Tuesday, 19 July 2016, Pages 755 - 766, Eumaeus, Episode 16

We stopped at "I'll just pay this lot." (Penguin 766.26), (Gabler 16.1646)

The Irish Nationalist politician, Charles Stewart Parnell (1846 - 1891), has been the topic of conversation at this late hour in the cabman's shelter.

 

(Photographs of the Parnell Monument (left), with details (right) taken on 3 June 2015 during the Joyceans' trip to Dublin)

Skin-the Goat's comment that the husband of Katherine O'Shea (who had a long affair with Parnell & married him later),  was a cottonball one, makes Bloom think of that scandal, of the court case, and how finally it brought Parnell down. The evidence produced in the court during the divorce case filed by the husband was the affectionate letters that passed between them. (Bloom used the name, Henry Flower, for his correspondence with Martha.) He also muses about the eternal question of the life connubial... Can real love, supposing there happens to be another chap in the case, exist between married folk? There is obviously another chap in his own marriage. Bloom is doing his utmost to suppress thoughts about this chap. Bloom makes a wrong remark that Katherine O'Shea was Spanish or half so. Like Molly. Types that wouldn't do things by halves. As is typical of him, Stephen murmurs something only he understands about The king of Spain's daughter, Spanish onions, etc. Mistaking that Stephen means that O'Shea was the king of Spain's daughter, Bloom is astonished, admiting that he had not heard that rumour before. He removes a faded photo of Molly from the book, Sweets of Sin, he has in his pocket, and shows it to Stephen.

Bloom tells Stephen: (that the photo is of)  'Mrs. Bloom, my wife the Prima donna...', that she appeared in public as a singer when she was barely sweet sixteen, (listen to the song, When you were sweet sixteen, by James Thornton, sung by Perry Como here), that no photo could reproduce a person like marble could. He had seen that very afternoon those Grecian statues, perfectly developed. Thoughts of Molly, makes Bloom ask himself, suppose she was gone when he (i.e., when he was gone??), and reminds him of the line, I looked for the lamp which she told me, from Thomas Moore's song, The Song of O'Ruark. (This line also reminded me of Charles Dickens's novel, David Copperfield, in which the fisherman, Mr. Peggotty used to leave a candle lit in the window. He explains to David Copperfield: '... it's for our little Em'ly. You see, the path ain't over light or cheerful after dark; and when I'm here at the hour as she's a common' home, I puts the light in the winder...' When Emily elopes with David Copperfield's friend, Steerforth, Mr. Peggotty goes in search of his young niece. During that time too, he makes sure that every evening a candle is kept lit in the window, so that Emily knows that the house is waiting for her. )

Parnell is still in Bloom's mind. He remembers how he had once picked up Parnell's silk hat that had been knocked off in the crowd, and had handed it back. Parnell had thanked Bloom with perfect Aplomb, saying: 'Thank you, sir. Parnell's behavior as Bloom remembered it contrasted with another incident regarding a hat that morning. To be fair, Bloom does not clearly recall whether Parnell had just said, 'Thank you' or 'Thank you, sir.' 

Bloom's thoughts wander back to Stephen. It was getting on for one. Bloom wonders when Stephen had eaten last, where he will sleep that night, whether he should take him home. Not being sure of how to invite Stephen to go with him, Bloom formulates his invitation in many ways in his mind. He has also not forgotten how Molly was angry with him when once he had brought home a dog (breed unknown). After mature reflection, Bloom tells Stephen, 'As it's rather stuffy here you just come home with me and talk things over.... Do you like cocoa? Wait, I'll just pay this lot.'

On these pages, Joyce makes use liberal use of metaphors (cooked his matrimonial goose, ass's kick, upsetting the applecart, their idol had feet of clay, placing him upon a pedestal... ). Some of them misplaced, though, in keeping with the over all nature of the episode, in which one is never sure of what is true, what is not. 

Tuesdays, 28 June, 5 & 12th July 2016, Pages 729 - 755, Eumaeus, Episode 16

As I could not attend the reading on three successive Tuesdays, I could not post anything on what was read.
But, I am glad to say that this blog was started with this episode in September 2013. In other words, but for some gaps, these blogposts on Joyce's Ulysses have come a full circle. Links below will help to catch up on what happens on pages 729 to 753.

Pages 729 - 737
Pages 737 - 745
Pages 745 - 753

Tuesday, 7 June 2016, Pages 719 - 728, Eumaeus, Episode 16

Note: There will be no reading on next Tuesday, the 14th of June 2016.

