FW pp. 104-28
(This post is about Chapter V, though these two segments drifted into Chapter VI.)
So this is it, I thought, after reading OM's latest post. The big reveal, where things start making sense, where JJ shows himself as a pre-post-modernist and things get meta, where the really difficult book becomes about a book about being a really difficult book. Yes, and definitely no.
First, the no. I really liked Chapters III and IV. I sorta disliked Chapter V because I felt more in the dark. Chapter V starts with an invocation to ALP, and proceeds to a three-page italicized list of all the names by which she (and her husband) have been/may be called. The list is cool and weird, and includes alot of then-popculture references, as well as some naughty bits. But the chapter itself isn't about either of them. It's about a letter that she wrote to him, which was never delivered and made its way to the city dump, where it's picked at by a wise "lookmelittle likemelong" hen. The letter and the hen have been mentioned before in the text, though, admittedly, I missed most of that. (Tindall is helpful here - at least to the extent he tells me what I don't know and directs me to passages that I can reread.) Text = text; letter = FW. Got it. But wait...Shem's the writer, not ALP, right?
Exactly. ALP dictated the letter to Shem (per Tindall), who, after the italicized list, takes over as our lit prof, our proto-Tindall, and guides us through an exegesis of what she/he wrote. It gets confusing/exhausting pretty quickly. The letter itself is in the text, says Tindall. Have at it:
"The bird in the case was Belinda of the Dorans a more than quinquegintarian (Terziis prize with Serni medal, Cheepalizzy's Hane Exposition) and what she was scratching at the house of clicking twelve looked for all this zigzag world like a goodish-sized sheet of letter paper originating transhipt from Boston (Mass.) [hey, O] of the last of the first to Dear whom it proceeded to mention Maggy well & allathome's health well on the hate turned the mild on the van Houtens and the general's elections with a lovely face of some born gentlemen with a beautiful present of wedding cakes for dear thankyou Chriesty and with grand funferall of poor Father Michael don't forget unto life's & Muggy well how are you Maggy & hopes soon to hear well & must now close it with fondest to the twins with four cross kisses for holy paul holy corner holipoli whollyisland pee ess from (locust may eat all but this sign shall they never) affectionate large looking tache of tech. The stain, and that a teastain (the overcautelousness of the master bilker here, as usual, signing the page away), marked it off on the spout of the moment as a genuine relique of ancient Irish pleasant pottery of that lydialike languishing class known as a hurry-me-o'er-the hazy."
Full disclousure? I didn't know that was the gotdam letter when I read it. Actually, I thought it was part of the letter, ("Dear" and "must now now close it with" tipped it), but not the whole thing. Professor Shem then examines the letter as a piece of physical evidence. How do we know ALP wrote it? The letter may be unsigned, but its author is obvious. "So why, pray, sign anything as long as every word, letter, pen stroke, paperspace is a perfect signature of its own?" One giveaway on the paperspace is the teastain. I'm not sure why tea means ALP.
Another version of the letter appears a few pages later, after another thunderclap, only this time the letter is in Franglais. "All schwants (schwrites) ischt tell the cock's trootabout him. Kayak kapuk. No minzies matter. He had to see life foully the plak and the smut, (schwrites)." All ALP wants, she writes, is to tell the truth about HCE's indiscretions back to him; he had to see the smut of his foul life. Hm. The letter isn't about anything divine; it's about something human, "as human a little story as paper could carry." (That's me adding Vico to that passage - if my point is off base, don't blame Tindall, haha.)
JJ isn't too concerned about smooth transitions, but he follows the little human story line with a two-page riff on sex and pillow talk. This is an absolutely amazing passage, imo. Where would we be, JJ asks, if that language of love, "the lingo gasped between kicksheets," and "told in sounds in utter that, in signs so adds to, in universal, in polyglutteral, in each auxiliary neutral idiom," were appropriated by "wicker churchwardens and metaphysicians"? (I chopped up alot of text there.) Would sex be the same? Would love be the same? JJ?
"So hath bee, love: tis tis: and will be: till wears and tears and ages. Thief us the night, steal we the air, shawl thiner liefest, mine! Here, Ohere, insult the fair! Traitor, bad hearer, brave! The lightning look, the birding cry, awe from the grave, ever-flowing on the times. Feueragusaria iordenwater; now godsun shine on menday's daughter; a good clap, a fore marriage, a bad wake, tell hell's well; such is manowife's lot of lose and win again, like he's gruen quhiskers on who's chin again, she placated them out but they grown in again. So what are you going to do about it? O dear!"
Indeed. But JJ isn't done with that language, which he shorthands as "this oldworld epistola of their weatherings and their marryings and their buryings and their natural selections," and takes a step back from it to consider all language. This is where he talks about FW. And so...
Second, the yes. As in, hell yes. Remember Barthes? The Death of the Author? Whose interpretation of a text matters, the author's or the reader's? JJ had an opinion. Because of "that prestatute in our charter" (The Magna Charta?), we "may have our irremovable doubts as to the whole sense of the lot, the interpretation of any phrase so far deciphered out of it, however unfettered our Irish daily independence, we must vaunt no idle dubiosity as to its genuine authorship and holusbolus authoritativeness." We might question what a phrase in a text means, but we shouldn't idly doubt the author's intent. So sayeth the Author, eh?
Maybe I'm doing exactly what JJ is advising that I shouldn't be doing. Maybe I'm reading too much into this passage, but he does mention the fruitlessness of overthinking, and the misunderstanding (or "intermisunderstanding") and just plain wrong-headed editing - "the innocent exhibitionism of those frank yet capricious underlinings," which calls "unnecessary attention to errors, omissions, repetitions and misalignments" - that results from it. Tindall almost supports this. Let's imagine that JJ predicted and threw shade at the cottage industry that would develop around reading/attempting to understand FW...of which this blog is part, a proud part. (Can we say that, OM? I'll be proud as punch when we finish.)
The end of these segments leads to the image above. Have you ever heard of the Book of Kells? Me, neither, but it's a big deal, and so pretty. Basically, the Book of Kells is an illustrated version of the Gospels, where the biblical words shares space with really fantastic pictures. (Vico: human = words; divine = symbols.) The last few pages of Chapter V are super dense, and I didn't get much from them. Tindall mentioned that the Book of Kells is a translation. So is the letter. Its translator? "[T]hat odious and still today insufficiently malestimated notesnatcher," "Shem the Penman," where this chapter ends and the next chapter begins.
It's Sunday, and I'm behind, as usual. Only fifteen pages, pfft. I'll try to get current in the next few days, and blog accordingly.
More later,
JF
(Psst. Hey, O. It's just you and me here. Our SOs checked out before we even started. And our so-called friends can't be bothered. So it's ok to say this project is grad-school grueling, and I'm not in my 20s anymore - back in the day, I was smart, or faked it better. I'm doing this for two reasons: Sharing something heady with you, and being able to tell my kids that I finished the hardest book ever written in the English "nat" language. Just so we're clear.
Oh, and I don't think I've pinpointed any page numbers for JJ passages since my Week 4 post. Do you think I need to go back and do that? Maybe, I will.)
No comments:
Post a Comment