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.)
