Reviewed by:

• John Banville and His Precursors ed. by Pietra Palazzolo, Michael Springer, and Stephen Butler
• Lee M. Jenkins

Born in Wexford in southeast Ireland in 1945, John Banville is recognized as one of the finest writers in English today: the author of a score of novels, some of which appear under his crime writing pseudonym of "Benjamin Black," Banville was awarded the Man Booker Prize in 2005 for The Sea, and has been tipped as a potential recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. John Banville and His Precursors examines Banville's generative engagements with literary and philosophical forebears, such as Samuel Beckett, Henry James, and Heinrich von Kleist, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan, and Martin Heidegger. Of interest to Stevens scholars are two chapters in the "Literary Engagements" section, contributed by two of the book's editors: Pietra Palazzolo's "Afterlives of a Supreme Fiction: John Banville's Dialogue with Wallace Stevens" and Michael Springer's "The Limits of Simile: Rilke, Stevens, and Banville's Scepticism."

Palazzolo and Springer both extend what Peter Brazeau once called the "Irish Connection" with Stevens to Banville—a connection that was forged by the Irish poet and art critic Thomas McGreevy in 1948, and that would continue in Stevens's posthumous reception or afterlife in the work of the Northern Irish poet Derek Mahon and in the poetry and essays of the Irish-American Susan Howe. (For more on this Irish connection, see my essay in the previous issue of this journal.) Palazzolo and Springer explore the cross-generic influence of Stevens's poetry on Banville's fiction (also registered in the title of the Belfast novelist Brian Moore's The Emperor of Ice Cream [1965]) by studying the close affinity with Stevens that Banville has acknowledged from Doctor Copernicus (1976) through The Blue Guitar (2015). Doctor Copernicus takes its epigraph from "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction"—"You must become an ignorant man again / And see the sun again with an ignorant eye / And see it clearly in the idea of it" (CPP 329)—while the latter novel, whose painter-narrator excels "in the fine art of thieving" (3), takes its title and epigraph from "The Man with the Blue Guitar": "Things as they are / Are changed upon the blue guitar" (CPP 135).

Palazzolo's chapter engages with Banville's philosophical and epistemological repurposing of Stevens in Doctor Copernicus, in which the astronomer's positing of a theory that may account for the observed motion of the planets, and that may thereby "save the phenomena" (29; italics in original), is conceived in imaginative rather than scientific or empirical terms as the projection of a supreme fiction. As Banville has put it, in a comment cited by Palazzolo, we can "only live by . . . necessary falsehoods. Art is one of them—the Supreme Fiction, as Wallace Stevens calls it" (qtd. on 88). Palazzolo, who reads Banville's "Revolutions" trilogy of 1976–1986 (Doctor Copernicus, Kepler, [End Page 121] The Newton Letter) accordingly, extends the Stevensian frame of reference to Banville's "art trilogy" of 1989–1995 (The Book of Evidence, Ghosts, Athena), noting Banville's "patterned triadic frame" of reference (104), but failing to relate the tripartite structure of these fictions to that of "Notes Toward a Supreme Fiction." In his introduction to John Banville and His Precursors, Springer locates the collection in the field of Comparative Literature, a field that, he argues, nurtures "ramified ecologies of persistence and reception" (5). But Comparative Literature may prove a minefield, too, for scholars who are less sure-footed in their foray into one of the parts of a comparative paradigm. This is the case with Palazzolo's study of Banville and Stevens. Although she makes valid if general points about Banville's and Stevens's shared "dynamics of the creative process," which "can be perceived in motion," and, after Simon Critchley, defines both writers as "inheritors of a 'romantic modernity'" (90), Palazzolo's analysis of Stevens is open to question, and is riddled with errors. For example, her claim that Stevens adopts the form of the long poem only...

