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)
