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As of Nov2000 these notes have been broken down into 18 separate pages, so some links will be broken (sorry). Basic skills intro.
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 PenelopeThis 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 omits Homer's Book II here [Homer]. Parts of it are echoed in ch1 and ch9.
2: Nestor
[etext]
Compare text and notes via frames
Linati schema: "The wisdom of the old world" [more]
Nestor is featured in the Iliad, already as aged as a grandfather [etext]
We should consider whether Stephen's questions to the students correspond to the missing Homeric Book Two [Homer]. (If Joyce had at first planned the Library debate as ch2, then 'Nestor' probably would not have involved the school, as it would have required a trip back down to Dalkey.)
The original of Deasy's school was Francis Irwin's Clifton School, housed in Summerfield Lodge (once the residence of poet Denis Florence McCarthy).
# SD teaches history, ponders facticity
# SD teaches English, tells riddle
# SD tutors math, ponders mothers
# Sargent gets it, goes to hockey
# Deasy pays SD, advises thrift
# Deasy discusses nationalism vs unionism
# Deasy finishes hoof-and-mouth letter
# Deasy condemns Jews and women
# last words, SD departs
2.1 "You"
Gilbert schema: Technique = catechism (personal)
2.1 "Cochrane... Armstrong... Comyn... Talbot... Sargent... Halliday"
The students are Protestants, children of the landlord-class. (cf the atmosphere of Clongowes in Portrait). The descriptions make them sound pre-teen, but the lessons seem more like high school.
2.1 "what city sent for him?"
cf? Telem to Nestor "I follow after the far-spread rumour of my father, if haply I may hear thereof, even of the goodly steadfast Odysseus, who upon a time, men say, fought by thy side and sacked the city of the Trojans." [Homer]
2.6 "Tarentum"
see Plutarch [etext] "a key moment in the foundation of the Roman people. The defeat by Rome, when only a small city state, of a powerful army bent on the destruction of Rome" [Ditmore] cf [Dillon]
2.7 "Fabled by the daughters of memory."
History is inevitably falsified (cf the falsified imagination of Oxford in ch1). cf Blake [context]cf? Telem to Nestor "...but even the death of this man Cronion hath left untold. For none can surely declare the place where he hath perished" [Homer]
2.7 "And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled it."
(JAJ omits a comma after 'way'.) SD is obsessed with the facticity of events, perhaps because he lacks a body/father.cf Athena's advice to Telemachus, to face the facts: "go to inquire concerning thy father that is long afar" [Homer]
2.8 "A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess."
Which phrase? ('Fabled by daughters', must be.) Blake's impatience with falsification? For Blake, excess eventually leads to wisdom, remember. [quotes]
2.9 "I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What's left us then?"
SD is still wrestling with the Church, and its arguments for conformity. He likes Nietzsche's argument, for example, that it will all happen again an infinite number of times.But here he seems to be asking about the value of history-- why bother teaching the boys these meaningless facts, perhaps? [Rickard's analysis]
An early FW note under 'Nestor' reads "nature develops the spirit in place, history in time" (after Hegel, used in the Mamalujo vignette)
2.16 "From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear."
Composition of place, Stephen's great talentcf? Telem to Nestor of O: "tell me plainly what sight thou didst get of him" [Homer]
2. "figrolls"
cf? the feast at Pylos: "Just as they had tasted the inner parts, and were burning the slices of the thighs on the altar to the god, the others were bearing straight to land" [Homer]cf? Cranly in Portrait, as a John-the-Baptist figure [etext]
2.25 "Vico Road"
'exclusive' cf [pic] [pic] [pic] [celebs now]Gabler should have his hands chopped off-- metaphorically, at least-- for his decision to 'regularise' Joyce's use of capitals in places, etc. (Danis Rose is even worse.) Their justification is that Joyce was gradually (but consistently) removing 'excess' capitals... but Joyce never made any changes so mechanically. (Gabler left dozens of random inconsistencies anyway.)
Gabler: "Normalisation affecting every episode is confined to a consistent introduction of lower-case initials for 'street', 'road' etc. in Dublin street names. Joyce became increasingly regular in writing them with miniscule initials; however, where a capital in such a position seems intended to represent graphically the print of an advertisement, the inscription on an envelope or the like, it is of course not reduced by editorial emendation." [more]
2.27 "Armstrong looked round at his classmates, silly glee in profile."
His stupidity doesn't embarrass him.
