Agee, Joyce and the Epic Tradition

I briefly mentioned in class the following allusion, but I'd like to expand on it here. Agee uses the quotation "I will go unto the altar of God" as an epigraph for the section entitled "Shelter." He also repeats it, its original context prior to the "Inductions" section. The quotation is from Psalm 43:

"I will go unto the altar of God:

Even unto the God of my joy and gladness, and upon the harp will I give thanks unto thee, O God, my God."

Some more context is in order: at the time of Agee's writing, the Catholic mass was still in Latin. The Roman Order of Mass begins (after the sign of the cross) with a section called the Introit:

"Priest: Introibo ad altare Dei.

Response: Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam."

Which is exactly the translation of the first two lines of Psalm 43 quoted by Agee.

This fact is significant unto itself: Agee's invocation of the Introit colors what he has to say next with a sacred connotation. Whether he is mocking himself here (seeing as he often depicts himself as a profane, even sexual tinted, intruder in the houses) is a different question. Either way, he has cast a religious overtone to the entire section.

I find it equally significant, however, that Joyce chose the same allusion to begin Ulysses:

"Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirro and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

--Introibo ad altare Dei."

In Joyce's case, there is no doubt about the irony of this invocation: Buck Mulligan is mocking his "jesuit" roommate Stephan Daedalus. The bowl of lather, for example, is meant as a false chalice. (Aside: Buck's real name is Malachi, a book of the bible which Agee quotes in the section about the Gudger's bible)

An allusion to Joyce is significant for Agee. As Richard Ellmann said, "[Joyce] sensed that the methods available to him in previous literature were insufficient, and he determined to outreach them." This is exactly the feeling Agee expressed in the letter we read at the Lilly about Jazz. He wants to be free of the constraints of writing for Fortune and Time. And Let Us Now Praise Famous Men was his attempt to do that, to subvert the forms of writing he had to write to make money. The bizarre "Intermission" in which Agee responds to the questionnaire of the Partisan Review is an explicit rebellion against the conventional. Agee sees a precedent in Ulysses of throwing the writer's manual out the second story window, and he uses it. Also note the difference between Joyce/Agee and Steinbeck, who for the most part (at least in the narrative chapters) stays with a conventional arc form and third-person omnicient narrator.

Examining the function of the Introit in Ulysses sheds some light on its possible function in Agee. Joyce clearly senses the epic tradition: the structure of his book is based on the Odyssey, and his title explicitly reflects that. One interpretation of the Introit is a (perhaps ironic) parallel to the invocation of the muse at the beginning of epic poetry. We've discussed how Agee's long descriptive style is akin to an epic. Here we see the connection of Agee to the epic tradition manifested in his use of the Introit at the beginning of a section of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men.

Agee's title also evokes the kind of epic sense of singing for "Famous Men," which in the epic tradition are the great warriors remembered. Recall that "glory" in the epic tradition was exactly being remembered. This is a major concern for Achilles in the Iliad, when he is deciding whether or not to return to battle. The worse fate for someone like Achilles is not to die, but to be forgotten. The bard is the keeper of his memory. Likewise, we see throughout Let Us Now Praise Famous Men the burden Agee feels to be authentic to the "Life" of the tenant families, to keep their memory in his book.