Nightwood

I am a casual reader and certainly no expert on literature, but `Nightwood' was recommended to me by someone who is, and I am very glad of that. So this review may seem a bit awkward, rubbing shoulders with more learned company, but perhaps there may be some worth in the perspective of someone who, in the normal course of events, would never have ventured into these waters.I will start by saying that `Nightwood' is a work of undoubted genius. Let me also say that I started by reading the reviews here, the Introduction by T. S. Eliot and the Preface by Jeanette Winterson, and -- especially in regard to the latter two -- I rather wish I hadn't. Eliot begins (and ends) by suggesting it might be better to refuse the license offered by being given the opportunity to introduce this work and, while I understand why he went ahead and did so, personally, I wish he'd followed his first inclination. Maybe he could have said, "Just read the book. You'll understand why when you're done," but it is not my place to put words in the great man's mouth.Winterson began by saying, "Certain texts work in homeopathic dilutions; that is, nano amounts effect significant change over long periods of time. Nightwood is a nano-text." I think Winterson is a very good author, but aside from finding that a dubious description of homeopathic dilutions, I can't figure out what it means in regards to `Nightwood', especially after reading it. Starting out feeling a bit lost, I wandered in the Preface a short while and gave up.The reviews were interesting and some were quite fun to read, but I'm glad I didn't have to base my decision to buy this book on them. That is not a slam against them, for this book is many things to many people, and on reading it again (as Eliot said) I may have (probably will) new opinions. So this is a review written before the first blush has faded. Due consideration can wait for another day.`Nightwood' has a reputation as a difficult book. I did not find it so. I fell in during the first two paragraphs and gratefully submerged myself to the end. Perhaps that is because I am shallow. But to me, the essential fact of the book is the language. The language is astounding. So much so that I will term `Nightwood' a tale told inside-out. By that I mean, in story telling as it is most often done, there are people, places, events, thoughts and feelings, and the author chooses her or his words and style to convey these to the reader.Here we have words; brilliantly arranged and sumptuously presented, in streams and sometimes in torrents, magnificently relentless. It is the words that engender the people, places and events in `Nightwood' because words need a referent to have resonance. Thus, the entities that populate the story are surreal, for they are born of language, not `reality', which must obey a different canon. The doctor is an amazing creation, but you will not meet him on this plane. The description of Jenny Petherbridge is a monumental achievement, and like a monument, it's hard not to get overwhelmed by it. Consider a few brief examples, minute beside the whole, but brilliant in their own right:`The words that fell from her mouth seemed to have been lent to her; had she been forced to invent a vocabulary for herself, it would have been a vocabulary of two words, "ah" and "oh."'`She was avid and disorderly in her heart. She defiled the very meaning of personality in her passion to be a person."And my favorite: `Only severed could any part of her be called "right."'No being that physics admits outside the imagination of a genius could merit such a description.It has been said that `Nightwood' is about `meaning' (a loose term) not information, and that is true, as far as it goes, but the degree is questionable. Considering that meaning, or perhaps more concretely, the thoughts that give that `meaning' meaning, some are not a thing of words, while in other cases, words can outrun the thoughts that inspired them. Which is the case in `Nightwood', I have no idea. The language is so dense, so rich, so layered and knotted, it has a life of its own, independent of its creator, as if it is no longer wholly the author's work, but shaped by other forces. Trying to root `meaning' out of it is truly difficult, perhaps impossible, if one's main concern is to ask: "What does `Nightwood' mean"?That is not to say the book is "meaningless." Taken as data, the reflections in `Nightwood' say some fascinating things about love, about loss, about the human condition. But so do many works. Such data are fairly commonplace (though true eloquence in expressing them is not). In this regard, `Nightwood' is not unique. Nor are these reflections the most profound I've ever read. Perhaps (indeed, most likely), on revisiting the book I will find more meaning. But that is not why I will revisit it.To me, `Nightwood' is first and foremost a sensual experience. I would not ask a sunrise what it means. A sunrise would never answer. I take `Nightwood' in the same spirit.

Read this book for my university writing class. Very interesting and intellectually complex. There is no structured plot, you will be lost at times and not know what’s happening. In this book, what matters is the characters portrayal and pay attention to the Dr.!!

