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The Internet Oxen of the Sun (Ulysses ch14)

  1a           1b          1c        2a        2b      this page, 3
Arvals       Mandeville   Pepys    Goldsmith  Lamb       Dickens
Sallust      Malory       Defoe    Burke      DeQuincey  Newman
Malmesbury   Elizabethan  Swift    Sheridan   Landor     Pater
Anglo-Saxon  Milton       Addison  Junius     Macaulay   Ruskin
moralities   Bunyan       Sterne   Gibbon     Huxley     Carlyle
                                   gothic                slangs

"'If you have seen the picture-gallery of any one old family, you will remember how the same face and figure-- often the fairest and slightest of them all-- come upon you in different generations; and how you trace the same sweet girl through a long line of portraits-- never growing old or changing-- the Good Angel of the race-- abiding by them in all reverses-- redeeming all their sins..."

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) [ch] [timeline] [works] [all-short] [links]

JAJ on Dickens: "...is neither the great-hearted, great-brained, great-souled writer in whose honor his devotees burn so much incense nor yet the common purveyor of sentimental domestic drama and emotional clap-trap as he appears to the jaundiced eye of a critic of the new school... It is enough to point to a row of personages to see that he has few (if any) equals in the art of presenting a character, fundamentally natural and probable with just one strange, wilful, wayward moral and physical deformity which upsets the equipoise and bears off the character from the world of tiresome reality and as far as the borderland of the fantastic... English taste has decreed to Dickens a sovereign position and Turk-like will have no brother near his throne." [1912 Italian exam paper] [cite]

In Stephen Hero, Dickens is denigrated in a discussion of Ibsen: "--I hope you're not going to mention Little Nell in the Old Curiosity Shop." [context]

1836: Sunday Under Three Heads: PGut
1836: Sketches by Boz: PGut
1837: The Pickwick Papers: PGut
1838: Oliver Twist: UVa
1838: Mudfog and Other Sketches: PGut
1838: Sketches of Young Gentlemen: PGut
1839: The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby: Bibliom
1840: Sketches of Young Couples: PGut
1841: Master Humphrey's Clock: PGut
1841: The Old Curiosity Shop: PGut
1841: Barnaby Rudge: PGut
1841: The Lamplighter: PGut
1842: American Notes for General Circulation: page-images, UVa
1843: A Christmas Carol: UVa, Gaslight
1844: The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit: Bibliom
1844: The Chimes: PGut, UVa
1845: The Cricket on the Hearth: PGut
1846: The Battle of Life: PGut
1846: Pictures from Italy: PGut
1848: Dombey and Son: Bibliom
1848: The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain: PGut
1849: The Life of Our Lord: Dfound
1850: David Copperfield: PGut, Bartleby
1851: To Be Read at Dusk: PGut
1853: Bleak House: PGut, Perseus
1853: A Child's History of England: PGut
1854: Hard Times: PGut
1854: The Seven Poor Travellers: PGut
1855: The Holly Tree: PGut
1856: The Wreck of the Golden Mary: PGut
1857: The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices: PGut
1857: The Perils of Certain English Prisoners: PGut
1857: Little Dorrit: PGut, Perseus
1858: A House to Let (Going Into Society): PGut
1858: Reprinted Pieces: PGut
1859: Hunted Down: PGut
1859: A Tale of Two Cities: PGut, UVa
1860: A Message from the Sea: PGut
1860: The Uncommercial Traveller: PGut
1861: Tom Tiddler's Ground: PGut
1861: Great Expectations: PGut
1862: Somebody's Luggage: PGut
1863: Mrs. Lirriper's Lodgings: PGut
1864: Mrs. Lirriper's Legacy: PGut
1865: Doctor Marigold: PGut
1865: Our Mutual Friend: PGut, Perseus
1866: Mugby Junction: PGut
1867: No Thoroughfare: PGut, BlackMask
1869: The Mystery of Edwin Drood: PGut, Gaslight
Letters of Charles Dickens to Wilkie Collins: BlackMask
Speeches, Literary and Social: PGut

