Iholdoff,therefore,inofferinganytheoryofidentitythatwould explain how "Equal to=aosch" because this does not describe an identity, but a limit between a description ("equal to"),
mathematical
symbolism (=), a riddle ("aosch"), a self- expression ("aosch"=chaos).
Constructing a Replacement for the Soul - Bourbon
33).
The first question ('Is it a faith? ") is asked by the elm. The answer (that is no answer: "That's a fact") is by the stone. The elm and stone are the material forms of two washerwoman on the banks of the ALP, the Liffey, who at the end of the chapter return into the night as elm and stone. The dialogue between elm and stone (animate and inanimate) constitutes or envelopes or limits or is about (there is no way to determine which o f these verbs to use here) Anna Livia Plurabelle, herself the principle o f becoming
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
181
animating the structures o f identity invoiced by Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker in his dissolution and in his memory: "0 tell me all about Anna Livia! . . . Telmetale of stem or stone. Besidetheriveringwatersof. . . "[FW196. 01-03;216. 03-04]). Thisdialogueas what is ALP is also a tale about ALP, a collapse o f expression into being.
This confusion of expression and being or identity (these are also confused here) turns the call between family members into a confession. Justius, the moralizing Shaun's name in debates with his brother Shem disguised as Mercius (Justice and Mercy from English Mystery Plays), challenges his father HCE, calling out to him as "Nayman of Noland"(Nomanofnoland)to'standforth. . . inyourtruecoloursereyoubebackfor ever till I give you your talkingto! " (FW187. 32-35). He then taunts his brother, Shem Macadamson: "Where have you been in the uterim, enjoying yourself all the morning sincy you last wetbed confession? " (187. 36-188. 01). How do we distinguish a sign from an effect? A confession from an act? Can we imagine praying as 'to prize', to lever open (a prize), or as an inquisition into mystery? "Let us pry" (188. 08)-- "We thought, would and did. --Away with covered words, new Solemonites for old Bathsheetbaths! That inharmonious detail, did you name it? Cold caldor! Gee! Victory! (FW188. 25-27) A
confession is as inharmonious detail as he who confesses.
In the Wake a mysterious letter, purporting to reveal the guilt ofHCE, is a version
and one of the prime constituents of the Wake itself: the Wake a "NIGHTLETTER" (FW308. 16) and the mysterious "The letter! The Litter! . . . Borrowing a word and beggingthequestion"(FW93. 22-24). TheLetter(inandastheWake)ortheletters(of the alphabet, of the letter, of the Wake) is picked out of a midden heap by a hen, latter
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
182
transformed into the king of birds as Queen, "Jenny Wren: pick, peck" (Wren, the queen ofbirds; FW278. 12), letters fragmenting the world and then sent through or carried by "Johnny Post: pack, puck", one among many, able to move becomes only a fragment of the world. "All the world's in want and is writing a letters. A letters from a person to a place about a thing. And all the world's on which to be carrying a letters. . . When men want to write a letters. Ten men, ton men, pen men, pun men, wont to rise a ladder. And den men, dun men, fen men, fun men, hen men, hun men wend to raze a leader. Is then any lettersday from many peoples, Dagnasanvitch? (FW278. 16-25).
This list, beginning with "Ten men" is continued a few pages later: "Ten, twent, thirt, see, ex and three icky totchy ones. From solation to solution" [FW284. 16-18; from solitude (It. sola, alone)] to dispersion in a whole. This is how a solution is described: "Imagine the twelve deaferended dumbbawls o f the whowl above-beugled to be the contonuation through regeneration of urutteration of the word in pergross" (FW284. 18- 22).
Earlier the solution to "[t]he all-riddle o f it? " was "[t]hat that is allruddy with us, ahead o f schedule, which already is plan accomplished from and syne" (FW274. 02-05). A riddle o f the enveloping facts is always already known in the way that Dasein is always aheadofitselfthatis,itisdefinedasitslimit,asthoseenvelopingfacts. Thecontinual conception of beginnings (arche and genesis) in the Wake is an attempt to make visible what is already and always the case for us at the point when it became this; such beginnings are temporal moments of simultaneous change and repetition (thus the continual rebeginning). The solution to "solation" (being dispersed into aloneness) is
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
another return to this beginning built (the interpretation constituting the substance o f what this beginning is in the Wake) out of the twelve apostles reacting (from Judaism to Christianity) to the Death and resurrection o f Christ.
These letters and litters from the Hen, a bird or bard, can tell the tale o f idiots in sound and fury, a second best bed a patrimony of always borrowed language pointing forward, too late or too early, but "Toborrow and toburrow and tobarraw! " (FW455. 12-
13). Isthisadescriptionoranenactmentofourinheritanceofwords?
I have met with you, bird, too late, or if not, too worm and early: and with tag for ildiot repeated in his secondmouth language as many of the bigtimer's verbaten wordswhichhecouldbalbly calltomemorythatsamekveldeve,erethehourof the twattering bards in the twitterlitter between Druidia and the Deepsleep Sea . . (FW37. 13-18)
Any "secondmouth language" can offer, "saluting corpses, as a metter o f corse" (FW37. 09-10), measuring (meter) time (a matter o f course) as the loss o f ourselves into dead bodies, "not a little token abock all the same that that was owl the God's clock it was"(FW37. 06-07), "could balbly" (Babal and badly) call to memory that same beginning ofevening,sin,andwoman(Da. kveld,eveningandEve). Whatthismomentwasis always formed into interpretations. God's bigtimer verbatim words o f forbidding (G. verboten) are stammered (L balbus) in the twitterlitter, not yet poetry, between the devil andthedeepsea. Thenonsenseofthesewords"tag"thehumanstancetowardtheworld as idiotic awe, an expression oflight and thanks (Da takfor ilden, thanks for the light). Such thanks can be ironic. Such irony can allow us to speak second mouth words as ours.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
184
This "ildiot" (maybe not yet an idiolect), that is our human stance toward god within our languageconstitutesusas"ildiots"(lesserbeingsspeakinganonsensicallanguage). Oris humanity divided here between 'ildiots' and 'kveldeve'? This stammering ("balby") orders the world and our language into permanence: "accompanied by his trusty snoler and his permanent reflection, verbigacious" (FW37. 12-13). "Verbigacious combines verbigeration, the meaningless repetition o f a word or phrase, and L verbi gratia, for instance. 'Verbigeration' creates the form of identity, a universal, a separation of content from form, from within language. This creates the illusion that meaning accompanies form as an extra component, an addition to sound, as perfume can come to stand for 'me': "My perfume o f the pampas, says she (meaning me)" (FW95. 22). This formal post hoc universal as a limit o f "soundsense" is also the particular o f an example, an example o f anyvoice and of being an "ildiot. . in the twitterlitter". What every instance is accompanied by, however, is the entire system of language, or rather the entire system of senseandthepossibilitiesofnonsensemediatedbyvariousinterpretativestances. Oneof
the possibilities o f being human is the continual possibility o f the need for interpretation. Which is not to say that every sentence requires interpretation.
