(no subject)

[proximoception]

Been stalled just shy of the end of Ulysses for weeks now, but I'm working on a paper on it anyway. I've come to admire the book more and more, and that's not entirely Stockholm Syndrome talking. Though: reading his letters and rereading his critical prose confirms my impression that I am James Joyce. I don't mean I have any of his genius, but we seem to have lived the same life. Literary opinions overlap alarmingly, too; about these I'm comfortable giving details. Ibsen was his man, first to last, Tolstoy the one novelist he heaped praise on. The third member of my personal triumvirate, Shelley, he mentions in a letter (age 22 or so) as making a third with Shakespeare and Wordsworth on the top shelf of English literature. There's a lot to this judgment--I'd demur only at the absence of Milton and Spenser. The former comes up in Wake a lot, I'd imagine, what with the shared topic and disability/method, and many have noted the odd affinities between FW and The Faerie Queene. He quotes from Faust in German a lot, and models "Circe" after it in some ways, though usually via the prism of Peer Gynt. Moby-Dick he'd likely never heard of; curious resemblances there too, no? Proust's book-in-progress he barely glanced at. Understandable. Never read Temps perdu when writing Ulysses, as I think Aesop said.

Re. Wordsworth, the novel's plot arc does have its Resolution & Independence aspect, doesn't it? And maybe can be meditated on in light of the Ode, though what can't.