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Advanced notes for Ulysses ch1 (Telemachus)

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 Sun's path:                       Scylla WRocks
                             Lestry             Sirens
                          Eolus                     Cyclops
              Proteus   Hades                         Nausikaa
             Nestor  LotusE                             OxenSun
    > Telemachus < Calypso                                Circe
 
SD= Stephen Dedalus  BM= Buck Mulligan   LB= Leopold Bloom   Eumeus
SiD= Simon Dedalus   JAJ= James A Joyce  BB= Blazes Boylan    Ithaca
EB= EncycBritannica  Cath= CatholicEncyc MB= Molly Bloom       Penelope

This is meant to supplement Gifford's "Ulysses Annotated" [Amazon], not replace it. Line numbers use Gabler's system. [Amazon]

Currently (Apr2000) I'm wracking my brain trying to re-think ch9 as part of the Telemachia, so Homeric references may seem very farfetched, until I see which paths pan out. You can see direct evidence of how Joyce dealt with Homer in the notesheets for Circe-thru-Penelope here: [homeric#circe]

Joyce called three first three chapters of Ulysses, corresponding to the first four books of the Odyssey, the Telemachia, after their main character Telemachus. (Joyceans always get this wrong, and say Telemachiad.)

Homer's Telemachus is 21 [bio], SD/JAJ is 22 years, 4.5 months.

Linati schema: "Telemachus does not yet bear a body (non soffre ancora il corpo)"

cf Homer's Telemachus lacking a father?

cf 1920 Oxen notesheet: "imagination has a body to it"

Groden points out (wrt ch4): "compared to SD, note how Bloom is consistently shown to be interested in and concerned with the world around him" [examples]. So 'bearing a body' may equate with feeling compassion for others. Cf end of Portrait: "Mother... prays now... that I may learn... what the heart is and what it feels." [etext]

It appears that ch9 (Scylla & Charybdis) was originally (pre-1915) part of the Telemachia, corresponding to Homer's Book Two [Homer].

Compare text and notes via frames

Linati schema: "The dispossessed son in struggle" [more]

cf 1908 Trieste notebook "Dedalus: He was a dispossessed son." He had wealth coming, but someone more powerful usurped it. (Not disowned by his father, though.) Also cf Telem "O that I had been the son of some blessed man, whom old age overtook among his own possessions! " [Homer]

Gorman schema: "Milkwoman = Mentor"

In Homer, Athena speaks to Telemachus first in the guise of Mentes, praising him and recommending he face the situation squarely [Homer], then as Mentor, cursing the Ithacans and challenging Telemachus to be a man and ignore the suitors' opinions. [Homer] It's hard to see the milkwoman doing much like either one-- Mulligan and Haines seem to fill these roles more closely.

Odyssey: Book I, [Athena in Ithaca] [more]

Joyce's reallife 1904 timeline: [detailed]

Pix of setting: Tower roof, roof and interior, setting

# BM salutes morning, SD emerges
# discussion of Haines and of SD's mother
# BM teases SD
# BM insults Haines, SD tells grievance
# BM rationalises his insensitivity, goes downstairs
# SD broods on mother, BM fetches him
# SD brings down bowl, BM cooks
# eating, discussion of mother Grogan
# chat with milkwoman
# BM pays, SD blows BM's set-up for 'touch'
# BM dresses, all leave and walk down to 40-foot
# SD refuses Hamlet-theory, BM sings Joking Jesus
# SD and Haines chat and smoke
# 40-foot folk chat
# BM undresses, asks for key and 2p, dives in; SD departs

[manuscript pic] [1922 page image]

1.1 "plump"

hungerlean Joyce/Dedalus resents Mulligan/Gogarty's wealth.

1.1 "Buck Mulligan"

Oliver Gogarty ('OG' below) [pic] [info&links]

1.2 "crossed"

presumably the mirror is much wider than the razor, effectively covering the bowl, so the razor rather lies across the mirror.

1.3 "dressinggown"

Danis Rose's 1997 edition of Ulysses 'improves' this as "dressing gown" [cite]

1.3 "sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air."

most of Gabler's corrections to the 1922 text of Telemachus are bogus, based on a patently silly fairy tale about jumbled carbon copies. As of 1993, Kidd had not grasped this. [more]

'by' alliterates awkwardly with 'behind', but it's more descriptive than 'on'.

1.6 "dark"

in this chapter, perhaps:
dark/shadow = SD = arduous good;
light/shine = BM = facile evil.
Cf Epstein [cite]

1.6 "stairs... up"

[pic] Since Mulligan's head is tilted down, the bottom of the stairs is (relatively) up.

1.8 "Come up"

cf? Hamlet "stand, and unfold yourself" [etext]

1.8 "Kinch!"

when Joyce's friend Claud Sykes first typed this episode in November 1917, he changed all the (many) exclamation marks to periods, and Joyce left most untouched. Gabler restores them, but there seem to me rather a lot. (Joyce might well have eliminated some himself, in revision.)

1.10 "tower"

Hamlet conventionally opens on the battlements of Elsinore castle [etext]

1.11 "awaking mountains"

cf Finnegans a-waking. 'awaking' is perhaps more intimately human than 'awakening'. The mountains are the Wicklow hills, to the west.

1.12 "gurgling"

although the gestures are blessings, the intent is perhaps exorcism.

1.16 "untonsured"

in Stephen's medieval imagination, the priest performing the Mass should be tonsured.

