Tuesday, 15 December 2015, Pages 547 - 555, Oxen of the Sun, Episode 14

It was a good place to stop our reading today, at "Per deam partulam et pertundam nuns eat bibendum!" (Penguin 555.32), (Gabler 14.1439)

It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the first paragraph we read today is as convoluted and long-winded as any we have so far read in this episode, Oxen of the Sun. The reason could be that Joyce imitates here the style of the 19th century English essayist and historian Thomas Macaulay, who is considered  to be 'a master of somewhat impetuous and unreliable history' (Gifford, 14.1174). Be that as it may be, we are confronted here with talks about science, what a man of science is like, what questions - such as the first question posed by public canvasser (Pubb. Canv.) Bloom (when did he pose this question?) regarding the future determination of sex - cannot be answered by science. At present. So the assembled people come up with all kinds of speculations about how the sex of a baby is determined during conception. Aristotle's theories in this matter are also mentioned, without naming him directly, of course. Mulligan, Doctor of Hygienics and Eugenics (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) comes up with multiple reasons - sanitary conditions, hideous publicity posters, ... - to explain infant mortality, another problem posed by the same inquirer (Bloom), who pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways. Mr. J. Crotthers comes up with other explanations, where as Lynch remarks that both natality and mortality, as well as as many other phenomena is subject to a law of numeration as yet unascertained. And so they go on. Even the phrase survival of the fittest is mentioned hinting at Darwin's theory of biological evolution. After all, everyone is assembled in a maternity hospital, and Mrs Purefoy has just given birth. Again. Fritz Senn opines that Joyce uses different styles of writing in this episode to show the evolution of language over the centuries.

Meanwhile, the style has changed to that of Charles Dickens (1812 -1870).

(Source: http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/37200000/David-Copperfield-1935-charles-dickens-37260933-1763-1381.jpg)

Joyce imitates scenes from David Copperfield, borrowing even the word, doady, which is the nick name given to David Copperfield by his girl-bride Dora. Naturally we do not read here about Dora and David. Instead we read about Mrs and Mr Purefoy and their children. One of their daughters is given the name Mary Alice. Mary was the sister-in-law of Dickens, and it is said that he idolized her. Alice is very close to Agnes, the one idolized by David Copperfield! Not just Dickens's, I feel that Omar Khayyam's words are also echoed here. Here Joyce writes: ' And so time wags on:...' One of the most famous verses of the 11th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam's is:

 'The moving finger writes; and having writ,

Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,

Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.'

(Moving finger = time, moves = wags)

The paragraph that follows (There are sins or ....) in the 19th century style of Cardinal Newman aka John Henry Newman, for whom Joyce is said to have had lifelong admiration, seems to be examining the effect of a chance word has on memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart. I feel that here Joyce is talking of the effect on Stephen of the words of Lenehan, the crucial word being 'mother'. (Lenehan said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him, have no fear. He could not leave his mother an orphan. Penguin 543. 20) At the beginning of the novel, we were told that Stephen's mother had passed away, and that he did not oblige her wishes and pray at her death bed. Stephen is still suffering from these memories.

Bloom (the stranger) observes the face before him. That this must be Stephen's is hinted at by Bloom thinking of one soft May evening at Matt Dillon's place. It was the first encounter between Molly and Bloom. Bloom had also seen there a young boy (a lad of four or five) and his mother. Bloom sees this young lad in his memories, and thinks, 'he frowns a little just as this young man does now...', sees how the mother had watched her son with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach in her glad look.

In a very biblical sounding language (style: John Ruskin, the 19th century English art critic and reformer), not only the image of the birth of Jesus in a stall is evoked to mention once again Mrs Purefoy and her new born baby but also the beginning of Genesis is evoked with the last words of the paragraph; ... so and not otherwise was the transformation, violet and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the word.

What was this special word? Burke's!, a pub at the corner of Denzille and Holles street. It was nearing 11 pm, the closing time of the pub! So all those assembled there gather in a hurry their belongings and leave the room. Bloom lingers back to send a kind word to the happy mother. While going out he whispers (to the nurse): 'Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee?' The others are already rushing out for yet another drink, thinking, 'Per deam partulam et pertundam nunc est bibendum!' (By the goddesses Partula and Pertunda now must we drink!)

Note: This is my last blog post for 2015! I thank you all for your kind words and deeds about this blog, and wish all of you happy holidays and a good start to 2016. May the new year bring peace to the world!

Chandra

Tuesday, 8 December 2015, Pages 540 - 547, Oxen of the Sun, Episode 14

We read as far as "... for ages yet to come." (Penguin 547.15), (Gabler 14.1222)

Mr. Bloom had been reminiscing as Mulligan was talking (we don't know what actually) to the friends gathered in the hospital ('Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror.' / Penguin 539.6). Haines has come and has left. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased. We are reminded again of the murder of Childs, whose house the people in the carriage on their way that morning to the funeral of Patrick Dignam had passed. Bloom is still not paying any attention to the happenings around him. He sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, ... It is as if a magical wand, a magical mirror  is revealing to him his earlier selves. What is the age of the soul of man? He sees the young Bloom on the way to school, sees himself as a young adult working already for the family firm, bringing home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm (his father) seated with Jacob's pipe ... He thinks of his first sexual encounter with Bridie Kelly on a drizzling night in Hatch street. He will never forget the name, ever remember the night...  He also thinks that he has no son unlike his father Rudolph who had him, Leopold. (That he had a son, Rudy, who died soon after birth is not mentioned here though).

Joyce has written the above contemplative part in the style of the 19th century British author, Charles Lamb. It is a move from the rational style characteristic of the 18th century to the romantic movement of the 19th. The following paragraph (The voices blend... / Penguin 541.28) is also in the style of the work 'The English Mail Coach' by the 19th century English essayist, Thomas de Quincey. (For more info, see Gifford 14.1078-1109. Quincey is famous for his work, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. As Fritz Senn explained, this episode is also opium like, heavy in its style.)

