JOYCE AND THE RUSSIAN GENERAL
429
On p. 335, he is the "rawshorn generand." The raw-shorn power
that begets.
He's the Dreamer. The Artist is
th~
Father. He begets what is
new. This, however, presupposes a destruction of the old. When he
does this, he's the Son.
A
host
is a
stranger.
A
host
is a
foe.
The Artist is a Son. He is hostile, a stranger, in the Inn of the
Father.
In the House of the Host.
Joyce is Stephen Dedalus. Dedalus: the Creator. Stephen: the
first Christian martyr. But the Artist he portrays is merely a Young
Man. Though he talks of his creating a "loveliness that is unborn," he
is not a Father yet. He cannot create as yet. He is incomplete.
In the last part of
Ulysses,
Dedalus realizes that he is akin to
Bloom. As a Son, he sees his kinship to the Father.
As
an Artist, he
perceives that he's kin to the Man.
In the
Portrait of the Artist,
Dedalus sees himself "a priest of the
eternal imagination, transmuting the daily bread of experience into
the radiant body of everlasting life."
He is still a priest. But, in addition, he's become "the daily
bread." He's the sacrifice. The Host.
Here, in
Finnegans Wake,
he
is
the rebellious Shem. (Shem: an
Irish form of James.) He is also HCE . The aging Father.
He shows us his anxieties, his sense of guilt, his defeats, troubles,
disappointments. Out of these he makes a song.
On p. 58, the guilty dreamer sees himself as a man who's on
trial.
He's a man of trials- the man at the bar. In other words, he's
the host.
On this page, his name is Festy King: a king, Vasily. (Stephen
is the Greek for crown.)
Festy (Festus) is the Latin form of-Joyce.
We have mentioned Hasty who, on p. 44, sings us the Arche–
typical Song. On p. 48, Hasty becomes Osti-Fosti. As the latter is
described, it is plain that he is Joyce.
