A Different Kind of Burden Shirt

I've been thinking for awhile now that the Belastunghemd (or burden shirt from Fn 5, pg 52) might be related to a couple of things.  In doing some research on types of fiction, sometimes references are only a close approximation to the object, idea or person being referenced. The specific example I found came from an academic paper (about Finnegans Wake), but unfortunately I can't find it again.  I have found a list of references to two characters in Finnegans Wake here to give you an idea.

To give you another example, I can create one using James Joyce, author of Finnegans Wake and Ulysses.  In Gaelic, his surname would be Seoighe (shoy).  Suppose somehow he is connected to archery, whether it be through word play or the sport.  Archer in gaelic is saighdeoir (sijue, long i).  The two words somewhat resemble each other but different enough that only someone who understands the connection that I am making would get it.  I suspect that there are these kinds of connections in S. that need to be found, too.

Back to the burden-shirt.  Mystimus and Geekyzen have talked about its possible connection to the shirt of Nessus. When I first came across the term, the first thought that came to my mind was the hair shirt worn by Thomas Becket, who was famously matyred when still wearing his (you can blame my high school literature teacher for this one), and the mystery plays of the middle ages.

The hair shirt or cilice, is an object worn by the faithful as an act of penitence or atonement; or as a way to assume some of the suffering of Christ.  The whole point of the garment is to make the wearer uncomfortable and/or to cause pain.  Although mostly associated with the Christian faith since biblical times, the practice has been traced to prehistoric cultures; the practice in Christianity comes from the biblical tradition of wearing sackcloth and ashes during mouring and debasement.  Related to this is the biblical tradition of rending one's clothes to expose a broken heart.  More recently, the hair shirt metaphor was applied to one of the Lost Generation writers; Virginia Woolf compared T. S. Eliot's wife, Vivienne, to "a bag of ferrets" worn around his neck.  It might also be that the burden shirt is a reference to five mourners; or to five sinners who need to atone for their sins.

It makes sense then that the play Belastunghemd performed by children is a morality play that takes place on Ash Wednesday.  Medieval European religious festivities at some point evolved into the formal dramas called mystery plays, using content taken directly from the bible.  They were sometimes performed around important holidays. Later, as mystery plays fell out of favor, morality plays became the form of entertainment popular in the 15th and 16th centuries.  Sometimes containing a moral or sometimes not, morality plays, often called interludes, were allegories in which the protagonist is encouraged to choose a Godly life through interactions with virtues shown in human form.

Using the same loose logic that I connected Joyce to the archer, I think Belastunghemd may also be a reference the literary genre bildungsroman, that originated in Germany in the 18th century from Goethe.  Goethe, who is probably most famous for his Faust (which also contains allegory), is credited for writing the first coming of age novel.  The term comes from the german meaning "novel of formation/education/culture"  Bildungsroman "is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood."  Which makes sense as becoming an adult comes with its own trials and responsibilities. In order to become an adult, one must give up childish things and assume the burdens or burden-shirt of maturity.


(8/17/14 edits for grammar and tags added)