Nightwood

“What had formed Felix from the date of his birth to his coming to thirty was unknown to the world, for the step of the wandering Jew is in every son. No matter where and when you meet him you feel that he has come from some place—no matter from what place he has come—some country that he has devoured rather than resided in, some secret land that he has been nourished on but cannot inherit, for the Jew seems to be everywhere from nowhere.”

Felix, like his father, is a Jew who obscures his true identity and passes for a member of aristocracy as a way to survive in an intolerant society. Historically, followers of Judaism have often been forced from their homes and left to figuratively wander in search of a homeland; this lack of an ancestral homeland motivates Felix’s intense desire to root himself in Viennese history and take it for his own. Notably, this discussion of Jews being from nowhere places the novel in an era before the establishment of the modern nation of Israel.

“Early in life Felix had insinuated himself into the pageantry of the circus and the theatre. In some way they linked his emotions to the higher and unattainable pageantry of kings and queens. The more amiable actresses of Prague, Vienna, Hungary, Germany, France and Italy, the acrobats and sword-swallowers, had at one time or another allowed him their dressing rooms—sham salons in which he aped his heart. Here he had neither to be capable or alien. He became for a little while a part of their splendid and reeking falsification.” 

Felix feels at home with circus and theater people because they are adept at moving through the world in their alter egos in a similar way that he does. Just like Felix, they assume false titles of nobility like princess and duchess. However, the performers are forthcoming about their fanciful stage names and do not have the same societal pressure as Felix to maintain their facade at all times.

“The circus was a loved thing that he could never touch, therefore never know. The people of the theatre and the ring were for him as dramatic and as monstrous as a consignment on which he could never bid.”

Felix’s love for the artifice of the circus in many ways foreshadows his love for Robin. The physical aspect of his courtship of Robin is stilted, and in her physically and her personality, he cannot touch her and can never fully know her.