James Joyce - Notes: Literary Figures [Giordano Bruno]

Giordano Bruno

General remarks: Joyce quotes Giordano Bruno as ‘Bruno the Nolan’ in The Day of the Rabblement (1901; Critical Writings, ed. Ellmann; Occasional ... Writings, ed. Kevin Barry) and wrote of him in his Daily Express review of Giordano Bruno by Lewis McIntyre (“The Bruno Philosophy”, Daily Express, 30 Oct. 1903) - in which he shows a prior knowledge of Bruno including Coleridge’s commentary on the coinciding opposites [coincidentia oppositorum] given in Biographia Litteraria and Isabel Frith’s Life of Giordano Bruno (1887) - from which he quoted in Day of the Rabblement. Bruno become the object of a remark about his execution by burning [auto da fe] in Rome on 1 Jan. 1600 in the course of a conversation between Stephen and the music teacher Artifoni in Stephen Hero (Jonathan Cape Edn. 1969, p.175) which is later transposed to to Stephen and Fr. Ghezzi in A Portrait (Cape [Definitive] Edn. 1969, p.252) where, however, it is reported by Stephen in conversation with Cranly itself reported in the diary entries at the end, and not actually shown in present time.

Joyce’s letters from Rome in 1906 show him disillusioned with the cult of Bruno at the site of his execution (‘The spectacle of the procession in honour of the Nolan [on 17 Feb.] left me quite cold.’; Letter to Stanislaus Joyce, [1] March 1907; Letters, Vol. II, pp.218-19 - see under Quotations, infra) while, similtaneously, he is revising his self-conception as a heroic artist. Yet Bruno’s ideas would ultimately form the armature of Finnegans Wake and are communicated to Harriet Shaw Weaver in this spirit in a letter of 27 January 1925 (as infra; Letters of James Joyce, Vol. I, ed. Stuart Gilbert [1957] NY: Viking Press 1966, p.226 [pp.224-25) - but soon after, tells her not to pay too much attention to the theories of Bruno and Vico since he uses them only ‘for all they are worth’ (Letters, I, p.241; - as infra).

[ Stephen Dedalus: ‘Ghezzi [...] said Bruno was a terrible heretic. I said he was terribly burned. He agreed to this with some sorrow. Then gave me recipe for what he calls risotto alla bergamasca.’ (A Portrait [... &c.], ed. Chester Anderson & Richard Ellmann [definitive edn.] (London: Cape 1968), p.; OUP Edn., ed. Jeri Johnson, 2001, p.201 [cited [in part] in Barry, ed. Occasional .. Writings, OUP 2000, Notes on &&147;Giordano Bruno”, being a review of p.309, n.2].)

Giordano Bruno [1] - Joyce references Bruno, with others, in his “Portrait” essay of 1904: ‘Extravagance followed. The simple history of the Poverello was soon out of mind and he established himself in the maddest of companies, Joachim Abbas, Bruno the Nolan, Michael Sendivogius, all the hierarchs of initiation cast their spells upon him. He descended among the hells of Swedenborg and abased himself in the gloom of Saint John of the Cross. His heaven was suddenly illuminated by a horde of stars, the signatures of all nature, the soul remembering ancient days.’ (Poems and Shorter Writings, ed. Ellmann, Litz, & Whittier-Ferguson, Faber 1991, p.214; for longer extract, see under Quotations, supra; also full text version in RICORSO LIbrary, ‘Irish Classics’, via index or direct.)

Note: The sole explicit allusion to Bruno by name in Stephen Hero occurs in a conversation with Fr. Artifoni, the amiable Jesuit Italian teacher, where Stephen cites The Triumphant Beast (viz., Lo Spaccio de La Bestia Tromphante [The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast], 1584) [SH 174].

Here, in response to Artifoni’s calling Bruno ‘a terrible heretic’, Stephen answers, ‘Yes [...] he was terribly burned.’ (Stephen Hero, Cape Edn. SH 175; also in AP Chap. V [diary entry for 24 March].) Immediately after, Joyce kindly concedes that the ‘teacher was a poor inquisitor’ [SH 175] - or inquisitioner, as the MS reads, while a marginal note, possibly by Stanislaus, prompts the correction inquisitor. (He means that Fr. Artifoni is not cruel.) In A Portrait Stephen’s bon mot is briefly paraphrased in one of the final diary entries [AP 253]: ‘Then went to college. Other wrangle with little roundhead rogue’s eye Ghezzi. This time about Bruno the Nolan. Began in Italian and ended in pidgin English. He said Bruno was a terrible heretic. I said he was terribly burned. He agreed to this with some sorrow. Then gave me recipe for what he calls risotto alla bergamasca. When he pronounces a soft o he protrudes his full carnal lips as if he kissed the vowel. Has he? And could he repent? Yes, he could: and cry two round rogue’s tears, one from each eye.’ (Portrait, Definitive Edn., ed. Anderson & Ellmann, London: Jonathan Cape 1968, p.253.)

Is Stephen Bruno’s Daedalus [Daedaleas]?

Daedaleas vacuis plumas nectere humeris Concupiant alii; aut vi suspendi nubium Alis, ventorumve appetant remigium; Aut orbitae flammantis raptari alveo; Bellerophontisve alitem [...]	Procedat nudus, quern non ornant nubila, Sol! Non conveniunt quadrupedum phalerae Humano dorso! Porra veri species Quaesita, inventa, et patefacta me efferat! Etsi nullus intelligat, Si cum natura sapio, et sub numine, Id vere plus quam satis est.
[ See full copy under Samuel Taylor Coleridge > “Magnanimity” [essay] - infra.

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Giordano Bruno (?1548-16 Feb. 1600) [2] - Joyce’s “The Day of the Rabblement” (1901) derives its haughty intellectual tone from Giordano Bruno’s heroic refusal to recant his unorthodox beliefs, leading to his execution by auto da fé at Campo dei Fiori in Rome in 1600. It is certain that Joyce had already read Isabella Frith’s Life of Giordano Bruno, the Nolan (1887) [see infra] when he wrote his pamphlet “The Day of the Rabblement” (1901) since he opens it with an epigram quoted in Frith which Richard Ellmann & Ellsworth Mason have identified with p.165 of her work in their edition of The Critical Writings of James Joyce (NY: Viking Press 1966; see p.69, n.3). Viz., Life of Giordano Bruno, the Nolan (1887), p165: ‘No man truly loves goodness and truth who is not incensed with the multitude.’ (See also Occasional, Critical and Political Writings [of] James Joyce, ed. Kevin Barry, Oxford 2000, p.296, n.1.)

Bibliographical note: I[sabella] Frith [Mrs. Oppenheim], Life of Giordano Bruno the Nolan, revised by Professor Moriz Carrière [English and foreign philosophical library; Vol. XXXI] (London: Trübner, 1887), xii [Pref. vi-x; Contents, x-xii], 395pp., ill. [front. port.]; incls. 11 chaps. and Appendix: “Alphabetical list of authorities” (pp.379-88); “The existing works of Bruno” (pp.[309]-39); “The Noroff collection of manuscripts” (pp.[341]-69). [Available at Internet Archive - online; see reading notes - attached].

