Monday 9 May 2016

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!'