Danial's

The Ghost of Shakespeare

From notes by J. Joyce: "What is a ghost? Stephen said with tingling energy. One who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners." ... Ghosts have fixed identities. Even with an identity forever etched into living memory, you may yet turn into a ghost, in which case your identity only serves to have you better framed - as a sketch in a "wanted" - or unwanted - flyer is. The chapter containing Stephen's causerie on Hamlet seems like the core of Ulysses, as if everything else must have formed itself around it. Nothing less might have been expected of Joyce: to be motivated, through something Shakespeare wrote, to find out what moved Shakespeare to write it, and to create Ulysses in the process!

posted by Danial @ 09:37