Occult Joyce: The Hidden in Ulysses 1847182100, 9781847182104

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Occult Joyce

Occult Joyce The Hidden in Ulysses

By

Enrico Terrinoni

CAMBRIDGE SCHOLARS PUBLISHING

Occult Joyce: The Hidden in Ulysses, by Enrico Terrinoni This book first published 2007 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2007 by Enrico Terrinoni All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN 1-84718-210-0; ISBN 13: 9781847182104

This work is dedicated to Chiara

As man, as beast, as an ephemeral fly begets, Godhead begets Godhead, For things below are copies, the Great Smaragdine Tablet said. —W.B. Yeats, “Supernatural Songs.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword .............................................................................................................ix Acknowledgments................................................................................................x List of Abbreviations ..........................................................................................xi Introduction..........................................................................................................1 Hermeticism, Rosicrucianism, Occult Science, and Dreamy Visions Chapter One .......................................................................................................28 Occultism, Literature, the Unconscious and Joyce Chapter Two.......................................................................................................71 Hades Chapter Three.....................................................................................................84 Aeolus Chapter Four ......................................................................................................99 Scylla and Charybdis Chapter Five.....................................................................................................119 Lotus-Eaters Chapter Six.......................................................................................................136 Nausicaa Chapter Seven ..................................................................................................148 Sirens Chapter Eight ...................................................................................................163 Proteus Chapter Nine ....................................................................................................183 Circe

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Table of Contents

Epilogue ...........................................................................................................204 Beyond the Occult, Beyond Joyce Bibliography ....................................................................................................209 Index ................................................................................................................217

FOREWORD

This book is mainly intended for general readers interested in Joyce, but I hope that it will also be useful to specialists. All references to James Joyce’s Ulysses in the end-notes are to the Random House/Bodley Head text, reprinted in the current Penguin Student Edition. They are followed only by page numbers. The standard episode-and-line-number reference system is here avoided in order to encourage the reader’s approach to the great book as a process of discovery. Ulysses is in many ways a “human” book, and its most profound meanings are encrypted beneath the surface of its “body.” To unveil its secrets implies an effort of anthropological archaeology. Accordingly, common readers as well as experts appraising Ulysses are always in a way interpreters of the occult, that is, the hidden in the text. Hence, only by following the traces and signs left on the textual surface will they eventually dig out what lies dormant beneath.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Versions of sections of this work have appeared in Joyce Studies in Italy, edited by Franca Ruggieri, Studi Irlandesi, edited by Carlo Bigazzi, and To the Other Shore, edited by Shane Murphy, Neal Alexander, and Anne Oakman. I wish thank the editors warmly. I am deeply indebted to Declan Kiberd for his continuous advice and his patience. I acknowledge financial support from the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

U P D FW GJ CW

L, I, II, or III

JJQ

Ulysses, edited by Declan Kiberd. London: Penguin, 1992. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, edited by Seamus Deane. London: Penguin, 1992. Dubliners, edited by Terence Brown. London: Penguin, 1992. Finnegans Wake, edited by Seamus Deane. London: Penguin, 1992. Giacomo Joyce, edited by Richard Ellmann. New York: Viking Press, 1968. The Critical Writings of James Joyce, edited by Richard Ellmann and Ellsworth Mason. New York: Viking Press, 1959. Letters of James Joyce. Vol. I, edited by Stuart Gilbert. London: Faber and Faber, 1957. Vol II and III, edited by Richard Ellman. London: Faber and Faber, 1966. James Joyce Quarterly, University of Tulsa, 1963-.

All translations from Italian into English are mine, unless stated otherwise.

INTRODUCTION HERMETICISM, ROSICRUCIANISM, OCCULT SCIENCE AND DREAMY VISIONS

On a normal day at the end of spring 1885, W.B. Yeats and some of his associates secretly met to found the Dublin Hermetic Society. It was June 16, exactly nineteen years before the day in which Joyce’s Ulysses is set. The members of the society were later said to be interested in “European magic and mysticism and Eastern religion.”1 The whole affair lasted only one year. In 1886, the DHS became the Dublin Theosophical Society. As Roy Foster suggests, the shift towards theosophical matters “disappointed Yeats, though he was impressed by the envoy sent by the Theosophical leader Madame Blavatsky.”2 Such an anecdote, evoking more or less randomly the memory of Yeats in an analysis of the occult in Joyce, may probably sound suspicious, if not out-ofcontext. The antagonism between Yeats and Joyce is indeed a common place in modern criticism. Neil Corcoran, for example, suggests that “Yeats steps forward into modernity out of the mists of the Celtic Twilight and the Irish Literary Revival,” whereas Joyce has often been read “as urban realist, European modernist, stylistic revolutionary.”3 However, a new generation of scholars is beginning to regard the relationship between the two writers in alternative ways, especially as regards the Irish national question. Emer Nolan argues that the Joyce/Yeats connection cannot be solved in terms of a simplistic dualism, “although it is certainly tempting to regard him [Joyce] as the antithesis of Yeats in every conceivable way.”4 As P.J. Mathews points out:

1

R. Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Mask, 42. Foster, W.B. Yeats: a Life, I: The Apprentice Mage 1865-1914, 47. 3 Corcoran, After Yeats and Joyce. Reading Modern Irish Literature, viii. 4 Nolan, “Modernism and the Irish Revival,” 164.

2

2

Introduction Notwithstanding Joyce’s scepticism about certain elements of the Revival, the idea that he may have been in sympathy with aspects of revivalist thought, is rarely countenanced.5

In this regard, the ambiguity of Joyce’s political position reflected in his works complicates the matter further. As David Lloyd has pointed out, Leopold Bloom is a “destibilizing figure,” for he “makes Joyce’s Ulysses a great counternationalist text without it, for that reason, becoming a pro-imperialist one.”6 Despite the apparent aesthetic and political distance that separates the two Irish writers, the relationship between them shows also a certain affinity, an affinity one can indeed assess by exploring their mutual visionary poetics. However, neither Yeats nor Joyce can be seen as spokesmen of a univocal message. It might be argued that one of their main common features is the presence of a creative friction between antinomies that helps them produce utterly dialectical texts. Such a struggle between contrary forces is certainly a cornerstone of Yeats’s poetics. A similar conflict is also present in Joyce’s writings. Terry Eagleton describes the author of Ulysses as “a rare creature, an avant-garde artist who is also a genuine democrat.” He points out that “hardly any other modernist writer is at once so esoteric and down to earth.”7 A perspective like this can be a useful groundwork for the present discussion of Joyce and the occult, despite the fact that the actual subject of the book is a little more esoteric than down to earth. But now, let us return briefly to the mentioned anecdote. One may well explain the odd coincidence by stating that the real events of June 16, 1885, and the fictional ones of June 16, 1904, have no connection at all. On the contrary, more credulous people may perhaps be inclined to resort to what Carl Gustav Jung would have candidly called a synchronicity. Other readers will regard casual events and synchronicities as the very same thing. What is exactly a synchronicity? Jung explained that the term means “a meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved.”8 In order to elucidate this definition, he mentions the distinction between “duplications” of events and “chance groupings.” The latter are significant in that they are more improbable than mere duplications. Here follows a colourful example of chance groupings:

5 Mathews, Revival. The Abbey Theatre, Sinn Féin, The Gaelic League and the Cooperative Movement, 111. 6 Lloyd, Ireland After History, 114. 7 Eagleton, The English Novel. An Introduction, 284. 8 Jung, The Collected Works, 520.

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On April 1, 1949, I made a note in the morning of an inscription containing a figure that was half man and half fish. There was fish for lunch. Somebody mentioned the custom of making an “April fish” of someone. In the afternoon, a former patient of mine, whom I had not seen for months, showed me some impressive pictures of fish. In the evening, I was shown a piece of embroidery with sea monsters and fishes in it. The next morning, I saw a former patient, who was visiting me for the first time in ten years. She had dreamed of a large fish the night before. A few months later, when I was using this series for a larger work and had just finished writing it down, I walked over to a spot by the lake in front of the house where I had been several times in the morning. This time a fish a foot long lay on the sea-wall. Since no one else was present, I have no idea how the fish could have got there. When coincidences pile up in this way one cannot help being impressed by them—for the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it becomes. […] It seems to me that in judging such a series a factor of uncertainty enters in at this point and requires attention. I have observed something similar in other cases, without, however, being able to draw any reliable conclusions.9

As is clear, Jung does not suggest bluntly that coincidences hide secret meanings. They just look suspicious and possibly conceal some strange knowledge connected with a hidden collective unconscious or memory. In our case, the Joyce/Yeats coincidence may well be just a mere “duplication,” although more superstitious readers, perhaps those equipped with a certain knowledge of other events related to Joyce’s life, may even go further and connect it with, say, the death-date of Joyce’s brother, Stanislaus, on June 16, 1955. Such an argument would not be rewarding in critical terms. Besides, Jungian approaches to Joyce taking into account the theory of synchronicity are not the most favourite ones in recent times.10 However, given Joyce’s particular obsession with dates and the importance he attached to simultaneity and coincidental occurrences in fiction, there is no doubt that the foundation of Yeats’s Dublin Hermetic Society on June 16, 1885—provided that he had access to such an information—would have proved significant to him. In an article written in Italian a few months after his death11 and published in the periodical Letteratura in 1941,12 Stanislaus Joyce states that “of the modern

9

Ibid., 521. See Thurston: “Odyssey of the Psyche: Jungian Patterns in Joyce’s Ulysses,” in James Joyce Broadsheet, 2. 11 The article is really an early draft of My Brother’s Keeper. Its content is expanded, and rewritten more extensively, in Stanislaus’s later book. To quote from it here is relevant due to certain significant differences, especially regarding Joyce’s own position towards the occult. 10

4

Introduction

Irish poets he esteemed only Yeats.”13 He would have returned to the same idea in My Brother’s Keeper, where he wrote that his brother considered Yeats “the greatest poet Ireland had produced.”14 Joyce’s attitude towards Yeats was in fact two-fold. Although he did not agree, especially during his youth, with some of Yeats’s aesthetic choices,15 he must have held him undoubtedly in high regard. This is shown by the fact that he knew by heart two of Yeats’s esoteric short stories, namely “The Tables of the Law” and “The Adoration of the Magi,” which deeply influenced his own early prose style. This points also to Joyce’s recognition of the intrinsic value of Yeats’s unmistakably occult short stories. The respect Joyce had for the older master is beyond doubt. In a letter to his son, Giorgio, written in June 1935, Joyce tells him about one night when he was asked by some friends to recite something beautiful, and for the next two hours he recited only poems by Yeats.16 The idea that Joyce was a great admirer of the art of Yeats despite the latter’s clear occultist inclinations, seemingly so distant from Joyce’s own temper, is shared by Ellmann. In Ulysses on the Liffey the critic stresses the importance, in “Telemachus” (Ulysses 1), of the difference between Stephen’s and Mulligan’s respective attitudes towards the great poet, stating that “Stephen never attacks him, only Mulligan does. It is a demonstration of affect that Joyce yielded to no other Dublin contemporary.”17 With regards to “Circe” (Ulysses 15) he records Joyce’s concern “with the idea of a precursor,” a role that he first assigned to Ibsen, then to Ibsen and Hauptmann, although “his final decision was for Yeats.”18 Thus, Yeats is not a precursor, but rather a mentor, who himself must have had the greatest admiration for the younger artist, as is evident in many letters. This is also confirmed in a famous speech pronounced by Yeats on the occasion of the awarding of the Tailteann prizes in Dublin, in August 1924: It is our duty to say that Mr. Joyce’s book, though as obscene as Rabelais, and therefore forbidden by law in England and the United States, is more indubitably a work of genius than any prose written by an Irishman since the death of Synge.19

12

A translation of the same essay into English appeared eight years later in the Hudson Review. See next note. 13 S. Joyce, “Recollections of James Joyce,” 27. 14 S. Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper, 183. 15 See for example: Ellmann, R. James Joyce, 101-3, 239, 325. 16 See L, I, 371-2. 17 Ellmann, R. Ulysses on the Liffey, 14. 18 Ibid., 148. 19 Cited in: Ellmann, R. James Joyce, 578.

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Despite the actual documented appreciation by Yeats of at least the Martello tower episode of Ulysses, in 1923 the poet confessed “that he had not been able to finish the book.”20 This shows that one can indeed enjoy a glass of good wine without having to finish the whole bottle, although people like Joyce would not agree with such a piece of wisdom. Statements of mutual respect between Yeats and Joyce are helpful in approaching the core argument of the present study. An analysis of the common ground, especially in occult terms, on which the two artists occasionally drew, might be a useful perspective for a new reading of Ulysses. It is not a concern of this book to demonstrate that Joyce was an adept of some remote occultist sect, or anything like that. He was no adept, nor can we see his use of occult themes and authors as an ultimate commitment to such an obscure territory of knowledge. On the contrary, the aim of the present analysis is to assess the actual relevance of occult authors, themes, and methodologies of investigation in the hidden structure of Ulysses, as well as to propose an interpretation of Joyce’s response to the subject. It is a fact that Joyce had several works dealing with various aspects of the occult in his personal libraries. It is also beyond doubt that, from his earlier works until his most mature books, he constantly referred to occult authors and themes on many occasions. However, it is necessary first to define Joyce’s idea of the occult. His approach is partly a way of revisiting, and perhaps resolving, his troubled relationship with religion. This would put him in a closer position to Yeats than one may imagine. For Yeats the occult, though an inestimable source for artistic imagination and vision, as well as a surrogate for religious belief, is mainly something pertaining to the supernatural. He believed intensely in the imaginative power of the paranormal, as his affiliation to many secret and esoteric societies, and his full commitment to practical magic, clearly show. Kathleen Raine explains that Yeats’s interest in various aspects of the occult, like Theosophy, magic, Swedenborgianism, Neoplatonism, and Indian philosophy concerns “the exploration of a mental universe.” 21 She adds that Yeats, like Blake, did not share “any part of the beliefs of materialism.”22 Thus, the occult becomes a place of the mind where all souls and memories, past and present, occasionally meet. Belief in supernatural powers helps the poet create an inner world of images useful in the construction of his own aesthetic creations. Surprisingly, Joyce’s attitude is not too distant from this perspective. The supernatural, the paranormal, and visions are massively present in Ulysses, though in distorted ways. However, to assess the nature of Joyce’s position 20

Ibid., 531. Raine, From Blake to a Vision, 6. 22 Ibid., 6.

21

6

Introduction

towards the subject implies the need to reinvent the whole notion of the occult, and to completely redesign the universe of occultism in terms of belief. It is in fact an assumption of the present work that Joyce was not the man who would gladly subscribe to any kind of spiritual system, let alone spiritualism. Despite his firm rationalistic rejection of all forms of spirituality, certain psychological considerations inform his approach to the occult in his texts. Judging by Joyce’s character, his broad and multifaceted interests, and his literary achievements, one can state bluntly that he is more empirical, scientific, and curious than Yeats about the more material aspects of existence. However, this cannot but settle the argument partly. Joyce’s aesthetic choices, which were always very close in their effects to an empirical and terrestrial representation of man and his unconscious, should undergo a redefinition in the light of his own relationship to the body of occult knowledge in which he was deeply read. Some evidence will here be useful. Among the volumes on occult subjects he had in his personal library in Trieste, we find many texts concerning occult matters, like Jacob Boehme’s The Signature of all Things, Emanuel Swedenborg’s Heaven and Its Wonders and Hell, two books on theosophy and discipleship by Annie Besant, a tract on the occult meaning of blood by Rudolph Steiner, a study in French on Spiritism, a volume by Merlin called The Book of Charms and Ceremonies Whereby All May Have the Opportunity of Obtaining Any Object They Desire, a translation of Plutarch’s theosophical essays, a study on Yogi philosophy and oriental occultism, a work by Giordano Bruno and a study on him, and finally several works by Blake and Yeats. 23 Joyce remained interested in the occult also in his more mature years. In the Paris library we find a copy of The Occult Review (July 1923) which features essays and articles on the “Practical Qabala,” the “Akasic Records,” and “the alleged communication with Madame Blavatsky.” The Paris library hosts also other books on similar subjects, though not as many as the Trieste library.24 Such a variety of texts would suggest that Joyce’s position towards the occult was very eclectic, as if the subject were a kind of amalgam of different traditions, all marked by the signature of secrecy. Theosophy, mysticism, magic, spiritism, and the so-called occult science in fact blend together to form a cluster of obscure erudition where Joyce eventually finds useful ideas, helpful in building up what looks literally like a cryptic system. This is consistent with the ways in which scholars use the word occult as an umbrella term. Antoine Faivre defines “Esotericism” as a field that includes various traditions of thought which have many common denominators:

23 24

See Ellmann, R. The Consciousness of Joyce, 1977. See Connolly, The Personal Library of James Joyce; a Descriptive bibliography.

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The more “classical” are, on the one hand, alchemy (understood as Philosophy of Nature and as a mode of spiritual transformation), astrology (in its speculative and not only divinatory form), magic (or magia, a manner of conceiving Nature as alive, interwoven with correspondences, and to which are related various forms of arithmology and musicosophy). Others were born at the beginning of modern times, such as Christian Kabbalah, Neo-Alexandrian hermetism, Paracelsism, theosophy, and Rosicrucianism.25

Faivre rightly contends that the esotericists established relationships between such diverse currents of thought eclecticly, drawing on “different authorities of the past, but almost always with a vision of universal correspondences inseparable from the idea that the cosmos is alive.”26 As regards this very last statement, all readers of Joyce will know that, were it not for the esoteric notion that “the cosmos is alive,” they would never encounter a soap crying “We’re a capital Bloom and I; / He brightens the earth, I polish the sky”27 in “Circe,” like many other instances of pseudo-magical prosopopoeia. However, the issue should not be reduced to single farcical occurrences in Ulysses. In fact, the cluster of secret knowledge which seems to be Joyce’s interpretation of the occult, is also consistent with the historical developments of that amalgam of hidden traditions named by kabbalist Cornelius Agrippa—an author whom Joyce readers encounter as early as the fifth chapter of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man28 —“occulta philosophia.” The eclectic nature of the esoteric is also implied in what Aldous Huxley calls “Perennial Philosophy.” Alongside occult authors and artists, also many professors of literary occultism describe it as an utterly heterodox doctrine. Leon Surette sums it up as follows: Perennial Philosophy is Aldous Huxley’s label for a set of beliefs that I call “occultism.” Both Perennial Philosophy and the occult claim for themselves whatever enlightenment is thought to be contained in Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Hermeticism, or any other mystical, pneumatic, or visionary tradition whatsoever—including those of Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam, as well as Swedenborgianism, spiritualism, and theosophy. They are, in short, synoptic belief systems.29

25

Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition. Studies in Western Esotericism, xiii. Ibid., xv. 27 U, 571. 28 See P, 244. 29 Surette, The Birth of Modernism: Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, W.B. Yeats, and the Occult, xvii. 26

8

Introduction

Demetres P. Tryphonopoulos argues that the “doctrines, myths and motifs of the occult tradition are highly eclectic and far too various for any claim of homogeneity to be meaningful.”30 He adds: The occult is a heterodox tradition constantly rediscovered by its adherents who simply borrow, steal, or reinvent religious ideas and practices that other eccentrics like themselves have kept current in all sorts of societies and publications.31

Tryphonopoulos’s definition of the occult seems to fit quite well Joyce’s own interpretation of the subject. William York Tindall, in commenting on various authors well known to Joyce such as Agrippa, the kabbalists, the Pytagoreans, Paracelsus, Boehme, and Swedenborg, argues that they are representative of some occult and philosophical branches of the Hermetic tradition “so thoroughly confused with one another that there is no point in trying to distinguish them.”32 Some of the occult books Joyce had seem to point to such confusion. They show a kind of continuity not only with the occult tradition itself, but also with writers who were interested in occultism like Blake and Yeats. In particular, thinkers like Boehme, the author of The Signature of All Things, and Swedenborg, the author of Heaven and Hell, were primary sources of inspiration for both poets. They were also very important to Joyce, and continued to be so since the early years until the later phases of his career. An early mention of them is to be found in the autobiographical essay “A Portrait of the Artist,” written in 1904: “He descended among the Hells of Swedenborg […] His heaven was suddenly illuminated by a horde of stars, the signature of all nature.”33 Here we find a direct mention of Swedenborg, while the allusion to Boehme is obliquely occulted. It is interesting to note that the copy of The Signature of All Things Joyce had is dated by Ellmann 1912, but the quotation above shows clearly that he must have known the book as early as 1904, while he was still in Dublin. Later in this study we will focus on the ways in which Joyce derived directly from Swedenborg the idea of writing Ulysses according to a body/book correspondence. The Swedish mystic, whose influence is recognisable in the works of writers, poets, and thinkers as diverse as Sheridan Le Fanu, Blake, Yeats, and Emerson is really a crucial author for Joyce. His interpretation of the Bible according to a general correspondence between the body of man and the body of Heaven deeply influenced Ulysses. Just as happens in Joyce’s great book, the

30

Tryphonopoulos, “The History of the Occult Movement,” 23. Ibid., 23. 32 Tindall, “James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition,” 24. 33 C, 44. 31

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Swede had invented a particular correspondence between the various organs of the human body and the organs of Heaven, otherwise called “the divine man.” In relation to Boehme, his Signatura Rerum is really a “signature” in Joyce’s great work, from its use in the opening passage of “Proteus” (Ulysses 3),34 down to the actual shaping of a visionary aesthetics strictly connected with the empirical perception of external reality. Boehme’s unorthodox mysticism is based on the theory of the elements. He believes that the elements of nature are powerful forces that influence the life of man. The signature is the external body of things as they appear to the eye. It is an exterior form hinting at the presence of a symbolic nature. This connects with the poetic power of imagination, which enables one to work out a set of interconnected correspondences. In fact, in Faivre’s words, correspondences imply an imagination “capable of deciphering the hieroglyphs of the world, that is, ‘the signatures of things.’ ”35 The scholar points out that such signatures “always present themselves more or less as mediators between the perceptible datum and the invisible or hidden thing to which it refers.”36 In the context of the above quotation from “A Portrait of the Artist,” the symbolic potential of Joyce’s interpretation of Boehme’s signatures as key elements of his use of the occult in his works, puts him in a much closer position to Yeats than one may suspect. As has been said before, Joyce admired immensely two esoteric short stories written by Yeats. This is confirmed by Stanislaus in My Brother’s Keeper.37 The first story, “The Tables of the Law,” appeared in The Savoy in 1896, while the second, “The Adoration of the Magi,” was published privately in a separate volume, alongside the first story, one year later. Originally, they were intended to follow another esoteric short story called “Rosa Alchemica” in the volume known as The Secret Rose, a collection published in 1897. Together they represent the follow-up to “Rosa Alchemica.” Joyce’s copy of the volume in the Trieste library dates 1904, but he must have read the book well before that date. The “prefatory note” to the 1904 edition suggests as much, as Yeats makes a veiled allusion to a meeting between him and the young James Joyce: These two stories were privately printed some years ago. I do not think I should have reprinted them had I not met a young man in Ireland, the other day, who liked them very much and nothing else that I have written.38

34

See U, 45. Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, xxii. 36 Ibid., xxii. 37 See S. Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper, 183. 38 Yeats, The Tables of the Law and The Adoration of the Magi, 1904.

35

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Introduction

Yeats’s first encounter with Joyce occurred in early October 1902. A few days after their meeting, on October 22 and 23, 1902, Joyce went to Marsh’s library, which still holds many occult texts. On that occasion, he read a copy of the prophecies attributed to Joachim of Flora. The library stocks other books by the Italian mystic. Joyce refers poetically to the circumstance in the third episode of Ulysses where he talks about “the stagnant bay of Marsh’s library.”39 A few lines below, he actually quotes from the text, trickily distorting a sentence written by Joachim. He also suggests a connection between the Italian mystic and the Dean of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Jonathan Swift.40 Yeats’s occult influence on Joyce, although subliminal, must have been relevant in this case, for both “The Tables of the Law” and “The Adoration of the Magi” are strictly connected with Joachim’s ideas on religion and the history of the world, as exposed in his imaginary secret book called Liber Inducens in Evangelium Aeternum. Furthermore, in “The Tables of the Law” we encounter also a link between the Italian mystic and Jonathan Swift. In fact, after having explained Joachim’s theories on the “Kingdom of the Spirit,” one of the characters, Owen Aherne, in response to the narrator’s scepticism about Joachim’s revolutionary theology, paraphrases and distorts one of Swift’s expressions in A Tale of a Tub: “Jonathan Swift made a soul for the gentlemen of this city by hating his neighbour as himself.”41 This is an interesting instance of Yeats’s influence on Joyce’s texts. Other references in the short story are relevant in the present discussion, for they are parallel to some occurrences in the third episode of Ulysses. One of them is Yeats’s allusion to “the kabalistic heresies of Pico della Mirandola.”42 In Joyce’s “Proteus,” besides all the references to various heretics, there occurs also an allusion to Pico della Mirandola,43 as well as to the kabbalistic primordial man, Adam Kadmon.44 The idea of using some of Yeats’s intuitions concerning occult knowledge in the unfolding of his works, is precisely suggesting the existence of an occultist method by which Joyce manages to conceal obscure significances behind half secret hints. Biographically speaking, we do not know, for it is not recorded anywhere, whether or not Yeats suggested that Joyce should go to Marsh’s library to find books by Joachim. However, this could very well be the case, for they met just a few days before his visit to the library, and on that occasion, as Stanislaus records,45 they talked of the two esoteric short stories Yeats would 39

U, 49. See ibid., 49. 41 Yeats, Short Fiction, 207. 42 Ibid., 204. 43 See U, 50. 44 See U, 46. 45 See n. 37 above. 40

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11

have reprinted some time later. Besides, in “The Tables of the Law” there happens to be also a reference to the 1527 edition of Joachim’s book Expositio in Apocalypsin. Actually, a rare copy of the same volume, published in Venice in 1527, is the property of Marsh’s library, alongside three other works and a biography of the mystic. Therefore, not only may we assume that Joyce must have followed the advice of the older artist, but also that he took his suggestions so seriously that he ended up using them later on, in one of the most cryptic passages of his masterpiece. In the case just mentioned, Joyce’s use of one of Yeats’s intuitions is clearly recognisable. This allows us to spot a certain similarity between their ways of concealing occult allusions in their works. Joyce and Yeats use the occult as a landscape of the mind. A mental landscape represents, for the author of Ulysses, the work of a lucid and precise intellect capable of elaborating complex aesthetic theories. It also reflects the products of a sort of hallucinated consciousness devoted to the invention of an oneiric textual universe. On the other hand, in Yeats’s art the predominance of visions as a poetic device could not have a psychological explanation concerning the nature of hallucinations, for Yeats believed in visions as ways to revelation. His writings are somehow magical writings, in that they try to establish a living connection with a supernatural spiritual world. On the contrary, Joyce is certainly more interested in the occult as a mirror reflecting a distorted human consciousness. Accordingly, in his texts he attempts to approach the secret faculties of the hidden side of the mind, by resorting to a parallel occult cognitive system. Apart from the autobiographical essay (1904), other places where occult authors are referred to are, for instance, the paper “Ireland: Island of Saints and Sages” (1907), the Trieste conference paper on Blake (1912), Giacomo Joyce (1914?), A Portrait (1914), certain critical writings, Ulysses (1922), and Finnegans Wake (1939). Swedenborg is ever present, but we also find Boehme, Paracelsus, Cornelius Agrippa, Hermes Trismegistus, the mystic known as Dyonisius the Pseudo-Areopagite, Pico della Mirandola, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Kooti Hoomi, and many others. Besides, among the ideas more frequently used in Joyce’s fiction are Giordano Bruno’s and Nicholas of Cusa’s theory of the coincidence of the contraries, the kabbalistic idea of the androgynous man, the theosophic theory of the Akasic Records, the idea of metempsychosis, numerology, and the alchemical correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm as expressed in Hermes Trismegistus’s Tabula Smaragdina. Such themes blend with many others of a more folkloric nature in Ulysses, such as magic transformations, living objects, apparitions of ghosts, haunting vampires, and daemonic beings, all contributing to gradually change the book into a curious example of fantastic literature.

12

Introduction

The authors Joyce occasionally mentions, with their occult theories and beliefs, are instrumental in the shaping of a secret internal texture in his works. This is clear especially in Ulysses, a book partly based on the empirical—almost scientific in that it involves a psychological methodology—exploration of the human mind. Occasionally, themes taken from the occult philosophy cohabit with a kind of more superstitious interest in the occult. This is the case of Joyce’s use of apparitions of ghosts and dead people, often in the form of vampires. Despite Joyce’s manifest interest in occult themes, his biography would lead us think that he may have been only mocking the occult as a category of pseudo-knowledge. For instance, in relation to the Dublin theosophists, it can be argued that Joyce’s judgement was not very positive. In a letter from Rome, in which he relates to Stanislaus his reaction to the riots at the Abbey Theatre during the staging of Synge’s Playboy, he calls them derogatorily hermetists.46 An explanation of such an attitude towards them is the widespread idea, among his Dublin acquaintances, that Joyce was just pretending to be interested in the occult, while in fact he was only mocking it. In this regard, Stanislaus Joyce’s recollections are certainly illuminating: In the period following his mother’s death Joyce still maintained an interest in theosophy, reading everything on the subject he could lay his hands on. He read Swedenborg, Blake, Madame Blavatsky, Colonel Olcott, Leadbeater, and Annie Besant. It was on this common theosophic terrain that he made the acquaintance of the poet-painter-economist, George Russell, who published his poems under the initials A.E. At their first encounter they discussed theosophy, at Russell’s home, until almost daybreak. Knowing Joyce’s satiric humour, the other young writers of the group laughed over this encounter later, believing that Joyce had been pulling Russell’s leg.47

Stanislaus Joyce, who in My Brother’s Keeper calls Blake “a lunatic,”48 is very sceptical about the occult in general. However, he often refers quite clearly to his brother’s genuine, though naïve, interest in the subject. His own recollection of Joyce’s encounters with Russell continues as follows: And Joyce let them talk because, as he confessed to me, he preferred they should believe a hoax had been perpetrated rather than have them discover his naïveté in the matter.49

46

See L, II, 208. S. Joyce, “Recollections of James Joyce,” 493. 48 S. Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper, 243. 49 S. Joyce, “Recollections of James Joyce,” 493. 47

Occult Joyce

13

In My Brother’s Keeper, Stanislaus again refers to Joyce’s commitment to the occult as something earnest though temporary: Knowing my brother’s satirical humour, his friends, foremost amongst them Gogarty, were sure that it was a glorious leg-pull, and my brother preferred them to think so. In fact, however, he had been even then as much in earnest as Russell himself.50

Stanislaus felt that the influence of Yeats and Russell on Joyce in the field of mysticism and Hermeticism was by no means a respectable matter. He refused to acknowledge Joyce’s problematic two-fold attitude towards the subject. Despite this, one can agree with Bonnie Kime Scott that although “Joyce’s renunciation of the Dublin theosophists was a formality that gave him a needed sense of artistic integrity,” he nonetheless “left their ‘neighbourhood,’ […] with considerable theosophical baggage, and added to it as he continued to read their work.”51 As regards his alleged mocking scepticism of their practices, the scholar believes that “Joyce’s satirical use of the Theosophists was often restrictive and conveniently masked indebtedness.”52 It can be argued that Joyce was at the same time drawn to, and repelled by, the occult. This ambivalence is also very Yeatsian. In fact, the visionary in Yeats always loved to experience visions, while the sceptic loved to question them. Declan Kiberd wittily remarks that Yeats “spent much of the decade [the 1890s] seeing visions as a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn: and the rest of it being expelled for questioning them.”53 One should really be reminded that, in 1890, Yeats was requested indirectly by Mme Blavatsky to leave the so-called Esoteric Section of the Theosophical Society due to his scepticism about some aspects of the society’s proceedings. This concerned primarily matters of belief, like when a resolution was passed which included a belief in Mme Blavatsky’s teachers.54 George Mills Harper records that: Yeats, as always, was sceptical, refusing to decide between alternatives because there were ‘too few facts to go on’ […] Hesitant to commit himself and uneasy about the vagueness of the resolutions, Yeats determined ‘to keep a diary of all signings I go through and such like, for my future use; and always to state my reasons for each of them most carefully and when in doubt as to the legitimacy of

50

S. Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper, 180. Scott, “Joyce and the Dublin Theosophists: ‘Vegetable Verse’ and Story,” 69. 52 Ibid., 70. 53 Kiberd, Irish Classics, 396. 54 See Harper, Yeats’s Golden Dawn, 5. 51

14

Introduction my reasons to submit them to some prominent members in whom I have confidence.’55

Such an oscillating attitude, always in balance between scepticism and belief, is parallel to Yeats’s own refusal to submit to the aggressive authority of McGregor Mathers in the occult society he later joined, the Golden Dawn. His behaviour generally tells us a great deal about his own opposition to the often obscurantist attitudes of many occultists, an aspect of their character which left Yeats disillusioned many a time.56 In fact, his belief in the occult is often counterbalanced by doubts of various sorts. Such ambivalence perhaps led him to prefer the “magic” power of poetry and imagination to proper occultism, as the ultimate fulfilment of his visionary temper. On the other hand, one cannot avoid registering the fact that he had been a member of the Golden Dawn and its follow-ups for more than thirty years. This seems a good enough reason to consider his commitment true and definitive. At the same time, his oscillations persuade us that he must have been also partly sceptical about his own allegiance to the occult. A truth is always made of two opposite sides, as Wilde would remind us. In this context, to see the occult in Joyce in relation to the occult in Yeats may be helpful in assessing the similar nature of Joyce’s own ambivalent response to the question. As Stanislaus Joyce points out,57 a blend of mysticism and occultism can be spotted in Joyce’s interpretation of the occult. Actually, he seems to combine the two categories, as if they were the two aspects of the very same system. In a sense, we can describe mysticism and occultism as the two sides of the same coin. As Faivre explains: Simplifying a little, one could consider that the mystic—in the very classical sense—aspires to a more or less complete suppression of images and intermediaries, of mediations, because they quickly become obstacles for him to union with God. This, in contrast to the esotericist, who seems more interested in the intermediaries revealed to his inner vision by virtue of his creative imagination than in tending above to a union with his God.58

Following such a simplifying explanation, one would be tempted to see in Joyce stronger affinities with the esotericist nature rather than the mystic, even though he pretended to put mystics and theosophists all into one category. However, it is such an assembly of remote influences that I here name occult. As a matter of 55

Ibid., 6. See ibid., 14-68. 57 See note 47 above. 58 Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, xxiii. 56

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15

fact, in “A Portrait of the Artist” (1904), alongside unhortodox mystics and visionaries like Swedenborg and Boehme, Joyce mentions also the Christian mystics John of the Cross and Joachim Abbas. In Giacomo Joyce he talks of Miguel de Molinos and Dyonisius the Pseudo-Areopagite. Again he mentions Dyonisius in “Ireland: Island of Saints and Sages,” as well as in the Italian conference paper on Blake. The case of this last mystic is exemplary in showing that Joyce’s personal combination of mysticism and occultism had somehow an historical foundation. Dyonisius is probably better known as Pseudo-Dyonisius. The writings attributed to him were very important in the religious developments of the early Church, although later they became fundamental mainly in the Christian orthodox tradition. Joyce considered him as the sine qua non for the understanding of Blake’s prophetic writings and visions. In a poineering study, Frances Yates analyses what she believed to be a kind of hermetic golden age in history—a period whose dominant philosophy was precisely the occult philosophy—focusing on certain authors, many of whom were dear to both Yeats and Joyce (Lull, Pico, Agrippa etc…).59 Her exploration explains the relevance of the Kabbalah as a factor of continuity in the developments of the occult philosophy in the Renaissance. Jewish Kabbalah, after the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492, and through the contacts with Christian Europe, took place alongside the newly-born Christian Kabbalah, when kabbalistic secrets and mystical techniques came gradually to be applied also to the interpretation of Christian mysteries. Dyonisius’s theories on the angelic hierarchies are believed by Frances Yates to be behind the doctrines of many kabbalists, among whom we find Raimond Lull and Francesco Giorgi.60 While Raymond Lull was a Christian kabbalist ante litteram, the Franciscan friar of Venice, Francesco Giorgi, author of De Harmonia Mundi, was a proper Christian kabbalist. His philosophy is summed up in the following description by Yates: The amalgam of Platonism, Hermeticism, Cabalism, astral cosmology and ethics is given a strongly Christian direction in the last book of De Harmonia Mundi which presents an elaborate Christological doctrine, infused with Franciscan Christian mysticism.61

Such an explanation may provide us with the missing link that possibly misled Stanislaus, in his own perception of the role of the occult in his brother’s views. Joyce’s idea of the occult, and particularly his own knowledge of the 59

See Yates, The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, 75. See ibid., 12, 33, 36. 61 Ibid. 34. 60

16

Introduction

field, seems to be parallel to the occulta philosophia of the Renaissance. This was in fact a blend of traditions as diverse as early Hermeticism, medieval Jewish Kabbalah, mysticism, Neoplatonism, Christian Kabbalah, and so on. Such a cluster of different categories of knowledge might have appealed very strongly to Joyce’s “medieval” mind. Yates’s idea that the theology of Dyonisius was behind the systems of some Renaissance Christian kabbalists, is peculiarly relevant in the present study, for it suggests precisely a cluster-like quality of the occult. Besides, as Frances Yates again points out, the “Giorgi type of Christian Cabala,” which was associated in Elizabethan England with the “Agrippa type, more deeply magical, alchemical as well as Kabbalist,” is the very root of Rosicrucianism.62 Such an intuition confirms the suspicion that Christian Kabbalah and Rosicrucianism are actually synonymous.63 Joyce makes one significant, although seemingly casual, allusion to Rosicrucianism in the early short story “Sisters,” first published in George Russell’s journal, The Irish Homestead. As is well-known, the story is set in 1895, the year in which Yeats, already a member of the Golden Dawn, an explicitly Rosicrucian association,64 wrote “The Body of the Father Christian Rosencrux.” It is a short essay about the coming of “an age of imagination, of emotion, of moods, of revelation,”65 after an “age of criticism.”66 The name Rosencrux stands for Rosencreutz, the imaginary founder of the secret order of the Rosicrucians. In Joyce’s short story, a young man is addressed by his uncles as a “Rosicrucian.”67 Leaving aside the question of the historical developments of Rosicrucianism, what is relevant in Joyce’s allusion is the evocative power of the adjective “Rosicrucian.” Jeri Johnson dismisses the whole question of any particular meaning to be attached to it, by pointing out that it “is simply used to suggest that the boy has become too interested in matters too esoteric for his own good.”68 However, if we see the reference in connection with Yeats’s short paper on father Christian Rosencrux, and with the idea of an amalgam of different esoteric undercurrents to which the term Rosicrucian alludes, it may suggest some deeper meanings yet to be calculated. Beeler thinks that we can discuss a Rosicrucian text as a text which seems “to blur in the eyes of its readers and cross over the border of fiction into the realm of reality.”69 He argues about the way in which “Rosicrucian texts were 62

Ibid. 170. See ibid. 89. 64 See Harper, Yeats’s Golden Dawn, 8. 65 Yeats, Essays and Introductions, 197. 66 Ibid., 197. 67 D, 2. 68 Johnson, “Notes,” in Joyce, Dubliners, 198, n. 4-14. 69 Beeler, The Invisible College: a Study of the Three Original Rosicrucian Texts, 26. 63

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written with multiple interpretations in mind,”70 and believes that they are open texts.71 One can suspect that a connection between the original Rosicrucian manifestos and Joyce’s works does indeed exist. Some odd coincidences point to this very conclusion. It is the case of Joyce’s secret (quasi-kabbalistic) use of letters, a device consistent with the notion of “open text.” In Ulysses, letters and words become alive through mutability and ambiguity. As Sebastian Knowles rightly explains, “language in Joyce is transformative, […] meaning is multiple, and […] letters, for Joyce, are an endless source of play.”72 As a matter of fact, in reading the original seventeenth-century Rosicrucian manifestos, one may be struck by the reference, in the Fama Fraternitatis—first published in Germany in 1614, though an English translation by Thomas Vaughan appeared in 1652—to three books with letters for titles (book M, book H, book I).73 Stephen Dedalus in “Proteus” refers twice to such an idea.74 Moreover, the anonymous author of the Fama Fraternitatis considers “Protheus” the most revealing book in the philosophical Bibliotheca of the Rosicrucian Society. In fact, the structural importance of “Proteus” in the organization of Joyce’s great work could hardly be denied. Furthemore, the manifestos stress the alchemical idea of a correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, which is one of the major structural characteristics of Ulysses. Finally, as Frances Yates again points out, the Rosicrucian manifestos are an expression of an age between the Renaissance and the XVII-century scientific revolution “historically set forth as an alternative to the Jesuit Order.”75 All this could well have appealed also to the anti-Jesuit in Joyce. Rosicrucian thought is based on many of the assumptions of esotericism, like the adept-only capability to decipher the secrets of nature. This may generally apply also to the relationship between Joyce’s works and their readers. In fact, as is stated in the second Rosicrucian manifesto called Confessio Fraternitatis, the great book of nature is “open to anyone’s eyes, but can be read or understood by only a few.”76 It can be argued that Ulysses is the protoptype of the text open to many, but understandable only by few. Such an apparently despicable and obscurantist quality of the book makes one wonder about the genre to which it belongs. Indeed, if literary theorists had invented a narrative

70

Ibid., 37. See ibid., 33. 72 Knowles, The Dublin Helix. The Life of Language in Joyce’s Ulysses, 17. 73 The two original manifestos are reprinted in Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. 74 See U, 50 and 61, where he speaks of “alphabet books.” 75 Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, xi-xii. 76 Cited in: Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, 174. 71

18

Introduction

subgenre called “hidden writing,” Joyce would have been probably among its main exponents.77 Among the revivalists of modern Rosicrucianism were also W.B. Yeats and Rudolph Steiner. There is absolutely no doubt that Joyce, at some stage, must have come in contact with their works. Yeats’s relationship with Rosicrucianism is evident in his commitment to the Golden Dawn. Despite his affiliation to such a secret esoteric society, his attitude towards occultism is filtered through his early commitment to the more-theoretical-than-magical theosophy of Madame Blavatsky. She was, just like Rudolph Steiner, a theorist of what could be named occult science. Dr. Steiner, who between 1907 and 1909 gave some 24 lectures on Rosicrucianism between Munich and Budapest, was committed to the founding of the so-called “science of the spirit,” otherwise known as “anthroposophy.” One may rely on his Occult Science for an outline of its core arguments. In Steiner’s words, occult science is “the science of what—to the ordinary methods of cognition—is present but unmanifest in the phenomena of the world.”78 However, one must be sceptical about the alleged scientific outlook outlined in the book. Steiner’s occult science moves constantly between an empiricist approach and a non-sensible subject matter, namely the soul. He does not seem to have had major doubts about the validity of his own original perspective. He deeply believes that the occult science is interested in “the non-sensible World-contents in the same mood as does the natural scientist of those accessible to sense-perception.”79 The assumption is that the secret realm of the occult, the soul, is in contact with the non-sensible. In relation to Joyce, we really need a more sombre approach. The occult, like many other systems of thought, has to be seen primarily, in its literal sense, as something hidden, which can be brought to the surface by using the proper tools. The “scientific” approach of such a methodology is closer to psychology than occultism. The two fields share in fact some basic ideas. Links between Jung, the occult, Gnosticism, and oriental philosophy, as well as between Freud’s psychology and the tradition of the Jewish Kabbalah, have been the object of many studies in recent years.80 As regards Joyce’s aesthetics, the

77

In relation to this aspect, see the illuminating examples Knowles spots in The Dublin Helix, especially the one involving Russell’s initials as the hidden reason why he speaks “occultly” in “Scylla” (11-2). 78 Steiner, Occult Science: an Outline, 26. 79 Ibid., 27. 80 See for instance: Nandor Fodor, Frued, Jung and Occultism, University Books, New York, 1971; J.J Clarke, Jung and Eastern Thought: a Dialogue with the Orient, Rutledge, London, 1994; David Bakan, Sigmund Freud and the Jewish Mystical Tradition, New

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19

attention has to shift from the level of the soul to that of the mind. In the case of his texts, our attention has to focus on the character’s mind. Indeed, the subject-matter of such an occult investigation is properly “the hidden side of the character’s mind.” Yet, two basic assumptions of Steiner’s science may be illuminating here, in relation to the analysis of an occult side of Joyce’s works: The two thoughts are as follows. First, that there is behind the visible an invisible world, hidden to begin with from the senses and from the kind of thinking that is fettered to the senses. And secondly, that by the due development of forces slumbering within him it is possible for man to penetrate into this hidden world.81

Steiner explains that “the visible facts, by their very nature, distinctly indicate a hidden world.”82 In applying this last sentence to Joyce’s works, we may read “words” for “facts,” and “possible worlds” for “world,” and the statement would be true all the same. In both cases, the aim is, as Steiner explains, “to evolve another mode of cognition.”83 Another theorist of occult science was Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. In Ulysses, we encounter the mysterious lady in “Aeolus”84 (Ulysses 7) and in “Scylla and Charybdis” (Ulysses 9), where her initials (H.P.B.) are quoted.85 Here follows a random example of her own methodology that shows similarities with Steiner’s ideas about the hidden/manifest relationship. In H.P.B’s Secret Doctrine, while attempting to defend, against the approach of natural science, the notions of light, heat, sound, cohesion, and magnetisms as substance, the theosophist displays an interesting idea of the way to cognition: In no way […] do the Occultists dispute the explanations of Science, as affording a solution of the immediate objective agencies at work. Science only errs in believing that, because it has detected in vibratory waves the proximate cause of these phenomena, it has, therefore, revealed ALL that lies beyond the threshold of sense. […] thus, we put forward the Occult teaching which maintains the reality of a supersubstantial and supersensible essence of that Akasa […] the nature of which cannot be inferred from its remoter manifestations—its merely phenomenal phalanx of effect—on this terrene plane.86

York, Schoken, 1958; Stephan A. Hoeller, The Gnostic Jung and the Seven Sermons to the Dead, London, Theosophical, 1982. 81 Steiner, Occult Science, 31. 82 Ibid., 32. 83 Ibid., 32. 84 See U, 178. 85 See U, 237. 86 Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, 514-5.

Introduction

20

On the one hand, such an attempt to provide the occult science with a scientific touch is also an effort to dignify a subject often dismissed as second-class knowledge. On the other, it may be interesting to note how it actually strives to create a connection with the material sense/perception plane. Such a striving may certainly have been an aspect of the occult more appealing to Joyce than Yeats. Yeats somehow moves on different grounds. His admiration for Blavatsky testifies to his early commitment to her secret doctrines. When he joined the Rosicrucian Golden Dawn, he chose a Latin motto (DEDI, Demon Est Deus Inversus)—surprisingly very similar phonetically to the first part of Stephen’s Latin surname, Dedalus—which is actually taken from Section XI (Part II, Volume I) of Blavatsky’s The Secret Doctrine, entitled “Daemon Est Deus Inversus.” Furthermore, given the fact that the Russian charismatic theosophist displays plainly a certain interest in matters of diabolism—she being the founder of a theosophical journal called Lucifer—Yeats’s motto shows connections with the more general anti-Christ theme, mirrored in the various beasts that crowd his more apocalyptic poems.87 Such a link is also significant in relation to Joyce. Besides Stephen’s famous devilish outburst “Non serviam”88 in “Circe,” clearly reminding us of his own half-satanic temper, we shall not forget that Joyce himself, and particularly his own pride, was described on many occasions, and by several persons of different backgrounds, as Luciferian. Ellmann records, for instance, that George Russell once wrote to Thomas Mosher that Joyce was “as proud as Lucifer.”89 By the same token, he takes account also of a conversation concerning the character of Joyce between T.S. Eliot and Wyndham Lewis, during which the latter remarked: “I daresay that he may be under the impression that he is being ‘as proud as Lucifer,’ or some bogtrotting humbug of that order.”90 Apart from having a satanic temper, Joyce must have had also seemingly Luciferian looks, judging by the funny reaction of two of Giorgio Joyce’s schoolmates, when they saw their friend’s father in the hall of his house in Zurich, in 1918: They met what seemed to them ‘an entirely black man’ in the hall. He wore a black jacket, had a black goat’s beard and black, bristly hair on his head. He shook hands with them and looked at them with his dark eyes from behind very thick glasses. Unable to bear this concentrated gaze, they left as quickly as they

87

See my chapter on “Circe.” U, 682. 89 Ellmann, James Joyce, 100. 90 Ibid., 494. 88

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decently could, agreeing as they went down the stairs that Giorgio’s father looked exactly like the devil.91

The impression is confirmed also by one of the Zurich landladies of the Joyces, who used to refer to the writer as “Herr Satan.”92 Despite this, Ellmann is probably right in stating that Lucifer (like Prometheus and Faust) is not the ultimate model for the hero in Ulysses, this role being assigned to “men of substance and family, whether they were voyagers, exiles, or homekeepers,” 93 like Ulysses, Dante, or Shakespeare. However, Joyce’s fascination with Luciferian characters is indisputable. This might have come to him through the acquaintance with a literary figure “who was to play a central part in the publication of Joyce’s early work,”94 Arthur Symons, a man deeply drawn towards “diabolism.”95 In Ulysses, the references to a devilish, half-demonic dimension are systematic, and therefore significant from a narrative technique point of view. What we can call a sort of “bland Satanism” in the book connects with another major hidden theme: vampirism. This again enriches Joyce’s idea of the occult, to the extent of including the narrative realm of the fantastic. Such an ambiguous fascination for demonism is also helpful in explaining why Yeats’s attitude towards the occult cannot be reduced to a mere interest in theosophy. He became gradually more and more in search of practical modes of psychic research. His behaviour within the Golden Dawn suggests a mixture of scepticism and belief, which is characteristic also of Joyce’s response to the occult. Here is one more anecdote which records Yeats’s “Joycean” ambivalence. Despite the existence, since 1866, of a Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia, the Golden Dawn claimed to be the true and only exponent of modern Rosicrucianism in England. Since its foundation, the Order portrayed itself as magical, establishing in Rosicrucian fashion all the necessary links with mysticism, Kabbalah, hermeticism, and alchemy. As is shown by a scrupulous study by Ellic Howe,96 the society was substantially a fake, for it was founded on the existence of forged documents and manuscripts, like the famous Cypher MS. At a certain stage, some of the original members, among whom was Yeats, came to know about the forgery. There were some defections as well as much 91

Ibid., 435. Ibid., 435. 93 Ibid., 393. 94 Ibid., 111. 95 Ibid., 112. 96 Howe, The Magicians of the Golden Dawn; a Documentary History of a magical order, 1887-1923. 92

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Introduction

dilettantism. Despite this, Yeats decided to stay, until eventually, on April 27, 1900, he was elected Imperator of the Outer Order’s Isis-Urania Temple.97 Another member of the Order was Aleister Crowley (motto: Perdurabo, i.e. I Will Last Through), a man who was later to be famously regarded as “the most perverse man in the world” due to his activities connected with Satanism. He joined the Order in 1898 and took his so-called “Portal Initiation” in 1899. He was then initiated as Adeptus Minor in Paris in 1900. Curiously enough, in 1923 Crowley published an interesting article called “The Genius of Mr. James Joyce,” in which he has it that Ulysses is a sort of novel of the mind.98 Interestingly, the idea of the “novel of the mind”—as stated by a notorious occultist like Crowley—somehow brings us back to the aforementioned notion of the occult as a landscape of the mind. As a mental frame, it helps Joyce find a new parallel code of signification, a literary technique enabling him to conceal secret meanings behind the cryptic texture of references in his works. This contributes in creating a sort of occulted discourse beneath the textual surface. An occultist method of interpretation—which to some extent involves the necessity, as Newman explains, “to read the work Hermetically”99—can help the reader bring to the surface the hidden significance of a number of allusions and suggestions in Ulysses, as well as to understand Joyce’s alternative ways of establishing analogic relationships between signs. Accordingly, the relevance in artistic, religious, and psychological terms of the cluster of symbols and images occult ideas evoke through their textual transfiguration, should not be underestimated. As Stanislaus Joyce pointed out: Theosophy was perhaps the only one of his enthusiasms which he came to regard as a total loss; all that was to remain of it was his interest in dreams. He used to make notes of the dreams that impressed him most, interpreting them and investigating their causes after a method of his own. This habit continued at Trieste. The importance he attached to them may be deduced from the fact that his last book, to which he devoted seventeen years, takes the form of an extremely long dream.100

The textual legacy of Joyce’s use of the occult lies also in his interest in dreams and their psychological interpretation. Such a position is curiously compatible with a Jungian perspective. In fact, in an essay called “Psychology and Spiritualism,” Jung argues:

97

See ibid., 233. The article is included in E.H. Mikhail, James Joyce: Interviews and Recollections. 99 Newman, Transgressions of Reading, 87. 100 S. Joyce, “Recollections of James Joyce,” 493. 98

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Those who are convinced of the reality of the spirits should know that this is a subjective opinion which can be attacked on any number of grounds. Those who are not convinced would beware of naively assuming that all manifestations of this kind are meaningless swindles. This is not so at all. These phenomena exist in their own right, regardless of the way they are interpreted, and it is beyond all doubt that they are genuine manifestations of the unconscious. The communications with “spirits” are statements about the unconscious psyche, provided that they are really spontaneous and are not cooked up by the conscious mind. They have this in common with dreams; for dreams, too, are statements about the unconscious, which is why the psychotherapist uses them as a firstclass source of information.101

Therefore, it is all a matter of perspectives and interpretations, or at least it seems to be so. Hence, we will argue about the ways in which occult knowledge provides Joyce with the possibility of re-inventing a personal aesthetics of the vision, and enables him eventually to escape, or rather dilute, referentiality in the authorship/text and text/readership relations. The aesthetics of the vision may also account for Joyce’s own rejection of the more spiritualistic aspects of the occult, as well as his devotion to its imaginary dreamlike quality. A similar perspective may again help us find common elements with Yeats. That Yeats also used, at times, an occult symbolism without being fully committed to it, is confirmed by a famous passage in the introduction to the second edition of A Vision. There he denies believing in his own theory. This is very similar to Stephen’s own attitude in “Scylla and Charybdis,” where he states that he does not believe in his own theory about the connection between Shakespeare’s life and works. What is relevant in Yeats’s lucid admission of disbelief is the symbolic importance of his system, as a means to enable imagination to be fully in power during the process of artistic creation: And now that the system stands out clearly in my imagination I regard them [my circles of sun and moon] as stylistic arrangements of experience comparable to the cubes in the drawing of Wyndham Lewis and to the ovoids in the sculpture of Brancusi.102

Yeats considered imagination as the only power able to free the mind and give way to the artistic development of the soul. This is in fact very similar to Blake’s feelings about poetic creativity, as well as to Paracelsus’s definition of imagination as “the queen of faculties.”103 Joyce, whose attention was directed

101

Jung, “Psychology and Spiritualism,” in Psychology and the Occult, 139. See my chapter on “Scylla.” 103 Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition, xvi. 102

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Introduction

to Blake via Yeats’s edition of his works,104 knew this well, for he stated that in Blake the visionary and the artistic faculties are strictly connected. Vision is at the basis of Blake’s art, as the following account by Joyce shows only too well: Elemental beings and spirits of dead great men often came to the poet’s room at night to speak with him about art and the imagination. Then Blake would leap out of bed, and, seizing the pencil, remain long hours in the cold London night, drawing the limbs and lineaments of the visions.105

The biographical truthfulness of the account can be questioned. However, in the present perspective, it is interesting to compare such a version to a remote record of Blake’s visions reported by Robert Southey: Whoever has had what is sometimes called the vapours, and seen faces and figures pass before his closed eyes when he is lying sleepless in bed, can very well understand how Blake saw what he painted.106

Visionary or hallucinatory states in Blake very much resemble what the psychologists call hypnagogic, or hypnopompic images, the only difference between the two being whether they occur at the onset of sleep or at waking time. It may be useful here to discuss briefly the nature of such images. For the sake of simplification, one can take account only of hypnagogic images. A hypnagogic state occurs at the onset of sleep, before entering into the REM sleep. It is associated with vivid hallucinatory imagery. Hypnagogic images are possibly the result of the visual system attempting to make sense of the visual inputs still available to the eyes when the mind is drifting towards sleep. Jung reports an experiment accounting for the ways in which hypnagogic images work, as follows: When a pencil is put into the anaesthetic hand of a hysteric, she will immediately produce long letters in automatic writing whose content is completely foreign to her consciousness. Cutaneus stimuli in anaesthetic regions are sometimes perceived as visual images, or at least as vivid and unexpected ideas […] In the half-waking state these phenomena occur fairly often as hypnagogic hallucinations.107

Here, we can touch briefly also on another case under Jung’s treatment, involving a certain Miss S.W., 15 ½ years old, Protestant, whose visions which 104

See S. Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper, 112. CW, 218. 106 Southey, The Correspondence of Robert Southey with Caroline Bowles, 194. 107 Jung, Works, Vol. I, 13-4. 105

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take the form of hypnagogic hallucinations are very similar to those experienced by Blake in Joyce’s account: Visions also came in large numbers […] At first they were confined to the onset of sleep. A little while after she had gone to bed the room would suddenly light up, and shining white figures detached themselves from the foggy brightness. They were all wrapped in white veil-like robes, the women had things resembling turbans on their heads and wore girdles. Later (according to her own statement) ‘the spirits were already there’ when she went to bed […] the visions were generally of a pleasant nature. Gazing at the beautiful figures gave her a feeling of delicious bliss. Terrifying visions of a daemonic character were much rarer. These were entirely confined to night-time or dark rooms. Occasionally she saw black figures in the street at night or in her room; once in the dark hallway she saw a terrible copper-red face which suddenly glared at her from very near and terrified her.108

A close psychological investigation can perhaps help us approach the textual discourse in the works of visionaries like Boehme and Swedenborg. A similar methodology can also be applied, to a certain extent, to writers like Yeats and Joyce. Let us take a random controversy, appeared in the weekly journal The Listener, between May and June 1949, which may perhaps illuminate the present argument. The dispute sprung from an article by Kathleen Raine on Swedenborg in which, besides considering the Swede’s influence on Blake and Yeats, the scholar tried to give an answer to a fundamental question: “Are visionaries reverting to a primitive way of thought that civilised man has outgrown?”109 Raine’s implicit answer involves the existence of a spiritual value of Swedenborg’s work, as well as the truthfulness of his foreseeing faculties. Three weeks after, one Dr H.B. Rosenbuch, in a letter to the editor, replied that to study “Swedenborg’s biography in the light of modern psychiatry leaves no doubt that he was a schizophrenic who suffered from hallucinations.”110 Due to a strange kind of coincidence, on Bloomsday 1949, in The Listener, Raine’s position was endorsed by the honorary secretary of the Swedenborg Society of London, Freda G. Griffith. Her argument displays only her belief and credulity, and is in no way scientific; accordingly, it does not deserve any attention here. Seven days later, Raine’s reply to Dr. Rosenbuch’s statement was published. She curiously argued that to call Swedenborg’s “a schizophrenic who suffered from hallucinations” equals “to call him a clairvoyant who was blessed with visionary powers,” and that whether “he suffered from his visions or was 108

Ibid., 22. Raine, “Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic,” in The Listener, May 19, 1949. 110 Ibid. June 9, 1949.

109

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Introduction

blessed by them depends upon what he made of them.”111 It is again a question of interpretation, but it can also be argued that all interpretations are in a sense manipulations. Thus, it seems that a judgement on such phenomena always depends on the way in which one looks at them in the first place. However, in a way Raine’s and Rosenbuch’s outlooks may be seen as complementary, and perhaps even compatible. While Raine’s is more interested in the effects of visionary faculties, Rosenbuch’s perspective shifts the question of visions from a spiritualistic ground to a more empirical one. It is empirical in that it may become the subject-matter for scientific research, particularly for psychology. It is in this context that Joyce’s textual use of the occult will be here partly analysed. The oneiric quality of theosophy in which he took so much interest is in fact the clue to the understanding of his approach to the occult as a source, a technical device, and an effect, textually speaking, of his artistic developments. Joyce’s use of visions in his works is massive. We might even say that his last book, Finnegans Wake, is a gigantic vision. Sheldon Brivic puts it evocatively, stating that “Finnegans Wake is about a mind that contains all of history in a dream.”112 In Ulysses the most powerful visions are those we find in “Proteus” and “Circe,” where ghosts literally materialize and come to haunt the characters’ imaginations. Thus, by considering vision as a mere faculty of imagination (i.e. the mind), the present reading of Ulysses will take account of Joyce’s occultist method and his aesthetics of the vision. By exploring the book in such a light, the secret meanings of a certain amount of occurrences in the various chapters, alongside the dreamlike nature of the two visionary key/episodes of the book—“Proteus” and “Circe”— will finally come to the surface. This will help us discover new significances encrypted in the hidden organization of Ulysses, a book undoubtedly governed by an occult discourse. However, one should always be reminded that the occult in Joyce, for all its religious and psychological implications, pertains mainly to the act of telling, it being involved in the dynamics of fictional representation. Accordingly, it has to deal with the construction of a possible visionary universe through the elaboration of empirical perceptions. Those impressions, induced on the psyche of the characters by the seemingly normal experiences of a day, are filtered in the text through the opaque and sometimes mocking mirror of a secret tradition. Such a tradition, intended by Joyce as a mythical projection of the unconscious in a textual dimension, models his subtle technique to the extent of ruling narration according to a parallel code. It is a code pointing to an alternative 111 112

Ibid. June 23, 1949. Brivic, “The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake,” 7.

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cognitive ontology, based on the idea that to write is always to hide, whereas to read is to decipher. In the present context, it will prove useful to redefine theoretically the pliable category here named occult, in order to reinvent, with some help of the imagination, the notion of an occult Joyce.

CHAPTER ONE OCCULTISM, LITERATURE, THE UNCONSCIOUS AND JOYCE

The occult language of literature In the history of ideas, as well as in religious and literary studies, the occult has often been seen as a characteristically fluid category. Its changeable and inconstant nature in fact defies scholarly categorization. This has predictably produced many generalized underestimations and misunderstandings. As we have seen, the mutable developments of a non-unitary discipline are consistent with the esoteric tightrope walking of some of the late nineteenth-century pseudoscientific revivalists of occultism and spiritualism. Faivre explained that the socalled occult movement, which appeared between the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, “sought to combine into one single worldview the findings of experimental science and the occult sciences cultivated in the renaissance.”1 Such an inclusive attempt to put together different and distant traditions, although linked by several affinities, never reached a full stop. Fluctuations of meanings were typical of its developments through history and indeed continued to be so in recent times. A scholarly discussion of Joyce and occultism in literature needs a preliminary word on the ways in which the eclectic patterns of occult studies and those of Joycean scholarship eventually cross. In fact, the considerable amount of evidence, both biographical and bibliographical, proving that Joyce must have been fully aware of that secret tradition, does not alone suffice in clearing the ground of unavoidable misunderstandings. Problems in elaborating a univocal definition of a changeable category such as the occult still wait to be solved, despite the illuminating criticism on the matter produced by scholars so far. In some cases, a tendency to consider the term occultism in the broader sense possible, rather than clarifying the approach of those critics who “have dared” to analyze the relations between the occult and literature, has compli-

1

Faivre, Theosophy, Tradition, Imagination, 26.

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29

cated the situation further. The result has often been to add to the debate a theoretical uncertainty that blurs the very boundaries of the occult tradition itself. In Stanislaus Joyce’s words, occultism equals theosophy, in spite of the fact that historically speaking theosophy is generally understood as a more recent phenomenon. Theosophy refers, for instance, to the not-always-easy-to-sum-up doctrines of Madame Blavatsky. In relation to this, Joyce’s “keeper” names mystics and visionaries who cannot be properly described as theosophists in the modern sense. Leon Surette admits to the need of compromising by using “occult” and “theosophy” interchangeably “whenever it will not cause confusion.”2 The relevance of Stanislaus Joyce’s use of the term introduces an oneiric universe as the working-ground for Joyce’s major achievements. Only in this sense is the reader allowed to consider Joyce’s position also from a psychological angle. As we have seen, Jung regards the occult mainly as something dealing with the secret faculties of the unconscious (dreams, visions and hallucinations), whereas Freudians assume that the interpretation of dreams makes them (partly) intelligible. In such a context, what Jean Laplanche suggests by stating that “a dream is not a phantasmagoria, but a text to be deciphered,”3 could be easily applied to the occult in Ulysses, and particularly to its dramatic exploit, the hallucinated dreams of “Circe.” The argument is still open to many different interpretations. Univocal categorizations are in fact risky here. Critic John Senior, one of the pioneers of the modern approach to the occult in literature, proposes to help the reader avoid possible misunderstandings by stating that: Occultism is a dangerous word to use, and special care must be taken not to misunderstand it. There are very low occultists and very high ones, and we should no more commit the world view itself to Hell because of charlatans who misrepresent it than we should disavow religion because of Chaucer’s Pardoner.4

Such a view implies the relevance of personal belief, which is no doubt a key issue when reviewing the works of “real” occultists. However, the realm of belief is not always a useful frame of reference when the subject for speculation is the fictional universe of a writer. The task of analysing the influence of the occult in Joyce’s writings implies the need to tackle a major question: the scepticism of those who are inclined to dismiss the actual relevance of his sympathy for the subject. With Joyce, it is an established tendency among critics to consider the occult just as an object of 2

Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 26. Laplanche, “Fantasy and the Origins of Sexuality,” 8. 4 John Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature, xiv. 3

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mockery. Accordingly, it has often been preferable to solve the whole issue by resorting to his ever-present ironical modernist detachment. A brilliant Joycean, Robert D. Newman, rebukes such a dismissal by suggesting that To accept unquestionably James Joyce’s mockery of occult practices and of those associated with them in Ulysses is to be caught in yet another of the traps that this consummate trickster sets for his readers. Despite a seminal article written thirty years ago by William York Tindall, critical investigation of the Hermetic tradition in Ulysses has been largely limited to explication of allusions.5

Newman’s words hint at the fact that the presence of occult contents in Ulysses might actually signal a most profound legacy, which can be found at the level of narrative strategies rather than the plane of mere references. He seems to suggest that the importance of the occult does not confine itself to its being hidden behind the obsolete symbolism and the occasional opacity of the book. If this were so, it would just represent the source for possible revelations of some concealed significances. In fact, the solution to the obscure occurrences in the book is traceable beyond the plane of allusions. The occult meanings signified are really a step further in the semiotic process. Thus, the occult becomes a structuring force of the book, rather than a rhetorical device used to stress its ironical and satirical complexity. Something similar is argued by Raph Jenkins, who in a pioneering article on the subject states that although it is fashionable “to assume that Stephen has rejected the mysticism of AE and the theosophists,” nonetheless his “knowledge of theosophic doctrines is far greater than any commentator has previously pointed out.”6 Not only may the present perspective clash with the sensitivities of some Joyce students, but also with the views of those who have always been reluctant to consider the very idea of a connection between occultism and literature in the broader sense. In relation to this, Surette cites the tendency of modern scholars to suggest that modernists other than Yeats were “infected” by occult influences: The scandal is not that scholars have dared to suggest that canonized authors such as Conrad, Yeats, Pound, Eliot, and Stevens [...] were tainted by occult influences. On the contrary, the scandal is scholarship’s long-standing avoidance of the topic.7

5

Newman, “Transformatio Coniunctionis: Alchemy in Ulysses,” 168. Jenkins, “Theosophy in Scylla and Charybdis,” 36. 7 Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 8. 6

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To talk of scandal in a diatribe concerning the game of literature is perhaps to overstate the whole question. It could lead to the temptation of neglecting further interpretative possibilities in order to favour a univocal perspective. This is dangerous in the case of Joyce, in which the more doors open the more chances one has to get close to one of the truths. The occult in Joyce’s texts equals partly the hidden side of the characters’ minds, and therefore lends itself to an explanation from a psychological standpoint. However, a discussion of occultism in literature must be primarily a discussion of language. Here it is useful to take account of the linguistic aspects of mental processes. Simplifying a little, it can be argued that the multi-layered process of codifying mental stimuli, perceptions, images, and thoughts into words is the first step of all kinds of expression and communication. It implies always, at a very basic level, at least a manifest and a hidden side. In a text, the manifest side equals the horizon of the written (words and their combinations). Instead, the hidden side equals what we may call the source for words, as well as the ways in which they are interrelated in the narrative. Freud’s distinction between the latent and manifest contents of dreams, the famous dreamthoughts/dream-content dichotomy, explains sufficiently such a dynamics. As Freud points out: The dream-thoughts and the dream-content are presented to us like two versions of the same subject-matter in two different languages. Or, more properly, the dream-content seems like a transcript of the dream-thoughts into another mode of expression, whose characters and syntactic laws it is our business to discover by comparing the original and the translation. The dream-thoughts are immediately comprehensible, as soon as we have learnt them. The dream-content, on the other hand, is expressed as it were in a pictographic script, the characters of which have to be transposed individually into the language of the dream-thoughts. If we attempted to read these characters according to their pictorial value instead of according to their symbolic relation, we should clearly be led into error.8

Similarly, if we read a text only according to what the manifest side of language suggests, we cannot but get only a partial impression about what it “says.” Furthermore, when we translate words into a written plane accessible to a possible reader, there occurs the question of textual interpretation. Interpretation is, still at a very basic level, always an attempt to decipher. This is consistent with Freud’s idea on the interpretation of dreams. He believes that the manifest content of a dream is given in the form of hieroglyphics, whose interpretation implies a translation into the language of the dream thought. The interpretation of dreams is relevant here for it introduces the concept of translation as interpreta8

Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, 381-2.

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tion. George Steiner contends that “to read is to decipher,” whereas to speak “is ‘to translate (Metapherein),’ ” both processes implying a need to decode “the signs or vital hieroglyphs through which life acts on consciousness.”9 The implicit message is that, in the complicated use of the dialectics of language as a literary code, we are to face a shift, a transfer parallel to the transition from the mere communication of meanings in a written form to their expression in the universe of the literary. Clive Bloom argues that “meaning, removed as the essential element of the literary, is not itself literary.”10 Whenever it is not removed from that plane, it becomes literary in its interconnection with the dialectics of hiding and revealing, an important distinction between literature and mere communication. Bloom spots an occult aspect in the very nature of the literary. He speaks of “that other need of language: the need of speaking in order to hide a secret.”11 His analysis moves from the assumption that literature is no place for lucidity or directness in communicating messages: Within the act of telling the text delivers other, sometimes contradictory, messages. Direct statement […] is eschewed by the literary in favour of ambiguity, convolution, equivocation and circumlocution [...] Thus, it might be argued that the nature of the fictionally literary is not to communicate but in its complex way to hide communicating or to radically delay its ever reaching a destination [...] Literature, encoded as a language of the secret-of-the-undisclosed, conditions a response by its refusal to speak.12

In this light, all literary texts become ciphered texts. Thus, at a very basic level, an occult work would not necessarily need some occult meaning or doctrine to hide in order to call itself occult. This is consistent with the Latin etymology of the adjective. In reminding us that it means “hidden,” Senior suggests that “occultists are often professional obscurantists.”13 In the present context, an investigation of the occult in Joyce should start from that particular occult which has not yet become occultism. Language is the basic dimension of the occult, whereas belief and ideology are only secondary implications. Further difficulties will complicate the present argument when proper occult texts will be taken into consideration. Therefore, it is of some use here to discuss the ways in which the theory of language and occultism have crossed each other’s paths. Many thinkers fond of the occult believe that language points to a 9

Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 77. Bloom, The Occult Experience and the New Criticism: Daemonism, Sexuality and the Hidden in Literature, 101. 11 Ibid., 100. 12 Ibid., 100-1 13 Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature, xv. 10

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now-lost and fragmented primordial unity. Frank Paul Bowman explains that such a theory follows “the occult-illuminist tradition” which “informed symbolist poetic theory as [...] Romanticism.”14 He examines the idea of the birth of language according to occult beliefs, stating that for the illuminist tradition “the purer sense is not something to be created, but something to be restored, something that has been lost.”15 He argues that: At the beginning, all was unity; this unity has been lost, fractured. The restoration of unity and the obliteration of differences are the tasks of men and the end of history [...] Certain mechanisms of language, in particular allegory and metaphor, are especially apt at embodying the perception of unity [..] Language, like creation, is divine in origin; it has lost in large part its original purity and unity and yet retains traces of that origin.16

The fragmentation of the real, as well as the attempt to make sense of it by trying to recompose a lost unity, is something the reader of Joyce faces in many places in Ulysses. For example, when Stephen Dedalus is walking along Sandymount beach trying to read the signatures of nature,17 he is referring to the possibility of decoding those secrets whose external shapes lie scattered around, in chaotic fashion, in front of his very eyes. Leopold Bloom seems to have something similar in mind, when he reflects on the reality that surrounds him along the same beach later in the day: “All these rocks with lines and scars and letters.”18 He is also perhaps expressing a belief in the primordial unity of things, of which superficial signatures of this vegetable world are but a shadow. In the passage above from Bowman’s essay on Boehme, the reference to metaphor and allegory as instruments useful in trying to rethink the imaginary unity of the language of Babel, are a further link to both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake. As Newman contends, the Neoplatonic “reversion of phenomena to their archetypes, informs the appeals of Hermeticism to Joyce, for the search for unity is essentially a return.”19 The idea of Joyce as the secret organizer of a ciphered text, for the understanding of which he drops hints the watchful reader has to collect, is the condition for an approach of Ulysses from an occult standpoint. Specifically, what Sheldon Brivic calls the “dream of cosmic extensiveness” which constitutes the essence of the Wake, “every detail of which is generated by one system, Joyce’s mind,”20 is exemplary of such a tension towards 14

Bowman, “Occultism and the Language of Poetry,” 52. Ibid., 52 16 Ibid., 52. 17 See U, 45. 18 U, 498. 19 Newman, Transgressions of Reading, 94. 20 Sheldon Brivic, “The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake,” 10. 15

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the reconstruction of a lost psychic and linguistic landscape. The critic argues that: The creator of this dream is involved in it, drawn by its images of desire and anxious to be overwhelmed by the randomness of its reality. But his visionary aspect wants to use this world to awaken Finnegan by reconstructing the lost unity, to awaken humanity by building the most complex possible image of the human mind, an image to show that we are one and many.21

In this context, some of Jacob Boehme’s ideas on language are also worthy of consideration. The mystic is himself involved in the debate about the nature of language. Boehme calls natural language a legacy of a lost Adamic language. In natural language, Adamic signatures can still be recognised, although the Fall has subverted the name of things, which were initially just direct translations of the Divine Word. Bowman explains that: The language of nature—the Word in creation—also exists, and letters, words, and syllables reflect its secrets and significations [...] Our intellection of natural language lets us understand the divine acts demonstrated by the letters [...] Thus, all creation is a symbolic cipher, the hieroglyph of a superior reality. The natural language is found in the signatures of things and in the Word within us. Man can know the being of things and learn to give them their true names, and language is the depository of man’s resemblance to God.22

“What’s in a name?” Mageeglinjohn asks in “Scylla and Charybdis.”23 “What’s in letters?” we may add. Actually, Stephen Dedalus, who here and there drops many hints concerning letters, eventually happens to reveal that he has some secret knowledge of the Jewish mystical doctrine known as the Kabbalah. The practical side of that tradition revolves around letters to which numbers are assigned. The whole universe is imagined as represented in the letters of the Law. About this, it was said by a kabbalist that if a letter was taken from the Law or added to it, the whole universe would immediately collapse. Another “modern kabbalist,” Jorge Louis Borges, shows an attitude towards language that could be described somehow as “Joycean”. Steiner explains that: We can locate in the poetry and fictions of Borges every motif present in the language mystique of Kabbalists and Gnostics: the image of the world as a concatenation of secret syllables, the notion of an absolute idiom or cosmic letter—alpha and aleph—which underlies the rent fabric of human tongues, the supposition 21

Ibid. 9. Bowman, “Occultism and the Language of Poetry,” 54. 23 U, 268. 22

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that the entirety of knowledge experience is prefigured in a final tome containing all conceivable permutations of the alphabet.24

The present investigation is informed, in its basic principles, by the theory of a once-united language subject to fragmentation after the Fall. Such a language has to be reconstructed. The aim is to point to the possibility of seeing language from an occult outlook as the fragmented legacy of a primordial oneness. Its components, letters and words, are the very fragments in which parts of the original lost significance seem still to lie, though only in a latent way. Its means are also analogous: metaphors, analogies, and allusions. As Tindall has it, Joyce’s analogical method shows an influence of occult thought. In talking of some of Joyce’s sources—among which he acknowledges Joachim of Flora, Dante, Blake, Madame Blavatsky, Henry S. Olcott, Yeats, A.E.—the critic believes that Joyce “drew analogical method from sources literary and occult.”25 In fact, occultists happen to see the history of the world as a chaos, made of scattered pieces of an ancient knowledge which is now lost. This sapientia can be reconstructed by picking up the various fragments normally disregarded as meaningless by the mass. They are not meaningless, though, for he who knows how to collect and organize them, in order to build back a pattern leading to a previous truth. As Tryphonopoulos explains, all occult scholars must “labor to discover and reassemble the scattered fragments in an attempt to trace the contour of the original structure of ancient wisdom.”26 This seems to be consistent with Newman’s opinion that The worlds of Ulysses and Finnegans Wake consist of correspondences, from the thought fragments that Stephen and Bloom mysteriously share and the elaborate schematas that Joyce constructed linking time, color, anatomy with episodes of Ulysses to the animistic view of Finnegans Wake. Joyce’s preference is for the analogical, an attempt to knit together the world.27

However, a lost unity cannot be recreated in reality, for reality is random and chaotic. Instead, it can be found in dreams as well as in fictional accounts, both being curious examples of teleological narrative. This is why the dimension of belief has to be kept within the boundaries of the oneiric, or rather, textually speaking, the fictional. The present perspective starts from this very assumption: a method similar to the occultist may prove useful in tracing back a system of meaningful references lying beneath the surface of Ulysses, a masterpiece of 24

Steiner, After Babel: Aspects of Language and Translation, 67. Tindall, “James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition,” 31. 26 Tryphonopoulos, “The History of the Occult Movement,” 20. 27 Newman, Transgressions of Reading, 95. 25

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hidden writing. And yet, such an occultist method in Joyce has to be, so to speak, secularized, in that it eschews the realm of personal belief, or even any serious interest in the question of belief. This has some fascinating implications in the seemingly casual process of discovering secret meanings and connections. In this light, particular sentences in the text will come to indicate some remote ways of interpretation although they seem to occur almost by chance in the middle of other discourses. Thus, their apparent purpose is to conceal rather than reveal. Such a strategy implies a redefinition of the theoretical exploration carried on so far, to the extent of including also the fictional horizon constructed by those occult sources, which are often the targets of many obscure allusions in Ulysses. To sum up, the literary is intended as a manifestation of the ineluctability of the ciphered obscurity of texts. If we add to its natural ambiguity certain occult references, doctrines, and theories, known to the writer but hidden behind the metaphors and allusions in his works, we witness to the ways in which a ciphered text becomes occult. At this stage, it can be argued that Joyce’s texts are/are not occult because of the actual presence/absence of occult notions behind them. Furthermore, some may still wonder whether or not Joyce may be just mocking the occult, rather than committing himself to it. It is useful here to start from the final question, and then to proceed backwards, just as an occultist would do normally. In relation to Joyce’s alleged mockery, one can easily admit to the fact that both mockery and commitment are present in Ulysses. Mockery is evident in many places. Besides, is there any aspect of the book in which we could be completely sure that Joyce does not display in an oblique manner his innate irony? Moreover, since irony implies detachment, one might wonder whether or not detachment can be resistant to the influence exerted by an earlier commitment. In fact, a sundering implies always some previous form of conciliation. In relation to Joyce’s very personal version of the occult, one feels the need for further clarifications. Of course, he was not a joiner by nature, and rather hated the idea of belonging to movements, let alone occultist societies. Despite this, one’s own sympathy for occultism cannot be judged solely from a membership of secret societies. The issue is broader. It involves the possible influence of occult knowledge on one’s life and works. The literary occult is mainly, so to speak, a narrative strategy. As Joyce himself confessed to Harriet Shaw Weaver, he would not pay too much attention to occult-related theories “beyond using them for all they are worth, but they have gradually forced themselves on me through circumstances of my own life.”28 This supports Newman’s view that

28

Cited in ibid., 86.

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such theories are worthy of consideration, for “allusions to Hermetic writings and concepts steadily increased”29 with each book Joyce wrote. However, despite Joyce’s instrumental use of the occult, in discussing literature we need to deal also partly with the issue of belief. Since belief is somehow linked to an idea of commitment, it is necessary to state whether or not an author actually believes in the theories he talks of. Unfortunately, belief as expressed in written texts is no easy matter to discuss. In fact, one could very likely happen to believe the unbelievable, or to be sceptical of his own persuasions at the same time. The case of fiction shows the impossibility to assess the genuineness of one’s beliefs from one’s written statements. As Eagleton reminds us, “fiction is a kind of writing in which you can neither lie, tell the truth, nor make a mistake.”30 Besides, it is not always easy to distinguish between belief and credulity. Surette, for instance, calls Yeats “credulous,”31 and still it would be difficult nowadays not to consider him one of the most fervent believers among occult poets. Timothy Materer faces the question of belief stating wittily that When Alice in Through the Looking Glass tells the White Queen that no one can believe impossible things, the Queen replies that sometimes she has believed six impossible things before breakfast. Alice needs the ability to believe the impossible if she is to understand the looking glass world, and so do poets who write of the occult, which takes them into a world as strange as Alice’s.32

Sometimes credulity and scepticism are a Janus-faced entity. This is the case with Yeats, whose attitude is described by Materer as “a mixture of scepticism and naïveté characteristic of occultists.”33 This can be applied also to Pound, “who often ridiculed Yeats’s occultism,” and yet “was like Yeats in mixing scepticism with credulity.”34 In the scholar’s perspective, both aspects of belief are parts of a peculiar modernist irony without which those poets would have appeared very naive in the eyes of their readers. In short, while it seems that some modernists shared partly a dual attitude towards the occult, it is beyond doubt that belief in the occult is always necessary for the writing of proper occult works. In Materer’s words, belief is “necessary to the writing of works like A Vision.”35 Hence, we need to make a further distinction between those writers 29

Ibid., 86. Eagleton, After Theory, 89. 31 Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 164. 32 Materer, Modernist Alchemy: Poetry and the Occult, 3. 33 Ibid., 3. 34 Ibid., 2. 35 Ibid., 2. 30

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who are committed believers, and those who are sceptical. This may well introduce the notion of a calculated distance between Joyce and Yeats. In commenting on this issue, Tindall has an illuminating explanation worth reading in full: Supposing Hermes-Thoth the god of romantic symbolists and Joyce’s patron in particular, we may expect to find correspondences or analogies in the ‘litterish fragments’ posted in that hollow image. For Yeats and a few other transcendentalists who believed or wanted to believe in a macrocosm they did not know but which correspondences might reveal, such analogies are sometimes vertical as Hermes recommends. But for writers like Joyce, who had lost belief in the upper half of Hermetic reality, except in so far as it could be equated with the poetic imagination or the unconscious, correspondences were generally horizontal, and The Emerald Tablet was modified, as we have noticed, to mean as here, so there. The method of Hermes, separated from his world and adapted to what was left, still seemed a way of exploring, unifying, or revealing the relationship of part with part. Joyce used correspondences to show the connection between man and man, man and society, man and nature, and, as if to prove himself a romantic, between past and present.36

In this light, it can be argued, for instance, that Joyce’s scepticism partly resembles the scepticism of another writer like Flaubert. Italo Calvino explains that Flaubert’s scepticism together with “his infinite curiosity for human knowledge” anticipates “the qualities of the great writers of the twentieth century.”37 Thus, a writer who has composed a visionary work may be allowed some doubts regarding the reality of his own esoteric searches. At times, writers opt for the ultimate symbolic power those experiences helped emerge. Accordingly, artists can be considered occult even if they are not true believers. They may be credulous, mocking, or even serious about their own commitments, but this does not change the situation, for writers are occult if their works are occult. The need here is to admit to the fact that a consumate sceptic like Joyce might have had his own occult ways. In order to explain such an idea, the use of a metaphor may perhaps be of some help. Let us consider the multifaceted and heterodox universe here named occult as a dark house, a big house perhaps, or rather, a lonely tower with high windows. As regards its external, it appears as a very sinister building. Once inside, we find out that the interior is absurdly kitsch. The furniture does not match either the colour of the walls or the curtains. Here and there we spot flights of stairs, perhaps winding stairs, which lead to nowhere. The high windows let through little light, and this explains the wide range of candles which light the

36 37

Tindall, “James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition,” 34-5. Calvino, Lezioni Americane, 126.

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colourful tapestry on the walls, as well as the rose-shaped mock Byzantine mosaics on the floor. The effect of such a building on the casual visitor is ambiguously powerful. A sense of mystery is baffled by the naïve blend of odd furniture and decorations. Such a house could well be the consequence of what we may call “open architecture.” Let us imagine that, at some stage, Joyce had a chance to enter such a building through its backdoor in order to take furtive notes of what was inside. Those notes we find scattered methodically in his works, as if he expected, or rather challenged, the reader to recognise the parallel signifying code organizing them. As regards the reader, the first point of such a game is not in the least to find the way back to the house, but rather to know that the writer himself was there at some stage. Of course, this does not add anything to our knowledge of either the house or the intruder. However, it may tell us something about what the writer has actually seen in the building, and what has had some influence on his texts. This helps also explain how texts are constructed, and the way in which Joyce created his own occult book. The watchful reader will eventually spot the hidden narrative that underwrites his work. Furthermore, such a conception of the occult speaks a final word about the scarce relevance of the author’s belief in the critical analysis of a literary work. A similar position is held by many scholars who have dealt with the occult in literary studies. In the preface to a valuable collection of essays on literary modernism and the occult, one of the editors, the mentioned Leon Surette, admits beforehand to the fact that, although one of the assumption of the collection is that “mythical, ecstatic and revelatory topoi in modernist texts” are informed by an “attempt to revive ancient pagan religious sensibilities,” the contributors to the book “are not committed to our view.”38 One of the actual contributors, John Coggrave, has a very interesting essay on Joyce’s use of occult sources. At this stage, the question of the reader’s response to an occult text emerges. Is the reader to take seriously the writer’s alleged beliefs, or could he just dismiss them as fictional and still enjoy them? The issue can be approached without resorting to the question of belief, which at the end of the day concerns solely the realm of personal subjectivity and is therefore not susceptible of being proved, let alone in an analisys of fictional texts. To wonder whether artistic expression should be committed to belief is in fact academic. This was suggested long ago by I.A. Richards in his famous pseudo-statement theory. As he put it, a pseudo-statement is “a form of words which is justified entirely by its effect in releasing or organising our impulses.”39 Another explanation of the theory is that the pseudo-statement stands “for a form of words which looks like a state38 39

Surette and Tryphonopoulos, Literary Modernism and the Occult Tradition, xvii. Richards, Science and Poetry, 59.

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ment, but should not be taken as one.”40 If we take it as a statement, “it may be true or it may be false; it is not necessarily false, although in fact it is likely to be so.”41 This is to suggest that a discussion of the occult in literature shall be freed of any bias against both the actual possibility that “serious” authors may have been fascinated by occultism, and the ultimate irrelevance in strictly literary terms of their belief in the occult doctrines hidden behind their works. This opens the text to multiple unprejudiced interpretations. Before examining in detail some of Joyce’s occult sources—and accordingly the presence/absence of occult contents in his works—it may be useful to discuss briefly how recent criticism has approached the question of the occult in literature. The purpose is to test the opinion of other scholars against the present use of the term occult.42 In his illuminating study, John Senior wishes to demonstrate that “the basic metaphysical assumptions of symbolism are occult.” 43 They point to “a direct connection between specifically occult movements—Rosicrucian, theosophical, and the like—and the symbolist movement in literature.”44 Such a perspective is close to the idea that symbolism and occultism dwell on similar grounds, in that they both use the analogical method implicit in the very idea of symbol. A symbol would point to something beyond mere referentiality, and cannot be reduced to the level of ordinary consciousness. What the role of the occult may be in such a semiotic process is easy to guess. A symbol pertains to the absolute, it being itself a sign of the tendency towards the divine essence, the logos, unity, 40

Richards, “Between truth and truth,” 39. Ibid., 39. 42 As regards a tentative chronology of the studies on the occult in literature, we may note that one of the first links historically established by critics between the two subjects is that between occultism, Romanticism, and Symbolism. A pioneering attention to the subject is paid by Auguste Viatte in Sources occultes du romantisme, illuminisme, théosophie, 1928, and by Denis Saurat in Littérature et occultisme, 1929. The relation between Hermeticism, Pythagoras, Boehme and Swedenborg, and authors like Nerval and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam, had been previously the centre of some interesting reflections in Arthur Symons’s The Symbolist Movement in Literature, 1899. Important contributions to the study of occult influences in literature are those of Edmund Wilson (Axel’s Castle, 1933) and Mario Praz (The Romantic Agony, 1956). The two scholars, although they did not belong to the field of occult studies yet to be defined, produced some interesting criticism on the relevance of esoteric themes in the development of the modern artist. Other recent studies more directly concerned with the analysis of the occult as a structural factor in modern literature are, to name just a few, those by William York Tindall, John Senior, George Mills Harper, Kathleen Raine, Timothy Materer, Clive Bloom, Leon Surette, and Demetres Tryphonopoulos. 43 Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature, xvi. 44 Ibid., xvi. 41

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eternity, or whatever else may be the object of this or that occultist research. In Senior’s opinion, for symbolist poets a symbol is “an image which permits the mind to break through its ordinary limits in order to perceive things not as they seem, but are.”45 Accordingly, he argues that the “value of the symbol is that, in evoking the sensation of vagueness, it stretches the limits of consciousness.”46 Symbolism is not to be intended as a poetics by which images taken from the occult lore come to substitute ordinary products of the poet’s imagination. The similarity lies neither in the subject matter nor in the cultural background of the artist or the occultist. What makes them alike is the way in which they attempt to “stretch the limits of consciousness,” to try and express the ineffable by means of a necessary imaginative complexity. The symbol is seen as something that goes even beyond metaphor, something which has very little or no connection at all with external reality. It apparently makes the reader dismiss the universe of empirical perception in favour of a superior realm. On the one hand, such an idea of symbolism as a kind of literary occultism shows some affinities with Joyce’s own method of alluding to something beyond the expectations of a reader accustomed to the normal use of metaphors, no matter how obscure. On the other, it is a little too definite in pointing to the possibility of a belief through which the occultist may actually reach with the mind an invisible realm, eternal, wise, and perfect. Senior, in fact, never proposes the existence of any such supernatural heaven, for “the ultimate vision, [...] is not a repudiation of the world, but an embracing. Heaven is here, now.”47 The apparent ambiguity of such a position is suggested by certain remarks which make us rather wonder whether literature may be the place for speculations on the infinite and the absolute, or if those sublime conceits should be left to religious debate. For instance, when Senior describes Swedenborg as “the perfect example of the modern occultist,”48 we are induced to believe that occultism and literature must perforce be two separate, though interconnected, grounds. In fact, with regards to Swedenborg’s doctrine of correspondences, Senior’s arguments resort to the idea of belief, the very same belief which in any writer would inevitably be seen as a sign of naiveté and credulity. He states that if Swedenborg “had chosen to call his doctrines allegories, there would have been little theological dispute.” 49 Unfortunately, “like a true occultist, he called them

45

Ibid., 43. Ibid., 43. 47 Ibid., 167. 48 Ibid., 32. 49 Ibid., 34. 46

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facts,” insisting not only “that the universe is like a human form but that it has a human form.”50 Quite to the contrary, Joyce’s use of occultist doctrines, or even of a precisely occultist method in his works, does not tell us anything about his being an occultist of any kind. As I said, belief is by no means necessary in literary creations. In other words, while a writer may well be a believer in his own visions, or in spirits, so to speak, this is not to be the rule. In fact, it happens very rarely, especially in the modernist literary scenario. Although one may only suppose that Joyce was very fond of spirits, one cannot but hesitate before indulging in the temptation to see a precise spiritualistic legacy in his works. At this stage, one may well wonder what were the spirits Joyce was fond of, and what sort of effect they had on his texts. An easy answer to this would be that they are those peculiar spirits that at times help him give the narration a hallucinated touch, like in “Circe” for example, where the ghosts of dead people fit the drunken phantasmagoria quite well indeed. However, to return to Senior’s reasoning, when its logic is brought to its extreme consequences, it leads him to state that Yeats is no symbolist poet at all, due to his alleged lack of contact with the absolute. Thus, it is better to call him an imagist for he “finds images to hold the conflicting orders of experience together but never symbols,” for symbols “entangle the Absolute.”51 Ezra Pound, who described the image as that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time, would have disagreed with John Senior in calling Yeats an imagist. In 1914, in an essay titled “The Later Yeats” we read: “Mr Yeats is a symbolist, but he has written des Images as have many good poets before him.”52 In such a virtual diatribe, one wonders whether for Senior we should consider the imagist Yeats an occultist at all. And if he is not, who is? After Senior, other critics have attempted to question and redefine the status of canonized authors in relation to the occult. Among them, Leon Surette is one of the most reliable. His major studies focus on Ezra Pound and occultism. They tend to display always a particular willingness to theorize and delimit the ground for speculation, though at times such rigorousness seems to be baffled by the fluid and heterodox nature of the subject he deals with. Surette’s studies are characterized by a certain courageous pride in defending strenuously particular ideas against the common view traditionally established by authoritative critics. This is the case of the question whether Yeats’s poetry and occultism should be seen as analogous or separate. Like Foster, Surette questions the “saving the appearances” arguments of Richard Ellmann and Graham Hough. According to them, we should admit to Yeats’s occultism, 50

Ibid., 34. Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature, 167. 52 Pound, Literary Essays, 378.

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but at the same time isolate it “from the poetry, despite the fact that everyone knows that the topic is manifestly occult in topic and imagery.”53 Before Surette, George Mills Harper had already attacked such a position efficaciously: It has been critically fashionable to follow W.H. Auden’s dismissal of Yeats’s occult studies in ‘all those absurd books’ with one contemptuous line: ‘…but mediums, spells, the Mysterious Orient—how embarrassing.’ It is, I suggest, unscholarly if not obtuse for those whose epistemology and critical bias run counter to Yeats’s to omit any consideration of the occult tradition.54

For Surette, the eclectic esoteric tradition called Perennial Philosophy, or occultism, is secretly ubiquitous in the background of many modernist writers. At times, it should be looked at through the lens of commitment or belief: Scholarly ignorance of the occult results from a largely justifiable contempt for the set of beliefs it represents. Although occultism is marginal to aesthetic culture, it is not as clearly isolated from it as might at first appear, or as one might wish. If we draw the horizons of the occult as the occultists themselves do, it possesses a long history running parallel to mainstream aesthetic culture, intersecting it at many points. The intersections of which I speak are not just resemblances between the themes and beliefs of occult writers and poets or artists; they include clear-cut cases of artists who adopt and accept occult beliefs and formulations.55

Such a perspective may not allow us, perhaps, to take in Joyce as a representative of occult literature. We could confine ourselves just to call him obscure, metaphorical, or allusive—like Yeats was just an imagist for Senior—and dismiss any further reflection on the topic. In fact, when Surette analyses briefly Joyce’s attitude towards the occult, he does so in a dismissive way. He avoids taking into account the possibility that some aspects of Joyce’s cultural background were nothing but occult in the truest sense. “Joyce’s mythical method,” he explains “is an adaptation and secularization of the mystical symbolism of the Symbolistes.”56 After having suggested that “Joyce replaces the esoteric sense by a merely allusive and metonymic sense,” he contends that the hidden in Ulysses “is simply the network of allusions to the Odyssey, and to a few other open exoteric realms.”57

53

Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 7. Harper, Yeats’s Golden Dawn, 1-2. 55 Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 11. 56 Ibid., 217. 57 Ibid., 217.

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The present study of Joyce’s great book starts from the very opposite perspective. Not only was Joyce’s knowledge of occult writers a fundamental part of his cultural background, to which he kept referring constantly in all his works, but it is clearly hidden behind the net of many textual allusions apparently pointing to a non-esoteric solution. More than that, it informs the structure itself of the book. Accordingly, it shapes the text-reader relationship ineluctably by modelling it on the adept’s response to occult practices. Despite this, it would be idle to try and find in his works any sign of belief at all. At most, we may occasionally find traces of his innate superstition. Such considerations in fact discourage any possible attempt to dismiss the relevance of the occult in Joyce. As Newman explains: Joyce’s parodies of the occult […] should not be interpreted as a dismissal of this mode of thought. Part of the appeal, and indeed the consequent difficulty of Ulysses, is the inclusive rather than the exclusive consciousness expressed within the novel […] Joyce’s irony is seldom sardonic, but rather intended to tease us out of circumscribed simplifications of life, whether they be Stephen’s obsessions or Bloom’s escapism.58

In this light, since all discussions of literature are textual discussions in the first place, the term occult will here continue to refer to the system of hidden ideas and images belonging to a secret universe encrypted in the text. Such a system constructs eventually a parallel fictional discourse, which functions via a hidden code of signification. Another brief clarification is needed concerning the more biographical aspects of Joyce’s fascination for the occult. Joyce’s superstition is a fact hardly questionable from a biographical point of view. This is suggested for instance by his obsession with dates, but also by the cited book on the charms and ceremonies to obtain any object desired he had in the Trieste library.59 However, in this context one has to face the objections of those occult scholars who believe that such a manifestation of human frailty has nothing, or little, to do with the high grounds of the Perennial Philosophy. To isolate the occult from “ghosts, poltergeists, witches, vampires, werewolves, and the like,”60 is sometimes one of their preoccupations. What is superstition? John Coggrave suggests that it “is a mixture of belief, fear and hope and presupposes correspondences within the universe which may have no rational basis.”61 In Joyce, and particularly in Ulysses, some of the 58

Newman, “Transformatio Coniunctionis: Alchemy in Ulysses,” 170. See Introduction, n. 23. 60 Surette, The Birth of Modernism, 11. 61 Coggrave, “Joyce’s Use of Occultist Sources,” 96. 59

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themes linked to folklore and superstition occur very frequently indeed. Accordingly, it would be difficult to take them as something disconnected with his own personal idea of the occult. Apparitions, ghosts, paranormal phenomena, vampires, and so on, are what certain occult studies scholars tend to exclude from their analyses. In relation to Joyce, a use of the term occult must be inclusive rather than exclusive, and therefore comprehend also this kind of manifestation. Before entering a textual discussion of Ulysses both as an occult book and as a curious example of fantastic literature, where the narrative points always to an indecision between the natural and the supernatural, it may be of some use to examine a few occult theories familiar to Joyce, discussed in some of the books he had in Trieste. The following analysis focuses on the ways in which they gradually became effective structuring features of his great work.

Joyce and the Occult A text whose importance in relation to Joyce has been oddly underestimated is Heaven and Hell by Emanuel Swedenborg. In Ulysses, the use of some of its doctrines is subterranean and pertains to the secret internal texture of the narrative. Its structural relevance in the so-called Ulysses schematas makes a new interpretation of them possible which could in fact yield up original results. Those skeletons invented by Joyce as a means to facilitate the understanding of his book are not, of course, the ultimate explanations of the numerous enigmas the book creates. They are just simple and sometimes superficial guidelines helpful in approaching the work. However, one feels that their secret purpose might be also perhaps to mislead the reader, rather than assist him on his way through the text. Still, some of the secrets they conceal are crucial to the appreciation of the hidden structure of the book. The two schematas are very different.62 Besides the many variants, categories such as correspondences and scene occur only in Gorman, while others such as persone and senso (significato) only in Linati. A two-fold difficulty links the opaque presence in Gorman of the correspondence category to the obscure meanings of the organs of particular chapters of the book. This eventually gives rise to challenging dilemmas. For example, what has “heart” in common with “Hades” (Ulysses 6), or “blood” with “Wandering Rocks” (Ulysses 10)? By resorting to the theory of correspondences outlined by Swedenborg in Heaven and Hell, one may account for the relationship between organs and episodes in Joyce’s masterpiece.

62

All references to the Linati and Gorman schematas in the present study are to Ellmann’s Ulysses on the Liffey, 178-83.

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The Swedish visionary based many of his writings on the idea of correspondence. He also invented a particular notion of “organ,” concerning the interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures. Before his so-called conversion, the Swede had been involved in scientific research. This provided him with a sort of scientificlike outlook evident in the aseptic coldness of his revelations. Since the day in which he plunged himself into the study of the Bible, he undertook the task of unveiling the hidden meanings encrypted in the spiritual subtext of the Scriptures. His method was based on the hermetic law of correspondences between a superior and an inferior sphere, i.e. “As above, so below.” Such an hermetic tenet would have become also a fundamental component of Yeats’s cultural background. It is likely that Joyce came in touch with it via the older poet. In a poetic passage, full of mysterious echoes, from an essay on Swedenborg written in 1914, Yeats wrote: Yet another impulse comes and goes, flitting through all, a preparation for the spiritual abyss, for out of the celestial world, immediately beyond the world of form, fall certain seeds as it were that exfoliate through us into forms, elaborate scenes, buildings, alterations of form that are related by “correspondence” or “signature” to celestial incomprehensible realities.63

Yeats knew well Swedenborg’s visionary universe. He knew that the Swedish mystic believed that every word of the Bible was a hint of a precise correspondence between things that happen respectively in heaven and on earth. The Swede believed that divine or angelic societies corresponded to human societies, and that, according to the Bible, heaven was actually a divine man who appeared in the shape of a human body. The organs of the divine man correspond to the organs of man’s body. God’s heaven is an exact correspondence of the body of man in all its parts. Swedenborg explicates his own theory as follows: It is an arcanum still unknown in the world that heaven reflects a single person if it is grasped as a single entity, but in the heavens this is common knowledge [...] Since angels know that all the heavens, including all their communities, reflect a single person, they actually call heaven The Greatest and Divine Man.64

Similar ideas are exhaustingly argued in the fat volumes of Arcana Coelestia, to which Joyce refers also in his Trieste paper on Blake. In reflecting on the style of Swedenborg’s prose, which has something of the realistic, Yeats suggests that there is “in Swedenborg’s manner of expression a seeming superficial-

63 64

Yeats, A Vision and Related Writings, 6-7. Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 61.

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ity.”65 Apparently, Joyce’s response to Swedenborg’s plain style was not too distant from Yeats’s: Swedenborg, who frequented all of the invisible worlds for several years, sees in the image of man heaven itself and Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel, who, according to him, are not three angels, but three angelic choirs. Eternity […] appeared to the Swedish mystic in the likeliness of a heavenly man, animated in all his limbs by a fluid angelic life that forever leaves and re-enters, systole and diastole of love and wisdom. From this vision he developed that immense system of what he called correspondences which runs through his masterpiece Arcana Coelestia.66

Joyce was aware that a somatic scheme emerged from Swedenborg’s works. This very idea is just what he states to his friend Carlo Linati in the famous letter about Ulysses, written on September 21, 1920, which included the first schema. He suggested that Ulysses is an epic tale concerning two races, the Israelite and the Irish. He compared the book to the human body, and explained that each adventure could be imagined as “one person although it is composed of persons.”67 The letter illuminates the actual structure of Ulysses. Dublin becomes the body of the universe. Its secrets can be understood only through the deciphering of an obscure net of correspondences involving organs of the body, hours, arts, techniques, and so on. The process is amazingly similar to a conceit which functions as the basis for all Swedenborgian visionary theories about correspondences: The whole natural world corresponds to the spiritual world—not just the natural world in general, but actually in details. So anything in the natural worlds that occurs from the spiritual world is called correspondent. It is vital to understand that the natural world emerges and endures from the spiritual world, just like an effect from the cause that produces it.68

Such an interpretation of the law of cause and effect fits quite well Joyce’s idea that each episode “(that is, every hour, every organ, every art being interconnected and interrelated in the structural scheme of the whole) should […] create its own technique.”69 Besides, it is interesting to note how such correspondences eventually merge into symbolism, in that they provide Swedenborg with the

65

Yeats, A Vision and Related Writings, 10-1. CW, 221-2. 67 L, I, 147. 68 Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 81. 69 L, I, 147. 66

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possibility of a two-fold interpretation of the Scripture. This leads us back to the question of the hidden in the literary use of language: Now we may say a bit about the knowledge of correspondence to the natural world through correspondences. As a consequence, communication with heaven is given to man through correspondences [...] If man were involved in the knowledge of correspondences, then he would understand the Word in its spiritual meaning. In this way it would be granted him to understand arcana of which he sees no trace in the literal meaning. The Word does contain a literal meaning and a spiritual meaning. The literal meaning is composed of worldly things, while the spiritual meaning is composed of heavenly things.70

In Heaven and Hell, we first encounter the “Correspondence of All Things of Heaven with All Things of Man,” and then the “Correspondence of Heaven with All Things of the Earth.” What Swedenborg calls “angelic communities” reminds one of Joyce’s idea that “one person” has to be “composed of persons”: Since the whole heaven reflects a single person […] heaven is divided into members and parts the way a person is, and these parts have similar names. Angels actually know what member one community or another is in [...] In general, the highest or third heaven makes up the head as far as the neck, the middle or second heaven the torso as far as the loins or knees. The lowest or first heaven up the feet right to the soles and also the arms right to the fingers. For despite being at the side, the arms and hands are lowest things of people. All this shows why there are three heavens.71

We can leave aside the question of the division of heaven into three parts, perhaps parallel to the structure of Ulysses. This might be only a coincidence shared by many other works important to Joyce, first among them Dante’s Divina Comedia. Instead, a closer analysis of Swedenborg’s way of assigning to each organ a specific meaning will illuminate the presence of a very strict relationship with Joyce’s book. A very secularized notion of the organs of heaven was well known to Joyce since 1906, when he wrote a curious letter to Stanislaus in which he wittily spoke of “what the poetical and mystical Swede would call ‘my interiors.’ ”72 Ulysses is full of interiors, as well as Swedenborg’s books. In Heaven and Hell Swedenborg speaks of fourteen organs, while in the schematas Joyce mentions twenty-one. Ten of them are present in both contexts. Six are referred to by the 70

Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 95-6. Ibid., 64. 72 L, II, 183.

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same names. The first is one of the most important of the whole body: heart. In Heaven and Hell, the Swede explains that heaven is made up of two kingdoms, the celestial and the spiritual. Different kinds of angels inhabit them. Those who live in the first kingdom share “intention,” which is essentially “good of love.” Those who live in the second kingdom share “discernment,” which is “what is true of faith.” The first kingdom is associated with heart while the second corresponds to the lungs.73 In the Ulysses schematas the distinction between heart and lungs is associated with the organs corresponding respectively to the sixth and the seventh episodes. With regards to the sixth chapter (“Hades”), in the senso category of Linati we read “descent to nothing,” while the art of the Gorman schema is “religion.” “Descent to nothing” and “religion” might be said to go on quite well with the ideas of “intention” and “good of love,” yet in a sort of parodied and inverted relationship. This becomes somehow clearer in connection with the seventh episode (“Aeolus”). In the simbolo category of Linati we read “wind” among other references, while the scienza/arte is “rhetoric.” On the contrary, in Swedenborg the “breath of the lungs” is a symbol of “discernment” and “truth of faith.” It can be argued that this is also a subtle ironical semantic inversion playing with the idea of truth and its representation. As we will see in due time, the possibility of portaying any truth at all in “Aeolus” is undermined not only by the filter of rhetoric, but also by a peculiarly deceitful kind of discourse such as the language of journalism. Such distinctions are just general ones, and arguably point to a very fluid sort of relationship between Joyce and Swedenborg. More peculiar correspondences linking the various organs and the truths of the scriptures in relation to other chapters, will certainly be of interest to the reader of Joyce. It is the case of what Swedenborg calls a “less general correspondence”: In the Greatest Man, or heaven, people in the head are those who are involved in everything good more than others are. They are in fact involved in love, peace, innocence, wisdom, discernment, and in joy and happiness as a result.74

Joyce speaks of brain in “Scylla” (Ulysses 9). In Gorman, the art of the episode is “literature,” while the technique is “dialectic.” In Linati “dialectic” is gone and the technique becomes “whirlpools.” If we compare the dynamic images evoked by the whirlpools of literature and dialectic to Swedenborg’s reassuring “love, peace, innocence, wisdom, discernment, joy and happiness,” the relationship looks clearer. It is as if Joyce had taken Swedenborg’s idea and deliberately inverted it. Thus, not only does he parody it, but he also demystifies, humanizes, 73 74

Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, par. 95, 82-3. Ibid., 83.

