Is the underlined part to the effect of: he copied faithfully with a quivering hand the symbols, which, as a result, were in wavering forms? If so, is ‘moved’ quite Joycean?
Is wheysour milk = sour watery milk?
Is swaddling bands = diapers?
Is it = Like my childhood, Sargent bends over his copybook beside me. or It looks as if my childhood bends beside me. or both?
Is it = My secret is far and his as deep/covert as our eys.?
Is it = and this whorled one (shell) was symbolized as an emir’s turban?
I would say that he “moves” (copies; yes, characteristically Joycean!) the symbols (like unfamiliar objects) from S’s piece of paper to his own book. They are “unsteady” both in terms of handwriting, and in terms of his uncertain grasp of the mathematics.
(Human) milk that was “sour as whey” (i.e. as whey from cow’s milk). I should imagine that JJ spoke from experience.
I would take them as the characteristic long clothes in which babies are wrapped.
I would read it as absolute identification.
It could be both “my childhood is far, and his is secret as our eyes”, and “my childhood is far as our eyes, and his secret as our eyes”; but probably the former. I like your “covert”.
If my understanding of a clove of orange is correct: a section of orange, then I would suppose the clove was quite huge for a meatfaced woman to nuzzle thirstily: suck greedly. Isn’t it normal in the case that the woman put the whole clove into her meatmouth instead of sucking it?
The words ‘clove’ and ‘orange’ don’t usually go together, this is why I suspect a sexual connotation here. Think of the shape of a clove (of garlic) tinged with orange… And if you then picture this (vile) woman nuzzling it, you can conjecture mannerism usually associated with Mediterranean men.
Does Deasy suggest that his prediction shouldn’t be unheared like Cassandra’s?
Is ‘oldly’ = ‘wise-man-likely’ or 'impatiently?
The underlined part has been puzzling me for a long time. I would think this time that it could hardly make much sense alone unless punningly connected with the foregoing sunbeam and aftgoing light, other than Odyssean background.
It seems so, yes: his letter anticipates the possibility that it will be disregarded, by warning that Cassandra was also disregarded. The allusion may be to her warning about the Wooden Horse (possibly his metaphor in the letter for what he calls “jew merchants” later); or possibly to her warning about the doom of Troy, when Paris embarked on the voyage that would end in the kidnapping of Helen (presumably the “woman who was no better than she should be”, i.e. a woman of loose morals).
That is a strange adverb. Would-be wisdom sounds likely, as you say; or does his finger shake a little?
I think he passes through the sunbeam once, his eyes “coming to blue life”, then turns and halts, not quite passing through the sunbeam again, and therefore looking “across” it at Stephen. I would agree with you about its (decorative?) connection with the following “light”.
It seems to me that Mr. Deasy said a wise thing for the first time to be like Nestor in spite of his muddling memory and anti-Home-Rule and anti-Jewish attitudes.
A trifle but what is an open porch? Is it without roof?
Do ‘toothless terrors’ have a pun on ‘The lions couchant on the pillars’ (for they were made of stone) and S. himself for he was called ‘toothless’ and would help Mr. D with the letter (piercing lance without teeth)?
Does ‘bullockbefriending’ allude to: S. who would help Mr. D with the letter concerning cattles (bullock), Homer who befriended the cattle of the sun-god, Homeric grammar ‘bullock befriending’ instead of ‘befriending bullock’, and Buck who was pro-Greek?
Does this part actually say: Mr. D forged many untrue facts as well as his greed for money (dancing coins), the Homeric sun-god blessing him, as a wise man like Nestor? If so, ‘wise shoulders’ or a wise man must have been an enantiosis. Or other allusions?
I wonder if there’s a certain element of dramatic irony here: Mr Deasy’s comments seem to suggest that a) Stephen is not very “humble” – with the implication that he, Mr Deasy, is “humble”, and therefore a great “learner”; and b) that Stephen is young and has much to learn – with the implication that he, Mr Deasy, has learnt much, simply because he is older. But we know, from Mr Deasy’s letter and comments, that he is not very “humble”, and not very sage.