Viz., Frith writes: ‘In another place he says (W[agner], ii, 424): “No man truly loves goodness and truth who is not incensed with the multitude, as, in what is commonly called love, he would be jealous and fearful for the thing beloved.” It was his prayer to be all arms and all eyes, and a new Briareas and a new Argus, that he might penetrate and embrace the whole of the infinite universe together with “the matter of Nature,” which, “being always the same under all forms of Nature, is not to be seen by the eye, but with the reason alone, with the intellect.” (Frith, Life of Giordano Bruno, London: Trübner & Co. 1887, p.165) - viz.,

Elizabeth Frith’s Life of Giordano Bruno the Nolan (1887). p.165.
[ Source: The Internet Archive - online; see longer extracts - as attached. ]

- Joyce writes: ‘No man, said the Nolan, can be a lover of the true or the good unless he abhors the multitude; and the artist, though he may employ the crowd, is very careful to isolate himself [...] and to-day when the highest form of art has been just preserved by desperate sacrifices, it is strange to see the artist making terms with the rabblement.’’ (Critical Writings, p.69.) Note: the sentence from Bruno given above in quoted in part only in the footnote to the Critical Writings [ending before ‘as, in what is ... &c.’].

Note that Frith uses the term ‘rabble’ but not ‘rabblement’ - viz., her translation of Bruno’s sonnet prefaced to Gli heroici furori (1585): “O worthy love of the beautiful! desire for the divine!” he cries, “lend me thy wings; bring me to the dayspring, to the clearness of the young morning; and the outrage of the rabble, the storms of Time, the slings and arrows of Fortune, shall fall upon this tender body and shall weld it to steel.” (Frith, op. cit., pp.131-32; my italics).

See also: ‘In 1525 the Genoese rabble had hooted Francis I when he rode into their city after the battle of Pavia, [...]’ (p.38.), and the epigraph to Chapter VI: ‘And when I leave this rabble rout and defilement of the world, I have it as an inn and not a place of abode. For Nature has given us out bodies as an inn to lodge in, and not to dwell in.’— Cato. (p.136.) Note: There are no other instances of ‘rabble’ in Frith’s book.

Joyce makes a veiled reference to Frith’s book in the opening of his review of J. Lewis MacIntyre’s Giordano Bruno (Macmillan 1903) for the Daily Express [Dublin] (30 Oct. 1903):

‘Except for a book in the English and Foreign Philosophical Library [I. Frith, Life of Giordano Bruno, London 1887], a book the interest of which is chiefly biographical, no considerable volume has appeared in English to give an account of the life and philosophy of the heresiarch martyr of Nola.’ (Critical Writings, ed. Ellmann & Mason, NY: Viking Press 1959, &c., p.132.) [See longer extracts, see under Joyce > Quotations > supra or as sep. page.]

Note: McIntyre, in his introductory remarks, makes a similar observation about the restriction of Frith’s book to biographical facts. In fact her chapter by chapter account of his perigrinations and trials is chiefly concerned with the roll-call of his writings while the apparatus of the book is largely bibliographical excepting only the transcription of Schoppius’s Latin letter on the execution of Bruno. [For reading notes on J. Lewis McIntyre, Giordano Bruno (London: Macmillan 1903), including longer extracts - see attached.]

The tone of his remarks suggests that he was not impressed by her grasp of Bruno’s philosophy and, in fact, his indebtedness to McIntyre in that respect is more pronounced (see Critical Writings, ed. Ellmann & Ellsworth, [1959] 1966, p.133, n. 1 & 2).

Frith quotes Coleridge [two allusions only]: ‘Had Bruno survived to write, like Descartes, a Discours sur la Methode, the Nolan must have escaped the accusation of pantheism which has arisen from his conception of a world-soul, with its attendant difficulties. “He suffered,” says Coleridge in his Table-Talk and Omniana [see bibl. note], “at Rome for atheism; that is, as is proved by all his works, for a lofty and enlightened piety, which was, of course, unintelligible to bigots and dangerous to an apostate hierarchy. If the human mind be, as it assuredly is, the sublimest object which nature affords to our contemplation, his lines, which [17] portray the human mind under the action of its own elevated affections, have a fair claim to the praise sublimity.”’ (pp.17-18.)

[Note however that McIntyre considers Bruno to be a pantheist - as infra.]

Note: The lines to which Coleridge refers are the ode beginning ‘Daedaleas ...” [as given under Coleridge, infra.] In this she make no attempt to describe or otherwise explain what Coleridge means by ‘his lines’ though there is enough bibliographical information here - viz., Omniana - to lead Joyce to the original, in which the glaring prominence of the name of ‘Daedalus’ -as it is spelt in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but here given as ‘Daedalas’ - must immediately catch the attention of any Joyce reader. BS

Further [Frith]: ‘He seems,” says Professor Carrière, “to have reached his conclusions by means of intuition and induction, for his mathematics are insignificant [...] “Bruno,” says Libri, “seems a priori to have embraced the Copernican system by a species of intuition, being no mathematician whatever”. [...] “Coleridge,” says Lewes, “used to say that imagination was the greatest faculty of the philosopher;” and the German critic Hillebrand was told by Leibnitz himself “that all his discoveries had been the result of lightning-like intuition and divination, ascertained afterwards [146] by observation and experiment.’ (pp.146-47; see further in Reading Notes - attached; and see extracts from G. H. Lewis, infra. )

Karl Hillebrand (1829-1884) was sometime secretary to Heine and wrote in English and French as well as German. (See Encyc. Brit., 1949, p.Vol. 11, p.558.

Note: These two references to Samuel Taylor Coleridge in Giordano Bruno by I. Frith (1887) have been identified in browsing the copy held at the National Library of Ireland, and subsequently confirmed as the sole instances of his name in that work by using the Search command within the text-format copy heldat Internet Library [online] and OpenLibrary.org [online] [BS / 11.12.2012.]

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Giordano Bruno [3] - in Day of the Rabbelement: An oblique allusion to Bruno occurs later on where Joyce writes: ‘Accordingy, the rabblement, placid and intensely moral, is enthroned in the boxes and galleries amid a hum of approval - la bestia Trionfante - and those who think that Echegaray is “morbid”, and titter coyly when Mélisande lets down her hair, are not sure but they are the trustees of every intellectual and poetic treasure.’ (Critical Writings, pp.70-71.) In an editorial footnote Richard Ellmann and Ellsworth Mason write: ‘Bruno wrote Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante, in which, however, the beast is not the rabblement of men but of human vices.’ (See Critical Writings, 1966, p.70, n.1.)

[See remarks on the ‘la bestia trionfante’ as the Pope in William Boulting, Giordano Bruno: His Life, Thought, and Martyrdom (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner 1914) - as infra.]

Note: Richard Ellmann argues that, for Joyce, the Brunonian doctrine of the coincidence of contraries was ‘no finespun theory, but an axiom which he saw everywhere confirmed.’ It helped him to organize A Portrait, which begins with the birth of the body and ends with the birth of the soul.” (Richard Ellmann, ‘Ulysses on the Liffey, London: Faber and Faber, 1972, p. 54.)

Giordano Bruno [4] - the review: Joyce reviewed Giordano Bruno by J. Lewis McIntyre as “The Bruno Philosophy” in the Dublin Daily Express (30 Oct 1903), rep. in Critical Writings, ed. Ellmann & Mason [1959] (NY: Viking Press 1965), p.133-34. The reflections in Joyce’s review of some observations made by McIntyre in his book are noted by the editors of the Critical Writings in footnotes to their edition of the review by simple means of a page citation in McIntyre (Giordano Bruno, Macmillan, 1903; available at Internet Archive - online).

