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Dante’s Wake

James Joyce famously said that he was happy to go down in history as “the cut-and-paste man”, and perhaps no other writer is so promiscuous with references and allusions. But whatever his flirtations with Shakespeare or Homer, he was always going steady with Dante. Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy (the epic poem in which the poet himself journeys through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven) was Joyce’s all-time literary crush, and no matter how unique Finnegans Wake might appear, almost every important element of its design has a logical antecedent in the work of the 14th Century poet.

For example, take the eccentrically detailed use Joyce makes of his own autobiography. Not only does he detail obsessively the geography and society of his hometown of Dublin and the people he knew, he includes references to people and events that only close friends and relations of the author could possibly understand. Ideas he had for books he had in adolescence, stories his father used to tell, his predilection for women’s underwear... That’s a pretty weird thing to do by any standards, but I’ve no doubt that Joyce took courage in his decision from Dante’s choice to fill his work with references to Florentine politics, meetings with deceased Florentine historical figures and old friends, and even to personal aspects of his own life: for example, his status as a political exile, and most importantly, his love for Beatrice Portinari, a Florentine woman who became Dante’s Dulcinea, an idealised representation first of courtly and finally of divine love.

Even the most difficult aspect of the Wake, its language, can be illuminated somewhat by the Comedy. In Dante’s Italy, Latin was still used as the common written language. But Dante believed that a standard vernacular Italian could replace Latin as the language of poetry in Italy. Unfortunately, standard Italian did not exist, so Dante had to invent it. The Comedy was composed in a combination of Italian dialects from across the peninsula. Obviously, when Joyce decided to combine however many dozens of dialects and languages to create the language of the Wake, his intention was not to create a new standard dialect of English. But he surely had in mind those Medieval Italians who read Dante’s work for the first time and discovered there a new language, equally familiar and unfamiliar to all.

But it’s in the content of the two works that the most interesting similarities lie. Dante’s poem describes a literal journey into the Underworld, but that setting is only the pretext for an exploration of the spiritual struggle with sin and the quest for moral purity. Joyce’s book describes a figurative journey into the “underworld” of a dream, but its true subject is the emotional conflict of the individual psyche.

The question of allegory takes us to Dante’s theory of poetics, which was based on Biblical scholarship in the Middle Ages. Medieval theologians interpreted the Bible on four levels of allegorical meaning: the literal, the typological (an allegory to the story of Jesus), the tropological (a moral rule for everyday life), and the anagogical (related to the nature of the Afterlife). Church doctrine taught that these allegorical meanings were the result of divine inspiration, but Dante thought that poets should imitate the system, composing their work with three layers of allegory concealed within. So the Comedy is at once the literal story of Dante’s pilgrimage, an allegory for the death and resurrection of Jesus, a detailed exploration of the nature of sin and virtue, and complete geography of the Afterlife.

When Joyce adapted this system for Ulysses, he did so in a fairly clear and similarly hierarchical fashion. The story of Leopold Bloom is at once a vividly literal portrayal of turn-of-the-century Dublin life and an allegory for the story of Odysseus. But in Finnegans Wake the system explodes. There is no literal layer at all, only a shifting series of varyingly coherent scenarios from which allegorical senses erupt in every direction (of which the most mysterious is ironically the most mundane: the identities of the dreamer and his family). In the Wake, a Medieval love of ordered systems and hierarchical lists collides with a very modern loss of trust in their validity. At the centre of the Comedy lies God. At the centre of the Wake lies the chaos of a mind at war with itself. It is Dante’s natural post-Freudian heir.

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Page 44: leave it to Hosty

Page 38: the gossiple

Page 14: our herodotary Mammon Lujius

Her Royal Majesty: My illustrations in print!

Imagine my surprise when Harriet Alida Lye, the editor of an arts magazine called Her Royal Majesty, contacted me to ask if she could print some of my illustrations in the latest issue. No, I was much more surprised than that. Anyway, the launch party for the new issue took place last Tuesday, and since it’s the first time my work was ever printed in a magazine, I felt like I should probably hose myself down and emerge from the Wake Cave to pick up a copy, stand around awkwardly, and generally feel not cool enough to get in. (The bouncer seemed to agree.) Photos of the event taken by Cara Tobe can be found here. I’m happy to say that I appear in none of them. The theme of the issue is “Doubles” (which seems like a pretty perfect fit for the Wake), and it’s a really great magazine, with a cover drawn by the brilliant Badaude (of London Walks), some great poetry, fiction and visual art, and artefacts from a collaborative performance by James Franco which is frankly disgusting. Check it out right now! It’s available either on pdf or in print (I’m right on the first page! Suck it, James Franco!) and the previous numbers are definitely worth a look as well. Harriet also posted a Q&A with me on the HRM blog a few weeks ago. I meant to mention it earlier, but I think I was too busy cleaning baby vomit off myself or something.