Meanwhile the skill and patience of the physician had brought about a happy accouchement. It had been a weary weary while both for patient and doctor. All that surgical skill could do was done and the brave woman had manfully helped. She had. She had fought the good fight and now she was very very happy. Those who have passed on, who have gone before, are happy too as they gaze down and smile upon the touching scene. Reverently look at her as she reclines there with the motherlight in her eyes, that longing hunger for baby fingers (a pretty sight it is to see), in the first bloom of her new motherhood, breathing a silent prayer of thanksgiving to One above, the Universal Husband. And as her loving eyes behold her babe she wishes only one blessing more, to have her dear Doady there with her to share her joy, to lay in his arms that mite of God's clay, the fruit of their lawful embraces. He is older now (you and I may whisper it) and a trifle stooped in the shoulders yet in the whirligig of years a grave dignity has come to the conscientious second accountant of the Ulster bank, College Green branch. O Doady, loved one of old, faithful lifemate now, it may never be again, that faroff time of the roses! With the old shake of her pretty head she recalls those days. God! How beautiful now across the mist of years! But their children are grouped in her imagination about the bedside, hers and his, Charley, Mary Alice, Frederick Albert (if he had lived), Mamy, Budgy (Victoria Frances), Tom, Violet Constance Louisa, darling little Bobsy (called after our famous hero of the South African war, lord Bobs of Waterford and Candahar) and now this last pledge of their union, a Purefoy if ever there was one, with the true Purefoy nose. Young hopeful will be christened Mortimer Edward after the influential third cousin of Mr Purefoy in the Treasury Remembrancer's office, Dublin Castle. And so time wags on: but father Cronion has dealt lightly here. No, let no sigh break from that bosom, dear gentle Mina. And Doady, knock the ashes from your pipe, the seasoned briar you still fancy when the curfew rings for you (may it be the distant day!) and dout the light whereby you read in the Sacred Book for the oil too has run low, and so with a tranquil heart to bed, to rest. He knows and will call in His own good time. You too have fought the good fight and played loyally your man's part. Sir, to you my hand. Well done, thou good and faithful servant!

There are lots of echoes here from Gerty in ch13.

"He must expect to be haunted with the ghosts of past sins, rising from the charnel-house, courting him to sin again, yet filling him the while with remorse; he must expect 'a trembling heart, and failing of eyes, and sorrow of mind', misgivings about his safety, misgivings about the truth of religion, and about particular doctrines, painful doubts and difficulties, so that he is forced to grope in darkness or in cold and dreary twilight." [1838]

John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890, converted from Anglican to Catholic in 1845) [ch] [timeline] [works]

"...nobody has ever written English prose that can be compared with that of a tiresome footling [trifling] little Anglican parson who afterwards became a prince [Cardinal, 1879] of the only true church..." [e682]

"silver-veined prose" deeply admired... sublimely simple and evocative style owes itself to faith of the convert. (WP173)

prose that he esteemed so highly "But he bores me when he tries to make his reader believe the impossible. Saint Thomas is more entertaining: he proves far too much to convince anyone." (WP239)

the greatest of English prose writers... not in the Apologia, which he thought rather badly written, but in his sermons. "I have read him a great deal... [in 'Oxen'] where all the other authors are parodied, Newman alone is rendered pure, in the grave beauty of his style. Besides, I needed that fulcrum to hold up the rest... The Church will surely decide to make a saint of him, if only for the numerous conversions that have followed in the wake of his own. At least a Blessed, if they don't succeed in finding a miracle." (WP217)