Today we stopped at "... not to say stormy, weather." (Penguin 728.16), (Gabler 16.652)

The location is still the cabman's shelter. Bloom and Stephan are being told a tale by W. B. Murphy, a sailor, whose ship docked just that morning eleven o'clock. As he mentions his own true wife, whom he has not seen for seven years now, Bloom pictures to himself the sailor's homecoming. Like Bloom and Stephan, the sailor is on his way home but none of these is really hurrying to reach their homes!

Making an interruption to borrow a spare chaw (tobacco, obviously used already), the sailor produces a not very clean looking folded document on which his discharge is recorded, lists the countries he has sailed to, the queer things he has witnessed - seen a crocodile bite the fluke of an anchor, man-eaters in Peru that eats corpses and livers of horses - finally producing in proof a picture postcard his friend had sent him, on which was printed: Choza de indios. Beni, bolivia. (According to Griffith, no cannibal tribes have been identified among the tribes of Peru; 16.470). Bloom also looks at the card. Noticing that it was addressed to a señor a boudin, and not to Murphy, he wonders about the sailor's Bona fides.

Who then is Boudin? Fritz Senn explained it thus: 'This incidence shows an interesting parallel between Joyce's Ulysses an Homer's Odysseus. Boudin in French means blood sausage. In Homer's Odysseus, when Odysseus returns home and finds it full of suitors, he spent that night in his bed tossing and turning like a blood sausage!'

In what Fritz Senn says is a typical example of interior monologue, Bloom thinks of his long cherished plan one day to travel to London, ... of seeing different places along the route, Plymouth, Falmouth ..., of going to prominent pleasure resorts such as Margate. Another thing that just then struck him was the idea of arranging a concert tour of summer music ... with an all star Irish cast (the e at the end will not make sense!)... of the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company...

As Bloom's fancy gallops, the sailor continues with the narration of all that he has seen. Saying, for instance, that he had seen a man killed in Trieste by an Italian chap, he produces a dangerouslooking claspknife. Upon his pronouncing that they thought the park (Phoenix) murders of the invincibles was done by foreigners on account of them using knives Bloom and Stephen exchange meaning glances. The silence that results (the sailor - after all ignorance is bliss - would not have been aware of the rumour that the keeper of the cabman shelter was skin-the-goat Fitzharris, the invincible) is interrupted by Bloom, who asks the sailor, whether he had seen the rock of Gibraltar. The answer, 'I'm tired of all them rocks in the sea...' makes one wonder again whether all that talk of the sailor was just hot air. Further prodding by Bloom has no effect on the sailor, and Bloom falls back into his revery.

Note that Stephen has not said a single word on these pages. Note also that Joyce has scattered many a song/poem in Bloom's interior monologue. Links to these are given below:
'For england, home and beauty' from the song, The Death of Nelson, by S. J. Arnold 

'... Alice Ben Bolt...' from the song, Ben Bolt, by Thomas Dunn English and Nelson Kneass 

'Enoch Arden' from the narrative poem, Enoch Arden, by Alfred Tennyson 

'... does anybody hereabouts remember Caoc O'Leary' from the ballad, Caoch the Piper, by John Keegan 

'... rocked in the cradle of the deep' from the song of the same name by Emma Willard

'... farther away from the madding crowd..' from the poem, 'Elegy written in a Country Churchyard' by Thomas Gray

'... spring when young man's fancy, ...' from the poem, Locksley Hall, by Alfred Tennyson

'... where ignorance is bliss...' from the poem, 'Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College, by Thomas Gray

'... dreaming of fresh woods and pastures new...' from the poem, Lycidas, by John Milton

Tuesday, 31 May 2016, Pages 711 - 719, Eumaeus, Episode 16

We read as far as "... sailing about." (Penguin 719.21), (Gabler 16.421)

Bloom is on his way home. It is 1 am. Bloom is taking Stephen along as he had apparently witnessed what had occurred at the Westland Row station, when Mulligan and that English tourist friend of his (Heines) had euchred their third companion (Stephen), leaving him with no place to go to at that late hour. Walking to Sandycove was out of the question at that time. On the way to the cabman's shelter, where they might hit upon some drinkables in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral to satisfy Stephen's thirst, Corley, aka Lord John Corley, appears singing a litany of poverty.