But then again,
Well even should not the framing up of such figments in the evidential order bring the true truth to light as fortuitously as a dim seer's setting of a starchart might (heaven helping it) uncover the nakedness of an unknown body in the fields of blues as forehearingly as the sibspeeches of all manking have foliated (earth seizing them! ) from root of some funner's stotter all the soundest sense to be found
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
185
immense our special mentalists now holds (securus iudicat orbis terrarum) . . .
(FW96. 26-33)
A stutter can frame speech as a form of possession, the grating of Moses' recitative againstAron'ssinginginSchoenberg'sOpera, orthegratingatanylimitofanyframe that marks the possibility that the world is a figment by showing that we see it through and asfragments. Thisself-reflection,abetrayalofourlimitationsandoftheworld's instability as a world, is like a "dim seer's setting o f a starchart" that uncovers "the nakedness of an unknown body making a starchart to find the world's order. " Contained within parenthesis as if within a world itself (securus iudicat orbis terrarum), the verdict
o f the world is secure. Secured by what? What is the verdict? (Can anything be secured from within parenthesis? can the world be secured from within the world? )
A survey and overview of this world marks the world's purview, its enacting principle, it's limit, scope and purpose as something ordered as "my world". The algebra (binomial) and the geometry (axioms and postulates) o f these "factionables" is incomprehensible and as inexpressible as by gone days and the ways o f god for a "neuralgiabrown", a brain:
ForasurviewoverallthefactionablesseeIrisintheEvenine'sWorld. Binomeans tobecomprendered. Inexcessibleasthybygodways. Theaximones. Andtheir prostalutes. For his neuralgiabrown.
Equal to = aosch.
P. t. l. o. a. t. o. (FW285. 26-286. 03)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
186
What does it mean to find Potato and not Plato in these letters? What letters are equal to what word? "Equal to=aosch" is a kind of self-referential paradox. "Equal to" is not equal to anything; if it is understood as '=' which defines a relation not a value; it marks equality it is not itselfa term except in relation to other symbols of relation. If 'equal to' is mentioned in quotation marks it can gain a categorical meaning (with all terms of relation) or generic meaning (with all symbols). The claim here, however, is that equal to is equivalent to an anagram ofchaos (to the anagram itselfor to the 'meaning' as chaos? ). And therefore Plato is a potato. Although this interpretation can seem reasonable(l), especially to a new world Aristotelian, what does it mean? How do we apply this identity?
The following is an identification of an identification of missing what had counted to'one'onceinageneralfailuretocountoneselfasoneselfexceptinthismistake: "the aphasia o f that heroic agony o f recalling a once loved number leading slip by slipper to a general amnesia o f misnomering one's own" (FW122. 04-05). This is called "the vocative lapse from which it begins and the accusative hole in which it ends itself'(FW122. 03-04) This lapse, the failure to address anyone (beginning the Wake in midsentence--"rivemm, past Eve and Adam's") is a loss of identity (in sleep or nonsense or forgetfulness or sin or sense or order) marked by the loss of any beloved (are we attached to the world through suchattachments? ): "theaphasiaofthatheroicagonyofrecallingaoncelovednumber leading slip by slipper to a general amnesia of misnomering one's own" (FW122. 04-06). The loss o f love (Eliot's hyacinth girl) and the agony o f recall, not only o f the beloved but
of loving, is a forgetfulness of who anyone is. Language, just as dreams, is a reminder of that agony, "the cruciform postscript" (FW122. 20) The revision of this script is both our
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
187
forgetting ourselves and the kisses of others into "the life he is to die into . . . lost himself or himselfsome somnione sciupiones" (FW293. 04-07). The possibility ofothers is the possibility of love. The failure to address oneselfas oneselfor one's language to others is what I have called the failed intentionality ofthe Wake. This kind oflanguage is marked on the other end by "the accusative hole which it ends itself', that is the objects which are the things themselves, the things that are never themselves words, and within the inverted cnat language' seem absences instead o f presences.
The analogies describing the relation between mind and world, between text and mind, text and world (wax, mirror, lamp, harp, container, etc. ) have been reduced here into a special kind of the self-reflexive nonsense language asking "It was life but was it fair? It was free but was it art? " (FW94. 09-10) and expecting continually failing
justifications for asking these questions that cannot be answered. This might seem (in many ways correctly) that the analogies o f mind and aesthetics have been replaced by an interpretive stance, but it is not clear that interpretation is always called for. If interpretation cannot claim any particular truth value and is not itself as Wittgenstein suggests, adequate for meaning, it's failure will not count as an adequate stance between mind and world and art.
Do we experience language such that we can experience this between "mind, world" and language as the between of night or nonsense? This following is some evidence for this: "Everyletter is a godsend, ardent Ares . . . To me or not to me. Satis thy quest on" (FW269. 17-20). The Wake is sent to god or from god or to me or not to me. The resistance to "mind, world" metaphors is what Joyce calls "holding tight to that
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
188
prestatuteinourcharter''(FW117. 34-35). Thisholdingtighttothe'discamate',"your disunited kingdom on the vacuum o f your own most intensely doubtful soul"(FW188. 16- 17) "may have our irremovable doubts as to the whole sense o f the lot, the interpretation
o f any phrase in the whole, the meaning o f every word o f a phrase so far deciphered out o f it. . . "(FW117. 35-118. 02). TheWakecontinuallydisplaysKierkegaard'sclaimthat"there is a difference between writing on a blank sheet o f paper and bringing to light by the application o f a caustic fluid a text which is hidden under another text", but with the difference that there is not any Christian truth underlying any surface of the world or mind {PointofView,40).
Iholdoff,therefore,inofferinganytheoryofidentitythatwould explain how "Equal to=aosch" because this does not describe an identity, but a limit between a description ("equal to"), mathematical symbolism (=), a riddle ("aosch"), a self- expression ("aosch"=chaos). This is a limit because "Equal to=aosch" not only does not have a meaning, it cannot have any meaning outside o f an allegory that some reader will construct. Itis,however,notsenselessasadescriptionofalimit. Thuswecanreadthe Wake, to the degree that it is made up ofthis kind ofnonsense, as the self-description and enactment o f shifting limits. But what kind o f limits? limits o f what? As I suggested in the previous chapter one such limit is the vanishing intentionality that marks a limit between our inexistence as something meaningful within language and our ability to invest
ourselves as ourselves through and as language. But this is to say the words 'our', 'ourselves', 'though', 'as', 'within', and 'meaning' all function as limits, as meaningless except as transparent markers of an interpretive position within language games or under theological pressure: reading language as a descriptions of the limits that make our being
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
human being human. This is not another kind o f language, but a way reading language as a non-language, or again as Joyce calls it "nat language".
How do you figure language within language iflanguage is all on the same logical level? As nonsense (as dead signs or code), as animate; thus the questions what is language or sense become questions about nonsense and about how, what and why anything,leastofallourselves,isorcanbeanimate. Sentencesorphrasesorlinesbecome "[t]hese ruled barriers along which the traced words, run, march, halt, walk, stumble at doubtful points, stumble up again in comparative safety seem to have been drawn first of allinaprettycheckerwithlamp-blackandblackthorn"(114. 07-11). TheWake,likeThe Book ofKells, seems written with a black ink that "is lamp black, or possibly fish-bone black. "2 Joyce describes the Wake by describing a monkish monument o f Irish culture, and uses this description, with others, as the substance ofthe Wake. The substance of this theological language, however, is their movement emerging out o f domesticity, not read or written but "drawn," for any sensitive person, "first of all in a pretty checker with lamp- black and blackthorn. "
The movement o f words can be characterized in relation to the "comparative safety" of ordinary usage:
It is seriously believed by some that the intention may have been geodetic, or, in theviewofthecannier,domesticeconomical. Butbywritingthithawaysendto end and turning, turning and end to end hithaways writing and with lines of litters slittering up and louds of latters slettering down, the old semetomyplace and
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
190
jupetbackagain from tham Let Rise till Hum Lit. Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom? (114. 13-20)
The "intention," one way ofofferingjustification (but ofwhat? ), could be geodetic, that is determinedby surveying(butofwhat? );oraneven"cannier"viewwouldbethat "intention may have been. . . domestic economical," L. domesticus or G. oikonomikos, pertaining to the household. These two possibilities (surveying and the domestic) describe the two aspects o f Wittgenstein's philosophy: surveying ourselves, the world and our language (what Kenny called providing "a clear view of the world" and Wittgenstein in his preface called "sketches of the landscape") and a return to ordinary language (the disappearanceoftheproblemsofphilosophyinordinarylanguage). Intherealmofthe ordinary, the translation between Latin and Greek is possible. The world o f sleep is also ordinary, but this thithaways and hithaways (losing control o f the tongue, the "latters slettering down", no one going up and no ladder to throw away since it has already dissolved) requires asking what would be an adequate survey or sketch o f what ordinary world? , limited how? seen as what? , threatened always by the interpretive distortions that allow for the blessing of one among any three brothers (Shem, Japhet, and Ham). The confusion o f interpretation for truth, the replacability o f people and words and commitments under this confusion, is the problem o f Hamlet ("tham Let" and "Hum Lit. )
written into the Wake. This is a tragedy accompanying our inheritance o f language, or maybeofpronounswhere"Semetomyplaceandjupetbackagain". Joyceisconstructing the place of my signs (Gr. <rr||ia), or the sign of me, or the place marked or having a mark set or affixed (Gr. crr|no08To<;) or a cemetery place. Wakean writing seems to place me
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
191
("Semetomyplace") within the surveyable world and loop it back again into a history of origins and disinheritance, placing me with and as Japhet, the 'non-Semitic' son o f Noah, Jupiter from "tham Let", Hamlet, and Ham, the rejected son o f Noah.
If we read this again, the old Greek signs and the Latin imitations, from them that rise, or from Let Rise (a name, a description and a marker, like "ildiot") until Human Literature Sleeps, ask the question "where in the waste is wisdom? " This is a description of how to read: the unity of Greek and Latin in the text (as an example of the language of the Wake) does not communicate, but asks forjustification. And this request is understood as ordinary, as ordinary as waste is and is our desire for wisdom. If 'let rise' both can mean 'arise' and function as the name 'Let Rise', then the confusion o f verb for name (as in "In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God") is the way in whichonecanenterorbenamedbylanguage. Consequently,"whereinthewasteis wisdom? " describes a stance toward ourselves, the world and our language that analogizes the relation between mind and world, by placing our humanity at risk by placing our constructions and our world as a world against us.
This is the effect ofJoyce's lists, to place the world enumerated against us and in this offer targets for sense and identification. But once an identification is made, as a result of an interpretation ('"alphybetty verbage' is a version of the Wake, or "am I a whirling dervish? " or "can the world be built outside of logic or as a list of predicates without any subject[s]? '), the meaning remains unclear. No interpretation is ever adequate because interpretation cannot determine meaning. Is the meaning ofFinnegans Wake the following list?
