Volume 4 Article 15
1983
To Bewilder Sensation: Surrealism in As I Lay Dying
To Bewilder Sensation: Surrealism in As I Lay Dying
Mary RohrbergerOklahoma State University
Follow this and additional works at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/studies_eng_new Part of the American Literature Commons
Recommended Citation Recommended Citation
Rohrberger, Mary (1983) "To Bewilder Sensation: Surrealism in As I Lay Dying," Studies in English, New Series: Vol. 4 , Article 15.
Available at: https://egrove.olemiss.edu/studies_eng_new/vol4/iss1/15
TOBEWILDERSENSATION: SURREALISM IN
AS I LAY DYING
MARYROHRBERGER
OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY
In interview after interview William Faulknerseemed reluctant to talk aboutAsI LayDyingin the usual way.Mostoften he useda pat response: “That was simple tour de force. That was written in six
weeks withoutchanging a word because I knew from the first where that was going,”1 or again: “Sometimes technique charges in and
takes command of the dream before the writerhimselfcan get his hands on it. That is tourde force and the finished workis simply a
matter of fittingbricks neatlytogether, sincethe writer knows proba
blyevery single word right to the end beforehe puts the first one down.
This happened with AsI Lay Dying.”2
“Tourdeforce. ” One wonderswhat he really meantbythat.Tomy
knowledge no one asked. In theinterviews at theUniversity of Vir
ginia,Faulkner used the phrasefour or five times, coupling itwith the idea that the novel justcameout.Several times he said that heshould
have reread thenovel beforethe interview andwhen asked to com
ment on meaning, he speculated as though the characters and the novelwere separate from him. Addie probably never toldJewel about his father, Faulkner said, but Jewel wouldn’t have cared anyway.
Whether Jewel’s horse is a substitute for Addie, Faulkner said, is “something for the psychologist” to answer;3 Vardaman is a child “trying tocopewiththis adult’
s
world whichtohim,and toany sane
person,” Faulkner said, “was completely mad.”4 Yetat the same time
that Faulkner calledtheworld of As I Lay Dyinginsane,he insisted
that Darl was mad. Now a madmaninamadworld must be indistin
guishable from itsother inhabitants,butDarl is distinguishable by being mad; thusthe other inhabitantsmust be something other than mad, and the world they inhabit must be something other than insane; or soeverydaylogicwould insist. But whether Darlis or is not
mad, he had a life ofhis own.“He did things,”Faulknersaid,“which it
seemed to me he had to doorhe insisted on doing. His reasons I could try to rationalize to suit myself, even if I couldn’t rationalize his
reasons to please meI hadto acceptthe actbecause Darl insisted on
doing that....I couldn’t alwaysunderstand why he didthings but he
did insist on doingthings....He was under his own power.”5
142 ASI LAY DYING
But Faulkner never denied the importance ofthe non-rational.
Question: “You apparently believe in extra-sensory perception.”
Answer: “Yes,1 probably depend almost completely on it. 1 don’t have
a trained mind, I’ve got to depend on extra-sensory perception.”6 Again: “But what symbolism is in the books isevidentlyinstinctin man, not inman’s knowledge but in hisinheritance of hisold dreams, in his blood,perhaps his bones, rather than in the storehouse of his
memory, his intellect.”7
Faulkner never called himself a surrealist, or, apparently, thought of himself asone,andmay not have knownof André Breton.
Nor,apparently,has a critic used the term in reference toFaulkner’s writing,thoughmanydescribequalities ofhis fiction characteristic of surrealist work. Jean-Jacques Mayoux says of the typical Faulkner
scene thatitdoesnot “affectus asif set ina book orthrough words; it is before us;ratheritsurrounds us.Itisaroundusas though we were in theprocess, not somuchof living itas of dreamingit.”8 Faulkner’s
characters,Mayoux says,
“
rise to the surface. Theyare materialized.”9 Warren Beck says that Faulkner’sworkscreate the “logic andreason
flouting quality of a dream.”10 Olga W. Vickery speaks ofthe halluci
natory effect of hiswork and of hisuse of intricate imageryand“the poetic rhythms of the unconscious.”11 But it isWalter J. Slatoff who comes closest to aligning Faulkner with surrealism. He says that
somewriters and painters, “the surrealists and dadaists,” wereled to deny reason, “to protest against disorder with disorder.” And, he continues, a part ofFaulkner is “contentwith disorder.”12 ButSlatoff seems tomisunderstand surrealism and so, I believe,is led toa conclu
sion inconsistent with surrealists’ aims and Faulkner’
s
achieve
ments. Surrealists are not content with disorder; they seek adifferent
kind oforder; andFaulkner doesnot leaveuswith contradictions; if his “suspensions arenotresolvable in rational terms,” as Slatoff says,
they are resolvable in surrealist terms.