(Source: Wikipedia)

Bloom is still immersed in his own thoughts. It is as if he is seeing a vision. He feels as if the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of generations that have lived. He sees Milly and Molly - Milly following her mother with ungainly steps, and Molly like a mare leading her fillyfoal. That vision too vanishes. All is gone. The rest of the paragraph is heavy, loaded with literary references. We are reminded of Isaiah's prophecy in the Old Testament on the woes that visit the unbelievers of Israel (...screechowls), of the prophet Jeremiah's predictions (... the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon), of T. S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land', of Homer's Odysseus (... murderers of the sun), of Yeats's play, 'The Countess Cathleen' (... parallax stalks behind and goads them...), and so on. It is like apocalypse itself. Everything moves towards the sea of death (Lacus mortis). Suddenly there is a change of tone, there is the harbinger of hope (And the equine portent grows again) with its reference to constellations of stars in the sky, to the daystar, to Martha, Milly, the young, the dear, the radiant.

Change of scene, change of style. Francis (Costello) is talking to Stephen about a couple of people they knew when they were at school together. Stephen is not interested in them (Why think of them?). He refers to them as poor ghosts, wondering - comparing himself to Odysseus- whether he can call them into life across the waters of Lethe ( a river in Hades, the water of which the dead were to drink to forget their earlier life). But Stephen has not been able to lay his own ghosts as is apparent when he is reminded of his mother's recent death. Still he continues to sit there, as Lenehan and others start again talking of the horse race of the day in which the outsider, Throwaway, had won, and of Lenehan's girl. Lenehan and the girl had met Father Conmee earlier in the day as they were coming out from the gap of a hedge. (See episode 10, The wandering rocks)

Meanwhile Mulligan notices that Bloom has withdrawn into himself (His soul is far away). But Bloom is not anymore reminiscing. He is looking at the scarlet label of the beer bottles opposite him.

(Source: https://porter21.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bass-Ale.jpg)

His and Stephen's eyes meet. Bloom pours some beer into a glass for Stephen. We again read about the various people assembled there. Only the chair of the resident (Dr Dixon) indeed stood vacant.  It is in these lines that the real life counterpart of Mulligan is revealed: Malachi Roland St John Mulligan aka Oliver St John Gogarty. 

Tuesday, 1 December 2015, Pages 534 - 540, Oxen of the Sun, Episode 14

We stopped at "Murderer's ground." (Penguin 540.9), (Gabler 14.1037)

In the preceding week, we had left Bloom thinking about the brash behavior of the youth around him. Though the style of that paragraph was not something we usually associate with Bloom, what we encountered there was typical indeed of our Bloom. As ever, he was ready to find excuses for his fellow human beings, attributing such boisterous behavior as he was witnessing to their age. He was also thankful that the ordeal Mrs. Purefoy, whom he had come to enquire after, was facing, was finally over, testifying to the mercy as well as to the bounty of the Supreme being.

First of all about the literary styles Joyce uses on the pages we read today. The most prominent style is that of political satire and rhetoric, first in the style of the Irish playwright, parliamentarian, Brinkley Sheridan (starting with the sentence, 'Accordingly he broke his mind...' Penguin 534.3), and then in the style of a political satirist with the penance, Junius (starting with the sentence, 'But with what fitness...', Penguin 535.3).  We also have a paragraph written in the style of gothic romances (starting with 'But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror.' Penguin 539.6). But these are not pure styles. The paragraph in the gothic style gets mixed up with that of Shakespearean language.

When Bloom expresses his feelings to the one sitting next to him (we do not know who this dressy young blade, Bloom's neighbor at the table, was), the reaction he gets is that it was her husband that put her in that expectation... unless she were another Ephesian matron. (Read here the story of The Ephesian Matron as told in the Tales of Jean de La Fontaine)

(The Ephesian Matron/
Source: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/la_fontaine/jean_de/tales/complete.html#chapter19)

As the  assembled young blades continue to make jokes about the whole affair, dragging in Mr Purefoy (old Glory Allelujurum, old bucko,...), Bloom wonders how the mere acquisition of academic titles turns such frivolous people into respectable doctors (... exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest...).  He further excuses their jokes telling himself that they do so to relieve pentup feelings, as after all birds of a feather laugh together. This is another typical Bloomian confusion, the words of this famous nursery rhyme being, "Birds of a feather flock together..."

At this point, the novel questions - in the style of the political satirist, Junius - what right Bloom, an outsider (this alien) has to raise such questions, to have such thoughts. (Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counseled? Penguin 535.3) He should not be preaching any gospel, as obviously not everything is ok at home (... a seedfield that lies fallow... Penguin 536.2), as he obviously has a habit that is reprehensible at puberty..., perhaps a reference to his masturbating on the Sandycove beach. (See Nausicca). 

Let us step out of Bloom's mind, and look at what is happening around him. Here Joyce offers us the style of the 18th century English historian, Edward Gibbon, the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. After the news of the birth which the nurse had brought,  Dixon, the junior medical officer in residence, had left the assembly and gone to help the mother.  Once he left, the company breaks out into a strife of tongues. Mr Bloom's attempts to urge, to mollify, to refrain have no effect whatsoever. Each one of the others comes out with what all can go wrong in childbirth. We are treated to a cascade of medical terms, intelligible only to the initiated. When Madden and Lynch start discussing about the juridical and theological dilemma created in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other (Penguin 538.30), the matter is referred to Bloom, who passes it on to Stephen (Coadjutor Deacon Daedalus). Stephen, who has remained silent so far on these pages, quotes in answer from the gospels: 'What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.'

