Raising the Wind
For the last decade or so, the field of modernist studies has been in a productive state of flux generated by a diverse array of work that seeks a return, as Michael North puts it, to the “scene of the modern.” Driven by more than just the ever-present historicist impulses of literary scholarship, this new critical turn seeks to challenge the self-sufficiency of the autonomous work of art, to demystify the structures governing modernism’s cultural production, and to embed works within the complex (and often enduring) legal, technological, political, and erotic contexts that shaped their production and reception. Although the various contributors to this issue of the JJQ may not think of themselves as part of the “new modernist studies,” the essays gathered here all share in this impulse to locate Joyce’s work in new contexts and often in unexpected dialogues with everything from nineteenth-century brain science to the semiotic theory of C. S. Peirce.
The issue begins with an essay by Sandra Tropp that turns our attention to the complex changes in neuroscience at the turn of the twentieth century and its powerful ability to unsettle the presumed autonomy of the aesthetic sphere. In “‘The Esthetic Instinct in Action’: Charles Darwin and Mental Science in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,” Tropp contends that Stephen’s sometimes torturous aesthetic theory actually encodes a broad attempt to incorporate the insights and discoveries not only of Charles Darwin, but of other emerging scientists like Grant Allen and Alexander Bain. On the one hand, this piece is a valuable and carefully researched source study that makes a convincing argument about how Joyce deployed Darwin’s idea of beauty and its apparent cultural relativity. Yet it is also much more than this, since Tropp uncovers in her examination of these scientific debates about the nature of mind and perception a largely unrecognized tension within Stephen’s aesthetic theory. In compelling close readings of these oft-examined passages from A Portrait, she invites us to see how words like “attention,” “stasis,” and “awaken” take on density as nodes in an even larger scientific and philosophical debate.
The issue then turns from theories of mind to Peirce’s theory of semiotics in Murray McArthur’s “‘The Index Nothing Affirmeth’: The Semiotic Formation of a Literary Mandate in James Joyce’s ‘The Sisters.’” The most intensely theoretical of the essays in this number, it brings Peirce together with Jacques Lacan’s work on psychoanalysis to offer a provocative re-reading of “The Sisters.” McArthur’s argument turns on Peirce’s concept of the “index,” a special kind of signification that cannot be easily aligned or reconciled with the more familiar dualistic Saussurean sign. By drawing on the unique powers of the index, McArthur contends, Joyce was able to formulate a unique aesthetic mandate for himself—an understanding of his own relationship to language and representation that manages simultaneously to abolish and affirm his own autonomy. Joyce’s indexical language still signifies, he claims, but it ultimately points to nothing, becoming itself a powerful figure of “paralysis,” “gnomon,” and “simony.” Moving effectively between the complex theoretical claims of Peirce’s work and subtle close readings of “The Sisters,” this challenging essay ultimately provides us a new way of thinking about the story and its importance as the genesis of Joyce’s own career.
Maren Linett too takes up Joyce’s fascination with the shape and trajectory of his own career, albeit in his last rather than his first novel. “The Jew’s Text: ‘Shem The Penman’ and ‘Shaun The Post’” makes the provocative claim that a pairing of these two chapters from Finnegans Wake uncovers Joyce’s deployment of Jewishness as a metaphor for his own position as a writer. Beginning with issues of copyright and piracy, she argues that Shem’s letter doubles as the Old Testament, a text ripped from its original context and then misinterpreted for the world. Casting Shaun in the image of Paul of Tarsus, she discovers in Shaun an abject Jewishness that doubles as an image for the modern artist. By following the various changes Joyce made to the Wake drafts, furthermore, she contends that Joyce transformed Shem’s Jewishness from an assimilative model in the 1920s text to a more clearly marked one in the 1930s, making these central sections of the book themselves a political response to the growing anti-Semitism in Germany and across Europe. Like the contributors to this issue, Linett offers not only a valuable source study in this essay, but a new way of thinking about the cultural and political commitments of Joyce’s writing.
The final two essays here also seek to return Joyce’s writing to the complex scene of its creation and reception. In “Madame Blavatsky and Theosophy in Finnegans Wake: An Annotated List,” Len Platt judiciously explicates Joyce’s manipulation of theosophy in Finnegans Wake. In some ways a companion piece to Platt’s much larger argument in Joyce, Race, and “Finnegans Wake,” these annotations demonstrate that Joyce saw theosophy as symptom and symbol of a modernity structured by “the faddist instinct, the capacity for trickery and sensationalism, and . . . irrationality.” Platt’s careful textual excavation is matched by the deft genetic arguments developed by Eli Z. Lassman in “‘Scribbled Words’: The Usage of the Ulysses Notebooks in ‘Proteus’ and ‘Aeolus.’” This essay is one of the first substantive pieces of scholarship in the JJQ developed from the newly acquired resources now available in the National Library of Ireland. Extending early claims by Michael Groden, Daniel Ferrer, and others, Lassman reminds us that the “scene of the modern” must encompass not only the broad reaches of modern brain science and fascist anti-Semitism, but the much narrower confines of Joyce’s ever-moving writing desk.
In addition to the Checklist, Dazibao, conference reports, and a diverse collection of reviews, this issue also includes a pair of fascinating notes. In “Padraic Colum’s ‘James Joyce as a Young Man,’” James P. Sullivan reproduces the original draft from Colum’s notebook of the book that grew to become Our Friend James Joyce. This short sketch evocatively captures something of the original memories Colum had of Joyce in the Dublin of 1902–1903 when he first set them down on paper. They may offer few new discoveries, but they do provide an intimate glimpse into Joyce’s early circle. This is followed by Hsinyu Hung’s “‘They Like it Because No-one Can Hear’: A Derridean Reading of Joyce’s Floral Language in ‘Lotus-Eaters,’” a deft examination of how the letter exchange between Bloom and Martha Clifford figures those more complex textual exchanges that shape our reading of Ulysses. Drawing on Derrida’s theory of the envoi, Hung concludes that the letter Bloom writes in “Sirens” is actually addressed to himself—to a narcissistic subject whose desire resides in the anticipation of a letter’s arrival rather than its composition.
