Anothervoicechallengesthe claim that what is possible is determined by grammar by exclaiming "But surely that is
arbitrary!
Brett Bourbon - 1996 - Constructing a Replacement for the Soul
, astheyoughttocategorically,as,strictlybetween ourselves, there is a limit to all things so this will never do.
"
(FW118. 31-119. 09)
But all is her inboume. Intend. From gramma's grammar she has it that if there is a third person, mascarine, phelinine or nuder, being spoken abad it moods prosodes from a person speking to her second which is the direct object that has been spoken to, with and at. (268. 16-22)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
166
? 6
The Wakean Grammar o f 'Between'
I am tempted to call the soul inFinnegans Wake the state ofbeing "between" or "amidst" in "the circumconversioning" (FW512. 16), in a revolution (L. circumconversio, a revolving) o f conversation, conversion and confession, o f "all her myriads o f drifting minds in one" (FW159. 07). But "[t]o the vast go the game! " (FW512. 15). The betweeness continually described and evoked in the "chaosmos . . . moving and changing every part of the time" (FW118. 21-23), however, enacts the distance between the mind and the soul as itselfthe form ofbeing anything (not just being a soul or a body or an idea), placed under the pressure of both a surrounding nothingness and the surrounding claim of matter.
The catalog o f genres amalgamated and informing Finnegans Wake is partially a function o f the books used and rewritten into it. Many o f these were already odd amalgamationsofgenres,furthercomplicatedbyJoyce'suseofthem: theEgyptianBook o f the Dead, as a dream book or a psychological theology; Vico's New Science, already a sociopsycholinguistic historical philosophy, Swift's Tale o f a Tub, Carlyle's Sartor
Resartus, and so on. The Wake is built out of distorted versions or fragments from these texts (as it is out of language itself). And further, the fragments ofwords that Joyce condenses into puns palimpsest words with allegories radiating in interpretations that reduce the text to a set of words (as if moments within the order of the interpretation). Any word offers itself as a target for interpretation and thus confession.
Notes for this chapter are on page 212
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
167
? "The abnihilization ofthe etym" describes the annihilation ofetym (its history into a new founding) as the annihilation o f the atom (the passage is full o f references to physics) which proceeds by an invocation of Vico's picture ofthe beginning of language in fear and imitation ofthunder ("the grisning ofthe grosning [It. groza, thunder storm] of the grinder o f the grander [G. Grunder, Founder] o f the first lord Hurtreford [Lord Rutherford split the atom in 1919]. . . ''[FW353. 22-23]). These beginning are ends. They describe the common grammatical boundaries between humans ("eytm") and matter (atom) and God ("grander"), the "fragoroboasity amidwhiches general uttermosts confussion"(FW353. 25). Amidtheutmostconfusion,whichisanynumberofuttermosts (extreme limits) marking this confusion. Such limits, however, describe a "confiission" (with a fusion) that in coming together and flying a part is an image (or an enactment) o f a confession. Such a reading brings out the significance of "fragoroboassity", a complicated pun that can be read as the voice of God: fragor (loud harsh noise) + It. rombazzo
(uproar) + oro (L. I speak) + bombasity +frage (G. question). But such noise while it can demand a response like the questioning o f human beings by God, can itself be turned into ourquestioningofanysuchdivinity"untuoning"theworld. Inthiscasethefirstperson"I am" of"the grander" becomes the alternative oro (I plead, beg and pray) of human beings.
How is such a "confiission" (confession) "perceivable [in] moleton (hidden atoms) skaping with mulicules (molecules)" (FW353. 26)? What would a confession directed not at God, but in memory of God and directed at the limit between mind and matter consist of or sound like? Are we not made up ofatoms and molecules? Do we not have thoughts, beliefs and desires?
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
168
? Such a confession is directed at the between, the vanishing intentionality, "the studious omission of year number and era name from the date" (FW121. 28-29), shaped as the negative nexus o f these forces. Joyce's confession, like Wittgenstein's in
PhilosophicalInvestigations, is made up of"[T]hings I say to myselftete-a-tete"(CV77), but cast as "The soul of everyelsesbody rolled into its olesoleself' (FW329. 18-19). (In Wittgenstein's such a debate is best understood as a negotiation with oneself at the limit between grammar, or the limits oflogic, and the claims ofpsychology as these limits organizes our common language and our forms o f life. ) Joyce writes a confession that could be anyone's ("I will confess to his sins and blush me further" [494. 31]) and thus is a "Wee, cumfused" (156. 31).
In Finnegans Wake, the conflicts between opposites, the bipolar transformations and resistances between characters, styles, categories (Space vs. Time; moral vs. aesthetic; life vs. death; conscious vs. unconscious, etc. ) are transformed into letters, dialogues, commentaries, narratives, as much as they fragment into one another, function as continuing multi-level debates, as if between body and soul, between the absent intentional source-pointandthemanifestationsofformwhichweread. Onewaythesedebatescanbe organized is between the father HCE and the mother ALP and between the two brothers Shem the penman and Shaun the spaceman. The daughter and sister Issy functions as a shiftingtokenofresistanceanddesirewithinthesedebates. Butthesedebatescanalso
function at a grammatical level, and that is the level of primary interaction between the reader and the text (that is the level at which meaning emerges as a problem not solvable by our interpretations). One can call this the resistance of the text. I am interested not in
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
169
? the content o f these debates (their psychology), but in the ways in which the form o f conversation and debate can be refracted into the descriptions o f a shifting set o f limits like those that describe the difference between self and soul, animate and inanimate, and so on.
