Closing Time 0394711610, 9780394711614

Citation preview

V-161

NORMAN

BROWN THE AUTHOR OF LIFE AGAINST DEATH AND LOVE'S BODY

dosin

$1.95

/


24 ,

Q

Spengler

at: decline.

the hand of a Paris student, but the

the voice of Vico.

I

:

Time

Closing

First the age of the gods,

30

then the age of heroes,

then the age of men.

The

origin

process I

is

is

sacred; the decline

is

secularization,

profanation

sometimes think

I

see that civilizations origi-

nate in the disclosure of some mystery,

some

secret;

and expand with the progressive publication of their secret; and end in exhaustion when there is no longer any that

secret, is

when

the mystery has been divulged,

to say profaned.

trated in the difference bet.

The

alphabet

is

The whole

believe

we

illus-

indeed a democratic triumph;

us, is a piece of

not yet profaned.

is

between ideogram and alpha-

and the enigmatic ideogram, taught

story

And

as

Ezra Pound has

mystery, a piece of poetry, so there

comes

—when

are in such a time

has to be renewed by the discovery of

a

—

time

civilization

new

mysteries,

by the undemocratic but sovereign power of the imagination, by the undemocratic power which

makes poets the unacknowledged kind, the power which makes

all

legislators of

things new.

man-

^°

Brown

Harper's

May

1961

:

The New

The origin

is

Among is

an

altar,

31

sacred

these hieroglyphs, the most prominent

because

began with

Science of History

among

all

people the

civil

world

religion.

Ns g

All nations, barbarous as well as civilized, keep

these three customs: tract

all

solemn marriages,

have some

all

religion, all con-

bury their dead.

ns,

333

ns,

10

These are the divine institutions among the gentiles, from which came later all their human institutions.

Sullemn fulminance, sollemn nuptialism,

lemn sepulture and providential

divining.

sal-

fw, 599

::

Closing

The occult In

tradition

is

an aristocratic tradition:

doctrine secret even from their

sacred

much

as

own

plehs,

whence

everywhere called secret doctrine, for

was

it is

32

nations of the world the priests kept such

all

indeed

Time

ns,

as to say secret.

95

Heroic commonwealths are commonwealths of the few: the few

who

who

are beloved of Jove; the

who

whom

Hercules was be-

are sons of Jove; heroes

selves sons of the gods, of

few

considered them-

ns, 490, 53

lieved to be the greatest.

Civilization

and

history

The origin They

is is

in origin

and nature

a class-structure,

the history of class-struggle.

of cities will

be seen to be founded by nature on

two communities, one of the nobles, to command, the other of the plebs, to obey.

Process

is

ns,

25

ns,

508,415

profanation, secularization.

In the heroic class-struggle the plebeians denied the aristocratic religion

the patricians

who

tests that the auspices

were

To

said in the heroic contheirs,

the plebs replied

whom Romulus had composed from whom the patricians traced

that the fathers of

the senate, and their descent,

non

esse caelo demissos, "were not

descended from heaven; that

is,

that Jove was equal

to ally

As

in Fustel

de Coulanges, The Ancient City.

The New

Class-structure

racy

is

33

rooted in religion, Vico's aristoc-

is

theocratic.

Science of History

The heroes

are:

god-fearing giants, as opposed to the impious

who had continued

giants

of things

the infamous

communism

and of women.

These were

at first

impious men,

who

ns,

503

ns,

553

recog-

nized no divinity; they were nefarious, since relations

among them were and

finally,

not distinguished by marriages;

not understanding society in the midst

of this infamous promiscuity of things, they were all

alone like wild beasts, and hence weak and lastly

miserable and unhappy because they were in want of

the goods that are needed to keep

all

Fleeing the several sions

which

this

ills

life safe.

they suffered in the dissen-

wild promiscuity produced, and

seeking escape and safety, they betook themselves to the cultivated lands of the pious, chaste, strong,

that

is,

of those

who were

already united in family

society.

To

these

altars,

weak, fleeing for their seeking violent

then,

the

NS,

17

NS>

lg

NS>

555

impious-nomadic-

from the

stronger, came and the pious-strong killed the among them and took the weak under their lives

refuge,

protection.

Grotius simpletons and Pufendorfs abandoned

men had

recourse to the altars of the strong to save themselves from Hobbes' violent men.

Closing

Brooding classes

in

background

who combine

to

is

Time

34

the dark thought that the

make

a city are essentially

heterogeneous:

The thereto

first

comers to human society were driven

by religion and by a natural instinct to

propagate the tive,

human

the latter in the

race (the former a pious strict

mo-

sense a gentle or gentile

one), and thus gave a beginning to noble and lordly friendship.

The second comers,

of a necessity of saving their

since they

lives,

came out

gave a beginning

to society in the proper sense, with a view principally to utility,

and consequently base and

servile.

These

refugees were received by the heroes under the just

law of protection, by which they sustained their natural lives

under the obligation of serving the heroes

as day laborers.

Compare

the

ns,

primordial

Master and Slave

in Hegel.

confrontation

between

555

.

:

The New

Classes are races; religion

is

Science of History

35

racism

The

heroes or nobles, by a certain nature of which they believed to be of divine origin,

theirs

were led to say that the gods belonged to them, and consequently that the auspices of the gods were

By means

of the auspices they kept within

orders

the public and private institu-

theirs also.

their

own

all

tions of the heroic cities.

To

the plebeians,

whom

they believed to be of bestial origin and consequently

men

without gods and hence without auspices, they conceded only the uses of natural liberty.

Civilization

is

an

altar,

on which

a sacrifice

is

ns, 41 4

being

made.

Human sacrifice: These savage

men

sacrifices

began among the

with vows and offerings of

first

human

crude sacri-

fices. NS, 191,

Civilization

is

an

Cities are called arae, altars;

and

517

altar: NS, 17

arae, altars, are arable:

ploughed lands were the

first altars

of the gen-

tiles.

NS, 15

On

these

first

lands Vesta sacrificed to Jove the

impious practicers of the infamous promiscuity, violated the

first altars

{the

first fields

Vico anticipates de Maistre.

of grain)

who NS> S49>

7?6

:

Closing

Time

36

The cycle ends in a ricorso fw,

recirculation

Teems

of times

and happy

returns.

3

The seim

anew. Ordovico or viricordo.

FW, 21 5

Array! Surrectionl

fw, 593

The world's great age begins anew The golden years return magnus ab

integro saeclorum nascitur ordo

APOTHEOSIS OF THE LUSTRAL

PRINCIPWM

FW, 286

Revolution It

is just, it is

just

about

to, it is just

about to fw, 597

rolywholyover.

A return to the first beginning the return of the gods

the Second Coming.

But

if

the peoples are rotting in that ultimate

and cannot agree on a monarch from and are not conquered and preserved by

civil disease

within,

from without, then providence for their extreme ill has its extreme remedy at hand. For such peoples, like so many beasts, have fallen

better nations

custom of each man thinking only of his own private interests and have reached the extreme wild of delicacy, or better of pride, in which like

into the

animals they displeasure.

and

bristle

and

lash out at the slightest

Thus no matter how

great the throng

press of their bodies, they live like wild beasts

The New

in a deep solitude of spirit

and

Science of History

will, scarcely

any two

own

being able to agree since each follows his pleasure or caprice.

By

reason of

37

providence

all this,

and

decrees that, through obstinate factions

des-

perate civil wars, they shall turn their cities into forests

and the

forests into

dens and

of men. In

lairs

this

way, through long centuries of barbarism, rust

will

consume the misbegotten

wits that have turned

them

subtleties of malicious

into beasts

made more

inhuman by the barbarism

of reflection than the

men had been made by

the barbarism of sense.

first

For the latter displayed a generous savagery, against

which one could defend oneself or take

flight or

on one's guard; but the former, with a base under

soft

savagery,

words and embraces, plots against the

and fortune of

friends

and

intimates.

be

life

Hence peoples

who have reached this point of premeditated malice, when they receive this last remedy of providence and are thereby stunned

and

brutalized, are sensible

longer of comforts, delicacies, pleasures,

but only of the sheer necessities of survivors in the midst of

necessary for

life

life.

And

naturally

become

sociable and, re-

of peoples, are again religious, truthful,

faith,

and

the few

an abundance of the things

turning to the primitive simplicity of the

Thus providence

no

and pomp,

brings back

first

and

among them

world

faithful.

the piety,

truth which are the natural foundations

of justice as well as the graces eternal order of

God.

and beauties of the ns,

1 1

06

3

.

Closing

In the jungle of

cities,

the

new

Time

38

barbarism.

than you think.

It is later

Fieluhr? Filou! What age is at? It saon What era's o'ering? Lang gong late.

Faurore! Fearhoure! At

is late.

F w, 21 F w, 244

last it past!

F w, 587

The thing that we dread has already happened. The thunder of the crash: Have you here? (Some ha) Have we where? Have you hered? (Others do) Have we whered? (Others dont) It's cumming, it's brumming! The clip, the clop! (All cla) Glass crash. The (klik(Sojne hant)

kaklakkaklaskaklopatzklatschabattacreppycrotty-

graddaghsemmihsammihnouithappluddyappladdypkonpkot! )

The

FW, 44

sense of an ending:

Western

And

Civilization

the

is

over.

lamp went out

burning, yep, the

as

it

Imp wnt out

couldn't glow on

for

it

couldn't stay

alight.

On

fw, 427

the verge of closing time.

Thatll beall for tody. Col boily.

End a muddy

it off.

fw, 474

Godnotch,

vry-

crushmess!

Shut up shop, dappy.

And

FW> 533-34

the duppy shot the

shutter clup (Perkodhuskurunbarggruauyagokgorlay-

orgromgremmitghundhurthrumathunaradidillifaititillibumullunukkunun!)

And they all

drank

free.

fw, 23

III.

