Fabled by the Daughters of Memory -Part Six
‘Thus, too, for donkey’s years. Since the bouts of Hebear and Hairyman the cornflowers have been staying at Ballymun, the duskrose has choosed out Goatstown’s hedges, twolips have pressed togatherthem by sweet Rush, townland of twinedlights, the whitethorn and the redthorn have fairygeyed the mayvalleys of Knockmaroon, and, though for rings round them, during a chiliad of perihelygangs, the Formoreans have brittled the tooath of the Danes and the Oxman has been pestered by the Firebugs and the Joynts have thrown up jerrybuilding to the Kevanses and Little on the Green is childsfather to the City (Year! Year! And laughtears!), these paxsealing buttonholes have quadrilled across the centuries and whiff now whafft to us, fresh and made-of-all-smiles as, on the eve of Killallwho’.
- James Joyce, ‘Finnegans Wake’, 1939.
Since the days of Heremon and Heber, progenitors of Ireland, the cornflowers have sprouted in Ballymun. Dog-roses have burst forth in the hedgerows of Goatstown. Tulips have come up in Rush, where twilight is a glory, and whitethorns have flourished out in the fields of Knockmaroon, while about them for a thousand years tribe has struggled with tribe, Fomoire with Tuatha, Tuatha with Fir Bolg. Five successive groups of invaders occupied Ireland before the ancestors of the Gaels finally settled there. These were the peoples of Cessair, Parthalon and Nemed, the Fir Bolg, and the Tuatha De Danann. These peoples were all harassed by a race of fierce and ravenous sea-robbers called the Fomorians. Such is the stuff of epic, and as it so happens a chiliad, a thousand years, also alludes to the Achilleid, an unfinished epic poem about the Greek hero Achilles and penned by the Roman poet Publius Papinius Statius, (c. 45 — c. 96), of which, as is the case with so much ancient texts, only a fragment remains.
The story proceeds in this manner. Thetis, goddess of water, mother of Achilles through Peleus, possessor of the gift of prophecy, foresees the death of her son in the Trojan War, and so attempts to conceal him upon the island of Scyros by dressing him up as a girl. On the island, Achilles falls in love with Deidamia, whom he pressures into engaging in sexual congress with him. Ulysses arrives to recruit Achilles for the war effort and reveals his identity. Ulysses and Achilles depart and Achilles gives an account of his early life and tutelage by the centaur Chiron. And there it is that the poem breaks off once his speech has ended. As for the general scholarly assessment of the opus it has been observed to be more in the style of Ovid, (43 BC — 17/18 AD), rather than Virgil, (70 BC — 19 BC). The predominance of feminine themes and feminine power has been noted in the poem, plus much attention given towards its perspectives upon the universal theme of relations between the sexes.
The introduction to the epic lays out its objectives and its range, which includes its purpose in covering the entire life of Achilles, not merely up to Hector’s death such as we find in Homer’s Iliad. It begins with the traditional epic invocation of the Muses, (for it is a Muse that sings through the singer), and of Apollo, requesting inspiration for the poet’s endeavours and outlining the content of the poem that is to follow. The Muses are thus the first to be addressed:
Of great-hearted Aeacides, the Thunderer’s offspring
fearsome and forbidden to succeed to his father’s heaven,
do sing, goddess. Although the man’s deeds are much famed
in Maeonian song (but more remain), that we traverse the whole -
so I crave — hero may you wish, and that hidden in Scyrus
we lead him forth with Dulichian trump and do not with Hector’s drag
cease, but lead the warrior down through Troy’s whole story.
Calliope, whose name means ‘beautiful-voiced’, is the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry. Calliope, of whom Hesiod, (active between 750 BC and 650 BC), says, in relation to the other Muses, she is ‘chiefest of them all, for she attends on worshipful princes’.
What makes a work an epic? Aristotle, (384 BC — 382 BC), having noted that the mimesis of tragedy is in actions related in a dramatic form, (see my article ‘Probable Impossibilities and Improbable Possibilities’ — Part One), the mimesis of epic poetry is in verse related in a narrative form. There are a number of similarities between tragedy and epic poetry, he argues. Epic poetry must maintain the unity of plot, and in this is akin to tragedy rather than history. For history relates to us everything that occurred during a specific period of time or to a specific group of people, and in virtue of this it is often disconnected. Epic poetry however must focus upon one particular story that remains an organic whole. Homer, (c. 750 BC), exemplifies the epic poet, as he relates a particular, connected story in the Iliad rather than trying to narrate everything that took place during the Trojan War. Furthermore, epic poetry must partake of many of the elements of tragedy, for instance, it should be either simple or complex, and it should deal primarily either with a character or with suffering. Aside from spectacle and melody, the six parts of tragedy are all present in epic poetry, the other four being plot, character, thought and diction, and epic poetry can also feature peripeteia, reversal of fortune, and anagnorisis, recognition of one’s true identity or the true nature of one’s circumstances.
