Term Paper Topic

Well, our days are winding down to a close, and paper topics loom before us, frightening and captivating. If only there was more time..... My sister commandeered the Internet for most of last night, so I apologize for this blog being a bit late. However, here it is.

When thinking about possible term paper topics, I knew I wanted to write about Beckett. Earlier on in the semester, I wrote a blog...more like a rant of sorts, about people dismissing the darker side of life as "depressing" and moving on. I railed on those who would rather not feel these emotions, deny their existence, rather than walking through that avenue of fire to find the revelation and discovery on the other side. Some things are worth being felt....deeply. I really connected with Malone Dies. Though he strips away everything from his characters, I found this absence, this nothingness, was full. Just as when true silence abounds all around you and you feel it like a physical presence or force, I found this emptiness to be deafening.

In my paper, I will be adressing this process of kenosis or emptying out of self to reach the core. This term relates to alchemy in some ways, but is more connected to a process of awareness in my eyes as opposed to a process of purification, though this absolutely comes into play. There is a certain sense of endurance in Malone, a desperate clinging to life combined with unattachment and breaking down. I find the paradox of emptying self to find self incredibly engaging. In my paper I want to describe or dive into this process and see what results.

Finnegans Wake Annotated Page (457)

As always when reading Finnegans Wake, I realize there is no real means of full understanding. After annotating my page, page 457, I was by no means closer to understanding the page as a whole. I could only latch onto vague trends and other noncommittal understandings. There seemed to be a lot of sexual references on the page. One example, for instance, is "drawhure deelish." Hure is the German word for whore, quite literally meaning prostitute. Deelish, I considered to contain several puns, for instance, deal-->concerning money such as the deal between the prostitute and here customers, delicious, also dervish--> sources of wisdom in the middle eastern Sufi faith. Dervish means "one who opens doors" in Persian, and the whirling dervish is a dance to achieve religious ecstacy.

Along with several sexual, or at least sensual, references on this page, there are a lot of religious references as well. Could Joyce be meaning to draw a parallel between the two?? I think so. "penitent Ferdinand" could refer to Ferdinand in the Tempest, but perhaps more aptly refers to Ferdinand King of Leon and Castille and member of the 3rd Order of St. Francis. This king of Spain fought to free spain from the Saracens and married the pious daughter of the then King of Germany. Ferdinand dedicated multiple churches to the Blessed Virgin Mary, here contrasted with references to whores and prostitutes on this page.
The "Devil a curly hair" passage refers to The Devil and The Farmer, a short story from England in 1893 which tells of a wager a farmer made with the Devil. In order to escape the bet, he told the Devil he could not straighten a curly hair on an anvil. When the Devil could not, he left the farmer in peace.

One reference that I found particularly interesting as far as how Joyce transformed the language of the actual quote in the rhythmic way he does is the passage that goes, "a tear or two in time is all there's toot." Literally it sounds like" a tear or two in time is all there is to it". Could this refer to the loss of virginity? The words also refer to a passage in the Bible that goes, "a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak". This passage is from the Ecclesiastes 3:7 and speaks about the "vanity of human life".

The end of this page seems to be a conversation between a man and a woman. She "tactilifully grapbed her male corrispondee". Working with the word "tactilifully", I basically did a word association or simply stated, a calling to mind of similar words this could be referring to. I found, tacit-->unvoiced, unspoken, implied; tempus-->tempest, time, tempus fugit--> Latin for "time flees"; temptation; impetuous; tumultuous; turbulent. Also the word "grapbed" could reference "grappled" and quite obviously "bed".

The tone of this page seemed overtly sexual but also connected to religion. I found that marriage of seemingly opposing systems of thought intriguing. Of course there have always been saints who have referred to their relationship with God in sexual terms. See The Esctacy of St. Therese by Bernini below for a visual example of this concept. But Joyce does this in an entirely new and subtle way. I wonder what this means to the work as a whole. However, I know there is no "meaning", no final truth, no unifying theme. This continues to upset me about Finnegans Wake...I don't think I will ever be reconciled to the idea of a world without too many references and yet without universal meaning at all....