The last thing we read today. "... £ 1,000,000 sterling." Gabler (17.1668), Penguin (845.27)
Bloom is still engaged in the process of divestiture, takes off his shoes, after (naturally it is not a simple matter if one remains true to the style of this chapter) disnoding the lace knots, unhooking and loosening the laces. He breaks off part of the nail of his big toe on his right foot that was peeping through the hole of the sock, inhales its odour before throwing it away. This little act brings back the memories of the time when he was Master Bloom and was a pupil at Mrs Ellis's juvenile school.
Soon Bloom's thoughts are off on a tangent, perhaps triggered by the money matters which had occupied him a short while before. He starts thinking about the kind of a house he would like to live in. What follows is a three-page long flights of fancy about his dream dwelling including servant's apartments, location, layout, number of rooms, type of furniture, size and details of the grounds in which it would be situated, kinds of flowers that would grow in the gardens, playing courts that would be added along with a summerhouse and a shrubbery, rabbitry, fowlrun, 2 hammocks (lady's and gentleman's), nature of transport desired to reach the town, ... Lo and behold, he thinks not only of the kind of hobbies he would engage in (outdoor: garden and fieldwork; indoor: discussion in tepid security of unsolved historical and criminal problems, house carpentry...) but also of possible names of this eligible and erected residence as being Bloom Cottage, Saint Leopold's, or Flowerville.
What follows is a list - yet one more of this chapter - of the kind of civic functions Bloom of 7 Eccles street foresees for Bloom of Flowerville. (Details on pages 842 & 843 in the Penguin edition!) Questions regarding how much to pay for such a country residence, and how to raise the required amount occupy next our Bloom. Among other possibilities he sees for the latter are winning a horse race in a national equine handicap (because of the 28 minute long difference between the Greenwich time followed in England and Dunsink time followed in Ireland, bookies in Dublin did not close their books until 3.30 or 3.45 pm local time and a private telegram would inform Bloom of the result of the race that was over much earlier), getting his hands on a few rare stamps or finding a solution of the secular problem of the quadrature of the circle, and winning the government premium £ 1,000,000 sterling.
During the reading, I felt quite dissatisfied with Bloom's occupation with all these trivial details, with his building such enormous castles in air, with his forgetting that his livelihood was based on acquiring advertisements for a newspaper. I could not forget that before all these memories/thoughts began to run amok, Bloom had seen solid evidence of his being betrayed by his wife. I asked myself what idea Joyce had while he wrote this section. I wondered how to reconcile this characterization of Bloom with the one I had carried all along with me - of a Bloom, who is a rational and a modest man. What, if any, parallels are there between Bloom's this home coming and that of Homer's Ulysses?
A long reflection about the behavior of Bloom through out the day did finally lead me to partial answers to my questions. Particularly his behavior whenever Blazes Boylan's name was mentioned. For example, very early in the novel, in the carriage on the way to the burial of Patrick Dignam,when Mr. Power mentions seeing Boylan airing his quiff (Penguin 115.2), Bloom forces himself to review the nails of his left hand. In fact, he had avoided returning home that day and had forced upon himself a long nocturnal perambulation in order not to confront the thoughts of Molly with Boylan at 7 Eccles Street.
Thus it is very much in line with Joyce's characterization of Bloom that Bloom thinks about his dream house, minutes after seeing a pair of long yellow ladies' gloves, an emerald ashtray containing four consumed matches, and notes of Love's Old Sweet Song on the vertical piano (Cadby)!!
Bloom is still engaged in the process of divestiture, takes off his shoes, after (naturally it is not a simple matter if one remains true to the style of this chapter) disnoding the lace knots, unhooking and loosening the laces. He breaks off part of the nail of his big toe on his right foot that was peeping through the hole of the sock, inhales its odour before throwing it away. This little act brings back the memories of the time when he was Master Bloom and was a pupil at Mrs Ellis's juvenile school.
Soon Bloom's thoughts are off on a tangent, perhaps triggered by the money matters which had occupied him a short while before. He starts thinking about the kind of a house he would like to live in. What follows is a three-page long flights of fancy about his dream dwelling including servant's apartments, location, layout, number of rooms, type of furniture, size and details of the grounds in which it would be situated, kinds of flowers that would grow in the gardens, playing courts that would be added along with a summerhouse and a shrubbery, rabbitry, fowlrun, 2 hammocks (lady's and gentleman's), nature of transport desired to reach the town, ... Lo and behold, he thinks not only of the kind of hobbies he would engage in (outdoor: garden and fieldwork; indoor: discussion in tepid security of unsolved historical and criminal problems, house carpentry...) but also of possible names of this eligible and erected residence as being Bloom Cottage, Saint Leopold's, or Flowerville.
What follows is a list - yet one more of this chapter - of the kind of civic functions Bloom of 7 Eccles street foresees for Bloom of Flowerville. (Details on pages 842 & 843 in the Penguin edition!) Questions regarding how much to pay for such a country residence, and how to raise the required amount occupy next our Bloom. Among other possibilities he sees for the latter are winning a horse race in a national equine handicap (because of the 28 minute long difference between the Greenwich time followed in England and Dunsink time followed in Ireland, bookies in Dublin did not close their books until 3.30 or 3.45 pm local time and a private telegram would inform Bloom of the result of the race that was over much earlier), getting his hands on a few rare stamps or finding a solution of the secular problem of the quadrature of the circle, and winning the government premium £ 1,000,000 sterling.
During the reading, I felt quite dissatisfied with Bloom's occupation with all these trivial details, with his building such enormous castles in air, with his forgetting that his livelihood was based on acquiring advertisements for a newspaper. I could not forget that before all these memories/thoughts began to run amok, Bloom had seen solid evidence of his being betrayed by his wife. I asked myself what idea Joyce had while he wrote this section. I wondered how to reconcile this characterization of Bloom with the one I had carried all along with me - of a Bloom, who is a rational and a modest man. What, if any, parallels are there between Bloom's this home coming and that of Homer's Ulysses?
A long reflection about the behavior of Bloom through out the day did finally lead me to partial answers to my questions. Particularly his behavior whenever Blazes Boylan's name was mentioned. For example, very early in the novel, in the carriage on the way to the burial of Patrick Dignam,when Mr. Power mentions seeing Boylan airing his quiff (Penguin 115.2), Bloom forces himself to review the nails of his left hand. In fact, he had avoided returning home that day and had forced upon himself a long nocturnal perambulation in order not to confront the thoughts of Molly with Boylan at 7 Eccles Street.
Thus it is very much in line with Joyce's characterization of Bloom that Bloom thinks about his dream house, minutes after seeing a pair of long yellow ladies' gloves, an emerald ashtray containing four consumed matches, and notes of Love's Old Sweet Song on the vertical piano (Cadby)!!
