"By Dot and Dash System": Punctuation and the Void in "Ithaca"

Author(s): Teresa Prudente

Source: European Joyce Studies , 2014, Vol. 23, DOUBTFUL POINTS: Joyce and
Punctuation (2014), pp. 109-127
Published by: Brill

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44871371

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 "By Dot and Dash System":
Punctuation and the Void in "Ithaca"

Teresa Prudente

Abstract: The essay focuses on how Joyce's use of the colon

in "Ithaca" is related to the way the episode re-discusses the
concepts of science and impersonality. Reference to the
history and functions of punctuation unveils the double-
faceted effect produced by the colon's repeated defiance of
the reader's expectations in the episode: on the one hand, it
leaves the mark open to multiple meanings and, on the other,
it deprives it of any given function. In this sense, I relate
Joyce's employment of the colon in "Ithaca" to his treatment
of the concept of the void, insofar as this questioning of the
conventional function of punctuation appears able to re-
create the void between words and sentences, so as to allow
the textual organization to leave behind the traditional set of
logical connections suggested by the mark.

Joyce's deviation from logical and narrative norms in "Ithaca" de

from a set of intertwined compositional procedures that he used w
he wrote the "dry rock" pages {LI 173) of the episode. As we k
the source texts for the chapter - school books, scientific texts,
pedagogical religious texts178 - present a textual and narrat
arrangement that allows the reader to see a conception
impersonality and objectivity in narration. Such paradox
exemplification of an extreme version of impersonality, which n
to be considered in light of Stephen's aesthetic theory in A Port
does not seem to be confined to Joyce's intent to parody

1. For an overview of the possible sources for the chapter and the way they
been interpreted by criticism, see Andrew Gibson, "Introduction", in Jo
" Ithaca ", ed. Andrew Gibson, European Joyce Studies 6 (Amsterdam and At
GA: Rodopi, 1996).

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 110 Prudente

objectivity and exactness

effect of "Ithaca" contrib
achievable, or perhaps des
of the
1 79
definition itself o
narrative conception.
In this context, the major structuring devices in the episode - its
relation to the other episodes, the development of its content and its
inconsistencies, and the paramount issue of point of view - are
inextricably bound to those stylistic, grammatical and syntactical
features which prove to be keystones of the chapter's complex
architecture. From this point of view, Joyce's repeated use of the colon
may be seen as closely connected to the scientific and impersonal
logic dominating the episode, and as operating in line with the
subversion of conventions that the hyper-conventional style of
"Ithaca" paradoxically enacts. The apparent misplacement of the
colon is visible from the very opening of the chapter, where the mark
evades the syntactical functions connected to its usage and
"improperly" comes to signal a temporal progression of the action, as
further emphasized by the "then" placed after the colon:

What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning?

Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place

they followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner
streets and Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced pace, each

2. On how the objective style of "Ithaca" questions and re-discusses impersonality

see especially: Karen Lawrence, "Style and Narrative in the 'Ithaca' Chapter of
Joyce's Ulysses ", ELH 47.3 (Autumn 1980): 559-74; John Paul Riquelme, "Enjoying
Invisibility: The Myth of Joyce's Impersonal Narrator", in The Seventh of Joyce , ed.
Bernard Benstock (Bloomington: Indiana University Press; Sussex: Harvester Press,
1982); Patrick A. McCarthy, "Joyce's Unreliable Catechist: Mathematics and the
Narration of 'Ithaca'", ELH 51.3 (Autumn 1984): 605-18; Harold D. Baker, "Rite of
Passage: 'Ithaca,' Style, and the Structure of Ulysses ", James Joyce Quarterly 23.3
(Spring 1986): 277 -97 ; Antonia Fritz, "Oviditties in 'Ithaca'", in Joyce's "Ithaca",
ed. Andrew Gibson, European Joyce Studies 6 (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi,
1996), pp. 77-105; Pierre Vitoux, "Impersonality and Emotion in James Joyce's
Aesthetics and Fiction", in Impersonality and Emotion in Twentieth-Century British
Literature , eds. Christine Reynier and Jean-Michel Ganteau (Montpellier: Université
Montpellier III, 2005), pp. 43-52; Brian Richardson, "Three Extreme Forms of
Narration and a Note on Postmodem Unreliability", Unnatural Voices : Extreme
Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction (Columbus: Ohio State University
Press, 2006), pp. 79-106.

