“ Ulysses ”: an Overview

1. “Ulysses”: anOverview Federico Pellegrino

2. Index • Summary • Structure • Style • MainCharacters • The Odysseymodel • Bloom’s Wanderings • Themes: • Art and Science • “AgenbiteofInwit” • Questforpaternity • Parallax • Bibliography

3. Summary

4. Structure Gilbert Schema (1921)

5. Style Monologue (male) The dog's bark ran towards him, stopped, ran back. Dog of my enemy. I just simply stood pale, silent, bayed about. Terribiliameditans. A primrose doublet, fortune's knave, smiled on my fear. For that are you pining, the bark of their applause? Pretenders: live their lives. The Bruce's brother, Thomas Fitzgerald, silken knight, Perkin Warbeck, York's false scion, in breeches of silk of whiterose ivory, wonder of a day, and Lambert Simnel, with a tail of nans and sutlers, a scullion crowned. All kings' sons. Paradise of pretenders then and now. He saved men from drowning and you shake at a cur's yelping. But the courtiers who mocked Guido in Or san Michele were in their own house. House of... We don't want any of your medieval abstrusiosities. Would you do what he did? A boat would be near, a lifebuoy. Natürlich, put there for you. Would you or would you not? The man that was drowned nine days ago off Maiden's rock. They are waiting for him now. The truth, spit it out. I would want to. I would try. I am not a strong swimmer. Water cold soft. When I put my face into it in the basin at Clongowes. Can't see! Who's behind me? Out quickly, quickly! Do you see the tide flowing quickly in on all sides, sheeting the lows of sand quickly, shellcocoacoloured? If I had land under my feet. I want his life still to be his, mine to be mine. A drowning man. His human eyes scream to me out of horror of his death. I... With him together down... I could not save her. Waters: bitter death: lost. (Scene III)

6. Fuga per canonem Bronze by gold heard the hoofirons, steelyringingImperthnthnthnthnthn. […] Last rose Castile of summer left bloom I feel so sad alone. Pwee! Little wind piped wee. True men. Lid Ker Cow De and Doll. Ay, ay. Like you men. Will lift your tschink with tschunk. Fff! Oo! Where bronze from anear? Where gold from afar? Where hoofs? Rrrpr. Kraa. Kraandl. Then not till then. My eppripfftaph. Be pfrwritt. Done. (scene XI, lines 1[…]53-61) Near bronze from anear near gold from afar they chinked their clinking glasses all, brighteyed and gallant, before bronze Lydia's tempting last rose of summer, rose of Castile. First Lid, De, Cow, Ker, Doll, a fifth: Lidwell, Si Dedalus, Bob Cowley, Kernan and big Ben Dollard. Tap. A youth entered a lonely Ormond hall. Bloom viewed a gallant pictured hero in Lionel Marks's window. Robert Emmet's last words. Seven last words. Of Meyerbeer that is. —True men like you men. —Ay, ay, Ben. —Will lift your glass with us. They lifted. Tschink. Tschunk. Tip. An unseeing stripling stood in the door. He saw not bronze. He saw not gold. Nor Ben nor Bob nor Tom nor Si nor George nor tanks nor Richie nor Pat. Heeheeheehee. He did not see. Seabloom, greaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. When my country takes her place among. Prrprr. Must be the bur. Fff! Oo. Rrpr. Nations of the earth. No-one behind. She's passed. Then and not till then. Tram krankrankran. Good oppor. Coming. Krandlkrankran. I'm sure it's the burgund. Yes. One, two. Let my epitaph be.Kraaaaaa. Written. I have. Pprrpffrrppffff. Done. (scene XI, last lines)

7. Hallucination STEPHEN: (Choking with fright, remorse and horror) They say I killed you, mother. He offended your memory. Cancer did it, not I. Destiny. THE MOTHER: (A green rill of bile trickling from a side of her mouth) You sang that song to me. Love's bitter mystery. STEPHEN: (Eagerly) Tell me the word, mother, if you know now. The word known to all men. THE MOTHER: Who saved you the night you jumped into the train at Dalkey with Paddy Lee? Who had pity for you when you were sad among the strangers? Prayer is allpowerful. Prayer for the suffering souls in the Ursuline manual and forty days' indulgence. Repent, Stephen. STEPHEN: The ghoul! Hyena! THE MOTHER: I pray for you in my other world. Get Dilly to make you that boiled rice every night after your brainwork. Years and years I loved you, O, my son, my firstborn, when you lay in my womb. […] THE MOTHER: (With smouldering eyes) Repent! O, the fire of hell! STEPHEN: (Panting) His noncorrosive sublimate! The corpsechewer! Raw head and bloody bones. THE MOTHER: (Her face drawing near and nearer, sending out an ashen breath) Beware! (She raises her blackened withered right arm slowly towards Stephen's breast with outstretched finger) Beware God's hand! (A green crab with malignant red eyes sticks deep its grinning claws in Stephen's heart.) STEPHEN: (Strangled with rage)Shite! (His features grow drawn grey and old) BLOOM: (At the window) What? STEPHEN: Ah non, par exemple! The intellectual imagination! With me all or not at all. Non serviam! FLORRY: Give him some cold water. Wait. (She rushes out) THE MOTHER: (Wrings her hands slowly, moaning desperately) O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart! STEPHEN: No! No! No! Break my spirit, all of you, if you can! I'll bring you all to heel! THE MOTHER: (In the agony of her deathrattle) Have mercy on Stephen, Lord, for my sake! Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary. STEPHEN: Nothung! (He lifts his ashplant high with both hands and smashes the chandelier. Time's livid final flame leaps and, in the following darkness, ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry.) THE GASJET: Pwfungg! (scene XV)

