Wege zum Leben – Wege zur Kunst: Intertextuelle Überlegungen zu John Fowles' Novelle The Ebony Tower unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von D. H. Lawrence und Friedrich Nietzsche

Abstract

This article offers a reading of John Fowles' novella The Ebony Tower based on implicit or ‘unconscious’ intertextuality. Viewed against a selection of texts by D. H. Lawrence and Friedrich Nietzsche, The Ebony Tower acquires a philosophical radicality which normally remains hidden beneath its evasiveness and subtlety. Without openly acknowledging it, Fowles' novella bristles with themes and motifs found in Nietzsche and Lawrence, such as the “will-to-power”, “slave morality”, and the “dionysian truth of nature”. Elucidating these analogies, the analysis proceeds to elaborate on the differences between Lawrence, Fowles and Nietzsche, focusing on their concepts of nature and the human psyche. In a similar way to Fowles' protagonist who in his paintings expresses both the joy and the horror of existence, The Ebony Tower in its totality contains traces of a fundamental negativity which results from the inclusion of what Kristeva has called “the abject”. If Fowles' text projects a holistic view of human existence, this view does preclude any sense of transcendency, security or unity.