Nin, Ulysses, and the Plastic Arts

[paigerella]

Hey Guys,

Since you were asking for more ;), here is the latest "essay," about Ulysses. It's in response to a reader's question from a bulletin quote that I put up on MySpace ( www.myspace.com/ulyssespodcast). It's extremely late, so I hope that this response made sense!

Ciao tutti! I hope that you all have a great weekend!!!!

-paigerella :)

Question:

It is an interesting comment because I had read Anais Nin well. But do you understand her? For me I miss something or am difficult to understand in what Nin wrote about Molly. What is your opinion?

Original Quote:

"Fowlie says of Ulysses: 'In the last episode of Joyce's Ulysses the long soliloquy of Molly Bloom the character has ceased being real in any usual sense. She is lying down in bed and the words which pass through her in her half dream, half conscious state convert her into the mythical figure of woman, into the figure of the earth itself."

-from Anais Nin, in The Novel of the Future

Response:

Dear HCEFW,

First, I want to thank you for your letter. It was like a beautiful stone in my dull, dull day. Today, at work, I photocopied documents for almost an hour and did several other mindless, trivial (to me) things. Then I read your letter, with your question about Molly Bloom, Fowlie, and Nin, and you gave me a glint of crimson  (thought) and something to look forward to: answering your question.

However, I do not know if I can answer it accurately at all. It is a quote that Nin used to... to illustrate the depth that a writer must delve to cross from the conscious to the subconscious (or vice versa). It is also a symbol of the subconscious in the works of the conscious. For some reason, I am thinking of Nietzsche and Bacchus, and the plastic arts.

Nin says that Fowlie discusses Freud, who said that "man is primarily a sleeper," (15). While Molly is sleeping, she loses herself and the prose moves from Molly the physical to the world of her dreams- symbols and symbolism. This dissipation of Molly and the symbols of her dreams transform her from the physical to the mythical. Molly represents fertility in Ulysses and here Fowlie is saying that, through her dreams, we reach her subconscious where the very essence Molly resides: she is Mother Nature, or, the Earth itself.

Because of your question, I have re-read the first part of Nin's book, "The Novel of the Future," where she discusses how to write and how literary artists must write. She begins with dreams which ultimately, she claims, aside from being thought without rules, are symbols from the subconscious.

Symbols are important because they express different layers of meaning at once. They have presence. She says, "The unconscious cannot express itself directly because it is a composite of past, present, future, a timeless alchemy of many dimensions. A direct statement, as for an act, would deprive it of its effectiveness. It is an image which bypasses the censor of the mind, affects our emotions and our sense. An act has to be interpreted on two levels-- one as action, the other as meaning," (11).

In The Novel of the Future, Nin says that there are several levels/ layers of consciousness, and artists / poets are the ones who do and must build bridges across them to have full access to all realms. This, in itself, is like Ulysses. While reading about Bloom, the narrative takes us (the readers) into his head, outside of his head and onto the street, into his memories, and then outside of his head again, yet within his memories or imagination (as if he is imagining himself in a room, and we are in the room watching his imaginary self- therefore we're "out" of his mind, yet within by reason of standing in the room of his imagination). We have all of these various levels happening almost simultaneously. And, as you know, there are the different layers of meaning in theme: Bloom and his day/ Ulysses and his epic voyage, different colors and parts of the body, layers of sound, etc. Joyce's work reminds me of this other quote by Nin: "Dream, waking dream, reverie, fantasy, all interlock and interrelate simultaneously but on different levels" (9).

Nin says that separating the conscious from the subconscious creates neurosis and that dreaming is indispensable to humanity because it provides an escape and perspective from history as it is lived in. This perspective reinforces personality/ individuality, and personal choices. It also provides the ability to choose actions within a situation and to keep from being swept up in history itself (here she briefly mentions the Nazis).

But why is this important? Well, for personal reasons- people must be in touch with their subconscious to keep neurosis at bay. They must also have a realm from which they can strengthen their spirits and gain perspective on their positions within history. And, by accessing our innermost symbols and translating them into the plastic arts, we add to history. This is why she admonishes drugs-- drugs reveal images and the subconscious, but they do not create activity.

We need to create, then, and to translate the symbols of our subconscious into the arts. "The young," she says, "would have no need of drugs if they had been educated in the life of the senses and emotions through art. Art has through the ages given people their heightened sense of life and given them the key to its meaning," (16). (As an aside, check out this quote-- I took the word "drug" out and replaced it with "television": "We downgraded and denigrated the artist who would have expanded their imagination and consciousness without side effects. Consequently, the young, trained in passivity and acceptance, have become, through television, voyeurs to the world of images--not creators." )

For some reason, I'm thinking of the poem that you put in your blog, "The Morning of Eternal Separation," by Kenji Miyazawa. He did what Nin was talking about. He created symbols in his poem, about the snow and the death of his sister, and the transformation of the snow into the food of Tushita Heaven. It became more than it was. It was translated into dreaming and layers and symbols and the universal language of understanding/ consciousness. All Nin does or did is try to explain what it is that poets do, and what those who would be poets must do in order to succeed. Things that we already know intuitively-- she just provides the language. Symbols have more power than words, and they are stronger because our subconscious recognizes them on several layers. Thus Molly isn't just Bloom's wife, she is the Mother of all creation, the Earth, the mythical woman figure, and fertility.

Good night,

Paigerella