The Inevitable Osmosis Of Being

As one of the most prolific and versatile American writers of the twentieth century, Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) has made amazing contribution to every possible literary genre including fiction, poetry, drama, and biography. With almost a volume a year in his sixty-eight-year literary career, Warren produces seventeen volumes of poetry, ten novels, sixteen short stories, seven plays and television dramas, five literary textbooks, eight books of nonfiction, two children's books, and more than one hundred essays. His outstanding talent has earned him almost all literary awards America bestows on a writer including three Pulitzer Prizes for both Fiction and Poetry. He was appointed as the first official Poet Laureate of the United States by the Library of Congress in 1986 as the national award for his distinctive contribution to American Literature. As one of the advocators of New Criticism, Warren is placed in the top rank of the twentieth century's most influential critics. Even before his death, Warren's position in the world of letters seemed secure and entrenched and is acclaimed as "a true successor to William Faulkner" in Southern literature (Cleopatra 1). After his death in 1989, there was a new boom of Warren study in America with the publication of a veritable flurry of articles and monographs. Such a strong trend continues with no less intensity of enthusiasm into the new millennium.As an important writer emerging from the Southern Renaissance, Warren does not merely confine himself to the issues of his native South, but manages to transcend the regional limitation by committing himself to the universal problems facing modern man. Throughout his literary career, Warren is constantly concerned with the "terrible division" of his time which for him is caused by the irresistible invasion of modernization. What distinguishes Warren as the most outstanding man of letters is that amidst the pervading nadir of despair in an increasingly technological and bureaucratic age Warren never loses hope that an ultimate solution is possible, that man can find necessary self-knowledge to overcome the sense of division and reestablish his proper relationship with the world. Everett Wilkie offers an insightful comment on Warren, "In his view, man must come face to face with a reality stripped of both God's benign or malevolent intentions and the Romantic's pathetic fallacy. Despite whatever difficulties man may face in his existence, Warren does not counsel despair or state that life is not worth living.... Though being alive may not always be easy and fun, Warren believes it is well worth the effort" (238-39). It is in this adherence to such a belief that Warren accomplishes his conversion from a regional writer to one of the most distinguished American men of letters.Almost all Warren critics are quick to identify the predominant theme of self-knowledge in his works. Due to the complexity of human experience "self-knowledge" is endowed with rich implications and assumes various forms in Warren's writings including the contemplation on the past and history, the search for a community, the recognition of evil inside the self and human limitation, the necessity of responsibility and moral growth. While assessing Warren's work and thought, critics have tended to evaluate those separate philosophical elements without referring them to the whole of his systematic thought. Fumbling in vain for a central philosophy of Warren's self-knowledge, some critics tend to regard Warren as ideationally fragmented, lacking in commitment to general philosophical issues. The critics' assessments sound reasonable to a certain extent, for with a writer like Warren with such considerable achievement and versatility, it does seem extremely difficult to frame him within one simple formula. However, the critics' occasional feeling of loss at the philosophical unity of Warren's works could not conceal the fact that whether in his novels, or poetry, or critical essays, Warren never fails to present a highly unified philosophy of self-knowledge in the readers' mind. Therefore, amidst the varied voices denying the existence of such philosophical unity, the author ventures a systematic examination of all the philosophical elements in Warren's literary creation by unifying them into Warren's philosophy of self-knowledge in spite of all the difficulties and risks.The unified picture of self-knowledge Warren presents before us is the self as an "inevitable osmosis of being" which he puts forward in his famous article "Knowledge and the Image of Man" in 1955. In this essay Warren not only emphasizes the importance of self-knowledge in one's search for a unified identity, but also offers his own interpretation of self-knowledge as man's recognition of himself as an "inevitable osmosis of being." He asserts that man is "in the world with continual and intimate interpenetration, an inevitable osmosis of being which in the end does not deny, but affirms identity" and it affirms such an identity because "out of progressive understanding of this interpenetration" man can create a new self (241). Warren points out in this essay that what modern man desires is the "full balance and responsibility in self-knowledge, in a recognition and harmonious acceptance of our destiny" (243). What is achieved through "the osmosis of being" is the