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
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
