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.)
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.
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.)
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| (Source: Wikipedia) |
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.
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| (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.