1.19 "Back to barracks"

cf? Hamlet "get thee to bed, Francisco" [etext]

if Gogarty is addressing Stephen, he's criticising his grooming. But if he's addressing the lather in the bowl, is he waiting for it to reach some stage of readiness?

1.19 "Back to barracks... a preacher's tone... Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents... trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all."

Joyce limns Mulligan's many-sided personality, literally able to shift direction five times a second. Cf 1908 notebook: "Gogarty: He speaks fluently in two jargons, that of the paddock and that of the science of medicine."

cf? "the entire menu of the routine anti-Victorianism of the day" Stack

1.23 "white corpuscles"

Mulligan the scientist is analytically imagining the lather transubstantiating into human flesh.

1.26 "Chrysostomos"

golden-mouthed [Cath] (Mulligan's colors in this episode are white and gold)

in his later years Joyce always carried a small notepad where he'd scribble inspirations. [eg-FW] So picture SD here pulling out a pad and scribbling this word.

this is no doubt also a reference to Gogarty's 'chryselephantine' (gold and ivory) shaving brush. When Trench (cf 'Haines' below) finally left the Tower (in 1905?) he took this brush with him, and OG complained in a letter: "The only personal extravagance and luxury that I indulge in are summed up in that divine brush." [uoc106]

Joyce refers to the brush without mentioning its extravagance, no doubt recognising it was too unbelievable for fiction!

1.26 "Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm."

a mystery-- perhaps showing how synchronicity favors Mulligan's spontaneous nature? But also cf Zeus's sign to Telemachus in Book Two: "in answer to his prayer did Zeus, of the far borne voice, send forth two eagles in flight" [Homer] (It's a late addition, so perhaps it replaces a corresponding correspondence in the Library episode?)

1.27 "Thanks... current"

God obediently effects the miracle at the priest's bidding. Mulligan again applies a scientific filter, that God has to pull the switch in an electrical circuit. (Homer invoking the Muse also bids her flip the switch of inspiration.)

[1922 page image]

1.32 "patron of arts"

Gifford suggests Roderigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI) father of Lucrezia [pic] "corrupt, worldly and ambitious" [EB]

1.34 "Your absurd name"

Gogarty might have learned of the 'Daedalus' pseudonym as early as Feb 1904

1.38 "the buck"

Joyce in college had seen himself as a proud stag defying the rabble of human hunters, but now he's suffered a defeat.

1.42 "Will you come"

Mulligan is willing to pay to keep Stephen around.

1.43 "the aunt"

I'm having trouble running this down, but Gogarty in 'Tumbling in the Hay' depicts himself as having both mother and aunt. His widowed mother was moderately wealthy, and OG may have referred to her sometimes as his 'aunt'.

1.49 "Haines"

based partly on Dermot Trench (born Richard Samuel Chenevix Trench 06Oct 1881, suicide 01Jun 1909-- maybe manic-depressive? Gogarty claims he was 'crossed in love' by 'a titled Irish enthusiast': mbms57), member of Irish Literary Theatre (played lead in an amateur performance of the first play ever written in the Irish language and did very well), helped AE with 'Irish Homestead', independent income, grandson of late Protestant Archbishop of Dublin, taught Irish at Trinity [ofjj64]

perhaps based partly on William Bulfin, a bicycle tourist who visited the Tower during Joye's brief stay. [info]

1.51 "Saxon"

Trench was Anglo-Irish.

[compare]

1.57 "raving all night"

since they all sleep in the one room, BM must have come home after this occurred?

cf Hamlet (Haines 'sees a ghost') "Have you had quiet guard? ...Not a mouse stirring." [etext]

1.59 "woful lunatic"

in ch10 Haines will assert SD's mind has lost its balance. (Rose 'corrects' 'woful' to 'woeful', I think.)

1.60 "funk"

Joyce has schoolboys use this expression in "An Encounter" and Portrait ch3.

1.62 "You saved men from drowning."

Gogarty was legendary for his fearlessness, leaping into the Liffey many times to save people, and not at all boastful about it [cite]

1.62 "not a hero"

cf Telemachus "to the end of my days shall I be a weakling and all unskilled in prowess" [Homer]

Joyce's views on heroism were subtle: "I am sure however that the whole structure of heroism is, and always was, a damned lie and that there cannot be any substitute for the individual passion as the motive power of everything-- art and philosophy included." (letter, 7Feb05)

cf? Portrait V SD w/EC c1902: "Turned off that valve [mean&self-pitying?] at once and opened the spiritual-heroic refrigerating apparatus, invented and patented in all countries by Dante Alighieri. Talked rapidly of myself and my plans." [etext] (SD here still seems to be using it in a positive sense...?)

forms of the word 'hero' occur nine times in ch12 Cyclops [all occurrences]

1.62 "If he stays on here I am off."

the real question for SD is perhaps whether Mulligan will honor this sensitivity, effectively choosing SD over Haines. cf Telem "...to wit that ye leave these halls..." [Homer]

the real 1904 breakup with Gogarty was to some extent due to Joyce's insulting him in a poem, 'The Holy Office' [etext]. In the poem Joyce describes OG as "him whose conduct 'seems to own' His preference for a man of 'tone'". This likely referred to OG's growing friendship with Arthur Griffith, disciple of the 18th C nationalist hero Wolfe Tone, but for the sake of Ulysses Joyce substitutes a (random) preference for upper-class Haines.

1.67 "thrusting a hand"

he's already taking it before he gets permission.