As Slatoff and others point out, Faulkner’
s
style ischaracterized by theuseofrapidlyshifting points of view, more or less incoherent narrators, disordered time sequences, juxtapositions of the appar
ently contradictory, and, often, unsyntactical, marathonsentences.
By meansof these devices,Slatoff suggests, Faulkner inducesin his
reader a state of“partialtrance.”13 Yet, one may argue, AsI Lay
Dying seems more, not less, linear thanother Faulkner novels: the plotis arrangedmoreor lessin simple chronological time. RichardP. Adams considersthepoint and concludesthatthe appearance of
MaryRohrberger 143 linearity is deceptive. He mentions the substantial flashbacks, the chronological displacement of Whitfield’
s
section,14 the continual
overlapping or recapitulations, the whole effect being reinforcedby Darl’s account of things he hadn’tseenand the use of language often inappropriate to the speakers. These devices, Adamssays, createa
sense of“temporalandepistemological disorientation.”15
The characteristic devices andthe effectthey create onthe reader
are similarto the severalcriteria fordetermining whethera work
is
surrealistic. Paul Ilie says:“Probablythemostinfallible is the subjec
tive effect [the work] has upon the observer, the feeling that the observer is in thepresence of astrange disturbing world.”16 “Wemust
not hesitate,” Breton says in the Manifestoes of Surrealism, “to bewilder sensation.”17 This kindof derangement of the sensesresults in aderealization of theeveryday world and can beaccomplished by
distortionsinform and perspective,space-timedislocations, absurdi
tiesresulting fromthe juxtaposition ofwords, ideas, images in rela
tionshipsnot bound by laws of logic, causality, or syntax, unusual encounters, dreamimages,simulation of insanity, dissimilarplanes
of reality. Theresult is a work of art uncanny, incongrous, and absurd,
characterized by asMary Ann Caws puts it, “a basicdoublecenter— realityand dream,presenceand absence, identityand distance, inti
macy and loneliness, unity and multiplicity, continuity and discontinuity, language and silence, mobility and immobility, clarity andobscurity, and so on.”18 But the polaritiesare not left suspended.
Rather, the basic drive of the surrealist isto a reconciliationofoppo
sites, to apoint sublime wherethecontraries areidentified. Breton says: “Everything tends to makeus believe that there exists a certain point of the mindat which life and death, the realand the imagined,
past and future,the communicable and the incommunicable, high and
low, cease to beperceivedascontradictions.”19 This point sublime is where the “yes” and the“no” meet.
In As I Lay Dying Faulknermakes use of a dizzying number of
narrators; viewpoints shift rapidly; lengths of sections vary. The
immediate effect is kaleidoscopic, but thearrangementis fugue-like in alternation,resulting ultimately by thetime thelast voice is heard in a
polyphonic composition.The multiplicity of voicesreverberate,inde
pendent, but harmonizing as the themes emerge in contrapuntal order. This arrangement allows for both linearity and simultaneity,
distancing the immediacy, polarities similar to those achieved by the use of the other devices. Darl’
s
voice carries the major theme. He has
144 AS I LAY DYING
almost twice as manysections ashisnearest competitor, Vardaman,
and together their voices carry half the novel. It is inthevoices of
these two characters that most ofthe mystery resides.Darl’s extra
sensory perception allows him to perceivewhat he logically cannot
know. He penetrates to secret places,reports events he has not wit
nessed. Tull saysof Darl: “He islookingat
me.