Recapturing The BeastIn Decadent Era Paris after World War I, in the Roaring Twenties, the intellectual artist and reporter Djuna Barnes fell incurably in love with Thelma Wood, a tall boyish bohemian, who often dressed as Robin Hood. Nightwood, composed as a catharsis for Barnes’ broken heart is a glimpse into the confusion, despair, alienation and longing that inspired and drove the famous artists of the Left Bank to create works of art that would shock and inspire generations to come.Barnes’ good friend the bisexual, TS Elliot, who was instrumental in having the book published in 1937, suggested that Barnes change her original title of the book from Bow Down to Nightwood, a suggestion she readily accepted since it contained her beloved Wood’s last name (Hunter). Nora Flood, who represents Djuna Barnes, is a pathetic, confused and alienated character in the novel. Robin Vote based on the real life, Thelma Wood is the heart-breaker who escapes from the “love hold” of: the husband Baron Felix, the son Guido, the love sick Nora and the wealthy, control-freak Jenny Petheridge. Nora morphs into the Night Watch “…the design that was to be the weather- beaten grain of her face, the wood in the work; the tree coming forward in her, an undocumented record of time” (Barnes 56). Nevertheless, the actual novel is recorded in time as one of the first openly gay and lesbian books published in England.This novel, at times stream of consciousness and at times dialogue, is in keeping with the Modernist Movement. Elliot in his introduction to the book suggests that the book be read as poetry. The later American poet, James Baldwin said, “Poetry is man’s rebellion against what he is”. The Decadents, stylish, free thinkers, artists and social changers rebelled against social conventions and labels. Many were alienated from their true selves due to alcohol, drugs and promiscuity. Barnes boldly examines herself and her longings in this painful tale of her love gone astray.The people of the underworld, the world of the night, do not stand alone as separate beings, but instead are friends and acquaintances who have been joined together suffering in Robin Vote’s shadow. One is reminded of the belief that when one dreams we are every character in the dream and wonders if it is so with Barnes.The four main characters in the novel correspond with the four characters in the faux Volkbein Coat of Arms: the lion, the dove, the bear and the ram. At first it may seem simple to label by matching the four characters to their animals, but it soon becomes impossible as the characters are not simplistically labeled, just as their sexuality is not simplistically labeled. Jeanette Winterson in the preface to Nightwood states that, “…its power makes nonsense of any categorizations, especially of gender or sexuality” and Michel Frann states, “…bisexuality is fluid rather than fixed” (Frann). The object of desire changes ones sexuality.Immediately as one begins the novel, the reader notices the creativity, splendor and gaudiness of the settings. An opulent scarlet and gold embossed bedspread with the faux Volkbein family crest is the artistic setting whereby the reader is introduced to the baby Baron Felix in 1880. This garish layering of images creates a subterfuge to mask the intense melancholia that runs through the novel. Humor is also used to attempt to mask the pain as in many of the Doctor’s crude and ribald remarks like, “Jenny is so greedy she wouldn’t give her shit to the crows” (Barnes 112) Fast forward, thirty years later, we are thrown into another setting, a table of nine men and a woman, in the absent pseudo Count Ontario Altamonte’s home. The characters of note are the pseudo Baron, the pseudo Dr. Matthew O’Connor, the third gender, trapezius Dame Broadback and the reporter Nora Flood. The subject of Mighty Doctor Grain of Salt O’Connor’s diatribe is a personified comparison of the Lutheran and Catholic religion.Nora Flood, an advanced publicist for the Circus asks a straightforward question of the debaters Baron Felix and Dr. Matthew, “Are you both really saying what you mean or are you just talking?” This simple question addresses the confusion and contradiction that Dr. O’Connor expounds upon throughout the novel. The theme of confusion as to who people are and what they desire is not answered in this examination of their existence. In the 1920’s the philosophy of Henri Bergson, Albert Einstein, Charles Darwin and Fredrick Nietzsche created debate about “old fashioned” complacency concerning man’s purpose in life. Sigmund Freud’s psychology forced The Left Bank Paris artists, who had created their