"Anguish for the Sake of Anguish"--Faulkner and His Dostoevskian Allusion (Critical Essay‪)‬

William Faulkner frequently talked of his special respect for Russian novelists. (1) In particular, Faulkner often singled out Dostoevsky, placing him among the great writers who inspired him not only to "match" their achievements but to outdo them. Many scholars have justifiably concluded that while many Russian writers may have had an impact on Faulkner, "[i]t was Dostoevsky with whom Faulkner felt the greatest affinity and who had the most profound influence on his writing" (Inge 37). Nonetheless, it is also true that references to Dostoevsky, his novels, or his characters in Faulkner's fiction are almost entirely absent, with the exception of a single oblique allusion in a short passage found in Requiem for a Nun (1951). This particular passage in Requiem was first identified as a reference to Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov by the Belgian scholar Jean Weisgerber in his seminal study of Faulkner's relationship to Dostoevsky, Faulkner et Dostoievski; Confluences et influences (1968). Although Weisgerber's book was widely criticised by both Russian and American Faulkner scholars for overemphasizing the Dostoevsky connection, (2) his identification of the Requiem passage as a specific allusion to Brothers Karamazov has never been challenged. Furthermore, neither Weisgerber nor the scholars who acknowledged the Dostoevskian reference subsequently have examined the questions that are raised by its form, its immediate context in Requiem, and its position in Faulkner's body of work. Several things must be acknowledged before the Requiem passage can be meaningfully analysed. First of all, the absence of direct references to Dostoevsky in Faulkner's mammoth literary output appears highly unusual, considering that Faulkner readily acknowledged his admiration for Dostoevsky and that references to other writers whom Faulkner admired abound in his fiction, undermining Weisgerber's theory that a lack of Dostoevskian references is due to Faulkner's "reticence bien anglo-saxonne" in displays of erudition (xii). Secondly, Requiem itself occupies an unusual place in Faulkner's life and canon, quite aside from its uniqueness as Faulkner's only fictional text to contain an allusion to Dostoevsky.