Wednesday 25 February 2015

Tuesday, 24 February 2015, Pages 250 - 258, Scylla and Charybdis, Episode 9

We read as far as "... a Penelope stayathome." (Penguin 258.4) (Gabler 9.620)

The topic of discussion is the plays - Pericles, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest - written by Shakespeare in the closing period. Gifford says that 'Stephen's sources all agree that the 'change in tone' in Shakespeare's late plays reflects a change in his outlook.' (Gifford 9.402-4)  Mr. Brandes, a Shakespearean scholar, accepts it (Pericles), Stephen said, as the first play of the closing period. It was the lifting of the shadow. A couple of other Shakespearean scholars mentioned on these pages are Sidney Lee, George Bernard Shaw Frank Harris,...

Then the discussion moves on to the dark lady of the sonnets, one of the three characters of Shakespeare's sonnets, the other two being The Fair Youth and The Rival Poet, and who Mr. W. H. is, who is mentioned in the dedication.
(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_sonnets)
Stephen goes on about how Shakespeare would have suffered as a result of being seduced at the young age of 18 by Ann Hathaway, a woman older than himself. ".. he will never be a victor in his own eyes..." Even having other affairs (assumed dongiovannism) will not save him.

Eglinton, the quaker librarian, and Mr Best listen to Stephen. Stephen thinks, 'They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.' The word porches lead to the ghost of the dead king in Hamlet. Hamlet's father was killed when poison (the juice of cursed hebenon) was poured into the porch of his ears while he was asleep in the orchard in the afternoon. Stephen asks how did the ghost of the king know how he was killed unless his creator endowed him with this knowledge. 

Stephen is majestically quoting here from many Shakespearean plays to underscore his argument that the dead king in Hamlet is Shakespeare indeed. Just as he is mentioning that the voice of the ghost is heard only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow (that is Hamlet), evoking Bible to say, the son consubstantial with the father, the seriousness of the discussion is deflated, like a pierced balloon, by the entrance of Buck Mulligan, saying, 'Amen!'

Buck Mulligan is his usual self, joking when he could/should have been serious. For example, when the librarian mentions that Mr Mulligan has his theory too ... of Shakespeare, Mulligan responds saying 'Shakespeare? I seem to know the name.' Mulligan has in his pocket the telegram that Stephen had sent canceling their appointment of meeting in The Ship. He imitates the voice of the writer, Synge, when he describes how he and Haines waited for one hour and two hours and three hours sitting waiting for pints apiece

Amidst all such buffoonery (Mulligan playing Shakespearean fool), an attendant opens the door to inform the librarian that a gentleman has come from the Freeman, wanting to see the files of the Kilkenny People for last year. The librarian is off (nay he danced off in a galliard) to assist the gentleman. Mulligan snatches the card the attendant had brought in, wondering who this 'gentleman' could be. He sees that it is Bloom, whom he had seen just before in the museum where the statues of Greek goddesses are displayed. (Bloom was there to find out whether they have no. Penguin 225.8)

John Eglinton decides, with Mr Best's approval, to hear more. They begin to get interested in Mrs S (Mrs Shakespeare) of whom they had till then thought of as a Penelope stayathome bringing up yet another parallel in this chapter between Joyce's Ulysses and Homer's Odysseus. 


Wednesday 18 February 2015

Tuesday, 17 February 2015, Pages 244 - 250, Scylla and Charybdis, Episode 9

We read as far as "Booted the twain and staved." (Penguin 250.16), (Gabler 9.414)

Shakespeare is still very much present on these pages. Stephen comes up with more ideas to cement his theory that the ghost, the father of Hamlet, is really Shakespeare. His argument does not hold water with all those present in the room. By the time we finish reading these pages, we realize that Stephen too - not only Bloom - is an outsider in Dublin's (literary) society.

Mr. Best, the assistant librarian, has just brought Ann Hathaway into the discussion. He says, "... we seem to be forgetting her...". Thus the pages that follow are about forgetting and remembering. (Fritz Senn's words). In talking about her, Stephen quotes from Shakespeare's poem, Venus and Adonis.

