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)

Monkey's Marginalia, No. 8 or Books Uncovered and Masks Removed

1. On the Eotvos Wheel website, one of Guthrie MacInnes' books, A Swindle of Cowbirds (1966), is listed. The book is reputed to have been published in 1966.  It just occurred to me today why the title sounded so familiar.  Please let me direct you to A Confederacy of Dunces.  Written by John Kennedy Toole, it is considered a comic masterpiece (and by me, too).  Sadly, Toole did not live to see his novel's success.  Toole had been working with a publisher and after several revisions, the publisher rejected the novel.  Toole ended his correspondence with the publisher in 1966.  In 1969, Toole committed suicide.  It was the only due to efforts of Toole's mother that the book was published posthumously.

2. Essad Bey, this is one authorship controversy that Dorst has never mentioned (to my knowledge) but seems to be the stuff S. is made of.  Essad Bey is believed to be Lev Nussimbaum and according to Tom Reiss, author of The Orientalist, Nussimbaum probably used the pseudonym Kurban Said.  Nussimbaum, though prolific, liked to play fast and loose with the facts, so much so, that his non-fictions works are considered garbage today by serious academics.  All of them. There is also some question as to whether he enlisted the help of additional authors due to the large number of books that are attributed to him.

Another interesting thing of note is that he started using the name Essad Bey to write for Die literarische Welt (The Literary World) in 1926.  His politics were far-right; he was considered required reading in Nazi Germany until his Jewish heritage was discovered;  and he was even contracted to write a biography of Mussolini until the nature of his origins came to light.

3.  It was through Essad Bay and Tom Reiss' book that I came across another authorship controversy.  Ali and Nino (1937) by Kurban Said. The players in this drama are:

• Baroness Elfriede Ehrenfels von Bodmershof.  Although her niece asserts the baroness's authorship, the baroness could have easily gained control of the copyright in Nazi Germany since Nissumbaum, as a Jew, would have had no legal right to assert his ownership of the book as its author. 
• The book is partially written by Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli with Nussimbaum filling the rest with passages cribbed from his prior writings. 
• The book is plagiarized from The Snake's Skin (1926) by Grigol Robakidze.  

4.  And finally, The Snake's Skin appears to echo the idea found in Borges' The Aleph, except the entire world is not found in space at the 19th step in the cellar, but within the book itself.  From wikipedia.org:

The novel The Snake’s Skin is about entire universe, where the space is complete and united. The scene takes place at the entire planet: the West and the East; Russia, Europe and finally Robakidze’s motherland – Georgia. Here one may also find an imaginary world of American billionaire living in his villa at Mediterranean Sea along with various prominent artists.
There is only one tense in the The Snake’s Skin – present, but it includes past and future as well. The main thing is reality, but myths and legends are part of this reality. The way of thinking is not only particularly human, but at the same time metaphysical and idealistic.
The personages of the novel do not live in the particular time period, or represent persons with concrete nationality. The author describes generalized citizen of the world that gets transformed into a particular person or in other words, returns to his roots (actual father, motherland), oneself, and the God. This is an adventure of Archibald Mekeshi’s soul taking place throughout the centuries.

Disappointingly, it appears that a English translation isn't available.

(8/9/14 edited for grammar and clarity, tags added)