Saturday 29 October 2016

Tuesday, 25 October 2016, Pages 872 - 879, Episode 18, Penelope

Reading was stopped at "... more than was good for him..." (Penguin 879.9), (Gabler 18.202)

(Note: As I was not present at the reading, the following notes are based on earlier reading.)
Bloom has fallen asleep. But Molly is awake, and her mind is busy with random thoughts, jumping from one memory to another, remembering all kinds of associations. Many of her thoughts are triggered by what Bloom has described to her of his day, but some of them have to do, though, with the time she has spent with Boylan. Not believing a wee bit his telling her that he had supper at Wynn's Hotel in Lower Abbey Street (Gifford, 18.36-37), she wonders where Bloom actually was that night, whether he had gone to the red light district (because he couldnt possibly do without it that long so he must do it somewhere...). The last time he came on my bottom, she remembers, was on the night when Boylan had given her hand a great squeeze, which she had reciprocated. They had sung 'the young May moon shes beaming love' (Lyrics here, video here.)

In her interior monologue during the quiet predawn hours, Molly dissects Bloom's behavior, the acts he comes up with in order to attract female attention (such as that of Mrs. Riordan (who was pious because no man would look at her twice), of the servant Mary they had in Ontario terrace (about whom Bloom had proposed that she could eat at our table on Christmas if you please O no thank you not in my house), the letter she caught him writing when she came into the front room to show him Dignams death in the paper, ... Molly also feels that Bloom knows about her and Boylan (hes not such a fool...).

Quite a bit of the passage that was read today is about having sex. Molly comes across as being quite 'modern', quite 'uninhibited', something remarkable during the early 20th century Catholic Dublin. She is also in a way 'matter of fact', when she thinks '... with all the talk of the world about it people make is only the first time after that its just ordinary do it and think no more about it...".She thinks of the confession she used to go to when Father Corrigan would question her quite probingly about where exactly she was touched, etc. From Father Corrigan, her thoughts wander to Boylan, who was smelling that afternoon of some kind of drink not whisky or stout (in fact Boylan had a sloegin in the bar at Hotel Ormond; see Sirens, episode 11), who had all he could do to keep himself from falling asleep after they took the port and potted meat, crumbs of which Bloom had found on the bed. In fact Molly confesses to herself that she too fell asleep soundly till the sound of the thunder (think of the thunderstorm that struck when Bloom was at the maternity hospital in Holles Street / episode 14, Oxen in the Sun) woke her up, prompting her to say a Hail Mary just as she used to when it used to thunder in Gibraltar, which would make her feel as if the world was coming to an end.

Molly's thoughts then turn to God, church, soul - and Bloom's scoffing at the idea of the existence of the soul and saying, "... you have no soul inside only grey matter." She now thinks he doesn't know what it is to have one, when thinking of the 'one', her thoughts turn to Boylan again. What follows is a detailed description of the 'anatomy' of Boylan, and the time she spent with him in the afternoon, ending with the thought, "... nice invention they made for women for him to get all the pleasure but if someone gave them a touch of it...". This 'it' refers to the pains of child birth, and leads automatically to Mina Purefoy (who had given birth a few hours ago), her useless husband and their many children. 

Wednesday 19 October 2016

Tuesday, 18 October 2016, Pages 871 - 872, PART B, Episode 18, Penelope

(Note that there are two parts to today's posting.)

Today, we started, Penelope, the final episode of Ulysses, and stopped in the middle of a sentence at "... with  his beard a bit grown in the bed...." (Penguin 872.22), (Gabler 18.28)

Stopping in the middle of a sentence will be the norm for the coming weeks as this episode that is about 62 pages long is composed of mere 8 sentences. The printer of Ulysses did not end the previous chapter with a fat full stop, contrary to Joyce's wishes, and Joyce uses just one full stop in this episode, that too at the very end. The style Joyce uses in this episode is how Nora Barnacle used in her letters, with no punctuation marks, no capital letters, nothing even to indicate end/beginning of paragraphs..

Penelope is the most often publicly read, rather performed, episode of Ulysses. As Fritz Senn says, it is the purest form of interior monologue. While Bloom falls asleep, Molly is awake, and is thinking about him, about herself, and myriad other things. Words such as 'yes', 'still' or 'because' signal change in the direction of thoughts.

