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
of opposites is concerned, both religion and common ethics have always been unequivocal in their opinion about good and evil. With the increase in technological inventions and new scientific discoveries, public rhetoric characteristically sided with intellect as opposed to instinct; and in fashion social opinion honored a dress code that reflected traditional heterosexual roles. Consequently, the latent members of these three pairs—animal instincts, evil tendencies and sex contra-specific behavior —have always been associated with 'suppression.' Nightwood addresses all three of them in the way ancient traditions do: it grants a distinguished status to the simultaneous presence of both sides of the polarity, thereby eventually extinguishing the oppositional energy of one another. Like a spiritual leader to Nora, Matthew makes the first association of 'night' with animal consciousness. He proclaims that in order to consolidate the impulses of night and day, at first one must "[make] a roadway for" (72) the latent side —the suppressed night (un)consciousness —and allow its energies to repossess one half of the personality. Continuing with his praise of the French, he offers his insights by way of saying: "The French have made a detour of filthiness —Oh, the good dirt! Whereas you are of a clean race, of a too eagerly washing people, and this leaves no road for you. The brawl of the Beast leaves a path for the Beast. You wash your brawl with every thought, with every gesture, with every conceivable emollient and savon, and expect to find your way again. A Frenchman makes a navigable hour with a tuft of hair, a wrenched bretelle, a rumpled bed. The tear of wine is still in his cup to catch back the quantity of its bereavement; his cantiques straddle two backs, night and day." [...] "Be as the Frenchman, ... he can trace himself back by his sediment, vegetable and animal, and so find himself in the odour of wine in its two travels, in and out, packed down beneath an air that has not changed its position during that strategy" (73). The French alone, says Matthew, embrace their Beast, unlike the Americans, who "[separate] the two for fear of indignities" (73). Modern society, especially from the beginning of the twentieth century, took pride in its intellectual development as a 'race' and increasingly denied connection with anything primitive and 76
