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Ulysses 2017
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Discussion Three – Episode 3, Proteus
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"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." (49)
Trying to understand Stephen
Stephen's relationships with women are always under close scrutiny. And though this quote confirms the sad and lonely Stephen we've come to know, I think there is within it a positive and a hopeful tone.
Mod
Again, the discussions are for the perspectives of the group members. While Ellmann is well-respected and such, he's not in this group, so in the future, you can "General Banter' about him in the other discussion.
Also, Mark, Thanks for the quotes from the text, but how about a bit of commentary about why you're posting them? We'd like to know what's going on in your head!
Jim wrote: "Christopher and Mark, I relocated your discussion of Ellman to the "Questions, Resources, and General Banter" thread.Again, the discussions are for the perspectives of the group members. While El..."
OK, Jim, I will bear that in mind. Thanks for re-posting it (as opposed to deleting it).
It seems the Telemachus part of Ulysses is partly a transition from A Portrait. Dedalus has become Icarus, His Paris "flight" was interrupted by his mother's illness.
I think the Proteus episode is a sort of synthesis- he is walking on the strand, thinking about Aristotle, thinking about his poor relations, feeling a bit of a failure.
I am having a hard time understanding the sequence where he meets his friend Kevin Egan."Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan of Paris "
Patrice is referred to later in the story when Kevin asks SD to give Patrice his regards.
But I thought in the memory, SD was sitting with Patrice and Kevin in MacMahon?
Christopher wrote: "Jim wrote: "Christopher and Mark, I relocated your discussion of Ellman to the "Questions, Resources, and General Banter" thread.Again, the discussions are for the perspectives of the group membe..."
In SD's internal monologue when imagines his father talking about him using the phrase "Couldn't he fly a little higher?"
I haven't read Portrait so I'm not so well versed on SD's history. Why do you think he's becoming Icarus, when in fact he's doing the opposite so far by NOT flying high enough in his own eyes? (Since his father in the passage is just an extension of his own thoughts)
Avishek wrote: "Christopher wrote: "Jim wrote: "Christopher and Mark, I relocated your discussion of Ellman to the "Questions, Resources, and General Banter" thread.Again, the discussions are for the perspective..."
My reading is that Stephen is imagining what his father would say about him (Stephen) going to visit his mother's brother. The line about flying higher I read as a euphemism by Simon (through Stephen) to imply could not his son find better people to hang around with. High meaning here social standing.
I've never followed the Icarus parallel.
Avishek wrote: "I am having a hard time understanding the sequence where he meets his friend Kevin Egan."Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon. Son of the wild goose, Kevin Egan..."
Hey Avishek - this is a tough one. Joyce can be very obscure when referencing his pro-nouns. Anyway...
The remembrance about Kevin Egan in Paris seems to be broken-up into two sections. It begins with: "Patrice, home on furlough..." and that scene seems to end with " He laps."
Then with seven paragraphs in between it resumes with: "Noon slumbers." The next paragraph: "The blue fuse burns..." May or may not be part of the K.E. story. Then the next: "Spurned lover." definitely is involved, and the scene concludes with Stephen's summary: "Weak wasting hand..." Ok.
So in the first part Stephen is drinking with Patrice. And Patrice is identified as being Kevin's son. But I don't think Kevin is present, because at the end of the paragraph, in French, Patrice tells Stephen that he does not believe in God, and then qualifies the statement by asking Stephen not to tell his father (Kevin) which leads me to believe Kevin is not in this scene.
Then when the remembrance picks up again all three characters are together having lunch. Then near the end of the "Spurned lover." There are these lines:
"Loveless, landless, wifeless. (I'm assuming it is Kevin being referenced here.) She (I'm guessing this refers to Kevin's ex-wife?) is quite nicey comfy without her outcastman, madame, in rue Git-le-Coeur, canary and two buck lodgers. Peachy cheeks, a zebra skirt, frisky as a young thing's. Spurned and undespairing. (Does the speaker mean "She" or "Kevin"?) Tell Pat you saw me, won't you? (So the question here is who is me? Kevin or She?)