An

Interlude nf Farce

An Interlude of Farce

41

In the meantime, waiting

waiting

Abide Waiting

Zeit's sumonserving, rise afterfall.

fw, 78

for the return of the theocratic age

to greet the return of the gods

(Heidegger

(H.D. Tribute

for.

The while Hymn.

we,

we

are waiting,

we

to

Freud

are waiting

FW

,

609

Plato:

There

an era

is

the universe on

There

is

tion

an era

also

Thereupon under

which the god himself

way and helps in

which he

it

assists

in its rotation.

releases his control.

begins to revolve in a contrary direc-

it

own

its

era draws to

its

in

its

impulse.

At

close, disorder

last, as this

comes

cosmic

to a head.

The

few good things the universe produces are polluted with so great a taint of

evil that it

brink of destruction, both

it

hovers on the very

and the creatures

in

it.

moment the god who first down upon it again. Beholding

Therefore at that very set it in order looks it

in trouble,

confusion

it

and anxious suffer

lest

racked by storms and

dissolution

and sink into the

bottomless abyss of differentiation, he takes control Politicus,

of the

helm once more.

269c, 273D

Closing

Time

42

In the meantime, an interim in the

time of the

Not

yet.

In Nowhere has yet the

rw> 3

Whole World

taken part of

himself for his Wife;

By Nowhere have Poorparents been sentenced Worms, Blood and Thunder for Life Not yet has

the

to

Emp from Corpsica forced the

Arth out of Engleterre;

Not yet have the Sachsen and Judder on the Mound of a Word made Wane; Not yet Witchywitchy of Wench struck Fire

of his

Heath from on Hoath;

Not yet

his Arcobaleine forespoken

Peacepeace

upon Oath;

fw, 175

In the interim, an interlude

during this swishingsight teUweisioned

an interlude of Finnegans

Wake

Etymology of

Make

is

his farced epistol to the hibruws.

fw, 228

farce: stuffing.

a farce with livers

with sage.

fw, 345

farce.

With what

minced

stuffe

small. Pigge farced

our old historiographers

have farced up their huge volumes.

o.e.d.

Farce, or satire: Satire. Scaliger's derivation of this is

untenable.

It is

from satura

word from

satyr

(full of variety, satufi

rated), satura Janx, a hotchpotch or olla podrida.

Dictionary

An Interlude of Farce

43

Finnegans Walce:

My

wudl The warped

flooring of the lair

and

soundconducting walls thereof, to say nothing of the uprights

and imposts, were

persianly literatured with

burst loveletters, telltale stories, stickyback

snaps,

doubtful eggshells, bouchers, flints, borers, puffers, rindless

raisins,

alphybetty-

vivlical viasses,

ompiter

dictas, visus

amygdaloid almonds,

formed verbage,

umbique, ahems and ahahs, imeffible unasyllabled,

you owe

which had

fallen lucifers, vestas

ornaments,

borrowed brogues,

blackeye lenses, family forsaken ties,

scapulars,

speech

tries at

mes, eyoldhyms, fluefoul smut, served,

showered

reversibles

jackets,

falsehair shirts,

jars,

God-

neverworn breeches, cutthroat

counterfeit franks, best intentions, curried notes,

upset latten tintacks, unused mill and stumpling stones,

twisted quills, painful digests,

magnifying

wineglasses, solid objects cast at goblins, once cur-

rent puns, quashed quotatoes, messes of mottage,

unquestionable issue papers, seedy ejaculations, limerick

damns, crocodile

tears, spilt ink,

blasphematory

young

ladies',

shopkeepers'

wives,

merry widows', ex nuns', vice abbess's i pro

virgins',

spits,

stale

milkmaids',

shestnuts,

super whores', silent mothers',

schoolgirls',

washerwomen's,

sisters',

mothers' -in-laws',

mothers' garters,

Charleys' aunts', grand-

fostermothers' ,

godrw, 183

41

Closing

Time

44

A farce, or compost heap: He dumptied

the wholeborrow of rubbages on

to soil here.

FWi

Puffedly offal tosh J

What

a mnice old mness

it all

mnakes!

A

7

mid-

denhide hoard of objects!

An

j

fw, 4 9

F w, 19

interlude of farce

an interval

between

shift

and

fw, 293

shift

between explosion and reexplosion (Donnaurwatteur! Hunderthunder!)

The Ginnungagap: Eddas

the

fw, 78

name

given in the Icelandic

to the interval of timeless formlessness be-

tween world aeons.

Somewhere, parently,

in the

ginnandgo gap be-

tween antediluvious and annadominant.

An interval

fw,

1

of timeless formlessness

an interregnum:

Whenever rarily in

the

Roman

constitution

fell

tempo-

abeyance because the succession of supreme

magistrates was accidentally broken, the transitional

period was designated an interregnum.

An

interval intercalated:

An

intercalary period stands outside the regular

order of things. Intercalary days tend to degenerate into seasons of unbridled license; they form an in-

terregnum during which customary restraints of law

and morality are suspended. Interregnum, or Saturnalia satire for

the Saturnalia.

Frazer g.b. ix,

328

1

:

An

Interlude of Farce

45

Interlude interpolated. Definition of farce:

The word was

originally applied

to phrases interpolated in the litany

between the

words kyrie and eJeison; to similar expansions of other liturgical formulae; to passages in the vernacular inserted

between the Latin sentences

in

chanting

the epistle.

o.e.d.

His farced

rw, 228

epistol.

Subsequently the

name

for the interludes of im-

promptu buffoonery which the

actors in the

reli-

dramas were accustomed to interpolate in

gious

their text.

Bob Dylan There must be some way out of here Said the joker to the priest.

The

Origin of Attic

Comedy:

p

M

Comford

not the eiron or the alazon but the bomolochos altar-ambusher or altar-snatcher

James Joyce, altar-boy turned altar-snatcher. This

is

the

way

that

Shem

built:

—The hoax that joke —The of junk the jungular? —Jacked up in a jock the wrapper. bilked.

jest

fw, 51

Closing

Time

46

Joyce celebrates the Feast of Fools Tis jest jibbenveek's joke.

The

festival of

FW

the subdeacons which

is

held on

the Circumcision or on Epiphany or the Octave of the Epiphany

is

called the Feast of Fools.

(Testum

hypodiaconoium, quod vocamus stultorum.') This festival flourished chiefly in the cathedral

France, though there are traces of tries.

varied,

It

it

towns of

in other coun-

of course, at different places

and

times, but the general character of the rejoicing perfectly clear, for reversal of ordinary

it

is

took the form of a complete

custom.

The

transformation be-

gan with the singing of the Magnificat at Vespers,

when

the words 'He hath put

their seat

down

the mighty from

and hath exalted the humble and meek'

were repeated again and again, while the baculus or staff of

ofEce was delivered into the hands of one of

the despised sub-deacons

King of Fools' led

who

as 'bishop or

Pope or

his fellows into the stalls of the

higher clergy, to remain there and usurp their functions for the duration of the feast. This transference

of authority was the signal for the beginning of the

most astonishing

revels.

As soon

shed their authority the sanctity.

as the higher clergy

ecclesiastical ritual lost its

Even the Mass was burlesqued. Censing

was done with pudding and sausages. Sometimes an

5g 5

An Interlude of Farce

ass

47

was introduced into church, while the Prose of

the Ass was chanted: 'Orientis partibus

Adventavit Asinus,

Pulcher et fortissimus, Sarcims aptissimus.'

On

these occasions solemn

Mass was punctu-

ated with brays and howls, and the rubrics of the 'office'

direct that the celebrant instead of saying

Ite missa est shall bray three times (tei

and that the people

shall

hinhannabit)

respond in similar fashion.

E. Welsford,

The

Fool,

202

Ritual clowns in primitive religion

the "Fools Lodge," or "Society of Contraries," violate taboos

"You

and thereby acquire magical power.

shall regard

Shocking stunts,

Shem:

mental and moral defective

this

seeker of the nest of evil in the

fw, 177

bosom

of a good

word.

FW, 189

The Zuni clowns used

to drink bowls full of urine

and feed on excrement and

Shem

in Diogenes,

69 (1970), 44-73

nothing as sacred."

just like

L. Makarius

all sorts

of filthy matter.

wrote crap in his hand, sorry!

He

shall

produce nichthemerically from his un-

heavenly body a no uncertain quantity of obscene

matter not protected by copriright in the United Stars of Ourania.

FW, 185

This was a stinksome inkenstink

The

worst,

it

is

hoped, even in our western

playboy ish world for pure mousefarm

filth.

FW, 183

Closing

The Zuni clowns

Time

48

ridicule people

Shem

scrabbled and scratched and scriobbled and skrevened nameless shamelessness about every-

body ever he met. Other

FW

traits characteristic

verse behaviour"

l82

of ritual clowns are "re-

and "backward speech." From

his

birth, the

mythical Koshari, father of the Sia clowns, nonsense, talked backward." The Zuni

"talked

clowns say the opposite of what they mean. Like a crazy fellow. Speaking a strange language. As in

Finnegans WaJce. It is

what Michelet

called "the great satanical prin-

ciple that everything

must be done

in the reverse

order."

Kish

and the

is

for anticheirst,

free of

my hand to him!

^

3o8

An

Interlude of Farce

49

This interlude of farce the time of Finnegans

Wake is

intermission time

incipit intermissio

fw, 278

not incipit tragoedia. There's just that Shakespeare fellow

left to beat, said

Nora Joyce

He was

avoopf (parn me!) aware of no other

shaggspick, other Shakhisbeard, either prexactly unlike his polar andthisishis or procisely

woops (parn!)

as

the seem as

what he fancied or guessed the

sames as he was himself. Joyce's

fw, 177

answer to Shakespearian tragedy: incipit intermissio

Lights, pageboy, lights!

The moment exit of the

of Finnegans

fw, 24s

Wake

corresponds to the

king from the play within the play in

HamJet: Enterruption.

