE POLITICAL VERSES OF SEAMUS HEANEY AND ROBERT BLY

ne of the stubborn issues in modern po­ lence of war stimulated the "unofficial legis­ 0 etry is the question of its proper, or most lator" in many a poet, while at the same time effective, political role. Since the time of the blasting the formal strictures of the New Crit­ romantics, poets have tended by nature and ics in favor of what came to be known as open habit toward inwardness, but certain exigent form. It is worth noting that political poetry occasions, wars and revolutions, have con­ in recent times, as the pun in my title may tinually "hurt" them into public utterance. suggest, is almost certain to be adversarial Still there is always an uneasiness attending rather than celebratory, a poetry of protest these public occasions, a sense that the true against one "political status quo" or another. business of the poet lies elsewhere. Modern The poets I shall be concerned with here, poets have only rarely played an active part Robert Bly and Seamus Heaney, embody very in the public events surrounding them, and different approaches to the problem of a poet's they have been likely to waver between social and political responsibility. Both be­ Shelley's injunction to act as "unofficial leg­ gan their careers writing personal, even pas­ islators" and Yeats's more sobering advice: "I toral lyrics, but turned because of what they think it better that in times like these I A perceived as political necessity-in Bly's case poet's mouth be silent, for in truth I We have the Vietnam War, in Heaney's case the no gift to set a statesman right." "troubles" in Northern Ireland-to poetry of The poets who followed the New Critical overtly political significance. Both have re­ approach, at least, were unambiguous when mained devoted in their own ways to the it came to adjudicating the rival claims of craft of poetry. Their difference stems from poetry and propaganda on a poet's loyalty: the traditions to which they have allied them­ passionate commitment meant nothing less selves and the balances they have struck be­ or more than passionate commitment to one's tween the rival claims of dissertation and of art. Political poems were to be judged, not by craft. the effectiveness of their discourse, but by More than most American poets this side of their success as linguistic objects. The tense Ezra Pound, Bly has excited extremes of criti­ but relatively quiescent decade of the 'fifties cal appreciation. He has been called, on the helped to foster such an ideal. An era of one hand, "a windbag, a sentimentalist, a outward calm produced a poetry of personal slob in the language," dangerously imitable concerns, which could be considered politi­ "by fledgling poets." 2 Another view consid­ cal only by implication. The "well wrought" ers him a sort of poetic guru, comparable in poem's external, formal balance held in check his way with Blake, Whitman, and Lawrence, its inward ironies, its seething and often para­ and concerned "to domesticate the sublime."3 doxical emotions. It is not surprising that What both of these appraisals remark from modern Marxist critics like Terry Eagleton their different perspectives is Bly' s persistent consider the New Critical approach "a recipe and rather calculated pursuit of a public and for political inertia, and thus for submission controversial role. to the political status quo." 1 This seeming Bly' s early poetry seems, if anything, rather calm, of course, was shattered in the 'sixties, when once again social violence and the vio- 2Eliot W einberger, "Gloves on a Mouse," Th e Nation 229.16 (Novembe r 17, 1979): 503.

'Terry Eagleton, Literary Theory: An Introduction (Min­ ' Charles Molesworth, Th e Fierce Embra ce: A Study of neapolis, Minnesota: Univers ity of Minnesota Press, Contemporary American Poe try (Columbia, Missouri: 1983) 50. University of Missouri Press, 1979) 138.

162 N EW ORLEAN S REVIEW too scrupulously personal. The lyrics in his "We," in this instance, suggests not so much first published volume, Silence in th e Snowy that the speaker has taken a social or political Fields (1962), assiduously cultivate what came stance, as a purely linguistic attempt to im­ to be known as "deep images," autonomous pose a kind of universality on what is very moments of perception joined together not much a private experience: rationally but through the surreal syntax of the unconscious mind. The speaker is alone There is unknown dust that is near us, in nature, open to its invitations for commun­ Waves breaking on shores just over the ion, and perfectly free, therefore, to tamper hill, with its constituents: Trees full of birds that we have never seen, The small world of the car Nets drawn down with dark fish. Plunges through the deep fields of the night, The evening arrives; we look up and it is On the road from Willmar to Milan. there. This solitude covered with iron It has come through the nets of the stars, Moves through the fields of night Through the tissues of the grass, Penetrated by the noise of crickets. Walking quietly over the asylums of the ("Driving Toward the Lac Qui Parle water. River")4 The day shall never end, we think; We have hair that seems born for the Bly's technique here is to seek the kind of daylight. excited and heightened awareness that the But, at last, the quiet waters of the night Russian Formalists and the Spanish surreal­ will rise, ist poets sought in dislocated or estranged And our skin shall see far off, as it does language. Aside from the fairly quotidian under water. reference to "the road from Willmar to Milan," all the images subtly deviate from common (Selected Poems 41) usage. The inside of the car is a "small world," a "solitude covered with iron," which Once again, the method here is to produce a "plunges" rather than simp! y driving through sense of mystery before nature by deviating "deep fields of the night." "The noise of crick­ significantly from the expectations of com­ ets," surely something commonplace in it­ mon usage, though Bly tries to ballast these self, "penetrates" the speaker's solitude as if deviations with some fairly ordinary sen­ it were a sharp instrument. The word may tences ("The evening arrives"; "The day shall even bear subtly phallic associations. The never end, we think"). Grass is not usually effort is to give ordinary, personal experi­ described as being composed of "tissues," ence a mystical intensity by estranging the hair is not usually "born," nor does skin "see" language used to describe it. The danger of in the usual sense of that word. And while such a technique is that the language, which the evening arrives fairly normally, Bly has, after all, ordinary allegiances that ante­ quickly personifies it as "walking ... over date the poet's use of it, may resist his effort asylums of water," rather in the miraculous to make it do transformative work. The manner of Jesus. One can see why Eliot heightened experience may seem merely bi­ Weinberger, perhaps disingenuously, is zarre, a kind of solipsistic phantasy. moved to characterize Bly's poetry as "a fes­ "Surprised by Evening," another fairly typi­ tival of pathetic fallacy"(504). Indeed, for Bly cal early poem, illustrates both the strengths estranging language seems sometimes to con­ and weaknesses of this approach. Although stitute the essence of poetry itself. Insofar as the poem makes use of the plural personal such language does heighten our awareness, pronoun, it is clearly the speaker's solitary however, it is a valid technique, though per­ consciousness manipulating the imagery. haps not enough in itself to create a major poetry. One can well imagine the nets of dark ' Robert Bly, Selected Poems (New York: Harper & fish, or the microscopic "tissues of the grass"; Row, 1986) 45. these images are disturbing in a strange, rather

TRIGGS 163 unspecific way. Perhaps the best approach to to make such a "leap" remains, as we shall a poem like this is through free association, see, in question . It is certain, however, tha t which, as George Steiner notes, "is a device he tried the leap and found it exhilarating. exactly calculated to pierce the m embran e Bly comments interestingly on the effect of b etween inner and outer sp eech, to deflect reciting political poetry a loud a t protest gath­ into the diagnostic light a nd echo-chamber erings: the unpremeditated rush and shadows of self­ colloquy."5 The problem is the extent to which I exp erienced for the first time in my life Bl y' s images allow them selves to b e deflected the p ower of spoken or oral poetry. A "into the diag nostic lig ht" as publicly avail­ briefl y lasting community springs to life able referents, even as purely ling uistic con­ in front of the voice, like a flo wer open­ structs, or simply reverbera te in the h ermetic ing ... . The community fl owers w hen isolation of the poet's con sciou sness. the poem is sp oken in the ancient way­ Bl y himself is aware of the problem of iso­ that is, with full sound, with conyiction, la ti on in such p ersonal poetry, and a dmits as and with the knowledge tha t the emo­ much in a comment on the Snowy Fields po­ tions are not priva te to the p erson speak­ ems: "I don' t feel much human relationship ing them . (Selec ted Poems 62) in these p oems, a nd the hundred thousand objects of twentieth-century life are absent Bly's las t sentence is particula rly interesting also" (Se lec ted Poems 27) . He claims that his in its suggestion that political poetry offered purpose was "to gain a resonance among the him an escap e from the solipsism of Snowy sounds," as well as "between the soul and a Fi elds .. loved countryside" (S elected Poems 27) . This It did not d efl ect him from his d evoti on to vein bein g worked, his solution was to follow the "d eep image," however, nor did it sug­ N eruda toward the "impure" poetry of p oli­ gest a radically new technique other than his tics. The Vietnam War, of course, provided adoption of what he calls the "Smart-Blake­ his occasion , thoug h h e notes that even be­ Whitman line" (Selec ted Poems 194). Rather, fore the war, he had begun writing a series of the surreal technique of p ersonal conscious­ poems ab o ut business fig ures, poems "of n ess attempts to abso rb, at whatever risk, the judgment rather than of affinity" (S elected n ew political subject m a tter. As William V. Poems 62) . It was the "p sychic urgency" of Davis aptly remarks, "the private individual the war, however, that impelled him to write dream of many of the poems in Silence is a full-voiced poetry of protest. In an essay on extended and elaborated ... until it becomes politica l p oetry, Bly speai<..s of the need of a the public nightmare as the outer world im­ poet, once h e has fully g rasp ed his own con­ pinges upon the inner individual conscious­ cerns, to leap up to the "psych e" of the na­ n ess."7 We see this very clearly in p oem s like tion: "the life of the nation can b e imagined . "War and Silence" : .. as a psyche larger tha n the p syche of any­ one living, a larger sphere, floating ab ove The bombers spread out, temperature everyone. In order for the poet to write a true s tead y. political poem, he has to be able to h ave such A Negro' s ear sleeping in an automobile a grasp of his own concerns that he can leave tire. them for a while, and then leap up into this Pieces of timber float by, saying noth­ other p syche." 6 This statement acts both as an ing. apology for the poems of Snowy Fields and as * * * a program for the p oem s of The Light Around Bish op s rush about crying, "There is no the Body (1967) and The Tee th Mother Naked at war," Last (1 970). Whe ther a nd how Bly was able And bombs fall, Leavin g dust on the beech trees. * * * 5George Steiner, On Difficu lty and Other Essays (New One leg walks down the road and leaves York: Oxford University Press, 1978) 79.

6 Robert Bly, Talking All M orning (Ann Arbor, Michi ­ ' William V. Davis, "Defining the Age," Moons and gan: The University of Michig an Press, 1980)100-01. Lion Tailes 2.3 (1977): 88.

164 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW The other behind; the eyes part rives from his new role models, Smart, Blake, And fly off in opposite directions. and Whitman, and involves incorporating into * * * his work certain syntactical devices of formal Filaments of death grow out. rhetoric, particularly anaphora, to articulate The sheriff cuts off his black legs an external world resistant to the importuni­ And nails them to a tree. ties of his imagination. Syntax, as it is allied with grammar, is by its nature rational and (S elected Poems 72) conventional in a way diction is not. In a poem like "Counting Small-Boned Bodies," In spite of the new subject matter, the style (S elected Poems 73) it offers a quasi-logical here is of a piece with that in Snowy Fields. structure for Ely's phantasmagorical imag­ The language similarly estranges itself from ery: everyday usage, presumably with the intent here of suggesting the chaos of modern war. Let's count the bodies over again. The effect, however, is still of mystical, per­ sonal revelation. To see this more clearly, If we could only make the bodies smaller, one has only to compare "War and Silence" the size of skulls, with war poems by Wilfred Owen or Keith we could make a whole plain white with Douglass. Ely' s surreal, alienated images, skulls in the his "Negro's ear" and amputated leg evapo­ moonlight. rate like the images of a dream upon waking when one considers Owen' s soldier "yelling If we could only make the bodies smaller, out and stumbling I And flound'ring like a maybe we could fit man in fire or lime" or Douglass's dead Ger­ a whole year's kill in front of us on a man, "mocked at by his own equipment I desk. that's hard and good when he's decayed." The problem may lie in the nature of the If we could only make the bodies smaller, "deep image" technique itself. In one of the we could fit Cantos, Pound jokes about Yeats pausing "to a body into a finger ring, for a keepsake admire the symbol I with Notre Dame stand­ forever. ing inside it." Commenting on these lines, Denis Donoghue notes that Yeats's "Symbol­ A good part of the effectiveness here derives ist imagination" tends "to dissolve the exter­ from the disturbing clash of syntax and dic­ nal object" in its own favor. 8 The symbolist tion. The repeated syntax of conditional sen­ can only achieve his desired effect by a cer­ tences suggests a kind of reasonableness very tain "vacancy," taking his "eye off the object, much at odds with the poem's flux of horrible or looking through it" (Donoghue, We Irish images and taking no notice of these images. 49). The surrealist of Bly' s stripe works with The effect is ironical, rather in the manner of a similar disadvantage. His calculated dislo­ Swift's "Modest Proposal." It touches on cation of ordinary language and syntax tends Ely's favorite protest theme, the insulating to dissolve external objects or reduce them to distance and insensitivity of the war's direc­ fragmentary projections of the self. The po­ tors to the particular horrors of the war itself. ems of Snowy Fi elds openly disintegrate natu­ This irony contributes a new note to the scale ral objects and reform them as objects of a of Ely's effects, and it resists what might mystical consciousness at one with nature. otherwise spoil the poem, the insistently pri­ Such a strategy has obvious limitations, how­ vate and sentimental nature of surreal imag­ ever, for political poetry, as it can only reluc­ ery. As it stands, one of the most disturbing tantly allow the external world and it is here elements of the poem is the aesthetic quality that political events take place-an indepen­ of the isolated, "deep" images ("a whole plain dent existence. white with skulls in the moonlight"). The One of Ely's answers to this problem de- dreamscape of Snowy Fields has indeed turned to nightmare in this poem, but the weight­ 8Denis Donoghue, We Irish: Essays on Iri sh Literature lessness of the unconscious still attaches to it. and So ciety (New York: Alfre d A. Kno pf, Inc., 1986) 49. Even Molesworth recognizes the "crux" of

TRIGGS 165 writing political poetry in a language that Department and by metonymic extension the "must be hushed or ecstatic": government of the United States act with the energy and intelligence of squids. The poem Part dream-vision, part diatribe, the [po­ has the force and the severe limitations of a litical] poems seem laughable to anyone paranoid fantasy. Its estrangement from the who is unsettled by all-embracing pa­ normal terms of discourse is not such that it thos or all-damning bile. Satire and ec­ renders its object more perceptible or com­ stasy make strange bedfellows and often pels us to view its object with heightened produce a tonelessness, a cancelling out awareness. Rather the poem's fantastic na­ of effect, in the service of an ineffable ture limits its articulations to the fragmented wisdom. (118-19) consciousness of Bly himself. There is cer­ tainly a great deal of "Indian blood" that "Counting Small-Boned Bodies" resists such Americans cannot forget or wash away, but it tonelessness largely because of its formal syn­ is definitely not, as Bly asserts, "underneath tax and the balance of irony and pathos which all the cement of the Pentagon I . . . preserved it affords. Bly is not often able to achieve in snow." Lines like these seem merely bi­ such a balance however. zarre in a way that does no justice to the "Hatred of Men with Black Hair" (Selected Indian cause. In effect, "Hatred of Men with Poems 75) asserts a link of racial hatred be­ Black Hair" is as personal a poem as anything tween Americans' behavior toward the Viet­ in Snowy Fields and cannot but fail as propa­ namese and their infamous treatment of the ganda. But even if we take it as a form of pure Indians. The effort is to render the presumed poetry, its success is questionable. racist violence of Americans at once threaten­ It may be that surrealism (the Spanish ex­ ing and absurd: ample notwithstanding) cannot offer Bly a fitting decorum for poetry about war. Surre­ We fear every person on earth with black alism is adept at exposing the absurdity or hair. irrationality lurking beneath ordinary expe­ We send teams to overthrow Chief rience, the quiet life in Minnesota, for in­ Joseph's government. stance. The experience of war, however, is We train natives to kill the President itself manifestly absurd, as Paul Fussell notes with blowdarts. on more than one occasion (see especially We have men loosening the nails on "My War," The Boy Scout Handbook and Other Noah's ark. Observations and Wartime). In dealing with war, the irrationality suggested by surreal State Department men float in the heavy techniques is distractingly superfluous. Out jellies near the of touch with the real absurdity of war, Bly bottom often appears merely inebriated with protest, Like exhausted crustaceans, like squids as in these lines from "Asian Peace Offers who are confused, Rejected Without Publication" (Selected Po­ Sending out beams of black to the open ems 68): sea. Each fights his fraternal feeling for the These suggestions by Asians are not great landlords. taken seriously. We know Rusk smiles as he passes them In such lines (Bly would term them Smart­ to someone. Blake-Whitman lines), anaphoric rhetoric Men like Rusk are not men only­ reins in but cannot completely control the They are bombs waiting to be loaded in hysterical excess of the images. Bly would a darkened hangar. obviously like to enlarge his occasion by of­ fering a historical dimension (the Indian con­ The title is meant to suggest a newspaper nection) and by hinting at apocalyptic conse­ headline, and thus the poem wishes to invoke quences (our tinkering with "the nails on something of the public nature and objectiv­ Noah's ark"). Still there is something merely ity of American journalism, but it succeeds jejune about his suggestion that the State neither as journalism nor as poetry. "Men

