Abstract Shades of Character:

In Djuna Barnes' modern novel, Nightwood, Barnes constructs abstract characters that resemble art in the form of paintings. Barnes's poetic voice sculpts each character; her loose and ambiguous descriptions qualify the idea that the characters are vessels for emotion. This concept creates a scenario in which the reader walks through Nightwood as one would walk through an art gallery. In particular, Nightwood distorts various literary styles for the purpose of abstracting character interpretation. Coupled with Barnes's abstract characterization, her presentation of metaphoric language transforms the traditional image of character. The slippery language associated with each character emerges through figurative and literal meaning. The persistent paradoxes Barnes instills in her characters and metaphors thematically coincide with the uncertainty of abstract art. Specifically, possession and knowledge are two major themes that reflect Barnes's avant-garde stylistic approach towards a visionary novel. Barnes’s fragmented form decorates a thematic experience that ultimately parallels the complexity of abstract art.

Scholarly Debates: "Spacial Form"

In terms of Nightwood being a modern novel, its composition is a pastiche of interlocking identities. Joseph Frank sees the literary construction as "a spacial form" in which modernist authors juxtapose their own experiences with characters within the novel (Frank 3). Frank declares that Barnes's novel compels the reader "to accept their world as we accept an abstract painting" (Frank 435). He further proclaims that "spacial form" does not convince the reader to believe the characters "are actual flesh-and-blood human beings" but rather are observed through individually (443). This repeated pattern provokes the question of whether or not the characters exist. In addition to "spacial form," Frank suggests that Barnes abandons "any attempt at naturalistic representation" (438).

Scholarly Debates: "Biographical Approach"

Contrary to Frank's claim that Barnes's novel lacks naturalistic representation, Lynn DeVore claims that the "identification of actual people and events" produces to "form the nucleus of Nightwood's narrative (DeVore 72). DeVore's approaches the novel's theme in a "sense that the truth of the past lies in art itself" and perceives that the characters possess humanistic qualities (72). For instance, DeVore suggests that Robin's character is based on Elsa von-Freytag Loringhoven (74). She also believes that Felix is based on "one of Elsa's lovers named Felix Paul Greve, who would later become, mysteriously, Frederick Phillip Grove, a famous Canadian novelist" (79). Whether Barnes intended her characters to be labeled as truths of the past remains a dominant theme that only justifies her abstract form and style. Barnes's experimental journalism known as "stunt journalism" carries themes of abstract human freakishness into her novel. Specifically, Barnes's report in the New York Times titled "Djuna Barnes probes the Souls of the Jungle Folk at the Hippodome Circus" is similar to the experiences of Nora and Robin (74). Both characters display a certain grotesqueness that would appear in a freak show. However, Barnes's use of grotesqueness should not be considered as a literary stunt in her novel, but as a spectacle of visual experience.

Abstract Beginnings In Barnes's Earlier Works

Djuna Barnes's abstract beginnings stem from the principles of symbolism. Symbolism in its historical context, is the indirect "complex[ity] of themes and ideas about reality and the perception of reality that formed in opposition to the theory and practice of naturalism" (Plumb 14). One symbolistic technique represented in Nightwood concerns "private symbols to achieve indirect discourse and suggestion" (16). Barnes's abstract characters communicate through an indirectness symbolistic techniques aesthetic. Barnes's familiarity with abstract symbolism is only one of many aspects that project her work as avant-garde. This stylistic measure cannot be defined by any specific movement as Cheryl Plumb argues that "there is no intent to reduce [Barnes's] work to a demonstration of symbolic practices" (17). Plumb suggests Barnes's earliest interviews along with "the jewel-like orchestration of Ladies Almanack," justifies "Barnes's persistent concern with what she referred to as decay or the psychological disturbance of the human being to his own nature" (17). 

The Synchronization of Poetry and Drawing

Earlier in Djuna Barnes's literary career, she published a collection of poems called The Book of Repulsive Women. Barnes abstract aesthetic manifests itself in The Book of Repulsive Women through the arrangement of visual art and poetry. Barnes's collection of poetry enlarges issues that concern the physical distortion of individuals through a standardized measure. Mary Ugner argues that Barnes's poetry evaluates social conditions from an outsider's perceptive and progressively pursues to counteract traditional values. Ugner perceives Barnes's poetry as a vulgar attempt to reverse the progressive fears that Americans believed to be connected with Modernism. The tensions between standardization and individualization suggests that Barnes "envisions American poetry as a cultural realm where disability, difference, and ugliness can thrive despite the American System’s standardizing protocols" (Ugner 126). Barnes's drawings initiate an immediate engagement with time and space. The negative space showcased in Barnes's drawings contribute to the overall effect of displacement.

Shades of Visual Metaphors:

In Djuna Barnes' modern novel, Nightwood, Barnes constructs abstract characters that resemble art in the form of cubist and abstract paintings. Barnes recreates the metaphor through paradoxical character interactions, abstract speculation, and bodily possession. Doctor O'Connor and Felix's speculation on uncertainty underscores the aspect of speculating on both the level of the page and reality. In the chapter, "La Somnambule," Felix and O'Connor's initial interaction with Robin is examined through metaphor; robin metaphorically resembles "a painting by the douanier Roussseau" from Felix's perspective (38). Felix compares Robin to Henri Rousseau's Post-Impressionistic painting The Dream. Through this scene, Robin is symbolized as the prey and continues to embody this fleeting figure. Robin is figuratively described as a "woman who presents herself to the spectator as a "picture" (Barnes 41). The visual approach to Robin's characterization resonates with the abstract idea that "for the contemplative mind, the chiefest danger" is that "a person's every movement" or perhaps a static interpretation of identity "will reduce to an image of forgotten experience" (41).

Robin is found in Frank's "spacial time" because of her ambiguous identity. She occupies an organic and "other" entity similar to "the unicorn" being "neither man nor beast deprived, but" is merely perceived as "human hunger pressing its breast to its prey" (41). Robin whether being described as "a figurehead in a museum" or "fading like a statue in a garden" justifies her connection with experience (41,45). The visualization and experience together trigger the overarching theme of possession and memory within the novel.

Cubism and Abstract Art in Context with Nightwood: