THE WORDS OF JOYCE

MICHAEL BOLERJACK

THE YES

To be Tolled in fragments: To take back the ringing yes from Derrida for Joyce, redeem it, not as

example but as the unexampled, the unprecedented, unique, unrepeatable Yes.

But, first the notes of the introduction leading to the redemption of affirmation:

A BB C BB A

Absolute

Father

Son

Holy Spirit

Son

Father

Absolute

Deconstructing the deconstruction to fulfill the deconstruction contrary to the truth of

contradiction without contradicting the truth Complete

Transcendent GOD

Mediation church

God

Church

World

I

World

Church

God

Aaron parents and grandparents

Burl

Bo

Charlotte

Bo

Burl

Aaron

Law prophets writings prophets law

Gospel/acts epistles revelation epistles gospel/acts

Love faith hope insight hope faith love

The book contains the text not the text contains the book

Zig zag

Mystical flower

Cross cross cross

Mystical flower

I am

He is

You are

I am

You are

He is

I am

Autobiography effracts

Epic drama fiction drama epic

Eternal time spacing time eternal

Exterior circular open effraction circular exterior

Myth drama critical fiction drama myth

Transcendent mediation immediate mediation transcendent

Truth / truth of contradiction / contradiction / contradiction of truth / truth

Nothing becoming being becoming nothing

Square circle effraction circle square

Necessity fantasy

Freedom reality

Necessity fantasy, vicious circle, effraction by love and work

Making free real

Absolute act

Possibility which is not

Impossible which really is

+ -

-- ++

Act de

De of de act

How does de prevent de of de?

How does deconstruction keep from deconstructing itself?

It always already is deconstructed

It starts out deconstructed

Not with act

Divided origin

Immemorial origin

No actual origin

Post retro active projection changes the past into de

De cannot be deconstructed from within

What of synthesis?

Making dialectic de

Making de dialectic

Nothing but

Must be effracted.

Possibility of impossibility

Equals

Impossibility of possibility

How to contradict the contradiction?

All goes through the I

As if the truth never was

As if the Jews did not die

Both did and did not

Neither did nor did not

Remains.

The b/a/n/n [both and neither nor]

Eliminates the either/or

Dialectic both / and

Leads to deconstruction

No choice.

Jump levels

Silence effracts

Accurate, he said

If you can say either this or that then there is choice, free

And the b/a/n/n [both and neither nor] is impossible

Choice destroys deconstruction

Deconstruction destroys choice

Total-talitarian

Either choice or non-choice

Must not choose non-choice

Choosing to choose, open

Choosing not to choose, defer, is to allow de

Two cities meta/para

If we eliminate choice we eliminate our freedom

Freedom is the thing itself, made impossible by de

Possible made impossible, impossible made possible [disaster]

Outside text is the context

If there is a context there is difference choice freedom

If all context is already text then no either/or

If I am the context, in god-church-world, then I effract it, I choose to be

Against the text, I am the standard of measure, I bind it, delimit the text

Explain it, not it me

The reader is the way the text arrives.

Text to weave

If there are folds

There are implications

And explications

An either/or

Exemplify complication

Simplify complication

Supplicate

A fold is a fold of something

Examples

Case in point

Show

Embody

Typical

Eximere- to take out-

Replication---

Reply, fold back, plaintiff’s reply, echo, copy

Answer, reply, rejoinder.

Law suit, dialogue

Either plaintiff or defendant, choice

Redeem---

Re-emire, redeem, take back, not example, take out

One steals by example or one is redeemed by taking back to original

Either / or in replication---rejoinder reply or copy, you choose, are free

Law means contradiction e/o [either/or] decision justice choice

Complication implication

Replication explication

Structure of ‘plication’

Either/or chooses one or other

b/a/n/n [both/and/neither/nor] chooses all

A-thesis before thesis, amoral before moral, no good / evil t/f [true, false] impossible

Since complication only implications pli selon pli

Since has been illusion explication is only illusion

Always plus one

Derrida seems to be bringing a unity into the text by yes+yes affirmation in Joyce

Molly Bloom’s final statement:

YES I SAID YES I WILL YES

Meanings of YES

1. Used as a function word to express assent or agreement

2. Used as a function word to introduce correction or contradiction of a negative assertion or

direction

3. Used as a function word to introduce a more emphatic or ex-plicit phrase

4. Used as a function word to indicate uncertainty or possible interest or attentiveness

5. Exclamation of jubilation

Yes

Said I

I Will

Yes

Perfect ringing of yes

4 words

7 times

12 letters

Perfect proof of Metasignification

Joyce knew the Ultrastructure well

Bloom asks Molly to choose

She chose

Decision, choice

An either him / or another

Free / the deconstruction cut off / by a decision

She does not defer but decides

Yes

She will

Desire inclination disposed a testament

To order to direct

To choose

As well him as another

I thought as well him as another

Indifference

And yet, yes.

Parse

Yes/I said yes I will/Yes.

Yes---three times

I said

I will 4 words

Again / the Ultrastructure

Yes three letters / will four / said four / I one, numbers, numbers, mystical forms.

The final YES is the explication of all the rest Penultimate yes is choice

Ante-penultimate is used to introduce a more emphatic or explicit phrase

Penultimate emphatic agreement

Ultimate the explicit, the explication still ringing.

