Translating the Olfactory Language of Faulkner and García Márquez
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Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 2006 The scent of a new world novel: translating the olfactory language of Faulkner and García Márquez Terri Smith Ruckel Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Ruckel, Terri Smith, "The cs ent of a new world novel: translating the olfactory language of Faulkner and García Márquez" (2006). LSU Doctoral Dissertations. 331. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/331 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please [email protected]. THE SCENT OF A NEW WORLD NOVEL: TRANSLATING THE OLFACTORY LANGUAGE OF FAULKNER AND GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of English by Terri Smith Ruckel B.A. University of Southern Mississippi, 1998 M.A., University of Southern Mississippi, 2001 December 2006 Acknowledgments No matter how solitary the scholar might feel in braving the sacrifices of time and energy necessary to complete a work of this scope, debts to those who sacrificed on the scholar’s behalf are always incurred. The first debt of gratitude that I owe is to my husband and then to my family. My work has taken a great deal of time and focus away from them all, and I will never be able to repay them for their support and understanding. Thank you, Ryan, for your constant friendship, love, and encouragement. Thank you, Gary Smith, for being the kind of father and man who makes the word “hero” still relevant. Thank you, Tony, Traci, Taryn, Tiffany, Tricia, Emili, Lane, Raegan, and Lauren – you all were the impetus for me to begin, but more importantly, for me to complete, this academic journey. I also want to acknowledge the support of my dissertation advisor, Dr. Bainard Cowan, whose contagious passion for the liberal arts has only been surpassed by his patience as my mentor. The committee of scholars assembled to help me complete my academic goals could not have been more collegial and accessible: Dr. John Wharton Lowe, Dr. Katherine Henninger, and Dr. Brannon Costello have all earned my gratitude and respect. Finally, I thank God with whom all things are possible. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgments...........................................................................................................................ii Abstract...........................................................................................................................................iv Chapter One Introduction: The Nexus of Smell in the Novels of Faulkner and García Márquez ...............................................................1 Two The Life of the Nose: Philosophical Perceptions of Smell’s Intimacy with Knowledge, Pleasure, and the Imagination...............................................11 Three Smell and the New World Novel: Contemplating Being in Redolent Metaphors....................................................................38 Four Eidolons and Smells, Like Souls: The Site of Memory and the Past in Absalom, Absalom! and Leaf Storm.......................................................57 Five The Quintessence and Puissance of Allure: Aromas of Sexuality in Faulkner and García Márquez.............................................................100 Six An Ethics of Smell: Revelations of the Other in Faulkner’s Light In August and García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera...............................131 Seven Conclusion: Rejoining the Intimacy of the Physical with Intimacy of the Universal.................................................................155 Works Cited.................................................................................................................................158 Vita...............................................................................................................................................174 iii Abstract Both William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez introduce the olfactory as a focal element in their writing, producing works that challenge the singular primacy of sight as the unrivaled means by which the New World might be understood. As they translate experiences of the New World into language, both writers record the power of olfactory perception to reflect memory and history, to shape identity, to mark unmistakably certain crisis moments of ethical action, and to delineate a form of knowledge crucial to their New World poetics of the novel. Observing and analyzing the olfactory language particular to the cultural spaces in and around Yoknapatawpha County and the village of Macondo, respectively, provides a means to enter the imaginary landscapes not only of these major novelists but of Plantation America and the New World in general. In line with those studies that examine tropes, issues, and themes common to U.S. and Spanish American literature, this study comprises an analysis of how the olfactory environment serves Faulkner and García Márquez as symbol and subject in the heroic diachronic sweeps of their respective Yoknapatawpha and Macondo narratives. Both authors use smells in order to get at truth –to get closer to knowledge, and smell becomes the intersection between the structure of experience and the structure of knowledge. Their olfactory passageways mark out the South and the Caribbean, leading to a rooted, complex, nuanced understanding of truth in a world that modern civilization has paved over. In this way, their fictional olfactory situations and language establish a critique of the modern era, of an all-too-Cartesian modernity in the world, and point to a new poetics specifically for the New World, where there might still be hope for the memory and the promise of a land that is “fresh from the hand of God.” iv Chapter One Introduction: The Nexus of Smell in the Novels of Faulkner and García Márquez Smells are surer than sights or sounds To make your heart-strings crack – – Rudyard Kipling, “Lichtenburg” In his essay, “Baroque and the Marvelous Real,” Alejo Carpentier discusses the dilemma faced by those American writers who would translate experiences of the New World into language, and he argues for the necessity not only of a “new vocabulary” but also a “new optic” to be used in depicting the New World. Both William Faulkner and Gabriel García Márquez have produced works that accomplish such translations, though, significantly, their novels reformulate the notion of a “new optic” by introducing the olfactory as a focal element in their writing. Thereby, they challenge the singular primacy of sight as the unrivaled means by which the New World might be understood. In uncounted passages throughout their novels, both writers record the power of olfactory perception to reflect memory and history, and, as I intend to demonstrate in exploring their works, to shape identity, to mark unmistakably certain crisis moments of ethical action, and to delineate a form of knowledge crucial to their New World poetics of the novel. Observing and analyzing the olfactory language particular to the cultural spaces in and around Yoknapatawpha County and the village of Macondo, respectively, provides a means to enter the imaginary landscapes not only of these major novelists but of Plantation America and the New World in general. Throughout the Sound and the Fury, for instance, Faulkner reiterates both Quentin’s and Benjy’s sensitivity to odors. Quentin associates his memories of Caddy with the odor of honeysuckle, and Benjy can “smell” Caddy’s sickness (75). Attention to “a wistaria vine 1 2 blooming for the second time” sets Absalom, Absalom! in motion in the dark parlor of an antebellum home where “the dim coffin-smelling gloom sweet and oversweet with the twice- bloomed wistaria against the outer wall” resuscitates a dead time back to life (1-4). Having wielded his natural endowment of “sensory remembering” in Chapter One, Quentin begins Chapter Two of Absalom in the “strange iron New England snow,” where he remembers “that dead summer twilight- -the wistaria, the cigar-smell, the fireflies- -attenuated up from Mississippi and into this strange room” (141). Similarly, in the Unvanquished Faulkner frames numerous scenes as well as the final chapter (“An Odor of Verbena”) with sprigs of verbena, a “material”close at hand to him as a Southerner, and particularly suitable because, as Drusilla claims, it has an odor “above the smell of horses and courage” (253). These are odors that Drusilla, Bayard’s stepmother, should know about: she concurrently wore verbena in her hair while cross-dressing in a male soldier’s uniform in order to ride with a regiment of Confederate soldiers into battle. García Márquez’s first novella, Leaf Storm, unfolds likewise with special attention given to olfactory perception: “The whirlwind . contaminated everything with its swirling crowd smell, the smell of skin secretion and hidden death” (1). As the novel progresses, García Márquez depicts the singular significance of smell to the unnamed grandson who bases his familiarity