Stephen Gilman, in his analysis of the fifteenth-century proto-drama La Celestirta, suggests two kinds of doctrinal debates: "vertical debates" as in Boethius' Consolation o f Philosophy between a privileged authority and a naive character and "horizontal debates" between characters of equal authority and privilege as in Seneca's De remedtis
fortuitorum. The structures that provide for the determination of these relations are missing in Finnegans Wake] and thus "the constant of fluxion" (FW297. 29) of character providesforneitherstabilityofidentitynorofrelationship. Allconversationswithinthe text require the explicit construction of a conversation between the reader and the text. Such a construction, therefore, entails the de facto animation of the text (within an horizontal debate) or the stabilization of the text into a context determined by text or reader (within a vertical debate). More importantly, however, either kind o f conversation destabilizes how we read, and if we continue reading these conversations destabilize our functional identity as human beings within or who use language. Reading the Wake tempts us to ask 'Is reading Finnegans Wake a human activity? '. The melodramatic character of this question is a reaction to the extremity required to generate a theological relation between the reader and the text.
Debates between self and soul and their Neo-Platonic reflection in the debate between lovers can take as their site o f debate the demands and the dread o f conversation, both o f vertical and horizontal conversations as modes o f self-reflection and self-denial.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
170
? This is one description: "Peena and Queena are duetting a giggle-for-giggle and the brideen Alanah is lost in her diamindwaiting" (FW377. 19-20). Wakean dialogues, where "Now's your never! "(377. 19), do not resolve into the clarity o f a communication, but ratherslipinto"communicantinginthedeificationofhismembers"(498. 21); acommon canting, both singing and nonsense, reforging a body into unity, god-like or statue-like, or at least a remembering of "Dodderick Ogonosh Wrak", Rodderick O'Conner, the last high king of Ireland (c. 1116-98), "on the table round" (498. 23), before Wrack "busted to the wurld at large" (498. 23). The dialogue between Peena and Queena (a giggle-for- giggle), like that between the Elm and Stone, the two washerwoman over and about Anna Livae Plurabelle, crosses beside (paratactically) the lost "brideen Alanah," the bride Eileen Aruna,theIrishHelen,lostbetweentwo-mindswaiting. "[T]hebrideenAlahah"isa version of "Nuvoletta, a lass", Issy, who earlier in the night (FW159. 06-07) "reflected for the last time in her little long life and she made up all her myriads o f drifting minds in one. " Into "one": a diamond-waiting, a purity of soul, impervious to all the but the greatest forces,adiamondweddinglastingastwo-mindswaiting. Whatdoesitmeantobemake one'smindsintoone? Thisisapictureofintention.
How does someone get lost?
"AisforAnnalikeLisforliv. Ahahahah,AnteAnnyou'reapttoapeaunty annalive! Dawn bives rise. Lo, lo, lives love! Eve takes fall. La, la, laugh leaves alass! Aiaiaiai, Antiann, we're last to the lost,. . . "I bring down noth and carry awe. " (FW293. 17-294. 06)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
? Eve ("alass") laughs at Adam; and this laugh leaves a girl ("alass"), but this stuttering "la, la, laugh", is itselfthe "antiann" crying (aiaiaiai; a vowel expression) not with the awe that anything exists, but that nothing (no-thing) can be brought into our minds at night (that anything can be negated) and thus this nothing ("noth") can also carry awe.
The distance between the details and a meta-description o f a sentence (between reading and interpreting) is the distance between the "commonpleas" (FW422. 29) and "AUSPICIUM. AUGURIA. DIVINITY NOT DEITY THE UNCERTAINTY JUSTIFIED BY OUR CERTITUDE. EXAMPLES" (FW282. R4; how can we read anything as an example? examples as auguria? ); or "Now day, slow day, from delicate to divine, divases" (FW598. 12). What is the distinction between divinity and deity, and why should divinity be preferred? How is divinity related to a kind o f uncertainty justified by our certitude? And what would be an example of this uncertainty and this divinity? Vico's poetic metaphysics describes how the uncertainty of early peoples caused them to project themselves into their ignorance, such that "he makes the things out o f himself and becomes them by transforming himself into them" [NS405], Uncertainty justified by certitude inverts this poetic metaphysics such that certainty is evacuated into uncertainty: pantheismisreplacedbyskepticism. Certitudecanthereforebeunderstoodtobewhat Cavell calls generic objects, those things about which no questions about their identity arise, and thus our doubt about them questions their very existence and because of their generic quality all objects, and thus the world {Claim o f Reason, 49-86). The doubt here, however, is not about wax or trees or tables. The generic object or target is divinity itself, and not any particular deity.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
172
? Divinity or deity are both manifested, in our interpretations, in Auspicium (the augury o f bird-watching) and augury (in general) (a token and a type; an example and a category). WhatcertaintygeneratesGod? Wecouldanswerthatthecertaintyof ourselves and our uncertainty about the future and the world motivate Vico's poetic metaphysics; or we could answer the uncertainty o f generic objects generates skepticism. But neither o f these can rightly be described as divinity. It is easy to imagine what uncertainty would generate the category o f divinity. But do we imagine that uncertainty and fear could generate the 'actual' world in which we find ourselves uncertain? 1
Between the "piejaw of hilarious heaven and roaring the other place" (between the admonition and moral advice [SI. piejaw] o f heaven and the roaring o f Hell), "you have become o f twosome twinminds forenenst gods, hidden and discovered, nay, condemned fool, anarch, egoarch, hiresiarch, you have reared your disunited kingdom on the vacuum ofyour own most intensely doubtful soul" (FW188. 11-17). This is a description of"Shem avic" (I a mhic, my boy), Shem the penman, the artist, the prankster, who in one kind of dialogue between the self and the soul would be the soul in Yeats "A Dialogue of Self and Soul": "Such fullness in that quarter overflows/ And falls into the basin of the mind", asking,atleast,"Whocandistinguishdarknessfromthesoul? "(Yeats,230). InYeats' poem the Self, attached to things and himself"emblematical of love and war" thinks "that shape must be his shape" because he exists as an 'I' that acts in folly toward "a proud woman", "endure[s] that toil ofgrowing up", and is blind to his own soul, which he never responds to or hears. Yeats' "A Dialogue of Self and Soul" is not a dialogue at all. Two aspects of a particular 'I' (unnamed and by default a persona for Yeats) alternate
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
173
? speaking, until in the last section ofthe poem "my Self' speaks continuously for four stanzas in a kind o f resignation to blindness and foolishness. Does this non-dialogue describe a psychology? Or what is the claim psychology has on aesthetics?
