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Chapter 15 / CIRCE - Joyce defining characteristic: Yes, Joyce's intelligence is awesome but there are all kinds of intelligence. His was a combinative genius with the ability to transform scraps of reality into shapes so characteristic that they remain forever in the mind of the reader. Although this is also his greatest weakness for some readers who are unable to perceive anything in the very commonplace material in which Joyce delights. Bob Williams Do give a couple of examples, please, Bob. Others too are MOST welcome. Chandra Examples? That's difficult. This characteristic is the very texture of Joyce's writing. If you look at Ulysses, the hero is an advertising man scrambling for shillings. Most of the rest of the cast are heavy drinkers and most of the scenes take place in pubs, in restaurants, at drinking parties or bawdy houses. Domestic scenes are rare except for the Blooms at home at the beginning and the end. We have a peek at the Dedalus household in Wandering Rocks. Otherwise everything is very public. In Finnegans Wake the hero keeps a pub and much of the action takes place in and around the premises although the premises can broaden to include the battle of Waterloo and the nearby Phoenix Park can also be the garden of Eden. The pub keeper can also be the city of Dublin and his wife the river that runs through the city. But in all Joyce's books the basis of everything is severely mundane and when he heaps on the grandeur it is with ironic intent and the result is comedy in the classic sense. Despite the classic comedy of his works there are frequent passages that are laugh-at- loud funny. Even the sober Dubliners has at least one very funny story (Grace). Joyce himself once expressed his content in being known as a scissors and paste writer and, although this remark is often taken out of context, there is a certain amount of truth in it. He listened to everyone and made notes on everything on scraps of paper that he transferred to notebooks and carried over - transformed and beautifully fitted together - into his books. Bob Williams Thankyou for that Bob - I had not heard that - cut/paste - about Joyce before. He would have likely LOVED the internet - although I concede that a lot of his prompting/motivation came from sound. A good example perhaps is in Cyclops where the Pub Irish/English slang sayings are distributed liberally and are common or mundane in themselves but when presented by Joyce become both the bricks and mortar of a parody of Homer's epic as well as a cutting display of the One-eyed tunnel vision of Irish Nationalism. A lot of these sayings he remembered from his father. I find this gift - elevating the commonplace to a stage where it has equality with the traditional + classical human motivations/struggles etc. - to be Joyce's most impressive, which is really the product of a superb intellect coupled with a singular imagination and vision. Paul My answer: i think everyone who comes into contact with Joyce's work cannot deny his ineluctable intelligence, his incredible skill and craftsmanship. This is all good and well, he is, undoubtedly a genius of the highest order. But what is it that keeps us lowlings in touch with work of such high literary excesses? When I tried to explain why I liked another of my great loves, the songs of The Smiths, all I could say was that they were "so human". This, i think, is the the most marvellously impressive thing in Joyce, his ability to scale the heights of literary excess but manage to do so with the most sympathetic humanity. At no point in Ulysses do we really loose touch with the simple and most vital quality of human compassion. Is that not what Ulysses comes down to? Thanks, bod Bod has expressed this very well. It's Joyce's humanity that brings us back. Without that artistry would count for nothing. Bob W Joyce's humanity! Without looking up a dictionary, I would understand humanity as kindness. Not necessarily as an account of the ordinariness of a human life. Or should I look up the Oxford dictionary? There is kindness in this book - as I am reading it for the first time, I will confront the kindness (and love) Bloom shows for Stephen later in Circe. But as a said before what strikes me is the lack of kindness amongst the friends around Stephen. And the main impression, I have, as a first time reader of Ulysses, is that there is so much going on, there is such a deluge of words, ideas, and thoughts, that I get lost in admiration for the intelligence of the writer. It is difficult to see the tree instead of the woods. Using Gifford, for example, does not help always. All those millions of references and explanations only reveal my ignorance. So I am left wide-eyed with wonder for Joyce's intelligence. Humanity, if it is there - well, it must be there, when Bod says that and Bob agrees with it - is lost to me till I finish the book, and start with it again. :-( Chandra
In his autobiograpical As I Was Going down Sackville Street, Oliver Gogarty (Buck Mulligan) tells of Joyce's copying everything down: (Joyce, John Elwood, a medical student, and Gogarty were in a pub ) James Augustine Joyce slipped quietly from the snug with an "Excuse me!" "Whist ! He's gone to put it all down!" "Put what down?" "Put us down. A chiel's among us takin' notes. And faith, he'll print it." Now, that was a new aspect of James Augustine. (And later) I was trying to recall what spark had been struck or what "folk phrase" Joyce had culled from Elwood or me that sent him out to make his secret record. Secrecy of any kind corrupts sincere relations. I don't mind being reported, but to be an unwilling contributor to one of his "Epiphanies" is irritating. And so on. Gogarty gives an interesting but warped view of Joyce as a man of intelligence but not, by implication, as smart as himself. Yogi
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