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Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake
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Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake R O B E RT BA I N E S
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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Robert Baines 2023 The moral rights of the author have been asserted All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2023942433 ISBN 978–0–19–889404–9 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198894049.001.0001 Printed and bound in the UK by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
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For Jennika
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Contents Abbreviations Transcriptional Conventions Acknowledgments
Introduction 1. The History of the Letter (FW 116.36–119.09)
ix xi xiii
1 9
2. Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy (FW 149.14–150.14)
49
3. The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous (FW 160.06–167.17)
92
4. A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man (FW 414.16–419.10)
133
5. Seeing through Balkelly (FW 609.24–612.15)
168
Conclusion Bibliography Index
202 207 217
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Abbreviations References to the following works have been recorded throughout using the abbreviations and editions as set out below. FDV P AFW FW Letters JJA U
Hayman, David. A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963. Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Penguin Books, 2000. McHugh, Roland. Annotations to Finnegans Wake. 4th ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake, edited by Robbert-Jan Henkes, Erik Bindervoet, and Finn Fordham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. References to this edition always take the following format: FW (page number).(line number). Joyce, James. Letters of James Joyce. Vol. I, edited by Stuart Gilbert. New York: Viking Press, 1957; reissued with corrections 1966. Vols II and III, edited by Richard Ellmann. New York: Viking Press, 1966. Joyce, James. The James Joyce Archive, edited by Michael Groden et al. New York: Garland Publishing, 1977–8. References to the JJA always take the following format: JJA (volume number):(page number). Joyce, James. Ulysses, edited by Hans Walter Gabler. New York: Random House, 1986. References to this edition always take the following format: U (episode number).(line number).
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Transcriptional Conventions Kind of Change: Additions Further additions on same manuscript Deletions Revisions
Symbols: Matched set of nested caret marks: base ^added text^ text Matched set of nested caret marks: ^added ^further added text^ text^ Matched set of angled brackets: Combination of angled brackets and caret marks: ^ new text^
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Acknowledgments I would like to thank Sam Slote, who supervised the bulk of the Ph.D. thesis from which this book grew. Sam has helped me a great deal over the years, and I’m particularly appreciative of the guidance he offered when this project was struggling. I would also like to thank John Nash, who was my first Ph.D. supervisor and who also oversaw the master’s thesis that evolved into my Ph.D. project. John’s influence permeates this book. During my time in Joyce studies, I’ve received a lot of advice and kindness from leading figures within that field. I would like to thank Luca Crispi, Anne Fogarty, Finn Fordham, and the late, great John Bishop. I was fortunate to start my career as a Joycean alongside many brilliant young Joyce scholars. Of all my outstanding contemporaries, I would particularly like to thank my good friends Ronan Crowley and Liam Lanigan. On completing my Ph.D., I moved to America where I first worked at Le Moyne College in Syracuse. I would like to thank Kate Costello-Sullivan and Ann Ryan for helping me to take my first steps in American academia. I presently work at the University of Evansville alongside many excellent professors. I would like to thank all of the literature professors within my department—Mark Cirino, Kristie Hochwender, and Sara Petrosillo—as well as my former colleagues Larry Caldwell and Bill Hemminger. I would also like to thank the indomitable Dan Byrne in the History department. Many kind individuals have helped me to write particular parts of this book. I would like to thank Jason Aleksander for his remarks on Nicholas of Cusa, Paul Richard Blum for his thoughts on Bruno, Jeffrey Braun for his advice on Einstein, Arnold Brooks for his guidance on Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction, Alan Code for his insights into Aristotelian logic, Bill Hemminger for reviewing my French translations, Leonard Lawlor for reading my discussions of Bergson, Robert Miner for his assistance with Vico, and David Roochnik for his observations on Plato. In 2015, I received a fellowship from the Moore Institute at the University of Galway which allowed me to spend a month there. During that time, I conducted research for this book. I would like to thank Daniel Carey and everyone at the Moore Institute. An earlier version of Chapter 2 appeared as “Time and Space: The Opposition of Professor Jones in Finnegans Wake I.6” in volume 8 of the Dublin James Joyce
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xiv Acknowledgments Journal. It is reproduced with the kind permission of Anne Fogarty, Director of the UCD James Joyce Research Centre. On a related note, I would also like to thank the Zurich James Joyce Foundation for generously allowing me permission to quote the manuscript note “Two Kinds of Monism” from the Hans E. Jahnke Bequest. I would like to thank Ellie Collins, Alexander Hardie-Forsyth, and Karen Raith at Oxford University Press for their sage guidance. At Straive, I would like to thank Jothi Aloysia Stephenson for her excellent project management and Rachel Addison for her meticulous copy editing. I would also like to thank Sergey Lobachev at Brookfield Indexing Services for his splended index. I would like to thank my parents, Simon and Elisabeth, and my brother Philip for their enduring love and support throughout my entire life. I would like to thank my dogs—Barkley, Nula, and Bernie—for taking me on the walks during which much of this book was mentally written. Lastly, and most of all, I would like to thank the person to whom this book is dedicated, my wife Jennika. She has supported and encouraged and enabled this book in innumerable ways over the many years it has taken to write it. Without her, I would neither have written this book nor have had a reason to write it.
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Introduction There are two primary ways to approach James Joyce’s relationship to philosophy. One is to regard Joyce as a philosopher. Philip Kitcher offers an example of this approach when he writes: Joyce’s mature fiction is much concerned with a reworking of the oldest, most central philosophical question, Socrates’ “How to live?” Joyce hopes to understand how to avoid the factors that confine our lives, how we might find some direction when we inevitably go astray, how we might come to terms (honestly) with our inevitable faults, missteps, and misdeeds.1
If to be a philosopher is to address the question “How to live?,” then Kitcher is certainly right that Joyce is a philosopher. One thinks here first of Ulysses and the “good man” Leopold Bloom, but all of Joyce’s works explore that question, including Finnegans Wake.2 The other way to consider Joyce’s relationship to philosophy, which is the approach of this book, is to examine the philosophical allusions within his works. One finds references to philosophy in Dubliners, Portrait, Exiles, and Ulysses. Yet none of those works point to philosophy as often as Joyce’s last. The Wake contains more philosophical allusions than any of Joyce’s other works, and it references a broader range of thinkers than any other text in Joyce’s oeuvre. For this reason, Finnegans Wake criticism has frequently explored the philosophical allusions within Joyce’s last novel. The very first work to do this was Samuel Beckett’s “Dante. . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce” That essay was the first piece in the collection Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, which was published in 1929, ten years prior to Finnegans Wake, when that novel was still known as Work in Progress. While Our Exagmination ascribes its twelve essays to twelve different authors, there was one man who guided them all. In a letter to Valery Larbaud, Joyce said, “I did stand behind those twelve Marshals more or less directing them what lines of research to follow” (Letters I, 283). This was certainly the case with Beckett’s essay. Joyce
1 Kitcher, “Introduction,” 16. 2 Joyce said of Bloom: “I see him from all sides, and therefore he is all-round in the sense of your sculptor’s figure. But he is a complete man as well—a good man. At any rate, that is what I intend that he shall be.” (Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses and Other Writings, 17–18.)
Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Robert Baines, Oxford University Press. © Robert Baines 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198894049.003.0001
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2 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake commissioned that essay from the young Beckett, gave him the subject matter, and provided him with many of the essay’s key ideas. Beckett’s title includes the names of two Italian philosophers, Giordano Bruno and Giambattista Vico, and the latter dominates the essay. The bulk of “Dante. . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce” is devoted to explaining Vico’s philosophy and to showing how Work in Progress references that philosophy. Beckett’s essay led the way in a field whose central works include James Atherton’s The Books at the Wake: A Study of Literary Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (1959), Clive Hart’s Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake (1962), John Bishop’s Joyce’s Book of the Dark: Finnegans Wake (1986), and Donald Phillip Verene’s Knowledge of Things Human and Divine: Vico’s New Science and Finnegans Wake (2003). Like “Dante. . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” these books focus primarily on Vico. The other philosopher in the title of Beckett’s essay receives little to no attention within them. The privileging of Vico over Bruno in these books is broadly representative of how Wake studies has approached those two philosophers. The only book devoted to Bruno’s influence on the Wake is Frances Boldereff ’s 1968 work, Hermes to His Son Thoth: Being Joyce’s Use of Giordano Bruno in Finnegans Wake. This is an idiosyncratic text that has little in common with the aforementioned studies of Vico’s role in Joyce’s last novel. Yet, while the definitive book on Joyce and Bruno remains to be written, that relationship has been successfully examined in book chapters and articles by critics like Gareth Joseph Downes, Federico Sabatini, and Theoharis C. Theoharis.3 The most recent major exploration of the philosophical allusions in Finnegans Wake is Verene’s 2016 work, James Joyce and the Philosophers at Finnegans Wake. As one would expect from a celebrated Vico scholar, Verene’s book focuses primarily on Vico. Two of the five chapters are devoted to him, and the chapter on Beckett’s “Dante. . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce” mostly discusses the third figure within the title of that essay. At the same time, Verene’s book also has a chapter on Bruno and Nicholas of Cusa, as well as a chapter that considers many of the other philosophers to whom the Wake alludes. After the book’s five chapters, there is a very helpful appendix titled “Register of Philosophers at the Wake” that offers a list of the philosophers referenced in Joyce’s last novel. My book builds upon the insights of the works mentioned above. Its approach is not to elucidate every philosophical reference within Joyce’s last novel, but rather to examine how the Wake references the philosophers who feature most 3 Downes has published several articles on Joyce’s relationship to Bruno, including “The Heretical Auctoritas of Giordano Bruno: The Significance of the Brunonian Presence in James Joyce’s The Day of the Rabblement and Stephen Hero,” in Joyce Studies Annual, 14 (2003): 37–73. Sabatini has also written many articles on Joyce and Bruno, most notably “James Joyce and Giordano Bruno: An ‘Immarginable’ and Interdisciplinary Dialogue,” in Daniel Ferrer, Sam Slote, and André Topia (eds.), Renascent Joyce (Florida James Joyce Series. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2013), 25–37. Theoharis has a chapter on Joyce’s understanding of Bruno in his excellent book Joyce’s Ulysses: An Anatomy of the Soul (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1988).
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Introduction 3 prominently within it. In conducting this examination, the book carefully explores the Wake’s allusions to a range of great philosophers including Aquinas, Aristotle, Bergson, Berkeley, Nicholas of Cusa, Hegel, Spinoza, Plato, and, of course, Vico and Bruno. When considering the myriad philosophical references within Joyce’s final work, it is helpful to have a sense of Joyce’s knowledge of philosophy. As Fran O’Rourke observes, while Joyce only formally encountered philosophy during his time at University College Dublin through his classes on logic, all of Joyce’s studies at that university “took place within an atmosphere permeated by Aristotelian Scholasticism.”4 This sparked an abiding interest in philosophy within Joyce, and that interest can be seen in his works, his notes, his libraries, and his numerous utterances on that field. That being said, as Sam Slote observes, Joyce did “not actively engage in the history of philosophy in a sustained manner.”5 For this reason, while Joyce knew of many different philosophers, he lacked a detailed understanding of how those philosophers fit into the larger philosophical tradition. Furthermore, his education did not give him the skills to interpret works of philosophy or to engage with philosophical ideas as a trained philosopher would. One can therefore understand why O’Rourke says that “Joyce’s attitude to philosophical questions was that of the amateur: fascinated, wondering but still puzzled.”6 When Joyce drew upon the discipline of philosophy during the writing of Finnegans Wake, he did so as an artist utilizing a resource to enrich and develop an artwork. Joyce was happy to transform philosophers and philosophical ideas to suit his aesthetic and conceptual purposes. Accuracy of representation was not one of his goals. One must therefore be careful in how one interprets the philosophical allusions in Finnegans Wake. For example, within the Wake there are three recurring structures that point to philosophical ideas: the thunderwords allude to the fact that, in Vico’s historical scheme, the first era begins with the first storm after the mighty flood of the Book of Genesis; the four-part cycles reference the cycles of Vico’s model of history; and the numerous plays on the name “Browne and Nolan” evoke Bruno’s principle of the coincidence of contraries. On first glance, the relationships between those structures and those ideas seem straightforward. Yet, when one examines those relationships more carefully, one can recognize their complexity. The thunderwords point to a key moment in Vico’s conception of history, but they do not embody an idea within Vico’s thought. The cycles of the Wake derive from those of Vico, but they are different to them in a number of important ways. Joyce’s novel consistently alludes to Bruno’s principle of the coincidence of contraries 4 O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 12. 5 Humphreys, “How Does James Joyce Rate as a Philosopher?” 6 Humphreys, “How Does James Joyce Rate as a Philosopher?”
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4 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake but, when it offers that principle, what is offered is quite different to Bruno’s principle. On each occasion, Joyce redefines the idea he has borrowed. Furthermore, within the Wake the most significant philosophical allusions are often those that connect philosophers or philosophical ideas to characters within the novel. These characters are usually versions of Shem or Shaun. Linking philosophers and philosophical ideas to particular characters helps Joyce to define the identities and worldviews of those characters. It also often allows him to define his own position. This is because Shem and Shaun frequently represent Joyce and Wyndham Lewis. Joyce’s relationship with Lewis collapsed during the writing of Finnegans Wake, and so Lewis is regularly presented within that novel as Joyce’s antagonist. There are consequently a number of scenes within the Wake in which the philosophers and philosophical ideas that are connected to Shem are also connected to Joyce and the thinkers and ideas that are aligned with Shaun are also aligned with Lewis and, thereby, against Joyce. These scenes offer insights into how Joyce saw his relationship to particular philosophers and philosophical ideas. At the same time, the manner in which Joyce connects characters to thinkers and ideas is not always so helpful. There are characters within the Wake who principally represent philosophers. The best known such character is book four’s Balkelly, a Wakean rendering of George Berkeley. What makes these characters difficult to fully define is that, while Joyce ties each of them to a particular philosopher, he often ascribes to these characters ideas and actions that do not accord with the philosophies of the thinkers they represent. One must therefore be cautious in how one characterizes the relationship between such a character and the philosopher that inspired them. As can be seen, the Wake’s philosophical allusions offer many challenges. In this book, I respond to those challenges by examining such allusions using a form of the following procedure. First, I offer a concise introduction to the original form of the referenced philosophical idea that explains where and when that idea first appeared and how it was understood by its originator. After this, I look at Joyce’s initial interaction with that idea and show both how he acquired it and how he first understood it. Joyce’s notes and non-fiction writings are invaluable resources for locating his initial impressions of philosophical ideas. When necessary, I then demonstrate how Joyce’s conception of the idea in question developed over time. This is often required because Joyce gathered most of the philosophical ideas referenced in the Wake years before he began that work, and, when Joyce retained a philosophical idea for a long period of time, that idea invariably evolved in his mind. In the last stage of the process, I turn my attention to the piece of text within the passage under examination that references Joyce’s conception of the idea in question at the time of writing. In examining that piece of text, I offer its earliest version, show how Joyce incorporates that version into a draft, and then follow the evolution of that piece of text as it moves across drafts and into the Wake. The purpose of this methodical approach is to illuminate every
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Introduction 5 stage in the production of a philosophical reference. This is the only means of fully demonstrating how such references operate. Just as it is important to consider how the Wake’s philosophical references function in themselves, so it is equally important to assess how they work together. This is because the Wake’s philosophical references frequently appear in clusters that bring together the ideas of different philosophers. While Joyce sometimes connects philosophers in order to suggest parallels between their ideas, he at other times unites philosophers in order to set them in opposition. In examining a passage in which philosophers are connected, I follow a similar procedure to the one described above. After considering the passage’s philosophical references in the usual manner, I then explain the relationship between the philosophers that the passage connects. This explanation focuses on the aspects of their philosophies that are referenced in the passage under analysis. In the next phase of the procedure, I follow the development of Joyce’s conception of the relationship between the philosophers in question. This is not always possible, but there are a number of thinkers that Joyce continually groups together. Aristotle and Aquinas is the classic example of this. Lastly, I explore how the passage under consideration defines the relationship between the philosophers it connects. To offer a basic example of this, if one thinker within a pair is aligned with the character of Shem and the other with that of Shaun, then, by virtue of the largely antagonistic relationship between those characters, those two thinkers are primarily defined as being opposed to one another. What differentiates this book from most prior studies of the philosophical allusions in Joyce’s last work is less how it explores those allusions and more how it reads the Wake. Most of the critics who have examined the Wake’s philosophical allusions—and this includes the likes of Atherton, Hart, Bishop, and Verene— have read the Wake by looking at particular words and phrases from throughout the novel. They rarely look at clauses or sentences, let alone larger units like speeches or paragraphs. In the works of these critics, individual words and phrases are either considered by themselves or woven together. Here is an example of the latter approach from Bishop: The Wake, in turn, not simply resists visualization, but actively encourages its reader not to visualize much in its pages, where “it darkles . . . all this our funnaminal world” (244.13). Because HCE passes through the night “with his eyes shut” (130.19), he regards the world from the interior of “blackeye lenses” (183.17) sunk in “eyes darkled” (434.31) and kept firmly “SHUT” behind “a bind of black” (182.32-3); through the “eyewitless foggus” of this “benighted irismaimed” (489.31 [his eyes “benighted,” each “iris maimed”]), we regard a universe of profound “unsightliness” (131.19).7 7 Bishop, Joyce’s Book of the Dark, 217.
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6 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake The words and phrases quoted in this passage do not derive from a single section of the Wake, but are rather drawn from chapters from across the novel. What’s more, as can be seen from the page and line references, the quoted words and phrases are not used in the order in which they appear in the Wake. There are two good reasons why the studies of Joyce’s last work that have examined its philosophical allusions have frequently read that novel by focusing on particular words and phrases from across its whole span. The first is that the Wake’s references to philosophy are distributed unevenly throughout the novel. It is often the case that references to a particular philosopher can be found in several different chapters. To offer just one example of this, the chapters that contain references to Aristotle include I.5, I.6, II.2, III.1, and III.3. It is therefore difficult to speak of any one philosopher’s role within the text by focusing on only one section or even one chapter of the novel. Since the density of the Wake makes it extremely difficult for regularly sized monographs to discuss large sections of it in any detail, it is understandable that critics looking to examine the Wake’s scattered references to a particular philosopher have frequently chosen to read that novel by focusing on textual fragments drawn from multiple chapters. The second reason why studies of the Wake’s philosophical allusions have frequently read that novel through words and phrases rather than clauses or sentence relates to the manner in which the Wake was written. In Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake, Hart observes that “the sentence in Finnegans Wake is hardly ever the unit of composition.”8 For all that Joyce’s compositional methods during the writing of the Wake were numerous, complex, and unstable, Hart is not wrong here. The sentences of the Wake are usually long, elaborate sentences that contain many parts. Joyce generally did not write these sentences from beginning to end. Most often, he began with a comparatively simple core sentence and then expanded it repeatedly through the addition of words, phrases, and clauses. This is why the sentences of the Wake are usually heterogenous masses that have homogenous sections within them. Critics of all kinds, not only those interested in philosophy, have often responded to the Wake’s sentence structures by focusing on individual words and phrases, as this allows a critic to look at particular parts of a sentence without having to work through the whole. I take a different approach to reading the Wake in this book. Each chapter focuses on a section of Joyce’s novel that contains a number of significant philosophical allusions. These sections are generally only a few pages long. This approach was inspired by one of the best recent books on the Wake, Finn Fordham’s Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake: Unravelling Universals. My reading style is similar to that of Fordham, but it is not entirely the same. Whereas he reads the sections on which he focuses genetically, which is to say that he follows
8 Hart, Structure and Motif, 40.
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Introduction 7 the composition of each section from its first draft to the version that appears in the Wake, I focus on the text of the Wake and read each of my chosen sections from beginning to end. For the purposes of space, I do not consider every sentence or even every paragraph within a section. Rather, I privilege the passages within each section that contain philosophical allusions. I use this reading style because it allows the Wake’s philosophical allusions to be considered within their contexts. When one isolates a philosophical allusion by plucking a word or phrase from a sentence, there is no way of accurately judging the nature of that allusion because there is no way of knowing how it is informed by the surrounding text. As regards Hart’s idea that “the sentence in Finnegans Wake is hardly ever the unit of composition,” this is undoubtedly an important idea that should influence every reading of the Wake.9 At the same time, it is also important to acknowledge that Joyce’s novel is largely made up of sentences. Long, complex, challenging sentences certainly, but sentences nonetheless. Therefore, rather than abstracting particular words and phrases and regarding them as independent units, it is more appropriate to treat the Wake as consisting of sentences made up of parts that have an integrity of their own. In examining a sentence within Joyce’s last novel, one should consider its parts, its whole, and the relationship between the two. Happily, thanks to the greater availability of the Joyce archive and the heroic efforts of genetic Joyce scholars, it is now easier than ever to understand how the sentences of the Wake operate. In looking at the drafts of a sentence, one can see how the sentence evolved during the composition process and so gain an understanding of both the parts into which the sentence is divided and how those parts unite to form the whole. This is one of the main reasons why the readings in this book consistently draw upon archival materials, such as Joyce’s drafts and notes. Naturally, the downside of my approach to reading the Wake is that, in discussing how that novel alludes to a particular philosopher, I cannot examine all of the Wake’s allusions to that philosopher. I respond to this problem within the book by focusing on the sections of the Wake in which Joyce most consistently and purposefully references the key philosophers of the novel. For example, Chapter 1 considers the role of Vico in the Wake by looking at a section of I.5. That section contains two paragraphs in which Joyce repeatedly references Vico and points to numerous aspects of his thought. While the Wake contains a multitude of references to Vico, there is no other section of the novel that so frequently alludes to Vico’s ideas. Consequently, while one cannot obtain a complete sense of how the Wake references Vico from examining those paragraphs, one can certainly gain an understanding of many important facets of how it does so. This book’s methodology allows it to demonstrate that the Wake’s references to philosophy collectively create a network of ideas, thinkers, and texts. For all the
9 Hart, Structure and Motif, 40.
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8 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake intricacy of this network, it has a logic and an integrity. At its center sit Joyce’s interpretations of Vico’s model of history and Bruno’s principle of the coincidence of contraries. All of the other philosophical ideas that play a significant role within the text are defined in relation to Joyce’s conceptions of those ideas. This is principally done through the characters of Shem and Shaun. Joyce connects Vico, Bruno, and all the philosophers he views as their kin to Shem. Since Shem and Shaun are in many ways opposites, it makes sense for Joyce to associate Shaun with all the thinkers he views as opposing Vico’s model of history and/or Bruno’s principle of the coincidence of contraries. Joyce gives the reader a sense of his stance toward to this division by repeatedly associating himself with Shem and his antagonist Lewis with Shaun. In presenting and explaining this network, this book shows how the Wake’s philosophical allusions function, how they fit together, and how Joyce uses them to define his relationships to the ideas referenced by them.
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1 The History of the Letter (FW 116.36–119.09)
As mentioned in the introduction, the idea that Vico plays an important role in Joyce’s final work was first put forward by Samuel Beckett in his 1929 essay “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” and it has been a critical mainstay ever since. Many Wake scholars have argued that Joyce’s novel was heavily influenced by Vico’s major work, Scienza Nuova (New Science). John Bishop, for example, asserts that Joyce “seems to have conceived of the New Science, in fact, as an intellectual foundation that would underlie Finnegans Wake as The Odyssey had Ulysses.”1 In recent decades, however, the idea that Vico’s philosophy is integral to the Wake has been challenged. Textual scholars have looked carefully at how Joyce gathered the Viconian terms and ideas that he utilizes within his novel, and their findings have brought into question the nature of Joyce’s interest in Vico. Wim Van Mierlo, for example, has contended that the “dissipation of thematic interest” within Joyce’s notes on Vico in notebook VI.B.1 makes it “clear” that, in taking those notes, Joyce “was not looking for any intelligible and comprehensive summary of Vico’s philosophy.”2 Textual scholars have also examined how Joyce incorporated his references to Vico into the text and have suggested that Vico is not always the point of origin for the passages that reference him. For instance, Andrew Treip has argued that, when Joyce made Viconian additions to the drafts of II.4, he did so in order to enhance pre-existing aspects of the text.3 This chapter will explore the debate regarding Vico’s role within the Wake by examining a section of I.5 that is full of references to Vico. That examination will demonstrate both how those references allude to Vico’s ideas and how they relate to the larger concerns of the chapter in which they appear.
1 Bishop, Joyce’s Book of the Dark, 176. 2 Van Mierlo, “Finnegans Wake and the Question of Histry!?,” 62. 3 See Andrew Treip, “Lost Histereve: Vichian Soundings and Reverberations in the Genesis of Finnegans Wake II.4,” 641–57.
Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Robert Baines, Oxford University Press. © Robert Baines 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198894049.003.0002
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10 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake
Joyce and Vico To understand the Vico references in I.5, one must begin by examining the history of Joyce’s interest in Vico’s philosophy.4 The exact starting date of this interest is difficult to locate. Verene observes that Joyce may have been introduced to Vico between 1898 and 1902 by his Italian teacher at University College Dublin, Father Charles Ghezzi.5 As captured in Portrait, Ghezzi spoke to the young Joyce about Bruno and so was evidently happy to discuss Italian philosophy with his students.6 While at University College Dublin, Joyce may also have heard of Vico through reading Raffaello Fornaciari’s Disegno storico della letteratura italiana (Historical Outline of Italian Literature), which contains a number of positive references to Vico. Constantine Curran, who attended University College Dublin at the same time as Joyce, says that Joyce was reading this book in 1901.7 However, Joyce’s first biographer, Herbert Gorman, argues that Joyce’s initial interaction with Vico came after he left university. According to Gorman, “Giambattista Vico and his Scienza Nuova . . . must have penetrated the subconscious mind of Joyce” in 1904 during Joyce’s stint as a teacher at Clifton School in Dalkey.8 Max Harold Fisch goes one year later and claims that Joyce “read and digested Vico in Trieste about 1905.”9 While none of these possible dates for Joyce’s discovery of Vico can be dismissed, it is also the case that none can presently be substantiated. One of the reasons it is hard to say when Joyce discovered Vico is that it is difficult to define what discovery means in such a context. Joyce may, for example, have read of Vico in Fornaciari’s book in 1901, but that was not necessarily the encounter that sparked Joyce’s enthusiasm for Vico. What can be said with greater certainty is that, by the early 1910s, Joyce was an admirer of Vico. Evidence for this comes from Joyce’s conversations with Paolo Cuzzi, a Triestine lawyer who took English lessons with Joyce between 1911 and 1913. As Joseph Mali observes, the meetings between the two “took place at Joyce’s home in via Donato Bramante 4, right on the Piazza Giambattista Vico.”10 It is therefore perhaps unsurprising that the two should have discussed Vico. Richard Ellmann describes their conversations: But often their subjects were less predictable, as when Cuzzi, who was studying Vico in school, discovered that Joyce was also passionately interested in the Neapolitan philosopher. Freud too became a subject of conversation. Cuzzi was 4 Arthur Walton Litz, Donald Phillip Verene, and Joseph Mali have all examined the development of Joyce’s interest in Vico. The account that follows draws from all three of those examinations. See Litz, “Vico and Joyce,” 245–55; Verene, Knowledge of Things Human and Divine, 10–20; and Mali, The Legacy of Vico in Modern Cultural History, 74–8. 5 Verene, Knowledge of Things Human and Divine, 10. 6 See P 271. 7 Curran, James Joyce Remembered, 121. 8 Gorman, James Joyce, 114–15. 9 Fisch, “Introduction,” 97. 10 Mali, The Legacy of Vico in Modern Cultural History, 77.
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The History of The Letter 11 reading Freud’s Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis, and he talked with Joyce about slips of the tongue and their significance. Joyce listened attentively, but remarked that Freud had been anticipated by Vico.11
This quote shows Joyce’s belief in the significance of Vico’s philosophy as well as his sense of its breadth. Joyce portrays Vico neither as a philosopher nor a historian, but rather as a proto-psychologist. What’s more, in bringing Vico into a discussion of verbal slips, Joyce offers early evidence of his interest in Vico’s ideas on speech and language. Around the same time as Joyce was discussing Vico with Cuzzi, he was also taking notes from commentaries on Vico. In the Cornell collection of Joyce’s papers, there are three pages of notes on Vico.12 These pages consist of typed paragraphs in English and Italian. The paragraphs in English are from the eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, which was published between 1909 and 1911. The source of the Italian paragraphs has not been identified. Andrew Treip argues that they come from Benedetto Croce’s La Filosofia di Giambattista Vico (The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico), which was published in 1911. He supports this idea by pointing to the fact that Croce’s book was published around the same time as the edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica from which Joyce drew his English notes on Vico.13 The reason Treip cannot be more definitive in his identification is that the Italian paragraphs in Joyce’s notes on Vico are not direct quotes from Croce’s book on Vico. If those paragraphs do derive from that book, they must be summaries or paraphrases. While the lack of a clear source for the Italian paragraphs makes it difficult to date Joyce’s notes on Vico, it seems most likely, based on the available evidence, that they were written shortly after 1911. The notes on Vico in the Cornell collection have three main themes. Several of the paragraphs in both English and Italian consider Vico’s theories of historical development and especially the idea that the histories of nations move in three- part cycles. Indeed, the whole first page is devoted to this subject. The other paragraphs often focus on Vico’s ideas regarding the evolution of language and, in particular, the role of myth within that evolution. There are also two paragraphs that discuss Homer and consider the relationship between poetry and philosophy. Of these three themes, the first is particularly striking because that is the aspect of Vico’s thought that Joyce would principally reference in the Wake. While there is evidence that Joyce was interested in Vico in the 1910s, this interest is not immediately apparent in the texts he worked on during that decade. The word “Vico” appears in Ulysses, but only within the name of the Vico Road in 11 Ellmann, James Joyce, 340. It is worth noting that the Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Vico from which Joyce took notes speaks of Vico as having “made the original discovery of certain ideas which constitute the modern psychologico-historic method” (“Vico, Giovanni Battista,” 23). 12 See Cornell–1–3; JJA 3:391–3. 13 Treip, “The Cornell Notes on Vico,” 218.
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12 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Dalkey, and there are no hints that Joyce’s mention of this road is intended to serve as a reference to Vico.14 Since Vico is also missing from Joyce’s remarks on Ulysses, it seems that Joyce did not regard Vico’s ideas as being directly relevant to that novel. By contrast, there is plenty of evidence of Joyce’s interest in Vico during the writing of Wake. Joyce urged friends such as Padraic Colum, Constantine Curran, and Harriet Shaw Weaver to read the New Science in order to understand his new work.15 When Colum responded to Joyce’s request by indicating that he could not read the New Science in the original Italian, Joyce directed him toward the French translation by the historian Jules Michelet.16 Joyce also took notes on Vico during the composition of the Wake. Notebook VI.B.1 contains two clusters of notes that relate to him.17 The Brepols edition of that notebook identifies some of those notes as deriving from the same Encyclopedia Britannica article that Joyce used for his earlier notes on Vico, but the sources of most of those notes are as yet unknown.18 In addition to appearing in Joyce’s notebooks, Vico also pops up in Joyce’s readings of the Wake. For example, in a November 1926 letter to Weaver in which he explains the opening page of the novel, Joyce glosses the word “passencore” as “pas encore and ricorsi storici of Vico” (FW 3.04–05).19 (The term “ricorsi storici” here points to Vico’s idea that the ideal cycles of history return to their starting points once they have completed all three of their stages.) The reference to Vico within Joyce’s explanation of the first page of the Wake is important because, as is often pointed out, that page references many of the major ideas within the novel. Vico’s presence on page one is therefore quite the accolade. For all the evidence of Joyce’s enthusiasm for Vico during the writing of the Wake, one of the key questions that has yet to be answered is whether Joyce read the New Science in the original Italian. He was certainly familiar with Michelet’s French translation, but, as will be discussed later, Michelet’s translation is more of an adaptation than an accurate rendering of the original. No editions of the New Science have been found in Joyce’s libraries and none of his notes have been shown to derive directly from that work. Although it seems probable that Joyce read the New Science in the Italian original at some stage, no conclusive evidence has been offered to show that this is the case. 14 See U 2.25. 15 See Ellmann, James Joyce, 564; Colum and Colum, Our Friend James Joyce, 122; and Curran, James Joyce Remembered, 86–7. 16 Colum and Colum, Our Friend James Joyce, 122. 17 The first cluster is on pages 96–7 and the second is on pages 114–17. For the first, see VI.B.1: 96–7; JJA 29:50, and for the second see VI.B.1: 114–17; JJA 29:59–60. 18 Joyce, The Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo. Notebook VI. B.1, 155–6. Treip suggests that the notes on pages 96–7 “probably derive from some extensive Italian text commenting on Vico’s New Science” (Treip, “Histories of Sexuality: Vico and Roman Marriage Law in Finnegans Wake,” 183). 19 Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce, 317.
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The History of The Letter 13 That being said, Joyce’s written and spoken remarks on Vico during the writing of the Wake evidence a knowledge of many of Vico’s ideas. Joyce’s familiarity with those ideas is also demonstrated by the complexity of the Wake’s references to Vico’s New Science. Yet, to be interested in a thinker is not necessarily to agree with that thinker, and Joyce’s enthusiasm for Vico’s ideas should not be taken as a sign that he fully supported them. When Joyce wrote or spoke of Vico, it was often with ambivalence. For instance, Tom Kristensen asked him if he believed in Vico’s new science and Joyce responded, “I don’t believe in any science, but my imagination grows when I read Vico as it doesn’t when I read Freud or Jung.”20 Similarly, when Jacques Mercanton brought up the subject of Vico, Joyce remarked: I don’t know whether Vico’s theory is true; it doesn’t matter. It’s useful to me; that’s what counts.21
Arguably the most telling of all of Joyce’s comments on Vico’s theories is to be found in a 1926 letter to Weaver: I would not pay overmuch attention to these theories beyond using them for all they are worth, but they have gradually forced themselves on me through circumstances of my own life. I wonder where Vico got his fear of thunderstorms. It is almost unknown to the male Italians I have met. (Letters I, 241)
These three quotes all contain both a dismissal of Vico’s ideas and a suggestion of their value. In the first, Joyce locates the value of Vico’s writings in how they foster his imagination. By speaking of his imagination rather than his knowledge or his understanding, Joyce here defines Vico’s writings more as art than works of history or philosophy. The second and third quotes are similar in that they both characterize Vico’s theories as being “useful.”22 By this, Joyce seems to mean that Vico’s theories provided him with ideas that he could adapt to suit his purposes and then integrate into his writings. What makes the third quote different to the other two is that it contains a new element. After rejecting Vico’s theories and then pointing to their worth, Joyce goes on to suggest that there is a sense in which he finds Vico’s theories to be true. Joyce says that those theories have “forced themselves” on him through the “circumstances” of his “own life” (Letters I, 241). He here suggests that he considers Vico’s theories to be true insofar as they have been supported by his personal experiences. Joyce then goes on to provide an example of this by speaking of Vico’s “fear of thunderstorms” (Letters I, 241). Such storms play a key role in Vico’s thought. In the New Science, the first thunderclaps and lightning strikes after the end of the great flood of the Book of Genesis scare 20 Ellmann, James Joyce, 693. 21 Mercanton, “The Hours of James Joyce,” 207. 22 Mercanton, “The Hours of James Joyce,” 207.
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14 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake mankind into conceiving of its gods and this begins the first cycles of history.23 Since Joyce was also terrified of thunderstorms, it makes sense that he would find an element of truth in this notion. What’s more, when Joyce speaks of Vico’s “fear of thunderstorms,” he suggests that Vico’s understanding of history was informed by the circumstances of his own life (Letters I, 241). In offering this suggestion, Joyce defines Vico’s histories as containing both events that are true in that they actually took place and events that reveal truth by representing the character of their creator. One can understand why Joyce, as a creator of semi-autobiographical fictions, would relate to such an approach. The personal connection between the two is one of the reasons why Vico is so frequently referenced in the Wake.
Viconian Cycles The section of the Wake that is densest with Vico references occurs in I.5, the chapter about the letter that the hen Biddy Doran finds in a dump. Over the course of the chapter, the narrator examines every aspect of the letter, from its authorship to its handwriting to even the envelope in which it was sent. This allows Joyce to consider a number of the major challenges of textual interpretation. The chapter’s key references to Vico can be found in FW 116.36–117.32, a passage that Joyce created as an addition to an existing discussion of the letter.24 That passage begins by focusing on the subject of love: So hath been, love: tis tis: and will be: till wears and tears and ages. Thief us the night, steal we the air, shawl thiner liefest, mine! Here, Ohere, insult the fair! Traitor, bad hearer, brave! (FW 116.36–117.02)
The key sentence here is the first: “So hath been, love: tis tis: and will be: till wears and tears and ages.” Love is here described as a transhistorical phenomenon that has been, is, and will be. At the same time, love is also presented as something that has a fixed life span. To say that love exists “till wears and tears and ages” is to suggest that a love can become old and worn and begin to fall apart. The word “tears” functions in a double sense because it points both to the destruction of love and to the weeping that so often results from such destruction. However, if love is always of a finite length, it may be that that length is great. Just as the term “ages” can be taken to suggest that love can grow old, so one can also read it as suggesting that love “will be” until ages have passed. Evidently, the temporality of 23 See Vico, The New Science, §62, 53. [Citations of Vico’s works in this book take the form: Vico, Title of Work, Paragraph Number, Page Number.] 24 The JJA dates the first draft of FW 116.36–117.32 as “probably June 1927” (JJA 46:419). No date is provided for the first draft of the preceding section, FW 115.11–116.35, but the second draft is dated “March 1925” (JJA 46:321). The earliest draft of the following section, FW 117.33–119.09, is dated “December–January 1923–1924” (JJA 46:297).
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The History of The Letter 15 love is a complex matter. This is the most important sentence of the opening four because, in thinking about how love exists both within and without time, it points to issues that will become of central importance in the discussion that follows. As the paragraph continues, it proceeds to reference Vico: The lightning look, the birding cry, awe from the grave, everflowing on the times. Feueragusaria iordenwater; now godsun shine on menday’s daughter; a good clap, a fore marriage, a bad wake, tell hell’s well; such is manowife’s lot of lose and win again, like he’s gruen quhiskers on who’s chin again, she plucketed them out but they grown in again. So what are you going to do about it? O dear! (FW 117.03–09)
These sentences contain two examples of a form that is commonly known within Wake criticism as a Viconian cycle. The first is the first sentence: “The lightning look, the birding cry, awe from the grave, everflowing on the times.” The second appears within the second sentence: “a good clap, a fore marriage, a bad wake, tell hell’s well.” These cycles are just two among the many that can be found within the book. According to Fweet, a website that offers annotations to Finnegans Wake, there are forty-nine such cycles in the Wake as a whole.25 Joyce made the connection between his cycles and those of Vico explicit when he said of Vico, “I use his cycles as a trellis.”26 Vico’s cycles are here defined as a framework from which Joyce could grow his text. That Joyce should focus on Vico’s cycles in the Wake is not surprising. Those cycles are one of the best-known features of Vico’s thought, and Joyce had shown his interest in them as early as the notes in the Cornell collection. The work in which Vico most fully defines his historical cycles is the New Science. For the sake of ease, this is commonly referred to as a single work, but there were in fact three editions, and each is quite different. As Leon Pompa explains, Vico significantly revised the first edition of 1725 for the second edition of 1730. He then made a number of additions to the second edition in order to create the third edition, which was published posthumously in 1744.27 Within Vico criticism, it is common to identify the three editions as the First New Science, the Second New Science, and the Third New Science. The standard edition is the third because that is where Vico most fully explains his ideas. All of the evidence of Joyce’s knowledge of the New Science suggests that the edition he knew was the Third New Science. To understand how Vico’s historical cycles operate within that edition, one must first gain a sense of the primary mode of history offered by the Third New Science. This can be done by looking at a section of the introduction to that edition in which Vico discusses his methodology:
25 “Fweets of Fin (_M,ViconianCycle_) with FW Text.” 26 Colum and Colum, Our Friend James Joyce, 123.
27 See Pompa, “Chronology,” xliii–xliv.
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16 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Herein, philosophy proposes to examine philology—that is, the study of all the things depending upon human choice, namely, the histories of languages, of customs, of deeds, and of peoples, in peace as well as in war…; thus, philosophy reduces philology to the form of a science by discovering therein the design of an ideal eternal history in accordance with which the histories of all nations run their temporal course.28
As can be seen from the end of that sentence, Vico’s view of history focuses on the histories of nations. He uses the term “nation” very loosely, and so the Roman Empire, the Hebrews, and France are all described as nations in the Third New Science. In the above quote, Vico observes that his approach to exploring the histories of nations draws upon two different disciplines: philology and philosophy. The offered definition of philology is extremely broad, and it shows that, when Vico considers the history of a nation from a philological perspective, he considers not merely the history of the language(s) of that nation, but rather the histories of “all the things” of that nation that depend on “human choice.” Those things include languages, customs, deeds, and peoples. Verene speaks of such things as the “certains or particulars of the human world.” He explains how Vico combines philology and philosophy when he goes on to observe that “In the form of thought of the New Science, philosophy, which by its nature and past history inclines towards the universal, is to join its mode of understanding to the philological understanding of these particulars.”29 Vico is able to unite the universal and the particular in the Third New Science because, in examining the histories of multiple nations through the framework of his conception of philology, he found within those histories “the design of an ideal eternal history in accordance with which the histories of all nations run their temporal course.”30 The primary mode of history in Vico’s major work is this “ideal eternal history.” It is “ideal” because, while it draws specific examples from particular nations, it is principally focused on the formal process of development shared by all nations. Within that process, the forms that characterize the larger development of a nation are mirrored in the forms that mark the development of its human institutions. Vico’s ideal eternal history is certainly, on one level, a theory of how nations develop, but there is also another level on which it is more than that. To see this, one must recognize how the word “eternal” functions within the term “ideal eternal history.” In addition to denoting Vico’s belief that the formal process of development undergone by all nations occurs across all time, it also points to the source of that process. Within the Third New Science, Vico argues that human history is shaped by providence, which he regards as “an attribute of the
28 Vico, The New Science, §7, 9. 29 Verene, Vico’s Science of Imagination, 57.
30 Vico, The New Science, §7, 9.
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The History of The Letter 17 true God.”31 What complicates this idea is that Vico also asserts that the “civil world has certainly been made by men.”32 To understand how he can hold both of these positions, one must consider his understanding of the relationship between providence and mankind. Several aspects of that understanding can be gleaned from this passage: Hence, this science must be a demonstration, so to speak, of the history of providence in what is actual, for it must be a history of the orders which providence has given (without any human discernment or counsel, and often contrary to what human beings have proposed) to this great city of humankind; the orders which providence has posited, although this world was created in time and is particular, are nevertheless universal and eternal.33
Vico here points out how different providence and mankind are. Whereas the former posits orders that are “universal and eternal,” the latter resides in a world that “was created in time and is particular.” He also highlights the lack of human influence on providence when he speaks of how providence functions “without any human discernment or counsel, and often contrary to what human beings have proposed.” Yet, one should not infer from the above quote that Vico regards providence and mankind as separate. Karl Löwith explains why: Modern critics of Vico’s notion of providence are indeed justified in saying that, with Vico, providence has become as natural, secular, and historical as if it did not exist at all. For in Vico’s “demonstration” of providence nothing remains of the transcendent and miraculous operation which characterizes the faith in providence from Augustine to Bossuet . . . . Vico’s God is so omnipotent that he can refrain from special interventions. He works completely in the natural course of history by its natural means: occasions, necessities, utilities.34
This being so, it is not contradictory for Vico to describe providence as the director of human history and mankind as the creator of the civil world. Within his philosophy, providence shapes human history from within by working through mankind and so both providence and mankind are, in different ways, responsible for that history and for the civil world that has resulted from it. On recognizing this, one can see that Vico’s ideal eternal history is not just a historical theory, but also a revelation of the course of providence. The most famous feature of Vico’s model of history is that it consists of cycles. This idea appeared in the First New Science, and it gradually evolved as Vico
31 Vico, §362, 126. 32 Vico, §331, 110. 34 Löwith, Meaning in History, 123–4.
33 Vico, §342, 117.
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18 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake revised his major work. Its final form is offered in the Third New Science and can be broadly summarized as follows: Providence acting through man causes the history of each nation to adhere to a fixed ideal structure. This structure consists of eras. Each era is divided into three ages: the age of gods, the age of heroes (semi-divine humans), and the age of men. Within an era, all nations pass through each of these three ages, but they do so at different speeds. As a nation moves through its three ages, it evolves in positive ways. The progress of the nation as a whole is mirrored in the progress of its human facets, such as its languages and its customs. At the end of each era, all nations collapse, and a new era begins.
This summary reflects what Vico says most of the time in the Third New Science. It does not reflect what Vico says all of the time, because, even within that work, Vico frequently changes how he defines his cycles. The inconsistencies are numerous and, while some can be easily resolved, others point to fundamental tensions within Vico’s ideas. For example, while Vico frequently speaks of his cycles as applying to all nations, he also often excludes the Hebrews from his historical scheme and defines that scheme as relating only to the gentile nations. The reason for this exclusion is that, to use Vico’s words, “The Hebraic religion was founded by the true God upon a prohibition against divination, the divination upon which arose all the gentile nations.”35 The word “divination” here points to Vico’s idea that, in the first age, the age of gods, the people of a nation collectively construct their god through the use of their imaginations. Vico argues that the Hebrews are different to the gentile nations because they never did this. They were prohibited from such “divination” because they had already discovered “the true God.” Since the Hebrews never carried out the act that causes the first age to begin, their history is not defined by the eras of the other nations. Vico is forced to enact, as Giuseppe Mazzotta puts it, a “drastic separation of Jewish history from the history of the gentiles” because, while he wants to suggest that mankind develops an ever-greater understanding of its world and itself as it passes through the cycles of an era, he also wants to define Christianity as offering access to the absolute truths of God.36 If he could separate religious knowledge from secular knowledge, then he could resolve this tension, but, for Vico, the goal is always to unite the human and the divine.
Thunderwords Despite the inconsistencies in Vico’s conception of history, Joyce repeatedly drew upon Vico’s historical cycles in writing his last novel. The Wake references those 35 Vico, §167, 83.
36 Mazzotta, The New Map of the World, 238. His italics.
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The History of The Letter 19 cycles in two main ways. The first is through its thunderwords. These massive words are all 100 letters long and many take the form of an amalgamation of different translations of one word or phrase. Here, for example, is the thunderword that appears on the first page of the novel: bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk! (FW 03.15–17)
As Roland McHugh observes, this word unites renderings of the words for “thunder” from languages including, to name only a few, Danish (“tordenen”), Greek (“brontaô”), Hindustani (“karak”), Japanese (“kaminari”), and Portuguese (“trovāo”).37 The Wake’s ten thunderwords all allude to Vico’s idea that it was the first storm after the great flood of the Book of Genesis or, as Vico usually terms it, the “Universal Flood” that caused the first nations to conceive of their first gods and so begin the era that is the first manifestation of Vico’s historical cycles.38 This connection explains both why a thunderword appears on the first page of the Wake and why the form of the thunderword recurs throughout the novel in different manifestations. To understand how Joyce’s thunderwords relate to the storm that launches Vico’s first era, one must examine the linguistic consequences of that storm. In starting the first era, that storm also starts the process of linguistic development within that era. Vico’s historical scheme argues that the languages of all nations develop across each era by passing through the same three forms: the first form of language is a “mute language of signs and objects which have a natural correspondence to the ideas which they are meant to signify”; the second consists of “heroic devices—that is, the similes, analogies, images, metaphors, and natural descriptions which made up the bulk of the heroic language found to have been spoken in the time when heroes reigned”; and the last form is “human language through words agreed upon by peoples.”39 Vico also uses the terms “articulate language” and “articulate speech” to describe the language of the third stage.40 While that form of language does not become dominant until the final linguistic stage of an era, the articulate language of the first era has its origins in the first storm after the universal flood. According to Vico, in the aftermath of that crucial storm, as each nation began to conceive of its god, articulate language began to be formed through onomatopoeia: “And this Jove for the peoples of Latium was because of the crash of thunder originally called Ious; because of the crackle of lightning, he was, for the peoples of Greece, called Ζεύς [Zeus]; for the peoples of the Near East, because of the sound of burning fire, he was called Ur, from which 37 See FW 03.15–17. 38 Vico, The New Science, §43, 43. 39 Vico, §32, 26. 40 For “articulate language,” see, for example, Vico, §490, 189. For “articulate speech,” see, for instance, Vico, §560, 228.
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20 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake came Urim, the power of fire.” Vico goes on to assert that, after using onomatopoeia, those peoples began “forming human words with interjections—that is, articulate words under the impetus of violent passions, which in all languages are monosyllables.” This idea leads him to suggest that “when the start of the first lightning bolts awakened wonder in men, the first interjection came into being from the interjection of Jove, taking form in the word ‘pa!’ which was later retained in the duplication ‘papa!’ an interjection expressing wonder; hence came into being Jove’s title, ‘father of men and gods,’ and later, all the gods were called ‘fathers,’ all the goddesses ‘mothers.’ ”41 As Verene observes, the eighth thunderword points to Vico’s discussion of the interjections “pa!” and “papa!” because it begins “Pappappappa” (FW 332.05).42 The thunderwords also reference the idea that the first peoples tried to replicate the sounds of that seminal first storm because those words are mimetic of the sound of thunder. Yet, while the thunderwords certainly allude to Vico’s descriptions of the oral responses of the people of the first nations to the first storm after the universal flood, they are also quite different to those responses by virtue of their length. Whereas the thunderwords are all very long, the words and interjections by which the inhabitants of the first nations are said to have responded to the first storm after the universal flood are all very short. Consequently, if the thunderwords are to represent the oral responses of the people of the first nations to the key storm within Vico’s historical scheme, they must represent either a string of responses from one individual or the collective response of a group. The larger purpose of Joyce’s vast, multilingual thunderwords is to suggest that at the dawn of religion, and thereby history, all languages were one. Those words are consequently in keeping with the Wake’s numerous references to the myth of the Tower of Babel, a myth which posits a time when all the people of the earth spoke the same language. Indeed, the first thunderword begins by pointing to the Tower of Babel because it starts “bababadal” (FW 03.15). Joyce’s last novel repeatedly references the notion of an original linguistic unity because that is one of the models for the language of the Wake. In speaking to Mercanton, Joyce said of his last work, “All the languages are present, for they have not yet been separated.”43 Joyce did not derive the idea of an original universal language from Vico. As will be discussed, Vico did believe in the existence of “a mental language common to all nations,” but this mental language is a language of ideas. It is not, as Vico would put it, an articulate language, which is to say a spoken language that, to borrow from the OED, consists “of clearly distinguishable parts (usually words and syllables) capable of conveying meaning.”44
41 Vico, §447–8, 171–2. 42 Vico, §448, 172. Verene, Knowledge of Things Human and Divine, 9. 43 Mercanton, “The Hours of James Joyce,” 207. 44 “Articulate, Adj. and n.”
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The History of The Letter 21 One finds Vico disavowing the idea of an original universal language in his discussion of how, in the myth of the Tower of Babel, God stops the building of that tower by creating a “confusion of languages.” Within that discussion, Vico notes that “it was on account of this confusion of languages that the Fathers wished for the purity of a sacred, antediluvian language that gradually came to be lost.”45 As is evident from Vico’s use of the word “wished,” he does not believe in the idea that, at Babel, God transformed one original universal language into all the languages of the earth. His explanation of why this is the case rests on his idea that the gentile nations emerged after the universal flood through the sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. According to Vico, the Biblical account of the “confusion of languages” only refers to “the languages of the peoples of the Near East, among whom Shem propagated humankind.” He goes on to say that “for the nations in all the rest of the world, the need [for language] must have proceeded differently insofar as the races of Ham and Japheth must have been dispersed throughout the great forest of the earth in feral wandering for two hundred years,” and, during that period, those races were “deprived of any human speech.”46 In the sentences that follow, Vico depicts the storm that begins the first era of history as occurring after the end of that migration. Therefore, when the gentile nations began to develop their respective languages, those nations were already widely distributed and many were only just beginning to speak again. What’s more, even if the gentile nations had shared a common language, it would still not have been universal because it would not have included Hebrew.
Joycean Cycles Alongside thunderwords, the other principal means by which Joyce references Vico’s historical cycles in the Wake is through his own historical cycles, which are adaptations of those of Vico. It is a commonplace of Wake criticism to refer to the cycles that appear in that novel as Viconian cycles, but the structure of the Wake’s cycles is quite different to those described in the Third New Science. Therefore, I will refer to the cycles that appear in the Wake as Joycean cycles. Each such cycle consists of four short phrases. While Joyce’s cycles do not all share the same form, they do adhere to a common flexible structure. One can gain a sense of this structure by comparing one of the Joycean cycles within I.5’s discussion of love with two other such cycles from elsewhere in the novel: reberthing in remarriment out of dead seekness to devine previdence (FW 62.07)
45 Vico, The New Science, §62, 52.
46 Vico, §62, 52–3.
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22 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake The lightning look, the birding cry, awe from the grave, everflowing on the times. (FW 117.03–04) eggburst, eggblend, eggburial and hatch-as-hatch can (FW 614.32–3)
The first of the four parts of a Joycean cycle usually refers to birth, as in “reberthing,” or to storms. In the latter case, Joyce generally alludes to thunder. The word “eggburst” in the third example is intended to evoke the idea of a burst of thunder. However, there are also a few occasions on which he speaks of lightning, such as “The lighting look” in the second example. Part two of a Joycean cycle most often refers to marriage. The words “remarriment” and “eggblend” are both examples of this. The only exceptions occur when the second part instead points to the idea of auspices. An auspice is a sign from the heavens. Vico speaks extensively of auspices and, when he does so, the auspices he discusses normally derive from storms or the flights of birds. So as not to confuse the storms that offered auspices with the storm that created the first religions, when Joyce references auspices in the second part of a cycle, he always refers to birds. One can see an example of this in the phrase “the birding cry” in the second of the above cycles. The third part of the Joycean cycle points either directly to death, as in “out of dead seekness,” or indirectly via the notion of burial. The phrases “awe from the grave” and “eggburial” are both examples of the latter. The fourth and final part of a Joycean cycle usually takes one of two forms. It either gestures at the notion of divine providence or it points to the idea of recurrence by suggesting that a new cycle is about to begin. The term “devine providence” at the end of the first of the above cycles is an example of the former. The last part of the egg-themed cycle, “hatch-as-hatch can,” is an instance of the latter. One can learn a lot about how Joyce created his cycles by looking at the section of “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce” in which Beckett relates the four parts of Work in Progress to Vico’s historical cycles: Part 1 is a mass of past shadow, corresponding therefore to Vico’s first human institution, Religion, or to his Theocratic age, or simply to an abstraction—Birth. Part 2 is the lovegame of the children, corresponding to the second institution, Marriage, or to the Heroic age, or to an abstraction—Maturity. Part 3 is passed in sleep, corresponding to the third institution, Burial, or to the Human age, or to an abstraction—Corruption. Part 4 is the day beginning again, and corresponds to Vico’s Providence, or to the transition from the Human to the Theocratic, or to an abstraction—Generation.47
47 Beckett, “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” 7–8.
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The History of The Letter 23 To make the parts of Work in Progress connect to the parts of Vico’s cycles, Beckett radically reworks those cycles, creating connections that don’t exist in Vico’s thought and adding entirely new features. He then tries to force his versions of those cycles together with the parts of Work in Progress. The result is a passage that misrepresents Joyce’s last work as much as it does Vico’s ideal eternal history. Beckett’s correspondences do, however, frequently describe the structure of Joyce’s cycles. For example, he relates part one of Work in Progress to birth, part two to marriage, part three to death and burial, and part four to providence. Had Beckett spoken of the parts of Joyce’s cycles rather than those of Work in Progress, these correspondences would have been broadly correct. When one recognizes this and one recalls that Joyce directed Beckett’s essay, one can see that the above quote offers an insight into how Joyce adapted Vico’s cycles to create his own. Beckett begins each of his descriptions of the first three parts of Work in Progress by connecting the part in question to a “human institution.” The institution of the first part is “Religion,” that of the second is “Marriage,” and that of the third is “Burial.”48 The idea of the three human institutions has two sources within the Third New Science. At the start of that work, Vico speaks of the early “divine things” of the gentiles, by which he means practices such as offering sacrifices to help them “understand auguries with a view to following divine warnings.” These “divine things” gradually gave way to “human things.” The first human thing is said to be marriage and the second burial.49 When Beckett speaks of the three human institutions, he also draws upon Vico’s suggestion that there are three customs that are shared by all nations: We observe that all the nations—whether barbarous or humane, and in spite of being founded in vastly different ways on account of immense distances from one another in place and time—are guardians of three human customs. They all have some religion, they all contract solemn marriages, and they all bury their dead.50
This is where Vico most directly defines religion, marriage, and burial as a triad. The institutions that Beckett connects to the first three parts of Work in Progress relate to the first three parts of Joyce’s cycles, which often reference religion, marriage, and burial. In the case of the first part of a Joycean cycle, the reference to religion is usually made through the use of storm imagery. This is because, for Vico, it was at the moment at which “the earth, after it had dried out from the dampness of the Universal Flood, could send into the air the dry evaporation which can generate the lightning” that the religions of the first era were born.51
48 Beckett, “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” 7–8. 49 Vico, The New Science, §10–12, 11–12. 50 Vico, §333, 110–11.
51 Vico, §62, 53.
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24 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake As well as connecting each of the first three parts of Work in Progress to an institution, Beckett also links each of those parts to an age. The first is associated with the “Theocratic age,” the second with the “Heroic age,” and the last with the “Human age.”52 While the three ages that he mentions are clearly the three ages that Vico presents as defining each era, the titles that Beckett gives those ages suggest that he is particularly drawing upon the “Three Kinds of Governance” section of book four of the Third New Science.53 In aligning the first three parts of Work in Progress with three institutions and three ages, Beckett suggests that the three institutions correspond to the three ages. One can understand how the Third New Science might lead one to such an interpretation. Vico says that religion, marriage, and burial came into being successively, and it stands to reason that the institution of religion should be the institution of the first age, the theocratic age. Yet, despite this, Beckett is wrong to suggest that the three ages correspond to the three human institutions. The Third New Science clearly states that marriage and burial were both carried out in the first age by those who “founded and divided up the first domains of the earth.”54 While the first three parts of Joyce’s cycles relate to Beckett’s three human institutions, they do not correspond to Beckett’s three ages to the same extent. As noted, the thunder and the lightning that can often be found in the first part of a Joycean cycle point to the birth of religion, which causes the first age and so begins the whole cycle. Yet it is conspicuous that Joyce’s cycles barely reference the other two ages. Even within the flexibility of those cycles, there is little space for the age of heroes or the age of men. The only time that a Joycean cycle points to either is when its second part uses bird imagery to reference the notion of auspices. Joyce seems to have associated auspices with the age of heroes. One of the Vico notes in notebook VI.B.1 reads “auspices heroes/ gentiles dark/ Livius middle.”55 For Vico, there is a link between auspices and the age of heroes in that avian auspices play an important role in that age, but such auspices do not have a special connection to the heroic age, and the idea of learning the will of the divine from the flights of birds actually begins in the age of gods.56 Consequently, Joyce’s references to auspices within his cycles are not the most effective means of alluding to the age of heroes. That Joyce should not point more directly to Vico’s three ages within the cycles of the Wake is rather surprising given how important Vico’s ages are to his ideal history and how strongly those ages feature in the discussions 52 Beckett, “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” 7–8. 53 Vico, The New Science, §925–7, 367. 54 Vico, §13, 13. 55 VI.B.1: 96; JJA 29:50. The Brepols edition of VI.B.1 suggests that “Livius” refers to the Roman historian Titus Livius but does not provide a source for the quote. (Joyce, The Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo. Notebook VI. B.1, 138). 56 In discussing how the first storm after the universal flood inspired the first religions of that era, Vico speaks of how, at that time, the “races of Ham and Japheth” struck upon “a kind of divination by which they divined what was to come from thunder and lightning and the flight of eagles, which they believed to be the birds of Jove” (Vico, The New Science, §62, 53).
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The History of The Letter 25 of Vico that Joyce knew. In not privileging the major cycle within Vico’s thought, Joyce shows one of the most important ways in which his priorities differ from those of Vico. Joyce’s cycles do not seek to define the ages of eras. Beckett points to the unit of time on which Joyce’s cycles most often focus when he connects each of the first three parts of Work in Progress to “an abstraction.” The three abstractions are “Birth,” “Maturity,” and “Corruption.”57 Given that the third part of Work in Progress is also associated with burial, the third abstraction, “Corruption,” clearly denotes death. Therefore, these three abstractions together chart the course of a life. It is not easy to find a basis for Beckett’s abstractions within Vico’s thought, which makes sense given that Vico’s principal concern was not the lives of individuals, but rather the histories of nations. Beyond the aforementioned link between corruption and burial, the most effective means of tying Beckett’s abstractions to Vico’s ideas is to focus on the first abstraction, “Birth,” and to view it as a reference to the fact that Vico frequently compares the inhabitants of the first age to children. For example, in the introduction to the Third New Science, Vico observes that the “earliest men (those in the childhood of an emerging humankind) believed that heaven was no higher than the tops of the mountains, just as even now children believe it to be little higher than the roofs of their houses.”58 Despite the lack of correlation between Beckett’s abstractions and Vico’s philosophy, those abstractions are very impor tant to Joyce’s cycles. The first and third parts of those cycles frequently refer to birth and death. The second parts of those cycles don’t fit with Beckett’s abstractions as well because, instead of pointing to maturity, they most often allude to marriage. Yet one could certainly make the argument that, for Joyce, marriage and maturity are related. The contrast between the immature Stephen and the married Bloom in Ulysses very much suggests this. After offering three human institutions, three ages, and three abstractions, Beckett faces a challenge: Vico was obsessed with triads, but Joyce’s final work has four parts. Consequently, Beckett has to create an additional fourth stage for each of the progressions that he outlines. There must be a fourth human institution, a fourth age, and a fourth abstraction. Taking his cue from the idea that the final part of Work in Progress “is the day beginning again,” Beckett focuses on the notion of recurrence in describing the fourth stages of his progressions. The fourth abstraction is “Generation,” which is very similar to the first abstraction, “Birth.”59 Similarly, in defining the age of the fourth stage Beckett goes back to the start. The final age is said to be “the transition from the Human to the Theocratic.”60 This is clearly not an age in itself, but rather, as Beckett terms it, the “transition” from one age to the next. It is therefore unclear whether Beckett’s
57 Beckett, “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” 7–8. 59 Beckett, “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” 8.
58 Vico, The New Science, §4, 7. 60 Beckett, “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” 8.
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26 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake progressions actually have four stages or whether the final stage is just Vico’s ricorso, the return to the beginning of the cycle. Beckett defines his fourth human institution as “Vico’s Providence.”61 One can understand why Beckett speaks of providence as a “human institution” by looking at his description of Vico’s conception of providence: This is not Bossuet’s Providence, transcendental and miraculous, but immanent and the stuff itself of human life, working by natural means. Humanity is its work in itself. God acts on her, but by means of her. Humanity is divine, but no man is divine.62
The source of this passage lies in Michelet’s preface to the second edition of his Selected Works of Vico: The text of the New Science is this: Humanity is its own work. God acts upon it, but by it. Humanity is divine, but no man is divine.63
Michelet influenced Joyce’s understanding of Vico, and so it makes sense for Beckett’s Joyce-directed essay to quote him. At the same time, in considering the above quote, it is important to keep in mind that Michelet’s humanist conception of Vico did not entirely align with Joyce’s understanding of Vico. This will be discussed in greater detail later in the chapter. Beckett’s description of the fourth part of Work in Progress broadly applies to the fourth part of a Joycean cycle. That description points to the notions of recurrence and providence, and these are the notions most commonly referenced in the fourth part of a Joycean cycle. By adapting Vico’s cycles, Joyce was able to create cycles of his own that primarily represent his conception of historical recurrence. While that conception was no doubt influenced by Vico, it is not that of Vico. In Joyce’s works, when history recurs, what recurs is the forms of characters and narratives rather than, as was the case for Vico, the forms that define the ages of all nations. One can see this clearly in all of Joyce’s novels. Stephen Dedalus shares certain characteristics with the Greek referenced in his last name. Leopold Bloom has encounters which in different ways and to different extents parallel those of Odysseus. Within the overdetermined realm of the Wake, every major character and narrative has multiple historical antecedents. It therefore makes complete sense that Joyce’s cycles should principally be cycles of individual lives. In suggesting that lives across time are defined by the three basic events of birth, marriage, and death, Joyce’s cycles point directly to one of the ideas that underpins all of Joyce’s representations of 61 Beckett, “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” 8. 62 Beckett, “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” 7. 63 Fisch, “Introduction,” 78. For the French original see Michelet, “Preface,” 3.
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The History of The Letter 27 historical recurrence, that of the transhistorical unity of human experience. Thanks largely to the prevalence of Bruno’s principle of the coincidence of contraries within the Wake, such gestures at larger unities are common in Joyce’s last novel. Having said all that, one must still be careful about how one characterizes Joyce’s understanding of historical recurrence. To borrow a phrase from Ulysses, what one finds in Joyce’s novels is “history repeating itself with a difference” (U 16.1525–6). Within Joyce’s conception of historical recurrence, as in that of Vico, the repetitions are formal and so manifestations of the same form can vary greatly. This idea is demonstrated by Joyce’s cycles because, while all derive their forms from a common flexible structure, no two are the same. Joyce’s recognition that the repetitions of history are also marked by difference shows there was a counterpoint within his thought to the notion of the transhistorical unity of human experience. If not the major note, it is nonetheless present. In thinking about how Joyce’s understanding of historical recurrence incorporates the notion of difference, it is worth recalling this anecdote from Mercanton: During lunch on a narrow terrace overhanging the lake, he [Joyce] showed me a photograph in the Irish Times of O’Connell’s statue in Dublin. In it, by chance and probably without his being aware, a tramp leaned with his back against the base in the same pose as the tribune, his arms crossed, his head bent forward, heavy with energy and eloquence. Joyce was delighted with it. “Altogether the meaning of Work in Progress: history repeats itself comically, this is our funnaminal world.”64
In Portrait, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake, legendary figures reappear in the Dublin of Joyce’s day in all-too-human guises, and this is comic to the extent that it is bathetic. At the same time, it is worth noting how, in the above quote, after asserting that “history repeats itself comically,” Joyce goes on to speak of our “funnaminal world.” While the word “funnaminal” evokes “fun” and “phenomenal,” it derives, as Fweet observes, from a note in notebook VI.B.32 that reads “fun nominal.”65 There is therefore a sense in which to speak of a “funnaminal world” is to speak of world in which there is not much fun at all. This notion is relevant to the above quote because it points to the fact that there is also a certain tragic quality to the idea that “history repeats itself comically.”66 Within that version of historical development, each repetition is always necessarily in some significant sense less than its original. Were it not, there would be no bathos.