Now we are in the world of gothic literature (But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. Penguin 539.6) Haines appears on the scene. We are taken back to earlier episodes, to the case of Samuel Childs murder (episode 6, Hades), to the episode of black panther (episode 1, Telemachus). Words from Hamlet make yet another appearance as do sentences that were spoken on earlier pages. For example, we had read the last sentence we read today, 'Murderer's ground' earlier on page 125 (Penguin). It is as if the novel is repeating itself. It is as if the novel is building a bridge between morning and night. 

Tuesday, 24 November 2015, Pages 526 - 534, Oxen of the Sun, Episode 14

We stopped at "... once more to the mercy as well as to the bounty of the Supreme Being." (Penguin 534.2), (Gabler 14.879)

Last week we had read about Buck Mulligan and Alec Bannon joining the bash at the Holles street maternity hospital. Mulligan had just produced a specially printed card proclaiming himself as Fertilizer and Incubator, and had announced his resolve to purchase the freehold of Lambay island to pursue his obligation in these roles.  This week we read that he proposes to set up there a fertilising farm to be named Omphalos (center of the world) and to offer his services to the poorest kitchenwench as well as to the opulent lady of fashion. Here Joyce is taking on the controversial topic of eugenics of which a chair had been established in the early 1900s at the London university (See Gifford, 14.684-85). Mulligan's description of the project entertains his audience, except for Mr. Dixon, who thinks that it is a useless exercise like carrying coal to Newcastle (at that time coal used to be shipped from Newcastle to other parts of England). Mulligan's attention now turns to the stranger among them, asking him - ironically - whether he (the stranger) was in need of any professional assistance that they could give. As the stranger, who in fact is none other than our Bloom, is answering quite seriously that he had come to see about a lady, Mr. Dixon takes his chance to poke fun at Mulligan, pointing to his incipient ventripotence (big-belly) and using bombastic medical terms. Mulligan's reply gives rise to another storm of mirth.

Next it is Alec Bannon's turn. Written in the style of the Irish novelist, Lawrence Sterne (1713-68), this paragraph (starting with 'Here the listener who was none other than the Scotch student,...'), describes how Bannon accepts a cup and starts talking in flowery language about his meeting a girl (Milly) and her beauty, ending with his thanks to God, the author of his days! (A sigh of affection gave eloquence to these words and, having replaced the locket in his bosom, he wiped his eye and sighed again.) What follows is another play of words with double meanings. Does Bannon really feel that he should have taken his cloak along or something else, does the Marchand de capotes he refers to mean a cloak merchant or a merchant of condoms?  (After all this episode is mainly about sterility and fertility.) Lynch comes in with his comments (One umbrella, were it no bigger than a fairy mushroom, is worth ten such stopgaps), with what his girl, Kitty would do/say.  Note that umbrella is a slang for diaphragm!

(Statue of Oliver Goldsmith in front of the Trinity college, Dublin)

With this kind of bantering going on, the style changes again to that of the 18th century Anglo-Irish novelist, Oliver Goldsmith, the author of The Vicar of Wakefield. A bell rings. Nurse Callan enters and speaks in low tone to Mr. Dixon. The room, which was quiet when the nurse was there, breaks out again in ribaldry, once she leaves. Costello, one of the assembled, very drunk, starts commenting about nurses and doctors. He is joined by Lynch and Mulligan (the young blood in the primrose vest), who again imitates in a female voice, how a nurse would react to a doctor's advances. (Bless me, I'm all of a wobbly wobbly....) Dixon rebukes them, and leaves the room to go and attend to Mrs. Purefoy, who has just given birth.

Attention and style change again: Attention to the musings of Bloom, style to that of another Anglo-Irish essayist, political theorist, Edmund Burke. Bloom reflects about the raucous behaviour of the young men around him. He had borne some impudent mocks he has been subjected to since his arrival as being the result of their age. Even then he cannot excuse Costello's remarks about the nurse. (To those who create themselves wits at the cost of feminine delicacy... to them he would concede neither to bear the name nor to merit the tradition of a proper breeding...) Whatever that be, he is glad to hear from Nurse Callan that the ordeal of Mrs Purefoy, whose status he had to come to enquire about, is finally over.

Tuesday, 17 November 2015, Pages 518 - 526, Oxen of the Sun, Episode 14

We stopped reading at "... our ascendancy party." (Penguin 526.16), (Gabler 14.864)

(Map of Dublin showing Ely Pl, Baggot ct, Merrion Square & Holles St with the maternity hospital)

Last week we were in the middle of the paragraph written in the style of Samuel Pepys, the diarist. (As Fritz Senn explained, this episode is in two time frames simultaneously: one referring to the time of the day (it is 10 pm) and the other to the time frame of the history of literature.) There was a big thunder with rain following. A swash of water was flowing in Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to Holles street that was all bonedry before. 

Buck Mulligan, who had been attending a party at Mr. Moore's (Penguin p. 275), had just left the party when he met the smartly dressed Alec. Bannon, who had come from Mullingar, where he had met Bloom's daughter, Milly. Mulligan knows Bannon as his (Mulligan's) brother was staying with the Bannons (Penguin p. 26). Both Mulligan and Bannon head to the maternity hospital.

In the hospital, Leop. Bloom and a covey of wags (group of young men) such as Dixon, Stephen, Punch Costello, Lenehan, Madden, Lynch are assembled. Bloom has been dreaming (thinking?) not only of Molly with red slippers on in a pair of Turkey trunks but also of Mrs Purefoy in labour and of her family ('Tis her ninth chick to live.... Her hub fifty odd and a methodist....)

With the change in style imitating that of Daniel Defoe, the topic changes too to describing the behavior/character of Lenehan, a kind of sport gentleman (i.e., interested in horse races), one who often had many stories to tell. Lenehan says that the has made sure that Mr. Deasy's letter (which Stephen had brought to Mr Russell, Penguin p. 246) on the foot and mouth disease is in that night's gazette. On hearing that the cows are to be butchered, Bloom, who had once worked for Mr Joseph Cuffe, a cattle, corn and wool salesman, questions whether the cows indeed have the foot and mouth disease.

What follows is a play on the word 'bull'. In the style of Jonathan Swift, the assembly talks in turn of a bull that's Irish (a statement that is apparently logical but which in fact is nonsense),  of an Irish bull in an English chinashop (a proverb meaning clumsiness) and of the papal bull that was sent to the island by farmer Nicholas (aka Pope Adrian IV, granting the overlordship of Ireland to Henry II - here referred to as lord Harry - of England). The word 'bull' becomes just an excuse to discuss Irish history at length.

It is at this time that Mulligan appears with Bannon. Mulligan comes in again as a harbinger of fun, of lightheartedness. He hands around a set of pasteboard cards which he had got printed that day: Mr Malachi Mulligan, Fertilizer and Incubator, Lambay Island. In flamboyant language - in fact in the style of two journalists, Joseph Addison and Richard Steele, who wrote essays for the Tatler and the Spectator - Mulligan explains how it grieved him plaguily, to see the nuptial couch defrauded of its dearest pledges, and how to curb this inconvenient , he had resolved to purchase .. the freehold of Lambay island from ... Lord Talbot de Malahide, a Tory gentleman of note much in favor with our ascendancy party.

Tuesday, 10 November 2015, Pages 512 - 518, Oxen of the Sun, episode 14

We read as far as "...  womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came."   (Penguin 518.29), (Gabler 14.490)

We are still witnesses to the drinking bash of a group of young people in a room of the maternity hospital in Holles Street. Mr. Bloom is also present. The young ones are drunk. An young nurse has come in and asked them to be quiet, as after all it is a hospital. 

Stephen is extremely drunk. In what is reminiscent of the earlier episode in the library, Stephen is being very voluble. He is making liberally allusions not only to the old testament (for example: ... even from Horeb and from Nebo and from Pisgah and from the Horns of Hatten, Penguin 514.16) but he is also referring to other well known (and also not so well known) works of poets (for instance, Master John Fletcher and Master Francis Beaumont, Penguin 513.13) , writers, philosophers (for instance, to Thus spake Zarathustra by Nietzsche, Penguin 513.31) etc. Naturally Shakespeare makes an appearance in the references to the secondbest bed, to Hamlet and his father. 

What does Stephen want to achieve with his 'lecture'? Can one, who is so very drunk, talk so incessantly and for so long? Even if he can and does have the knack to go off on topics that are obviously of little interest to the people around him, could we, the readers, feel comfortable with what we read on these pages? Things start to fall into place if one can accept that what we are confronted with here is really memories (Special thanks to Ashraf Noor for this explanation.) Memories of the book, memories of mankind's past, memories of history.  What we read here are not just examples of Stephen's scholarship.  Rather what we are offered here are snippets from Joyce's  repertoire. Stephen, after all, turns out to be a mere peg on which Joyce hangs his ideas. 

Things start to get a bit calmer as we move from the above Elizabethan style of writing to John Bunyan's style in Pilgrim's Progress.

(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pilgrim%27s_Progress#/media/File:Christian_in_Pilgrim%27s_Progress.jpg)

Stephen's oratory is interrupted by Punch Costello. As he recites George Burleigh's parody of the nursery rhyme, 'The house that Jack built', thunder is heard from outside. Just like Joyce in real life, Stephen too is scared of thunder. (... the braggart boaster - i.e-. Stephen - cried that an old Nobodaddy - i.e., god - was in his cups... But the was only to dye his desperation... ) Bloom tries to calm him down, explaining in his typical manner the cause of thunder as a natural phenomenon! But Bloom's words do not succeed in quietening  Stephen's fear. .. he had in his bosom a spike named Bitterness which could bot be words be done away (Penguin 516.19)

As storm rages outside the hospital, the style of the episode changes yet again, this time to that of Samuel Pepys, the famous diarist. And the happenings of the day, Thursday sixteenth June are summarized. 

Tuesday, 3 November 2015, Pages 507 - 512, Oxen of the Sun, episode 14

We read to, "In Horne's house rest should reign" (Gabler 14.333) (Penguin p. 512).

This is one of the densest parts of the chapter (if not of the whole book). It is worth pulling through, though (and it will become easier as we go on), if only to see how "Oxen of the Sun" works in its stylistic imitations of various periods. The imitations of styles can be seen as a translation of sorts: everything is translated into an earlier period. Ulysses has indeed been described as the book that translates itself.

With "Now let us speak" (in the style of Sir Thomas Malory of the Middle English period) we get a roundup of who is present (14.187): the company consists of Dixon, Lynch, and Madden, who are medical students, Lenehan, Crotthers, Punch Costello, and Stephen. Mulligan is expected.

The young men are discussing what should be done when a choice has to be made in childbirth between the life of the mother and the life of the baby. Views about this conflict, of course (the church taking the stance that the child should be saved, the law refraining from taking any position at all). The tenor among the students seems to be that the mother should be saved. Stephen makes a few ironic comments and states the Catholic view against contraception as a sinful abuse of our true nature. Bawdy talk and laughter follow (they all make jokes about masturbation, genitals etc.). When Bloom is appealed to for an opinion on whether the child or the mother should be saved, his reaction is:

laying hand to jaw, he said dissembling, as his wont was, that as it was informed him, who had ever loved the art of physic as might a layman, and agreeing also with his experience of so seldomseen an accident it was good for that mother Church belike at one blow had birth and death pence and in such sort deliverly he scaped their questions. (14.254)

In other words, he takes refuge in a joke about the church seeming alright as it would get the financial advantage of both, a birth and a death -- thereby, "as his wont was" (as he usually did) "dissembling" and "escaping", true to type for the Odysseus figure he is.