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 "By Dot and Dash System " 1 1 1

bearing left, Gardiner's place by an inadvertance as far as the

farther corner of Temple street, north: then at reduced pace with
interruptions of halt, bearing right, Temple street, north, as far as
Hardwicke place. Approaching, disparate, at relaxed walking pace
they crossed both the circus before George's church diametrically,
the chord in any circle being less than the arc which it subtends.
(17.01-9)

While the colon promises to satisfy the requirements of the

mathematical catechism of "Ithaca" by introducing, by definition,180
explications (the ones expected in the answers) or lists, and by
signaling that the author is aiming at further clarifying his statements,
colon usage in this chapter often evades these functions thus opening
the way to a series of meaningful textual effects.
One way to disentangle the complex net of significances
produced by punctuation in "Ithaca" is to look into what logical and
syntactical rules are violated by Joyce's use of the colon and,
consequently, what set of alternative functions these punctuation
marks acquire in the text. Joyce's departure from a conventional usage
of the colon appears particularly significant if, as Adorno has
underlined, this mark exerts a strong syntactical function by operating
as "a green traffic light" which - as Adorno continues by quoting Karl
Kraus - "opens its mouth wide: woe to the writer who does not fill it
with something nourishing."181 This definition underlines the
expectations arisen in the reader by the mark of the colon, whether
acting on a conscious or a sub-conscious level. Although punctuation
marks have become more and more invisible to the reader's
perception, studies in the field of cognitive and computational
linguistics show how they still function as a strong, silent indication
guiding the reader in his interpretation of the connections between the
cola of the sentences.182

3. The OED describes the colon as carrying three main uses: to introduce a list; to
introduce a piece of direct speech or a quotation; to separate two parts of a sentence
where the first leads on to the second. As I later will show, further definitions of this
mark stress the fact that in the case of the last usage, that of introducing a causal
connections, the direction of the chain is not necessary carried forward, but it may
rather work in both directions.
4. Theodor W. Adomo, "Punctuation Marks", trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, The
Antioch Review , Vol. 48, No. 3, Poetry Today (Summer, 1990), p. 300.
5. See especially Rona F. Flippo, "Evidence of the Cognitive and Metacognitive
Effects of Punctuation and Intonation: Can the New Technologies Help?", Paper

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112 Prudente

The history of punctua

has emerged as the resul
from the passage from o
came to operate as an in
sentence instead of as an
and intonation of the
produced on the reader
provided by punctuation
absence (or concealmen
"Ithaca", as I intend to a
questioning presence tha
that I have previously
functions of the colon.
This leaves the punctu
while, at the same time,
any significance. It is in

presented at the Annual Me

(Dundee, Scotland, July 1
Punctuation and its Use in
Linguistics , ed. Bernard Jon
and V. Akman, "Current Appr
Computers and the Humanit
on "The Physiology of Readin
(Stanford: Stanford University
6. See Sanger, Between W
Introduction to the History
1992); and Bice Mortara Gara
Laterza, 2008).
7. The first codification of th
Manuzio the Younger (16th ce
contemporary English were
Grammar and have remained r
Brenda J. Willis, "Prosodie and
the Study of Orality and Liter
on punctuation still show a di
punctuation; in the above-men
at the elocutionary and synta
rather as overlapping in thei
(syntactical) roles.
8. See especially Derek Attrid
(Cambridge: Cambridge Unive
Words", in Richard Brown,
Studies 17 (Amsterdam: Rodop

