The Absence of God in Modernist Literature

240 Pages·2007·1.904 MB·English

by  Gregory Erickson (auth.)

The Absence of God in ModernistLiterature
This page intentionally left blank
The Absence of God in
Modernist Literature
Gregory Erickson
THEABSENCEOFGODINMODERNISTLITERATURE
© Gregory Erickson,2007.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-1-4039-7758-8
“The Red Wheelbarrow”by William Carlos Williams,from Collected Poems:
1909–1939,Volume I,copyright ©1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp.
Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.
All rights reserved.No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published in 2007 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™
175 Fifth Avenue,New York,N.Y.10010 and
Houndmills,Basingstoke,Hampshire,England RG21 6XS
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave
Macmillan division of St.Martin’s Press,LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.
Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States,United Kingdom
and other countries.Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European
Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-1-349-53763-1 ISBN 978-0-230-60426-1 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230604261
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Erickson,Gregory.
The absence of God in modernist literature / Gregory Erickson.
p.cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1.God in literature.2.Literature,Modern—19th century—History
and criticism.3.Literature,Modern—20th century—History and
criticism.4.Schoenberg,Arnold,1874–1951—Criticism and
interpretation.I.Title.
PN56.G57E75 2007
809(cid:2).93382—dc22 2006051383
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd.,Chennai,India.
First edition:May 2007
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Literature after the Death of God 1
1 Reading God/God Writing:
The Irrational and Difficult Name 17
2 The Golden Bowl, Atheology, and Nothing 57
3 À La Rechercheand Proust’s
Unstable Metaphors of Divinity 93
4 Proust’s Theology of Music 123
5 Schoenberg’s Godless Silences:
Atonality, Poetry, and the Challenge
of Coherence 143
6 Schoenberg’s Impossible God:
Moses und Aron 177
Epilogue: The Other Side of God: Reading
in the Dark 199
Notes 211
Bibliography 221
Index 233
This page intentionally left blank
Preface and
Acknowledgments
Along time ago, in my first year in the English PhD
program at The Graduate Center of the City University
of New York, I took a class on James, Proust, and Woolf
with Mary Ann Caws and a course on Biblical Narrative with David
Richter. As almost an afterthought to both classes, I wrote a short
“improvisation” on The Golden Bowl and negative theology, and I
started a paper on deconstruction, atheism, and theology. My
research on these papers brought me into contact with the works
of Thomas Altizer, Mark C. Taylor, Kevin Hart, and John Caputo
for the first time. While it seemed clear to me that these remark-
able thinkers were changing how scholars thought about philoso-
phy, theology, and deconstruction, it also began to change how I
thought about literature and music, especially the literature of the
early twentieth century. The result, after many years of thinking
and reading, was first my dissertation and now this book.
There are many people that I need to thank, starting with my
dissertation committee, Professors Wayne Koestenbaum, David
Gordon, Richard McCoy, and my director Mary Ann Caws. They
were understanding, passionate, efficient, and kind. I especially
want to thank Mary Ann, who on my first day of class as a graduate
student told me that the best thing you could get from a course was
a list of books to read. More than anything, this book represents
years of engaging with the reading lists and ideas I have gotten from
her. Many other professors and teachers I have had the pleasure of
learning from also helped determine the shape of this book, includ-
ing Richard Barickman, Norman Kelvin, Charles Persky, Joan
Richardson, Eve Sedgwick, Leo Treitler, and Martin Stevens.
About the members of my writing group, Melissa Bloom,
Jennifer Lemberg, Tanya Radford, and Richard Santana, I cannot
viii Preface and Acknowledgments
say enough. All close friends and all great readers, their suggestions
and influence can be seen in every sentence of this work. They
were patient, confrontational, demanding, and relentless in their
criticism, suggestions, and encouragement. My engagement with
these people was my most rewarding and productive time in grad-
uate school and I trust it will continue for years to come. Special
thanks to Jennifer who has been a loyal partner on my whole acad-
emic journey; she has read and commented on every word and
draft of this book. Other friends and colleagues who have helped
with their advice and expertise along the way include Joy Calico,
Kimberly Engber, George Fisher, Neil Lerner, David Lavery, Paul
Loxtercamp, Rhonda Wilcox, and Maile Yaminaka. Also thanks to
my friends at Medgar Evers and Mannes College, my colleagues
and students at the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, my free-
lance musician friends, the students in my “Monstrous, Mystical,
and Surreal” seminar at the Gallatin School, and the guys at
Temple basketball. Some of you didn’t even know I was writing
this, but you helped keep me productive, energized, employed,
and sane.
And finally, thanks to my mom who introduced me to the joys
of reading, my dad with whom a recent conversation gave me the
idea for my conclusion, my brother Mike, who keeps me laughing,
and my nephew Quincy—born about the same time my ideas for
this book were—for helping me keep it all in perspective. And
thanks to Angelina Tallaj, without whom I cannot imagine these
past ten years, and who, at the beginning and end of every day,
makes it all worthwhile.
* * *
Several chapters in this book contain pages that have appeared in
earlier publications, and I am grateful to the publishers for per-
mission to reprint them here. Sections of chapter 3 and 4 were first
published by Cambridge Scholars Press in Music and Literary
Modernism: Critical Essays and Comparative Studies(2006), edited by
Robert MacParland and are reprinted with permission of
Cambridge Scholars Press. An earlier version of chapter 2, “The
Golden Bowl, A/theology, and Nothing” appeared in the Henry
James Review 22:3 (2001), 259–267. © The Johns Hopkins
University Press. Reprinted with permission of The Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Introduction: Literature
after the Death of God
“Whither is God?” he cried: “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and
I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we
drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire
horizon?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (Gay Science125)
One morning in 1917, in La Rochelle, I was waiting for some school
friends who were to accompany me to the lycee. They were late. After a
while I found myself at a loss as to how to amuse myself. I decided to think
about the Almighty. He instantly toppled out of the sky and disappeared
without leaving any word or explanation. “He doesn’t exist,” I said to
myself with polite surprise, and thought the matter settled.
—Jean-Paul Sartre (Words 210)
The news of the death of God cannot really reach our ears until its rever-
berations are traced in the notions of self, history and book. The echoes of
the death of God can be heard in the disappearance of the self, the end of
history, and the closure of the book.
—Mark C. Taylor (Erring 7)
Disappearance—Death—Difficulty
In 1965, J. Hillis Miller followed his book on Victorian poetry, The
Disappearance of God, with Poets of Reality, a book on modernism. In the
Introduction he wrote that “if the disappearance of God is presup-
posed by much Victorian poetry, the death of God is the starting point
for many twentieth century writers.” In much modernist literature, as
Miller described it, God, who was “once the creative sun, the power
establishing the horizon where heaven and earth come together,
becomes an object of thought like any other. When man drinks up the
sea he also drinks up God, the creator of the sea” (2–3). God, it
seemed, was now truly dead, and modernism had sounded the death
G. Erickson, The Absence of God in Modernist Literature
© Gregory Erickson 2007