2.33 "Kingstown pier"
A mile-long seawall and promenade [pic] ditto [bandstand]
2.35 "They knew: had never learned nor ever been innocent. All. With envy he watched their faces..."
SD feels their social inferior, in dealings with girls? (Though he's been with prostitutes, SD feels in some ways still a virgin.)
2.36 "Edith, Ethel, Gerty, Lily"
Edy Boardman and Gerty MacDowell from Nausikaa (11 chapters on), Lily from the 40-foot swimmer (chapter just past). ('Ethel' occurs nowhere else in Ulysses.)
2.40 "The words troubled their gaze."
cf Haines. SD's brains give him some power over the stupid, though he doesn't really know how to use it yet...?
2.45 "Not wholly for the smooth caress."
Stack: [discussion] "The 'smooth caress' is that bestowed by the master race on the mere colonial. It is the 'blessed' state of being, apparently, accepted into the society of those who are one's oppressors. a very seductive position indeed."
2.46 "For them too history was a tale like any other too often heard, their land a pawnshop."
Because it's not real to them, they can't feel much outrage.(Are the schoolboys another version of the suitors, usurping?)
2.47 "pawnshop"
in 1900 Dublin "...earnings per family averaged just over £1 2s a week. Such people were, inevitably, in constant debt. Every year about four-and-a-half million items were pawned in Dublin alone." [cite]2.49 "Time has branded them and fettered they are lodged in the room of the infinite possibilities they have ousted. But can those have been possible seeing that they never were? Or was that only possible which came to pass? Weave, weaver of the wind."
cf 1.661: 'Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind...' So does SD distrust his own theorising?
2.64 "Weep no more"
Milton [etext]; annotated w/frames
2.67 "It must be a movement then, an actuality of the possible as possible."
Why does this matter? If it's a movement, then... what? Zorilla suggests "It" here is Lycidas's not-dead soul [cite]
2.68 "floated out"
memory-space interpenetrating reality-space [discussion]
2.69 "library of Saint Genevieve"
[pic-ext] [pic-int] 3D VR
2.70 "Paris"
SD's adventures in Paris will substitute in the next two chapters for Telemachus's adventures in Homer's Books III and IV.
2.71 "Siamese"
according to Costello his name was Chown and he accompanied JAJ on an outing to Tours.
2.74 "Thought is the thought of thought... the soul is the form of forms."
Aristotle [etext]
2.80 "Turn over, Stephen said quietly. I don't see anything."
Stephen doesn't care if they cheat? cf Athena to Telem "thou needst not now be abashed" [Homer]
2.83 "Of him that walked the waves. Here also over these craven hearts his shadow lies and on the scoffer's heart and lips and on mine. It lies upon their eager faces who offered him a coin of the tribute. To Caesar what is Caesar's, to God what is God's. A long look from dark eyes, a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the church's looms."
2.102 "The cock crew"
This is apparently a standard joke. But if you change the last lines to "'Tis time for this poor sinner/ To go home and get his dinner" then the number of syllables per line increases evenly.thread: [password]
2.116 "He stood up and gave a shout of nervous laughter to which their cries echoed dismay."
The failed-performance motif (joke). [Cixous analysis]
2.132 "Sargent"
Joyce assigns him to Homer's Pisistratus, Nestor's sixth and youngest son (same age as Telem, 21yo): [1st appearance], [more] He plays a greater role in Book IV, chauffeuring T to Sparta.
2.139 "Ugly and futile... She had loved his weak watery blood drained from her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life?"
2.144 "Columbanus"
[Cath]
2.151 "Sitting at his side"
cf Butler's Odyssey "Then Telemachus got into the chariot, while Pisistratus gathered up the reins and took his seat beside him." [etext] (Butcher-Lang just has "they yoked the horses and mounted the inlaid car".)
2.158 "Averroes and Moses Maimonides, dark men in mien and movement, flashing in their mocking mirrors the obscure soul of the world, a darkness shining in brightness which brightness could not comprehend."
Averroes [Cath] [EB]; Maimonides [Cath] [EB]
2.159 "soul of the world"
Bruno [Cath] [info]
2.170 "Secrets, silent, stony sit in the dark palaces of both our hearts: secrets weary of their tyranny: tyrants, willing to be dethroned."
SD suspects this is how his body was usurped (via secrets/ enforced taboos)?
2.200 "leather"
The color for this chapter is brown, but it's presented purely in terms of objects known to be brown, not by using the colorwords. (Can it be coincidence that he dropped the word 'brown' from his vignette of the corpse in ch1?)