64 Mercanton, “The Hours of James Joyce,” 234. The phrase “our funnaminal world” appears in FW 244.13. 65 “Fweets of Fin (^244) with FW Text.” VI.B.32: 138; JJA 36:383. 66 Mercanton, “The Hours of James Joyce,” 234.
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28 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake The idea that the repetitions of history are comic does not derive from Vico. Indeed, Pompa notes that, in the later editions of the New Science, the “considerable optimism” of the first edition gives way to a “considerable pessimism” as Vico “actively considers the possibility of a further recurrence of the whole [historical] pattern, at least in the Europe of his day.”67 This being so, one can at least say that the tragic strand within Joyce’s predominantly comic historical vision is also present within Vico’s historical scheme. Just as Joyce’s cycles help him to argue for his conception of history, so they also aid him in pushing back against a famous historical model with which he disagreed. That model is encapsulated in the “Nestor” episode of Ulysses when Mr. Deasy asserts that “All human history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God” (U 2.380–1). Don Gifford notes that “In Mr. Deasy’s mouth this expresses the Victorian faith in the inevitability of man’s moral and spiritual progress.”68 Joyce’s cycles do not preclude the possibility of progress because they are formal cycles and so successive manifestations of a form can progress in their matter. That being said, Joyce’s idea that history repeats itself comically is in many ways at odds with, to use Gifford’s words, “the Victorian faith in the inevitability of man’s moral and spiritual progress.”69 What principally differentiates Joyce’s cycles from Mr. Deasy’s historical model is that they directly challenge all teleological conceptions of history. There is no indication within Joyce’s cycles that they move toward a particular end. In fact, as mentioned, the fourth part of a Joycean cycle often suggests that that cycle will go on recurring. What’s more, since Joyce’s cycles appear in a cyclical novel, there is a sense in which they will collectively continue to recur. One should not, however, assume from the fact that Joyce’s cycles challenge the model of history offered by Mr. Deasy that those cycles are entirely opposed to the Christian conception of history. When Joyce’s cycles don’t end by suggesting their recurrence, they usually conclude with a reference to providence. This is one of the most prominent signs of their Viconian heritage. That being said, if Joyce’s cycles are being guided by providence, it is a very different form of providence to that which directs Vico’s cycles. The force behind the historical scheme of the New Science has no discernible sense of humor. Now that we have considered how and why Joyce adapted Vico’s cycles, we can return to the two previously quoted Joycean cycles at the top of page 117. Here again is the paragraph in which they appear: So hath been, love: tis tis: and will be: till wears and tears and ages. Thief us the night, steal we the air, shawl thiner liefest, mine! Here, Ohere, insult the fair! Traitor, bad hearer, brave! The lightning look, the birding cry, awe from the grave, everflowing on the times. Feueragusaria iordenwater; now godsun shine 67 Pompa, “Introduction,” xxxvi. 68 Gifford, Ulysses Annotated, 39. 69 Mercanton, “The Hours of James Joyce,” 234. Gifford, Ulysses Annotated, 39.
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The History of The Letter 29 on menday’s daughter; a good clap, a fore marriage, a bad wake, tell hell’s well; such is manowife’s lot of lose and win again, like he’s gruen quhiskers on who’s chin again, she plucketed them out but they grown in again. So what are you going to do about it? O dear! (FW 117.03–09)
The first cycle is in the middle of the paragraph: “The lightning look, the birding cry, awe from the grave, everflowing on the times.” As previously discussed, within the four parts of that cycle, one finds a storm, auspices, burial, and the suggestion that the cycle will continue on forever. The second cycle can be found in the sentence that follows: “a good clap, a fore marriage, a bad wake, tell hell’s well.” Here one can see a storm, marriage, burial, and another suggestion of the eternity of the cycle. The phrase “tell hell’s well” sounds like “till hell’s well.” By definition, hell will never be well and so the phrase suggests that the cycle will continue indefinitely. While these two cycles follow the conventions of the Joycean cycle, they are also informed by the subject of the paragraph in which they appear, love. In the first sentences of the paragraph, the narrator speaks of the eternity of love and references Tristan and Iseult. In this context, “the lightning look” that opens the first cycle can be understood as the look of love. It is followed by the phrase “the birding cry.” The earlier reference to Tristan and Iseult suggests that this phrase alludes to the fact that, in Joseph Bédier’s version of the legend of Tristan and Iseult, a version that Joyce knew, the narrator speaks of how, when Tristan and Iseult lived together in the forest, Tristan would often call the birds of the forest to him through song.70 This reference to when the two lived together is quite fitting given that the second parts of Joycean cycles are often concerned with marriage. The first cycle ends by suggesting that the cycle it has presented will be “everflowing on the times” and so it makes sense that what follows contains a recapitulation of that cycle (FW 117.03–04). The next sentence begins with the phrase “Feueragusaria iordenwater” (FW 117.04). As McHugh observes, this phrase references all four classical elements. “Feuer” is the German for “fire,” “aria” is the Italian for “air,” “iorden” points to “Jorden,” which is the Danish for “the earth,” and the second half of the second word is “water” (AFW 117). These allusions to elements point back to the preceding cycle: “The lightning look, the birding cry, awe from the grave, everflowing on the times” (FW 117.03). This is because lightning strikes cause fires, birds fly in the air, graves are in the earth, and water flows. In connecting the four parts of that cycle to the four classical elements, Joyce suggests that his cycles are essential and natural. 70 See Bédier, The Romance of Tristan and Iseult, 94–5. For Joyce’s knowledge of Bédier’s version, see Hayman, “Tristan and Isolde in Finnegans Wake: A Study of the Sources and Evolution of a Theme,” 93–112.
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30 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake The clause that follows “Feueragusaria iordenwater” reads: “now godsun shine on menday’s daughter” (FW 117.04–05). The “now” at the start of this clause marks a new beginning. While the prior phrase points back to the previous Joycean cycle, this clause sets up the next. If one reads “godsun” as “good sun,” one can interpret the clause as a whole as an expression of hope for the growth and success of a young woman. At the same time, if one reads “godsun” as “godson,” one can read that clause as a request to a young man to smile at a young woman. Both interpretations are supported by the fact that the first two elements of the cycle that follows, “a good clap, a fore marriage,” suggest that a man and a woman have succeeded in creating a relationship (FW 117.05). In this context, “a good clap” primarily suggests sex, but it also offers an ironic, not to mention comic, reference to gonorrhea. By considering how the two cycles in this paragraph relate to its central topic, one can see that these cycles are not conventional Joycean cycles. The span of time that is most often covered by a Joycean cycle is that of a life. The first part of a Joycean cycle often points to birth and the third to death. The two cycles in this paragraph, however, begin not with a birth, but rather with the start of a relationship. Consequently, instead of telling the story of a life, both tell the story of a love. In keeping with the earlier references to Tristan and Iseult, both cycles define love as ending with death. Separation seems not to be an option. The idea that the two cycles in this paragraph depict relationships is reinforced immediately after the second cycle when the narrator characterizes it for the reader: “such is manowife’s lot of lose and win again” (FW 117.06). In speaking of “manowife’s lot,” the narrator points to a term for a married heterosexual couple, “man and wife.” The word “manowife” suggests “man or wife,” and so the “lot” of “manowife” can be that of a heterosexual husband or wife. That lot is said to be to “lose and win again” (FW 117.06). Since there must be a relationship before it can be lost, the process outlined here is a cyclical process of gain and loss: marriage to a person of the opposite sex, loss of that partner, marriage to another person of the opposite sex. This idea is illustrated by the narrator in the remainder of the sentence: “like he’s gruen quhiskers on who’s chin again, she plucketed them out but they grown in again” (FW 117.07–08). While the comparison between relationships and facial hair is of course humorous in nature, it does suggest how commonplace it is for heterosexual men and women to gain and lose spouses. The paragraph ends by pointing to the inevitability of the recurrence of the described cycle: “So what are you going to do about it? O dear!” (FW 117.08–09). Just as the cycle of life, the cycle to which Joycean cycles most often point, must necessarily continue to turn, so must the cycle of relationships, and this is true of all relationships. The paragraph speaks of heterosexual marriage, but its ideas apply more broadly. Love and loss will always follow one another, just as life and death do.
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The History of The Letter 31 The narrator’s discourse on love continues into the next paragraph: If juness she saved! Ah ho! And if yulone he pouved! The olold stoliolum! (FW 117.10–11)
As McHugh points out, the first and third of these exclamations derive from an epigram by Henri Estienne, “Si jeunesse savait! Si viellesse pouvait!” (If youth but knew! If age but could!) (AFW 117). While this epigram can be applied broadly, the version that appears here points to heterosexual relationships, because the first half contains the female pronoun “she” and the second features the male pronoun “he” (FW 117.10). If one takes it as relating to relationships more widely, the epigram suggests that as one’s knowledge of love increases, so one’s capacity for love decreases. The notion of love here functions in both its emotional and physical senses. One can therefore relate the epigram back to the ideas of the previous paragraph because it suggests one of the ways in which relationships are defined by processes of gain and loss. The fourth exclamation in the above quote is “The olold stoliolum!” (FW 117.10–11). This is a reference to an 1866 hymn by Katherine Hankey titled “Tell Me the Old, Old Story.” That hymn begins: Tell me the old, old story, Of unseen things above; Of Jesus and His glory, Of Jesus and His love.71
Given the context in which the phrase “The olold stoliolum!” (FW 117.10–11) appears, the story in question is clearly that of romantic love rather than divine love.
Quinet, Michelet, Vico, and Bruno The next sentence initially looks as though it will explain the passage of that story, but, on examining the terms within it, one can see that its purpose is rather to bring the discussion back to Vico: From quiqui quinet to michemiche chelet and a jambebatiste to a brulobrulo! (FW 117.11–12)
This sentence has four parts. The third, “a jambebatiste,” references Giambattista Vico, and the other three parts all point to thinkers that Joyce associated with 71 Hankey, The Old, Old Story, 9.
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32 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Vico. The first part, “quiqui quinet,” relates to the French historian Edgar Quinet, the second, “michemiche chelet,” points to Michelet, and the last, “brulobrulo,” alludes to a key Wakean philosopher, Bruno. As will be shown, Joyce’s reasons for relating those thinkers to Vico were quite different. I will begin with Bruno. The idea that Joyce considered the philosophies of Vico and Bruno to be connected is presented in Beckett’s Joyce-directed essay, “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce.” However, Beckett seems not to have grasped the connection that Joyce saw, and so his discussion of the matter is awkward and muddled. Beckett outlines Bruno’s famous principle of the coincidence of the contraries and then asserts that it was “from these considerations” that “Vico evolved a Science and Philosophy of History.”72 Yet Beckett does not explain how the principle of the coincidence of contraries informs Vico’s understanding of history, and he provides no evidence that Vico was aware of Bruno. That Beckett should not be able to produce any such evidence is unsurprising. A number of critics have argued for Vico’s knowledge of Bruno. For example, Mazzotta reads the phrase “infinite worlds” in the last paragraph of book five of the Third New Science as an “anonymous allusion” to Bruno’s De l’Infinito, Universo e Mondi (On the Infinite Universe and Worlds).73 However, the general critical consensus is that, while parallels can certainly be drawn between the ideas of Vico and Bruno, there is no clear evidence of Vico’s knowledge of Bruno.74 To gain a sense of why Joyce considered Vico and Bruno to be connected, it is helpful to begin with Joyce’s conception of Bruno’s philosophy during the writing of the Wake. In a 1925 letter to Weaver, Joyce defines that philosophy as “a kind of dualism—every power in nature must evolve an opposite in order to realise itself and opposition brings reunion etc etc” (Letters I, 226). As will be discussed in Chapter 3, Joyce drew this rather idiosyncratic interpretation of the Brunoian coincidence of contraries from Samuel Taylor Coleridge.75 Within this interpretation, Bruno is presented as arguing that “every power in nature” is locked in a continuous, self- generating cycle of union and separation. Joyce considered Bruno’s philosophy to be connected to that of Vico because the cycle of union and separation is of central importance to the Wake’s Vico-inspired cycles. As mentioned, those cycles frequently contain references to the union of marriage and the separation of death. When one knows why Joyce connected Vico and Bruno, one can understand Beckett’s difficulty in grasping this connection. It derives from parallels between Joyce’s adaptations of Vico’s cycles and Joyce’s Coleridgean conception of Bruno’s coincidence of contraries. One could not find this connection by simply comparing the works of Vico and Bruno. 72 Beckett, “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” 6. 73 Mazzotta, The New Map of the World, 219. Vico, The New Science, §1096, 440. 74 See, for example, Mali, The Legacy of Vico in Modern Cultural History, 128. 75 For the original, see Coleridge, The Friend, 1:97.
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The History of The Letter 33 The sentence that relates Vico to Bruno also links him to Michelet. That Michelet should appear in this sentence is understandable given how much evidence there is of the importance of the translations within his Oeuvres Choisies de Vico (Selected Works of Vico) to Joyce’s understanding of Vico. This evidence takes several different forms. Joyce encouraged friends like Padraic Colum and Constantine Curran to read Michelet to understand Vico.76 Joyce took notes from Michelet’s introduction to Vico, an essay titled “Discourse sur le système et la vie de Vico” (A Discourse on the System and Life of Vico), in notebook VI.B.12.77 Joyce referenced Michelet in a letter to Weaver explaining a passage from I.1. that had been published in transition.78 Furthermore, as Mali observes, in Our Exagmination both Beckett and Stuart Gilbert quote Michelet’s preface to the 1835 second edition of Selected Works of Vico.79 This is the edition that Joyce owned. We know this from Curran, who explains that Joyce lent him a copy of “Michelet’s translation of the Scienza Nuova” and directed his attention toward particular passages within it. Curran includes those passages in his account of the event, and the first of those passages is from the preface to the second edition of Selected Works of Vico.80 Since that book contains several works by Vico and not just the Third New Science, Joyce could have drawn from it a broad understanding of Vico’s philosophy. However, the fact that Joyce had a copy of that book does not mean that he read the whole thing. As Joyce’s notes frequently attest, he was not the kind of reader who always goes from cover to cover. The translation of the Third New Science in the edition of Selected Works of Vico that Joyce owned is less than faithful. Like Joyce, Michelet adapted Vico’s ideas to suit his own interests and views. What Michelet liked about Vico was his humanism. In both Michelet’s introductory essay on Vico and his preface to the second edition of Selected Works of Vico, he emphasizes this aspect of Vico’s philosophy. One can see this in the section of the latter that Beckett references in his Our Exagmination essay: The text of the New Science is this: Humanity is its own work. God acts upon it, but by it. Humanity is divine, but no man is divine.81
76 See Colum and Colum, Our Friend James Joyce, 122, and Curran, James Joyce Remembered, 87. 77 See VI.B.12: 13–15; JJA 31:232–3. For a discussion of these notes, see Treip, “Recycled Historians: Michelet on Vico in VI.B.12,” 61–72. 78 In a 1927 letter to Weaver, Joyce notes that the phoenix is “the symbol used by Michelet to explain Vico’s theory” (Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce, 321.) Joyce’s reference is to this sentence from Michelet’s “A Discourse on the System and Life of Vico”: “Finally, when the nations seek to destroy themselves, they are dispersed in solitude . . . and the phoenix of society is reborn from the ashes” (Michelet, “A Discourse on the System and Life of Vico,” 42). 79 Mali, The Legacy of Vico in Modern Cultural History, 75. 80 Curran, James Joyce Remembered, 87. 81 Fisch, “Introduction,” 78. For Beckett’s version, see Beckett, “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce,” 7.
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34 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake As a humanist, Michelet was not a supporter of the idea that history adheres to ideal eternal cycles. He makes this clear in the opening of his 1834 essay “Introduction à l'histoire universelle” (“Introduction to World History”): With the world, a war began that will end with the world, and not before: the war of man against nature, of spirit against matter, of liberty against fatality. History is nothing but the story of this endless struggle . . . . If this introduction achieves its aim, history will be revealed as an enduring protest, as the progressive triumph of liberty.82
For Michelet, history is linear rather than cyclical, and the force that principally drives it forward is not providence but man. This movement occurs when man protests, when man struggles, when man battles for liberty. And, while the war in which man is engaged will never end, Michelet does believe that man is winning. He speaks of history as revealing the “progressive triumph of liberty.” The larger historical vision offered by Michelet placed him in many ways at odds with Vico. It was a vision founded on progress and human freedom rather than historical cycles and divine influence. At the same time, he had too much respect for Vico to simply dismiss the ideal eternal history of the Third New Science, and so he tried to achieve a compromise of sorts. As Stephen Kippur observes, “Michelet suggested that if one had to view ‘the movement of humanity as an eternal rotation, corso, ricorso’ one should remember ‘that if humanity marches in circles, the circles are always expanding.’ ”83 This is not an illegitimate reading. Vico’s cycles do allow the possibility of progress. However, his discussions of those cycles make it very clear that he was more focused on how ages are similar in form than on how they differ in matter. As can be seen, while Michelet tries to accommodate Vico’s cycles, what he really values in Vico’s conception of history is the notion that humanity has shaped its own history. The cycles of the Wake therefore illustrate one of the ways in which Joyce’s sense of the value of Vico’s thought differed from that of Michelet. The best account of Joyce’s interest in Michelet’s Selected Works of Vico comes from Curran. As mentioned, when Joyce lent Curran his copy of that book, he highlighted a number of passages within it.84 Of those passages, it is the second that is the most revealing: Despite the obscurity that results from this, despite the continual use of a strange terminology that the author often neglects to explain, there is in the system as a
82 Michelet, “Introduction to World History,” 25. 83 Kippur, Jules Michelet: A Study of Mind and Sensibility, 33–4. Kippur cites Jules Michelet, Œuvres completes, Vol. 2 (1828–1831) (Paris: Flammarion, 1972), 342. 84 See Curran, James Joyce Remembered, 86–7.
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The History of The Letter 35 whole presented in this manner an imposing grandeur and a dark poetry that makes one think of that of Dante.85
Michelet here defends Vico while acknowledging the strangeness of his language. It is all too clear why the author of Finnegans Wake would have been drawn to such a defense. Joyce’s last novel is certainly a work of “dark poetry” that contains “a strange terminology that the author often neglects to explain.” That being said, what is most important here is the comparison that Michelet draws between Vico and Dante. As Robert Flint explains, Michelet had good cause to compare Vico to Dante: [Vico] was, we must not forget, a poet. He wrote a great deal of poetry. Verses from his pen are to be found in almost all of the poetical collections of his age. It was to a large extent by writing poetry that he made a livelihood. And the general opinion of his contemporaries as to his poetry was highly favorable.86
This knowledge helps to explain both the stylized nature of Vico’s prose and the importance of poetry within his philosophy. The title of Beckett’s Joyce-directed essay “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce” suggests that Joyce concurred with Michelet’s comparison between Dante and Vico. Given Joyce’s reverence for Dante, this is quite the compliment to Vico. In considering Joyce’s relationship to Vico, it is extremely useful to know how Michelet mediated that relationship. While Joyce’s conception of Vico was not entirely that of Michelet, Michelet influenced Joyce’s understanding of Vico by offering a vision of that philosopher in which Joyce was able to see much of himself. This being so, it makes sense that Michelet is referenced in the sentence in I.5 in which Joyce points to those who informed his conception of Vico. The final figure referenced in that sentence is Quinet. I will hold back from discussing Quinet for just a moment because the reference to Quinet in that sentence is not just an indicator that Joyce considered Quinet’s ideas to relate to those of Vico; it also gives the reader an early warning that one of the Wake’s so-called Quinet sentences is approaching. The second sentence after that which alludes to Quinet is just such a sentence. Before we can get to that sentence, however, we must first consider the one before it: It is told in sounds in utter that, in signs so adds to, in universal, in polygluttural, in each auxiliary neutral idiom, sordomutics, florilingua, sheltafocal, flayflutter, a con’s cubane, a pro’s tutute, strassarab, ereperse and anythongue athall. (FW 117.12–16)
85 Michelet, “A Discourse on the System and Life of Vico,” 26.
86 Flint, Vico, 42.
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36 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake The narrator is here discussing how the old, old story of love is told. He explains that it is told in sounds and signs and a wide variety of different languages. The word “universal” suggests a universal language, but, as McHugh points out, Universal is also the name of an artificial language (AFW 117). Similarly, the phrase “each auxiliary neutral idiom” refers to Idiom Neutral, another artificial language (FW 117.13–14. AFW 117). McHugh also explains that “sordomutics” is a play on “sordo,” the Spanish for “deaf,” and “mutus,” the Latin for “mute” (FW 117.14. AFW 117). The word “sordomutics” (FW 117.14) therefore suggests languages for those who can neither hear nor speak such as sign language. “Florilingua” is the language of flowers and, to quote McHugh once again, “sheltafocal” means “word of Shelta” in Shelta, which is one of the languages of the Irish Traveler communities (FW 117.14. AFW 117). As the list progresses, the items within it stop being conventionally linguistic in nature. “Flayflutter” suggests both the gentle movement of a fluttering fly and the violence of flaying (FW 117.14). The formally similar terms “con’s cubane” and “pro’s tutute” (FW 117.15) point to the words “concubine” and “prostitute” (FW 117.15). “Strassarab” alludes to the term “street arab,” which, in the early twentieth century, was a term for a homeless child (FW 117.15.). “Ereperse,” in the context of the Wake, evokes Persse O’Reilly, the title character of the ballad that appears at the end of I.2 (FW 117.15). However, the final and most important term in the list, “anythongue athall,” very much reflects its earlier concern with language (FW 117.15–16). The portmanteau “anythongue” suggests both “anything” and “any tongue.” The difference between these two allows the sentence to make its main point. The prior terms in the list argue that the story of love is not just told in every language of sounds or signs. It is also told through actions, occupations, identities, and many other less conventional forms of language. Indeed, as the final term suggests, it can be told through anything at all. Since the story of love transcends all forms of language, it is best understood as an ideal structure that can be expressed in an infinite number of ways. This is exactly what was highlighted in the previous paragraph when the story of love was twice presented in the form of a Joycean cycle. However, in uniting “anything” and “any tongue” in “anythongue,” Joyce offers a reminder that for the story of love, or indeed any ideal structure, to be expressed, it must be expressed through some sort of language. Even the Wake can’t convey ideal structures in their pure forms. Consequently, the term “anythongue” points to a paradox of sorts: to express that which transcends language, one must use language. As I.5 goes on to show, this idea has important consequence for both Joyce’s and Vico’s cycles. In the large sentence that follows, the narrator continues to discuss the story of love: Since nozzy Nanette tripped palmyways with Highho Harry there’s a spurtfire turf a’kind o’kindling when oft as the souff souff blows her peaties up and a
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The History of The Letter 37 claypot wet for thee, my Sitys, and talkatalka tell Tibbs has eve: and whathough (revilous life proving aye the death of ronaldses when winpower wine has bucked the kick on poor won man) billiousness has been billiousness during milliums of millenions and our mixed racings have been giving two hoots or three jeers for the grape, vine and brew and Pieter’s in Nieuw Amsteldam and Paoli’s where the poules go and rum smelt his end for him and he dined off sooth american (it would give one the frier even were one a normal Kettlelicker) this oldworld epistola of their weatherings and their marryings and their buryings and their natural selections has combled tumbled down to us fersch and made-at-all-hours like an ould cup on tay. (FW 117.16–30)
This is where Quinet comes in. The above sentence is one of the Wake’s six different adaptations of a sentence that Quinet wrote in his introduction to Ideés sur la Philosophie de l’Histoire de l’Humanité, his 1827 French translation of Johann Gottfried von Herder’s Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man). This is Quinet’s original sentence: Aujourd'hui, comme aux jours de Pline et de Columelle, la jacinthe se plaît dans les Gaules, la pervenche en Illyrie, la marguerite sur les ruines de Numance, et pendant qu'autour d'elles les villes ont changé de maîtres et de nom, que plusieurs sont rentrées dans le néant, que les civilisations se sont choquées et brisées, leurs paisibles générations ont traversé les âges, et se sont succédé l'une à l'autre jusqu'à nous, fraîches et riantes comme aux jours des batailles.87
McHugh offers the following translation: Today, as in the time of Pliny & Columella, the hyacinth disports in Gaul, the periwinkle in Illyria, the daisy on the ruins of Numantia; & while around them the cities have changed masters & names, while some have ceased to exist, while the civilisations have collided with one another and smashed, their peaceful generations have passed through the ages & have come up to us, fresh & laughing as on the days of battles. (AFW 281)
While most of the Wake’s versions of Quinet’s sentence are creative adaptations that differ from the original as much as that which appears in I.5, Joyce does offer a French version of Quinet’s sentence in II.2 that is largely similar to the original.88 As seen earlier, in I.5 Joyce includes Quinet in a sentence that also mentions Michelet and Vico. This makes a great deal of sense. Quinet and Michelet were not just contemporaries; the two were friends for many years. They knew one 87 Herder, Ideés sur la Philosophie de l’Histoire de l’Humanité, 1:34–5.
88 See FW 281.04–13.
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38 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake another well during their contemporaneous translations of Vico and Herder, and shared a number of ideas. For example, as previously mentioned, Michelet defined history as the story of “the war of man against nature, of spirit against matter, of liberty against fatality.”89 Quinet defines history in very similar terms in his introduction to his translation of Herder’s Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man when he says that history “from beginning to end, is the drama of liberty, the protest of the human race against the world which enchains it, the triumph of the infinite over the finite, the freedom of the spirit, the reign of the soul.”90 In that same introduction, Quinet speaks at length of Vico. He outlines the ideal eternal history of the Third New Science in glowing, lyrical terms, and describes Vico as having “laid down the universal laws of humanity.”91 The problem that must be faced by any discussion of Quinet’s role in the Wake or of Joyce’s sense of Quinet’s relationship to Vico is that there is no evidence that Joyce read anything about or by Quinet beyond the one sentence that appears within the Wake. What’s more, one could even question the idea that Joyce knew one sentence by Quinet because the evidence suggests that he only knew that sentence through a translation that contains errors. As Inge Landuyt and Geert Lernout have shown, Joyce found the so-called Quinet sentence of the Wake in Léon Metchnikoff ’s La civilisation et les grand fleuves historiques (Civilization and the Great Historical Rivers). In copying Quinet’s sentence, Metchnikoff made errors. Joyce retained those errors and then added a few of his own when he reproduced Metchnikoff ’s sentence in notebook VI.B.1.92 Naturally, the manner in which Joyce acquired Quinet’s sentence influenced his understanding of it. As Landuyt and Lernout observe, “The genetic evidence seems to suggest that Joyce chose the sentence for its beauty and for what the sentence itself says, not for Quinet’s theories or for the function the sentence might have in Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire de l’humanité, which he does not seem to have read.”93 This interpretation is supported by a summary of that sentence that Joyce included in a 1930 letter to Weaver: “E. Q. says that the wild flowers on the ruins of Carthage, Numancia etc have survived the political rises and falls of empires” (Letters I, 295). Joyce evidently understands the sentence to contrast the permanence of nature with the relative transience of even mankind’s largest constructs. Had Joyce read Quinet’s sentence in its original context, he would have known that, immediately after that sentence, Quinet goes on to say:
89 Michelet, “Introduction to World History,” 25. 90 Heath, Edgar Quinet: His Early Life and Writings, 76. For the original, see Herder, Ideés sur la Philosophie de l’Histoire de l’Humanité, 1:32. 91 Herder, Ideés sur la Philosophie de l’Histoire de l’Humanité, 1:17. My translation. 92 See Landuyt and Lernout, “Joyce’s Sources: Les Grands Fleuves Historiques,” 112–13. 93 Landuyt and Lernout, “Joyce’s Sources: Les Grands Fleuves Historiques,” 113. Introduction à la philosophie de l’histoire de l’humanité is the title under which Quinet’s introduction to his translation of Herder appears within Quinet’s complete works.
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The History of The Letter 39 Should the permanence of the material world, then, only incite vain regrets, and does this imposing mass exist only to convey the ephemeral and tumultuous nature of the succession of civilizations? God forbid! On the contrary, the material world is reflected in the whole system of human actions and marks them with a profound character of peace and serenity.94
When Quinet speaks of the “material world” here, he means the natural world as separate from the human world. This being recognized, one can see that, for Quinet, there is no opposition between the permanent natural world and the ephemeral human world. Rather than contrasting one with the other, he argues that the two worlds mirror one another. What makes it even more difficult to speak of Joyce’s reworkings of Quinet’s sentence as representing Quinet’s ideas is that, as mentioned, the Wake’s versions of that sentence freely adapt it to suit Joyce’s purposes. One can see this by comparing the three parts of Quinet’s original sentence with the three parts of the Quinet sentence in I.5. These are the first parts of both: Today, as in the time of Pliny & Columella, the hyacinth disports in Gaul, the periwinkle in Illyria, the daisy on the ruins of Numantia. (AFW 281) Since nozzy Nanette tripped palmyways with Highho Harry there’s a spurtfire turf a’kind o’kindling when oft as the souff souff blows her peaties up and a claypot wet for thee, my Sitys, and talkatalka tell Tibbs has eve: (FW 117.16–19)
Quinet begins by speaking of the ancient past. The “time of Pliny & Columella” is the age of the Roman Empire. He then goes on to describe an activity that occurred in that ancient past and that continues to occur in the present, that of flowers disporting themselves. To “disport” is to play and enjoy oneself, so the fact that this activity has been going on for a long time is a good thing. The first section of Joyce’s sentence also describes long-standing enjoyable activities. The narrator begins by speaking of the time “Since nozzy Nanette tripped palmyways with Highho Harry.” Given that this is the start of a Quinet sentence, the amount of time since that event is probably substantial. The term “tripped palmyways” can be seen as an image of dancing or of hand holding. McHugh observes that “nozze” is the Italian for “wedding,” and so it appears that the hands holding one another are being joined in marriage (AFW 117). The narrator goes on to say that, ever since that union, “there’s a spurtfire turf a’kind o’kindling when oft as the souff souff blows her peaties up and a claypot wet for thee” (FW 117.17–18). The images of fire and water here are images of male and female arousal. According to the narrator, male arousal, “a spurtfire turf a’kind o’kindling,” is sparked as often 94 Herder, Ideés sur la Philosophie de l’Histoire de l’Humanité, 1:35. My translation.
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40 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake as the wind blows up a woman’s “peaties” or petticoats and reveals female arousal, “a claypot wet for thee.” The first section ends by saying that this will go on “tell Tibbs has eve” (FW 117.19). As McHugh notes, this is a play on the Hiberno- English phrase “till Tibbs his eve” (AFW 117). Since there is no St. Tibbs, the eve of his day will never come and so to say that an activity will be carried out “till Tibbs his eve” is to say that it will be carried out forever. Consequently, the first part of the sentence ends by suggesting the permanence of sexual desire. This is significant because Joyce here associates permanence with the human rather than the natural. Having said that, it is hard to conceive of what could be more natural than sexual desire. In the second parts of both Quinet’s original sentence and the Quinet sentence in I.5, the mood grows darker: & while around them the cities have changed masters & names, while some have ceased to exist, while the civilisations have collided with one another and smashed, (AFW 281) and whathough (revilous life proving aye the death of ronaldses when winpower wine has bucked the kick on poor won man) billiousness has been billiousness during milliums of millenions and our mixed racings have been giving two hoots or three jeers for the grape, vine and brew and Pieter’s in Nieuw Amsteldam and Paoli’s where the poules go and rum smelt his end for him and he dined off sooth american (it would give one the frier even were one a normal Kettlelicker) (FW 117.19–27)
The focus of Quinet’s sentence shifts from the permanence of the floral to the transience of the human. While the first part of that sentence is about beauty and joy, the second is about death and destruction. Quinet speaks of cities that have “ceased to exist” and entire civilizations that have “smashed.” Joyce echoes the themes of the middle of Quinet’s sentence in the middle of his own. After a parenthetical statement on the deadly cost of alcoholism, the narrator broaches the notion of “billiousness.” As the OED explains, to be “bilious” is to be “choleric, wrathful, peevish, ill-tempered.”95 In saying that, “billiousness has been billiousness during milliums of millenions,” the narrator suggests the permanence of anger and violence (FW 117.21–2). As in the first part of the sentence, Joyce here undermines the idea of an opposition between the permanence of the natural world and the transience of the human world by discussing the permanence of a human temperament. The narrator then goes on to speak of how “our mixed racings have been giving two hoots or three jeers for the grape, vine and brew” (FW 117.22–3). The Brepols edition of notebook VI.B.14 suggests that the phrase 95 “Bilious, Adj.”
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The History of The Letter 41 “three jeers for the grape, vine and brew” may be a reworking of the note “3 cheers for the / green, white & gold.”96 In this case, one might take the Wake’s phrase to refer to the Irish flag, even though the third color on that flag is orange rather than gold. At the same time, “the grape, vine and brew” can also be seen as the red, white, and blue of the American flag (FW 117.23). One of the reasons for thinking this is that the sentence goes on to point to America through terms like “Nieuw Amsteldam” and “sooth american” (FW 117.24–6). Either way, “the grape, vine and brew” seems to denote the colors of a flag (FW 117.23). Therefore, when the narrator speaks of how some have been for those colors, “two hoots,” and some have been against those colors, “three jeers,” he appears to be speaking of wars (FW 117.23). This topic is entirely appropriate for the middle part of a Quinet sentence. The narrator then goes on to say that “Pieter’s in Nieuw Amsteldam and Paoli’s where the poules go and rum smelt his end for him and he dined off sooth american” (FW 117.24–6). The prior references to alcohol within the sentence suggest that “Nieuw Amsteldam” refers not only to New Amsterdam but also to Amsterdam’s Amstel Brewery. While Pieter is only associated with alcohol, Paoli is connected to both alcohol and prostitution. As McHugh observes, Paoli’s name evokes “Sankt Pauli,” the “brothel quarter of Hamburg.” Furthermore, Paoli is “where the poules go,” and “poule” is a French slang term for a prostitute (FW 117.24–5. AFW 117). According to the narrator, however, it was Paoli’s other vice that led to his demise. In saying of Paoli that “rum smelt his end for him and he dined off sooth american,” the narrator repeats the sentence’s earlier connection between alcohol and death (FW 117.25–6). The middle section of the sentence ends as it began with a parenthetical statement: “it would give one the frier even were one a normal Kettlelicker” (FW 117.26–7). The word “frier” is a play on “fear.” Given the grim content of this section of the sentence, it is not clear whether it is Paoli’s sad fate or the section in its entirety that should give one fear, but the narrator clearly feels that all should be fearful. Happily, in the third parts of both Quinet’s original sentence and the Quinet sentence in I.5, silver linings are offered: their peaceful generations have passed through the ages & have come up to us, fresh & laughing as on the days of battles. (AFW 281) this oldworld epistola of their weatherings and their marryings and their buryings and their natural selections has combled tumbled down to us fersch and made-at-all-hours like an ould cup on tay. (FW 117.27–30)
Quinet ends his sentence by speaking of how the “peaceful” flowers of the first part of the sentence have survived the conflicts of human history and so are still 96 VI.B.14: 191; JJA 32:217. Joyce, The Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo. Notebook VI. B.14, 244.
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42 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake able to grow and disport themselves. In the corresponding section of Joyce’s sentence, the narrator speaks not of the survival of flowers, but rather of the survival of the “oldworld epistola of their weatherings and their marryings and their buryings and their natural selections.” As McHugh points out, “epistola” is the Latin for “letter” (AFW 117). The contents of this letter are made clear by the fact that the phrase “oldworld epistola” points back to the earlier notion of the old, old story of love. Given that, in the Wake, the third part of a Quinet sentence always speaks of the survival of that which was discussed in the first, it is clear that what has survived is not just tales of love or declarations of love, but also the events that constitute the story of love. The narrator defines those events when he speaks of “their weatherings and their marryings and their buryings and their natural selections” (FW 117.27–8). This is a Joycean cycle. As noted, such a cycle can tell the story of a relationship rather than, as is more common, the story of a life. There is no indication that the first term, “weatherings,” denotes the start of a relationship, but the second term in this cycle, as in most Joycean cycles, refers to marriage and so, to the extent that marriage involves love, the continuation of this cycle ensures the survival of love. Furthermore, the last term in the cycle, “natural selections,” points to Darwin’s theory of how the traits of organisms develop over generations. It suggests not just that the cycle will continue, but that it will involve reproduction. The references to marriage and sex within this cycle serve to connect the third part of the sentence back to the first. That a Joycean cycle should appear within this Quinet sentence is not surprising. Two of the other Quinet sentences in the Wake also contain Joycean cycles.97 What connects the Wake’s Quinet sentences to its Vico-inspired cycles is the idea of continuity amidst change. Within each Quinet sentence and each Joycean cycle, there is the suggestion that each human life contains elements that are intrinsic, universal, and atemporal. Joyce’s cycles focus on the most fundamental of those elements: birth, love, and death. The Quinet sentences generally offer more such elements and, in doing so, point to notions like beauty, desire, and conflict. From the relationship between the Wake’s Joycean cycles and its Quinet sentences, one can see Joyce’s understanding of the connection between Vico and Quinet. What is also important about the end of the Quinet sentence in I.5 is that the Joycean cycle it offers is located within a letter. This matters because the paragraph that contains that Quinet sentence ends only a few lines later, and the end of that paragraph marks the end of the principal discussion of Vico in I.5. After this, the narrator returns to his prior topic, the main topic of the chapter, Biddy Doran’s letter. By locating the last Joycean cycle of the section on Vico within an “oldworld epistola,” Joyce is able to transition from Vico back to that letter
97 See FW 354.22–36 and FW 614.27–615.10.
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The History of The Letter 43 (FW 117.27). In connecting his cycles to Biddy Doran’s letter, Joyce also highlights the degree to which those cycles are linguistic in nature. Like all ideal structures, Joyce’s cycles can only be expressed and encountered through language. What’s more, just as the connection between those cycles and Biddy Doran’s letter invites the reader to consider how Joyce’s cycles relate to that letter, so it also raises the question of how that letter relates to those cycles. As will be seen, the discussion of Biddy Doran’s letter that is offered in the paragraphs that immediately follow the Vico section of the chapter is highly pertinent to Joyce’s cycles.
Biddy Doran’s Letter As that discussion begins, the narrator tries to establish some hard facts regarding Biddy Doran’s letter: Now, . . . while we in our wee free state, holding to that prestatute in our charter, may have our irremovable doubts as to the whole sense of the lot, the interpretation of any phrase in the whole, the meaning of every word of a phrase so far deciphered out of it, however unfettered our Irish daily independence, we must vaunt no idle dubiosity as to its genuine authorship and holusbolus authoritativeness . . . . On the face of it, . . . the affair is a thing once for all done and there you are somewhere and finished in a certain time, be it a day or a year or even supposing, it should eventually turn out to be a serial number of goodness gracious alone knows how many days or years. Anyhow, somehow and somewhere, before the bookflood or after her ebb, somebody mentioned by name in his telephone directory, Coccolanius or Gallotaurus, wrote it, wrote it all, wrote it all down, and there you are, full stop. (FW 117.33–118.14)
The narrator here acknowledges that there are many aspects of the letter that remain unclear. Those aspects include minor matters such as what the letter as a whole means, what the phrases within the letter mean, and what the words in those phrases mean. Despite this, the narrator confidently claims that there should be “no idle dubiosity as to its genuine authorship and holusbolus authoritativeness.” By this he means that two facts about the letter are clear: the letter has a particular author, and it bears the complete authority of that author. Following this very direct assertion, the narrator backtracks somewhat and says that the letter at least appears to have been written “somewhere” and to have been produced over a certain period of time, but he cannot provide the exact length of that period. Seemingly frustrated by this failure, the narrator concludes by forcibly stating that somehow, somewhere, somebody “wrote it, wrote it all, wrote it all down, and there you are, full stop.” The concluding phrase makes it clear that he has no desire to discuss the matter further.
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44 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Curiously immediately after saying this, the narrator goes on to challenge the idea that any facts regarding the letter can be definitively established. This about- turn is so marked that the narrator’s monologue begins to read more like internal dialogue: O, undoubtedly yes, and very potably so, but one who deeper thinks will always bear in the baccbuccus of his mind that this downright there you are and there it is is only all in his eye. Why? (FW 118.14–7)
The argument of this sentence is that even the facts of a text that a reader considers to be obvious and irrefutable are merely perceptions. No matter how forcefully a reader may argue for the objectivity of their perceptions by saying “there you are” and “there it is,” those perceptions will all always “only” be “in” their “eye.” After making this claim, the narrator asks why this is the case, and the answer to that question is offered at the start of the next paragraph: Because, Soferim Bebel, if it goes to that, (and dormerwindow gossip will cry it from the housetops no surelier than the writing on the wall will hue it to the mod of men that mote in the main street) every person, place and thing in the chaosmos of Alle anyway connected with the gobblydumped turkery was moving and changing every part of the time: the travelling inkhorn (possibly pot), the hare and turtle pen and paper, the continually more and less intermisunderstanding minds of the anticollaborators, the as time went on as it will variously inflected, differently pronounced, otherwise spelled, changeably meaning vocable scriptsigns. (FW 118.18–28)
The “gobblydumped turkery” of which the narrator speaks is the letter found by Biddy Doran. The reference to “turkey” in “turkery” plays on the fact that Biddy Doran is a hen. At the same time, as Fweet points out, the word “turkery” also points to the term “turquerie,” which is the name of the “fashion for imitating aspects of Turkish art and culture in Western Europe in the 16th to 18th centuries.”98 Consequently, in speaking of the letter as a “turkery,” the narrator suggests, as he often does, that the letter may be an imitation or a forgery (FW 118.22). The sentence’s main contention regarding that letter is that “every person, place and thing in the chaosmos of Alle anyway connected with the gobblydumped turkery was moving and changing every part of the time” (FW 118.21–3). The narrator explains this idea by offering a number of examples. He says that the inkpot was moving and changing, the pen was moving and changing, the paper was moving and changing, the minds of the authors were moving and changing. But it is not
98 “Fweets of Fin (^118) with FW Text.”
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The History of The Letter 45 just that which was “connected” to the letter that was moving and changing (FW 118.22). The text of the letter was undergoing alteration. The words were gaining new inflections, new pronunciations, new spellings, and new meanings. It is the idea that every aspect of a text is continually in flux that explains why even the facts regarding a text that seem beyond doubt are still just subjective perceptions. The position of the narrator need not be taken to be that of Joyce. If interpreting a text were truly as impossible a task as the narrator of I.5 presents it as being, then it would not be worth the effort to even try to read or write. The purpose of I.5 is to point to the challenges of textual interpretation rather than to suggest the futility of any such effort. Therefore, when the narrator of I.5 draws attention to the notion that all words are continually evolving, Joyce is not saying that language is an inherently unstable medium, but rather that language can only ever be a relatively stable medium. To define any language as entirely stable would be to ignore how each language alters over time as a result of how it is used. At the same time, were a language entirely unstable, it could not be used at all because it could not be understood. The notion of the relative stability of language is important because of how it relates to the ideas of the prior paragraphs. In those paragraphs, the narrator twice makes the point that, while ideal structures transcend their particular linguistic manifestations, they can still only be communicated and received through language. There is no means of directly accessing their pure forms. This point is made in relation to both the story of love and the Joycean cycles of the Wake. When the narrator goes on to speak of the relative instability of language, this discussion folds back on his remarks regarding the relationship between the ideal and the linguistic. It is because ideal structures must be expressed through language that they are influenced by the relative instability of language. As a language changes over time, so the enduring ideal structures embodied within that language are expressed in new terms. At the same time, the terms by which those structures are known are interpreted in new ways. These shifts in expression and interpretation create new understandings of those structures. Their abstraction does not make them immune to the effects of time. In drawing attention to how the relative instability of language impacts the ideal, Joyce poses a challenge to both the Joycean cycles of the Wake and the Viconian cycles from which they derive. Vico’s cycles are ideas abstracted from human history, and the only means of accessing those ideas is through the temporal medium of language. This being so, even if Vico is right in arguing that the events of history are locked in providential structures that remain eternally stable in themselves, humanity’s conceptions of those structures cannot help but change in accordance with the evolutions of the languages through which those structures are expressed and interpreted and so, from humanity’s perspective, those structures will always possess a relative fluidity.
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46 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Vico has a solution to this problem. One can see it in the first book of the Third New Science: It is necessary that there be, in the nature of human things, a mental language common to all the nations which uniformly attends to the substance of the things achievable within the sociability of human life and articulates that substance with as many different modifications as these things are able to have throughout their many different aspects. This is what we experience as true in proverbs—that is, with the maxims of commonplace wisdom—which are understood be the same in substance even though they have as many different aspects as there are nations, ancient and modern.99
According to Vico, all nations across space and time share certain essential ideas that they express through their many different languages. When Vico speaks of these ideas collectively, he consistently refers to them as a “mental language.” The relationship of this language to the articulate languages of the nations is clarified elsewhere in the Third New Science when Vico posits the idea of a “a mental dictionary for giving the origins of all the differently articulated languages.”100 As can be seen, Vico considers all the articulate languages to derive from mankind’s common “mental language.”101 In positing a shared ideal language that manifests itself in all the world’s articulate languages but is immune to the changes that articulate languages invariably undergo, Vico is able to create an eternal language that shields certain ideas from the fluidity of articulate language. To achieve this goal, however, Vico must make sweeping claims regarding the unity of the ideas and languages of “all the nations” across space and time.102 The main reason the relationship between the ideal and the linguistic is a source of tension in Vico’s philosophy is that he associates the ideal with the divine as well as the mental. To the extent that the ideal is tied to the divine in Vico’s thought, it is connected to stability, unity, and eternity. Vico regards language as a human response to the divine and so associates it with change, diversity, and temporality. When one recognizes this opposition, one can see that each time Vico connects the ideal and the linguistic, he creates a paradox he cannot fully resolve. Joyce shows a degree of sympathy with Vico’s position through the narrator of I.5, who also struggles with the difficulties generated by the instability of language. This can be seen in the narrator’s next sentence: No, so holp me Petault, it is not a miseffectual whyacinthinous riot of blots and blurs and bars and balls and hoops and wriggles and juxtaposed jottings linked 99 Vico, The New Science, §161, 82. 102 Vico, §161, 82.
100 Vico, §144, 78.
101 Vico, §161, 82.
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The History of The Letter 47 by spurts of speed: it only looks as like it as damn it; and, sure, we ought really to rest thankful that at this deleteful hour of dungflies dawning we have even a written on with dried ink scrap of paper at all to show for ourselves, tare it or leaf it, (and we are lufted to ourselves as the soulfisher when he led the cat out of the bout) after all that we lost and plundered of it even to the hidmost coignings of the earth and all it has gone through and by all means, after a good ground kiss to Terracussa and for wars luck our lefftoff ’s flung over our home homoplate, cling to it as with drowning hands, hoping against hope all the while that, by the light of philophosy, (and may she never folsage us!) things will begin to clear up a bit one way or another within the next quarrel of an hour and be hanged to them as ten to one they will too, please the pigs, as they ought to categorically, as, stricly between ourselves, there is a limit to all things so this will never do. (FW 118.28–119.09)
The narrator is not willing to accept that the letter is a “miseffectual whyacinthinous riot.” At the same time, he cannot help but acknowledge that it “looks as like” such a riot “as damn it.” This being so, the narrator tries to make the best of a bad situation. He asserts that we should be glad that we even have the letter after “all it has gone through” and that we should “cling to it as with drowning hands” and hope that “things will begin to clear up a bit one way or another within the next quarrel of an hour.” The narrator believes that they probably will “as they ought to” because “there is a limit to all things so this will never do.” Given the chapter’s many prior references to Vico, it is striking that the narrator says that he hopes that the needed clarity will be provided “by the light of philophosy.” As McHugh observes, the word “philophosy” points to “phôs,” the Greek word for “light,” and so suggests philosophy’s capacity to illuminate. At the same time, “philophosy” also references “filofol,” a term Joyce picked up from Lazar Sainéan’s La Langue du Rabelais (The Language of Rabelais). McHugh defines “filofol” as a “term for ‘philosophy’ suggesting ‘fine folie’ (lit. ‘fine madness’)” (AFW 119). This being so, it seems that the narrator would be wise not to put too much faith in the “light of philophosy” (FW 119.04–05).103 To conclude, Joyce was interested in many aspects of Vico’s thought, and that interest lasted over a long period. He also felt a personal connection to Vico that was grounded both in Vico’s ideas and in the artistic, frequently obscure manner in which Vico expressed those ideas. Within the Wake, when Joyce references Vico he most often points to Vico’s conception of history. Joyce’s principal means of referencing that conception are his thunderwords and his Joycean cycles.
103 The narrator says that “by the light of philophosy, . . . things will begin to clear up a bit . . . as they ought to categorically” (FW 119.04–08). In this context, the word “categorically” can be read as pointing to the famous categories of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. As will be discussed in Chapter 5, Joyce took notes from the table of categories in that work.
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48 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake In creating these forms, Joyce drew ideas from Vico and then adapted them to serve his purposes. When Joyce uses his thunderwords and his Joycean cycles in the Wake, he does so primarily to assert his own ideas. The thunderwords point to the notion of an original universal language, which is an important model for the language of the Wake. The Joycean cycles allow Joyce to present his conception of historical recurrence. As the examined section of I.5 shows, by adapting Vico’s ideas as he did, Joyce was able to create connections, albeit subjective, indirect connections, between Vico and two other thinkers who are frequently referenced in the Wake, Bruno and Quinet. These connections highlight the centrality of Joyce’s Vico-inspired cycles within the conceptual framework of the Wake. At the same time, within the section of I.5 explored in this chapter, one also finds Joyce deploying those cycles in a context that challenges them. The emphasis on the instability of language within that section poses a serious problem to Vico’s ideal eternal history, the model of history that underpins both his cycles and those of Joyce. As can be seen, in writing the Wake Joyce used Vico’s rich and stimulating ideas in a complex and nuanced manner. The relationship between the two transcends simple notions of influence or agreement.
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2 Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy (FW 149.14–150.14)
The passages within the Wake that are densest with philosophical references often focus on the characters of Shem the Penman and Shaun the Postman. This pair are the twins of the novel’s central Earwicker family, and they appear in a multitude of different forms throughout the Wake. The Earwicker twins are in many ways opposites. Shem is an artist, an introvert, a heretic, an ascetic, and a sham. Shaun, by contrast, is a publicist, an extrovert, a conformist, a glutton, and a success. The latter is as beloved as the former is despised. Yet, despite their differences, Shem and Shaun are inseparable. This is partly because, being opposites, each defines the other and so neither can exist without the other. Their inseparability also stems from the fact that Shem and Shaun both embody aspects of Joyce. Many of their virtues and their flaws derive from their creator. Shem and Shaun therefore need to be understood as halves of one as well as two. What further complicates matters is that, in addition to using the Earwicker twins to represent himself, Joyce also uses them to define his relationships to others. When this approach is adopted, Shaun frequently represents Joyce’s fellow modernist Wyndham Lewis. This is because the always complex relationship between the two became fraught during the years of the writing of the Wake. One of the key reasons why the encounters between Shem and Shaun are frequently full of philosophical allusions is that Lewis was interested in philosophy and his writings on Joyce were often informed by his philosophical views. This chapter will examine a part of one of the sections of the Wake in which Shem and Shaun stand in for Joyce and Lewis. The section in question appears in I.6, a chapter in which Shem asks his brother twelve questions. The eleventh of those questions is: “if you met on the binge a poor acheseyeld from Ailing,” and “if the fain shiner pegged you to shave his immartial, wee skillmustered shoul . . . would you?” (FW 148.33, 149.07–10). When Shem inquires as to whether Shaun would save the soul of a poor, ailing exile, he refers both to himself and to the poor, ailing exile who created him. Shaun’s response is very direct: “No.” (FW 149.11). In explaining the reasons behind his uncharitable response, Shaun takes on the role of Professor Jones, a character based on Lewis, and proceeds to offer an extensive lecture on the relationship between time and space that draws heavily on Lewis’ essay “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” Jones’ lecture is almost twenty pages long and includes two tales, that of the Mookse and the Gripes and Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Robert Baines, Oxford University Press. © Robert Baines 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198894049.003.0003
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50 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake that of Burrus and Caseous. While the next chapter will consider the latter of those tales, this chapter will focus on the two paragraphs that open Jones’ lecture as they contain important allusions to philosophers such as Bergson, Spinoza, and Hegel. In examining those allusions, the chapter will show how they define Joyce’s relationship to Lewis.
Joyce and Lewis: The Beginning It is easy to demonstrate that Jones represents Lewis. That professor is the principal respondent to the eleventh question of I.6 and, in a 1927 letter to Weaver, Joyce wrote, “No 11 is [Shaun] in his know-all profoundly impressive role for which an ‘ever devoted friend’ (so his letters are signed) unrequestedly consented to pose” (Letters I, 257–8). Lewis signed his letters to Joyce “ever devoted friend” and, by 1927, Joyce had clearly come to find this habit quite ironic. The relationship between the two had not, however, always been so strained. To understand Joyce’s engagement with Lewis in the Professor Jones section of I.6, one must have a sense of the history of their relationship. Joyce and Lewis first met in the summer of 1920, but they were certainly aware of one another long before then. In April 1914, Ezra Pound wrote to Joyce and informed him that Lewis was starting “a new Futurist, Cubist, Imagiste Quarterly.” In that letter, Pound also suggests to Joyce that Lewis “might take” some of Joyce’s essays.1 The first edition of the magazine mentioned by Pound would appear in June of 1914 under the title Blast and would not contain any of Joyce’s essays. However, Joyce is not entirely absent from that edition. His name can be found in Lewis’ great list of those he wishes to bless alongside, ironically, the Pope and Oliver Cromwell.2 In Pound’s letter to Joyce regarding Blast, he also speaks of Lewis’ views on Portrait and Dubliners. According to Pound, Lewis “likes the novel but isn’t very keen on the stories.”3 Lewis would refute this claim in his 1937 autobiography Blasting and Bombadiering. He there says that, prior to meeting Joyce in 1920, all he had read by him was some of the pages of Portrait that had appeared in The Egoist. As Lewis presents it, he was not much impressed by those pages: At that time, it was of far too tenuous an elegance for my taste. Its flavor was altogether too literary. And as to its emotional content, that I condemned at once as sentimental-Irish.4
1 Pound, Pound/Joyce; The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, with Pound’s Essays on Joyce, 26. 2 Lewis, “Manifesto 1,” 28. 3 Pound, Pound/Joyce; The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, with Pound’s Essays on Joyce, 26. 4 Lewis, Blasting and Bombadiering, 266.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 51 If one trusts the accuracy of Lewis’ account, it appears that, from the outset, he viewed Joyce’s writing as being insubstantial, overly self-conscious, and, worst of all, inexcusably Irish. The emphasis on Joyce’s Irishness that one finds here can be seen throughout Lewis’ writings on Joyce. Such was Lewis’ sense of Ireland’s inherent cultural inferiority to England that he could neither comprehend nor accept how Ireland could have produced a writer for whom he had such respect, and so he felt compelled to examine the matter over and over again. Lewis would go on to echo his criticisms of Portrait in his discussions of Ulysses. Given the continuities between Lewis’ remarks on those two works, it seems likely that, when Pound spoke of Lewis as liking Portrait, he did so not because it was true, but rather because he thought it would encourage Joyce to submit a piece to Blast. The first meeting between Joyce and Lewis was the product of another attempt by Pound to help Joyce. In the summer of 1920, Lewis and T. S. Eliot met Joyce in Paris in order to give him a parcel prepared by Pound. As Lewis recalls with glee in Blasting and Bombadiering, when Joyce opened Pound’s parcel, he found its main contents to be a pair of old brown shoes. Joyce was apparently so embarrassed by this attempted kindness that he insisted on paying for every meal, drink, and cab during the rest of Eliot and Lewis’ tenure in Paris.5 After this awkward first encounter, however, Joyce and Lewis went on to become friends. When Lewis visited Paris again in the summer of 1921, he socialized a great deal with Joyce. In a letter to Frank Budgen dated May 31, 1921, Joyce writes: “Had several uproarious allnight sittings (and dancings) with Lewis as perhaps he will tell you. I like him” (Letters III, 42). During the time period in which Joyce and Lewis were drinking companions, there was, nonetheless, a competitive element to their relationship. One memorable account of their attempts to best one another comes from Pound: Wyndham Lewis & Joyce rivals—out do each other drinking. One night they about killed each other. At any rate at the end of the night the two on curbstone with feet in gutter. J. to L. “You may paint this but I will write it.”6
Given the numerous characterizations within the Wake of Joyce and Lewis as Shem and Shaun, it is conspicuous how Pound’s recollection points to both the similarities and the differences between the two. Joyce’s remark suggests that he saw Lewis as using a different artistic medium to broach the same subject matter. In understanding their relationship in this way, Joyce was half right. While Lewis drew a number of portraits of Joyce and Joyce represented Lewis on multiple occasions in his last novel, Lewis also wanted to be the one to write their relationship.
5 See Lewis, Blasting and Bombadiering, 267–70, 290–1. 6 Olson, Charles Olson & Ezra Pound, 107.
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52 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake It was in 1922, a few months after the publication of Ulysses, that Lewis first declared his desire to publicly write about Joyce. In a letter to Violet Schiff dated May 20, Lewis spoke of having borrowed a copy of Ulysses from Weaver for the purposes of writing a review.7 While no review would be written, Lewis did read the book he had borrowed and, in a letter to Sidney Schiff written six days later, he offered his initial impressions of that book. Many aspects of the interpretation of Ulysses that Lewis would expound at greater length in The Art of Being Ruled and “The Revolutionary Simpleton” can be found in this letter. The most significant such example is when Lewis defines Joyce’s novel as “romantic”: I think that after reading a definitely romantic book like Ulysses, you want to get out of this masturbatory, historico-political Irish fairyland as soon as possible, back to some conceptual statement, at a lower temperature—gladly below zero for the moment, to be surrounded by an element as simple as ice, or rock.8
As will be discussed, the word “romantic” had a wide variety of negative connotations for Lewis. On this occasion, as one can see from the rest of the sentence, Lewis uses it in order to level at Ulysses the same criticisms he had directed at Portrait. For Lewis, Ulysses is a “definitely romantic book” because, like Portrait, it is airy, narcissistic, and, worst of all, Irish. There are, however, other sections of the same letter in which Lewis views Ulysses differently. Here, for example, is a passage in which Lewis contradicts the idea that the world of Joyce’s novel is an insubstantial “fairyland”: There is of course a rather pretentious view in it, a scholarly bluff which is irritating here and there . . . Still I feel that it is saved from that (the Bloomsbury taint) only by the impressionist element (the photographic naturalism). And that I do not like very much; though certainly in Joyce’s hands it is as successful as it can be.9
The meaning of the second sentence is somewhat unclear because Lewis there speaks of the “impressionist element” of the novel and then defines that element as the novel’s “photographic naturalism.” This causes a problem because impressionism is quite different to “photographic naturalism.” Impressionism strives to portray perceptions, whereas “photographic naturalism” seeks to depict material objects. In attempting to grasp what Lewis is saying, it is helpful to read this sentence in the light of Lewis’ later discussion of Ulysses in his huge, unpublished work The Man of the World. While much of that work would later be published in 7 Cassidy, “Letters of Wyndham Lewis to Sidney and Violet Schiff,” 24. 8 Cassidy, “Letters of Wyndham Lewis to Sidney and Violet Schiff,” 24. 9 Cassidy, “Letters of Wyndham Lewis to Sidney and Violet Schiff,” 24.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 53 a different form, there is, as Paul Edwards notes, a section of that work titled “The Critical Realists” that has never been published. That section contains a long footnote in which Lewis speaks of Ulysses by, to quote Edwards, “stressing what he thought of as its ‘impressionistic’ method, its relationship with the naturalism of Dubliners, and distinguishing this substratum from the innovatory techniques by which it is conveyed.”10 Edwards’ account of this footnote is helpful for understanding Lewis’ letter to Schiff because it clarifies that, when Lewis speaks of the “impressionist element” of Ulysses, he refers not to the subjectivity of its styles, but rather to its realism, and this is why he uses the term “photographic naturalism” to explain his conception of that element. While Lewis’ use of the word “impressionist” is rather confusing, it is appropriate to the extent that one of the goals of impressionism is to capture ordinary events in the lives of ordinary people. It is in the dissonance between the two above quotes from Lewis’ letter to Schiff that one can see the first manifestation of the central tension within Lewis’ reading of Ulysses. Lewis is critical of Joyce’s novel because he finds it to be inward- looking in multiple regards: it is semi-autobiographical; it explores the workings of the mind; it is stylistically self-conscious. At the same time, Lewis also can’t help but acknowledge the degree to which Ulysses looks out upon the city in which it takes place. What makes the whole situation even more difficult is that while Lewis dislikes the inward-looking aspects of the novel, he thinks that the novel’s attempt at representing Dublin is “as successful as it can be.”11 This meager compliment shows that Lewis is no more certain how to judge Ulysses than how to define it. One of the reasons Lewis would go on to respond to Joyce’s novel on so many occasions and in such a variety of ways is that he never conclusively resolved the inconsistencies within his initial reaction. As noted, Lewis would next write about Ulysses in “The Critical Realists,” and he would there return to several of the ideas he first broached in his letter to Schiff. From the perspective of the current chapter, the most important section of “The Critical Realists” is that in which Lewis says of Ulysses, “it is a disordered slop-pail of ‘vitalist’ material, so much stuff poured over you.”12 While the second half of the sentence anticipates Lewis’ later discussions of the sheer “amount of stuff ” that Joyce’s novel contains, what is even more important is the word “vitalist.”13 The OED defines “vitalism” as “The doctrine or theory that the origin and phenomena of life are due to or produced by a vital principle, as distinct from a purely
10 Edwards, “Wyndham Lewis versus James Joyce: Shaun versus Shem?,” 11. 11 Cassidy, “Letters of Wyndham Lewis to Sidney and Violet Schiff,” 24. 12 See Edwards, “Wyndham Lewis versus James Joyce: Shaun versus Shem?,” 11. Edwards argues that Lewis’ discussion of Ulysses in “The Critical Realists” dates from 1924. (See Edwards, “Wyndham Lewis versus James Joyce: Shaun versus Shem?,” 17.) 13 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 110.
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54 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake chemical or physical force.”14 When Lewis references vitalism, he does so in order to point to Henri Bergson and his famous élan vital (vital impetus). In Bergson’s L’Évolution créatrice (Creative Evolution), he argues for an “original impetus of life” that passes from each generation of living things to the next. This impetus is the “fundamental cause” of the evolutionary variations that “accumulate and create new species.”15 However, while Bergson was commonly associated with vitalism, he did not consider himself a vitalist because he viewed vitalism as arguing for a vital principle that causes finite, individual development.16 By contrast, Bergson’s vital impetus is to be found within all life, and the evolution it causes has neither goal nor end. The reference to Bergson in “The Critical Realists” is the first occasion on which Lewis associates Joyce with Bergson. As will be shown, Lewis would go on to explain his sense of the connection between the two at length in “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” the essay to which Joyce responds in I.6. Lewis’ first published discussion of Joyce appeared in his 1926 book The Art of Being Ruled. That book contains a chapter of barely two-and-a-half pages titled “Mr. Jingle and Mr. Bloom.” The chapter begins by speaking of madness. Lewis then moves on to discussing Gertrude Stein because he believes that “what she is exploiting in her method is the process of the demented.”17 By this Lewis means that Stein’s style, especially her use of repetition, evokes the thought processes of the insane. Joyce is brought into Lewis’ discussion of Stein because Lewis considers Joyce to have “employed” Stein’s “method with success (not so radically and rather differently) in Ulysses” through his use of interior monologue.18 It is important to note that Lewis does not speak of Stein and Joyce as sharing a common method. He is very clear on the idea that Stein originated the method and Joyce followed her in using it. From Lewis’ perspective, Stein and Joyce only differ in that Joyce aims at achieving “a considerable degree of naturalism” in his representations of the thoughts of his characters, whereas Stein’s approach is “more ostensibly personal” and “semi-lyrical.”19 The title of the chapter references the character of Alfred Jingle from The Pickwick Papers because Lewis views the chief benefit of the method used by Stein and Joyce as being that it produces the kinds of comic effects that one finds in the novels of Dickens. He endeavors to prove this by pointing to the similarities between Stein’s poem “Idem the Same: A Valentine to Sherwood Anderson,” a section of Bloom’s interior monologue from the “Lestrygonians” episode, and a sample of Jingle’s speech. Lewis’ comparison between the three leads him to conclude the chapter by saying of Joyce that, “by the devious route of a fashionable naturalist device” and “the influence exercised on him by Miss Stein’s technique of picturesque dementia,” Joyce is able to present
14 “Vitalism, n.” 15 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 87. 16 See Bergson, Creative Evolution, 42–4. 17 Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, 346. 18 Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, 346. 19 Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, 346.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 55 in Ulysses “the half-demented crank figure of traditional English humour.”20 As can be seen, even when focusing on Joyce’s use of interior monologue, Lewis still brings in the notion of naturalism. For all that the discussion of Ulysses in The Art of Being Ruled emphasizes the novel’s unreality by continually pointing to the madness of its method, Lewis nonetheless recognizes the presence of a realist intent within Ulysses. It is the tension between these two positions that connects Lewis’ remarks on Ulysses in The Art of Being Ruled back to his earlier discussions of that novel. Joyce quickly learned of Lewis’ comments on Ulysses in The Art of Being Ruled. That book was published on March 11, 1926, and a mere twelve days later Joyce wrote to Weaver and spoke of Lewis’ “determined onslaught” on his “unoffending work.”21 As Dirk Van Hulle has pointed out, the evidence of Joyce’s reading of Lewis’ book can be found in Notebook VI.B.20, which the James Joyce Archive dates as “early 1926.”22 Joyce’s notes from The Art of Being Ruled are quite consist ent with his notes from the other texts that he mined for the Wake in that, as Van Hulle puts it, “although Joyce seems to have taken some interest in the content of the work, his attention was particularly caught by special vocabulary, phrasings, or linguistic oddities.”23 It was not long after reading The Art of Being Ruled that Joyce produced his response. On March 30, he wrote to Weaver again and told her of how Lewis had inspired a “most grotesque addition to Vb.”24 By “Vb,” Joyce means chapter III.2 and, as Van Hulle has observed, one can find Joyce’s earliest engagement with Lewis’ comments on Ulysses in The Art of Being Ruled in the third draft of the “Dave the Dancekerl” section of that chapter: Can you ^sing^ us a shive encore on your jubalharp, eh Mr. ^ Jinglejoys^?25
The name “Jinglejoys” combines Joyce’s last name with that of Mr. Jingle, the Dickensian character whose speech Lewis compares to Bloom’s interior monologue in The Art of Being Ruled. What is striking about this sentence is that, rather than merely referencing Lewis’ discussion of Ulysses, Joyce adopts Lewis’ voice and uses it to address himself. The sentence thereby anticipates not only the numerous occasions within the Wake on which characters speak in a Lewisian fashion but also the novel’s multiple explorations of the relationship between Joyce and Lewis. Given the Wake’s numerous references to Lewis’ anti-Semitism, it is also conspicuous that the instrument of Mr. “Jinglejoys” is a “jubalharp.” 20 Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, 348. 21 Ellmann, James Joyce, 595. 22 JJA 33:xviii. 23 Van Hulle, Textual Awareness, 98. 24 See Van Hulle, James Joyce’s “Work in Progress,” 88. Van Hulle cites BL Add. 57348–129. 25 BL 47483–123v; JJA 57:188b. See Van Hulle, Textual Awareness, 97. The final form of this sentence can be found on page 466 of the Wake: “Could you wheedle a staveling encore out of your imitationer’s jubalharp, hey, Mr Jinglejoys?” (FW 466.17–8).
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56 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake The name of this instrument points to the Old Testament figure of Jubal, who, in the book of Genesis, is described as “the father of all such as handle the harp and the organ.”26 While Lewis’ discussion of Ulysses in The Art of Being Ruled does not directly engage with Bloom’s connection to Judaism, Joyce was quite right to sense that that aspect of Bloom’s identity was important to Lewis’ reading of Joyce’s epic, and Lewis would go on to consider it at length in his longer examination of Ulysses in “The Revolutionary Simpleton.”27 Two months after the publication of The Art of Being Ruled, Lewis contacted Joyce and asked him for a piece for his new review, The Tyrocritic. As Joyce explains in a letter to Weaver dated May 21, 1926, he told Lewis that he would contribute “with great pleasure.”28 The piece that Joyce gave to Lewis for The Tyrocritic was a draft of “The Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump.”29 That text would go on to form the basis of pages 282 to 304 of Finnegans Wake II.2. As Van Hulle notes, Joyce finished his contribution to Lewis’ review on July 25, and he subsequently told Sylvia Beach that he had “spent a great deal of time on the piece for Lewis.”30 However, when Lewis published the first edition of his new review in February of 1927 under the new title of The Enemy, it did not contain the piece that Joyce had produced for it. Rather, the first edition of The Enemy was dominated by a long essay by Lewis named “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” and far and away the largest chapter within that essay bore the title “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce.” Lewis’ essay does not even mention the piece that Joyce wrote for The Tyrocritic. It contains only two quotes from Work in Progress, and both are from a draft of I.7 that appeared in the Autumn-Winter 1925 edition of This Quarter under the title “Extract from Work in Progress.”31 “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce” is central to all of Joyce’s engagements with Lewis in the Wake and is of particular importance to that which occurs in I.6. To fully understand Lewis’ substantial discussion of Joyce, it is important to consider it in the contexts of both the essay and the review in which it appeared. That review was titled The Enemy because, as the editorial that opens the first edition explains, Lewis believed that there were virtues to adopting such a role. In that editorial, he talks about the freedom of being without obligations “towards party or individual colleague.” For Lewis, such freedom enables “serious unpartisan criticism.” He also goes on to mention that another of the benefits of the approach of his review is that it “publicly repudiates any of those treacherous or unreal claims to ‘impartiality.’ ”32 One might wonder how Lewis can dismiss 26 Gen. 4:21 KJV. 27 See Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 119. 28 Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce, 313. 29 For the MS that Joyce gave Lewis, see Cornell (Wyndham Lewis Collection), 1–11; JJA 53:45–55. 30 Van Hulle, James Joyce’s “Work in Progress,” 49. Van Hulle quotes Joyce, James Joyce’s Letters to Sylvia Beach, 1921–1940, 73. 31 See Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 125. The proofs for the piece titled “Extract from Work in Progress” that appeared in This Quarter are missing. See JJA 47:397. 32 Lewis, “Editorial,” ix.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 57 impartiality while defining his criticism as unpartisan. What allows him to do so that is that he only regards himself as unpartisan in the sense that he does not conform to the ideas of others. Lewis is quite clear that, in his critical writings, he always writes from his own perspective. After explaining why he has chosen to define himself as an enemy, Lewis then describes how he will act as an enemy. In doing so, he emphasizes the idea that the attacks of his review are not directed at particular people. Lewis writes that, “if incidentally the first of the age” are “subjected to criticism,” it is “more the period, its infections, and the action of those infections within the tissues of their work, than the brilliant individual energy they may possess, at which criticism is directed.”33 Toward the end of the editorial, Lewis returns to the same theme in a slightly different fashion when he explains that the focus of his review is “very strictly things, not people.”34 As one might expect from the fact that the first edition of The Enemy begins by repeatedly denying that the attacks within it are personal, that edition is full of such attacks and none of the attacks are more personal than that directed at Joyce. The overtly oppositional stance of The Enemy was quite characteristic of Lewis. He explains his sense of the value of opposition in Time and Western Man when he writes, “But how can we evade our destiny of being ‘an opposite,’ except by becoming some grey mixture that is in reality just nothing at all?”35 From Lewis’ perspective, to unite with another is not to gain another identity, but rather to lose one’s own and so to cease to exist. Therefore, to have an identity at all, one must resist uniting with others by defining oneself in opposition to them. When Lewis argues for the validity of this position, he shows himself to be aware that it opens him up to the charge of being locked within his own perspective. He counters this potential charge by arguing that he does not need to unite with his opposites because he contains within himself contradictory dispositions that allow him to conduct internal debates. Lewis explains how those debates reach their resolutions when he writes: “I have allowed these contradictory things to struggle together, and the group that has proved the most powerful I have fixed upon as my most essential ME.”36 As can be seen, Lewis considers opposition to be necessary both without and within. His biographer Jeffrey Meyers suggests that the centrality of the notion of opposition within Lewis’ worldview may have been a result of his military experiences in World War One: His self-characterization as the Enemy and obsession with the military operations of his real or apparent adversaries, which led to accusations that he was “paranoid,” may have evolved from the experience of trench warfare. . . . Like the soldiers, Lewis came to need and even to love his store of accessible enemies,
33 Lewis, “Editorial,” x. 34 Lewis, “Editorial,” xiv. 35 Lewis, Time and Western Man, 132. 36 Lewis, Time and Western Man, 132.
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58 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake whose hostile resistance provoked his verbal battles, inspired his polemical campaigns and kept his sword sharp. Perhaps some of his friends became his enemies so that he could love them.37
Lewis certainly found the tension in his relationship with Joyce to be a source of creative inspiration, but, as the last sentence of the above quote suggests, Lewis did not merely love Joyce in the sense of loving to hate him. He knew that his constant attacks on Joyce would persistently draw the attention of an artist for whom he had great respect. Lewis would not be such an important figure in the Wake had he not written “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce.” To attain the artistic relationship that he sought with Joyce, Lewis was willing to become his friend’s enemy. The discussion of Joyce in the first edition of The Enemy appears in a chapter of an essay titled “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” Aside from a few short pieces, this essay is the entirety of that edition. While “The Revolutionary Simpleton” engages with a variety of different matters, its primary focus is the influence of Bergson, and Lewis’ comments on Ulysses appear within the context of that subject. To be able to read those comments in context, it is therefore necessary to have a sense of Lewis’ attitude toward Bergson.
Lewis and Bergson Lewis treats Bergson with characteristic hostility in “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” but he did not always view him negatively. While living in Paris in the first decade of the twentieth century, Lewis attended lectures by Bergson at the Collège de France and, to quote Meyers, “Lewis found Bergson to be an excellent lecturer in philosophy.”38 As Meyers goes on to explain, all of Lewis’ most virulent attacks, whether directed towards writers, artists or philosophers, were attacks against individuals that he had previously admired.39 The violence with which Lewis treated a particular person was generally proportionate to the esteem in which he once held them. Therefore, the particular contempt that the mature Lewis held for Bergson suggests that he had once been an ardent disciple. When Lewis attacks Bergson, his attacks focus on a notion that is central to Bergson’s philosophy, that of flux. Within Bergson’s thought, the word “flux” primarily operates in the sense of, to quote the OED, “A continuous succession of changes of condition, composition or substance.” Since the word “flux” also means “a flowing,” Bergson often uses water imagery to convey that notion.40 One finds fluxes throughout Bergson’s thought, but Lewis’ critiques of Bergson’s 37 Meyers, The Enemy, 107–8. 39 Meyers, The Enemy, 137.
38 Meyers, The Enemy, 16. 40 “Flux, n.”
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 59 treatment of that notion center mainly on Bergson’s two best known works, Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness) and Creative Evolution. Therefore, the best means of understanding those critiques is to look at how the notion of flux develops across those two works. In the earlier of the two, Time and Free Will, Bergson engages with the notion of flux in explaining his revolutionary understanding of time. As Suzanne Guerlac observes, that understanding is predicated on two distinctions: Bergson distinguishes two sorts of multiplicity. One can be manipulated through number and counting and pertains to the world of things that exist in space. He calls this distinct multiplicity. The other, which characterizes inner affective states, will be called confused multiplicity, because its elements are fused together…. Bergson also distinguishes between two sorts of consciousness. The first, immediate consciousness . . . refers to the way something feels to us directly, before we stop to think about it, try to communicate it to someone, or represent it symbolically in any way. The second, reflective consciousness, involves thinking and implies the use of tools that enable us to think and to know: language, logic, mathematics, and other symbols or means of representation. Reflective consciousness objectifies experiences. It treats them the same way it considers objects in space.41
These ideas led Bergson to distinguish between two conceptions of time. The first, which is the common conception of time, often known as clock time, results from the reflective consciousness treating the states of consciousness as though they are discrete spatial objects. Those states can thereby be viewed as a distinct multiplicity, and this allows them to be quantified. This understanding of the states of consciousness results in a conception of time in which moments of time function like states of consciousness in that they are distinct and quantifiable. While this conception of time is useful, in that it creates a form of time that can be measured, it derives from a false transposition of time into space, and this is why Bergson consistently labels it spurious. The second conception of time, duration, is quite opposite because, as Guerlac observes, it is “radically independent of space” and can only be approached “through inner states.”42 To be more specific, duration occurs within the immediate consciousness prior to the operations of the reflective consciousness. Since the states of consciousness have not yet been spatialized and thereby objectified, they are experienced in their true form, wherein, as Bergson puts it, “even when successive, [they] permeate one another, and in the 41 Guerlac, Thinking in Time, 62. (Italics are Guerlac’s.)
42 Guerlac, Thinking in Time, 63.
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60 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake simplest of them the whole soul can be reflected.”43 This leads to a conception of time in which one’s past and present states, rather than being separated from one another, are, to quote Bergson again, formed into an “organic whole, as happens when we recall the notes of a tune, melting, so to speak, into one another.”44 For Bergson, duration and immediate consciousness are similar in that, rather than being made up of distinct, static parts, each consists of a continuous, developing whole in which the parts cannot be separated. What’s more, the manner in which the two develop is also similar. Just as Bergson defines “duration within us” as “an organic evolution which is yet not an increasing quantity,” so he speaks of the “inner states,” which is to say the states of immediate consciousness, as “living things, constantly becoming.”45 As these quotes make clear, the notion of flux is central to Time and Free Will, in that Bergson regards both duration and immediate consciousness as fluxes. The flux of duration is a product of the flux of immediate consciousness. Bergson develops the ideas of Time and Free Will in his best-known work, Creative Evolution. In that work, the flux on which he principally focuses is neither immediate consciousness nor duration, but rather life. Having said that, in Creative Evolution the ideas of life and consciousness are fundamentally connected. Indeed, so close is the relationship between the two in Creative Evolution that they are on occasion equated. For example, only a few sentences after describing “life as a whole” as “a wave which rises,” Bergson returns to that image and says, “on the other hand, this rising wave is consciousness.”46 Consequently, the approaches of the two works to the notion of flux are not so different. Creative Evolution is, in many ways, an attempt to expand the ideas of Time and Free Will beyond the boundaries of the human mind. It is in the second chapter of Creative Evolution that Bergson most directly explains the idea of life as flux: Life in general is mobility itself; particular manifestations of life accept this mobility reluctantly, and consistently lag behind. It is always going ahead; they want to mark time. Evolution in general would fain go on in a straight line; each special evolution is a kind of circle. Like eddies of dust raised by the wind as it passes, the living turn upon themselves, borne up by the great blast of life. They are therefore relatively stable, and counterfeit immobility so well that we treat each of them as a thing rather than as a progress, forgetting that the very permanence of their form is only the outline of a movement.47
43 Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, 100. 44 Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, 100. 45 Bergson, Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, 226, 231. 46 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 269. 47 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 128.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 61 When Bergson speaks of “life” here, he uses the word in the broad sense of the force which causes all animate existence. His discussion of life begins with the claim that “life in general is mobility itself.” The term “mobility” here refers not to spatial movement, but rather to evolution. In saying that “life in general is mobility itself,” Bergson is saying that each thing that bears life continually changes and develops and so is, thereby, in a perpetual state of flux. He goes on to observe that “particular manifestations of life” accept their mobility more willingly than others. As Bergson explains elsewhere in the book, there is an aspect of a living being that works against the life within it and that aspect is its materiality. This notion is presented most clearly when, to return to an earlier quote, Bergson describes “life as a whole” as “a wave which rises, and which is opposed by the descending movement of matter.”48 Bergson’s privileging of life over matter is clear from the fact that life ascends whereas matter descends. To return to the quote above, it is the countering of the mobility of life by the stability of matter within each living being that causes each living being to be “relatively stable.”49 However, this relative stability causes people to misconceive of living beings as being immobile, and the result of this misconception is that each living being is treated as a “thing rather than a progress.”50 From Bergson’s perspective, this is wrong for two reasons. The first is that living beings only “counterfeit immobility.”51 By this he means that while living beings can appear immobile, they can never truly be so. The second is that, in viewing a living being as a “thing rather than a progress,” one loses sight of the primacy of mobility. As Bergson puts it, “the very permanence” of the “form” of any living being “is only the outline of a movement.” By this he means that the mobility of a being is its essence and the static appearance that a being offers is merely a product of that mobility. Bergson’s notion of life as flux has important consequences for man’s capacity to engage with the world. For Bergson, “The intellect is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life.” He goes on to explain that while the intellect is “skillful in dealing with the inert,” when it “wants to treat the life of the body or the life of the mind, it proceeds with the rigor, the stiffness and the brutality of an instrument not designed for such use.”52 Fortunately, within Bergson’s conception of mind, the intellect is accompanied by the complementary capacity of instinct. Whereas the former cannot effectively engage with life, the latter, by contrast, is closely related to life in that it “carries out further the work by which life organizes matter.” Bergson clarifies what this means by offering an example: “When the little chick is breaking its shell with a peck of its beak, it is acting by instinct, and yet it does but carry on the movement which has borne it through embryonic
48 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 269. 50 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 128. 52 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 165.
49 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 128. 51 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 128.
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62 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake life.”53 As can be seen, when a living being acts by instinct, life acts through it. Indeed, so closely are instinct and life connected in Bergson’s thought that he says of instinct, “If the consciousness that slumbers in it should awake, if it were wound up into knowledge instead of being wound off into action, if we could ask it and it could reply, it would give up to us the most intimate secrets of life.”54 For Bergson, however, instinct cannot attain that degree of consciousness and so cannot provide those secrets. This is why the third capacity of intuition is required. He defines that capacity as “instinct that has become disinterested, self-conscious, capable of reflecting upon its object and of enlarging it indefinitely.” Whereas intelligence can only go “all round life, taking from outside the greatest possible number of views, drawing it into itself instead of entering into it,” it is intuition that leads humans to the “very inwardness of life.”55 The example of intuition that is subsequently offered is relevant to both Joyce and Lewis because that example is the “aesthetic faculty.” Bergson explains how this faculty differs from “normal perception”: Our eye perceives the features of the living being, merely as assembled, not as mutually organized. The intention of life, the simple movement that runs through the lines, that binds them together and gives them significance, escapes it. This intention is just what the artist tries to regain, in placing himself back within the object by a kind of sympathy, in breaking down, by an effort of intuition, the barrier that space puts between him and his model.56
According to Bergson, when the artist, who is here defined as male, looks at a living being, he is able to use his aesthetic faculty in order to gain a sense of “the intention of life.” By this, Bergson means life’s purpose in organizing the elements of that being. In grasping “the intention of life,” the artist can transcend “normal perception” and so understand the living being in question from the inside as well as the outside. This characterization of the aesthetic faculty bestows upon the artist an extraordinary capacity for insight. One can certainly understand why so many of the artists of the early twentieth century found this conception of the artist to be appealing and so were drawn to Bergson’s thought. Indeed, one of the main reasons Lewis felt such a strong need to attack Bergson’s philosophy was its popularity among his contemporaries. In “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” Lewis launches a major offensive against Bergson. One can gain a sense of the rationale behind the sprawling argument of that essay by looking at the more concise discussion of Bergson that Lewis offered a year earlier in The Art of Being Ruled. That book contains a four-page chapter on
53 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 165. 55 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 176.
54 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 165. 56 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 177.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 63 Bergson titled “The Great God Flux.” At the end of the chapter, Lewis presents his view of Bergson’s thought: Bergson is throughout recommending capitulation to the material in struggle against which the greatest things in the world have been constructed. This fashionable, unskeletal, feminine philosopher of the flux wished . . . to deliver all this up to the river-god, to the god Flux, once more. I am an artist, and, through my eye, must confess to a tremendous bias. In my purely literary voyages my eye is always my compass. “The architectural simplicity”—whether of a platonic idea or a greek temple—I far prefer to no idea at all, or, for instance, to most of the complicated and too tropical structures of India. Nothing could ever convince my EYE—even if my intelligence were otherwise overcome—that anything that did not possess this simplicity, conceptual quality, hard exact outline, grand architectural proportion was the greatest art. Bergson is indeed the arch enemy of every impulse having its seat in the apparatus of vision, and requiring a concrete world. Bergson is the enemy of the Eye, from the start; though he might arrive at some emotional compromise with the Ear. But I can hardly imagine any way in which he is not against every form of intelligent life.57
As one would expect given the title of the chapter, Lewis places great emphasis on the role of flux in Bergson’s thought. When he speaks of how Bergson is “throughout recommending capitulation to the material in struggle against which the greatest things in the world have been constructed,” Lewis suggests that the “greatest things in the world” have all been “constructed” for the purpose of imposing a degree of permanence upon a transient world. He takes Bergson to argue that mankind should cease to construct such great things and merely submit to that transience. It is for this reason that Lewis attacks Bergson, labeling him “fashionable,” “unskeletal,” in the sense that his ideas lack a logical internal structure, and “feminine.” As is often the case with Lewis’ insults, these adjectives say more about him than they do about his target. After attacking Bergson in this manner, Lewis proceeds to admit that he is hardly objective in his condemnation of Bergson as he is an artist who relies heavily on his eyes. Those eyes are said to prefer a classical form of art that values “simplicity, conceptual quality, hard exact outline, grand architectural proportion.” What Lewis values in classical art, he also values in philosophy. One can see this when he equates “a platonic idea” and a “greek temple” by offering both as examples of the “architectural simplicity” he esteems. After speaking of his own eyes, Lewis goes on to proclaim Bergson “the enemy of the Eye.” This is because he believes that the eye requires the “concrete
57 Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, 338.
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64 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake world” that Bergson challenges. In describing Bergson as the “enemy of the Eye,” Lewis defines Bergson against not only the classical, Lewis’ preferred mode of art and thought, but also against all the visual arts, including literature. For Lewis, the only artform that can embrace Bergson’s worldview is music, and this is why he suggests that Bergson “might arrive at some emotional compromise with the Ear.” The word “emotional” here functions as a negative term. In associating Bergson with emotion, Lewis attempts to define Bergson’s thought as antithetical to the rationality of his own. The opposition between emotion and reason is referenced again in the last sentence of the quote when Lewis says that he “can hardly imagine any way in which” Bergson “is not against every form of intelligent life.” In specifically using the word “intelligent,” that last sentence also suggests that Lewis has concerns regarding Bergson’s views on the limits of intelligence. The brief discussion of Bergson in The Art of Being Ruled would be expanded into a much more substantial critique in “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” In that essay, Lewis responds to Bergson from the perspectives of both the artist and the amateur philosopher. The philosophical sections of the essay are mostly in the later chapters. Lewis there speaks more of ideas than people, and so the tone is, by his standards, quite moderate. This enables him to make stronger, more objective arguments against Bergson’s philosophy than are offered in The Art of Being Ruled. For example, the discussion in chapter XIX of how Bergson’s ostensibly anti-mechanistic philosophy is actually fundamentally mechanistic contains a number of valid points.58 For the most part, however, “The Revolutionary Simpleton” considers the relationship of Bergson’s philosophy to art. In doing so, its primary concern is to define Bergson as a romantic. To provide just one example of this, in the very first chapter of the essay Lewis declares that “Bergsonian durée [duration], or psychological time, is essentially the ‘time’ of the true romantic.”59 Later on in that same chapter, Lewis offers his conception of the romantic: The “classical” is the rational, aloof and aristocratical; the “romantic” is the popular, sensational and “cosmically” confused. That is the permanent political reference in these terms. It is not in conformity with its position in this Classic-Romantic controversy, however, that the word “romantic” is generally used. Rather is it in opposition to positive science—not to the great traditional opponent of positive science, the classical ideal—that we find it employed. . . . We say “romantic” when we wish to define something too emotionalized (according to our positivist standards), something opposed to the actual or the real: a self-indulgent habit of mind or a
58 See Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 147–8. 59 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 33.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 65 tendency to shut the eyes to what is unpleasant, in favor of things arbitrarily chosen for their flattering pleasantness.60
When Lewis speaks of the classical and the romantic in the opening sentence, his characterizations are highly subjective. It would not be unfair to say that the classical is merely defined as that which Lewis is for, in both political and artistic terms, and the romantic is that which he is against. Lewis values “the rational, aloof and aristocratical” to the same extent that he disdains “the popular, sensational and ‘cosmically’ confused.” In the paragraph that follows, Lewis further explains his sense of the romantic by suggesting that, in his time period, the romantic is not commonly opposed to the classical, but rather to “positive science.” As Lewis lays out that opposition, he begins to hark back to the discussion of Bergson in The Art of Being Ruled. Here, as there, the central distinction is that between the internal and the external. Yet, whereas Lewis’ remarks on Bergson in The Art of Being Ruled emphasize his sense of the superiority of the external, in the above quote from “The Revolutionary Simpleton” he focuses on the inferiority of the internal. The romantic is described as possessing “a self-indulgent habit of mind or a tendency to shut the eyes to what is unpleasant, in favor of things arbitrarily chosen for their flattering pleasantness.” This image of willful blindness points back to the discussion of Bergson in The Art of Being Ruled, because Lewis there emphasizes the importance of his vision to all of his art while dubbing Bergson “the enemy of the Eye.”61 When one recognizes the parallels between the two passages, one can see the extent to which Lewis’ definition of the romantic is defined by his view of Bergson. A comparison of those two passages also shows that Lewis’ portrayal of Bergson’s philosophy in “The Revolutionary Simpleton” is even more critical than that in The Art of Being Ruled. In discussing the romantic’s “tendency to shut the eyes,” Lewis defines that figure, and thereby Bergson, as a fantasist, a narcissist, and an irrationalist.62 The connection that Lewis establishes between Bergson and the romantic allows him to include within “The Revolutionary Simpleton” attacks on many artists and thinkers that he considers romantic. That essay contains chapters on figures as diverse as Gertrude Stein, Oswald Spengler, and Charlie Chaplin.
Joyce and Bergson The section of “The Revolutionary Simpleton” that focuses on Joyce often casts its subject as a romantic through its emphatic insistence on the influence of Bergson on Joyce: 60 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 35. 62 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 35.
61 Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, 338.
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66 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Without all the uniform pervasive growth of the time-philosophy starting from the little seed planted by Bergson, discredited, and now spreading more vigorously than ever, there would be no Ulysses, or there would be no A La Recherche du Temps Perdu. . . . In short, Mr. Joyce is very strictly of the school of Bergson- Einstein, Stein-Proust. He is of the great Time-school they represent. His book is a time-book, as I have said, in that sense.63
The “time-philosophy” that is mentioned in the first sentence of this quote includes not only the temporal ideas within the two books by Bergson on which Lewis focuses in “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” Time and Free Will and Creative Evolution, but also the temporal ideas within the many other works that Lewis views as having been inspired by Bergson. This is why Lewis describes the “time-philosophy” as having started “from the little seed planted by Bergson.” That “seed” was then supposedly developed by the likes of Stein, Proust, and Albert Einstein. To indicate that something adheres to the time-philosophy, Lewis applies to the prefix “time” to it. For example, the “Time-school” consists of those who follow and profess the “time-philosophy.” In discussing Joyce, Lewis distributes the prefix “time” liberally. Joyce is said to belong to the “great Time-school.” Ulysses is described as a “time-book.” Lewis even goes so far as to say that Joyce’s novel would not exist were it not for the “time-philosophy.” As regards Bergson’s influence on Joyce, there seems little room for misinterpretation here. However, there are also sections of “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce” that challenge the idea that Ulysses is devoutly Bergsonian in its approach. They do so by suggesting that the novel is not entirely romantic and therefore, by the logic of the Lewis’ alignment of Bergson and romanticism, not entirely Bergsonian. As in the letter Lewis wrote to Sidney Schiff immediately after reading Ulysses for the first time, there is a tension within the discussion of Ulysses in “The Revolutionary Simpleton” between its emphasis on the romantic nature of that novel and its acknowledgment of Ulysses’ naturalistic aspects. The tension between the two exists because, for Lewis, romantic art portrays the perceptions, emotions, and fantasies of the mind, whereas naturalistic art, by contrast, depicts the material objects of the world. One can see an example of this tension in the section of “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce” in which Lewis attempts to define the narrative technique of Joyce’s novel. He begins by saying that the “method that underlies Ulysses is known as the ‘telling from the inside.’ ”64 Yet in discussing what Joyce includes inside the mind, Lewis speaks of the material rather than the ideal: At the very end of a long reading of Ulysses you feel that it is the very nightmare of the naturalistic method that you have been experiencing. Much as you may 63 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 108. 64 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 110.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 67 cherish the merely physical enthusiasm that expresses itself in this stupendous outpouring of matter, or stuff, you wish, on the spot, to be transported to some more abstract region for a time, where the dates of the various toothpastes, the brewery and laundry receipts, the growing pile of punched bus-tickets, the growing holes in the baby’s socks and the darn that repairs them, assume less importance.65
There is little sense here that Lewis is talking about perceptions or ideas. As highlighted by his italicization of the word “matter,” Lewis’ focus seems to be very much on the physical objects of the material world. The reason for this is that Lewis’ discussion of Joyce’s narrative method slips into a critique of the volume of information that Ulysses provides regarding the ordinary events of an ordinary day. When it does so, it shifts its focus from the romantic aspect of Ulysses to the naturalistic. In acknowledging the presence of the latter, Lewis demonstrates his awareness that not every aspect of that novel can be defined as Bergsonian. For the most part, however, Lewis presents Ulysses as a romantic, Bergson- inspired novel. While it is always difficult to substantiate claims of influence, there is certainly evidence that Joyce was aware of Bergson during the writing of that novel. In one of the Exiles notes, Joyce writes: “All Celtic philosophers seemed to have inclined towards incertitude or skepticism— Hume, Berkeley, Balfour, Bergson.”66 The notes for Exiles were taken down between November 1913 and January 1915 and so were likely written just before Joyce started working on Ulysses.67 During the period in which Joyce was constructing his epic, he also owned books by and on Bergson. Among the books that Joyce left in Trieste when he moved to Paris in the June of 1920 were Bergson’s Creative Evolution and La signification de la guerre (The Meaning of War: Life and Matter in Conflict), as well as Joseph Solomon’s Bergson.68 The latter offers a general introduction to Bergson’s thought. As can be seen, the absence of any references to Bergson in Ulysses certainly does not derive from an ignorance of his ideas. The reason for that absence is likely that Ulysses is set in 1904. None of Bergson’s major works had been translated into English at that time, and so he was not well known in the English- speaking world. It would therefore be unrealistic for the characters of Ulysses to be familiar with his philosophy. Joyce would, however, go on to demonstrate his knowledge of Bergson in the Wake. As will be discussed, the word “Bitchson” in I.6 is a pun on Bergson’s name (FW 149.20). Also, in II.1 the credits for the production of “The Mime of Nick, Mick and the Maggies” contain the item
65 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 110. 66 Joyce, Poems and Exiles, 353. 67 For the dating of the Exiles notes, see MacNicholas, James Joyce’s Exiles, 29. The start of Joyce’s work on Ulysses cannot be dated exactly, but his first declaration that he had begun work on it appeared in a June 16, 1915 letter to Stanislaus. In this letter, James told his brother that he had written the first episode of his new novel. See Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce, 209. 68 See Ellmann, The Consciousness of Joyce, 101, 128.
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68 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake “Promptings by Elanio Vitale” (FW 219.19, 221.22). The name of the prompter is a play on “élan vital,” the original French term for Bergson’s famous vital impetus. Despite all this evidence of Joyce’s interest in Bergson, the question of the influence of Bergson on Joyce is not a straightforward matter. Many critics have explored the relationship between the two, and there are a number of regards in which one could consider Joyce’s last two novels to be Bergsonian.69 If one were to focus on the notion of duration, for example, one could point to the several episodes within Ulysses in which there is a marked discord between the internal experience of time and external clock time. The most extreme example of such discord can be found in the “Circe” episode, which repeatedly draws attention to the irregularity of its temporal structure. Similarly, if one were to concentrate on the notion of flux, one would have no difficulty in finding examples of this notion in the novel formerly known as Work in Progress. To point to only one example, in the last chapter I quoted the section of I.5 in which the narrator describes Biddy Doran’s letter as a “gobblydumped turkery” and explains at some length how it can be that “every person, place and thing in the chaosmos of Alle anyway connected with the gobblydumped turkery was moving and changing every part of the time” (FW 118.21–3). However, while one can certainly locate similarities between the ideas of Bergson and Joyce, it is also important to recognize how they differed. To return to the prior examples, while a case can be made that Joyce draws upon the notion of duration in Ulysses, it should also be acknowledged that the notion of duration rests in part on a distinction between the internal realm of conscious states and the external realm of material objects. Ulysses consistently challenges this distinction by highlighting the reciprocal relationship of influence between its two sides. A basic example of this can be found in “Lestrygonians.” Just as Bloom’s hunger causes him to view the objects of the world through the lens of food, so his physical act of quenching of that hunger transforms him from within by raising his spirits. One might therefore question the degree to which the notion of duration is applicable to Ulysses. Similarly, one can push back against the idea that the conception of flux offered in the Wake is Bergsonian. To do so, one might, for example, note that in Bergson’s best-known work, Creative Evolution, the key flux is that of life and Bergson strongly emphasizes the idea that the forward movement of life is unstoppable: All the living hold together and all yield to the same tremendous push. The animal takes its stand on the plant, man bestrides animality, and the whole of
69 Works examining the connection between Bergson and Joyce include: Shiv Kumar Kumar, Bergson and the Stream of Consciousness Novel (New York: New York University Press, 1962); Mary Ann Gillies, Henri Bergson and British Modernism (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996); and Ruben Borg, The Measureless Time of Joyce, Deleuze and Derrida (New York: Continuum, 2007).
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 69 humanity, in space and in time, is one immense army galloping beside and before and behind each of us in an overwhelming charge able to beat down every resistance and clear the most formidable obstacles, perhaps even death.70
Bergson here conceives of the development of life as linear and overwhelmingly positive. At the end of the sentence, he even imagines life evolving to the point that it can overcome death. In considering this notion, it is worth bearing in mind that, earlier in the same paragraph, Bergson speaks of the “life of the body” as being “on the road that leads to the life of the spirit.”71 As discussed in the last chapter, Joyce’s final work is skeptical of optimistic, linear models of progress. Finnegans Wake is as much concerned with revolution as evolution. One of the reasons why Joyce and Bergson disagree on the notion of progress is that Bergson’s understanding of evolution is underpinned by the teleological Christian model of history. This is evident from the references to spirituality within his discussions of the ascent of life. As also mentioned in the last chapter, Joyce does not hold with this model of history. In considering the similarities and differences between the ideas of Bergson and Joyce, one can see the difficulty of attempting to argue that the former influenced the latter. Joyce certainly knew of Bergson’s ideas while writing his last two novels, but this does not mean that he necessarily agreed with or used those ideas. What can be said with more certainty is that, if Bergson was a major influence on Ulysses and the Wake, Joyce did not draw a great deal of attention to this. Bergson is not referenced in Ulysses and, while there are two allusions to him in the Wake, given how often that novel engages with Lewis’ long essay on Bergson in the first edition of The Enemy this is a conspicuously small number of allusions. Those allusions occur in I.6 and II.1, and so Bergson is absent from the tale the Ondt and the Gracehoper in III.1. This absence is significant because, as will be discussed in Chapter 4, that tale includes allusions to almost every philosopher who is referenced elsewhere in the Wake. The fact that Bergson does not have a major presence in Joyce’s last novel is no proof that he exerted no influence on that work, but it certainly makes it more difficult to show that he did. As noted, Lewis takes a less equivocal stance on the relationship between Bergson and Joyce in “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” That essay repeatedly casts Joyce as a follower of Bergson. What’s more, this is just one of the many critiques that Lewis levels at Joyce in that work. One can see another when, in comparing Joyce with his countrymen Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw, Lewis attacks Joyce’s character and comportment: Joyce is steeped in the sadness and the shabbiness of the pathetic gentility of the upper shopkeeping class, slumbering at the bottom of a neglected province; 70 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 271.
71 Bergson, Creative Evolution, 269.
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70 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake never far, in its snobbishly circumscribed despair, from the pawnshop and the “pub.” . . . Joyce resembles him [Shaw] in some striking particulars; but the more recent figure, this quiet, very positive, self-collected irish schoolmaster, with that well-known air of genteel decorum and bienséance of the irish middle-class, with his “if you pleases” and “no thank yous,” his ceremonious Mister-this and Mister-that, is remote from what must have been the strapping, dashing George Bernard Shaw of the Shavian heyday.72
That Joyce was upset by this passage is clear from how often he returns to it in the Wake. The references to this passage in that novel suggest that it was not Lewis’ characteristically hateful attitude toward all things Irish in these sentences that bothered Joyce, but rather the allusions to his social class. Lewis is not content in implying Joyce’s social inferiority by locating him in the “upper shopkeeping class.” He also feels the need to denigrate that class for its “sadness” and “shabbiness.” Furthermore, Lewis mocks what he views as the hypocrisy of the “upper shopkeeping class” by referring to its “pathetic gentility” and its “snobbishly circumscribed despair.” Amidst the wealth of insults within this passage, Joyce homed in on the references to his “if you pleases” and “no thank yous,” and Wakean forms of these phrases are littered throughout Professor Jones’ lecture in I.6.73 That Lewis’ remarks stayed with Joyce for a long time is evidenced by Arthur Power’s recollection of a conversation he had with Joyce in Paris in which Joyce “repeated some of the criticisms that had been levelled against his work, quoting Wyndham Lewis’ jibe about him being a middle-class writer.”74 This remark can be dated approximately because Power speaks of Joyce as living on the Rue Galilée at the time of that conversation, and Joyce lived there between November 1932 and July 1934. Even without a more exact date, it is evident that Joyce retained the discussion of his social background in “The Revolutionary Simpleton” for several years after first reading it.
Professor Jones’ Lecture “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce” was published in the first edition of The Enemy in January of 1927 as part of “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” Lewis then revised and expanded “The Revolutionary Simpleton” into a book-length work titled Time and Western Man, which was published in September of 1927. Even before the appearance of that book, Joyce had started formulating his response.
72 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 97. 73 To offer just one example of each, in the opening lines of p. 150 “if you please” appears as “Of your plates?” and “no thank you” becomes “no funk you!” (FW 150.03,05). 74 O’Connor, The Joyce We Knew, 120.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 71 The first drafts of all of the parts of Professor Jones’ lecture had been written before the publication of Time and Western Man, and so that lecture primarily replies to “The Revolutionary Simpleton.”75 The principal means by which it does so is parody. Joyce pokes fun at Lewis’ prose style through the aggression and arrogance of Jones’ discourse. At the same time, Joyce also ensures that he stays close to Lewis’ essay by continually using terms and phrases drawn from it. As these textual fragments are incorporated into the Wake, they are repurposed. Van Hulle observes that the Wake responds to Lewis’ The Art of Being Ruled through a “counterstrategy” that “presages what the situationists call détournment, ‘a subversive plagiarism that diverts the spectacle’s language and imagery from its intended use,’ ” and Joyce uses the same strategy in responding to the “The Revolutionary Simpleton” in Jones’ lecture.76 That lecture begins when Shaun sidesteps Shem’s question about whether Shaun would help him if he were in need. Shaun does so in order to speak on a different subject: But before proceeding to conclusively confute this begging question it would be far fitter for, if you dare! to hasitate to consult with and consequentially attempt at my disposale of the same dime-cash problem elsewhere naturalistically of course, from the blinkpoint of so eminent a spatialist. (FW 149.14–9)
As Shaun begins to engage with academic matters, he adopts the guise of Professor Jones. This learned academic feels that it would be beneficial for Shem to consult the “disposale” of the “dime-cash problem” that he has offered “elsewhere.” This reference to the problem being solved “elsewhere” is an allusion to “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” The Lewisian Jones has solved the “dime-cash problem” in that text because the words “dime” and “cash” are intended to evoke the terms “time” and “space” and “The Revolutionary Simpleton” is very much concerned with the relationship between those two ideas. Evidence for the idea that “dime” and “cash” point to “time” and “space” can be found in the first draft of the above sentence, in which Joyce wrote the word “time” and then changed the “t” into a “d.”77 One of the reasons Jones speaks of “dime” and “cash” rather than “time” and “space” is that, in the second chapter of “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” Lewis says that, for the romantic, each moment in time has “only so much value as is 75 Professor Jones’ lecture goes from FW 149.11 to 168.12. It was written in four sections. The first draft of the first section (FW 149.11–150.14) was produced in “probably June or July 1927” (JJA 47:1). The first draft of the second section (FW 150.15–152.03) dates to “Summer 1927” (JJA 47:109). The first draft of the third section (FW 152.04–159.23) was written in “July or August 1927” (JJA 47:125). The first draft of the fourth and final section (FW 159.24–168.12) has been dated as “probably August 1927” (JJA 47:143). 76 Van Hulle, “Wyndham Lewis in Finnegans Wake Notebook VI.B.20,” 7. Van Hulle cites Downing et al., Radical Media, 59. 77 BL 47473 f. 144v; JJA 47:47; FDV 99.
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72 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake conveyed in the famous proverb, Time is money.”78 By this, Lewis means that that, for the romantic, each moment only has value in itself. It makes “no reference beyond itself ” and contains “no absolute or universal value.”79 The idea that Jones represents Lewis is reinforced by the professor’s reference to how, in solving the “dime-cash problem,” he viewed it “from the blinkpoint of so eminent a spatialist” (FW 149.17–9). This reflects the end of the preface to “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” in which Lewis says that the purpose of his essay is the criticism of the “time-view, from the position of the plastic or the visual intelligence.”80 As Jones’ lecture continues, the professor proceeds to refer to Bergson: From it you will here notice, Schott, upon my for the first remarking you that the sophology of Bitchson while driven as under by a purely dime-dime urge is not without his cashcash characktericksticks, borrowed for its nonce ends from the fiery goodmother Miss Fortune (who the lost time we had the pleasure we have had our little recherché brush with, what, Schott?) and as I further could have told you as brisk as your D.B.C. behaviouristically pailleté with a coat of homoid icing which is in reality only a done by chance ridiculisation of the whoo-whoo and where’s hairs theorics of Winestain. (FW 149.19–28)
Jones speaks to a student called “Schott,” whose name references Edoardo Schott. As John McCourt observes, Schott was “Joyce’s best Triestine student and later one of his friends in Zürich.”81 In speaking to “Schott,” Jones mentions the “sophology of Bitchson.” The word “sophology” alludes to the term “sophism” and so suggests a branch of knowledge that deals in deliberately misleading arguments. Those arguments are said to be offered by a character called “Bitchson,” whose name evokes that of Bergson. The comically insulting nature of the name “Bitchson” points to the furious attacks on Bergson that one finds throughout “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” The antipathy of Professor Jones towards Bitchson begins to be explained when Jones observes that Bitchson “while driven as under by a purely dime-dime urge is not without his cashcash charackterickstitcks” (FW 149.20–2). The emphasis on monetary matters in this section is so sustained that it is difficult not to interpret Professor Jones as suggesting that Bitchson is really only interested in money. Given the explicit anti-Semitism of the later parts of Jones’ lecture, it is entirely appropriate to view Jones as here using an anti-Semitic stereotype against the text’s version of the Jewish Bergson. The phrases “dime-dime urge” and “cashcash charackterickstitcks” also allude to Lewis’ sense of the falsity of Bergson’s self-perception. Roland McHugh notes that “dime-dime urge” points to the word “Demiurge” (AFW 149). This word is, to quote the OED, “A name for the Maker or Creator of the world, in the Platonic 78 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 36. 80 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 27.
79 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 36. 81 McCourt, The Years of Bloom, 75, n. 129.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 73 Philosophy,” and so is often used in English-language translations of the creation narratives of Plato’s Timaeus.82 Therefore, Bitchson’s “dime-dime urge” can be viewed as a desire to create new worlds (FW 149.21). Jones contrasts that urge with Bitchson’s “cashcash charackterickstitcks” in order to suggest the distance between what Bitchson would like to imagine he is doing and what he is really doing (FW 149.21–2). As McHugh observes, the phrase “cashcash charackterickstitcks” evokes “cache-cache,” the French name for the children’s game hide and seek (AFW 149). Given Lewis’ continual association of Bergson with time, the reference to that game seems designed to characterize Bitchson as a child who, in playing the seeker, counts time with his eyes closed. In this characterization, rather than creating a new world Bitchson blocks out the one that already exists around him. Jones’ depiction of Bitchson as misguidedly arrogant and willfully blind very much reflects Lewis’ portrayal of Bergson in “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” The professor continues to play on the idea of Bitchson as a child when he asserts that Bitchson has “borrowed” his theory from “the fiery goodmother Miss Fortune” (FW 149.22–3). In alluding to the Fairy Godmother from the pantomime Cinderella, Jones suggests that Bitchson’s worldview is a childish fantasy. The source of these images of childhood is Lewis’ discussion of the “child personality” in “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” He there describes this personality as the “all-important base” of the Bergsonian time-school because he considers Bergson’s rejection of the conventional understanding of time to be symptomatic of how the modern adult cannot accept the passing of time and so attempts to revert to childhood.83 After making this point, Lewis goes on to explain that one of the most important manifestations of the “child personality” is the use of childish language. In an extension of a criticism first offered in The Art of Being Ruled, Lewis describes Joyce as using such language. According to Lewis, Joyce discarded his knowledge of grammar and correct usage so as to be able to imitate the childish style of Gertrude Stein. This is why Lewis portrays Joyce and Stein as romping along hand in hand, “both outdoing all children in jolly quaintnesses.”84 The discussion of the “child personality” in “The Revolutionary Simpleton” also attacks Marcel Proust, and this is recognized in the Wake by the fact that, immediately after the mention of the “fiery goodmother Miss Fortune,” there is an allusion to Proust: “who the lost time we had the pleasure we have had our little recherché brush with” (FW 149.22–4). The terms “lost time” and “recherché” point to the title of Proust’s masterpiece, À la recherche du temps perdu, which is now commonly translated into English as In Search of Lost Time. The images of childhood conclude with that of a cake covered in homemade icing or, as the Wake puts it, “behaviouristically pailleté with a coat of homoid 82 “Demiurge, n.” 83 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 74. 84 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 74.
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74 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake icing” (FW 149.25–6). As the James Joyce Digital Archive observes, the source of the word “behaviouristically” is the note “behaviourist” in notebook VI.B.2.85 The reason that word appears in Jones’ lecture is that Lewis’ The Art of Being Ruled follows its chapter on Bergson with one titled “Hatred of Language and the Behaviorist ‘Word-Habit.’ ” That Joyce knew this chapter is demonstrated by his notes from it.86 The opening of the chapter on behaviorism connects to the end of that of Bergson. Lewis closes his discussion of the philosophy of Bergson by saying that he can “hardly imagine any way in which” Bergson “is not against every form of intelligent life.”87 The chapter that follows begins: “Hatred of the word goes hand in hand with hatred of the intellect.”88 According to Lewis, behaviorism seeks to replace the word with the deed and thought with action because it would impose upon the mind a mechanistic model that reduces the complexities of the mental realm to a series of basic processes. Since Lewis dislikes behaviorism and connects it to Bergson, that approach to psychology is an entirely suitable subject for Jones’ lecture. Beside the word “behaviouristically” sits “pailleté,” the French for “spangled” (FW 149.25–6). This word seems out of place because it is followed by the phrase “with a coat of homoid icing” and one would not normally refer to a cake as being “spangled” with icing (FW 149.26). The meaning of “pailleté” only emerges later on in the lecture when Professor Jones refers to “tinkers and spanglers” (FW 151.09). The thinker that “spanglers” and “pailleté” both point to is the German historian Oswald Spengler (FW 149.26). In “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” Lewis speaks of Spengler and Joyce together: But if I had to choose a book that would entirely fulfill all the requirements, as a literary paradigm, for my criticism of the “time”-motion school, it would not be to Ulysses that I should go. I should go to another literary form altogether, namely, history; and I should find in Spengler’s Decline of the West my perfect model of what a time-book should be.89
Given how forcefully Lewis argues for Joyce’s embrace of the time-philosophy, it seems extraordinary that anyone should be capable of producing a more temporal book than Ulysses. The fact that Lewis declares Spengler’s Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of the West) to be his “perfect model of what a time- book should be” therefore shows just how deeply Lewis considered the ideas of Spengler and Bergson to be intertwined. When one looks at the treatment of time in The Decline of the West, one can understand why Lewis came to that conclusion: 85 “Lexfac16 I.6§1 Lexicon 1939 Text.” 86 See Van Hulle, “Wyndham Lewis in Finnegans Wake Notebook VI.B.20,” 16. 87 Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, 338. 88 Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, 339. 89 Lewis, “Editorial,” 168.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 75 For primitive man the word “time” can have no meaning. He simply lives without any necessity of specifying an opposition to something else. He has time but knows nothing of it. All of us are conscious, as being aware, of space only, and not of time. Space “is,” (i.e. exists, in and with our sense-world)—as a self- extension while we are living the ordinary life of dream, impulse, intuition and conduct, and as space in the strict sense in the moments of strained attention. “Time,” on the contrary, is a discovery, which is made only by thinking. We create it as an idea or notion and do not begin till much later to suspect that we ourselves are Time, inasmuch as we live. And only the higher Cultures, whose world- conceptions have reached the mechanical- Nature stage, are capable of deriving from their consciousness of a well-ordered measurable and comprehensible Spatial, the projected image of time, the phantom time, which satisfies their need of comprehending, measuring and casually ordering all.90
Spengler divides man’s relationship with time into three stages. In the first, “primitive man” experiences time but has no conception of it. In the second, cultured man draws upon his perceptions of space in order to create a notion of time. He regards space as being “well-ordered measurable and comprehensible” and so he projects these qualities upon time. This understanding of time is very similar to Bergson’s clock time and, just as Bergson considered such a view to be false, so Spengler labels this conception of time “the phantom time.” In the third stage of man’s understanding of time, the realization dawns that “we ourselves are Time, inasmuch as we live.” What Spengler means by this is that time is alive and so, when we live, we are time. As he explains in the paragraph before the one quoted above, Spengler considers time to be alive because of its “character of directedness.”91 From his perspective, time does not proceed forward automatically but rather grows in a purposeful manner. This is why he observes that time “has ‘life,’ direction, impulse, will, a movement-quality that is most intimately allied to yearning.”92 Since it is a living thing, it is “indivisible and irreversible, once and uniquely occurring, and its course is entirely indeterminable by mechanics.”93 Just as Spengler’s phantom time is very similar to clock time, so this living time resembles duration in a number of regards. Most notably, within both of those conceptions of time, time is indivisible and unquantifiable. In examining Spengler’s understanding of time, one can quite understand why Lewis associated him with Bergson.
90 Spengler, The Decline of the West, 1:122. 92 Spengler, The Decline of the West, 1:122.
91 Spengler, The Decline of the West, 1:122. 93 Spengler, The Decline of the West, 1:122.
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76 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake
Einstein and Bergson After the allusion to Spengler through the word “pailleté,” Professor Jones goes on to argue that “the sophology of Bitchson” is “in reality only a done by chance ridiculisation of the whoo-whoo and where’s hairs theorics of Winestain” (FW 149.20, 26–8). This is where Einstein joins the discussion. As with Bergson, Jones shows his contempt for Einstein by punning on his name in an amusingly disrespectful manner. At the same time, in speaking of Einstein’s theories as his “whoo-whoo and where’s hairs theorics,” Jones points to the phrases “who’s who” and “where’s where” and so highlights the degree to which Einstein’s theories challenged basic notions of identity in the early twentieth century. Einstein is relevant to Professor Jones’ lecture because, like Bergson, he was an important time theorist. To understand Einstein’s conception of time, one must first consider the view that he opposed. That view can be seen in Isaac Newton’s 1687 work Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy when Newton draws a distinction between absolute time and common time: Absolute, true, mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature, flows equably without relation to anything external, and by another name is called duration: relative, apparent, and common time, is some sensible and external (whether accurate or unequable) measure of duration by the means of motion, which is commonly used instead of true time; such as an hour, a day, a month, a year.94
Newton holds “relative, apparent, and common time” to be unreliable because it is dependent upon factors outside of itself. The measurements he lists at the end of the sentence all relate to the movement of the Earth around the sun. A change in that movement would cause those measurements to change. So, in order to obtain a more reliable form of time, Newton posits the existence of “absolute, true, mathematical time.” Since the problems of “relative, apparent, and common time” arise from its lack of independence, “absolute, true, mathematical time” must be “of itself, and from its own nature.” The mode of time that Newton posits is the mode of time that Einstein seeks to challenge. Einstein’s refutation of Newton’s understanding of time can be seen in his book Über die spezielle und die allgemeine Relativitätstheorie (Relativity: The Special and General Theory). He there illustrates his opposition to Newton’s conception of time in non-mathematical terms by offering an example involving a train passing through a station as two lightning strikes occur.95 In The ABC of Relativity, a book
94 Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 8. 95 See Einstein, Relativity, 21–7.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 77 that Joyce knew, Bertrand Russell provides a revised version of Einstein’s example that is shorter, easier to follow, and more dramatic: Let us suppose that on a foggy night two men belonging to a gang of brigands shoot the guard and engine-driver of a train. The guard is at the end of the train; the brigands are on the line, and shoot their victims at close quarters. An old gentleman who is exactly in the middle of the train hears the two shots simultaneously. You would say, therefore, that the two shots were simultaneous. But a station-master who is exactly half-way between the two brigands hears the shot which kills the guard first. An Australian millionaire uncle of the guard and engine-driver (who are cousins) has left his whole fortune to the guard or, should he die first, to the engine-driver. Vast sums are involved in the question of which died first. The case goes to the House of Lords, and the lawyers on both sides, having been educated at Oxford, are agreed that either the old gentleman or the station-master must have been mistaken. In fact, both may perfectly well be right. The train travels away from the shot at the guard, and towards the shot at the engine-driver; therefore the noise of the shot at the guard has further to go before reaching the old gentleman than the shot at the engine-driver has. Therefore if the old gentleman is right in saying that he heard the two reports simultaneously, the station-master must be right in saying that the heard the shot at the guard first.96
In Russell’s example, there are two observers, the old gentleman and the station- master. The two observers hear the two shots differently because time passes at a different rate for each. For the station-master, there is a gap of time between the two shots, whereas for the old gentleman there is not. The reason for this discrepancy is that the two are in motion relative to each other. The old gentleman is on the moving train while the station-master stands on the platform. This affects when each hears the shots because it influences how long it takes for the sound of each shot to arrive in the ears of each observer. Russell’s point, which is also Einstein’s point, is that every observation of time takes place within a particular spatial context. This point contradicts Newton’s notion of the existence of an absolute time that “flows equably without relation to anything external.”97 It also establishes that no statement of time can be purposeful if the spatial context is not also provided. Hermann Minkowski responded to this idea in 1907 by developing the notion of space-time wherein time and the three spatial dimensions are merged into a four-dimensional realm.
96 Russell, The ABC of Relativity, 33–4. Joyce’s awareness of Russell’s book is shown by the fact that on page 73 of notebook VI.B.19 he wrote “ABC of Relativity” and then, underneath, “B Russell.” (VI.B.19:73; JJA 33:244.) 97 Newton, Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 8.
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78 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Professor Jones offers his understanding of the relationship between the time theories of Einstein and Bergson when he asserts that “the sophology of Bitchson” is “in reality only a done by chance ridiculisation of the whoo-whoo and where’s hairs theorics of Winestain” (FW 149.20, 26–8). The professor seems to suggest here that Bergson’s philosophy is an accidental parody of the theories of Einstein. The likely inspiration for Jones’ understanding of the relationship between Einstein and Bergson is the following passage from “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce”: The philosophy of the space-timeist is identical with the old, and as many people had hoped, exploded, bergsonian [sic] philosophy of psychological time (or durée, as he called it). It is essential to grasp this continuity between the earlier flux of Bergson, with its Time-god, and the einsteinian [sic] flux, with its god, Space-time.98
In contrast to Professor Jones, Lewis argues that it was Bergson who influenced Einstein. Given that Einstein was ten when Time and Free Will was published, this makes more sense than Jones’ interpretation of events. Yet, in attempting to show how similar the ideas of the philosopher and the physicist are, Lewis runs into problems. The very terms that he uses to describe the ideas of Bergson and Einstein point to how different they are. Bergson’s notion of time is described as “psychological” because duration is the time of the mind rather than that of the external, spatial realm. It can therefore hardly be said to be “identical” to space- time. Einstein was interested in connecting time and space whereas Bergson sought to separate them. Lewis’ discussion of the relationship between the ideas of Bergson and Einstein in “The Revolutionary Simpleton” would reappear in book one of Time and Western Man. In the second book of that work, Lewis returns to that relationship, and he there seems to retract his earlier comments on the matter. Lewis says that he has been “taxed with identifying Einstein with Bergson” and that he had “not intended” to do this.99 Yet even after apparently retiring to a more sensible position, Lewis cannot quite leave the matter alone. In the paragraph that follows, he goes on to say: “That Einstein, as much as Sorel or Proust, for instance, had not at least read the work of Bergson, and formed some opinion upon it, favorable or otherwise, is unlikely, to say the least.”100 Despite his reservations, Lewis is here unwilling to entirely forgo his sense of the connection between the two. What can be said with certainty regarding the relationship between Einstein and Bergson is that, by 1927, the year of “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” the two were very much aware of one another. As Guerlac explains, the physicist and the 98 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 105. 100 Lewis, Time and Western Man, 139.
99 Lewis, Time and Western Man, 138.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 79 philosopher did not consider their positions to be as similar as Lewis thought them to be: In the 1920s Bergson engaged in a public disagreement with Einstein over the notion of time presupposed in the theory of relativity. . . . Bergson’s position was so misunderstood that he subsequently tried to withdraw from circulation the book he wrote in response to Einstein, Durée et simultanéité [Duration and Simultaneity] (1922). The issue remains in dispute to this day. . . . At the time, however, it appeared that Einstein had defeated Bergson, who was accused of rejecting the new physics of relativity because he had not understood it.101
The bulk of the public dispute between Bergson and Einstein took place between 1922 and 1924 and so preceded Lewis’ writing of “The Revolutionary Simpleton” by a few years.102 Either Lewis was ignorant of the dispute, or he felt that it was not relevant to his purposes, because he does not allude to it at any point in his book. Bergson and Einstein are presented throughout as having offered the same theory in different disciplines. In Finnegans Wake, when Professor Jones asserts that Bergson drew his theory of time from Einstein, this misunderstanding of the relationship of influence between the two may well be a joke on Joyce’s part about Lewis’ failure to understand the differences between the physicist and the philosopher.
Qualis and Talis After the depiction of Einstein as “Winestain,” Professor Jones’ lecture turns towards the issue of language: To put it all the more plumbsily. The speechform is a mere sorrogate. Whilst the quality and tality (I shall explex what you ought to mean by this with its proper when and where and why and how in the subsequent sentence) are alternativomentally harrogate and arrogate, as the gates may be. Talis is a word often abused by many passims (I am working out a quantum theory about it for it is really most tantumising state of affairs). A pessim may frequent you to say: Have you been seeing much of Talis and Talis those times? optimately meaning: Will you put up at hree of irish? Or a ladyeater may perhaps have casualised as you temptoed her à la sourdine: Of your plates?
101 Guerlac, Thinking in Time, 12–13. 102 For the dating of the dispute between Bergson and Einstein, see Canales, “Einstein, Bergson, and the Experiment That Failed.”
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80 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Is Talis de Talis, the swordswallower, who is on at the Craterium the same Talis von Talis, the penscrusher, no funk you! who runs his duly mile? (FW 149.28–150.06)
When Professor Jones says that “the speechform is a mere sorrogate,” this can be read as another critique of Bitchson, the Wake’s version of Bergson. Since “sorrogate” points to the word “sorrow,” one can take Jones’ remark as suggesting that Bitchson’s language makes him sad. At the same time, that remark can also be viewed as a more general comment on the nature of language. The word “sorrogate” combines “surrogate” and “sorrow,” and so one can read the claim that “the speechform is a mere sorrogate” as suggesting that the tragedy of the word is that it can only ever stand in for something else. It can never be the object that it represents. If each word points beyond itself, it has no intrinsic meaning of its own. Consequently, individual words can have multiple meanings and different words can have the same meaning. This is why it is very difficult to establish firm boundaries between words. These ideas relate back to the preceding part of the paragraph because Jones was there trying to create a division between Bitchson and himself. In doing so, he was replicating Lewis’ attempts at distancing himself from the time-school. The notion of the surrogacy of language suggests that the boundaries between things are not always absolute. Sometimes, the situation is more complicated. Jones illustrates his point in the next sentence through two pairs of words: the first being “quality” and “tality”; the second “harrogate” and “arrogate” (FW 149.29–30, 32). The words in these pairs are different but also very similar, since each only differs from its other by its first phoneme. Jones says that he will explain the meaning of the first pair, “quality and tality,” in the “subsequent sentence” (FW 149.29–32). While the sentence that follows includes neither of those words, it does contain the word “Talis” and so suggests that the “quality and tality” pairing alludes to the Latin words “qualis” and “talis” (FW 149.34, 29–30). “Qualis” means “what sort of ” and “talis” means “such.” These two words constitute a pair because they are often used in correlative constructions. “Qualis . . . talis…” translates as “As . . . so…” and “Talis . . . qualis…” means “Such . . . as…”103 So, while “talis” and “qualis” are different words, they frequently operate in constructions that rely on the interaction of the two and they have very similar meanings. Indeed, Jones considers the meanings of “talis” and “qualis” to be more than merely similar. At the end of the paragraph that introduces the word “talis,” Jones observes, “Talis and Talis originally mean the same thing, hit it’s: Qualis” (FW 150.13–4). From his perspective, there is a sense in which “talis” and “qualis” are one as well as two.
103 Simpson, Cassel’s Latin Dictionary, 493, 593.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 81 Jones believes that the indeterminacy of language creates a problem because it allows words to be intentionally misused. He illustrates this through the word “Talis,” a word that he considers to be “often abused” (FW 149.34). In his first example, he points out that a commonplace question such as “Have you been seeing much of Talis and Talis,” i.e., such and such, “those times?” can be used to enfold a very different question: “Will you put up at hree of irish?” (FW 149.36–150.02). As McHugh notes, this is a request for a “three pennyworth of Irish whiskey and cold water” (AFW 150). The second example involves the question “Is Talis de Talis, the swordswallower, who is on at the Craterium the same Talis von Talis, the penscrusher, no funk you! who runs his duly mile?” (FW 150.03–6). Given that “de” and “von” are French and German versions of the same word, “of,” the two named individuals have the same name and so there is no way to tell them apart. Consequently, the word “Talis” is being “abused” in that question because it is being used to ask a question that cannot be answered (FW 149.34). As is appropriate for a character based on Lewis, Jones clearly believes in the virtues of clarity, stability, and division. While the text certainly disagrees with this perspective, any reader who has made it this far into the Wake may well have some sympathy for this view.
Spinoza and Hegel Despite offering two examples of the abuse of the word “Talis,” Jones still feels that he has not conveyed his point and so he provides a third. In doing so, Jones not only provides another pairing that unites similarity and difference; he also brings the discussion back to philosophy: Or this is a perhaps cleaner example. At a recent postvortex piece infustigation of a determinised case of chronic spinosis an extension lecturer on The Ague who out of matter of form was trying his seesers, Dr’s Het Ubeleeft, borrowed the question: Why’s which Suchman's talis qualis? to whom, as a fatter of macht, Dr Gedankje of Stoutgirth, who was wiping his whistle, toarsely retoarted: While thou beast’ one zoom of a whorl! (FW 150.06–13)
The example that is offered takes place at a “postvortex piece infustigation.” The word “postvortex” refers to Vorticism, the art movement founded by Lewis. As Meyers observes, this avant-garde movement was “fascinated with machinery, the city, energy and violence.”104 Given how Lewis had treated Joyce, it is understandable that, in characterizing the Vorticist movement, Joyce should draw attention
104 Meyers, The Enemy, 63.
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82 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake to its violence. In his first draft of the sentence, Joyce wrote “postvortex piece-examination,” a phrase suggestive of a viewing at an art gallery.105 The word “examination” was replaced by “infustigation” so that Joyce could point to the word “fustigate,” which means “to cudgel” or “to beat.”106 As McHugh observes, the phrase “postvortex piece infustigation” can also be read as a play on “postmortem police investigation” (AFW 150). The Vorticist movement came into being just before the start of World War One and did not make it through the war. Consequently, from the perspective of 1927, the Vorticist movement had passed away. At the “postvortex piece infustigation,” a “lecturer” asks the question: “Why’s which Suchman’s talis qualis?” (FW 150.0710). The presence of the interrogatives “why” and “which” at the start of the sentence makes it difficult to identify the exact nature of the question, but it seems to be asking something along the lines of “Why is each such person as such?” The question can therefore be taken as an enquiry about the origin of personal identity. At the same time, it can also be viewed in a broader context that would interpret it more as a plea for an explanation as to how individual identity can exist at all. This alternative context is enabled by the characterization of the asker of the question “Dr’s Het Ubeleeft” as the Dutch philosopher Benedict de Spinoza (FW 150.09). Words like “determinised,” “spinosis,” and “extension” all point to him, and The Hague is referenced in the term “The Ague” because Spinoza lived the last years of his life there (FW 150.07–8). Also, as McHugh observes, the name “Dr’s Het Ubeleeft” points to Spinoza’s homeland because it is a play on “als het U belieft,” the Dutch for “if you please” (FW 150.09. AFW 150). As with Bergson and Einstein, Professor Jones renders Spinoza in a manner that is so derogatory as to be humorous. His name is referenced through the term “chronic spinosis,” which alludes to the medical condition of spinal stenosis. This association of Spinoza with health problems continues in the description of “Dr’s Het Ubeleeft” as “an extension lecturer on The Ague” (FW 150.08–9). As the OED explains, the word “ague” used to refer to Malaria but is now used to describe “a state or bout of distress, fear, or other strong emotion” or “a fit or spell of shaking or shivering.”107 What’s more, Fweet notes that the last name of “Dr’s Het Ubeleeft” suggests the German “übel,” meaning “evil, bad, sick.”108 Jones’ attitude toward Spinoza likely stems in part from the fact that, in “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” Lewis aligns Spinoza with Bergson’s time-philosophy by connecting him to the idea of space-time: “And Spinoza and his god, or One Eternal Substance, though not often mentioned, is indeed, it is plain enough, the underlying philosophy too, that, at least, underlies all the ‘modal’ rhetoric and ingenuity of Space-time.”109 105 BL 47473 f. 141v; JJA 47:50; FDV 99. 106 “Fustigate, v.” 107 “Ague, n.” 108 “Fweets of Fin (^150) with FW Text.” 109 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 146.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 83 The Wake’s version of Spinoza does not speak of space-time, but rather raises the matter of individual identity. One can understand why he does so by considering Joyce’s view of Spinoza. There is a quote from him in the Exiles notes, and he is mentioned on several occasions in Ulysses, but, of all of Joyce’s references to Spinoza, that which is most relevant to Professor Jones’ lecture appears in Joyce’s 1903 book review, “The Bruno Philosophy”: “In his [Bruno’s] attempt to reconcile the matter and form of the Scholastics—formidable names which in his system as spirit and body retain little of their metaphysical character—Bruno has hardily put forward a hypothesis, which is a curious anticipation of Spinoza.”110 Joyce here defines Spinoza as a monist. Since the terms “monist” and “monism” will appear several times in this book, I should here clarify that, while there are different forms of monism, when the terms “monist” and “monism” appear in this book, they refer, unless otherwise specified, to ontological monism, which is the doctrine that all being is one. It stands in opposition to ontological dualism, which holds that being can be separated into two categories. Most often, when the term “monism” is used, it is contrasted against the specific dualism referenced in the above quote, Aristotle’s dualism of form and matter. Joyce ascribes that dualism to the Scholastics because they adopted it from Aristotle. In presenting Spinoza as a monist who opposes the dualism of the Scholastics, Joyce is quite right. For Spinoza, there is only one substance, and that substance is God. One can see this in his Ethica (Ethics) when he writes, “Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.”111 The great problem faced by Spinoza’s monism, and indeed, all forms of monism, is the notion of individual identity. It is difficult to reconcile monism’s claim that all objects share the same identity with the apparent variety of the objects of the universe. To some degree at least, individual objects seem to have individual identities. Spinoza tries to account for this by arguing that “from the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes, (i.e. everything which can fall under an infinite intellect).”112 Spinoza here suggests that if there were any limitation to what could be created by God’s intellect then that would suggest a limitation on God’s intellect and so, since that cannot be, the objects of the world must be infinite in quality and quantity. Therefore, for Spinoza, the universe is composed of one substance, but there can be no limit on the number of ways in which that substance can manifest itself.
