Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2000. [Vol. 6.] Eger Journal of American Studies. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 26)
Studies - Szilvia Nagy: I Can Operate in the Dark—Bodies are Phosphorescent... Occult Modernism and Myth-Making in Djuna Barnes 's Nightwood
was structured by polarity. With another stroke of the pen, she associates the 'night' with 'the unconscious'; sleep opens up the "dark door" of desires lacking the sanction of the Bible. The mention of the night gown is pronounced here as just moments before this dialogue Nora found Matthew in a woman's night gown. But the gesture of 'twilight' makes it clear that 'convergence' will assume a more emphasized status than the 'polarity' of day and night. In the intricate cosmology of Nightwood, the binary of 'day' and 'night' will stand for further dualities, and their division will come to denote their brief blending into One, in a moment of paradoxical nonexistence. I take this assertion as my starting point, adding that numerous others might equally be valid, especially in the case of Barnes whose evasiveness was probably the only thing she had a commitment to. In only a few sentences, Barnes sets the stage for an endlessly explicable flow of ideas regarding the nature of binaries as inevitably present in modern society, and as the title of the novel shows, the 'night' takes a major role in this enterprise. In fact, it has its own life as an extra character, acting as a gate to many of the issues and patterns of thought that Barnes plays around with in the course of Nightwood. The first four chapters introduce the main characters—Felix, Matthew, Robin, Nora and Jenny —and at the same provide capsule glimpses into their respective characters and priorities. The setting is the increasingly commodifíed space of public culture and the "splendid and reeking falsification" (11) of the circus, "taking its flight from the immense disqualification of the public" (11). The characters are in a search for definitions for themselves and a sense of belonging. Felix inherited from his father Guido Volkbein an obsessive "pretense to a Barony" (5), with all due fabricated evidence, including "a coat of arms that he had no right to and a list of progenitors ... who had never existed" (5), and "life-sized portraits of Guido's claim to father and mother" (7) which were in actual fact mere "reproductions of two intrepid and ancient actors" (7). Doctor O'Connor, "pathetic and alone" (30), is looking for his man and pursuing his futile wish to "boil some good man's potatoes and toss up a child for him every nine months by the calendar" (78). Nora has "that mirrorless look of polished metals which report not so much the object as the movement of the object" (48); she is "endlessly embroiled in a preoccupation without a problem" (48), a 73
