Reviewed by:

• Conrad, Faulkner, and the Problem of Nonsense by Maurice Ebileeni
• Anne Luyat (bio)

Maurice Ebileeni’s psychoanalytic reading of Joseph Conrad and William Faulkner explores five of their novels in the light of the French philosopher Jacques Lacan’s concepts of non-sens, symptom, and sinthome. It is a demanding but rewarding read. The concept of nonsense is shown to be a means of sublimating the textual recognition of the chaotic in three works by Conrad— Lord Jim, Heart of Darkness, and Under Western Eyes—and in two works by Faulkner—The Sound and the Fury and As I Lay Dying. In his consideration of nonsense as a concept during his 1955 lectures in Paris at l’Hôpital Sainte Anne, Jacques Lacan referred to Aristotle’s definition of nonsense or tuché as a trauma or a missed encounter with the real. Lacan expanded the concept when he gave his first seminar at the Ecole Freudienne in Paris in 1964, noting that nonsense was inassimilable to the symbolic order because it remained outside the domain of conceptualization.

In Lacanian terms, the dying words of Kurtz, “The Horror! The Horror!” in Conrad’s novella “Heart of Darkness” indicate the existence of an unrecognized and unresolved trauma. In relating the nature of Kurtz’s excesses of avarice and cruelty during the time he worked in Africa, the story’s narrator, Marlow, indicates the origin of the unresolved trauma and gives the words of Kurtz posthumous significance. Ebileeni suggests that the efforts of Conrad’s narrators to understand the symptom—what is going wrong in the life of another character—constitutes a valuable exercise, but one that, in the case of extreme perseverance on the part of a narrator, can become an indicator of neurosis. During his meeting with Kurtz’s fiancée in Brussels, Marlow comes to the full realization that what he knows about Kurtz is unspeakable and should not be repeated. When Kurtz’s fiancée inquires about the last moments of Kurtz’s life, Marlow tells her the untruth that Kurtz spoke only her name before dying. Marlow’s decision not to communicate the last words of Kurtz [End Page 81] to her because the words were too terrible to repeat increases their resonance in the story while freeing Marlow from any further attempt to discover their exact meaning.

The haunting leitmotif of Kurtz’s unresolved trauma, “The Horror! The Horror!,” continues to echo the existence of the chaotic in the life of Kurtz and the missed encounter of his fiancée with the real, but the words themselves can no longer draw Marlow into their vortex. Ebileeni believes that the efforts of Conrad’s narrators to identify the symptom in the lives of other characters and to understand their distress will protect them and prevent them from sharing a similar destiny. Marlow employs an eloquent metaphor to describe his own close call with fate: “I had been permitted to draw back my hesitating foot.”

Ebileeni believes that Benjy’s howling in The Sound and the Fury also represents the presence of an unexplained trauma. He also believes that the succession of howls seem to fill a gap in Benjy’s mind. Benjy’s successive howls also serve to reveal a certain degree of instability in the novel’s other characters. As trauma begets trauma, the novel’s other characters begin to recognize the necessity of maintaining effective communication with one another. Their change in attitude is due at least in part to their having witnessed Benjy’s futile attempts to make himself understood. The wrenching sound of his suffering reveals the extent of his trauma and underlines the dramatic composition of the novel.

Ebileeni’s explanation of the symptom in Conrad and the sinthome in Faulkner employs terms which Jacques Lacan defined in his 1974 and 1976 seminars in Paris. The symptom, or what is going wrong in a character, is considered by Lacan to be a form of neurosis, while the sinthome, the place where an error appears, creates a situation closer to psychosis. Lacan used the example of...

审核人：

• 康拉德，福克纳和莫里斯·埃比莱尼的废话问题
• 安妮·卢亚特（生物）

莫里斯·埃比雷尼（Maurice Ebileeni）对约瑟夫·康拉德（Joseph Conrad）和威廉·福克纳（William Faulkner）的精神分析读物，是根据法国哲学家雅克·拉康（Jacques Lacan）的无感觉，症状和sinthome概念来探索他们的五本小说。这是一本要求很高但有益的读物。在康拉德（Conrad）的三幅作品（吉姆勋爵，《黑暗之心》和《西方之眼》）以及福克纳的两幅作品（《喧and与骚动》和《As and the Fury and Asy》）中，胡说八道的概念被证明是一种升华对混沌的文本认识的手段。我躺死。在他1955年在巴黎圣安妮宫（L'HôpitalSainte Anne）的演讲中考虑废话作为一种概念时，雅克·拉康（Jacques Lacan）将亚里士多德对废话或tuché的定义称为对现实的创伤或错过。拉康（Lacan）于1964年在巴黎的法国大学（Ecole Freudienne）举行了他的第一次研讨会时，扩大了这个概念，并指出废话对象征秩序是不可同化的，因为它仍然处于概念化领域之外。

用拉康尼亚语来说，库尔兹垂死的话是“恐怖！惊恐的事件！” 康拉德中篇小说中的“黑暗之心”表明存在着无法识别和解决的创伤。故事讲述者马洛（Marlow）在谈到库尔茨在非洲工作期间过度贪婪和残酷的本质时，指出了未解决的创伤的根源，并给库尔茨遗言赋予了重要意义。Ebileeni建议康拉德的叙述者努力理解症状-另一个角色的生活中出了什么问题-构成了一项有价值的练习，但如果讲述人过分地坚持不懈，则该练习可能会成为神经症的指示。马洛在布鲁塞尔与库尔兹的未婚妻见面时，完全意识到，他对库尔兹的了解是难以言喻的，不应重复。当库尔兹的未婚夫询问库尔兹一生的最后时刻时，马洛告诉她一个事实，库尔兹在死前只说出了自己的名字。Marlow决定不向她传达Kurtz的最后一句话[结束第81页]，因为这些单词太可怕了以至于无法重复，这增加了他们在故事中的共鸣，同时使Marlow不再有任何进一步的尝试去发现他们的确切含义。

库尔兹未解决的创伤缠身的主旋律，“恐怖！“恐怖！”继续呼应库尔兹一生中混乱的存在以及未婚夫与真实未婚妻的相遇，但这些词本身再也无法将马洛吸引到他们的漩涡中。Ebileeni认为，康拉德的叙述者为识别其他角色的生活中的症状并了解他们的痛苦而做出的努力将保护他们并阻止他们分享相似的命运。马洛用一个雄辩的比喻用命运来形容自己的亲密呼唤：“我被允许放下我犹豫的脚。”

埃比雷尼（Ebileeni）相信，本杰（Benjy）在《喧Sound与骚动》中的s叫声也代表着无法解释的创伤的存在。他还认为，ls叫的接连似乎填补了Benjy头脑中的空白。本杰连续的how叫声也揭示了小说其他角色的某种程度的不稳定。随着外伤成为外伤，小说的其他角色开始认识到保持有效沟通的必要性。他们态度的改变至少部分是由于他们亲眼目睹了Benjy徒劳地试图使自己理解。他痛苦的痛苦声音揭示了他的创伤程度，并突显了小说的戏剧性构图。

埃比列尼（Ebileeni）对康拉德（Conrad）症状和福克纳（Faulkner）sinthome症状的解释采用了雅克·拉康（Jacques Lacan）在1974年和1976年在巴黎举行的研讨会上定义的术语。该症状，或者是在一个字符脚麻，由拉康认为是神经官能症的一种形式，而sinthome，在出现错误的地方，产生了一种情况更接近精神病。拉康以...为例