Subject: Met-Him-Pike-Hoses
From: Cecilia Baader (ceciliaann@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Jul 23 2000 - 13:24:02 GMT
Best wishes, fish . . .
Recently, I came across this from James Joyce's _A Portrait of the Artist as
a Young Man_:
"But he could no longer disbelieve in the reality of love
since God himself had loved his individual soul with divine
love from all eternity. Gradually, as his soul was enriched
with spiritual knowledge, he saw the whole world forming
one vast symmetrical expression of God's power and love. Life
became a divine gift for every moment and sensation of which,
were it even the sight of a single leaf hanging on the twig of
a tree, his soul should praise and thank the giver.
The world for all its solid substance and complexity no longer
existed for his soul save as a theorem of divine power and love
and universality. So entire and unquestionable was this sense
of the divine meaning in all nature granted to his
soul that he could scarcely understand why it was in any way
necessary that he should continue to live. Yet that was part
of the divine purpose and he dared not question its use..."
(150)
So there you go, folks. Proof positive that if Seymour would have been
Catholic, he wouldn't have done it. He'd have been too scared to.
Okay, I'll stop my joking around. Interesting, though-- Matt K. mentioned a
while back that he was surprised that there weren't any Joyce references in
Salinger's work, since the man seemed to have such a penchant for
name-dropping. (Okay, maybe you didn't say it in *precisely* that way, but
that's the gist of it.)
I've been reading a lot of Joyce lately (I get on these thematic kicks--
ergo the ollav idea. I'm leaving for Ireland today, you see, and reading
James Joyce just seems necessary under the circumstance.)
Keeping Matt's comment in the back of my mind, as I read more and more I
kept thinking that there's altogether too much similarity in ideas between
Joyce and Salinger for there *not* to be strong connection. So I wonder:
is the connection so strong that old J.D. just stayed away from mentioning
names so that he wouldn't be too obvious? Matt thought that "Uncle Wiggly"
was an elaborate reenactment of "The Dead". Upon rereading of "The Dead", I
can see the connection. But what about this: Is _The Catcher in the Rye_ a
reenactment of _Ulysses_? Both Odysseys, in the grand sense of the word,
both heavily influenced by eastern thought.
Now, I haven't had the opportunity to go through both books to make and cite
more concrete connections, but as I plow through more and more of _Ulysses_,
I'm seeing so many that I cannot help but thinking that I'm not wrong
about this. There's the school in the beginning, the searching throughout,
the woman who is wrong and the inability to reach the one who is right, the
prostitutes, the references to metempsychosis (the Greek name for
reincarnation), etc. I'm feeling more and more like there's an amazing
parallel.
When I get back in two weeks, I'll have thought this out better, and I will
have (hopefully) have finished the book. And I'll cite more specific
examples. I just wanted to throw this one out there, so that people who
have read both books could think on it. And tell me if I'm wrong if I am.
Regards,
Cecilia.
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