THE WORDS OF JOYCE MICHAEL BOLERJACK
THE YES
To be Tolled in fragments: To take back the ringing yes from Derrida for Joyce, redeem it, not as example but as the unexampled, the unprecedented, unique, unrepeatable Yes. But, first the notes of the introduction leading to the redemption of affirmation:
A BB C BB A Absolute Father Son Holy Spirit Son Father Absolute Deconstructing the deconstruction to fulfill the deconstruction contrary to the truth of contradiction without contradicting the truth Complete Transcendent GOD Mediation church God Church World I World Church God Aaron Burl Bo Charlotte Bo Burl Aaron
parents and grandparents
Law prophets writings prophets law Gospel/acts epistles revelation epistles gospel/acts
Love faith hope insight hope faith love The book contains the text not the text contains the book Zig zag Mystical flower Cross cross cross Mystical flower I am He is You are I am You are He is I am Autobiography effracts Epic drama fiction drama epic Eternal time spacing time eternal Exterior circular open effraction circular exterior Myth drama critical fiction drama myth Transcendent mediation immediate mediation transcendent Truth / truth of contradiction / contradiction / contradiction of truth / truth Nothing becoming being becoming nothing Square circle effraction circle square Necessity Freedom
fantasy reality
Necessity fantasy, vicious circle, effraction by love and work Making free real Absolute act Possibility which is not Impossible which really is + --
++
Act
de
De of de
act
How does de prevent de of de? How does deconstruction keep from deconstructing itself? It always already is deconstructed It starts out deconstructed Not with act Divided origin Immemorial origin No actual origin Post retro active projection changes the past into de De cannot be deconstructed from within What of synthesis? Making dialectic de Making de dialectic Nothing but Must be effracted. Possibility of impossibility Equals Impossibility of possibility How to contradict the contradiction? All goes through the I As if the truth never was As if the Jews did not die Both did and did not Neither did nor did not
Remains. The b/a/n/n [both and neither nor] Eliminates the either/or Dialectic both / and Leads to deconstruction No choice. Jump levels Silence effracts Accurate, he said If you can say either this or that then there is choice, free And the b/a/n/n [both and neither nor] is impossible Choice destroys deconstruction Deconstruction destroys choice Total-talitarian Either choice or non-choice Must not choose non-choice Choosing to choose, open Choosing not to choose, defer, is to allow de Two cities meta/para If we eliminate choice we eliminate our freedom Freedom is the thing itself, made impossible by de Possible made impossible, impossible made possible [disaster] Outside text is the context If there is a context there is difference choice freedom If all context is already text then no either/or If I am the context, in god-church-world, then I effract it, I choose to be Against the text, I am the standard of measure, I bind it, delimit the text Explain it, not it me
The reader is the way the text arrives. Text to weave If there are folds There are implications And explications An either/or Exemplify complication Simplify complication Supplicate A fold is a fold of something Examples Case in point Show Embody Typical Eximere- to take outReplication--Reply, fold back, plaintiff’s reply, echo, copy Answer, reply, rejoinder. Law suit, dialogue Either plaintiff or defendant, choice Redeem--Re-emire, redeem, take back, not example, take out One steals by example or one is redeemed by taking back to original Either / or in replication---rejoinder reply or copy, you choose, are free Law means contradiction e/o [either/or] decision justice choice Complication Replication
implication explication
Structure of ‘plication’
Either/or chooses one or other b/a/n/n [both/and/neither/nor] chooses all A-thesis before thesis, amoral before moral, no good / evil t/f [true, false] impossible Since complication only implications pli selon pli Since has been illusion explication is only illusion Always plus one Derrida seems to be bringing a unity into the text by yes+yes affirmation in Joyce Molly Bloom’s final statement: YES I SAID YES I WILL YES Meanings of YES 1. Used as a function word to express assent or agreement 2. Used as a function word to introduce correction or contradiction of a negative assertion or direction 3. Used as a function word to introduce a more emphatic or ex-plicit phrase 4. Used as a function word to indicate uncertainty or possible interest or attentiveness 5. Exclamation of jubilation Yes Said I
I Will Yes
Perfect ringing of yes 4 words 7 times 12 letters Perfect proof of Metasignification Joyce knew the Ultrastructure well Bloom asks Molly to choose She chose Decision, choice An either him / or another Free / the deconstruction cut off / by a decision She does not defer but decides Yes
She will Desire inclination disposed a testament To order to direct To choose As well him as another I thought as well him as another Indifference And yet, yes. Parse Yes/I said yes I will/Yes. Yes---three times I said I will 4 words Again / the Ultrastructure Yes three letters / will four / said four / I one, numbers, numbers, mystical forms. The final YES is the explication of all the rest Penultimate yes is choice Ante-penultimate is used to introduce a more emphatic or explicit phrase Penultimate emphatic agreement Ultimate the explicit, the explication still ringing. Yes: Janus at door looking back on the first three fictions and forward to the Wake: Dubliners said / Portrait will / Ulysses yeses I effraction / Wake is effracted text after I: Dubliners god / Portrait church / Ulysses world---Moral, rebellion, epic/simony, paralysis, gnomon/yes is the bit making the rest a gnomon---Text of god-church-world effracted by I saying yes.---In order to complete the three at step/decision, in order to arrive at four, in order to reach the all in all at Wake. Everything hinges on the Yes. It is dialectic that affirms and cancels. What takes place after the YES is a different order of things, meta / not para. Each step by Joyce goes further, and is never parallel, but at last fully meta. Beyond, the meta-novel, not antiAnything but completely free, pure, the joy felt after the act of faith: YES. Derrida’s YES/YES does not quite catch it, as if there were always one more yes to be said. What ULYSSES showed is that in making a final explicit YES, one affirms as in an act of faith and makes oneself free, Molly made her decision, Joyce his, and freed herself/ himself. It is the finality of the Yes that is important, not the possible indefinite addition. The final YES is more than any of the four meanings given, it is a meta-static-yes. It is final, but it structurally cannot stop being said, at once final and infinite, but never indefinite. It is not like a total count in the making, plus one, but at once all numbers combined, a symbol for God in a book both profane and, yes, sacred. I have shown the ringing of the YES, circular in structure and as Ultrastructure, But what of the b/a/n/n the both/and/neither/nor?
