Ulysses (James Joyce) - A literary discussion

[Haihao]

Hello MrP, Good evening!

That’s why I felt unnatural as I took it as B’s voice. Too rude too. Haines’ practice of Gaelic which the old lady couldn’t comprehend makes everything in order. And for #1, too, it’s as clear as a bell.

Best regards,

Haihao

[Haihao]

Sorry for my hairsplitting but,

– I see little hope, Stephen said, from her or from him.
Buck Mulligan sighed tragically and laid his hand on Stephen’s arm.
– From me, Kinch, he said.

1. If he had said ‘Or from me, Kinch.’ or ‘From me either.’ then it would be very clear he meant ‘see little hope from me either’. But now only ‘From me’ and ‘Kinch’. Is there any possibility to mean ‘From me you will see hope, Kinch.’?

– There’s your snotrag, he said.

2. dogsbody, kip and snotrag (noserag) are repeatedly used by Buck. Is there any intention or allusion in it (them)?

Stephen, taking his ashplant from its leaningplace, followed them out and, as they went down the ladder, pulled to the slow iron door and locked it. He put the huge key in his inner pocket.

At the foot of the ladder Buck Mulligan asked:
– Did you bring the key?
– I have it, Stephen said, preceding them.

3. I would say pulled to the slow iron door = pulled the slow iron door to. As far as I know, used as an adverb, ‘to’ would always come last. Is this ‘pull to’ usage a curve ball?

4. I would infer from the 2nd underlined part that they had waited for S until he went down to the foot of the ladder then B asked the question. Is that correct?

He walked on. Behind him he heard Buck Mulligan club with his heavy bathtowel the leader shoots of ferns or grasses.
– Down, sir! How dare you, sir!

5. Does the whole paragraph suggest B doesn’t like people or things outstanding or just he said it to let Haines hear?

Thank you!

Haihao

[MrPedantic]

Hello Haihao,

1. I think it’s a “correction”. Stephen’s “We had better pay her” and “Would I make any money out of it” have spoilt Buck’s plans (to beguile the milkwoman, and to promote Stephen to Haines). Thus the “hope” rested in Buck’s cunning, not in Haines and the milkwoman, as Stephen seems to think; and Buck’s “From me” gently draws his attention to the fact.

2. All three terms are slangily and mildly disrespectful (of S., his handkerchief, and the tower, for which S. seems to pay the rent). Buck likes to keep the world in its place.

3. Yes, it means “pulled the door slowly to”. Both forms are possible; but perhaps the rhythm of “pulled the slow iron door to” would suggest a jerkier closing of the door than JJ intended.

4. Yes, that’s how I would read it.

5. I think this may just be a humorously oblique reference on Buck’s part to exemplary tales such as these:

Aristotle wrote: “Periander advised Thrasybulus by cutting the tops of the tallest ears of corn, meaning that he must always put out of the way the citizens who overtop the rest.” In Livy’s account, the tyrannical Roman King, Tarquin the Proud, received a messenger from his son Sextus Tarquinius asking what he should do next in Gabii, since he had become all-powerful there. Rather than answering the messenger verbally, Tarquinius went into his garden, took a stick, and symbolically swept it across his garden, thus cutting off the heads of the tallest poppies that were growing there. The messenger, tired of waiting for an answer, returned to Gabii and told Sextus what he had seen. Sextus realised that his father wished him to put to death all of the most eminent people of Gabii, which he then did.

(From Wikipedia)

(Not “hairsplitting”, I would say; “reading Joyce”…)

Best wishes,

MrP

[Haihao]

Very nice indeed. I have got another one:

He turned to Stephen, saying, as he pulled down neatly the peaks of his primrose waistcoat:
– You couldn’t manage it under three pints, Kinch, could you?
– It has waited so long, Stephen said listlessly, it can wait longer.

1. Do ‘peaks’ here mean ‘central line points in the front and back hems of his waistcoat’?

2. Do the 1st and 2nd ‘it’ both mean ‘idea’ of Hamlet’?

Thank you!

Haihao

[Mister_Micawber]

.
I suppose so, but I don’t understand that location-- the vocabulary is too sartorial for me.

I would think that they were the points on the front, as HERE.
.

[MrPedantic]

My topological guess would be the same as Mister M’s.

I would agree about the first and second "it"s: “You couldn’t manage it” I would read as “You couldn’t manage to present your idea of Hamlet”; and “it has waited so long” as “my idea of Hamlet has waited so long”.

Best wishes,

MrP

[Haihao]

I see. Thank you very much. And,

The seas’ ruler, he gazed southward over the bay, empty save for the smokeplume of the mailboat, vague on the bright skyline, and a sail tacking by the Muglins.

1. Does ‘over’ mean ‘above’ or ‘across and beyond’? If the latter, then ‘empty’ would refer to 'empty sea southward beyond the bay, wouldn’t it?

2. Does ‘vague’ modify ‘the smokeplume’ or ‘the mailboat’ or the both?

All the best,

Haihao

[Mister_Micawber]

.
1-- Across (and beyond, if it is possible- MrP will tell us how big the bay is.)
2-- Well, they are of a piece, but smoke plumes are rather vague at the best of times, so I’ll plump for the mailboat, which makes more sense.
.

[Haihao]

I am reassured, Mr. Micawber, with the both. Just some more:

– I read a theological interpretation of it somewhere, he said bemused. The Father and the Son idea. The Son striving to be atoned with the Father.

3. I would guess it refers to Elsinore, That beetles o’er his base into the sea. If so then the Elsinore is the symbol for the Son and sea for the Father?

4. Does it also indicate and overlap the thema of Telemachus that S. is searching for his (spiritual) father with the Odyssey background?