Note: Lewis McIntyre thinks that Bruno was a pantheist: ‘[...] the theory may be regarded as either dualistic (as Cusanus’ really was) or as pantheistic. There is no doubt, however, that it was in the latter sense that Bruno held the coincidence of contraries.’ (Giordano Bruno, Macmillan 1903, pp.179.) See further in reading notes, attached.]

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Giordano Bruno [5] - The editors of the Critical Writers indicate in their footnotes to “The Bruno Philosophy” that Joyce repeats Lewis McIntyre’s judgements on his subject at several points: firstly, where Joyce calls Bruno ‘the father of what is called modern philosophy’ rather than Bacon or Descartes [CW, 133]; secondly, where he speaks of Bruno’s notion of the relation between mind and body as ‘a curious anticipation of Spinoza’ [CW, 133], and thirdly where he styles Bruno ‘the god-intoxicated man’ rather than Spinoza [CW, 134; see note, infra]. A forth identification associated with Joyce’s comparison between Bruno and Averroes and Erigena is correct in principle but associated with the wrong page - i.e., p.110 for p.305 in McIntyre. Thus the eries of pages cited in Critical Writings at p.133, n.1 & 2; p.134, n.3 is pp.324, 338, 110, & 110 [sic] where the last is an error for p.305. [See quotation - infra.]

‘[...] more ingenuous than that of Averroes or of Scotus Erigena’ (CW, 134): In the Critical Writings, Ellmann and Mason erroneously associate this idea with p.110 of McIntyre’s book - perhaps a copying error since the antecedent remark about Spinoza is accurately tallied with that page also. In fact, the corresponding passage in McIntyre falls on p.305: “There were two types of rationalism in mediaeval philosophy - that of Averroes, which sought to supplant the positive religions by a religion of philosophy, and that of Scotus Erigena, which aimed at upholding popular faiths while allowing the philosopher freedom of thought in interpreting the doctrines these faiths involved. Bruno’s rationalism is clearly of the second type, although personally he disliked all prevailing religions for the reasons already given.’ Quite correctly, the editors of the Critical Writings state that McIntyre makes the comparison though ‘without drawing so forceful a conclusion.’

[See extracts from McIntyre’s Giordano Bruno (London: Macmillan 1903) where Joyce’s source-passages are indicated by underlining - attached.]

Note: Speaking in his own voice, Joyce discounts Bruno’s share in Raymond Lully’s theory of memory and his excursions into the field of ethics as “fantastical and middle-aged’, meaning ‘medieval’ - quite untypically - in a pejorative sense [CW, 133]. For the rest, he celebrates Bruno as one of ‘the number of those who loftily do not fear to die’, and identifies ׃his vindication of the freedom of intuition’ as ‘an enduring monument’ - a monument which, in Joyce’s parting comment, renders Bruno’s ‘legend [...] the most honourable, more sanctified, and more ingenuous than that of Averroes or of Scotus Erigena.’ [CW, 134.] BS.

God-intoxicated - see J. Lewis McIntyre:
‘He was full of enthusiasm, as we shall find, for the divine - in things, in us, in the world, in the universe - a “God-intoxicated man” far more strikingly than the impassive Spinoza. It was because the Copernican theory fitted into his mystical thought of the One, as an identity of the infinitely small, the point, and the infinitely great, the broad, deep, immeasurable universe, that it appeared to him an inspiration of genius.’ (p.110.) [Note: This sentence is indicated in the Critical Writings, ed. Mason & Ellmann [1959] 1965, as the source of Joyce’s remarks - as above.]

God-intoxicated - see John Owen:
‘Reading Bruno’s Eroici furori, one is forcibly reminded of Schleiermacher’s glowing description of Spinoza as a “God-intoxicated man”: [313; here quotes German - as attached.] This magnificent eulogy is as applicable to Bruno as to Spinoza. Indeed, of the two I think the author of Gli eroici furori is a few stages further advanced in God-intoxication than even Spinoza. That a man capable of conceiving such a noble and elevated object for human affections, of being permeated by such a divine passion, [n.1.] should have actually suffered death as an atheist, must be pronounced one of the most monstrous perversions of justice which defile the pages of history. Unhappily, it is not a solitary instance of the irony which occasionally overrules human destinies, and with diabolical humour prescribes slavery as the lot of lovers of liberty, compulsory falsehood or the stake as the destiny of lovers of truth; as well as persecution and death as an atheist for the God-intoxicated enthusiast. [n.2]

God-intoxicated - see Novalis:
Novalis [George Freidrich Freiherr von Hardendberg] is usually cited as the author of the phrase ‘god-intoxicated man’ as attached to Spinoza. See Novalis: Notes for a Romantic Encyclopaedia - Das Allgemeine Brouillon, trans., ed. and intro. by David W. Wood (NY: State University of New York Press 2007), p.261 [Notes on the text] - viz., ‘Fragmente und Studien 1799/1800 in which Novalis famously remarks, “Spinoza is a God-intoxicated man”’. (Novalis Schriften, six volumes, edited by Richard Samuel, Hans-Joachim Mähl and Gerhard Schulz, Stuttgart, Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1960-2006, III, no. 562, p.651. [The said edition of the works of Novalis is usually style HKA for Historische-Kritische Ausgabe.]

Note 1. Few things in Bruno’s works are more remarkable than the depth and sincerity of his God-passion. The title which next to Philosophus he most affected is Theophilus (lover of God). From his point of view no doubt the terms are synonymous.

Note 2. (‘Bruno e stato bruciato vivo a Roma come sprezzatore della religione e di Dio. Oramai sappiamo che cosa importano questo accuse, e possiamo dire anche noi con tutta ragione. “Eh! Prole dolor! res eo jam pervenit ut qui assertè fatentur, se Dei ideam non habere, et Deum non nisi per res creatas (quorum causas ignorant) cognoscere, non erubescant philosophos atheismi accusant”’ — Spaventa, Saggi, p. 167, quoting Spinoza, Tract. Theo. Pol., om op., ii. p.82. (Owen, p.313-14; notes on p.314.)

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Giordano Bruno [6]: ‘Infinite other worlds, inhabited like our own, spread throughout space; a structure to the universe of suns and clusters of suns circling in grand orbits, but no “centre” except in the ground beneath two human feet; the presence of God not atop an empyrean throne past the threshold of the farthest stars, but inhabiting every atom of matter; an eternal span to matter, which can change its form but never be exhausted in any proportion; and finally and logically, infinity demanded of him an innate union of all contraries, by which evil and good, history and the future, localized humanity and an infinite universe inform and express one another.’ (Quoted in Bill Kuhns, ‘Reviewing the Reviews: Giordano Bruno and Marshall McLuhan’, in McLuhan Studies, 1, 2 [q.d.; 1996?] online; accessed 14.10.2008]. (Also cites inter alia Bruno’s death by burning [auto-da-fé] on 17 Feb. 1660 at Campo dei Fiere, Rome, and notes a biography by William Boulting.

