The labyrinth of understanding: textual space in James Joyces Ulysses

Vry Dalma

The text unfurls its space James Joyces Ulysses is a labyrinth of understanding. Its textual space creates an area of understanding the diverse cross-connecting routes of which the reader has to explore so that the correlations of meaning and hence, the possibilities of making sense of these correlations may unfold. Differently put, Ulysses, as a textual construction, insists that its intersections, echoes and associations be comprehended throughout the spatial exploration of the text so that in this way it may reveal itself as a dynamic, ever-changing field of meaning, open to interpretation. The present paper wishes to elaborate briefly how this textually created field of meaning that is the textual space of Ulysses reveals itself throughout the process of understanding. Such an elaboration requires that the particular mode of textual space Ulysses creates and thereby exposes be elucidated beforehand. In order to elucidate the mode of textual space Ulysses testifies of, the paper will begin with the brief explication of an important Greek term, energeia. As Hans-Georg Gadamer elaborates,1 the term was created by Aristotle as a fundamental concept of his theory of physics, elaborated by way of an analogy to Dynamis or dynamism, which analogy demonstrates that energeia involves both actuality, reality and action. Therefore, the concept of energeia, thematizing the being of motion in the sense of actuality as action, sheds light on the mode of being manifested by the work of art,2 since, as Gadamer underlines, the unfolding of the work of art is also a process of dynamic actuality. The work presents itself as it is actually in the specific way it unfolds throughout the process of understanding, and in this sense, it uncovers itself as energeia. In other words, the work of art exhibits itself inasmuch as the movement of understanding allows it to unfurl in its ever-changing completeness. With regard to the dynamic movement of understanding a work of literature necessitates, this means that as Gadamer formulates it elsewhere the actualization of writing always already requires interpretation in the sense of explicative understanding, just as the actualization of the word addressed to somebody does.3 Therefore,

Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wort und Bild so wahr, so seiend, Gadamer Lesebuch (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), p. 185. 2 Gadamer 185. 3 Die Aktualisierung von Schrift verlangt jedenfalls immer schon Interpretation im Sinne des deutenden Verstehens, wie die des Wortes, das einem gesagt wird. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Frhromantik, Hermeneutik, Dekonstruktivismus. Gesammelte Werke 10: Hermeneutik im Rckblick (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1995), p. 129.

it is not the variety of the possible meanings of a written form or of a set of signs that is actualized when one is reading, but the thereby signified. Writing cannot be read without being understood, that is, without being articulated and thus, without performing an unparalleled intonation and modulation, since these anticipate the sense of the whole. 4

In other words, the norm that a work of literature presents may only be met if one follows the speech of the text as it unfolds, if one conforms to its command and thereby enters the everchanging correlations of meaning. Only this way does the literary work become energeia, or the dynamic actuality that is itself. The work of art, hence, is the actual norm of understanding to which one has to be attentive in order to allow for its unfurling, in which process it bares itself as a dynamically meaningful creation. The concept of the text is a fundamental hermeneutical concept. It constitutes the authoritative base [Gegebenheit], to which understanding and interpretation has to measure itself it is the hermeneutical point of identity which keeps every variable within bounds.5 Therefore, with regard to works of literature one may say that it is the text itself which in its mode of articulation exposed in its dynamic unfolding unveils something seemingly known in a light which makes one recognize it differently, if one becomes aware of the way the work addresses one. To put it in another way, the mode of articulation a work of literature as a mode of lingual organization exhibits, opens up in and as the edifice of the text which one has to explore throughout the process of reading, and which process provides the possibility of making sense of the continually altering meaningful correlations. Hence, the autonomous work of verbal art as energeia uncovers itself as a dynamic order, as a free-standing artistic construction which, as such, occupies its own verbal-textual space. It is this space one has to explore, attempting to understand its unfolding textual correlations, in order to be able to reach possible insights the work, in its dynamic unfurling which takes place throughout the process of understanding may impart. Umberto Eco formulated this insight in The Open Work the following way: [b]lank space surrounding a word, typographical adjustments, and

