Novel and Film: Two Essays

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Novel and Film Two Essays
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Mikhail Mikhailovich Bahktin

• Discourse in the Novel

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Dialogical Discourse

• A living utterance
• A particular historical moment
• A socially specific environment
• Dialogical threads woven about a social object
• The utterance stems from the dialogue and enters
  back into itparticipatory rather than theoretical

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The Historical Moment of AMW

• Jansenism
• Freethinkers-Port Royal
• Still Life Painting
• Court Life in France
• Economic Development
• Development of the Viol as Musical Instrument
• Development of Orchestration and large Ensemble
  Playing.

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Jansenism

• Associated with Port Royal Cistercian Convent and
  the Arnaud family
• Port Royal pupils included Racine, Arnuad family
  and Pascal
• Emphasized original sin, human depravity, the
  necessity of divine grace and predestination
• High level of moral rectitude and religious piety
• Influenced by Augustines philosophy

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Blaise Pascal

• We arrive at truth, not by reason only, but also
  by the heart.
• I feel engulfed in the infinite immensity of
  spaces whereof I know nothing, and which know
  nothing of me, I am terrified The eternal silence
  of these infinite spaces alarms me.
• However vast a man's spiritual resources, he is
  capable of but one great passion.
• All man's troubles come from not knowing how to
  sit still in one room.

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Society of Port Royal

• These were men whom the love of retirement had
  united to cultivate literature, in the midst of
  solitude, of peace, and of piety. They formed a
  society of learned men, of fine taste and sound
  philosophy. Alike occupied on sacred, as well as
  on profane writers, they edified, while they
  enlightened the world. Their writings fixed the
  French language. The example of these solitaries
  show how retirement is favourable to penetrate
  into the sanctuary of the Muses and that by
  meditating in silence on the oracles of taste, in
  imitating we may equal them.

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Lubin Baugin 1610-1663

• Master of the still-life
• Two distinct periods of workearlier, still life
  (France) later, religious portraits (Italy)
• Lived outside of Paris
• He was openly involved in republishing the books
  of the empirical doctor, David Laigneau, against
  bloodletting. A Protestant, Laigneau had also
  written a treatise on alchemy. Could an interest
  in empiricism and alchemy exist in harmony with
  orthodox piety in 1660? In any case, it was the
  sign of a free spirit.

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St. Jerome--Bible Translator
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Socially Specific Environmentin AMW

• Social Situation Discourse
• NarrationSimple, Elegant Prose, Sparse and Clean
• Hermit in SolitudeSilence, Music
• Erotic, Dyadic LoveSilence, Music
• Familial with DaughtersActions, Clumsy Speech,
  Music
• Fellow Animals and Plants--Actions
• MuisicanTechnique on the Instrument, Speech of
  the Instrument, Nod of the Head,
  Raising of the Eyebrow
• Mentor/StudentExplanations, Clumsy Speech, Music
• Rural HelpmatesActions
• Co-religionistsPerformance
• Co-artistSilence,Technique of the Brush Stroke,
  Listening
• Royal CourtArgument

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Dialogical Threads in AMWExample The Viol

• Narrative Description of Viols Music One of
  his pupils, Come le Blanc the Elder, declared
  that he contrived to imitate all the inflexions
  of the human voice from the sigh of a young lady
  to the sob of an old man, from the war cry of
  Henri de Navarre to the soft breathing of a child
  trying to draw something, from the distracted
  groan sometimes produced by sexual pleasure to
  the almost voiceless gravity, deprived of nearly
  all force and harmony, of a man lost in prayer.
  (p. 4)

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Films Use of Dialogical Thread?
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Additional Dialogical Threads around the Viol

• Technique He found a new way to hold the viola
  de gamba between his knees without allowing it to
  rest against his calf.
• He perfected the bowing technique by lightening
  the weight of his hand and exerting pressure only
  on the horsehairastonishing virtuousity.
• Insturment He added a bass stringdeeper tones
  and melancholy effect.
• Place He had a hut constructed in the branches
  of a great mulberry tree dating from the days of
  Monsieur de Sully...In this retreat he could work
  without disturbing the little girls

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Heteroglossia

• To use language at all is to speak in many
  languages.
• A social stratification of language(s)literary
  genres, professional usages, religious
  discourses, regional idioms etc.
• Every speaker of language is inhabited by these
  multiple forms of language in juxtaposition to
  one another.

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Internal Dialogization

• Rather than looking for a pure and coherent
  image, form or metaphor, the novelist/poet
  registers in his or her discourse the
  heteroglossia of language
• To understand any utterance, one must hear it
  against the background of language and the
  multiplicity of concrete utterances language
  allows

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From The Unbearable Lightness of Being

• By Milan Kundera

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• Cemetery
• Cemeteries in Bohemia are like gardens. The
  graves are covered with grass and colorful
  flowers. Modest tombstones are lost in the
  greenery. When the sun goes down, the cemetery
  sparkles with tiny candles. It looks as though
  the dead are dancing at a childrens ball. Yes,
  a childrens ball, because the dead are as
  innocent as children. No matter how brutal life
  becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery.
  Even in wartime, in Hitlers time, in Stalins
  time, through all occupations. When she felt
  low, she would get into the car, leave Prague far
  behind, and walk through one or another of the
  country cemeteries she loved so well.
• For Franz a cemetery was an ugly dump of stones
  and bones.

