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An Aesthetic Consciousness

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An Aesthetic Consciousness An Aesthetic Consciousness: An Existentialist Reading of William Faulkner’s Fiction Maya Heller MPhil English and Comparative Literature Goldsmiths, University of London December 2017 I hereby declare that all of the work presented in this thesis is my own. Maya Heller, 7th December 2017 2 Abstract This thesis presents an existentialist reading of William Faulkner’s early fiction (1925-31). Moving away from a regionalist perspective the thesis argues that Faulkner’s work can be viewed as part of a universal and aesthetic exploration of the human condition. By focusing specifically on Jean-Paul Sartre’s early philosophy (1930s-40s) and the concepts of consciousness, the duality of being: being-in-itself (the world of objects) and being-for-itself (human consciousness), the thesis investigates the way in which consciousness operates ontologically in Faulkner’s prose. It argues that a decidedly existentialist consciousness can be traced in Faulkner, one in which a linked relationship between imagination and reality lays bare the fragility of the characters and a sense of displacement in Faulkner’s fiction. Within the context of existentialism, the thesis also emphasises the importance of the artist figure within Faulkner’s writing. As the embodiment of existential action and choice, the artist in Faulkner’s fiction reflects a sense of liberation and freedom. In this context, the existentialist reading re- examines the way the artist’s sense of reality hinges on the interaction between human consciousness and the world of objects, between Faulkner’s representation of art (text, painting and sculpture) and form and technique (fragmentation and multiple perspective). 3 CONTENTS Introduction 5­12 Chapter One: William Faulkner’s Sanctuary (1931) – French existentialist reception of William Faulkner in the 1930s and 1940s Sanctuary (1931) 12­43 a. Existence Precedes Essence 25­26 b. Consciousness 26­28 c. Analysis of Temple 28­43 Chapter Two: William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying (1930) – Aesthetic Consciousness: form and technique 44­93 a. Existence 45­50 b. Death and fragmentation of form 51­54 c. The coffin as an existentialist object 54­64 d. Negation 64­71 e. Fragmentation of form and Cubism 71­80 f. Darl’s Existentialism 80­93 Chapter Three: William Faulkner’s Mosquitoes (1927) and Elmer (1925), and Jean­Paul Sartre Nausea (1938) – Imaging Consciousness: an Analysis of the Artwork and the Imaginary Object 94­151 a. Mosquitoes (1927), and Nausea (1938) 96­99 b. The notion of nausea 99­111 c. Colour in Elmer and Nausea 111­124 d. The magical object and imaging consciousness 124­129 e. Music and Analogon 129­142 f. Stasis and movement 142­148 g. Being­for­others 149­151 Conclusion 152­159 Bibliography 160­169 4 INTRODUCTION ‘… So vast, so limitless in capacity is man’s imagination to disperse and burn away the rubble-dross of fact and probability, leaving only truth and dream …’ 1 This research project proposes an existentialist reading of Faulkner’s early fiction. The aim is twofold, first of all, to provide a platform on which to investigate the role of imagination in Faulkner’s fiction and secondly to rethink some of the reasons for Faulkner’s popularity in the context of French existentialism. Through an existentialist reading, Faulkner’s representation of reality will also be analysed in an attempt to move away from the traditional regionalist perspective on his work. My argument will also highlight Faulkner’s certain universal themes in Faulkner’s work, particularly with respect to the concepts of being and consciousness as defined by Jean-Paul Sartre in his works, The Imaginary - A Phenomenological Psychology Of The Imagination (1940) and Being and Nothingness: An Essay On Phenomenological Ontology (1957). I will argue that Faulkner’s early prose between 1925-1931 exhibits most clearly what can be defined as an existentialist form of imagination and reality through the use of textual form (such as ellipsis and italics) and technique (such as multiple perspective and fragmentation) as particular aesthetic devices. Faulkner’s early prose in: Elmer (1925), Mosquitoes (1927), Sanctuary (1931) and As I Lay Dying (1930), displays an important attention to colour, fragmentation, multiple perspective and the art object as a way to question how imagination operates. For Faulkner, the re- representation of reality necessitates the artist’s eye, it necessitates in other words, the artist’s complete immersion into the surrounding landscape. By focusing on these aesthetic ideas, Faulkner’s fiction will be inserted into a reading in which his writing is seen as an investigation into a universal 1 William Faulkner, Requiem For a Nun, (Penguin books, 1960) (1951) p. 219. 