News and Notes
A great deal of news from Dublin has crossed my desk in the last several months as the city of Joyce’s birth turns its renewed energies to his work. At the start of this year, the inaugural issue of the Dublin James Joyce Journal appeared. Handsomely published by the James Joyce Research Centre at University College Dublin in association with the National Library of Ireland, this first number of the annual offers a diverse array of work by Irish or Dublin-based researchers, ranging from a beautifully illustrated essay by Stephanie Raines on the 1894 Araby Bazaar to some revealing spadework by Terence Killeen on the mysterious Alfred Hunter. Information about subscriptions and submissions can be obtained by contacting Anne Fogarty at <joyceresearchcentre@ucd.ie>.
In addition to the new journal, the James Joyce Research Centre will be conducting once again its annual research colloquium at UCD from 16–18 April 2009. According to the organizers: “Speakers will analyse and debate the usefulness of particular methodologies and theoretical positions for aspects of research projects that they have concluded or their applicability for works in progress. The utility of historicist, material and textual approaches to Joyce will particularly be addressed. The delegates at the colloquium will include doctoral and post-doctoral students currently engaged in research on Joyce at universities in Europe, the US, and elsewhere. MA students, Joyce scholars, and those with an active interest in Joyce are also welcome to attend.” The speakers this year include a raft of leading scholars in the field, including Luke Gibbons, Anne Fogarty, Declan Kiberd, Emer Nolan and many others. The fee is a modest €50, and there are scholarships available. Further information can be had by contacting Anne Fogarty at <joyceresearchcentre@ucd.ie>.
Finally, the James Joyce Centre in Dublin is launching its program of speakers this year with a talk by Luca Crispi entitled “Reading Dubliners.” It will take place on Joyce’s birthday—2 February—and will be held at the Centre on 35 North Great George’s Street, Dublin, at 6:30 p.m. Admission is free.
Beyond Dublin, the wheels of Joyce scholarship continue to turn, and plans are now well afoot for the 2009 North American James Joyce Conference to be held this year from 12–17 June in Buffalo, New York. “Eire on the Erie” will feature a host of events, including a talk by Colum McCann, an exhibition drawn from the dazzling holdings of the University at Buffalo’s Special Collections, a cruise on the Niagara River, and the usual array of panels, presentations, and other pleasures. For information about the conference, visit the website at < http://english.buffalo.edu/jamesjoyce/ >.
Joyceans might also wish to consider attending the 2009 conference of the Modernist Studies Association, to be held this year in Montreal, Canada, from 5–8 November. This year’s theme is “The Languages of Modernism,” and the organizers (of whom I am one) encourage the submission of both paper and seminar proposals dealing with this and other topics in modernist studies. Although the MSA generally discourages single-author panel submissions, new and exciting work on Joyce regularly appears on the organization’s programs. Registration and submission information can be found online at < http://0-msa.press.jhu.edu.library.utulsa.edu/conferences/msa11/index.html >.
***
The last several months have seen the development and expansion of several new digital resources devoted to Joyce studies. Surely among the most useful of these is the James Joyce Checklist. Developed by the JJQ’s Bibliographer, Bill Brockman, and hosted by the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, this amazing resource offers a richly searchable database of Joyce scholarship. I have already announced this site’s creation, but the developers are continuing to add to its capabilities, making it an ever more powerful resource for teachers, scholars, and students. I urge you to visit the site at < http://research.hrc.utexas.edu/jamesjoycechecklist/ > and be dazzled by what it offers.
Thanks to the hard work and enterprise of our graduate-student staffers, including Patrick Belk and Matt Kochis, the JJQ is continuing to extend its digital presence. The journal now has its own Facebook page at < http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16536544943&ref=ts > where users can get updates on the journal, connect with other Joyceans, and add comments to “the wall.” This is our first step into social media, and we hope eventually to create a chance for readers to respond to essays and notes as the journal is published. The JJQ website itself is also continuing to add new resources, including links to developing sites of interest to Joyceans as well as information about other journals and societies of interest.
Other digital projects are also afoot, and I encourage you to visit two remarkable new websites that have recently come to my attention. The first of these is Joyce Images, a wonderful collection of Edwardian photographs and images designed to illustrate the eighteen episodes of Ulysses. This collection has been developed by Aida Yared and includes everything from stereoviews to comics and manuscripts. You can find it online at < http://www.joyceimages.com >. The second site features a collection of books and objects relating to James Joyce that has been assembled by Leo Koenders. Some of the arts books, in particular, are fascinating, including an unusual collection of photographs illustrating Giacomo Joyce. Take a tour of the collection at < http://www.jamesjoyce-snotgreen.com/ >.
***
It saddens me greatly to close this installment of “Raising the Wind” with the news that Jin Di, who spent some sixteen years translating Ulysses successfully into Chinese, has died. His work on Ulysses won him international accolades and prizes, including the National Rainbow Award for Superior Literary Translation and an honorary membership in the Irish Translators’ and Interpreters’ Association. He published widely on translation, including essays in the JJQ as well as Shamrocks and Chopsticks: James Joyce in China, A Tale of Two Encounters (2001). After retiring as Professor of English at the Tianjin Foreign Languages Institute, he traveled as a visiting fellow to Oxford, Notre Dame, the University of Virginia, and elsewhere, sharing always his passion for Joyce’s work. His humor and intelligence will be sorely missed by all.
Sean Latham
University of Tulsa