110 Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 93–4. For the reference to Spinoza in the Exiles notes, see Joyce, Poems and Exiles, 343. Spinoza is mentioned in Ulysses at U 11.1058, 12.1804, 17.722, and 18.1115. 111 Spinoza, Ethics, 9, Part 1, Proposition 1. [All of the citations of Spinoza’s Ethics in this book are propositions and so they all take the form: Spinoza, Ethics, Page Number, Part Number, Proposition Number.] 112 Spinoza, Ethics, 13, Part 1, Proposition 13.
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84 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Spinoza tries to mediate between the unity and the plurality of the universe by arguing that one can apprehend the universal substance under different modes. The two that he considers primary are thought and extension. The former is the mode of the internal, mental realm and the latter is the mode of the external, material realm. These modes are separate but parallel insofar as “the order and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of things.”113 This being so, while Spinoza’s philosophy is monistic it offers a form of monism that incorporates dualism. The opposites of thought and extension are united within the divine substance. In Professor Jones’ lecture, Joyce shows his awareness of Spinoza’s primary modes of being. What is striking is that Joyce’s depiction of Spinoza emphasizes one side of the thought-extension dualism over the other. When the narrator speaks of how the “extension lecturer . . . out of matter of form was trying his seesers,” Joyce portrays Spinoza as trying to use either his eyes or his glasses to see the extended material world (FW 150.08–9). As will be shown, this privileging of extension over thought takes place in order to position Spinoza in opposition to the man who will answer his question, “Why’s which Suchman’s talis qualis?” (FW 150.10). Joyce also sets up the contrast between the questioner and his respondent by associating the Dutch professor with politeness. As noted, the name “Dr’s Het Ubeleeft” alludes to the Dutch “als het U belieft” (“if you please”) (FW 150.08–9). This allusion is important because that is one of the phrases that Lewis ascribed to Joyce in order to mock his “well- known air of genteel decorum” in “The Revolutionary Simpleton.”114 Spinoza, the controversial thinker who was exiled from his community, is thereby associated with Joyce. This association helps to explain the earlier description of Spinoza as “trying his seesers” (FW 150.09) because, as the Wake notes on several occasions, by the time Joyce came to write his final novel, his eyes were in a terrible state. The Spinozan professor’s question is answered by a “Dr Gedankje of Stoutgirth” (FW 150.11). This academic represents Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, the German philosopher who was born in Stuttgart. As one would expect, the depiction of Hegel that appears in Jones’ lecture pokes fun at him. Just as the word “Stoutgirth” points to obesity, so the phrase that precedes Dr Gedankje’s name— “as a fatter of macht”—does the same (FW 150.10–1). That being said, the phrase “fatter of macht” also plays on the German words “vater” (father) and “macht” (power) and so defines the Wake’s version of Hegel as an influential figure. Hegel’s presence in Jones’ lecture has no source in “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” He is not referenced in that essay, and neither The Art of Being Ruled nor Time and Western Man engages at any length with his thought. The reason for this can be found in Lewis’ discussion of his relationship to Nietzsche in Rude Assignment: “But for me Nietzsche was, with Schopenhauer, a thinker more 113 Spinoza, Ethics, 35, Part 2, Proposition 7. 114 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 97.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 85 immediately accessible to a Western mind than the other Germans, whose barbarous jargon was a great barrier—Hegel, for instance, I could never read.”115 The inspiration for creating a Wakean version of Hegel and setting him in dialogue with a rendering of Spinoza came not from Lewis, but rather from the fact Joyce associated both Spinoza and Hegel with the notion of the unity of opposites. One can see why Joyce connects Hegel to that notion by looking at the notes on Hegel in the Wake notebooks. Three such notes have been identified. One relates to Hegel’s understanding of history. Notebook VI.A contains the note: “nature develops the spirit in place, history in time.”116 This is a rendering of a sentence from Hegel’s introduction to his Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Weltgeschichte (Lectures on the Philosophy of History): “History in general is therefore the development of Spirit in Time, as Nature is the development of the Idea in Space.”117 Joyce would incorporate two different reworkings of that note into II.4.118 The other two Hegelian notes explain why Joyce associated Hegel with the notion of the unity of opposites because both relate to Hegel’s famed dialectic. One, which appears in notebook VI.B.18, simply reads “thesis antithesis/ synthesis.”119 The other, which can be found in notebook VI.B.9, is more extensive and so of greater interest: Hegel thesis etre antithesis non etre synthesis devenir120
115 Lewis, Rude Assignment, 128. 116 VI.A: 391; JJA 28:108. Joyce, James Joyce’s Scribbledehobble, 87. 117 Hegel, Philosophy of History, 70; W 12:96–7. [Citations of Hegel’s works in this book take the form: Hegel, Title of Work, Page Number; W Volume Number: Page Number. W refers to Werke, the twenty- volume edition of Hegel’s works edited by Eva Moldenhauer and Karl Markus Michel (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1969–71).] 118 Joyce’s note from Hegel’s introduction to his Philosophy of History appears in II.4 as both “the spirit of nature as difinely developed in time” and “the rathure’s evelopment in spirits of time in all fathom of space” (FW 389.16–7, 394.10). Hegel’s presence in II.4 is mentioned in a tantalizing 1923 letter from Joyce to Weaver. Joyce there speaks of “the theory so well set forth (after Hegel and Giambattista Vico) by the four eminent annalists” (Letters I, 205). The quartet in question are the Wake’s four historians, collectively known as Mamalujo. Joyce’s remark might lead one to think that Mamalujo’s conception of history is broadly defined by Hegel and Vico, but that remark has a more concrete source. When Joyce sent the above quoted letter to Weaver, he had recently finished the first draft of the Mamalujo section of II.4. That draft contains a passage in which Hegel and Vico are combined: “all the Roman history ^of the spirit of nature as divinely developed in time all history^ past and present and present and absent and past and present and future” (BL 47481 f. 3; JJA 56:31; FDV 214). The addition “of the spirit of nature as divinely developed in time all history” derives from Joyce’s Hegelian note in notebook VI.A (VI.A: 391; JJA 28:108). Vico is referenced by this passage because it speaks of “all the Roman history . . . past and present and future” and so alludes to Vico’s ideal eternal history (BL 47481 f. 3; JJA 56:31; FDV 214). Joyce came to feel that this reference to Vico was not sufficiently clear, and so he made it more explicit by changing the opening of this passage to “Woman history repeating herself of the spirit of nature as divinely developed in time” (BL 47481 f. 31–2; JJA 56:73–4). The term “history repeating herself ” points directly to Vico’s historical cycles. 119 VI.B.18:101; JJA 33:110. 120 VI.B.9:143; JJA 31:72.
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86 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Despite the lack of circumflexes, it is clear that the three French terms on the right-hand side denote respectively “to be,” “to not be,” and “to become.” What can be seen in this note is a rough encapsulation of the best-known example of Hegel’s dialectic. To speak of dialectic in the context of Hegel is not to speak of a particular idea, but rather of the method that is central to Hegel’s philosophy. Walter Terence Stace offers an explanation of this method that, helpfully, draws upon the specific example used by Joyce in the Hegelian note in VI.B.9: Being, nothing, becoming, is the first Hegelian “triad.” Throughout the entire system there is this triple rhythm. The first category in each triad is always, as here, an affirmative category. It lays itself down as a positive assertion, e.g. being, is, etc. The second category is always the negative, or opposite, of the first. It denies what the first affirmed, e.g. not-being, is not, etc. This second category is not brought in by Hegel from any external source. It is deduced from the first category, and this means that the first contains the second and is shown to produce it out of itself. . . . Thus the first category contains its own opposite and is identical with it. At this point the two categories stand confronting and contradicting each other. . . . How can the thing both be and not be? The answer is that it both is and is not when it becomes. The category of becoming therefore resolves the contradiction. In other words, the contradiction between the first and second categories is always reconciled in a third category which is the unity of the two preceding. The third category contains within itself the opposition of the other two, but it also contains their underlying harmony and unity.121
As Stace goes on to say, once the third category has been identified it then becomes the first category of a new triad, and the process moves onward and upward. To my mind, the most difficult idea within this explanation of Hegel’s dialectic is the idea that the first category is identical with its own opposite. In attempting to understand this, it is helpful to look at Hegel’s own discussion of the opposition that Stace uses as his example, that between being and not-being. In Wissenschaft der Logik (The Science of Logic), Hegel considers the relationship between being and its negation, which he terms “nothing.” After defining “Being, pure being” as “pure indeterminateness and emptiness,” Hegel goes on to define “Nothing, pure nothing” as “complete emptiness, absence of all determination and content.” It is this identity that causes Hegel to argue that “Nothing is, therefore, the same determination, or rather absence of determination, and thus altogether the same as, pure being.”122
121 Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel, 92–3. 122 Hegel, Hegel’s Science of Logic, 82; W 5:82–3.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 87 In considering the relationship of the first two categories of Hegels’s dialectic to the third, what is important to realize is that the third category is not simply the unity of the first two. It is rather the case that, as Stace observes, the third category contains within it both the unity and the opposition of the prior categories. To put that differently, the relationship between the first two categories within the third is neither one of “and” nor “or” but rather both. Stace goes on to illustrate this later in the same paragraph when he defines the third category in the example, “becoming,” as “a being which is not-being, or a not-being which is being.”123 Once the nature of the third category within Hegel’s dialectic has been clarified, one can see why Hegel’s term for that category was “Aufhebung.” Terry Pinkard observes that this German word carries “the disparate meanings of ‘canceling,’ ‘raising,’ and, ‘preserving.’ ”124 In English, “Aufhebung” is commonly translated as “sublation.” Joyce’s use of his notes on Hegel’s dialectic in the Wake suggests that he saw parallels between Hegel’s approach to opposition and that of Bruno. For example, I.4 contains this sentence: The hilariohoot of Pegger’s Windup cumjustled as neatly with the tristitone of the Wet Pinter’s as were they isce et ille equals of opposites, evolved by a onesame power of nature or of spirit, iste, as the sole condition and means of its himundher manifestation and polarised for reunion by the symphysis of their antipathies. (FW 92.06–11)
This sentence speaks of two characters. One is called “Wet Pinter.” The other is here called “Pegger’s Windup,” but is better known by the name Festy King. These two characters are presented as opposites. The “hilariohoot” of Festy King contrasts with the “tristitone” or sadness of Wet Pinter. At the same time, the two are also united or, as the text puts it, “cumjustled” together, and this is why they are described as being “equals of opposites.” In order to explain the paradoxical relationship between Festy King and Wet Pinter, Joyce references both Bruno and Hegel. The reference to the former occurs in the middle of the sentence: “evolved by a onesame power of nature or of spirit, iste, as the sole condition and means of its himundher manifestation and polarised for reunion” (FW 92.08–10). This is a Wakean reworking of Coleridge’s law of polarity, which he regarded as the “foundation” of Bruno’s “metaphysics”: “Every Power in Nature and in Spirit must evolve an opposite as the sole means and condition of its manifestation: and all opposition is a tendency to re-union.”125 Joyce drew upon this rendering of Bruno’s principle of the coincidence of contraries on a number of occasions. For example, as mentioned, in a 1925 letter to Weaver he described Bruno’s 123 Stace, The Philosophy of Hegel, 93. 125 Coleridge, The Friend, 1:97.
124 Pinkard, Hegel, 344.
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88 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake philosophy as consisting of “a kind of dualism—every power in nature must evolve an opposite in order to realise itself and opposition brings reunion etc etc” (Letters I, 226).126 This depiction of Bruno’s philosophy will be discussed at greater length in Chapter 3. What matters for the moment is that the above sentence in I.4 reflects the understanding of Bruno that Joyce shared with Coleridge. That understanding locates the principle of the coincidence of contraries at the center of Bruno’s philosophy. Joyce speaks of that philosophy as offering “a kind of dualism” rather than being conventionally dualistic because it argues for the continuous unity and separation of opposites. After referencing Bruno, Joyce then brings in some of the terms from his notes on Hegel’s dialectic. The words “symphysis” and “antipathies” point, respectively, to “synthesis” and “antithesis” (FW 92.10–1).127 In using Bruno’s coincidence of contraries and Hegel’s dialectic to explain the term “equals of opposites,” Joyce demonstrates his belief that Bruno and Hegel shared the notion of the unity of opposites (FW 92.08). Since Joyce saw Spinoza as also sharing that notion, one might think that, in bringing Spinoza and Hegel together in the Wake, Joyce would present them as being in agreement. Yet this is not what he does. Instead, Joyce uses his versions of Spinoza and Hegel to demonstrate the notion of the unity of opposites. He does this by placing those two philosophers, philosophers that Joyce saw as being united by the notion of the unity of opposites, on opposite sides of Spinoza’s thought/extension dichotomy. While, as mentioned, the Spinozan Dr’s Het Ubeleeft is associated with extension, the name of the Hegelian Dr Gedankje plays on “gedanke,” the German word for “thought” (FW 150.11). Hegel’s philosophy privileges thought over extension, but he very much agrees with Spinoza’s view that thought and extension are only separate insofar as they are different aspects of a higher totality. Joyce’s desire to define his versions of Spinoza and Hegel as opposites is also the reason why the Hegelian Dr Gedankje responds so angrily to the Spinozan Dr’s Het Ubeleeft’s question. When asked “Why’s which Suchman’s talis qualis?,” Dr Gedankje is said to have “toarsely retoarted”: “While thou beast’ one zoom of a whorl!” (FW 150.10, 12–3). If one takes Dr. Gedankje to be doing his utmost to be offensive, one could interpret this reply as “because you are a son of a whore.” Yet, given Dr Gedankje’s nationality, it is perhaps more sensible to view the reply through the lens of German and so to follow McHugh in reading it as “weil du bist ein Sohn der Welt” (because you are a son of the world) (AFW 150). In this interpretation, Dr Gedankje responds to his colleague’s question about the origin of identity by telling him that the world is simply as it is and so there is no point in
126 Joyce also references Coleridge’s version of the Brunoian coincidence of contraries in his non-fiction works “The Bruno Philosophy” and “The Universal Literary Influence of the Renaissance.” See Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 94, 188. 127 VI.B.9:143; JJA 31:72.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 89 attempting to solve the conundrums it presents. This attempt at closing down the debate seems very much out of keeping with the character of Hegel, whose encyclopedic works explore their subjects in great depth and at great length. Given the manner in which the Wake’s version of Hegel responds to its rendering of Spinoza, one might well ask whether Hegel had a negative view of Spinoza. Happily, there is no need for speculation on this matter because Hegel discusses Spinoza at length in his Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie (Lectures on the History of Philosophy). There Hegel observes that “the simple thought of Spinoza’s idealism is this: The true is simply and solely the one substance, whose attributes are thought and extension or nature: and only this absolute unity is reality, it alone is God.”128 Hegel then goes on to offer his judgment on this mode of idealism: This Idea of Spinoza’s we must allow to be in the main true and well-grounded; absolute substance is the truth, but is not the whole truth; in order to be this it must also be thought of as in itself active and living, and by that very means it must determine itself as mind. But substance with Spinoza is only the universal and consequently the abstract determination of mind; it may undoubtedly be that this thought is the foundation of all true views—not, however, as their absolutely fixed and permanent basis, but as the abstract unity which mind is in itself. It is therefore worthy of note that thought must begin by placing itself at the standpoint of Spinozism; to be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy.129
This passage contains two of Hegel’s main criticisms of Spinoza’s conception of substance. One is that Spinoza’s substance lacks self-consciousness and so cannot “determine itself as mind.” The other is that Spinoza’s substance is “only the universal” and so cannot account for the individuality of particular objects. Yet, while the above quote does include criticisms of the conception of substance that sits at the heart of Spinoza’s philosophy, it also highlights Hegel’s belief in the validity of Spinoza’s ideas. The words “true” and “truth” pepper the discussion. Furthermore, this quote also demonstrates Hegel’s sense of the significance of Spinoza’s philosophy. Not only does he describe Spinoza’s notion of a universal substance as “the foundation of all true views,” he also makes the characteristically grand pronouncement that “to be a follower of Spinoza is the essential commencement of all Philosophy.” In making this last assertion, Hegel casts Spinoza as one of his own forefathers. Since Dr Gedankje’s furious response to his colleague does not derive from Hegel, one might well inquire as to its origin. The clue as to whom Dr Gedankje is 128 Hegel, Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy, 3:256, W 20:161. 129 Hegel, 3:257; W 20:165–6.
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90 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake primarily representing when he gives his response is provided by his last word, “whorl” (FW 150.13). This word suggests “whirl” and, since a vortex is a type of whirl, it points to Vorticism and so to Lewis. Furthermore, Dr Gedankje’s overtly aggressive nature is entirely in keeping with that of Lewis. One can therefore interpret Dr Gedankje’s remark as Joyce’s criticism of Lewis for attempting to close down the significant philosophical, historical, and aesthetic debates started by the maligned thinkers of the time-school. Having said that, while there are good reasons for thinking that Dr’s Het Ubeleeft represents Joyce and that Dr Gedankje stands for Lewis, it would hardly be characteristic of the Wake to allow such identifications to go unchallenged. Just as the name “Dr’s Het Ubeleeft” points to one of the phrases that Lewis used to deride Joyce’s stilted manners, so “Dr Gedankje” points to the other (FW 150.09–11). The name of the German professor suggests the German word “danke” which means “thank you” and so alludes to Lewis’ mention of Joyce’s “no thank yous.”130 The distinction between the two professors is further blurred by the fact that, as McHugh notes, Dr Gedankje’s name also points to the Dutch “dank je,” which means “thank you,” and so suggests that the ostensibly German Dr Gedankje may in fact share the nationality of his Dutch colleague (AFW 150). Consequently, while Dr’s Het Ubeleeft and Dr Gedankje can be taken to represent Joyce and Lewis, they can also both be taken to represent Joyce. This situation is quite in keeping with the nature of Professor Jones’ lecture, because, while Jones represents Lewis, the character of Professor Jones is a guise adopted by Shaun and the character of Shaun represents an aspect of Joyce. To conclude, in publishing the first edition of The Enemy, Lewis sought to spark a conflict with Joyce. The essay that dominates that edition, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” attacks Ulysses by repeatedly defining it as the novelistic embodiment of Bergsonian romanticism. According to the central strand of Lewis’ critique, Ulysses disdains and dismisses the stable material world. Joyce thought too much of Lewis to simply reject his criticism. At the same time, he refused to be drawn into the kind of adversarial relationship that Lewis sought. So, rather than merely retaliating against Lewis’ essay with an attack of his own, Joyce offered a number of nuanced responses to Lewis in the Wake. The first two paragraphs of Professor Jones’ lecture offer a good example of how those responses operate. The bulk of the first of those two paragraphs reinforces the opposition between Joyce and Lewis by referencing the numerous attacks on Joyce and his supposed time-school compatriots in “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” Joyce then shifts the discussion to the notion of language and, in doing so, moves away from simple oppositions to pairings in which the members of the pair are similar and different, separate and connected. The principal example of this is “talis” and “qualis.” In the final stage,
130 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 97.
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Professor Jones vs. The Time Philosophy 91 Joyce reaches his culminating idea, that of the unity of opposites, and presents a pairing that demonstrates this notion. By aligning the Spinozan Dr’s Het Ubeleeft and the Hegelian Dr Gedankje with not only himself and Lewis but also the Wake’s opposed representations of Joyce, Shem and Shaun, Joyce is able to define his relationship with Lewis as being characterized by both unity and division. In doing so, he rejects Lewis’ binary conception of that relationship. Since Joyce is unwilling to be located alongside or against Lewis, he neither affirms nor denies the philosophy of Bergson in the Wake. His relationship to that philosophy is presented as being more complicated than such contrary terms will allow. Yet, for all that Joyce seeks to transcend the opposition of unity and division in the opening of Jones’ lecture, one would hardly describe his position as neutral. The professor’s references to the scathing criticisms of “The Revolutionary Simpleton” are so continual that the start of his lecture cannot help but privilege the idea that Bergson and Joyce were united by a common enemy.
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3 The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous (FW 160.06–167.17)
In Professor Jones’ lecture in I.6, he offers two tales that illustrate his understanding of the relationship between time and space. This chapter will focus on the second of those tales, that of Burrus and Caseous, because Joyce uses that tale to explore how our conceptions of being and our personal relationships are defined by the opposition at the heart of this chapter, that between unity and duality. I here use the terms “unity” and “duality” because the tale of Burrus and Caseous references the philosophies of Aristotle, Nicholas of Cusa, and Bruno, and, in doing so, considers the relationship between ontological monism, the idea that all being is one, and ontological dualism, the notion that being can be divided into two categories. Professor Jones begins the tale of Burrus and Caseous by introducing its main characters. As he does so, he makes a number of philosophical allusions: for to this graded intellecktuals dime is cash and the cash system . . . means that I cannot now have or nothave a piece of cheeps in your pocket at the same time and with the same manners as you can now nothalf or half the cheek apiece I’ve in mind unless Burrus and Caseous have not or not have seemaultaneously sysentangled themselves, selldear to soldthere, once in the dairy days of buy and buy. (FW 160.06–161.14)
The “intellecktuals” mentioned at the start of the quote belong to the principal target of Jones’ lecture: the Bergsonian time-school. Jones asserts that the thinkers of that school believe “dime is cash.” As is often the case in his lecture, the professor here speaks of time and space as “dime” and “cash.” Therefore, in saying that the time-school thinks that “dime is cash,” Jones points to the notion of space-time. That notion is not an aspect of Bergson’s philosophy, but, as was discussed in the last chapter, Jones’ inspiration, Lewis, believed that there was a “continuity between the earlier flux of Bergson, with its Time-god, and the einsteinian [sic] flux, with its god, Space-time.”1 Jones points to the problematic implications of the flux philosophy when he goes on to say that: 1 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 105. Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Robert Baines, Oxford University Press. © Robert Baines 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198894049.003.0004
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 93 I cannot now have or nothave a piece of cheeps in your pocket at the same time and with the same manners as you can now nothalf or half the cheek apiece I’ve in mind (FW 161.09–11)
The comedy of this passage comes from the fact that it uses pieces of cheese small enough to fit into a pocket in order to point to one of the big ideas of the first major philosopher of the tale of Burrus and Caseous: Aristotle.
Aristotle’s Principle of Non-Contradiction To say that Joyce admired Aristotle is something of an understatement. In 1917, Joyce said to Georges Borach: In the last two hundred years we haven’t had a great thinker. My judgment is bold, since Kant is included. All the great thinkers of recent centuries from Kant to Benedetto Croce have only cultivated the garden. The greatest thinker of all times, in my opinion, is Aristotle. Everything, in his work, is defined with wonderful clarity and simplicity. Later, volumes were written to define the same things.2
As O’Rourke explains, Joyce’s passion for Aristotle was kindled during his university days: It has been suggested that Joyce may have absorbed some of Aristotle’s aesthetic ideas (the Poetics) while at Belvedere College; he was certainly introduced to Aristotle in a formal manner at University College under the guidance of his Jesuit professors. Not only did he choose logic as one of his subjects, but he was also exposed throughout the entire curriculum to the Scholastic mode of deliberation, which owed much to Aristotle.3
Joyce’s encounters with Aristotle at University College Dublin impacted him deeply. This can be seen in Joyce’s representations of his younger self. In Stephen Hero, Portrait, and Ulysses, Stephen continually quotes Aristotle and considers his ideas. That Stephen’s fascination with Aristotle reflects that of the young Joyce is shown by the fact that, in a note to a diary entry from 1904, Stanislaus says of his brother, “He upholds Aristotle against his friends, and boasts himself an Aristotelian.”4 As this chapter will show, Joyce’s relationship to Aristotle evolved
2 Borach, “Conversations with James Joyce,” 71. 3 O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 12. 4 Joyce, The Complete Dublin Diary of Stanislaus Joyce, 53. For the key artifacts of Joyce’s youthful interest in Aristotle, see O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 12–18.
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94 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake over the course of his life, but the fact that in 1917 he still spoke of Aristotle as the “greatest thinker of all times” shows that the older Joyce retained much of his youthful enthusiasm for Aristotle’s thought.5 Many of the Aristotelian quotes that appear in Stephen Hero, Portrait, and Ulysses derive from the notes on Aristotle that Joyce took in his Early Commonplace Notebook in Paris in early 1903. Most of those notes are Joyce’s own English translations of sections of J. Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire’s French translations of De Anima (On the Soul) and Metaphysica (the Metaphysics).6 When Joyce refers to Aristotle in the opening of the tale of Burrus and Caseous, he points to one of his notes from the Metaphysics. Here is that reference again: I cannot now have or nothave a piece of cheeps in your pocket at the same time and with the same manners as you can now nothalf or half the cheek apiece I’ve in mind (FW 161.09–11)
This is the Wake’s reworking of the following note from Joyce’s Early Commonplace Notebook: The same attribute cannot at the same time and in the same connection belong and not belong to the same subject.7
While Joyce took numerous notes from the Metaphysics and On the Soul, he clearly understood that this sentence is of particular significance. In Portrait, Stephen observes, “Aristotle’s entire system of philosophy rests upon his book of psychology and that, I think, rests on his statement that the same attribute cannot at the same time and in the same connection belong to and not belong to the same subject” (P 225). Joyce’s rendering of his younger self seems to have forgotten in which book that line appears. Rather than locating it in the Metaphysics, Stephen ascribes it to Aristotle’s “book of psychology,” by which he means On the Soul. (Stephen calls that work a “book of psychology,” because Barthélemy-Saint- Hilaire’s French translation was titled Psychologie d’Aristote.) Nonetheless, Stephen certainly remembers the crucial line. It is conspicuous that he offers it exactly as it appears in Joyce’s note. Evidently, Joyce felt that line to be so important that he included it despite the anachronism that it creates. Joyce gives Stephen a quote that he took down in Paris even though Portrait ends before Stephen has left Ireland.
5 Borach, “Conversations with James Joyce,” 71. 6 For these notes, see O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 206–30. 7 O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 224. Joyce’s note is his translation of the following sentence from J. Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire’s French translation of the Metaphysics, Métaphysique d’Ariostote: “Il est impossible qu’une seule et même chose soit, et tout à la fois ne soit pas, à une même autre chose, sous un même rapport” (O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 224. O’Rourke is quoting Aristotle, Métaphysique d’Aristote, 2:25).
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 95 Joyce and Stephen are both right in asserting the importance of Aristotle’s claim. To see why it is so important, one must view it in its original context. In book IV of the Metaphysics, Aristotle asserts that the philosopher “must be able to state the most certain principles of all things.”8 He then goes on to offer the “most certain of all principles”: It is, that the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect . . . . For it is impossible for anyone to believe the same thing to be and not to be . . . . It is for this reason that all who are carrying out a demonstration refer it to this an as ultimate belief; for this is naturally the starting-point even for all the other axioms.9
This principle is commonly known as the principle of non-contradiction. As can be seen, Stephen’s assertion that “Aristotle’s entire system of philosophy” rests on this statement is not a personal opinion, but rather derives from Aristotle’s claim that the principle of non-contradiction is “the starting-point even for all the other axioms” (P 225).10 Aristotle offers a wide range of arguments to demonstrate the certainty of the principle of non-contradiction. One of the most important of those arguments is that there is no effective means of arguing against that principle. The opponent of the principle of non-contradiction would have to argue that the same attribute can at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect. As Aristotle explains, this would create a number of problems for the opponent of the principle of non-contradiction: Further, it follows that all would then be right and all would be in error, and our opponent himself confesses himself to be in error.—And at the same time our discussion with him is evidently about nothing at all; for he says nothing. For he says neither “yes” nor “no,” but both “yes” and “no”; and again he denies both of these and says “neither yes nor no”; for otherwise there would already be something definite.11
Aristotle begins by observing that the opponent of the principle of non- contradiction, a figure that Aristotle posits as being male, “confesses himself to be in error.” This is because he would have to concede that everything that he claims to be right could just as well also be wrong. If the same attribute can at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject in the same respect, then the
8 Aristotle, “Metaphysics,” 1587, Met. IV.3, 1005b10–11. [Citations of Aristotle’s works in this book take the form: Aristotle, Title of Work, Page Number, Bekker Number.] 9 Aristotle, 1588, Met. IV.3, 1005b22 . . . b19–20 . . . b24–5 . . . b31–3. 10 Aristotle, 1588, Met. IV.3, 1005b32–3. 11 Aristotle, 1592, Met. IV.4,1008a29–34.
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96 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake attribute of truth can at the same time belong and not belong to an argument in the same respect. Consequently, the opponent of the principle of non-contradiction can only ever be as right as he is wrong. Aristotle then goes on to say that his opponent, in arguing against the principle of non-contradiction, has, in fact said, “nothing.” This is because that opponent has no means of making a positive, meaningful claim. He cannot say of anything that it is. He can only say that it both is and is not. And yet even this assertion must be annulled because it must be accompanied by its own denial. Another central reason Aristotle considers the principle of non-contradiction to be absolutely certain is that it reflects his understanding of the nature of substance. Jonathan Lear explains this idea: Aristotle’s goal is neither to prove the principle of non-contradiction nor to convince an opponent of the principle to change his mind: in Aristotle’s view, there is no such opponent. What Aristotle is trying to do is to show how the structure of reality constrains the structure of our thought. The very fact that the world is constituted of substances and properties forces us to think, speak, and act in certain ways. In a world made up of substances, any thinker must be someone who believes the principle of non-contradiction.12
Aristotle’s conception of substance changed over the course of his career, so, in thinking about the relationship between the principle of non-contradiction and Aristotle’s understanding of substance, it is best to focus on the discussions of substance in the work in which he offered the principle of non-contradiction, the Metaphysics. Those discussions include extensive explorations of the notion of primary substance. As Lear observes, this is the form of substance that answers the questions, “what is most real?, what is ontologically basic?, what is that upon which the reality of other things rests?”13 Within the Metaphysics, Aristotle moves away from the position of his earlier work, the Categories, in which he argued that individual living beings and objects are primary substances, and instead adopts the view that a primary substance is the form of a species. To borrow the language of William David Ross, the word “form” is not here used in the sense of “a sensible shape,” but instead functions “as the inner nature of a thing which is expressed in its definition, the plan of its structure.”14 The word “species” should also be explained. It operates here in the broad sense of, to quote the OED, “A class composed of individuals having some common qualities or characteristics, frequently as a subdivision of a larger class or genus.”15 One can understand what Aristotle means when he speaks of the forms of species by looking at this illustration from Lear: 12 Lear, Aristotle, 264. 14 Ross, Aristotle, 74.
13 Lear, Aristotle, 270. 15 “Species, n.”
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 97 Once Aristotle discovered that an individual like Socrates could be conceived as a composite of form and matter, it was a short step to realizing that the species man could be conceived as a universal which itself has a formal and material aspect. The species man could be conceived as human soul embodied in such and such a type of flesh and bones. Human soul is thus the form of the species man. There is one such form per species. You and I differ in matter, but we are the same in form: each of us is human soul embodied in this or that matter.16
Since human soul is the form of the species man, it is also, from the perspective of the Metaphysics, an example of a primary substance. As can be seen, Aristotle’s understanding of primary substance rests on his ontological dualism, which is to say his belief that being can be divided into the two categories of form and matter. In explaining his new conception of substance, Aristotle also makes the point that a primary substance is “one and the same as its essence.”17 (To quote Hugh Lawson-Tancred, “the essence of a thing is those per se features of it that are mentioned in its definition.”18) Primary substances are identical with their essences because such substances are “self-subsistent things” which “have no other substances or entities prior to them.”19 It is the relationship between primary substances and essences that leads us back to the principle of non- contradiction. In book IV of the Metaphysics, Aristotle says of those who argue against that principle: And in general those who use this argument do away with substance and essence. For they must say that all attributes are accidents, and that there is no such thing as being essentially man or animal.20
The opponent of the principle of non-contradiction does not believe that any attribute can be essential because, from their perspective, any attribute that belongs to a particular subject at a certain time in a certain respect must also be capable of not belonging to that subject at the same time in the same respect. This is why they “must say that all attributes are accidents.” In doing away with essences, the opponent of the principle of non-contradiction also does away with primary substances because of the identity of primary substances and essences. Shorn of the most basic form of substance, the opponent of the principle of non- contradiction cannot help but be lost in a realm of amorphous objects. Aristotle puts this well:
16 Lear, Aristotle, 274–5. 17 Aristotle, “Metaphysics,” 1629, Met. VII.6, 1032a5. 18 Aristotle, Metaphysics, 177. 19 Aristotle, “Metaphysics,” 1628, Met. VII.6, 1031a28 . . . a29–30. 20 Aristotle, “Metaphysics,” 1590, Met. IV.4, 1007a21–3.
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98 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Again, if all contradictories are true of the same subject at the same time, evidently all things will be one. For the same thing will be a trireme, a wall, and a man, if it is equally possible to affirm and deny anything of anything….21
When there are no essential attributes, “all contradictories are true of the same subject at the same time” because no one attribute can be more true of its subject than its negation. This being so, the opponent of the principle of non- contradiction must hold that each thing is not what it is and also is what it is not. For instance, to draw upon the offered examples, they must regard a man who is not a wall as also being a wall and not a man. The positive aspect of this perspective is that “all things will be one” insofar as each thing will actually have all attributes and so will be the same as everything else. However, the opponent of the principle of non-contradiction must accompany that positive aspect with a contrary negative aspect, within which each thing will be the same as everything else in that each thing will actually have no attributes and so will be nothing. From this we can see that, if we wish to live in the world as, from Aristotle’s perspective, it really is, a realm in which each particular is comprised of a type of matter and a primary substance that is identical with its essence, we have no choice but to accept the principle of non-contradiction. In thinking about how that principle is used within the tale of Burrus and Caseous, it is important to know that it reflects Aristotle’s understanding of substance because, shortly after referencing the principle of non-contradiction, Joyce brings in Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno, two thinkers whose conceptions of substance are so radically different to that of Aristotle that they challenge the principle of non-contradiction. However, before those two thinkers enter the scene, Joyce offers his Wakean version of the principle of non-contradiction. To understand how this version functions, it is helpful to look at its development. Here is the first draft of the Wake’s version of Aristotle’s principle: I cannot ^now^ have ^& nothave^ a piece of ^ cheeps^ in your pocket at the same ^ times^ & with the same manners22
This sentence is actually quite close to Joyce’s original rendering of the principle: “The same attribute cannot at the same time and in the same connection belong and not belong to the same subject.”23 The main difference between this Wakean version and the original is that the version written for the Wake does not retain the abstract terms “subject” and “attribute.” Instead, in that version, the “subject”
21 Aristotle, “Metaphysics,” 1591, Met. IV.4, 1007b19–21. 22 BL 47473 f. 137v; JJA 47:147; FDV 105. 23 O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 224.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 99 is the speaker and the “attribute” is that of having a piece of cheese.24 Joyce also changes “connection” to “manner,” but, in this context, the two are synonyms.25 After finishing his first draft, Joyce then produced a fair copy of that draft and made some changes to his version of the principle of non-contradiction: I cannot now have or nothave a piece of cheeps in your pocket at the same time and with the same manners as you can now nothalf or half the cheek apiece I’ve in mind26
In changing “times” back to the original “time,” Joyce brought his sentence closer to Aristotle’s principle. However, the first half of the sentence also contains an alteration that radically alters the meaning of that piece of text. Joyce switched the fifth word from “and” to “or” and so made the first half of the sentence read, “I cannot now have or nothave a piece of cheeps in your pocket at the same time and with the same manners.”27 This switch is important because to say that a subject cannot have or not have an attribute at the same time and in the same manner is very different from saying that it cannot have and not have an attribute at the same time and in the same manner. I am indebted to Alan Code for explaining that, in denying an affirmation and a negation by asserting that the speaker can neither have nor not have the piece of cheese at the same time and in the same manner, the new form of the first half of the sentence offers an apparent violation of the Law of Excluded Middle.28 This is another of Aristotle’s logical principles, one closely related to the principle of non-contradiction, which states that “there cannot be an intermediate between contradictories, but of one subject we must either affirm or deny any one predicate.”29 However, as Code also informed me, when Jones says that he cannot have or not have a piece of cheese at the same time and in the same respect, the second denial creates a double negation, and so the professor’s words entail that he can both have and not have a piece of cheese at the same time and in the same respect. Therefore, Jones’ assertion also violates the principle of non-contradiction.30 The new version of the sentence also adds a second clause: I cannot now have or nothave a piece of cheeps in your pocket at the same time and with the same manners as you can now nothalf or half the cheek apiece I’ve in mind31
24 BL 47473 f. 137v; JJA 47:147; FDV 105. 25 O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 224. BL 47473 f. 137v; JJA 47: 147; FDV 105. 26 BL 47473 f. 175; JJA 47:162. 27 My italics. 28 Alan Code, “Joyce and Logic Request,” e-mail, 2022. 29 Aristotle, “Metaphysics,” 1597, Met. IV.7, 1011b23–4. 30 Alan Code, “Joyce and Logic Request,” e-mail, 2022. 31 BL 47473 f. 175; JJA 47: 162. My italics.
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100 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake This new clause is in many ways similar to the first. It speaks of halving rather than having, but the word “half ” also functions as a form of “have.” Whether one takes the clause to be about halving or having, it does not come near to violating the principle of non-contradiction because it argues that the same attribute can belong or not belong to the same subject, i.e., the “cheek apiece” can be halved or not halved, had nor not had. Also, the second clause does not repeat the end of the first, “at the same time and with the same manners,” but, even if it did, that would not be an issue because the principle of non-contradiction allows that the same attribute can at the same time belong or not belong to the same subject in the same manner. Therefore, while the first clause of the quote violates the principle of non-contradiction, the second does not. The version of the sentence quoted above is the same as that which appears in the Wake, and so this is also true of the Wake’s rendering of the principle of non-contradiction. When Professor Jones offers that rendering, he is not trying to challenge that principle and so, as frequently occurs in his lecture, his intent is undermined by his language. Jones’ aim is rather to show how the Bergsonian time-school violates even the most essential and obvious of principles. The professor views the relationship between Bergson and Aristotle as oppositional because this is how Lewis saw it. As discussed in Chapter 2, “The Revolutionary Simpleton” frequently defines the Bergsonian time-school as romantic and sets it in opposition to the classical. If, for Lewis, Bergson is the archetypal romantic philosopher, then Aristotle is the archetypal classical philosopher. One can see this in Lewis’ 1934 book Men Without Art. In a chapter titled “The Terms ‘Classical’ and ‘Romantic,’ ” Lewis writes: The “classical” has a physiognomy of sorts, then: it has a solid aspect rather than a gaseous: it is liable to incline rather to the side of Aristotle than to the side of Plato: to be of a public rather than of a private character: to be objective rather than subjective: to incline to action rather than to dream: to belong to the sensuous side rather than the ascetic: to be redolent of common sense rather than of metaphysic: to be universal rather than idiomatic: to lean upon the intellect rather than upon the bowels and the nerves.32
The insults thrown at the romantic in this passage echo those of “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” and so, by aligning Aristotle with the classical, Lewis very much defines him against Bergson. At the same time, what also connects this passage to “The Revolutionary Simpleton” is the fact that here, as there, that which is presented as being classical is simply that which Lewis likes and that which is said to be romantic is that which he does not. For this reason, it is difficult to
32 Lewis, Men Without Art, 190.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 101 relate Aristotle to the definition of classicism that Lewis offers here. To point to just one of many possible examples, by virtue of being defined as a classicist rather than a romantic, Aristotle is here aligned with “common sense” and so against “metaphysic.” Since Aristotle was interested in both the physical world of ordinary perception and the metaphysical realm, he really belongs on both sides of this opposition, but Lewis’ binary view of the relationship between classicism and romanticism cannot allow this. Examples like this show that Lewis’ definition of classicism so little reflects Aristotle that the great Greek philosopher’s inclusion within that definition is principally a sign of the strength of Lewis’ desire to be associated with Aristotle. Given the form in which the Wake presents the principle of non-contradiction and the fact that it is presented by a version of Joyce’s chief antagonist, Wyndham Lewis, it is evident that Joyce does not offer that principle in order to support it. However, as noted in the last chapter, in reading Professor Jones’ lecture one must be careful of falling into the trap of assuming that Joyce is always directly opposed to the ideas offered by the Lewisian professor. Joyce’s respect for Aristotle certainly equaled that of Lewis, and he was well aware of the significance of the principle of non-contradiction. The reason that principle appears in the manner that it does in the tale of Burrus and Caseous is not because Joyce had rejected it outright, but rather because it goes against one of the Wake’s defining concepts, the principle of the coincidence of contraries.33 Indeed, as Jones moves from his Aristotelian allusion to the first appearance of Burrus and Caseous, he points to the opposition between the principle of non- contradiction and that of the coincidence of contraries. This can be seen when he asserts that the validity of the time-school’s challenge to Aristotle’s principle rests on whether or not “Burrus and Caseous have not or not have seemaultaneously sysentangled themselves” (FW 161.12–13). As is often the case within their tale, Burrus and Caseous here function as opposites. What interests Jones is the matter of their relationship. The word “sysentangled” suggests “disentangled,” but, as McHugh notes, “sys” is the Greek for “together,” so “sysentangled” also alludes to the idea of being tangled together (AFW 161). When this is known, one can see that Jones’ point is that the validity of the time-school’s objection to the principle of non-contradiction is dependent on whether opposites are united or divided. One can understand the rationale behind this argument. As mentioned, Aristotle thinks that the opponent of the principle of non-contradiction “must predicate of
33 In speaking of the principle of the coincidence of contraries, I use “contraries” and “opposites” as synonyms even though, as Verene observes, there is, strictly speaking, a difference between the two: “Logically, on the Traditional Square of Opposition, contrariety is a precise sense of opposition in which the two terms cannot both be true but can both be false—differing from contradictories, which cannot both be true, but also cannot both be false” (Verene, James Joyce and the Philosophers at Finnegans Wake, 60).
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102 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake every subject every attribute and the negation of it indifferently.”34 In doing so, that figure argues that all contrary attributes coincide in each subject. Since opponents of the principle of non-contradiction must affirm the coincidence of contraries in this manner, their position crumbles if contraries do not coincide. In drawing attention to this idea, Jones not only highlights the opposition between the principle of non-contradiction and the principle of the coincidence of contraries; he also establishes that there is much at stake in the tale of Burrus and Caseous. That being said, the seriousness of the tale is also one of the sources of its comedy. What makes it funny is the contrast between its weighty philosophical concerns and its relentless food-based puns.
Burrus and Caseous That contrast is embodied by the tale’s title characters. Burrus and Caseous are, respectively, versions of Shaun and Shem, and so the principle of the coincidence of contraries is built into their identities. One can see this by considering their names. “Burrus” plays on the French word for butter, beurre, while “Caseous,” when used as an adjective, means, to quote the OED, “Of or relating to cheese; abounding in cheese; cheesy” (FW 161.12).35 The name “Caseous” also points to the German word for cheese, “käse.” Butter and cheese are both dairy products, and so one might not think of them as opposites. As Philip Keel Geheber explains, however, the two can be considered contrary if one focuses on how and, more specifically, where they are made. Butter “is made by skimming off the fat that floats to the top of the milk.” By contrast, cheese is “composed of coagulated casein curds that sink after bacteria ferments lactose in the milk into lactic acid and rennet enzymes are added for coagulation.”36 Butter and cheese are therefore opposites in so far as the former is found at the top of the milk and the latter at the bottom. What makes the names “Burrus” and “Caseous” comic is that they operate on both a dairy level and a much grander Roman level. Given how often the Wake references Shakespeare, Joyce was probably thinking more of the versions of Brutus and Cassius that appear in Julius Caesar than their historical originals. To speak of Shakespeare’s Brutus and Cassius as opposites would be a simplification, but they are certainly very different characters. Shakespeare’s Brutus is noble and heroic, whereas his Cassius is conniving and treacherous. Since Professor Jones is a character adopted by Shaun, it is unsurprising that Brutus is associated with Shaun and Cassius with Shem. As is usually the case, Jones makes no attempt to hide his bias toward characters of his own ilk. 34 Aristotle, “Metaphysics,” 1591, Met. IV.4, 1007b29–30. 36 Geheber, “A Long the Krommerun,” 132.
35 “Caseous, Adj.”
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 103 In the paragraph that follows the initial appearance of Burrus and Caseous, Jones introduces the two more fully and so further defines the relationship between them: Burrus, let us like to imagine, is a genuine prime, the real choice, full of natural greace, the mildest of milkstoffs yet unbeaten as a risicide and, of course, obsoletely unadulterous whereat Caseous is obversely the revise of him and in fact not an ideal choose by any meals, though the betterman of the two is meltingly addicted to the more casual side of the arrivaliste case and, let me say it at once, as zealous over him as is passably he. (FW 161.15–21)
Jones here celebrates Burrus for his grace, quality, and purity. Caseous doesn’t just lack these qualities; he is “obversely the revise” of Burrus. “Obversely” suggests “obverse” and so defines Burrus and Caseous as being opposite sides of the same being. The word “revise” supports this idea through its play on the word “reverse.” At the same time, “revise” also suggests that Caseous is a revision of Burrus. This could be considered a compliment because the revised version of something is usually an improvement on the original. However, given Jones’ preference for Burrus, the word “revise” is likely meant in the derogatory sense that Caseous is just a copy of his counterpart. The professor goes on to explain that, for all Burrus’ superiority, “the betterman of the two” is still “meltingly addicted” to the other and “as zealous over him as is passably he.” Evidently, despite their differences, Burrus and Caseous are still strongly drawn to one another. This passage offers a good demonstration of the tension of the Shem-Shaun relationship. The forces that unite them are as strong as those that divide them. The bond between Burrus and Caseous is also defined by their collective relationship to another of the major figures within the Wake. This is made clear at the start of the next paragraph: The older sisars (Tyrants, regicide is too good for you!) become unbeurrable from age, (the compositor of the farce of dustiny however makes a thunpledrum mistake by letting off this pienofarte effect as his furst act as that is where the juke comes in) having been sort-of-nineknived and chewly removed . . . the twinfreer types are billed to make their reupprearance as the knew kneck and knife knickknots on the deserted champ de bouteilles. (FW 162.01–11)
This sentence contains a number of references to the murder of Julius Caesar by Brutus, Cassius, and their associates. The “older sisars” are said to have been “sort-of-nineknived and chewly removed.” The reference to the “sisars” as “older” is important because this regime change also represents a generational shift. Within the Earwickerian context of the scene, the assassination of Caesar represents the ousting of HCE by Shem and Shaun. This action is depicted on a number of
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104 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake occasions in the Wake, the most important of which is the tale of how Buckley shot the Russian General in II.3. In the above sentence, the significance of the fall of HCE is shown by how it is marked in the divine realm: “the compositor of the farce of dustiny however makes a thunpledrum mistake by letting off this pienofarte effect as his furst act as that is where the juke comes in.” God here makes a “thunpledrum mistake” by letting off a fart. While the synchronization of this event with the fall of HCE is certainly a joke about the ultimate importance of each human ruler, God’s mistake is, nonetheless, consequential. As McHugh notes, the reference to thunder in the word “thunpledrum” is there to remind the reader that, in Vico’s version of history, the first age, the age of gods, is said to have begun when “the heavens finally flashed lightning, and thundered with lightning and thunder.”37 This is why the epoch-shifting fart is God’s “furst act” (FW 162.04). As the new age begins, a “juke” comes in to replace the fallen king (FW 162.04). What is curious about this is that HCE is overthrown by his two sons and yet replaced by a single man. The reason that there is only one “juke” is that the figure who replaces HCE is a composite of Shem and Shaun. One can see this from Joyce’s notes for another of the scenes in which HCE is overthrown by his sons, the tale of Buckley and the Russian General. In notebook VI.B.13, Joyce wrote “Crimea & .”38 The tale of Buckley and the Russian General takes place during the Crimean war. In Joyce’s note, the Russian General is denoted by the HCE siglum ( ) and Buckley is denoted by the siglum , which combines those of Shaun ( ) and Shem ( ). That HCE should be replaced by a composite of Shem and Shaun is appropriate because there is a level on which he unites the two. This idea is referenced at the very start of the above quote when it is said that “the older sisars . . . become unbeurrable from age” (FW 162.01–02). On the Roman level, this phrase is about how, in Caesar’s final years, he assumed a level of power that those around him were unwilling to tolerate. Looking at it from a dairy perspective, however, one can see the French word for butter, “beurre,” in “unbeurrable” and the French word for cheese, “fromage,” in “from age.” The description of the final state of Caesar thereby points to both Burrus and Caseous. Since HCE and his sons are archetypal characters, Joyce seems to be suggesting an ideal cyclical pattern in which fathers produce sons who unite to replace their fathers. Within this cycle, the unity of the sons serves as a metaphor for how, as individuals mature, so they come to embrace perspectives that they had once considered alien or contrary to their own. It is here worth remembering that Shem and Shaun, for all their differences, both represent aspects of the mature Joyce. Professor Jones’ discussion of the relationship between the Earwicker boys and their father is important to the broader consideration of the relationship
37 AFW 162. Vico, The New Science, §377, 134.
38 VI.B.13: 188; JJA 32:96.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 105 between unity and duality within the tale of Burrus and Caseous because, rather than arguing for or against the unity of opposites in any absolute sense, it suggests that opposites are continually in the process of uniting and separating. This is an idea that Joyce returns to later on in the tale when he refers to Bruno. After discussing Burrus and Caseous for several paragraphs, Jones comes to an important realization: Thus we cannot escape our likes and mislikes, exiles or ambusheers, beggar and neighbour and—this is where the dimeshow advertisers advance the temporal relief plea—let us be tolerant of antipathies. Nex quovis burro num fit mercaseus? (FW 163.12–15)
What Jones grasps here is that, while opposites are necessarily divisible, they are also necessarily indivisible. One cannot “escape” from the other because each defines the other. It is conspicuous that Joyce presents this point in terms that relate directly to his relationship with Lewis. The phrase “exiles or ambusheers” points to Joyce, the exile, and Lewis, the ambusher whose attack came as a surprise to Joyce. The response from the members of the time-school, or, as Jones labels them here, “the dime-show advertisers,” to the idea of the inseparability of opposites is to offer a plea: “let us be tolerant of antipathies.” This plea can be seen as encouraging people to be patient in the face of antipathy. At the same time, it can also be read as suggesting that antipathies should be respected and not dismissed out of hand. Given that the members of the time-school were peaceable sorts, one takes them to be making the former case. Jones’ reaction to the time-school’s plea can be seen in his subsequent question: “Nex quovis burro num fit mercaseus?” (FW 163.15). As McHugh points out, this question plays on two different Latin phrases. The Wake’s “Nex quovis burro num fit mercaseus?” suggests “ex quovis butyrum num fit merus caseus,” which means “From any butter there is not made pure cheese” (AFW 163). In the context of the Burrus and Caseous episode, this phrase seems to be arguing that Caseous was not made from Burrus. The relationship between those two is further defined by the second Latin phrase to which Jones’ question points, “Non ex quovis ligno fit Mercurius,” which means “You cannot make a Mercury out of just any piece of wood” (AFW 163). Considering Jones’ preference for the Shaunish Burrus over the Shemish Caseous, it seems likely that Burrus here represents the Roman god rather than the piece of wood. Consequently, the phrase suggests that Burrus was not made out of Caseous. Taken together the two sources of Jones’ question suggest that neither Burrus nor Caseous was made from the other. In highlighting the individuality of each, Jones seeks to undermine the notion that Burrus and Caseous are inseparable and so must be tolerant of one another. As is clear throughout his lecture, Jones is not a believer in tolerance.
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106 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake
Nicholas of Cusa’s Principle of the Coincidence of Contraries In the sentence that follows, Jones brings his exploration of the nature of opposition directly into the realm of philosophy: I am not hereby giving my final endorsement to the learned ignorants of the Cusanus philosophism in which old Nicholas pegs it down that the smarter the spin of the top the sounder the span of the buttom (what the worthy old auberginiste ought to have meant was: the more stolidly immobile in space appears to me the bottom which is presented to use in time by the top primomobilisk &c.). (FW 163.15–22)
In speaking of “old Nicholas,” “the Cusanus philosophism,” and “learned ignorants,” Jones points to Nicholas of Cusa or, as he is also known, Cusanus, a fifteenth-century German philosopher and theologian whose major work is titled De docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance). There is no record of Joyce reading the works of Cusanus, and so the most likely source of this sentence is J. Lewis McIntyre’s book Giordano Bruno, a book that Joyce reviewed for the Daily Express in 1903.39 One reason for thinking that Joyce’s knowledge of Cusanus comes from McIntyre is that when Cusanus is mentioned in the Wake it is often in conjunction with Bruno. As will be seen shortly, the sentence which follows that quoted above contains multiple references to Bruno. Another reason for viewing McIntyre as the source of Jones’ allusion to Cusanus is that McIntyre’s book contains a substantial discussion of Cusanus that includes the exact symbol that Jones uses in his lecture. According to Jones, “old Nicholas pegs it down that the smarter the spin of the top the sounder the span of the buttom” (FW 163.17–19). This spinning top symbol can be found at the end of McIntyre’s discussion of Cusanus’ understanding of God: The Divine was at once the greatest and the least; greatest because we could not imagine it added to, for it was the all; least because, being truly existent, we could not imagine anything taken away from it. It is owing to the limits of human thought, therefore, that God is at once greatest and least, equal and unequal, many and one; God Himself is free from all contradiction, the apparent contraries of our understanding are in Him one and the same. So, to our imagination, the infinite circle coincides the infinite straight line, and a top spinning with its fastest movement appears to stand still.40
39 See Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 93–4. 40 McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 143.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 107 This is a dense passage that brings together many important ideas within Cusanus’ philosophy. The best way to understand those ideas, and thereby the concluding spinning top image that Joyce brings into the Wake, is to look at Cusanus’ discussion of maximums in On Learned Ignorance. In that work, Cusanus differentiates between three different kinds of maximum. This is the first of the three: Accordingly, the maximum is the absolute one that is all things, and all things are in this maximum, for it is the maximum. And because the maximum has no opposite, the minimum coincides with it as well, and therefore the maximum is also in all things. Because it is absolute, it is actually all possible being and contracts nothing from things, for all things come from it.41
The maximum that Cusanus describes here is an absolute unity. It contains all things and is all the things that it contains. When Cusanus speaks of “all things,” he refers not just to the actual objects of existence. This maximum is “actually all possible being” in that every potential being has been actualized within it. There is no potential realm that sits outside of it. Indeed, “this maximum has no opposite” because it contains and reconciles all oppositions within itself. After explaining the nature of this maximum, Cusanus bestows upon it the name of God.42 For Cusanus, God is the absolute unity and that in which contraries coincide. The second maximum is that of the universe: In the second place, just as absolute maximumness is absolute being, by which all things are what they are, so also from absolute being there is a universal unity of being that is called “the maximum from the absolute.” This universal unity exists in a contracted way as universe, and its unity is contracted in plurality, without which it cannot exist.43
Cusanus describes the universe as the “maximum from the absolute” because it derives from the absolute maximum of God. Yet the universe is different to God because, instead of being absolute, it “exists in a contracted way.” By this Cusanus means that the universe is less than God and has limitations that God does not. As H. Lawrence Bond observes, this causes the universe to have a number of characteristics that are opposite to those of God. The universe is “plural as opposed to only one; finite, perishable, divisible, imperfect and other as opposed to infinite, eternal, indivisible, perfect and indistinct;…and comprehensible as
41 Nicholas of Cusa, “On Learned Ignorance,” 89. 42 Nicholas of Cusa, “On Learned Ignorance,” 89. 43 Nicholas of Cusa, “On Learned Ignorance,” 89.
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108 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake opposed to incomprehensible.”44 The finite nature of the universe causes humans to attempt to understand God in finite terms, but such attempts must always fall short because of the infinity of God. Cusanus’ third and final maximum mediates between the first two: For since the universe exists in plurality only in a contracted way, we will seek in the many things themselves the one maximum in which the universe actually exists most greatly and most perfectly as in its end. This maximum is united with the absolute maximum, which is the universal goal, for it is the most perfect end beyond all our capacity. About this maximum, which is both contracted and also absolute, and which we name Jesus, forever blessed, I will add several things, as Jesus himself will inspire me.45
The third maximum exists within the universe but it is also united with the “absolute maximum” of God. It is able to connect God and the universe because it shares the qualities of both in that it is “both contracted and also absolute.” Cusanus names the third maximum Jesus. At times, Cusanus argues that the universe yields no knowledge of God and so it is only through Jesus and the religion he inspired that man can gain any sense of God. For instance, in On Learned Ignorance Cusanus writes: “Since God is not knowable in this world, where reason, opinion, and teaching lead us, by means of symbols, from the better known to the unknown, God is grasped only where persuadings leave off and faith enters in.”46 On other occasions, however, Cusanus uses worldly objects as symbols to convey the nature of God, and the spinning top symbol referenced by McIntyre and borrowed by Joyce is an example of this. How those symbols function is a source of tension in Cusanus’ philosophy. From one perspective, those symbols cannot represent God because his being is of a different nature to the objects of the universe. Consequently, one cannot learn of God by simply considering the appearances of those symbols. Rather, as Bond puts it, those symbols “require perception in ‘the mind’s eye’ of the invisible truth signified under the form of quantity and quality, yet a truth possessing neither.”47 Since Cusanus wishes his reader to look through his symbols to the greater spiritual reality of God that lies beyond the material realm, one might well question why any one object should be used to symbolize a particular property of God rather than another. Jasper Hopkins responds to this question:
44 Bond, “A Brief Glossary of Cusan Terms,” 461. 45 Nicholas of Cusa, “On Learned Ignorance,” 90. 46 Nicholas of Cusa, “On Learned Ignorance,” 197. 47 Bond, “Introduction,” 53. Bond references Cusanus’ On the Vision of God, in which Cusanus says of God’s face, “But I see the invisible truth of your face, represented in this contracted shadow here, not with the eyes of flesh, which examine this icon of you, but with the eyes of the mind and the intellect” (Nicholas of Cusa, “On the Vision of God,” 243).
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 109 Yet, Nicholas does believe that some of these symbolic likenesses are more appropriate than others. And this belief suggests that in spite of his extreme language, he does not regard God as unqualifiedly inconceivable. For if he did, he would have no basis for distinguishing between appropriate and inappropriate symbols.48
There is therefore also a sense in which there must be some degree of correspond ence between Cusanus’ symbols of God and God himself. As mentioned, the Cusan symbol referenced in the Wake is that of a spinning top. McIntyre speaks of how “a top spinning with its fastest movement appears to stand still,” and this appears in the Wake as “old Nicholas pegs it down that the smarter the spin of the top the sounder the span of the buttom” (FW 163.17–19).49 These quotes reference Cusanus’ dialogue Trialogus de possest (On Actualized Possibility). This dialogue contains three characters: Bernard, John, and the Cardinal. When Bernard asks “to be led by a sensible image” to understand how God is “all things at once,” the Cardinal responds by saying: I shall try to show you such an image. I will take the example of boys playing with a top—a game known to us all, even in practical terms. A boy pitches out a top; and as he does so, he pulls it back with a string which is wound around it. The greater the strength of his arm, the faster the top is made to rotate—until it seems (while it is moving at the faster speed) to be motionless and at rest.50
Therefore, as the Cardinal goes on to say, in the case of the spinning top it would appear that “maximal motion would at the same time also be minimal motion and no motion.”51 From this, Bernard derives a new understanding of the nature of God: Things which are separated for us are not at all separated in God. . . . And all things which in our world are separated as opposites exist conjointly in God. And all the things which here are different are there identical.52
On viewing this example, one might ask whether it is valid to draw essential principles from false appearances. A spinning top that is rotating quickly only gives the semblance of motionlessness. In considering this matter, it is important to keep in mind that Cusanus is using the objects of the world to suggest the nature of God. He is not making claims about how such objects operate within
48 Hopkins, “Introduction,” 22. 49 McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 143. 50 Nicholas of Cusa, “On Actualized Possibility,” 87–8. 51 Nicholas of Cusa, “On Actualized Possibility,” 91. 52 Nicholas of Cusa, “On Actualized Possibility,” 91–3.
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110 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake the physical universe. This is in part because, as Clyde Lee Miller notes, “Nicholas believes that our knowledge of the natural world (embodied and made systematic in the mechanical and technical arts and the conceptions of science via mathematics) will remain conjectural.” His basis for this belief is that, when we use the mechanical and technical arts and the sciences to gain knowledge of the world, “we are not dealing with the truth of extramental things—their true forms are one with God—but with physically located temporal realities (images of the divine, the ‘really real’).”53 As can be seen, Cusanus’ understanding of the relationship between God and the universe exerts a strong influence on his epistemology. Cusanus’ spinning top symbol is portrayed by Professor Jones as being an encapsulation of the “Cusanus philosophism,” and, in many ways, he is not wrong to do so (FW 163.17). The symbol does not explain the entirety of Cusanus’ philosophy, but, in suggesting how God’s unity lies beyond human notions of opposition, it brings together a number of Cusanus’ ideas regarding the nature of God and the capacities of human understanding. Therefore, when Jones asserts that he cannot give his “final endorsement” to the “Cusanus philosophism,” he is saying that he does not accept the idea that there is a higher realm in which all contraries are reconciled in God. This is exactly what one would expect of a character who always emphasizes the necessity of divisions. In rejecting Cusanus’ philosophy, Jones aligns himself alongside Aristotle, whose ontology is grounded in individual primary substances rather than the unity of all being. After refusing to endorse the ideas of Cusanus, Jones goes one step further and corrects him: “what the worthy old auberginiste ought to have meant was: the more stolidly immobile in space appears to me the bottom which is presented to use in time by the top primomobilisk &c” (FW 163.19–22). As McHugh points out, in referring to Cusanus as an “auberginiste,” Jones humorously plays on the French slang word “aubergine,” which is a term for a nose that is red from drinking (AFW 163). The professor insults Cusanus because he is angry with him for overlooking the importance of the relationship between time and space to his spinning top analogy. Jones is so obsessed with that relationship that he thinks that all ideas should be presented in relation to it. This is why the professor revises Cusanus’ analogy to make it reference time and space. Jones also thinks that Cusanus should have said that the bottom of the spinning top is “presented to use in time by the top primomobilisk &c” (FW 163.21–2). The word “primomobilisk” points to the term “primum mobile,” the outermost sphere in the Ptolemaic universe. This sphere is the cause of all movement within that universe and so, to the extent that our conceptions of time derive from movement, it can also be viewed as the cause of time within that universe. This explains why Jones describes the “top primomobilisk &c” as being that which presents the bottom of the spinning
53 Miller, The Art of Conjecture: Nicholas of Cusa on Knowledge, 29.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 111 top “to use in time” (FW 163.21–2). The term “primum mobile” also refers to the notion of the prime mover and so brings the discussion back to Aristotle. His clearest explanation of this notion can be found in the Physics: “Since there must always be motion without intermission, there must necessarily be something eternal, whether one or many, that first imparts motion, and this first mover must be unmoved.”54 Aristotle also discusses the prime mover in the Metaphysics, and Joyce was certainly aware of those remarks. Two of the Aristotle notes in Joyce’s Early Commonplace Notebook derive from chapter seven of book XII of the Metaphysics, which is one of the sections of that work in which Aristotle directly engages with the notion of the prime mover.55 When Jones references that notion, he does so partly because the prime mover, like the outermost sphere of the Ptolemaic universe, is the cause of all movement and so, as with that sphere, there is a perspective from which the prime mover is the cause of time. The other reason for that reference is that it serves to suggest that Cusanus, in presenting his spinning top analogy, should have taken a more Aristotelian approach.
Bruno’s Principle of the Coincidence of Contraries After correcting Cusanus, Jones proceeds to allude to one of the most important philosophers of the Wake: And I shall be misunderstord if understood to give an unconditional sinequam to the heroicised furibouts of the Nolanus theory, or, at any rate, of that substrate of apart from hissheory where the Theophil swoors that on principial he was the pointing start of his odiose by comparison and that whiles eggs will fall cheapened all over the walled the Bure will be dear on the Brie. (FW 163.22–8)
In speaking of the “Nolanus theory,” Jones references Giordano Bruno of Nola. The words “principial” and “Theophil” also allude to Bruno in that they point to his best-known work, De la Causa, principio e uno (Cause, Principle, and Unity), in which a character named Teofilo speaks for the author. Joyce’s interest in Bruno was sparked during his university days by his Italian instructor Father Ghezzi, and that interest remained throughout Joyce’s life. One finds references to Bruno in many of Joyce’s fiction and non-fiction works, including Portrait, Stephen Hero, “The Bruno Philosophy,” “The Day of the Rabblement,” and “The Universal Literary Influence of the Renaissance.”56 There is, however, no work by Joyce that
54 Aristotle, “Physics,” 432, Phys. VIII.6, 258b10–12. 55 See O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 229–30. 56 See Joyce, Stephen Hero, 170; P 271; and Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 50, 93–4, 188.