Es ist also nicht die Vieldeutigkeit eines Schriftbildes oder Zeichenbestandes, sondern die des damit Bezeichneten, die, wenn einer liest, aktualisiert wird. Man kann Schrift nicht lesen, ohne zu verstehen, d. h. ohne zu artikulieren und damit eine einmalige Intonation und Modulation vorzunehmen, die den Sinn des Ganzen antizipiert. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Frhromantik, Hermeneutik, Dekonstruktivismus, p. 129. 5 Er formuliert die autoritative Gegebenheit, an sich Verstehen und Auslegen zu messen hat gleichsam als der hermeneutische Identittspunkt, der alles Variable begrenzt. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Der eminente Text und seine Wahrheit. Gesammelte Werke. Band 8: sthetik und Poetik I: Kunst als Aussage (Tbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1993.), p. 289. [my translation V. D.] This does not mean that the text is restricted to an originary interpretation. The text unfolds itself in a novel way every time it is encountered by the reader, but it provides insight only if it is read as an artistically autonomous construction, in terms of its own measure.

spatial composition in the page setting of the poetic text all contribute to the creation of a halo of indefiniteness and to making the text pregnant with infinite suggestive possibilities.6

Modes of textual space Socrates, in Platos dialogue entitled Phaedrus, makes it explicit that rhetorical speeches, which are, like works of literature, lingual constructions should exhibit themselves as organic arrangements. [E]very discourse ought to be a living creature, having a body of its own and a head and feet; there should be a middle, beginning and end, adapted to one another and to the whole [.]7 Therefore, the insight that verbal constructions, as the organic creations of language, have bodies of their own and thus, occupy their own verbal space in which understanding has to orient itself was already present in antiquity. However, the recognition that works of literature, though still confined to works of poetry, create and occupy their own autonomous verbal-textual space was first made manifest in its consequence by the art and aesthetics of Romanticism. According to the Romantic conception of organic form the poem, the work of art, is a spatially organic entity. As Coleridge writes, [t]he organic form [] shapes, as it develops, itself from within, and the fullness of its development is one and the same with the perfection of its outward form.8 The sequence of words, organized into an organic whole by the poets imaginative design, creates the very space in which the aesthetic revelation takes place. Therefore, the organic form, as Coleridges concept of the image highlights, is an appeal to poetically empowered words to turn substantive and to hold within themselves the moving world of words and references that are recreated into the text.9 On the basis of this line of thought it proves justifiable to claim that according to the Romantic conception of organic form, the poem occupies its own autonomous, self-sufficient textual space and does not allow for any kind of external rule or influence to interfere with its organic structure. In this respect, the consideration of the mode textual space presented by the Romantic fragment is also necessary. Despite being an essentially different mode of construction from that exposed by the organic form, the fragment, another fundamental mode of Romantic thought, also exhibits itself in and as its own textual space. The fragment is complete in its
Umberto Eco, The Poetics of the Open Work. The Open Work. Translated by Anna Cancogni (Cambridge, M. A.: Harvard University Press, 1989), p. 8. [I slightly modified the translation V. D.] 7 Plato, Phaedrus. [264 C] Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Retrieved from The Internet Classics Archive http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedrus.html., on 2 June 2011. 8 The quoted excerpt from Coleridges essay entitled Shakespeares Judgement Equal to His Genius is cited by Murray Krieger in his work entitled Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992) on page 199. 9 Krieger 214.
6

incompletion, it is organic unto itself: as Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy formulate it, [t]otality is the fragment in itself in its completed individuality.10 What this implies may be well highlighted by the following thought of Maurice Blanchot: [t]wo fragmentary texts may be opposed, but only inasmuch as they are posed after each other, one without relation to the other, or related by an indeterminate blank that neither separates nor unites them [].11 Hence, although the fragments very completion remains incomplete,12 this incompletion is part of its autonomous textual space. In other words, the fragment exposes by way of its completed incompletion that the process of (re)reading is compelled to be a constant state of becoming, which becoming is the becoming, the unfurling of the text that accounts for itself in its very construction and thus, for its incompletion also. Therefore, the fragment, by way of its very mode of construction, makes on realize that though the movement of understanding can never reach a predetermined goal, that in this sense a work of art should forever be becoming and never be perfected,13 it nevertheless demarcates an autonomous area of understanding which unfolds in and as a self-contained verbal-textual space whose relation to other texts (and textual spaces) may be illuminated by its own textual correlations only. Romanticism, in many respects the antecedent of Modernism, left the legacy of the concept of organic form and that of fragmentariness, both conceived as autonomous verbaltextual modes of space, to Modernist thinkers and artists.14 Moreover, Modernists opened up still new ways of creating constructions of textual space, due to the considerable influence unique ways of representation in visual arts had on verbal arts. Differently put, poetry and the verbal arts gained inspiration from the visual arts in terms of creating their own verbal space in the form of unique and self-sufficient poetic structures. Among the various aesthetic movements in the early twentieth century, Cubism was one of the most influential. As Glen Macleod claims, [t]he cubist techniques of fragmentation, multiple perspectives, and juxtaposition are part of the standard modernist repertoire from Eliots The Waste Land to Stevenss The Man with the Blue Guitar. 15 That is, due to the influence of the modes of

Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc Nancy, The Literary Absolute: The Theory of Literature in German Romanticism. Translated by Philip Barnard and Cheryl Lester (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988), p. 44. 11 Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation. Translation and foreword by Susan Hanson (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 2003), p. 154. [I modified the first half of the English translation on the basis of the Hungarian translation V. D.] 12 The Literary Absolute 46. 13 The Literary Absolute 43. The quotation is a part of the 116th Athenaeum fragment by Friedrich Schlegel. 14 Frank Kermode in his work entitled Romantic Image (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957) explores this artistic legacy in great detail. 15 Glen Macleod, The visual arts. The Cambridge Companion to Modernism, ed. by Michael Levenson (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 202.

10

visual representation on verbal arts, in the creation of poems as constructions of verbal-textual space the act or quality of looking16 itself became the focal point. Still, this did not mean that poetry or any of the verbal arts was supposed to aim at creating the verbal illusion of visuality. On the contrary. As Reed Way Dasenbrock underlines, Ezra Pound, the originator of the Modernist concept of the poetic image, repeatedly warned against [] the misapprehension that by an image he meant a visual image.17 That is, a new mode of poetic construction emerged which Joseph Frank, the author of Spatial Form in Modern Literature describes as an [a]esthetic form in modern poetry [] based on a space-logic that demands a complete reorientation in the readers attitude towards language.18 For example, in T. S. Eliots work entitled The Waste Land, as Joseph Frank points it out, syntactical sequence is given up for a structure depending on the perception of relationships between disconcerted word-groups.19 Therefore, the Modernist work of verbal art, as a complex lingual utterance, is built up of disconnected textual particles which make up a pattern of relationships that the reader has to decipher herself/himself; and in order to be able to decipher this pattern in a way that it may become meaningful to him/her, the reader has to navigate the space of the text which is the actual area of understanding. Besides Eliot numerous other authors reverted to the realization of this mode of verbal-textual space or spatial form in literature. Among many others, the above mentioned Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Marcel Proust, Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner all made attempts at effectuating this construction. Joyces Ulysses, published in the same year, in 1922, as Eliots The Waste Land testifies of a similarly devised textual space, the elucidation of which will ensue, now that the required ground of its understanding is set.

Macleod 206. Reed Way Dasenbrock, The Literary Vorticism of Ezra Pond and Wyndham Lewis: Towards the Condition of Painting (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), p. 93. 18 Joseph Frank, The Idea of Spatial Form (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1991), p. 15. 19 Frank continues the above cited passage in the following way: To be properly understood, these word-groups must be juxtaposed with one another and perceived simultaneously. Only when this is done can they be adequately grasped; for, while they follow one another in time, their meaning does not depend on this temporal relationship. Frank 14. The stance held by Joseph Frank with regard to this point differs from that of the present paper. I cannot agree with the notion that word groups can be perceived simultaneously, since the sequential character of writing and reading cannot be suspended even in case of a text which is devised in terms of what Frank calls spatial form. However, the sequential character of reading is only one aspect of the complex process of understanding a literary text. The oscillatory game of making sense of diverse textual particles in their respective relations to one another cannot be avoided either, since it is a fundamental requirement in associating disconcerted word-groups and is hence unavoidable in the understanding of the text itself.
17

