"Voice" in As I Lay Dying

Author(s): Shari Benstock and Stephen M. Ross

Source: PMLA, Vol. 94, No. 5 (Oct., 1979), pp. 957-959
Published by: Modern Language Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/461982
Accessed: 02-03-2016 14:24 UTC

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 Forum 957

and looking out (at close objects and at distant Ross begins by hinting that the "ordinary" use of

ones). Words like "circle," "descend," "rises" direct "voice" connects it with "vocal sound as the vehicle

and reinforce the movement. As the reader can con- of human utterance or expression"; he then sug-

firm by imaginatively tracking the objects in Trakl's gests that there exists a figurative use of "voice"

order, the resulting pattern is that of a spiral. Pass- (unspecified, except by reference to a series of

ing through a series of visual foci, that coil re- critical works that apparently employ it [n. 4, pp.

peatedly connects a chill and merciless heaven 308-09]) whose origins in critical dialogue are al-

with a chill and merciless earth. All the while- ready receding into the darkness of memory, leav-

again in contrast to "Northern Cold"-the objects ing behind a residue of critical "misuse" of this term.

viewed are never subjected to measurement. While it would seem to be the function of this essay

All this can be dramatized by rearranging the to "pry loose" some of the figurative applications of

lines of "Im Winter" so that "up" lines are sorted "voice," the discussion directs itself toward refuting

out from "down" lines and juxtaposed, with a the use of this word in its more ordinary context,

change also in the "in-out" pattern; lines I and 12 as an extension of human consciousness, using As I

keep their positions, and the punctuation is un- Lay Dying as a pretext for demolishing what might

changed: seem to be an almost perversely literal-minded appli-

cation of a critical tool.

The field glimmers white and cold. The approach is clearly structuralist, and there-

And ravens splash in bloody ditches.

fore the crux lies in language itself: works of fiction

Reeds tremble yellow and tall.

are (we now know) nothing more than words, but

A deer bleeds to death gently on the ridge

it has been traditional, unfortunately, to assume that

such words issue from a voice that itself "presum-

And the gray moon rises slowly.

ably emanates from someone, though the source

The sky is lonely and monstrous.

may be hidden or unnamed" (p. 300). This as-

A silence dwells in black rooftops.

Jackdaws circle over the weir sumption is provably incorrect (in regard to Faulk-

ner's text, at least), as Ross demonstrates: "Critics

Sometimes afar a sleighbell rings

discover discourse they cannot believe: Vardaman,

And hunters descend from the wood.

the littlest Bundren, speaks of his brother's horse as

A fire's gleam slips from the huts;

'an unrelated scattering of components-snuffings

Frost, smoke, a step in the empty grove.

and stampings; smells of cooling flesh and am-

moniac hair'. . . . The objection raised here is very

This piece, both more grim and more optimistic

simple. Vardaman as a person could not talk this

than "Im Winter," is not Georg Trakl's poem.

way; therefore he is poorly employed as a narrator"

(p. 302).

LAYEH A. BOCK

If the reader is naive enough to search for an

Stanford University

author behind Vardaman, an entity responsible for

1 The Principles of Psychology (New York: Holt,

"raising" the level of this particular discourse be-

1890), p. 245.
yond the childlike, one discovers another impedi-

ment to critical evaluation: "even when no such

entity as an author can be discovered, we still try

"Voice" in As I Lay Dying

to identify 'him' in a speech implying human origin

somewhere just over the horizon of the imagined

To the Editor:

world" (p. 305)-and to no avail, presumably, since

I was so struck by the reasoning that undergirds "if As I Lay Dying does lead the reader to seek an

Stephen M. Ross's essay "'Voice' in Narrative author, it does not do so as a means of anchoring

Texts: The Example of As I Lay Dying" (PMLA, voices in the 'presence' of an author; the author, like

94 [1979], 300-10) that I feel compelled to com- the narrator, is constituted by mimetic voice, and

ment on it. In confining his exploration of the term the paradox of fictional representation remains un-

"voice" to As I Lay Dying, Ross cleverly evades a solved" (p. 305).

number of the more problematic uses of this term as Another detour one might follow in an effort to

a critical tool (i.e., as applied to "impersonal" narra- discover the human arena for the "voice" we hear

tives), and yet the backdrop of his examination leads to an exploration of the consciousness of the

would seem to push both author and reader to a characters, specifically that which involves "interior

consideration of the efficacy of this term even in monologue," expressed in thought rather than in

response to such a text as Faulkner's, which on the speech. But this too leads to a dead end: "a strict

surface suggests its applicability. application of the term 'interior' presupposes a

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 958 Forum

metaphysics of consciousness, a metaphysics that critical tool that lends itself to a discussion of As

the novel challenges" (p. 304). Again, the problem I Lay Dying, even though this "novel disrupts

lies in language: since everything in a narrative work mimetic voices and thus calls our attention to them

is constructed of language, then consciousness itself as voices" (p. 308). Indeed, at the conclusion of

is nothing more or less than the language in which this essay readers are called on to substitute one

it is expressed, and even "nonverbal consciousness" figural item for another: instead of "hearing"

-if we concede there is such a thing-must be con- voices they are now to "see" the novel's "perceptual

veyed from writer to reader in language, so that 'surface'" broken into "unexpected discursive

substituting "consciousness" for "voice" in no way planes." This, declares the critic, is not a polyphonic

assists our understanding of the narrative process- novel at all: instead, it is a cubist painting!

