Tuesday, 23 September 2014, Pages 97 - 100, Lotus-eaters, Episode 5

The group stopped at "Yes: under the bridge" (Gabler 5.385) (Penguin 100.20).

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Tuesday, 16 September 2014, Pages 87 - 97, Lotus-eaters, Episode 5

We read 10 pages today, stopping at "... flowers of its froth." (Gabler 5.317) (Penguin 97.31)

The highlights of these pages is Joyce's use of the technique of the stream of conciousness. This is especially obvious when the thoughts of Bloom intermingle with the talk of M'Coy. (See for example,  the paragraph starting with 'Doran, Lyons in Conway's.' Gabler (5.309), Penguin (89.33)). Reading the text aloud helps one to separate the thoughts from the spoken words.

On these pages, we also get to know Bloom a bit more: he has been carrying on a letter-liason with Martha, a person whom he has not met, and who thinks that his name is Henry Flower - well, 'Bloom' is quite close to 'Flower' -; he has a penchant to eye women, specially when they get on or off from a vehicle; he knows some famous arid; his father had committed suicide. And he is still kind of haunted by the torn envelope & by Love's Old Sweet Song! On the whole, these pages act as mirrors to the daily happenings in the life of a not-so-out-of-the-ordinary person. He saunters across acne, crosses roads, meets an acquaintance, a couple get on to a horse-drawn carriage, looks at advertisements, hoardings and bill boards, passes over a hopscotch court, and on seeing a cat sleeping is reminded of a legend about Prophet Mohammed.

Still thinking about the effect of the force of gravity and the value thirty two feet per second per second (value of the acceleration due to gravity at sea level on earth), Bloom enters the post office, produces a visiting card (made under a false name, Henry Flower) that he had hidden in his hat, and asks whether there are any letters for him. This is the first indication we have that he has been carrying on a liason with somebody. As he starts tearing open the envelope to which something is pinned on, he sees M'Coy. Not realizing that Bloom has no interest in stopping for a chat, M'Coy starts small talk. Bloom's attention is divided between the letter he is yet to read, and the sight of a woman and a man about to enter a horse-drawn carriage. He wonders, "which side will she get up?" M'Coy continues to talk as Bloom moves a little to the side of M'Coy's talking head to have a clear view. But just them a heavy tramcar honking its gong slews between. Poor Bloom. Whenever the sight of a girl/woman tantalizes him, something comes in between and blocks his view!

After promising M'Coy that he will make sure to enter his name in the mourners' list at Paddy Dignam's funeral - in case M'Coy is unable to attend the same - Bloom strolls on towards Brunswick street. At the corner, his eyes wander over the multicolored hoardings. Among them was the announcement of that night's play, Leah, starring Mrs. Bandmann Palmer, who had appeared on the previous night as Hamlet.  (She was not the only actress to have played the role of Hamlet.) That realization leads Bloom to wonder, perhaps he (Hamlet) was a woman. (Is that) why Ophelia committed suicide.

Passing a horse carriage stand, (where the horses were - their noses in a nosebag - busy munching oats), and the cabman's shelter, Bloom hums an aria from Don Giovanni and turns into Cumberland street. Treading carefully, he passes over a hopscotch court, sees a child playing marbles, and a tabby (cat) blinking, watching from her warm sill. Bloom's thoughts that it is a pity to disturb them (sleeping cats), reminds him of a legend from Islam, about Mohammed. It is said that once Mohammed on trying to get up as he hears the call for prayer, notices that his cat, Muezza, was sleeping on the sleeve of his prayer robe. Instead of disturbing the sleep of the cat, he decides to tear of the sleeve, and goes to the mosque in a torn robe.

Having found a quiet spot where he can read the letter unobserved, he opens it inside the newspaper (where he has been hiding it), finds that what was been pinned on to it is a yellow flower (which prompts him to conclude that Martha is not annoyed after all) and reads it. This is a typed letter written in a somewhat patchy, shaky style and with a couple of (intentional, on Joyce's part) mistakes in it (e.g. Martha types "world" instead of "word" or "wrote" instead of "write", easy mistakes to make on a typewriter). Bloom seems to feel somewhat ironic about his correspondent, but he reads the letter again, this time punctuating or interspersing it with various types of flowers in several places, thereby rendering an interpretation of what he's reading: "Angry tulips with you darling manflower punish your cactus if you don't please poor forgetmenot how I long violets to dear roses when we soon anemone meet all naughty nightstalk wife Martha's perfume" (5.264-6). On his continued walk, Bloom puts the flower into his heart pocket,  tears up and throws away the envelope and also throws away the pin.
Although he shows no intention of becoming involved any more closely with Martha (he's been thinking "no roses without thorns" earlier but has just thrown away the pin that held this particular flower, maybe preferring the rose without the thorn here) he decides to "go further next time", possibly thinking about becoming more daring and erotically outspoken in his next letter to her.