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
192
My wud! The warped flooring ofthe lair and soundconducting walls thereof. . . were persianly literatured with burst loveletters, telltale stories,. . . doubtful eggshells,. . . alphybettyformed verbage, vivlical viasses, ompiter dictas, visus umbique, ahems and ahahs, imeffible tries as speech unasyllabled, you owe mes, eyoldhyms, fluefoul smul, fallen lucifers,. . . counterfeit franks, best intentions,. . . gloss teeth for a tooth,. . . inversions of all this chambermade music one stands, given a grain of goodwill, a fair chance of actually seeing the whirling dervish, Tumult, son o f Thunder, self exiled in upon his ego, a nightlong a shaking betwixtween white or reddr hawrors, noondayterrorised to skin and bone by an I neluctable phantom . . . writing the mystery o f himself in furniture. (FW183. 08- 184. 10)
Furniture and language both constitute the world as limits to myself. This limit is enacted by or as matter, what Berkeley called "the furniture of earth". What is "the mystery of himself'? He writes while sitting in furniture as a piece of furniture determined and defined by materiality. This "mystery o f himself in furniture" becomes at the end o f the Wake, when the sleeper is awakening, the "fumit o f heupanepi world" (FW611. 18). c[F]umit' containsfait (L. as it was) andfarm s (L. oven, fireplace), and can be read as 'bum it'. "[F]umit' can be translated as 'as it as bums and is a furnace. " This burning is stabilized as a thing when "fumit" puns "the furniture of earth. " Consequently, the being andstabilityofthepastcondensedintofurniturecontainsHeracletianflux. "[H]eupanepi' consistsoftheGreekeu(good),pan(all),andepi(upon). Thus"fumitofheupanepi world" can be translated as 'the furniture o f the flux o f the good upon all the world bums
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
193
into a furnace. ' (So that's what it means to confuse the mind and the world! ) As the sleeper awakens into consciousness at the end of the Wake, under the sun and in rising color, "that part of it (fumit of heupanepi world) had shown itself. . . unable to absorbere", that part ofthe matter ofcourse, the matter ofa person organized as time, as change, (thefurnitureofthefluxofthegooduponalltheworldbumsintoafurnace)had shown itself unable to absorb light, because there was little light in the night, and because the mind reflects the world, which with the new sun means this it (this "world, mind") becomes another sun. 3 This is a picture of a mind generating and reflecting the light of the world. But this picture is neither a metaphor nor a model nor a theory ofthe mind. It is, instead, a description o f being between things (furniture) and loss (burning) as a limit to them both. Being between matter and time requires a mode o f self-reflection that generates an T as a limit to meaning. What I mean by this is that one cannot get anymore meaning out our own self-reflection than we can out o f this passage in the Wake. And the meaning of this passage is a description of the limit to the meaning of this passage.
The night is a reordering of oneself and the world into the condition betwixtween things, ideas, concepts, clarity, sense, moments. "Yet is no body present here which was nottherebefore. Onlyisorderothered,Noughtisnulled. FuitfiatX"(FW613. 13-14). Asit was, let it be! What is this reothering, where "nought is nulled", but everything is knot and nat? This kind o f riddle, another riddle o f enveloping facts, can be answered by another riddle: "Do you hold yourself then for some god in the manger, Sheholhem, that you will neither serve nor let serve, pray nor let pray? " (FW188. 18-19)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Language itself can be used as the form o f resistance to the claims o f the world or ofother people on us (the claims, ifone acknowledges any, ofthe Wake). ALP writes,
"I wrote me hopes and buried the page when I heard Thy voice" (the coming of day or of sense or of a greeting and so on) I asked "So content me now" (FW624. 04-05). Such content appears to be "I pity your oldselfI was used to. Now a younger's there. " (FW627. 06-07). Theoldselfiswhat'I'usedto. . . be,orbecomingwasa "Tobecontinued's tale" (FW626. 18). Being here is also a habit, "I was used to", where the difference between how one describes oneself is not clearly different from how one describes others.
And yet it is exactly the difference between myself and others that allows me to be visibletotheseothers. InInvestigations,Wittgensteinidentifiestwodomainsofknowing: (1) a knowing marked by second and third person claims, and (2) first person claims associatedwithmentalstateslikebeingdepressed,excited,inpain,etc. Thuswecansay 'I know he is in pain,' but not 'I know I am in pain'. Could I doubt this? Or not know that I am in pain?
If we say "'Since yesterday I have understood this word. ' 'Continuously', though? --To be sure, one can speak of an interpretation of understanding, but in what cases? Compare: "When did your pains get less? " and "when did you stop understanding that word? " (PI p. 59)
I can forget that "wissen"means to know, and then all ofa sudden recall it, maybe by saying to myself "/c/z weiss". It is through experiences like this that we imagine an unconscious somewhere behind, beneath, around, even surrounding our consciousness.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
195
But I might never recall the definition without looking it up or asking a German friend. Thus we might think that our unconscious is a dictionary for our consciousness. Forgetting a word seems like losing it, losing something that is mine. In this my world or my language has waned, and the world has shrunk.
One can follow the mineness of knowing a word (which does not mean of course that it is private) into the mineness of pain and enter Wittgenstein's discussion of pain. Can I ask someone if I am still in pain? Since I can't my pain seems private. I can also forgetmypain. Imightgethitagain,harder,sothatwhateverwasbrokenbeforegets maskedbyagreaterpain. Thismightbeafunctionofthelimitationsofmynervous system, but we find the same effect in our emotional distress. This is what drives us into homeopathy. I might listen to Chopin's B flat minor Sonata (with its Funeral March) after my wife has left me. This might seem at the time a tragedy, and at least call for catharsis, as Milton says in the Preface to Samson Agonistes "to purge the mind o f those and such like passions, . . . , by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for so Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humors. " The passions transformed in tragedy are reduced analogically to a physiologicalprinciple. Weentertheworldthroughthisanalogy. Thesepainsmightbe mine. If I lose this pain have I lost something of mine? Pain, excitement, depression all can be temporally limited to a particular duration. They are contained within time. The mineness of these sensations is my experience, my investment or identification of myself with these mental states. Can I experience the meaning o f the word "wissen"? If not then
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
196
how is it mine? Should we not construe it, after the model in the Tractatus, as a limit of my experience and thus of my world? We want love to be like understanding a world as myworld,notlike'knowing'transitorypain. Inthissensewewantlovetobeamind. 4
The "between" in Finnegans Wake is marking off in negative space these two uses o f 'knowing,' not as logical distinctions tied to theories about first or third person discourse, but as grammatical distinctions organizing our investments in the forms o f our languageasmeaningful. Thisislikeaestheticizinglogicorlinguistics,notassublime(as in metaphysics), but as I suggested as grammatical jokes. The fragments generated by these jokes form a "monthage stick in the melmelode hawr, I am (twintomine) all thees thing"(FW223. 08-09). Thisislikesaying,"Iamallthesefragmentsincludingthis fragment and that and this 'I'. " In my previous discussion of fragments, this self-reflexive turning expresses a demand forjustification, or a configuration ofthe condition ofbeing human within the world as between what Wittgenstein marks as justifications and rights:
"When I say 'I am in pain' I am at any rate justified before myself. " --What does that mean? Does it mean: "If someone else could know what I am calling 'pain', he would admit that I was using the word correctly"?
To use a word without justification does not mean to use it without right. (PI? 289)
This last sentence is either contradictory (an appeal to rights is an appeal to justification) or is a picture of the limit ofjustification. If the latter, justification operates outside first- personclaims: itscriteriaarevisibletoothers. Thusjustification,inthispictureofuse,is not required when expressing pain because how would I be mistaken about my own pain
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
197
(not my own hurt). But does the concept o f right, describing my statements as without justification but with right, attach itself differently to my first person claims? Justification
functions through an interpretive stance from which judgments can be made.
