faulkner schopenhauer

8/12/2019 Faulkner Schopenhauer

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FAULKNERS KINSHIP WITH SCHOPENHAUER:THE SABBATH OF THE IXION WHEEL

It is hard to overestimate the attraction that many modern writers havefelt toward the thinking of Artur Schopenhauer. Bryan Magee says, Allin all, especially when Wagner is taken into the reckoning, it looks to me asif the influence of Schopenhauer on creative artists of the very front ranksurpasses that of any other philosopher since the ancient Greeks. Mageesurveys adoptions of motifs and ideals from Schopenhauer by writers asdiverse as Mann and Rilke; Tolstoy and Turgenev; Hardy and Conrad;Maupassant, Zola, and Proust; Maugham and T. S. Eliot; and Jorge LuisBorges (who claims to have an explicitly Schopenhauerian world-view).2Given this enormous range of influence, it should not be surprising thatthe climatic vision of William Faulkners greatest novel, Light in August,exhibits striking similarities to the outlook enunciated in the chapters onaesthetic knowledge in Schopenhauers magnum opus, The World as Willand Representation. Parallels in thought are augmented by similar images,centering upon the metaphor of the aesthetic contemplators escape froma torture wheel. And parallels in aesthetic thinking are further clarified byanalogous ideas in the realms of metaphysics and ethics, all closely inter-related in Faulkners novel as in Schopenhauers treatise.We know that Schopenhauer powerfully influenced Ellen Glasgow,Faulkners fellow Southerner. And we know, too, of Schopenhauerslasting effect upon Jules Laforgue, a self-declared disciple of Eduard vonHartmann, who had elaborated the ideas of The World as Will and Repre-sentation into a massive Philosophy of the Unconscious: Laforgue was highon the list of Faulkners favorite and oft-read poets.3 So it is more thanprobable that Faulkner, in his most visionary novel,4 may have borrowedsome of the pervasive Schopenhauerianism with which Laforgue infusedhis poetic (and prose) writings. Of course, Harold Blooms recent remarkson Wallace Stevens5 and Erich Hellers excellent essay on Goethes Ma-rienbader Elegie6 have both shown that, even in the absence of provableinfluence, Schopenhauerian affinities may greatly illuminate the mentalworkings of kindred creators. Faulkners kinship with Schopenhauer,whatever its causes, is both extensive and revealing. But although we can-not prove Faulkner studied Schopenhauer, the range of analogous motifsand insights indicates a strong likelihood that the American novelist waswell acquainted with the German philosophers work.Like Schopenhauer, Faulkner shows great fondness for motifs borro-wed from oriental religion. Lena Grove is seen in many avatars (LA 5);Joe Christmas appears in numberless avatars (LA 213); even JoannaBurden passes through every avatar of a woman in love (LA 244). Joesfoster father, McEachern, is called juggernautish; Percy Grimm, too, isa Juggernaut (LA 190,435). One of these latter references neatly illust-nkq7hilologus 7 I (1987) 4477459


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448 Margin Bidney - Faulkne rs Kinship w ith Sehopenhauerrates the way Faulkner recurrently halts, or greatly retards, the action ofthe book to provide moments of clairvoyance. Time seems illusory, spa-ce dreamlike, teleology suspended or abrogated:He [McEach ern] turned into the road a t that slow and onerous gallop, the two of them, manand bea st, leaning a litt le stiff ly forward as though in some juggernautish simulation of ter-rif ic speed though the actual speed itself wa s abse nt, as if in that cold and implacable andundeviating conv iction of both omnipotence and clairvoyanc e o f which they both partookknown dest ination and speed were not nece ssary. (LA 190)

Schopenhauer wants us to see things in a similar way when he argues thatthe Will, the thing-in-itself, is a unity that lies outside of time and space,which, as categories of the principle of sufficient reason or causality,deceive. This distortive principle is Maya, the veil of deception ( W W R113,8; W W V 174, 37).8 Schopenhauer summarizes the plot of the Bhuga-vad-Gita in an attempt to explain Maya (WW R 284, WW V 392). Asynthesizer of Kant and the Hindu-Buddhist heritage, Schopenhauerwants to penetrate the veil of time, space, and causality to contemplate thething-in-itself.