balance and harmony of the individual desires to create the unity of self. Thus, amidst the vortex of social flux and flow Warren's osmotic theory offers modern man a sense of order and a moment of stasis in his struggle for the wholeness of being.Throughout his literary career Warren gradually endows his osmotic theory with philosophical depth and develops it into an organic and systematic philosophy as his answer to the fundamental question of self-knowledge. In another important essay Democracy and Poetry (1975), Warren offers an exact definition of "self as his continued elucidation of his osmotic theory. In the book-length essay Warren defines the "self as follows: "I mean by the self; in individuation, the felt principle of significant unity" (Foreword xii). Warren further elaborates the qualifiers of the self as "continuity—the self as a development in time" and "responsibility—the self as a moral identity" (xii). Here the analysis of Warren's concept of selfhood is conducted by likening the process of self-discovery to the Jungian process of self-individuation to show they are identical in essence. Warren's definition of selfhood provides three essential philosophical dimensions for his osmotic philosophy—the temporal, spatial and moral dimensions. The temporal dimension focuses on the self as continuity in time, in which the past and future converge on a present unfolding endlessly, while the spatial dimension stresses the spatial interrelatedness of the self with the world. In the meantime, the recognition of one's temporal and spatial interconnection necessitates man's acceptance of responsibility for his actions if he is to construct an integrated self. This gives rise to the moral dimension of his osmotic philosophy. Here the recognition of the self in multi-dimensional interconnection with the world is the very self-knowledge Warren has been searching for throughout his life. Thus we can see that the authentic selfhood newly achieved through self-knowledge is not a flat image but a multi-dimensional unity covering human experience in all its complexity.As the essential existential state of the self whose pattern remains constant, the concept "osmosis of being" can effectively unify those various philosophical elements in Warren's writings into an interrelated whole. Warren firmly believes that through an awareness of the temporal continuity, spatial interconnectivity and moral responsibility of the self, the individual can eventually overcome the fragmentation and disorder of his existence and return to his primal unity of being. In the process he perceives the original bonds between himself and the rest of humanity and the seamless nature of his own inner being. Thus, instead of the traditional linear analysis of man's existence or the flat picture of man in his world, Warren presents us a holistic view of man in an osmotic relationship with his world.As illustrated in Warren's novels, the protagonist's spiritual journey to the osmotic unity of being always follows the pattern of Christian conversion: first the fall and estrangement, then the subsequent redemption or damnation. Following this paradigm, Warren argues that man's identity depends on how he distinguishes himself from nature and society. That is, the individual must first discover his fallen state of separateness, submit himself to a painful process of moral growth, and undergo the pain of self-criticism before his ultimate attainment of true unity of being. Only after man has realized that isolation is a universal condition shared by all men, can he initiate his return to his lost unity.In the meanwhile, Warren also points out, the self-identity achieved through this "inevitable osmosis of being" is not of a static quality, but rather a dynamic one, "a continually emerging, an unfolding, a self-affirming and ... a self-corrective creation" ("Knowledge" 241). According to Warren, the world is in a continual flux of change. Time and change can afford no absolute knowledge for man to create an eternal identity. Before long the temporary balance achieved through such osmosis is upset by the changing existential situations, and man is seen on another round of the journey, searching for new self-knowledge for his unity of being. Hence, as the rendition of man's essential state of being, Warren's "inevitable osmosis of being" is not a fixed set of philosophical principles or norms, but a dynamic process of individuation, an oscillating process that will never cease until death terminates it. Here the rendition of self-creation as a dynamic process, rather than a static product, is in a sense a kind of postmodern interpretation of the self, which leaves Warren's osmotic theory forever open to any challenge from both the traditional and modern, even from the postmodern camps.The primary purpose of this study is to examine how Warren's philosophy of the "inevitable osmosis of being" can unify diverse aspects of human experience into his literary creation. A secondary purpose is to examine how his theory has been born and borne out in selections from his poetry, novels, prose, and critical writings while at the same time to illustrate the dynamic nature of knowledge, that is, how Warren's art and thinking developed over his literary career. The three philosophical dimensions of Warren's osmotic theory identified here not only serve as unifying factors for the seemingly random