The first question ('Is it a faith? ") is asked by the elm. The answer (that is no answer: "That's a fact") is by the stone. The elm and stone are the material forms of two washerwoman on the banks of the ALP, the Liffey, who at the end of the chapter return into the night as elm and stone. The dialogue between elm and stone (animate and inanimate) constitutes or envelopes or limits or is about (there is no way to determine which o f these verbs to use here) Anna Livia Plurabelle, herself the principle o f becoming
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
181
animating the structures o f identity invoiced by Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker in his dissolution and in his memory: "0 tell me all about Anna Livia! . . . Telmetale of stem or stone. Besidetheriveringwatersof. . . "[FW196. 01-03;216. 03-04]). Thisdialogueas what is ALP is also a tale about ALP, a collapse o f expression into being.
This confusion of expression and being or identity (these are also confused here) turns the call between family members into a confession. Justius, the moralizing Shaun's name in debates with his brother Shem disguised as Mercius (Justice and Mercy from English Mystery Plays), challenges his father HCE, calling out to him as "Nayman of Noland"(Nomanofnoland)to'standforth. . . inyourtruecoloursereyoubebackfor ever till I give you your talkingto! " (FW187. 32-35). He then taunts his brother, Shem Macadamson: "Where have you been in the uterim, enjoying yourself all the morning sincy you last wetbed confession? " (187. 36-188. 01). How do we distinguish a sign from an effect? A confession from an act? Can we imagine praying as 'to prize', to lever open (a prize), or as an inquisition into mystery? "Let us pry" (188. 08)-- "We thought, would and did. --Away with covered words, new Solemonites for old Bathsheetbaths! That inharmonious detail, did you name it? Cold caldor! Gee! Victory! (FW188. 25-27) A
confession is as inharmonious detail as he who confesses.
In the Wake a mysterious letter, purporting to reveal the guilt ofHCE, is a version
and one of the prime constituents of the Wake itself: the Wake a "NIGHTLETTER" (FW308. 16) and the mysterious "The letter! The Litter! . . . Borrowing a word and beggingthequestion"(FW93. 22-24). TheLetter(inandastheWake)ortheletters(of the alphabet, of the letter, of the Wake) is picked out of a midden heap by a hen, latter
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
182
transformed into the king of birds as Queen, "Jenny Wren: pick, peck" (Wren, the queen ofbirds; FW278. 12), letters fragmenting the world and then sent through or carried by "Johnny Post: pack, puck", one among many, able to move becomes only a fragment of the world. "All the world's in want and is writing a letters. A letters from a person to a place about a thing. And all the world's on which to be carrying a letters. . . When men want to write a letters. Ten men, ton men, pen men, pun men, wont to rise a ladder. And den men, dun men, fen men, fun men, hen men, hun men wend to raze a leader. Is then any lettersday from many peoples, Dagnasanvitch? (FW278. 16-25).
This list, beginning with "Ten men" is continued a few pages later: "Ten, twent, thirt, see, ex and three icky totchy ones. From solation to solution" [FW284. 16-18; from solitude (It. sola, alone)] to dispersion in a whole. This is how a solution is described: "Imagine the twelve deaferended dumbbawls o f the whowl above-beugled to be the contonuation through regeneration of urutteration of the word in pergross" (FW284. 18- 22).
Earlier the solution to "[t]he all-riddle o f it? " was "[t]hat that is allruddy with us, ahead o f schedule, which already is plan accomplished from and syne" (FW274. 02-05). A riddle o f the enveloping facts is always already known in the way that Dasein is always aheadofitselfthatis,itisdefinedasitslimit,asthoseenvelopingfacts. Thecontinual conception of beginnings (arche and genesis) in the Wake is an attempt to make visible what is already and always the case for us at the point when it became this; such beginnings are temporal moments of simultaneous change and repetition (thus the continual rebeginning). The solution to "solation" (being dispersed into aloneness) is
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
another return to this beginning built (the interpretation constituting the substance o f what this beginning is in the Wake) out of the twelve apostles reacting (from Judaism to Christianity) to the Death and resurrection o f Christ.
These letters and litters from the Hen, a bird or bard, can tell the tale o f idiots in sound and fury, a second best bed a patrimony of always borrowed language pointing forward, too late or too early, but "Toborrow and toburrow and tobarraw! " (FW455. 12-
13). Isthisadescriptionoranenactmentofourinheritanceofwords?
I have met with you, bird, too late, or if not, too worm and early: and with tag for ildiot repeated in his secondmouth language as many of the bigtimer's verbaten wordswhichhecouldbalbly calltomemorythatsamekveldeve,erethehourof the twattering bards in the twitterlitter between Druidia and the Deepsleep Sea . . (FW37. 13-18)
Any "secondmouth language" can offer, "saluting corpses, as a metter o f corse" (FW37. 09-10), measuring (meter) time (a matter o f course) as the loss o f ourselves into dead bodies, "not a little token abock all the same that that was owl the God's clock it was"(FW37. 06-07), "could balbly" (Babal and badly) call to memory that same beginning ofevening,sin,andwoman(Da. kveld,eveningandEve). Whatthismomentwasis always formed into interpretations. God's bigtimer verbatim words o f forbidding (G. verboten) are stammered (L balbus) in the twitterlitter, not yet poetry, between the devil andthedeepsea. Thenonsenseofthesewords"tag"thehumanstancetowardtheworld as idiotic awe, an expression oflight and thanks (Da takfor ilden, thanks for the light). Such thanks can be ironic. Such irony can allow us to speak second mouth words as ours.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
184
This "ildiot" (maybe not yet an idiolect), that is our human stance toward god within our languageconstitutesusas"ildiots"(lesserbeingsspeakinganonsensicallanguage). Oris humanity divided here between 'ildiots' and 'kveldeve'? This stammering ("balby") orders the world and our language into permanence: "accompanied by his trusty snoler and his permanent reflection, verbigacious" (FW37. 12-13). "Verbigacious combines verbigeration, the meaningless repetition o f a word or phrase, and L verbi gratia, for instance. 'Verbigeration' creates the form of identity, a universal, a separation of content from form, from within language. This creates the illusion that meaning accompanies form as an extra component, an addition to sound, as perfume can come to stand for 'me': "My perfume o f the pampas, says she (meaning me)" (FW95. 22). This formal post hoc universal as a limit o f "soundsense" is also the particular o f an example, an example o f anyvoice and of being an "ildiot. . in the twitterlitter". What every instance is accompanied by, however, is the entire system of language, or rather the entire system of senseandthepossibilitiesofnonsensemediatedbyvariousinterpretativestances. Oneof
the possibilities o f being human is the continual possibility o f the need for interpretation. Which is not to say that every sentence requires interpretation.
