UE2A - Irish literature : "James Joyce and the literary

Transcription

UE2A - Irish literature : "James
Joyce and the literary Modernism"
- Stéphane JOUSNI
Auteur(s) : JOUSNI Stéphane
Document créé le : 26/09/2009
[ Plan du cours ]
1 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL LANDMARKS............................8
1.1 BIBLIOGRAPHY.......................................................................................8
1.1.1 WORKS BY JOYCE.............................................................................8
1.1.2 WORKS ON JOYCE............................................................................8
1.1.3 USEFUL WORKS ON IRISH LITERATURE........................................8
1.2 A BIOGRAPHY OF JAME JOYCE [1882-1941]...........................................8
1.3 AN OVERVIEW OF JOYCE'S WORKS.......................................................9
1.4 EXTRACTS..............................................................................................10
1.4.1 A PASSAGE FROM "AN ENCOUNTER" (Dubliners).........................10
1.4.2 A PASSAGE FROM "ULYSSES".........................................................11
1.4.3 A PASSAGE FROM "FINNEGANS WAKE".........................................11
1.5 JOYCE AND YEATS.................................................................................12
2
DUBLINERS, « A CHAPTER IN THE MORAL HISTORY OF [HIS]
COUNTRY »......................................................................................................14
2.1 COMPOSITION.......................................................................................14
2.1.1 THE VALUE OF CATHOLICISM (VIRTUES AND SINS)....................14
2.1.2 THE AGES OF LIFE..........................................................................14
2.2 CASE STUDIES.......................................................................................15
2.2.1 "THE SISTERS"................................................................................15
2.2.1.1 Summary....................................................................................16
2.2.1.2 Comments..................................................................................16
2.2.1.3 Words, concepts and symbols....................................................17
2.2.1.3.1 definitions...........................................................................17
2.2.1.3.2 Symbols...............................................................................18
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2.2.1.4 Close analysis of some key details..............................................19
2.2.1.4.1 grey face..............................................................................19
2.2.1.4.2 the dream............................................................................19
2.2.1.4.3 the little dark room.............................................................19
2.2.1.4.4 tobacco and the snuff-box ..................................................19
2.2.1.4.5 other symbols......................................................................19
2.2.1.4.6 popular language................................................................20
2.2.1.5 To conclude about faith..............................................................21
2.2.2 "THE BOARDING HOUSE"..............................................................22
2.2.3 "THE DEAD"....................................................................................22
3 "A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN"....................................23
3.1 PAYM'S MAIN CHARACTERISTICS........................................................23
3.2 THE ARTIST IN THE MAKING...............................................................24
3.2.1 INTRODUCTION..............................................................................24
3.2.2 LANGUAGE AS FASCINATION........................................................26
3.2.2.1 The five senses...........................................................................26
3.2.2.2 Language and attention to it.....................................................26
3.2.2.3 Words and wonder....................................................................27
3.2.2.4 Evolution...................................................................................27
3.2.2.5 A brief analysis of the passage..................................................28
3.2.2.6 Stephen's non serviam..............................................................29
3.2.3 THE MAIN JOYCECEAN THEMES : FAMILY, HOMELAND AND
RELIGION................................................................................................30
3.3 JOYCE'S AESTHETICS...........................................................................31
3.3.1 STEPHEN, JOYCE, AND ART...........................................................31
3.3.1.1 Genesis of the Portrait (i.e. the final text published in 1916)......31
3.3.1.2 The 3 genres..............................................................................32
3.3.1.3 Aquinas.....................................................................................32
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3.3.1.4 Stephen's conceptions...............................................................33
3.3.1.5 The theory of epiphany..............................................................33
3.4 A POST COLONIAL READING OF THE PORTRAIT................................35
3.4.1 RESUME ET EXTRAIT.....................................................................35
3.4.2 ANALYSE TEXTUELLE....................................................................37
3.4.2.1 Une réflexion sur la langue........................................................37
4 "ULYSSES", A DAYTIME ODYSSEY.............................................................39
4.1 STORY OF THE PUBLICATION..............................................................39
4.2 HOMER.................................................................................................40
4.3 WHAT IS MODERNISM ?.......................................................................41
4.4 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS......................................................41
4.5 A BRIEF STUDY OF A FEW EPISODES..................................................42
4.5.1 Episodes 1, 2 & 4 (« Telemachus », « Nestor » and « Calypso »)........42
4.5.1.1 Consciousness...........................................................................42
4.5.1.2 Time..........................................................................................43
4.5.1.3 Narrative...................................................................................44
4.5.1.4 Fiction.......................................................................................44
4.5.2 Episodes 7, 12, 15 ( « Aeolus », « Cyclops » and « Circe »)................45
5 ON "FINNEGANS WAKE"............................................................................52
5.1 "FINNEGANS WAKE", L'AUTRE TEXTE.................................................53
5.1.1 CECI N’EST PAS UN MOT.................................................................54
5.1.2 CECI N’EST PAS UNE LANGUE. .....................................................56
5.1.3 CECI N’EST PAS UN TEXTE.............................................................59
5.1.4 ANNEXE...........................................................................................61
5.2 POUR UNE LECTURE INTIME DE "FINNEGANS WAKE"......................62
5.2.1 ANNA LIVIA PLURABELLE.............................................................63
5.2.2 QUESTIONS DE GENRE(S).............................................................66
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5.2.2.1 Gender......................................................................................66
5.2.2.2 Genre biologique......................................................................68
5.2.2.3 Genre / famille..........................................................................70
5.2.3 ANNEXE..........................................................................................72
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Présentation
Les finalités et objectifs
Ms. Stéphane JOUSNI
Ms Goarzin’s class will focus especially on the cultural and political context for Yeats’s oeuvre, while Ms
Jousni’s will offer to locate James Joyce in the wake of the Literary revival and look into the counter-proposals
made by Joyce to the gospel of Celtic revivalism. Both intructors will provide relevant excerpts from texts as
illustrations.
La démarche d'apprentissage
Ce module de cours s'articule en :
●
Chapitres et corpus de textes à lire en annexe (onglet "Cours") ;
●
Glossaire des termes clé (onglet "Glossaire");
●
Ressources bibliographiques et webographiques (onglet "Ressources") ;
●
Planning d'activités pédagogiques facultatives constituant une recommandation de parcours
d'apprentissage (onglet "Planning").
Les activités pédagogiques du planning sont à réaliser dans l'espace-cours de CURSUS destiné à
l'accompagnement de ce module de cours.
Le contenu du cours
This course is divided in 2 lectures / modules :
Module 1 - Yeats and the Revival
Ms Goarzin's class will focus on the way a literary renaissance movement emerged in the mid-1880s in
Ireland. We shall show that while the Literary revival may be said to be rooted in the renewed interest in things
Celtic exemplified by the Antiquarian movement among others, it took off more significantly with Standish
O’Grady or Samuel Ferguson. Writers tended to be more committed to recovering a national literature, which
translated into a move westwards to the “origins” of Gaelic culture and language. While the centres of the
Renaissance were initially both in London and in Dublin with literary figures such as Oscar Wilde or Bernard
Shaw, W. B. Yeats actively contributed to shifting the movement to Ireland and was active most notably in
providing the nation with its own with its own theatre, The Abbey Theatre (as will be developed in the M2
course on Irish drama). As a result of increased cultural and political awareness, the nation was able to claim
a literature of its own and had achieved its independence from British rule by the 1920s.
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Module 2- James Joyce and Literary Modernism
This class will examine the move to literary modernism into Joyce’s works. After Yeats, the second « tower »
of XXth century Irish literature was indeed James Joyce. Yeats and Joyce actually met, which prompted
another writer, post-modernist Flann O’Brien, to dub the fact a few years later : « The Filthy Modern Tide
meets the Celtic Toilet », thus deriding at both literary trends (Modernism and the Celtic Twilight, aka the
Celtic Revival).
Joyce’s four major works will be introduced : Dubliners (1914), A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916),
Ulysses (1922) and Finnegans Wake(1939). The purpose of this class is less to ‘study’ Joyce than to provide
you with the indispensable ‘keys’ one needs to enter his works.
Les évaluations
Rappel :
UE2A IRISH LITERATURE : From the Celtic Revival to Modernism
Coefficient : 1
MODALITES DU CONTROLE DE CONNAISSANCES UE2A et UE2B
Session 1
Session 2
Assidus : Contrôle sur table
Tirage au sort entre UE2A et UE2B, écrit 2
heures
Assidus : oral
Tirage au sort sur la partie non traitée de la
1ère session (préparation 1 heure, passage 20
minutes)
Non Assidus : idem
Non assidus : idem
7
1
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL LANDMARKS
1.1 BIBLIOGRAPHY
Given the huge amount of criticism on Joyce, the following list is only an indication of the works which can be
usefully consulted.
1.1.1 WORKS BY JOYCE
- Dubliners, ed. with an introduction and notes by Terence Brown, Penguin, 1992 (1914) ;
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ed. with an introduction and notes by Seamus Deane, Penguin, 1992
(1916) ;
- Ulysses, ed. with an introduction and notes by Jeri Johnson, Oxford University Press, 1993 (1922) ;
- James Joyce, - Œuvres I et II, dir. Jacques Aubert, Gallimard, coll. La Pléiade, 1995.
1.1.2 WORKS ON JOYCE
- ELLMANN, Richard : James Joyce, Oxford University Press, 1982 (1959). (a biography) ;
- JOYCE, Stanislaus : My Brother’s Keeper, Viking Press, New York, 1958. (id.) ;
- ECO, Umberto: The Aesthetics of Chaosmos, The Middles Ages of James Joyce, Harvard University Press,
1989 (1962). (for the chapters on the Portrait) ;
- RABATE, Jean-Michel, James Joyce, Hachette Supérieur, coll. Portraits Littéraires, 1993 ;
- BONAFOUS-MURAT, Carle, James Joyce Dubliners, Logique de l’impossible, Ellipses, 1999.
1.1.3 USEFUL WORKS ON IRISH LITERATURE
- The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism, Cambridge university Press, 2007 ;
- DEANE, Seamus, Strange Country, Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790, Oxford University
Press, 1997;
- GENET J. & FIEROBE C.: La littérature irlandaise, Armand Colin, coll. U, 1997 ;
- KIBERD, Declan, Inventing Ireland, Jonathan Cape, London, 1995 ;
- KIBERD, Declan, Irish Classics, Granta Books, London, 2000.
1.2 A BIOGRAPHY OF JAME JOYCE [1882-1941].
Date
Events
Feb. 2, 1882
Born in Rathgar (Dublin) to an impoverished
Catholic family (his father more or less drives
the family to ruin on account of his recurring
problems with alcohol).
1888-1891
Education at Jesuit schools : first Clongowes
School, then Belvedere College (both schools
8
are represented in the Portrait) - and, briefly, at
. He proves a clever pupil and student (more
particularly in languages).
1900-1901
writes an article on Ibsen[1]1 and then to Ibsen
himself to claim his admiration Henrik Ibsen,
very famous Norwegian poet and playwright
(1828-1906).
1902
spends a year in Paris to study medicine.
1903
goes back to Dublin in time to assist his dying
mother.
1904
meets Nora Barnacle and elopes with her to
the Continent. He leaves Ireland more or less
for good (except for two or three brief
occasions, one in 1909, then in 1912).
1904-1915
the Joyces live in Italy (in Pola, then Trieste)
until the outbreak of World War I sends them to
exile in neutral Switzerland, in Zurich. They
beget two children: Giorgio and Lucia. From
age 20, Lucia will suffer from schizophrenia.
1919
they leave for nearly till the end of James’s life.
1939
A few months after Finnegans Wake is
published, World War II is declared.
1941
Joyce dies on January, 13. The direct cause of
his death is a stomach cancer, even though all
along his life his major health problems were
(namely a severe glaucoma which caused him
to read and write only with the help of a
magnifying glass).
1.3 AN OVERVIEW OF JOYCE'S WORKS
- Chamber Music (a collection of poems), 1907 ;
- Dubliners* (a collection of short stories), 1914 ;
- A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man* (a novel), 1916 ;
- Exiles (a play): 1918 Ulysses* (a ‘novel’), 1922 ;
- Finnegans Wake (a ‘novel’), 1939.
* those works in particular will be dealt with in this course
1 Note : Henrik Ibsen, very famous Norwegian poet and playwright (1828-1906).
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-----The four major works on which all Joycean criticism is concentrated are Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man, Ulysses and Finnegans Wake.
In the chronological order of their composition, these four works witness a dramatic evolution in Joyce’s writing
from a somewhat classic Victorian style to the boldest innovations and revolutions of Modernism.
Dubliners : according to Joyce who desired to present his fellow citizens with a mirror-image of themselves,
Dublin city was/is the centre of what he called ‘paralysis’, Ireland being an epitome of conservatism and
bigotry.
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man : the ‘young man’ in question is Stephen Dedalus, portrayed from his
very early age to his late adolescence. An obvious persona of Joyce himself, Stephen is also a character in
Ulysses.
Ulysses is the Joycean Odyssey, in so far as its major intertext is Homer’s. Together with Stephen, the main
characters of this one-day epic in the streets of Dublin are Leopold Bloom, a 38 year-old Dublin Jew of
Hungarian descent and his wife Molly. The book was the object of a law suit (for obscenity) in the United
States, where it was banned until 1933.
Finnegans Wake , for its part, cannot easily be described. A mixture of more than 20 languages, overloaded
with multilingual puns, the ‘novel’ – which Joyce entitled Work in Progress all along the 17 years it took him to
complete – may be considered as the night counterpart of daytime Ulysses, ‘except’ that it also includes the
entire history of Ireland, from the early Viking settlements down to the beginnings of the twentieth century
(including the Revolution of Easter 1916 and the 1921 partition).
1.4 EXTRACTS
1.4.1 A PASSAGE FROM "AN ENCOUNTER" (Dubliners)
It was Joe Dillon who introduced the Wild West to us. He had a little library made up of old
numbers of The Union Jack, Pluck, and The Halfpenny Marvel. Every evening after school we met
in his back garden and arranged Indian battles. He and his fat young brother Leo, the idler, held
the loft of the stable while we tried to carry it by storm; or we fought a pitched battle on the grass.
But, however well we fought, we never won siege or battle and all our bouts ended with Joe
Dillon's war dance of victory. His parents went to eight o'clock mass every morning in Gardiner
Street and the peaceful odour of Mrs Dillon was prevalent in the hall of the house. But he played
too fiercely for us who were younger and more timid. He looked like some kind of an Indian when
he capered round the garden, an old tea-cosy on his head, beating a tin with his fist and yelling :
`Ya! yaka, yaka, yaka!'
Everyone was incredulous when it was reported that he had a vocation for the priesthood.
Nevertheless it was true.
10
1.4.2 A PASSAGE FROM "ULYSSES"
After a moment he followed the others in, blinking in the screened light. The coffin lay on its bier
before the chancel four tall yellow candles at its corners. Always in front of us. Corny Kelleher,
laying a wreath at each fore corner, beckoned to the boy to kneel. The mourners knelt here and
there in praying desks. Mr Bloom stood behind near the font and, when all had knelt dropped
carefully his unfolded newspaper from his pocket and knelt his right knee upon it. He fitted his
black hat gently on his left knee and, holding its brim, bent over piously 2 Although the beginning
of the passage reads quite easily as a third person narrative (it describes M. Bloom’s feelings
during the Catholic service for one of his friends who has recently died), it soon becomes more
cryptic as it presents Bloom’s reactions and thoughts unmediated in what is called the ‘stream of
consciousness’ (l. 10 and even more so from line 14 onward.) . [2]1
A server, bearing a brass bucket with something in it, came out through a door. The
whitesmocked priest came after him tidying his stole with one hand, balancing with the other a
little book against his toad’s belly. Who’ll read the book? I, said the rook.
They halted by the bier and the priest began to read out of his book with a fluent croak.
Father Coffey. I knew his name was like a coffin. Dominenamine. Bully about he muzzle he looks.
Bosses the show. Muscular christian. Woe betide anyone that looks crooked at him: priest. Thou
art Peter. Burst sideways like a sheep in clover Dedalus says he will. With a belly on him like a
poisoned pup. Most amusing expressions that man finds. Hhhn: burst sideways. […] (U, 6, 99)
1.4.3 A PASSAGE FROM "FINNEGANS WAKE"
As my explanations here are probably above your understandings, lattlebrattons, though as
augmentatively uncomparisoned as Cadwan, Cadwallon and Cadwalloner, I shall revert to a more
expletive method which I frequently use when I have to sermo with muddlecrass pupils. Imagine
for my purpose that you are a squad of urchins, snifflynosed, goslingnecked, clothyheaded,
tangled in your lacings, tingled in your pants, etsitaraw etcitero. And you, Bruno Nowlan, take your
tongue out of your inkpot! As none of you knows javanese I will give all my easyfree translation of
the old fabulist’s parable. Allaboy Minor, take your head out of your satchel! Audi, Joe Peters!
Exaudi facts! (FW, 152)
1 Note : Although the beginning of the passage reads quite easily as a third person narrative (it describes M.
Bloom's feelings during the Catholic service for one of his friends who has recently died), it soon becomes
more cryptic as it presents Bloom's reactions and thoughts unmediated in what is called the « stream of
consciousness » (l. 10 and even more so from line 14 onward.)
11
1.5 JOYCE AND YEATS
William Buttler Yeats
The 'encounter' [3]1 The term is to be understood in a metaphorical way, although the two men actually met.
can be seen as the confrontation between « Modernism » and « Celtic Twilight »,
Yeats had an early influence when Joyce, as a young man, was writing poems (1896-1898). Joyce candidly
acknowledged to his brother Stanislaus that he could not rival his countryman whose volume The Wind among
the Reeds, has awakened his intense admiration when it was published in 1899.
Literary life at the turn of the century in Dublin was intense & ambitious, but Joye did not approve of the
directions teaken by Yeats & Moore (he called Yeats an aesthete). Yet he wrote that « in English there was no
one writing verse or fiction whom he admired more » (quoted in Richard Ellman, p.98). In 1902 Joyce decided
to make himself known in those literary circles. He presented himself to George Russel (AE) then 35, who in
turn introduced him to Yeats, who was 37 at the time (Joyce being 20)
This is the account of the meeting as Richard Ellmann writes it in his biography of Joyce 4 James Joyce,
Richard Ellmann, Oxford University Press, 1959 (revised ed. 1982), p.100. [4] 2:
In early October 1902, Yeats came to Dublin, and Russell, who had told him a year before that a new
generation would arise to find them both obvious, announced, ' The first spectre of the new generation has
appeared. His name is Joyce. I have suffered from him and I would like you to suffer.' Yeats submitted, and
Russell wrote Joyce to go to see the poet at teh Ancient Concert Rooms where he was helping to rehearse
Cathleen ni Houlihan and some other plays. But Joyce preferred to meet Yeats more privately, and
haphazardly on the street near the National Library. They went from there to a café.
Their meeting has a symbolic significance in modern literature, like the meeting of Heine and Goethe. The
defected Protestant confronted the defected Catholic, the landless landlord met the shiftless tenant. Yeats,
fresh from London made one in a cluster of writers whom Joyce would never know, while Joyce knew the
limbs and bowels of a city of which Yeats knew well only the head.The world of the petty bourgeaois which is
the world of Ulysses and the world in which Joyce grew up, was for Yeats something to be abjured. Joyce had
the same contempt for both the ignorant peasantry and the snobbish aristocracy taht Yeats idealized. The two
were divided by upbringing and predilection.
1 Note : The term is to be understood in a metaphorical way, although the two men actually met.
2 Note : James Joyce, Richard Ellmann, Oxford University Press, 1959 (revised ed. 1982), p.100.
12
At the age of thirty-seven, Yeats had not yet begun to display the deliberate savagery or the worldly beauty of
his later poetry, but he had reached a point in his early work from which he knew he must veer sharply. The
wind Among the Reeds, (1899) and The Shadowy Waters (1900) had been too concerned with beauty,a nd
Yeats needed now to find roughness and spontaneity. For this purpose he had violently turned to writing
peasant palys in peasant dialect. To Joyce this interest in the Irish folk on the part of an Anglo-Irishman was
patronizing,and on the part of an elaborate artist was self-defeating.
Later on :
Yeats's play Cathleen ni Houlihan is echoed in « The Dead »
Joyce asked Yeats's help to publish Dubliners (by the end of 1913*) - to no avail, for the collection was not to
be published before 1914 (after long tractations and a lot of difficulties).
That same year (1913) Yeats introduced Ezra Pound to Joyce.
As for Joyce's play, Exiles, Yeats rejected it for the Abbey Theatre in 1917, but he thought A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man a great work. Yeats also subscribed to Ulysses and thought it a « work of genius »
(1922) ... but he acknowledged later that he never finished reading it !
13
2 DUBLINERS, « A CHAPTER IN THE MORAL HISTORY OF [HIS]
COUNTRY »
Three stories in particular will be the focus of this course : « The Sisters », « The Boarding House » and « The
Dead ».
Se integral text of :
"Ce document est disponible sur la version en ligne du module de formation."
2.1 COMPOSITION
The fifteen stories composing the collection are centred on the city of Dublin and organised around religion.
They can be grouped according to -at least- two patterns. One pattern divides the collection in 4 'ages': stories
of childhood, stories of adolescence (or youth), stories of the mature years, stories of public life. The second
pattern attributes to each story either a virtue or a sin (in the Catholic religion).
2.1.1 THE VALUE OF CATHOLICISM (VIRTUES AND SINS)
> The first three stories correspond to the 3 theological virtues [5] 1
« The Sisters » = faith
« An Encounter » = hope
« Araby » = charity
> the fourth story, « Eveline », correspond to a cardinal [6]2 virtue : fortitude
> the following stories correspond to the 7 mortal sins[7] 3
" After the Race" : pride
" Two Gallants" : covetousness
" The Boarding House" : lust
" A Little Cloud " : envy
" Counterparts " : anger
" Clay " : gluttony
" A Painful Case " : sloth
The rest of the stories do not fin in with the pattern of virtues and sins, but the temporal division (of human life)
applies.
2.1.2 THE AGES OF LIFE
1 Note : In French: « vertus théologales ». There are only 3 of them.
2 Note : Fr. « vertus cardinale ». There are 4 cardinal virtues: prudence, temperance, fortitude (or
courage) and justice.
3 Note : To be distinguished from venial sins (Fr. péchés véniels),
14
●
childhood (3): « The Sisters » / « An Encounter » / « Araby »
●
youth / adolescence (4): « Eveline » / « After the Race » / « Two Gallants » / « The Boarding
House » (although Bob Doran, the protagonist, is said to be thirtty-five years of age. One might
also consider that the main character, after all, might be Polly – and she is twenty...)
●
mature life (and/or married life) (4) : « A Little Cloud » / « Counterparts » / « Clay » / « A Painful
Case »
●
public life (3): « Ivy Day in a Committee Room » / « A Mother » / « Grace »
In all cases, « The Dead » , story n° 15 and last, stands apart. It is longer and even deserves the term of
« novella ».
Joyce's purpose or intentions when writing these stories (he had nearly completed them by 1905 – except for
« The Dead » – but he couldn't find a publisher before 1914), have been well known for quite long, since Joyce
exchanged numerous letters both with his brother Stanislaus and with various publishers. Two of these letters
are now famous.
One, dated 1904, accounts for the title of the collection : « I call the series Dubliners to betray the soul of that
hemiplegia or paralysis which many consider a city ». The second, sent a few months later to publisher Grant
Richards, reads: « My intention was to write a chapter in the moral history of my country and I chose Dublin for
the scene because that city seemed to me the centre of paralysis. »
The following sentence is also quite famous : « [I have tried to present it to the indifferent public under its four
aspects: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life. The stories are arranged in this order]. I have
written them for the most part in a style of scrupulous meanness... »It is no wonder then if the notion / concept
of paralysis (or hemiplegia) is of so great importance in dubliners. Indeed, the theme is foregrounded ass early
as in the very first lines of « The Sisters » :
There was no hope for him this time: it was the third stroke. Night after night I had passed the
house (it was vacation time) and studied the lighted square of window: and night after night I had
found it lighted in the same way, faintly and evenly. If he was dead, I thought, I would see the
reflection of candles on the darkened blind, for I knew that two candles must be set at the head of
a corpse. He had often said to me: `I am not long for this world,' and I had thought his words idle.
Now I knew they were true. Every night as I gazed up at the window I said softly to myself the
word paralysis. It had always sounded strangely in my
All three words correspond, in the mind of the young narrator (a persona of Joyce himself) to the signifier of
secret, something hidden and mysterious, that only adults are aware of and vaguely shameful. In short, it
stands for knowledge, and the the evolution of the character in the course of each story (at least for the first
three), which is mirrored by the reader's gradual awareness, belongs to hermeneutics.
2.2 CASE STUDIES
2.2.1 "THE SISTERS"
15
Text "Ce document est disponible sur la version en ligne du module de formation."
2.2.1.1 Summary
The following summary is taken (and amended) from Patrick RafroidiI 8 In York Notes on Dubliners , ed.
Longman, 1985 (rev. 1995). [8] 1
Publication : the story was first published in August 1904, in the Irish Homestead(AE’s newspaper) under the
pseudonym of Stephen Daedalus... that is to say the name of the future 'hero' of A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man, which will be published 12 years later.
The setting is the narrator’s home (Great Britain Street 9 Note the choice of the name of the street, especially
in the perspective of a 'post-colonial' reading of Joyce's work. [9] 2, Dublin), where he lives with his uncle and
aunt (the configuration is similar in « Araby »), where an old priest has just died at his sisters’ place.
Characters : the main 2 characters are the boy-narrator (1st person) and the dead priest, Rev. James Flynn.
Around the boy appear his uncle and aunt as well as a friend of the family : old Cotter, « a tiresome old rednosed imbecile ». The priest’s two spinster sisters are Eliza and Nannie 10 Another priest, Father O’Rourke, is
mentioned several times but is not seen. [10]3.
