Will O' The Wisp

I found the stylistic qualities of Will O' The Wisp to be in stark contrast to any of the earlier writings that were assigned for this class. Although I feel it was most similar to Queneau's We Always Treat Women Too Well, it certainly was written in a completely different style. It was less straight forward and written with less obvious language than Queneau's story and had more of a poetic nature to it - but both stories were DIRTY. Dirty and grimey. Almost offensive to the point of being comical. However, I feel like Drieu accomplished this with a bit more style. Drieu wasn't really as overtly vulgar like Queneau was (at least by today's standards), and it was the way in which Drieu described things that made it a bit more slick. He used his words much more delicately and yet at the same time more brutally so than Queneau in We Always Treat Women Too Well. This is incredible because I found it to have a subversively filthy style, even considering the fact that I am reading it through the tinted glasses of today's jaded standards of vulgarity. However, I think that the fact that it had some class and was not just terribly offensive is what made it particularly special in this modern context. Its too easy to simply be over-the-top vulgar and its not enough to be provocative anymore. I could absolutely envision a return to fashion of more delicate language in our society, although at the same time I feel like our mainstream society is becoming less and less sophisticated, so maybe this will never be allowed to come to fruition. The way in which Drieu described things was very cutting and dry. It was what I imagined all Frenchmen sound like in their native language when they are talking filthily.

Both Queaneau and Drieu's stories had a biting sense of humor that I was particularly fond of, however I found that Drieu's sense of humor was a bit more subtle and sarcastic, whereas Queaneau's was a bit more irreverent. One of my favorite lines from this story was in the beginning when the narrator is introducing Marquis d'Averseau who possessed “a literary name since he had written A History of French Princes who were Sodomites.” This humor was a bit less obvious than a lot of the jokes Queaneau had used. It is also probably funny to a smaller selection of people. However the unique and obscure nature of this type of joke is what makes it so great. Often the less “mainstream” or understandable humor is, the funnier it is. Somebody once told me that at its heart, humor is simply the realization of incongruity in the world. This discrepancy between the funny and the obscure is what makes this particular style of humor so humorous because it adds to that of the original incongruity that comprises the joke.

Although my first instinct is to compare Will O' The Wisp with We Always Treat Women Too Well, it was more similar in complexity of language to Kierkegard's Fear and Trembling. This is in the sense that both works give a feeling of unraveling a mystery by virtue of the hidden messages and nuances in the language. Also, both Drieu and Kierkegaard spend a lot of time describing the motivations, emotional states, and internal milieus of their characters – much more so than Queneau (and the Focault reading we were assigned didn't really have any characters).

As for James Quinn's response, I happened to believe that Alain could save himself in the beginning of this story. At least I wanted to. I guess I just wanted to believe that anybody could change if they wanted to, which maybe isn't so true. I don't think it was that Alain didn't really want to change deep down inside, but that he was trapped in a self-defeating mindset. My favorite line in this story is “I only know myself. Life is myself. I, I am nothing; and death is nothing twice over.” Here his clash with the absurd brings him to a state where he cannot reconcile his feelings of nothingness. This is something that I believe everyone faces at some point in life. Some people choose to ignore it and bottle it up forever, others cannot. In my opinion this second group of people have to either find some sort of existential meaning or go the same route as Alain (not necessarily committing suicide, but remaining as empty, hollow people).

One final thing I would like to bring up is the name of Drieu's story – Will O' The Wisp. This was the name that the translator or publisher gave to to the English translation. The original title Le Feu Follet (meaning the fire within) was abandoned. I am really starting to wonder why the name was changed and also what other aspects of the story were changed in the translation of this story. The name Will O' The Wisp is interesting. I looked it up and it is a reference to a mysterious light that is said to be seen floating over lakes at night, retreating into the distance when approached by anybody. This, although fundamentally different accomplishes some of the same things as the title The Fire Within. They both are referring to some sort of inexplicable conflict of unknown consequence, a subject which characterized this book. However, I feel like a lot of meaning is lost in the name change. The Fire Within had more of a feeling of internal struggle, whereas Will O' The Wisp denotes more of a mysterious and haunting quality. Similarly, I wonder how the translation of some of the metaphors worked out. Surely some of the meaning was lost or changed in translation, but how much of the insight and depth differs between the original and the translation?