Incubism

“The coffin is a house in which the dead shelter for a time…. The cortège brings the dead back into the pathways of the living. When the body is no longer capable of locomotion, it is carried along by members of the community in an act of solidarity, which turns out to be an act of abandonment when the body is left at its grave to be eulogized, then earthed in.” -- Allan Hepburn, “The Irish Way of Dying: ‘Ulysses’ and Funeral Processions”

In his schema for “Hades,” James Joyce listed the technic for Ulysses’ sixth episode as “incubism.” If you’re like most people, you likely have no idea what this means. That’s perfectly reasonable, as it seems to be a neologism coined by Joyce. “Incubism” is often interpreted as a reference to an incubus - a type of demon that sits on the chest of a sleeping person and forces itself sexually on the sleeper. It makes sense, then, that a stifling, incubistic atmosphere takes hold in “Hades,” a demonic energy ruling an episode infused with death. Even cheese is regarded as the “corpse of milk.” In an episode where “every Friday buries a Thursday,” Leopold Bloom reflects frequently on the inhumation of the dead, the weight of soil on a coffin bearing down on his psyche.

Robert M. Adams notes that the colors grey and brown are used to reveal the oppressive atmosphere of incubism. Greyness manifests in the “mild grey air” of Glasnevin Cemetery, Paddy Dignam’s once ruddy face turned grey, Jack Power’s greying hair, and “an obese grey rat [toddling] along the side of [a] crypt.” Bloom recalls Molly had to cancel a concert in Greystones due to her pregnancy with now-deceased Rudy. Brown might seem like an outlier here, but Joyce associated brown with foreboding figures in “The Dead'' as well as Ulysses. Dublin’s boatman on the Royal Canal, the Charon of Dublin, salutes Paddy’s cortège with a brown hat, a tramp dons a “huge dustbrown yawning boot”, and Mervyn Browne once told Bloom a story about the crypts St. Werburgh’s church, carrying the theme one step further.

Johann Heinrich Füssli, “The Nightmare,” 1781

Deeper connotations for incubism can be found in the term’s etymology. Allan Hepburn points out that the word “incubation” derives from a Latin word meaning “to lie on,” just as an incubus lies on its victim. Hepburn takes this interpretation one step further, stating that Joyce’s incubism is the state of being “incubed” or being “enfolded in a series of cubes and boxes.” One might be incubed in a horse drawn carriage with three friends, for instance. At a funeral, a body is incubed inside a coffin, and then the body incubed in the coffin is incubed in the hearse. The body incubed in the coffin is ultimately incubed in the grave. Though “Hades” does have a stifling air, I find this interpretation more satisfying, as it allows the incubed Dignam to become the nucleus of “Hades.” During the funeral procession from Sandymount to Glasnevin, Dublin’s bustling city centre is seen from a corpse-eye-view, peeping out at the comings and goings of the living from the window of a hearse (or more precisely a carriage in the funeral cortège) rattling through the streets.

From Bloom’s vantage point in the carriage, the ceremony surrounding Dignam’s death feels like going through the motions, a routine rather than a ritual. Bloom describes the whole affair as:

“Paltry funeral: coach and three carriages. It's all the same. Pallbearers, gold reins, requiem mass, firing a volley. Pomp of death.”

Bloom’s lack of understanding of Catholic rituals comes into play once again, leading to an awkward faux pas:

“Mr Power gazed at the passing houses with rueful apprehension.
—He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said.
—The best death, Mr Bloom said.
Their wide open eyes looked at him.
—No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep.
No-one spoke.”

Bloom takes comfort in his friend’s lack of suffering, but his observant Catholic counterparts are horrified at the thought of a sudden death as the “best death.” Due to the suddenness of his passing, Paddy was unable to receive his last rites from a priest, leaving his soul adrift in the hereafter. Bloom appraises death as a physical process rather than a spiritual one, though. For Bloom, by the time the men reach the cemetery, the ritual takes on the air of an assembly line:

“Every mortal day a fresh batch: middleaged men, old women, children, women dead in childbirth, men with beards, baldheaded businessmen, consumptive girls with little sparrows' breasts. All the year round he prayed the same thing over them all and shook water on top of them: sleep. On Dignam now.”

Bloom interprets the confines of the coffin as a way to obscure the reality of the corpse within, acting as a barrier between the living and the dead. It hides any undesirable odors or visible decay - natural indications of death - from the sensibilities of the living. Elaborate embalming techniques further this divide, shielding the true appearance of the recently deceased. Coffins and embalming are done for the sake of the living; a respectfully incubed corpse distorts the reality of death.

As Bloom notes the comings and goings of hearses and other traffic through the streets of Dublin, he has a sudden, jolting vision of Paddy’s hearse hitting a bump and spilling the no-longer-incubed Dignam onto the pavement:

“Bom! Upset. A coffin bumped out on to the road. Burst open. Paddy Dignam shot out and rolling over stiff in the dust in a brown habit too large for him. Red face: grey now. Mouth fallen open. Asking what's up now. Quite right to close it. Looks horrid open. Then the insides decompose quickly. Much better to close up all the orifices. Yes, also. With wax. The sphincter loose. Seal up all.”

