The Rest Is Silence: Paradigms of the Unspoken in Irish Studies || How to Pull a Good Whoroscope

Dalarna University Centre for Irish Studies

How to Pull a Good WhoroscopeAuthor(s): Steven BondSource: Nordic Irish Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2, The Rest Is Silence: Paradigms of the Unspoken inIrish Studies (2012), pp. 131-147Published by: Dalarna University Centre for Irish StudiesStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41702640 .

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How to Pull a Good Whoroscope

Steven Bond

This article proposes that Samuel Beckett's 'Whoroscope' is both influenced by and engages in dialogue with the Cartesian motifs of James Joyce's Ulysses . The influence of Joyce on the early Beckett is long attested to, and to some extent has extended into the analysis of 'Whoroscope'. Various early commentaries note Joycean echoes in specific lines of Beckett's poem (Line ninety three, for Hedberg; Lines twenty six, thirty, and seventy five, for Connors) but, as Connors notes, the 'slang or ungrammatical constructions' contained therein are reflections upon Joyce's style only.1 While the Cartesianism of 'Whoroscope' (Harvey, Hedberg, Stein, Connors, Doherty), and of early Beckett more broadly (Kenner, Esslin, Hoffmann, Hesla, Morot-Sir, Topsfield), has been the object of much scrutiny since the early sixties, the Cartesianism of Ulysses (excluding my own recent work) is thus far been the subject of a critical silence, confined to a single 1984 JJQ article by Philip Sicker.2 Sicker's article draws convincing parallels between Descartes' s three prophetic dreams of 10 November 1619, and the dream recollections of Stephen Dedalus in Ulysses. Most suggestive of direct influence is the coincidence of both youths being handed a melon by an unidentified stranger. Seven allusions to Descartes in Finnegans Wake , all noted by Adaline Glasheen, complete the scant history of scholarly work on Cartesianism in Joyce's works.3 The Cartesian motifs which this article unearths in the late works of Joyce are thus minimally established in the secondary literature, and for a more thorough exposition of same I refer you to my forthcoming article.4 Consequent upon this silencing of the father of modern philosophy in interpretations of Joyce's writing, no critic has yet cited Joyce as a possible source for Beckett's Cartesian content. In doing so, this article underscores the evolution of Beckett's Cartesianism.

It is customary for considerations of 'Whoroscope' to take as their starting point a consideration of the poem's title, and the circumstances of its creation. Section I follows suit in this regard. It also notes the veiled Ulyssean references to Descartes' s death which Joyce derived from Adrien Baillet's 1691 Vie de Descartes , the precise source and Chapter utilised by Beckett in 'Whoroscope'. We extend the long attested Joycean influence



Nordic Irish Studies

not only into the poem's Cartesian content, but tentatively into the poem's Bloomsday composition date. Section II provides a close exegesis of a few select lines of Beckett's poem, whilst noting similar allusions in Ulysses. In some cases, we highlight likely retrospective references to both Beckett and 'Whoroscope' in Finnegans Wake. Of particular interest to the Joycean connection proposed here is John Pentland Mahaffy's 1902 Descartes , a sourcebook for Beckett, which describes Descartes as both Ulysses and Daedalus. Given that the period of Whoroscope's creation is the period of Beckett's most intense collaboration with Joyce, it is something of an oversight that no critic notes the Ulyssean echoes of Beckett's Cartesian sourcebook, the Bloomsday timing of the poem's composition, or Joyce's similar if obscure Cartesian motifs. While we are at pains not to draw definitive conclusions in the absence of genetic support, a carefully constructed dialogue with the hitherto marginalised Cartesianism of Joyce's Ulysses might yet imbibe 'Whoroscope' with some broader holistic meaning. Such a holistic appraisal could conceivably incorporate the poem's alleged single date of composition, both of its alternate titles, and provide a motive for its being falsely presented as without pre-meditation.

Section I: The Circumstances of Creation

'Whoroscope' was famously written in a single day and awarded first place for a poetry competition on Time held by The Hours Press. The competition deadline date was 15 June 1930.5 That Beckett was three hours beyond the midnight deadline when personally delivering his submission thus secures the date of delivery as 16 June 1930, or Bloomsday. In the context of the proposed Joycean influence outlined below, it is tempting to read some significance into the Bloomsday birth date. Jean Michel Rabaté, whilst agreeing with the majority of arguments presented below, has remarked in personal correspondence that the overlapping date is an instance of 'pure coincidence,' as indeed it must be. Beckett can no more author the competition deadline than he can his Good Friday birth date, but this does not preclude him from recognising and assimilating the facts of life into his art. Beckett encountered in Joyce the consciousness 'that things with a common numerical characteristic tend towards a very significant interrelationship'.6 It is thus not inconceivable that a poem written on the night of 15/16 June would consciously engage in a dialogue with Ulysses. Its being a noteworthy coincidence does not necessitate its previously occurring to Beckett, but both he and Joyce were typically alert enough to

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welcome history where it played into their hands. The Bloomsday date is one noteworthy component of what is, in toto , an interesting intersection.

