Chapter Nine Yorick As a Polyphonic Character
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Chapter Nine Yorick as a Polyphonic Character In his study of Dostoevsky’s novels, Bakhtin introduced the idea of polypho- ny in an attempt to highlight their uniqueness in terms of a plurality of equal- ly valid voices making up their versatile ideological constitution. I believe, however, that the category can also be applied to a single literary character to study his or her patchwork identity. This application, in fact, is also grounded in the Bakhtinian theory. The critic, in a 1961 essay rethinking the arguments put forward in “the Dostoevsky Book”, writes: “A single consciousness is contradictio in adjecto. Consciousness is in essence multiple. Pluralia tan- tum” (Bakhtin 1984a: 288). The idea of the multiplicity of identity, of course, is not Bakhtin’s invention. In fact, it is very much in line with David Hume’s argument that “self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos’d to have a reference” (Hume 1975: 251), and that consequently, “The mind is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations” (Hume 1975: 253).1 I will argue in what follows that the construction of Yorick as a literary character can, on the one hand, be taken as an illustration of Hume’s theory and, on the other, makes a rewarding subject of a Bakhtinian reading. 1. Yorick’s intertextual and extratextual self The figure of Yorick is perhaps the most complex literary creation in Sterne’s oeuvre. His complexity depends, for the most part, on his existence in be- tween different texts and also on his relationship to Sterne’s life. In fact, his 1 The affinities between Sterne’s and Hume’s approaches to the category of personal identity are also recognised by Dussinger (1974: 189). 186 In Quest of the Self identity as a literary character is an outcome of a dynamic dialogue between literary tradition, Sterne’s life and his work.2 Chronologically speaking, his origins are to be found in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act 5 Scene 1, in which the gravediggers dig up the skull of Yorick, “the king’s jester”. Taking over their find, Hamlet recalls the fool in the cele- brated speech: Alas, poor Yorick. I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excel- lent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and how abhorred my imagination is. My gorge rises at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft. Where be your jibes now? Your gambols? Your songs? Your flashes of merriment that were wont to set the table on a roar? No one now to mock your own jeering? Quite chopfallen? (Shakespeare 2006: 335) What the figure of Shakespeare’s Yorick, and Hamlet in general, stood for in Sterne’s understanding was, as Monkman writes, “its ever-tormentingly mys- terious mixture of wit, humor, emotion, death, its jesting beside an open grave, its essential gaiety” (Monkman 1971: 113). These qualities define Sterne’s Yorick throughout the author’s work. In both Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey the intertextual dependence on Shakespeare’s deceased jester is explicitly established. In Volume I of Tristram Shandy Mr Yorick, the local parson, is intro- duced and extensively characterised. Given Tristram’s hobby-horsical obses- sion with origins, it is by no means surprising that a substantial part of the presentation refers to Parson Yorick’s ancestry: [Yorick’s] family was originally of Danish extraction, and had been transplanted into England as early as in the reign of Horwendillus, king of Denmark, in whose court it seems, an ancestor of this Mr. Yorick’s, and from whom he was lineally descended, held a considerable post to the day of his death. [...] It has often come into my head, that this post could be no other than that of the king’s chief Jester;---and that Hamlet’s Yorick, in our Shakespear, many of whose plays, you know, are founded upon authenticated facts,--was certainly the very man. (TS, 25-26) 2 In the following sketch, my examination of Yorick’s intertextual constitution will be limited to his dependence on other figures bearing the name of Yorick. Therefore, it will not account for Yorick’s quixotism, explicitly referred to in both Tristram Shandy and A Sentimental Journey. For a study of Sterne’s Quixotes, including Yorick, see Niehus 1985: 41-60 and Paulson 1998: 150-158. .