Tuesday 22 September 2015

Tuesday, 22 September 2015, Pages 464 - 474, Nausicaa, episode 13

We stopped mid-paragraph at "From everything in the least indelicate her finebred nature instinctively recoiled." (Penguin 474.28), (Gabler 13.661)

Last week, we had left how the howling of Baby Boardman was calmed down with the help of a suckingbottle. Gerty, immersed in her thoughts, is disturbed by this noise caused by not only the baby but also the twins, and wishes that they would go. Noticing that the gentleman sitting on the rocks was looking at her, her heart goes pitapat. In no time does she give up her dreams of the bicycle-riding boy, Reggy Wylie, and transfer her matrimonial wishes to this gentleman, who was in deep mourning (the first hint that the person is none other than our Mr. Bloom), who she could see at once by his dark eyes and his pale intellectual face that he was a foreigner.

The following are the main distinguishing features of the pages we read today:

(Source: http://www.sfmission.com/sfbirthplace/ladyofsorrows2.GIF)
First of all, passages such as those above alternate with passages describing the service in the church nearby. As Fritz Senn explained, we move, within a single sentence, from the scene in the church (recitation of the litany to Virgin Mary, Father Conroy assisting Canon O'Hanlon at the altar) to the scene on the beach (Gerty, Cissy, Edy, Jacky, Tommy, the baby and the gentleman), and get into the mind of Gerty (her wishes/dreams about how here was that of which she had so often dreamed.)

Secondly, though we read at the beginning of the episode that three girl friends were seated on the rocks, we realize soon that there is not much friendship amongst the three girls. In fact there is quite a bit of jealousy, even bitchiness. Gerty, for example, thinks quite meanly about Cissy's hair (which had a good enough color if there had been more of it), where as she complements herself about her own hair thinking, 'a prettier, a daintier head of nut brown tresses was never seen on a girl's shoulders'.

Thirdly, at this stage it is quite difficult to distinguish between wishful thinking and reality regarding Bloom and Gerty. Gerty imagines Bloom looking at her and that there was meaning in his look. She thinks how, if she could make him fall in love with her, (she would) make him forget the memory of the past. Then mayhap he would embrace her gently, like a real man, crushing her soft body to him... This quick transfer of affection from Reggy Wylie to Bloom (though Bloom is still a complete stranger to Gerty) makes one wonder whether it is all in Gerty's imagination. But then one thinks of what happened early that morning when Bloom went to Dlugacz. There he saw his nextdoor girl, who was served first. Bloom got impatient to buy what he had come for, so that he could catch up and walk behind her if she went slowly, behind her moving hams (Penguin 71.21). Thus there could be a grain of truth in how Gerty perceives Bloom's attention on her (she thinks that he was eyeing her as a snake eyes its prey).

Finally, there is another hint here of how much of Bloom's efforts of the day are thwarted. In the morning he could not catch up with the nextdoor girl. Later in the day, he did not succeed in his attempt to inspect the Greek goddesses in the library museum. At the end of the day, he is still trying to secure the order for an advertisement from Keyes. Now on the beach, when Cissy goes to him to ask what time it was, he cannot give an exact answer, as his watch was stopped, saying it must be after eight because the sun was set. 

In the twilight of the sunset, however, which must be around 8.30 p.m. in mid June Dublin, we know the day is moving towards its end. So, Bloom's day has moved to Bloom's night. While the girls carry on taking care of the children and clean up the baby, Gerty pursues her dreams the no-one knew of. She thinks poetry, which she'd be able to write if she could only express herself like that poem that had appealed to her so much and copied out for herself, and of the lamplighter who will soon be doing his rounds in the streets, like she has read in the book The Lamplighter by Miss Cummins. (Incidentally, the heroine in The Lamplighter is called Gerty, too.)


The book is accessible through Google Books:
https://books.google.ch/books?id=ygkRAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=the+lamplighter+cummings&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMInqOGk7CNyAIVgdUUCh0XuAYQ#v=onepage&q&f=false

Gerty is acutely aware of time going by (the years were slipping by for her) and of that one shortcoming, of an accident coming down Dalkey hill, always trying to conceal it. (At this point, the reader does not know what she is referring to.) Her fantasies about Bloom, what kind of man he might be, whether he is suffering and afflicted by some tragedy (he is wearing mourning clothes, after all), a widower perhaps, or a man who has had to put his wife into a madhouse, a nobleman with a foreign name.

We will pick up from her musings and her picturing on the beach next week.

