IMMORTALIZING THE HUMAN SPIRIT: ANALYZING FAULKNER THROUGH SCHOPENHAUER ________________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Submitted to the Temple University Graduate Board ________________________________________________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY ________________________________________________________________________ By Christine Lynn Webster May, 2015 Examining Committee Members: J. T. Barbarese, Dissertation Reader, English Department, Rutgers-Camden University Sheldon Brivic, Dissertation Advisor, English Department, Temple University Daniel O’Hara, Dissertation Advisor, English Department, Temple University Alan Singer, Dissertation Advisor, English Department, Temple University © Copyright 2015 By Christine Lynn Webster All Rights Reserved ii ABSTRACT As a writer who composed some of the most formidable American prose of the twentieth century, William Faulkner wrote modernist novels the numerous complexities and ambiguities of which require continued decipherment. Critics have attempted to interpret If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem; Absalom, Absalom!; As I Lay Dying; The Sound and the Fury; and Light in August through various critical approaches, yet none has successfully pinpointed Faulkner’s aesthetic philosophy. This dissertation satisfies the critical deficiency by studying Faulkner’s work through the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, namely the latter’s view of reality as will and representation, or truth and illusive manifestation. Ultimately, this endeavor leads to the discovery that Faulkner used literature to commemorate and immortalize the human spirit in its continual fight to persevere against the constraining nature of causality. Analyzing the themes and formal permutations of each novel, this dissertation notes Faulkner’s concern with the spatial and temporal boundaries characteristic of the human condition and the limits they present for Reason and the maintenance of joy. The argument identifies Faulkner’s Schopenhauer-esc advocacy for one’s temporary denial of the “individual will” or ego in moments of aesthetic transcendence that permit an alleviation of suffering. This previously overlooked connection between Schopenhauer and Faulkner recognizes the author’s desire to produce the conditions necessary for the reader to glimpse the universal will in an extension of the present moment. iii This book is dedicated to my mother, Arlene Webster, who wanted me to finish this dissertation more than she wanted anything for herself. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I acknowledge with gratitude the assistance of my three advisors, Dan O’Hara, Sheldon Brivic, and Alan Singer, all of whom—in different ways—were instrumental in my progress. Their feedback about my work was invaluable. Likewise, I appreciate J. T. Barbarese for acting as my outside reader: for taking the time to read my dissertation and to provide his helpful input. I also extend warm thanks to my mother, Arlene Webster, for the constant encouragement that she showed me through the drafting of my dissertation. Her selfless desire to see me succeed—even during her own personal challenges—motivated me and gave me a level of emotional support that not only made me feel loved but that helped me to persist through a task of this magnitude. My sisters, Charlene and Kelly—and my grandparents, Nick and Mary, also regularly showed enthusiasm and interest in my progress, which contributed to a climate of ambition, support, and hope. For these reasons, I am very thankful to them. I also thank a number of friends and colleagues for their encouragement, inquiry, support, and positivity: (my boyfriend) Marc Hansen, Donna Armstrong, Joe Diaco, Keith O’Shaughnessy, James Coyle, Samantha Faucher and her family, Michelle Koprivica, and Kira Matonick. I greatly appreciate their kind words, friendship, and actions. v TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...iii DEDICATION……………………………………………………………………………iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS………………………………………………………………...v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………………………………...vii PREFACE……………………………………………………………………………….viii CHAPTERS 1. IMMORTALIZING ROMANTIC LOVE IN IF I FORGET THEE, JERUSALEM……………...…………………………………...1 2. DENYING THE CULTURAL WILL OF SEXUAL AND RACIAL OPPRESSION IN ABSALOM, ABSALOM!.................................................42 3. SELF-DEFENSES OF THE WILL-TO-LIVE: EGO REFORMATION AND SELF-DEPRECATION IN AS I LAY DYING………………………………...75 4. QUENTIN’S SUICIDE AS AN AFFIRMATION OF THE WILL-TO-LIVE................................................................................................118 5. DENIAL OF THE EMBODIED WILL IN LIGHT IN AUGUST: A MODERN RENDITION OF ANCIENT GREEK TRAGEDY…………………152 CONCLUSION…………..…………………..