File spoon-archives/phillitcrit.archive/phillitcrit_1997/phillitcrit.9711, message 1067


Date: Thu, 27 Nov 1997 23:18:23 -0500
From: Gregory {Greg} Downing <downingg-AT-is2.nyu.edu>
Subject: Re: PLC: Number Symbolism


At 09:06 PM 11/27/97 -0500, you (Paul Stone <pas-AT-MNSi.Net>) wrote:
>	If someone reads a passage and says "Hey, there are a real lot of c's in
>here." and then tests it numerically and finds out that there are indeed 3
>times more than usual, then that IS interesting. And maybe it is even
>directly intentional that Joyce put all the 'c-words' in there. (I wonder
>what that means?) 

See the article I referenced, a few of whose ideas I mentioned in the post
you're replying to.


>But Joyce was also a very musical writer and it is
>possible that he just liked the c sound and intentionally put THAT in
>there. 

Quite possible -- though bear in mind c has multiple sounds in English. But as a
general point it is quite true that in Ul as in life there are often
multiple factors/causes/reasons simultaneously present: "multifactorial" to
use the term from social-sci methodology. 

>Okay, maybe that is apples and apples. 

???a bit unclear to me

>Of course, the 3:1 is
>prevalent in Ithaka. Water:Earth mentioned explicitly. This is all really
>interesting, But hardly complex math. Just a recurring motif. Like in line
>349 
>"He had not risked, he did not expect, he had not been disappointed, he WAS
>satisfied". 3 negatives, one postive.	

Well, the triadic thing, if this is what you're referring to, I was
mentioning in Oxen (episode 14, the one where Bloom and St start to link up)
not Ithaka (episode 17, the one where Bloom and St. part). 

JJ admits to not being hardcore technical, despite his rather unaccountable
reputation in some quarters as a deep thinker. (A lot of his material, even
learned material, is from anthologies, news clippings, almanacs and
directories, the eleventh edit. of the Encyclop Brit, etc. No wonder the
artist-figure in _FW_ is "Shem [Irish for Jim] the Penman," a 19C Chicago
pen-and-ink counterfeiter of paper-money.) In the same long and crucial
"T.H. Huxley-style" para. in which I earlier pointed to the "law of
numeration" sentence and the "Still the plain straightforward question" of
infant-mortality sentence, there's this a bit later about Stephen (largely,
JJ, age 22):

"this morbidminded esthete and embryo philosopher who for all his overweening 
bumptiousness in things scientific can scarcely distinguish an acid from an
alkali"

This comes after Stephen sticks his nose in right at the end of Bloom's
comments about infant mortality, whose thrust is pretty impt. for Bloom in
his possible future personal life; Bloom is annoyed at St interrupting and
stepping on his nascent (!) insight. Joyce started in med school three times
(twice in Dublin, once in Paris), and never stuck it out more than a few
weeks -- but note all the medical and scientific stuff in Ulysses, and St's
hanging around with med students and young doctors. But JJ was never willing
or able to memorize basic chemistry in the med-school course. Hence (in
part) the sentence above.



>It is obvious that Ithaka is the
>"science" chapter. Simply from the way the question/answer thing alternates.
>	I would be interested to know if there was an exhaustive study of all
>letters in all episodes? Did other's have 'letters' too? If no one has done
>that study, perhaps you could add a 'letter' heading to each of the
>chapters in you Ulysses Schema.
>	I wouldn't put anything past ole JJ though. 

I have mentioned that to the author of the article I cited. He may do that,
but with the basically P.C. tools at his disposal, he has not yet had time.
I do think JJ tried to work more and more in in later episodes of Ul., which
might not be there in 1916-19 episodes. After all, the later episodes
(1919-22) are virtually backed up against the first _Finnegans Wake_
sketches from 1923. If you look in 14 and 17 at least (which are what I know
most closely) there are little things there that are basically FW tricks
embedded in English. But as he said re FW, "Je suis au but de l'anglais" --
by the end of Ul., writing macaronically was maybe the only or the best way
to extend what he was doing any further.


>>Joyce used a lot of science in Ithaka (the penultimate episode in Ulysses).
>>What do you think of the math/science-thinking there (I could say positive
>>and not-so-positive things about it)?
>
>	Well, I remember the last time I read Ulysses (about five years back) I
>was amazed at the glaring scientific "ERRORS" in Circe (15). I'm sure that
>Joyce put those in there on purpose, but fellow classmates (who know not
>even the equation for the area of a circle), if not directed to these
>errors in scientific fact, would certainly today still believe these faulty
>assertions put forth by purposely dimwitted characters. Sorry, I would have
>to travel to my parents' house and dig up my old essays to give you exact
>references. But they are there.
>	

Some are deliberate and atrributed by JJ to one character or another; some
are JJ's slips, esp. in the later episodes where he was working fast with
REALLY bad eyes. E.g., the measurements for Bloom's muscles in Ithaka are
wildly low, because JJ copied them out of Sandow's Exercises, but from an
example using a man much smaller than Bloom (Sandow was kind of the Jack
LeLane [sp?] of his day, mutatis mutandis, the guy who invented the term
"98-lb/7-stone weakling").


>	My point is still: fudging around with simple numbers and using simplistic
>numerical motifs which are naturally echoed in nature and man's
>actions/thoughts (if stretched or compressed enough -- and in fact, as you
>have admitted, intentionally manipulated by JJ) is not really
>mind-boggling. To have a sophisticated mathematical allegory is what I'm
>waiting for. And I ain't never seen one. 
>

I'd agree -- nothing profoundly philosophical or scientific. But the basic
idea is to suggest that (1) scientific and mathematical modes are part of
culture and the world, and (2) there are patterns in the world, and since
literature to some extent is mimetic of the world and experience, literary
works should contain dense patterns as well. From ancient down to
early-modern times, there was also (3) the idea that the world is divinely
constructed of pattern, numerical ad geometrical (inter alia), and art
should echo that.


>	Once again. I think that this is really interesting. But it is hardly ever
>done well, and even when it is done well, like in Dante, and Joyce, it's
>just simple counting -- which is already a necessity for good scansion.
>Language is simple math when it becomes poetic. There is always a pattern,
>and that is why it is satisfactory. Exhaustively searching for a pattern of
>polynomial/binomial expansion, or Exponential Growth,  or set theory in
>literature is like saying "hey that white coloured stuff over there is
>coloured white." Sooner or later, no matter how complicated the equation
>becomes, it will describe the pattern. The problem is, language and math
>are totally unrelated, except in that really simplistic way, and if you
>have simple language, you have no math, and with complicated math, you have
>no intelligible language. You can't square the circle, and Joyce realized
>this as he alludes to it in "Proteus" [3]. 
>	Like Twain said "there are lies, damned lies, and statistics".
>	If you search long enough, you can prove anything by manipulation of numbers.
>
>	But what about the serious attempts at linking real math with real
>literature? I'm still waiting.
>

Well, in my limited experience I have always noted that if someone has not
done a decent job at x, that is MY opening. Well, wolffy, estamos esperando!

Greg Downing/NYU, at greg.downing-AT-nyu.edu or downingg-AT-is2.nyu.edu



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