Chapter 23 Intertextuality

"We'll have to try and get the mainsail topped," I said.The shadow walked away from me without a word.These people are all ghosts, and the weight on the cable is only the weight of a group of ghosts.Indeed, if there were ever a sail hoisted by purely spiritual power, it was the sail; for, properly speaking, no one in the whole ship was strong enough to do it, let alone us on deck. These poor people are gone.Of course I led the effort myself.They followed me feebly from cable to cable, stumbling and panting.They labor like titans.We worked for at least an hour, during which time there was not a sound from the black universe.When the last rap was taut, my eyes, accustomed to the darkness, recognized weary figures, some prostrate on the side of the ship, others slumped in the hatchway.One was panting heavily on the rear winch; among them, I was like a tower symbolizing strength, having nothing to do with disease, but only spiritual pain.I waited a while, trying to get rid of the burden of guilt and fight off my feelings of inferiority, and then said:

"Now, boys, we'll go aft and adjust the transom. There's only so much we can do for the boat, and her luck will do the rest." Joseph Conrad: Shadow Lines (1917) There are various ways in which one text can be used to refer to another: parody, artistic parody, affiliation, allusion, direct quotation, parallel construction, etc.Some theorists believe that intertextuality is the fundamental condition of literature, that all texts are woven out of the material of other texts, whether the authors realize it or not.Writers committed to the realism of documentary style tend to deny or belittle this principle.Samuel Richardson, for example, believed that he had invented a novel form entirely independent of previous literature; yet in Pamela (1740) his virtuous The maid ends up marrying her master after much pain and suffering.This storyline is easily recognizable as a fairy-tale archetype.Another important English novel is Henry Fielding's Joseph Andrews (1742).The beginning of the novel is a parody of Pamela, in which the fables of the good man of Samaritan are recreated and incorporated, and there are many passages written in a mocking heroic style.In short, intertextuality is the foundation of English fiction, and at the other end of the time scale, novelists tend to exploit rather than resist it, reshaping old myths and earlier works in literature at will to reproduce contemporary life, Or add vibes for recreating contemporary life.

Some writers are more vocal about such references than others.James Joyce gave his epics titles to provide this information to his readers; Nabokov gave the name of Edgar Allan Poe's Annie Pole to Lolita's predecessor.Conrad's subtitle "Confession" for "Shadows" may be conveying a more esoteric allusion. The novella was originally an autobiography about the experience of a young merchant mariner who was unexpectedly appointed captain.The crew was waiting to return to a port in the Far East. The captain of a sailing ship was killed at sea, so he was recommended to take over the position.After setting out into the Gulf of Siam, he soon learned that the dead captain was insane, and his first mate believed that the old man had bewitched the ship.That fear seemed confirmed when the ship was stranded at sea because of a dead wind: the crew fell ill with a fever, and the young captain discovered that his predecessor had destroyed all the quinine.Later, on a dark night, there were signs that the weather might be changing.

The description of sickly sailors obeying the captain's order to hoist the mainsail so that the ship can sail with it when the wind rises shows that Conrad was an expert , know what he said - he was a navigator with 20 years of sea experience.But this passage is also reminiscent of one of the most famous poems in English literature, Coleridge's "Song of the Old Sailor."In this poem, the dead sailor rises from the deck of a bewitched ship to man the rigging: The sailors go to get the cables, where they used to work; They lift their limbs like inanimate tools We're a horrible crew.

A sailor kills an albatross, bringing spells to his ship: calm days and plague.When he accidentally blessed the water snake, the spell was lifted, and the boat drifted back to his hometown with the help of natural forces.He was the only one who escaped the catastrophe, but the unfortunate fate of his companions on board made him feel guilty.In Conrad's story, the evil that brought the ship's curse is passed on to the dead captain, but for the narrator the aftermath is a religious experience similar to that of the sailor.What would have been just a cable becomes an abstract ritual beyond the "shadow line" that separates innocence from experience, youth from maturity, arrogance from humility.The young captain miraculously escapes yellow fever (as did the sailor), but he feels "uneasy...sinful...survival is meaningless." A ship adrift, swaying in the light air, while all the crew lay dying slowly on their decks. "When the mainsail was hoisted and the wind picked up, he thought 'The evil ghost has settled, the evil curse has been broken, the spell removed.We are now in the hands of a good living being who moves us forward..." Compare:

the boat is galloping Sailing lightly: beautiful breeze blow just for me When the ship in Conrad's story finally reaches port and raises the signal for medical assistance, the naval doctor on board is like the helmsman and hermit in Coleridge's billows when the sailor steers the ship back alone. , was surprised to find that there was no living creature on the deck.Like the sailor, the captain couldn't shake off the guilt he felt for his crew's suffering.As they were being carried from the ship, he said: "They passed me one by one--each embodying a most severe reproach." Compare:

pain and curse in their death never disappears: I can't take my eyes off them, Nor can the eyes be raised to pray. Like the sailor who three-step-stopped to unburden himself, the captain was forced to "confess" about his experience. Whether Conrad consciously used these allusions cannot be proven textually, and while it would be interesting to try and find proof, the conclusion would not be very different.The resemblance is evidenced by his reading of Coleridge, but he may have reconstructed these resemblances (although I doubt that) unconsciously, just as they may have been to reading this poem. The same is true for readers who forget later, or who just pick and choose parts of the chapter.Certainly not the first or only time Conrad used literal metaphors in this way.Marlowe's journey up the Congo River in "The Heart of Darkness" is clearly referenced to Dante's descent down the ladder of hell in "Purgatory", and his later novel "Victory" is based on Shakespeare's "The Tempest". facsimile.

James Joyce's is perhaps the most famous and influential example of textual interrelationship in modern literature.When the book was published in 1922, T. S. Eliot praised Joyce's use of "The Odyssey" as a structural tool, "subtly contrasting the contemporary with the ancient." "a step in the direction of making the modern world a subject of art." For Eliot has been reading Joyce's serial novels for the past few years while simultaneously writing his own great poems (also in Published in 1922, and he also draws parallels with the continuity of contemporary Grail legends), we can interpret his praise for it as part approval, part declaration.However, in these two works, textual interrelationships are not limited to a single source, or to structural similarities.A parody of many different texts, but a parody, in which various texts are involved, not only in parody but also in direct and indirect references.For example, one chapter is set in a newspaper in which each department bears headlines that mimic the development of the news medium; In a maternity hospital, a parody of the development of British prose from Anglo-Saxon times to the twentieth century.

Because I have combined fiction writing with an academic career for nearly thirty years, it is not surprising that my own fiction increasingly intersects a variety of texts.In fact, Joyce and Eliot have been a big influence on me on this point, especially the former. The parodies in "The British Museum Is Falling Down" are inspired by this example, for example, as it also deals with events in a single day, and the final chapter is a cheeky nod to Molly Bloom's monologue. The breakthrough point in the production of "A Small World" began when I considered the possibility of writing a comic satire about some academic celebrities traveling the world in a jet to compete academically and romantically. meeting, and the novel could be based on the story of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table and their quest for the Holy Grail, especially the one written by Jesse Weston that was used by Eliot.I have also talked about the origin of these novels in other articles (in the afterwords of "The British Museum Is Collapsing" and "Writing"), and I mention it here to make the point that textual interrelationships are not, or are not Must have been only a decorative addition to the style, on the contrary, it was sometimes a decisive factor in conception and writing.

However, there is another aspect to the art of fiction, one that only writers know.This other aspect, often associated with textual interrelationships, is the "missed opportunity".In the course of reading, one inevitably encounters texts that are similar to one's own, or available, from time to time, but one's own work has long since been completed and the time has passed to make use of this discovery.Towards the end of "It's a Small World," there's a scene that takes place during the MLA conference in New York.This convention is always held in the last days of December.With protagonist Perth McGalliger's victory at the Critical Momentum group meeting, the weather takes a surprising turn.Thermals from the south are raising temperatures in Manhattan to heights never seen before this season.In the book's mystical composition, it's the equivalent of King Fisher's impoverished kingdom in the Grail saga, which begins to plump as the Grail Knight asks the necessary questions.Arthur King Fisher, the old-timer of modern academic criticism who chaired the conference, felt the curse of impotence magically leave him: this is what he said of his North Korean mistress Sangmi:

"It's like the 'halcyon' season... a period of calm weather in midwinter. The ancients called it the 'halcyon' season, because the kingfisher was supposed to hatch at this time. Remember Milton's poem 'The bird sits still Hatch eggs in the waves'? This bird is the kingfisher. Sangmi, 'halcyon' means this in Greek: kingfisher. The season of 'haJcyon' is the season of kingfisher. It is also my day, our day. He could just as well have quoted another passage, another very fitting one: Kingfisher day, gentle breeze Raise the sails, and the eight sails paddle the water. Moreover, he could add another sentence: "This is the most beautiful line in the book, but Alila Pound persuaded Tom Eliot to delete it." Unfortunately, "A Small World" was published before it was published. , I did not find these lines in The Waste Land: Original Manuscripts and Photocopies, including Pound's Notes, edited by Valery Eliot.