Shem is become "twosome twinminds forenenst god" ("forenenst gods": over- against god). The dialogue of"twosome twinminds" is addressed in challenge or is caused by being against the gods. What does this confusion between (1) being that which addresses the canopy o f human limits (gods) out o f an internal dialogue and (2) becoming this dialogue (being "twosome") by being against this limit (or limits)? The first case might be a judgment on myselfor on the gods; I might provide descriptions or meanings or interpretations. The second offers a cause for my being, and this cause functions as a principle o f identity. This identity or being (it is not clear which it is) is hidden, discovered, and condemned: hidden by Shem as a revolt against heaven or in the instability o f intention, desire and identity he discovers in himself as himself. And what would the discovery of my own instability mean, my discovery of myselfas these dialogues? Would it be like discovering an engine in my heart? Or a machine in my head? A discovery operates at the limit between what I know and what I do not know, and thus
offers a resistance to my fantasies. It can act as a temporary ground. This discovery, however, moves the hidden form of this dialogue out into something that can be known and therefore judged. And thus Shem must speak his revolt, through his discovery o f his revolt and o f his doubleness (or "twinsome twinminds" (double)(double)= quadruple), and thus be condemned (by himself, his family, his society, his gods). His condemnation names him in four ways: "fool, anarch, egoarch, hireseiarch". He is he who speaks
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
174
? nonsense (fool) that maybe wisdom (fool), who revolts against the ground (arche) o f faith and knowledge and community (anarch), who is his own ground and his own kingdom (egoarch), who is the ground o f the sacred (hieratic) and o f heresy (heresiarch) [all doubled].
Shem has become what seems to be a "disunited kingdom"; but there is a confusion between whether his "twosome twinminds" are the effect or a cause o f his being against the gods. Is the next clause a reaffirmation ofthe previous clause, or does it mark a reaction to being hidden, discovered and condemned? : "you have reared your disunited kingdom on the vacuum ofyour own most intensely doubtful soul". Is he fool, anarch, egoarch, hiresiarch outside o f any disunited kingdom (maybe in the daytime unity o f consciousness)? Or can we only understand this plurality through the 'disunited kingdom' he raises on the discovery of what is either a soul whose existence or identity is doubtful. Or if it is already the limits within which this doubt operates, then is it his soul that
doubts? The confusion o f cause and effect allows these two clauses to describe the groundorlimitofagency. Thisagencyismeasuredasthedistancebetweenthe "twinminds" and the "doubtful soul. " The mind is confused into a plurality, a plurality of sensory inputs, desires and fears, memories or possibilities and so on, a plurality determined and expressed in four identities or roles (again a crucial ambiguity) that allows a further self-reflection that constitutes (as an effect or cause) the creation of a domain of self (a kingdom or society of mind) determining or expressing the soul as doubtful.
This kind of doubt can be expressed "Between his voyous and her consinnantesl"; between his vowels (voice and voyage and his acting the voyeur) and her consonants
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
175
? (consummation and together-in-sin-bom) (FW485. 10-11). What is between vowels and consonants in a word or between words besides empty space? Wittgenstein has an answer. Theinterlocutor(oneofthe"twosometwinminds"ofWittgenstein)asks"Ifa proposition too is conceived as a picture o f a possible state o f affairs and is said tQ shew the possibility of the state of affairs, still the most that the proposition can do is what a painting or relief or film does: and so it can at any rate not give an account o f what is not the case. So it depends wholly on our grammar what will be called (logically) possible and what not,--i. e. what that grammar permits? " Unlike many of the statements marked offin quotation marks in Investigations, Wittgenstein is not attempting to dissolve the logic of thisdescription(exceptmaybetoremovethe"wholly').
Anothervoicechallengesthe claim that what is possible is determined by grammar by exclaiming "But surely that is arbitrary! " (PI? 520). And is answered, "Is it arbitrary? " Grammar determines one set of possibilities, but it cannot determine the application o f the sentences possible within any grammar o f usage (philosophical statements being an example o f statements that are possible within not only our language but in a domain o f usage, which itself is senseless) :
It is not every sentence-like formation that we know how to do something with, not every technique has an application in our life; and when we are tempted in philosophy to count some quite useless thing as a proposition, that is often because wehavenotconsidereditsapplicationsufficiently. (PI? 520)
A meaningful application, however, is not an interpretive application. A large number of allegories are possible as interpretations of an event, action, statement or text, but not all such allegories are equally probable. Thus Wittgenstein recognizes two limits: the limits
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
176
? of grammar ("Essence is expressed by grammar. . . Grammar tells what kind of object anything is" PI ? ? 371, 373) and the limits of application within or as a form of life.
Application for Wittgenstein is primarily normative (and thus he talks o f the originary home o f a word, and adjudicates disputes about this home by asking how we have leant a word or a language game, and describes language games as forms of life basedonagreementinjudgment). Anotherwayofunderstandingapplicationisasa description of our intentional stances or inhabitation of our language. Intentionality is visible through the interpretation of our actions as purposive or directed or about something. Suchaninterpretivepictureofintentionalityisalsonormative,determining aboutness within the context in which something is used or in which someone exists. And yet the criterion of application is used to mark the limit of interpretation, where the meaning of something is functional from within a language game. The need for interpretation arises from the failure ofthe transparency of meaning, as it were from the outside o f a language game (the difference between seeing-as and interpreting. All forms of life, grammar or criteria or normative rules and our practices and our history and our biology, interests, desires, fears and so on are all between "his voyous and her consinnantes". This space (a 'between') is the mark of our animation (the everything that
is required for something to mean).
How do we (as a particular he or she or you or I, at least these) inhabit this
between?