166 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW like Rusk," whether one agrees with them or tortured with a telephone generator," not, are precisely "men only"; this is the es­ The sergeant said. sence of their humanly tragic fallibility. De­ "I felt sorry for him And blew his head nying them humanity in such a glib manner, off with a shotgun." Bly makes no valid contribution to our un­ These instants become crystals, derstanding of the war in Vietnam. Even his Particles "Asians" are not granted a realized exist­ The grass cannot dissolve. Our own ence. Bly takes them no more "seriously" gaiety than as props in his unconscious. The second Will end up part of the poem, which succeeds better than In Asia, and you will look down your the first, does so by forgetting the "politics" cup of the opening lines altogether and returning And see to the safe, interior landscape of "deep imag­ Black Starfighters. ery" : These lines are chilling in the way certain Lost angels huddled on a night branch! televised reports of the war were chilling. A The waves crossing horrible act of war is depicted simply, in this And recrossing beneath- case through the sergeant's reported speech. The sound of the rampaging Missouri­ Bly does not insist on its absurdity, but it Bending the reeds again and again some- seems absurd because it intrudes on the peace­ thing inside us ful sanctuary of life in America, where people Like a ghost train in the Rockies­ go about their ordinary lives, farming, enjoy­ About to be buried in snow! ing a spring day, drinking coffee. Both events Its long hoot are real but appear surreal precisely because Making the owl in the Douglas fir turn they do not belong together. The estrange­ his head ... ment of our perception does not seem so much a contrived linguistic event as a natural Bly' s "lost angels" are more real than his outcome of our bombardment with electronic "Asians," and the owl turning its head in the information; and it prepares quite naturally last line is the most vividly realized image in the hallucination of looking down a coffee the poem. The ending of the poem could have cup and seeing war planes. As in the televi­ been written for Snowy Fields. But isolated sion reports, Bly brings the war home to us images do not make for effective discourse in and makes us uneasy at its intrusion. But a political poem; simple contrast does not even this approach is not without its prob­ necessarily create coherence. lems. As Phillip Knightley suggests in Th e Occasionally, however, Bly's contrasts of First Casualty, the bizarre phenomenon of American peacefulness and Asian violence war scenes broadcast continually on televi­ are effective, as in "Driving Through Minne­ sion, far from hastening the end of the war sota During the Hanoi Bombings" (S elected through a change in national consciousness, Poems 74) . Here the surreal juxtapositions had the effect of numbing us and making the reflect something less arbitrary than the war seem less real.9 Paradoxically, it is this jumble of Bly's unconscious: the jarring and kind of numbness that a reader senses in uniquely modern experience of war reported Bly's poem, rather than horror or the righ­ electronically in a peaceful environment. teous indignation of protest. The poems where Bly is righteously indignant tend to We drive between lakes just turning slip over the line into bathetic propaganda. A green; poem like "Driving Through Minnesota," on Late June. The white turkeys have been moved "Phillip Knig htley, Th e First Cas ualty: From the Crimea A second time to new grass. to Viet na m: The War Corres po ndent as H ero, Propagand ist , How long the seconds are in great pain! and M y th Maker (New York: H a rcourt Bra ce Jovanovich , Jnc., 1975). Terror just before death, Shoulders torn, shot 10Paul Fussell , The Grea t War and M odern M emory (New From helicopters. "I saw the boy being York: Oxford University Press, 1975) C hap V.

TRIGGS 167 the other hand, leaves us helpless, numb, and Teeth Mother Naked at Last" (S elected Poems hallucinant before events. 76) reprises and to an extent sums up Bly' s Paul Fussell has argued that it is extraordi­ various approaches to political poetry. As narily difficult, though not impossible, to such it often seems a jumble of "deep im­ describe modern warfare with real ad­ ages," anaphora, "television" news clips, and equacy .10 It is perhaps even more difficult for protest hysterias: Bly. The Vietnam war is not, after all, his personal experience, except as he may expe­ B-52s come from Guam. Teachers rience it second-hand. As we have seen also, die in flames. The hopes of Tolstoy fall his allegiance to the traditions of interna­ asleep in the ant heap. tional surrealism, an approach deeply rooted Do not ask for mercy. in personal consciousness, makes it problem­ * * * * * * atic for him to achieve a level of universal as The room explodes. opposed to personal significance. This ques­ The children explode. tion, of course, is not as simple as it seems, for Blood leaps on the vegetable walls. in a sense nothing is free from history. Terry * * * * * * Eagleton would point out that all writers, Marines kill ducks with three-hundred­ whether they wish to do or not, represent dollar shotguns certain "ideologies the ideas, values and feel­ and lift cigarette lighters to light the ings by which men experience their societies thatched roofs of huts. at various times." 11 Thus in one sense Bly's They watch the old women warily. poetry is politically suggestive even when it * * * * * * is most personal and perhaps in ways con­ As soon as the President finishes his trary to his overt intentions. On a common press conference, black wings carry sense level, however, Bly' s poetry wrestles off the words, with the problem of achieving public signifi­ bits of flesh still clinging to them. cance. Bly himself is scornful of poets who * * * * * * "do not bother to penetrate the husk around It is a desire to eat death, their own personalities, and therefore cannot to gobble it down, penetrate the husk that has grown around the to rush on it like a cobra with mouth psyche of the country either" (Quoted by open. Davis 78). As we have seen, however, such It is a desire to take death inside, penetration is not really so easy. It is very to feel it burning inside, pushing out risky and involves struggling with one's sur­ velvety hairs, rounding language, culture, and society to like a clothesbrush in the intestines- strike a balance between local, political ob­ jectives and the provisional! y universal ob­ That is the thrill that leads the President jectives of literature. As we shall see, Heaney on to lie. achieves such a balance more often than Bly. Bly's effort, increasingly, is to find mythical, Lines like these show Bly risking all the weak­ or pseudo-mythical, analogies for his essen­ nesses we have discussed, and they suggest tially personal consciousness, ritual enact­ various reasons why the poem as a whole ment for his mystical intuitions. His glibly cannot succeed. But the breadth of a poetic "Jungian" references to a supposed national sequence offers Bly the opportunity to suc­ "psyche" are telling in this respect. His at­ ceed quite powerfully, if provisionally, in tempt to propound an apocalyptic myth based individual passages: on the opposition of masculine and feminine consciousness, fitful though it is, reflects this If one of those children came toward me need. with both hands The long poetic sequence known as "The in the air, fire rising along both elbows, I would suddenly go back to my animal brain, 11 Terry Eag leto n, Marxism and Literary Criticism (B er­ keley a nd Los Angeles: University of California Press, I would drop on all fours screaming; 1976) viii. my vocal cords would turn blue; so

168 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW would yours. effort seems to be to come to terms with this It would be two days before I could play world before attempting to explore its wider with one of my own children again. resonances. A number of the early poems deal with his father' s activities as a farmer. These lines were suggested obviously by the These poems are at once caressing and dis­ famous photograph of a child running down tancing; they register the child's awe before a road covered with burning napalm. They his father and the young man's stock-taking record an objective scene along with Bly's and separation. In "Follower," Heaney pic­ outraged response, a guttural response that tures his father at work behind a "horse­ for once he shared with the majority of his plough": countrymen. And here at last he rises to the role of the political poet at his best: that of the I stumbled in his hob-nailed wake, private man impelled to be a public spokes­ Fell sometimes on the polished sod; man, hurt into poetry of more than private Sometimes he rode me on his back significance. Still the best moments in "The Dipping and rising to his plod. Teeth Mother" are such isola ted passages. The "mythology" Bly would use to knit his I wanted to grow up and plough, sequence together is of a rather puerile sort To close one eye, stiffen my arm. and will not bear comparison with the more All I ever did was follow rigorous mythologizing of Robert Graves. It In his broad shadow round the farm. is really in passages like the one about the burning child, rather than any pseudo-mytho­ I was a nuisance, tripping, falling, logical reference to the "Teeth Mother," a Yapping always. But today matriarchal goddess who devours "hairy and It is my father who keeps stumbling ecstatic men," that Bly succeeds as a political Behind m e, and will not go away.13 poet, but as we have seen his success is at best troublesome and provisional. These are lines that would have pleased the Unlike Bly, Seamus Heaney seems hardly New Critics with their craft, the balance of to have worked at becoming a political poet. the sound system, as well as the carefully The role was virtually thrust on him as a controlled paradox that forms the center of resident of Northern Ireland, and with it a the poem's essentially internal discourse. Like remarkably early fame that some critics have most of Heaney's farm poems, it is retrospec­ begrudged him. But like Bly's, Heaney's first tive, pitting the speaker's present state of books, Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Door awareness against his innocent consciousness into the Dark (1969), were essentially per­ as a child. Something quite similar is at work sonal. The poems in Death of a Naturalist are in the famous "Digging"(Selected Poems lO­ absorbed in concrete imagery without being ll), where Heaney quite explicitly compares particularly surreal. Perhaps in reaction to his own work as a writer with the traditional Yeats, Heaney easily accepts the existence of labor of his father and grandfather. an external world with its plurality of inde­ pendent objects. Many of these poems deal Under my window, a clean rasping specifically with farming, though farming has sound never held the central position in Heaney's When the spade sinks into gravelly poetry that it does, say, in the poetry of R.S. ground: Thomas or Wendell Berry. Farm culture pro­ My father, digging. I look down vided the furnishings of Heaney' s youth, and it is as such that farm imagery pervades his Till his straining rump among the first book. As Helen Vendler perceptively flower beds remarks, "at first, Heaney aggrandized and Bends low, comes up twenty years away consecrated his infant world." 12 Heaney's Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. * * * * * * 12H elen Vendler, The Mu sic of What Happen s: Po ems, Poe ts, Critics (Cambridge, Massachuse tts: Harvard 13Sea mus Heaney, Selec ted Poem s 1965-1 975 (London: University Press, 1988)150. Faber and Faber Limited, 1980) 18-19.

TRIGGS 169 By God, the old man could handle a spring spade. Just like his old man. Is beneath all adult dignity. I rhyme * * * * * * To see myself, to set the darkness echo­ The cold smell of potato mould, the ing. squelch and slap ("Personal Helicon," Selected Poem s 27) Of soggy peat, the curt cuts of an edge Through living roots awaken in my head. Here the child is explicitly solipsistic, a Nar­ But I've no spade to follow men like cissus essentially alone in nature and alive to them. its invitations. But unlike Bly, Heaney is not tempted to tinker with the constituents of Between my finger and my thumb nature. A poem like this establishes Heaney's The squat pen rests. relation to a number of strains in British and I'll dig with it. European Romanticism. The p erspective of the child, "big-eyed" and "benea_th all adult Though its perspective is interior (it is clearly dignity," is reminiscent of the H.ilke of Das what Steiner would call "inner speech"), this Buch der Bilder. On the other hand, the rather is a beautifully realized lyric. Heaney's lan­ luxurious diction (consider the wealth of as­ guage, which can be seen as literary and "es­ sociation, as well as the alliterative and asso­ tranging" in its own way (the pen is described nant sound structure in "I savoured the rich earlier as being "snug as a gun"), is nonethe­ crash when the bucket I Plummeted") sug­ less on easy terms with the external world, gests Keats and Hopkins. If Heaney has not trusting to the concrete otherness of things to yet set out to define himself as part of a which it may refer. Having established this specifically Irish linguistic tradition, there is, relation, it is free to luxuriate in others: inter­ perhaps, something of Patrick Kavanagh's nal, linguistic, "musical" relations, which do parochialism in the early poems. not have the effect of isolating the experience The problem for Heaney is how to assimi­ in Heaney's consciousness. Instead, we are late these influences and convert his "big­ given free access as readers to the experience eyed" childhood and "big-eared" youth into that consciousness manipulates. a maturity capable of exploring the deeper As we shall see, Heaney accomplishes this and wider resonances of his experience. Not in part by submitting to a number of tradi­ all critics would agree that he has done so. tions which are compatible with the decorum The English critics in particular have their of personal poetry. Like "Digging," many of reservations. A. Alvarez, who considers the early poems place the child's point of Heaney "an intensely literary writer," argues view, which the speaker assumes, in opposi­ that his work never escapes the traditional tion to the point of view of adults, the "I" British discomfort with modernism. 14 Because against the "they." of this, it "challenges no presuppositions, does not upset or scare, is mellifluous, As a child, they could not keep me from craftsmanly, and often perfect within its cho­ wells sen limits. In other words, it is beautiful And old pumps with buckets and wind­ minor poetry"(17). Calvin Bedient takes a lasses. similar position, asserting that "Heaney I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, scarcely projects a point of view. Most of the smells what he writes is no more, if no less, than Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. potato deep earth-bound if earth-enriched, placidly rooted in top soil, far from One, in a brickyard, with a rotted board unfathomable." 15 top. I would argue, on the other hand, that when I savoured the rich crash when a bucket Plummeted down at the end of a rope. So deep you saw no reflection in it. 14 A. Alverez, "A Fine Way with the Language," The * * * * * * New York Review of Books 27.3 (March 6, 1980): 16. Now, to pry into roots, to finger slime, 15Calvin Bedient, " The Music of What Happens," To stare, big-eyed Narcissus, into some Parna ss us: Poetry in Rev iew 8.1 (Fall-Winter 1979): 110.

170 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Heaney does turn to political poems, his situation in Northern Ireland, poems that re­ rootedness acts as a check on the tendency of fer to the situation by implication, and poems political poetry to drift toward propaganda. about linguistic imperialism, the problem of It offers a balance of craft and discourse that the Irish writer forced to use the English is so often lacking in Robert Bly's work. One language as his vehicle of expression. reason may be that Heaney has never given Perhaps not surprisingly, the first group of himself over as completely as Bly to the dic­ poems (which most nearly approximates Bly's tates of the "cause." Though he lived for sense of the political poem) has been consid­ years in the midst of terrorist violence, the ered by critics the most questionable of suc­ poet in Heaney stubbornly refused the notion cess. Even such sympathetic readers as Denis that his role be identified wholly with the Donoghue and Donald Hall have openly ex­ public cause. The poet's "raison d'etre," as pressed their preference for the "long Heaney puts it, is primarily "involved with perspective" 17 of the so-called "bog poems," marks on paper." 16 It is also essentially a which in Hall's phrase, tease Heaney "into matter of private consciousness. The vio­ the truest poetry." 18 I would agree about the lence of the public world may force itself at "bog poems," but I think it is arguable that times on such a consciousness, though not even in the most overtly political of his po­ necessarily to predictable effect. In an essay ems about Belfast, where, as Donoghue notes, entitled "Belfast," Heaney tries to put his "the only vantage points are held by sol­ finger on the poet's ambivalent relation to diers" ("Poets Who Have Learned Their public events: Trade" 45), Heaney never slips as precipi­ tously as Bly into rancorous propaganda. On the one hand, poetry is secret and Perhaps this is because he is never willing to natural, on the other hand it must make risk as much as Bly on the occasion. A poem its way in a world that is public and like "Casualty"19 lacks the hard edge of Bly' s brutal. Here the explosions literally rattle politics; when Heaney does not succeed, he is your window day and night, lives are likely to fall into sentimentality: shattered blandly or terribly, innocent men have been officially beaten and hu­ Sometimes, on his high stool, miliated in internment camps-destruc­ Too busy with his knife tive elements of all kinds, which are even At a tobacco plug perhaps deeply exhilarating, are in the And not meeting my eye, air. (Preo cc upations 34) In the pause after a slug He mentioned poetry. What is perhaps most interesting here is Heaney's confession that in some paradoxi­ This story of a pub-crawling friend, "blown cal sense the poet may find such events to bits I Out drinking in a curfew I Others "deeply exhilarating." The poet is, first, a obeyed," while it verges on being maudlin, is fallible human being, and only second, if at still full of what Heaney calls elsewhere " the all, the proponent of a political cause. (Of music of what happens" ("Song," Field Work cqurse, in Terry Eagleton's sense, this atti­ 56). It is this "music," in all its dense particu­ tude can be said simply to reflect a particular larity, to which Heaney is ultimately loyal. "ideology.") Because of this, Heaney is more sure of his Heaney has never embraced political po­ personal perspective than Bly, even as this etry with the single-minded enthusiasm of makes him more ambivalent in his discourse. Bly. Political poetry is only one of a number of strategies Heaney uses to deepen and broaden his personal experience. Heaney's " Denis Donoghue, "Poets Who Have Learned Their Trades: 'Field Work'," The New York Times Book R eview political poems take several distinct forms, of (December 2, 1979): 45. which we may isolate the three most imp9 r­ tant: poems that directly refer to the political 18 Donald Hall, "The Nation of Poets," Parnass us: Po­ etry in Review 6.1 (Fall-Winte r 1977): 158.

