(Original Review, 1981-02-01)
Harry Levin wrote a book called “The Power of Blackness” about Poe,
Hawthorne, and Melville, the classic trio of Dark Romance, and there is no
doubt Blackness and Night haunt the human imagination and generate oneiric
phantasms to boot. In the French cultural scene although surrealism was losing
steam, it was still a powerful force and it did emphasize the oneiric, and
Borde and Chaumeton were very interested in the grotesque, bizarre, and oneiric
per se. I tend to agree with them in one sense, especially if we take Noir to
be the latest incarnation of a long, long dark tradition of literature (and
film, etc.) and apply it backwards. I am not aware offhand of any such
overarching grouping of literature but I think it is a possible overarching
category that would include a vast variety of literature from the Iliad,
through Greek tragedy, lots of folk literature or things like Beowulf and on
through Gothic and Dark Romance and up to our present noir.
Hammett makes it hardboiled and realistic, but I think that it has a
hidden 'oneiric' psychological dimension in that those 5 days I think Sam was
in a virtual state of altered consciousness. Which I’ve written about
elsewhere. Perhaps such extreme states, including dreams are also the sublime.
I had not really thought of that, but it is worth thinking more about, in the
context of “The
Maltese Falcon,” just how much of an (ironically) 'oneiric' novel this
hardboiled novel really is. For me the psychologically extremism of “The Maltese
Falcon” actually manifests itself in the intensity and unity of the prose made
possible by it being hidden. I mean that Sam's altered state of consciousness
is hidden from the reader but it works to intensify he events and with Hammett’s
absolute mastery of rhythmic prose it has enormous impact on the reader, or
this reader anyway. It is a pressure cooker. Poe gets a similar intensity of
effect with Roderick Usher, but there it is not hidden and is compressed into a
short story, where Hammett succeeds in stretching it out over a whole novel.
Hammett counterpoints the hidden quality by constantly giving it away with
Sam's facial expressions, gestures, and especially his eyes, and he certainly
brings up dreaminess there. I would have to think some more about this
'sublime' of dream and extreme psychic states but it certainly dovetails with
NIGHTmares.
That fake scene was great, but I don't think I could call it
sublime. Huston was absolutely right to use the 'such stuff as dreams are made
of' line, but Hammett was even more right to not point out this kind of moral
to the story. Reminded me a bit of the finale of Vathek, now THAT was sublime.
