Fantasy Literature: An Approach to Reality

168 Pages·1982·17.199 MB·English

by  T. E. Apter (auth.)

FANTASY LITERATURE
By the same author
Novels
SILKEN LINES AND SILVER HOOKS
ADONIS' GARDEN
Criticism
THOMAS MANN: The Devil's Advocate
VIRGINIA WOOLF: A Study of her Novels
FANTASY LITERATURE
An Approach to Reality
T.E. APTER
© T.E. Apter 1982
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1982 978-0-333-26803-2
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1982 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-1-349-04712-3 ISBN 978-1-349-04710-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04710-9
To my father
Contents
Acknowledgements Vlll
1 INTRODUCTION: Fantasy and Psychoanlysis 1
2 FANTASY AS MORALITY: Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' 12
and Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter
3 THE UNCANNY: Freud, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Edgar Allan Poe 32
4 THE DOUBLE: Stevenson's DrJ ekyll and Mr Hyde, 48
Hoffmann's The Devil's Elixirs, Dostoevsky's
The Double
5 FANTASTIC OBJECTIVITY: Franz Kafka 67
6 THE FANTASY OF ORDER: Vladimir Nabokov 93
7 LOGICAL FANTASY: Jorge Luis Borges 111
8 PSYCHOANALYSIS AS FANTASY 130
Notes 152
Index 159
Acknowledgements
The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly
given permission for the use of copyright material:
Sigmund Freud Copyrights Ltd, the Institute of Psycho-Analysis, and the
Hogarth Press Ltd, for permission to quote from The Standard Edition of
the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated and edited by
James Strachey.
Martin Seeker & W arburg Ltd for permission to quote from In the Penal
Settlement by Franz Kafka, translated by Willa and Edwin Muir.
Schocken Books Inc for permission to reprint from The Penal Colony by
Franz Kafka, copyright © 1948 by Schocken Books Inc. Copyright
renewed © 1965 by Schocken Books Inc.
Penguin Books Ltd for permission to quote from Nikolai Gogol's Diary of
a Madman and Other Stories by Nikolai Gogol, translated by Ronald Wilks.
Calder and Boyars Ltd for permission to quote from E.T.A. Hoffmann's
The Devil's Elixirs, translated by Ronald Taylor.
The author gives special thanks to Dr Nathaniel S. Apter for his
comments, criticism and encouragement.
1 Introduction: Fantasy and
Psychoanalysis
The aim and purpose of fantasy in literature are not necessarily different
from those of the most exacting realism. What is called 'truth' in fiction
is often hypothetical: if a character has certain traits, then one is likely to
find, or enlightened by finding in him, other, related traits; also, if a
character has certain traits then his actions and responses are already to
some extent circumscribed. Yet hypotheses in fiction, however
'realistic', must be imaginative as well as plausible. At each state in the
work the artist is faced with choices and decisions that may not have been
foreseen at a previous stage. The 'truth' of fiction is attributable not only
to the integration of character traits, the balance of motives, the
consequences of actions and the development of events, but also to the
ways in which new plausibilities are spotted, and the ways in which the
artist's decisions create possibilities which throw light on various
characters, their motives, or their conditions. Truth in fiction is not a
study of probabilities but a utilisation and discovery of both possibilities
and plausibilities to make points about what is probably our world.
As practised readers of fiction we can gauge the point and legitimacy of
conclusions drawn from fantastic as well as from realistic premises. For
example, when Gregor Samsa wakes to find himself transformed into a
gigantic insect, then his and his family's subsequent behaviour reveals a
great deal about Gregor's pre-insectile state and thus justifies Kafka's use
of the implausible premise. The fantastic circumstances can be viewed as
an economical and effective means of revealing characters' interests and
emotions which would be disguised or modified in surroundings well
ordered by comfort or custom; in this way they would be seen to have the
same purpose as the realist's plot.
Alternatively, though not exclusively, the fantastic tale may be read as
an allegory, with the literal story seen as a hieroglyph recording a
previously established truth. The fantastic occurrences, setting, or
characters will not tax the reader's credulity for they will be treated as
1
2 FANTASY LITERATURE- AN APPROACH TO REALITY
systematic representations, with the particular quality of their strangeness
commenting in various ways upon the ideas represented.
These suggestive readings make fantasy respectable and manageable,
but they are obviously inadequate. If fantasy is a story proceeding
logically from a fantastic premise, then the bizarre expectations it arouses
and its peculiar brand of reasoned confusion are ignored. If the mental
acrobatics of the fantasist are treated as allegories, then their revolutionary
constructions are ignored. In either case fantasy becomes inessential to the
work's themes and ideas, however appropriate it may be to their present
ation. My aim in this book is to discuss the methods and achievements of
fantasy in the modern novel and story, from Nathaniel Hawthorne to
Jorge Luis Borges, and to show how and why fantasy is essential to the
authors' various purposes, which must be understood not as an escape
from reality but as an investigation of it. The works discussed here are
different from the fairy tale, myth or saga which are either enacted in a
world separated from ours spatially or temporally (in a 'Never-never land'
or 'Once upon a time'), or which are imaginative, emblematic histories.
The respective metamorphoses of Jove and the Beast are very different
from Gregor Samsa's because, however wonderful, they occur within the
laws of their mythic or enchanted settings. Gregor Samsa's trans
formation obviously breaks natural laws: if the tale is not understood as
occuring within our world it loses its point. However, at the same time
that Gregor's transformation defies nature and logic, it reveals an
unexpected order which indubitably belongs to our world. Recognition
is puzzling not only because it is disturbing but also because of the
strangely literal language fantasy employs and the difficulty in marking
out that area of thought, response and perception which is thereby
realistically decribed.
At the heart of fantasy in modern fiction is the uncertainty as to which
world the tale belongs-to this one, or to a very different one? The
central query is unlike Hamlet's uncertainty as to the status of the ghost
- an illusion, a demon, an angel, his dead father? - and unlike, too, the
query in The Turn of the Screw - are the ghosts hallucinated or are they
spectres which could, in principle, be seen by others? The problematic
fantasies in Hawthorne, Conrad, Hoffmann, Kafka, Gogol, Dostoevsky,
Nabokov and Borges cannot be isolated within a generally stable world,
nor can answers as to the status of the fantasies solve the questions they
raise. Even if Gogol's madman or Dostoevsky's Golyadkin or
Hoffmann's Nathanael have got things wrong, their beliefs, expectations
and perceptions persist in commenting upon this world. The impact of
fantasy rests upon the fact that the world presented seems to be