Abstract
Not all twentieth-century writers surrender to biblical archetypes in the manner of Joseph Roth, Kafka, or Dostoevsky who were in their different ways possessed by the Joban paradigm. Conrad, for instance, strongly responsive though he is to myth-patterns of all kinds, is not seized in this fashion. Marlow in Heart of Darkness is a questing hero who, like Aeneas, visits the underworld there to confront Erebus, son of Chaos, and to behold Phlegethon, the river of Death.1 There are also arguable traces of Dante’s Inferno in Marlow’s journey up-river.2 Kurtz — who is not only an adventurer but also a poet, painter and musician — re-enacts Orpheus’s descent into the region of Hades, there to behold forbidden things and eventually to be torn to pieces by the Thracian women. In “The Secret Sharer,” Leggatt’s deed and subsequent fate explicitly recall the biblical story of Cain and Abel, whilst the relations between Leggatt and the Captain belong to the archetype of the Double.3 In these examples, Conrad is clearly exploring the artistic possibilities of these archetypal stories and myth-patterns. Much the same is true of Hardy. The stories of Saul and David from the first book of Samuel are seriously evoked in The Mayor of Casterbridge, lending a kind of universality and strength to the story of Henchard and Farfrae.4
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Notes
Cf. Lillian Feder, “Marlow’s Descent into Hell,” Nineteenth Century Fiction, IX (1955), 281–90
Cf. Robert O. Evans, “Conrad’s Underworld,” Modern Fiction Studies, II (1956), pp.56–62
Cf. Louis H. Leiter, “Echo Structures: Conrad’s The Secret Sharer,” Twentieth Century Literature, V (1960), 159–75;
Karl Miller, Doubles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp.255–7
For an excellent analysis of these echo-patterns see Nehama Aschkenasy, “Biblical Substructures in the Tragic Form: Hardy, The Mayor of Casterbridge; Agnon, And the Crooked Shall Be Made Straight,” in Biblical Patterns in Modern Literature, eds. David H. Hirsch and Nehama Aschkenasy (Chico CA: Scholars Press, 1984), pp.85–94
Cf. Mark Goldman, “Comic Vision and the Theme of Identity,” in Bernard Malamud and the Critics, eds. Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field (New York: New York University Press, 1970), pp.158, 159
S.Y. Agnon, Works [Hebrew] (Tel-Aviv: Schocken, 1953), vol. II, p.517
Gerald Hoag, “Malamud’s Trial: The Fixer and the Critics,” in Bernard Malamud: A Collection of Critical Essays, eds. Leslie A. Field and Joyce W. Field (Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1975), pp.132, 138
Sandy Cohen (Bernard Malamud and the Trial by Love [Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1974], p.74) suggests rather improbably a link with the story of the near-sacrifice of Isaac. There a ram is offered up as a substitute (Genesis 22:13).
Cf. Mellard, “Four Versions of Pastoral,” p.72 and Sheldon J. Hershinow, Bernard Malamud (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1980), p.72
Robert Alter, After the Tradition: Modern Jewish Writing (New York: Dutton, 1969), p.125
Yosef Haim Brenner, Breakdown and Bereavement, trans. Hillel Halkin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), p.32
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© 1998 Harold Fisch
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Fisch, H. (1998). Biblical Patterns for Sale: Malamud, The Fixer . In: New Stories for Old. Cross-Currents in Religion and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230502352_7
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