He don’tsay nothing;
justlooks atmewith them queer eyes olf hisn that makes folkstalk.I alwayssayit aint never been whathedoneso much as how he looks at you. It’s like he hadgot into the inside of you someway. Like somehow you waslooking atyourself and your doings outen his eyes.”19
In this novel it is mainly in Darl’s sections that we find the
sentences elsewhere typical ofthe Faulknerian idiom. Early critics worried about the credibility of a character thinking in words and
syntaxinappropriatetohis educationand station and different from his actual speech. Faulknersometimes argued that since Darl was madit was appropriateforhislanguage to be different. Later critics explainDar
l
as embodyingthe concept of poetic madness or as encom
passing all possible modes of response and awareness.20 But Darl
is,
more than anyone else,the medium through whichthe two worlds pass. When his language is most poetic weseem deepest inside the
subconscious and thecontraries and space-time dislocations aremost clearlydiscernible.Darl says: “We go on,with a motion so soporific,so dreamlike as to be uninferent of progress, as though time andnot
space were decreasing between us and it.” It is “as thoughwe had
reached the place wherethe motion of thewasted world accelerates justbeforethefinal precipice....Itisasthoughthe spacebetween us were time.” “Howdoourlives ravel out intothe no-wind, no-sound,the weary gestures wearilyrecapitulant:echoes ofold compulsions with no-hand on no-string” (pp. 101, 139, 196).
Much of what Dar
l
reports seems etched onhis eye’
s
nether side and what he says seems arevelation of a truth based in dream logic.
Vardaman’
s
totemistic thinking is similar to Darl’s.Indeed, at one point in the novel, Chapters 48 through 51,their voices follow each otherin strict counterpoint—Vardaman, Darl, Vardaman, Darl. The
child,whose mindis at least temporarily deranged, is similarto the man who iscalled insane. They are botheredbysimilar confusions.
Vardaman worries about identity, reality andnon-reality, cause and effect. Darl conjugates the verb “tobe.” The twobrothersfunction to reveal the subconscious, theprimordial, thenether sideof life.
The other voices, those representingthe conscious, the“sane,” are
Mary Rohrberger 145 split equally.Anse,Dewey Dell, Jewel, Cash, Addie, Whitfield have
fifteen sections betweenthem. Cora, Tull, Peabody and the others,
also fifteen. Thefirst of these groups is composed of insiders. Their voicescarry themes as well as overlap with eachother andwiththe
voices of Dar
l
and Vardaman. The second group is composed of
outsiders. Their voices comment and recapitulate. Thus the statements of theme, together with the overlappings and recapitulations, create an effect oflinearityas well as simultaneity; the voices of insidersand outsiderscreate aneffect of identity aswell
as distance; and thevoicesof the “insane” mesh withthe voices of the
“sane”to create whateverauthenticity thereis in the surreal vision. The double-center is the baseof the surrealistworld view. This, together with the insistence that inner perception be presented visually, resulted in the primary of the surreal image, which is
composed of two or more elements having no logical relationship with
each other.Cawssays: “The surrealistaim could be loosely defined as
the intention of transforming (with all the deliberately alchemical forces which attaches to thelatter verb)sets ofstatic polar contraries
intopotentially powerful juxtapositions, intellectuallyuncomfortable
to contemplate, shocking tothe normal perception in theirintense
irrationality.”21 This kind of juxtapositioning of distant entities
results in a sudden confrontation andforms an entirely new object
where contraries are identified. The greaterthe disparity, the more
shocking the image that results. Breton, agreeingwith Dali, calls the
processparanoiac.Hecontinues:“Obtainingsuch adouble image (for
example, the image of a horse that isat the same time the image ofa
woman22) can be prolonged, continuing theparanoiacprocess, the existence of another obsessiveidea then being enoughto causea third image toappear...and soon until a number ofimages, limited onlyby
thedegreeofparanoiac capacity ofthought, converge.”23
Perhaps themost strikingeffect thatFaulknerachievesinAs I Lay Dying results from the use of this kind of double-image. The
theme is announced early by Dar
l
in the opening episode. Typically,
there emerges from thenarration asmall, set scene,highly stylized. The three brothers—Darl, Jewel, Cash—are set in juxtaposition.
Straight linesandcircles, soft rightanglesdescribe the pathDarl and
Jewelwalk along. At first Jewel is behind Darl, but Darl describes
Jewelas thoughhe can see him, asthough the tableauhas been lifted
out of reality and projected asan imagethat Darl sees. Jewelis tall, rigid, like a cigarstore Indian, movingonly from the hips down.
