Coactus volui
Coactus
volui
In Brief
"Coactus volui," the obscure Latin phrase that the madman Farrell mutters from bared teeth in Wandering Rocks, has a paradoxical meaning: "Having been forced, I was willing." It comes from Justinian's Institutes, one section of an immense codification of existing Roman law called the Corpus Juris Civilis that the Byzantine Emperor Justinian commissioned in the 6th century. Farrell's quotation suggests a preoccupation with the law that is both learned and maddening.
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R. J. Shork identified the source of the strange phrase in
"Joyce and Justinian: U250 and 520," JJQ 23 (1985):
77. His note reports that the Institutes cite a legal
opinion by "the jurisconsult Paulus" on the question of how
"force and fear" may affect the validity of a contract. Paul
wrote, "Si metu coactus adii hereditatem, puto me heredem
effici, qua quamvis si liberum esset noluissem, tamen
coactus volui": "If I have been forced by fear to
accept a legacy, I judge that I am made a legatee because,
although I would not have been willing had it been freely
offered, nevertheless, having been forced, I was willing."
In other words, legal contracts willingly signed are binding
even if the will of the signer was forced.
The perverse logic of such inhumane legal arguments evidently is exacerbating Farrell's mental imbalance: in the next sentence the narrative shows him "grinding his fierce word." The phrase also characterizes his education in the classics and his unhappy preoccupation with an injury done him. The man known to Dubliners as "Endymion" suffered devastating brain damage in 1874 as a result of a work accident and filed two unsuccesful lawsuits against people as a result. He passed much of his time in the readers' room of the National Library––a fact reflected in Scylla and Charybdis when Stephen thinks of the man's madly elaborate signature in the room's visitor log––and his education certainly included some study of Latin. In As I Was Going Down Sackville Street Oliver Gogarty, a classicist of real distinction, touches more than once on Farrell's familiarity with Latin. He recalls that after he helped Farrell resolve a dispute with his landlady, she sent the two men on their way with "Pax vobiscum," a familiar Latin phrase:
Indignantly Endymion turned and shouted:
"Nux vomica! my good woman. Nux vomica!..."
"I never allow the common people to outquote me in the classics," he explained. (266)
This absurd non sequitur (Nux vomica is a tree whose leaves produce the poisonous compound strychnine) is of a piece with Farrell's perpetual zaniness, but it testifies to his classical education. By having him mutter "Coactus volui," Joyce suggests that he passes his days consulting obscure Latin tomes in vain hopes of finding a legal remedy to his great misfortune. In this respect he confirms what Josie Breen says of her husband in Lestrygonians: "Denis will be like that one of these days."
