The final episode in Ulysses seems more like a coda then a continuation. Then again, it is rich with the signs of a new beginning, so maybe it's better to say it feels like the beginning of a connected but different work. In either case, the novel has seemed to resolve itself by the end of Ithaca. The plotless last episode adds nothing to the story.
Femininity has been a symbol for creative acts throughout the novel, and so it also seems to read as the sort of wellspring for the book, for Bloom's quest, and maybe for the lives of all the Dubliners in the novel. The virtue of the chapter here is the remarkably ambiguous power of Molly's. One critic has compared her voice to Gerty's. Though far coarser and not nearly as hypocritical, I can see where this interpretation is coming from. Molly is not an earth mother, nor a goddess. She is a lower middle class woman who had an unhappy childhood, but who is still intent on getting something out of life.
And for Bloom, that's enough.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
A woman's hand writing
Full disclosure: I haven't finished "Ithaca" yet. Partly because I just finished a screening of a brutal little movie,"The Celebration", about incest, suicide, and family gatherings which I can't get my head around it, and partly because I want this chapter to last a little longer. Also because I'm graduating in 2 weeks.
I'll post again on this chapter, but what's stuck with me in the first 30 pages or so is an image of a woman's hand writing. It first appears in answer to the question "Were their views on some points divergent". Stephen attributes the strange day to the "reapparition of a matutinal (def: of, relating to, or occuring in the morning) cloud...at first no bigger than a woman's hand".
The hand reappears in Stephen's reaction to Bloom's viral ad campaign of having two women write in a carriage drawn through the streets, when Stephen imagines a woman's hand writing "Queen's Hotel", the hotel where Bloom's father killed himself. The image occurs again in the list of Molly's shortcomings; she leaves a pen in the ink jar after writing letters.
The image is mysterious and haunting, and finally indecipherable. There are some connections to be made: it works as a bridge to the next chapter, Molly's monologue; the letters written by Milly and Martha; and as an image of creativity, feminine (like the metaphor in "Oxen of the Sun").
But at this point in the chapter it seems mostly discrete from the motifs and themes raised previously, and more powerful because of it. There are so many lines to draw between like things in Ulysses, that at times I felt like the novel could almost be "solved", interpreted satisfactorily, like an equation. The strange image of the woman's hand cannot; it exists on its own terms.
I'll post again on this chapter, but what's stuck with me in the first 30 pages or so is an image of a woman's hand writing. It first appears in answer to the question "Were their views on some points divergent". Stephen attributes the strange day to the "reapparition of a matutinal (def: of, relating to, or occuring in the morning) cloud...at first no bigger than a woman's hand".
The hand reappears in Stephen's reaction to Bloom's viral ad campaign of having two women write in a carriage drawn through the streets, when Stephen imagines a woman's hand writing "Queen's Hotel", the hotel where Bloom's father killed himself. The image occurs again in the list of Molly's shortcomings; she leaves a pen in the ink jar after writing letters.
The image is mysterious and haunting, and finally indecipherable. There are some connections to be made: it works as a bridge to the next chapter, Molly's monologue; the letters written by Milly and Martha; and as an image of creativity, feminine (like the metaphor in "Oxen of the Sun").
But at this point in the chapter it seems mostly discrete from the motifs and themes raised previously, and more powerful because of it. There are so many lines to draw between like things in Ulysses, that at times I felt like the novel could almost be "solved", interpreted satisfactorily, like an equation. The strange image of the woman's hand cannot; it exists on its own terms.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Chapter 16
The "Emmaeus" episode drifts sleepily through Bloom's thoughts in the cab shelter, reiterating mostly familiar themes in new terms, with cliches and loopy digressions. The language is purposefully hazy, veering off on tangents and mixing up characters (e.g., the referrent of "he" is often unclear), and reflects the time of night and Bloom's (and maybe Joyce's) fatigue.
Cliches pepper the sentences, in a unqiue way. Usually a cliche is a shortcut for a writer. Here Joyce uses a superabundance of tired language to represent the narrative from different angles, to state and then overstate: "En route, to his taciturn, and not to put too fine a point on it, not yet perfectly sober companion, Mr. Bloom, who at all events, was in complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober..." The technique has the effect when read of forcing the reader to question of the authority and the reality of what's been written, which is the exact opposite intended effect of a cliche. Right?
The narrative seems to make itself sleepy, as it often cuts itself off with an "etcetera" or an impatient change of topic. "We can't change the country. Can we change the subject?"
The topics though are also cliched, or over discussed, in the context of the novel: the results of the horse race; adultery; Molly and her "Spanish eyes"; music; Parnell and Irish Nationalism: i.e., all things we've read about before. Here they are written about in the tricky seemingly straightforward style of the newspaper Bloom glances at and addressed at face value to the greatest degree yet (though really its a layering of conflicting facts).
The sailor Murphy is a double for Bloom, or more like a false Bloom. He claims to seen many strange things, been separated from his wife, and to have a son like Telemachus who's gone to sea. He is a sailor/adventurer but unlike Bloom he gets no real thrill out of his experiences. It's strongly hinted he has invented some or all of his stories: Bloom thinks "referring to friend Sinbad", mocking him. But then, he goes on to add his story about the Italians is, maybe, plauisble. The sailor says his favorite book was Arabian Nights which seems like his inspiration for his tales.
