tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52703363262823463062024-03-13T11:31:04.648-07:00Finnegans Wake in Santa Cruzseana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.comBlogger219125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-44972470333773418712022-07-27T19:42:00.002-07:002022-08-23T14:41:03.402-07:00 HCE, Job and the Guilt of Everyman, Part 7 (seventh part of seven) by Ann Cavanaugh<p>Joyce to my understanding shifts away from the notion of justice ( for either the
individual or the universal). Joyce seems to understand that the God we have
come to worship is capricious and cruel and cannot be relied upon. He speaks an
incomprehensible language in the sound of terrifying thunder. At the same time
it is interesting, as mentioned, that he continued to show up as a Catholic
throughout his life. Joyce is showing us not just another lens through which to
live and understand life and our lives but an entirely new (all things old become
new again) viewing apparatus. For Joyce it is Love and the Feminine that is the
foundation and refuge which we have lost and are in need of; and that the over
reliance on Laws and contracts of the patriarchy have brought us to a place dry
and inhospitable. Unlike personal justice or justice in the larger sense, Love
and the ways of the Feminine are available to us always and do not necessarily
require faith. Although by the end of his ordeal Job’s faith comes closer to Joyce
in his letting go and allowing for mystery. Codifying what is acceptable human
behavior has its benefits but it also can surely be abused and be the cause of
suffering depending upon the Law giver(s). And thus while justice can be
described by adherence to the letter of the Law it must always include a living
sense of morality and compassion. Or in more mystical terms be tempered with
Mercy. </p><p>Creation as the manifestation of Love and the domain of the Feminine does not
exclude the more masculine function of Judgement and Law. But The Law
devoid of the Feminine can at best impart a weak/shifting sense of security, as it
can so readily be rendered, at best, useless in the light of deception and
manipulation and, at the worst, the justifier of war and all manner of suffering. </p><p>One could argue that Joyce is asking us to return to a more nature based
orientation which has its roots, of course, in paganism. In Judaism’s assertion
against paganism through the focus on covenant and Law it jeopardized this
connection. Joyce is an advocate for the restoration of what has been lost
through neglect, aggression, and an over emphasis on logic and our thinking
function. He is inviting us to what is retrievable if we but have the willingness to
sharpen our senses and our innate faculties for creativity and a more intuitive
relationship to our world along with the courage to question our cherished
beliefs and institutions. Perhaps it is not so hard to understand Joyce’s abiding
connection to Catholicism. Much of what he is pointing us to can be found in the
ministry of another paradigm shifter who showed up to bring emphasis to an
earlier scriptural message; the highest commandment as; “Love one’s neighbor
as oneself.” And, I would add, everyone is one’s neighbor. </p><p> Finally I am left with a sense of the ongoing River of Life and of human thought
and effort which in terms of humanity’s reaching for relationship with the
unknown is, as in all things, an ever moving, ever shifting evermore forever and
ever…….. </p><p>But wait… where does this leave us now, at this particular moment in time,
pondering the Guilt of Everyman. Let’s try and really sit with this and see this
narrative (the OS of Original Sin) as also in a process of shift and change. I
would suggest that whatever benefit has been derived from telling/believing this
ancient story such benefit has been vastly overshadowed by its violent effects
throughout history. </p><p>As a testament to Joyce and his labors, let’s see if we might not come up with a
better more compassionate story, perhaps one that has lain in silence for too
long, and in so doing become active agents in reestablishing the sense of the
unifying power at the root of all Life.
</p>seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-41402078180019704822022-07-27T19:42:00.000-07:002022-07-27T19:42:17.187-07:00 HCE, Job and the Guilt of Everyman, Part 6 (sixth part of seven), by Ann Cavanaugh<p> Part VI
Margarete Susman in her insightful essay on Job, God the Creator, in Glatzer’s
book, speaks to a larger sense of justice or one which is a more historical justice;
one which is about humanity as a whole or nations rather than justice on an
individual level. When justice is defined by contract and Law it is an easier task
to point to a description but as with everything in life this simply avoids the
complexities. Job gives us very little with which to formulate any coherent idea
of justice. The final phase in the biblical story has God restoring all that Job had
lost though his trial period. I found this anti-climatic. One wonders if God
would have restored all that had been lost to Job if Job had not come to a deeper
understanding of his ignorance. This seems a valid question given the backstory
as about Job being tested at Satan’s request. Would Satan, having triumphed
with Job’s failure for instance, come to restore his losses? Or would Job simply
become the unfortunate collateral damage of the playing out of the universal
power forces? Well there’s a notion hearkening back to pagan roots! This
restoring of material goods and bodily integrity lends itself to such
inconsequential what ifs. </p><p>What makes more sense to me is seeing the restoration of Job’s former life as
symbolic of his having come through a journey of self discovery and that it is his
essential self that is either restored or has been discovered through this trial. The
stories of the journey “home” with its many “trials” has been with us from time
immemorial. Sometimes the home is a re-membering, sometimes there is a
terrestrial or an extraterrestrial home etc. I would posit that for Job it is the
discovery of a faith he had no previous notion about; an expansion of his sense
of awe and humility in light of his blessings arising in a universe that is truly not
controllable or predictable. Could one then perhaps speak of gratitude as
opposed to faith? There now exists the opportunity for his living as a good man
not for gain but for the sake of the good in and of itself. One could then also, as
easily perhaps, call his good life Kismet, Luck, Fortune. All concepts that were
part of earlier systems about the forces at work in the universe which had now
become part of the dominion of a monotheistic God and which is now called
faith. For Job it is no longer a transactional relationship he has to his God but
one based on something deeper and more mysterious. Joyce likewise gives us a
beautiful communication about the importance of the journey and home. He
lays his storytelling on the template of the classic Odyssey (I would suggest that
both Ulysses and the Wake are informed by this archetypal drama to a greater or
lesser degree) and for him the journey towards home in the Wake is rendered in
an astonishingly moving and transcendent vision as the Great Mother/Sophia/
Life Force ALP gives her self over to the longing and dissolving movement of
and to the sea - Original Home. </p>seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-26315816092746305462022-07-27T19:41:00.002-07:002022-07-27T19:41:56.871-07:00 HCE, Job and the Guilt of Everyman, Part 5 (fifth part of seven), by Ann Cavanaugh<p>Job cannot understand God’s sense of justice but through opening to the vastness
of creation he sees and accepts his inability to comprehend and in this moment
comes to a place of faith. It seems the narrative points to Job’s sense of faith as
resting in the vast ordering of nature and the cosmos as the signature of a mighty
God. Job’s so called faith at the end of the tale seems to be of a different stripe
from what is called faith at the beginning. His need for a hearing in order to
voice his case, if you will, seems to be based on a faith in a contract that he feels
is breached. His faith at the end seems based on the sense of covenant or a
mutual agreement of commitment wherein he holds faith in a God that could act
against him at any moment but essentially it would be understood now as all to
his and to a greater benefit. One can’t help but think of that old saw from a
disciplining parental authority “it’s for your own good,” all while the switch may
be coming down. </p><p> I was struck by how similar the ultimate relationship between an unknowable
and all powerful God and Job’s acknowledgement of ignorance and accepting on
faith his subservient position is to the traditional marriage contract wherein the
wife or bride accepts her husband as the Lord, if you will, and her role as one of
duty to obedience and service. In the Wake this is changed up to the degree that
ALP is one with the Life Force and is the active party in her defense of her
accused husband. The Feminine is at the center of Life and honored as such. It is
she who is the one who bestows many gifts upon her multitudinous children. </p><p>From a political standpoint adhering to a covenant with a single God can
obviously lend coherence to a community and create the potential for nation
building and thus security. Ironically we face a not dissimilar challenge to our
“secular faith” in our own Supreme Court in this moment. We as the body
politic are being called to have trust and faith in our highest social contract and
yet the requirements/power of the parties here seem unbalanced or
mismatched. A so called secular faith can only work if the body is assured that
its needs are being met. We are not an enslaved people being led by a more
enlightened prophet (Moses) in the form of present day conservative judges,
some of whom have strong religious leanings, and who presume to know better
what the majority needs. Our relationship to our highest secular authority is not
a covenant as described. However, when present day authority believes it is
divinely inspired it can begin to look a little too close to a coming down from the
mountain with an unchallengeable decree. When this occurs one runs the risk of
enslavement to what is now the new order. </p>seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-80273664628138104182022-07-27T19:41:00.001-07:002022-07-27T19:41:41.377-07:00 HCE, Job and the Guilt of Everyman, Part 4 (fourth part of seven), by Ann Cavanaugh<p>The biblical God we meet is seduced (or tested himself as it were) by Satan to
allow the torture of Job as a way of testing Job’s devotion to God. Lots of testing
going on here. Perhaps seduced is the wrong word. Perhaps it is an idea that
found favor with God but required the agency of Satan to be put into operation.