("Venus and Adonis quarto" by Richard Field - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Venus_and_Adonis_quarto.jpg.)
Mentioning (and quoting) the plays, Taming of the Shrew, Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Macbeth and of course Hamlet, Stephen disputes the statement that Shakespeare chose badly in choosing Ann as his spouse. He further plays on her name, when he says: "He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way." Stephen's serious monologue is lightened by Mr Best when he quotes brightly two lines (Between the acres of the rye...) from As You Like It. These lines trigger (for whatever reason) in Stephen's mind, the story of Paris and Aphrodite. He refers to Paris as the wellpleased pleaser.

As the tall figure of bearded George Russell wearing homespun clothes gets up to leave to go to the office of the weekly newspaper, Irish Homestead, John Eglinton mentions that night's meeting at the Irish novelist, George Moore's place. That would be a meeting of many literary figures of Ireland. John Eglinton, Piper (W. J. Stanton Pyper), Colum (Padraic Colum), Starkey ( J. S. Starkey), Buck Mulligan and even Haines are going to be there. But not Stephen. And perhaps not Russell as he has a meeting at that time. Hearing this, Stephen thinks of Dawson chambers where the meeting is to take place as the Yogibogeybox. (Russell was a member of the theosophical society.) The thoughts of theosophy that then crowd Stephen's mind come across as being a bit of mumbo jumbo with its reference to Madame Blavatsky's work, ISIS Unveiled, to Buddha, to hesouls, shesouls and shoals of souls. 

The discussion about Stephen's ideas on Shakespeare continue after Russell leaves. The quaker librarian is nice enough to say that Stephen's views are most illuminating. But Eglinton can not be won over so easily (... if you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare is Hamlet you have a stern task before you). Stephen continues to argue.

These pages with their litany of names of Irish literary figures (not widely known today), comments about Theosophy, Stephen's quoting (without naming the sources) Shakespeare's works and Aristotel's ideas make reading them quite a challenge!

Thursday 12 February 2015

Tuesday, 10 February 2015, Pages 238 - 244, Scylla and Charybdis, Episode 9

Stopped today's reading at "... guiltless though maligned." (Penguin 244. 7),  (Gabler 9.244)

We are still in an office of the National Library in Dublin. Stephen and others (See Sabrina's excellent post from last week to learn about the various characters who were present) have just talked about Heines, who is not there as he has gone to buy the book, The Love Songs of Connacht, by Douglas Hyde (1860 - 1949).

What we read on these pages is a fictional discussion of fiction (Fritz Senn's words). Mainly of Shakespeare. That too about Shakespeare's Hamlet. Before Stephen starts expounding his thesis on Shakespeare and Hamlet, Georg Russell makes a kind of 'derogatory' remark about lovesongs. (That he does so warning occultly hints at his interest in mysticism, occult etc.) He also comes up with some strong opinions about peasants, who makes revolutions, the cheap kind of work (sixshilling novel) produced in the rarefied air of the academy,.. They also talk about the literary scene in France, about Mallarme.

But Shakespeare and Hamlet, rather Stephen's views of Shakespeare and Hamlet, occupy the center stage on these pages. We have to read these pages with much care as Stephen's exposition is interspersed with a lot of interior monologue, his thoughts wandering from Shakespeare's fiction to what others (such as the 16th century English dramatist Robert Greene) have said about the bard, to his own time at Clongowes as portrayed by Joyce in A Portrait of The Artist as a Young Man, to his mother's deathbed, to the money he owes A. E. (George Russell) etc.

"Shakespeare's family circle" by unknown german engraver - engraving.
Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Shakespeare%27s_family_circle.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Shakespeare%27s_family_circle.jpg
We should pay special attention to a couple of things in Stephen's argument. (a) to his attempt - telling himself to add local color, work in all you know - to recreate the atmosphere of the staging of a Shakespearean play. (Penguin 240.26 ff) (b) to his explanation on what a ghost is. Stephen defines a ghost as one who has faded into implacability through death, through absence, through change of manners. (c) to his main argument that the dead king in Hamlet is Shakespeare himself, that Hamlet is none else than his dead son, Hamnet, and that he naturally converts his own wife Ann Hathaway into the guilty queen, Gertrude.  (The connection between Hamnet and Hamlet occupies scholars even today as can be read here.) Stephen's painting of what happens when Shakespeare appears to Hamlet as the ghost is really beautiful: To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamlet Shakespeare, who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.

