Tuesday, 24 March 2015, Pages 280 - 288, Wandering Rocks, Episode 10

We stopped with the following sentence in Latin: "et a verbis tuis formidavit cor meum." (Penguin 288.3; Gabler 10.205)

After having spent many hours with an episode of heavy discussions, of echoes and of allusions, we have moved to an episode whose main feature is one of movement. This episode feels like a breath of fresh air after the heaviness of the vaulted cell, of  a room in the National Library. This episode, named aptly as wandering rocks, is highly cinematic. All kinds of people are walking around, the paths of many, if not all, cross.

The pages we read today are devoted to Father Conmee. We could easily call these pages as one morning in the life of Father Conmee.

(Source: url)

Father Conmee SJ was a real person. He was the rector at Clongowes Wood College when Joyce was enrolled as a student there in 1888. Connie was also instrumental in getting Joyce and his brothers into Belvedere College in 1890. (See: http://jamesjoyce.ie/tag/fr-john-conmee/). In Joyce's works, he first appeared in A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, where as the rector of Clongowes, Stephen's college, he shows lots of understanding for the young boy, who has been unfairly pandied by Father Dolan. But here in Ulysses, Father Conmee is portrayed as a condescending person, one who has little empathy for others, one who seems to be good in making small talk when needed.

The walk of the very reverend John Conmee S. J. this morning takes him along the Gardiner street, Mounty square, Great Charles street, North Circular road, North Strand road, into a tram at Newcomen bridge to traverse past Mud Island, crossing the river Tolka at Annesley bridge, getting off the tram at the Howth road stop. But it is not yet clear to where the very reverend John Conmee S. J. is bound.

On his walk he meets a onelegged sailor, whom he blessed in the sun instead of giving any coin, the wife of Mr David Sheehy M. P. with whom he exchanges pleasantries, and three little schoolboys from Belvedere, whom he asks to post a letter. He salutes and is saluted by Mrs M'Guinness, by Mr William Gallagher standing in the doorway of his shop, and by a constable on the beat. He sees a billboard of Mr Eugene Stratton, dressed as a black man, and wonders about what happens to the millions of black and brown and yellow souls that had not received the baptism of water when their last hour came like a thief in the night.

Soon after he alights from the tram, it is time for him to read from breviary. He should have read the Nones before lunch. Being occupied so, he sees - but does not really notice - a flushed young man followed by a young woman coming from a gap of a hedge. Father Conmee blesses both gravely and turns a thin page of his breviary, reading the 21st section of Psalm 119.

Tuesday, 17 March 2015, Pages 270 - 280, Scylla and Charybdis, End of episode 9

Completed reading episode 9 (Penguin 280.8; Gabler 9.1225) with

Laud we the gods

And let our crooked smokes climb to their nostrils

From our bless'd altars.

But first things first. As Stephen continues to lecture on how Shakespeare modeled a few characters in his plays on his family members, and moves on to mention specially his three brothers, Gilbert, Edmund and Richard, John Eglinton provokes him (draws his sword / touched the foil) saying, "Let us hear what you have to say of Richard and Edmund..." Stephen then thinks of his own brother (Where is your brother? Apothecaries Hall.), who for him was like a whetstone (a stone used to sharpen knives, here one's own wits) along with later friends like Cranly, Mulligan, etc. By the way, this little paragraph offers one of the many proofs scattered around in the book that Stephen is modeled on Joyce himself. James Joyce's brother, Stanislaus, worked in a apothecary, and was like a whetstone for Joyce.

What follows is Stephen's discourse on relating Richard, William Shakespeare's brother, to the Richard of the play, Richard III. To prove that the theme of the false or the usurping or the adulterous brother or all three in one is to Shakespeare... always with him, Stephen refers to various plays by Shakespeare, to his daughter who was accused of adultery, and to the wordings on his tombstone. According to Stephen, it was the original sin (of his being seduced by Ann Hathaway) that darkened his understanding.

(Source: http://imgkid.com/william-shakespeare-grave.shtml)

Even though Stephen himself laughs at the end of his argument (to free his mind from his mind's bondage), even though Buck Mulligan intervenes with one of his, apparently, irrelevant comments, the mood here is sombre. It also contains two profound sentences everyone knows but does not always think about: "We walk through ourselves, meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love, but always meeting ourselves. Every life is many days, day after day."

