The essential opposition of intuition and intellect as a means of ordering and giving meaning to the human condition penetrates to the heart of A Fable and encompasses every ramification of the conflicts which appear upon the surface.

Some clues to the broad intellectual basis and, in a larger sense, to the whole intellectual environment within which A Fable may be read, occur in a conversation between Faulkner and a young Frenchman, Loic Bouvard, at the Princeton Inn on November 30, 1952. Faulkner happened to be passing through the city, and a mutual friend arranged the interview for Bouvard, who was studying for his Ph.D. in Political Science at Princeton. The atmosphere was informal and conducive to candor, but Bouvard noted that Faulkner was always careful, in fact deliberate, in answering his questions. The conversation finally became centered upon Camus and Sartre, when Bouvard informed Faulkner that many of the young people in France were supplanting a faith in God with a faith in man, obviously a reference to the atheistic existentialism of these two writers. Faulkner's reply is more pertinent than is apparent at first [7].

“Probably you are wrong in doing away with God in that fashion. God is. It is He who created man. If you don't reckon with God, you won't wind up anywhere. You question God and then you begin to doubt, and you begin to ask Why? Why? Why? - and God fades away by the very act of your doubting him”. But he immediately qualified his statement. “Naturally, I'm not talking about a personified or a mechanical God, but a God who is the most complete expression of mankind, a God who rests in the eternity and in the now” [14, p.203].

One is perhaps not surprised that Bouvard was more interested in hearing Faulkner's ideas on man and art, since the interview did take place only after the Nobel Prize acceptance speech, and that speech's apparent humanism, plus the vogue at that time of “existentialism”, would certainly have exercised their influence upon a young French intellectual. What is surprising is the ease with which Bouvard reduced Faulkner's statements about God to “Faulkner's deism” especially since Faulkner had immediately made it clear that he meant neither “a personified or a mechanical God” I shall attempt here to rectify an error in reaction to which Bouvard, as well as many later critics mentioned above, fell victim [7].

For what Bouvard thought were separate and distinct categories were much more closely joined than he realized, were in fact in some ways practically fused. Here are meant the categories “man” and “god”. Faulkner, like Bergson, is often speaking about one in terms of the other (“a god who is the most complete expression of mankind”), but only within the necessary limits of how they define each category. Faulkner is not as precise in A Fable as is Bergson in his Two Sources of Morality and Religion, but the resemblances are there. Faulkner's library does not yield a much-thumbed copy of the Two Sources of Morality and Religion; nevertheless the hypothesis that Bergson's work forms the intellectual basis of A Fable remains valid, since no other works of Bergson are recorded there either, and their availability to him need not be restricted to Faulkner's personal library [7, p.208-239].

Simply noting that Faulkner has never been reticent in acknowledging Bergson's influence upon him, I shall proceed upon the assumption that he was aware of Bergson's ideas on the “vital impetus”, and all the ramifications there of, even though he may not have come across them neatly compressed within the covers of the work to which I shall refer. A comparison of Bergson's The Two Sources of Morality and Religion with A Fable will show parallels both in subject matter and language which suggest more than mere coincidence.

Bergson's conception of the “dialectic” and Faulkner's dramatization of it lie below the “wars” in A Fable and the essential conflict is not New Testament Christianity against Old Testament orthodoxy, nor Christ against Caesar, nor the apostolic church against the institutionalized church, nor war against peace, nor a projected humanism against a traditional transcendent super-being. It is a simpler yet more profound opposition which may manifest itself in any of these more apparent conflicts. Indeed, most of the above-mentioned “conflicts” are not real conflicts at all, but would fall within one of these two basic oppositions, the intellect, since most would be subsumed under static religion.

3.2 Allegoric character of the novel

What A Fable “is” seems to be a central question for some critics in determining its structural features. Thomas H. Carter, for instance, felt that it was basically cleanly structured, but “the other sub-plots obscure the simple rightness of the Corporal's story”. Many see the essential failure occurring in the attempt to mix genres and tones which, in their view, it is impossible to mix. Most critics read A Fable as an allegory which has either been contaminated or enriched in a dreadful way by certain “realistic” features which clash with the main action, the Passion whether it is contaminated or enriched is apparently owing to whether the critic personally prefers the realistic or the symbolic mode.