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 "ßv Dot and Dash System " 1 1 3

the colon in "Ithaca" with his treatment of the concept of the v

insofar as such questioning of the fixed meaning of punctu
allows the void between words and sentences to re-emerge,
making the textual organization depart from the limited set of lo
connections traditionally suggested by the mark and enter the terr
of many possible syntactical relations. In this perspective, referen
the origins of the system of punctuation proves helpful not so mu
suggest a correspondence between ancient practices and Joyce's u
the marks, but rather to underline the conventional, and thus arbitrar
foundation of the system that has come to fill the voids between
and that we now take for granted and consider the only pos
modality of textual organization. It is instead useful to remember
that same void separating words and sentences is itself only one o
possible conventions in writing, if we consider the original practi
scriptio continua. 186
In "Ithaca", the emphasis on the unavoidable arbitrary foundat
of punctuation appears inscribed into a wider questioning of
referential function of words in light of the artificial orig
language ("confined to certain grammatical rules of acciden
17.743)). This is visible not only in how the vocabulary and the s
of the episode - the syntactically complex and increasingly
quality of the answers - amplify the opacity of the linguistic me
but also in the repeated references to processes of transcodificat
involving the alphabetic code. These can be found in the geom
and alphabetic rendering of Bloom and Stephen's urinary traject
("Bloom's longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form o
bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter [...] Stephen's higher,
sibilant" (17.1192-98)) with the letters serving as metaphors both
their graphic and sonorous features; in the transcription of the s
letters of Milly's epistle (17.1791-94); in "the transliterated name
address of the addresser of the three letters in reversed alph
boustrophedonic punctated quadrilinear cryptogram (v

9. See the mentioned texts by Saenger, "The Physiology of Reading"; Parkes

and Effect, and Bice Mortara Garavelli, Storia della punteggiatura. For the r
between scriptura continua and modernist experimentation see also: St
McCaffery, Prior to Meaning: The Protosemantic and Poetics (Evanston
Northwestern University Press, 2001); Anthony Cordingley, "The reading ey
scriptura continua to modernism: orality and punctuation between Beckett's L 'i
and Comment c'est/How It is ", Journal of the Short Story in English 47
http://jsse.revues.org/index800.html, accessed on 14th July 2012.

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114 Prudente

suppressed) N. IGS./W
1801); in the "glyphic com
ancient Hebrew and Irish
alphabetic systems of c
(17.1674)); religious ling
tetragrammaron" (17.19
indistinct daguerreotype"
More poignantly, Stephe
"increasing simplificatio
hieroglyphs to the Greek
to emphasize precisely
language has moved towa
an increasing clarification
expense of the immediate
first systems of signs.187
the mentioned passage
function of punctuation,
one of the signs that
Manuscripts, as well as t
reveal how the modern
ipositurae) that signaled t
aloud. More specifically,
pause between the signs

10. I refer here to some of the

debate on the origins of langu
Advancement in Learning on t
by John Bulwer's essay on chy
with that immediate relationsh
one of course thinks of Stephen
odours, would be a universa
"Hieroglyphs, Real Characte
Seventeenth-Century Thought
Lia Formigari, Language and
(Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J.
hieroglyphs in 17,h-century
Characters, and the Idea of N
Thought", Journal of the Histo
afterlife of this notion of the h
questioning of the "hieroglyphi
writing (p. 69).

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 "By Dot and Dash System " 1 1 5

full stop, and, as we read in Isidore,188 was to be employed when

sentence already bore an autonomous meaning but still require
addition to be completed.
Significantly, the importance of punctuation in making the t
understandable was already stressed before the introduction of
syntactical role of marks, with one of the first theoretical treatis
the field authored by the Jesuit grammarian Father Daniello Barto
his Trattato dell'ortografia italiana (1670), Bartoli insisted on
essential role played by the three positurae in guiding the reader f
one part of the text to another, and he provided for this a metap
different from the one, commonly employed, of the org
combination of the parts of a body: that of the discourse seen
separated set of islands with punctuation allowing the reader to m
easily from one to the other. Early Jesuit grammar's emphasis on
claritas deriving from punctuation is strongly contradicted by the
the colon is employed in "Ithaca", where the interposition of the m
often does not serve the function to orient the reader, but rather igni
a set of perplexed responses which range from awareness of the m
which may otherwise pass unnoticed, to its almost autom
substitution with a more "appropriate" sign, or even to perhaps t
most immediate but also fertile reaction: to proceed in reading hav
left the syntactical connections between sentences undetermined
in Father Bartoli's metaphor, the islands disconnected and opened
infinite recombination). In this sense, the way the colon is emplo
in the episode overlaps not only with the pre-syntactical us
punctuation, but also with the practice of transcription of the f
manuscripts, where punctuation was not inserted by the writer,
rather by the scribes,189 with a process of interpretation a
deciphering that does not appear distant from the reader's ta
facing the ever-moving Joycean text.
Joyce deprives the colon of its traditional function in "Ithaca
This deprivation is particularly meaningful when considering
episode's recreation of a scientific examination and/or dissecti
reality and experience. The colon is in fact a mark largely employ
scientific texts not only to achieve clarity and conciseness, but als
its function as a causal connective. Interestingly, the relation

