Each Text is Haunted by the Others - Assignment Example

Each text is haunted by the others, the earlier by the later, the later by the earlier … Intertextuality is a ghost effect.’ Discuss The intertextuality of two novels as apparently unique as James Joyce’s Ulysses and Vladimir Nabokov’s Pale Fire might appear to be a daunting task, but it is clear that there are relationships between them. The idea of an intertextual relationship with a present text with one of the past, while the concept of a novel mirroring one that has yet to be written is rather more tenuous. However, if one text can be considered as essentially foreshadowing in a predictive way what will come in the future, then such a relationship is possible. This is particularly the case with a text such as Ulysses, which introduced so many new techniques to the literary world and has at least been acknowledged, if not directly used, by virtually every serious novelist since it was written. This essay will consider these two novels within the paradigm of Kristerva’s concept of intertextuality: that is that a text has two axes, one horizontal (connecting the author with the reader) and the other vertical, connecting the text with other texts. The first section of this analysis will consider the vertical axis of Kristerva’s intertextual graph: the complex inter-relationships between these two texts completed more than forty years apart. One way that the two texts relate to one another is in the sheer complexity of their form. Both Joyce and Nabokov have been (and still are) accused of being cerebral, at times near impossible writers to understand. This accusation is laid against them for a number of reasons: first of all, the amount of knowledge that they assume within a reader, second, the at times convoluted internal structure of their works, and third, the lack of an obvious narrative line. While both Joyce (in early works such as Dubliners) and Nabokov (in his most famous work Lolita) at times did produce obviously narrative-driven writing:- with a clear beginning, middle and end, they tended to develop (some would say degenerate) – into a more complex structure as their literary lives developed. One way in which Ulysses may be seen to foreshadow Nabokov’s later work, or in which Nabokov used Joyce’s earlier technique, is in the lack of a clear narrative viewpoint within the two works. Thus Ulysses is famously told, in the main, from the point of view of at least two different characters, Stephen Dedalus and Mr. Bloom. Different styles of writing are also used, including the use of straight prose, stream of consciousness, and at one point something appears to be a play script. Consider that the following all come from the same novel: Buck Mulligan came from a stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. (p.1.) BLOOM I was indecently treated, I . . . inform the police. Hundred pounds. Unmentionable. I . . . BELLO Would if you could, lame duck. A downpour we want, not your drizzle. BLOOM To drive me mad! Moll! I forgot! Moll! . . . We . . . Still . . . (p.529) . . . I remember shall I wear a white rose and I wanted to put on the old stupid clock to near the time he was the first man kissed me under the Moorish wall my sweetheart when a boy it never entered me mind . . . (p. 744) Unlike most authors, who seek to produce some kind of a whole within their work, and even if they are using different techniques, attempt a seamless transition between the different techniques/styles, Joyce appears to want to make the flow of Ulysses as disjointed as possible. Before illustrating how similar many parts of Pale Fire are to this, it serves well to notice that BLOOM, with his staccato, unfinished sentences that are nevertheless full of meaning, is also resonant of another famous character: Mr. Jingle from The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens. Here is the complexity of an intertextual examination: all writers (or virtually all) have read numerous other authors, and it is seldom a matter of a straight comparison between two texts, but rather an attempt at picking particular colors out of a kaleidoscope that may relate to a host of other novels/ists either individually or as a group. In Pale Fire Nabokov produces a similar kaleidoscope effect. First it must be stated that Nabokov is essentially producing work that is one level removed from the normal writer because he is, remarkably, writing in his second language. The words “genius” and “dazzling intellect” are perhaps not fashionable within the attempted egalitarianism of the textual equality of intertextuality, but the playful, at times almost contemptuously brilliant nature of Nabokov’s writing is at least partially explained by a consideration of his linguistic virtuosity. Much as in Joyce’s text, Pale Fire appears to be making a point – other writers, including the one whose poem is apparently being critically analyzed within the novel (all created by Nabokov of course), can only dream of the ability to write in their native language as well as Nabokov does, let alone in one that is foreign to them. Much as Joyce’s text does not bother much with a narrative, so Pale Fire is apparently a textual experiment. The text starts in a playful mode that parodies and satirizes a number of different types of person, writing and idea. The book begins with a Foreword to the poem Pale Fire, which was apparently written by one John Francis Shade “during the last twenty days of his life”. Nabokov brilliantly apes the mixture of childlike enthusiasm and obscurity that goes along with a scholar’s fascination with a work that may be of interest to no-one but himself. The Foreword is perhaps a classic example of a scholar who knows more and more about less and less. There is also a sense that ‘something else’ is occurring with the sudden change of person that occurs: The short (166 lines) Canto One, with all those amusing birds and parhelia, occupies thirteen cards. Canto Two, your favorite, and that shockingtour de force, Canto Three, are identical in length (334 lines) . . . a methodical man, John Shade usually copied out his daily quota of completed lines at midnight but even if he recopied them later, as I suspect he sometimes did, he marked his card or cards not with the date of his final adjustment, but with that of his Corrected Draft or first Fair Copy. I mean he, preserved the date of actual creation rather than that of second