THESIS) - WILLIAM FAULKNER: TIME AND MYTHOLOGY Manoel Ferreira Neto: THESIS

XII PART

"As I lay Daying" is a legend; and the procession of ragged, depraved Hillman, carry Addie Brunden´s body through water and through fire to the cemetery in Jefferson, whilst people free from the smell and buzzard circle everhead - this progress is not unlike that of the medieval sow toward redemption. The legend is instructive for us. Because they are simpler in mind and live more remotely from the Snopes world than the Younger Sartorises and Compsons, the Brunden´s are able to carry a genuine act of traditionl morality through to its end. They are infected with amorality, but it is the amorality of the Snopes.

Such discusson we have been showing, analyzing, likening, splitting up the senses just to comprehend Faulkner´s universe, couldn´t reach for the best without deepening into the theme of Myth related to Biblical genealogies of the Old Testament or of those momentous sequences of names which climax as in the beginning of the Gospel of St. Matthew in one unique event, the birth of the Son of God. "Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaacbegat Jacob, and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren... And after they were brought to Babylon, Jacomas begat Salatiel... And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus, who is called Christ. The birth of Christ is an eternal event, since it had been announced from the beginning of time". Faulkner´s novels, whilst secular, seem to be heralding Good Tidings; they keep us potent, as though by giving us gum to chew, whilst we wait for the Incarnation, whereby all promises will be fulfilled. Man, for want of salvation, is for a whilst surrendered to Fatality, he is turned toward the past only because the future does not yet exist.

Concerned to consider a Faulkner´s comprehension related to myths, to overcome time as a psychological dimension, reaching the senses of human being, it´s the very needed some establishments of exegesis without which how could be understand the real sense of myth in his words.

Maulraux, in his famous preface to Santuary, had already spoken of Faulkner´s art as "fascination", and Sartre, writing on Sartoris, as a "spell". Nowhere are those words more applicable than in Absalom. Even though at first the story is not particularly misterious, the reader soon finds himself "possessed" by it, as are the two narrators, Quentin Compson and his Canadian friend, Shreve. The Canadian is fascinated by his initiation into what he thinks is the mystery of the deep. "South", Quentin by the horror of incest - both the incest he imagines exists between Judith and Charles Bom and the incest he imagines existed between himself and his sister Caddie - whilst we common readers are hipnotized by the motionless, frozen time which is gradually revealed to mortals as the only image of Eternity theu will ever perceive.

The Sartorises and the Sutpens and the Compsons do not represent the traditional in its various degrees of vitality. They are people in a certain way of life, at a particular time, confronted with real circumstances and with items of history. And their humanity (or their illusion of humanity, on a larger - than life scale) is not limited, ultimate, by their archetypal significance. Moreover, in each book there is dramatically credible fiction which remains particular (sometimes with difficulty) coherent as action, even though the pattern is true, in a larger sense as myth. In short, Mr. Faulkner successful work has the some kind, though certainly not the same degree, of General meaning there´s to be found in Dante´s Divina Commedia or in the Electra of Sofocles.

Faulkner´s heroes are not, as are others, defined by a complex of psychological, biographical, or social peculiarities which, taken together, secure their individuality. Their structure rests upon one atemporal and immutable act, often speculative or at least situated, ouside time, such as Christmas´ Negro blood, the crime formerly committed by the old convict in the Wild Palms, or the vein cruelty of Popeye... Faulkner´s novels do not, like those of Stendal and Balzac, increase our knowledge of man. They impart to us a vision of the world and that fascination which a certain image of eternity, of timelessness, hols for the human mind.

#RIODEJANEIRO#, 03 DE JANEIRO DE 2019#