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 Leopold. That, 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.
(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 Leopold. That, 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?
