the last words of james joyce by michael bolerjack

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    The Last Words of James Joyce

    Michael Bolerjack

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    The Last Words of James Joyce 2012 Michael Bolerjack

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    For Betty Lee Ligon,

    who actually finished reading Finnegans Wake

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    Table of Contents

    The Yes

    Finnegans Wake

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    THE YES

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    To be Tolled in fragments: To take back the

    ringing yes from Derrida for Joyce, redeem it,

    not as example but as the unexampled, theunprecedented, unique, unrepeatable Yes.

    But, first the notes of the introduction leading

    to the redemption of affirmation:

    A BB C BB A

    Absolute

    Father

    Son

    Holy Spirit

    Son

    Father

    Absolute

    Deconstructing the deconstruction to fulfill the

    deconstruction contrary to the truth of

    contradiction without contradicting the truth

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    Complete

    Transcendent GODMediation church

    God

    Church

    World

    I

    World

    Church

    God

    Aaron parents and grandparents

    Burl

    Bo

    Charlotte

    Bo

    BurlAaron

    Law prophets writings prophets law

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    Gospel/acts epistles revelation epistles

    gospel/acts

    Love faith hope insight hope faith love

    The book contains the text not the text contains

    the book

    Zig zag

    Mystical flower

    Cross cross cross

    Mystical flower

    I am

    He is

    You are

    I am

    You are

    He is

    I am

    Autobiography effracts

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    Epic drama fiction drama epic

    Eternal time spacing time eternal

    Exterior circular open effraction circular

    exterior

    Myth drama critical fiction drama myth

    Transcendent mediation immediate mediation

    transcendent

    Truth / truth of contradiction / contradiction /

    contradiction of truth / truth

    Nothing becoming being becoming nothing

    Square circle effraction circle square

    Necessity fantasyFreedom reality

    Necessity fantasy, vicious circle, effraction by

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    love and work

    Making free real

    Absolute act

    Possibility which is not

    Impossible which really is

    + -

    -- ++

    Act de

    De of de act

    How does de prevent de of de?

    How does deconstruction keep from

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    deconstructing itself?

    It always already is deconstructedIt starts out deconstructed

    Not with act

    Divided origin

    Immemorial origin

    No actual origin

    Post retro active projection changes the past

    into de

    De cannot be deconstructed from within

    What of synthesis?

    Making dialectic de

    Making de dialectic

    Nothing but

    Must be effracted.

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    Possibility of impossibility

    Equals

    Impossibility of possibility

    How to contradict the contradiction?

    All goes through the I

    As if the truth never was

    As if the Jews did not die

    Both did and did not

    Neither did nor did not

    Remains.

    The b/a/n/n [both and neither nor]

    Eliminates the either/or

    Dialectic both / and

    Leads to deconstruction

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    No choice.

    Jump levels

    Silence effracts

    Accurate, he said

    If you can say either this or that then there is

    choice, free

    And the b/a/n/n [both and neither nor] is

    impossible

    Choice destroys deconstruction

    Deconstruction destroys choice

    Total-talitarian

    Either choice or non-choice

    Must not choose non-choice

    Choosing to choose, open

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    Choosing not to choose, defer, is to allow de

    Two cities meta/para

    If we eliminate choice we eliminate our

    freedom

    Freedom is the thing itself, made impossible by

    de

    Possible made impossible, impossible made

    possible [disaster]

    Outside text is the context

    If there is a context there is difference choice

    freedom

    If all context is already text then no either/or

    If I am the context, in god-church-world, then I

    effract it, I choose to beAgainst the text, I am the standard of measure,

    I bind it, delimit the text

    Explain it, not it me

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    The reader is the way the text arrives.

    Text to weave

    If there are folds

    There are implications

    And explications

    An either/or

    Exemplify complication

    Simplify complication

    Supplicate

    A fold is a fold of something

    Examples

    Case in point

    Show

    Embody

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    Typical

    Eximere- to take out-

    Replication---

    Reply, fold back, plaintiffs reply, echo, copy

    Answer, reply, rejoinder.