1826: Two Essays on Biblical and Ecclesiastical Miracles: NR
1833: The Arians of the Fourth Century: NR
1834-1843: Parochical and Plain Sermons: NR-8vols
1837: Lectures on the Prophetical Office: NR
1838: Lectures on the Doctrine of Justification: NR
1843: Fifteen Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford: NR
1843: Sermons Bearing on Subjects of the Day: NR
1844: Lives of the English Saints: NR
1845: An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine: NR, F2S
1848: Loss and Gain: The Story of a Convert: NR
Meditations and Devotions: NR
1849: Discourses Addressed to Mixed Congregations: NR
1849-1878: Sermon Notes: NR
1850: Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans: NR-3vols
1851: Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England: NR
1852: The Idea of a University: NR, Fordham
1855: Callista: A Tale of the Third Century: NR
1859: On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine: Fordham
1865: Apologia Pro Vita Sua: NR, Fordham
1865: The Dream of Gerontius: NR
1867: Verses on Various Occasions: NR
1870: An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent: NR, F2S
1871: Essays, Critical and Historical: NR-2vols
1871: Tracts Theological and Ecclesiastical: NR
1872: Historical Sketches: NR-3vols
1872: Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects: NR
1874: Sermons Preached on Various Occasions: NR
1879: Addresses to Cardinal Newman, With His Replies: NR
1883: The Via Media of the Anglican Church: NR-2vols
A Letter Addressed to His Grace: NR
Letters and Correspondence: NR
Selected Works and Commentary: NR
Selection Adapted to the Seasons of the Ecclesiastical Year: NR

There are sins or (let us call them as the world calls them) evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but they abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise. Yet a chance word will call them forth suddenly and they will rise up to confront him in the most various circumstances, a vision or a dream, or while timbrel and harp soothe his senses or amid the cool silver tranquillity of the evening or at the feast at midnight when he is now filled with wine. Not to insult over him will the vision come as over one that lies under her wrath, not for vengeance to cut off from the living but shrouded in the piteous vesture of the past, silent, remote, reproachful.

"The arena, decked and in order for the first scene, looked delightfully fresh, re-inforcing on the spirits of the audience the actual freshness of the morning, which at this season still brought the dew. Along the subterranean ways that led up to it, the sound of an advancing chorus was heard at last, chanting the words of a sacred song, or hymn to Diana; for the spectacle of the amphitheatre was, after all, a religious occasion."

Walter Pater [ch] [bio] [works] [downloads] [best quote]

1865: Coleridge: Toronto, Blackmask
1872: The Renaissance: PGut, PGut, Blackmask
1885: Marius the Epicurean: Blackmask 1 vol2
1887: Imaginary Portraits: PGut, PGut, Blackmask
1889: Appreciations, with an Essay on Style: PGut, Blackmask
1893: Plato and Platonism: PGut, Blackmask
1895: Miscellaneous Studies: PGut, Blackmask
1895: Greek Studies: PGut, Blackmask
1896: Essays From "The Guardian": PGut, Blackmask
1896: Gaston de Latour: PGut, Blackmask

The stranger still regarded on the face before him a slow recession of that false calm there, imposed, as it seemed, by habit or some studied trick, upon words so embittered as to accuse in their speaker an unhealthiness, a flair, for the cruder things of life. A scene disengages itself in the observer's memory, evoked, it would seem, by a word of so natural a homeliness as if those days were really present there (as some thought) with their immediate pleasures. A shaven space of lawn one soft May evening, the wellremembered grove of lilacs at Roundtown, purple and white, fragrant slender spectators of the game but with much real interest in the pellets as they run slowly forward over the sward or collide and stop, one by its fellow, with a brief alert shock. And yonder about that grey urn where the water moves at times in thoughtful irrigation you saw another as fragrant sisterhood, Floey, Atty, Tiny and their darker friend with I know not what of arresting in her pose then, Our Lady of the Cherries, a comely brace of them pendent from an ear, bringing out the foreign warmth of the skin so daintily against the cool ardent fruit. A lad of four or five in linseywoolsey (blossomtime but there will be cheer in the kindly hearth when ere long the bowls are gathered and hutched) is standing on the urn secured by that circle of girlish fond hands. He frowns a little just as this young man does now with a perhaps too conscious enjoyment of the danger but must needs glance at whiles towards where his mother watches from the piazzetta giving upon the flowerclose with a faint shadow of remoteness or of reproach (alles Vergängliche) in her glad look.

