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PARTISAN REVIEW
Why the name Osti-Fosti? Well-the Latin word
hostis
was
originally
fostis.
Ergo-
Osti-Fosti.
Who is our authority for this little bit of information?
It
is a
Roman rhetorician-whose name is Festus.
James Joyce is the Dreamer. He's the Host. The Russian Gen–
eral.
On p. 349, as the general is receiving the Last Rites, we see
that he carries
The Martyrology of Gorman.
Herbert Gorman's biography of Joyce.
On. p. 354, near the end of the episode, we hear a "Cicilian"
hurdy-gurdy.
It's a Sicilian hurdy-gurdy. It's a reference to Cecilia, the
patron saint of music. It's a reference to Buckley, the authentic
Buckley, who had the Christian name of Cecil.
This is still another meaning: both Cecil and Cecilia are de–
rived from
caecus.
Blind. This gives us an allusion to Joyce, purblind
Joyce. He is cranking his hurdy-gurdy. The hurdy-gurdy of
Finne–
gans Wake.
In
his
blindness, in his darkness, Joyce creates
Finnegans Wake .
In the dark of his unconscious, the Artist makes his
Art.
The Dreamer
makes his Dream. In his dreaming, he assuages the attritions of the
day.
In the night, the Father, too, does his labors of Creation. He
repairs what has been lost. He renews the day-time world.
Strangely enough, de Todleben made
his
fame at Sevastopol in a
much similar f.ashion.
An
engineer, nightly he threw up new de–
fenses. With these, he replenished what had been destroyed by day.
The Father, we have said- the Father yields before the Son.
Then the Son becomes the Father.
There is a new orthodoxy. There is always a new dogma. On
p. 354, the children make a common tum.
The rebels make-a Cornintern.
In the first part of this paper, we attempted to discover what
the tale of Buckley meant. A horse-race, an explosion and the story of