Violating the sanctity of an incubed corpse results in grotesque shock-horror, exposing Dignam’s mouth and anus, making the unseeable visible to all. Bloom, lacking a spiritual world view, regards the defilement of Paddy’s corpse as a material tragedy rather than a violation of religious taboo. He focuses on the physicality of the macabre scene - Paddy’s mouth agape, his sphincter on display, his ultimate decomposition - rather than the offense such a desceration might inflict on Paddy in the afterlife. Bloom is a bit hyperborean in his outlook, recalling Mulligan’s unsentimentality for death in “Telemachus”:

“—And what is death, he asked, your mother's or yours or my own? You saw only your mother die. I see them pop off every day in the Mater and Richmond and cut up into tripes in the dissectingroom. It's a beastly thing and nothing else. It simply doesn't matter.”

Bloom’s materialism is gentler than Mulligan’s, though. He may not be wailing like a “hired mute from Lalouette’s” or a “crape weeper”, but he does feel keenly the sting of loss, frequently turning to thoughts of Rudy and his father. Rudy’s death day is only a week away, after all. Instead, possessed of a problem-solving mindset, Bloom has several adaptations for coffin design that can improve upon the condition of the incubed dead. A coffin could be fitted with “an electric clock or a telephone in the coffin and some kind of a canvas airhole” in case the incubed is still alive. Or maybe the grave could include a gramophone with a recording the preserves the deceased’s voice:

“Kraahraark! Hellohellohello amawfullyglad kraark awfullygladaseeagain hellohello amawf krpthsth.”

“Hades” also corresponds with the heart, chief organ of the circulatory system. Bloom astutely observes that one’s heart is “A pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. One fine day it gets bunged up: and there you are.” In the funeral procession’s progress across Dublin, we see the heart’s task of circulation projected onto the main arteries of the Hibernian Metropolis. People, carriages, horses and hearses are “pumped” through the city center and out to the extremities as a matter of course. It’s this commodius vicus of recirculation that keeps the city and its citizens alive. No circulation, no commerce, no economy, no city, no life.

Bloom and the other funeral goers can’t help but notice the break-neck speeds at which their hearse careens through Dublin. Hugh Kenner posits that this may be due to simple logistics - Sandymount, where Paddy made his home at 9 Newbridge Ave., is quite far from Glasnevin Cemetery on Dublin’s northside and the hearse must rush to deliver the guest of honor to the funeral on time. Joyce chose this address because it was near the home of Joyce family friend Matthew Kane (the real-life inspiration for Paddy Dignam) and was unoccupied in 1904, so Joyce felt a fictional family of Dignams could take up residence there. If a heart is pumping too vigorously, however, the owner of the heart may have a heart attack. Bom! In the case of Dublin’s circulatory system, an overturned coffin might result.

Multiple corpses course through Dublin’s veins alongside the living. Bloom notes a child’s coffin moving through the streets near the Rotunda Hospital, a tiny corpse incubed within. He thinks that their family would like to get the grim affair of a child’s funeral over sooner, so they move speedily. Of course, rapidly moving funeral processions have a hidden economic benefit - the more funerals that can take place in one day, the more money the funeral parlors and undertakers make. Bloom suggests:

“... another thing I often thought, is to have municipal funeral trams like they have in Milan, you know. Run the line out to the cemetery gates and have special trams, hearse and carriage and all. Don't you see what I mean?”

Though they are somewhat open to Bloom’s practicality, his compatriots are moved by the “fine old custom” of funeral processions traveling through the city centre. Though the corpse is incubed and hidden from view, the procession acts as a memento mori for passersby. Anyone on Sackville St. that day, whether they knew Paddy or not, has a chance to honor him (or ignore him) as he passes, though he was no great man or martyr. Joyce may have been inspired by the massive public outpouring of public funerals for Irish political heroes, his funeral cortege passing by the statues erected in their honor. Paddy is merely a common corpuscle sliding through the aorta of Dublin. The grandeur frozen in these heroic statues ironically emphasizes Dignam’s non-heroic downfall on one hand. On the other, someone as common as Paddy is afforded the dignity of being able to follow in the footsteps of great men in death.

Mark Osteen offers a third and final interpretation for the technic of incubism, noting that each attendee to Dignam’s funeral is being oppressed by his own personal incubus. Bloom feels the burden of grief at losing his father and Rudy. Simon Dedalus is burdened by his dead wife and Martin Cunningham by his absent, but living, wife. Beyond personal incubi, Bloom’s social circle are oppressed by the economic system in which they live. Osteen sees the financial circumstances of these men as the result of the complicity of Church and State to keep most Irish people from attaining a comfortable middle class life, stating:

“Joyce blames not only the institutional powers that oppress the Irish but also Irish citizens themselves for their passive acceptance of failed ideologies and for the inability to discover alternatives to the cult of patriotic sacrifice that paralyzes them and prevents them from shaping a more positive definition of Irishness.”

