ABSTRACT

Now both smoothness and sequence are gone from the novel. The Subjective or Stream of Consciousness has been substituted. And the Subjective covers a multitude of sins. The so-called ‘modern’ novel appears to me to be a garbage-pail or ash-can which contains any or every cast-off remnant of living: old cloths, broken crockery, back numbers, stale food and decaying fish. I might has guessed that there was Chaos coming, for Joyce had his aileron out and caught rumblings from Rimbaud, rumours of a revolt that cast its shadow before the revolution, and was destined to turn things topsy-turvy until hideousness took the place of beauty, and slavery the place of liberty, and discord the place of harmony, disruption the place of unityunless the cohesion that the galvanised garbage-pail gives to its contents be considered an unity: the bucket in this instance being the Subconscious. Naturally, these ‘moderns’ in their obscurity were left to talk to themselves for the want of an audience. Joyce went one further, and talked to himself in his sleep: hence Finnegans Wake.