H.H. Rowley, in his essay; The Intellectual Versus the Spiritual Solution (in Glatzer’s
anthology) states; “It was the expression of God’s confidence in him, and by his
very suffering he was serving God.” One can reasonably ask; serving God how
or for what? Serving him in his war with Satan? One can’t help but think of
Joyce’s warring twins Shem and Shaun as the human example of this warring
archetype. The twins are split off from a unity which is ultimately mended in the
Wake and an argument can be made for Satan as the split off son of God. </p><p>Unlike Christ who is tempted but castigates Satan, this God succumbs. Job loses
everything and suffers untold pain in the course of his trials and asks/demands
nothing but to be heard and considered by this God, who has joined forces in an
unholy alliance, which renders Job pitiable. With HCE the focus remains on the
concept of guilt/Guilt over something that may or may not have happened in
Phoenix Park. Rather than a loss of worldly goods, children and personal health
HCE’s brand of torture comes in the form of the wealth of his accusers and the
dearth of supporters. Joyce seems to see this as a particularly Irish form of the
manifestation of cruelty and shame. Take his words for instance, “Ireland is the
old sow that eats her farrow,” or as another example, the cruelty of the rejection
and “crucifixion” of Parnell by the Irish: and this over, of no small consequence,
Parnell’s acting on sexual desire outside the rules (Law) of Catholicism. </p><p>The story of Job is resolved through Job’s coming to see that he has been
expecting to understand the ineffable vastness of the contract with the small
instrument of human knowledge. In fact he appears to be coming from an
understanding of there existing a contract (ie an agreement around proscribed
behavior of the signatories) rather than from the idea of covenant which Eichrodt
in his Theology of the Old Testament describes as essential to defining Israel as
Israel and “controlling the formation of national faith.” He goes on to say:
“As an epitome of the dealings of God in history the ‘covenant’ is not a doctrinal
concept, with the help of which a complete corpus of dogma can be worked out,
but the characteristic description of a living process, which was begun at
a particular time and at a particular place, in order to reveal a divine
reality unique in the whole history of religion.”(Italics his). In this sense we can
think of this covenant as similar to a marriage agreement which is an agreement
of commitment but which does not determine necessarily the day to day
interactions of the partners and does not determine the quality of the partnership
over time. This analogy to a marriage contract is of course apt as Israel is
described as the bride of God. It is clear from Eichrodt’s work and also various
writings within the Hebrew Scriptures that the understanding of contract or
covenant might be clear and definitive in one moment in history and then
understood differently at another time. </p>seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-2792841076698556422022-07-27T19:41:00.000-07:002022-07-27T19:41:20.915-07:00 HCE, Job and the Guilt of Everyman, Part 3 (third of seven parts) , by Ann Cavanaugh<p>Job is adamant that he has expected justice from a God whom he believes is a
just God and to whom he has been faithful. One can see in this dynamic the
embedded idea of covenant, or a contract if you will. Job is outraged that he has
kept his part of the bargain and now he is subjected to a life of suffering and loss
with no justice in sight. HCE, in contrast, seems more resigned to his situation.
There’s no imagined broken contract here, just the internal and external voices of
shame and accusation to which Everyman, religious or otherwise, is subject. Yet
at the same time, behind all that is played out on the Wake stage, there lives his
Loudship who speaks in unintelligible thunder words, and with whom one
could not imagine having any semblance of a relationship, contractual or
otherwise. </p><p>Unless, of course, one that is strictly fear based.
While the Fall predates the contexts for both of these protagonists we are not led
to see original sin as in any way playing a part in Job’s trial. Joyce, on the other
hand, recognizes the importance of this imagined event and it is pointed to over
and over again in the dreamscape of the Wake. After all Finnegan died from a
Humpty Dumpty fall off a ladder. And thus the fun begins! Joyce seems to be
after pointing out this message of innate impurity/guilt and how it seems to
breathe its unholy breath into so much of life as we experience it. We are guilty
from the get go and are not only ignorant but weak and ineffectual to boot. One
wonders how anyone could go from this as a starting point to a place of being
able to identify with a Christlike approach to life. Oh wait, that’s possible after
one is redeemed, as it were. Well, that would be one way to retain the idea of
innate impurity but without the end game of eternal damnation. It doesn’t,
however, offer much hope for this present life; hope for a better life in heaven
maybe, but then what does one do with the concept of the Kingdom being all
around us? My take is that Joyce was all about the Kingdom that needs to be
realized (a-wakened) here and now. And through his humor and commitment to
his craft he seems to be saying, don’t lose out on the fun that lives and breathes
despite all the rest.</p>seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-62751410904989708862022-07-27T16:38:00.001-07:002022-07-27T16:38:39.600-07:00 HCE, Job and the Guilt of Everyman, Part 2 (second of seven parts) , by Ann Cavanaugh<p>In tackling the question of guilt it is important to sort out what I refer to as guilt
with a small g and Guilt with a large G. Guilt (with a small g) as that which
describes human immorality and all manner of harmful behavior to self and
other. That behavior for which we can have a sense of regret and a need for
reconciliation/forgiveness which can serve to advance our awareness and ethical
development. It is Guilt written with a large G that is, as I see it, capable of
holding us hostage from our own goodness. This is the Guilt that functions to
advance the belief in the individual, and humanity at large, as participating in
the results of an ahistorical event of our “first parents.” That behavior which
purportedly caused the original separation from God and the good; resulting in
the belief in the fundamental impurity of the individual human and the human
race and the need for redemption. Now this is one rendering of the Genesis story,
and there are others, but it is undeniably the one that has had major influence
over generations, Christian and otherwise. </p><p>This story of our Fall from original purity through our own willfulness, or what?
innate darkness? is capital G Guilt. But are we only tempted if we have the
capacity to be tempted? And if so, from where does this come? If we contain the
potential to act with impurity then impurity is something we have within us
and this would predate The Fall. How does free will square with innocence?
Rather than concluding that Eve was tempted what could change if she was
identified with being curious and persuaded? One can’t help but consider the
argument that this so called Fall was the result itself of a set up or test
orchestrated for a purpose beyond understanding. It leads to separation from
the natural world and the world of our inner instincts and then later we find this
same God, who originally banished his first created children, in a covenant
relationship with another of his children (Job) where this child/man is also being
tested/tortured to prove yet another point. And is that point one He needs to
verify for himself? Wouldn’t that beg the question that there is something about
this human creature which is beyond His innate knowing? Or was the
enactment more an opportunity for an “I told you so” with His son (in Job the
angelic realm is referred to as sons of God and Satan is among them). These are
all vital questions prompted by this story that get at the essence of who and what
is God but also who and what is man and the question of what essentially
constitutes a vital relationship of religious belief. </p>seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-33134430055101852632022-07-27T16:38:00.000-07:002022-07-27T16:38:10.745-07:00 HCE, Job and the Guilt of Everyman, Part 1 (first of seven parts), by Ann Cavanaugh<p>Picking up <i>The Dimensions of Job: A Study and Selected Readings </i>edited by Nahum
N. Glatzer, decades after a first reading, was a bit of a revelation as I observed
many points of intersection between this biblical poetic story and the ongoing
trial/guilt of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake protagonist HCE (Humphrey
Chimpden Earwicker). </p><p>Sin, Guilt, Suffering…..In Job, suffering can be understood not as the outcome of
sin but rather inextricably tied to life itself and incomprehensible in its meaning
from a religious perspective. An understanding of suffering is demonstrated to
be problematic in the Job story in that it is shown to not be available to logical
analysis. Rather it is through suffering one can come to a deeper orientation to
the ineffable. One might say a deeper humility in our sense of knowing that we
do not know and this as the beginning of Wisdom. Wisdom, Sophia, The
Feminine. And it is the Feminine to which Joyce is pointing us. </p><p>Whether Joyce had intentionally drawn from this Old Testament (Hebrew
Scripture) drama or, more likely the notion of original sin, which would have
been out in front for him given his Jesuit education, it struck me that one of the
many lenses through which we can read Finnegans Wake is the Jobean trial; which
is at once a tale of a cruel set up by a jealous God and the existential suffering of
Everyman. As with HCE, Job is up against accusations of guilt, being falsely
accused by so called friends, and as he sees it, unfairly punished. Unlike HCE,
who stammers out several possible alibis and then goes on to enumerate all the
services he has provided to family and community, Job goes through a stage of
demanding loudly, and in no uncertain terms, to be recognized for his
righteousness or, at the least, not punished for what are minor infractions which
are part and parcel of being human. While their defenses are similar their
approaches are worlds apart. Job’s argument and indignation are reasonable
within the context of an understood transactional relationship; he is full of
“righteous” indignation. HCE in comparison has the tone of a quiet somewhat
humorous ticking off of reasons why it could not have been him and even if it
was him one should look at all the good stuff he has done. He comes across as a
fully rounded human with his good points and his requisite flaws. </p><p>The other major difference between these two characters is that HCE has, as it
were, an awesome defense attorney in ALP (The Feminine, Anna Livia
Plurabelle). She engages in actively defending and arguing for HCE and puts
her argument in a letter for all to see. Job is alone in his righteousness and all
abandon him including his wife, who attempts to disabuse him of his loyalty to
God and friends, who reason he must be guilty to be so out of favor with God.