1.73 "snotgreen... taste it"

cf 1908 notebook: "Gogarty: His coarseness of speech is not the blasphemy of a romantic. His coarseness is the mask of his cowardice of spirit." and Portrait draft: "He [SD] had tried to receive coldly these memories of his friend's boisterous humour, feeling that his coarseness of speech was not a blasphemy of the spirit but a coward's mask, but in the end the troop of swinish images broke down his reserve and went trampling through his memory, followed by his laughter..." [e379]

Rose 'simplifies' this as 'snot-green' (ditto many, many other compounds) [Senn]

Joyce was proud of capturing Dublin's scent in his prose.

1.75 "Dublin bay"

[old pic]

1.76 "quietly"

has he noticed people below, and restrained/censored himself?

1.77 "Isn't the sea what Algy calls it: a great sweet mother?"

Swinburne [context]

1.78 "mother"

this is the first of 21 'mother's in this chapter [Stack] [all occurrences]

1.78 "Epi oinopa ponton"

Homer's cliche: [Greek context]

1.83 "mailboat"

[old pic]

1.84 "Kingstown"

now Dun Laoghaire [view from Tower] ditto [from hill] [old pic of harbor from downtown] ditto [old pic of small boats] [touristy pix] [history] ditto recent [map] [satellite pic]

1.88 "killed your mother"

Orestes was tormented by the Furies after killing his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus, in revenge for their murder of his father Agamemnon [cite]. Homer uses this anecdote's parallels for foreshadowing: [Book I] [Book III]

1.88 "won't let"

so presumably BM's aunt/mother doesn't know SD has moved into the Tower? If she finds out, will she withhold money from BM?

Gogarty's mother was quite a strict Catholic, and disapproved of George Moore, etc as well [uoc115]

1.91 "You could have knelt down, damn it, Kinch, when your dying mother asked you, Buck Mulligan said. I'm hyperborean as much as you. But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused."

Mulligan's hyperbole-- it was actually an uncle who asked-- the 'Red' Murray of ch7 Eolus [qv]

for 'hyperborean' see Nietzsche [etext]

1.95 "sinister"

hypocritical Mulligan sees unhypocritical/sincere SD as sinister.

1.97 "mummer"

[background] (does this imply SD often acts without speaking? or is the point that OG thinks SD is playing a role, but SD really isn't?)

[compare]

1.102 "Pain, that was not yet the pain of love, fretted his heart."

Joyce wants us to see all of Stephen's weaknesses-- here, that he's still a selfish youth, incapable of unselfish love. Presumably he'll learn something this day to advance him towards greater maturity. (cf Linati schema, acquiring a body.)

fraying... fretted

cf Richard to Beatrice in Exiles: "O, if you knew how I am suffering at this moment! For your case, too. But suffering most of all for my own." [etext]

1.102 "Silently, in a dream"

we'll see shortly that Stephen is composing a 'vignette' here, the first of many we'll overhear. cf 1920 Circe notesheet: "Artist: make plays of incidents"

[pic of mother]

1.111 "her rotting liver"

SD sees it objectively, but also compassionately, and with anger at God for His cruelty.

1.112 "kind voice"

Joyce allows OG was capable of kindness.

1.113 "How are the secondhand breeks?"

trousers (breeches), not footwear.

1.117 "poxy bowsy"

cf 1908 notebook: "Gogarty: The most casual scenes appear to his mind as the theatres of so many violent sexual episodes and casual objects as gross sexual symbols."

SD must have got them elsewhere, for BM wouldn't wear poxy breeks...?

1.120 "I can't wear them if they are grey"

cf Hamlet [etext]

1.124 "palps"

as a doctor, Mulligan will soon be palpating patients

1.128 "Conolly Norman"

The NY Review of Books [qv] devoted many pages over many issues [index] to a debate between Kidd and Gabler over 'Connolly' (Gabler) vs 'Conolly' (Kidd). Kidd won, with a photo of a tombstone.

1.129 "paralysis"

cf Hamlet's indecisiveness

1.129 "insane"

BM insulting SD. cf Bloom's characterisation of BM: "prone to disparage, and even, to a slight extent, with some hilarious pretext, when not present, deprecate him" [Eumeus]

1.130 "He swept the mirror a half circle in the air to flash the tidings abroad..."

The mirror motif-- for BM, mirrors are spies' tools... betrayers' weapons. The tidings are presumably that SD is insane.

1.136 "As he and others see me."

cf Robert Burns [etext] Also Bloom, below ch4ff.

under similar circumstances about 70 years earlier James Clarence Mangan had replied, "That's nothing compared to the inner man" [cite] (Kurt Vonnegut recalls his scientist-brother tapping his forehead and saying, "You should see it in here!")

Stannie's description of Joyce, supposedly around this time: "I hate to see Jim limp and pale, with shadows under his watery eyes, loose wet lips, and dank hair. ...He likes the novelty of the role of dissipated genius. ...running after every chit with a petticoat on it and making foolish jokes to them in a high weak voice..." [cdd101]

1.143 "rage of Caliban"

cf Oscar Wilde [etext]

1.146 "cracked lookingglass"

cf Oscar Wilde [different etext] and cf 1908 notebook: "Ireland: Irish art is the cracked looking-glass of a servant."

[compare]

1.157 "God, Kinch, if you and I could only work together we might do something for the island. Hellenise it."

