Happy Bloomsday. Here’s the *Insane* Final Paper I Submitted for “Reading Ulysses” in College
In my final term of college (spring 2009) the economy had collapsed and left us jobless, so I escaped into the ironic joy of being an English major by enrolling in “Reading Ulysses.” Yes, it’s a tough read. But amidst the constant partying of “senior spring,” Joyce made perfect sense. Both cocky and hopeless, I submitted this final paper that annoying mimics Joyce to my professor. She kindly awarded me a B+ with only one comment: “Gutsy move, Mr Cudworth.”
May your #Bloomsday be filled with similarly silly gravitas.
“Irony in Scylla and Charybdis”
submitted: 5/29/09
“In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge?”
Which? Shush! No questions! (Reserved for the catechumen.) The questions are answers. Everything is worth writing about! Or: Nothing is. The coherence of an argument stems from the benevolence of its listener. Antagonistic poesy, sentimentalized prose, compartmentalized reflections, balked logic: subsidiaries to the contemporary English essay, the two-dimensional manifestation of a germinating mind-flower. It’s all gone to pot! But this is not where the core emotions converge. Get on the level. This is where the ‘antagonistic’ ‘sentiments’ and ‘reflections’ ‘converge,’ ‘reduced to their simplest forms.’
Who was the first undergraduate to parody Joyce?
Clement Gossamer, age 19, Vassar College. Drafted for the Good War before sentimentality became second nature. The first nature being complacency. They say that Jackson Pollack freed the line but in fact it was Mr Gossamer circa spring 1941 with his essay entitled, ‘Inside Ineluctable Irony.’ This personal essay consisted of 4,000 words (≈). Verdict: ineffective. Expelled from his Latin class for “misuse of subjunctive, celent.” But this is an age of judicial activism. Subjugate precedent. Isolate antecedents. Clause phrases. Glut parses.
Why did Gossamer choose to write on Joyce at that particular place, particular time, and particular subject?
Consult Sosostris. And because it was lusciously controversial. His Navy father, Claude Gossamer, had procured a copy from a passing shipmate en route from Gibraltar. It was all very exciting, at the time.
What was the first sentence of Gossamer’s personal essay?
“I don’t believe it, that ‘A man of genius makes no mistakes.’”
How did the essay asymptotically approach the Beauty of the Magi Joyce?
It didn’t. Gossamer was a problem child with an absent father who had long been away canoodling at sea. Gossamer’s essay, here quoted at length, began:
I don’t believe it, that ‘A man of genius makes no mistakes.’ But if genius were to make a mistake, it would be ironic. Irony is a difficult word. For difficult reasons. It comes from the Greek, eironeía: dissimulation. Which I don’t think is a very good synonym for irony. Some types of irony are dramatic irony and Socratic irony but Joyce uses a third type of irony that he invented. We will call this irony ‘post-dramatic-irony’ because it begs the question that we answer with ‘what the next step after irony is’ which is what Joyce uses in his ‘seminal’ novel, Ulysses. Joyce, few would deny, was a genius. But few would also argue conversely that he did not make any mistakes, which he did. Granted, it is Stephen Dedaulus who says the sentence, ‘A man of genius makes no mistakes,’ but any one reading the novel can see that this is obviously meant to be Joyce as a young student essentially prophesizing what Joyce will become (i.e. a genius). This is the ironic part. In the past, specifically attic tragedy, dramatic irony was an irony that the reader and author could enjoy because we knew more than the characters in the story. With Joyce, this is not the case! Because Stephen is obviously Joyce, obviously Joyce was being ironic when he said that ‘genius makes no mistakes’ because everyone makes mistakes. Ergo, Joyce could not enjoy his own irony. In this way, he was a genius, effectively ostracizing himself from enjoying the irony in his own novel. But perhaps he could enjoy it. After all, Stephen also says in Scylla and Charybdis that, “The schoolmen were schoolboys first.” Smug little Stephen! Shakespeare’s heir.
What role(s) does Shakespeare play in the narrative?
A merchant’s part. One, the narrative is broken-busted. Coitus inturruptus. Hamlet’s relationship with his mother, father. With Shakespeare. With a ghoul. Ghost. Grandfather. That far back, the seed is lost. What of cryptorchidism. Again, it is irony. It takes place, of all places, on a stage. Ergo, ‘dramatic’ irony. Shakespeare is mentioned 50 times in Ulysses by name, but how many more by report? Many more. To knock or not to knock. But everyone knows Shakespeare played a pivotal role in drama and that was the role of the ghoul, the pater-ghost, Darth Father Hamlet. Does Joyce play a similar role. In creating a father (Simon Daddylus) does the son (Stephen D [Joyce]) become the player ghost. Corpus meum. A rectangular mat was invented with seven squares and there were conclusions one could jump to, but none of these conclusions answer questions in the binary. Such as: To jump or not to jump! Joyce is not a ghost. Not yet. One day, a scholar, Shakespeare’s heir, might come along and summon him. But then there’s the question of alleles.