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I’m not totally sure about the text placement here... but it’s past my bedtime.

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Page 32: The sigla H.C.E.

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In order to ease my way back into sound work habits, I’m doing some overdue revisions.

Soul of the Devil! Did ye think me dead?

Where the hell have I been? Well, it turns out that I grossly overestimated the amount of time and energy that I would have during Theo’s first two months, and as a result spent the whole of August wishing I were asleep. Fortunately, I was able to steal a fifteen-minute nap several days ago, and now I feel like a new man. The baby aside, it’s been a pretty exciting few months. With luck I’ll be posting more about that in time.

Meanwhile, my big news is that I have started selling art prints online! My store can be found here, or by clicking the “shop” link above. There are only three illustrations posted so far, but I’ll be adding more over the next few days, and I’d love to hear from anyone who’d like to see a specific image available!

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What a warm time we were in there!

I just wanted to offer a quick explanation for the inactivity around here this month. My wife Melanie gave birth to our son Theo last Friday, and the preparation for his arrival proved something of a distraction. (I demanded an apology for this, but none was forthcoming.) I hope that my life will soon settle down sufficiently for me to make up for lost time, but meanwhile I appreciate your patience!

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I can’t promise I won’t clean this up and repost it tomorrow, but I‘ve been getting quite impatient to post a new one.

Attention makes me uncomfortable

I never really know how to react to praise. Generally I respond by mumbling and looking at my feet. Nevertheless, I really appreciate the generous comments and words of support I’ve received about my project from blogs and websites. It makes a big difference to know that the time I’m spending on this, time which could be otherwise spent rewatching Battlestar Galactica and eating chocolate hob nobs, is valued by people that I’ve never even met. So I want to extend my sincerest thanks (in many cases long overdue) to those sites that have mentioned me. And from now on, I’ll be keeping track of them on the site’s “About” page. I know I’ve forgotten some, so please let me know if you don’t see yourself and I’ll add you!

Thanks to:

Biblioklept Daniel Silliman In Someone Else’s Dream Weaver of the Wind A Piece of Monologue De Contrabas James Joyce Quarterly Ron Silliman Languagehat Harriet Staff, Poetry Foundation The Rumpus The Millions Shannon Hubbell Black Book Jonathan Shipley John Coulthart Read Eat Slip Passiontask No Pun Intended A Building Roam

Astrid Wittebolle, Knack.be Largehearted Boy Hello World 3:AM The New Inquiry @ Open Salon Scamp.ie The Glass-Bottom Blog Coudal.com Sean McGrath Behemot.si Who Killed Lemmy Caution? Wordnik Too Gallant Stan Carey Parislist Paris Weekends

I’m also excited to see that I’ve been listed in the University of Texas at Austin’s online Joyce bibliography, The James Joyce Checklist!

Technology 1:0 Stephen

I just fixed a problem with my email. If you sent me a message and I didn’t respond, please send it again!

Pictures from Bloomsday and After

Last Thursday was Bloomsday. It was also the night that the winners of the Paris Literary Prize were announced at the Société des gens de lettres. And (as I’ve been repeating over and over like an excitable child) my work was exhibited at the event! Here are some pictures to prove that I didn’t make up the whole thing. Many thanks to Sylvia Whitman and everyone at Shakespeare’s, and to the de Groot Foundation, sponsors of the prize. Being invited to display my work at your event made me feel honoured to the point of discomfort (as I’m sure they could tell. If you think I’m self-deprecating on this site, you should see me in real life). And thank you, Haejin, foundation polyvalente, whose skills at matting and hanging are spoken of in hushed tones by primitive peoples who mistake them for magic. Congratulations also to the winner of the prize, Rosa Rankin-Gee, and the two runners-up, Adam Biles and Agustin Maes! I look forward to seeing your books in print! Afterwards, the pictures were taken to Shakespeare and Company bookstore, where they will be on display until June 30th. You can see some more pictures from the award ceremony and the reading on Friday here.

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