We have read until: – Ay, he said, sighing. (Gabler 8.842) (Penguin p. 221)
On his way to lunch, Bloom continues his walk down Grafton St, one of the main streets in Dublin, where all the good
departmental stores would be. Various thoughts pass through his mind, including one of his son, who died only eleven days after he was born, followed by,
"Could never like it again after Rudy"
(8.610), although it remains unclear to us whom this refers to exactly (who
would never like it after: Bloom, Molly, both?). Bloom becomes aware of the
jingling of the horses' harness (indeed, "jingle" is one of the words
that rings through the book and will always be reminiscent of the noise the
Blooms' bed makes). He notices women's legs and stockings, particularly what
they look like and if they're elegantly or shabbily clothed. He thinks,
"All the beef to the heel were in" at 8.617, as Milly had written in her letter about the women at the
country fair (4.403). "Beef To The Heel Like A Mullingar Heifer" is an Irish expression
referring to a woman's ungainly lower legs.
Two further textual notes at this point:
– Bloom thinks, "Women won't pick up
pins. Say it cuts lo" (8.630). He's thinking of "cuts love", as
in a popular belief, which here literally cuts love: the word "love"
is cut, leaving only "lo".
– "Perfume of embraces all him assailed. With hungered flesh
obscurely, he mutely craved to adore." (8.638): Joyce's friend Budgen
tells an anecdote about these sentences. When he once asked Joyce about the
progress he was making with Ulysses, Joyce replied, "I have been working hard on it all
day". Budgen: "Does that mean that you
have written a great deal?" Joyce: "Two sentences." "You
have been seeking the mot juste?”, Budgen asked. “No,” said Joyce. “I have the
words already. What I am seeking is the perfect order of words in the sentence.
There is an order in every way appropriate. I think I have it.” The words in
question were the ones at 8.630, which describe the seducing effect the silk
petticoats hanging in shop windows have on the hungry hero. (In Frank Budgen, James Joyce and the Making of “Ulysses”,
pp. 19-20). Fritz Senn comments here on Joyce's skill and thought that went into
working out how to express sensations.
To resume the story, Bloom next enters Burton, a cheap eating place,
which he leaves again rather quickly disliking its soppy eaters. (The
passage (8.650 ff.) is a good and vivid example of how to render of disgust,
the monosyllabic words are put to great effect.) At the same time, though, Bloom also thinks,
"Am I like that?", trying to see himself as others might see him (as
is typical of him) (8.662). Bloom leaves (after a pretence of looking for
somebody who doesn't seem to be there) and goes to Davy Byrne's, a pub that
still exists today.
A couple of additional notes:
– "Sandwich"
triggers "Ham and his descendants musterred and bred there".
(8.741). To understand the joke that flicks through Bloom's mind we need to
know that it is taken from a comic rhyme: "Why should no man starve on the
desert of Arabia? / Because of the sand which is there. / How came the
sandwiches there? / The tribe of ham was bred there and mustered" (Fritz
Senn, JJQ 12, no. 4, 1975: 447). Ham
is the one of Noah's three sons who saw him drunk and naked.
– The potted meats he notices on the shelves (8.742)
bring back the Plumtree ad he saw that morning under the obituaries. As far as scholars have been able to find out, it was
never actually was under any newspaper's obituary notices, but it is in the one
Bloom is reading.
In his musings about food, Bloom goes
through a whole range of eating habits and customs (eating, not eating, eating
something specific at a particular time, for customary or religious reasons, there's digestion, cannibalism etc.)
Finally, Bloom settles on a cheese sandwich and a glass of burgundy. Note that
his choice is unusual: Gorgonzola would have been (and still is) an particular
variety of cheese at the time, and he has wine, not beer like most Dublin men probably
would. Bloom is different from others in nearly every respect.
A note on cheese: If your edition gives
"Mighty cheese" it is a misprint which should be corrected to "Mity
cheese" (8.755). What lies behind this is a saying that originated in the
16th century: "The process of making cheese was popularly regarded as a
process of digestion because it involved the use of rennet, a substance derived
from animal stomachs and used to curdle milk" (Gifford, Ulysses Annotated). In addition, Beck
and Simpson explain in their James Joyce Online Notes that the pun mity/mighty would
have been a well known one at the time and was used in advertisements for
cheese too: http://www.jjon.org/joyce-s-allusions/cheese
A few closing words on the "Table
talk" in Lestrygonians, the episode pervaded by the theme of eating (8.692):
– Expressions like "Bitten off more than
he can chew "(8.661) and "Working tooth and jaw" (8.663) are
figures of speech with (appropriately) a food reference.
– To "ruminate" (cf.
"Ruminants" at 8.1034) is to chew the cud (wiederkäuen) but also to
think deeply about something, i.e. it makes a good word to describe the
interior monologue in the context of this chapter.
– In the passage about the "silver knife
in his mouth" (8.682 ff.), Bloom is reflecting around a word play that
does not work. (We almost witness a
'word play in the making')
– At 8.692, we read "I munched hum un thu
Unchster Bunk un Munchday" (for: I met him hin the Ulster Bank on Monday).
This could be called 'the language of munch' (what comes out when you eat with
your mouth full). It is not only imitative language but also, in Fritz Senn's
take, an instance of how language translates itself.
– At 8.830, we
find "Zinfandel", the favourite horse of the race which is talked
about repeatedly in the book. It is of interest here since Zinfandel is both
the name of a horse and that of a wine. In other (Fritz Senn's) words,
"even the horse is drinkable in this chapter".