Another component is Beckett's chosen title, 'Whoroscope,' with an italicized 'W' ensuring that the Whore/horoscope portmanteau is unmistakable. Beckett later presents us with a literal whoroscope in the form of Celia's 'blackmail' delivery to protagonist Murphy,7 but Episode XV of Ulysses , set in Bella Cohen's brothel in Tyrone Street, provides us with the original whoroscope in the work of either author. We are not given the obvious portmanteau of Beckett, but it may be significant that both Stephen and Bloom have their horoscope cast by a whore named Zoe Higgins, shortly after midnight. Joyce's prior whoroscope might in the end be unrelated to Beckett's, but it remains a fact of mathematical probability that individual coincidences obey the combinatorial rule of product. These ' Whoroscope parallels, however vaguely suggestive when considered in isolation, might thus serve to mutually reinforce the Beckett/Joyce dialogue here proposed. In further illustration of this fact, let us next consider the alternate title for Beckett's Cartesian poem.

When Nancy Cunard wrote to Louise Morgan requesting that Beckett be announced as the Hours Press competition winner, the letter was dated only '3 a.m.', which may conjure the hour of Beckett's 16 June delivery. Furthermore, it gives the title of Beckett's poem as 'The Eighth Day'.8 The relevance of 'The Eighth Day' to Descartes is easily explicable. Baillet's 1691 untranslated Two Volume biography devotes ten pages to the details of Descartes' s sickness and death. Each chapter begins by sectioning the narrative that follows. The chapter in question, XXI of Volume II, devotes just one section to the first seven days of his illness. ' Historie des Sept prémiers jours de sa maladie '.9 Descartes first shivered on 1 February 1650, and the subsequent final day out of bed (coincidentally James Joyce's birthday and the anniversary of Ulysses's publication) saw him receive communion at Candlemass. The following lengthy section of Baillet is devoted entirely to the events of 8 February, 'The Eighth Day', such as Descartes' s eventual bleeding by Dr Weulles. 7/ commence a connoitre son mal le huitéme jour, & se fait saigner: mais trop tarď .10 Two final peaceful and uneventful days are treated curtly. Descartes died at 4 a.m. on 11 February. The final sentence of 'Whoroscope,' beginning 'Oh Weulles spare the blood of a Frank',11 firmly locates the poem's final action on the fourth day of Descartes' s illness ' Messieurs éspagnez le sang françois9}2 It was then that Descartes lost his clarity and descended into a pious daydream from which he would not reawaken fully until the morning of ' le huitéme jour' which likely provides the moment in which Beckett's

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Descartes has opportunity to meditate upon his life. Baillet thus gives a viable solution as to why Beckett initially intended 'The Eighth Day' title. Furthermore, Beckett's Descartes is here reminiscent of Joyce's Descartes, as Joyce likewise occludes the philosopher behind veiled references to the fatal action of Baillet's eighth day.

Baillet discounts the slanderous fictions (' fictions calomnieuses ') surrounding Descartes' death, such as his being poisoned by the Queen's Grammarians.13 He does note, however, that Dr Weulles, by whom Descartes initially refused to be bled, was Descartes' s sworn enemy (' ennemi juré de M. Descartes')}* Joyce's clearest reference to Descartes's death, as recounted by Baillet, is also derived from 8 February, wherein Descartes requests of Weulles that he be brought some wine infused with tobacco (' infuser dû tabac dans du vin ').15 The fact is likely recalled in Leopold Bloom's warning to Stephen.

I wouldn't personally repose much trust in that boon companion of yours who contributes the humorous element, Dr Mulligan, as a guide, philosopher, and friend, if I were in your shoes [. . .]. Of course you didn't notice as much as I did but it wouldn't occasion me the least surprise to learn that a pinch of tobacco or some narcotic was put in your drink for some ulterior object.16

Beyond the fact that all searches for alternative referents thus far suggest a peculiarly Cartesian 'remedy', it's being administered by the Doctor who seconds as Stephen's enemy recalls the events preceding Descartes's death. Episode XIV, where Dr Malachi Mulligan concocts the Cartesian infusion, furthermore provides the required drink of choice. 'He was laying his hand upon a winejar: Malachi saw it and withheld his act, pointing to the stranger and to the scarlet label'.17 Beckett's later covert treatment of Baillet's eighth day cannot guarantee his knowledge of Joyce's having preceded him in this regard. Notwithstanding, the evidence towards a deliberate, extended, intertextual Cartesian metaphor is gradually building.