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and secularizes its spiritual meanings. This is confirmed by the fact that in Linati one of the symbols of “Scylla” is “mysticism.” In Gorman, “mysticism” is a correspondence of the episode. Furthermore, in the very same paragraph from Swedenborg’s book, we encounter another interesting connection: “In the Greatest Man, or heaven, people in the loins or organs for generation are involved in marriage love.”75 Rather than loins or organs for generation, Joyce prefers to speak bluntly of “genitals.” In Gorman they refer to the fifth episode (“Lotus-Eaters”), where the correspondence is “eunuchs,” a very powerful symbol of “marriage love” and “generation.” On the other hand, in Linati we find a funny mixture of the spiritual and the sexual, in the relation between “the seduction of the faith” and “castration.” Here, Joyce’s will to invert and parody the original spiritual idea is even more manifest. The way in which he seems to play with Swedenborg’s ideas and doctrines, displays a kind of childish and hilarious glee. Something similar happens in connection with other organs that will be taken into account in the following chapters. Another occult thinker whose phantom presence is very subtly concealed behind the game of ironical jokes concerning the spiritual in Ulysses, is Annie Besant. Her book entitled The Path to Discipleship is also present in Joyce’s library. Of course, the fact that he had the book would not alone suffice to prove that he had actually read it. However, we may take Stanislaus’s word for this.76 He repeatedly stated that James had studied, among other authors, also the works by Besant. A mocking reference to her occurs in Finnegans Wake, where she is referred to as “the lover of liturgy.”77 James Joyce’s controversial fondness for the teachings of theosophy, a peculiarly Victorian aspect of what is usually regarded as a fin de siècle craving for the occult, is well described by a two-page note headed “Theosophy,” included in one of the very expensive notebooks recently acquired by the National Library of Ireland. Annie Besant, a remarkable woman born in London to Irish parents in 1847, a crucial year for Ireland, was to become one of Madame Blavatsky’s closest collaborators, and a good friend to W.B. Yeats.78 To discuss her idea of theosophy here might help us understand the reason why Joyce was at the same time interested in, and repelled by, the occult. He somehow nurtured a cultural distaste for its more backward-looking and reactionary aspects, he being some kind of a progressive thinker. Notwithstanding this, as we know he remained interested in the topic through the years. This is partly due to what could be described as the occult’s progressive strains. Such a seemingly oxymoric concept 75

Ibid., 84. See Introduction,” n. 47. 77 FW, 423. 78 Harper, Yeats’s Golden Dawn, 8. 76

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can be explained by casting a look at the ideological manifesto of the occult society par excellence in the Victorian period, Blavatsky’s and Besant’s Theosophical Society. A survey of some of its basic principles stated in Lucifer, the journal of the society, gives one the impression that the whole thing could have been a rather democratic and anti-hierarchical affair. It is stated, for instance, that the objects of the society are “to form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour,” and that “no person’s religious opinion are asked upon his joining.”79 Tolerance, albeit only towards the fellow-members, was in fact the only requirement for admission. An example of such “liberal” politics is provided by Annie Besant herself. Her biography would suggest that there might be forward-looking aspects even in what is traditionally considered to be a very obscurantist subject. Before joining the Theosophical Society, she had been a member of the executive committee of the Fabian Society. Her leftist ideas and commitment to socialist and feminist causes inspired her audacious involvement in the famous Match Girls’ Strike in 1888 in London. On that occasion, she wrote numerous articles exposing the poor conditions of young female labourers in the match factory of Bryant and May.80 Furthermore, as Kiberd records, she “had a lasting impact on both Irish and Indian cultures and was elected president of the Indian National Congress in 1917.”81 She was apparently very skilful in the “application of Irish methods of political agitations in the campaigns waged by Indian separatists.”82 To assess the combination of occultism and progressive tendencies in the dual nature of Besant’s thought is helpful in understanding why Joyce might have been fascinated by her character. However, other text-related reasons explain his interest in her teachings. Unlike Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell, Besant’s ideas do not become structural features of Ulysses. Her style is much more didactic than the Swede’s own mode of recounting his visions. Her narrative actually implies a complete commitment from the disciple wishing to become an initiate of the new spirituality proposed. Such an act of devotion is certainly hard to imagine as coming from Joyce. Instead, it is more plausible to think that Besant’s beliefs may have initially incited his irony and disenchantment. Despite this, upon reviewing Besant’s book, one is struck by many ideas that help illustrate how the occultist method in Ulysses works. Furthermore, the text discusses also some of the occult themes present in Joyce’s work. 79

See the scanned version of Lucifer: www.theosophical.org/intro/chap1/index.html. See Besant, Annie. “The ‘White Slavery’ of London Match Workers,” The Link, Issue 21, June 23, 1888 (reprint Northon Anthology of English Literature, Seventh Ed., vol. 2, 1715). 81 Kiberd, Inventing Ireland, 252. 82 Ibid., 252. 80

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The Path to Discipleship is a collection of four lectures delivered at the twentieth anniversary of the Theosophical Society at Aydar, Madras, towards the end of December 1895, the year in which Yeats wrote “The Body of Father Christian Rosencrux.” Their purpose is to lead the disciple from a kind of human disunited imperfection towards what she calls the “perfected ideal manifested in the beginning for the guidance of the race, and unrealized in evolution by the weakness and the childishness of men.”83 The reference to the unrealized ideal of the “guidance of the race” is vaguely reminiscent of the close of A Portrait, where Stephen Dedalus expresses his own intention to forge “the uncreated conscience of my race.”84 According to Bonnie Kime Scott, such a wish suggests that Joyce, at least in those youthful years, continued “to describe his mission as the spiritual reform of the Irish, a role in the tradition of the Dublin Theosophists.”85 The first discipline leading to the achievement of Besant’s “perfection” is what she calls Karma-Yoga. This is somehow relevant in the light of the manual of Yogi philosophy and oriental occultism Joyce had in Trieste. Many of the doctrines of theosophy are actually derived from Eastern philosophy and religion, especially Hinduism and Buddhism. Karma-Yoga is seen as a practice of training and regulating the lower instincts. According to Besant, it can be “accomplished by temperate self-control, by deliberate training of the lower nature.”86 This implies “care and moderation in all physical activities, thus gradually training and regulating and moderating,”87 and causes curious consequences in one’s own domestic life: Men were not fit for the hard road of celibacy, save here and there a few [...] By household life were men taught to control and moderate their sexual passions, not by crushing them out [...] not by single effort which tries to kill and to uproot in a moment, but by gradual training in moderation, and by practising self-denial of the home.88

In the context of Ulysses, all such precepts (moderating the lower nature, choosing the pure path in food, controlling the sexual passions) look like the opposite of the ways in which Stephen and Bloom regulate their own lives. The only one that, in an ironical and distorted interpretation, could be somehow linked to them is “practising self-denial of the home.” However, the reason why the two 83

Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 13-4. P, 276. 85 Scott, “Joyce and the Dublin Theosophists: ‘Vegetable Verse’ and Story,” 60. 86 Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 31. 87 Ibid., 31. 88 Ibid., 32. 84

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characters happen to follow unconsciously such a precept is certainly not any secret wish to moderate their sexual passions. As in Swedenborg, we are again encountering a semantic inversion of a spiritual teaching. However, considering that theosophy teaches one to detach oneself from a terrestrial plane to reach a superior state, it is possible that Bloom and Stephen involuntarily try to do something similar, provided that such a superior state is not imagined as a supernatural condition. Unfortunately, they both seem to fail in every attempt to purify themselves, or at least do not manage to reach the final stages of such a complicated process. In fact, their attempts to reconcile, to become united with their own opposites—explicit towards the end of the book especially in “Circe” and “Ithaca” (Ulysses 17)—is hardly to be considered an ultimate success. Quite to the contrary, the impression is that nothing really changed during the “story of a day” narrated in Ulysses. All possibilities of reconcilement, or separation, not only between them but also in relation to all aspects of external reality, are still open at the end of the book. Accordingly, the world of Ulysses is “real” and oneiric at the same time. That certain theosophical doctrines present in Besant’s teachings are perhaps implied in the unfolding of Ulysses seems to be proved by other occurrences. Take for instance the famous statement in “Cyclops” (Ulysses 12) according to which love is supposed to be “the opposite of hatred.”89 The idea looks very much like a precise principle expressed in Besant’s book: “Hatred ceases not by hatred at any time, hatred ceases by love [...] Forgive the injury; give love for hatred.”90 Despite the fact that in “Nausicaa” (Ulysses 13) Bloom seems to have forgiven the Citizen for his injurious remarks addressed to him,91 at the end of “Cyclops” we had been left wondering whether or not he was really at peace with him. We do not know if his final imaginary victory over the Citizen at the end of the episode—perhaps his only victory in the whole book—is an act of reconcilement, or of dismissal of the other character’s machismo. Ulysses is a circular book, in which the beginning and the end coincide. There is no sign of any serious psychological achievement other than the transient impressions that a normal day has left on the protagonists’ unconscious. Morevoer, the various episodes are full of correspondences pointing to the relative irrelevance of a fictional dimension based on the temporal succession of events. This is why a solution to the hatred/love dilemma may lie in another occasional sentence dropped as early as in “Sirens” (Ulysses 11). There Bloom silently gives voice to his own truly nihilistic feeling, stating that everything is just an external appearance: “Hate. Love. Those are names.”92 This seems to 89

U, 432. Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 33-4. 91 See U, 496. 92 U, 368.

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suggest that the answer to the evocative question, in “Scylla,” about what is hidden in a name, may be ultimately that “nothing is in a name,” for names are just external forms or, in Boehme’s words, signatures. Such a perspective might well be a useful context in which to explain the presence of theosophy in Joyce’s works. It would allow us to see how it plays a structural role in Ulysses, in spite of the fact that at times it becomes clearly the object of derision. The occult in general provides a secret solution to the overwhelming sense of frustration, incompleteness, and failure of the protagonists, at least the male ones. Everything in the book seems coloured by a grave and gloomy, yet ironical, void of any ultimate sense. It can be argued that the coincidentia oppositorum, on which much of the stylistic greatness of the book is based, shows at the end its real emptiness of meaning. What the protagonists fail to achieve is what they secretly talk about. Yet, as Gose explains, “Bruno’s coincidence of contraries informs both theme and the structure of Ulysses,”93 and cannot be dismissed so easily. Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction is here contradicted and refuted in favour of Bruno’s coincidentia.94 Gose refers to the idea of a parallel system of signification in the book, and alludes to the latent “presence” of the author within the text, as the occulted organizer of meanings: Structurally, Joyce seems to have built several of his episodes as mirrors, partly to show how one contrary reflects its opposites, but also to demonstrate that in his universe there is an order which reflects its principle of construction. It […] also contains its creator implicitly within it, as the organizer who plants clues which enable the wary reader to discover that conventional ideas of order are inadequate, that contraries do finally coincide, that all is thus mysteriously and immeasurably one.95

Most of the times in Ulysses, occult ideas simply occur and give the narration a touch of obscurity. It is the case of Bloom, who seems to be well acquainted with the theory of metempsychosis or reincarnation,96 as well as Stephen with that of the akasic records.97 Both tenets are fundamental to Besant’s theosophy, although they originally derive from oriental philosophy. In this regard, Craig Carver has an interesting suggestion to make: When Joyce and Stuart Gilbert were discussing the “Aeolus” episode, the subject of Akasic records cropped up. Joyce seemed inclined […] to give some credence 93

Gose, “The Coincidence of Contraries as Theme and Technique in Ulysses,” 213. See Newman, Transgressions of Reading, 93-5. 95 Gose, “The Coincidence of Contraries as Theme and Technique in Ulysses,” 230. 96 See U, 77. 97 See U, 182.

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to the theory held by certain occultists that essentially thoughts, like matter, are indestructible and persist in some “repository” out of space and out of time, yet accessible in certain privileged moments to the “subliminal self.”98

In Besant’s lectures, the same concept is treated as a dogma. As for Stephen’s akasic records, Besant’s work is clearly one of Joyce’s major sources. It gives us a most clear explanation of the idea: All history lies in the akasha; its records are there imperishable and indestructible; not one act of humanity that is past but is registered there, not one fact of human history that is not written there for the eyes that are able to see. The time will come when all history will be written from that, instead of in the ignorant way it is written now, and man when they want to know the past will look back into the imperishable records and use them for swifter development, utilizing past experience to promote a swifter growth of humanity.99

The “Akashic records” are thought to be kept by the so-called Recorders of Karma. Since in those records “are written down all the past thoughts and deeds of men,”100 it is rather fascinating to imagine that Joyce may have fulfilled his unconscious desire to become in his own mind one of those imaginary keepers of the Akashic records. Such an intention is perhaps evident in Finnegans Wake, where he attempts to write down the whole epic of humanity. As we have seen, this is also implied in Carver’s argument about Budgen’s recollection of a conversation with Joyce. On that occasion, the writer had stated that words had the power to evoke images from the universal mind. The scholar explains that in his last work Joyce attempts “to evoke all of human history out of the Great Memory by means of the words which he reshaped and used.”101 He adds: “Finnegans Wake is the ‘Brook of Life’ [...] revealing and encompassing the flow of all events through the deeply mysterious power of words.”102 The subtle impact of the theosophical concept of the Akasic Records on Joyce’s aesthetics—also in the light of Yeats’s amazingly similar doctrine of the Anima Mundi—seems beyond doubt. In fact, those records could also be considered as a metaphorical aspect of the consciousness, which, in his alternation of sleeping and waking states, manages to record unimaginable quantities of details, both superficial and profound, helpful in providing it with an aura of lost wholeness and totality:

98

Carver, “James Joyce ad the Theory of Magic,” 203-4. Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 143-4. 100 Ibid., 84. 101 Carver, “James Joyce and the Theory of Magic,” 208. 102 Ibid., 208.

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Chapter One All your past, all the experience that you have gained, is garnered in consciousness. All the knowledge that you have acquired is treasured in the consciousness that is really you. You put out at your birth a little part of yourself to gather new experience and to increase this consciousness still more.103

Such an idea reminds one of Jung’s collective unconscious. What seems relevant here is the impression of the interrelated oneness of the whole, to which both the akashic records and the consciousness, as made up of specific fragments apparently autonomous, seem to point. In fact, theosophy regards the birth of the universe, the Kosmos, properly as the fragmentation of a primordial unity parallel to the birth of the languages after Babel. Such a unity suffered a major fracture, which gave rise to the transition from perfection to imperfection: We realize that the one has become the many. Glancing backward into the primal darkness that shroudeth all, we can hear out of that darkness but a whisper—a whisper: “I will multiply.” That multiplication is the building of the universe, and of the individuals who live within it. In that will to multiply of the “One which is without a second,” we see the source of manifestation, we recognize the primal germ, as it were, of the Kosmos. And as we realize that beginning of the universe and as we see the complexity, the multiplicity, that result from the primal simplicity, from the primal unity, we realize also that in each of these phenomenal manifestations there must be imperfection.104

Accordingly, the task of the occultist in his attempt to walk back the way towards perfection, is to try and reach a kind of unity parallel to that which is perceived by glancing backward into the primal darkness. In this perspective, it is easy to see how the beginning and the end are ultimately one, their true essence being one of united perfection rather than fragmented imperfection. A similar idea is the basis of the occultist method governing the reception of texts like Ulysses. As a strategy, it helps the reader gain the hidden significance of chaotic pieces of knowledge, apparently lost and lying scattered around in the narrative. Those fragments sometimes give the impression of incoherence and casualness in a literary text. One should look backwards from seemingly accidental occurrences to their occulted significances, in order to rediscover a united message. Despite the many similarities with the occult discourse, such a message is by no means of a supernatural character in Joyce, although it is partly connected, by ways of inversion, with a spiritual dimension of man. For all the lack of spiritualistic ends, to interpret the text backwards is consistent with the way in which occultists see things and the world around them. This is implicit in Annie Besant’s question: “Do you notice how when dealing with things from 103 104

Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 59. Ibid., 6-7.

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the occult standpoint, they are reversed as compared with the standpoint of earth?”105 Something similar happens with other occult themes in Ulysses. Take for instance the concept of metempsychosis to which Molly refers in “Calypso” (Ulysses 4).106 In the light of Besant’s perspective, Molly’s ignorance of the significance of methempsychosis becomes ironically offensive to the initiated disciple, for there “are certain fundamental truths of life on which no longer possibility of doubt must remain to him,” among which we find “the great truth of Re-incarnation.”107 A few lines below in Besant’s tract, there occurs another interesting reference which is also relevant to the previous discussion on Joyce, Swedenborg, and the heavenly man. In fact, Besant believes that another point on which “no possibility of doubt must remain” is “the great truth of the existence of the divine Man.”108 Three more reflections on Annie Besant’s four lectures are worthy of discussion here. The first is most significant in showing how Joyce again uses a precisely theosophic terminology in order to subvert its original message. It can be argued that such a methodology would be characteristic also of his interpretation of Homer. In the occult context, after having inverted the original meaning, Joyce eventually substitutes it with an alternative significance. Take the case of the different stages of initiation in Besant’s book. Initiation is considered “the expansion of consciousness,” which provides one with “the key to knowledge” for it “opens up new vistas of knowledge and power,” and gives one “the key which unlocks the doors of nature.”109 The various stages of initiation are called portals: When a man is once initiated, what is done has to be done perfectly, no longer imperfectly; every accomplishment is completely achieved, every chain is definitely cast off. No longer the imperfect working out.110

In order to understand how Joyce mocks at the ways in which the passing of the various portals during initiation may lead to perfection, suffice it to quote a very well-known statement by Stephen Dedalus summarizing the dialectic of the contraries—perfection/imperfection—in a revolutionary artistic theory: “The man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of dis-

105

Ibid., 80. See U, 77. 107 Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 96-7. 108 Ibid., 97. 109 Ibid., 91. 110 Ibid., 92. 106

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covery.”111 In such a perspective, perfection does not point anymore to revelation. Instead, revelation is achieved only through a curious kind of commitment to making mistakes volitionally. In other words, this is to say that the fulfilment of human nature has to come to terms with the acceptance of man’s limitations and imperfections. We are again facing a powerful inversion of a theosophical doctrine. This, in fact, looks somehow like theosophy inverted. It is indeed a very effective way of occulting the occult. The two remaining ideas of Besant’s book that might have appealed to Joyce do not inform the developing of a personal artistic creed, but rather constitute somehow charming aspects of a possible alternative ideology. The first is of a very general nature, and may account for certain places of A Portrait like chapter three, which evoke sinister visions of hell. This shows also that Joyce’s early interest in theosophy could well have been a kind of surrogate for the religion abandoned. The context of reference is a passage from A Portrait that deals in fact with the horrors of hell, horrors which are disregarded by the theosophists as pure western nonsense. Besant’s opinion on the matter might have provided some solace to the scared souls of many young boys educated, like Joyce, to fear the damnation of hell in both physical and spiritual terms: You do not know the misery and the error that too many souls undergo when they pass from the body into the world which to them is unknown, and is crowded for them with all the imaginary terrors with which superstition dominated by pretended knowledge has peopled it: especially it is the case in the West where man talk about eternal hell, and tell people that after death there is no growth and no progress, that a sinful man is plunged into the lake of fire and brimstone, there to spend the countless ages of eternity without hope of salvation, without hope of escape. You cannot imagine what the effect of that is on souls passing into the other world through the gateway of death, and imagining that all this is, or even may be true, imagining that they may be victims of this horror that they have heard of from their ignorant teachers.112

Theosophy seems to be a way of avoiding the risk of eternal burning and damnation, for it eschews completely all beliefs in hell. This alone would explain why its teachings could have partly appealed to young students whose psyche was indeed touched by scary sermons and anathemas, while at religous schools. A final consideration concerns a poetical description by Besant of the state of man, when he manages to rise still higher from the last stage of his growth. It occurs towards the end of the book. Again, what is relevant here is not the actual spiritual benefits man can get by accepting to undergo all the stages of the complex process of initiation. On the contrary, what appears fascinating is the coin111 112

U, 243. Besant, The Path to Discipleship, 134.

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cidence, or at least the amazing similarity, between the aims of both the theosophical teachings of Besant and the art of Joyce, culminating perhaps in the discordia concors of Finnegans Wake. Besant preaches about a particular state of perfection, where thoughts, words, music, and colours blend in the final harmony of the whole: If in those far-off days there should be an orator and an audience, how different then would be the oratory and how different would be the effect on the people. Instead of hearing words, articulate sounds that reach the ears, and, and convey so imperfectly and inadequately but a small portion of the thought, they would see thought as it really is; though springing out before their eyes radiant in colour, beautiful in sound, exquisite in shape, and they would be spoken to as it were music, until the whole hall would be full of perfect music and perfect colour and perfect shapes.113

Such a description might well be also a kind of manifesto of the ultimate and perfect artistic creation, one where music and words are no more distant entities, and analogical thoughts become a means for the mutual, silent understanding of a united radiant plurality. This suits very well what Joyce’s achievements in the visionary sections of Ulysses, as well as the Wake, might finally be. It also shows clearly the relevance of the occult legacy in Joyce’s literary strategies. Another modern theosophist whose ideas are illuminating in the present discussion is Rudolph Steiner. It will be clear from what follows that he may well be one of the missing links accounting for the conflation of the more “theoretical” occultism into the “folkloric” realm of the unbelievable, the two aspects coexisting in Joyce’s fictional universe. The title of one of his works Joyce had in Trieste is Blut ist ein ganz besonderer saft, which means roughly “Blood is a very special fluid.” It is a conference paper given in Berlin in 1906, and its contents are mainly of a theosophical nature. It was translated into English in 1907.114 Before analysing it, we should take account of the fact that the word blood is a very important one in Ulysses. It occurs some 47 times, while in Dubliners, A Portrait and Finnegans Wake taken altogether we encounter it “only” 51 times. It is also the organ of a crucial episode, “Wandering Rocks.” The chapter itself, in its division into 18 sections plus a coda, is a mirror-like image of textual (and numerological?) wholeness in the somatic organization of Ulysses, a book made up of eighteen episodes. The term somatic is helpful here. In fact, it is rather interesting to note that in Steiner’s anthroposophy blood mirrors the very image of 113

Ibid., 146. All quotations from Steiner’s essay are from the English translation of the conference paper’s revised text. 114

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the human body, for a man’s blood is thought to be “a true double ever bearing him company, from which he draws new strength, and to which he gives all that he can no longer use.”115 Furthermore, Steiner believes that blood is a sort of repository of the memory of the race: A person is born of a connection, a race, a tribe, a line of ancestors, and what these ancestors have bequeathed to him is expressed in blood [...] that is to say, his forbears are active in his blood, and at such a time he dimly takes part in their remote life.116

This is consistent with a powerful use of the word blood in “Proteus.” In the third episode, the very idea of a blood-connection with the past generations is hinted at in one of Stephen’s reflections, which reminds us of what has been perhaps the darkest hour in modern Irish history, the great famine: “Famine, plague and slaughters. Their blood is in me.”117 The tone of Steiner’s paper is very didactic. Its purpose is to provide the non-adept with a general outlook on anthroposophy, i.e. the “science of the spirit.” Such a discipline is in many respects very similar to Blavatsky/Besant’s theosophy, i.e. “divine wisdom.” Accordingly, there is no need to analyse it in detail here, especially after having briefly discussed Besant’s precepts. Both doctrines share a pseudo-scientific approach to their subject-matter. Only, in Steiner’s case, alongside the despicable elitish tones of superiority of the discussion, from time to time we encounter also a somewhat ironical disposition. This is very unusual for occultists, who are not famous on the whole for their lively sense of humour. Steiner’s reasoning on occasions originates funny remarks, like the following, concerning the scepticism of the “contemporary judges” of Antroposophy: The fault does not always consist in the lack of an idea behind the words, when the latter convey nothing to a person. Indeed, we may here adopt, with a slight alteration, a remark of the witty Lichtenberg, who said: “If a head and a book come into collision and the resulting sound is a hollow one, the fault need not necessarily be that of the book!”118

Such an ironical comment would not persuade one, of course, that one’s own intellect may be faulty if it does not grasp at once things that are not logically intelligible. This is proved by Dr. Steiner’s theories which are often extravagant, 115

Steiner, Occult Significance of Blood, 15. Ibid., 34-5. 117 U, 56. 118 Steiner, Occult Significance of Blood, 17. 116

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to say the least. In fact, some of his theosophical conclusions are rather odd, like for instance those on the possible link between soul and body through blood, or on the historical split within the race—within a pure-blood race—due to the end of consanguineous weddings. In spite of their pretension of scientificity, they never demand proof or verification, and this is why they often appear very sketchy and rather approximate, if not utterly foolish. An example of Steiner’s vaguely rationalistic outlook is the occasion where he ventures into an apparently scientific discussion of the various processes through which blood transforms and renovates itself. Such a renovation implies the need for blood to take in the oxygen and other nutritive substances from the world outside the body. The argument eventually leads to some picturesque deductions. Blood appears to be the medium through which man faces external reality as an independent being, in that it is the receptacle of external impulses and images, which become internal figures in the brain. However, this may happen only if the independence of the being of man has really been achieved. Then, man becomes creative and makes “it possible for the Ego, the individual Will, to come to life.”119 Alas, whenever such a process has not taken place yet, a being “would not be able to say ‘I,’ ”120 due to the fact that the principle for the development of the Ego lies nowhere else than in the blood. Now, no wonder that such a cogitation, when colliding with the mind, may eventually produce some sort of a hollow sound. The same vagaries of reasoning occur whenever Steiner touches on the evolution of the races of mankind, and on the transition from a civilization characterized by a most ancient wisdom to the birth of logical thought and intellect. These are just examples showing the reasons why to believe in what the occult science talks about without being tempted to make a mockery of it, is a very difficult task for the sceptic. Despite this, some of Steiner’s ideas, just like some of Besant’s doctrines, seem to have many things in common with Jung’s psychology. In this respect, they may be relevant also in trying to understand the textual use Joyce makes of the occult, in relation to the attempt to recreate textually a mental universe. It is the case of what Steiner calls “the spiritual archetype, the original Spiritual Beings, whence all things manifest have proceeded.”121 It is a necessary condition for the understanding of the sensible world. An internal image of such a higher essence is mirrored in the spiritual “background” of blood.122 This is clearly reminiscent of the hermetic assumption “as above, so below” which informs also the textual development of some of Joyce’s aesthetic intuitions. It is in fact also the basic principle of the science of the spirit:

119

Ibid., 32. Ibid., 32. 121 Ibid., 12. 122 Ibid., 12. 120

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Thus the whole cosmos lives in the form of a crystal. In the same way the whole cosmos is expressed in the living substance of a single being. The fluids coursing through a being are, at the same time, a little world, and a counterpart of the great world. And when substance has become capable of sensation, what then dwells in the sensations of the most elementary creatures? Such sensations mirror the cosmic laws, so that each separate living creature perceives within itself microcosmically the entire macrocosm. The sentient life of an elementary creature is thus an image of the life of the universe, just as the crystal is an image of its form.123

Blood as the memory of the past generations, as well as the spiritual archetype reflected in blood, are concepts somehow contiguous to some of those Jung used in his studies on the psychology of the unconscious. One passage in particular from Steiner’s paper shows an amazing resemblance to Jung’s researches in the occult field. While the psychologist often uses hypnotism when dealing with cases that are allegedly occult, he also takes into account somnambulism and clairvoyance. They are all considered states of diminished consciousness, during which the unconscious takes over and produces the strange phenomena we label occult. Judging by its external effects, it is interesting to note how Dr. Steiner analyses those states from a similar perspective. He takes account of the oneiric shape of the great cosmic law in a state of reduced consciousness in the following terms: When […] man temporarily suppresses his higher consciousness, when he is in a hypnotic state, or one of somnambulism, or when he is atavistically clairvoyant, then he descends to a far deeper consciousness, one wherein he becomes dreamily cognizant of the great cosmic laws, but nevertheless perceives them much more clearly than the most vivid dreams of ordinary sleep.124

In reading this, one is reminded of a passage in “Ithaca” where such a truth is inverted and parodied by Joyce. In Ulysses, hypnotic and somnambulistic states do not help peceive any of the comsic laws. They just produce confusion and odd behaviour: From which (if any) of these mental or physical disorders was he not totally immune? From Hypnotic suggestion: once, waking, he had not recognised his sleeping apartment […] From somnambulism: once, sleeping, his body had risen, crouched and crawled in the direction of a heatless fire and, having attained its destination, there, curled, unheated, in night attire had lain, sleeping.125

123

Ibid., 26. Ibid., 34. 125 U, 811. 124

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Returning to Steiner’s extravagant theories, other aspects of his teachings are relevant in relation to Joyce. He believes, for instance, that blood is the repository of all perceptions, sensations, and memories coming from the contact with the external world as well as from the legacy of the past generations. In such a light, blood itself becomes a kind of substitute for the unconscious, the revelation of its secrets being the mission of the occultist: At the present time man in his waking-life perceives external things through the agency of his senses and forms ideas about them. These ideas about the external world work on his blood. Everything, therefore, of which he has been the recipient as the result of sense-experience, lives and is active in his blood: his memory is stored with these experiences of his senses. Yet, on the other hand, the man of to-day is no longer conscious of what he possesses in his inward bodily life by inheritance from his ancestors. He knows naught concerning the forms of his inner organs; but in earlier times this was otherwise.126

We could draw a line from this last statement to the previous discussion on Swedenborg’s ideas on the secrets of inner organs, for it seems that the general approach to the question, for the Swede as well as for Steiner, is somehow similar. Correspondences regulate the relationship between the internal and the external, as well as between the world above and the world below. The occult is properly the hidden, and will only be brought to the surface through interpretations relying on the right analogies. A further relevant aspect of the relationship between Joyce and Steiner has to do with the folkloric implications of the anthroposopher’s theories about blood. Actually, one of the concerns of the present analysis of Ulysses is to spot the subliminal and extremely subtle occurrences of the theme of vampirism in various forms in the text. Interestingly, such a theme is almost always presented as strictly linked to a set of frequent half-blasphemous half-serious references to hilarious devils, daemonic beasts, and fake states of possession, all pointing to the existence of a sort of bland and joking Satanism in the book. They allow us to describe Joyce’s work not only in terms of occult or hidden writing, but also as an example of fantastic literature. The correspondence between the devilish and the vampiric attitudes of the characters, as well as their attempts to “possess” other people, are manifest especially in “Aeolus” and “Circe.” What could have been the possible source of such an odd connection between devils and vampires? The link between vampirism and a general idea of evil is obvious. However, theosophists and occultists are often keen in declaring the relative independence 126

Steiner, Occult Sgnificance of Blood, 35-6.

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of legends and lore from their own grounds of research. In fact, occultists, while acknowledging the existence of evil spirits, often consider folkloric accounts about supernatural beings as something that has little to do with their own investigations. Despite this, because Joyce was not an occultist at all but just someone interested in matters occult, he refers in his books to both theosophy and supernatural (devilish and vampiric) phenomena without bothering too much to make clear-cut distinctions. It could be argued that such a connection is directly derived from Dr. Steiner’s remote conference paper on the occult meaning of blood. Steiner’s states clearly, at the very beginning of the essay, that he is going to talk about the true significance of blood in relation to the rapport between soul and body. He is going to do so by starting from a precise reference to the power of blood in terms of possession. The title itself of the paper draws inspiration from Goethe’s Faust. It is what Mephistopheles actually says to Faust when he proposes to him to subscribe to the blood pact. That Goethe considers blood a “special fluid” points to two directions: the previously-discussed theosophical option, and the occult power of blood: The only reasonable explanation that can be given […] is that to the devil, blood was something special, and that it was not at all a matter of indifference to him whether the deed was signed in ordinary neutral ink, or in blood.127

The power of blood is strictly connected with its occult meaning, that is, the link with the past generations, history, race, and myth. Ultimately, it connects man with the whole imagination of mankind. Blood is seen as an imperishable substance. Like Akasha, it is the receptacle of the true sense of the diachronic development of the culture of humanity. This is why the devil wishes to take possession of it: Whatever power it is that wishes to obtain the mastery over a man, that power must work upon him in such a way that the working is expressed in his blood. If, therefore, an evil power would influence a man, it must be able to influence his blood. This is the deep and spiritual meaning of the quotation from Faust. This is why the representative of the evil principle says: “Sign with thy blood thy name to the pact. If once I have thy name written in thy blood, then I can hold thee by that which above all sways a man; then shall I have drawn thee over myself.” For whoever has mastery over the blood is master of the man himself, or of the man's ego.128

127 128

Ibid., 5. Ibid., 40-1.

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The exposition could not have been clearer. Despite the fact that Steiner never refers to any sort of vampire, it is easy to see that the medium through which he believes it is possible to possess man, is apparently the same for both the devil and the vampire. Here, to take into account Steiner’s doctrines, as well as Swedenborg’s and Besant’s, is an attempt to give an ultimate answer to the question of Joyce’s commitment to the occult. The Irish writer is not willing to put his art into the hands of occultists of any kind. However, his fascination for the imaginative potentialities of the occult is sincere. His use of occult themes and ideas derives from his interest in the dynamics of the mind, the oneiric, the unconscious, and the obscure. This will become clearer when one looks at his response to the occult through the lens of Jung’s psychology.

The Unconscious in Joyce’s text Jung’s approach to the occult concerns mainly the representation of the hidden activities of the mind. Such a perspective partly resembles Joyce’s reaction to the subject and the use he makes of occult themes and strategies in his works. However, the debate on the influence of the Swiss on Joyce is still open, and lends itself to opposite positions and opinions.129 To look at their mutual relationship from an occult standpoint highlights some curious, perhaps illuminating, interpretations of the whole issue. Jung’s concern with the investigation of allegedly occult phenomena is well known. It is first documented by his own extensive researches and writings on the topic.130 His own position seems to have shifted slightly during his long career, from the early dismissal of the possibility of exploring metaphysical realms through a psychological analysis, to the later silent admission, often perceivable between the lines, that some sort of “extra-human” power may actually be behind certain manifestations of the psyche. However, his interest in the subject is always of a scientific character. He tends to consider the occult from a phenomenological point of view. He explains as much in a foreword to Phénomènes occultes, written in 1939: The point of view I have adopted is that of modern empirical psychology and the scientific method [...] Psychology cannot establish any metaphysical “truths,” nor does it try to. It is concerned solely with the phenomenology of the psyche.131 129

See next chapter, nn. 16-9. An attempt to collect some of Jung’s most interesting contributions to the debate is the cited volume Psychology and the Occult, from which, for the sake of simplicity, all quotations from Jung’s works in this chapter are taken. 131 Ibid., 3. 130

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This is true also in relation to some of the traditions forming the eclectic occult category, like alchemy for example. Newman suggests that “the belief in the unity of matter and spirit and the correspondence between the physical and spiritual planes”132 are the very basis of alchemical thought. This would allow one to assume that a Jungian outlook might be helpful also in analysing the occult in Joyce’s texts. In fact, alchemy is for Jung “a projection onto matter of archetypes and processes of the collective unconscious.”133 Such an approach is utterly distant from the pseudo-scientific explanations of the so-called occult scientists. As Jung himself declares, “that many spiritualists brag about their ‘science’ and ‘scientific knowledge’ is, of course, irritating nonsense.”134 However, he is always very accurate in acknowledging when supposed serious scientists dealing with occult phenomena firmly state their belief in the material existence of imponderable events. This is the case with a famous English physicist, William Crookes, who in his Quarterly Journal of Science delivered his observations on the phenomenon of the levitation of human beings in 1874. In Jung’s reaction to the exposition of Crookes’ accounts, we find a relatively illuminating assessment of his own oscillation between scepticism and belief: For a variety of reasons it is not possible to criticize Crookes’s powers of apprehension and retention during those years from the psychiatric point of view. We only know that at that time Crookes was not manifestly insane. Crookes and his observations must remain for the present an unsolved enigma [...] How does a thinking person, who has shown his sober-mindedness and gift for scientific observation to good advantage in other fields, come to assert that something inconceivable is a reality?135

Jung’s conclusions on occult phenomena, after his investigations of the experiments and séances conducted by various mediums, are of a scientific nature. He states that “the results are of purely psychological interest,” and that everything which can “be considered a scientifically established fact belongs to the domain of the mental and cerebral processes.”136 However, on other occasions he is more willing to allow the existence of some immaterial power deriving from the hidden faculties of the human brain. Such an attitude informs Jung’s response to the occult, as is clear in the foreword to Fanny Moser’s book on Ghosts—Spuk: irrglaube oder wahrglaube 132

Newman, “Transformatio Coniunctionis: Alchemy in Ulysses,” 171. Ibid., 171. 134 Jung, Psychology and the Occult, 107. 135 Ibid., 100. 136 See ibid., 100-1. 133

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(1950)—in which he narrates his experiences in a hunted cottage he had to share for some weeks with an annoying and very nasty ghost.137 The short contribution points to Jung’s gradual shift towards the persuasion that “parapsychology would do well to take account of the modern psychology of the unconscious.”138 However, some of Jung’s most important theories have indeed many things in common with the doctrines of the theosophists, although, they always concern the scientific observation of cerebral processes, rather than the steps towards perfection. For instance, Jung’s idea of the psyche as a divided unity is parallel to the primordial fragmented unity of the soul according to the theosophists: “the psyche is not an indivisible unity but a divisible and more or less divided whole.”139 He adds that although “the separate parts are connected with one another, they are relatively independent.”140 It could be argued that something similar happens with Jung’s theorization of the collective unconscious, which shows amazing similarities with both Besant’s doctrine of Akasha, and Steiner’s occult meaning of blood: The other part of the unconscious is what I call the impersonal or collective unconscious. As the name indicates, its contents are not personal but collective; that is, they do not belong to one individual alone but to a whole group of individuals, and generally to a whole nation, or even to the whole of mankind. These contents are not acquired during the individual’s lifetime but are products of innate forms and instincts. Although the child possesses no inborn ideas, it nevertheless has a highly developed brain which functions in a quite definite way. This brain is inherited from its ancestors; it is the deposit of the psychic functioning of the whole human race.141

Such an outlook agrees with the principle that the occult pertains mainly to dynamics of the mind. Accordingly, apparitions of spirits or other psychic phenomena are nothing but representations of the unconscious in determinate circumstances. Only in this light can they become the object of serious scientific research. This is Jung’s conclusion in “Psychology and spiritualism”: Even spirits appear to be psychic phenomena whose origins lie in the unconscious. At all events, the “Invisibles” who are the source of information in this book are shadowy personifications of unconscious contents, conforming to the

137

Ibid., 146-51. Ibid., 152. 139 Ibid., 114. 140 Ibid., 114. 141 Ibid., 117. 138

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This clashes evidently with the ideas of the occultists about apparitions. As Carver explains, such “phenomena, as Joyce probably knew, can be explained in terms of the Great Memory.”143 Although it is possible to approach them from an occult standpoint, one would probably be wrong in thinking that Joyce genuinely uses them in such a context. A more plausible interpretation would be that some sort of continuity exists between the occult and the oneiric. An affinity between dreams and spirits is shared by Jung, and seems to support the need for a reconsideration of the value of dreams, apparitions, and visions in Joyce. But what are the spirits that appear in Ulysses? At what hours and in what circumstances do they become manifest? Do they turn into ghostly presences that haunt the existences of other characters? These are some of the questions we need to answer, in an analysis of the occult phenomena in Joyce’s great work. The two major spirits with a precisely haunting role in the text are Lipoti Virag and Stephen’s dead mother. Although they are present through allusions in various chapters, they become actual hallucinatory personifications only in “Circe.” They both materialize and come to haunt the imaginations and memories of their dear relatives late at night, between 12pm and 1am, when, at least with regards to Stephen, the influence of a massive consumption of alcohol has dulled the faculties of the conscious side of the psyche. This partly explains why everything seems to happen as if in a hallucinated dream in “Circe.” “Hallucination” is the technique of the fifteenth episode according to Gorman. Jung often links vision states similar to those occurring in “Circe” to attacks of hysteria. Take for instance the case of “Miss E., aged 40, single, book-keeper in a large business.”144 According to Jung, she suffered from hallucinations featuring dead people. In various occasions she also saw and heard children buried alive in a cemetery, alongside quite a number of skeletons. The following accounts are interesting descriptions of the events that happened before and after the cemetery experiences, which show a certain affinity with some of the incidents of “Circe”: The next night, between twelve and one o’clock—the earlier attacks usually happened about this time—she was plagued by the dead for about ten minutes. She sat up in bed, stared into a corner of the room, and said: “Now they’re coming, but they are not all here yet. Come along, the room’s big enough, there’s room for all. When they’re all there I’ll come too.” Then she lay down, with the words: 142

Ibid., 138. Carver, “James Joyce ad the Theory of Magic,” 211. 144 Jung, Psychology and the Occult, 8. 143

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“Now they’re all there,” and fell asleep. In the morning she had not the slightest recollection of any of these attacks. Very short attacks occurred again on the nights of October 4, 6, 9, 13 and 15, all between twelve and one o’clock.145

Something similar happened to another patient, a certain “girl of 17, also a severe hysteric,” who “in her attacks saw the corpse of her dead mother approaching her, as if to draw her to itself.”146 In explaining his own opinion about the nature of such hallucinations,147 Jung returns to the case of Miss E. and her visions of children buried alive, focusing on some of the events that prompted the hallucinatory experiences. He specified particularly that “the walk in the cemetery induced the vision of the skeletons,” whereas “the hallucination of children buried alive, whose voices the patient heard at night”148 were evoked by the meeting with the three boys. In fact, Miss E. had gone “to the cemetery in a somnanbulistic condition, which on this occasion was particularly intense in consequence of having taken alcohol.”149 All this very much resembles what happens in Ulysses. The walk in the cemetery which occurs in “Hades” is what makes Bloom think of his suicidal father. It also summons the visit of his grandfather Lipoti Virag, between twelve and one o’clock, in “Circe.” On the other hand, together with other plausible explanations, alcohol partly accounts for the apparition of Stephen’s dead mother at the same hour of the night, an apparition only her drunken son is capable of seeing. We should also consider that one of the symbols of “Hades,” a chapter which evokes “Circe” in several places, is “the unconscious,” and that for Jung the apparitions of spirits are nothing but psychic manifestations of the power of the unconscious. In general, Jung discusses partly the haunting nature of the apparitions of dead parents in a paper published in 1920, stating that “many patients felt persecuted by their parents long after they are dead.”150 In short, he is quite convinced that this is the result of mental illness. The same cannot be said, of course, in relation to the apparitions in “Circe.” However, what is interesting here is the affinity between those “textual” apparitions and some of Jung’s cases concerning hallucinations and allegedly supernatural phenomena. Certain aspects of the occult narrative of Ulysses are amazingly compatible with Jung’s “paranormal” 145

Ibid., 10. Italics mine. Ibid., 12. Italics mine. 147 Hallucinations are to be intended here as automatic constructions of complicated visionary scenes, induced by external impressions often occurring during states of diminished consciousness like somnambulism, a partial manifestation of severe hysteria. 148 Jung, Psychology and the Occult, 16. Italics mine. 149 Ibid., 16. Italics mine. 150 Ibid., 111. 146

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cases. Such similarities point again to the consideration of the occult as something contiguous with the unconscious, whose obscure faculties react to external empirical stimuli in seemingly imponderable ways. Jung is in fact fairly persuaded that ghosts and similar phenomena “have to do with psychic facts of which our academic wisdom refuses to take cognizance, although they appear clearly enough in our dreams.”151 Accordingly, an analogous perspective is certainly helpful not only in acknowledging the massive presence of occult (and fantastic) contents in Ulysses, but also in showing that the tension towards the occultum is a structural factor in Joyce’s “vision” of his own art. As we will see shortly, this is clear in an analysis of Ulysses from an occult standpoint. What follows is a new reading of the book, which turns Joyce’s masterpiece, so to speak, literally upside down. In fact, as Besant teaches us, the occult allows one to proceed backwards from the effects to their very causes. One of the aims of the following investigation is therefore to prove how Ulysses is a book that can be read backwards. In a way, this renders it even more “provisional” and open than many are ready to admit. In such a context, informed by a peculiar fondness for overturnings and inversions, it is useful to take a look now at the cemetery chapter. The episode represents, in strictly spatial terms, a metaphor for the ultimate end of man’s terrestrial life. Thus, like all proper ends, it speaks subliminally also of new latent beginnings, which await to be re-discovered by the adept-reader.

151

Ibid., 123.

CHAPTER TWO HADES

“Hades” is a useful starting point in an analysis of the occult textuality of Ulysses, for it anticipates oneirically some of the later narrative developments of “Circe,” the final stage of the present journey.1 The two episodes are in fact connected. As Adams points out, despite the fact that “Hades” is supposed to represent an imaginary descent into a pagan version of hell, the actual descensus Averni in Joyce’s book is pictured in “Circe,” where we witness a “really haunting vision of Bloom’s psychic underworld, compared with which “Hades” [...] is essentially a daylight chapter.”2 “Hades” is also interesting due to its death-related implications. It might be argued that Ulysses itself could be read somehow as a kind of distorted book of the dead. Knowles suggests that “all Ulysses speaks of exhumation,”3 and that “bringing back the dead is Joyce’s obsession.”4 Some of the characters, especially the dead ones featuring in the living external world of the cemetery episode, will remain hidden as parts of a textual unconscious in many of the subsequent daylight chapters. Most of them will materialize only in “Circe” as visionary projections of the imagination. This is particularly true in the case of Bloom’s dead son. Bloom thinks first of him in “Hades”: “If little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit.”5 Then, towards the end of “Circe,” in one of the final stage-directions, the boy appears as a ghost, just as Bloom had previously imagined him: “a figure appears slowly, a fairy boy of eleven […] dressed in an Eton suit.”6

1

The selection and chronology of the episodes included in the present study may sound a little eccentric. In relation to the first six, except for “Proteus” and “Circe,” rather than the actual narrative of Ulysses the analysis follows the order in which the corresponding organs of heaven are listed in Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell . 2 Adams, “Hades,” 92. 3 Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 54. 4 Ibid., 57. 5 U, 110. 6 U, 702.

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Rudy is not the only dead character referred to in “Hades” who appears later in the day in “Circe.” The same applies to Stephen’s dead mother, evoked in the memories of Simon Dedalus during the walk in the cemetery.7 This happens also with Patrick Dignam, the main hidden protagonist of the episode, he being the proprietor of the body that has to be buried. In “Circe” his ghost haunts the scene in the shape of a daemonic dog.8 The other famous apparition of the fifteenth episode, Bloom’s grandfather Lipoti Virag, is also indirectly “summoned” in “Hades” by Bloom’s frequent thoughts related to his suicidal father. This happens, for instance, after Mr Power’s remarks about suicides:9 “They have no mercy on that here […] Refuse Christian burial. They used to drive a stake of wood through his heart in the grave.”10 A final allusion to the questionable macabre practice of piercing a dead man’s heart, which has perhaps also vampiric implications, occurs towards the end of “Hades,” during Bloom’s silent considerations about the necessity of making sure that the supposed departed won’t be buried alive.11 In the chapter we also encounter some interesting references to apparitions of ghosts. The following is peculiarly relevant if we bear in mind the night-hour when the spirits haunting Jung’s patient previously discussed, used to pay their ghastly visit to his young patient: “Have you ever seen a ghost? Well, I have. It was pitchdark night. The clock was on the stroke of twelve.”12 We must not forget that apparitions of spirits and ghosts at the turn of midnight are also topoi of gothic and fantastic literature. An instance of this is a book more connected with Joyce’s texts than has been suggested by critics, Bram Stoker’s Dracula. As Stoker informs us, in Transylvania, on a particular day of the year, the eve of St. George’s day, according to popular lore, “when the clock strikes midnight, all the evil things in the world will have full sway.”13 Such phenomena linked to folklore interested also Jung. An interpretation of their textual occurrence through the psychology of the unconscious might prove useful here. In one of the last paragraphs of the episode we encounter what seems to be a manifesto of the haunting intentions of some unidentified ghost: “I will appear to you after death. You will see my ghost after death. My ghost will haunt you after death.”14

7

See U, 132. See U, 597. 9 See U, 120. See also 112. 10 U, 120. 11 U, 140-1. See also below, n. 21. 12 U, 136. 13 Bram Stoker, Dracula, 6. 14 U, 146. 8

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The Land of the Dead Paddy Dignam’s funeral, and therefore the call to the cemetery, both imply the idea of the living visiting the dead. In the logic of the coincidence of the contraries so dear to Joyce through the theories of Giordano Bruno and Nicholas of Cusa, this will call forth, later on in the book, its very contrary, that is the dead visiting the living, as happens in the dreams of “Circe.” Most of the events of the fifteenth episode seem to occur in an unconscious dimension. “The unconscious” is also one of the symbols of “Hades” according to the Linati schema. Jung argues that the soul establishes the relationship to the unconscious, which is “also a relationship to the collectivity of the dead; for the unconscious corresponds to the mythic land of the dead, the land of the ancestors.”15 Although Joyce was famously sceptical of psychology and psychoanalysis, a connection between his writings and the studies of people like Jung or Freud might exist as well. Many scholars have produced illuminating criticism that clarifies such a problematic relationship. Sheldon Brivic argues that Joyce, in his own ways, might have admired some of the theories formulated by Jung.16 Gillespie, in his study of Joyce’s sources, states that “despite the alleged antagonism to Freud and Jung, Joyce owned several of their works.”17 Newman contends that Joyce must have read Jung’s Psychology of the Unconscious, and reminds us of the similarities between the 1916 English translation of the work and the “psychological method” of Ulysses. He thinks that such affinities deserve further attention, especially regarding the emphasis that Jung gives in this version to the son’s battle for deliverance from the mother, as well as its links with the climatic hallucinatory appearance of Stephen’s mother in “Circe.”18 Atherton suggests that “Joyce’s dislike of Jung and Freud did not prevent him from using their discoveries,” and yet he doubts “if he accepted Jung’s theory of collective unconscious.”19 In the present perspective, the relevance of Jung’s notion of collective unconscious in Ulysses lies in its connection with some very similar occult doctrines discussed in the previous chapter. The unconscious, like the theosophists’ Akasha and Steiner’s occult meaning of blood, is not only the receptacle, the memory, of all the impulses of the history of humanity. It is also, ironically, a medium of communication with the world of the dead, and particularly with one’s own ancestors. 15

Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 183. See Brivic, “The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake,” 23-4. 17 Gillespie, Inverted Volumes Improperly Arranged, 9. 18 See Newman, “ ‘Transformatio Coniunctionis’: Alchemy in Ulysses,” 169. 19 Atherton, The Books at the Wake, 39.

16

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Such a relationship between the living and the dead has also farcical implications. As Kimberly J. Devlin points out, “Hades” reminds us “that the world of the living is as ephemeral as Homer’s parade of visible shades.”20 The living correspond to the dead, just as death itself is presented somehow as parallel to life. We encounter a similar idea in the evocative conclusion of the short story “The Dead,” where Joyce portrays oneirically a final communion between the living and the departed. In the sixth episode of Ulysses, the idea of the possible means for a communication between the living and the dead is hidden behind some mocking references connected with the preoccupations about the people buried alive: “They ought to have some law to pierce the heart and make sure or an electric clock or a telephone in the coffin.”21 The reference to the telephone is a clear link to the passage in “Proteus” where the navelcord suggests to Stephen the idea of a communication with Eden by phone.22 In fact, also in “Hades” we find an allusion to the navelcord. There it becomes the symbol of a connection with the underworld, it being compared to the gravedigger’s rope.23 On the other hand, in the unfolding of the chapter we find also an ironical allusion to a possible communication among the dead themselves: “Wonder does the news go about whenever a fresh one is let down. Underground communication […] Got wind of Dignam.”24 A possible communication within the community of the dead, besides pertaining to the faculties of the unconscious and being symbolized by images of various cords (telephonic cords, navelcord, coffinband), points also to a relationship between some visible realm and an unknown country of the mind. Another reference in the symbol category of the Linati schema seems to point to this very idea: “l’ignoto,” meaning literally “the unknown.” In the English version of the schema printed at the end of Ellmann’s Ulysses on the Liffey, an erroneous translation occurs. While in Italian “l’ignoto” is intended as a substantive, the English translation proposes to take it for an adjective. Accordingly, in English it becomes “the unknown man,” which would lead the reader think of a particular character in the episode. Thus, it would be easy to think of a reference to the Man in the Macintosh. Such a wrong identification actually occurs, for instance, in the cited paper on “Hades,” otherwise illuminating, by Adams.25 On the contrary, “the unknown” refers to some hidden space/time relationship. This could be, for instance, the unknown future pre20

Devlin, “Visible Shades and Shades of Visibility,” 85. U, 140-1. See above, n. 11. 22 See U, 46. 23 See U, 142. 24 U, 145. 25 See Adams, “Hades,” 102. 21

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dicted by Tyresias in the descent to Hades in the Odyssey. It could even stand for a connection with another symbol in the schema, “the unconscious,” which would encourage the reader to look for an interpretation of its occurrence in psychological terms. Such a love for misunderstandings and double-patterns is characteristic of Joyce’s texts, and is consistent with his own wish to play with inversions as a literary device.

Poetics of Inversion In the somatic scheme of Ulysses the organ assigned to “Hades” is “heart.” Many of the religious connotations of the word in the chapter let us imagine that the heart of Ulysses may be ultimately a suffering and broken one, like Christ’s heart for example. However, in relation to “sacro cuore,” i.e. “sacred heart,” which is also one of the symbols in Linati, as Adams points out, “it’s not at all easy to calculate the spirit behind this very potent symbol.”26 By taking into account Swedenborg’s notion of the heart of heaven, we may eventually cast some light on the calculation of the hidden meaning of the heart of “Hades.” In Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell we read that “the celestial kingdom corresponds to the heart,” and that “the celestial kingdom is the seat of heaven’s intention, where the ‘good’ of love reigns.”27 Therefore, from the mystic’s interpretation of the Bible, we apprehend that in the Word heart indicates will and good of love. Instead, “the unconscious,” one of the most important symbols of “Hades,” can hardly be the proper “seat of man’s intention.” Therefore it could be argued that Joyce, being temperamentally predisposed to inversion by nature (“non serviam”), is here attempting to establish a sort of inverted, and possibly parodied, relationship between his “somatic” work of art and the Swede’s representation of the human body of heaven. As we will see, such a semantic overturn of the original spiritual significances of the organs is implied in the organization of many among the episodes of Ulysses which have a correspondence with the body. The game Joyce is playing in building up the Ulysses schematas according to an episode/organ relationship is even more comprehensive than this. It is as if the aim of the schematas was partly to mislead rather than help the reader of Ulysses understand the textual obscurity of the book. In this context, the semantic overturn functions as a device that inevitably produces confusion and even hilarity in the expectations of those readers equipped with some knowledge of the Swede’s doctrines. This does not work only in relation to Swedenborg’s spiritual teachings. Taking into account, for instance, again the simbolo category, the first inversion of meanings concerns 26 27

Ibid.,106. Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 82-3.

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Homer’s Ulysses. In fact, in Homer’s work Ulysses goes down to Hades to look for Tyresias the foreseer. He wishes to know something about the future obstacles to his return home. Instead, in Linati we find “il passato,” meaning “the past.” This is another powerful inversion, for the episode is actually crowded with remembrances and memories of the past, and all hints at the future dimension are dropped only in a subliminal and unconscious way. Something similar happens with the above-cited references to the haunting ghosts appearing later in “Circe.” Accordingly, the possibility of a system of inversions being a structuring factor of the episode seems to point again to the coincidentia oppositorum—the balance of the opposites merging into a final communion—as the ultimate sense and solution of the contraries evoked in the text. In other words, we are induced to witness the ever-present transition “from one extreme to the other,”28 until finally “both ends meet.”29 However, the truthfulness of such an assumption is yet to be verified, and the reader is challenged to test it against the actual unfolding of the book, until a possible further inversion may occur again. The future/past example is only one of the many instances suggesting that a technique based on the inverting device may work as a hidden force behind the surface of the chapter, and more generally of Ulysses. One wonders whether the Swedish mystic’s teachings hide some other hints to opposite analogies in the text. From the quotation above, we grasp that for Swedenborg the organ heart is the symbol of “good of love,” and is therefore an image of mystical joy. On the contrary, almost all the references in the schematas concerning the sixth episode seem to provide the idea of a very painful earthly heart suffering from a serious breakdown. The heart of Ulysses is as broken as the heart of suicidal people. One of the symbols in Linati is “crepacuore,” meaning breakdown or heartbreak. In the text, we encounter many clear references to such a powerful symbol. The most obvious is Martin Cunningham’s cold statement about breakdown as the cause of death of his alcoholic friend Paddy Dignam.30 Just a few lines below, during one of Mr Bloom’s trains of thoughts, we find a less realistic but more symbolic reference which links the word breakdown to the fall of Parnell.31 Finally, after Mr Power’s unmerciful remark about the people who kill themselves, we encounter Bloom’s sad and crude reflections suggested by the above-mentioned recollection of his broken-hearted father. One of the references to breakdown is also the recollection of Mrs Sinico, the sad lady who committed suicide in the short story “A Painful Case,” in28

U, 122. U, 136. 30 See U, 119. 31 See U, 119. 29

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cluded in Dubliners. Her ghost occurs twice in the episode. The first reference is very indirect indeed. It is Bloom’s statement about the destiny of the Dignam family after Paddy’s departure: “A sad case.”32 Mrs Sinico is one of the most striking examples of broken-hearted characters to be found in Joyce’s works. The other occurrence is less open to speculation. It is a plain allusion to the unhappy lady: “Last time I was here was Mrs Sinico’s funeral. Poor papa too. The love that kills.”33 The fact itself that her name is present in both “A Painful Case” and “Hades” is quite interesting. It encourages one to look for further correspondences between Dubliners and Ulysses. The first link one might think of is to a short story whose title manifestly alludes to the other world: “The Dead.” Adams is one of the critics who propose a similar interpretation.34 The connection goes beyond thematic similarity, and touches on certain features of narration. A journey in the carriage where a conversation between the characters takes place occurs in both the contexts. The several recollections of the memory of those who have left this world also point to some striking affinities. An ultimate sense of the imaginary co-existence of the living and the dead is clearly felt by the reader in both cases, especially towards the end of the short story, as well as in the representation of Bloom’s cynical thoughts about the more materialistic aspects of death. In fact, both Gabriel Conroy and Bloom, two men of the press, continually try to avoid sentimentality towards the stories of dead people. Conroy is capable of mistaking Gretta’s sad attitude in the recollection of her dead lover for passionate sexual excitement, while Bloom manages to be completely and superbly cold about a supposed spiritual dimension with which death may be thought to be concerned: “Well it is a long rest. […] Must be damned unpleasant. Can’t believe it at first. Mistake must be: someone else. Try the house opposite.”35 Ultimately, and more subliminally, the memory of Lily, the caretaker’s daughter who inaugurates the narration of “The Dead,” could perhaps be recalled in the sixth episode both by the caretaker Corny Kelleher and by the song “The Lily of Killarney,” whose title is quoted in one of Bloom’s reflections.36 Joyce was in fact used to constructing such apparently far-fetched analogies in his works. To analyse them more comprehensively as parts of a hidden system would be quite interesting, although it would probably lead the present discussion away from its core theme: the broken heart of “Hades.” Not only is the heart of the episode broken, but it is also sick. Actually, one of the symbols is “vizio cardiaco,” i.e. heart trouble. In the text, Paddy Dignam 32

U, 129. U, 145. 34 See Adams, “Hades,” 99-101. 35 U, 140. 36 See U, 114. 33

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and other alcoholics like him suffer from this illness.37 Alcohol, according to Simon Dedalus, is also threatening the life of his own son. Simon’s concerns are about Buck Mulligan’s evil influence on Stephen: “I won’t have her bastard of a nephew ruin my son.”38 Prompted by such a remark, Bloom thinks of his own dead son, Rudy, whose departure, together with Virag’s death, left him obviously heart-broken. Accordingly, by way of analogy, or at least in merely figurative terms, we may conclude that the heart of the father is as suffering as the heart of the son. Bloom is in fact both the son of a broken-hearted man, and a mourning father himself. In this light, the hidden meaning of another symbol in Linati, the “sacred heart,” comes suddenly to the surface. A reference to the statue of the sacred heart occurs when the characters are walking in the cemetery in search for Parnell’s resting place.39 Besides the curious correspondence between a dead political leader, who had created quite a turmoil in the relationships between Britain and Ireland a few years before, and another famous “agitator,” Jesus Christ, we may suspect that Joyce is here playing with a further subtly blasphemous allusion. He wishes to suggest, very cunningly indeed, that the sacred heart of God’s son lies buried in a human cemetery, in the company of other dead men like him.

