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.
— 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.
— 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.
