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!
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!
