1936 novel by Djuna Barnes
Nightwood is a 1936 novel by American author Djuna Barnes that was first published by publishing house Faber and Faber. It is one of the early prominent novels to portray explicit homosexuality between women, and as such can be considered lesbian literature.
It is also notable for its intense, gothic prose style. The novel employs modernist techniques such as its unusual form or narrative and can be considered metafiction, and it was praised by other modernist authors including T. S. Eliot, who edited the novel, helped publish it, and wrote an introduction included in the 1937 edition published by Harcourt, Brace. As a "roman à clef", the novel features a thinly veiled portrait of Barnes in the character of Nora Flood, whereas Nora's lover Robin Vote is a composite of Thelma Wood and the Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Jenny Petherbridge is Henriette Alice McCrea-Metcalf, and Felix Volkbein is derived from Frederick Philip Grove.
Synopsis.
Bow Down.
Felix Volkbein is born in early 1880 to Guido and Hedvig Volkbein, a Jew of Italian descent and a Viennese woman of great beauty, respectively. Guido died six months previously, and Hedvig dies too, at the age of forty-five, shortly after giving birth to Felix.
Guido had pretended to be of baronial descent, adapting to Christian customs, but is constantly haunted by his Jewishness. He lives as an outcast. Hedvig is convinced that she is a Baroness by marriage, though. They reside in a house overlooking the Prater in Vienna, filled with ornaments of a false lineage, including paintings of Guido's claimed parents, a coat-of-arms of Guido's own proclamation, and three pianos, upon which Hedvig plays waltzes in a masculine style.
Thirty years later, Felix turns up from nowhere with the paintings of Guido's "parents", which bear an accidental resemblance to the man. His aunt informs him of his presumed baronial heritage, and Felix takes it up readily, along with an obsession for a sort of nobility and royalty. He comes by good money, masters seven languages, and though well-known, is not popular. He is usually seen alone, dressed in part for the evening and in part for the day.
In 1920, he lives in Paris, keeping two servants for their physical resemblances to royalty, insinuating himself among the actresses and circus performers of Europe in their salons, who have taken on titles too, but for different purposes. He finds a sense of peace here.
One of these performers is Frau Mann, a trapeze artist. One night in Berlin, Mann intends to introduce Felix to a Count Onatorio Altamonte, but they walk in on Dr. Matthew O'Connor, an Irishman from San Francisco, presiding as interim host until the Count has appeared. He holds a certain interest in gynecology and considers himself an amusing predicament.
O'Connor speaks about history and legend, on humor, then proceeds, running over Mann's interjection, to describe a former circus performer in the "Cirque de Paris", focusing especially on tattoos which O'Connor calls the "ameublement" of depravity, and which the performer calls beauty. Felix asks O'Connor about Vienna, seeing that the doctor has stolen the show. A young woman in her late twenties doing publicity for the circus comes over; she is Nora Flood. The doctor claims to have helped to bring her into this world.
Felix bursts into laughter at a certain phrase of the doctor's, then finds himself distressed at having done so. The doctor comes and claims not to be or have a variety of things, then finishes off with a sweeping statement about love and lies. He then continues by comparing the Protestant and the Catholic churches and their methods of storytelling, and their effects.
He moves on to sorrow, after a chide from Nora, then describes a memory of being in a town under bombardment. He had rushed for the cellar, and inside was an old Breton woman, her cow, and a Dubliner praying. Then, under a flash of lightning, he saw that the cow had tears all over her eyes, and he began to talk to the cow. Then comes an aside recalling an encounter with a headsman.
Suddenly, the Count appears with a young girl and tells them all to go, which Matthew says, after the trio are in a cab, is because the Count thinks that he has had "his last erection." Frau Mann bids them go for drinks, and then Felix disembarks. It is snowing.
In Heinrich's, Matthew says that Felix reminds him of a Mme. Basquette, who was "damned from the waist down", without legs. She had wheeled herself around the Pyrenees on a board. Then one day a sailor saw her, wanted her, and raped her. When he was done, he put her down five miles outside of town. She had to wheel herself back into town, crying all the while.
Then Matthew describes his parents and what they looked like. Frau Mann mentions an album of her own, falls asleep, and then the doctor leaves, foisting the bill upon her.
La Somnambule.
Matthew lives on the , close to the church of Saint-Sulpice, and frequents the neighborhood "place", its environs, and a local café. He is often seen walking alone, going to Mass, where he uses the holy water liberally, and sometimes, late at night, before entering the cafe, gazing up at the towers of the church and the fountain in the "place".
Now, a few weeks after the Berlin encounter, he brings Felix to the cafe. Felix considers Matthew a liar in behavior. Matthew talks about Jews and the Irish, moving from knowledge to societal problems in a medical metaphor. Then grief and laughter, denying that he is neurasthenic, and waiting. Felix muses about beverages unique to cities. An employee from a local hotel approaches the doctor regarding a lady who has fainted. Matthew tells Felix to pay the bill and to follow him, which Felix does. They go upstairs to a room full of a variety of plants surrounding a bed, upon which lies a young woman.