Cliches pepper the sentences, in a unqiue way. Usually a cliche is a shortcut for a writer. Here Joyce uses a superabundance of tired language to represent the narrative from different angles, to state and then overstate: "En route, to his taciturn, and not to put too fine a point on it, not yet perfectly sober companion, Mr. Bloom, who at all events, was in complete possession of his faculties, never more so, in fact disgustingly sober..." The technique has the effect when read of forcing the reader to question of the authority and the reality of what's been written, which is the exact opposite intended effect of a cliche. Right?
The narrative seems to make itself sleepy, as it often cuts itself off with an "etcetera" or an impatient change of topic. "We can't change the country. Can we change the subject?"
The topics though are also cliched, or over discussed, in the context of the novel: the results of the horse race; adultery; Molly and her "Spanish eyes"; music; Parnell and Irish Nationalism: i.e., all things we've read about before. Here they are written about in the tricky seemingly straightforward style of the newspaper Bloom glances at and addressed at face value to the greatest degree yet (though really its a layering of conflicting facts).
The sailor Murphy is a double for Bloom, or more like a false Bloom. He claims to seen many strange things, been separated from his wife, and to have a son like Telemachus who's gone to sea. He is a sailor/adventurer but unlike Bloom he gets no real thrill out of his experiences. It's strongly hinted he has invented some or all of his stories: Bloom thinks "referring to friend Sinbad", mocking him. But then, he goes on to add his story about the Italians is, maybe, plauisble. The sailor says his favorite book was Arabian Nights which seems like his inspiration for his tales.
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Circe
I enjoy this chapter very very much and think it is a demonstration of limitless skill in developing, creatively, the book's preoccupations. But I could easily understand another reader's frustration with "Circe". Besides being very demanding on a reader (making demands on time, memory of the book, & sense of location within the book: like "Oxen of the Sun" the chapter jars the reader (more like "Circe" basically assualts the reader)), there is no true resolution, which I think is probably the fundamental or at least first learned joy of reading. I think it's a little bit of an acid test for the reader, who must really work at this chapter, and the interpretations drawn are going to really depend on the reading of the preceeding thirteen chapters.
Because in one way, "Circe" interrogates the reader and his or her interpretations of the novel to this point. Especially, to make of Bloom. The mirror we see his reflection in in the beginning of the episode, from four points of view, is a symbol of that. He begins the chapter literally having shit his pants, and then he is put on trial, forced to confess his fetishes, turned into a woman, raped, and sacrificed. Simulatenously he is praised as a reformer, a religious figure, and a god. The different views of Bloom do seem to follow more than a dialectic or two sided course; it really seems more like four sided, with participants entering the stage from many dimensions (like Virag, Bloom's ancient progenitor and keeper of the Bloom manhood).
Critics seem to have reached a consensus, that the really weird parts of the chapter are Bloom's hallucinations. I disagree. Clearly they are from his point of view, as they feature things from his consciousness: the soap, the potato. But they seem more like a gestalt of the novel. I would argue that Ulysses' is a closed universe, with a limited numbers of objects (literally it has a vocabularly of about 30,000 different words). "Circe" then seems like encyclopaedic encapsulation of the book, of its themes, characters, motifs, and previous action, in conjugation. (You could also say "Circe" is a written as a dialetic disguised as a synecdoche of the novel; both words appear within pages of each other at the end of the chapter.)
Conjugation describes the chapter well because 1) the characters' defining attributes, their tehnics, are shown in various progressions, as a conjugation of a verb 2) the theme of conjugates, i.e. opposing pairs or doubles features heavily 3) conjugal relationships, especially Bloom and Molly 4) sex & the brothel.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Nausicaa
This chapter is split into two prose styles. The first half is written like a novel for women, not unlike Sweets of Sin. It ends with Bloom ejaculating as the fireworks reach their climax. The second half of "Nausicaa" is written in the stream of consciousness style Joyce has established in "Lotus Eaters", "Calypso" and "Hades".
The second half of the chapter gives the reader some biographical information about Bloom, Molly, and Milly: where they used to live, Molly's first kiss and memories of Milly as a little girl. It also features Bloom's reflections about menstruation, the moon, and sailors, and so is thematically important.
But the first half of the chapter is undoubtedly more interesting in itself. In this set piece, Joyce skewers both mediocre prose and lower middle class ambition. The tepid writing confuses phrases like the "apple of dischord" and the "golden rule". It shows the Virgin Mary as the (obviously unrealistic) feminine ideal for Irish girls. Its observations of what a teenaged girl might imagine married life to be are a sad and absurd contrast to the reality of other marriages in Ulysses.
At about the same time as Bloom begins masturbating to Gerty Macdowell, cracks begin to appear beneath the veneer of placid prose. Gerty's friends become ugly. One of them is hinted to be a lesbian. The twin boys turn into brats. I interpret these contradictions as reality shining through the cliches of romance novel, at the same time as sexuality is hinted at it in Bloom's onanism. What lies beneath romance, and guides it, sex, also overtakes it, in the form of children, middle age, your children's children, and eventually death. I interpret this as Joyce implying Tthat language cannot completely lie, that even at its most tired and inexpressive it begins to break down and suggest truth.
