Ulysses

by James Joyce

The mockery of it, he said gaily. Your absurd name, an ancient Greek.

—God, he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a grey sweet mother? The snotgreen sea. The scrotum-tightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks. I must teach you. You must read them in the original. Thalatta! Thalatta! She is our great sweet mother. Come and look.

But to think of your mother begging you with her last breath to kneel down and pray for her. And you refused. There is something sinister in you . . .

—Thanks, Stephen said. I can’t wear them if they are grey. —He can’t wear them, Buck Mulligan told his face in the mirror. Etiquette is etiquette. He kills his mother but he can’t wear grey trousers.

In a dream, silently, she had come to him, her wasted body within its loose graveclothes giving off an odour of wax and rosewood, her breath bent over him with mute secret words, a faint odour of wetted ashes.

Liliata rutilantium te confessorum turma circumdet: iubilantium te virginum chorus excipiat.

—You’re not a believer, are you? Haines asked. I mean, a believer in the narrow sense of the word. Creation from nothing and miracles and a personal God. —There’s only one sense of the word, it seems to me, Stephen said.

—You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought.

He broke off in alarm, feeling his side under his flapping shirt. —My twelfth rib is gone, he cried. I’m the Uebermensch. Toothless Kinch and I, the supermen.

Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death. They are not to be thought away. 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.

Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is: the soul is the form of forms. Tranquillity sudden, vast, candescent: form of forms.

A poor soul gone to heaven: and on a heath beneath winking stars a fox, red reek of rapine in his fur, with merciless bright eyes scraped in the earth, listened, scraped up the earth, listened, scraped and scraped.

He proves by algebra that Shakespeare’s ghost is Hamlet’s grandfather.

Stephen’s hand, free again, went back to the hollow shells. Symbols too of beauty and of power. A lump in my pocket. Symbols soiled by greed and misery.

History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy said. All history moves towards one great goal, the manifestation of God. Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying: —That is God. Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee! —What? Mr Deasy asked. —A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging his shoulders.

A bloated carcass of a dog lay lolled on bladderwrack. Before him the gunwale of a boat, sunk in sand. Un coche ensablé, Louis Veuillot called Gautier’s prose. These heavy sands are language tide and wind have silted here.

Touch me. Soft eyes. Soft soft soft hand. I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now. What is that word known to all men? I am quiet here alone. Sad too. Touch, touch me.

Mr Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls.

Here, she said. What does that mean? He leaned downward and read near her polished thumbnail. —Metempsychosis? —Yes. Who’s he when he’s at home? —Metempsychosis, he said, frowning. It’s Greek: from the Greek. That means the transmigration of souls.

Wait before a door sometime it will open. Let her wait.

By lorries along sir John Rogerson’s quay Mr Bloom walked soberly, past Windmill lane, Leask’s the linseed crusher’s, the postal telegraph office.

Maud Gonne’s letter about taking them off O’Connell street at night: disgrace to our Irish capital. Griffith’s paper is on the same tack now: an army rotten with venereal disease: overseas or halfseasover empire. Half baked they look: hypnotised like. Eyes front. Mark time. Table: able. Bed: ed. The King’s own. Never see him dressed up as a fireman or a bobby. A mason, yes.

—Why? I said. What’s wrong with him? I said. Proud: rich: silk stockings.

He tore the flower gravely from its pinhold smelt its almost no smell and placed it in his heart pocket. Language of flowers. They like it because no-one can hear. Or a poison bouquet to strike him down.

Father Bernard Vaughan’s sermon first. Christ or Pilate? Christ, but don’t keep us all night over it.

How long since your last mass? Gloria and immaculate virgin. Joseph her spouse. Peter and Paul. More interesting if you understood what it was all about. Wonderful organisation certainly, goes like clockwork. Confession. Everyone wants to. Then I will tell you all. Penance. Punish me, please. Great weapon in their hands.

Always passing, the stream of life, which in the stream of life we trace is dearer than them all.

One dragged aside: an old woman peeping. Nose whiteflattened against the pane. Thanking her stars she was passed over. Extraordinary the interest they take in a corpse. Glad to see us go we give them such trouble coming.

That Mulligan is a contaminated bloody doubledyed ruffian by all accounts. His name stinks all over Dublin. But with the help of God and His blessed mother I’ll make it my business to write a letter one of those days to his mother or his aunt or whatever she is that will open her eye as wide as a gate. I’ll tickle his catastrophe, believe you me.

If little Rudy had lived. See him grow up. Hear his voice in the house. Walking beside Molly in an Eton suit. My son. Me in his eyes. Strange feeling it would be. From me. Just a chance. Must have been that morning in Raymond terrace she was at the window, watching the two dogs at it by the wall of the cease to do evil. And the sergeant grinning up. She had that cream gown on with the rip she never stitched. Give us a touch, Poldy. God, I’m dying for it. How life begins.

Is there anything more in him that they she sees? Fascination. Worst man in Dublin. That keeps him alive. They sometimes feel what a person is. Instinct. But a type like that. My nails. I am just looking at them: well pared. And after: thinking alone.