"[Wjhere to go is knowing remain? Become quantity that discourse bothersome
when what do? Knowing remain? " (FW485. 14-15). The distance between "his voyous
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
177
? and her consinnantes" is generated by the self-reflexive knowing (voyeur) that moves (voyage) 'going' (an act) into the question "where to go? ", that is, a going by remaining. I hear the rhetoric o f 'where to go' as invoking 'go to hell', which is to remain in the state of sleep or imagination where one can go anywhere and remain where one is, but at the same time lose oneself into fragments. Two pages earlier, the inquisitors in this section in their pursuit ofthe buried father interrogate Yawn (a version ofthe 'saintly' Shaun) who denies his relation to his brother "Seamus" in order to disguise his relation to his father:
Nwo, nwo! . . . I'll see you moved farther. . . What cans such wretch to say to I or how have Me to doom with him? " (FW483. 15-18).
But it is in this vacuum that we find the twinminds, the subjunctive necessities that we "tumupon" or towards which we write or exist.
"Life, it is true, will be a blank without you because avicuum's not there at all, to nomore cares from nomad knows, ere Molochy wars bring the devil era, a slip of the time between a date and a ghostmark. . . from the night we are and feel
and fade with to the yesterselves we tread to tumupon" (FW473. 06-11).
The Latin avis ( 'bird' and recall "Shem avic") and the Latin vicus ('street' or 'village') and the Latin vacuum ('empty space') collapse into "avicuum" (as if Keat's Nightingale is gone and the village on the urn empty). Without a bird-sign from heaven life is inauspicious; this augury o f a blank life indicates another movement, "from nomad knows" "to nomore cares". "Nomad knows" is both 'no man knows' and 'a nomad knows'. The opposition of nomad to man invokes an opposition between change (or at least movement) and identity. This tension and movement constitutes the blankness o f life
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
178
? which is itself opposed to the possibility o f the future ("ere Molochy wars bring the devil era") that is itself"between a date and a ghostmark". This space "between a date and a ghostmark", "where to go is knowing remain? ", between vowel and consonant is only visible through the failure of the continuity of discourse or language. It is visible in our being creatures who are sometimes awake and sometimes asleep and in language bound by the limits or frames organizing it into sense or the world, and thus in language seen as fragments: "Terrorofthenoonstruckday,cryptogramofeachnightlybridable. But,to speak broken heaventalk, is he? " (FW261. 26-28 ). This "broken heaventalk" directed and figured between God and humans constitutes ianguage not as propositions, assertions, and claims, but as always questions: "But, to speak broken heaventalk, is he? Who is he? Whose is he? Why is he? Howmuch is he? How is he? " (FW261. 28-31). How can these questions be answered? "Who in the name o f thunder'd ever belevin you were that bolt? " (FW299. 11-12; Arch, levin: lightening). The thunder following lightening voices the name o f not only the thunderer but o f the 'belevin' (Arch, lightening), the 'being lightening-bolt' or as the source of the sound 'being thunder-bolt'. The god of thunder has 'the name of
thundered', of the past echoed, which is who this bolt claims to be: that thunder or that lightening voicing that thunder; and thus "who in your name would believe you were your name? "
(The instability o f name [here a model o f language's iterability] reflects an ontological instability o f self fragmented in the night: "[F]rom the night we are and feel and fade with to the yesterselves we tread to tumupon". 'To tread' seems synonymous
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
? with 'to love', or rather the self-love on top of which I pivot all night or all life long. I am pursuing here this pivot as a 'between' words and people and sense. )
Another way of picturing the distance between mind and soul is as between the flash o f lightening and the sound o f thunder, the time when silence communicates not only ourdistancefromtheflash,butseemsapauseintheturningoftheearth: "Whereflash become word and silents selfloud. To brace congeners, trebly bounden and aservaged twainly"(FW267. 16-18). SelfloudpunstheGermanSelbstlaut(vowel),andtherefore identifies vowels as the expression of the self. The flash of lightening becoming the word, as the flesh became, "consinnantes": the consent ("consin) of God to be bom ('nantes') as humanandtobewithsin('consin'). Thelimitbetweenthedivineandthehumanlies thereforeintheflash(Godtoman)andinthesilence(mantoGod). Inhabitingthis between is to "brace congeners", to make or hold some group (or some mind) into an identity ('congener', in the same genus or resemblance); or this is the word of God forming the self into absence and silence except as the receiver (as Noah was) to gather two o f a kind (brace) into a unity (congener).
Stuttering ("broken heaventalk") crystallizes an 'I' out of Wakean language (betraying a stumbling human gait, as Keirkegaard calls it in the second volume of Either/Or [14]) by staying language into further nonsense: "which we do not doubt ha has a habitat ofdoing, but without those selfsownseedlings which are a species ofproofthat the largest individual can occur at or in an olivetion such as East Conna Hillock" (FW160. 09-13). This individual is manifested as a place, Old Conna Hill, and as the inverted HCE. Is finding ourselves not in the world, but as the world (at least at night) "a
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
180
? speciesofproof'thatouroriginisours,thatwefoundtheworld? Self-ownershipand self-generation provides for an entrance into the world, and entrance as the world: "But the world, mind, is, was and will be writing its own wrunes for ever, man, on all matters that fall under the ban of our infrarational senses. . . " (FW19. 35-20. 1).
In what is called the ALP chapter, this "world, mind" as it "is, was and will be writing", a "lost histerve"(FW214. 01), that counters the story of the Bible with "In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to the farther? Allalivial, allaIuvial! "(FW213. 31-32). ThisnewstoryisofthemotherAnnaLiviaPlurabelle,the riverof"lethullian","[a]beingagaininbecomingsagain"(FW491. 23). ALPdescribesthe limit between language and time, "[bjetween our two southsates and the granite they 're warming, or herface has been lifted. . . /"(FW209. 08-09). I will analyze this limit between identity and change as a sexual ontology of language in Chapter 10. I want to suggest here that her "becomings again" are part o f a conversation, like that collapsed in the"abnihilisationoftheetym. . . withan. . . fragoroboassityamidwhiches. . . uttermosts confiission" (the roar ofthe voice ofgod and matter mixed with the prayer and confession o f human beings; FW353. 22-25), between "Is that a faith? That's a fact. " (FW199. 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.
