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!
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
