NOise
: Hack the Abstraction!
“For it is not the work of heat to make cold, but
the opposite? / Yes. / And it is not the work of what is dry to make things
wet, but the opposite. / Certainly.” Plato, The
Republic
Invoking the
re-emergence of the shakespearean ghost in the trope casting light on the
recurring imagery of the constellation of Cassiopeia (Ulysses 575)
renders the name of the Bard perceivable at the level of characterization.
Although suggestive of a potential symbolic act of “disestablishment,” the
metaphoric charge of this narrative maneuvering, in fact, offers a far more
complex and nourishing signification. It is provocative, to say the very least.
And yet, it invites thinking reverence through the nobility of rebellion. By so
doing, it disentangles one of the many seeming knots within its very tissue. Not
only does it reconfigure the meaning of the mythical names of Scylla and
Charybdis in the context of the novel, but inspires disambiguation of the entrenched
perception of uneasy “choices.” Does avoiding one perplexity necessarily imply
accepting another? One would highly doubt it.
That ghostly presence
of the shakepearean flow brings into the narrative the names of the sons of the
novel: Stephen Dedalus and Rudolph Bloom (Ulysses 575). It is the very
presence of those sons that is evocative of the looming shadows of their
fathers: Simon Dedalus and Leopold Bloom. And it is precisely the elusive
characters of each one of them that is suggestive of their infinitely
interlaced aspects: crossing, merging, fusing, colliding, separating…distancing…and
yet, remaining hybridized in the immortalized image of the birth of the Bard in
the interstellar spaces overlooking the mighty water. Like the whisper from the
fountain (Ulysses 389). Like hamlet, the sonfather. Like the mutual
recognition between the son and the father--womanly man--through the
communication channel free of foggy noise, relieved of amalgamation obfuscating
the flow – invigorated and cleansed by the power of crystalline signal, by
virtue of noise.
Shakespearean presence
bears some semblance to the wandering companionship depicted in the imagery of the
moon and the parallels Joyce draws between it and the symbolic of woman. Hardly
could a description of the dynamic of those convergences and juxtapositions be
imagined in a more powerful poetic key than the intersection highly suggestive
of the restorative potential of the vacillations between diverse aspects of ambivalence
and ambiguity epitomized in antithetical, yet not antagonistic -- colliding,
but also resonating -- affliction and elevation, turbulence and vibrancy,
adversary and solace, as presented in Ulysses:
Her antiquity in
preceding and surviving successive tellurian generations: her nocturnal
predominance: her satellitic dependence: her luminary reflection: her constancy
under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and
waning: the forced invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to
inaffirmative interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her
power to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to
incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage: the
terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent propinquity: her
omens of tempest and calm: the stimulation of her light, her motion and her
presence: the admonition of her craters, her arid seas, her silence: her
splendour, when visible: her attraction, when invisible. (576)
When Bloom in the
“Ithaca” episode turns on the faucet in the kitchen of his house, he lifts a
valve and the cornucopia of imagery leaks through that tubular device (Ulysses
549). The outpour symbolizing the versatility, quirkiness, elusiveness, and
gentleness of water brings to awareness the perplexity of earthly affairs in
the shadow of moonlight. The valve opens up the flow perceivable by many,
available to all, owned by noone. It sheds light to the particularly salient
trope of “satellitic dependence” reflecting the power of meekness embodied in
the tricky wording. Just as the silvery companion is dependent on the planet it
shadows, so is its impact and power inevitably experienced and mirrored in the
pulsation of the orbit it safeguards. Just as the satellitic character defines
it, so is the planet characterized as being the host of its satellite. Just as
one is characterized by its accompanying attributes, so is the other recognized
in the key of being accompanied. How does this dynamic reshift the dependency
narrative?
This constancy by
virtue of resilience, power by virtue of weakness, stability within fragility
is what is integral to the flow connecting Stephen and Bloom in the midst of those
unfathomable tribulations, indecisiveness, and bewilderment. There is the flow
anchoring those stormy surfaces, anchoring those wandering “Jews,” those
wandering rocks. The same anchor that cleanses poor Lear’s agitated heart torn
by torrential gushes of guilt. His “faucet” unleashes the purifying shower of
tears (1.4.251-264). While he is not entirely willing to repent, his tears
speak that what he cannot. Vladimir Nabokov:”We think not in words, but in
shadows of words” (Vladimir Nabokov, Strong
Opinions 30).[1]
As they flow, they offer a possibility to recuperate his inner turmoil and cleanse
his curse plagued mouth with the appeasing faculty of the friendly presence
reconstituting the vitalizing bonding between the parent and the offspring.
Lear learns. So can
everyone else. By virtue of humbleness.
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