On being asked by Eglinton whether he believes in his own theory, Stephen promptly says, 'no'. What Stephen really means by this 'no' is worth pondering about. In any case, Eglinton is relieved (is that why he smiles doubly?) because then Stephen cannot expect any payment for his theory even if he writes it down (for publication in the Dana)

Mulligan gets up, saying, 'Come, Kinch', words that remind Stephen of what Mulligan had said that morning as they were leaving the Martello Tower (Penguin 20.2). Feeling that he is following a clown (a lubber), Stephen goes out - feeling dejected (all amort) - of the dark room in which they were all sitting into daylight. Mulligan reads out from the scrap of paper on which he was scribbling something before they left the National Library. This scribbling act ('The Lord has spoken to Malachi'; Penguin 274.8) and reading from his tablet (Penguin 278.13) conceal references to the Bible.

A man passed out between them, bowing, greeting. 'The wandering jew', whispers Buck Mulligan. It was Mr. Bloom.

The episode ends with a quotation from the end of Cymbeline. Peace and tranquility have been restored. 

Tuesday, 10 March 2015, Pages 264 - 270, Scylla and Charybdis, Episode 9

Read as far as "... looked at all: refrained." (Penguin 270.29), Gabler (9.965)

On the previous page Stephen had started to speak about Saint Thomas. He continues here comparing what he thinks were the ideas of St. Thomas with those of the new Viennese school (i.e., Freud)  regarding incest.  The key word here seems to be 'avarice' - incest as avarice of emotions,... Jews, whom christians tax with avarice... Stephen says whether these be sins or virtues old Nobodaddy (God) will tell us at doomsday lent (last judgement). He brings Shakespeare and his plays back into the discussion, quoting from Winter's tale (.. Sir Smile, his neighbor) and from Hamlet (Polonius advice to his son). This prompts Mr Best to say that Gentle Will (William Shakespeare) is being roughly handled. 

Mr Best's comment starts off a play of words regarding 'will': 'will' as the modal verb, 'will' as the shortened version of the name, William, and 'will' as wish. (The will to live, ..., for poor Ann, ... is the will to die.) Stephen imagines how Ann would have lain on the secondbest bed (somehow this topic of the secondbest bed seems to haunt Stephen!), and how she would have spent her old age. He talks of how she would have suffered from remorse of conscience, and echoing an earlier section from the episode (Penguin 257.26) says, 'Venus has twisted her lips in prayer.'

Eglinton intervenes again, saying, ' I feel that Russell is right. (see Penguin, page 242) What do we care for his wife or father?" What follows in the coming pages is a discourse on the relationships between fathers and sons including Shakespeare's writing Hamlet soon after the death of his own father John, Stephen's thoughts about his relationship with his own father, Simon Daedalus. Naturally a reference to Jesus and Church is not left out (... only begetter to only begotten), nor to the nature of Holy Trinity (...Father was Himself His Own Son.) Stephen concludes that paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should love him or he any son? The argument moves from a particular son and a particular father to being the father of all his race as shown by Shakespeare's writing of Hamlet.

Stephen next starts narrating how Shakespeare brought his own family into his plays: his mother's name in the forest of Arden (setting of As you Like it), his dead son Hamnet cast as Hamlet, his wife, Ann Hathaway as Cleopatra, Cressid and Venus, bringing finally into the picture the three brothers of William Shakespeare, Gilbert, Edmund and Richard. Mr Best, whose first name is Richard, is very keen that Stephen will say a good word for Richard.

Suddenly the discussion takes on the form of a play. After all as Hamlet said and Buck Mulligan mentions, the play's the thing! Musical terms ( piano, diminuendo, tempo, stringent) are introduced to indicate how these players speak. Stephen, moving on to how Shakespeare hides his own name in many of his plays, turns to the celestial phenomenon of a super nova (Tycho's star) that was discovered in November 1572  (when Shakespeare was eight and a half years old), in the W-shaped constellation Cassiopeia and whose brightness lasted for almost sixteen months.

