Tuesday, 23 February 2016, Pages 605- 613, Circe, Episode 15

Our reading stopped at "... virgo intacta." (Penguin 613.23), (Gabler 15.1786)

We had seen last week how Bloom appears seated on a milkwhite horse, and was anointed by two archbishops.

(The koh-i-noor diamond)

What follows is Joyce's take on the coronation ceremonies in Great Britain. Bloom is wearing a mantle of gold, stands on the stone of destiny (aka stone of scone). The koh-i-noor diamond is shining on his right hand. Bells from surrounding churches ring. Fireworks go up from the Mirus bazaar. (Bloom had seen that noon a placard announcing the bazaar and the fireworks to raise funds for the Mercer's hospital (episode 8, Lestrygonians). In fact he had seen these fireworks that evening sitting on the Sandymount shore, where he had seen the three girl friends including Gerty McDowell (episode 13, Nausicaa).  His whitehorse is now a palfrey horse, which is usually defined as a small saddle horse for women (and can also mean a horse for state occasions / Gifford 15.1500). This 'feminine' association forebodes what happens later in the episode, when Bloom's feminine nature surfaces!

Borrowing Alfred Tennyson's lines 'Half a league onward' from his poem 'The Charge of the Light Brigade, Bloom makes another speech, describing how on this day twenty years ago he overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith. (A reference to the Boer war of 1900.) As  many of the assembled people praise him, and as per his announcement, thirtytwo workmen wearing rosettes, from all the counties of Ireland, under the guidance of Derwan the builder, construct the new bloomusalem, a man in a brown macintosh appears saying, 'Don't you believe a word he says.' By the way, we had met this man in the brown macintosh that morning at the funeral, (Hades, episode 6), and had seen him again at lunch time while he, eating dry bread, passed swiftly and unscathed across the viceroy's path (Wandering Rocks, episode 10)

Bloom orders to shoot him, himself striking down with his scepter poppies. (According to Gifford / 15.1565-66, this recalls Tarquinius Superbus - d. 495 B. C. -, the last of the semilegendary tyrant-kings of Rome, who was supposed to have prefigured the tyrannical nature of his reign when, as a child, he beheaded poppies with a toy scepter.) Many instantaneous deaths are reported. Bloom's bodyguard distribute money, medals, loaves, fishes, butter scotch, pineapple rock, etc. Bloom had walked past that day at lunch time Graham Lemon's, a lozenge and comfit manufacturer's sweet shop, where he had seen pineapple rock and butter scotch (episode 8, Lestrygonians).  Now he takes trouble to mix with the people, pokes baby boardman gently in the stomach (episode 13, Nausicaa), shakes hands with a blind stripling (episode 8, Lestrygonians), all echoing the behavior of today's politicians during election time. Even the citizen, who is so antisemitic (episode 12, Cyclops), praises Bloom saying, 'May the good God bless him!' Bloom presides over the Court of Conscience (court of requests) and gives advice to all those who come - we had met many of these people in earlier episodes - with their requests, however banal they may be.

The tide turns as Bloom is explaining to those near him his schemes for social regeneration. Suddenly people, even those who had worshipped him earlier, turn against him. Bloom tries to quieten things down by telling jokes, singing songs (I bet she's a bonny lassie). But the situation turns real serious with the appearance of Alexander J Dowie, mentioned on the placard, Elijah is coming, which Bloom had seen at lunch time. Dowie instigates the mob with his fiery speech, and the mob scream, 'Lynch him! Roast him! He's as bad as Parnell was. Mr. Fox!' (In his clandestine correspondence with Kitty O'Shea, Parnell is said to have used several assumed names, among them Fox and Stewart. Gifford 15.1762.) Mother Grogan throws her boot at bloom. Several shopkeepers throw objects like condensed milk tins, unsaleable cabbage, etc.

The scene changes to another court scene. Bloom calls on his old friend, Dr Malachi Mullign, sex specialist, to give medical testimony on his behalf. Dr. Mulligan announces that Dr Bloom is bisexually abnormal, and according to the examination he has made and after he had applied the acid test, he can declare Bloom to be virgo intacta (an intact virgin.)