philosophical themes constantly explored in his writings, but also provide the basic structure for this dissertation. Therefore, in an attempt to underscore the systematic unity of Warren's organic theory, the discussion in this dissertation is unfolded from the three dimensions to reveal the rich connotations of Warren's osmotic theory.The main body of this dissertation is divided into four chapters, with each part constituting one important aspect of Warren's philosophy of self-knowledge. In the Introduction, a systematic literature review is conducted by focusing on Warren's predominant theme of the search for self-knowledge with the intention to demonstrate how far Warren study has proceeded, what gaps are left for future Warren scholars, and how the present Warren study comes into being with the edification and inspiration provided by these seminal ideas contained in previous Warren study.Chapter One provides a detailed elaboration of the theoretical origins of Warren's osmotic philosophy and its essential content. SectionⅠprovides an insightful examination of the theoretical and cultural derivation of his osmotic theory by framing it within the larger context of both Southern and Western literary tradition. Struggling among the various schools of thoughts outpouring to him, Warren is fumbling for a middle ground for the disintegrated modem man to reestablish his harmonious relationship with the world. His insistence on his artistic independence endows him with a critical mind which makes him skeptical toward any established theory. Critically assimilating the nutritious elements from each school of thought, Warren's osmotic theory is a formidable synthesis of many diverse strands of thought both traditional and modern, including his Southern heritages of Agrarianism, Christianity, such Western literary trends as Romanticism, Naturalism, and the influence of those modernist philosophers including St. Augustine, Henri Bergson and William James. Here Warren's philosophical eclecticism serves as a touchstone for a better understanding of his osmotic philosophy.SectionⅡfocuses on the detailed elucidation of Warren's osmotic philosophy and its manifestation in his poetry. The discussion in this section is based on Warren's two important essays "Knowledge and the Image of Man" and Democracy and Poetry which mainly outline Warren's philosophical and aesthetic principles upon which his literary kingdom is founded.SectionⅢpoints out the arduous process of self-creation and its dynamic characteristics. For Warren, the creation of the unified self is a dialogic process of self-affirmation, a continued negotiation of the self with the world, an eternal dialectic process that renews the self in the individual's never-ceasing quest for a harmonious and balanced being.Chapter Two concentrates on the temporal dimension of his osmotic philosophy with regards to the self as a development in time. Though Warren's preoccupation with time and history has been heavily explored in the past, this chapter is intended to conduct a thorough examination from the perspective of Warren's osmotic philosophy of the "osmosis of being." Section I explores Warren's concept of time which is in essence the Bergsonian conception of psychological time as opposed to the mechanically measured time in physics or mathematics. For him, time is no longer the abstract concept composed of measurable and separate time units of the past, present and future, but rather, an indivisible and dynamic stream of flow, in which the past, present and future are not isolated knots in the string of time, but are interconnected with each other in constant mutual osmosis and transformation. However, the Industrial society not only undercuts the dignity of labor but also cuts man off from a fructifying past upon which he can build an integrate identity. Modern man finds himself trapped in a tragic state of temporal disintegration and loses his sense of self-identity. Warren points out in his works the necessity to reestablish the continuity of time in the creation of a unified identity for modern man and emphasizes the importance of the past, for he believes that the meaning of the present is determined by the past and any denial of the past will deprive man of his future. The osmotic nature of time leads man to the awareness of himself as part of a dynamic flow of life and history.Warren's concept of time as the continuous stream of flow falls into the great Western tradition of thought represented by Roman theologian Saint Augustine and modern psychologists and philosophers including William James and Henri Bergson. Generally this line of thinkers holds a subjective view of time as contrasted to the physical concept of time held by ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and modern physicist Einstein. For these thinkers time does not exist in physical and material reality but exists psychologically as the result of the human mind's comprehension of reality. This psychological view of time, which is much closer to human mind and life, provides inexhaustible vitality and poetic inspiration for Warren's literary creation. This section focuses on the detailed analysis of the close affinity between Warren's osmotic vision of time and Bergson's theory of psychological "intuition" and "duration" in their revelation of the essential nature of the world. SectionⅡis devoted to the study of