(Source: http://www.smokymtnastro.org/Seasons/Summer/Summer%20Sky%20Tour%20Polar%20Constellations.htm)

Again there is a link to the Bible, to Exodus, when Stephen explains this celestial phenomenon as a star by night, a pillar of the cloud by day. Perhaps this image of the Israelites walking makes Stephen look at his hat, his stick, his boots. He is wearing boots borrowed from Buck Mulligan. There are holes in his socks. His handkerchief borrowed that morning by Mulligan is soiled. All symbols of Stephen's poverty. 

Tuesday, 3 March 2015, Pages 258 - 264, Scylla and Charybdis, Episode 9

We read as far as "All smiled their smiles." (Penguin 264.1) Gabler (    )

The topic of Shakespeare leaving (only) his secondbest bed to his wife Ann Hathaway dominates these pages. In the last section Eglinton had said to Stephen, ' 'We want to hear more. ....Till now we had thought of her .... a Penelope stayathome.'

Thus the next part of Stephen's discourse starts with a reference to Penelope. Antisthenes, a student of Socrates, is supposed to have said that Penelope because of her (stayathome) virtue is more beautiful than the beautiful Helen. But soon Stephen is back to Shakespeare and his twenty-year long sojourn in London. (Here is a connection to Odysseus, who also spent twenty years away from home.) Stephen says about Shakespeare: 'His life was rich", and goes on to imagine how his dining table would have looked (marchpane = marzipan), how he dallied between conjugial love (for Ann Hathaway) and scortatory love (with prostitutes), listing names of women with whom he is supposed to have had liaisons.

This part interspersed with Buck Mulligan's buffoonery and Stephen's interior monologue (... Encore vignette sous,... Do and Do. Thing done... Old wall where sudden lizards flash...) is not always easy to decipher. Additionally Stephen's discourse demands that the readers be very well versed not only with Shakespeare's works, which he liberally quotes from, but also with his life as well as with the lives of Aristoteles, Socrates, Plato etc.

The talk then moves on to Shakespeare's will,  according to which he left only his secondbest bed to Ann. Stephen seems to want to prove (though he announces that the burden of proof is with you not with me) the marital disharmony between William S and Ann H. Eglinton mentions that the will ... has been explained ... by jurists.

(Shakespeare-LastPg.jpg)

Stephen is obviously bothered about this act of Shakespeare's leaving only the secondbest bed to Ann. Because Shakespeare was rich. Because he had amassed much property. Because he does not come out with flying colors when his behavior is compared with that of Aristotle (who on his deathbed made sure that his slaves are freed, that he will be buried next to his wife, and that his mistress should be allowed to live in one of his houses) and with that of Charles II, whose dying request was 'Let not poor Nelly starve.' (Gifford, 9.720-24)

The next topics they touch upon are homosexuality (love that dare not speak its name), and the bard's strict sense of business dealings which led him to create, for example, the character of Shylock in The Merchant of Venice. Whether or not Shakespeare was a jew is also touched upon, with Eglinton quoting from a paper by the dean of Studies at the University College in Dublin that Shakespeare was catholic.

Mulligans' playacting (Ora pro nobis, ..Pogue mahone...) saves the day when Stephan starts next on Saint Thomas. All smiled their smiles.

Note: If you also wonder what happened to Shakespeare's firstbest bed, there is an interesting explanation here!

Tuesday, 24 February 2015, Pages 250 - 258, Scylla and Charybdis, Episode 9

We read as far as "... a Penelope stayathome." (Penguin 258.4) (Gabler 9.620)

The topic of discussion is the plays - Pericles, The Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, The Tempest - written by Shakespeare in the closing period. Gifford says that 'Stephen's sources all agree that the 'change in tone' in Shakespeare's late plays reflects a change in his outlook.' (Gifford 9.402-4)  Mr. Brandes, a Shakespearean scholar, accepts it (Pericles), Stephen said, as the first play of the closing period. It was the lifting of the shadow. A couple of other Shakespearean scholars mentioned on these pages are Sidney Lee, George Bernard Shaw Frank Harris,...

Then the discussion moves on to the dark lady of the sonnets, one of the three characters of Shakespeare's sonnets, the other two being The Fair Youth and The Rival Poet, and who Mr. W. H. is, who is mentioned in the dedication.