But then again,
Well even should not the framing up of such figments in the evidential order bring the true truth to light as fortuitously as a dim seer's setting of a starchart might (heaven helping it) uncover the nakedness of an unknown body in the fields of blues as forehearingly as the sibspeeches of all manking have foliated (earth seizing them! ) from root of some funner's stotter all the soundest sense to be found
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
185
immense our special mentalists now holds (securus iudicat orbis terrarum) . . .
(FW96. 26-33)
A stutter can frame speech as a form of possession, the grating of Moses' recitative againstAron'ssinginginSchoenberg'sOpera, orthegratingatanylimitofanyframe that marks the possibility that the world is a figment by showing that we see it through and asfragments. Thisself-reflection,abetrayalofourlimitationsandoftheworld's instability as a world, is like a "dim seer's setting o f a starchart" that uncovers "the nakedness of an unknown body making a starchart to find the world's order. " Contained within parenthesis as if within a world itself (securus iudicat orbis terrarum), the verdict
o f the world is secure. Secured by what? What is the verdict? (Can anything be secured from within parenthesis? can the world be secured from within the world? )
A survey and overview of this world marks the world's purview, its enacting principle, it's limit, scope and purpose as something ordered as "my world". The algebra (binomial) and the geometry (axioms and postulates) o f these "factionables" is incomprehensible and as inexpressible as by gone days and the ways o f god for a "neuralgiabrown", a brain:
ForasurviewoverallthefactionablesseeIrisintheEvenine'sWorld. Binomeans tobecomprendered. Inexcessibleasthybygodways. Theaximones. Andtheir prostalutes. For his neuralgiabrown.
Equal to = aosch.
P. t. l. o. a. t. o. (FW285. 26-286. 03)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
186
What does it mean to find Potato and not Plato in these letters? What letters are equal to what word? "Equal to=aosch" is a kind of self-referential paradox. "Equal to" is not equal to anything; if it is understood as '=' which defines a relation not a value; it marks equality it is not itselfa term except in relation to other symbols of relation. If 'equal to' is mentioned in quotation marks it can gain a categorical meaning (with all terms of relation) or generic meaning (with all symbols). The claim here, however, is that equal to is equivalent to an anagram ofchaos (to the anagram itselfor to the 'meaning' as chaos? ). And therefore Plato is a potato. Although this interpretation can seem reasonable(l), especially to a new world Aristotelian, what does it mean? How do we apply this identity?
The following is an identification of an identification of missing what had counted to'one'onceinageneralfailuretocountoneselfasoneselfexceptinthismistake: "the aphasia o f that heroic agony o f recalling a once loved number leading slip by slipper to a general amnesia o f misnomering one's own" (FW122. 04-05). This is called "the vocative lapse from which it begins and the accusative hole in which it ends itself'(FW122. 03-04) This lapse, the failure to address anyone (beginning the Wake in midsentence--"rivemm, past Eve and Adam's") is a loss of identity (in sleep or nonsense or forgetfulness or sin or sense or order) marked by the loss of any beloved (are we attached to the world through suchattachments? ): "theaphasiaofthatheroicagonyofrecallingaoncelovednumber leading slip by slipper to a general amnesia of misnomering one's own" (FW122. 04-06). The loss o f love (Eliot's hyacinth girl) and the agony o f recall, not only o f the beloved but
of loving, is a forgetfulness of who anyone is. Language, just as dreams, is a reminder of that agony, "the cruciform postscript" (FW122. 20) The revision of this script is both our
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
187
forgetting ourselves and the kisses of others into "the life he is to die into . . . lost himself or himselfsome somnione sciupiones" (FW293. 04-07). The possibility ofothers is the possibility of love. The failure to address oneselfas oneselfor one's language to others is what I have called the failed intentionality ofthe Wake. This kind oflanguage is marked on the other end by "the accusative hole which it ends itself', that is the objects which are the things themselves, the things that are never themselves words, and within the inverted cnat language' seem absences instead o f presences.
The analogies describing the relation between mind and world, between text and mind, text and world (wax, mirror, lamp, harp, container, etc. ) have been reduced here into a special kind of the self-reflexive nonsense language asking "It was life but was it fair? It was free but was it art? " (FW94. 09-10) and expecting continually failing
justifications for asking these questions that cannot be answered. This might seem (in many ways correctly) that the analogies o f mind and aesthetics have been replaced by an interpretive stance, but it is not clear that interpretation is always called for. If interpretation cannot claim any particular truth value and is not itself as Wittgenstein suggests, adequate for meaning, it's failure will not count as an adequate stance between mind and world and art.
Do we experience language such that we can experience this between "mind, world" and language as the between of night or nonsense? This following is some evidence for this: "Everyletter is a godsend, ardent Ares . . . To me or not to me. Satis thy quest on" (FW269. 17-20). The Wake is sent to god or from god or to me or not to me. The resistance to "mind, world" metaphors is what Joyce calls "holding tight to that
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
188
prestatuteinourcharter''(FW117. 34-35). Thisholdingtighttothe'discamate',"your disunited kingdom on the vacuum o f your own most intensely doubtful soul"(FW188. 16- 17) "may have our irremovable doubts as to the whole sense o f the lot, the interpretation
o f any phrase in the whole, the meaning o f every word o f a phrase so far deciphered out o f it. . . "(FW117. 35-118. 02). TheWakecontinuallydisplaysKierkegaard'sclaimthat"there is a difference between writing on a blank sheet o f paper and bringing to light by the application o f a caustic fluid a text which is hidden under another text", but with the difference that there is not any Christian truth underlying any surface of the world or mind {PointofView,40).
Iholdoff,therefore,inofferinganytheoryofidentitythatwould explain how "Equal to=aosch" because this does not describe an identity, but a limit between a description ("equal to"), mathematical symbolism (=), a riddle ("aosch"), a self- expression ("aosch"=chaos). This is a limit because "Equal to=aosch" not only does not have a meaning, it cannot have any meaning outside o f an allegory that some reader will construct. Itis,however,notsenselessasadescriptionofalimit. Thuswecanreadthe Wake, to the degree that it is made up ofthis kind ofnonsense, as the self-description and enactment o f shifting limits. But what kind o f limits? limits o f what? As I suggested in the previous chapter one such limit is the vanishing intentionality that marks a limit between our inexistence as something meaningful within language and our ability to invest
ourselves as ourselves through and as language. But this is to say the words 'our', 'ourselves', 'though', 'as', 'within', and 'meaning' all function as limits, as meaningless except as transparent markers of an interpretive position within language games or under theological pressure: reading language as a descriptions of the limits that make our being
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
human being human. This is not another kind o f language, but a way reading language as a non-language, or again as Joyce calls it "nat language".