Then the next couple of lines may help identify me:
"I wanted to get poor Pat a job one time." (Would the mother or the father be more likely to call the son "poor" Pat?) Then:
"Mon fils (my son) soldier of France. I taught him to sing." (Again, the question who would be more likely, by tone and word choice, to speak these lines, the mother or the father?)
So. I don't think the three men were together in the first scene because of the comment in French. And then when the request is made to be remembered to Pat it may be a conversation with the mother rather than Kevin, but I'm not sure.
Maybe this will help? I had fun working on it. - )
Wow thanks a lot mark! I read your breakdown and re-read the section and it makes a lot more sense now.
One of my favorite Joyce Jokes is here in "Proteus": Kinch giving out the phone number to heaven: Aleph, alpha: nought, nought , one (43).
The rumination on Catholic argument at the bottom of that page (43) about the consubstantiality of the Father and Son may have something to say about the Hamlet's godfather argument.Later, Stepen argues with himself, in "my father's consubtantial voice" about visiting Aunt Sara or not and being interiorly berated for the company he keeps by said father's voice.
Tracy wrote: "The rumination on Catholic argument at the bottom of that page (43) about the consubstantiality of the Father and Son may have something to say about the Hamlet's godfather argument.Later, Stepen..."
As it happens, Bloom spots Stephen and points him out to Simon in episode six, and Simon does have some choice words for "what he married into."
Why is Stephen still in Dublin? He left once to get away from all the things there that were bothering him. He had come come home for his mother's sake - which he didn't handle very well. Now it's the same old, same old, bitter, unhappy, unsatisfied Stephen sitting in Dublin. Why is he still there?
Mark wrote: "Avishek wrote: "I am having a hard time understanding the sequence where he meets his friend Kevin Egan."Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon. Son of the wild g..."
That sounds good! But I want to add what I'm getting from that passage. I'm wondering if Kevin the wild goose is a radical Fenian--it says he "prowled with Col. Richard Burke"--I found reference to A Richard Burke who was jailed for bomb-throwing-- and the action that follows sound like it might have been the throwing of a bomb (also someone, either Burke or Egan is a Celtic chief--tanist. ) Kevin is "hiding" in gay Paree probably because he could be arrested in Dublin, and possibly Stephen met him there--sounds like he somewhat admires him. Therefore, since Kevin is missing, it must be his former? wife with the poor Pat lines, etc...in the next paragraph this is supported when soc narration apparently by Stephen back on the strand thinks, "They have forgotten Kevin Egan, not he them."
Why is Stephen still in Dublin? Well, partly because he's Telemachus, who stays home. I like how this episode shows the sand literally sucking at his feet as if intent on keeping him from leaving Ireland. Maybe he needs money first--why he resents Buck's usurpation of his pay. But also, all this Hamlet-like interior monologue, including thinking about Paris and Irishmen who made the leap, makes it seem he's contemplating making that change himself (Joyce eventually does, right?) He's like MacBeth, on the bank and shoal of time--getting ready to jump.
I have this question about "the two maries"--they are midwives, no? And here, when Stephen returns his focus to the strand, says they tucked "it" among the bullrushes--seems an obvious reference to Moses as a baby being put in the bullrushes to hide that he was a Jew. Did the women put a baby (alive or dead?) somewhere on the strand or is this just another flight of SD's fancy?
Also--the live dogs and dead dog in this scene, coupled with a woman who couldn't be saved from drowning--Ophelia?? Is (was) there a woman in SD's life?Hamlet, when he's pretending to rave to Polonius calls Ophelia "a dead dog"--"If the sun can breed maggots in a dead dog, friend, lok to't". This all has to do with P telling O to stay away from H.
Tracy wrote: "Mark wrote: "Avishek wrote: "I am having a hard time understanding the sequence where he meets his friend Kevin Egan."Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar MacMahon. Son ..."
