Body and labyrinth: anthropological and urban symbolism in James Joyces “Ulysses”

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spatial symbolism ulysses novel

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Body and labyrinth: anthropological and urban symbolism in James Joyce's “Ulysses”

Borodenko O., PhD. in Philosophy, Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Petro Mohyla Black Sea National University (Mykolaiv, Ukraine)

The article highlights the features of anthropological and urban spatial symbolism in James Joyce's “Ulysses”. The symbolism of this modernist work is examined using philosophical methods -- hermeneutical and phenomenological. The philosophical comprehension of the spatial form of Joyce's novel aims at identifying and analyzing the main ways of symbolization, understood by the author of the article as the process of philosophically constructing (reproducing) a symbol, transforming an artistic image into a symbol. The text of “Ulysses” is evaluated as “body centric”. Some symbols of fleshliness in Joyce's novel have been analyzed. It is shown how the combination of two key images (the Human Body and the Labyrinth) creates a “double-take effect” that helps to clarify the essence of the symbol of the City.

Keywords: philosophy of culture, James Joyce, “Ulysses”, spatial form, symbolization, bodycentricity, symbolism of fleshliness, spatial urban symbolism, “double-take effect”.

Висвітлюються особливості антропологічної та міської просторової символіки в романі Джеймса Джойса «Улісс». Символіка модерністського твору розглядається з використанням філософських методів - герменевтичного та феноменологічного. Філософське осмислення просторової форми роману Джойса спрямовано на виявлення та аналіз головних способів символізації, яка розуміється автором статті як процес філософського конструювання (відтворення) символу, трансформування художнього образу в символ. Текст «Улісса» оцінюється як «тілоцентричний». Аналізуються окремі символи тілесності роману Джойса. Показано, як поєднання двох ключових образів (Людського Тіла та Лабіринту) створює своєрідний ефект (“doubletakeeffect”), який сприяє проясненню сутності символу Міста.

Ключові слова: філософія культури, Джеймс Джойс, «Улісс», просторова форма, символізація, тілоцентричність, символіка тілесності, просторова міська символіка, “doubletakeeffect”.

Formulation of the problem. The object of our study is the text of the novel Ulysses by the prominent Irish writer James Joyce. This work has been studied many times, including in works on the philosophy of culture. In our opinion, the spatial and anthropological symbolism of this novel, the mechanisms of symbolization in Joyce are of particular interest.

An analysis of the symbolism of Ulysses, as well as other modernist texts, makes us turn to the concept of spatial form. This concept was proposed by the American researcher Joseph Frank. His work.

Spatial Form in Modern Literature (1945) laid the foundations of the literary and philosophical analysis of the modernist text as a special space-time continuum, which is constructed by the author and is perceived by the reader as a kind of integrity and continuity. Developing the ideas of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (Laocoon, 1766), J. Frank notes that classical literature, unlike painting, uses a language consisting of words that are located one after another in a temporal sequence; it means that the literary form, in accordance with its original nature, is certainly based on a narrative sequence, whatever it may be [4, p. 86].

In modernist poetry and prose, according to Frank, a fundamentally new approach to the aesthetic definition of the image, as well as to the symbolization of space and time is being developed: “Modern literature - represented by its creators such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Marcel Proust and James Joyce - in its development shows a tendency to spatial form. All these writers ideally expect the reader to perceive their works not in a chronological but in a spatial dimension, at a frozen moment in time” [4, p. 86-87]. Frank also proceeds from the well-known definition of the image proposed by Ezra Pound: “...an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time” [9, p. 200].

In our opinion, spatial form has long been not only a literary, but also a philosophical concept. The use of this concept in the philosophy of literature opens up new possibilities for understanding a literary text as an anthropological phenomenon. For example, modifications of the spatial form make it possible to trace the presence of the reader as a subject of a literary act, the evolution of an image in literature, and also (and this is especially interesting) the mechanisms of symbolization of space and time in a literary work.

The features of the spatial form of Ulysses, in our opinion, are far from studied enough. The purpose of our work is to identify some key features of the spatial form in the James Joyce's novel, and also to trace the mechanism of symbolization in Joyce based on the analysis of the anthropological and urban symbolism of the novel.

