Tuesday, 25 February 2020 (6.241)

The last reading stopped at: “expresses that.” (6.241)


Episode 6, Hades
Summary:

It is finally time to leave for Patrick Dignam's funeral. Bloom enters the creaking carriage that was to take him, Martin Cunningham, Mr Power and Mr Dedalus. There are many hints in this episode to underline the fact that Bloom is an outsider in the Dublin society.
They all attempt to make conversation during the ride to the Prospect cemetery. But whatever Bloom says does not seem to interest the others. There is also little seriousness in the carriage. For instance, Mr Dedalus gets quite angry just by being told that his son and heir was passing by because he imagines his son, Stephen, in the company of Buck Mulligan, whom he refers to as a contaminated bloody double dyed ruffian by all accounts. Bloom, who witnesses this outburst, feels that he understands the feeling of the father as he himself had a son Rudy, who unfortunately lived only for a few days. The thought of his death makes Bloom think of the moment of conception of his son. Must have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window watching the two dogs at it by the wall of the cease to do evil.
Just when Bloom thinks, he's coming in the afternoon, the others see and greet Blazes Boylan whom they pass. This leads to Mr Power enquiring Bloom about madame and the coming concert tour. They talk about the singers (Louis Werner, J. C. Doyle, John MacCormack) who are to participate in the tour.

(Summarized from the book, Ulysses for the Uninitiated.)

Tuesday, 18 February 2020 (5.542)

The last reading stopped at: “God speed scut.” (5.542)


After getting rid of M'Coy, Bloom moves on, and comes near the open backdoor of All Hallows and enters the church. (All Hallows aka St. Andrew's is a Roman Catholic church on Westland Row.) The paragraphs that follow describing Bloom's observing the rituals which are being conducted involving members of a sodality, and his reactions to what he sees are some of the most hilarious paragraphs in Ulysses.

When the mass is finished, Bloom decides to leave before a person comes around with the collection plate. Outside, noticing that there is still enough time before Dignam's funeral starts, Bloom decides to go to the pharmacy, Sweny's in Lincoln place to get a lotion Molly wants. As he had not bought a bottle with him, Bloom tells the pharmacist to make up the recipe and that he will collect it later in the day. 

As he comes out, he hears the voice of Bantam Lyons hailing him. Lyons wants to have a look at the newspaper Bloom is carrying. When Bloom tells him to keep the newspaper as he was going to throw it away that moment, Bantam Lyons leers, thrusts the newspaper back at Bloom and rushes off. Bloom does not understand his behaviour. Neither do we at this moment. But it will help not to forget this incidence.

Bloom walks with his soap to the baths around the corner from Lincoln Place. 

(Summarized from the book, Ulysses for the Uninitiated.)

Tuesday, 11 February 2020 (5.287)

The last reading stopped at: “To keep it up.” (5.287)

Summary:

Mr Bloom leaves his house. He is to attend Patty Dignam's funeral at quarter to (4.549) that morning which means that he has enough time to do other things before going to the funeral. Sauntering along, he passes John Rogerson's quay, Windmill Lane, Lime street, Westland row etc., sees shops such as the Belfast and Oriental Tea Company (5.19) and meets/sees people - for example, the boy and the girl near Brady's cottages (5.5).
He goes into a post office and produces a card on which his name is given as Henry Flower (5.62) and gets a letter waiting for him. Before he could open it outside the post office, M'Coy hails him. Bloom has no interest in stopping and exchanging small talk with M'Coy but cannot get rid of him. As M'Coy stays on to chat, Bloom's attention is distracted by two people waiting near an outsider (a two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage) drawn up before the door of the Grosvenor (5.98) hotel. While Bloom is busy observing and admiring the rich silk stockings (5.122) of the woman and wondering from which side she will get into the carriage, M'Coy continues to talk explaining how he heard of Dignam's passing away. If she would in fact get into the carriage from the side he can see, Bloom would get to see her ankles as she would have to lift her skirt up to get into the carriage! But that does not happen as a heavy tramcar (5.131) goes by blocking his view just as she gets into the carriage! M'Coy finally moves away after telling Bloom, "My missus has just got an engagement. At least it's not settled yet" (5.148) and asking him to put down his name at Patty Dignam's funeral if he is not there because the drowning case at Sandycove may turn up (5.171). We had heard of the drowning case in episode 1.
Bloom is finally left in peace. He strolls towards Brunswick street. His eyes wander over the multicoloured hoardings (5.192) at the corner of Westland Row and Great Brunswick street. One of them is the playbill of the play Leah with Mrs Bandmann Palmer. (Mrs Bandmann Palmer (1845-1926) was a famous English actress.) Bloom recollects that she had played Hamlet the previous night. That a woman had played Hamlet, makes him wonder at first whether Hamlet was a woman. (Perhaps he was a woman. (5.196)) This thought leads to the next whether that was the reason that Ophelia committed suicide. Thinking of 'suicide' naturally makes Bloom remember his father, who had committed suicide.
Walking on, Bloom comes to a secluded spot near the Westland Row railway station, where he opens the letter he had collected earlier at the post office. The letter addressed to Henry Flower by Martha has a flower pinned to it. Now it is clear that Bloom is carrying on an affair under the assumed name of Henry Flower with Martha, whom he is yet to meet! Could meet one Sunday after the rosary (5.270). The pin which Martha has used brings back to his memory a song he had once heard, O, Mairy lost the pin of her drawers. . . (5.281)

Tuesday, 4 February 2020 (end of episode 4)

The reading group has now reached the end episode 4 (“Calypso”).


