Tuesday, 17 May 2016, Pages 704 - 711, Eumaeus, Episode 16

IMPORTANT: There will be no reading of Ulysses on Tuesday, the 26th of May due to the general body meeting of the Friends of the Zürich James Joyce Foundation starting at 18.30h.

We are in a new episode, Eumaeus, Fritz Senn's favorite episode. Stopped our reading with the sentence, "Stephen anyhow lent him one of them." (Penguin 711.15), (Gabler 16.196)

Eumaeus is the first episode of the last book (consisting of 3 episodes) of Joyce's Ulysses. It is also the first of the three homecoming episodes. As Eumaeus is faithful to Odysseus, Bloom is faithful to Stephen.

(Painting by Bonaventura Gemelli)

After having rescued Stephen from the soldiers and the police, Bloom is taking him home. It is 1 am. Both are tired after a very loooong day. Stephen has been quite drunk, and is slowly sobering up. Bloom is not really drunk but is obviously exhausted.

What an unexpected change in style awaits us in this episode! If the two preceding episodes - Oxen of the Sun and Circe - felt like a ferocious thunderstorm in monsoon, this one feels, at first, like a gently flowing, calm stream. At first I felt almost betrayed by the absence of fireworks in the style and language. It was so non-Joycean! But soon Joyce's new technique becomes obvious. He uses lots of cliches, many idioms and proverbs, writes long-winded sentences, takes us on a literary ride in which he demonstrates how to write something that in a way is somewhat pompous, quite a bit rambling. In his scheme, Joyce describes the technique he uses here as 'narrative (old)'. Contentwise not much happens.

For instance, the first page of the episode tells us about Bloom, rather Mr Bloom, cleaning up Stephen a bit, handing him his hat and walking stick. Both walk homewards. Stephen would like to drink something. As there was no water pump in the vicinity, Bloom suggests that they go by the cabman's shelter, where they might get something to drink in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral. As they are both tired, Bloom thinks of getting a vehicle, provided one is available. The remaining pages we read today recount them continuing on foot, but by the time we stopped the reading after 7 pages, they still had not reached the cabman's shelter, which should have been hardly a stonesthrow away. It is not that they are rambling. It is the language that does.

The happenings on the way scores the difference in the characters of the two men. As they pass Baird's stonecutting works, Stephen thinks of Ibsen (an echo of A Portrait of he Artist as a Young Man), whereas Bloom is busy enjoying the smell of freshly baked bread at James Rourke's city bakery. Bloom talks and talks, trying to make Stephen aware of the dangers of nighttown, consequences of drinking ('You frittered away your time, he very sensibly maintained, and health and also character besides which,...), and of being friends with those who deserted him. Bloom admits that he himself relished a glass of choice old wine in season ... still never beyond a certain point.  Stephen though is silent. 

There are these and much more to discover on these pages. The first sentence - 'Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed off the greater bulk of the shavings ... and bucked him up...' reminds us of the beginning of the novel, which starts with Buck Mulligan coming up the stairhead with a bowl of lather, a mirror, a razor, and a brush to shave. 

Tuesday, 10 May 2016, Pages 697 - 703, Circe, Episode 15

Today we completed the Circe episode, which we had started reading on 12 January 2016, which also means that we completed book II of Ulysses! To put it extremely mildly, it has been an interesting, although at times pretty bewildering, literary journey.

Last week, we had left Stephan lying prone - but with his face to the sky - after being struck in the face by Private Carr. Private Compton tugs his comrade, saying 'There's the cops!'

We are now back in reality. Well, at least till the very end. Two policemen arrive at the scene, wanting to know what has been happening. Some bystanders have assembled. A man, bending down to look at Stephen, announces that he has fainted, but he'll come to all right. Bloom gets angry - for the second time on this memorable  day - at Private Carr, who he says, struck Stephen without provocation. As the police wants to note down name and address of Stephen, a car (a hackney) arrives with Corny Kelleher. (He works for the undertaker, O'Neill, and had arranged Dignam's burial that morning.)

It was said that Kelleher was a tout (informer) of the police. Perhaps that is why Bloom is happy to see him now. Earlier Bloom had turned his face away when the car with Kelleher and two lechers (was Boylan one of them?) had come to a stop at the door of the brothel, just as Bloom was hurrying out to go after Stephen. Kelleher manages to send off the police. The bystanders also disperse slowly.

Bloom and Kelleher try to explain to each other why each was in the nighttown. Kelleher had left those two lechers at the brothel, and had got off his car, when he saw the crowd, to see what was happening. Bloom was visiting an old friend, and was going home by Gardiner street...  Even the horse wants to go hohohohome. On hearing that Stephen lives in Sandycove, Kelleher quickly gives up the idea of giving him a lift, and leaves. The car jingles tooraloom round the corner of the tooraloom lane. (Tooraloom is a song associated with Corny Kelleher. He was singing it earlier in episode 5. It is a take on the song, 'I vowed that I never would leave her' by Arthur Lloyd.)

Things are quietening down. So far the episode was brimming with people, sometimes in reality, more often in fantasy. Now only two are left: Bloom and Stephen. Stephen is still lying on the ground. Bloom tries to wake him up, calling his name. In his muddled up state, Stephen wakes up murmuring black panther (episode 1), vampire (episode 3), and singing words of the poem, 'Who goes with Fergus' by W. B. Yeats (episode 1)

(The black panther in the kitchen of Martello Tower, now James Joyce Tower and Museum,  Sandycove, Dublin)

Bloom, on hearing the words, Fergus, shadows, woods, white breast ..., thinks that Stephen is thinking of a girl named Ferguson! Best thing could happen him. For some unexplained reason, Bloom murmurs the oath of the Freemasons initiation into the lodge. (The original oath is midway on this website.)