16 9 Seamus Heaney, Preoccu pations: Selected Prose 1968- ' Seamus Heaney, Field Work (New York: Farrar, 1978 (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1979) 34. Straus & Giroux, 1979) 21-24.

TRIGGS 171 The poem, "Stump," for instance (Selected puzzles that would "perpetuate the power of Poems 75), seems to present quite plainly a literature as a privileged and exclusive form tragic, Northern Irish scene, and yet it keeps of discourse." 20 According to Poirier, the much of its mystery, especially in its ambigu­ second kind of writing "gives, or so it likes to ous suggestions of the speaker's conscious­ pretend, a fairly direct access to pleasure, but ness: which becomes, on longer acquaintance, I am riding to plague again. rather strange and imponderable"(l30). Sometimes under a sooty wash Pound and the Joyce ofUlysses are paradigms From the grate in the burnt-out gable of difficulty; Stevens, Frost, and George Eliot I see the needy in a small pow-wow. are paradigms of density. I would suggest What do I say if they wheel out their also that Bly and Heaney are distinguishable dead? according to these terms. Bly, as a surrealist I'm cauterized, a black stump of home. self-consciously posing in the modernist tra­ dition, is difficult. Heaney, writing such de­ The perspective, interestingly, is the same as ceptively accessible political poe ms as that in "Digging": the speaker looks down "Stump," is dense. from a window, suggestive perhaps of his The "bog poems" have an exquisite den­ "literary" viewpoint, privileged at once and sity. This series of poems from Wintering confined. What he sees below is the "real" Out (1972) and North (1975) was suggested world of people who labor and suffer and by the discovery of a number of ancient bod­ whose relation to himself he would, however ies preserved in the peat bogs of Denmark. difficultly, construe. The first line is quite At the time scientists speculated that the bod­ ambiguous. Is the speaker "riding to plague" ies, some of which had their throats slashed, in the sense that he is venturing imagina­ were those of sacrificial victims. The "bog tively to encounter the plague of sectarian people" offer Heaney various possibilities violence, or is he somehow, in his literary for poetic treatment. In one sense, they are role, plaguing the "needy" sufferers, who art objects, presented like Keats's Grecian may not need the words he has to offer? The Urn or Rilke's Torso for imaginative contem­ speaker's hesitance in the pen ultimate line to plation. As such, their objective presence present himself as their spokesman might acts as a tease and a check on the poet's suggest the latter interpretation. In either subjective imagination. At the same time case, however, the experience is one of sear­ they function as symbols of the deep racial ing, cauterizing sympathy for their plight. It experience of the north, to which Heaney, as transfigures the speaker (a neatly surreal an Irishman, feels himself allied. They allow touch) into "a black stump of home," gravely him, as it were, a further digging, more than wounded and alienated from his own sur­ "potato deep," into his own consciousness, roundings and certainties. Even this image conceived here as a product of continuous involves the amiguities of a possible pun. Is history. As Gregory Schirmer notes, "Heaney the speaker, perhaps, "stumping" in a politi­ has developed the image of the bog into a cal sense, and if so, does the context suggest powerful symbol of the continuity of human his awareness of its ineffectiveness? Both experience."21 The bog people, tangible prod­ senses exercise claims on our attention. ucts of this continuity, appear as virtual mes­ Clearly, the poet is troubled into his protest, sage carriers of the unconscious. In fact, they and there is nothing of Bly's rather smug suggest a mythology closer in spirit to Jung's satisfaction in it. than the one Bly insists upon. At the same In The Renewal of Lite·rature, Richard Poirier time, they offer, as ancient "victims," telling makes a valuable distinction between litera­ parallels to the situation in Northern Ireland. ture of "difficulty" and literature of "den­ "The Tollund Man" (Selected Poems 78-79), sity." The first suggests the modernist pro­ one of the earliest of the "bog poems," is pensity for difficult surfaces, a literature of typical of Heaney's indirect approach to po-

20 Richard Poirier, The Renewal of Literature: Emersonian Reflections (New York: Random House, 21 Gregory A. Schirmer, "Seamus Heaney's 'Salvation Inc., 1987) 98. in Surrender,"' Eire-Ireland 15.4 (Winter 1980): 143.

172 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW litical writing. Heaney contemplates the body number of factors. Unlike Bly, he has not first as a n object, at once fascinating a nd allied himself to a tradition which is essen­ horrible: tially inhospitable to public utterance. Hea n ey's writing has always displayed a be­ In the fl a t country n earby coming humility before the external world. Where they dug him out, The depth of the bog establishes a continuity His last gruel of winter seeds between the p ersonal a nd the cultural which Caked in his stomach, enables Heaney to speak at o nce personally and as a representative of his culture; it is an Naked except for external d epth, n_ot a personal abyss. At the The cap, noose and girdle, . same time, Heaney has never allowed public I will stand for a long time. utterance to become the raison d' etre of his work. When h e addresses public issues, it is Adroitly mixing Christian and pagan tradi­ because they have hurt him into a poetry tions, H eaney now teases out what one might which seeks always a return, even if only call the Tollund Man's mythological features. provisionally, to sanity, the strange benig­ H e is a "bridegroom to the goddess" of the nity of living. (Indeed, one hopes that bog, who " tightened her tore on him I And Heaney's recent comments envying the East­ opened her fen, I Those dark juices working ern European poets their stressed political I Him to a saint's body." Only at this point situation do not signal a significant shift in does Heaney "risk blasphemy" by consider­ his own poetic practice.) Speaking of Yeats's ing the Tollund Man's political implications. later poems, Heaney notes that "they ask, H e will "consecrate" the bog and "pray" to indirectly, about the purpose of a rt in the the Tollund Man to "germinate I The scat­ midst of life and by their movements, their tered, ambushed I Flesh of labourers, I Stock­ images, their musics they make palpable a inged corpses I Laid out in the farmyards." truth which Yeats was at first only able to The Tollund Man b ecomes, for Heaney, a affirm abstractly, in those words which he "saint" of political victims. The political ef­ borrowed from Coventry Patmore: 'The end fect Heaney seeks here is not obvious, nor is of art is p eace'" (Preoccupations 112). Like it especially hopeful. One important aspect Yeats, Hea ney has been a poet first, with a of the "continuity of human experience" is its poet's interest in the tangle of language, and violence, which leaves the poet mournful and aware always of a poet's decorum. This may ironic: "in the old man-killing parishes I I seem like an old New Critical judgment; it will feel lost, I Unhappy and at home." Yet may suggest simply a necessary prejudice of as Helen Vendler points out, these poems the liberal-humanist ideology. But we need "lift [Heaney] free from a superficial piety to take stock of our recent poets, claiming that would put either sectarian or national what may be lasting or valuable in their addi­ names to the Ulster killings" (155-56). tions to our culture and discarding what is Perhaps the poet's gift, if not "to set a states­ misguided or inept. D man right," is to register a human grief, com­ r.lex and indirect, at his excess. This is what Bly does, too, on the rare occasions of his best political poetry, such as the passage on the Jeffery Triggs directs th e Oxford English Dictionary's North burning child. That Heaney succeeds more Ameri can reading program and writes poetry and critical articles. often and more richly is attributable to a

TRIGGS 173 Barry W. Sarchett

THE OUTLAW AS FIGURE, THE FIGURE AS OUTLAW: NARRATIVITY AND INTERPRETATION IN SAM PECKINPAH'S PAT GARRETT AND BILLY THE KID

All narrative may be in essence obituary. -Peter Brooks

ne of the central techniques of both in Lear, an observer through it all." 4 Further­ O poststructuralist and reader-centered more, Peckinpah has stated that he thought methods of criticism is to employ the lan­ of Alias as "the writer who portrays the leg­ guage of narratives as possible end"5-and for our purposes the writer is metalanguages. 2 That is, in the words of always a displaced form of the reader (and Gerald Prince, texts contain "reading inter­ vice-versa). As Robert Scholes states in a ludes" (or moments of conspicuously de­ deconstruction of the traditional "produc­ ployed metalanguage) which can be taken as tion / consumption" (or writing / reading) "an index of the stance taken by the narrative opposition, "the writer is always reading and with regard to its own communicability and the reader is always writing." 6 Thus as read­ readability, as an indication of how it osten­ ers of the text of Pat Garrett (like Seymour sibly wants to be read . . . and as a factor Chatman, I mean by "reader" not only those determining to some extent the response of in armchairs, but audiences in movie houses, 3 7 any reader other than itself." In this view theatres, etc. ), we perceive/ read Alias per­ interpretation continues a process that the ceiving/reading many of the same events. text has already begun. With this process in Perhaps his role in the film is best summed mind, I want to explore possible readings of up in Garrett's command to him in Lemuel's Sam Peckinpah' soft-neglected Pat Garrett and saloon: "Give us a nice read." Billy the Kid (1973) based on how the film But I will deal more completely with Alias itself appropriates interpretive responses to later, and turn now to the central character as its own content. well as central reader in the text: Pat Garrett. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is conveniently To speak of Garrett as the reader in the text suited to such an endeavor because it fore­ should not be surprising. Most of the film's grounds what we have come to call "the reader commentators agree that, as in so many ver- in the text." Most obviously there is the enig­ matic figure of Alias, a newswriter (portrayed ' Quoted in Garner Simmons, Peckin pa h: A Portrait in by Bob Dylan), who Kris Kristofferson has Montage (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1982) 173 . said was conceived to "be sort of like the Fool 5Sam Peckinpah, "Straight Shootin' Sam ," interview with Brian Huberm a n and Jerry H olt, Sou th west M edia 1Pete r Brooks, Reading fo r the Plot: Des ig n and Review 3 (Spring 1985): 19. Intentionin Narrative (New Yo rk: Ra ndom House, 1985) 95. 6Robert Scholes, Textual Po wer: Literary Theory and the Teachin g of English (New H aven: Yale Univ. Press, 1985) 2Jo nathan Culler, On Deco nstruction: Th eory and Criti­ 8. For another discussion of this point, see Wolfgang cism After Structuralism (Ithaca, N .Y. : Cornell Univ. Iser, "Interaction Between Text and Read er" (S uleiman Press, 1882) 240. and C rosm an 106-07). Iser notes how read ers "receive" texts by "composing" them. 3Gera ld Prince, "Notes on the Text as Read er," The Reader in the Tex t: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, ' Seymour Cha tman, Story and Dis co urse: Narrative eds. Susan R. Suleiman a nd Inge C rosm a n (Prince ton, Structure in Fi ction and Fi lm (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell Univ. N.J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 1980) 237. Press, 1978) 41.

174 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW sions of the Kid's legend, its p sychological And the interpretive sp iral descends further and moral them es center in Garrett, and in when we notice that this is in turn the older fact it is generally acknowledged that Pat Gar rett' s representation o f the earlier Ga rrett is one of Peckinpa h 's most subjective Garrett' s interpretive a ttempts not only to films-that is, a large pro p ortion of the scen es find Billy (i.e. to d ecip h er his trail), b u t to sort are projected from Garre tt's point of view. 8 out h is (Garrett's) own relation sh ip to his Now, thanks to the 1988 release (to televi­ society, his times, h im self, a nd of course to sion and on cassette) o f the " Restored Billy . Director's Cut" of the film, it is finally p os­ H owever, Garrett's interpre tive quest can sible to gau ge just h ow central Ga rre tt's sub­ be condensed , if we p ay attention to the stra­ jectivity is to Peckinpah 's vision of the leg­ tegic m e talangu age of the text, to his search end. Among other scen es, the uncut version for Billy . I pro p ose that the film thus can be includes the fam ou s absent fram e narrative discu ssed as a m etacritical m edita tion u p on cut by MGM, in which Garre tt is ambushed the na ture of reading / interpreting which is and killed by John Poe a nd other Chisum played ou t through Garrett's psych e as well company-men in 1909, almost thirty years as the socio-historical saga of Billy the Kid after the d eath of Billy.9 In the prologu e and the closing of the frontier. portion of the fra m e narra tive, as Garrett is Garre tt twice asks-once from Black Harris shot and begins to fa ll from his buggy in slow a nd once from Gates-for "sign s" on Billy. motion, Peckinpa h cuts in sho ts of a chicken's Th e m e taph or is unavoidable I think: for head being blown off, in addition to shots of Garrett, Billy is the elusive signifier to w hich Billy and a younger Garrett shooting chick­ he must attach a sign ified in order to com­ ens buried to their heads in sand. The "re­ plete the structure of the sign . The hunt for sulting montage [makes] it appear tha t b oth Billy is therefore a quest for his m ean ing. the younger Garrett a nd Billy [are] shooting (Peckinpah 's film, in this regard, m ust be the older Garre tt" (Simmons 184). Then regarded as a m edita tion upon the n a ture of Peckinpah completes the cut to the scen e at the symbol/ sign in the canon on ical Ameri­ Old Fort Sumner 28 years b efore where Billy can litera ry tradition of Emerson, Melville, and his bunch are shooting chicken s, thus Haw thorne, James, Faulkner, a nd Pyn ch on.) beginning the inner narra tive of Garrett's now Garrett know s tha t such a qu est is m ade dif­ mythically fa ted stalking and killing of the ficult b ecau se, as Garrett tells the business­ Kid. Thus the studio-excised frame narrative m en at Governor Wallace's, Billy "ain't ex­ is discursively crucial to the film b ecau se the actly predictable ." In m ore familiar critical entire inner narra tive becomes by implica­ terminology, w e wou ld say tha t Billy, as tion a fl ashback in the d ying Garrett's con­ signifier, is undecidable. Peckinpah in fact sciousness; as Garner Simmon s remarks, " the goes to some leng ths to create a purposefully story of Billy's last d ays becom es Ga rrett' s indeterm inate Billy: thus the character' s com­ memory a t the m om ent of his own d emise" bina tion of integrity a nd exp edien cy, loyalty (171) .10 The refore the inne r n a rra ti ve is and selfishness, innocence a nd sexu ality, saint Garrett's interpretation or re-presentation of a nd sinner might b e summed up in w h a t that climactic mom ent in his life, and in our Stephen Tatum calls Billy's "Mona Lisa Smile" cultural mythos, when h e guns Billy down. (160). 11 This ver y u npr e dicta bility o r undecida bility aliena tes Garre tt from Billy. H e tells Sheriff Ba ker that there "comes an 8For a d eta iled discu ssio n of point of view in the film, see Pau l Seyd o r, Peckinpah: The Western Films (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1980) 183-226. For a thorou gh as 10Compare Ja m es Cobu rn' s rema rks o n MGM's cata­ well as suggestive s tu d y of the m y th o f th e Kid and stro p hic reediting of the film: "There were three scenes Garrett as it has evolved in American culture, see that justify [the film] tha t are m issing fro m the MGM Stephen Tatum , Inventing Billy the Kid: Visions of the vers ion. It was to be told from Pat Gar rett's point of Outlaw in America, 1881-1981 (Alb uquerq u e: U niv. of view ra ther than fro m Billy' s, and it was done so pur­ New Mexico Press, 1982). posely . . The e ntire narrative of the film becomes Garrett's flashback at the m oment of his death " (quo ted "For a p recise account of the m any problems and in Simmon s 183-84). conflicts w h ich p lagu ed Peckin pah over the long cou rse of production of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, see Seydor " Seyd or (205, 220) a lso fin ds much to say on Billy' s (185-202) and Simmo ns (169-88). enigmatic smile.