He moved a doll’s head to and fro

5. Is it possible to determine whether ‘backward and forward’ or ‘leftward and rightward’ or ‘round-ward’?

Mercury’s hat quivering in the fresh wind that bore back to them his brief birdlike cries.

6. Does this picture suggest anything indicating whether the hat was on or off his head?

– Three times a day, after meals, Stephen said drily.

7. Does it suggest people pray before meals but joke (blaspheme) after = they don’t really believe?

Thank you!

Haihao

[MrPedantic]

Hello Haihao,

3. I would take “it” as Hamlet, here.

4. It would not surprise me to find an obscure allusion to the Trinity, in “atoned” (“at-one’d”); or at least to find that a PhD student somewhere had made a case for it. But I think yes, the Telemachus/Hamlet/NT allusions prepare for Stephen + Bloom.

5. I would read it as “he moved his head from side to side, with see-saw movements resembling the movements of a doll’s head, when a child moves a doll from side to side in human simulation”.

6. I would say “on his head”; the brim of the petasus “quivering”.

7. I think it may be intended to suggest the tiresome regularity with which Buck repeats his ballad.

For #2: there may be a mild pun on “vague” (French for “wave”).

Best wishes,

MrP

[Haihao]

Hello MrP,

Thank you for your insightful comments again. There is another one puzzling me:

He walked on, waiting to be spoken to, trailing his ashplant by his side. Its ferule followed lightly on the path, squealing at his heels.

1. I would guess it’s not really a ‘fetule’ but some wrapping head on the end of the ashplant, isn’t it? If so, why ferule?

Thank you!

Haihao

[Mister_Micawber]

.
I think you’ve made a typo in the first instance, Haihao,-- and perhaps JJ has made a different one in the original–but it is indeed just a ferrule (not a ‘fetule’)-- a metal tip cover-- at the nether end (not the head) of the ashplant he carries.

Perhaps the usual spelling was with the single ‘r’ 100 years ago.
.

[Haihao]

That’s right, MM. It seems that Joyce Sensei and I both made typos with the same word. Thank you for the clarification of the meaning as well. And,

The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen’s memory the triumph of their brazen bells:

2. I love this kind of Joycean ‘3D’ expression very much and I am sure I can never be able to acquire the sense. Instead I can only put it to the same effect as: Their brazen bells rang triumphally in Stephen’s memory of the proud potent titles: 1D. Maybe it’s just my naiveness or greenness.

All the best,

Haihao

[Mister_Micawber]

.
I think this is JJ trying to look like a ‘writer’-- it’s not Stephen talking here. It is a bit much. Try to say it without spitting.
.

[Haihao]

O, yes! Is it "The proud potent titles clanged over Stephen’s memory the triumph of their brazen bells?

And the following although I couldn’t really read it:

et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam

I missed it completely.

Haihao

[Mister_Micawber]

.
Me too-- those case endings are an intrinsic part of Latin, though. We’ll have to wait for MrP to let us know if JJ played with the Latin too for alliterative purposes, or just quoted something from his Jesuit past. My Latin is limited to “Veni, vidi, vici”.
.

[Haihao]

My Latin is limited to vice versa. BTW, some source says the meaning of et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam is somewhere around: The Church of the Apostles believing in the only most sacred.

And, I’m also interested in the part that follows the above:

the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a chemistry of stars. Symbol of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus, the voices blended, singing alone loud in affirmation: and behind their chant the vigilant angel of the church militant disarmed and menaced her heresiarchs. A horde of heresies fleeing with mitres awry: Photius and the brood of mockers of whom Mulligan was one, and Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ’s terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own Son. Words Mulligan had spoken a moment since in mockery to the stranger. Idle mockery. The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael’s host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields.

3. Does ‘a chemistry of stars’ symbolize ‘changing’?

4. ‘behind their chant’ would change a voice’s phase into a vision’s. Is it possible because it happened in S’s mind?

5. I would guess ‘the stranger’ refers either to the old lady or to the English but couldn’t recall any ‘words in mockery’. What does that suggest?

6. Does ‘the void’ allude to all those conflicts, mockery, etc. concerning church or religion?

Thank you!

Haihao

[MrPedantic]

@Haihao

et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam

Hello Haihao,

This is from the Credo: “[I believe in A, B, C, D, E…] and one holy catholic and apostolic church”.

The first four -am endings are regular; they represent adjectival agreement with the case (accusative) of “ecclesiam”.

[MrPedantic]

…

3. I think S. here perceives a resemblance between three phenomena: i) the evolution of ritual and dogma ii) the evolution of his own unusual habits of thought iii) the processes involved in the formation and evolution of stars.

4. I would take this as a reference to voices singing Palestrina’s Mass for Pope Marcellus. Joyce was a musician; early music such as the choral works of Palestrina had become better known, around the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

5. The “stranger” I take to be Haines: a “stranger” in the less common senses “visitor” and “foreigner”. Buck’s jocular words on the Son’s “striving to be atoned” with the Father resemble Sabellius’s heresy.

6. I think “the void” implies both a Dantesque void, which awaits mockers and those who utter idle words, and an inner wasteland, of the kind that Eliot made familiar.

(“Weaving the wind” has a Biblical air, as a metaphor for futile activity; it also turns up in Eliot’s Gerontion. While “Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ’s terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own Son” seems to prefigure Borges.)

Best wishes,

MrP

[Haihao]

Hello MrP, Good evening!

I have another one to ask for your (MP, MM, etc.) ever informative and insightful comments.

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

1. ‘Hear, hear!’ could mean ‘agreed!’ How about them here?

2. Does ‘Prolonged applause’ for the mass (in S’s mind)?

Thank you!

Haihao