Body getting a bit softy. I would notice that from remembering. What causes that I suppose the skin can’t contract quickly enough when the flesh falls off. But the shape is there. The shape is there still. Shoulders. Hips. Plump. Night of the dance dressing. Shift stuck between the cheeks behind.

Someone has laid a bunch of flowers there. Woman. Must be his deathday. For many happy returns.

Madame: smiling. I smiled back. A smile goes a long way. Only politeness perhaps. Nice fellow.

—The devil break the hasp of your back! Mr Power, collapsing in laughter, shaded his face from the window as the carriage passed Gray’s statue. —We have all been there, Martin Cunningham said broadly. His eyes met Mr Bloom’s eyes. He caressed his beard, adding: —Well, nearly all of us.

—We had better look a little serious, Martin Cunningham said. Mr Dedalus sighed. —And then indeed, he said, poor little Paddy wouldn’t grudge us a laugh. Many a good one he told himself.

—He had a sudden death, poor fellow, he said. —The best death, Mr Bloom said. Their wide open eyes looked at him. —No suffering, he said. A moment and all is over. Like dying in sleep. No-one spoke.

White horses with white frontlet plumes came round the Rotunda corner, galloping. A tiny coffin flashed by. In a hurry to bury. A mourning coach. Unmarried. Black for the married. Piebald for bachelors. Dun for a nun. —Sad, Martin Cunningham said. A child. A dwarf’s face mauve and wrinkled like little Rudy’s was. Dwarf’s body, weak as putty, in a whitelined deal box. Burial friendly society pays. Penny a week for a sod of turf. Our. Little. Beggar. Baby. Meant nothing. Mistake of nature. If it’s healthy it’s from the mother. If not the man. Better luck next time.

—But the worst of all, Mr Power said, is the man who takes his own life. Martin Cunningham drew out his watch briskly, coughed and put it back. —The greatest disgrace to have in the family, Mr Power added. —Temporary insanity, of course, Martin Cunningham said decisively. We must take a charitable view of it. —They say a man who does it is a coward, Mr Dedalus said. —It is not for us to judge, Martin Cunningham said. Mr Bloom, about to speak, closed his lips again. Martin Cunningham’s large eyes. Looking away now. Sympathetic human man he is. Intelligent. Like Shakespeare’s face. Always a good word to say.

That afternoon of the inquest. The redlabelled bottle on the table. The room in the hotel with hunting pictures. Stuffy it was. Sunlight through the slats of the Venetian blinds. The coroner’s ears, big and hairy. Boots giving evidence. Thought he was asleep first. Then saw like yellow streaks on his face. Had slipped down to the foot of the bed. Verdict: overdose. Death by misadventure. The letter. For my son Leopold. No more pain. Wake no more. Nobody owns.

Coffin now. Got here before us, dead as he is.

Martin Cunningham whispered: —I was in mortal agony with you talking of suicide before Bloom. —What? Mr Power whispered. How so? —His father poisoned himself, Martin Cunningham whispered. Had the Queen’s hotel in Ennis. You heard him say he was going to Clare. Anniversary. —O God! Mr Power whispered. First I heard of it. Poisoned himself!

—I am the resurrection and the life. That touches a man’s inmost heart. —It does, Mr Bloom said. Your heart perhaps but what price the fellow in the six feet by two with his toes to the daisies? No touching that.

The Botanic Gardens are just over there. It’s the blood sinking in the earth gives new life.

Always someone turns up you never dreamt of. A fellow could live on his lonesome all his life. Yes, he could. Still he’d have to get someone to sod him after he died though he could dig his own grave. We all do. Only man buries. No ants too. First thing strikes anybody. Bury the dead. Say Robinson Crusoe was true to life. Well then Friday buried him. Every Friday buries a Thursday if you come to look at it.

Lay me in my native earth. Bit of clay from the holy land. Only a mother and deadborn child ever buried in the one coffin. I see what it means. I see. To protect him as long as possible even in the earth. The Irishman’s house is his coffin. Embalming in catacombs, mummies, the same idea.

Well it is a long rest. Feel no more. It’s the moment you feel. Must be damned unpleasant. Can’t believe it at first. Mistake must be: someone else. Try the house opposite. Wait, I wanted to. I haven’t yet. Then darkened deathchamber. Light they want. Whispering around you. Would you like to see a priest? Then rambling and wandering. Delirium all you hid all your life. The death struggle. His sleep is not natural.

Bam! expires. Gone at last. People talk about you a bit: forget you. Don’t forget to pray for him. Remember him in your prayers. Even Parnell. Ivy day dying out. Then they follow: dropping into a hole one after the other. We are praying now for the repose of his soul. Hoping you’re well and not in hell. Nice change of air. Out of the fryingpan of life into the fire of purgatory.

More sensible to spend the money on some charity for the living. Pray for the repose of the soul of. Does anybody really? Plant him and have done with him. Like down a coalshoot. Then lump them together to save time.