There is no real equivalent for this chapter in Homer's Odyssey. But with Penelope, we get an alternative weaving of text (similar to the Penelope, the weaver and un-weaver in Homer) - what she thinks sometimes overlap with, sometimes contradicts what we have read before (e.g. what Bloom thought, what Stephen said), i.e. we have a different sort of text, a parallax view of the text as a whole (an alternative view, a re-writing)

Molly's monologue is fluid, pre-articulation, pre-punctuation; her "because" often explains nothing, her "yes" does not seem to refer to or answer much (pointedly so: the opening - we don't know what she is talking about, we start in the middle of her trains of thought); her syntax is double-faced (e.g.: ... I suppose he was glad to get shut of her and her dog smelling my fur ... Should we read 'get shut of her and her dog' or 'her dog smelling my fur'?). Her pronouns are sometimes ambiguous (e.g. shes beaming love because he has an idea about him and me hes not such a fool.)

Molly also has a lot of "but", "still" etc., i.e. she veers left and right, e.g. from being ruthless in her judgements to taking a more lenient view of the same person, as she does with Mrs Riordan (the famous Dante of A Portrait of the artist as a young man) at the opening of the chapter. 

The chapter starts with Molly's monologue on Bloom. She dissects his behavior, the acts he comes up with in order to attract female attention, such as that of Mrs. Riordan (who was pious because no man would look at her twice), of the servant Mary they had in Ontario terrace (about whom Bloom had proposed that she could eat at our table on Christmas if you please O no thank you not in my house), the letter she caught him writing when she came into the front room to show him Dignams death in the paper, ... She wonders where he actually was that night, not believing a wee bit his telling her that he had supper at Wynn's Hotel in Lower Abbey Street (Gifford, 18.36-37).

Read here what Joyce wrote to his friend Frank Budgen about this episode.

Tuesday, 18 October 2016, Pages 868 - 871, PART A, End of Episode 17, Ithaca

Today's reading brought us to the end of the seventeenth episode with

"Where?"
(Well, the final fat full stop is missing from many editions of the novel contrary to the instructions of Joyce.)
Last week we had left Bloom getting into bed next to Molly. Molly who woke up after Bloom kissed the plump mellow smell melons of her rump, asked him, drowsily, about his day. Bloom answers leaving out somethings (such as the letter from Martha Clifford, the erotic moment watching Gerty on the Sandymount Strand) and modifying some other happenings of the day (example: being invited for supper at Wynn's Hotel where as in reality he had had his dinner at the Ormond hotel.) In Homer's Odyssey, Penelope too questions the stranger, who is Odysseus in disguise. "He spoke, and made the many falsehoods of his tale seem like the truth." (Book 19). Bloom also tells Molly about Stephen, introducing him as  Stephen Dedalus, professor and author. It is noteworthy that Bloom does not ask Molly about how she spent her day.

As Bloom is talking and drifting off into sleep, both Molly and Bloom are aware of their sexual relationship. Joyce tells us here Molly's date of birth, the date on which they were married, the dates on which Milly and Rudy were born, the date on which Rudy died, and the date on which Milly attained puberty. That Joyce fixes 8th October as the date on which Bloom and Molly married is significant as he eloped with Nora on 8th October 1904. That Bloom and Molly had no sexual intercourse for a period of 10 years, 5 months and 18 days is also significant as 10 is the number of years during which Odysseus had to wander. Joyce describes here in some detail the physical act of sex using a tone that is so dry that it reminds one of the ruling in the case, United States vs. One Book Called Ulysses, in which Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that Ulysses was not pornographic—that nowhere in it was the "leer of the sensualist". 

Slowly though it is time for Bloom, lying in the direction of N.W. by W., to rest. (Molly is lying S.E. by E., reclining like Gaea - Tellus, goddess of earth, of fertility.) He has walked a lot that (nay, previous) day and night. As he drifts off into sleep, his thought about his having travelled a lot reminds him of another famous traveler, the incomparable Sindbad the Sailor. Names - distortions of Sindbad the Sailor (for example, Sinbad the Sailor, Tinbad the Tailor, Jinbad the Jailor, ...Xinbad the Phthailer) - float in and out of his mind lending a touch of Orient to Joyce's version of Odyssey. He even thinks of the Arabian mythical bird roc's egg that Sindbad once used to escape.  The last thought he has is of  "Darkinbad the Brightdayler(dark in bed, the day is bright or not far away), which is a foreshadow of the language of Finnegans Wake. 

With this we have come to the end of Ithaca, the 17th episode. Bloom has come home. Finally. Finally he falls asleep. 

