Tuesdays, 28 June, 5 & 12th July 2016, Pages 729 - 755, Eumaeus, Episode 16

As I could not attend the reading on three successive Tuesdays, I could not post anything on what was read.
But, I am glad to say that this blog was started with this episode in September 2013. In other words, but for some gaps, these blogposts on Joyce's Ulysses have come a full circle. Links below will help to catch up on what happens on pages 729 to 753.

Pages 729 - 737
Pages 737 - 745
Pages 745 - 753

Tuesday, 7 June 2016, Pages 719 - 728, Eumaeus, Episode 16

Note: There will be no reading on next Tuesday, the 14th of June 2016.

Today we stopped at "... not to say stormy, weather." (Penguin 728.16), (Gabler 16.652)

The location is still the cabman's shelter. Bloom and Stephan are being told a tale by W. B. Murphy, a sailor, whose ship docked just that morning eleven o'clock. As he mentions his own true wife, whom he has not seen for seven years now, Bloom pictures to himself the sailor's homecoming. Like Bloom and Stephan, the sailor is on his way home but none of these is really hurrying to reach their homes!

Making an interruption to borrow a spare chaw (tobacco, obviously used already), the sailor produces a not very clean looking folded document on which his discharge is recorded, lists the countries he has sailed to, the queer things he has witnessed - seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an anchor, man-eaters in Peru that eats corpses and livers of horses - finally producing in proof a picture postcard his friend had sent him, on which was printed: Choza de indios. Beni, bolivia. (According to Griffith, no cannibal tribes have been identified among the tribes of Peru; 16.470). Bloom also looks at the card. Noticing that it was addressed to a señor a boudin, and not to Murphy, he wonders about the sailor's Bona fides.

Who then is Boudin? Fritz Senn explained it thus: 'This incidence shows an interesting parallel between Joyce's Ulysses an Homer's Odysseus. Boudin in French means blood sausage. In Homer's Odysseus, when Odysseus returns home and finds it full of suitors, he spent that night in his bed tossing and turning like a blood sausage!'

In what Fritz Senn says is a typical example of interior monologue, Bloom thinks of his long cherished plan one day to travel to London, ... of seeing different places along the route, Plymouth, Falmouth ..., of going to prominent pleasure resorts such as Margate. Another thing that just then struck him was the idea of arranging a concert tour of summer music ... with an all star Irish cast (the e at the end will not make sense!)... of the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company...

As Bloom's fancy gallops, the sailor continues with the narration of all that he has seen. Saying, for instance, that he had seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap, he produces a dangerouslooking claspknife. Upon his pronouncing that they thought the park (Phoenix) murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them using knives Bloom and Stephen exchange meaning glances. The silence that results (the sailor - after all ignorance is bliss - would not have been aware of the rumour that the keeper of the cabman shelter was skin-the-goat Fitzharris, the invincible) is interrupted by Bloom, who asks the sailor, whether he had seen the rock of Gibraltar. The answer, 'I'm tired of all them rocks in the sea...' makes one wonder again whether all that talk of the sailor was just hot air. Further prodding by Bloom has no effect on the sailor, and Bloom falls back into his revery.

Note that Stephen has not said a single word on these pages. Note also that Joyce has scattered many a song/poem in Bloom's interior monologue. Links to these are given below:
'For england, home and beauty' from the song, The Death of Nelson, by S. J. Arnold 

'... Alice Ben Bolt...' from the song, Ben Bolt, by Thomas Dunn English and Nelson Kneass 

'Enoch Arden' from the narrative poem, Enoch Arden, by Alfred Tennyson 

'... does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary' from the ballad, Caoch the Piper, by John Keegan 

'... rocked in the cradle of the deep' from the song of the same name by Emma Willard

'... farther away from the madding crowd..' from the poem, 'Elegy written in a Country Churchyard' by Thomas Gray

'... spring when young man's fancy, ...' from the poem, Locksley Hall, by Alfred Tennyson