One needs to remember to see both of these stories as parables and thus each
character serves as stand-in for humanity writ large while at the same time both
prompt us to ask the question of human guilt on the individual level, as well as
to ponder what each view has to teach us. Job’s journey brings him ultimately in
touch with a sense of humility. HCE seems to have a sense of humility from the
start, in addition to the connection to the Feminine, and his light hearted
humorous touch cannot be overlooked. Job is a person who sees the ebb and
flow of life in that he has a sense of what his behavior has amounted to and, thus,
of what he is justly deserving. In HCE we have man as tested by the ever
changing/shifting fortunes of life and, in contrast to Job’s approach, someone
who has adopted Joyce’s prescription for survival - “silence, exile and cunning. “
Like Joyce, HCE would rather persuade than demand.</p>seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-61240139587793374982020-10-31T17:43:00.001-07:002020-10-31T17:43:56.702-07:00Remembering Ed Smiley<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OS2v6JE0DqQ/X54A6FL7lAI/AAAAAAAAFMI/RBivJsMxNsscA-b2YcRMMe39qWrtclLTgCLcBGAsYHQ/s800/Ed%2BSmiley.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="432" data-original-width="800" height="216" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OS2v6JE0DqQ/X54A6FL7lAI/AAAAAAAAFMI/RBivJsMxNsscA-b2YcRMMe39qWrtclLTgCLcBGAsYHQ/w400-h216/Ed%2BSmiley.png" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>I have been much remiss in not posting here on the blog that we lost one of our most enthusiastic Wakers back in August. Although I started this blog, Ed has been an enthusiastic poster since very close to that time, and in recent years, his posts outnumbered mine considerably. I realized that Dia de los Muertos might be a good time to make up for not having written something earlier, but then realized that Halloween itself might be an even better day, since, as his <a href="https://www.facebook.com/smiley.ed" target="_blank">Facebook </a>post shows, he was nothing if not enthusiastic about Halloween. </p><p>Although all of the Wake group has lived in Santa Cruz, California 'and environs' for many years, the rest of us did not know Ed when he joined our group, although I'm sure all of us were a mere degree or two of separation from him. But I actually came into contact with Ed on Goodreads. I must have been scrolling through the names of people who had commented on the book and realized that Ed lived right in the same town as I do. As we met in a pub, not someone's home, I felt fine about mentioning that there was a Wake group right in his own town. I think he probably made it to the very next meeting. </p><p>Ed had already read the <i>Wake </i>twice by the time he joined us, and at first I think he felt somewhat impatient with our leisurely crawl through the book. But unlike others who came and went after a few sessions, he had tenacity, and above all, such a devotion to Joyce and the book that he was willing to take us as he found us. Ed had a great memory and a wide field of interest and was always eager to share that with us. Sometimes we were not as eager to be taught as he was to teach, but in retrospect, what he was really sharing with us was his enthusiasm. </p><p>He told us once that in a dream, he had been able to read the book that came after the <i>Wake</i>, which Joyce had promised would be much simpler to understand. Joyce died before he could write that book, but I think Ed believed he had actually seen it, and for my part, I wouldn't be at all surprised. </p><p>It was a peculiar aspect of the Wake group that we didn't learn that much about each other's lives outside the group if we didn't already know it. We never saw Ed's house until he threw a party for our actually finishing the book, and I'm pleased to recall that he dressed the house up in Wakean motifs and himself up as Joyce, if I recall right. It was a nice evening, and in retrospect, we all found it rather touching. </p><p>But we did come to learn fairly soon that Ed was an artist and a very good one, as well as a tech guy who made his living in that industry. His paintings were described by him as '<a href="https://www.edsmileysart.com/?fbclid=IwAR1sEApe-jEIgforQfq4cs2fGY16CErhLjvENh1-wrJaWAAxe68CYfIydlM" target="_blank">colorful abstracts.</a>' He had frequent shows, particularly at the First Fridays Santa Cruz hosts monthly and the ones I went to seemed well attended. </p><p>In addition to surviving a very serious car accident during the time we knew him (he escaped without major injuries, I think, but his copy of the Wake did not), Ed contracted lung cancer and had to wait for a lung transplant in the last year or so that we knew him, in our second time around with the Wake. His spirit was the same, but he had an oxygen machine and trouble breathing and so his presence with us was a little different. In some ways that helped him meld into the group better. He was very faithful about attending even up to the time when the pandemic shut us (and the Poet and the Patriot) down. I know he was very happy to be part of our group enterprise and we were happy to have him. </p><p>Ed did get his lung transplant but it was right around the time the lockdown started and though we had a few emails back and forth, we weren't really in the loop. His daughter wrote on his Facebook page that he had had a few bad patches since the transplant, but things had been looking up again, and he was expecting to return to painting when he simply passed away. </p><p>It took us awhile but we did hold a Zoom wake for Ed and it felt very appropriate to just be our small group remembering him as he was to us. We also felt an urge to resume (rezoom? I can't resist adding) but that has yet to be revived. Maybe after the election we'll all have a little more mental space for it.</p><p><br /></p><p>Happy Halloween, Ed. We miss you. Say hi to Joyce for me.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DT8LBj0wfg4/X54CV7uJZzI/AAAAAAAAFMU/vQdJXV9NOOkEaAJwLkD5sD4Xifnd5PLjACLcBGAsYHQ/s2048/Finn%2B4-17-19%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1783" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-DT8LBj0wfg4/X54CV7uJZzI/AAAAAAAAFMU/vQdJXV9NOOkEaAJwLkD5sD4Xifnd5PLjACLcBGAsYHQ/w349-h400/Finn%2B4-17-19%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="349" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p>seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-74554065478032351282020-07-27T17:27:00.002-07:002020-07-27T17:27:53.361-07:00Did Joyce know of Lotería cards and the Mexican game?<br />
<br />
There’s a rhyme for one of them that connects Finnegan to Shaun!<br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<dd style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 164%; background-image: none; border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Lato, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 26.239999771118164px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-image: none; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-size: 26.239999771118164px; font-stretch: inherit; font-style: italic; font-variant-caps: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Tanto bebió el albañil, que quedó como barril.</span></dd><dd style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 164%; background-image: none; border: 0px; caret-color: rgb(32, 33, 34); color: #202122; font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Lato, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 26.239999771118164px; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; overflow: auto; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">So much did the bricklayer drink, he ended up like a barrel.</dd></blockquote>
Ed Smileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16076415756688151999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-15617785192407349572020-07-11T21:48:00.003-07:002020-07-11T21:48:26.731-07:00I’m thinking that it makes sense to think of the recorso as a fixed Shaun/space square with <i>immobile</i> ages, and a Shem/time reversal <i>going through the ages backwards:</i><br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>Republic</li>
<li>Monarchy</li>
<li>Theocracy begins again</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
The Roman history where Augustus wields power but does it officially through the Senate, his line is turned into a monarchy, and then the Emperor becomes a divinity was known to Joyce.<br />
<br />
This video suggested some of these ideas to me.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://youtu.be/iqP-0dkuEJc">https://youtu.be/iqP-0dkuEJc</a><br />
<br />
Disturbing parallels to our own times.Ed Smileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16076415756688151999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-1691048003247935372020-01-11T00:44:00.002-08:002020-01-11T00:44:15.094-08:00along theThe last word in <i>Finnegans Wake:</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
<br />
<blockquote>
Whish! A gull. Gulls. Far calls. Coming, far! End here. Us
then. Finn, again! Take. Bussoftlhee, mememormee! Till thous-
endsthee. Lps. The keys to. Given! A way a lone a last a loved a
long <b><span style="font-size: large;">the
</span></b></blockquote>
<br />
A fun article on the fun article:<br />
<br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: , "arial" , sans-serif; letter-spacing: -0.1px;"><i>The most commonly-used word in English might only have three letters – but it packs a punch.</i></span><br />
<a href="http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20200109-is-this-the-most-powerful-word-in-the-english-language">http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20200109-is-this-the-most-powerful-word-in-the-english-language</a><br />
<br />Ed Smileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16076415756688151999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-8241122372045270162019-11-30T08:31:00.000-08:002019-11-30T08:31:08.469-08:00Bio of Harriet Shaw Weaver<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-english-woman-who-bankrolled-james-joyce-1.4098075?mode=amp" target="_blank">https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-english-woman-who-bankrolled-james-joyce-1.4098075?mode=amp</a><br />
From the Irish Times<br />
<br />
<br />
<h1 style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; caret-color: rgb(65, 65, 65); color: #414141; font-family: Georgia, Times, serif; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1em; margin: 5px 0px;">
The English woman who bankrolled James Joyce </h1>
