Coming of Age: Virus and Vico
Its #Ulysses100. If its not one virus its another.
Post Eighteen
Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday dear Jim and Ulysses, happy birthday to you!
As January peters out, we are merely hours from the 2nd February centenary, sorry I should say #Ulysses100 if I want to get noticed. To say celebrations may be to over-egg a touch but certainly all over the world Joyce fans and scholars are marking the occasion. Even non-Joyceans will do well not to notice the event. Here in our little corner of north London, North London Ulysses will be heading to the Clissold Arms pub in Fortis Green, better known for its Kinks connections than Joycean (but we’re on that case), to chat, to read and to partake of Guinness’s porter and Jameson’s whiskey (other beverages also available).
Turnout may be a little muted for part of our lovely group remains uncomfortable in public gatherings. Vaccined and boosted though the vast majority of us may be in the UK, a jig in a pub remains a little scarry for some and understandably so. This virus is not to be scoffed at. North London Ulysses started reading in mid-January; for some in the pub, for others on zoom and if on the centenary our party allows for the usual reading, we shall finish Nestor. In Ulysses Joyce was prescient in a number of ways; Irish independence, the rise of fascism and even possibly the holocaust, an Irish nod towards Europe but we can’t say that he foresaw Covid. And yet. And yet his reference in Nestor to a virus is indeed noted and not simply because the word appears, that would be silly and trite; bear with while I try to make something of substance.
It is, ironically, the headmaster Mr.Deasy, who draws our attention. Yet not ironic because it is via his ignorance and xenophobic, misogynous myopia that he imparts significant life lessons; for example that Stephen might do better learning than teaching. Deasy is concerned with the foot and mouth disease that is blighting Irish cattle and he has drafted a cliché-ridden letter that he would like Stephen with his newspaper connections, to help get published. Nestor is a chapter in which we wonder what it is to teach, to inspire the next generation and the pressure that imposes upon teachers. The episode opens with Stephen teaching history and so we contemplate how we view history. It’s all too easy and obvious to accept the conventional, ‘this follows that follows this follows that’ as Deasy’s religious orthodoxy would have us believe. It might be something more imaginative as a William Blake or a Kurt Vonnegut may ponder. A history in which an ancient Greek Ulysses might turn up in 1904 as a Leopold Bloom. Mark the phrase ‘Akasic records’ for future reference.
A mind expanding view of history requires glancing at a Neapolitan chap called Giambattista Vico (1668-1744). Contrary to Mr. Deasy’s opinion, history says Vico isn’t a linear path leading inexorably into the manifestation of God’s light but rather a circular repetitive spiral starting with the voice of god (whatever that may be) and finishing in the same place. Meantime we trot through autocracy aristocracy, democracy and a descent into chaos before a huge cataclysm returns us to the wrath of god and the cycle repeats. For James Joyce the first world war must have been that cataclysm. I mean, what else? For us inhabiting this part of the twenty-first century (at least those outside of Syria, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Uyghur) the Covid pandemic carries cataclysmic characteristics. For Deasy the pandemic affected only cattle, which was devastating for farmers but only a matter of time before it percolated through the Irish economy and riddled a meat dependent wider society like marbles of fat on a nice rib-eye.
How is this significant for our book Ulysses? After all this is only episode two and there is maybe one further reference in episode twelve to a meeting to discuss the cattle crisis at the City Arms Hotel. Generally despite Bloom’s empathy, we are not so bothered with the poor cows as we plunder through the book. Until that is episode fourteen Oxen of the Sun, which in some important ways is the key episode. Homeric resonance reminds that Odysseus (Ulysses) is warned not to touch the cattle on the island belonging to Helios, the Sun God. Obviously they do and bad shit happens. In 1904 Ireland the cattle are diseased and the sun is imposing a vengeful drought upon Ireland. In episode fourteen there is a cataclysmic thunderclap bringing torrential fertilizing rain. The cycle resets. It must be significant that this occurs in the episode of the virus-ridden oxen. No spoiler but in significant ways this is a pivotal point in the book.
Joyce is a clever fella but he’s no Cassandra; he did not predict coronavirus. But he did visualise a viral pandemic generating the Vicoan thunderclap, so let’s indulge him credit for that. He is after all, the birthday boy.
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