Check

or slowback. Dvershen.

fw, 332

You're well held now, Missy Cheekspeer, and

your panto's

off!

fw, 257

Closing

Time

50

Farce makes a farce out of tragedy.

Have you evew thought, wepowtew, that sheew gweatness

was

his

twadgedy?

Empson, Some Versions ot

fw

Pastoral, p. 5:

"There

was a performance of Hamlet in the Turk-Sib

re-

gion which the audience decided spontaneously was farce."

Karl Marx,

The Eighteenth Brumaire

parte, p. 1:

"Hegel says somewhere

stage of universal history, sonalities reappear in

that,

great events

upon the and

one fashion or another.

forgot to add that on the as tragedy;

all

of Louis Bona-

on the second,

first

per-

He

occasion, they appear

as farce."

5,

—— An Interlude of Farce

51

Tragedy, comedy, farce the forms of politics are the forms of theater

bourgeois comedy, the happy ending

H. Rosenberg

tragic confrontation of antagonists

the agony Class-struggle as the continuation of tragedy

—

Waiting foi Lefty Is

the proletariat the

new collective hero

waiting to go on stage

another actor on the stage of history a

new

actor in a neo-classical revival

as in 1848

Marx

Karl festo

Or

is

—

of

The Communist Mani-

the proletariat the sober reality of the

human

condition

—the necessity of labor to

be disclosed after the show

after the farce has

and none nunce come

Waiting

is

over

ended

so soon either shall the pharce for the

to a

setdown secular phoenish.

for Lefty,

Waiting

for

Godot

waiting to stop the show, the farce

waiting to bring the house down.

fw, 4

History

is

Closing

Time

am

trying

a nightmare from which I

to awake.

eth.

52

Ulysses, 34

The play thou schouwburgst, Game, The curtain drops by deep request.

here endfw, 257

Roll away the reel world, the reel world, the reel

world! cherchons la

Farce

is

the

mode

flamme/

FWf 64

of consciousness in which a peo-

ple take leave of their history

"The

iron statue of

top of the

Napoleon

will crash

from the

Vendome column."

Mane

No more Greek revival let

the dead bury the dead

no more ghosts. Waiting

for a

Calling

new dawn.

all

downs. Calling

all

downs

to dayne.

Array! Surrection!

FW( 593

You mean to see we have been hadding a sound night's sleep? You may so. It is just, it is just about to, it is just

about to rolywholyover.

fw, 597

:

An Interlude of Farce

The it

53

necessity of farce

takes a farce to see a farce

Marx's paradoxes in it is

The Eighteenth Brumaire

not sober political analysis:

it's

a

riot.

Marx clowning Abbie Hoffman clowning John Cage clowning

What Karl Marx really meant is Finnegans Wake. "Literary called

bolshevism,"

brother

Stanislaus

Joyce

it.

Stannie was a santryman and drilled people.

Caddy went

peace a farce.

to

all

decent

Winehouse and wrote o fw, 14

—

—

—

Closing

Time

54

Farce, or operetta

the swan song of dying civilizations

For a burning would

is

come

to dance inane.

FW> 250

Are you not danzzling on the age of a vulcano? Siar, I

am deed.

fw, 89

Operetta "Its divine idiocy, its

heavenly

sclerosis," to

quote

the Polish novelist Witold Gombrowicz, "provide a perfect artistic symbol for the absurdity of

New YoTk '

outworn

conventions, for paralyzed social and political struc-

1970

tures."

Finnegans

Wake is

Joyce's gaiety

pantheomime

or chrismaris

Every evening

at lighting

up

fw, 180

pandemon

o'clock sharp

until further notice in Feenichts Playhouse.

fw, 455

and (Bar

and conveniences always open, Diddlem Club dounfw, 219

cestears.)

With

futurist onehorse balletbattle pictures

and

the Pageant of Past History worked up with animal variations amid everglaning mangrovemazes and beorbtracktors by Messrs

ows by the film

The

folk,

Thud and

Blunder. Shad-

masses by the good people.

fw, 221

gist of the pantomime, from cannibal king

to the property horse, being,

remind us how, in

this drury

Times and Mother Spades their crutch.

slumply and slopely, to

world of ours, Father boil

their

Which every lad and

knows. Hence.

kettle

with

lass in the lane

FW, 599600

An

Farce

is

Interlude of Farce

55

mode of demystification mode remystifies

the

the tragic

"Love Remystified" the tragic

The

mode

is

solempne.

necessity of farce or Finnegans

Wake

order to have our archetypes without Jungian solemnity or Yeatsian occultism. in

—How culious an epiphany!

Farce

is

Fw

5o8

vulgarization

(Stoop)

fw, 18

(please stoop) "It

is

imperative that

we

sink"

Williams

HYPOTHESES OF COMMONEST EXPERIENCES

FW>286

Here Comes Everybody.

No more heroics instead of Aristotle's leading families, our low hero

O/ the lowness of him was beneath that sunk to!

Lowest basemeant

all

up

fw, 184

to

FW, ljl in hystry!

__, mmm

Closing

Farce

is

Time

56

the theater of impotence.

In a situation of general social paralysis stasis, sterility, stereotypification

the aim

is

not the seizure of power, but the dissolu-

tion of power.

Karl

Marx

in

The Eighteenth Brumaire

demolishing the cult of the leader bringing Napoleon's statue down.

"We are outlaws, not organizers."

Abbie Hoffman:

Organizers are big pricks.

Beyond

beyond tragedy, beyond

history,

genital or-

ganization of the body politic.

Farce

is

the theater of impotence

the clown the

little fellow;

Farce

is

Fenichel

the castrated penis

is

Charlie Chaplin.

nihilism.

fw, 415

Nixnixundnix. Joyce wore his eyes out looking at Europe and seeing nothing.

And in a

of Irish history he said:

bloody

fight over

Two

bloody Irishmen

bloody nothing.

Finnegans Wake: Putting AUspace in a Notshall. All history.

marryvoising

fw, 455

moodmoulded cyclewheeling *w. 186

An

Interlude of Farce

57

Avoiding Jungian solemnity or Yeatsian occultism

we

take refuge in the Void, the Nothing: It

was

allso agreenable in

our sinegear clutch-

touring the no placelike no timelike absolent,

less,

mixing up pettyvaughan populose with the magnu-

moore with

genstries,

lloydhaired mersscenary blookers

boydskinned

and

pigttetails

gwendolenes with duffyeyed dolores;

goochlipped like so

many

unprobables in their poor suit of the improssable.

FW, 609

A tale Told by an

idiot, full of

sound and

fury,

Signifying nothing.

King Leai

is

also

Macbeth, V, v

Much Ado About Nothing Tomfoolery

Enter Lear, with Cordelia dead in his arms

My poor fool Beyond tragedy and is

is

hang'd!

Lear,

V,

farce

the fusion of these opposites.

The

final

pages of Finnegans

Wake

literature at the breaking point

breaking

down

breaking into

tears.

The poignt you

at.

of fun where I

am

crying to arrive fw, 160

iii

Closing

This intermingling of

hilarity

cally speaking, sufficient to

and

fear

is,

Time

58

ethnologi-

betray the presence of

the clown. Just as in the romantic theory of the

melange des

genres in literature, the Zuni clowns represent both gravity

and

Makarius

hilarity.

In Finnegans

Wake,

the twins Hilary and Tristopher

Giordano Bruno's motto: In

hilaritate

tiistis,

in

tristitia hilaris.

f

am

not leering,

highly sheshe sherious.

I

pink you pardons.

I

am fw, 570

An Interlude of Farce

Beyond tragedy and

59

farce

to the fusion of these opposites is

back

back to the original goat-song out of which both tragedy and satyr-play, those siamixcd twins,

by separation

FW

66

arose.

We know nothing and can know nothing but the dance, to dance to a measure contrapuntally, Satyrically, the tragic foot.

Tragocdia

=

Williams

goat-song

What

then agentlike brought about that goady thundersday this municipal sin business? This municipal sin business

—

is

he

tra-

fw, 5 talk-

ing about Kent State?

That tragoady thundersday Finnegans

HCE

is

Wake is

that fishabed ghoatstory

fw, 51

Hircus Civis Eblanensisf old goat-citizen

FW, 21$

of Dublin Giles Goat-Boy

is

out of Finnegans

Wake

j ohn Barth

Got by the one goat, suckled by the same nanna one twitch, one nature makes us oldworld

kin.

f

FWf 4 $ 3

Closing

Time

60

Goat-song or satyr-play satyr-play or satire

word from

Scaliger's derivation of this

stated

when we go

satyr

is

rein-

joycing

letting punplays pass to ernest.

fw, 233

That tragoady thundersday or Satyr's

Caudledayed Nice.

fw, 415

For the triduum of Saturnalia his goatservant had paraded hiz willingsons in the Forum. Saturnights pomps,

FW, 97

exhabiting that corricatore

of a harss, repealled by Oscur

Camerad.

FW, 602

Finnegan Beginnagain

we are back

again

before the Birth of Tragedy before the

Gods

of Greece

something more elemental. does that synthesis of god and goat in the

What satyr

mean? (Nietzsche).

human

I

estimate the value of

beings, or races, according to

how

necessarily

Ecce Homo,

XV,

4; II,

4

they cannot understand the god apart from the satyr.

Said the joker to the priest.

Mais regardez done ce Joyce: C'est

Je satyre

sur

il

est tout a fait grecque.

un vase grecque/

Ellmann, 612

—

An Interlude of Farce

61

Something more elemental the hour of the beast

"pawses"

It darkles, (tinct, tint) all this

rw

world.

FW, 244

Not Pater Panther:

When

221

our funnaminal

noster but Panther monster. all

FW, 244

beast.

the leopards break into the temple and drink

the wine from the sacred chalice.