own avant garde melting pot of nonconformists to address their past and what their dreams had to do with their present situations. Nora Flood’s dream of observing her grandmother’s bedroom and Robin, hint at the sexual abuse that Djuna Barnes endured as a child in her “dysfunctional” family (Dalton). Nightwood’s characters are at different times either victims, transgressors or both; driven by lust, voyeurism, or selfishness. They are a unique, exclusive group attempting to forget the harsh realities of post WWI. They are trying to enjoy life and hide their pain and disgust of the new world.In chapter one, “Bow Down”, when the Count returns to his residence with a young girl dressed in a riding habit, whom he plans to seduce, he orders all the “partiers” to “Get out!” (Barnes 28). Baron Felix face turns scarlet, since his true longing and motivation in life is to be accepted as an aristocrat. The trapezius, the Duchess of Broadback, Frau Mann and her old flame, Dr. O’Connor are unperturbed and continue their conversation elsewhere, in a coffee shop. Frau Mann falls asleep and the doctor sneaks out, leaving her alone with the restaurant bill. Throughout the novel the doctor is quick to take up the chance of free food and drink.Fifteen years later we are introduced to the femme fatal, Robin Vote, passed out alone, on a divan, surrounded by tropical plants in a middle class Parisian hotel. Robin is displayed in an elaborate Rousseau setting, wearing white trousers. She is the “… chiefest danger a beast turning human” (Barnes 41). Dr. Michael Grain of Salt O’Connor accompanied by his now friend, Baron Felix is called to resuscitate the woman. Dr. O’Connor steals some money from the unconscious woman and even indulges himself in her lipstick and powder before he revives her by throwing water over her. The surprised Baron Felix makes no comment on the observed action. Unless they are asked the characters who know of all of each other’s shortcomings and failures do not speak of them. Baron Felix, age forty five and needing an heir soon marries the twenty year old American, Robin Vote, making her a Baronin. Baron Felix becomes the first Robin Vote victim. Nonetheless, Vote produces the “mentally deficient” Baron child, Guido (Barnes 115). Guido later ends the Volkbien lineage to enter the priesthood. Robin Vote, who in one instance takes on a Lady Macbeth persona, contemplates bashing out her new baby’s brains. She soon dumps husband and child and escapes her responsibilities. This is Robin’s modus operandi –to escape and run when others become dependent on her for their own happiness. Love and responsibility are a cage to Robin Vote. However, Baron Felix states he will always possess Baronin Robin in his son, Guido.Now in 1923, our femme fatale Robin meets victim number two Nora Flood, at the Denckman circus, across the ocean in New York City. The immediate sexual attraction between the women is intense as even the circus animals perform in the meeting (Barnes 60). It seems as if Nora is taking the paw of the lioness and not a human being as they quickly exit together. Their idyllic love soon wanes, “Love becomes the deposit of the heart, analogous in all degrees to the findings in a tomb” (Barnes, 61). Nora’s attempt to buy a home and fill it with souvenirs and mementos of the lover’s history together is inadequate to keep the nocturnal, wandering Robin Vote encapsulated. Robin Vote is a creature who will not be caged. She prefers to be the hunter not the prey. Barnes writing elaborated with garish, displays of gaudiness and layers of icing that obliterate the bare crux of the novel is like all the mementos in the “artsy”, claustrophobic apartment. It is as if by throwing layers of paint over the heartache one will be mentally disorientated and confused enough to avoid melancholia for a time. Robin leaves Nora for her nightly sexual escapades, but always returns until Nora finds about her affair with Jenny. One of the most agonizing scenes is the book is while Robin is trying to sneak out of the house without having to deal with the possessive Nora. Nora has a pure motive of love, she wants to belong and be loved. Robin on the other hand feels that Nora’s love is like a prison sentence.Nora Flood is like a teenage girl who refuses to accept that her lover is gone and seeks consolation and advice from the cross dresser Dr. O’Connor. The doctor in his tiny narrow bed wearing makeup is like the wolf in “Little Red Riding Hood”. Nora is the naïve child who allows Dr. O’Connor to vicariously live her life. Both characters long to change their lives.Robin’s nightly streetwalking is