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

FICTION AS THE 'RIVER BETWEEN': DANIEL MARTIN 61 This is then the dimension to which the novel's title character has to return in order to achieve the 'whole sight,' without which all is desolation as the first line of the novel announces. Yet we know that the past which has to be revisited showed him as "Inscrutable innocent, already in exile." (D

. M. 16) The question is whether return to an earlier phase of exile is worth the price. Of course we do not know yet what the price is. The chapter entitled "Games" introduces us to a more comfortable form of exile. Daniel Martin manages to write materials, which actually bring him success in a totally alien world; the dream factory of media dominated contemporary society. As it happened in John Fowles's earlier novels the mobility of the setting is relevant. Daniel Martin, the child whom we met in the first chapter was born and brought up in England, but in the novel's present he lives in Hollywood. The first chapter is not his memory of the past but an impersonal, 'shooting' a technical solution, which is meaningless even in the context of the first two chapters. The paradise, or dream world of many artists was generous to the prodigal son, who nevertheless has to travel back to England to discover his need for 'naturalness' and later his right to be happy and rooted in a tradition which he came to forget. The journey is rather relevant in its spiritual sense, and this is explicit in the novel as Daniel Martin can only arrive 'home' if he visits a land of more complex spiritual significance than England or America. Egypt brings about the theme of Isis and Osiris, with the possible interpretation of the spirit of Dorset assimilating its 'brother' formerly blinded and misled by financial success and giving birth to it. What disturbs the reader of Daniel Martin is its 'material' pretence, that is that in most part John Fowles is trying to pass a theoretically discussed series of film-script-like chapters as a coherent, traditional novel. Actually, the above mentioned pretence supports the 'existential' and spiritual situation of the protagonist. Daniel Martin misinterpreted the concept of freedom similarly to Nicholas Urfe in The Magus. Nicholas Urfe interpreted freedom as the result of being unattached. Daniel Martin interpreted freedom as a series of fragments of indispensable infidelities. These infidelities are interpreted as fragments because they were committed by Daniel Martin as reactions to certain conflicting situations viewed in isolation which the protagonist is trying to interpret