The hour of the beast, or the barbarian The wild main from Borneholm has

jest

come

to crown.

fw, 331

The whool

of the whaal in the wheel of the

whorl of the Boubou from Bourneum has thus come to taonl

fw, 415

One two

three.

Choursl So come on, ye wealthy

gentrymen wihfrufrocksfull of fun! Thin thinl Thin thin! Thej oily and thel ively, thou billy with thee coo, for to jog a jig of a crispness nice

and sing a

Hip champouree! Hiphip champouree! O you longtailed blackman, polk it up behind me! Hip champouree! Hiphip champouree! And, Jessies, missal too.

push the pumkik round. Anneliuia!

One

FW

,

236

stands, given a grain of goodwill, a fair

chance of actually seeing the whirling dervish, Tumult, son of Thunder.

Fw

,g 4

——

—

Closing

Waiting

for the return of the

Time

gods

witnessing the return of barbarism

the Engels, on

new barbarians

The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the

the origin

— the

coming-into-being and

State:

the passing-

away— "Indeed, only barbarians are capable of rejuvenating a world laboring

under the death throes of unnerved

civilization."

Vico

is

Engels

right is

right

Here

is

that synthesis that Gramsci sought:

Vico and Marxism reconciled

Mao is tach

right

The Great Cultural Revolution was to decommunism from civilization. The civilized

world looked on and could not believe

its

eyes.

62

An

Waiting

for the return of the

Interlude of Farce

63

gods

witnessing the return of barbarism

The new barbarians returning to primitive simplicity of the

first

world of peoples r r

c llOO

k „

NS,

'

to recognize the gods to greet

them

Dei diakctus soloecismus—the

dialect of

God is Love's Body,

solecism.

God does not speak good

239

English.

Not atticism but solecism. Barbarism.

Barbarism, or speaking with tongues as in

Finnegans

Wake

polyglot turning into glossolalia

Pentecost

wordloosed over seven seas crowdblast in

cellel-

leneteutoslavzendlatinsoundscript.

In the buginning

is

the woid, in the

the sounddance. Instead of the sentence, the sounddance.

Fw muddle

is

FW

3?8

IV.

New

The

Science

of Origins

The New

Vico

is

Science of Origins

T1C0TS0

The New Science

is

return to divination:

This Science must therefore be a rational

civil

theology of divine providence.

"Though men,

its

first

A return

created

in

creation has been

to the poetic

was

67

NS,342

the second-cycle age of

made

possible by a return

wisdom by which the world

of nations

created."

NS

K

to the language of the gods:

Their poetic wisdom began with this poetic metaphysics, which contemplated

God

by the

attri-

bute of his providence; and they were called theological poets, or sages

who understood

the language

of the gods expressed in the auspices of Jove;

were properly called divine

from divinari,

and

in the sense of diviners,

to divine or predict.

NS> 3 g,

Closing

The gods

Time

68

return in thunder:

Reader! lover of books! lover of heaven,

And

of that

God from whom all things are given,

Who in mysterious Sinai's awful cave To Man

the wondrous art of writing gave:

in thunder and in fire! Again he speaks r b Thunder of Thought, and flames of fierce

The gods is

desire:

f

p

i.

3

return in thunder

Finnegans

Vico

la e, J

Jerusalem,

Wake is thunder

thunder; stunning

Vico's best reader, Michelet:

"1824. Vico. Effort, infernal shades, grandeur,

the golden bough.

From 1824

on,

I

was seized by a

frenzy caught from Vico, an incredible intoxication

with his great historical principle."

Autob. 76

The New Science of Origins

The origin

69

of civilization, thunder:

For a long period of time the impious

races of

the children of Noah, having lapsed into a state of bestiality,

went wandering

like

wild beasts until they

were scattered and dispersed through the great forest of the earth;

and with

their bestial education QLants

had sprung up and existed among them

when

the heavens thundered for the

at the time

first

time after

the flood.

NS>

Thereupon a few the most robust, and

195

who must have been who were dispersed through giants,

the forests on the mountain heights where the strongest

have their dens, were frightened and

beasts

astonished by the great effect whose cause they did

not know, and raised their eyes and became aware

They pictured the sky

of the sky.

great animated body, Jove, the

first

who meant

to

which

to themselves as a

in that aspect they called

god of the so-called greater gentes, tell them something by the hiss of his

and the clap of his thunder. Thus it was fear which created gods

bolts

KS, 377 in the world.

NSf 3 % 2

God-fearing gumts, as represented by the Poly-

phemus of Homer.

ns,

503

Closing

Time

70

For the Clearer of the Air from on high has spoken in tumbuldum tamhaldam to his tembledim

tombaldoom worrild and, moguphonoised by that phonemanon, the unhappitents of the earth have terrerumbled from fimament unto fundament and from tweedledeedumms down to twiddledeedees.

F w, 258

What the thunder said

DA DA DA Damyata: Restrain yourselves

That

frightful

thought of some divinity which

imposed form and measure on the

bestial passions

men and

them

of these lost

thus transformed

into

human passions. The

ns,

340

NS>

504

enchained under the mountains by

giants,

the frightful religion of the thunderbolts, learned to

check

their

habit

bestial

of

wandering wild

through the great forest of the earth, and acquired the contrary custom of remaining hidden their fields.

With

began likewise to show

settled in

conatus the virtue of

this

also their bestial lust

and

itself

among them,

from finding

its

spirit

restraining

satisfaction in

the sight of heaven, of which they had a mortal terror.

So

it

came about

woman

that each of

into his cave

perpetual

company

Thus the

act of

is

and would keep her there

is

love was performed under to say, in shame;

the second

bond

united, even as shamelessness

them.

in

for the duration of their lives.

human

cover, in hiding, that after religion,

them would drag one

and

this,

that keeps nations

and impiety destroy

The New

The

origin

civilization,

Hexagram

Science of Origins

71

of civilization, thunder; the origin of

madness

16.

Yii/Enrhusiasm

"Thunder comes resounding out of the

earth: the

image of enthusiasm." It

was a deficiency of human reasoning power

that gave rise to poetry so sublime that the philos-

ophies which

came afterward have produced none

equal or better, and have even prevented duction.

its

proNS>

384

.

Closing

Time

72

Vico recovers that heroic sublimity his 4>BK speech to the students in 1732:

delh

men re eroica.

Writing The

New Science

work has

this

filled

me

with a certain heroic

spirit.

Autob. is

LightningAike flashes of Platonic divinity.

Autob.

Cultivating a kind of divinity in our mind.

Autob. 141

Vico recovers that

An

it

began

so rapidly, indeed, that he

Christmas morning

1720.

and

finished

Sunday evening (April

o'clock Easter

9,

at

it

it it

nine

1730)

Autob. 194

Fatal fury, heroic fury Eroici

Fuiori,

Giordano Bruno; who got

terribly

burned another Orphic voice, another Neo-Platonist.

Vico belongs to the Hermetic

The origin cal poets,

tradition.

of language in fantasy, not in reality:

For that

first

language, spoken by the theologi-

was not a language in accord with the na-

ture of the things

it

dealt with, but

was a

fantastic

speech making use of physical substances endowed

with

life

38

creative madness, or fury:

almost fatal fury drove him to meditate

and write

1

and most of them imagined

to be divine.

ns, 401

:

The New

Hence

poetic wisdom, the

gentile world,

Science of Origins

wisdom

first

of the

must have begun with a metaphysics

not rational and abstract like that of learned

now, but

felt

73

and imagined

as that of these

first

men men

must have been who, without power of ratiocination, were all robust sense and vigorous imagination.

NS 375 ,

It is

beyond our power

imagination of these

first

to enter into the vast

men, whose minds were

not in the least abstract, refined or spiritualized, because they were entirely immersed in the senses, buffeted by passions, buried in the body.

They were out For God, things, and,

of their in

minds

his

purest

knows

intelligence,

by knowing them, creates them; but

they, in their robust ignorance, did

wholly corporeal imagination. quite corporeal, they did ity;

NS> 37 8

it

And

by virtue of "a

it

because

was

with marvellous sublim-

a sublimity such and so great that

perturbed the very persons

it

it

excessively

who by imagining

did

the creating, for which they were called poets, which is

Greek

for "creators."

That such was the confirmed by proper material

NS>

origin of poetry

this eternal property is

of

it:

the credible impossibility.

is

3?6

finally

that

its

NS 383 ,

Closing

Time

74

Man is maniac the Dionysian origin of civilization

enthusiasm

So

that, as rational

metaphysics teaches that

man becomes all things by understanding them (homo intelligendo fit omnia), this imaginative metaphysics shows that man becomes all things by not understanding them (homo non intelligendo fit omnia).

It's

a

all

NS405

misunderstanding, a creative misunder-

standing

the fortunate

fall

Hirp! Hirp! for their Missed Understandings! chirps the Ballat of Perce-Oreille.

Myths from

arising facts

art

FW

,

r

Duncan

1

75

forms misunderstood, arising

misunderstood, arising from historical

events, arising arising

from

from

literary allusions

from metaphor, giving

misunderstood, to

rise

would-be

Truth of

history.

The original mistake in every sentence metaphor. :

& Life

Myth, 47

Love's Body,

244

5

The New Science of Origins

Vico

is

75

hcoiso

Vico a poet-giant wandering

in the primeval forest again:

We wander ignorant of the men and the places. You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy? You says: It is a puling sample jungle of woods. The rediscovery of the uncertainty principle in Heisenberg, in Joyce, in

Autob. 49

FW, 112

John Cage.

along the winding ways of random ever!

FW, 405

(since in this scherzarade of one's thousand

one nightinesses that sword of certainty which would indentifide the

body never falls)

in fact, the

FW, 51

sameold gamebold adomic structure

of our Finnius the old One, as higfily charged with electrons as hophazards can effective

it.