Summary:
He steps out after just pulling the door after him, without locking it. In the sunny morning, he walks in happy warmth, imagining some other place where it would be early morning as described in one of his books, in the track of the sun depicting a sunburst on the title page, then of the headpiece over the Freeman (a newspaper) leader of the homerule sun rising up in the northwest (4.103).
At the butcher's, he has to wait as the nextdoor girl gets served first. When it is his turn, Bloom wants to buy what he wants quickly so that he can catch up and walk behind her . . . , behind her moving hams (4.171). But outside, there is no sign of her. She is gone. Walking back along Dorset street, he reads the flyer of Agendath Netaim, planters' company, whose offices are at Bleibtreustrasse 34, Berlin, W.15. (4.190)
Back at home, Bloom finds that two letters and a card had come by post. One of the letters if from his daughter, Milly. The other letter is addressed to Mrs Marion Bloom (4.244). Taking up the breakfast tray to Molly,  who is still in bed, Bloom gives her the letter, and finds out that it is from Boylan, who will be bringing the programme (4.312). They are going to sing La ci darem and Love's Old Sweet Song (4.314). As Molly sips her tea, Bloom tries to explain to her the meaning of the word, metempsychosis (4.341) that she had found in the book she has been reading.
In the kitchen, he reads again Milly's letter, has his breakfast, feels a gentle loosening of his bowels (4.460). He goes to the toilet at the back of the garden, sits asquat on the cuckstool (4.500) and reads the story, Matcham's Masterstroke (4.502), by Mr Philip Beaufoy published in an old number of Titbits (4.467) he has taken with him. With the thought that he himself might manage a sketch (4.518), Bloom [tears] away half the prize story sharply and [wipes] himself with it (4.537), pulls up his pants and [comes] forth from the gloom into the air (4.539) as the bells of George's church (4.544) toll Heigho! Heigho! (4.506) . . .

Tuesday, 21 January 2020 (4.76)

The last reading stopped at: “back anyhow” (4.76)


Summary of the beginning of episode 4:

We meet Mr Bloom for the first time in this episode. It is 8 am. Bloom is in his kitchen preparing breakfast. He is also putting her breakfast things on the humpy tray (4.7).
In the very first paragraph we come to know about the kind of food he relishes. (Most of all he like[s] grilled mutton kidneys which [give] to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine; 4.3). A cat is keeping his company, mewing Mkgnao, Mrkgnao, and then Mrkrgnao, asking for milk in the cat's language! After pouring some milk in a saucer for the cat, and watching her shining whiskers as she licks, and wondering whether the whiskers are a kind of feelers, Bloom moves his attention to the breakfast tray he is preparing.
He knows that she [doesn't] like her plate full (4.11). Deciding against ham and eggs, he decides to walk to the butcher, Dlugacz, to buy pork kidney. He calls out softly by the bedroom door whether she wants anything for breakfast. He hears a 'Mn' in answer, and the jingling of the loose brass quoits of the bedstead (4.59).
He picks up his hat from the peg, the crown of which carries the legend, Plato's high grade ha (4.69). Obviously the sweat has erased the last letter of the word 'hat'! After making sure that a white slip of paper (4.70) was still quite safe (4.71) inside the leather headband of the hat, Bloom steps out of the house after just pulling the door close without locking it, as he does not find the latchkey in his pocket. 

Summary of the end of episode 3:

The tide comes in. The water reminds Stephen of the drowned man he had heard about that morning. He pictures to himself how the corpse [rises] saltwhite from the undertow, bobbling a pace a pace a porpoise landward (3.472). Imagining how a quiver of minnows (3.476) will be swimming around the corpse, Stephen tells himself God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain (3.477). In this one sentence God, Jesus, the Featherbed Mountain south of Dublin are brought together explaining the name Proteus, Joyce gave to this episode. 

Still thoughts of Mulligan are not far from Stephen's mind. He searches for the handkerchief Mulligan had taken that morning to wipe his razor blade. Not finding it, Stephen places the snot he had picked from his nostril on a rock, and gets ready to move. Because all days make their end. By the way . . . Tuesday will be the longest day*** (3.490).