16

The textual space of Ulysses As Joseph Frank explicates, the reader of Ulysses is compelled to read the text exactly in the same manner as he reads modern poetry, that is, by continually fitting fragments together and keeping allusions in mind until, by reflexive reference, he can link them to their complements.20 Richard Ellmanns statement concerning Joyces mode of composition sheds light on the way such a spatial construction of the text came into being: [h]is method was to write a series of phrases down, then, as each episode took form, to cross off each one in a different coloured pencil to indicate where it might go.21 As a result, complementary textual fragments referring to the same events or themes, establishing associations or constituting verbal echoes surface throughout, at diverse points of the work, which fragments, as Stuart Gilbert points out, have to be assimilated in the readers mind for him to arrive at a complete understanding.22 Therefore, instead of making one follow a sequence of actions and events, Joyce gives us details and actions in solution and obliges us to sort out the givens,23 as David Hayman underlines. Accordingly, Joyce himself declared as regards the possibilities of textual composition that [a] man might eat kidneys in one chapter, suffer from kidney disease in another, and one of his friends could be kicked in the kidney in another chapter,24 which events in the course of the reading process may manifest themselves as diverse associated locations embedded into the textual space of Ulysses. However, the reading process does not simply become a task of assembling a puzzle: it gradually grows into an exploration of an area of understanding, as pointed out above, in which the reader has to follow diverse textual paths form one location of a corresponding fragment to the other and throughout this textual wandering do possibilities of meaning develop. In other words, the distance and the difference between the diverse related textual locations modulate the possibilities of meaningful correlations between these, therefore, such distances and differences are constitutive in making sense of the textual fabric of the work, as it unfolds throughout the process of understanding. The corresponding textual fragments unveil different aspects of the same point of reference which point of reference may concern, among others, a specific relation between characters, a particular theme or a mode of verbal formulation in the novel which are often also interrelated. And as one makes his/her way through the text from one textual location to the other, the significance and meaning of each
Frank 20. Richard Ellmann, James Joyce (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 416. 22 Stuart Gilbert, James Joyces Ulysses (New York: Vintage Books, 1960), p. 25. 23 David Hayman, Ulysses: The Mechanics of Meaning (London and Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), p. 22. 24 Joyce quoted by Ellmann on p. 436.
21 20

site appears differently in the light of previous or impending readerly insights reached at diverse other meaningful locations surfacing in various other contexts. Hence, the whole work is constantly remodulated throughout the process of reading which process is therefore the spatial orientation of the reader in and by the text.25 Moreover, the area of understanding the reader explores as he/she tries to uncover the textual correlations and thus, to make sense of the text of Ulysses does not only entail the diverse routes from one corresponding textual fragment to the other. It also involves the paratactic arrangement or, in other words, the direct juxtaposition of seemingly unrelated segments. Given that the paratactically ordered textual units do not constitute a coherent verbal surface, one has to work out the relations between these oneself as one moves to and fro between them. The juxtaposed textual elements may be discrete textual chunks articulated by diverse textual voices, such as the voice of style and the voice of a narrator, but they may also be disparate fragments of thought or textual vignettes lacking explicit connection though formulated by the same voice. Whichever mode of juxtaposition it may be, parataxis as a result of the collision of the incongruent textual segments always brings about the disruption of a unified narrative surface by way of inducing textual fissures which imply the lack of causal relations and the lack of conceptual thinking. The juxtaposed textual units are joined by the very fissures which separate them, since these hiatuses give rise to counter-orders within the text and the tension of difference between these counter-orders, anchored in the textual gaps, create the actual need of giving sense to the paratactic arrangements. Therefore, as Wolfgang Iser claims, each trace marks both difference and interaction between segments26 which, in turn, means that [d]ifference [] operates both as a divider and as a stimulus for the linking of what has been divided.27 Though Iser explicates the significance of the gaps between the textual segments of a literary text from a different aspect than the one prevailing in the present discussion, his claims prove to be of considerable importance also with regard to understanding how textual space unfurls. By way of creating meaningful fissures, parataxis builds a facet of the verbal-textual space of Ulysses: the juxtaposition of diverse textual segments calls upon the reader to orient herself/himself in the space of textual counter-orders,
Although the scope of the present paper is not wide enough to undertake the task of elaborating the relation between time and textual space, it must be noted that making renewed attempts at understanding the literary text always entails giving time to it. That is, following the diverse textual paths and thereby orienting oneself in the area of understanding always involves correlations between evocation, retention and anticipation, and these correlations are established by the timing of the text. Therefore, one may say that it is time which allows for the comprehension of the texts spatially relational order. 26 Wolfgang Iser, The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology. (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 228. 27 Iser 229.
25

so that in this way (s)he may attempt to uncover their possible correlations and thereby, to answer the need of giving sense to the juxtaposed chunks of the text within its entire area of understanding. The forthcoming passages will make an attempt to elucidate briefly how the various modes of parataxis manifest themselves in the text.

