Alternate post title: "What the thunder said."
This chapter opened with a description of how the children's games at dusk would be broadcast across the world. I suggested that the means of transmission was thunder (see my earlier post), which we know from FW to speak in many languages, 100 letters at a time. And we also learned that the game, described as a play with actors, would be followed by an "afterenactment" that is a Magnificent Transformation Scene of the marriage of day and night in a dawn of peace.
So what happens at the end of the book? Do we get our M.T.S.?
The appearance of the father after the final unsuccessful guess of Glugg is arguably where the scene begins. It is part of the play however, or at least the ongoing drama: his appearance is noted by the narrator as Issy's girls are celebrating their win ("reechoable mirthpeals and general thumbtonosery," 253.27-28), but not as the father, but (the implication of course being HCE) as a "longsuffering laird of Lucanhof" (253.32). He is also implied to be deus ex machina: a "god of all machineries" is invoked by the narrator (253.33) who is (feigning, I think) surprise at his appearance, playing along with the play. The children's game, which is the play itself, is over with Glugg's final failure, but the drama continues, and the scene is set for the transformation scene. So, do we get it?
After speculation about this figure's identity, and talk about his consort as well, the play itself is interrupted: notice the interesting typography at the end of 255.11, where the sentence is cut off with "---!" and a new paragraph begins, "Jehosophat, what doom is here!" I see this as the actual appearance of the father, outside of the play, the fourth wall definitively fallen down, the Mime of Mick, Nick, and the Maggies over, and the Great Transformation Scene which started to take shape cut short. There will be no such thing. It is not even completely dark yet.
The father is here, but the mother brings the children home, upstairs over the pub to begin their period of studying. Issy follows somberly. The door is closed and thunders:
Lukkedoerendunandurraskewdylooshoofermoyportertooryzooysphalnabortansporthaokansakroidverjkapakkapuk. (257.27-28)The commentators say this thunderword is full of variations of "shut the door" in Danish, Irish, German, French, and other languages. This is the first time we hear the thunder in book II. It was promised as the vehicle of the radio play at the beginning of II.1, but now it happens extradiegetically, outside of the play, which was abruptly stopped short before catharsis could be achieved.
Now the curtain falls and the play is applauded. So the audience saw the play of the children's game, and its interruption, seeing the children brought home and shut into their upper chamber...and applauded it all, as if the play was the whole.
We are eager for dawn but we know that, even if the kids could pull off the Magnificent Transformation Scene, that dawn would only have been depicted as a false unity of opposites (day and night), an empty infinity. To me, the promise of a false or empty reconciliation at the end is made up for by the strange unity (this is Derrida's phrase) of the play and its dismantling. The Great Transformation Scene was meant to be its supplement and, like a satyr play maybe, to bring a sense of ending. Something else ended up supplementing it, and, perhaps by some subterfuge, gave the audience that feeling (after all, their applause is noted three times and louder each time, over pp.257-58). The curtain falls but the night rolls on.
* * *
I have no desire to go academic here, but this idea of "strange unity" is something I've been working through as I'm trying to chart out some next steps for my day-job research. I discovered its usefulness for my reading of the end of II.1 as I was writing this post. I do often write down notes during the day to flesh out formally when I sit down in the late evenings to write here, but the clear and resolved object of observation and my description of it usually comes out in the moment. I want to sit with this idea of "strange unity" a bit more, because it can be confessional.
What value does my normally finegrained discussion (alternating with broad characterizations and sweeping generalizations, I'll admit) of difficult passages in a book that, until recently, I was mostly embarrassed to admit I read, have for anyone who might read it? Outside of fellow enthusiasts? I think I write for them and for myself; I said at the beginning of this writing project that I wanted to find my voice and even my own self while reading FW and writing about it.
I think my life is a strange unity, and it is OK. I don't really mean my entire life, my being-for-others and for-myself, me as a spouse and a parent. Fully aware that I am extremely lucky to have the luxury to do this, I am only thinking about my intellectual endeavors, which encompasses my job and my hobby, how I find and make meaning in my own time, and how I spend a significant amount of time with the loved ones in my family...loving art and beauty, and the self, teaching my children what that means, finding it all together; what you could call my spiritual life (but not in a Catholic way)? Today at a music recital at my daughters' school the principal gave a short speech at the end thanking the children and encouraging them to continue playing their instruments, and said that it is good for the Geist (pointing to her head) as well as the Herz (pointed to her heart). I immediately thought, isn't Geist both? It is "mind" but if the mind is always growing and does so while on the highway of despair (I'm a desperate Hegelian unfortunately), I think that "heart" is equally involved in the process.
[This was a bit of a sidetrack. I've left sentences unfinished, extra spaces followed by lonely periods waiting for thoughts to be completed. I knew what they would be, but I didn't want to forget the next ideas, which would have made perfect sense, so I skipped ahead. But as I go back to fill in the blanks I'm left wondering what I was thinking, and wishing I could write and think linearly, write as fast as I think, or vice versa. I'll fill them in...you won't guess which ones...but I'll try to be better.]
It all remains a strange unity. In a very practical way, first of all: I didn't pursue a PhD in the spiritual matters I always felt the most deeply about: poetry, James Joyce, Vergil...for practical reasons maybe? I'm a literature guy, and sure, what I do professionally is that. The connections are manifold and I gain on each side of the divide. I read James Joyce at night and I struggle through a draft of a book about ancient novellas during the day. But I could never have done a dissertation on Joyce, for example, or published academic articles. I probably could now, twenty years later, after learning the trade and realizing that some distance is good; that strange unity means heterogeneity, which spurs growth. But it only is a possibility because of that strange unity of myself across the things I love and I like. To find a way to be good at the things I like (Hebrew and Egyptian philology, narratology) and to make a living in pursuit of them, researching and teaching, discovering things, preserving a small part of the record of humanity. It's all very good and I like it; I'm dedicated to it, devoted even. I hope that I can continue to do it and make a living. I've sacrificed a lot to get here and am highly skilled and specialized, and belong. I deserve it, even though it may not materialize.
But there's the negative side, a surfacing of that deeper drive whose name we don't want to say. It's why I have two blogs, this one, and an official one for updates about my research...which one am I writing on the most? It's clear. Or why, the more work I have to do in the day job, the more time I'm spending with FW: I am finishing my first book with a goal to have a complete draft by mid April (it's going well and according to schedule), but I'm also...reading FW in 65 days and blogging about it every day (and re-committing myself to that goal, I promise!). Don't tell my supervisor. The strange unity is fragile and can be problematic but it keeps me me.
(Challenge) Live out my life of strange unity; absolutely. But the sense of a deeper unity beyond the strange remains. Or, putting it another way, the strangeness wants to have a payoff beyond the two terms kept adjacent but never blended. Derrida argues that what is supplementary, by a certain logic, ends up being more essential than the core thing itself. Something in my life that brings them together is what I am doing right (write) now---now. This is the only place it can happen.
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