Such a reading requires us to dispense with the theory that Beckett's carefully constructed 'submerged puns'18 were written in a single day, a supposition that is in any case consistent with many previous commentaries.19 That the poem was scribbled on five sides of Hotel Bristol stationary and lacks the 'revision or the doodles to which Beckett resorts when hesitating'20 perhaps suggests a fabricated spontaneity which the unquestionable complexity of 'Whoroscope' does not allow us to entertain. On publishing 'Beckett's Whoroscope: Turdy Ooscopy', in 1975, William

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Bysshe Stein received a personalised letter from Beckett. 'You do me more than proud. Had I had, in my head, when writing in haste that piece, a tenth of what you find, I would deplore it less today'.21 Mark Nixon has pointed out in personal correspondence that two further versions of 'Whoroscope' recently discovered - they currently await catalogue numbers at their new home of Reading - detract from the plausibility of the better known version's spontaneity. Sean Lawlor's unpublished 2009 PhD thesis, Making a noise to drown an echo: allusion and quotation in the early poems of Samuel Beckett 1929-1935 , which looks at all three, may make any lingering discussion of haste redundant. Beyond these earlier versions, the whereabouts of the 'three notebooks'22 of Descartes material Beckett utilized in writing 'Whoroscope' is currently unknown. The similar absence of overt references to Descartes in Joyce's available manuscripts (Dirk Van Hulle, Geert Lernout, Luca Crispi and Sam Slote have concurred on this point in personal correspondences and conversations) largely precludes a genetic approach to any possible intertextual Cartesian play between Joyce and Beckett. The following section is thus unavoidably and unapologetically deductive in places, aiming at speculation without gross overinterpretation. It does not set itself the unattainable goal of proving Beckett's direct engagement with Joyce, but rather highlights where Joyce most likely pre-empts Beckett's highly idiosyncratic Cartesian allusions. It is the obscure nature of Beckett's Descartes, coupled with Beckett's conjuring of close if not precisely similar allusions to Ulysses , which strongly suggests his prior and thorough knowledge of Joyce's Descartes.

Section II: 'Whoroscope', a Textual Exegesis

We cannot treat of 'Whoroscope' in its entirety, nor do justice to the broad expanse of Joyce's Cartesian references. Instead, we proceed in the order of Beckett's poem, and unpack various passages which provide the more probable allusions to Joyce's Descartes. The November 1619 dreams, the early flirtation with the Rosicrucians, the omelettes Descartes liked for breakfast and other distinctly non-philosophical details are more pertinent to our study than such well known philosophical catchphrases as Cogito ergo sum. In some instances, the lines cited provide possible source materials for Finnegans Wake , published nine years later. The opening citation, concerning 'the Brothers Boot', is exceptional in that we do not consider any corresponding reference in Joyce's work. Nevertheless, the opening lines of the poem provide a useful example to the uninitiated of Beckett's highly eclectic method, complete with Eliot style footnotes later

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added at the request of the judges, Nancy Cunard and Richard Aldington. The Notes make clear that the poem is from first to last a condensed and idiosyncratic Cartesian biography.

What's that? An egg? 23 By the brothers Boot it stinks fresh.

This is one of the allusions which Doherty traces directly to Mahaffy, remarking that it was 'a delight to a "Trinity scholar", a detail which linked Dublin to Descartes, as Beckett himself was doing'.24 The Boot brothers were anti-Aristotelian Dutch physicians one of whom travelled to Dublin. Mahaffy adds that Descartes' s success probably halted the publication of the positive part of their system, the Aristotelian criticism having being published in Dublin in 1640.25 Although the incidental detail is hardly worth mention, its vaguely tying Descartes to the Irish capital was enough for the Trinity lecturer, Mahaffy, to include it in his Descartes , and enough to pique the curiosity of Beckett who surmises the referent succinctly in an appended endnote. 'In 1640 the brothers Boot refuted Aristotle in Dublin'.26 We do not find any clear allusion to the brothers Boot in Joyce's work but Harvey's only mention of Joyce in a sixty page treatment of 'Whoroscope' warrants mention at this juncture. Concerning the brothers Boot he says, 'As Beckett once mentioned, this is an event of which even Joyce was unaware'.27 One might derive from this comment that Joyce's momentary lapse of omniscience is against the background of an otherwise thorough knowledge of Descartes' life and philosophy, one that would merit Beckett's special comment upon this one idiosyncratic detail and one that we have thus far failed to account for.

and I'll pebble you all your hen-and-a-half ones 28 or I'll pebble a lens under the quilt in the midst of day.

The quilt in the midst of day betrays Descartes' penchant (reminiscent of Oblomov-Beckett) for thinking in bed until noon. The explanatory Note reads, 'Descartes, who had remained in bed till midday all his life'.29 A 'pebble' can be a lens of clear colourless quartz, and taken together with the 'lens' invokes Descartes' 1637 Optics . Noteworthy from our perspective is Joyce's own bringing together of the 'hen' and the 'lens' at the precise moment of the Wake widely accepted as the only positive

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reference to Beckett, or 'bethickeť. Jean Michel Rabaté urged me to extend 30

my consideration of Cartesianism into this passage.

[. . .] the farther back we manage to wiggle the more we need the loan of a lens to see as much as the hen saw. Tip. You is feeling like you was lost in the bush, boy? You says: It is a puling sample jungle of woods. You most shouts out: Bethicket me for a stump of a beech if I have the poultriest notions what the farest he all means.31

The surrounding treatment of Belinda of the Dorans, 'that original hen',32 is full of fowl imagery. In the context of foregoing considerations, most worthy of comment is the Beckettian timing, 'midst of day', of Joyce's own lens/hen passage 'at the hour of klokking twelve',33 and Joyce's invocation of J.P. Mahaffy as 'Mayhappy Mayhapnot' shortly previous to same.34 That is to say, Finnegans Wake locates Beckett not only amidst a wealth of distinctly whoroscopic imagery, but alongside J.P. Mahaffy, author of one of Beckett's two primary sourcebooks for the poem at issue.

