‘things exactly as they are and things upon the blue guitar'

‘things exactly as they are and things upon the blue guitar'

By

Sampson I. Onwuka

The Joyce Country…

I have taken interest in the literature of William York Tindall (1960), concerning in this case the Joyce Country, Ireland, on the nature of things and things upon an object. In discussing Ireland, he mentions that there are and as they were two things; ‘things exactly as they are and things upon the blue guitar. The blue instrument is art, of course. Things as they are green. That Ireland is green and Ulysses blue….” We take from Tillman the sense of ‘analogy’ - the original nature of Ulysses character that he is opiate blue as Ireland is green - perhaps from a certain angle. The inspiration for Joyce country is cast for instance upon Europe, based in part on furniture as if part of an original and permanent character in a play so described as Stephen in Stephen Hero masterpiece where the author
makes allusions to the ‘Dublin Clock’ and the sense of ‘epiphany’ which alters differently when imagination endows reality, and according the book, “Stephen of Stephen Hero is another helpful commentator for that boy could find epiphany in a grain of sand. Equivalent to his radiance, his epiphany is a showing forth and a seeing into….”

It is not impossible to conclude or accept that certain natural expectations are unnatural, a statement of reason that welcomes an acceptance that the use of the definitive article ‘upon’ for instance upon that hour defines a time defines a circumstance. It is the circumstance of this hour that elevates the observer to higher limits of human imagination, that going forward upon that 'hour' is meeting for ‘going forth’ either/or ‘looking into’.


The drama from the page takes a new look when Europe replaces the votive use of Joyce Country Ireland and Vico’s New Science as takes a form from its narrative standard of history, that history of Europe so described as a changing pattern rest upon the vistas of old villages, and here and perhaps like elsewhere - imaginations sulk that Europe is by its history transformed into character, into an idea that is infringes the sentiment of nearly every observer.

As some experts once mentioned that we take it that “…the future of the idea of Europe! If it has one, depends less on central banking and agricultural subsidies, on investment in technology or common tariffs, subsidies, on investment in technology or common tariffs, than we are instructed to believe.”

We take it that Idea of Europe – the subject of George Steiner’s Essay (2004; 2012) is on Europe as upon a fair, for here as perhaps elsewhere Europe for Steiner “…is the place where Goethe’s garden almost borders on Buchen wald, where the house of Corneille abuts on the marketplace in which Joan of Arc was hideously done to death.” In the drama that follow parts of James Joyce and his Ulysses, the author is no longer at ease with the art, his reflection is a character from perhaps an influence no longer affair for Ireland. It is not here that imaginations fail to impress than character is subject upon a ‘blue guitar’ as if Europe with ‘all its fears’ is consigned to the deep of history. The rise of Europe and its civilization began with Christianity, it staggered along the corridors of Judaism, Islam and the Gypsies, with the collapse of Christianity, it yields to its decline. It is the negative that is the picture. 

We invoke here the character of Rob Riemen and his interpretation of Steiner’s Essay that false is going forth when an idea is not upon an act. There is something of uncertainty is an act, original on how it evolves and like a play, it leads somewhere, perhaps not a play it is riddled with uncertainty. It is the resonance of an act endears as a play, for a play is upon an act, hold differently alters as well. 

Where George Steiner could not have imagined his essay upon a Joyce Country, his shift of apathy and invocations on Spinoza; ‘All things excellent are as difficult as difficult as they are rare”, swallow his commandment that you ‘do not shy away from that which is difficult’. A green guitar for Europe upon a blue outfit may or may not impress, but there is an understatement that a gap exist between what defines the difference between polar ends and actions which a natural reactions authors for a moment.

In all reality, there are limits of expectations in history and for a moment, an acts in the moment defines history, history defines an idea, and idea defines certain aspect of character. 

Rob Riemen thus says, “Europe committed suicide by killing its Jews. The destruction of six million European Jews, the destruction of six million European Jews, the destruction of the world of Mahler, Alban Berg, Hofmannsthal, Booch, Kafka, Celan, Karl Kraus, Walter Benjamin .… was also the destruction of l’esprit europeen, the idea of Europe. With the loss of this idea, nothing remained of Europe but a cultureless, soulless, purely geographic and economic entity,”

The future is not the concern of this commentator, he seeks redemption for an idea of Europe, he is a product of some past, short in the grasp of the changing landscape that perhaps elsewhere like some old Irish Country, landscapes betray, etc., and history is upon a time. He is searching for some epiphany perhaps, no more than character as with idea Europe ‘setting forth’ is epiphany not from rear view and images.       

Once upon a time explains the mindset of the desiderata, the narrator is speaking from a time, as if he or she speaks to an idea, for Europe based on some history, which for all memories can and still disappoint. George Steiner is here a humanist, and his essaying about Europe and its future, that an idea of Europe is based on a character based on the persecutions of the Church and against the Church yielding grudgingly to asunder of State and the Church. Steiner claims a future in his essay that “A post Christian Europe may emerge, though slowly and in ways difficult to predict, from the shadows of religious persecution. In a world now in the grip of murderous fundamentalism, be it that of the American South or Midwest, be it that of Islam, Western Europe may have the imperative hammering out, of enacting a secular humanism. It can purge itself of its own dark heritage.…”

It is impossible to see Steiner plainly as an advocate for Europe caught in the cycle of ‘dark heritage’. 

If we can judge the last lines from the initial dispatch, he seems to believe that the character of Europe is equal to the acts of the Christian church, a pride slovenly dispelled from the acceptance that ‘a post Christian Europe’ was equally detrimental, equally useful and proves in part that conflict in part defies character but in whole, if not in part, war is history and an idea. Our point is faulted in impugning on divided Europe and Jewry but here and once more like elsewhere, the gulf assume new significance when Europe and its past is no more than a shadow in the history and narrative of Joyce Country Ireland. We may end from when we began by casting Europe as Ireland as Joyce Country Ireland begins to replace Europe. 

What invokes an epiphany? Monotony or a deference, the idea of one language is not upon an Eden, or with Europe as one people or an idea, or Europe perhaps a culture ridden to acts, or a realia based upon a ‘blue guitar’ and some Irish Country called Joyce. Instead of the ‘worlds of Richelieu, of Palmerston and of Bismarck,’ and the morality of our niceties religion which everyone can disagree, we can hum for Joyce Country and perhaps like William Blake ‘Auguries of Innocence’ or perhaps another, we are off “To see a world in a grain of sand/And heaven in a wild flower/Hold infinity in the palm of your hand/and eternity in an hour.”