Descensus Nihilo Hints at the connection between “Hades” and religion are present in many places in the episode. We encounter, for instance, all the rituals of a funeral ceremony, many comments on the various religions and types of burials, as well as several curses and imprecations. Hence, it is easy to guess why “religione” is the art of the chapter in Linati. Speaking in terms of Swedenborgian references, such an attention to religion may be suspect. The spiritual significance of the organ heart according to the mystic’s reading of the Bible takes on certain pagan and profane shades in Joyce’s work. Such a conclusion comes from a particular occurrence in the senso category of Linati, which reads “discesa nel nulla,” that is “descent to nothing.” In Swedenborg’s world, to be in the heart of heaven means to have ascended to a privileged position, among those angels who share the divine will and good of love. On the other hand, according to Joyce, to reside in the “heart” of his epic of the human body points simply to a gloomy descensus nihilo. Such a “nothing” is both a symbol of the ultimate rejection of all religious beliefs in the other world, and a commitment to a peculiarly sceptical kind of nihilism. This 37

See U, 129. U, 110. 39 See U, 144. 38

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has certainly interesting implications in terms of a possible Jungian interpretation of a descent to one’s own unconscious. Besides, the act of descending to the land of the dead has also deep meanings in both the spiritual and the lay textual tradition, as examples from both religious and classical literature clearly show. In “Hades,” Joyce seems to play with no less than four different kinds of descent. The classical parallels are somehow more evident than the religious ones. They refer mainly to the world of the epic. However, the religious connotations are rather subliminal, and could as well help us explain some obscure references of the episode’s epic correspondences. In relation to Swedenborg’s world, the verb to ascend (to heaven) clearly reminds those acquainted with certain aspects of the Christian doctrine, of Christ’s ascension to heaven after his own death. In “Hades,” the counterpart of the ascension is evidently the descent. Ironically, the destination of such a journey, that is, the nothing, looks a little less desirable than Christ’s own “resting place.” It could be argued that in the apocryphal gospel tradition there exist also accounts of a descent of Christ to hell. That Joyce had actually read some of the apocryphal gospels is very likely, for he was always most keen in reading works whose “authority” was denied by the Church. This is shown for instance by the references to various heresiarchs like Photius, Arius, Valentine, and Sabellius in the first episode of Ulysses, alongside many others in the third. Accordingly, it is very probable that at some stage he must have encountered a corpus of writings never accepted by the Church as official gospels. Apocryphal ways are characteristic of Joyce’s narrative discourse. It can be argued, for instance, that Stephen himself adopts an apocryphal method in elucidating his theory on Shakespeare in “Scylla,” as John Eglinton clearly suggests.40 This is proved by the fact that in “Ulysses 9” Christ’s descent to hell, known as the harrowing of hell, is also referred to by Stephen, although in a distorted way.41 An apocryphal gospel in which the descent to hell is narrated, is the Evangelium Nicodemi. The Gospel of Nicodemus was first found in manuscripts of the XII century. It has been one of the most popular among apocryphal texts. It soon became known through a variety of medieval versions, as well as in vernacular translations. It is made up of two parts: the “Acts of Pilate,” and the actual narrative of the harrowing of hell. The latter describes Christ’s journey to hell in the space-time between death and resurrection. Christ’s mission is to save the patriarchs and the innocents who had the misfortune of dying before his coming. The notion that Christ visited the land of the dead, as deriving from the apocryphal tradition, could well be behind Joyce’s blasphemous allusion to the 40 41

See U, 250. See U, 253.

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sacred heart, whose final resting place, in the quotation above, was to be among the dead. Further correspondences for the descent are Ulysses’s own descent to the underworld in the Odyssey, and Aeneas’s visit to Hades in Virgil’s great work. That the latter reference is actually one of the secret intentions of the sixth chapter is proved by the fact that Simon Dedalus, on spotting his son from the carriage, addresses Mulligan, who is with him, as “his fidus Achates.”42 Achates is one of the comrades of Aeneas. The final allusion behind the idea of the descent is a book which Ellmann compared, “in complexity at least,” to Ulysses itself: La divina comedia by Dante Alighieri.43 The work is made up of three parts like Ulysses, and the protagonist is the author himself. As is well known, Dante embarks on a fantastical journey to hell, purgatory, and heaven. The first part concerns a descent to Limbo and then to Inferno. What Dante visits is not a pagan Hades, as Ulysses and Aeneas had done, but Christian hell. In his journey to the land of the damned, his companion is Virgil. In Joyce’s “Hades,” all possible destinations of the soul after death are the subject of mockery, and show plainly Bloom’s agnostic, sceptical, and hilarious nature.44 If the theosophists, like Bloom, were sceptical of the actual existence of hell, Simon Dedalus appears to be quite confused about the very existence of its imaginary contrary, heaven. After Martin Cunningham’s wryly sympathetic remark that Dedalus’s dead wife is better now where she is, he answers sadly: “I suppose she is in heaven if there is a heaven.”45 On the other hand, Bloom’s attitude towards what he probably regards as a mere superstition, he being some kind of a non-Jewish Jew, is dismissive of all possibilities of a life after death. This is suggested by his ironical reaction to the formula “I am the resurrection and the life,” uttered by the priest during the funeral ceremony: Once you are dead you are dead. That last day idea. Knocking them all up out of their graves, Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost the job. Get up! Last day! Then every fellow mousing around for his liver and his lights and the 46 rest of his traps.

By substituting the destination of all journeys to the underworld with a no man’s land, an inexorable nothing, the cited probable sources for the image of the de42

U, 109. See Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 57. 44 See for instance U, 140. 45 U, 132. 46 U, 133.

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scent blend with a definitive sympathy for nihilism. The idea behind such a complex system of allusions could well be that a newly deconsecrated heart of the father/son descending to nothing/Hades, is here the real protagonist. This is not only an ultimate refusal of a religious concept. The power of the semantic inversion, which makes an ascension become gradually a descent, functions as a kind of joking heresy. Like other proper heresies, it is not just a symbol of denial, but also a statement about an alternative ideology. It is as if Bloom were looking for a substitute for the religion abandoned. All of a sudden, Bloom finds out that a final reconcilement of the contrasts and contraries of human bodily existence may be achieved only by means of ironical inversions, that is, by journeys backwards. Swedenborg, like many other non-orthodox thinkers to whom Joyce often refers (Boehme, Bruno, Agrippa etc…), was considered a heretic himself. His intention was to build up a new Church, whose program was to replace the theological architecture of the Christian tradition made up of what he considered wrong interpretations of the Bible, with an alternative view of the true meaning of the sacred scriptures. Such a revolutionary exegesis was to be founded, at least partly, on the revelation of the hidden meanings of the organs of heaven, according to a new reading of the Bible through correspondences. Hence, the heart of heaven, like all other organs of which he speaks at length in his works, is a purely symbolic heart. It means that, just as the will and love should reside in the heart of men, so should divine will and good of love dwell in the heart of heaven. On the other hand, Joyce’s aim is to create a system as complex as possible, blending pagan, Christian, epic, mystical, heretical, and modern traditions. Using heart as a symbol, he is attempting to blur the reader’s possibility of understanding some of the remote allusions hidden behind the organ. He is thus playing the role of an obscurantist creator of meanings. Besides, his use of Swedenborgian symbolism reveals also an utter desire to parody the concept of spirituality as such. The wish to invert spiritual notions belonging to some obscure mystical tradition proves very successful in providing his system with all the necessary mystery an occult text requires. Certain significant references to both heaven and hell occur in the episode, which seem point to the concept of the coincidence of the contraries as the subtle message of Joyce’s narrative. This is the case, for instance, of the existence of the four rivers of the underworld, a topos in the classic tradition. One of them, the Acheron, is a concrete obstacle preventing the dead souls from reaching their fatal destination without the help of the proper ferryman. All dead people, before getting to know what kind of a place is waiting for them, have to cross that river. The way to hell is then a waterway. “To hell by water,” one might think. In Ulysses, the four rivers of Hades coincide with the four rivers of

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Dublin the carriage crosses during the journey to Glasnevin cemetery. At some point of the narration, we find the following obscure train of sentences: “Developing waterways. James M’Cann hobby to row me o’er the ferry. Cheaper transit. […] To heaven by water.”47 The way to hell has thus become the way to heaven, and the two ultimate contraries ironically coincide again. Such a mocking final reconcilement of heaven and hell will be explored exhaustively in “Circe.” Here, in order to see the bigger picture, one should bear in mind that water in Ulysses is always strictly linked to the idea of death. The theme of the death-by-water is obsessively present in the book, just like in Eliot’s The Waste Land. Stephen’s silent statement in “Proteus” that “Seadeath” is the “mildest of all deaths”48 is parallel to one of Bloom’s thoughts towards the end of “Hades”: “Drowning they say is the pleasantest.”49 However, in “Hades” the death theme is mostly parodied. We encounter it in the funny story Bloom tries to narrate, which is instead finished by Martin Cunningham.50 Death-by-water, which is supposed to be a serious subject, is here deconsecrated and parodied. Water, a symbol of death in the previous chapters, is now just an accident. Accordingly, if water/death leads to both heaven and hell without any substantial distinction in the mockery of it all, then to end up in heaven or in hell after death becomes just a matter of sheer chance. Heaven and hell are essentially the same thing: a nothing which is both nihilism and coincidence of the opposites. At the same time, the belief in a life after death is undermined by a prevailing sceptical attitude. Ascending and descending coincide. Being born and being dead are mirrorlike parts of the same game: “In the midst of death we are in life.”51 The spiritual dimension has ineluctably become the object of derision. We encounter the catholic Simon Dedalus cursing mutely at the sky,52 and the non-Jewish Jew Bloom talking of hell in a parodied manner: “Must be an infernal lot of bad gas round the place.”53 Here he might be echoing a particular passage from Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell where we read: “When they [the hells] are closed […] one can see something dark, thick with smoke.”54 Finally, the idea that “Giordano Bruno’s coinciding contraries may in retrospect be seen to give form to each episode of Ulysses,”55 as Richard Ellmann 47

U, 124. U, 63. 49 U, 145. 50 See U, 118. 51 U, 136. 52 See U, 112. 53 U, 130. 54 Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 476. 55 Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 54. 48

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convincingly argues, is probably the basic principle behind the inverting technique informing many secret interpretations of the book, which thus becomes a distorted occult text. It provides us also with a link to the further explorations of the coincidentia in Finnegans Wake, where it merges into Vico’s cycles, and makes Joyce himself the creator of something that may never end. The hermetic coincidence of the contraries is then the imaginary conclusion of a process it has contributed to start. The beginning corresponds to the end. The “fine” is again awaking in order to start a new circular and eternal cycle. Despite the mocking context in which such secret doctrine is worked out, the purpose of Joyce’s subtle irony in playing with the reader’s expectations “is not simply to baffle,”56 as Adams suggests. Accordingly, we should not underestimate the importance of the method just outlined as a structuring force of the hidden writing of Ulysses. Some of the implications of this complex technique must be approached with an eye to the occult dynamics informing the cultural background of the author. An occult outlook will therefore help us understand fully the hidden semiotic discourse of Ulysses, as a deeply layered structure of signification. Such a destabilizing process of signification is most evident in a chapter that takes its imaginary title from the Greek god of the wind, Aeolus.

56

Adams, Surface and Symbol, 12.

CHAPTER THREE AEOLUS

To take a look at “Aeolus” after “Hades” is useful in the present context, not only in the light of the actual chronology of the book. Despite the stylistic differences, which are indeed relatively easy to recognize, like for instance the structuring of the narration in “Aeolus” according to a journalistic editorial policy, with headlines and pars, we encounter also certain subtle allusions to “Hades,” which function as subterranean patterns of continuity between the two episodes. Such a narrative consistency is secretly implied in the beginning of the chapter. Actually, the very first headline, “IN THE HEART OF THE HIBERNIAN METROPOLIS,”1 brings the attentive reader back to “heart,” the organ of the chapter just concluded. Such a connection seems to be one of the leitmotifs of “Aeolus.” As is well-known, the organ of the episode, “lungs,” through the textual simulation of the act of breathing, is what is imagined to inform the style of the narrative. At a more superficial level, “Aeolus” is also supposed to be a representation of what may have happened, in a Dublin newspaper office, at noon of a normal day, at the beginning of the twentieth century. The connection between lungs and heart is obvious. The act of breathing as a bodily function is perforce connected with the circulation of blood. Thus, the first link between the two chapters in Ulysses, intended as the epic of the human body, is easy to grasp. One is allowed to presume that another headline “HOW A GREAT DAILY ORGAN IS TURNED OUT,”2 besides pertaining obviously to the world of the press, may also be another general allusion to the organ category. The interpretation of an odd sentence stuck in one of Bloom’s thoughts, just a few lines before the above reference, is an even more illuminating instance of this analogical process: “But will he save the circulation?”3 Only on the surface does this refer to the circulation of the newspaper. Such a complex double relation (press/lungs, lungs/heart) is just an effect of the theory that everything in Ulys-

1

U, 147. U, 150. 3 U, 150. 2

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ses must be interconnected.4 In this light, “Hades” and “Aeolus” are really twinepisodes. As we will see, a major source of inspiration for the organ/episode relation agrees in presenting “lungs” and “heart” as organs whose occult meanings are inseparable.

Rhetoric of the Occult According to Hodgart the seventh chapter is the only place in the book where we find some real, actual work performed by Bloom in order to earn his wages.5 In fact, as Patrick Magee points out, “Aeolus” is a “particularly masculine episode,”6 despite the fact that most of the other male characters happen to be scarcely involved in any work at all. Both the perspectives, although oriented towards different goals, suggest the ironical meaning of Bloom’s fatigue, in opposition to the windy rhetoric of his colleagues. This explains why their behaviour towards him is not in the least friendly. It is of some use here to look for some of the hidden figures of narration standing for an obscure connection with the rest of the occult intentions of the book. In order to do so, one cannot but refer constantly to the surface level of the episode linked to the various implications of the science/art of the Linati schema, that is “rhetoric.” As is well known, the word has both a technical and a pejorative meaning. In relation to the classical world, it alludes to the art of persuasion. Cicero and Quintilianus were among its main theorists. Before them, Aristotle and Plato were also among those who contributed to the debate concerning rhetoric, which later included the speculations of the sophists. As a matter of fact, in “Aeolus” Stephen is said to be reminiscent of a pupil of one of the most famous among the sophists, Antisthenes, a disciple of Gorgia.7 In “Scylla” Stephen himself directly refers to Antisthes.8 Rhetoric was very much loved in medieval times too. Its structural legacy in literature is to be spotted, for instance, in Dante’s and Boccaccio’s prose works, and in the culture of the Renaissance or the Baroque period. We find clear relics of its classical five divisions (inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria, actio) also in the homiletic tradition. Many sermons written and performed in continental and insular monasteries followed the old rules of rhetoric as they had been codified in the classical age. 4

See Chapter One, n. 67, 69. See Hodgart, “Aeolus,” 115. 6 McGee, “Machines, Empire, and the Wise Virgins: Cultural Revolution in “Aeolus,” 90. 7 See U, 188. 8 See U, 258. 5

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Such knowledge, fully accepted as a fundamental part of education during many centuries, was gradually to be seen, in more recent times, just as tedious erudition made up of useless rules. Such a shift in the general attitude towards the subject is well explained by the fact that we are no longer accustomed to studying rhetoric at school. Young students may well regard it just as some sort of a sadistic punishment imposed by old-fasionhed professors whose sole purpose is to give them a bad time. Furthermore, rhetoric often identifies for us also a way of being either pompously inconclusive or dishonestly prolix, rather than a system of useful rules of the discourse. Nevertheless, it was a fundamental aspect of education during James Joyce’s schooldays, alongside many other subjects that nowadays students usually ignore. It was of particular importance especially in Catholic schools such as those Joyce attended, and one level at the Jesuits’ schools was even titled “rhetoric.” In Ulysses, particularly in the seventh episode, Joyce makes his readers aware of both the semantic shades of the word, which he happens to use in a veiled and quite ironical way. The technics of the Linati schema are in fact “simboleutike, dikanike, epidiktike and tropi.” They refer to three particular speeches and a parable occurring in the episode. However, tracing exact and precise references between those speeches and the varieties of rhetoric Joyce mentions is not the task of the present analysis. The correspondence between them is part of a more general parody. This is clear if we take account of the surface meaning of the episode. According to Ellmann, the three speeches are “only wind.”9 The episode is definitely full of swollen windbags. In relation to journalism, Bloom himself gives the reader a clue that explains the hidden implications in the chapter: “Weathercocks. […] Wouldn’t know which to believe.”10 This is exactly what he thinks of journalistic rhetoric. Hence, it is not surprising that among the symbols in Linati we encounter “press” as well as “wind.” The journalism=futility equation is easily understood even at a first reading, and the general deceitfulness of the rules of speech seems to play the main role in the narration. We will not find a more convincing example of mutability11 and falsity of speech in the whole book. Why does Joyce so unequivocally mock the world of rhetoric? Kiberd’s suggestion that Joyce, like Yeats, “felt relieved to have escaped a career as a journalist”12 provides a sufficient explanation of such an attitude towards journalistic rhetoric. In the present context, an occult interpretation of the correspondence between “lungs” and “Aeolus” may eventually help us account 9

Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 68. U, 159. 11 “Mutabilità” is one of the symbols of Linati. 12 Kiberd, in U, 991. 10

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for some obscure meanings of rhetoric in the episode. Since in Ulysses each organ is supposed to create its own technique,13 in “Aeolus” the act of breathing, made of two contrasting halves—inspiration and expiration—is acutely symbolized by many couples of doubling and self-inverting sentences.14 This is just an effect of Joyce’s method, and does not explain the reason for its actual use. By resorting to Swedenborg’s doctrine of correspondences, a new reading of the episode becomes possible. The Swede believes that the lungs and the heart of heaven are the two most important organs of the divine body. As such, they are strictly related. Of the two kingdoms into which heaven is divided, the celestial and the spiritual, the first corresponds to the heart and the second to the lungs. Furthermore, the spiritual kingdom belongs to discernment: “the breath of the lungs indicates discernment and what is true of faith.”15 Both the ideas of truth and faith appear very useful to a comprehensive interpretation of “Aeolus.” Swedenborg believes that the main activity of the lungs in the body of heaven is itself a symbol of truth of faith. On the contrary, according to what might be a reader’s first response to the seventh episode, rather than any sort of truth “Aeolus” gives us the idea of falsity, deceitfulness, and dishonesty in speech. The semantic overturn is even more powerful here than in “Hades.” In the sixth chapter, intention/heart pointed to the unconscious; here truth/lungs becomes falsity. A link between lungs and the idea of an inverted truth is provided once again by a seemingly casual sentence, apparently very easy to understand, but silently pointing to an occult explanation. It is a brief section of one of Bloom’s thoughts about journalistic rhetoric: “Hot and cold in the same breath.”16 As has been noted, the passage could very well allude to one of Aesop’s fables, in which a satyr could heat his hands and cool his soup with the same breath.17 It could also provide a solution to the pseudo-mystic inverted correspondence of the episode. The sentence may in fact have a double meaning. On the one hand, it apparently describes the quintessence of rhetorical journalism, by presenting the newspaper-men as a bunch of hypocritical fellows, who can say one thing and the opposite “with the same breath.” On the other, its hidden meaning clarifies the nature of the obscure link between rhetoric/deceitfulness and lungs. The sentence describes nothing more than the usual act of breathing, which is made of two contrasting halves: inspiration (cold) and expiration (hot). Breathing is then a necessary conjunction of two contraries, without which the 13

See n. 4 above. See Ellmann, 71-3. 15 Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 82-3. 16 U, 159 . 17 See U, 994, n. 159.17. 14

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action performed by the lungs in the economy of the body would be impossible. More than that, the breathing of the lungs becomes a sine qua non for life itself to exist. It seems to suggest that what really keeps death temporarily away for man is the coincidence of the contraries. However, one should acknowledge that a subtle irony is clearly the main feature of the allusion here. This irony informs also many other obscure references in the episode, all contributing in constructing its deep structure based on an occult rhetoric. Irony and double meanings are parallel to the subtle semantic duality of the cited sentence. They serve both as a solution to the question of the two initial meanings of rhetoric, and as a deceitful device in the narrative. As Adams explains, Joyce “expects the reader to see through surface inanity to underlying truth, as well as through surface pretensions […] to underlying fraud.”18 Truth and fraud are therefore also coexisting contraries, although any reconciliation between them appears improbable in reality. In fact, a reunion of such discordant realms can happen in the possible worlds of narrative, the only space where the fictional and the real go hand in hand.

Hidden Patterns of Futility Irony permeates the very heart and lungs of Ulysses, and pertains to the great work’s deep structure. Quoting again from Adams, “Joyce’s intricate, perverse way with small patterns may give us extra reason to hesitate before large ones.”19 One of those small meaningful patterns is suggested again by the scienza/arte of the chapter according to Linati. The Italian word Joyce used is in fact “rettorica,” a term chosen instead of the more common “retorica” without the double “t.” It is an old and academic spelling, which makes us wonder what Joyce’s source could have been. A probable solution to this question would be the book of a Gorizian writer—Gorizia is just a few kilometres from Trieste, the city where Joyce wrote much of Ulysses—entitled La persuasione e la rettorica, (i.e. Persuasion and Rhetoric), published in 1913. The work caused a sensation in Italy in the second decade of the twentieth century, mainly due to certain biographical details of the life and death of its author. The book was actually a university dissertation written by a young philosophy student of Jewish origins, Carlo Michelstaedter, who after having submitted it to the examining commission in October 1910, shot himself with a revolver and died. Originally, the thesis was supposed to be about the idea of rhetoric in the works of Plato and Aristotle. John McCourt notes poignantly the evident 18 19

Adams, Surface and Symbol, 160. Ibid., 159.

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parallelism between the sad destiny of this young student and the life of Otto Weininger, author of Sex and Character, which had ended in a similar way a few years before in a place not too distant from Michelstadter’s Gorizia and Joyce’s Trieste. In this context, it may be interesting to note that in one of Joyce’s notebooks recently acquired by the National Library of Ireland, there exists a whole paragraph headed “Weininger” which dates probably around 1915. It proves that Joyce took a serious interest in the intellectual. McCourt speaks also of a few other Triestine writers who knew the work of Weininger. Among them was Italo Svevo—Joyce’s friend and pupil—and Biagio Marin, who had been himself shocked by Weininger’s “suicide which mirrored that of his friend Carlo Michelstaedter.”20 McCourt is completely right in making the connection. Both philosophers came in fact from the same geographical area. Both belonged to the Jewish intellectual community, and both committed suicide. Nevertheless, the influence of Weininger’s theories on the sexuality of the Jews, especially regarding Bloom’s supposed androgyny and the writing of “Circe,” is documented, while even the fame of Michelstaedter is almost unknown beyond the Alps, not to speak of his possible influence on Joyce. Something seems to suggest the presence of an obscure connection between this suicidal student and the young James Joyce. They were both interested in meaningful coincidences. As regards Michelstaedter, he was so attentive to the importance of dates that he shot himself on his mother’s birthday. In January 1910 the 28-year-old Irish writer had come back to Trieste after his sojourn in Dublin, and he was still there in October, when Michelstaedter committed suicide. Immediately after the tragedy, local and national newspapers speculated creatively about the event. In November 1910, Giovanni Papini, a famous Italian critic, and a very close friend to Carlo Linati, published an article about Michaelstaedter entitled “A metaphysical suicide” which came out in a major national newspaper. The essay was reprinted two years later in a book by Papini himself, where it precedes a paper on Carlo Linati. All this would point to the likeliness that Joyce must have known about the destiny of the unfortunate Jewish philosopher, although no proof of the relationship is available yet. Michelstaedter’s book became popular soon after its publication. It actually deals with a very original interpretation of the two ideas of persuasion and rhetoric, which has interesting connections with the kind of rhetoric mocked at in “Aeolus.” Persuasion is for him the condition of “being,” not in the historical sense of “existing,” but in the sense of “becoming fully oneself.” On the contrary, rhetoric means to live and to accept the necesary compromise with the deceitful forces of history and society. Such forces include politics and religion. 20

McCourt, The Years of Bloom, James Joyce in Trieste 1904 -1920, 229.

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Michaelstaedter’s attitude towards modern society is extremely hostile, and recalls some aspects of Stephen Dedalus’s luciferian “non serviam,” as well as some implications of the journalistic rhetoric of “Aeolus.” The following passage taken from his thesis is a powerful example of such a defiant character: (Men) neither know nor can produce anything. They are content with words that feign communication […] and feed their boredom with words […] use words to mean things that they do not know, in order to soothe their sorrow.21

At the end of the book, he bitterly criticizes all at once politicians, men of letters, historians, journalists, and clergymen, in an attitude not too dissimilar from the one we encounter in some parts of Joyce’s “The Holy Office.” The rettorica obsessing him is neither the classical craft of speech nor an art of persuasion, but the quintessence of falsity and futility. It is a commitment to human frailty and dishonesty, a fatal preference for cowardice disguised as worldliness. It is likely that Joyce, probably via Carlo Linati, came to know at some stage about this young Jewish suicidal writer. If this were the case, he would certainly have been struck by the evocative power of certain strange synchronicities of his life. The Gorizian intellectual died at the age of 23 in October 1910. Joyce left Ireland in October 1904, almost at the same age. Michelstaedter was some sort of an exiled Jew, for he lived in a multicultural land characterised by the presence of mixed national identities and nationalistic cultural claims. It was an area of multilingualism. He had some knowledge of the Kabbalah, and presumably, judging by the day chosen for his suicide, believed in the occurrence of meaningful coincidences. It would be redundant here to say anything about Joyce’s own obsession with dates. On the contrary, it could be useful to return to the idea of synchronicity, in order to establish whether or not it could be somehow applied to Joyce’s texts. Jean Kimball, in an interesting Jungian study of Ulysses, which has recently received some harsh criticism,22 argues that according to Jung synchronicity is a “modern differentiation of the alchemical theory of correspondence, based […] on empirical experience and experimentation.”23 In other words, this theory deals with non-casual coincidences, which presumably were part of human knowledge before their meanings were lost and forgotten. Kimball, perhaps wisely showing some sort of a sceptical attitude, states that Jung “acknowledges that synchronicity explains nothing, it simply formulates the occurrence of

21

Michelstaedter, La persuasione e la retorica, 110. See Introduction, n. 10. 23 Kimball, Odyssey of the Psyche. Jungian Patterns in Joyce’s Ulysses, 20. 22

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meaningful coincidences.”24 She adds: “the only recognizable and demonstrable link between them is common meaning, or equivalence.”25 Bearing in mind that a non-casual coincidence, in textual terms, may very well be an odd fact difficult to explain due to the absence of a precise frame of reference, we may take again Adams’s word that “in a discussion of consistency, the odd fact is on every count more important than the regular one.”26 This would encourage one to believe that to apply the synchronicity theory to a literary text can eventually yield up fascinating results. A most relevant feature of textual analysis is in fact parallelism. In the present context, it mainly points to the potential relevance of occult semantic substrata. Such information hidden beneath the surface of the text includes the referents accounting for all the odd occurrences in the narrative. Those referents are occult, in that they are indeed concealed from the eyes of the reader. A pointed analysis of them will show that they can be taken as fragments of a once-united truth. To interpret such latent narrative contents may lead one to take the value of meaningful coincidences in the book more seriously than has been done in the past.

Vampiric Spirituality At this stage, it can be of some use to return to the religious implications of the correspondence between the “breath of the lungs” and the “truth of faith.” In the textual world of “Aeolus,” such a connection involves a newspaper=Church equation which is quite easy to grasp. The fact itself that the Freeman’s Journal was closely connected with the Catholic Church in Ireland, necessarily points to the textual parallelism between the world of the press and a religious dimension. In textual terms, the relationship is hinted at very soon in the episode. One of the first newspaper’s headlines is “THE CROZIER AND THE PEN.”27 Just a few lines above, a character named Red Murray had ironically spoken of the newspaper’s publisher, William Brayden, as of “our Saviour.”28 After this, when Murray says that Archbishop Walsh has phoned twice in the morning, Bloom wittily remarks that he is also “one of our saviours.”29 In assessing the importance of the religious connection, it could be of some interest to note that in Linati “red” is the colour of the episode. Red is also the colour of the garments commonly worn by Cardinals. Ellmann’s comment on 24

Ibid., 20. Ibid., 20. 26 Adams, Surface and Symbol, xix. 27 U, 149. 28 U, 149. 29 U, 150. 25

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the religious allusions of the chapter is quite interesting: “though seemingly haphazard, these remarks neatly supply one of the keys to the episode.”30 The critic manages to explain convincingly the religious significance of the veiled textual presences of Jesus and the Lord in the episode. However, it is quite interesting to note that the main religious discourse behind the chapter is not strictly speaking the Catholic but the pagan Ancient Greek one. Aeolus is in fact the Greek god of wind. In the correspondences category in Gorman, we find him associated with the newspaper’s editor, Myles Crawford. He is himself, so to speak, a living allusion to the Catholic world. It is he who announces “No drinks served before mass”31 in commenting on Simon Dedalus’s desire to embark on a pub-crawl. Finally, in warning Stephen against possible obscene allusions in his parable, he ironically gives voice to his own authority by saying: “no poetic licence. We’re in the archdiocese here.”32 The newspaper’s office itself is depicted as a religious site, a profane archdiocese where all are eventually lay ministers. However, everything in Joyce always suggests the likely cohabitation of opposite meanings. Here, the rhetoric of the inversion is silently at work. This is suggested by a non-casual hint dropped at some stage of the narration: “Read it backwards first.”33 Bloom is actually referring to the Dayfather’s job of checking the exact sequence of the types of a paragraph about to be printed by reading them backwards. The thought also reminds him of his dead father, who used to read to him his Jewish hagadah book backwards. If we take such a seemingly casual occurrence as an occult hint, one of those silent suggestions that speak directly to the reader bypassing referentiality, it could perhaps point to the existence of a system of inversions in the episode that extends to the realm of religion. Thus, religion could be turned into a sort of inverted spirituality. In such a context, he who is correspondent to a god may also be the symbol of an evil being like the devil. Actually, Crawford himself tempts Stephen in devilish fashion, by attempting to draw him to his circle: “I want you to write something for me, he said. […] Put us all into it, damn its soul. Father son and Holy Ghost and Jakes M’Carthy.” 34 Of course, from a symbolic point of view, Crawford is just trying to persuade the young intellectual to write the great book of the age, like a new Irish Bible. However, the half-blasphemous implications of the passage are better understood if we consider that, actually, who happens to say the final word on religion in the last line of the episode is Crawford himself. I am referring to a seemingly casual line that in fact casts imaginary doubts on the 30

Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 64. U, 161. 32 U, 187. 33 U, 155. 34 U, 171. 31

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authority of whoever migt be in charge of interpreting God’s truth: “If the God Almighty’s truth was known.”35 The sentence powerfully questions the idea of any knowable “truth of faith,” and therefore seems to warn the reader against accepting the very role of the interpreter of divine things. This is in a way also an attempt to express disillusion towards diviners in the broader sense, and certainly discourages the very idea of canonical readings of given texts. However, to disregard a particular religious, theoretical, or philosophical option often implies the need to come to terms with its opposite. Although we have seen how Joyce’s mocking response to religion does not lead him to prefer any other spiritual solution, let alone daemonism, it is interesting to see how in the episode religious parodies parallel the hoax involving a less saintly sphere linked to a general idea of evil. That some kinds of farcically wicked presence are latent in the press world portrayed by Joyce is shown by the way in which Bloom behaves with Councillor Nannetti. When he has to explain to the foreman how the two keys of the advertisement have to be drawn, he simply crosses his fingers, as if he was confronting the devil or a vampire. Something similar happens, for instance, in Dracula at one point when the local people are told by Jonathan Harker about his intention to visit the bloody Count: “the crowd round the inn door […] all made the sign of the cross and pointed two fingers towards me.”36 In “Aeolus,” the very image of the vampire is explicitly evoked by the recollection of Stephen’s poem from chapter three, which included the image of the vampire’s kiss.37 In the context of Anglo-Irish literature, the main source for this is a lyric from Douglas Hyde’s Loves Songs of Connacht published in 1893, the year in which the Gaelic League was founded. The book was immediately a great success. However, it is possible that eleven years later, in 1904, when Stephen actually rewrites it, it might have become somehow out of fashion. We can actually detect some parodical intentions in Stephen’s adaptation of Hyde’s translation from the Irish. In fact, it is the Sassenach Haines, Stephen’s enemy, who takes some interest in the Irish language, and particularly in Hyde’s Love Songs.38 Later on, when we will take account of “Circe,” we will encounter other very subtle vampiric connections linked to the year of 1893, a year which in fact divides the 22-year period of Stephen’s (and Joyce’s?) life between 1882 and 1904, into two exact halves. The year 1893 is crucial in Ulysses. In 1893 both Joyce and Stephen were eleven, just like the ghost of Bloom’s dead son, Rudy, in “Circe.” A further odd coincidence of events is interesting to note here. It involves another writer who 35

U, 189. Stoker, Dracula, 7. 37 See U, 168. 38 See U, 254. 36

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is himself at the very core of the subliminal discourse of Ulysses: William Shakespeare. It has to do with the Bard’s son, Hamnet, who was baptised on 2 February—Joyce’s birthday—1585, and who died eleven years later. That Joyce knew such biographical details is almost certain, for Stephen’s theory in “Scylla” is deeply rooted in his pointed knowledge of the life of Shakespeare. Finally, a further literary connection concerning the vampire theme leads again to Emanuel Swedenborg and his influence on Joyce. One may be reminded of the many subtle allusions in Joyce’s texts to another Anglo-Irish writer who was fond of vampires, Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, the author of “Carmilla,” one of the first she-vampires of fantastic literature. He was also into Swedenborgianism, as many references to the Swede in his works indisputably show. As has been suggested, Sheridan Le Fanu was a major influence on Joyce, especially in relation to Finnegans Wake. Atherton has interesting comments on all the allusions in the Wake to his The House by the Churchyard—one of the books Joyce’s father loved most—but also to the murder of Lord Cavendish and his associate by the Invincibles.39 Actually, the Invincibles’ affair, which took place on May 6, 1882, three months after Joyce’s birth, is also an important theme of “Aeolus.” In Ulysses we find a very odd coincidence regarding Sheridan Le Fanu. In “Cyclops” we encounter the title of the famous collection of short stories which contains “Carmilla,” In a Glass Darkly, alluded to in a surprisingly cryptic way during a parodical description of a spiritualistic séance.40 The Sheridan Le Fanu/Joyce connection could also be plainly established via the influence that Swedenbord had on both writers. Swedenborg’s teachings are famously structural aspects of Sheridan Le Fanu’s fiction. In the novel Uncle Silas the Swede is directly quoted and constantly referred to. In the short story collection In a Glass Darkly, alongside all apparitions of the mystic through quotations from his works, Swedenborg is actually present by means of a very Joycean trick dealing with the biographical dimension. A fictional character, Doctor Martin Hesselius, who is said to have studied the case of the vampire Carmilla, is in fact modelled on one Hesselius who was a cousin of Swedenborg. Such an occult use of a historical character connected with the Swede is parallel to Joyce’s occultist habit of concealing details of persons that he knew, or that he knew of, in his works. In this light, Swedenborg could be seen as a major link between Joyce and Sheridan Le Fanu. McCormack states that an “interest in Swedenborg’s thought underlines the continuity between Le Fanu and the generation of Yeats and Wilde.”41 One can imagine that this kind of continuity via Swedenborg could be extended also to James Joyce. 39

See Atherton, The Books at the Wake, 110-3. See U, 389. 41 McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland, 6. 40

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Other minor coincidences point to a relationship between the works of Joyce and those of Sheridan Le Fanu. A very powerful one is the fact that in “Circe,” the image of the vampire will ultimately materialize in the shape of Stephen’s dead mother.42 The dead mother=vampire relation is also what partly occurs in “Carmilla,” where the mother of Laura—one of Carmilla’s favourite victims— and Carmilla herself belong in fact to the same family.43 Besides, Carmilla represents a sort of distorted maternal figure in the story, as many references show. William Vender, in his well-known Freudian reading of the short story, calls the figure of the mother “the daemonic shadow mother.”44 This is relevant here, not only due to the association between the mother and the vampire, but also for the parallelism between the vampiric and the daemonic, which features massively also in Ulysses. A further occult connection leading again to Sheridan Le Fanu is the reference in “Aeolus” to Lady Dudley, the viceroy’s wife whom Joyce happens to connect with the Phoenix Park murders.45 She is actually the wife of the same Lord Lieutenant who will pass through the city later in the day, in Joyce’s book. Bearing in mind that Sheridan Le Fanu had lived for many years in Phoenix Park where the viceroy’s lodge was located—his father being chaplain to the Royal Hibernian Military School also situated in the park—Lady Dudley evokes the memory of Dudley Ruthyn, Silas’s evil son in Uncle Silas. As regards Lord Dudley passing through the city in Ulysses, there is a further odd biographical coincidence, which alas does not account for any particular detail in text. Nevertheless, perhaps it may help us see in a new light the relationship between the two writers, as well as the knowledge Joyce might have had of some details of Sheridan Le Fanu’s life. McCormack reminds us that, on the occasion of King George’s visit to Dublin in 1821, Joseph and William Sheridan Le Fanu “watched the king’s procession into Dublin from their grandfather’s house in Eccles Street.”46 The fact that the children were actually staying in the street where Bloom also lives, may or may not be meaningful. Perhaps it is just a synchronicity, and we may be sceptical about it as Jung would have been. However, in case Joyce had somehow come to know such a detail about Sheridan Le Fanu’s biography, it would mean that surface meanings in Ulysses are often just ways to mislead the reader, and to create an illusionistic narrative whose deep sense is to be found elsewhere. 42

U, 702. See the discussion of this occurrence in my chapter on “Circe.” See Davis, “Gothic’s Enigmatic Signifier. The Case of J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla.” 44 Vender, “Carmilla: the Arts of Repression,” 215. See also: Michelis, “Dirty Mamma: Horror, Vampires, and the Maternal in Late Nineteenth-Century Gothic Fiction.” 45 See U, 174. 46 McCormack, Sheridan Le Fanu and Victorian Ireland, 15. Italics mine. 43

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Despite this questionable biographical dimension, the two authors are linked by the use of the theme of vampirism. Such a connection is based mainly upon subtle textual references. The following is an almost random example. Just after the recollection of Stephen’s poem, Myles Crawford utters a strange unfinished sentence, preceded by a broken reference to a story set in Vienna. The tale concerns the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph: “Hungarian it was one day….”47 Bearing this in mind, one should note that in the episode Myles Crawford makes also a strange mistake about the Invincibles’ affair, dating it 1881, instead of 1882, the year Joyce was born. Curiously enough, as Adams points out, Bloom in “Eumeus” makes the same error.48 The double occurrence may well be a double mistake. However, one should consider that in Joyce mistakes are always volitional, and are supposed to open the portals of discovery. Adams has a paragraph titled “Bloom as Hungarian, Bloom as Jew,” in which he partly fails to spot a precise function of Bloom being of Hungarian origins. Both the scenes of Crawford’s unfinished tale and Bloom’s origins point to a parallelism between the two characters. The reference to Hungary also reminds us of the background of “Carmilla,” a story set in Styria, which is an Austrian province on the Hungarian border.49 However, textually speaking, what makes Crawford’s vampiric allusions come to he surface is one of Stephen’s silent comments upon his ugly features: “Would anyone wish that mouth for her kiss?”50 Here the text seems to be establishing again a direct dialogue with the attentive reader. Stephen is clearly linking the kiss of the vampire in his poem, a female kiss, to Myles Crawford, a character who is at the same time the newspaper’s editor, a mock Cardinal, a symbol of the pagan god Aeolus, and finally a devil tempter. The connection is suggested by the fact that the poem also explicitly talks of a female vampire, which agains leads us back to Sheridan Le Fanu, as well as to the recollection of Stephen’s dead mother. The relationship between Stephen and Myles Crawford is problematic. The devil/vampire Crawford tempts Stephen and tries to persuade him to make ally with him. At a crucial point, Bloom rings the office, as if he were trying to rescue unconsciously the young intellectual from the evil temptations of the editor, and is providentially told through a third party to “go to Hell” by Crawford himself.51 Alongside this, we find other casual references to a mocking devilish dimension in the words of the editor, like the following sentences: “we haven’t got the chance of a snowball in Hell,”52 or “there was 47

U, 169. See Adams, Surface and Symbol, 161-2. 49 See Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass Darkly, 344. 50 U, 175. Italics mine. 51 See U, 173. 52 U, 166. 48

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weeping and gnashing of teeth over that.”53 This last expression, besides being reminiscent of chapter seven of the Gospel according to St. Matthew,54 seems to be also evocative of the section devoted to the description of Hell in Swedenborg’s book, significantly entitled “What Hell-Fire and Gnashing of Teeth Are.”55 Since the term occult is here used in an inclusive way, it may be interesting to note that in “Aeolus” we encounter one passage where some important sources of Joyce in the field of occultism make their appearance disguised as names. They include A.E. and Madame Blavatsky.56 Direct allusions to mysticism, alongside oblique references and occult hints, are all relevant in a proper understanding of the episode’s substructure. Most of them concern religious or occult matters. Although they are fundamental in the subtext of the work, they play also an active role in the shaping of the narration. The whole system of obscure references in the episode is resolved in a famous, although seemingly irrelevant, hint occurring twice during Stephen’s monologues: “Akasic records of all that ever anywhere wherever was.”57 Leaving aside the question of Joyce’s (mis)spelling of the word, readers must be reminded that the Akashic records are potentially the means of communication between the living and the collective memory of humanity (Past, Present, Future). They are said to comprehend all things on earth, which happened in any age or time. They show affinities with what Yeats called Anima Mundi, and somehow suggest that things which seem to have no apparent meaning at all may instead be meaningful according to hidden patterns of interpretation. If there existed in the world of men such things as the Akashic records, they would certainly be responsible for the occurrence of all the odd synchronicities spotted in the preceeding pages. In the context of Ulysses, the idea of an immortal repository of all memories and thoughts of both the living and the dead must perforce be translated into a symbolic level. It seems that apparently casual occurrences should always be interpreted as if they were open to an explanation that takes account of the textually hidden. Secret clues possibly belong to the text’s unconscious. They always work beneath the surface of narration. The task of the reader is then to establish the right connections, in order to make them come to the surface. This might eventually make him look like an adept of what could be seen as a pseudo-orphic (half-religious, half-satanic) secret cult we may call “Joyceanity.” By paying the due attention to the hidden meanings of the connections, to the 53

U, 174. See Hodgart, “Aeolus,” 119. 55 Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 471-9. 56 See U, 178. 57 U, 182. See also 183. 54

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semantic intersections between the various levels of narration, and finally to the hidden semiotic code which organizes them, one could eventually approach a great deal of the structural complexity of the book from a new perspective. Such an oblique rhetoric will be even more evident in the next chapter, where the ghostly presence of William Shakespeare will come to haunt the scene, and join the odd company of the occult protagonists of the episode.

CHAPTER FOUR SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS

In an analysis of the internal thematic structure of Ulysses, there are several reasons why one should discuss “Scylla” after having cast an eye on “Hades” and “Aeolus.” One of them is well explained by Vivian Mercier, who detects in “Ulysses 9” the occasion of a third possible encounter between Stephen and Bloom, after having “been in each other’s vicinity three times.”1 We can consider this just a “coincidence by absence.” Other textual occurrences actually link the three chapters. They include the subliminal echo of the apocryphal “Harrowing of Hell,” the Haines/Douglas Hyde ironical connection, and the Stephen=Anthistenes equation. One could also interpret Bloom’s furtive visit to the library in search of an issue of the Kilkenny People as a further connection with the world of the press depicted in the seventh episode. Moreover, it can be argued that Stephen’s reference to the “coffined thoughts”2 dwelling in the National Library reminds one of both the athmosphere of the cemetery episode3 and those “death breaths”4 he had breathed in “Proteus.” We may eventually reach the same conclusion by analysing other textual correspondences. A remark in “Scylla,” commenting on Stephen’s management of the discussion among the intellectuals gathered in the library, is peculiarly relevant in this perspective. It parallels a sentence in “Proteus” which describes Stephen’s awareness that he is gradually overcoming the difficulty of walking with his eyes closed. In the ninth episode, while he is conducting his dialogic struggle in the library, we read: “I think you’re getting on very nicely. Just mix up a mixture of theolologicalphilological.”5 In the third chapter we had: “I’m getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side.”6 The use of similar expressions is not just a coincidence. It tells us something about the

1

Mercier, “John Eglinton as Socrates: A Study of ‘Scylla and Charybdis,’ ” 80. U, 248. 3 This connection, and the following one, are suggested by Kiberd in his annotations to the text: U, 1021, n. 248.7. 4 U, 61. 5 U, 263. 6 U, 45. 2

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difference between Stephen’s ways of dealing with his own thoughts on the two occasions, and therefore points to a kind of development of his rhetorical skills. At a surface level, the resemblance between “Proteus” and “Scylla” is prompted by the fact that Stephen appears to be playing indisputably the main role, the winner’s one, in both contexts. However, while in the third episode his silent reasoning does not have to face the reaction of any imaginary antagonist, in “Scylla” he takes part in a dispute and confronts other characters. As many have argued, the way in which the talk in the library is reported makes one think of a dialogue. The dramatic nature of “Scylla” parallels the structure of “Circe,” an episode much resembling a dramatic visionary play. Actually, at a certain stage the dialogue of the ninth episode merges into drama. It is the case of a short play whose protagonists are Stephen, Buck Mulligan, Best, and Quakerlyster.7 The idea that “Scylla” is a sort of imaginary go-between chapter between “Proteus” and “Circe” seems to be confirmed by an occasional hint linking back to Stephen’s dream in the third episode, a dream which in a way anticipates the atmosphere of “Ulysses 15”: “Street of harlots after. A creamfruit melon he held to me.”8 Dialogue is often used as a means to unfold a theory avoiding what are perceived at times as the intolerable pedantries of intellectual discourse. In the library episode, the theory expounded concerns the relationship between an author’s life and his works. However, through the use of a particular terminology Joyce is silently referring also to another kind of hidden reasoning, which may help us understand some later oneiric developments of “Circe.” “Scylla” is, so to speak, the theoretical precondition to the approach of the fifteenth episode, the solution to the occult question in Ulysses. This is suggested by what is really a covert theory of ghosts. Ghosts, in fact, haunt the world of “Scylla” just as they will influence the dynamics of perception in the hallucinated universe of “Circe.”

A Theory of Ghosts Bearing in mind Jung’s interpretation of ghosts, spirits, and apparitions as psychic facts, or in other words, as representations of the activity of the unconscious, one may see in a new light Stephen’s definition of a ghost as “one who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners.”9 It is clear, from the unfolding of his own theory, that he interprets apparitions in their literary sense as projections of the artistic will. 7

See U, 268-9. U, 279. 9 U, 240. 8

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This is why they manifest as unconscious casual phenomena. The Shakespeare theory in “Scylla” is undoubtedly a ghostly one. It is mainly based on the idea that Shakespeare is not Hamlet, but rather the ghost of the prince’s father. By stating that the true artist becomes an “androgynous angel,” as well as “a wife unto himself,”10 Stephen is implying that artists are truly ghosts. As Mercier argues, the artist “is not absent from but hidden by his work.”11 Stephen explains as much in the following terms: He [the artist] goes back, weary of the creation he has piled up to hide him from himself, an old dog licking an old sore. But, because loss is his gain, he passes on towards eternity in undiminished personality, untaught by the wisdom he has written or by the laws he has revealed.12

In the passage, Stephen is obviously referring to Shakespeare, as well as to himself as the recorder of his own life. The story has to be revealed to the reader gradually through a process that involves the act of negating direct knowledge. Such an idea in the Joyce=Shakespeare equation has become a commonplace in criticism,13 although it might be objected on many theoretical grounds. One should really be careful before indulging in the temptation to put life and its representation on contiguous levels. However, it is a fact that in Joyce’s fiction aspects of biography provide at least a useful referential frame which helps locate “historically,” so to speak, some of the ideas discussed as well as many of the characters portrayed. In this light, the occult implications of the fact that the two authors are ghostly textual presences in their respective works, is rarely taken into consideration. In “Scylla,” a similar gaseous relationship is suggested in many places. Take for instance the passage where Eglinton ironically introduces Stephen’s theory that Hamlet is a ghoststory. Soon after that, Stephen’s murmured admonition reads: “List! List! O List!”14 As is well known, this is what the ghost actually says in Shakespeare’s play. Some time later, before stating that Shakespeare is a “ghost, a shadow now, the wind by Elsinore’s rocks,”15 the young intellectual rejoices at his own success in making his audience admire the perfection of his own dialectical performance, by uttering:

10

U, 274. Mercier, “John Eglinton as Socrates: A Study of ’Scylla and Charybdis,” 69. 12 U, 252. 13 See Mercier’s cited article, but also Schutte’s work on Joyce and Shakespeare (n. 27 below), and Kellogg’s essay mentioned below (n. 33). 14 U, 240. 15 U, 252. 11

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“They list.”16 Thus, he himself, like Shakespeare, turns into a ghost. Furthermore, he also ironically identifies with Hamlet’s evil uncle, lover of the prince’s mother, in the act of pouring poison into his listeners’ ears.17 Ghosts and actors are parallel in Shakespeare’s world, for they are so in his language. One should not overrate here the semantic duplicity, in Elizabethan times, of the word “shadow.” The term could mean a spirit, but also something similar to a ghost. However, as Oscar Wilde reminds us in The Portrait of Mr W.H., the technical meaning of the word was connected with the stage. After the reference above, Stephen finally reveals that the writer, in his being both the ghost and the ghost’s creator—but also an actor, that is, a feigner, a dissimulator—is therefore the creator of himself, his own imaginary father. Such a ghostly family game, implied in his questionable biographical interpretation of Shakespeare’s plays, had been previously the target of Mulligan’s mockery. In “Telemachus,” he had reassured Haines that Stephen was able to prove by algebra that the grandson of Hamlet is the grandfather of Shakespeare, and that “he himself is the ghost of his own father.”18 It follows that in “Scylla” some generations of the Bard’s family are finally linked via relations of identities. Such identities involve both the living and the dead in the shape of apparitions. An odd connection between grandsons and grandfathers is here established. At first, it seems to clash with the idea that the ghost of the father is haunting the life of the son, as we are told in “Scylla.” However, in the ninth episode some strange relationships are outlined which point to a consubstantiality of all the members of the same family in the broader economy of the race: When Rutlandbaconsouthamptonshakespeare or another poet of the same name in the comedy of errors wrote Hamlet he was not the father of his own son merely but, being no more a son, he was and felt himself the father of all his race, the father of his own grandfather, the father of his unborn grandson.19

In this perspective, also the appearance of the ghost of Lipoti Virag, Bloom’s grandfather, in “Circe,” rather than his own suicidal father whom one would have expected after the many references to him in the book, is not as strange as it could seem. Mr Best thinks that to be a grandfather is an art,20 and this announces subtly the importance of the coming of Lipoti in “Circe.” His presence is therefore completely justified by the identity of grandsons and 16

U, 252. See U, 252. 18 U, 21. 19 U, 267. 20 See U, 250. 17

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grandfathers theorized in “Scylla.” It is also in a way foretold by the pseudotheological reflections of Stephen about the mystery of paternity on which the Church appears to be ultimately founded.21 Accordingly, the apparition of the spirit of Stephen’s mother in the visionary drama of “Ulysses 15” should be ironically dismissed as a psychic delusion experienced by Stephen, in that maternity for him is hardly to be considered a mystery like fatherhood. Besides, in the case of Bloom’s future pregnancy, maternity is somehow presented as a symbol of the unity of man and women, in the perfection of artistic androgyny. This introduces a major theme of Ulysses, the visionary identity of genders, which can partly be explained as a mocklegacy of a neoplatonic tenet. Other occult aspects of “Scylla,” possibly the easiest to spot at a first reading, are the rather systematic references to the world of theosophy that crowd the episode.22 Their occurrence has been more or less fully analysed by many critics, like Ralph Jenkins for example, and the reader will here be spared of didactic explanations. A pointed analysis of the theosophical allusions of the chapter would be little relevant in this context, for those textual references are just, in their own ways, surface devices with a mystifying function. The core of the present analysis is instead the subliminal presence of a parallel discourse that underwrites narration. This can in fact be spotted at a deeper level than the referential one, and it does not point to an attitude of mockery and dismissal. In fact, to believe in direct statements in Joyce is always to be deceived. Accordingly, his surface treatment of occult contents is clearly dismissive, and as such it would lead one to disregard the occult dimension as little relevant. Mercier is one of the critics who fell into such a tricky trap. In commenting on the fact that “mysticism” is one of the “symbols” in Linati, he states that “perhaps theosophy, which is ridiculed in more than one passage, stands for mysticism in general.”23 He may well be right, judging by Stephen’s behaviour in the episode.24 However, despite the overwhelming irony, what is meaningful in the present context is the structure lying beneath the surface of the work, a structure certainly informed also by irony and disenchantment. Similarly, we all know that one would be naively mistaken if one believed that what the characters of a fictional text say corresponds to the author’s views. This is particularly true in the case of Joyce, especially when mockery is involved. We might as well refer to an opinion expressed in the text by the quaker librarian: “The mocker is never taken seriously when he is most serious.”25 21

See U, 266. See for instance U, 237. 23 Mercier, “John Eglinton as Socrates: A Study of ‘Scylla and Charybdis,’” 72. 24 See for instance U, 237. 25 U, 255. 22

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That Joyce is close to the cause of the theosophists can hardly be demonstrated. However, his own response to the occult does not prevent him from using their methods and ideas in a convincing and quite fruitful way. One instance of this is the aforementioned idea that the Church is founded on the mystery of paternity, and therefore “founded, like the world, macro- and microcosm, upon the void.”26 Such a remark, besides anticipating the ultimate sense of Joyce’s dealing with the issue of spirituality in nihilistic terms, explains how thoroughly, in the micro/macrocosm reference, the text agrees with some basic teachings of the hermetists. An interesting mediation, though rooted in a different kind of analysis, is the one proposed by Schutte in his illuminating study of Joyce and Shakespeare: Like Bloom, he [Stephen] feels the power of spiritual values; he hates Mulligan for deriding them. He is willing to grant their power and acknowledge that they may exist, but like Bloom he refuses to allow them dominion over his life […] On the other hand, because he insists on absolute dedication to Art, Stephen feels he must reject also precisely those spiritual values which Bloom has said alone are life.27

A dual attitude in dealing with spiritual themes emerges from such an argument. Stephen is at the same time capable of acknowledging the power of spirituality and of rejecting its influence on his artistic views. This mixture of scepticism and belief is consistent with the pseudo-statements theory discussed earlier on. In the episode, such a blend of contrary inclinations parallels Stephen’s explanation of his Shakespeare theory and his contemporaneous rejection of it when Eglinton asks him whether he believes in it or not. Mockery, which at times implies the negation of belief, is fundamental to Joyce’s conception of his own art. This is proved by a series of ironical remarks which follow Eglinton’s opinion that Stephen should not expect to be paid for a theory in which he does not believe: I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help me to unbelieve? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other chap.28

Negation always implies acknowledgement. Acceptance and rejection are the two sides of the same coin, that is, so to speak, the coin of belief. Another solution to such a friction of antinomies is Eglinton’s wise suggestion that the

26

U, 266. Schutte, Joyce and Shakespeare. A Study in the Meaning of Ulysses, 145-6. 28 U, 275.

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truth is to be found midway.29 In other words, this could well be a milder version of the final coincidence of the contraries which the hermetists, ridiculed in more than one passage in Ulysses, had successfully taught Joyce.

A Wife unto Himself Oppositions are no doubt among the hidden structural forces of “Scylla,” as the treatment of Shakespeare in the chapter demonstrates.30 Other similar issues can be found in the schematas. They include the contrasts between mysticism and scholasticism, Plato and Aristotle, London/Paris and Stratford/Dublin, and finally youth and old age. The latter is also a crucial question in Yeats’s poetry. The hint at another significant opposition in occult terms, of which Robert Kellogg brilliantly recognizes the actual source,31 is dropped during one of Stephen’s references to William Shakespeare. As Stephen has it, Shakespeare lived in London as an ante-litteram Don Juan for many years, after having been raped in Stratford by a woman eight years older than him. Stephen synthesizes such an ambivalence in a colourful sentence: “Twenty years he dallied there between conjugal love and its chaste delights and scortatory love and its foul pleasures.”32 The two kinds of love alluded to are seen as opposite aspects in Shakespeare’s sentimental life. Kellogg explains the allusion as a reference to the title of a tract by Swedenborg, whose English translation, published in 1794, is Swedenborg’s Delights of Wisdom concerning Conjugal Love: after which follow the pleasures of Insanity concerning Scortatory Love.33 The scholar is no doubt right in spotting this very subtle reference. However, since Joyce did not have a copy of the pamphlet, nor is it stated anywhere that he had actually read it, we will never know whether he went further than remembering just its title. The only book by Swedenborg Joyce has ever possessed is in fact Heaven and Hell. Luckily enough, the text deals at length with the notion of “conjugal love,” that is, marriage love, and can therefore prove helpful in explaining the true meaning of the allusion in “Scylla.” Conjugal love is presented in Ulysses as a merely human and earthly experience, while for the Swede it is a mystical estate concerning the spiritual life of the angels: […] there are marriages in the heavens just as there are on earth. But marriages in the heavens are very different from marriages on earth […] Marriage in heaven is 29

See U, 272. See for instance the description of the Bard as “ravisher and ravished,” U, 252. 31 See n. 33 below. 32 U, 258. 33 Kellogg, “Scylla and Charibdis,” 171.