Analysis of the recent achievements. The Joyce's novel, published in 1922, which is one of the key works of modernism, does not need a detailed presentation. The author shows one day of the life of an ordinary Dubliner Leopold Bloom, his endless wanderings around the city, emotional torment and dreams. Studies on the interpretation of the complex symbolism of this novel began to appear almost immediately after the publication of the work in print. So, T. S. Eliot pays particular attention to the role that form plays in Joyce's novel: “it is simply a way of controlling, of ordering, of giving a shape and a significance to the immense panorama of futility and anarchy which is contemporary history” [3, p. 483].

Among the impressive number of recent publications that analyze the anthropological and spatial symbolism of Ulysses, we single out, in particular, the works of R. Alter, U. Eco, E. Rojas, R. Springman [1; 2; 10; 12], as well as interesting and important studies of M. Ciaran McMorran and M. Litt (2016) on geometry and topography in Joyce's Ulysses (2016), V Shervashidze and M. Semykina (2016) on connection of Ulysses symbols with hermeneutic tradition, D. Igrutinovic (2013) on water symbolism in Ulysses, A. Janus (2013) on some anthropological symbols in Joyce.

Presentation of the main research. The human body is one of two “main characters” of Joyce's novel. In this context, it will be appropriate to say about the bodycentricity of Ulysses. Bodycentricity is a characteristic feature of modernism in general. This feature was first noted by Jose Ortega y Gasset in his work Dehumanization of Art (1925). The Spanish philosopher considered bodycentricity a sign of degradation of art, which is expressed in the displacement of human content from it [8]. In our opinion, the bodycentricity of modern culture carries not only a negative, but also a positive charge. The latter is expressed in the interest of modern culture to a person as a whole (and not just to his soul), attempts to understand himself and others through the prism of fleshliness, to decipher body signs and symbols, to alleviate bodily pain and suffering.

The body symbolism is present in almost all the episode-chapters of Ulysses (there are 18 in all). According to Gilbert schema, each episode, starting with the fourth, is dedicated to a specific organ or part of the human body: Calypso - kidney; Lotus Eaters - genitals; Hades - heart; Aeolus - lungs; Lestrygonians oesophagus; Scylla and Charybdis - brain; Wandering Rocks - blood; Sirens - ear; Cyclops - muscle; Nausicaa - eye, nose; Oxen of the Sun - womb; Circe locomotor apparatus; Eumaeus - nerves; Ithaca - skeleton; Penelope - flesh [5]. It is noteworthy that this schema was compiled by Joyce himself in 1921 for his friend Stuart Gilbert in order to help him understand the complex structure of the novel. An earlier table compiled by Joyce for his friend Carlo Linati (Linati schema for “Ulysses”, 1920) also gives symbolic correspondences of episodes of the novel to organs of the human body. There are slight discrepancies in both schemes. Therefore, we can argue that the author himself positioned his text as “bodycentric”. C. G. Jung, in his article on the novel, also emphasizes this feature: “Ulysses, very much unlike his ancient namesake, is a passive, merely perceiving consciousness, a mere eye, ear, nose, and mouth, a sensory nerve exposed without choice or check to the roaring, chaotic, lunatic cataract of psychic and physical happenings, and registering all this with almost photographic accuracy” [7, p. 109].

And indeed, images of the human body are found constantly in the text of Ulysses. The senses are also in the foreground. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Ulysses is a novel of desire, a novel of finding a goal that eludes a person: “Bloom bathes in a spate of images, sounds, and odors triggering memories recent and distant and a profusion of thoughts. His mind races back and forth among all of these, exulting in their multifarious abundance, accepting the desires they arouse” [1, p. 164].

Corporal images acquire philosophical understanding from Joyce. Here are just a few examples. So, in the `Lestrygonians' episode, the heroes of the novel gather in a pub. At Homer, the Lestrygonians is a tribe of cannibals to which Odysseus falls. Indeed, Leopold Bloom reflects on food all the time, and the topic of cannibalism is also present in the text. The monologue of Bloom inside the pub describes the symbolism of this episode well: “Perched on high stools by the bar, hats shoved back, at the tables calling for more bread no charge, swilling, wolfing gobfuls of sloppy food, their eyes bulging, wiping wetted moustaches. <.. .> A man spitting back on his plate: halfmasticated gristle: gums: no teeth to chewchewchew it. Chump chop from the grill. Bolting to get it over. Sad booser's eyes. Bitten off more than he can chew. Am I like that? See ourselves as others see us. Hungry man is an angry man. Working tooth and jaw”. [6, p. 316-317]. In this episode food “is a major means of self-definition, as well as an important channel for the transmission of culture”, “a social signifier, a bearer of interpersonal and cultural meanings” [11, p. 133].