In so far as we may yet speak of a possible Cartesian Beckett/Joyce intertext here, the influence should not be conceived as one directional. If 'Whoroscope' expands upon the Cartesianism of Ulysses , then the Wake likely returns the favour. The extent to which the temporally preceding text was imbued with Cartesianism as a compositional device, or re-interpreted as Cartesian after the fact, is sometimes difficult to determine from this vantage point. But it looks increasingly likely that Beckett's own Bloomsday creation will prove pivotal to any future exegesis of this proposed dialogue. Nor is this article original in positing Wakean allusions to 'Whoroscope'. Previous considerations have postulated at least two references to the portmanteau title. Hedberg points to

' eroscope , made up

of "Eros-scope", "hero-scope", and "horoscope", which is Joyce's way of saying what the word horoscope means to him'.35 Gluck, prompted by Tindall, considers 'How to Pull a Good Horuscoup when Oldsire is Dead to the World'.36 'Joyce's pun, more myth-minded than Beckett's, includes a reference to Horus, Isis, and Osiris'.37 One might add 'horrorscup' from Finnegans Wake II.2,38 a Chapter wherein Adaline Glasheen locates the majority of the Wakean allusions to Descartes. Most convincing is Tindall's 'Horuscoup', occurring as it does just seven pages prior to 'bethicket', or Beckett. It is also tempting in this context, if somewhat speculative, to take Joyce's proximate advice to concentrate on 'the enveloping facts [. . .] circumstantiating' any document in addition to 'the literal sense' of it as advice to be applied to 'Whoroscope' directly.39

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Them were the days I sat in the hot-cupboard throwing 40 Jesuits out of the skylight.

For Connors, 'Them were the days' recalls Joyce due to its ungrammatical construction. The 'hot-cupboard' is the stove heated room where Descartes had his dreams and, on the same night according to Baillet, hatched the philosophy that later appeared as the 1637 Discourse on the Method. Discussion of the dreams in Ulysses is postponed until the following section. Presently, we look briefly at a line segment from the Wake which recalls Beckett's formulation above, 'birthdays cards; those were the days and he was their hero'.41 In addition to the possible 'them were the days' (Beckett)/'those were the days' (Joyce) substitution, 'birthdays cards' is a reference to Descartes if we are to believe the convincing Glasheen, to be grouped with the later playing card references of Finnegans Wake, II.2, 'If she can't follow suit Renée goes to the pack',42 'you make me a reborn of the cards'.43 Glasheen translates the latter from English to French, 'a reborn (René) of the cards {DES CARTES}'.44 It is but a small step to unify Connors and Glasheen into the supposition that 'birthdays cards' is intended to recall not only Descartes, but 'Whoroscope', wherein Beckett's Notes inform us that 'He [Descartes] kept his own birthday secret so that no astrologer could cast his nativity'

45

A wind of evil flung my despair of ease against the sharp spires of the one lady: not once or twice but . . 46

The above invokes the three famous youthful dreams or prophecies of 10 November 1619, and Descartes' s struggle not to be blown by a strong wind towards a Church. Philip Sicker' s 'Shades of Descartes: An Approach to Stephen's Dream in Ulysses

' has convincingly mapped Stephen's three recollections of his melon dream to the three dreams of Descartes. Beckett does not make mention of the melon in 'Whoroscope', and for a more in depth discussion of the melon in Ulysses I refer you to Sicker, who does an admirable job of exposing it. Conversely, Joyce does not make any obvious allusion to Descartes' s wind, though Sicker does offer some tentative suggestions as to covert allusions. More clearly, a turn to Joyce's Ulysses Notesheets in the British Museum finds Descartes' s dream melon in close

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proximity to the wind later utilised by Beckett. '<Melon - meet & love a foreign lady & go abroadxAir - I flew, there was wind)'.47 Just four notes later, Joyce adds the single word '(Ballet-)', which reads as a likely allusion to Baillet given its proximity to the specific details of Descartes' dreams found only in Adrien Baillet's 1691 Vie de Descartes. This is supported by a further note on this same Notebook sheet that reads '<pinch of t in wine make drunk)',48 which Herring takes for the above mentioned tobacco/wine infusion. Neither the 'wind' nor 'Ba[i]llet' find their way into the finished text of Ulysses , but their appearance in Joyce's Notesheets allow some interesting conclusions. Firstly, they greatly strengthen Sicker's case that the dream melon of Ulysses is indeed a reference to Descartes, given its proximity here to another distinctly Cartesian dream motif. Furthermore, it shows Joyce to be utilising not only the same dreams and the same sourcebook as 'Whoroscope,' but the precise dream imagery of Beckett's 'wind of evil'.

