Wednesday 16 December 2015

Tuesday, 15 December 2015, Pages 547 - 555, Oxen of the Sun, Episode 14

It was a good place to stop our reading today, at "Per deam partulam et pertundam nuns eat bibendum!" (Penguin 555.32), (Gabler 14.1439)

It had better be stated here and now at the outset that the first paragraph we read today is as convoluted and long-winded as any we have so far read in this episode, Oxen of the Sun. The reason could be that Joyce imitates here the style of the 19th century English essayist and historian Thomas Macaulay, who is considered  to be 'a master of somewhat impetuous and unreliable history' (Gifford, 14.1174). Be that as it may be, we are confronted here with talks about science, what a man of science is like, what questions - such as the first question posed by public canvasser (Pubb. Canv.) Bloom (when did he pose this question?) regarding the future determination of sex - cannot be answered by science. At present. So the assembled people come up with all kinds of speculations about how the sex of a baby is determined during conception. Aristotle's theories in this matter are also mentioned, without naming him directly, of course. Mulligan, Doctor of Hygienics and Eugenics (Hyg. et Eug. Doc.) comes up with multiple reasons - sanitary conditions, hideous publicity posters, ... - to explain infant mortality, another problem posed by the same inquirer (Bloom), who pertinently remarks, we are all born in the same way but we all die in different ways. Mr. J. Crotthers comes up with other explanations, where as Lynch remarks that both natality and mortality, as well as as many other phenomena is subject to a law of numeration as yet unascertained. And so they go on. Even the phrase survival of the fittest is mentioned hinting at Darwin's theory of biological evolution. After all, everyone is assembled in a maternity hospital, and Mrs Purefoy has just given birth. Again. Fritz Senn opines that Joyce uses different styles of writing in this episode to show the evolution of language over the centuries.

Meanwhile, the style has changed to that of Charles Dickens (1812 -1870).
(Source: http://images6.fanpop.com/image/photos/37200000/David-Copperfield-1935-charles-dickens-37260933-1763-1381.jpg)
Joyce imitates scenes from David Copperfield, borrowing even the word, doady, which is the nick name given to David Copperfield by his girl-bride Dora. Naturally we do not read here about Dora and David. Instead we read about Mrs and Mr Purefoy and their children. One of their daughters is given the name Mary Alice. Mary was the sister-in-law of Dickens, and it is said that he idolized her. Alice is very close to Agnes, the one idolized by David Copperfield! Not just Dickens's, I feel that Omar Khayyam's words are also echoed here. Here Joyce writes: ' And so time wags on:...' One of the most famous verses of the 11th century Persian poet Omar Khayyam's is:

 'The moving finger writes; and having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it.'
(Moving finger = time, moves = wags)

The paragraph that follows (There are sins or ....) in the 19th century style of Cardinal Newman aka John Henry Newman, for whom Joyce is said to have had lifelong admiration, seems to be examining the effect of a chance word has on memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart. I feel that here Joyce is talking of the effect on Stephen of the words of Lenehan, the crucial word being 'mother'. (Lenehan said, laying a hand on the shoulder near him, have no fear. He could not leave his mother an orphan. Penguin 543. 20) At the beginning of the novel, we were told that Stephen's mother had passed away, and that he did not oblige her wishes and pray at her death bed. Stephen is still suffering from these memories.

Bloom (the stranger) observes the face before him. That this must be Stephen's is hinted at by Bloom thinking of one soft May evening at Matt Dillon's place. It was the first encounter between Molly and Bloom. Bloom had also seen there a young boy (a lad of four or five) and his mother. Bloom sees this young lad in his memories, and thinks, 'he frowns a little just as this young man does now...', sees how the mother had watched her son with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach in her glad look.

In a very biblical sounding language (style: John Ruskin, the 19th century English art critic and reformer), not only the image of the birth of Jesus in a stall is evoked to mention once again Mrs Purefoy and her new born baby but also the beginning of Genesis is evoked with the last words of the paragraph; ... so and not otherwise was the transformation, violet and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the word.