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Chapter Four the bonding of two individuals into one mind. We shall first explain what this bonding is like. The mind is made up of two parts, one of which is called discernment, the other intention. When these two parts work together, they are called a single mind. In heaven, the husband takes that part called discernment, and the wife that part called intention. When this bond (which is a matter of more inward elements) comes down into the lower levels that involve their bodies, it is perceived and felt as love. This is true marriage love. We can see from this that true marriage love originates from the bonding of two individuals into one mind. In heaven, this is called “dwelling together,” and a couple is not called two but one.34

The idea that the heavenly couple is called one instead of two implies a kind of “unity of being,” an androgyny of the soul, whose possible realization can only take place in heaven. In fact, as we will see later in this study, the idea of a terrestrial reconciliation between the sexes, and precisely the union between Bloom and Molly in the text, is hard to achieve. It is in fact overshadowed by the superior androgynous reconciliation within oneself. Carolyn Heilbrun explains that the term androgyny “defines a condition under which the characteristics of the sexes and the human impulses expressed by men and women, are not rigidly assigned.”35 This agrees with the ideas of animus and anima which Jung explains in these terms: Every man carries within him the eternal image of a woman […] a definite feminine image. This image is fundamentally unconscious, an hereditary factor of primordial origin engraved in the living organic system of the man, an imprint or “archetype” of all the ancestral experiences of the female, a deposit, as it were, of all the impressions ever made by woman […] The same is true of the woman: she too has her inborn image of man.36

Although Stephen says that Shakespeare would at the same time be bawd and cuckold,37 he adds in Swedenborgian fashion that “in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.”38 The purpose of this passage is to portray the sentimental and sexual life of a particular man by offering a powerful and refined parody of the original spiritual interpretation connected with androgyny. The shift from heavenly environs to earthly Elizabethan 34

Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 285. Heilbrun, Towards Androgyny. Aspects of Male and Female in Literature, x. 36 Jung, Collected Works, Vol. 17, 198. 37 See U, 274. 38 U, 274.

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England is a way of secularizing the occult. It can also be argued that the idea of the two angels becoming one might have influenced the fictional relationship between Stephen/Bloom and Molly. Consider, for instance, the following passage from Heaven and Hell: The existence of this kind of bonding of husband and wife in the most inward elements of their minds, comes from their creation itself. The man is actually born to be discerning—that is, to think from discernment; while the woman is born to be affectional—that is to think from intention […] In the matter of form, a man has harder, less attractive face, a heavier voice, a harder body; while a woman has a smoother, more attractive face, a gentler voice, a softer body […] There is, however, no dominance in marriages in heaven. The wife’s intention actually belongs to her husband, and the husband’s discernment to the wife, because each wants to intend and think like the other—that is, with sharing, and reciprocally. This is the source of their bonding into one.39

The references to a “smoother, more attractive face, a gentler voice, a softer body,” perhaps suit the image of Molly Bloom in Ulysses. Also the idea of a wife as representative of the intention—and discernment in changeable proportions—could somehow illuminate the sense of Molly’s drowsy monologue in the last episode, where the actual border between the two faculties appears to be utterly ephemeral. In order to establish a final link between the Swede’s idea of marriages in heaven and Joyce’s own work, at the risk of sounding redundant, or rather, a Swedenborgian adept, we can take a look at a few more passages from Heaven and Hell concerning the attributes of conjugal unions: I have been told by angels that so far as two married partners are involved in this bond, they are involved in true marriage love and at the same time in intelligence, wisdom, and happiness; this because the Divine—True and the Divine—Good, the sources of all intelligence, wisdom, and happiness, flow primarily into true marriage love […] true marriage love, seen in its own right, is a condition of innocence. […] For nothing fails to give pleasure to their minds; in fact, heaven flows with its joys into the details of their lives.40

Curiously enough, the words “love, intelligence, wisdom, happiness, good, innocence and joy” are also considered by Swedengorg to be the very attributes of head, an organ of the body of heaven:

39 40

Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 286. Ibid, 287, 295. Italics mine

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Chapter Four In the Greatest Man, or heaven, people in the head are those who are involved in everything good more than others are. They are in fact involved in love, peace, innocence, wisdom, discernment [intelligence], and in joy and happiness as a result.41

The Linati schema informs us that the organ of “Scylla” is “brain.” Brain in this context equals “head” through semantic extension. What is then the connection between those attributes of head/marriage love and the sense of the ninth episode? This is the question we need to answer in order to understand fully one of the hidden themes of the chapter, and precisely its bookish literariness. Let us start by saying that all the qualities Swedenborg attaches to the head of heaven share inevitably some ethical meaning. They in fact represent an estate of spiritual perfection. Considering that “literature” is the art of the episode according the schematas, Swedenborg’s attributes seem to jar with Joyce’s idea of literature, which in the early essay, “Drama and Life” (1900), he had described as “the whimsicalities and circumstances of men and women.”42 As is the case with Stephen’s parallel essay “Art and Life” in Stephen Hero, it can be argued that the notion of literature discussed there does not correspond to the more mature developments of the same concept when Joyce actually wrote Ulysses. Generally speaking, and leaving aside theoretical consideration about authorship, one could perhaps agree with Kellogg that one should rather “attribute its ideas [the ideas expressed in Stephen’s essay] to Joyce […] than to a fictional prefiguration of the Stephen of Ulysses.”43 Kellog’s hypothesis is “that the distinction scarcely exists when the thoughts of the two are from the same period.”44 This is consistent with a very basic truth: the facts of Ulysses take place in 1904 and not in 1922. Something similar happens in relation to Stephen’s aesthetic theories exposed in various works, which we tend to ascribe to an authorial function dependent on Joyce’s intentions while at university. By the same token, in an analisys of Joyce’s ideas about the relationship between literary representation and life, one can assume that the ideas expressed in “Scylla” are close at least to the position of the young Joyce on the matter. To a certain extent, one can also agree with Schutte’s opinion that “between the end of the Portrait and the opening of Ulysses, Stephen’s character has hardened, and he has lost much of his capacity for growth.”45 This may point to some quite intentional irony on Joyce’s part, in pretending that one of his alter 41

Ibid, 83. Italics mine. CW, 40. 43 Kellogg, 154. 44 Ibid., “Scylla and Charybdis,” 154. 45 Schutte, Joyce and Shakespeare. A Study in the Meaning of Ulysses, 18. 42

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egos whose “character has hardened” expresses a most revealing theory concerning the obscure relationship between the author’s life and his works. Accordingly, it can be argued that in the episode the literature/brain dichotomy is indisputably linked to life via a further powerful inversion. All the attributes of the head quoted above—wisdom, innocence, intelligence, love, good, joy and happiness—cannot really suit Joyce’s idea of literature as a type of writing that eschews morals. Not only is the lack of moral goals inconsistent with Swedenborg’s belief, but it seems to be its very contrary. In the light of Stephen’s rejection of his own theory, and therefore of his own lies about it, the following definition of literature as lie, taken from an essay by Italian writer Giorgio Manganelli, may help us approach the question of calculating the hidden meaning of the art of “Scylla”: Literature, far from describing “the totality of man,” is not expression but provocation. It is not the wonderful human figure sought by the moralists of culture. Instead, it is ambiguous, unnatural, a little monstrous. Literature is not just an arbitrary action. It is vicious. It is always an act of disobedience, a jest, a joke, a sacred provocative gesture against history.46

Stephen’s perspective is very similar to this. The reader will acknowledge that while he pretends to be talking about Shakespeare, he is instead evidently speaking of himself, and “unconsciously” of Leopold and Molly. The final irony of such a discourse emerges when he states that he does not believe in his own theory, which makes him reject all sorts of commitments, even to himself. In “Telemachus” Stephen was concerned about making money with his own theory.47 In “Scylla” he is ready to sell it for a guinea.48 This ironically jars with the opening of the episode, where the Quaker librarian had mentioned Goethe’s “priceless pages” of Wilhelm Meister.49 It seems that the idea of literature in Ulysses shows a complete lack of moral aims. Such a hoax of gigantic proportions involves necessarily many hidden references in the book. Among them, the mystical ones play an important role. In the present perspective, mysticism—here intended as a part of the heterodox universe named occultism—and literature are hardly differentiated. In fact, in the episode the two categories blend in Joyce’s view. Many writers mentioned in the episode belong to what could be described as A.E.’s intellectual circle. Despite the fact that they were not all true believers, it is clear that Russell was regarded by them as an influential figure in Dublin’s 46

Manganelli, Il rumore sottile della prosa, 76. See U, 18-9. 48 See U, 275. 49 See U, 235. 47

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literary scenario. Actually, before leaving the library, Russell is invited by a third party to one of George Moore’s evenings. At the end of the episode, Buck Mulligan will be invited too.50 Moreover, at a certain stage Russell is rumoured to be working on a poetry collection that shall include the poems of some young Irish poets, but Stephen is not among them. Russell, described as the “gulfer of souls,”51 is therefore a symbol of both literature and mysticism. His textual presence justifies the occurrence of certain occult themes in the episode. Apart from the strictly theosophical ones, we encounter also certain bland references to Satanism, like those present in previous chapters. Some of them whisper occasionally the name of W.B. Yeats, himself a ghostly shadow in the episode.

Diabolus Est Deus Inversus Mercier argues that in “Scylla” Joyce is inviting the reader to an “odd game of hide-and-seek.”52 In such a playful atmosphere, we find some interesting references to Shakespeare, and precisely to the bard’s alleged intention to hide himself in his works.53 In modern times, something similar happens with certain film directors, like in the movie “The Dead” where Huston makes a short appearance as the cab-driver at the end of the story. Another Shakespeare-related Will, whose presence has escaped most readers of the episode, is subtly concealed in the text, and this is Stephen’s description of the jester Mulligan as “a lubber jester, a wellkempt head,”54 which actually hides a reference to Will Kempe, who played the jester in Burbage’s company. The way in which his name is disguised contributes in providing Mageeglinjohn’s famous question “what’s in a name?”55 with further obscure echoes. Such echoes are also linked to the use of pseudonyms and initials in the reference to certain characters whose actual identification is not a hard task. Again, most of them belong to both the fields of mysticism and literature. We find two other Wills, suggested by the initials W.B. (Yeats and Blake), the theosophist par excellence Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (H.P.B), her occult mentor Kooti Hoomi (K.H.), George Russell (A.E.), and so on. Stephen’s

50

See U, 245, 275. U, 245. 52 Mercier, “John Eglinton as Socrates: A Study of ‘Scylla and Charybdis,’ ” 69. 53 See U, 269. 54 U, 276. 55 U, 268. 51

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initials are also subtly incorporated in the text: “S.D. sua donna.”56 This again suggests the idea of androgyny, for sua donna in Italian means “his woman.” The many references to persons named Will, beside reminding one of Wilde’s theory in The Portrait of W.H. alluded to by Mr Best,57 happen to cause inevitable confusion in the text: — Gentle Will is being roughly handed, gentle Mr Best said gently. — Which Will? Gagged sweetly Buck Mulligan. We are getting missed. — The will to live, John Eglinton philosophised, for poor Ann, Will’s widow, is the will to die.58

A particular Will who appears as another powerful ghost-by-absence haunting the episode is Yeats. His occult presence is suggested by many allusions, among which some are more direct than others. Of course, when one speaks of the presence of Yeats, one refers to his textual “existence” within the fictional horizon of the narrative. One may well argue that all fictional presences are somehow ghostly ones or, in other words, textual shadows. Actual persons cannot be present in the real sense of the word. Besides, there is no “real” world in the strict sense to which the text refers, but only possible worlds, like Giordano Bruno’s infinite worlds. The people are there insofar as their names are there. They are, so to speak, hidden behind names. Through the dynamic role of the reader, Joyce’s textuality seems sometimes to behave like the spiritualistic formulas of the mediums who are asked to evoke spirits on behalf of third parties. In the same way, the people concealed behind the text can also be summoned through analogical interpretation. This happens, for instance, when a reader spots an allusion to a character in an ambiguous textual occurrence. In Joyce’s works, such a method stands for a proof that a quasi-magical practice of letting the characters lie hidden beneath the text is silently at work. It is as if they are awaiting to be summoned by the reader/adept through the dialectical relationship that links words (names, initials, and so on) to their occult referents. The relation between a text and its reader is somehow similar to that between the formulas of a charm and the person who tries to evoke some absent presence, like in spiritualistic séances. This is, of course, subtly parodied by Joyce, and the whole affair is thoroughly secularized. In order to show how this process works in detail, we may start with the first allusion to the works of Yeats. It occurs at the very beginning of the episode, when Stephen is about to start his lecture on Hamlet: “Seven is dear to the

56

U. 269. See U, 254. 58 U, 264. 57

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mystic mind. The shining seven W.B. calls them.”59 As I have said, W.B. may well be also the initials of William Blake. However, some allusions seem to suggest that the shadow of the Sligo poet is lurking behind this particular occurrence all the same. It is useful to take account of certain occult implications of the number seven, a number which, as has been noted, occurs many times in Yeats’s poetry too. The reference here could be, say, to “the sailing seven” in “A Cradle Song,” to “the Seven Light” in “The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers,” or even to the poem and the collection titled In The Seven Woods. Actually, towards the end of “Scylla,” Joyce happens to write a parody of the poem “Baile and Ailinn” from In the Seven Woods.60 Coggrave explains that Joyce’s use of numbers is “evident through his work, particularly the number seven, traditionally the occultist symbol of creativity, wholeness and perfection.”61 He goes on quoting from Blavatsky’s Isis Unveiled, where the mysterious lady refers to an occult correspondence between many different things. These include the seven prismatic colours of the rainbow, the seven labours of magic of the kabbalists, the seven upper spheres, the seven notes of the musical scale, the seven numerals of Pythagoras, the seven wonders of the world, the seven ages, and finally the seven steps of the masons.62 This plethora of meanings hidden behind the number seven is confirmed by the popular Brewer’s Book of Myths and Legends, which gives the following account of some of them: Seven. A mystic sacred number; it is composed of four and three, which among the Pythagoreans were, and from time immemorial have been, accounted lucky numbers. Among the Babylonians, Egyptians and other ancient peoples there were seven sacred planets; and the Hebrew verb to swear means literally, “to come under the influence of seven things” […] There are seven days in the creation, seven days in the week, seven virtues, seven divisions in the Lord’s prayer, seven ages in the life of man, climateric years are seven and nine with their multiples by odd numbers, and the seventh son of a seventh son was always held notable. Among the Hebrews every seventh year was Sabbatical, and seven times seven years was the Jubilee. Three great Jewish feasts lasted seven days and between the first and second were seven weeks. Levitical purifications lasted seven days. The number is associated with a variety of occurrences in the Old Testament. In the Apocalypse we have seven churches of Asia, seven candlesticks, seven stars, seven trumpets, seven spirits before the throne of God, seven horns, seven vials, seven plagues, a seven-headed monster, and the lamb with seven eyes.

59

U, 236. See U, 277. See also Kiberd’s annotations: 1029, n. 277.15-24. 61 Coggrave, “Joyce’s Use of Occultist Sources,” 105. 62 See also Blavatsky, Isis Unveiled, 408. 60

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The old astrologers and alchemists recognized seven planets, each having its own heaven.63

The number seven stands also for a cluster of further occult meanings, including the seven planes of nature;64 Rudolph Steiner’s seven stages of the way of initiation or his sevenfold man;65 the seven kabbalistic sephiroths proceeding from the first triad;66 and finally, in Joyce’s episode, “the wonder of seven parishes”67 which Shakespeare’s secondbest bed is not, according to Stephen. John Senior argues that the number seven has also certain alchemic implications, linked to music by means of a Kabbalistic connection. He acknowledges that “the alchemists said that the seven metals were the seven strings of the lyre and the seven notes of the musical scale.”68 Theosophical and numerological allusions in the text often take place alongside the nebulous theme of Satanism, in the context of the half-serious and eclectic occult system of Ulysses. It is interesting here to consider briefly also the various references to this subject. We encounter the title of a novel by Marie Corelli, The Sorrows of Satan which, as Kiberd explains, suggests a kind of mockery of “Stephen’s youthful aim to write an epic with the satanic figure as hero.”69 Immediately after the mentioned “shining seven,” there come mixed references to Milton’s Satan in Paradise Lost, suggesting again the idea that the devil is more than an occasional presence in the episode.70 In such a context made of subliminal meanings, a sentence occurring a few lines below which is at the surface level obviously referred just to Cranly, could be seen as a satanic allusion: “My soul’s youth I gave to him.”71 The image of the devil is also implied in Stephen’s recollection of James VI, King of Scotland,72 who had written a treatise on demonology.73 Similarly, we may take account of the reference to Sir Walter Ralegh,74 whose circle of atheist friends, according to

63

Brewer’s Book of Myth and Legend, 259. See Jenkins, “Theosophy in Scylla and Charybdis,” 37-8. 65 See Steiner, Occult Science, 58-9. 66 This will be discussed more comprehensively in the chapters on “Sirens” and “Proteus.” 67 U, 265. 68 Senior, The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Literature, 29. 69 Kiberd, in U, 1015, n. 235.25. 70 See U, 236. 71 U, 236. 72 See U, 263. 73 See U, 1025 n. 263.3. 74 See U, 258. 64

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past scholarship, was said to rejoice at reading God’s name backwards.75 Interestingly, the reader will be forced to accomplish this very practice later on, in “Circe.” The same theme seems to be carried out also in the unfolding of the logic of the initials. For instance, Buck Mulligan, the performer of an inverted Christian rite much resembling the parody of a black mass as early as in “Telemachus,” has initials that could also point to the black mass (B.M.). It could also be argued that the first and the final letters of Bloom’s surname are B.M., while the initials of Molly Bloom are the same as Buck Mulligan’s, only inverted. A less tentative textual connection with the satanic theme is provided by an interesting passage in “Scylla,” which links back to chapter four of A Portrait, where Swedenborgian and devilish ghosts had joined the same company in the ciphered language of Stephen’s artistic intentions. Before discussing it, we may briefly take account of a further connection between the two contexts, a cluster of sentences which describe Stephen’s reflections while leaving the library: “The portico. Here I watched the birds for augury.”76 Stephen’s recollection is an intertextual link to a passage in A Portrait featuring a direct allusion to Swedenborg. It concerns the Swede’s ideas regarding “the correspondence of birds to things of the intellect.” In Stephen’s words, the birds “know their names and seasons because they, unlike man, are in order of their life and have not perverted that order by reason.”77 As we will see, such a retrospective connection between Ulysses and A Portrait helps us see in a new light the satanic theme in “Scylla.” Towards the end of the discussion in the library, the reader encounters an obscure epithet referred to Stephen: “Bous Stephanoumenos.”78 It means “ox/bull soul of Stephen,” and recalls the description of Stephen as the “bullockbefriending bard,”79 as well as Joyce’s collaboration with The Irish Homestead. This was a farmer’s journal edited by A.E., in which three of Joyce’s short stories had been published in 1904. However, phonetically speaking, the name may eventually sound to anyone with little Greek a little devilish, like the name Mephistopheles, for example. The man=beast equation implied would also lead to this conclusion. In Christian iconography, the devil is often described by the image of the beast. What makes the connection relevant in the present context are again a couple of passages from chapter four of A Portrait, which help us see the bigger picture: “Stephanos Dedalos! Bous

75

This is suggested in De Angelis, “Commento a Ulisse,” 1231, n. 792. U, 279. 77 P, 244. 78 U, 269. 79 U, 44. 76

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Stephanoumenos! Bous Stephanoforos!”80 A few paragraphs above, a supersubtle allusion to hell and the devil via musical theory and the history of music had been made: He heard notes of fitful music leaping upwards a tone and downwards a diminished fourth, upwards a tone and downwards a major third, like triplebranching flames leaping fitfully flame after flame, out of a midnight wood.81

The occult meaning of the musical intervals quoted here has escaped most readers of Ulysses. The passage contains satanic allusions, which introduce the subsequent image of the flames, a clearer reference to hell and the devil. Let’s start by saying that such a precision in the use of a jargon like that of harmony, hardly accessible to common readers, is at least suspect, and like all things suspect in Joyce, it probably hides a secret solution. A diminished fourth and a major third are musical intervals which, though harmonically different, both involve two tones. Suffice it to say that Stephen imagines that he is hearing first an ascending one-tone interval followed by a descending diminished fourth, then again another ascending one-tone interval followed by a descending major third. It is not clear whether the first notes of the one-tone ascending intervals and those of the two-tone descending ones are the same notes, but if they are so the hidden sense of Joyce’s musical allusion would instantly materialize as a satanic allusion. In fact, the result of the two descending intervals would be two three-tone intervals, and in the history of musical harmony the three-tone interval—better known as the tritonus or the tritone—is also called the Diabolus in Musica, that is, the devil in music. Until the end of the Renaissance, it was regarded as dangerous for its devilish associations. The Church prohibited it, for it was thought to summon Satan. Popular lore has it that those who were found using the interval could be subjected to torture, and that burnings were a favourite option. It follows that Joyce, whose keen knowledge of music should not be underestimated despite his relative imprecision in dealing properly with musical jargon, is here playing with a very subtle game hardly accessible to the nonspecialists. He is thus making a satanic allusion so obscure that it could have been picked up only by a few. Such an obscurantist attitude is by no means surprising on Joyce’s part, and is somehow consistent with the ways of the occultists. Their secrets are in fact to be disclosed only to adepts, and are not to be known by others. Similarly, Joyce is perhaps parodying an attempt to rewrite in cryptograms a kind of knowledge for adepts only. At the same time, he is subtly stating that, in order to understand the secrets he has concealed in his works, his 80 81

P, 182-3. P, 179.

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readers have to commit themselves to him, as if he were God, or Satan, or both of them. It is in this context that we should locate the importance of Yeats’s gaseus presence in the episode. We should not forget that his already-mentioned Golden Dawn’s motto—DEDI, Diabolus Est Deus Inversus—was also a clear reference to the devil. The allusions pointing to Yeats’s haunting role are of two kinds: direct and indirect. Among the direct ones, beside those already discussed, we find also a reference to his Cathleen Ni Houlihan,82 and to “Aengus of the birds”83 evoking Yeats’s “The Wanderings of Aengus.” They also include Stephen’s overt recollection of the Sligo poet’s admiration for Colum’s lines,84 and finally Mulligan’s ironical rebuke to Stephen about his lack of the Yeats touch.85 Other occurrences are more open to different interpretations, although it seems that they may eventually point to a Yeatsian connection too. For instance, the way in which “the clown” Mulligan is portrayed in “Scylla” as looking “blithe in motley”86 is perhaps reminiscent of “where motley is worn,” a famous line from Yeats’s “Easter 1916.”87 The poem, written in September 1916, was published immediately after in a private edition of 25 copies, but became well known to the wider public only when it appeared in The New Statesmen and The Dial in the Autumn of 1920. Ellmann records that “Scylla” was composed between October 1918 and February 1919. It was first published between April and May 1919.88 Accordingly, provided that there might be a link between the two uses of the same unusual word, the dates of composition and publication point to the fact that an influence of Yeats on Joyce is possible. Otherwise, it may well be just a coincidence. A slightly different version of the same “coincidence” recurs also in “Circe,” where Mulligan is described as wearing a “clown’s cap with curling bell,”89 a clear reminiscence of Yeats’ poem “The Cap and Bells.” A similar connection is provided also by the resemblance between other seemingly casual expressions in the episode and verses written by Yeats. An instance of this could be a curious sentence pronounced by Mulligan: “O, thunder of those loins!”90 which may eventually parallel “a shudder in the loins” 82

See U, 236. U, 279. 84 See U, 246. 85 See U, 278. 86 U, 253. 87 Yeats, Collected Poems (1992), 176. 88 Ellmann, James Joyce, 442. 89 U, 681. 90 U, 257. 83

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in Yeats’s “Leda and the Swan,” from The Tower (1928). In support of this view it can be argued that while Mulligan was talking of the statue of a goddess, the Venus Kallipyge, a few lines below Stephen actually speaks of Helen, that is, Leda’s daughter. Such subliminal links between Joyce and Yeats—two artists who undoubtedly shared some similar interests and sources in the visionary field (Blake, Boehme, Swedenborg and Joachim Abbas etc…)—are somehow reflected in their respective attitudes towards their own theories. Stephen’s ironical rejection of the ideas explained in his Shakespeare lecture is a debt to Wilde, who thought that a truth is made of two opposites both of which may be true all the same. However, it is also quite similar in spirit to a famous passage from Yeats’s introduction to the second edition of A Vision, where the poet answers negatively a possible question about his own belief in the complex theory he has formulated. In Atherton’s words, A Vision is a work “which Joyce seems to treat as if it were a book he had written himself.”91 Despite this, the sceptical intentions explicit in Yeats’s unwillingness to believe in his own theory could not in any way have influenced the writing of the Hamlet theory in “Scylla.” The mentioned introduction by Yeats was published in 1928, many years after the composition of Joyce’s episode. On the other hand, the suggestion that this could point to an influence of Joyce on Yeats is rather fascinating. A similar outlook, although on a very different textual ground, is what Roy Foster seems to suggest when he speaks of the influence of Joyce’s Portrait on Yeats’s Reveries, which “may be traced in the child’s eye impressionism of his opening passage.”92 However, even if this is not the case, Yeats’s introduction to A Vision stands out clearly to show the similarities between the artistic tempers of the two writers. Such an attitude jars with the popular view that Joyce and Yeats are poles apart with no hopes of reconciliation, wittily summed up by Terry Eagleton in “The Ballad of Willie Yeats”: But the Irish were deaf to this mystical wit In England a Gael and in Ireland a Brit ’Twixt twaddle and Thompson gun they made their choice “You’re a tiresome auld eejit” said young Jimmy Joyce.93

However, one feels that it is time for a comparative study attempting to trace the affinities between Joyce and Yeats, despite the apparent aesthetic, cultural, and political distance that separates them. Such a critical attitude would be cer91

Atherton, The Books at the Wake, 113. Foster, W.B. Yeats: a Life, I: The Apprentice Mage 1865-1914, 526. 93 Eagleton, “The Ballad of Willie Yeats,” 3.

92

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tainly helpful in shaking a little the popular assumption that the poetics of Yeats and Joyce are irreconcialable, a view that nowadays has the typical solidity of common places. The time has come, perhaps, to review the relationship between Joyce and Yeats, at least in terms of aesthetic affinity, if not of proper artistic legacy. The latent presence of Yeats is detectable also between the lines of what is seemingly one of the less “interesting” chapters of Ulysses, “Lotus-Eaters” (Ulysses 5). There, as in “Scylla,” it blends with other proper occult themes such as theosophy, Satanism, and vampirism. Accordingly, Yeats’s ghost will gradually become one of the structuring features of the hidden subtext of Ulysses.

CHAPTER FIVE LOTUS-EATERS

“Lotus-Eaters” is a key chapter for the understanding of Ulysses as an occult text, and yet it has been described as one of the least interesting episodes, “lying as it does in perfumed lethargy between the fecund smell of Calypso’s bed and the morbid air of Hades.”1 Accordingly, it has attracted “relatively” little attention. Herring, the author of the above poetical description, is no doubt right. The reader encounters little action in “Lotus-Eaters,” and the narration unfolds in a seemingly narcotic way. However, this is true only on the surface, for the episode is much more complex than may appear at first. Herring acknowledges that it is “more than an interlude,” for it “forecasts motifs in the novel.”2 He correctly believes that such a textual interrelation typical of the episodes of Ulysses causes “each chapter to grow more or less naturally out of the previous one, thus swelling the progress of a design previously begun.”3 The hidden structure of “Ulysses 5” is characterised by a subterranean net of complex symbolic references, which lie dormant in the shadow of its lethargic quality. In many cases, they are deeply linked to the some of the main occult themes already taken into consideration in relation to previous chapters. The occurrence of such themes establishes a problematic relationship between an apparently linear episode and one of the most revealing in the whole book: “Scylla.” This partly explains the present choice of studying “Lotus-Eaters” after having looked at the library chapter. A further reason for such a decision concerns the complex occult meaning of the organ category. The episode has two different organs: “skin” (Linati) and “genitals” (Gorman). Despite the importance of the first, keenly analysed by many critics in the past, here we may take the alternative pattern, and follow for the first time in this study the Gorman schema. In fact, an explanation of the hidden meaning of “genitals” in the light of Swedenborg’s thought will prove illuminating. It shows how an occult narration literally permeates also the present episode. It points to the possibility of reorganizing the chapters of Ulysses 1

Herring, “Lotuseaters,” 72. Ibid., 72. 3 Ibid., 73. 2

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according to a different sequence, a hidden order that eventually opens up new interpretations for the watchful reader.

Interplay of Obscure Trivialities The range of obscure and secret meanings encrypted in the textual dimension of the chapter is very wide. Each of them seems to allude to different spheres and themes, all pointing once again to Joyce’s eclectic and amalgamlike idea of the occult. As before, we again encounter the Yeats connection alongside Swedenborgian echoes, blasphemous allusions, and oblique links to the Kabbalah. All such themes are dependent on each other, for they are interrelated and interconnected in a bigger perspective. If taken together, they form a comprehensive system, a parallel semiotic code pointing to a cluster of meanings corresponding to a hidden structure. Keeping this ideal unity in mind, alongside the unstable fluidity which generally accompanies all esoteric knowledge, it is useful to spot and analyze those themes separately, despite the fact that they are indeed parts of a whole. As regards the Yeats connection, in the previous chapter the poet’s textual absence has been described by a gaseous presence in Ulysses. More generally, two different kinds of relationship between the Sligo poet and Joyce can be identified. The first depends on similarities in their respective poetics, which could perhaps be interpreted in terms of influence or artistic legacy. The second can be taken as a curious type of synchronicity. While according to theosophical thought the meaning of coincidences may refer to the realm of the mysterious keepers of the akashic records, “textual synchronicities,” that is to say, seemingly casual coincidences consciously orchestrated by an authorial strategy, belong to the text’s instructions, and are supposed to guide the reader towards some specific goal. A different type of coincidence concerning biographical events such as the foundation of Yeats’s Hermetic Society in Dublin, or the date of death of Stanislaus Joyce, or even Yeats’s father’s death, on February 3, 1922—the day after the publication of Ulysses—are not the subject of critical interpretation. Perhaps, they may well be synchronicities in the Jungian sense, or rather mere coincidences of events with no meaning at all. Such possibilities, despite the potential symbolical significance they might have had for Joyce’s superstitious mind, or even for Yeats’s credulous attitude towards the odd, do not explain anything about the text, nor do they illuminate the connection between the works of the two writers. On the contrary, we may regard other textual features, like, say, the female voice of Yeats’s Crazy Jane poems, to name just a random example, as possibly pointing to an occult dimension. This might be the tension towards the unity of

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the opposites (also in terms of gender), of which the interchange of sexes is a powerful symbol. Such phenomena happen for instance in “Circe,” where Bella turns into Bello, and Leopold Bloom becomes pregnant. According to Ellmann, Crazy Jane expresses a view that may eventually represent the opposite of Yeats’s nature, a view which jars with Yeats’s own attitude towards society. The series of poems centred on her character are in fact “completely physical and anti-intellectual.”4 In relation to one single poem, “Crazy Jane talks with the Bishop,” Ellmann has an illuminating explanation of its duplicity: [She] is not so wild as she appears, or as Yeats pretended, for, as the last two lines indicate [For nothing can be sole or whole/That has not been rent], she shares his theories about love, and sees it as a conflict of opposites but also as an escape from them to unity, wholeness, or, to use a word which she would not have used, to beatitude.5

Another biographer of Yeats, Stephen Coote, shares a similar view: “Contraries meet in Crazy Jane and, in their fullness, redeem her from the ghostly existence foredoomed for the unfulfilled dead.”6 Such a tension towards reunion, or reconciliation after the sundering, is similar to what, after being theorized in “Scylla,” occurs in “Circe.” Actually, the sexual violence of which Bello/Bella is capable, and of which Bloom becomes a “willing” victim, echoes distanly the fierce and defiant character of Crazy Jane. Yet again, the possibility of arguing about an influence of Yeats on Joyce in this case is denied by the simple fact that the writing of the Crazy Jane series began in 1929,7 some seven years after the publication of Ulysses, and nine after the completion of “Circe.”8 One wonders whether, on the contrary, Joyce finally managed to teach something to the older poet. Such textual synchronicities are just general. They are interesting as guidelines to approach the cultural frameworks of the artistic achievements of the two writers. However, they also suggest that the relationship between Yeats and Joyce is not a superficial one. As regards “Lotus-Eaters,” the link is established on the basis of some most subtle references. One involves the idea of androgyny, while the others, “anticipating” and explaining a meaningful allusion present in “Scylla and Charybdis,” refer more generally to the world of the occult. A few pages from the beginning of the episode, after Bloom collects Martha Clifford’s spicy letter in Westland Row post office, he spots a recruiting poster 4

Ellmann, Yeats: The Man ad the Mask, 272. Ibid., 273. 6 Coote, W.B. Yeats: A Life, 510. 7 See Ellmann, Yeats: The Man ad the Mask, 273. 8 See Ellmann, James Joyce, 442. 5

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which makes him think first of Major Tweedy, and then of Maud Gonne.9 As is well known, she is also a constant reference in the poems of Yeats. He loved her deeply and even proposed to her at some stage. Actually, he loved her so much that, after she had turned him down, he ended up proposing to her daughter. The response of Gonne’s daughter, Iseult, showed clearly that she was at least as wise as her mother, for she rejected him too. However, in early 1903 Maud married John MacBride,10 one of the nationalist leaders executed during the Easter Rising in 1916. Yeats hated MacBride, whose “masculine” character must indeed have been opposite to his own. He eventually immortalized him as a “drunken, vainglorious lout” in one of his most famous poems. Many sources describe Maud Gonne as a woman with a very strong personality and determination. Probably, given her passionate interest in politics and certain masculine traits of her temperament, we could imagine her as some kind of a “manly woman.” Roy Foster records that she was once described as “a great red-haired yahoo of a woman” by a “timid Trinity don.”11 Many examples of her fierce temper support such a view, like for instance a particular event happened during the Jubilee of Queen Victoria, in 1897. In the following account, Ellmann describes her defiant behaviour as opposed to Yeats’s protective attitude: Maud Gonne delivered an incendiary speech to the crowd, telling how she had tried to decorate the graves of the Manchester Martyrs (Irishmen hanged for revolutionary activity thirty years before), and had been refused permission because of the Jubilee. In a low voice that yet seemed to go through the crowd, she said, “Must the graves of our dead go undecorated because Victoria has her Jubilee?” and the whole crowd went wild. A riot started, and Maud Gonne wanted to join the rioters, but Yeats, to her great irritation, prevented her.12

To state bluntly that Yeats’s reaction in this case shows unequivocally his feminine side against Maud Gonne’s masculine pride would probably be much too speculative. However, it is a fact that he was deeply fascinated by this side of her character, a counterpart to his own intellectual nature, which prevented him from performing any kind of violence from too close a distance. In “LotusEaters,” only on the surface does the reference to Maud Gonne—prompted by associative reasoning which starts from the military poster on show on the wall of the post office—appear casual. Its hidden meaning may well be again one of the several allusions to the interchange of genders and androgyny in Ulysses. 9

See U, 88. See Foster, W.B. Yeats: a Life, I: The Apprentice Mage 1865-1914, 286. 11 Ibid. 91. 12 Ellmann, Yeats: The Man ad the Mask, 113.

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Such an occulted discourse is proved also by the circumstance that “LotusEaters,” like “Scylla and Charybdis,” is connected via one of its organs with Swedenborg’s marriage love, an idea clearly linked to the androgynous status of angels. In the episode, the reference to Maud Gonne obviously recalls the image of W.B. Yeats, who had been obsessed by her for so long. Perhaps Joyce, in his attitude of parody towards almost everything, was mocking at the poet’s unfulfilled love, or rather at his “half-feminine” character. On other occasions, Joyce’s texts seem to show a certain reverence towards Yeats. This is the case of a series of allusions to the number “seven” which occur also in “Lotus-Eaters.” The “shining seven” dear to Yeats in “Scylla” are parallel to the presence of the same number, in various shapes and forms, no less than five times in the fifth episode. Some of the references are quite obscure, while others are plainly blasphemous, or rather related to the main occult motifs of the book. The first two occur in the same page. A few lines after the “Plumtree Potted Meat” rhyme, we encounter the following curious sentence portraying Molly letargically resting on the bed, with “blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens.”13 Immediately after, there follow a few lines from “Love’s old sweet song.” As C.H. Hughes explains, it is a monotonous song characterized by many repetitions. It is interesting to note that the initial refrain is repeated seven times.14 The two occurrences both imply Bloom’s scarce sexual confidence, and point perhaps to his ambiguous sexual identity. The remaining three are also interesting. One concerns a seven-figure cheque cashed by Lord Iveagh in the Bank of Ireland15 and immediately precedes the moment in which Bloom reaches All Hallows church,16 as if to propose a funny mixture of the secular and the spiritual in the attempt to assess the monetary value of religion. The other, five paragraphs below, ironically involves the religious sphere too, it being a reference to the “Seventh heaven.”17 The passage, as we will see, hides subtly many obscene and blasphemous implications. In fact, it relates to the women who kneel in the church waiting for the priest to satisfy their “appetite.” The last occurrence is the imprecise recollection of a piece of sacred music by the Italian composer Francesco Saverio Mercadante. Joyce writes: “Mercadante: seven last words.”18 The original title of the work is Le sette parole del Nostro Signore, meaning The seven words of Our Lord. 13

U, 91. See Hughes, The Human Side of Music, 87. 15 See U, 97. 16 See U, 9. 17 U, 98. 18 U, 101. 14

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As is evident, most of the allusions somehow imply a religious context, which provides them with the necessary background blasphemous thoughts always need. However, in order to understand fully their meaning in the text, and the evident obsession with the number seven as a magic number, we can look back at what Joyce wrote in the early essay “A Portrait of the Artist” in 1904: Use of reason is by popular judgement antedated by some seven years and so it is not easy to set down the exact age at which the natural sensibility of the subject of this portrait awoke to the focus of eternal damnation, the necessity of penitence and the efficacy of prayer.19

The paragraph itself concerns Joyce’s early preoccupations with religious practices. The relevance of the number seven for Joyce is highlighted also by the fact that at the age of seven a child was supposed to enter the schools run by Jesuits, though he was only 6½ when he enrolled at Clongowes Wood College.20 This would put him in the position of an outsider, one who swam against the tide, since the early days. We shall also consider that the essay owes much also to the style of Yeats’s prose, and to his mystical and alchemical knowledge. The connection testifies to Joyce’s early commitment to occult knowledge, the legacy of which, in terms of narrative strategy, eventually leads to interesting explanations of non-casual allusions in Ulysses. Many of Bloom’s internal monologues are in fact examples of such a legacy, and help us calculate the hidden relevance of seemingly casual occurrences in the episode. An instance of this is the following passage: “The chemist turned back page after page […] Quest for philosopher’s stone. The alchemists.”21 Here, the rather obvious connection between chemistry and alchemy is presented as part of a train of thought. It does not need logical explanations, and therefore in a way contributes to highlighting the continuity between the two disciplines from an occult standpoint. Such continuity is taken for granted in Bloom’s thoughts, and is therefore passed on to the reader as it is, with no further explorations. Often in Ulysses occult assumptions illuminate obscure passages which could be explained, at a superficial level, by resorting to linear interpretations. Here, the superficial connection between chemistry and alchemy could also point to the underlying structure that regulates the textual dynamics of the book. In fact, the reference to the goal of the alchemists is stuck there in the middle of a monologue with no apparent reason. It becomes meaningful only if we con-

19

C, 41. Italics mine. See Elmann, James Joyce, 27. 21 U, 103-4.

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sider its “epiphanic” nature, which brings to the surface also a series of previous references to that cluster of meanings forming the sphere of the occult. Such a general interconnection of ideas reminds one again of the Anima Mundi evoked by Yeats, a poetical version of the esoteric Akashic Records. From an occult point of view, it refers to the eternal soul of the world whose microcosmic image is hidden in the deep abyss of the human unconscious. This silent consciousness is the receptacle of all the memories of the world, and awakens from time to time to give birth to seemingly casual events. Such events, in a literary context, lead to epiphanic discoveries and manifestations. Just a few words in the middle of a paragraph and, all of a sudden, a series of recollections comes to the surface through the medium of analogy. The reader acquainted with occult ways of communicating meanings will perhaps spot references to alchemy, Yeats, esoteric quests, mystical numbers, hermetic doctrines, and so on. Something similar to this process is described by “Oxen of the Sun” (Ulysses 14) in a seemingly casual poetical sentence: A scene disengages itself in the observer’s memory, evoked, it would seem, by a word of so natural a homeliness as if those days were really present there (as some thought) with their immediate pleasures.22

Such an epiphanic “occultist method” is really what helps Joyce hide secrets and occult significances behind his words. Accordinlgy, it should also ideally help the reader partly gain the knowledge of the way back to the original message. This eventually happens if we take account of the latent presence of Swedenborg in the episode.

Organs of Castration The Swedenborgian connection shows further the advantages of analysing comparatively “Lotus-Eaters” and “Scylla and Charybdis” by proceeding backwards from “Ulysses 9” down to “Ulysses 5.” We have seen how the Library chapter is connected with marriage-love by means of plain allusions in a distorted context. Here, the correspondence is even more evident. As I have said, the episode has two organs, “skin” and “genitals.” In relation to the first, Maud Ellmann interprets it as a clue to the importance of the skin/surface level against the preoccupations with depths. She believes that such a preoccupation is so great in Western culture that “it is difficult to credit surfaces.”23 Dealing with the issue of skin disease in the episode, she suggests that in “Lotus-Eaters” Bloom is“busy saving his skin, which is threatened by wounding from without, 22 23

U, 552. Ellmann, M. “Skinscapes in ‘Lotus-Eaters,’ ” 55.

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by leakage from within, as well as by the skin diseases that befuddle this distinction.”24 Thus, the critic argues that in the episode “images of skin disease […] bring to the light the existential insecurity of skin, its susceptibility to wounding, penetration, desquamation.”25 Both the organs of the episode are, so to speak, “external.” However, in the present discussion, “genitals” appear to be more revealing in connection with Swedenborg. In fact, in the mystic’s opinion, “in the Greatest Man, or heaven, people in the loins or organs for generation are involved in marriage love.”26 As we have seen, Stephen dismisses the perfection of marriage love in the ninth episode, where it comes to mean “unfaithfulness” via a process of semantic inversion. Here, considering that one of the symbols in Linati is indeed “castration,” and that the Gorman schema suggests a reference to “eunuchs,” the reader may well be facing an even more powerful overturning of meanings. The various ways in which both the “external” organs are presented in a negative manner point to the possibility that their meanings can indeed be inverted. Thus, the idyll of marriage love gradually turns into the dark and sterile shadows of castration. In fact, just as Bloom’s penis is famously described as a “limp father of thousands, a languid floating flower,”27 skin is generally dismissed as a monstrous and awful thing, perhaps echoing some descriptions by Dean Swift in Gulliver’s Travel. In the episode, we find plenty of examples of this tendency, like the allusions to various skin diseases such as eczema,28 smallpox,29 warts, bunions, and pimples.30 Should we assume that surfaces (and perhaps surface interpretations) are in Ulysses something to be rejected as useless and meaningless, just like external organs? In relation to Bloom’s sexuality and masculinity, this is not very relevant, for he is supposed to be some sort of an androgynous angel, and as we know such beings must be rightly deprived of all the joys of sex. This makes him somehow ironically close to Stephen, who can also be symbolically imagined as an angel, for “he does not bear a body yet,” as the Linati schema suggests. However, this is just partly the case, for at least Bloom will later enjoy some of the pleasures of sex, although only in the company of himself. The whole system of the episode points to an overturn of the meaning of genitals. In a Swedenborgian context, they are a symbol of marriage love, while in Ulysses they refer only to unfaithfulness (“Scylla”) and castration (“Lotus24

Ibid. 65. Ibid. 65. 26 Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 84. 27 U, 107. 28 See U, 86. 29 See U, 92. 30 See U, 104. 25

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Eaters”). Unfaithfulness can be seen as the opposite of marriage love. We encounter Molly’s intentions of betraying her husband as early as in “Calypso,” where we also become aware of Bloom’s possible flirtation with Martha Clifford. He receives a letter from her, and is very anxious to read it. The letter shows the lady’s desire to meet him personally, alongside some chastizing fantasies she has about him. In the present perspective, her (un)volitional error about the other wor(l)d in the letter may also point to some occult meanings dealing with a supernatural dimension parallel to the terrestrial one. Such a theme will be discussed at lenght in my chapter on “Nausicaa.” Returning to Bloom’s marriage, we may note that thoughts about Molly are very frequent in the episode. They are perhaps the real reason why he discards the possibility of meeting up with Martha. In one case, when Bloom is fancying his bath and foreseeing his masturbation, surprisingly enough he anticipates the last words of Molly’s final monologue, possibly parodying them in advance: “Nicer if I a nice girl did it. Also I think I. Yes I.”31 Unfortunately, here Bloom is not thinking of a possible marital reconciliation. He is just dwelling on the fantasy of a masturbation in the bath, and possibly suggesting the feminine qualities—he a nice girl— which contribute in making him a mock androgynous being. These are two further negations of “marriage love.” However, his fancy will be frustrated further, until the final fulfilment of his desire will occur in “Nausicaa.” This shows again the uselessness and the futility of bodily instincts, particularly of those related to the genitals. It is indeed a further proof that one of the organs of this chapter does not stand anymore for marriage love, nor does it point to its opposite, unfaithfulness. It is changed utterly into a grim symbol of “castration.” Castration can be either sexual or social. When the two forces of sex and society combine, it causes graver problems. A particular sexual castration leading to the evasion of the duties of marriage love occurs in countries where the religion of drinking counts on many adepts. To spend most evenings drinking out makes people occasionally neglect their family duties, as well as their sexual lives. Herring argues that “the pubs in Dublin also provide refuge from reality,”32 but Bloom does not seem to be one of those men whose time would be marked by the closing-time hours of pubs. Perhaps, this is due to his Jewish origins. Jewish people are allegedly not the most committed among drinkers. Curious anthropological studies about the ways in which drink does not affect the Jews properly, started to appear since the late 1940s. Most of them seem to point to the existence of a cultural environment which almost naturally prevents a Jewish person from becoming a drunkard.33 31

U, 105. Herring, “Lotus-Eaters,” 82. 33 See Keller, Mark, “The Great Jewish Drink Mystery.” 32

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Thus, it is not surprising that in one of the first images of the fifth chapter, when Bloom spots a young boy smoking, he imagines his sad family situation as follows: “Tell him if he smokes he won’t grow. O let him! His life isn’t such a bed of roses! Waiting outside pubs to bring da home. Come home to ma, da.”34 Bloom is here referring to a peculiar kind of self-castration and alienation from which he seems to be fortunately free. Yet, a different kind of distance between him and his wife does exist, and is again a proof of his half-androgynous inclinations. As Declan Kiberd explains, “throughout the day, Bloom will often try to imagine himself in the role of this or that woman.”35 Many hints point to the interchange of sexes throughout the episode. One of the most revealing is the famous reference to an actress, Millicent Palmer, who played the role of Prince Hamlet at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin on June 15, 1904. This implies the recognition of the female element in the character of Hamlet. Considering the theory exposed in “Scylla and Charybdis,” it also suggests a female element in Shakespeare’s personality. We shall not forget that promiscuity was normal in theatre performances in Elizabethan times. Women were never involved in the acting, and men played all feminine roles. The idea fascinates Bloom to the extent that he enacts a feminine behaviour himself, blending it with his ambivalence (part fascination, part frustration) on the subject of castration. In order to show this close link between the themes of hermetic androgyny and castration, we may consider the following famous passage: As he walked he took the folded Freeman from his sidepocket, unfolded it, rolled it lenghtwise in a baton and tapped it at each sauntering step against his trouserleg.36

The section contains two most symbolical elements which look inseparable. The first is the “rolled newspaper as a sausage-like surrogate penis,”37 while the second is the act of sauntering, which reminds us of the girl Bloom sees outside a shop in “Calyspo.”38 The newspaper may symbolize Bloom’s unconscious knowledge of his own castration, while the act of sauntering may perhaps suggest obliquely the feminine part of his hidden nature. In “Lotus-Eaters” we encounter some striking images concerning the idea of sexual desires not properly fulfilled. Later on in the book will it be clear that they are also a symbol of an-

34

U, 86. Kiberd, in U, 974, n. 87.27. 36 U, 87. 37 Kiberd in U, 974, n. 87-27. 38 See U, 71. 35

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drogyny. The passage quoted above is just an anticipation of what will happen in subsequent chapters. Another example of castration is given by the cab-horses=eunuchs equation established in the Gorman schema in the correspondences section. It gradually makes its way throughout the episode. The stress on the sexual neutrality of both nags and eunuchs prompts a parallel between man and animal, which seems to contain subtle blasphemous allusions also in the light of a beast/Devil connection. Let us consider for instance the image of a “cod in a pot”39 at the end of the episode. It is a possible mocking metaphor for the figure of Christ according to early Christian symbolism. In the history of Christianity, the image of the fish representing Christ the saviour has much to do with the Kabbalah for reasons that will be explained later. Joyce’s obscure reference points to his awareness of some aspects of such a secret tradition. However, this is a problematic issue. As Brivic argues, “Joyce’s version of the Kabbalah is thoroughly personal.”40 In relation to Finnegans Wake, Atherton is right in including the Kabbalah in the list of those occultist sources (Spiritualism, occultism, alchemy) “in which we are given to understand that Joyce was deeply read.”41 However, he dutifully highlights an inconsistency in Joyce’s knowledge of Kabbalistic doctrines. This is evident in his discussion of the numerological relationship, which links the books by Levy-Bruhl’s that Joyce had in his personal library, and the Wake. Atherthon, despite stating that everything Joyce uses in Finnegans Wake about the Kabbalah “seemed to be contained in the article on that subject in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica,”42 had previously explained the above connection as follows: According to Levy-Bruhl, ‘there is no number among the first ten that does not possess supreme mystical importance for some social group or other.’ Furthermore, ‘certain multiples of numbers of mystic value participate in the peculiar properties of those numbers.’ This is the state of affairs in Finnegans Wake. So far as arithmetic is concerned there is simply unity and diversity. But each of the main characters has a number as well as a symbol, and certain numbers—of which 1123 is the most prominent—have a mystical value which has still not been satisfactorily explained. The particular character assigned to each number may have been obtained by Joyce from some works on occultism and the Kabbalah.43

39

U, 106. Brivic, “The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake,” 28. 41 Atherthon, The Books at the Wake, 46. 42 Ibid. 47. 43 Ibid., 44. 40

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Given the description of the occult as a cluster of various interrelated traditions of secret knowledge of which the Kabbalah was a major component, the fact that Joyce’s Kabbalistic sources are contained only in one article of the Encyclopedia Britannica sounds odd. In fact, Kabbalah-derived ideas about the magical and mystical value of numbers literally permeate the whole eclectic corpus of occult works. They are a major aspect of Rosicrucianism as well as of modern theosophy, and no doubt inform substantially also the works of LevyBruhl, which we may well regard as one of Joyce’s direct sources. If we assume that there are many indirect influences in Joyce’s occult background, and not only those that have been traced or are traceable, his keen use of Kabbalistic doctrines is not surprising at all. Such awareness is easy to demonstrate. Take for instance his use of a particular image related to the Kabbalah in the Wake connected with Gérard de Nerval. De Nerval was one of the authors he learned about via Arthur Symons. Atherton states that according to Symons the manuscript of De Nerval’s La Rêve et la Vie was “scrawled on scraps of paper interrupted with Kabbalistic signs and ‘a demonstration of the Immaculate Conception by geometry.’ ”44 The scholar accepts that such a demonstration “probably has something to do with the geometrical figure in the Wake (293) which shows ‘figurat leavely the whome of your eternal geometer.’ ”45 However, considering that Symons’s book, which Joyce read and studied in Trieste,46 was published in 1899, the demonstration of the Immaculate Conception by geometry may well have inspired also another feature of Ulysses, and precisely Mulligan’s joke about Stephen’s ability to prove “by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather.”47 Besides, it helps us understand that, if Kabbalah-related textual traces are present in detail in the Wake, there is no sufficient reason to dismiss the possibility that they are also present behind certain apparently odd passages in Ulysses. Such a perspective could illuminate the previous mocking Christological reference to “a cod in a pot.”48 The image of the fish standing for a symbol of Christ has its roots in a Kabbalistic technique known as Notarikon, which shows a Jewish-Christian legacy. A full explanation of how it works can be found in the mystical Jewish book Sefir Yezirath. Notarikon is a technique of combining letters together in order to form new words. Such original “lexical creations” can be subject to a mystical interpretation according to a secret symbolism. In short, Notarikon concerns the creation of a new meaningful term by aligning the 44

Ibid., 51. Ibid., 51. 46 Ibid., 49. 47 U, 21. 48 U, 106. 45

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initials of certain source terms. In the case of Christ portrayed as a fish, apart from the evangelical metaphor of the “fisher of souls”—probably accounting for the description of A.E. as a “gulfer of souls” in “Scylla”—we must note that the original Greek word for fish is ichthys. According to Notarikon, the word is made up by the initials of the sentence Iesous Christos Theou Yios Sauter, i.e. Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour. Notarikon is deeply involved in the birth of Christian symbolism. It is a primordial link between the development of the esoteric systems of the two parallel religious traditions, the Hebrew and the Christian. As regards Joyce’s actual knowledge of this technique, one can agree with Mitchell Morse who, after having revealed the solution to the acronym for “fish,” points out: “whether or not Stephen is consciously playing this word game, Joyce certainly is.”49 Similarly, although Bloom may not be necessarily aware of the kabbalistic implications of his reference to a “cod in a pot,” Joyce surely is. In fact, as we will see, the hypothesis that Bloom knows well some of the techniques and doctrines of the Kabbalah is more than an easy speculation. Suffice it to say now that the abovementioned example can give us a fair idea of Joyce’s utterly obscure use of mystical notions, and his method of weaving them into his narrative.

Opiate Religion of the Masses Let us now return to the man=animal equation in the light of the idea of castration. First, the correspondence is alluded to by the description of the nags’ eyes as “full buck eyes.”50 This probably refers also to “the equine Mulligan,”51 and again suggests perhaps a parallel with Swift and the farcical man/horse duality exposed in Gulliver’s Travels. The general man/animal relationship is coloured by certain blasphemous tints. As for the cab-horses, the reference to their castration occurs just after the passage where Bloom was said to be hearing the “crunching gilded oats”52 they were champing. On the other hand, the very paragraph where the word eunuch occurs twice53 follows the passage where the priest places the host into the mouth of the communicants in All Hallows church. Thus, as men and women are “satisfied” by eating the sacred wafer, nags are happy to champ their oats. Oats and host are therefore corresponding. It is interesting to note that, in the Linati schema, we find them both among the symbols of the episode.

