Week 5: Joyce - The Dead
Apparently the title comes from a poem from Thomas Moore's Irish Melodies, written between 1807 and 1834.
Oh, ye Dead! oh, ye Dead! whom we know by the light you give
From your cold gleaming eyes, though you move like men who live.
Why leave you thus your graves,
In far off fields and waves,
Where the worm and the sea-bird only know your bed,
To haunt this spot where all
Those eyes that wept your fall,
And the hearts that wail'd you, like your own, lie dead?
It is true, it is true, we are shadows cold and wan;
And the fair and the brave whom we lov'd on earth are gone,
But still thus even in death
So sweet the living breath
Of the fields and the flow'rs in our youth we wander9d o9er
That ere, condemn'd, we go
To freeze mid Hecla's snow,
We would taste it awhile, and think we live once more!
There's a basic annotation here. Nothing more than the basics, but I found something similar the first time I studied the story, a few years ago.
As the last story in 'Dubliners' (1914), "The Dead" was apparently written after the collection was complete, in order to uplift the work, which was seen as depressing and sombre. I also noticed that it's significantly longer than the others in the collection, and seems more mature - Joyce is perhaps reaching further with his final story, and trying to do more than just contemplate a single aspect of the "moral history of Ireland". The aspects he was examining were childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life, according to a letter he wrote.
I won't spend too long on the story, considering we covered it quite well in class (and in my first year of English), but it's probably worth picking up in the idea of Gretta (parallels with Nora Barnacle, Joyce's partner), who is from the west of Ireland, the old country. Also, Micheal Furrey is based on Micheal Bodkin (one of Nora's past lovers), who died similarly.
The idea of the old country is a resounding note in the story, I think - just a concept of something more powerful and more meaningful than the quotidian life most people are living. I think the legends and language would have been what attracted both Joyce and Yeats to the idea of the past, although Joyce was probably slightly more self-aware of his obsession, not letting it take him over.
I also found something really interesting here - a reconstruction of the story, but with musical and vocal cues throughout. It's fascinating, considering how the story flicks between conversations, dances and songs.
From that link, on epiphanies: "In his Stephen Hero, an early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce has Stephen Daedalus describe an epiphany in the following manner, "By epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself," and a bit later Stephen concludes, "This is the moment which I call epiphany. First we recognize that the object is one integral thing, then we recognize that it is an organized composite structure, a thing in fact; finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognize that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps up to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany" (Werner, 48). While this description seems to outline three steps in the epiphanic moment, Joyce also emphasizes the sudden and momentary nature of the epiphany--the way the integral and composite nature of the object or emotion is perceived simultaneously. Just as musical counterpoint involves the simultaneous presentation of multiple melodic statements, the literary epiphany involves the simultaneous presentation of multiple hermeneutic perspectives. Furthermore, the recognition that the literary epiphany is both a composite structure and, at the same time, one integral thing is analogous to the way counterpoint is both a combination of autonomous melodic lines and an integrated, or interdependent, whole."
NB: "Werner" refers to [Werner, Craig H. Dubliners: A Student's Companion to the Stories. Boston: Twayne, 1988.]
Oh, ye Dead! oh, ye Dead! whom we know by the light you give
From your cold gleaming eyes, though you move like men who live.
Why leave you thus your graves,
In far off fields and waves,
Where the worm and the sea-bird only know your bed,
To haunt this spot where all
Those eyes that wept your fall,
And the hearts that wail'd you, like your own, lie dead?
It is true, it is true, we are shadows cold and wan;
And the fair and the brave whom we lov'd on earth are gone,
But still thus even in death
So sweet the living breath
Of the fields and the flow'rs in our youth we wander9d o9er
That ere, condemn'd, we go
To freeze mid Hecla's snow,
We would taste it awhile, and think we live once more!
There's a basic annotation here. Nothing more than the basics, but I found something similar the first time I studied the story, a few years ago.
As the last story in 'Dubliners' (1914), "The Dead" was apparently written after the collection was complete, in order to uplift the work, which was seen as depressing and sombre. I also noticed that it's significantly longer than the others in the collection, and seems more mature - Joyce is perhaps reaching further with his final story, and trying to do more than just contemplate a single aspect of the "moral history of Ireland". The aspects he was examining were childhood, adolescence, maturity and public life, according to a letter he wrote.
I won't spend too long on the story, considering we covered it quite well in class (and in my first year of English), but it's probably worth picking up in the idea of Gretta (parallels with Nora Barnacle, Joyce's partner), who is from the west of Ireland, the old country. Also, Micheal Furrey is based on Micheal Bodkin (one of Nora's past lovers), who died similarly.
The idea of the old country is a resounding note in the story, I think - just a concept of something more powerful and more meaningful than the quotidian life most people are living. I think the legends and language would have been what attracted both Joyce and Yeats to the idea of the past, although Joyce was probably slightly more self-aware of his obsession, not letting it take him over.
I also found something really interesting here - a reconstruction of the story, but with musical and vocal cues throughout. It's fascinating, considering how the story flicks between conversations, dances and songs.
From that link, on epiphanies: "In his Stephen Hero, an early version of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Joyce has Stephen Daedalus describe an epiphany in the following manner, "By epiphany he meant a sudden spiritual manifestation whether in the vulgarity of speech or of gesture or in a memorable phase of the mind itself," and a bit later Stephen concludes, "This is the moment which I call epiphany. First we recognize that the object is one integral thing, then we recognize that it is an organized composite structure, a thing in fact; finally, when the relation of the parts is exquisite, when the parts are adjusted to the special point, we recognize that it is that thing which it is. Its soul, its whatness, leaps up to us from the vestment of its appearance. The soul of the commonest object, the structure of which is so adjusted, seems to us radiant. The object achieves its epiphany" (Werner, 48). While this description seems to outline three steps in the epiphanic moment, Joyce also emphasizes the sudden and momentary nature of the epiphany--the way the integral and composite nature of the object or emotion is perceived simultaneously. Just as musical counterpoint involves the simultaneous presentation of multiple melodic statements, the literary epiphany involves the simultaneous presentation of multiple hermeneutic perspectives. Furthermore, the recognition that the literary epiphany is both a composite structure and, at the same time, one integral thing is analogous to the way counterpoint is both a combination of autonomous melodic lines and an integrated, or interdependent, whole."
NB: "Werner" refers to [Werner, Craig H. Dubliners: A Student's Companion to the Stories. Boston: Twayne, 1988.]
posted by David | 8:45 PM
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