An End of All Explanations: Visualizing and Interpreting Lewis’s Revisions to Part IV, Chapter 9 of Tarr
In my last post, I described a working hypothesis about Wyndham Lewis’s revisions to Tarr: that in producing the 1928 version, he was principally interested in adding voices to the earlier 1918 version, particularly through the addition of FID.
I decided to test this hypothesis by looking at one of the more disturbing chapters in Tarr. Chapter 9 (Chapter 8 in the 1918) of Part IV begins in Kreisler’s apartment following the rape of Bertha. It begins by narrating the aftermath of the rape, and as the chapter progresses it narrates retrospectively the rape itself. Already in the 1918 edition, this chapter is told primarily from Bertha’s perspective. But I was interested to see if the 1928 gave more of her perspective—particularly to see whether Lewis increased his use of FID to render her thoughts. Read more