审核人：

• 约翰·班维尔（John Banville）和他的前任编辑。彼得拉·帕拉佐洛（Pietra Palazzolo），迈克尔·斯普林格（Michael Springer）和史蒂芬·巴特勒（Stephen Butler）
• 李·詹金斯（Lee M.Jenkins）

约翰·班维尔（John Banville）于1945年生于爱尔兰东南部的韦克斯福德（Wexford），被公认为当今英语水平最好的作家之一：创作了许多小说，其中一些出现在他的罪行下，其笔名是“本杰明·布莱克（Benjamin Black）”，班维尔被授予2005年，他凭借《海洋》获得了布克奖，并被提名为诺贝尔文学奖的潜在获得者。约翰·班维尔（John Banville）和他的前任考察了班维尔（Banville）与文学和哲学先辈的创世历程，例如塞缪尔·贝克特（Samuel Beckett），亨利·詹姆斯（Henry James）和海因里希·冯·克莱斯特（Heinrich von Kleist），莫里斯·布兰科特（Maurice Blanchot），雅克·拉康（Jacques Lacan）和马丁·海德格尔（Martin Heidegger）。史蒂文斯学者感兴趣的是“文学订婚”部分中的两章，由该书的两位编辑撰写：彼得拉·帕拉佐洛的《至尊小说的余生：约翰·班维尔与华莱士·史蒂文斯的对话》和迈克尔·斯普林格的《比喻的极限：里尔克》 ，史蒂文斯（Stevens）和班维尔（Banville）的怀疑主义。”

Palazzolo和Springer都将彼得·布拉索（Peter Brazeau）曾经与史蒂文斯（Stevens）称为“爱尔兰联系”（Irish Connection）延伸到了班维尔（Banville），这种联系是由爱尔兰诗人和艺术评论家托马斯·麦格里维（Thomas McGreevy）于1948年建立的，这种联系将在史蒂文斯（Stevens）的死后接待或作品的来世中延续代表北爱尔兰诗人德里克·马洪（Derek Mahon）以及爱尔兰裔美国人苏珊·豪（Susan Howe）的诗歌和散文。（有关这种爱尔兰联系的更多信息，请参阅我在上一期杂志上的文章。）Palazzolo和Springer探索史蒂文斯诗歌对班维尔小说的跨学科影响（也在贝尔法斯特小说家布莱恩·摩尔的书名中进行了记录）。蓝色吉他（2015）。哥白尼医生的题词来自“至高无上的小说笔记” —“您必须再次成为一个无知的人/并以无知的眼光再次看到太阳/并在其思想中清晰地看到它”（CPP 329）后者的小说“偷窃的艺术中”，其画家叙述者的过人之处（3），采取它的标题和题词的“人与蓝色吉他”：“事物的本来面目/于蓝色吉他改变”（CPP 135）。

帕拉佐洛与班维尔在史蒂文斯的哲学和认识论再利用章节接合医生哥白尼，其中一种理论认为可能占行星的观察到的运动的天文学家的：放置，并且可以从而“保存现象”（29;斜体原） ，以想象的而非科学的或经验的术语被视为至高无上的小说的投影。正如班维尔（Banville）所说，在Palazzolo所引用的评论中，我们“只能……生活……必要的虚假。艺术就是其中之一-至高小说，正如华莱士·史蒂文斯所说”（第88期）。帕拉佐洛，谁读的班维尔的“革命”三部曲1976年至1986年（博士哥白尼，开普勒，[尾页121] 因此，牛顿信（Newton Letter）扩展了史蒂文斯式的参照系，适用于班维尔（Banville）的1989-1995年的“艺术三部曲”（《证据书》，鬼魂，雅典娜），并指出了班维尔的参照式三重框架（104），但没有联系起来。这些小说的三重结构与“通向最高虚构的笔记”的结构相同。在他对约翰·班维尔和他的前任的介绍中，史普林格将其收藏品放在比较文学领域，他认为，该领域培育了“持久性和接受性的分枝生态”（5）。但是，对于那些不太愿意涉足比较范式之一的学者来说，比较文学也可能是一个雷区。Palazzolo对Banville和Stevens的研究就是这种情况。尽管她对班维尔和史蒂文斯共享的“创作过程的动力”的一般观点是有效的，但“在运动中可以被感知”，并且在西蒙·克里奇利之后，将两位作家都定义为““浪漫现代性”的继承者”（90 ），帕拉佐洛对史蒂文斯（Stevens）的分析是值得商question的，而且充满了错误。例如，她声称史蒂文斯只是采用长诗的形式...