    Law suit, dialogue

    Either plaintiff or defendant, choice

    Redeem---

    Re-emire, redeem, take back, not example, take

    out

    One steals by example or one is redeemed by

    taking back to original

    Either / or in replication---rejoinder reply or

    copy, you choose, are free

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    Law means contradiction e/o [either/or]

    decision justice choice

    Complication implication

    Replication explication

    Structure of plication

    Either/or chooses one or other

    b/a/n/n [both/and/neither/nor] chooses all

    A-thesis before thesis, amoral before moral, no

    good / evil t/f [true, false] impossible

    Since complication only implications pli selon pli

    Since has been illusion explication is only

    illusion

    Always plus one

    Derrida seems to be bringing a unity into the

    text by yes+yes affirmation in Joyce

    Molly Blooms final statement:

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    YES I SAID YES I WILL YES

    Meanings of YES

    1. Used as a function word to express assent or

    agreement

    2. Used as a function word to introduce

    correction or contradiction of a negative

    assertion or direction

    3. Used as a function word to introduce a more

    emphatic or ex-plicit phrase

    4. Used as a function word to indicate

    uncertainty or possible interest or attentiveness

    5. Exclamation of jubilation

    Yes

    Said I

    I WillYes

    Perfect ringing of yes

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    4 words

    7 times12 letters

    Perfect proof of Metasignification

    Joyce knew the Ultrastructure well

    Bloom asks Molly to choose

    She chose

    Decision, choice

    An either him / or another

    Free / the deconstruction cut off / by a decision

    She does not defer but decides

    Yes

    She will

    Desire inclination disposed a testament

    To order to direct

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    To choose

    As well him as anotherI thought as well him as another

    Indifference

    And yet, yes.

    Parse

    Yes/I said yes I will/Yes.

    Yes---three times

    I said

    I will 4 words

    Again / the Ultrastructure

    Yes three letters / will four / said four / I one,

    numbers, numbers, mystical forms.

    The final YES is the explication of all the rest

    Penultimate yes is choiceAnte-penultimate is used to introduce a more

    emphatic or explicit phrase

    Penultimate emphatic agreement

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    Ultimate the explicit, the explication still

    ringing.

    Yes: Janus at door looking back on the first

    three fictions and forward to the Wake:

    Dubliners said / Portrait will / Ulysses yeses I

    effraction / Wake is effracted text after I:

    Dubliners god / Portrait church / Ulysses world-

    --Moral, rebellion, epic/simony, paralysis,

    gnomon/yes is the bit making the rest a

    gnomon---Text of god-church-world effracted

    by I saying yes.---In order to complete the three

    at step/decision, in order to arrive at four, in

    order to reach the all in all at Wake. Everything

    hinges on the Yes. It is dialectic that affirms and

    cancels. What takes place after the YES is a

    different order of things, meta / not para. Each

    step by Joyce goes further, and is never parallel,

    but at last fully meta. Beyond, the meta-novel,not anti-Anything but completely free, pure, the

    joy felt after the act of faith: YES. Derridas

    YES/YES does not quite catch it, as if there were

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    always one more yes to be said. What ULYSSES

    showed is that in making a final explicit YES,

    one affirms as in an act of faith and makesoneself free, Molly made her decision, Joyce

    his, and freed herself/ himself. It is the finality

    of the Yes that is important, not the possible

    indefinite addition. The final YES is more than

    any of the four meanings given, it is a meta-

    static-yes. It is final, but it structurally cannot

    stop being said, at once final and infinite, but

    never indefinite. It is not like a total count in the

    making, plus one, but at once all numbers

    combined, a symbol for God in a book both

    profane and, yes, sacred.

    I have shown the ringing of the YES, circular in

    structure and as Ultrastructure,

    But what of the b/a/n/n the

    both/and/neither/nor?What of the banns? Of marriage. Wedding ring,

    a banding, binding.

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    The banns of Derrida impossibly bans the

    wedding, anti-banns, It makes the

    I DO

    Impossible.

    It makes the YES of decision impossible,

    allowing only the meaning of a kind of

    inattentiveness. Derridas YES is the opposite of

    Joyces. It does not explicate, does not choose,

    is not emphatic, neither does it assert the

    contrary, but rather like a manager will murmur

    to an employee yes, yes while never intending

    action.