Warren's philosophy of history born out of his unique concept of time. From his Agrarian stand Warren believes that history is an integral, continuous process, a systematic movement unfolding endlessly through time. Man is the product of history and lives in the continuum of time. No one can free himself from the past, for he is inevitably related with and defined by history. For Warren, history exists as an inexhaustible storehouse from which he can draw his sense of identity and establish his proper relationship with the world. Due to the dynamic and consecutive nature of time, man can not return to the past or rewrite history. What Warren's historical vision imparts to us is that one must accept his past together with its glory and guilt, recognize his limitation and imperfection, his innate sin and depravity, and live responsibly both at the present and in the future in order to reconstruct his unity of being.Warren's heavy sense of history pervades all of his writings and endows them with an extraordinary philosophical depth. In this section Warren's classic novel All the King's Men is selected for close textual study to illustrate how the concept of time and historical vision are presented in his literary creation.Chapter Three attempts to underscore the spatial dimension of Warren's osmotic philosophy through a close examination of the division both inside and outside the self. Section I focuses on the analysis of Warren's unique theory of the spatial interconnection of the self with the world—the "spider web" theory he puts forward in his novel All the King's Men. According to this theory, every man is an inevitable knot in this enormous web. No matter who he is or what action he takes, he will inevitably touch the web, cause the vibration of the web and exert influence on others. Therefore, every one has to assume responsibility for the consequences of his actions. The spider web theory reveals to us that the isolated self cannot become a true being without a merger with its world.However, with the advent of Pragmatism, Progressivism and scientific positivism ushered in by modernization modern man finds himself overthrown from this close-knit web and cut off from his fellow men and the world. On the other hand, Warren ascribes the inner self-division of modern man to his dualistic view of the nature of man as both good and evil. Confronted by such great division Warren prescribes his osmotic theory as an effective remedy to ease the division in both worlds. Inwardly it can subdue the soul's pain by integrating the divided selves; outwardly it can relieve the sense of loneliness by bringing the separate individual to the recognition of his interconnectedness with the world, especially with his community.The next two sections of this chapter are devoted to the achievement of the osmotic unity of the self in both its inner and outer worlds respectively. Section II focuses on the achievement of the inner osmosis between the divided selves with a brief exploration of Warren's interpretation of the nature and the origin of man's inner self-division. In Warren's novels, the dichotomy between fact and idea which gives rise to man's inner self-division is mainly illustrated by two different types of people: realists and idealists. Being locked in their separate incompleteness of personalities, neither type can realize the complexity of the self, nor could they acknowledge the justification and sanctity of other individuals' needs. Both types of characters are proved to be destructive and end in bloody tragedies, as illustrated by Governor Willie and Doctor Adam in his All the King's Men. However, amid the tragedies of incomplete selfhood, Warren never fails to convey a consoling message that though the integrated self is difficult to achieve, it can be finally obtained through the compromising osmosis between conflicting poles within the divided selves. This can be best illustrated by the third group of characters, who can achieve their final unity of being after having undergone a painful and arduous process from self-denial and isolation to reconciliation. The spiritual conversion of Jack Burden from an idealist to a moral realist in All the King's Men is the perfect demonstration of Warren's osmotic vision. In this section several novels of Warren are selected for close textual study with the emphasis being attached to his masterpiece All the King's Men.SectionⅢpoints out the essential role that community plays in the creation of the spatial integration of the self through textual analysis of Warren's novels Night Rider, Wilderness and Flood. Warren holds to the necessity of defining the self in a dialectical relationship with the community. Only through the recognition of his interrelationship with the world both internally and externally and the mutual interplay between all things can man "return to a communion with man and nature" and reach his final spiritual redemption ("Knowledge" 241). His salvation comes from being able to accept the humanness of others and form a loving and responsible relationship with his world. The moral elements involved in the process of self-discovery lead us naturally to the discussion of the moral dimension of Warren's osmotic theory in the next Chapter.Chapter Four approaches Warren's theory of "osmosis of being" from the moral dimension of his philosophy. In Democracy and Poetry by endowing the self with