Osteen identifies hats as a key to the financial incubi clinging to each of Paddy’s peers - “...hats represent the characters’ desperate attempts to mark their financial conditions by maintaining the appearance of respectability; minor but telling symbols, they betray the characters’ hidden economic problems.” The inscription in Bloom’s high grade ha is partially covered by a slip of paper containing a secret address. Martin Cunningham’s tall silk hat reveals his pompous nature as the group’s ringleader. Stephen Dedalus’ wide brimmed Latin Quarter hat represents his bohemian aspirations while Boylan’s “white disk '' marks him out as a showboat. Simon Dedalus uses his hat to obscure his family’s precarious financial situation, as Molly Bloom puts it, “...such a criticiser with his glasses up with his tall hat on him… and a great big hole in his sock….” Bloom pointing out the “dinge” in John Henry Menton’s hat shows that his headpiece, and by extension his persona, appears less formidable than he had hoped.

At a funeral, however, hats are doffed in respect, temporarily whisking away outward personas, forcing a period of vulnerability and truth. Death acts as the “great leveller” in more than one way. Once their hats are replaced, the men can resume keeping up appearances. As Tom Kernan says, “The others are putting on their hats.... I suppose we can do so too. We are the last. This cemetery is a treacherous place.” One risks losing their identity in the graveyard. Corpses rarely wear hats.

The incubus of debt has kept at least one person away from Dignam’s funeral. In “Lotus Eaters,” M’Coy asked Bloom to make sure he is marked down as attending even though he would be absent. Osteen writes that M’Coy is afraid to show his face at Dignam’s funeral because he lost his job as an ad canvasser at the Freeman’s Journal due to embezzling from the newspaper. M’Coy knows that Joe Hynes will be at the funeral on behalf of the paper and doesn’t want to bump into him, and so asks Bloom to fill in for him. Hynes himself owes a debt of 3 shillings to Bloom. Despite Bloom’s subtle reminder to Hynes in “Aeolus,” the debt remains unpaid and is likely to remain so as Hynes later spends the money on pints in “Cyclops.”

“Hades” represents a sort of metempsychosis of the Dubliners short story “Grace,” with many of the same characters appearing in both works. Of course, M’Coy is conspicuously absent, causing Bloom to stand in as the “center of the quincunx.” I’ve already discussed Martin Cunningham’s reincarnation in Ulysses in a previous post, so let’s finish out by having a look at Tom Kernan and Jack Power. In “Grace,” Kernan’s friends try to help him sober up after a drunken fall (which stained his hat with lavatory filth). He’s off the wagon again in Ulysses, so it seems the Jesuits’ magic didn’t work. Kernan owes money to a man named Fogarty for groceries; Simon slyly points out that Kernan “left him weeping.” In addition to his financial burden, Kernan is weighed down by a paralyzing, foolish sentimentality. Kernan opines over his preference of the Protestant service, stating that it “touches a man’s inmost heart.” Kernan’s sentimentality allows Bloom to place himself in opposition to Kernan’s silliness, highlighting his own prudence and skepticism, and most importantly, his lack of paralysis in the face of ritual.

Jack Power was a man on the make in “Grace,” though in “Hades” seems to have fallen on hard times. Power works for the Royal Irish Constabulary, an embodiment of how some Irish might use their relative power in society to simultaneously oppress their countrymen and collude with their colonial masters. Though Power is respected amongst his peers, his unexplained debts are whispered about behind his back. Bloom has an inkling about their origin:

“Nice fellow. Who knows is that true about the woman he keeps? Not pleasant for the wife. Yet they say, who was it told me, there is no carnal. You would imagine that would get played out pretty quick. Yes, it was Crofton met him one evening bringing her a pound of rumpsteak. What is this she was? Barmaid in Jury's. Or the Moira, was it?”

Joyce based Jack Power on Tom Devin, a family friend of the Joyces. Devin twice borrowed money from Joyce and never repaid him (though Joyce himself left numerous debts unpaid in his younger days). Joyce exacted his revenge against Devin by portraying him as a pitiable, sexually-frustrated debtor who worked for the RIC. That’ll show him.

Joyce uses “Hades” and Bloom’s hyperborean streak to satirize the adherence to old-fashioned funeral customs and reverence for political martyrs common amongst Irish people. Such piety has left the Irish people with a G.P.I. - a general paralysis of the insane- unable to progress, stewing in miserable, oppressive circumstances, both ameliorated and exacerbated by drink. Dignam himself had once worked for John Henry Menton, funeral attendee and Bloom rival, but was ultimately fired for drunkenness. His love for pints led him to a new position six feet under. Poor Paddy. How many of his friends are only a few steps behind him? Stuart Gilbert points out that the men seem awkward in the carriage and cemetery because they are sober. “Ireland sober is Ireland stiff,” after all. Bloom, with his sobriety and indifference to ritual, represents a way forward for a stagnant culture. If only the other men would pay him any mind.

Further Reading

Who Was the Real Reuben J. Dodd?

Who Was the Real Paddy Dignam?