Plot : the boy narrator has been befriended by a 65-year-old priest living in retirement. He has been expecting
his death for a long time, but now the priest has experienced a third stroke and is paralysed, and the boy
knows death is imminent. He goes past the priest’s place once more and back at home (first paragraph) he
hears from old Cotter, obviously hostile to his relationship with Father Flynn, that death has occurred. The boy
does not betray any feeling but experiences a very vivid dream of the priest… to whose house he returns in
the morning, although he has not the courage to enter. But his aunt takes him there in the evening. He then
sees his old friend in his coffin and listens to his elders’ conversation, which gradually builds up a picture of
total failure utterly different from what he had imagined.
2.2.1.2 Comments
There are some autobiographical elements. In the child Joyce probably makes use of himself in print for the
first time; in the uncle, he makes use of his father; Flynn was the name of his mother’s grandfather, and on this
side of the family there had been a priest who became harmlessly insane and lost his parish.
This is the first setting of the general theme of paralysis (see the very first sentence of the story) and also of
the motif of death which links ‘The Sisters’ with the last story of the collection (‘The Dead’). It is a study in
appearance and reality (notice the contrast between the priest lying in state and what we hear of his life, or
between the “big discoloured teeth” and the boy’s romantic dream of Persia – to be taken up again in ‘Araby’;
1 Note : In York Notes on Dubliners, ed. Longman, 1985 (rev. 1995).
2 Note : Note the choice of the name of the street, especially in the perspective of a 'post-colonial'
reading of Joyce's work.
3 Note : Another priest, Father O'Rourke, is mentioned several times but is not seen.
16
beauty is of the imagination, ugliness of reality). It is a study in human ambiguity: the boy is sad that the priest
has died and yet feels as if ‘he had been freed from something by his death”; the priest is considered a failure
and yet has widely contributed to opening the boy’s mind to knowledge. Such fundamental complexities are
rendered through an equal complexity of structure (study the relationship of the dream, which is broken into
several parts) and viewpoints (the priest’s character is revealed through the testimony of different witnesses,
through dream as well as reality).
‘The Sisters’ hints at the incapacity of the Church (represented by the broken chalice) to help man to a
balanced, creative, un-paralytic life; yet the permanent fascination of religious rites retains its grip. There is a
possible symbolic implication that the priest stands for the Irish Catholic Church which sells vocations to
susceptible children (young James long wanted to become a Jesuit) - hence the use of the word ‘simony’ - and
insists on being served while failing the people that serve it. In this light, Eliza’s remark “God knows we done
all we could, as poor as we are…” would make her and her sisters representatives of those Irish people whose
language they certainly use.
2.2.1.3 Words, concepts and symbols
2.2.1.3.1 definitions
DEFINITION
paralysis
in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary),the word is defined as such :
1/ a nervous condition with impairment or loss of esp. the motor function of the nerves.
2/ A state of utter powerlessness. (whatever the disease that medically affected the priest, the second
definition is by far the most important to the understanding of the story – including its metaphorical value.
DEFINITION
gnomon
In geometry (according to 'the' Euclid, -see text- that is to say a representation of space in 2 dimensions), the
word refers to the part of a parallelogram which remains after a similar parallelogram is taken away from one
of its corners. In other words, the 'concept' stands for incompleteness.
Be careful : the word in its first meaning (see def. In Oxford Concise Dictionary) refers to “ the rod or pin, etc.
on a sundial that shows the time by the position of its shadow”.
DEFINITION
simony
traffic in sacred things (from the name of Simon Magnus who offered money to Christ’s Apostles for the gift of
conferring the Holy Ghost). See in the text the phrase : “ to absolve the simoniac of his sin” (...)
17
2.2.1.3.2 Symbols
paralysis 1 : the priest’s physical paralysis is the metonymy of the Dublin moral paralysis, which is the
programme of the whole collection. My use of the word programme refers to the 1st sentence. The priest’s
“fate” is rather the character’s doom (his 'textual' doom). Three (3) as a figure is not a casual number (it is a
sacred one – Trinity- ...).
gnomon2 : re-read the end of the story : this is the symbol of a religious life based on faith …without faith ! (as
is witnessed by the emphasis / insistence on what is incomplete or broken ; see the broken chalice, or the
empty fire place, which both refer to an absent / broken or empty faith.
simony3 : the tobacco satins on the priest's sacerdotal garment are evidence of his « sin” , so is is laugh and
the repetition of the notions of laugh / laughing + idle
Hermeneutics : this word (which has already been used in these pages) means: to decipher the hidden
meaning of a text (normally a sacred text) . In Dubliners, it means to decipher/ read the hidden significance of
the city, that is to say of Life (it is obviously to be understood in a negative) sense).
For instance : in § 1, for the boy, trying to read the meaning of the lighted window equates trying to decipher
symbols that are way above his understanding.
It is the same thing a few paragraphs below: “I puzzled my head to extract meaning from his unfinished
sentences” / “reading the card pinned on the crape” at the door of the deceased.
Indeed, usually, there was another notice, easy for him to understand, which read :
"Umbrellas: re covered” .
Here, two elements perturb the boy's deciphering : a) other people have arrived before him + b) there is
another difficulty : “the reading of the card persuaded me that he was dead and I was disturbed to find myself
at check”
All these details are the more important since the whole short story revolves around the question of
“understanding” or not … see the relationship between the boy and the priest, which shows in the text in the
insistance on the lexical field of teaching / knowing / understanding = p.11 “he had taught me” / “he had
explained to me the meaning of … (+ repetition of the word ‘different’).
1- paralysis : in the OED (Oxford English Dictionary),the word is defined as such :
1/ a nervous condition with impairment or loss of esp. the motor function of the nerves.
2/ A state of utter powerlessness. (whatever the disease that medically affected the priest, the second
definition is by far the most important to the understanding of the story – including its metaphorical value.
2- gnomon : In geometry (according to 'the' Euclid, -see text- that is to say a representation of space in 2
dimensions), the word refers to the part of a parallelogram which remains after a similar parallelogram is taken
away from one of its corners. In other words, the 'concept' stands for incompleteness.
Be careful : the word in its first meaning (see def. In Oxford Concise Dictionary) refers to “ the rod or pin, etc.
on a sundial that shows the time by the position of its shadow”.
3- simony : traffic in sacred things (from the name of Simon Magnus who offered money to Christ’s Apostles
for the gift of conferring the Holy Ghost). See in the text the phrase : “ to absolve the simoniac of his sin” (...)
18
“ Understanding ” : the concept is linked to religion (cf. p.11). Note also that in the text, the question about the
comparison with Post Office Directory & newspapers is very close (in the space of the text) to the mention of
the Eucharist.
The Post Office directory (as well as newspapers) are not religious elements; the latter are thus “traded” for
profane references, which is the definition of simony.
2.2.1.4 Close analysis of some key details
2.2.1.4.1 grey face
(bottom p.2) + “but the grey face was still following me” : mark the repetition of the word 'grey' + to constant
use of the pronoum 'it' : it betrays a certain uneasiness … It soon reveals both the existence of an obsession +
a trauma. This is confirmed by the follwing sentence “… my soul receding into some unpleasant and vicious
region” (these are strong terms, echoing p.1, « like the name of some maleficent and sinful being »
2.2.1.4.2 the dream
(bottom p.5) : the verb 'remember' is repeated 3 times (4 occurrences) . Do not overlook the opposition EastWest, marked by the presence of 'Persia' (everything situated East is connoted postiviley in Joyce, especially
in Dubliners. East represents a better world, the world of escape and imagination; see the story “Araby”)
2.2.1.4.3 the little dark room
Together with the 'stupefied doze', this description has negative connotations. Compare and contrast with
« the sunny side of the street » (p.3). The boy is not in a mourning mood (see line before last p.3) . This might
appear curious since the old priest was a friend of the boy . … But it leads to the top of p. 5, with the mention
of freedom (+ repetition / polyptoton).
Later on , there are many indications about dusk & absence of light (eg. top p.6): “...blind … suffused with
dusky golden light”. All this is necessarily symbolical of light -or absence of). It stands for the illumination of
faith versus the dark recesses of Hell, or of the absence of God .
2.2.1.4.4 tobacco and the snuff-box
the passage (p. 3), full ofalliterations in “f” : 'snuff-stains' ... + 'inefficacious' : there is something very important
here : together with the repetition of the details p. 5, +, p.6, the presence of 'black cavernous nostrils' (which
allude to something devilish), the scene amounts to a parody of the Eucharist 1 (= another example of simony)
2.2.1.4.5 other symbols
the chalice (p. 6 §3) in “loosely retaining a chalice” (the chalice is the vessel of transubstantiation = living
presence of God) + “empty fireplace” (bottom p.6), a detail which is repeated later on, in “empty grate”, bottom
p. 8) + the “broken chalice” (p.9) + the mention : “it contained nothing” (!) is the revelation that there is no
1- Eucharist : the Christian sacrament commemorating the Last Supper, in which bread (the flesh of Christ)
and wine (the blood of Christ) are consecrated and consumed.
19
God / that God is absent (and has been so for quite a long time in the priest's life). The latter mention (« it
contained nothing ») is an example of double language, which is to be interpreted in a symbolical way. So is
the phrase « his life was crossed » (bottom p. 8).
2.2.1.4.6 popular language
Note a certain number of phrases and sayings : for example (p.7) : we done all we could / she’s wore out / it
was him brought us all them flowers
These forms (grammatical 'incorrections'), as weel as « for to go » / « for to look » (p.9) are forms of HibernoEnglish1. See also the malapropism p. 9 : “rheumatic wheels” (instead of pneumatic wheels!)
1- Hiberno-English : The history as it is outlined here is not meant to be comprehensive. It is a very brief
overview. Also it deals only with external events that influenced languages spoken in Ireland.
Two languages dominate any discussion of Language of Ireland – Irish and English. Although Hiberno-English
is now the national Standard Language of Ireland, the Irish language was the principal language of most of the
population until well into the nineteenth century. In many ways the history of the interplay between the two
languages reflects the external history of the country. English has won the battle of dominance but only to a
certain extent and from a certain point of view. The title of Hiberno-English with its two components clearly
describes the relationship between the two tongues.
English has been used in Ireland since the twelfth century. The Anglo-Normans began arriving in Ireland from
about 1167 onwards, bringing with them the Norman-French and English languages. This meant that there
were three languages current in Ireland at that time – Irish, Norman-French, and English. In addition Latin was
used by senior clerics. Norman-French was spoken by commanders of the invading forces, who had been
sent to Ireland by Henry II to conduct (allegedly) a moral mission to reform the Irish. The King had been
authorized to do so by the only English Pope, Nicholas Breakspear, who had taken the name Hadrian IV.
In England, Norman-French was used for diplomatic correspondence up to the reign of Henry IV (1399-1413).
In Ireland, use of this language declined much earlier, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, but not
before it had contributed a number of words to the lexicon of Irish (for example, dinnéar from Norman-French
diner, buidéal from botel, and so forth).
English continued in use, but such was the power of the Irish language that the authorities in England began
to worry about the resurgence of Irish culture and linguistic influence. The authorities were especially
concerned about this resurgence in that part of the country, to the north and south of Dublin, which came to be
known as The Pale (I think more clarity in how the Pale is defined). To counteract this trend, a son of Edward
III, Lionel, Duke of Clarence was sent over to preside at an assembly in Kilkenny. This parliament issued the
famous ‘Statute of Kilkenny’, written in Norman-French (more as a gesture, than as an indication that NormanFrench was still generally understood). This document prohibited the ruling class and their retainers from
becoming more Irish than the Irish themselves. It was directed at the settlers. Hurling was banned, as was
entertainment of Irish minstrels, and other notably Irish pastimes. For us, the main interest is the ban it placed
on the use of the Irish language and on the adoption of Irish names by the English. People breaking this rule
would have their lands and property seized. This would not be returned until the ‘culprits’ had relearned
English.
This statute was ineffectual, and the Irish language continued to make inroads into the Pale. Change only
came about with the adoption of a new scheme for governing and administering Ireland – the Plantations
20
2.2.1.5 To conclude about faith
The mention of the confession box and the incident of the priest laughing-like softly to himself (bottom p. 3) +
the very last lines (« there was something gonre wrong with him... ») mean that the priest had stopped
believing in God. Which is both an individual tragedy, AND, if one remembers hat Joyce was saying about his
« style of scrupulous meanness ») : it is also an indictment of the church : the Irish people ( la masse/ la
base ) has been / is betrayed by the priest(s) and by Religion (“in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man ,
Joyce – via the character of Stephen's uncle – speaks of Ireland as « a priest-ridden race”).
More generally (as less linear an analysis) and still about the “style of scrupulous meanness”: the boy’s
speech in « The Sisters » is inexistant or impeached (after his understanding being difficult). The boy is both
antagonist to old Cotter (who does not eat in order to speak + unfinished sentences // as opposed to the boy
which took effect from 1549 onwards. This resulted in speakers of English being ‘planted’ at various places far
beyond the Pale. The immediate effect was that for the first time Irish people away from the main populationcentres, especially Dublin, had to face and mix with users of the English Language. Those who employed
them spoke English, and they had consequently to learn English, just to receive instructions. Where the rules
of the Statute of Kilkenny failed, sheer practicality ensured the eventual success of the English Language in
Ireland.
The English language benefited from the symbolical prestige attached to its being used by the people who had
the power. In addition, Irish people began to emigrate to England in greater and greater numbers from the end
of the sixteenth century. They had to learn English as quickly as possible. Understandably, they had to learn it
through the lexicon, grammar, and syntax, pronunciation, and idiom of their vernacular language, Irish, which
is substantially different from English – for example, in its verbal forms, which have no equivalent of ‘have’ in
English, and in its prepositional range. Thus an Irish person then, and now, may say ‘He’s been dead with
years’, corresponding to British English ‘He has been dead for years’, with the Irish preposition ‘le’ (=with)
being translated and incorporated into the English sentence, making it typically Hiberno-English.
Use of the English language became further established from the late seventeenth century in Ireland. The
Penal Laws from (1695) ensured that Irish people were denied formal education, and the informal education
provided by the Hedge Schools played its part in the formation of modern Hiberno-English. English continued
to flourish here throughout the eighteenth century. The great Seminary at Maynooth was established in 1795.
Priests graduating from this college addressed their congregations in English whenever they could. From the
1780’s the Penal Laws had been eased, thus helping to eradicate the polarization, on political and religious
lines, of those who spoke English and those who spoke Irish.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century the rise of English was unstoppable. The Act for the Legislative
Union of Ireland with Great Britain (1800) strengthened the need for aspiring politicians to learn and use
English efficiently for putting the Irish case in Westminister. When they came back to Ireland to address their
own people they spoke in English and further enhanced its prestige. Many other events helped this process. A
system of Primary Education was introduced in 1831, and the medium for instruction was English. Children
were punished for using the Irish Language.
A decade later, the Famine had a catastrophic effect on the poorest, Irish-speaking members of the
population. Since then, in spite of efforts of The Gaelic League and many Government enactments in
education – in spite, too, of the brilliant work of many writers in Irish – the position of the Irish language has
become weaker and weaker. However, it also has another life, so to speak, in Hiberno-English, as instanced
already with the example of ‘He’s been dead with years’.
Much of the literary effect of Anglo-Irish literature depends on the author's use of Hiberno-English vocabulary,
21
narrator who eats so as to prevent himself from speaking) AND submitted to the priest (who taught him
everything…).
2.2.2 "THE BOARDING HOUSE"
More is to come on this story.
2.2.3 "THE DEAD"
More is to come on this story.
idiom and sentence-structure. From the earliest usages in the fourteenth-century "Kildare Poems" to the great
nineteenth and twentieth century writers, George Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey, John Millington Synge, and
of course James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and on to the most recent, Edna O'Brien, Roddy Dolye, Seamus
Heaney, Jamie O'Neill, Maeve Binchey, Tom Paulin and Gerard Stembridge, to name just a few. HibernoEnglish provides the linguistic resources which identify their culture as Irish.
Hiberno-English is a singularly rich member of the family of Englishes and owes much of its vivacity and
inventiveness to the underlying influence of the Irish Language and also to the turbulent history of the Irish and
the English.
Source : Website The Hiberno English : http://www.hiberno-english.com/history.htm
22
3 "A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN"
3.1 PAYM'S MAIN CHARACTERISTICS
The Latin words quoted in the first page of the novel (i.e. the epigraph) might help understand the hero’s
stance and the allegorical import of his destiny. These words, Et ignotas animum dimittit in artes, are taken
from Ovid’s Metamorphoses (VIII, 188). It means literally: ‘And he applies his mind to obscure arts’. The ‘he’ in
question is Daedalus, father of Icarus, who fashioned wings for himself and his son to escape from the Cretan
labyrinth he had created to house the Minotaur, the half-bull, half-man offspring of Queen Pasiphae and an
artificial bull. The name Daedalus in Greek means ‘cunning artificer’, (hence the last line of Stephen’s diary:
“Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead”). Icarus flies too near the sun, his wings melt
and disintegrate and he falls into the sea. Daedalus arrives safely in Sicily. The father and the son are often
taken as prototypes of the classical and of the romantic artist respectively [11] 1.
Fall of Icarus
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Chute_d'Icare
LEGENDE : Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel de Oude
Divided in five chapters, the novel is a third person narrative, except for the last pages which constitute
Stephen’s diary just before he leaves Ireland; hence they are written in the first person. The narrative follows
the emotional and intellectual development of a young Dublin boy, from infancy to young adulthood, from the
baby stage of the first pages to the end of adolescence when the young man decides to renounce his initial
project (priesthood) and embarks instead on a career as a writer.
A novel of formation (in German a Bildungsroman2 [12]3) , the Portrait has become a very famous text, from
which a certain number of passages are often quoted. To begin with, the ‘form’ (or the ‘style’) is a revolutionary
one since the language itself mirrors the hero’s evolution. Secondly, the ‘content’ was also a revolution in its
own respect: it read as a political pamphlet on the situation of Ireland at the turn of the century. It is also a kind
of love-hate declaration for a country Joyce left and pretended to abhor and yet spent his entire life writing
about :
When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets[13]4 flung at it to hold it back from
flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets. […] Do you
know what Ireland is? asked Stephen with cold violence. Ireland is the old sow that eats her
farrow. ( PAYM , 220)
The most famous episodes and most often quoted passages are the following :
1 Note : Seamus Deanes notes, PAYM, 277.
2- Bildungsroman : German for « novel of formation » or educational novel : a novel dealing with one
person’s early life and development.
3 Note : The German word is very often used in literary commentaries and analyses. When the formation of
the hero is that of an artist, as is the case in Joyce, the Bildungsroman is called a Kunstlerroman.
4 Note : The words in bold italics are my emphasis: they are key-words to the understanding of the 'Portrait'.
23
a) Still a youngish pupil at Belvedere College, Stephen, aged 14 or so, suddenly realizes – during a
conversation with the English Prefect of studies – that his language (i.e. the English such as it is spoken in
Ireland) is a colonized language :
The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home,
Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of
spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have
not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his
language. (PAYM, 205)
b) Stephen’s aesthetic theories are based on Aquinas1 [14]2’s theory on beauty :
[…] the qualities of universal beauty. Aquinas says: ad pulchritudinem tria sunt requiuntur,
integritas, consonantia, claritas. I translate it so: Three things are needed for beauty, wholeness,
harmony and radiance. (PAYM, 229)
c) Stephen refuses to stay in Ireland and rejects everything it stands for, choosing exile instead. This is his non
serviam3 [15] 4:
I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe
whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church: and I will try to express myself in some
mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I
allow myself to use – silence, exile, and cunning. (PAYM, 268-269)
d) Stephen takes his leave :
Welcome, O life! I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality of experience and to forge in
the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race. (PAYM, 275)
3.2 THE ARTIST IN THE MAKING
3.2.1 INTRODUCTION
1- Aquinas : (in French Thomas d’Aquin): c.1225-74. An Italian philosopher and Dominican friar from Aquino
in southern Italy, the greatest of the medieval Scholastic theologians. He represents in his writings, especially
in the Summa Theologica, the culmination of Scholastic philosophy, the harmony of faith and reason, and in
particular the reconciliation of Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy (source = The Oxford Companion
to English Literature).
2 Voir ci-dessus
3- Non-serviam : Latin for « I will not serve »
4 Note : Latin for « I will not serve ».
24
In order to help you read and fully enjoy the first pages of the novel, here is an analysis by British linguist
Geoffrey Leech[17]1. Leech first quotes Anthony Burgess[18]2, who in his work Joysprick : an introduction to
the language of James Joyce, proposes a division of novelists into ‘Class 1’ and ‘Class 2’. A Class 1 novelist is
one “in whose work language is a zero quality, transparent, unseductive, the overtones of connotation and
ambiguity totally damped”. The Class 2 novelist is one for whom “ambiguities, puns and centrifugal
connotations are to be enjoyed rather than regretted, and whose books, made out of words as much as
characters and incidents, lose a great deal when adapted to a visual medium”.
Although some of Burgess’s general statements are undoubtedly arguable, their accuracy as regards Joyce
cannot be denied. In Burgess’s classification, Joyce is a pre-eminently Class 2 novelist, and as an example,
he offers a humorous translation into Class 1 language of the opening of the Portrait :
Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road
and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby
tuckoo…
His father told him that story : his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.
He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon
platt. (PAYM - incipit)
Here is how Burgess « translates » Joyce's prose into everyday language :
My earliest recollections are of my father and my mother bending over my cot and of the
difference in personal odour that subsisted between my two parents. My father, certainly, did not
have so pleasant an odour as my mother. I remember I would be told infantile stories, altogether
appropriate to my infantile station. One of them, I seem to recall, was concerned with a cow
coming down the lane – which lane never specified – and meeting a child who was called (I am
embarrassed, inevitably, to recollect this in maturity) some such name as Baby Tuckoo. I myself,
apparently, was to be thought of as Baby Tuckoo. Or was it Cuckoo? It is, of course, so long
ago…
We need not take Burgess’s parody too seriously, nor need we accept the absoluteness of his Class 1 and
Class 2 categories – since he himself acknowledges that the two classes overlap. The main point is, according
to Leech, that “prose varies a great deal in the amount of aesthetic interest which attaches to the linguistic
form. Here is the moment to recall what Jakobson and the Prague School of Poetics has distinguished the
‘poetic function’ of language3 [19] 4by its foregrounding, or de-automatization of the linguistic code. This means
that the aesthetic exploitation of language takes the form of surprising a reader into a fresh awareness of, and
sensitivity to, the linguistic medium which is normally taken for granted as an ‘automatized’ background of
communication. As the Joyce example shows, this foregrounding is not limited to the more obvious poetic
1 Note : In Style in Fiction (a linguistic introduction to English fictional prose), Longman, 1981.
2 Note : A British novelist (A Clockwork Orange) and literary critic, more particularly a Joycean critic.
3- poetic function of language : according to Jakobson, language has six main functions: referential,
emotive, conative, phatic, poetic, and metalinguistic.
4 Note : Language has six main functions, according to Jakobson : referential, emotive, conative, phatic,
poetic, and metalinguistic.
25
devices, such as metaphors and alliteration. It may take the form of denying the normally expected clues of
context and coherence. Joyce confronts us her with a piece of apparently inept, uncontextualized, childish
language lacking ‘normal’ prosaic logical transitions, and so shocks us into a re-experience (rather than a
reminiscence) of the childhood consciousness from which the ‘young man’s portrait’ will gradually evolve in the
novel.”
3.2.2 LANGUAGE AS FASCINATION
3.2.2.1 The five senses
The very first element that draws our attention in the Portrait is the emphasis on the five senses. Only recent
research in neuro-psychology evidenced that the new born baby is but what he perceives and underlined the
causal link between the progressive organisation of the five senses in the foetus’ development and the
acquisition of the faculty of speech[20]1.
All five senses are indeed present in the very first lines of the Portrait : sight with the vision of the father’s
“hairy face” / sound with the nursery rhyme and the family’s clapping / touch with mention of the little boy
wetting his bed / smell and taste with Dante (Stephen’s aunt) giving him a “cachou every time he brought her
a piece of tissue paper”. Later on, from pages 4-5, the early binary mode of the infant will be expressed by
various couples of adjectives related to the elementary sensory perceptions (warm vs cold / dry vs wet / dark
vs light, etc.)
3.2.2.2 Language and attention to it
Attention to language appears with the mention of baby Stephen’s lisp (“the green wothe botheth”) together
with his alteration of nice into nicens and his first portmanteau word which conflates the name of the animal
and its cry (cow + “moo!” à moocow). Not to mention the transformation of auntie into Dante[21] 2. The reader
is from the first page confronted to the representation of a child’s language, which is characterized by the
simplicity of both syntax and lexis. There are few words; all are short and often repeated. All segments are
short, they are made of clauses rather than sentences, and they are coordinated or juxtaposed (mainly with
and or and then) rather than subordinated[22]3. All this, paradoxically ends up creating a conspicuous opacity:
we adult readers fail to understand what is written on the page, precisely because it is too simple. If we briefly
come back to Leech’s analysis (see the introductory pages of this course), we can easily understand how and
why Burgess’s humorous translation helps us reverse the trend : by rearranging the order of the text according
to logics and reinstating a hierarchy among the items of information, by commenting more than narrating,
Burgess recreates the transparency of language. As a consequence we can now fully appreciate the
sophistication lying under the false simplicity of the opening pages of the Portrait.[23]4 With the Portrait, Joyce
is portraying a progress, an evolution: that of language as much as the progress or evolution of the hero.
1 Note : This acquisition and the further development of language is a key element in the Portrait.
2 Note : This phonological alteration from the child is also very useful to Joyce in the sense that it allows him
to evoke the Italian poet he admired very much and whom he borrowed the notion of ephiphany (see
further down in section 2).
3 Note : The supremacy of coordination (that is to say a purely chronological sequencing of events) over
subordination (which implies a more elaborate logics) is characteristic of the mind of the very young child.
