Wake In Progress

Page 61: Sylvia Silence, the girl detective

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 01:34:00 +0000

Page 60: one of our coming Vauxhall ontheboards

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 09:22:00 +0000

Dante’s Wake

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:53:00 +0000

James Joyce famously said that he was happy to go down in history as “the cut-and-paste man”, and perhaps no other writer is so promiscuous with references and allusions. But whatever his flirtations with Shakespeare or Homer, he was always going steady with Dante. Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy (the epic poem in which the poet himself journeys through Hell, Purgatory and Heaven) was Joyce’s all-time literary crush, and no matter how unique Finnegans Wake might appear, almost every important element of its design has a logical antecedent in the work of the 14th Century poet.

For example, take the eccentrically detailed use Joyce makes of his own autobiography. Not only does he detail obsessively the geography and society of his hometown of Dublin and the people he knew, he includes references to people and events that only close friends and relations of the author could possibly understand. Ideas he had for books he had in adolescence, stories his father used to tell, his predilection for women’s underwear... That’s a pretty weird thing to do by any standards, but I’ve no doubt that Joyce took courage in his decision from Dante’s choice to fill his work with references to Florentine politics, meetings with deceased Florentine historical figures and old friends, and even to personal aspects of his own life: for example, his status as a political exile, and most importantly, his love for Beatrice Portinari, a Florentine woman who became Dante’s Dulcinea, an idealised representation first of courtly and finally of divine love.

Even the most difficult aspect of the Wake, its language, can be illuminated somewhat by the Comedy. In Dante’s Italy, Latin was still used as the common written language. But Dante believed that a standard vernacular Italian could replace Latin as the language of poetry in Italy. Unfortunately, standard Italian did not exist, so Dante had to invent it. The Comedy was composed in a combination of Italian dialects from across the peninsula. Obviously, when Joyce decided to combine however many dozens of dialects and languages to create the language of the Wake, his intention was not to create a new standard dialect of English. But he surely had in mind those Medieval Italians who read Dante’s work for the first time and discovered there a new language, equally familiar and unfamiliar to all.

But it’s in the content of the two works that the most interesting similarities lie. Dante’s poem describes a literal journey into the Underworld, but that setting is only the pretext for an exploration of the spiritual struggle with sin and the quest for moral purity. Joyce’s book describes a figurative journey into the “underworld” of a dream, but its true subject is the emotional conflict of the individual psyche.

The question of allegory takes us to Dante’s theory of poetics, which was based on Biblical scholarship in the Middle Ages. Medieval theologians interpreted the Bible on four levels of allegorical meaning: the literal, the typological (an allegory to the story of Jesus), the tropological (a moral rule for everyday life), and the anagogical (related to the nature of the Afterlife). Church doctrine taught that these allegorical meanings were the result of divine inspiration, but Dante thought that poets should imitate the system, composing their work with three layers of allegory concealed within. So the Comedy is at once the literal story of Dante’s pilgrimage, an allegory for the death and resurrection of Jesus, a detailed exploration of the nature of sin and virtue, and complete geography of the Afterlife.

When Joyce adapted this system for Ulysses, he did so in a fairly clear and similarly hierarchical fashion. The story of Leopold Bloom is at once a vividly literal portrayal of turn-of-the-century Dublin life and an allegory for the story of Odysseus. But in Finnegans Wake the system explodes. There is no literal layer at all, only a shifting series of varyingly coherent scenarios from which allegorical senses erupt in every direction (of which the most mysterious is ironically the most mundane: the identities of the dreamer and his family). In the Wake, a Medieval love of ordered systems and hierarchical lists collides with a very modern loss of trust in their validity. At the centre of the Comedy lies God. At the centre of the Wake lies the chaos of a mind at war with itself. It is Dante’s natural post-Freudian heir.

Page 47: The Ballad of Persse O'Reilly 3/3

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 09:14:00 +0000

Page 46: the ballad of Persse O'Reilly 2/3

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 12:05:00 +0000

Page 45: the ballad of Persse O'Reilly 1/3

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:28:00 +0000

Page 44: leave it to Hosty

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 13:17:00 +0000

Page 38: the gossiple

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:30:00 +0000

Page 14: our herodotary Mammon Lujius

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 14:00:00 +0000

Her Royal Majesty: My illustrations in print!

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 13:28:00 +0000

Imagine my surprise when Harriet Alida Lye, the editor of an arts magazine called Her Royal Majesty, contacted me to ask if she could print some of my illustrations in the latest issue.

No, I was much more surprised than that.

Anyway, the launch party for the new issue took place last Tuesday, and since it’s the first time my work was ever printed in a magazine, I felt like I should probably hose myself down and emerge from the Wake Cave to pick up a copy, stand around awkwardly, and generally feel not cool enough to get in. (The bouncer seemed to agree.) Photos of the event taken by Cara Tobe can be found here. I’m happy to say that I appear in none of them.

The theme of the issue is “Doubles” (which seems like a pretty perfect fit for the Wake), and it’s a really great magazine, with a cover drawn by the brilliant Badaude (of London Walks), some great poetry, fiction and visual art, and artefacts from a collaborative performance by James Franco which is frankly disgusting. Check it out right now! It’s available either on pdf or in print (I’m right on the first page! Suck it, James Franco!) and the previous numbers are definitely worth a look as well.

Harriet also posted a Q&A with me on the HRM blog a few weeks ago. I meant to mention it earlier, but I think I was too busy cleaning baby vomit off myself or something.

Page 23: and they all drank free

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:18:00 +0000

I’m not totally sure about the text placement here... but it’s past my bedtime.

Page 78: on the heights of Abraham

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:01:00 +0000

Page 37, version 2

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:05:00 +0000

Page 32: The sigla H.C.E.

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 11:57:00 +0000

Page 36, version 2

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 07:31:00 +0000

Page 35, version 2

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 15:42:00 +0000

Page 22, version 2

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 19:43:00 +0000

Page 21, version 2

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 08:32:00 +0000

In order to ease my way back into sound work habits, I’m doing some overdue revisions.

Soul of the Devil! Did ye think me dead?

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 17:10:00 +0000

Where the hell have I been? Well, it turns out that I grossly overestimated the amount of time and energy that I would have during Theo’s first two months, and as a result spent the whole of August wishing I were asleep. Fortunately, I was able to steal a fifteen-minute nap several days ago, and now I feel like a new man. The baby aside, it’s been a pretty exciting few months. With luck I’ll be posting more about that in time.

Meanwhile, my big news is that I have started selling art prints online! My store can be found here, or by clicking the “shop” link above. There are only three illustrations posted so far, but I’ll be adding more over the next few days, and I’d love to hear from anyone who’d like to see a specific image available!

Page 76

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 08:20:00 +0000

Page 75

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 08:23:00 +0000

What a warm time we were in there!

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 10:11:00 +0000

I just wanted to offer a quick explanation for the inactivity around here this month. My wife Melanie gave birth to our son Theo last Friday, and the preparation for his arrival proved something of a distraction. (I demanded an apology for this, but none was forthcoming.) I hope that my life will soon settle down sufficiently for me to make up for lost time, but meanwhile I appreciate your patience!

Page 74

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Sat, 09 Jul 2011 09:35:00 +0000

Page 73

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 19:47:00 +0000

Page 72

noreply@blogger.com (Stephen Crowe) — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 21:49:00 +0000