(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare%27s_sonnets)

Stephen goes on about how Shakespeare would have suffered as a result of being seduced at the young age of 18 by Ann Hathaway, a woman older than himself. ".. he will never be a victor in his own eyes..." Even having other affairs (assumed dongiovannism) will not save him.

Eglinton, the quaker librarian, and Mr Best listen to Stephen. Stephen thinks, 'They list. And in the porches of their ears I pour.' The word porches lead to the ghost of the dead king in Hamlet. Hamlet's father was killed when poison (the juice of cursed hebenon) was poured into the porch of his ears while he was asleep in the orchard in the afternoon. Stephen asks how did the ghost of the king know how he was killed unless his creator endowed him with this knowledge. 

Stephen is majestically quoting here from many Shakespearean plays to underscore his argument that the dead king in Hamlet is Shakespeare indeed. Just as he is mentioning that the voice of the ghost is heard only in the heart of him who is the substance of his shadow (that is Hamlet), evoking Bible to say, the son consubstantial with the father, the seriousness of the discussion is deflated, like a pierced balloon, by the entrance of Buck Mulligan, saying, 'Amen!'

Buck Mulligan is his usual self, joking when he could/should have been serious. For example, when the librarian mentions that Mr Mulligan has his theory too ... of Shakespeare, Mulligan responds saying 'Shakespeare? I seem to know the name.' Mulligan has in his pocket the telegram that Stephen had sent canceling their appointment of meeting in The Ship. He imitates the voice of the writer, Synge, when he describes how he and Haines waited for one hour and two hours and three hours sitting waiting for pints apiece. 

Amidst all such buffoonery (Mulligan playing Shakespearean fool), an attendant opens the door to inform the librarian that a gentleman has come from the Freeman, wanting to see the files of the Kilkenny People for last year. The librarian is off (nay he danced off in a galliard) to assist the gentleman. Mulligan snatches the card the attendant had brought in, wondering who this 'gentleman' could be. He sees that it is Bloom, whom he had seen just before in the museum where the statues of Greek goddesses are displayed. (Bloom was there to find out whether they have no. Penguin 225.8)

John Eglinton decides, with Mr Best's approval, to hear more. They begin to get interested in Mrs S (Mrs Shakespeare) of whom they had till then thought of as a Penelope stayathome bringing up yet another parallel in this chapter between Joyce's Ulysses and Homer's Odysseus. 

Tuesday, 17 February 2015, Pages 244 - 250, Scylla and Charybdis, Episode 9

We read as far as "Booted the twain and staved." (Penguin 250.16), (Gabler 9.414)

Shakespeare is still very much present on these pages. Stephen comes up with more ideas to cement his theory that the ghost, the father of Hamlet, is really Shakespeare. His argument does not hold water with all those present in the room. By the time we finish reading these pages, we realize that Stephen too - not only Bloom - is an outsider in Dublin's (literary) society.

Mr. Best, the assistant librarian, has just brought Ann Hathaway into the discussion. He says, "... we seem to be forgetting her...". Thus the pages that follow are about forgetting and remembering. (Fritz Senn's words). In talking about her, Stephen quotes from Shakespeare's poem, Venus and Adonis.

("Venus and Adonis quarto" by Richard Field - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Venus_and_Adonis_quarto.jpg.)

Mentioning (and quoting) the plays, Taming of the Shrew, Antony and Cleopatra, Twelfth Night, As You Like It, Macbeth and of course Hamlet, Stephen disputes the statement that Shakespeare chose badly in choosing Ann as his spouse. He further plays on her name, when he says: "He was chosen, it seems to me. If others have their will Ann hath a way." Stephen's serious monologue is lightened by Mr Best when he quotes brightly two lines (Between the acres of the rye...) from As You Like It. These lines trigger (for whatever reason) in Stephen's mind, the story of Paris and Aphrodite. He refers to Paris as the wellpleased pleaser.

As the tall figure of bearded George Russell wearing homespun clothes gets up to leave to go to the office of the weekly newspaper, Irish Homestead, John Eglinton mentions that night's meeting at the Irish novelist, George Moore's place. That would be a meeting of many literary figures of Ireland. John Eglinton, Piper (W. J. Stanton Pyper), Colum (Padraic Colum), Starkey ( J. S. Starkey), Buck Mulligan and even Haines are going to be there. But not Stephen. And perhaps not Russell as he has a meeting at that time. Hearing this, Stephen thinks of Dawson chambers where the meeting is to take place as the Yogibogeybox. (Russell was a member of the theosophical society.) The thoughts of theosophy that then crowd Stephen's mind come across as being a bit of mumbo jumbo with its reference to Madame Blavatsky's work, ISIS Unveiled, to Buddha, to hesouls, shesouls and shoals of souls. 

