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)