In another episode (`Sirens'), events unfold in the Ormond bar at 4 p.m. The symbols of the episode are ear, hearing. The episode is full of various sounds - the clatter of horse hooves, the ringing of a bell, the sounds of a piano, etc. Such heteroglossia, in our opinion, is intended to emphasize both randomness and the diversity of the world. The space of this episode is the ocean of sounds into which Bloom plunges. As one researcher notes, “this episode shows the multiplicity of centers as we see the same recurring sights such as a coin tossed to a beggar or a young woman crossing the street through the eyes of different Dublin characters. The center changes multiple times, yet a character, well defined and named, is still functioning as the center” [12, p. 29]. It is such an acentric space, this chaosmos of sounds that is characteristic of the whole Ulysses.

The `Circe' episode is saturated with sexual symbolism. The episode takes place at night in Dublin's brothels and finds its development in the fantasies of tipsy heroes. If in previous episodes (for example, in `Nausicaa') Joyce symbolically substantiates the idea of seducing a man by a woman, then “the `Circe' episode takes this idea further by equating man's fall from grace through original sin both with Circe's turning men into swine as well as the many assorted fallen women turning Bloom into a sinned' [10, p. 132]. That is why in this episode a man is on the verge of losing his own body (turning into a pig). So in Joyce, the process of desomatization is symbolically described.

The logical conclusion is: if each episode of the novel, taking place in a certain part of Dublin, symbolizes a certain part of the human body (even these words are consonant: “Dublin” / “body”), then the whole city should symbolize the whole body. U. Eco notes on this occasion: “the eighteen chapters of Ulysses, corresponding to the same number of parts of the human body, ultimately add up to the image of the body, which appears as a symbol of Joyce's vast universe on the cosmic scale” [2, p. 247-249].

So, we observe throughout the narrative how Leopold Bloom and other characters wander around the city. But all these people are constantly inside the huge, gigantic body - the body of the City. In Ulysses we meet a technique well known in the history of world culture, when a person is portrayed inside a huge body (“body-in-body”). You can recall the analogy: Jonah, who was in the belly of a whale; a citizen living in “Leviathan State” of Hobbes; prisoners of a huge prison or camp; slaves in the hold of a ship; travelers in the center of the Earth, etc.

Dublin is also described by Joyce as a giant labyrinth. Leopold Bloom, moving through the streets of the city, often comes to a standstill, gets confused, wanders to the touch. If at Homer we encounter a labyrinth of islands, then at Joyce it is a labyrinth of Dublin streets. So, in the `Lotus Eaters' episode the protagonist goes to public baths through this maze at 10 a.m. In the `Hades' episode, the path of the funeral procession passes through Dublin, heading for the Kingdom of the Dead - Glasnevin Cemetery. The author cites countless names of streets, squares, pubs, schools, shops, with which Bloom has various memories. `Aeolus' episode, which takes place in the editorial office of two newspapers, shows us an extremely confusing labyrinth of urban news and gossip. Other similar examples can be given.

As we can see, James Joyce created in Ulysses a very interesting double image of the City. It is double because it is formed by superimposing on each other two images (image of the Giant body and the image of the Labyrinth), which often behave unpredictably, sometimes experiencing a person, then saving and protecting him. Dublin in Joyce's novel is both the Body and the Labyrinth at the same time (Body- Labyrinth). Such a technique is generally characteristic of a modernist culture, which has always sought to avoid unambiguous interpretations and simplification. Let's call this technique, by analogy with the cinema, “double-take effect”. Perhaps the imposition of two images in one text helps the author and readers clarify, understand more deeply and clearly the symbolism of the city described and groomed by Joyce. In fact, the “double-take effect” is the author's desperate breakthrough to the symbol, because “natural symbolism” is that fundamental part of culture, which, unlike norms and values, is not created by a person, but stored, as Jung showed, in the depths of our collective unconscious.