49

Ibid., 47. U, 93. 51 As Kiberd suggests in U, 977, n. 93.31. 52 U, 93. 53 U, 101. 50

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Another aspect of the men=horses equation is provided by the similarity between a sentence referring to the nags’ genitals (“a stump of black guttapercha wagging limp between their haunches”)54 and one which instead refers to Bloom’s penis (“the limp father of thousands.”)55 Both the “useless” organs are described by the adjective “limp,” and both induce a sort of pleasure in Mr Bloom’s lazy contemplative attitude. He hypothesizes that the circumstance of being gelded may eventually produce a certain feeling of quiet satisfaction. While he is looking at the cab-horses, he sympathetically thinks: “Might be happy all the same that way.”56 Here Bloom is also metaphorically thinking of his own social as well as sexual self-castration. Later in the episode, a similar reflection will refer to those eunuchs who used to sing sacred music in the choirs: “Suppose they wouldn’t feel anything after. Kind of placid […] Eunuch. One way out of it.”57 The correspondence of men and animals implies a satanic allusion too. In satanic rites such as extreme black masses, sexual intercourses often happen in the animal way. Bloom’s walking into the church of All Hallows through the back door may perhaps be an allusion to this very practice. Despite this, what really strikes the attention is the occult system of powerful obscenities and blasphemies hidden behind the symbols of Linati. First, the image of the eunuch recalls that of the priest. We see him walking, like a eunuch in a harem, along by the women knelt in the benches, in order to distribute the Holy Communion. In support of this view we may refer back to a sentence in “Proteus,” in which Stephen had imagined “the snorted Latin of Jackpriests, moving burly in their albs, tonsured oiled and gelded.”58 This is another reference to the priest=eunuch equation. The obscene metaphor in “LotusEaters” goes even further: The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at each […] and put it neatly into her mouth. Her hat and head sank. Then the next one: a small old woman. The priest bent down to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time.59

The passage is obscene at its utmost. Joyce makes Bloom pretend that he, being some kind of a Jew, does not recognize a sacred term such as host, which he calls “the thing.” The priest is no longer a eunuch walking along by the women, 54

U, 94. U, 107. 56 U, 94. 57 U, 101. 58 U, 49. 59 U, 99. Italics mine. 55

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but a blasphemous devotee, or rather a pseudo-satanic minister morbidly satisfied by a congregation of women by means of oral sex in a sacred place. Besides, this also implies a clear correspondence between host and penis, as before between host and oats, all featuring as symbols in Linati. It seems that such a method of concealing obscene and blasphemous implications behind an apparently detached description of a catholic rite, is one of the major features of the episode. Bloom himself explains this very idea through a typically Joycean device we have already encountered. A character discusses a particular matter pretending to reveal an utter truth about it, whereas he is instead entering a direct dialogue with the reader. Thus, he speaks on behalf of the author himself, or rather of an authorial function wishing to peep in through the thick texture of the narrative. The aim is to suggest silently that tales are always to some extent lies, and narrators often resemble professional liars. The actual reference behind the veil of such fictional lies is to narrative itself, or to the general scheme of the work, and often points to new unexpected interpretations. An instance of this process occurs in one of Bloom’s thoughts: “Lollipop. It does. Yes, bread of angels it’s called. There’s a big idea behind it, kind of kingdom of God is within you feel.”60 Here the big idea, connected with cannibalism by means of a previously established equation between Corpus Christi and “Christ’s corpse,”61 is not just the Church’s religious cunning in inventing a powerful symbolism intended to cheat on its own people. Rather, due to an irony which functions as the very technical device enabling narrators to conceal obscene unforeseen meanings behind simple words, the big idea behind Bloom’s seemingly random thought can be explained as follows. The sacred host the communicants eat symbolizes the kingdom of God, intended in Swedenborgian fashion as the very body of God. Such body is really a corpse. Thus, believers become ironically, and unwillingly, necrophiliacs. Furthermore, man can tranquilly champ God’s corpse just as nags champ oats. The logical consequence is that the dead body of the Creator can be devoured by the created in a macabre cannibalistic pseudo-religious rite. Therefore, it will ultimately dwell temporarily inside the body of man, and one can imagine that sooner or later it will have to be expelled from there. This is one of the hidden blasphemous meanings of the “digestive value of religion” exposed in Joyce’s early Portrait. The whole process resembles and expands the previous sinister hoax alluded to in “Hades,” where the resting place of the sacred heart of Jesus was a cemetery. Christian communion becomes in “Lotus-Eaters” a trivial thing, for it loses all its religious connotations, and begins to exhale a faint odour of blasphemy. This also stands for Bloom’s (and Joyce’s?) own refusal to be subject to any 60 61

U, 99. Italics mine. See U, 99.

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kind of spiritual ideology. Although Bloom is Jewish by family tradition, he is not a very good practising Jew. In “Lotus-Eaters,” he also professes his own murmured mock non serviam to the promises of the Roman Catholic Church. Stephen Dedalus had already done something similar in A Portrait and will repeat his oath in “Circe.” His own refusal will be an act of defiant and indignant courage. Instead, Bloom’s non serviam is tainted by obscenities and trivialities, although it stands mainly for the position of a sceptical person. Bloom’s choice to step aside from religion is pronounced by means of a mere mockery of spiritual institutions. It could be interpreted as the development of Joyce’s own firmness in rejecting the spiritual. However, Bloom’s decision is implicit, whereas Stephen’s (and Joyce’s) was clearly explicit. The hoax involves also other aspects connected with religion, and particularly those suggested by another symbol, “drugs.” It clearly explains what Bloom’s intentions finally are. Drugs are connected with spirituality also in Marx’s famous slogan about religion, the “opiate of the masses.” In the following quotation, Bloom parodies the motto in his own way: “Sermon […] Save China’s millions. Wonder how they explain it to the heathen Chinee. Prefer an ounce of opium.”62 The final sentence of the passage suggests Bloom’s own preference for opium over spiritual delusions. However, it may also point to the Chinee’s customs. His ironical preference for drugs is the main difference between his own non serviam and Stephen’s. While Stephen’s was informed by silence, exile, and cunning, Bloom’s is pragmatically influenced just by the effects of opium. Furthermore, Marx’s idea about the value of religion is parodied twice, if we consider also a last connection with A Portrait, which can link to the allusion to Christ as a cod in a pot. In the discussion among the students about universal brotherhood—which is also a possible hint at the aims of Blavatsky’s theosophical society—in the fifth chapter of the book, Temple had stated that Marx was “a bloody cod.”63 Such an attempt at reducing the universality of Marx’s truths to minimal terms parallels the dismissal of the message of Christ in Ulysses, where he is no more a god but a cod. The fact that Bloom opts for opium rather than religion has also some hidden meanings which bring us back to a major issue of the episode, the possible uselessness of external organs. Let us just consider the following quotations: “Cigar has a cooling effect. Narcotic;”64 “Drugs age you after mental excitement. Lethargy then […] Chloroform. Overdose of laudanum. Sleeping draughts. Lovephiltres.”65 Here, drugs evidently equal a certain peace of the mind and 62

U, 98. P, 213. 64 U, 96. 65 U, 104. 63

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quietness of the senses. The image of the cigar is another surrogate penis, just as the folded paper before. Yet, it does not provide an idea of excitement. On the contrary, like the other drugs referred to, it suggests a satisfactory narcotic effect. Bloom is again taking pleasure in imagining himself in a state of lethargy, while making bland sexual allusions in the reference to “excitement” and “lovephiltres.” His own personal non serviam is thus also informed by a fascination for the self-satisfactory and psychologically relaxing aspects of castration. Castration is the basic symbol of the episode. It takes place alongside the atmosphere of perfumed lethargy which perspire from its pages. It is also the ultimate reason for Bloom’s own refusal of a possible love affair with Martha Clifford. He does not fall into any (religious, sexual, or even social) temptation, which may involve someone else apart from himself. In other words, like a voluntary exile, he steps aside from society intended as a community. Having almost lost his hopes in the marriage relationship with Molly, he tries to be content with himself alone, by fancying the act of self-produced pleasure that will occur in “Nausicaa.” However, his chosen destiny to live in a state of lethargy can still be rescued by an act of love. Ironically, this could well be the prospect possibly concealed behind Molly’s softly murmured and final “Yes.” In the meantime, while love is yet to come, and sexual intercourse is only a distant mirage, Bloom must still test the possibility of some kind of erotic satisfaction. This will actually take place in the next chapter, “Nausicaa,” though in an atmosphere of uncertainty, which in a way parallels the delusional experiences of the more visionary chapters.

CHAPTER SIX NAUSICAA

“Nausicaa” is certainly not among the most complex episodes of Ulysses. Despite the different styles and the shifts from one point of view to another in the middle of the chapter, the tale is narrated in a less tortuous way than elsewhere. It is probably such a quality of the language, a certain easy clarity of narration, which has amplified in past years the meaning of the main event related, Bloom’s masturbation on Sandymount strand. Rather than the religious ceremony that takes place in the church near to where Bloom and Gerty are “playing their game,” it is the seemingly innocent, though partly idealized, language of the first section of the episode that provides the sexual act with its shocking contours. Scholars have traditionally interpreted the chapter as made up of two halves, corresponding respectively to Gerty’s and Bloom’s points of view. Such a narrative plainness gives indeed the impression that to approach Joyce’s art in “Nausicaa” is possible without the help of too many reference commentaries. John Bishop, in assessing a stylistic consistency between the thirteenth chapter and the preceding one, “Cyclops,” rightly states that both the episodes present readers “with alternate perspectives on the same scene, though here [in “Nausicaa”] only two of them rather than many.”1 The critic argues that the first half, “an indirect (and female) monologue, offers a mediated account of Gerty MacDowell’s view of a flirtatious encounter with Bloom,” while the second “a direct (and male) monologue, offers Bloom unmeditated reflections backward over the same events.”2 Although the apparent simplicity of the episode’s structure may be perhaps only a superficial aspect of “Nausicaa,” this does not imply, as always in Joyce, that hidden meanings are not lurking in the shadow, here as elsewhere. In fact, to think naively that the division of the chapter in two corresponding halves may be the sole, or even the main, stylistic device present in the episode is to be caught in an easy trick set by Joyce for his readers. As Fritz Senn argues, “Nausicaa” is “technically complex, numerous discordant ruptures disturbing the ba1 2

Bishop, “A Metaphysics of Coitus in Nausicaa,” 185. Ibid., 185.

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sic division into two main parts.”3 He believes that, like “Cyclops” and “Oxen of the Sun,” “Nausicaa” also contains a wide range of “moods and styles, though the spectrum is narrower.”4 He identifies many fancy “sub-categories,” such as “luxuriant clusters,” “endearing ways,” “sumptuous confection,” and so on.5 However, rather than indulging in the description of such features, it will be useful here to re-examine the main theoretical issue of “Nausicaa,” that is, the question of perception and its relationship with external reality. The whole narrative strategy of Ulysses is founded on such a connection, and so are Senn’s “sub-categories” in “Nausicaa.” The way in which Gerty’s monologue is presented to the reader partly helps us understand the nature of her approach to external reality. All impressions are based on what appears in the exterior. Later in the episode, the two conflicting versions of the events will make it clear that Gerty’s perception is affected by an eccess of sentimentalism, while Bloom’s is much too rooted in materialism. However, they both share the assumption that all impressions always draw on the activity of the organs of perception. They give the protagonists the opportunity to unleash their fantasies, and to construct what appears to be a virtual affair.

The Failure of Perception All fantasies in the episode are governed by the fervid activity of imagination. It is the functioning of the two organs, eye and nose—which according to the schematas correspond to “Nausicaa”—that gives life to such fantasies. As before, one would do well to investigate whether such a hint dropped by Joyce in his guidelines for the understanding of the book is to be taken seriously as the principle of the episode, or rather ironically as a mocking parody of something else. The latter hypothesis would point to some secret wish to question the credibility of all possible theories of knowledge based on the relationship between perception and reality. The issue of perception as a means to understanding has been in the past the centre of the philosophical disputes between empiricists and idealists. Bishop Berkeley, one of the ghosts that haunt the scene in “Proteus,” argued that sensual qualities inhere in the mind. He questioned, and somehow surpassed, Locke’s sensism, according to which only the secondary qualities “were” in the mind. Esse est percipi, i.e. “to exist is to be perceived,” is the well known statement which powerfully sums up Berkeley’s thought on the matter. It im3

Senn., “Nausicaa,” 305. Ibid., 306. 5 See ibid., 306. 4

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plies a certain connection between the object as it appears through the senses, and the person who tries to get a perception of it. Since perception is only perception by sense, there will always be unperceived objects. Although they are not perceived, they do exist all the same, for, as Winkler suggests, there is “some other spirit that perceives them, though we do not.”6 It follows that, although sometimes we cannot use our perception in order to achieve our knowledge of external objects, reality exists in that it is thought of by God. Alas, man is just a mortal thing, and can only perceive by sense, and therefore only understand via sensual perception. In fact, perception is the sole means which can eventually produce some forms of understanding. We encounter an experiment to test the validity of such a statement in the third episode of Ulysses. There, Stephen Dedalus happens to wonder whether perception, especially visual perception, could provide any understanding of reality besides a mere contact with it: “If you can put your five fingers through it, it is a gate, if not a door. Shut your eyes and see.”7 Given the importance of the act of closing his own eyes in order “to see,” the experiment stands also for an anticipation of the game of glances between Bloom and Gerty in “Nausicaa.” Stephen’s attempt to analyze the effect produced by the closing and the opening of his eyes while slowly walking along Sandymount strand, seems to correspond to Bloom’s obsessive stares, according to Gerty’s version, later in the day on the same beach. The location chosen by Joyce as an appropriate place to test the possibility of sensual, and particularly visual, perception is a further superficial link between the two chapters. The range of possibilities in terms of narration opened by the functions of the organ “nose” is explored also in “Lotus-Eaters,” where scents and perfumes abound. In that episode, as we have seen, we also find an allusion to a fantasy of masturbation in the bath, which announces the main event of “Nausicaa.” Furthermore, through the eyes of Jewish-born Leopold Bloom, we witness a Catholic mass in the church of All Hallows, which parallels the ceremony in the church of Mary Star of the Sea, in “Nausicaa.” The two episodes are thus deeply connected. However, although we cannot state bluntly that there was in Joyce’s philosophical attitudes any particular idealistic or empiricist tendency at all, we can still question why at times he adopts such an experimental method, and what the hidden message of such a reasoning might be. In order to clarify this idea, we may once again take account of an aspect of Joyce’s cultural background, which utterly contrasts with any possible sensual perception horizon, that is, Swedenborg’s visionary teachings.

6 7

Winkler, Berkeley: An Interpretation, 205. U, 45.

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In “Nausicaa” the will to invert, parody, and mock the meaning of the correspondences suggested by the Swedish visionary is easy to spot. Some features of the chapter prove that a kind of semantic inversion, or overturn of meanings, is very relevant in the game of ironical, farcical, and grotesque allusions to Swedenborgian spirituality. In Heaven and Hell it is stated that heavenly organs such as eye and nose are themselves involved in the dialectical dynamics of perception and understanding: “People in the eyes are involved in discernment […] people in the nostrils, in perception.”8 The ideas of discernment and perception are indeed connected from a mystical point of view. The relationship between the angels who inhabit certain parts of heaven and their knowledge of the secret truths hidden in the Bible parallels the rapport between the person and external reality. This allows us to hypothesize that knowledge derives only from perception by senses in both the contexts. The concept can easily apply also to the narrative strategies of “Nausicaa,” although such a superficial similarity may sound deceitful at first. He who believes—be he the reader, or even a fictional character—that truth comes from the senses, thinks that the only possible knowledge that can create a contact between the individual and external reality can be established through perception. Hence, all understanding must emerge from that very contact. He does not care about hidden meanings, or ultimate significances, of the thing itself assuming that there is none, or rather, if there is one, that it pertains to God and is, so to speak, unperceivable by man. He thus equates perception and understanding which become as one. On the contrary, the mystic, who firmly believes in the theory of correspondences, thinks that perception and understanding are not just mediums between the self and reality. They go beyond mere materialistic contact, and imply a connection with the hidden truths revealed only to adepts. Perception is a mystical way to revelation, and therefore leads to a form of understanding mainly through the contemplation of the divine. The significance of the act of “seeing”—which according to the Swede corresponds to “understanding”—is then profound. The seer is he who alone “understands.” Seers were said to be the prophets, the evangelists, and Christ himself. As one should expect, Joyce’s almost childish love for jokes, especially when they concern religion, is evident also in “Nausicaa.” Here, as in many other episodes, his purpose is to ridicule the meaning of such correspondences as those Swedenborg had so carefully established. The aim is to show not only that perception has little to do with understanding, but also that all spiritual understanding which comes from perception by sense must necessarily be deceitful. At the same time, such a deconstructive aim illustrates the failure of the ex8

Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 84.

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perimental method, portrayed at the end of the day only as an incomplete and unfulfilling approach to knowledge. The attack on spirituality is even more violent, and becomes one of the main issues of the episode. This is true on a superficial level, considering for example the temporal coincidence of a religious ceremony in the church, and a completely irreligious act such as a masturbation performed nearby. Bloom’s behaviour is doubly irreverent, for as Senn explains: “Masturbation is a sin in the Catholic context, and its essential sterility made it an offence in the Judaic code.”9 A deeper level on which the episode is projected consists in showing subtly the failure of all perceptions as possible keys to understanding secret truths and hidden meanings linked to the spiritual world. Even from a quick glance at the schematas, such a ridiculing of visual perception is more than evident. The sense is “the projected mirage,” a further development of the idea of deceitfulness. It is definitely an image of most distant perception: “Were those nightclouds there all the time? Looks like a phantom ship. No. Wait. Trees are they. An optical illusion. Mirage.”10 Moreover, among the symbols we find “hypocrisy,” which also suggests the idea of falsity. Finally, the art of the episode is “painting.” This implies a subtle allusion to the fragility of all possible visual perceptions. In fact, together with the reference to “eye” as one of the organs, this sounds certainly self-ironical, considering that Joyce already had grave eyesight problems by the time he wrote the episode.11 A similar view is prompted also by the meaning of “nose,” the organ of the second part of the episode, Bloom’s monologues. Bishop believes that its function is “profoundly anti-idealizing,”12 and therefore reinforces the dismissal of Gerty’s view based instead mainly on “perception through the act of seeing.” The style itself suggests that “what we see” is by no means an objective truth, but changes according to the different points of view. Most of the narration is made up of monologues giving voice to two opposite personal angles. The effect on the reader is that no absolute clarity is possible at all. Bloom’s version of the facts is utterly discordant from Gerty’s. Considering also that their virtual affair, as is idealized by her, draws mainly on visual perceptions, the structure itself of the narrative stands as a statement of the deceitfulness of the senses, and of the failure of all possible representations of an objective reality.

9

Senn, “Nausicaa,” 278. U, 490-1. 11 “Nausicaa” was completed in early 1920 (see Ellmann, James Joyce, 442). For Joyce’s eyesight problems see: ibid., 440-1, 454. 12 Bishop, “A Metaphysics of Coitus in Nausicaa,” 199. 10

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Thus, if our own senses are not worthy of trust, and we, victims of perennial optical mirages, are not capable of avoiding deceit in trying to see anything at all beyond external reality, what is the alternative? When empiricist and idealistic options are both discarded as superficial, while spirituality is seen as erroneous though fascinating, what way of escaping mere nihilism does man have? Although we can imagine that Joyce was indeed some kind of a nihilist writer, we cannot solve the dilemma just by suggesting that he rejected both the approaches by treating them as ridiculous and futile. An alternative narrative is possible. Some of the latent textual instructions of the episode point to the existence of an occultist method that helps us reconstruct a secret subtext overlooked by most readers so far.

A Language Between Us “Nausicaa” is crowded with subtle allusions hinting at the shadowy presence of a ciphered language. To spot such a secret medium of comunication requires attention, for it is softened in the narrative by a peculiarly deceitful female sensitivity evident in both Bloom’s and Gerty’s monologues. Its presence is again revealed by the occurrence of particular sentences, which pop in the text in a seemingly casual way just in the middle of other discourses. Although their apparent purpose is to direct the reader to the referential level of narration, they metaphorically indicate some remote ways of interpretation. Here are three examples: You could see there was a story behind it.13 Just changes when you are on the track of the secret.14 Still it was a kind of language between us.15

As in “Lotus-Eaters”, thanks to such textual clues, the narrative directly addresses the reader in order to tell him something about the underlying secret structure that underwrites Ulysses. Other allusions in the chapter point to the presence of a subliminal discourse, through which the characters manage to silently exchange informations. They function just as scattered pieces of a seemingly occult language shared by Gerty and Bloom. On the surface, they appear to be unconscious, and yet they hint at a hidden explanation. 13

U, 462. U, 480. 15 U, 485. 14

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Gerty’s language, though seemingly innocent, is in fact dotted with strange references, which in an occult context would prove meaningful. For instance, while she is describing the behaviour of the two little boys, Tommy and Jacky Caffrey, she calls them “Masters.”16 She also refers to a “golden rule,”17 as well as to the “unmentionables.”18 Her childish language justifies the use of such terms, and still they are also significant in an occult perspective. Masters are in fact those who lead the performance of magic rites, or occult ceremonies. In fiction, master is the word that Renfield, the bug-eating madman of Dracula, uses to address the Count. The “golden rule” may well suggest “the law of God” in the Jewish as well as the Christian tradition. It can also be reminiscent of the order of the Golden Dawn, of which Yeats was a prominent member. It may even conceal meanings linked to the alchemical idea of purity represented by gold. Finally, “unmentionable” could also be an epithet for the unutterable name of god, according to the Jewish Kabbalah. All those references point in ironical fashion to a kind of speech that occultists could recognize. Among Gerty’s confused and ingenuous meditations, other expressions are significant, especially with reference to the Rosicrucian Society. She describes her mouth as “rosebud,”19 and imagines her own complexion as the faintest “rosebloom,”20 so alluding also to the alleged freemason Bloom. Furthermore, she silently recites in her thougths a litany dedicated to the Virgin Mary, calling her “mystical rose.”21 Ultimately, a few pages later, we encounter a reference to the conventions of “Society with a big ess,”22 which may well be another veiled allusion to the same context. Bloom and Gerty are the indisputable protagonists of the episode, for they share a secret language known only to them. It is a language made up of apparently casual sentences which, when taken together and reorganized, may become significant. They are the only two characters in the whole chapter who deserve complete attention from the reader. They live in a world of their own, distant from everyone else’s world, far away, one might say, from the world of mortals. Gerty’s idealization of Bloom automatically sets him in a different and superior sphere, aloof from the rest of men. We can also find in the text evidences of her own detachment, as if she could join him in his own dimension. The very idea of a distance from humanity is suggested for instance in the following passage: “They both knew that she was something aloof, apart in another 16

U, 450. U, 451. 18 U, 451. 19 U, 452. 20 U, 453. 21 U, 463. 22 U, 475. 17

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sphere, that she was not one of them and there was somebody else too that knew it.”23 Having stated that the protagonists who share a secret language which allows them to communicate silently are presented to the reader as people who do belong to a different world, the system of subliminal references goes even further, and touches on other categories of the occult such as magic, divination, astrology, metempsychosis, vampires, and finally satanic allusions.

Occult Themes and Techniques Such a secret game involves the descriptions of both Gerty and Bloom as characters that seem to belong to an occult world of their own. At the very beginning of the chapter, the reader encounters for instance an odd comment regarding Gerty’s blue eyes: “Why have women such eyes of witchery?”24 A few lines below, we find a precise reference to the “haunting expression”25 of her eyes. On the other hand, Bloom is described in a more dark and mysterious way, like someone coming back from the world of the dead. His passion is “silent as the grave,”26 and precipitates Gerty’s Pateresque wish to cry “to him chockingly […] a little strangled cry, […] that cry that has rung through the ages.”27 A few pages before, she had indeed sensed something magical concerning her own attraction to Mr Bloom, as if he could command her will without the need for her consent: “If she saw that magic lure in his eyes there would be no holding back for her.”28 Such a reflection makes her express a fatal wish of commitment to the superior power of Mr Bloom: “She would make the great sacrifice.”29 Only on the surface does such a suspicious terminology refer to love talk. Instead, subterranean meanings half occult half ironical are lurking beneath the text here. This is consistent with Todorov’s idea that the reader’s response to a fantastic text is informed by his indecision as to whether the narrative has a natural or a supernatural explanation. Such ambiguous allusions to an occult signification are far too numerous in the episode to be ignored. They inevitably point to the existence of a parallel fantastic subnarrative. Some of them are much too manifest, and hardly explainable from a non-occult perspective. They include, for instance, a strange reflection such as the following: “Metempsychosis. They believed you could be 23

U, 472. U, 453. 25 U, 453. 26 U, 477. 27 U, 477. 28 U, 474. 29 U, 474. 24

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changed into a tree from grief.”30 Bloom himself provides us with the key to contextualize such a reference. At a certain stage, he in fact wonders whether reality is secretly ruled by some extra-human power. He calls such a force magnetism, and sees it as a sort of astral effect on human lives. In doing so, he makes clear that what actually governs earthly events must not be a supernatural power, but something essentially natural, though occult. Here the reader should be reminded of the attention the occultists normally pay to the subject of magnetism.31 One of Bloom’s reflections seems to suggest that such a power may also ironically explain why his watch has stopped the moment he was cuckolded: Wonder is there any magnetic influence between the person because that was about the time he […] Also that now is magnetism. Back of everything magnetism […] Magnetic needle tells you what’s going on in the sun, the stars. 32

Alongside such allusions, all of which appear to be coloured by light tints of mockery, it is interesting to spot also the various places where we find half serious references to the devil. As before, here they happen to summon the theme of “vampirism,” a theme strongly present in “Nausicaa” and very much connected with that of a bland Satanism in the book. It is useful to stress that they are not actual allusions to the devil, their tone being much similar to Gerty’s ingenuous and unconscious occultist language. They appear just as seemingly innocent expressions. Nonetheless, it is their methodical recurrence, alongside the general blasphemous atmosphere of the episode, which must alert us. Six times we find such occurrences. Only one does not refer to persons. It is in fact related to the haunting power of alcohol, which is described by the expression “demon drink.”33 Two are meant to illuminate Bloom’s point of view concerning the real nature of women during their monthly period: “Devils they are when that’s coming on them. Dark devilish appearance.”34 Two are also used by the protagonist in order to describe Gerty’s character and behaviour: “Hot little devil all the same,”35 and “O Lord, that little limping devil.”36 Finally, the last one is dedicated to Mr Bloom: “Her woman’s instinct told her that she had raised the devil in him.”37 30

U, 492. See Introduction, n. 86. 32 U, 487. 33 U, 460. 34 U, 481. 35 U, 479. 36 U, 482. 37 U, 469. 31

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All such cases, together with the others quoted before and despite their general innocent air, are hints that suggest the presence of a possible hidden narrative. As I have said, they function as analogical springboards for the occult theme of vampirism, introduced by the ubiquitous presence of a bat in the episode. As Ronald Bates argues in an essay investigating the correspondence of birds to things of the intellect in A Portrait, “in Christian iconography bat-wings are symbolic of Satan, demons and Death.”38 In “Nausicaa” a bat is seen flying above in the sky after twilight.39 In Bram Stoker’s vampire novel, not only the daylight-fearing Count can turn into a bat, but he can also assume the form of rats. Bearing this in mind, we may perhaps see in a different light the following passage from “Nausicaa”: Ba. What is that flying about? Swallow? Bat probably […] Ba again. Wonder they come out at night like mice. They are a mixed breed. Birds are like hopping mice. What frightens them, light or noise? 40

Before adding anything on this subject, readers should be reminded that it would be rather hard to find evidence that Joyce had read Dracula, although Joseph Valente, author of challenging books on both Stoker and Joyce, rightly suggests that this is very likely.41 The only actual reference to Bram Stoker in Joyce’s texts is a cryptic allusion in Finnegans Wake, which could be also reminiscent of the atmosphere of “Circe”: “Let’s root out Brimstoker and give him the thrall of our lives. It’s Dracula’s nightout.”42 In “Nausicaa” the theme of vampirism is justified also by a reference which links back to the third episode, “Proteus.” After his masturbation on the beach, Mr Bloom stoops over a piece of paper he finds on the strand and picks it up.43 As we know, in the morning Stephen had started to write a short poem on the same beach, and had left it there. Its verses included the powerful image of the kiss of a pale vampire, as well as a bat which “sails bloodying the sea.”44 Perhaps Bloom holds the same piece of paper. Later on, he will try to write poetry himself, though without apparent success. Numerous expressions in “Nausicaa” seem to suggest that the relationship between the two protagonists of the episode parallels the rapport between vampires and their victims in fantastic literature. As in works like Dracula or Car38

Bates, “The Correspondence of Birds to Things of the Intellect,” 283. See U, 473. 40 U, 492. 41 See Valente, Quare Joyce, 74. 42 FW, 145. 43 See U, 497. 44 U, 60. 39

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milla, Mr Bloom represents the master vampire while Gerty is his halfconsenting prey. She spots a “waxen pallor”45 in her own features, a trait shared by all the famous vampires in the history of literature, as well as by their victims. Besides, this recalls also the pale vampire of Stephen’s poem. Moreover, twice in her thoughts we find references to strange pains that literally pierce her heart.46 They could remind us of the way to kill vampires. In fact, Edy Boardman does wonder whether Gerty is actually heartbroken.47 In this context, the following reference is also illuminating: “Every effort would be to share his thoughts.”48 It implies the possibility of telepathy between Gerty and Bloom, which is indeed parallel to the mental connection between the master vampire and his victim, like in Dracula. Unfortunately, the only result telepathy produces here is not mutual understanding, but rather deception. However, all this indicates indeed the actual presence of a hidden plot, which speaks of a possible mock vampiric world. Despite this, we must of course keep in mind that on the surface such expressions describe just a love affair; and yet, love is also a crucial theme of Dracula, as well as of other vampire stories. This last connection points to an almost revolutionary occult explanation of one of the most cryptic passages of the chapter, if not of the whole book: the famous riddle of the sands. Bloom’s abortive poem reads: “I… AM.A.”49 As many scholars have argued, the message contains the Latin (and Italian) root of the verb amare, i.e. to love. Taking for granted that this is the main intention of Bloom’s scribbled phrase, Fritz Senn gives the following explanation of the passage: In one respect Bloom attains the Christian aim of forgiving his most recent persecutor, the citizen: ‘Look at it the other way round. Not so bad then. Perhaps not to hurt he meant.’50

One can agree with Senn in making the connection between the riddle and the sentence occurring only a few lines above. However, this points to a superficial explanation, and needs to be supplemented by a deeper one. Although Bloom may well be referring superficially to the Citizen in a new light of forgiveness and love, we can also take his mumbled suggestion literally. To look at it the other way round is really to read it backwards. Bloom knows quite well that reading backwards, that is, from the right to the left, is the way one would nor45

U, 452. See U, 454, 466. 47 See U, 471. 48 U, 474. 49 U, 498. 50 Senn, “Nausicaa,” 281. 46

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mally read Hebrew. In “Circe” Bloom’s dead son, Rudy, reads in such a way.51 Hence, if we invert the sequence of letters Bloom wrote the results is: “A.MA…I.” Two occult hypotheses can be argued now. The first parly alludes again to a connection with vampirism and specifically with Stoker’s Dracula. In fact, in Italian, a language Joyce knew almost perfectly, the word amai means “I once loved.” Despite the fact that at a more superficial level this evokes the memory of Bloom’s failed marriage with Molly, as well as his own present incapability to love, the riddle can also be interpreted as an inter-textual reference to a particular passage in Dracula where the master commands the three vampirellas to leave Jonathan Harker alone. There the Count, apart from suggesting the possibility that he will love again, makes clear to his evil companions that “he once loved.”52 However, until the relationship between Joyce and Stoker will be established in a definitive way, it is better not to speculate too much on this option. On the contrary, the second solution is more revealing, and certainly consistent with the present reading of the book. The new expression, “A.MA…I,” is another incomplete sentence pointing to one of the main occult themes of the book, the androgyny of Leopold Bloom. In fact, the newly-formed meaning foresees a status which he will actually achieve only in “Circe,” where he will experience motherhood. The cry “A.MA…I” is Bloom’s proleptic vision of himself as the mother he will become, though only in a hallucinatory context.53 This suggests obliquely the structural importance of the inverting technique in Ulysses. Its theoretical basis is again the equivalence/coincidence of the contraries. One wonders whether such a conflation of opposites will lead in the book to an actual final reconciliation. An answer to such a dilemma will be the core of the analysis of the next chapter, “Sirens.”

51

See U, 702. Here follows the passage: “How dare you touch him, any of you? […] This man belongs to me! […]” The fair girl, with a laugh of ribald coquetry, turned to answer him:“You yourself never loved; you never love!”[…] “Yes, I too can love; you yourselves can tell it from the past.” (Stoker, Dracula, 34). 53 For a recent alternative explanation of the riddle see: Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 10-1. 52

CHAPTER SEVEN SIRENS

“Sirens” is really a turning point in the interpretation of Ulysses as an occult book. As before in relation to other places of the text, its importance lies in the possibility of unveiling particular truths concealed either behind very subtle allusions, or behind an equation between distant levels of signification. Both aspects point to an underlying occult code that has to be identified in order to be brought to the surface. Here, the game of hiding and conceiling involves mainly some obscure implications of music. In “Sirens,” all the already-discussed thematic figures of the book (the law of correspondences, the Swedenborgian connection, the semantic overturn, the coincidentia), alongside the development of an occultist method of narration, are inestricably connected. On a more superficial level, the first obvious correspondence is between the overture-like beginning and the further developments of the themes it presents. The orchestral exhortation “Begin”1 is the first musical metaphor we encounter. It introduces the reader to the general atmosphere of “Sirens,” accordingly the most musical among all episodes of Ulysses. The reasons for such an assumption are quite evident, foremost among them the attempt to produce musical effects. In the schematas we find explicit links to the musical dimension. “Music” is the art, “fuga per canonem” is the technique, and “sounds” and “embellishments” are the symbols. Jules Law believes in the possibility of displacing the meaning of the episode which is “framed by a political context (signalled most immediately by the passing of the viceregal cavalcade) which it is Bloom’s project to repress and avoid.”2 Such a general statement in the beginning of his analysis—the title of the first paragraph being “The “outside” of music”—seems to suggest an approach that might be useful also in the present perspective. Law’s reading of “Sirens” is not only impatient with music. It is informed by the conviction that “some of the most intriguing developments in the chapter occur “outside” its psycho-philosophical meditation on music.”3 In the present view, the outside of 1

U, 330. Law, “Political Sirens,” 150. 3 Ibid., 150. 2

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music does not concern a political interpretation. In fact, it is rather an “inside,” in that it deals with some occult implications of music, and their structural meaning in relation to developments of the musical theme in the book. This way of appraising “Sirens” will show how some of the odd references we find in the schematas could be approached from a new perspective. Thus, the link between them and the text becomes logically coherent. This is the case, for example, of “the sweet cheat” as the sense/meaning, or “promises” as one of the symbols. The Swedenborgian correspondence for the organ “ear” can partly provide an explanation of such connections. As always with Ulysses, we must distinguish between several layers of signification, those linked to superficial meanings, and those belonging to the field of indirect allusions. Their coexistence in the text-reader relationship produces a sort of semiotic blackout, a paralysis of meaning which strips the reader of all certainties about the possible construction of verifiable interpretations. Furthermore, the reader here has also to deal with a special kind of allusion, far from general, but also distinct from any idea of metaphor we are accustomed to. It is a secret level, which finally corresponds to the superficial textual levels, echoed through some obscure hints in the narration.4

The sad magic of music Of all the various themes “Sirens” conceals, some are more relevant than others in the organization of the work, their implications being broader and more fascinating. All of them are double-faced, and the two aspects of each, the superficial and the secret, are always corresponding. It goes without saying that despite their double nature, they are also interrelated and depending on each other. A superficial theme, rather easily spotted by the reader, is a sort of pervasive air of sadness, incompleteness, and failure. The eleventh episode of Ulysses is possibly the one in which we feel most the frustrated nature of Mr Bloom, as well as the psychological effects his condition inexorably produces. Alongside Bloom’s own failure, we face also other personal sad stories, like the one recalled by the depiction of Simon Dedalus as a still-good-enough singer, though not as good as in the old days. Not only is such a general loneliness of the episode the starting point of the present reflection, but it is also the goal of all speculations, it being a kind of “human sense” of the chapter. The first reference to such a feeling occurs in the overture, and anticipates some further developments of the same idea: “I feels so sad. P.S. So lonely 4

The word superficial, here, indicates a sort of general sense of the episode, similar to its first effect upon the reader.

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blooming.”5 These words represent the fulcrum of Bloom’s broodings. His very nature is a frustrated one, his blooming being castrated by the ways of life. Yet, some irony is here detectable. The “P.S.” reference indicates his own latent intention to write a letter to Martha Clifford. The following sentence, the poetic “So lonely blooming,” may very well be, in his own mind, also a trick to try and obtain from her a kind of maternal attention towards him. The whole line can be interpreted as an effort to establish a complex out-of-marriage relationship with a woman who has already shown her sadistic intention to punish him.6 Of course, it refers also to a verse from “The Last Rose of Summer” by Thomas Moore. This provides the link to another line in the same overture, where the title of the poem occurs woven with Rose of Castille by Balfe. The result is an effect of light sadness (“Last rose Castille of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone”),7 perhaps anticipating oneirically the last line of Finnegans Wake: “A way a lone a last a loved a long the.”8 Another passage in the first pages alludes to the same feeling, although it is not directly addressed to Bloom: “Miss Kennedy sauntered sadly […] Sauntering sadly […] Sadly she in sauntering gold hair.”9 This is very interesting in many respects. First, it points to the fact that Bloom is not the only sad character in the episode. It anticipates that during the day we will encounter other lonely people absorbed in a similar atmosphere of incompleteness. A further detail suggests that the ways of Miss Kennedy and those of Bloom have something in common. As many have noted, the verb “to saunter” is used on various occasions in Ulysses to describe a somewhat girlish way of walking, which is also characteristic of Bloom.10 Apart from discussing the arguable feminine nature of the act of sauntering, the use of the same verb in connection with Bloom and other women in the book may be a hint helpful in trying to understand the utter reason of the feeling of lonesomeness evident throughout the episode. Men and women are corresponding in the book, as their attitudes and ways clearly show. However, as in reality, something belonging to their terrestrial nature is there to keep them apart. The feeling of sadness and frustration could well be provided by a secret awareness of such an irreconcilable fraction. In fact, Bloom will become a woman only in the visionary exploit of “Circe.” Still, the allusions to androgyny are so frequent in the book that they invite us to treat them rather seriously.

5

U, 329. See U, 95. 7 U, 330. 8 FW, 628. 9 U, 331. 10 See Chapter Five, n. 38. 6

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Feelings of loneliness and sadness are the main superficial features of the episode. They are the symbols of a secret esoteric truth. We can imagine that the naturally unfulfilled tension towards androgyny and unity in the protagonists is the ultimate reason inducing those very feelings. Such conclusions could eventually undermine the authority of another occult truth unmistakably connected with the technique of Ulysses, the coincidentia oppositorum. Could it be that this Neoplatonic belief in unity as reconciliation of the contraries is here only a pretext to suggest that the destiny of men’s terrestrial existence is irreparably tainted by nostalgia? A famous quotation taken from the final part of the episode seems to point to this very truth: “Hate. Love. Those are names.”11 As we have seen, the sentence jars with the other statement occurring in “Cyclops,” where love is meant to be the opposite of hatred.12 We are facing a definitive ironical ambiguity here. It would be rather difficult to discern whether or not this is a parody of both the occult beliefs. Contraries look like mere masks, and the possibility of returning to any primordial unity at all produces both frustration and irony at the same time. Plato’s Convivium inspired the occult belief that men and women shared once the same nature, but are now separated by a distance that is merely corporeal and bodily. This deserves attention in “Sirens.” It is not an accident that at the end of the episode Bloom happens to spot a whore “with black straw hat askew.”13 She corresponds to Blazes Boylan, Molly’s lover, who also wears a straw hat. Something obliquely similar could be said of Simon Daedalus, who happens to reach his pipe “forth from the skirt of his coat.”14 This superficial truth parallels a secret reasoning, a subliminal esoteric logic underlying the whole episode. A second superficial theme, the magical power of music, is announced by the reference to the singer Simon Dedalus. It shows the relevance of intertextuality in Joyce’s works, for some passages and the general atmosphere of the chapter contain many echoes from the short story “The Dead.” Such a connection has been comprehensively analysed, among the others, by Jackson I. Cope, who takes the many common features between “Sirens” and “The Dead” as a starting point for a brilliant analysis of Ulysses as a kind of ciphered text. Between “Sirens” and “The Dead,” some places suggest an evident resemblance. The performances of the singers—Aunt Julia and the tenor Bartell D’Arcy in the short story, Simon Dedalus and Ben Dollard in the eleventh episode of Ulysses—are just the first and more superficial correspondences. During

11

U, 368. See Chapter One, nn. 89, 90, 91, 92. 13 U, 374. 14 U, 336. 12

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their performances, silence is made around them, and the audience remains still and attentively listening. In relation to this, Bettina Klein states that: Dedalus’s, Dollard’s and Cowley’s music (voice and piano=string instrument) attracts more attention than the barmaids’ seductive display. It is in particular Simon Dedalus’s voice that enchants all the listeners, Bloom and the barmaids included. Male singing outdoes anything else brought forward in this episode. This is a clear reference to Apollonius’s Orpheus who beats the Sirens with his songs.15

The enchanting power of music is evident in both Aunt Julia’s and Bartell D’Arcy’s performances in “The Dead.” However, it is during D’Arcy’s that we encounter an atmosphere which somehow anticipates the singing of “Sirens.” In the following passage, the tenor is giving his version of “The Lass of Aughrim,” while Gretta Conroy, standing on the stairs, is absorbed in a most mysterious stillness: “Gabriel […] asked himself what is a woman standing on the stairs in the shadow, listening to distant music, a symbol of.”16 Gabriel is wondering what has stolen his wife’s mind and thoughts. His thoughts are parallel to Bloom’s ironical meditations on the same subject, towards the end of the eleventh episode: “What do they think when they hear music? Way to catch rattlesnakes.”17 Despite Bloom’s grossly materialistic attitude, it is quite evident that both men are somehow attempting to cope with the same dilemma. Gabriel’s reference to “distant music” also has its counterpart in “Sirens.” Here, rather than any sort of existentialist interpretation of a tune hardly heard from a certain distance, it is the nature of silence itself, both as a sound and as a necessity for the act of listening, which catches Bloom’s investigative character: “That voice was a lamentation. Calmer now. It’s in silence you feel you hear. Vibrations. Now silent air.”18 The reference to vibration is fundamental, for it provides a link between the superficial side of the theme of music and its secret explanation. Here we need to stress the value of silence as a state of the mind. As Bloom believes, it gives one the opportunity to understand the real nature of music, of which the act of listening is the sine qua non. In the episode, music has also a sort of magical/alchemical power. It can change the moods of people, as Bloom himself secretly acknowledges when he thinks of the above mentioned “P.S.” in the letter to Martha Clifford: “Too po15

Klein, “Traces of Homer: Between Sources and Models in Joyce’s “Aeolus,” ” 276. D, 211. 17 U, 367. 18 U, 357. 16

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etical that about the sad. Music did that. Music hath charms Shakespeare said.”19 Hallan Hepburn, in discussing Bloom’s thought that “minor-key melancholy in music is performative, a pretense of feeling,”20 highlights the magical implications of music: “As Plato argues in his discussion of musical modes in The Republic, music affects emotions [...] For Plato as for Bloom, this affectivity bypasses reason.”21 Such a peculiar power of music influences the characters’ moods also in “The Dead,” where both Gretta and Gabriel finally surrender to its secret force. Gretta is won by the recollection of the sad memories of her Galway past, while Gabriel is defeated by the silent sound of the faintly falling snow. Accordingly, he dies an imaginary death in communion with the destiny of all the living and the dead. Music can change moods then, and turn joy and desire into hopeless sadness. This happens in “The Dead” as well as in “Sirens,” where sounds of desolation inform all of Bloom’s reflections. However, music in the chapter has also a more superficial effect, which may perhaps be explained just as a Dublin, or rather an Irish, peculiarity of the time. When performed in a bar, it often happens to obtain complete attention and willingness to listen from the people gathered there. This is the case in the Ormond Bar, where the protagonists lend attention to the singers whenever they start to perform. Throughout the episode, we encounter many exhortations to hush and listen, and they are generally accomplished. It is the case, for instance, of the gentle and charming captatio benevolentiae by which Simon Dedalus begs for attention before starting his own song.22 A strong summon to listen, which resounds with the subtle murmur of a powerful sexual metaphor, comes also from Miss Douce when she offers George Lidwell a “winding seahorn,” in order to make him hear the voice of the sea.23 In the Odyssey, Ulysses providentially saves his comrades from hearing the dangerous call of the Sirens by plugging their ears with wax. In Joyce’s episode, despite the difficulty to state with a sufficient amount of certainty who the Sirens really are—whether the singers or the seductive barmaids—the Homeric connection is certainly parodied and inverted. Here everyone can hear, even deaf people, as if the power of music shared something of the supernatural: “And by the door deaf Pat, bald Pat, tipped Pat, listened.”24

19

U, 361. Hepburn, “Ulysses, Opera, Loss,” 67. 21 Ibid., 67. 22 See U, 352. 23 See U, 362-3. 24 U, 366. 20

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In analysing the hidden meaning of some references in the schematas, a similar parodical effect occurs. This happens if we take into account the Swedenborgian connection, which can eventually unveil a secret theme connected with music.

Music inverted “Ear” is the organ of “Sirens.” In Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell we are given to understand that in the Scriptures the ear is a symbol of “hearkening and obedience.”25 Joyce subtly mocks both the ideas. In the schematas, in fact, we find “promises” among the symbols, and “the sweet cheat” as the sense/meaning. While those references may very likely be only half-serious reminiscences of the Homeric correspondence with the singing of the Sirens, it is hard not to spot also a link to the two concepts of “hearkening and obedience” in the light of a semantic overturn. In fact, although in “Sirens” the protagonists imaginatively plug both their ears with their fingers, everyone actually obeys to the sweet cheat of music and to its magical power. Accordingly, everybody hearkens to its false promises. The false promise here is also the trap Joyce sets for those among his readers who are not willing to see through surface meanings. Alongside all the general exhortations to lend attention to music occurring in many places of the episode, the secret sense concealed behind the two ideas may dwell in a different ground rather than a strictly musical one. Bloom thinks as much in an odd silent reference which plays on both levels, the superficial and the secret: “Might be what you like till you hear the words.”26 We have seen already how apparently casual sentences like this may open a vast range of possibilities in terms of interpretation. The suggestion to wait until the words make their appearance is subtler than might seem. It alludes to the cheating spells of music, but also to a words=music equation which is fundamental to Joyce’s own poetics. Actually, the relationship between words and music is a major feature also in other works by Joyce. The musical effects of narrative play a central role, for example, in “The Dead”—especially in the perfect symphonic architecture of its final paragraphs—in Chamber Music, in many places of A Portrait, and in Finnegans Wake. Among all the episodes of Ulysses, “Sirens” is the one where music plays alone the main part. One is reminded of what Joyce wrote to Harriet Weaver in the summer of 1919, in relation to the fact that since he had written

25 26

Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell, 84. U, 359.

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the “Sirens” episode, he found it impossible to listen to any kind of music.27 This points to the existence of a very strict relationship between music and language. The musicality of the chapter is mainly, in fact, a product of the organization of words, whose concatenation secretly gives it an inner life. Richard Ellmann argues that while Pater wrote that the arts aspire to the condition of music, and Mallarmé believed that music “had to work with relationships which words had already established,” it was Joyce who suggested that “all the music aspires to the condition of language.”28 Joyce’s radical ideas about the relationship between words and music are certainly very helpful in appraising “Sirens.” However, one should be careful before generalizing so neatly and state bluntly that for Joyce music aspires to the condition of language. At least one cannot do so if one considers only the eleventh episode of Ulysses. It would be easier to show how such a statement works with regards to Finnegans Wake, where music, or rather harmony, is not only the starting point but also the final aim of Joyce’s art. Thus, harmonic effects are somehow achieved through the attempt to reproduce polyphony via polysemy. On the contrary, as regards “Sirens,” one has to refrain from indulging in the easy temptation of drawing an exact parallel between the condition of music and that of language. In an early study, A. Walton Litz, following Curtius’s wise scepticism about a compromise between music and literature, suggests that Joyce, in “trying to atone musical and literary forms,” ended up weakening “the rational structure of his prose, exalting secondary qualities (‘suggestion’ and ‘sound-imitation’) at the expense of communication.”29 His conclusion is that “Sirens” demonstrates “the weaknesses of a compromise between the two arts.”30 Such a judgement may well seem overstated, especially in the light of the future achievements of Joyce in the effort to create his own music in the Wake. On the other hand, the insuperable barrier to the simulation of musical form is what produces Joyce’s frustration, given also his unfulfilled wish to become a musician/performer. Such a frustration actually led him to pursue a literary career as his second best choice.31 In order to solve the question of the relationship between literature and music, Hepburn suggests that we should resort to opera as the place where both arts blend in a successful wedding.32

27

See L, I, 128-9. Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 104. 29 Litz, The Art of Joyce, 70. 30 Ibid., 70 31 See Kiberd, “Theatre as Opera: The Gigli Concert,” 145. 32 See Hepburn, “Ulysses, Opera, Loss,” 64. 28

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The textual ambiguity of “Sirens” may also encourage us to consider carefully the secret system of references, as well as the suggestions hidden by the writer between the lines, not as a surrogate for the failure of a compromise between the two arts, but rather as a latent feature of the episode. In this context, a quotation such as the following sounds as a key phrase to approach the occult message concealed behind “Sirens”: “Words? Music? No: it’s what’s behind.”33 “What’s behind” refers to a textual unconscious, neither invented nor understood by the protagonist, yet fully orchestrated by the author. This agrees with Hepburn’s comment that “music stands as the Freudian Unberwusste, or ‘unknown’ component of identity that colours individual subjectivity and human interaction.”34 What is the hidden essence of music? What links it to the ultimate secrets of words and language? The solution is eventually provided by a secondary character, Richie Goulding. After Simon Dedalus’s performance, he joins the praising crew and addresses Bloom with the following remark: “Grandest number in the whole opera.”35 Despite the apparent clarity of the sentence, which occurred also in “Proteus,”36 Bloom’s mind does not catch the superficial meaning of the expression. On the contrary, he is fascinated by another idea suggested by the word number. The term no longer stands for a musical piece. Instead, he takes it literally, and it inaugurates a most peculiar train of thoughts already implied in the earlier reference to vibrations: Numbers it is. All music when you come to think. Two multiplied by two divided by half is twice one. Vibrations; chords those are. One plus six is seven. Do anything you like with figures juggling [...] Musemathematics. And you think you are listening to the ethereal. But suppose you said it like: Martha, seven times nine minus x is thirtyfive thousands.37

The shift from the previous words/music relation to a more comprehensive perspective including numerical allusions is now clear. It becomes almost a structural factor of Joyce’s poetics if we consider that, as John Senior explains, the essence of music, according to the hermetic belief of the Pytagoreans, is numerical: “Through numbers, the alchemists also identified themselves with

33

U, 354. Hepburn, “Ulysses, Opera, Loss,” 63. 35 U, 359. 36 U, 48. 37 U, 359. For a detailed explanation of the mathematical meaning of the passage see Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 76-7. 34

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the Pythagoreans. […] Pythagoras taught the relation between number and music.”38 Secret relationships between words/letters and numbers are also established in the tradition of the Kabbalah. The idea that Joyce was fully aware of the connections between such numerological doctrines seems to be shared by Sheldon Brivic. The scholar points out that he “was aware of Giordano Bruno’s statement that the wisdom of the Kabbalah ‘derives from the Egyptians, among whom Moses was brought up,’ ”39 and that Blavatsky’s “Isis Unveiled sees a connection between the Kabbalah and ‘the cosmological theory of numerals which Pythagoras learned from the Egyptian hierophants.’ ”40 This leads inexorably to a most mysterious and revealing solution. The unveiling of music will eventually help us discover what’s behind it.

Music unveiled Acoustic science says that it is the number of vibrations in a unit of time that gives the sound its height, and allows us to distinguish a particular note from another. Its frequency gives a sound its timbre. Numbers are also the basis of the idea of rhythm. This seems to be the hint dropped by another seemingly casual sentence in the episode: “Time makes the tune.”41 The assumption that the whole essence of music is numerical is established in the cited expression “Musemathematics,” which in its first part contains a reference to the inspirational process, and indirectly also to the ancient Greek world of the Pythagoreans. Bloom’s reflections are the products of his halfscientific mind, and this somehow anticipates an attitude that will be more evident in “Itacha.” The principle implied in the above-expression is that musical relationships are parallel to mathematic ones insofar as they depend on similar numerical rapports. Hence, the previous words=music equation, which has been replaced by the music=numbers relation, gives way, now, by means of a simple logical syllogism, to the rapport between words and numbers. In order to solve the question in a definitive way, we may take account of some ideas and techniques of the Kabbalah, which Joyce undoubtedly came to know through a number of diverse sources. We have already touched briefly on the subject. Now it is time to return to this issue in order to assess its actual relevance in the hidden discourse of Joyce’s great work. 38

Senior, The Way Down and Out, 29. See also my chapter on “Scylla,” n. 68. Brivic, “The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake, 13. 40 Ibid., 13. 41 U, 359. 39

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As Gershom Scholem puts it, “the Kabbalah, literally “tradition,” that is, the tradition of things divine, is the sum of Jewish mysticism.”42 Cope informs us that Joyce had access to important texts of the Kabbalistic tradition, “in the course of his weaving of Ulysses.”43 In response to this, Brivic argues that “Cope effectively expands our recognition of Joyce’s knowledge of the Kabbalah, though some of his observations are more suggestive than conclusive.”44 One can agree with Cope that Joyce’s knowledge of the Kabbalah is deeper than has been suggested. In order to support this view from a textual perspective, we can here review a few implications of kabbalistic knowledge, which will prove further the extent of Joyce’s awareness of the teachings of the kabbalists. A technique known as Gematria provides the link with the reasoning explained above, and with the final numbers=words equation. Scholem describes it as the “interpretation through the numerical value of the Hebrew letters.”45 In the Kabbalah, the fundamental tenet of the Gematria is the correspondence of the letters of the alphabet to numbers. This is undoubtedly what Bloom’s monologue is all about. It is confirmed by a passage in “Ithaca” where we witness to his own knowledge of such a technique: And Bloom in turn wrote the Hebrew characters ghimel, aleph, daleth and (in the absence of mem) a substituted goph, explaining their arithmetical values as ordinal and cardinal numbers, videlicet 3, 1, 4 and 100.46

Cope states that a mock kabbalistic relationship between numbers and letters has been alluded to previously in Ulysses,47 and precisely in Stephen’s fancy telephone call to Edenville, in the third episode: “Hello. Kinch here. Put me on to Edenville. Aleph. Alpha: nought, nought, one.”48 A further link to the same episode is the aforementioned mutual reference to “the greatest number […] in the whole opera.”49 With regards to most of Bloom’s allusions, it would be quite useless to look for more precise relations here. This is due first to the fact that a parodying will seems to be, as always, the main feature of the game. Secondly, as we know,

42

Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, i. Cope, Joyce’s Cities, 70-81. 44 Brivic, “The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake,” 7. 45 Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, 56. 46 U, 806. 47 See Cope, “Sirens,” 236-7. 48 U, 46. See also next chapter. 49 U, 48. 43

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Joyce was certainly not a Kabbalist, although at times he behaves as such.50 Coggrave puts it in the following way: [The Kabbalah] appealed to Joyce as a schema which linked every aspect of animal, vegetable and human life with that of the cosmos. It functioned as yet one more example of a network of correspondences that would, without demanding formal adherence, provide him with what was basically an aesthetic arrangement of the multifarious items of universal experience without binding him to any particular creed or organization.51

With this being the case, what is interesting in Ulysses’ mock kabbalistic textual occurrences is the secret system of allusions underwriting them. It is perhaps a legacy of Bloom’s multifaceted Jewish background. This leads us back to the general meaning of the episode from which the present analysis started. The theory of the hidden references to Kabbalistic techniques is in fact neither the main feature of the chapter, nor the ultimate cause behind its organization. It is nothing but a means by which other more general statements and truths are suggested. Those statements, providing a kind of human sense to the chapter, are likely to be applied also to the book as a whole. Through such a final step, we may eventually find out that they are introduced to our attention both as superficial and as secret themes, the latter being suggested by the strange numerical techniques of the Kabbalah. In order to show how such a circularity of ideas works, we can take into account the general Kabbalistic assumptions of which the numerical references seem to be a signatura. They may well explain the sense of incompleteness, failure, and frustration of which Bloom and other characters in the episode fall victims. Kabbalistic teachings not only include a practical side—the techniques of interpretation through numbers, letters, and words—but also theoretical aspects, which partly contrast with the traditional orthodox rabbinical doctrine. Such a theoretical side involves a series of what look like revolutionary statements about the nature and the essence of God and his Law. Scholem explains that most Kabbalistic doctrines revolve around “the divine emanations or sephiroth, in which God’s creative power unfolds.”52 God reveals himself “through the creative power of the sephiroth.”53 Suffice our discussion to explain that the sephiroth, or manifestations of the power of God, are ten, and 50

An interesting application of a quasi-kabbalistic method (including the exchange of letters for numbers and the act of reading the alphabet backwards, a connection with Rudy’s way of reading) is to be found in Knowles’s explanation of the Dolphin’s Barn cryptogram. See, Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 21-4. 51 Coggrave, “Joyce’s Use of Occultist Sources,” 113. 52 Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, 35. 53 Ibid., 35.

