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Abstract
This is a study of the question of happiness (the eudaimon bios ) in C. P. Cavafy, Valery Larbaud and James Joyce from within the paradigm of Homer's Odyssey. As I suggest, the real principle of value is Odysseus' Ithaca rather than the journey, as it is often assumed. I discuss whether, in the examined writings of these authors, happiness is possible; also, whether it is sufficient for human life, and what conditions are necessary for its attainment and preservation. I first offer a reading of Homer's epics: of the Iliad as a revealing argument of what is contrary to human existence and of the Odyssey as a literary form that is defined as a way of communicating eudaimonia—joy and as being conducive to it. I suggest that C. P. Cavafy's texts reveal the initial fear against the faith in a possible human happiness. Also that his poem “[special characters omitted]” is the final result of a textual effort that begins with an unstudied text, “[special characters omitted]”, and progresses through two equally lesser known texts, “[special characters omitted]” and “[special characters omitted]”. Valery Larbaud takes the question one point further: in his novel, Le Journal Intime de A. O. Barnabooth, he offers the possible and realized example of the happy life. He gives his own version of the necessary passage to it and the confirmation that the Ithaca found at the end of the journey is fully satisfactory and endowed with the possibility of happiness. Larbaud's novel introduces firmly the question of the need for a spiritual center, and this is discussed in detail through Larbaud's central examples of Seneca, Dante and of religious faith. The third example of this study, James Joyce's Ulysses, constitutes the culminating point: human happiness is not only possible, but it can be reconstructed if once one's faith in the value of life becomes misplaced. In my study, I propose a central relationship between Ulysses and a text by Søren Kierkegaard never before associated with Joyce, Some Reflections on Marriage by a Married Man from Kierkegaard's Stages on Life's Way.
