Faulstick, Dustin, 03-26-14
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‘Nothing New Under the Sun’: Ecclesiastes and the Twentieth-Century-US-Literary Imagination A dissertation presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy Dustin Faulstick May 2014 © 2014 Dustin Faulstick. All Rights Reserved. 2 This dissertation titled ‘Nothing New Under the Sun’: Ecclesiastes and the Twentieth-Century-US-Literary Imagination by DUSTIN FAULSTICK has been approved for the Department of English and the College of Arts and Sciences by Paul C. Jones Professor of English Robert Frank Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 Abstract FAULSTICK, DUSTIN, Ph.D., May 2014, English ‘Nothing New Under the Sun’: Ecclesiastes and the Twentieth-Century-US-Literary Imagination Director of Dissertation: Paul C. Jones This dissertation examines the influence of Ecclesiastes on the fiction of prominent US authors including Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Ernest Hemingway. While critics from J. Hillis Miller to Carol J. Singley have addressed Ecclesiastes’ presence in these texts, this project argues that Ecclesiastes provided a nearly inevitable allusive choice for turn-of-the-twentieth-century US writers. The biblical book anticipates scientific and philosophical developments of the era and shares foundational modern ideas on nature’s indifference, the value of a realistic presentation of life, and a concern over life’s meaninglessness. The project requires scholars to rethink the role of religious allusion in late-nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts by unearthing a comprehensive religious engagement in a literary period often thought antithetical to religion. 4 Acknowledgments I wish to thank Paul C. Jones, Carey Snyder, Amrit Singh, and Cory Crawford for serving on my dissertation committee. Paul and Carey offered especially invaluable advice throughout the process. Also at Ohio University, Joe McLaughlin, Mark Halliday, Ayesha Hardison, and Thom Dancer contributed to my thinking about this project. At Emory University, Brent Strawn led a course on Ecclesiastes that generated my initial reflections on Ecclesiastes and literature. Thanks also to Mom, Dad, Courtney, and Ben. 5 Table of Contents Page Abstract ............................................................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgments ............................................................................................................... 4 Chapter 1: 'Another Generation Cometh': The Modern Appeal of Ecclesiastes ................. 6 Chapter 2: 'The Race is Not to the Swift': Ecclesiastes and US Naturalism ..................... 59 Chapter 3: 'He that Loveth Silver': Ecclesiastes-Endorsed Realism in The Golden Bowl and The House of Mirth ..................................................... 128 Chapter 4: 'And the Sun Goeth Down': Ecclesiastes-Inspired Skepticism in the Modernism of Ernest Hemingway and Jean Toomer ................................ 194 Chapter 5: 'Already of Old Time': Taking Ecclesiastes to The Street ............................. 261 Epilogue: 'A Time to Embrace': Ecclesiastes, Postsecularism, and the Value of a Reverent Skepticism ................................................................................... 291 Notes ............................................................................................................................... 304 Works Cited .................................................................................................................... 320 6 Chapter One | ‘Another Generation Cometh’1: The Modern Appeal of Ecclesiastes Few ideas have influenced thinking in the United States more than Christianity. It follows that few texts have been more influential in US literature than the Christian Bible. In his In The Shadow of a Great Rock: A Literary Appreciation of the King James Bible, Harold Bloom calls the King James Bible a primary influence on US literature: “the KJB became a basic source of American Literature: Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson are its children, and so are William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy” (23).2 Still, it comes as at least something of a surprise that three of the Modern Library’s 100 best novels of the twentieth century take their titles from a single biblical book. Quotations from Ecclesiastes provide the title for Henry James’ 1904 The Golden Bowl (12:6), Edith Wharton’s 1905 The House of Mirth (7:4), and Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 The Sun Also Rises (1:5). Hemingway also considered several Ecclesiastes’ quotations as possible titles for his other novel included on the 100- best list, A Farewell to Arms. As evidenced by these four novels on the Modern Library’s best list, the approximately 