Note: Richard Ellman writes in his biography, James Joyce, the following about the episode, Circe (Page 76): "... He came to know the European theater well, and decided that Ibsen's principal disciple was Hauptmann."... Hauptmann's Hanneles Himmelfahrt, purchased a few months earlier, juxtaposed a naturalistic setting with apparitions of Hanneles father and mother in a way that crudely foreshadows the Circe episode of Ulysses."

Tuesday, 16 February 2016, Pages 596- 605, Circe, Episode 15

The reading stopped at "Leopold, Patrick, Andrew, David, George, be thou anointed!"
(Penguin 605.5), (Gabler 15.1489)

During our previous session, we had stopped our reading just when Sir Frederick Falkiner, the recorder (a barrister acting as a judge), had passed the sentence on Bloom that he be detained in custody in Mountjoy prison during his Majesty's pleasure and there be hanged by the neck until he is dead. H. Rumbold, master barber - he was mentioned earlier in the Cyclops episode when Joe Hynes had read aloud a letter of application from him for the job of a hangman - gets ready to do the job. (Joyce has named the hangman after Sir Horace Rumbold, the British minister to Switzerland in 1918.)

Bloom desperately asks him to wait, defending himself saying (that he has a) good heart, (that he fed the) gulls, turns to Hynes, one of the spectators in the court, to support him, only to be told coldly that Hynes considers him as a perfect stranger. The second watch points to something saying that it is a bomb. Bloom denies it and identifies it as a pig's feet (he had bought one earlier), and says that he was at a funeral.

The word funeral leads to the appearance of Paddy Dignam's ghost that materializes as the beagle (the dog is back!!) lifts his snout, and his dachshund coat becomes a brown mortuary habit. The apparition declares, "I am Paddy Dignam's spirit. List, list, O list" echoing the ghost of Hamlet's father saying, "I am thy father's spirit...List, list, O, list! If thou didst ever thy dear father love..." Diagram's ghost had appeared earlier in the Cyclops episode, where it had described how their abodes were equipped with every modern home comfort such as talafana, alavatar, ... At that time the ghost had requested  a quart of buttermilk (and) this was brought and evidently afforded relief, though now it says, "That buttermilk didn't agree with me.'"The figures of the caretaker and priest who presided over Dignam's funeral that morning also appear. Finally the ghost worms down through a coalhole, baying under ground, the song: "Dignam's dead and gone below", a take on the Children's song, Old Roger is dead and gone to his grave. 

With the disappearance of Dignam, Bloom is (i.e, we are) back in reality. He hears piano music coming from a house. That he hears (or imagines) kisses chirping, shows that the house is a brothel. Bloom fantasizes that kisses start flying about him, twittering, warbling, cooing! Zoe Higgins, a young English whore, comes down the steps. Asking him whether he is looking for someone, she tells him that 'He's inside with his friend'. (Stephan is inside Mrs Cohen's establishment with Lenehan.) Now follows quite a 'hot' section with Zoe handling Bloom, sliding her hand into his left trouser pocket and bringing out a hard black shrivelled potato that Bloom had been carrying along with him the entire day!

As midnight chimes from distant steeples, Bloom is back in his fantasy world. Wearing an alderman's gown and chain, he is told, 'Turn again, Leopold! Lord mayor of Dublin! (These sentences are based on a charming children's story, Dick Whittington and His Cat.) Bloom makes an impassioned speech, '... better run a tramline from the cattle market to the river. That's the music of the future. That's my programme....' There is a grand procession headed by John Howard Parnell, city marshal of Dublin. The procession, the participants (royal Dublin fusilier, king's own Scottish borderers, Cameron Highlanders, Welsh Fusiliers, lord mayors of Dublin, of Cork, other mayors, sirdars, grandees, maharajahs,...) and the spectators (windows thronging with sightseers, boys perched on lampposts, telegraph poles,...) are described on two pages that follow. Joyce had warned us earlier with his 'List, list, O list!'