    The last seven words of Molly recall her

    decision to marry, wedding banns, that ban the

    Derridean appropriation before-hand. Shechooses one, not all. Just Bloom. And re-affirms

    her choice. Renewal. Of the Banns.

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    To say this YES is always to choose the

    faithfulness, though we have been unfaithful. It

    is a kind of repentance, a YES that turns, thatbrings back, that redeems.

    Derrida takes it out of context, examples it,

    rejects the redemption, the supplicatory aspect

    of the final Yes in Ulysses. That YES does not

    replicate, does not implicate, and though it is in

    a position to explicate does not, and is

    supremely simple, not complicated.

    The YES is a supplication. It does not

    supplement itself, it prays. It is neither folded

    nor unfolded, for it has never been enfolded. It

    is a plea, not a pli. The YES simplifies the matter.

    It is not pliable, but resolution itself, resolving

    the work, and as much as you can bear, or hear,

    in the context of your readership. But perhapsthat is the reply of yes implied by Derrida,

    that when we hear Mollys YES we reply yes

    again and again. Qui, qui. If that is the case he

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    may be exonerated, but I believe his YES is too

    complex and is like his messiah unable to affirm

    because it cannot stop repeating itself. It wouldhave been better then to say a simple NO than

    to endlessly entangle Joyces ACT in an endless

    deferral.

    In the end Derrida turns the YES into a YET.

    Eventually, yes, yes, but not yet. Not never, just

    not yet, not now, decision is impossible, too

    much difference: hesitating at the altar:

    Yet, I could not say, yet I will not, yet neither

    nor will, not Yet. Yet I said Yet I will Yet. No one

    can say YES to that. Say Yes to Yes itself, as

    Derrida quotes Blanchot in Living On, but not

    that. Joyce said in the Wake that PATIENCE is

    the great thing. That means to wait. As you wait

    repeat to yourself yes I must yes I will yes, I will

    wait, right now I am waiting, not deferring, nothesitating, not passively waiting but affirming

    the awaited. In that one may be able to arrive

    at the hour the bridegroom comes. It is then we

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    may make an exclamation of jubilation, that in

    the modern world Molly Bloom was the first to

    make, which now every sports fan makes whentheir team wins, YES! What was the giving of

    assent or the making of an affirmation became

    near the end of the world an act of the

    expression of joy at the outcome.

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    Finnegans

    Wake

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    The end of this book, which really does not end,

    implies something that is there and not there at

    the same, a kind of prayer. I have shown the

    supplicatory aspect of the Yes at the end of

    Ulysses and now would like to de-monstrate the

    conclusion of the Wake as the perfection of this

    prayer. The last lines of the book can be read so

    many ways. Usually one says the final the is

    referring to the opening riverrun, to circle

    things back. I think it does this and something

    else as well. Joyce proclaims that the keys to

    are given. He has said Finn, again. He has said

    Till thous-endsthee. Now I think that this ends

    thee. The the of the end is to be said not asslack the, definite but open, but precisely

    THEE. The Keys to. Given! Given to whom, but

    to THEE. Not a way a lone a last a loved a long

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    abut the, because you are it, I AM IT, we are

    it, as the auditors of Prospero in the epilogue of

    Shakespeares final act, his prayer forforgiveness. Given? Key? It is the forgiveness of

    THEE.

    to.

    then.

    endsthee. Lps {please}

    long the []

    long thee, he longs but for THEE, to then ends,

    THEE.

    Thou, ends, thee. It ends with us, we are the

    one for whom and in whom the work arrives

    and Joyce affirms not one definitely but all

    infinitely. It is a way of saying YOU and YES at

    once: the THEE. THEE I said THEE I Will THEE,

    then you and I are in truth the arrival of the

    text, that the secret is that it is we who hold thekeys, keys of Peter, keys of the see, to forgive, to

    forgive all good thieves, whom writers to write

    must be, saying, But softly, thee, remember me,

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    till thou ends thee, that we never ending be, as

    love does not end, for thee given, never ending,

    thou art the key, the text is thee (se). The text isthese, thees, the signature effect is here comes

    everybody, and all along HCE was THEE, was all

    of us, it was written to you and you and you

    and yes to thee.