Fw, 61

Closing

Time

76

Vico rebarbarizing himself

To

discover the

way

in

which the

thinking arose in the gentile world,

human

first

we encountered

exasperating difficulties which have cost us the search of a good twenty years.

We

had

to

from these human and refined natures of ours those quite wild and savage natures, which

not at

all

re-

descend

we

to

can-

imagine and can comprehend only with

great efforts. It

is

NS>

a learned ignorance, as in

33g

Cusanus

Nicholas of Cusa another Orphic voice. :

rrn

i

.

,

,

llie solution to the

We

wold made aboot we

fresh

start

in.

identity:

as babes

Get lost

.

fond always. As were we

And robins in crews so.

Body,

story-

^

scratch.

are

s

,5,

awqndering in a

where with the hen in the

from

The woods babes

amore

are once

hose

,

,

problem of

33 g

their

FWf 6 19

V.The

New

Science

of Language

The New

Man

his

is

Science of Language

79

own maker

maker or creator creator or poet

"Poets" which

The making is

is

Greek

is

The

The New

376

Holderlin,

Mensch auf dieser Erde

Heidegger

only poetry

the key to

and of

NS,

poetry, poiesis

Dichteiisch wohnet der there

for "creators."

Love's Body,

Science

is

266

poetry:

principle of these origins both of languages

letters lies in

the fact that the

first

gentile

peoples, by a demonstrated necessity of nature, were

poets

which

who spoke is

in poetic characters.

This discovery,

the master key of this Science, has cost us

the persistent research of almost

all

because with our civilized natures

our

literary life,

we cannot

imagine and can understand only by great poetic nature of these

first

men.

at all

toil

the ns,

34

Closing

Man

makes himself by making

this

poetry.

is

his

own

Time

gods,

80

and

In the Autobiography Vico summarizes:

He

discovers

ophy, and race.

first

That

is

new

of

all

historical principles of philos-

human

a metaphysics of the

to say, a natural theology of all nations

by which each people naturally created by

own gods through a certain man has for divinity. Thus he

itself its

natural instinct that discovers the identity

of the grand principle of gentile theology with that

of the poetry of the theological poets,

worlds

to

the Autob. 167-8

poets.

first

The key

who were

The New Science

but the key to mythology

is

is

mythology

etymology:

Meanwhile Vico, by the reading of Bacon of Verulams treatise on the wisdom of the ancients, more ingenious and learned than to look for

its

true,

was incited

principles farther back than in the

fables of the poets.

He

was moved to do

this

by the

example of Plato who in the cratylus had sought to track them down within the origins of the Greek language.

An added

incentive was the feeling he

had

begun to entertain, that the etymologies of the grammarians were unsatisfactory.

Autob. 148

:

The New

Anthropology becomes

Science of Language

81

linguistics; or philosophical

philology:

"A New

Science

Essayed," wherein he begins

is

to reduce philology to scientific principles.

Including

among

marians, historians,

the philologians

critics,

all

Autob. 158

the gram-

who have occupied themand deeds of

selves with the study of the languages

peoples.

Overcoming the Cartesian

The

1

ns,

140

39

philosophers failed by half in not giving

certainty to their reasonings ity

ns,

bias against philology:

and

of philologians,

by appeal

to the author-

likewise the latter failed by

half in not taking care to give their authority the

sanction of truth by appeal to the reasoning of the philosophers.

Dethroning philosophy It follows that

in favor of

the

first

mythology:

science to be learned

should be mythology or the interpretation of

Truth and

life is in

Poetic truth truth which

considered

is

is

ns, 51

metaphysical truth, and physical

not in conformity with

false.

fables.

myth

it

should be ns,

205

.

Closing

Thus he overthrows the

rationalist

made sense Age of Reason.

dential considerations that

Hugo

Grotius, John Selden,

82

theory of the

origin of the state: a social contract based

ended philosophers of the

Time

on pru-

to enlight-

and Samuel Pufen-

dorf should have taken their start from the begin-

nings of the gentes, -where their subject-matter begins.

But

all

three of

them

err together in this respect,

by beginning in the middle; that

is,

with the

times of the civilized nations (and thus of

latest

men

en-

lightened by fully developed natural reason)

NS 394 ,

The who

foundation of the state

is

returned to Orpheus,

Am-

with his song tamed the savage beasts; to

phion,

who with

his lyre built

out of stocks and

stones the walls of a city.

Amphion used

stones, in the sense in

which the

Latin word for stone, lapis, meant a lout, and

signi-

fying therefore the simple-minded plebeians.

The metaphysics of the them god-fearing, was the

poet-giants,

734

ns,

502

by making

source of their poetic

morality.

Cosmos upsung from

ns,

chaos:

through the windr of a wondr in a wildr weltr as a wirbl of a warbl

is

a world.

is

a

fw, 597

The New

That the Ancient

Corollary:

Serious

Science of Language

Roman Law was

83

a

Poem, and that the Ancient Jurisprudence a

Severe Kind of Poetry. Legal Fiction

Thus

all

is

ns,

Poetic Diction:

the fictions of ancient jurisprudence

1027

q Barfield

were truths under masks, and the formulae in which the laws were expressed, because of their strict measures of such

subtraction,

addition,

—admitting neither alteration—were called

and so many words nor

carmina, or songs.

* The New

*

ns,

1036

ns,

403

* *

#

Science of language

the nature of words

is

their

nascimento

their origin their etymology. _ The etymology of the word etymology:

etym means true the definition of the

word "etymology"

itself as meaning veriloquium.

The

truth

is

in the root

the true meaning

is

the original meaning.

Closing

Anthropology

is

history,

and

This was the order of

history

human

is

Time

84

etymology:

institutions: first

the forests, after that the huts, then the villages,

next the

cities,

and finally the academies.

This axiom this

sequence of

is

a great principle of etymology, for

human

for the histories of

guages.

institutions sets the pattern

words

Thus we observe

in the various native lan-

in the Latin language that

almost the whole corpus of rustic origins.

meant a

its

words had sylvan or

For example, lex.

collection of acorns.

derived ilex, as

it

First

it

must have

Thence we

believe

is

were illex, the oak (as certainly

aquilex means collector of waters); for the oak produces the acorns by which the swine are drawn gether,

to-

lex was next a collection of vegetables, from

which the

latter

were called legumina. Later on, at

when vulgar letters had not yet been invented writing down the laws, lex by a necessity of civil

a time for

nature must have meant a collection of citizens, or the public parliament; so that the presence of the

people was the lex, or "law." Finally, collecting letters,

and making,

as

it

were, a sheaf of

each word, was called legere, reading.

them

for ns,

239-40

The New Science of Language

A

very

fairworded

instance

85

of falsemeaning

adamelegy.

FW> 77

But we are making a bolderdash

for

lubberty of speech

letting punplays pass to ernest.

History

is

FWf 233

paronomastic

—History

as her

is

harped.

fw, 486

The texture of history is the texture of Finnegans Wake. Compare Marcel Granet, Chinese Civilization: Yao, the Sovereign

had to aim arrows a

"appeared

his celestial double.

like the

sun"

sun before he could become

Son of Heaven. Thus he succeeded

emblem is

who

at the

As soon

as

in

overcoming

he had conquered the

of the sun, he was worthy to reign. Archery

an inaugural ceremony by which one can reveal

one's virtue.

But an unworthy Chieftain

proof turn against him. the incapable magician

The is

penalty which overtakes

the result of a reflex action,

the arrows which are aimed at Heaven the form of lightning.

by lightning, and

will see the

The bowman

perishes, because

fall

himself

back in is

struck

without possess-

ing the necessary qualifications, he has attempted to

awaken and capture the energies of the

Fire.

Such

was the case of Wu-yi, a king without Virtue. Wu-yi shot an arrow aiming at the sky, or rather at a leather

198-99

Closing

Time

bottle full of blood

which he called the Sky. Made

of the skin of a bull,

it

king drew his at a

game

fortune.

bow

of chess

had the shape of an owl. The he had

after

won

the owl's

which gave him the

Wu-yi belonged

move

right to try his

to the family of the Yin,

who owned the emblem of the Owl and bore the name Leather Bottle. But, being degenerate, he had not the virtue in himself which empowered him to

be worthy his

his coat-of-arms

mythical double.

It

and to remain master of

was quite otherwise with

Huang-ti. Huang-ti (the yellow Sovereign) was able

Owls (Yellow Birds)

to catch to

be able to

A true sovereign ought

.

shoot them by using

twisted arrows.

Like the lightning, these are the bearers of Huang-ti,

who

fed

upon

all

the virtue of the celestial

incorporated in him. to heaven

He was

by apotheosis

celestial

fires

was

thus enabled to ascend

in a hurricane.

Huang-ti was thunder. with a

knew how to identify emblem. By means of

owls,

himself completely with his sacraments,

fire.

He was

also identified

Leather Bottle, under the name of

The leather bottle Ti-hong is a bird as well as a bag made of skins and a drum. There is even an owl (his name is Drum-of-the-Night) who is a bag, Ti-hong.

and from

whom

thunderbolt and arrows will

re-

86

The New

And

bound.

there

finally,

red and with

and

immovable

bellows.

its

also, like

a

is

when he

producing the wind

The

eyes,

Science of Language

drum who

is

an owl,

breathes. Completely

he represents a forge

Celestial Leather Bottle

is

the Hill of Heaven, which

is

rich in copper. It bears

the name: Chaos (Hun-tun). Chaos dies

when

pierced seven times by the Lightning.

this

is

only a second birth.

man

of fact, every

only a respectable to his

is

to say,

with to

it,

as a stupid

he lacked

drama

in

face, or

which he

fig-

born anew in the end, by means of execu-

is

part in a dance,

offers

has seven

he had "neither

aperture:

tion. In his right as celestial

banquet.

man

was represented

personified,

nor eyes," that

he

As a matter

initiation.

a well-born)

(i.e.,

respectability. In a mythical ures,

death

has seven apertures in his face. But

He had no

busybody.

an

It is

But

it is

Hun-tun, the Leather-bottle Chaos,

heart.

when he was visage,

red

mineral ore in fusion, and at the summit of

and he

is

Leather Bottle, he takes

shown

besides offering a

It

is

precisely to the Lightnings that

and

if

they pierce

evil intent

and

him seven

in order to kill

pay him for his kind reception.