The words avatar and juggernaut point to a similar dualism inFaulkners novel. The power of passion is often juggernautish, brutallyand blindly violent, in this book. The murderous Percy Grimm - to takethe most egregious example-is moved like a pawn by a mysteriousPlayer (LA 437), very reminiscent of Schopenhauers amoral Will.But almost every character in Light in Augu st is at some time granted amoment of quasi-elevation above his mental enslavement, and during the-se timeless moments is capable of seeing his (or her) innumerable apparentchanges as mere transient avatars, incarnations or temporary embodi-ments, of an essence that never changes. Brown sees a timeless andbeautiful infall ibility in his unpredictable frustrations. As though some-how the very fact that he should be so consistently supplied with themelevates him somehow above the petty human hopes and desires whichthey abrogate and negative (LA 412; nothing could be more quintessen-tially Schopenhauerian than this derogation of petty human hopes anddesires). Or we may think of Joes meditation as, breathing deep andslow, feeling with each breath himself diffuse in the neutral grayness, hebecomes one with loneliness and quiet that has never known fury ordespair. That was all I wanted, he thinks in a quiet and slow amazement(LA 313). Time is slowed down; spatial form is dissolved; the wil l is stilled.Faulkner not only tends to cancel time and space, he also dissolves plura-lity into seeming avatars of underlying unity. Thus he sets up pairs ofcharacters and families as mutual mirrors by giving them similar names(Burch and Grove), similar psychologies (Joe and Joanna), and similarhistories (the Hines family of the South and the Burden family of theNorth). Seeming opposites - whether in spatial location, temporal back-ground, or individual temperament - are resolved into unsuspectedsameness.


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Martin Bidney - Faulkne rs Kinship with Schopenhauer 449But each characters experience of the momentary suspension of time, spa-ce, and plurality is ust that - momentary. For the most part they remainslaves of maya. Only the softly inwardlighted, Buddha-like Lena seemsto have made a way of life out of calm, contemplative communion withthe implacable and immemorial earth (LA 15,26). Sometimes she has towage a mild battle with that providential caution of the old earth of andwith and by which she lives, but she always retains that tranquil andcalm unreason and detachment which makes her face calm as stone, butnot hard (LA 23, 15). Her face wakes, serene, slow, warm (LA 24). It isan enigma, this grave face: it has either nothing in it, or everything, allknowledge (LA 409). Lenas enigmatic combination of warm earthinessand extreme, serene detachment may well remind us of the passage inwhich Schopenhauer, thinking of all the lost potential in the history of ourtroubled world, imagines how the personified earth would tranquillyassuage our childish distress:But the earth-spirit would smile and say: The source from which the individuals and theirpowers f low is inexhaust ible, and 1s as boundless as are t ime and spa ce; for , just l ike theseforms of every phenomenon, they too are only phenomenon, visibi li ty of the wil l . No f initemea sure can exha ust that infinite sourc e; therefore undim inished infinity is stil l alwa ys openfor the return of any e vent or work that w as nipped in the bud. In th is world of the pheno-menon, true loss is as l i tt le possible as is true gain. (WW R 183-84; WWV264)Schopenhauer replies, It is art, the work of genius ( W W R 184; W W V265). Lena, too, seems essentially an aesthetic perceiver. Hers are the ob-jectivity and spiritual peace which Schopenhauer finds in Dutch pain-tings of st i l l l i fe (WWR 197; W W V 281). In her we sense the power of anall-including receptivity combined with calm detachment, a combinationmemorably expressed in her single glance all-embracing, swift, innocent,and profound (LA 5). In privileged moments, other characters in thebook can begin to feel the serenity that accompanies true aesthetic kno-wing. Lenas temperament alone seems to allow her this experience on adaily basis.9

But even though Lenas tranquil temperament may give us a clue to thenature of Faulknerian aesthetic knowing, only Hightowers richly develo-ped vision reveals this mode of knowledge in its full articulation, with al1its metaphysical and moral implications. Hightowers evasive, reclusivelife is on the whole pathetic. But he, too, is presented as a sort of potentialBuddha even if, for the greater part of his life, he has been merely an obeseparody of one: Between his parallel and downturned palms and with hislower body concealed by the desk, his attitude is that of an eastern idol(LA 83). When Hightower is finally vouchsafed an epiphanic vision, itsummarizes and gives philosophic shape to the whole novel. And it is inthis vision that Faulkners Schopenhauerian affinities become evident inclear detail.Leaving the eastern idol image aside (and it is a very equivocal metap-hor at best), we must admit that Hightower at first seems a rather unlikely