26
3.2.2.3 Words and wonder
Another form of Joyce’s preoccupation with language is represented by Stephen’s fascination for words
themselves. Words and their strange resonances, words and their hypnotic power, whether their ‘meaning’ is
understood or not, are in their own regard true “characters” of the novel. See for instance the paragraph on the
word suck page 8 or, earlier on, on the polysemy of the word belt (P, 5), or else on the existence of two words
for one thing (Stephen wonders at the fact that a pandybat is also called a turkey -P, 28- )[24]1. Various
examples can be found in the first chapter. For example Stephen has interrogations on the name of God (P,
13). He also reflects (rather sensually) on the word wine :
the word was beautiful : wine. It made you think of dark purple because the grapes were dark
purple that grew in Greece outside houses like white temples. (P, 47).
And a few months after these episodes (ie at the age of 6-7 [25] 2), Stephen is even seen starting to reflect on
that very fascination exerted by language:
Words which he did not understand he said over and over to himself till he had learnt them by
heart: and through them he had glimpses of the real world about them. (P, 64).
3.2.2.4 Evolution
Then, the most remarkable feature of the Portrait (which represented a revolution at the time) consists in
making use of Time both as a motif and as a structural element of the narrative. Indeed, if time is a chronology
(at the beginning of the novel, the young hero is 2-3 years old, at the end he is a young man of 17-18), it is
also a major “character” who is responsible for the gradual changes that appear in the language of the text.
The latter mirrors the evolution of young Stephen’s language instead of commenting upon it as was usual in
literature so far. Truly so, it is the portrait of a language in progress which the novel draws, together with the
portrait of “the Artist…” One can’t but be convinced when confronting the lisp of the child of the beginning (« O,
the greene wothe botheth ») and the extreme sophistication of Stephen’s discourse in the end (as it appears in
his non serviam3 for instance - p. 268).
We won’t insist on the linguistic characteristics of the simplicity of the very first lines: lexical repetitions (among
which the verb to be) and an extremely basic syntax in which subordination is totally absent, are enough to
give the reader an idea of what the beginning of an elementary “thought” might be. Rather than an intellectual
process, it is still the elementary expression of a “sensitivity”. A few pages later on (p.5), a careless or absentminded reader might still think he is witnessing the adventures of the “baby tuckoo” he has met page 3. Yet,
4 Note : From chapter two onwards, the text shows a progressive departure from that perception with the
introduction of Stephen ’ s free indirect speech and the presence of more and more complex connectives
(but and yet to begin with, then time markers, then condition, etc.).
1 Note : This is no less than the discovery (before Saussure?) of the division of a sign between signifier and
signified.
2 Note : At the beginning of chapter 2, Stephen is shown having regular strolls on the coast with his father
and granduncle.
3- Non-serviam : Latin for « I will not serve »
27
the analysis of the paragraph (“Nice mother ! …. And his father had told him…” [26]4) shows how mistaken that
reader would be, for considerable changes that have occurred in Stephen’s intellect (Stephen who is now
aged 6-7).
Joyce aged 6 years old
3.2.2.5 A brief analysis of the passage
Telling the arrival of the young child at the boarding school, with his parents kissing him good-bye for 3 months
or so (ie the first term, till the Christmas holidays), two words – nose and kiss (tightly knit thanks to and and
but) – herald the presence in the text of the trio father/ mother /child (or mother-him-father in the chronological
order). Nose and kiss are then linked by to (a marker of direction or intention), which precedes the qualification
of nose by the adjective red, itself leading straight to the ‘logical’conclusion : cry. In other words, the
‘intellectual’ pattern of the memory is:
kissà (requires the use of) noseà red (mothers’s nose + eyes = red) à (which means) cry (mother is crying).
As for the mother, that part of the scrutinized paragraph ends with the looping of the loop: starting with the
word nice (in “Nice mother!”), it stops with the word nice (in “She was a nice mother but she was not so nice
when she cried” - p.9-). Following it, the ‘concept’ of mother leads to the concept of ‘father’ (via the principle of
contiguity). While the mother was characterized by her emotional reaction (she cries), the father is defined by
4 Note : The paragraph starts with « That was not a nice expression » and carries on down to « never to
peach on a fellow » (pages 5-6).
28
action and speech: « and his father gave him… » / « and his father told him… ». Indeed, we are far, very far
away from the ‘simple’ sensory associations of the first lines.
Let us now compare this passage with Stephen’s speech and argumentation some ten years later.
3.2.2.6 Stephen's non serviam
His last phrase, sour smelling as the smoke of charcoal and disheartening, excited Stephen’s
brain, over which its fumes seemed to brood. (1) – Look, here, Cranly, he said. You have asked
me what I would do and what I would not do. I will not serve that in which I no longer believe,
whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in
some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence, the only
arms I allow myself to use – silence, exile, and cunning. (2) (P, 268).
Stephen’s famous quote (2) appears as a model piece of argumentation.
First in its structure. Indeed we can find here the 5 stages of classical Greek rhetorics :
a) an exordium [27]1 = « Look here, Cranly »;
b) the reminder of his rival’s question : « You have asked me what I would do and what I would not do »...
c) ... sets out the programme : “I will tell you what I will do and what I will not do”;
d) development of each of two opposed arguments, one negative, the other positive : “I will not serve” / “I will
try to express myself”;
e) the final stage is the conclusion or “péroraison” (French) : “using for my defence… silence, exile and
cunning.”
Then in its rhetorical devices. Various devices can be found :
a) figures of thought, such as anaphoras (“I will tell you” / “I will do” / “I will try”), syntactic chiasmus (“you have
asked me” / “I will tell you”), oppositions (“what I would do – what I would not do” / “I will not serve – I will try to
express myself”), parallels (“as freely as I can” – “as wholly as I can”);
b) tropes : equivalence (“some mode of life or art”), use of synecdoche [28] 2 (“my home, my fatherland, or my
church”), together with metaphore (“silence, exile and cunning”), the latter figure being emphasized by the
regular ternary rhythm.
Most remarkably, the part of the narrative preceding Stephen’s speech (1), even though shorter, is as
sophisticated as the speech itself:
●
The style is highly hypotactic (complex sentences with embedded clauses).
●
The lexical fields used prove extremely coherent : a) the mind with words such as phrase or
brain, together with the senses and emotion (words such as smelling / disheartening / excited /
seemed / brood) ; b) the isotopy of fire via such words as smoke, charcoal, excited and fumes.
●
Last but not least, the metaphor is extremely complex which links Cranly’s sentence to the smell
of charcoal, the fumes and Stephen’s brain has in fact stemmed from a single word, the word
1 Note : The very introductory words in classical rhetoric, (in French « l'exorde »).
2 Note : Figure of speech by which the whole is represented by one of its parts.
29
match, which can be found a few lines above : « He [Cranly] produced his match and began to
clean the crevice between two teeth. Then he said carelessly… » (P, 268).
No doubt, the evolution of the language (that of the text), which marks the progress of Stephen’s mind and
consequently, his language has been dramatic[29] 1. That is, first and foremost, the undeniable revolution of
Joyce’s writing in the Portrait.
3.2.3 THE MAIN JOYCECEAN THEMES : FAMILY, HOMELAND AND
RELIGION
It has already been stated: it is only at the end of the novel that Stephen expounds the reasons for his
oncoming exile, that is to say his rejection of his native land: “….whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland
or my church” (P ,268). Yet, the demonstration has been made all along the narrative that all three are
responsible for young Stephen’s formation and “deformation”.
Family, country or homeland, and religion are the main three instances suffering Stephen’s (Joyce’s)
indictment. The very first example can be found in the Christmas dinner (depicted from pages 25-26 down to
p. 39). It combines the three ‘characters’. The family is represented by the parents, Uncle Charles and Mrs
Riordan (Dante) to which can be added a friend of the family, Mr Casey.
Both religion and patriotism are also present, since they constitute the heart of the conversation which soon
becomes a fierce debate over the responsibility of the Catholic Church in Parnell 2’s tragic end. One party
blames Parnell3 because he was a sinner (he had committed adultery – this is Dante alias Mrs Riordan’s
opinion –) the other party (as a whole the men of the family) is against the church who should not “meddle with
politics”[30]4. The anathema is uttered both by Uncle Charles who speaks of Ireland as an “unfortunate
priestridden race” (P, 37) and by Mr Casey whose outcry (“No God for Ireland. We have had too much God in
Ireland. Away with God!” -P, 39-) is certainly a model for young Stephen’s future rejection of religion. And with
Dante’s reply in terms of blasphemy (as a true believer – or a bigot? –), it is one of Ireland’s major features
which is thus portrayed, and extremely realistically so[31] 5.
1 Note : Le terme est bien à entendre dans son sens premier en anglais : « spectaculaire ».
2- Parnell : Parnell, Charles Stewart(1846-1891): nationalist leader, born into a Protestant landlord family. A
Home Rule MP from 1875 to 1891, he established his reputation as an advanced nationalist through
‘obstruction’ tactics in Westminster. He became the leader of nationalist movement via his presidency of the
Land League (1879) and chairmanship of the Irish Parliamentary Party (1880). From the foundation of the
National League onwards (1882) he pursued a purely constitutional campaign for Home Rule. The general
election of 1885 (which returned 86 nationalist MPs) was an impressive demonstration of Parnell’s power.
After 1886, a combination of poor health and his affair with Mrs O’Shea (wife of an Irish officer serving in the
British army) removed him from the centre of nationalist affairs and soon led him to his death, viewed as the
tragic issue of a series of betrayals (by his party companions, by the Church…). See the Christmas dinner
episode in PAYM. See also the short story “Ivy Day in a Committee Room”, one of the stories in Dubliners.
3- Parnell : Parnell, Charles Stewart(1846-1891): cf ci-dessus.
4 Note : For the historical details, see both Seamus Deane's introduction and the Irish Chronology + Key
Names in irish History (in this course)
5 Note : It is still true in our days, even if modernity has helped the country evolve in a less clerical way.
30
Two more episodes stage the importance of religion in Stephen’s life and development, whether it be
emotional, intellectual or spiritual: on the one hand the famous scene of corporal punishment usually referred
to as the “pandybat scene” at the end of chapter one (P, 49-52); on the other hand, the heart of chapter 3,
which develops Stephen’s renunciation to what he thought was his vocation: priesthood. In that part, the
reader should pay particular attention to the sermon on Hell and Stephen’s consequent thoughts (P, 116-146).
I recommend in particular to focus on the “pandybat scene”. Not only is the Joycean passage a remarkable
piece of writing, but it also stands for the first instance in the text of Stephen’s growing ‘political’ or ethic
awareness (in this case, the existence of injustice) and the first form of his rebellion against the church.
Indeed, what the text stages after Father Dolan has shut the door behind him is Father Arnall’s sympathy (in
the Greek sense of the word meaning “to suffer with”) and Stephen’s interior monologue: « it was unfair and
cruel because the doctor had told him…». There is no way in which the Portrait – in this passage at least –
could be read other than as an indictment of the Church in their educational methods.
3.3 JOYCE'S AESTHETICS
3.3.1 STEPHEN, JOYCE, AND ART
In this section, several philosophical notions and concepts will be dealt with; as we don’t have time and space
enough to develop them all, I encourage you to look them up in the various dictionaries and encyclopaedias
you may have access to. Each time key concepts or key names will be used - whether or not I provide you
with a definition - they will be printed in bold letters on a grey background.
3.3.1.1 Genesis of the Portrait (i.e. the final text published in 1916)
A first draft of it was written as a short autobiographical essay by the young Joyce in 1904. As the text was
refused for publication (in a literary magazine called Dana) Joyce decided to transform the text into a novel.
He entitled it Stephen Hero [32]1. Three years later, in 1907, Joyce decided once again to transform his text
and he used Stephen Hero as a first draft for an entirely new novel, which was to become A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man. The difference between SH and PAYM relies not so much in a series of diegetical
variations (some characters change, disappear, receive a different name, while in parallel, some episodes are
included or deleted) as in the shift in perspective. Whereas in Stephen Hero, the perspective is individual,
nearly anecdotal, in the Portrait, Joyce’s aim is more general. His objective from 1907 was in fact much closer
to the initial text of his youth (the 1904 Portrait of the Artist): he intended to give his views on the function of
the Artist in general. This implied the formulation (acceptable in terms of fiction) of his specific conception of
art, his aesthetics.
I can’t but direct you to two major critical texts on the subject: Jacques Aubert’s in French and Umberto Eco’s
in English. As they do not read easily, I will sum them up in the lines below; yet, I encourage you to try and
read the works themselves. Aubert’s is the introduction to the Pléiade edition of Joyce’s Works in French
(Gallimard, 1982[33]2). The other is the section U. Eco devotes to the Portrait in his book The Aesthetics of
Chaosmos, the Middle Ages of James Joyce(cf bibliography ), pages 15-31.
The principal themes of Stephen’s aesthetics, expressed at the end of chapter five[34] 3 are as follows:
Let us “simply” (!) concentrate on the theory of genres and on epiphany.
1 Note : It will often be referred to in the rest of these pages as SH, in the same way as the Portrait is PAYM.
2 Note : It cannot be borrowed from the B.U. but it can be read there.
31
●
The subdivision of art into three genres : lyric, epic and dramatic. These are the categories
established by Aristotle in his Poetics.
●
The objectivity and impersonality of the work of art
●
The autonomy of art
●
The nature of the aesthetic emotion
●
The criteria of beauty. From this last theme emerges :
●
The doctrine of the epiphany
●
The pronouncement on the nature of poetic activity and the function of the poet.
About Aristote (http://agora.qc.ca/mot.nsf/Dossiers/Aristote )
1
3.3.1.2 The 3 genres
The distinction between the three Aristotelian genres lies in the variations in the distance between the artist,
the image he presents of himself in his work and his emotions. In the lyrical genre, the artist presents his
image in immediate relationship with himself; in the epic, he presents it in an indirect relationship with himself
and others. On the contrary, the epic form is the continuation of the lyrical form and assumes equidistance
between the artist or the poet, the reader and the emotional centre. At least theoretically, the dramatic form
represents for Joyce the true and proper form of art. As Stephen says, then
[…] the personality of the artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid and lambent
narrative, finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalizes itself, so to speak… The mystery of
esthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the God of the creation,
remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence,
indifferent, paring his fingernails. (P, 233)
The principle of the impersonality of the work of art, so typical of the Joycean poetic, vigorously emerges here.
To put it extremely briefly, let us say that Joyce did not invent any of these concepts; he simply “borrowed”
them (transforming them of course), both from the Anglo-Saxon environment and the Aristotelian tradition
AND the symbolists poets (Baudelaire and Mallarmé for the French and W.B. Yeats for the Anglo-Irish)[35] 2.
3.3.1.3 Aquinas
The aesthetic formulations of St Thomas were also much influential. St Thomas, also referred to in English in
general (and all along the Portrait in particular) as Aquinas, was an Italian philosopher and Dominican friar
from Aquino in southern Italy. He was the greatest of the medieval Scholastic theologians (c. 1225-1274). He
3 Note : Immediately after his non serviam addressed to Cranly, and during the conversation with Lynch (P,
221-235).
1
2 Note : The influence of Flaubert on Joyce is also to be taken into account.
32
represents in his writings, especially in the Summa Theologica, the culmination of Scholastic philosophy, the
harmony of faith and reason, and in particular the reconciliation of Christian theology with Aristotelian
philosophy. The Summa, which is unfinished, is a vast synthesis of the moral and political sciences, brought
within a theological and metaphysical framework. He was called the ‘Doctor Angelicus’. His followers are
called Thomists and they are still an active school in contemporary philosophy. He was a very important
influence on Dante’s Divina Commedia [36]1 (which brings us back to Joyce, once again).
3.3.1.4 Stephen's conceptions
Stephen uses the terms of Aquinas’s theory on beauty to explain his own conception :
To finish what I was saying about beauty said Stephen, the most satisfying relations of the
sensible must therefore corresponds to the necessary phases of artistic apprehension. Find these
and you find the qualities of universal beauty. Aquinas says: Ad pulchritudinem tria requiuntur:
integritas, consonantia, claritas [37]2. I translate it so: Three things are needed for beauty,
wholeness, harmony and radiance. (P, 229)
Many more could be said on these concepts and their aesthetic implications. Suffice to say here that
Stephen’s real understanding of Aquinas seems, according to a number of Joycean critics, rather flawed or at
least biased. For instance, he seems to have added some romantic gloss to the notions, which would
correspond to a relative immaturity at that stage of his life[38] 3. What must be added here though is the impact
this ‘Aquinas-inspired’ theory had on the notion of epiphany.
3.3.1.5 The theory of epiphany
The term is to be dealt with enormous precautions. First because there is an etymological (and religious)
definition which does not completely correspond to the Joycean acception. Secondly because the implications
of the latter on the understanding of Joyce’s work as a whole are far from unimportant.
a) Derived from the Greek epiphaneia = manifestation (from the verb meaning to reveal), the first meaning of
epiphany is “the manifestation of Christ to the Magi according to the biblical account. It is also the festival
commemorating this on January the 6th. By extension, the term refers to any manifestation of a god or
demigod[39]4.
b) In the Joycean cosmogony, the term appeared for the first time in Stephen Hero, in which a proper
definition is given :
1 Note : Source: The Oxford Companion to English Literature, ed. M. Drabble, Oxford University Press,
1985, 1995.
2 Note : These 3 thomist concepts, as well as their translation in English by Stephen, are to be known by
heart.
3 Note : The Stephen who is seen back from Paris at the beginning of Ulysses (he is the continuation of the
character of the Portrait and stands, although in a deformed and ironic way, for Joyce himself) utters a
number of sarcasms on his “childish ” conceptions of a few years earlier.
4 Note : Oxford English Dictionary – OED (concise version)
33
By an epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation, whether in the vulgarity of speech or of
a gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself. He believed that it was for the man of letters
to record these epiphanies with extreme care, seeing that they themselves are the most delicate
and evanescent moments. (SH, 211)
Although the term epiphany itself does not appear in the following passage of the Portrait which corresponds
to its equivalent in Stephen Hero, what is at stake at that moment is precisely the (from now on ‘Joycean’)
epiphany :
This supreme quality is felt by he artist when the esthetic image is first conceived in his
imagination. The mind in that mysterious instant Shelley likened beautifully to a fading coal. The
instant wherein that supreme quality of beauty, the clear radiance of the esthetic image, is
apprehended luminously by the mind which has been arrested by its wholeness and fascinated by
its harmony in the luminous silent stasis of esthetic pleasure, a spiritual state very like to that
cardiac condition which the Italian physiologist Luigi Galvani, using a phrase almost as beautiful
as Shelley’s, called the enchantment of the heart. (P, 231)[40]1
Summing up Umberto Eco’s reading of the evolution of the Joycean epiphany, I would express the distinction
between the two forms as such: in Stephen Hero, the epiphany is still a way of seeing the world and thus a
type of intellectual and emotional experience. In the Portrait, the epiphany is a way of discovering reality and
at the same time a way of defining reality through discourse. In the Portrait, the epiphany is no longer an
emotional moment but an operative moment of art, something which founds and institutes, not a way to
perceive, but a way to produce life.
Actually, between Stephen Hero and the final draft of The Portrait , nearly ten years intervene. In the
meantime, Joyce had been writing Dubliners, a collection in which each short story appears like a vast
epiphany, or at least “the arrangements of the events tend to resolve themselves in an epiphanic experience”.
The following precisions are taken from Umberto Eco once again :
The epiphanies of Dubliners are key moments that arise in a realistic context. They consist of common facts or
phrases but acquire the value of a moral symbol, a denunciation of a certain emptiness of existence. The
vision of the old dead priest in the first story [“The Sisters”], the final crying of Chandler in “A Little Cloud” and
the solitude of Duffy in “A Painful Case” are all brief moments that turn moral situations into metaphors […].
[41] 2
1 Note : For the purpose of clarity (!), I specify here that the words in bold grey letters are my emphasis.
They correspond to the 3 notions-concepts defined by Aquinas and used by Stephen earlier on.
2 Note : Taken from The Aesthetics of Chaosmos (op. cit.), p. 25. I would like to add that in Dubliners, one
more epiphany deserves specific attention: that which occurs in the last short story « The Dead ». The
« revelation » happens when Gabriel has the vision of his wife Gretta at the top of the stairs, a vision which
causes him to imagine himself as a painter who would then capture the image of this beautiful and
unknown woman and entitle the picture « Distant Music ». As a piece of further reading, I include in this
section pages 19 to 24) a few more pages on three specific epiphanies: that of « The Dead » in Dubliners,
and the main two epiphanies of the Portrait (the seabird girl and a moment on the steps of the National
library). .
34
In the Portrait, the word and the concept of epiphany does not any longer suggest a moment of vision in which
something shows or reveals itself. What now interests Joyce is the act of the artist who shows something by a
strategic elaboration of the image.
The paramount example of epiphany in the portrait is that of the seabird girl
(http://www.clioetcalliope.com/oeuvres/peinture/venus/venus.htm) 1 [42]2, thanks to which Stephen decides to
renounce his former vocation as a priest and become an artist instead. Here reality is epiphanized through the
verbal suggestions of the poet. The vision, with all its potential for the revelation of a universe resolved in
beauty, in the pure aesthetic emotion, acquires its full importance and does so only in the total and unalterable
structure of the page.
Read the text « Ce document est disponible sur la version en ligne du module de
formation. »
3.4 A POST COLONIAL READING OF THE PORTRAIT
This short section, mainly in French, includes a passage which is today considered as one of the seminal texts
selected by critics of post-colonial theories. More specifically, it is a passage taken from chapter 5 of the
Portrait. It is reproduced below, after ashort introduction, and then analysed from a post-colonial point of view,
that is to say taking into account one major criterion: the relation between the colonizing power and colonized
people.
As far as the Portrait is concerned, and even though at the time (1916) Ireland was still far from being an
independent nation viewing back its history as the history of a former British colony, even though Joyce
himself was politically speaking very far from taking official sides in that respect, the analysis his hero makes
of language (his own language, that is to say the English spoken in Ireland) is extremely modern. The
confrontation which is here depicted between Irish English and British English, of which Stephen is only
beginning to become aware, is a key passage in the understanding of the relationship Joyce established later
on with his “native” language. Indeed it led him to “violate” that same language in various imaginative ways in
his last opus, Finnegans Wake, which we will briefly present / introduce at the end of this last section.
3.4.1 RESUME ET EXTRAIT
Pensionnaire chez les Jésuites au lycée de Belvedere à Dublin, le jeune Stephen Dedalus (dans cet épisode
âgé de seize ans) est dans cette scène en pleine conversation – privée – avec le préfet des études (the
dean– équivalent du principal –). Le début de leur entretien, axé sur la dernière et brillante dissertation de
l’élève Stephen, est centré sur la notion esthétique et philosophique de Beauté et il y est question d’une lampe
à huile, prise en exemple au double sens concret et métaphorique.
1
2 Note : The passage is situated at the end of chapter 4 (P, 185-186 : from « He was alone. He was
unheeded happy and near to the wild heart of life. « down to » open before him in an instant of ecstasy the
gates of all the ways of error and glory. On and on and on and on! »). I encourage you to read the passage
several times and address me questions by email if you feel the need.
35
[…]
- To return to the lamp, he said, the feeding of it is also a nice problem. You must choose the pure
oil and you must be careful when you pour it in not to overflow it, not to pour in more than the
funnel can hold.
- What funnel? asked Stephen.
- The funnel through which you pour the oil into your lamp.
- That? said Stephen. Is that called a funnel? Is it not a tundish?
- What is a tundish?
- That. The … funnel.
- Is that called a tundish in Ireland? asked the dean. I never heard the word in my life.
- It is called a tundish in Lower Drumcondra[43] 3, said Stephen, laughing, where they speak the
best English.
- A tundish, said the dean reflectively. That is a most interesting word. I must look that word up.
Upon my word I must.
His courtesy of manner rang a little false and Stephen looked at the English convert with the same
eyes as the elder brother in the parable may have turned on the prodigal.[44] 4 A humble follower
in the wake of clamorous conversions, a poor Englishman in Ireland, he seemed to have entered
on the stage of Jesuit history when that strange play of intrigue and suffering and envy and
struggle and indignity had been all but given through – a late-comer, a tardy spirit. From what had
he set out? Perhaps he had been born and bred among serious dissenters, seeing salvation in
Jesus only and abhorring the vain pomps of the establishments. Had he felt the need of an implicit
faith amid the welter of sectarianism and the jargon of its turbulent schisms, six principle men,
peculiar people, seed and snake Baptists, supralapsarian dogmatists? Had he found the true
church all of a sudden in winding up to the end like a reel of cotton some fine-spun line of
reasoning upon insufflation on the imposition of hands or the procession of the Holy Ghost? Or
had Lord Christ touched him and bidden him follow, like that disciple who sat at the receipt of
custom, as he sat by the door of some zinc-roofed chapel, yawning and telling over his church
pence?
The dean repeated the word yet again.
- Tundish! Well now, that is interesting!
- The question you asked me a moment ago seems to me more interesting. What is that beauty
which the artist struggles to express through lumps of earth, said Stephen coldly.
The little word seemed to have turned a rapier point of his sensitiveness against this courteous
and vigilant foe. He felt with a smart of dejection that that the man to whom he was speaking was
a countryman of Ben Johnson. He thought:
- The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words
home, Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without
unrest of spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech.
I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of
3 Note : Quartier de Dublin où vit la famille Dedalus. Joyce y vécut lui-même dans sa jeunesse.
4 Note : Allusion à la parabole biblique du Fils Prodigue.
36
3.4.2 ANALYSE TEXTUELLE
De la même manière que l’on ne peut réduire le Portrait, roman d’une extrême richesse, à la « simple »
description de l’évolution intellectuelle du jeune Stephen Daedalus (autoportrait à peine déguisé de l’auteur
Joyce), la scène ci-dessus ne peut être réduite, elle non plus, à un seul de ces thèmes, en l’occurrence la
question de la langue.
Ainsi, toute la question de la conception de la beauté selon Epictète par exemple (le philosophe grec auquel
le préfet des études fait appel par l’entremise de sa fameuse métaphore de la lampe ; elle est développée par
la texte joycien dans les lignes qui précèdent cet extrait), est d’une importance cruciale. Stephen en effet, et à
l’époque Joyce avec son jeune héros, partage une autre conception de la beauté, celle de St Thomas d’Aquin.
