Finnegans Wake - Queen Mary, University of London

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eTransfers. A Postgraduate eJournal for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Issue 1 (2011) authentically. The call of conscience to guilt [Gewissensruf] reveals a fundamental lack. For Heidegger, “if one takes ‘laden with moral guilt’ as a ‘quality’ of Dasein, one has said very little.” (BT 328). Guilt is not a simple emotion; 21 Dasein is guilty, rather, in its very existential structure. Dasein is guilty in its ownmost possibility. Heidegger writes: “We define the formally existential idea of the ‘Guilty!’ as ‘Being-the-basis for a Being which has been defined by a “not”’ — that is to say, as ‘Being-the-basis of a nullity’”(BT 328). What is this nullity? Heidegger writes that Dasein is […] never existent before its ground, but rather in each case only in terms of it and as it. Being the ground therefore means never to have power over One’s ownmost being from the ground up. This not belongs to the existential sense of thrownness. Being the ground is itself a nullity of itself. (BT 284) That is, Dasein cannot ever get back behind its thrownness, it is “never existent before its ground.” Dasein can never climb out of the world such that its existence is no longer of any concern to it, being instead always already bound up with a care structure that presents its thrown facticity in accordance with its attunement. In anxiety, Dasein realises it is thus imprisoned, and realises that grounded meaning is forever elusive outside of its ownmost possibility of death. The call of conscience, then, reveals Dasein as guilty, and to be authentic, Dasein must embrace this guilt. In the vernacular, it might be said that Dasein must accept itself for what it is. By accepting fallen meaning as fallen, Dasein casts off distraction and dwells mindfully in the heritage of the one. This has profound implications as a social narrative, as Dasein opens itself up to cultural, religious and even literary narratives as the determining source of its meaning. But what of Earwicker? Does guilt likewise lead him out of fallenness? HCE’s guilt, while no less axiological, may seem at fist glance more traditionally moral, though, as we will see, as an archetypal narrative Earwicker is no less prone to his thrown nullity. The Earwicker narrative is universal to all men. “[I]t was […] a pleasant turn of the populace which gave him as sense of those normative letters the nickname Here comes Everybody” (FW 32). In every incarnation, HCE is tempted into scandal. Like Dasein, HCE seems unable to get behind its thrownness. Earwicker is always unable to avoid its facticity, characterised by its thrownness into moral guilt. Earwicker’s fall 21 For Heidegger, there is no ethical transgression involved in the guilt. 14
eTransfers. A Postgraduate eJournal for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Issue 1 (2011) is predicated on Finn’s and re-enacted by Shaun. As Campbell and Robinson aver, “the bier of Finnegan is the stage on which history enacts itself in the goings and comings of HCE.” 22 Finn, as the original faller, is the existential structure of HCE who in turn is the existential structure of Shaun and Shem. Together the male archetypes of Finnegans Wake are the paternal structure of human being. As a trinity, grandfather, father and sons are ‘Dadsein’. What of the female? In Being and Time, Heidegger is silent on the question of gender, referring to Dasein in the neuter and presumably regarding sex as a specific existentiell. ALP, however, as female, is complicit in HCE’s transgression and yet is also HCE's loyal defender. She offers “a reiz every morning for Standfast Dick and a drop every minute for Stumblestone Davy” (FW 210). As her namesake suggests, Anna Liffey is the river of life that flows around HCE. The dramatic narrative of human being is always a question of gender: “Every telling has a taling and that’s the he and she of it” (FW 213). The narratives of HCE and ALP are entwined in primal Being-with. Joyce once wrote that, in her youth, “[ALP’s] Pandora’s box [contained] all the ills flesh is heir to.” 23 Yet still she offers “the primal sacrament of baptism or the regeneration of all men by affusion of water,” (FW 564) consoling her husband: “Rise up […] you have slept too long. You did so drool. I was so sharm. But there’s a great poet in you too!” (FW 619). ALP is both the alpha of the fall and the omega of redemption. Ultimately, HCE’s guilt is made bearable because it is washed clean by ALP in the forgetful (Lethe) waters of her life (Liffey). HCE is forgiven his transgressions by the very being against whom he has transgressed. There can be no permanent resolution or closure, but, as the narrative repeats, perpetual consolation. It is this consolation that provides a way out of despair. Existentially, ‘Dadsein’ is cast between these poles of transgression and redemption. ALP first entices, flowing like a river from “swerve of shore to bend of bay” (FW 3) before washing clean her husband’s guilt. Guilt is primal but so is salvation. One is the possibility for the other and these two faces of ALP flow around the bifurcated, lustful-penant HCE. 22 Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake (New York: The Viking Press, 1972), 95. 23 Richard Ellman, James Joyce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 564. 15
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