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)

Online reading, Thursday, 29 April 2021 (11.1155)

The last reading stopped at: “Rrr.” (11.1155)

Online reading, Thursday, 22 April 2021 (11.899)

The reading stopped at ". . . Dolphin's Barn Lane Dublin." (11.899)

Summary:

Listening to the song, When first I saw that form endearing . . , coming from the bar, Richie Goulding recognizes his brother-in-law's voice. The strained relationship between the two does not lessen his appreciation for Simon Dedalus's voice. Bloom asks Pat, the waiter, to set ajar the door of the bar (11.670). They all listen, are moved by the words, by the singing. As he plays with an elastic band he has been carrying in his pocket, Bloom mulls over tenors, Boylan’s visit to Molly and about the life of Simon Dedalus. 

When he realizes that the song he is listening to is from the opera, Martha, Bloom thinks of Martha Clifford and the letter he got that morning from her.

Simon Dedalus's voice soars, and he is for them Lionel, the hero of the opera and to Bloom he has become Siopold (11.752): Simon + Lionel + Leopold (Bloom). Richie Goulding remembers his listening to Simon Dedalus singing ‘Twas rank and fame, an aria from the opera, The Rose of Castile, by Michael Balfe. Goulding’s comment that this is the grandest number in the whole opera (11.828), starts off Bloom's thoughts on numbers (Numbers it is. All music when you come to think (11.830).) 

Not only Bloom and Richie Goulding but all the others present at that time in the Ormond Hotel listen to, appreciate and applaud Simon Dedalus's singing. The thirsty ones continue to drink. Bronze and gold continue to replenish the tankards. A little bit of flirting goes on. An extension of this harmless flirting is carried on to the dining room with Bloom's asking Pat for a pen and ink to write a reply to Martha. Of course he does not want to let Richie know what he is doing. So Bloom pretends that he is writing a business letter to the newspaper, Freeman's Journal.

Online reading on Thursday, 15 April 2021 (11.662)

The last reading stopped at: “pinnacles of gold.” (11.662)

Summary:

In the Ormond hotel saloon, Simon Dedalus and Father Cowley are with Ben Dollard, who is playing the piano. The three are also reminiscing about a past incidence at which Goodwin, a piano teacher, was playing the piano not so well and how Ben Dollard had to borrow a pair of trousers, albeit a pair too tight, from Bloom. (When they were living in Holles Street, Molly and Bloom collected and sold secondhand clothes and theatrical costumes.) Their talk moves to Molly, her looks, her parentage.

Bloom and Richie Goulding are having their dinner in the restaurant. Dinners fit for princes (11.523). While having dinner, Bloom's thoughts turn to Molly and to his conversation with her that morning. By sheer coincidence (or did he hear the music from the saloon and recognize the voices?) Bloom is also thinking of the night when he and Molly lent Dollard a dress suit for the concert. Thoughts of Molly make Bloom remember again the day the two had spent on the Howth. There is a very nice sentence here: We are their harps. I. He. Old. Young (11.582). Is Bloom thinking of how women (like Molly) play with men (like himself/old and like Boylan/young)?

More customers enter the Ormond bar. Urged by his friends to sing, Simon Dedalus declines at first. As they are discussing about the music, Boylan is jaunting jingly; Bloom and Goulding are having dinner. 

 (Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)

Online reading on Thursday, 8 April 2021 (11.465)

The last reading stopped at: “eau de Nil.” (11.465) 

Summary:

We should read this episode with much thought and care if we want to decipher and understand what Joyce is telling us here. It is similar to listening to a symphony and being able to pick out individual instruments, individual leitmotivs. An example is the following sentence: two sheets cream vellum paper one reserve two envelopes when I was in Wisdom Hely's wise Bloom in Daly's Henry Flower bought (11.295). This single sentence is composed of Bloom's interior monologue (when I was in Wisdom Hely's), of description of what Bloom is currently doing (he is buying two sheets cream vellum paper . . . two envelopes . . . in Daly's) and of echoes from earlier episodes (Henry Flower, Hely's).

On these pages, we first meet Lenehan who comes into the bar of the Ormond hotel looking for Boylan. But Lenehan is too small a fish to fry in the eyes of the two barmaids. The more he tries to get their attention, the cooler becomes their reaction. Failing with his overtures addressed to the sirens, he turns to Simon Dedalus, telling him about Stephen and their meeting MacHugh and O’Madden Burke in the newspaper office early that day. Even Simon Dedalus does not pay much attention to Lenehan, and moves to the saloon door, where there is a piano, recently tuned by a blind tuner, probably the same blind stripling we had met earlier in episodes 8 and 10. Meanwhile, Bloom crossing the bridge of Essex, remembers the letter he had received that morning from Martha, and decides to buy some writing paper to send a reply. Boylan also comes to the Ormond bar. At this point of the episode, Joyce has introduced a great mixture of interior monologue (mostly Bloom's) with what is actually happening (mostly with Boylan). Bloom, wanting to hide from Boylan, follows Richie Goulding into the dining room of the Ormond. They are served by Pat, a deaf (bothered) waiter. Bloom's caring character is revealed here in a few words. Though at first undecided, not wanting to make him walk twice (11.445), he orders a bottle of cider (11.447).

Online reading on Thursday, 1 April 2021 (11.224)

The reading stopped at "None nought said nothing. Yes."(11.224)

Summary:

Joyce not only gave the name Sirens to the 11th episode of Ulysses but also defined music as its art. Music is present here in various forms; not just in the terminology, songs, arie, references to musical instruments, choice of verbs used but equally prominently in the structure of the episode. There are fragments of sentences that resemble fragments of musical motives, leitmotivs. (Example: Imperthnthn thnthnthn (11.2).) Music also connects Joyce’s Ulysses to Homer’s Odyssey.

The previous episode ended with a recapitulating of the 'rocks' we had encountered wandering around Dublin. This episode starts, on the other hand,  with 63 fragments of sentences. This part, serving as the introduction to the episode, is like the overture of a musical composition introducing leitmotivs that reoccur. It is fun to recognise them as one gets further into the episode.

The ‘concert hall’ is the bar of the Ormond hotel. The ‘concert’ begins at 4 pm. From the streets of Dublin encountered in Wandering Rocks, the previous episode, we have moved to the inside of the bar of the Ormond hotel. The major musicians here are the two barmaids - bronze-haired, Ms. Douce and gold-headed, Ms. Kennedy -, Lenehan, Boylan, Simon Dedalus, Father Cowley, Ben Dollard, and of course our Bloom!

 (Excerpted from Ulysses for the Uninitiated)