Online reading, Thursday, 20 May 2021 (12.337)

The reading stopped at ". . . flabbergasted." (12.337)

Summary:

In the pub they find the citizen sitting with a sheaf of papers, waiting for someone to buy him a drink. A rather fearsome looking dog called Garryowen is sitting at his feet. The citizen is said to be working for the cause (12.123), which could refer to the revival of Irish culture or to Irish independence. The citizen, a rather narrow minded nationalist, has been modeled by Joyce on Michael Cusack (1847-1907), founder of the Gaelic Athletic Association, dedicated to the revival of Irish sports such as hurling, Gaelic football and handball. The Irish Revival was very topical at the time the story of Ulysses is set at. Joyce describes the citizen as a sort of prehistoric Irish warrior. He is said to be adorned with tribal figures mentioned in a list of Irish heroes some genuine, some fake, the list finally growing completely out of proportion. Joyce's description here obviously owes a debt of ‘gigantism’ to Homer’s description of Polyphemus, one of the Cyclopes in Odyssey (Gifford, 12.151-205).

Even the language becomes at times rather violent, reminiscent of the big uncouth giants of Homer. It drifts into parodies. Sometimes adjectives are piled up, the language becomes cumulative, hyperbolic, bordering on being kitschy. In short, Joyce's technique here is gigantic; everything is elaborated, exaggerated.

In Kiernan's pub, Joe Hynes and the anonymous narrator are being served by Terry. Hynes pays for the pints with a sovereign that he says was given to him by Bloom, referring to him as the prudent member (12.211),  hinting that Bloom could be a Freemason. The citizen is busy reading birth, marriage and death notices in the “old woman of Prince's street” (the Freeman's Journal). His dog, old Garryowen, bares its teeth, growling now and then, and gets kicked in its ribs as a reward. Bob Doran (a character we know from the story, The Boarding House, in Dubliners) is sitting in a corner in a stupor, snoring drunk blind to the world (12.251).

This group of pub visitors is joined soon by Alf Bergan, who is doubling up with laughter, remembering how Mr. Breen was upset because he had received that morning the card on which it was written U. p: up.

Online reading, Thursday, 6 May 2021 (12.67)

Note: There will be no Zoom meeting on Thursday, the 13th of May 2021, as the day is the Day of Ascension.

The reading on Thursday, 6th May stopped at "... says he." (12.67)
(We completed Sirens, episode 11 and started with Cyclops, episode 12.)

Summary:

Episode 11

The episode 11 in which music is present in various forms, in its structure and terminology as well as  in the reference to arie, songs, and musical instruments, reaches its high point (if one has to settle for just one) close to the end when Ben Dollard sings the tragic Irish ballad, The Croppy Boy, moving with his voice the hearts of all those assembled in the Hotel Ormond.  Bloom wants to leave the hotel before the song ends. He is occupied with thoughts of Boylan, imagining how just at that time Boylan would perhaps be knocking at the door of Eccles street 7.

Listen to Kevin McDermott (1844-1892) rendering The Croppy Boy.

Episode 12

Cyclops, the succeeding episode, is a very funny and at the same time a serious episode. Its special characteristic is the insertion of 30 and more parodies/interpolations to highlight a particular point of interest.

The episode opens with a narrator, who is, and remains nameless. It is five o'clock in the afternoon, and as he is just talking to old Troy of the D. M. P. (an inspector of the Dublin Metropolitan Police), a chimney sweep passes by and nearly puts out his eye with his broom and ladder. The near miss of the chimney sweep’s broom and ladder (reminiscent of Odysseus’s burning pike of olive wood) suggests that the narrator is one of the Cyclopes (Gifford, 12.2-3). He sees Joe Hynes coming down the street, and tells him about this encounter with the chimney sweep. When Joe asks what the narrator is doing in these parts of the city, the narrator replies how he has been trying, without success, to collect bad debt from a plumber called Geraghty, who had bought nonperishable goods such as tea and sugar from Moses Herzog, a Jewish dealer, but then failed to pay.

Joe Hynes, a reporter, has been at a meeting of the Cattle Traders Association in the City Arms Hotel. He wants to inform someone referred to here as the citizen, for reasons not told, what went on at this meeting. He and the narrator walk round to Barney Kiernan's, 1 pub at 8-10, Little Britain Street near the courthouse on Green Street. Indeed, barristers from there used to adjourn to Barney Kiernen's to drink and discuss cases.

(Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)