We may note here that this chapter is full of the pleasantness of the drowsy and the narcotic. Problems are kept at a distance, phantasies are of inebriating, soothing scenes and Blooms seems more interested in letting himself be enveloped by the painless rather than to face the harshness of reality. In this vein, we closed our reading on the description of an image that goes through Bloom's head, one of barrels full of porter, rolling about, then bursting open and a "lazy pooling swirl of liquor" with a froth of flowers washing over everything.

Tuesday, 9 September 2014, PART 2, Pages 85 - 87, Lotus-eaters, Episode 5

Today we completed the episode 4, and started with the episode 5, stopping at "... earth is the weight." (Gabler 5.46) (Penguin 87.22)

Note: Related posts are in two parts: Part 1 deals with episode 4 & Part 2 with episode 5.

Part 2:

Having found out when the funeral of Dignam is to take place, Bloom leaves home at quarter to. What follows is like a guide to walk through Dublin. 

From Sir John Rogerson's quay, Bloom turns into Lime street. In a couple of sentences, Joyce sketches the face of abject poverty, abundant there at that time. Bloom sees a boy carrying a bucket of offal, smoking a chewed fagbutt. He sees a smaller girl with scars of eczema. At first Bloom thinks of telling the boy that if he smokes he won't grow but refrains himself because his (the boy's) life isn't such a bed of roses. Bloom passes many landmarks of the time including the Bethel, Nichols' the undertaker, thinks of the funeral (scheduled for 11) again, of O'Neill, another undertaker, of Corny Kelleher who had got a job at O'Neill's, and of Tom Kernan (a real tea merchant from Dublin and also a character we know from Dubliners). 

Stopping in front of the window of The Belfast and Oriental Tea Company, he reads the labels on tea packets in the window. Choice blend, made of the finest Ceylon brands. Bloom's imagines how life could be in Ceylon (Dolce far niente / pleasant idleness). Sleep six months out of twelve. Too hot to quarrel. He remembers seeing a picture with a chap floating on his back in the dead sea. Wondering why the chap could float without sinking, Bloom tries to recollect, as answer, Archimedes Principle, and is confused about volume and weight. His questioning mind asks him what is weight after all? The answer: It is the force of gravity of the earth is the weight. 

Tuesday, 9 September 2014, PART 1, Pages 81 - 85, Calypso, Episode 4

Today we completed the episode 4, and started with the episode 5, stopping at "... earth is the weight." (Gabler 5.46) (Penguin 87.22)

Note: Related posts are in two parts: Part 1 deals with episode 4 & Part 2 with episode 5.

Part 1:
We get to know different facets of Bloom on these concluding pages of the 4th episode. We see him as a concerned father, as an affectionate father. We see him as a worried husband. We get to know one of the characteristics that is so typical of Bloom, a characteristic we shall notice again and again. This is his always trying to figure out causes/reasons of why things are as they are.  It amuses us to realize that he really has forgotten quite a bit of physics, (natural sciences in general), he had once known. Finally we find Bloom reading the popular weekly paper, Titbits, while doing his morning act in the jakes*.  We are also introduced in these early pages to the nursery rhyme, Sing a Song of Sixpence, which Joyce uses often in Ulysses.

Bloom has just finished reading Milly's letter. Twice. Bloom is concerned about Milly who is in Mullingar but tries to console himself saying that she knows how to mind herself. Well, all he can do is to wait in any case till it does (happen). Though he thinks of her with affection, his affection is troubled - he smiled with troubled affection at the kitchen window - and he is aware of the fact that though she is brave, she is also vain. After all he had caught her once in the street pinching her cheeks to make them red. Typical of the Bloom we are going to get to know better in the following pages, he thinks of why her cheeks were pale - Anemic a little. Was given milk too long. (As we know, too much of milk hinders the absorption of iron, and can lead to anemia!) Milly had mentioned in her letter of her friend Bannon, who sings Boylan's song about those seaside girls. (Read the lyrics and listen to the song here.)

The mentioning of Boylan makes Bloom think of the torn envelope upstairs, of the address (Mrs. Marion) on the envelope, of his wife lying in the bed, reading the letter, smiling. His thoughts are disjointed: Will happen, yes. Prevent. Useless. Lips kissed, kissing, kissed. The beginning of the next paragraph - Better where she is down there - gives us a plausible clue to understand these thoughts. So Bloom thinks that it is better that Milly is away in Mullingar, and not at home. Obviously he suspects that something is going to happen at home, and feels that it will be useless of him to try to prevent it. Of course, we do not know what that something is at this stage in the book!

