Episode II.4 reunites two of the earliest vignettes-- T&I and Mamalujo-- immediately following the first, ROC.
In 1923, Mmlj seemed like a short afterthought inserted into a long, melodramatic boy-girl soap opera. A year later Mmlj was published on its own, and the first part of T&I (the stereotypes' kiss) was set aside, while the second part (their dramas) was abandoned (probably rejected not lost).
When they were reunited, Mmlj took priority, with T&I's kiss split into many very short passages inserted out of sequence... maybe to show the kiss through Mmlj's eyes? (The 'kiss' section didn't really have much of an internal story arc that needed preserving.) Issy's characteristics are especially freely redistributed.
It's frustrating that the dominant literary effect in Mmlj seems to be simple repetition with variation, because it's BORING. Or did Joyce come up with a way to deepen their boringness? Maybe rehearsing the other major themes in this boring minor key?
Horseshows, history, misremembering, drowning, divorce, voyeurism...
And this is finally positioned after the kiddies play and study, and after a long tavern scene.
And T&I's original perfect hyper-stereotypes seem to have completely lost their interest for Joyce, as if he started there as an exercise whose value was solely in moving beyond it...
Showing posts with label episodes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label episodes. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 30, 2014
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
Page 260 (II.2)
Assigned reading
(12? pars [] plus 107 notes)
[secondary]
[McH]
[*]
synopsis: 'the route back to the tavern — him and his mausoleum'
"Twas off the blue Canaries, a glorious summer day"
FDV: "So let us follow them. Down Livy Lane, along Mezzofanti Mall, then across Lavatery Square, up Tycho Brahe Terrace, along Isaac Newton Avenue through S. Catechista's gate till"
2DV: "So let us follow them quick lunch. Down Livy Lane, along Mezzofanti Mall, then across Lavatery Square, up Tycho Brahe Terrace, along Isaac Newton Avenue through S. Catechista's gate till"
VI.A "whirlwind lunch"
3DV: "Hither let us as we have rest and followed them, quick lunch, buy our lefts, halt, long Livius Lane, Mid Mezzofanti Mall, diagonising Lavatery Square, up Tycho Brahe Crescent, Shouldering Berkeley's Alley? under Saint Cecilia's Archeway,"
mysteries:
[00:00-01:22]
II.2: 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308
synopsis: 'the route back to the tavern — him and his mausoleum'
"Twas off the blue Canaries, a glorious summer day"
FDV: "So let us follow them. Down Livy Lane, along Mezzofanti Mall, then across Lavatery Square, up Tycho Brahe Terrace, along Isaac Newton Avenue through S. Catechista's gate till"
2DV: "So let us follow them quick lunch. Down Livy Lane, along Mezzofanti Mall, then across Lavatery Square, up Tycho Brahe Terrace, along Isaac Newton Avenue through S. Catechista's gate till"
VI.A "whirlwind lunch"
3DV: "Hither let us as we have rest and followed them, quick lunch, buy our lefts, halt, long Livius Lane, Mid Mezzofanti Mall, diagonising Lavatery Square, up Tycho Brahe Crescent, Shouldering Berkeley's Alley? under Saint Cecilia's Archeway,"
mysteries:
[00:00-01:22]
II.2: 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308
[Night lessons (II.2)]
Suppose....
When Joyce wrote the Muddest Thick vignette in 1926, it somehow fell outside his outline for Books One and Three, and planted a stake deep in the unknown future for Book Two. The guessing game of II.1 began to come together in 1930 and was publishable by 1933, but the bridging text between the end of II.1 and the Muddest Thick first led to the unusual false start of 1934's 'Draft Six'.
In a 1939 letter to Budgen, Joyce described this chapter's technique as "a reproduction of a schoolboy's (and schoolgirl's) old classbook complete with marginalia by the twins, who change sides at half time, footnotes by the girl, who doesn't, a Euclid diagram, funny drawings, etc." Of this, only the Euclid diagram was fixed when he set to work in 1934. Shem resembled Joyce-the-teacher (cf SD in Ulysses-Nestor).
Suppose...
The 1934 rewrite was inspired by the idea of moving Issy's letter to a footnote, and transferring most of the evocations of her inattention to footnotes as well... with the twins' parallel marginal notes as an afterthought. (Hayman speculates that the typescript of draft six had wider margins in anticipation of this change.)
So can we tell if Joyce imagined the text of this supposed classbook to have been written first, describing perhaps the previous incarnation of the kids, with all three sets of marginalia then being added as they (re)read their previous story together?
A weak consensus agrees that this scene takes place upstairs at HCE's tavern (to be featured in III.3), in the evening just after the guessing game of the previous chapter. HCE and ALP appeared at the site of the game, and brought the children home specifically to do these lessons.
(How sure are we it's a tavern? Is it open yet? Is HCE free to leave on errands? Has everyone had dinner?)
But II.2 begins with a long 'route' (way too long to be the route from the games to the tavern) and yet another re-consideration of the parents and kids... with the kids all the while commenting ambiguously on this description of their own situation, which text Joyce seems to consider a center of their lessons.
(If the kids are studying history shouldn't their main lesson be HCE's past and future, and his battles and falls?)
The guessing game was a competition between Shem and Shaun for Issy's love. How are these lessons different, then? (Is it more than sexism that Joyce makes Issy characteristically inattentive to the lessons?)
In II.2 Shem clearly has the upper hand, specifically his sexual sophistication, while he obviously didn't in II.1.