two basic qualities—continuity and responsibility, Warren regards the individual as a moral entity capable of both guilt and responsibility. Similarly, the message Warren intends to convey through his osmotic vision of time and spider web theory is that man should live responsibly in the world. In his attempt to offer an ethical standard for man to live by, Warren points out in "Knowledge and the Image of Man" that what is achieved from the "osmosis of being" is a "growth of moral awareness" and the way to achieve moral growth is through "the discovery of love, and law. But love through separateness, and law through rebellion" (241-42). Viewing from his osmotic perspective, Warren holds that only by assuming the burden of responsibility can the individual be absolved from the haunting sense of guilt for his past and for his fellow men. Warren's moral vision, as a result of his lifelong contemplation on the existential dilemma of modern man, constitutes a humanistic response to the naturalistic threat to the integrity of self in modern society.SectionⅠoffers a brief examination of Warren as a philosophical moralist who is constantly obsessed with the decline of morality in modern society and carries out a precise analysis of Warren's basic opinion on the inner and outer factors that give rise to such phenomena. Warren insists that being thrown into a world bereft of any universal values, man should create his own moral standards to instill meaning and order into life. After the detailed examination of the influence of the moral vision of Christianity on that of Warren, the author points out that invariably in Warren's works, the process of man's moral conversion follows the Christian pattern of Fall—self-knowledge—Redemption. It is an archetypal pattern that runs through most of Warren's literary creation and determines its basic structure.SectionⅡis devoted to the close examination of Warren's double moral standard—"love and law." Due to the duality of man as being both emotional and rational, Warren recognizes the necessity for some double moral standard to reconcile both the feeling and the thought in his attempt to provide a sense of balance and harmony for bewildered modern man. Therefore, amidst a variety of voices claiming to have solved the modern moral dilemma, Warren offers his distinctive and affirmative moral standard—"love and law"—as an all comprising avenue for man to achieve his moral regeneration and to return to his lost unity with nature and society. This section also explores the deep and wide connotations of "love" and "law" as manifested in Warren's works. The rich implications of love and law make Warren's double standard a universal and effective moral standard capable of solving human problems.For Warren, love and law, as two inalienable aspects of the dialectic unity of his double standard, can not function independently but have to work together in order to offer modern man a balanced moral standard. On one hand, without love, law is deprived of rich humanistic connotations and is reduced to abstract principle, pure mechanistic apparatus of morality and ethics. On the other hand, because of the undeniable existence of evil and the fallible nature of man, without the regulation of law, love is stripped of the brilliance of human wisdom and reason and is reduced to mere sensuality. Or even worse, with the lack of rationality love can be converted into guilt or hideous crime. This can be illustrated by Warren's narrative poem Brother to Dragons, which discusses the hideous crime that happened in the family of Thomas Jefferson who drafted Declaration of Independence. In the story Jefferson's nephew Lilburn brutally dismembers a black slave out of his fervent love for his mother. Therefore, both sides of this double standard must work in concert in order to bring the splitting halves into reconciliation and lead man to the "full balance and responsibility" to which he aspires. Besides, Warren also recognizes that like the unity achieved from the "osmosis of being," any unity between love and law is bound to be equally "precarious" and "precious," for as Warren's work testifies, man is prone to negate one side or the other and ends in loss of balance in morality due to the limitation and the incompleteness of self-knowledge. Therefore, Warren insists that an osmotic balance should be maintained between love and law in order to keep both sides equal and prevent the usurpation of one by the other.SectionⅢdiscusses the exact way offered by Warren to the discovery of love and law—"love through separateness and law through rebellion." The discussion first focuses on the examination of the importance of separateness as an inevitable stage of man's moral conversion in the creation of the unity of the self. Then the discussion is directed to the rebellion which makes law an inalienable part of life. Since in Warren's works rebellion often resumes the form of violation or violence, his recurring theme of violence is explored at length to emphasize the importance of law in Warren's moral standard. Besides his Brother to Dragons, his highly acclaimed novels All the King's Men and his novel Meet Me in the Green Glen focusing on the theme of love are selected for close study in this chapter to reveal the arduous journey of the protagonists' moral growth.As an energetic writer whose career encompasses most of the 20th century, Warren