Note: there will be no reading on Tuesday, 8 July 2014.
We finished chapter 1 today, which saw the three
young men walking down to the beach, where Mulligan is going to have a swim. He chats with an acquaintance, who is already in the water and gossips with him about young Seymour, who seems to have dropped out of his medical studies, is back in town, and is seeing a red-haired girl named Lily (to which Mulligan's comment is, in character, "Redheaded women buck like goats" (1.706)). Stephen and Haines aren't joining Mulligan in swimming but the three arrange to meet at the pub, The Ship, later that day. Haines and Stephen talk about Irish and English history,
and a couple of typical themes (which we will encounter again in the book) turn
up: that of master and servant (England and Ireland) and that of Ireland's two
masters, i.e. the state and the church (British rule and the rule of the Roman
church). The double rule was already lightly hinted at in the phrase we
encountered in the opening sentence of the book: "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a
bowl of lather on which a mirror and a
razor lay crossed" (1.1). There is also mention of a recent drowning case
nearby. Stephen imagines the body turning up soon (the popular belief was that a
drowned body would resurface after nine days). Indeed, we find ourselves more
and more in Stephen's mind, his interior monologues getting longer and longer. But it is
not always possible to keep apart what belongs to Stephen's thoughts and what
is reported like in a narration. These two voices blend.
The closing word, "Usurper", it may
be safely assumed, is what's going though Stephen's mind — a term that may
apply not only to the British but, in this case, to Mulligan, who seems to take
everything over in Stephen's view: e.g. Stephen would like to be a writer, but
Mulligan is coming out with all the clever turns of phrases. Note how he never states
anything simply but always makes a theatrical act of what he's saying (accompanying
it by quotations like, "Thus spake Zarathustra" (1.727) or "Make
room in the bed" (1.713)). From this point of view, Mulligan may be seen
to have something in common with the suitors in Homer's Odyssey, who eat up
what is in Odysseus home and try to usurp it from him.
Summarizing, we see in
chapter one three young men living in a tower near a beach; Stephen appearing
grumpy and brooding; Mulligan exuberant, playacting a lot and full of spirits,
although he may become rather repetitive in the long run, his jokes a little
stale:
- O, Haines said, you have
heard it before?
- Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily. (1.609)
- Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily. (1.609)
and Haines, the Englishman taking an
anthropologist's interest for the Irish, which comes across having a rather patronizing air. Politics are hinted at too (Ireland oppressed
and under British rule; Ireland seeing times of revival and of cultural
renaissance; the rule of the Church), but such themes are generally kept under
the surface and only break through in hints occasionally.
Indeed, we often can't follow everything we read straight away. Some of it will become clear eventually (some won't though!). Very often in Ulysses, details turn up and we don't know what is worth remembering: some of it will come back, some won't. The reader needs to have the patience to wait and see.