Suddenly we are back in fantasy. Against the dark wall the figure of a fairy boy of eleven appears, dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes (like Cinderella) and a little bronze helmet. ... On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons. He is carrying a slim ivory cane. It is Rudy, Bloom's deceased son. Bloom had once imagined that his son will walk one day beside Molly in an Eton suit (Penguin, p. 110).  Gifford (15.4965-66) explains that in the language of gems, the diamond has the power of making men courageous and magnanimous and of protecting them from evil spirits. The ruby is symbolic of a cheerful mind, and it works as a preservative of health and as an amulet against poison, sadness, and evil thoughts. The bronze helmet, the ivory cane and lambkin hint that Rudy appears in the role of Hermes (Mercury).

All this symbolism brings together on one hand Homer's Odysseus and Joyce's Ulysses. When Odysseus approaches Circe's palace, he is stopped by Hermes. Here Hermes appears when our Odysseus leaves Circe's palace. On the other hand, the appearance of Rudy shows that Stephen is a potential son of Bloom. Seeing Rudy, all the paternal protective instinct is awakened in Bloom. The last part of Ulysses deals with what happens to this father - son duo.

On December 20, 1920, after having rewritten the episode from start to finish six or seven or eight or nine times (the count varied), Joyce pronounced that the episode, Circe, is done. (Ellmann, p. 497).  Ellmann writes: 'The Homeric story delighted him, especially the Circean transformation.... There were considerable difficulties to be resolved in portraying the suppressed desires of Bloom and Stephen in vaudeville form, psychoanalysis turned into a vehicle of comedy.' (p. 495). It is anybody's guess whether Joyce indeed succeed in his endeavor! (I for one will miss this episode!)

Tuesday, 3 May 2016, Pages 690 - 697, Circe, Episode 15

We stopped at "There's the cops!" (Penguin 697.29), (Gabler 15.4770)

Bloom has hurried out of the brothel after throwing a shilling on the table towards repairing the chandelier that Stephen had damaged with his ashplant before fleeing out.  At the corner of Beaver street Bloom sees Stephen in altercation with two soldiers, Private Carr and Private Compton. The soldiers are angry at Stephen's comments about The King. Stephen has been saying to them: "You are my guests. Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. History to blame..." (Penguin, p. 686); "But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king" (Penguin p. 688). Bloom has been trying to pacify the soldiers saying "He (Stephen) doesn't know what he's saying. Taken a little more than is good for him."

In another bout of fantasy, many characters we had met earlier appear: The Citizen (episode 12), the croppy boy (episode 11), Rumbold, demon barber ( then he was master barber, episode 12), Patrice and Kevin Egan (episode 3), Edward the Seventh and even a composite character named aptly Don Emile Patrizio Franz Rupert Pope Hennessy!

There is a lot of Irish history here on these pages. For example, the song The Citizen sings,

May the God above

Send down a dove

With teeth as sharp as razors ....

is not only a parody of a 1830 song but is also a reference to a trial of two Sinn Feiners in 1921. (More information here.) The croppy boy is, as we learnt earlier, a ballad about the 1798 Irish rising. Patrice Egan was one of the wild geese or Irish expatriates, who left Ireland as they were not willing to live under British rule. Much of what Stephen says here is seeped in Irish history. For instance, his saying, 'Green rag to a bull' (Penguin, p. 690) is a take on the popular saying red angers a bull, red being the color of Britain, green being that of Ireland. The composite character above suggests several wild geese families as also Sir John Pope Hennessy,  conservative Irish Catholic politician, an anti-Parnellite, and eighth governor of Hong Kong (Gifford 15.1914). Rumbold, referred to here as the demon barber, was the British minister to Switzerland in 1918, who had annoyed Joyce.

There are also words and phrases which would not have been seen in those days (1920s) in printed books. The reference here is of course to the swearing words, bleeding, fucker etc. Interestingly these are all said by Private Carr, a British soldier: "I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king" (Penguin, p. 694), "I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ!" (Penguin, p. 696).  The graph below shows the frequency of the usage of the word, fucking, between the years 1800 and 2000. Ulysses was published in 1922!

(Those wondering whether the word was really used already around 1800s will find an interesting discussion here!)

Fantasy figures from the Irish history continue to appear. The most important of them is that of Old Gummy Granny. She, the old woman, who is Ireland itself, appears when the heads of the assembled women - Kitty, Biddy, etc - coalesce. But old Gummy Granny has all the typical attributes - toadstool, sugarloaf hat - of the Irish fairy. Stephen recognizes her. 'The old sow that eats her farrow' is an echo of The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen also reacts as if she and he make up two parts of the Holy Trinity. Only the blessed third person (the church?) is missing.

The following scene, starting with 'Dublin's burning' is like the Armageddon. The black mass is conducted. Accordingly the language uttered by the damned is the inverse of that uttered by the blessed. 

Damned: 'Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol Eht rof, Aiulella!'

Blessed: 'Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!'

Similarly Dooooooooooog is the inversion of Goooooooooood! Recall that in this episode a dog appears in various incarnations. 

Meanwhile Bloom is trying to get Stephen away. When he appeals to Lynch, Lynch goes away dragging Kitty along, prompting Stephen to compare him to Judas. Cissy Caffrey, for whose sake Private Carr has been threatening Stephen,  tries to calm the soldier down. But he rushes at Stephen, striking him in the face. A dog, a retriever starts barking. A fight starts between two women. Private Compton tries to pull away his comrade because 'There's the cops!'