Stopped at "Just as well to get shut of them as soon as you are sure there's no." (Gabler 6.871) (Penguin 141.6)
The main topic on these pages is the burial of Patrick Dignam, or rather, the musings of Bloom about death, burial, religious service etc.
Bloom follows along with his group the coffin to the burial place. On the way, Corny Kelleher comments on the difference in the service they have just heard to the service in the Irish church, saying, with solemnity: "'I am the resurrection and the life'. That touches a man's inmost heart." Bloom says, 'It does', but thinks that no touching the heart of the fellow in the six feet by two with his toes to the daisies. For, the heart is a pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. One fine day it gets bunged up: and there you are. I love these thoughts. They make 'death' such a matter of fact happening. Just a pump that gets bunged up one day! Basta! What is there to philosophize about!
Bloom also does not hold much with the thought of resurrection. Because "once you are dead you are dead." No calling 'Come forth, Lazarus' would recall dead people back to life. He thinks of all that remains of a person, after death, is pennyweight of powder in a skull. (A pennyweight is 24 grammes/grains, and is 1/20th part of an ounce.) If he is thinking of the weight of the soul here, he would be wrong, of course. (The common belief that the soul weighs 21 gm is also wrong as it is based on flawed scientific experiments.)
The group marches to the burial place. It is a strange group, totally unconcerned about the death of Dignam. They tell jokes. They laugh. When John O'Connell, the caretaker of the cemetery, joins the group, Bloom wonders what it means to be the caretaker of a cemetery; "Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard..."
At the burial place itself, Bloom's imagination runs riot. He thinks of how the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh, nails. The coffin itself makes him think that it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding. As the gravediggers lower the coffin and fling heavy clods of clay on to it, Bloom turns his face away, thinking how awful it would be if he (the dead person) was alive all the time. His busy mind suggests all kinds of solutions - pierce the heart to make sure (it has stopped), put a telephone in the coffin, a airhole - to rescue the supposedly dead person.
Thus Bloom's thoughts on death, burial, the religious service, etc are highly rational. Reading these pages, one cannot help but feel that one knows Bloom very well indeed. The image below shows how Joyce imagined Bloom looks! (It is apparently, the only sketch of Bloom!)
The main topic on these pages is the burial of Patrick Dignam, or rather, the musings of Bloom about death, burial, religious service etc.
Bloom follows along with his group the coffin to the burial place. On the way, Corny Kelleher comments on the difference in the service they have just heard to the service in the Irish church, saying, with solemnity: "'I am the resurrection and the life'. That touches a man's inmost heart." Bloom says, 'It does', but thinks that no touching the heart of the fellow in the six feet by two with his toes to the daisies. For, the heart is a pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. One fine day it gets bunged up: and there you are. I love these thoughts. They make 'death' such a matter of fact happening. Just a pump that gets bunged up one day! Basta! What is there to philosophize about!
Bloom also does not hold much with the thought of resurrection. Because "once you are dead you are dead." No calling 'Come forth, Lazarus' would recall dead people back to life. He thinks of all that remains of a person, after death, is pennyweight of powder in a skull. (A pennyweight is 24 grammes/grains, and is 1/20th part of an ounce.) If he is thinking of the weight of the soul here, he would be wrong, of course. (The common belief that the soul weighs 21 gm is also wrong as it is based on flawed scientific experiments.)
The group marches to the burial place. It is a strange group, totally unconcerned about the death of Dignam. They tell jokes. They laugh. When John O'Connell, the caretaker of the cemetery, joins the group, Bloom wonders what it means to be the caretaker of a cemetery; "Wonder he had the gumption to propose to any girl. Come out and live in the graveyard..."
At the burial place itself, Bloom's imagination runs riot. He thinks of how the soil would be quite fat with corpsemanure, bones, flesh, nails. The coffin itself makes him think that it does seem a waste of wood. All gnawed through. They could invent a handsome bier with a kind of panel sliding. As the gravediggers lower the coffin and fling heavy clods of clay on to it, Bloom turns his face away, thinking how awful it would be if he (the dead person) was alive all the time. His busy mind suggests all kinds of solutions - pierce the heart to make sure (it has stopped), put a telephone in the coffin, a airhole - to rescue the supposedly dead person.
Thus Bloom's thoughts on death, burial, the religious service, etc are highly rational. Reading these pages, one cannot help but feel that one knows Bloom very well indeed. The image below shows how Joyce imagined Bloom looks! (It is apparently, the only sketch of Bloom!)
(Source: http://www.geoffwilkins.net/ulysses/images/Bloom.jpg)
By the way, David Suchet does resemble closely Joyce's sketch in his role as Bloom in the documentary Great Modern Writers!