Thursday 17 September 2015

Tuesday, 15 September 2015, Pages 456 - 464, Nausicaa, episode 13

We read as far as "... young heathen was quickly appeased."  (Penguin 464.31) (Gabler 13.403)

On these pages we read about what Gerty MacDowell yearns after, her current home-life, and we get to know a bit more about Cissy Caffrey. About the funny, daring, madcap Ciss with her golliwog curls*  (Penguin 459.28). And then there came out upon the air the sound of voices and the pealing anthem of the organ (Penguin 460.8) from the church of Mary, Star of the Sea, situated near Sandymount Strand. A temperance retreat was going on in the church at this time.
(Source: http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/multimedia/archive/00492/a9385490-6823-11e3-_492882c.jpg)
Gerty, who would never see seventeen again, yearns in vain. She thinks first of Reggy Wylie T. C. D., the boy on the bicycle. Of course once he had snatched a half kiss, ending only on the end of her nose, but Gerty knew that strength of character had never been his strong point. Gerry is kind of desperate because she has been waiting ... to be asked. She yearns after a manly man with a strong quiet face, his hair slightly flecked with grey. She imagines how she would care for such a man, how she would keep their house (a beautifully appointed drawingroom with pictures and engravings and the photograph of grandpapa Giltrap's lovely dog Garryowen), what she would prepare for him (griddlecakes and queen Ann's pudding)...

Meanwhile Edy Boardman has buttoned up Tommy Caffrey's knickerbockers and tries to send him off to play with Jacky and to be good now. Tommy of course wants his ball which the baby in the pushcart is playing with. Though specifically forbidden by Edy to do it, Cissy manages to get the ball and give it to Tommy. All this goes to show the hidden tension in the friendship amongst the three girls.

In the church nearby, the men's temperance retreat is being conducted by the reverend John Hughes S. J. Listening to the sounds coming from the church, Gerty thinks of her father, a prey to the fumes of intoxication. (This is one of the many touches of sad realities present in the background of this episode that is otherwise quite kitschy.) She loved him still with all his faults. Gerty thinks of the time when they all had supper with Mr Dignam and his family. Mr Dignam that died suddenly and was buried. Her mother had said to the father to let that be a warning. Oh, her mother! Her snuff taking mother! Her mother who had those raging splitting headaches! Gerty was not only nice to her father, she helped her mother too, and looked after their house by turning off the gas at the main every night, by tacking up on the wall of that place (referring euphemistically to the toilet) sentimental pictures, for instance one of halcyon days.

It is with the description of the twins playing with the ball that a gentleman in black sitting there by himself is brought into the picture (a link to Nausicaa in the Odyssey, where it is the girls at play with a ball at the beach onto which Odysseus has been washed who wake him with their screams). Who this gentleman is, is really easy to guess) The ball kicked by Jacky towards the seaweedy rocks is kicked back by the gentleman towards Cissy, but lands right under Gerty's skirt. Gerty tries to kick it away as a delicate pink creeps into her pretty cheek. She ventures at the same time a look at him (the gentleman) and the face that met her gaze there is the twilight, wan and strangely drawn, seemed to her the saddest she had ever seen. We are also told that, till then they had only exchanged glances. So, suddenly, we learn that she had seen this gentleman already and, in retrospect, realize that she has been aware of him watching and has been acting with him in mind all along.

The litany of Loreto is being recited at the church, verses of which are interspersed in the text (Virgin most merciful, mystical rose, pray for us). Gerty in her musings remembers being taught by Father Hughes that the Virgin Mary would never abandon those who, though careworn and erring, invoke her help. We then hear some more about what is going on close by, the twins playing, the girls watching over them and the baby in the pushcart, until the baby wets himself, which causes some distress, and starts crying. Cissy is quick to deal with everything and, always readywitted, comforts and appeases him adroitly.


* The term golliwog is quite a loaded term. More information is available here.

Friday 11 September 2015

Tuesday, 8 September 2015, Pages 449 - 456, Nausicaa, episode 13

Today we started a new episode. This 13th episode of the novel is known as Nausicaa in Joyce's list. We stopped the reading at "... as it wasn't of a Friday." (Penguin 456.19) (Gabler 13.187)

In Book 5 of The Odyssey, Odysseus leaves Calypso's island, is harassed by Poseidon, and is finally beached at the mouth of a river in the land of a fabulous seafaring people, the Phaeacians. Odysseus hides in a thicket to sleep off his exhaustion and in Book 6 is eventually awakened by the activities of the Princess Nausicaa and her maids-in-waiting, who have come to the river to the palace laundry. (Gifford's introduction to the episode, 13.1 - 1306)


The very first sentence of the episode sets the tone for the entire episode. 
(Source:http://www.blogcdn.com/www.mydaily.co.uk/media/2011/02/mills--boon-cover.jpg)
A far cry from the Joycean style which we have gotten to know in the previous episodes, the tone of this episode is one of over-sentimentality, very flowery, sticky sweet as honey, and reminded me of the Mills and Boon romantic novels. It is certainly very different from the crudeness, vulgarity, violence and nationalistic feelings of Cyclops, the previous episode. All this proves, if proof is needed, the versatility of Joyce's writing!