On getting a halfcrown coin by Stephen, Corley thanks him, saying. "You're a gentleman". This is in contrast to what Mulligan had told Stephen that - rather the previous - morning: "He (Heines) thinks you're not a gentleman" (Penguin, p.2). Corley moves off but not before asking Stephen to put in a word about a possible job (even as a sandwichman) to his 'friend', whom he had seen a few times in the Bleeding Horse with Boylan. Whether Bloom would frequent such a pub, that Gifford mentions as being somewhat outside of Bloom's geographical patterns and rather low on the social scale, (Gifford 16.198) is anybody's guess. That too in the company of Boylan.

We have here another example that, as Fritz Senn stresses upon, is typical of this episode in which it is often difficult to say what is true and what is not. The grandiloquent style used by Joyce in this episode comes home in the manner in which Joyce describes what Bloom, standing in the background, thinks of Corley and Gumley. (Mr Bloom in the meanwhile kept dodging about in the vicinity.... /Penguin 711. 34). In fact the pages we read today are teeming with similar examples.

Bloom continues to try making a conversation with Stephen, often resorting to French words, often in a style that is supposed to match Stephen's intellectual way of thinking and discoursing. These attempts end up being real Bloomean! For instance, Bloom's observation, "Everyone according to his needs or everyone according to his deed", is in fact his version of the saying by Karl Marx. At the same time, he is still the caring elder when he asks Stephen, "... why did you leave your father's house?"  Stephen's answer, "To seek misfortune..." is met with diplomacy by the older man. He also warns Stephen not to repose much trust in that boon companion of his. To this there is no response forthcoming from Stephen, whose thoughts, triggered by Bloom's comments on his father, are occupied by his family.

The cabman's shelter near Butt Bridge. Source: Wikipedia

Eventually the two reach the cabman's shelter near Butt Bridge. Close by, near a men's public urinal, a group of Italians are heatedly arguing. (The translation of the argument as given by Gifford (16.314) is reproduced below.*). As they enter, Bloom whispers to Stephen that the owner of this unpretentious wooden structure is none other than the once famous Skin-the-Goat Fitzharris, the invincible, though he could not vouch for its truth. The argument going on outside continues. Bloom is impressed by the musicality of the language but his attempts to say few words in Italian fail. Stephen, who understands Italian, tells him that the argument was over money. 'Sounds are impostures,' he continues, '... like names.' Stephen's mentioning 'Murphy' as one of the names he recites, brings into the conversation a sailor, one of the many hoi polloi, who had taken shelter in the cabman's shelter. 

When Stephen, unheeding Bloom's warning pressure on his boot, says that his name is Dedalus, the sailor, W. B. Murphy, of Carrigaloe, starts off recounting how he had met Simon Dedalus, who toured the wide world with Hengler's Royal Circus, whom he had seen shoot two eggs of two bottles at fifty yards over his shoulder. Another evidence for what Fritz Senn had said earlier in the evening: 'It is often difficult in this episode to say what is true and what is not.'

* "Whore of a Blessed Virgin, he must give us the money! Aren't I right? Busted asshole! Let's get this clear. Half a sovereign more... So that's what he says, however! Half. Blackguard! His filthy dead (ancestors)! But listen! Five  more per person..." 

Tuesday, 17 May 2016, Pages 704 - 711, Eumaeus, Episode 16

IMPORTANT: There will be no reading of Ulysses on Tuesday, the 26th of May due to the general body meeting of the Friends of the Zürich James Joyce Foundation starting at 18.30h.

We are in a new episode, Eumaeus, Fritz Senn's favorite episode. Stopped our reading with the sentence, "Stephen anyhow lent him one of them." (Penguin 711.15), (Gabler 16.196)

Eumaeus is the first episode of the last book (consisting of 3 episodes) of Joyce's Ulysses. It is also the first of the three homecoming episodes. As Eumaeus is faithful to Odysseus, Bloom is faithful to Stephen.

(Painting by Bonaventura Gemelli)

After having rescued Stephen from the soldiers and the police, Bloom is taking him home. It is 1 am. Both are tired after a very loooong day. Stephen has been quite drunk, and is slowly sobering up. Bloom is not really drunk but is obviously exhausted.

What an unexpected change in style awaits us in this episode! If the two preceding episodes - Oxen of the Sun and Circe - felt like a ferocious thunderstorm in monsoon, this one feels, at first, like a gently flowing, calm stream. At first I felt almost betrayed by the absence of fireworks in the style and language. It was so non-Joycean! But soon Joyce's new technique becomes obvious. He uses lots of cliches, many idioms and proverbs, writes long-winded sentences, takes us on a literary ride in which he demonstrates how to write something that in a way is somewhat pompous, quite a bit rambling. In his scheme, Joyce describes the technique he uses here as 'narrative (old)'. Contentwise not much happens.