Tuesday, 14 January 2020 (3.408)

The last reading stopped at: “library counter” (3.408)

Summary:

Paris, Rodot's (a patisserie), Kevin Egan sipping his green fairy (absinthe), having food, their conversation, his words ("You're your father's son", 3.229), Irish history, his own thoughts that they have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them (3.263) - all these pictures tumble around in Stephen's mind. Without his realising it, Stephen [has] come nearer the edge of the sea and wet sand [slaps] his boots, (3.265). He turns back, climbs over sedge and sits on a stool of rock(3.284). He sees a dog's carcass, a real dog running across the sweep of sand (3.294), then two people walking towards the shore. (Just as Joyce was, Stephen is also scared of dogs but he decides to sit tight.) This sight triggers in his mind pictures of the Norwegian invaders (Lochlanns), of Dubliners running to the strand to hack the green blubbery whalemeat (3.305) in what would have been a time of famine in Ireland . . . Similarly the dog's bark running towards him (3.310) makes him aware of his fear of dogs, when he (Mulligan) saved men from drowning (3.317) and then the thought of the drowned man takes his mind back to his mother's death (I could not save her; 3.329).

The two people Stephen sees walking shoreward are a woman and a man (3.331). The dog is their's. As the dog suddenly runs off, the man whistles calling the dog back.  The two are cocklepickers (cocklers gather shellfish (cockles) from the sand at low tide; Oxford Reference Dictionary). They wade into the water, dip their bags in, before lifting them again and wading out.

Stephen is sitting on a stool of rock watching the cocklepickers and their dog. (Joyce's description of their actions and of the dog's (running around, sniffing the carcass, etc., are very picturesque.) His mind is busy with thoughts. Biblical episodes, words from the Bible, from Aristotle, from Oscar Wilde, from Yeats, from Ibsen, from Shakespeare and others are swirling around in his mind. Watching the two people walking on the clammy sand, with the woman following the man, Stephen fantasises about the two, about how her fancyman* [treats] two Royal Dblins in O'Loughlinis of Blackpitts**. These thoughts lead to Adam and Eve and their being banished from the Garden of Eden,  followed by the sun's flaming sword (3.391).

Amidst all these thoughts, Stephen tries to jot down a poem he has been composing. Not having any paper at hand -  he had forgotten to take slips from the library counter (3.408) - , he tears of a piece from the letter Mr. Deasy had given him to get published in a newspaper.

Tuesday, 7 January 2020 (3.215)

The last reading stopped at: “conquistadores.” (3.215)

Summary:

After leaving the school, Stephen goes for a walk along the Sandymount Strand. His mind is full of philosophical thoughts, of ideas (for example, on the form and colour of substances) he has read from philosophers such as Jakob Böhme, Aristotle, Dante Alighieri, . . . He recalls Dante's referring to Aristotle in his Divine Comedy as maestro di color che sanno (3.6) that means master of those who know.

Thinking of Aristotle's theory of vision, of bodies and their forms, colours, Stephen closes his eyes and walks a few steps on the Sandymount Strand. He is aware that he is keeping steps one after the other (Nacheinander, 3.13). He is also aware that he is wearing borrowed pants and shoes, giveaways from Mulligan. (My two feet in his boots are at the ends of his legs, 3. 16). He opens his eyes and sees that everything around him is still there, his thoughts echoing Gloria Patri (There all the time without you: and ever shall be. world without end, 3.27).
Stephen sees two women coming down the steps of Leahy's terrace. He imagines that there is a navelcord in the midwife's bag, one of them is carrying. Stephen thinks of navelcords going back to the first of its kind. Could he use it to connect to Edenville (the place of Adam and Eve) by giving the operator the number as aleph, alpha, nought, nought, one (3.39)? There is much of Biblical thinking in this thought, and the ones that follow.
Soon he is close to his aunt Sara's place. Should he go visit her? What would be the reaction of his father if he hears of the visit? Aunt Sara is not rich. Uncle Richie is a clerk. He drafts bills of costs for Goff and Tandy (3.80). It is a far cry from Stephen's boasting that one of his uncles was a judge and an uncle a general in the army (3.106). Houses of decay, mine, his and all(3.105). This awareness of poverty make Stephan recall his dreams when he was young: Books you were going to write with letters for titles (3.139) . . .  Someone was to read them there after a few thousand years, a mahamanvantara (3. 143). 

Immersed in his own thoughts while walking on Sandymount Strand, Stephen, realises that the grainy sand had gone from under his feet (3.147). The strand there is highly polluted, smelling of sewage. When he understands that he had passed the way to his aunt's house, Stephen turns and walks towards the Pigeonhouse (a power station). The name makes him think of not only the book La Vie de Jesus by M. Leo Taxil (3.167) in which Joseph asks Mary who put her in that state, and gets the answer, "It was the pigeon, Joseph" (3.162) - after all according to the Ballad of the Joking Jesus, his father was a bird - , but also of Kevin Egan and his son, Patrice as well as of his own days in Paris. Stephen recalls his returning from Paris after getting a telegram from his father that said, Nother dying come home father (3.199). This thought inevitably leads to memories again of his mother's death.