Toute la question de l’esthétique joycienne est là posée.
About Epictète (http://www.mediterranees.net/litterature/epictete/biographie.html)
1
D’autre part, la question religieuse est également d’une importance capitale, comme le montrent notamment
les nombreuses références bibliques (par exemple la parabole du Fils prodigue). Le jeune Stephen est en
effet élève chez les Jésuites, et le dogme chrétien (catholique) tel qu’il est enseigné par les « bons pères »,
est rejeté par lui qui, après avoir un instant envisagé de devenir prêtre lui-même, décide en lieu et place de
devenir artiste et de consacrer sa vie à l’écriture. On voit d’ailleurs bien le lien entre les deux questions, celle
de l’esthétique et celle de la religion, même si nous contentons ici de le mentionner.
3.4.2.1 Une réflexion sur la langue
Nous aborderons ici un seul aspect du texte : la réflexion qu’il contient sur la langue, en l’occurrence, l’anglais
tel qu’il est parlé en Irlande, c’est-à-dire avec ses variations à la fois phonologiques (l’accent, qui ne peut être
rendu, sauf très approximativement, par l’écrit), mais surtout lexicale et grammaticale. C’est ce qu’on appelle
« l’anglais hibernien » ou Hiberno-English.
About "Hiberno-English (http://www.answers.com/topic/hiberno-english) "
2
Stephen, pourtant très instruit et d’une intelligence supérieure, se rend compte ici pour la première fois qu’il
n’y a pas adéquation parfaite entre son anglais à lui et celui du préfet des études, Anglais d’origine. C’est la
raison du dialogue – du quasi quiproquo – autour des mots funnel (le terme anglais) et celui de tundish (son
équivalent ‘dialectal’ en hiberno-english)[46]3. Très vite, au-delà de l’aspect presque comique de l’échange, ce
qui frappe est la condescendance du préfet des études (soit de l’Anglais, du colon) envers la langue de
l’Autre, celle de Stephen (l’Irlandais, le colonisé), implicitement considérée comme « pittoresque » – « That is
a most interesting word. I must look that word up. Upon my word I must » – c’est-à-dire déconsidérée.
Stephen le sent d’ailleurs très bien, qui réfléchit en ces termes : “his courtesy of manners rang a little false…”.
1
2
3 Note : Dans sa traduction française, Jacques Aubert utilise respectivement les termes « entonnoir » et
« verseur » (Gallimard, coll. Pléiade, ed. 1982, p. 716)
37
Ce n’est toutefois qu’à la fin du passage qu’il formule en termes de raisonnement ce qu’il vient de ressentir de
manière affective : il y aura toujours une différence entre l’anglais d’Angleterre (celle du préfet, « un
compatriote de Ben Johnson »[47]4 et le sien ; le seul qui compte, le seul reconnu étant le premier. Cet
anglais là est le premier, à la fois chronologiquement, historiquement (avant la colonisation anglaise, la langue
irlandaise était exclusivement le gaélique), et « idéologiquement », c’est-à-dire sur le plan de la norme à
suivre. C’est ce qu’exprime Stephen lorsqu’il dit : “ the language in which we are speaking is his before it
is mine”, ou lorsqu’il désigne son propre anglais comme “an acquired speech”. La remarque suivante que se
fait le jeune homme peut, de prime abord, sonner anodine et renvoyer par exemple aux seules différences
d’accent (« how different are the words… on his lips and on mine »). En réalité, le constat que fait Stephen est
celui de la « colonisation de sa langue » et il s’agit bien de sa part d’une véritable révolte contre l’impérialisme
linguistique des Anglais :
I have not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of
his language
qui équivaut à une déclaration d’indépendance, dans un premier temps culturelle (rappelons que
l’indépendance – politique – irlandaise date de 1922).
4 Note : Dramaturge anglais (1572-1637), contemporain de Shakespeare, auteur de nombreuses pièces,
poèmes, etc. et aussi de la première Grammaire Anglaise, donc prônant une norme en matière
linguistique. L'exemple de Stephen s'avère par conséquent particulièrement bien choisi (mieux que s'il
avait fait appel à Shakespeare par exemple, car la langue de Shakespeare est tout sauf « normative »).
38
4 "ULYSSES", A DAYTIME ODYSSEY
To begin with, let me provide you with a number of general insights on the novel, whose story of publication is
extremely complex. Let us say to be brief that the book finally appeared in 1922. For a more detailed story of
the pubication, you can read Jeri Johnson's introduction to the 1993 edition at Oxford University Press (the
reference edition for this course). One can also find numerous details in Richard Ellman's biography of Joyce,
often cited in this course.
Before examining in details several of the episodes (Ulysses is not divided into « chapters » but into
« episodes », it might be necessary to have an overview of the techniques used by Joyce. A usefully summary
or that purpose can be found in The Cambridge Introduction to Modernism [11]1. Here are some of the most
significant extracts :
4.1 STORY OF THE PUBLICATION
Joyce wrote Ulysses while living in Trieste, Zurich and Paris, having gone into voluntary « exile » from Ireland
because of its conservative social and intellectual climate. He was in close touch with avant-garde circles in all
three cities and their experiments influenced his. The novel appeared in installments in the Little Review
beginning in 1918, but publication was interupted in 1920 when its publishers were prosecuted for obscenity,
over an episode in which Bloom masturbates.
Once complete, the novel had to be published in Paris and was banned in England, Ireland and the United
States for more than a decade. English customs officials and the U.S. Post Office seized and destroyed most
copies of hte first editions. During the 1920s, the novel was known in the English-speaking world mainly
through some smuggled copies. After 1930, readers could purchase Stuart Gilbert's commentary, which
contained excerpts of he novel that had not been judged obscene. In order to make the novel easier to
understand, Joyce gave his French and Italian trnaslators schemas explaining that each episode had its own
distinctive time, scene, style, bodily oragn,art, colors symbol, and outlining the correspondences between
characters and their counterparts in the Odyssey and, to a letter extent, Hamlet .
Ulysses : Ce document est disponible sur la version en ligne du module de formation. by S.
Gilbert
1 Note : Cambridge University Press, 2007, in particular chapter 5, entitled « Prose Fiction », pages 153176.
39
There are also biblical parallels, but they have a somewhat different status; the characters themselves are
unaware of the similarities between their own lives and those of the characters in The Odyssey , but frequently
invoke the Bible to explain their circumstances.
4.2 HOMER
Chest of Homer
LEGENDE :
Presumed Chest of Homère (Musée du Louvre)
The Homeric references in Ulysses raise a number of critical issues. Thr use of parallels with one of he great
classicalepics to describe the humdrum and sordid marital affairs of a reasonably intelligent but not otherwise
remarkable lower-middle class hero can be understood as a form of mock epic, in which high style is applied
to low matter. Joyce's attitude would then be seen as satirical, like Eliot's attitude towards such characters as
Sweeney and the typist in The Waste Land. More frequently however, readers have seen Joyce as trying to
represent what Baudelaire called « the heroism of modern life ». Bloom, who appears merely comic at the
beginning of the novel, seems to become more heroic, more like Odysseus, as the narrative progresses.
Another debate concerns how much weight readers should place on the schemas in which Joyce outlined the
mythic parallels. Eliot praised Joyce's « mythic method », but many critics disagree with Eliot and see the
parallels as a kind of scaffolding, not esssential to the structure of the work, and interpret Joyce's purpose as
less unifying than Eliot suggests. In other words, they see Joyce not as a high modernist, but as the first postmodernist, discarding the unifying myths that could make sense of contemporary history, but they both also
recognized that,to be compelling, these modern myths must becomplex, ironic and multifarious. The seeds of
post- modernism are preent in the highest of high modernist works.
More about Homère (http://philoctetes.free.fr/homereod2.htm)
1
40
1
4.3 WHAT IS MODERNISM ?
Many histories of the novel present modernism as a rebellion against realism, or against the Victorian novel
more generally. There is some truth in this, especially in so far as the modernists, like Sterne before them,
play with and parody the conventions they have inherited. However, modernism can also be understood as the
natural continuation of a trend of the development of realism repreented by Dostoevsky, Flaubert and James.
Modernist techniques like stream of consciousness attemt to describe in great detail the experience of
reality as lived by an idiosyncratic individual. At the same time however, rather than simply accept the
subjectivism of the madman or decadent, the great modern novelists attempt to make out of the
fragmented perceptions of individuals a picture of the whole objective world. They tend to avoid the
omniscient narrator of Fielding and the realists (Jane Austen, Balzac, Eliot...)and istead to present the
world mainly through the eyes of their characters. But while eschewing the omniscience of the narrator, they
are not rejecting realism in the broad sense defined by Watt. Rather, they are tilting the balance toward what
Watt called « realism of preentation », trying to show not necesarily how things really are, but how
things are experienced, what it feels like to be alive.
4.4 THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS
The stream of consciousness technique of the first nine episodes of Ulysses can be seen as a further
development of realism, moving ever inward to represent the consciousness of the individual character in
greater detail. After episode ten however, the novel seems to break decisively with realism; instead of
highlighting the referential functions of words, Joyce emphasizes their involvements in systems of discourse,
ideology and style. The parodies, however, do not indicate a total break with repreentation; rather, while
calling attention to the inadequacies and ideological effects of various highly stylized systems of repreentation,
Joyce still seems to be maintaining an ideal of adequate repreentation against which all the individual styles
need to be judged. It is notable that the last episode of the novel returns to a version of the interior monologue
technique, « monologue (female), » to represent Molly Bloom's consciousness in much the same way as
Stephen's and Bloom's have been portrayed earlier in the novel.
[…]
Like that of the Odyssey, the plot of Ulysses ends with a return to the marital bed, though Joyce
leaves the reader uncertain whether the novel's major plotlines – Stephen's search for a father,
Bloom's exile and return, Molly's adultery – have reached their natural conclusion or will simply be
repated after everyone wakes up on June 17.
41
4.5 A BRIEF STUDY OF A FEW EPISODES
4.5.1 Episodes 1, 2 & 4 (« Telemachus », « Nestor » and « Calypso »)
Joyce at Martello Tower
LEGENDE :
Dublin, 1904. The summer Joyce met Nora, friend and fellow University College student Constantine P.
Curran took this photograph of James sporting the same yachting cap he was wearing when he met his future
wife on 10 June 1904. She thought the handsome young James might be a "sailor." When later asked what
James was thinking about while being photographed, he replied, "I was wondering would he lend me five
shillings."
(From the University College Dublin Library, C.P. Curran papers.)
We shall focus on the 4 main issues that must be tackled with when one deals with Modernism :
consciousness, time, narrative, and fiction..
4.5.1.1 Consciousness
●
The main modernist form is the novel. Epic & lyric poetry, drama were preeminent literary forms
in ‘ancient culture’. Hence, the novel (relatively modern), is a popular genre, not meant for the
elite (+ women). « To prove the significance of « the art of fiction » the modernists transformed
the popular genre of the 18th & 19th centuries into something much more difficult to read.
●
Joyce’s career traces in miniature the gradual inward movement from realism to modernism.
Dubliners combined naturalist attention to detail & symbolism , then PAYM was developing the
42
consciousness of the young artist through a changing literary ‘style’: a subtler form of free indirect
discours / speech. The first 3 episodes of Ulysses push this tendency even further.
Extract I, 5-6 12
[49]1 Note that the paragraphs below are not yet completely written, but rather present themselves under the
form of notes jotted down in parallel with reading the passages themselves
- mother + sea + note JJ n° 19 p.773 (Ireland called Emerald Isle ) ;
- politics (Sassenach + speaking Irish + health problems)& Religion (parody of) + guilt + Homer but also
Hamlet) / Remorse = agenbite of inwit (remorse of conscience in Middle English) : -consciousness =
conscience (both wds closely related). Ulysses, the novel explores the close relationship between the two
notions. Gradually, the narrative focus moves inward. Frequent modulation btw the perspectives of narrator
and character. Sometimes it is difficult to tell which is which, to make the difference between something
narrated as external event or as a passing thought of one of the character.
The narrative is described as « young » in Telemachus, « mature » in Calypso »: the techniques are largely
the same, though. But the contents are different; Stephen = intellectual / Bloom = earthly and practical (with
short, Anglo-Saxon words for the latter, when Stephen largely uses long words with Latin or Greek origin).
4.5.1.2 Time
●
See Einstein & relativity / Time = dominant theme in the modernist novel . For example: Bloom’s
watch stops at 4.30, possibly the moment when Molly consumates her affair with Blazes Boylan.
"Time" by Virginia Woolf
An hour, once it lodges in the queer elementof thehuman spirit, may be stretched to fifty or a
hundred times its clock length; onthe other hand, an hour may be accurately represented on the
timepiece of the mind by one second. This extraordinary discrepancy between time on the clock
and time in the mind is less known taht it should be and deserves fuller investigation... When a
man has reached the age of thirty... time when he is thinking become sinordinately long , time
when he is doing becomes inordinately short.
(in Orlando, 1928)
another example is the cloud Stephen observes p.9 (the same is seen in later episodes- IV, 58) .
●
Obsession with ghosts (Hamlet) as well as death & funeral (Dignam's attended by Bloom in
episode VI- « Hades » - / metempsychosis (Molly in Calypso)
●
Modernists are /were sometimes accused of avoiding history. Joyce was profoundly skeptical of
attempts to describe history with a capital letter.
- history which is to blame according to Haines (= colonialism) p.20 ;
1 Note : The Roman figures (here I) refer to the number of the episode, while the Arabic figures stand for the
number of pages.
43
- Aristotle (the actual versus the possible) : see note J. Johnson p.776 ;
- love of mother p.28 (cf. episode I) / Stephen being paid / Deasy’s vision of History : p.31 he uses the simple
past (even though grammar commands that he should use the present perfect) / p.33 : foot & mouth disease
(+ his stupidity « I don’t mince my words) + antisemitism (p.33), with the end on Deasy's antesimitic joke ;
- History as a nightmare…one of the most famous quotes of Ulysses : « History is a nightmare from which I
am trying to awake... » (p.34).
4.5.1.3 Narrative
Modernism is often equated with an absence of no plot. In Ulysses, there are competing plots : Bloom’s exile /
Molly’s adultery / Stephen’s quest for a father). Sometimes minor events are overshadowing major ones. Two
examples can be given: Throwaway (the horse in « Lotus Eaters », episode5) // The presence of a man
named McIntosh (in episode 6, « Hades ») during P. Dignam’s funeral; the man is alluded too several times
later on in various episodes : it is a red herring, there is no answer… »
One could sum this up by saying that, in fact, Joyce is seen here showing contingent events that do not
apparently lead to magnified consequences,
Later episodes show a break away from the stream of consciousness. I refer you for instance to the
newspaper titles in the episode « Aeolus », in which there is a fierce competition between the titles & the rest
of the narrative (they are orchestrated by what is called « the Arranger ») . One can also think of the parodies
of The Citizen (episode 12) or the « styles » in Oxen of the Sun (epsiode 14) or drama et the didascalies... in
Circe (episode 15).)
4.5.1.4 Fiction
As The Cambridge companion to Modernism writes it :
The « Nausicaa » and « Lotus Eaters » episodes contain, indirectly Joyce's meditations on the
rôle of fiction in our lives. At the literal level, Gerty has consumed grat deal of low-quality fiction,
and her consciousness seems shaped by it. More broadly, however, Gerty's consciousness
seems to be a fiction of Bloom's desire ,and in general, Ulysses is a novel not just about
consciousness but about how we construct our own consciousness out of language and indeed
how we construct or imagine the consiousness of other people. In A Portrait of the Artist as a
Young Man (1916), Joyce attempted, through the « Uncle Charles Principle », to imagine what
Uncle Charles would say about his own trip to the outhouse.
Ulysses is an extended meditation on how people view themselves in language: first, the
language of the ongoing interior monologue by whcih we make grocery lists or plans for the
evening or fantasies for ouselves; second, the various languages, learned from literature or
advertising, the Bible or popular music, with which we tell ourselves stories about the world and
about ourselves. Ulysses celebrates this power of fantasy and fiction-making at the same time as
it criticizes particular fantaies, like the nationalist self-aggrandisement of « the Citizen ». In
addition to reinventing the representation of consiousness, rethinking our understanding of time,
and revising the functioning of plots, Ulysses reevaluates fiction itself and its central rôle in human
consciousness. (p. 173).
44
In the meantime, let us simply note, for episode 4, aka « Calypso », the following basic elements :
Example of his stream of consciousness. See p. 53 § 1, 4 (+ bottom of the page) ...
Extract IV, p. 53-54 + 67
Extract IV, p. 53-54 + 67
●
Calypso is the episode in which M. Leopold Bloom appears first.
●
eatingà excreting / ingestion – defecation : all these elements are meant to represent a
somatisation of the text, which is given a libidinal rhythm. Bloom’s is a bodied text / a corpus,
contrary to Stephen’s.
●
style of Bloom’s thoughts : p.55 -56 (example of St Joseph school & « joggerfry »)
●
Leopold back home (after the butcher’s) / the reader meets Molly (+ letters by Milly / B. Boylan)
●
met him pike ..what ? p.62 (this is Molly's « deformation » of the word metempsychosis
●
presnence of other characters (minor ones in Dubliners, for example)
●
Manure / p.65-66 : Leopold is thinking of it & enjoying it (+ adding his own).
4.5.2 Episodes 7, 12, 15 ( « Aeolus », « Cyclops » and « Circe »)
You will find here a few notes corresponding to the last class on Ulysses . The episode summaries
are taken (and sometimes abridged) from Jeri Johnson’s 1993 edition of Ulysses (the 1922 text).
The « examples » are merely given as ‘suggestions for reading’ to help you focus on the main
elements as they are explained/explicated in the summaries. No literary analysis is meant to be
provided by these excerpts, which merely represent an « overview » of Joyce’s work(s).
Dublin Map
LEGENDE :
Episode 7 « Aeolus »:
45
Location :
Offices of the Freeman’s Journal (and Evening Telegraph), 4-8 Princes Street North (E4, behind the General
Post Office), off Sackville Street and around the corner from Nelson’s Pillar (F3)[50] 1.
Time : 12 noon
Homer :
Earlier at Menelaus’s court, Odysseus told the tale of landing on the floating island of Aeolia, ruled by Aeolus,
‘warden of all the winds’ and father of six sons and six daughters, all married to one another. After entertaining
Odysseus (who repaid the debt of hospitality by recounting his adventures), Aeolus gave Odysseus a bag in
which he had ‘penned up every wind that blows’, the west wind being intended to carry him safely home.
Odysseus set sail and after nine days came within sight of Ithaca, only to collapse with exhaustion. His men,
convinced that he was hiding precious gifts in the bag, opened it and released the winds. They were blown
back to Aeolus’s island where Odysseus again sought his help. Aeolus, recognizing one whom the gods have
cursed, banished him. (Book X)
Joyce :
In keeping with its Art, ‘Rhetoric’ (or in less reverent tones, windy bombast, hot air), Aeolus is a virtual
handbook of rhetorical tropes. Stuart Gilbert, who fist catalogued these (with hints from Joyce), lists 95
examples […] The other use of rhetoric – oratorical persuasion – also plays its part in Aeolus : famous Irish
(and Greek) orators parade past, their speeches alluded to or dissected. Similarly, the modern mode of
persuasion – the daily newspaper – provides more than the setting. Newspapers and journalists abound ; the
institution of the press is treated with both scepticism and affection (remember that the young Joyce, under the
pseudonym of Stephen Daedalus, published in The Irish Homestead). But more than this, the ‘Sllt… Sllt …
Sllt’ (117.10,11,13) of the presses themselves beat the steady rhythm of mechanical inhalation and exhalation.
This is the home of the modern mechanized material production of words, the place where paper and ink
come together, the ink having been spread on inverted lead letters already distributed by a typesetter who
‘reads it backwards first… mangiD. kcirtaP’ (118.9-10).
Note too, that this episode has been fiddled with by the Arranger, that figure distinctly different from the
narrator, not least in ‘his’ awareness of the book as a material object consisting of paper and ink juxtaposed to
form words, sentences, and a non-continuous narrative, all of which can be played with, moved about, taken
out and reinserted in different places to create surprising effects. Here the Arranger becomes Editor, an editor
who has taken to the copy with a pair of scissors and a blue pencil, has cut it up and inserted ‘Headlines’ into
the gaps (headlines which often have a flippant disregard for their relevance to what follows ; ironic
irreverence is this Editor’s hallmark ).
Examples
●
p. 115-116-117: read the passages corresponding to the following mock newspaper titles : « We
see the canvasser at work » / « House of Key(e)s » and « Orthographical », which are
transparent references to L. Bloom, whose job is to canvass for adverts. The ‘orthographical’
passage is, as often in Ulysses, best understood by the reader who cares to read it aloud ( cf. the
pun – in French it would be called a mix of calembour and contrepètrie – on the « unparalleled
embarrassment of a harassed pedlar while gauging at the symmetry of a peeled pear under a
cemetery », as Bloom understands it and reflects on it).
●
p. 119 : the title « Erin, Green Gem of the Silver Sea » is only after repeating close reading
understandable as a reference to the colonial state Ireland was in at the time. The metaphor,
1 Note : These indications correspond to a Dublin map as reproduced in J. Johnson ’s edition of Ulysses
(pages vi-vii).
46
quite a hackeneyed one at the turn of the century, was used in « Telemachus », in the dialogue
between B. Mulligan, Stephen and Haines, their English host.
●
p.121: observe the rhetorical tropes used here (a strict ‘identification’ with proper terminology is
not required though, even if it can prove a pleasant game) : they are all based upon the seamntic
field of wind / breath, etc. , as is fitting for an episode centred on the God of winds (Aeolus).
« Reaping the whirlwind » / « when they get wind of a new opening » / « and then all blows
over » / « Enough of the inflated windbag »[52]1… All these phrases and expressions point to the
« windy » / purely rhetorical tendencies of the press and politicians that Joyce is here indicting (or
at least making fun of).
●
p. 130 : corresponding to the title « You can do it », the line reading ‘ Set it in your face. See it in
you eye. Lazy idle little schemer’ is an obvious quotation from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man (the pandybat scene in which young Stephen – then aged 6 or 7 – is accused of having
broken his glasses on purpose so as to avoid doing his schoolwork). From Ulysses onward,
Joyce frequently resorted to the principle of self-quotation. (this scene briefly reappears in
episode 15, Circe, p. 523).
●
p.140-141 : the apparently cryptic titles « K.M.A. » and « K.M.R.I.A » are explained immediately
below in the text : behind the childish oath (« kiss my ass »), the repetition of the joke signals
-once again- an « anti-colonial » stance (Royal + Irish are more important terms than the
‘vulgarity’ itself).
Episode 12 « Cyclops » :
Location :
Barney Kiernan’s pub (8-10 Little Britain Street, near the corner with Green Street (E 3-4). ‘I’ meets Joe Hynes
at the corner of Arbour Hill and Stony Batter (D3). They walk down North King Street (passing south of
Linenhall Barracks) and turn south into Halson Street (past the back of the court-house (D3, E3-4). Bloom,
Cunningham, Power and Crofton leave Kiernan’s in a car which will head south towards Dignam’s house on
Newbridge Avenue (H5).
Time : 5 pm
Homer :
Earlier in his account of his travails before landing in Phaecia, Odysseus told of arriving at the land of the giant
Cyclops, ‘arrogant lawless beings’ who dwell in caves, and never leave or till their own land. Leaving most of
his men on board his ship, Odysseus chose the twelve bravest to go with him to meet the Cyclops,
Polyphemus. (for the rest of the « book » -number IX-, see either Homer himself or J. Johnson’s summary p.
882-883)
Joyce’s Hints :
« The chapter of the Cyclops is being lovingly moulded in the way you know. The Fenian is accompanied by a
wolfhound who speaks (or curses) in Irish – see p.298-299. He unburdens his soul bout he Saxo-Angles in the
best Fenian style and with colossol vituperativeness alluding to their standard industry. The epic proceeds
explanatorily « He spoke of the English, a noble race, rulers of waves, who sit on thrones of alabaster, silent
as the deathless gods » (in his letters- L1 - quoted by J.Johnson)
Joyce :
Polyphemus (from the Greek, literally ‘many-voiced’) would have fared better his battle against Odysseus had
he been ‘many-eyed’. At the very least, Odysseus’s task would have been twice as hard. Since monocularity
1 Note : The same idea is conveyed in the French image « tout ça c ’est du vent ».
47
allows no depth perception (it takes two eyes sufficiently widely spaced and forward-looking for that), it sits
fittingly with bigotry, self-centredness, and rage. No wonder then the attitudes espoused here, by the firstperson narrator (known only as ‘I’), the xenophobic citizen (spokesman for Ireland right or wrong), and those
sucked into the drunken antagonism against Bloom ‘the bloody jewman’ sole disesnting voice.
But Polyphemus’s many-voicedness has its correlates not so much in Bloom’s discordant humanitarian
exhortations as in the other half of the narration, that portion not assignable to ‘I’. ‘I’ recounts an anecdote
(racist, unsurprisingly) about a […] thief who successfully swindles a certain Jew named Moses Herzog out of
goods. […] Suddenly into the narrative breaks a legal contract […] which stops abruptly ; this ‘document’
carries the action not one step further forward. Nor can it even really be considered narration.There is no
‘narrative voice’ narrating this ‘text’ ; it stands out as announcing its status as a written document, and as
rejecting any claim to be telling a tale. Similarly, the other intrusive eruptions most resemble other texts :
newspaper sports colums, society pages, news items, letters, translations of ‘Gaelic’ verses, court records,
descriptions of artefacts, biblical parodies, and lists, lists, lists. In this, Cyclops is more intertextual than
polyphonic.
‘Many-voiced’ is only a literal translation of ‘Polyphemus ; figutatively (and more suitably) his name means
‘much spoken of’. Fame in Homer’s oral culture spread from voice to voice ; Cyclops’s verbal equivalent, is the
seemingly endless capacity these men have for talk and the spreading of rumour. But Ulysses itself is situated
at the height of the age of print, just at the beginning of those modern machines the telephone, radio, and
television which will once again promote the voice. Cyclops proudly announces its textual supremacy, for
even as it depicts a struggle between ‘the narrative voice’ and ‘the text as text’ it contains them both. Novel
and anti-novel : Cyclops accomodates both and so flaunts a binocularity Polyphemus might have yearned for.