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Giordano Bruno [4 - cont.]: ‘[...] even in the two extremes of the scale of nature, we contemplate two principles which are one; two beings which are one; two contraries which are harmonious and the same. Therefore height is depth, the abyss is light unvisited, darkness is brilliant, the large is small, the confused is distinct, dispute is friendship, the divided is united, the atom is immensity .... Here are the signs and proofs whereby we see that contraries do truly concur; they are from a single origin and are in truth and substance one. This, having been seen mathematically is accepted physically ... / Here as in a seed are contained and enfolded the manifold conclusions of natural science; here is the mosaic, the disposition and order of the speculative science.’

Giordano Bruno [4 - cont.] (from De immenso): ‘[...] I shall place you in the body of the moon; your senses, through proper adaptation, will enable you to use your faculty of reason and see these things ... From this side I shall show you the face of the earth shining in the opposite region, in the light of the radiant sun diffused into the surface of the ocean. Do you see how the vast machine seems contracted into a small mass? ... Now the moon is not the moon to you, but it seems to be the true earth ... Notice how Britain is condensed to a small point and the very narrow Italy is condensed into a thin and short hair.’ (All quoted without refs. in Kuhn, op. cit.) [On extremes, see Shem’s Latin sentence in Finnegans Wake [287.23-28] - as in Notes, 1, infra.]

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Giordano Bruno [5] Kuhn remarks that Bruno published three pamphlets in London with a fake Venetian imprint [1584], under the titles The Ash Wednesday Supper, On Cause, Prime Origin, and the One, and On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, and ends by quoting Bruno: ‘And while I venture out beyond this tiny globe Into reaches past the bounds of starry night I leave behind what others strain to see afar.’ (Bill Kuhns, op. cit.]

Antoine Faivre, Theosophy, Imagination, Tradition: Studies in Western Esotericism (NY State UP 2000) - “Exercises of Imagination” - Vis Imaginativa (A Study of some Aspects of the Magical Imagination and its Mythical Foundations [chap.]: ‘[... T]he work of Giordano Bruno, De Imaginum, Signorum et Idearum compositione (1591), propounded a theory of the imagination conceived of as the principal instrument of magical and religious processes. In so doing, Bruno, in the manner of Giulio Camillo (L’idea del Teatro, 1550), transformed the art of memory, which had been merely a rational technique using images (as in Thomas Aquinas), into a religious and magical one. It was a matter of training the imagination to make of it an instrument allowing the acquisition of divine powers. One could attract the spirits through incantations, seals, and [101] markings, but also by the imagination alone, this third method being the principal one.’ (pp.101-02).

Note: Earlier on, Faivre writes: ‘[...] a [9] knowledge of divine things is gained starting from the concrete world, from the entire universe, whose “signatures” or hieroglyphs it is first a matter of deciphering. The second philosophico-scientific factor was the appearance of mechanism, which favored the emergence of Cartesianism. In contrast to this new form of scientific imagination and to an epistemology that emptied the universe of its “correspondences,” theosophy and pansophy reaffirmed the place of the microcosm in the macrocosm. Certainly, theosophy is not scientific, and pansophy has never gone beyond the project stage. Nevertheless, at this time, both of them appeared to many people as a promise, a hope, a new dawn of thought. Moreover, the poetic aspect of their discourse favored a co-penetration of literature and science and by virtue of this contributed to the development of the popularization of science.’ (pp.9-10.)

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Giordano Bruno [6] - Hélène Cixous writes: ‘[Joyce’s] letters to Stanislaus during 1905-07 show that he was gradually disengaging himself from all idealism, including his youthful admiration for Ibsen or Giordano Bruno; he records, for example, that he had with complete indifference taken part in a procession in honour of the Nolan.’ (Letters, Vol. II, p.217; 1 March 1907; Cixous, The Exile of James Joyce, trans. Sally Purcell, London; Calder 1976, p.228.)

Bruno Commemoration [procession], 17 Feb. 1907: ‘The spectacle of the procession in honour of the Nolan [on 17 Feb.] left me quite cold. I understand that anti-clerical history probably contains a large percentage of lies but this is not enough to drive me back howling to my gods. This state of indifference ought to indicate artistic inclination, but doesn ‘t. Because I take a fortnight to read a small book. I was about two days making up my mind to go and see the Dusk of the Gods. I weighed the cold, the distance, the crush, discomfort &c. Finally I went and tried to interest myself but was considerably bored. [217; ...] The day of Bruno’s memorial procession I was standing among the crowd waiting for the cortege to appear. It was a murky day and, being Sunday, I had not washed. I was wearing a white felt hat, faded by reason of heavy rains, Scholz’s five crown cloak hung bawways on me. My boots, being Sunday, were coated with a week’s dirt and I was in need of a shave. In fact, I was a horrible example of free thought.’ (Letters, II, 217-18; see longer extract under Quotations, attached.)

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Bruno’s Works online: PDF versions of the works of Giordano Bruno and studies of him are available on Internet at the Bibliotheca Bruniana Electronica of the Instituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici and the Warburg Institute [SAS/London Unversity] - see parent directory .

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Giordano Bruno [8] - called by Mason & Ellmann ‘a favourite philosopher of Joyce, whose name is mentioned constantly in Finnegans Wake.’ (Critical Writings, Viking Press 1959, &c., p.9.) The editors go on to quote Stanislaus Joyce: ‘Jim had kept the reference to “the Nolan” advisedly, overriding objections from me, his doubting Thomas. He intended that the readers of his article should have at first a false impression that he was quoting some little-known Irish writer - the definite article before some old family names being a courtesy title in Ireland - so that when they discovered their error, the name of Giordano Bruno might perhaps awaken some interest in his life and work. Laymen, he repeated, should be encouraged to think.’ (My Brother’s Keeper, p.146; here p.69, n.2.)

Gordon Brown - see Stanislaus Joyce: ‘[...] he thought seriously of abandoning his university studies and going on the stage in order to gain a practical knowledge of the production of dramatic works. Beginning with the easiest part of the probejct, he sometimes took a theatrical paper called, I think, The Stage and chose his stage name, Gordon Brown, a choice which bore witness to his admiration for Giordano Bruno whose philosophical essays he was reading at the time.’ (My Brother’s Keeper, London: Faber 1958, p.132.)

Note also: a Gordon Browne illustrated the poem “The Charity of Countess Kathleen” by Katherine Tynan in Atlanta (Feb. 1891). See Collected Letters of W. B. Yeats, Vol. I (OUP 1986), p.107, n8.

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Giordano Bruno [10] - See Samuel Beckett, “Dante ... Bruno. Vico.. Joyce”, in Exagmination Round His Factification for an Incamination of Work in Progress (1929; & edns. 1939, 1962, 1972):

‘[...] At this point Vico applies [5] Bruno - though he takes very good care not to say so - and proceeds from rather arbitrary data to philosophical abstraction. There is no difference, says Bruno between the smallest possible chord and the smallest possible arc, no difference between the infinite circle and the straight line. The maxima and the minima of particular contraries are one and indifferent. Minimal heat equals minimal cold. Consequently transmutations are circular. The principle (minimum) of one contrary takes its movement from the principle (maximum) of another. Therefore not only do the minima coincide with the minima, the maxima with the maxima, but the minima and the maxima are in the succession of transmutations. Maximal speed is a state of rest. The maximum corruption and the minimum of generation are identical: in principle, corruption is generation. All things are ultimately identified with God, the universal monad, Monad of Monads. From these considerations Vico evolved a Science and Philosophy of History [...].’ (Exagmination ... &c., 1929; rep. 1939, 2nd Edn. 1962; pb. 1972, pp.6-7.)