Saturday 15 October 2016

Tuesday, 11 October 2016, Pages 860 - 868, Episode 17, Ithaca

The reading stopped at '... catechetical interrogation.' (Penguin 868. 3), (Gabler 17.2249)

(As I was not present at the reading, the post below is based on earlier reading.)

Bloom mulls about the imperfections of the day, which were many indeed: not being able to obtain the renewal of an advertisement, not being able to obtain a certain quantity of tea from Thomas Kernan, not being able to make sure whether or not the Hellenic female divinities in the National Museum had posterior rectal orifices, not being able to obtain admission to the Gaiety Theater, ...

Bloom has entered his bedroom, unknown to us. We had seen the previous morning how Molly carelessly discards her clothes (Penguin, 75.1). It is so even now. Bloom notices a number of her clothes lying haphazardly on top of a rectangular trunk. (The trunk bearing the letters B. C. T. (Brian Cooper Tweedy) makes him think of his father-in-law.) Bloom's eyes also catch sight of many other objects - some a bit damaged - dispersed in the room. Bloom sheds his clothes, deposits them on a chair, gets into a nightshirt by inserting his head and arms into the proper apertures, prepares the bedlinen, and finally gets into the bed.

What catches his attention immediately? New bedlinen, presence of a human form, female, hers, the imprint of a human form, male, not his, AND  crumbs of potted meat. 


What is home without
Plumtree's potted meat?
Incomplete
With it an abode of bliss.
(Penguin, 91. 10)

This unmistakable proof in the bed (that certainly makes one question the assertion in the above advertisement of a home with Plumtree's potted meat being an abode of bliss) of the happenings of the afternoon starts off in his mind a list, a series, of possible suitors of Molly, starting with Mulvey, her first boy friend, and ending with Boylan. (This long list must naturally be taken with a big pinch of salt!) Bloom, who considers Boylan to be a bounder, a bill-sticker (Penguin, 711.19), a bester and a boaster, feels envy, jealousy, abnegation, and equanimity at the thought of his having been the last occupant of the bed.

The paragraph (Penguin, 865.7) that describes why/how Bloom feels equanimity is for me one of the most wonderful paragraphs of the novel. These reflections /descriptions elevate Bloom (the eternal outsider, the naive person, the one to whom hardly people listen to, the one who truly cares not only for Stephen but also for a Mrs. Purefoy in labour, the one who cares more for science than for nationalism,...) to a special level, differentiating him from ordinary mortals! The adultery Molly commits with Boylan is for him an act that is very natural, that is more than inevitable. He reflects on various kinds of crimes that one could commit, that are more heinous than adultery in the world. Bloom reminds himself of the apathy of the stars, i.e., he knows that it matters little to the world if Molly commits adultery. He would have smiled, if he indeed would have smiled, thinking of the inanity of extolled virtue, of the silliness of enthusiastically praising virtue. 

Bloom's kissing (as an act of quiet acceptance of what had happened?) the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, wakes up the sleeping Molly, who asks him ....?. It is time for yet more catechetical interrogation!

Friday 7 October 2016

Tuesday, 4 October 2016, Pages 850 - 860, Episode 17, Ithaca

We stopped at "... (atonement)." (Penguin 860.9), (Gabler 17.2058)

(As I have been away since 4th October, I have decided to repost below what I had earlier written about these pages. With some additions/modifications of course!)

Bloom finds the three (now four) letters by Martha Clifford which that he has stored in the first drawer. Why would he store them in an apparently unlocked drawer? Would they not be seen by Molly? Does he in fact intend for Molly to discover these letters? Is it because she has seen them that she has little qualms about singing Love's Old Sweet Song with Boylan, wearing long yellow gloves? 

The second drawer contains many important documents including the birth certificate of Leopold Paula Bloom and an envelope addressed by his father To My Dear Son LeopoldThat, like Rilke, Bloom also has a feminine middle name is worthy of notice. That Bloom's middle name is Paula explains in a way his transformation into a female character in the chapter Circe. Who wouldn't with such a (middle) name!

