Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel

98 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel

It bears repeating that the epiphany is not all-encompassing in its
bearing and does not bestow the character with a complete or final
ontological schema. Rather, it forces him to undo the restrictive
epistemological parameters that have so far confined his worldview,
allowing him the inner space to refashion his vision of the world in
a way that is more consistent with the cosmopolitan ideals we have
previously seen him exhibit.
It is also important to highlight at this stage the central role of
materiality in the epiphany, with the body being used ultimately as
a site for constructing and articulating reality—not only in the sense
that the prospect of death spurs him on to see the world anew, but
that it forces him to place the concept of bodily existence outside the
domain of power relations. Indeed, when he is asked by his tormen-
tors if he would like to say any last words, the Magistrate exclaims:
“I want to live. As every man wants to live. To live and live and live.
No matter what” (p. 130). These words are almost an exact repeti-
tion of the leitmotif of the man clinging to life on a “narrow ledge,”
as imagined by Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment
(an observation that, at the time of this book’s writing, appears to
have been overlooked by earlier critics):

[If ] he had to live on some high rock, on such a narrow ledge that he’d

only got room to stand, with the ocean, everlasting darkness, everlast-

ing solitude, everlasting tempest around him, if he had to remain stand-

ing on a square yard of space all his life, a thousand years, eternity, it

were better to live like that than to die at once! Only to live, to live and

live! Life, whatever it may be!^45

While the connection to Dostoevsky is not in itself the most sig-
nificant aspect of the scene, it nonetheless deepens our apprecia-
tion of Waiting for the Barbarians when we consider the possible
links and their ethical implications. Indeed, we could note that both
novels frame profound ethical questions within situations of over-
bearing socio-material influences. In Crime and Punishment, these
influences exert themselves most palpably in the form of grinding
poverty, which disrupts Raskolnikov’s ability to play the role of fam-
ily patriarch. In Waiting for the Barbarians , however, the material
influences comprise the disciplinary power nexus that enfolds and