Schall und Wahn (1929)

I get what Faulkner is trying to do and all, but personally I just can't stand the stream of consciousness way in which he wrote. Just not my cup of tea, but whatever at least I finished it.

i read the entire Benji section/first chapter. i get that Faulkner is an unusual stylist, but what is the constructive point of leading off the book with that section, which, in my edition, is 72 pages long? or of even including that section at all?

putting this on hold. don't have much desire to continue currently.

read probably 50 more pages. i'm not enjoying this book, seems dumb to continue. i read summaries of the section i stopped on and the two remaining sections. doesn't sound like i missed much by not actually reading the book.

i'm done with Faulkner. i think his writing is a lot of work for too little reward. sayonara Count No 'Count.

خشم و هیاهو داستان یک خانواده در حال فروپاشی و با مشکلات متعدد در اوایل قرن بیستم هست.

سه فصل اول از دید سه نفر از اعضای خانواده بیان می شه. فصل ۴ ام روایت سوم شخصی داره که عمدتا مربوط به خدمتکار خانه و نگرشش نسبت به خانواده هست. پیوست هم تاریخچه ای از خاندان کامپسون و اتفاقات چند سال بعد از ۴ فصل اول رو توضیح می ده.

نکته جالب کتاب، روایت متفاوت سه فصل اول - که هر کدوم مربوط به یکی از برادران این خانواده است- نسبت به هم هستن. دو فصل اول، روایت داستانی خطی ندارن و به نظر می رسه به خاطر ناتوانی ذهنی بنجامین در فصل اول و اضطراب و افسردگی کونتین در فصل دوم باشه و برای همین دنبال کردن داستان برای من تو این تو تا فصل تقریبا غیرممکن بود.

فصل سوم اما روایتی خطی داره که مربوط به برادریه که کفالت خانواده را بر عهده گرفته و دیدگاه چندان مثبتی به وقایع نداره.

صدای آرمان سلطان زاده فضای خوبی از دغدغه های این خانواده ایجاد می کرد و با وجود این که فهمیدن داستان تو فصل های اول واقعا سخت بودن در کل تجربه جالبی بود. ( )

The Sound and the Fury was written (and is set) in the postbellum American South, in the period after Reconstruction (1865–77). At this critical moment in American history, the South was in the process of redefining itself and its values in the absence of slavery. Certain Southern families (typically old landed families) refused to participate in this process. Instead, they turned inward; they clung to their traditions and values—to vague notions of honour, purity, and virginity.

The Sound and the Fury documents the decline of these families. The Compsons, as Faulkner casts them, are direct descendants of the planter-aristocrats. They are the inheritors of their values and traditions, on whom the survival (or ultimate extinction) of this Southern aristocracy depends. The Compsons, for the most part, shirk this responsibility. Quentin, however, does not. The burden of the past falls heavily upon Quentin, who, as the eldest son, feels he must preserve and protect the Compson family honour. Quentin identifies his sister as the principal bearer of the honour he is to protect. When he fails to protect that honour—that is, when Caddy loses her virginity to Dalton Ames and becomes pregnant—Quentin elects to commit suicide. Quentin’s suicide, in conjunction with Caddy’s pregnancy, precipitates the fall of the Compson family. Still, for nearly two decades, the family survives. Its death knell is tolled on April 8, 1928, by Miss Quentin, who “swung herself by a rainpipe” to the locked window of her uncle’s bedroom, took her mother’s money, “climbed down the same rainpipe in the dusk,” and vanished, taking with her not only the money but the last semblance of the Compson family honour. At the end of the novel, the Compson family is in ruins and, on a larger scale, the Southern aristocracy is too.

The Sound and the Fury’s form is distinctly Modernist: Faulkner employs a number of narrative techniques, including unreliable narrators, interior monologues, and unconventional syntax, that are recurrent features of literary Modernism. Faulkner’s conception of time, particularly as expressed in his nonlinear representation of time, is a cause of disagreement among scholars, who argue over which different philosophies influenced Faulkner and to what extent. A number of scholars, for example, have made the case for a link between Faulkner’s conception of time and the theory of duration formulated by French philosopher Henri Bergson. Such an argument places Faulkner among a number of Modernist writers influenced by Bergson, including Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and T.S. Eliot. The title of Faulkner’s novel alone expresses Faulkner’s concern with time. The Sound and the Fury takes its name from a soliloquy given by the title character of William Shakespeare’s play Macbeth.

In that soliloquy, Macbeth reflects on time and the meaninglessness of life:

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle.
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

Macbeth’s words echo throughout The Sound and the Fury, and some scholars have noted that they are made literal through the three Compson brothers: Benjy is the “idiot” to whom Macbeth refers; Quentin, the “walking shadow” who “frets his hour” and then “is heard no more”; and Jason, the “poor player,” full of “fury.” ( )

Som et buskas du skal igjennom. Den river deg opp. Du ser lysninger gjennom det, tror du. Mange forteller, mange sier mye om noen som knapt er der. Noe skjer, men mest snakkes eller tales det. Om håpet, om leting, om bebreidelser, om raseriet, om tvangen og lengselen. Som istykkerrevne biter flakser fortellingen videre med vekselvis vind og stille. Inniblant det sette, er det det hørte, det erfarte, det følte, det lyttende, det redde og det skrytende brautende.