There are however two marked dissimilarities between epic poetry and tragedy. First, the length. An epic poem can judiciously last as long as an entire string of tragedies, so long as it may be presented in a single hearing. The plot of an epic poem can be much more expansive than that of a tragedy in virtue of the fact that it is not limited by the stage. Epic poetry can jump back and forth between events happening at the same time in different places in a way that would be inconceivable upon the stage. Second, epic poetry should be narrated in heroic metre, while tragedy is usually articulated in iambic metre. Homer is extolled by Aristotle for the manner by which he diminishes his own voice in the narrative and allows for the actions and the characters to tell the story themselves. Homer demonstrates how epic poetry can recount exaggerated events in a believable manner, whereas a tragedy could never get away with such wonders for they are less believable when seen in performance. A plot should never hinge upon improbable events, but Homer manages through his art to render this defect in the Odyssey to be of apparently mere slight significance, and he is adept in the use of paralogisms, that is, conclusions resulting from faulty or illogical arguments, to make untruths appear believable.
Aristotle cautions against an overly fond usage of ornate diction, the choice and use of words, for it may well be very agreeable when there is no action to relay, nor character or thought to disclose, but ornate diction can oftentimes obscure such more crucial elements on the occasions when they are found together.
First player
…….
Out, out, thou strumpet, Fortune! All you gods,
In general synod ‘take away her power;
Break all the spokes and fellies from her wheel,
And bowl the round nave down the hill of heaven,
As low as to the fiends!’
LORD POLONIUS
This is too long.
HAMLET
It shall to the barber’s, with your beard. Prithee, say on: he’s for a jig or a tale of bawdry, or he sleeps: say on: come to Hecuba.
First Player
‘But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen — ‘
HAMLET
‘The mobled queen?’
LORD POLONIUS
That’s good; ‘mobled queen’ is good.
First Player
‘Run barefoot up and down, threatening the flames
With bisson rheum; a clout upon that head
Where late the diadem stood, and for a robe,
About her lank and all o’er-teemed loins,
A blanket, in the alarm of fear caught up;
Who this had seen, with tongue in venom steep’d,
‘Gainst Fortune’s state would treason have pronounced:
But if the gods themselves did see her then
When she saw Pyrrhus make malicious sport
In mincing with his sword her husband’s limbs,
The instant burst of clamour that she made,
Unless things mortal move them not at all,
Would have made milch the burning eyes of heaven,
And passion in the gods’.
- ‘Hamlet’, Act 2, Scene 2.
(Mobled? Muffled or veiled? A misreading of inobled?)
Oh, what a rogue and peasant slave am I!
Is it not monstrous that this player here,
But in a fiction, in a dream of passion,
Could force his soul so to his own conceit
That from her working all his visage wanned,
Tears in his eyes, distraction in his aspect,
A broken voice, and his whole function suiting
With forms to his conceit? And all for nothing —
For Hecuba!
What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba
That he should weep for her?
- ‘Hamlet’, Act 2, Scene 2.
What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba indeed? I shall come to that. Meanwhile, Aristotle treated of tragedy and epic poetry as though they were largely alike, for they both aspire to be imitations of great deeds, noble heroes, and tragic suffering, but the chief distinction between the two is that while tragedy conveys all this by means of action, epic poetry does so by means of language alone. They deal in the same genre, so the chief distinctions between the two are determined by where the boundaries are to be drawn as required by the differing media of expression, for a tragedy cannot be as lengthy as an epic, nor can it depict so many different events nor succeed free of censure with as many fantastical occurrences. On the other hand, tragedy is more focused, and epic poetry cannot make use of the music or spectacle of stage performances, the former is perhaps more realistic, for as we witness everything in a tragedy happening before our eyes, the action is limited to within the realm of human possibility. Whereas epic poetry is a purely narrative medium and as such is restricted merely by the imagination of the poet and of the listener. As we are without assistance in the visualizing of events, the epic poet can more readily recount the improbable without vexing us. In the Iliad Achilles pursues Hector three times around the walls of Troy while Homer makes no mention of the rest of the Greek army which one supposes must have been laying about in sedentary manner while witnessing the pursuit. On stage this would come across as quite absurd, but as Homer can focus exclusively upon the characters of Achilles and of Hector we are liable not to notice any such discordance in the unfolding of an epic moment.