<h2 amp-access="authorized = true" itemprop="description" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; color: #515151; font-family: Lato, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 1em; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.3em; margin: 1em 0px;">
First Joyce and later Ireland were beneficiaries of Harriet Shaw Weaver’s generosity.</h2>
<div>
<br /></div>
Ed Smileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16076415756688151999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-15208965381990747652019-10-30T21:18:00.002-07:002019-10-30T21:18:28.470-07:00Halloween themed Joyce parody On McSweeny’s<br />
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/warren-zevons-werewolves-of-london-by-james-joyce">https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/warren-zevons-werewolves-of-london-by-james-joyce</a><br />
<br />Ed Smileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16076415756688151999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-47146170776735358772019-10-26T07:57:00.000-07:002019-10-26T07:57:03.010-07:00The tragic earwigI picked up this little gem from Clint Carroll on the <i>Reading Finnegans Wake </i>Facebook<i> group.</i><br />
<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I read that earwigs undergo “incomplete metamorphosis” ... a process called hemimetabolism. The earwig has no pupal stage and does not molt. Our earwig, then, old HCE, is incapable of complete metamorphosis or transformation. He simply is regardless of the costume he wears in the Wake or the particulars of the time or setting he finds himself in. He simply is ... like the earwig ... and this is why ALP’s speech in Book IV is so heartbreaking, so very lovely and generous and merciful.</blockquote>
Ed Smileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16076415756688151999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-77873819296112320142019-09-13T16:38:00.001-07:002019-09-13T16:46:48.580-07:00Table of Correspondences<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<br />
<table border="1">
<tbody>
<tr><th><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><i style="font-weight: normal;">sigla</i></span></th><th><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> ∃</span></th><td><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif; font-size: large; text-align: center;"><b> ∆</b></span></td><th><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> ⊥</span></th><th><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> ⊏</span></th><th><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: large;"> ∧</span></th>
</tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> <span style="font-size: xx-small;">dreamtime</span> </span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">HCE</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">ALP</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Issy</span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> Shaun </span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> Shem </span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> <i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">in real life</span></i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> Mr Porter </span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> Mrs Porter </span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> Isabelle </span></td><td><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif;">Kevin</span></span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> Jerry</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-size: x-small;"> <i><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">organ</span></i></span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> ear </span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">heart</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">eye</span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> right testes </span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> left testes </span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> <i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">nature</span></i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> mountain</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> river</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> stream</span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> right bank stone </span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> left bank tree </span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> <i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">art</span></i></span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> architectural </span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> epistolary</span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> cinematic </span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> political</span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> literary</span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> <i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Egypt</span></i></span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> Osiris</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> Isis</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Nut</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Horus</span></td><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> Set and Thoth </span></td></tr>
<tr><td><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> <i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Rome</span></i></span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Caesar</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Calpurnia</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Cleopatra</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Brutus</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Cassias</span></td></tr>
<tr><td style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> <i><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Eden</span></i></span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Adam</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Eve</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Lilith</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Michael</span></td><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "trebuchet ms" , sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Satan</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div>
<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Note: couldn't find an HTML entity for E rotated 90 </span></i><i><span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">degrees to the right, so used the alternate sigla for HCE.</span></i></span></div>
Ed Smileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16076415756688151999noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-52290915316582572882019-05-13T13:45:00.004-07:002019-05-13T13:45:59.527-07:00Now why didn't I think of this?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I've already sent this link out to our own group, but for any <i>Wake </i>fan that happens to drop by I thought I should mention it here also. In celebration of the 80th anniversary of the publication of the Wake, Susie Lopez put up an article on Literary Hub about her experience of annotating the <i>Wake </i>for her own edification and enjoyment. It looks fabulous.<br />
<br />
Here's <a href="https://lithub.com/finnegans-wake-at-80-in-defense-of-the-difficult/" target="_blank"><i>Finnegans Wake </i>at 80: In Defense of the Difficult</a></div>
seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-39283217046379488302019-04-21T17:27:00.001-07:002019-04-21T17:27:33.659-07:00Finnegans Wake in Santa Cruz, 2.0<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oUqyhNURAJE/XL0JLFsnzQI/AAAAAAAAEyQ/ZmQywOYwwRoIGEH9ANoe815_gzwMsYnJwCLcBGAs/s1600/Finn%2B4-17-19%2B%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1393" height="400" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-oUqyhNURAJE/XL0JLFsnzQI/AAAAAAAAEyQ/ZmQywOYwwRoIGEH9ANoe815_gzwMsYnJwCLcBGAs/s400/Finn%2B4-17-19%2B%25281%2529.jpg" width="348" /></a></div>
<br />
All current members of our Santa Cruz Wake group happened to be in town for our last meeting, and, not without effort, one courageous individual managed to get us to stand still long enough to take a picture for this rare occurrence. (Tip!)</div>
seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-62013902911537919952019-02-06T23:17:00.000-08:002019-02-06T23:17:07.775-08:00Beautiful Dreamers: The Watched Watchers of Picasso and Joyce<i>Pre-ramble</i>: These musings were inspired by reading one of the essays in <i>Other Criteria: Confrontations with Twentieth-Century Art </i>by Leo Steinberg. The essay in question, <i>Picasso's Sleepwatchers, </i>raised certain resonances with <i>Finnegans Wake.</i> The book is vitally interesting in a general sense far beyond looting for quotatoes. A remainder floated into my awareness in the tail end of winter nap reverie.<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<br />
As much as anything else can be said, in one of the scheherezadean multiplet of tales we tell ourselves of <i>Finnegans Wake</i> is that, as Bishop relentlessly suggests, it is the voyeuristic story of an "unquiring" Mr Porter who loses and "refinds" himself submerged in a fantastical and universal existence under the fantastical "agnomen" of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, aka the universal Here Comes Everybody. And said shadow existence is filled to its finny gills with watchers and watched and watched watchers. But to be fully fair we must add: and night watches watching on first-second-third watch, and the assignation of the hands of a watch, and watching out lest ye be watched, and so on down through all <i>ad infinitum</i>-cy.<br />
<br />
Much of that essay set off Wakean alarms for me. ("Thank you Loud.") Picasso's images of sleepers watched overpower their watchers with an apparently passive and negative capability, but when examined fully suggest a hidden power rather than a potentiality. As Steinberg puts it:<br />
<blockquote>
Sleep, the interior privacy of the <i>sueño</i>--the state of sleeping and dreaming which in Spanish goes by a single name--may be Picasso's symbol of the inmost self. Once while challenging the would-be interpreters of his art, he asked "how can anyone enter into my dreams?" He was protecting the self in its solitude, but also its secret inner facility.</blockquote>
"Is there not one who understands me?" He goes on to add:<br />
<blockquote>
The naive image of inactive sleep is clearly too mechanistic for Picasso's art.</blockquote>