*|*

^^

*f*

*J»

5JC

times,

it is

he not

him they mean :

87

Time

Closing

The New

Science

is

88

etymology:

In the beginning was the

Word, and

the

Word

was

Man.

Man

grammar:

is

Tenses and Persons of the Verb a city

is

syntax (Karl Kraus

Etymology

As

in

is

hcoiso: as

it

was

in the beginning.

Finnegans Wake: fw, 353

the abnihilisation of the etym. That's what Finnegsins

Wake is about:

smashing the atom.

Etyms

are atoms.

Annihilisation of language:

he would wipe

alley

multa-

english spooker,

fw, 1 78

phoniaksically spuking, oft the face of the erse.

Annihilisation of language so that

it

can be

abnihi-

lated again; created out of nothing.

Out of the thunder: The abnihilisation

of the

etym by the

grisning

of the grosning of the grinder of the grander of the first

lord

of

Hurtreford expolodotonates through

Parsuralia with boassity

are

an ivanmorinthorrorumble fragorom-

amidwhiches general uttermosts confussion

perceivable

moletons skaping with mulicules

while Coventry plumpkins fairlygosmotherthemselves in the Landaunelegants of Pinkadindy.

fw, 353

:

The New Science of Language

89

Etymology: the origin of language

A stances

fantastic speech

endowed with

making use of physical sublife and most of them imag-

ined to be divine. First

comes

The guages:

a

NS, 401

body language:

universal principle of etymology in

from the properties of bodies to tions of the

First

all lan-

words are carried over from bodies and signify the institu-

mind and spirit.

NS>

237

ns,

363

comes the senses

What

Aristotle said of the individual

man

is

therefore true of the race in general: nihil est in

INTELLECTU QUIN PRIUS FUERIT IN SENSU. That

human mind it

is,

the

does not understand anything of which

has had no previous impression from the senses.

But these are not the sensations of vulgar empiricism.

The atoms

or etyms of language, the roots, are not

prosaic sensations but poetic genera.

Poetic genera, or poetic characters.

Not

intelligible class

but imaginative

concepts of things,

class concepts:

The first men, the children, as it were, of the human race, not being able to form intelligible class concepts of things, had a natural need to create poetic characters; that

is,

imaginative class concepts

or universals, to which, as to certain models or ideal portraits, to

reduce

resembled them.

all

the particular species which NS 2Qg

Closing

Time

90

Imaginative class concepts, or mythologies:

Thus the mythologies must have been the proper languages of the fables, as their cates; the fables

name

indi-

being imaginative class concepts,

the mythologies must have been the allegories cor-

responding to them.

ns,

403

NS>

49 $

ns,

x7n

Poetic genera, or sensory topics:

The selves to

first

founders of humanity applied them-

a sensory topics by which they brought

to-

gether those properties or qualities or relations of individuals crete,

"It

and

and from these created

was by a topos, or

men

which were, so to speak, con-

species

their poetic genera.

common

'place' that primitive

passed from the thundering sky to Jove the

Thunderer." This

is

the

way

in

which the theological poets

apprehended Jove, Cybele, and Neptune, for example, and, at first

mutely pointing, explained them as

substances of the sky, the earth, and the sea, which

they imagined to be animate divinities and were therefore true to their senses in believing

them

to NS » 402

be gods. Sensory topics are: Sensible signs believed to be divine counsels sent to

man by the gods.

Signification

is

of signs

and wonders.

*&

.

:

The New Science of Language

At first mutely pointing.

91

k$,

402

Mute speech Speech began in mute times with the body.

Mutes make themselves understood by

m, 1045

gestures

or objects that have natural relations with the ideas

they wish to signify. This axiom the hieroglyphs by which

time of their

Mutes

first

all

is

the principle of

nations spoke in the

barbarism.

utter formless sounds

ns,

225-26

ns,

228-30

by singing, and

stammerers by singing teach their tongues to pro-

Men

nounce. song, as

most tile

of

we

vent great passions by breaking into

observe in the most grief-stricken and the

joyful. It follows that the

nations, having

dumb

beasts

founders of the gen-

wandered about in the wild

and being therefore

sluggish,

state

were

inexpressive save under the impulse of violent passions,

and formed

Formed

their first languages

their first languages

(here keen again

by singing.

by singing:

and begin again

soundsense and sensesound kin again)

to

make fw, 121

Closing

Time

92

Stammerers

Mutt and

Jeff

(Mute and Deaf),

mousterious bestial giants, in Finnegans

Wake:

You tollerday donsk? N. You tolkatiff scowegian? Nn. You spigotty anglease? Nnn. You phonio saxo? Nnnn. Clear all so! 'Tis a Scuse

us,

chorley guy!

Jute.

Let us swop hats and excheck a few strong

verbs

weak oach eather yapyazzard abast the blooty

creeks.

— Yutahl Mutt. — Mukk's pleasurad. — Areyoujejf? Mutt. — Somehards. — But you are not jejfmute? Mutt. — Xoho. Only an — Whoa? Whoat the mutter Jute.

Jute.

Jute.

utter er.

Jute.

is

with

you?

Mutt. — became a stun a stummer. — What a hauhmihauhaudibble I

Jute.

to be cause!

Mutt. Jute.

Mutt.

How, Mutt?

— Aput the surd. — Whose poddle? Wherein? — The Inns of Dungtarf where buttle,

awe Jute.

thing,

—

Used

to be he.

You

that side your voise are almost

inedible

more

to

me. Become a bitskin

wiseable, as

if I

were you.

fw, 16

The New Science of Language

Civilization originates in

93

stammering

half a sylb, helf a solb, holf a salb

onward

fw, 292

The builder is a stutterer: Then inmaggin a stotterer. Suppoutre him to been one biggermaster Omnibil.

fw, 337

Balbus babbles; Balbus builder of the Tower of Babel.

fw, 467

The thunder is God

stuttering:

to speak broken heaventalk

The

sibspeeches of

(earth seizing them!)

all

mankind have

from the root of some fun-

ner's stotter.

* First

fw, 261

foliated

FWt 9 6

*

*

*

the divine, a

*

dumb

language of hiero-

glyphics.

Autob. 169

Mute speech

is

hieroglyph and body speech,

stammering and poetry, highest and lowest, seen as one.

Now

in view of the nature of children

custom of the

first

Egyptians,

we

and the

assert that poetic

speech, in virtue of the poetic characters

it

employs,

can yield many important discoveries concerning antiquity.

NSt4n

Closing

The original language

is

the language of the gods

Myth

is

Time

94

the language of the gods is

mute

speech.

mute speech:

In Greek the fable was also called mythos,

myth, whence comes Latin mutus, mute. For speech

was born in mute times as a mental language, which Strabo in a golden passage says existed before vocal or articulate language.

The first families when

ns, 401

language, that of the times of the gentile

men were newly

received into

humanity, was a mute language of signs and physical objects having natural relations to the ideas they

wished to express. It

ns, 32

must have been the most ancient language of

Atlantis.

ns, 431

The New Science of Language

The language

of the gods

95

not spoken words but

is

signs:

They

believed that Jove

that such signs were words,

commanded by

signs,

and that nature was the

language of Jove. Signification

is

ns,

379

of signs and wonders.

What the thunder said dumbfounding wonderstruck us as a thunder, yunder.

Well,

all

fw, $7

be dumbed!

fw, 262

Imagine the twelve deaferended dumbbawls of

whowl abovebeugled

to

be the contonuation

through regeneration of the urutteration of the word in pregross.

fw, 284

Ullhodturdenweirmudgaardgringnirurdrmolnirfenrirlukkilokkibaugimandodrrerinsurtkrinmgernrackinarockar! Thor's for yol

—The

hundredlettered

of perfect language.

name

again, last

word

FW

424

3

Closing

Time

%

Mute speech science of sonorous silence all's set

rw,

for restart after the silence

rw, 382

the shocking silence

The

2 30

rw, 393

silence speaks the scene.

F w.

1

Divination of signs and wonders

"In a Symbol there lation:

is

concealment and yet

reve-

here therefore, by Silence and by Speech

acting together,

comes

a double significance."

words of silent power

Wear

„

190

FW

dumb

language °f hiero-

glyphics or sacred characters. Poetic characters.

,

378

Autob 160 ns,

34

Poetry precedes prose

but poetry

is

writing; characters;

graven images; hieroglyphs; ideograms; Anathemata;

pictograms Fenollosa,

Medium

The Chinese Written Character as a

for Poetry.

,

anartful of

outer nocense!

the divine, a

,

FWf 345

Silence in thought! Spreachf

First

.

d. Jones

3

The New Science of Language

97

Imagism language as epiphany flashes (of lightning)

Where flash becomes word and silents selfloud. 'Tis

optophone both.

It is

fw, 267

optophone which ontophanes.

Two

—

is it

fw,

1

optical or optimal?

words get on top of each other and

become sexual.

The elements of language are sensory topics sensory topics are poetic images

etyms are images the Chinese written character

"The etymologist have been once a fossil

poetry."

finds

brilliant

is

visible etymology.

the deadest word to picture.

Language

is

Emerson

:

Closing

Poetry comes before prose: that

Time

98

to say writing

is

comes before speech. All nations began to speak by writing.

ns,

429

m,

33

Or a more moderate formulation Philologists have believed that languages

came

and then

into being

letters;

whereas

first

letters

and language were born twins and proceeded apace through

A

all their

three stages.

reproach to the whole trend of twentieth-century

philosophy of language.