himself provides an important index for the change and development of American literary history. Taking the whole of Warren oeuvre into account, we can see that Warren steers toward an older literary tradition in his search for a unified philosophy to overcome the shattered image of modern man. His literary creation represents a culmination of an important tradition in modern Southern literature which takes the "quest for identity" as its central theme. In this sense, Warren's osmotic philosophy on the creation of the "whole man" falls in the vein of the great American literary tradition of the "quest for self-identity." Moreover, by committing himself to the issues of his time Warren instills modern content and renewed vitality into this great tradition. The illustration of Warren's participation in and carrying on the literary tradition of the search for self-identity can provide the reader a glimpse of the continuity of American literary tradition.Through the detailed and systematic study this dissertation is intended to demonstrate, under this unifying philosophy of "osmosis of being," these diverse philosophical elements and themes in Warren's literary creation are interwoven into an interrelated whole, each serving as a constituent philosophical element of this unified philosophy. In the meantime, this dissertation also points out Warren's osmotic philosophy of self-knowledge, while being systematic and unified, is quite plastic and dynamic. It rejects the rigidity of the "one-answer system" he has fiercely rejected. Warren's osmotic philosophy runs through his literary creation and endows it with powerful and lasting artistic vitality. To sum up, Warren's osmotic philosophy reveals to us the essential pattern of human existence. It seeks to propose possible solutions to the existential dilemma of modern man within a highly unified framework and in consideration the diversity of human experience.This dissertation is original in the following two aspects: first, departing from the popular practice of literary research to approach the writer and his/her literary works from certain established critical theory, this dissertation ventures a systematic study on the philosophical unity of Warren's writings by framing his works into his unifying philosophy of self-knowledge. Against the complexity and diversity of the philosophical themes recurring in Warren's works, this dissertation identifies the "inevitable osmosis of being" as Warren's philosophy of self-knowledge and attempts to synthesize the various philosophical elements in his works into this unified philosophy from the three philosophical dimensions—temporal, spatial and moral dimensions.Second, the author conducts a pioneering reexamination of the three philosophical dimensions identified in this dissertation from the perspective of Warren's osmotic vision through detailed textual analysis of Warren's works. When it comes to Warren's vision on History and Time, this dissertation analyses the embodiment of Warren's osmotic vision in his concept of time and points out the interpenetration between past, present and future. Besides, it examines this psychological concept of time by dating back to its origin in Western philosophical tradition. This dissertation is original in the interpretation of man's spatial interconnectedness with his world by employing Warren's "spider web" theory. Warren's osmotic vision sheds new light on the perennial conflict between man and society and the eternal conflicts such as idea and fact, innocence and experience within the divided self. In addition, Warren offers his "osmosis of being" as the effective remedy to overcome the great division of his time. In discussing Warren's moral vision, the author conducts a close examination of the rich connotations of the two separate terms "love" and "law" in Warren's literary context. Besides, it further explores the dialectic relationship between "love and law" and stresses the necessity to achieve an osmotic balance between the two inalienable sides to bring about the integrity of the self.However, due to the limited space of this dissertation and the comprehensiveness of Warren's osmotic philosophy, it is impossible for the author to cover all the aspects of his osmotic philosophy in this dissertation, such as the blood osmosis between parent and child, the necessity to maintain the osmotic balance between man and nature, and the touchy problem of racial relationships facing every Southern writer. Since these aspects of human life are of equal importance in Warren's general philosophy, they deserve equal critical attention in the discussion of Warren's osmotic philosophy. In my future research and study I shall continue to direct my attention to these aspects in order to reveal the inexhaustible charm of Warren's thought and art. The author sincerely hopes that all these efforts made in this dissertation can open up new terrain for future Warren study.What needs to be specially mentioned here is that the idea of harmony contained in Warren's philosophy of "osmosis of being" is thought-provoking and edifying for Chinese people who are engaged in the construction of a harmonious society. It not only carries on one of the two predominating lines of thought running through the history of Western civilization—humanism (the other being individualism advocating the antagonism between man and nature), but also provide...