It is summer evening. The time is 8 p.m. The venue, Sandymount strand. Three girl friends are seated on the rocks. At first we get to know only two of them - Cissy Caffrey and Edy Boardman. The four year old twins - Tommy and Jacky Caffrey have come along with the girls, who have also brought a eleven month old baby in a pushcart. Tommy and Jacky are building castles in the sand. Naturally they fight with the selfwilled Master Jacky falling on the headstrong Master Tommy, destroying the castle the latter had built, leading to screams. 

The third of the three girls, Gerty MacDowell, enters the picture as Edy Boardman tries to console Master Tommy. Gerty MacDwell, seated near her companions, lost in thought, gazing far away into the distance was, in very truth, as fair a specimen of winsome Irish girlhood as one could wish to see

What follows is a long description of how Gerty looks and what she wears (a neat blouse of electric blue, a navy three-quarter skirt, coquettish little love of a hat, shoes that were the newest thing in footwear), her dreams,.... We also get some glimpses of her character, of her superstitions. We get to know that she is older than 17 (though Gerty would never see seventeen againPenguin 455.34), that she has (had?) an admirer, a boy that had the bicycle off the London bridge road always riding up and down in front of her window, whom his father kept now in in the evenings to study. So Gerty is now wearing blue for luck, hoping against hope (of meeting the boy again). That morning she had also nearly slipped up the old pair on her inside out and that was for luck... Gerty knows (or feels) that Edy Boardman is jealous of her because of that boy. 


Thus, so far we have come to know the Nausicaa of the episode but the Odysseus is still 'hiding'. Not in a bush but on the rocks!

Thursday 3 September 2015

Tuesday, 1 September 2015, Pages 440 - 449, Cyclops, End of episode 12

Today we finished reading 'Cyclops', which as Fritz Senn explained, bears the closest parallel in the entire book to Homer's Odyssey. Just think of the parallels between the citizen and Polyphemus, of the biscuit box thrown by the citizen with the rock thrown by Polyphemus. Other features that should be compared are the numerous references to 'eye' in the singular form hinting at the single-eyed giant, Joyce's playing with names through out the episode with how Odysseus introduces himself to Polyphemus by saying his name is "Οὖτις", and finally the gigantism of the entire episode with the gigantic inhabitants of the island, Cyclops.
(Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphemus)
Last week, we had left Martin Cunningham, rapping for his glass, saying, 'God bless all here is my prayer.' Bloom had gone out of the pub. Lenehan was pretending that he knows where he's gone.... He had a few bob on Throwaway and he's gone to gather in the shekels.' The friends gathered in the pub were talking in general of jews, and in particular of Bloom, the jew.

Cunningham's mentioning of God's blessing starts off another interpolation, this one about a formal blessing as it takes place in a church. This long interpolation (And at the sound of the sacring bell,...; penguin 440.5) that is more than two pages long, and is inserted between what Joe Hynes ('And I'm sure He will') and Jack Power ('And so say all of us') are saying, puts forth a real long list of saints, some real, some disguised to indicate those present in Barney Kieran's pub. Even the citizen's dog, that bloody mangy mongrel, gets a place of honor in this list as S. Owen Caniculus!


Bloom returns from the courthouse, where he has been looking for Martin Cunningham. Cunningham, who feels the tension in the air, makes a quick exit with Bloom, Jack Power and Crofton. They get on the jaunting car, and Martin says to the jarvey, 'Off with you.' Their hasty exit cues in another interpolation (The milkwhite dolphin....; penguin 443.28), a short report on a kind of nautical farewell, and is full of sailing technicalities. 


Though Bloom quits the pub, the citizen does not keep quiet. The situation turns nasty with him rushing out and bawling at Bloom. As the onlookers (ragamuffins and sluts of the nation) enjoy the scene, Bloom starts to retaliate, evoking names of famous (though here irrelevant) jews, ending with 'And the Saviour was a jew and his father a jew. Your God.' Enraged, the citizen storms into the pub (By Jesus, I'll crucify him so I will. Give us that biscuitbox here.') with Joe Hynes trying to stop him. It is time for another interpolation (A large and appreciative gathering...; penguin 445.13), another parody of another departure. Now of a foreign visitor (Lipoti Virag alias Leopold Bloom).


The jarvey has gone round the corner just as the citizen hurls the biscuitbox after Bloom. It misses the target and the old tinbox clatters along the street. The interpolation that follows is real gigantic in nature, dealing as it does with an earthquake. (The catastrophe was terrific.... ; penguin 447.1) The citizen is shouting to the bloody dog; 'After him, Garry! After him, boy!' But the bloody car manages to go round the corner. Bloom's 'escape' is parodied in the very last paragraph of the episode (When, lo, there came about them...; penguin 449.1) in which Joyce uses at first biblical language describing how the prophet Elijah ascended to the heavens, ending the episode with ordinary language.