But a correction

is

coming from M. Foucault, Les

De

Mots

et les

ogie.

(And from the decipherment

cboses;

and

}.

Derrick,

Ja

grammatoJ-

of the genetic

codex.)

Foucault and Derrida return to the occult tradition the doctrine of signs as signatures of things signification

is

of signatures

The Signature Oi All Things

What God

deposited

words;

Adam, when he

beasts,

was

this

mute

in

Boehme

the world

first

assigned

reading these visible

speech.

and

was written

names

to the

silent

marks, Foucault, 53

The New Science of Language

It is all

99

one book

The Book of God's Works and Word. Every phenomenon is scripture

Book

the

of God's

not alphabetic but hieroglyphic.

Find tongues

in

trees,

books

in

the running

brooks,

Sermons

in stones,

and

God in

every thing.

Astrology, the science of the speech of the stars.

He lifts the

lifewand and the

—Quoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiquoiq! Everything

is

legend: to be read

(lego, legere,

read) to

be deciphered

Denise Levertov, "To The Reader"

As you

read, a white bear leisurely

pees, dyeing the

snow

saffron,

and lie

as

you read, many gods

among lianas

:

eyes of obsidian

are watching the generations of leaves,

and

as

you read

the sea

is

turning

turning its

dark pages.

its

ns,

739

dumb speak.

dark pages,

fw, 195

to

"

Closing

Mute speech "

—Say

it,

no

C. Williams

first

race,

peoples,

who were

founded the

the children

world upon the

first

the arts are nothing but imitations of nature,

arts;

and

human

100

W.

—

ideas but in things

Thus the of the

Time

in a certain

way "rear poems made not of words

but of things.

ns,

217,498

ns,

435

Idanthyrsus, king of the Scythians, used five real

words to answer Darius the Great. These

were a

frog, a

mouse, a

bird, a ploughshare,

five

and

a bow.

Five real words say

with things

it

"Rebus riddle,

has,

non

(Lat.

with

things).

verbis sed rebus.

The

A

hieroglyphic

word

origin of the

somewhat doubtfully, been traced

to the lawyers

of Paris who, during the carnival, used to satirize the follies

of the day in squibs called

De

rebus quae

geruntur (on the current events), and to avoid actions,

libel

employed hieroglyphics either wholly or

in

part."

Finnegans Wake. "In heraldry the

name

rebus

is

given to pun-

ning devices on a coat of arms suggesting the of the family to spear

on the

whom

it

name

belongs; as the broken

shield of Nicholas Breakspear."

Brewer's

Dictionary

:

The New Science of Language

101

Mute speech say

with things, say

it

A

with deeds

hieroglyphic or sacred or secret language, by

means of mute

Mute

it

acts.

ns, 32

speech: In the beginning was the deed, and

the deed was the word.

Three kinds of languages. The

first

of these was

a divine mental language by mute religious acts or

from which there survived in Roman law the actus legitimi which accompanied

divine ceremonies,

all their civil transactions.

ns,

928-29

ns,

1027

ns,

1045

Such ceremonial gestures are proper to mute times.

Hence with regard

to

what

is just,

the certain

began in mute times with the body. Then when the so-called articulate languages

were invented,

it

ad-

vanced to ideas made certain by spoken formulae.

A rebus, a riddle a puzzle which can only be solved

by turning

it

around in every direction

But by writing thithaways end ing, turning

with

and end

to

to

end and

end hithaways writing and

up and louds of down, the old semetomyplace and

lines of litters slittering

slettering

backagain from tham Let Rise

where in the waste

is

turn-

till

the wisdom?

Hum

latters

jupet-

Lit. Sleep,

fw,

1

14

Closing

Time

102

A rebus, a riddle Ailes VergangJiche

every

the the

phenomenon

new science new science

nui ein Gleichniss

ist is

an enigma

is

divination

is

heraldry

(iconology

By new

following up these principles, he discovers

origins

dumb when

heroic

of

language of

all

insignia,

the

first

which were the nations at a time

they were incapable of articulate speech.

Thus

he discovers new principles of the science of heraldry,

which he shows

to be the

same

as those of numis-

matics.

Autob. 168

The New

Science

is

heraldry

to read the Shield of Achilles

with history a

of history

mute poem,

and every

The

all

a

on

it

work of art

field a heraldic shield: first

shield in the world

was the ground of

the field where the dead were buried, whence in the science of heraldry the shield

arms.

is

the ground of the ns, 563

The New

Science of Language

103

Love's Body,

To

rise

from history to mystery:

214

Thanks, beloved, to Adam, our former Finnlatter

and our grocerest churcher,

first

as per Grip-

piths' varuations, for his beautiful crossmess parzel.

To

we must

find significance

learn

how

fw, 619

to read the

signs, the insignia

A

coat of arms was called by the Italians in-

segna, an ensign in the sense of a thing signifying,

whence the

Italian verb insegnare, to teach.

The hieroglyphs The civil world elements of which

ns,

486

or world of nations has as the

it

formed

is

all

the institutions

represented by the hieroglyphs displayed in the picture placed as frontispiece to serve as

tion tO

THE

an introduc-

NEW SCIENCE.

NS, 2

We start from scratch

fw, 336

"Relearning the Alphabet"

(DeniseLevertov (Stoop)

if

you

abcedminded, to

are

this clay-

book, what curios of signs (please stoop), in this allaphbed!

Can you

The moral

is:

Home blares,

rede

its

world?

fw, 18

stop talking and start writing.

all

go.

oddmund

kindalled bushies!

Halome. Blare no more rams-

barkes!

And

And

cease your fumings,

sherrigoldies yeassymgnays;

your wildeshaweshowe moves swiftly sterneward! For here the holy language. Soons to come.

To

pausse.

fw,

2 $6

—

:

:

Time

Closing

McLuhan in the

is

104

not right (write)

beginning was the book.

The proteiform graph

itself is

a polyhedron of

scripture.

FWf 107

The new barbarism wandering

in the

woods again

will rediscover the book.

Druids again Great Scott! :

Scott's tree

wandering in the woods in the littering leaves renewal of letters

The

letter!

The

And

litter!

the soother the

bitther!

FWf 93

the tree alphabet (Robert Graves) rune, futhorc,

AH bit

ogham

the airish signics of her

from an Father

Hogam

The spelling, the spells: And how they cast

till

dipandump

helpa-

the Mutther Masons.

their spells upon, the fronds

that thereup float, the bookstaff branchings!

druggeted stems, the leaves incut on trees!

can their aiding.

tantrist spellings? I

Elm, bay,

tawny runes

Fw, 223

can

Do

The you

lese, skillmistress

this way, cull dare, take a message,

ilex sallow,

meet

me at the pine.

fw, 571

The New

Man but

and

"the language animal"

is

language

if

all

nature

is

105

G. Steiner

writing

is

written

animals are language animals.

then

all

It

as scripture that

is

Science of Language

man becomes

part of nature

again; as

he becomes mythy again; that

is

to say, mute.

For speech was born in mute times

as a

mental

language. It was fitting that the matter should be so ordered by divine providence in religious times, for

is

it

attach

an eternal property of

more importance

to

religions that they

meditation

than to

speech.

ns, 401

Language and Nature, words and things (Les Mots et

ks choses) Nature

are not heterogeneous substances.

is

the language of Jove.

ns,

Vico overcomes the disastrous dualism of the seventeenth century, ies cogitans and res extensa.

As

in

Finnegans Wake.

Finnegans thing

Wake

is

not about anything,

itself.

*

*

*

*

*

it

is

that

379

Closing

The original language

is

universal

Time

106

human

catholic

quod semper quod ubique quod ab omnibus archetypal

There must be in the nature of human institutions a mental language common to all nations, which uniformly grasps the substance of things

human social life and many diverse modifications as may have diverse aspects. feasible in

This

common

Science, by

whose

expresses

these

it

with as

same things ns, 161

mental language

is

proper to our

light linguistic scholars will

enabled to construct a mental vocabulary

be

common

to all the various articulate languages living

and

dead.

ns,

The mental properly

all

dictionary by

which to interpret

the various articulated languages.

1

62

ns, 35,

M5,

445

A deep structure of linguistic universals but not as in Chomsky.

A

universal

language

is

etymologicon for the science of

necessary

if

we

are to be able to discuss

with propriety the natural law of the peoples.

Autob. 168

The New Science of Language

107

But deeds are words iconology

is

etymology

anthropology

is

etymology (structuralism

A lexicon

is

necessary for learning the language

spoken by the ideal eternal history traversed in time

by the

histories of all nations.

A

ns, 35

mental vocabulary of

human

social instituns,

355

ns,

787

themselves Homer.

ns,

875

inseparable from popularity.

ns,

809

tions,

Along these

lines there

is

even a way to transcend

Vico's occultist elitism.

The original elite were theological But

poets

in a deeper view:

We

must deny

to

Homer any

kind of esoteric

wisdom.

The Greek peoples were Poetry

is

popular:

Poetic sublimity

The language belongs and the poetry is

is

to the people

in the language.

ID Das Buch von dem Es

Let IT speak, the

In Homer, Goethe found eine Sprache die fur sich dichtet

und

denlcet:

a language that in

and by itself makes the poetry

and does the thinking.

Closing

We

Time

108

must therefore proceed from a vulgar

metaphysics.

The

ns,

34Q

vulgar tongues should be the most weighty

witnesses concerning those ancient customs of the

peoples that were in use at the time the languages

were formed.

ns, 151

Vulgar traditions must have had public grounds of truth, by virtue of which they

and were preserved by

entire

came

into being

peoples over long

periods of time.

There

is

the

ns

common

sense of the

human

f

1

49t 3 56

race

as the criterion taught to the nations by divine

providence to define what

is

certain in the natural

law of the gentes.

This

is

ns,

the Dionysian turn to the to irkfjBos o

ti

142,14s

common man.

to av\oT€pov

cvofucre )(prjral tc / roS^av Sexolfuiv.