5,000-word Ecclesiastes – which follows its main character Qoheleth3 through his autonomous journey challenging traditional wisdom, advocating eating and drinking well in a loving community, and trying to make sense of his perception that “all is vanity” (1:2) – significantly contributed to the twentieth-century US literary imagination.4 7 Beyond these well-known novels by James, Wharton, and Hemingway, Ecclesiastes’ prevalence in the United States extends to the naturalism of Stephen Crane, Ellen Glasgow, and Jack London. Crane’s 1894 “The Men in the Storm,” his 1897 “The Open Boat,” and Glasgow’s 1898 Phases of an Inferior Planet make use of Ecclesiastes to express their views on nature’s indifference, and London’s character Captain Wolf Larsen quotes Ecclesiastes extensively in London’s 1904 novel The Sea-Wolf. African American writers Jean Toomer and Ann Petry also draw attention to Ecclesiastes in their works by quoting verses from the book: Toomer’s narrator does so in the final paragraph of his 1923 Cane, and in Petry’s 1953 The Narrows, her character Cesar the Walking Man chalks Ecclesiastes 1:10 onto the sidewalk. While I focus on the fiction identified in the preceding two paragraphs, the twentieth-century literary investment in Ecclesiastes extends to several poets, novelists, and storywriters whom I do not consider in depth. In Theodore Dreiser’s 1911 novel Jennie Gerhardt, Lester Cane reflects on life’s “uselessness […] which [he claims] has been best expressed by the Preacher in Ecclesiastes” (192). Sherwood Anderson’s 1919 story “Sophistication” shares Ecclesiastes’ concern that everyone “must live and die in uncertainty” (234).5 T. S. Eliot borrowed phrases, themes, and rhythms from Ecclesiastes in at least four of his major poems: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock (1915), The Waste Land (1922), “Ash Wednesday” (1930), and Four Quartets (1934).6 Louis Untermeyer takes on the persona of Ecclesiastes’ speaker in his 1928 poem “Koheleth.” And, in what could serve as a thesis statement for Ecclesiastes’ modern popularity, 8 Thomas Wolfe’s posthumous 1940 novel You Can’t Go Home Again offers Ecclesiastes this especially high praise: of all I have ever seen or learned, that book seems to me the noblest, the wisest, and the most powerful expression of man’s life upon this earth — and also the highest flower of poetry, eloquence, and truth. I am not given to dogmatic judgments in the matter of literary creation, but if I had to make one I could say that Ecclesiastes is the greatest single piece of writing I have ever known, and the wisdom expressed in it the most lasting and profound. (732-3) Furthermore, in the complete 1950 version of Wallace Stevens’ poem “An Ordinary Evening in New Haven,” Stevens’ speaker associates Ecclesiastes with the project of modernism: “A figure like Ecclesiast7 / Rugged and luminous, chants in the dark / A text that is an answer, though obscure” (Canto XIX). Ray Bradbury’s 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 gives its protagonist Montag the role of memorizing Ecclesiastes; Ecclesiastes provides John Updike with the name of Episcopal priest Jack Eccles in his 1960 novel Rabbit, Run8 and his subsequent Rabbit novels; Philip K. Dick’s 1962 novel The Man in the High Castle contains an internal novel titled after a reference to Ecclesiastes 12:5: The Grasshopper Lies Heavy; and Roger Zelazny’s 1963 science-fiction novelette A Rose for Ecclesiastes imagines religion on Mars to share Ecclesiastes’ worldview. Judson Mitcham’s 1991 poetry collection Somewhere in Ecclesiastes won the Devins Award for Poetry, and Mark Jarman’s 1997 poetry collection Questions for Ecclesiastes won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize in 1998. 9 Prominent nineteenth-century US-literary voices also have ties to Ecclesiastes. Herman Melville’s 1851 Moby Dick calls Ecclesiastes “the truest of all books” (424). And while Walt Whitman and Mark Twain rarely quoted from the book, twenty-first- century critics have described their works of in terms of Ecclesiastes. David Haven Blake’s essay “Whitman’s Ecclesiastes: The 1860 ‘Leaves of Grass’ Cluster” describes sections of “Leaves of Grass” as “reminiscent of the Book of Ecclesiastes, […] a record of Whitman’s struggles with time, doubt, vanity, and the nature of the universe” (613). James H. Smylie’s essay “The Preacher: Mark Twain and Slaying Christians” argues that Twain’s “eclectic style sounds much like the preacher of Ecclesiastes” (485). Ecclesiastes’ influence on Melville, Whitman, and Twain suggests that these writers in turn – as they did for so much in US culture – set the stage for Ecclesiastes’ popularity in the late-nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Acknowledging these Ecclesiastes’ parallels in the mid-nineteenth century rightly discourages claiming