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450 Martin Bidney -Faulkners Kinship with Schopenhauer

candidate for the role of prime visionary in Faulkners novel. Schopen-hauer tells us that some fortunate people can attain a wonderfully calm,tranquil, will-free frame of mind... simply and solely by the inner force ofan artistic disposition ( W W R 197; W W V 281). But Hightower has nosuch luck. His artistic disposition, such as it is, can rarely break free ofbondage to narcissistic fixations dating from his earliest years. Obsessedby vivid memories of childhood identification with his supposedly heroicgrandfather, Hightower is never in possession of these repetitious imagi-nings: they wholly control his will. On the whole, Hightower gives littleevidence of that artistic genius which Schopenhauer finds requisite for avision that looks completely through and beyond the principle of suffi-cient reason (time, space, causality) to the inner, timeless truth of things,the world as Idea, as thing-in-itself - a cool, distanced, will-free vision ofthat Will to which all things and persons are subject save the aestheticknower.OBut Schopenhauer also seems to imply that there may be another pathto visionary freedom. Perhaps the unbearable tension of accumulatedemotional pressure is what eventually propels Hightower into a new stateof truly aesthetic awareness, of exemplary openness to what both Scho-penhauer and Faulkner appear to regard as timeless truth. Schopenhauerpoints out that when suffering becomes intolerable, sometimes nature...seizes on madness as the last means of saving life ( W W R 193; WWV276) .The madmans point of contact with the genius is that both disregardthe principle of sufficient reason, ordinary cause-effect relations in spa-ce-time, in order to attain a vision that will transcend temporality ( W W R193-94; WWV 277). If, as Schopenhauer suggests, the transition frompain to madness ( W W R 193; W W V 276) can help explain the suddenrupture of the connections laid down by the principle of sufficient reason,there seems no difficulty in positing (though Schopenhauer does not do soexplicitly) an equally natural sudden transition from pain to aestheticknowledge. There is no doubt that this is what Hightower actually expe-riences.The pain of Hightowers accumulated guilt at length becomes sooverwhelming that we might well have expected nature to seize on mad-ness, rather than aesthetic knowledge, as Hightowers means of escape.Realizing that his solipsistic absorption in Civil War fantasy had alienatedhis wife to the point of driving her to suicide (after an extramarital affair),Hightower calls himself her seducer and her murderer (LA 462). Histhinking begins to slow now... like a wheel..., the power which propels itnot yet aware (LA 462). He seeshimself surrounded by faces, the facesseem to be mirrors in which he watches himself, and the wheel of thin-king slows; the axle knows it now but the vehicle itself is sti ll unaware (LA462). The faces at first seem to be those of this congregants, outraged at thebehavior of their self-styled spiritual leader. Hightowers guilt becomesactual horror as the wheel of thinking turns on with the slow implaca-


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Martin Bidney - Faulkne rs Kinship with Schopenhauer 451

bility of a mediaeval torture instrument, until suddenly the climax comes:The wheel, released, seems to rush on with a long sighing sound... fastand smooth now, because it is freed now of burden, of vehicle, axle, all(LA 464-65).At this point, in the lambent suspension of August, the wheel, libera-ted from all constraints, seems to engender and surround itself with afaint glow like a halo... full of faces:The face s are not sh aped with suffering, not shaped with anything: not horror, pain, not evenreproach. They are peaceful, as though they have escaped into an apotheosis; his own isamong them. In fact, they al l look a l i tt le al ike, compo site of all the faces which he has everseen . But he can distinguish them one from anoth er... (LA 465)The faces include those of almost everyone in the novel, certainly everyoneof any importance that Hightower has known in the town. His own face isamong them, and more than that, all the faces are mirrors in which hewatches himself. This vision of a halo of light in August, a halo of deified,will-free faces, is a microcosm of the book, and summarizes its major mea-nings.Let us look carefully at the behavior of Hightowers symbolic wheel -or rather, wheels, since there are two of them: the guilt-burdened wheel ofthinking and the liberated, visionary wheel or halo of light. To be evenmore precise about it, the first, slow, burdened wheel is not so much awheel of thinking as of being thought - the power which propels it [i.e.,the thought] not yet aware [i.e., not yet self-aware]. The thought is forced,not aware of what impels it; it is obsessive, compulsory, guilt- or emotion-ridden thought - not clear, conscious thought, which would be tranquiland objective (and which becomes so only when the wheel is freed of itsemotional burden of compulsion and replaced by a halo of peaceful light).This first, burdened wheel attains self-awareness only very gradually; theaxle becomes self-aware while the vehicle as a whole is sti ll unawa-re. Total freedom from drivenness and compulsion, total awareness,comes only when the guilt-fever lifts: when thought becomes objective andtranquil, the wheel ceases to be a wheel of torment and instead emanates awheel of light. Rather than the slow implacability of a mediaeval tortureinstrument, we now have a bright apotheosis. The apotheosized facesin the wheel of light are wholly free of suffering - of horror, pain,...reproach. They have escaped; they are peaceful. The seer who con-templates them is mirrored in their tranquil light of emotion-free knowled-ge.Schopenhauer has depicted the same contrast between an emotion-burdened torture-wheel (he calls it the revolving wheel of Ixion or sim-ply the wheel of Ixion) and a liberated, wholly aware apotheosis (he callsit the highest good and the state of the gods). Like Faulkner, Scho-penhauer emphasizes the freedom from pain and suffering attainable in astate of knowledge, self-awareness, objective comprehension:


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452 Martin Bidney - Faulkne rs Kinship with SchopenhauerNo attained object of wil ling can give a satisfaction that lasts.... Therefore, so long as ourconsciousness is fille d by our will , so long as we are given up to the throng of desires with itsconstant hopes and fears [recall Browns derogation of petty human hopes and desires,noted above], so long as we are the subject of will ing, we never obtain lasting happiness orpeace. Essentially, it is all the same w hether we pursue or flee, fear harm or aspire to enjoy-ment; care for the constantly deman ding will , no matter in what form, continually fills andmoves consciousness; but without peace and calm, true well-bein g is absolutely impossible.Thus the subject of wil ling is constantly lying o n the revolving wheel of Ixion...

When, however. an external cause or inward disposition suddenly raises us out of theendless stream of will ing, and snatches knowledge from the thraldom of the will , the atten-tion is now no longer directed to the motives of will ing, but comprehends things free fromtheir relation to the will . Thus it considers things without interest, without subjectivity, pure-ly objectively; it is entirely given up to them in so far as they are merely representations, andnot motives. Then all at once the peace, always sought but always escaping us on that firstpath of will ing, comes to us of its own accord, and all is wel l w ith us. It is the pamless state,prized by Epicurus as the highest good and as the state of the gods; for that m oment we aredelivered from the miserable pressure of the will . We celebrate the Sabbath of the penalservitude of willi ng; the wheel of Ixion stands still. ( WW R 196; WW V 279-80)This Ixion wheel is not the only circular torture-machine we find in Scho-penhauer. A variant of the image is his comparison of life to a circularpath of red-hot coals having a few cool places, a path that we have to runover incessantly: the will-bound man keeps running, hoping to find a coolplace, but the man who grasps the inner nature of the whole, who seeshimself in all places simultaneously, wisely withdraws ( WW R 380; WW V5 16). Hightowers mediaeval torture wheel of burdensome, drivingemotion finds both classical and Gothic analogues in the philosophersmetaphors for human bondage. Similarly, Faulkners metaphoric equa-tion of spiritual/aesthetic deliverance with apotheosis in light findsparallels in Schopenhauer, who explains the symbolic value of light aseternal salvation in all religions on the following basis:

light is the correlative and condition of the most perfect kind of knowledge through per-ception, of the only knowledge that in no way directly affects the will . For sight, unlike theaffections of the other senses, is in itself, directly, and by its sensuous effect, quite incapable ofpleasantness or unpleasant ness of sensation in the organ; in other words, it has no directconnexion with the will.... Therefore the pleasure from light is in fact the pleasure from theobjective possibility of the purest and most perfect kind of knowledge from perception.(WW R 199-200; WW V284-85)From Schopenhauers perspective it would therefore make perfect sense tosymbolize the painless state, the state of the gods, by a circle of light, asFaulkner does in Hightowers vision. This would take the heat out of thefiery circular path. For what heat is for the wil l light is for knowledge(WW R 203; WW V 289).

The faces which Hightower sees, faces freed from the unaware and dri-ven wheel of torment into the pure halo of serene and unreproachfulknowledge, have three traits requiring special emphasis. They all seem tobe mirrors in which Hightower watches himself. In addition, they alllook a little alike, composite of all the faces which he has ever seen.Nevertheless (and this is the final point), he can distinguish them onefrom another; indeed, his own is among them (LA 465). The image of