Stephen launches into quite a monologue, most of it probably remaining unclear to most people. To try to snatch a few things about which he seems to be speaking, we may note that: he comments on the Church's condemnation of abortion, brings in the figures of the two medieval philosophers Averroes and Moses Maimonides, claims that the foetus is endowed with a soul after two months (with which we have moved into the second month of the embryo's development), all the while putting in quotations from a variety of sources. He also imitates a sermon, talks about Eve (who brought sin into the world) and of the Virgin Mary (who brought us the redeemer of all the sins), he blasphemes, shows off his money and lies about where he got it from (i.e. being paid for a poem he wrote), he quotes Mulligan (which he does surprisingly often, considering his dislike of him) and goes into more, rather confusing talk. Fritz Senn points out (also by way of general comfort) that he too doesn't know what Stephen is trying to convey (wondering also if he may simply be showing off or if he is just rambling). We are reminded here of the Stephen of chapter 9 (the library chapter) where his listeners probably couldn't follow his argument either. Stephen does not really seem to care or consider who his audience. In contrast to him stands Bloom, who is always aware of who he's talking to and trying to explain, although nobody ever listens.

Bloom's thoughts go to Mrs Purefoy, who is suffering because of the difficult birth, as well as to the memory of his son Rudy, who died only eleven days old. He observes Stephen and is sorry to see him live a wasteful life of debauchery (he seems to feel rather fatherly toward Stephen). Despite the obscurity of the language, some of Bloom's sorrow for his dead son does come through.

Finally, Punch Costello then strikes up a bawdy song, but Nurse Quigley comes to the door and asks for restraint. The other join drunkenly in the rebuke of Costello, and we end our reading on their mock-curses of him:

thou chuff, thou puny, thou got in peasestraw, thou losel, thou chitterling, thou spawn of a rebel, thou dykedropt, thou abortion thou, to shut up his drunken drool out of that like a curse of God ape. (14.327)

Tuesday, 27 October 2015, Pages 499-507, Oxen of the Sun, episode 14

We starten the 14th chapter, also referred to as "Oxen of the Sun", and have read as far as "Woman's woe with wonder pondering" (Gabler 14.186) (Penguin p. 507). 

The name of the chapter, "Oxen of the Sun", refers to the Homeric episode in which Odysseus' men committed one of the worst crimes — they killed the sacred oxen — while Odysseus was asleep.

Before he had written the episode, Joyce wrote to his friend Budgen that he intended to compose the chapter in the style of the history of English prose, and that he would do it in analogy to the development of an embryo.

The letter to Frank Budgen was written on 20 March 1920 and is rendered in full below. Here's an extract:

Am working hard at Oxen of the Sun, the idea being the crime committed against fecundity by sterilizing the act of coition. Scene, lying-in hospital. Technique: a nineparted episode . . . . introduced by a . . . . prelude (the unfertilized ovum), then by way of earliest English alliterative and monosyllabic and Anglo-Saxon (‘Before born the babe had bliss) . . . . then by way of Mandeville (‘there came forth a scholar of medicine  . . . .), then Malory’s Morte d’Arthur . . . . , then the Elizabethan chronicle style . . . . , then a passage solemn, as of Milton, Taylor, Hooker, . . . .  then a passage  Bunyanesque . . . . and so on through Defoe-Swift and Steele-Addison-Sterne and Landor-Pater-Newman . . . . Bloom is the spermatozoon, the hospital the womb, the nurse the ovum, Stephen the embryo. 

                        How’s that for high?

Fritz Senn wondered at the closing remark ("How's that for high?") and whether Joyce was being ironic. A clear symbolism like the one he puts forward (seeing Stephen as the embryo etc.) seems unlike Joyce; but maybe Joyce did indeed have a plan, to which he may or may not have adhered very strictly.

Of importance to the reading group is probably the following:

The chapter goes through the history of English prose style. It does so by showing stylistic progression in parallel to that of the embryo (the episode has 9 parts in analogy to the 9 months of pregnancy). The language goes from the style of Latin to that of simpler Anglo-Saxon. Note that seeing language as something that could progress in a biological way reflects what was in the air in Joyce's time, when people were very concerned with the discoveries of Darwin and other studies in evolution. When languages were discovered to be related (e.g. that one could speak of “families” of languages, the new sciences of etymology studying word change, vowel shifts etc.) they could be seen as something evolutionary, developing in a Darwinian sense. Joyce renders some of this idea in chapter 14, i.e. he presents language as something developing and biological.

Admittedly, this chapter is very hard to get into. It starts off with something totally obscure: "Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holies Eamus". Now that extensive scholarship has provided us with clues we can try to make sense of it. The first-time reader has no chance to see, though, that "Deshil" is a pun in Gaelic, a phonetic rendering of deiseal, deisil, which can be used to mean 'May it be right' or 'May it go well'. It also means 'Going to the right' or 'going clock-wise or sunwise', the opposite way of the widdershins used by witches and so the natural and lucky way to proceed. "Holles" refers to Holles Street (the address of the Maternity Hospital), and "Eamus" is Latin for 'Let us go'. So the whole combines 'Let it be right! Let us go to Holles Street!' (see Atherton in James Joyce's Ulysses: Critical Essays. Ed. Hart, Hayman. University of California Press. Berkley: 1974 about this chapter).

  

What we gather from the form of the beginning (form being what we can turn when we don't understand the sense, Senn points out) is that there is a 3 x 3 structure: three sentences are repeated three times (3 x "Deshil Holles Eamus.", 3 x "Send us bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening and wombfruit.", 3 x "Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa! Hoopsa boyaboy hoopsa!", sounding like a nurse's cry at a baby that's just been born). With the insistence of the number 3, often associated with ceremony or incantation, the opening seems to be based on rituals. (It is indeed based on the "Carmen Arvale", the first written document in Latin, which is concerned with fertility. See one here: http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/carmenarvale.html)

The text now starts its imitation of the evolution of language, and it does so by imitating styles of previous writers of English. 