Stephen went to Paris to study pre-med (just like Joyce) and returned home to witness his mother's death. But his mother has been buried for awhile now and yet he is still hanging around. Money of course is an issue, always with Stephen. But, I don't see Stephen as Telemachus.
Tracy wrote: "I have this question about "the two maries"--they are midwives, no? And here, when Stephen returns his focus to the strand, says they tucked "it" among the bullrushes--seems an obvious reference to..."The "maries" may certainly have left a dead mis-birth in the bulrushes, or just as likely it is just Stephen's fantasy.
Tracy wrote: "Also--the live dogs and dead dog in this scene, coupled with a woman who couldn't be saved from drowning--Ophelia?? Is (was) there a woman in SD's life?Hamlet, when he's pretending to rave to Pol..."
I don't remember a drowned women? Where is that part?
There is the "last tram" scene girl in Portrait, but they sort of break up before Stephen goes to Paris. I think just on circumstantial evidence Stephen might be a little more cheerful if there was a woman in his life.
I also don't see Stephen as Hamlet.
Mark wrote: "Tracy wrote: "Mark wrote: "Avishek wrote: "I am having a hard time understanding the sequence where he meets his friend Kevin Egan."Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with me in the bar ..."
It's what the first episode is called. The Telemachiad. Someone has to be T, and I don't think it's Buck or the Englishman or the principal.
I have an old Penguin edition, where it's page 51. The reference to a woman drowning is obscured in the long paragraph about the Vikings, starting "The dog's bark ran toward him.." Towards the end he says, "A drowning man...I with him together down..I could not save her. The next line starts, "A woman and a man.." which is partly addressing the real setting of the strand, but Joyce and his word games!!
Ophelia, of course, drowned. There are many lines quoting and referencing Hamlet, with SD narrating himself as if he is taking Hamlet's perspective, like p. 50--"I pace... hearing Elsinore's tempting flood"..there's much much more, and on the last page(56) he sings Ophelia's mad song, which she sings to Claudius and Gertrude: "My cockle hat and staff and his my sandled shoon."
Ophelia sings this after Hamlet has killed her father. The entire song seems like a discourse on her relationship with Hamlet..I'll try to find it.
How should I your true love know
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon.....
Later she sings:
Tomorrow is Saint Valentine’s day,
All in the morning betime,
And I a maid at your window,
To be your Valentine.
Then up he rose, and donned his clothes,
And dupped the chamber door.
Let in the maid that out a maid
Never departed more.
Indeed, without an oath I’ll make an end on ’t:
(sings)
By Gis and by Saint Charity,
Alack, and fie, for shame!
Young men will do ’t, if they come to ’t.
By Cock, they are to blame.
Quoth she, “Before you tumbled me,
You promised me to wed.”
He answers,
“So would I ha' done, by yonder sun,
An thou hadst not come to my bed.”
Immediately following this Ophelia leaves and drowns herself. The song addresses a previous conversation she had with Hamlet where he implies he wants her to prove her love, and she calls him naughty. It seems their relationship was never consummated, and she regrets it.
I see a lot of Hamlet in Stephen. Both are consummate actors and role players. They are both alone, unable to trust anyone. They are contemplating a big action, and feel uncomfortable with the Usurpers' control in their lives (Claudius and Buck). All throughout "Proteus" (a changling) Stephen takes on the roles, as he is walking, of various characters from books he's read, acting them out in his head as he goes and relating them to his present life. To me he's Telemachus, Hamlet, a viking warrior, the character in the Tempest who's father has drown --he recites his lines, "Full Fathom Five my father lies..."
There is a drown man spoken of in the first episode Telemachus. But not a drown woman, I don't think.
I read a comment somewhere, that Stephen thinks he's the main character in a book called "Hamlet," and doesn't know he's a subsidiary character in a book called ULYSSES.His tragedy, his tragic stance, is comic in the long run.