Stephen's thesis does not attract everybody in the room. Russell objects to such a peeping and prying into greenroom gossip. Mr Best's face, appealed to, agreed. (We only know that Mr Best's face agreed, we don't know if indeed Mr Best agreed!) Of course Stephen is not happy about this. In his thoughts he mocks at Russell by referring to him as sirrah, (a common form of addressing an inferior person during the Elizabethan times), remembering at the same time that Russell had lent him a pound when he (Stephen) was hungry.

Recollection of this borrowed pound leads Stephen's thoughts to what happened to that money (spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed), to his conversation that morning with Mr. Deasy (I paid my way. I paid my way.), and finally to philosophical excursions of the identity of a human being. (Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound. = With time the stuff we are made of changes. The Stephen who borrowed the pound five months ago is different from the one who is now Stephen.) He thinks of his childhood and youth as portrayed in the novel, A Portrait...

He underscores this chain of thoughts with: I, I and I. I. I dare to interpret this as follows: The full stop  between I, I and I and I stands for 'changes in the molecules'. The comma between I and I and I. signifies that something still continues even if the molecules change. (Read Aristotle to understand more!)

Stephen next thinks of A. E. I. O. U. Here Joyce has posed a nice puzzle for us. Do the 'I's of I, I and I. I remind Stephen of the five vowels of the English language or is he telling himself: "A. E. (George Russell's pen name) I owe you (that pound)"? 

Finally, please do not loose heart if this episode comes across as being too hard a nut to crack at first reading. Continue with the reading group once you finish reading Ulysses first time. Everything becomes so much more enjoyable and beautiful the second time over!

Friday 6 February 2015

Tuesday, 3 February 2015, Pages 236 - 238, Scylla and Charybdis, Episode 9

We stopped at: "An emerald set in the ring of the sea." (a few lines after the poem starting "Bound thee forth, my booklet, quick") (Gabler 9.102) (Penguin p. 238)


Lyster in his office (thanks to Bill Brockman)


Stephen, Russell, Eglinton, Lyster and Best are immersed in talk at the library. Russell, Eglinton, Lyster and Best were people who existed in real life. They are sometimes referred to by their actual names and sometimes by their pseudonyms, which can become rather confusing. Here's the cast:

Russell (pen name: A. E.): George Russell was something of a literary giant of the time. He was poet, philosopher, artist, journalist, and economic theorist all at once. As a poet committed to mystical experience, he was also a dominant figure in the Irish renaissance around the turn of the century (the phrase he "oracled out of the shadow" at 9.46 renders something of the mysticism he was interested in). In real life, Russell was instrumental in publishing Joyce's short stories Dubliners in The Irish Homestead, and Joyce owed a lot to him.

Eglinton: John Eglinton is the pseudonym of William Kirkpatrick Magee. Both in the novel as in life, he was an accomplished critic and influential figure on the Dublin literary scene.

Lyster: Thomas W. Lyster ("the quaker librarian" 9.1) was the Librarian of the National Library of Ireland from 1895 to 1920. He translated a biography of Goethe.

Best: Richard Irvine Best was the assistant librarian of the National Library in 1904.

The library men are discussing approaches to and the relation between art, life and literature. Their debate appears to be about two opposing views on whether literature should be seen in the author's biographical context or not. Some of the theories they bring up were in the air at the time and would have been well known among literary people. In talking about the pros and cons of using the facts of Shakespeare's life to interpret his art, they also throw around pet phrases (a well known one of Russell's was: "Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences" 9.48), clichés ("Seven is dear to the mystic mind. The shining seven WB calls them." 9.27) and rather unoriginal, received wisdom on Shakespeare. At the same time, they snub Stephen by mockingly inquiring into his Hamlet theory. Stephen counters by taking the chance to show off his knowledge of Aristotle and Plato. Indeed, we may pick up some of the tension between the men from the very beginning of the chapter, or at least note that Lyster seems to be feel the need to appease ("Urbane, to comfort them, the quaker librarian purred." 9.1).

Much of the episode so far is told as if perceived through Stephen's eyes and in his language. His thoughts are strewn in between the bits of conversation, letting us have all the debris of Stephen's reading. Some of them are dense, enigmatic, but some quite poetic also: "Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past" (9.89).


This is where it may be appropriate to remember one of Joyce's famous quotations: "I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality" (in Richard Ellmann's biography, James Joyce, p. 521) – with thanks to Rolf Wespe for making reference to this quotation during the reading.