intervened when she meets victim number three, the self-serving older, Jenny Petheridge. In the fourth chapter, “The Squatter”, the transvestite, Doctor O’Connor later confesses to orchestrating the meeting of Robin and Jenny (Barnes 71). The meeting of Robin and Jenny is explained twice to the reader; essentially the story is the same. Doctor O’Connor claims more than once he brought Nora Flood into the world and therefore knows her motivations. It is never made clear if he introduced her to the People of the Underworld or if he is her biological father. Nonetheless he felt he betrayed Nora when he allowed Robin to meet Jenny. Dr. O’Connor is a seer, an advisor, a pornographer, a thief, “a moocher” and a wise old man. He speaks of the prostitutes on London Bridge who lifted their skirt standing up for tuppence. The story of the misfortunate girls, although irrelevant to the conversation gives the doctor pleasure in the telling.In the coach scene, Robin meets her match in baseness, Jenny Petheridge. As Robin directs her attention to a young woman and female child, the jealous and possessive Jenny claws at Robin’s face drawing blood. The bestiality shown by Jenny is a turning point for the sadomasochistic Robin and gives her motivation to dump the too good Nora. Nora is described as a woman without public shame and one able to turn evil when she is betrayed. Later, Nora goes to Jenny’s house and sees objects that she thought were representative of her and Robin’s exclusive love, namely a childhood portrait and a doll now in Jenny Petheridge’s very somber, organized home. The doll is a symbol of “the last doll, given in age, is the girl who should have been a boy…” (Barnes 157). Robin Vote and Dr. O’Connor did not get to pick their gender and are trapped in the inescapable wrong sex. If Robin and the doctor could swap their sex with each other, life may have been simpler. Nora Flood is the most confused character because she fails to recognize what people want or need. Nora’s failure to realize Robin’s needs creates her unfulfilled longing. Robin Vote is like an animal taking love and using and being used for sex. Robin is unworthy of Nora’s stifling love and more suited to Jenny’s calculated love. Robin Vote is a creature of beauty who will return to the night from whence she came.The girl child, from the coach scene becomes a toy for the entertainment of Robin that Jenny tolerates in an attempt to control Robin’s wanderings. However, we are reminded in “Night Watch” that, “To love without criticism is to be betrayed” (57). Robin Vote soon continues her promiscuous wanderings at night to be held by strangers, but now she has two rejected lovers in Jenny and Nora, both hunting and stalking her. Robin Vote is an exploiter and the exploited. Dr. O’Connor explains, “If you, who are blood-thirsty with love, had left her alone, what?” As critic Roland Barthes states, “Literature is the question minus the answer”, the reader is now filled with questions and no answers. Will the Beast be recaptured?Humankind is motivated by longing, but not fulfilled. Dr. O’Connor said he would have been happier being a woman married to a man-producing offspring, cooking and cleaning. However he is trapped in a man’s body and never able to fulfill his goal. In a past life he claims he got his brother’s wife pregnant, then deserted or killed her. Now he is alone. He lives in a tiny cell of a room wearing a flannel nightgown and smearing on cheap makeup. He implores Nora to give up on any idea of reuniting with Robin Vote. Advice she ignores. Dr. O’Connor is dressed as the wolf that ate the grandmother. He may not wish to also eat Nora, but as an aging transvestite he will certainly vicariously live through her.A heavily veiled, Jenny Petheridge, unable to hold Robin distraughtly, calls on Baron Felix, Vote’s first victim and former husband to garner information. The veils are symbolic of the confused identity of the speaker. In the presence of the Baron’s son, Guido, Jenny tells Felix that Guido’s mother, Robin allows her pets to die and has a toy, a child named Sylvia. The Doctor says of Jenny, “That woman would allow the third rising of a corpse to attend her means” (123). The wealthy and generous Jenny based on a real person is given no pathos in Nightwood.Nora , the Barnes character decides, “ I will do something that she will never be able to forgive, then we can begin as strangers (166).”In the final scene of the novel in an abandoned chapel on the two hundred year Flood Estate, Robin Vote sexually humps a frightened and whimpering dog. Now as Nora secretly watches this spectacle of bestiality upon