See-Young Park
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Korea
Professor Alfred Kramer and Neo-Kantianism in Mr Noon
The autobiographical elements in Mr Noon are pervasive enough to allow Lawrence biographers and critics to read the novel as 'thinly disguised' autobiography. Certainly Lawrence makes Mr Noon a vehicle of autobiography, but the authorial subject in the novel is distributed among several figures who variously separate and converge as the text unfolds. Relevant to this is the narrator's rejection of descriptive autobiographical detail. The narrator erases such detail and subverts verisimilitude, the basis of autobiography. This subversion of mimetic representation cautions us to separate biographical revelation from fictional improvisation in characterization. In this paper I look at the refraction in Mr Noon of the real life figures such as Edgar Jaffe and Alfred Weber. They are significant not only for our appreciation of the author's creative flair but also in the context of Lawrence's endorsement of Lev Shestov's objection to neo-Kantianism. In August 1919 Lawrence, with S. S. Koteliansky, completed the translation of a book by the Russian philosopher. In Mr Noon Lawrence represents German intellectuals in connection with their neo-Kantian credentials. The reconstruction of the German Professor Kramer in Mr Noon is, in my opinion, given a decisive impetus by the Shestov translation.