Functional Pastoralism in The Blood Oranges

FUNCTIONAL PASTORALISM IN THE BLOOD ORANGES Lois A. Cuddy* Despite the favorable critical attention given to the fiction of John Hawkes, reviews and criticisms have been remarkably deficient in their understanding and assessment of The Blood Oranges. The undue emphasis on mate-swapping and erotic love has resulted in a general disregard for the essential function of pastoralism which is central to the structural and philosophical integrity of the novel. It is important, therefore, to explore Hawkes's adaptation of pastoral conventions to contemporary life and values1 as a prerequisite to the clarification and appreciation of this novel. Historically the poetic pastoral2 has presented the rural world of an idealized Golden Age contrasted with the sophisticated urban society of disintegrating values: it is imagination struggling to overcome a reality with which man has become disillusioned. This "basic duality" of pastoralism3 is presented in this novel through the rural life of Illyria, metaphor for the imagination, colliding with the social world or conventional morality; and each character and image reinforces the pastoral opposition which is strengthened primarily by using Cyril and Hugh as polarities of life styles, modes of thought, and perception. John F. Lynen describes this pastoral conflict in contrasting urban and country life: "Pastoral plays the two against each other, exploiting the tension between their respective values, elaborating the ambiguity of feeling which results, and drawing attention to the resemblances beneath the obvious differences."4 This comment perfectly describes the relationship between Cyril and Hugh. Hawkes substitutes twentieth-century Illyria for Arcadia, but the pastoral landscape, symbols, and motifs are the same: a grape arbor, lemon grove, pastoral gods, fauns, goats, idyls, timelessness in a land of no time and all time, love-making with freedom and delight, the unchanging climate5 of all pastoral lands ("in Illyria there are no seasons"6) , and such pastoral adjectives as "bucolic" and "sylvan." There "Lois A. Cuddy, who holds a Ph.D. in American Literature from Brown University, has written on Whitman, Dickinson, and Hawthorne. She is currently working on a book on T. S. Eliot. 16Lois A. Cuddy are the traditional goat-girls, fishermen, and a shepherd who plays his flute. But much more is at stake here than just a superficial, stylized rural retreat by way of pastoral diction and imagery. The conceptual framework which Hawkes is establishing is explicit when Fiona says, " 'Cyril is a pastoral person. Aren't you, baby?' " And Cyril responds, " 'Sure I am' " (p. 183). In Hawkes's retreat to Illyria, the pastorals of innocence and happiness, which are conceptually and ideologically antagonistic to each other, not only function together but their juxtaposition is executed artfully. The pastoral of innocence rejects the values of commercial society in favor of peace, beauty, and purity. A materialistic economy does not exist for the pastoral provider that Poggioli describes: "While for allotherpeopletimeis money, the shepherd always has timeto waste or to spare; and this enables him to put fun before duty and pleasure before business; or to follow no other will than his caprice" (p. 152). To Cyril, whose job, income, and education are never mentioned, life is for sensually idling, or idylling, with wine, simple food and clothing, and love. Political power and social institutions have no place in this world of quiet, natural luxuriance, and withdrawal. Poggioli points out the direct relation between marriage and the innocent life: "The natural outcome of the pastoral of innocence is the family situation, or the domestic idyll" in which an aging couple enjoy "the tender affections of the decline of life."7 In The Blood Oranges Cyril emphasizes that the two married couples are beyond the stage of early adulthood, perhaps even in "the decline of life": "Youth has no monopoly on love. . . . After all, at the height of our season Fiona and Hugh were almost forty, Catherine had passed that mark by several years, while I was already two or three long leaps beyond middle age" (p. 16). The reader is never told exact ages, nor how long their "season" was, for such indefiniteness allows fantasy free rein. But as married, aging couples, their place in the pastoral tradition is made secure. The function of these four people...