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112 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake alludes to Bruno as often as the Wake. Indeed, after Vico, Bruno is the most frequently referenced philosopher in that novel. Professor Jones alludes to Bruno after pointing to Aristotle and Cusanus because Bruno’s philosophy was influenced by both, albeit in very different ways. To start with Cusanus, there are times at which Bruno directly reiterates the distinction within On Learned Ignorance between the absolute maximum of God and the contracted maximum of the universe. For instance, in De l’Infinito, Universo, e Mondi (On the Infinite, the Universe, and the Worlds), the character of Filoteo says: I say the universe is entirely infinite, because it has neither edges, limits or a surface, but it is not totally infinite because each part of it we can comprehend is finite and each of the innumerable worlds within it is finite. I say that God is totally and comprehensively infinite because not only is He without any boundary or limit but also each of His attributes is one and infinite; . . . .57
In the same year as Bruno wrote On the Infinite, the Universe, and the Worlds, he also produced Cause, Principle, and Unity, and one finds similar language there.58 That work also echoes Cusanus by arguing that contraries coincide in God: “And so, what is elsewhere contrary and opposed is one and the same in him, and every thing in him is the same.”59 What’s more, Bruno follows that argument with a notion that is central to the philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, the notion that God “cannot be comprehended by the intellect, except by way of negatives.”60 However, while Cause, Principle, and Unity highlights a number of the similarities between the philosophies of Cusanus and Bruno, it also shows how their ideas differed. One matter on which the two disagreed is the point of mediation between God and the universe. As previously discussed, for Cusanus, this is Christ. By contrast, when Bruno defines God and the universe as being separate, he connects them through an entity named the world soul. This name is somewhat misleading as the world soul is the soul of the whole universe rather than any one world. In Cause, Principle and Unity, Teofilo explains the concept of the world soul: The world soul, therefore, is the formal constitutive principle of the universe and all it contains. I say that if life is found in all things, the soul is necessarily the 57 Bruno, On the Infinite, the Universe, and the Worlds, Dialogue 1, 50. [Citations of Bruno’s works in this book take the form: Bruno, Title of Work, Dialogue Number, Page Number.] 58 For example, in the third dialogue, Teofilo says that “the universe is all that it can be, in an unfolded, dispersed and distinct manner, while its first principle is all it can be in a unified and undifferentiated way, since all is there as a whole, an absolutely one and the same thing without difference or distinction” (Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 3, 66). When Bruno here speaks of the universe’s “first principle,” he refers to God. 59 Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 3, 68. 60 Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 3, 68.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 113 form of all things, that form presides everywhere over matter and governs the composites, determines the composition and cohesion of the parts.61
For Bruno, “life is found in all things,” and “the soul is necessarily the form of all things.” Consequently, the world soul, being the soul of the universe, contains all the forms of the universe within it. As well as possessing those forms, the world soul also imposes those forms onto the matter of the universe and thereby creates the individual objects of the universe. Bruno presents the world soul as being intrinsic to the universe, but he also suggests how it partakes in the nature of God when he speaks of how it “presides,” “governs,” and “determines.” The world soul is the means by which God rules the universe. The idea that Bruno proposes had been explicitly rejected by Cusanus: Between the absolute and the contracted there is no intermediate, as those imagined who believed the soul of the world to be a mind subsequent to God and prior to the contraction of the world. For God alone is the soul and mind of the world, in such a way that this soul is regarded as something absolute in which all the forms of things actually exist.62
Cusanus does not accept the idea that, between the absolute unity of God and the contracted unity of the universe, there is a world soul, “a mind subsequent to God and prior to the contraction of the world.” From his perspective, it is rather the case that God is the soul of the world in so far as he is that “in which all the forms of things actually exist.” That Cusanus should feel the need to strike down the idea of the world soul is understandable. As Alfonso Ingegno puts it, the world soul makes it “possible to imagine a mediation between the human and the divine which, moving through nature, would render unnecessary the solution adopted by Nicholas of Cusa and would in fact do away with all forms of Christology.”63 Cusanus and Bruno also sometimes differ on the notion of substance. For Cusanus, “the unity of the universe exists contractedly in plurality,” and this is why everything other than God is, in relation to him, “finite and limited.”64 At times, Bruno agrees that the universe is made up of numerous finite substances. There are, as noted, passages in both On the Infinite, the Universe, and the Worlds and Cause, Principle, and Unity that support this conception of the universe. However, it is also the case that much of the latter work is devoted to a very different conception of substance. This conception begins to emerge when Bruno, after uniting all forms in the world soul, turns his attention to matter:
61 Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 2, 45. 62 Nicholas of Cusa, “On Learned Ignorance,” 155. 64 Nicholas of Cusa, “On Learned Ignorance,” 169, 94.
63 Ingegno, “Introduction,” xix.
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114 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Just as in art, then, while the forms vary to infinity (if this were possible), under those forms there always persists one and the same matter—the form of the tree, for example, being followed by the form of the trunk, then of a board, then of a table, a stool, a chest, a comb and so on, while the wood remains the same—and it is no different in nature, where forms vary infinitely, one after the other, and the matter always remains the same.65
All matter is here defined as being “one and the same.” As Bruno develops his discussion of this universal matter, he argues that there must be a common substratum to the material and the spiritual, to sensible matter and intelligible matter, and ultimately even to form and matter. The conclusion of this argument can be seen at the start of the fifth dialogue of Cause, Principle, and Unity: The universe is, therefore, one, infinite and immobile. I say that the absolute possibility is one, that the act is one; the form, or soul, is one, the matter, or body, is one, the thing is one, being is one. . . . Moreover, since it comprehends all contraries in its being in unity and harmony, and since it can have no propensity for another and new being, or even for one manner of being and then for another, it cannot be subject to change according to any quality whatsoever, nor can it admit any contrary or different thing that can alter it, because in it everything is concordant.66
Rather than existing, to use Cusanus’ term, “contractedly in plurality,” this universe is unified and limitless.67 It contains no individual, finite substances because it is one being that combines all matter and all forms. Indeed, as Bruno observes, this universe “comprehends all contraries.” The above conception of the universe is very similar to Cusanus’ notion of the absolute maximum of God. Yet, rather than replacing God with the universe, Bruno combines the two. One can see this in the third paragraph of the fifth dialogue of Cause, Principle, and Unity when Bruno moves from speaking of the universe to speaking of God: Here, then, is how it is not impossible, but rather necessary, that the optimum, the maximum, the incomprehensible is everything, is everywhere, is in everything, for, being simple and indivisible, it can be everything, be everywhere and be in everything. Thus, not for nothing is it said that Jove fills all things, inhabits all parts of the universe, is the centre of everything which has being: one in all, and that through which all is one, and is that which, being all things and comprehending all being in itself, causes everything to be in everything.68 65 Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 3, 57. 66 Bruno, Dialogue 5, 87. 67 Nicholas of Cusa, “On Learned Ignorance,” 169. 68 Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 5, 89.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 115 The first sentence speaks of the universe and the second of God or, as Bruno puts it, “Jove.” While the second sentence differentiates between God and the universe, the description of God within that sentence is in many ways similar to the description of the universe in the first. Furthermore, the manner in which Bruno transitions from the first sentence to the second suggests that the notion that the universe is an absolute unity supports the idea that God is an absolute unity. At this point in the fifth dialogue of Cause, Principle, and Unity, Bruno has strayed from Cusanus, but he takes a step back toward him in the next paragraph: And this is the difference between the universe and the things of the universe: for the universe contains all being and all modes of being, while each thing of the universe possesses all being but not all modes of being.69
Cusanus’ distinction between the absolute maximum of God and the contracted, plural universe here reappears as a distinction between “the universe” and “the things of the universe.” This allows Bruno to account for the mutability and particularity of “the things of the universe,” but it also offers another suggestion that Bruno regards God and the universe as one. Just as there are important similarities and differences between the philosophies of Cusanus and Bruno, so the same is true of their understandings of the principle with which both are commonly associated, that of the coincidence of contraries. The reason Bruno’s understanding of that principle is similar to that of Cusanus is that, as Bruno was happy to acknowledge, he learned of the principle of the coincidence of contraries from Cusanus. In Cause, Principle, and Unity, as Teofilo begins to offer “the signs and the proofs” that “demonstrate the coincidence of contraries,” he asks: Is there anything more opposite to a straight line than a curve? And yet, they coincide in the principle and the minimum, since (as the Cusan, the inventor of geometry’s most beautiful secrets, divinely pointed out) what difference could you find between the minimum arc and the minimum chord? Furthermore, in the maximum, what difference could you find between the infinite circle and the straight line? Do you not see that the larger the circle, the more its arc approximates straightness?70
Bruno here presents the straight line and the curve as contraries. He argues that these contraries coincide by asserting that the maximum curve and the minimum curve are both straight lines. This leads him to suggest that the straight line and the curve coincide in “principle.” That word is defined earlier in the same work as 69 Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 5, 89. 70 Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 5, 96–7.
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116 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake “that which intrinsically contributes to the constitution of things and remains in the effect.”71 From this one can see that Bruno regards the coincidence of the straight line and the curve as essential. This example is ascribed to Cusanus, and Robert de Lucca notes that it derives from two works by Cusanus: De mathematica perfectione and De beryllo.72 In considering this example, however, it is important to recognize that, when Bruno uses geometrical figures in the fifth dialogue of Cause, Principle, and Unity, he uses them for a different purpose than Cusanus does in his works. Cusanus employs the finite geometrical figures of the universe to suggest the infinite nature of God, within whom contraries coincide. He can do no more than suggest because, for him, human thought cannot fully grasp God’s infinite being. While Bruno at times maintains Cusanus’ division between an infinite God and a finite universe, he also on other occasions unites an infinite God with an infinite universe that contains finite things. Within the latter model, contraries coincide within the universe as well as God because they are one. Bruno uses geometrical figures in the fifth dialogue of Cause, Principle, and Unity to support this model, and so those figures point to a coincidence of contraries that lies neither beyond the universe nor beyond human thought. It is rather the case that, as Paul Richard Blum observes, Bruno “regards the geometrical figures of Nicholas” that he borrows “as evidence of the reality of the infinite in the finite and as evidence of the identity of thinking and being which is expressed in geometry.”73 Just as Cusanus is mentioned in the fifth dialogue of Cause, Principle, and Unity, so the same is true of Aristotle, but Bruno’s remarks on Aristotle are rather less complimentary: Aristotle, among others, did not discover the one, nor being, nor the true, because he did not recognize being as one. Although he could have adopted the meaning of being which is common to substance and accident, and further, distinguished his categories according to as many genera and species as there are specific differences, nonetheless he perceived truth badly, not going deeply enough into the knowledge of this unity and of this indistinction of the eternal nature and eternal being. With his harmful explanations and his irresponsible arguments, this arid sophist perverted the sense of the ancients and hampered the truth, less, perhaps, out of intellectual weakness, than out of jealousy and ambition.74
The venom of these words is partly a product of the fact that Cause, Principle, and Unity was written shortly after Bruno’s stay in Oxford during the late spring and 71 Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 2, 37. 72 Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 5, 97. 73 Blum, Giordano Bruno, 43. 74 Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 5, 90–1.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 117 early summer of 1583. As McIntyre explains, Oxford University was, at that time, “a stronghold of Aristotelianism,” and its statutes declared that “Bachelors and Masters who did not follow Aristotle faithfully were liable to a fine of five shillings for every point of divergence, and for every fault committed against the Logic of the Organon.”75 (The word “Organon” is commonly used as a collective term for Aristotle’s six works on logic.) Bruno’s forceful attack on Aristotle was his response to the oppressive enforcement of Aristotle’s ideas that he had recently experienced. In the above quote, Bruno characterizes his disagreement with Aristotle as relating to the nature of being. The dominant conception of being within Cause, Principle, and Unity, that of one unified, indistinct, eternal being, is directly anti- Aristotelian. Bruno argues that Aristotle could have adopted that conception while maintaining all the many distinctions that define his own understanding of being if he had simply recognized that, beyond all those distinctions, lies the one true being that is common to all classes of being. As discussed earlier, Aristotle considers primary substances to be ontologically basic. There is not a more foundational form of being that lies beyond them. Just as the principle of non- contradiction is a product of this ontology, an ontology in which the dualism of form and matter is central, so Bruno derives his principle of the coincidence of contraries from his monistic conception of being. It therefore makes sense that those two principles are opposed to one another. To return to the Wake, Professor Jones speaks of Bruno immediately after referencing Cusanus, and his attitude to the two is similar. Jones can no more offer his “final endorsement to the learned ignorants of the Cusanus philosophism” than he can “give an unconditional sinequam to the heroicised furibouts of the Nolanus theory” (FW 163.16–7, 23–4). Since Jones has already been associated with Aristotle, his non-endorsements align Bruno with Cusanus and against Aristotle. As shown, this is quite correct. After refusing to “give an unconditional sinequam to the heroicised furibouts of the Nolanus theory,” Jones qualifies this refusal by saying: or, at any rate, of that substrate of apart from hissheory where the Theophil swoors that on principial he was the pointing start of his odiose by comparison and that whiles eggs will fall cheapened all over the walled the Bure will be dear on the Brie. (FW 163.24–8)
The references to butter and cheese in the phrase “the Bure will be dear on the Brie” show that Jones is here using Burrus and Caseous to explain his understanding of the Brunoian coincidence of contraries. He begins by speaking of how one being produces its opposite. In Jones’ example, “Theophil” is the “pointing start of his 75 McIntyre, Giordano Bruno, 21–2.
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118 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake odiose by comparison.” Given the professor’s dislike of Caseous, one assumes that he is the odious product of Burrus. Jones then goes on to suggest the ubiquity of division and destruction through a phrase that evokes the demise of Humpty Dumpty: “whiles eggs will fall cheapened all over the walled.” However, the sentence concludes on a positive note by arguing that amidst that division and destruction there will also be reconciliation and love. The phrase “the Bure will be dear on the Brie” suggests that Burrus will ultimately be affectionate toward Caseous. In sum, Jones here defines the Brunoian coincidence of contraries as a process in which a being generates a separate opposite and then reunites with it. That Joyce understood Bruno’s philosophy in this way while writing the Wake can be seen in a 1925 letter to Weaver: Bruno Nolano (of Nola) another great southern Italian was quoted in my first pamphlet The Day of the Rabblement. His philosophy is a kind of dualism— every power in nature must evolve an opposite in order to realise itself and opposition brings reunion etc etc. (Letters I, 226)
Similar characterizations of Bruno’s conception of opposition can also be found in Joyce’s 1903 review of McIntyre’s book on Bruno and his 1912 essay “The Universal Literary Influence of the Renaissance.”76 Joyce got this interpretation of Bruno’s understanding of opposition from Samuel Taylor Coleridge. In a footnote to one of the essays in his collection The Friend, Coleridge defines his law of polarity: Every Power in Nature and in Spirit must evolve an opposite as the sole means and condition of its manifestation: and all opposition is a tendency to re-union. This is the universal Law of Polarity or essential Dualism, first promulgated by Heraclitus, 2000 years afterwards re-published and made the foundation both of Logic, of Physics, and of metaphysics by Giordano Bruno.77
When Joyce reproduces the first sentence of this quote, he does not always quote it verbatim, but he is faithful in substance. The version that appears in the Wake uses the unconventional language of that novel, but the conception of opposition that it presents is that which Joyce had offered on several previous occasions. Joyce’s repeated use of Coleridge’s law of polarity to describe Bruno’s understanding of opposition is surprising because, when Joyce first quoted that law in his 1903 review of McIntyre’s book, he did not think it a good description of Bruno’s understanding of opposition:
76 See Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 94, 188. 77 Coleridge, The Friend, 1:97.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 119 In his attempt to reconcile the matter and form of the Scholastics . . . Bruno has hardily put forward an hypothesis which is a curious anticipation of Spinoza. Is it not strange, then, that Coleridge should have set him down a dualist, a later Heraclitus, and should have represented him as saying in effect: “Every power in nature or in spirit must evolve an opposite as the sole condition and means of its manifestation; and every opposition is, therefore, a tendency to reunion.”?78
As Owen Barfield explains, it is understandable that Joyce should have found it “strange” that Coleridge ascribes his law of polarity to Bruno: Two questions arise: first, did Bruno in fact ever use the expression “Law of Polarity”? and secondly, apart from labels, is there in fact to be found in Bruno anything that is fairly recognisable as the law of polarity as Coleridge propounded it? The first and less important question must almost certainly be answered in the negative. We suggest, though with slightly less confidence, that the second must be answered the same way.79
Barfield goes on to suggest how Bruno’s principle of the coincidence of contraries differs from Coleridge’s law of polarity: A logical contradiction is mere negation; contemplated as “paradox” it becomes in a sense affirmative and positive; but it is still static. But the essence of polarity is a dynamic conflict between coinciding opposites.80
This quote is right to associate the Brunoian coincidence of contraries with the static. At the start of the fifth dialogue of Cause, Principle, and Unity, when Bruno speaks of a unified universe that comprehends all contraries, he describes that universe as “immobile.” This is because it “has no local movement since there is nothing outside of it to which it can be moved, given that it is the whole.” As mentioned earlier, Bruno also observes that such a universe “cannot be subject to change according to any quality whatsoever, nor can it admit any contrary or different thing that can alter it, because in it everything is concordant.”81 Such is the contrast between Bruno’s static conception of how contraries coincide and Coleridge’s dynamic interpretation of it that one might well ask from where that interpretation comes. The answer is that, in speaking of the law of polarity, Coleridge was ascribing one of his own conceptual principles to Bruno. As Meyer Howard Abrams observes, “the root principle throughout Coleridge’s thought” is that “all self-compelled motion, progress, and productivity, hence all emergent 78 Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 93–4. 79 Barfield, What Coleridge Thought, 186. 80 Barfield, What Coleridge Thought, 187. 81 Bruno, “Cause, Principle, and Unity,” Dialogue 5, 87.
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120 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake novelty or ‘creativity,’ is a generative conflict-in-attraction of polar forces, which part to be reunited on a higher level of being, and thus evolve, or ‘grow,’ from simple unity into a ‘multeity in unity’ which is an organized whole.”82 The reason Joyce came to view Bruno’s understanding of opposition through the lens of Coleridge’s law of polarity is that Coleridge’s law, in combining unity and division, captured both sides of Joyce’s view of Bruno. The Wake’s numerous references to the idea that contraries coincide all serve to define Bruno as a figure of unity, but, for Joyce, Bruno was also a figure of division, and this aspect of his conception of Bruno is present in the Wake. The sentence on Bruno that appears in the tale of Burrus and Caseous speaks of “the heroicised furibouts of the Nolanus theory” (FW 163.23–4). The phrase “heroicised furibouts” points to a work by Bruno titled De Gli Heroici Furori, which is commonly translated into English as On the Heroic Frenzies. The first occasion on which Joyce quoted Bruno was in his 1901 essay “The Day of the Rabblement,” and the quote that appeared there is from On the Heroic Frenzies. Joyce’s essay begins: “No man, said the Nolan, can be a lover of the true or the good unless he abhors the multitude; and the artist, though he may employ the crowd, is very careful to isolate himself.”83 The first half of the sentence is a rendering of a statement made by the character of Minutolo in On the Heroic Frenzies: “To be sure, no one can truly love truth and goodness without raging at the masses.”84 Joyce’s version of that statement makes it clear that he felt that Minutolo speaks for Bruno. The “Nolan” who appears at the start of the “The Day of the Rabblement” is not the great unifier of the principle of the coincidence of contraries, but rather a man who believes that his moral and intellectual superiority to the masses leaves him no choice but to separate himself from them. In the second half of the first sentence of “The Day of the Rabblement,” when Joyce speaks of how the “artist” adheres to the Nolan’s dictum and isolates himself, Joyce very deliberately aligns himself with Bruno. The connection between the two is further reinforced within the essay by the manner in which Joyce refers to Bruno. According to Joyce’s brother Stanislaus, Joyce labelled Bruno the “Nolan” because he “intended that the readers of his article should have at first a false impression that he was quoting some little-known 82 Abrams, Natural Supernaturalism, 268. 83 Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 50. 84 Bruno, On the Heroic Frenzies, Part Two, Dialogue 4, 327. Kevin Barry suggests that Joyce found this sentence in Isabella Frith’s Life of Giordano Bruno, which had been published in 1887. (See Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 296.) In Frith’s book, the relevant sentence reads: “No man truly loves goodness and truth who is not incensed with the multitude” (Frith, Life of Giordano Bruno, the Nolan, 165). Joyce could also have read Louisa Williams’ 1887 translation of De Gli Heroici Furori, which was titled The Heroic Enthusiasts. In that translation, the sentence under discussion reads: “Certainly no one truly loves the truth and the good who is not angry against the multitude” (Bruno, The Heroic Enthusiasts, Part Two, Dialogue 4, 2:100). Neither the version found in Frith’s biography nor that found in Williams’ translation is close enough to that which Joyce offers in “The Day of the Rabblement” to preclude the possibility that Joyce translated the sentence from Italian himself rather than using an existing English translation.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 121 Irish writer—the definite article before some old family names being a courtesy title in Ireland—so that when they discovered their error, the name of Giordano Bruno might perhaps awaken some interest in his life and work.”85 The young Joyce sought to awaken interest in Bruno’s life and work because he viewed Bruno as a martyr to the cause of free thought and because he saw parallels between Bruno’s struggle against the Catholic Church and his own. This can be seen most clearly in the final sentence of Joyce’s 1903 book review “The Bruno Philosophy”: “For us his vindication of the freedom of intuition must seem an enduring monument, and among those who waged so honourable a war, his legend must seem the most honourable, more sanctified and more ingenuous than that of Averroes or of Scotus Erigena.”86 Joyce’s ironic use of the word “sanctified” here casts Bruno as an unorthodox saint. Over time, however, Joyce’s view of Bruno began to change. In a March 1907 letter to Stanislaus that Joyce wrote while in Rome, he spoke of watching the annual procession to mark Bruno’s death: The spectacle of the procession in honour of the Nolan left me quite cold. I understand that anti-clerical history probably contains a large percentage of lies but this is not enough to drive me back howling to my gods. (Letters II, 217)
Joyce’s reaction to the procession was partly a product of the low spirits that he was experiencing at that time, but, as the second sentence suggests, it was also caused by a shift in Joyce’s attitude toward anti-clericalism. By 1907, he no longer held that movement in the esteem he once had, and so he no longer valued such icons of that movement as Bruno as highly as he had done before. Yet, while Joyce’s description of the “procession in honour of the Nolan” is certainly indicative of a shift in Joyce’s attitude toward Bruno, it is conspicuous that Joyce still speaks of Bruno as the “Nolan” (Letters II, 217). Joyce had not forgotten his reference to Bruno at the start of “The Day of the Rabblement.” Indeed, Joyce would return to that reference well after 1907. As noted earlier in this chapter, in 1925 Joyce wrote a letter to Weaver in which he tried to briefly introduce Bruno. In that letter, Joyce mentions that he “quoted” Bruno in his “first pamphlet The Day of the Rabblement” (Letters I, 226). The influence of that pamphlet on the Wake can be seen from the fact that the allusions to Bruno in Joyce’s last work consistently point to his much earlier reference to Bruno as “the Nolan” by playing on the resemblance between Browne and Nolan, the name of a Dublin book and station ery store, and Bruno of Nola.87 To point to just one of many possible examples, right before the start of the tale of the Mookse and the Gripes Professor Jones gives this command to one of his pupils: “And you, Bruno Nowlan, take your 85 Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper, 146. 86 Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 94. 87 Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 50.
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122 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake tongue out of your inkpot!” (FW 152.11). Just as Joyce remembered his first quote from Bruno, so he continued to value the source of that quote. As Ellmann points out, Joyce’s Trieste library contained 1906 editions of both volumes of On the Heroic Frenzies in the original Italian.88 Notably, this is the only work by Bruno to be found in either Joyce’s Trieste or Paris libraries. It is, therefore, not surprising that, in the sentence that alludes to Bruno in the tale of Burrus and Caseous, the work by Bruno that is most directly referenced is On the Heroic Frenzies. The Bruno that Joyce found in that work, a misanthrope who abhors the masses, is difficult to reconcile with the Bruno who espoused the coincidence of contraries. Given this tension within Joyce’s view of Bruno, one can understand why he would be drawn to Coleridge’s perspective. In Coleridge’s law of polarity there is both unity and division in that there is a continuous alternation between separation and reunion. By associating that version with Bruno, Joyce was able to make his contrary perceptions of “the Nolan” coincide.89 Coleridge’s law of polarity is referenced in the tale of Burrus and Caseous and, as mentioned in the prior chapter, a Wakean rendering of it appears in I.4.90 One might therefore ask whether Joyce’s last novel affirms that version of Bruno’s understanding of opposition. As is usually the case with the Wake, the answer to that question is not straightforward. The most important way in which the Wake supports Coleridge’s law of polarity is by having Shem and Shaun enact it through their relationship to their father. As discussed earlier, the sons of HCE are to a great extent opposites, but they are nonetheless destined to unite. Having done so, they will overthrow and replace their father. Once this occurs, the new HCE will have sons and the cycle will begin again. Shem and Shaun’s cycle of development is a prominent means by which the Wake endorses Coleridge’s law of polarity. At the same time, while the mature Joyce certainly saw the Brunoian coincidence of contraries through a Coleridgean lens, there are still ways in which the Wake endorses a simpler, more truly Brunoian conception of opposition. As will be discussed, there are characters in the Wake who can unite opposites, but those characters assert the Brunonian coincidence of contraries with far lesser regularity than one of the Wake’s signature linguistic devices. Joyce often constructed the portmanteau words and phrases of his final novel to make them suggest opposite meanings. For instance, earlier in this chapter I mentioned that “sysentangled” points to both “disentangled” and “tangled together” (FW 161.13). Words and phrases like “sysentangled” point to the Brunoian coincidence of contraries, but they lack the means to represent Coleridge’s dynamic model of opposition. Since such words and phrases permeate the Wake, the Brunoian coincidence of contraries is more prevalent in that novel than Coleridge’s law of polarity, and so the Wake promotes a static monism more often than it does a dynamic dualism. That being said, it is important to recognize that these two positions are not entirely 88 Ellmann, The Consciousness of Joyce, 103. 89 Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 50.
90 See FW 92.06–10.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 123 exclusive as Coleridge’s law of polarity contains a phase in which opposites unite. Therefore, to hold the Coleridgean interpretation of Bruno’s philosophy is still to regard Bruno as arguing for the coincidence of contraries, albeit a different coincidence of contraries to that which he actually espoused, one privileging dualism over monism. Joyce’s last novel asserts both monistic and dualistic forms of the coincidence of contraries because his world view was characterized by forms of monism and dualism. This can be seen in a document within the Hans E. Jahnke Bequest at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation titled “Two Kinds of Monism.” Joyce there differentiates between “Ontological monism” and “Cosmogonical monism.” The former is p resented in positive terms. It is labeled “true monism” and described as “an art, a grouping of like with like.” “Cosmogonical monism” is defined in a very different manner: a science, a search for causes, for generative factors of things, cannot end in one only. Must be at least two, and, by law of parsimony, not more than two. We therefore get two elements, two indestructible & ungenerable creators of universe of nature. (= space and Time (motion)91
Joyce here argues that space and time cannot be united. To do so would be to end “the search for causes” in “one only.” He states that there “must be at least two” and “not more than two” and that those two are space and time. This is why Joyce describes “Cosmogonical monism” as “false monism.”92 In defining “Ontological monism” and “Cosmogonical monism” as he does, Joyce suggests that the world’s one being has two causes. This suggestion is a great illustration of how Joyce combined forms of monism and dualism. Professor Jones has a different perspective to Joyce. After speaking of Cusanus and Bruno, Jones explains why he does not support their monisms: Now, while I am not out now to be taken up as unintentionally recommending the Silkebjorg tyrondynamon machine for the more economical helixtrolysis of these amboadipates until I can find space to look into it myself a little more closely first I shall go on with my decisions after having shown to you in good time how both products of our social stomach . . . are mutuearly polarised the incompatabilily of any delusional acting as ambivalent to the fixation of his pivotism. (FW 163.29–164.03)
Professor Jones begins by talking about the “Silkebjorg tyrondynamon machine.” The word “Silkebjorg” points to butter and, more specifically, to butter churns. Geheber notes that the Irish butter industry “began using centrifugal separators
91 Joyce, “Two Kinds of Monism.”
92 Joyce, “Two Kinds of Monism.”
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124 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake from Silkebjorg, Denmark, in the early 1880s.”93 As one would expect from the tale of Burrus and Caseous, beside a reference to butter, one finds a reference to cheese. The word “tyrondynamon” points to the word “tyros,” which, as McHugh points out, is Greek for “cheese” (AFW 163). Jones explains that the “Silkebjorg tyrondynamon machine” can be used for the “helixtrolysis of these amboadipates” (FW 163.30–1). As McHugh also observes, the word “amboadipates” plays on the Latin word “ambo,” meaning “both,” and the Latin word “adipes,” which translates as “fats” (AFW 163). Given the earlier references to butter and cheese within the sentence, it seems likely that the two fats in question are the fats to be found in those dairy products, even though the fat in butter and that in cheese both derive from the same source, milk. The idea that the two fats should be connected to butter and cheese, and thereby Burrus and Caseous, also makes sense within the larger context of the sentence because the tale of Burrus and Caseous continually returns to the question of whether the two are united or divided, and, when Jones speaks of the “helixtrolysis of these amboadipates,” he points to the division of those fats (FW 163.31). This is because “helixtrolysis” alludes to “electrolysis,” a process frequently used for the purpose of separation. As the Encyclopedia Britannica notes, “Electrolysis is used extensively in metallurgical processes, such as in extraction (electrowinning) or purification (electrorefining) of metals from ores or compounds.”94 The image of separation offered by “helixtrolysis” relates back to the passage’s earlier reference to the butter churn, a device that separates butter from buttermilk (FW 163.31). Consequently, when Professor Jones says that he should not be “taken up as unintentionally recommending the Silkebjorg tyrondynamon machine for the more economical helixtrolysis of these amboadipates,” he is asking his listener not to assume that he believes that Burrus and Caseous should be divided (FW 163.29–31). Given the professor’s continual, Lewisian emphasis on division over unity and his refusal to accept the principle of the coincidence of contraries, whether it be the version of Cusanus or that of Bruno, the reader could hardly be blamed for making such an assumption. Jones claims that he needs to consider the matter more fully, but then, within the very same sentence, he goes on to exclaim that he will show “how both products of our social stomach” are “mutuearly polarised” (FW 163.34, 164.02). Burrus and Caseous are here depicted as being antithetical to one another. The “early” in “mutuearly” suggests that it has been this way from the start. The reason for this polarization appears in the last part of the sentence when Jones speaks of “the incompatabilily of any delusional acting as ambivalent to the fixation of his pivotism” (FW 164.02.03). This is another spinning top image that connects to that from earlier. Cusanus’ spinning top represents the union of opposites within the absolute unity of God. Jones responds to Cusanus’ image by suggesting that human beings cannot even fully unite with one another. The primary concern of 93 Geheber, “A Long the Krommerun,” 133. 94 The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Electrolysis | Definition, Britannica.”
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 125 each individual is, and must be, to look after themselves. For Jones, no one can pretend that they are “ambivalent” to their own stability. The attempts of human beings to unite with one another must always founder on the boundaries of the self. Given that this perspective is being put forward by Professor Jones, a representation of the confrontational, misanthropic Wyndham Lewis, one might well think that this is the view that Joyce is aligning himself against. But what is striking about Jones’ view is how redolent it is of that of Stephen Dedalus in the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode of Ulysses. In that episode, Stephen speaks of a God who is “doubtless all in all in all of us” (U 9.1049–50). By this Stephen means that God is completely present in every part of every person and, indeed, every other object of the universe. But, after having outlined this vision of absolute divine unity, Stephen says that he does not believe his own theory. The main reason for this is shown at the end of the episode as Stephen banters with Mulligan: My will: his will that fronts me. Seas between. (U 9.1202)
For all Stephen’s talk of unity, he knows that he is both distant from and opposed to his supposed friend. The phrase “seas between” plays on the title of the episode and suggests that Stephen and Mulligan are as contrary as Scylla and Charybdis. As in the Wake, larger notions of unity are challenged by the inescapability of selfhood.
Margareen To return to the tale of Burrus and Caseous, after arguing for the polarization of the title characters, Professor Jones proceeds to introduce a new character: Positing, as above, too males pooles, the one the pictor of the other and the omber the Skotia of the one, and looking wantingly around our undistributed middle between males we feel we must waistfully woent a female to focus and on this stage there pleasantly appears the cowrymaid M. (FW 164.04–08)
The “too males pooles” are Burrus and Caseous. In presenting them here, Jones again points to how they are both similar and different. The one is the “pictor” or picture of the other and “the omber the Skotia of the one.” As McHugh points out, “omber” is a play on “ombre,” the French for “shadow,” and “skotia” is the Greek for “darkness” (AFW 164). Given Jones’ preference for the Shaunish Burrus, one assumes that Burrus is the picture of Caseous and that Caseous is the dark shadow of Burrus. The professor looks “wantingly” between the two of them as though something is missing and, when he does so, Jones sees an “undistributed middle between males” (FW 164.05–06). The term “undistributed middle” derives from the name of a logical fallacy. Here is a relevant example of such a fallacy:
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126 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake All butter is dairy. All cheese is dairy. Therefore, all butter is cheese.
The term “undistributed middle” derives from the idea that every syllogism has a major term, a minor term, and a middle term. As Patrick Hurley explains, the major term is “the predicate of the conclusion,” which, in the above example, is “cheese.” The minor term is “the subject of the conclusion” and so, on this occasion, it is “butter.” The middle term, “which provides the middle ground between the two premises, is the one that occurs once in each premise and does not occur in the conclusion.”95 Therefore, the middle term in the given example is “dairy.” As Hurley goes on to say, one of the rules to which a syllogism must adhere if it is to be considered valid is that “the middle term must be distributed at least once.” When this does not happen, the major term and the minor term can be related to different parts of the middle term without there being any common ground between the two.96 In the example above, the minor term, “butter,” is distributed in the first line of the syllogism and the major term, “cheese,” is distributed in the second, but the middle term, “dairy,” is not d istributed. The syllogism does not say what proportion of dairy products are butters or what share of such products are cheeses, and this is what enables the false conclusion that all butter is cheese. When the middle term of a syllogism is not distributed, then that syllogism commits the fallacy of the undistributed middle and so is invalid. All of which is to say that, when Jones speaks of the “undistributed middle between males,” he is saying that there is no common ground between Burrus and Caseous (FW 164.06). As ever, Jones emphasizes the division between the two. Into the space between Burrus and Caseous comes “cowrymaid M.,” whose full name is revealed in the following sentence as “Margareen” (FW 164.08, 14). Since Burrus is a version of Shaun and Caseous of Shem, it is appropriate for them to be joined by a rendering of their sister Issy. Margareen’s foody name connects her to Burrus and Caseous, but she is also separated from them in that she is not named after a dairy product. The appearance of Margareen is important to the scene because it represents a female intervention into a philosophical discussion that, up to this point, had featured only male characters. Margareen’s entry into the tale of Burrus and Caseous is also significant because the Wake consistently defines philosophy as a male realm. The novel’s philosophical allusions are almost entirely references to male philosophers.97 Consequently, the characters within the Wake that represent philosophers, like Balkelly or Dr Gedankje of Stoutgirth, are versions of male characters, usually Shem or Shaun. Furthermore, when philosophical 95 Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic, 260. 96 Hurley, A Concise Introduction to Logic, 282. 97 Verene’s James Joyce and the Philosophers at Finnegans Wake contains an appendix that offers a “Register of Philosophers at the Wake.” Of the sixty-five listed thinkers, the only woman is Saint Teresa of Ávila. See Verene, James Joyce and the Philosophers at Finnegans Wake, 105–7.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 127 allusions are made by characters, they are usually made by male characters, such as Professor Jones. This is all in keeping with Portrait and Ulysses. In both of those novels, discussions of philosophy are principally discussions between men about the ideas of men. In considering why Joyce’s works represent philosophy in this manner, one cannot overlook this remark from Joyce to Budgen: You have never heard of a woman who was the author of a complete philosophic system. No, and I don’t think you ever will.98
This is clearly a horribly misogynistic remark, and a number of similar remarks by Joyce have been recorded.99 As Ellmann notes, one of the reasons such remarks are hard to comprehend is that, throughout his career, Joyce relied heavily upon the support of such brilliant women as Sylvia Beach and Harriet Shaw Weaver.100 This reliance explains why Mary Colum responded to Joyce’s declaration, “I hate intellectual women,” by saying, “No, Joyce, you don’t.”101 Happily, Joyce’s works engage with the subject of gender in a more complex and thoughtful manner than the remarks that were just quoted. In considering the above comment to Budgen in light of those works, one might focus on the word “system.”102 The “Penelope” episode of Ulysses and the “ALP” chapter of the Wake both present the female mind as being fluid, creative, and excessive, rather than static, mechanical, and rigidly structured. One could therefore argue that one need not infer from Joyce’s assertion that a woman could not be “the author of a complete philosophic system” that Joyce believed that women could not be philosophers.103 However, this argument runs into the problem that the women in Joyce’s fiction are given little opportunity to show their capacity for philosophy. When philosophy is discussed, they are rarely part of the conversation. What might be said in response to this, however, is that the separation of women from philosophy in Joyce’s works does not exclude his women characters from profound thought. Molly Bloom and ALP are both good examples of this, and one finds the same approach in the tale of Burrus and Caseous. As that tale goes on to show, it is because Margareen has a more complex understanding of the nature of identity than Burrus and Caseous that she is able to transcend the oppositional structure of their relationship. One can therefore regard Joyce’s works as suggesting that the profound thoughts of women are different to the profound thoughts of men and that philosophy reflects only the latter of those two. Such an interpretation may seem generous in light of the above comment to Budgen, but, in comparing Joyce’s spoken utterances on gender with his treatment of that subject in his fiction, one can see that his views on gender were manifold and heterogeneous. 98 Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses and Other Writings, 354. 99 See Ellmann, “Two Perspectives on Joyce,” 7. 100 Ellmann, “Two Perspectives on Joyce,” 7. 101 Ellmann, “Two Perspectives on Joyce,” 7. 102 Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses and Other Writings, 354. 103 Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses and Other Writings, 354.
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128 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Some of his ideas on that subject were strikingly progressive. Others were bafflingly regressive. This paradox is certainly reflected in his approach to the relationship between women and philosophy. In the case of Margareen, it is the progressive side of Joyce’s understanding of gender that comes to the fore. One can see this in Jones’ description of Margareen’s relationship to a baby named “Master Pules”: I am closely watching Master Pules, as I have regions to suspect from my post that her "little man" is a secondary school teacher under the boards of education, a voted disciple of Infantulus who is being utilised thus publicly by the seducente infanta to conceal her own more mascular personality by flaunting frivolish finery over men’s inside clothes, for the femininny of that totamulier will always lack the musculink of a verumvirum. (FW 166.20–6)
Jones is suspicious of “Master Pules.” When he says that he has “regions to suspect” that Margareen’s “ ‘little man’ is a secondary school teacher,” he seems to be suggesting that the supposed baby is a little man in a literal rather than a figurative sense. This subterfuge is thought to be “utilised thus publicly” by Margareen in order to “conceal her own more mascular personality by flaunting frivolish finery over men’s inside clothes.” The phrase “more mascular personality” suggests that Jones considers Margareen to possess masculine as well as feminine qualities, and he reinforces this idea through his reference to her supposed hiding of male clothing beneath her external female clothing. Given the professor’s preference for division over unity, it is unsurprising that he is troubled by the manner in which Margareen combines categories. To try to restore order, Jones asserts that “the femininny of that totamulier will always lack the musculink of a verumvirum.” As McHugh notes, the words “totamulier” and “verumvirum” play on Latin phrases. In that language, “tota mulier” means “complete woman” and “verus vir” means “real man” (AFW 166). Jones’ argument is that the femininity of Margareen will always lack the masculinity of a real man. He is entirely unwilling to accept that she can truly be both feminine and masculine.
Antonius The idea of Margareen’s duality is important to the tale of Burrus and Caseous because, as the following paragraph explains, it is the reason why she ultimately chooses neither Burrus nor Caseous: Margareena she’s very fond of Burrus but, alick and alack! she velly fond of chee. . . . A cleopatrician in her own right she at once complicates the position while Burrus and Caseous are contending for her misstery by implicating herself
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 129 with an elusive Antonius, a wop who would appear to hug a personal interest in refined chees of all chades at the same time as he wags an antomine art of being rude like the boor. (FW 166.30–167.03)
While Margareen is fond of both Burrus and Caseous, her heart belongs to another. Joyce here shifts from one Roman Shakespeare tragedy to another as Julius Caesar gives way to Antony and Cleopatra. Margareen, a “cleopatrician in her own right,” is said to implicate herself with “an elusive Antonius.” Just as this new figure is connected to Margareen, so he is also related to Burrus and Caseous. Indeed, Antonius seems to bear qualities possessed by each of that pair. His “personal interest in refined chees of all chades” shows his Caseous side, but, at the same time, he also “wags an antomine art of being rude like the boor.” Just as the last word of this phrase connects Antonius to Burrus, so the play on The Art of Being Ruled in “art of being rude” relates Burrus, and thereby Antonius, to Lewis. The connection between Burrus and Lewis makes sense because Burrus is a version of Shaun and many of Shaun’s characteristics derive from Lewis. The idea that Antonius unites the Shaunish Burrus and the Shemish Caseous is reinforced by McHugh’s observation that characters like Antonius, who are defined by being the “most successful” members of their respective triumvirates, are usually denoted by the siglum that combines those of Shem and Shaun, .104 The appearance of the “elusive Antonius” is a significant moment in Jones’ broader discourse on the nature of opposition (FW 167.01). This is because of how it relates to his prior points. After engaging with the ideas of Cusanus and Bruno, the professor explains that he does not support their monistic philosophies because he does not believe that a person can ever transcend their individuality. As noted earlier, the idea that larger notions of unity are challenged by the inescapability of selfhood connects Jones’ lecture to the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode of Ulysses. In that episode, Stephen cannot believe in his argument for the all-in-all-in-all inclusivity of the author-god because he feels so distanced from his supposed friend Mulligan. Yet, just after Stephen has expressed his belief that there are “seas between” them, a man does cross the divide between the two (U 9.1202). The moment in which Leopold Bloom, the Dublin Ulysses, passes between the Scylla and Charybdis of Stephen and Mulligan is indicative of his ability to overcome oppositions. He can do this because he bears attributes that are opposite to those of his ostensible identity. For instance, in “Penelope,” Molly observes that one of the reasons she originally liked him is that she “saw he understood or felt what a woman is” (U 18.1578–9). Bloom’s apprehension of the feminine is here defined as being as much experiential as intellectual. He can engage with the superficially antithetical quality of femininity because,
104 McHugh, The Sigla of Finnegans Wake, 92.
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130 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake rather than defining himself against it, he recognizes his own femininity. This idea comes across strongly during Bloom’s hallucinations in “Circe.” Within those hallucinations, Bloom is described as a “finished example of the new womanly man” and, at one point during his interaction with Bella Cohen, he even becomes a woman (U 15.1798–9). Just as Bloom is the character in Ulysses who can combine contraries, so Antonius and all the other s fulfill that role in the Wake. As mentioned, in the tale of Burrus and Caseous, Antonius unites the antithetical title characters. On the Roman level of the tale, this seems somewhat odd as Mark Antony opposed Brutus and Cassius. To understand why Joyce chose to portray Antony as embodying the coincidence of contraries, it is helpful to look at how Shakespeare presents him in Antony and Cleopatra. In act one, Octavius Caesar says of Antony that he “is not more man-like / Than Cleopatra; nor the queen of Ptolemy / More womanly than he.”105 This remark is typical of how the Roman characters within the play attack Antony for having deviated from their norms of masculinity. Like Bloom, Antony is presented as a character who has both masculine and feminine qualities. This duality is one of the manifestations of the central tension within Antony’s character. In attempting to transcend the divide between Rome and Egypt, Antony must continually embody both sides of oppositions. This is why it is appropriate for the Wake’s representation of Antony to represent the union of the antithetical Burrus and Caseous. Furthermore, the idea that Antony has both masculine and feminine qualities also makes Antonius the counterpart to the feminine and masculine Margareen. Joyce’s support for Antonius’ unified duality is shown by the fact that, like Bloom, he represents a heroic figure. Antony won the heart of Cleopatra, and he defeated Brutus and Cassius at the Battle of Philippi. At the same time, both Ulysses and Finnegans Wake show the challenges of combining contraries. Antonius is “elusive” because he is also like Bloom in that he is a rare individual (FW 167.01). Both characters demonstrate that to be exceptional is often to be isolated, misunderstood, or attacked. By contrast, Burrus and Caseous are akin to the bulk of the young men in the Wake in that they are versions of Shem and Shaun, and this causes them to be trapped in limited and limiting identities. As evidenced by Margareen, the same does not hold of the young women who represent Issy. After introducing Antonius, the Professor goes on to explain the consequences of Antonius’ dual nature: And this is why any simple philadolphus of a fool you like to dress, an athemisthued lowtownian, exlegged phatrisight, may be awfully green to one side of him and fruitfully blue on the other which will not screen him however from appealing to my gropesarching eyes, through the strongholes of my acropoll, as a 105 Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra,” 1664.
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The Unity and Duality of Burrus and Caseous 131 boosted blasted bleating blatant bloaten blasphorus blesphorous idiot who kennot tail a bomb from a painapple when he steals one and wannot psing his psalmen with the cong in our gregational pompoms with the canting crew. (FW 167.08–17)
Jones here points to the duality of Antonius by speaking of a man who “may be awfully green to one side of him and fruitfully blue on the other.” According to McHugh, the color references in this section point to the “contending green and blue factions” in sixth-century Constantinople and so reinforce the notion of Antonius as one who unites opposites (AFW 167). Jones is so enraged by the idea of such individuals that his invective becomes comical. The professor begins his tirade by arguing that “any simple philadolphus of a fool you like to dress” can have a double nature (FW 167.09). As McHugh notes, the word “philadolphus” is a play on the Greek “philadelphos,” which means “brother-loving (man),” and so Jones’ derogatory use of that word is another indicator of his lack of compassion (AFW 167). The object of the professor’s scorn is also described as “an athemisthued lowtownian, exlegged phatrisight” (FW 167.09–10). These words contain a wealth of insults. To quote McHugh, “athemisthued” points to the Greek word “athemistos,” which means “illegitimate” (AFW 167). It also suggests “atheist,” which, coming from Professor Jones, is certainly a slur. A “lowtownian” might be a person who adopts a low, undignified tone, or it may be understood to relate to someone who comes from the wrong part of town (FW 167.10). “Exlegged” can be taken as a reference to drunkenness in that it suggests “legless” (FW 167.10). Also, McHugh observes that “exlegged” is a reference to the Latin phrase “ex lege,” which means “according to law,” and so to speak of an “exlegged phatrisight” may be to speak of someone who has been found guilty of patricide or fratricide (FW 167.10. AFW 167). Jones’ disparaging description of Antonius echoes a number of Shaun’s standard critiques of Shem. In doing so, it cannot help but reiterate the invective Joyce received from detractors such as Lewis, and it is conspicuous that, as the sentence proceeds, so it becomes increasingly Lewisian. Jones says that a man’s duality cannot save him from appearing to the professor as a “boosted blasted bleating blatant bloaten blasphorus blesphorous idiot” (FW 167.13–14). This magnificent barrage of derogatory epithets is in itself redolent of Lewis, but, just in case the reader should miss the reference, Joyce also puts in some more direct allusions. The words “blasted,” “blasphorus,” and “blesphorous” point to the first issue of Lewis’ magazine Blast. That issue began with a manifesto in which all manner of different entities were either blessed or blasted, depending on whether or not Lewis liked them.106 It is fair to say that Antonius and his ilk are well and truly blasted by Professor Jones. Of course, given the Wake’s stance toward that
106 See Lewis, “Manifesto 1.”
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132 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake professor, this attack serves to reinforce the idea that Joyce has a positive view of Antonius. To conclude, the tale of Burrus and Caseous begins its exploration of the relationship between unity and duality by focusing on the notion of the unity of being. As Jones expresses his opposition to this notion, he aligns himself with Aristotle and against Cusanus and Bruno. Despite Joyce’s abiding respect for Aristotle, his position is largely opposite to that of Jones. In characterizing that position, one must, however, be cautious. The primary means by which the Wake argues for the unity of being is its references to the principle of the coincidence of contraries. Those references usually point to Bruno rather than Cusanus, and so they seem to reference his version of that principle. However, when Joyce presents his conception of the Brunoian coincidence of contraries within the Wake, what he offers is rather Coleridge’s law of polarity. Joyce reinterpreted Bruno’s principle as Coleridge’s law because this allowed him to bring together the two sides of his conception of Bruno. The Wake endorses Coleridge’s law of polarity through the cyclical relationship between the Earwicker twins and their father, but it also continually affirms the Brunoian coincidence of contraries by showing how portmanteau words and phrases can unite opposite meanings. Indeed, for all that the mature Joyce ascribed to a Coleridgean understanding of Bruno’s philosophy, when his last novel points to the notion of the unity of opposties, it more often asserts Bruno’s static monism than it does Coleridge’s dynamic dualism. The relationship between these two positions is not a problem to be resolved, but rather a tension within Joyce’s thought. As Jones’ lecture shifts its focus from ontology to human relationships, the connection between unity and duality remains to the fore. The professor cannot believe in the unity of being because he does not believe that people can transcend their limits and truly unite with others. Joyce’s partial agreement with this idea can be seen from the fact that Shem and Shaun are to a great extent locked in their oppositional relationship. At the same time, Joyce also challenges Jones’ view through the characters of Margareen and Antonius. Those characters can unite with others because they already unite opposites within themselves. Jones’ fierce condemnations of Margareen and Antonius only underscore the Wake’s endorsement of the manner in which that pair combine unity and duality. When one compares how the tale of Burrus and Caseous treats the notion of the unity of being to how it portrays human relationships, one can see that it validates multiple forms of the principle of the coincidence of contraries.
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4 A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man (FW 414.16–419.10)
Chapters 2 and 3 explored sections of Professor Jones’ lecture and considered how those sections are informed by Joyce’s complex relationship with Wyndham Lewis. This chapter will take a similar approach in that it will consider the influence of that relationship upon a section of III.1: the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper. As with Jones’ lecture, that tale uses philosophical references to both mimic and respond to Lewis’ critiques of Joyce. What makes the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper central to any consideration of the Wake’s philosophical allusions is that it contains more such allusions than any other section of that novel.
Joyce and Lewis: Back and Forth By the time Joyce began working on this tale, he had already published a version of Jones’ lecture. It made its debut in transition 6 in late August 1927. The first text within the writing of the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, a brief sketch in notebook VI.B.21, dates from between December 1927 and February 1928.1 While the space of time between the first publication of Jones’ lecture and the start of Joyce’s work on the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper was only a few months, Lewis published two works during that time that influenced his relationship with Joyce. The second issue of Lewis’ magazine The Enemy appeared in September 1927. While the first issue contained “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce,” the second was far less critical of Joyce. Indeed, Edwards argues that, in the second issue, Lewis seeks to “win” Joyce “back” and there is certainly evidence to support this idea.2 When Lewis speaks of Joyce in that issue, he does so primarily in the context of Joyce’s relationships to Stein and transition. As discussed in Chapter 2, in both The Art of Being Ruled and “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” Lewis describes 1 The James Joyce Archive dates notebook VI.B.21 as “between December 1927 and April-May 1928,” and the first draft of the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper as “probably February 1928” (JJA 34:xii. JJA 57:291). 2 Edwards, “Wyndham Lewis versus James Joyce: Shaun versus Shem?,” 13.
Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Robert Baines, Oxford University Press. © Robert Baines 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198894049.003.0005
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134 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Joyce as having copied the style of Stein.3 By contrast, in the second issue of The Enemy Lewis tries to separate Joyce from Stein by aligning her with transition while distancing him from it. One can see an example of this when Lewis describes Stein as being “more prominent in the nature of things, in Transition, and its policies, than is Mr. Joyce.” In the sentence that follows, Lewis goes on to say that Joyce is “hardly at home” within transition and that “he belongs elsewhere.”4 As Lewis’ discussion of Joyce progresses, he argues that Joyce’s works only appear in transition due to “a mistake on the part of the public,” and that “the all-important rhythm or colour of ” Joyce’s “genius is of a character very different from, and even . . . the opposite of the character and beliefs of the people with whom he is associated.”5 In detaching Joyce from transition, Lewis is here, by his own standards and on his own terms, attempting to be kind to Joyce. These remarks appear within a broader critique of transition in which the editors and artists of that journal are depicted as parasites who are destroying French culture from within. Given that Joyce’s association with transition was far from accidental, it seems unlikely that he would have been overly grateful to Lewis for excluding him from The Enemy’s attack on that journal. At the same time as Lewis was trying to undo some of the damage caused by “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce,” that piece reappeared in a new work. Time and Western Man was published on September 29, 1927. This book grew out of Lewis’ earlier essay “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” and the process by which one became the other was complex.6 Some of the chapters in Time and Western Man are largely or entirely the same as their originals in “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” some are revised versions of chapters from that essay, and others are completely original to Time and Western Man. What is confusing about the relationship between that work and “The Revolutionary Simpleton” is that, while the first of the two books that comprise Time and Western Man is titled “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” that book does not reproduce the essay published in the first edition of The Enemy. Rather, the first book of Time and Western Man consists of versions of the first sixteen chapters of “The Revolutionary Simpleton” that are mostly faithful to their originals. The conclusion that ends that book is a reworking of chapter twenty-two of the earlier essay and the appendices that follow that conclusion also derive from the essay that appeared in The Enemy. The remaining chapters of the original “Revolutionary Simpleton” appear in revised form in the second book, alongside the new chapters that were written specifically for Time and Western Man. Lewis divided Time and Western Man into two books because those books focus on different subjects. As Edwards has observed, the first book considers 3
See Lewis, The Art of Being Ruled, 346, and Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 73. Lewis, “Editorial Notes,” xiii. 5 Lewis, “Editorial Notes,” xxiii, xxv–xxvi. For a discussion of how Lewis developed “The Revolutionary Simpleton” into Time and Western Man, see Edwards, “Afterword,” 493–8. 4
6
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 135 “the concrete manifestations in high and popular culture of thinking typical of the ‘Time-school,’ ” whereas the second examines “the Time-philosophy itself.”7 Since the second book, “An Analysis of the Philosophy of Time,” is more than twice as large as the first, Time and Western Man is much more focused on philosophy than on cultural matters. By contrast, in “The Revolutionary Simpleton” the analysis of Bergson’s influence on modern culture is considerably longer than the discussion of the philosophy of Bergson and his followers. Consequently, while Time and Western Man developed out of “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” the two works are in many respects quite different. Joyce was certainly aware of Time and Western Man. In notebook VI.B.21, one finds a pun on the title of that book, “Spice & Westend Women.”8 This pun would end up in the second chapter of book two of the Wake.9 However, while it is easy to show that Joyce knew of Lewis’ book, it is much more difficult to prove that he read it. When a scholar makes a claim that Joyce read a particular book during the writing of the Wake, he/she/they usually supports that claim either by showing that Joyce took notes from that book or by locating references to that book within the drafts of the Wake. The difficulty of using either of these approaches to support a claim that Joyce read Time and Western Man is that much of that work derives from “The Revolutionary Simpleton” and, as was discussed in Chapter 2, there is ample evidence to show that Joyce read that essay. Consequently, to demonstrate that Joyce read Time and Western Man, one would need to show his knowledge of the sections of that work that were original to it. This is not an easy thing to do. Within my research, I have found no evidence that there are notes in the Wake notebooks that derive from the new material within Time and Western Man. Furthermore, I have not seen any references to that material within drafts of the Wake. Given the nature of the sections of Time and Western Man that are original to it, this is perhaps unsurprising. When Joyce engages with Lewis’ writings in the Wake, he usually focuses on discussions of himself. Such discussions are absent from the material that Lewis wrote specially for Time and Western Man. Joyce’s only appearance within the whole of the second book is in a chapter that is a reworking of a chapter from “The Revolutionary Simpleton.”10 Having said all this, while it cannot be proven that Joyce knew anything of Time and Western Man beyond its title, it is nonetheless likely that he read it. Time and Western Man was published during a period in which Joyce was very much invested in his difficult relationship with Lewis. At that time, Joyce produced several texts about Lewis and also read a number of works by him. As was shown in Chapter 2’s discussion of the start of Professor Jones’ lecture, there is evidence that Joyce read The Art of Being Ruled and “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” What’s more, Jones’ lecture also references another work by Lewis, his 7 9
Edwards, “Afterword,” 496. 8 VI.B.21: 101; JJA 34:52. See FW 292.06. 10 See Lewis, Time and Western Man, 252–4.
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136 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake 1928 novel The Childermass.11 Given Joyce’s interest in Lewis’ work, not to mention the impossibility of Joyce’s knowing whether or not Time and Western Man would contain a fresh assault upon him, it seems highly unlikely that he would have ignored it. It was only a few months after the publication of Time and Western Man that Joyce began to work on the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper. The sketch in which those characters appear for the first time can be found in notebook VI.B.21.12 As noted earlier, that sketch was written between December 1927 and February 1928. This dating derives from the fact that the James Joyce Archive dates notebook VI.B.21 as “between December 1927 and April-May 1928” and the first draft of the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper as “probably February 1928.”13 That tale would be published for the first time at an early stage in its genesis. The section of Work in Progress that appeared in transition 12 in March 1928 contained a nascent version.14 It then went into print for a second time when it was included in Tales Told of Shem and Shaun. This collection was published in August 1929, and it united three Lewis-related sections of Work in Progress. The tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper appeared alongside that of the Mookse and the Gripes and also “The Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump.” In C. K. Ogden’s introduction to that collection, he mentions how Work in Progress has been influenced by the “reactions of the Enemy.” Ogden also observes that the “rattle of the Lewis-guns” can be heard to resound through the tale of the Mookse and the Gripes.15 Within Finnegans Wake, the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper would end up in III.1 and so needs to be read within the context of that chapter. The structure of III.1 is similar to that of I.6, the chapter that contains so much of the Lewisian material in the Wake. In both, Shaun is asked a series of questions and his answers form the content of the chapter. Right from the start of III.1, Shaun is connected to Lewis. In his opening speech, Shaun describes himself as an “everdevoting fiend” of his brother (FW 408.18). As noted in Chapter 2, Lewis signed his letters to Joyce “ever devoted friend.”16 Yet, while the text invites the identification of Shaun as Lewis, one must be careful about how one defines the relationship between the two. Within III.1, Shaun is associated with a number of individuals, both real and fictional, and he draws characteristics from many of them. For example, as McHugh observes, Shaun’s apparent ability to read Greek links him to another of Joyce’s antagonists, Oliver St. John Gogarty.17 Nonetheless, 11 Jones uses the phrase “watches cunldron” (FW 151.13). As McHugh observes, in Lewis’ The Childermass, a novel that contains extensive parodies of Joyce, one finds the phrase “your witch’s cauldron, Time” (AFW 151. Lewis, The Childermass, 153). The phrase “watches cunldron” appeared for the first time as an addition to a galley that was received by Weaver on May 16, 1938. For the galley, see BL 47476a f. 234; JJA 49:489. For the dating, see JJA 49:287. 12 See VI.B.21: 154–6; JJA 34: 79–80. 13 JJA 34: xii. JJA 57: 291. 14 See Joyce, “Continuation of a Work in Progress,” 16–19. 15 Ogden, “Preface,” v, xi. 16 See Letters I, 257–8. 17 See FW 419.20 and AFW 419.
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 137 it is certainly the case that Joyce saw a connection between Shaun and Lewis and this connection impacts the tale of Ondt and the Gracehoper because the Shaunish Ondt bears many Lewisian characteristics. In fact, Joyce told Padraic Colum that “He had wanted certain features for the ungracious and purposeful Ondt, and Lewis had provided them.”18
Philosophical Allusions in the Tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper The Lewisian tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper was connected to philosophy from the off. In notebook VI.B.21, immediately after the sketch in which the Ondt and the Gracehoper make their debuts, there is a note that reads “A Tinker’s Fillopsopy.”19 This note is not part of the sketch, but the word “Fillopsopy” would go on to be used in the tale, albeit in a different form. In the first draft, “Fillopsopy” becomes “fillupsupper,” and the word is used in a philosophical context. It appears within the phrase “his comfortumble fillupsupper of a plate o’monkynouss.”20 This phrase alludes to the philosophical concept of nous as well as Plato and, as will be shown, Aquinas. Joyce seems to have felt that, in the transition from “Fillopsopy” to “fillupsupper,” the intended reference to philosophy had been lost, and so, in the next draft, he wrote “filupsuppy.”21 However, Joyce then crossed that out and replaced it with the word that appears in the Wake, “phullupsuppy.”22 The reference to philosophy is here much clearer. As Joyce moved from the sketch of the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper in notebook VI.B.21 to the first draft, he continued to point to philosophy. That first draft contains numerous philosophical allusions, and Joyce added several more as he developed the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper. The references to philosophy that appear in the final version of the tale consist almost entirely of allusions to philosophical concepts and philosophers. The allusions to philosophical concepts within the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper operate in different ways and with varying degrees of directness. The clearest is the presence of the word “nous” within the word “o’monkynous” (FW 417.15). That the word “nous” should be understood in a specifically philosophical sense is apparent from the context. The word “o’monkynous” appears within the phrase “comfortumble phullupsuppy of a plate o’monkynous,” which, as mentioned, also points to Plato and Aquinas (FW 417.14–15). Another philosophical concept that is referenced within the tale is Bruno’s coincidence of contraries. Joyce neither names this concept nor puns on its name, but he does point to it by including one of the Wake’s many plays on the similarity between the names 18
Colum and Colum, Our Friend James Joyce, 145. 19 VI.B.21: 156; JJA 34:80. BL 47483 f. 85; JJA 57:299; FDV 223. 21 BL 47483 f. 96; JJA 57:322. 22 BL 47483 f. 96; JJA 57:322. FW 417.15. 20
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138 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake “Bruno of Nola” and “Browne and Nolan.” In the Gracehoper’s song at the end of the tale, one finds the line “Till Nolans go volants and Bruneyes come blue” (FW 418.31). Since, within the Wake, the name “Browne and Nolan” points to two people, the pair who gave their name to a Dublin book and stationery store, and to one person, Bruno of Nola, it is both a duality and a unity. The name thereby alludes to Bruno’s principle of the coincidence of contraries. In the two examples above, one can clearly discern references to philosophical concepts. There are other sections of the tale, however, in which it is more difficult to judge whether such references are present. For instance, when the Gracehoper leaps into the snow, he is said to have “promptly tossed himself in the vico, phthin and phthir, on top of his buzzer” (FW 417.05–06). Since the Gracehoper lands on the top of his head, the movement by which he tosses himself into the snow must be some sort of half-somersault. This semicircular motion is described in a section of text that contains the word “vico,” and so one could certainly read the Gracehoper’s leap as playfully alluding to Vico’s cycles. If this is the case, the reference is so oblique that one hesitates to fully affirm its presence. The bulk of the references to philosophy in the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper are not references to philosophical concepts, but rather to philosophers. While the names of some philosophers are simply included in the text, as in the example of Vico above, it is more often the case that the Wake transforms the names of philosophers into humorous portmanteau words. For example, Leibniz becomes “leivnits,” and Schopenhauer turns into “schoppinhour” (FW 416.29, 414.33). Joyce’s novel accords the great names of philosophy no special reverence. To make my discussion of the philosophical references in the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper as clear as possible, I here offer a list of those references: Reference FW 414.16: “spinooze” FW 414.22: “akkant” FW 414.31–2: “harry me, marry me, bury me, bind me” FW 414.33: “schoppinhour” FW 415.10: “beck” FW 416.04: “schelling” FW 416.19–20: “melanctholy” FW 416.29: “leivnits”
Referent(s) Spinoza Kant Vico’s Cycles Schopenhauer Beck23 Schelling Melancthon24 Leibniz
23 Jakob Sigismund Beck was a German philosopher who lived in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He was one of the most important early elucidators of Kant’s philosophy. That Beck should be referenced in the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper is entirely appropriate given that that tale also alludes to a number of his contemporaries: Hegel, Kant, Schelling, and Schopenhauer. 24 Philip Melancthon is best known as a theologian, but, as David J. Deane explains, he was also an influential philosopher:
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 139 FW 416.33: “hegelstomes” FW 416.33: “millipeeds” FW 417.06: “vico” FW 417.08: “aquinatance” FW 417.09: “umsummables” FW 417.15: “plate o’monkynous” FW 417.15: “confucion” FW 417.16: “aristotaller” FW 417.32: “veripatetic” FW 418.31: “Till Nolans go volants and Bruneyes come blue”
Hegel Mill Vico Aquinas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Summa Contra Gentiles25 Plato, Aquinas, Nous Confucius Aristotle Peripatetic26 Bruno, Coincidence of Contraries
One of the most useful resources for interpreting the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper is a letter that Joyce wrote to Weaver in March of 1928.27 In that letter, Joyce explains the meanings of a number of the words within the tale. The listed references to Leibniz, Kant, and Schopenhauer are all mentioned in that letter, and Joyce also makes it clear there that the word “nous” should be interpreted in the philosophical sense of the word. On compiling a list like the one above, one faces the fresh challenge of judging the significance of each of those references. Such judgments involve determining whether a reference is simply one part of the cluster of philosophical references In the German schools Melancthon was looked upon as a common or general preceptor. Uniting the study of the Aristotelian philosophy with ancient learning in general, he extracted from Aristotle all that was essentially good, and illustrated it by the aids of literature and general criticism, adapting all to the principles of true religion. At the same time whatever was valuable in the writings or doctrines of the Stoics and Platonists he adopted for his use, and whatever his genius suggested, he incorporated into his system. This system, which from its founder was called the Philippic method, was pursued in most of the German academies, under the sanction of both the civil and ecclesiastical authorities. In all the Lutheran schools abridgments of the various branches of philosophy by Melancthon, composed in a familiar style, were constantly and for a long period taught; of this nature were his Logic, Ethics, Physics, and his Treatise on the Soul. (Deane, Philip Melancthon: The Wittenberg Professor and Theologian of the Reformation, 31–2) 25 The main reason for relating “umsummables” to Aquinas is the proximity of “umsummables” to “aquinatance” (FW 417.08–09). As the Gracehoper lies in the snow, he thinks to himself that “the next time he makes the aquinatance of the Ondt after this they have met themselves, these mouschical umsummables, it shall be motylucky if he will beheld not a world of differents” (FW 417.07–10). It is hard to imagine that Joyce placed a word containing “summa” so close to a clear reference to Aquinas without intending for the reader to connect the two. The word “umsummables” suggests both the Summa Theologiae, which is often just known as the Summa, and also the Summa Contra Gentiles. Joyce’s Trieste Library contained a copy of the latter in its original Latin as well as an annotated English translation of it (Ellmann, The Consciousness of Joyce, 99, 125). Furthermore, as O’Rourke has shown, there is abundant evidence that Joyce was familiar with the Summa Contra Gentiles. (See O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 43–4.) 26 The OED defines “Peripatetic” as “A student or follower of Aristotle, an Aristotelian; the sect of such followers; (more generally) a scholastic philosopher” (“Peripatetic, n. and Adj.”). 27 See Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce, 329–32.