"And round the walls of the porches there are set pillars of variegated stones, jasper and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted with flakes of snow, and marbles, that half refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cleopatra-like, 'their bluest veins to kiss'-- the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a receding tide leaves the waved sand; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all beginning and ending in the Cross; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life-- angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labours of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth; and above these, another range of glittering pinnacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers, --a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's lion, lifted on a blue field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a marble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the breakers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid themselves with coral and amethyst."

John Ruskin (1819-1900) [ch] [timeline] [extract]

1841: The King of the Golden River: PGut, Belinus, Kells, Baldwin
1860: Unto This Last: text, Gandhi
1865: Sesame and Lilies: PGut
1866: The Ethics of the Dust: PGut

Mark this farther and remember. The end comes suddenly. Enter that antechamber of birth where the studious are assembled and note their faces. Nothing, as it seems, there of rash or violent. Quietude of custody, rather, befitting their station in that house, the vigilant watch of shepherds and of angels about a crib in Bethlehem of Juda long ago. But as before the lightning the serried stormclouds, heavy with preponderant excess of moisture, in swollen masses turgidly distended, compass earth and sky in one vast slumber, impending above parched field and drowsy oxen and blighted growth of shrub and verdure till in an instant a flash rives their centres and with the reverberation of the thunder the cloudburst pours its torrent, so and not otherwise was the transformation, violent and instantaneous, upon the utterance of the Word.

"Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask no other blessedness. He has a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, and will follow it! How, as a free-flowing channel, dug and torn by noble force through the sour mud-swamp of one's existence, like an ever-deepening river there, it runs and flows; --draining-off the sour festering water, gradually from the root of the remotest grass-blade; making, instead of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful meadow with its clear-flowing stream. How blessed for the meadow itself, let the stream and its value be great or small! Labour is Life: from the inmost heart of the Worker rises his god-given Force, the sacred celestial Life-essence breathed into him by Almighty God; from his inmost heart awakens him to all nobleness,-to all knowledge, "self-knowledge" and much else, so soon as Work fitly begins."

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) [ch] [Brown] [timeline] [extract] [extracts] [links]

'he championed the spiritual against the material, demanded respect for justice and for the moral law and insisted on the supreme need of reverence... not merely for what is above us, but, also, for what is on the earth, beside us and beneath us.' [ch] 'history is the record of the thoughts and actions of great men' [ch]

1824: Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship (trans): Bartleby
undated: The Sorrows of Werther (trans): PGut, Bartleby
1831: Characteristics: Bartleby
1831: Sartor Resartus: [ch] PGut
1837: The French Revolution: A History: [ch] PGut
1838: Essay on Scott: Fordham
1841: On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History: [ch] PGut
1850: Latter-Day Pamphlets: [ch] PGut
1851: The Life of John Sterling: [ch] PGut
1858-1865: History of Friedrich II of Prussia (Frederick the Great): [ch] PGut
1866: Inaugural Address at Edinburgh: Bartleby
1875: Early Kings of Norway: PGut
Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle: CWW
New Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle: CWW

Burke's! outflings my lord Stephen, giving the cry, and a tag and bobtail of all them after, cockerel, jackanapes, welsher, pilldoctor, punctual Bloom at heels with a universal grabbing at headgear, ashplants, bilbos, Panama hats and scabbards, Zermatt alpenstocks and what not.