her pet, maybe she will finally rid herself of the love she has held for so long for the unobtainable Robin Vote. As the Marchesa foretold in “The Squatter”, “…, but there was one person who had come to the end of her existence and would return no more. As she spoke she looked slyly at Robin…” (Barnes 77).The reader has been allowed to flâneur the lives of the privileged Parisian lesbian bohemians of the Decadent Age, observing the depravity and suffering that human sexuality may thrust upon its victims, both human and animal. Barnes has warned us about the dangers of obsessive controlling love and what it does to the giver and the non-receiver of that love. In a way Barnes has followed through with Nora’s plot by giving Robin/Thelma something she would never be able to forgive. In truth Thelma Wood never spoke to Djuna Barnes again after she read Nightwood, so the idea of the two meeting again as strangers did not work out for the author. In comparing your love object to a selfish animal in a novel probably doesn’t work for reconciliation, but it certainly does create a grotesque image of depravity.Djuna fell into a pathetic alienated life of alcohol and near poverty (Dirda). “Real creators, no matter how wayward their genius, deserve our thanks and homage” (Dirda). We took a walk into the confusion of the night, experienced a longing for an unobtainable desire, while the completion of our dual personalities searched for acceptance and peace. Like Narcissus we are all searching for our soul mate.

A strange book filled with odd tormented people. The writing is startling and beautiful a book to savor that brings wonder.

I read it three times within six months--dazzaling! A fantastic novel.

Je suis troublée : ce livre est préfacé par TS Eliot, ce qui n'est pas rien... mais je le trouve illisible. Les phrases sont alambiquées, trop longues, comme si l'auteur avait essayé de produire un style littéraire élaboré et subtil.. mais sans succès.On me dit Djuna Barnes est connue, comment vous ne l'avez pas lue ? certaines scènes se passent à St Germain... je l'achète doncJe remet mon niveau d'anglais en cause, relisant les phrases plusieurs fois, cherchant le sens... et de guerre lasse le proposeen lecture à une personne de confiance, américaine, journaliste. Il déteste et confirme : c'est long, verbeux et peu agréable à lire. Du reste, il ne la connait pas et elle n'a pas écrit d'autres livres important.Je m'accorde les droits du lecteur (cf D. Pennac) : je vais sauter des pages et aller directement aux passages qui m'intéressent : St Germain et ceux qui pourraient évoquer une position d'avant garde sur les femmes car DB était homosexuelle.

...but I'm glad it was accomplished. We all *know* a novel when we see one, but rarely do we come up with a testable and workable definition of one. We may define a novel by length, and were that the case then we would certainly consider "The Count of Monte Cristo" a novel, bulging on our bookshelves at 1312 pages, were we elaborate enough to purchase the Penguin edition. "Ulysses", likewise catches our scansion of people's bookshelves at 1296 pages (again, with the Penguin edition, this time with annotations). "Anna Karenina": 992; "Don Quixote": 1056. Despite these behemoths, "Nightwood" stands proudly alongside them at a mere 153. As any physicist will tell you, a novel's density is not solely dependent on its volume. It has to have mass, and "Nightwood's" gravitas is made all the more salient for being able to weave such power, beauty, and tragedy into its small volume. Saturn, with a large enough bath, would float despite its size; Nightwood would pierce through the heavens and pull all things towards it, such is its density and terrible beauty.But what of other factors that would comprise a novel? We may consider theme or character, and "Nightwood" has them in abundance. Barnes' facility with prose justifies its poetic attribution, and she twists her words into a tapestry nothing short of gorgeous, giving us the memorable Matthew O'Connor, "the greatest liar this side of the moon"; the Baron Felix Volkbein, and the principal women of this theatrical cast; Robin Vote, a woman with the body of a boy, Jenny Petherbridge, and Nora Flood. This hymn to forsaken love gives us a novel that is operatic, sung in a Baudelairian mode in 1920s Paris. The Beloved, the Night, the swell of hearts so misfit that they must surely belong if only for an instant, are what we encounter through the unique voices of our anti heroes.I will say no more. "Nightwood" is a novel and a poem, and is a work not to be missed.

The book is awful but the seller is just great