Tracy wrote: "Mark wrote: "Tracy wrote: "Mark wrote: "Avishek wrote: "I am having a hard time understanding the sequence where he meets his friend Kevin Egan."Patrice, home on furlough, lapped warm milk with m..."
I have always read the her in, "...I could not save her." As Stephen talking about his mother.
This particular moment in the story starts a little before:
"He(mulligan) saved men from drowning and you(stephen) shake at a cur's yelping." (...)
"Would you do what he did? A boat would be near, a lifeboy." (...)
"Would you or would you not?" (...)
"The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I would try. I am not a strong swimmer." (...)
"I want his(?) life to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. I...With him(drowning man) together down...I could not save her."
So I think the little scene here is Stephen sort of comparing himself to Mulligan, and Mulligan's heroics spoken of earlier. In the last two sentences, the drowning man is hypothetical, and Stephen seems afraid that if he tried to save such a man they would both probably drown. It's only the final word that's feminine, and I think he is referring to his mother. So I don't see an Ophelia here.
Stephen may play at being Hamlet, but the similarities of their situations are not very strong. Yes, Stephen admits to having Viking blood in him. But I can't agree with Stephen staying in Dublin because Telemachus stays at home in the Odyssey. It leaves Stephen with no freedom of action, if he is only here to mimic Homer's character.
I think you are looking for too close a parallel.Stephen can be Telemachus the same way Bloom can be Ulysses and Molly can be Penelope.
The suitors are eating and drinking his inheritance.
Excellent analysis of Proteus, by the way.
The drowning girl returns in Wandering Rocks when Stephen meets his sister Boody at the bookstall.
Excellent point about the scene, a very important scene, with Dilly in Rocks. But I do not see it as a return. In Proteus I still feel since everything in the little scene talks about saving a man from drowning the change to her at the end does not refer to the drowning victim, but to Stephen's mother.Now where that story seems hypothetical, the story in Rocks where Stephen thinks: "She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her." I read as being metaphorical, with the her now referring to Dilly.
Christopher wrote: "I read a comment somewhere, that Stephen thinks he's the main character in a book called "Hamlet," and doesn't know he's a subsidiary character in a book called ULYSSES.His tragedy, his tragic st..."
I prefer to stick to the text, and I've never seen Stephen thinking he was a character in another book. I don't see Stephen as either tragic or comic, but mostly defiant and sincere. I read Ulysses as a love story.
There is a lot going on in this discussion!! Would this help.... in the first 2 chapters, they keep trying to define 'irish art'?
Mark wrote: "Tracy wrote: "Mark wrote: "Tracy wrote: "Mark wrote: "Avishek wrote: "I am having a hard time understanding the sequence where he meets his friend Kevin Egan."Patrice, home on furlough, lapped wa..."
I think that's a good reading, to say SD was referring to not being able to save his mother. I thought that as well, but it does not negate another reading that touches on Ophelia.
If I only learned one thing in reading Finnegan's Wake, it's if there is a confusion between two readings in Joyce, yes, both were meant--the enormity of the man's mind! The man who can blend three images in one coined word--ie. _" paythronosed" that portmanteaus patronage, throne, and "paying through the nose"--might also be doubling up his allusions above the most literal reading of his story.
With that same thought, the great line you cited, I want his life (to be his) I think sort of speaks to this battle raging in his head of taking on other lives (in his head) yet wanting to be his own man. It helps me to think, in sorting out all this confusion, that despite the roles he must take on: teacher, son, employee, tenant and whipping boy for Buck--his ultimate identification is as an artist. He wants an artful, artfilled life, to live like a god, if you will, which is a line somewhere in this episode. In order to do that, he aligns himself with great characters in Literature, like Hamlet and Telemachus, to make sense of his place in life, to elevate his life. To make himself a hero and a god.
He does compare himself to Mulligan, but also to others, including the drowning man, which is probably why his imagination takes him to drowning himself, (also explaining his aversion to water?)