(FW118. 31-119. 09)
But all is her inboume. Intend. From gramma's grammar she has it that if there is a third person, mascarine, phelinine or nuder, being spoken abad it moods prosodes from a person speking to her second which is the direct object that has been spoken to, with and at. (268. 16-22)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
166
? 6
The Wakean Grammar o f 'Between'
I am tempted to call the soul inFinnegans Wake the state ofbeing "between" or "amidst" in "the circumconversioning" (FW512. 16), in a revolution (L. circumconversio, a revolving) o f conversation, conversion and confession, o f "all her myriads o f drifting minds in one" (FW159. 07). But "[t]o the vast go the game! " (FW512. 15). The betweeness continually described and evoked in the "chaosmos . . . moving and changing every part of the time" (FW118. 21-23), however, enacts the distance between the mind and the soul as itselfthe form ofbeing anything (not just being a soul or a body or an idea), placed under the pressure of both a surrounding nothingness and the surrounding claim of matter.
The catalog o f genres amalgamated and informing Finnegans Wake is partially a function o f the books used and rewritten into it. Many o f these were already odd amalgamationsofgenres,furthercomplicatedbyJoyce'suseofthem: theEgyptianBook o f the Dead, as a dream book or a psychological theology; Vico's New Science, already a sociopsycholinguistic historical philosophy, Swift's Tale o f a Tub, Carlyle's Sartor
Resartus, and so on. The Wake is built out of distorted versions or fragments from these texts (as it is out of language itself). And further, the fragments ofwords that Joyce condenses into puns palimpsest words with allegories radiating in interpretations that reduce the text to a set of words (as if moments within the order of the interpretation). Any word offers itself as a target for interpretation and thus confession.
Notes for this chapter are on page 212
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
167
? "The abnihilization ofthe etym" describes the annihilation ofetym (its history into a new founding) as the annihilation o f the atom (the passage is full o f references to physics) which proceeds by an invocation of Vico's picture ofthe beginning of language in fear and imitation ofthunder ("the grisning ofthe grosning [It. groza, thunder storm] of the grinder o f the grander [G. Grunder, Founder] o f the first lord Hurtreford [Lord Rutherford split the atom in 1919]. . . ''[FW353. 22-23]). These beginning are ends. They describe the common grammatical boundaries between humans ("eytm") and matter (atom) and God ("grander"), the "fragoroboasity amidwhiches general uttermosts confussion"(FW353. 25). Amidtheutmostconfusion,whichisanynumberofuttermosts (extreme limits) marking this confusion. Such limits, however, describe a "confiission" (with a fusion) that in coming together and flying a part is an image (or an enactment) o f a confession. Such a reading brings out the significance of "fragoroboassity", a complicated pun that can be read as the voice of God: fragor (loud harsh noise) + It. rombazzo
(uproar) + oro (L. I speak) + bombasity +frage (G. question). But such noise while it can demand a response like the questioning o f human beings by God, can itself be turned into ourquestioningofanysuchdivinity"untuoning"theworld. Inthiscasethefirstperson"I am" of"the grander" becomes the alternative oro (I plead, beg and pray) of human beings.
How is such a "confiission" (confession) "perceivable [in] moleton (hidden atoms) skaping with mulicules (molecules)" (FW353. 26)? What would a confession directed not at God, but in memory of God and directed at the limit between mind and matter consist of or sound like? Are we not made up ofatoms and molecules? Do we not have thoughts, beliefs and desires?
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
168
? Such a confession is directed at the between, the vanishing intentionality, "the studious omission of year number and era name from the date" (FW121. 28-29), shaped as the negative nexus o f these forces. Joyce's confession, like Wittgenstein's in
PhilosophicalInvestigations, is made up of"[T]hings I say to myselftete-a-tete"(CV77), but cast as "The soul of everyelsesbody rolled into its olesoleself' (FW329. 18-19). (In Wittgenstein's such a debate is best understood as a negotiation with oneself at the limit between grammar, or the limits oflogic, and the claims ofpsychology as these limits organizes our common language and our forms o f life. ) Joyce writes a confession that could be anyone's ("I will confess to his sins and blush me further" [494. 31]) and thus is a "Wee, cumfused" (156. 31).
In Finnegans Wake, the conflicts between opposites, the bipolar transformations and resistances between characters, styles, categories (Space vs. Time; moral vs. aesthetic; life vs. death; conscious vs. unconscious, etc. ) are transformed into letters, dialogues, commentaries, narratives, as much as they fragment into one another, function as continuing multi-level debates, as if between body and soul, between the absent intentional source-pointandthemanifestationsofformwhichweread. Onewaythesedebatescanbe organized is between the father HCE and the mother ALP and between the two brothers Shem the penman and Shaun the spaceman. The daughter and sister Issy functions as a shiftingtokenofresistanceanddesirewithinthesedebates. Butthesedebatescanalso
function at a grammatical level, and that is the level of primary interaction between the reader and the text (that is the level at which meaning emerges as a problem not solvable by our interpretations). One can call this the resistance of the text. I am interested not in
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
169
? the content o f these debates (their psychology), but in the ways in which the form o f conversation and debate can be refracted into the descriptions o f a shifting set o f limits like those that describe the difference between self and soul, animate and inanimate, and so on.
Stephen Gilman, in his analysis of the fifteenth-century proto-drama La Celestirta, suggests two kinds of doctrinal debates: "vertical debates" as in Boethius' Consolation o f Philosophy between a privileged authority and a naive character and "horizontal debates" between characters of equal authority and privilege as in Seneca's De remedtis
fortuitorum. The structures that provide for the determination of these relations are missing in Finnegans Wake] and thus "the constant of fluxion" (FW297. 29) of character providesforneitherstabilityofidentitynorofrelationship. Allconversationswithinthe text require the explicit construction of a conversation between the reader and the text. Such a construction, therefore, entails the de facto animation of the text (within an horizontal debate) or the stabilization of the text into a context determined by text or reader (within a vertical debate). More importantly, however, either kind o f conversation destabilizes how we read, and if we continue reading these conversations destabilize our functional identity as human beings within or who use language. Reading the Wake tempts us to ask 'Is reading Finnegans Wake a human activity? '. The melodramatic character of this question is a reaction to the extremity required to generate a theological relation between the reader and the text.