SARCHETT 175 age in a man's life when he don't want to mode, but with a difference: the cinematog­ spend time figuring what comes next." In raphy emphasizes autumnal colors, and many linguistic terms, we would say, as is pointed characters-Garrett, Billy, J.W. Bell, Pete out elsewhere in the film, that "[Billy's] got Maxwell, Mr. Harrell- tell tales of violent, too much play in him," (emphasis added) and often meaningless, deaths; from Sheriff Garrett wants to stop the ever-sliding capa­ Baker's justly praised d eath tableau to the bility of the signifier; in narrative terms he end, the film is haunted by dirge-like varia­ assumes the role of the reader/ writer who tions on the melody of Dylan's ballad wishes for closure. 12 "Knockin' on Heaven's Door." Finally, much In short, Garrett becomes an analogue of a could be made of several characters- Bowdre, particular type of reader-what I will call Bob Ollinger, and Sheriff Kip McKinney­ (for want of a better term) the "traditional who, dying or not, speak as if they are al­ reader," or one who resists the textuality of ready dead.14 Garrett, however, is again the the text and instead insists upon constructing most important figure in this regard. He is a final and authoritative meaning, a kind of dead from the beginning, both structurally­ E.D. Hirsch on horseback. Therefore it is given his murder in the frame narrative-and most fitting that Garrett is a lawman. In his psychologically-his wife correctly tells him saloon, old Lemuel bitterly taunts Garrett for (in another scene cut from the original MGM "sittin' there with all that law crammed in­ release yet also unfortunately cut from the side of ya just bustin' to get out." Garrett is "uncut" version; it is available only in the full of law-or the lawful figure in the film. version originally released to television) that And, as Barbara Johnson says, the "law is the he is "dead inside." forcible transformation of ambiguity into Garrett is thus the central embodiment of decidability" (quoted in Culler 239). Con­ closure or stasis in what many critics have versely, Billy, as outlaw, is tautologically out­ seen as a film depicting a world bereft of side the law-literarily and socially, he is a redemptive possibility; Pat Garrett and Billy lawless "figure." In the metaphorical scheme the Kid is often described as if it were The I have been advancing Garrett has no other Waste Land of Peckinpah's canon.15 This line choice but to destroy Billy if the "letter" of of reasoning tends to reduce the film to a the law is to be fulfilled. conventional American cultural allegory Death would obviously seem to be the sim­ wherein Billy blatantly symbolizes the once plest and most elegant metaphor for any kind wild and open West which Garrett kills in a of narrative closure. 13 Billy's death is only the ritual reenactment of the closure of the fron­ final death in a film literally saturated with tier. After all, as Dennis Denitto says in a death. Corpses pile up in the usual Peckinpah discussion of the Western film, "the chief instrument of transformation [of the West] was the law." 16 And certainly such readings 12"Closure" is a most proble matic te rm, obviously in n eed of som e clarifica tion. J. Hillis Mille r has discussed are congruent with Peckinpah's well-known the apore tic nature of closure in narrative: its contradic­ theme (especially in his Westerns) of a de­ tory function of both "tying up" and "unraveling" is a pleted, mechanical present contrasted with a function of an inhere nt ins ta bility in la nguage and heroic and mythical past. thought. See J. Hillis Miller, "The Problematic of Ending in Narrative," Nin etee nth-Century Fiction 33 (1978): 3-7. For my purposes I prefer Mille r's following 14 Bowdre: "They killed me- [' m gut-shot for sure." d efinitio n: " the neat folding toge ther of elaborate na r­ Ollinger: "He's killed me too." McKinney: "[hope they rative mate rials in a single resolution" (5). As will spell my name right in the pape rs." Of these three, only immedia tely be seen, [ wantto expand the usefulness of McKinne y s urvives . the term from its application in narrative theory to an add i tiona I a ppl ica tio n to the interpretive process. 15See Seydor (214), and especially Tatum, who bases his analysis of Pat Ga rrett as a manifestation of Northrup 13Three w ell-known studies ha ve influenced my think­ Frye' s ironic mythos on the film ' s "landscape of closed ing about narrative closure: Fra nk Kermode, Th e Se nse possibilities" (158). From a psychoanalytical pers pec­ of an Ending: Studies in the Th eo ry of Fi ction (London a nd tive, a similar point is made by Terence Butler in his New York: O xford Univ. Press, 1967); D .A. Miller, Nar­ Crucified Heroes : Th e Film s of Sam Peckinpah (London: rat ive and It s Oisco11ten ts: Problems of Closure in th e Tra ­ Gordon Fraser, 1979) 85-86. ditional Novel (Princeton, N .J.: Princeton Univ. Press, 6 1981 ); and , most obviously, Pe te r Brooks' Reading fo r th e ' Dennis DeNitto, Film: Fo rm and Fee ling (New York: Pl ot . Harper & Row, 1985) 385.

176 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW But Peckinpah's Westerns repay our re­ stature by refusing the princess and re­ peated attention because they self-reflexively maining alone (Randolph Scott in the transgress generic expectations and generate Ranown series of movies). As the r esolu­ multiple and conflicting layers of meanings. tion of the Proppian tale can be seen to If, for example, we think of Garrett as a type represent the resolution of the Oedipus of reader I call "traditional," then the film complex (integration into the symbolic), implicates such a reader in a socio-political the rejection of marriage personifies a act. The critical assumptions which allow us nostalgic celebration of phallic, narcis­ to contain the text inside an allegorical frame­ sistic omnipotence.18 work, be it sociological or, as in Paul Seydor1 s Remembering that the Lacanian "symbolic" case, psychological, inevitably force us into represents castration and "subjection" to the Garrett's interpretive boots: to transform the Law of the Father, Mulvey's comments re­ undecidable into the decidable, to corral the mind us how important the excised scene of signifier in to a static signified, to decide upon Garrett confronting his wife is to the psycho­ an authoritative meaning is to participate in logical logic of Peckinpah' s film, particularly Billy's death and the destruction of the open when this is related to Garrett' s visit to West. Chisum (the virtual L:1w in Lincoln County), At this point it would be instructive tore­ where we learn that Garrett has borrowed member the original frame narrative. The money from Chisum to buy some land. This autumnal colors, elegiac score, and in fact conflation of marriage, property, and Law every discursive element of the inner narra­ represents Garrett's "integration into the sym­ tive are all mediated through Garrett's con­ bolic," but should be read in the context of sciousness: a closed life creating a closed the loss of Garrett's "pre-Oedipal" existence world through the typically Romantic aes­ as outlaw and friend of the Kid (the associa­ thetic act of imposing a transcendent stasis tion of "Kid" and childhood becomes espe­ upon the open-endedness of experience. But cially resonant here). 19 Mulvey thus offers a it is equally important to remember that, even way to understand Garrett's "splitting" as a though Garrett is the "lawful" reader bent on salient feature of the Western h ero: closure, he also clearly sympathizes with Billy The tension between two points of at­ and allows him many opportunities to escape traction, the symbolic (social integration to Mexico. 17 Laura Mulvey's Lacanian read­ and marriage) and nostalgic narcissism, ing of the Western helps us understand generates a common splitting of the West­ Garrett' s narrative as a product of a "split ern h ero into two, something unknown subject." in the Proppian tale. Here two functions In some "afterthoughts" on her now epony­ emerge, one celebrating integration into mous article, " Visual Pleasure and Narrative society through marriage, the other cel­ Cinema," Mulvey speculates on the struc­ ebrating resistance to social standards tural properties of the Western, in which, like and responsibility. (18) many Proppian folk-tales, Just as Garrett's marriage to a Mexican woman "marriage" makes a crucial contribution to narrative closure. However, the 18 function' s presence also has come to al­ La ura Mulvey, "Afte rthou g hts o n ' Vi s u a l Ple asure and Narra tive Cine m a' Ins pired by ' Dua l in the Sun,"' low a complication in the Western, its Frarnework 15/16 / 17 (1 981): 14. complementary opposite "not marriage". Thus, while the social integration repre­ 19At ano the r point in the film the Kid re minds Ga rre tt sented by marriage is an essential aspect that he (Billy ) o n ce rode fo r Chis um w hile Ga rrett was a n outla w. Then Billy says tha t " the La w ' s a funny of the folk-tale, in the Western it can be thing , ain' t it?" This obvio u sly s u ggests tha t the La w is accepted . . . or not. A hero can gain in a n arbitra ry con s truct, but m o re importantly, Bill y' s ironic remark corrobora tes La can's thesis in his fa m o u s reading o f "The P urlo ined Lette r" tha t " it is the sym ­ bolic orde r w hich is constitutive fo r the s u b ject ." See " Ga rre tt's sympathy for Billy is mos t dra m a tically Jacques Lacan, "Seminar o n 'The P urlo ined Le tter ," ' rend ered in w ha t Seydor calls " the s ubtle but quite tra n s. Je ffrey Me hlman, The Purloi ned Poe: Lacan. unmis ta kable implica tion" tha t Garrett plants the g un Derrida. and Psychoan aly tic Read ing, ed s. John P. Mulle r in the outhouse in Lincoln w hich allows Billy to escape a nd William J. Ri ch a rdson (Baltimo re : The Jo hns (188-89n). Hopkins Univ. Press, 1988) 29.

SARC HETT 177 complicates his desire for "integration" into tionless observer with a quizzical and ironic (Anglo) society, it would be psychologically expression on his face. He also serves as a appropriate if in Garrett's narrative there kind of structural mediator between Billy and would surface other repressed modes of read­ Garrett, always peripheral to the action, yet ing more resistant to closure. also always at hand in important scenes in­ I have already mentioned Alias as a reader volving either (see Seydor 217). in the text and we need now to return to him. Suppose we call Alias the "modernist What sort of reader is he? The legend-maker, reader" in deference to the symbiotic rela­ as Peckinpah would have it? Or the detached tionship between modernist literature (efface­ ironic Fool described by Kristofferson? Many ment of the authorial voice) and New critics have complained that the character is Criticism's values (effacement of the reader). muddled or that Dylan's performance is con­ If Alias is the disinterested figure at home in fused. But these are voices insisting on ambiguity, then we might assume that he is decidability in a film which has much to say the perfect complement to Garrett's closure­ about that very motive. There might then be oriented reading. But, as we did with Garrett, some advantages in examining Alias as a we should reinsert Alias's mode of reading purposeful muddle. After all, in the barber­ back into the text to ascertain the effects of shop when Garrett asks him who he is, Alias such a reader. Does, for example, Alias as offers only the most open-ended responses: reader allow Billy's undecidability to flour­ "That' s a good question." His very name is an ish in an affirmation of textuality and open­ anti-name-the essence of the sliding endedness (or phallic narcissism, to put signifier. A ppropria tel y, he changes his hat Mulvey's negative spin on this issue)? in every scene, one of the most successful and Even though Alias's characteristic position suggestive of the few comic touches in the is on the margin of the action, our post-struc­ film. As a reader, Alias's role is delineated in turalist moment in criticism has taught us to his character, or more properly, his anti-char­ be skeptical of any claims for a subject-posi­ acter. What kind of reader/writer so tion outside or above, to realize, in fact, that problematizes identity? the marginal is always central. Therefore The answer is not difficult: Keats formu­ Alias's very disinterestedness must have con­ lated it long ago. Alias has no self because he sequences in the narrative. Since any stance, is detached and thus "negatively capable," to interpretive or political, which aspires to be adapt Keats' phrase. This sort of artist-figure objective, detached, or non-ideological inevi­ has been endlessly valorized in modernist tably reifies any given set of circumstances criticism from Arnold to Eliot and Trilling, (i.e., indirectly privileges the status quo), fit­ and was finally transformed into the "disin­ tingly Alias, through the negativity of inac­ terested" reader (as opposed to Garrett, whose tion, allows Garrett to destroy Billy. Alias "self" is always at stake in his readings) cham­ does nothing to help Billy avoid Garrett's pioned by New Criticism in its pursuit of fatal manhunt (except for warning him near irony, paradox, and ambiguity. To cite only the end that Garrett is coming to Maxwell's, the most famous example, Wimsatt and which Billy already knows) or to stop Garrett. Beardsley, in their patristic New Critical es­ Alias even ironizes the suggestion that Billy say "The Affective Fallacy," called for a criti­ escape to Mexico, suggesting that it would be cism based on the "psychological principles a good place to live, but "that depends on of aesthetic distance, detachment, or disin­ who you are." His single positive act on Billy's terested ness. " 20 behalf is to kill one of the bounty hunters, but Alias seems to fit the mold well. Appropri­ this seems only designed to keep Billy alive ately, he rides with Billy, the ambiguous so that Alias may insinuate himself into the signifier, but he exists on the margins of the gang in order to chronicle the epic struggle gang, is rarely part of a two- or three-shot, between Garrett and the Kid. As and typically is shot in close up as the emo- mythographer, Alias needs the legend, a plot which has played itself out to the end, so that he can tell it again and again. 20W.K. Wimsa tt, Jr., The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, Instead, the paradigmatic scene involving 1954) 33 . Alias occurs in old Lemuel's saloon: he is

178 NEW ORLEA S REVIEW appropriately on the edge, or even outside, of Will, if ever there was an appropriate inter­ the frame reading the "airtights" (another in­ lude in the film in which to listen for teresting representation of closure) as Garrett m etalinguistic comment, this should be it. methodically maims and kills members of The entire scene, previously available only Billy's gang. Even after Billy's death, Alias in the version released for television, has simply stares quizzically after the fact as been virtually ignored by critics. Yet it is one Garrett ponders the events and finally rides of the most compelling and uncanny moments away. in all of Peckinpah's work. As Garrett takes In other words, Alias as reader is also im­ his final steps toward the showdown in Pete plicated in a socio-political act. Though this Maxwell's house, the mist suddenly thickens act is composed of inaction, his disinterested when he turns to ·see Will/Peckinpah in the stance closes off other possibilities-such as shadows working on a coffin. So eerie and positive attempts to manipulate events of the dreamlike is the ensuing confrontation that it narrative toward some alternative outcome. is tempting to regard it as a literal dream Thus there can be no neutral position in read­ (within a dream, we remember) on Garrett's ing. To rest in ironic detachment or ambigu­ part, a projection of his divided desire. How­ ity is not to fully confront undecidability, but ever, the entire scene, especially given the paradoxically to decide on certain textual prophetic tone and cryptic quality of Will's values which contribute to the closing off of short speech, is so suggestive and ambiguous the sign/ text, to decide what the text can be by that interpretive temptations multiply rap­ limiting it to certain Kantian aesthetic ends. idly for an attentive reader. In other words, for Alias, Billy is an aesthetic Will begins by making an overt comment object, hypostatized and mythologized in the on interpretive closure to Garrett, but he legend he will supposedly write. The trace­ might as well be speaking to all readers: "You able consequences of his disinterestedness finally figured it out, huh? Go on-get it over contribute to the tragedy: the signifier has with." Will's tone here is unmistakably de­ been dominated and Billy will die in order to rogatory, even bitter. And should we be too live in the formal eternity of "art." 21 eager to conclude that he is speaking merely It should come as no surprise, therefore, in of Garrett's success in finding Billy's hide­ a text so suffused with self-reflexivity as Pat out, Will's strange, taunting remark to Garrett Garrett, that the actual artist, or original as he walks away after saying nothing, should reader I writer of the filmed story we witness, disabuse us of this notion: "When you gonna makes an appearance just as the narrative is learn you can't trust anybody, even yourself, about to close. Peckinpah himself, in a sur­ Garrett?" Since Garrett can trust himself to prising departure, appears as Will the coffin­ find Billy-and probably could have done so maker, to speak directly to Garrett, another much sooner-it is quite possible to regard reader I writerY In terms of narrative pro­ this question as addressing larger psycho­ gression, Will's scene is utterly gratuitous logical and philosophical concerns about the and unmotivated; it can thus have only a very problem of "figuring it out." Certainly purely discursive function. Operating again the question speaks pointedly to the interpre­ on the principle that the marginal decenters tive issues thus far posed in this essay: to the "central," and given who is speaking as those who opt for decidability it is the sternest of warnings. We might call Will the voice of interpretive agnosticism, aware that all inter­ 21 For an excellent discussion of Alias as mythmaker, and how the casting of Dylan as Alias e nhances this pretation is untrustworthy, blind, and there­ them e, see Seydor (2 18) . fore unfinished. Will thus speaks as the "postmodern reader." No wonder he so sar­ 22 Peckinpah does not include his name in the actin g castically orders Garrett, the putatively tra­ credits. I know of o nly one other instance where he appears in his own film, and it also suggests a hig hl y ditional reader, to "get it over with," since self-reflexive-almost Vertovian-playfulness on his Garrett's presumptuous task is to kill/ finish p art. In Con voy Peckinpah plays the part of a filmmaker the unpredictable Billy, the synechdochic "fig­ filming, coincidentally, another character played b y ure" of the West. Kristofferson. For this information, and for much valu­ able insight into Peckinpah, I am indebted to Professor But of course as a filmmaker Peckinpah's John Sim ons. very purpose is to interpret and thus neces-

SARCHETT 179 sarily to decide-to create a "reading" of psy­ bury it in this ground and I'm gonna chological and socio-cultural data through leave this territory. an emplotment on the screen. Peter Brooks If we entertain the possibility that Peckinpah reminds us that "plot" also refers to a "mea­ himself is speaking through Will, then these sured area of land" (11), thus linguistically short lines may initiate a great many inter­ connecting narrativity itself to the taming of pretive conjectures. Peckinpah could, for in­ frontiers and to gravesites. If plot is "the stance, be commenting upon his own frustra­ logic and dynamic of narrative, and narrative tions with a film which was sabotaged, and itself a form of understanding and explana­ eventually cut to shreds, by the studio system tion" (Brooks 10), then narration is finally a he so loved to hate. And so he unceremoni­ form of cognitive mastery. The artist, like all ously announces it dead and buried and readers, "figures it out" by transforming pro­ moves on. Or, in the subtle allusion to Huck cess, flux, and the undecidable significations Finn' s paradigmatic flight, we might hear of experience into a structure or product. Peckinpah's allegiance to the frontier myth of This has been the ideological linchpin of Ro­ unrestricted possibility encoded in the figure mantic and Modernist aesthetics: art and of Billy. Or, is Peckinpah signalling us that death come together as transcendence of the he is giving up on this myth and thus leaving arbitrary and contingent."23 the frontier? Perhaps this explains Peckinpah's choice to Finally, without dismissing any of these portray a coffin-maker. Despite Will's obvi­ possibilities, Peckinpah may be granting us a ous sympathy for Billy and his bitter opposi­ vision of interpretation and narration as pro­ tion to Garrett and the Law (his last words to cesses embodied in the dialectical movement Garrett could hardly be more clear: "You of closing/opening, stasis/movement, de­ chicken-shit, badge-wearin' son-of-a-bitch"), struction/ creation, satisfaction/ desire. He in a sly comment on his own culpability, as seems to be allowing for the fact that, as artist and mythmaker, in Billy's "death,"­ Wallace Martin expresses it, "the narrator Will is building a child' s, or "kid's," coffin­ could truly end only by rejecting the very and on the more general relationship of nar­ impetus to narrate in the first place. The ration and closure, Peckinpah may be play­ dialectic of desire and satisfaction cannot be ing upon the dilemma he shares with Garrett, stopped."25 The film Peckinpah both creates Alias, and all readers/narraters (as opposed and rejects would therefore become a mo­ to narrators). Certainly if he has learned, ment in that larger interpretive process which unlike Garrett, that he can't trust even him­ Peckinpah as artist and reader continually self, then he has put himself in a position, by (re)enacts. It becomes a product that partici­ way of Will, to call into question his own pates in the process but is never enough be­ creation as a finished, unified product or cause the process is never finished. At the closed system of signification.24 same time, the film itself becomes an embodi­ Will's most cryptic of all comments to ment of the process through foregrounding Garrett in fact suggests just this subversive the process itself in the actions of Garrett and function: Alias, the readers in the text. This in turn You know what I'm gonna do? Put ev­ may invite the audience of readers to face erything I own right here. And I'm gonna their own inevitable participation in the cre­ ation of the film (and, ergo, their world) which at first they thought to be merely observing " Terry Eagle ton, The Id eology of the A esthetic (Cam­ from a neutral position outside. bridge, Mass.: Basil Bla-ckwell, 1990) 88. Will's scene suggests even more in this re­ gard. For, both structurally and tonally, it 24 The many different versions of the film suggest a n resembles nothing more than the enigmatic interesting m etacommentary here: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, like Peckinpah's masterpiece The Wild Bunch, grave scene in Hamlet. Both are uncanny exis ts only in the form of several contested versions, metacommentaries saturated by the presence none of which can claim for itself a final authority. of imminent death . A well-known Perhaps the studio interference which Peckinpah ob­ sessively courted marks a space where the repressed returns in his work. Thus his own "plots" become 25Wallace Martin, Recent Th eories of Narrative (Ithaca, forever suspended, always unfinished. N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press, 1986) 85.