Did Joyce even know about helices, about the way our genetic material is passed on, how to be rich with seed is the jointure of gametes and not a metaphorical garden for ironic wombing verbs, or how the poor things he does to Poldy Bloom, sadomasochate, effeminize, enflower, and immollyate, how these verbs contribute to the irony that is the opposite of what is suspected but secretly we all hold deep within our bushes like a candle hushed by steady-sweaty palms, that is the Joycean irony?
No. That is what makes his work wax ironic.
What makes Joycean irony different from the Albeésque, Brechtian, Ionescan, or Pinteresque?
Joycean irony is biblical, canonical, and unrepeatable. And it is prose, for the most part, therefore not overly dramatic. Which is why Clement Gossamer deemed it ‘post-dramatic-irony,’ albeit pre- Albeé/Pinter, but post- Brecht/Ionesco. (Pause). Joycean post-dramatic irony stems from Stephen into Bloom and ploppy-drops into Miss Marion Bloom via Blazes yes it yes it’s yes–semen. That is Joycean irony. That there is one egg per < spermal flagella and that the acrosome that reaches the egg isn’t the strongest, nor the fastest, nor the brightest, nor the lightest, nor the kindest, nor the fullest, nor the closest, it is Bloom’s! But it dies. Poor Rudy! Milly is already some pence per maidenhead. And yes, Stephen is a factor, yes, because by Shakespearean algebra he is implicitly connected. Bloom = (Molly/Boylan) + Stephen — Rudy. The Dramatists are rarely concerned with implicit connections, which relates to the earlier point that, yes, Joyce might have made some mistakes, as evidenced in the Gabler, because implicit differentiation as applied to prose is about as accurate as squaring the circle which yet again is ironic because even π is as the gods say less than perfect. But we all are that is the point, which relates to the earlier point that Bloom’s sperm is Herculean or perhaps even better because Homer spent his time with Odysseus and Joyce spent his with Poldy Bloom. Irony is becoming important, it seems.
What, specifically, is ironic about Stephen’s implicit relationship to Bloom?
Stephen Siegfried, encumbered, smashes! the chandelier in an act of defiance, much the same way Bloom climbs back into the womb and puckers up to Molly’s rump. Because these events are both important, they needs be juxtaposed.
What would Stephen find ironic about his navigation of Scylla and Charybdis?
The fact that he prays. Requiescat! The raging rocks and shivering shocks will do that to the best of boys. Poor Stephen! Couldn’t kneel down for his mum. Ole Simon’s still kicking. Prepare for metempsychosis. The fact that Stephen lives. Mummy, the water vortex wails, a dead hole in the sundered sea, a necrid orifice. Ole Simon, the rock serpent, spits damning noxious plashes upon the deck. The fact that this is his journey. The fact that he is unknowingly on his way home to Ithaca. To pee with Poldy Bloom.
What is Stephen really afraid of when he asks himself if he’s a father if he were or if he’ll ever plant his mulberrytree in the earth or when he thinks the dankest thought of all what have I learned?
Of being a father of planting the wrong tree of learning nothing of being a Darth Father or learning too much about mulberries and not enough about the earth or about the life after middle life because he is wishing so much in his youth for genius and a national epic and a reconciliation and a future sister self apart from the fading coal of Shelley and of course he’s doing this is French and then in Latin too and his only contribution to literature was a little pip: Me! He is afraid that he doesn’t know when he is being ironic or when he is being a genius or when he will become Bloom. Or if. He is afraid that even though he doesn’t believe in all that shite his Mother’s soul still molds alone. Why can’t this be the end! He is afraid that he will be trapped forever in the womb of Dublin spitting in the River Liffey waiting for the next month or the next. Schoolboys for schoolboys. He is afraid perhaps of love that dare not speak its name.
What satisfactions does Stephen cherish?
None, save the glorification of Ireland through his contributions to Literature.
Bloom?
According to Gossamer: Kidneys, rumps, conversations with Stephen. Also according to Gossamer:
Poldy Bloom is a lost cause, a sad man with a sadder plan. His only hope is that he can perhaps one day reconcile with Molly Bloom, his one true love, and enjoy the bucolic life they were meant for. To escape the Womb! Alas, he returns, as he always does, to the sullied marriage bed. The baked meat crumbs at the marriage bed-table. Poor Bloomy Hamlet!
