Confinement in Paul Auster's Moon Palace and the New York Trilogy

B ATTEMPTS AT MASTERING LANGUAGE

1/ To go back to the origins

Babel

Faced with the problem of the ineffectiveness and inadequacy of language, Auster's characters develop different methods towards a mastering of language. One particular method which is given great importance in The New York Trilogy is that of Stillman. Stillman is a linguist who wrote under the pseudonym of Henry Dark, a pamphlet called The New Babel. In his work, he exposes his theory according to which it is possible «to undo the fall [of man], to reverse its effects by undoing the fall of language, by striving to recreate the language that was spoken in Eden.»^189(*) Following this principle, for nine years, Stillman will keep his son isolated from human speech and contact, keeping him locked in a small and lightless room so that he might learn the original language of God. This language, also referred to as the adamic or prelapsarian language, is the supposedly lost language that God asked Adam to invent to name the creatures. This language was supposed to convey the essence of things, thereby leaving no gap between the word and the thing. But let us examine Michel Foucault's definition of the prelapsarian language that he gives in Les Mots et Les Choses:

Sous sa forme première, quand il fut donné aux hommes par Dieu lui-même, le langage était un signe des choses absolument certain et transparent, parce qu'il leur ressemblait. Les noms étaient déposés sur ce qu'ils désignaient, comme la force est écrite dans le corps d'un lion, la royauté dans le regard de l'aigle.(...) Cette transparence fut détruite à Babel pour la punition des hommes. Les langues ne furent séparées les unes des autres et ne devinrent incompatibles que dans la mesure où fut effacée d'abord cette ressemblance aux choses qui avait été la première raison du langage.^190(*)

Stillman considers that Babel is the cause of all the problems he meets with language. That is the reason why he tries to counteract the fall of language, by recreating a prelapsarian language that will at last express things satisfactorily. Stillman's attempt, though it is a total failure, is not unfounded. In effect, it follows a long trend, as Umberto Eco explains: «Un grand rêve traverse la culture humaniste et l'empirisme anglais, de Bacon au XVIII e siècle tout entier (Formigari, 1970) : celui de decouvrir la langue de nos aïeux, ou de recréer une langue universelle valable pour tous les hommes.»^191(*) Besides, this trend gave way to a number of similar experiments as early as in Ancient Egypt, as Quinn is able to remember.^192(*) Therefore, Stillman is a Babelist, and we are inclined to think that Auster is himself fond of the myth of Babel. Indeed, his work is full of allusions to Babel. In The Locked Room, the tall building where Fanshawe hides himself in Boston is made of bricks and as Stillman pinpoints in City of Glass «for there [in Boston] -as nowhere else in the world, the chief construction material is brick -which as set forth in verse three of Genesis II, was specified as the construction material of Babel.»^193(*) In Squeeze Play, a pot boiler written by Auster under a pseudonym in 1978, George Chapman, the private eye, has a poster of The Tower of Babel by Bruegel in his office. Furthermore, it should be noted that Auster wrote an essay called New York Babel.

* ¹⁸⁹ City of Glass, page 47.

* ¹⁹⁰ Michel Foucault, Les Mots et Les Choses (Paris : Gallimard, 1988), page 51.

* ¹⁹¹ Umberto Eco, Le Signe : Histoire et Analyse d'un Concept (Bruxelles : Labor, 1988), page 168

* ¹⁹² City of Glass, page 33.

* ¹⁹³ City of Glass, page 48