Leaving the kitchen, he feels a gentle loosening of his bowels. Deciding to use the outside toilet, he picks up the paper, Titbits, and walks out.

(Source: https://s3.amazonaws.com/joyceimages-images/thumb/small_Titbits_1Guinea.jpg)

On his way to the toilet, he notices the state of the garden and imagines that if he could reclaim the whole place, he can grow peas, lettuce, fresh greens... Sitting on the cuckstool (toilet seat), he unfolds Titbits. Reading that week's prize-winning story, Matcham's Masterstroke, Bloom dreams of writing a story himself and imagines seeing the story published, authored by Mr. and Mrs. L. M. Bloom.  He could perhaps invent a story for some proverb.  But which proverb? His thinking of the time when he used to jot down on his cuff what she (his wife) said dressing, hints to us that Molly, his wife, often uses proverbs. Bloom's thoughts turn to the bazaar dance he attended with Molly, where apparently she had danced with Boylan too.

Having completed his business in the toilet, Bloom gets out in the bright light outside. As he starts wondering what time the funeral is to be, the bells of George's church start tolling. It is quarter to.

* (a toilet, esp. an outdoor one)

Note: Writing about going to toilets, and describing the act on the toilet, was - to say the least - quite uncommon in the days Joyce wrote Ulysses. Erza Pound, who had in fact made it possible for Ulysses to be serialized in The Little Review in the US, had apparently penciled the paragraph starting with 'Quietly he read...',  (Penguin 83.4) intending it to be deleted. 

Tuesday, 2 September 2014, Pages 72 - 81, Calypso, Episode 4

Stopped at "Then he read the letter again: twice." (Gabler 4.427) (Penguin p. 81.2)

Bloom walks home from the butcher's, reading the leaflet about investing money in land ("Agendath Netaim: planters' company" (4.191)), when a cloud covers the sky and, momentarily, darkens his thoughts too. If we think back to (and are able to remember) chapter 1, we see a cloud there too: "A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in deeper green" (1.248), which brought on dark thoughts for Stephen, also (he thinks of his mother). It's the same cloud, a little later in the day. (And we also have a certain moment of similarity between Bloom and Stephen.)

On returning home, Bloom finds the mail that has arrived in the meantime. One of the letters is addressed to "Mrs Marion Bloom", which is outrageous (and offensive to Bloom) as, in those days, the proper way to address a letter to her would have been to "Mrs Leopold Bloom". Bloom is aware of this — and wary of the situation. He goes on to prepare breakfast and takes a tray up to Molly's bed, bringing the mail for her too. He lifts the blinds, seems generally attentive to her (while getting very little thanks back) but eyes the letter she's had (and now half hides under her pillow). On asking who it is from she replies it's from Boylan, who is going to bring the programme for her singing performance in the afternoon.

Molly asks Bloom (maybe to distract him — we're not sure how much she's really interested in his answer) about the meaning of a word she found in a book she's reading:

— Met him what? he asked.

— Here, she said. What does that mean?

He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail.

— Metempsychosis?

— Yes. Who's he when he's at home?
— Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It's Greek: from the Greek. That means the transmigration of souls.
— O, rocks! she said. Tell us in plain words.

(4.336)

Bloom does his didactic best to explain the word to Molly. Eventually, he comes up with various ways to describe the term (metempsychosis is the transmigration of souls, also expressed through the idea of reincarnation, he tries to give her a few examples too). In other words, we have one term described from three different angles: metempsychosis focuses on the soul, transmigration on the wandering (the act) and reincarnation on the flesh. It'll be an important feature of the book to illuminate things from various perspectives and highlight different aspects of the same thing.

Back down in the kitchen, Bloom reads his daughter's letter, thanking him for the birthday gift she's just received (her birthday was on June 15), while he drinks tea from a cup he'd been given as a present by her years ago. It's a moustache cup:

http://teaobsession.tumblr.com

The cup has a semi-circular ledge inside to keep gentlemen's mustaches dry.

We learn that Milly's working as an apprentice to a photographer (which was a very new business and modern profession in those times), that she's rather proud of her figure (and condescending of that of the country girls in Mullingar, the "beef to the heals" as she calls them, a term taken from the phrase "beef to the heels, like a Mullingar heifer", referring to women's thick legs) and that someone called Bannon has taken a photograph of her. It's the same young man we read of in chapter 1, when Mulligan is about to dive into the water:

— Is the brother with you, Malachi?
— Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.
— Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.

— Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.

(1.682)

A brief note about the words our reading this week ended on ("Then he read the letter again: twice."): We see a little of how Bloom reads Milly's letter. He first only skims it once, then reads it three times (let's say he reads the letter 3,5 times). This may function as another mini-instruction or self-referential hint that a text (also this book) can afford to be read more than once and in various ways.