The woman is disheveled, has a scent approaching fungi, and her skin resembles flora. She seems to evoke the somnambule and the paintings of Henri Rousseau. Felix retreats for propriety and Matthew, who happens to be an unlicensed doctor, rouses the woman. The woman tries to rise, but falls back onto the bed. Felix then sees Matthew make a series of dissembling movements with his hands; this is to embellish his face with perfume, powder, and rouge. Matthew, thinking himself unobserved, pockets a hundred-franc note. Felix decides to continue to like the doctor, and to cover him. Felix turns to see the girl sitting up in bed; she recognizes the doctor, but struggles to identify him until the doctor tells her where she is. Looking at her, Felix feels something along the lines of that the woman who presents herself as a picture is dangerous; one sometimes meets a woman who is beast turning human, whose every movement is reduced to images, and who is the infected carrier of the past. He feels as if the girl is the converging halves of a broken fate, and then she dismisses them.
The doctor, asking a bystander for her name, finds it to be Robin Vote, then returns to the café with Felix. He asks Felix about women and marriage; Felix wishes for a son, born of an American woman, who feels about the past the same way he does. The doctor goes on about nobility, the divine right of kings, and blind loyalty. Felix responds that to pay homage to the past is also to acknowledge the future—that is why he must have a son. The doctor critiques aristocracy, which Felix chalks up to his Americanism. Matthew retorts that his Americanism causes him to believe anything, then drinks to Robin as the café closes up shop.
Felix calls for the next four days on Robin to find that she is not in her room. On the fifth, he runs into her on the street, and they walk towards the Jardin du Luxembourg, Felix talking about himself, Robin silent. She is gracious but fading, her smile a little bitter, and her presence, to Felix, painful but a happiness.
They spend much time in museums in the days following, and Felix is surprised to learn that Robin has a taste not just for the excellent but also for the debased and decadent. Her sense of touch seems to be acute, and her hands are sensual. She dresses atemporally but not contemporaneously. His love for her seems fated, and she agrees to marry him.
He takes her to Vienna, showing her all the historic buildings, but is only capable of repeating what he has read about them. He speaks to her in German; saying that life is eternal, and its beauty lies in that fact.
In their hotel that night, Robin opens the window while Felix speaks of history, and Felix, looking at Robin, sees that she is insufficient for his hopes. Returning to Paris, he sees Robin as an enigma, but places his faith in her Christian proclivities, though her attention seems to be taken by something not yet extant. Felix tries to sway her to his chosen destiny, but continuously fails.
Robin becomes pregnant and takes to wandering to other cities alone for long lengths of time, having become aware of some empty space in herself. Then she takes to Catholicism, praying in many churches, thinking of her son's purpose, of the Emperor, and of many historical and fictional women. She does not pray for damnation or forgiveness, but outlines her predicament.
Felix returns that night to find Robin having falling asleep reading the memoirs of the Marquis de Sade, one line being underlined. He asks her what is wrong; they are unable to speak to one another. That night, she gives birth to a small and sad boy. Felix finds her one night seemingly about to smash their son upon the ground, but then she brings him down. Robin takes to wandering again, and is almost never home. One night, they have a confrontation about how Robin did not want their son, and Robin leaves Paris for a few months, reappearing later with Nora Flood, and unwilling to explain what she has been up to. The doctor says that she has been in America.
Night Watch.
Nora Flood is introduced as a native of western America, Christian by temperament, and proprietor of a salon in which outcasts of all sorts gathered. She loves widely, and gives herself up for everyone. She appears to constantly record some sort of music, and her eyes unconsciously augment what she sees with her own unconscious terms. She lacks humor, and lacks ignominy, which draws people to her and frightens them. The world to her appears a curiosity, with her outside it, preoccupied otherwise, until she meets Robin.
In the fall of 1923, she meets Robin at a circus in New York, and after one of the lionesses in the pit takes a swipe at Robin, leave together at Robin's behest. They begin their relationship then, living together at Nora's apartment until midwinter, traveling across Europe until reaching Paris, where Nora buys an apartment on the "rue du Cherche-Midi" which Robin has chosen. They evolve such that Nora comes to be alone in the apartment with knickknacks and other objects, reminders of their relationship, for most of the time. Robin is now beyond simple or conventional description, and has molded Nora to her purposes. Nora begins to dream of Robin in danger, and of taking Robin's body down into the earth with her.
When they are together, though, Robin sings strange songs in many languages which Nora occasionally tries to emulate, but haltingly, and which Nora occasionally interrupts with questions. The singing persists, and Nora comes to the conclusion that the only way to keep Robin for herself is through death.
They stay together for years, and as time goes on, Robin's departures increase in frequency. Nora would track Robin's preparations for departure by the sounds of her dressing, and when Robin leaves, she tells Nora not to wait for her. At first, Nora goes with Robin, but as Nora begins to feel intrusive or forgotten, Nora stays home. She longs for Robin desperately, though, and then goes out where she might not see Robin.
Matthew, seeing Nora walking, notes her as a religious woman without the refuge of the faith,