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among them the first three are the more general ones. Each of the remaining seven, named the lower sephiroth, corresponds to a part of the human body of the primordial man, Adam Kadmon. It is interesting to note that in the third episode of Ulysses we find a seemingly casual allusion to Adam Kadmon.54 He is the man in the purest form that certain Kabbalistic traditions identify with the God of the sepiroth, or God as he reveals Himself through the manifestations of His power. The general correspondence of the sephiroth with parts of the body, seemingly consistent with Swedenborg’s idea of the “body of heaven,” may have influenced also the internal organization of Joyce’s “bodily” book. Besides, as we will see, such mystical ideas are here used just in order to introduce another version of the theme of androgyny—a link back to the theorization of the perfect artist as an androgynous angel and a wife unto himself in “Scylla.” The androgyny of God is in fact the revolutionary theory secretly elaborated by the Kabbalists, in manifest contrast with the Jewish traditional doctrine. Scholem puts it as follows: Of the seven potencies that emanate from it [from the third sephiroth],55 the first six are symbolized as parts of the Primordial men’s body and epitomized in the phallic ‘foundation’ [...] The tenth sephirah, however, no longer represents a particular part of man, but, as complement to the universally human and masculine principle, the feminine, seen at once as mother, wife, and as daughter, though manifested in different ways in these different aspects. This discovery of the feminine element of God, which the Kabbalists tried to justify by Gnostic exegesis, is of course one of the most significant steps they took.56

There is no doubt that a writer like Joyce could have been intrigued by such a complex, half-blasphemous, and obscure doctrine belonging to the tradition of Jewish mystical knowledge. The kabbalistic doctrine of the sephiroth57 was mentioned in the article on the Kabbalah in the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which Atherton believes to be one of Joyce’s major sources.58

54

See U, 46. The third sephiroth, also called the upper mother, is a demiurgic potency, an aspect of God, an almost-independent feminine element within him. 56 Scholem, On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism, 105. 57 For the importance of the sephiroth in the Wake, see: Brivic, “The Mind Factory: Kabbalah in Finnegans Wake,” McHugh, Annotations to ’Finnegans Wake, 261, Campbell and Robinson, A Skeleton Key to ’Finnegans Wake, 171, 193-5. 58 See my chapter on “Lotus-Eaters,” n. 42. 55

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Given that Joyce refers first to Adam Kadmon, and then to the androgynous as the prototype of the perfect artist, one wonders how the concept is presented to the reader. Does it point to a serious commitment to, or rather a mocking parody of, kabbalistic knowledge? We have seen that the straw-hatted whore at the end of the episode is reminiscent of Blazes Boylan, and that generally in “Sirens” men seem to correspond to women. It can also be argued that the theory of the “coincidence of the opposites” might be affected by a congenital error, for it leads nowhere but to frustration and impotence. Apparently, at least in “Sirens,” it does not provide any ultimate solution to the dialectics of the contraries, no reunion with one’s own opposite being possible. The idea of human incompleteness in the episode is indeed a debt to the Kabbalah. This can be proved on a textual level, by analysing further examples of a direct relationship between its legacy and the atmosphere of sadness and failure connected with music. Who are, in fact, the real sirens in the episode? Perhaps, the Homeric Sirens were androgynous beings themselves. In the Odyssey, they are not remarkable for the sexual potency of their appeal, but only for the cheating powers of their chant. This would suggest that the singers are the sirens in the episode, in that they are the only ones who can catch the attention of the people gathered in the Ormond bar. The two sexy barmaids pass relatively unobserved if compared to the male singers. Hence, if the singers are the sirens, then the barmaids possibly correspond to Odysseus’s crowd. This seems to be confirmed by many passages, like the one where a girl actually pretends to prevent herself from listening, by plugging her own ears.59 A further evidence of such an exchange of genders is the passage where Lydia Douce anticipates Bloom’s most peculiarly masculine act in the whole book, his masturbation on Sandymount Strand.60 Having stated that a natural, although fictional, exchange of genders between the protagonists may well be the fundamental issue of the chapter, we can now return to the starting point of the present reflection in the light of a new and more comprehensive perspective. We can recognise the general air of incompleteness surrounding the episode as the result of the failed unconscious attempt of almost all the protagonists to achieve the perfect state of androgyny, as suggested by the occult sapientia of the Kabbalists, as well as by neoplatonic beliefs. Men and women are prevented from reaching such perfection due to that unavoidable terrestrial barrier known as human nature. This secret wish, shared by many of the relevant characters of

59 60

See U, 333. See U, 369.

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“Sirens,” is destined to remain unfulfilled. The awareness of such a truth is also the ultimate reason informing Bloom’s own feelings of sad failure. This inevitably produces the reader’s human empathy with him. The very popular interpretation of Bloom’s character as feminine is poignantly explained by Carolyn Heilbrun, who states that the “woman as hero, like the man as hero, exists in one character in Ulysses, Leopold Bloom.”61 She stresses his “empathy with women,” remarking that “he alone in the book is sympathetically present during childbirth.”62 The scholar’s fascinating conclusion is that “his Jewishness in Dublin makes necessary a certain passivity and has developed in him a great kindness.”63 Bloom’s awareness of some of the secret doctrines of Jewish mysticism is a clear hint at the secret truth of androgyny. His nature is then two-fold. While textually speaking his fluid sexuality appears to be detectable in his unmistakably womanly behaviour, from an occult point of view it has to be linked to his non-conformist “Jewishness.” The “Sirens” chapter is firmly a further anticipatory key passage in the acknowledgment of Bloom’s double nature. Only in the imaginary and oneiric evolutions of “Circe” will his occult and latent wish to become his own opposite be partly satisfied. In the meantime, we can look at another turning point the great book, “Proteus,” in which the other protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, plays the main role. Not only is the third chapter strictly connected with the occult motifs discussed so far, but it also shows that such hidden themes involving the sphere of spirituality become really a substantial part of the alternative ideology Joyce is attempting to construct for his readers.

61

Heilbrun, Towards Androgyny. Aspects of Male and Female in Literature, 95. Ibid., 95. 63 Ibid., 95. 62

CHAPTER EIGHT PROTEUS

“Proteus” shows unequivocally the relevance of numbers in the secret system of Joyce’s book, alongside other major hidden themes. As MacQueen suggests, literary numerology is the theory of composition “in terms of which an author deliberately incorporates in the text of his work numerical patterns which he regards as conveying precise significances.”1 In this light, it is useful to look at what Joyce said to Adolf Hoffmeister in 1933, in relation to his own obsession with numbers: Number is an enigma that God deciphers […] I have discovered the importance of numbers in life and history. Dante was obsessed by the number three. He divided his poem into three parts, each with thirty-tree cantos, written in terza rima.2

The very fact that “Proteus” is the third episode of Ulysses suggests its most revealing quality in the occult scheme of the book. Cooper’s reference work on myths and legends informs us that Pythagoras calls the number three “the perfect number, expressive of ‘beginning, middle and end,’ wherefore he makes it a symbol of a Deity.”3 Number three is a cornerstone in the numerical structure of Joyce’s book. Ulysses is divided into three parts, each having its own internal division, which is also ruled by a ternary logic. The “Telemachiad” and the “Nostos” are made up of three episodes each, while the “Odyssey” has twelve chapters. Such an obsession with the number three can be explained partly as an allusion to the Trine God of the Catholic theology. If we take account of Joyce’s desire to exploit all the possibilities provided by the particular ideas he explores, a further explanation comes to the surface which involves a subtle range of allusions to Satanism. In fact, while in Dante’s Divina Comedia, the thirtythree canti of each of the three Cantiche can be seen as a clear allusion to the years of Christ, the eighteen episodes of Ulysses may

1

MacQueen, Numerology. Theory and Outline History of a Literary Mode, 2. Cited in Coggrave, “Joyce’s Use of Occultist Sources,” 105. 3 Cooper, Brewer’s Book of Myth and Legend, 283. 2

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be pointing also to the triple repetition of the number six, the number of the devil. For those in search of an even more fantastic explanation, bearing in mind that Bloom is at some stage rumoured to be a freemason, it is interesting to know that tirthythree are also the degrees of the so-called Scottish Rite, the highest degree of the Freemasons, while degree eighteen corresponds to the rite of the Crux Rubra, the Rosicrucian level.4 In the light of such remote connections, the relevance of “Proteus” as a key passage in the occult dynamics of the book emerges. This is not, of course, to diminish the importance of other chapters. Despite the several opposite forces that apparently undermine Ulysses’s formal unity, the idea of totality in the book does not seem to be a matter of speculation. Every episode has its own peculiar part to play in the game of secret and superficial meanings harmonically interwoven in the texture of the narrative. However, some episodes are more comprehensive than others, which on the contrary keep gravitating around them as in a solar system according to a chosen centre. The difference between the already-discussed chapters and “Proteus” is substantial. It resembles the relationship between a medieval encyclopaedia and its various sources of information. In other words, if we look at “Ulysses 3” after having studied carefully all the other episodes with an eye to their occult structures, we eventually find out that most of their secret themes had been already introduced in the third chapter. The very appearance of those themes in “Proteus” looks like an overture. In the episode, many hints are dropped which need to be picked up and re-organized coherently. The purpose is to recover a previous knowledge apparently lost. In order to achieve a more general idea of the goals of the present reasoning, it is necessary to acknowledge in advance the reason why the solution to the occult question in Ulysses is “Circe.” The decision not to end this discussion with the final episode, “Penelope” (Ulysses 18) might in fact look radical at first. While “Eumaeus” and “Ithaca” are relatively “relaxing” chapters after the drunken and visionary exploits of “Circe,” the last episode, “Penelope,” is more a solution in psychological, narrative, and human terms to Ulysses, rather than the revelation of its hidden secrets. Although its role is fundamental in showing Joyce’s subtle technique, his literary craft, and his keen understanding of the human mind, it is arguably in the fifteenth chapter that the occult themes which continually underflow as the rivers of Hades the surface of the book, break through the text in a semantic explosion and become finally visible. Besides, the two male protagonists who during the textual unfolding of the book carry the responsibility to become the unconscious witnesses of a theory of secret mes4

For a similar connection between numbers and their secret masonic implications in relation to another work of art, Mozart’s The Magic Flute, see Robins Landon, H.C. 1791 Mozart Last Year. New York, Schirmer Books, 1988.

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sages, will be closer to each other in “Circe” than in any other section of the book. Newman brilliantly assesses their psychological and quasi-alchemical descent into the dark night of the unconscious, in the following terms: The conjunction of contraries basic to alchemical theory is enacted within the psychological design of the novel. In Circe, Bloom’s and Stephen’s faces merge in the mirror with that of Shakespeare. In Ithaca, a ‘keyless couple’ […] they discuss the similarities of the Hebrew and Irish languages and people, and Stephen leaves Bloom’s house playing a Jew’s harp.5

Their respective journeys through the text seem to be oriented towards curious forms of reconciliation, for as Newman again suggests, they “also urinate together while simultaneously observing a shooting star.”6 In the critic’s view, the whole process is similar to the first stages of alchemy, themselves a kind of descent of the matter into the unifying darkness, before an inevitable process of regeneration. The three final stages of the book, where such a union seems to occur, are an imaginary drunken episode such as “Circe,” and what could be seen as the aftermath of a massive intake of alcohol during the night (“Eumeus” and “Ithaca”). Such a time, which precedes indeed the onset of sleep, may be interpreted somehow as the step before the hangover, a time when all sorts of union become possible. Similar oneiric reconciliations could not have happened before in the day, nor could they happen after, for as Knowles observes, “Bloom and Stephen are parallel and will never converge […] Parallel lines are divided lines and so Stephen must decline Bloom’s offer to stay.”7 In fact, they are completely out of the stage in “Penelope,” and this seems to justify the view that the final chapter is really something utterly detached from the rest of the text. Among the three moments of the “Telemachiad,” the final is no doubt the most complexly structured, as well as the most obscurely written. The narrative presents the reader with a huge amount of dark allusions, hardly intelligible from a referential point of view. The majority of those hints, which Joyce drops in a seemingly casual way in order to conceal them between the lines of his cryptic text, do not belong to a thesaurus of knowledge shared by common readers. The results of such a technique, which combines the elements of the narrative as in a mosaic, are extremely easy to guess. On the one hand, the reader’s expectations8 are not even allowed the chance to fail. The reader’s possibility to establish a dialogue with the text is in many cases negated by the re5

Newman, “Transformatio Coniunctionis: Alchemy in Ulysses,” 180. Ibid., 180. 7 Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 7. 8 See: Iser, The Implied Reader, 196-233. 6

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mote ambiguity of those references. This compels him almost naturally to refer to a critical apparatus of notes and interpretations, in order to get at least a superficial and partial idea of what is all about. On the other hand, this dillusions the reader as to a plain narrative coherence in the work, for the importance of the referential function is indeed reduced to minimal terms. Luckily enough, the third millennium reader can easily gain access to many studies containing useful annotations and commentaries. However, in relation to “Proteus,” sometimes even those valuable books fail in recomposing clearly a united message whose pieces are scattered in a seemingly chaotic way all through its pages. At times, despite their clarifying intentions, the various critical works make comprehension even more difficult for general readers. As it happens, assumptions of interpretive clarity do not always account fully for actual textual opacity. As we have seen already, such a statement proves to be true when our perspective is an occult one. “Darkness needs only darkness to be perceived,” an occultist could say. Towards the end of “Proteus” we encounter an oddly symbolical hint: “You find my words dark? Darkness is in our souls, do you not think?’9 Here, we witness again to the text’s attempt at bypassing mere referentiality, in order to establish a direct contact with its readers. In what follows, I will propose an interpretation of such a cryptic relationship, whose revolutionary implications, so far, seem to have been overlooked by many readers of Joyce’s masterpiece.

Dyonisius, Blake, Boehme, and “Proteus” Dyonisius the pseudo-Areopagite, a mystic whose influence on Joyce has been recently one of the objects of a brilliant study by Colleen Jaurretche,10 is responsible for a most fascinating theological theory, known as the “apophatic theory.” It revolves around the possibility of coming to the knowledge of God through the darkness and the negation of knowledge itself. In medieval times, such a theory massively influenced the negative mystical tradition, while more generally the “Dyonisian introspection filters through the early Middle Ages to all mystical texts.”11 Some of its tenets can help us understand partly the hidden intentions of Joyce’s texts, which lay lurking behind many a passage in “Proteus.”

9

U, 61. Jaurretche, The Sensual Philosophy. Joyce and the Aesthetics of Mysticism. 11 Ibid, 18. For a general overview of Dyonisius’s influence on the mystical thought of Middle Ages see the chapter, “Medieval Abstrusities,” 8-37.

10

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According to Vladimir Lossky, Dyonisius’s works “have enjoyed an undisputed authority in the theological tradition of the East, as well as in that of the West.”12 He is allegedly the author of a corpus known as the Areopagitica, some of which are present on the shelves of the National Library of Ireland, as well as in the Marsh’s Library, Dublin. That Joyce knew the essence of this theory is confirmed by a conference paper on Blake he read at the University of Trieste in 1912: Dionysius the pseudo-Areopagite, in his book De Divinis Nominibus, arrives at the throne of God by denying and overcoming every moral and metaphysical attribute, and in the last chapter falling into ecstasy and prostrating himself before the divine obscurity, before that unutterable immensity which precedes and encompasses the supreme knowledge in the eternal order.13

Dyonisius the Pseudo-Areopagite makes a timid appearance also between the lines of Giacomo Joyce.14 A few years before, the mystic had been introduced in another conference paper, “Ireland: the Isle of Saints and Scholars,” given at the University of Trieste. On that occasion, he had mistaken the actual Dyonisius for Saint Dyonisius, patron saint of France.15 Dyonisius’s mystical theology helps us find a reasonably logical explanation of the images of darkness and dark eternity haunting many famous passages in “Proteus.” The apophatic theory is also known as the theory of negation, and is seen in opposition to the cataphatic theory, or theory of affirmation. Dyonisius’s negative theology tells us that God is obscurity, and that we may come to know him only if we negate all our intellectual or moral knowledge. According to Lossky, such a theory fosters the view that in order to approach God “it is necessary to deny all that is inferior to Him.”16 The scholar describes the whole process as follows: If in seeing God one can know what one sees, then one has not seen God in Himself but something intelligible, something which is inferior to Him. It is by unknowing (agnosia) that one may know Him who is above every possible object of knowledge [...] by progressively setting aside all that can be known, in order to draw near to the Unknown in the darkness of absolute ignorance.17

12

Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 23-4. CW, 222. 14 See GJ, 1. 15 See CW, 160. 16 Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, 25. 17 Ibid., 25. 13

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In the above cryptic allusion to the darkness residing in our very souls, Joyce was clearly using, and perhaps parodying, Dyonisius’s theory of the darkness of knowledge. This is confirmed by an idea concealed behind another famous line taken from “Nestor” (Ulysses 2): “Darkness shining in brightness, which brightness could not comprehend.”18 Suffice it to say, now, that in this case Joyce is applying Dyonisius’s mystical ideas to a terrestrial context, rather than to a divine one, in a way that is much similar to his own secular re-adaptation of Swedenborg’s system of correspondences. He is also informing us of his own obscurantist techniques, besides suggesting that certain things are not worthy of elucidation, for dark complexity is part of their very nature. One shall be reminded, here, that subliminal questions often require subliminal answers. The idea of divine darkness as expressed in the apophatic theory may in fact illuminate another very relevant, though well-concealed, aspect of “Proteus,” the hidden presence of William Blake. Many critics have comprehensively assessed such a ghostly presence, and in a way we should not imagine it as an obscure topic at all. Some of Blake’s ideas are quite revealing in the present context, for they provide interesting links to Joyce’s own visionary technique. They include, for instance, a quasi-mystical attitude towards the worship of imagination, which, in the light of Joyce’s personality, could no doubt lead to some quite ironic misunderstandings. It is well known that Joyce loved to think of himself as a writer who completely lacked imagination. Such a suggestion is of course mainly provocative, although certain aspects of his fiction, like the oftentransfigured representation of people who interested him, which shows his own obsession with details of their lives, would somehow make us take it seriously. The Italian scholar Emilio Cecchi, in an early study which, though never translated into English, happened somehow to enjoy a certain fortune in England in the first decades of the last century, explained Blake’s poetics in the following terms: Blake outlined the external shape, already alive though empty, into which only later the great Romantics were to pour more determinate passion and thought. His poetry has the effect of the appearance of the luminous contour of a dreamy figure, in the desert mirror of the air.19

The aim of these few lines is to introduce a kind of symbolic presentation of Blake’s role in the historical shaping of the romantic sensitivity. However, they seem to point also to the existence of what could be named the “aesthetics of the vision,” which might well be one of the subliminal connections between Blake and Joyce. 18 19

U, 28. Cecchi, I Grandi Romantici Inglesi, 73.

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In Ulysses a similar approach informs various narrative features, like the interior monologues, the occasional reminiscences which come to characters’ minds when they are absorbed in other mental patterns, and the non-casual coincidences of events, which function as latent links between various sections of the text. The latter can be spotted in many places of the book, but constitute the external shape, as well as the textual peculiarity, mainly of the third and the fifteenth episode. In this light, we can consider “Proteus” and “Circe” as two oneiric parallel lines on which a certain continuity between the methods and the achievements of both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake would seem to travel. The aesthetics of the vision is no doubt suggested to Joyce by the works of Blake, whose prophetic books owe a great deal to mystical knowledge. Blake was in fact very familiar with the doctrines of Swedenborg and Boehme. His more visionary works happen to reveal also a substantial debt to the theories on perception of the Bishop of Cloyne, George Berkeley. Kathleen Raine shows how Blake’s firm opposition to the materialist and empiricist ideas so strong and influential in his time is nothing but a commitment to Berkeley’s teachings on the coincidence of existence and perception. Accordingly, such an outlook informed also Blake’s inclinations towards visionary aesthetics. In Raine’s view,“Blake adds only passion to Berkeley’s argument.”20 In “Proteus,” the teachings of Berkeley are indeed among the most revealing aspects of the episode. Actually, he is one of the ghosts who appear and disappear between the lines. We also encounter a direct reference to him towards the end of the chapter.21 His thought informs deeply Stephen’s strange behaviour. In one of the most famous passages of the episode, Stephen’s experiment on Sandymount strand, such an odd legacy comes clearly to the surface. As soon as Stephen decides to close his eyes and walk in the darkness, there comes a famous allusion to the dimensions of time and space in Blake: I am getting on nicely in the dark. My ash sword hangs at my side. Tap with it […] Sounds solid: made by the mallet of Los Demiurgos. Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount Strand?22

An authoritative interpretation of the second part of the passage, suggested to Thornton by M.D. Paley, has it that “the way into eternity” is an indirect quotation of an actual passage from Blake’s Milton, where the protagonist reaches Eternity through the poet’s left foot:

20

Raine, Blake and the New Age, 173. See U, 60-1. 22 U, 45. 21

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Chapter Eight And all this vegetable world appeared on my left foot, As a bright sandal formed immortal precious stones and gold: I stooped down and bound it on to walk forward through Eternity.23

Joyce’s admiration for Blake is renowned. In the Trieste library we find three collections of his poems. In general, his pointed knowledge of Blake’s books, and particularly his fondness for the ideas of time and space frequently alluded in them, is to be dated years before the writing of “Proteus.” Such an interest is in fact already clear in some of Joyce’s early critical writings, like the 1912 Trieste paper on Blake. In that essay, Joyce had in fact rephrased a famous passage from Milton24 where Blake had described the modality of access to Eternity, in the following terms: “in a space smaller than a globule of blood we approach eternity, of which our vegetable world is but a shadow.”25 If we are to accomplish the task of finding exact allusions lurking behind Joyce’s words in “Proteus,” such a well known reference may certainly be more illuminating than the one proposed earlier. Besides, Blake’s obsession with the various accesses to Eternity, which in fact designates a dimension beyond the terrestrial conceits of time and space, is a common feature shared by almost all of his prophetic books. Moreover, it is very easy to find in his works the word Eternity introduced by a preposition suggesting an imaginary movement. For instance, in Milton, vv. 15-16, Plate 1, we read: “Say first: what moved Milton—who walked about in Eternity / One hundred years, pondering the intricate mazes of Providence.”26 Furthermore, the two verses from Milton Joyce had rephrased in the 1912 lecture (“And every space smaller than a globule of man’s blood opens / Into Eternity, of which this vegetable earth is but a shadow”)27 could well be another direct source for the renowned passage in “Proteus.” Finally, the following verses from Jerusalem may also have provided Joyce with the image he was looking for: I rest not from my great task! To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes Of Man inwards into the Worlds of thought, into Eternity Ever expanding in the bosom of God, the Human Imagination.28

23

Blake, The Poems, 518. See ibid., 539. 25 CW, 222. 26 Blake, The Poems, 490. 27 Ibid., 539. 28 Blake, The Complete Writings with All the Variant Readings, 623. 24

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Given such difficulties in trying to find exact allusions to a univocal passage in Blake’s corpus accounting for the reference in “Proteus,” we may look for an alternative explanation based on a different ground. In Blake’s visionary aesthetics, the general sense of the Eternity/Vegetable World dichotomy is nothing but an apparent opposition of the two dimensions, which utimately share a perpetual and cyclical nature. In Blake’s mythology, Eternity is imagined as the opposite of “the sea of time and space,” where the soul falls because of sin. In Milton we become aware that Time is called Los by mortals, while the name of Los’s feminine emanation, Space, is Enitharmon. In a verse many critics consider the key to the understanding of the poem—“Time is the mercy of Eternity”29—the essentially circular nature of Blake’s cosmology is finally revealed. After the fall, the soul tries to redeem itself in the spatial and temporal dimension, that is, in the world of Los and his emanation. “The sea of time and space” is the place where humanity can rediscover its truest nature, in order to return to the imaginative knowledge of Eternity, or in other words, to the beatitude of Eden. A similar idea is summed up in the ambitious epigraph of a book Joyce had bought in 1912,30 Signatura Rerum, by the mystic Jacob Boehme: Signatura Rerum The Signature of all things. Shewing the sign and signification of The several forms and shapes in the creation; And what the Beginning, ruin and cure of Everything is. It proceeds out of Eternity into Time, and again out of Time into Eternity, And comprises all mysteries.

The title of the book is cited in the very first paragraph of “Proteus.” Boehme’s position on the relationship between the terrestrial and the immortal world starts from the very assumption that Time and Eternity are contiguous dimensions, despite their apparent opposition. They agree in general terms with the idea of concidentia oppositorum so dear to Joyce. A passage from Signatura Rerum concerning the true nature of Eternity may help us see the matter in a new light:

29 30

Blake, The Poems, 528. See Introduction, n. 33.

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Chapter Eight Without nature God is a mystery, understand, in the nothing, for without nature is the nothing, which is an eye of eternity, an abyssal eye that stands and sees in the nothing, for it is the abyss.31

The idea of Eternity, the immortal place where supreme divinity reigns alone, is here presented in connection with an image of abyss. This may lead us back to the darkness suggested by Stephen’s decision to walk with his eyes closed along Sandymount strand. What strikes the attention in the above passage is the description of the nothing, the abyss, in terms of “an eye of eternity.” Such a cluster of theological-ontological categories linked to the sense-perception plane through the visual dimension, brings us back to the image of darkness provided by Dionysius’s apophatic theory. Hence, an occult interpretation of the famous passage from “Proteus” becomes possible. Stephen, who has in mind the ideas of space and time dear to Blake as complementary parts of the same imperfect dimension, decides to close his eyes and walk in the darkness. When he becomes aware that he is “getting on nicely in the dark,”32 he wonders ironically whether he may be accessing Eternity along the strand of Sandymount. Eternity, according to his farcical irony, is evidently an ontological obscurity, which we may approach only by negating the clarity of our knowledge. This is symbolized by the closing of his eyes, an action which finally gives him the chance to get in contact with Eternity. According to George Mills Harper, Eternity is “another name for Eden”33 in Blakean terms. Actually, just a few lines below the above passage we encounter Stephen’s mocking attempt to be put through Eden by phone. We can leave aside for the moment the meaning of this telephone call, whose mystical implications I will discuss later on. Instead, we can now take a look at the suggestions provided in the schematas, in order to see if we can identify further traces of a subliminal narrative concerning other parts of the body and their occult signification.

Stephen and the Body In general, to take the textual clues provided in the schematas literally is often to be deceived intentionally by Joyce. In relation to “Proteus”, even structural features such as “the primordial matter” as the sense/meaning—reminding us of the mythical divinity who had the ability to continuously change his own form—are just superficial explanations. Mitchell Morse believes that most of

31

Boehme, The Signature of All Things, 22. U, 45. 33 Mills Harper, The Neoplatonism of William Blake, 148. 32

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the various mutations in the chapter “take place in Stephen’s mind, not in the outer world.”34 The ever-changing nature of words and language in the episode, as well as all the fluid textual permutations of Ulysses, expose clearly the major characteristic of open texts. As regards “Proteus,” this is also confirmed by other symbols occurring in Linati, like “word, tide, moon, evolution, metamorphosis.” Having said this, one should be sceptical of easy solutions, for they would comply with Joyce’s own wish to see us, readers, utterly misled. Accordingly, we are in need of an alternative explanation in order to come to terms with the fatal complexity of the cluster of half-serious half-psychotic allusions of the chapter. From an occult standpoint, one will do well to bear in mind that the socalled “universal Proteus” is also another word for the “Akasha,” the great memory of the word.35 In this light, we can try to explain the first major dilemma of the Linati schema, which again has to do with the notion of organ in Ulysses. Why do the chapters of the “Telemachiad” not have a correspondence with the body? The answer to this question seems obvious, at least judging by the explanation provided by Linati, “Telemaco non soffre ancora il corpo,” which according to a translation given in Ellmann’s Ulysses on the Liffey means: “Telemachus does not yet bear a body.” We know that translations are always attempts “to say almost the same thing” with new words. While there is no doubt that Ellmann’s literal translation interprets correctly the surface meaning of Joyce’s statement, the ambiguous and half-metaphorical sense of the Italian verb soffrire in this occurrence has to be reconsidered. Although the verb, which can indeed be translated as “to suffer,” may mean in certain cases also “to bear,” suffice it to say that in this context it signifies more likely “to feel [something] intensely.” A more reliable translation of Joyce’s explanation would be: “Telemachus does not yet feel the body,” meaning that he does not yet feel the legacy of the body. This implies also that he is not aware of the body’s secret meaning. The new translation changes things utterly. Ellmann’s version would make us believe that Stephen does not partake of any bodily dimension, or rather that he is not ready yet for a mature psychological relationship with his own body. This seems to be supported on the surface by the fact that he is somehow embarrassed by his own body (poor eyesight, rotten teeth, and so on). On the contrary, the alternative translation points to the actual conception of the body. The only chapters which do not have a correspondence with organs are those of the

34 35

Mitchell Morse, “Proteus,” 39. See Carver, “Joyce and the Theory of Magic,” 202-3.

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“Telemachiad.” The first question in need of an answer, now, concerns the relationship between the body as a whole and the individual organs. As we know from the famous letter Joyce sent to Linati on September 21, 1920, in defining his book he referred to the cycle of the human body.36 Accordingly, he established the various relations with the categories of the schema, silently arguing that each episode is an interconnection of the corresponding hours, organs, arts, and so on. Thus, he suggested that each adventure was supposed to be “one person although it is composed of persons.”37 Joyce claimed to have produced a body=book equation parallel to the organ=episode connection. Hence, as the human body is a communion of organs, the book should be a communion of episodes. Such an anthropological textual system does not allow us to regard Stephen’s existence as “non-bodily.” Even though the episode is really nothing but a flourishing of interior monologues interwoven into an almost unconscious narrative, Stephen’s actions are indeed experimental experiences. His attempts to perceive through the senses are sufficient proofs that he exists “bodily.” This statement seems to jar strikingly with the idea provided by Ellmann’s translation, which instead would have it that he is rejecting all bodily experiences for he cannot bear a body. Of course, the explanation given in the schema points metaphorically also to the uncompleted nature of the young artist, but again this would be structurally incoherent, considering the realistic organ/episode parallelism Joyce had chosen as a system for each part of his masterpiece. On the other hand, the alternative translation (“Telemachus does not yet feel the body”) may help us approach the question from a different angle. Two solutions can be offered now. Let us start with the first. The episodes that have no legacy of the body are representations of a fictional unity. They are therefore a symbol of wholeness and completeness, a microcosm parallel to the macrocosm of the book. A similar interpretation has been frequently applied in the text to the episode known as “Wandering Rocks,” a chapter which may also be seen as a microcosmic summary of the structure of the book. However, in that case the parallelism would not apparently involve occult categories of knowledge. Instead, the correspondence was a superficial one. On the other hand, “Proteus” provides us with the idea of microcosm in a rather subterranean way, it being mainly an attempt to eschew referentiality in the text-reader relationship. This would fit very well the law of correspondences, which makes us see reality as compared to its projections on a larger screen. It appears to fit also the 36 37

See L, I, 146. Ibid., 147.

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explanation given by Joyce to Linati about every hour, organ, and art being interconnected in the structure of the book.38 Such microcosm=macrocosm equation, alongside the evident separateness, though interconnected, between the first part of he book and the remaining two, is also confirmed by a further circumstance. In fact, in the “Telemachiad” only one person of the secularized trinity (Stephen/Leopold/Molly) features as the undisputed protagonist, the other two being present only as shadows. This could not be said, of course, with regards to either the “Odyssey” or the “Nostos.” In “Proteus,” the “ghost” of Leopold Bloom appears many times between the lines. For instance, after Stephen has scribbled his poem on a piece of paper torn from Mr Deasy’s letters, he foresees Bloom who will pick it up in “Nausicaa”: “Who ever anywhere will read these written words?”39 The same happens in the recollection of Stephen’s dreams, which anticipate what will actually occur to him later in the day, when Bloom, after rescuing him, will “offer him his wife’s melon-like buttocks”:40 Open hallway. Street of harlots […] That man led me, spoke. I was not afraid. The melon he had he held against my face. Smiled: creamfruit smell […] In. Come. Red carpet spread. You will see who.41

Not only is this a premonition of the atmosphere of “Circe” and “Itacha,” but it also prefigures Bloom’s and his wife’s fantasies about an affair between Stephen and Molly. In other places the theme of anti-Semitism—suggested by the reference to the French journalist Edouard Adolphe Drumont,42 and by the recalling of Psalm 137:1-2 on the exile of the Jews43—anticipates oneirically the later appearance of Mr Bloom. Of course, on reading the book according to its actual chronology, the reader is not aware of the such references as “textual presages.” He is more likely to grasp similar connections only on a second reading. One should be reminded, here, that second readings are indeed ways to read texts backwards. Not only are second readings consistent with Joyce’s technique, but they are also necessary in a critical approach to all kinds of text. This applies especially to fantastic works, where the reader is always uncertain as to whether he has to follow the natural or the supernatural order to things. 38

See preceding note. U, 60. 40 U, n. 59.1, 964. 41 U, 58-9. 42 See U, 53. See Thornton, Allusions in Ulysses, 54. 43 See Gifford and Seidman, Notes for Joyce. An Annotation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, 40. 39

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As for the presence of Bloom’s wife, we do not find in the text similar referential allusions, for it is the episode’s style itself that speaks clearly of Molly. The Linati schema informs us that the technique is “soliloquy,” and in fact the abundance of interior monologues which characterizes the chapter is parallel only to “Penelope.” If we followed such a pattern of continuity in pseudotheological terms, we would be probably led astray by the subtle range of halfblasphemous implications it hides. Stephen, the Son, would become the only symbol of unity in the Trinity, from whom the other two persons—a male and a female—would then proceed. For all the fascination of such a hypothesis, it does look a bit too speculative, and therefore it is better to take it just as one of the thousand possible interpretations of Joyce’s work. On the contrary, other aspects like the formal unity of the third episode, or its being a microcosm-like image mirroring the wider project of the book, are less open to speculation. In fact, it is as if Ulysses represented the larger screen on which the textual intentions of “Proteus” are cast as projections. Readers of the episode encounter the coexistence of most of the main secret themes we have previously spotted, like for instance a peculiar fascination for vampirism.44 In other chapters, Stephen’s vampire poem evokes subliminal allusions to a kind of mocking Satanism. Such a theme is clearly connected with his own double personality. It is an aspect of his character which always prevents him from choosing between two opposite forces, like mysticism and scholasticism (“Scylla and Charibdis”) or a saintly and a devilish nature (“Proteus.”) The following passage brings us back to some sections of A Portrait that suggest the very same idea: Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint. Isle of saints. You were awfully holy, weren’t you? You prayed to the Blessed Virgin that you might not have a red nose. You prayed to the devil in Serpentine avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street.45

Stephen’s ambivalent behaviour is parallel to the balance between commitment and rejection, which makes him prefer rather unconsciously the ways of the coincidentia as a means to try and solve possible psychological inconsistencies. The third chapter is the very emblem of such a reconciliation expressed in overture-like fashion. The tension towards the reunion of the contraries is mirrored in the themes that can be found in other sections of the book. These are for instance Bloom’s reconciliatory and androgynous nature, his being an exiled man in his own country—a condition much resembling that of the young Dedalus—and finally 44 45

See U, 60. U, 49-50.

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his half-unconscious tendency towards blasphemy. We have already analysed the occurrence of the first two themes. Here we can take account of the third. Bearing in mind the farcical correspondence of priest and eunuchs established by Bloom in “Lotus-Eaters,” the following reference clarifies that Stephen plays with a similar idea also in “Proteus”: “The snorted Latin of jackpriests moving burly in their albs, tonsured, oiled and gelded.”46 According to the occultist method, the coexistence of the same secret messages in the episode, as well as in the book, allows us to define “Proteus” perhaps as the summa libri, which has a higher status than a simple overture. In this light, we may propose a first solution to the above-mentioned major dilemma of the “Telemachiad.” Telemachus does not have relations with the body for the very system of correspondences between organs and chapters does not apply to the first section of the book, it being a symbol of unity and not of partition. In fact, however revealing the organ/episode correspondence may be in genetic terms, it does not provide an adequate response to all the referential as well as the structural enigmas of “Proteus,” a most problematic episode in this respect.

The Centre of the Body The second solution is perhaps more comprehensive. Stephen does not feel the legacy of the body yet because he is not aware of its ultimate and secret sense. As we will see, it could be argued that he has lost the knowledge of the body. This conclusion is suggested by the almost obsessive recurrence in the “Telemachiad” of a particular part of the body, which seemingly lacks a particular function in the logic of the organ correspondence: the navel.47 It is in fact one of the keywords of the first part of Ulysses, as many critics have argued. Still, it conceals also an inner secret significance. A preliminary step is the question of whether there is any relationship between this part of the body and Joyce’s conception of organs at all. Of course, the navel is not an organ. It is really a purposeless part of the body. Yet, by ways of analogy, it stands for a symbol of a particular organ men lose soon after birth: the navelcord. Then, if the omphalos is not an organ, how can we describe it? Eventually, the first paragraph of “Proteus” provides an occult answer to such a question in the reference to Boehme’s The Signature of All Things. Various commentators describe the idea of signatura as an exterior form or surface, which requires the presence of a substance, or symbolic nature, as a precondition to its actual existence. Boehme himself explains the concept as follows: 46 47

U, 69. See U, 7, 20, 46.

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Chapter Eight The signature or form is no spirit, but the receptacle, container, or cabinet of the spirit wherein it lies; for the signature stands in the essence, and is as a lute that lies still, and is indeed a dumb thing that is neither heard nor understood; but if it be played upon, then its form is understood, in what form and tune it stands, and according to what note it is set. Thus, as the signature of nature in its form is a dumb essence; it is as a prepared instrument of music, upon which the will’s spirit always plays; what strings he touches, they sound according to their property.48

These words taken from a book Joyce held most dear happen to illuminate the fictional method allowing him to conceal possible worlds behind words. Words are signatures, and only if we play with them do they become alive and revealing. In this sense, the omphalos is just a dumb signature, which through the active role of the reader can become significant. It inevitably points to its corresponding lost organ: “What has she in the bag? A misbirth with a trailing navelcord, hushed in ruddy wool. The cords of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh.”49 Here the navelcord becomes the symbol of the possibility for men to establish a connection with the past generations. In other words, the navelcord is a fleshy cable, which should provide the living with the means of an imaginary communication with the dead. Unfortunately, the organ is destined to be lost as soon as man comes to life. Accordingly, there seems to be no means of communication between the past and the present generations in reality, although fictional narratives, as well as dreams, can play with such a possibility convincingly. As Cope proposes, “umbilical cords suggest telephonic cords, and Stephen’s ironic joke is to call across the cords of modern communication a plea of primitivism.”50 If we take account of a precise reference occurring just before Stephen mock phone call to Eden, the irony becomes even more evident. We should bear in mind the correspondence between Eden and Eternity in Blakean terms, as well as the possibility of a contact with Eden only in the darkness of knowledge. Let us read the passage: “That is why mystic monks. Will you be as gods? Gaze in your omphalos.”51 In “Lotus-Eaters,” Bloom imagines to be gazing in his own navel in the bath.52 In this regard, Maud Ellmann states that generally in Joyce “the phallus is supplanted by the omphalos,” and that Bloom’s gazing in his own navel “testifies to his cutaneous anxieties, because the navel arks the point

48

Boehme, The Signature of All Things, 10. U, 46. 50 Cope, “Sirens,” 236. 51 U, 46. 52 See U, 107. 49

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of rupture with the original maternal skin in which he longs to be reenveloped.”53 The act of begetting establishes the primal relationship between the mother and the child. The navel is just the bodily sign of such a relationship. In the context of “Proteus,” the navelcord stands more generally also for a contact with the people who came before us. It is a line of communication between past and present, and accordingly the link to an imaginary ancestral unity of all the living and the dead. In such a light, a curious kind of human non-spatial and nontemporal way of communication between the present and the past is made possible by the signatura visible in our body. This is the meaning of the mystical practice of gazing in one’s own navel. Accordinlgy, the omphalos is, in Boehme’s terms, a signature which needs to be played upon in order to be understood as “form.” In this perspective, an occult alternative explanation is lurking in the shadow of the ironical remark about mystic monks. Gifford attempts to complete Stephen’s broken sentence in the following way: “That is why mystic monks are fascinated by the navel and gaze at it in the discipline of contemplation.”54 In his annotation to the word omphalos in “Telemachus,” the scholar suggests that some theosophists of the late nineteenth century contemplated the omphalos “as the place of the “astral soul of man,” the center of self-consciousness and the source of poetic and prophetic inspiration.”55 On the other hand, Thornton reveals that gazing on the navel is a typical posture of the devotee in the eastern religions.56 Such an explanation displaces the meaning of the refererence, for it locates it spatially in the religious east in a way that is consistent with Joyce’s use of the theories of Dyonisius. Bigazzi, in an Italian commentary on the episode which has never been translated into English, defines the occurrence in “Proteus” as follows: It is an allusion to a system of doctrinaire and behavioural precepts widespread among the hesychasts. Hesychasm (derived from the Greek word esichaios meaning “calm, tranquil”) designates an ascetical/mystical monastic movement well known in Byzantine and Balkan Christianity […] Through a cluster of devotional practices, and through the gazing in the navel while saying ritual prayers, hesychasts achieve an estate of ecstatic exaltation, which tends towards the contemplation of the divine light […]57

53

Ellmann, M. “Skinscapes in ‘Lotus-Eaters,’ ” 66. Gifford and Seidman, Notes for Joyce. An Annotation of James Joyce’s Ulysses, 33. 55 Ibid., 17. 56 See Thornton, 44. 57 Bigazzi, “Proteo,” 225-6.

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Joyce’s subtle allusion to Hesychasm goes beyond the simple devotional practice of gazing on the omphalos, a discipline somehow ridiculed in the text. As always, a cluster of remote meanings lies hidden behind the mask of Joyce’s irony. Hesychasm is not only a system of rules for the devotee. It is also a complex theological doctrine, and Joyce seems to have been acquainted with some of its peculiar teachings. In the introduction to an interesting study on the subject, Meyendorff suggests that the term hesychasm “is associated by modern authors with the psychosomatic method of prayer, formally attested only in the late fourteenth century.”58 However, it cannot be reduced to such a curious practice. A derogatory name for the hesychasts was omphalopsychoi, that is, “people with their souls in their navel.”59 Meyendorff points out that their spiritual experience “is based on the distinction between the trascendent “essence” and the “uncreated energies” through which God becomes knowable to men in Christ.”60 Such “uncreated energies” are the necessary link to understand fully the complex pseudo-theological system Joyce has occulted in “Proteus.” Lossky explains that those energies are “that mode of existence of the Trinity which is outside of its inaccessible essence.”61 Not only are they one of the dogmatic principles of the Orthodox Church. They are also informed by the theories of Dyonisius on the ways in which it is possible to establish a contact with the otherwise unapproachable God. An analogous concept is implied in Stephen’s mocking attempt to communicate with Eden by phone. Besides, the power of the “uncreated energies” is curiously similar to that of the kabbalistic sephirot, the divine emanations in which God’s power unfolds. The contact with God, and therefore with Eternity or Eden, made possible via both the “uncreated energies” and the sephirot, is mocked at in “Proteus” during the imaginary phone call. The number Stephen calls is an odd combination of numbers and letters. The letters are precisely “Aleph” and “Alpha,” taken respectively from the Hebrew and the Greek alphabet. Accordinlgy, the first can be described as a signature of the Jewish Kabbalah, while the second refers to the doctrines of the Orthodox Church. As always in Ulysses, letters function as signatures pointing to hidden truths. One can imagine a final narrative overturn in “Proteus.” Although the episode is crowded with surface references to the Catholic Church, as well as to the mystical and heretical tradition, what Joyce is subliminally talking about is the mysti-

58 Meyendorff, Byzantine Hesychasm: historical, theological and social problems, without page numbers. 59 See ibid. 60 Ibid. 61 Lossky, 73.

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cism of both the Orthodox Church and the Jewish Kabbalah. This happens through a subtle discourse of inversions involving the spiritual sphere. Such an interpretation, in an atmosphere determined by an utter failure of all perceptions, makes us imagine metaphorically that only on the surface is “Proteus” set in Sandymount. On the contrary, its imaginary action takes place in a different part of Dublin, the “Liberties,” the area from which the midwives who carry the occult organ of the chapter in a bag come from. Dean Jonathan Swift, whose shadow in the episode merges into the ghost of Joachim of Flora, used to live there too. Finally, it is where Joyce very likely had access to the secret doctrines of the Orthodox Church, in “the stagnant bay of Marsh’s Library,”62 located just behind Swift’s Cathedral. Actually, the library hosted many volumes about Eastern mysticism as well as properly occult texts already in Joyce’s times. The tradition of the Orthodox Church continued to fascinate Joyce in Trieste. In a letter from there he records how he was “always moping in and out of the Greek Churches.”63 This made one English teacher suggest that he might have been “a believer at heart.”64 To such a charge he was able to respond that “in my opinion I am incapable of belief of any kind.”65 Such a powerful statement helps us see the two sides of Joyce’s interests in matters of spirituality: a deep fascination for, and an ultimate negation of, belief. However, aspects of the occult like mysticism, theosophy, and Hermeticism became gradually instrumental to Joyce’s narrative. They underwrite his texts and supply them with parallel discoursive patterns enabling him to frequently mislead and fool his readers. Those secret strategies, as well as their representations through technical narrative devices such as the semantic overturn and the occultist method are hidden beneath the surface of his book and wait to be discovered by the reader/adept. Once they have been dug out and finally revived, they show no legacy of commitment or belief, but rather point to a void perhaps consistent with Dionysius’s divine darkness. It is an abyss which alone can comprehend real knowledge for, as Joyce dutifully reminds us, “darkness is in our soul.” In the following chapter, such a ghostly discourse involving the categories of religious spirituality will influence the representation of allegedly occult phenomena pertaining to the characters’ unconscious. Through a visionary technique, the reader will encounter apparitions that on the one hand function as textual hallucinations, while on the other constitute real materializations of latent contents already evoked in previous episodes. Accordingly, “Circe” will be seen 62

U, 49. L, II, 89. 64 Ibid., 89. 65 Ibid., 89. 63

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as the “realization” of many premonitions and presages, which turn Ulysses into a sort of prophetic book.

CHAPTER NINE CIRCE

“Circe” has traditionally attracted more attention than many other sections of the book. In the present context, the chapter is so revealing that it almost naturally becomes the proper conclusion of the analysis of Ulysses from an occult standpoint. Earlier on, I have described the actual final chapter of Ulysses, “Penelope,” as a solution in psychological and narrative terms to the great book, rather than the revelation of its secrets. On the contrary, “Circe” represents the stage where its visionary intentions are “realized” at last. In a sense, one can agree with Karen Lawrence that “Penelope” is a self-contained coda to the book. The judgement is based on an analysis of the episode’s style, made up of narrative techniques strikingly different from those that can be identified in previous chapters. They include “the absence of the third-person narration, the unpunctuated, unbroken “sentences,” and the representation of thought as if it were continuous speech.”1 Similarly, “Penelope” shows also scarce connections with the rest of the book in an occult perspective. It could be argued that one of the male protagonists, Bloom, whose nature is ultimately fulfilled oneirically in the ironical achievement of androgyny in “Circe,” does not seem to need any reconcilement at all with the opposite sex in the real world of Molly. Her “universe” is in many ways completely apart from Bloom’s, which is indeed informed by a mixed sexual identity. Bloom’s unconscious aim is to symbolize the Platonic and Neoplatonic truth of the androgynous man. He is also projected towards the myth of the Primordial man, the androgynous Adam Kadmon of the Kabbalah. At the same time, as Carolyn Heilbrun explains, “Molly herself is perhaps […] closer to a man’s sexual fantasies of a woman than to a woman.”2 The hidden message of her final drowsy monologue could well suggest a possible reconcilement with the opposite sex, but this would have little to share with any aim at a return to the androgynous ideal. At most, it could be argued that this points to a tendency towards reunion within her own “male” self, her animus,

1 2

Lawrence, The Odyssey of the Style in Ulysses, 204. Heilbrun, Towards Androgyny. Aspects of Male and Female in Literature, 95.

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for, as Jung explains, “in the unconscious of every man there is hidden a feminine personality, and in that of every woman a masculine personality.”3 All this is not to reduce, of course, the importance and the greatness of “Penelope,” a somewhat self-contained episode, if you like. Although the last chapter shows certain similarities with the techniques of other parts of the book—especially concerning the meanderings of the human mind—it remains quite independent from the rest of the great work. Suffice this analysis to say that the the task of investigating Molly’s mind in the last chapter could not really be carried out from an occult standpoint, her universe being much too linked to the more materialistic aspects of life. Bloom also displays materialistic attitudes, yet they are so only on the surface. The representation of his unconscious dimension ironically detaches itself from material life. Its purpose is mostly to ridicule and secularize the spiritual sphere, which had been fundamental in the formation of Joyce’s background and character. Quite to the contrary, Molly’s mental wanderings, despite their comprehensiveness, have almost always precise referents in external reality and point mainly to a terrestrial dimension which has little of the occult in it. A further illuminating feature of “Circe” is its inclusiveness. Like “Proteus,” the episode resembles much more an image of wholeness than one of partition. In “Circe” we notice the occurrence of many among the major themes and possibly almost all the characters already encountered in preceding chapters. Kenner states that one is very likely “to gather the impression that absolutely everyone and everything in the book turns up here somewhere, animated by a new and phantasmagoric life.”4 He alludes to a certain relationship informed by a microcosm/macrocosm logic between the episode and the book: “As Ulysses is the Odyssey transposed and rearranged, “Circe” is Ulysses transposed and rearranged.”5 Rabaté poingnantly sums up the situation in “Circe” as follows: Voices are linked to gestures in a wild pantomime that generates the most delirious of hallucinations, while the themes developed by this staggering gesticulation body forth myriads of symptoms all produced by an unconscious, a very peculiar textual unconscious that can only be attributed to the preceding chapters of the novel.6

Something similar applies also to other chapters of Ulysses, like “Wandering Rocks,” for example. Nonetheless, the textual inclusiveness is also a major characteristic of “Circe,” where to spot the coincidental presence of almost eve3

Jung, Collected Works, 284. Kenner, “Circe,” 355. 5 Ibid., 356. 6 Rabaté, James Joyce, Authorized Reader, 76. 4

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ryone in the book is even easier. Such a presence is, of course, suggested only in oneiric terms. As we know, dreams are linked to time and space relationships of their own. Such a “spatial temporality” allows even improbable coincidences of events to “materialize” in what is perceived as an alternative and parallel reality. This seems to connect the episode with “Proteus” in ways that deserve attention. The two chapters, for instance, share some structural features of narration, like the constant alternation of visionary and naturalistic interludes. Despite this, it is not always easy to make a clear distinction between such kinds of representation in the fifteenth episode. What one is tempted to call hallucinations in “Circe” often seem to merge into more naturalistic descriptions in ways that are suspect. Kenner explains that the action “may be subject to many small expressionist inflections […] which it is misleading to call “hallucinations.” 7 In fact, the critic believes that “no one is hallucinated but ourselves.”8 Such a view implies that the border between the so-called naturalistic passages and the more visionary ones is extremely transient and fluid. Although such a systematic alternation of seemingly objective narration and dream-like interludes links deeply “Proteus” and “Circe,” we shall not exclude from the analysis some fundamental differences between them. These include, for instance, the dramatic or rather pseudo-dramatic narrative technique of “Ulysses 15,” which has no counterpart in the third episode. However, to say that its pseudo-dramatic quality functions as a technique in the strict sense cannot but create some ambiguities. Linati informs us that the technique of the chapter is in fact “vision animated to bursting point,” while in Gorman we simply find the word “hallucination.” This is particularly significant in the light of the interpretation proposed by certain critics, Richard Ellmann among the others, according to whom the hallucinations of “Circe” resemble the dreams of Bloom. Accordingly, all that he suppresses by day is by night “allowed” in his unconscious. Ellmann explains as much in a poetic description of such a dialectical relation between the complementary realms of day and night: In the morning the sunlit world was credible, but now its devotees are asleep, and those who still keep watch see its shapes—animate and inanimate—as shadows. The self is deprived of latitude and longitude, and becomes its own place, in itself making of earth a hell or a purgatory. Form and reason no longer offer their helping hands, incertitude and remorse having supplanted them. The eye confronts no ineluctable modality of the visible, only unsought images of the invisible, lusts and loathing from within claiming autonomous existence without.9

7

Kenner, “Circe,” 346. Ibid., 346. 9 Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 140. 8

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Such a view seems to fit also some dreamy plays by an author who himself was very well-read in the works of the occultists: August Strindberg. In the explanatory note to his A Dream Play, the Swedish writer outlines his literary project in a way that very much resembles the effects, as well as the technique, of “Circe.” To quote from it here may be useful in approaching the oneiric inner world of Ulysses as is represented in the fifteenth episode, literally the manifestation, or rather the apparition, of the book’s textual unconscious: The author has tried to imitate the disconnected but apparently logical form of a dream. Everything can happen; everything is possible and likely. Time and space do not exist; on an insignificant basis of reality the imagination spins and weaves new patterns: a blending of memories, experiences, free inventions, absurdities, and improvisation. The characters spit, double, redouble, evaporate, condense, scatter, and converge. But one consciousness remains above them: the dreamer’s; for him are no secrets, no inconsequence, no scruples, no law.10

Such a dreamy frame as the dramatic skeleton of Strinberg’s play also applies to a possible interpretation of “Circe.” Rather than a mere narrative technique, as the Gorman schema seems to suggest, hallucination is the effect at which the art of Joyce aims. In fact, if one links the definitions we find in the schematas back to the actual structure of the chapter, one is tempted to describe it as a visionary or hallucinated drama. Such a perspective would establish fascinating connections also with some aspects of the theatre of the Celtic Revival. Len Platt argues that “hallucinations, dreams, masking, fantasy are common to Joyce’s massive extravaganza and to the Revivalists texts which he dubbed ‘dwarf dramas.’ ”11 He explains that common features of Revivalist plays and Joyce’s text are “hero cultism, messianic traditions and apocalyptic visions,” whereas magical “transformations, usually associated with pantomime traditions in “Circe” criticism, are commonplace in revivalist theatre.” As regards the fifteenth episode of Ulysses, the critic even proposes a parallel between Yeats’s Cathleen ni Houlihan, “where an old crone is transformed in a young girl who has ‘the walk of a queen,’ ” and “Circe,” where we encounter “Stephen’s famous transformation into Rudy.”12 A similar view is most relevant also in the present context, for it suggests a further link between Joyce and Yeats. It also allows us to reconsider the importance in Joyce’s art of the rest of the revivalists and the Dublin intellectuals he seemingly dismissed by calling them derogatorily hermetists in 1907.13 Actu10

Strindberg, A Dream Play and Four Chamber Plays, 19. Len Platt, Joyce and the Anglo-Irish, 18. 12 Ibid., 18. 13 See Introduction, note 46.

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ally, Hermes is one of the persons in the Linati schema. While the surface meaning of his inclusion refers to the Greek Hermes, “the dark Mercury,”14 who in the Odyssey advises Ulysses against the magic of Circe, a subliminal interpretation suggests that Joyce is also referring to Hermes Trismegistus, the father of alchemy, and author of the tabula smaragdina: MANANAAN MACLIR: (With a voice of waves) […] Occult pimander of Hermest Trismegistos. (With a voice of whistling seawind).15

The textual presence of Hermes Trismegistus is here a signature of the secret occult system of signification ruling the internal organization of Ulysses. The kind of thought one may call “hermetic”—based on the Tabula Smaragdina of Hermes Trismegistus whose main tenet is the powerful statement “As above, so below”—constitutes the very core of the law of correspondences. Such a tenet, which in Finnegans Wake becomes “the tasks above are as the flasks below,”16 has influenced many philosophers and artists in history. According to Tindall, it was also reflected, in literary terms, in the “analogical correspondence between the sign and the thing signified,”17 which is at the basis of the theories of the symbolists. In such a context, the critic cites a line from Yeats’s “Supernatural Songs,” in which the poet refers to the Tablet.18 The mutual use of Hermes by Yeats and Joyce is a further proof of a sort of imaginary continuity between their works. On such a ground, we may now return briefly to the distance between the twin-episodes “Proteus” and “Circe.” While the occult referents of the third chapter belong to different traditions of mysticism, “Circe,” with all its visions, fantasies, hallucinations, and magic, has less to share with a pseudo-religious dimension, it being much more oriented towards proper hermetic philosophy and occultism. As I have argued before, mysticism and Hermeticism are complementary in Joyce’s inclusive view of the occult. Such a view materializes in “Circe” in the occurrence of many among the secret themes already encountered in other episodes. Here their presence is, so to speak, transfigured, although it is much more systematic than in previous sections. Those themes may well provide us with the definitive answer to some of the fundamental questions posed by Ulysses as an occult work.

