Analysis Of Faulkner's Philosophy Of Time

Bergson’s philosophy apparently influenced Faulkner’s notion of time, an admission he has made in an interview with Loic Bouvard. He remarked, “In fact I agree pretty much with Bergson’s theory of the fluidity of time” (Lion in the Garden 70). In the Bergsonian scheme, man experience time as period, a continuous stream, according to which, past, present, and future are not rigid and clear-cut points of difference in time, but they flow in one’s consciousness, persistently impacting one another. From this angle, the past is not strictly past; on the other hand, it is conserved in the present as a living force that influences the way in which one undergoes the present. Furthermore, in different interviews, Faulkner explained that his outlook of time was linked to his aesthetic view:
In my opinion time can be shaped quite a bit by the artist; after all, man is never time’s slave. (Lion in the Garden 70)
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that 100 years later when a stranger looks at it, it

Moreover, Quentin, unlike his brother Benjy, who understands reality without any abstraction, is a highly gifted and sensitive man. Hence, his monologue in section two is replete with his abstract and philosophical meditations on the nature of what he experiences, as his contemplation on time shows. From this perspective, Quentin is seen to be an alter-ego of Faulkner, as Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) is that of Joyce. Through Quentin, Faulkner examines the possibility that artistic resources, particularly literary language, can capture life that is easily flawed with time into the ultimate truth “so that 100 years later when a stranger looks at it, it moves again.” Quentin’s problem with time and his struggle to arrest the past fixed, in this sense, are Faulkner’s