The Eye That Is Language: A Transatlantic View of Eudora Welty by Danièle Pitavy-Souques

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Eye That Is Language: A Transatlantic View of Eudora Welty by Danièle Pitavy-Souques Laura Wilson (bio) The Eye That Is Language: A Transatlantic View of Eudora Welty by Danièle Pitavy-Souques In her touching preface to this collection of Danièle Pitavy-Souques's essays, Pearl McHaney writes that: "The Eye That Is Language: A Transatlantic View of Eudora Welty offers readers and scholars a global perspective of Welty's achievements" (xi). The volume, published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2022, was originally conceived by Pitavy-Souques as a way to collate writings from her decades-long commitment to Welty studies, but was sadly never finished before her death in July of 2019. McHaney worked with Pitavy-Souques during the initial stages of planning for the collection and was supported by Danièle's husband François Pitavy in bringing his late wife's idea to fruition. Bookended by McHaney's introductory remarks and a closing remembrance of Pitavy-Souques's and Welty's friendship written by François, the book now stands as a shining memorial to Pitavy-Souques's inimitable work on Eudora Welty and the achievements of her own life, including the highest French merit Légion d'honneur and the highest Eudora Welty Society accolade, The Phoenix Award. Thinking about the perspective of this collection offers us the chance to consider Welty's art of representation, alongside the way she so often plays with appearances and points of view (visual, moral, political). At the same time, perspective is a common term in visual arts such as photography, painting, and film, all interests of Eudora Welty that are deftly explored in this book. Focusing on the perspectives of this collection emphasizes Pitavy-Souques's examination of what we might call the language that is eyes: that is to say, moments where Pitavy-Souques shows us how Welty viewed, illustrating the multiple perspectives that she wrote both from and about. Explorations pertaining to sight abound in this volume. A word concordance demonstrates that the word see is featured 115 times in addition [End Page 175] to seen 43, sees 28, and seeing 13. Eye or eyes appears 79 times. The first visual tool that really stuck out for me in the work, the mirror, lexically appears 40 times (50 if you include its plural and connected words), as Pitavy-Souques suggests that "Welty used mirror effects quite early," calling this a "modernist feature favored by Virginia Woolf in her short stories and by surrealist filmmakers like Jean Cocteau" (116). The mirror symbol offers readers another chance to interrogate Welty's fictional technique, questioning the accuracy of reflected images produced by layers of metal and glass, a surface that only ever provides a virtual image since light rays never actually cross over in a reflection. In turn, Pitavy-Souques argues that in Welty's work, "the surface functions as a lure; behind the apparent picture or story, there lies another one, much more instructive or disturbing" (111). A reading of Delta Wedding illustrates well such ideas of illusion and false representation: From the first, in spite of its apparent hugeness, the Delta and the plantation appear to Laura [McRaven] as a closed world limited by reflection: the sky mirrors the fields, the name Fairchild refers to the place as well as to its inhabitants, and characters come and go between two identically furnished plantation houses. The black waters of the bayou reflect a house that was never lived in. (117) Twinning and repetition feature often in Welty's work as extensions of the perceived image, with the reflective façades of Shellmound and Marmion working to trap Laura McRaven inside layers of outward appearance, the idealized front-facing image of plantation culture that historically concealed many real horrors. Horror and fascination relate to another key argument that flows throughout the book: the notion of the mythical hero Perseus as a symbol for the artist, indeed Welty herself, who "questions her art in the very moment she is creating it" (11). Given my own particular fondness for the Gorgon myths and Welty's use of Medusa, I was very much drawn to...