Panepiphanal World The Florida James Joyce Series University Press of Florida Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee New College of Florida, Sarasota University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola Panepiphanal World James Joyce’s Epiphanies Sangam MacDuff Foreword by Sebastian D. G. Knowles University Press of Florida Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers · Sarasota Published with the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Copyright 2020 by Sangam MacDuff CC-BY-NC-ND An electronic edition of this book is available under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0, Attribution-Non-Commercial-No-Derivatives International 4.0 License. http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ For permission to publish commercial versions please contact the University Press of Florida. All rights reserved except as licensed pursuant to the Creative Commons license identified above. Published in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 6 5 4 3 2 1 ISBN 978-0-8130-6549-6 (ePDF) ISBN 978-0-8130-6566-3 (ePub) DOI: http://doi.org/10.5744/9780813065496 The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows Names: MacDuff, Sangam, author. | Knowles, Sebastian D. G. (Sebastian David Guy), author of foreword. Title: Panepiphanal world : James Joyce’s epiphanies / by Sangam MacDuff ; foreword by Sebastian D. G. Knowles. Other titles: James Joyce’s epiphanies | Florida James Joyce series. Description: Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2020. | Series: The Florida James Joyce series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019032962 (print) | LCCN 2019032963 (ebook) | ISBN 9780813066325 (hardback) | ISBN 9780813057439 (pdf) Subjects: LCSH: Joyce, James, 1882–1941—Criticism and interpretation. Classification: LCC PR6019.O9 Z7183 2020 (print) | LCC PR6019.O9 (ebook) | DDC 823/.912—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032962 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019032963 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 2046 NE Waldo Road Suite 2100 Gainesville, FL 32609 http://upress.ufl.edu For Sabrina, Sofia, and Lilly Contents List of Figures ix List of Tables xi Foreword xiii Acknowledgments xv Abbreviations xvii 1. Introduction 1 2. From Genesis to Joyce: A Brief History of Epiphany 23 3. “Remember your epiphanies . deeply deep” 51 4. Silence and Repetition in Dubliners 76 5. “A day of dappled seaborne clouds”: A Portrait of the Artist’s Epiphany 102 6. Permutations of Epiphany in Ulysses 145 7. The Panepiphanal World of Finnegans Wake 181 8. Conclusion 225 Appendix: Epiphanies in Joyce’s Work 233 Notes 237 Bibliography 263 Index 279 Figures 1. César Abin, “Caricature of James Joyce” 60 2. Euclidian Gnomon 95 3. “Position of a Child in the Womb” 173 4. “Form of a Child in the Womb” 173 Tables 1. Epiphanies in Portrait 103 2. Epiphanies in Ulysses 146 Foreword What is actually celebrated on the Feast of the Epiphany? The appearance of the magi? Christ’s Nativity, or the baptism? The manifestation of a bright star, possibly Halley’s Comet, visible over Palestine a decade earlier than any of these? The Feast of the Epiphany is an open-ended signifier in the Christian calendar and so is a rich and appropriate site for MacDuff to begin. MacDuff points out that pre-Christian manifestations of the divine were generally nonnegotiable: if an angel or a god showed up in the Old Testament or in classical literature, you just had to deal with it. The key with the Christian epiphanies is that the revelations must be interpreted to be understood, a move from ontology to epistemology. As MacDuff says, following Morris Beja in this argument, an epiphany puts the responsibil- ity on the viewer, insisting on the subjective truth of the experience. Joyce is a palimpsest: every bit of writing is a rewriting, and his early epiphanies return in his work again and again. Three of them, in particu- lar, show up like ghosts at every party: the one about injustice (“Apologise / Pull out his eyes”), the one about abjection (“The hole we all have”), and the one about a mother’s love (“Years and years I loved you when you lay in my womb”). MacDuff’s analysis of the “hole” epiphany is brilliant: MacDuff neatly connects the navel with the anus, with the navelcord of “Proteus,” a church nave, and the original sense of “nave” as a central hub into which radial spokes are inserted. The reading of this epiphany displays MacDuff’s maieutic art, uncoiling significance from small things, giving an embryonic image a chance to breathe and take up the space it demands. The