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