180 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Shakespeare enthusiast, Peckinpah hints at Brooks claims that, such comparisons in the very name of his If the motor of narrative is desire, total­ coffin-maker. Hamlet, very likely the most izing, building ever-larger units of mean­ interpreted text in Western literature, also ing, the ultimate determinants of mean­ suggests itself here because it remains the ing lie at the end, and narrative desire is most notorious canononical text which ultimately, inexorably, desire for the end. thema tizes the process of interpre tation. Its (52) hero, so concerned with fulfilling the Law, is However dubious Brooks' own totalizing commonly perceived as the essence of indeci­ narrative of narrativity may be, Peckinpah's siveness; like Garrett, Hamlet is plagued by film itself problematizes such a narrative de­ the indecidability of signifiers while relent­ sire as politically and socially motivated lessly pursuing interpretive closure. Appro­ through a stunning narrative achievement priately, each leaves a mass of bodies in his which questions its own "desire for the end." wake. Garrett's last words, the last words spoken in However, no matter what Christian human­ the film, ostensibly hurled at John Poe, who ist resolutions we may cautiously attribute to has attempted to mutilate Billy's corpse, also Shakespearean tragedy, in Peckinpah's film serve as a Lacanian comment upon his own death provides no resolution at all for its desires and upon Brooks' narrative desire: haunted protagonist. After Billy's death, "What you want and what you get are two Garrett is exhausted as he slumps in a porch different things." 26 D swing, but he is more haunted than ever by Billy's life and significance, as the frame nar­ 26lt seem s rather appropriate that I "end " this essay rative makes clear. As J. Hillis Miller says, with a note which reopens the entire issue of endings. "Death, seemingly a definitive end, al­ Susan Winnett's recent feminist critique of Brooks' narratology- "Coming Unstrung: Women, Men, Nar­ ways leaves behind some musing or be­ rative, and Principles of Pl easure," PMLA 105 (1990)­ wildered survivor. . Death is the proposes tha t Brooks' narrative paradigm is "tied to an most enigmatic, the most open-ended ideology of representa tion derivable only from the dy­ ending of all"(6). namics of m a le sexuality": arousal, discharge, and qui­ escence/finality (506) . Winne tt then attempts to derive As both Garrett and Alias ponder Billy's a "counterexample" of female narra tive d esire in which death in the closing moments of the inner m eaning or "sense-making" would be prospective rather narrative of Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, than retrospective. I would suggest that Pat Garrett and Miller's insight seems justified enough. But Billy the Kid, as a text which thematizes and resists its own desire for the e nd, migh t provide ample materia l Peckinpah expands it even more. We are left for counterreadings which would loca te the film's nar­ not only to ponder Garrett pondering, but to rative discourse relative to sexu a l politics. Such a ponder Garrett's death in the frame narrative project, I would a dd, might suggest that, contrary to as well. The film closes in a death that, in conventional wisdom, Peckinpah's films may not be simply seamless projections of m ale fantasy, but rela­ narrative terms, has motivated only a re-open­ tively heterological representations of male desire . ing of the lives and legends of the Kid and Garrett. For Garrett's death not only ends the film, it begins it. In a way, then, our only Barry Sarchett teaches literary theory and popular cu lture avenue to interpretive closure is to endlessly in th e Department of English at the Co lorado Co llege. begin again.

SARCHETT 181 T. Alan Broughton

RECOGNITIONS

As far as the sorrow, dear Mother, is concerned, which we have and continue to have in separation and loss, it seems to me it is instinctive, that without that we could not resign ourselves to separations, and that probably it will help us to recognize and find each other again later. -Van Gogh, to his mother

e both insisted I leave W but I stayed for months as close as your breasts. I have seen my own son heaved bawling into air, never again tethered so near another beating heart.

Leaving the house you shaped, I strode in a world made just for me, flailing and snatching. I gave you one more room to clean from habit.

Now when we meet beneath the same pine trees, old resemblances puzzle. Was he the one who wobbled with outstretched arms across first lawns? Or she the voice who sang of cake and little horses to come on the far side of fever?

How often we rehearse this final scene: you stand and gaily wave where the sidewalk ends.

182 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Sagri Dhairyam

BETWEEN HYSTERIA AND DEATH: EXPLORING SPACES FOR FEMININE

Subjectivity in de Palma's The Sisters and Body Double

In on e minute you will ha ve to predict what tifia ble stylistic homages to grandmasters of our unsuspec ting subject will do . .. and the cinema like Hitchcock. While such those of you peeking in at home, peek along unproblematized recuperation is suspect in with him. its unthought self-satisfaction and its atten­ -Ted Craft, gameshow host for "Peep­ dant inclination to smooth over the violence ing Toms" in Th e Sisters done to women onscreen, the feminist out­ rage, though useful in its anger, is restrictive in its tendency to dismiss the often overtly rian de Palma's films, particularly those feminist concerns that engage de Palma's Bpreoccupied with the woman's body as films. The uneasy problematic of recuperat­ site of and agent for violence, like The Sisters ing space for political analyses without plung­ (1973), Carrie (1976), Dressed to Kill (1980) and ing into a political textualiza tion of the films Body Double (1984), have drawn responses is perceptively examined in Bruce Babington's ranging from outraged feminist protest to analysis of Carrie and Wendy Steiner's as well often celebratory fascination with his visual as Aselle and Gandhy's discussions of Dressed excesses. 1 The fascination with his cinematic to Kill: the analyses point out the films' some­ spectacles centers, for the most part, around times sexist attitudes, but attempt to open up de Palma's pyrotechnics onscreen-oft re­ sites for resistance within the films' multi­ marked homages to Hitchcock/ high tech vi­ plicity of discourses and visual images.3 sual effects, and self-reflexive Godardian cam­ Helpful as these recuperations are, I sug­ era work to name but a few. This spectatorial gest that de Palma's particular centrality to pleasure is fore grounded by de Palma's sta­ feminist concerns lies in the very split h e tries tus as an auteur who, through his various to negotiate-between visual spectacle and films, works with linked thematics of split political statement(s): the films, in the flam­ identity and voyeurism, as well as easily iden- boyance of their visual manoeuvres, fore­ ground and indict the scopophilic technolo­ 1 For a sa mpling o f a rticles voicing a femini st protest, gies within and without the cinema that see S.K. Ba thrick, "Carrie; Ra g time: The H o rro r of Gro w­ (re)produce assymetrical, gendered subject ing Up Fe ma le," Ju mp Cut 14 (1977): 9-10; M. Citron, positions in contemporary Western society. "Ca rrie Meets Ma rathon Man," Jump Cut14 (1 977) : 1 0-12; George Morris, "Summe rtime Blues: Dressed to Kill a nd The technologies enabling de Palma's film­ No Ptace To Go ," Fil m Comment 16 (Sept / Oct 1980):54-5; making recognize their complicity in a Da vid Denby e t a !. , "Pornog ra phy : Love or D eath?" Fil m scopophilic economy organized around the Com men t 20 (Nov / Dec 1984): 29-30. For som e commen­ predominance of the visual. As Luce Irigaray tary that cele brates d e Palma 's vis ual technique a nd his fo cus o n voyeurism , see Pa uline Ka el, "The C urre nt suggests, such an economy consigns women Cinema : Mas ter Sp y, Maste r Seducer," New Y orker 56 to the role of marginalized other; not allow­ (Aug 1980): 68-71; Laurent Bouzerea u, The De Palma ing them to speak their sexuality, it denies Cut (New York: De m b ne r Books, 1988); Susan Dworkin, them the position of speaking subject: Double De Palma (New York: N ewmarket Press, 1984). [W]oman's desire has .. . been submerged 2 Willia m F is her's essa y on de P a lma's s tro n g mis rea dings (in the Bloo mia n sen se) o f Hitc hco ck historicizes bo th directo rs' works, providing a valuable 3 Bruce Ba bington, "Twice A Vi ctim: Carrie Meets the reading of d e Palma's "pers pective" o n Hitchcock as a BFI ," Screen 24 (May / June 1983): 4-18; We nd y Ste iner, mod ernis t or pos t-mod e rnis t practice. See "Re: Writing: "De Palma 's Romances," Michigan Qu arterly Revie w 21 Film Histo ry: Fro m Hitchcock to DePa lma," Persistance (Summer 1982); Giovanna A ss e ll e a nd Be hroze Ga ndhy, of Vi sion 1 (Summer 1984): 13-22. "Dressed to Kill " Screen 23 (Se pt/ Oct 1982): 137-43.

DHAIRY AM 183 by the logic that has dominated the West mercia! success, its comparatively light­ since the time of the Greeks. Within this h e arted treatment of the "serious" logic, the predominance of the visual, problema tics of sexual / gender identities, in­ and of the discrimination and individu­ dicates possibilities of resistance within a alization of form, is particularly foreign scopophilic society that the more nihilistic to female eroticism. Woman takes plea­ Th e Sisters forecloses. The earlier film's pes­ sure more from touching than from look­ simism denies positions for resistance out­ ing, and her entry into a dominant scopic side the control of its master narratives and economy signifies, again, her consign­ allows only silence within their stranglehold. ment to passivity: she is to be the beauti­ ful object of contemplation.4 "It wa s all a ridiculous mistake, there wa s no In the particular cluster of de Palma's films body. " centering around women and their eroticized - Grace Collier to Detective Kelly in Th e bodies, a comparatively early film, Th e Sis­ Sisters ters, often read as de Palma's overtly feminist The controlling image of Siamese twins (at film, 5 overtly indicts the master narratives once one and other) in Th e Sisters, first intro­ manipulating the (women) objects of the duced by the stylized conjoined foetuses voyeur's look even as it reflects on the con­ within the womb in the credit sequence, es­ structions of gendered subject positions in a tablishes the film's central enigma- who is technologized, voyeuristic society. For the Dominique and why does she kill? But more characters in the film and for its spectators, importantly for this analysis, the image es­ succumbing to the seductions of the tablishes de Palma's recurrent concern with voyeuristic gaze is always more dangerous doubling and split identity in a specifically than it is pleasurable: the indictment of the feminist context. Though Danielle, the good ordering scopic economy is thorough. In twin, is superficially at ease as womanly ob­ contrast, a later film like Body Double pro­ ject of the gaze, Dominique, the evil twin, ceeds by indirection to its concerns; though comes forth to stab the voyeur in his genitals. the plot revolves around the gaze as did that In the person(s) of Danielle/ Dominique, at of The Sisters, it stresses the seductive plea­ once one and other, is allegorized the para­ sures of voyeuris m. Yielding to the doxical positioning of woman, at once placid voyeuristic fascination of the gaze, charac­ object and threatening subject. ters in the film and its spectators are posi­ The only person who "sees" Dominique, in tioned as always already guilty of the vio­ any sense, in the temporal present of the film lence they /we perpectuate. Thus Body is Grace Collier, reporter I voyeur-herself Double's delight in visual spectacle becomes paradoxical master and mistress of the look. a means to undermine the voyeuristic subject From her apartment across the street from positions forced upon us by a technologized Danielle Blanchion-Breton's (in framings re­ society, stressing all the while that we constructing thoset of Rear Window), Grace (re)produce such positioning inasmuch as we sees a black man scrawling "help" in his own wish to resist it. Flaunting the de Palma blood on the window; she sees Dominique, signature in its visual pyrotechnics and its face distorted, twisted in body, stabbing him. preoccupations with voyeurism and sexual­ Grace Collier, significantly, is also the only ity, the film exploited the backlash of contro­ witness to the otherwise absent black victim, versy that the earlier releases Carrie and whose body is unidentifiable because Dressed to Kill incurred over their pornogra­ untraceable. 7 When the police finally arrive phy.6 Ironically, then, Body Double's com- on the scene in the persons of Detective Kelly and his cohort, they are less interested in ' Luce Irigaray, T h is Sex Which Is Not One, tra ns . Ca therine Porter (Ithaca: Corne ll University Press, 1985), 25-6. 7Both The Sisters and Body Double inscribe the cultura l o the r in the black Philip Woo d e a nd Sam Boucha rd 's 5Robin Wood, " ... " America n N ightmare: Essays on the masquerade as the India n as s ig nificant absences in a Horror Film , eds. Britto n e t al. white ordered socie ty. This proble ma tic is beyond the prese nt s cope of the pape r, but it seems related to d e 6For a summary of review s a nd d e Palma's reacti o ns, Palma 's quixotic representa tio ns o f gendered others in see Dworkin, 22-3 a nd 132-3, a nd Bouzereau, 69-71. the w omen h e portra ys.