The discussion about Stephen's ideas on Shakespeare continue after Russell leaves. The quaker librarian is nice enough to say that Stephen's views are most illuminating. But Eglinton can not be won over so easily (... if you want to shake my belief that Shakespeare is Hamlet you have a stern task before you). Stephen continues to argue.

These pages with their litany of names of Irish literary figures (not widely known today), comments about Theosophy, Stephen's quoting (without naming the sources) Shakespeare's works and Aristotel's ideas make reading them quite a challenge!

Tuesday, 10 February 2015, Pages 238 - 244, Scylla and Charybdis, Episode 9

Stopped today's reading at "... guiltless though maligned." (Penguin 244. 7),  (Gabler 9.244)

We are still in an office of the National Library in Dublin. Stephen and others (See Sabrina's excellent post from last week to learn about the various characters who were present) have just talked about Heines, who is not there as he has gone to buy the book, The Love Songs of Connacht, by Douglas Hyde (1860 - 1949).

What we read on these pages is a fictional discussion of fiction (Fritz Senn's words). Mainly of Shakespeare. That too about Shakespeare's Hamlet. Before Stephen starts expounding his thesis on Shakespeare and Hamlet, Georg Russell makes a kind of 'derogatory' remark about lovesongs. (That he does so warning occultly hints at his interest in mysticism, occult etc.) He also comes up with some strong opinions about peasants, who makes revolutions, the cheap kind of work (sixshilling novel) produced in the rarefied air of the academy,.. They also talk about the literary scene in France, about Mallarme.

But Shakespeare and Hamlet, rather Stephen's views of Shakespeare and Hamlet, occupy the center stage on these pages. We have to read these pages with much 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) etc.

"Shakespeare's family circle" by unknown german engraver - engraving.
Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Shakespeare%27s_family_circle.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Shakespeare%27s_family_circle.jpg

We should pay special attention to a couple of things in Stephen's argument. (a) to his attempt - telling himself to add local color, work in all you know - to recreate the atmosphere of the staging of a Shakespearean play. (Penguin 240.26 ff) (b) to his explanation on what a ghost is. Stephen defines a ghost as one who has faded into implacability through death, through absence, through change of manners. (c) to his main argument that the dead king in Hamlet is Shakespeare himself, that Hamlet is none else than his dead son, Hamnet, and that he naturally converts his own wife Ann Hathaway into the guilty queen, Gertrude.  (The connection between Hamnet and Hamlet occupies scholars even today as can be read here.) 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, Hamlet Shakespeare, who has died in Stratford that his namesake may live for ever.

Stephen's thesis does not attract everybody in the room. Russell objects to such a peeping and prying into greenroom gossip. Mr Best's face, appealed to, agreed. (We only know that Mr Best's face agreed, we don't know if indeed Mr Best agreed!) Of course Stephen is not happy about this. In his thoughts he mocks at Russell by referring to him as sirrah, (a common form of addressing an inferior person during the Elizabethan times), remembering at the same time that Russell had lent him a pound when he (Stephen) was hungry.

Recollection of this borrowed pound leads Stephen's thoughts to what happened to that money (spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed), to his conversation that morning with Mr. Deasy (I paid my way. I paid my way.), and finally to philosophical excursions of the identity of a human being. (Molecules all change. I am other I now. Other I got pound. = With time the stuff we are made of changes. The Stephen who borrowed the pound five months ago is different from the one who is now Stephen.) He thinks of his childhood and youth as portrayed in the novel, A Portrait...

He underscores this chain of thoughts with: I, I and I. I. I dare to interpret this as follows: The full stop  between I, I and I and I stands for '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!)

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

Finally, please do not loose heart if this episode comes across as being too hard a nut to crack at first reading. Continue with the reading group once you finish reading Ulysses first time. Everything becomes so much more enjoyable and beautiful the second time over!