same skill is in play with MacDuff’s reading of Joyce’s manuscript copy of “The Apocalypse of St. John,” which is a revelation. Building from the small to the great, MacDuff constructs a compelling case not just for the importance of the document but also for the persua- siveness of his own method. xiv · Foreword MacDuff moves from hole to whole, from vacuum to plenum. For MacDuff, silence and repetition are the anode and cathode of Joyce’s art and the twin poles of the modernist mind. Each epiphany is what Ber- gotte, in Proust’s The Captive, would call a “little patch of yellow wall”: in the painter’s dying appreciation of Vermeer’s View of Delft, Proust captures the idea of art as a tiny part of a larger image, a precious substance in itself that also participates in a greater whole. The same happens in Swann’s Way, as Marcel admires the twin steeples of Martinville, with the steeple of Vieuxvicq dancing behind it. His resulting creation, a page of description that celebrates the play between art and life, fills him with happiness. So it was for Joyce, who kept a manuscript of his epiphanies with him until the end of his writing life, leaving them only when he fled occupied France in December 1940. MacDuff tells us why and reintroduces us to a world we thought we knew, showing us how much more there is to see. Sebastian D. G. Knowles Series Editor Acknowledgments Parts of this book have previously appeared as “Joyce’s Revelation: ‘The Apocalypse of Saint John’ at Cornell,” in Genesic Fields: James Joyce and Genetic Criticism, edited by Genevieve Sartor (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018), 118–26, and “Death and the limits of epiphany: Wordsworth’s ‘spots of time’ and Joyce’s epiphanies of death,” in James Joyce Quarterly 53.1–2 (Fall/Winter 2015): 61–74. I am grateful to the publishers for permission to include revised versions in the present work, and to Betsy Jolas for permis- sion to reproduce César Abin’s caricature of James Joyce from transition 21 (March, 1932): 256. Research grants from the European Society for the Study of English and the Swiss Association of University Teachers of English enabled me to visit the Universities of Buffalo, Cornell, and Yale in 2015, and I am grate- ful to the Swiss National Science Foundation, who supported an Open Access edition of this publication. In addition to institutional support, I have benefited from the assis- tance of more people than I can hope to acknowledge, including the many colleagues, students, and friends who helped to shape these ideas. I thank them all, though I can but name a few: David Spurr guided me through- out the project, helping to improve it in every way; Deborah Madsen, Maud Ellmann, Fritz Senn, Finn Fordham, Simon Swift, Angus Mc- Fadzean, Sebastian Knowles, Jean-Michel Rabaté, and Morris Beja read earlier drafts, offering perceptive criticism and encouragement; Eleanor Deumens masterminded the project at the University Press of Florida; Penelope Cray edited the manuscript meticulously; and Stephanye Hunter has been instrumental in bringing it to press. Having always lived in communities, I am blessed with many friends and a large, extended family. It would be impossible to thank them all xvi · Acknowledgments individually, but I am particularly grateful to Mike Wilding, Rosemary Summers, David Wyllie, Sally Wyllie, John Lennard, Tom Raymont, Rory O’Bryen, and Tristram Stuart for their unfailing friendship and support. Finally, and most importantly, I thank my parents, my children, and Sa- brina, without whom I could never have written this book. Abbreviations CW Joyce, James. The Critical Writings. Ed. Ellsworth Mason and Richard Ellmann. New York: Viking, 1973. D ———. Dubliners. London: Penguin, 2000. E ———. Exiles: A Play in Three Acts. London: J. Cape, 1972. FW ———. Finnegans Wake. London: Penguin, 1992. JJA ———. The James Joyce Archive. Ed. Michael Groden et al. 63 vols. New York: Garland, 1977. LI–LIII ———. Letters of James Joyce. 3 vols. Ed. Stuart Gilbert and Richard Ellmann. New York: Viking, 1957–66. P ———. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. London: Pen- guin, 1992. PSW ———. Poems and Shorter Writings. Ed. Richard Ellmann, A. Walton Litz, and John Whittier-Ferguson. London: Faber and Faber, 1991. SH ———. Stephen Hero. Ed. Theodore Spencer, rev. John J. Slo- cum and Herbert Cahoon. London: J. Cape, 1975. U ———. Ulysses: The Corrected Text. Ed. Hans Walter Gabler. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. OE Beckett, Samuel, et al. Our Exagmination Round His Factifica- tion for Incamination of “Work in Progress.” London: Faber and Faber, 1972.