The following passages from modernist writers William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway bear interesting similarities. Each passage takes Christian language and re-casts it in nihilistic terms. Faulkner and Hemingway both suggest the insufficiency of religious faith in the face of modernity. They also uphold the power of art over the power of belief, or, perhaps, position art as a replacement for faith.
In The Sound and the Fury Quentin Compson ponders his father’s fatalistic philosophy: “Father was teaching us that all men are just accumulations dolls stuffed with sawdust swept up from the trash heaps where all previous dolls had been thrown away the sawdust flowing from what wound in what side that not for me died not.” The image of people as sawdust dolls could hardly be more pessimistic or dismissive of human possibility. The final phrase evokes the wound in Christ’s side. After Jesus was crucified, one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear to see if he was dead. According to John 19:34, “But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water.” In Christian tradition, this blood and water represents the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist. The image of the wound in Christ’s side is a synecdoche for the entire Christian view of atonement through Christ’s sacrificial death. Mr. Compson’s view reduces Christ’s sacrifice to meaninglessness. Quentin’s formulation–“the sawdust flowing from what wound in what side that not for me died not”–negates the salvific nature of Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus’ blood might as well have been sawdust, since it had no more power than anyone else’s blood.
Hemingway ends “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” with a nihilistic re-casting of the Lord’s Prayer. The original Lord’s Prayer reads: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.” Hemingway’s version replaces virtually every noun with “nada” the Spanish word for “nothing”: “Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada.” The repetitions of “nada” make the mock prayer sound like nonsense. Hemingway’s nihilistic creed ends with a similar adaptation of the opening of the Ave Maria. Instead of “Hail, Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee,” Hemingway has “Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.” “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” serves as an allegory of Hemingway’s theory of art. The old man’s beloved cafe is a place of refuge from the chaotic world. It is clean and well-lit. It is orderly, just as Hemingway believed art should be. It is art, not faith, that offers meaning.