Why does he spend his down time, alone, at the sea if he fears it? It's one of those attraction/repulsion things--his fear is also his salvation, the place closest to his escape. I don't see him so much in character like Telemachus, more temporarily, in the situation of him. If we are to believe Tennyson's version of Telemachus (I recommend reading the poem he appears in, called "Ulysses"!! I think SD doesn't want to be Telemachus. In the poem Ulysses the father (who SD probably would rather identify with but is temporarily stuck) says of his son, "Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine. "
I see this as a person SD would rather not be, but is, doing common duties to his mother, his teaching job, but he wants to be Proteus and change, into the father Ulysses who is larger than life, heroic, and daring. This is why he walks the shore. It might also explain why he didn't kneel for his mother-- in a small way rejecting duty to be more heroic in the daring way of Odysseus.
I had never noticed this before, but want to remind myself to return to this chapter, later, because another character walks the shore, Leopold Bloom, very differently in contrast to Stephen, in the notorious 13th episode Nausicaa--I believe that was the one that got the book banned?
Biblio wrote: "There is a lot going on in this discussion!! Would this help.... in the first 2 chapters, they keep trying to define 'irish art'?"
I know, I want to talk about that image! It's wonderful. Making art of a cracked mirror!. Has anyone ever heard of this Japanese art concept of Wabi-Sabi? Its premise is that a flaw in a piece of art makes it more beautiful. The classic example would be a delicate piece of China or pottery with a hairline crack. The crack highlights the fragile nature of the beauty of the piece--perfect symmetry is too boring to be beautiful. Winged Victory, or Venus di Milo would be another illustration, more interesting because of the missing head and arms.
SD in France working away at art successfully would not make a good subject of art. He needs flaws.
Tracy - I categorically agree with you that after reading Finnegans Wake any interpretation of anything in that book is valid, but I also believe that some interpretations are closer to the truth than others.Stephen may fantasize about certain famous characters from literature, but I don't believe he wants to be anyone but himself.
I don't see Stephen's problems as being related to his identity. He has chosen the path to becoming an Artist, but certain things are at this point missing from the puzzle and Stephen is here in this book to work that out.
Your erudition on Hamlet and Homer and Tennyson is impressive, but I question taking these associations too far.
I believe Ulysses to be a unique work of Art, and not an imitation or interpretation of any other work.
Yes, Nausicaa is the chapter that got it banned.
You guys have a lot of context where you can draw parallels from! As someone who is reading this for the first time and not having read portrait (or hamlet) , I find it normal that Stephen hasn't left dublin despite him appearing to be miserable there.He clearly spends a lot of time introspecting about the direction his life has taken and finding himself back somewhere he wanted to leave, has made him realize the futility of attempting to leave to gain some semblance of happiness.
Because even he leaves, he still remains this person wherever he goes. Someone who is more inside his head than in 'reality'. This is not to say that he doesn't want to maybe move back, it's too early into the book to tell.
His thoughts seem to suggest he is making peace with the vastness of the universe and that he is also just a cog in the vast machine. Responsible for his own happiness or sorrow, however directionless.
"Bag of corpsegas sopping in foul brine. A quiver of minnows, fat of a spongy titbit, flash through the slits of his buttoned trouserfly. God becomes man becomes fish becomes barnacle goose becomes featherbed mountain. Dead breaths I living breathe, tread dead dust, devour a urinous offal from all dead. "
So I think maybe at this time his focus is more on self discovery than wanting to move out elsewhere.
Mark wrote: "Tracy - I categorically agree with you that after reading Finnegans Wake any interpretation of anything in that book is valid, but I also believe that some interpretations are closer to the truth t..."I think we are actually agreeing.
Hey Avishek - I very much appreciate your perspective, I had the same experience the first time I read Ulysses!Great quote: An wonderful example of Joyce's unique syntax: It's almost like a fantasia on the sounds of the letters b, t, and d.