Interestingly, in Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida, the tone of which switches between salacious comedy and tragic foreboding, Achilles and his Myrmidons discover Hector, who has finished fighting and taken off his armour in order to try on the golden armour of the warrior he has conquered, and surround the unarmed Trojan and stab him to death. Not especially heroic. But Achilles revels in his ‘triumph’ anyway.
ACHILLES
The dragon wing of night o’erspreads the earth,
And, stickler-like, the armies separates.
My half-supp’d sword, that frankly would have fed,
Pleased with this dainty bait, thus goes to bed.
Sheathes his sword
Come, tie his body to my horse’s tail;
Along the field I will the Trojan trail.
- ‘Troilus and Cressida’, Act 5, Scene 8.
The rather imposing and celebrated qualities of epic poetry are rendered through heroic metre that is somewhat contrived and elevated and further distances the characters participating in the tale from realistic portrayal, extraordinary speech blending exquisitely with extraordinary deeds, whereas tragedy uses an iambic metre that closely resembles the rhythms of everyday speech. But epic poetry and tragedy may be judged according to similar criteria in spite of their differences, and crucially to both is the maintaining of unity of plot. For epic poetry, in virtue of its length, episode and digression is more befitting, and yet such digressions must be tied to the plot as tightly as the fewer digressions to be found in tragic poetry. Similar requirements regarding character presumably apply to the epic hero as to the tragic hero. Regardless of the divergences between both genres, it would appear that the basic criteria for judging quality remain the same.
For Hegel epic poetry presents spiritual freedom, that is, free human beings, in the context of a world of circumstances and events. ‘In the epic’, Hegel states, ‘individuals act and feel; but their actions are not independent, events also have their right’. What is described in such poetry, therefore, is ‘a play between actions and events’. Epic individuals are situated individuals, caught up in a larger enterprise, for instance the Trojan War in Homer’s Iliad. What they do is thereby determined as much by the situation in which they find themselves as by their own will, and the consequences of their actions are to a large degree at the mercy of circumstances. Epic poetry thus shows us the worldly character, and the attendant limitations, of human freedom. In this respect, for Hegel Alexander the Great would not have made a good subject for epic poetry in virtue of the fact that ‘his world was his army’, his creation was under his control, and therefore was not truly independent of his will. Among the great epic poems Hegel discourses upon are Homer’s Odyssey, Dante’s Divine Comedy and the mediaeval Spanish poem El Cid. Much of what he has to say about the epic, however, derives from his reading of Homer’s Iliad. In the modern period, Hegel insists, the epic has relinquished its place to the novel. However much variety is engendered by epic creations through its subject-matter, still the adventurous character of the situations, the conflicts, and the complications which can ensue from out of such material leads to a kind of treatment much akin to a ballad so that the numerous single exploits are not tied together into any rigid unity. And furthermore, this material leads to something like a novel, albeit that the incidents do not move upon the foundation of a fixedly regulated socially ordered configuration nor upon a prosaic advancement of events.
But herein emerges a problem to be detected in both epic and tragedy. An epic concerns itself with the deeds of heroic or legendary figures. A tragedy concerns itself with the conflict between a protagonist and some superior force, destiny for instance, or some flaw in the tragic character that leads to their downfall. And yet, perhaps we do not buy into the narrative and the heroic figures are not seen to be heroic nor the tragic figures tragic, but to be something different entirely. The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, by Henry Fielding, (1707–1754), was described by the author as a comic epic in prose, for when he set about writing it the novel was not yet a respectable nor acceptable genre of literature, and to render it so he proffered a new theory of the novel (rather ironically given it was called a novel for good reason) whereby the novel is a comic epic in prose, and thereby accords with Hegel’s contention. Fielding took the view that the epic is divisible into comic epic and tragic epic. ‘The EPIC, as well as the DRAMA’, he said, ‘is divided into tragedy and comedy. HOMER, who was the father of this species of poetry, gave us a pattern of both these, though that of the latter kind is entirely lost; which Aristotle tells us, bore the same relation to comedy which his Iliad bears to tragedy. And perhaps, that we have no more instances of it among the writers of antiquity, is owing to the loss of this great pattern, which, had it survived, would have found its imitators equally with the other poems of this great original’.