184 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW checking on the body than in harassing "Miss ous, at-home freedom to peep. The positions Civil Liberty" Collier, reporter for the Stolen of Peeping Toms tha t are given us by the Island Panorama , in retaliation for her articles film's opening sequence are ones that we con­ on the police force. Not to be stymied, Grace struct ourselves, not only in the darkness of determines to get her story and solve the the cinema but throug h our cultural posi­ murder and, to this end, hires private detec­ tions as objects of the gaze and p eep ers within tive Larch to check the scene of the crime and a scopophilic economy. In the opening se­ find the body. She herself trails Danielle and quence, Danielle, who masquerades as the Emile to the Loisel Institute in pursuit of the blind woman, and Woode are both con­ elusive Dominique, only to be captured by structed by the spectator's and the camera's the Svengalian Emile and hypnotized into eye in ways directly r e levant to Laura taking the dead Dominique's place. Do­ Mulvey's scathing critique of the camera's minique who is responsible for the killing, pleasures in scopophilia, pleasures that she lives now in the recesses of Danielle's mind, rightly insists are played up to by the her­ only mentally summoned when Danielle is metically sealed fantasy of narrative cinema.8 sexually a roused, and then is intent on killing Yet the narrative, far from being hermetically the man responsible for her I their arousal. sealed, intriguingly hints that Woode's gaze Sharing her persona, Grace watches as Emile within the TV show is the ironic trigger to his forgets the dangers of sexual play and asserts death and invites us, the spectators, to par­ erotic mastery over Danielle, only to be ticipate in his guilt by participating in the stabbed to death. The police arrive on the sexual violence of his look. Danielle, picking scene, arrest Danielle and attempt to get Grace up his look, responds to Woode's interest to reveal the whereabouts of the black corpse, on screen the gameshow, and later invites him but Grace is adamant in the denial of her to ask her out. The ensuing night of sexual story. intercourse summons Dominique (Danielle's This narrative, playing as it does with the dead Siamese twin and other persona) to kill problematic of looking/ witnessing, is itself the looker. If Dominique were not summoned, situated in a cinematic strategy that repeat­ she would not exist: she has to be constructed edly connects the act of looking at the visual by the male gaze, which is also the spectator's, spectacle with the gaze(s) that construct in order to exist. gendered subjects in the material world. In The film's concern with sexual identity is the opening sequence for example, the visual self-evident: Dominique kills only when play on the blind woman who strips in front Danielle is sexually manipulated, and sex is of the watching male in the bath house sets manipulation in this film. Emile Breton, up the film's explorations of the technologies Danielle's lover and ex-husband, is also for looking. As the camera zooms in on the Dominique's killer: the master psychiatrist voyeuristic Phillip Woode, he is startlingly d eciding who is to live and who is not, he repositioned on a TV screen within the out­ performs the dreadful cleavage that kills line of a keyhole, with the logo "Peeping Dominique in a macabre b & w tv sequence Toms" superimposed. A gameshow voiceover which seems to constitute both part of takes control and host Ted Craft remarks, as Danielle's memory and Grace's hypnosis. He the camera pans the audience, "In one minute forces Grace, on discovering her in the Loisel you will have to predict what our unsuspect­ Institute, into the role of patient by giving her ing subject will do ... and those of you another identity, and hypnotizes her into shar­ peeking in at home, peek along with him." ing Dominique's repressed self. Repeated Not only are the spectators in the theater framings of Grace in bed next to Danielle, positioned as peepers and gendered as male watching helplessly as Emile fondles Danielle, (in our identification with Woode), but we recreate Dominique's aversion to his ad­ are asked to recognize the apparatus that vances. The hypnosis sequences of the twins' construct their (and our) peeping past (suggestively, we sometimes see Grace subjectivities. Where the cinematic apparatus offers a pub­ 8Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cin­ lic, and legitimate, voyeurism, the technol­ ema" rpt. in Feminism and Film Theory, ed. Constance ogy of television allows a private, and insidi- Penley (New York: Routledge, 1988), 46-56, esp. 59/60.

DHAIRY AM 185 in place of Dominique) in grainy TV footage, tice, as Emile's narrative of desire ends. The the cuts to Emile's disto rted fa ce, the fades camera cuts from the gothic Loisel Institute into a watching, hypnotized iris all indicate where Grace is being taken away by her par­ Emile's attempts to make over Grace, to sh a p e ents to a ma n, Kelly 's plainclo thes' cohort, her subject position by controlling h er story. stationed beside a car in front of a white Grace's regressio n in the last sequen ce of the hou se. As h e looks up over his shoulder, the film suggests, indeed, that sh e has succumbed cam era follows in a close up eyeline match of to Emile's master narrative (the "mind fuck" the gabled ho u se a nd moves in for an extreme as Liz Blake in Dressed to Kill and Sam close up of a window high up in the eaves. Bouchard in Body Double term similar attempts The ensuin g cut, to a voiceover of Kelly 's at control). 9 affable "Well, Miss Collier," reveals a me­ Danielle/ Dominique may have killed Emile, dium shot of Kelly seated in Grace's bed­ the mas ter narra tor, but the seduction of his room, Grace in a w hite nightgown on her bed, narrative continues. Fo r the w o m en in the and Mrs. Collier between the two, her dis­ movie, to succumb to its seductio ns is to lose torted h ead intervening between the camera their narra tives cons tructed at such cost in a a nd the conversation. The scene cu es us in phallocentric world. Grace Collier's loss of vis u ally for the conventional resolution scene her reporter self, for example, hints tha t she w h ere the detective takes control, as in films need s to be re-educated out of h er role as from the genre of detective/ na ir su spense voyeurist reporter (a role emphasized by shots (the last scen es of Curtiz' M ildred Pierce pro­ of her with binoculars, watching Larch in vide a good example). Danielle's apartment, and shots of h er watch­ But, as Kelly tells Grace about Danielle ing the histo ry of the twin s and the Loisel Breton 's arrest for the first degree murder of Institute) into h er role as object o f the gaze. Emile Breton, h e con fesses to his inability to Grace as r eporter constantly transgresses the find the body of the black man she had wit­ bounds of m ale control as in her en counters nessed being killed. Grace underlines his with De tective Kelly and Larch. Far from lack of control over the narrative of law and buying into a liberal humanist position that order in h er refusal to repeat the story, "It proffers the independent woman repo rter as was all a ridiculous mistake, there was no an answer to the m a le hero, the film ques­ murder. " Though Kelly takes her refusal as tions the terms of that proposition, indica ting a n incentive for further apology, the camera variously tha t the Grace's subject position is in slow synchronization to Bernard Herrman's threatening to the order of the world in which haunting music tracks around the d etective, she lives. Though it is one that is constantly repositionin g him momentarily between a undercut by h er status as woman, the per­ huge Raggedy A nn doll and Grace Collier. In son a of "Miss Civil Liberty" d etermined to this ironic visual comment, Grace and Rag­ make h er way to a bigger by-line d ep ends on gedy Ann are (as were she and Danielle) sis­ a masculinist ethic. The paradox of Grace's ters in bed, p artners as d oll objects . The positio n is re-iterated b y the ten sion between cam era completes its 360 degree track and the the role of daughter needing to find the right convention a l shot/ reverse shot structure of man that h er mother con structs and that of Hollywood continuity editing resumes as prying reporter that Grace builds for herself. Grace repeats h er d enial of the killing. The The tig htrope she walks finally topples her scene ends with a m edium s hot of Grace in into the no (wo)man's land sh e occupies a t b ed, a distorted shadow to her left, being the end of the film. gra dually superimposed by a sh ot of the miss­ Th e astringent irony of the last scenes rein­ ing couch in w hich the body is hidden. A forces the film 's bleak nihilism. The ruminating cow stands beside the couch com­ penultimate scene establishes the detectives' pleting the picture of rustic peace in some phallocra tic narrative, the narrative of jus- remo te Canadian landscape while the camera languidly withdraws to reveal railway tracks, 9 See Steiner, 393. Revealing ly en ou g h, in comment­ a ra ilway shed, and a tractor approaching. ing on this p h rase of Liz Blake's in Dressed to Kill, she As the camera continues its movement back­ notices the connection in th e film between voyeurism and psychoanalysis, both indicative, finally, of the will ward, Larch disguised as a telephon e line­ to control. man is revealed feet first: he stands posi-

186 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW h oned on a telephon e p ole, binocula rs fo­ nihilism, non e of Grace's narra tives find voice cused on the couch. O ver this last image is as they are all silen ced; sh e com es to occu py superimposed "The End." the hysteric's sp ace which allows for no n ar­ The last of the subject p ositions given u s, ra tive. Th is h ysteric's sp ace, in Irigaray's Larch 's, is the m ost futile, a nd ironically the re thinking o f Freu dian psych oan a lyis, is m ost appro pria te to ou r specta torial sta tus: w here wom an 's p ower is kept in reserve a t w e sit, in the theatre's d arkness, watching the sam e time tha t it is repressed a n d ou tside narratives that further the frustra ted violence la ngu age: of our voyeuristic roles. No via ble alterna­ Hysteria is silent and a t th e same time it tives are allowed us. Kelly 's a ttempt to regain m im es. A nd-how could it b e o ther­ control over the narrative, for exam p le, a nd wise-miming / reprodu cing a la nguage to direct Grace's former story to its a llo tted tha t is n ot its own, masculine lan gu age, slot in his re-op ening of the murder case is it caricatures a nd deforms tha t language: equally frustrated: h e is d enied a solution as it "lies," it "d eceives," as wom en have are we. Presented as we are with Grace/ d oll always been reputed to do. (Irigaray 137) in bed , the riddle of Da nielle/Dominiqu e can­ Retreating into hysteria, Grace withdraws not be closed; thou gh we may have solved the from a n impossibly p hallocentric world. In­ riddle of Dominique's killings, the n arratives asmu ch as it is a protest, it is a p rotest that tha t force h er to su ch brutality are still seduc­ cannot be h eard within the film's diegesis­ tive. The visual imagery of technologies for Kelly, for example, th in ks that sh e d enies him p eeping (TV screens in gameshow s, at Life her narrative as a ploy to make him ap ologize Magazine, in the hospital) is related to the further. Only we, the sp ectators, may recog­ sadistic control of in stitutions of m ed icin e nize it for w hat it is, if we a re so inclined. and the law (the scalpel wielded in the sur­ gery of tw ins, the cleaver that replaces the "Don 't touch me! Corpse sucker! I've seen scalpel for the o p eration itself, the knife tha t your type on those horror movies on late the police ha ve to find). The images force the night TV, you're a necrophiliac! " violen ce of Da nielle / Do minique's subject - Holly Body to Jake Scully in Body position upon us. Sh e / they are sid eshow Double freaks, a visual a llegory for the violen ce of Tha t Body Double is a frothier film playing the cultural positioning of women as objects to the dem a nds of an au d ien ce fam iliar with of pleasure and control, as is Grace in bed d e Palma's earlier su ccesses is p erhaps to its with h er d oll. Grace in her white nightgown ad vantage as the stra tegies for resista nce tha t and the ruminating cow next to the couch a re it ske tch es a re strategies no t outside bu t al­ related n ot only by the graphic match of th e ways alread y within the guilty p leasures of superimposition: in h er d oll w orld, sh e is scop ophilic voyeurism . Th e n arra tive of Body more an object tha n is the cow in its placid Double, mu ch as did that of The Sisters, re­ rusticity. volves around the problem a tics of sexu al The film's brutality, it would app ear, lies identity. But, w h ere in the earlier m ovie, the not so much in the visual savagery of D o­ p sychiatrist's n a rra tive is clearly the most minique / Danielle's stabbings as in its black p owerful and d oes the m ost violen ce, in the comment on constructions of gender in patri­ later film, Sam Bou ch ard's attempts to im­ archal society, its searing examination of the pose a master na rrative are never as p owerful scopophilic m astery of technological culture. as h e would like them to be. While Jake and Even as the scen es link the images of Grace Holly, the p articipa nts and su rvivors of his and the cow , they connect the images of Kelly a ttempts a t control, offer no unproblem atized waiting futilely for Grace's story and Larch stra tegies of resista nce, th e film avoids the waiting endlessly for som eone to collect the dark p essimism that informs The Sisters. couch. Indeed , the investigations of the de­ Body Double focuses on th e way an ou t of tectives, public (Kelly) and private (La rch), work actor, Ja ke Scully, is set up b y a frien d, are indicative of their d etermination n ot to Sam Bou chard, to watch Gloria Revelle's mas­ see and to m aintain the borders of a regula ted turbation routine each evening, so that Sam voyeurism tha t d ep ends on its phallocentrism (in reality her husband, Alexan der Revelle) to enforce its legitimacy. In the film's radical disguised as an Indian can murder h er. Jake,

DHAIRYAM 187 having witnessed the gruesome killing as he him. As the camera dolly sweeps up and out was intended to do, subverts his function as of his way, Jake is hauled out of his tomb, and unsuspecting witness when he discovers that embarks on an incoherent explanation: "I was an erotic dancer, Holly Body, does a routine in the coffin, I closed my eyes. I thought disquietingly similar to Gloria's. Jake tracks everything was going to be O.K. I opened my down Holly, unveils Sam's identity as eyes-and the camera was right on top of m e, Alexander Revelle, and finally solves the last and I don't know, I couldn't move ." His piece of the puzzle as he tears through the claustrophobia causes Scully to be fired from Indian's mask to reveal a murderous Sam/ his job, and, much later in the movie, will Alexander. As a vengeful Sam attempts to become central to his inadequacy in dealing bury Holly and Jake alive, Jake arises from with the Indian who feels free to bury him the grave to save the day, or the night as the alive. Jake's castrating phobia is thus associ­ case may be. ated from the start with the voyeuristic tech­ The opening sequence of the film signals de nology of the cinema: Jake's position a ? object Palma's penchant for foregrounding the of the camera's gaze is linked to his inability spectator's complicity in creating the spec­ to "perform" as a vampire, to prey upon his tacle of film. The Sisters begins with images victim and to "act" as actor and as person. from a TV game show; Body Double opens Once set up behind Bouchard's phallic tele­ with a sequence from a low budget gothic/ scope, its sights trained on Gloria's supposed vampire film. Lush gothic credits in drip­ body, Jake constructs a narrative in vindica­ ping blood red letters are superimposed on a tion of his inability to perform before the overpainted sunset behind palm trees. The camera. Ironically, his position as voyeur artifice alerts viewers to the parodic play on behind the dictating lens of the telescope Hollywood vampire flicks, as does Pino proves no less debilitating than his position Donaggio's eerie score, replete with wolves as object of the gaze. howling. In a typical de Palma shot, the Jake's titillation by the body doing its erotic camera moves slowly backward past sensu­ routine (a body not Gloria's but Holly's) can­ ous marble angels and tracks languidly down not be separated from his attempts at follow­ beneath a headstone to an open coffin to shock ing Gloria Revelle into Bellini's, his gaze at us with a blond, punk vampire who turns, her undressing behind parted curtains, his baring his fanged mouth. As the camera impulse to pocket the panties she discards in freezes in an extreme close-up of the awfully the trash. There is no question of Jake being open mouth, the music dies, and an off-screen in love with Gloria; his fascination with her is voice exclaims, "Action, Jake. Jake, action." an attempt to impose his narrative on the Not only are we positioned in a film within a pastiche of a woman with the face of one and film, but we are asked to gaze with the cam­ the body of another, both women whose era at the humorous spectacle of a vampire thoughts he is never privy to and at whose who literally cannot close his mouth to take actions he can only peek. The Gloria who his bite and complete his sexual conquest goes shopping to seduce a lover who never over his victim and his spectator. Jake Scully, appears is a two-dimensional poster woman, even in this first shot as frozen vampire, is reminiscent of a Godard film. The image she already castrated as performer and agent. projects-Californian tan, impossibly slim, This is further underlined by the following breathily sexuaP0-is inseparable from her sequence when he surprizes his girlfriend identity as the "real" Gloria Revelle, woman, atop her lover and in consequence is forced to wife, mistress and object. Each "role" is as move out of her house. Unemployed and insubstantial as the next, a play of surfaces homeless, Jake is perfect victim for the seduc­ with no depth as are the telescopic lens shots tion of voyeurism which promises total con­ that initially capture her onscreen which are trol behind the lens of the telescope. In playing on the opening spectacle of a 10See Dworkin, 100-1. D e Palma's concentration film within a film, de Palma is careful to oGloria 's image is recounted in Dworkin's anecdote connect his protagonist's, Jake's, debilitating about the actress, Deborah Sheldon, b eing forced to lose weight around her thighs for the shot of Gloria Revelle claustrophobia to the ordeal of being filmed in the clinging white skirt when Jake follows her into and having the camera's eye "right on top" of the Rodeo Collection.

188 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW also, revealingly enou gh , point of view shots miniscule Gloria runs d own the tunnel. from Scully's perspective: Gloria in sun­ The cut immediately following the shot of glasses, in a white dress, in her white car, as the tunnel is a m edium shot of Jake back in she waits in her driveway and Scully watches. his voyeur's paradise, telephone in hand, tele­ She does not "perform" as does Holly Body, scope in front, as h e p aces about abortively but everything sh e does is on display, mar­ trying to call Gloria: "Hello Gloria, this is keting a p articular m od e of life for the con­ Jake. I'm the gu y tha t almost-fucked you a t sumption of Jake and the sp ectator, both im­ the beach today." Unable to complete his call, potent and unable to act. he resorts to the empowering telescope: in a Gloria's status as image is particula rly series of POV shot.s, we see the Revelle house, foregrounded by the lyrically romantic fan­ first in darkness, then windows lighted as the tasy sequence on the beach after she runs up security guard and Gloria enter the house. the tunnel to lead the frozenly claustropho­ Reverse shots of Jake at the telescope, caught bic Scully out into the daylight after his en­ up in his voyeur's magic, go from medium counter with the Indian. The high tech visual shots to close-ups as h e watches the Indian effects, the dizzying pans of the background moving into the upper level with an upright as the revolving couple embrace in the fore­ drill in his hand, the image a parody of the ground become a homage to the cinematic impotent }ake b ehind his phallic but static apparatus constructing the scene rather than telescope. The camera zooms in as the Indian the romance of Jake and Gloria. In synchro­ conceals himself and watches Gloria undress, nization with Pino Donaggio's cloying score, and Jake, also in close-up, watches him watch­ the camera pleasures itself in a routine al­ ing her. Immobilized behind the telescope, most reminiscent of Holly Body's. De Palma, snared in the seduction of the gaze, Jake hesi­ in fact, filmed the painted studio backdrops tates just a little too long b efore snatching up and the beach separately with a 360 degree the telephone, ironically initiating Gloria's camera, process plated them, and filmed the killing by the act of completing his call. As actors embracing on a turntable in front of h e screams an incoh erent warning down the this moving background in order to achieve phone, the Indian rises and attempts to the effect h e wanted (Dworkin 75-7). The strangle her with the phone cord. parodic pastiche of romantic cliches that h e Jake's call is trigger to the murder; thenar­ assembles is a strategy repeated in Dressed to rative is set in place by his position behind Kill where Kate Miller's encounter with the the eye of the telescope. Jake wants to "see" intriguing stranger at the Art Museum func­ what is going to happen as much as do the tions on much the same dynamic as Wendy sp ectators of his n arrative: he / we are prey to Steiner so aptly points out (388-9). Though the striptease, not of Holly's disrobing, but of Gloria resists the encounter at the last, mut­ narrative disclosure. 11 He enters the house tering, "No, no, I can't, I can't do this-not too late, gets knocked down by the Indian's here," and clacks her way back down the dog, and sees the bloody drill tip emerging tunnel, she is m ost seductive to Jake, and to through the ceiling. Upstairs, the Indian com­ us, the spectators, when out of reach. pletes the murder in a p ainstaking sequence Freed of the tight close-up onscreen with which allows us to witness his first abortive Gloria, Jake is d elivered from the necessity to attempt as the drill com es unplugged. A low act by her escape down the long, womb-like angle medium shot of his legs completes the tunnel. Jake's identity as voyeur depends on scene as the drill em erges like a giant steel distancing the object of his gaze, otherwise phallus into an unseen Gloria. The instru­ he risks impotence when "performing" for ment of violence is h eavily coded as male, the the camera, as in the scenes in the tunnel with phallic drill becoming a visual allegory for the Indian, or on-camera in the opening se­ the violence of the sexual act, and, by exten­ quence. Incapable of pursuing her because of sion, of our desire to know the end of the his recurrent claustrophobia, Jake is also un­ able to follow throug h on his sexual fanta­ "See Roland Barthes, Th e Pleasure of the Text (New sies. The deep focus photography positions York: Hill and Wang, 1975), 89. Barthes rem arks, sig­ nificantly but in passing, o n the striptease staged by Jake's profile in tight close-up as he looks narrative suspense, the erotic gap that tantalizes the down, frustrated , in the foreground, while a reader with further revela tio n.

