Today's reading reached the end of Circe, episode 15.
Summary:
Outside the brothel, Stephen has got into altercation with two soldiers. One of them, Private Carr rushes at Stephen, striking him in the face. Bloom is trying to get Stephen away from the scene, when two policemen arrive. Soon Corny Kelleher also arrives in a hackney. With the help of Kelleher, Bloom manages to get rid of the police. Kelleher, who thinks of giving a ride to Stephen, gives up the idea when he hears that Stephen lives far away in Sandycove. Even the horse that is pulling the hackney wants to go hohohohome.
Things start to quieten down. So far the episode was brimming with people, sometimes in reality, more often in fantasy. Now only two are left: Bloom and Stephen. Stephen is still lying on the ground. Bloom tries to wake him up, calling his name. In his muddled up state, Stephen wakes up murmuring black panther (Telemachus, episode 1), vampire (Proteus, episode 3), and singing words of the poem Who goes with Fergus by W. B. Yeats (Telemachus, episode 1). Bloom, on hearing the words - Fergus now, shadows, the woods, . . . dim sea - thinks that Stephen is thinking of a girl named Ferguson.
Again suddenly we are back in the world of fantasy. Against the dark wall a figure appears slowly , a fairy boy of eleven, . . . dressed in an Eton suit with glass shoes like Cinderella and a little bronze helmet. On his suit he has diamond and ruby buttons. He is carrying a slim ivory cane. It is Rudy, Bloom's deceased son. Bloom had once imagined that his son will walk one day beside Molly in an Eton suit. (In the language of gems, the diamond has the power of making men courageous and magnanimous and of protecting them from evil spirits. Ruby is symbolic of a cheerful mind, and it works as a preservative of health and as an amulet against poison, sadness, and evil thoughts; Gifford, 15.4965-66). The bronze helmet, the ivory cane and lambkin hint that Rudy appears in the role of Hermes (Mercury).
All this symbolism brings together on one hand Homer's Odyssey and Joyce's Ulysses. When Odysseus approaches Circe's palace, he is stopped by Hermes. Here Hermes appears when our Odysseus leaves Circe's palace. On the other hand, the appearance of Rudy shows that Stephen is a potential son of Bloom. Seeing Rudy, all the paternal protective instinct is awakened in Bloom. The last part of Ulysses will deal with what happens to this father - son duo. For us, readers, reading this episode has been, to put it extremely mildly, an interesting, although pretty bewildering, literary journey.
