Online reading of Thursday, 28 January 2021 (9.313)

The joint online reading of Ulysses held on Thursday, 28 January stopped at: “becoming important. It seems.” (9.313)

If you have any questions regarding the online readings, please contact the Zurich James Joyce Foundation: info@joycefoundation.ch 

 Summary:

Shakespeare and Hamlet, rather Stephen's views of Shakespeare and Hamlet, occupy the centre stage of these pages. These have to be read with utmost care as Stephen's exposition is interspersed with a lot of interior monologue, his thoughts wandering from Shakespeare's fiction to what others such as the 16th century English dramatist Robert Greene have said about the bard, to his own time at Clongowes as portrayed by Joyce in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, to his mother's deathbed, to the money he owes A. E. (George Russell) and so on.

A couple of things in Stephen's argument should be paid special attention: (a) his attempt to recreate the atmosphere of the staging of a Shakespearean play, telling himself to add local colour, work in all you know (9.158), (b) his explanation of a ghost as “one who has faded into impalpability through death, through absence, through change of manners” (9.147), (c) his main argument that the dead king in Hamlet is Shakespeare himself, that Hamlet is none other than his dead son, Hamnet, and that he naturally made his own wife Ann Hathaway the guilty queen, Gertrude. Stephen's painting of what happens when Shakespeare appears to Hamlet as the ghost is really beautiful: “To a son he speaks, the son of his soul, the prince, young Hamlet and to the son of his body, Hamnet Shakespeare, who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever” (9.171).

Stephen's thesis does not attract everybody in the room. He underscores his chain of thoughts with: I, I and I. I (9.212).This should be interpreted this as follows: The full stop between I, I and I and I, that is the first full stop, stands for the changes in the molecules. The comma between I and I and I signifies that something still continues even if the molecules change. (Read Aristotle to understand more!)

I and I. I. is followed by A. E. I. O. U (9.213). Here Joyce has posed a nice puzzle for us. Do these remind Stephen of the five vowels of the English language or is he telling himself: A. E. (George Russell's pen name) I. O. U. (I owe you (the pound)?

                                                                                                                                        (Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)

Online reading of Thursday, 21 January 2021, Episode 9

The joint online reading of Ulysses held on Thursday, 21 January 2021 stopped at: “H. P. B.'s elemental.” (9.71)

If you have any questions regarding the online readings, please contact the Zurich James Joyce Foundation: info@joycefoundation.ch 

Introducing Scylla and Charybdis, Episode. 9:

This episode that follows Lestrygonians, an easy episode characterized by Bloom's wanderings and musings, is anything but easy to follow. As Bloom dominated the previous episode, Stephen is the person who is the major character here. Food was the staple topic there, literature here.

The location of the episode is the National Library of Dublin. Some friends and acquaintances - Stephen, Russell, Eglinton, Lyster, Best - are gathered and are expressing their opinions of the literary giants of yesteryears: Goethe, Shakespeare, Dante, Aristotle, Plato, Milton, Blake, Yeats, Ben Johnson, Synge. They allude to the thoughts, symbols and scenes from Paradise Lost, Inferno and Hamlet. The men are discussing approaches to and the relation between art, life and literature. Their debate appears to be about two opposing views on whether literature should be seen in the author's biographical context or not. Much of the initial part of the episode is told as it is perceived through Stephen's eyes. The language used is typically Stephen’s. It looks as if his mind is constantly churning out what he has read in the works of the masters. His thoughts are strewn in between bits of conversation, letting us have all the debris of his reading.

(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)

Online reading of Thursday, 21 January 2021 (End of episode 8)

 Summary ending episode 8:

Mr Bloom leaves Davy Byrne’s and walks down Duke Street towards Dawson street, wandering, wondering about many things. For instance, for some reason not apparent, he thinks of the last scenes of the opera, Don Giovanni when the Il Commendatore’s statue visits Don Giovanni. He dreams about how much money he could make if he gets ads from Keyes, Prescott's, . . . what all he could do with that money.  Still he does not want to think of one thing. Today. Today. Not think (8.1063). He does not want to think of what is about to happen that day.

Walking on he sees an young, blind man tapping the curbstone (8.1075). Bloom, ever sympathetic, wants to help him and asks him, whether he wants to cross the street. He touches the young man's elbow gently, then takes the limp seeing hand to guide it forward (8.1090) (The cane that the blind person carries in his hand makes his hand a seeing hand.) Wanting to start a conversation but not wanting to seem to be condescending, Bloom makes a remark about the weather, but gets no response. 

After being helped by Bloom to cross the street, the young man goes on his way. Bloom continues to think of him. Terrible. Really terrible. . . Where is the justice being born that way? (8.1144) That thought reminds Bloom of the news of the tragedy he had read that day. (The Freeman's Journal, 16 June 1904, carried the story on page 5: Appalling American Disaster. . . . Five hundred persons, mostly children, perished today by the burning of the steamer General Slocum, near Hell Gate, on the East River . . . ; Gifford, 8.1146-47). Where is justice in such things? Karma they call that transmigration for sins you did in a past life (8.1147). The thought of Karma brings back to his mind Molly asking him that morning the meaning of the word metempsychosis, a word she had pronounced as met him pike hoses.