Joyce will contrast this motive with its opposite-- to paralyse Europe. cf Matthew Arnold [etext]

also, cf 1920 Oxen notesheet: "SD attacks hellenism, appendicitus of Europe"

1.159 "Cranly's arm. His arm."

a bit of a mystery-- perhaps SD's fastidiousness? Byrne implausibly thinks it refers to his own unusual strength [jfb84] Byrne had broken with JAJ over some betrayal while JAJ was in Paris-- supposedly he was hurt that JAJ sent Cosgrave a more intimate (and obscene) postcard than he'd sent Byrne-- but their reconciliation began immediately and was complete by 16 June, according to Byrne. [jfb85] cf A Portrait [context]

At the end of the Eumeus episode, Bloom's arm will be added to the series.

also cf 1908 notebook "Gogarty: Heaven and earth shall pass away but his false spirit shall not pass away." and 1905 letter to Stannie: "Gogarty would jump into the Liffey to save a man's life but he seems to have little hesitation in condemning generations to servitude." [e197]

1.167 "Break the news to her"

[RealAud] ditto To his mother, or girlfriend, that Clive has been castrated?

1.170 "gilded with marmalade"

cf 1920 Circe notesheet: "SD remembers falsely place not seen" Oxford's gilded youth suggest 'gilded with marmalade' and 'gelded' (and everyone looks like Matthew Arnold: pic) by an unreliable process of unconscious association. (Again, because SD lacks a body? Or is it just morning sleepiness?) [cartoon?]

Oxford [info&pix]

1.176 "omphalos"

Kidd complains that Gabler has italicised this without any authorisation from Joyce.

1.181 "They halted, looking towards the blunt cape of Bray Head that lay on the water like the snout of a sleeping whale."

not remotely visible, if I read the maps right, so probably a game, not Joyce's error?
[pic1] = what they really saw;
[pic2] = sleeping-whale-like Bray

Kidd notes an inconsistency here in that Gabler didn't de-capitalise 'Head'

1.187 "anxiety"

cf? the Ithacans "pity fell on all the people" [Homer]

1.189 "Do you remember the first day I went to your house after my mother's death?"

a year-old grudge!

posting [password]

Gogarty's mother lived in Rutland square, about a block south of Belvedere college

1.199 "beastly dead"

in a letter to Stannie on 10Jan 1907, JAJ wrote: "The news is that O.G.'s mother is 'beastly dead' and that O.G. is very rich..." [SL143] so apparently this is a close approximation of a real offense. Ulysses was barely a glimmer in his eye, but he surely intended to include the scene in a never-written chapter of Stephen Hero

[compare]

1.210 "To me it's all a mockery and beastly.`''

cf? Hamlet "Horatio says 'tis but our fantasy, And will not let belief take hold of him" [etext]

1.211 "Teazle"

from Sheridan [etext]

1.220 "of the offence to me"

(could it be BM's saying "only Stephen" that SD means?)

cf Telemachus "deeds past sufferance have now been wrought" [Homer]

cf? Hamlet "It is offended... See, it stalks away!" [etext]

[discussion]

1.225 "Pulses were beating in his eyes, veiling their sight, and he felt the fever of his cheeks."

he knows his life may be changed by this conversation, eg having to leave? SD's inertia is due to his virtues (sensitive, caring), BM's frictionless personality is due to his lack of these particular virtues. (Compare this moment with little Stevie and Conmee at Clongowes: etext)

1.231 "Chuck Loyola"

[comment]

posting [password]

1.235 "Give up"

cf Antinous "let me see thee eat and drink as of old" [Homer]

cf Hamlet [etext]

1.237 "drone"

BM's singing is never quite singing: "drone... singing out of tune...growled... chant...chanted". Contrast Phemius? "he lifted up his voice in sweet songs" [Homer]

1.239 "And no more"

[poem] Joyce had set this to music, so probably it's another usurpation. cf especially FW notebook Oct23 "HCE hears his ballads sung (W.A. + O.G." (WA is probably William Archer who criticised Joyce's earliest works c1900; HCE in FW is Joyce, more or less.)

1.242 "Woodshadows floated silently by through the morning peace from the stairhead seaward where he gazed."

a mystery-- what are woodshadows? (Since they're coming from the stairs, could it be Mulligan's fire's smoke?)

1.243 "Inshore and farther out the mirror of water whitened, spurned by lightshod hurrying feet."

Rose sees 'spumed' here. I can't hear it, but JAJ would have welcomed spumed (and churned) as subliminal associations.

Athena's flight to Ithaca "She spake and bound beneath her feet her lovely golden sandals that wax not old, and bare her alike over the wet sea and over the limitless land, swift as the breath of the wind." [Homer]

in Homer's Book V, Hermes will take a parallel, later flight to Calypso (Ulysses ch4): "Straightway he bound beneath his feet his lovely golden sandals, that wax not old, that bare him alike over the wet sea and over the limitless land, swift as the breath of the wind." [Homer]

1.244 "feet"

poetic feet? [comment] [password]

1.245 "A hand plucking the harpstrings, merging their twining chords."

Joyce probably first heard Yeats's iambs sung in a play, possibly accompanied by a harp or psaltery.

Joyce made some effort to have each chapter include specific echoes of all the others. Here we're getting ch11 Sirens. (Though it's already present in the Little Review version, years before Sirens was drafted!)

[compare]

1.248 "A cloud began to cover the sun slowly, wholly, shadowing the bay in deeper green."

this is supposed to synchronise with Bloom in chapter four, but meteorologically it can't be the same cloud at the same moment (less than a mile high, but seven miles apart).