DHAIRYAM 189 narrative. The drill is, moreover, linked I do not do animal acts. I do not do S & metonymically through the visual imagery of M or any variations of that particular the sequence to the telescope and the vio­ bent. No water sports either. I will not lence that it perpetrates on Gloria through shave my pussy. No fist-fucking and the insistent POV shots from Jake's perspec­ absolutely no coming in my face. tive. Jake's inability to stop the murder be­ Later, as she accompanies Jake to his party, cause of his fascination with the telescope's she clarifies yet further that she cannot get spectacle links him, as it does his spectators into acts with women, though she has no fascinated with the cinematic image, to the problems with those who do. Though the violence that the Indian performs with his parameters that she proclaims are a means of drill. control over the business of her body, they The strength of Jake's investment in his role are equally the parameters for accepted, as voyeur is highlighted when he tries out for straight heterosexual sex without any "bent" a role in a porn movie while attempting to apart from the sheer dynamics of exhipition­ locate Gloria's body double: he defines his ism, sex for the camera, the peepers, the voy­ role in the video by defining his role in Sam's eurs. All the kinkiness, within these bound­ narrative when h e repeats, "I like to watch." aries, is strictly the dialectic of the look, of Though he successfully consummates the act watching and being watched. with Holly Body, the moment of sexual con­ The technologies of the look, in Body Double, summation is concealed from the camera. offer possibilities for resistance in their pa­ There is, in both the film we watch and in the rodic visual images, unlike Th e Sisters where video, "no come shot"; we, the spectators, as they prove ultimately unnegotiable for Grace well as the cameramen shooting the video are Collier who retreats to her child's bedroom, cheated of the proof of Jake's prowess as the re-constructed in the image of her doll. Gloria voyeur, significantly, can only perform Revelle, of course, dies quite summarily, but off-camera, or in the darkness of the theatre. her body double, Holly, unlike Dominique or In contrast, Holly Body, the punk porn star, is Grace Collier, resists her co-optation into delineated by her role as object of the gaze; Jake's, and Sam's, narratives. She performs her name plays with connotations of the as object of the gaze for the camera (as did (un)holy body of woman in the Western imagi­ Danielle for the TV gameshow), but she is not nation as well as with the body of Holly­ destroyed by the seductions of its gaze. Holly wood, site of pleasure for the camera and its uses the camera for her pleasure as well as for spectators. 12 Even her notorious blue video, her viewers'; she refuses to be confined to the "Holly Does Hollywood," is a comment on role of object, moving from the position of the the voyeurism of the film industry. The stress looked-at-object to that of the looker I sub­ on Holly as part of the business of Hollywood ject, "getting off" on her spectators' arousal is also indicative of the status of women in by her act. Unlike Grace or DanielleiDo­ cinema, seducers of and seduced by the eye of minique, she does•not retreat into death or the camera. As Holly remarks in her TV doll status, silenced of narrative. interview, watched by Jake in Sam's futuris­ Jake inhabits a space the obverse of Holly's tic bedroom, she "gets off on being watched." in his position as male voyeur and protago­ If Jake would like to watch, Holly likes being nist. Paralyzed by the camera in his role as defined by her body, being watched, though vampire and as protagonist, he is deprived of she is careful to define the parameters of her any control over his story. Only in the last looked -at-ness: sequences of the film is Jake able to "act": in refusing to follow Sam I the Indian's direc­ tions, he literally rises from the grave, a feat 12 See Susan Rubin Suleiman, "(Re)Writing the Body: he is unable to perform in the opening se­ The Politics and Poetics of Female Eroticism" in The Female Body in Western Culture, ed . Susan Rubin Suleiman quence, and saves Holly. Jake, indeed, fi­ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985). Suleiman nally completes his bite-into the body double concisely and insightfully indicates the place the fe­ in the vampire film-in the closing sequences. male body occupies in the Western cultural imagina­ But, while he has come through as actor in tion. The rest of the essays in the volume, as well, analyze the spaces for feminine subjectivity in the posi­ both senses, as performer and as agent, Holly tioning of the female body in literature, film and art. refuses to legitimate his performance by play-

190 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW ing into his status as hero. Jake, though loses out on either. Humorous though the resurrected as low budget star is no master comment is, its astringent appropriateness is narrator, even as much as Sam Bouchard or foregrounded by the closing credit sequence Rubin the director of the low budget vampire when a resurrected Scully the vampire bites flick, or, by extension, even as much as the into the body double. Scully makes women master voyeur and manipulator, master "mind into living corpses in his persona as vampire fucker" de Palma himself for whom Sam and and he has been responsible for Gloria Rubin are, as it were, stand-ins. Revelle's death by his inadvertant complicity These interlocking narratives which hold in Bouchard's violent narrative. But his at­ its actors in thrall provide much of Body tempts at control are entangled in a web of Double's fascination. Though so complexly changing power positions; as voyeur or as positioned, the actors in the film are not ren­ victim, Jake is not hero, but nor is he villain. dered static; they undermine the power of It is in Holly's refusal of his advances, per­ narratives in which they act by redefining the haps, that our possiblities for resistance lie, parameters for their roles. In contrast, the constrained though these may be. Preferring scopophilic narratives of a technologized cul­ the darkness of the grave to her "role" as ture in The Sisters leave its actors with no rescued heroine in Jake Scully's drama, Holly voice save that of death or hysteria; the ear­ Body (re)defines the parameters of her posi­ lier film finally indicates the futility of at­ tion. Unlike Grace Collier, Holly's body in its tempting to find ways of moving outside the movement from TV screen to grave does not stranglehold of its cultural narratives. move from speech to hysteric silence; rather, Though Body Double leaves nobody her vociferous resistance is to be heard long uncensured, neither Jake nor Holly, it asks after the movie ends and the blood drips not so much for a way out as for strategies of down the bared breasts of Jake's victim. Un­ resistance within the guilty cycle of pleasure like so many women in de Palma's movies and danger. Caught as we are precisely within who remain silenced through death this dialectic, our complicity as spectators of (Danielle/Dominique, Gloria Revelle, Kate de Palma's cinematic spectacles enables the Miller in Dressed to Kill), or through night­ violence of his image. Yet we are ourselves mare trauma (Grace Collier, Sue Snell in Car­ constructed by the camera, placed in the rie, Liz Blake in Dressed to Kill), Holly Body is theatre's darkness with its fantasies, as is quite able to scramble out of the grave with­ Jake Scully in the coffin by Rubin and behind out Jake's helping hand. De Palma, director the telescope by Sam Bouchard. But by the and shaper of Gloria's and Holly's bodies and same paradox we are never held to one posi­ the roles/coffins he wants them to fill, is, of tion; we see and act differently as the impera­ course, implicated in Jake's as well as Holly's tives of the situation demand, as indeed do roles, caught within the circle of guilt and Jake and Holly. pleasure. But it is in that tangled series of This emphasis on the process of the film, its guilty manipulations onscreen that we find duplicitously contructed and constructing our spaces for resistance as we shuttle con­ tendencies, is insistently linked in both The stantly between the positions of peepers and Sisters and Body Double to questions about those at whom they peep. Neither wholly subjectivity, the always already gendered unquestioning consumers of Hollywood vi­ subject, that is nonetheless in the process of sual spectacles, nor competely consumed by being perpetuated. The final sequences of its pleasures as spectators, our strategies for Body Double tell us as much. A high angle resistance lie between the two, in suspecting shot cranes into the open grave where a sud­ our always complicit status.* denly awakened Holly crouches in revulsion away from Jake: "Don't touch me! *I am indebted to Trevor Pronga whose in­ Corpse-sucker! I've seen your type on those sightful paper on de Palma's Carrie and per­ horror movies on late night TV, you're a ceptive comments were catalyst for this ex­ necrophiliac! Yechhh!" Necrophilia is late ploration of de Palma's feminist agenda. 0 night TV's other to the romantic heroism of daytime soap (as exemplified in the lyrically Sagri Dhairyam tea ches at the University of Illinois at romantic scene with Gloria), but Jake Scully Urbana-Champaig n .

DHAIRYAM 191 L. Taetzsch

CROSSING TRAJECTORIES IN THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER

h e themes of isolation and alienation-an loss of artistic drive. Biff Brannon, on the T unfulfilled desire to connect and to m ake other hand, begins in the m orass of his sexual sense of the world-are amply documented past and moves upward toward androgyny among the critics of Carson McCullers' The with its concomitant artistic awareness. Hearf Is a Lonely Hunter. McCullers herself Mick begins as the androgyn-the tomboy stated, "Th e broad principal theme of this dressed in shorts and tennis shoe-sat the top book is indica ted in the first dozen pages. of her trajectory in terms of artistic vitality This is the theme of man's revolt against his and vision, where we see her literally climb­ own inner isolation and his urge to express ing to the top of a roof: "There was something himself as fully as possible." 1 Within this about getting to the very top that gave you a theme the mute John Singer is the magnet wild feeling and made you want to yell or dra wing Mick Kelly, Ja ke Blount, Dr. sing or raise up your arms and fly" (28). Mick Copeland, and , to some extent, Biff Brannon. is enlig htened . The muse speaks to her p er­ Singer's "eyes made a p erson think that he sonally, vibrantly, distinctly: " It was a funny h eard things nobody else had ever heard, thing-but nearly all the time there was some that h e knew things no one had ever guessed kind of piano piece or other music going on in b efore." 2 Blount, Copeland, and Mick seek an the back of h er mind. No matter what she was impossible connection with Singer, while Biff doing or thinking it was nearly always there" observes and thinks: "Th ey talked, and the (29). mute's expression changed as he watched At this juncture Mick is strong and confi­ them. It was a funny thing. The reason was it dent: "M .K.-That was what she would have in them or in him?" (114). Biff' s observations written on everything when she was seven­ and ruminations give us a more objective teen years old and very famous" (29). She perspective of Singer's effect on the other identifies with "MOTSART," another "young characters, a clearer lens through which we kid" who had "made up all these beautiful can see their hunger for understanding a nd pieces for the piano and for the violin and for human contact. a band or orchestra too" (31). Mick can iden­ The above themes have been expounded on tify with Mozart because she herself is an thoroughly, and I have no quarrel with them, artist and a musician. She paints pictures a t except that they overlook a key aspect of the the free art class and attempts to make a n ovel-the linked opposing trajectories of violin out of an old ukulele. She seeks out the Mick Kelly a nd Biff Brannon. These trajecto­ strains of music wherever she can find them, ries start at opposite poles and cross some­ even if it means stalking the rich part of town where in the deadly. time-space of the novel. to find homes in which radios are tuned to Mick Kelly begins in androgyny with high classical pieces. In contrast, Mick does not energy, enlightenment, and artistic transcen­ identify with her older sisters and does not d ence. At the end of the novel she has become want to become like them. '"I don't want to tra pped in the flesh of a sexual being, head­ b e like either of you,"' she says to her sisters, ing toward confusion, exhaustion, and the '"and I don' t want to look like either of you. And I won't. That's why I wear shorts. I' d 'Oliver Evans, "Author's Outline of The Mute," by rather be a boy any day, and I wish I could Carson McCullers, The Ballad of Carson McCullers (New move in with Bill"' (35). With one sister, Etta, York: Coward-McCann, 1965) 195-215. primping "all the day long" and the other one ' Carson McCullers, The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (New "good-looking but thick in the head," it is York: Bantam, 1953) 20. easy to see why Mick cannot identify with

192 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW them. Her dreams and plans have no space fully) aware of his own. He keeps "a complete within the traditional role of woman she sees file of the evening newspapers that dated around her. For Mick, the androgyny is un­ back without a break for twenty-o n e years" conscious, for the people she identifies with (18). Most of his time is spent watching and and wants to emulate are all male. She sees trying to understand what is going on around Bill and Harry Minowitz as having valuable him. He is extremely sensitive to others and thoughts and real options in the world, and feels a tenderness for "freaks." her artistic men tors are Moza rt and Biff, then, plays a double role in the novel. Beethoven; whereas womanhood offers her He helps u s interpret the other characters' nothing but foolishness (her sisters) or drudg­ actions, and is transformed himself into artis­ ery (her mother). tic, enlightened androgyny. As the novel While Mick' s trajectory begins high in spirit progresses, Biff' s artistic nature becomes and androgyny, Biff's starts low while his stronger and more d eveloped. A clear indica­ developing a ndrogyny is still contaminated tion of this is the progressively more d etailed by Alice's presence: " Being around that and vivid descriptions given of his window woman always made him different from his display preparations. In the final description real self. It made him tough and small and at the end of the book, he takes fresh summer common as she was" (11) . Biff has rejected flowers, making a foundation of " tea olive male sexuality, but we are not sure exactly strewn over the bottom, cool and green," then why. He reminisces about a happy first year a "red pottery tub filled with the brilliant of marriage, a strenuou s sex life between him­ zinnias." Biff himself comments that the dis­ self and Alice when "the bed came down with play ends up being "downright artistic" (303). them twice in three months" (201). The impli­ While Biff reaches his artistic peak at the cation is that he fell out of love with Alice's end of the novel, Mick reaches hers in Part II. character, and we see Alice's own sister She walks around in the night and lis tens to Lucille commiserating with him. Then w e music coming from radios in the rich part of know he took up with prostitutes "Gyp and town. She dwells in an "inner room" in which Madeline and Lou." Later, "suddenly he lost she imaginatively thinks of "foreig n coun­ it" and "could lie with a woman no longer" tries and plans and music ... " (138). Rather (201). At one point Alice calls him a freak and than being afra id of walking alone at night, as implies odd sexual behavior, but this sen­ other girls might be because a man might tence is not finished and we are left to s pecu­ "come out from somewhere and put his tea­ late: '"Well, I've known you to do things no pot in them like they was married" (86), Mick man in this world would be proud of. I've is confident she could run fa s t enough or give know you to-"' (11). In any case, his male her attacker a "good sock." At Vocational sexual activity has ended. When he rumi­ High, she does not take stenography like the nates about that "special physical part kept other girls, but gets special permission to always guarded" by people, and his hand take mechanical shop. moves "nervously toward his genitals," he Vocational High, however, is the setting for notes that the special part is no longer, for Mick's gradual change toward female sexual­ him, his genitals: "Not. Any more" (24). ity and loss of her artis tic energy. Mick recog­ Biff does not mourn the loss of his "male­ nizes that she is an outsider at the school and ness," but rather embraces a metamorphosis begins planning to be "with some bunch al­ into a more enlightened entity. Unlike Mick, mos t as much as she thought of music" (88). Biff consciously chooses androgyny: " By na­ In this desire to join her peers and to becom e ture all people are of both sexes. So that mar­ a m ember of a group, Mick unwittingly takes riage and the bed is not all by any means. The the first steps toward social femininity. She proof? Real youth and old age ... . And he has a party and dresses up in her older sis­ even proved it himself-the part of him that ters' clothes, puts on make-up, and invites sometimes almost wished he was a mother boys and girls from h er new school. But in the and that Mick and Baby were his kids" (113). midst of this initiation, she reverts back to the As the historian, observer, and interpreter, tomboy when the other neighborhood kids Biff is more aware of the other characters' crash the party: "Everybody was a wild kid motivations than they are, and more (if not playing out on Saturday nig ht and she felt