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140 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake within the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper or whether that reference has a referent that is in some sense relevant to the passage in which it appears. There are certainly references for which the former is the case. For example, the speech that begins the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper contains the word “spinooze,” which points to Spinoza (FW 414.16). It is hard to conceive of how the philosophy of Spinoza could be connected in any meaningful way to that word or to the sentence that contains it. What’s more, if one looks at the draft in which the word “spinooze” appears, one can see that Joyce originally wrote “spin” and then changed it to “spinooze.”28 This suggests that Joyce added a reference to Spinoza because the opportunity for a pun presented itself. Within the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, the philosophical allusions that bear a greater significance are those that tie their referent to one of the two main characters. Such allusions draw their importance from the fact that, on one level, the Ondt and the Gracehoper represent Lewis and Joyce. When a reference connects a philosopher or a philosophical concept to the Ondt, it also connects the philosopher or concept in question to Lewis, and this provides a context for that reference. Similarly, any philosopher or philosophical concept linked to the Gracehoper is also linked to Joyce. That being said, the Gracehoper and the Ondt are also versions of Shem and Shaun, and, on this level, both the thinkers and concepts associated with the Gracehoper and those related to the Ondt are tied to Joyce. Since the key philosophical references within the tale are those in which a character is connected to a philosopher or a philosophical concept, the reading of the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper in this chapter will focus on those references.
Aquinas The first passage within the tale that is dense with philosophical references occurs when the hungry, desperate Gracehoper decides to go for a walk in the winter snow. After walking round and round in circles, the Gracehoper gives up altogether and just throws himself into the snow: The Gracehoper who, though blind as batflea, yet knew, not a leetle beetle, his good smetterling of entymology asped nissunitimost lous nor liceens but promptly tossed himself in the vico, phthin and phthir, on top of his buzzer, tezzily wondering wheer would his aluck alight or boss of both appease and the next time he makes the aquinatance of the Ondt after this they have met themselves, these mouschical umsummables, it shall be motylucky if he will beheld not a world of differents. (FW 417.03–10) 28
BL 47483 f. 91; JJA 57:308.
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 141 The Gracehoper is here aligned with Joyce through his blindness. The reference to the Gracehoper’s “good smetterling of entymology” also connects the two since that phrase suggests “good smattering of etymology.” It is helpful that Joyce makes the link between the Gracehoper and himself clear at the start of the sentence because that allows the reader to understand that the Gracehoper’s previously discussed half-somersault into “the vico” is representative of Joyce’s dive into the ideas of Vico. Within the passage, the word “vico” functions as a form of the word “snow,” and, if one looks at the first draft of the tale, one can see that Joyce originally wrote “snow” and then changed it to “vico.”29 As the Gracehoper lies in the snow, he wonders when his ill luck will pass and considers how he might appease the maker of his misery. The Gracehoper then thinks to himself that “the next time he makes the aquinatance of the Ondt after this they have met themselves, these mouschical umsummables, it shall be motylucky if he will beheld not a world of differents” (FW 417.07–10). The larger purpose of this part of the sentence is to convey the idea that the Gracehoper thinks that the Ondt will notice a difference in his appearance when the two next meet. What makes the passage slightly confusing is the ambiguity of its pronouns. It makes most sense to take the first “he” to refer to the Gracehoper and the second to belong to the Ondt. Having said that, the ambiguity of the pronouns is purposeful in that it points to the complexity of the relationship between the Ondt and the Gracehoper. When the two will have met, they will, as the text puts it, have “met themselves” in that they are on one level opposite aspects of the same being. At the same time, the two are also “umsummables” because they cannot be summed. The tension within the relationship between the Ondt and the Gracehoper stems from the fact that they are both one and two and so they can be neither absolutely united nor divided. Given the extent to which the identities of the two are intertwined, it is quite appropriate for the last pronoun of the sentence to have the capacity to refer to either. Just as the sentence is grammatically loose, so its philosophical allusions lack fixity within the text. One example of this is the word “aquinatance,” which alludes to Aquinas. Joyce first spelled this word “aquinetance,” but then changed it, presumably to clarify the allusion.30 While the sentence’s earlier reference to Vico clearly aligns him with the Gracehoper, it is unclear as to whether the word “aquinatance” is intended to connect Aquinas to just the Ondt or to both the Ondt and the Gracehoper. That the word “aquinatance” appears in the phrase “the aquinatance of the Ondt” suggests the former, but the fact that it refers to a future meeting between the Ondt and the Gracehoper argues for the latter (FW 417.08). This argument is supported by the other reference to Aquinas within the passage, “umsummables,” because it also refers to both characters 29
BL 47483 f. 85; JJA 57:299; FDV 223. word “aquinetance” can be found in the first draft. (See BL 47483 f. 85; JJA 57:299; FDV 223.) Within the drafts of the JJA, the first appearance of “aquinatance” can be seen on the third proofs for transition 12. (See BL 47483 f. 96; JJA 57:322.) 30 The
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142 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake (FW 417.09). Happily, in the sentence that follows, there is another allusion to Aquinas that clarifies his role within the tale. In that sentence, the freezing, starving, possibly mad Gracehoper imagines how comfortable the Ondt must be in his home. This is the start of that sentence: His Gross the Ondt, prostrandvorous upon his dhrone, in his Papylonian babooshkees, smolking a spatial brunt of Hosana cigals, with unshrinkables farfalling from his unthinkables, swarming of himself in his sunnyroom, sated before his comfortumble phullupsuppy of a plate o’monkynous and a confucion of minthe (for he was a conformed aceticist and aristotaller) (FW 417.10–16)
In the Gracehoper’s vision, the Ondt is wearing slippers, smoking a cigar, and warming himself in his “sunnyroom.” As this imaginary Ondt relaxes, he is “sated before his comfortumble phullupsuppy of a plate o’monkynous and a confucion of minthe (for he was a conformed aceticist and aristotaller).” This is where the previously discussed word “phullupsuppy” appears in the tale. This word suggests “philosophy,” “full up,” and “supper,” and so it is appropriate that, in the words that follow, food and philosophy are repeatedly comically combined. The phrase “plate o’monkynous” evokes “plate of monkey nuts,” but it also alludes to the philosophical concept of nous, Plato, and, as will be shown, Aquinas. As McHugh observes, “Confucion of minthe” points to “infusion de menthe,” the French name for mint tea, as well as Confucius (AFW 417). Lastly, “aristotaller” references “teetotaler” while also serving as an unmissable reference to Aristotle (FW 417.16). Given that these four thinkers and the concept of nous are all connected to the Ondt, it is unsurprising that the source of these references can be found in “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” At the very end of “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce,” Lewis writes: I prefer the chaste wisdom of the Chinese or the Greek, to that hot, tawny brand of superlative fanaticism coming from the parched deserts of the Ancient East, with its ineradicable abstractness. I am for the physical world.31
The Chinese and Greek philosophical traditions are here contrasted with the Abrahamic religions. Lewis suggests that the former focus on the “physical world” whereas the latter are more concerned with abstract ideas. In doing so, he makes it abundantly clear that his preference is for the materialist approach that he identifies with the philosophers of China and Greece. Joyce represents this preference in the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, but the means by which he does so calls into question several aspects of the above quote from “The Revolutionary
31
Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 130.
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 143 Simpleton”: the distinction between philosophy and religion; the assertion of the materialism of Greek thought; and Lewis’ definition of himself as a follower of the Chinese and Greek philosophical traditions. To gain a clear sense of how the philosophical allusions within the Gracehoper’s vision operate, it is helpful to consider each individually. Let’s begin with the reference to nous within the word “monkynous” (FW 417.15). When Joyce created that word, he had already associated Lewis with the idea of nous. One can see this in a sentence in I.3: “There was not very much windy Nous blowing at the given moment through the hat of Mr Melancholy Slow!” (FW 56.28–30). That sentence is an adaptation of a remark in “The Revolutionary Simpleton”: “there is not very much reflection going on at any time inside the head of Mr. James Joyce.”32 Joyce clarifies the source of his sentence by transforming the word “reflection” into the phrase “windy Nous,” a play on Wyndham Lewis. In doing so, Joyce insults Lewis within Lewis’ own insult. The word “windy” can here be taken to mean long- winded, overblown, or simply empty. The sentence in question was added to I.3 in a draft that the James Joyce Archive dates as “probably March-April 1927.”33 It was therefore written before the word “monkynous” (FW 417.15). That word appears for the first time as “monkynouss” in the first draft of the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, which likely dates from February 1928.34 For an allusion to the concept of nous to sit alongside references to Aristotle and Plato is entirely appropriate as that concept is discussed by both. Indeed, nous is explored by several of the major ancient Greek philosophers. What makes it difficult to define that concept is that the word “nous” can be used in a number of different ways. Stephen Menn offers a helpful guide to this matter: We may render nous as “thought” or “intuition” when it denotes an action; but translation is more difficult in other cases…. When nous does not denote an action it has two other senses, each more common than the sense “rational soul.” Sometimes nous is the internal object which someone noei [thinks], his thought or intention or plan . . . . Most often, however, nous is what someone possesses when he acts or thinks rationally. . . . Nous in this sense should be translated as “reason” or “intelligence”; it is seriously misleading to translate it as “mind.”35
What makes the issue more complicated is that some philosophers shift between different senses of the term. For example, as W. K. C. Guthrie has observed, Aristotle is inconsistent in how he uses nous:
32
Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 109. JJA 45:221. For the draft in question, see BL 47472 f. 233; JJA 45:233. 34 BL 47483 f. 85; JJA 57:299; FDV 223. 35 Menn, “Aristotle and Plato on God as Nous and as the Good,” 554–5. 33
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144 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Aristotle uses nous without scruple to mean either the infallible intellectual intuition spoken of in An. Post. [Posterior Analytics] or in a wider sense to include all the operations of reason. In the Politics . . . the psyche is simply divided into two, irrational and rational, and nous is equated with the rational, and at line 24, with logismos [reasoning]. It can be practical as well as theoretical, aiming at successful action. . . . It cannot be infallible in all these capacities, yet in its narrower meaning, . . . it is always right. . . . One can only try to make clear in each case, where the distinction is important, which sense is intended.36
Happily, given the complexity of the term nous, Joyce offers a sense of how he uses the term in the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper in a March 1928 letter to Weaver in which he explains some of the words in that tale. Joyce there glosses “monkynous” as “monkeynuts also the ‘nous’ rational intelligence cf monasticism.”37 What makes this gloss funny is the fact that the first referent is so markedly different to the second. What makes it odd is that, in discussing nous, Joyce does not point to the understanding of that term held by any one philosopher or school of philosophy. Instead, he refers to “monasticism.” For the reader familiar with Joyce’s works, however, the allusion is quite clear. In Portrait, the narrator speaks of Stephen’s regret that his age does not value “the monkish learning in terms of which” he strives “to forge out an esthetic philosophy” (P 194). The nature of that “monkish learning” is explained later in the novel when Stephen observes that MacAlister would call Stephen’s “esthetic theory applied Aquinas” (P 227). As Stephen subsequently explains that theory, he proves MacAlister’s hypothetical characterization to be correct through his frequent references to Aquinas. It therefore seems highly probable that Joyce, in speaking of “monasticism” in his letter to Weaver, is pointing to Aquinas.38 This interpretation is further supported by the fact that, when Joyce references philosophy in his fiction, he often points to Aquinas. This is because Joyce had a great admiration for him. In Joyce’s 1907 essay “Ireland: Island of Saints and Sages,” he speaks of Aquinas as possessing “perhaps the keenest and clearest mind that human history has ever seen.”39 As with Aristotle, Joyce’s respect for Aquinas was a product of his education. O’Rourke observes that, “Based on a wide variety of testimonies, it is evident that the influence of Aquinas was all-pervasive at Joyce’s university, not only among the philosophers but also in classes on literature and economics.”40 That influence is captured in Portrait. As mentioned earlier, when Stephen speaks of his aesthetic theory in that novel, he frequently points to Aquinas. What is odd about this is that, as Thomas Noon points out,
36 Guthrie,
Aristotle, 6:308–9. 37 Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce, 331. Selected Letters of James Joyce, 331. 39 Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 114. 40 O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 37. 38 Joyce,
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 145 Aquinas “was far more interested in philosophical and theological science than in literature as an art.”41 Stephen does not bring Aquinas into his discussions of aesthetics because it is appropriate, but rather because he wants to show the breadth of Aquinas’ influence on his thought. The Stephen of Ulysses also frequently quotes and references Aquinas in his words and thoughts. To point to just one of many possible examples, at the start of one of his speeches in “Scylla and Charybdis,” Stephen says, “Saint Thomas . . . whose gorbellied works I enjoy reading in the original, writing of incest from a standpoint different from that of the new Viennese school Mr Magee spoke of, likens it in his wise and curious way to an avarice of emotions” (U 9.778–81). Stephen’s interest in Aquinas is such that, in “Telemachus,” Mulligan refers to him as “Thomas Aquinas” (U 1.15). The key artifact of Joyce’s early enthusiasm for Aquinas is a series of notes that Joyce took down in his Early Commonplace Notebook while in Pola in 1904.42 Those notes are divided into three sections. In each of the first two, Joyce offers a quote from Aquinas and then proceeds to discuss that quote. However, the readings do not engage with the subject of the quotes, which is the relationship between goodness and beauty. Instead, they focus on a different subject, a subject in which Joyce was evidently more interested, that of aesthetic apprehension. The third section lacks a quote, but it is similar to the first two in that Joyce there again draws on Aquinas in order to ponder the nature of aesthetic apprehension.43 The notes on Aquinas in the Early Commonplace Notebook therefore serve as a good example of Joyce developing his aesthetic theories by applying Aquinas. Those notes are the basis for the discussions of Thomist aesthetic theory in Stephen Hero and Portrait.44 In the same year as Joyce took down those notes, he also wrote the poem “The Holy Office.” Joyce there describes his soul as being “Steeled in the school of old Aquinas.”45 In the same poem, Joyce speaks of himself as “Bringing to tavern and to brothel/The mind of witty Aristotle.”46 The fact that these are the only philosophers to be mentioned in the self-portrait of “The Holy Office” underscores the idea that Aristotle and Aquinas were the two most important thinkers for Joyce in his youth. Having said that, for the young Joyce, Aristotle and Aquinas were so closely connected that it is not entirely accurate to speak of him as viewing them as separate thinkers. This is evidenced in Portrait by the continual linking of those philosophers. For instance, in chapter five Stephen is asked about the development of his aesthetic theory, and during the ensuing conversation he observes, “For my purpose I can work on at present by the light of one or two ideas of Aristotle and 41 Noon,
Joyce and Aquinas, 19–20. For the notes in question, see Joyce, The Critical Writings of James Joyce, 146–8. 43 For the sources of Joyce’s quotes from Aquinas, see Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 312–13. 44 See Joyce, Stephen Hero, 95–6, 212–13, and P 201, 229–31. 45 Joyce, Poems and Exiles, 105. 46 Joyce, Poems and Exiles, 103. 42
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146 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Aquinas” (P 202). O’Rourke explains that Joyce’s conception of the relationship between Aristotle and Aquinas was a product of the fact that, according to the “accepted opinion” of the age, “Aquinas had merely baptized the philosophical system of the Stagirite; Thomist philosophy completed Aristotelian thought.”47 In speaking of baptism, O’Rourke here points to the fact that Thomism unites Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology. By the time Joyce encountered Aquinas at University College Dublin, he had already broken from that theology and, so, to quote O’Rourke again, he “adhered to Aquinas the philosopher, which meant essentially Aquinas the Aristotelian.”48 Consequently, while Aristotle and Aquinas were both very important to Joyce in his youth, it was the Greek who exerted the greater overall influence. When Joyce references Aquinas’ understanding of nous in his letter to Weaver regarding the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, he points to an Aristotelian aspect of Thomist thought. Aquinas produced commentaries on several of the works in which Aristotle discusses nous, including Ethica Nicomachea (Nichomachean Ethics), On the Soul, and the Metaphysics. The influence of Aristotle on Aquinas’ understanding of nous is clear to see. To point to one notable example, in On the Soul Aristotle discusses the nature of thought: Since in every class of things, as in nature as a whole, we find two factors involved, a matter which is potentially all the particulars included in the class, a cause which is productive in the sense that it makes them all (the latter standing to the former, as e.g. an art to its material), these distinct elements must likewise be found in the soul. And in fact thought, as we have described it, is what it is by virtue of becoming all things, while there is another which is what it is by virtue of making all things. . . . Thought in this sense of it is separable, impassible, unmixed, since it is in its essential nature activity . . . .49
Within this passage, it is the word “thought” that is the translation of “nous.” Aristotle here argues for two different kinds of thought: one which is passive, which “is what it is by virtue of becoming all things,” and the other which is “in its essential nature activity.” Aquinas draws upon this distinction in his Treatise on Human Nature (Summa Theologiae I.76–86), although he speaks of the “intellect” rather than “thought.” Aquinas asserts that the “intellect’s operation consists in being acted on in a certain way” and so it is a “passive capacity.”50 He then goes on 47 O’Rourke,
Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 30. Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 29. 49 Aristotle, “On the Soul,” 684, DA. III.5, 430a10–5 . . . a18–19. 50 Aquinas, “The Treatise on Human Nature,” 225, Summa Theologiae, I, 79, 2. [Citations of Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae in this book take the form: Aquinas, Title of Work, Page Number, Summa Theologiae, Part Number, Question Number, Article Number.]. 48 O’Rourke,
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 147 to argue for the necessity of positing an “agent intellect” which is, to use Aristotle’s term, “productive” in that it can “actualize intelligible things by abstracting the species from material conditions.”51 Aquinas makes the source of his discussion of the two aspects of the intellect abundantly clear by quoting from On the Soul throughout. In a subsequent section of the Treatise on Human Nature, Aquinas argues that the intellect is rational. This occurs when he considers the question, “Is reason a different capacity from intellect?” In answering that question, Aquinas defines intellection as “the apprehending of intelligible truth directly” and reasoning as a process in which one advances “from one intellectual object to another so as to cognize the intelligible truth.” He then argues that, while angels can “directly and without interference apprehend the truth about things,” humans can only attain truth through the process of reason.52 He therefore holds that “in a human being reason and intellect are the same capacity.”53 In looking at these two passages from Aquinas’ Treatise on Human Nature, one can understand why Joyce, in explaining nous in his letter to Weaver, uses the term “rational intelligence cf monasticism.”54 What’s more, one can also see why it is difficult to maintain the distinction between Greek philosophy and Christian thought that Lewis posits in “The Revolutionary Simpleton” when he states his preference for the “chaste wisdom” of “the Greek” over the “superlative fanaticism coming from the parched deserts of the Ancient East.”55 Thomism consistently unites Christianity with the ideas of Aristotle. Once the reference to Aquinas in “monkynous” has been recognized, the next question to consider is why Joyce would connect that word, and so Aquinas, to the Ondt, and thereby Lewis (FW 417.15). One reason is Joyce’s sense of Lewis’ Catholicism. This can be seen in Padraic Colum’s account of a conversation he had with Joyce regarding Lewis: I remarked that Wyndham Lewis seemed to be approaching the position of the Catholic Church. “You have taken the words out of my mouth!” Joyce exclaimed. “He is preparing to make a clamorous conversion.”56
Colum goes on to add that “this turned out not to be the case.”57
51 Aquinas, “The Treatise on Human Nature,” 227, Summa Theologiae, I, 79, 3. Aristotle, “On the Soul,” 684, DA. III.5, 430a12. 52 Aquinas, “The Treatise on Human Nature,” 236, Summa Theologiae, I, 79, 8. 53 Aquinas, “The Treatise on Human Nature,” 237, Summa Theologiae, I, 79, 8. 54 Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce, 331. 55 Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 130. 56 Colum and Colum, Our Friend James Joyce, 145. 57 Colum and Colum, Our Friend James Joyce, 145.
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148 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Another reason why Joyce connects Lewis and Aquinas can be found in Time and Western Man. That book has a chapter called “God and Reality” in which Lewis engages with a book by Fulton Sheen titled God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy: A Critical Study in the Light of the Philosophy of Saint Thomas. In this book, Sheen asserts the dominance of anti-intellectualism within contemporary thought and argues against it from a Thomist position. He is quite clear on the source of the anti-intellectualism that he perceives: Whatever philosophical criticism is given today is in greater part a repetition of that made by the great French Academician Henri Bergson. It is under his leadership that the intellectualist position has met its severest attacks, and it is round his arguments that all modern anti-intellectualists rally.58
The arguments to which Sheen refers are those offered by Bergson in his discussion of the relationship between intellect, instinct, and intuition in chapter two of Creative Evolution.59 Since Sheen considers Bergson to be the father of the anti- intellectualism that, from Sheen’s perspective, plagues modern philosophy, he spends much of his book attacking Bergson. Naturally, this endeared Sheen to Lewis, and the discussion of Sheen’s book in Time and Western Man recognizes the extent to which Lewis’ view of Bergson is similar to Sheen’s Thomist perspective: The problems of “God” and of “Intelligence” are one, according to Dr. Sheen: As men lost faith in the intelligence, they acquired faith in the God of becoming. The modern God was born the day the “beast of intellectualism” was killed. The day the intelligence is reborn, the modern God will die. They cannot exist together: for one is the annihilation of the other. This last passage indicates the ground, the solid ground, upon which the Thomist doctrine and the one adumbrated here must necessarily meet….60
Sheen’s assertion that Bergson’s flux philosophy is so opposed to “the intelligence” that each must necessarily destroy the other echoes Lewis not only in its anti- Bergsonism but also in its antithetical structure and the violence of its language. Therefore, if one assumes that Joyce read Time and Western Man, one can in part trace the connection between Aquinas and Lewis in the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper back to Lewis’ discussion of Sheen. 58 Sheen, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy: A Critical Study in the Light of the Philosophy of Saint Thomas, 13. 59 See Bergson, Creative Evolution, 135–85. 60 Lewis, Time and Western Man, 363–4. Lewis quotes Sheen, God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy: A Critical Study in the Light of the Philosophy of Saint Thomas, 2.
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 149 Having said all this, it would be wrong to paint Lewis as being entirely in accord with Sheen. In the “God and Reality” chapter of Time and Western Man, the self-styled enemy also spends a great deal of time discussing the ways in which he disagrees with Sheen. For example, Lewis objects to the “incurably historical view of things” offered by the “neo-scholastic attitude” of Sheen’s book. He says of that “attitude”: It is incurably “conservative”: it is forever the “old” against the “new”; it is “anti- modern” in a, to me, stupid “historical” manner. It says many shrewd and damaging things about “modernism”: but because all that is contemporary (except Thomism) is vowed—such its unanimity and herd discipline—to silence about anything that is not very delightful or intelligent about “modernism,” that is no reason why the epoch and the ideas that produced Scholasticism, to which Catholicism points, should be wholly beautiful and true.61
Lewis’ dislike of the privileging of the old over the new within the “neo-scholastic attitude” stems less from the fact that such an approach leads to generalizations and more from the fact that it offers a positive view of the era of Scholasticism. As one might assume from reading the above quote, in the sentences that follow Lewis goes on to say “many shrewd and damaging things” about that era. Rather than privileging one time period over another, Lewis’ approach is to highlight the flaws in the thought of both the Middle Ages and the contemporary moment. One of the more curious aspects of the critique of Thomism that Lewis offers in “God and Reality” is that he suggests that one of Thomism’s main problems is Aquinas himself: But the Thomistic angel-world seems a tawdry and irrelevant interloper in the Greek physical world of Aristotle. . . . It is the classical background that gives Thomism its health. Aristotle is more important in it than St. Thomas.62
Lewis here attacks Thomism’s understandable emphasis on the spiritual. As a Catholic theologian, Aquinas was not “for the physical world” in the manner that Lewis was.63 While there are parallels between the philosophy of Time and Western Man and that of Thomism, Lewis makes it clear in the above quote that he sees his position as being closer to that of Aristotle than Aquinas. This is relevant to the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper because, within the Gracehoper’s vision of the Ondt’s comfort, the latter is described as an “aristotaller” (FW 417.16). As was discussed in Chapter 3, Lewis considered his classicism to be strongly
61 Lewis, 63
Time and Western Man, 362. 62 Lewis, Time and Western Man, 370. Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 130.
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150 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Aristotelian, even though the version of classicism he propounded was highly idiosyncratic and in many ways unrepresentative of Aristotle’s thought.
Plato The section of the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper that references Aquinas and Aristotle also points to Plato through the phrase “plate o’monkynous” (FW 417.15). Joyce did not view Plato in the same light as he did Aristotle and Aquinas. There are references to Plato in Portrait and Ulysses, but those references are significantly fewer in number than those to Aristotle and Aquinas. In the earlier novel, Stephen appears to quote Plato: “Plato, I believe, said that beauty is the splendour of truth” (P 225). Yet the passage to which Stephen points has not been fully identified. As Gifford notes, “remarks of this sort” can be found in Phaedrus and the Symposium, but neither offers an exact match.64 Indeed, the quote may not derive from Plato at all. Ellmann has suggested that the source of Stephen’s line is actually Gustave Flaubert.65 Stephen’s references to Plato in Ulysses are clearer. Most of those references can be found in “Scylla and Charybdis.” Stephen’s attitude toward Plato in that episode is best exemplified by his exchange with John Eglinton regarding the relationship of Aristotle to Plato. Stephen begins their interaction by speaking of the “model schoolboy” Aristotle: —That model schoolboy, Stephen said, would find Hamlet’s musings about the afterlife of his princely soul, the improbable, insignificant and undramatic monologue, as shallow as Plato’s. John Eglinton, frowning, said, waxing wroth: —Upon my word it makes my blood boil to hear anyone compare Aristotle with Plato. —Which of the two, Stephen asked, would have banished me from his commonwealth? (U 9.76–83)
Stephen’s last sentence points to the fact that, in Plato’s Republic, Socrates argues that the poet “who has the skill to transform himself into all sorts of characters and represent all sorts of things” should be exiled.66 From Socrates’ perspective, only the “story-tellers and poets who are severe rather than amusing, who portray the style of the good man,” and who follow the prescribed artistic conventions of 64 Gifford,
Joyce Annotated, 249. See Joyce, My Brother’s Keeper, 148 and Joyce, The Critical Writings of James Joyce, 141. 66 Plato, The Republic, 398a, 98. [Citations of Plato’s works in this book take the form: Plato, Title of Work, Stephanus Number, Page Number.] 65
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 151 the state should be allowed within it.67 One can understand why Joyce presents the character based on his younger self as being opposed to such a perspective. Stephen’s preference for Aristotle over Plato has often been taken to represent that of Joyce. In Gorman’s biography, he writes that, for the Joyce of 1903, Aristotle “still represented . . . Dogma, a Rock set against the turbid tides of inchoate metaphysics.” He was therefore “the reverse of Plato and Plato’s beautiful and ineffectual mysticism.”68 (Ellmann’s biography points back to this remark and uses it to support the idea that Joyce “distrusted Plato.”69) Gorman’s description of Joyce’s 1903 understanding of the relationship between Plato and Aristotle is anachronistic in that it draws upon the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode of Ulysses and, more specifically, the representation of that episode within the Gilbert Schema: The Rock—Aristotle, Dogma, Stratford: The Whirlpool—Plato, Mysticism, London: Ulysses—Socrates, Jesus, Shakespeare70
When one looks at these lines together, it seems odd that Gorman should use them as examples of Joyce’s preference for Aristotle over Plato. Just as Joyce was no proponent of mysticism, so he was also not a fan of dogma in any sense of the word. To gain a sense of why Joyce associates Aristotle with dogma, it is helpful to go back to the Linati Schema, which Joyce produced a year before the Gilbert Schema. There, amidst the correspondences for the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode, one finds the note “Scholasticism and Mysticism/ Plato and Aristotle.”71 Since the Gilbert Schema links Plato to mysticism, Aristotle is here associated with Scholasticism, and this explains the reasoning behind the connection of Aristotle to “Dogma” in the Gilbert Schema.72 Joyce’s association of Aristotle with Scholasticism is understandable. Above and beyond Aristotle’s influence on Scholasticism, Joyce’s sense of the connection between Aristotle and Aquinas was so strong that, when he thought of one, the other was often close at hand. The link between Aristotle and “Dogma” within the Gilbert Schema is not the only reason to think that that schema does not support the idea that Joyce preferred Aristotle over Plato.73 There is also the fact that the Gilbert Schema associates Aristotle with Scylla and Plato with Charybdis. This does not suggest the superiority of Aristotle over Plato, but rather defines the two as extremes between which one should navigate. Intriguingly, the thinker that Joyce defines as mediating the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato is Socrates. The reason for this can be found in “Scylla and Charybdis.” Eglinton there asks Stephen, “What useful discovery did Socrates learn from Xanthippe?” and Stephen responds, “Dialectic” (U 9.233–5). 67 Plato,
The Republic, 398b, 98. 68 Gorman, James Joyce, 95. James Joyce, 103. 70 Texas; JJA 12:174a. 71 Buffalo V.A.1.a–1; JJA 12:169. 72 Texas; JJA 12:174a. 73 Texas; JJA 12:174a. 69 Ellmann,
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152 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake In this context, the word “Dialectic” points to the discursive nature of Socrates’ philosophical method. Within that method, there is no one doctrine that offers the means to greater understanding. Rather, one learns through the exchange of reasoned arguments. Once the nature of Joyce’s reference to Socrates within the Gilbert Schema has been recognized, one can see that that schema does not suggest that one should avoid the philosophies of Aristotle and Plato as one should Scylla and Charybdis, but, rather, that one should locate a middle path between the two by engaging with both and debating their merits. In offering these remarks, my intention is not to dispute the idea that Joyce preferred Aristotle over Plato, but rather to suggest that one must be careful in how one uses Ulysses and its schemas to demonstrate this. Stephen’s views are more closely aligned with those of Aristotle than those of Plato, but he does not speak for the mature author of Ulysses. Joyce’s sense of the relationship between Aristotle and Plato during the years in which he wrote that novel can be seen more clearly in the Ulysses schemas and those schemas suggest that, at that time, he saw neither the philosophy of Aristotle nor that of Plato as providing the definitive path. That being said, no matter which period of Joyce’s life one considers, it is always the case that Aristotle plays a greater role in Joyce’s thought than Plato. Joyce was more interested in Aristotle, he considered Aristotle to be a more important thinker, he was more influenced by Aristotle, and therefore, understandably, he viewed his own ideas as being closer to those of Aristotle. In Joyce’s works, the references to Aristotle are more frequent and more significant than those to Plato. However, to say that Joyce was less interested in Plato than Aristotle is not to say that he was uninterested in Plato. For Joyce, no philosopher could compare with Aristotle, the man he dubbed “the greatest thinker of all times.”74 As evidenced, Plato is referenced in all three of Joyce’s novels, and Stephen Dedalus is presented as having a knowledge of Plato in both Portrait and Ulysses. While there is no artifact that demonstrates Joyce’s youthful reading of Plato in the manner of the notes on Aristotle and Aquinas in the Early Commonplace Notebook, there is evidence of the mature Joyce’s interest in Plato. As Ellmann has shown, the library that Joyce left in Trieste in 1920 contained two works by Plato. One was titled Five Dialogues bearing on Poetic Inspiration [Ion, Symposium, Meno, Phaedro, Pheadrus] and the other was the Socratic Discourses of Plato and Xenophon. Both books were published in 1913 and both are stamped “J. J.”75 For all that Joyce did not relate to Plato’s philosophy, he was certainly interested in it and aware of its significance. Stephen Dedalus regularly invokes Aristotle, Aquinas, and Plato because, to varying degrees, all three were important to Joyce as a young man. While those three philosophers are all referenced on multiple occasions in the Wake, they are 74
Borach, “Conversations with James Joyce,” 71. The Consciousness of Joyce, 123.
75 Ellmann,
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 153 not the dominant thinkers of that work. In Joyce’s final novel, it is Vico and Bruno who take center stage. This is more than just a shift of focus because, as was discussed in Chapter 3, the philosophy of Bruno directly opposes that of Aristotle. In challenging Aristotle, Bruno also in many ways defined himself against Aquinas because Thomism is deeply indebted to Aristotelian thought. The relationship between Bruno and Plato is more complicated. On the one hand, there are certainly important similarities between the ideas of the two. For instance, in the Timaeus Plato argues for the existence of a world soul that has parallels with that of Bruno: “Now when the creator had framed the soul according to his will, he formed within her the corporeal universe, and brought the two together and united them center to center.”76 At the same time, when Bruno posits an absolute universe that combines all forms and all matter, he sets himself in opposition to Plato because, as will be discussed, the distinction between form and matter is central to Plato’s thought. From Joyce’s perspective, Bruno’s opposition to Aristotle was more significant than his disagreements with the ideas of Aquinas and Plato because Aristotle was the central thinker of Joyce’s youth. Within the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, the Ondt is aligned with Aristotle and so the younger Joyce. As will shortly be shown, the Gracehoper is aligned with Bruno and so the older Joyce. Consequently, the fable can be understood as offering not just an interaction between Joyce and Lewis, but also a debate between the perspectives of the younger Joyce and the older. Speaking of Lewis, Joyce connects him to Plato when the Ondt of the Gracehoper’s imagination is described as being “sated before his comfortumble phullupsuppy of a plate o’monkynous” (FW 417.14–15). What makes this connection odd is that Lewis aligned Plato with the romantic and so Bergson. As noted in Chapter 3, Lewis’ Men without Art defines the classical against the romantic by saying that the former is “liable to incline rather to the side of Aristotle than to the side of Plato.”77 One might therefore think that Lewis saw his ideas as being opposed to those of Plato. While there is an extent to which this is true, such a perspective is not entirely accurate. In “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” Lewis quotes a section of Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time, and Deity in which Alexander criticizes Plato’s theory of universals: It is in fact the cardinal defect of universals as conceived by Plato or the Pythagoreans that they were changeless and immovable and eternal. For not even the mind of Plato could be free from the habits of his age.78
76
Plato, “Timaeus,” 36d–e, 1166. 77 Lewis, Men Without Art, 190. Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 131. Lewis’ italics. Lewis quotes Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity: The Gifford Lectures at Glasgow, 1916–1918, 1:226. 78
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154 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Lewis then proceeds to state what he considers Alexander to really be saying: I claim no credit for being able to tell you that universals should be regarded under the form of motion. I have the good fortune to be a philosopher of flux and movement, coming in the Alexandrian wake of Bergson and hoisted on the tide of Einstein. Plato was not a flux philosopher, but then Plato had not the good fortune to live in this age.79
Lewis’ version of Alexander argues that “Plato was not a flux philosopher” because Plato did not regard his universals “under the form of motion.” This rendering of Alexander stands in contrast to Plato because he is a “philosopher of flux and movement,” one “coming in the Alexandrian wake of Bergson and hoisted on the tide of Einstein.” The idea that the philosophies of Plato and Bergson are antithetical carries over into Time and Western Man. One can see this in the chapter titled “The Fusion of Idealism and Realism.” Lewis there speaks of Heraclitus, whom he defines as “the first celebrated Western protagonist of the Flux and nothing but the Flux.” While a number of differences between Bergson and Heraclitus are acknowledged, Bergson is nonetheless described as “professing much the same belief as Heraclitus.” Lewis opposes Heraclitus to Plato because the latter “believed that there was something indestructible and constant behind the phenomenal flux.”80 Naturally, given Lewis’ sense of the similarities between the philosophies of Heraclitus and Bergson, by defining Plato against Heraclitus, Lewis also to a great extent defines him against Bergson. It would therefore appear that Lewis saw the philosophy of Plato as being opposed to both that of Bergson and that of Aristotle. He is neither a classicist nor a romantic. To understand how this is possible, one must consider how Lewis aligns his oppositions. While he associates the romantic with flux philosophy and the classical with philosophies that in some way oppose that perspective, he also aligns the romantic with idealism and the classical with realism. This is partly a product of the fact that the flux in Bergson’s first major work, Time and Free Will, is that of immediate consciousness. Plato causes a problem for Lewis because, according to the logic of Lewis’ oppositions, since Plato is not a romantic flux philosopher he should be a classical realist. Yet Plato is neither a conventional realist nor a conventional idealist. One can understand Plato’s relationships to realism and idealism by examining one of the best-known aspects of his philosophy, his theory of Forms. In seeking to understand this theory, it is helpful to begin by looking at the following dialogue between Socrates and Glaucon in book six of the Republic: 79
Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 133.
80 Lewis,
Time and Western Man, 233.
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 155 I [Socrates] replied, “We say that there are many particular things that are beautiful, and many that are good, and so on, and distinguish between them in our account.” “Yes, we do.” “And we go on to speak of beauty-in-itself, and goodness-in-itself, and so on for all the sets of particular things which we have regarded as many; and we proceed to posit by contrast a single form, which is unique, in each case, and call it ‘what really is’ each thing.” “That is so.” “And we say that the particulars are objects of sight but not of intelligence, while the forms are the objects of intelligence but not of sight.”81
A Form is here presented as being a universal, which is to say, “a property which is predicated of or possessed by all the individuals of a class (or all the species of a genus).”82 The Forms are contrasted against the particular objects of the world. Whereas the latter are material objects that are apprehended by the senses, the former are ideal objects that are apprehended by the intellect. When the intellect identifies the unique Form of a set of particular material objects, it locates “what really is” of each of those objects. While the above quote points to several of the attributes of the Forms, it does not fully define them because it does not capture the fact that, for Plato, the Forms are real as well as ideal objects. This other aspect of the Forms can be seen from Francis Macdonald Cornford’s definition of them as “ideals or patterns, which have a real existence independent of our minds and of which the many individual things called by their names in the world of appearances are like images or reflections.” Cornford goes on to say in a footnote that, since the Forms “have a real existence independent of our minds,” “most modern critics avoid the term ‘Idea,’ though this is Plato’s word [for the Forms], because it now suggests a thought existing only ‘in our minds.’ ”83 This being so, one can see why it is difficult to define Plato as a conventional realist or a conventional idealist. His Forms bridge the gap between realism and idealism. Lewis was quite aware of Plato’s problematic relationship to the traditional realist/idealist dichotomy. He shows this in “The Fusion of Idealism and Realism”:
81 Plato,
The Republic, 507b, 245–6. 82 “Universal, Adj., n., and Adv.” The Republic of Plato, 176. Cornford’s definition of the Forms draws upon these words from Socrates in the Parmenides: But, Parmenides, the best I can make of the matter is this—that these forms are as it were patterns fixed in the nature of things. The other things are made in their image and are likenesses, and this participation they come to have in the forms is nothing but their being made in their image (Plato, “Parmenides,” 132c–d, 927). 83 Plato,
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156 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Plato today is coming to occupy the position of a symbolical meeting-ground and rallying cry for the united idealo-realist philosophy. For was he not, it is said, a “realist,” in the sense that he believed his “forms” to be ultimately real? And yet he is notoriously a figure representing “the ideal.”84
The notion of Plato as uniting realism and idealism is quite in keeping with the chapter in which it appears. While one might think that Lewis would be intrinsically opposed to the fusion of such opposites as realism and idealism, the chapter in question argues for the unity of the two. Toward its end, Lewis even observes that “a great deal of merging and interpenetration is to be found everywhere in the world of thought.” In supporting that point, he again brings in Plato: “Professor Alexander writes: ‘No sane philosophy, Plato’s or any other’s, has been definitely this or that.’ ”85 This approach is eminently reasonable, but it is quite at odds with the rest of the book. In the paragraph that follows, Lewis tries to draw Time and Western Man back onto its former path by explaining why he continues to regard his philosophy as directly opposed to that of the time-school: In these difficult new adjustments that I am here proposing to you, our definition must be sought in the rigidity of the principle at the base of all our arguments; a rigor as though there, at the base of the necessary dialectical instability, there were planted a God. The idealo-realists, or to name a few, Alexander, Whitehead, Cassirer, Gentile, are just as adamant as that: their principle is just as rigid, indeed more so. For there is no principle more pervasive, ubiquitous, exacting, and hence absolutist and rigid, than is Time.86
Through Lewis’ use of “our” and “their,” he creates two groups. That of Lewis and the reader is defined against that of the time-school. Lewis speaks of how his group defines itself through the rigidity of its foundational principle. That rigidity does not stem from an absolute opposition between the principles of the two groups. Lewis makes this clear when he refers to “the necessary dialectical instability” of the relationship between the two groups. Rather, that rigidity derives from the need of the group to treat its foundational principle as though it were “a God.” The reason for this reverence is that the opposing group, that of the time- school, is as “adamant” in its convictions and as “rigid” in its principles as Lewis’ group. In fact, according to Lewis, that group is even more inflexible in its principles than his own. As the last sentence puts it, there is “no principle more pervasive, 84 Lewis,
Time and Western Man, 239. Time and Western Man, 242. Lewis’ italics. Despite appearances, this is a paraphrase rather than a quote. Alexander writes, “But no sane philosophy has ever been exclusively the one or the other, and where the modern antithesis has hardly arisen, as with Plato, it is extraordinarily difficult to say under which head the philosophy should be classed” (Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity: The Gifford Lectures at Glasgow, 1916–1918, 1:8). 86 Lewis, Time and Western Man, 242. 85 Lewis,
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 157 ubiquitous, exacting, and hence absolutist and rigid, than is Time.” Lewis believes that he cannot compromise his position by embracing relativity because this would allow him to be overrun by his absolutist enemies. In reading this paragraph, it is also worth noting how Lewis defines the “idealo-realists.” While the name of the group suggests a fusion of idealism and realism, Lewis includes the “idealo-realists” within the time-school and so, according to the logic of the book, categorizes them as idealists. This being so, from Lewis’ perspective, the so-called “idealo-realists” are either in disguise or in denial. The skepticism that is displayed here regarding the possibility of truly uniting realism and idealism pushes back against the main thrust of the chapter. As is all too evident from “The Fusion of Idealism and Realism,” Plato is a problematic figure for Lewis. Joyce is correct to align Lewis with Plato in the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper because Plato is presented positively in “The Revolutionary Simpleton” and Time and Western Man, but Lewis never fully embraces Plato. This is partly because there are aspects of Plato’s philosophy that fit Lewis’ definition of the “romantic” and partly because Plato’s philosophy cannot easily be incorporated into the oppositions of “The Revolutionary Simpleton” and Time and Western Man. One of the consequences of the latter is that Plato challenges some of the ideas of those works. For instance, as mentioned earlier, in defining his position at the end of “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce” Lewis aligns himself with Greek philosophy because he associates it with the material rather than the spiritual. Plato’s philosophy does not support this characterization because, as one would expect given its relationships to realism and idealism, it is not directly materialist. This is no minor exception as Plato is one of the most important and influential philosophers of ancient Greece.
Confucius The passage that connects Lewis to Plato also links him to Confucius. Within the Gracehoper’s vision, the Ondt’s supper consists of “a plate o’monkynous and a confucion of minthe” (FW 417.15–16). While Lewis speaks of his respect for the “chaste wisdom of the Chinese” in “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” he does not mention China’s most famous thinker in that essay.87 There is one passing reference to Confucius in Time and Western Man but no real engagement with his thought.88 This is perhaps not surprising. One of the best-known aspects of Confucius’ philosophy is his doctrine of the mean. In the work of that name, the master says that “the superior man cultivates a friendly harmony, without being weak.”89 This was hardly Lewis’ perspective. The reference to Confucius in the 87 89
Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 130. Confucius, “The Doctrine of the Mean,” 390.
88 Lewis,
Time and Western Man, 223.
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158 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Wake draws attention to the relative absence of Confucius from “The Revolutionary Simpleton” and Time and Western Man and so points more broadly to how small a role the “chaste wisdom of the Chinese” plays in those works.90 Of the four philosophers that the Gracehoper’s vision connects to the Ondt, and thereby Lewis, three are thinkers that one would associate with Joyce. The odd man out is Confucius, who is not a major figure in any of Joyce’s works. That being said, there are a number of references to Confucius in the Wake.91 For example, early on in I.6, one finds this passage: “the most conical hodpiece of confusianist heronim and that chuchuff uous chinchin of his is like a footsey kungoloo around Taishantyland” (FW 131.33–5). McHugh identifies numerous allusions to Confucius within this passage. To mention only some, “chuchuff ” points to the Chinese city of Qufu, which is also known as Chufu. That city was Confucius’ birthplace. The phrase “footsey kungoloo” alludes to K’ung-fu-tzu, the Chinese name of which “Confucius” is a Latinized form. The last word, “Taishantyland,” references the sacred mountain of Tai Shin. Confucius was born after his parents prayed at a shrine from which that mountain can be seen (AFW 131). Furthermore, as McHugh has pointed out elsewhere, in writing the Wake Joyce took notes from Carl Crow’s Master Kung: The Story of Confucius. Those notes can be found in notebook VI.B.45.92 Yet, while Joyce was to some degree interested in Confucius, he was certainly not as familiar with the thought of Confucius as he was the philosophies of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Plato.
Bruno and the Gracehoper Once the Gracehoper’s philosophy-infused vision has ended, the focus of the tale shifts to the Ondt, who, in stark contrast to the Gracehoper, is having a great time. This is partly due to his play with four young females and partly the result of his delight at the sight of the Gracehoper’s despair. In his spiteful glee, he mocks the defeated Gracehoper at length. After this shower of derision, the tale changes form. Its end consists of a poem in rhyming couplets. In the first two lines of that poem, the narrator again speaks of the Ondt’s laughter, and the rest of the poem is devoted to the Gracehoper’s response to the Ondt’s unkind words. That response is marked by great maturity from the outset. Its first line is: “I forgive you, grondt Ondt, said the Gracehoper, weeping” (FW 418.12). The key word here is “grondt” because it captures several aspects of the Gracehoper’s layered response to the Ondt. “Grondt” suggests “great” and so serves as a form of respect. At the same time, “grondt” also points to the words for “green” in Danish (“grøn”), Norwegian 90
Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 130. For a discussion of Confucius’ role in the Wake, see Yee, “Metemsinopsychosis: Confucius and Ireland in Finnegans Wake.” 92 See McHugh, “Confucius in Notebook VI.B.45.” 91
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 159 (“grønn”), and Swedish (“grön”). The word “grondt” can thereby also be taken to suggest both the Ondt’s inexperience and his jealousy of the Gracehoper. Lastly, and most importantly, the word “grondt” combines the names of the two main characters within the tale and so the term “grondt Ondt” suggests how the Ondt’s identity is defined by the nature of his relationship to the Gracehoper. Without his antagonist, the Ondt would have no one to spark his characteristic anger. The Gracehoper’s concluding speech repeatedly returns to the idea that he and the Ondt are inseparable insofar as each partially defines the other. On one such occasion, the Gracehoper references Bruno: We are Wastenot with Want, precondamned, two and true, Till Nolans go volants and Bruneyes come blue. Ere those gidflirts now gadding you quit your mocks for my gropes An extense must impull, an elapse must elopes, Of my tectucs takestock, tinktact, and ail’s weal; As I view by your farlook hale yourself to my heal. (FW 418.30–5)
The Ondt and the Gracehoper are “Wastenot” and “Want” in the sense that the Ondt does not waste anything and the Gracehoper wants. The pair are described as being “precondamned,” a word which suggests that they have previously been both condemned and damned. The second line goes on to say that their collective punishment will continue “Till Nolans go volants and Bruneyes come blue.” As McHugh observes, “volants” points to the Latin word for “flying,” “volans,” and so the time denoted in the line is a time when men can fly and brown eyes turn blue, which is to say a time that will never come (AFW 418). The punishment of the Ondt and the Gracehoper cannot end because that punishment is their inseparability. Within the line in question, Joyce alludes to Bruno in his usual manner. The words “Bruneyes” and “Nolans” point to the name of Dublin book and stationery store Browne and Nolan and, thereby, to Bruno of Nola (FW 418.31). It is a sign of Bruno’s importance to the novel as a whole that this reference to Bruno is of a different nature to the other philosophical references within the tale. As has been discussed in this chapter, the most significant philosophical references within the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper are those that bind a thinker to a particular character, such as when the Ondt is described as an “aristotaller” (FW 417.16). The reference to Bruno in the Gracehoper’s speech is different to the other such references because the Gracehoper is not aligned with Bruno by the Ondt or the narrator, but rather by himself within his own speech. This being so, he can follow his allusion to Bruno with illustrations of Bruno’s best-known idea. The Gracehoper does this through the line “An extense must impull, an elapse must elopes” (FW 418.33). The word “impull” combines two contrary motions by uniting “impel,” which means to push forward, with “pull.” The second half of the
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160 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake sentence functions in a similar way. The word “elopes” also unites contrary motions in that an elopement is an act of both joining and separation. In eloping, one joins with one’s partner through marriage while also separating oneself from one’s family. The words “impull” and “elopes” therefore both demonstrate Bruno’s principle of the coincidence of contraries. The line in which those words appear also illustrates that notion through its structure. It is divided into two halves that are similar because they have the same form and because they each contain a word that unites opposites. At the same time, the two halves differ because the first points to space through the word “extense,” which evokes the spatial term “extension,” and the second references time through the temporal term “elapse.” Within the Lewisian context of the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, space and time serve as contraries, and so the two halves of the line are both united and opposed. It is conspicuous that the version of the coincidence of contraries offered by the Gracehoper has more in common with that of Bruno than the Coleridgean version that frequently appears within the Wake. From the Gracehoper’s perspective, he can neither align himself with the Ondt nor separate himself from him, and so he proceeds to argue that the two of them should respond to the reality of their relationship by trying to learn from one another. This can be seen, in the penultimate line of the above quote, when the Gracehoper urges the Ondt to share in his moderate and respectful tactics: “Of my tectucs takestock, tinktact, and ail’s weal” (FW 418.34). According to the Gracehoper, the Ondt should take this approach before the “gidflirts” presently “gadding” him quit his “mocks” for the Gracehoper’s “gropes” (FW 418.32). The “gidflirts” mentioned here are the four young females with whom the Ondt plays. While the Gracehoper’s advice is wise and genuine, the reference within it to Shem and Shaun’s earlier incarnations as the Mookse and the Gripes suggests that it is unlikely to be taken. All that really changes within the conflict of the Earwicker twins is that they assume new forms. That being said, the Gracehoper is not wrong to argue that he and the Ondt should at least try to understand one another. Given the circumstances, it certainly seems the best available option. In considering Joyce’s attitude toward this matter, it is worth bearing in mind that the Gracehoper’s speech ends the tale. The Ondt is not given a chance to argue against the Gracehoper’s mediate approach. The speech that concludes the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper ends with these lines: My in risible universe youdly haud find Sulch oxtrabeeforeness meat soveal behind. Your feats end enormous, your volumes immense, (May the Graces I hoped for sing your Ondtship song sense!), Your genus its worldwide, your spacest sublime! But, Holy Saltmartin, why can’t you beat time? (FW 419.03)
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 161 The grammatical ambiguity of the first couplet makes it somewhat difficult to follow. It is not clear if the object of the verb “find” is the “in risible universe” or the “oxtrabeeforeness meat soveal behind.” In attempting to grasp what the Gracehoper is saying in those lines, it is helpful to look at the earlier versions of them. The first iteration can be found in the first draft: In the risible universe where could one find Such prodigious advances with so much behind?93
In this version, one can see that the Gracehoper is praising the Ondt for his “prodigious advances,” while also characteristically drawing attention to his size. The second version can be seen for the first time in the James Joyce Archive in the third proofs for transition 12. That version is not greatly different: In my risible universe where could you find Such prodigious advancement with so much behind?94
At this stage, the Gracehoper takes possession of the “risible universe,” which is appropriate given his association with fun and laughter. That is the only major change from the first draft. The third and final version is, however, quite different to the prior two versions. The earliest draft within the James Joyce Archive to feature that final version is the proofs for Tales Told of Shem and Shaun: My in risible universe youdly haud find Sulch oxtrabeeforeness meat soveal behind.95
By swapping the “in” and the “my” of the earlier version, Joyce creates the term “in risible universe.” This term causes confusion because one could take it to denote a universe that is not risible. The earlier drafts suggest that the opposite is the case and that the Gracehoper does view his universe as risible. At the same time, the words “in risible” also combine to suggest “invisible,” and it makes sense for the universe of the Gracehoper to be invisible. The visible universe is that of space, of the Ondt, of Lewis. Furthermore, the term “in risible universe” connects to the phrase “youdly haud find,” as that phrase suggests “you’ld hardly find,” and one would struggle to find an invisible universe. This being so, while the earliest forms of the phrase “youdly haud find” led into the following line, the versions from the proofs for Tales Told of Shem and Shaun up to and including that in the Wake also relate back to the first half of the line in which that phrase appears. Therefore, in the version of the above quoted lines that appears in the
93 95
BL 47483 f. 88v; JJA 57:306; FDV 224. Yale 9.8–54; JJA 57:375.
94
BL 47483 f. 97; JJA 57:322.
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162 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Wake, that which “youdly haud find” is both “My in risible universe” and “Sulch oxtrabeeforeness meat soveal behind.” The Gracehoper doubts that the Ondt will be able to find one or the other. It’s also here worth noting that, in McHugh’s annotations, he suggests that the term “in risible universe” points to the “ ‘Visible Universe’ of Aristotle and Aquinas” (AFW 419). Given that the Ondt is connected to Aristotle and Aquinas earlier in the tale, this interpretation makes sense, but I would argue that Aristotle and Aquinas are only referenced through Lewis and are only relevant to the extent that their philosophies accord with his emphasis on the physical world. Since Aristotle was interested in metaphysics and Aquinas was more than interested in theology, both frequently explored the invisible rather than the visible. Their positions should not be conflated with that of Lewis. As the Gracehoper moves toward the end of his speech, he continues to lavish praise on the Ondt. In the last line, however, he switches from offering compliments to posing a challenging question: “But, Holy Saltmartin, why can’t you beat time?” (FW 419.08). On one level, to “beat time” is to keep time in a musical sense. The Gracehoper’s question therefore suggests that the Ondt, for all his achievements, lacks the musical ability of the Gracehoper. This reading is supported by the fact that, only a couple of lines earlier, the Gracehoper says that he hopes that “the Graces” will “sing” his “Ondtship song sense” (FW 419.06). Given Lewis’ negative attitude toward music and Joyce’s musical ability, it is easy to relate the Gracehoper’s question to their relationship. On another level, to “beat time” is to overcome time itself. The Gracehoper’s question can consequently also be read as Joyce asking Lewis why he cannot defeat his foe. Since time is a necessary condition of existence, the question suggests the ultimate futility of Lewis’ attacks on it. In offering this reading, I should note that Lewis was not against time itself, but rather Bergson’s conception of time and the products of that conception. Having said that, however, within “The Revolutionary Simpleton” and Time and Western Man, Lewis does not challenge Bergson by offering his own conception of time. His general approach is rather to oppose the temporal to the spatial. One can see this in the preface to “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” when Lewis says that the purpose of his essay is to critique the Bergsonian “time-view” from “the position of the plastic or visual intelligence.”96 Consequently, “The Revolutionary Simpleton” and the book it spawned both frequently read as though Lewis was actually against time itself. While the Gracehoper uses the second half of the last line of his speech to suggest that the Ondt cannot overcome that which he opposes, the first half of that line offers the Ondt an example of how he might more purposefully proceed. The Gracehoper there speaks of “Holy Saltmartin” (FW 419.08). On first reading, one might think that he uses this term to address the Ondt, but, as McHugh points out, “saltmartino” is the Italian for “grasshopper,” so it seems more likely that the 96
Lewis, “The Revolutionary Simpleton,” 27.
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 163 Gracehoper is swearing by “Holy Saltmartin” while also defining himself as such (AFW 419). The word “Saltmartin” points to St. Martin. The reason for this allusion can be found in Sulpitius Severus’ Vita Sancti Martini (Life of St. Martin). Within that hagiography, there is a scene in which St. Martin, passing by the gate of the city of Amiens in the middle of a particularly cold winter, meets “a poor man destitute of clothing.” St. Martin asks others to help this man, but none show any pity, so St. Martin divides his cloak into “two equal parts” and gives the man one half. The following night, St. Martin has a vision in which he sees Christ wearing the half of his cloak that he gave to the poor man and Christ tells St. Martin that “he himself had been clothed in that poor man.”97 This story parallels the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper in that it depicts a destitute individual who seeks aid in the cold midwinter. The Gracehoper alludes to that story in order to contrast the righteous compassion of St. Martin with the cruelty of the Ondt. Furthermore, in casting himself as “Holy Saltmartin,” the Gracehoper suggests that there are parallels between St. Martin and himself (FW 419.08). While the Gracehoper has no opportunity to care for another within his tale, the parallel holds to the extent that they both adopt a mediate approach. The Gracehoper does not tell the Ondt that his perspective is right or wrong, but rather suggests to him that each would gain from understanding the other. The idea of each of a pair becoming like the other is shared by St. Martin. In dividing his cloak into two and giving half to the naked man, St. Martin makes the two alike in that each is half clothed and half naked. The Gracehoper’s just identification with St. Martin serves as a riposte to the self-proclaimed piety of the Ondt. Once the Gracehoper has finished his speech, all that remains of the tale is a brief blessing: In the name of the former and of the latter and of their holocaust. Allmen. (FW 419.09–10)
This is the second of three variations on this blessing that can be found in the Wake. All three appear at the ends of tales. The first is at the end of the story of Norwegian Captain in II.3 and the third comes at the conclusion of the encounter between Paddrock and Balkelly in IV.1.98 That this blessing appears on three occasions within the novel is quite appropriate considering its structure. The blessing points to the Christian Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. However, in all three of the Wake’s versions of that blessing, the third element does not complete the structure because it points to destruction rather than creation. For instance, as can be seen above, the blessing that ends the tale of the 97 Severus,
Life of St. Martin, 11. 98 See FW 331.14–15 and 612.29–30.
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164 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Ondt and the Gracehoper references the two characters within the tale and then speaks of “their holocaust” (FW 419.09–10). The word “holocaust” here functions in the broad sense of “complete destruction.”99 This image of the Ondt and the Gracehoper being destroyed just as a unifying structure is about to be imposed upon them is related to the message of the tale. As discussed, the tale does not end with the resolution of its debate. While the Gracehoper’s position is certainly that which is validated, the Ondt is not shown to concur with that position. Consequently, the blessing at the end of the tale represents the fact that those two characters never achieve the unity that the Gracehoper seeks. This inconclusive ending is in keeping with those of the earlier Shem and Shaun tales such as that of the Mookse and the Gripes and that of Burrus and Caseous. Like Stephen Dedalus, Shem and Shaun have shapes that cannot be changed and so they never agree because they cannot agree.100 The final word of the tale, “Allmen,” suggests that such failures are common (FW 419.10). Yet this does not mean that such failures are inevitable. As discussed in Chapter 3, there are “elusive” individuals who are capable of creating accord (FW 167.01). Furthermore, as mentioned in the same chapter, Shem and Shaun’s inability to agree is a product of their masculinity rather than their humanity. The word “Allmen” does not include women (FW 419.10). Issy is certainly capable of uniting opposites. In the particular case of the fable of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, their failure to unite is partly a product of the fact that they represent space and time. Slote explains this point: The problem with assuming a synthesis in Joyce’s fable is that the Ondt and the Gracehoper are not dialectically opposed terms. To be sure, like “The Mookse and the Gripes,” this fable seems to enact an opposition between space and time. But space and time are not necessarily diametrically contrary, unless one agrees with Lewis’ condemnation of time-philosophy. This, however, is not a presupposition Joyce shares.101
If one reason that the fable of the Ondt and the Gracehoper does not enact the unity of space and time is that Joyce did not regard space and time as “dialectically opposed terms,” another can be seen in “Two Kinds of Monism.” As was discussed in the prior chapter, that document argues that “a science, a search for causes, for generative factors of things, cannot end in one only.” It then goes on to define space and time as the two basic causes of the “universe of nature.”102
99
“Holocaust, n.” told Budgen that Stephen Dedalus has “a shape that can’t be changed” (Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses and Other Writings, 107). 101 Slote, “The Prolific and the Devouring in ‘The Ondt and the Gracehoper,’ ” 54. 102 Joyce, “Two Kinds of Monism.” 100 Joyce
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 165 “Two Kinds of Monism” establishes that Joyce did not regard space and time as aspects of a prior unity.
Joyce and Lewis: The End The tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper was published for the first time in transition 12 in March 1928 and it did little to quell the back and forth between Joyce and Lewis. In the years that followed, Lewis produced a number of works that attacked Joyce: The Childermass (1928), the third issue of The Enemy (1929), and The Apes of God (1930). Joyce fired back in May of 1929 through Our Exagmination. Scott W. Klein observes that “Lewis serves as implicit and explicit subject in no fewer than four of the twelve essays on Work in Progress published in 1929 as Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress by friends and supporters under Joyce’s supervision.”103 The four referenced essays are those of Marcel Brion, Thomas MacGreevy, Robert Sage, and William Carlos Williams. As Klein notes, the essays by MacGreevy and Williams are particularly aggressive and direct in their criticism of Lewis.104 Williams, for example, speaks of “the dementia of Wyndham Lewis.”105 This is a long way from the artful equanimity of the Wake, but it should certainly be read as an aspect of Joyce’s response to Lewis. Later on in 1929, Joyce again took aim at Lewis through the publication of Tales Told of Shem and Shaun. As noted earlier, this collection contains three Lewis-related sections of Work in Progress, including the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, as well as an introduction by Ogden that references Lewis on a couple of occasions. Given how often Joyce and Lewis attacked one another in print between 1926 and 1930, it is rather surprising that they chose to meet at the end of this period. As Meyers observes, in July of 1930, one month after the publication of The Apes of God, Joyce and Lewis “dined together at Joyce’s request and had a friendly discussion about the career of the Irish tenor John Sullivan, whom Lewis later introduced to his patron Lady Cunard.”106 Meyers also notes that Lewis subsequently wrote a letter to Richard Aldington in which he described his meeting with Joyce in very unkind terms: “James Joyce has come to see me, to play Odysseus to my Cyclops—quite forgetting that it is he not myself who has half-sight.”107 In the circumstances, one might well wonder why Joyce continued to tolerate Lewis to the extent that he did. One of the main reasons seems to have been that, while Lewis’ attacks displeased Joyce, he also recognized their value. In a 1932 letter to
103 Klein,
The Fictions of James Joyce and Wyndham Lewis, 153. See Klein, The Fictions of James Joyce and Wyndham Lewis, 153–5. 105 Williams, “A Point for American Criticism,” 184. 106 Meyers, The Enemy, 140. 107 Meyers, The Enemy, 140. Meyers quotes Lewis, The Letters of Wyndham Lewis, 190. 104
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166 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake Weaver, Joyce describes Lewis’ “hostile criticism” of his work as “by far the best that has appeared” (Letters III, 250). Joyce knew Lewis’ tirades contained some valid points. The reason he did not fully accept them is that he could also see the limits of Lewis’ readings of his works. Joyce said to Budgen, “Allowing that the whole of what Lewis says about my book [Ulysses] is true, is it more than ten per cent of the truth?”108 As this quote shows, while Lewis saw Joyce as half- sighted, Joyce considered Lewis’ view of his work to be myopic. In the 1950s, when Lewis reflected upon his relationship with Joyce in the twenties and thirties, he felt some regrets. This is clear from Lewis’ 1950 autobiography Rude Assignment. Lewis there defends himself by saying that he did not regard what he said to Joyce “as in any way personally offensive” and by arguing that he never suggested that Joyce “was not worthy of the greatest attention and respect.” At the same time, he is willing to admit that he “should have been more circumspect” in his criticisms and that he was “perhaps too forcible.”109 On a similar note, Meyers observes that, when Ellmann interviewed Lewis in 1954 and 1956, Lewis did not define his relationship to Joyce as oppositional: In 1954 Lewis was more frank and revealing, and admitted that he had had a great deal of trouble with Joyce after his essay had appeared in the Enemy. But in 1956 Lewis appeared more reluctant to assume the guise of Joyce’s adversary, emphasized their friendship and said that Joyce had always visited him when he came to London.110
Since so much of the relationship between Joyce and Lewis was textual, it is appropriate that even this final aspect of their relationship should manifest itself in a work of literature. As Edwards has noted, in the mid-1950s Lewis wrote the conclusion to The Human Age, a trilogy of novels that had begun with The Childermass. He had originally intended for the Joycean character of James Pullman to be “obliterated by the foot of a warring angel,” but, in 1956, Lewis changed his mind and decided that Pullman should be “afforded grace by a forgiving God and assimilated to Heaven.”111 When one views this act of salvation in the light of Rude Assignment and Ellmann’s remarks, it seems a plea for forgiveness. By then, however, Joyce could not provide that absolution. To conclude, the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper contains more philosophical references than any other section of the Wake. By this means, that tale mirrors the works by Lewis in which he discusses Joyce because those works are littered with references to philosophy. When one looks at the philosophical references within the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper, one can see that those 108 Budgen,
James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses and Other Writings, 359. Rude Assignment, 59. 110 Meyers, The Enemy, 140–1. Meyers cites “Interview with Richard Ellmann.” 111 Edwards, “Wyndham Lewis versus James Joyce: Shaun versus Shem?,” 16. 109 Lewis,
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A Portrait of the Ondt as a Young Man 167 references function in different ways. While some merely add to the wealth of philosophical allusions within the tale, others serve to define its characters. The alignment of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Plato with the Ondt and Bruno and Vico with the Gracehoper allows the reader to view the Ondt and the Gracehoper as representing both Lewis and Joyce as well as the younger Joyce and the older Joyce. This double characterization has two effects. It serves to challenge the idea of Joyce and Lewis as opposites, while also pointing to how time creates paradoxes within the identity of the so-called individual. The Ondt and the Gracehoper are neither one nor two but necessarily both one and two. Since they cannot be absolutely united or divided, their confrontation can have no definitive conclusion. Not even the Gracehoper’s Brunoian call for unity can resolve their differences. Given the extent to which the relationship between the Ondt and the Gracehoper was modeled on that between Joyce and Lewis, one would struggle to argue that Joyce was wrong to end the tale in this way.