How do you figure language within language iflanguage is all on the same logical level? As nonsense (as dead signs or code), as animate; thus the questions what is language or sense become questions about nonsense and about how, what and why anything,leastofallourselves,isorcanbeanimate. Sentencesorphrasesorlinesbecome "[t]hese ruled barriers along which the traced words, run, march, halt, walk, stumble at doubtful points, stumble up again in comparative safety seem to have been drawn first of allinaprettycheckerwithlamp-blackandblackthorn"(114. 07-11). TheWake,likeThe Book ofKells, seems written with a black ink that "is lamp black, or possibly fish-bone black. "2 Joyce describes the Wake by describing a monkish monument o f Irish culture, and uses this description, with others, as the substance ofthe Wake. The substance of this theological language, however, is their movement emerging out o f domesticity, not read or written but "drawn," for any sensitive person, "first of all in a pretty checker with lamp- black and blackthorn. "
The movement o f words can be characterized in relation to the "comparative safety" of ordinary usage:
It is seriously believed by some that the intention may have been geodetic, or, in theviewofthecannier,domesticeconomical. Butbywritingthithawaysendto end and turning, turning and end to end hithaways writing and with lines of litters slittering up and louds of latters slettering down, the old semetomyplace and
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
190
jupetbackagain from tham Let Rise till Hum Lit. Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom? (114. 13-20)
The "intention," one way ofofferingjustification (but ofwhat? ), could be geodetic, that is determinedby surveying(butofwhat? );oraneven"cannier"viewwouldbethat "intention may have been. . . domestic economical," L. domesticus or G. oikonomikos, pertaining to the household. These two possibilities (surveying and the domestic) describe the two aspects o f Wittgenstein's philosophy: surveying ourselves, the world and our language (what Kenny called providing "a clear view of the world" and Wittgenstein in his preface called "sketches of the landscape") and a return to ordinary language (the disappearanceoftheproblemsofphilosophyinordinarylanguage). Intherealmofthe ordinary, the translation between Latin and Greek is possible. The world o f sleep is also ordinary, but this thithaways and hithaways (losing control o f the tongue, the "latters slettering down", no one going up and no ladder to throw away since it has already dissolved) requires asking what would be an adequate survey or sketch o f what ordinary world? , limited how? seen as what? , threatened always by the interpretive distortions that allow for the blessing of one among any three brothers (Shem, Japhet, and Ham). The confusion o f interpretation for truth, the replacability o f people and words and commitments under this confusion, is the problem o f Hamlet ("tham Let" and "Hum Lit. )
written into the Wake. This is a tragedy accompanying our inheritance o f language, or maybeofpronounswhere"Semetomyplaceandjupetbackagain". Joyceisconstructing the place of my signs (Gr. <rr||ia), or the sign of me, or the place marked or having a mark set or affixed (Gr. crr|no08To<;) or a cemetery place. Wakean writing seems to place me
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
191
("Semetomyplace") within the surveyable world and loop it back again into a history of origins and disinheritance, placing me with and as Japhet, the 'non-Semitic' son o f Noah, Jupiter from "tham Let", Hamlet, and Ham, the rejected son o f Noah.
If we read this again, the old Greek signs and the Latin imitations, from them that rise, or from Let Rise (a name, a description and a marker, like "ildiot") until Human Literature Sleeps, ask the question "where in the waste is wisdom? " This is a description of how to read: the unity of Greek and Latin in the text (as an example of the language of the Wake) does not communicate, but asks forjustification. And this request is understood as ordinary, as ordinary as waste is and is our desire for wisdom. If 'let rise' both can mean 'arise' and function as the name 'Let Rise', then the confusion o f verb for name (as in "In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was God") is the way in whichonecanenterorbenamedbylanguage. Consequently,"whereinthewasteis wisdom? " describes a stance toward ourselves, the world and our language that analogizes the relation between mind and world, by placing our humanity at risk by placing our constructions and our world as a world against us.
This is the effect ofJoyce's lists, to place the world enumerated against us and in this offer targets for sense and identification. But once an identification is made, as a result of an interpretation ('"alphybetty verbage' is a version of the Wake, or "am I a whirling dervish? " or "can the world be built outside of logic or as a list of predicates without any subject[s]? '), the meaning remains unclear. No interpretation is ever adequate because interpretation cannot determine meaning. Is the meaning ofFinnegans Wake the following list?
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
192
My wud! The warped flooring ofthe lair and soundconducting walls thereof. . . were persianly literatured with burst loveletters, telltale stories,. . . doubtful eggshells,. . . alphybettyformed verbage, vivlical viasses, ompiter dictas, visus umbique, ahems and ahahs, imeffible tries as speech unasyllabled, you owe mes, eyoldhyms, fluefoul smul, fallen lucifers,. . . counterfeit franks, best intentions,. . . gloss teeth for a tooth,. . . inversions of all this chambermade music one stands, given a grain of goodwill, a fair chance of actually seeing the whirling dervish, Tumult, son o f Thunder, self exiled in upon his ego, a nightlong a shaking betwixtween white or reddr hawrors, noondayterrorised to skin and bone by an I neluctable phantom . . . writing the mystery o f himself in furniture. (FW183. 08- 184. 10)
Furniture and language both constitute the world as limits to myself. This limit is enacted by or as matter, what Berkeley called "the furniture of earth". What is "the mystery of himself'? He writes while sitting in furniture as a piece of furniture determined and defined by materiality. This "mystery o f himself in furniture" becomes at the end o f the Wake, when the sleeper is awakening, the "fumit o f heupanepi world" (FW611. 18). c[F]umit' containsfait (L. as it was) andfarm s (L. oven, fireplace), and can be read as 'bum it'. "[F]umit' can be translated as 'as it as bums and is a furnace. " This burning is stabilized as a thing when "fumit" puns "the furniture of earth. " Consequently, the being andstabilityofthepastcondensedintofurniturecontainsHeracletianflux. "[H]eupanepi' consistsoftheGreekeu(good),pan(all),andepi(upon). Thus"fumitofheupanepi world" can be translated as 'the furniture o f the flux o f the good upon all the world bums
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
193
into a furnace. ' (So that's what it means to confuse the mind and the world! ) As the sleeper awakens into consciousness at the end of the Wake, under the sun and in rising color, "that part of it (fumit of heupanepi world) had shown itself. . . unable to absorbere", that part ofthe matter ofcourse, the matter ofa person organized as time, as change, (thefurnitureofthefluxofthegooduponalltheworldbumsintoafurnace)had shown itself unable to absorb light, because there was little light in the night, and because the mind reflects the world, which with the new sun means this it (this "world, mind") becomes another sun. 3 This is a picture of a mind generating and reflecting the light of the world. But this picture is neither a metaphor nor a model nor a theory ofthe mind. It is, instead, a description o f being between things (furniture) and loss (burning) as a limit to them both. Being between matter and time requires a mode o f self-reflection that generates an T as a limit to meaning. What I mean by this is that one cannot get anymore meaning out our own self-reflection than we can out o f this passage in the Wake. And the meaning of this passage is a description of the limit to the meaning of this passage.