Paratactic arrangements As one of the above mentioned modes of paratactic arrangement in Ulysses, the juxtaposition of discrete textual chunks articulated by diverse textual voices appears several times throughout the novel, conspicuously in the chapters entitled Aeolus and The Cyclops. In the former, the imitations of newspaper headlines interrupt the narrative, in the latter, the narration of the cyclopic narrator is interrupted by passages of stylistic mockery. The meaningful contrast between the style together with the tone of the textual planes presented by the colliding segments, and the implicit associations lingering in the intruding fragments to the narrative passages which they interrupt unfold only if the text is read as a spatial construction. That is, the two textual planes presented by the narrative passages and the intrusions have to be understood in the light of each other so that the sense of the juxtaposition may surface. Let an example illustrate this point from the chapter entitled Aeolus:
What is it? Mr Bloom asked. A recently discovered fragment of Cicero, professor MacHugh answered with pomp of tone. Our lovely land. SHORT BUT TO THE POINT Whose land? Mr Bloom said simply. Most pertinent question, the professor said between his chews. With an accent on the whose. (102-103)
28

The caption SHORT BUT TO THE POINT halts the narrative temporarily in order to anticipate and also to comment ironically on Blooms directly following remark. Therefore, the intruding headline gains significance in the light of the dialogue which it interrupts, and the dialogue itself becomes intelligible if the interrupted passages are associated by the reader retrospectively, with a detour through the intruding caption. The juxtapositional structuring of the text is also observable in the tenth chapter of the novel entitled The Wandering Rocks which, to apply David Haymans phrase, is constructed as a series of interlocking prose vignettes.29 To put it differently, the chapter is constructed
28

All parenthesised references are to the page numbers of the following edition of Ulysses: James Joyce, Ulysses, ed. by Hans-Walter Gabler (London: Penguin Books, 1986). 29 Hayman 97.

of juxtaposed chunks of irregularly shaped prose,30 into which chunks, interpolations are inserted to indicate the fictional simultaneity of various situations. Here is an example:
The shopman let two volumes fall on the counter. Them are two good ones, he said. Onions of his breath came across the counter out of his ruined mouth. He bent to make a bundle of the other books, hugged them against his unbuttoned waistcoat and bore them off behind the dingy curtain. On O'Connell bridge many persons observed the grave deportment and gay apparel of Mr Denis J Maginni, professor of dancing. Mr Bloom, alone, looked at the titles. Fair Tyrants by James Lovebirch. Know the kind that is. Had it? Yes. (193-194)

The section itself from which the example is taken the tenth section or prose vignette within the tenth chapter of the novel presents Leopold Bloom as he is scanning books at a bookstall. The passage presenting the description of the shopman is followed by another, thematically unrelated passage which concerns Mr Maginni, dancing master. Hence, the narrative is, again, halted by way of an interpolation which results an ironic contrast between the appearance, the circumstances and the bearing of the shopman and of the dancing master. This kind of parataxis is also a mode of the spatial orientation of the reader in and by the text, since the relations between the diverse juxtaposed textual segments acquire meaning only if the segments are understood as such parts of the text that throw light upon each other as the reader herself/himself attempts to the uncover the possible correlations between them, oscillating to and fro. On the basis of the exemplified modes of textual composition, one may posit that parataxis proves to be one of the fundamental and hence, unavoidable orders of organization in the textual space of Ulysses. Moreover, the textual construction of series of silent thoughts also demands that these be understood in and as a spatially meaningful arrangement. The juxtaposed fragments of thought expose two or more though not necessarily unrelated thematic planes which are to be made out by way of following the text as it uncovers itself in its own meaningful space. That is, the difference of one plane of thought from the other and their ensuing counter-orders are to be interpreted in terms of their meaning-relations surfacing in the textual space; and the meaning-relations of these planes cannot be understood in any way other than by way of opening up possible correlations between the diverse corresponding fragments of thought given in solution. To put it in another way, the reader, trying to comprehend how the thoughts are related, oscillates from one fragment of thought to the other and in the area of understanding explored by way of this oscillatory game, the possibilities of meaning unfold. The following excerpt, also from The Wandering Rocks chapter, illustrates this well:

30

Hayman 82.

