Decoding Dedalus: Entelechy, Form of Forms

“—As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. And as the mole on my right breast is where it was when I was born, though all my body has been woven of new stuff time after time, so through the ghost of the unquiet father the image of the unliving son looks forth.”

This is a post in a series called Decoding Dedalus where I take a passage of Ulysses and break it down line by line.

The line below comes from “Scylla and Charybdis,” the ninth episode of Ulysses. It appears on page p. 189-190 in my copy (1990 Vintage International). We’ll be looking at the passage that begins “Mr Best’s face, appealed to, agreed.” and ends “A.E.I.O.U.”

The National Library of Ireland, November 2023

Stephen Dedalus begins to build his theory of Hamlet for his audience of literary men in the National Library in “Scylla and Charybdis,” Ulysses’ ninth episode. Unfortunately, he meets push back right out of the gate. Fortunately, Aristotle has got his back.

Prominent mystic and poet George Æ Russell unambiguously rejects Stephen’s thesis that understanding Shakespeare’s biography, particularly his relationship with his son and wife, can deepen one’s understanding of his art. Æ dismisses Stephen’s ideas as “interesting only to the parish clerk” and “greenroom gossip.” The poet’s words are immortal, and that’s enough:

“Peeping and prying into greenroom gossip of the day, the poet’s drinking, the poet’s debts. We have King Lear: and it is immortal.”

Æ then paraphrases the French playwright Villiers de l’Isle, a forerunner to the Symbolists, as saying, “As for living our servants can do that for us.” Stephen is plunged into a momentary identity crisis. He thinks:

“Mr Best’s face, appealed to, agreed.
Flow over them with your waves and with your waters,
Mananaan, Mananaan MacLir…”

Mr Best’s agreement is actually a powerful refutation of Æ’s argument, as Mr Best is (unfairly) portrayed as a doofus throughout the episode. Stephen silently fires back at Æ with the mastermystic’s own words. The verse invoking the Irish sea god Mananaan MacLir to swallow Æ beneath the waves is a paraphrase of a druid’s invocation from Æ’s play Deirdre, in which the sea god is exhorted to swallow the mythical lovers Deirdre and Naoise.

Though Stephen’s reaction is obscure at first, we can see that he is quite offended by Æ’s remarks, which are far from kind or gentle to the young man. It’s not revealed within the narrative of Ulysses if Stephen’s curse against the mystic-poet was effective. Perhaps it’s because Stephen has second thoughts almost immediately:

“How now, sirrah, that pound he lent you when you were hungry?
Marry, I wanted it.
Take thou this noble.
Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson’s bed, clergyman’s daughter. Agenbite of inwit.
Do you intend to pay it back?
O, yes.
When? Now?
Well... No.
When, then?”

Stephen, roused to anger by Æ's mention of the poet’s drinking and debts, now reminds himself that Æ lent him money when he was hungry (the real Æ made a similar loan to James Joyce in 1904). In this case, Æ’s patronage only contributed to the artist’s drinking and carousing. Thus, Stephen feels the sting of Agenbite of Inwit, or the remorse of conscience, which initally manifests as an indignant curse. Theoretically he could pay him with the wages he received that morning, but he is fairly committed to squandering that money rather than making good on his debts. This passage allows Stephen/Joyce to subvert and refute Æ’s assertions that so-called “green room gossip” doesn’t make good art, as this rundown of an artist’s unseemly behavior is spun into art, with a little quasi-Shakespearean flair for good measure. It might be nicer in theory than practice, though:

“I paid my way. I paid my way.
Steady on. He’s from beyant Boyne water. The northeast corner. You owe it.”

The reality of unpayable debt jolts Stephen’s memory back to that very morning and the words of his boss, Mr. Deasy:

“Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman’s mouth?... I paid my way. I never borrowed a shilling in my life. Can you feel that? I owe nothing. Can you?”