11. Isidore, Etymologiae, "The notis sententiarum" (7th century). See Parkes,
and Effect, p. 22, and Mortara Garavelli, Storia della punteggiatura, p. 55.
12. See Parkes, Pause and Effect, pp. 9-20.

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 116 Prudente

established by the colon b

not tied to a uni-direction
virtue of the erasure of a
this mark can point in bot
vice versa, up to the point
both interpretations,190 wit
The potential causal func
through the repeated use
writing, that of the succe
which theoretically serv
successive causes ("wha
Predictably, the series of
unfolding of an enchain
accumulation of items ty
emptying of the causal
difficulty of interpretatio
its occurrence as variably
discharge" (17.350)) resu
cause-effect chain, thus r
how exhaustive a scien
relationships between ac
deprived of causal meani
juxtaposition which is a
having, though not in con

What advantages attended s

A softer beard: a softer br

from shave to shave in it
unexpectedly encountering
at incustomary hours: (17.2

Firstly, oscillation between

the anticipated diamond

13. Bice Mortara Garavelli, Pro

103.

14. See Fritz Senn, '"Ithaca"': Portrait of the Chapter as a Long List", in Joyce's
"Ithaca", ed. Andrew Gibson, pp. 31-76. Senn's stress on how the techniques of
cataloguing and listing in the chapter work against a recapitulation and completion of
narrative is also relevant to the perpetual movement forward enacted by the colon
which I intend to underline.

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 " By Dot and Dash System " 1 1 7

acceded 1837) and the posticipated opening of the new municipal

fish market: secondly, apprehension of opposition from extreme
circles on the questions of the respective visits of Their Royal
Highnesses, the duke and duchess of York (real), and of His
Majesty King Brian Boru (imaginary): thirdly, a conflict between
professional etiquette and professional emulation concerning the
recent erections of the Grand Lyric Hall on Burgh Quay and the
Theatre Royal in Hawkins street: fourthly, distraction resultant
from compassion for Nelly Bouverist's non-intellectual, non-
political, nontopical expression of countenance and concupiscence
caused by Nelly Bouverist's revelations of white articles of
nonintellectual, non-political, non-topical underclothing while she
(Nelly Bouverist) was in the articles: fifthly, the difficulties of the
selection of appropriate music and humorous allusions from
Everybody s Book of Jokes (1,000 pages and a laugh in every one):
sixthly, the rhymes homophonous and cacophonous, associated
with the names of the new lord mayor, Daniel Talion, the new high
sheriff, Thomas Pile and the new solicitorgeneral, Dunbar Plunket
Barton. (17.428-45)

Such negation of the causal relationships, together with the doubl

directional movement potentially provided by the mark, open the w
to further implications in the effects stimulated by the way the co
operates in the episode. The potential reversibility of the cause-ef
relation introduced by the colon as well as the way this mark ofte
evades its function as a causal connective in may be related to
circularity of religious axiomatic knowledge and to the modalities
which this eludes rational explication,192 in a way not dissimilar t
how science as portrayed in the chapter fails to achieve an exhaus
explication of reality. Significantly, Stephen's reference to s
circular axiomatic logics in "Scylla and Charybdis" ("the churc
founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world
macro- and microcosm, upon the void" (9.839-42)) is re-echoed
passage in "Ithaca" which proves crucial both for the mentio

15. On the modalities by which the catechism operates in Ithaca and, especia
evades conclusion, see Lorraine Weir, "From Catechism to Catachresis: Aspec
Joycean Pedagogy in Ulysses and Finnegans Wake ", in Coping with Joyce : E
from the Copenhagen Symposium , eds. Morris Beja and Shari Benstock (Colum
Ohio State University Press, 1988), pp. 220-31; and Maria DiBattista, "Ulys
Unanswered Questions", Modernism/modernity 15.2 (April 2008): 265-75.