Debates between self and soul and their Neo-Platonic reflection in the debate between lovers can take as their site o f debate the demands and the dread o f conversation, both o f vertical and horizontal conversations as modes o f self-reflection and self-denial.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
170
? This is one description: "Peena and Queena are duetting a giggle-for-giggle and the brideen Alanah is lost in her diamindwaiting" (FW377. 19-20). Wakean dialogues, where "Now's your never! "(377. 19), do not resolve into the clarity o f a communication, but ratherslipinto"communicantinginthedeificationofhismembers"(498. 21); acommon canting, both singing and nonsense, reforging a body into unity, god-like or statue-like, or at least a remembering of "Dodderick Ogonosh Wrak", Rodderick O'Conner, the last high king of Ireland (c. 1116-98), "on the table round" (498. 23), before Wrack "busted to the wurld at large" (498. 23). The dialogue between Peena and Queena (a giggle-for- giggle), like that between the Elm and Stone, the two washerwoman over and about Anna Livae Plurabelle, crosses beside (paratactically) the lost "brideen Alanah," the bride Eileen Aruna,theIrishHelen,lostbetweentwo-mindswaiting. "[T]hebrideenAlahah"isa version of "Nuvoletta, a lass", Issy, who earlier in the night (FW159. 06-07) "reflected for the last time in her little long life and she made up all her myriads o f drifting minds in one. " Into "one": a diamond-waiting, a purity of soul, impervious to all the but the greatest forces,adiamondweddinglastingastwo-mindswaiting. Whatdoesitmeantobemake one'smindsintoone? Thisisapictureofintention.
How does someone get lost?
"AisforAnnalikeLisforliv. Ahahahah,AnteAnnyou'reapttoapeaunty annalive! Dawn bives rise. Lo, lo, lives love! Eve takes fall. La, la, laugh leaves alass! Aiaiaiai, Antiann, we're last to the lost,. . . "I bring down noth and carry awe. " (FW293. 17-294. 06)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
? Eve ("alass") laughs at Adam; and this laugh leaves a girl ("alass"), but this stuttering "la, la, laugh", is itselfthe "antiann" crying (aiaiaiai; a vowel expression) not with the awe that anything exists, but that nothing (no-thing) can be brought into our minds at night (that anything can be negated) and thus this nothing ("noth") can also carry awe.
The distance between the details and a meta-description o f a sentence (between reading and interpreting) is the distance between the "commonpleas" (FW422. 29) and "AUSPICIUM. AUGURIA. DIVINITY NOT DEITY THE UNCERTAINTY JUSTIFIED BY OUR CERTITUDE. EXAMPLES" (FW282. R4; how can we read anything as an example? examples as auguria? ); or "Now day, slow day, from delicate to divine, divases" (FW598. 12). What is the distinction between divinity and deity, and why should divinity be preferred? How is divinity related to a kind o f uncertainty justified by our certitude? And what would be an example of this uncertainty and this divinity? Vico's poetic metaphysics describes how the uncertainty of early peoples caused them to project themselves into their ignorance, such that "he makes the things out o f himself and becomes them by transforming himself into them" [NS405], Uncertainty justified by certitude inverts this poetic metaphysics such that certainty is evacuated into uncertainty: pantheismisreplacedbyskepticism. Certitudecanthereforebeunderstoodtobewhat Cavell calls generic objects, those things about which no questions about their identity arise, and thus our doubt about them questions their very existence and because of their generic quality all objects, and thus the world {Claim o f Reason, 49-86). The doubt here, however, is not about wax or trees or tables. The generic object or target is divinity itself, and not any particular deity.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
172
? Divinity or deity are both manifested, in our interpretations, in Auspicium (the augury o f bird-watching) and augury (in general) (a token and a type; an example and a category). WhatcertaintygeneratesGod? Wecouldanswerthatthecertaintyof ourselves and our uncertainty about the future and the world motivate Vico's poetic metaphysics; or we could answer the uncertainty o f generic objects generates skepticism. But neither o f these can rightly be described as divinity. It is easy to imagine what uncertainty would generate the category o f divinity. But do we imagine that uncertainty and fear could generate the 'actual' world in which we find ourselves uncertain? 1
Between the "piejaw of hilarious heaven and roaring the other place" (between the admonition and moral advice [SI. piejaw] o f heaven and the roaring o f Hell), "you have become o f twosome twinminds forenenst gods, hidden and discovered, nay, condemned fool, anarch, egoarch, hiresiarch, you have reared your disunited kingdom on the vacuum ofyour own most intensely doubtful soul" (FW188. 11-17). This is a description of"Shem avic" (I a mhic, my boy), Shem the penman, the artist, the prankster, who in one kind of dialogue between the self and the soul would be the soul in Yeats "A Dialogue of Self and Soul": "Such fullness in that quarter overflows/ And falls into the basin of the mind", asking,atleast,"Whocandistinguishdarknessfromthesoul? "(Yeats,230). InYeats' poem the Self, attached to things and himself"emblematical of love and war" thinks "that shape must be his shape" because he exists as an 'I' that acts in folly toward "a proud woman", "endure[s] that toil ofgrowing up", and is blind to his own soul, which he never responds to or hears. Yeats' "A Dialogue of Self and Soul" is not a dialogue at all. Two aspects of a particular 'I' (unnamed and by default a persona for Yeats) alternate
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
173
? speaking, until in the last section ofthe poem "my Self' speaks continuously for four stanzas in a kind o f resignation to blindness and foolishness. Does this non-dialogue describe a psychology? Or what is the claim psychology has on aesthetics?