146 AS I LAYDYING
Instead offollowing the path,Jewel stepsthrough the cottonhouse andemerges in frontof Darl. Thereis a kind of mathematical preci
sionintherelationshipset upbetween Jewel andDarl, a relationship defined in terms of Cash’s building of the coffin, measuring, fitting
boards together.Though thebrothers areclearlyinmotion, the effect
is of stasis, like the figures frozen in time on Keats’s urn, and though the brothersare here clearly separated, bytheend,all the children will
be superimposed, laid one on top of another.
The method can be seen more clearlyif we selectthemost obvious examples:Jewel and the horse in montage; Addie,the horse, and the fish in montage;the seedand the sack inmontage withalltheexten
sions the seed and sack represent—Lafe helping Dewel Dell load,
Jewel helping Dar
l
load, Whitfield helping Addie load, Darl, somehow ineveryone’s sack, penetrating knowing their secretloads, Addiein
the coffin, Addie in the earth, Dewey Dell, who feelslike “awetseed
wildin the hotblindearth.” Theimagesmultiply crazily, coalescing,
andcreating new images each time a new termis added.
It isdifficult tosaythat Darl is more or less insane than the rest of Addie’schildren. Cash, ostensiblythe most reasonable, measures to
the half inch the distance he fell. The point itseems to me is made clearlyinChapters 18 and19.In Chapter 18 Cash liststhirteen points in explanation of why he made the coffin on a bevel. In immediate juxtaposition, Faulknerplacesthe shortestchapter in the novel: “My mother is a fish.”The juxtaposition createsmontage and makes the identification clear.All thechildrenhave much in common. By the time they get Addie buriedthey have each lost something—Jewel,his horse; Cash, the phonograph he wanted to buy; Dewel Dell, her ten dollars;Vardaman, the train he did not see;Darl, his “freedom.” None
can be said tobemore or lessviolent than theothers.Jewelseems the
most openly violent, but theothers suppress violence andturn itto
other ends. Vardaman watches the buzzards, Dar
l
setsthe barnon
fire,Dewey Dell wishes Dar
l
dead, Cash allowshis leg to be set in
cement.Nor can any of their actionsbe seen as clearly selfless. Each
loved Addie, but with thesamelove-hate that Jewel feelsfor his horse and that Addie felt for them. The burial they afford her is anobscene caress. The last time we see Dar
l
heis onthe train on his way to
Jackson.Although Dar
l
recounts theepisode,he usesthethird person.
In thesection he laughsand conjectures why he is laughing.Somehow it seems tiedup with grotesquesexual behavior.The train passesthe
wagon on orby which are the otherBundrenchildren. Cash, Dewey
Mary Rohrberger 147
Dell, and Vardaman are eating bananas. “Yes yes yes yes yes yes
yes,”says Darl.Themontageis complete. Addie hasbeen laid in the hot blindearth and only Darl, theapprehending mind, knows why.
Therole that Addie playsin thenovel canbe seen as surrealist in concept. Sexual love is a unique goal ofhuman search because, as Ferdinand Alquie says: “It contains allthe obscurity, all the prob
lems, all the ambiguity of man.”24 Women are the bond, a bridge between waking anddream, the source ofwonder,the repositoryof unique and overpowering knowledge hiddenfrom men. The woman is
oftenthefemalecounterpart of the centaur image of man, because she
ispresented aswoman and serpent.25 Addie fits the role.Inher is also the merger of life and death and the material and the immaterial.
Peabody says: “I can remember how when I was young I believed
death to be a phenomenonof the body;now I knowittobemerely a
functionof themind”(p. 42).