[Tindall] [Gordon]
(There's no simple way to present the marginalia as a linear text, especially if the original pagebreaks are eliminated, as in FW2. I suggest it be re-imagined in terms of separate paragraphs, each with a heading from the righthand margin, renumbered footnotes, and bracketed insertions for the lefthand marginalia.)
The three styles of note probably deserve three fonts, and three tones of voice when read aloud. (But since we're utterly clueless about what voices JAJ would have picked, one risks getting it dead wrong.)
When Joyce wrote the Muddest Thick vignette in 1926, it somehow fell outside his outline for Books One and Three, and planted a stake deep in the unknown future for Book Two. The guessing game of II.1 began to come together in 1930 and was publishable by 1933, but the bridging text between the end of II.1 and the Muddest Thick first led to the unusual false start of 1934's 'Draft Six'.
In a 1939 letter to Budgen, Joyce described this chapter's technique as "a reproduction of a schoolboy's (and schoolgirl's) old classbook complete with marginalia by the twins, who change sides at half time, footnotes by the girl, who doesn't, a Euclid diagram, funny drawings, etc." Of this, only the Euclid diagram was fixed when he set to work in 1934. Shem resembled Joyce-the-teacher (cf SD in Ulysses-Nestor).
Suppose...
The 1934 rewrite was inspired by the idea of moving Issy's letter to a footnote, and transferring most of the evocations of her inattention to footnotes as well... with the twins' parallel marginal notes as an afterthought. (Hayman speculates that the typescript of draft six had wider margins in anticipation of this change.)
So can we tell if Joyce imagined the text of this supposed classbook to have been written first, describing perhaps the previous incarnation of the kids, with all three sets of marginalia then being added as they (re)read their previous story together?
A weak consensus agrees that this scene takes place upstairs at HCE's tavern (to be featured in III.3), in the evening just after the guessing game of the previous chapter. HCE and ALP appeared at the site of the game, and brought the children home specifically to do these lessons.
(How sure are we it's a tavern? Is it open yet? Is HCE free to leave on errands? Has everyone had dinner?)
But II.2 begins with a long 'route' (way too long to be the route from the games to the tavern) and yet another re-consideration of the parents and kids... with the kids all the while commenting ambiguously on this description of their own situation, which text Joyce seems to consider a center of their lessons.
(If the kids are studying history shouldn't their main lesson be HCE's past and future, and his battles and falls?)
The guessing game was a competition between Shem and Shaun for Issy's love. How are these lessons different, then? (Is it more than sexism that Joyce makes Issy characteristically inattentive to the lessons?)
In II.2 Shem clearly has the upper hand, specifically his sexual sophistication, while he obviously didn't in II.1.
[Tindall] [Gordon]
(There's no simple way to present the marginalia as a linear text, especially if the original pagebreaks are eliminated, as in FW2. I suggest it be re-imagined in terms of separate paragraphs, each with a heading from the righthand margin, renumbered footnotes, and bracketed insertions for the lefthand marginalia.)
The three styles of note probably deserve three fonts, and three tones of voice when read aloud. (But since we're utterly clueless about what voices JAJ would have picked, one risks getting it dead wrong.)
Wednesday, April 9, 2014
Page 219 (II.1)
Assigned reading
(1+ par [] plus 100 notes)
[secondary]
[McH]
[*]
FDV: "Glug : the bad {black} boy of storybook who has been sent into disgrace by Mr Shemus Pannem" [1934?]
mysteries:
[00:00-01:30]
II.1: 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259
FDV: "Glug : the bad {black} boy of storybook who has been sent into disgrace by Mr Shemus Pannem" [1934?]
mysteries:
[00:00-01:30]
II.1: 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259
[Finnegans Wake, Book Two]
Clive Hart suggested that Books One and Three display some mirror symmetry, with Book Two between them. It's sometimes called the book of the children, or, via Vico, the book of heroes.
The early vignettes of Tristan and Isolde, and Mamalujo, ended up in II.4. The Muddest Thick provided an early fulcrum for II.2.
II.1's theme of children's games is certainly universal, going back past kittens play-hunting and play-fighting. Joyce relies on Norman Douglas's "London Street Games" [1916] for phrases and themes.
We should expect the children's games to rehearse the interactions of the adults: a temptation, a sin, a cad, a battle, a fall, a river to wash things clean. The main game that Joyce chooses has Shem trying to guess the color of Issy's underwear, with Shaun's chastity as counterpoint. There are surely biographical echoes of 22yo Joyce courting 20yo Nora.
This was conceived after the Muddest Thick's scene of Shem shocking Shaun with a diagram of their mother's bottom, framing both II.1 and II.2 as the children's evening activities. A likely biographical echo imagines Joyce with his puritanical 3yrs-younger brother Stanislaus.
The early vignettes of Tristan and Isolde, and Mamalujo, ended up in II.4. The Muddest Thick provided an early fulcrum for II.2.
II.1's theme of children's games is certainly universal, going back past kittens play-hunting and play-fighting. Joyce relies on Norman Douglas's "London Street Games" [1916] for phrases and themes.
We should expect the children's games to rehearse the interactions of the adults: a temptation, a sin, a cad, a battle, a fall, a river to wash things clean. The main game that Joyce chooses has Shem trying to guess the color of Issy's underwear, with Shaun's chastity as counterpoint. There are surely biographical echoes of 22yo Joyce courting 20yo Nora.
This was conceived after the Muddest Thick's scene of Shem shocking Shaun with a diagram of their mother's bottom, framing both II.1 and II.2 as the children's evening activities. A likely biographical echo imagines Joyce with his puritanical 3yrs-younger brother Stanislaus.
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