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    The Complete Apocalypse

    End of the Church, The Thirty Years War, Volume 27

    An Icon from an Evening in Glas and Apocalyptic WritingsAbysses 1: Two Witnesses

    Covers

    The Catholic Apocalypse

    The Post Pontiff Church

    Israel Ate Manna

    Christchurch Destroyed

    If He Crowned YouPraise

    Timeline of the Antichrist

    When I Look into Your Eyes

    The Other Witness

    The Four Last Things

    Apostle is One Sent

    The Treatise on LogicParadise Throne

    Therese in Theory

    An Icon for the Critics on Glas

    An Icon from an Evening in Glas

    Say that Jerusalem is

    The Words of Joyce

    Heidegger and LevinasPreface to the Apocalypse

    Keys of the Abyss

    Faith Creates Being

    Search for the Absolute

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    An Icon for the Church on the Mercy of God

    A Limit on Infinity

    Salted with Fire

    All Saints DayPP

    The Long Commentary

    The Middle Commentary

    The Epitome

    God Church World

    The 72

    The SovereigntiesVocabulary of God

    The Recrucifixion of Christ in the Modern World

    Symbols

    Yes Yet You Yen

    Two Column Work Continued March 23, 2012

    The Advent

    Meaning and Experience, Part 1Stanzas for Marinela and The One Hundred Stanzas

    The Virgin She Was the Whitest Winter

    The Letter A

    Michael Bolerjack: Bibliography of the Works of Michael

    Bolerjack

    Meaning and Experience, Part 2

    Marginality: Fiction without Fiction, Part 1Marginality: Fiction without Fiction, Part 2

    Meaning and Experience, Part 3

    To Gather

    Conclusion to the Arrival

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    Speeches

    Love and Death

    Emmanuels Fiction

    A Jacques Derrida EschatologyMeaning and Experience, Part 4

    The Gift

    The Philosophers

    Grammatology

    The Nietzschean Marriage

    Dialectic and Deconstruction

    Athens and JerusalemAlchemy

    The Two Ways

    Light

    Qui Etre

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    A TIME FOR EVERYTHING

    The Complete Apocalypse

    Of the Magisteries BeyondOf the Magisteries Beyond The Complete Apocalypse

    The Just Shall Live By Faith

    The Divine Congeries

    Looking Ahead After The Complete Apocalypse

    Variorum

    Variorum 2

    Rachel Weeping Her Children Part 1Rachel Weeping Her Children Part 1 Alternative Cover

    Latter to the Romans November 27, 2012

    The Complete Apocalypse As Revealed To Me Volume 1

    The Complete Apocalypse As Revealed To Me Volume 2

    The Complete Apocalypse in Outline

    An Introduction to The Complete Apocalypse

    In the Margins of The Complete ApocalypsePOEMS of The Complete Apocalypse

    To Scatter the Power of the Holy People

    Preparation for the Apocalypse

    The Letter A

    The Third Fiat Opening

    PP by Michael Bolerjack

    A Time For Everything Preface and First Four EpisodesParadise Throne and Preface to Paradise Throne

    In the Days of Camus and Derrida

    ANTI-READING

    The Ideality of the Literary Object

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    Meaning and Experience

    Sub Tuum Praesidium

    A Time For Everything Part 1 The Book of Signs

    A Time For Everything Part 2 the Book of GloryFragments of the Second Witness

    Therese in Theory

    A Jacques Derrida Eschatology in Ruins

    He Said I Thought Youd Fold

    Speeches

    An Icon from an Evening in Glas and Apocalyptic Writings

    SeventeenShakespeare and Joyce

    Catholic Economy and Ultrastructure

    The Arrival

    Dialectic and Deconstruction

    Science and Religion

    Preaching Deconstruction

    Derridas DissertationTHE VIRGIN She Was The Whitest Winter

    Michael Bolerjack In The Thirty Years War

    Love and Death

    Two Essays For Arrival

    The Last Words of James Joyce