Focus on narrative voice
●
Note the constant puns on ‘I’ / « eye » (for example, p 286 : « And lo, as they quaffed their cup
of joy, a godlike messenger came swiftly in, radiant as the eye of heaven… »). Many more can
be found all through the episode.
●
Note also the innumerable « says I » as introduction / dis-introduction to the dialogues. They put
the emphasis both on oral / familiar language, and on the aforementioned pun « I / eye ».
●
The major stylistic characteristic of the episode is the presence of innumerable parodies, which
can’t be ascribed to any « narrator » -cf lines above taken from Johnson-.
Examples
●
p. 282 « In Inisfail the fair … » : parody of James Clarence Mangan’s translation of Alfrid’s poem
(a 7th century poem).
●
p. 284 : Homeric description of the Citizen : « The figure seated on a large boulder at the foot of a
round tower was that of a broadshouldered deepchested stronglimbed frankeyed redhaired freely
freckled shaggybearded widemouthed ….hero ». All those adjectives are fashioned after the
Greek syntax, a stylistic characteristic of Homer’s, and called « the Homeric epithets ». Note the
irony, both directed at the form (the grammatical peculiarity) and the content (the physical
stereotypes of the « true Gael »).
●
p. 289 : a seance[53]1 for the deceased Paddy Dignam (cf . episode 6 « Hades »). This parody
mocks the seances conducted in the terms of the tenets of Theosophy, a neo-Hindu, neoBuddhist philosophy articulated and espoused by Madame Blavatsky. Earlier on in her annotated
edition, Jeri Johnson specifies : « The Theosophists were much about Dublin around the turn of
1 Note : to be understood as « séances de spiritisme ».
48
the century. Following Hindu and Buddhist teachings, they believed in the ‘transmigration of
souls, the brotherhood of man irrespective of race or creed, and complicated systems of
psychology and cosmology’, nad denied a personal god. […] Mrs Blavatsky was not infrequently
investigated for charlatanism. Yeats was her most famous ‘follower’, though in Ireland AE
(George Russell) was perhaps her most ardent. » The passage selected down below gives the
measure of Joyce’s sarcasms (see the obvious puns + the spelling in imitation of the
Theosophist’s predilection for Sanskrit.) :
Interrogated as whether life there resembled our experience in the flesh he stated that he had heard from
more favoured beings now in the spirit that their abodes were equipped with every modern home comfort such
as tālāfānā, ālāvātār, hātākāldā, wātāklāsāt and that the highest adepts were steeped in waves of volupcy of
the very purest nature.
●
p. 294 : parody of a front-page story covering a major event (here Robert Emmet’s funeral).
Note the lists of names of the foreign delegation (once again, the puns and jokes are obvious, such as «
Monsieur Pierrepaul Petitépatant, the Grandjoker Vladinmire Pokethankertscheff […] Ali Baba Backsheesh
Rahat Lokum Effendi […] » ).The technique foreshadows the one used in Finnegans Wake.
●
p. 313 : This parody is that of an upper class wedding as it could be reviewed in the ‘society
column’ of a newspaper. All the names correspond to plants, trees or flowers and the passage is
often referred to as « the botanic wedding ». Excerpt :
The fashionable international world attended en masse this afternoon at the wedding of the chevalier Jean
Wyse de Neaulan, grand high chief ranger of the Irish National Foresters, with Miss Fir Conifer of Pine Valley.
Lady Sylvester Elmshade, Mrs Barbara Lovebirch, Mrs Poll Ash …(follows a huge list of similar names) graced
the ceremony by their presence. […]».
The whole point in introducing such a farcical list is to undermine the Citizen’s political discourse, then centred
on the deforestation of Ireland as suppopsedly conducted by the British. Ending on a biblical parody p.330.
The passage ( end of the episode) reading « When, lo, there came … a shovel » is thus commented upon by
Jeri Johnson (cf. her note p.898) : « Parody of biblical event ; specifically Bloom departs in the manner of
Elijah’s ascent to Heaven ( 2 Kgs , 2 : 11-12)[54]1 : ‘And it came to pass, as they [Elijah and Elisha] still went
on, and talked, that, behold, there appeared a chariot of fire, and horses of fire, and parted them both
asunder ; and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it, and he cried, My father, my father,
the chariot of Israel and the horsemen thereof’. […]. Do not forget that Ulysses is, after Joyce himself « an
epic of two races, the Jewish and the Irish …».
The transmogrifications of Bloom by Hamilton Richard
LEGENDE : image2
Episode 15 « Circe » :
Location :
Bella Cohen’s brothel (82 Lower Tyrone Street, though number 81 in the text-F3-). We enter ‘nighttown’ by
way of the Mabbot Street entrance (F3). Stephen and Lynch (see PAYM) have come by train from Westland
Row station (F4) to Amiens Street station (F3), then have walked along Talbot and Mabbot Streets to Tyrone
Street. Bloom, too, has come by train, but he missed the Amiens Street Station and has been carried to the
1 Note : La référence doit se lire ainsi (en français): Livre des Rois (livre deuxième), verset 2, lignes 11-12.
2 Cf : Cf annexe : "The transmogrifications of Bloom" by Hamilton Richard
49
next stop. He makes his way back (presumably by the next train) and follows (somewhat later) Stephen and
Lynch’s route.
Time : Midnight
Homer :
When narrating his tale to King Alcinous, Odysseus tells of landing on Circe’s island (Aeaea) after having
escaped the Lestrygonians (= Ulysses’s episode 8). On arriving, Odysseus divided his men into two groups,
the first led by himself, the second by Eurylochus. The second he sent to scout the island. Coming upon
Circe’s palace, they found it surrounded by wild beasts (bewitched by Circe) and the goddess herself inside
weaving a web. All entered except Eurylochus, and the ‘goddess of the braided hair’ offered them food into
which, unbeknownst to them, she ‘intermingled pernicious drugs’. Once they had eaten, she waved her wand
and turned them into swine. Eurylochus returned to tell Odysseus, who set out to rescue them. On the way, he
met Hermes (disguised as a youth) who gave him the magic antidote, the herb moly, and advice on how to
thwart Circe’s charms. Arriving at Circe’s palace, Odysseus followed Hermes’s wisdom : he took the herb and
thus was neither affected by Circe’s drugs, nor turned to swine. Instead, seizing his sword, he rusehed
towards her as if to kill her. Astonished, she nevertheless recognized him as Odysseus whose arrival Hermes
had prophesied, pleaded for gentleness, and asked him to her bed. Odysseus made vow she would plot no
more mischief toward him before he would sleep with her. Later her handmaids bathed, anointed, clothed, and
ferd him. Circe released the men, then provided a feast for them. Here they stayed until the year was out,
when the men, restless for home, urged Odysseus to seek Circe’s help in returning to Ithaca. Circe bade
Odysseus first travel to Hades to seek counsel from Tiresias, the blind seer. After the trip to Hades (Ulysses’s
episode 6), Odysseus returned to Circe’s island and sought her advice on how to return to Ithaca. She outlined
the necessary route : past the Sirens (U, 11), past either the Wandering Rocks (U, 10) or Scylla and Charybdis
(U, 9). She also warned him of the danger of slaughtering the sacred Oxen of Helios (« Oxen of the Sun », U,
14). Armed with her advice, Odysseus and his men set sail.
Joyce’s hints :
He wanted to « make Circe a costume episode also. Bloom for instance appears in five or six different suits » /
Besides, Joyce refers to the entire episode as a ‘Walpurgisnacht’ (according to German legend, the witches’s
Sabbath, on eve of 1 May ; in Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles takes Faust to this fête.)
Joyce :
Ulysses’s most extreme departure from narrative norms arrives with « Circe « which looks like drama but
doesn’t act like one. Here buttons, caps, yews speak, a rooster lays an egg, night hours dance, Edward the
Seventh ‘levitates’. Beside this, the appearance of the ghost of Stephen’s mother and the transformation of
Bloom into a woman seem comparatively ‘normal’. Indeed, the ‘normal’ and the ‘phantasmagoric’ become
indistinguishable in Circe. As Daniel Ferrer points out, nothing in the formal apparatus of the drama allows us
objectively to distinguish between the characters and events we might wish to assign to fantasy and those we
might seek to call ‘real’[55]1. The stage directions command all performances (whether Bloom’s or button’s) in
the same deadpan, objective way. And what is it that appears on stage ? From the characters’ perspectives
(most specifically, Stephen’s and Bloom’s) : their most closely held secrets. For them, interiority (whether
nightmare, fantasy, memory or anything repressed) is exteriorized, given an objective reality. Whatever they
have sought most actively to internalize, to keep private (even from themselves), hauntingly returns as
uncannily familiar, external ‘hallucination’. This is Freud’s’Return of the Repressed’ with a vengeance.
But if Stephen and Bloom cannot (seemingly) distinguish ‘hallucination’ from ‘actual event’, no more can the
reader. And, just as what they see seems both uncannily familiar and strange, the text before us seems oddly
simultaneously like and unlike the Ulysses we have so far read. For just as Stephen and Bloom re-member
their pasts into present drama, Circe re-members Ulysses’s textual past into present dramatic narrative. The
1 Note : For reference to D. Ferrer, see J. Johnson, p. 922.
50
text recirculate its prior self, re-presenting elements in new configurations. So Cyclops’s Black Liz reappears
as an egg-laying rooster ; Gerty McDowell (Nausicaa, U, 13) limps forward ‘leering… oggling’; Rabaiotti’s ice
cream car (first glimpsed in Wandering Rocks –U, 10-) now provides ‘ wafers between which are wedged
lumps of coral and copper snow’. There are literally hundreds of such displaced repetitions. The textual titbits
we have ignored or passed over or even repressed return with the accusation (overtly voiced by Virag) : ‘ I
presume you shall have remembered what I will have taught you on that head ?’ […]
Various literary and psychological texts fed Joyce’s imagination in his writing of Circe. Those with the greatest
influence on the episode are :
- G. Flaubert’s The Temptation of Saint Antony (1874) ;
- Goethe’s Faust, I & II (1808-1832) ;
- Henrik Ibsen’s Ghosts (1881) ;
- Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1886) ;
- Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs (written 1870, publ. 1904) ;
- August Strinberg’s Ghost Sonata (1907).
Focus on
●
Molly’s apparition (p.417) : note both the reference to ‘reality’ in the way Molly addresses her
husband (either « Poldy » -for Leopold- or ‘poor little hubby’ – for husband-) and teh manner in
which she is described in the didascalies, ie in accordance with Leopold’s fantasies. Incidentally,
this passage (Molly in Turkish costume) is written after Falubert’s La Tentation de Saint Antoine.
●
Bella Cohen : the whoremistress of the brothel appears p.494. The didascalie enhances her
formidable – and somewhat masculine – appearance (a sprouting moustache), thus preparing
the transformation of the woman Bella into the man Bello (p.497). Note the transformation of the
personal pronons in the didascalies themselves : « (He [Bloom] knots the lace. Bella places her
foot on the floor. Bloom raises his head. Her heavy face, her eyes strike him in midbrow. His
eyes grow dull, darker and pouched, his nose thickens à « BELLO : Hound of dishonour ! » […]
Two elements should be noted here : firstly the parallel transformation in terms of gender (Bella à Bello and
Bloom à «’a charming soubrette’ »[56] 1// secondly the fact that the scene is an illustration of the ‘psychopathia
sexualis’ known as masochism (and his counterpart : sadism) ; « masochism », a tendency named after L. von
Sacher Masoch, author of Venus in Furs, which is obviously an intertext here.
1 Note : Intervenes slightly below, p.502.
51
5 ON "FINNEGANS WAKE"
As already specified in the general introduction to this course, here is a possible summary of the main
elements to be kept in mind in order to familiarize oneself with Finnegans Wake, that « hypermnesiac
machine », according to French philosopher Jacques Derrida :
A mixture of more than 20 languages, overloaded with multilingual puns, the ‘novel’ – which Joyce entitled
Work in Progressall along the 17 years it took him to complete – may be considered as the night counterpart
of daytime Ulysses, ‘except’ that it also includes the entire history of Ireland, from the early Viking settlements
down to the beginnings of the twentieth century (including the Revolution of Easter 1916 and the 1921
partition).
The best way to start getting acquainted with the mysteries and puzzles of this gigantic “hypertext” can be to
read the following two sections. They are, simply, the reproduction of two of the main “explanatory” articles I
published on The Wake in the last four years. As the publishers were French one, the articles are written in
French. Some more might be included in the course in the next months.
Joyce's Interrogation !
LEGENDE :
Drawn by César Albin for Joyce's 50th birthday, and appearing in transition magazine.
(Copyright César Albin. The Harley Croessman Collection of James Joyce, Special Collection, Morris Library,
Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.)
52
5.1 "FINNEGANS WAKE", L'AUTRE TEXTE
[…] by Maistre Sheames de la Plume, some most dreadful stuff in a murderous mirrorhand ) that
he was avoopf (parn me!) aware of no other shaggspick, other Shakhisbeard, either prexactly
unlike his polar andthisishis or procisely the seems as woops (parn!) as what he fancied or
guessed the sames as he was himself and that, greet scoot, duckings and thuggery, though he
was foxed fux to fux like a bunnyboy Rodger with all the teashop lionses of Lumdrum hivanhoesed
up gagainst him, being a lapsis linquo with a ruvidubb shortartempa, bad cad fad sad mad nad
vanhaty bear, the consciquenchers of casualty prepestered crosswords in postposition, scruff,
scruffer, scruffertmurrainmostandallthatsortofthing, if reams stood to reason and his lankalivline
lasted he would wipe alley English spooker, multaphoniaksically spuking, off the face of the erse,
[…] [57] (FW, 177). 1
À se pencher sur ce qui s’est longtemps appelé Work in Progress (écrite entre 1923 et 1939, l’oeuvre garda
cette appellation jusqu’à sa publication) [59]2 , l’exégète amateur de Joyce constate souvent une première et
fondamentale erreur de lecture. Très fréquente, en particulier chez les anglicistes, cette erreur réside dans le
rétablissement de cet infime signe diacritique qu’est l’apostrophe et qui fait du titre joycien un syntagme
nominal incluant un génitif. Tout joycien orthodoxe ne peut que s’en irriter : Finnegans Wake n’est pas
Finnegan’s Wake . Pourtant, lorsqu’on déplie ce titre – et tous les autres segments du texte d’ailleurs – on
s’aperçoit que c’est aussi cela.
Finnegans Wake , doit en effet une part de son existence à la vieille balade irlandaise [60] 3 bien connue de
Joyce qui dit qu’on s’est bien amusé à veiller Finnegan : « Lots of fun we had at Finnegan’s wake ». À partir
de cette donnée, et si l’on intègre la dimension d’oralité (il n’est plus nécessaire aujourd’hui de démontrer à
quel point l’écriture de Joyce est orale ou aurale), de multiples sens adventices viennent se greffer sur le
noyau initial. Ainsi, la suppression de l’apostrophe permet de pluraliser Finnegan et donc de faire de l’ouvrier
maçon de Dublin qui, dans la chanson, se casse les reins en tombant de son échafaudage, un personnage à
la fois pluriel et universel. Puis, si l’on rétablit la segmentation du patronyme afin d’en isoler Finn – alias Finn
McCool, le géant des sagas irlandaises –, de egan on fait again , ce qui permet d’entendre toutes les
réitérations, les répétitions, voire les bégaiements de l’histoire, c’est à dire, selon le principe de Vico – qui
gouverne Finnegans Wake , nous dit Joyce –, sa circularité. Fin peut également se lire en français : « fin » ; le
redoublement du n transforme alors la formule cabalistique [61] 4 en fin negans : « qui nie la fin ». Or, on sait
que la fin de l’œuvre – sa dernière phrase – est en fait son début :
1 Note : James JOYCE, Finnegans Wake [1939], London/Boston : Faber & Faber, 1975. Les segments
en italiques serviront plus particulièrement de support à notre démonstration dans les pages cidessous.
2 Note : Elle est due à Ford Madox Ford, auteur en 1915 du « roman moderniste » The Good Soldier.
Ford en tant qu ’éditeur contribua à la publication par fragments de Finnegans Wake. Voir Richard
ELLMANN, James Joyce [1959], Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 563.
3 Note : Elle est en fait américano-irlandaise. Il s ’agit déjà là d ’une première et même séminale
« hybridation » ; voir infra.
4 Note : Sur Joyce et la Cabale et ou la Théosophie, voir entre autres éléments, les notes explicatives
de Jeri JOHNSON dans son édition annotée et commentée de Ulysses : Ulysses, Oxford University
Press, 1993.
53
A way a lone a last a loved a long the [62] 1 //
riverrun, past Eve and Adam’s, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius
vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs[63]2.
Il suffit encore d’une lecture trop rapide, ou d’un brin de perversité linguistique, ou tout simplement d’esprit
ludique qui amalgame les deux, pour remarquer qu’à une métathèse près, Finnegans Wake n’est guère
éloigné de « Finns again wake », soit, avec la complicité de l’Histoire, l’annonce ou la confirmation de la
deuxième conflagration mondiale par le truchement de l’invasion de la Finlande par l’armée russe, alors liée
par le pacte germano-soviétique [64]3. Entendons-nous bien : il n’y a pas là d’abus interprétatif. Finnegans
Wake , qui contient sa propre glose, non seulement favorise, mais encore requiert de son lecteur ce type de
coopération ; l’œuvre a autant de lectures possibles qu’elle a de lecteurs, réels ou potentiels. Pour reprendre
les mots de Kevin Barry à propos de Ulysses : « misunderstanding is a prerequisite for understanding » [65]4.
Il paraît aller de soi que l’affirmation vaut encore plus pour Finnegans Wake .
La réflexion qui va suivre, qui interroge la problématique de l’identité et de l’altérité [66] 5 , est bâtie en trois
points autour de cette définition paradoxale : le Wake est à la fois ce qu’il est et ce qu’il prétend ne pas être,
c'est-à-dire autre. Pour paraphraser à la fois Magritte et Foucault glosant Magritte dans les Mots et les
Choses [67]6 , nous intitulerons ces trois points comme suit : 1. Ceci n’est pas un mot. 2. Ceci n’est pas une
langue. 3. Ceci n’est pas un texte.
5.1.1 CECI N’EST PAS UN MOT
Ce peut être une forgerie, à la fois portmanteau word et pun, à l’exemple de ce spooker qui apparaît à la ligne
10 de notre extrait. La syntaxe de la phrase – car c’en est bien une, même si seul un fragment en est ici
donné –, qui permet d’isoler le groupe nominal English spooker, révèle spooker comme un substantif en – er
où s’entend un hapax formé à partir de speaker et de la déformation du « o » diphtongué de spoke en quasi
« u », à l’irlandaise ; l’écho de l’adjectif spooky n’est pas non plus à mésestimer. La notion à laquelle renvoie
1 Note : Là se termine, sur une phrase inachevée, la dernière page du Wake.
2 Note : Ce deuxième segment, qui poursuit le précédent, constitue l ’ incipit du Wake.
3 Note : Finnegans Wake sortit des presses de chez Faber & Faber le 30 janvier 1939. L ’invasion du
territoire finlandais par l ’armée russe, en novembre 1939, fut ainsi commentée par Joyce dans une lettre à
un ami, Fritz Vanderpyl, lettre écrite en français et datée du 14 mars 1940 : « Et à ce propos, il est bien
singulier comment après la publication de mon livre (dont le titre signifie à la fois la veille mortuaire et le
réveil de Finn, c ’ est à dire notre héros légendaire celto-nordique) la Finlande, jusqu ’alors terra incognita
occupe tout-à-coup le centre de la scène d ’ abord par le fait que le prix Nobel de littérature a été décerné à
un écrivain finnois et après à la suite [sic] du conflit russo-finnois. J ’ai reçu, juste avant l ’ouverture des
hostilités, un commentaire bizarre de Helsinki à ce sujet. » Cité par Richard ELLMANN, op. cit., p. 730.
4 Note : Kevin Barry, professeur à l ’Université de Galway, s ’exprimait ainsi dans le cadre du congrès
annuel de IASIL (International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures) en juillet 2004.
5 Note : Les deux étant plurielles, bien évidemment.
6 Michel FOUCAULT, Les Mots et les Choses, Paris : Gallimard, 1966.
54
cette forgerie est reprise un peu plus loin et déclinée en ce qui est indubitablement un verbe au participe
présent (reconnaissable grâce au morphème -ing), qui télescope speak, spooky et puke et fait du « parler », et
plus particulièrement du parler anglais, une étrangeté inquiétante voire émétique.
Ceci n’est pas un mot : le multaphoniaksically de la ligne 10, qui ne peut prétendre à l’identité de mot-valise,
n’est ni un lapsus, ni un borborygme, ni une insulte, mais peut-être une condensation des trois. La seule
certitude concerne sa fonction grammaticale, celle d’adverbe, d’adverbe anglais comme le laisse à penser la
double suffixation ical / ly. Dans ce monstre lexical qui revêt les oripeaux d’un hybride latin-grec, par
juxtaposition d’une préfixation latine non orthodoxe (multa et non multi [68]1) et d’une racine grecque phon,
quelque peu déguisée derrière une sonorité pseudo-slave (phoniak), on entend à la fois une aphonie et la
réverbération d’échos avec les adjectifs sick et maniac. Ceci n’est pas un mot, mais un problème autant
qu’une profession de foi[69]2.
Penchons-nous sur ce segment que l’on trouve à la ligne 9.
Ceci –scruffertmurrainmostandallthatsortofthing – n’est pas un mot mais, peut-être, une leçon de grammaire
multilingue. Il s’agit du dernier terme d’une incise qui donne à voir et à entendre, en un rythme ternaire typique
de la rhétorique classique, deux avatars fantaisistes de l’adjectif anglais scruff, adjectif court d’origine
saxonne[70]3, d’abord au comparatif en -er – c’est le deuxième terme de l’incise – puis au superlatif, mais
avec mutation consonantique (le morphème -est devient -ert), et ce à l’intérieur d’une concaténation qui inclut
l’autre forme, plus moderne, de gradation des adjectifs anglais, celle en more et most. Mais ce murrainmost
(pénultième fragment de cette fabrication terminée par la périphrase stéréotypée qui signe ici, paradoxalement
à la fois l’achèvement du non-mot et l’inachèvement de la liste : « and all that sort of thing »), ce murrainmost
donc, inclut également des réminiscences de mots français (« mort », « murène », « marraine ») et, sans
l’ombre d’un doute, le Murray patronyme de la mère de Joyce, née Mary Jane Murray.
Ce principe combiné de juxtaposition et de superposition lexicale, qui aboutit à un empilement de signifiants
responsable de l’apparente illisibilité de ce pseudo mot-valise est, sans lui être complètement assimilable,
calqué sur le principe qui gouverne les langues dites agglutinantes [71] 4, à l’exemple du turc, du basque, de
1 Note : L'une des raisons possibles à cette substitution est que Joyce avait besoin du a pour lier le
morphème a (privatif) et le radical grec -phon afin de faire entendre « aphone ».
2 Note : C'est la lecture d'Umberto Eco. Dans une section de son ouvrage intitulée « The Poetics of the
pun », Eco qualifie le principe de Finnegans Wake de « jeu de métamorphoses continuelles, dont le « bon
mot », le calembour, est le ressort fondamental. » Au passage, Eco sémioticien fait au terme anglais pun le
sort suivant : « the pun is a figure ignored by classical rhetoric. Let us define it as a sort of pseudoparonomasia which constitutes a forced embedding of two or more similar words. Sang + sans + glorians +
sanglots + riant give “ sansglorians. ” The pun is a continuity produced by reciprocal elisions so that one
word can stand for another word, even if no word appears in its entirety. » Umberto ECO, The Aesthetics of
Chaosmos, the Middle Ages of James Joyce [1962], Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University
Press, 1982, p. 65.
3 Note : Scruff (dépenaillé, peu soigné, negligé) est un mot emprunté au vieux nordique (Old Norse) .
4 Note : On appelle langues agglutinantes les langues qui présentent la caractéristique structurelle de
l'agglutination, cad la juxtaposition après le radical d ’affixes distincts pour exprimer les rapports
grammaticaux. Ainsi en turc, à partir de –ler (marque du pluriel) et de –i (marque du possessif), on
formera, avec le radical ev (« maison »), les mots evler (« maisons » - nominatif pluriel), evi (« maison » -
55
certaines langues caucasiennes, …ou du hongrois, langue maternelle d’un certain Leopold Virag rebaptisé
Bloom. La violation de la morphologie à laquelle Joyce s’est livré là apparaît donc moins comme un
barbarisme[72]1 revendiqué que, pour partie du moins, comme l’explicitation de l’une des règles
morphologiques de l’anglais par le biais d’une opération, morphologique elle aussi, empruntée à d’autres
systèmes linguistiques.
Dans Ulysses déjà, Joyce s’était livré à l’exercice et avait produit quelques réjouissants exemples
d’« agglutinations » baroques, fort transparents pour la plupart [73]2. Mais le projet de Finnegans Wake n’est
pas, à la différence de celui de Ulysses , de faire de l’œuvre un fragment de réel dont le langage essaierait de
donner une représentation. Il est, ou du moins se veut, le Livre Total ; d’où l’ampleur et le caractère
protéiforme des dernières « agglutinations » joyciennes qui font qu’avec le Wake , le mot d’abord, puis le
langage tout entier, entre dans une autre dimension. Car c’est bien, pour commencer, une remise en question
de la notion même de mot, telle en tout cas qu’elle est comprise dans nos langues flexionnelles, qu’opère
Finnegans Wake .