We next consider the possibility of another retrospective Wakean allusion to 'Whoroscope'. I have argued in greater detail elsewhere49 that Joyce's use of the French word poêle , traditionally descriptive of the tile- stove or stove heated room in which Descartes succumbed to the dreams from above, is used as such in Finnegans Wake . 'Mon foie, you wish to ave some homelette, yes, lady! Good, mein leber! See, I crack, so, he sit in the poele, umbedimbt'.50 That Joyce should call for the cracking of an egg in a poêle that we might have some homelette, or 'little man omelette', is again very reminiscent of 'Whoroscope,' which is effectively structured about Descartes awaiting his omelette. Beckett's opening Note reads, 'René Descartes, Seigneur du Perron, liked his omelette made of eggs hatched from eight to ten days; shorter or longer under the hen and the result, he says, is disgusting'.51 Beckett's condensed life is interrupted throughout by the philosopher's inquiries as to how ripe his eggs are, 'chicken me up that egg', 'are you ripe at last', etc. The gastronomic preference is borrowed from Baillet. Joyce's later portmanteau, 'homelette', may have been consciously guided by the appearance of ' les hommes '

just four lines previous to Baillet's ' omelette ', the proposed diet being part of Descartes' 'secret' discovery of how to make men live for four or five hundred years.52 The post-'Whoroscope' 'homelette [. . .] poele' of the Wake suggests a Beckett-Joyce direction of influence. However, the typical trend that relatively overt references to Descartes in 'Whoroscope' and Finnegans Wake first appear more covertly in Ulysses finds expression here. Stephen's third and final recollection of his Cartesian dream, 'Mark me. I dreamt of a watermelon', is immediately preceded by a conversation between Stephen

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and Bella about an omelette in which Bella laughs, 'Ho! ho! ho! ho!. . . Omelette on the . . .'53 As such, the 'ho! . . . Omelette' and dream-melon of Ulysses were more likely the initial influence on Beckett (a Joyce-Beckett influence). The 'homelette . . . poele' of Finnegans Wake also recalls Bella Cohen's (Joyce-Joyce), and the extent to which it simultaneously conjures the intermediary 'Whoroscope' (Joyce-Beckett-Joyce) becomes very difficult to determine. But it seems improbable that Beckett and Joyce should independently tie Descartes to an omelette, particularly given that Beckett did so during his period of most intensive cooperation with Joyce.

(Kip of Christ hatch it!) in one sun's drowning (Jesuitasters please copy).54

'Everyone seems agreed on the genesis of Beckett's first published work, Whoroscope'.55 So begins Francis Doherty's 'Mahaffy's Whoroscope,' an article which challenged the primacy of Adrien Baillet's 1691 Vie de Descartes as the main Cartesian source for Beckett's first published poem. Doherty patiently proves that a 'quite unpretentious work which was not only closer to his own time, but closer in provenance to that of Baillet,' namely J.P. Mahaffy's 1902 Descartes , provided Beckett with a second significant sourcebook here.56 One term traced to Mahaffy is 'Jesuitaster'. 'In these pamphlets Descartes was no longer the unique Archimedes and Atlas of science, but Jesuitaster , atheist, a second Vanini, a Cain, a vagabond, impious, and profligate of life (Mahaffy's italics)'.57 Descartes is 'no longer' the Archimedes and Atlas of science, suggesting that he was at some point. Beckett's use of 'Jesuitaster' may thus be carefully designed to point us to Mahaffy's earlier positive reference to Descartes as Archimedes and Atlas. Following the wedding day death of one of Descartes's Utrecht disciples, Renéri, in the early 1640s, another professor by the name of yEmilius was ordered to pronounce an éloge on Renéri and the new philosophy. The following is the description of Descartes, taken from Mahaffy, contained in that éloge, 'the only Archimedes of the age, the true Atlas of the universe, the Hercules, the Ulysses, the Daedalus, &c., &c., of science'.58 Descartes is 'the Ulysses, the Daedalus' of science. That Descartes should be described as Ulysses is a nice touch given that Joyce was surely encoding Descartes in Ulysses to some extent. If we grant this much, however, then that Descartes should be Ulysses and Daedalus is a coincidence perhaps as unlikely as Beckett's independently hatching

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Descartes's omelette on Bloomsday. That Mahaffy's 'Daedalus' is designated the single symbol œ , in place of the two letter ae , could account for Joyce's later development of dropping the a entirely for the single letter e of 'Dedalus'. These are highly speculative parallels, but worthy of mention when the stakes are as high as the odds. Beckett would not likely have thoroughly plundered Mahaffy at this time and missed the Descartes/Ulysses/Daedalus connection. One feels almost as if he should have mentioned it in his Bloomsday creation, and 'Jesuitaster' may be his veiled reference to same. Turning back to the Wake , Joyce's long established reference to Mahaffy as 'Mayhappy Mayhapnot' might now betray Joyce's later knowledge of Beckett's source materials. We have seen that Mahaffy appears just five pages subsequent to 'Horuscoup' and two pages prior to 'bethicket', amidst a further wealth of whoroscopic imagery. But it is the quest for a prior more covert Ulyssean treatment that is most rewarding in this instance, rising as it does the possibility of an intertextual Cartesianism that is not merely grafted onto Ulysses as an afterthought, but somehow entangled in the web of that book's inception.