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1 1 8 Prudente

double-directional movemen
void:

Did Stephen participate in his

He affirmed his significa

proceeding syllogistically from
conscious rational reagent b
ineluctably constructed upon t

Was this affirmation apprehen

Not verbally. Substantially.

What comforted his misappre

That as a competent key

energetically from the unk
incertitude of the void. (17.10

The difference between the t

Stephen and Bloom appears
between abstract and exper
adverbs "syllogistically" and
from the two divergent proc
prefigured here. The two opp
Bloom's minds - "from the k
are consequences of the cruci
images of the void here pre
which "a micro and a macro
introduced by the key propo
space to be traversed. It is by
the void that I intend to prop
the way the colon is employe
way similar to the mathemat
also in line with how punc
subsidiary to grammar, but r

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 "By Dot and Dash System " 1 1 9

musical annotations and mathematical signs.193

From this perspective, the chain created by the successive use
colons may also point to a series of atomic subdivisions ("Of the e
of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the earth: of
myriad minute entomological organic existences" (17.1058)) w
reproduce on the page that alternation of matter and v
independence and complementarity of the atoms, which
paramount features of the model proposed by classical atomism:

What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier

returning to the range, admire?

Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature

in seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's
projection: its umplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the
Pacific exceeding 8,000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and
surface particles visiting in tum all points of its seaboard: the
independence of its units: the variability of states of sea: its
hydrostatic quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap
and spring tides: its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the
circumpolar icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and
commercial significance: (17.183-93)

The water's universality is here conceived not as coinciding with

encompassing rational categories, but rather with a "persever
penetrativeness" (17.213-14). The essential characteristic of wat
that it is an element that fills the space of its container inste
assuming a form on its own. The universal element thus
interstitial spaces among things; a characteristic of water, thus, is
is both independent from other elements, while also depending u
them for its fluid form. Joyce's use of the colon in "Ithaca" repro
this relational quality of water, namely in that each phrase separ
by colons is independent on its own (like the independent aspe
water that contains a certain combination of chemical quali
namely H20), but also depends on each of the surrounding phrase
its shape. It is my suggestion, as I will discuss when I tur

16. See Geoffrey Nunberg, The Linguistics of Punctuation (Stanford: Center fo

Study of Language and Information, 1990). See also Sanger's analysis of
relationship between the origins of punctuation and musical and mathematical
Between Words , pp. 131-42.

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 120 Prudente

Lucretius, that the void resembles/models water's essential

movement: that of reaching and coming to fill.
Significantly, the permeability of water is employed as a key
metaphor by Lucretius in his De Rerum Natura, a text which, I argue,
proves essential in order to disentangle the implications of the
atomistic breaking off that the quoted passage appears to perform. In
his work, Lucretius employs this metaphor so as to render the void
and, especially, its inextricability from matter, visible to the reader:
"Then too however solid objects seem, / they yet are formed of matter
mixed with void: / in rocks and caves the watery moisture seeps / and
beady drops stand out like plenteous tears (I, 346-49)." 194 This
conception of the void understood not as the opposite or the negation
of matter, but rather as the space where matter is absent but which is
essential to allow atoms to move and combine proves enlightening in
retracing Joyce's treatment of the void conceived not so much as an
abstraction, but rather as a dense and inhabitable space, occupied by
those "mouldy voids" {FW 37.07-9) which condense not only the
vacuum's multiplicity and internal differentiation, but also its
dynamic, ever-changing and ever-growing nature. As I will show, the
reference to Lucretius proves essential not only in light of the
innovative conception of the void suggested by his poem, but also
because the very purpose animating his work, that of offering a poetic
exposition of Epicurean atomism, represents a significant precursor of
"Ithaca'"s interaction of language, science, and epistemology.
Recent criticism on De Rerum Natura has underlined how
Lucretius 's treatment of the void can be seen as exceeding the
Epicurean notion of the void understood exclusively as space deprived
of matter and as hinting instead at the vacuum possessing a certain
degree of dynamism. This radicalization of the double-faceted
implications of the void - the simultaneous horror and voluptas vacui
- has been interpreted as stemming not so much from Lucretius's
philosophical positions, but rather from his exploitation of the "poetic
potential of void,"195 in close connection with how his attempt at
"representing to the imagination the physical hypothesis of atomism