Burke's: a pub, one block north of the hospital [map]

'outflings': Carlyle's 'French Revolution' is written in the present tense

'a tag and bobtail': usually 'rag, tag, and bobtail' = rabble
'bobtail': horse with short tail [def] (Bannon's haicut was described as a cut bob)
'cockerel': young rooster [def]
'jackanapes': impudent person [def]
'welsher': swindler, or person from Wales [def]
'pilldoctor': not Dixon the surgeon, who's just coming downstairs

'bilbos': Spanish rapiers
'Panama hats': Mulligan wears a Panama hat [Scylla] [pix]
'scabbards': bilbos and scabbards might imply a dueling society?
'Zermatt': Swiss resort near the Matterhorn
'alpenstocks': walking sticks for mountaineering [pix]

A dedale of lusty youth, noble every student there. Nurse Callan taken aback in the hallway cannot stay them nor smiling surgeon coming downstairs with news of placentation ended, a full pound if a milligramme.

'dedale': maybe 'a variously-adorned group'? [OED?]
(also French for 'maze'. 'daedal' means ingenious, after Daedalus: def) cf "Behold the mansion reared by dedal Jack..." [Oxen]

'smiling surgeon' = Dixon

'a full pound': a reasonable weight for the placenta

They hark him on. The door! It is open? Ha! They are out, tumultuously, off for a minute's race, all bravely legging it, Burke's of Denzille and Holles their ulterior goal. Dixon follows giving them sharp language but raps out an oath, he too, and on.

'tumultuously': cf Oxen-note: "tumultuously eddy   mad witch's hair"

Dixon tries at first to quiet them, but instead joins them?

Bloom stays with nurse a thought to send a kind word to happy mother and nurseling up there. Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet. Looks she too not other now? Ward of watching in Horne's house has told its tale in that washedout pallor. Them all being gone, a glance of motherwit helping, he whispers close in going: Madam, when comes the storkbird for thee?

'Doctor Diet and Doctor Quiet': Drs. Diet, Quiet, and Merryman are the best doctors, according to a proverb quoted in Swift's Polite Conversation

'Looks she too not other now': cf Oxen-note: "different appearance of nurse Callan" (she 'too'? who else, then?)

'Ward of watching in Horne's house': "The double-thudding Anglo-Saxon motive recurs from time to time... to give the sense of the hoofs of oxen."

'storkbird': it may be that Nurse Callan is actually pregnant (longshot)

an Oxen-note may hint that Nurse Callan looks at herself in the mirror after Bloom and Dixon leave: "Woman looks at ?mirror after adieu"

The air without is impregnated with raindew moisture, life essence celestial, glistering on Dublin stone there under starshiny coelum. God's air, the Allfather's air, scintillant circumambient cessile air. Breathe it deep into thee.

'moisture': wetness of newborn baby
'coelum' = the vault of heaven (Latin) 'cessile' = yielding
'Breathe it': newborn's first breath (Oxen-note: "Getting out they breathe")

By heaven, Theodore Purefoy, thou hast done a doughty deed and no botch! Thou art, I vow, the remarkablest progenitor barring none in this chaffering allincluding most farraginous chronicle.

Theodore Purefoy, husband, Methodist, accountant in bank [Lestryg] [Penelope]

'doughty' = stouthearted (cf Oxen-note: "Dought, likely man")

'chaffering' = haggling or chattering [def] (cf Oxen-note: "chaffering + other racketing")

'farraginous' = mixed, formed of various materials

Astounding! In her lay a Godframed Godgiven preformed possibility which thou hast fructified with thy modicum of man's work. Cleave to her! Serve!

preformed: cf Oxen-note: "preformation, male only encourages minute complete embryo"

'Serve': Oxen-note: "serve (fuck)"

Toil on, labour like a very bandog and let scholarment and all Malthusiasts go hang. Thou art all their daddies, Theodore.

'bandog' = bound-dog (implies ferocity)

'Malthusiasts': Malthus enthusiasts would support birth-control (mal- implies negativity)

Art drooping under thy load, bemoiled with butcher's bills at home and ingots (not thine!) in the countinghouse? Head up!