Seeing the envelope sent to him by his father makes Bloom think of his father, an old man, a widower and of Athos, his infirm dog. He also feels a bit of remorse because in his young days he (Bloom) had viewed certain beliefs and practices (of his father) with disrespect. (The dog of Odysseus was Argos. It was so infirm by the time Odysseus finally reached home that all it could do as it saw the master was to wag its tail before dropping dead.) 
Bloom reminiscences about his father, about the letter from his father which was stored in the second drawer, about his father's suffering from progressive melancholia that finally had led him to commit suicide. Now Bloom thinks of a conversation he had had with his father regarding the various stations he (the father) had passed through before settling down in Dublin. He fondly remembers a couple of idiosyncrasies of his father - such as drinking voraciously the juice of gooseberry fool from an inclined plate. Bloom also remembers the money he had inherited, consoling himself that things could have been far worse than they currently are. For example, he could sink in poverty, descending slowly but definitely from being an outdoor hawker to an inmate of Old Man's House Kilmainham. One of the indignities he would certainly suffer from - if he does end up as a pauper - would be the unsympathetic indifference of previously amiable females!  

Bloom's thoughts catapult him into thinking that going away would be one way to escape from such a fate. But then there are pros and cons of such a departure. What follows is a description of places  in Ireland and abroad that would be attractive destinations. True to the nature of this chapter, Ithaca, thinking of each place leads Bloom to other associated thoughts. For example, when he thinks of Ceylon, he cannot avoid thinking of supplying tea to Thomas Kernan; straits of Gibraltar are special, being the unique birthplace of Marion Tweedy. It is while thinking of the possible modes of travel that Bloom transforms (in his thoughts) into a heavenly body so that he would wander, selfcompelled, to the extreme limit of his cometary orbit.... and somehow reappear reborn...

What intrigued me most in this list is the mention of the forbidden country of Thibet (from which no traveller returns) / Penguin p.857. Where is this Thibet? Why don't travellers not return from there? Gifford explains in his Ulysses Annotated (17.1989) that this could refer to (a) the Tibetan policy of exclusion that closed the country to most Western traveller from 1792 onwards, (b) Hamlet's soliloquy, 'To be, or not to be, that is the question', in which 'death' is said to be the undiscovered country, from whose bourn no traveller returns.

But, I immediately thought of the novel, Lost Horizon, by the British author, James Hilton. Both Thibet (= Tibet?) and James Hilton's Shangri-La are in the Himalayas. Today Shangri-La has come to symbolize earthly paradise. In the novel, it is a lamasery, where one leads a spiritual life. Once people have reached the place, they age extremely slowly. But once they leave Shangri-La, they age very rapidly and die quickly. Thus this is a place, for me, from which no traveller returns. Unfortunately, James' Hilton's novel was published ten years after James Joyce's Ulysses was published! So Joyce could not have known it. But I might not have imagined too much. James Hilton is said to have based his Shangri-La on Shambhala, a mythical kingdom mentioned in ancient Hindu and Buddhist tests. It is quite possible that Joyce had heard of it. Perhaps this is how one reads Ulysses, with one's own associations and interpretations!


Because it is late, very late, in the night, and because of the proximity of an occupied bed, with the anticipation of warmth (human)... Bloom starts to rise in order to prepare to go bed. Before rising, he recapitulates - once more - the happenings of that eventful day. 

The paragraph (6th on p. 859, Penguin) devoted to this recapitulation is a very special one. It lists, in order, all that happened to Bloom that day. But Ulysses would not have been Ulysses if Joyce had resisted the temptation of adding a rich layer to these seemingly banal events. Adding words in parentheses to the events of the day, (which he apparently did very late, while proof reading the work just before print, probably driving his publishers mad with yet more last-minute additions) Joyce transforms the day into a quasi-schematic Jewish liturgical calendar, as he had reviewed the day previously in the form of a Roman Catholic litany in the chapter Circe (Penguin, p. 618). (Words in italics are by Don Gifford.  See comment 17.2044, page 60 in Gifford's Ulysses Annotated.) Two among these references intrigue me: (1) The word holocaust used in association with the event: the altercation with a truculent troglodyte in Bernard Kiernan's premises. (2) The word atonement associated with the event: nocturnal perambulation to and from the cabman's shelter, Butt Bridge.

The event in Bernard Kiernan's premises refers to the chapter Cyclops where there is altercation between Bloom (Penguin, p. 380) and the Citizen. Holocaust is said to mean literally, a burnt offering, total sacrifice, and figuratively to the ceremony that commemorates the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in 70 A.D.  (Gifford, comment 17.2051). It would be interesting to explore further these associations and to draw parallels between the altercation Bloom has with the Citizen and (a) the concept of total sacrifice, and (b) the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. 

Similarly, the word atonement means righting the wrong, to make amends. What is being atoned for here? Did Bloom take it upon himself that night to atone for the 'wrongs' that had happened in Stephen's life when he brought him home via the cabman's shelter, made him a hot cup of cocoa and offered him a bed to sleep?