Equally interesting is the second and only other reference to Ulysses contained in Mahaffy's Descartes. It occurs in a letter written by Descartes to French diplomat, Henri Brasset, on 23 April 1649, wherein he remarks that 'It is not thought strange that Ulysses should have left the enchanted isles of Calypso and Circe,' but that Descartes was now being asked to leave a land 'where there is certainly less honey than in the Promised Land, but perhaps more milk'.59 This was Descartes's lyrical expression of his indecision at whether or not he ought to leave his Dutch exile for the court of Queen Christina in Sweden. The only two references to Ulysses in a likely Cartesian source for Joyce thus invoke the Dedalus and the Jew that would later come to signify the central characters of Joyce's epic. Given that there exists a historical tradition of merging Descartes and Ulysses together, that in a likely Joycean source this merging occurs simultaneously with 'Daedalus' and the 'Promised Land', one might ask if Joyce's Ulysses has not continued this tradition. In this context, the noted absence of manuscript references to Descartes with respect to Joyce and Beckett may be justified as part of a very deliberate Cartesian occlusion. To borrow Van Hulle's terminology, 'this act of effacing the auctoritas paradoxically consolidates its authority'.60 The manuscript effacement in this instance may be total. If Beckett's missing 'three notebooks' cited the foregoing sections of Mahaffy's Descartes , then it is not difficult to see why they were not bequeathed to us incessant notesnatchers. It is also possible that

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the tempting intersection was entirely lost on Beckett, but the question of whether it was or was not surely warrants asking.

and farewell for a space to the yellow key of the Rosicrucians.61

Harvey cites Charles Adam's remark that Descartes' s 'seal, with the two interwoven initials R and C (René des Cartes), happened to be exactly the seal of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood'.62 It is long supposed that Adam and Tannery's twelve-volume Oeuvres de Descartes (1897-1910) provided Beckett with yet another sourcebook for 'Whoroscope'.63 As far as we know presently, it was not a source for Joyce. It is worthy of note, however, that the first of three uses of the Cartesian/Rosicrucian initialism - 'R.C.' - in Finnegans Wake occurs in the heavily Cartesian H.2., just two pages subsequent to Joyce's encryption of René Descartes as 'reborn of the cards'.64 As one might come to expect at this point, 'R.C.' initially appears in Ulysses. I will not repeat in detail here what I have already elaborated elsewhere,65 but there is a reasonable case to be made that Joyce's 'R.C.' is symbolic of both Descartes and the Rosicrucians. This would not guarantee Adam and Tannery as a further Joycean source, but it would show Joyce to be once again pre-empting the lesser known biographical details that later find their way into 'Whoroscope'.

Oh Weulles spare the blood of a Frank who has climbed the bitter steps, (René du Perron !) And grant me my second starless inscrutable hour.66

Descartes' s second hour is 'starless' because he is beyond horoscopy, having ordered Franz Hals to remove the birth date from his portrait. He climbs the bitter 'steps' because Perron, his family name after lands that he inherited, translates directly from French as 'steps' or 'staircase' for Stein.67 Turning now to Joyce, one is less confident about his own use of Perron or steps as significant of Descartes, but there are some possible allusions to same. The closest Wakean allusion to 'Perron' is 'Perrichon',68 possibly a 'Perron' interrupted by the German first person pronoun, 'Ich'. Such a reading could be hinted at by 7 rene ws'69 (my italics) four lines previous, in addition to the fact that this passage is located just a few pages

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prior to the heavily Cartesian II.2. Allusions in Ulysses are even more difficult to determine. The second appearance of Descartes' s melon dream sees Bloom walking with the 'step of a pard',70 which is loosely reminiscent of one of Descartes' s more famous letters to Chanut. On his fifty third, and final, birthday, Descartes writes that he has ignited the jealousy of fortune, before complaining that on his final trip to Paris he was treated as a rarity, 'une Panthère' .71 The panther is a significant nightmare image in Ulysses which accompanies or instigates the melon dream, a fact which makes reasonable the extension of Joyce's Cartesian imagery from dream of melon to 'step' of pard. More probably, there is a nice phonetic encapsulation of a dreaming Descartes (steps) on the final page of Ulysses , 'and the vague fellows in the cloaks asleep in the shade on the steps and the big wheels of the carts of the bulls' (my italics).72 Two Ulyssean uses of 'the cards' may likewise play upon the Irish thld substitution that Simon Dedalus earlier mocks as 'De boys up in de hayloft'.73 That Joyce should have been translating Descartes as 'the cards' before he became 'reborn of the cards' in the Wake is consistent with the fact that the only English Descartes text available to Joyce in the NLI was a reproduction of a deck of playing cards - allegedly Descartes' s own manuscript designs - with geometrical text and illustrations. The use of the geometrical playing-cards, (invented by the late ingenious Mr. Moxon.) As also a discourse of mechanick powers. By Monsieur Des-Cartes .74 In this light, one might hazard that Dennis Breen's nightmare, in which 'the ace of spades was walking up the stairs,' is a cryptic reference to Descartes.7 Bloom's conversation with Josie Breen about same does just precede his search for 'Code [. . .] (R.C.)' in the Irish Times. If Joyce were as interested in cartomancy as Molly Bloom, then he may have hit upon the fact that Descartes' s death day, 11 February, corresponds in 'birth card' cartomancy to the Aè. Immediately following the 'melon' in 'Circe' 4, the British Museum Notesheet quoted above, we read '<art of gesturesxAce of spades>'.76 It all rings quite neatly, for some perhaps too neatly, with the later playing card references of Finnegans Wake. It remains difficult to determine which of the forgoing inferences has grasped authorial intention. But we do contend without hesitation that Joyce ought to be incorporated into the future treatment of Beckett's early Cartesianism. One can no longer presume, as Alan Astro does, that 'it will take Beckett years to achieve this synthesis between Joyce and Descartes'.77 The synthesis seems initially to be Joyce's achievement, which is not to situate the relationship as one of pure dependency.

