DANTE… BRUNO. VICO… JOYCE

Abstract

The danger lies in the clarity (neatness) of the identifications. The conception of Philosophy and Philology as a pair of minstrels from the Teatro Dei Piccoli is comforting, like looking at a carefully prepared ham sandwich. Giambattista Vico himself cannot resist the appeal of such a coincidence of gesture. He insisted on a complete identification between philosophical abstraction and empirical illustration, thereby nullifying the absolute character of each conception - unjustifiably suspending the dimensional limits of the real, temporalizing what is extratemporal. And now here I am, with a handful of abstractions, among which, notably: a mountain, the coincidence of opposites, the inevitability of cyclical evolution, a system of Poetics, and the prospect of self-extension within from the world of “Work in Progress”, by Mr. Joyce. There is a temptation to treat each concept as “a bass dropt neck fust in till a bung crate”, and to do something quite satisfactory from that. Unfortunately, such an application accuracy would imply distortions in one of two directions. Should we twist a given system so that it fits within a contemporary category, or should we modify the dimensions of that category to satisfy those hungry for analogies (analogymongers)? Literary criticism is not accounting.