1.251 "she wanted to hear"

cf Penelope w/Phemius "from her upper chamber the daughter of Icarius, wise Penelope, caught the glorious strain" [Homer] (she also is dispossessed)

Stannie [mbk134] claims it was dying brother Georgie who made this request in 1902, not mother May in 1903

1.251 "Silent with awe and pity I went to her bedside."

contrast SD's version with BM's-- the arrogant heretic was not unfeeling.

1.255 "Her secrets"

cf Bloom's drawer of secrets in ch17 Ithaca.

This passage is reworked from the 1908 notebook, under 'Mother':

1908: The drawer in her deadroom contained perfumed programmes and old feathers.
1922: Her secrets: old featherfans, tasselled dancecards, powdered
    with musk, a gaud of amber beads in her locked drawer.

probably the comma after 'dancecards' is Joyce's mistake. (He was horrible at commas.)

When she was a girl a birdcage hung in the sunny window of her house.
A birdcage hung in the sunny window of her house when she was a girl.
 
When she was a girl she went to the theatre to see the pantomime
    of Turko the Terrible
She heard old Royce sing in the pantomime of Turko the Terrible
 
and laughed when Old Royce the actor sang:
and laughed with others when he sang:
 
I am the boy/ That can enjoy/ Invisibility.
I am the boy/ That can enjoy/ Invisibility.

so the laughter at Turko is because the old actor called himself a boy?

Every first Friday she approached the altar and when she came home
    drank a glass of water before eating.
Her glass of water from the kitchen tap when she had approached
    the sacrament.
 
Sometimes she roasted an apple for herself on the hob.
A cored apple, filled with brown sugar, roasting for her at the hob
    on a dark autumn evening.
 
Her nails were reddened with the blood of lice.
Her shapely fingernails reddened by the blood of squashed lice
    from the children's shirts.

1.255 "tasselled dancecards"

[pic- front&back] (inner pages had lines for scheduling partners) [Emily Post passim] [re-enactors info]

1.258 "Turko the Terrible"

[background] (reappears in Calypso and Circe)

1.270 "In a dream"

Stephen is mentally reworking his phrase from 1.102 [Stack] which is itself reworked from the 1908 notebook:

She came to me silently in a dream after her death
Silently, in a dream she had come to him after her death,
In a dream, silently, she had come to him,
 
and her wasted body within its loose brown habit
her wasted body within its loose brown graveclothes
her wasted body within its loose graveclothes
 
gave out a faint odour of wax and rosewood
giving off an odour of wax and rosewood,
giving off an odour of wax and rosewood,
 
and her breath
her breath, that had bent upon him, mute, reproachful,
her breath, bent over him with mute secret words,
 
a faint odour of wetted ashes. (1908)
a faint odour of wetted ashes. (1.102)
a faint odour of wetted ashes. (1.270)

earliest version, also 1908 notebook: "Mother: ...her wasted body within its loose brown habit gave out a faint odour of wax and rosewood..." (Kain and Scholes see 'washed' for 'wasted' but this must be wrong?) [brown habit?]

1.273 "On me alone"

cf Hamlet [etext]

1.278 "Ghoul! Chewer of corpses! No, mother! Let me be and let me live."

May is a ghoul because she's dead, and God is a ghoul for devouring her, but May was a ghoul even before her illness, because of her Catholic superstitions. (ch6 Hades is echoed here.)

Stephen must blame Mulligan for this haunting, having opened himself and been rebuffed.

in a letter to Nora that Ellmann dates to 01Sept 1904 (but likelier 02Oct), Joyce wrote "That skull, I am glad to say, didn't come to torment me last night. How I hate God and death!" [SL27]

cf? Antinous blaming Penelope "she hath devised in her heart this wile" [Homer] (Odysseus's shroud vs May's graveclothes?)

cf Telem weighing whether he can throw Penelope out "I may in no wise thrust forth from the house, against her will, the woman that bare me" [Homer]

1.282 "Stephen, still trembling at his soul's cry"

he doesn't will his apostasy, it happens spontaneously.

1.285 "waking us"

so Mulligan was home too?

1.290 "Touch him for a quid... I get paid this morning"

neither SD nor JAJ can see the point of accumulating wealth.

1.293 "Four quid"

SD may have exaggerated to BM, because he holds his tongue here.

1.293 "Lend us one"

we'll see at 2.255 that SD owes BM nine pounds, so BM is being remarkably tactful here

1.296 "We'll have a glorious drunk to astonish the druidy druids."

which druids, exactly? Russell and Yeats and Lady Gregory? Probably not the priests. (This is important because JAJ analysed Dublin society into categories, eg "their Intensities and their Bullockships" in the 1904 'Portrait' [etext].)

1.300 "O, won't we"

Gifford mentions a similar-sounding James Bland song, but the lyrics [pix] don't match.

[compare]

1.311 "Clongowes"

[homepage] (w/Flash)

1.313 "livingroom"

[diagram] [pic] ditto detail

1.317 "meeting of their rays"

(optically impossible!)

1.320 "hammock"

Gogarty described Joyce's bed as being to the right of the door, his own to the left. if this is accurate, Haines may have been left to a hammock, as a temporary thing.