14

U, 583. U, 627. 16 FW, 263. 17 Tindall, “James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition,” 28. 18 See Yeats, Collected Poems, 299. 15

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Swedenborg, Yeats, and the New Era of Bloom Neoplatonic ideas about the dialectic of the contraries and their final conjunction according to the coincidentia inform the imaginary marriage of heaven and hell in Blake’s prophetic writings, as well as in Swedenborg visionary works. This is also traceable in “Circe,” although mostly in ironical fashion: Misters very select for is pleasure must to visit heaven and hell show with mortuary candles [...] Perfectly shocking terrific of religion’s things mockery seen in universal world.19

Joyce portrays the final conjunction of the two dimensions, the terrestrial and the heavenly, as a comical and clownish derision of opposite cultural and ideological hypotheses, rather than a mystical or intellectual achievement. He eventually makes fun of Swedenborg. Such a final mockery is consistent with the previous practice of questioning and inverting the Swede’s meanings of particular organs of the heavenly body. A precise Swedenborgian organ correspondence is not easy to find in “Circe.” The episode has in fact two organs, “locomotor apparatus” (Linati, Gorman) and “skeleton” (Linati). Such confusion does not help us find a precise connection with Swedenborg’s system of relations between individual organs and spiritual truths. As regards the reason why the Swedenborgian correspondence may not work properly in “Circe” one can again think of two solutions. “Circe,” like “Proteus,” provides us with an idea of wholeness wellrepresented by the organ “skeleton.” One of the superficial meanings of the word, according to a popular English dictionary, is “a scheme reduced to its essential or indispensable elements.” The fact that Joyce used the term also to describe the Ulysses schematas is worthy of examination here. Let us try to apply the mentioned dictionary definition to the textual dynamics of the occult in Joyce. The “indispensable elements” may represent the obscure references of the text, while the “big idea behind them” is the presence of a hidden scheme informing the occult parallel discourse of the chapter. The skeleton identifies in fact an internal dimension. It is the symbol of a bodily secret, which will be revealed only years after one’s own physical death. Only when the external traits of one’s persona will decay and become invisible, will its shape come to the surface. It is rather fascinating to imagine that Joyce might have thought about the same metaphor, when he concealed the secrets of Ulysses behind some very inextricable nets of obscure meanings. One does not need to be reminded of his famous statement about the years and decades professors would have spent in trying to understand the meaning of his works. In19

U, 673.

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stead, we might take Bloom’s murmured commitment to the oath of the secrecy of the Freemasons20 rather seriously here: “(He murmurs)… swear that I will always hail, ever conceal, never reveal, any part or parts, art or arts…”21 The passage functions again as yet another intrusion of the author in the text. Hence, starting from the assumption that “Circe” may be a sort of internal counterpart to the external body of Ulysses, we may draw a line from the technique (“vision animated to bursting point”) to the organ of the episode. Bearing in mind that visionary or hallucinatory states pertain to the unconscious, it could be argued that a vision is something cast only on the internal. As such, it cannot reach the minds of other persons but that of he who alone experiences it. It is in fact a projection on the inner world. Thus, it becomes consistent with the image of the skeleton, both in a thematic and in a technical sense. As regards the second solution to the question of why “Circe” has not an exact inverted Swedenborgian correspondence with an organ of the body, it would be rather inaccurate to state bluntly that the eighteenth-century Swedish mystic is out of the game in “Ulysses 15.” Actually, his shadow is diffracted into a further subliminal level hardly accessible to the non-adepts. Such a phantom presence could be seen as a surrogate for the absent organ correspondence. A subtle allusion to Swedenborg is made in Bloom’s mocking address to his subjects, inaugurating the advent of the “New Bloomusalem”: BLOOM: My beloved subjects, a new era is about to dawn. I, Bloom, tell you verily it is even now at hand. Yea, on the word of a Bloom, ye shall ere long enter into the golden city which is to be, the new Bloomusalem in the Nova Hibernia of the future.22

While the various commentators have rightly detected here all sorts of puns on biblical passages and popular songs,23 the appellative “Nova Hibernia” sounds suspicious. The occult reference is to a short pamphlet by Swedenborg, which contains a survey of the doctrine of his New Church, as well as some comments on extracts from the Scriptures. The booklet was published in 1758, and is called Nova Jerosolima. It circulated in the English-speaking world as The New Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine. A pocket edition of the English version has been on the shelves of the National Library of Ireland since 1877. The book begins with the explanation of what Swedenborg calls “internal reading.” This is symbolically relevant in the present context. One might argue that “Circe,” and generally speaking Ulysses, could well be interpreted accord20

See Thornton, Allusions in Ulysses, 377; Gifford and Seidman, Notes for Joyce, 428. U, 702. 22 U, 606. Italics mine. 23 See Thornton, Allusions in Ulysses, 377; Gifford and Seidman, Notes for Joyce, 297. 21

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ing to an internal and secret logic. In the context of occult influences, Swedenborg’s “internal reading” cannot but remind one of Giordano Bruno’s “internal writing,” that is, mnemotechnics. Bruno refers to the idea of “internal writing” in the very frontispiece of his masterpiece on the art of memory, De Umbris Idearum, i.e. On the Shadows of Ideas. There he tells his reader that the book contains the art of searching, finding, judging, ordering, and applying. Those arts are exposed in order to help us “apprehend the internal writing and perform mnemonic operations.”24 In Bruno, the art of memory as internal writing is indeed a magical art. Given the importance Joyce attaches to memory, and the fact that “magic” is the art of “Circe,” one may suspect that mnemonic processes are here nothing less than the very heart of Joyce’s narrative technique. After all, what is “Circe” if not a magical/oneiric performance of textual memory? All characters in the book surface there, as if cast in the big screen of the reader’s unconscious. The organization of “Circe” resembles very much a mnemonic operation. As such, we might consider it as the unconscious memory of the book. The characters featuring in the episode take often the form of ghosts and shadows. However, they are also, in a way, actors, performers, Shakespearean shadows. No wonder that the echo of Bruno’s powerful statement “umbra profunda sumus,” i.e. “we are a deep shadow,” which opens the book of memory as Joyce undoubtedly knew, resounds suspiciously also in relation to “Circe.”25 The idea of internal reading is introduced by Swedenborg with reference to a passage in St. John’s Revelation concerning the “New Jerusalem”: What a man understands naturally they [the angels] understand spiritually. What they understand is the true signification; and this is the internal or spiritual sense of the word.26

As Kiberd suggests,27 in the previous passage from “Circe” concerning the advent of the New Bloomusalem we should identify also an allusion to Blake’s prophetic books, and probably to the poem Jerusalem. In general, Blake’s presence in “Circe” is detectable in the sequence of visions and hallucinations that constitute the very structure of the episode. As we have seen already, the poet’s ghost is frequently associated with that of Yeats, whose edition of Blake’s works Joyce had in his Trieste library. The works and some aesthetic theories of Yeats may provide us with further illuminating keys to an occult approach to the

24

Bruno, Le ombre delle idee, 37. The word shadow occurs some 39 times in Ulysses, and 6 times in “Circe.” 26 Swedenborg, On the new Jerusalem and Its Heavenly Doctrine, Italics mine. 27 See U, 1133, n. 606.23.

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episode. Yeats’s antichrist symbolism,28 evident in most of his major poems, parallels Joyce’s lighter use, in “Circe,” of images of powerful beasts, devil-like beings, second comings, and other apocalyptic metaphors. Moreover, bearing in mind that “magic” is the art of the episode according to Gorman, as well as the symbol according to Linati, a new interesting interpretation in the context of a Yeatsian influence on the episode becomes possible. Yeats’s visionary aesthetic, stated in his famous essay “Magic” which dates 1901, is here useful. He professed to believe in three fundamental doctrines, “handed down from early times,”29 which are “the foundations of nearly all magical practices.”30 Such tenets are explained as follows: (I) That the borders of our mind are ever shifting, and that many minds can flow into one another, as it were, and create or reveal a single mind, and a single energy. (II) That the borders of our memories are as shifting, and that our memories are a part of one great memory, the memory of Nature itself. (III) That this great mind and memory can be evoked by symbols.31

These lines alone suffice to provide us with a useful key to understand most of the oddities of the “Circe” chapter. They include some actual, though well concealed, references to Yeats. Only a few of them are clear allusions. The first is a kind of lapsus memoriae. We encounter it in one of Best’s cues, which despite its apparent casualness in the dialogue, appears to be particularly significant and certainly volitional: “A thing of beauty, don’t you know. Yeats says, or I mean, Keats says.”32 Others point to the ever-present poem “Who Goes with Fergus?” which first appeared in Yeats’s The Countess Cathleen. In “Circe” it is the ghost of Stephen’s mother that quotes from the poem.33 Then, it is Stephen himself who, drunk at the end of the chapter, remembers a few scattered words of it.34 A few lines down, Bloom echoes such an oblivious reciting, himself misconstruing the order of the poem’s words and lines.35 In other places we find the shadow, though more diffused, of the early Yeats. Take for instance the mentioned appearance of the Jester Mulligan wearing a “clown’s cap with curling bell,”36 or the description of Stephen as “grown and 28

In relation to this aspect, see Melchiori, The Whole Mystery of Art, passim. Yeats, Essays and Introductions, 28. 30 Ibid., 28. 31 Ibid., 28. 32 U, 627. 33 See U, 681. 34 See U, 702 35 See U, 702. 36 U, 681. 29

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grey and old.”37 The two occurrences might allow us to see veiled allusions to the poems “The Cap and Bells,” from Yeats’s The Wind Among the Reeds, and to “When You Are Old” from The Rose, whose first line goes: “When you are old and grey and full of sleep.”38 A further subtle reference is worthy of discussion here: “STEPHEN: […] I will arise and go to my.”39 This, besides recalling the parable of the prodigal son, may also very likely remind one of the first line of Yeats’s most famous poems, “The Lake Isle of Inisfree.” In order to take such occurrences not just as mere casual coincidences, but as features of a bigger picture, we may reflect upon the fact that both “When Your Are Old” and “The Lake Isle of Inisfree” are included in The Rose, which features also the poem “Who Goes with Fergus?” quoted so many times in Ulysses. The Yeats legacy is also shown by “dance,” the science of the episode according to Linati. Towards the end of “Circe” almost all the characters on stage, the imaginary as well as the real ones, take part in a queer and possibly halfmacabre dance. This is described as follows in one of the stage directions: “Twining, receding, with interchanging hands, the night hours link, each with arching arms, in a mosaic of movements.”40 In the final stages of Yeats’s “Rosa Alchemica,” a short story first published in 1896, whose protagonists feature also in “The Tables of the Law” and in “The Adoration of the Magi”—both works Joyce claimed to know by heart—we encounter the following poetical account of a dreamy and visionary dance experience: A half-dream, from which I was awakened by seeing the petals of the great rose, which had no longer the look of a mosaic […] Still faint and cloud-like, they began to dance, and as they danced took a more and more definite shape […] and soon every mortal foot danced by the white foot of an immortal […] While I thought these things, a voice cried to me from the crimson figures.41

However, the major influence of a Yeatsian imagery on the episode is no doubt the recurrence of powerful beasts, which create an almost apocalyptic atmosphere in an ironical dimension. As a matter of fact, among the persons in the Linati schema we read “the beasts.” In a context such as the present, the different animals which crowded Yeats’s mature poems become relevant, for they carry the message of an inverted second coming about to approach. In the poem “The Second Coming, ”written in 1919 and published in The Dial and The Na37

U, 682. W.B. Yeats, Collected Poems (1992). 39 U, 634. 40 U, 679. 41 Yeats, Short Fiction, 195-6. Italics mine.

38

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tion in November 1920, the “rough beast” which “slouches towards to Bethlehem to be born”42 is the image that proclaims Yeats’s apocalyptic aesthetics. The beast is also the representative of the coming of a new era, the age of the anti-Christ. In “Circe,” something similar happens in a seemingly casual reference to “the white bull mentioned in the Apocalypse.”43 In “Circe,” an episode where the “End of the world” which precedes the second coming of Elijah speaks with a Scottish accent,44 the man/animal transfiguration is implied in the title itself of the chapter. Circe in the Odyssey is the enchantress who changed Ulysses’s friends into swine. We might well take this as an amplification of the animal transformations in “Proteus.” In the fifteenth chapter, we find a predominance of allusions to members of the canine family. We encounter a bawd with “wolfish eyes,”45 the populace described as a pack of “laughing hyenas,”46 a “terrier,”47 an unspecified dog following Bloom,48 a “retriever,”49 a “wolfdog,”50 and finally a “mastiff.”51 The transfiguration continues as Paddy Dignam’s spirit makes his entrance on stage baying “lugubriously.”52 He has the external features of a dog53 and claims that his new shape is due to a process of reincarnation.54 In the “Telemachiad” the reader encounters the famous half-blasphemous dogsbody pun, alluding obliquely to God. In “Circe,” the presence of such an amount of dogs in so many different forms has a double explanation, and proposes a symbolical dichotomy. On the one hand, it suggests again the mockery of the divine through a process of inversion, while on the other it points towards a satanic symbolism. The two spheres, the divine and the diabolic, are here equally jeered at. They are the two counterparts of the same pseudo-theological hoax. In fact, when a dead hand writes on the wall that “Bloom is a cod,”55 we cannot but be reminded of the mentioned reference to Christ in the expression 42

Yeats, Collected Poems (1989), 187. U, 612. 44 See U, 624. 45 U, 572. 46 U, 589. Consider also the mythological androgynous nature of the Hyena: Thornton, 416. 47 U, 576. 48 See U, 578. 49 U, 580. 50 U, 580. 51 U, 581. 52 U, 597. 53 See U, 598. 54 See U, 597. 55 U, 616. 43

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“cod in a pot.”56 Moreover, at some stage Bloom is hailed as the “greatest reformer,”57 the messiah announcing a new era to humanity. When he is asked if he is in fact the Messiah, he echoes Christ’s words in answer to Pilate,58 but also Stephen’s previous mock identification with Christ: “I thirst.”59 Stephen is here also portrayed as one of Bloom’s subordinates. He is alluded to as a “spoiled priest,”60 and a monk.61 He is also the son of a cardinal, Primate of All Ireland.62 On the other hand, Bloom is described as a “pig dog,”63 and at some stage “murmurs with hangdog meekness.”64 Since the word dog is the literal reversal of god, we may well spot a further occult connection here. Towards the end of the episode, the character Adonai happens to scream first the word “Dooooooooooog!”65 and then its reversal, “Goooooooooood.”66 This is interesting in the light of the practice of Sir Ralegh and his atheist associates of pronouncing God’s name backwards.67 Actually, a seemingly casual reference to Sir Waler Ralegh also occurs at some stage, in the fifteenth episode.68 Just before such blasphemous screams, a character, Father Malachi O’Flynn, had pronounced the reversal of the opening of the mass: “Introibo ad altare diaboli.”69 If we put this in connection with Mulligan’s very first words in the book (“Introibo ad altare dei”)70 we see a further reason why “Circe” has to be considered the final act of the great work in occult terms. Anyway, it cannot be denied that it concludes at least the subtle satanic discourse lying beneath the text. In this context, the coexistence of the daemonic and the divine in the character of Bloom, within the mocking athmosphere of the fifteenth episode, can be interpreted as the only real reconciliation possible in Joyce’s masterpiece. Bloom is in fact not only a dog—and therefore an imaginary inverted god without a capital “g”—but also a “marked man.”71 We are also informed that Beaufoy’s story, which had been misused by Bloom in the morning in the ab56

See my chapter on “Lotus-Eaters,” n. 48. U, 604. 58 See U, 615. 59 U, 63. 60 U, 638. 61 See U, 638. 62 See U, 638. 63 U, 594. 64 U, 685. 65 U, 696. 66 U, 696. 67 See my chapter on “Scylla”, nn. 74-5. 68 See U, 601. 69 U, 695. 70 U, 1. 71 U, 515. 57

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sence of toilet paper, has been “disfigured by the hallmark of the beast.”72 There is no need to explain the already-discussed association of the beast with Satan. Instead, we may consider the textual occurrences linking Bloom to animal images, in order to see the bigger picture. Beaufoy describes Mr Bloom as “leading a quadruple existence,”73 while in the words of Mrs Bellingham he has the features of an ironically sophisticate devil tempter.74 Furthermore, at some stage Bloom admits to the fact that he had been a victim of a half-devilish relationship of temptation when still young. In doing so, he murmus that the “demon possessed me.”75 Something similar happens in one of the Nymph’s cues, where Bloom is portrayed as a joking Satan who is eventually after the virtue of a virgin: THE NYMPH: Sacrilege! To attempt my virtue! (A large stain appears on her robe) Sully my innocence! You are not fit to touch the garment of a pure woman. (She clutches in her robe). Wait, Satan.76

This way of calling him Satan parallels Stephen’s drunken reaction when, after a box of matches falls from his pocket, Blooms picks it up and gives it back to him. All that he can say in response to such an act of kindness is “Lucifer. Thanks.”77 Stephen’s later attempt to celebrate a black mass—besides providing the whole book with a circularity commenced with the parody of a catholic rite performed by Buck Mulligan in “Telemachus”—may also be considered as a further act of submission to Bloom, whose connotation is ironically both devilish and messianic.

Drama of Devils and Vampires The references above illuminate the occult meaning of one of Beaufoy’s remarks referred to Bloom, a remark whose significance proves clear in the ironical context of the farcical satanic allusions that crowd the episode: “Street angel and house devil.”78 A similar dichotomy, a mock coincidence of supernatural contraries, is also alluded to by the complementary imprecations occurring in

72

U, 586. U, 586. 74 See U, 592. 75 U, 659. 76 U, 662. 77 U, 665. 78 U, 586. 73

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the chapter: “By Hades,”79 “By the God above me,”80 “By heaven,”81 “so help me fucking Christ.”82 Other characters that share animal features with devilish implications are Lipoti Virag and Bella/Bello Cohen. As regards Bloom’s grandfather, coming in Dracula’s fashion all the way from some strange village in Hungary just to haunt his nephew’s hallucinations, he “gobbles gluttonously with turkey wattles,”83 “howls,”84 and finally shouts “Rats!”85 Some lines before, he had referred to Panther,86 a double allusion to the legend of the Roman centurion who was said to have impregnated Mary, and to the animal that later will be associated with the vampire. Not only does Lipoti’s beastly appearance look halfdiabolic, but he also pronounces a powerful anti-Christian anathema: VIRAG: (A diabolic rictus of black luminosity contracting his visage […]) He had a father, forty fathers. He never existed. Pig God! He had two left feet. He was Judas Iacchias, a Libyan eunuch, the pope’s bastard [..] A son of a whore. 87 Apocalypse.

Here the old Hungarian Jew automatically identifies with a sacrilegious being invoking the arrival of the Anthichrist, who according to St. John will precede the second coming.88 Similarly, Bella Cohen is also portrayed as both an animal and a devilish character. Before she makes her entrance on stage, Zoe had warned ironically that the “devil is in that door.”89 When she approaches the rest of the company, Bloom, once devil tempter himself and now only “adorer of the adulterous rump,”90 addresses her as a “powerful being,”91 and “bends over her hoof”92 to tie her laces.

79

U, 589. U, 593. 81 U, 613. 82 U, 696. 83 U, 632. 84 U, 636. 85 U, 638. 86 See U, 637. 87 U, 636. 88 About the biblical reference to the antichrist and the second coming see St. John’s Apocalypse, I, 2:18. 89 U, 640. 90 U, 644. 91 U, 642. 92 U, 643. 80

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Up until this very moment, all that had happened was in preparation for the advent of the great beast. After Bloom’s and Bella’s change of sexes, Bello insists on cruelly twisting her arms, while Bloom proclaims in her screams: “It’s hell itself!”93 It is not clear whether the pronoun “it” refers here to the pain she is suffering or to the powerful beast causing it. A few lines below, Bello happens to curse his own “infernal luck,”94 so secretly admitting his hidden satanic nature. The possibility that all those references to a satanic dimension, no matter how ironic, could be just mere accidents in Joyce’s text is rather improbable. On the contrary, together with the black mass interlude at the end of the episode,95 they are part of a bigger picture. They very likely indicate the existence of a subliminal occult signification informed by the principle of inversion, which manages to change Ulysses into a modernist work of fantastic literature. A further aspect of the connection between beasts and evil beings of the chapter is the theme of vampirism. A link seems to exist between animals and vampires in Joyce’s book, just as in certain nineteenth-century works by other Irish writers. In “Circe,” we find three direct references, as well as many subliminal hints, to the image of the vampire. The first is a straight mention made by Stephen. It concerns a vampire man who “debauch nun very fresh young with dessous troublants.”96 The second is a triumphant toast in French: “Vive le vampire!”97 which promptly follows Stephen’s previous allusion. The third occurs at the very end of the episode, when Bloom tries to wake his young companion up, who still lies on the ground after Private Carr has punched him. As soon as he awakens, on seeing Bloom he mysteriously groans “Who? Black panther vampire.”98 He is probably thinking of his own poem from episode 3, in which we find the image of a pale vampire. Otherwise, he might be still shocked by the memory of Haines’s nightmare the previous night, which involved the dream of a black panther.99 An alternative explanation is that the blurred profile of a black panther vampire might have been suggested to his alcohol-dulled mind by Bloom’s face, which he sees after having recovered his senses. Finally, it could be argued that the panther/vampire association has reached him telepathically, for as we have seen, Lipoti Virag had earlier made a reference to the Roman centurion Panther.

93

U, 646. U, 646. 95 See U, 695-6. 96 U, 673. 97 U, 673. 98 U, 701. 99 See U, 3. 94

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The latter option, given the totally oneiric encounter between Bloom and his grim grandfather, would imply a kind of silent transmission of thoughts between Bloom and Stephen via the ghost of Lipoti. This would strengthen the argument of those who tend to interpret the accidents of “Circe” mainly as dreams of the protagonists. It could also be an oblique allusion to the telephatic powers of a master vampire, as happens in Stoker’s Dracula. As we have seen, something similar occurs in “Nausicaa” between Bloom and Gerty. One thing cannot be questioned. After Stephen has mumbled those dark words, a particular mental association slowly takes shape in his mind. The image of the vampire silently summons the memory of his own dead mother: (He sighs and stretches himself, then murmurs thickly with prolonged vowels) Who…drive…Fergus now. And pierce…wood’s woven shade?… […] …shadows…the woods. …white breast…dim…100

The passage is illuminating. The surface allusion here is again to Yeats’s poem, “Who Goes with Fergus?” dear to Stephen’s mother. However, what strikes the attention is the double track in Joyce’s text. While on a referential level we are seemingly facing the description of a young man whose consciousness is dimmed by the consumption of alcohol, a deeper level would suggest here a new interpretation concerning vampirism. Although Stephen is drunk and tired, and therefore cannot remember well all the words from Yeats’s poem, he who wrote the passage is in fact very lucid. What is the meaning of such a subtle narrative technique, which plays with psychology and mental associations? According to the present view, those scattered words occurring just after Stephen’s mention of a vampire need to be recomposed in a logical order. The terms “drive,” “pierce,” “wood,” and “white breast” are just hints to the normal procedure for the killing of a vampire. Famous accounts of such a practice—that is, “to drive a wooden stick through a vampire’s breast in order to pierce his heart”—are to be found in folklore as well as in literature. One should be reminded of the mentioned passage in “Hades,” where Bloom had been sadly thinking of his dead father. There he alluded to the same bloody practice, which according to him was applied also to suicidal people.101 If the corpse of Bloom’s Hungarian father might have been treated just as that of a vampire, we are somehow tempted to see a parallelism in the fate of Stephen’s mother. To sum up, the above incomplete lines refer to the dream of 100 101

U, 702. See my chapter on “Hades,” nn. 10-1, 21.

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killing the memory of a vampire-like parent who comes to haunt the life of his/her living son. Not only is the role of Stephen’s mother parallel to that of Blooms’s father, but, in the economy of the race, it becomes associated also with the ghost of his grandfather, the Hungarian devil Lipoti Virag. It is he who comes to torment the mind of his nephew acting in his father’s stead. In this light, we may also understand the significance of Lipoti’s earlier allusion to the Roman centurion Panther. It established a telepathic connection with the black panther vampire imagined by Stephen, and prompted his mumbling thoughts about an efficacious method to get rid of the haunting ghost of his vampire-like mother. But what could have been, apart from works like Dracula or “Carmilla,” the folkloric traditions accessible to Joyce, which can be recognised as likely sources for his use of such a vampiric imagery? A rare two-volume English translation of a eighteenth-century treatise on apparitions and vampires by abbot Augustine Calmet had been donated, among many other books, to the library of the Royal Dublin Society by a Dr. Jasper Robert Joly, the one-time Vicar general of the diocese of Tuam, Killala, and Achonry, many years before Joyce was born. The entire deposit of Joly’s library was intended by the Vicar to enable the RDS to open a public library in Dublin, which eventually became the National Library of Ireland in 1877. Since then, the book has been kept on the shelves of the NLI for consultation. Its title is The Phantom World. As early as the preface, it shows the author’s intentions “not to foment superstitions, not to feed the vain curiosity of visionaries.”102 Abbot Calmet states clearly that he writes “for reasonable and unprejudiced minds, which examine things seriously and coolly.”103 Such an attention to objectivity in the reviewing of odd phenomena would have certainly appealed to the half-scientific mind of the young James Joyce, a habitué of the National Library. Calmet’s principal object is to discuss about the vampires of Hungary. In the second volume, he gradually touches also on the vampires of Moravia, Silesia, Poland, Boehmia, and Transylvania. His style, like Swedenborg’s, is extremely lucid and logical, though at times a little naïve: The revenans of Hungary, or vampires, which form the principal object of this dissertation, are men who have been dead for a considerable time, sometimes more, sometimes less; who leave their tombs and come and disturb the living, sucking their blood, appearing to them, making a noise at their doors and in their houses, and lastly, often causing their death. They are named vampires, or oupires, which signifies, they say, in Slavonic, a leech. The only way to be deliv-

102 103

Calmet, The Phantom World, xxiii. Ibid., xxiii.

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ered from their haunting, is to disinter them, cut off their head, impale them, burn them, or pierce their heart.104

A particular occurrence in Calmet’s discussion may support the hypothesis that Joyce could have been acquainted with his work. A chapter of the book is entitled “Dead People who Masticate in their Graves and Devour their own Flash.” If we take account of the connection in Stephen’s mind between the idea of the vampire and the image of his dead mother, we may now see in a new light a passage in “Circe” where he had called her “The corpsechewer!”105 Much earlier, he had used the words “Ghoul! Chewer of corpses!”106

Dracula’s Nightout Not only might Calmet’s treatise on vampires be one of Joyce’s sources, but it is also an illuminating documentation in relation to the genesis of Stoker’s Dracula. Some hints in “Circe” happen to point to the existence of a very subliminal Joyce/Stoker connection. First, one may acknowledge that Lipoti Virag’s provenance is at least suspect. Szombathely, which is located close to the present border between Hungary and Austria, is not exactly in Transylvania, like the place where Stoker’s bloody count is said to “live.” However, its position is in the very heart of an area from where many vampire legends have sprung, by judging on what works like Calmet’s book explain. At some stage, Lipoti shows to have some knowledge of the traditions of the Carpathians: “They have a proverb in the Carpathians in or about the year five thousand five hundred and fifty of our era.”107 The similarity between Lipoti and Stoker’s devilish count would not only be geographic. Their haunting journeys westwards are also parallel. Certain linguistic analogies in their respective manners of speaking English should be highlighted. Kiberd remarks that although the count’s English is “excellent,” the fact that it is learned from books produces a “strange intonation,” and accordingly in his speech “grammar and words are circumspect.”108 This could also easily apply to his “fellow-countryman,” Lipoti Virag. Ultimately, just like his father and grandfather, at a certain stage Bloom behaves like a joking vampire himself. This happens when Zoe “bites his ear gently with little goldstopped teeth sending on him a cloying breath of stale garlic,”109 and he suddenly “draws 104 105

106 107

Ibid., 5-6. U, 682.

U, 11.

U, 632. 108 Kiberd, Irish Classics, 385. 109 U, 600.

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back mechanically.”110 Understandably, the bad smell of garlic disturbes him immensely, and this could also point perhaps to a curious common ground between vampires and men. However, the connection between Stoker and Joyce remains hard to prove, especially in biographic terms. Apart from the already-mentioned reference to Dracula and Stoker in Finnegans Wake,111 which is somehow reminiscent of the weird night-out of “Circe,” there is no other proof of any direct “textual contact” between the two writers. Despite this, at some stage in “Circe” we encounter an interesting indirect link to Stoker, via the mention of one of his closest relations, his elder brother. In one of Mrs Bellingham’s bursts of invective directed to Bloom, she drops a very important hint which so far has escaped most readers of Ulysses: “He closed my carriage door outside sir Thornley Stoker’s one sleety day during the cold snap of February ninetythree.”112 In this case, we can certainly rely on Tindall’s wise suggestion that “there is nothing in Joyce that is casual.”113 Such a general statement about Joyce’s art is endorsed by many critics, like for instance Silverstein who, in a brilliant essay on Bruno’s Ars Memoriae in “Circe,” argues that “it is well known that Joyce does not choose details casually.”114 As regards the passage above, we should follow an interpretation suggested by the mention of the year 1893, which points to the latent ghostly presence of Bram Stoker in the episode. Bram’s brother was one of the professors of Oliver St. John Gogarty—the model for Buck Mulligan—and a renowned surgeon in Dublin. His transient presence in “Circe” may appear casual at first. What is it that makes it significant? There seems to be no reason for Joyce to be so precise in stating clearly the space and time coordinates of a seemingly trivial event, especially in a completely oneiric context like the one depicted in “Circe.” Such accuracy in setting the occurrence in a particular month of a particular year sounds at least suspect. February 1893 is in fact a peculiar date in the organization of Ulysses. In that month Joyce became eleven, the same age as Bloom’s dead son, who, as Ellmann reminds us, also “died at eleven days.”115 Actually, Rudy’s ghost appears at the end of the episode just as “a fairy boy of eleven.”116 The connection between Sir Thornley Stoker’s and the month of February 1893, and specifically, given Joyce’s half-superstitious obsession with his own birth-date, with the day in which he became eleven, February 2, makes way for 110

U, 600. See my chapter on “Nausicaa,” n. 42. 112 U, 591-2. 113 Tindall, “James Joyce and the Hermetic Tradition,” 33. 114 Silverstein, “Bruno’s Particles of Reminiscence,” 273. 115 Ellmann, Ulysses on the Liffey, 148. 116 U, 702. 111

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an interesting discovery regarding the second organ of the chapter, “locomotor apparatus.” What happened on the day of Joyce’s eleventh birthday in Dublin? As the Freeman’s Journal and the Irish Times both report in full-page articles, during the sixteenth annual meeting of the Dublin Branch of the British Medical Society held in the College of Physics, Kildare Street (just beside the NLI), Sir Thornley Stoker had replaced Sir William Stokes as president of the association. Stoker had worked in dean Swift’s hospital. He was to have a long academic and professional career, and was to become also Governor of the National Gallery of Ireland. In relation to “Circe,” bearing in mind that the symbol according to Linati is “zoology,” it is of some interest to know that Sir Thornley also held the position of Inspector for Ireland under the Anatomy and Vivisection Act.117 This would help us explain again some of Mrs Bellingham’s aggressive words addressed to Bloom: “The cat-o’-nine-tails. Geld him. Vivisect him.”118 A further example of the use of a medical jargon in the episode occurs after a reference to the Russian scientist Metchnikoff, who inoculated apes against syphilis.119 Soon after this occurrence, a character says: “Locomotor Ataxy.”120 This may well be a connection with the chapter’s organ, “Locomotor apparatus.”121 Rabaté records how Joyce had “confided to Budgen that the rhythm of the chapter was that of ‘locomotor ataxy.’ ”122 He argues also that the organ “establishes a controlling network that lies beneath the ataxia of the chapter.”123 The “Locomotor Apparatus” provides no doubt a clear idea of movement. On the contrary, “Locomotor ataxy’ is a reference to a state of paralysis. In medicine, it is the common prognosis that identifies the Tabes Dorsalis, or General Paralysis of the Insane. It could be a symptom of the final stages of syphilis. In “Circe” it is Shakespeare who appears at some stage to be “rigid in facial paralysis.”124 As we will see, it could be argued that “locomotor ataxy,” besides proposing a certain continuity with the message of Dubliners, stands also for a further utterly subliminal allusion to Bram Stoker. According to David Norris,125 rumours that the man who wrote Dracula had died of syphilis circulated in Dublin soon after Stoker’s death, in April 1912. The Death Certificate of Bram Stoker reads in fact “Locomotor Ataxy.” The 117

See Freeman’s Journal, (Dublin) 3.6.1912. See U, 594. 119 U, 637. 120 U, 637. 121 U, 637. 122 Rabaté, James Joyce, Authorized Reader, 87. 123 Ibid. 87. 124 U, 671. 125 Shepard and Power, Dracula, Celebrating 100 Years, 178-80. 118

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connection between the Stoker brothers must have been taken for granted by Joyce, as well as by the people of Dublin, at the time of their respective departures during the same year. Both their obituaries in the Freeman’s Journal refer to their family relationship. Furthermore, both include references to the fact that Bram Stoker had been the manager of Sir Henry Irving. Curiously enough, Sir Irving is also present in “Circe” with no apparent reason.126 It is not improbable that, in making a reference to Sir Thornley, Joyce was also alluding to his more famous brother. Thus, the reference to Thornley would become a textual signature of Bram, and also an indirect link to the underlying vampiric discourse of the episode. This would be structurally parallel to what happens, for instance, in the case of the Parnell brothers in Ulysses. In fact, just as it would be hard to imagine that the character of John Howard Parnell in the book is not an allusion to his most famous brother—the much lamented uncrowned king of Ireland, Charles Stewart Parnell—the presence of Sir Thornley may well be a shadow of the phantom of Bram, the creator of the most powerful vampire in the history of literature. Through the echo of the obscure cause of death of Bram Stoker, as well as of Thornley’s ghostly expertise in vivisection, we may well be allowed to consider “locomotor ataxy” as the ultimate secret hidden behind many cryptic allusions in Ulysses. Furthermore, bearing in mind also the latent suspicion of syphilitic paralysis hanging over the priest in Joyce’s first short story, “Sisters,” such an obscure net of connections in “Circe” would lead the reader back to patterns of consistency within Joyce’s literary career, a career whose first official step of some magnitude was the writing of Dubliners. There paralysis was undoubtedly one of the most powerful key words. Through Ulysses a similar subliminal continuity could be extended also to Finnegans Wake, a book where the complementary ideas of movement and eternal return are nothing but metaphors of immobility. “Locomotor ataxy” is the fatal affection of the organ of “Circe,” the most crucial episode of Ulysses in occult terms. Accordingly, it is also the symptom of the ineluctable pathology of Joyce’s visceral link with his own past, and with the hemiplegic nature of his own truly eternal city, Dublin.

126

See U, 615.

EPILOGUE BEYOND THE OCCULT, BEYOND JOYCE

To read Joyce’s Ulysses from an occult standpoint is no doubt a risky option, though a highly fascinating one. Such dialectic ambivalence mirrors a further duality, which tells us a great deal about the relationship between the textual intentions and the effects of Ulysses, that is, the writer’s dual attitude towards the occult, which can be traced in the wise words of Stanislaus written soon after his brother’s death. Such a dichotomy, which involves the complementary categories of belief and scepticism, is a constant in Joyce’s character, his poetic vision, and accordingly, his works. Other critics have endorsed a similar view. Among them, as early as in 1965, Silverstein also drew on Stanislaus as a very reliable source on the matter, and commented on his recollection of Joyce’s dual attidude towards the circle of the Dublin theosophists. He reminds us how Joyce was said by his brother to have been sympathetic to “a poem called Nirvana which described a state not of bliss but rather of what mystical writers call vestation of spirit,” and at the same time how often he “made fun of occultists, punning on their names.”1 The eclectic and sometimes self-contradictory nature of the occult is conceived by Joyce as a kind of psychic system embedded in the narrative. What the present book has attempted to demonstrate is how his idiosyncratic attitude towards the occult is imbricated in the belief/scepticism dichotomy, which underwrites the text and characterizes the reader/text relationship. On the one hand, scepticism is detectable in the great amount of irony, parodies, and mockery concerning the occult in the book. On the other, belief, or rather an oblique version of it, is traceable in the commitment to the knowledge of occult matters, doctrines, and techniques, as well as in the “plural” hermeneia—a process of multiple interpretations, or rather, possible translations— which Joyce’s writings prompt. Thus, the reader really becomes, as Newman contends, an “interpreter, or hermƝneus, a diviner of signatures.”2 Conversely, the belief/scepticism dichotomy is informed by another structural ambivalence, a congenital aspect of Joyce’s temper and artistic inclina1 2

Silverstein, “Bruno’s Particles of Reminiscence,” 274-5. Newman, Transgressions of Reading, 100.

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tions: his dual tendency towards the modern and the medieval. Such an attitude appears to be also very Yeatsian. As Jaurretche explains in commenting on the influence of Yeats’s prose-style on Joyce’s critical writings, “Yeats’s prose also points to the late Victorian interest in medieval heritage, history and hermeneutics as an incipient form of modernist self-expression.”3 She argues that Yeats “locates in aestheticism and decadence the intellectual antecedents of nineteenth-century medievalism and the forebears of twentieth-century introspective literature.”4 Such an outlook allows her to take account brilliantly of the relevance of medieval mystical philosophy in the development of Joyce’s aesthetics. A similar perspective could be applied both to the occult as a fundamental aspect of medieval thought, and to its modern version in the works of more recent writers. The act of believing and being sceptical at the same time is a feature shared by many modernists towards their own works, which left a mark also on their inspirational processes. The two issues of belief and scepticism are really warring contraries. They are the two sides of the same coin, and point to a possible reconciliation. As regards Joyce, this may be seen as a modern “translation” of a much discussed medieval tenet of his artistic “creed,” the Neoplatonic coincidence of opposites. Despite this, the reconciliation of contraries proves to be only a precarious solution to the fragmented world depicted in Ulysses, for it cannot avoid causing an overwhelming feeling of frustration and incompleteness in the characters. Since the present conclusions are mainly drawn from a textual analysis of Ulysses as an example of occult writing, it can be useful to spend a few summarizing words on how this critique was structured. A study such as the present, accounting only for a number of episodes in the book, can be easily regarded as partial. It can be argued that such a partiality is increased by the fact that my critical journey through Joyce’s masterpiece starts with chapter 6 and ends with chapter 15, touching only on six more episodes in what looks like an apparently eccentric pattern. Accordingly, the present reading leaves out some of the most important “moments” of the book. With regards to the first remark, one can only say that every analysis of the book has to be partial, given the infinite range of possible interpretations to which Ulysses will be open for a long time to come. In fact, also other valuable critical works on Joyce’s book have focused only on a selection of episodes. Selection is a necessary criterion of all critiques, and of course is not per se a bad one. In relation to the second issue concerning the eccentricity of the present critical wandering through the text, one shall consider that the choices made 3 4

Jaurretche, The Sensual Philosophy: Joyce and the Aesthetics of Mysticism, 38. Ibid., 39.

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here always follow an internal logic, parallel to an internal reading of the book. It is in fact an interpretation of a cluster of hidden narrative patterns. The fact that they are concealed beneath the surface is mainly what allows one to call the book occult in the first place. Properly occult themes and visionary techniques in Ulysses, taken as parallel modes of signification, are also good enough reasons to suggest that the book is an occult text. They are probably the most brilliantly concealed intentionally by Joyce, between and behind the lines of his work. Such a seemingly obscurantist inclination of the text is one of the main reasons which justifies the great risk of leaving the Penelope episode out of the analysis. According to Knowles, “it is Molly’s hand that rules the world of Ulysses.”5 The scholar suggests as much in a chapter of his challenging study, where he presents Molly as realistically central in the dynamics of the book, to the extent that she might be seen as the authoress of Ulysses “in the sense that Victor Frankenstein is the creator of his monster.”6 The centrality of Molly is out of question here. However, the occult is a transient theme in Ulysses, which does not inform all aspects of the work. It becomes a real key to a hidden knowledge, a knowledge that fluctuates perhaps too much to be encapsulated in any definitive scheme of interpretation. It is a symbol of incompleteness and failure, and therefore all analyses of its textual implications shall remain incomplete and open. However, such open incompleteness may eventually take on positive shades. It somehow prefigures the essence of what Franco Moretti, in treating Ulysses alongside Faust, Cantos, and other great modernist works, calls failed masterpieces.7 Fluidity and openness stand for the frailties of the human condition as embodied masterly, for example, in the character of Mr Bloom. On the contrary, despite the psychological fluctuations of her inner worlds, Molly seems to be a figure of solid corporeity that finally achieves, or may achieve, whatever she desires in a relatively simple way. Here, Hamlet’s misogynist suggestion that frailty and woman are inseparable entities is reversed, and could no doubt be applied also to Bloom, himself a potentially androgynous man. In fact, at the end of the day he fails to reconcile with his own opposite, whereas Molly seems to be able to reconcile quite happily with everybody around. Molly’s corporeity is parallel to the corporeity of Ulysses. Indeed, the present reading of the text has been massively concerned with the occult function of the body and its organs. The final acceptance of the body in Ulysses is in fact a sort of rejection of its own opposite, that is, the spirit. It is 5

Knowles, The Dublin Helix, 104. Ibid., 112. 7 See Moretti, Opere mondo, 6. 6

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rejected in favour of spirits, both in the alcoholic sense, and as pseudosupernatural apparitions, as happens in “Circe.” In such a half-farcical context, one can certainly agree that Molly is the central force in the book. And yet, in her ingenuous or rather unconscious attempt to kick out spirituality from her own universe, she becomes a hidden power, a kind of spirit herself, that literally haunts the characters, especially her husband. Her reign is detached from the real scene of Ulysses, and this is why in the narrative scheme of the book she features mainly in what seems to be a coda, although a most revealing one. One feels that Molly is somehow an absent presence in the chapters preceding the last one, a bit like a god who, for those who believe, may be “absently present” everywhere and forever. In this perspective, given the lay mockery of all kinds of spirituality in Ulysses, to analyse “Penelope” from an occult standpoint would have paralleled an attempt to make sense of the will of God in a study on men who jeer at his very existence. Joyce would have hardly been the kind of guy who appreciates such a hermeneutic hypothesis. On the contrary, the abundance of diverse farcical versions of the spirituality theme points clearly to his half-ironical half-serious use of occult notions. Such a committed mockery on the one hand reaches as far as Christian mysticism and pseudo-mysticism, while on the other it stretches towards the multifaceted universe of the occult as embodied in fantastic narratives. It is always and continuously shot through with an invariable inclination towards ironical and sometimes blasphemous jokes. Such a strange, fanciful, and absurd scenario is the visionary stage of “Circe,” the final act of this study. The fifteenth episode is in fact performed by hallucinated actors and grotesque spirits, all forming a sort of monstrous company of wandering players. However, we should not reduce the greatness and the importance of the episode, a proper skeleton of the book, to delusional categories and vain visions. The use of ineffable themes such as occultism, vampirism, and Satanism, alongside mysticism, is the signatura of a very serious joke, which inevitably runs all through Ulysses. Everything concerning the spiritual dimension of humanity seems to be at stake. In this context, it is impossible not to see also a final powerful attack to the religious system in which Joyce himself had been reared and educated. As regards this, the final word is left to Stephen to say. In “Circe” he silently seems to fling a major stone also to the Catholic tradition: “Where’s the third person of the Blessed Trinity?”8 Some years later, the same stone may have been picked up by an imaginary successor of Joyce, Flann O’Brien. In The Dalkey Archive, published in 1964, a 8

U, 693.

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character aims to “clarify and establish Iscariot Gospel;”9 another intends to discover the truth of the Jonas episode in the Bible; and finally, Mr James Joyce, a retired barman who claims that he has never written Ulysses, wishes to join the Jesuit Order just for the sake of expelling the impostor Holy Spirit from the Trinity. The very nature of the Holy Spirit, he believes, is based on a philological misinterpretation of the Greek word reuch, according to its Greek and Latin erroneous translations. O’Brien’s book, which may provide us with a useful guideline to enter and apprehend the very subtle, yet revolutionary, legacy of Ulysses in Irish literature10—that is, the final rejection of spirituality as a whole, despite its age-old cultural relevance—makes fun of Catholic exegesis, institutions and Saints, including St. Augustine who speaks with an Irish accent. This looks like a monstrous comic debauch of religion. In the microcosm/macrocosm logic of Ulysses, the catholic religion as well as the occult are the signaturae of the broader category of spirituality, which is invariably the object of “jocoserious” jests. However, such a committed mockery would seem to compel the author to reject also a part of himself. Something similar happens to Stephen who, for the sake of his own liberty, artistic fulfilment, and self-determination, is forced by his own will to abandon altogether his mother, his family, his friends, his country, and his religion, as well as other spiritual or spiritualistic drives. After such a sundering, symbolically testified by his own drunken non serviam in “Circe,” we would indeed expect at least some forms of reconciliation pointing to a sort of return back to a past unity. Alas, such reconciliation does not occur in Ulysses. Perhaps, one will have to wait for Finnegans Wake to experience a further mockery of a possible return to a state of harmony and reconcilement. There, the hidden message delivered to the reader by the possible worlds of Ulysses, will finally be achieved in the dreamy memory of a theosophic oneiric universe, made up of words, thoughts, music, open interpretations, and indeed silent understanding.

9

O’Brien, The Dalkey Archive, 71. As regards the presence of Joyce in O’Brien’s book, see: Clissmann, Flann O’Brien: A Critical Introduction to his Writings, 291-323.

10

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INDEX

Adam Kadmon; 10; 160; 161; 183 Aesop; 87 Agrippa, Cornelius; 7; 8; 11; 15; 16; 81 Akasha; 64; 67; 73; 173 Akasic records; 6; 11; 54; 55; 97 alchemy; 7; 21; 66; 113; 124; 129; 165; 187 Alighieri, Dante; 35; 80; 85; 163 androgyny; 89; 103; 106; 111; 121; 122; 123; 128; 129; 147; 150; 151; 160; 161; 162; 183 anthroposophy; 18; 60 Aristotle; 54; 85; 88; 105 Berkeley, George; 137; 169 Besant, Annie; 6; 12; 50; 51; 52; 53; 55; 56; 57; 58; 60; 61; 65 Blake, William; 5; 6; 11; 15; 24; 35; 110; 112; 117; 167; 168; 169; 171; 188; 190 Blavatsky, H.P.; 1; 6; 11; 12; 13; 18; 19; 29; 35; 51; 60; 97; 110; 112 Boccaccio; 85 Boehme, Jacob; 6; 8; 9; 11; 15; 25; 54; 81; 117; 171; 177 and language; 34 Borges, Jorge Louis; 34 Brancusi, Constantin; 23 Bruno, Giordano; 6; 11; 54; 81; 82; 111; 190; 201 Budgen, Frank; 55 Calmet, Augustine; 199; 200 Cicero; 85 coincidentia oppositorum; 11; 54; 73; 76; 81; 82; 83; 105; 147; 148; 151; 161; 176; 188; 206 Colum, Padraic; 116 Corelli, Marie; 113 correspondences; 7; 9; 35; 38; 41; 44; 45; 46; 47; 48; 49; 53; 77; 79; 80;

81; 87; 92; 99; 129; 139; 148; 151; 159; 168; 174; 177; 187 Crookes, William; 66 Crowley, Alistair; 22 de Nerval, Gérard; 130 Dyonisius the Pseudo-Areopagite; 11; 15; 166; 167; 172; 179; 180; 181 Eliot, T.S.; 20 Freud, Sigmund; 18; 31; 73 Giorgi, Francesco; 15 Goethe, J.W.; 109 Gogarty, Oliver St. John; 201 Golden Dawn, Hermetic Order of; 14; 16; 20; 116; 142 Gonne, Maud; 122 Hermes Trismegistus; 11; 187 Hesychasm; 180 Hoffmeister, Adolph; 163 Homer; 57 Huxley, Aldous; 7 Hyde, Douglas; 93 Irving, Sir Henry; 203 James VI, King of Scotland; 113 Joachim of Flora; 10; 15; 35; 117; 181 John of the Cross; 15 Joyce, Giorgio; 4 Joyce, James; 1; 20; 23; 25; 28; 35; 44; 54; 57; 77; 78; 86; 87; 88; 89; 90; 93; 108; 124; 137; 138; 173; 174 “A Painful Case”; 76 “Ireland the Isle of Saints and Scholars; 167 “Sisters”; 16 “The Dead”; 74; 77; 110; 151; 152; 153; 154 “The Holy Office”; 90 A Portrait; 7; 8; 11; 15; 52; 58; 59; 114; 134; 145; 154; 176

218 A Portrait (1904); 9; 124 and belief; 104 and Besant; 50; 52; 58 and Blake; 169 and Bruno; 190 and Calmet; 200 and coincidences; 93 and Jung; 66 and letters; 17; 180 and religion; 134 and Shakespeare; 101; 104 and Sheridan Le Fanu; 94; 96 and Steiner; 59; 61; 63 and Stoker; 72; 145; 147; 200 and superstition; 12; 44; 120 and Swedenborg; 47; 48; 49; 50; 105; 107; 139; 154 and textual ghosts; 111 and the Kabbalah; 130; 131 and Yeats; 4; 10; 11; 117; 118; 121; 123; 192 conference paper on Blake; 167; 170 Dubliners; 16; 59; 77; 203 Finnegans Wake; 11; 26; 33; 35; 50; 55; 59; 73; 83; 94; 129; 145; 150; 154; 155; 157; 169; 187; 201; 203; 209 Giacomo Joyce; 167 June 16; 1; 2 occult books present in personal libraries; 5; 6 occultist method; 115; 175 response to psychology and psychoanalysis; 73 response to the occult; 2; 6; 11; 18; 22; 23; 26; 29; 36; 38; 42; 44; 50; 65; 68; 70; 103; 205 semantic overturn; 75 Ulysses; 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 7; 8; 9; 10; 11; 12; 17; 19; 21; 22; 26; 30; 33; 35; 36; 43; 44; 45; 47; 48; 49; 50; 51; 52; 53; 54; 56; 57; 59; 62; 63; 66; 68; 69; 70; 71; 73; 74; 75; 76; 77; 79; 80; 81; 82; 83; 84; 85; 86; 87; 88; 90;

Index 92; 93; 94; 95; 97; 99; 100; 103; 104; 105; 107; 108; 109; 113; 114; 115; 118; 119; 120; 121; 124; 125; 126; 130; 134; 136; 137; 138; 141; 147; 148; 149; 151; 153; 154; 155; 156; 158; 159; 160; 162; 163; 164; 165; 168; 169; 173; 175; 176; 177; 179; 180; 183; 184; 185; 186; 187; 188; 189; 190; 192; 193; 194; 197; 201; 202; 203; 205; 206; 207; 208; 209 Joyce, Stanislaus; 9; 10; 15; 22; 29; 48; 205 June 16; 3; 120 Jung, C.G.; 2; 18; 24; 29; 56; 61; 62; 72; 184 and the occult; 65; 66; 67; 68; 69 the unconscious; 73 Kabbalah; 7; 15; 16; 18; 21; 33; 34; 73; 90; 120; 129; 130; 131; 142; 157; 158; 159; 160; 161; 180; 181; 183; 215 Kooti Hoomi; 11; 110 Leadbeater, C.W.; 12 Levy-Bruhl, Lucien; 130 Lewis, Wyndham; 23 Linati, Carlo; 47; 89; 90 Lull, Raymond; 15 MacBride, John; 122 magic; 143 Mallarmé, Stéphan; 155 Manganelli, Giorgio; 109 Marin, Biagio; 89 Marx, Karl; 134 McGregor Mathers, S.L.; 14 Mercadante, Francesco Saverio; 123 Michelstaedter, Carlo; 88; 89; 90 Miguel de Molinos; 15 Moore, George; 110 Moser, Fanny; 66 music; 59; 113; 115; 123; 132; 148; 149; 151; 152; 153; 154; 155; 156; 157; 161; 178; 209 Nicholas of Cusa; 11 number seven, the; 112; 113; 124

Occult Joyce numerology; 163 O’Brien, Flann; 208; 209 occult, the; 5; 28; 38; 40; 168 and literature; 29; 40 and symbolism; 41 as a multifaceted tradition; 6; 7; 8 as a parallel semiotic discourse; 30 as the hidden; 31; 32 belief in; 37 in literary studies; 39 occultism; 6; 7; 8; 14; 15; 18; 28; 29; 30; 31; 32; 36; 37; 40; 41; 42; 43; 51; 52; 59; 63; 97; 109; 129; 187; 208 occultist method, the; 22; 26; 36; 42; 51; 56; 125; 133; 141; 142; 148; 177; 181 Olcott, H.S.; 12; 35 Papini,Giovanni; 89 Paracelsus; 8; 11; 23 Parnell, C.S.; 78 Parnell, J.H.; 203 Pater, Walter; 155 Pico della Mirandola; 10; 11; 15 Plato; 85; 88; 105; 151; 153 Plutarch; 6 Pound, Ezra; 42 Pythagoras; 112 Quintilianus; 85 Ralegh, Sir Walter; 113 Rosicrucian manifestos; 17 Russell, George (A.E.); 12; 20; 30; 35; 97; 109; 110; 114 Satanism; 21; 22; 63; 110; 113; 114; 115; 132; 143; 144; 163; 176; 193; 195; 197; 208 semantic overturn, the; 81; 87; 126; 139; 148; 154; 181 Shakespeare, William; 21; 23; 79; 94; 98; 101; 102; 104; 105; 106; 108; 109; 110; 113; 117; 128; 130; 153; 165; 202 Sheridan Le Fanu, Joseph; 94; 95; 96 Southey, Robert; 24 Steiner, Rudolph; 6; 18; 19; 59; 60; 61; 63; 65; 73; 113

219

Stoker, Bram; 72; 145; 147; 200; 201; 203 Dracula; 93 Stoker, Sir Thornley; 201; 202; 203 Svevo, Italo; 89 Swedenborg, Emanuel; 6; 8; 11; 12; 15; 25; 41; 45; 47; 48; 49; 50; 51; 53; 63; 65; 75; 76; 78; 81; 82; 87; 94; 97; 105; 107; 114; 117; 120; 125; 126; 138; 139; 148; 154; 160; 188; 189; 190; 199 Swift, Jonathan; 10; 126; 131; 181; 202 Symons, Arthur; 21; 40; 130 synchronicity; 2; 90; 97; 120; 121 Theosophical Society, the; 51 theosophy; 6; 18; 21; 26; 29; 50; 53; 54; 56; 58; 60; 63 tritonus, the; 115 vampirism; 21; 63; 65; 93; 94; 143; 144; 145; 147; 176; 197; 198; 199; 200; 203; 208 Vico, G.B.; 83 Virgil; 80 Weininger, Otto; 89 Wilde, Oscar; 94; 102; 117 Wyndham, Lewis; 20 Yeats, W.B.; 1; 2; 10; 25; 35; 38; 42; 46; 52; 55; 94; 97; 110; 111; 120; 122; 123; 191 “A Cradle Song”; 112 “Crazy Jane talks with the Bishop”; 121 “Easter 1916; 116 “Leda and the Swan”; 117 “Rosa Alchemica”; 9; 192 “Supernatural Songs”; 187 “The Adoration of the Magi”; 4; 10; 192 “The Body of Father Christian Rosencreutz”; 16 “The Cap and Bells”; 116; 192 “The Lake Isle of Inisfree”; 192 “The Poet Pleads with the Elemental Powers”; 112 “The Second Coming”; 193 “The Tables of the Law”; 4; 9; 192

220 “The Wanderings of Aengus”; 116 “When You Are Old”; 192 “Who Goes with Fergus?”; 191; 198 A Vision; 117 admiration for Joyce; 5 and imagination; 23 and Joyce; 13; 116; 121; 206 and Rosicrucianism; 18 and Swedenborg; 46 and the Golden Dawn; 14; 21; 142 and Theosophy; 20

Index Cathleen ni Houlihan; 116; 186 Celtic Revival; 1 Dublin Hermetic Society; 1 Dublin Theosophical Society; 1 In The Seven Woods; 112 June 16; 1; 3; 120 response to the occult; 5; 11; 13 Reveries; 117 scepticism about the occult; 23 The Countess Cathleen; 191 The Rose; 192 The Wind Among the Reeds; 192