One may easily contrast this opinion to that of Hyatt Howe Waggoner, who sees the novel's process as “almost the opposite of the symbolic”, one that emerges from “an interpretation of scripture based on the supposition that historic Christianity was founded upon a hoax”. Roma King feels that Faulkner's view is basically Christian, but that the book fails because he has “no systematic intellectual grounding or comprehensive theology”, and the allegory “gets lost among naturalistic irrelevancies and details”. But for Lawrance Thomson the “allegorical skeleton sticks through the flesh unpleasantly”. And Irving Howe considers the book to be “a splendidly written fable that is cluttered and fretted with structural complexities appropriate only to a novel”. And finally, we may go to Carter again, who delivers another critical edict. “Whatever its symbolic structure is A Fable must be judged by the standards of naturalistic fiction” [9, p. 147-148].

The parallel between the representative of the open society and dynamic religion, and the inherent antagonism that this new being must project upon the established institutions, is thus clearly drawn. Another facet of the “deep dialect” - one which is based on experience - is thus established and one may draw obvious implications from the parallel, fusion as it were, of dynamic religion with the open society. The Corporal is both the representative of the open society and that individual who has immersed himself in the elan vital, and, as his confrontation with the priest illustrated, has embodied within himself, as a “species composed of a single individual”, the power to overcome the casuistry of dialectic simply by “being”. The Corporal is one who, in the Bergsonian sense, has immersed himself into “real” time, which “if it is not God, is of God”, and the “religion” which emerges from this inundation is one which cannot be defined by ethical laws or theological argument. It is “a religion of men, not laws” [3, p.187].

One may still reasonably ask why Faulkner had to choose the obvious parallel to the Gospel stories, why he could not have demonstrated these ideas on their own merits rather than borrow from the Gospels. Bergson may again supply us with an explanation. But just as the new moral aspiration takes shape only by borrowing from the closed society its natural form, which is obligation, so dynamic religion is propagated only through images and symbols supplied by the myth-making function. A careful reading of the novel shows the reasons for the trappings of Christian allegory in A Fable.

The most striking “supernatural” incident parallels, in a rough way, the “multiple deaths” of the Corporal, it occurs in the scene describing the Groom's return to the town in Tennessee where they had first raced the horse. He had earlier appeared at the church, but now appears at the loft above the post office where the men are shooting dice. He suddenly appears there, no one speaks, he goes to the game, a coin mysteriously appears at his foot “where 10 seconds ago no coin had been”, he plays the coin, and immediately wins enough for food. The scene below describes his exit and return:

“ He went to the trap door and the ladder which led down into the store's dark interior and with no light descended and returned with a wedge of cheese and a handful of crackers, and interrupted the game again to hand the clerk one of the coins he had won and took his change and, squatting against the wall and with no sound save the steady one of his chewing, ate what the valley knew was his first food since he returned to it, reappeared in the church ten hours ago; and - suddenly - the first since he had vanished with the horse and the two Negroes ten months ago” [14, p.194].

The necessary response is a crude one, but it nonetheless resembles the Corporal's ability to cut past speech and force action. The Groom's mysterious abilities to create the fierce loyalties of those around him links him to the Corpoml also. It is this ability which carries over into the main action, and is the means by which he and the Runner are joined. But in the context of the main action, the Runner is a different person, a point which will be taken up below. His mysterious qualities are even highlighted in the near play on words Faulkner employs in Sutterfield's pronunciation of his name, “Mistairy” for Mr. Harry. The Groom is, in a sense, “resurrected” also. His mysterious reappearances are not the only point of resemblance in this sense. Faulkner describes him at the very beginning of the “horsethief” episode as having undergone a sort of rebirth as a result of his experiences with the horse. The rebirth is somewhat analogous to the Corporal's final interment in the tomb of the unknown soldier, since it suggests outwardly everything that he was not previously, and also points to the anonymity of the Corporal as far as the world is concerned.

“Three things happened to him which changed completely not only his life, but his character too, so that when late in 1914 he returned to England to enlist it was as though somewhere behind the Mississippi Valley hinterland ... a new man had been born, without past, without griefs, without recollection” [14, p.151].