5.1.2 CECI N’EST PAS UNE LANGUE.
Ceci n’est pas une langue, mais plusieurs. Ni espéranto ni polyglossie, glossolalie peut-être – si l’on émet sur
le résultat un jugement littéraire négatif –, mais à coup sûr entreprise babélique. Elle est née de la passion
logoscopique d’un Irlandais dont la langue maternelle était l’anglais ou plus exactement le Hiberno-English ;
d’un Irlandais exilé qui, en 1907, alors qu’il n’avait pas encore terminé Dubliners mais avait déjà en tête
l’essentiel de Ulysses , confiait à son frère Stanislaus son désir de désapprendre l’anglais [74] 3 ; d’un Irlandais
possessif singulier), evleri (« maisons » - possessifs pluriel). Les mots d ’une langue agglutinante sont
ainsi analysables en une suite de morphèmes distincts. Les langues agglutinantes se distinguent des
langues flexionnelles.L ’agglutination est la fusion en une seule unité de 2 ou plusieurs morphèmes
originairement distincts, mais qui se trouvent fréquemment ensemble dans un syntagme. Ce processus a
une grande importance dans l'évolution diachronique du français car il entre dans la formation de plusieurs
mots (« aujourd'hui » = « au jour d'hui » / « lierre = l ’hierre »). Ce processus est important
synchroniquement dans le créole des Antilles, de Haïti. Sur le plan de la typologie des langues, le
processus d ’agglutination caractérise les langues qui juxtaposent après la racine et, plus rarement, avant
elle, des affixes nettement distincts, utilisés pour exprimer les divers rapports grammaticaux (comme le
basque). In Dictionnaire de linguistique et des sciences du langage, dir. J. DUBOIS, Paris : Larousse,
1994.
1 Note : Selon les grammairiens latins, les qualités et défauts de l ’énoncé se répartissent en deux
catégories. Du côté des qualités, on trouve les figures et les tropes, et du côté des défauts, les
barbarismes et les solécismes. Le solécisme est une violation de la syntaxe. Le barbarisme, lui, est une
violation de la morphologie.
2 Note : Voir S. JOUSNI, « Joyce : le verbe en délire ou la dure sagesse des notions », in Parole et Pouvoir,
Rennes : PUR, coll. Interférence, 2003.
3 Note : Stanislaus Joyce rapporte dans son journal intime que son frère envisagea un temps -en 1907-de
ne plus écrire qu ’en français ou en italien (« He threatened to unlearn English and to write in French or
Italian »). S. JOYCE, My Brother ’ s Keeper, New York : Viking Press, 1958. Cité par R. Ellmann p. 397
56
cosmopolite qui à partir de cette date se mit à insérer dans ce qui allait devenir son Odyssée dublinoise des
fragments d’une vingtaine de langues.
Avec Finnegans Wake, Joyce généralisera le processus, qui deviendra beaucoup plus syncrétique encore.
Dans l’extrait qui nous occupe ici, nous avons déjà pu, en dehors de la matrice anglaise, repérer sans trop
d’efforts des emprunts plus ou moins orthodoxes au latin et au grec, à l’italien, au français, au polonais ou au
gaélique. Le dernier segment de notre extrait – « off the face of the erse » – laisse en effet voir dans son
dernier mot – car cette fois c’en est un – une variation autour de earth « la terre », arse « le cul », et erse le
« gaélique », qu’il soit d’Irlande ou d’Ecosse.
Avant de poursuivre, il nous faut à présent proposer une glose interprétative minimale du fragment ici
examiné, extrait du livre de Shem and Shaun [75]1 , alias Kevin et Jerry, les deux jumeaux ennemis de PorterEarwicker, le cabaretier de Chapelizod dont l’œuvre rapporte les transformations successives. Shem, qui est
tout ensemble l’abréviation de Seamus, soit James, c'est-à-dire Joyce lui-même, et la paronomase de sham
comme l’adjectif qui dénonce la fausseté de l’imposteur, c’est Shem the Penman. Shaun lui, est Shaun the
Post : « the first writes the word, the second delivers it, generally in a distorted and debased form » [76]2 . Ici,
Shaun, prototype du faux-frère, vitupère ce qu’il croit être le désir de Shem (le « Maître Sheames de la
Plume » de la ligne 1, persona de Joyce), si ses rimes finissaient par avoir raison et si sa ligne de vie le lui
permettait (« if his reams stood to reason and his lankalivline lasted ») d’éradiquer l’anglais de la surface de la
terre et de la langue irlandaise, ou plus précisément : par son multilinguisme, de balayer de la surface de la
terre et de celle du gaélique, tous les locuteurs anglais. Philippe Lavergne, auteur en 1982 de la seule
adaptation en français du Wake (on ne peut en effet parler de traduction dans ce cas), propose : « effacer tout
parler anglais, de sa langue multiaphonique, de la surface de la Teire » [77]3.
Nous en arrivons à une deuxième proposition : ceci n’est pas une langue mais, si l’on en croit le diagnostic du
frère ennemi, la destruction d’une langue. Il y a erreur cependant, sur le plan linguistique du moins, de la part
de Shaun (et implicitement de la part du non lecteur qui condamnerait d’avance Finnegans Wake comme
monstruosité insensée). C’est en effet hâtivement, et en toute mauvaise foi, que Shaun conclut à la
destruction de l’anglais. Cette dernière n’en est pas une car elle n’est que provisoire et superficielle.
En 1922, Joyce, dans une lettre à un ami où il s’expliquait sur ce qui allait devenir Finnegans Wake,
déclarait : « je suis au bout de l’anglais ». Il ajoutait qu’avec Finnegans Wake, épopée nocturne – après
Ulysses, épopée diurne –, il ne faisait que « mettre le langage en sommeil » :
(op. cit.)
1 Note : Chapitre 7 et avant-dernier du livre I (le Wake comprend quatre livres).
2 Note : Le commentaire est d'Anthony BURGESS dans son Shorter Finnegans Wake, Londres : Faber &
Faber, 1966, p.14.
3 Note : C'est nous qui soulignons. Finnegans Wake, tr. Ph. Lavergne, Paris : Gallimard, 1982.
57
I have put the language to sleep. In writing of the night, I really could not, I felt I could not use
words in their ordinary connections. Used that way they do not express how things are in the
night, in the different stages – conscious, then semi-conscious, then unconscious. When morning
comes of course everything will be clear again... I’ll give them back their English language. I’m not
destroying it for good. [78]1 (#_ftn21)
Il est toutefois permis de soupçonner Joyce de n’être qu’à moitié honnête. En effet, l’expression anglaise « to
put to sleep », qui signifie également anesthésier, constitue un euphémisme pour tuer, en particulier lorsqu’il
est question d’animaux, d’une nouvelle portée de chiots ou de chatons par exemple [79] 2.
Quoiqu’il en soit, la destruction supposée, ou l’anesthésie – partielle ou totale – n’est que superficielle. Dans
un article paru dans les années soixante-dix [80]3, André Topia arguait que si les créations lexicales de
Finnegans Wake sont des monstres, son armature syntaxique et rhétorique repose sur du connu, et même sur
de l’archi-connu, sur du familier, voire du stéréotypé. Autrement dit, et même si nous ne pouvons ici qu’en
esquisser la démonstration [81]4 , dans le Wake seul le lexique est malmené par Joyce, en l’espèce par
outrage fait à la morphologie. La syntaxe, elle, en l’occurrence la syntaxe de l’anglais est bien plus que
respectée : il lui est rendu hommage. Ce n’est donc pas de destruction qu’il faut parler, mais de
déconstruction, au sens derridien du terme.
Ceci n’est pas une langue « pure » (aux sens normatif et prescriptif à la fois de la linguistique et de la
sociologie) mais une langue hybride, métissée. La déconstruction à laquelle il vient d’être fait allusion et qui
caractérise Finnegans Wake correspond, si l’on veut bien analyser l’œuvre joycienne en sa diachronie, à un
projet esthétique et politique de longue date, projet que l’on peut, après des théoriciens comme Bhabha ou
Spivak ou encore des écrivains comme Wole Soyinka, qualifier de projet de décolonisation linguistique.
On se souvient que c’est la bataille autour d’un mot [82] 5 qui dans le Portrait fait prendre conscience à
Stephen du fait que sa langue est une langue assujettie, littéralement colonisée :
1 Note : In ELLMANN, op. cit., p.546. C ’est nous qui soulignons.
2 Note : Sens 2 selon l ’Oxford English Dictionary: to put to sleep = to anesthesize, to kill (an animal)
painlessly.
3 Note : « La cassure et le flux », in Revue Poétique n° 26, Paris : Seuil, 1976, pages 132-151.
4 Note : Nous proposons toutefois dans cette note le découpage syntaxique du deuxième grand segment
qu'après Barthes nous pouvons appeler lexie, « celui qui va de « though he was foxed » jusqu'à la fin de
notre extrait:« though he was foxed [...] scruffertmurrainmostandallthatsortofthing » est une subordonnée
concessive. Elle est en quelque sorte appositive par rapport à la proposition principale « première » de la
phrase entière incluant notre segment, phrase ici amputée de son début et de sa fin pour des raisons de
commodité de démonstration. A cette subordonnée concessive est juxtaposée une autre subordonnée,
conditionnelle celle-là : « if reams stood to reason and his lankaliveline lasted ». Cette proposition
subordonnée seconde est dépendante de la proposition principale « he would wipe alley English spooker
[...] off the face of the erse ». Sémantiquement, cette subordonnée conditionnelle est hiérarchiquement
supérieure à la concessive qui la précède.Un découpage syntaxique de deuxième niveau, qui décrirait
chaque unité signifiante à l ’intérieur de chacune des deux subordonnées, déborderait le cadre
épistémologique de cet article. Quoique fastidieux, il est néanmoins tout à fait simple.
58
The language in which we are speaking is his before it is mine. How different are the words home,
Christ, ale, master, on his lips and on mine! I cannot speak or write these words without unrest of
spirit. His language, so familiar and so foreign, will always be for me an acquired speech. I have
not made or accepted its words. My voice holds them at bay. My soul frets in the shadow of his
language. [83]1 (#_ftn26)
Force est de remarquer qu’à partir de ce constat – fictionnalisé dans le Portrait par le truchement énonciatif de
Stephen –, la facture jusque là extrêmement classique de la langue joycienne progresse de plus en plus vers
une langue inqualifiable, souvent dite babélique. L’adjectif peut être ou non jugé pertinent. Il recouvre en tout
cas un degré de plus en plus haut de métissage, par emprunts lexicaux et morphologiques à tout un éventail
de langues, européennes et extra-européennes. Il s’agissait pour Joyce d’inventer un nouvel outil – et avec
Finnegans Wake il y est parvenu [84]2 –, un outil poétique qui, tout en lui permettant de facto de lutter contre
l’hégémonisme britannique au moins dans sa forme linguistique, rende compte de la révolution copernicienne
de la modernité, laquelle prenait dans les années vingt et trente, entre autres formes, celle du cosmopolitisme
(linguistique également en ce qui concerne notre propos). C’est la raison pour laquelle on peut affirmer
qu’avec Finnegans Wake Joyce ne cherchait pas à détruire l’anglais – ce qu’il eût fait en mettant à mal sa
syntaxe – mais à l’enrichir, à la « métisser », pour reprendre le concept clé de Bhabha. Ni créole, ni pidgin, ni
Babel, ni langue adamique, la langue de Finnegans Wake est tout cela à la fois mais en anglais. Ce qui rend
l’œuvre tout ensemble, et contradictoirement, universelle et unique. Universelle dans son intention et unique
dans sa réalisation.
5.1.3 CECI N’EST PAS UN TEXTE
Ceci n’est pas un texte, mais un hybride spatio-temporel. Dans l’article de la Revue Poétique précédemment
cité, A. Topia, opposant l’illisibilité verticale – paradigmatique – du Wake à sa lisibilité horizontale –
syntagmatique – écrivait :
Le Temps et l’Espace entrent en compétition dans l’expérience que fait le découvreur du Wake : d’un côté un
continuum sonore, un flux (même s’il est le résultat d’un choix) de l’autre une inscription spatiale du texte qui
entraîne l’arrêt, la cassure du flux par la prolifération verticale des signifiants, quand la voix est le liant
homogène qui restitue le continuum temporel .[85]3 (#_ftn28)
Le Wake est en somme un espace-temps, tel en tout cas qu’il donne à voir ses coutures et ses empiètements,
tel aussi qu’il reflète une époque qui voyait par exemple Einstein élaborer sa théorie de la relativité.
5 Note : Le mot anglais funnel, qui se dit en anglo-irlandais tundish. Cf A Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man [1916], Penguin, 1975, pages 188-189. Comme le fait remarquer Seamus Deane dans son édition
commentée du Portrait: « This [ the word tundish] is in fact an English (Elizabethan) word, not an Irish word
». Note 67 p 312, edition Penguin, 1992.
1 Note : Portrait, id.
2 Note : Ne serait-ce que par défaut, par le fait que c'est là sa dernière œuvre et que nul ne sait ce qu'il aurait
pu écrire après Finnegans Wake si le temps ne lui avait manqué.
3 Note : « La cassure et le flux », art. cit.
59
C’est également une vision de l’Histoire, inspirée du schéma cyclique de Vico [86] 1 . Vico divisait l’Histoire en
âges : le premier âge était l’âge du divin ou de la théocratie, le deuxième celui des seigneurs ou de
l’aristocratie, le troisième l’âge humain ou démocratie. Le postulat était le suivant : chaque étape représente
une dégradation par rapport à la précédente, jusqu’à l’anarchie et le chaos caractéristique du quatrième âge,
qui dans un grand fracas de tonnerre ramène à l’origine (ce que Vico appelle ricorso ) et ce indéfiniment,
cycliquement [87]2 . Seule l’acceptation de cette circularité permet à l’homme déchu d’espérer connaître le
salut.
Chacun des quatre livres de Finnegans Wake (dont l’un des motifs clé est la chute, à commencer par celle de
Finnegan) représente ainsi l’une des quatre étapes identifiées par Vico. Il est toutefois important de préciser
que, pas plus que l’Odyssée d’Homère n’est l’exact ou le seul hypotexte de Ulysses , la Scienza Nuova de
Vico n’est la seule ni exacte infrastructure qui sert de soubassement au Wake . Simplement, ce schéma offrait
à Joyce et à sa créativité une structure commode, « a commodius vicus of recirculation […] », pour citer la
première page de l’œuvre. [88]3
Ceci n’est pas un texte, c’est une énigme, et même un certain nombre d’énigmes, plus nombreuses encore
que celles que Joyce avait selon sa propre boutade placées dans Ulysses : « I’ve put so many enigmas and
puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant and that’s the only way of
insuring one’s immortality »[89]4 5 .
La place fait défaut pour évoquer ici ne serait-ce que quelques unes des déclinaisons mystiques que propose
le Wake des chiffres 4, 7, 12, 32 (comme 32 m/s, la mesure de l’accélération dans la chute des corps), 216
(comme les 216 appellations de Earwicker), ou encore 1001 comme les 1001 manifestations nocturnes du
tonnerre[90]6 . Qu’il nous suffise de dire qu’en somme, Finnegans Wake c’est aussi la Cabale.
En tout cas, et pour abonder dans la direction d’Umberto Eco qui voit en Joyce, grand scolastique, le dernier
des moines médiévaux (« the last of the medieval monks » [91]7 ) : Finnegans Wake est à la fois un jeu, un
labyrinthe et un syncrétisme culturel, à l’image du Livre de Kells dont Joyce emportait toujours avec lui une
reproduction à chaque fois qu’il se déplaçait [92] 8. Ou à celle, moins connue peut-être, en tout cas moins
souvent évoquée, des Hisperica Famina . Cet ensemble de textes ésotériques du Haut Moyen Age, écrits par
des moines irlandais dans un latin de fantaisie (le hiberno-latin) qui incorporait des termes d’hébreu, de grec
1 Note : Gianbattista VICO (1668-1744), philosophe italien, auteur en 1725 de La Scienza Nuova.
2 Note : Voir le commentaire d'A. Burgess dans A Shorter Finnegans Wake, op.cit., p. 9.
3 Note : Umberto Eco écrit: « In 1926 Joyce writes that he would like to draw selectively [my emphasis] upon
the theories of Vico, using them only insofar as they are useful to him. [...] Joyce in fact, has said that the
Neapolitan philosopher helped to stimulate his own fantasy rather than to discover any « science ». U.
ECO, The Aesthetics of Chaosmos, the Middle Ages of James Joyce, op. cit. p. 63.
4 Note : Plus sérieusement, Joyce confiait à Arthur Power : « [...] en d'autres mots, nous devons écrire
dangereusement : tout est enclin au flux et au changement de nos jours, et la littérature moderne, pour être
valable, doit exprimer ce flux. » In Arthur POWER, Conversations with James Joyce, ed. C. HART,
London : Macmillan, 1974, p.95. (tr. fr., Paris : Belfond, p.131).
5 Note : cf ci-dessus
6 Note : Le tonnerre dont toute sa vie Joyce eut peur et qui constitue l'une des armatures du Wake.
7 Note : U. ECO, op. cit. p. 81.
60
et de langues celtes, était un savoureux mélange d’érudition et de blagues de potache. Dans ce titre,
Hisperica Famina , qui signifie grossièrement « Oraisons de l’Ouest – Western Orations », le terme Hisperica
est un mot-valise qui combine Hibernia – l’Irlande – et les Hespérides. En déduire que Joyce s’inspira à la fois
de la lettre et de l’esprit de ces textes n’est pas une simple spéculation : le chapitre 7 du Livre Premier du
Wake (soit le Livre de Shem and Shaun, dont est tiré notre extrait) cite en effet des fragments de l’un des
poèmes de ces Hisperica Famina : « Altus prosator », hymne attribué à Saint Colomban.
Ceci n’est pas un texte mais une machine. Ce dernier terme n’est pas à prendre au sens de Deleuze mais à
celui de Derrida, qui qualifiait Finnegans Wake de « machine hypermnésique capable de stocker dans une
immense épopée, avec la mémoire occidentale et virtuellement toutes les langues du monde, jusqu’aux traces
du futur. »[93]1 Nous ne donnerons pour preuve de la pertinence globale de la formule que sa justesse
concrète en ce qui concerne par exemple (qui n’en est qu’un parmi d’innombrables autres), le terme tiré de
notre extrait de lionses (ligne 6). Dans l’expression « all the teashop lionses of Lumdrum »[94]2 ce lionses
donc condense, en un faux pluriel qui est aussi un vrai cas possessif, une allégorie de l’Angleterre assimilée,
par le truchement du teashop qui le précède, à une méchante congrégation de buveurs de thé, boutiquiers
par-dessus le marché, nommément la multinationale des Lyons tea. Mais Lyons, qui est également un
personnage mineur de Ulysses, ainsi qu’un des membres d’une branche de la famille maternelle de Joyce qui
servit de modèle pour l’une des sœurs Morkan dans « The Dead » [95]3 est enfin, ironie de l’histoire, le nom
du médecin (J.B. Lyons) qui signa le certificat de décès de Joyce, le 13 janvier 1941 à la clinique de la Croix
Rouge de Zurich. « Mémoire occidentale », collective aussi bien qu’individuelle, et « jusqu’aux traces du
futur », écrivait Derrida ...
Nous dirons pour finir (provisoirement) que si Finnegans Wake n’est pas un texte, c’est avant tout parce qu’il
est un texte Autre. Il est une invite à la création partagée, qui brouille les frontières entre auteur et lecteur [96]
4
et fait qu’il ne peut y avoir de lecture erronée du Wake. Ce faisant, Finnegans Wake est moins un texte qu’un
mythe. Un mythe bien sûr parce qu’il récrit la plupart des mythes irlandais (à commencer par celui de Finn
McCool), et que donc tout ensemble il mythifie et démythifie l’Irlande. Mais surtout un mythe parce qu’il résout
une contradiction majeure, celle qui consiste à représenter l’irreprésentable – le chaos du monde, et plus
particulièrement le chaos du monde moderne –, au moyen de l’illisible. Mais un illisible qui lui aussi, comme
tout le reste, n’est qu’apparence.
5.1.4 ANNEXE
8 Note : Dans une lettre à Arthur Power, Joyce écrivait : « In all the places I have been to, Rome, Zurich,
Trieste, I have taken it about with me and have pored over its workmanship for hours. It is the most purely
Irish thing we have and some of the big initial letters across a page have the essential quality of a chapter
of Ulysses. Indeed, you can compare much of my work to its intricate illuminations. » Cf R. ELLMANN, op.
cit., p. 548. Au chapitre 5 du Livre I de Finnegans Wake, Joyce fait même dériver le Livre de Kells de
l ’épopée de H.C. Earwicker (FW, p. 122) !
1 Note : J. DERRIDA, Ulysse gramophone, Paris : Galilée, 1987, pages 95-99.
2 Note : Nous proposons en annexe une glose du segment entier « all the teashop lionses of Lumdrum
hivahoesed up gagainst him »
3 Note : Exactement la grande tante de Joyce ; voir R. ELLMANN, op. cit., p. 245.
4 Note : Voir l'ouvrage de Jean-Michel RABATE, Portrait de l ’auteur en autre lecteur, Cistre, 1984.
61
Il s’agit là de tous les fesse-mathieux ligués contre Shem, c'est-à-dire les puristes la langue anglaise. Ils sont
bien « contre lui », comme en témoigne le gagainst him, où le simple ajout d’un g parasite à l’initiale suffit à
faire bégayer, façon gag, tous les gagas qui s’étouffent d’indignation.
Ces ennemis sont des créatures tout droit sorties d’un tableau de Jérôme Bosch : le pluriel grotesque du lion
(lionses), roi des animaux et allégorie de l’Angleterre, n’ôte-t-il pas toute majesté au conquérant, réduit comme
on l’a dit plus haut à sa qualité de buveur de thé ?
Lumdrum, où s’édicte la loi du bien parler, c’est Londres bien sûr, mais aussi le manque d’imagination, la
monotonie stérilisante (humdrum). Qui sait d’ailleurs si ce ronron, ce train-train, ne conduit pas l’homme au
sommeil (lumber) ?
Quant au « participe passé » hivanhoesed, il télescope ou mieux, syncrétise :
Ivanhoé , le personnage historique et le personnage littéraire (celui du roman éponyme de Walter Scott
-1819- auquel incidemment fait allusion le pervers de la nouvelle « An Encounter » dans Dubliners [97]1 ), soit,
peut-être responsable du h rajouté au patronyme, le héros du royaume d’Angleterre déchiré par l’hostilité
entre les Saxons et les Normands, féal de Richard Cœur de Lion avec qui il partit pour les Croisades [98] 2 .
Host,car Shem / Joyce a bien plus qu’une armée contre lui – celle de ses hôtes – : il a la Foi tout entière. En
effet le mot host renvoie non seulement à l’hostie, mais encore à HOS, abréviation anglaise de Hosea – Osée
en français –, qui n’est autre que l’appellation de l’Ancien Testament. Hosea-Osée, c’est également le dernier
roi d’Israël, et peut-être aussi le début de hosanna.
House,soit toute la communauté anglophone, ou en tout cas anglaise car le terme réfère à la typologie de la
noblesse (les familles royales appartiennent, par exemple, à la « maison » d’York ou de Lancastre …).
Hose, le collant ou justaucorps du Moyen Age (et que portait Ivanhoé). Le terme est évocateur de ces Dark
Ages qui, même s’il s’agit alors d’une contre-vérité historique, renvoient dans le langage populaire aux
ténèbres de l’intelligence.[99]3 (#_ftn42)
5.2 POUR UNE LECTURE INTIME DE "FINNEGANS WAKE"
En préambule, et afin de circonscrire le propos qui va suivre, il paraît indispensable de rappeler les principaux
éléments diégétiques de Finnegans Wake . L’œuvre en effet, pour touffue qu’elle soit et en dépit de ce que sa
complexité à de multiples niveaux pourrait laisser supposer, n’en « raconte » pas moins « une histoire ». Une
histoire dont la trame, au fond assez simple, peut se résumer ainsi : [100]4 (#_ftn43)
1 Note : James JOYCE, Dubliners [1914], St Albans : Triad / Panther Books, 1977.
2 Note : C'est bien de croisades que nous parlons, celle de Joyce et son entreprise babélique, celles
menées contre lui par le biais du procès en inintelligibilité fait à Finnegans Wake.
3 Note : La traduction de Philippe Lavergne, qui par ailleurs rend justice à beaucoup des jeux de mots
multilingues de Joyce, glisse assez pauvrement sur cet Ivanhoé : « [...] qui s'était Ivanhoée contre lui ».
Finnegans Wake, tr. fr. Ph. Lavergne, op. cit.
4 Note : Le résumé qui suit est partiellement inspiré des premières pages de l' « abrégé » publié par
Anthony Burgess : A Shorter Finnegans Wake, Faber & Faber, Londres, 1966.
62
Le promeneur qui laisse ses pas le mener du côté ouest de Dublin, au sud de Phoenix Park, tombe vite sur le
quartier de Chapelizod. Pour peu qu’il soit féru d’étymologie, ledit promeneur reconnaît au passage l’origine
du toponyme : la chapelle d’Iseult. Très vite, se signale à son attention un pub, à l’enseigne de « l’homme
mort » (The Dead Man). Son propriétaire, le protagoniste de Finnegans Wake , est un homme d’âge mûr,
d’origine scandinave et protestante. Il s’appelle Porter ; il a une femme, qui a du sang russe dans les veines ;
à eux deux, ils ont trois enfants : deux garçons, des jumeaux, Kevin et Jerry, et une fille, prénommée Isobel.
