Joyce's notes 2

Robert wishes Richard to use against him the weapons which social conventions and morals put in the hands of the husband. Richard refuses. Bertha wishes Richard to use these weapons also in her defence. Richard refuses also and for the same reason. His defence of her soul and body is an invisible and imponderable sword.



As a contribution to the study of jealousy Shakespeare's Othello is incomplete. It and Spinoza's analysis are made from the sensational standpoint-- Spinoza speaks of pudendis et excrementis alterius jungere imaginem rei amatae.

cf Brandes [ebook]
PROPOSITIO XXXV
'but also because the image of a lover is forced to join the other parts and droppings'


Bertha has considered the passion in itself-- apart from hatred or baffled lust, the scholastic definition of jealousy as a passio irascibilis comes nearer-- its object being a difficult good. In this play Richard's jealousy is carried one step nearer to its own heart. Separated from hatred and having its baffled lust converted into an erotic stimulus and moreover holding in its own the power the hindrance, the difficulty which has excited it, it must reveal itself as the very immolation of the pleasure of possession on the altar of love. He is jealous, wills and knows his own dishonour and the dishonour of her, to be united with every phase of whose being is love's end, as to achieve that union in the region of the difficult, the void and the impossible is its necessary tendency.

Aquinas distinguishes concupiscent and irascible passions [more?]



It will be difficult to recommend Beatrice to the interest of the audience, every man of which is Robert and would like to be Richard-- in any case Bertha's. The note of compassion can be struck when she takes the spectacles from her pocket in order to read. Critics may say what they like, all these persons-- even Bertha-- are suffering during the action.



Why the title Exiles? A nation exacts a penance from those who dared to leave her payable on their return. The elder brother in the fable of the Prodigal Son is Robert Hand. The father took the side of the prodigal. This is probably not the way of the world-- certainly not in Ireland: but Jesus' Kingdom was not of this world nor was or is his wisdom.



Bertha's state when abandoned spiritually by Richard must be expressed by the actress by a suggestion of hypnosis. Her state is like that of Jesus in the garden of olives. It is the soul of woman left naked and alone that it may come to an understanding of its own nature. She must appear also to be carried forward to the last point consistent with her immunity by the current of the action and must show even a point of resentment against the man who will not hold out a hand to save her. Through these experiences she will suffuse her own reborn temperament with the wonder of her soul at its own solitude and at her beauty, formed and dissolving itself eternally amid the clouds of morality.



The secondary and lower phase of Robert's position is the suspicion that Richard is a cunning adventurer using Bertha's body as a bait to gain Robert's friendship and support. The corresponding phase in Richard's attitude is the suspicion that Robert's admiration and friendship for him is simulated in order to lull and stupefy the vigilance of his mind. Both these suspicions are borne in upon the characters from purely external evidence and do not in either case spring into existence spontaneously from the soils of their natures.



It is an irony of the play that while Robert not Richard is the apostle of beauty, beauty in its visible and invisible being is present under Richard's roof.