A work may be styled as a prose epic if it contains within it all of the parts of an epic poem, the fabulous, action, character, feeling and sentiment, diction. Only metre is lacking. Bringing together these ideas of the comic epic and the prose epic, Fielding advances a new genre, comic epic in prose, which primarily guarantees a diverse set of characters caught up in quite far-reaching and sweeping action. A comic epic in prose is written in a light tone in which the absurd and ridiculous is exposited moderately and genially through irony and satire, though the scale is epic and is comic in virtue of its concern with the ridiculous and the absurd in human life. It presents something like forty adroitly delineated characters extracted from divergent cross sections of society, lords, lawyers, servants, highwaymen, parsons, inn keepers, prostitutes, rakes, soldiers, philosophers (see the above illustration from Tom Jones) and so on. Within such a context Tom Jones is a novel of epic magnitude incorporating a diversity of structure, plentiful stories, digressions and episodes all closely tied up with the central theme, and so the entire society, life and manners of the time is presented for our entertainment. The author demonstrates a concern for the epic unities, those of time, place and action, endowing the plot and action of Tom Jones with an epic grandeur while the author freely utilises mock heroic style and diction. And the objective of the novel is to display virtue’s loveliness and vice’s ugliness. By this manner Tom Jones has all of the characteristics of a comic epic, whereas unlike a serious epic its action is light and absurd. Its characters tend to be of inferior rank while the grand epic style is employed to narrate the light and absurd events, including a recurrent use of heroic similes, all such epical devices working towards the creation of comic effect.
This is all in evidence in the chapter entitled A battle sung by the muse in the Homerican style, and which none but the classical reader can taste. Sophia Western is attending church and is struck by Molly Seagrim’s pulchritude. Later she calls upon Black George to let him know that she would like to hire Molly as her maid servant, and Black George, though he keeps it to himself, is aghast that Sophia has not noticed that Molly is pregnant, probably by Tom. He makes his way home to consult with his wife for advice, but the family is engaging in a fracas over what occurred at church, when the women assaulted Molly with ‘Dirt and Rubbish’. By way of reprisal, Molly knocked out the leader of the group of assailants and cleared herself a path using a skull and thighbone from the graveyard as her weapons. The narrator relates the story in an ironic Homeric style, listing the names of the men and women who fell victim to Molly. Goody Brown, being the only woman to fight back, attacks Molly and tears out her hair. The narrator points out that given women never fail to aim for each other’s breasts when fighting, Goody Brown, who is flat-chested, has the upper hand. Eventually, Tom’s entrance quenches the skirmish:
‘When each of the combatants had borne off sufficient spoils of hair from the head of her antagonist, the next rage was against the garments. In this attack they exerted so much violence, that in a very few minutes they were both naked to the middle.
It is lucky for the women that the seat of fistycuff war is not the same with them as among men; but though they may seem a little to deviate from their sex, when they go forth to battle, yet I have observed, they never so far forget, as to assail the bosoms of each other; where a few blows would be fatal to most of them. This, I know, some derive from their being of a more bloody inclination than the males. On which account they apply to the nose, as to the part whence blood may most easily be drawn; but this seems a far-fetched as well as ill-natured supposition.
Goody Brown had great advantage of Molly in this particular; for the former had indeed no breasts, her bosom (if it may be so called), as well in colour as in many other properties, exactly resembling an antient piece of parchment, upon which any one might have drummed a considerable while without doing her any great damage.
Molly, beside her present unhappy condition, was differently formed in those parts, and might, perhaps, have tempted the envy of Brown to give her a fatal blow, had not the lucky arrival of Tom Jones at this instant put an immediate end to the bloody scene’.
- ‘Tom Jones’, 1749.
But what, we might well ask, of Hamlet’s explanation to a group of players on the purpose of playing?: ‘… whose end, both at the first and now, was and is to hold, as ’twere, the mirror up to nature, to show virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone or come tardy off, though it make the unskillful laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve, the censure of the which one must in your allowance o’erweigh a whole theatre of others’.
A mirror up to nature? Is there a life that is ever epic? Or tragic? Or farcical for that matter? Or a train wreck, metaphorically speaking? The tale of the Christ may be the most epic tale of all dealing as it does with cosmic themes and the ultimate purposes of our lives, as recounted for instance in the grand epic Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, by Lew Wallace, (1827–1905). What of those of us with no experience of the numinous? From the Latin, numen, meaning a deity or spirit presiding over a thing or space, an experience of the power or presence or realisation of a divinity, as recounted by Rudolf Otto, (1869–1937), in The Idea of the Holy.
