michael's thoughts about "proteus"
I can't begin to explain how much I am enjoying this book. The writing in Three is nothing short of brilliant. I now realize why I put the book down in my 20's: I was frustrated with Stephen's lucid thoughts about the physical and metaphysical worlds. I was having the same thoughts at the time as Stephen has in the book, though Joyce's references to Aristotle, Kant and Schopenhauer (among others!), while I read them and understood them in a technical sense, did not resonate with my experiences at the time. Looking back, I actually did have a nexus, but I could not feel it, or, put another way, could not realize the experience. For me it was cerebral but not experiential, For the things we have to learn before we can do them, we learn by doing them. Stephen can't experience metaphysical reality either but his thoughts are more lucid than they should be, and that's because Joyce is writing about his thoughts as a young man with the experience of a man in his mid-to-late thirties. Although Joyce does give Stephen the right level of confusion and frustration. Jesus did start preaching until his 30's for the same reason and neither will Stephen. But it's brilliant to see him beginning his quest.
And then I was just stunned at line 61: "Here." I didn't get it at first. I kept reading. Then on the second read it hit me; it's not Stephen and it's not the narrator- it's Joyce! It's the author. I've never experience this before in a novel in this way- authors usually make it very clear when they are using their own voice. And then I started looking closer for a reason why he did that. I started to see that the lines after "Here" until the aposiopesis in 149 are inserted into the original story. If you take out the inserted text it flows perfectly: "His pace slackened. The grainy sand had gone from under his feet." And you can see this throughout the chapter, you can almost piece together the original draft. Joyce must have intended the reader to experience this fragmentation. I'm not sure why but the technique works.
In Two, Stephen told us about his reasoning on the soul: "The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms." Again, from Aristotle. He then turns to his childhood teaching and finds that there must be a better understanding of the teachings of Christianity: "To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven on the church's looms. Ay. Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro. My father gave me seeds to sow." The writing is amazing- the imagery Joyce creates in these three short lines is nothing short of amazing. Stephen is telling us that the church's understanding of Jesus' teaching was fabricated and the riddle was not deciphered correctly. He does not yet know the answer but he knows the church has it wrong. Then Stephen tells us his riddle. The riddle seems to be about the crucifixion: cock crew (Peter), sky blue at eleven (morning) and time to go heaven (Jesus). But the answer seems nonsensical. Grandmother and hollybush must be contractions: it's grand mother and holly bush. Stephen can't figure out the nature of the soul, or at least can't experience it, so the metaphysical aspects of chapter 2 are about confusion.
Mother's death comes back several time in Chapter Three: his mother's womb, the French telegram, the dog digging for his grand mother. Stephen is building a sense of reality and self that differs from his childhood teachings but he cannot make sense of the major events in his life nor his thoughts and feelings about them: mother's death, father's abandonment, rejection of authority (church and state), searching for understanding, his place in the world, soul vs. physical world, guilt, sexuality, etc. He's searching for answers and he needs guidance, but where will he find it? Not from his father. His mother is a key but there's too much guilt and fear there, but she still offers something from another world. Mulligan and Haines have nothing to offer. It wasn't in Deasy in Two. Will it be Bloom? This can go any way.
The quest begins officially with the decision to strike out and not return to the tower; "silent tower....Call: no answer." And the quest must have a metaphysical component: "My soul walks with me, form of forms." He believes in the existence of the soul but it is not fully understood, and his souls' relationship to the physical world is unestablished. The symbolism of the three mast at the end of the chapter foreshadows the the nature of the quest, of which I think there are three: authority (church, state and man), physical origin (mother, father, son), and metaphysical origin (father, son and spirit/soul).
Three is a serous chapter, filled with symbolism and questions, but among all this Joyce still create laughter: "O weeping God, the things I married into. De boys up in the de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers. And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less. Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ." It's brilliant writing.
Joyce is a painter as much as a writer. Or, better put, he writes like a painter: layers of text that build images filled with meaning and symbolism.
And then I was just stunned at line 61: "Here." I didn't get it at first. I kept reading. Then on the second read it hit me; it's not Stephen and it's not the narrator- it's Joyce! It's the author. I've never experience this before in a novel in this way- authors usually make it very clear when they are using their own voice. And then I started looking closer for a reason why he did that. I started to see that the lines after "Here" until the aposiopesis in 149 are inserted into the original story. If you take out the inserted text it flows perfectly: "His pace slackened. The grainy sand had gone from under his feet." And you can see this throughout the chapter, you can almost piece together the original draft. Joyce must have intended the reader to experience this fragmentation. I'm not sure why but the technique works.
In Two, Stephen told us about his reasoning on the soul: "The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms." Again, from Aristotle. He then turns to his childhood teaching and finds that there must be a better understanding of the teachings of Christianity: "To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven on the church's looms. Ay. Riddle me, riddle me, randy ro. My father gave me seeds to sow." The writing is amazing- the imagery Joyce creates in these three short lines is nothing short of amazing. Stephen is telling us that the church's understanding of Jesus' teaching was fabricated and the riddle was not deciphered correctly. He does not yet know the answer but he knows the church has it wrong. Then Stephen tells us his riddle. The riddle seems to be about the crucifixion: cock crew (Peter), sky blue at eleven (morning) and time to go heaven (Jesus). But the answer seems nonsensical. Grandmother and hollybush must be contractions: it's grand mother and holly bush. Stephen can't figure out the nature of the soul, or at least can't experience it, so the metaphysical aspects of chapter 2 are about confusion.
Mother's death comes back several time in Chapter Three: his mother's womb, the French telegram, the dog digging for his grand mother. Stephen is building a sense of reality and self that differs from his childhood teachings but he cannot make sense of the major events in his life nor his thoughts and feelings about them: mother's death, father's abandonment, rejection of authority (church and state), searching for understanding, his place in the world, soul vs. physical world, guilt, sexuality, etc. He's searching for answers and he needs guidance, but where will he find it? Not from his father. His mother is a key but there's too much guilt and fear there, but she still offers something from another world. Mulligan and Haines have nothing to offer. It wasn't in Deasy in Two. Will it be Bloom? This can go any way.
The quest begins officially with the decision to strike out and not return to the tower; "silent tower....Call: no answer." And the quest must have a metaphysical component: "My soul walks with me, form of forms." He believes in the existence of the soul but it is not fully understood, and his souls' relationship to the physical world is unestablished. The symbolism of the three mast at the end of the chapter foreshadows the the nature of the quest, of which I think there are three: authority (church, state and man), physical origin (mother, father, son), and metaphysical origin (father, son and spirit/soul).
Three is a serous chapter, filled with symbolism and questions, but among all this Joyce still create laughter: "O weeping God, the things I married into. De boys up in the de hayloft. The drunken little costdrawer and his brother, the cornet player. Highly respectable gondoliers. And skeweyed Walter sirring his father, no less. Sir. Yes, sir. No, sir. Jesus wept: and no wonder, by Christ." It's brilliant writing.
Joyce is a painter as much as a writer. Or, better put, he writes like a painter: layers of text that build images filled with meaning and symbolism.
posted by Robert Frumkin at 11:50 AM
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