Finnegans Wake - Queen Mary, University of London

More documents

Recommendations

Info

eTransfers. A Postgraduate eJournal for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Issue 1 (2011) But is ALP herself wholly subordinate to a male protagonist? For Joyce, is woman placed into existence to be the plaything and comforter of man? In her final epiphanic moments before rebirth, ALP is presented as if with a choice. Running out towards the sea, weary with the detritus of life, she realises, as if addressing her husband on the shore, “I thought you were all glittering with the noblest of carriage. You’re only a bumpkin. I thought you were great in all things, in guilt and in glory. You’re but a puny. Home!” (FW 627). The cares of her life, her concern for her husband, are suddenly cast off and placed into perspective. Man’s guilt and redemption, his existential meaning, are “puny” irrelevances. She is free to turn towards her home. ALP’s existential narrative will be interrupted by the ginnungagap of her dissolution in a primal sea. I go back to you, my cold father, my cold mad father, cold mad feary father, till the near sight of the mere size of him, the moyles and moyles of it, moananoaning, makes me seasilt saltsick and I rush, my only, into your arms. (FW 628) But what is this? This primal sea is not feminine. Having scarcely finished renouncing the concerns of men, ALP greets not her primal mother but her father. How exactly are we to interpret this passage? The diabolical duality of Finnegans Wake rises here to a crescendo. ALP seemingly longs to return to her father, and yet speaks of him as a lover, suggesting a return to HCE. Addressing this male entity, she wishes to “rush, my only, into [his] arms” and yet at once proclaims him “cold,” “mad” and “feary.” It becomes clear that an obscene phallic pun runs through the passage, with ALP exclaiming at the “mere size of him” and complaining of being “seasilt saltsick” after his “moananoaning” (echoing onanism). To be blunt, it appears ALP has said farewell to men only to rush into the arms of her lover who is also her father upon whom she performs incestuous fellatio. The possibility of simple redemption or resolution for either character is thus scandalised by the complexity of the final male archetype into which ALP flows. Even here, at the end of the cycle, the dual nexus of guilt and redemption continues to provide the uttermost horizon of human being. Guilt-redemption is the rootless thrownness of existence. And then it begins again: a comedy of secular soteriology. 16
eTransfers. A Postgraduate eJournal for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies Issue 1 (2011) Resolute Dasein is ‘redeemed’ from inauthenticity as it presses into the identities of its cultural world, mindfully aware of their ultimate groundlessness. If Heidegger seems oblivious to the Wildean irony this commitment entails, something of his bluster is avoided in the troubled social standings of HCE and ALP. For Here Comes Everybody, replacing solemn heroism with uproarious farce. Contact Address: Michael Gilbert, michaelgilbert577@hotmail.co.uk. Keywords: English: James Joyce, Finnegans Wake; Martin Heidegger, Being and Time; Hermeneutics; Ontology; Phenomenology. German: James Joyce, Finnegans Wake; Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit; Hermeneutik; Ontologie; Phänomenologie. eTransfers. A Postgraduate eJournal for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies http://eTransfers.uni-giessen.de http://www.sllf.qmul.ac.uk/research/anglogerman/etransfers/ 17
Page 1 and 2: eTransfers. A Postgraduate eJournal
Page 15: eTransfers. A Postgraduate eJournal

Finnegans Wake - Queen Mary, University of London

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?