The paragraph starting "Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive" (14.7) could translate into something like 'Somebody's goodness is known by how well he takes care of the young'. Paragraph two praises the art of medicine, the care put into maternity being valued particularly. The next paragraph ("To her nothing already then and thenceforward" (14.50)) displays Latin patterns (cf. also Latin terms like "parturient") and seems to be a praise of mothers and to be saying something like 'Nothing should worry her'. After this, we get imitations of the style of Old English (with its predilections for alliterations, e.g. in "Before born babe bliss had. Within womb won he worship" (14.60)), the story telling us that he (presumably Bloom) was driven by sympathy because he knew the woman was in pain (he's on his way to visit Mrs Purefoy at the hospital, about to give birth). Of note is that some words that have died out by now are used in their old way (e.g. "ruth", "bedthane", "welkin", "couth"), Joyce always being interested in the origins of words and in reviving their old meanings and past uses. Fittingly, as this chapter is also about evolution, we see elements that have not survived.

Then Bloom enters the hospital, is greeted by the nurse (on whom he once had a little crush), who also complains to him because:

Once her in townhithe meeting he to her bow had not doffed. Her to forgive now he craved with good ground of her allowed that that of him swiftseen face, hers, so young then had looked. Light swift her eyes kindled, bloom of blushes his word winning (14.88).

So, at her little chiding him for not greeting her when they once met, he produces an excuse about not having recognized her on account of looking so young (all the while coming across as a little embarrassed — not surprisingly). The funny part of passages like these is that some of the meaning still comes through even if it is filtered through an obscured style.

We then get (language progressing) an imitation of Mandeville, the story being now told in the style of medieval tales — where, of course characters, are not simply men but knights, buildings aren't houses but castles, events (like the bee sting of which we heard in an earlier episode) are not simple incidents but adventures (the bee that stung Bloom becomes the dragon he was wounded by). When Bloom is ushered in to join a party of medical students who are having drinks in one of the rooms at the hospital (unlikely as that may sound to today's readers), we get a description of what is inside the wonderful castle, and the things he sees there:

And full fair cheer and rich was on the board that no wight could devise a fuller ne richer. And there was a vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay strange fishes withouten heads though misbelieving men nie that this be possible thing without they see it natheless they are so. And these fishes lie in an oily water brought there from Portugal land because of the fatness that therein is like to the juices of the olivepress (14.148)

— a tin of Portuguese sardines in oil, presented as though it were something miraculous, appreciated for the handiwork and the production that went into it. With this, and the description of beer that follows immediately (again beer and brewing, the act of transforming hops and malt, appreciated as something you can't take for granted) we, and the style of the language, have advanced to the Middle Ages.

—————

Joyce's letter to Budgen in full:

Am working hard at Oxen of the Sun, the idea being the crime committed against fecundity by sterilizing the act of coition. Scene, lying-in hospital. Technique: a nineparted episode without divisions introduced by a Sallustian-Tacitean prelude (the unfertilized ovum), then by way of earliest English alliterative and monosyllabic and Anglo-Saxon (‘Before born the babe had bliss. Within the womb he won worship.’ ‘Bloom dull dreamy heard: in held hat stony staring’) then by way of Mandeville (‘there came forth a scholar of medicine that men clepen etc’) then Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (‘but that franklin Lenehan was prompt ever to pour them so that at the least way mirth should not lack’), then the Elizabethan chronicle style (‘about that present time young Stephen filled all cups’), then a passage solemn, as of Milton, Taylor, Hooker, followed by a choppy Latin-gossipy bit, style of Burton-Browne,  then  a  passage  Bunyanesque  (‘the reason was that in the way he fell in with a certain whore whose name she said is Bird in the hand’) after a diarystyle bit Pepys-Evelyn (‘Bloom sitting snug with a party of wags, among them Dixon jun., Ja. Lynch, Doc. Madden and Stephen D. for a languor he had before and was now better, he having dreamed tonight a strange fancy and Mistress Purefoy there to be delivered, poor body, two days past her time and the midwives hard put to it, God send her quick issue’) and so on through Defoe-Swift and Steele-Addison-Sterne and Landor-Pater-Newman until it ends in a frightful jumble of Pidgin English, nigger English, Cockney, Irish, Bowery slang and broken doggerel. This progression is also linked back at each part subtly with some foregoing episode of the day and, besides this, with the natural stages of development in the embryo and the periods of faunal evolution in general. The double-thudding Anglo-Saxon motive recurs from time to time (‘Loth to move from Horne’s house’) to give the sense of the hoofs of oxen. Bloom is the spermatozoon, the hospital the womb, the nurse the ovum, Stephen the embryo. 

                        How’s that for high

(James Joyce to Frank Budgen, 20 March 1920, Letters of James Joyce, vol. 1, ed. Stuart Gilbert (New York, 1966), pp. 139-40.)

Tuesday, 20 October 2015, Pages 495 - 499, Nausicaa, episode 13

We have finished episode 13, "Nausicaa". 

The point at which we pick up the reading (when "far on Kish bank the anchored lightship twinkled, winked at Mr Bloom" (13.1180)) is one that marks the division between the two parts in this chapter: the first part is rendered in Gerty's style (sugary, inflated, aiming high), the second in Bloom's postorgasmic, more down to earth, deflated style. The twinkle occurs with the rocket going up and we get an overview of Dublin: we briefly see Sandymount, the hill Howth, the newspapers that are being distributed, music is coming from the church (things Bloom could not see or hear). In Fritz Senn's explanation, this flight into a different perspective is like a "cinematographic sweep", ending back on Bloom. The passage is like having a bit of the interior monologue embedded into a cinematic sweep.

Bloom then looks out at a lifeboat and imagines how hard life must be for the people working as coastguards for the lighthouse. He thinks of their working equipment, one of which is the "breeches buoy" - something like a lifebuoys fitted with trouser-legs, used to manoeuvre a coastguard between ship and shore to rescue people on ships in danger (13.1183):

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/breeches_buoy

Bloom then remembers Milly, who was fearless during a boat-ride, whereas he didn’t like it so much, nor the danger (the irony of this: Bloom, the Odysseus figure, not liking a boat ride).

