| HJS |
| volume 4, issue 2, 2003-4 |
| NOTES 1 For a helpful overview of the scatological satiric tradition, from Aristophanes to Swift, see the first two chapters of Jae Num Lee's book Swift and Scatological Satire (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1971). 2 to paraphrase Norman O. Brown's discussion of excrement in Swift, entitled "The Excremental Vision," chapter thirteen of his Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytic Meaning of History (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1985). 3 Sheldon Brivic has pointed out that the most prominent references to the Kabbalah in II.2 (the mentioning of "Ainsoph" and the list of ten numbers that closes the chapter) "both appeared for the first time on the 1934 manuscript in which Joyce first divided the text into columns.... The decision to use the columns was thus accompanied by a decision to emphasize the Kabbalah" (14). Nadel finds a "typological" parallel with the Talmud in this chapter: "The 'Study Hours' section (II.2) evokes the Talmudic page with its centred, columned text, two sets of marginal comments... and the footnotes" (112). 4 Waite, Doctrine, 33, where one also learns that "His dwelling is the place which is not a place, or more literally, locus qui non est." 5 The number ten is a key number for emanationist thinking. Ainsoph is the One (Waite describes it as "abiding in the simplicity and undifferentiation of perfect unity"; Secret, 28) above all numbers and productive of all numbers, "the decade is the emanation of Ain Soph." (Waite, Doctrine 41). To be sure, there are numerous tens throughout the classbook chapter, itself chapter ten in the book: "Ainsoph, this upright one, with that noughty besighed him zeroine.", "And what the decans is there about him anyway, the decemt man?" (FW 261.23-24, 261.31-262.01). 6 Annotations, 294. 7 Waite, Doctrine, 60. See also Scholem, Kabbalah, where one will find the claim that "The divine emanation can be described both in terms of symbols drawn from the doctrine of Sefirot ...and of symbols drawn from the sphere of language and composed of letters and names. In the latter case, the process of creation can be symbolized as the word of God.... In essence, the Torah contains in a concentrated form all that was allowed to develop more expansively in the creation itself" (169), and Trends: "The world of the Sefiroth is the hidden world of language, the world of the divine names. The Sefiroth are the creative names which God called into the world, the names which He gave to Himself. The action and development of that mysterious force which is the seed of all creation is, according to the Zohar's interpretation of the Scriptural testimony, none other than speech" (215-216). 8 In fact, the geometry problem of the chapter may contain the problem of separating land and water in creation: "Problem ye ferst, construct ann aquilittoral dryankle Probe loom!" following McHugh in taking "littoral" as "on the shore" (FW 286.19-21; McHugh, Annotations, 286). 9 The text is linked to the divine in the marginal comment "SORTES VIRGINIANAE," referencing Virgilianae, the practice of divination by the random opening of a book of Virgil (FW 281.R2), and in the mention of an "inkbottle authority" that claims the ever expanding universe yet remains "under one ... original sun" (though the neighboring marginalia calls this "Hearasay in paradox lust" (FW 263.26-27 and FW 263.L4). Lastly, and for what it's worth, the text presents the phallus of HCE (believed by some to be the Phoenix Pillar?), in the tall narrow column of text making up II.2, a column which comes with commentary and notes. 10 As recounted in Richard Ellmann's James Joyce, new and revised edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), p. 398 and note 398-399. 11 The Russian general is identified with HCE at FW 352.32-34: "Kaptan (backsights to his bared!), His Cumbulent Embulence, the frustate fourstar Russkakruscam, Dom Allaf O'Khorwan, connundurumchuff." We might also read the above mentioned quotation as Buckley claiming to recognize the face of God in the ass of the general, an idea quite in keeping with what is presented here. 12 Consider also Taff's query immediately after Butt's statement, "You hidn't the hurts?" (FW 345.08). Butt will not allow for a hiding or destruction of the hurts or marks of finitude on the part of the general. For this reason he must die. 13 Beckett's declaration that this would be another insult to Ireland is repeated here, to be sure "At that instullt to Igorladns!" (FW 353.18-19), but this can only hold if Ireland itself names an expressive isle, the island of saints and sages. |
| ANDREW MITCHELL EXCREMENTAL SELF-CREATION IN FINNEGANS WAKE |