TAETZSCH 193 like the very wildest of all" (98). In her last stood behind the counter and he was troubled fling of wildness, she leaps into a drainage and sad. He wanted to reach out his hand and ditch for a finale. When she gets home and touch her sunburned, tousled hair-but not takes off the ripped and soiled outfit her as he had ever touched a woman. In him there sisters had loaned her and puts on her shorts, was an uneasiness, and when he spoke to her she realizes that "she was too big to wear his voice had a rough, strange sound" (102). shorts any more after this" (99). But this same How can we identify this feeling as sexuality evening, the last night she clothes herself in when it is not "as he had ever touched a the androgyn's raiment, is when Mick dis­ woman"? The feeling is sexual, but not the covers Beethoven. Sitting in the side yard of sexuality of a man toward a woman, but an a house she used to visit in the summertime, androgyn toward an androgyn. While Mick she has the most intense musical experience is unable to recognize him as a fellow of her life while listening to his Third Sym­ androgyn, Biff, with his greater insight and phony, and then: awareness, is able to sense something in her which draws him to her in a mesmerizing, Suddenly Mick began hitting her thigh obsessive fashion. He walks through her with her fists. She pounded the same neighborhood, hoping to catch sight of her, muscle with all her strength until the and when interviewing Harry Minowitz for a tears came down her face. But she could job, Biff can not restrain himself from asking not feel this hard enough. The rocks un­ about her. Biff is unable, however, to under­ der the bush were sharp. She grabbed a stand intellectually why he is attracted to Mick. handful of them and began sera ping them Knowing that it is "wrong" for a grown man up and down on the same spot until her to be sexually attracted to a thirteen-year­ hand was bloody. Then she fell back to old, he feels that it is "not quite right. Yes. the ground and lay looking up at the Wrong" (198). night. With the fiery hurt in her leg she Biff' s guilt about his feelings for Mick causes felt better. She was limp on the wet grass, him to send a contradictory message to Mick, and after a while her breath came slow for she thinks he dislikes her and is still angry and easy again. about some gum she stole from the cafe years (101) ago. She continues to think of him as this gruff, angry man, in fact, until the end of the The beauty of the music is too great for Mick, novel when Biff is no longer interested in her. and she must translate it into physical pain. At that point she thinks: "He didn' t have this After this orgasmic epiphany, Mick whispers grudge against her any more, so he must have out loud, '"Lord forgiveth me, for I knoweth forgotten about the pack of gum. Now he not what I do,"' and wonders why she says always wanted to talk to her" (301). Once Biff this (101). Clearly it is because she has experi­ has lost his obsessive attraction to her, he can enced orgasm and is only subliminally aware easily talk with her as he can with any other that she has transgressed some norm of be­ customer in his cafe. havior. Her rapture, however, carries two While Mick reaches her peak of artistic negative elements within it: the frustration of awareness the night of the party and heads being unable to fulfill its promise through downward on her trajectory from there, Biff personal artistic expression and a foreshad­ is becoming gradually more artistic and an­ owing of Mick's later defloration by Harry drogynous. He thinks about adopting a couple Minowitz. of little children and takes up playing the At this point Biff's attraction to Mick begins mandolin. He uses Alice's perfume and hair to move beyond the platonic or even "moth­ rinse, and takes pleasure in making a "gen­ erly" stage:3 "He watched her [Mick] as she teel, artistic display" in the front window of the cafe. ' While Mick's story is told fairly sequentially and For Mick, however, the path is all downhill. orderly through the novel's time-space, Biff's is not. We Bubber's shooting of Baby marks the begin­ find out more about his earlier life la ter in the novel, ning of change, opening "a veritable flood­ through his memories. In terms of his trajectory, how­ 4 ever, we see his progression in terms of androgyny and tide of tragedy" for Mick and her family. artistic awareness through his actions a nd thoughts . Mick is "tired of hanging around with the

194 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW kids" and no longer has that deep intuitive feel queer about, but suddenly it had just connection with them (Heart 139). Thus, she happened" (212). Of course, this "queer" feel­ makes a terrible mistake thinking she will ing Mick has is that of budding sexuality. teach Bubber a lesson by telling him that Fertilized with their caring friendship and Baby is dead, people are hunting for him, and physical closeness, the bud bursts into full he will go to Sing Sing where they ha:ve little color on the fateful day of the picnic in the electric chairs just his size. Bubber is natu­ country. For both Mick and Harry, the initia­ rally traumatized by this news, tries to run tion into adult sexuality is a tragedy. Harry away, and is never the same again. Mick's leaves town and becomes a mechanic because deep connection with her little brother is sev­ he cannot face his mother, while Mick "felt ered: "But he was a different kid-George­ very old, and it was like something was heavy going around by himself always like a person inside her. She was a grown person now, much older and with nobody, not even her, whether she wanted to be or not" (236). Mick knowing what was really in his mind" (153).5 is no longer a tomboy getting high on the Mick's unwitting rejection of Bubber, then, music in her head, for she has lost her head in continues her metamorphosis into female female sexuality: "It was like her head was adulthood and loss of the artistic power of broke off from her body and thrown away. androgyny. She works throughout the winter And her eyes looked up straight into the on her music and still plans to become fa­ blinding sun while she counted something in mous, but has moved the date back from her mind. And then this was the way. This seventeen to twenty. She is beginning to have was how it was" (235). Contrast this loss of a sense of time and an awareness that she is her head, this blindness, this passive resigna­ running out of it. The key figure, however, in tion, to the heightened sensory experience of Mick' s passage from androgyn to woman, is her orgasmic union with beauty after listen­ her childhood friend and neighbor, Harry ing to Beethoven. Minowitz. One winter afternoon fifteen-year­ Physically, Mick has been initiated into old Harry comes over to help with her En­ womanhood. The next steps out of androgyny glish homework as she sits on the back steps. are social and cultural: "Then in late June Mick ends up wrestling with him like a child, there was a sudden happening so important but they are no longer children: "As they that it changed everything" (270). The "hap­ walked across the dark back yard for some pening," of course, is that Mick accepts a job reason she felt funny. There was nothing to in Woolworth's to help with the family's money problems. She takes it at the begin­ ning of the summer, but knows she will not 'Alice Hall Petry, "Baby Wilson R edux: AJcCullers' be able to quit when school starts: "It was like The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, " Southern Studies 25.2 she had been trapped into something. The job (1986):196-203. wouldn't be just for the summer-but for a 5The falling out with a younger sibling is a recurrent long time, as long as she could see ahead. theme for McCullers and typically occurs at the point Once they were used to the money coming in when the older child enters the adult world through an it would be impossible to do without again" awareness of male or female sexuality. In Heart, Bill brushes Mick off when he begins to deal with adult (272). Ironically, Mick asks Singer if she problems: "Sometimes she hated Bill more than anyone should take this job, and he nods yes. She else in the world. He was different entirely from what sacrifices her androgyny, her autonomy and he used to be" (38). In McCullers' short story "Sucker," individualism as an artist, to become a the narrator brutally attacks his younger brother after a dismal rejection by a young woman. "'Don't you know woman, to take her social position as an adult when you're not wanted?'" he says to Sucker (8). "Sucker daughter in the family, a female worker in the was gone when I woke up the next day. And later when marketplace. I wanted to apologize as I had planned he looked at me in this new hard way so that I couldn't say a word" (9). Mick has followed her trajectory to its As the narrator struggles with adult sexuality, he cuts depths. As Biff says about her, "She had grown off his connection to his younger brother, and thereby older. Her rough and childish ways were al­ to his own childhood. The same thing occurs in The most gone. And instead there was something Member of the Wedding when Frankie begins to turn ladylike and delicate about her that was hard away from John Henry. See "Sucker" and The Member of the Wedding, Collected Stories of Carson McCullers (Bos­ to point out" (305). Mick has accepted her ton: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). cultural role as woman-wearing silk stock-

TAETZSCH 195 ings no matter how impractical; wasting her swift radiance of illumination he saw a small salary on dangling earrings and a silver glimpse of human struggle and of valor. bangle bracelet; smiling all day so that "she ... His soul expanded . But for a moment had to frown a long time to get her face only. For in him h e felt a warning, a shaft natural again" (299) . of terror. Between the two worlds he was Mick has also lost her muse: "But now no suspended ... . The left eye d elved nar­ music was in h er mind. That was a funny rowly into the past while the right gazed thing. It was like she was shut out from the wide and affrighted into a future of black­ inside room" (301). She no longer has the ness, error, and ruin. And he was sus­ energy to fight for h e r artistic vision because pended between radiance and darkness. "now sh e was always tired" (301). Mick does Between bitter irony and faith. think about buying a piano by putting aside (306) two dollars a week, and she ends her last scene in the book with a dete·rmination that it What Biff sees is the human conditi.on-the is "All right! O .K. ! Some good ," but this la­ struggle of hope and valor against dark forces m ent sounds more like wishful thinking than beyond knowing or control. For a split sec­ an actual plan that might be accomplished ond (it is a position impossible to maintain) (302). Mick remembers what happened to h e stands at the intersection of dialectical George and to his little red bicycle. When the opposites "between irony and faith." Freed family could no longer make payments on it, from the constraints of sexual identity, Biff is it was taken away. Feebly, Mick fantasizes finally able to see. He has moved, a t the end that if any m en came to take h er piano away, of his trajectory, into enlightenment. "As he she would knock them down. went to the door his walk gained steadiness. While Mick is fantasizing, Biff observes that And when at last he was inside again he h e is no longer obsessed b y her: "And Mick. composed himself soberly to await the morn­ The one who in the last months had lived so ing sun" (307). strangely in his heart. Was that done with Mick' s trajectory begins on the rooftop and too? Yes. It was finished" (305). Mick, who travels downward to a low point at the end of has almost become a woman (she still orders the novel when "She is frustrated in her at­ an ice-cream sundae with her beer), has no tempts to study art, disturbed by what she more power over him. In addition, Biff has has learned of female sexuality, and haunted moved on to a higher state in which h e loves by nightmares in which houses collapse upon people rather than a particular person: "Who h er." 6 We leave Mick angry and frustrated, would h e be loving now? No one person . and can only imagine a life for her similar to Anybody who came in out of the street to sit her sisters' and mother's. Biff's epiphany at for an hour and have a drink. But no one the end of the novel, however, signifies his p erson" (304). He has passed the need for rise to androgynous artistic vision and to connection to an individual, transcending it enlightenment. While Mick and Biff have not with a love for humanity. touched in human warmth or contact, their The expansion of Biff's spirit culminates in trajectories have crossed and are now com­ an epiphanic experience comparable to Mick' s plete. D rapturous union with Beethoven. Late in the night Biff is standing alone in the cafe, listen­ ing to a foreig n-"German, French, or Span­ 6Constance M. Perry, "Carson McCullers a nd the Fe­ ish"-voice of doom (305). Lost in medita­ m a le Wunderkind ," The Sou th ern Litera ry journal tion, he contemplates· the riddle of Singer's 19 .1 (1986): 3645 . life and d eath, when: L. Taetzsch is a writer and artist who ha s published essays ... suddenly he felt a quickening in him. in Central Park and The High Plains Literary Review and His heart turned and he leaned his back stories in C hiron Review, Pacific Review and Asylum, am ong others. against the counter for support. For in a

196 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW

FEATURED ARTISTS

Stanley H. Barkan is a poet and director of Cross Cultural Communications.

Joe Bolton's first book, Breckenridge County Suite, was published by The Cummington Press in 1989. He has new work in The Antioch Review, The New Criterion, Poetry, The Yale Review, and The North American Review. A 1989 NEA Fellow, he teaches at the University of Arizona.

Yves Bonnefoy is generally considered to be one of the greatest living French poets, as well as one of this century's creative and critical geniuses. His poetic career spans nearly four d ecades, from his earliest volume, Du mouvement et del 'immobilite de Douve, published in 1953 to Cequi Jut sans lumiere, which appeared in 1987. Author of numerous books and essays on poetics and art history as well as translations into French ofShakespeare and Yeats, Bonnefoy has held the Chair of Comparative Studies in Poetics at the College de France since 1982.

Daniel Bourne teaches at the College of Wooster, where he edits Artful Dodge. His poems and translations from the Polish appear in a number of places, including Field, American Poetry Review, and Partisan Review. He has just completed editing the section on Poland for Shifting Borders, an anthology of Eastern and Central European poetry forthcoming from Associated University Presses.

Zdena Bratrsovska lives in Prague and has published two books.

T. Alan Broughton is a professor of English at the University of Vermont. He has published four novels, four books of poetry, and a collection of short stories. His latest collection of poems is entitled Preparing to Be Happy.

Svetlana Burianova graduated from the Philosophical faculty. She lives in Prague as a free­ lance Russian and English interpreter. She has published one book of poetry.

Peter Cooley's fifth book, The Astonished Hours, has just been published by Carnegie-Mellon. He has taught creative writing at Tulane since 1975.

Cola Franzen's most recent translations are Poems of Arab Andalusia, City Lights, 1989, and Diary of a Voyage, by Guillermo Nunez. The Chilean painter, who recounts the story of his arrests, imprisonments, and eventual exile by the Pinochet regime.

Phyllis Sanchez Gussler grew up in California and Alaska. She moved to North Carolina ten years ago, where she enjoyed an eight-year period of indentured servitude to the data process­ ing profession before returning to graduate school and writing poetry.

Richard Katrovas is the author of several volumes of peotry and teaches at the University of New Orleans.

Vivian Lamarque's first book, a poetry collection, Teresino, won the Viareggio Prize Opera Prima. She has translated Soleil de Minuit by J. Prevert and Pieces sur L'Art by P. Valery.

Christopher Merrill is the author of two books of poetry, Workbook and Fevers & Tides; editor of the Forgotten Language: Contemporary Poets and Nature; and co-translator (with Jeanie Fleming) of Andre Breton's Constellations.

Elizabeth Gamble Miller is an associate professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Southern Methodist University, where she teaches Spanish-American poetry and literary translation. Her four book publications include Hugo Lindo's poetry and the fables of David Escobar Balindo in bilingual editions. She has been editor of the American Literary Translators Association newsletter since 1984 and is on the board of Translation Review.

198 NEW ORLEANS REVIEW Rita Signorelli-Pappas has had poems published recently in Poetry, National Forum, and N egative Capability and has new work forthcoming in Kansas Quarterly, Saint Andrew's Review, and San Jose Studies.

Sandra Nelson is the Editor-in-Chief for the Cream City Review. She has published over 113 poems and short stories in more than 68 magazines and anthologies.

Jan Rejzek ia a freelance journalist and music critic. She has published two books.

Lucinda Roy is an associate professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. Her collection of poems, Wailing the Dead to Slee p, was published in London, and she is the recipient of the Baxter Hathaway Poetry Prize for her slave narrative poem Needlework. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in magazines in the U.S. and the West Indies.

Pedro Salinas was born in Madrid in 1892 and died in Boston in 1951. He taught at the Universities of Murcia, Seville, Paris, Cambridge, and Puerto Rico. His complete poems appeared under the title Poesfa junta.

David Sander's poems and translations have appeared in various small magazines including Poetry Ea st, The Christian Science Monitor, and Stand. He is currently associate director of the University of Arkansas Press.

Lisa Sapinkopf's translations of Yves Bonnefoy's poems won the Columbia University Trans­ lation Center Prize. Her translations of Bonnefoy and other authors have appeared in Pans Review, Poetry, The Boston Review, Partisan Review, Ploughshares, Michigan Quarterly, New Orleans Review, Berkeley Poetry Review, Translation, and numerous other journals.

Josef Simon has published The Desert Bird and several other books of poetry.

Katherine Soniat's most recent collection of poems, Cracking Eggs, was published by the University Presses of Florida. Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Georgia Review, The North American Review, The Ohio Review, The Yale Review, and the The Minnesota Review. She teaches at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Barry Spack's teaches at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His seventh collection of poems, Brief Sparrow, appeared from Illumenati in 1988.

Michael Spence's work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Sewanee Review, Yankee, The Southern Review , Prairie Schooner, and others. His book The Spine was published in 1987 by Purdue U . Press. In 1990 he was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Karel Sys graduated from The Prague School of Economics. He is the editor of the magazine, Tvorba. He has published seven books of poetry.

Renata Treitel is a teacher, poet and translator. She was educated in Italy, Argentina and the United States. She has published one collection of poetry, German Notebook (1983).

Ivan Wernisch has published five collections of poetry. He lives in Prague.

Saul Yurkievich an Argentinian poet, critic, and professor of Latin American literature at the University of Paris. He has published some dozen volumes of poetry. His latest book is A imagen y semejanza.

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