(British Royal Insignia with the crown, scepter and orb)

(The white horse that will carry Kalki, Indian miniature painting from ca. 1795)

Bloom appears bearing the symbols of the English royalty, seated - just as Kalki, the tenth incarnation of the Indian god, Vishnu - on a milkwhite Horse!  Boys run around singing the wren song.  A coronation scene follows with the bishop of Down and Connor, the Church of Ireland, proclaiming Bloom as the emperor-resident and king-chairman and the Archbishop of Armagh anointing him,  proclaiming 'Habemus Carneficem' (We have an executioner ). Naturally, a take on Habemus Papam!

Tuesday, 9 February 2016, Pages 587- 596, Circe, Episode 15

The reading stopped as "Neck or nothing." (Penguin 596.24), (Gabler 15.1183)

A case is going on against Bloom in a court. Mr Philip Beaufoy has appeared as a witness and has accused Bloom of being a plagiarist, a street angel and house devil. Next, Mary Driscoll appears accusing Bloom of surprising her in the rere of the premises, of holding her and discoloring her in four places as a result. When Bloom, the accused, is asked to make a bogus statement, he starts his own defence. He appears holding a fullblown waterlily (a symbol of purity) and talks about himself in the third person, as if a lawyer is talking about him.  His long and unintelligible speech, full of excuses and explanations - though branded as a black sheep, ... he wanted to retrieve the memory of the past (read the lyrics and/or listen to the song), ... to turn over a new leaf - makes everybody laugh.

True to the fact that all that is going on here is in Bloom's mind, the nature of the court case against him as well as the person who defends him change often. After Philip Beaufoy and Mary Driscoll, the accusation against Bloom is about the bucket! Here (memories of) two happenings are mixed up. The first one occurred at noon after Bloom had a lunch of cheese sandwich and a glass of burgundy at Davy Byrne's (Episode 8, Lestrygonians), when a quiet message from his bladder came, and he had to go out of Davy Byrne's to do it. The second one occurred earlier in the episode we are reading, when he hears a joke being told by the gaffer about Cairns doing it into only into the bucket of porter... His new defending lawyer is J. J. O'Molloy, whom we had met in episode 7, in the newspaper office. J. J. O'Molloy's speech in defence of Bloom gets crazier and crazier as he continues with a voice of pained protest. Accordingly his client is an infant, is from the land of the Pharaoh, is of Mongolian extraction, is an innately bashful man, and would be the last man in the world to do anything ungentlemanly...

During all this, Bloom appears in two different attires. Once he assumes three different nationalities, appearing barefoot, pigeonbreasted, in lascar's vest and trousers, has tiny mole's eyes and speaks in pidgin English. (Lascars are sailors from India.) As O'Molloy changes, assuming the avine head and foxy mustache, Bloom is in court dress, confidently (or carelessly) producing references from his previous bosses, even from those who had kicked him out of his job.

His saying, "I have moved in the charmed circle of the highest .. Queens of Dublin society", triggers the appearances of ladies of Dublin's high society: Mrs Yelverton Barry, Mrs Bellingham, The Honorable Mrs Mervyn Talboys. (Joyce bases these names on real people!) What follows are accusations and more accusations against Bloom. As the punishments spoken out by the ladies (I'll flog him black and blue in the public streets... I'll dig my spurs in him up to the rowel....) get more and more severe, Bloom quails expectantly, squirms, pants cringingly, saying, "I love the danger." The jury in this case is made up of many of the characters we have met before: Martin Cunningham, Jack Power, Simon Daedalus etc. It also includes the featureless face of a nameless one. This last one could be the narrator of the Cyclops episode that takes place in Barney Kiernan's pub. Gifford (15.1143) says that 'a nameless one' is taken after the poem of the same name by thje Irish poet, James Clarence Mangan. (lyrics here, video here!)

Reading all this any reader of Ulysses would naturally wonder what is happening. The Bloom we see in this episode is not the Bloom we had known till now. All in all, Bloom is/was a decent albeit a passive man. What should one make of the Bloom we meet here?

Richard Ellmann has some answers in his biography, James Joyce. He writes (page 367): "While writing  the Circe episode Joyce drew heavily upon Sacher-Masoch's book, Venus im Pelz. Much of the material about flagellation is derived from it. Venus in Furs tells of a young man named Severin who so abases himself before his mistress, a wealthy woman named Wanda, and so encourages her cruelty toward him, that she becomes increasingly tyrannical, makes him a servile go-between, and then, in a rapturous finale, turns him over to her most recent lover for a whipping. There are many similarities to Circe..."

