Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 3. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 29)
Tibor Tóth: Fiction as the 'River Between': Daniel Martin
70 TIBOR TÓT! I search of conventional definition of time which includes past, present and future. Three-dimensional time is regained through journeys dense with private and collective myths, from among which the one regarding Isis and Osiris seems to be extremely important. They were taken into a room to see a delicately incised wallcarving of the ritual pouring of the flood waters of the Nile, and he and she stayed on to see it better [...] Two divinities, a male and a female, faced each other, holding up tilted flasks from which the water poured in two curved and crossing lines, forming an arch; except that it wasn't water, but chains of the ancient keys-of-life, cascades of little loop- , topped crosses. (D. M. 533) Whether story, fictional reworking, 'homecoming' can be interpreted or not remains unstated at the end of the novel. Dan's novel can never be read, lies eternally in the future, his ill-concealed ghost has made it impossible last his own impossible first. (D. M. 668) Since Daniel Martin does not follow a traditional presentation of events, does not have chronological order a great deal of ordering is required. The novel contests and subverts the linear or diachronic development of events and challenges the straightforward way of reading. The economy of traditional fictional methods fits better the fragmented accounts, the chaos of which Daniel is trying to make sense, but he has to work hard to regain access to smooth interpretation. Daniel starts to write a novel about his own life and the book 'suffers' the disadvantages of fiction constructed upon elements of film-script but in the end it leads to the union of the two arts in fiction. As we have already stated the 'chaos' is supported through John Fowles's handling of the dimension of time. Timelessness replaces temporality and it dismisses unity, classification, or conventional order of narrative. This kind of interpretation of time is not really problematical in The Trench Lieutenant's Woman , because one finds conventional elements that render the different experiments comprehensive for the reader. Of course, the flow of water which is not water, of time which is not time, the "chains of the ancient keys-of-life," the 'cascades' of different time dimensions, settings, meanings and technical solutions contrib-
