All Readings Online

Since the current pandemic has been worsening again, on-site readings are being suspended. 

Instead, the Foundation is providing online readings. All current Tuesday and Thursday groups are merged into one and will start gathering online on 

Thursday, 5 November, at 4.30 p.m. 

The online group begins with episode 7, “Aeolus”. Updates about the group's progress continue to be given on this site. 

Every Thursday morning, readers will receive an email with a link to log into Zoom. 

For those who are using Zoom for the first time: You will need to download the software from zoom.us if you're using a computer, the Zoom app from the Apple store if you're using an iPhone or iPad, or the Zoom app from Google Play if your device is an Android.

If you encounter difficulties or have any questions, please get in touch with the Foundation at info@joycefoundation.ch.

Let's stay connected in the best way we can.

Tuesday, 20 (end of episode 6) & 27 October (...) 2020

The reading group has been split into two halves. The first half met on Oct. 20th and the second on Oct. 27th.

Both groups completed Hades, episode 6.

Summary (till the end of the episode): 

At the end of the last reading, we had left Bloom thinking of using gramophones to remember dead people by recalling their voice. His pondering continues for a while and moves on to the ways in which - apart from burial in the ground - dead bodies can be disposed of: cremation, the Parsee tower of silence, burial in the sea, . . . 

Soon gloomy thoughts leave Bloom. He feels that there is plenty to see and hear and feel yet (6.1003). He meets Martin Cunningham and John Henry Menton. Menton is quite abrupt with Bloom, who crestfallen, moves on reflecting over Menton's behaviour. (Gifford*/6.1025 explains that this last incidence has a Homeric echo. At the end of Book 11, Odysseus encounters in the underworld the shades of several of his former comrades in arms, including Ajax, who refuses to speak to Odysseus because he is still "burning" (angry) over the fact that in the contest over who was to bear Achilles' arms after his death, the Lady Thetis and Athena awarded the honour to Odysseus.)

* Ulysses Annotated by Don Gifford, ISBN 0-520-06745-2

(Summarized from the book, Ulysses for the Uninitiated.)

PLEASE NOTE

The Ulysses readings are taking place on site again. The group has been split into two halves to ensure more space for readers. The two halves alternate and convene fortnightly.

Updates about the group's progress continue to be given on this site.

Please note that the Foundation is asking participants to sign up in order to be able to adhere to the necessary safety measures. If you would like to join or re-join a group, it will be bst to check beforehand if it is possible and advisable to do so.

Contact:

Email: info@joycefoundation.ch

Phone: 044 211 83 01

For more information please visit the Foundation's website.

Tuesday, 6 & 13 October 2020 (6.969)

The reading group has been split into two halves.

The first half gathered on Oct 6, the second on Oct 13. Both stopped their reading at: “Wisdom Hely's” (6.969).

Summary (upto 6.969):

Episode 6, named Hades, describes Mr Bloom traveling in a creaking carriage to the Prospect Cemetery to attend the funeral of Paddy Dignam. Martin Cunningham, Jack Power and Simon Dedalus are also in the carriage. Joyce develops on the first couple of pages of the episode the characters of these people. Bloom is an outsider in this group. Whenever he tries to say something - which is not often -, his words are mostly ignored by the others. The carriage drives from one end of Dublin to the other, past many well known places, monuments and statues. When it halts at the gates of the cemetery, Bloom and the rest descend and follow other mourners including Dignam's wife and daughter, first to the mortuary chapel where a service is held and later to the burial spot. 

During the burial and afterwards, Bloom's imagination runs riot with various thoughts relating to life and death. For instance, when after the service at the chapel, Tom Kernan says, comparing that service to the one in the Irish church, "I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man's inmost heart"(6.670), Bloom replies, "It does" (6.671), but thinks that no touching the heart of the fellow in the six feet by two with his toes to the daisies (6.672). For, the heart is a pump after all, pumping thousands of gallons of blood every day. One fine day it gets bunged up: and there you are (6.674). After the ceremony when Bloom and others walk through the cemetery, the sight of the saddened angels, crosses, broken pillars, family vaults, . . .  (6.928) makes him think that it would be more sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living (6.930). He wonders at all those dead, musing all these here once walked round Dublin (6.960), thinking of how to remember everybody.

(Summarized from the book, Ulysses for the Uninitiated.)