What Faulkner has done in his treatment of the Corporal is to let the action around the Corporal speak for him rather than letting him speak for himself; often the action seems to run a contradictory course to what is being verbalized by cliaracters around the Corporal. This observation goes to the heart of the Corporal's character and the implications toward which his presence in the novel points. The Corporal, for all his taciturnity and seeming passivity, is the essence of action - meaningful action. He is the essence and embodiment of what Bergson considers the mystic, the representative of “dynamic religion”. The Corporal, if not exactly suspicious of ritual, at any rate has no need of ritual, for ritual is extraneous to the dynamic religion he represents. It is, as Bergson states, “a religion of men, not rules”, a religion in which “prayer is independent of its verbal expression; it is an elevation of the soul that can dispense with speech. Bergson, in attempting to define “dynamic religion”, equates it with mysticism, but not the Eastern type of mysticism we generally identify with the Hindu ascetics. These are not true mystics, according to Bergson.

What the Corporal attempts to do, and succeeds in doing for a while, is exactly this. All the action of A Fable is generated by his act of mutiny. This failure will be explained within that context, but for the moment we may see this characteristic, dynamism, operating in relation to the Corporal in the particular way Faulkner has chosen to portray it. The Corporal does not have the gift of rhetoric - he has no need of it; action, experience, is his primary method of expression. His monosyllabic answers to the casuistic arguments of the priest and the Marshall are not owing to stupidity or sullenness. An examination of his answers to most of the questions put to him shows that he does not answer the question directly so much as simply state a “fact” which ultimately has bearing upon the question. For example, in answering the priest's charges that he must bear the responsibility for Gragnon's execution, he simply repeats:

“Tell him [the Marshall] that” [14, p.364-366].

To the Marshall's long argument in the “Maundy Thursday” scene, he first answers simply, “there are still ten” (meaning his disciples), when the Marshall indicates the futility of his martyrdom [14, p.346]. To the last part of the Marshall's argument, when the Marshall expands at length upon the “narrative of the bird” to reinforce his offer of life, the Corporal simply answers:

“Don't be afraid. There's nothing to be afraid of. Nothing worth it” [14, p.352].

The Corporal is equally taciturn in other scenes. He does not speak his first word until page 249; he speaks fewer words than any other major character in the novel, unless one considers the Groom to occupy equal stature, and even the Groom is referred to as constantly mouthing curses, even though Faulkner does not record them for the reader.

Actually, the Corporal's lack of speech is simply part of his makeup. He is exhibiting the mystic temperament as Bergson conceives of it. A calm exaltation of all its faculties makes it see things on a vast scale only, and in spite of its weakness, produce only what can be mightily wrought.

This passage, which goes far to explain the Corporal's peculiar actions also in relation to the other characters in the novel and the events which surround him, bears a resemblance to Faulkner's description of the Corporal as he calmly watches from his prison window above the rage and turbulence of the crowd below.

“He looked exactly like a stone-deaf man watching with interest but neither surprise nor alarm the pantomime of some cataclysm or even universal uproar which neither threatens nor even concerns him since to him it makes no sound at all” [14, p.227].

The Corporal is able to transcend much of the human passion that is normally aroused either in argument or in anxiety over one's future. Bergson may offer a reason for the Corporal's “odd” qualities of character when he writes of the difference between ordinary ideas of love and the mystical love of mankind.

The Corporal, as mystical, intuitive man, then, becomes the embodiment of the open society, which must emerge from the universal love of mankind, as well as the embodiment of the “dynamic religion” which is embodied in men, not rules.

It is the Corporal's “presence” which causes action more than any direct action he engages in. By this method his effect is felt throughout the entire novel. He has no personal eloquence, nor radiance, nor energy of the usual sort associated with action. The key to his effectiveness lies in his presence. He is dynamic in the deepest sense, not merely kinetic. He embodies in himself all of the facets and possibilities that the complex of attitudes arising from and involved in the refinement of the intuition posit. Just as the Marshall depends upon ritual, meeting, dialectic, and intelligence, so does the Corporal have no need for any of them. He is beyond the . neces sary rhetoric of the preacher, the casuistry of the plotter, or the energy of the builder. He is effective nonetheless, because his presence alone suffices to cause meaningful action. As the old man at the ammunition dump, who first informs the Runner of the Corporal's mission, tells him:

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