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The poisoned name

During a visit to Cork, Simon Dedalus gives his son his point of view on the natureof being a father: I'm talking to you as a friend, Stephen. I don't believe in playing the

stern father. I don't believe a son should be afraid of his father. No, I treat you as your

grandfather treated me when I was a young chap. We were more like brothers than father and

son (5). Thus, he defined himself as an equal, another, in an evasion of his role.

The purpose of the trip to Cork is the visit to the school of medicine; to the

amphitheatre, where his father was a student for a while. James Joyce would try in

vain to study medicine in Paris. We can ask ourselves if this interest is based on a

desire for social climbing, or a desire for knowledge of a body, and in fact

KNOWLEDGE OF THE BODY. They look for the initials S.D., carved into one of the

tables the same initials as Stephen, just as James had the same initials as his father,

John Joyce. Stephen sees the word foetus written on a table. The search for the initials

is supplanted by his interest in the foetus, not yet named, the promise of life, and

escaping investigation by the medical field, then, at the beginning of the twentieth

century.

Not yet named. For Joyce, the question of naming is central, the importance of

the proper noun linked to the effects of the inadequacy of the father, which Lacan

interprets as a way of writing a version of the Name-of-the-Father, written as a

proper noun, in an attempt at suppliance. It is a perpetual game of Hide-and-seekwith all the changes in proper nouns: Dedalus, Abraham, Jacob, Bloom, J.J. OMalley,

Virag etc. Blooms father, Virag, poisoned himself: The fathers name that poisoned

himself. The French translation does not allow us to differentiate himself from

itself, giving rise to an ambiguity which leads us to believe that its the name

which poisoned itself (6).

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Joyce was looking for fame. He wanted the universities to look after his work

for three hundred years, and to become someone renowned, or renamed, which can

be interpreted as being named again. It raises the question of the right to existence

and creation. Joyces father had a wonderful voice, which had an effect on his mother, even

if she never set much store by what he said. His voice mirrored something

approaching desire; the voice as a, cause of desire. Something reached the son in

this art of the voice, through phonation. J. Aubert speaks of the meaningful effects of

the voice. Lacan agrees. The function of phonation is to re-inforce, and asks the

question: at what stage does the meaning, in its written form, distinguish itself from

the simple effects of phonation? Its the phonation which transmits this proper

function of the name (7).

The confessor; perversion

Although he lost his faith in the teachings of the church, which Stephen

confesses to his friend Cranly, he has trouble freeing himself from the support; the

framework of his thinking. His father suggested he rely on the Jesuit fathers, the

diplomatic Church, to leave everything up to the confessors confession based on

the idea of grip; the renewed grip of the Catholic whole, which covers everything;

the renewed hold by all that has fallen (8). To redeem what has fallen is what

interests Joyce intensely. The father fallen from on high, it might be said, into decline.

The question of the symbolic debt is raised in a crucial way, in the mind of the young

artist, in this very particular aspect of the casuistry of Saint Alphonse of Liguori which consists of the accounting of indulgences, which Stephen calls the cash

register.

The crucial question for Joyce will be his relationship with the function of

confessor a difficult relationship and function, ambiguous. He is both fascinated

and repulsed by the marvellous possibilities for perversion which this represents.

Everything the confessor has at his disposal, in terms of language and silence (9).

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Stephen refused the invitation to join the priesthood, put forward by the Jesuit

fathers from Belvdre. Nevertheless, he would like to become a redeemer, in other

words, the one who redeems and rehabilitates. He wants to rehabilitate his father,

which Lacan considers to be a prototype of PERE-VERSION, in the father-sonrelationship. The pre-version serves to prevent the psychotic trigger, and acts as a

structure which attempts to couple or tie the borromean rings together. In Ulysses,

Joyce dismisses Stephen and hands over to Bloom, this transition from one to the

other brings in the concept of the Redeemer. Bloom, when talking about his father,

says the one who has my voice and my eyes. This shows that they are not only

made of the same signifiant, but really of the same matter. Ulysses bears witness to

what keeps Joyce rooted in his father, while at the same time renouncing him. This is

well and truly his symptom (10).

Le sinthome

Lacan lets us into a secret his sinthome. Its Reality, which he writes in the

form of a borromean knot, made up of three rings of string: I,R,S. If there is a mistake

in the drawing of the knot, there will be just a single ring. If symbolism frees itself,

the sinthome is the way to repair that. These three elements, as they are expressed to

us, are a metaphor, and this raises the following question: Is it possible to imagine a

metaphor from something that is only a number? Lacan answers in the affirmative:

Because of this, the metaphor is called the figure (11).

The metaphor of the chain isnt written easily. Expressing the Reality inquestion is the forcing of a new writing, which, through this metaphor, has a

symbolic range. Its a new type of forcing, the idea doesnt blossom from the

imagination, nor is it something completely foreign, it brings home the

Reminiscence, as opposed to the Rememoration. Rememoration (cf, Freud in The

Sketch) concerns things which are printed in the nervous system, and endowed with

letters, whereas reminiscence is a phonological symbol, representing the sound of

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the language, defined by the distinctive properties which oppose it, and which

contrast with the other sounds of the same language (12).

Therefore, Joyce committed himself to the path of writing, defined by Lacan inrelation to the borromean knot. This writing becomes autonomous. This new writing

is absolutely essential to his Ego meaning the idea of oneself as a body having a

weight and a consistency. The sliding, the gliding of Joyces imagination is corrected

by this Ego, repairing the missing relationship of what doesnt join together in a

borromean way in his case. Through this ingenious writing device, the borromean

knot is restored.

Here is the artificer in action. He has the voice of a son, a voice which carries a

certain know-how concerning the signifiant.

In Portrait... Stephen confesses to his friend Cranly, who he compares to a

guilty priest, his desire I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call

itself my home, my fatherland or my church : and I will try to express myself in some mode of

life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defence the only arms I allow

myself to use - silence, exile, and cunning (13).

Lacan considers Joyces desire to be an artist as compenstion for the fact that

his father was inadequate. He thus allows himself to go into exile; this never more,

and, as he is leaving Dublin, it is nevertheless towards his father that he turns in a

final hope and petitions him: Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever ingood stead (14).