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Joyce's and Beckett's works are malleable, perhaps incomparably so, and some of the forgoing likely transgresses the limits of interpretation. In the current absence of genetic support, the unintended step back is perhaps an unavoidable accompaniment of every two perron forward. 'Whoroscope' itself, in the light of surrounding texts and circumstances, appears a deliberate extension beyond its own textual boundaries. Beckett surely noted, for example, when reading Baillet's account of Descartes' dreams in Ulm, Germany, that he was living on rue d'Ulm, Paris. He cannot conjure such happenstance, but can deliberately build his text upon it, so that one cannot cleanly extricate the design from the circumstance. The Cartesian horoscope triumphantly illustrates the dangers of imposing said design, whilst simultaneously imparting an irresistible temptation to do so. This thesis would thus see itself shelved firmly with the open-ended questions. The 'bitter steps' of Beckett's 'Whoroscope' might assist the chaos of Joyce's manuscripts in explicating the latter's writing process of decomposition and subsequent recombination. But again, it is a game of snakes and ladders, and one cannot in any meaningful sense solve 'Whoroscope' or Ulysses. The best one can expect from Joyce or Beckett is to stumble a little ways further down the rabbit hole. This particular rabbit hole is difficult to escape, for no amount of textual exegesis can detract from the following facts. On Bloomsday, 1930, at 3 a.m., Samuel Beckett - for two years obsessed with both James Joyce and René Descartes - was on rue Guénégaud slipping five sheets of Hotel Bristol stationary in the letter box of Nancy Cunard's office. The poem written thereon offered a covert treatment of Descartes' s life, including various incidental details which feature prominently in Joyce's own Bloomsday creation. During the period of the poem's gestation, Beckett was spending much time in Joyce's apartment at 2 Place Robiac. The text now accepted as Beckett's primary sourcebook describes Descartes as 'the Ulysses, the Daedalus' and as a Ulysses in the Promised Land. Joyce's Ulysses is about a Dedalus and a Jew. One person might see in such facts a significant sourcebook not only for 'Whoroscope' but for Ulysses , another, a happy coincidence. This author, however, cannot see the woods for questions, the answering of which might light up the way ahead. Did Trinity College Library acquire its copy of Mahaffy's Descartes before Joyce left for Paris? Do any of Beckett's material Descartes sources have marginalia in Joyce's hand? Did Beckett knowingly choose 'the Ulysses, the Daedalus' for a Bloomsday poem in which 'she bloomed and withered'? In sum, did Beckett know what he was doing? And if so, did Joyce know what Beckett was doing?

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Notes and References

1 Patricia Connors, 'Samuel Beckett's "Whoroscope" as a Dramatic Monologue', Ball State University Forum 19.2 (1978): 28, Forum Library Journal digital collection, web, 1 1 February 201 1.

2 Philip Sicker, 'Shades of Descartes: An Approach to Stephen's Dream in Ulysses' James Joyce Quarterly 22.1 (1984): 7-24.

3 Edward Burns, & Gaylord Joshua, eds., A Tour of the Darkling Plain: The Finnegans Wake Letters of Thornton Wilder and Adaline Glasheen (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2001) 140. Adeline Glasheen, Third Census of Finnegans Wake (California: University of California Press, 1977) 72-73.

4 Steven Bond, 'The Occlusion of René Descartes in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake' Journal of Modern Literature (forthcoming).

5 James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1996) 111; Nancy Cunard, These Were the Hours: Memories of My Hours Press Réanville and Paris 1928-1931 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969) 109.

