Help my unbelief: James Joyce and religion PDF
Preview Help my unbelief: James Joyce and religion
Help My Unbelief Related titles available from Continuum Joyce: A Guide for the Perplexed Peter Mahon Joyce and Company David Pierce Joyce’s Ulysses Sean Sheehan The Reception of James Joyce in Europe Edited by Geert Lernout and Wim Van Mierlo Help My Unbelief James Joyce and Religion Geert Lernout Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Geert Lernout 2010 Geert Lernout has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identifi ed as the Author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-4411-3108-9 (hardback) 978-1-4411-9474-9 (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire Contents Acknowledgements vi List of Abbreviations vii Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Joyce and the Church According to the Critics 13 Chapter 2 The Holy Roman Apostolic Church 28 Chapter 3 Heresy, Schisma and Dissent 52 Chapter 4 Joyce’s Own Crisis of Belief 94 Chapter 5 Loss of Religion in Retrospect: From Epiphanies to Exiles 111 Chapter 6 ‘You behold in me a horrible example of freethought’ 140 Chapter 7 Free Lay Church in a Free Lay State 157 Chapter 8 After Ulysses 191 Conclusion 206 Notes 218 References 222 Index 231 Acknowledgements This book has had a fairly long history. The fi rst ideas developed as part of my work with Vincent Deane and Daniel Ferrer on the edition of the Finnegans Wake Notebooks at Buffalo, but only in early 2004 did I begin the writing in ear- nest when I took up a Mellon Fellowship to do research at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center of the University of Texas. I am particularly grateful for the help received from Tom Staley and his expert staff on that and many other visits to Austin. I also thank the staff at the University of Antwerp library for their valuable help. At a fairly late stage, Steven Morrison gave me a chance to consult his doctoral dissertation, which helped me a great deal to get back on track. This is also the place to thank Fritz Senn, Ursula Zeller, Ruth Frehner and of the James Joyce Stiftung in Zürich and John McCourt and Laura Pelaschiar of the James Joyce School in Trieste, Luca Crispi and Stacey Herbert of the Dublin James Joyce Centre who gave me the chance to present some of this material in an early form. The Joyce world is a very friendly place and this book has benefi ted greatly from real-life and digital discussions with a large number of people, both Joyceans and goyim: Fritz Senn, Luca Crispi, Stacey Herbert, Ron Ewart, Daniel Ferrer, Maria Wells, Andrew Gibson, John McCourt, Christopher Whalen, Marysa De Moor, Vincent Deane, Terence Killeen, Joe Schork, Sam Slote, Ron Ewart, Chrissie Lees, David Berman, Judith and Richard Harrington, Vincent Neyt, Scarlett Baron, Peter Shillingsburg, Ronan Crowley, Michael Groden, Wim Van Mierlo, Warwick Gould, Peter de Voogd, Ron Bush, Tom Staley, Vincent and Christine O’Neill, Martha Campbell, Peter Robinson and many others. In particular I feel privileged to have in Dirk Van Hulle a very knowledgeable and extremely generous colleague at the University of Antwerp: every day he reminds me of what a university is supposed to be like. Joe Schork, David Pierce, John Smurthwaite and Dirk Van Hulle read early versions of the book or parts of the book and without their critical comments and generous help it would never have been published. I am also grateful for the anonymous comments from a number of readers which forced me to tighten the argument and which resulted in a better book, I hope. List of Abbreviations Joyce’s Works D James Joyce, Dubliners: Text, Criticism, and Notes, Robert Scholes and A. Walton Litz, eds. New York: Viking, 1979. FDV Hayman, David, A First-Draft Version of ‘Finnegans Wake’. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1963. FW James Joyce, Finnegans Wake. London: Faber and Faber, 1964. The page number is followed by the line number. JJ Richard Ellmann. James Joyce. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982. Letters I, II, III James Joyce, Letters of James Joyce. Vol. I. Stuart Gilbert, ed. New York: Viking, 1957, reissued with corrections 1966. Vols II and III. Richard Ellmann, ed. New York: Viking, 1966. P James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Chester Anderson, ed. New York: Viking, 1968. SH James Joyce, Stephen Hero. John J. Slocum and Herbert Cahoon, eds. New York: New Directions, 1963. U James Joyce, Ulysses: The Corrected Text. Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior, eds. London: The Bodley Head, 1986. The chapter number is followed by the line number. This page intentionally left blank Introduction In the library chapter of Ulysses Stephen Dedalus admits that he does not believe the theory on Shakespeare that he has just been expounding at great length. John Eglinton replies that there is a Herr Bleibtreu in Berlin who has his own theory but at least this German Shakespearean has the benefi t of actually believ- ing what he preaches. This comment leads Stephen to a brief bit of interior monologue that gave me the title of this book: ‘I believe, O Lord, help my unbe- lief. That is, help me to believe or help me to unbelieve?’ (U 9:1078–9). In the privacy of his own mind, Stephen Dedalus simply reacts to Eglinton’s comment, but his thoughts have much wider signifi cance. The fi rst sentence is a quotation from the bible, more specifi cally from the second half of Mk 9:24, part of the story of the healing of an epileptic boy. The verse runs: ‘And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.’1 The phrase is important for all kinds of reasons; fi rst it demonstrates what Jesus has said in the preceding verse: ‘Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believeth,’ a truth that is then demonstrated in this particular healing. Earlier the disciples had failed to heal the boy and when they asked their master for the reason of their failure to cure him, Jesus replied: ‘This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer and fasting.’ But there is a completely different and much less pious message too. The disciples’ inability to heal the boy reminds the bible reader of their master’s failure to perform miracles in his hometown just three chapters earlier in the same gospel. As only bible specialists and militant unbelievers know, this is one of the places where two evangelists clearly contradict each other and it is no coincidence that it involves the issue of unbelief. In Mk 6.1–3, Jesus returns to Nazareth where he preaches at the synagogue, but the local people reject him, precisely because they know him, his brothers and his sisters: 4. But Jesus, said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house. 5. And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them. 6. And he marvelled because of their unbelief.
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