The customs and The mass line.

beliefs of the vulgar are normative.

Euripides,

Bacchae,

430

The New

The vernacular, the Vico it is

Rd a

Science of Language

109

the vulgar eloquence

public

way

the Joycean principle of

HCE

Here Comes Everybody

The

soul of everyelsesbody rolled into

its

ole-

FW, 329

soleself.

The way Finnegans Wake was written: "Really

it

is

not

I

who am

you, and you, and you,

book.

It is

there,

and that

girl at

writing this crazy

and

that

man

over

the next table."

His producers are they not his consumers?

It

is

the

way towards the

unification of the

FW) 497

human

race.

The map of the

souls'

groupography.

rWf 47 6

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Norman

where

ico,

He

O.

Brown

was

his father

bom

in

1913 in El Oro, Mex-

was active as a mining engineer.

was educated at Oxford University, the University

of Chicago,

he took

and the University of Wisconsin, where

his doctorate in 1942. Following a year spent

as Professor of versity,

Languages at Nebraska Wesleyan Uni-

he served three years as a research analyst with

the Office of Strategic Services. For Professor of Classics at

many

years

he was

Wesleyan University, and then

taught at the University of Rochester.

He

is

currently

Professor of Humanities, Cowell College, University of

California at Santa Cruz.

Against Death: tory,

The

Love's Body,

He

is

the author of Life

Psychoanalytical

Hermes the

Meaning of His-

Thief:

The Evolution

of a Myth, and To Greet the Return of the Gods.

VINTAGE CRITICISM, LITERATURE, MUSIC, AND ART V-418 V-398 V-260

The Dyer's Hand The Enchafed Flood Blotner, Joseph and Frederick Gwynn

Auden, W. H. Auden, W. H.

(eds.)

Faulkner

at the University

V-259 V-51 V-64}

Buckley, Jerome H. The Victorian Temper Burke, Kenneth The Philosophy of Literary Form Carlisle, Olga Poets on Streetcorners: Portraits of Fifteen Russian Poets

V-569

Cartey, Wilfred Whispers from a Continent: The Literature of Contemporary Black Africa

V-y$ V-626 V-535

Camus, Albert The Myth of Sisyphus and other Essays Camus, Albert Lyrical and Critical Essays Eisen, Jonathan The Age of Rock: Sounds of the American

V-655 V-4 V-6}2 V-i) V-646 V-}6}

V-114 V-115 V-116 V-117 V-438 V-21} V-20 V-12 V-88 V-260 V-581 V-452 V-8} V-677 V-678 V-90

Cultural Revolution Eisen, Jonathan The Age of Rock 2 Einstein, Alfred A Short History of Music Ellman, Richard (ed.) The Artist as Critic: Critical Writings of Oscar Wilde Gilbert, Stuart James Joyce's Ulysses Gilman, Richard The Confusion of Realms Goldwater, Robert Primitivism in Modern Art, Revised Edition Hauser, Arnold Social History of Art, Vol. I Hauser, Arnold Social History of Art, Vol. II Hauser, Arnold Social History of Art, Vol. Ill Hauser, Arnold Social History of Art, Vol. IV

Heller, Erich Other Essays

The

Artist's

Journey into the Interior and

Howe, Irving William Faulkner: A Critical Study Hyman, S. E. The Armed Vision Jarrell, Randall Poetry and the Age Kerman, Joseph Opera as Drama Kermode, Frank The Romantic Image Kramer, Jane Allen Ginsberg in America Kessle, Gun, photographs by, and Jan Myrdal Angkor Kronenberger, Louis Kings and Desperate Men Lester, Julius The Seventh Son, Vol. I Lester, Julius The Seventh Son, Vol. II Levin, Harry The Power of Blackness: Hawthorne, Poe, Melville

V-296 V-55 V-J20 V-^44 V-452 V-118 V-119 V-24 V-108 V-4 15 V-186 V-2J8 V-39

MacDonald, Dwight Against Mann, Thomas Essays Mirsky, D.

S.

the

American Grain

A History of Russian Literature

Muchnic, Helen From Gorky to Pasternak Myrdal, Jan and photographs by Gun Kessle Angkor Newman, Ernest Great Operas, Vol. I Newman, Ernest Great Operas, Vol. II Ransom, John Crowe Poems and Essays Shahn, Ben The Shape of Content Shattuck, Roger The Banquet Years, Revised Steiner, George Tolstoy or Dostoevsky Stevens, Wallace The Necessary Angel Stravinsky, Igor The Poetics of Music

V-ioo V-24)

Sullivan, J. W. N. Sypher, Wylie (ed.)

V-266 V-229 V-458 V-166 V-162 V-35 V-194 V-347 V-218 V-360 V-500 V-546

Sypher, Wylie Sypher, Wylie Sypher, Wylie

Beethoven: His Spiritual Development Art History: An Anthology of Modern

Criticism

Loss of the Self

Rococo

to Cubism Literature and Technology

Sze, Mai-Mai The Way of Chinese Painting Tillyard, E. M. W. The Elizabethan World Picture Tindall, William York Forces in Modern British Literature Valery, Paul The Art of Poetry Warren, Robert Penn Selected Essays

Wilson, Edmund Classics & Commercials Wimsatt, W. and C. Brooks Literary Criticism Wind, Edgar Art and Anarchy Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition

VINTAGE BELLES-LETTRES V-418 V-^98 V-342 V-271 V-512 V-544 V-75 V-30 V-314 V-349 V-535

Auden, W. H. The Dyer's Hand Auden, W. H. The Enchafed Flood Beckson, Karl (ed.) Aesthetes and Decadents of the 1890's Bedier, Joseph Tristan and Iseult Bloch, Marc The Historian's Craft Brown, Norman O. Hermes the Thief Camus, Albert The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays Camus, Albert The Rebel Clark, Eleanor The Oysters of Locmariaquer Curtiss, Mina (tr.) Letters of Marcel Proust Eisen, Jonathan Age of Rock: The Sounds of the American

V-655 V-112 V-113 V-363

Cultural Revolution Eisen, Jonathan The Age of Rock 2 Gide, Andre Journals, Vol. 1: 1 889-1 924 Gide, Andre Journals, Vol. II: 1 924-1 949 Goldwater, Robert Primitivism in Modern Art, Revised with 58 illustrations

V-402 V-449 V-438

V-663 V-456 V-235 V-337 V-369

Goodman, Paul

Hawkweed: Poems

Gray, Francine du Plessix Divine Disobedience Heller, Erich The Artist's Journey into the Interior and Other Essays Herrigel, Eugen Zen in the Art of Archery Jones, Ita The Grubbag Kaplan, Abraham New World of Philosophy

Kaufmann, Walter (tr.) Beyond Good and Evil Kaufmann, Walter (tr.) The Birth of Tragedy and

the

Case of Wagner V-436

Kaufmann, Walter

Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist,

Antichrist

V-401

Kaufmann, Walter Ecce

V-437 V-452 V-230 V-329 V-296 V-193 V-55 V-59} V-452

v~337 V-^69 V-401

V-437 V-639 V-672 V-373

(tr.)

On

(tr.)

The Will

Homo

Kaufmann, Walter

the Genealogy of to

Morals and

Power

Kessle, Gun, photographed by, with Jan Myrdal Angkor Leedom, William S. The Vintage Wine Book Lindbergh, Anne Morrow Gift from the Sea Macdonald, D wight Against the American Grain Malraux, Andre The Temptation of the West Mann, Thomas Essays

Merwin, W.

S. (trans.) The Song of Roland Myrdal, Jan, photographed by Gun Kessle Angkor Nietzsche, Friedrich Beyond Good and Evil Nietzsche, Friedrich The Birth of Tragedy and The Case of Wagner Nietzsche, Friedrich On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo Nietzsche, Friedrich The Will to Power Ouspensky, P. D. Tertium Organum Ouspensky, P. D. The Fourth Way Paustovsky, Konstantin The Story of a Life

V-598 V-$ 97

V-596 V-594 V-$ 99 V-595 V-24 V-691 V-109 V-415 V-278 V-85 V-194

v~347 V-468 V-592 V-665 V-298 V-256 V-580 V-360 V-546

Marcel The Captive Marcel Cities of the Plain Marcel The Guermantes Way Marcel Swann's Way Marcel The Sweet Cheat Gone Marcel Within a Budding Grove Ransom, John Crowe Poems and Essays Rukeyser, Muriel The Speed of Darkness Proust, Proust, Proust, Proust, Proust, Proust,

Saturday Evening Post Adventures of the Mind Shattuck, Roger The Banquet Years, Revised Stevens, Wallace The Necessary Angel Stevens, Wallace Poems Valery, Paul The Art of Poetry

Warren, Robert Penn

Selected Essays

Watts, Alan The Wisdom of Insecurity Watts, Alan Nature, Man and Woman Watts, Alan Does it Matter? Watts, Alan The Way of Zen Wilde, Oscar De Profundis Williams, Margaret (tr.) The Pearl Poet Wimsatt, W. R. and Brooks, C. Literary Criticism Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition

LITERATURE AND PHILOSOPHY de force" (Library creates a threeway conversation, the participants being himself, Giambattista Vico — the Italian philosopher who wrote The New Science— and the James Joyce of Finnegans Wake. Vico was the first writer to proclaim that human affairs were entirely human — God had nothing to do with them — and Joyce, among others, found in Vico the beginning of the modern point of view that, in turn, shaped the consciousness of his own work. Closing Time is more than an effort to penetrate the great minds of Vico and Joyce; it is a profound and original In this "extraordinary tour

Journal),

Norman O. Brown

continuation of their own dialogue.

"Remarkable... for the freedom of

its text

and

and for the pleasure of its learning and intellectual performance!'— Edward W. Said, The New York Times Book Review

organization,