Regressively
Regressively
In Brief
The abstract, Latinate, rational language of Ithaca
can paradoxically intensify the presentation of Bloom's
emotional states, by gazing down blankly from olympian heights
on his human griefs and longings. The first such moment comes
as Bloom recollects other nights when he enjoyed meaningful
intellectual conversation. After mentally ticking off a list
of such talks, the narrative asks what inference he draws from
"the irregular sequence of dates 1884, 1885, 1886, 1888, 1892,
1893, 1904." Answer: "He reflected that the progressive
extension of the field of individual development and
experience was regressively accompanied by a restriction of
the converse domain of interindividual relations." The more we
become ourselves, in other words, the less companionship we
experience with others. This observation of an inverse
relationship feels mathematical, and indeed it owes something
to Bertrand Russell's Introduction to Mathematical
Philosophy.
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Bloom's memories of other stimulating conversations involve
particular people (Owen Goldberg, Cecil Turnbull, Percy
Apjohn, "casual acquaintances and prospective purchasers,"
"major Brian Tweedy and his daughter Miss Marion Tweedy,"
Julius Mastiansky), places (streets, parlors, railway cars,
doorsteps, a garden wall), and times ("at night," "in the
evenings," "occasionally," "frequently," "once"). But the bare
list of numbers, abstracted from their experiential contexts,
invites depressive thoughts. Although its "irregular
sequence" hardly justifies the formulation of a
mathematical law, it does suggest an inverse relationship
between age and companionship. Adult personality displays a
pattern of "progressive extension of the field of
individual development and experience": as one ages one
becomes more intellectually capable, more confident in one's
observations and judgments, more set in one's ways, more
oneself. Meanwhile, in "the converse domain of
interindividual relations," those same years see a "restriction."
As we progress, we regress.
Bloom may be thinking this thought only about himself, and he
certainly is not doing so in such hyper-abstract terms, but
the quasi-mathematical language suggests a universal law of
human experience: "progressive" individuality is inevitably
accompanied by "regressive" interindividuality. Slote,
Mamigonian, and Turner note that two of the narrative's terms,
"field" and "converse domain," come from
Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy
(1919): "The field of a relation consists of its
domain and converse domain together" (32). Joyce jotted down
these terms in one of his notebooks: "field = domain &
converse" and "converse domain of relations." He also wrote
there, "0 = 1/many, ∞ = many/1, other = 1/1," this time
reflecting another of Russell's comments: "It will be observed
that zero and infinity, alone among ratios, are not one-one.
Zero is one-many, and infinity is many-one" (65).
These sentences clearly lie behind the answer to the next
question in Ithaca: "From inexistence to existence
he came to many and was as one received: existence with
existence he was with any as any with any: from existence to
nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived."
Here Russell's zero (1/many) is the person being born, his
integers (1/1) are life, and his infinity (many/1) is death.
Joyce's formulation describes birth as the process of one
individual coming into relationship with many others. Life is
a process of one-on-one encounters, searching for meaningful
relationship amid a sea of impersonal others. And death is a
return to nothingness (or allness, depending on one's beliefs)
in which all relationship ceases. The largest knowable expanse
of human life, then, exemplifies the law articulated
previously: we start out meaningfully connected to many others
and see that plenitude shrink toward the vanishing point.
These dark philosophical reflections on human life are echoed
emotionally, later in the chapter, in the "lonechill" that
Bloom feels when the young man whom he has invited into his
life walks cheerfully out of it.
1924 photograph of Bertrand Russell. Source: Wikimedia Commons.