April 8, 2007

  • Eleven

    Today's sermon

    Samuel Beckett on Dante and Joyce:

    "Another point of comparison is the preoccupation with the significance
    of numbers. The death of Beatrice inspired nothing less than a highly
    complicated poem dealing with the importance of the number 3 in her
    life. Dante never ceased to be obsessed by this number. Thus the poem
    is divided into three Cantiche, each composed of 33 Canti....
    Why, Mr. Joyce seems to say, should.... the Armistice be celebrated at
    the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month? He cannot
    tell you because he is not God Almighty, but in a thousand years he
    will tell you... He is conscious that things with a common numerical
    characteristic tend towards a very significant interrelationship. This
    preoccupation is freely translated in his present work...."

    -- "Dante... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce," in James Joyce/Finnegans Wake: A Symposium (1929), New Directions paperback, 1972

    See also Plato, Pegasus, and the Evening Star.