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the mirrors suggests that, in this experience, the subject and object of per-ception, the seer and what he sees, are identical or coessential. This ties inneatly with the assertion that all the perceived faces themselves look alittle alike, each of them being in fact a kind of universal composite(composite of all the faces which he has ever seen [emphasis mine]). Weget a strong sense that what Hightower is seeing is a vision of universalhumanity. Yet the faces are distinguishable; they can be perceived as thoseof distinct individuals: his wifes; townspeople, members of that congre-gation which denied him,... Byron Bunchs; the woman [Lena] with thechild, and others (LA 465; only the faces of Christmas and Grimm areconfused, a special case which we will deal with later). In one respect, then,Hightower sees himself mirrored in all faces and all faces mirroring eachother. But in another respect, each of the faces remains unique, and High-tower sees his own face as one more among these irreproducibly uniqueindividualities. The complexity of the relationship between individualityand universal humanity has rarely been figured forth so explicitly andengagingly in a single imaginative experience.Schopenhauers analysis of aesthetic perception reads like a commenta-ry on all three aspects of this vision which we have just noted: 1)subject-object mirroring, 2) compositeness or universality of each face,and 3) unique individuality of each face. As regards the mirroring of per-ceiver and perceived, Schopenhauer notes that the Idea which isobjectively comprehended by the aesthetic perceiver includes subject andobject:When the Idea appears, subject and object can no longer be distinguished in it, because theIdea, the adequate objectivity of the will , the real world as representation, arises only whensubject and object reciprocally fill and penetrate each other completely. In just the same waythe knowing and the known individu al, as things-in-themselves, are likewise n ot different.. ..The wil l is the in-Itself ofthe Idea that completely objectifies it; it is also the *in-itself ofthe particular thing and of the individ ual that knows it.... As will , outside the representationand all Its forms, it is one and the same in the contemplated object and in the individ ual whosoars aloft in thts contemplation , who becomes conscious of himself as pure subject. There-fore in themselves these two are not different; for in themselves they are the ~11 thaf hereknows I tse lf ( W WR 180; WW V 259).Since the object of the aesthetic seers perception is an Idea in Platossense, and absolutely nothing else (WWR 233; WW V 328), Schopen-hauer would hardly be surprised to find Hightowers universal vision ofunited-self-and-other imaged as a lambent apotheosis, something bothsupernal and supremely beautiful. The Platonic Idea is more precisely anIdea-Image, something absolutely perceptive, and, although represen-ting an infinite number of individual things, is yet thoroughly definite( WW R 234; WW V 329). As such, it is not only true but beautiful as well.Anything aesthetically comprehended as the expression of an Idea isalso beautiful ( W W R 210; W W V 298). The clearer and more universalthe perception of the Idea, the more godlike the state of him who detached-ly soars aloft in contemplating it. Not only each of the faces in the halo,


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454 Martin Bidney - Faulkners Kinship with Schopenhauer

but also Hightower as Platonic aesthetic perceiver, has escaped into anapotheosis.

But the more we emphasize this first point about the Hightower vision,the unity of perceiver and perceived as expressed in the notion of a subject-object mirroring, the more questions we may have concerning the secondand third points: the compositeness of each face and its simultaneous uni-que individuality. If aesthetic perception is the contemplation of the oneand universal will as it knows itself in its essential Idea and is therebyfreed from itself, would not the presence of plurality-compositeness,individuality, or any form of multiplicity whatever - compromise theobjectivity or adequacy of the vision, in Schopenhauers terms? For wehave been told that Plurality and difference, like space and time, existonly in that defective mode of knowledge which is subject to the distor-tions of the principle of sufficient reason (WWR 160; WWV259). Whathave compositeness and individuality to do with the one and universalthing-in-itself, contemplated by the mirrored subject as will-free knower?Has Hightowers self-apotheosis been earned?

Schopenhauer explains, in a way wholly consonant with the structureand import of Hightowers vision, that although aesthetic contemplationusually leaps straight to the universal, so that each particular thing at onestroke becomes the Idea of its species ( WWR 179; WWV 258) the humanbeings aesthetic self-knowledge is a very special case, a partial exceptionto this rule. For it isone of the distinguishing features of mankind that therein the character of the spec ies andthat of the individual are separated so tha t... each person exhibits to a certain exten t an Ideathat is wholly charac teristic of him. Therefore the arts, aiming at a presentation of the Idea ofmankind, have as their problem both beauty as the character of the species, and the characterof the individual, which is called characterpar excellence. Again, they have this only in so faras this character is to be regarded not as som ething accidental and quite peculiar to the manas a single individual, but as a side of the Idea of man kind, specially appearing in this parti-cular individual: and thus the presentation of this individual serve s to reveal this Idea. ( W W R224; WWI316-17)Hightowers vision, we may say, does not simply illustrate the end productof aesthetic contemplation - the Will s knowledge of itself in bright Plato-nic detachment - but also the way in which one proceeds toward this goalby first acquiring a correct aesthetic knowledge of human beings. Eachhuman beings character or induplicable personality is to some extent anIdea in itself, and to this extent each face appearing in Hightowers visionmust remain distinct from all others. Hightower understands the truth andbeauty of individuality. But this individuality acquires its beauty and truthonly in so far as it is not considered wholly separate from the Idea ofmankind, but is regarded instead as a unique revelation of a particularside or aspect of this Idea.Distinguishing the chief characteristics of Hightowers vision so far inSchopenhauerian terms, we may sum them up as follows. Insofar as theindividual himself embodies a distinct idea, Hightower achieves insight by


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contemplating his own image apotheosized in the bright circle of Ideas.Insofar as the individuality of any person is of value only as simultaneousmanifestation of the Idea of humanity, Hightower attains insight by con-templating each of the individual faces (his own included) as to someextent a universal composite. Finally, insofar as the ultimate goal ofaesthetic contemplation is the attainment of the Will s knowledge of itself,Hightower is correct in seeing all the faces as coequally mirroring his ownin a subject-object union. Thus all three aspects of the Hightower visionhave their clear analogues in principles of Schopenhauerian aesthetic cog-nition.