Mr Kernan halted and preened himself before the sloping mirror of Peter Kennedy, hairdresser. Stylish coat, beyond a doubt. Scott of Dawson street. Well worth the half sovereign I gave Neary for it. Never built under three guineas. Fits me down to the ground. Some Kildare street club toff had it probably. (197)

The following interpretation of this passage, as one of the several possible interpretations, seeks to demonstrate that the thematically corresponding fragments of the cited silent monologue reveal their relatedness if one associates them throughout the process of understanding which takes place as an orientation within the realm of the texts spatially meaningful area. Hence, one may reach the following interpretation of the first, the third, the fifth and the sixth sentences by way of understanding them in association: Mr Kernan ponders on his coat and rejoices at the thought of the low price it cost. The second and fourth sentences of the series of silent thoughts intrude into the thematic scope delineated by the first, the third, the fifth and the sixth sentences, engaged by the formerly stipulated association. However, if the second and fourth sentences are also uncovered in their possible correlation, they become meaningful as the constituents of another plane of thought. Scott of Dawson street, on the basis of the association between the second and fourth sentences, may turn out to be somebody who Never built under three guineas. Therefore, in the light of the meaningful relations set up between the thoughts of the first plane, the reference to Scott and to the price of his services (uncovered as the second plane) may be understood as a means of contrast by which Mr Kernan seeks to highlight the advantageous purchase he made with buying a second-hand coat from Neary. If the linear process of reading is not complemented by the spatially oriented understanding of the relations between the diverse fragments of thought, the passage may pose considerable difficulties to the reader.

Last thoughts on the textual space of Ulysses Last but not least, one may speak of spatiality as regards Ulysses in yet another aspect. Though this consideration concerns the mode of textual construction only implicitly, one may say that the arrays of the various stylistic attributes associated with the chapters also amount to a spatially apprehended whole. Most of the episodes were assigned by Joyce an appropriate symbol, an art, a colour and an organ of the body, which all shape the particular mode of textual composition applied in the diverse chapters. These stylistic attributes, however, do not mould the artistic design of the individual chapters only, but also, being interrelated and interconnected in the somatic scheme of the whole,31 as Joyce put it, add another aspect to the spatial apprehension of the novel: Ulysses becomes the space occupied by the human body and
31

Joyce quoted by Jeri Johnson, Introduction, James Joyce, Ulysses: The 1922 Text (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. xxxi.

10

by the microcosm of arts, by the ring of symbols and by the spectrum of colours. Thus, as one reconstructs correspondences and traces echoes in terms of the Joycean stylistic attributes, another facet of the meaningful space of Ulysses takes shape. The diverse facets of spatiality elaborated upon above overlap, intersect with each other and thus comprise a labyrinth of understanding which unfolds throughout the process of reading as the meaningful area of textual correlations: an area that is, which, constructed as the verbal-textual space of Ulysses, compels the reader to delve into the intricate order of the text, so that (s)he may make sense of what is revealed to her/him in its verbal relations. Therefore, the autonomous, textual space constituted by Ulysses testifies to a fundamental insight articulated by Manfred Frank with regard to the process of understanding a literary text, which insight was formulated the following way:
Those who follow only the continuous flow of succession in the text, miss its junctions of meaning, the recurrence of its themes, the concentration of its symbols, the harmony of its scales at diverse locations [], briefly: all those hermeneutical intersections and cross-connections which allow a unidirectionally rendered text to be polyfunctional [].32

Wer nur dem kontinuierlichen Flu der Nacheinander folgt, verfehlt in einem Text die Knotepunkte des Sinns, die Rekurrenz seiner Themen, die Verdichtung seiner Symbole, die harmonie seiner Tonfolgen an Verschiedenen Orten [], kurz: all jene hermeneutischen Kreuz- und Querverbindungen, die einen unidirektional wiedergegebenen Text polyfunktional werden [] lassen. Manfred Frank, Das Sagbare und das Unsagbare: Studien zur deutsch-franzsischen Hermeneutik und Texttheorie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1990), p. 155. [my translation V. D.]

32

11