Yes: Janus at door looking back on the first three fictions and forward to the Wake:

Dubliners said / Portrait will / Ulysses yeses I effraction / Wake is effracted text after I:

Dubliners god / Portrait church / Ulysses world---Moral, rebellion, epic/simony, paralysis,

gnomon/yes is the bit making the rest a gnomon---Text of god-church-world effracted by I

saying yes.---In order to complete the three at step/decision, in order to arrive at four, in order to

reach the all in all at Wake. Everything hinges on the Yes. It is dialectic that affirms and cancels.

What takes place after the YES is a different order of things, meta / not para. Each step by Joyce

goes further, and is never parallel, but at last fully meta. Beyond, the meta-novel, not anti-

Anything but completely free, pure, the joy felt after the act of faith: YES. Derrida’s YES/YES

does not quite catch it, as if there were always one more yes to be said. What ULYSSES showed

is that in making a final explicit YES, one affirms as in an act of faith and makes oneself free,

Molly made her decision, Joyce his, and freed herself/ himself. It is the finality of the Yes that is

important, not the possible indefinite addition. The final YES is more than any of the four

meanings given, it is a meta-static-yes. It is final, but it structurally cannot stop being said, at

once final and infinite, but never indefinite. It is not like a total count in the making, plus one,

but at once all numbers combined, a symbol for God in a book both profane and, yes, sacred.

I have shown the ringing of the YES, circular in structure and as Ultrastructure,

But what of the b/a/n/n the both/and/neither/nor?

What of the banns? Of marriage. Wedding ring, a banding, binding.

The banns of Derrida impossibly bans the wedding, anti-banns, It makes the

I DO

Impossible.

It makes the YES of decision impossible, allowing only the meaning of a kind of inattentiveness.

Derrida’s YES is the opposite of Joyce’s. It does not explicate, does not choose, is not emphatic,

neither does it assert the contrary, but rather like a manager will murmur to an employee yes, yes

while never intending action.

The last seven words of Molly recall her decision to marry, wedding banns, that ban the

Derridean appropriation before-hand. She chooses one, not all. Just Bloom. And re-affirms her

choice. Renewal. Of the Banns.

To say this YES is always to choose the faithfulness, though we have been unfaithful. It is a kind

of repentance, a YES that turns, that brings back, that redeems.

Derrida takes it out of context, examples it, rejects the redemption, the supplicatory aspect of the

final Yes in Ulysses. That YES does not replicate, does not implicate, and though it is in a

position to explicate does not, and is supremely simple, not complicated.

The YES is a supplication. It does not supplement itself, it prays. It is neither folded nor

unfolded, for it has never been enfolded. It is a plea, not a pli. The YES simplifies the matter. It

is not pliable, but resolution itself, resolving the work, and as much as you can bear, or hear, in

the context of your readership. But perhaps that is the “reply” of yes implied by Derrida, that

when we hear Molly’s YES we reply yes again and again. Qui, qui. If that is the case he may be

exonerated, but I believe his YES is too complex and is like his messiah unable to affirm because

it cannot stop repeating itself. It would have been better then to say a simple NO than to

endlessly entangle Joyce’s ACT in an endless deferral.

In the end Derrida turns the YES into a YET. Eventually, yes, yes, but not yet. Not never, just

not yet, not now, decision is impossible, too much difference: hesitating at the altar:

Yet, I could not say, yet I will not, yet neither nor will, not Yet. Yet I said Yet I will Yet. No one

can say YES to that. Say Yes to Yes itself, as Derrida quotes Blanchot in Living On, but not that.

Joyce said in the Wake that PATIENCE is the great thing. That means to wait. As you wait

repeat to yourself yes I must yes I will yes, I will wait, right now I am waiting, not deferring, not

hesitating, not passively waiting but affirming the awaited. In that one may be able to arrive at

the hour the bridegroom comes. It is then we may make an exclamation of jubilation, that in the

modern world Molly Bloom was the first to make, which now every sports fan makes when their

team wins, YES! What was the giving of assent or the making of an affirmation became near the

end of the world an act of the expression of joy at the outcome.

Finnegans Wake The end of this book, which really does not end, implies something that is there and not there at the same, a kind of prayer. I have shown the supplicatory aspect of the Yes at the end of Ulysses and now would like to de-monstrate the conclusion of the Wake as the perfection of this prayer. The last lines of the book can be read so many ways. Usually one says the final “the” is referring to the opening riverrun, to circle things back. I think it does this and something else as well. Joyce proclaims that the keys to are given. He has said Finn, again. He has said Till thous-endsthee. Now I think that this ends thee. The “the” of the end is to be said not as slack “the,” definite but open, but precisely THEE. The Keys to. Given! Given to whom, but to THEE. Not a way a lone a last a loved a long a…but the, because you are it, I AM IT, we are it, as the auditors of Prospero in the epilogue of Shakespeare’s final act, his prayer for forgiveness. Given? Key? It is the forgiveness of THEE. to. then. endsthee. Lps {please} long the […] long thee, he longs but for THEE, to then ends, THEE. Thou, ends, thee. It ends with us, we are the one for whom and in whom the work arrives and Joyce affirms not one definitely but all infinitely. It is a way of saying YOU and YES at once: the THEE. THEE I said THEE I Will THEE, then you and I are in truth the arrival of the text, that the secret is that it is we who hold the keys, keys of Peter, keys of the see, to forgive, to forgive all good thieves, whom writers to write must be, saying, But softly, thee, remember me, till thou ends thee, that we never ending be, as love does not end, for thee given, never ending, thou art the key, the text is thee (se). The text is these, thee’s, the signature effect is here comes everybody, and all along HCE was THEE, was all of us, it was written to you and you and you and yes to thee. Michael Bolerjack