He also reflects that:<br />
<blockquote>
... Picasso's sleep watching also has a Hispanic flavor. It recalls the poet Quevedo "posing wakeful questions to the dream-life" and Spain's national drama, Calderón's <i>La</i> <i>vida</i> <i>es</i> <i>sueño, </i>whose complex plot demonstrates "each man dreams what he is"... </blockquote>
It might also be noted, although Steinberg has not chosen to emphasize it, that it is in the nature of visual art to have it watched by a viewer, so that the watcher is being watched by the very nature of the medium. And psychically, this suggests the metaphorical potentiality fo further nesting.<br />
<br />
Sleep and the transrational may transcend the limitations of the day life in the form of a rebellion of the repressed, whether psychosexual or sociopolitical. And it can be in this form its facility and power may be expressed.<br />
<br />
After all, sleep consists of (ideally) one third of all human life. Indeed in precise ratio one third of the angels joined Lucifer in rebellion. And a match ("lucifer") in Phoenix park lights the guilt-ridden watching of a watch when watch hands match at midnight. Picasso kept, as Steinberg puts it, "irregular hours" and was "asleep when others were awake"; Joyce wrote for the "ideal reader with the ideal insomnia". It must be noted that ideal insomnia precludes ideal sleep.<br />
<br />
To rewrite the Happy Fall and Fault Joyce takes a page from Blake with whom he had a deep familiarity. In <i>The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, </i> Satan, who is potent purveyor of Energy & Eternal Delight, is really an exiled Jesus who has "rebuilt Heaven" from the abyss. Joyce built his heavenly structure out of abysmal puns. Blake told of a Universal Man, Albion, asleep to his potency. But Blake's Universal Man is now become an Irishman, an alcoholic, overweight, flatulent, red-nosed, humpbacked, bat eared Irishman, a tavern keeper--but also an unknowing Jesus-Finnegan avatar, unaware of the universality of his story, and in uneasy sleep confronts always and only himself. His knowing and not knowing, and his encountering and avoiding take the form of multiple watchings and forgettings.<br />
<br />
And it is with this in mind I include the passage from Steinberg that caught my eye and triggered this essay:<br />
<blockquote>
Even in common experience, where wakefulness is a running down and sleep a renewal of forces, the advantage of power balance is not all on the side of vigilance. And inside a picture, where real motion is stilled, the contrast between sleeping and waking may be so conceived as to beggar the state of waking. Then the sleeper's repose, being self-contained and replete, will discredit the waking state as a condition condemned to the avid intake of experience and data, a restlessness which in its need to be continually feeding betrays incompleteness: and the other's quiescence will appear more puissant, because less dependent on perpetual maintenance. Even in common American speech a "sleeper" is a potential winner; while the Spanish <i>sueño</i> implies nothing less than the power to dispel facts.</blockquote>
In the waking world, the male, the white, the English, are all dominant. In the world of the <i>Wake</i>, the riparian feminine infiltrates the received story and ribs its great folly; the forces of the dark and the dark-skinned join hands to subvert the tongue of Empire via polysemy and polyglot; the colonized Irish are the Adamic race now, Joyce flicking the Irish idiom as deftly as a Fenian blade. So too, the repressed psychosexual forces emerge from the shadows and frolic in Joyce's language of howling puns, seminal themes, and cunning linguistics.<br />
<br />
Mr Porter-HCE figure plays all the roles in a great forgetting that is sleep. Yet his family recapitulate their waking roles in some of their Wakean ones, yet have analogs in his own body. He is watching himself. As one example, his auburn haired dream-wife, ALP, the ruddy river Liffey, is in physical manifestation, his circulatory system. She indeed keeps the "keys to his heart."<br />
<br />
The watcher of the self suggests an esoteric out of the body aspect of the Self that can examine with dispassion the thrashing of the self-mind. The self persistently enters into delusion and forgets what it has discovered.<br />
<br />
The first watcher is Joyce, who is, like the divine creator, sitting on his cloud and "paring his own fingernails". The next watcher is the reader. The reader constantly falls for the delusion that they can approach the reading passively and analytically and ends up with the same delusions as the next watcher, Porter.<br />
<br />
Porter, who has become HCE, forgets his waking life in his Wakean life, yet recapitulates it in parody. He constantly beholds himself. Yet, he forgets who he is. The reader is confused. Confused that he is confused in reading HCE's confusion he forget<span style="font-family: inherit;">s that he <i>ought</i> to find it confusing. The reader becomes part of the joke too. </span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Blake, helpfully describing fragmentation of the aspects of the psyche into its lesser parts, s</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">tates "</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">They became what they beheld." </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Much of the watching takes the form of witnessing potential but unresolvable crime and guilt. Much of the watching consists of watchers watching watchers. The indiscretion in Phoenix Park in some sense triggered by a voyeuristic watching of two women, in turn witnessed by three soldiers. </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">Even </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Joyce leaves his cloud, enters the book himself as Shem to clear things up. He too becomes a watched watcher. Though viewed as a shameful shambling sham, ALP knows he reveals the words of the heart to regather and heal the scattered parts of the psyche, but the message gets through in fits and starts. Even the Four Analyst bedposts with their questing voyeurism cannot clear things up with their anal lists and transcripts. Perhaps the reader becomes part of Shaun in his role as critic and theologian. But </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">HCE becomes his whole family, the entire populace, and multiple interrogators and constantly shifting encounters of watched watchers. The more he dissolves the more he forgets who is interrogating whom, and the more he becomes "</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;">Mister </span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;">Finnagain</span><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;">!"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Ed Smileyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16076415756688151999noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-11949606186534174162019-01-24T17:04:00.001-08:002019-01-24T17:04:09.797-08:00The Ballad of of Persse O'Reilly--page 44 and continuing<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've been a bit remiss about getting a new post up lately, but rest assured that our group is going on full speed. I missed the meeting where the group read "The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly" aloud, but we started off our most recent meeting with this very Irish rendition, which Tom was able to dig up for us. There are some other versions out there that sound a bit lighter but I think I prefer the dourness of this one, even if it is slightly abbreviated. For your entertainment and edification, a ballad by Mr. James Joyce. Feel free to read (or sing) along.</div>
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-25087357130015612142018-10-24T10:54:00.000-07:002018-10-24T10:55:08.505-07:00Nevertheless, she persisted. The Prankquean-pages 21-23<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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There was a simultaneous "aha!" of recognition at last Wednesday's meeting from those of us who have taken this ride once before when the Prankquean made what I believe is her first appearance in the <i>Wake. </i>The term had become familiar to us over the course of the book, but most of us had passed over its first occurence on that run though. What was reassuring, though, was that we remembered the tale it is found in, if not this name or label attached to this feminine archetypal figure.<br />
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So what's the tale? Well, before I begin any explanations, I think I'll refer you to this wonderful rendition by Adam Harvey of the very passage we read:<br />
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A somewhat easier to understand account of the meeting between the pirate queen Grace O'Malley and the Earl of Howth can be found on the <a href="http://howthcastle.com/legends-of-howth-castle/" target="_blank">legends </a>page of the Howth Castle website. Basically, if you don't feel like clicking through, the story is of Grace O'Malley, who goes by many other names because her real name in Irish is <span lang="ga" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Gráinne Ní Mháille, and so was anglicized in a variety of ways. Joyce dubs her 'grace o'malice' here.Pirate queen is a bit deceptive, because in fact she was the actual lord of Connaught, a realm which included both land and sea, and which she inherited from her father. I find her story fascinating on many levels,, but perhaps particularly because she is both a figure of historical record, and also a part of Irish folklore. To put it another way, it's as though Robin Hood had lived in the time of Queen Elizabeth. </span></span><br />
<span lang="ga" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span lang="ga" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;">Joyce uses an event that has some historical basis to suit his own ends. Although the original account has Grace making off with the earl's heir (though according to our legends page, this couldn't have happened in exactly that way), Joyce turns it into a fairytale, with the same event happening three times, with three different children. Some say that this is a Viconian cycle, since Vico only spoke of three ages, while Joyce adds the ricorso as a fourth. I'm starting to see the ricorso as more of a reset than a cycle, as when playing a video game. </span></span><br />