An explanatory note: "Must be getting on for nine by the light. Go home. Too late for Leah. Lily of Killarney. No. Might be still up" (13.1211).

Bloom is thinking that he should not stick around at the beach and should move on. It is getting late, too late to go to see the play Leah, he thinks (which would be starting at 8 p.m.). What is likely to be going on here is that Bloom, on his roaming around the whole day, might also be trying to stay away from home. He may have told Molly earlier that he would go to see a play. At this point in the evening, Molly might still be up and, therefore, Bloom does not want to go back yet. The irony of this is that we have an Odysseus (a home-going figure) who, here, is in no hurry at all to get home.

Bloom does feel tired, though, which is also reflected in the language. It too is getting heavy and the voice more drowsy (in contrast to the flying-high-up mood of the 1st part). After “Long day I’ve had” we get a recall of what we read earlier (Martha’s letter, bath, funeral, Keyes’s ad, museum etc.). He looks back at the episode in the pub (chapter 12, "Cyclops") and seems able to see it in a more relaxed way. The “Look at it other way round” is again a typically Bloomian attempt to see the other's perspective and the other side of the story. Very thoughtful of him -- yet, to give his slightly revengeful side credit too, he does imagine the citizen from "Cyclops" as hanging around with a ‘not much to look at’ woman:

Three cheers for the sister-in-law he hawked about, three fangs in her mouth. Same style of beauty. Particularly nice old party for a cup of tea. The sister of the wife of the wild man of Borneo has just come to town. Imagine that in the early morning at close range. Everyone to his taste as Morris said when he kissed the cow. (13.1221)

Bloom is about to doze off and his mind drifts into a dream-like state, when images take over. The closing paragraphs reflect Bloom's mind, which is in a fuzzy state of consciousness (we get echoes, vague references, bits of memory that surface with no logical order). A second time it refers back to instances we read about in previous chapters (met him pike hosed, Raoul, the perfume your wife uses, Mulvey etc.) (13.1279).

A note on the text: Some editions lack what has been restored by Gabler. The paragraph starting "O sweety all your little" (13.1279) should read as follows:

O sweety all your little girlwhite up I saw dirty bracegirdle made me do love sticky we two naughty Grace darling she him half past the bed met him pike hoses frillies for Raoul de perfume your wife black hair heave under embon senorita young eyes Mulvey plump hubs me breadvan Winkle red slippers she rusty sleep wander years of dreams return tail end Agendath swoony lovey showed me her next year in drawers return next in her next her next.

There was some speculation during the reading as to what Bloom might have been writing in the sand with a stick he found on the beach. "I", then "AM. A." (13.12.58). Incomplete sentences tempt us to fill in. Fritz Senn wonders would Bloom be writing "I am a naughty boy" (in memory of Martha's letter) or "I am alone", and points out that "Ama" also happens to carry Latin overtones for love, which would be appropriate, the idea of love being at the root of Nausicaa (not that Bloom would be aware of it but we as readers may make the connection).

At any rate, Bloom would likely chalk up the encounter as a positive one. There are no signs of disillusionment, disappointment or bitterness at the visual encounter with Gerty (rather, he thinks, “Made me feel so young” (13.1272)). Indeed, there has been some kind of understanding and language between him and Gerty.

At the close of "Nausicaa", the narrative breaks up into three parts or strands: Bloom – Gerty – priest’s house, accompanied by three strikes of the clock with repetition of the three Cuckoos (with their references to cuckoldry - Bloom's fate at the moment). The three "Cuckoos" are reminiscent of the end of Shakespeare's play Love's Labours Lost, which are, "Cuckoo! / Cuckoo, cuckoo!' O word of fear, / Unpleasing to a married ear".

After that, for just a few lines, we get back into the language of the first part of the episode and its homey style. The chapter had started with "The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace" and maybe the Gerty-style closes the embrace (a little like a bracket).

Tuesday, 13 October 2015, Pages 491 - 495, Nausicaa, episode 13

The group read till "... winked at Mr. Bloom." (Penguin 495), (Gabler.13.1181)

This post is only this long as neither Chandra nor Sabrina could be present at the reading.

Tuesday, 6 October 2015, Pages 483 - 491, Nausicaa, episode 13

We read till " My native land, goodnight." (Penguin 491.3), (Gabler 13.1080)

After his excitement, when his fireworks went up like a rocket, down like a stick, Bloom's thoughts revolve round the three girls, particularly around Gerty. He is a bit disappointed that Gerty did not turn back as she went down to the strand (Wouldn't give that satisfaction.) He also thinks of women in general, wondering how they have eyes all over them. (Sharp as needles they are.). His observation of Molly, Milly, and even of that typist going up Roger Green's stairs substantiate his opinion of women, making him wonder kind of intuition is handed down from father to, from mother to daughter, he means.
For Bloom this interlude on the beach has come as big relief after the happenings of the day (Dignam's funeral, the altercation in Kiernen's pub).
Meanwhile the firework display is going on. And Gerty looks back. As if to tell him, "Darling, I saw, your. I saw all." In fact Bloom is not even sure of her name, even though he heard her being called, 'Gerty'. After all he himself uses a 'false' name - Henry Flower - and address in his correspondence with Martha Clifford!
Bloom has sympathy about women and their role in the society. (“they settle down to potwalloping and papa’s pants will soon fit Willy and fuller’s earth for the baby when they hold him out to do ah ah”) Thinking of babies, he thinks of visitng Mrs Purefoy, (confusing at firs, in typical Bloom fashion, the name to be Mrs Beaufoy, Mr. Beaufoy being the one who wrote that story in the newspaper, earning a guinea per column), who is in the hospital, about to give birth. This thought leads him on to other thoughts about other women, their unsuitable husbands (Marry in May, repent in December).
His wetness reminds him of Boylan, of what could be happening at home, to whether his wrist watch had stopped at that exact time when Boylan was with Molly. Is their magnetic influence between the person... Bloom to think of physical laws, and typical of him, gets confused between magnetic and gravitational forces.
The scent of a whiff of a perfume, which Gerty had used, makes Bloom think of how smell is carried over. Why did he smell it only now? Would the strong smell from the spice islands, like Ceylon (he had seen Ceylon tea in a shop window that morning), be carried long distances? And Molly's perfume that clings to everything she takes off. Bloom thinks of smell that is typical of women and and men. Of mansmell. Of priests not having that mansmell. Source of life. How does that smell? Like celery sauce. To find out, Bloom puts his own nose in the opening of his waistcoat, thinks he smells almonds, and then recognizes that the smell is from the lemon soap he had bought that morning.
Thus the thoughts turn to the pharmacy he had visited that morning, of the lotion for Molly which he should have picked up later in the day, of his not having paid for the soap.
And so on....
Reading these pages we feel that we are inhabiting Bloom's mind, witnessing his thoughts that run helter skelter, jumping from one topic to the next. Like a stream bubbling and dancing. On its way to a bigger river.