Shem is become "twosome twinminds forenenst god" ("forenenst gods": over- against god). The dialogue of"twosome twinminds" is addressed in challenge or is caused by being against the gods. What does this confusion between (1) being that which addresses the canopy o f human limits (gods) out o f an internal dialogue and (2) becoming this dialogue (being "twosome") by being against this limit (or limits)? The first case might be a judgment on myselfor on the gods; I might provide descriptions or meanings or interpretations. The second offers a cause for my being, and this cause functions as a principle o f identity. This identity or being (it is not clear which it is) is hidden, discovered, and condemned: hidden by Shem as a revolt against heaven or in the instability o f intention, desire and identity he discovers in himself as himself. And what would the discovery of my own instability mean, my discovery of myselfas these dialogues? Would it be like discovering an engine in my heart? Or a machine in my head? A discovery operates at the limit between what I know and what I do not know, and thus
offers a resistance to my fantasies. It can act as a temporary ground. This discovery, however, moves the hidden form of this dialogue out into something that can be known and therefore judged. And thus Shem must speak his revolt, through his discovery o f his revolt and o f his doubleness (or "twinsome twinminds" (double)(double)= quadruple), and thus be condemned (by himself, his family, his society, his gods). His condemnation names him in four ways: "fool, anarch, egoarch, hireseiarch". He is he who speaks
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
174
? nonsense (fool) that maybe wisdom (fool), who revolts against the ground (arche) o f faith and knowledge and community (anarch), who is his own ground and his own kingdom (egoarch), who is the ground o f the sacred (hieratic) and o f heresy (heresiarch) [all doubled].
Shem has become what seems to be a "disunited kingdom"; but there is a confusion between whether his "twosome twinminds" are the effect or a cause o f his being against the gods. Is the next clause a reaffirmation ofthe previous clause, or does it mark a reaction to being hidden, discovered and condemned? : "you have reared your disunited kingdom on the vacuum ofyour own most intensely doubtful soul". Is he fool, anarch, egoarch, hiresiarch outside o f any disunited kingdom (maybe in the daytime unity o f consciousness)? Or can we only understand this plurality through the 'disunited kingdom' he raises on the discovery of what is either a soul whose existence or identity is doubtful. Or if it is already the limits within which this doubt operates, then is it his soul that
doubts? The confusion o f cause and effect allows these two clauses to describe the groundorlimitofagency. Thisagencyismeasuredasthedistancebetweenthe "twinminds" and the "doubtful soul. " The mind is confused into a plurality, a plurality of sensory inputs, desires and fears, memories or possibilities and so on, a plurality determined and expressed in four identities or roles (again a crucial ambiguity) that allows a further self-reflection that constitutes (as an effect or cause) the creation of a domain of self (a kingdom or society of mind) determining or expressing the soul as doubtful.
This kind of doubt can be expressed "Between his voyous and her consinnantesl"; between his vowels (voice and voyage and his acting the voyeur) and her consonants
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
175
? (consummation and together-in-sin-bom) (FW485. 10-11). What is between vowels and consonants in a word or between words besides empty space? Wittgenstein has an answer. Theinterlocutor(oneofthe"twosometwinminds"ofWittgenstein)asks"Ifa proposition too is conceived as a picture o f a possible state o f affairs and is said tQ shew the possibility of the state of affairs, still the most that the proposition can do is what a painting or relief or film does: and so it can at any rate not give an account o f what is not the case. So it depends wholly on our grammar what will be called (logically) possible and what not,--i. e. what that grammar permits? " Unlike many of the statements marked offin quotation marks in Investigations, Wittgenstein is not attempting to dissolve the logic of thisdescription(exceptmaybetoremovethe"wholly').
Anothervoicechallengesthe claim that what is possible is determined by grammar by exclaiming "But surely that is arbitrary! " (PI? 520). And is answered, "Is it arbitrary? " Grammar determines one set of possibilities, but it cannot determine the application o f the sentences possible within any grammar o f usage (philosophical statements being an example o f statements that are possible within not only our language but in a domain o f usage, which itself is senseless) :
It is not every sentence-like formation that we know how to do something with, not every technique has an application in our life; and when we are tempted in philosophy to count some quite useless thing as a proposition, that is often because wehavenotconsidereditsapplicationsufficiently. (PI? 520)
A meaningful application, however, is not an interpretive application. A large number of allegories are possible as interpretations of an event, action, statement or text, but not all such allegories are equally probable. Thus Wittgenstein recognizes two limits: the limits
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
176
? of grammar ("Essence is expressed by grammar. . . Grammar tells what kind of object anything is" PI ? ? 371, 373) and the limits of application within or as a form of life.
Application for Wittgenstein is primarily normative (and thus he talks o f the originary home o f a word, and adjudicates disputes about this home by asking how we have leant a word or a language game, and describes language games as forms of life basedonagreementinjudgment). Anotherwayofunderstandingapplicationisasa description of our intentional stances or inhabitation of our language. Intentionality is visible through the interpretation of our actions as purposive or directed or about something. Suchaninterpretivepictureofintentionalityisalsonormative,determining aboutness within the context in which something is used or in which someone exists. And yet the criterion of application is used to mark the limit of interpretation, where the meaning of something is functional from within a language game. The need for interpretation arises from the failure ofthe transparency of meaning, as it were from the outside o f a language game (the difference between seeing-as and interpreting. All forms of life, grammar or criteria or normative rules and our practices and our history and our biology, interests, desires, fears and so on are all between "his voyous and her consinnantes". This space (a 'between') is the mark of our animation (the everything that
is required for something to mean).
How do we (as a particular he or she or you or I, at least these) inhabit this
between?