Further: ‘For the benefit of those who enjoy a parenthetical sneer, we would draw attention to the fact that when Mr. Joyce’s early pamphlet The Day of the Rabblement appeared, the local philosophers were thrown into a state of some bewilderment by a reference in the first line to “The Nolan”. They finally succeeded in identifying this mysterious individual with one of the obscurer ancient Irish kings. In the present work he appears frequently as “Browne & Nolan” the name of a very remarkable Dublin Bookseller and Stationer.’ (Ibid., 1972, p.17.)

Note: Beckett returned to Bruno and Joyce when, in 1955, he wrote to the Joyce scholar David Hayman that Joyce’s thinking when he knew him was ‘more consistent with Bruno’s identification of contraries than with the intellectualism of Mallarmé’. (Letter of 22 July 1955, in Letters of Samuel Beckett , 1941-1956, ed. George Craig, et al., Cambridge UP 2011, p.537.)

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Giordano Bruno [11] - Richard Ellmann writes: ‘[...] among philosophers he found an unexpected master in Giordano Bruno. Bruno had long been considered a clerical villain, but his vindication had begun. In 1889 [recte 1887] a statue to him was erected in Rome in the same Campo dei Fiori where he had been burned at the stake in 1600. Ghezzi piously reminded Joyce that Bruno was a terrible heretic, and Joyce dryly rejoined, “Yes, and he was terribly burned.” Bruno’s theory of an ultimate unity and its terrestrial division into contraries attracted Joyce, perhaps, because he saw his art as a reconciler of those opposites within his own mind which he would later personify as Shem and Shaun. In Finnegans Wake he made Bruno of Nola Irish by confusing him with the Dublin booksellers, Browne and Nolan.’ (James Joyce, 1965 Edn., p.61.) [Cont.]

Fr. Ghezzi: The model for Fr. Artifoni in Stephen Hero and, more incidentally, in Ulysses. In A Portrait he appears under his own name in Stephen’s diary entries [AP253 - as infra]. This was Joyce’s Italian teacher Fr. Charles Ghezzi, SJ, whose fictional name he took from Almidano Artifoni, the owner of the Berlitz School of languages in Trieste and Pola where Joyce worked. (See further in Notes, infra.)

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Giordano Bruno - Richard Ellmann [cont.]: ‘The publication of Two Essays [by Skeffington and Joyce] roused a good deal of talk. No one knew who the Nolan was. As Joyce told Herbert Gorman later, “University College was much intrigued by this personage whom it supposed to be an ancient Irish chieftain like the MacDermott or the O’Rahilly.’ [41] Some students thought it was Joyce himself, later identified in the columns of St. Stephen’s as “the dreamy one of Nola”; others thought it was the porter at the St. Cecilia medical school, whose name was Nolan [42] “Said the Nolan” became a catch phrase. Stanislaus had urged him to clarify this reference to Giordano Bruno of Nola, but James replied, “Laymen should be encouraged to think,” and fancied that when the students discovered who the Nolan was, they might go on to read some of his work. “The writer of Michael Kramer” was probably also a baffling phrase to most of his readers, though more easily illuminated. The implications of Joyce’s final sentence about the successor to Ibsen, which he had adapted from the curtain speech in the first act of The Master Builder, were not lost; he was twitted for them at the Sheehys’, where speaking of some Dublin event, Hannah Sheehy said, “0, there are sure to be great crowds.” Skeffington chimed in, “In fact it’ll be, as our friend Jocax would say, the day of the rabblement.” And Maggie Sheehy declaimed, “Even now the rabblement may be standing by the door!” Joyce wrote the dialogue down in an epiphany, perhaps to suggest how in Ireland all things are cheapened. / In St. Stephen’s the essay was handled both lightly and heavily.’ [Cont.]

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Giordano Bruno - Richard Ellmann [cont.]: ‘Arthur Clery, writing as “Chanel”, pretending to quote a State Paper, Aet. Eliz., said that Joyce was “corrupted, as we do verily believe, by the learning of Italie or othere foreign parts, hath no care for Holye Religion, but is fain to mislead our players.” A leading article, perhaps by Kennedy, took issue with Joyce more sharply. The multitude that he so detested was Catholic, it pointed out, and this multitude was willing to forego art if art interfered with the spirit. Only Joyce had refused to join in the protest against The Countess Cathleen, the writer reminded him, and smugly concluded: “If Mr. Joyce thinks that the artist must stand apart from the multitude, and means he must also sever himself from the moral and religious teachings which have, under Divine guidance, moulded its spiritual character, we join issue with him, and we prophesy but ill-success for any school which offers the Irish public art based upon such a principle.” Joyce had succeeded in flouting both the Irish Literary Theatre and the students who disliked its plays for the wrong reasons. He had found his private mountain top. / Although he was profoundly disaffected, Joyce was not like Skeffington a rebel day in and day out. He accepted the enemies he had sought, but did not much bother himself about them. Most of the rabblement liked him better than he desired.’ (Ellmann, James Joyce, 1957 &c., pp.93-94; see also pp.144, 151, 154, 249.)

On Nicolaus Copernicus, in Cena de al Cenari (1585): ‘He was a man of grave and cultivated mind, of rapid and mature intelligence; inferior to no preceding astronomer, unless in order of succession and time; a man, who in natural ability was far superior to Ptolemy, Hipparchus, Eudoxus, and all those others who followed in their footsteps. What he was, he became through having liberated himself from certain false axioms of the common and vulgar philosophy — I will not say blindness. Nevertheless, he did not depart far from them; because, studying mathematics rather than Nature, he failed to penetrate and dig deep enough altogether to cut away the roots of incongruous and vain principles, and thus, removing perfectly all opposing difficulties, free himself and others from so many empty investigations into things obvious and unchangeable. In spite of all this, who can sufficiently praise the magnanimity of this German, who, having little regard to the foolish multitude, stood firm against the torrent of contrary opinion, and, although well-nigh unarmed with living arguments, resuming those rusty and neglected fragments which antiquity had transmitted to him, polished, repaired, and put them together with reasonings more mathematical than philosophical; and so rendered that cause formerly contemned and contemptible, honourable, estimable, more probable than its rival, and certainly convenient and expeditious for purposes of theory and calculation? Thus this Teuton, although with means insufficient to vanquish, overthrow, and suppress falsehood, as well as resist it, nevertheless resolutely determined in his own mind, and openly confessed this final and necessary conclusion: that it is more possible that this globe should move with regard to the universe, than that the innumerable multitude of bodies, many of which are known to be greater and more magnificent than our earth, should be compelled, in spite of Nature and reason, which, by means of motions evident to the senses, proclaim the contrary, to acknowledge this globe as the centre and base of their revolutions and influences. Who then will be so churlish and discourteous towards the efforts of this man, as to cover with oblivion all he has done, by being ordained of the Gods as an Aurora - which was to precede the rising of this Sun of the true, ancient philosophy, buried during so many centuries in the tenebrous caverns of blind, malignant, froward, envious ignorance; and, taking note only of what he failed to accomplish, rank him amongst the number of the herded multitude, which discourses, guides itself, precipitates to destruction, according to the oral sense of a brutal and ignoble belief, rather than amongst those who, by the use of right reason, have been able to rise up, and resume the true course under the faithful guidance of the eye of divine intelligence.’ (Trans. by Agnes Mary Clerke in ‘Copernicus in Italy’, in the Edinburgh Review, July 1877, pp.102-18; this extract, pp.116-17 - available at Internet Archive - online.)