"'consciousness' cannot serve us as a presence, as a I eagerly await Ross's definition of "discursive

groundwork of the 'real' on which to rest the novel's planes" in As I Lay Dying.

shifting linguistic patterns, for consciousness itself

is constituted by voice rather than revealed by it"

SHARI BENSTOCK

(p. 304).

University of Illinois, Urbana

The same circular approach holds for a definition

of "textual' voice. One example should suffice:

Mr. Ross replies:

"Faulkner employs italicized print frequently in As

I Lay Dying, as he does in other novels. . . . For

Shari Benstock's quarrel is finally more with

each type change we might devise a rationale ap- structuralism than with my article, and hers is not

propriate to the context of the particular section in an atypical reaction to nonrepresentational theories

which it occurs. But no pattern emerges. . . . The of literary discourse. She is disturbed by the state-

italics do not equal anything. They are arbitrary ment that literature is language and that it deserves

textual variations that articulate a difference" (p. to be examined as such. She is disturbed, it seems,

308). The italics are "arbitrary," "equaling" nothing because to examine language seriously will trap us

(that we can define), and no matter how ingenious in circularity and in paradox. Benstock hurls that

our reasoning about the contextual origins of such charge at my head with considerable fervor, as if by

textual idiosyncrasies, our reasons are dismissed rearranging my arguments and labeling them "circu-

merely as another "fiction"-akin to Faulkner's lar" she had somehow refuted me and the whole

own. The question remains, The italics "articulate structuralist enterprise as well.

a difference" in what?
Instead she has merely expressed a need for cer-

It seems depressingly obvious that we have gone tainty that literature, especially modern literature,

all around Robin Hood's barn to arrive precisely refuses to satisfy. Protesting that, after examining

where we started: if all is "voice" in the novel (and voice in As I Lay Dying, we end up where we

who can argue with fifteen first-person characters

started, Benstock fails to distinguish between circu-

who also, sometimes, serve as the novel's narra-

lar reasoning and an examination that seeks to

tors?), and all voice is rendered through language,

elucidate an inherent circularity in fictional dis-

then the sources of the "voices" remain concealed

course. Of course studying voice and voices in the

by the very language that produces them. Even

novel will not produce a final "necessity for such

when the language is differentiated (by colloquial

occurrences," as she wishes it would. She seems to

speech, metaphoric digression, or variations in dic-

want voice to do the impossible, to reveal some in-

tion and syntax), even when we can name an indi-

terpretation Ultimate and True. In just the same way

vidual speaker, even when certain language is

she distorts the final paragraph of my article by

emphasized (by italics, for instance), we cannot

reducing the analogy between the way two expres-

draw conclusions about the necessity for such oc-

sive mediums function to the kind of rigid equation

currences, because such suppositions are both "arbi-

(novel = cubist painting) that a study of voice cau-

trary" and "fictitious." And so, Ross sweepingly

tions us against.

concludes, "Just as the novel does not allow us to

Interpretation is invariably "circular," as the

reduce mimetic voice to an imaginary speaker, it

famous image of the hermeneutic circle suggests:

continually drives us away from 'represented

we can know the whole only by perceiving the parts,

realities' that might account for, and silence, textual we can perceive the parts only in reference to the

voice" (p. 308).

whole; we know Vardaman by his voice, we assess

I wonder whether it might not have occurred to his voice by what we know of him. And so it goes.

Ross somewhere along his circuitous route that he Such circularity cannot be chased away by sarcastic

began at the wrong place, choosing for his discourse restatement. On the contrary, it can be an exciting

an inappropriate term: perhaps "voice" is not a part of our literary experience. Attention to char-

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 Forum 959

acter, to the language of characters, to the voice

language threaten our traditional interest in char-

that is "character" these do not cancel each other acter, author, consciousness, and so on, we should

out as Benstock seems to believe. We can of course be glad they have reinvigorated our interpretive

choose to stop the play of language by making as- strategies. Benstock is wrong in implying that I was

sertions about characters, events, and authors; we intent on "demolishing" voice as a critical tool; my

can choose to ignore the language in which person target was only a restrictive mimetic notion of voice

and event are projected. And indeed, to make such (such as her vague "extension of human conscious-

assertions, we probably must on occasion suspend ness"). No more than Benstock do I want criticism

our concern with language. Structuralism simply to abandon fiction's "human arena," the persons and

reminds us that such suspension can only be tem- places we are prompted to imagine. But neither can

porary and provisional. To say that a character we forget how those persons and places got there.

exists only in the language (and voice) that creates And a novelist like Faulkner, I strongly believe

him or her is not to reject discussions of character; (and am willing to assert), did not want us to for-

it is to alert us to the risk of making claims about get that either.

literary personae like the Bundrens as if they were

our crazy neighbors down the street. STEPHEN M. Ross

Instead of assuming that structuralist theories of U.S. Naval Academy

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