Tuesday, 26 August 2014, Pages 65-72, Calypso, Episode 4

Stopped at "No sign. Gone. What matter?" (Gabler 4.190) (Penguin p. 72)

This episode start the beginning of book II (Ulysses is divided into three books) and is much more straightforward and easier in tone than the previous one. We meet Mr Leopold Bloom in the morning preparing a breakfast tray for "her" (presumably his wife) and getting ready to leave the house to get a kidney for himself.

Before leaving for the butcher's he asks her if she wants anything (a moan is all he gets in reply and the jingling sound of the bed as she turns, which makes him think he must finally have those springs mended). He then picks up his hat, checks the hat-band with the inscription "Plasto's high grade ha" (with the T sweated off from frequent wear) assures himself that the "white slip of paper" is still inside his hat-band, "quite safe", and that he has his potato (4.69 ff.). We don't know at this point what the paper and the potato are about. He doesn't have his house keys since he's left them in his other trousers but he can risk leaving the house without them just for the moment.

At Dlugacz, the butcher's, Bloom waits for the customer who's being served to finish her purchase (it's the next-door neighbours' the servant girl) and observes her rather chapped fingers and her "vigorous hips", whose sight he rather likes (4.148). In fact, he's hoping to get a chance to follow her on the way home and watch her secretly if the butcher serves him fast enough. Unfortunately (and here's one of life's many little frustrations already) the girl heads in a direction different from home.

A few comments about this chapter:

Consider its opening. The first thing we learn about a character, Mr Bloom, is what he likes to eat, and he eats "with relish". For a moment, however, we may be misled: "relish" could at first be understood to mean the sauce, and only later may we realise it means something like joy or pleasure. "Beasts and fowls", too, is a phrase from the Bible rather than a novel. So, here, we seem to be dealing with things that are not very common in English speaking countries. (To say nothing of the last word of the first paragraph: Not many would have expected it to end on "urine". Bloom is introduced by his predilection and it is, to say the least, one of unusual tastes.)

The second sentence is interesting, too. Were we to read it aloud, we may find it's not easy to read quickly, which is due to the numerous consonant clusters. One's tongue has to run around the palate quite a bit to read it. It is, in Fritz Senn's comparison, a little as though we were chewing. In other words, the sentence imitates the act of mastication.

A word about the cat. It says "Mkgnao!" and then "Mrkgnao!" and again, lowdly, "Mrkrgnao!", as if the cat were emphasising something. On the one hand, this elaborate attempt to render cat-speech (rather than giving a simple "miaow") is telling of how closely Bloom is listening (we'll find him to be a very attentive person indeed). He also tries to imagine what the cat sees, e.g. whether he looks as tall as a tower to it, then deciding, "No, she can jump me" (4.29). It's a trait we'll soon come to appreciate as typical of Bloom, who's often trying to imagine what the world looks like to others or 'from the other side'. Finally and tellingly in this passage, the cat never says the same thing twice: it is as though it were giving us a lesson in miniature about how to read the book in general.

A note about the Home Rule irony that Bloom smiles about, which may need some explanation: On his way to the butcher's, and walking eastward, Bloom imagines a day in the Orient, only to conclude, however, that it's "probably not a bit like it really" (4.99). Similarly, he thinks, "What Arthur Griffith said about the headpiece over the Freeman leader: a homerule sun rising up in the northwest from the laneway behind the bank of Ireland", smiles and, "Ikey touch that: homerule sun rising up in the northwest (4.100 ff.).

When the Irish were trying to bring on Home Rule to have independent legislation from Britain, they depicted the Parliament building (which later became the bank of Ireland) with a sun rising behind it. The irony was that, if you looked at the bank of Ireland, you'd be facing northwest — which is certainly not where the sun rises. Our "sun rising up in the northwest" points to how the symbolism does not match the reality.

So, Bloom's turning around the image of the orient ("not a bit like it") just as he considers the twisted political symbolism illustrates how, often, in Ulysses something is not quite right — a feature that is rather present throughout the book. It is one worth looking out for and that will add to the humour of the book.

Tuesday, 19 August 2014, Pages 58-64, Proteus, Episode 3

We have reached the end of chapter 3, with Stephen continuing his walk on the beach, observing what he sees and following his thoughts. We leave him on Sandymount Strand, after he's looked for (and not found) the handkerchief in his pocket, carefully depositing the bit of snot picked from his nose on a rock. He then looks back over his shoulder "rere regardant" at a ship, "a threemaster, her sails brailed up on the crosstrees" (3.504). "Rere regardant" is terminology from the language of heraldry and would be used to describe e.g. an animal depicted on a crest looking backward.

So, the last sight we get in this chapter is of a ship, the "threemaster" (threemaster, incidentally, recalling the "two masters" Stephen feels he is serving and that he thought about earlier). The ship's "crosstrees" recall Calvary Hill, where Jesus was crucified. We know from Frank Budgen, a close friend of Joyce's who was quite knowledgeable in the field of ships and with whom Joyce discussed Ulysses rather closely, that he corrected Joyce about the term "crosstree" and said that it would be wrong in the language of sailing. But Joyce did not seem to care and replied that he wanted that term as he was going to need it later in the book (cf. Frank Budgen, The Making of "Ulysses" — a very good read if you want to know more about their conversations).