'drooping': cf Oxen-notes: "drooping weight of thought"; "imagination has a body to it"; "lancinating else drooping" for 'lancinating': [Oxen]

'drooping... load... Head up': Purefoy as ox?

'ingots (not thine!)': Purefoy is an accountant in a bank

For every newbegotten thou shalt gather thy homer of ripe wheat. See, thy fleece is drenched.

'homer': ten to twelve bushels (Hebrew) (Oxen-note: "a homer of manna")

'thy fleece is drenched': Judges 6:37 [KJV] has Gideon asking God to give this sign if he (Gideon) is to save Israel

'thy fleece': Purefoy as sheep?

'drenched': newborn's wet hair

Dost envy Darby Dullman there with his Joan?

in Woodfall's c1800 ballad "The Happy Old Couple; or The Joys of Love Never Forgot" this couple's (D&J's) love survives their decline, and the loss of a child [gif]

the narrator has switched from addressing Theodore to addressing the reader (and from praising to criticising the Purefoys)

(in ch15, darbies are handcuffs: Circe)

Oxen-note: "chivalry (cycl. ?rows) no more but stayed for Darby + Joan" (chivalry has survived to the present in couples like D&J?)

'envy': cf? Oxen-note: "Ulysses projects envy at each chapter"

A canting jay and a rheumeyed curdog is all their progeny. Pshaw, I tell thee! He is a mule, a dead gasteropod, without vim or stamina, not worth a cracked kreutzer.

'canting jay': noisy bird
'progeny': they have many kids!?

Joyce's notes make it clear that this is an allusion to Tolstoy's 1890 (ie post-Carlyle) story, The Kreutzer Sonata, a shocking study of sexual jealousy: [etext] Tolstoy (1828-1910)

Copulation without population! No, say I! Herod's slaughter of the innocents were the truer name. Vegetables, forsooth, and sterile cohabitation! Give her beefsteaks, red, raw, bleeding!

'Copulation without population': (is this Bloom's conscience condemning him?)

'Herod's slaughter of the innocents': in Matthew, Herod tries to beat a prophecy by killing all infants of Jesus' age [KJV]

'Vegetables... and sterile cohabitation': AE's theosophical regimen = LB's impotence? (longshot: cf "Pold veg", below?)

'Give her beefsteaks': (longshot: give Molly Boylan?)

She is a hoary pandemonium of ills, enlarged glands, mumps, quinsy, bunions, hayfever, bedsores, ringworm, floating kidney, Derbyshire neck, warts, bilious attacks, gallstones, cold feet, varicose veins. A truce to threnes and trentals and jeremies and all such congenital defunctive music!

'She': Mina Purefoy? Molly?? Ireland???

'hayfever': cf? Circe-note "hayfever (O of S)" (Oxen of Sun)
'Derbyshire neck': goiter
'cold feet': cf Molly's complaint re LB in [Circe] and [Penelope]

'threnes' = dirges, esp. the lamentations of Jeremiah (also 'jeremies')
'trentals' = dirges, elegies
'defunctive music' = belonging to the dead (cf Shakespeare's "The Phoenix and the Turtle" line 14)

congenital deformities?

Twenty years of it, regret them not. With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and never do. Thou sawest thy America, thy lifetask, and didst charge to cover like the transpontine bison.

'Twenty years': Purefoys married 20 years? (20 years is also the length of Odysseus's separation from Penelope)

cf ch15 "BLOOM: On this day twenty years ago we overcame the hereditary enemy at Ladysmith..." [Circe]

and "BELLO (ruthlessly): No, Leopold Bloom, all is changed by woman's will since you slept horizontal in Sleepy Hollow your night of twenty years. Return and see." [Circe]

cf: JAJ's parents were married 23 years (six daughters and five sons survived infancy)

'wait and never do': cf Hamlet?