But we are not yet at the last stage of Hightowers vision, which as awhole is by no means a static state of consciousness, but a process, agrowth of awareness. Indeed, before looking at the visions final phase weshould note the living, mobile, organic development which, according toSchopenhauer, always characterizes the contemplation of the Idea, as dis-tinguished from mere reasoning with concepts. The concept, Schopen-hauer says, islike a dead receptacle... from which no more can be taken ou t (by analytical judgements) thanhas been put in (by synthetical reflection). The Idea, on the other hand, develops in him whohas grasped it representations that are new as regards the concept of the same nam e; it is like aliving organism, developing itself and endowed with generative force, which brings forth thatwhtch was not previously put into it. ( WWR 235: WWV 330)

The aesthetically perceived Idea alone has generative force. In cognitiveterms (relevant because aesthetic perception, for Schopenhauer, is alsoobjective cognition), the Idea contains the basis for new synthetic, notmerely analytic, judgments. The artist of genius shows human beauty ashe has never seen it, and in his presentation he surpasses nature ( W W R222; WWV 313). Because ne ourselves are the will which we perceive/know in aesthetic cognition, we have an anticipation of what nature(which is in fact just the will constituting our own inner being) endeavoursto present (WWR 222; WW V 313). By recognizing in the individualthing its Idea, the aesthetic perceiver, as it were, understands natureshalf-spoken words. He expresses clearly what she merely stammers( WW R 222; WW V 3 13-14). Aesthetic cognition is a truly revelatory pro-cess insofar as, through it, the perceived object reveals more, or deeper,truths than our earlier (non-aesthetic) experience of it could ever have ledus to induce. Genuinely unexpected knowledge comes upon us.This is certainly what happens to Hightower in the final stage of hisvision. Studying the faces in the halo of light, he notices that the face of JoeChristmas presents an anomalous puzzle, whose solution he only gradual-ly comes to see and understand:This face alone is not clear. It IS confused more than any other, as though in the now peacefulthroes of a more recent, a more inextricable, compositeness. Then he can see that tt is twofaces which seem to strive (but not of themselves strivmg or desirin g it: he knows that, b ut


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456 Martin Bidney - Faulkne rs Kinship with Schopenhauerbecaus e of the motion and desire of the wheel itself) in turn to free them selve s one from theother, then fade and blend again. But he has seen now . the other face , the one that is notChr istma s. [Putt ing the clues together, he real izes i t IS Chr istmas castrator and murderer,Percy Grimm .] Then it seem s o him that some ult imate damm ed f lood within him breaks andrushes awa y. He s eem s to watch i t , feel ing himself losing contac t with earth, l ighter andlighter, emptying, f loating. [He thinks he is dying, thinks of praying, decides not to pray. H ethinks of the lost and unheeded crying of all the living who ever lived, and he begins to pityhimself along with them, but apparently stops .] The wheel turns on . I t spins now, fading,withou t progress, as though turned b y that final f lood which had rushed out of him , leavinghis body em pty and lighter than a forgotten leaf... so that it can be now No w (LA 465-66; theparagraphs end with no period, and there is an extra spa ce between the two last words)Hightower reaches the final stage in his gradual liberation from the drivenwheel only when he realizes that the murderer and his victim are moreinextricably blended than any of the other composite faces in the halo.These two individuals, murderer and victim, are less free to be individualthan any of the others whose faces appear to Hightower. Christmas andGrimm are striving, struggling with each other, not because either of themwants to, but because of the motion and desire of the wheel itself, theunabated power of Will which, even in the halo of light, is stil l not fullyfreed into knowledge. This struggling is left over from the emotion-burde-ned wheel of ego-bound thinking which the halo-faces all seemed to haveescaped - but the escape was incomplete. To achieve the last and higheststage in aesthetic deliverance from the driven wheel, Hightower needs tolearn one more thing: that murderer and victim are one.

Hightower learns this lesson and is freed, raised aloft into a now Nowof pure presentness beyond the distorting constrictions (time, space, cau-sality) of the principle of sufficient reason, beyond will, beyond fear,beyond guilt. He has learned that good and evil are inextricably blended inman, and that for those who have not come to understand this factthrough an aesthetic cognition of individual and universal human nature,the tragically complex interweaving of good and evil will continue to pro-duce blind conflicts overruling conscious control. Hightower is finallyfreed from that burdensome guilt which has attached him to the wheel oftorment when he understands the deep connection between guilt and theunawareness of our natures full complexity. He learns compassion forcriminals as well as victims, and he learns compassion for himself.