17. "Praeterea quamvis solidae res esse putentur,/ hinc tamen esse licet raro cum
corpore cernas, /in saxis ac speluncis permanat aquarum/liquidus umor et uberibus
fient omnia guttis" in Lucretius, De Rerum Natura , I, 346-49.
18. James I. Porter, "Lucretius and the Poetics of Void", in Le jardin romain:
Épicurisme et poésie à Rome: Mélanges offerts à Mayotte Bollack , ed. Annick Monet,
2003. Available online at <http://sites.google.com/site/jamesivanporter/articles>.

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 "By Dot and Dash System" 1 2 1

entails being able to represent void."196 The mind's ina

conceive of and express the void shapes Lucretius's conc
language, which appears partially and meaningfully to depar
Epicurean orthodoxy. Although Lucretius's discourse on the f
of words (Book 5) follows the Epicurean materialistic explan
sees this formation as an automatic process originating f
body's reaction to the sensorial impact of objects, further ins
his poem hint instead at a questioning of this notion of langu
exclusively physiological phenomenon.
As Brooke Holmes has underlined, Lucretius's crucial exp
"lingua daedala"197 ("the tongue, crafter (or fashioner) of
read together with a second definition, provided in Book
tongue as "animi interpres"198 ("translator of the mind") re
words are seen by the Latin poet as exceeding the mere r
function, that of describing the world of phenomena, t
invention and creative elaboration in order to express th
content and to convey "a real world that may only
analogically or through its perceptible effects, that is, the
atoms and void".199
The notion itself of clinamen, the swerve by which th
atoms is influenced and disturbed, which Lucretius s
emphasizes in comparison with its role in Epicurean atomism
set of epistemological implications related again to the
quality of the void. In Deleuze's interpretation, the clinamen
as the foundation of those concepts of "difference" and
which Epicurus and Lucretius affirm in contrast with
epicurean focus on Being and Wholeness, inasmuch the
proves not so much an arbitrary deviation, but rather "a diff
matter and, by the same token, a differential of thought, ba
method of exhaustion" thus manifesting "the lex atomi, tha
irreducible plurality of causes or of causal series, and the im

19. Porter, "Lucretius and the Poetics of Void", p. 28.

20. "Hasce igitur penitus voces cum corpore nostro/exprimimus rec
emittimus ore,/ mobilis articulât verborum daedala lingua/ formaturaque l
parte figurât." (4.549-52) ["then when we express these voices from the de
body and send/ them forth directly from the mouth, the nimble tongue,
words,/ joints them and the shaping of the lips in tum gives them form"].
2 1 . Lucretius, De Rerum Natura , 6. 1 149.
22. Brooke Holmes, " Daedala Lingua: Crafted Speech in De Rerum
American Journal of Philology 126.4 (Winter 2005): 564.

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 122 Prudente

of bringing causes toget

differentiation and on th
us back to the movemen
suggested by Joyce's use
an epistemological model b
the empty spaces in betw
the events), or, in terms o
sentences that they relate o
From an aesthetic point
within matter ("est in re
also suggests that Bloom's
(17.1019) implies a discour
be conceived as able to recreate the void as simultaneous and
complementary, rather than alternative, to matter. Sam Slote has
underlined how the two characters' different relationships with the
element of water, Stephen's hydrophobia in contrast with Bloom's
fascination with it,201 involve a subterranean discourse on art, insofar
as despite the incompatibility of "genius and water" (17.237-40)
proclaimed by Stephen, the aquatic element holds many of the
characteristics of art as conceived by Joyce. In this sense, Stephen's
hydrophobia can be read as further separating the character from the
previously-mentioned epistemological model based on differentiation
of states, that is to say from that sensorial and logical process of
knowledge which, similar to the image of Bloom traversing the void,
entails the subject's penetration into the interstitial space of
discontinuous matter, discontinuous space and time.202
Stephen's transition from the known to the unknown (17.1013-
14) proceeds syllogistically through a deductive model, excluding the
subject's involvement with or immersion in experience, and,
significantly, with a replication of the circular religious logics which I
have outlined. The axiomatic ground on which Stephen's system of