According to Otto the concept of the holy is frequently employed to convey moral perfection, and while it does entail this it also contains another distinct element that transcends the ethical sphere, and this is the numinous, a ‘non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self’. Such a mental state ‘presents itself as wholly other, a condition absolutely sui generis and incomparable whereby the human being finds himself utterly abashed’. And in virtue of the numinous being irreducible and sui generis it cannot be defined in terms of other concepts or experiences, and that the reader must therefore be ‘guided and led on by consideration and discussion of the matter through the ways of his own mind, until he reach the point at which ‘the numinous’ in him perforce begins to stir… In other words, our X cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, it can only be evoked, awakened in the mind’. Otto then proceeds to attempt to evoke the numinous and its various aspects, describing it (using Latin, which should arouse our suspicions) as a mystery, mysterium, that is at once terrifying, tremendum, and fascinating, fascinans. He writes:
‘The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its ‘profane’, non-religious mood of everyday experience…. It has its crude, barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling, and speechless humility of the creature in the presence of — whom or what? In the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures’.
And what if we never have such a feeling? (What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?) Is there anyone who has ever had an epic life? ‘A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and also, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language … not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions’. Such is Aristotle’s account of tragedy. And yet mayhap the real tragedy is that our lives are neither epic nor tragic, but absurd and empty:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing’.
- Shakespeare, ‘Macbeth’, Act 5, Scene 5.
We need perhaps to replace the idiot with a better writer.
Enter James Joyce. Ulysses is an epic novel in that it follows advertising canvasser Leopold Bloom through an ordinary day in Dublin, 16th June, 1904, while establishing parallels and structural correspondences between his assignations and encounters and Homer’s epic poem the Odyssey and the adventures of Odysseus, or Ulysses in the Latinized version of his name. The Sirens episode, for instance, is dominated by musical motifs and opens with an overture introducing the central themes of the episode and sets the general tone for what is about to ensue. Or perhaps we can think of it as an orchestra tuning up prior to a performance, the musicians practising their quavers or tremolos or vibratos and the cadences of the composition to be performed and which to the audience sounds very much like a discordance but all will make sense when rightly arranged and developed and embellished in the performance to follow:
Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringing.
Imperthnthn thnthnthn.
Chips, picking chips off rocky thumbnail, chips.
Horrid! And gold flushed more.
A husky fifenote blew.
Blew. Blue bloom is on the.
Goldpinnacled hair.
A jumping rose on satiny breast of satin, rose of Castile.
Trilling, trilling: Idolores.
Peep! Who’s in the… peepofgold?
Tink cried to bronze in pity.
And a call, pure, long and throbbing. Longindying call.
Decoy. Soft word. But look: the bright stars fade. Notes chirruping answer.
O rose! Castile. The morn is breaking.
Jingle jingle jaunted jingling.
Coin rang. Clock clacked.
Avowal. Sonnez. I could. Rebound of garter. Not leave thee. Smack. La cloche! Thigh smack. Avowal. Warm. Sweetheart, goodbye!
Jingle. Bloo.
Boomed crashing chords. When love absorbs. War! War! The tympanum.
A sail! A veil awave upon the waves.
Lost. Throstle fluted. All is lost now. ……….
Bloom is having dinner at the Ormond hotel, while Molly Bloom’s lover, Blazes Boylan, proceeds to his rendezvous with her. While dining, Bloom attends to the singing of Simon Dedalus, Goodbye, Sweetheart, Goodbye: ‘The bright stars fade . . . the morn is breaking . . . The dewdrops pearl . . . And I from thee . . . to Flora’s lips did hie . . . I could not leave thee . . . Sweetheart, goodbye!’ … while Bloom keeps an eye upon the seductive barmaids, the Sirens, Miss Douce (with the bronze hair) and Miss Kennedy (with the golden hair).
Our two voluptuous barmaids are gazing through the windows of the hotel desirous to catch a glimpse of the procession of the Viceregal cavalcade making its way through the heart of the city and which is now rolling along the north bank of the river Liffey, the time is 3:38 pm. They are laughing at a man in one of the carriages who is craning his neck to admire them in the window. Meanwhile Bloom has with him an erotic novel The Sweets of Sin that he had just recently bought for Molly. For the Sirens were half avian half maidenly creatures whose beautiful singing tempted sailors off their course, luring their ships to wreck upon a rugged rocky island. In the Odyssey, Odysseus stops up his crew’s ears with wax to prevent them from hearing the Sirens’ song, while he himself is bound to the mast to be enchanted by the song of the Sirens while thwarting himself from steering his ship toward the temptresses. With the episode’s representation of singing performances together with its musical prose elements, including syncopated syntax, linguistic refrains, and onomatopoeia, it engages somewhat directly whilst seeking to reproduce the qualities of music. Matt Lenehan flirts with Miss Douce. He asks her a question about the opera The Rose of Castille. She tells him: ‘Ask no questions and you’ll hear no lies’. He implores her to ‘sonnez la cloche’, ring the bell to sound the hour, and she consents, enticingly bending, lifting up her skirt, and pulling her elastic garter to smack her thigh. Lenehan breaks out in delight, and Douce looks down upon this coarse simpleton as she ‘smilesmirked supercilious’ on him. She does, however, smile softly upon Boylan, for she quite plainly is looking for favour from him.
