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casparb 's review for:
Absalom, Absalom!
by William Faulkner
Been a while since I was at the Faulkner. Absalom (x2) is a very insistent, vigorous text. It's not so demanding as S&F, but certainly requires considerable focus. One can become lost quite easily - rereading chapters is recommended.
Also a brilliant one on the title. Even if the book of Samuel is familiar, the reference can pass by.
Faulkner shines as always, in the style. Here and there he channels Wilde (the opening stacks adjectives upon adjectives almost parodically). Elsewhere, I find myself reminded of ancient mystical authors. Love all that.
'we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence, impervious to time and inexplicable'
'Yes. Maybe we are both Father. Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. Maybe happen is never once but like ripples maybe on water after the pebble sinks, the ripples moving on, spreading, the pool attached by a narrow umbilical water-cord to the next pool which the first pool feeds, has fed, did feed, let this second pool contain a different temperature of water, a different molecularity of having seen, felt, remembered, reflect in a different tone the infinite unchanging sky, it doesn't matter: that pebble's watery echo whose fall it did not even see moves across its surface too at the original ripple-space, to the old ineradicable rhythm thinking Yes, we are both Father.'
I'm reminded of Ulysses here - the water-talk in Ithaca, the feminine 'Yes' of Penelope. Also something of an ee cummings poem here.
Also a brilliant one on the title. Even if the book of Samuel is familiar, the reference can pass by.
Faulkner shines as always, in the style. Here and there he channels Wilde (the opening stacks adjectives upon adjectives almost parodically). Elsewhere, I find myself reminded of ancient mystical authors. Love all that.
'we see dimly people, the people in whose living blood and seed we ourselves lay dormant and waiting, in this shadowy attenuation of time possessing now heroic proportions, performing their acts of simple passion and simple violence, impervious to time and inexplicable'
'Yes. Maybe we are both Father. Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. Maybe happen is never once but like ripples maybe on water after the pebble sinks, the ripples moving on, spreading, the pool attached by a narrow umbilical water-cord to the next pool which the first pool feeds, has fed, did feed, let this second pool contain a different temperature of water, a different molecularity of having seen, felt, remembered, reflect in a different tone the infinite unchanging sky, it doesn't matter: that pebble's watery echo whose fall it did not even see moves across its surface too at the original ripple-space, to the old ineradicable rhythm thinking Yes, we are both Father.'
I'm reminded of Ulysses here - the water-talk in Ithaca, the feminine 'Yes' of Penelope. Also something of an ee cummings poem here.