Note: This post comes from the Dubai airport. Next week, the blog entries will be minimal, giving just page and line reference, as neither of us are around. The week after next, Sabrina will look after the blog. Post us comments if you'd like to keep us updated about the reading groups during our absence!

Tuesday, 29 September 2015, Pages 474 - 483, Nausicaa, episode 13

We read up to: "Val Dillon. Apoplectic" (Penguin 483.30) (Gabler 13.893)

We are nearing the end of the chapter and the climax of the episode, while the characters on the beach are watching the fireworks from the Mirus bazaar. Cissy, Edy and the children have got up and run nearer to see better, but Gerty seems content to remain seated on her rock and watch from a distance. She looks up and leans far back, pulling up and holding her knee, supposedly to steady herself, but really to let Bloom get a good view of her legs and undergarments (just as she had been swinging her legs to the music from the church a little earlier). Legs at the time, let it be added, were a rarity and hardly ever on show, which makes this a truly special moment for Bloom. The display works for him as he seizes the opportunity and finishes what he had started to do to himself already with his hands in his pockets.

There are two parallel actions going on here, one of the fireworks display in the distance and the other that of Bloom masturbating while he is watching Gerty. Incidentally, this is the part which took Ulysses to court in the US in 1920 (an outraged father had protested that it should not be possible that his daughter reads things like this), and the book was banned in America.

To pick out one of the chapters many details: Gerty leans back and, like everyone else trying to see something, straining her neck while trying to look up high:

And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees, up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight (13.719).

Well aware of his looking, she goes through what Bloom is likely to be able to see: her blue garters, and probably he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white (13.724)). With "nainsook" (a type of Indian cotton) and its slogan-like description as "the fabric that caressess the skin" and the mention of "pettiwitdth" (a brandname) Gerty goes on to a little digression into the language of advertising and of buying lingerie. Fritz Senn points out that "nainsook" is an Indian word meaning 'pleasing to the eye', a detail very fitting to this chapter.

(Nainsook knickers.
Source: http://www.advintageplus.com/1920-print-ad-chemises-nainsook-envelope-chemise-chemise-and-bloomer-combination/)

The fireworks (and Bloom's orgasm) over, Gerty gets up to leave the beach. We read that she walks with a certain quiet dignity characteristic of her but with care and very slowly because - because Gerty MacDowell was... Tight boots? No. She's lame! O! Here we have slipped into Bloom's mind. At the same time as he does, we realize that she has a limp and probably remained seated all the while because of it. While the others can run she cannot. On a second reading and going back and, we would now know why she stayed seated: she was showing off, presenting herself in a favourable light and at her best (concealing what she called "shortcoming" (13.650). When she gets up the magic is gone. Bloom thinks of her shortcoming as a "defect" which is ten times worse in a woman (13.774). For someone like Gerty a physical handicap lowered the chances of getting married even more. And Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away (13.772).

Fritz Senn comments how appropriate the word "limp" is for this passage: it can be used as a verb (to limp) and as an adjective. As a verb it would be fitting to describe the way the language of the text now moves on since it, too, is now limping: the sentences are short, slightly clumsy, nothing as high-flying (or trying to be high-flying) as in the first half of the episode. As an adjective, "limp" would go well with the organ that goes limp after an orgasm. In Senn's words, we are now in the limp part of the chapter.

From here on, we follow Bloom. He is glad to have been gratified this time (in being granted a view of Gerty's legs and undergarments), as he remembers the instance earlier in the day when the same hopes were thwarted (in chapter 5, he had been trying to catch a glimpse of a pair of female legs when a tramcar drove by and impeded his view). His thoughts: Made up for that tramdriver this morning (13.787).

His mind then wanders here and there: to fashion, menstruation, his attraction to women,  flirting with them, remembering walking the dark streets in the Appian way (a street in Dublin, with a name reminiscent of the Romans) wanting to take up a woman, Mrs Clinch, realizing just in time that she was someone he knew. He tries to imagine what it must be like for a prostitute, especially when new to the job, to be rejected by a potential customer. He wonders about his watch and whether it stopped at precisely the time Molly and Boylan were having intercourse: Funny my watch stopped at half past four. Dust. Shark liver oil they use to clean. Could do it myself. Save. Was that just when he, she? (13.846)). Other memories float in: Molly's first love, Mulvey, who kissed her under the Moorish wall, when she was living in Gibraltar (this is something Molly must have told him); the first days of courting her; some of her other suitors (his competitors).

Next week when we pick up (in this more earthy, more down-to-earth part) from: There she is with them down there for the fireworks, there will be several pages of relatively easy interior monologue - the relaxedness of which we may as well enjoy since the chapter to follow will be a much harder one!