Further: Clerke remarks before introducing this quotation: ‘It was Giordano Bruno’s pride to have broken down the barriers of heaven, and like the “little old woman” of the nursery rhyme, to have “cleared the cobwebs out of the sky”, in the shape of the last vestiges of the cycles, epicycles, and rotating spheres. Space - immense, ethereal, illimitable - lay open before him; peopled with shining spheres - the “Divine Animals” of Plato - consciously rejoicing as they swept through their voluntary, majestic orbs. [...] His daring prescience multiplied even the traditional seven planets of the solar system, which, in the increasing [116] family of the planetoids alone, have, by the latest discovery of Borelly, grown to the imposing number of 172. / But with all his poetic fervour, which sometimes misses its mark, and sometimes anticipated the result of much later discoveries, Giordano Bruno has left us one of the grandest and most weighty tributes to the character and genius of Copernicus himself. We shall quote the passage as a remarkable example of the great Italian style of that age.’ (pp.116-17; quotation follows, as above.)

Globes, spheres & televisions: see Joyce’s Brunonian phrases in Finnegans Wake: ‘I can easily believe heartily in my own most spacious immensity [150] as my ownhouse and microbemost cosm when I am reassured by ratio that the cube of my volumes is to the surfaces of their subjects as the sphericity of these globes [...] is to the feracity of Fairynelly’s vacuum.’ (FW, 150-35-151-07.) In this passage - ascribed to Professor Loewy-Brueller - the ‘faroscope of television’ [150.31-32], described as a ‘nightlife instrument’ in need of ‘betterment’ or ‘readjustment’ [150.33-34], is said to reveal this cosmological order.]

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Coulson Turnbull, Life and Teachings of Giordano Bruno: Philosopher, Martyr, Mystic 1548-1600 (1913): ‘In an inspired speech Bruno, through the interpreter, Jean Hennequin, of Paris, declared the discovery of numberless worlds in the One Infinite Universe. Nothing was more deplorable, declared he, than the habit of blind belief, for of all other things it hinders the mind from recognizing such matters as are in themselves clear and open. It was proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people. However, he cautioned that they should not be influenced by the fervor of speech, but by the weight of his argument and the majesty of truth.’ (p.41; quoted at Wikiquotes online - noting that the italicised phrases were spoken in a debate at the College of Cambray on 25 May 1588, and quoted as such in George Seldes, The Great Quotations, 1977, p.35 [substituting ‘is’ for ‘was’ in this passage of reported speech.)

Giordano Bruno [12] - Colin MacCabe gives an introductory account of Joyce’s use of Bruno (‘An Introduction to Finnegans Wake’, 1982): ‘[...] His unorthodox beliefs and his final death at the stake as a heretic in 1600 had interested Joyce from an early age. Bruno’s principle of the “coincidence of contraries” denied the existence of absolute identities in the universe. Bruno argued that oppositions collapsed into unities at their extremes, thus extreme heat and extreme cold were held to be indistinguishable, and all identities were, therefore, provisional. Bruno joined this belief to a belief in an [33] infinite universe composed of an infinity of worlds. [...] But to understand Joyce as simply providing an artistic gloss to the theories of an obscure philosopher is to minimise crucially the importance of the Wake. Bruno is important insofar as he provides a philosophical trellis on which the philosophical and linguistic presuppositions of identity can be unpicked. At one level of consciousness we claim an identity and stability both for ourselves and our objects of perception. But such identities can only be produced by a process of differentiation in which other identities are rejected. [...]’ (See in James Joyce: New Perspectives, ed. MacCabe, Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf, pp.29-40; longer extract in RICORSO Library, “Criticism / Major Authors / Joyce”, infra.].

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Giordano Bruno [13] - Oscar Wilde: Bruno’s Bestia Trionfante [Triumphant Beast] is the subject of a reference in Wilde’s “The Critic as Artist” [in Intentions, 1891], where he characterises dullness a ‘the permanent Bestia Trionfans that calls wisdom from its cave’:

‘Dulness [Dullness] is always an irresistible temptation for brilliancy, and stupidity is the permanent Bestia Trionfans that calls wisdom from its cave. To an artist so creative as the critic, what does subject-matter signify? No more and no less than it does to the novelist and the painter. Like them, he can find his motives everywhere. Treatment is the test. There is nothing that has not in it suggestion or challenge.’ (Works of Oscar Wilde, Galley Press 1987, p.966.) Note: footnote in this edition simply translating the phrase as ‘Triumphant beast’ without italics or allusion to Bruno.

See Wilde’s reference to Bruno in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891; London: Nash & Grayson Edn., 1928]): ‘Soul and body, body and soul - how mysterious they were! [...] Was the soul a shadow seated in the house of sin? Or was the body really in the soul, as Giordano Bruno thought? The separation of spirit from matter was a mystery, and the union of spirit with matter was a mystery also.’ (p.87; for longer extract, see infra.)

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Giordano Bruno [14]: A Sonnet (Third Dialogue, in The Heroic Frenzies [De gli eroici furori], Pt. I (1585) [Sonnet XVI]: ‘Since I have spread my wings toward sweet delight, the more do I feel the air beneath my feet, the more I spread proud pinions to the wind, and contemn the world, and further my way toward heaven. / Nor does the cruel fate of Daedalus’s son burden me, on the contrary I follow his way the more: that I shall fall dead upon the earth I am well aware; but what life compares with this death? / I hear the voice of my heart upon the wind: Where do you take me, adventurous one? Resign yourself, for too much temerity is rarely without danger. / I reply: fear not boble destruction, burst boldly through the clouds, and die content, if heaven destines us to so illustrious a death.’ (Trans. Paulo Eugene Memmo, in Esoteric Archives - online; Pt. III [as supra] is echoed at Bibliotecapleyades - online.)

[Note: the interlocutors are called Tansilla and Cicada - but cf. Tansillo, the poet whose sonnets are employed by Bruno in Gli Heroici Furori (1585).]

[See works of Bruno at the Esoteric Archives site online - some digital and others with links to current volumes at Amazon.com; accessed 24.01.2013.]

Giordano Bruno [16]: On the Infinite Universe and Worlds (De L’Infinito Universo et Mondi): [ded.] To the Most Illustrious Monsieur de Mauvissière (Venice 1584) [come sobra stampato in Londra]- available at Positive Atheism online; accessed 26.07.2012.]

