----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2005 11:45 AM
Subject: VN speaks for himself to on pets,peats and
petards
Dear List,
There is an important reference in VN´s lecture on
Joyce which I couldn´t find yesterday but that I can now add:
I´m copying from Fredon Bowers edition of Lectures
on Literature, page 287:
"Another consideration in relation to Bloom: those
so many who have written so much about "Ulysses" are either very pure men or
very depraved men. They are inclined to regard Bloom as a very ordinary
nature, and apparently Joyce himself intended to portray an ordinary
person. It is obvious, however, that in the sexual department Bloom is, if
not on the verge of insanity, at least a good clinical example of extreme sexual
preoccupation and perversity with all kinds of curious complications. His case
is strictly heterosexual, of course - not homosexual as most of the ladies and
gentlemen are in Proust (...) - but within the wide limits of Bloom´s love for
the opposite sex he indulges in acts and dreams that are definitely subnormal in
the zoological, evolutional sense. I shall not bore you with a list of his
curious desires, but this I will say: in Bloom´s mind and in Joyce´s book the
theme of sex is continually mixed and intertwined with the theme of the
latrine. God knows I have no objection whatsoever to so-called frankness
in novels. On the contrary, we have too little of it, and what there is
has become in its turn conventional and trite, as used by so-called tough
writers, the darlings of the book clubs, the pets of clubwomen. But I do
object to the folowing: Bloom is supposed to be a rather orginary citizen.
Now it is not true that the mind of an ordinary citizen continuously dwells on
physiological things. I object to the continuously, not to the
disgusting. All this very special pathological stuff seems
artificial and unnecessary in this particular context".
..............................................
There are other comments by VN about
Joyce´s and Bloom´s "extraordinariness" which are as vivid as the
one here quoted.
Young Eric´s or any Veen or Zemski
(explicit) sexual fantasy should not be confused with VN´s own,
to the point of " continuously" permeating his
novel like a bass background.
VN ( on page
346) writes about Joyce´s parodies :
"We can thus define clichés as bits of dead prose
and of rotting poetry. However the parody has its interruptions. Now what
Joyce does here is to cause some of that dead and rotten stuff to reveal here
and there its live source, its primary freshness (...) Joyce manages to build up
something real - pathos, pity, compassion - out of the dead formulas which he
parodies".
I also think that this very real,
compassionate and golden atmosphere is something VN achieved in ADA,
albeit by other means no less "extraordinary". Paradise
regained?
Jansy