Bronzedouce communing with her rose that sank and rose sought Blazes Boylan’s flower and eyes.
— Please, please.
He pleaded over returning phrases of avowal.
— I could not leave thee…
— Afterwits, miss Douce promised coyly.
— No, now, urged Lenehan. Sonnez la cloche! O do! There’s no-one.
She looked. Quick. Miss Kenn out of earshot. Sudden bent. Two kindling faces watched her bend.
Quavering the chords strayed from the air, found it again, lost chord, and lost and found it, faltering.
— Go on! Do! Sonnez!
Bending, she nipped a peak of skirt above her knee. Delayed. Taunted them still, bending, suspending, with wilful eyes.
— Sonnez!
Smack. She set free sudden in rebound her nipped elastic garter smackwarm against her smackable a woman’s warmhosed thigh.
— La cloche! cried gleeful Lenehan. Trained by owner. No sawdust there.
She smilesmirked supercilious (wept! aren’t men?), but, lightward gliding, mild she smiled on Boylan.
— You’re the essence of vulgarity, she in gliding said.
Which brings us to the matter of the different ways in which it is possible to describe reality. (What’s Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?) At a fundamental level, ontologically speaking, terms such as object, fact, property, relation and category are employed to make sense of the most basic features of reality. Prior to Immanuel Kant, (1724–1804), there was widespread consensus with regard to the framework within which disputations concerning ontology, what there is, should proceed, and varying accounts of existence, essence, substance and property were enunciated and advocated for, such as the status within ontology of universals, particulars, and individuals. Amidst such divergences there were shared objectives, discovering the fundamental nature of reality, and shared methods, dialectical argumentation, and those who abstained from such discourse and inquiry did so from a position of scepticism, committing themselves to the view that we simply lack the necessary cognitive resources to decide upon any of these matters of contention, which is a self-contradictory position as scepticism tends to be, a consistent sceptic should be sceptical about whether or not we lack the necessary cognitive resources to decide upon any of these matters of contention.
Nevertheless, there was a quite straightforward consensus among all factions that ontology was concerned with characterising the nature of reality, making it known as it really is if that is not a circular way of putting it. Kant, however, advanced a suggestion that ontology is rather concerned with enunciating the nature of reality as it is known to human cognition, and not as it is in itself. In agreement with the sceptics he denied our access to a world in itself, but in disagreement with the sceptics he believed there is still good reason to be partaking in ontology for there was still an account to be presented of the fundamental structures by which the world is disclosed to us.
Inquiry into the essential qualities of the mind, or of society, or whatever, of necessity tend towards an unproblematic view of such matters rather than towards their real complexity. That is to say, the concern is with valid, reliable and objective interpretations which supposedly hold true over time, the implication of which is that there is a reality independent of the one conducting his or her research and that it can be known and hence laid bare. It has been pre-supposed that this has been undermined somewhat by post-modernism and a concomitant emergence and development of a number of different approaches to such qualitative inquiry but Hegel’s phenomenology already put forth an alternative. The Hegelian phenomenological method studies phenomena with the purpose of educating the reader towards a standpoint of purely conceptual thought from which philosophy can be done. Through such engagement one inhabits so to speak a series of successive phenomenal worlds, including what appear somewhat like configurations of human social life, interlinking forms of social existence and thought within which participants in such forms of social life conceive of themselves and the world, such forms mapping onto the history of western European civilization from the Greeks (and so much like Ulysses) to the present.
The discussion of epic consciousness in the section on The Spiritual Work of Art in the Phenomenology of Spirit evokes Mnemosyne, goddess of Memory, mother of Calliope and the muses. In the epic various sides of self-consciousness engage in a dialectic which takes the form of a pictorial narrative. These involve universals, particulars, and individuals, and it is the minstrel that is the real power and which unites the whole picture, bringing all together through the might of his or her muse, Mnemosyne, though one presumes her daughter as well, Calliope. Though not present in the narrative he or she projects him or herself into the heroes who occur in it:
‘The external existence of this picture-thinking, language, is the earliest language, the Epic as such, which contains the universal content of the world, universal at least in the sense of completeness, though not indeed as the universality of thought. The Minstrel is the individual and actual Spirit from whom, as a subject of this world, it [the world] is produced and by whom it is borne. His ‘pathos’ is not the stupefying power of Nature but Mnemosyne, recollection and a gradually developed inwardness, the remembrance of essence that formerly was directly present. He is the organ that vanishes in its content; what counts is not his own self but his Muse, his universal song. What, however, is in fact present is the syllogism in which the extreme of universality, the world of the gods, is linked with individuality, with the Minstrel, through the middle term of particularity, The middle term is the nation in its heroes, who are individual men like the Minstrel, but presented only in idea, and are thereby at the same time universal, like the free extreme of universality, the gods’.