What was this special word? Burke's!, a pub at the corner of Denzille and Holles street. It was nearing 11 pm, the closing time of the pub! So all those assembled there gather in a hurry their belongings and leave the room. Bloom lingers back to send a kind word to the happy mother. While going out he whispers (to the nurse): 'Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee?' The others are already rushing out for yet another drink, thinking, 'Per deam partulam et pertundam nunc est bibendum!' (By the goddesses Partula and Pertunda now must we drink!)

Note: This is my last blog post for 2015! I thank you all for your kind words and deeds about this blog, and wish all of you happy holidays and a good start to 2016. May the new year bring peace to the world!
Chandra

Sunday 13 December 2015

Tuesday, 8 December 2015, Pages 540 - 547, Oxen of the Sun, Episode 14

We read as far as "... for ages yet to come." (Penguin 547.15), (Gabler 14.1222)

Mr. Bloom had been reminiscing as Mulligan was talking (we don't know what actually) to the friends gathered in the hospital ('Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror.' / Penguin 539.6). Haines has come and has left. Malachias, overcome by emotion, ceased. We are reminded again of the murder of Childs, whose house the people in the carriage on their way that morning to the funeral of Patrick Dignam had passed. Bloom is still not paying any attention to the happenings around him. He sits there, ruminating, chewing the cud of reminiscence, ... It is as if a magical wand, a magical mirror  is revealing to him his earlier selves. What is the age of the soul of man? He sees the young Bloom on the way to school, sees himself as a young adult working already for the family firm, bringing home at duskfall many a commission to the head of the firm (his father) seated with Jacob's pipe ... He thinks of his first sexual encounter with Bridie Kelly on a drizzling night in Hatch street. He will never forget the name, ever remember the night...  He also thinks that he has no son unlike his father Rudolph who had him, Leopold. (That he had a son, Rudy, who died soon after birth is not mentioned here though).

Joyce has written the above contemplative part in the style of the 19th century British author, Charles Lamb. It is a move from the rational style characteristic of the 18th century to the romantic movement of the 19th. The following paragraph (The voices blend... / Penguin 541.28) is also in the style of the work 'The English Mail Coach' by the 19th century English essayist, Thomas de Quincey. (For more info, see Gifford 14.1078-1109. Quincey is famous for his work, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. As Fritz Senn explained, this episode is also opium like, heavy in its style.)

(Source: Wikipedia)

Bloom is still immersed in his own thoughts. It is as if he is seeing a vision. He feels as if the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of generations that have lived. He sees Milly and Molly - Milly following her mother with ungainly steps, and Molly like a mare leading her fillyfoal. That vision too vanishes. All is gone. The rest of the paragraph is heavy, loaded with literary references. We are reminded of Isaiah's prophecy in the Old Testament on the woes that visit the unbelievers of Israel (...screechowls), of the prophet Jeremiah's predictions (... the bulls of Bashan and of Babylon), of T. S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land', of Homer's Odysseus (... murderers of the sun), of Yeats's play, 'The Countess Cathleen' (... parallax stalks behind and goads them...), and so on. It is like apocalypse itself. Everything moves towards the sea of death (Lacus mortis). Suddenly there is a change of tone, there is the harbinger of hope (And the equine portent grows again) with its reference to constellations of stars in the sky, to the daystar, to Martha, Milly, the young, the dear, the radiant.

Change of scene, change of style. Francis (Costello) is talking to Stephen about a couple of people they knew when they were at school together. Stephen is not interested in them (Why think of them?). He refers to them as poor ghosts, wondering - comparing himself to Odysseus- whether he can call them into life across the waters of Lethe ( a river in Hades, the water of which the dead were to drink to forget their earlier life). But Stephen has not been able to lay his own ghosts as is apparent when he is reminded of his mother's recent death. Still he continues to sit there, as Lenehan and others start again talking of the horse race of the day in which the outsider, Throwaway, had won, and of Lenehan's girl. Lenehan and the girl had met Father Conmee earlier in the day as they were coming out from the gap of a hedge. (See episode 10, The wandering rocks)

Meanwhile Mulligan notices that Bloom has withdrawn into himself (His soul is far away). But Bloom is not anymore reminiscing. He is looking at the scarlet label of the beer bottles opposite him.
(Source: https://porter21.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Bass-Ale.jpg)
His and Stephen's eyes meet. Bloom pours some beer into a glass for Stephen. We again read about the various people assembled there. Only the chair of the resident (Dr Dixon) indeed stood vacant.  It is in these lines that the real life counterpart of Mulligan is revealed: Malachi Roland St John Mulligan aka Oliver St John Gogarty. 