Stephen was silent then, too, responding to Mr. Deasy only in his own mind with a list of unpaid debts, including, “Russell, one guinea.” So, Stephen actually owes more than a pound as a guinea is worth a pound and a shilling. Stephen’s association of Æ with Mr. Deasy runs deeper than a few shillings, though. Mr. Deasy is proud of his Ulster ancestry, and Stephen now recalls that Æ is originally from “beyant Boyne water,” meaning he comes from north of the Boyne River. Æ, born in Armagh, is indeed a northerner and a Protestant, so Stephen wonders if he shares Mr. Deasy’s worldview as well (Æ emphatically does not). Part of Stephen’s mission in the Library is to deliver Mr. Deasy’s foot and mouth letter to Æ, who is the editor of The Irish Homestead. Stephen fails to interest “the pigs’ paper” in Deasy’s rhetoric, as Æ only politely feigns interest in Deasy’s letter:

“If he considers it important it will go in. We have so much correspondence.”

There is one more interesting overlap in Stephen's perception of these two men who vex him so. He associates Æ with Mananaan the sea god, and in that passage where Mr. Deasy brags about his financial responsibility, Stephen thinks:

“The seas’ ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay…”

Stephen is referencing the British Empire in this specific quote, but there is a homeric parallel to these comments as well. Odysseus struggled to find his way home for so long because he ran afoul of Poseidon, the seas’ ruler. Stephen is beset on all sides by sea gods, be they Irish or English. He can’t catch a break. Suddenly, an escape hatch appears:

“Wait. Five months. Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound.
Buzz. Buzz.”

Stephen has discovered a loophole in his debtorship: he’s a totally new person because all his molecules have changed since he first borrowed that dang guinea from Æ. His form is everchanging, like the endless procession of tides in the ocean, unbound like Proteus, yet another sea god. Checkmate, Æ. In the end, it’s Stephen’s Aristotelian mindset that brings him back down to earth:

“But I, entelechy, form of forms, am I by memory because under everchanging forms.
I that sinned and prayed and fasted.
A child Conmee saved from pandies.
I, I and I. I.
A.E.I.O.U.”

Aristotle rises from the depths once more. Stephen may be subject to shifting protean metamorphoses on the surface, but each version of Stephen is tied to past and future versions of Stephen on a deeper level. Yes, Stephen was once a devoutly religious youth and is now a slightly older blasphemer, but those people are both Stephen. He was once a weedy little boy, cowering under physical abuse at Clongowes Wood College, and now he boldly speaks his mind to prominent, respected men, caution be damned. Yet, each is still Stephen. Each a different version of his “I,” but always, persistently “I.” So, yeah, he still owes that guy a guinea.

Most of us wouldn’t have to be convinced of this societal truth, but what would Aristotle say? WWAS?

The key to this philosophical riddle lies in Stephen’s mention of “entelechy, form of forms.” We’ve discussed in a previous blog post that “form of forms” refers to Aristotle’s conception of the soul, and that alone is enough to grasp Stephen’s conclusion here. Though Stephen’s physical being changes, his soul is eternal and unchanging. It’s the soul, the form of forms, that results in the persistence of “Stephen” as a continuous identity even if his superficial aspects change.

And about “entelechy”? An anglicization of the Greek word “entelecheia,” this term, coined by Aristotle, is a portmanteau of several ancient Greek words and was never defined by Aristotle. But wait, there’s more. In the book Aristotelian Interpretations, Joycean and Aristotelian scholar Fran O’Rourke explains that entelechy has a similar meaning to essence, form, or eidos, a term we’ve discussed in this blog post. The soul in Aristotle’s view, O’Rourke says, is “the first actuality (entelechy) of a natural body endowed with organs.” It’s the special something that makes a human a human rather than a pile of meat or a corpse. Its persistence creates a stable identity within that body.

O’Rourke also explains that entelechy acts as a stabilizing force in the face of change. Entelechy is a “fully actualised perfection of something once it has attained its goal and completed its action.” I think this may be partly what Stephen is driving at with his odd, pompous retort to Eglinton a few paragraphs later, “A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.” Shakespeare, a man of genius, represents such a “fully actualised perfection,” a state that persists throughout his artistic work, itself an extension of his soul. If this is true for Shakespeare, it might also be true for Stephen Dedalus. Naturally, Stephen shares his form of forms, his entelechy, with his creator, James Joyce, a man who knows a thing or two about volitional errors.

Decoding Dedalus: Entelechy, Form of Forms

Further Reading:

A Shakespearean Ghost Story Part 2: Anne Hath a Way