Unit 9: Eccleisiastes and the Questioning of Wisdom... Part 2

JAMES JOYCE'S ULYSSES

In a "Periodic Table of Literature," Joyce would occupy the place of plu­tonium: remarkably dense, but filled with hearty boundless energy. Joyce (1882-1941) stands as one of the most radically innovative prose styl­ists of the twentieth century, realizing his own self-stated ambition "to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreat­ed consciousness of my race." Though he ostentatiously rejected its narrow dogmatism, Joyce's strict Catholic education is reflected in much of his fiction.  Ulysses can be read as a carefully

structured parallel to Homer's Odyssey, in which every episode in the novel corresponds in some way to an episode in the epic poem. Leopold Bloom, a Dublin Jew, is cast as Ulysses, whom Joyce regarded as the most "complete" character in literature, and is followed throughout the course of a single day. He at­tends a funeral, eats lunch in a pub,

ogles a young girl and frets about his unfaithful wife--Bloom is Everyman and Dublin is a microcosm.  Bloom is in sharp contrast to the aloof young Stephen Deadalus, "the artist, like the God of creation, (who) remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails." Bloom, who assumes the role of Stephen's pro­tector late in the book, comes to dis­play the same deeply humane quali­ties we see in The Preacher.

SAMUEL JOHNSON'S The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia

Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was England's most comprehensive man of letters--a writer of poetry, tales, criticism, biography, political tracts, as well as the first great dictionary of the English language. His first book, A Voyage to Abyssinia (1735), trans­lates into English a French version of a seventeenth-century Portuguese Jesuit's manuscript account of his travels to Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Later, Abyssinia and Egypt would provide the "oriental" setting for Johnson's great work of prose fiction, Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia (1759). Rasselas is a philosophical tale--critics hesi­tate to call it a novel because it lacks realism of character or of dialogue. The tale does, however, have a cohesive plot. Prince Rasselas, with his sage guide Imlac, his sister Nekayah and his sister's maid, Pekuah, leaves his home in the Edenic but secluded "Happy Valley" in order to pursue in the broader world a "choice of life"--a profession, a place to live--that he hopes will bring a simple and enduring happi­ness, a life uncomplicated by hard­ship and suffering. The company enters Cairo and examines life among a wide variety of character types, including young wastrels (iron­ically called "Young Men of Spirit and Gaiety" in the title of Chapter 17), a philosopher who preaches Stoic impassivity (Chapter 18), shepherds (Chapter 19), a rich man (Chapter 20), and a hermit (Chapter 21). Rasselas hopes to find happiness naturally attaching to one state, con­dition, or locale of life, but his hopes are repeatedly frustrated: none of the men he meets turn out to be happy. Like Ecclesiastes, Johnson's tale dramatizes inflated expectation and disappointment, time and again.

Solomon's Temple

THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON

1 Kings 5-7 describes the luxuri­ous materials and high degree of craftsmanship with which Solomon had the temple constructed. The temple was built of “costly stones, hewn stones" (1 Kings 5:17), and then lined with cedar beams and panels. In spite of the second com­mandment's ban on carved images, these cedar panels and olive and fir wooden doors were carved with fig­ures of flowers, palm trees, and cherubim, and two large cherubim were placed in the Holy of Holies. All the carvings were covered in gold, as were the incense altar and table for ceremonial bread that the KJV calls "shewbread." Kings reports that Solomon hired the brassworker Hiram of Tyre to cast some of the temple furnishings. These included two large pillars decorated with lilies, pomegranates,

and patterns of checkers and chains; ten lavers and their bases for the priests to cleanse them­selves; and an enormous "molten sea," or large basin, on a base of twelve oxen. 2 Chronicles gives a somewhat different story of the building of the temple that reports that Hiram was "skillful to work in gold, and in silver, in brass, in iron, in stone" as well as in other materi­als (2 Chronicles 2:14)-from which derives the tradition, important in Freemasonry, that Hiram was the architect of the temple.

Summary:

The voice of the Preacher or Koheleth main­tains that most human pursuits--after great riches, fame, even wisdom itself--are "vani­ties"; chance has a way of leveling human designs, and death finally levels everyone, consigning them, the good as well as the bad, to oblivion. The best thing one can do is accept the innocent joys that turn up from day to day, especially those that revolve around friendship and marriage, merriment and labor. Ecclesiastes ends with the some­what more orthodox editorial coda that enjoins us to fear God and keep the com­mandments.

Unit 9: Eccleisiastes and the Questioning of Wisdom... Part 2