Some visible signs of infidelity?
Flushed cheeks, curled follicles, semen under the nails, and in this case of wooing: meat crumbs.
Is this modernism, post-modernism, or high modernism?
Answer: D. Nothing is sacred. Everything matters. Meat crumbs. Erections. The yap of a doggy now dead. “Yggod won daed.” Limps. S. John Nepomuc. Moses. Haines Love. Freud convinced us that our dreams matter. Some nut convinced us that our lives are dreams. Everything is relevant. That’s ironic. Funeral baked meats. Paddy Dignam didn’t have no meats to bake, just orifices to fill, spilled out in the street. Like a rack of lamb.
Was Paddy Dignam really like a rack of lamb?
No. That was Bloom. And Jesus. Sometimes Stephen, contextually.
Is there anything we know that Stephen doesn’t?
Tough question. Certain technological advancements. And of course we have Frank O’Hara, who was probably secretly who Stephen really wanted to be, that damn pocket poet! But ceteris parabis, no.
What is the definition of post-dramatic-irony, as posited by Clement Gossamer?
“Post-dramatic irony: a pseudo-autobiographical character expresses hopes or fears, such that a future reader is aware of the author’s failures or successes, thus ostracizing the author as a player in the enjoyment of irony.”
How can we tell when Stephen is being ironic in Scylla and Charybdis?
While there is no litmus test for irony, especially in a work as hyperbolic and indecisive as Ulysses, readers frequently must survey Joyce’s prose for moments of authenticity. In fact, readers often face extensive iterations yielding nothing but dead ends. Stephen Dedalus is a prime example. In the chapter auspiciously titled “Scylla and Charybdis,” Stephen navigates the metaphorical high seas of intellectualism, steering precariously close to Shakespeare and families and death and fidelity and perhaps even Bohemia on the coast. Stephen’s theories on Hamlet, Hamnet, and Hathaway purportedly shed light on Shakespeare the Man, but they are peppered with self-admonishments, compromises, and half-truths (“The truth is midway, he affirmed”). In fact, in the end, he admits he hasn’t yet read all of the plays and doesn’t even believe his own theories. But this is a narrow reading of Stephen Dedalus. While Stephen is a hubristic intellectual guilty of hyperbolic and oftentimes ironic remarks on literature, his Aristotelian penchant for ‘truth in moderation’ makes him the most reliable character of the bunch. Irony in its many forms remains elusive, but is nonetheless essential for readers to sympathize with Stephen.
Do readers sympathize with Stephen Dedalus?
Most readers do in the end of the day when they think about how we all harbor these things and aspirations and theories about great people and why shouldn’t we. We are all men and women and sometimes we wash up on the seashore and ask “Where are we?” and there is no one there but ole swarmy Cerimon the Periclean wizard and even though we can’t see with the salt in our eyes he’ll ask about Ulysses because everyone has read Ulysses who lives by the sea it’s like required or something by the gods of literature and then of course he’ll ask about Stephen who refused to stay the night but who successfully navigated the Straight of Messina one afternoon and only lost a few men along the way not even important enough to have real names yet. Then Cerimon will laugh his purple-robéd laugh and shuffle on back to read the chapter again. Cerimon is fascinated with how Stephen connects characters in Shakespeare to the man Shakespeare and still wants to know if Cerimon was dear enough to Shakespeare to be linked biographically but this is probably not the case given that Hamlet was such a winy little bitch he’s the only one anyone ever pays any attention to. So much for raising the DEAD!
What became of Clement Gossamer?
After being expelled for his controversial essay, he faded into the obscurity of the theater, playing shows as Wyatt Earp to small groups of tourists in the western states. Poor Clement!
Cease to strive. Should we?
No. This is another moment in Modernism where something is said that the author doesn’t really mean but thinks it is well worth thinking about the world as it would be if this advice were taken. This is post-dramatic irony in a sense because we know that Joyce did not cease to strive therefore we know something the characters don’t but in another sense it is not because the characters don’t know it is because the truth is somewhere halfway like Stephen said and that is how you get through Scylla and Charybdis by getting somewhere halfway if only it were that easy but you’re bound to lose something along the way be it narrative, character, description, setting, time, or a letter grade. It seems like no one gets this they just talk about all these places this happens and how that isn’t very realistic but for the most part it is just hard to theorize about something that has a core of molten genius like how there can be any mistakes anywhere why even in the editorial process it is like putting your pinky against the sun and of course that is just a trick of perspective physics is playing on you but of course genius makes no mistakes because if it is a mistake we can read it as ironic or funny or sentimental but at least there is satisfaction that converges. Now let us reflect on these antagonistic sentiments.
Do you believe your own theory?
Yes.
