Today we stopped at: "less than the arc which it subtends."
17.10 (Gabler), p. 776 (Penguin)
Bloom and Stephen have to stop in the road for an old horse
which is dragging a sweeper. Bloom feels sorry for it and wishes he had a lump
of sugar. Stephen is singing, which prompts Bloom to
say that he'd have a lot in common with his wife, who is a lover of music too,
and starts imagining plans for having Stephen's voice trained and establishing
him as a successful singer. This would have the benefit of bringing in some
money and of lifting Dublin's musical life to a more distinctive taste, and
Stephen could still devote himself to literature in his spare time. Another
piece of advice Bloom gives to Stephen is to cut away from Mulligan, who has no qualms about talking about him behind his back. The horse deposits three steaming turds on the road (a scene
described with attempts to lift, on a stylistic level, what is evidently
dropping). Stephen carries on singing as he and Bloom walk away into the
distance.
At this point, a shift in perspective occurs and the scene is
perceived from the driver of the sweepercar's position, who (though he can't hear what
they're saying) watches the two men walking away side by side. Bloom and Stephen
walk into the distance (a cinematic scene, in a way), linked in companionship but apart from each other
mentally.
We talked about the voice in this chapter, since it seemed
to some that it couldn't really be Bloom's, he seems so different from
how we know him. Maybe the chapter, particularly its ending, invites us to see
the voice as detaching itself from the characters (though it may originate from
what they say and do) - like something that lays itself over the events, or
something into which the events are transposed but that claims existence in its
own right.
One last time, an example of what we have come to enjoy as
typically (and funnily) Eumaean, with its deliberately awkward style, the
metaphors that don't go well together, then taking over and getting out of hand completely:
Added to which of course would be
the pecuniary emolument by no
means to be sneezed at, going hand in hand with his tuition fees. Not, he
parenthesissed, that for the sake of filthy lucre he need necessarily embrace
the lyric platform as a walk in life
In Ithaca (the next chapter, on which we started) it's rather
the precision which gets out of hand. It is written in a
pattern of question and answer, it strives to be exact (almost mathematically so), as
if it were trying to get back the hold that's been missing (viz. the looseness and laxness of the
previous chapter). But, again, the effort seems to defeat its purpose.
