University:
University of Michigan
Course:
ENGLISH 473 | Topics in American Literature
Academic year:

2021
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338

Pages:

22
Author:

Koen D

Chapter 3 The Urn's Idealities in "The Bear" Perhaps the most compelling intertextual relationship between Keats's ode and Faulkner's work is in his short story "The Bear." Published in 1942 in a collection of short stories titled Go Down, Moses, "The Bear" is a hunting story that traces the protagonist, Isaac McCaslin, from his "baptism" into the mythical wilderness, to his renunciation of his inheritance in his adulthood. The majority of "The Bear" is set during Isaac's youth and is framed by the overpowering presence of Old Ben: a large, menacing bear that had "loomed in [Isaac's] dreams since before he could remember." Isaac endeavors to envision the bear as a deathless myth, as if the mortal animal could be transfigured into the changeless realm of the Grecian urn. In a similar fashion, Isaac retreats from the world of change and attempts to embody the ideals of the Grecian, a feat alternately presented as both heroic and cowardly. Unlike the characters studied earlier, Faulkner does not portray Isaac in an overtly negative light, instead choosing an ambivalence closer to Keats's interaction with the urn. Faulkner positions Keats's ode as a form of refuge against the brutalities of society contrasted with the dangers of the urn's ideals to delude and ignore reality altogether. In "The Bear," we see Keats's ode Irving Howe, "The Relationship Between Part IV and the Rest of the Bear," In Bear, Man, and God: Seven Approaches to William Faulkner's 'The Bear' ed. Francis Utley (New York: Random House, 1964), 350. William Faulkner, "The Bear," Go Down, Moses (New York: Modern Library, 1970). 200. All other references to this edition cited with the prefix "GDM." functioning in extremes, leading Isaac to denounce the institution of slavery though he compromises his ability to cope with the constant flux of life. The story of "The Bear" (as published in Go Down, Moses) is told in five parts with the first two sections dealing with Isaac's initiation into the woods of Old Ben. Isaac's elders have been trying to bring down Old Ben for so many years that their hunting trips have become a rite of passage for boys upon reaching the age of ten. The woods, called Big Bottom, are described by Isaac as being "[b]igger and older than any recorded document" (GDM, 191). The trees depicted on the urn that resist seasonal changes in their perpetual spring, are present in "The Bear," though now the woods are trying resist their own destruction: "being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with plows and axes who feared it because it was wilderness" (GDM, 193). The description of the woods of Isaac's youth is like a double-exposed image, as the elements of the natural environment are imprinted by the indelible myths of "deities or mortals" that inhabit Isaac's imagination (GU, 6). As Bart Welling remarks, "Faulkner's texts regularly get in the way, interposing [the] intertextual networks of tradition, production, and meaning" upon the landscape of the disappearing wilderness. These intertextual networks are specifically a Romantic characteristic, as the imagination imposes a secondary reality on the world around it. Isaac's thoughts are projected (or displaced) onto not only the woods but the society of people around him to the point that he cannot discern reality at all. As an orphan, Isaac's childhood forms a strong attachment to the woods, as he reflects "... the deathless and immemorial phases of the mother who had shaped him if any had toward the man he almost was, mother and father both to the old man born of a Bart H. Welling, "A Meeting with Old Ben: Seeing and Writing Nature in Faulkner's Go Down, Moses." The Mississippi Quarterly 55 (Fall: 2002), 463. Gelfant concurs: "[t]hus, he changes from an uninitiated boy into a Hunter-ideal, embodying the virtues of courage, pride, humility, and endurance. But he does this at the sacrifice of human flexibility, for as a perfected being, any further gesture he could make would involve a departure from the ideal" (Gelfant, 52). In Isaac's argument with his cousin, McCaslin Edmonds as to whether Isaac should accept his birthright, Isaac contends he cannot repudiate the land that "was never mine to repudiate" (GDM, 256). Isaac's repudiation is now shown seen as an "act of escaping" both the evil of the world and the responsibility to set things right (GDM. 294). McCaslin, not given to the uncomprehending extremes of Isaac, sees Isaac shirking his familial duty and escaping into the suspended illusions of Truth and Beauty. During their discussion, the narrative flashes back to a moment years prior when McCaslin discovered that Isaac had seen Old Ben and did not shoot him. Realizing that the much younger cousin was trying to prolong the "wild ecstasy" of pursuit from the inevitable motion of time, McCaslin reads Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" to Isaac: 'But you didn't shoot when you had the gun, McCaslin said. "Why?"" [McCaslin retrieves a book and opens it] "Listen,' he said. He read the five stanzas aloud and closed the book on his finger and looked up. All right, he said. 'Listen,' and read again, but only one stanza this time and closed the book and laid it on the table. She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, McCaslin said: 'Forever wilt thou love, and she be fair 'He's talking about a girl, he said. He had to talk about something." McCaslin said. Then he said, "He was talking about truth. Truth is one. It doesn't change. It covers all things which touch the heart-honor and pride and pity and justice and courage and love. Do you see now? (GDM, 296-297) McCaslin perceives Isaac's inability to kill Old Ben as a way of preserving the purity of his ideals. Repeating the second verse of Keats's ode emphasizes McCaslin's awareness of Isaac's refusal to risk the "spirit ditties of no tone" by necessitating change (GU, 14). This passage reveals McCaslin's awareness of Isaac's stasis as much as it is a study on the subjectivity of interpretation. Isaac assumes Keats is referring solely to the girl, missing McCaslin's point that Keats was using the girl a way of expressing something larger. McCaslin sees the ode not only as a direct commentary on the urn's ideals, but illustrating a truth that can be removed from the context of the poem and still be true. Isaac has restricted Truth to have a limited meaning an application that cannot cover "all things which touch the heart," but only what has been expressively shown. McCaslin wants to prove to Isaac that by ignoring the part of the bear that is subject to change and decay, he removes the possibility of coming any closer to this image. Isaac cannot understand his cousin's implied universality and instead traps himself into a life that is incontrovertible, as he believes if Truth cannot change, neither should he. In rejecting his inheritance, Isaac also shows a withdrawal from time that dooms him to the still life of his imagination, just like the immobile "men and maidens" on the Grecian urn. In his attempt to personify the eternal verities Keats associates with the urn, he limits himself from the action of Truth and the experience of Beauty.

Klein Joseph Keats Urn and the Arrested Image of Faulkner-4

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