1.321 "hearth"

this was to Stephen's left as he entered from the stairwell, with a high barbican above on each side

1.323 "key"

[pic]

1.324 "Janey Mack"

BM switches to euphemisms in Haines' presence [cite]

1.329 "Stephen haled his upended valise to the table and sat down to wait."

suggesting he's barely unpacked, and they haven't gotten him his own chair. (Joyce lasted only a week, in fact. After he left he wrote to James Starkey to pack his belongings: "a pair of black boots, a pair of brown boots, a blue peaked cap, a black cloth cap, a black felt hat, a raincoat and the MS of my verses which are in a roll on the shelf to the right as you enter" plus ch12 of Stephen Hero)

1.333 "Not a word"

[comments]

posting [password]

1.339 "What sort of kip is this?"

cf? Athena: "What feast, nay, what rout is this?" [Homer]

Mulligan uses this word to mean a wide range of things. Stannie reported in his diary for Sept 1904 [cdd88] that Gogarty used the words 'box' and 'Jaysus' in a generic fashion for room/building and male: 'ghost-box, God-box, cunt-box; awful J, hairy J, gloomy J'

1.345 "That woman"

Joyce identifies the milkwoman as Athena disguised as Mentor, but whether she's also Mentes [Homer] is less clear. If so, she must somehow rouse him to speak to the suitors, and to go in search of news of his father. (In Book XIII she explains to O that she sent T on this journey, rather than tell him straight out where O was, so that "by going thither he might win a good report" Homer)

in Homer's version, Telemachus is the first to spy Mentes, because unlike the suitors he's sad, thinking of his father. [Homer] In Joyce's version, also contradicting Homer, BM is the one who offers her tea.

1.349 "slapped it out"

cf "a carver lifted and placed by them platters of divers kinds of flesh" [Homer] also in Book IV [Homer]

[compare]

1.354 "strong tea"

[recipe]

1.366 "Dundrum"

two villages and a bay: [map1] (Yeats village); [map2] (Tipperary village); [map3] (bay, N Ireland)

1.367 "big wind"

the big wind was 266Feb 1903 whiule Joyce was in Paris

cf 1920 Oxen notesheet: "Big Wind, fire" (LB will date memories by the 1894 fire at Arnott's)

1.371 "Mabinogion"

[etext] [info&links] [impact]

1.371 "Upanishads"

[info&links]

1.385 "He crammed his mouth with fry and munched and droned."

lost line recovered by Gabler, happily.

[compare]

1.403 "poor old woman"

the Shan Van Vocht [RealAud] [lyric]. In Circe, JAJ will call her 'Old Gummy Granny', in FW 'Kate the Slop' (and also the washerwomen in FW ch8).

1.406 "upbraid"

almost-Mentor, at least in SD's imagination.

1.418 "Stephen listened in scornful silence. She bows her old head to a voice that speaks to her loudly, her bonesetter, her medicineman: me she slights."

SD's contempt for peasants, and envy of BM. In Homer's version, Athena could at least tell who the hero was! "Thy head surely and they beauteous eyes are wondrous like to his" [Homer]

posting [password]

Stephen Hero p238 echoes this, observing peasants in a train station on the way to Mullingar: "a gentleman... who was giving loud directions to a porter... attracted their wondering attention for several minutes"

1.437 "ring of the milkcan"

[pic]

1.442 "seven mornings a pint at twopence"

calculation motif.

1,443 "and these three mornings a quart"

either Stephen or Haines arrived later than the other two, just three days ago where the others have been there at least a week

1.447 "having filled his mouth with a crust thickly buttered on both sides"

seen in the light of the gold-and-ivory shaving brush (above 1.26) it's clear Joyce is repulsed by Gogarty's avarice/gluttony

1.449 "Pay up and look pleasant"

personifying England's landlord-role towards Ireland

[compare]

1.451 "florin"

cf? 1908 notebook: "Gogarty: His money smells bad."

1.455 "Ask nothing"

Swinburne [partial context] This being BM's second citation of ACS, we should assume JAJ is signalling that they share some traits. [ACS background] (Hayman suggests in 'Mechanics of Meaning' that BM is more like Oscar Wilde.)

UOC confirms that Gogarty was a huge fan of (still-living) Swinburne's, and made multiple pilgrimages trying to meet him (unsuccessfully, because ACS was very paranoid about blackmailers!)

1.457 "her uneager hand"

the avarice motif. Haines has made this happen, not her.

1.475 "The unclean bard makes a point of washing once a month."

Joyce was superstitious about 'aquacities' including gems. cf [Ithaca] But again, he's not willing this eccentricity because he thinks it's cool, he's letting it happen because he honors his instincts as holy.

1.476 "All Ireland is washed by the gulfstream"

cf 1908 notebook: "Ireland: The Irish are washed by the Gulf Stream"

posting [password]

1.480 "make a collection"

cf SD/JAJ's 'forgery' of the speech-patterns of those around him

cf? 1919 Cyclops notesheet "Haines = ear of the world; S.D. = Horace's deaf donkey" (deaf donkey = uncomprehending audience in theater) [Horace-Latin] Perhaps Haines sees himself as the ear of the world appreciating Irish wit, while SD sees him as just another deaf donkey? (SD makes a brief appearance in an early draft of Cyclops, but Haines never.)

1.480 "your sayings"

might Haines mean 'you Irish' (plural) rather than 'you Stephen' (singular)?

1.481 "Agenbite of inwit"

Dan Michel's 1340 Ayenbite of Inwyt or Remorse of conscience [etext]

1.490 "Would I make any money by it? Stephen asked... You put your hoof in it now. What did you say that for? ...Why don't you play them as I do?"