'America': in Donne's Elegie 19, his mistress [etext]

'transpontine': on the other side of the hypothetical land bridge

'bison': oxen-motif

(clearly addressing Theodore again)

How saith Zarathustra? Deine Kuh Trübsal melkest Du. Nun trinkst Du die süsse Milch des Euters. See! It displodes for thee in abundance.

Nietzsche-quote from Thus Spake Zarathustra (1891): "You are [should be 'were'] milking your cow, Adversity [or Affliction]. Now you are drinking the sweet milk of her udder." [German etext] [English]

cf Friar Laurence in "Romeo and Juliet": "I'll give thee armour to keep off that word; Adversity's sweet milk, philosophy, To comfort thee, though thou are banished." [etext]

'displode': to explode, with a noisy discharge (from Swift's Tale of a Tub: cite)

Drink, man, an udderful! Mother's milk, Purefoy, the milk of human kin, milk too of those burgeoning stars overhead, rutilant in thin rainvapour, punch milk, such as those rioters will quaff in their guzzlingden, milk of madness, the honeymilk of Canaan's land.

'milk of human kin': Lady Macbeth: 'milk of human kindness' stays Macbeth's hand [etext]

'stars': ie, the Milky Way galaxy
'rutilant': bright red

Thy cow's dug was tough, what? Ay, but her milk is hot and sweet and fattening. No dollop this but thick rich bonnyclaber. To her, old patriarch! Pap!

'tough': ie, Mina's labor was difficult?

'bonnyclaber': thick curdled milk (Irish)

'To her': drinking a toast ...with breastmilk? (cf LB: Penelope)

Per deam Partulam et Pertundam nunc est bibendum!

Latin: "By the goddesses P & P now must we drink."

'Nunc est bibendum': from Horace's Ode 37 [bilingual] [English]

'Partula': cf Oxen-note: "board at foot of bed Prorsa, Postverta, Nixii, Partula, Genita Mana" (Prorsa and Postverta are surnames of Carmenta, referring to her knowledge of past and future. the other three are deities of childbirth.)

'Pertundam': cf Oxen-note: "deae virginenses, prema, pertunda: Deus Subigus" cf St Augustine's "City of God" VI.9.3: "Adest enim dea Virginiensis et deus pater Subigus, et dea mater Prema et dea Pertunda, et Venus et Priapus" [English] "Why is the bed-chamber filled with a crowd of deities, when even the groomsmen have departed? And, moreover, it is so filled, not that in consideration of their presence more regard may be paid to chastity, but that by their help the woman, naturally of the weaker sex, and trembling with the novelty of her situation, may the more readily yield her virginity. For there are the goddess Virginiensis, and the god-father Subigus, and the goddess-mother Prema, and the goddess Pertunda, and Venus, and Priapus."

Prema: Roman goddess of newlyweds
Pertunda: Roman goddess of loss of virginity
Subigus: Roman god protector of wedding night

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major: FW : Pomes : U : PoA : Ex : Dub : SH : CM : CM05 : CM04
minor: Burner : [Defoe] : [Office] : PoA04 : Epiph : Mang : Rab
bio: timeline : 1898-1904 : [Trieste] : eyesight : schools : Augusta
vocation: reading : tastes : publishers : craft : symmetry
people: 1898-1904 gossip : 1881 gossip : Nora : Lucia : Gogarty : Byrne : friends : siblings : Stannie
maps: Dublin : Leinster : Ireland : Europe : Paris : Ulysses
images: directory : [Ruch]
motifs: ontology : waves : lies : wanking : MonaLisa : murder
Irish lit: timeline : 100poems : Ireland : newspapers : gossip : Yeats : MaudG : AE : the Household : Theosophy : Eglinton : Ideals
classics: Shakespeare : Dante : Pre-Raphaelites : Homer : Patrick
industry: Bloomsday : [movies] : Ellmann : Rose : genetics : NewGame
website: account : theory : early : old links : slow-portal fast-portal

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