Introductory Epistle: ‘If, O most illustrious Knight, I had driven a plough, pastured a herd, tended a garden, tailored a garment: none would regard me, few observe me, seldom a one reprove me; and I could easily satisfy all men. But since I would survey the field of Nature, care for the nourishment of the soul, foster the cultivation of talent, become expert as Daedalus concerning the ways of the intellect; lo, one doth threaten upon beholding me, another doth assail me at sight, another doth bite upon reaching me, yet another who hath caught me would devour me; not one, nor few, they are many, indeed almost all. If you would know why, it is because I hate the mob, I loathe the vulgar herd and in the multitude I find no joy. It is Unity that doth enchant me. By her power I am free though thrall, happy in sorrow, rich in poverty, and quick even in death. Through her virtue I envy not those who are bond though free, who grieve in the midst of pleasures, who endure poverty in their wealth, and a living death. They carry their chains within them; their spirit containeth her own hell that bringeth them low; within their soul is the disease that wasteth, and within their mind the lethargy that bringeth death. They are without the generosity that would enfranchise, the long suffering that exalteth, the splendour that doth illumine, knowledge that bestoweth life. Therefore I do not in weariness shun the arduous path, nor idly refrain my arm from the present task, nor retreat in despair from  the enemy that confronteth me, nor do I turn my dazzled eyes from the divine end. Yet I am aware that I am mostly held to be a sophist, seeking rather to appear subtle than to reveal the truth; an ambitious fellow diligent rather to support a new and false sect than to establish the ancient and true; a snarer of birds who pursueth the splendour of fame, by spreading ahead the darkness of error; an unquiet spirit that would undermine the edifice of good discipline to establish the frame of perversity.

Wherefore, my lord, may the heavenly powers scatter before me all those who unjustly hate me; may my God be ever gracious unto me; may all the rulers of our world be favourable to me; may the stars yield me seed for the field and soil for the seed, that the harvest of my labour may appear to the world useful and glorious, that souls may be awakened and the understanding of those in darkness be illumined. For assuredly I do not feign; and if I err, I do so unwittingly; nor do I in speech or writing contend merely for victory, for I hold worldly repute and hollow success without truth to be hateful to God, most vile and dishonourable. But I thus exhaust, vex and torment myself for love of true wisdom and zeal for true contemplation. This I shall make manifest by conclusive arguments, dependent on lively reasonings derived from regulated sensation, instructed by true phenomena; for these as trustworthy ambassadors emerge from objects of Nature, rendering themselves present to those who seek them, obvious to those who gaze attentively on them, clear to those who apprehend, certain and sure to those who understand. Thus I present to you my contemplation concerning the infinite universe and innumerable worlds.’

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Giordano Bruno [15]: Gareth Joseph Downes, ‘The Heretical Auctoritas of Giordano Bruno: The Significance of the Brunonian Presence in James Joyce’s The Day of the Rabblement and Stephen Hero’, in Joyce Studies Annual, 14 (Summer 2003), pp.37-73 - cites Beckett’s remark that Joyce thought Bruno insufficiently treated in his - or any? - article in Our Exagmination Round His Factification for an Incamination of Work in Progress (1929). The remarks was made by Beckett in an interview with James Knowlson [Damned to Fame].

[See further - including his listing of works on Bruno available to Joyce in the National Library of Ireland - under Commentary > G. F. Downes - attached; also our redaction - supra.]

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Giordano Bruno [16]: William Turner, “Giordano Bruno”, in The Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 3 (NY: Robert Appleton Co. 1908): ‘[...] Bruno’s system of thought is an incoherent materialistic pantheism. God and the world are one; matter and spirit, body and soul, are two phases of the same substance; the universe is infinite; beyond the visible world there is an infinity of other worlds, each of which is inhabited; this terrestrial globe has a soul; in fact, each and every part of it, mineral as well as plant and animal, is animated; all matter is made up of the same elements (no distinction between terrestrial and celestial matter); all souls are akin (transmigration is, therefore, not impossible). This unitary point of view is Bruno’s justification of “natural magic.” No doubt, the attempt to establish a scientific continuity among all the phenomena of nature is an important manifestation of the modern spirit, and interesting, especially on account of its appearance at the moment when the medieval point of view was being abandoned. And one can readily understand how Bruno’s effort to establish a unitary concept of nature commanded the admiration of such men as Spinoza, Jacobi, and Hegel. On the other hand, the exaggerations, the limitations, and the positive errors of his scientific system; his intolerance of even those who were working for the reforms to which he was devoted; the false analogies, fantastic allegories, and sophistical reasonings into which his emotional fervour often betrayed him have justified, in the eyes of many, Bayle’s characterization of him as “the knight-errant of philosophy.” His attitude of mind towards religious truth was that of a rationalist. Personally, he failed to feel any of the vital significance of Christianity as a religious system. It was not a Roman Inquisitor, but a Protestant divine, who said of him that he was “a man of great capacity, with infinite knowledge, but not a trace of religion.”’ (Available online.)

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Giordano Bruno [17]: The reinstatement of Bruno was the fruit of anti-clerical forces within the Risorgimento, while the statue raised in the Campo di Fiore was made by Ettore Ferrari on 9 June 1887.

The Bruno Procession - Joyce writes to Stanislaus on 16 Feb. 1907: ‘I have just been listening to Americans discussing Giordano Bruno in honour of whom there is a procession here tomorrow. They seem to know something of him but I dislike the accent.’ (Letters, II, p.215; Selected Letters, 1975, p.151; see longer extracts under Quotations, infra.) [See footnote reference to statue erected in 1889 at Campo di’ Fiore [sic].

In a letter to Stanislaus of Feb. 1907, Joyce wrote that the spectacle of his public commemoration ‘left me quite cold. I understand that anti-clerical history probably contains a large percentage of lies but this is not enough to drive me back howling to my gods.’ (Letters, II, 217; see longer extract, in Quotations, infra.)

Note: Joyce’s relation to Bruno in Dublin and after is the subject of Gareth Joseph Downes, ‘The Heretical Auctoritas of Giordano Bruno: The Significance of the Brunonian Presence in James Joyce’s The Day of the Rabblement and Stephen Hero’, in Joyce Studies Annual, 14 (Summer 2003), pp.37-73, in whcih the above is quoted at pp.38, 45. [See under Commentary, supra.]

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Giordano Bruno [19] - see George Henry Lewes, The Biographical History of Philosophy from Its Origins in Greece Down to the Present Day (1845-46), which contains a chapter on Giordano Bruno in Pt. II, pp.373-97: Modern Philosophy [section on § V. “Giordano Bruno” - with alternate page-headings “From Proclus to Bacon” and “Giordano Bruno”]

Passage from which I. Frith quotes a sentence (in her Life of Giordano Bruno the Nolan, London 1887, p.146): ‘[...] with imperfect language, do get some sort of utterance. As a system, it is more imaginative than logical; but to many minds it would be all the more acceptable on that account. Coleridge used to say, and with truth, that imagination was the greatest faculty of the philosopher; and Bruno said, “Philosophi sunt quodammodo pictores atque poetae .. Non est philosophus nisi fingit et pingit”. Little as the dull man of science [...] (p.393.)

Lewes also writes of Bruno:

§ I. Scholasticism

[...] I find the whole career of philosophical inquiry, from Proclus to Bacon, can be presented in three typical figures: namely, Abelard, as representing Scholasticism; Algazzali, as representing Arabian philosophy; and GIORDANO BRUNO, as representing the philosophical struggle which overthrew the authority of Aristotle and the Church. (p.343.) [...] we must pass at once to Giordano Bruno, whom we have selected as the type of the philosophical insurgents against the authority of Aristotle and the Church. (p.372.)

[Note: studies of Peter Abelard & Algazzali form § II and § III.]