Love "sopping...foul brine." in the first sentence. Then, "flash through the slits" and "buttoned" in the second. The third sentence uses a beautiful rhythm to express a complex idea. But for me, "Dead breaths I living breathe," is the best of all: the poetry of the blended b's, the vividness of "living" and the curiousness of the thought.
It seems, with Joyce, you get and awful lot in a rather small space for such a long book.
Avishek wrote: "You guys have a lot of context where you can draw parallels from! As someone who is reading this for the first time and not having read portrait (or hamlet) , I find it normal that Stephen hasn't l..."That is a fantastic passage--I'm glad you highlighted it. I think it shows he's still digesting his mother's death, trying to deal with it as a living person, while feeling some sort of creepy, gross empathy with being dead that Stephen is capable of--and the circles and cycles of life (as Hamlet did). The previous paragraph to it is the one that borrows quotes from the Tempest, the exquisite poem where a son describes his father's death by sea, returning to the sea in bits, and to me relates to this theme:
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
That's how I want to die )))
Avishek: for good or ill I taught British Lit for more than 20 years, so drawing parallels in great literature is second nature to me. I instinctively feel its my "job" to point out the connections to the past. This is my third read of Ulysses, and I am so happy that it's kinda finally coming together for me! The first time I read "Proteus" it took me weeks--this time I finished it in a couple of hours. You seem to be doing well with it!
Christopher wrote: "I think you are looking for too close a parallel.Stephen can be Telemachus the same way Bloom can be Ulysses and Molly can be Penelope.
The suitors are eating and drinking his inheritance.
Excell..."
Hey Christopher - I apologize for not thanking you for your complement to our on going conversation. Thank you. I'm having fun too.
Tracy wrote: "Mark wrote: "Tracy - I categorically agree with you that after reading Finnegans Wake any interpretation of anything in that book is valid, but I also believe that some interpretations are closer t..."Cool! Very cool! - )
Mark wrote: "Hey Christopher - I apologize for not thanking you for your complement to our on going conversation. Thank you. I'm having fun too. "Looks like I whizzed through Proteus, reading it on my own. The questions raised here made me look a little closer.
"Nestor" has gotten less attention. Is that because it's less difficult?
Christopher wrote: "Mark wrote: "Hey Christopher - I apologize for not thanking you for your complement to our on going conversation. Thank you. I'm having fun too. "Looks like I whizzed through Proteus, reading it ..."
I wondered that about Nestor too. I just didn't have much more to think. If someone gets me thinking about some part of it, however???
Was it mentioned here that some of what is going on is Stephen attempting to write? He gets playful with language, and looks for a scrap of paper to note down some of his lines and thoughts. It allows for the idea that some of what he is thinking about may be rooted in memory, but we can't distinguish memory from embellishment, fantasy, and guilty intrusions from his unconscious.General reflection so far. I didn't put my thoughts into words the first time I read some of this book, but Joyce is an explicitly filthy author, in the literal sense of being obsessed with vomit, bile, boogers, shit, farts, urine, bad smells, decaying bodies, ugly sights; as well being more figuratively filthy in dwelling on the filthy aspects of our human nature, such as fear, cowardice, compromise, dashed hopes, guilt, pain, poverty, exploitation, vanity, envy, contempt, shame, and horror. The book, and the minds within, can be rather repulsive. Of course we know that we've got some brilliant and sometimes idealistic--sometimes too idealistic--young and old fools trapped in this ugly world.
And... looking back a little bit, the book starts out as a proto-nerd-fest. And the relationship between Stephen and Haines is interesting, without necessarily making either look good. We can feel some contempt for Haines, and he is a relative simpleton, but he also seems to have an innocent, at least somewhat sincere admiration for Stephen. And he's probably a hack of a writer.
I've never notice any dirt at all. Nor any "dwelling on the filthy aspects of our human natures". Or any "repulsive" characters either. I've always read Ulysses as a love story.
