Joyce's Misbelief

2. “A Ripping Good Joke”: The Attractions of Schism

2 “A Ripping Good Joke” The Attractions of Schism Much in Joyce proceeds by indirection; what is crucial to the text and to him is often nudged to the side of the main attraction. Meaning is divertive in the sense that the ostensible focus of Joyce’s narrative is often a substitute—a distraction, an amusement—for what is really at issue. Mockery and play are strategies of indirection, seeking to move away from something serious, to parody something essential. It is in the oblique spaces created by indirection and circumlocution that opportunities for freedom occur. Misbelief thrives in silence and misdirection. Joyce’s interest in religion is similarly expressed through indirection and deflection ; it all begins with a joke. The Stephen Dedalus of Portrait is a character who, while constantly being schooled, alternates between religious impulses of obedience and rebellion; his interests and concerns are frequently about matters of faith. Because of his superior status as head boy, he is expected and called upon to act the part of a schoolmaster during Belvedere’s Whitsuntide performance. Yet his part is just that—an act, a role-playing.1 His concern for issues of obedience and faith are likewise called up when his schoolmate Heron suggests that his performance add a touch of parody: “What a lark it would be if you took off the rector in the part of the schoolmaster. It would be a ripping good joke” (75). The “lark” is the lightheartedness of a schoolboy prank (whatever its comic lowering of Stephen’s self-conception in the later figure of the “hawk-like man”), and the imitation and parody of the august religious leader, his being “taken off,” would be “ripping”—slang for something excellent, splendid . The inference is that all authority, teachers and priests both, should be ridiculed. Stephen is asked by Heron particularly to parody the rector’s sonority : “He that will not hear the churcha let him be to theea as the heathena and the publicana” (76).2 To jibe at authority, especially its pronouncements about serious matters, by mocking its voice, its pronunciation, is a fine piece of work. A loose transcription of Jesus’ words to his disciples about how they should regard rebellious congregation members, those who “will not hear,” the statement Heron proposes for mocking the rector deserves attention. The passage “A Ripping Good Joke”: The Attractions of Schism / 11 from Matthew 18: 17 in the Douay Bible reads: “If he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican.” Heron is not quite accurate, although he gets close. The Authorized Version also approaches near enough: “But if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen and a publican.” (There seems to be a little trouble about those articles, “the” and “a” publican. The fact that Joyce’s text corresponds to neither version will be discussed later.) This sentence presents obliquely and silently something that is not foregrounded in the main narrative. Here, Heron persists in teasing Stephen , this time about Emma and how his erotic interest in her precludes him, according to Heron, from being a “saint” (77) and makes him rather a “sly dog” (76). Through Heron, Joyce continues to challenge and mock religious values, suggesting his own cynicism. When Heron forces Stephen to “admit” his hypocrisy , he “submissively”—if comically—recites the Confiteor. The confession is the apparent focus both of this narrative sequence and the subsequent memory it evokes of a similar incident in which Stephen refuses to admit that Byron is a heretic; yet the passage Heron calls to be parodied is as much the issue as the succeeding scenes of mock confession and submission. The statement from the Gospel is one of the seminal directives on how the faithful should respond to a heretic. The Catholic Encyclopedia cites the same passage from Matthew to define heretical behavior (“Schism,” 13:532). Heresy is a manner of thinking or following a school of thought, and the word derives from the word for choice, one of perversion and diversion. Even while Stephen is only “acting,” he both defines heresy and pronounces on it. This choice and its tangential presentation in the text pertain to the essential identity of religion in Joyce, represented through imitation, parody, and indirection. On one side, religion is relegere: a rereading or an interpretative choice that repeats (hence, the imitation of the rector through play-acting or Stephen’s repeated memories of...