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5
Seeing through Balkelly (FW 609.24–612.15)
The final chapter of this book will consider the Paddrock and Balkelly episode in book four of the Wake. In that episode, Paddrock, a version of St. Patrick, is confronted by an archdruid called Balkelly. The archdruid’s name evokes that of Ireland’s greatest philosopher, George Berkeley. For Joyce, the connection between Berkeley and Balkelly was so strong that, when he spoke of Balkelly in his letters, he often simply referred to him as Berkeley.1 This chapter will evaluate the degree to which Balkelly represents Berkeley.
Joyce and Berkeley To understand the rendering of Berkeley that appears in the Paddrock and Balkelly episode, one must first consider Joyce’s prior depictions of that philosopher. As one might expect, Joyce discussed his illustrious compatriot on numerous occasions prior to the Wake. The first mention of Berkeley in one of Joyce’s works can be found in his 1907 essay “Ireland: Island of Saints and Sages.” Joyce there lists some of the “Irish writers who adopted the English language in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and almost forgot their native country.” That list includes “Berkeley, the idealist philosopher,” as well as other luminaries of the age like Burke, Goldsmith, and Swift.2 Joyce’s second reference to Berkeley would be rather more telling. Amidst the discussion of Blake in Joyce’s 1912 essay “Realism and Idealism in English Literature,” one finds the following passage: If we were to lay a charge of madness against every great genius who does not share the science undergraduate’s fatuous belief in headlong materialism now held in such high regard, little would remain of world art and history. Such a slaughter of the innocents would include most of the peripatetic system, all medieval metaphysics, an entire wing in the immense, symmetrical edifice built
1 See, for example, Joyce’s October 9, 1923 letter to Weaver (Letters I, 204). 2 Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 122–3.
Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Robert Baines, Oxford University Press. © Robert Baines 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198894049.003.0006
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Seeing through Balkelly 169 by the angelic doctor, St Thomas Aquinas, the idealism of Berkeley and (note the coincidence) the very scepticism that leads us to Hume.3
Joyce here creates an opposition between “the science undergraduate’s fatuous belief in headlong materialism” and a collection of famous philosophies. From the pejorative way Joyce describes that which opposes those philosophies, one can see that they bear his approval. This idea is reinforced by the fact that the offered list of philosophies begins by pointing to the two major thinkers of Joyce’s youth, Aristotle and Aquinas. The Joyce of 1912 was no young man, but the above passage shows his continuing respect for Aquinas. As regards Aristotle, the creator of the “peripatetic system,” it was five years after this essay that Joyce spoke of him as “the greatest thinker of all times.”4 It is therefore something of an honor for Berkeley to be included among the referenced philosophers. Berkeley’s name is followed by that of David Hume, and the two would be grouped together again in Joyce’s next reference to Berkeley. In the Exiles notes, which date from between November 1913 and January 1915, these two notes appear together: The doubt which clouds the end of the play must be conveyed to the audience not only through Richard’s questions to both but also from the dialogue between Robert and Bertha. All Celtic philosophers seemed to have inclined towards incertitude or scepticism—Hume, Berkeley, Balfour, Bergson.5
As Joyce observes in the first note, the “doubt which clouds the end of the play” does not belong entirely to any one character. That being said, it is certainly Richard Rowan’s doubt that dominates the close of the play. In his final speech, he speaks of possessing “a deep wound of doubt which can never be healed.”6 Since “doubt” and “incertitude” are virtual synonyms, the second of the above notes seems to follow on from the first.7 This being so, that note defines Richard as belonging to the offered line of skeptical Celtic philosophers. The character of Richard is a blatant self-portrait and so that note also locates Joyce within that line. The note on “Celtic philosophers” is therefore quite consistent with the discussed section of “Realism and Idealism in English Literature.” Joyce defines himself as a skeptic in that part of the essay by challenging a philosophy that he presents as the majority view. The “headlong materialism” he opposes is described as being “now held in such high regard.”8 In both “Realism and Idealism in 3 Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 179–80. 4 Borach, “Conversations with James Joyce,” 71. 5 Joyce, Poems and Exiles, 352–3. 6 Joyce, Poems and Exiles, 265. 7 Joyce, Poems and Exiles, 352–3. 8 Joyce, Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing, 179.
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170 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake English Literature” and the Exiles note on “Celtic philosophers,” Berkeley is aligned with Joyce’s skepticism. That Hume is paired with Berkeley on both occasions underlines this idea.
Berkeley in “Proteus” Berkeley’s first substantial appearance in Joyce’s fiction occurs in the “Proteus” episode of Ulysses. The earliest extant draft of the section of “Proteus” that references Berkeley can be found in the earliest extant draft of the episode.9 That draft consists of a series of textual fragments. As Luca Crispi points out, “Joyce probably compiled these fragments (or composed this draft) after mid October 1917 in Locarno, Switzerland, and subsequently wrote the next surviving draft of the episode (Buffalo MS V.A.3) from late October to December 1917.”10 The date of that draft is important because it was roughly around that time that Joyce purchased the only book on or by Berkeley he is known to have owned, Alexander Campbell Fraser’s 1881 book Berkeley. That book is a biography that also presents the key ideas of Berkeley’s major works. Ellmann observes that the edition Joyce owned came out in 1912 and was purchased in Zurich.11 Since Joyce arrived in Zurich in June 1915 and left in October 1919, the book must have been purchased between those dates, but, since there is no way of being more specific about when Joyce bought Fraser’s book, there is no way of knowing if it influenced Joyce’s presentation of Berkeley in “Proteus.” What can be said about the Berkeleyan section of “Proteus” is that it needs to be read in the context of the opening of that episode. In the first paragraph of “Proteus,” Stephen considers Aristotle’s understanding of color: Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. (U 3.3–6)
The inspiration for this passage can be found in one of the Aristotelian notes that Joyce took down in his Early Commonplace Notebook in Paris in 1903: “Colour is the limit of the diaphane in any determined body.”12 This note derives from Aristotle’s discussion of the transparent in De Sensu et Sensibilibus (Sense and Sensibilia):
9 NLI MS 36,639/7/A. See Joyce, “II.Ii.1.a. Notebook.” 10 Crispi, “A First Foray into the National Library of Ireland’s Joyce Manuscripts: Bloomsday 2011.” 11 Ellmann, The Consciousness of Joyce, 109. 12 O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 219.
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Seeing through Balkelly 171 But since the colour is at the extremity of the body, it must be at the extremity of the transparent in the body. Whence it follows that we may define colour as the limit of the transparent in determinately bounded body.13
When one compares this English translation with the French translation that Joyce used, one can see why Joyce’s note speaks of the “diaphane” rather than the “transparent”: Mais comme la couleur est dans une limite, elle doit être aussi à la limite du diaphane; et par conséquent, on pourrait définir la couleur: la limite du diaphane dans un corps déterminé.14
The major challenge in trying to understand what Aristotle is saying about the nature of color is his use of the term “transparent.” He does not use that term in the common sense of, to quote the OED, “Having the property of transmitting light, so as to render bodies lying beyond completely visible.”15 As Code points out, within Aristotle’s thought, “For a body to be transparent is for it to be able to contain light, and light itself just is the exercise of this capacity.”16 When Code speaks here of “light itself,” he refers to the illumination of a body rather than light in its pure form. Code goes on to observe that this understanding of the transparent explains why, in On the Soul, Aristotle speaks of light as “the activity of what is transparent qua transparent.”17 Here Aristotle is simply stating that, when a body is illuminated, it is using its capacity for transparency, which is to say its capacity for containing light. Once Aristotle’s conception of the transparent has been recognized, one can see the point he is making about color in the section of Sense and Sensibilia from which Joyce took his note. To say that color is “at the extremity of the body” is to say that the color of an object is on its surface. The surface must also be the “extremity of the transparent in the body” because an object’s capacity to contain light stops at its surface. Since, for Aristotle, the surface is both the location of color and the “extremity of the transparent,” it makes sense for him to say that color is the limit of the transparent.18 When Stephen thinks of this aspect of Aristotle’s understanding of color in “Proteus,” he finds it problematic. What bothers him about the idea that, to quote Joyce’s note, “Colour is the limit of the diaphane in any determined body” is the notion of color as residing “in bodies.”19 This concerns him because he thinks it suggests that Aristotle “was aware of them bodies before of them coloured” and 13 Aristotle, “Sense and Sensibilia,” 698, Sens. 3, 439b10–13. 14 O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 219. O’Rourke cites Aristotle, Psychologie d’Aristote, 39–40. 15 “Transparent, Adj. (and n.).” 16 Code, “Aristotelian Colours as Causes,” 236. 17 Code, “Aristotelian Colours as Causes,” 236. Aristotle, “On the Soul,” 666, DA. II.7, 418b10. 18 Aristotle, “Sense and Sensibilia,” 698, Sens. 3, 439b10–11. 19 O’Rourke, Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, 219.
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172 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake he cannot understand how this can be the case. His comic solution to the problem is to imagine that Aristotle knew of the bodies before their colors by banging his head against them or, as Stephen puts it, “knocking his sconce against them” (U 3.5–6). Theoharis Constantine Theoharis describes this section well when he speaks of Stephen as “making false difficulties and false solutions for Aristotle’s theory.”20 To say that color is in bodies is not to say that one must perceive bodies before colors. As evidenced in both Stephen Hero and Portrait, Stephen is very interested in the process by which the mind apprehends objects and tends to read texts on other subjects as commenting on that process. However, to make this point is not to say that Stephen’s thoughts serve no purpose. Pierre Vitoux argues that “the issue raised by Stephen’s question why ‘in bodies?’ is whether Aristotle was justified or not in supplementing our immediate perception of colors as seen on a plane or a veil . . . with the notion of an object or body not directly perceived.”21 Vitoux’s characterization of the issue is overtly Berkeleyan because that sentence leads into a discussion of Berkeley, but he is certainly right to suggest that Stephen’s thoughts engage with the relationship between objects and perceptions and so serve to set up the later discussion of Berkeley. Those two passages are also connected by the fact that Stephen’s image of Aristotle as “knocking his sconce against” bodies evokes Samuel Johnson’s refutation of Berkeley’s philosophy (U 3.5–6). In James Boswell’s biography of Johnson, Boswell recalls that when he suggested to Johnson that Berkeley’s philosophy is “impossible to refute,” Johnson responded by “striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone” and saying, “I refute it thus.”22 Robert Martin Adams explains the relationship between Johnson’s kick and Aristotle’s headbanging when he writes that Stephen “has Aristotle repeat with his head Dr Johnson’s famous experiment, with his foot, to prove the solidity of the external universe.”23 The position with which Aristotle is associated at the start of “Proteus” can broadly be described as a realist position in that it views perceptions as deriving from objects rather than vice versa. Stephen challenges this position and so, at this point in the episode, one might be tempted to view him as an idealist in the manner of Berkeley. Just a few lines later, however, Stephen also challenges idealism: Open your eyes now. I will. One moment. Has all vanished since? If I open and am for ever in the black adiaphane. Basta! I will see if I can see. See now. There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end. (U 3.25–8)
20 Theoharis, Joyce’s Ulysses, 18. 21 Vitoux, “Aristotle, Berkeley, and Newman in ‘Proteus’ and Finnegans Wake,” 163. 22 Boswell, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, 471. 23 Adams, Surface and Symbol: The Consistency of James Joyce’s Ulysses, 134.
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Seeing through Balkelly 173 Stephen is here once again thinking about the relationship between objects and perceptions. If, as idealism suggests, objects are the products of perceptions, then an object cannot exist when it is not perceived. Stephen tries to test whether or not objects function in this way by closing his eyes. Since he can no longer see Sandymount Strand, he considers the possibility that it has ceased to exist: “Has all vanished since?” When he opens his eyes, this has clearly not occurred and so he concludes, “There all the time without you: and ever shall be, world without end.” The first part of this sentence has two different meanings. The world is “there all the time without you” in the sense that it exists even when you are not perceiving it. It is also “there all the time without you” insofar as it is always outside you and so is not, as idealism would have it, internally constructed. The major problem with Stephen’s experiment is that it rests on a faulty understanding of idealism. It is one thing to say that objects do not exist when they are not perceived. It is quite another to say that objects are permanently erased when they are not perceived. The idealist would not expect Stephen to be adrift in the “black adiaphane” after opening his eyes. (In this context, the neologism “adiaphane” refers to that which cannot contain light.) Stephen’s experiment is also faulty in that it assumes that the nulling of just one sense can cause the world to disappear. As Stephen walks along the beach with his eyes closed, he continues to perceive his surroundings in a number of other ways. Such challenges to Stephen’s conclusions would likely not concern him too much. Looking at his considerations of realism and idealism together, one can see that his goal is not to create a theory of perception, but rather to destroy those that he knows. Given Stephen’s depressed state of mind during the “Proteus” episode, this is hardly surprising. Yet, while Stephen’s thoughts on idealism do not refute it, those thoughts certainly point to a major problem within idealism, which is the question of what happens to objects when they are not perceived. This is a question that all idealists must answer, but it is particularly relevant to Berkeley. In the most famous line he ever wrote, Berkeley said of objects that “Their esse is percipi, nor is it possible they should have any existence, out of minds or thinking things which perceive them.” Desmond M. Clarke glosses the much-quoted first clause of that sentence as “their being, existence, or reality is to be perceived.”24 Therefore, while Stephen’s challenge to idealism is not a direct challenge to Berkeley’s thought, Berkeley is certainly among those that Stephen seeks to challenge by questioning whether objects cease to exist when they are not being perceived. This being so, when one views Stephen’s thoughts on idealism alongside those on realism, one can see his ambivalence toward Berkeley’s idealist position. For Stephen, that position solves some of the problems of realism, but it also has its own inherent flaws.
24 Berkeley, “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” 84.
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174 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake Toward the end of “Proteus,” Stephen’s thoughts return to the subject of perception, and it is here that he directly references Berkeley: The good bishop of Cloyne took the veil of the temple out of his shovel hat: veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field. Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that’s right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. (U 3.416–20)
When Stephen thinks of Berkeley, he sees him as the “good Bishop of Cloyne” because Berkeley held that position within the Church of Ireland between 1734 and his death in 1753. Appropriately for an Anglican bishop, Stephen’s version of Berkeley wears a “shovel hat” and from this hat he draws “the veil of the temple.” This term has its origins in the scene in the book of Exodus in which God instructs Moses to build a tabernacle and tells him that this tabernacle must contain a multicolored veil that separates “the holy place and the most holy.”25 The difference between these places is outlined in the Encyclopedia Britannica: The outer room, or “holy place,” contained the table on which the bread of the Presence (shewbread) was placed, the altar of incense, and the seven-branched candelabrum (menorah). The inner room, or Holy of Holies, was thought to be the actual dwelling place of the God of Israel, who sat invisibly enthroned above a solid slab of gold that rested on the Ark of the Covenant and had a cherub at each end.26
Later on, when King Solomon built a temple in Jerusalem based on Moses’ tabernacle, he included within it a similar veil, and this was the first “veil of the temple.”27 This veil would go on to be involved in a crucial moment in the New Testament. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all observe that one of the supernatural consequences of Jesus’ death was that, to quote Matthew, “the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom.”28 R. Alan Cole explains the figurative meaning of this event within Christian thought: The symbolism of this [the tearing of the veil] is used later in the New Testament to illustrate the tearing down of the barrier between Jew and Gentile, in the broken body of Christ, by which all barriers between God and man were abolished (Heb. 10:20; Eph. 2:14). Both Jewish priesthood and Jewish temple had ceased to
25 Exod. 26:33. 26 The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica, “Tabernacle | Judaism | Britannica.” 27 See 2 Chron. 3:14. 28 Matt. 27:51. See also Mark 15:38 and Luke 23:45.
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Seeing through Balkelly 175 have any future religious significance, as shown by the tearing of this curtain, since now there was direct access for all to God through Christ.29
The “veil of the temple” referenced by Stephen can therefore be understood as dividing the human and the divine. This is important because that division plays a major role in Berkeley’s next appearance in Joyce’s fiction, the Paddrock and Balkelly episode. As Stephen’s thoughts progress, the “veil of the temple” becomes a “veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field” (U 3.416–18). Stephen here moves from thinking of Berkeley as a clergyman to conceiving of him as a philosopher of perception, but the similarity between the two phrases points to the fact that those two aspects of Berkeley’s thought were intertwined. When Stephen ponders Berkeley’s philosophy of perception, the specific aspect on which he focuses is Berkeley’s theory of vision. Stephen takes Berkeley to regard the immediate visual field as a flat “veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field.” According to Stephen, it is only after distance has been thought—“Flat I see, then think distance”—that the two-dimensional “veil of space” becomes three-dimensional (U 3.417–19). Berkeley offered the ideas with which Stephen is here engaging in his first major philosophical work, “An Essay towards a new Theory of Vision.” Berkeley there argues that “distance, of itself and immediately, cannot be seen.”30 It is important to pay attention to the middle section of that statement because Berkeley is often quoted as saying that distance cannot be seen, and this is incorrect. For Berkeley, distance can be seen, but the process by which it is seen is complex. From his perspective, what allows distance to be seen is experience. As Berkeley puts it, “the estimate we make of the distance of objects considerably remote is rather an act of judgment grounded on experience than of sense.”31 Berkeley clarifies the nature of the experiences that enable this act of judgment when he writes: This I am persuaded of, as to what concerns myself; and I believe whoever will look narrowly into his own thoughts and examine what he means by saying he sees this or that thing at a distance, will agree with me that what he sees only suggests to his understanding that, after having passed a certain distance, to be measured by the motion of his body, which is perceivable by touch, he shall come to perceive such and such tangible ideas which have been usually connected with such and such visible ideas.32
29 Cole, The Gospel According to St. Mark, 323. 30 Berkeley, “An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision,” 7. 31 Berkeley, “An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision,” 7. 32 Berkeley, “An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision,” 22.
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176 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake When Berkeley speaks of how the “motion” of the “body” is “perceivable by touch,” he makes it clear that he includes the kinaesthetic within the tangible rather than viewing it as its own category. It is our experiences of the normal relationship between the tangible, as understood in this broader sense of the term, and the visual that, for Berkeley, allow our understandings to make the judgments required for the perception of distance. This idea raises the question of what the eyes see prior to the work of the understanding. According to Berkeley, “what we immediately and properly see are only lights and colours in sundry situations and shades and degrees of faintness and clearness, confusion and distinctness.”33 In looking at that sentence, one can certainly see why Stephen regards Berkeley as viewing what is immediately seen as a “veil of space with coloured emblems hatched on its field” (U 3.417–18). That being said, while Stephen clearly has some awareness of Berkeley’s theory of vision, the experiment he conducts to examine that theory shows that he does not fully understand it. As noted, Stephen views Berkeley as arguing that the immediate field of vision is “flat” and that one must “think distance” to give depth to that field (U 3.418–19). To explore Berkeley’s theory, Stephen tries to enact the transition from two-dimensional vision to three-dimensional vision, and he considers himself to be successful in doing so. One can see this when he thinks, “Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope” (U 3.419–20). Yet, in thinking that he can view the world in two dimensions, Stephen demonstrates that he has not fully grasped Berkeley’s conception of vision. For Berkeley, we make the judgments involved in vision so often that they become habitual, and this means that we automatically see the world in three dimensions. There can be no return to a flat field of vision. The reason Stephen considers this to be possible is that, as Cleo Hanaway-Oakley has observed, in thinking about Berkeley’s theory of vision, Stephen slips into a description of the procedure for using a stereoscope. A popular entertainment form in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the stereoscope was “one of the first pre-cinematic devices to produce an apparently three-dimensional image.”34 To see that Stephen is thinking of stereoscopes, it is helpful to look again at his description of how vision operates: Hold hard. Coloured on a flat: yes, that’s right. Flat I see, then think distance, near, far, flat I see, east, back. Ah, see now! Falls back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope. Click does the trick. (U 3.418–20)
33 Berkeley, “An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision,” 36. 34 Hanaway-Oakley, James Joyce and the Phenomenology of Film, 85–6.
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Seeing through Balkelly 177 Hanaway-Oakley explains how this relates to using a stereoscope: The viewer must “Hold hard” onto the apparatus and then wait for the “flat” 2D images to transform into seemingly 3D objects, to fall “back suddenly, frozen in stereoscope.” It is the “Click [that] does the trick”; it is the adjustment of focal length—achieved through sliding the stereogram image along the crossbar then clicking it into the correct position—that brings the 3D image into focus.35
Given the extent to which Stephen is here thinking of the stereoscope, it makes sense that his thoughts on vision do not entirely accord with those of Berkeley. Having said that, the parallels between Berkeley’s theory of vision and the workings of a stereoscope are such that one can understand why he would use the latter to engage with the former. Just as Stephen’s approach to Berkeley’s theory of vision is influenced by the parallel he draws with the workings of a stereoscope, so it is also influenced by his earlier thoughts on Aristotle. Within those thoughts, Stephen focuses on the relationship between colors and bodies, and he returns to this subject during his musings on Berkeley. From Stephen’s perspective, those two philosophers have opposite understandings of vision. He associates Aristotle with the idea that one perceives bodies before colors and Berkeley with the notion that one perceives colors before bodies. This opposition is false because, as noted earlier, contrary to what Stephen thinks, Aristotle does not argue that one perceives bodies before colors. The point Aristotle is making in the passage Stephen references is that colors reside in bodies. At the same time, while Aristotle and Berkeley do not have directly contrary understandings of the relationship between colors and bodies, they are by no means in agreement. Berkeley does not hold with Aristotle’s idea that colors reside in bodies. From his perspective, we only experience colors in this way because of how our experiences have trained us to unite the visual and the tangible. There is no essential connection between an object’s visual properties and its tangible properties. In contrasting Berkeley to Aristotle, Stephen also aligns Berkeley with the idealist position that he sets in opposition to Aristotle’s realist position. Since Joyce’s pre-Ulysses references to Berkeley show that he saw him as an idealist, this alignment is understandable. Stephen’s thoughts on Berkeley in “Proteus” focus on Berkeley’s theory of vision rather than his mature idealist philosophy, but that theory very much anticipates that philosophy and so Berkeley’s theory of vision cannot be dissociated from his later idealism. This being so, Stephen’s thoughts on Berkeley’s theory of vision should certainly be read as an element of the episode’s larger exploration of the relative merits of realism and idealism. In considering how Berkeley’s appearance in “Proteus” anticipates his reappearance in book four of the Wake, it is essential to recognize the central tension 35 Hanaway-Oakley, James Joyce and the Phenomenology of Film, 86.
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178 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake within the presentation of Berkeley in Ulysses’ third episode. Berkeley is there cast as an orthodox thinker by being described as “the good bishop of Cloyne” (U 3.416). At the same time, he is also portrayed as an unorthodox thinker, a skeptic even, because of his idealism. This tension would be repeated in the presentation of Berkeley in the Wake, and it is one of the reasons why it is so hard to define the character of Balkelly.
Paddrock and Balkelly When one turns from Berkeley’s appearance in Ulysses to that in Finnegans Wake, one finds him being located in a very different context. This is because the Paddrock and Balkelly episode grew out of Joyce’s fascination with St. Patrick rather than his interest in Berkeley. Joyce’s Wake notebooks contain a vast number of notes on Ireland’s patron saint, and those notes derive from a wide range of sources. As Daniel Ferrer has observed, the notebook in which Joyce most fully engages with St. Patrick is VI.B.14. There one can see “Joyce working his way methodically through half a dozen full-length studies [of St. Patrick] (with some passing references to a seventh book), as well as articles in the Catholic Encyclopedia, an extended effort resulting in some fifty pages of notes.”36 While VI.B.14 contains Joyce’s largest repository of notes on St. Patrick, there are also notes related to him in many of the other Wake notebooks. The particular notes that inspired the Paddrock and Balkelly episode are in VI.B.3. That notebook dates from between March and July of 1923, and it contains a number of notes from Joseph Mary Flood’s 1918 book Ireland: Its Saints and Scholars.37 While some of those notes relate to St. Patrick, others relate to the figure of the ollave, and it was from the latter that Joyce created Balkelly, the antagonist of the Wake’s major rendering of St. Patrick. Joyce drew his notes on the ollave from a chapter in which Flood explains how the Irish education system worked between the fifth and seventh centuries of the common era. According to Flood, there were then “two classes of school in Ireland, the ecclesiastical and the lay.” The lay schools “succeeded to the schools which had been governed by the Druids before the introduction of Christianity to Ireland, and the Christian Ollaves or doctors who taught in them were the successors of the wise men who directed the training and education of the people of pagan Ireland.” In discussing the duties and privileges of ollaves, Flood pays particular attention to the “Ollave poet” and points out that such an ollave had to undergo a much longer course of education than other ollaves and so was treated with even greater respect.38
36 Ferrer, “Introduction,” 9. 37 For the dating of VI.B.3, see Deane, “Introduction,” 4. 38 Flood, Ireland: Its Saints and Scholars, 85–6.
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Seeing through Balkelly 179 The passage on the ollave poet clearly roused Joyce’s interest, and he took a number of notes from it, including “7 degrees of wisdom// then Ollave” and “ollave can wear/ same number/ of hues as king.”39 In the same notebook, one finds the seed of the Paddrock and Balkelly episode: “Culter of this thing in/ itself see the grass// (r+o+y+b+i+v).”40 This note does not come from Flood, but, as Vincent Deane has pointed out, it is certainly connected to Joyce’s notes from Flood.41 This is because, in referencing a philosophical concept, Immanuel’s Kant’s thing in itself, alongside the colors of the rainbow, that note points to two of the principal subjects of Joyce’s notes from Flood: wisdom and color. Joyce would expand the “Culter” note into Balkelly’s two speeches, which were the first part of the Paddrock and Balkelly episode to be written. While it is hard to judge how far Joyce had developed his plans for those speeches when he took down this note, one can see how it points ahead to some of the key aspects of Balkelly’s speeches. As Deane observes, the first word of the note, “Culter,” serves as a variant spelling of “coulter,” which is a word for a knife.42 Consequently, the phrase “Cultur of this thing/ in itself ” anticipates Balkelly’s incisive mode of vision.43 That phrase also contains the Kantian term “thing/ in itself,” and this term appears in Balkelly’s first speech in the Wake as “the Ding hvad in idself id est” (611.21). The second half of the note, “see the grass// (r+o+y+b+i+v),” would be developed into Balkelly’s description of how all objects of all colors look green to him.44 That color is conspicuously absent from the list of the colors of the rainbow at the end of the note. It did not take Joyce long to develop that note into the first draft of the Paddrock and Balkelly episode. The notes in VI.B.3 date from between March and July of 1923, and the earliest draft of that episode was written in July of 1923.45 That draft contains two sentences, each of which offers the earliest form of one of Balkelly’s speeches. Here is the first of those sentences: The archdruid ^topside joss pidgin man^ ^Berkeley^ ^of the Irish josspidgin^ ^in his heptachromatic sevenhued roranyellgreeblindigo^ then explained ^to silent ^whiterobed^ Patrick^ the ^ illusiones^ of the colourful world ^of joss^, its furniture, animal, vegetable and mineral, appearing to fallen men under but one ^ reflectionem^ of the several iridal gradations of solar light, that one which it had been unable to ^ absorbere^ while for the seer beholding reality, the thing as in itself it is, all objects showed themselves in their true ^ coloribus^, resplendent with the sextuple ^ gloria^ of the light actually ^ retained^ within them.46
39 VI.B.3: 92–3; JJA 29:226. VI.B.3: 93; JJA 29:226. 40 VI.B.3: 64–5; JJA 29:212. 41 Deane, “Introduction,” 6. 42 Deane, “Introduction,” 6. 43 VI.B.3: 64; JJA 29:212. 44 VI.B.3: 64–5; JJA 29:212. 45 For the dating of the draft, see JJA 63:145. 46 BL 47488 f. 99; JJA 63:146a; FDV 279.
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180 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake As is evident, by the time Joyce produced this draft he had substantially expanded the note that inspired the scene. In carrying out that expansion, Joyce drew upon his notes on ollaves. For example, the “heptachromatic sevenhued roranyellgreeblindigo” outfit of the archdruid is informed by both “7 degrees of wisdom// then Ollave” and “ollave can wear/ same number/ of hues as king.”47 In looking at the above first draft, one can see why Joyce chose to involve Berkeley. He had created an Irish scene in which a prominent figure speaks of perception and, in doing so, references a famously difficult philosophical concept. It was therefore in many ways appropriate for that figure to be named Berkeley. Furthermore, even in its first draft, the archdruid’s first speech shares a number of the concerns of the Berkeleyan section of “Proteus.” As well as being interested in vision and, more specifically, the relationship between colors and bodies, that speech also engages with the connection between the human and the divine. The archdruid contrasts the ordinary vision of “fallen men” with that of seers like himself who can perceive the “gloria” of the light retained within objects. At the same time, Berkeley’s faith was so central in his life and thought that, in depicting him as an “archdruid,” Joyce created a version of Berkeley that is profoundly, comically un-Berkeleyan.48 What’s more, by placing that archdruid in opposition to a deeply devout man, Joyce ensured that both Balkelly and Paddrock would have some essentially Berkeleyan qualities. On completing the first draft of the Paddrock and Balkelly episode, Joyce produced two more drafts. He then sent all three of his drafts of that episode to Weaver.49 After doing so, Joyce put aside Balkelly’s speeches and did not return to them for fifteen years. It seems likely that one of the reasons for this was that Weaver did not respond positively to the drafts she received. In a letter to Weaver dated October 9, 1923, Joyce writes, “I am sorry that Patrick and [?] Berkeley are unsuccessful in explaining themselves” (Letters I, 204–5). This remark is somewhat misleading in that it suggests that both of the main characters within the scene Joyce sent to Weaver have the opportunity to explain themselves. While Paddrock appears within the submitted drafts as the recipient of Balkelly’s speeches, none of those drafts contain any of his words. Paddrock’s response would not become a part of the scene until much later. When Joyce produced the first drafts of the Paddrock and Balkelly episode, the writing of Finnegans Wake had barely begun. By the time he returned to that episode, his novel was almost finished. It was in the middle of 1938, about a year before the publication of Finnegans Wake, that Joyce began to rework and expand his long-dormant depictions of Paddrock and Balkelly.50 His first major addition
47 VI.B.3: 92–3; JJA 29:226. VI.B.3: 93; JJA 29: 226. 48 BL 47488 f. 99; JJA 63:146a; FDV 279. 49 See Letters III, 79. 50 For the dating of draft 3.3 of FW 607.23–614.18, see JJA 63:145.
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Seeing through Balkelly 181 can be seen in the first 1938 draft of the episode.51 One finds there the earliest version of the Muta and Juva dialogue, which is the exchange that opens the Paddrock and Balkelly episode and introduces its main characters. In the next draft, Joyce added the earliest forms of all the sections of the episode that follow Balkelly’s speeches.52 That draft contains nascent versions of Paddrock’s response, the crowd’s reaction, and the summation of the scene. As Joyce filled out the episode and developed the new sections, so he continued to make changes and additions to Balkelly’s speeches. Consequently, while the earliest versions of those speeches were the starting point for the episode, their final forms also reflect the rest of the episode. As noted, the tale of Paddrock and Balkelly does not begin with that pair but rather with Muta and Juva. Their dialogue sets the scene for the confrontation that follows. This is how their conversation begins: Muta: Quodestnunc fumusiste volhvuns ex Domoyno? Juva:
It is Old Head of Kettle puffing off the top of the mornin.
Muta: He odda be thorly well ashamed of himself for smoking before the high host. (FW 609.24–7)
McHugh suggests that Muta’s first words offer a version of the Latin “Quod est nunc fumus iste volvens ex Domino?” (What now is that smoke rolling out of the Lord?) (AFW 609). It is this smoke that is referenced when Juva speaks of “puffing” in his response (FW 609.25). The transgressive nature of the smoke is made clear when Muta subsequently asserts that “He odda be thorly well ashamed of himself for smoking before the high host” (FW 609.26–7). These remarks all allude to the Paschal fire that St. Patrick lit at Slane. That fire was a violation of the law because High King Laoghaire was at that time taking part in a religious festival at Tara and, to quote Dean Kinane, “it was one of the standing laws of this festival, that the fires should be extinguished in every hearth of Erin, and death was the penalty upon anyone who durst kindle his fire before that of Tara was seen shining in the stillness of the dark night.”53 High King Laoghaire saw St. Patrick’s fire, and so he and his druids travelled to Slane to confront the lawbreaker. It was there that the first of several contests between St. Patrick and High King Laoghaire’s druids took place. Those contests are the primary inspiration for the Wake’s altercation between Paddrock and archdruid Balkelly.
51 See BL 47488 f. 91–3; JJA 63:155–7; FDV 278–9. 52 See BL 47488 f. 112v, 113, 113v; JJA 63:170–2; FDV 280. 53 Kinane, St. Patrick, 95. Kinane’s biography of St. Patrick is one of the books on St. Patrick that Joyce read while working on the Wake. As Ferrer observes, Joyce “filled twenty pages” of notebook VI.B.14 “with notes from it” (Ferrer, “Introduction,” 10).
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182 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake As the dialogue between Muta and Juva continues, the episode’s main characters are introduced: Juva: Khubadah! It is the Chrystanthemlander with his porters of bonzos, pompommy plonkyplonk, the ghariwallahs, moveyovering the cabrattlefield of slaine. Muta: Pongo da Banza! An I would uscertain in druidful scatterings one piece tall chap he stand one piece same place? Juva: Bulkily: and he is fundementially theosophagusted over the whorse proceedings. (FW 609.32–610.02)
Paddrock is the “Chrystanthemlander” of whom Juva speaks and Balkelly is Muta’s “one piece tall chap.” When the Wake offers a pair of contrary male characters, one is usually Shemish and the other Shaunish. In identifying a character as a version of Shem or Shaun, one goes a long way to understanding the nature and function of that character. Given the number of characteristics that are assigned to Paddrock and Balkelly in the above quote, one would think it would be straightforward to identify one as Shem and the other as Shaun, but this is not the case. The Balkelly of the above quote certainly has Shaunish qualities. Muta points to Balkelly’s size when he describes him as a “one piece tall chap,” and Juva picks up on this idea when he refers to Balkelly as “Bulkily” (FW 609.36, 610.01). Shaunish characters are usually presented as being physically large so as to connect them to the spatial rather than the temporal. In the above quote, Balkelly is also defined as sharing the choleric disposition of Shaunish characters like Professor Jones and the Ondt. Juva speaks of him as being “fundementially theosophagusted,” and the latter word in that phrase suggests, among many other things, “disgusted” (FW 610–01). Furthermore, the idea that Balkelly is a version of Shaun draws support from the fact that, in a 1924 letter to Weaver, Joyce wrote, “my one bedazzled eye searched the sea like Cain-Shem-Tristan-Patrick.”54 The Wakean rendering of St. Patrick is Shemish insofar as he is humble and he emphasizes the importance of unity. If Paddrock is a version of Shem, it only stands to reason that his antagonist must be a form of Shaun. At the same time, Shaun is typically associated with orthodox thought, especially Catholicism, and the Catholic character in this scene is of course Paddrock. His religion is built into the term that Juva uses to describe him because the first syllable of “Chrystanthemlander” is a homophone for “Christ” (FW 609.32). Paddrock’s Christianity sets him in opposition to Balkelly, who is associated with Shemish unorthodox thought by virtue of being connected to theosophy. This connection can be seen when Juva describes Balkelly as being “fundementially 54 Joyce, Selected Letters of James Joyce, 220.
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Seeing through Balkelly 183 theosophagusted” (FW 610–01). Since Juva is the narrator who backs Paddrock, his connection between Balkelly’s thought and theosophy may simply be intended to suggest the illegitimacy of the archdruid’s beliefs. That being said, Juva is not wrong to make that connection. While theosophical thought takes many different forms, the mode of vision to which the archdruid subsequently lays claim, a mystical mode of vision that moves beyond the physical to the spiritual, is in keeping with the broad tenets of theosophy. In discussing the common characteristics of theosophical belief, J. Gordon Melton of the Encyclopedia Britannica notes that “Theosophical writers hold that there is a deeper spiritual reality and that direct contact with that reality can be established through intuition, mediation, revelation, or some other state transcending normal human consciousness.”55 Despite the parallels between Balkelly’s beliefs and those of theosophy, one might assume that Berkeley’s philosophy, being so essentially Christian, has little in common with theosophy. Yet this is not the case. As will be shown, Berkeley certainly supports the idea of a “deeper spiritual reality.” It is difficult to definitively align Paddrock with one Earwicker twin and the Balkelly with the other because both have Shemish and Shaunish qualities. This idea is underscored by Juva when he refers to Balkelly as “Bulkily” (FW 610.01). Juva’s reference points ahead to his later remark that “High Ober King Leary,” the Wake’s version of High King Laoghaire, has “help his crewn on the burkeley buy but he has holf his crown on the Eurasian Generalissimo” (FW 610.04, 11–13). This is where the connection between the tale of Paddrock and Balkelly and that of Buckley and the Russian General is made explicit. Balkelly is here associated with his virtual namesake Buckley and Paddrock is related to the Russian General. The connection between the two tales suggests that Paddrock and Balkelly are both combinations of Shem and Shaun because, as was discussed in Chapter 3, Buckley and the Russian General both operate in this manner. This understanding of their characters derives from a note in notebook VI.B.13, “Crimea & .”56 Buckley is here represented by the siglum that combines Shem and Shaun, , and the Russian General is denoted by HCE’s siglum, . Since the Wake suggests on numerous occasions that, after overthrowing their father, the united Shem and Shaun become the new HCE, and are not so much separate characters as different stages in the development of a composite identity. By relating Balkelly and Paddrock to Buckley and the Russian General, Joyce suggests that those characters also function as versions of and . In broaching this interpretation, however, it is important not to overly concretize the idea that Balkelly is a version of and Paddrock a rendering of . Joyce is hardly consistent in such matters. For example, notebook VI.B.21 contains the note “ Patrick.”57 The important point is rather that Juva’s reference to the tale of Buckley and the Russian General 55 J. Gordon Melton, “Theosophy | Definition, Beliefs, History, & Facts | Britannica.” 56 VI.B.13: 188; JJA 32:96. 57 VI.B.21: 118; JJA 34:61.
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184 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake adds support to the idea that both Paddrock and Balkelly, in their very different ways, combine aspects of Shem and Shaun. The complex nature of Balkelly’s identity makes it difficult for the reader to locate Berkeley amidst the philosophers of the Wake. He is neither aligned with Vico, Bruno, and the other Shemish thinkers nor with Aristotle, Aquinas, and their Shaunish kin. This makes it all the more important to pay close attention to the ideas of the Wake’s version of Berkeley.
Balkelly’s Vision Many of those ideas are offered in Balkelly’s first speech, which begins shortly after the end of the Muta and Juva dialogue. That speech is not presented directly but rather recounted by the narrator of the tale. It opens with Balkelly’s definition of ordinary vision. According to the archdruid, most people see “all too many much illusiones through photoprismic velamina of hueful panepiphanal world spectacurum of Lord Joss” (FW 611.12–14). Balkelly here argues that ordinary vision yields not truths but rather “all too many much illusiones.” These illusions derive from “photoprismic velamina.” As McHugh notes, “velamina” is the Latin for “veils,” and so the word points back to Stephen’s consideration of Berkeley in the “Proteus” episode of Ulysses (AFW 611). Stephen there pondered “the veil of the temple” and the “veil of space” (U 3.416–17). When Balkelly uses the word “velamina,” the veils to which he refers are the surfaces of objects. Those surfaces are “photoprismic” insofar as they separate the rays of light that they retain from those that they reflect. By relating the surfaces of objects to veils, Balkelly suggests that there is something hidden within objects that ordinary vision cannot perceive. The archdruid goes on to say that the “photoprismic velamina” of conventional eyesight belong to the “hueful panepiphanal world” (FW 611.13). The word “hueful” suggests “colorful,” and “panepiphanal,” as McHugh observes, points primarily to “paneiphanês,” the Greek for “all-visible” (AFW 611). Appearing in a text by Joyce, “panepiphanal” cannot help but also evoke the epiphany. Here, however, that evocation is ironic because Balkelly is arguing that ordinary vision cannot grasp the true nature of objects. The “hueful panepiphanal world” is described as the “spectacurum of Lord Joss” (FW 611.13–14). Balkelly’s first speech contains a number of words from Chinese Pidgin English including “Joss,” which, as McHugh points out, is the word for “God” in that language (AFW 611). The “Lord Joss” is said to possess a “spectacurum” (FW 611.14). This word suggests not only “spectrum” but also, to draw once more upon McHugh, “spectaculum,” the Latin word for “stage play” (AFW 611). This signification is entirely relevant because it points back to the central idea of the passage, which is that the surfaces of objects offer a false understanding of the world.
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Seeing through Balkelly 185 As Balkelly continues his speech, he proceeds to explain why he conceives of the surfaces of objects in this manner: the of which zoantholitic furniture, from mineral through vegetal to animal, not appear to full up together fallen man than under but one photoreflection of the several iridals gradationes of solar light, that one which that part of it (furnit of heupanepi world) had shown itself (part of fur of huepanwor) unable to absorbere (FW 611.14–19)
The objects of the world are here described as its “zoantholitic furniture.” McHugh notes that the adjective “zoantholitic” combines the Greek words for “animal” (“zôon”), “flower” (“anthos”), and “stone” (“lithos”), and this explains why Balkelly speaks of the “zoantholitic furniture” as moving “from mineral through vegetal to animal” (AFW 611). The more conventional word “furniture” is also important because it relates to Berkeley. In A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley uses the word “furniture” in a very similar manner to Balkelly when he argues, to quote just the relevant part of a long sentence, “that all the choir of heaven and furniture of the earth, in a word all those bodies which compose the mighty frame of the world, have not any subsistence without a mind.”58 The idea that Joyce was pointing to Berkeley through the word “furniture” is supported by the fact that the referenced Berkeleyan sentence appears in the book on Berkeley that Joyce owned, Fraser’s Berkeley.59 The Wake’s Berkeley speaks of “zoantholitic furniture,” for the purposes of making the argument that such objects “appear to full up together fallen man” under “but one photoreflection of the several iridals gradationes of solar light, that one which that part of it . . . had shown itself . . . unable to absorbere” (FW 611.15–19) What is said here is quite straightforward: for ordinary human beings, the color of an object is defined by the wavelengths of visible light which have been reflected rather than absorbed by the surfaces of the object. From the manner in which Balkelly frames this idea, it is evident that he thinks that to perceive the color of an object based on just “one photoreflection” is to be limited in one’s vision. In considering Balkelly’s definition of ordinary sight, one should also pay attention to his reference to “full up together fallen man.” Through this reference, Balkelly defines mankind’s perceptual limitations as a product of the Biblical fall of man and so suggests that to forsake God is also to forsake the real. Berkeley would very much have agreed with this idea. After defining ordinary vision, Balkelly explains the extraordinary manner in which he perceives the objects of the world:
58 Berkeley, “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” 85. 59 See Fraser, Berkeley, 61.
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186 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake whereas for numpa one puraduxed seer in seventh degree of wisdom of Entis-Onton he savvy inside true inwardness of reality, the Ding hvad in idself id est, all objects (of panepiwor) allside showed themselves in trues coloribus resplendent with sextuple gloria of light actually retained, untisintus, inside them (obs of epiwo). (FW 611.19–24)
At the start of this section, Balkelly defines himself as the “numpa one puraduxed seer.” As McHugh points out, the word “puraduxed” suggests both “paradised” and “paradoxed” (AFW 611). The reference to paradise not only implies the perfection of Balkelly’s mode of vision but also contrasts the manner in which he sees the world with that of “full up together fallen man” (FW 611.15–16). Through this contrast, Balkelly puts forward the idea that his form of sight is superior to that of ordinary human beings because it is closer to that of God. The word “puraduxed” also points to “paradoxed” and the purpose of this signification is to allow Balkelly to suggest that the manner in which he perceives the world is paradoxical in that he can use two opposed forms of vision: the ordinary form of mankind and his own higher form (FW 611.19–20). Balkelly’s capacity for both forms of vision is evident from his detailed comparison of the two. The archdruid goes on to speak of himself as being “in seventh degree of wisdom of Entis-Onton” (FW 611.20). The term “seventh degree of wisdom” derives from the source of the tale of Paddrock and Balkelly: Joyce’s notes on ollaves from Flood’s Ireland: Its Saints and Scholars. In notebook VI.B.3, one finds the note “7 degrees of / wisdom // then Ollave.” That note comes from this passage within Flood’s description of how Ireland’s early lay schools operated: The course of education was divided into seven stages, or as they were called the “seven degrees of wisdom,” which corresponded with the term periods in a modern university. A student who had passed through the various degrees and attained to the highest grade was known as an “Ollave or Doctor.”60
Since Balkelly wears the “heptachromatic sevenhued septicoloured” outfit of the ollave, he has evidently passed through the “seven degrees of wisdom” and “attained to the highest grade” (FW 611.06). Consequently, when Balkelly speaks of himself as being in the “seventh degree of wisdom,” it is a means for him to suggest that his intellect is as special as his vision. Balkelly describes his wisdom as residing in the field of “Entis-Onton” (FW 611.20). McHugh notes that these two words are similar because “entis” is the Latin for “of a being” and “ontôn” is the Greek for “of beings” (AFW 611). “Entis-Onton” is a highly important term within Balkelly’s speech because it is here that he begins
60 VI.B.3: 92–3; JJA 29:226. Flood, Ireland: Its Saints and Scholars, 86.
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Seeing through Balkelly 187 to speak of the ontological alongside the visual. The manner in which Balkelly relates the two can be seen when he subsequently speaks of his ability to “savvy inside true inwardness of reality” (FW 611.20–1). To “savvy” something is to “know” or “understand” it.61 Since this comment leads into Balkelly’s declaration that he is able to perceive the light contained within objects, it seems within the context that the archdruid is able to understand the “true inwardness of reality” because he is able to perceive it. This reading is reinforced by the fact that Balkelly’s claim to “savvy inside true inwardness of reality” grew out of the first draft’s reference to “the seer beholding reality.”62 What Balkelly perceives and understands within the “true inwardness of reality” is “the Ding hvad in idself id est” (611.21). On a basic level, this phrase, which derives from the note that inspired the whole episode, simply means “the thing that in itself it is.” What complicates matters is that it references Kant’s famous “ding an sich” (thing in itself) and, as will be discussed, the thing in itself is a complex and unstable concept within Kant’s philosophy. After referencing Kant, Balkelly puts aside ontological matters and returns to the subject of visual perception. The archdruid says that, within his mode of vision, “all objects . . . allside showed themselves in trues coloribus resplendent with sextuple gloria of light actually retained, untisintus, inside them” (FW 611.22–4). Balkelly here says that he is able to see objects in their true colors. By this he means that he can see the wavelengths of light retained within those objects. In this fantastical conception of optics, the light that is absorbed by the surfaces of an object is stored within that object as light and is capable of being externally perceived. Since this is not how light functions, one might be led to consider Balkelly’s claims regarding his vision to be false, but such a reading would overlook the generic context for the tale of Paddrock and Balkelly. The myths that tell of St. Patrick’s contests with High King Laoghaire’s druids are full of extraordinary feats that defy the laws of the physical world. Balkelly’s mode of vision is quite in keeping with the conventions of those myths and so, in that context, should be taken as real. In considering the means by which Balkelly explains his special mode of vision, it is important to note his use of the word “gloria,” the Latin for “glory,” to describe the light he sees within objects (FW 611.23). While Balkelly principally uses this word in the sense of, to quote the OED, “resplendent beauty or magnificence,” one cannot divorce “gloria” from its important religious meanings.63 Within Christianity, that word is often used to refer to the splendiferous light of God or heaven. Therefore, in saying that he perceives “sextuple gloria of light” within objects, Balkelly suggests not only the magnificence of that light but also its divinity (FW 611.23). This explains why Balkelly believes that his mode of vision brings him closer to God.
61 “Savvy, v.”
62 BL 47488 f. 99; JJA 63:146a; FDV 279.
63 “Glory, n.”
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188 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake As shown, Balkelly spends a great deal of time explaining how his mode of vision functions. Yet, for all his efforts, Paddrock grasps none of it. As the narrator puts it, “Rumnant Patholic, stareotypopticus, no catch all that preachybook” (FW 611.24–5). Paddrock’s mode of vision is here defined through the word “stareotypopticus.” While this portmanteau contains within it a number of different words, many of which relate to vision, the two most important are “stereotype” and “stereoscope.” These words combine to suggest that Paddrock views the world in a conventionally three-dimensional manner and so is incapable of the transcendent vision to which Balkelly lays claim. On seeing that Paddrock has not understood him, Balkelly tries again to convey the nature of his vision. The speech through which he does so is rather different to his first. It consists of seven parts, all of which have the same form. In each, Balkelly insults Paddrock, identifies an object within the appearance of High Ober King Leary, and then declares that object to look green to him (FW 612.04). As with Balkelly’s first utterance, this speech is related by the narrator rather than being presented directly, and this allows that narrator to show that the true colors of the objects that Balkelly takes to be green follow those of the colors of the rainbow. Joyce does not provide those colors directly, but rather suggests or offers a synonym for each:
(1) FW 611.33: “fiery” (red) (2) FW 611.36: “saffron” (orange) (3) FW 612.02: “golden” (yellow) (4) FW 612.03: “verdant” (green) (5) FW 612.06: “bulopent” (blue) (6) FW 612.08: “Indian” (indigo)64 (7) FW 612.11: “violaceous” (violet)
Balkelly’s speech demonstrates that he does not realize that, when he looks into objects and sees “sextuple gloria of light,” the one color of the rainbow that is always missing is green and, since green is always the color that is reflected rather than absorbed, every object looks green to him (FW 611.23). This being so, just as he necessarily misperceives the external appearances of all objects that are not green, so he must also misperceive the light retained within such objects because he will always see that light as consisting of the six colors of the rainbow that are not green. It is clear that Balkelly’s internal vision and his external vision are both severely distorted. He is not the superior being he considers himself to be, and so his arrogance is misguided and comic. In considering the nature of Balkelly’s vision, it is worth noting Deane’s observation that the note that inspired Balkelly’s
64 McHugh notes that “‘indigo’ means the ‘the Indian substance’” (AFW 612).
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Seeing through Balkelly 189 speeches (“Culter of this thing in/ itself see the grass// (r+o+y+b+i+v)”) offers “an image born of Citizen-like hairsplitting, which reduces the diversity of the perceived world to a fragmentation of a national unity it would like to represent as being as natural and universal as grass.”65 This nationalistic interpretation is certainly a useful way of understanding the purpose behind Balkelly’s visual biases. For all that Joyce internationalizes the tale of Paddrock and Balkelly, the idea that it depicts a confrontation between a native Irishman and an outsider from a different culture is still central to it. Having reviewed Balkelly’s speeches, one can begin to assess the extent to which he resembles Berkeley. The first step in doing so is to recognize that, within Balkelly’s speeches, he makes three main claims:
(1) He is able to see the wavelengths of light retained within objects. (2) He is able to see the thing in itself. (3) He is able to look beyond the physical world to the divine.
Claims (1) and (2) share the same concerns as Stephen’s thoughts on Berkeley in “Proteus”: the relationship between bodies and colors and the boundary between the human and the divine. These are certainly important matters in Berkeley’s philosophy, but to acknowledge this is not to say that Berkeley would have agreed with Balkelly’s views on those matters. As regards Balkelly’s first major claim, which is that he can see the wavelengths of light retained within objects, it is correct to say that Berkeley was aware that objects absorb light. In his last work, Siris, Berkeley discusses Newton’s Opticks and says, “And to him [Newton] it seems probable, that as many rays as impinge on the solid parts of bodies, are not reflected but stifled and retained in the bodies.”66 Berkeley then goes on to agree with this idea. As one would expect, however, the author of “An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision” never espouses the idea that one can look through the surfaces of an object and see the light it has absorbed. Berkeley was very interested in optics, but, as evidenced by his reference to Newton, his engagement with that subject was scientific rather than mystical.
Kant Balkelly’s second major claim is that he can see the thing in itself. It is one of the curious features of the Wake’s version of Berkeley that he does not directly point 65 VI.B.3: 64–5; JJA 29:212. Deane, “Introduction,” 6. 66 Berkeley, Siris, a Chain of Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries Concerning the Virtues of Tar Water, 103.
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190 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake to any of his main source’s central concepts, but he does mention one of Kant’s most famous ideas. What makes this all the curiouser is that Kant is not a thinker that Joyce often references in his writings. Of the relatively few allusions to Kant in the Wake, the most significant other than that offered by Balkelly can be found in III.3. A version of Shaun named Yawn has a speech in that chapter that points to the twelve forms of judgment that Kant includes in his table of judgments in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason).67 The only allusion to Kant in Joyce’s fiction prior to the Wake appears in Ulysses, and that allusion is to the same idea as the one referenced in Balkelly’s speech. In “Ithaca,” as Bloom tries to justify to himself his sentiments regarding Molly’s relationship with Blazes Boylan, he reflects upon “the presupposed intangibility of the thing in itself ” (U 17.2212–3). To assess Berkeley’s relationship to the Kantian concept pondered by Bloom, one must first define that concept. This is not an easy thing to do because, as Howard Caygill observes, Kant uses the term “thing in itself ” to “denote a cluster of meanings.”68 One of the main reasons for this is that Kant defines the thing in itself in three different works: the 1781 first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (usually referred to as the A edition); 1783’s Prolegomena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik, die als Wissenschaft wird auftreten können (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will be Able to Come Forward as Science), which is a summary of the key ideas of the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason; and the 1787 second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (generally known as the B edition). While the Prolegomena is largely consistent with the A edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, there are significant differences between the A and B editions. The B edition lacks some of the parts of the A edition and also contains substantial passages that are original to it. These changes are not just structural or linguistic; they are products of the evolution of Kant’s ideas. Consequently, in speaking of the thing in itself, one must at times account for the differences between the two editions of the Critique of Pure Reason.69 The best way to approach the concept of the thing in itself is to start with two key distinctions within Kant’s thought. The first is that between the sensibility and the understanding: The capacity (receptivity) to obtain representations through the way in which we are affected by objects is called sensibility. Objects are therefore given to us 67 For Yawn’s speech, see FW 523.21–525.05. For Kant’s table of judgments, see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A70/B95, 98. [Citations of the Critique of Pure Reason in this book take the form: Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, original first (A) and/or (B) edition page number, page number in cited edition.] Joyce took notes from Kant’s table of judgments and his table of categories. These can be found in VI.B.4: 77–8; JJA 29:301–2. 68 Caygill, A Kant Dictionary, 393. 69 The edition of the Critique of Pure Reason quoted in this chapter follows the standard modern convention of integrating the A edition and the B edition.
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Seeing through Balkelly 191 by means of our sensibility. Sensibility alone supplies us with intuitions. These intuitions are thought through the understanding, and from the understanding there arise concepts.70
Within this complex conception of perception, the sensibility enables objects to produce intuitions and these intuitions are then transferred to the understanding which uses the processes of thought to derive concepts from them. This being so, our knowledge of objects is a product of the operations of both the sensibility and the understanding. This is why Kant refers to them as the “two stems of human knowledge.”71 The second important distinction is that between a priori knowledge and a posteriori knowledge: In what follows, therefore, we shall understand by a priori knowledge, not knowledge independent of this or that experience, but knowledge absolutely independent of all experience. Opposed to it is empirical knowledge, which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience.72
The significance of this second distinction lies in how Kant relates it to the first. The idea that we use our sensibilities and our understandings to draw knowledge from our experiences is hardly controversial. The extraordinary move Kant makes is to argue that we each also possess an a priori understanding and a priori sensibility. The a priori understanding contains judgments and concepts which, according to Kant, necessarily cannot derive from experience. Kant illustrates how this works by using the example of substance: If you remove from your empirical concept of any object, corporeal or incorporeal, all properties which experience has taught you, yet you cannot take away from it that property by which you think the object as a substance . . . . Persuaded, therefore by the necessity with which that concept of substance forces itself upon you, you will have to admit that it has its seat in your faculty of knowledge a priori.73
As can be seen here, to speak of a judgment or concept as belonging to the a priori understanding is not to say that it plays no role in our experiences, but rather to say that it is so essential to all experience that it cannot be the product of any one experience and so must precede all experience. Just as the a priori understanding holds essential concepts and judgments, so the a priori sensibility contains fundamental forms. One such form is space. 70 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A19/B33, 59. 72 Kant, B2–3, 38. 73 Kant, B6, 40.
71 Kant, A16/B30, 55.
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192 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake According to Kant, space “is the subjective condition of sensibility under which alone outer intuition is possible for us.”74 To put that slightly differently, Kant regards space as that within the sensibility which makes possible external experiences. He shows that he understands time to function in a complementary manner when he describes it as “the subjective condition under which alone all intuitions can take place within us.”75 As can be seen, Kant does not view space and time as residing in the world beyond the mind. Rather, he believes the mind uses the ready mental tools of space and time to enable its internal and external experiences and, thereby, create its world. Once these key ideas have been understood, one can approach the thing in itself. Kant most often uses that term to denote an external object as it exists outside of one’s sensible perception of it. An example of this can be seen in the Prolegomena: There are things given to us as objects of our senses existing outside us, yet we know nothing of them as they may be in themselves, but are acquainted only with their appearances, that is, with the representations that they produce in us because they affect our senses. Accordingly, I by all means avow that there are bodies outside us, that is, things which, though completely unknown to us as to what they may be in themselves, we know through their representations which their influence on our sensibility provides for us, and to which we give the name of a body—which word therefore merely signifies the appearance of this object that is unknown to us but is nonetheless real.76
From Kant’s perspective, we only know external objects through their appearances, which is to say through “the representations that they produce in us because they affect our senses.” How they exist beyond those appearances or, as Kant often puts it, how they exist “in themselves” is not something that can be known. Yet this idea does not cause Kant to doubt the existence of those objects. As can be seen from the above quote, Kant is very clear on the idea that our representations of external objects derive from objects that exist “outside us.” That being said, his difficulty in proving the existence of external objects that cannot be known beyond their appearances is evidenced by the fact that the B edition of the Critique of Pure Reason contains an entirely new explanation as to why this is so.77 74 Kant, A26/B42, 64. 75 Kant, A33/B49, 69. 76 Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science, 4:289, 40. [Citations of the Prolegomena in this book take the form: Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science, Volume and Page Number in the Akademie Edition, Page Number in Cited Edition.] 77 For the explanation in the A edition, see Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, A366–80, 340–53. For the explanation in the B edition, see Kant, B275–80, 238–41.
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Seeing through Balkelly 193 While Kant principally uses the term “thing in itself ” to speak of external objects as they exist beyond their appearances, he also recognizes the self as an object and uses the term “thing in itself ” in relation to the self. Kant’s position on the extent to which one can know oneself is quite consistent with his position on the degree to which one can know external objects. He observes that “we must admit that with regard to inner intuition we know our own subject only as appearance, and not as it is in itself.”78 The reason neither internal nor external objects can be known beyond their appearances is explained in the Critique of Pure Reason: What we meant to say was this, that all our intuition is nothing but the representation of appearance; that the things which we intuit are not in themselves what we intuit them as being, nor are their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us, and that, if we remove our subject or even only the subjective constitution of the senses in general, then the entire constitution and all relations of objects in space and time, nay space and time themselves, would vanish. They cannot, as appearances, exist in themselves, but only in us. It remains completely unknown to us what objects may be in themselves and apart from all this receptivity of our sensibility. We know nothing but our manner of perceiving them, a manner which is peculiar to us, and not necessarily shared by every being, even though it must be shared by every human being.79
Kant here offers a forceful rejoinder to the common conception of perception. In ordinary life, we certainly believe that our intuitions of objects reflect those objects as they are in themselves, and this causes us to think that our intuitions of the relationships between objects are similarly accurate. For Kant, this is wrong. From his perspective, our intuitions are products of how our sensations have been processed by our sensibilities. Since our sensibilities belong only to human beings, we cannot perceive things in a truly objective manner that transcends the human perspective. Nor can we undo the workings of our sensibilities and apprehend objects in their original forms, which is to say “in themselves.” Should we try to do so, those objects would simply “vanish” because, in bypassing our sensibilities, we would also be bypassing the forms that enable us to experience objects, such as space and time. Furthermore, even if an intuition of an object in itself were somehow possible, that intuition would still need to be processed by another subjective mental mechanism, the understanding, and this processing would redefine that intuition by bringing to bear upon it the mind’s essential judgments and concepts. Joyce puts a reference to Kant’s thing in itself into the mouth of his version of Berkeley. Kant would not have liked this. In the Prolegomena, he describes the 78 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B156, 155.
79 Kant, A42/B59, 75.
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194 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake A edition of the Critique of Pure Reason as the “antidote” to Berkeley’s “mystical and visionary idealism.”80 A similar approach is taken in the B edition when Kant speaks of the “dogmatic idealism of Berkeley.”81 These quotes make it sound as though Kant had a low opinion of Berkeley. Yet, when they are viewed in their original contexts, one can see that Kant felt the need to emphatically differentiate himself from Berkeley because he recognized how similar their modes of idealism were and did not want others to confuse them.
Berkeley’s Idealism What Berkeley thought of the notion of the thing in itself or, indeed, any aspect of Kant’s philosophy cannot be known because Kant had barely begun his career as a philosopher when Berkeley died. That being said, it is certainly possible to consider how Berkeley’s understanding of the relationship between the appearance of a thing and the thing in itself relates to that of Kant. To do so, one must begin with Berkeley’s conception of the nature of human knowledge. He outlines this at the start of A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge: It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by the help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways…. But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call “mind,” “spirit,” “soul,” or “my self.”82
For Berkeley, human knowledge involves two categories: the knower and the known. The knower is the “perceiving, active being” that gathers and processes knowledge from without and within. Berkeley provides a number of different names for this being, including “mind,” “soul,” and “spirit,” because he regards the acquisition of human knowledge as both an intellectual and spiritual process. That which the knower knows is ideas. These can take a number of forms, including sensations, memories, imaginings, and recognitions of emotions and mental processes.
80 Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science, 4:293, 44. 81 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B274, 238. 82 Berkeley, “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” 83.
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Seeing through Balkelly 195 Material objects are noticeably absent from Berkeley’s list of what can be known. This is because of his conception of the nature of such objects: By sight I have the ideas of light and colours with their several degrees and variations. By touch I perceive, for example, hard and soft, heat and cold, motion and resistance, and all these more and less either as to quantity or degree. Smelling furnishes me with odours; the palate with tastes, and hearing conveys sounds to the mind in all their variety of tone and composition. And as several of these are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so reputed one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name “apple.”83
Within Berkeley’s view of human knowledge, the material objects of the world, objects that we normally take to be external and independent, are nothing more than collections of sensations which we deem to constitute individual things. This understanding of material objects is what lies behind Berkeley’s famous proclamation regarding such objects, “Their esse is percipi” (“Their being, existence, or reality is to be perceived.”)84 What is radical about Berkeley’s perspective is its immaterialism. The notion of matter is at the heart of the common conception of the physical universe. For Berkeley, however, that notion is inherently problematic. In A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, he explains why he considers this to be the case by referencing John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and, in particular, that work’s influential discussion of primary and secondary qualities: Some there are who make a distinction betwixt primary and secondary qualities. By the former they mean extension, figure, motion, rest, solidity or impenetrability, and number; by the latter they denote all other sensible qualities, as colours, sounds, tastes, and so forth. The ideas we have of these they acknowledge not to be the resemblances of anything existing without the mind, or unperceived, but they will have our ideas of the primary qualities to be patterns or images of things which exist without the mind, in an unthinking substance which they call “matter.” By “matter” therefore, we are to understand an inert, senseless substance, in which extension, figure, and motion do actually subsist. But it is evident from what we have already shown, that extension, figure, and motion are only ideas existing in the mind, and that an idea can be like nothing but another idea, and that consequently neither they nor their archetypes can 83 Berkeley, “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” 83. 84 Berkeley, “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” 84. The offered gloss is that of the editor, Desmond M. Clarke.