'... where ignorance is bliss...' from the poem, 'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, by Thomas Gray

'... dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new...' from the poem, Lycidas, by John Milton

Tuesday, 31 May 2016, Pages 711 - 719, Eumaeus, Episode 16

We read as far as "... sailing about." (Penguin 719.21), (Gabler 16.421)

Bloom is on his way home. It is 1 am. Bloom is taking Stephen along as he had apparently witnessed what had occurred at the Westland Row station, when Mulligan and that English tourist friend of his (Heines) had euchred their third companion (Stephen), leaving him with no place to go to at that late hour. Walking to Sandycove was out of the question at that time. On the way to the cabman's shelter, where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral to satisfy Stephen's thirst, Corley, aka Lord John Corley, appears singing a litany of poverty.

On getting a halfcrown coin by Stephen, Corley thanks him, saying. "You're a gentleman". This is in contrast to what Mulligan had told Stephen that - rather the previous - morning: "He (Heines) thinks you're not a gentleman" (Penguin, p.2). Corley moves off but not before asking Stephen to put in a word about a possible job (even as a sandwichman) to his 'friend', whom he had seen a few times in the Bleeding Horse with Boylan. Whether Bloom would frequent such a pub, that Gifford mentions as being somewhat outside of Bloom's geographical patterns and rather low on the social scale, (Gifford 16.198) is anybody's guess. That too in the company of Boylan.

We have here another example that, as Fritz Senn stresses upon, is typical of this episode in which it is often difficult to say what is true and what is not. The grandiloquent style used by Joyce in this episode comes home in the manner in which Joyce describes what Bloom, standing in the background, thinks of Corley and Gumley. (Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity.... /Penguin 711. 34). In fact the pages we read today are teeming with similar examples.

Bloom continues to try making a conversation with Stephen, often resorting to French words, often in a style that is supposed to match Stephen's intellectual way of thinking and discoursing. These attempts end up being real Bloomean! For instance, Bloom's observation, "Everyone according to his needs or everyone according to his deed", is in fact his version of the saying by Karl Marx. At the same time, he is still the caring elder when he asks Stephen, "... why did you leave your father's house?"  Stephen's answer, "To seek misfortune..." is met with diplomacy by the older man. He also warns Stephen not to repose much trust in that boon companion of his. To this there is no response forthcoming from Stephen, whose thoughts, triggered by Bloom's comments on his father, are occupied by his family.

The cabman's shelter near Butt Bridge. Source: Wikipedia

Eventually the two reach the cabman's shelter near Butt Bridge. Close by, near a men's public urinal, a group of Italians are heatedly arguing. (The translation of the argument as given by Gifford (16.314) is reproduced below.*). As they enter, Bloom whispers to Stephen that the owner of this unpretentious wooden structure is none other than the once famous Skin-the-Goat Fitzharris, the invincible, though he could not vouch for its truth. The argument going on outside continues. Bloom is impressed by the musicality of the language but his attempts to say few words in Italian fail. Stephen, who understands Italian, tells him that the argument was over money. 'Sounds are impostures,' he continues, '... like names.' Stephen's mentioning 'Murphy' as one of the names he recites, brings into the conversation a sailor, one of the many hoi polloi, who had taken shelter in the cabman's shelter. 

When Stephen, unheeding Bloom's warning pressure on his boot, says that his name is Dedalus, the sailor, W. B. Murphy, of Carrigaloe, starts off recounting how he had met Simon Dedalus, who toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus, whom he had seen shoot two eggs of two bottles at fifty yards over his shoulder. Another evidence for what Fritz Senn had said earlier in the evening: 'It is often difficult in this episode to say what is true and what is not.'

* "Whore of a Blessed Virgin, he must give us the money! Aren't I right? Busted asshole! Let's get this clear. Half a sovereign more... So that's what he says, however! Half. Blackguard! His filthy dead (ancestors)! But listen! Five  more per person..."