Abstract

This study attempts to show how Henri Bergson's Creative Evolution "helped" William Faulkner, as Faulkner claimed. Though Bergson's influence pervades most aspects of the novels from characterization to plot structure, the concepts of la duree, the elan vital, and L'evolution creatrice influence particularly Faulkner's symbolic technique. The general doctrine of "creative evolution" involves for both Bergson and Faulkner the concept of motion. Movement signifies life, and stasis indicates death. Man's movement through time and space, in thinking and in emotional development, indicates health: creative evolution. Faulkner's attraction to Bergsonian concepts reveals important aspects of his beliefs about art. In considering The Sound and the Fury, Light in August, and Absalom, Absalom!, this study focuses on three characteristic works that show Faulkner's consistent translating of Bergson's ideas into art