<span lang="ga" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 14px;"><span style="font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;">After consulting our texts, we spoke towards the end of the meeting of the interesting idea of the Jarl van Hoother (aka, the Earl of Howth) being a masculine figure in a slow and drowsy torpor. One reason he doesn't want to let Grace O'Malley in is because of the late hour and his sleepiness. According to our text, and I don't remember if it was Campbell or just which one, Grace represents the animating feminine principal. She is the invigorating one. And when I look at what is happening in our country, I see a similar principle at work. What Grace is demanding of the Earl is nothing outrageous. According to our legends page, Grace is only asking him to fulfill the traditions of ancient Irish hospitality. In other words, she is only asking what is due her.</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;"><br /></span></span>
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: "times" , "times new roman" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px;">What the slumbering earl doesn't at first understand is that, one way or another, she is determined to get it. </span></span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EqGZGOcEKKw/W9Cu6lmnkbI/AAAAAAAAExs/jyDoRbuOKgoxjOrNfYq0qWhsUb7_KorGgCLcBGAs/s1600/Grace%2BO%2527Malley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="640" data-original-width="426" height="640" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-EqGZGOcEKKw/W9Cu6lmnkbI/AAAAAAAAExs/jyDoRbuOKgoxjOrNfYq0qWhsUb7_KorGgCLcBGAs/s640/Grace%2BO%2527Malley.jpg" width="425" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://www.geograph.ie/photo/3998233" target="_blank">Statue of Grace O'Malley at Westport House-photo by Suzaane Mischyshyn</a></td></tr>
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-71845763221090416232018-10-13T16:14:00.000-07:002018-10-13T16:14:09.452-07:00Hasatency? page 16<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Our last meeting, which is already a week and a half ago now, was of a <span style="font-family: inherit;">smaller </span>group than it has been recently, as there were various commitments that some of our members had to meet. Still, a smaller group is sometimes nice, just in terms of having a more cohesive conversation. We read a smaller portion too, just the Mutt and Jute dialogue and about a page and a half after.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I had remembered Mutt and Jute coming a lot further along than page 16, but I suppose we took the beginning a bit slower the first time around. We decided that one member would read Jute and one Mutt. Although usually both of them read well, each was dealing with a vision problem that day and although I wouldn't ordinarily find it funny when people are stumbling over words, in this context, I had trouble containing myself, because the passage is about two people who can't understand each other.It seemed like quite a Joycean sort of joke. </span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Jute-Are you jeff?</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mutt-Somehards.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Jute-But you are not jeffmute?</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mutt-Noho. Only an utterer.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Jute-Whoa? Whoat is the mutter with you?</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Mutt-I became a stun a stummer.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Jute-What a hauhauhauhaudible thing, to be cause! How, Mutt?</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">and a couple of lines down,</span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Jute-You that side of your voice are almost inedible to me. Become a bitskin more wiseable, as if I were you.</span></i><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">There were of course many, many tracks and byways we drifted down in the course of the session, but I wanted to focus on one thing that came up for me. In this part, we have one of the first plays on the word hesitancy, if not the first. Mutt says, just after the line above, "Has? Has at? Hasatency?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Now from our last read through of the <i>Wake</i>, we are pretty familiar with at least one significance of the word. Joyce's hero, Charles Stewart Parnell, was accused of the murders of Lord Cavendish and the Chief Secretary for Ireland is Phoenix Park because of some incriminating letters attributed to him that were then published in the newspaper. But the letters were discovered to be forged due to the misspelling of the word hesitancy as 'hesitency'. It was discovered that the journalist Richard Piggott had forged the letters because he had misspelled the word before.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In addition, Parnell was apparently a stutterer. I came across this paragraph from an article called <a href="http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~ehrlich/382/PARNELL" target="_blank">"The Shade of Parnell" </a>that I thought it would be fun to share:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span>
<pre style="overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">The influence exerted on the Irish people by Parnell defies
critical analysis. He had a speech defect and a delicate physique
he was ignorant of the history of his native land; his short and
fragmentary speeches lacked eloquence, poetry, and humour; his
cold and formal bearing separated him from his own colleagues; he
was a Protestant, a descendant of an aristocratic family, and, as
a crowning disgrace, he spoke with a distinct English accent. He
would often come to meetings an hour or an hour and a half late
without apologizing. He would neglect his correspondence for
weeks on end. The applause and anger of the crowd, the abuse and
praise of the press, the denunciations and defence of the British
ministers never disturbed the melancholy serenity of his
character. It is even said that he did not know by sight many of
those who sat with him on the Irish benches. When the Irish
people presented him with a national gratuity of 40,000 pounds
sterling in 1887, he put the cheque into his billfold, and in the
speech which he delivered to the immense gathering made not the
slightest reference to the gift which he had received.</pre>
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<pre style="overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"></pre>
<pre style="overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But fun as this is, it is not exactly new information. And even the idea that, here at the beginning of the ricorso, these two prehistoric men stutter as they learn to talk, and may even be imitating the thunder is something we've come across before.</span></pre>
<pre style="overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">
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<pre style="overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I am not sure how anyone else's thought processes work in the medium that is the <i>Wake </i>group, but it's certainly the case for me that thoughts and impressions come up while listening to the conversation that wouldn't have occurred to me otherwise. I wouldn't even say that they are thoughts so much as sudden intuitions, which I often feel compelled to speak out, more as a way of grasping at them before they slip away than to impress them on others. And in this case, I began to think about how it is for us to read these words aloud, how they often create a hesitancy in <i>us</i>, because so many of the <i>Wake </i>words are not one thing or another, but both or often much more. I know pretty much nothing about physics, but I am always remembering the title <i>Light Can be Both Wave and Particle</i>, which is a story collection by Ellen Gilchrist. The image of the Wake being an unstable thing, glistening and throbbing between its various possibilities was arresting to me. And Joyce makes stutterers of us all, hesitating on the brink of assigning an always provisional and temporary meaning. </span></pre>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LkPl6RzaIM0/W8J6g6sQMTI/AAAAAAAAExg/T8iuWSy3inYUjqg-Dqre_v1mfLuINZ8WQCLcBGAs/s1600/330px-Charles_Stewart_Parnell_-_Brady-Handy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="414" data-original-width="329" height="320" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LkPl6RzaIM0/W8J6g6sQMTI/AAAAAAAAExg/T8iuWSy3inYUjqg-Dqre_v1mfLuINZ8WQCLcBGAs/s320/330px-Charles_Stewart_Parnell_-_Brady-Handy.jpg" width="254" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Stewart_Parnell#/media/File:Charles_Stewart_Parnell_-_Brady-Handy.jpg" target="_blank">Charles Stewart Parnell</a></td></tr>
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<pre style="overflow-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-15374593397099690312018-09-27T19:30:00.000-07:002018-09-27T19:30:03.894-07:00A visit from PQ<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I'd be remiss if I didn't take time out from writing my extremely random blog posts about reading the <i>Wake </i> to mention a visit from our roving correspondent Peter Quadrino to Santa Cruz last weekend. Peter and his fiancee Colleen were here in the greater Bay Area and so we gathered an impromptu group from among our regular Wake attendants at our usual hangout, The Poet and Patriot. The links between our cell of Wakers and Peter's Wake group in Austin, Texas are many, as several of our members here have relatives who have ended up in Austin for a time, and have attended Peter's Wake group while they were in residence.<br />
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Peter's group meets twice a month, once at a local bookstore called Malvern Books, and once at the Irish delegation. Here's an <a href="https://finwakeatx.blogspot.com/2016/11/finwakeatx-visits-irish-consulate-in.html" target="_blank">account</a> of their first meeting at the latter. The Austin Wakers approach is somewhat different than ours, in that they tackle a page at a time, everyone reading two lines, after which they all have at it. They also have Peter's blog post outlining it, which he refers to as <a href="http://www.abuildingroam.com/2010/05/finnegans-wake-treasure-map.html" target="_blank">Finnegans Wake Treasure Map.</a><br />
