James Joyce

I thought that I would open a thread on James Joyce, the author of several books, most notably "Ulysses".

I have actually read "Ulysses", twice in fact, and various books [i]about[/i] it. I first loved the deep "Yes"! of Molly Bloom at the very end. If it had been a "No" I would have long left the book alone.

One of Joyce's books I have never read (apart from small portions) is "Finnegans Wake", written in what has come to be called "Wakese", an amalgamation of languages that Joyce found that he needed, never finding quite the correct word in his native tongue to capture the reality of life as he knew it to be. Quite profound really.

Samuel Beckett said that "Finnegans Wake" wasn't [i]about[/i] anything, but was rather the [i]thing itself[/i]. Maybe, but I can make little of most of it. Maybe I need to translate it into my own Wakese?

But a few lines here and there have captured my mind/heart, quoted here now:-

[i]They lived and laughed and loved and left.

First we feel. Then we fall.

Let us leave theories there and return to here's hear.

The Gracehoper was always jigging ajog, hoppy on akkant of his joyicity.

Will ye, ay or nay?

A dream of favours, a favourable dream. They know how they believe that they believe that they know. Wherefore they wail.
[/i]

I particularly love the "gracehoper" line. And maybe I capture the "thing itself" as gift from Joyce's sharing. No word there already known and wrung dry, to be pounded once more by my "self" and its conditioned behaviour and reactivity, but new words calling for new eyes. Beautiful. Life giving. Grace. I hope(r) !

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SW-User

More on James Joyce. I re-visited my blog on Google and reread a few things there on Joyce. So here a bit of a cut and paste, with a little bit of reworking. Reminded again of Samuel Beckett's "Krapps Last Tape" where Mr Krapp (some joke there maybe?) records his thoughts or whatever every ten years or so and when he listens back each time can find little connection. Then the last tape of course, yet if we escape from a totally linear time frame, which was first and which is last?

I've mentioned liking books about "Finnegans Wake", and one I read was "Pervigilium Finneganis" which purports to be the Wake translated into Latin! I [i]think [/i] it is a joke.

It manages the impossible and makes the Wake even more unreadable. Yes, a good joke, and I tend to think that James Joyce would have laughed. Would he have enjoyed it? But a serious point is made (or not) in the introductory essay that proceeds the body of the text, which is well worth the small price of the entire book. A point made in other books on the Wake, including "A Word In Your Ear" by Eric Rosenbloom. That at some point you really do need an ejector seat and stop looking for more and more depth in the various tricks of the text. Don't fall for Joyce's attempt at immortality and become one who lives their life deciphering each and every word, then re-deciphering each word again and again, keeping you busy and away from life itself. I think Sartre had something to say about seeking to immortalise himself in literature and he chose to resist the temptation. Maybe Joyce did not, and Nora Barnacle should have had a quite word in his ear at some point.

But I do love James Joyce. It was as I said before the "Yes" of Molly Bloom that did it. But it is Yes to life, not yes to pouring over a book looking for clues that can then be used to impress the literati.

Nevertheless, in Latin or Wakese, often both are sometmes welcome alternatives to Zen books, which are all seeking to encourage you to leap from the top of a 100 ft pole without a safety net. So leap! Don't let James Joyce have the last laugh.

Well, to finish I will share a few quotes from books [i]about[/i] "Ulysses" and "Finnegans Wake" which I have drawn from on my own often vulnerable and stumbling path through our fragile world.

[i]Bloom (Leopold Bloom of Ulysses) is no perfect hero, but perfection is overrated. Give me a honest human being embracing their mundane humanity any day over a person striving after perfection.

Joyce does not present us with the illusion of a perfect life in this book, a life without pain and sorrow, but in all his honesty Joyce shows us that life as it is and not as we think it should be is worth saying Yes to. The sorrows and difficulties faced in Ulysses are included in Joyce’s affirmation of life, because what good would such an affirmation be if it did not include all of life?

Joyce offers a new litmus test for what we call the hero, not gigantic feats of strength, but small and simple feats of kindness.
[/i]

(Sorry, I failed to put from where this came)

But another quote, this from Joseph Campbell, from his book on Joyce, "Mythic Worlds, Modern Words":-

[i]It’s my feeling that our imagery has been deprived of its affect by our strongly rational tendency in the interpretation of images and by our religious traditions concretizing symbols, so that they refer, not past themselves to symbolic themes, but to historical events—when, for example, we interpret the resurrection of Christ as having been an historical event instead of seeing the resurrection as a psychologically crucial moment of crisis, this deprives the imagery of its affect.[/i]

And finally: -

[i]An epiphany was not a miraculous dispensation from above but, as Joyce defined it, an insight into 'the soul of the commonest object.[/i]

(Kevin Birmingham, from "The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle For James Joyce's Ulysses.")