BM prefers deceptive manipulation to SD's direct approach. Probably at this point SD sees that he's lost BM's tolerance-- the rift opening without the narrative explicitly mentioning it.

this probably corresponds to a real breach with Gogarty that happened 15Aug, a month before the real Tower-fight, inspiring this letter [full text] and poem: "I offended two men today by leaving them coolly. I wanted to hear your voice, not theirs." [SL25/L2-46] and CMxvii qv

Because your voice was at my side
    I gave him pain,
Because within my hand I held
    Your hand again.

There is no word nor any sign
    Can make amend--
He is a stranger to me now
    That was my friend.

the points at issue may have included the 'Holy Office' insult, because two weeks later Gogarty wrote: "I have broken with Joyce... His want of generosity became to me inexcusable. He lampooned Yeats, AE, Colum, and others to whom he was indebted. A desert was revealed which I did not think existed amid the seeming luxuriance of his soul." [uoc86. cf e167]

this was then patched up briefly before the final breach, which takes place in Ulysses only 'offstage' after Ch14 Oxen [Eumeus mention]

is this Telemachus's speech to the suitors, then? Inspired by Athena/Mentes/milkwoman?

cf? 1920 Oxen notesheet "Haines I was polite." (SD inwardly reassuring himself)

1.494 "bent across"

cf? Telem with Athena "holding his head close to her that those others might not hear" [Homer]

[compare]

1.506 "play them"

cf? Eurymachus's advice to Telem to marry Penelope off "Let him command his mother to return to her father's house" [Homer]

1.517 "contradict myself"

Whitman [facsimile]

1.519 "Latin quarter hat"

supposedly Joyce imitating Arthur Rimbaud's style [pic] Joyce also (or actually?) wore a different cap that summer [pic]

Stephen refers to Paris only this once in the chapter, but BM does twice in reference to him (hat, plus 'Paris fads'). The fifth arondissement was called 'Latin' because that was the Sorbonne students' lingua franca in the middle ages [cite&map] (When Joyce stayed there in 1902-03 he did in fact use Latin to speak with the many nationalities of student in the cafes)

Gabler capitalises Quarter.

1.528 "ashplant"

Gogarty described it elsewhere as "with the handle at right angles to the shaft" [pix]

cf? Telem's sword [Homer] (but what are the two swift hounds?)

1.528 "followed them out"

many chapters of Ulysses show a change from indoors to outdoors or vice versa

1.529 "the ladder"

some sources claim this was a rope ladder but I find this implausible-- it would be iron, embedded in the outer wall. (Getting a heavy trunk up it must have been tricky.)

1.536 "Down sir!"

cf 1908 notebook: "Gogarty: He addresses lifeless objects and hits them smartly with his cane: the naturalism of the Celtic mind."

1.542 "Martello"

[background] ditto

[compare]

1.567 "That beetles"

[context] [pic] [VR]

1.569 "Buck Mulligan turned suddenly for an instant towards Stephen but did not speak. In the bright silent instant Stephen saw his own image in cheap dusty mourning between their gay attires."

has BM censored a witticism to protect SD's feelings? Or is his silence tinged with anger? (Because he's a compulsive dissembler, we have to pay close attention to know.)

but Gogarty was also said to be unable to repress derogatory jokes, even to others' faces...?

Possibly Mulligan's instinct was to continue the 'Hamlet' quote: "...And there assume some other horrible form, Which might deprive your sovereignty of reason And draw you into madness?" [etext]

1.574 "The sea's ruler"

Poseidon, the only god who doesn't pity Odysseus [Homer] [myth]

(so was Bloom's c1894 'Waterloo' [bio] perhaps a case of offending Poseidon/Britain? by blinding a Cyclopeian son?)

[1904 Empire trading cards]

1.576 "the Muglins"

[scuba view] [map]

1.577 "theological interpretation"

cf? Halitherses's prophecies, followed by Antinous's debunking "there be many birds that fly to and fro under the sun's rays" [Homer]

1.595 "about to rise"

cf Athena's departure "like an eagle of the sea she flew away" [Homer]

1.596 "Write down"

Gogarty's last verse actually began: [full etext]

Goodbye, now, goodbye, you are sure to be fed
You will come on My Grave when I rise from the Dead...

1.600 "forty-foot"

[pic] [pic]

the name refers to the supposed depth-- there was even a high divingboard

1.602 "birdlike cries"

Gabler's 'birdsweet' unwisely overrides Joyce's own second thoughts.

[compare]

1.605 "We oughtn't to laugh"

cf? Athena on the suitors "well might any man be wroth to see so many deeds of shame" [Homer] or Eurymachus on Athena? "lo, he was gone, nor tarried he that we should know him" [Homer]

1.612 "Creation from nothing"

Nicene Creed [Cath] [info]

1.614 "There's only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said."

SD the Aristotelian, with his dagger definitions.

1.616 "green stone"

cf this pic where the clasp actually has a small green-glass button (not clearly visible). That Haines's twinkles implies a crystal, not a large opaque stone (another of the hypnotic 'aquacities' that Stephen mistrusts).

this will be echoed in ch4 by the cat's green eyes, and maybe in ch3 by Kevin Egan's green absinthe

1.617 "cigarette"

cheap ones were three cents a pack of ten [ad], [pricier]

1.626 "free thought"

cf "no more do I put faith in tidings... neither have I regard unto any divination" [Homer]

1.629 "My familiar"

[definition]

1.630 "They will walk on it tonight, coming here in the dark."