23. Gilles Deleuze, The Logic of Sense (New York: Columbia University Press,
1990), pp. 269-70.
24. Sam Slote, "Questioning Technology in 'Ithaca'", Hypermedia Joyce Studies 8.2
(2007). <http://hjs.ff.cuni.cz/archives/v8_2/main/essays.php?essay=slote>
25. See also Suzette A. Henke's analysis of how Bloom's attitude seems to be
related to Blaise Pascal's conception of the ""two infinites" defining existence. The
universe is bounded by endless space, yet the void penetrates into the center of every
particle of matter". Suzette A. Henke, Joyce's Moraculous Sindbook (Columbus:
Ohio State University Press, 1978), p. 216.

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 "ßv Dot and Dash System " 123

knowledge seems to be constructed - further emphas

adverb "ineluctably" - becomes reflected also in his positio
agent" rather than as "agent", insofar as his "consciou
attitude seems to entail separation from rather than appr
experience, thus making concepts such as the "void", the
and "incertitude" appear as abstractly re-constructed by his
this sense, the epistemological model which here seem
with Stephen appears to allude to something contrary to
the artist as able to explore the void [to "travel the void w
(FW 469.9-11)] and especially to penetrate that "void of
100.27), which inevitably connects also to the proc
detachment inherent in the notion and narrative t
impersonality.
The interstitial model to which I've previously referred
to Lucretius 's atomistic model in fact opens the ground t
idea of impersonality that does not entail artificial self-eff
an ideal of scientific objectivity (the same parodied in "Ith
rather the subject's physical adherence to the void,204
similar to what happens in Lucretius's poetic attempt, the
of the void as an element that is to be explored and n
reconfigured not as an abstraction, but rather as no less i
than matter is.
The potential atomistic processes of division and s
which the colon enacts in "Ithaca" render visible to the rea

26. See also Geert Lernout's examination of the differences show

characters in their approaches to reading and learning, and the way the
the reader's hermeneutic process: "Bloom's eclipse of Stephen also sig
of reading novels. The two characters stand for a different hermene
example invites readers to hunt for references, to look for parallels
Shakespeare. [...] Without at least a measure of Bloom's empathy it is
if not impossible to know what is going on". Geert Lernout, James
(Dublin: The National Library of Ireland, 2004), p. 27.
27. This idea is inscribed into the research I am currently carryi
epistemological and scientific foundation of the notion and technique o
in Woolf and Joyce. For a more extensive treatment of the connecti
between impersonality and the void, see Teresa Prudente, "Woolf and
Perspectives for a Dynamic Comparison", in Weaving New Perspecti
eds. M. Alonso and Laura Torrado (New Castle upon Tyne: Cambr
Press, 2012), pp. 96-120, while the premises of my work on impersonal
authors can be found in Teresa Prudente, "'The Daily Bread of Ex
Transfiguration of Materiality in Joyce's and Woolf s Writing",
(Summer 2011): 142-58.

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124 Prudente

the empty space separat

relations between cola),
such process of breakin
colons to which I have
simultaneously the infin
Bloom" (17.1932); "Did
division, afflict him? Les
hoped" (17.884-85)] and a
be seen as one of the po
established by the colon, a

Were there obverse medi

vast?