Saturday 5 December 2015

Tuesday, 1 December 2015, Pages 534 - 540, Oxen of the Sun, Episode 14

We stopped at "Murderer's ground." (Penguin 540.9), (Gabler 14.1037)

In the preceding week, we had left Bloom thinking about the brash behavior of the youth around him. Though the style of that paragraph was not something we usually associate with Bloom, what we encountered there was typical indeed of our Bloom. As ever, he was ready to find excuses for his fellow human beings, attributing such boisterous behavior as he was witnessing to their age. He was also thankful that the ordeal Mrs. Purefoy, whom he had come to enquire after, was facing, was finally over, testifying to the mercy as well as to the bounty of the Supreme being.

First of all about the literary styles Joyce uses on the pages we read today. The most prominent style is that of political satire and rhetoric, first in the style of the Irish playwright, parliamentarian, Brinkley Sheridan (starting with the sentence, 'Accordingly he broke his mind...' Penguin 534.3), and then in the style of a political satirist with the penance, Junius (starting with the sentence, 'But with what fitness...', Penguin 535.3).  We also have a paragraph written in the style of gothic romances (starting with 'But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror.' Penguin 539.6). But these are not pure styles. The paragraph in the gothic style gets mixed up with that of Shakespearean language.

When Bloom expresses his feelings to the one sitting next to him (we do not know who this dressy young blade, Bloom's neighbor at the table, was), the reaction he gets is that it was her husband that put her in that expectation... unless she were another Ephesian matron. (Read here the story of The Ephesian Matron as told in the Tales of Jean de La Fontaine)

(The Ephesian Matron/
Source: https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/l/la_fontaine/jean_de/tales/complete.html#chapter19)
As the  assembled young blades continue to make jokes about the whole affair, dragging in Mr Purefoy (old Glory Allelujurum, old bucko,...), Bloom wonders how the mere acquisition of academic titles turns such frivolous people into respectable doctors (... exemplary practitioners of an art which most men anywise eminent have esteemed the noblest...).  He further excuses their jokes telling himself that they do so to relieve pentup feelings, as after all birds of a feather laugh together. This is another typical Bloomian confusion, the words of this famous nursery rhyme being, "Birds of a feather flock together..."

At this point, the novel questions - in the style of the political satirist, Junius - what right Bloom, an outsider (this alien) has to raise such questions, to have such thoughts. (Where is now that gratitude which loyalty should have counseled? Penguin 535.3) He should not be preaching any gospel, as obviously not everything is ok at home (... a seedfield that lies fallow... Penguin 536.2), as he obviously has a habit that is reprehensible at puberty..., perhaps a reference to his masturbating on the Sandycove beach. (See Nausicca). 

Let us step out of Bloom's mind, and look at what is happening around him. Here Joyce offers us the style of the 18th century English historian, Edward Gibbon, the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. After the news of the birth which the nurse had brought,  Dixon, the junior medical officer in residence, had left the assembly and gone to help the mother.  Once he left, the company breaks out into a strife of tongues. Mr Bloom's attempts to urge, to mollify, to refrain have no effect whatsoever. Each one of the others comes out with what all can go wrong in childbirth. We are treated to a cascade of medical terms, intelligible only to the initiated. When Madden and Lynch start discussing about the juridical and theological dilemma created in the event of one Siamese twin predeceasing the other (Penguin 538.30), the matter is referred to Bloom, who passes it on to Stephen (Coadjutor Deacon Daedalus). Stephen, who has remained silent so far on these pages, quotes in answer from the gospels: 'What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.'

Now we are in the world of gothic literature (But Malachias' tale began to freeze them with horror. Penguin 539.6) Haines appears on the scene. We are taken back to earlier episodes, to the case of Samuel Childs murder (episode 6, Hades), to the episode of black panther (episode 1, Telemachus). Words from Hamlet make yet another appearance as do sentences that were spoken on earlier pages. For example, we had read the last sentence we read today, 'Murderer's ground' earlier on page 125 (Penguin). It is as if the novel is repeating itself. It is as if the novel is building a bridge between morning and night.