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<a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wAKUaFOLxhA/W62NbZm_9sI/AAAAAAAAExU/lKFoxY_AP8k6Rmca_P7mJE8u9rWX5TZPACLcBGAs/s1600/malvwern%2Bbooks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="281" height="256" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wAKUaFOLxhA/W62NbZm_9sI/AAAAAAAAExU/lKFoxY_AP8k6Rmca_P7mJE8u9rWX5TZPACLcBGAs/s400/malvwern%2Bbooks.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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I first connected with Peter when this blog was new, and its whole point was really just to discover whether we here in Santa Cruz could discover other Wakeans out there. At that point, he was living and working in Southern California and managed to get to a well-established group in Marina del Rey, which he posted about <a href="http://www.abuildingroam.com/2011/01/wakening.html" target="_blank">HERE</a>. Not long after that, he presented a paper on some connections between Joyce and Salvador Dali he'd made for an annual James Joyce conference at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, which he talks about a bit <a href="http://www.abuildingroam.com/2011/06/thought-through-my-eyes-epilogue-part-1.html" target="_blank">HERE</a>. He had previously shared that paper with me and by extension other members of our group in order to get some feedback before giving his talk. I found it all quite interesting.<br />
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On moving to Austin, though, Peter decided to form his own Wake group, and initially held meetings at the public library. Not long after that, he decided that he really needed to start a blog just about Finnegans Wake, which could also serve as the home page for the group.<br />
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<a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NlGfl5YnI7g/W62Ma8W9TyI/AAAAAAAAExI/thVYtX9tdagX8IkmRRbTcJN5vbYmZq7bACLcBGAs/s1600/antwerp.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="152" data-original-width="332" height="182" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NlGfl5YnI7g/W62Ma8W9TyI/AAAAAAAAExI/thVYtX9tdagX8IkmRRbTcJN5vbYmZq7bACLcBGAs/s400/antwerp.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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We were all interested to hear about a trip he and another Austin Waker had made to the International James Joyce Symposium in Antwerp, Belgium, where he presented a paper called, "The Pantheon of FINNEGANS WOKE" , which I thought I might have to summarize, but which Peter has published a version of <a href="http://finwakeatx.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-pantheon-of-finnegans-woke-or-why.html" target="_blank">HERE</a>. In it, you will find some of the usual suspects you might already know about, like Marshall McLuhan and Norman O. Brown, but there are also some surprises. One that he mentioned to us at our gathering was William Melvin Kelley, a black writer in the Langston Hughes circle, who the OED credits with coming up with the term WOKE. As Peter puts it in his post, "which means every time you hear someone use the term "woke" it was originated by a Wake head.<br />
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Check out his two blogs, <a href="http://www.abuildingroam.com/" target="_blank">A Building Roam</a>, which covers other things besides the Wake, including his other passions, baseball and rap music, and of course <a href="http://finwakeatx.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">Finnegans, Wake!</a> Both are consistently thought provoking.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-naZwyqJx3lM/W62LeyeLQyI/AAAAAAAAExA/yhknjmmUGMEbWoX70H5ru4nQcSBWAGcEwCLcBGAs/s1600/william%2Bmelvin%2Bkelley.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="174" data-original-width="200" height="348" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-naZwyqJx3lM/W62LeyeLQyI/AAAAAAAAExA/yhknjmmUGMEbWoX70H5ru4nQcSBWAGcEwCLcBGAs/s400/william%2Bmelvin%2Bkelley.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William Melvin Kelly-WOKE</td></tr>
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-34039188287010100662018-09-22T15:28:00.001-07:002018-09-22T15:28:46.895-07:00Succoth-bifurcations upon bifurcations, page 13<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
At the end of a passage on page 13, and after a list of both Jewish calendar months and Latin numbers, the final word is (Succoth.)--the parentheses are Joyce's, not mine. Two members agreed at our most recent meeting that this was a reference to the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles, also known as the Feast of Ingathering or the Feast of Booths, although they disagreed about the pronunciation. But it caught my attention because a Jewish friend had recently mentioned that she and friends would be honoring Sukkot (there are many spellings, as it is a transliteration from another alphabet) , in which Jews around the world build temporary houses as part of the festival, by phone banking and canvassing to build a new House--of Representatives.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MUsZAPYmd3M/W6a_SeG1s2I/AAAAAAAAEw0/3z-sbH3q4ig4kHY43NKbgDF2IVi7JijFwCLcBGAs/s1600/800px-Sukkah_Roofs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="529" data-original-width="800" height="211" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-MUsZAPYmd3M/W6a_SeG1s2I/AAAAAAAAEw0/3z-sbH3q4ig4kHY43NKbgDF2IVi7JijFwCLcBGAs/s320/800px-Sukkah_Roofs.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sukkah roofs by <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sukkah_Roofs.jpg" target="_blank">Yoninah</a></td></tr>
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What is more immediately relevant to our Joyce group is that Sukkot this year actually starts tomorrow evening, September 23rd, at sunset. So we seem to be in a bit of synchronicity in our reading of the Wake at the moment. Of course, the real question is, can we ever not be?<br />
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But a word about different interpretations, both of spelling and other things. I've already mentioned that there is no one right spelling, except, I would guess, in the Hebrew alphabet. But the festival itself is two-pronged, and as my friend above suggests, also open to creative interpretation. It is a harvest festival, 'the feast of ingathering' mentioned in Exodus, as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sukkot" target="_blank">Wikipedia</a> tells us. But it has a deeper religious significance, this time from Leviticus, where it is said to commemorate the Exodus and the dependence of Israel on the will of God.<br />
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The doubleness of the word, however, does not stop here. For the annotated <a href="http://finwake.com/1024chapter1/1024finn1.htm" target="_blank">Finnegans Wake </a>website has this note<span style="background-color: white;">: </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;"><i> <span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Flood: Ireland, Its Saints and Scholars 10: '</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">King </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman";">Niall of the Nine Hostages went on successive expeditions against the peoples of Gaul and Britain. Amongst the captives... was Succoth, a lad of sixteen... afterwards called Patricius, probably in allusion to his noble birth'</span>.<span style="font-family: "times new roman";">n to his noble birth'</span>.</i></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span>
<span style="background-color: white;">In other words, the person we would come to know as St. Patrick. A website called <a href="https://electricscotland.com/history/other/patrick_saint.htm" target="_blank">Electric Scotland </a>claims him as a Scotsman, and calls him Succat or Succath, but also thinks it might place his birth near an estate in Scotland currently called Succoth. And there is indeed a later historical figure called </span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;">Ilay Campbell, Lord Succoth from the region:</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tIm7xwegx_o/W6a6b5WQ0rI/AAAAAAAAEwc/fk9XS8t_F1Exp2QyBmh9K9sa-qX-vIVqgCLcBGAs/s1600/330px-Portrait_of_Sir_Ilay_Campbell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="387" data-original-width="330" height="400" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-tIm7xwegx_o/W6a6b5WQ0rI/AAAAAAAAEwc/fk9XS8t_F1Exp2QyBmh9K9sa-qX-vIVqgCLcBGAs/s400/330px-Portrait_of_Sir_Ilay_Campbell.jpg" width="340" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portrait by David Martin-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilay_Campbell,_Lord_Succoth" target="_blank">wikipedia</a></td></tr>
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<span style="background-color: white;">And don't get me started on a more recent controversy as to whether St. Patrick was actually a slave or really <a href="https://www.irishcentral.com/roots/history/saint-patrick-slave-trader-tax-collector" target="_blank">a slave trader and tax collector.</a> That might be a bridge too far even for this blog post. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;">Anyway, all this blather is basically just to reaffirm that there is never just one path through the <i>Wake</i> or one meaning, or even always one pronunciation.</span><br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-28461080805246882052018-09-07T17:50:00.000-07:002018-09-07T17:50:30.050-07:00the museyroom, pages 7-11<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We had eleven people at this Wednesday's Wake group, which I think is probably the largest yet, with the possible exception of a special Wake group some years back when a fellow Joycean enthusiast was in town. This time we welcomed several new or newish participants, and all the more familiar members happened to be back from their travels or not yet off on their travels and conflicting schedules, which is not likely to happen again for some time.<br />
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As we 'begin again' it was rather startling to me that one of the new attendees is not actually new to the <i>Wake </i>at all, but was,all unknowingly, one of the instigators of our attempt. Many years ago (the late seventies) several of our members, then college students, wandered into an all night dramatization of Finnegans Wake on campus, which was inspired by or maybe even presided over by the legendary Norman O. Brown, who was at that time teaching here, at UCSC. Although I wasn't one of those students, I have heard about this marvelous event several times over the years, including the tossing of various pages of <i>Finnegans Wake</i> into the air, but discovered that Tim had actually been one of the performers, in some sense connected to the 'character' of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, or HCE. There seemed a strange looping of time, that someone who was part of the catalyst should now become part of this new reading, which in some sense would not have happened without his original participation. Seemed very apt as we 'begin again'.<br />