Generally, we may note that terms are of particular interest to Stephen, who has a fine awareness of language and whose thoughts are often close to utterance (i.e. he seems to think as he would speak or even write). He is interested in variations of language, e.g. the language of gypsies (the poem "White thy fambles..." is a slightly erotic love poem in Gypsy language), the language of heraldry, the lingo of thieves, the language of monks etc. He experiments with imitative sound (e.g. while listening to the water, "a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos " (3.456)). He tries out expressions that would render best, even imitate, what he observes (the woman he watches on the beach "trudges, schlepps, trains, drags, trascines her load" (3.392)). He depicts the movements of the dog on the beach closely, making him morph into other animals (the dog seems like a wolf, then a goat, a calf, a bear, a fawn, a pard, a panther, a vulture, but then also goes back to being very dog-like). The dog is observed closely, with all the associations it brings up, including its running and the moving "toward one great goal" (3.351), which recalls the manifestation of God that Deasy spoke about in Chapter 2 (note in passing that it was one of Joyce's favourite points that "dog" spell "god" backward). And he tries out words for phonetic effect ("mouth to her moomb. Oomb, allwombing tomb" (3.401)). Stephen also scribbles down his vampire poem on a piece of paper torn from Mr Deasy's letter, which the reader never gets to see however (i.e. we don't have the words and hence don't get to see the act of putting thoughts to paper).

Finally, Stephen's thoughts return to the drowned body and he imagines its expected turning up in a rather unsavoury way. It occurs to him, in between thoughts, that "By the way next when is it Tuesday will be the longest day" (3.491). We can deduce now that, since Tuesday is the longest day (June 21), and the day of the book is a Thursday, it is now June 16 (we do not know the year yet at this point). 

With the close of chapter 3 we have reached the end of the first book of Ulysses. Chapter 4 will, in a way, open a new book.

Check out Aida Yared's homepage for illustrations of Ulysses lines. This threemaster is taken from her collection at http://www.joyceimages.com/chapter/3/?page=8

Tuesday, 12 July 2014, Pages 52 - 58, Proteus, Episode 3

Stopped at "... waves and waves." (Gabler 3.341) Penguin (58.3)

As Stephen wanders along the Sandymount strand, thoughts wander in his mind. How Joyce has used words and language on these pages to evoke images is simply beautiful!

When we left Stephen last week on the strand, he was thinking about his time in Paris (My Latin quarter hat.) and his time in Clongowes where it was once wrongly believed that he would enter the church (Cousin Stephen, you will never be a saint.) His mind is still interweaving the same strands of thoughts; you were going to do wonders, what? Missionary to Europe after fiery Columbanus, Fiacre and Scotus (three famous Irish missionaries to the continent)... After nursing such high ambitions, how did he return from Paris to Ireland? With the rich booty of a couple of copies of the magazines, Le Tutu, Pantalon Blanc et Culotte Rouge! And he returns because he got a telegram, "Nother dying come home father." Thought of the telegram with the grim news makes Stefan recall Mulligan's saying, "The aunt thinks you killed your mother."

Stephen does not dwell on his mother's death much longer as the gold light on sea, on sand, on boulders catch his eyes. The houses bathed in the sun light look as if they are lemon colored. Their lemon color lead his thoughts back to Paris with its lemon (colored) streets.

Sephen remembers his lunch meeting with Kevin Egan, one of the Irish wild geese (Penguin, (51.7)), how he looked (his fustian shirt, sanguineflowered, trembles its Spanish tassels...; raw face bones under his peep of day boy's hat), what he said ("You're your father's son. I know the voice." (Stephen's voice is supposed to resemble that of his father's, who was a good singer), how other people in that cafe were eating (around the slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths and grumbling gorges), ...  Stephen thinks of this Irish revolutionary as being loveless, landless, wifeless. He feels the utter waste as They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them.

By this time, Stephen has come nearer the edge of the sea and the wet sand slapped his boots. He has walked a long way. Seeing the Kish lightship (moored at the northern end of Kish Bank, two miles east of Kingstown, now Dun Laoghaire; Gifford 3.267), he turns back. The feeling of the wet sand in which his feet are sinking lead him to the thoughts of the Martello tower he had left that morning. He has given the key to the tower to Mulligan. So he will not be able to enter the tower that night if Haines (panthersahib) and Mulligan (his - Haines's - pointer) are asleep. Anyway he had told himself that morning: "I will not sleep here tonight." (Penguin, 28.2)

Stephen climbs up and sits on a stool of rock. A dog - just a point when seen from the distance - runs across the sweep of sand. At first Stephen - as scared of dogs as Joyce himself was - wonders whether  the dog would attack him. But the dog runs back to the two women whom Stephen refers to as the two maries (Mary Magdalena and Mary, the mother of James), at the same time wondering whether they are the same as the ones he saw earlier, and if so, where they hid the afterbirth he had imagined that they were carrying.

Sitting on the rock at the strand, Stephen thinks of the Vikings, of Malachi, the king of Ireland who fought against the invaders, of the history of Ireland dotted with famine, plague and slaughters.

The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped and ran back. Well aware that he shakes at a cur's yelping, while Mulligan saved men from drowning, Stephen confronts his own 'cowardliness (?), helplessness (?)' in saving a drowning man. After all he could not save her (his own mother).

The last paragraph of what we read today is very cinematic, very visual. Joyce has created clear imagery of how a dog would behave running around on the strand, of how the waves serpent towards his (the dog's) feet, curling, unfurling many crests, every ninth, breaking, plashing, from far, from farther out, waves and waves.

Very beautiful indeed!

Chandra