La plupart du temps, soit la plupart du « livre », Porter et toute sa famille sont endormis : le samedi soir au pub
a été fort animé et la maisonnée tout entière s’achemine vers un dimanche de grasse matinée. Au cours de
cette longue nuit que figure le texte, Porter rêve. Toutes ses préoccupations quotidiennes, ses obsessions,
ses aspirations et ses regrets nous sont livrés : il prend de l’âge, il sent que l’avenir est proche qui
appartiendra bientôt à ses deux fils (Kevin est son favori) et sa vie ne lui apparaît plus comme allant de soi. Le
cabaretier vieillissant n’éprouve plus guère de désir pour sa femme et, en lieu et place, il cherche à satisfaire
une dernière fois sa libido auprès d’une jeune beauté, en l’occurrence sa fille Isobel. Certes, le mot inceste
n’est jamais prononcé par le texte ou par Porter (sauf sous la forme déguisée d’insecte [101] 1). Mais le tabou
et le sommeil transforment Porter en un être hybride, moitié être bestial moitié insecte rampant, comme
l’indique la nouvelle identité qu’il assume pendant la nuit : Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, soit HCE. Ces trois
initiales se verront d’ailleurs déclinées tout au long du texte en de multiples « explications ». Sous cette
première appellation, l’on voit se dessiner la bosse ( hump ), celle de la culpabilité sexuelle en l’occurrence,
alliée à un zeste d’animalité simiesque ( chimp ) et plus qu’une allusion à l’insecte : earwicker est une
paronomase de earwig, qui donnera par la suite, et par le truchement du français perce-oreille, la forme
hibernicisée Persse O’Reilly [102]2 , autre avatar de HCE, archétype de l’homme coupable, du pécheur
générique [103]3. Parmi les autres expansions de HCE, citons Here Comes Everybody (plus encore que
Leopold Bloom dans Ulysses , Porter / Earwicker est « Monsieur Tout le monde ») ou encore Have Childers
Everywhere (notre homme, peu avare de sa semence, est très prolifique), sans oublier Howth Castle and
Environs (l’histoire se passe à Dublin). En bref, et par de multiples détours – géographiques,
anthropologiques, psychanalytiques … – Joyce fait revivre à son héros au cours d’une nuit de sommeil toute
l’histoire, celle de l’Irlande et celle du monde.
5.2.1 ANNA LIVIA PLURABELLE
Le chapitre 8, qui nous préoccupe plus particulièrement ici [104] 4, est le dernier du livre premier (l’œuvre en
comporte quatre). Correspondant au « premier âge » de Vico, soit l’âge de la théocratie [105]1, ce chapitre
retrace les origines historiques et géophysiques de l’Irlande ; et le dramatis personae inclut tous les
1 Note : On en trouve une seule occurrence, à la page 127 : « [...] bred manyheaded stepsons for one
leapyourown taughter ; is too funny for a fis hand has too much outside for an insect ; like an heptagon
crystal emprisoms trues and fauss for us ; [...]»
2 Note : Dans sa biographie de Joyce, Richard Ellmann précise : « Joyce investigated the earwig carefully,
even to the point of writing the entomological laboratory of the Museum d'Histoire Naturelle for papers on
forficula. He liked the French word for earwig, perce-oreille, and quickly associated it with Percy O'Reilly, a
famous player from West Meath in the All Ireland Polo Club in 1905. Then he wrote « The ballad of Persse
O'Reilly » (Finnegans Wake, 44-6). R. Ellmann, James Joyce, Oxford University Press, new and revised
edition, 1982 (1959).
3 Note : HCE est, par exemple, censé avoir eu des ennuis judiciaires en raison d'actes indécents qu'il aurait
commis à l'encontre de deux jeunes filles dans Phoenix Park. Voir infra.
63
personnages historiques, réels ou fictifs, dans leurs avatars premiers, les plus anciens et les plus mythiques,
qui ont contribué à la façonner.
Quoique anecdotique, l’histoire de la composition de ce chapitre n’est pas sans intérêt. Joyce y consacra,
selon ses propres dires, mille deux cents heures de travail, qu’il dévolut pour partie à l’élaboration de jeux de
mots lui permettant d’inclure le plus grand nombre de noms de rivières du monde entier : trois cent cinquante
ont été recensés à ce jour par les diverses études consacrées à Finnegans Wake [106]2 .
Ce chapitre en effet, est tout entier consacré à Anna Livia Plurabelle ; or la femme de Humphrey Chipden
Earwicker, mère des jumeaux Kevin et Jerry – également et plus souvent dénommés Shem and Shaun – et
de leur fille Isabel / Izzy / Isolde, est aussi, est surtout, la Liffey, rivière matrice qui irrigue Dublin et qui l’a
enfantée. Anna Livia Plurabelle – ALP, tout comme Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker est HCE – c’est l’eau, le
fleuve, la fluidité, le principe féminin, l’alpha et l’oméga de la vie et de l’histoire comme l’indiquent ses trois
initiales, lettres premières de l’alphabet dans lequel Joyce écrit la lalangue de Finnegans Wake [107]3 .
4 Note : C'est de ce chapitre qu'est extrait le passage que nous nous proposons de scruter. Ce dernier est
reproduit en annexe à cet article.
1 Note : Gianbattista Vico, philosophe italien (1668-1744), auteur en 1725 de La Scienza Nuova. A ce
propos, Richard Ellmann précise : « He [Joyce] admired [also] Vico ’s positive division of human history
into recurring cycles, each set off by a thunderclap, of theocratic, aristocratic, and democratic ages,
followed by a ricorso or return ». Ellmann ajoute qu'il y avait beaucoup de distance dans cette admiration :
« Joyce did not share Vico's interest in these as literal chronological divisions of « eternal ideal history »,
but as psychological ones, ingredients which kept combining and recombining in ways which seemed
always to be déjà vus. « I use his cycles as a trellis, » he told Padraic Colum later; he wrote Miss Weaver,
« I would not pay overmuch attention to these theories, beyond using them for all they are worth, but they
have gradually forced themselves on me through circumstances of my own life. I wonder where Vico got
his fears of thunderstorms. It is almost unknown to the male Italians I have met. » R. Ellmann, op. cit., p.
554. Voir également A. Burgess, op. cit., p. 9.
2 Note : Celles incluses dans le passage que nous examinons sont indiquées dans le texte entre
parenthèses en gras et en italiques.
3 Note : Richard Ellmann rapporte ainsi l ’explication que donna Joyce à Harriet Weaver de l ’épisode :
« Anna Livia Plurabelle » dont il lui envoya une première mouture en mars 1924 : « [it is] a chattering
dialogue across the river by two washerwomen who as night falls become a tree and a stone. The river is
named Anna Liffey. [...]» . Dans une note, Ellmann précise : « The idea for the episode came to him on a
trip to Chartres, where he saw women washing clothes on both banks of the Eure... he liked to think how
some day, way off in Tibet or Somaliland, some boy or girl in reading that little book would be pleased to
come upon the name of his or her home river » (Ellmann, op. cit., p. 563). Voir aussi à ce sujet les
entretiens de Joyce avec Arthur Power (in Conversations with James Joyce, Millington, Londres, 1974.)
64
Le texte, à ce stade de l’œuvre, rapporte le dialogue de deux lavandières [108] 1 occupées à laver dans la
rivière – la Liffey – le linge sale d’une partie de Dublin, et notamment la chemise de Earwicker, époux d’Anna
Livia. Les deux femmes se laissent aller à toutes sortes de médisances, en particulier sur le couple, qui
défraya la chronique comme suit : HCE fut accusé puis arrêté et emprisonné pour « acte d’impudicité » envers
deux jeunes filles dans Phoenix Park. Quant à Anna Livia, elle commit elle-même bien des délits et se livra à
maintes turpitudes pour défendre son époux et apporter des preuves tangibles de son innocence. Pour les
deux lavandières, le scandale de cette intimité honteuse rendue publique par les journaux est une source
inépuisable de commérages et c’est avec délectation qu’elles s’y livrent [109] 2.
A la nuit tombante, les deux femmes se transforment peu à peu, l’une en pierre (signe de stabilité et de paix),
l’autre en arbre (signe de la croissance, et représentation du Temps). Cet arbre et cette pierre – stem and
stone – sont aussi les symboles des jumeaux, Shem and Shaun. Et de la même manière que les deux
jumeaux sont des frères ennemis, les deux femmes sont dans un rapport de rivalité (l’une connaît l’histoire de
Earwicker et d’Anna Livia, l’autre presse la première de la lui raconter et la jalouse pour les informations
qu’elle possède), tout comme la stabilité ou la paix d’un côté (la pierre) et le Temps ou l’Histoire de l’autre
(l’arbre) sont souvent mis en opposition. Cette polarité est d’ailleurs figurée dans l’intrigue, en l’occurrence par
l’éloignement progressif des deux commères. Au début de la section proches au point de se cogner, les
lavandières s’éloignent de plus en plus l’une de l’autre, deviennent littéralement incapables de s’entendre,
chacune sur une berge de la rivière, laquelle a grossi, enflé et, de petit ruisseau à l’origine, est devenue fleuve
à la fin de l’Histoire.
La petite histoire de Finnegans Wake , elle, nous informe que le seul enregistrement que l’on possède de
Joyce lisant un extrait de son œuvre concerne précisément la fin de cet épisode d’« Anna Livia Plurabelle » :
en août 1929, alors qu’il s’était rendu à Londres pour consulter un ophtalmologiste à propos de son glaucome
qui devenait de plus en plus handicapant, il se laissa convaincre de graver sur microsillon un passage de son
Work in Progress , qui était alors commencé depuis six ans [110] 3 .
(http://static.salon.com/mp3s/joyce1.mp3)
Ecouter Joyce lire cet extrait (http://static.salon.com/mp3s/joyce1.mp3)
4
1 Note : La dimension symbolique, et même mythique, de ces deux personnages féminins est loin d'être
négligeable. Leur caractère maléfique n'est pas à écarter, qui pourrait bien faire d'elles des messagères de
la mort. Ainsi, dans le folklore de plusieurs régions de France, en particulier en Bretagne, les « lavandières
de nuit » sont des êtres dont il vaut mieux ne pas s'approcher : en invitant le passant à tordre avec elles le
linge pour l'essorer, elles l'entraînent dans l'au-delà. Voir Paul Sébillot, Croyances, mythes et légendes des
pays de France, éd. Omnibus, 2002, p. 629-630.
2 Note : Il entre même dans lesdits commérages une jubilation quelque peu blasphématoire, comme
l'indique le glissement du répons classique « Lord save us » (l. 15 de l ’extrait) en « talk save us » (l. 18).
(Nos italiques).
3 Note : Cf. Richard Ellmann, op. cit. , p. 617. Pour entendre la voix de Joyce lisant ce fragment, on peut
consulter le site Internet suivant : http://static.salon.com/mp3s/joyce1.mp3 L'enregistrement disponible
s'arrête à la phrase : « Towy I too, rathmine. », qui précède immédiatement l'extrait ici analysé (FW, p.
215).
4
65
De la suite – et fin – de ce passage « mythique » [111]1 , nous allons proposer quelques gloses. Comme
Joyce le fait dire à l’une de ses lavandières : « Every telling has a taling and that’s the he and the she of it »
( FW , p. 213). C’est cette addition, « he and she », qui est aussi une confusion – celle des genres notamment
–, qui servira ici de base à une des possibles lectures intimes de Finnegans Wake . A cette fin, nous
considèrerons le terme intime sous l’angle de l’étymologie qui donne à cet adjectif français, emprunté (13761377) au latin intimus, superlatif de interior, le sens de « ce qui est le plus en dedans, le plus au fond », qu’il
s’agisse du lien entre deux êtres très étroitement liés ou de la vie intérieure, généralement secrète, d’une
personne [112]2 .
Ce qu’il y a de plus « en dedans », de plus « au fond » et de plus profond dans l’écriture de Finnegans Wake
c’est, selon nous, le refus de la différenciation, le déni de l’individualisation, voire le rejet de l’individuation ou
du moins de l’univocité : le même, c’est aussi l’autre et vice-versa. Ainsi, la notion de genre, basée sur
l’établissement de catégories étanches, est-elle posée par le texte comme abolie. Tout, qu’il s’agisse des
êtres, des lieux, des choses, et ce en particulier au cours de ce premier âge selon Vico auquel appartient
encore la section « Anna Livia Plurabelle », tout donc en est au stade du proto- , cet état unique dont on n’a
connaissance que par reconstitution – c'est-à-dire une forme de fiction – mais qui annonce une future ou
possible réalisation [113]3, soit une future ou possible vérité de l’être, du lieu, de la chose.
5.2.2 QUESTIONS DE GENRE(S)
5.2.2.1 Gender
Le « genre » que le texte met à mal est d’abord à entendre au sens de l’anglais gender [114] 4 . Le il et le elle
ne sont qu’une seule et même réalité. C’est ainsi que dans l’interrogation précisément générique de la ligne
21, « Who were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of ? », l’emploi de la conjonction or qui marque
l’alternative met l’accent sur l’indifférenciation sexuelle, et ce même si Shem et Shaun sont, en tant que
personnages, deux garçons. Un peu plus haut dans le texte (l. 19), l’agglutination daughtersons dans le
segment « All Livia’s daughtersons » souligne elle aussi, et quasiment de la même manière, la non pertinence
de la distinction entre le masculin et le féminin.
A un niveau moins littéral, les « mamelles de bouc » (buckgoat paps) qui ornent prétendument le poitrail de
HCE, pour lors décliné en « Hircus Civis Eblanensis » [115]5, renvoient à la présence, a priori contradictoire,
d’attributs féminins (avec leurs fonctions dérivées) sur une anatomie virile. Derrière l’image grotesque et, là
encore, probablement blasphématoire, se cache, par parenthèse, une allusion à saint Patrick. Ce dernier, de
fait, mentionne dans ses Confessions [116] 6 une cérémonie d’initiation païenne à laquelle il refusa de se plier
et qui comportait entre autres rites celui où un homme donne le sein à un autre homme. Totalement dépourvu
1 Note : Voir le texte en annexe à cet article.
2 Note : Définition tirée du Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, Alain Rey (dir), Le Robert, Paris,
2000 (1992), p. 1869-1870.
3 Note : Réalisation ou « actualisation », selon la terminologie d'Aristote que Stephen aime à employer dans
Ulysses.
4 Note : L'anglais n'étant pas une langue à genres au sens grammatical du terme, nous parlons là de la
« valeur », masculine ou féminine, accordée aux mots.
5 Note : Littéralement « bouc-citoyen de Dublin » (latin).
66
des arrières pensées libidineuses qui semblent avoir horrifié Patrick, ce rite renvoyait, plus innocemment, au
principe de la « nutrition » qui dans les civilisations celtiques équivalait à l’adoption. Il s’agissait par là pour un
homme, un « chef de tribu », d’accepter au sein de sa famille un être issu d’une autre lignée biologique. Cette
référence indirecte à Patrick, et par son intermédiaire à un très ancien rite celte, est à notre sens déjà lisible
quelques lignes plus haut [117]1 lorsque le surnom provisoire de HCE, Dear Dirty Dumpling se trouve précisé
par cette périphrase définitoire mise en apposition : « foosterfather of fingalls and dotterghills », où le « père
adoptif » (foster-father [118]2) se reconnaît derrière le premier terme. Au « genre » dans le sens de
différenciation sexuelle (gender) se superposerait donc aussi le « genre » au sens sociologique de caste, la
gens latine et non plus le seul genus.
Revenons à la stricte opposition du masculin et du féminin que la langue des lavandières rend objectivement
caduque, et penchons-nous d’un peu plus près sur les fingalls and dotthergills des lignes 2-3. Ils ont beau
désigner a priori les fils et filles (distincts en tant que genres) adoptés par HCE, ils n’en sont pas moins
ambivalents. Le pseudo-masculin fingall [119]3 , employé à la fois pour la quasi-paronomase qui ressuscite
Finn McCool et pour le jeu de mots par homophonie sur la rivière Fingel, s’achève sur la finale gall, qui est
l’une des explications phonétiques de girl. Quant au dotthergills, qui semble à première vue redondant dans le
féminin (daughter / girl), il incorpore néanmoins aussi, visuellement et auditivement, le gille, bouffon du
Moyen-Age encore présent dans le folklore du Nord de la France et de Belgique, et le dgill qui évoque la
boisson [120] 4, soit deux « sèmes » dénotateurs du masculin.
Cela dit, et toute ambivalence sexuelle mise à part, dans l’un comme dans l’autre de ces hapax, se trouvent
d’un côté fin (la nageoire) de l’autre gill (la branchie), tous deux éléments anatomiques définitoires du poisson.
Or ces fingalls et dotthergills, qui sont les fils-filles de HCE alias Dublin, alias « Dear Dirty Dumpling » sont
également les fils-filles d’Anna Livia Plurabelle, soit la rivière Liffey. Des poissons donc, sans distinction de
sexe, fils-filles de la rivière [121]5.
6 Note : Il existe plusieurs traductions de ce texte, écrit en latin vers 450. Peut-être apocryphe, il est
néanmoins toujours attribué à saint Patrick en personne, en l'absence de preuves contraires. Le texte
entier est consultable à l'adresse suivante : http://www.catholicfirst.com/thefaith/catholicclassics/stpatrick et
aussi sur l'un des portails Joyce du web : http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/patrick.html
1 Note : A la ligne 2 de notre extrait.
2 Note : Il y a dans cette fabrication bien d ’autres signifiants superposés, ne serait-ce que celui qui signe la
folie (foo / fou). Mais l'on peut aussi émettre l'hypothèse suivante : ce segment foo présent dans
« foosterfather », met en relief par allitération le phonème [f ] qui serait une marque possible de la
paternité. Il est en effet repris plus loin « l. 18 » dans « my foos won't moos », où le doublet phonétique f /
m renvoie clairement à celui du couple father / mother. Le deuxième terme, « moos » onomatopée
classique du langage enfantin pour désigner la vache (voir le tout début du Portrait de l'Artiste), renverrait
au lait, donc à l'allaitement, donc à la maternité. Le doublet f / m est également présent dans la paire
« gammer and gaffer » de la ligne 3.
3 Note : C'est sa mise en parallèle avec le terme « dottergills » qui le rend masculin au regard du « father »
qui précède. Sur un autre plan : dans plusieurs langues celtes dont le gaélique d'Ecosse, fin signifie « pur »
et gall désigne l'étranger (l'étranger par la langue notamment, aucune dimension péjorative n'étant
présente dans le terme). La fabrication joycienne est donc déjà en soi un paradoxe.
4 Note : A gill est un quart de pinte en vieil Anglais (XIè siècle).
67
5.2.2.2 Genre biologique
Dans le rejet du genre qu’opère à tous les niveaux la langue de la section « Anna Livia Plurabelle », le mot
« genre » est également à entendre au sens biologique de la classification en règnes puis en espèces. Le
texte et toute l’histoire de Finnegans Wake n’est que transformation, transmutation, réincarnation : d’être en
un autre être, d’un être en minéral ou en végétal, d’un personnage en un autre personnage, en chose, en lieu,
en moment.
Quelques aperçus ont déjà été donnés plus haut, notamment la transformation de HCE en bouc. Il a aussi été
précisé en préambule que cette section (la dernière du Livre I) donnait à voir la transformation des deux
lavandières, l’une en arbre (« I feel as old as yonder elm - l.16-, l’autre en pierre (« I feel as heavy as yonder
stone » -l. 18-). Elm / stem et stone, soit une nouvelle fois Shem et Shaun. Il a enfin été rappelé que, de façon
générique, l’homme (HCE) c’est la ville (Dublin) et la femme (ALP) la rivière (la Liffey) et leurs enfants des
poissons [122]1 .
Les lignes 3 à 5 de notre extrait, qui concernent HCE dans son incarnation de la ville de Dublin, méritent qu’on
s’y attarde. Elles débutent par cette interrogation toute rhétorique : « Hadn’t he seven dams to wive him ? ».
La glose la plus évidente est celle-ci : HCE, homme à femmes – rappelons que ses initiales signifient aussi
Have Childers Everywhere – n’a-t-il pas eu sept femmes, légitimes ou non ? C’est ce que laisse à entendre la
question suivante, elle aussi rhétorique, celle des lignes 7-8 : « But at milkidmass [123]2 who was the
5 Note : Dans la traduction française de Finnegans Wake – traduction partielle – que Joyce supervisa en
1930-1931, le segment « foosterfather and dotthergills » est rendu par « papa lait en chef des titifils et des
tétéfilles. » Cette traduction est consultable sur le site
suivant : http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/fwake/alpfrench.html .Un demi-siècle plus tard (1982), Philippe
Lavergne explicite et banalise le texte en donnant « père adoptif des fils et filles de Fingal » (in Finnegans
Wake, tr. Ph. Lavergne, Gallimard, 1982, p. 231) Pour le segment « All Livia's daughtersons » de la ligne
19, la première traduction donne : « De Livie tous les fillefils », celle de Lavergne : « Tous sont fils-filles
d ’All Livia » (FW- tr., p.232). Dans la suite de cet article, toutes les références que nous ferons aux
adaptations françaises de Finnegans Wake seront tirées de ces deux « traductions ».
1 Note : Il faut préciser que la rivière Liffey charrie autant d'éléments minéraux (alluvions, cailloux) qu'elle
abrite d'espèces aquatiques. En ce sens, l'équivalence Shaun / stone fait elle aussi partie de la déclassification « annaliviesque ».
2 Note : Ce « milkidmass » à lui seul appellerait plusieurs paragraphes de gloses. On y trouve aussi bien la
Saint Michel (Michaelmas), que le principe liquide, lacté ou non, ou peut-être le minuit de la messe du
même nom. C'est en tout cas l ’hypothèse privilégiée par Philippe Lavergne, dont la traduction donne :
« Mais à la messe de minuit quelle était l'épouse ? ». Celle supervisée par Joyce introduit une altération de
Cornélie (« Mais à la Saint Cornlie qui était l'espouse ? »). Cornélie / Cornélia, Romaine, fille de Scipion
l ’Africain et mère des Gracques ; restée veuve de bonne heure, elle se consacra à l ’éducation de ses
fils. Elle fut le type de la Romaine de grande naissance, admirable pour ses vertus et sa grande culture.
Nous avancerions volontiers l'hypothèse selon laquelle Joyce aurait effectué là ce que les traducteurs
professionnels appellent une équivalence culturelle. En effet, le segment « milkid », par son schéma
accentuel, sa consonance en [i] et sa finale [id] nous paraît apte à évoquer le souvenir de Brigitte / Brigid,
l ’une des plus grandes figures composant le panthéon de l'Irlande post-patricienne, et que Joyce aurait
68
spouse ? » / « Mais à la fin des fins, qui est resté sa femme légitime ? »[124] 1Cette interprétation par le
truchement de la polygamie de HCE est corroborée par l’emploi du terme même de wive, verbe forgé à partir
du substantif wife au pluriel dépouillé de son ‘s’. Certes. Il ne faut cependant pas oublier qu’à un niveau
supérieur, HCE est aussi une métaphore ou une incarnation de la ville de Dublin. La question « Hadn’t he
seven dams to wive him ? » s’entend alors comme un rappel de l’histoire de la création – physique,
architecturale – de la cité. Dublin est une agglomération qui s’est développée au fil de l’histoire,
essentiellement grâce aux sept captations de l’eau de la rivière Liffey ; ce sont les « seven dams »
mentionnées à la ligne 3 [125]2. Le démontage de cette construction historique de Dublin City (soit sa
déconstruction) n’est pas pour autant achevé : il reste notamment à ajouter que « wive » fait aussi écho à
« wave », les vagues qui dénotent l’élément liquide (la rivière, la Liffey) ; enfin « wive » est aussi par apocope
de « wi(y)vern », le vipérin principe féminin de la vouivre , ce serpent fabuleux de maintes légendes du
folklore européen.
Cela nous amène à évoquer, même brièvement et sous l’angle purement formel, cette immense métaphore de
la rivière qu’est le texte de Finnegans Wake ; filée tout au long de l’œuvre, elle l’est de façon plus concrète,
plus tangible dans cette section « Anna Livia Plurabelle ». S’attarder sur cette métaphore, c’est souligner la
fluidité, le caractère à la fois plastique et sonore de la langue de ce passage, c'est-à-dire sa poéticité, qui n’est
pas sans rappeler l’épisode « Protée » de Ulysses , où Stephen médite sur la mutabilité de toute chose au
rythme des vagues qui viennent mourir sur le sable de la plage de Sandymount [126] 3 . L’analyse rapide de
quelques segments permet de mettre en évidence cette fluidité que Joyce cherchait à rendre ; comme il
l’écrivit un jour à un ami : « it [la section] is an attempt to subordinate words to the rhythm of water » [127]4 .
Entre autres éléments, notons :
●
le passage en douceur, sur les plans phonétique, thématique, et symbolique, de daughters à
waters, et ce en quasi paronomase : « His tittering daughters of » (lignes 13-14) devient « His
chittering waters of » (ligne 16).
transposée en Cornélie. Autre hypothèse : ce « Cornlie », pourrait être une altération de Saint Cornély,
saint patron de la ville de Carnac (Morbihan, Bretagne). Evêque de son état, Cornély aurait selon la
légende transformé en pierres les soldats de l ’armée romaine qui s ’apprêtaient à envahir la région. Ce
serait là l ’origine des alignements des menhirs de Carnac.
1 Note : Cette traduction synthétique, approximative, est la nôtre. La réponse à la question est : Anna Livia,
bien sûr.
2 Note : Ces « barrages », au nombre de sept, étaient chacun flanqués de sept ponts (les « seven
crutches » de la phrase suivante : « And every dam had her seven crutches »). La déclinaison du chiffre
magique de sept se poursuit : « And every crutch had its seven hues ». L'interprétation qu'il convient de
donner de ces sept couleurs, reprises et développées ligne 7, est encore à construire.
3 Note : La technique, même si elle repose sur un sens différent, est également celle qui préside à l ’écriture
de l'épisode « musical » des « Sirènes » dans Ulysses.
4 Note : L'ami en question, le Dr Sarsfield Kerrigan, ancien condisciple de Joyce, se plaignait de l ’aspect
purement « dadaïste » de toute la section « Anna Livia Plurabelle ». Voir R. Ellmann, op. cit., p. 564.
Ellmann rajoute en note : « He [Joyce] felt some misgivings about it the night it was finished, and went
down to the Seine to listen by one of the bridges to the waters. He came back content. »
69
●
la présence de repères stables, marquée par la série des formes en – ing : tittering / chittering /
flittering / liffeying / rivering / hitherandthithering. Le parallélisme de ces formes[128] 1 est
d’ailleurs renforcé par la structure partitive interrompue; combiné avec le réseau allitératif en t/r/ f/
l/ ch, tous phonèmes évoquant des bruits de frottements, chuintements divers ou clapot ..., il
contribue par le rythme et les effets sonores à évoquer la « musique » des eaux de la rivière.