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It's also interesting that Deidre, who in some ways could be termed our own Kate (though not elderly) and who was our original barkeep who had to take a break for health reasons, is now working Wednesday nights again. What pub have we <i>really</i> wandered into, I wonder?<br />
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As Kathe (Kate under a different name) guides us through the 'museyroom', saying "This is..." before its many artifacts, I get a sense that it wouldn't have been possible for me to have had on the first reading, which is that the whole show is being brought to life again, a 'revival' as they're sometimes called on Broadway. As Tom said last time about the first thunderclap, which we read aloud together, there was something of an incantation to it, something a little bit creepy. As Ed was saying this time, it's all brought to life out of the ruins, after great loss. In our current historical moment, which is no longer the same moment at which we started last time, though it was as recently as 2009, it is a little easier now to imagine what it would mean to be picking through the wreckage at some not too distant date, and beginning again.<br />
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I wasn't too successful in researching some of the things that interested me in this passage, such as whether Wellington (Willingdone) represented Shem and Napoleon (Lipoleum) Shaun or visa versa, and in fact, the little I could find actually thought of both as primarily HCE figures.<br />
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But as the hen knows, when you're picking through the dump, you come across other treasures. For instance, this article on <a href="http://kirbymtn.blogspot.com/2010/07/bruno-vico-and-finnegans-wake.html" target="_blank">"Bruno Vico and Finnegans Wake" </a>by Eric Rosenbloom, which gives us some sense of their philosophies and why they were of interest to Joyce. I don't mind admitting that I could do with a refresher course, and especially since I find both these men very intriguing. And I could relate to this bit about how Joyce saw Vico:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 15.4px;"><i>Joyce, although often referring people to Vico, also asserted he did not “believe” Vico’s science, “but my imagination grows when I read Vico as it doesn’t when I read Freud or Jung.” </i></span><br />
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Contained within the article, though, was a theory that I hadn't heard before, and which I found moving.<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 15.4px; font-style: italic;">Hugh Kenner has suggested that the dreamer does not want to wake up, that ALP is a widow resisting the conscious awareness that her husband — executed after the 1916 Easter uprising, he says — is no longer beside her. The hanging scaffold is suppressed by becoming Tim Finnegan’s building scaffold. Her tears become the river in which her dreams flow. The book of history assures us that life always rises from the ashes, but we also know that individual loss is unrecoverable. The incomplete sentence at the end of </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 15.4px;">Finnegans Wake</span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif; font-size: 15.4px; font-style: italic;"> gives the reader a choice: Leave the book and return to life, or return to the book’s first words.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15.4px;">This of course can't be the only interpretation, but I do find it intriguing that the article goes on to say that Joyce himself had likened <i>Finnegans Wake</i> to St. John of the Cross's <i>Dark Night of the Soul</i>. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "times" , "freeserif" , serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 15.4px;">On a MUCH lighter note, I found a Tumbler site called<a href="http://finneganswakenotes.tumblr.com/post/8776448212/book-i-pages-8-10" target="_blank"> "Notes on Finnegans Wake,"</a> which included this YouTube animation of the "museyroom"--in Italian. If you've recently read Joyce's English version you will be surprised how much you understand, even if you don't really speak Italian. As my professor Donald Nicholl reminded us, there is the Via Negativa that the Dark Night of the Soul represents, but there is also the Via Positiva. I have always been clear which one I'd choose if I had my druthers. </span></span><br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5270336326282346306.post-7396272534102874102018-08-24T16:03:00.000-07:002018-08-24T17:07:25.008-07:00Hurtleturtle, off we go! Page 3-7<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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We began in earnest this Wednesday, experimenting with a slightly different format. All eight of us present read a paragraph and when we had got round the table, each person said a few words about what had struck them. Although I struggled a bit to formulate anything, I liked this approach, as it was instructive to get a glimpse as to what others had experienced.<br />
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Although I probably won't attempt this every time, I thought I'd give a sense of what people came up with.<br />
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Cathy was struck this time around by how much Joyce is talking about the Fall, as spoken of in Jewish and Christian tradition, including his own Irish-Catholic past.<br />
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Leslie noticed how the opening is like an overture, in which the rest of the work is already hinted at.<br />
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Ed, the only one of us who has read the Wake multiple times, wanted to emphasize that Finnegan's fall from the ladder encompasses other kinds of falling as well, and found himself, ardent Joycean that he is, thinking of Marlene Dietrich singing "Falling in Love Again".<br />
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Melissa, who teaches literature, said that she gets so overwhelmed by the beauty and cleverness of Joyce's words that it is hard for her to keep up with the sense of the whole.<br />
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Ann, who is partly reading this time the lens of <i>The Curse of the Kabbalah </i>by John P. Anderson, was struck by what that author calls 'the curse of repetition'. We are fated to go through it all again. Another cycle. Someone else added "Groundhog Day".<br />
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Frank, new to the group, said that at times he just closed his eyes and listened--as with difficult poetry, the feeling is as important as the lmeaning. Others agreed that this is perhaps the way Joyce wanted us to take it in. He liked the feeling of language "coming up at me."<br />
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Tom wrote down words as we came to different passages, partly to suggest their mood or tone: potent, event, background voices, narrative, closure, celebration. He also mentioned that when we all read the first "thunderword" together, it felt a bit like an incantation, and seemed almost creepy. Are we summoning up the cycle of the Wake again?<br />
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As for me, I was struck by a curious division in myself. I was surprised by how much continues to elude me, I suppose thinking I was going to find this all if not easy, then easier, but at the same time seeing how some things did feel familiar--this time around, at least there were a few signposts.<br />
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Melissa had the good or bad luck to read the very Joycean word<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="background-color: #f9f7f5; color: #444444;">"hierarchitectitiptitoploftical" (FW 005.01,) and though I think with the help of our reference works we managed to figure out some of its meanings, getting the sense of heights and tipping over, I thought I'd share a link to David Atwood's entry on his <a href="https://davidwatwood.wordpress.com/2012/03/20/hierarchitectitiptitoploftical/" target="_blank">blog</a>, as he says it's his favorite Wakean word. We tend to think of a fall as something bad, but as he points out, <span style="font-family: inherit;">"</span></span></span><span style="background-color: #f9f7f5; color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">all things topple or fall in the fullness of time, whether buildings, bridges political figures, governments, administrative structures, the tower of Babel, Jerusalem or Adam and Eve." In the current political climate, I see some of that as hopeful.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f9f7f5;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">We learned that, among many other things (of course), the "penisolate war" refers to a fight between the Duke of Wellington and </span><span style="color: #444444;">Napoleon</span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;"> , which plays out throughout the book. Have to keep that in mind this time round.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #f9f7f5;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: inherit;">Finally, as we were discussing Jacob and Esau as variations on the twins of the book, Shem the Penman and Shaun the postman, I wondered, but isn't this a story about tricking your brother out of his birthright? And I couldn't quite see how that played out either between Shem and Shaun or between James Joyce and his brother Stanislaus. But I've now found an excellent blog called <a href="https://steemit.com/literature/@harlotscurse/finnegans-wake-a-prescriptive-guide-1" target="_blank">Finnegans Wake--a Prescriptive Guid</a>e, and an entry entitled<a href="https://steemit.com/literature/@harlotscurse/jacob-esau-and-isaac" target="_blank"> Jacob, Esau and Isaac</a>, which is well worth reading. It tells us that, although we think of Joyce as the oldest son, in fact there was an older brother who died at birth. Joyce didn't literally steal his birthright, but it's easy to think he might have felt like he did. </span></span><br />
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seana grahamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03774794086733027289noreply@blogger.com4