Ellmann also quotes from a letter Joyce wrote to Nora on September 2 (page 287): "Tonight I have an idea madder than usual. I feel I would like to be flogged by you. I would like to see your eyes blazing with anger..."

By the way, there is no dog on all these pages. After all we are in a court house!

Tuesday, 2 February 2016, Pages 584- 587, Circe, Episode 15

When I left about ten minutes earlier, we had just read "Play cricket." (Penguin 587.2) (Gabler xxxx)
(In other words, the group would have read a litter bit more. )

But first things first!
The 2nd of February is a special date indeed.

(Source: http://www.booktryst.com/2011/09/superstar-1st-edition-of-ulysseys.html)

James Joyce was born on this date in 1882. It was also on this date1922 that Ulysses was published by Sylvia Beach in Paris. 1000 copies - all  numbered - were printed in the first edition. 100 copies were printed on Dutch handmade paper, copies 101 to 250 were printed on verge d'Arches paper. The remaining 750 copies were 'normal' copies but were also printed on handmade paper. The cover of each of these 1000 copies was in bright Aegean blue color. The Zurich James Joyce Foundation is in possession of one of these first edition copies. This was gifted to the foundation by the family of the Zurich ophthalmologist, Alfred Vogt, to whose daughter Helene Wiederkehr Vogt, Joyce had given a signed copy.

Follow the links below for more information!
http://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/bibliophile-schaetze-1.18230137
http://www.booktryst.com/2011/09/superstar-1st-edition-of-ulysseys.html
http://www.baumanrarebooks.com/blog/the-story-behind-the-first-edition-of-ulysses-by-james-joyce/

 Now back to Bloom and his imaginary escapades!
The last time we had left Bloom in the company of two police, whom he had informed that he was a respectable married man, without a stain on his character, that his wife was the daughter of Majorgeneral Brian Tweedy, famous for the heroic defense of Rorke's Drift. Bloom continues to defend himself, this time turning to the gallery for support. (It looks as if we are in the middle of a play. Perhaps we, the readers, are part of the gallery audience.) Bloom, who had defended himself earlier in the Cyclops episode saying "... Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me", now says, "I'm as staunch a Britisher as you are, sir... I did all a white man could." quoting from the ballad, Jim Bludso of the Prairie Belle. (The ballad tells the story of the heroic death of Jim Bludso, a Mississippi riverboat (Prairie Belle) captain, whose 'religion' was "And if ever the Prairie Belle took fire ... He'd hold her nozzle again the bank / Till the last soul got ashore." Prairie Belle does catch fire, and Bludso is as good as his word... Gifford 15.797-98)

The first watch is not letting Bloom go! He demands to know Bloom's professor or trade. Now Bloom's wishes and ambitions (day dreams?) surface. He says: "Well, I follow a literary occupation,..." This association to literary ambitions trigger two appearances: Myles Crawford, the editor from the Aeolus episode and Mr Philip Beaufoy. Till now all that we had known of Mr Beaufoy was that he was the author of the prize titbit, Matcham's Masterstroke, the story which Bloom had read that morning asquat on the cuckstool. (Episode 4, Calypso). In fact at that time Bloom had '(day) dreamt' of writing a story himself. Now Bloom imagines a court scene with Mr Beaufoy as a witness, tearing apart Bloom's literary merits. Mr Beaufoy is obviously very upset that a specimen of his maturer work (had been) disfigured by the hallmark of the beast. Indeed Bloom had that morning, after he had completed his business on the cuckstool, torn away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it. 

The court scene continues. The next witness to be called is Mary Driscoll, scullerymaid.  She was their maid when the Blooms lived in Ontario Terrace, Rathmines. In the court, she accuses Bloom of trying to carry on with (take advantage of) her. Naturally Bloom denies the charge, defending himself saying 'Incautiously I took your part when you were accused of pilfering... Play cricket. (Play fair.)"