The social world is comprised of multiple realities and perspectives, each one as relevant as any other and we construct this world through interpretation of it and through actions based upon those interpretations. One may suppose that were a particular inquiry to adopt such a relativist position and consider interpretations as legitimate then any one account cannot claim to have precedence over any other account. Is there an objective reality or are there multiple realities? The latter would imply that nothing can ever be known for certain. But thinking in terms of whether one reality has precedence over another reflects the all too common preoccupation with the antithesis between truth and falsity, the truth or falsity of realism or of relativism in this case, a superficial and dogmatic way to proceed. An appropriate method of inquiry should rather take on the nature of dialectic, which is to say, the avoidance of over-simplifying through rigid oppositions, or the resolution of oppositions through the taking up of one side against another. On the contrary, the illusory manner by which dichotomies underlie philosophical disputes are to be identified, for the integration of contrary elements in the search for an Hegelian middle ground whereby some preferred aspect in the interpretation of the text may be drawn from one particular standpoint and another drawn from its apparent opposite.
There is an objective and subjective reality and an Hegelian middle ground adopts neither position but one midway between the two, the existence of an independent reality, a world that has an existence independent of our perception of it, and a denial that there can be direct access to that reality, emphasising instead representation not reproduction of social phenomena. The nature of the intellect consists in this immediate unity of being and seeing, observing and being are inseparably united. ‘If I were a king’, said Meister Eckhart, ‘and did not know it, I should not really be a king’. Phenomenology does not reveal what there is but examines the experience that consciousness makes of what it takes to be there. Consciousness simultaneously distinguishes itself from something, and at the same time relates itself to it. Being for consciousness is knowing. Being in itself truth. The Phenomenology is an epic Bildungsroman or formative, educational opus in itself.
‘OUR Lord saith that the Kingdom of God is near us. Yea, the Kingdom of God is within us as St Paul saith ‘our salvation is nearer than when we believed’. Now we should know in what manner the Kingdom of God is near us. Therefore let us pay diligent attention to the meaning of the words. If I were a king, and did not know it, I should not really be a king. But, if I were fully convinced that I was a king, and all mankind coincided in my belief, and I knew that they shared my conviction, I should indeed be a king, and all the wealth of the king would be mine. But, if one of these three conditions were lacking, I should not really be a king’.
- Meister Eckhart, (c. 1260 — c. 1328), ‘Sermons: The Nearness of the Kingdom’.
Coming up next:
Euterpe, the muse of music, song and lyric poetry.
Notes to Finnegans Wake quotation:
1. donkey’s years: a very long time.
2. bout: a round at fighting; and a contest, match, trial of strength, and bout (French Slang), penis.
3. bare/hairy: Genesis 27:11: ‘Esau my brother is a hairy man’; and Heber and Heremon, legendary progenitors of the Irish race.
4. cornflower: plant with blue, pink or white rays.
5. BALLYMUN: Village, North Dublin suburb on road to Naul.
6. muskrose: (so called from its musky odour) a rambling rose (Rosa moschata), having large fragrant white flowers, in panicled clusters[ and dog rose, prickly wild rose with delicate pink or white scentless flowers (native to Europe).
7. RUSH: Village and seaside resort, County Dublin, 18 miles North of Dublin; and sweetrush, a marsh herb with long leaves.
8. townland: in Ireland, a division of land of varying extent; and, a territorial division, a township.
9. twined: of a plant, grow so as to spiral around a support.
10. whitethorn: a hawthorn.
11. figure: to adorn or mark with figures, to embellish or ornament with a design or pattern.
12. Moyvalley (Irish): town, County Kildare, on the Liffey river (from Irish Magh Bhealaigh: Plain of the Path).
13. maroon: a large kind of sweet chestnut native to Southern Europe; and Knockmaroon Hill, just west of Phoenix Park (also, a western gate of the park); and Cnoc na Mabhan (Gaelic), ‘hill of the dead persons’.
14. chiliad: 1000 years.