"[Wjhere to go is knowing remain? Become quantity that discourse bothersome
when what do? Knowing remain? " (FW485. 14-15). The distance between "his voyous
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
177
? and her consinnantes" is generated by the self-reflexive knowing (voyeur) that moves (voyage) 'going' (an act) into the question "where to go? ", that is, a going by remaining. I hear the rhetoric o f 'where to go' as invoking 'go to hell', which is to remain in the state of sleep or imagination where one can go anywhere and remain where one is, but at the same time lose oneself into fragments. Two pages earlier, the inquisitors in this section in their pursuit ofthe buried father interrogate Yawn (a version ofthe 'saintly' Shaun) who denies his relation to his brother "Seamus" in order to disguise his relation to his father:
Nwo, nwo! . . . I'll see you moved farther. . . What cans such wretch to say to I or how have Me to doom with him? " (FW483. 15-18).
But it is in this vacuum that we find the twinminds, the subjunctive necessities that we "tumupon" or towards which we write or exist.
"Life, it is true, will be a blank without you because avicuum's not there at all, to nomore cares from nomad knows, ere Molochy wars bring the devil era, a slip of the time between a date and a ghostmark. . . from the night we are and feel
and fade with to the yesterselves we tread to tumupon" (FW473. 06-11).
The Latin avis ( 'bird' and recall "Shem avic") and the Latin vicus ('street' or 'village') and the Latin vacuum ('empty space') collapse into "avicuum" (as if Keat's Nightingale is gone and the village on the urn empty). Without a bird-sign from heaven life is inauspicious; this augury o f a blank life indicates another movement, "from nomad knows" "to nomore cares". "Nomad knows" is both 'no man knows' and 'a nomad knows'. The opposition of nomad to man invokes an opposition between change (or at least movement) and identity. This tension and movement constitutes the blankness o f life
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
178
? which is itself opposed to the possibility o f the future ("ere Molochy wars bring the devil era") that is itself"between a date and a ghostmark". This space "between a date and a ghostmark", "where to go is knowing remain? ", between vowel and consonant is only visible through the failure of the continuity of discourse or language. It is visible in our being creatures who are sometimes awake and sometimes asleep and in language bound by the limits or frames organizing it into sense or the world, and thus in language seen as fragments: "Terrorofthenoonstruckday,cryptogramofeachnightlybridable. But,to speak broken heaventalk, is he? " (FW261. 26-28 ). This "broken heaventalk" directed and figured between God and humans constitutes ianguage not as propositions, assertions, and claims, but as always questions: "But, to speak broken heaventalk, is he? Who is he? Whose is he? Why is he? Howmuch is he? How is he? " (FW261. 28-31). How can these questions be answered? "Who in the name o f thunder'd ever belevin you were that bolt? " (FW299. 11-12; Arch, levin: lightening). The thunder following lightening voices the name o f not only the thunderer but o f the 'belevin' (Arch, lightening), the 'being lightening-bolt' or as the source of the sound 'being thunder-bolt'. The god of thunder has 'the name of
thundered', of the past echoed, which is who this bolt claims to be: that thunder or that lightening voicing that thunder; and thus "who in your name would believe you were your name? "
(The instability o f name [here a model o f language's iterability] reflects an ontological instability o f self fragmented in the night: "[F]rom the night we are and feel and fade with to the yesterselves we tread to tumupon". 'To tread' seems synonymous
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
? with 'to love', or rather the self-love on top of which I pivot all night or all life long. I am pursuing here this pivot as a 'between' words and people and sense. )
Another way of picturing the distance between mind and soul is as between the flash o f lightening and the sound o f thunder, the time when silence communicates not only ourdistancefromtheflash,butseemsapauseintheturningoftheearth: "Whereflash become word and silents selfloud. To brace congeners, trebly bounden and aservaged twainly"(FW267. 16-18). SelfloudpunstheGermanSelbstlaut(vowel),andtherefore identifies vowels as the expression of the self. The flash of lightening becoming the word, as the flesh became, "consinnantes": the consent ("consin) of God to be bom ('nantes') as humanandtobewithsin('consin'). Thelimitbetweenthedivineandthehumanlies thereforeintheflash(Godtoman)andinthesilence(mantoGod). Inhabitingthis between is to "brace congeners", to make or hold some group (or some mind) into an identity ('congener', in the same genus or resemblance); or this is the word of God forming the self into absence and silence except as the receiver (as Noah was) to gather two o f a kind (brace) into a unity (congener).
Stuttering ("broken heaventalk") crystallizes an 'I' out of Wakean language (betraying a stumbling human gait, as Keirkegaard calls it in the second volume of Either/Or [14]) by staying language into further nonsense: "which we do not doubt ha has a habitat ofdoing, but without those selfsownseedlings which are a species ofproofthat the largest individual can occur at or in an olivetion such as East Conna Hillock" (FW160. 09-13). This individual is manifested as a place, Old Conna Hill, and as the inverted HCE. Is finding ourselves not in the world, but as the world (at least at night) "a
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
180
? speciesofproof'thatouroriginisours,thatwefoundtheworld? Self-ownershipand self-generation provides for an entrance into the world, and entrance as the world: "But the world, mind, is, was and will be writing its own wrunes for ever, man, on all matters that fall under the ban of our infrarational senses. . . " (FW19. 35-20. 1).
In what is called the ALP chapter, this "world, mind" as it "is, was and will be writing", a "lost histerve"(FW214. 01), that counters the story of the Bible with "In kingdome gone or power to come or gloria be to the farther? Allalivial, allaIuvial! "(FW213. 31-32). ThisnewstoryisofthemotherAnnaLiviaPlurabelle,the riverof"lethullian","[a]beingagaininbecomingsagain"(FW491. 23). ALPdescribesthe limit between language and time, "[bjetween our two southsates and the granite they 're warming, or herface has been lifted. . . /"(FW209. 08-09). I will analyze this limit between identity and change as a sexual ontology of language in Chapter 10. I want to suggest here that her "becomings again" are part o f a conversation, like that collapsed in the"abnihilisationoftheetym. . . withan. . . fragoroboassityamidwhiches. . . uttermosts confiission" (the roar ofthe voice ofgod and matter mixed with the prayer and confession o f human beings; FW353. 22-25), between "Is that a faith? That's a fact. " (FW199. 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.