Who's thoughts are being channeled in the first half of Nausicaa? Is it Bloom, in an extended and vivid fantasy? Is it Gerty, in another example of the unresricted narration Joyce employs? Could it be some amalgam of both, suggesting a fanciful/fantasical meeting of minds? Or is it a third character, a new narrator invented for the reasons I've intrepreted?
The second half of the chapter gives the reader some biographical information about Bloom, Molly, and Milly: where they used to live, Molly's first kiss and memories of Milly as a little girl. It also features Bloom's reflections about menstruation, the moon, and sailors, and so is thematically important.
But the first half of the chapter is undoubtedly more interesting in itself. In this set piece, Joyce skewers both mediocre prose and lower middle class ambition. The tepid writing confuses phrases like the "apple of dischord" and the "golden rule". It shows the Virgin Mary as the (obviously unrealistic) feminine ideal for Irish girls. Its observations of what a teenaged girl might imagine married life to be are a sad and absurd contrast to the reality of other marriages in Ulysses.
At about the same time as Bloom begins masturbating to Gerty Macdowell, cracks begin to appear beneath the veneer of placid prose. Gerty's friends become ugly. One of them is hinted to be a lesbian. The twin boys turn into brats. I interpret these contradictions as reality shining through the cliches of romance novel, at the same time as sexuality is hinted at it in Bloom's onanism. What lies beneath romance, and guides it, sex, also overtakes it, in the form of children, middle age, your children's children, and eventually death. I interpret this as Joyce implying Tthat language cannot completely lie, that even at its most tired and inexpressive it begins to break down and suggest truth.
Who's thoughts are being channeled in the first half of Nausicaa? Is it Bloom, in an extended and vivid fantasy? Is it Gerty, in another example of the unresricted narration Joyce employs? Could it be some amalgam of both, suggesting a fanciful/fantasical meeting of minds? Or is it a third character, a new narrator invented for the reasons I've intrepreted?
Cyclopes
The "Cylcops" episode is written in a playful mock epic tone that appropiates Homer's catalogues, Bible stories, Irish folk lore, society and sports reporting, and parliamentary debate. The melange of styles most resembles the "skit" the Citizen reads to Joe Hynes et. al., about the tribal chieftain meeting Queen Victoria, which parodies a news story by coolly reporting including absurdities alongside facts. The cavalier tone makes the argument between Bloom and the Citizen seem ridiculous, and in fact all the men's arguing, about the Gaelic language and sports, and foot and mouth disease, cannot be taken seriously. (Or rather, it cannot be read at face value, but rather as a barely disguised attack on Bloom's identity. Identity is the crucial theme in the Odyssey's Cyclops episode; Odysseus pretends to be nobody, than yells at Polyphemus his true identity.) Bloom does take the debates seriously; as the anonymous narrator notes, he will discuss anything. The reader is shown Bloom's power of reasoning and poise in a debate, but Joyce's inclusion of the ridiculously discursive prose digressions ironically inform the reader that Bloom's ability to "see" or understand life is, while quantatively better than the other men's, still blind to the greater scope of life.
By the greater scope of life, I mean the range of singular experiences Joyce shows are facing turn of the century Dubliners, which he seems to argue can't be abstracted to sociology (drinking) or politics (home rule), but which can only be understood truly on a personal, singular level: Dignam's son, Rudy Bloom, Molly's infidelity, Stephen's mother's death, and even the bigotry Bloom has to suffer. The poignancy of these individual cases have the power to be "seen", or felt by others; though sadly they are mostly suffered through alone.
References to eyes abound. My favorite is the "I" relating the half of the chapter in slang, the direct presentation of the action. It reminds me of a John Barth passage about first person narration: "Blind 'I', seeing and signifying nothing". The narrator is blind to the reader, in that we know nothing about him and can't guess who he is (the smart money may be on Simon Deadalus, whose name is full of 'eye' sounds); he is also blind to the true action in the episode, concerned only with the action rather than the ideas motivating the Citizen and Bloom.
By the greater scope of life, I mean the range of singular experiences Joyce shows are facing turn of the century Dubliners, which he seems to argue can't be abstracted to sociology (drinking) or politics (home rule), but which can only be understood truly on a personal, singular level: Dignam's son, Rudy Bloom, Molly's infidelity, Stephen's mother's death, and even the bigotry Bloom has to suffer. The poignancy of these individual cases have the power to be "seen", or felt by others; though sadly they are mostly suffered through alone.
References to eyes abound. My favorite is the "I" relating the half of the chapter in slang, the direct presentation of the action. It reminds me of a John Barth passage about first person narration: "Blind 'I', seeing and signifying nothing". The narrator is blind to the reader, in that we know nothing about him and can't guess who he is (the smart money may be on Simon Deadalus, whose name is full of 'eye' sounds); he is also blind to the true action in the episode, concerned only with the action rather than the ideas motivating the Citizen and Bloom.
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