………………………………………....202 WORKS CITED………………………………………..………………………………206 vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AA Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! AILD Faulkner, As I Lay Dying ES Schopenhauer, The Essential Schopenhauer: Key Selections from The World as Will and Representation FW Schopenhauer, Prize Essay on the Freedom of the Will JER Faulkner, If I Forget Thee, Jerusalem OFRPSR Schopenhauer, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of the Sufficient Reason LA Faulkner, Light in August PP I Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume I PP II Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume II SF Faulkner, Sound in the Fury WWR I Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, Volume I WWR II Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, Volume II vii PREFACE Background In the hundred-plus years of criticism of Faulkner’s novels, scholars have offered insightful contributions, yet no one has yet sufficiently apprehended the author’s aesthetic philosophy and vision. This dissertation satisfies that need. If critics were to carefully analyze If I Forget Thee Jerusalem; Absalom, Absalom!; As I Lay Dying; The Sound and the Fury; and Light in August, they would notice that Faulkner was actually lamenting the mortal condition and using his modernist art to provide hope and escape. Faulkner knew that causal limitation—or the human condition of being constrained by space and time— forbade the maintenance of joy, as pleasurable moments are ephemeral. Moreover, he knew that time harbored the cultural prejudices of era and place, putting constraints on opportunities through ugly ideologies and unfair conditions like poverty and racism. As a result, his subject matter was often tragic: full of natural death, suicide, murder, abortion, and suffering. We would be remiss to label Faulkner as merely a pessimist, though, for when asked by an interviewer, “Do you consider human life basically a tragedy,” Faulkner replied, “Yes. But man’s immortality is that he is faced with a tragedy which he can’t beat and he still tries to do something with it” (Meriwether and Millgate 89). Faulkner’s work attempts to beat the tragedy of man’s mortality. In fact, his modernist techniques provide an unstable narrative environment capable of shocking his readers beyond their typical awareness and permitting them to temporarily transcend suffering; through his viii work, they bypass personal egos, experiences, and prejudices in an artistic glimpse of eternity. By using theme, paradox, intermittent storylines, anachronistic moments, symbolism, wordplay, cyclical plots, palimpsest, allegory, and recursive writing, Faulkner lifts temporal and spatial constraints to challenge current views of reality. Surprisingly—for it has been largely overlooked by scholars—Faulkner’s suggestions for surviving the tragedy of the human condition endorse those of the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer. This philosophy most effectively elucidates Faulkner’s attempt to immortalize the human condition through his aesthetics. Explanation of Schopenhauer’s Philosophy and Establishment of Terminology According to fundamental concepts of Schopenhauerian philosophy, humans endure lives of suffering caused by the disparity between will and its representations. To Schopenhauer, will is the life force present in all of creation. An energy that continually assumes new forms, will manifests through the origination, growth, destruction, and renewal of life and matter. It is a persistent self-generative essence with survival as its sole aim. According to Schopenhauer, the will appears in men and animals, as their innermost nature […as well as in] the force that shoots and vegetates in the plant, indeed the force by which the crystal is formed, the force that turns the magnet to the North Pole, the force whose shock he encounters from the contact of metals of different kinds, the force that appears in the elective affinities of matter as repulsion and attraction, separation and union, and finally even gravitation [all of which have] the same inner nature (WWR I: 109-110). This constant propulsion is made possible through causality—that is, through movements of will in materiality. As such, will cannot be adequately represented by one shape, ix location, or moment. In its varied physical expressions, will is the cohesion of all matter—transcendent of their totality because it exists not just in form and movement, but also in the potential for yet unmade ideations and in the subsequent existence of expired forms. Even in sequential time, the relations of past, present, and future to each other have merely “a relative existence” (WWR I: 177) because will is metaphysical. To understand Schopenhauer as well as the terminology in this dissertation, one must know the difference between the universal