Zadignose wrote: "Was it mentioned here that some of what is going on is Stephen attempting to write? He gets playful with language, and looks for a scrap of paper to note down some of his lines and thoughts. It all..."That is a good point, Zadignose. The book wallows in bodily functions and "dirty thoughts," but that is in part because Joyce is asserting "Aristotelian" realism against "Platonism," -- Yeats and AE and Synge and anyone else who wanted to view the world, and Ireland in particular, through a 'twilit' haze.
Not to mention the "windiness" of the newspaper men.
Also, Bloom seems to know and accept that men inhabit bodies, but he isn't a mocker like Mulligan, or a backwards Jesuit like Stephen. A cheese sandwich and a glass of burgundy in a 'clean' pub is how he combats the Lestrygonians.
Zadignose wrote: "Was it mentioned here that some of what is going on is Stephen attempting to write? He gets playful with language, and looks for a scrap of paper to note down some of his lines and thoughts. It all..."Yes, that is an interesting point about Stephen thinking about writing, from the opening lines of this section. And he regularly reminds himself to notice the rhythm of what he is doing, the words he is thinking. If I'm remembering correctly, he seems to have used one of Mr. Deasy's letter to the editor to remember a phrase he liked--um..
"Mouth to her kiss" ? Not sure why he likes that so well..
And it is certainly notable that the book is full of filth, from Stephen's snotrag on p. 2 through "lascivious" people bathing others,belching cabmen, dead babies carried cord and all by the midwives, dead dogs, dogs peeing, the image of Real or imagined a drowned man's corpse as a bag of gas to Stephen's noseleavings on a rock--which humorously made me think of Walt Whitman's "flotsom and jetsam" ha!
I recall from my visit in the 80s that parts of Ireland were memorably greasy , and for some bathing and clothes washing seemed optional--I was expecting all fresh green fields and shamrocks! If I had an olfactory memory of Ireland, I would say the majority of the places I visited had the strangely similar odor of boiled sheep fat.
I'm looking for the passage where Stephen declares he will not romanticize Ireland in his writing. Perhaps that's what he meant by the adiaphane, as opposed to the diaphane--but I can't find it.
The ash plant--what is the deal with the ash plant? I have a vague memory of it from my last read, that it is possibly significant. All I can think of now is the old Catholic thing --Ashes to ashes, dust to dust--like carrying his dead mother around? I'm a gardener, and I'm afraid I have no idea what an ash plant is or how big it gets or anything.
Ahh--found the answer to my own question--not a plant at all!An "ashplant" is a walking stick fashioned from a sapling that has been cut off below the surface of the soil. The main root of many ash saplings takes a horizontal bend for several inches, several inches below the surface, before continuing its downward path, and such a sapling supplies a natural handle when the stick is inverted
I think his walking stick is made from the wood of an Ash tree.
Tracy wrote: "Ahh--found the answer to my own question--not a plant at all!An "ashplant" is a walking stick fashioned from a sapling that has been cut off below the surface of the soil. The main root of many a..."
I've always wondered what Stephen was carrying around.
Something like a shillelagh?
Cphe wrote: "I've always thought it was a walking stick made out of a hardwood like Tallowood that was durable.If I remember correctly SD's has a head on it for fitting into his hand.
Used for walking and I'v..."
And dogs
Cphe wrote: "Hmmm.....I googled shillelagh and they are quite expensive on eBay.The stem of some are knotty but I can't see the benefit of that."
For bashing heads, clearly.
I must admit having toted around a shillelagh at one point in my youth and smashing a few shins.
I think I may have been a bit of delinquent, come to think of it.
Scene: The Strand
Hour: 11 am
Art: Philology
Symbol: Tide
Technic: Monologue (male)
Stephen walks along the strand, free associating and letting his consciousness stream over time and space.
This episode is a bit of a challenge, but if you key in on the episode’s relation to the story of Proteus and Menelaus in The Odyssey, and also make note of the “Art” for this episode – Philology – you should be able to get a handle on what’s happening.
Proteus and The Odyssey
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proteus
Philology
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philology