(In some respects, it resembles the comment Bloom sensibly decided not to make, in the “catechism” section, about attending the “University of Life”.)
This seems to be an attempt to replicate the “aithousa” or open portico of the Greek; though what that would imply in terms of English architecture, I can’t envisage.
“Toothless terrors” perhaps like the lions of England? In the context of Pylos, it’s also difficult not to recall pre-classical city gates. “Toothless” too as a reminiscence of “toothless Kinch”, as you say.
Yes; if Stephen helps Deasy with his letter, Buck will devise an appropriately half-hexameter Homeric epithet for him: “bullock-befriending bard”. Bulls and oxen feature much in Odyssey III. (It also recalls the “Bous Stephanoumenos” of Portrait.)
I think the “wise shoulders” reflects Mr D’s estimation of himself, which is unlikely to be the reader’s or Stephen’s opinion (and which is thus indeed an example of enantiosis); while the dancing coins are an image of Stephen’s, which seems to summarise the themes of this visit to “Nestor”. (An ordinary writer would have merely said “dappled” at this point.)
Is it = It was me who saw him clambering down to the footpace, a garland of grey hair on his comminated head, (DESCENDE!) ? If so, why clambering down to the footpace (dais) instead of clambering up?
Is ‘the altar’s horns’ the altar’s four corners?
Is ‘jackpriests’ priests do their service for monay (jack)?
Is ‘the fat of kidneys of wheat’ the good sorts of wheat?
That’s a tricky passage. I’m not entirely sure I follow it; but:
I think he sees himself as the tonsured priest (“him me”), descending to the footpace, presumably during Mass, as in this image.
I should think he means an altar such as this one. There may be implications also of a classical altar; “horned” then puns too on the bulls that you would sacrifice to Poseidon.
“Jack” generally has a pejorative sense, in compounds, with a sense of “ordinary”, “everyday”, “pedestrian”, “unexceptional”. Here, “jackpriest” suggests the unspecial priestly underlings.
This comes from Deuteronomy, and means the finest part of the wheat:
“Butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.”
Joyce’s phrase probably implies “fat with eating the left-over consecrated bread, after Mass”.
I would infer from the context that Raw facebones should refer to Kevin Egan. But since he was a radical Catholic how could he put on a peep of day boy’s (precursors of Orangemen) hat?
I have a feeling that the whole Proteus bears a well-rhymed writing and sometimes the feet or rhyming words seem to me more important than their literal meaning. However, this one I really understand not:
What was the pard (panther)? Some connection with Haines?
What is got in spousebreach? Is ‘formed between wrong spouseship’? (kind of son of a bitch)
Yes, it seems to break into various kinds of metre from time to time – pentameters, or rhymed couplets, or snatches of alliterative verse.
Here, I think yes, the pard recalls Haines’s black panther; I would say (tentatively) simply as an association in S’s mind, rather than a particular allusion.
Perhaps “begotten in adultery” (“spousebreach” has an air of Anglo-Saxon verse).
Perhaps “feeding on the dead like a vulture”; presumably in reference to a canine tendency to dig up corpses.
Thank you, MrP, very much again and a trifle again:
How should I imagine ‘two figures across from the crested tide’? = out of the crested tide two figures appeared and came across the sea walking shoreward?
I would guess ‘it’ suggests baby Moses. But why this connection comes out here? Is it because one of the earlier two ladies carried a bag with a dead baby?
I see them walking across the sea in front of the breaking waves, where the waves run in. But it’s by no means clear.
I think you’re right about Moses, and the connection with the dead baby. The passage seems to combine (in S’s imagination) the finding of Moses with the deposition after the Crucifixion. (I wonder whether it also relates to S’s reflections on the sea in the scene with Buck.)
