fatherhood

[note 2.21]

father’s day

[note 2.21]

Fatherhood . . . is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten.

—James Joyce, Ulysses

This could be read as a bleak assessment of fatherhood (and of the Church itself), this idea of an apostolic succession, of power and knowledge being handed down hand-to-hand, generation to generation, that only the anointed can bestow. But (for today) I choose to read it as strangely hopeful, that we are made of all that has come before us, including our fathers.

Stanley Kunitz introduced this Joyce quote to me (I forget in what context)—I’d missed it in my reading of Ulysses (I likely missed a lot). I now believe that Stanley was pointing out that my relationship with him was also a type of apostolic succession, and that this is true of all poetry. If one can think of poetry as a tree, I’ve always felt (hoped) that I existed somewhere on Stanley’s branch.

After Ulysses was published, Samuel Becket ended up working for Joyce as a research assistant and secretary (another apostolic succession).

Beckett, who I read throughout my 20s. Here’s Becket on fatherhood:

HAMM: Scoundrel! Why did you engender me?

NAGG: I didn’t know.

HAMM: What? What didn’t you know?

NAGG: That it’d be you.

—Endgame

For me, this is what is so thrilling about Beckett, how he moves from tragedy to comedy within the space of a few words.