დროისა და სივრცის აგებულება ფოლკნერის მოთხრობაში "ვარდი ემილისათვის"
The Structure of Time and Space in William Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily"

Summary/Abstract: “A Rose for Emily” is a short, chronologically circular story of a southern lady, from an established “blue blood” family, who fights the inevitable march of time and commits homicide before ultimately succumbing to what she resisted. Faulkner takes us on a full circle beginning at death, and ending at death for Ms. Emily Grierson. It is also a story of the local environment, a stereotypical “Lost Cause” town in the South. True to the words from the Confederate anthem, “old times there are not forgotten. Look away, look away, Look away Dixie Land.” In Jefferson, Dixie Land does not look away. Instead it keeps permitting and holding-on to what Faulkner’s narrator refers to as “the fallen monument.” Two white, male, figures of Jefferson’s past, central to the shaping of thestory, are Miss Emily’s father and Colonel Sartoris. The Colonel’s myth about Emily’s exemption from taxes allows Emily to hold one of life’s certainties at bay, but it is Emily’s father who channels her to loneliness and facing the other certainty of life alone. The attitude and conditions set by her father virtually ensured Emily’s failure with potential suitors, and only through the arrival of a Yankee male in town, is Emily possibly to bespared from facing the future and certain death alone. The story is an indictment upon the South, but also, despite the homicide that is revealed, it is apologetic and sympathetic. While one could be frightened, angry or embarrassed with Miss Emily (and the South) one also feels some sympathy and mercy (as described by the narrator). Emily represents the old South. The town, with its people, represent the greater southern community that made some progress, but is culpable in perpetuating hate, and a lie. Faulkner’s imagery describes the town expanding and changing around Emily’s home, “with its stubborn and coquettish decay…eyesores among eyesores.” As years’ pass, the younger generations, back away from effective confrontation with Emily, and as Faulkner asserts at the end of the story, “already knew there was one room in that region above stairs which no had seen in forty years and which would have to be forced.” The compromise of 1877 ended the Reconstruction Era and Northern occupation of the rebellious South. It meant that those clinging to the belief in “The Lost Cause” had temporarily won. In a larger sense, much reform that was possible by Northernintervention, was, like the Yankee Homer Barron, dead. Many practices of the South were tolerated and permitted for the sake of pity and peace. Miss Emily’s family managed to hang-on, and like the old South, “vanquish” those from within who might try to change the circumstances. Many “blue blood” families of the Old South were Episcopal or Anglican, they were the traditionalist who hung-on to “The Lost Cause” and the formality of ritual – what the narrator points out with “noblesse obliges.” A Grierson really should not marrya “Northerner, a day laborer.” Miss Emily does not respond well to efforts by the Baptist minister who seeks to turn her suspected romantic behavior from Homer Barron. Nor should she respond, as Baptists were a large, white yeoman denomination heavily involved in the abolition movement, and Emily was Episcopal.In the article, an attempt is made to analyze the narrative structure of Faulkner’s short story with regard to its time and space. Correspondingly, the accent is put on the poetics of the story rather than on the cultural context or the historical background it reflects. Emily’s failure in her struggle with time forms the main collision of the story, and can only be comprehended though the analysis of its time and space structure. This canbe visualized in four concentric circles of a) the ‘outer’ time-space or ‘the North’ where Homer Barron comes from; b) the frst inner circle depicted as the city of Jefferson; c) the second inner circle of Emily’s house; and d) the time-space hub of the story, Emily’s bedroom. “A Rose for Emily” represents a spatiotemporal unity, and time in the story is perceived as a measure of movement in space. The intensity of time is personified incharacters, and their actions symbolize the movement of time overcoming spatial barriers. Emily’s numerous uninvited guests suggest the intrusion of time in her private space, and on a wider scale, they suggest the inevitability of change. The action in the story slows down from wider to narrower narrative spaces (‘the North’, Jefferson, Emily’s mansion, Emily’s bedroom). Correspondingly, time also slows down, until it reaches an illusory ‘timelessness’ in the contracted space of Emily’s bedroom. But hair and pillow hints suggest, that there still has been an action in the bedroom. It was Emily herself who brought movement into her micro-space, eventually bringing time into it. The final scene of the intrusion of townspeople into the bedroom suggests the victory of time over Emily’s illusion that she could have won the battle, at least in her private space.

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