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From Ceremony

• By Leslie Marmon Silko

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• Do something for me, the way you did for others
  who came back. Because what if I didnt know I
  killed one?
• But the old man shook his head slowly and made a
  low humming sound in his throat. In the old way
  of warfare, you couldnt kill another human being
  in battle without knowing it, without seeing the
  result, because even a wounded deer that got up
  and ran again left great clots of lung blood or
  spilled guts on the ground. That way the hunter
  knew it would die. Human beings were no
  different. But the old man would not have
  believed white warfarekilling across great
  distances without knowing who or how many had
  died. It was all too alien to comprehend, the
  mortars and the big guns and even if he could
  have taken the old man to see the target areas,
  even if he could have led him through the fallen
  jungle trees and muddy craters of torn earth to
  show him the dead, the old man would not have
  believed anything so monstrous. Kuoosh would
  have looked at the dismembered corpses and the
  atamic heat-flash outlines, where human bodies
  had evaporated and the old man would have said
  something close and terrible had killed these
  people. Not even oldtime witches killed like
  that.

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• The way
• I heard it
• Was
• In the old days
• Long time ago
• They had this
• Scalp Society
• For warriors
• Who killed
• Or touched
• Dead enemies.
• They had things
• They must do
• Otherwise
• Kooko would haunt their dreams
• With her great fangs and
• Everything would be endangered.
• Maybe the rain wouldnt come

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Woman with Girdle

• By Anne Sexton

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• Your midriff sags toward your knees
• Your breasts lie down in air,
• Their nipples as uninvolved
• As warm starfish.
• You stand in your elastic case,
• Still not giving up the new-born
• And the old-born cycle.
• Moving, you roll down the garment,
• Down that pink snapper and hoarder,
• As your belly, soft as pudding
• Slops into the empty space
• Down, over the surgeons careful mark,
• Down over hips, those head cushions and mouth
  cushions,
• Slow motion like a rolling pin,
• Over crisp hairs, that amazing field
• That hides your genius from your patron

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• Over thighs, thick as young pigs,
• Over knees like saucers,
• Over calves, polished as leather,
• Down toward the feet.
• You pause for a moment,
• Tying your ankles into knots.
• Now you rise,
• A city from the sea,
• Born long before Alexandria was,
• Straightway from God you have come
• Into your redeeming skin.

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Seymour Chatman

• What Novels can do that Films cant (and vice
  versa)

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Narratives vs. Images

• Narratives take time to read, while images are
  taken in in a glance
• Narrative, more than an image, invokes a virtual,
  as well as actual, time story time vs.
  discourse time.
• The time of a narrative can be ordered internally
  in a manner an image cannot.

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Description in Narrative

• Interrupts and freezes the time structure of the
  narrative and invokes a tableau vivant (a living
  picture).
• Only a limited amount of details can be invoked
  in the tableau
• The details are invoked in a particular order.
• An implied narrator easily asserts details as
  existing e.g. the tiny cart.

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• The painter was busy painting a still-life on a
  table a half-filled glass of red wine, a lute on
  its side, an open music score, a black velvet
  purse, some playing cards with the knave of clubs
  uppermost, a chessboard on which were arranged a
  vase holding three carnations and an octagonal
  mirror leaning against the studio wall. (p.
  45-46)

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• All that death shall take away is in its night,
  Sainte-Colombe whispered in his pupils ear,
  They are all the pleasures of this world that
  are taking their leave, bidding us adieu. (p. 46)

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Setting a Scene in Cinema

• Everything is present simultaneously as the
  action unfolds
• Numerous details must be added
• The details can be structured visually but are
  more synchronic than diachronic
• Assertions of an implied narrator cannot be
  easily included in the setting up of a scene.
• Action still occurs even when the director has a
  scene stand still.

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• Whereas in novels, movements and hence events
  are at best constructions imaged by the reader
  out of words, that is, abstract symbols which are
  different from them in kind, the movements on the
  screen are so iconic, so like the real life
  movements they imitate, that the illusion of time
  passage simply cannot be divorced from them.

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• Further in film there is a movement from scene to
  scene that gives the film a tempo beyond that of
  the actions of particular actors within a scene
  intra-scene tempo vs. inter-scene tempo
• Spatial element in written works that is lacking
  in film. For instance, AMW has very short
  chapters. Further the sentences are of simple
  construction and do not dawdle. The reader is
  not encouraged to take pleasure in the act of
  relating the different sentence parts into a
  coherent whole. Rather a sentence emerges and
  then quickly fades, as the next sentence emerges.
  Further AMW has short paragraphs. Each
  indentation acts much like a musical rest, a
  pause before one takes up the next thread of
  narrative.

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The Musical Note

• Music is played in the cinema and the narrative
  descriptions of music from the novel are left
  out.
• Colombes compositions and style emphasized the
  dynamics of single notes, as well as the silences
  out of which notes emerge and then fade back
  into.
• The importance of rests/pauses in music.

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The Voice Over vs. Narrator

• How to Translate Narration into Cinema
• Use a voice-over
• Action, editing and cutting
• Incorporate key elements of narration into
  dialogue
• Add words at scene transitions
• Compose the film as flashback