5 metaphysical state of being, a state, which situates the individual as the core subject through choice and human freedom. I intend to focus on aspects of consciousness and imagination in Jean- Paul Sartre’s early philosophy (1930’s- 1940s’) as found in: L’Être et néant (1943) Being and Nothingness: An Essay On Phenomenological Ontology, (1957), L’Existentialisme Est Un Humanisme (1946) Existentialism and Humanism (1948) and L’imaginaire (1940) The Imaginary- A Phenomenological Psychology of The Imagination (1940), as well as Sartre’s critical work on Faulkner: ‘William Faulkner’s Sartoris’2 (1938), and ‘On The Sound and the Fury: Time in the Work of Faulkner’3 (1947). My aim is not only to identify particular existentialist concepts within Faulkner’s fiction, such as freedom, choice, bad faith, contingency, facticity and the duality of being, being-in-itself (être–en- soi) and being–for-itself (être-pour–soi), and to evaluate how they effect Faulkner’s use of characterisation and narrative, but to apply these terms specifically to Faulkner’s use of form and technique. Aesthetic elements of Faulkner’s prose such as fragmentation and multiple perspective gain emotional and critical weight when viewed in the light of these existentialist ideas. They accentuate certain crucial thematic concerns in Faulkner’s fiction, such as how human consciousness channels individual struggle and universal dilemmas in the face of death. This will be explored in As I Lay Dying, as will violence as a form of physical choice in Sanctuary and artistic freedom in Mosquitoes and Elmer. My approach will thus be both philosophical and historical. The argument continues with the identification of some of the elements common to the existentialist reading of form and technique in Faulkner with that of American criticism of his work mainly from the 1950s onwards. Some of the American critics who will be discussed are: Robert Penn Warren, Michael Millgate and Olga Vickery, all a part of the New criticism of the 1940s-1950s who moved away from ‘biographical, sociological, and historical analyses […] and argued for a turn to the text itself and the practice of what they called 2 ‘Sartoris’, Nouvelle Revue Française, L (February 1938), 323-28. In (Situations I). 3 ‘On the Sound and the Fury: Time in the Work of Faulkner’, Literary and Philosophical Essays, trans. Annette Michelson (London: Rider, 1955), 79-87. 6 close reading’4. By comparing some of these formalist ideas regarding form and technique with existentialist concerns the introspective nature of Faulkner’s characters, and how they operate within their environment will be analysed. Such an analysis will unravel some of Faulkner’s concerns regarding mortality, human endeavour and individual isolation. The motivation for my existentialist reading stems partly from a gap in scholarly research on Faulkner and existentialism. I have encountered numerous readings of Faulkner by critics such as Lothar Hönnighausen and André Bleikasten that mention existentialist terms, such as “de trop” and “consciousness”, without fully developing or explaining them. It is my aim to elaborate and explain some of this existing criticism in relation to Faulkner’s fiction. Critics such as William J Sowder and Ralf A Ciancio, present only a partial existentialist reading of Faulkner’s work, and thus my aim is partly to expand on these existential readings. Some of Faulkner’s texts, such as Mosquitoes (1927) and Elmer (1925), have not been examined in existential terms at all. The line of inquiry will hinge on Sartre’s early (1930s-40s) existentialist conception of consciousness as the starting point for a rereading of Faulkner’s writings. The concept of human consciousness will be viewed from interconnected ontological and aesthetic angles. The ontological argument will focus on the binary relationship between being-in-itself (the world of objects) and being-for-itself (human consciousness) and the importance of the physicality and concreteness of existence. At the heart of the conflict of consciousness according to Sartre is the realisation that the world and its objects are indefinite and concrete, whereas human consciousness is continually changing and non-lasting. This friction between human fluidity of thoughts and actions and the world of objects, is also part of an aesthetic argument, which will be further explored through Faulkner’s use of fragmentation and multiple perspective in As I Lay Dying. Faulkner’s techniques are read in the context of the existential split between the external and the internal aspects of consciousness and its implications for understanding man’s place in the world. My argument will also connect 4 Annette Trefzer, ‘Introduction’, in Annette Tretzer and Ann J. Abadie (eds.) Faulkner and Formalism: Return of the Text (University of Mississippi Press, 2012), pp.IX-XXIII.p.IX. 7 Faulkner’s notion of how form operates within narrative, and its relation to existentialist reality, with that of art and the role of the artist. The example used will be an analysis of how Cubist aesthetics and wider modernist concerns relate to existentialist theory. ** Chapter 1, ‘William Faulkner’s Sanctuary (1931) - French existentialist reception of William Faulkner in the 1930s and 1940s’ In this chapter the important role of the French critic and Princeton professor Maurice-Edgar Coindreau in translating Faulkner’s fiction into French will form the starting point for a reading of Faulkner’s reception in France.
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