In arriving at this state of blissful freedom (however short-lived it mayprove to be), Hightower could be said to have moved beyond the beautifulinto the experience of what Schopenhauer would designate as the sublime.The feeling of the sublime is distinguished from that of the beautiful onlyby... exaltation beyond the known hostile relation of the contemplatedobject to the will in general ( W W R 202; W W V 288). Perception of thebeautiful is achieved without a struggle, but in sublime cognition theperceiver contemplates in pure, will-free detachment precisely thoseobjects which are most terrible to the Wil l, particularly as manifested inits objectivity, the human body ( W W R 200-01; WWV286-87). To con-template a murderer without fear or repulsion despite ones instinctive,


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Martin Bidney - Faulkne rs Kinship with Schopenhauer 457physical recoil from the contemplation is to triumph over the will s auto-matic shrinking from threat. To see a coessential humanity in murdererand victim underlying (and belying) their surface, will-bound, driven con-flict and consequent tragedy, is to experience an exaltation not possiblewhen aesthetic cognition is achieved without such an intensified internalstruggle.A vision of individual and universal humanity whose central focus is anemblematic image of the coessential humanity of murderer and victim, canhardly help but suggest a message as much moral as intellectual or aesthe-tic: Tout comprendre, cest tout pardonner. All love (agape, caritas),says Schopenhauer, is compassion or sympathy ( WW R 374; WW V510). In Schopenhauers view, the only adequate formula for conduct isthe Vedantic aphorism, Tat tvam asi, or This art thou : Whoever isable to declare this to himself with clear knowledge and firm inward con-viction about every creature with whom he comes into contact, is certainof all virtue and bliss, and is on the direct path to salvation (WWR 374;W W V 509). Hightowers visionary expercience seems designed to emble-matize precisely this insight: the compassion that issues from will-freeaesthetic cognition is the root of all virtue (Schopenhauers word, Erlo-sing or salvation, is no more emphatic than Faulkners majestic term,apotheosis).Schopenhauer, however, is not content with compassion, or with thevirtues arising from it. He urges the necessity of a further transition fromvirtue to asceticism, to denial of the will-to-live ( W WR 380,378; WW V5 16,514). He ends his book by recommending a flowing away into not-hing, and the books last word is appropriately the word nothing( W W R 411-12; WWV 557-58). Faulkner, by contrast, insists upon theneed for engagement in the real world: he castigates reclusiveness andwithdrawal. Though the emphasis on compassion in Light in Augu st isvery Schopenauerian in spirit, the similarity in ethical thinking betweennovelist and philosopher definitely stops at this point.

Unfortunately, Hightower does not long remain in his hard-won stateof aesthetic cognition, nor is he allowed to contemplate for long the libe-rating moral insights which have accompanied it. Almost instantly,Hightowers imagination betrays him. Schopenhauer notes that there aretwo ways of considering an imaginary object: in objective, will-free aesthe-tic perception, or in a will-bound way subject to the principle of sufficientreason.Considered in the first way, it is a means to knowledge of the Idea, the communication ofwhich is the work of art. In the second case, the imaginary object is used to build castles in theair, congenial to selfishness and to ones own whim, which for the mome nt delude anddelight; thus only the relations of the phantasms so connected are really ever known. (WWR187; WWV268)

There could hardly be a more precisely accurate, trenchant way of charac-


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458 Martin Bidney - Faulkners Kinship with Schopenhauerterizing the difference between Hightowers sublime vision, which we havebeen considering, and its pathetic sequel. No sooner has Hightower felthimself liberated from his long-term Civil War fantasy-fixations into thelight of compassionate knowledge of the thing-in-itself, than the eternalNow is rudely interrupted by the return of the past. Hightowers imagi-nings once again become will-bound, not revelatory of anything save hisown narcissistic ancestor-worship.

Schopenhauer says that, when will-bound, the imaginary object is usedto build castles in the air (Luftschlosser): Hightowers newly revivedfantasy-memories transform Civil War soldiers into chivalric wielders ofberibboned lances in the wind. Schopenhauer warns against victimi-zation by ones selfish phantasm (Phantasmen): Hightower fills theair with imagined phantom apparitions. Castles in the air or lances inthe wind, phantoms or phantasms, such imaginings repeat all too literallyHightowers lifelong history of subjection to precisely those fantasies mostcongenial to selfishness:It is as though they had merely waited until he could find something to pant with, to bereaffirmed in triumph and desire with, with this last left of honor and pride and life. He hearsabove his heart the thunder increase. myriad and drumm ing. Like a long sighing of wind intrees it begins, then they sweep in to sight, borne now upon a cloud of phantom dust. Theyrush past, forwardleaning in the saddles, with brandished arms, beneath whip ping ribbonsfrom slanted and eager lances; w ith tum ult and soundless yelling. . .his bandaged head hugeand without depth upon the twin blobs of his hands upon the ledge, it seems to him that hestill hears them: the wild bugles and the clashing sabres and the dying thunder ofhooves. (LA467)The past takes over; the imaginings lose depth. One might hope that theold frenzies might die away for good with the dying thunder of hooves, butHightower still hears them. Old reflexes of the Will die hard.SUNY/Binghamton MARTIN BIDNEY

NotesI. Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp.