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196 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake exist in an unperceiving substance. Hence, it is plain that the very notion of what is called “matter” or “corporeal substance” involves a contradiction in it.85
According to Berkeley, proponents of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities argue that the mind’s ideas of primary qualities differ from its ideas of secondary qualities because the former are “patterns or images of things which exist without the mind, in an unthinking substance which they call ‘matter,’ ” whereas the latter are not “the resemblances of anything existing without the mind.” As the remainder of the passage makes clear, Berkeley regards this argument as nonsense. From his perspective, “an idea can be like nothing but another idea,” and so, for the ideas of primary qualities to be “patterns or images” of the qualities of matter, the qualities of matter would need to be ideas. But to suggest that an “inert, senseless,” “unthinking,” “unperceiving” substance such as matter is capable of containing ideas is, for Berkeley, entirely contradictory. When one reads passages such as this, one can fully understand why Joyce consistently characterized Berkeley as an idealist and a skeptic. One of the key difficulties generated by Berkeley’s position relates to his distinction between ideas and the beings that process ideas. If “an idea can be like nothing but another idea,” one must ask how he can claim to know of such beings.86 Berkeley overcomes this problem by creating a distinction between ideas and notions. One can see this in Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philoneus when the character of Philoneus defines his understanding of inner being: I have a notion of spirit, though I have not, strictly speaking an idea of it. I do not perceive it as an idea or by means of an idea, but know it by reflection.87
As A. C. Grayling observes, the difference between ideas and notions is that “ideas are always sensory ideas, that is, are either the content of states of sensory awareness, or the copies of those in memory, reflection, and imagination; and notions are concepts focally of the self, spirit or mind, and God.”88 To understand how such notions come into being, it is helpful to look at a section of one of Philoneus’ earlier speeches: My own mind and my own ideas I have an immediate knowledge of; and by the help of these, do mediately apprehend the possibility of the existence of other spirits and ideas. Farther, from my own being, and from the dependency I find 85 Berkeley, “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” 86. For Locke’s discussion of primary and secondary qualities, see Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, 135–41. 86 Berkeley, “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” 86. 87 Berkeley, “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philoneus,” 214. 88 Grayling, Berkeley, The Central Arguments, 50. Grayling quotes Berkeley, The Works of George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, 2:232.
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Seeing through Balkelly 197 in myself and my ideas, I do, by an act of reason, necessarily infer the existence of a God, and of all created things in the mind of God.89
This chapter will return to the “things in the mind of God.” For the time being, let us focus on the human. According to Berkeley, one has a notion of one’s own mind because one has “immediate knowledge” of that mind. This knowledge, combined with one’s knowledge of one’s own ideas, allows one to “mediately apprehend the possibility of the existence of other spirits and ideas.” It is impor tant to note the level of qualification here. Rather than saying that one can directly apprehend other spirits and ideas, Berkeley contends that one can use a mediate form of apprehension to grasp the “possibility” of the existence of such spirits and ideas. Given the nature of his idealism, it makes complete sense that Berkeley should be very cautious in characterizing the human capacity to know of other living beings. It is, however, clear from the context that Berkeley considers that capacity to be strong enough for each person to have, if not an idea, at least a notion of the “existence of other spirits and ideas.” He takes a similar approach in the second sentence of the above quote when he goes on to speak of God. In that sentence, Philoneus suggests that man’s knowledge of the existence of God derives not from an “immediate knowledge” of God, or even a mediate apprehension, but, rather, from a rational inference from his own being and from the feelings of “dependency” he finds in himself and his ideas. One might well question the reliability of such a means of gaining knowledge, but Philoneus, Berkeley’s mouthpiece within the dialogue, has no such qualms. He says of God, “I have a notion of Him or know Him by reflection and reasoning.”90 As can be seen, Berkeley offers multiple means by which notions can be created, and, in doing so, he ensures that, within his philosophy, man has some means of knowing all the beings that Berkeley considers man to know. On gaining a sense of how Berkeley’s idealism functions, one can begin to see its relationship to Kant’s thing in itself. The notion of the thing in itself derives from a distinction between the appearance of an object and the object as it exists beyond its appearance. Kant is quite consistent on the idea that, no matter the nature of the object, whether it be an external body or one’s own self, it cannot be known beyond its appearances. At the same time, Kant still wants to maintain a degree of realism, and so he argues for the existence of internal and external objects even as he says that they cannot be known in themselves. Berkeley agrees with Kant insofar as he thinks that, within the bounds of human knowledge, all one can know of external material objects is their appearances. Indeed, he even goes one step further and challenges the very idea of matter. Berkeley’s attitude toward spiritual objects is, however, quite different to his attitude toward material 89 Berkeley, “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philoneus,” 213. 90 Berkeley, “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philoneus,” 213.
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198 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake objects. While he does not think that spirits can be sensorily perceived, he does believe that humans have the capacity to generate notions of their own selves, the selves of other living beings, and even that of God. In this way, human knowledge does include some knowledge of internal and external objects. Furthermore, when one moves within Berkeley’s philosophy from the realm of human knowledge to that of divine knowledge, one finds him making greater claims for man’s capacity to know the thing in itself. To understand this aspect of Berkeley’s philosophy, it is helpful to return to his famous contention regarding material objects, “Their esse is percipi” (“Their being, existence, or reality is to be perceived.”)91 One can challenge this idea by taking the approach of Stephen in “Proteus” and asking whether all material objects cease to exist the moment they cease to be perceived. What makes this challenge forceful is that it highlights the distance between Berkeley’s understanding of material objects and the manner in which we usually experience such objects. Berkeley is quite aware of the strength of this challenge, and he responds to it by switching between two positions that Jonathan Dancy terms “idealism” and “phenomenalism”: “For the idealist, an object only exists so long as some mind is actually perceiving it, while for the phenomenalist an object exists as long as it is possible for it to be perceived, even if no mind is perceiving it at the moment.”92 One can see Berkeley move between idealism and phenomenalism as so defined in this sentence from the opening of A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge: The table I write on, I say, exists, that is, I see and feel it; and if I were out of my study I should say it existed, meaning thereby that if I was in my study I might perceive it, or that some other spirit actually does perceive it.93
In the first part of the sentence, Berkeley takes an idealist position. The table exists because he is perceiving it through sight and touch. However, Berkeley then switches to a phenomenalist position and says that the table would exist even if he were not perceiving it because it would still have the potential to be perceived. Such shifts are quite common within Berkeley’s writings on the existence of material objects. He does, however, have a good reason for not being overly troubled by the distinction between idealism and phenomenalism. Within Berkeley’s philosophy, when a material object is perceived, it is held in a mind. Given that he considers such objects to be collections of ideas, this makes complete sense. Berkeley believes that all the collections of ideas that we perceive as material objects are at
91 Berkeley, “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” 84. The offered gloss is that of the editor, Desmond M. Clarke. 92 Dancy, Berkeley: An Introduction, 65. 93 Berkeley, “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” 84.
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Seeing through Balkelly 199 all times held within one very special mind, the mind of God, and so this means that they continue to exist even when not perceived by human beings. The clearest explanation of this idea is offered by Philoneus in his second dialogue with Hylas: It is evident that the things I perceive are my own ideas, and that no idea can exist unless it be in a mind. Nor is it less plain that these ideas or things by me perceived, either themselves or their archetypes, exist independently of my mind, since I know myself not to be their author, it being out of my power to determine at pleasure what particular ideas I shall be affected with upon opening my eyes or ears. They must therefore exist in some other mind, whose will it is they should be exhibited to me.94
According to Berkeley, the collections of ideas we regard as material objects reside in the human mind. At the same time, such collections of ideas must also exist independently of the human mind since it lacks the ability to produce them. The collections of ideas which we deem to be material objects “must therefore exist in some other mind, whose will it is they should be exhibited” to human minds. Philoneus explains to whose mind he is referring in a later speech when he says, “the things by me perceived are known by the understanding, and produced by the will, of an infinite spirit.”95 Given the primacy of Christianity within Berkeley’s thought, he need not be more explicit about the fact that this “infinite spirit” is God. When this is recognized, one can see that the above quote argues that the collections of ideas that humans view as material objects are ideas in the mind of God that he has created. This argument explains why material objects persist when they are not perceived by a human mind. It also shows that, for Berkeley, one can know a material object in itself to the extent that one can know that it is a collection of ideas in the mind of God. The one difficulty in the above quote from Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philoneus stems from Berkeley’s use of the word “archetypes” within his claim that the “ideas or things” he perceives, “either themselves or their archetypes,” necessarily “exist independently” of his mind as he knows himself “not to be their author.”96 Dancy explains both why this word causes a problem and how that problem can be resolved: Now Berkely is willing to talk in terms of archetypes, and as soon as he does so it becomes possible that he is flirting with the thought that the archetypes of our ideas are ideas in the mind of God. If this were so, our ideas would not be 94 Berkeley, “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philoneus,” 196. 95 Berkeley, “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philoneus,” 197. 96 Berkeley, “Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philoneus,” 196.
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200 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake identical with God’s ideas, since there is no sense in holding that ideas are identical with their archetypes. . . . But in fact Berkeley is very cagey in this talk of archetypes, and never commits himself explicitly to the view that God’s ideas are archetypes of our own; his explicit remarks are all in the other direction.97
The other direction here being that the collections of ideas that we view as material objects are not copies of the ideas of God, but rather are the ideas of God. So, to return to the Wake, neither Kant nor Berkeley would accept Balkelly’s claim that he can see the thing in itself. Indeed, both argue extensively for the unknowability of the thing in itself. As demonstrated, however, when one looks more closely at the ideas of Kant and Berkeley, one can see that both, in different ways and to different degrees, want to allow man some knowledge of the thing in itself. For this reason, there is an extent to which Kant and Berkeley share Balkelly’s lesser claim to know “the Ding hvad in idself id est” (FW 611.21). They do not, however, hold with the Archdruid’s claims for the perceivability of the thing in itself. In the case of Berkeley, it is important to recognize that, while he does regard humans as being able to perceive certain ideas within the mind of God, he does not believe that humans can perceive God himself and so he does not think that humans can perceive the cause of their perceptions of material objects. All this being so, one can say that, while it is appropriate for the Wake’s version of Berkeley to reference Kant’s thing in itself because that concept is an aspect of an idealist philosophy that has much in common with that of Berkeley, the manner in which Balkelly engages with the thing in itself does not bring him closer to Berkeley. As regards Balkelly’s third and final major claim, which is that he can look beyond the physical world to the divine, it is true that Berkeley and his Wakean representation share the belief that they can perceive the divine. However, their respective means of doing so are very different. Balkelly has a special mode of vision that allows him to see through the surfaces of objects to the “gloria” contained within (FW 611.23). For Berkeley, one need not possess a transcendent, supernatural form of sight to gain access to the spiritual realm because, in perceiving material objects, there is always a level on which one is perceiving the ideas of God. Furthermore, while Berkeley and Balkelly both have deeply mystical understandings of the world, their forms of mysticism differ greatly because of their respective religions. One of Berkeley’s reasons for offering his mystical vision of the world is that he wishes to demonstrate the centrality of the Christian God within ordinary human experience. As one would expect of an archdruid, Balkelly is utterly averse to that god, and he shows this throughout his dispute with Paddrock.
97 Dancy, Berkeley: An Introduction, 51.
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Seeing through Balkelly 201 To conclude, Balkelly’s name points to that of Berkeley, but the archdruid’s explanations of his extraordinary mode of vision show the distance between the two. Berkeley would not have agreed with any of Balkelly’s three main claims. That being said, one can understand why Joyce brought Berkeley into his Patrician scene. Above and beyond the fact that it called for an Irish philosopher, the scene shared the concerns of Stephen’s thoughts on Berkeley in “Proteus”: the connection between colors and bodies and the relationship between the human and the divine. Moreover, for all that Balkelly is certainly less Berkeley rather than more, there are still some important parallels between the two. Both reject the conventional understanding of matter. Both think that they can behold the divine. Both claim knowledge of the thing in itself, albeit to different degrees. Yet, even taking these parallels into account, the distance between Balkelly and Berkeley is such that neither Balkelly’s arrogant attitude nor his distorted view of the external world should be taken as critiques of Berkeley’s philosophy. The complexity of Joyce’s references to that philosophy in Ulysses and the Wake demonstrate that he found Berkeley’s ideas to be compelling and creatively stimulating. What drew Joyce to Berkeley’s thought is its extraordinary combination of profound epistemological skepticism and deeply ingrained Christianity. As a thinker who possessed both radical Shemish ideas and orthodox Shaunish beliefs, Berkeley was a fascinating paradox for Joyce, and, for all the differences between them, Joyce saw certainly saw some of his own contradictions in Berkeley. One can therefore understand why he kept returning to him.
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Conclusion The first step toward gaining an overview of Joyce’s understanding of the relationships between the Wake’s major philosophers is to look at how that novel references Vico and Bruno. This is because those two Italians dominate the Wake’s philosophical references. From Joyce’s perspective, the most compelling aspect of Vico’s thought is his cyclical conception of history, and the most interesting idea in Bruno’s philosophy is his principle of the coincidence of contraries. Joyce found these ideas to be relevant, useful, and, in some regards, true. They also allowed him to challenge orthodox notions of time and being that he had come to question. Consequently, when Joyce alludes to Vico and Bruno in the Wake, he generally references those ideas. That being said, it is important to recognize that the versions of those ideas that appear within the Wake are often less than faithful to their originals. Joyce adapted the ideas that he most valued in the philosophies of Vico and Bruno in order to bring them closer to his own concerns and more in line with his own views. Joyce’s versions of Vico’s cycles focus on the lives of individuals instead of the eras of nations. What’s more, when he references the thunder that starts Vico’s first historical era, his rendering of that thunder points to the notion of an original linguistic unity, a notion that Vico rejected. As regards Bruno, while the Wake’s portmanteau words frequently point to his principle of the coincidence of contraries by signifying words with opposite meanings, Joyce’s novel also regularly alludes to the dynamic Coleridgean version of that principle that Joyce had adopted in which opposites continually separate and unite. The result of Joyce’s willingness to adapt his chosen Viconian and Brunoian ideas is that the Wake’s affirmations of those ideas are partial rather than absolute. In considering how Joyce presents his versions of his favorite ideas within the philosophies of Vico and Bruno, it is also essential to look at how he contextualizes his versions of those ideas because, in doing so, one can see how the Wake challenges those ideas. For example, the manner in which Joyce integrates his versions of the cycles of Vico’s ideal eternal history into I.5 raises the question of how an ideal history can be eternal when it must be expressed through the fluid medium of language. Similarly, while there is undoubtedly a privileging of unity over division within the Wakean scenes in which Joyce uses versions of Shem and Shaun to allude to his Coleridgean interpretation of the coincidence of contraries, those scenes also betray a certain skepticism toward notions of unity. In such scenes, unity usually functions more as a goal than as a reality. Those scenes thereby Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. Robert Baines, Oxford University Press. © Robert Baines 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198894049.003.0007
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Conclusion 203 challenge both the Coleridgean coincidence of contraries and that of Bruno. What these examples demonstrate is that Joyce saw flaws as well as virtues in the ideas of Vico and Bruno. From the evidence of the Wake, it is clear that he considered the virtues of those ideas to outweigh their flaws, but it is nonetheless important to know that he perceived those flaws. While Vico and Bruno are certainly the philosophers who are referenced most often in the Wake, there are several other thinkers to whom that novel alludes on multiple occasions. When Joyce offers renderings of the ideas of those thinkers, he shows himself to be just as willing to adapt their ideas as he is those of Vico and Bruno. The version of Aristotle’s principle of non-contradiction in I.6 is a good example of this.1 In looking beyond Vico and Bruno to the Wake’s other major philosophers, one can also begin to gain a sense of how all of the philosophers who are regularly referenced in Joyce’s last novel relate to one another in that work. Since those philosophers are many in number, the relationships between them are numerous and so it is helpful that the Wake provides a framework in which to locate them. That framework is the relationship between Shem and Shaun. Thanks in large part to the connection between Shaun and Lewis, the scenes in which Shem and Shaun confront one another frequently contain numerous philosophical references. Those references are often tied to a particular character by virtue of being included in their speech or in the narrator’s descriptions of them. Through this means, Joyce is able to align many of the philosophers he references in the Wake with either Shem or Shaun. Some of these alignments are positive. For example, when a character draws upon an idea associated with a particular thinker. Others are negative. On these occasions, one brother ties the other to a certain philosopher in order to insult him. Most of the philosophers to whom the Wake frequently alludes are associated with one of the two Earwicker twins. These connections are primarily made in two sections of the novel: Professor Jones’ lecture in I.6 and the tale of the Ondt and the Gracehoper in III.1. Shem generally represents Joyce to a greater extent than Shaun, and so Joyce relates the philosophers with whom he was most in agreement at the time of the writing of the Wake to Shem. Given that Shem and Shaun are on many levels opposites, one might think that Joyce opposed the philosophers he associates with Shaun, but this is not entirely the case. It would be more accurate to say that, during the years of the Wake, Joyce agreed with those philosophers to a lesser extent than those that he associated with Shem. What must be kept in mind is that, even when Shaun primarily represents Lewis, he still reflects aspects of Joyce’s personality. Therefore, in associating particular philosophers with Shaun, Joyce also relates them to himself.
1 See FW 161.09–11.
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204 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake The three key Shaunish philosophers are Aristotle, Aquinas, and Plato. While the Wake ties these thinkers to Lewis, it is important to keep in mind that they are also the major philosophers of Joyce’s university days. Of the three, Aristotle and Aquinas definitely exerted a greater influence on the young Joyce than Plato, but both Portrait and Ulysses suggest that Joyce was also interested in Plato at that point in his life. Over time, Joyce would come to view the ideas of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Plato as orthodox in the negative sense of the word because he associated them with his Catholic university and, thereby, the Catholic Church of Ireland. This explains why the older Joyce, the willfully unorthodox author of Finnegans Wake, to a great degree defined himself against the ideas of those philosophers, especially Aristotle and Aquinas. That being said, the older Joyce also recognized the impact that the philosophers of his university days had on his intellectual development. Indeed, on the evidence of the Wake, Aristotle and Aquinas made significant contributions to Joyce’s mature thought, albeit in a negative manner. By associating them with Shaun, Joyce suggests both how he moved away from those two thinkers and how they stayed with him. The Shemish philosophers are the philosophers of Joyce’s maturity, the philosophers of the Wake. It therefore makes sense that Vico and Bruno, the two key philosophers of the Wake, are also the two seminal Shemish philosophers. It is Joyce’s versions of Vico’s model of history and Bruno’s principle of the coincidence of contraries that collectively define what it means to be such a philosopher. In aligning Vico and Bruno with Shem, Joyce aligns them against the Shaunish philosophers. As was discussed in Chapter 4, while it is by no means the case that the philosophies of Vico and Bruno are entirely antithetical to those of Aristotle, Aquinas, and Plato, there are certainly important points of disagreement between particular philosophers within those two sets of thinkers, most notably between Aristotle and Bruno. While Vico and Bruno are the two most important Shemish thinkers, there are several others. Most are defined as such because Joyce saw parallels between their ideas and his understanding of Bruno’s coincidence of contraries. For example, Nicholas of Cusa is aligned with Shem, which makes sense given that Bruno got the principle of the coincidence of contraries from him. Joyce also connects Spinoza to Shem because he knew that Spinoza shared Bruno’s belief in the unity of opposites. Hegel held the same belief, but, oddly enough, in the scene in which Spinoza is connected to Shem, Hegel is defined as an angry Shaunish figure. Given the extent to which Hegel’s thought is theologically orthodox, this identification makes sense on some levels. At the same time, the purpose of the scene in which Spinoza and Hegel are associated with the two Earwicker twins is not to validate those associations, but rather to challenge them. Within that scene, it is the Lewisian character of Professor Jones who connects those two philosophers to Shem and Shaun and so defines them as opposites. Joyce certainly did not view Spinoza and Hegel as such. He recognized how the philosophies of both
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Conclusion 205 resembled that of Bruno. Consequently, Jones’ attempt at defining Spinoza and Hegel against one another is best understood as one of the many examples of how the professor’s relentless desire to establish oppositions causes him to misunderstand relationships. Joyce also aligns Bergson with Shem. This is understandable because there are significant parallels between Bergson’s philosophy and those of Vico and Bruno. Like Vico, Bergson challenged the standard conception of time, and, like Bruno, he opposed the common understanding of substance. However, the Wake does not highlight these connections. It keeps Bergson at a certain distance from its main thinkers because Joyce did not want to validate Lewis’ claims that he was a disciple of Bergson. For this reason, Bergson is only defined as a Shemish thinker insofar as he is set in opposition to the Shaunish Professor Jones. Unlike the other thinkers associated with Shem, Bergson’s connection to the more Joycean of the Earwicker twins is negative rather than positive. Of the philosophers who are frequently referenced in Joyce’s last novel, the one who is most difficult to relate to Shem or Shaun is Berkeley. As Chapter 5 explained, the Wake’s rendering of Berkeley, book four’s Balkelly, has both Shemish and Shaunish qualities. His size and disposition belong to Shaun, but his unorthodox ideas connect him to Shem. Balkelly’s duality reflects Joyce’s recognition that Berkeley’s skeptical idealism was inseparable from his fervent Christianity. The above discussion of how the major thinkers of the Wake relate to Shem and Shaun can be represented by this simple diagram: Shem
Shaun
Bruno
Cusanus
Vico
Hegel
Bergson
Berkeley
Plato
Aquinas Aristotle
Spinoza
Figure 1 Relationships of the Wake’s Major Philosophers to Shem and Shaun.
In this diagram, the further left a thinker is, the more he is associated with Shem, and the further right a thinker is, the more he is aligned with Shaun. As can be seen, while most of the key philosophers of the Wake are connected to one brother or the other, those connections have varying degrees of strength. The strength of each connection depends not only on the ideas of the philosopher in question but also on Joyce’s personal relationship to that philosopher and indeed, in many cases, on Lewis’ relationship to that philosopher. The two sides of the diagram meet because the thinkers of the Wake form a unity as well as an opposition. In different ways and to different degrees, each provided Joyce with material for his art. While the philosophers in the above diagram are by no means the only
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206 Philosophical Allusions in James Joyce ’ s Finnegans Wake thinkers referenced in the Wake, that diagram nonetheless displays the breadth of that novel’s allusions to philosophy. What’s more, it also demonstrates the coherence of the Wake’s allusions to the thinkers that it most frequently references, and this is the note on which I will end. As this book has shown, the Wake’s allusions to its most important philosophers establish a network that consists not only of thinkers but also of ideas and texts. Joyce’s interpretations and reinterpretations of the texts he read by and on the Wake’s major thinkers resulted in his conceptions of the ideas of those thinkers and it is those conceptions that define the relationships between those thinkers within the Wake. The network that is the sum of those relationships is large, complex, and full of subtleties, but this does not stop it from being comprehensible. Just as we can understand the Wake’s allusions to its central philosophers and philosophical ideas on an individual basis, so we can discern how those allusions operate in groups and, indeed, grasp how they function as a whole. I hope that this book has inspired you to develop and refine the network defined within it.
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210 Bibliography “Flux, n.” In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed December 10, 2018. http:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/72249. Fordham, Finn. Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake: Unravelling Universals. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Fraser, Alexander Campbell. Berkeley. Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1881. Frith, Isabella. Life of Giordano Bruno, the Nolan. Edited by Moriz Carriere. London: Trübner, 1887. “Fustigate, v.” In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed December 18, 2018. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/75823. “Fweets of Fin (^118) with FW Text.” Fweet. Accessed June 3, 2018. http://fweet.org. “Fweets of Fin (^150) with FW Text.” Fweet. Accessed January 19, 2022. http://www. fweet.org. “Fweets of Fin (^244) with FW Text.” Fweet. Accessed July 27, 2022. http://www.fweet.org. “Fweets of Fin (_M,ViconianCycle_) with FW Text.” Fweet. Accessed May 11, 2018. http:// fweet.org. Geheber, Philip Keel. “Assimilating Shem into the Plural Polity: Burrus, Caseous, and Irish Free State Dairy Production.” In A Long the Krommerun: Selected Papers from the Utrecht James Joyce Symposium: XXIV International James Joyce Symposium, Utrecht University, 15th–20th June 2014, edited by Onno Kosters, Tim Conley, and Peter de Vogel, 127–39. European Joyce Studies 24. Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2016. Gifford, Don. Joyce Annotated: Notes for Dubliners and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Berkeley, C.A.: University of California Press, 1982. Gifford, Don. Ulysses Annotated: Notes for James Joyce’s Ulysses. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Gillies, Mary Ann. Henri Bergson and British Modernism. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1996. “Glory, n.” In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed May 18, 2021. http://www. oed.com/view/Entry/79122. Gorman, Herbert. James Joyce: A Definitive Biography. London: Bodley Head, 1949. Grayling, Anthony Clifford. Berkeley, The Central Arguments. La Salle, I.L.: Open Court, 1986. Guerlac, Suzanne. Thinking in Time: An Introduction to Henri Bergson. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006. Guthrie, William Keith Chambers. Aristotle: An Encounter. Vol. 6. A History of Greek Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Hanaway-Oakley, Cleo. James Joyce and the Phenomenology of Film. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. Hankey, Katherine. The Old, Old Story. London: William Wells Gardner, 1877. Hart, Clive. Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake. Evanston, I.L.: Northwestern University Press, 1962. Hayman, David. A First-Draft Version of Finnegans Wake. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1963. Hayman, David. “Tristan and Isolde in Finnegans Wake: A Study of the Sources and Evolution of a Theme.” Comparative Literature Studies 1, no. 2 (1964): 93–112. Heath, Richard. Edgar Quinet: His Early Life and Writings. London: Trübner & Co., 1881. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Hegel’s Lectures on the History of Philosophy. Translated by Elizabeth Sanderson Haldane and Frances H. Simson. Vol. 3. New York: The Humanities Press, 1963. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Hegel’s Science of Logic. Translated by Arnold V. Miller. Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 1998.
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Bibliography 211 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Philosophy of History. Translated by John Sibree. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2004. Herder, Johann Gottfried von. Ideés sur la Philosophie de l’Histoire de l’Humanité. Translated by Edgar Quinet. Vol. 1. Paris: F. G. Levrault, 1834. “Holocaust, n.” In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed May 9, 2019. http:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/87793. Hopkins, Jasper. “Introduction.” In A Concise Introduction to the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, edited by Jasper Hopkins, 3–42. Minneapolis, M.N.: Arthur J. Banning Press, 1986. Humphreys, Joe. “How Does James Joyce Rate as a Philosopher?” The Irish Times. June 9, 2022, sec. Culture. Hurley, Patrick J. A Concise Introduction to Logic. Belmont, C.A.: Wadsworth Publishing Co., 1988. Ingegno, Alfonso. “Introduction.” In Cause, Principle and Unity and Essays on Magic, edited by Richard J Blackwell and Robert de Lucca, 1–102. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Joyce, James. “II.ii.1.a. Notebook.” National Library of Ireland. Accessed September 10, 2019. http://catalogue.nli.ie/Record/vtls000357771/HierarchyTree#page/5/mode/1up. Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Penguin Books, 2000. Joyce, James. “Continuation of a Work in Progress.” Transition 12 (1928): 7–27. Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Edited by Robbert-Jan Henkes, Erik Bindervoet, and Finn Fordham. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Joyce, James. James Joyce’s Letters to Sylvia Beach, 1921–1940. Edited by Melissa Banta and Oscar Silverman. Oxford: Plantin Press, 1987. Joyce, James. James Joyce’s Scribbledehobble: The Ur-Workbook for Finnegans Wake. Edited by Thomas E. Connolly. Evanston, I.L.: Northwestern University Press, 1961. Joyce, James. Letters of James Joyce. Vol. I. Edited by Stuart Gilbert. New York: Viking Press, 1957; reissued with corrections 1966. Vols. II and III, edited by Richard Ellmann. New York: Viking Press, 1966. Joyce, James. Occasional, Critical, and Political Writing. Edited by Kevin Barry. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Joyce, James. Poems and Exiles. Edited by J. C. C. Mays. London: Penguin Books, 1992. Joyce, James. Selected Letters of James Joyce. New York: Viking Press, 1975. Joyce, James. Stephen Hero. New York: New Directions, 1963. Joyce, James. The Critical Writings of James Joyce. Edited by Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann. New York: Viking Press, 1959. Joyce, James. The Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo. Notebook VI.B.1. Edited by Vincent Deane, Daniel Ferrer, and Geert Lernout. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2003. Joyce, James. The Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo. Notebook VI.B.14. Edited by Vincent Deane, Daniel Ferrer, and Geert Lernout. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols Publishers, 2002. Joyce, James. The James Joyce Archive. Edited by Michael Groden et al. New York: Garland Publishing, 1977–8. Joyce, James. “Two Kinds of Monism.” Manuscript note Finnegans Wake II.ii.2. Hans E. Jahnke Bequest at the Zurich James Joyce Foundation. Joyce, James. Ulysses. Edited by Hans Walter Gabler. New York: Random House, 1986. Joyce, Stanislaus. My Brother’s Keeper: James Joyce’s Early Years. Edited by Richard Ellmann. Cambridge, M.A.: Da Capo Press, 2003. Joyce, Stanislaus. The Complete Dublin Diary of Stanislaus Joyce. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971.
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212 Bibliography Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Marcus Weigelt and Max Müller. New York: Penguin, 2007. Kant, Immanuel. Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science with Selections from the Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Gary Hatfield. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Kinane, Dean. St. Patrick. London: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1920. Kippur, Stephen A. Jules Michelet: A Study of Mind and Sensibility. Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1981. Kitcher, Philip. “Introduction.” In Joyce’s Ulysses: Philosophical Perspectives, edited by Philip Kitcher. New York: Oxford University Press, 2020. Klein, Scott W. The Fictions of James Joyce and Wyndham Lewis: Monsters of Nature and Design. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Kumar, Shiv Kumar. Bergson and the Stream of Consciousness Novel. New York University Press, 1963. Landuyt, Inge, and Geert Lernout. “Joyce’s Sources: Les Grands Fleuves Historiques.” Joyce Studies Annual 6 (1995): 99–138. Lear, Jonathan. Aristotle: The Desire to Understand. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988. Lewis, Wyndham. Blasting and Bombadiering. London: Calder, 1982. Lewis, Wyndham. “Editorial.” In The Enemy: A Review of Art and Literature, edited by Wyndham Lewis and David Peters Corbett, 1:ix–xv. Santa Rosa, C.A.: Black Sparrow Press, 1994. Lewis, Wyndham. “Editorial Notes.” In The Enemy: A Review of Art and Literature, edited by Wyndham Lewis and David Peters Corbett, 2:xi–xxxii. Santa Rosa, C.A.: Black Sparrow Press, 1994. Lewis, Wyndham. “Manifesto 1.” Blast 1 (1914): 11–28. Lewis, Wyndham. Men Without Art. New York: Russell & Russell, 1964. Lewis, Wyndham. Rude Assignment: An Intellectual Autobiography. Edited by Toby Foshay. Santa Barbara, C.A.: Black Sparrow Press, 1984. Lewis, Wyndham. The Art of Being Ruled. Edited by Reed Way Dasenbrock. Santa Rosa, C.A.: Black Sparrow Press, 1989. Lewis, Wyndham. The Childermass. London, J. Calder, 1965. Lewis, Wyndham. The Letters of Wyndham Lewis. Edited by W. K. Rose. Norfolk, C.T.: New Directions, 1964. Lewis, Wyndham. “The Revolutionary Simpleton.” In The Enemy: A Review of Art and Literature, edited by Wyndham Lewis and David Peters Corbett, 1:25–192. Santa Rosa, C.A.: Black Sparrow Press, 1994. Lewis, Wyndham. Time and Western Man, edited by Paul Edwards. Santa Rosa, C.A.: Black Sparrow Press, 1993. “Lexfac16 I.6§1 Lexicon 1939 Text.” James Joyce Digital Archive. Accessed December 18, 2018. http://jjda.ie/main/JJDA/F/flex/fa/l39fa.htm. Litz, Arthur Walton. “Vico and Joyce.” In Giambattista Vico: An International Symposium, edited by Giorgio Tagliacozzo and Hayden V. White, 245–55. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969. Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Edited by Roger Woolhouse. London: Penguin Books, 1997. Löwith, Karl. Meaning in History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957. MacNicholas, John. James Joyce’s Exiles: A Textual Companion. New York: Garland Publishing, 1979.
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Bibliography 213 Mali, Joseph. The Legacy of Vico in Modern Cultural History: From Jules Michelet to Isaiah Berlin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Mazzotta, Giuseppe. The New Map of the World: The Poetic Philosophy of Giambattista Vico. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999. McCourt, John. The Years of Bloom: James Joyce in Trieste, 1904–1920. Madison, W.I.: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000. McHugh, Roland. Annotations to Finnegans Wake. 4th ed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016. McHugh, Roland. “Confucius in Notebook VI.B.45.” A Wake Newslitter 6, no. XVI (1979): 83–3. McHugh, Roland. The Sigla of Finnegans Wake. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976. McIntyre, J. Lewis. Giordano Bruno. London: Macmillan, 1903. Melton, J. Gordon. “Theosophy | Definition, Beliefs, History, & Facts | Britannica.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed September 10, 2019. https://www.britannica.com/ topic/theosophy. Menn, Stephen. “Aristotle and Plato on God as Nous and as the Good.” The Review of Metaphysics 45, no. 3 (1992): 543–73. Mercanton, Jacques. “The Hours of James Joyce.” In Portraits of the Artist in Exile: Recollections of James Joyce by Europeans, edited by Willard Potts, translated by Lloyd C. Parks, 206–52. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979. Meyers, Jeffrey. The Enemy: A Biography of Wyndham Lewis. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980. Michelet, Jules. “A Discourse on the System and Life of Vico.” Translated by Ashraf Noor. New Vico Studies 26 (2008): 21–46. Michelet, Jules. “Introduction to World History.” In On History, by Jules Michelet, translated by Flora Kimmich, 23–63. Cambridge: Open Book Publishers, 2013. Michelet, Jules. “Preface.” In Œuvres Choisies de Vico, by Giambattista Vico, translated by Jules Michelet. Œuvres complètes, Vol. 27. Paris: Flammarion, 1894. Miller, Clyde Lee. The Art of Conjecture: Nicholas of Cusa on Knowledge. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021. Newton, Isaac. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952. Nicholas of Cusa. “On Actualized Possibility.” In A Concise Introduction to the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa, by Jasper Hopkins, translated by Jasper Hopkins, 65–163. Minneapolis, M.N.: Arthur J. Banning Press, 1986. Nicholas of Cusa. “On Learned Ignorance.” In Selected Spiritual Writings, translated by H. Lawrence Bond, 85–206. New York: Paulist Press, 1997. Nicholas of Cusa. “On the Vision of God.” In Selected Spiritual Writings, translated by H. Lawrence Bond, 233–89. New York: Paulist Press, 1997. Noon, William Thomas. Joyce and Aquinas. New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press, 1957. O’Connor, Ulick, ed. The Joyce We Knew. Mercier Original Paperback; Cork: Mercier Press, 1967. Ogden, Charles Kay. “Preface.” In Tales Told of Shem and Shaun, by James Joyce, i–xv. Paris: The Black Sun Press, 1929. Olson, Charles. Charles Olson & Ezra Pound: An Encounter at St. Elizabeths. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1975. O’Rourke, Fran. Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas. Gainesville, F.L.: University Press of Florida, 2022.
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214 Bibliography “Peripatetic, n. and Adj.” In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed February 28, 2019. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/141001. Pinkard, Terry P. Hegel: A Biography. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Plato. “Parmenides.” In The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, translated by Francis Macdonald Cornford, 920–56. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982. Plato. The Republic. Translated by Desmond Lee. London: Penguin Books, 1987. Plato. The Republic of Plato. Translated by Francis Macdonald Cornford. London: Oxford University Press, 1945. Plato. “Timaeus.” In The Collected Dialogues of Plato, Including the Letters, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns, translated by Benjamin Jowett, 1151–211. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982. Pompa, Leon. “Chronology.” In The First New Science, by Giambattista Vico, translated by Leon Pompa, xxxix–xliv. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pompa, Leon. “Introduction.” In The First New Science, by Giambattista Vico, translated by Leon Pompa, xix–xxxviii. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Pound, Ezra. Pound/Joyce; The Letters of Ezra Pound to James Joyce, with Pound’s Essays on Joyce. Edited by Forrest Read. New York: New Directions, 1967. Ross, William David. Aristotle. New York: Barnes & Noble, 1956. Russell, Bertrand. The ABC of Relativity. New York: New American Library, 1969. Sabatini, Federico. “James Joyce and Giordano Bruno: An ‘Immarginable’ and Interdisciplinary Dialogue.” In Renascent Joyce, edited by Daniel Topia Ferrer, Sam Slote, and André Topia, 25–37. Gainesville, F.L.: University Press of Florida, 2013. “Savvy, v.” In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed May 18, 2021. http://www. oed.com/view/Entry/171503. Severus, Sulpitius. Life of St. Martin. Philadelphia: Dalcassian Publishing Co., 2017. Shakespeare, William. “Antony and Cleopatra.” In The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, by William Shakespeare, edited by Stephen Orgel and A. R. Braunmuller, 1651–700. London: Penguin Books, 2002. Sheen, Fulton John. God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy: A Critical Study in the Light of the Philosophy of Saint Thomas. New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1930. Simpson, D. P. Cassel’s Latin Dictionary. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1968. Slote, Sam. “The Prolific and the Devouring in ‘The Ondt and the Gracehoper.’ ” Joyce Studies Annual 11 (2000): 49–65. “Species, n.” In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed July 18, 2022. http://www. oed.com/view/Entry/185995. Spengler, Oswald. The Decline of the West. Translated by Charles Francis Atkinson. Vol. 1. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1926. Spinoza, Benedictus de. Ethics. Translated by Edwin Curley. London; New York: Penguin Books, 1996. Stace, Walter Terence. The Philosophy of Hegel: A Systematic Exposition. New York: Dover Publications, 1955. The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Electrolysis | Definition, Britannica.” Accessed January 27, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/science/electrolysis. The Editors of Encyclopedia Britannica. “Tabernacle | Judaism | Britannica.” Encyclopedia Britannica. Accessed February 11, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Tabernacle. Theoharis, Theoharis Constantine. Joyce’s Ulysses: An Anatomy of the Soul. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. “Transparent, Adj. (and n.).” In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed June 25, 2021. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/204969.
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Bibliography 215 Treip, Andrew. “Histories of Sexuality: Vico and Roman Marriage Law in Finnegans Wake.” In James Joyce 3: “Scribble” 3: Joyce et l'Italie, edited by Claude Jacquet and Jean-Michel Rabaté, 179–99. Paris: Revue des Lettres Modernes, 1994. Treip, Andrew. “Lost Histereve: Vichian Soundings and Reverberations in the Genesis of Finnegans Wake II.4.” James Joyce Quarterly 32, no. 3/4 (1995): 641–57. Treip, Andrew. “The Cornell Notes on Vico.” In James Joyce 3: “Scribble” 3: Joyce et l'Italie, edited by Claude Jacquet and Jean-Michel Rabaté, 217–20. Paris: Revue des Lettres Modernes, 1994. Treip, Andrew. “Recycled Historians: Michelet on Vico in VI.B.12.” A Finnegans Wake Circular 4, no. 4 (1989): 61–72. “Universal, Adj., n., and Adv.” In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed March 26, 2019. http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/214783. Van Hulle, Dirk. James Joyce’s “Work in Progress”: Pre-Book Publications of Finnegans Wake Fragments. London; New York: Routledge, 2016. Van Hulle, Dirk. Textual Awareness: A Genetic Study of Late Manuscripts by Joyce, Proust, and Mann. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Van Hulle, Dirk. “Wyndham Lewis in Finnegans Wake Notebook VI.B.20.” Genetic Joyce Studies, no. 21 (Spring 2021): 1–17. Van Mierlo, Wim. “Finnegans Wake and the Question of Histry!?” In Genitricksling Joyce, edited by Sam Slote and Wim Van Mierlo, 9:43–64. European Joyce Studies 9. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999. Verene, Donald Phillip. James Joyce and the Philosophers at Finnegans Wake. Evanston, I.L.: Northwestern University Press, 2016. Verene, Donald Phillip. Knowledge of Things Human and Divine: Vico’s New Science and Finnegans Wake. New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press, 2003. Verene, Donald Phillip. Vico’s Science of Imagination. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981. Vico, Giambattista. The New Science. Translated by Jason Taylor and Robert Miner. New Haven, C.T.: Yale University Press, 2020. “Vico, Giovanni Battista.” In Encyclopedia Britannica, 11th ed., XXVIII:23–5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911. “Vitalism, n.” In OED Online. Oxford University Press. Accessed January 6, 2020. https:// www.oed.com/view/Entry/224022. Vitoux, Pierre. “Aristotle, Berkeley, and Newman in ‘Proteus’ and Finnegans Wake.” James Joyce Quarterly 18, no. 2 (1981): 161–75. Williams, William Carlos. “A Point for American Criticism.” In Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress, by Samuel Beckett et al., 171–85. New York: New Directions, 1972. Yee, Cordell D. K. “Metemsinopsychosis: Confucius and Ireland in Finnegans Wake.” Comparative Literature Studies 20, no. 1 (1983): 115–24.
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Index For the benefit of digital users, indexed terms that span two pages (e.g., 52–53) may, on occasion, appear on only one of those pages. Abrams, Meyer Howard 119–20 absolute unity 107 abstractions 25–6 Adams, Robert Martin 172 aesthetic faculty 62 Aldington, Richard 165–6 Alexander, Samuel 156; Space, Time, and Deity 153 “Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce, An” (Lewis) 56–8, 65–7, 69–71, 78, 133–4, 142, 157 Antonius (character) 129–32; dual nature of 130–1 Apes of God, The (Lewis) 165–6 a priori knowledge: vs. a posteriori knowledge 191 a priori sensibility 191–2 a priori understanding 191–2 Aquinas, Thomas: connection between Lewis and 147–50; on intellect 147; Joyce’s references to 141–2, 144–5, 152–3, 161–2, 169, 204; on reason 147; relationship between Aristotle and 5, 145–6; On the Soul 146–7; Summa Theologiae 139n.25; Treatise on Human Nature 146–7; understanding of nous 146–7 Aristotle: conception of substance 96–8, 117; connection between Lewis and 100–1; discussion of nous 143–4, 146; in Gilbert Schema 151–2; on human soul 97; influence on Joyce 93–4, 169, 204; logical principles of 99; Metaphysics 94–8; on motion 110–11; on nature of color 99, 171–2; Physics 110–11; Plato and 150–2; principle of non-contradiction 94–8, 203; relationship between Aquinas and 5, 145–6, 204; Sense and Sensibilia 170–1; On the Soul 94; on the transparent 170–1 articulate language 46 Art of Being Ruled, The (Lewis) 54–6, 64–5, 73–4, 129, 135–6 Atherton, James: The Books at the Wake 2 Aufhebung 87
Balkelly (character): mode of vision of 184–9, 200–1; perception of the divine 200; reference to Kant 186–7; on thing in itself 186–7, 189–90, 200; wisdom of 186–7 Barfield, Owen 119 Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire, Jules 94 Beach, Sylvia 56, 127 Beck, Jakob Sigismund 138 Beckett, Samuel: on abstractions 25; on ages 24; “Dante . . . Bruno. Vico.. Joyce” 1–2, 9, 22, 32, 35; on human institutions 23–6; on Joyce’s cycles 1–2, 22–3, 26 Bédier, Joseph 29 behaviorism 73–4 Bequest, Hans E. Jahnke 123 Bergson, Henri: on aesthetic faculty vs. normal perception 62; conception of time 59–60, 75, 79, 162; on consciousness 59–60; Creative Evolution 53–4, 60–2, 67–8, 148; criticism of 58–9, 62–6, 73–4, 100, 162; discussion of life 53–4, 60–2, 68–9; Einstein and 78–9; influence on Joyce 65–6, 68–9; influence on modern culture 134–5; on intellect 61–2, 148; lectures of 58; The Meaning of War 67–8; on mobility 61; notion of flux 60–2, 148; on progress 69; on relationship between intellect, instinct, and intuition 148; romanticism and 65–6; Shemish and Shaunish qualities 205; Time and Free Will 58–60, 78, 154; “time-philosophy” of 65–6, 73, 100, 162; on two sorts of multiplicity 59; works of 58–9 Berkeley, George: “An Essay towards a New Theory of Vision” 175–6, 189; on archetypes 199–200; ecclesiastical career of 174; on existence of God 197; on human capacity to know of other living beings 197; idealism of 177, 194–200; idea of deeper spiritual reality 182–3; on ideas in the mind of God 198–9; on ideas vs. beings that process ideas 196; immaterialism of 195; on material objects 195, 198–9; mystical vision of the world 200; on nature of human
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218 Index Berkeley, George (cont.) knowledge 194; on perception of the divine 200; phenomenalism of 198; on primary and secondary qualities 195–6; on spiritual objects 197–8; theory of vision 175–7, 180; on thing in itself 194, 197–8, 200; Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philoneus 196, 199–200; A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge 185, 194–6, 198; use of the word “furniture” 185 Biddy Doran (character) 44–5 Biddy Doran’s letter: author of 43; discovery of 44–5; establishment of facts regarding 43–4, 68; Joyce’s cycles and 42–3; language of 45; as miseffectual whyacinthinous riot 46–7; textual interpretation of 44–5 Bishop, John 2, 5–6, 9 Blast (magazine) 50, 131–2 Bloom, Leopold (character) 1, 26–7, 68, 129–30 Blum, Paul Richard 115–16 Boldereff, Frances: Hermes to His Son Thoth 2 Bond, H. Lawrence 107–8 Borach, Georges 93 Brion, Marcel 165 Bruno, Giordano: Aristotle and 112, 116–17, 120–1, 152–3; Cause, Principle, and Unity 111–17, 119–20; commemoration of death of 121; Cusanus’ influence on 112; On the Heroic Frenzies 120–2; On the Infinite, the Universe, and the Worlds 112–13; Joyce’s references to 1–2, 111–12, 118, 120–3, 159–60; on life 113; on matter 114; monism of 132; on nature of being 117; notion of God 112, 115; in Oxford 116–17; Plato and 152–3; principle of the coincidence of contraries 3–4, 7–8, 32, 87–8, 115–20, 159–60, 202, 204–5; on substance 98, 113; on universe 112–15; use of geometrical figures 115–16; Vico and 32; on world soul 112–13 Buckley and the Russian General 103–5, 183–4 Budgen, Frank 51 Burrus and Caseous, tale of: identities of characters 102; Margareen’s entry into 126–7, 129; principle of non-contradiction in 98, 101–2; relationship between characters of 102–5, 124–7, 132 Caesar, Julius 103–5 Caygill, Howard 190 Celtic philosophers 67–8, 169–70 Clarke, Desmond M. 173 Cleopatra, queen of Egypt 130 Code, Alan 99, 171
Cohen, Bella (character) 129–30 coincidence of contraries. See principle of the coincidence of contraries Coleridge, Samuel Taylor 32; law of polarity 87–8, 118–23, 132 Colum, Mary 127 Colum, Padraic 12, 136–7, 147 Confucius 157–8 consciousness 59–60 Cornford, Francis Macdonald 155 cosmogonical monism 123 Crispi, Luca 170 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant) 189–94 Croce, Benedetto 93; The Philosophy of Giambattista Vico 11 Crow, Carl: Master Kung: The Story of Confucius 158 Curran, Constantine 10, 12, 34 Cuzzi, Paolo 10–11 Dancy, Jonathan 198 “Day of the Rabblement, The” (Joyce) 120–2 Deane, Vincent 179 Decline of the West, The (Spengler): treatment of time 74–5 Dedalus, Stephen (character): critique of idealism 172–3; description of stereoscopes 176–7; Greek characteristics of 26–7; philosophical references of 144–5, 152–3, 172; on subject of perception 173–4 Demiurge 72–3 Downes, Gareth Joseph 2 Dr Gedankje of Stoutgirth (character) 81, 84, 88–91 Dubliners (Joyce) 1, 50, 52–3 Early Commonplace Notebook 94, 110–11, 145, 170 Earwicker twins. See Shem and Shaun Edwards, Paul 52–3, 133–5, 166 Einstein, Albert: allusions to 76; Bergson and 78–9; Relativity: The Special and General Theory 76–7 Eliot, T. S. 51 Ellmann, Richard 10, 121–2, 127, 150–2, 166, 170 Enemy, The (Lewis) 56–8, 69, 90–1, 133–4, 165–6 essences 97 essential attributes 97–8 Estienne, Henri: “Si jeunesse savait! Si viellesse pouvait!” epigram 31 Exiles (Joyce) 1, 169–70 Exodus, book of 174
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Index 219 Ferrer, Daniel 178 Festy King (character) 87–8 Finnegans Wake (Joyce): annotations to 15; approach to reading 6–7; characters 4, 47, 126–7, 140; cycles of 21–8; on Irish flag 40–1; language of 36; myth of the Tower of Babel in 20; on New Amsterdam 40–1; notebooks 12, 33, 38, 55, 84–5, 178–9; philosophical allusions in 3–8, 205–6; structure and composition of 3–4, 6–7; studies of 2–3, 5–6; on subject of love 14–15, 21, 36–7; thunderwords in 18–21, 47–8; women in 127–8; See also individual philosophers Fisch, Max Harold 10 Flint, Robert 35 Flood, Joseph Mary: Ireland: Its Saints and Scholars 178, 186 flux 58–9, 61, 68, 78, 154 Fordham, Finn: Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake: Unravelling Universals 6–7 Forms: concept of 155 Fornaciari, Raffaello: Historical Outline of Italian Literature 10 Fraser, Alexander Campbell: Berkeley 170, 185 Freud, Sigmund: Five Lectures on Psychoanalysis 10–11 Geheber, Philip Keel 102, 123–4 Genesis, Book of: figure of Jubal 56; great flood of 3–4, 13–14, 19–20 Ghezzi, Charles 10, 111–12 Gifford, Don 28, 150 Gilbert, Stuart 33 Gilbert Schema for Ulysses 151–2 God: absolute maximum of 108; immediate knowledge of 197 Gorman, Herbert 10, 151 Gracehoper (character): blindness of 140–1; despair of 158–9; on Holy Saltmartin 162–3; link between Joyce and 141; musical ability of 162; reference to Bruno 159; relationship to Ondt 141–2, 158–60, 162; walk in the winter snow 140–2 Grayling, A. C. 196 Guthrie, W. K. C. 143 Hanaway-Oakley, Cleo 176 Hankey, Katherine: “Tell Me the Old, Old Story” 31 Hart, Clive: Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake 2, 6–7 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich: as angry Shaunish figure 204–5; dialectic of 86–8; on history 84–5; Joyce’s notes on 86; Lectures on the History of Philosophy 89; Lectures on the
Philosophy of History 84–5; on nothing 86; The Science of Logic 86; on Spinoza 89 Heraclitus 154 Herder, Johann Gottfried von: Outlines of a Philosophy of the History of Man 37 history: Christian conception of 28; conflicts of 41–2; cycles of 17–19, 26–8, 34, 47–8, 85n.118, 202; Hegelian view of 84–5; ideal eternal 16–17; providence and 17; Viconian understanding of 3–4, 7–8, 13–18, 103–5 “Holy Office, The” (Joyce) 145–6 Hopkins, Jasper 108 human ages 24–5 human customs 23 human institutions 24–6 human knowledge 194 human soul 94, 97, 146–7 Hume, David 169–70 Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE) (character) 103–5, 122–3, 183–4 Hurley, Patrick 126 idealism 172–3, 177, 194–200 ideas: vs. beings that process ideas 196 Idiom Neutral 36 illusions 184 intellect 61–2, 83, 147–8 intuition 61–2, 191–3 Ireland: education system 178, 186; flag of 40–1; introduction of Christianity to 178 “Ireland: Island of Saints and Sages” (Joyce) 168 James Joyce Digital Archive 73–4 Jingle, Alfred (character) 54–6 Johnson, Samuel 172 Joyce, James: Aristotelian philosophy and 93–4, 101, 132, 170; attitude to philosophical questions 3; Bergson’s ideas and 68–9; Berkeley’s ideas and 201; Bruno’s philosophy and 87–8, 118, 120–3; on “Celtic philosophers” 169–70; conception of historical recurrence 26–8; Cornell collection of 11; correspondence of 1–2, 13, 32–3, 38, 50–1, 180; criticism of 69–70; Cuzzi and 11; fascination with St. Patrick 178; gender and 126–8; Lewis and 4, 50, 90–1, 165–7; on monism 123; notebooks of 12, 33, 38, 55, 84–5, 178–9; in Paris 67–8; reading of The Art of Being Ruled 55; review of McIntyre’s book on Bruno 118; on space and time 123, 164–5; Stein’s influence on 54–5, 133–4; subject of gender and 127–8; Trieste library of 121–2; T. S. Eliot and 50; understanding of philosophy 1, 3–5, 32, 132, 152–3, 202–4;
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220 Index Joyce, James (cont.) Vico’s philosophy and 10–11; in Zurich 170; See also individual works of Joyce Joyce, Stanislaus 93–4, 120–1 Joycean cycles 21–31; abstractions in 25; Beckett’s three ages and 24–5; as cycles of individual lives 26–7; form of 21; four classical elements in 29; idea of auspices 22, 24–5; love in 28–31, 36–7, 42; notions of recurrence and providence 26; possibility of progress in 28; reference to birth and death in 22, 32, 42; reference to hell 29; reference to marriage 22, 32, 41–2; reference to sex 30; reference to thunder 22, 28–9; span of time in 30; structure of 23 Kant, Immanuel: Critique of Pure Reason 189–94; on existence of internal and external objects 192, 197–8; on intuition 191–3; on perception of internal and external objects 193; on a priori knowledge vs. a posteriori knowledge 191; Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will be Able to Come Forward as Science 190; on sensibility and understanding 190–1; subjective condition of sensibility 191–2; on thing in itself 179, 186–7, 189–90, 192–3, 197–8, 200 Kinane, Dean 181 Kippur, Stephen 34 Kitcher, Philip 1 Klein, Scott W. 165 Kristensen, Tom 13 Landuyt, Inge 38 language: development of 19–20; idea of universal 20, 46 Laoghaire, High King of Ireland 181, 183–4, 187 Larbaud, Valery 1–2 Law of Excluded Middle 99 law of polarity 118–21, 132; vs. principle of the coincidence of contraries 119–20 Lawson-Tancred, Hugh 97 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 139 Lernout, Geert 38 Lewis, Wyndham: “An Analysis of the Mind of James Joyce” 56–8, 65–7, 70–1, 78, 133–4, 142, 157; anti-Semitism 55–6; The Apes of God 165–6; The Art of Being Ruled 52, 54–6, 64–5, 73–4, 135–6; association with Aristotle 100–1; attitude toward music 162; autobiography 50; on Bergson’s philosophy 58–9, 62–5, 72–3, 148; Blasting and Bombadiering 50–1; Catholicism of 147; The Childermass 135–6, 165; conception of time 162; criticism of 165–6; critique of
Joyce 50, 67, 69–70, 74, 133–4, 165–6; definition of the classical and the romantic 65, 71–2, 100–1; The Enemy 56–8, 69, 90–1, 133–4, 165–6; on Heraclitus 154; The Human Age 166; on “idealo-realists” 156–7; interviews 166; letters of 52–3, 66, 165–6; The Man of the World 52–3; Men Without Art 100; military experiences 57–8; on Nietzsche 84–5; notion of naturalism 54–5; on philosophy of Plato 154–7; relationship with Joyce 4, 50, 58, 90–1, 166–7; Rude Assignment 166; as Shaun 49–50; on Spengler 74; “The Critical Realists” 53–4; “The Revolutionary Simpleton” 53–4, 56, 58, 62–7, 69–72, 74, 134–5; on Thomism 149–50; on time 75; Time and Western Man 70–1, 134–5; on Ulysses 52–3, 55–6, 58, 66–8; on vitalism 53–4; worldview 57–8 life 60–2 Locke, John: An Essay Concerning Human Understanding 195 love 14–15, 21, 28–31, 36–7, 42 Lucca, Robert de 115–16 MacGreevy, Thomas 165 Mali, Joseph 10 Margareen (character): and Antonius 129, 132; masculine and feminine qualities of 128–30; relationship to Master Pules 128; in tale of Burrus and Caseous 126–8 Mark Antony 130 Martin, Saint 162–3 Master Pules 128 material objects: collections of ideas as 199–200; nature of 195, 198–9 Mazzotta, Giuseppe 18 McCourt, John 72–3 McHugh, Roland 19, 29, 31, 36–7, 39–42, 47, 72–3, 81–2, 103–5, 110–11, 123–4, 129, 131–2, 158, 162–3, 181, 184–5 McIntyre, J. Lewis 106, 116–17 Melancthon, Philip 139n.25 Melton, J. Gordon 182–3 Menn, Stephen 143 Mercanton, Jacques 13 Metaphysics (Aristotle) 94, 96, 110–11 Metchnikoff, Léon: Civilization and the Great Historical Rivers 38 Meyers, Jeffrey 57–8, 81–2, 165–6 Michelet, Jules: humanism of 34; influence on Joyce 35; preface to Selected Works of Vico 26, 33; Quinet and 37–8; translation of the Third New Science 12, 33; view of history 34
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Index 221 Miller, Clyde Lee 109–10 Minkowski, Hermann 77 monism 83–4, 92, 122–3, 164–5 Mulligan, Buck (character) 125, 129–30, 144–5 Muta and Juva dialogue 181–2 New Science (Vico): editions and revisions 15; on heaven 25; on human institutions 23–4; idea of historical cycles 17–18, 21; idea of history 15–17, 28, 34, 37–8; influence on Joyce 9, 12–14, 33; on languages of the nations 46; translations of 12, 33 Newton, Isaac: conception of time 76–7; Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy 76 Nicholas of Cusa: On Actualized Possibility 109; conception of substance 98, 113; De beryllo 115–16; De mathematica perfectione 115–16; on different kinds of maximum 107–8; Joyce’s reading of 106; On Learned Ignorance 107–8; on nature of God 106, 108–11, 115–16; principle of the coincidence of contraries 106–11, 115; relation to Shem 204–5; on soul of the world 113; on universe 107–8 Nietzsche, Friedrich 84–5 Noon, Thomas 144–5 nous: philosophical concept of 142–4, 146–7 Ogden, C. K. 136 Ollaves, Christian 178 Ondt (character) 136–7, 158–60 Ondt and the Gracehoper, tale of: allusion to Aquinas 139n.25, 141–2, 161–2; allusion to Aristotle 149–50, 153, 161–2; allusion to Bruno 137–8, 159–60; allusion to Plato 150, 153; allusion to Vico 138, 141; blessing in 163–4; conception of nous 137–8, 142–4; conclusion of 160–4; connection between Shaun and Lewis and 136–7; context of 136–7; drafts and revisions of 161–2; fable of 164; first publication of 165; poetic form of 158–61; references to philosophers 138–40; references to philosophical concepts in 137–8; representation of Lewis and Joyce in 133, 166–7; writing of 133, 136–7 opposites. See unity of opposites ordinary vision 184 O’Rourke, Fran 3, 93, 144–6 Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress 1–2, 33, 165 Oxford University 116–17
Paddrock and Balkelly episode: allusion to Berkeley 175, 180, 189; discussion of visual perception 184–8; drafts of 179–81; Muta and Juva dialogue 180–2; perception of objects of the world 184–5; reference to Kant 186–7; reference to paradise 186; relationship to Shem and Shaun 182–4; religious associations 182–3; revision of 180–1; sources of inspiration 178–9 Patrick, Saint 178, 181, 187 Pegger’s Windup (character) 87–8 phenomenalism 198 Plato: Aristotle and 150–2; on Forms 154–5; in Gilbert Schema 151–2; vs. Heraclitus 154; Joyce’s references to 150–1, 204; realist/ idealist dichotomy and 154–6; Republic 150–1, 154 Pompa, Leon 15 Portrait (Joyce) 1, 10, 50–1, 93–4, 111–12, 126–7, 144–6, 150, 152, 171–2, 204 Pound, Ezra 50–1 Power, Arthur 70 primary and secondary qualities 195–6 primum mobile 110–11 principle of non-contradiction: certainty of 95–6; definition of 95; opponents of 95–8, 101–2; vs. principle of coincidence of contraries 101–2; Wake’s version of 98–102, 203 principle of the coincidence of contraries: Bruno’s philosophy and 87–8, 115–18; vs. law of polarity 119–20; vs. principle of noncontradiction 101–2, 117; Shaun and Shem’s identities and 102; Vico’s model of history and 3–4, 7–8, 32, 204; Wake’s references to 3–4, 87–8, 121–2, 132, 137–8, 159–60, 202–5 Professor Jones’ lecture: allusion to Bergson 72–4, 76, 78, 92; allusion to sophism 72–3; allusion to Spengler 74–5; depiction of Hegel 84–7; on dime-cash problem 71–3, 92; on dual nature of Antonius 130–2; issue of language in 79–81; Joyce’s engagement with Lewis in 50, 70–1, 90–1; on “primum mobile” 110–11; principle of non-contradiction in 92, 94, 98–100; on qualis and talis 79–81, 90–1; references to butter and cheese 123–6; references to Spinoza 82–4; reference to Bruno 111–12, 121–2; reference to Cusanus 106, 110–11; on relationship between Einstein and Bergson 76, 78–9; on relationship of time and space 92; structure of 49–50; writing of 70–1
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222 Index Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will be Able to Come Forward as Science (Kant) 190, 192–4 “Proteus” episode of Ulysses: Berkeley’s appearance in 170, 173–5, 177–8, 201; image of Aristotle in 170–2; subject of perception in 173–4 Proust, Marcel 73 providence 16–17
races: Biblical account of dispersion of 21 “Realism and Idealism in English Literature” (Joyce) 168 “Revolutionary Simpleton, The” (Lewis): on Chinese and Greek philosophical traditions 142–3; critique of Bergsonian “time-philosophy” 64–7, 73, 100, 134–5, 162; discussion of Ulysses 65–7; on distinction between philosophy and religion 142–3; images of childhood in 73; on Plato’s philosophy 153–4; publication of 56; on relationship between the ideas of Bergson and Einstein 78–9 Ross, William David 96 Rowan, Richard (character) 169–70 Russell, Bertrand: The ABC of Relativity 76–7
on problems of “God” and of “Intelligence” 148; Thomistic perspective of 148 Shem and Shaun (characters): connection to philosophers through 7–8, 203–6; inability to agree 163–4; interpretation of the coincidence of contraries and 202–3; as Joyce and Lewis 4, 49, 51; relationship between 49, 203; relationship to father 103–5, 122–3 Shem the Penman (character): personality of 49, 68; twelve questions of 49–50; unorthodox thought of 182–3 Slote, Sam 3, 164 Socrates: on poets 150–1 Solomon, King 174 soul of the world 112–13 space and time 77–8, 92, 123, 164–5 Spengler, Oswald 74; The Decline of the West 74–5 Spinoza, Benedict de: conception of substance 83–4, 89; criticism of 89; Jones’ attitude toward 82; on limitation on God’s intellect 83; monism of 83; on primary modes of being 84; relationship to Shem 204–5; Wake’s allusions to 81–2, 139–40 spiritual objects 197–8 Stace, Walter Terence 86 Stein, Gertrude 54–5, 73, 133–4 Stephen Hero (Joyce) 93–4, 111–12, 145, 171–2 stereoscope 176–7 substance: conception of 83–4, 89, 96–8, 110, 113–14, 117, 191, 196
Sabatini, Federico 2 Sage, Robert 165 Sainéan, Lazar: The Language of Rabelais 47 Schiff, Sidney 52–3, 66 Schopenhauer, Arthur 139 Schott, Edoardo 72–3 sensibility 193; vs. understanding 190–1 Severus, Sulpitius: Life of St. Martin 162–3 Shakespeare, William: Antony and Cleopatra 130 Shaun the Postman (character): ability to read Greek 136–7; connection to Lewis 136–7; on dime-cash problem 71–2; orthodox thought of 182–3; personality of 49; responses to Shem’s questions 49–50 Shaw, George Bernard 69 Sheen, Fulton: God and Intelligence in Modern Philosophy 148; on intellect, instinct, and intuition 148; neo-scholastic attitude 148–9;
Tales Told of Shem and Shaun (Joyce) 136, 161–2, 165 “The Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump, The” (Joyce) 56, 136 Theoharis, Theoharis Constantine 2, 171–2 thing in itself 179, 186–7, 189–90, 192–4, 197–8, 200 Thomism 144–50, 152–3 thunderwords 3–4, 18–21, 47–8 time: conception of 59–60, 74–7 Time and Western Man (Lewis): Joyce’s awareness of 135–6; on philosophy of Plato 156–7; publication of 70–1, 134; structure of 134–5; Thomism and 149–50 Tower of Babel: myth of 20–1 transition: critique of 133–4 transparent: discussion of 170–1 Treip, Andrew 9, 11 Tristan and Iseult: legend of 29
Quinet, Edgar: on history 37–8, 41–2; Introduction a la Idees sur la Philosophie de l’Histoire de l’Humanite 37–8; on material world 39; Michelet and 37–8; Vico’s connection to 38, 42; Wake’s allusions to 31–2, 35, 37
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Index 223 Ulysses (Joyce): on experience of time 68; impressionist element of 52–3; Lewis’ comments on 52–5, 66, 73, 90–1, 165–6; narrative method of 66–7; “Nestor” episode of 28; “Penelope” episode of 127–8; photographic naturalism of 52–3; references to Aristotle 93–4; references to Bergson 67–8; references to Kant 189–90; references to Plato 150–2; references to Spinoza 83; references to Vico 11–12; reference to historical recurrence 27; “Scylla and Charybdis” episode of 125, 129–30, 151–2; women in 127–8; See also Bloom, Leopold (character) understanding: vs. sensibility 190–1 universe 107–9, 112–15
Vico, Giambattista: on auspices 22, 24–5; comparison to Dante 35; on customs of nations 23; on cycles of history 15, 17–19, 22–3, 34, 45, 47–8, 202; on the divine 23, 46; fear of thunderstorms 13–14; on Hebrews 18; historical theories of 3–4, 11, 13–18, 103–5; humanism of 33–4; ideal eternal history of 15–18; Joyce’s enthusiasm for ideas of 10–14, 47–8; on linguistic development 11, 19–21, 46; methodology 16; on providence 16–18, 26; on universal flood 3–4, 13–14, 19–21, 23, 24n.56; Wake’s allusions to 1–4, 7, 9, 14–15, 18–22, 28–32, 42–3, 202–3; See also New Science (Vico) vision: theory of 175–6 vitalism 53–4 Vorticist movement 81–2, 89–90
Van Hulle, Dirk 55–6, 70–1 Van Mierlo, Wim 9 veil of space 184 veil of the temple 174–5, 184 Verene, Donald Phillip 2, 5, 10, 16, 20, 101n.33
Weaver, Harriet Shaw 12, 52, 55, 127, 180 Wet Pinter (character) 87–8 Wilde, Oscar 69 Williams, William Carlos 165 zoantholitic furniture 185