Molly and Boylan continue to occupy Bloom's thoughts. Before Bloom had taken the elbow of the young stripling to help him cross the road, he had passed Drago's (a Parisian perfumer and hairdresser) on Dawson street, and recalls now seeing his brilliantined hair that morning. (Though haunted whole day by memories of Boylan, Bloom does not name him on these pages.) He sees Boylan once again, as he (Bloom) reaches Kildare street. He wants first to go to the National Library, which is to his left, to check up the design for the advertisement and later to the National Museum to check up on the goddesses. But as he catches the sight of the straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes. Turnedup trousers (8.1168), Bloom gets very flustered, very agitated. He turns therefore to the right, and goes to the National Museum instead. Feigning as if he is preoccupied, Bloom fumbles in his pocket, taking out things he had stowed there. Even in his agitated state he notices and appreciates the cream curves of the stone of the National Museum. By the time his hand finds the soap in his pocket, Bloom reaches the gates of the museum.

He is Safe!

(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)

Online reading of Thursday, 14 January 2021 (8.1027)

The joint online reading of Ulysses held on Thursday, 14 January 2021 stopped at: “for the baby.” (8.1027)

Summary:

Looking for lunch, Bloom first enters Burton, a cheap eating place, which he leaves again rather quickly when he sees how sloppily people are eating there. This passage not only is a good and vivid example of how to render disgust but it also connects Joyce's Ulysses with Homer's Odyssey recalling to mind the cannibalism of the Lestrygonians.   Wondering, am I like that? (8.662) and trying to see himself as others might see him, Bloom leaves pretending that he had entered the restaurant to look for somebody who does not seem to be there. Then he goes to Davy Byrne's, a pub that still exists today.

Davy Byrne's, 21 Duke Street, Dublin

Inside he sees, sardines, sandwiches, etc that remind him of the lines from a poem: "Why should no man starve on the deserts of Arabia? / Because of the sand which is there. / How come the sandwiches there? / The tribe of Ham was bred there and mustered." (Gifford 8.741-42). He also recalls the ad of Plumtree's potted meat that he had seen that morning.

As Bloom orders a gorgonzola cheese sandwich, olives and a glass of Burgundy,  Nosey Flynn, who is sipping his grog there, asks, “Doing any singing those times?”(8.767). Even though he does not want to answer, thinking that Flynn knows as much about it as [his] coachman, (8.769) Bloom does let himself be engaged in a conversation with Flynn. When Nosey Flynn starts wondering loudly about which horse to bet on in that day's Gold Cup Race, Davy Byrne cannot help, saying, “I'm off that.” (8.815) Bloom decides not to say anything too because he is afraid that Flynn will lose more  by betting on a horse.

Eating his lunch, Bloom realizes that the wine tasted better as he was not thirsty. Perhaps he can (go home) at about six o'clock. Six. Six. Time will be gone then. (What he undoubtedly is thinking is whether "the visit" will be over by six o'clock.) Against his will, he is reminded of Boylan. Thinking of Oysters, for example, he recalls seeing him that morning, on the way to the Dignam's funeral. He was in the Red Bank this morning. (8.866) Red Bank was a seafood restaurant in Dublin.

Stuck on the pane two flies [buzz], stuck. (8.896) Their buzzing thus reminds Bloom of the time he had spent on the Howth with Molly, how the bay then had looked, how she had passed on a piece of seedcake (8. 907) from her mouth to his, how her eyes were like flowers, take me, willing eyes (8.910), how he had kissed her, how she had kissed him. (Here Bloom is thinking of one of the nice moments of his life. She had kissed him. Him! Now he knows that Boylan will be visiting Molly that afternoon, and so has kept out of the house.)

Watching veins in the wood of the counter in the pub,  make Bloom think of curves . . ., of shapely goddesses, Venus, Juno. (8.920) The next question that arises in his mind is whether these lovely sculptures have . . . Because we stuffing food in one hole and out behind. . . They have no. (8.930) The anatomical feature Bloom is thinking of is not mentioned here. Bloom, who has never looked whether or not they have any, decides to investigate the same. Can see them library museum standing in the round hall, naked goddesses. (8.921) (Plaster cast of Venus stood in the entrance rotunda of the National Museum in Dublin). He would bend down as if he were retrieving something he dropped, so that the keeper won't see (8.931) what he is up to!

Bloom has to go out of the bar quickly. In his absence Nosey Flynn and Davy Byrne talk about him, coming finally to the conclusion that he's not too bad. (8.983) By then new customers - Paddy Leonard, Bantam Lyons and Tom Rockford - walk in. (Bloom had passed on his paper that morning to Bantam Lyons saying that he was about to throw away the paper anyway.)

(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated. )

Online reading of Thursday, 7 January 2021 (8.740)

The joint online reading of Ulysses held on Thursday, 7 January 2021 stopped at: “let me see.” (8.740)

Synopses provided on this blog are written by Chandra Holm and are summarised from her eBook Ulysses for the Uninitiated.