Of the eons of geological p

the earth: of the myriad m
concealed in cavities of th
hives and mounds, of
spermatozoa: of the incalcu
imperceptible molecules
affinity in a single pinh
constellated with red and
void space constellated wit
universe of divisible com
divisible in divisions of r
and divisors ever diminish
progress were carried fa
reached. (17.1057)

The succession of colons

atomistic subdivision of m
image of an incessant mo

28. I refer here to Agamben' s

Deleuze's last essay "Immanen
conception of immanence insofa
kind, something like an absolu
something like a passage withou
the dislocation of immanence i
remains absolutely immanent
carries a colon with it" (Gior
Philosophy , ed. and trans. Danie
1999), pp. 223-28).

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 "By Dot and Dash System " 1 25

Atomistic fission of the infinitesimal elements suggests her

movement whose end is graphically (and again - in line
stress on the artificial foundation of punctuation - conve
represented by the full stop closing the passage, wh
simultaneously contradicted by the words preceding the clo
("nought nowhere was never reached"), in a way similar to h
episode constantly contradicts its implicit promise of explana
This stress on perpetual movement is important because
us understand how the elements that I have so far underlined
orchestrate the episode's internal development and its role within
Ulysses. The endless tension towards infinity is enacted in the chapter
by a set of interlaced procedures (or violation of procedures) which
appear to reproduce this incessant and blind progression, whereas the
void - and, in narrative terms, impersonality - is not seen as a given
perceptual and aesthetic status, but rather as the object of an endless
quest. The path "from existence to inexistence" (17.67) becomes thus
an unstable and uncertain process, "there being no known method
from the known to the unknown" (17.1 140), but rather

An infinity renderable equally finite by the suppositious apposition

of one or more bodies equally of the same of different magnitudes:
a mobility of illusory forms immobilized in space, remobilized in
air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a present before its
probable spectators had entered actual present existence (17.1141-
45)

The emphasis here on the artificial nature of a process of subdivision

of infinity which renders this ungraspable concept visible to the mind
("renderable," "immobilized," "remobilized") while also
incorporating an awareness of such artificiality ("illusory") and its
consequent conceptual fragility ("possibly", "probable"). Repetitions,
alliterations and polyptotons further amplify the "emptiness" of the
concepts these words refer to ("suppositious apposition ... a mobility
... immobilized ... remobilized ... exist as a present ... present
existence"), thus unveiling the dynamics of a simultaneous
encapsulation and questioning of linguistic and epistemologica!

29. In this respect it is also worth considering the full stop closing the episode
which, as we know, Joyce wanted to be particularly visible. See on this matter Austin
Briggs, "The Full Stop at the End of 'Ithaca': Thirteen Ways - and Then Some - of
Looking at a Black Dot", Joyce Studies Annual 7 (1996): 125-44.

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 126 Prudente

conventions performed b
although not linear, proce
it was not a heaventree,
heavenman. That it wa
unavoidable conventions bu
on them and, subsequently
In terms of punctuation,
relation to the colon, suc
emphasis of the marks' p
displacement and a repea
they give rise. Nonethe
proceeding, since not only
set of different situations
this subversion also coex
the mark fully adheres to
happens more insistently t
the idea of a non-linear
shown earlier, of a proc
reversal, visible also tow
reverting pattern from "an

The visible signs of antesati

An approximate erection: a
elevation: a tentative revela

[...]

The visible signs of postsatisfaction?

A silent contemplation: a tentative velation: a gradual abasement: a

solicitous aversion: a proximate erection. (17.2237-46)

In this sense, the difficult and tentative process from the known to the
unknown appears to remain constantly open to its - perhaps
unavoidable - reversal, which opens the question of how the absence
of punctuation in "Penelope" works in relation to the dynamics of

30. See for instance 17.1292-98; 17.1593-1602; 17.1936-47; and 17.2311-18.

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 "By Dot and Dash System" 1 27

punctuation in "Ithaca". In light of the elements so far underlin

may in fact ask whether the void of punctuation in Ulyss
episode may be conceived as a "real" void (and thus as the
point of a process which, nonetheless, as we know, tends to a
"never to be reached"); or, again, as a stage in a cyclic process
discussion of conventions entailing both subversion and incorp
of those same conventions; or, by following the dynamics
have intended to single out in this essay, as one of those inter
empty spaces which are integral parts of an intermittent lingui
experiential model.

University of Turin

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