It is noteworthy that in the penultimate episode of the novel `Ithaca', Joyce shows us a combination of two key images. Bloom is returning home with his son Stephen. According to Joyce, one of the symbols in this episode is a mirror. Bloom rises into the bedroom and sees himself in the mirror. He stands for a long time, considering his reflection and reflecting on his life, successes and failures, missed opportunities. In this episode, the wanderer meets not only with his son, but also with himself. A mirror is a symbol of the labyrinth (since we can see an infinite number of reflections in it), a symbol of the meeting of being and other being, a symbol of the border of two worlds. A person can see his body in full detail in a mirror; only mirror gives a complete image of the body. Thus, in the `Ithaca' episode, Joyce, using the symbolism of the mirror, more clearly does what he tried to do throughout the story - to combine key images and meanings.

Conclusions. The text of James Joyce's Ulysses is quite rightly regarded as a “bodycentric” text. Reasons for such an assessment: a) the entire vast text of the novel is full of symbols and images of fleshliness; b) the author proposed a key symbol that is directly associated with a specific part or organ of the human body for almost every episode of the novel (see Gilbert schema for “Ulysses” and Linati schema for “Ulysses”); c) Joyce's novel is one of the highest achievements of modernist literature, and bodycentricity (as was substantiated by J. Ortega y Gasset) is one of the main features of modernism. Joyce's novel, like all modernist texts, has a specific spatial form (J. Frank). This specificity, despite numerous works on Ulysses, has not been studied enough at the moment. A special gap is, in our opinion, the mechanism of symbolization in Joyce, as well as the process of transforming an artistic image into a symbol. This problem is promising for further study.

The key symbol of Ulysses is the City. The results of our analysis of urban spatial symbolism in combination with the analysis of anthropological symbolism (primarily the symbolism of fleshliness) in Joyce suggest the following: the author of the work, striving to reveal the essence of Dublin's urban space most fully and deeply, combined two key images - the image of the Human body and the image of the Labyrinth. This technique, which consists in superimposing two images, we called conditionally “double-take effect”. This technique is widely used in modernist culture. This technique allows us to emphasize the ambiguity and diversity, heterogeneity, the “puzzle” nature of the symbolic urban space. It is, in our opinion, the key in the process of symbolization in Joyce.

References

1. Alter, R., 2005. `Imagined Cities: Urban Experience and the Language of the Novel'. New Haven, Yale University Press, 175 p.

2. Eco, U., 2006. `Poetiki Dzhoysa' [`Le poetiche di Joyce'], transl. A. Koval. Sankt-Peterburg: Symposium. [In Russian], 489 p.

3. Eliot TS., 1923, `Ulysses, Order, and Myth'. The Dial. Vol. 75 (5), p. 480.

4. Frank, J., 1988. `Spatial Form in Modern Literature'. Reprinted from Sewanee Review 53.2-3 (1945). M. Hoffman and P. Murphy (eds.). Essentials of the Theory of Fiction. Durham and London: Duke UP.

5. Gilbert, S., 1930. `James Joyce Ulysses': A Study. New York: Knopf, 407 p.

6. Joyce, J., 1961. `Ulysses'. New York: The Modern Library, 773 p.

7. Jung, Cg.,1978, `Ulysses: A Monologue'. The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature. The Collected Works, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Vol. 15, p. 109-134.

8. Ortega y Gasset J., 1925. `The Dehumanization of Art'. Available at: https://monoskop.org/images/5753/ Ortega_y_Gasset_Jose_1925_1972_The_Dehumanization_ of_Art.pdf

9. Pound, E., 1913. `A Few Don'ts by an Imagiste'. Poetry Magazine, March, p. 200-209.

10. Rojas, E., 2010. `Madness as Redemption in Circe' Papers on Joyce, 16, p. 123-137.

11. Sceats, S., 2000. `Food, Consumption & the Body in Contemporary Women's Fiction'. Port Chester: Cambridge University Press, 224 p.

12. Springman, R., 2000. `The Postmodern Joyce Emerging in Ulysses: Joyce's Sirens of Words'. The Oswald Review: An International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Criticism in the Discipline of English. Vol. 2 (1), p. 21-39.

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