WILDERNESS AND CIVILIZATION
349
Actually, it should always have been clear that Faulkner never
was a traditionalist in any accepted sense of the term. His attachment
to the South, like Quentin Compson's in
Absalom, Absalom,
is one
of tormented love but not of admiration. Although he frequently
went far enough back into history, he never chose to concentrate on
Southern society in its happier ante-bellum days; or to hold it up as
a model for preservation. He always shows a tradition in the process
of going to pieces, and probes into the past for the causes.
In
the
causal complexity there is .always at bottom the same thing: a guilt
of rapacity and greediness which has corrupted the tradition right
at its starting point, an inevitable sin in man's civilizing efforts.
In
other words: tradition itself is part of the curse, it is its continuance
through time; and history for Faulkner is really nothing but a work–
ing out of the guilt, either by atonement, as in the case of Isaac Mc–
Caslin, or by disasters administered as punishment. They are not
disasters of a blind fate, but proceeding logically from the guilt and
brought about by the same spirit which created the guilt. Justice in
Faulkner is always done by self-inflicted punishment. "No wonder
the ruined woods I used to know don't cry for retribution! he thought:
The people who have destroyed it will accomplish its revenge."
Sutpen's downfall is a perfect illustration of this. But he is not
the only sinner; the McCaslins, Sartories, Compsons, and all the other
aristocratic planters of the South, also acquired their land by devious
means. Faulkner has developed this idea slowly. When he wrote
Ab–
salom, Absalom,
published in 1936, he made Sutpen an outsider, who
with crueller methods imitates the already established planters in or–
der to found a dynasty of his own. But in
Go Down, Moses
(1942)
he shows that the older families had the same doubtful beginning,
and the system of a Southern plantation can serve as symbol for the
exploitation of ancient Rome. And by 1954, in
A Fable,
Faulkner
sees the same guilt, which cursed the South, in all civilization.
The stories of
Go Down, Moses,
particularly "The Bear," "Old
People," and "Delta Autumn," when discussed critically, are usually
put under the heading of "primitivism." Ironically enough, this is
done primarily with the same arguments used for Faulkner as tradi–
tionalist, namely his hate for the mechanized aspects of modern civil–
ization: the auto, the machine, the gadgets.
A few months ago, Faulkner wrote a letter to the
New York
