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Functional Pastoralism in The Blood Oranges

Despite the favorable critical attention given to the fiction of John Hawkes, reviews and criticisms have been remarkably deficient in their understanding and assessment of The Blood Oranges. The undue emphasis on mate-swapping and erotic love has resulted in a general disregard for the essential function of pastoralism which is central to the structural and philosophical integrity of the novel. It is important, therefore, to explore Hawkes's adaptation of pastoral conventions to contemporary life and values1 as a prerequisite to the clarification and appreciation of this novel. Historically the poetic pastoral2 has presented the rural world of an idealized Golden Age contrasted with the sophisticated urban society of disintegrating values: it is imagination struggling to overcome a reality with which man has become disillusioned. This "basic duality" of pastoralism3 is presented in this novel through the rural life of Illyria, metaphor for the imagination, colliding with the social world or conventional morality; and each character and image reinforces the pastoral opposition which is strengthened primarily by using Cyril and Hugh as polarities of life styles, modes of thought, and perception. John F. Lynen describes this pastoral conflict in contrasting urban and country life: "Pastoral plays the two against each other, exploiting the tension between their respective values, elaborating the ambiguity of feeling which results, and drawing attention to the resemblances beneath the obvious differences."4 This comment perfectly describes the relationship between Cyril and Hugh. Hawkes substitutes twentieth-century Illyria for Arcadia, but the pastoral landscape, symbols, and motifs are the same: a grape arbor, lemon grove, pastoral gods, fauns, goats, idyls, timelessness in a land of no time and all time, love-making with freedom and delight, the unchanging climate5 of all pastoral lands ("in Illyria there are no seasons"6) , and such pastoral adjectives as "bucolic" and "sylvan." There