6 Samuel Beckett, et. al., James Joyce/Finnegans Wake: A Symposium (New York: New Directions Books, 1972) 21.

7 Samuel Beckett, Murphy (London: Pan Books, 1937) 22-3. 8 Marsha Fehsenfeld, & Overbeck Lois, eds., The Letters of Samuel Beckett 1929-

1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 28. 9 Adrian Baillet, La Vie de Monsieur Des-Cartes , 2 vols (Paris: Daniel Horthemels,

1691)11414. 10 Baillet, II 414. 1 1 Samuel Beckett, Collected Poems (London: John Calder, 1986) 4. 12 Baillet, II 418. 13 Baillet, II 414-15. 14 Baillet, II 417. 15 Baillet, II 421. 16 James Joyce, Ulysses: Annotated Student Edition (London: Penguin Books, 1992)

714. 17 Joyce, Ulysses 545. 18 William Stein Bysshe, 'Beckett's "Whoroscope": Turdy Ooscopy', ELH 42.1

(1975): 129. 19 Knowlson 112; Francis Doherty, 'Mahaffy's Whoroscope', Journal of Beckett

Studies 2.1 (1992): 45-46; Johannes Hedberg, Samuel Beckett's Whoroscope : A Linguistic-Literary Interpretation (Stockholm: Moderna sprâk monographs, 1972) 8; Ruby Cohn, A Beckett Canon (United States of America: University of Michigan Press, 2001) 9.

20 Cohn, 13.

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21 Samuel Beckett, Autograph Letter Signed (Paris, 5 October 1975) web, 6 June 2010, Bookseller Inventory #19991, <http://zacker.info/wiki/index.php?title= Whoroscope>. Craig Zacker informs me in personal correspondence (31 March 2010) that the original of Beckett's signed 3 -inch by 4-inch card was advertised for sale in September 2003 by Antic Hay Books, located in Asbury Park, New Jersey, USA. The price, to the best of his memory, was $800. It is no longer for sale at Antic Hay Books, and I have been unsuccessful to date in locating its current whereabouts or owner.

22 Richard Kearney, 'Beckett: The Demythologising Intellect', The Irish Mind: Exploring Intellectual Traditions , ed. Richard Kearney (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 1985) 270.

23 Beckett, Poems 1, Lines 1-3. 24 Doherty 29. 25 John Pentland Mahaffy, Descartes (New York: Books for Libraries Press, 1969)

147. 26 Beckett, Poems 5. 27 Lawrence Harvey, Samuel Beckett Poet & Critic (New Jersey: Princeton

University Press, 1970) 35n. 28 Beckett, Poems 1, Lines 19-20. 29 Beckett, Poems 6. 30 In conversation with Jean-Michel Rabaté, Questions and Answers Session: Steven

Bond, 'Joyce's Ulysses Putting 'de Cartes before 'de Horse'. XXII International James Joyce Symposium, Charles University, Prague. 15 June 2010.

31 James Joyce, Finnegans Wake (London: Penguin Books, 1992) 1 12. 32 Joyce, Wake 110. 33 Joyce, Wake 111. 34 Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake , 3rd edition (Baltimore: John

Hopkins University Press, 2006) 110. 35 Hedberg 7n. 36 Joyce, Wake 105. 37 Barbara Reich Gluck, Beckett and Joyce Friendship and Fiction (London:

Associated University Presses, 1979) 18 In. 38 Joyce, Wake 261. 39 Joyce, Wake 109. 40 Beckett, Poems 2, Line 26. 41 Joyce, Wake 111. 42 Joyce, Wake 269n. 43 Joyce, Wake 304. 44 Burns and Gaylord 140. 45 Beckett, Poems 5. 46 Beckett, Poems 3, Lines 45-48.

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47 Philip Herring, Joyce s Ulysses Notesheets in the British Museum (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1972) 288.

48 Herring 291. 49 Steven Bond, 'Joyce, Beckett & the Homelette in the Poêle' Otherness Essays

and Criticism 1.1 (2010). 50 Joyce, Wake 59. 5 1 Beckett, Poems 5 . 52 Baillet, II 448-9. 53 Joyce, Ulysses 673-74. 54 Beckett, Poems 3 , Lines 49-5 1 . 55 Doherty 27. 56 Doherty 28. 57 Doherty 40. 58 Mahaffy 78. 59 Mahaffy 131-2. 60 Dirk Van Hulle, Joyce & Beckett Discovering Dante The NLI Joyce Studies

Centennial Series No. 07 (Dublin: National Library of Ireland, 2004) 26. 61 Beckett, Poems 3, Line 55. 62 Harvey 25. 63 Chris Ackerley, & Stanley Gontarski, eds., The Faber Companion to Samuel

Beckett (London: Faber and Faber, 2006) 644. 64 Joyce, Wake 306. 65 Steven Bond, 'R.C.: Rosicrucianism and Cartesianism in Joyce and Beckett',

Miranda 4 Samuel Beckett Issue (201 1). 66 Beckett, Poems 4, Lines 94-98. 67 Hedberg, 33; Stein, 153. 68 Joyce, Wake 254. 69 Joyce, Wake 254. 70 Joyce, Ulysses 279. 71 Baillet, II 341. 72 Joyce, Ulysses 932. 73 Joyce, Ulysses 47. 74 Rene Descartes, On the use of the geometrical playing-cards, (invented by the late

ingenious Mr. Moxon.) As also a discourse of mechanick powers (London: J. Lenthall, 1717).

75 Joyce, Ulysses 199. 76 Herring, 288. 77 Alan Astro, Understanding Samuel Beckett (South Carolina: University of South

Carolina Press, 1990) 33.

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Documents

The Rest Is Silence: Paradigms of the Unspoken in Irish Studies || How to Pull a Good Whoroscope