2.201 "Stuart coins"
[pix?] ditto [Stuarts info] cf 1908 notebook: "Ireland: Irish wits follow in the footsteps of King James the Second who struck off base money for Ireland which the hoofs of cattle have trampled into her soil."
2.202 "spooncase"
[pic] [Cath]
2.218 "his little savingsbox"
The machine motif. This mechanism is normally designed to wear on a belt: [pic]
2.229 "Don't carry it"
Deasy gives endless advice without SD ever asking for any (unlike Homer's Nestor)
2.234 "Three nooses round me here."
The third master? The nets.
2.247 "unhating"
a carefully chosen word [Stack]
2.257 "Cousins"
'Gas from a Burner' (1912) said "I printed the table-book of Cousins/ Though (asking your pardon) as for the verse/ 'Twould give you a heartburn on your arse:" [etext]
2.258 "Mrs MacKernan, five weeks' board"
this house in Beggars Bush was where Joyce had actually been living on 16 June (though Stannie claims he was evicted for a few days on the 15th). if Stephen had been living there immediately before coming to the Tower ca 13 June, that would mean he started at MacK's around May 1. (everyone else seems to spell it McKernan)Costello says they were a married couple with two small daughters-- not the same McKernans as the neighbors in 1900 with 10yo daughter Susie.
these five weeks, plus one at the Tower, might correlate with three semi-weekly paydays-- Ellmann claims JAJ moved to MacKernans to be closer to the new job.
2.276 "Croppies lie down"
[lyric]
2.284 "The rocky road to Dublin"
[lyric&midi] [RealAud] lyric
2.286 "A gruff squire"
Stephen is again exercising his craft [Stack]
2.286 "horseback"
cf Nestor "tamer of horses" [Homer] or "subduer of wild-horses" aka "lord of chariots" {Homer]
2.302 "Shotover"
[lineage] [list of protected winners' names] (The years of their victories-- 1866 and 1882-- are LB's and SD's birthyears.)
2.321 "the foot and mouth disease"
JAJ's anachronistic recycling of a 1912 experience. [detail] Aka hoof-and-mouth [cite] Also, reading motif
2.355 "The harlot's cry from street to street/ Shall weave old England's windingsheet."
[context] (beware the frames)
2.364 "Paris Stock Exchange"
[history in French] Gabler has 'stock exchange'.
2.373 "Who has not?"
cf Jesus, eg on casting the first stone [Stack]
2.377 "History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
Maybe, from the burden of incertain choice to the freedom of spontaneous action? Regaining his body?
2.379 "What if that nightmare gave you a back kick?"
Maybe, divine retribution for sins?
2.380 "All human history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God."
cf Tennyson [etext line 155]
2.383 "That is God... A shout in the street..."
cf Proverbs 1:20 [etext] also Jesus againStannie [mbk20] compares this to JAJ's fear of thunder: 'God is something that startles you... makes you jump up and look out the window'
2.390 "A woman"
cf? Antinous blaming Penelope "the fault is not in the Achaean wooers, but in thine own mother, for she is the craftiest of women" [Homer]
2.390 "no better"
'morally suspect; sexually promiscuous' [def]
2.391 "Helen"
[essay]
2.391 "ten years"
cf Nestor "For nine whole years we were busy" [Homer]
2.392 "faithless wife"
Devorgilla [history]
2.397 "For Ulster"
[context&history]
2.406 "to learn one must be humble"
cf? Athena to Telem "thou shalt bethink thee of somewhat in thine own breast, and somewhat the god will give thee to say" [Homer]
2.425 "old as I am"
cf Nestor of Telem "none would say that a younger man would speak so like an elder" [Homer] and cf the puzzling 1920 Oxen notebook entry: "LB + SD I'm experience he youth. What is wrong?"
2.442 "never let them in"
[history] [quote]
2.448 "On his wise shoulders through the checkerwork of leaves the sun flung spangles, dancing coins."
(Is this nature rewarding materialists?) In Circe the image will recur as "A yoke of buckets leopards all over him [Deasy again] and his rearing nag a torrent of mutton broth with dancing coins of carrots, barley, onions, turnips, potatoes." [Circe]
Earlier in Circe [qv] Stephen will comment on Deasy's 'wisdom': "Our interview of this morning has left on me a deep impression." This may be SD explaning why he's quitting, but see also the Eumeus notesheets: "Telem doesn't thank Nestor"