For instance, the first page of the episode tells us about Bloom, rather Mr Bloom, cleaning up Stephen a bit, handing him his hat and walking stick. Both walk homewards. Stephen would like to drink something. As there was no water pump in the vicinity, Bloom suggests that they go by the cabman's shelter, where they might get something to drink in the shape of a milk and soda or a mineral. As they are both tired, Bloom thinks of getting a vehicle, provided one is available. The remaining pages we read today recount them continuing on foot, but by the time we stopped the reading after 7 pages, they still had not reached the cabman's shelter, which should have been hardly a stonesthrow away. It is not that they are rambling. It is the language that does.

The happenings on the way scores the difference in the characters of the two men. As they pass Baird's stonecutting works, Stephen thinks of Ibsen (an echo of A Portrait of he Artist as a Young Man), whereas Bloom is busy enjoying the smell of freshly baked bread at James Rourke's city bakery. Bloom talks and talks, trying to make Stephen aware of the dangers of nighttown, consequences of drinking ('You frittered away your time, he very sensibly maintained, and health and also character besides which,...), and of being friends with those who deserted him. Bloom admits that he himself relished a glass of choice old wine in season ... still never beyond a certain point.  Stephen though is silent. 

There are these and much more to discover on these pages. The first sentence - 'Preparatory to anything else Mr Bloom brushed off the greater bulk of the shavings ... and bucked him up...' reminds us of the beginning of the novel, which starts with Buck Mulligan coming up the stairhead with a bowl of lather, a mirror, a razor, and a brush to shave. 

Tuesday, 10 May 2016, Pages 697 - 703, Circe, Episode 15

Today we completed the Circe episode, which we had started reading on 12 January 2016, which also means that we completed book II of Ulysses! To put it extremely mildly, it has been an interesting, although at times pretty bewildering, literary journey.

Last week, we had left Stephan lying prone - but with his face to the sky - after being struck in the face by Private Carr. Private Compton tugs his comrade, saying 'There's the cops!'

We are now back in reality. Well, at least till the very end. Two policemen arrive at the scene, wanting to know what has been happening. Some bystanders have assembled. A man, bending down to look at Stephen, announces that he has fainted, but he'll come to all right. Bloom gets angry - for the second time on this memorable  day - at Private Carr, who he says, struck Stephen without provocation. As the police wants to note down name and address of Stephen, a car (a hackney) arrives with Corny Kelleher. (He works for the undertaker, O'Neill, and had arranged Dignam's burial that morning.)

It was said that Kelleher was a tout (informer) of the police. Perhaps that is why Bloom is happy to see him now. Earlier Bloom had turned his face away when the car with Kelleher and two lechers (was Boylan one of them?) had come to a stop at the door of the brothel, just as Bloom was hurrying out to go after Stephen. Kelleher manages to send off the police. The bystanders also disperse slowly.

Bloom and Kelleher try to explain to each other why each was in the nighttown. Kelleher had left those two lechers at the brothel, and had got off his car, when he saw the crowd, to see what was happening. Bloom was visiting an old friend, and was going home by Gardiner street...  Even the horse wants to go hohohohome. On hearing that Stephen lives in Sandycove, Kelleher quickly gives up the idea of giving him a lift, and leaves. The car jingles tooraloom round the corner of the tooraloom lane. (Tooraloom is a song associated with Corny Kelleher. He was singing it earlier in episode 5. It is a take on the song, 'I vowed that I never would leave her' by Arthur Lloyd.)

Things are quietening 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 (episode 1), vampire (episode 3), and singing words of the poem, 'Who goes with Fergus' by W. B. Yeats (episode 1)

(The black panther in the kitchen of Martello Tower, now James Joyce Tower and Museum,  Sandycove, Dublin)

Bloom, on hearing the words, Fergus, shadows, woods, white breast ..., thinks that Stephen is thinking of a girl named Ferguson! Best thing could happen him. For some unexplained reason, Bloom murmurs the oath of the Freemasons initiation into the lodge. (The original oath is midway on this website.)

Suddenly we are back in fantasy. Against the dark wall the figure of a fairy boy of eleven appears, 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 (Penguin, p. 110).  Gifford (15.4965-66) explains that in the language of gems, the diamond has the power of making men courageous and magnanimous and of protecting them from evil spirits. The 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. 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 Odysseus 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 deals with what happens to this father - son duo.