§ IV. Revival of Learning

To have suddenly cast off all Authority would have been too violent a [370] change; [...] There is something profoundly significant in the principle of Authority, when not exercised despotically, and something essentially anarchical in the principle of Liberty of Thought, when not restrained within due limits. Both Authority and Liberty are necessary principles, which only in misuse become paralyzing or destructive. It may be made perfectly clear to the rational mind that there can be no such thing as ‘liberty of private judgment’ in Mathematics, Astronomy, Physics, Chemistry, or any other science the truths of which have been established; [... but] to require such submission is to pass beyond the principle of Authority, and assume that of Despotism. (p.371.)

§ V. Giordano Bruno

He could not let the world wag on its way, content to smile at its errors [...; 380] He rushed into the arena / ‘Confident as is the falcon’s flight’ (p.381.) In adopting the form of dialogue, Bruno also followed the taste of his age. It is a form eminently suited to polemical subjects; and all his works are polemical. [...] He makes his dialogues far more entertaining [388] than works of metaphysics usually are; and this he does by digressions, by ridicule, by eloquence, and a liberal introduction of sonnets. Sometimes his very vivacity becomes wearisome. The reader is stunned and bewildered by the remorseless torrent of substantives and epithets which pours from his too prolific pen. There is nobody to rival him but Rabelais, in this flux of words. [Here Lewes quotes a prose passage of nine lines from Gli eroici furori beginning, “Che spectaccolo, o Dio buono! ...” - remarking, ‘it continues for some fifty lines more.’ (Opp. ital., ii, 299; here p.389, n.[1]. That Spinoza and Descartes were actually conversant with the writings of Giordano Bruno does not distinctly appear. Yet it is not to be disputed that Bruno anticipated Spinoza in his conception of the immanence of the Deity in his famous natura naturans and natura naturata, and in his pantheistic theory of evolution. He also anticipated Descartes’ famous criterium of truth ...’ (p.390.) Bruno ‘looked to Nature as the great book for man to read’ and ‘deified Nature; and looked upon the Universe as the garment of God, as the incarnation of the divine activity.’ (p.390). ‘Bruno’s creed was pantheism.’ (p.391.) [...]

Lewes notes that in his section on Giordano Bruno (§ IV, pp.373-97.) he has ‘altered and abridged as essay of my own in the British Quarterly Review.’ (p.373, n.)

Lewes traces Bruno’s thought from traces from ‘Pythagoras, Plato, and Plotinus’ (p.379.) After a synopsis of his philosophy, he remarks: ‘Such is the faint outline of his doctrine, to preach which, Bruno became a homeless wanderer and a martyr; as he loftily says, “Con questa filosofia, l’anima mi s’ aggrandesce, e mi si magnifica “intelletto” If not original, this doctrine has at any rate the merit of poetical grandeur. In it deep thoughts, though [393] wrestling with imperfect language, do get some sort of utterance.’ [His italics; op. cit., pp.393-94.)

Internet: Lewes’ Biographical History of Philosophy from Its Origins in Greece Down to the Present Time [1845-46] (London: G. Cox 1852), Series I: Ancient Philosophy, in 2 vols. - of which Vol 1 is available in copy held at of University of St. Michael (Toronto) at Internet Archive - online.

The copy of A Biographical History of Philosophy (London: Charles Knight & Co. 1845-46) held in the National Library of Ireland was donated by Jasper Robert Joly (1819-93). Two sets of vols. 1-4 are held as call no. J 921 & 10912.

Jasper Robert Joly donated 23,000 volumes to the Royal Dublin Society in 1863 to be held in trust for the National Library of Ireland which was founded in 1877

See also Lewes, Do., Vol. 2 [Ancient Philosophy in 2 vols. - Vol II] (London: C. Knight 1845 edn.) held at Michigan UL [fnd. 1835; book accessioned in 1845], on Google Books - online; and Do., Part II: Modern Philosophy [1885 Edn.], facs. rep. (Kessinger 2004) - online.

[Note: Lewes uses the epithet ‘lofty’ in writing of Bruno [search at Internet Archive online]; see also his remarks under Johannes (Scotus) Erigena - as supra.]

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[ There is a Bruno portal ‘ giordanobruno.filosofia.sns.it.]

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Some contemporary critical sources on internet ...

I. Frith, Life of Giordano Bruno (London: Trübner & Co. [Ludgate Hill] 1887) - available at the Internet Archive [online]; accessed 30.07.2012. A facsimile of the 1st edition was published in Early Studies of Giordano Bruno [ser.], ed. Paul Richard Blum (Bristol: Thoemmes 2000). [Note that Firth’s book is inscribed to Nicholas Trubner, ‘faithful friend and adviser who proposed the subject of this book’. (p.v.).] See extracts - attached. John Owen, The Skeptics of the Italian Renaissance [2nd edn.] (NY: S. Sonnenschein & Co.; London: Macmillan 1893), xix, 419pp, xxxcvi, 8° [Chap. V: Giordano Bruno, pp.245-344; the whole available at Internet Archive - online.] See extracts - attached. Lewis J. McIntyre, Giordano Bruno (Macmillan 1903) - available at Internet Archive [online]; accessed 11.12.2012. For the full text of Joyce’s review of his work in Dublin Daily Express (20 October 1903), see RICORSO, Library, “Major Authors” > James Joyce, [infra]. Review of same by T. Whittaker in Mind n.s., 13, 50 (April 1904, pp.281-84 - available at JSTOR > online. See extracts - attached. Coulson Turnbull, Life and Teachings of Giordano Bruno : Philosopher, Martyr, Mystic 1548 - 1600 (q. pub. 1913) - by the author of The Solar Logos: or Studies in Arcana Mysticism (Pasadena: Gnostic Press 1923). No COPAC citation. William Boulting, Giordano Bruno: His Life, Thought, and Martyrdom (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner 1914) See extracts - infra. The Great Theosophists: Giordano Bruno, in Theosoph [No. 23 of a 29-pt. Ser.], 26, 8 (June 1938), pp.338-44 Available at Wisdomworld - online. Dorothea Waley Singer, Giordano Bruno, His Life and Thought (NY: Schuman 1950) [incls. an annotated translation of On the Infinite Universe and Worlds], and Do. [rep. edn.] (NY: Greenwood Press, 1977), xi, 389pp. ill. [Available at Positive Atheism - online.] See extracts - attached.

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Giordano Bruno - Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago UP 1964; 1979, 1991 [pb.]) - Preface: ‘Many years ago I planned to make an English translation of Giordano Bruno’s La cena de le ceneri with an introduction emphasising the boldness with which this advanced philosopher of the Renaissance accepted the Copernican theory. But as I followed Bruno along the Strand to the house in Whitehall where he was to expound te Copernican theory to knights and doctors, doubts arose. Was that journey imaginaty and was the Supper really held at the French embassy? And was the Copernican theory really the subject of the debate or was there something else implied in it? The Bruno problem remained with me thereafter as the real centre of all my studies; masses of notes and manuscript accumulated but full understanding eluded me. Some major clue was missing. [Speaks here of the work of P. O. Kristeller, E. Garin, and D. P. Walker in demonstrating the importance of Renaissance Hermetism.] Further: No one has yet spoken of Bruno in connection with Hermetism, nor, in spite of my interest in all these studes, did the possibility of such a connection occur to me for some time. [...; ix] It was not until a few years ago that it dawned upon me, quite suddenly, that Renaissance Hermetism provides the long-sought-for major clue to Bruno. [...].’ (pp.ix-x.) [Signed Warburg Inst., Univ. of London.] Available at Amazon - online [i.e., Preface, Contents, 6pp., and Index].