Horace Benbow and Bayard Sartoris: Two Romantic Figures in Faulkner's Flags in the Dust

Abstract

FAULKNER in his third novel, Flags in the Dust, has presented us with two antithetical figures-Horace Benbow and Bayard Sartoris. Horace is the thinker, artist, and dreamer; Bayard the impulsive and reckless man of action. Despite their differences, however, both characters are romantic figures; both yearn for a finer worlda finer world than Yoknapatawpha, and perhaps this modern age, can offer. Horace with his intellectual sensibility embodies-though imperfectly-a type of Keatsian romantic, while Bayard with his love for adventure embodies the Byronic hero. Horace, a bookish intellectual, demonstrates a romantic nature in his desire for a more meaningful existence than that which he finds in his country law office. In one passage Faulkner describes Horace lying awake dreaming of a fantastic world where he could voyage beyond the moon to the ultimate roof of things, where unicorns filled the neighing air with galloping, or grazed or lay supine in latent and golden-hooved repose.' Later Faulkner explainsHorace desired a cage in which to bar himself freedom with trivial compulsions. A topless cage, of course, that his spirit might wing on short excursions into the blue . (p. I9I). In several endeavors, Horace does actually attempt to escape his mundane existence and to actualize his dream of a finer life. He has made an abortive attempt to become an Episcopalian minister, and he is a dilettante poet and glassmaker. Nonetheless, his attempts at escape are essentially futile, ill-conceived enterprises. Twice in the novel, Faulkner recreates scenes from Keats's poems to underscore Horace's misconceived notions of romanticism and the world. In a recreation of Ode to a Grecian Urn, Faulkner describes Horace admiring a beautiful vase he has made, an almost perfect vase of clear amber which he called by his sister's name.