Conrad's Influence on Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!

Abstract

CONRAD'S INFLUENCE ON FAULKNER'S ABSALOM, ABSALOM! Stephen M. Ross* William Faulkner knew Joseph Conrad's fiction thoroughly, and echoes of Conrad's stories appear in Faulkner's own, from his earliest stories to his late novels.1 Having read Conrad as early as the fourth grade, Faulkner continued to read him throughout his life, and consistently listed the Polish seaman among those few authors whose influence he would acknowledge—he explicitly admitted, for example, that his style gained "quite a bit from Conrad."2 Richard Adams sums up the extent of Conrad's influence as being "in the whole of Faulkner's work . . . the strongest and most pervasive . . . coming from any writer of prose fiction."3 Conrad's influence is nowhere more evident than in Absalom, Absalom!, where Faulkner has assimilated techniques, ideas and even scenes from various Conrad works, especially Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness. Albert Guerard, in his study of Conrad, points to Absalom, Absalom! as an extension and heightening of the essential methods of "Conradian impressionism," the methods "of that impressionism allegedly taught by Ford Madox Ford: a narrative method of deceptive emphasis and constantly shifting perspective, depending for much of its beauty on swift oscillations between the long view and the close, between the moralizing abstract and the highly visualized particular."4 The multiple narrative point of view, the frequent shifting back and forth in time, the emphasis on a single event (what Ford called "the Affair"5) viewed from varied perspectives, the progression deffect or gradual accretion of impressions through a series of separate, intense encounters with the central characters—Absalom, Absalom! shares all these techniques with Impressionism.6 Faulkner shared, too, certain of the aesthetic and epistemological assumptions underlying such techniques : the assumption that truth, or what Conrad called "that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask," comes to the reader only through great effort and involvement, only when he has been made to "hear," to "feel," and to "see";7 the assumption that conjecture can be a "Stephen M. Ross is an Assistant Professor of English at Purdue University. 200Stephen M. Ross valid mode of comprehension; theassumption that theworld as it comes filtered through another's life can be fully as compelling (both for a character and for the reader) as "first-hand" experience. Such broad similarities between Absalom, Absalom! and Conrad's work have been discussed (by Guerard, Adams, Blotner, among others) ; but important details of Faulkner's "borrowing" from Lord Jim and Heart of Darkness need to be explored, for the specific similarities of technique and aesthetic premise point toward a deeper sharing of moral insight. Mr. Compson's story-telling, in Chapters Two, Three and Four of Absalom, Absalom!, and including the letter he sends Quentin at Harvard, echoes Lord Jim in rhetorical pattern, in its tone of narration, and even occasionally in imagery. lx>rd Jim breaks into three narrative sections: a brief introduction of Jim, rendered omnisciently; Marlow's lengthy "yarn," told on the hotel verandah; and the packet received by the "privileged man," in which Marlow concludes Jim's history. Similarly, Chapter Two of Absalom, Absalom! opens with an omniscient section introducing Sutpen (upon his arrival in Jefferson), followed (in Chapters Two, Three and Four) by Mr. Compson's version of the Sutpen tragedy, as he tells it to Quentin; Mr. Compson's role is completed when he sends the letter informing Quentin of Rosa Coldfield's death, the letter which triggers the final recreation of Sutpen's saga by Quentin and his Harvard roommate Shreve McCannon . Lord Jim opens with a striking image of Jim dressed in white, walking straight toward one "with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull."8 He materializes suddenly, with the startling immediacy of a man met rounding a corner. The visual details evoke an impression of Jim that carries through the rest of his story, an image that remains essentially intact no matter how much later information alters and blurs its outline. Faulkner, too, builds Mr. Compson's speculations around a vivid picture of Thomas Sutpen; Chapter Two begins...