The night is a reordering of oneself and the world into the condition betwixtween things, ideas, concepts, clarity, sense, moments. "Yet is no body present here which was nottherebefore. Onlyisorderothered,Noughtisnulled. FuitfiatX"(FW613. 13-14). Asit was, let it be! What is this reothering, where "nought is nulled", but everything is knot and nat? This kind o f riddle, another riddle o f enveloping facts, can be answered by another riddle: "Do you hold yourself then for some god in the manger, Sheholhem, that you will neither serve nor let serve, pray nor let pray? " (FW188. 18-19)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Language itself can be used as the form o f resistance to the claims o f the world or ofother people on us (the claims, ifone acknowledges any, ofthe Wake). ALP writes,
"I wrote me hopes and buried the page when I heard Thy voice" (the coming of day or of sense or of a greeting and so on) I asked "So content me now" (FW624. 04-05). Such content appears to be "I pity your oldselfI was used to. Now a younger's there. " (FW627. 06-07). Theoldselfiswhat'I'usedto. . . be,orbecomingwasa "Tobecontinued's tale" (FW626. 18). Being here is also a habit, "I was used to", where the difference between how one describes oneself is not clearly different from how one describes others.
And yet it is exactly the difference between myself and others that allows me to be visibletotheseothers. InInvestigations,Wittgensteinidentifiestwodomainsofknowing: (1) a knowing marked by second and third person claims, and (2) first person claims associatedwithmentalstateslikebeingdepressed,excited,inpain,etc. Thuswecansay 'I know he is in pain,' but not 'I know I am in pain'. Could I doubt this? Or not know that I am in pain?
If we say "'Since yesterday I have understood this word. ' 'Continuously', though? --To be sure, one can speak of an interpretation of understanding, but in what cases? Compare: "When did your pains get less? " and "when did you stop understanding that word? " (PI p. 59)
I can forget that "wissen"means to know, and then all ofa sudden recall it, maybe by saying to myself "/c/z weiss". It is through experiences like this that we imagine an unconscious somewhere behind, beneath, around, even surrounding our consciousness.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
195
But I might never recall the definition without looking it up or asking a German friend. Thus we might think that our unconscious is a dictionary for our consciousness. Forgetting a word seems like losing it, losing something that is mine. In this my world or my language has waned, and the world has shrunk.
One can follow the mineness of knowing a word (which does not mean of course that it is private) into the mineness of pain and enter Wittgenstein's discussion of pain. Can I ask someone if I am still in pain? Since I can't my pain seems private. I can also forgetmypain. Imightgethitagain,harder,sothatwhateverwasbrokenbeforegets maskedbyagreaterpain. Thismightbeafunctionofthelimitationsofmynervous system, but we find the same effect in our emotional distress. This is what drives us into homeopathy. I might listen to Chopin's B flat minor Sonata (with its Funeral March) after my wife has left me. This might seem at the time a tragedy, and at least call for catharsis, as Milton says in the Preface to Samson Agonistes "to purge the mind o f those and such like passions, . . . , by reading or seeing those passions well imitated. Nor is Nature wanting in her own effects to make good his assertion: for so Physic things of melancholic hue and quality are us'd against melancholy, sour against sour, salt to remove salt humors. " The passions transformed in tragedy are reduced analogically to a physiologicalprinciple. Weentertheworldthroughthisanalogy. Thesepainsmightbe mine. If I lose this pain have I lost something of mine? Pain, excitement, depression all can be temporally limited to a particular duration. They are contained within time. The mineness of these sensations is my experience, my investment or identification of myself with these mental states. Can I experience the meaning o f the word "wissen"? If not then
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
196
how is it mine? Should we not construe it, after the model in the Tractatus, as a limit of my experience and thus of my world? We want love to be like understanding a world as myworld,notlike'knowing'transitorypain. Inthissensewewantlovetobeamind. 4
The "between" in Finnegans Wake is marking off in negative space these two uses o f 'knowing,' not as logical distinctions tied to theories about first or third person discourse, but as grammatical distinctions organizing our investments in the forms o f our languageasmeaningful. Thisislikeaestheticizinglogicorlinguistics,notassublime(as in metaphysics), but as I suggested as grammatical jokes. The fragments generated by these jokes form a "monthage stick in the melmelode hawr, I am (twintomine) all thees thing"(FW223. 08-09). Thisislikesaying,"Iamallthesefragmentsincludingthis fragment and that and this 'I'. " In my previous discussion of fragments, this self-reflexive turning expresses a demand forjustification, or a configuration ofthe condition ofbeing human within the world as between what Wittgenstein marks as justifications and rights:
"When I say 'I am in pain' I am at any rate justified before myself. " --What does that mean? Does it mean: "If someone else could know what I am calling 'pain', he would admit that I was using the word correctly"?
To use a word without justification does not mean to use it without right. (PI? 289)
This last sentence is either contradictory (an appeal to rights is an appeal to justification) or is a picture of the limit ofjustification. If the latter, justification operates outside first- personclaims: itscriteriaarevisibletoothers. Thusjustification,inthispictureofuse,is not required when expressing pain because how would I be mistaken about my own pain
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
197
(not my own hurt). But does the concept o f right, describing my statements as without justification but with right, attach itself differently to my first person claims? Justification
functions through an interpretive stance from which judgments can be made.