15. perihelion: that point in the orbit of a planet at which it is nearest to the sun; and perihelios (Greek), around-the-sun.
16. Fomhor (fower) (Gaelic): legendary pirates harassing pre-Milesian colonists; anglic. Fomorians. Three hundred years after the Flood, Partholón, who, like the Gaels, is a descendant of Noah’s son Japheth, settles in Ireland with his three sons and their people. After ten years of peace war breaks out with the Fomorians, a race of evil seafarers led by Cichol Gricenchos. The Partholonians are victorious, but their victory is short-lived. In a single week they are wiped out by a plague — five thousand men and four thousand women — and are buried on the Plain of Elta to the southwest of Dublin, in an area that is still called Tallaght, which means ‘plague grave’. A single man survives the plague, Tuan mac Cairill, who (like Fintán mac Bóchra) survives for centuries and undergoes a succession of metamorphoses, so that he can act as a witness of later Irish history.
17. brittle: to cut to pieces.
18. teeth; and oath; and tuath (tue) (Gaelic), region, territory; and folk; and Tuatha De Danann (tue a previous wave of inhabitants of Ireland. They came from four northern cities, Falias, Gorias, Murias and Finias, where they acquired their occult skills and attributes. They arrived in Ireland, on or about May 1 (the date of the festival of Bealtaine), on dark clouds, although later versions rationalise this by saying they burned their ships to prevent retreat, and the ‘clouds’ were the smoke produced. Led by their king, Nuada, they fought the First Battle of Magh Tuiredh (Moytura), on the west coast, in which they defeated and displaced the native Fir Bolg, who then inhabited Ireland. In the battle, Nuada lost an arm to their champion, Sreng. Since Nuada was no longer “unblemished”, he could not continue as king and was replaced by the half-Fomorian Bres, who turned out to be a tyrant. The Fomorians were mythological enemies of the people of Ireland, often equated with the mythological “opposing force” such as the Greek Titans to the Olympians, and during Bres’s reign they imposed great tribute on the Tuatha Dé, who became disgruntled with their new king’s oppressive rule and lack of hospitality. By this time Nuada had his lost arm replaced by a working silver one by the physician Dian Cecht and the wright Creidhne (and later with a new arm of flesh and blood by Dian Cecht’s son Miach). Bres was removed from the kingship, having ruled for seven years, and Nuada was restored. He ruled for twenty more years.
19. oxman: a man who tends or drives oxen; and ‘Oxman’, viking (as in Oxmantown, part of North Dublin).
20. firebug: arsonist, the fire-fly; and Fir Bolga (fir bulgu) (Gaelic), Bags Men, third legendary colonists of Ireland. In far antiquity the Fir Bolg were the rulers of Ireland (at the time called Ériu) immediately before the arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danann, or the Children of Danu, who many interpret as the Gaelic gods. The King of the Tuatha Dé Danann, Nuada, sued for half the island for his people, but the Fir Bolg king refused. They met at the Pass of Balgatan, and the ensuing battle — the Battle of Mag Tuired — went on for four days. During the battle Sreng, the champion of the Fir Bolg, challenged Nuada to single combat. With one sweep of his sword, Sreng cut off Nuada’s right hand. However, the Fir Bolg were defeated and their king, Eochaidh, was slain by a goddess, The Morrígan, though the fierce efforts of their champion Sreng saved them from utter loss. The Tuatha Dé Danann were so touched by their nobility and spirit they gave them one quarter of the island as their own. They chose Connacht and are mentioned very little after this in the myths.
21. throw up: to erect or construct hastily; to cease definitely to do, quit, give up. 22. Jerrybuild, to build flimsily of materials of poor quality; and Jerry/Kevin, Jerry, short for Jeremiah, is a cognate of Irish Diarmaid; Kevin is a cognate of Greek Eugenios.
23. Little Green Market, Dublin.
24. William Wordsworth: My Heart Leaps Up When I Behold: ‘The Child is father to the Man’.
25. hear.
26. pax (Latin): peace; and peace pact sealed.
27. button hole: the hole or slit through which a button passes, an opening like a buttonhole; a flower or small bunch of flowers worn pinned to the lapel or in the buttonhole, especially at weddings, formal dances, etc.
28. quadrille: to dance quadrilles (a square dance, of French origin, usually performed by four couples, and containing five sections or figures, each of which is a complete dance in itself).
29. whiff : a slight puff or gust of wind, a breath.
30. waft: to blow softly, to send through the air.
31. Killaloe: Cill Dha Lua (kilgalu) (gael), Church of [St.] Dalua, Co. Clare, site of Brian Boru’s palace; anglic. Killaloe.
