Gods and clods
U 15.2193-4: Book through to eternity junction, the nonstop run. Just one word more. Are you a god or a doggone clod? In “Are you a god or a doggone clod” Joyce refers to the traditional contrast between God and clod, in the context of early twentieth-century American religious fanaticism characterised by John Alexander Dowie/Elijah III (see Writing Elijah). The adjective doggone adds further colour from American English: the term in first recorded there, in the mid nineteenth century. But the contrast between God and clod (Man as a clod of clay or earth; a poor mortal being) dates back centuries. Though the contrast is not used in the King James Bible (where clod appears six times), it is common in Early Modern poetry. A typical use occurs in Thomas Tusser’s Fiue Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry (1573) f. 94v:
It was a staple of poetic rhyme, and it is not surprising to find Edward Bysshe listing the rhyme-words in his Dictionary of Rhymes (1702) p. 26:
William Hazlitt was widely cited in 1828 for his contrastive use of God and clod in describing a tyrant:
That human nature can move from being clod-like to becoming god-like was not infrequently encountered in late nineteenth-century religious discussion. George Hughes Hepworth, sometime preacher, lecturer, and journalist, was encouraged by James Gordon Bennett to write popular sermons for God-fearing Americans who never went to church. He wrote his Herald Sermons (1894) for Bennett’s paper the New York Herald. He introduces the general contrast between God and clod in one sermon:
and then follows this up in a later lecture, with an invocation to the average listener (perhaps distantly related to Leopold Bloom):
This latter passage was widely cited in contemporary American newspapers, as Hepworth’s words were syndicated from the Herald across America. Literary discussion of God and clod received a boost with the publication in 1908 of Jack London’s Martin Eden. London was by now extremely popular in America, and widely read in Britain and Ireland too. Martin Eden is a novel about the struggles of a writer to rise above his working-class background, particularly motivated by love. Interested in types of fiction, Martin Eden, had “in the course of his reading” discovered two kinds:
When “Elijah” (Dowie) enquires of his audience in Nighttown “Are you a god or a doggone clod?” he was drawing on a contrast that had received a considerable airing in contemporary religious and literary circles, especially in America. John Simpson |
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