William Faulkner's "Carcassonne"

WILLIAM FAULKNER'S "CARCASSONNE" Noel Polk* In spite ofthe increasing amount ofattention during the past decade to William Faulkner's achievement as a writer of short fiction, not much has been done to advance an understanding of his most perplexing and enigmatic story, "Carcassonne," beyond the readings of the early commentators , which held that the story was essentially Faulkner's portrait of the artist, the poet, struggling with what little he had of this world's goods to "perform something tragical and bold and austere." According to this entrenched reading, "Carcassonne" thus affirms the victory of the imagination over the real world and so provides a foundation for considerations of Faulkner's aesthetic theories.1 There is much in the story that makes this reading plausible, even attractive, but it is, finally, a considerably limited view of "Carcassonne" and of its place in the Faulkner canon, a view that barely scratches the surface of the story. In a letter to Saxe Commins in late October of 1948, concerning the organizationoftheplanned CollectedStories, Faulknerwrotethat"evento a collection of short stories, form, integration, is as important as to a novel—an entity of its own, single, set for one pitch, contrapuntal in integration , toward one end, one finale."2 Many critics have cited this passage in discussions of the structure of Collected Stories, but it has not often enough provided a starting point for discussions of his numerous earlier collections of short fiction, during the organization ofwhich he must have formedhisideas aboutthe need for any book tohave a deliberate and identifiable shape. His first collection, These 13 (1931), in which "Carcassonne" was first published, is a collection of individual stories—including such warhorses as "A Rose for Emily" and "Dry September"—that have been studied and anthologized almost from the time they were first published. It has not, however, been sufficiently understood as a collection, one with such "contrapuntal integration" as Faulkner deemed desirable. Doubtless "Carcassonne" is not itself the "one end, one finale" of These 13, since Faulkner clearly meant more by that phrase than a single story. But These 1 3 is a tightly organized, terribly complex collection; it does have a rather formal structure that is reinforced by a subtle interweaving of themes and images from story to story and from section to section, and it demonstrably "¦Noel Polk is a Professor ofEnglish at the University ofSouthern Mississippi. Among his publications areFaulkner's "Requiemfora Nun": A CriticalStudy (Indiana) and TheLiterary ManuscriptsofHaroldFrederic. HehaseditedworksbyFaulkner, includingFaulkner's "Marionettes "(Virginia) and Sanctuary: The Original Text(Random House), and is Textual Editor of the Faulkner Computer Concordance. 30Noel Polk possesses unity of "pitch." An approach to "Carcassonne" through its relationships with its companion stories, through its position as the climactic piece—perhaps it is an epiphany—ofthe whole collection, yields a reading quite different from the traditional one, a readingwhich suggests that "Carcassonne 's" meanings are neither so crystal clear nor quite so shrouded in mystery as they have seemed. It will be useful first, however, to look briefly at some of "Carcassonne 's" more important sources, since its numerous allusions to and gleanings from a wide assortment ofancient and modern literatures help to shape and control its texture and its meanings.3 The dramatic situation, the dialogue between the protagonist and his own skeleton, owes much to a device traditional in Western literature, the debate between the body and the soul. The immediate source for Faulkner's use of the device seems to have been A. E. Housman's "The Immortal Part," poem 43 of A Shropshire Lad.4 In this poem the "bones within" the dreamer wonder when the flesh shall be cast off: When shall this slough of sense be cast, This dust of thoughts be laid at last, The man of flesh and soul be slain And the man of bone remain? This tongue that talks, these lungs that shout, These thews that hustle us about, This brain that fills the skull with schemes, And its humming hive ofdreams,— These to-day are proud in power And lord it in their little hour: The immortal bones obey control Of dying flesh and dying soul. The poem goes on to suggest that...