●
la régularité amenée par le choix rythmique du trisyllabe, qui vient se briser sur une
« expansion », hitheranthithering, laquelle mériterait une analyse à elle seule.
5.2.2.3 Genre / famille
Enfin le mot « genre » est dans notre présente argumentation à prendre dans l’acception plus vaste de la
linguistique historique (diachronique) qui regroupe les langues en familles et raisonne en arborescences, tous
concepts qui enferment et séparent, qui figent. Le « genre », dans ce sens également, est remis en question
par le texte joycien.
La fluidité sans cesse re-travaillée de la langue de Finnegans Wake en effet, a aussi, et d’abord, à voir avec
l’histoire, dont elle métaphorise la continuité. Continuité non au sens linéaire du fleuve d’Héraclite, qui
présuppose un télos, mais au sens de la transformation incessante et infinie, qui revient sur elle-même – la
même mais une autre – en même temps qu’elle est en perpétuelle extension – une autre mais au fond la
même. La conception cyclique de l’histoire telle que la formulait Vico (en quatre âges dont le quatrième, le
ricorso , marque le recommencement) peut permettre d’approcher l’essence de cette continuité. C’est ce que
désigne la formule « Teems of times and happy returns. The seim anew. Ordovico or viricordo. Anna was,
Livia is, Plurabelle’s to be », présente aux lignes 8-9. On y retrouve plusieurs noms de rivières (Tees, Teme,
Seim), soit l’un des motifs principaux de cette section fluviale, « l’ordre » selon Vico (Ordovico) et ce dont on
se souvient (viricordo) [129]2 . Le raccourci, fourni par Joyce lui-même qui en appelait à Vico pour rendre
compte de la structure de Finnegans Wake , est cependant une facilité, une « commodité » [130]3 plutôt
qu’une clé absolue ; car la circularité à laquelle on a coutume de ramener schématiquement cette conception
de la continuité historique, et qui était peut-être effectivement la conception de Vico, se rapproche davantage,
chez Joyce, de la spirale en expansion constante.
A l’intérieur du passage qui nous occupe (comme à maints autres endroits d’ailleurs) le texte en fait rejoue
l’expérience, en un « temps réel » qui correspondrait à celui de la lecture, de la déconstruction de la langue, et
restitue par reconstruction (par dissémination, aurait dit Derrida) les transformations que l’Histoire a apportées
ou fait subir à la langue du fait des diverses invasions, en d’autres termes les influences et autres métissages
historiquement déterminés [131] 4qui ont pesé sur elle et l’ont façonnée. Dans ce fragment de la section
« Anna Livia Plurabelle », on trouve ainsi, dans le désordre chronologique, diverses traces historiées :
1 Note : Incidemment, tous ces « mots » sont des néologismes, des mots-valises ou agglutinations, en bref
des hapax.
2 Note : D'où il convient sans doute aussi de détacher le segment initial : vir / la force, alias le principe
masculin, celui de HCE.
3 Note : L'aveu en est fait par Joyce à la deuxième ligne du texte : « by a commodius vicus of recirculation
back to » (notre soulignement).
4 Note : Le projet était en germe dans les pastiches de l'épisode « Oxen of the Sun » de Ulysses. En
l'espèce, l'argument de Finnegans Wake est que les emprunts divers, les mutations historiques, changent
la « couleur » et affectent la « nature » de la langue initiale.
70
●
des traces d’hybride anglo-danois (Danish-English) ; l’information émane de Joyce lui-même, qui
l’évoque dans la lettre à Harriet Weaver datée du 7 mars 1924 déjà mentionnée ici[132] 1, Harriet
Weaver à qui il venait de faire parvenir une première version de ses pages – avec gloses
explicatives. Ce sont elles qui permettent à Philippe Lavergne, dans sa traduction, de préciser à
propos de la phrase 9 de la section (« Wash quit and don’t be dabbling », qu’il adapte en « Lave
tranquillement et n’éclabousse pas partout ») : "[…] Soit : arrête le non sens (vas en norvégien)
et les expressions à double entrée [sic]. L’expression norvégienne, kvitt eller dobbelt, quitte ou
double, est là en arrière-plan, comme pour indiquer que peut-être enfin nous allons connaître
tout sur tout, et en particulier la clé du Wake." [133] 2
●
des traces d’anglo-irlandais, dérivé de gaélique mais d’origine obscure. Un exemple en est fourni
avec le terme skeowsha, présent dans l’expression « she was the queer old skeowsha » de la
ligne 1. Il est rendu soit par « mais quelle drôle de drôlesse quand même qu’Anna Livie… »
dans la traduction française supervisée par Joyce en 1930-31, soit par « c’était quand même une
drôle de Squaw-sha, cette Anna Livia », dans la traduction de Lavergne (1982)[134]3.
●
des traces de l’invasion Viking (les fondateurs de Dublin, comme ne cesse de le rappeler le
texte) dans ce qu’elle a eu de déterminant sur le plan linguistique. Du segment situé aux lignes
10-11: « Northmen’s thing made southfolk place but howmulty plurators made each one in
person ?» Joyce dit : « The high place on which the Norwegian Thing had its meeting has now
become Suffolk place » / « What number of places will make things into persons ? Play on the
statement that a ‘substantive’ is the name of a person, a place, or a thing »[135]4. L’on mesure
ainsi à quel point se vérifie le principe de la transmutation : le nord devient le sud, la chose
(thing) devient le lieu (place) ; mais la chose c’est aussi l’être et Thing c’est aussi King [136]5.
●
des traces du substrat romain, mais dans sa dimension italienne (géographique), différente de
celle de l’habituelle chrétienté latine qu’il recouvre ; c’est là ce que signalent les initiales HCE, en
ordre inversé dans l’expression Etrurian Catholic Heathen (ligne 6), initiales qui disent entre
1 Note : Voir supra, note 9.
2 Note : Finnegans Wake, trad. Ph. Lavergne, op. cit., p. 209.
3 Note : Ce terme, skeoshaw, est ainsi défini dans les dictionnaires d ’Hiberno-Engish, du moins dans ceux
disponibles sur Internet, notamment la Hiberno-English Archive, consultable à l ’adresse suivante :
http://www.hiberno-english.com : seadhogosa, segosha, segasha /s@ ’go:S@ / n. pleasure, joy, delight;
'Me ould segosha »< Ir. Seaghais n. (genitive singular : seaghsa or seaghaise, cf. Ir. seaghaiseach,
pleasant, joyful. « Come over here to me, me old seadhgosa, it's been a long time since I've seen you ’.
This word has attracted many fanciful and improbable explanations (e.g., the Irish phrase « Seo dhuit é »=
Here, take it) because of its literary associations, e.g., it is used by James Joyce in F.W., 215.12 : « Ah, but
she was the queer old skeoshaw anyhow, Anna Livia, trinkettoes').
4 Note : Ces commentaires sont consultables à l ’adresse suivante : http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/fwake ,
site cit.
5 Note : Ce king est également celui de la comptine de Humpty Dumpty, dont la chute (« [...] Humpty
Dumpty had a great fall ») a pour écho premier celle du maçon Tim Finnegan dont Finnegans Wake
raconte aussi l'histoire.
71
autres choses l’alliance des contraires – l’oxymore Catholic Heathen – et le « hors normes »
linguistique : l’Etrurie (d’où dérive le Etrurian du texte) est cette région d’Italie entre l’Arno et le
Tibre dont le peuple (les Etrusques) et la langue qu’il parlait sont, on le sait aujourd’hui, non indoeuropéens [137]1.
●
des traces de latin, orthodoxe celui-là, comme dans l’autre déclinaison de l’acronyme HCE en
Hircus Civis Eblanensis (ligne 11), littéralement : « goat citizen of Dublin ». Dans ce goat, qui
représente également le bouc émissaire réminiscent de la condamnation a priori de HCE dans
l’affaire de l’impudicité de Phoenix Park, se perçoit en filigrane le visage du malin et avec lui
l’allégorie de la lubricité, autre forme du principe viril. S’y devinent par ailleurs des connotations
patriotiques ou nationalistes, voisines de celles qui, en sus du lien avec saint Patrick
évangélisateur de l’Irlande, étaient attachées à Skin-the-Goat, personnage de l’épisode
« Eumée » de Ulysses.
On voit bien dès lors le défi qui est lancé à l’intellectuel – celui que caricature l’expression « my trinity
scholard » [138]2 , alias James Joyce lui-même et à, sa suite, le lecteur du Wake –, de procéder à une
unification, une normalisation, une « normativisation » de la langue. Ce serait là le défaut rédhibitoire de qui
voudrait voir une « signifiance », ou une visée téléologique, donc une illusion dans l’esprit de Joyce, dans le
passage historique (… forgé de toutes pièces par le texte) de la langue sanscrite, le sanscreed de la ligne12,
néologisme composé aussi à partir de la foi, à la langue irlandaise : eryan dans le texte, soit une conflation de
aryan , Erin , eirann [139]3 .
La langue, avons-nous dit ? Quelle langue ? La question se pose en effet, et continuera de se poser dès lors
qu’on se mêlera de lire et de parler sur Finnegans Wake. A minima, il s’agit de la langue de HCE, dans sa
fonction d’homme universel, un homme qui se trouve être irlandais, même vaguement, même partiellement,
ou grossièrement. A maxima, cette langue, où le terme lui-même n’est guère qu’une métaphore, commode
mais abusive, qui permet de résumer tout ce qu’est et n’est pas le babélisme triomphant de Finnegans Wake,
n’en est pas une ; du moins au sens de la linguistique moderne, qui demanderait une analyse exhaustive de
son « système » avant de lui octroyer l’estampille officielle de « langue ». L’entreprise serait aussi vaine que
non pertinente puisque ce serait là « normativiser », c’est-à-dire clore, la langue ou la non-langue en question.
Tout au contraire, il s’agit de la faire et la refaire, de la fabriquer, sempiternellement. Sans doute est-on alors
condamné à conclure, provisoirement du moins, qu’avec Finnegans Wake ce qui se déroule sous nos yeux
ébahis c’est un rêve du Langage : partagé, à la fois universel et personnel, inédit en somme, et en un mot
intime.
5.2.3 ANNEXE
Extrait de Finnegans Wake (section « Anna Livia Plurabelle », Livre I, chapitre 8, pages 215-216 dans l’édition
de référence Faber & Faber, 3è édition incluant les corrections de Joyce)
1 Note : La chose était-elle connue de Joyce ? Il est impossible de l'affirmer à ce stade de notre étude.
2 Note : D'après Philippe Lavergne, le terme « eblanensis » serait l'adjectif latinisé dérivé de Eblana, une
salle de spectacle de Dublin. (Finnegans Wake, trad., op. cit., p. 232, note 78).
3 Note : Voir ce qui a été développé plus haut sur la nutrition.
72
Ah, but she was the queer old skeowsha anyhow, Anna Livia, trinkettoes! And sure he was the
quare ( Quare ) buntz too, Dear Dirty Dumpling, foosterfather of fingalls ( Fingel) and dotthergills.
Gammer and gaffer we’re all their gangsters. Hadn’t he seven dams to wive him? And every dam
had her seven crutches. And every crutch had its seven hues. And each hue had a differing cry.
Sudds for me and supper for you and the doctor’s bill for Joe John. Befor! Bifur! ( Biferno ) He
married his markets, cheap by foul, I know, like any Etrurian Catholic Heathen, in their pinky (
Pink ) limony ( Lim ) creamy birnies and their turkiss indienne (Indian ) mauves. But at
milkidmass who was the spouse? Then all that was was fair. Tys Elvenland! ( Tys Elv,
Elfenland ) Teems of times ( Tees, Teme ) and happy returns. The seim (Seim ) anew. Ordovico
or viricordo. Anna was, Livia is, Plurabelle’s to be. Northmen’s thing made southfolk’s place but
howmulty plurators made each one in person? Latin me that, my trinity scholard, out of eure
sanscreed into oure eryan! ( Trinity, Eure, Our ) Hircus Civis Eblanensis! He had buckgoat paps
on him, soft ones for orphans. Ho, Lord! ( Ho ) Twins of his bosom. Lord save us! ( Save ) And ho!
Hey? What all men. Hot ? His tittering daughters of . Whawk?
Can’t hear with the waters of. The chittering waters of . Flittering bats, fieldmice bawk talk. Ho! Are
you not gone ahome? What Thom Malone? Can’t hear with bawks of bats, all thim liffeying waters
of. Ho, talk save us! My foos won’t moos. ( Moose / Oos ) I feel as old as yonder elm .( Elm ) A
tale told of Shaun or Shem? All Livia’s daughtersons. Dark hawks hears. Night! Night! My ho head
halls ( Halls Creek ). I feel as heavy as yonder stone ( Stone ). Tell me of John or Shaun? Who
were Shem and Shaun the living sons or daughters of ? Night now! Tell me, tell me, tell me, elm!
Night night! Telmetale of stem or stone. Beside the rivering waters of , hitherandthithering waters
of .Night!
73
ANNEXES
ANNEXE : University College Dublin
University College Dublin (UCD)
ANNEXE : The Joyce family in Paris
The Joyce family in Paris
LEGENDE :
Paris, 1924. The Joyce family: James, Nora, Giorgio and Lucia.
(From the Poetry/Rare Books Collection, University Libraries, State University of New York at Buffalo.)
74
ANNEXE : Joyce with left eye blindfolded
Joyce with left eye blindfolded
ANNEXE : William Buttler Yeats
William Buttler Yeats
75
ANNEXE : Fall of Icarus
Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel de Oude
LEGENDE :
Fall of Icarus by Pieter Bruegel de Oude
Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussel
More about in Wikipedia
More about this painting in wikipedia (http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Chute_d%27Icare)
1
76
1
ANNEXE : Dublin Map
Dublin Map
ANNEXE : "The transmogrifications of Bloom" by Hamilton Richard
"The transmogrifications of Bloom" by Hamilton Richard
77
GLOSSAIRE
Aquinas : (in French Thomas d’Aquin): c.1225-74. An Italian philosopher and Dominican friar from Aquino in
southern Italy, the greatest of the medieval Scholastic theologians. He represents in his writings, especially in the
Summa Theologica, the culmination of Scholastic philosophy, the harmony of faith and reason, and in particular the
reconciliation of Christian theology with Aristotelian philosophy (source = The Oxford Companion to English
Literature).
Ben Johnson : English playwright (1572-1637). A contemporary of Shakespeare, Ben Johnson is the author of a
number of plays, poems,etc., as well as of the first English Grammar. By this he was defending the norm in terms of
language and linguistic behaviour. Stephen’s example is thus particularly relevant, far more than if he has chosen
Shakespeare himself, whose « style » is everything but ‘normative’.
Bildungsroman : German for « novel of formation » or educational novel : a novel dealing with one person’s early
life and development.
Eucharist : the Christian sacrament commemorating the Last Supper, in which bread (the flesh of Christ) and wine
(the blood of Christ) are consecrated and consumed.
exordium : (in French exorde) : corresponds in classical Rhetorics to the very first words of an argumentation.
gnomon : In geometry (according to 'the' Euclid, -see text- that is to say a representation of space in 2 dimensions),
the word refers to the part of a parallelogram which remains after a similar parallelogram is taken away from one of
its corners. In other words, the 'concept' stands for incompleteness.
Be careful : the word in its first meaning (see def. In Oxford Concise Dictionary) refers to “ the rod or pin, etc. on a
sundial that shows the time by the position of its shadow”.
Hiberno-English : The history as it is outlined here is not meant to be comprehensive. It is a very brief overview.
Also it deals only with external events that influenced languages spoken in Ireland.
Two languages dominate any discussion of Language of Ireland – Irish and English. Although Hiberno-English is
now the national Standard Language of Ireland, the Irish language was the principal language of most of the
population until well into the nineteenth century. In many ways the history of the interplay between the two languages
reflects the external history of the country. English has won the battle of dominance but only to a certain extent and
from a certain point of view. The title of Hiberno-English with its two components clearly describes the relationship
between the two tongues.
English has been used in Ireland since the twelfth century. The Anglo-Normans began arriving in Ireland from about
1167 onwards, bringing with them the Norman-French and English languages. This meant that there were three
languages current in Ireland at that time – Irish, Norman-French, and English. In addition Latin was used by senior
clerics. Norman-French was spoken by commanders of the invading forces, who had been sent to Ireland by Henry II
to conduct (allegedly) a moral mission to reform the Irish. The King had been authorized to do so by the only English
Pope, Nicholas Breakspear, who had taken the name Hadrian IV.
In England, Norman-French was used for diplomatic correspondence up to the reign of Henry IV (1399-1413). In
Ireland, use of this language declined much earlier, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, but not before it had
contributed a number of words to the lexicon of Irish (for example, dinnéar from Norman-French diner, buidéal from
botel, and so forth).
English continued in use, but such was the power of the Irish language that the authorities in England began to worry
about the resurgence of Irish culture and linguistic influence. The authorities were especially concerned about this
resurgence in that part of the country, to the north and south of Dublin, which came to be known as The Pale (I think
more clarity in how the Pale is defined). To counteract this trend, a son of Edward III, Lionel, Duke of Clarence was
sent over to preside at an assembly in Kilkenny. This parliament issued the famous ‘Statute of Kilkenny’, written in
78
Norman-French (more as a gesture, than as an indication that Norman-French was still generally understood). This
document prohibited the ruling class and their retainers from becoming more Irish than the Irish themselves. It was
directed at the settlers. Hurling was banned, as was entertainment of Irish minstrels, and other notably Irish
pastimes. For us, the main interest is the ban it placed on the use of the Irish language and on the adoption of Irish
names by the English. People breaking this rule would have their lands and property seized. This would not be
returned until the ‘culprits’ had relearned English
This statute was ineffectual, and the Irish language continued to make inroads into the Pale. Change only came
about with the adoption of a new scheme for governing and administering Ireland – the Plantations which took effect
from 1549 onwards. This resulted in speakers of English being ‘planted’ at various places far beyond the Pale. The
immediate effect was that for the first time Irish people away from the main population-centres, especially Dublin, had
to face and mix with users of the English Language. Those who employed them spoke English, and they had
consequently to learn English, just to receive instructions. Where the rules of the Statute of Kilkenny failed, sheer
practicality ensured the eventual success of the English Language in Ireland.
The English language benefited from the symbolical prestige attached to its being used by the people who had the
power. In addition, Irish people began to emigrate to England in greater and greater numbers from the end of the
sixteenth century. They had to learn English as quickly as possible. Understandably, they had to learn it through the
lexicon, grammar, and syntax, pronunciation, and idiom of their vernacular language, Irish, which is substantially
different from English – for example, in its verbal forms, which have no equivalent of ‘have’ in English, and in its
prepositional range. Thus an Irish person then, and now, may say ‘He’s been dead with years’, corresponding to
British English ‘He has been dead for years’, with the Irish preposition ‘le’ (=with) being translated and incorporated
into the English sentence, making it typically Hiberno-English.
Use of the English language became further established from the late seventeenth century in Ireland. The Penal
Laws from (1695) ensured that Irish people were denied formal education, and the informal education provided by
the Hedge Schools played its part in the formation of modern Hiberno-English. English continued to flourish here
throughout the eighteenth century. The great Seminary at Maynooth was established in 1795. Priests graduating
from this college addressed their congregations in English whenever they could. From the 1780’s the Penal Laws
had been eased, thus helping to eradicate the polarization, on political and religious lines, of those who spoke
English and those who spoke Irish.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century the rise of English was unstoppable. The Act for the Legislative Union
of Ireland with Great Britain (1800) strengthened the need for aspiring politicians to learn and use English efficiently
for putting the Irish case in Westminister. When they came back to Ireland to address their own people they spoke in
English and further enhanced its prestige. Many other events helped this process. A system of Primary Education
was introduced in 1831, and the medium for instruction was English. Children were punished for using the Irish
Language.
A decade later, the Famine had a catastrophic effect on the poorest, Irish-speaking members of the population.
Since then, in spite of efforts of The Gaelic League and many Government enactments in education – in spite, too, of
the brilliant work of many writers in Irish – the position of the Irish language has become weaker and weaker.
However, it also has another life, so to speak, in Hiberno-English, as instanced already with the example of ‘He’s
been dead with years’
Much of the literary effect of Anglo-Irish literature depends on the author's use of Hiberno-English vocabulary, idiom
and sentence-structure. From the earliest usages in the fourteenth-century "Kildare Poems" to the great nineteenth
and twentieth century writers, George Bernard Shaw, Sean O'Casey, John Millington Synge, and of course James
Joyce and Samuel Beckett, and on to the most recent, Edna O'Brien, Roddy Dolye, Seamus Heaney, Jamie O'Neill,
Maeve Binchey, Tom Paulin and Gerard Stembridge, to name just a few. Hiberno-English provides the linguistic
resources which identify their culture as Irish.
79
Hiberno-English is a singularly rich member of the family of Englishes and owes much of its vivacity and
inventiveness to the underlying influence of the Irish Language and also to the turbulent history of the Irish and the
English.
Source : Website The Hiberno English : http://www.hiberno-english.com/history.htm
Non-serviam : Latin for « I will not serve »
paralysis
1/
a
:
nervous
in
the
condition
OED
with
(Oxford
English
impairment
or
Dictionary),the
loss
of
esp.
word
the
is
defined
as
motor
function
of
such
the
:
nerves.
2/ A state of utter powerlessness. (whatever the disease that medically affected the priest, the second definition is by
far the most important to the understanding of the story – including its metaphorical value.
Parnell : Parnell, Charles Stewart(1846-1891): nationalist leader, born into a Protestant landlord family. A Home
Rule MP from 1875 to 1891, he established his reputation as an advanced nationalist through ‘obstruction’ tactics in
Westminster. He became the leader of nationalist movement via his presidency of the Land League (1879) and
chairmanship of the Irish Parliamentary Party (1880). From the foundation of the National League onwards (1882) he
pursued a purely constitutional campaign for Home Rule. The general election of 1885 (which returned 86 nationalist
MPs) was an impressive demonstration of Parnell’s power. After 1886, a combination of poor health and his affair
with Mrs O’Shea (wife of an Irish officer serving in the British army) removed him from the centre of nationalist affairs
and soon led him to his death, viewed as the tragic issue of a series of betrayals (by his party companions, by the
Church…). See the Christmas dinner episode in PAYM. See also the short story “Ivy Day in a Committee Room”,
one
of
the
stories
in
Dubliners.
poetic function of language : according to Jakobson, language has six main functions: referential, emotive,
conative, phatic, poetic, and metalinguistic.
simony : traffic in sacred things (from the name of Simon Magnus who offered money to Christ’s Apostles for the gift
of conferring the Holy Ghost). See in the text the phrase : “ to absolve the simoniac of his sin” (...)
80
BIBLIOGRAPHIE
BONAFOUS-MURAT Carle : BONAFOUS-MURAT, Carle, James Joyce Dubliners, Logique de l’impossible,
Ellipses, 1999.
BURGESS Anthony : BURGESS, Anthony, A Shorter Finnegans Wake, Faber & Faber, Londres, 1966.
DEANE Seamus : DEANE, Seamus, Strange Country, Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790, Oxford
University Press, 1997;
DERRIDA Jacques : DERRIDA, Jacques, Ulysse gramophone, Paris : Galilée, 1987.
ECO Umberto : ECO, Umberto: The Aesthetics of Chaosmos, The Middles Ages of James Joyce, Harvard
University Press, 1989 (1962). (for the chapters on the Portrait)
ELLMAN Richard : ELLMANN, Richard : James Joyce, Oxford University Press, 1982 (1959). (a biography) ;
FOUCAULT Michel : FOUCAULT, Michel, Les Mots et les Choses, Paris : Gallimard, 1966.
GENET J. & FIEROBE C. : GENET J. & FIEROBE C.: La littérature irlandaise, Armand Colin, coll. U, 1997 ;
JOUSNI Stéphane : S. JOUSNI, « Joyce : le verbe en délire ou la dure sagesse des notions », in Parole et Pouvoir,
Rennes : PUR, coll. Interférence, 2003.
JOYCE James : Joyce, James, Dubliners, ed. with an introduction and notes by Terence Brown, Penguin, 1992
(1914).
JOYCE James : Joyce, James, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, ed. with an introduction and notes by
Seamus Deane, Penguin, 1992 (1916).
JOYCE James : Joyce, James, Ulysses, ed. with an introduction and notes by Jeri Johnson, Oxford University
Press, 1993 (1922).
JOYCE James : Joyce, James, James Joyce, - Œuvres I et II, dir. Jacques Aubert, Gallimard, coll. La Pléiade, 1995.
JOYCE James : JOYCE, James, Finnegans Wake [1939], London/Boston : Faber & Faber, 1975
JOYCE Stanislaus : JOYCE, Stanislaus : My Brother’s Keeper, Viking Press, New York, 1958. (id.)
KIBERD Declan : KIBERD, Declan, Inventing Ireland, Jonathan Cape, London, 1995 ;
KIBERD Declan : KIBERD, Declan, Irish Classics, Granta Books, London, 2000.
POWER Arthur : POWER, Arthur, Conversations with James Joyce, ed. C. HART, London : Macmillan, 1974, (tr.
fr., Paris : Belfond)
RABATE Jean Michel : RABATE, Jean-Michel, James Joyce, Hachette Supérieur, coll. Portraits Littéraires, 1993.
SEBILLOT Paul : Paul Sébillot, Croyances, mythes et légendes des pays de France, éd. Omnibus, 2002,
81
WEBOGRAPHIE
: http://agora.qc.ca/mot.nsf/Dossiers/Aristote
: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Chute_d%27Icare
: http://philoctetes.free.fr/homereod2.htm
: http://static.salon.com/mp3s/joyce1.mp3
: http://www.answers.com/topic/hiberno-english
: http://www.clioetcalliope.com/oeuvres/peinture/venus/venus.htm
: http://www.mediterranees.net/litterature/epictete/biographie.html
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