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Journal article
Nightwood's Freak Dandies: Decadence in the 1930s
Modernism/modernity (Baltimore, Md.), Vol.15(3), pp.503-526
09/01/2008
Web of Science ID: WOS:000261442200005
Abstract
Excerpt - In the first chapter of Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood, Baron Felix Volkbein “owe[s] his first audience with a ‘gentleman of quality’” to the Duchess of Broadback, the trapeze artist otherwise known as Frau Mann.1 Like the “Duchess” and the “Baron,” Count Ontario Altamonte’s claim to aristocracy is suspect, and among the “impossible people” who gather to receive him, only Felix, devoted as he is to the “great past,” seeks to pay him homage (N, 13, 9). When Felix arrives, however, he finds that instead of the Count, it is Dr. Matthew O’Connor who is holding court. Rather than being received by royalty, Felix becomes part of an “audience” for an entirely different performance: the discursive dexterity of the putative doctor. The centerpiece of that performance is O’Connor’s account of Nikka, “the nigger who used to fight the bear in the Cirque de Paris” (N, 16). “Tattooed head to heel with all the ameublement of depravity” (ibid), Nikka’s body brings together the tattooed man and the African savage, two standard exhibits of the American freak show stage. Like O’Connor, Nikka is a performer, and O’Connor’s account of him is thus a meta-performance in which the Coney Island freak shows that Barnes knew so well converge with the decadent aesthetic which informs virtually everything she wrote.
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Details
- Title
- Nightwood's Freak Dandies
- Publication Details
- Modernism/modernity (Baltimore, Md.), Vol.15(3), pp.503-526
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publisher
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Copyright
- © 2008 the Johns Hopkins University Press
- Identifiers
- WOS:000261442200005; 99380580295506600
- Academic Unit
- College of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities; English
- Language
- English