The surreal image also carrieswithinit the potential for humor as
anecessary consequence of its makeup. The juxtapositioning of dis
tant realities on an inappropriateplane, the montage ofcontradic
tions and incompatibilities of experience, leads to absurdity, not inthe “nauseatingsense of theword,”asAnna Balakianputs it, “but
so
far
as ‘absurd’designates the forcesthatout-distance the narrow limits of
logic.”26 Maurice Nadeau quotes Jarry, “Laughter isborn out ofdis
covery ofthe contradictory.”27Wallace Fowliewrites: “There is a kind ofhumor which is visible at the most solemn and even tragicmoments
of experience. Nerves can’t stand too muchtension and often are relieved by a paradoxicalexplosion.”28 This kind of humorwas termed
black humor ordark humor by Breton, whoconsidered it the“superior rebellionof the mind.”29 And this kind of humoris typicalinAsI Lay
Dying. Thereis muchthatis absurd—Cash buildingAddie’s coffin under her window,Vardaman boringholes in the coffin, the ineffec
tive Anse directinga huge, complicated journey,theBundrensbeing tested by fireand flood (and all the ironiesresultingfrom the comic
juxtapositioning ofthis family andits journey with various archety
pal journeys andrituals), Cashlying on thecoffin, his leg encased in cement, the grotesqueries resulting from Darl’
s
identification of Addie
and the fish,Anseatthe end withnewteeth and a newwife. Itis the peculiarparadoxical quality of this kind of humorthat accounts for the frustrationof readers who insist on calling the novel eitheraffir
mative or pessimistic, heartwarming or grotesque, tragic or comic.
The fact is, it is all of these things — not first one and then
148 ASI LAY DYING
another, but at the same time. Nor are the paradoxes frustrating.As
Breton says: “Themind ofthe man whodreamsis fully satisfied by what happensto him.”30
Surrealists set out to bewilder sensation and thus to revitalize matter by resituating objects in relation to themselves and their audience. The object was tounsettle cliched habits of thinking and
elevate the subconscious to a position of power. In thisway the see-er became theseer, who aloneisfree. The structure and effects ofAs I
LayDying suggest that Faulkner musthave agreed.
NOTES
1 Faulknerin theUniversity, ed. Frederick L.Gwynnand JosephL.
Blotner
(New
York, 1959),
p.
87.
2 Jean Stein, “William Faulkner: An Interview,” William Faulkner: Three Decades of Criticism,ed.Frederick J. Hoffman and Olga W.Vickery
(East Lansing, 1960), p.72.
3 Faulkner inthe University, p. 109. 4 Faulkner in the University, p.111.
5 Faulknerin the University,pp. 263-264.
6Faulknerin the University,
pp.
268-269.
7 FaulknerAt Nagano,ed.Robert A. Jelliffe (Tokyo, 1956),
p.
68. 8 “The Creation of the Real in William Faulkner,” Three Decades, p.
163—Mayoux’s italics.
9 “William Faulkner’s Style,” Three Decades, p. 153.
10TheNovels of William Faulkner(BatonRouge, 1959), p.50.
11 “The Edge ofOrder: ThePattern of Faulkner’s Rhetoric,
”
Three Decades,p.197.
12
“
The Creation of the Real in William Faulkner.” ThreeDecades, p.
156.
13 Slatoff, p. 193.
11 Thereare other displacements—Chapters17,20,40,54, for example. 15 Faulkner:Myth and Motion(Princeton, 1968), p. 71.
Mary Rohrberger 149
16The SurrealistMode in Spanish Literature (Ann Arbor, 1968). p. 5.
7 (Ann Arbor, 1969), p. 263.
18 The PoetryofDadaand Surrealism (Princeton, 1970). pp. 19-20. (New York, 1975), p. 119.
20See,forexample IrvingHowe, WilliamFaulkner: ACriticalStudy
(New York,1952), p. 55, and Vickery, The Novels of William Faulkner, p.50.
21 The Poetry ofDada and Surrealism, pp. 14-15.
22A fortuitousexample with relationship to AsI Lay Dying. 23 Manifestoes of Surrealism,p. 274.
The Philosophy of Surrealism (Ann Arbor, 1965), p. 7.
Another fortuitousexample. Jewel, ofcourse, is projected as centaur
by means of the Jewel-horsemontage. See WallaceFowlie.Age ofSurreal
ism(Bloomington and London,1966), p. 108.
Andre Breton: Magus ofSurrealism (New York, 1971), p. 248.
27TheHistory of Surrealism (New York,1965),p.25. Age of Surrealism, p.108.
Anna Balakian, Surrealism:TheRoadto the Absolute (New York,
1959),p. 236.
30 Manifestoes of Surrealism, p. 13.