What of the banns? Of marriage. Wedding ring, a banding, binding. The banns of Derrida impossibly bans the wedding, anti-banns, It makes the I DO Impossible. It makes the YES of decision impossible, allowing only the meaning of a kind of inattentiveness. Derrida’s YES is the opposite of Joyce’s. It does not explicate, does not choose, is not emphatic, neither does it assert the contrary, but rather like a manager will murmur to an employee yes, yes while never intending action. The last seven words of Molly recall her decision to marry, wedding banns, that ban the Derridean appropriation before-hand. She chooses one, not all. Just Bloom. And re-affirms her choice. Renewal. Of the Banns. To say this YES is always to choose the faithfulness, though we have been unfaithful. It is a kind of repentance, a YES that turns, that brings back, that redeems. Derrida takes it out of context, examples it, rejects the redemption, the supplicatory aspect of the final Yes in Ulysses. That YES does not replicate, does not implicate, and though it is in a position to explicate does not, and is supremely simple, not complicated. The YES is a supplication. It does not supplement itself, it prays. It is neither folded nor unfolded, for it has never been enfolded. It is a plea, not a pli. The YES simplifies the matter. It is not pliable, but resolution itself, resolving the work, and as much as you can bear, or hear, in the context of your readership. But perhaps that is the “reply” of yes implied by Derrida, that when we hear Molly’s YES we reply yes again and again. Qui, qui. If that is the case he may be exonerated, but I believe his YES is too complex and is like his messiah unable to affirm because it cannot stop repeating itself. It would have been better then to say a simple NO than to endlessly entangle Joyce’s ACT in an endless deferral. In the end Derrida turns the YES into a YET. Eventually, yes, yes, but not yet. Not never, just not yet, not now, decision is impossible, too much difference: hesitating at the altar: Yet, I could not say, yet I will not, yet neither nor will, not Yet. Yet I said Yet I will Yet. No one can say YES to that. Say Yes to Yes itself, as Derrida quotes Blanchot in Living On, but not that. Joyce said in the Wake that PATIENCE is the great thing. That means to wait. As you wait repeat to yourself yes I must yes I will yes, I will wait, right now I am waiting, not deferring, not hesitating, not passively waiting but affirming the awaited. In that one may be able to arrive at the hour the bridegroom comes. It is then we may make an exclamation of jubilation, that in the modern world Molly Bloom was the first to make, which now every sports fan makes when their team wins, YES! What was the giving of assent or the making of an affirmation became near the end of the world an act of the expression of joy at the outcome.
Finnegans Wake The end of this book, which really does not end, implies something that is there and not there at the same, a kind of prayer. I have shown the supplicatory aspect of the Yes at the end of Ulysses and now would like to de-monstrate the conclusion of the Wake as the perfection of this prayer. The last lines of the book can be read so many ways. Usually one says the final “the” is referring to the opening riverrun, to circle things back. I think it does this and something else as well. Joyce proclaims that the keys to are given. He has said Finn, again. He has said Till thous-endsthee. Now I think that this ends thee. The “the” of the end is to be said not as slack “the,” definite but open, but precisely THEE. The Keys to. Given! Given to whom, but to THEE. Not a way a lone a last a loved a long a…but the, because you are it, I AM IT, we are it, as the auditors of Prospero in the epilogue of Shakespeare’s final act, his prayer for forgiveness. Given? Key? It is the forgiveness of THEE.
to. then. endsthee. Lps {please} long the […] long thee, he longs but for THEE, to then ends, THEE.
Thou, ends, thee. It ends with us, we are the one for whom and in whom the work arrives and Joyce affirms not one definitely but all infinitely. It is a way of saying YOU and YES at once: the THEE. THEE I said THEE I Will THEE, then you and I are in truth the arrival of the text, that the secret is that it is we who hold the keys, keys of Peter, keys of the see, to forgive, to forgive all good thieves, whom writers to write must be, saying, But softly, thee, remember me, till thou ends thee, that we never ending be, as love does not end, for thee given, never ending, thou art the key, the text is thee (se). The text is these, thee’s, the signature effect is here comes everybody, and all along HCE was THEE, was all of us, it was written to you and you and you and yes to thee.
Michael Bolerjack