On December 20, 1920, after having rewritten the episode from start to finish six or seven or eight or nine times (the count varied), Joyce pronounced that the episode, Circe, is done. (Ellmann, p. 497).  Ellmann writes: 'The Homeric story delighted him, especially the Circean transformation.... There were considerable difficulties to be resolved in portraying the suppressed desires of Bloom and Stephen in vaudeville form, psychoanalysis turned into a vehicle of comedy.' (p. 495). It is anybody's guess whether Joyce indeed succeed in his endeavor! (I for one will miss this episode!)

Tuesday, 3 May 2016, Pages 690 - 697, Circe, Episode 15

We stopped at "There's the cops!" (Penguin 697.29), (Gabler 15.4770)

Bloom has hurried out of the brothel after throwing a shilling on the table towards repairing the chandelier that Stephen had damaged with his ashplant before fleeing out.  At the corner of Beaver street Bloom sees Stephen in altercation with two soldiers, Private Carr and Private Compton. The soldiers are angry at Stephen's comments about The King. Stephen has been saying to them: "You are my guests. Uninvited. By virtue of the fifth of George and seventh of Edward. History to blame..." (Penguin, p. 686); "But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king" (Penguin p. 688). Bloom has been trying to pacify the soldiers saying "He (Stephen) doesn't know what he's saying. Taken a little more than is good for him."

In another bout of fantasy, many characters we had met earlier appear: The Citizen (episode 12), the croppy boy (episode 11), Rumbold, demon barber ( then he was master barber, episode 12), Patrice and Kevin Egan (episode 3), Edward the Seventh and even a composite character named aptly Don Emile Patrizio Franz Rupert Pope Hennessy!

There is a lot of Irish history here on these pages. For example, the song The Citizen sings,

May the God above

Send down a dove

With teeth as sharp as razors ....

is not only a parody of a 1830 song but is also a reference to a trial of two Sinn Feiners in 1921. (More information here.) The croppy boy is, as we learnt earlier, a ballad about the 1798 Irish rising. Patrice Egan was one of the wild geese or Irish expatriates, who left Ireland as they were not willing to live under British rule. Much of what Stephen says here is seeped in Irish history. For instance, his saying, 'Green rag to a bull' (Penguin, p. 690) is a take on the popular saying red angers a bull, red being the color of Britain, green being that of Ireland. The composite character above suggests several wild geese families as also Sir John Pope Hennessy,  conservative Irish Catholic politician, an anti-Parnellite, and eighth governor of Hong Kong (Gifford 15.1914). Rumbold, referred to here as the demon barber, was the British minister to Switzerland in 1918, who had annoyed Joyce.

There are also words and phrases which would not have been seen in those days (1920s) in printed books. The reference here is of course to the swearing words, bleeding, fucker etc. Interestingly these are all said by Private Carr, a British soldier: "I'll wring the neck of any fucking bastard says a word against my bleeding fucking king" (Penguin, p. 694), "I'll do him in, so help me fucking Christ!" (Penguin, p. 696).  The graph below shows the frequency of the usage of the word, fucking, between the years 1800 and 2000. Ulysses was published in 1922!

(Those wondering whether the word was really used already around 1800s will find an interesting discussion here!)

Fantasy figures from the Irish history continue to appear. The most important of them is that of Old Gummy Granny. She, the old woman, who is Ireland itself, appears when the heads of the assembled women - Kitty, Biddy, etc - coalesce. But old Gummy Granny has all the typical attributes - toadstool, sugarloaf hat - of the Irish fairy. Stephen recognizes her. 'The old sow that eats her farrow' is an echo of The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Stephen also reacts as if she and he make up two parts of the Holy Trinity. Only the blessed third person (the church?) is missing.

The following scene, starting with 'Dublin's burning' is like the Armageddon. The black mass is conducted. Accordingly the language uttered by the damned is the inverse of that uttered by the blessed. 

Damned: 'Htengier Tnetopinmo Dog Drol Eht rof, Aiulella!'

Blessed: 'Alleluia, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth!'

Similarly Dooooooooooog is the inversion of Goooooooooood! Recall that in this episode a dog appears in various incarnations. 

Meanwhile Bloom is trying to get Stephen away. When he appeals to Lynch, Lynch goes away dragging Kitty along, prompting Stephen to compare him to Judas. Cissy Caffrey, for whose sake Private Carr has been threatening Stephen,  tries to calm the soldier down. But he rushes at Stephen, striking him in the face. A dog, a retriever starts barking. A fight starts between two women. Private Compton tries to pull away his comrade because 'There's the cops!'