or third thoughts. There is a very loud amusement park in front of my current lodgings. (p.13) First of all there is the odd word ‘parhelia’, used as if it is common use. The, and it is very easy to miss this, the “your favorite”. Who exactly does “your” refer to in this sentence? Is it an imaginary reader of the analysis that Nabokov’s character is writing for? Is it the actual reader of Nabokov’s character? Is it the actual reader of Nabokov’s novel? It is never made entirely clear. There is also the strange, but hilarious, digression into the “amusement park” statement, used apparently to excuse the opaque clumsiness of his previous explanation. The book is full of such strange digressions, as if to illustrate just how amateurish the imaginary author actually is. These textual complexities appear to exist for their own pleasure, as if the text is having a conversation with itself. This is very similar to much of Ulysses. Nabokov has clearly at least learned from, if nor directly copied the literary-form-within-another-literary-form technique exhibited by Joyce as he moves into the surely parodic beginning of Canto One: I was the shadow of the waxwing slain By the false azure in the windowpane; I was the smudge of ashen fluff – and I Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky. (p.33) As with Joyce and his brief (perhaps even un- or at least sub-conscious) reference to Dickens’ Mr Jingle, so Nabokov seems to be parodying the at times self-consciously melancholic style of TS Elliot, especially with the resonances of The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock. It is here perhaps that this discussion can sensible move into the realm of the second axis within Kristerva’s paradigm: the horizontal one connecting the author with the reader. There are a number of ways of considering this relationship, perhaps best is to consider that a person reads Ulysses first and then Pale Fire, and then perhaps repeats the process. Ulysses is extraordinarily difficult to read, but at least does not pose the questions that appear when a reader is tackling Pale Fire. First of all, is Nabokov making fun of the reader, or rather a certain kind of reader? If for example, a reader does not know what “parhelia” means (this one, and surely a majority of similarly educated, did not), what are they to make of it? Is Nabokov making fun of the reader, or is Nabokov aiming his derision at the type of writer would make fun of a reader in this way? The difference is important, but vital. There is perhaps a sense of “nausea”, in a Sartrean sense, about the whole relationship between the reader and the author in Pale Fire. The actual reader (you or me) is never entirely sure who the ‘author’ is meant to be, nor whether the reader is meant to take on some kind of role while going through the book. Should one just be one’s normal self as the reader or take on the role of a fellow scholar to the imaginary author, or perhaps the unidentified person behind that “your” on the first page? It is never made clear. What is clear is that Nabokov has taken the technique whereby Joyce appears to have assumed an enormously complete Classical education within his reader in Ulysses and expanded it to almost parodic extent. The reader of Pale Fire is meant to be able to distinguish between references to obviously fictional other works, those of real works so obscure they need to be looked up (and thus may appear to belong to the first type) and those that are genuine. Also, how is a reader meant to read the book? Should she constantly turn back to the particular line within the Cantos that the commentary is referring to, and thus become almost inevitably lost within the hilarious (although infuriating) digressions which the commentator indulges in, or should the Commentary be read as merely a satire of a particular type of scholarly mind. It does not matter which line it is supposedly referring to, as the whole is part of a fictional creation: what matters is the characterization that Nabokov is doing. Once a reader has read both books, and starts to read Ulysses again, he will probably discover two things. First, Ulysses will be easier to read because he has become used to the multi-layered, multi-techniqued and often dizzying range of perspectives offered by both books. Certain passages of the book will also resound within the reader in a different way. Of course, these different resonances go far behind the intertextual relationship of two novels: the person has lived more of life, experienced and thought things differently, and thus will approach what he is reading in a different manner. But for the sake of this argument a hypothetical world in which the ‘same’ individual returns to Ulysses is postulated. The reader will probably laugh more while reading Ulysses the second time: accepting the fact that there is indeed a playfulness within this type of apparently unfathomable writing. In order to understand it, the reader must learn to float along on the surface of the writing without becoming too bogged down within the details. This is perhaps easier to do in Ulysses, which at least tells the story of a single day :– albeit from multiple perspectives and the use of often confusing inner monologue. To conclude, the idea of texts “haunting” one another, both forwards and backwards in time, is a useful model for considering the experience that a reader has when tackling works as complex as Ulysses and Pale Fire. It is perhaps a truism to say that each time a book is read it ‘becomes’ something unique as it is filtered through the perspective of an individual reader with a unique perspective – both in terms of what they have read, and what they have experienced. While it may not be currently popular to argue so, a text does not exist until it is brought to life within the imagination of the reader. The more intertextual relationships can be gleaned, whether they are intentional or not on the part of the author, the more vivid and valuable the experience of the text will be. ____________________________________ Works Cited Dickens, Charles. The Pickwick Papers. Penguin, London: 1982. Elliott, TS. The Collected Poems. Faber and Faber, London: 1992. Joyce, James. Ulysses. Random House, New York: 1948. Kristerva, Julia. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. Columbia University Press, New York: 1980. Nabokov, Vladimir. Pale Fire. H Wolf, New York: 1962. Read More