SD thinks 'they' not 'we'. He knows they won't come back before dark because there's nothing to do out in the sticks, for such cosmopolitan types.

1.630 "He wants that key."

the three residents are sharing one key. All leave for the day, together. Mulligan should keep the key if he pays the rent (unless one of the others expects to return earlier).

(shouldn't it be 'this key'?)

1.631 "It is mine. I paid the rent."

Van Caspel [Bibliofind] argues that this is SD picturing BM speaking, but Joyce would normally have signalled this via italics. SD has been gainfully employed for three payperiods (months or fortnights?) at 3 and twelve per, but he's very unlikely to have had 12 pounds in advance for the year's rental... and in fact Gogarty paid it.

we don't know how long SD has been staying at the Tower-- in fact, he lasted less than a week. Gogarty actually moved in between 29Jul and 17Aug 1904. Trench's dates are unknown.

1.631 "Now I eat his salt bread."

Dante [etext, see 17.060]. The context suggests SD is exiled, suffering unfamiliar (and 'vicious') environments, but that BM not SD will be the one dishonored by the clash.

1.631 "Give him the key, too. All."

what else has SD given BM??? Nothing material, that we know of, so is it trust? his person? his pay? his country? cf Telem's parting gifts to Athena [Homer]

1.632 "He will ask for it. That was in his eyes."

the last we saw of BM's eyes was when SD's declaration of his grudge was 'stirring silver points of anxiety in his eyes'. This wasn't compassion on BM's part, but paranoia?

so is BM already planning to ditch SD? If SD is thinking that far ahead, he should foresee that by night they will have partied away his pay.

1.638 "two masters"

cf Telem to Athena "they devour and minish my house" [Homer] and Telem to Antinous "someone of them shall surely have this kingship" [Homer]

JAJ 1907: "I confess that I do not see what good it is to fulminate against the English tyranny while the Roman tyranny occupies the palace of the soul." [cite]

1.641 "And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs."

a riddle-- his muse? his country? just Mulligan... or Deasy? cf Wilde's "Soul of Man Under Socialism" "Three despots... Prince... Pope... People" [etext]

1.649 "history is to blame"

cf? Antinous blaming Penelope "the fault is not in the Achaean wooers, but in thine own mother" [Homer]

[compare]

1.656 "Photius"

[Cath]

1.657 "Arius"

[Cath]

1.661 "The void"

cf JAJ 1923: "Life is suspended in doubt like the world in the void."

1.665 "Hear, hear! Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu!"

SD pictures himself dazzling crowds with his brilliance. Probably he's aware that this impulse is juvenile, and recalls himself to his Paris posing. (cf Proteus below)

1.667 "German jews"

to Haines, England is Ithaca and jews are the suitors

on 24Nov 1906 Gogarty wrote an article for 'Sinn Fein' condemning "England becoming Jewry" which Joyce dismissed as 'drivel'. [L2-200]

1.675 "man that was drowned"

cf Telem on might-be Odysseus: "that man whose white bones, it may be, lie wasting in the rain upon the mainland, or the billow rolls them in the brine." [Homer]

also Matt Kane (original of Martin Cunningham) nearby in Dublin bay, around 10 July 1904, body not recovered for days, funeral 13 July (cf ch6) attended by Alfred Hunter (original of Bloom) and the Joyces (father and son). [info]

1.683 "Westmeath"

county containing Mullingar and Athlone [map] [info]

1.692 "Buck Mulligan made way for him to scramble past and, glancing at Haines and Stephen, crossed himself piously with his thumbnail at brow and lips and breastbone."

hypocrite, to fool his mother. There's an anecdote of Gogarty being forced to go to Confession and meeting up with a bicycling friend as he emerged, saying, "He says I'm going to Hell. Come on." [uoc105]

[compare]

1.706 "Redheaded women buck like goats"

the manuscript continued "...And all creation simply gloats."

1.732 "Horn of a bull, hoof of a horse, smile of a Saxon."

three things not to be trusted. (Part of Joyce's technique was to collect random bits of color like this-- in notebooks-- and work them into the text at some appropriate point.)

1.733 "The Ship, Buck Mulligan cried. Half twelve."

the Ship was a pub a block east of the Freeman's Journal offices (Eolus). [old pic of locale] [360 degree Quicktime VR tour] BM expects to start drinking SD's pay. (But where will BM and Haines spend the next four hours?)

cf Telem to Athena "after thou hast bathed... wend to the ship" [Homer]

1.739 "I will not sleep here tonight. Home also I cannot go."

has Stephen decided he can't trust BM any more, or has he sensed that BM has decided not to let him further queer the game with Haines...?

1.744 "Usurper."

since Stephen has no right to the Tower, what has BM usurped? The milkwoman's respect, for one. (Has someone usurped SD's missing body? The church?)

cf Hamlet [etext]

What corresponds to Athena's tale of Ilus's poison? [Homer]

to Eurycleia's care? [Homer]

to Telemachus departure? [Homer]

PhilG asks: Please don't use a fake email address; it creates a lot of technical problems for [Philip Greenspun]. For example, this software will send you an email alert if someone responds to your message and those alerts will bounce back to us if the address you type isn't valid.

Joyce omits Homer's Book II here [Homer]. Parts of it are echoed in ch1, ch2, and especially ch9.

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