389-90.2. See Appendix 7 (Schopenhauers Influence on Creative Writers), in Magee, pp. 379-

90. In Appendix 8 (A Conjecture about Dylan Thomas), pp. 391-93, Magee cogentlyargues for Schopenhauers influence upon that poet as well. And it may be of interest that theprotagonist and first-person narrator of Sau l Bellow s Mr. Samml ers Plane t (New York:Fawcett, 1969) is named Artur, after Schopenhauer (p. 191).

3. For Elle n Glasgow, see Vein oflron (New York: Scribners Sons, 1938) e.g., pp. 96,353, 383. For Laforgue and Hartmann see Jean Pierrot, The Decadent Imagin ation. 1880-1900, trans. Derek Coltm an (Chicago and London: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 120-21, For Faulkner on Laforgue see Lion in the Garden: Intervietvs with W am Faulkner 19261962, ed. James B. Meriwether and Michael Mill gate (New York: Random House, 1968) pp.135. 211,234.

4. I agree with Virginia V. Hlavsas statement that this work may be the most significantnovel by the centurys lea din g A meric an novelist; see her essay, St. John and Frazer inLight in August: Biblic al Form and Mythic Function. Bull etin of Research in the Humam ties83 (1980) 9.


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Martin Bidney - Faulkne rs Kinship with Schopenhauer 4595. Harold Bloom, Poetry andRepression; Revisionismfrom Blake to Stevens (New Havenand London: Yale U niv. Pres s, 1976), pp. 284-86._6. Erich Heller, Die Marienbader Elegie. Uber das Verstum me n und das Sagen, dieErfahrung und das Ged icht. Es sav s iber Goethe (Frankfu rt am Main : Ins el Verlaa. 1970 ).pp. 11 -62. , .7. All Faulkne r citations refer to William Faulkn er. Lipht in Aupu sr. mtrod . bv CleanthBrooks (New York: Radom House , 1968) abbreviated Li. - *8. All Schopenhauer citations refer to Arthur Schopenha uer, The Wo rld as Will andRepresentat ion, trans. E. F. J. Payne, 2 vols., vol I (New York: Dover, 1969) abbreviatedW W R, and to the most recent, mo st accessible text-cr it ical adition of Die W elt a/s Wil le undVorstellung, in Schopenhau ers Siimtliche W erke, 5 ~01s ..vol. 1 , ed. Wolfgang Freiherr vonLijhneysen (Stuttgart/Frankfurt am Main: Cotta-Insel, 1960), abbreviated WW V.9. There is a long tradit ion of Keatsian comm entary on Light m August, star t ing withNorm an Holm es Pearsons Lena Grove , Shenandoah 3 (1952) 3-7. Espe cially u seful in this

context is Kar l E. Zink, Flux and the Frozen Mom ent: The Imagery o f Stasis in Faulkner sProse, PML A 71 (1956). 285-301. But Keats IS not the onlv noetic thinker intrigued bv thepossib ility that aesth etic perception m ight be a kind ofcogt on. For Schopenh er, too, itmak es sense o say that beau ty is truth, truth beauty.10. Tho se, who , ac cording to Schopenh auer. have risen even higher in the scale of libera-t ion from Wtl l than have the aesthet ic knowers, nam ely the ascet ic negators o f thewill-to-live, migh t a lso be mentioned here. I have postponed the them e of asc etic renuncia-t ion, important as i t ma y b e, in order not to confuse the discussion; i t is treated in the sect ionon ethics below.11. This point is emphasized by Peter L. Hays in More Light on Light m August , Paperson Literature and Language 11 ( 1975), 4 17- 19, and by Olga Vick ery, The Novels of WilliamFaulkner (Baton Rouae: Lousiana State Univ. Press. rev. ed. 1964). D. 79. For other usefulperspect ives on Highrowers vision see Robert M . S labey, Myth and Ritual in Light inAugu st, Te xas Studies in LlteratureandLanguage 2 (1960) 238-49; Ilse Duso ir Lind, Apo-calypttc Vision as Key to Light in August, Studies m Am erican Fiction 3 (1975), 133-41.

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