Hollander quotes the final sentence of “The Dead”: “His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” The chiasm of “falling faintly” and “faintly falling” makes it feel as if you pass through the sentence twice - as if you walked through a revolving door and came back out, but were not where you started.
Hollander also notes that Joyce inverts the tradition trope of the echo. Traditionally, the initiating voice is whole, and the responding echo is fragmentary (Herbert’s “Heaven” is one of Hollander’s most accessible examples). With Joyce, though, the fragmentation often comes first, and is only later (if at all) univocalized.
Peter Leithart
Peter J. Leithart is President of Theopolis Institute. He is the author of numerous books on theology, literature, and culture, including Theopolitan, Defending Constantine, and Baptized Body.
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