8. Catechism (impersonal) • What act did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination? • At the housesteps of the 4th Of the equidifferent uneven numbers, number 7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket of his trousers to obtain his latchkey. • Was it there? • It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on the day but one preceding. • Why was he doubly irritated? • Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded himself twice not to forget. • What were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly (respectively) and inadvertently, keyless couple? • To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock. • Bloom's decision? • A stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed over the area railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped two points at the lower union of rails and stiles, lowered his body gradually by its length of five feet nine inches and a half to within two feet ten inches of the area pavement and allowed his body to move freely in space by separating himself from the railings and crouching in preparation for the impact of the fall. • Did he fall? • By his body's known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in avoirdupois measure, as certified by the graduated machine for periodical selfweighing in the premises of Francis Froedman, pharmaceutical chemist of 19 Frederick street, north, on the last feast of the Ascension, to wit, the twelfth day of May of the bissextile year one thousand nine hundred and four of the christian era (jewish era five thousand six hundred and sixtyfour, mohammadan era one thousand three hundred and twentytwo), golden number 5, epact 13, solar cycle 9, dominical letters C B, Roman indiction 2, Julian period 6617, MCMIV. • (Scene XVII)

9. Monologue (female) O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and the pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes. (Scene XVIII)

10. MainCharacters Leopold Bloom (Drawingby James Joyce) Molly Bloom (in picture: Nora Joyce) Stephen Dedalus (in picture: Joyce aged 22)

11. The OdysseyModel 1. Telemachus 2. Nestor 3. Proteus 4. Calypso 5. Lotus Eaters 6. Hades 7. Aeolus 8. Lestrygonians 9. Scylla & Charybdis 10. WanderingRocks 11. Sirens 12. Cyclops 13. Nausicaa 14. OxenOf The Sun 15. Circe 16. Eumaeus 17. Ithaca 18. Penelope Alba TELEMACHIAD Mattina Mezzogiorno ODYSSEY Giorno Sera o Notte Mezzanotte NOSTOS

12. Bloom’s Wanderings Vladimir Nabokov’s mapof Bloom’s wanderingsthroughDublin

13. Themes What two temperaments did they individually represent? The scientific. The artistic. (Scene XVII, referring respectively to Bloom and Stephen) ÞisbocisdanMichelisofNorthgate / y-writeanenglisofhisoȝenehand. þethatte : Ayenbyteofinwyt. And isof þe bochouseofsayntAustinesofCanterberi . mid þe lettres : C : C (AyenbiteofInwyt) • The abnihilization of the etym by [...] the first lord of Hurtrefoldexplodotonates • through Parsuralis with ivanmorinthorrorumblefragoromboassityamidwhiches [...] • are perceivable moletonsskaping with mulicules [...] Similar scenatas are • projectilised from Hullulullu, Bawlawayo, empyreal Raum and mordernAtems. • (FinnegansWake, 353.22-29) Speaking to me. They wash and tub and scrub. Agenbite of inwit. Conscience. Yet here's a spot. (Scene I) She is drowning. Agenbite. Save her. Agenbite. All against us. She will drown me with her, eyes and hair. Lank coils of seaweed hair around me, my heart, my soul. Salt green death. We. Agenbite of inwit. Inwit'sagenbite. (Scene X)

14. If he had smiled why would he have smiled? To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the first term of a succeeding one, each imagining himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity. (scene XVII)

15. Bibliography • James Joyce: • “Ulysses” (Penguin, 1971) • “FinnegansWake” • “SelectedLetters”, ed. by Richard Ellmann (Faber and Faber, 1992) • Pericles Lewis, “Cambridge IntroductiontoModernism” (Cambridge UD, 2007) • José Ortega y Gasset, “The Dehumanization of Art” (Princeton University Press, 1968),in Dorrit Cohn, “Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction” (Princeton University Press, 1983), inEvangeliaVoyiatzaki, “The Body in the Text: James Joyce's Ulysses and the Modern Greek Novel” • Thomas Jackson Rice, “Joyce, Chaos and Complexity” (University of Illinois Press, 1997) • Garry Leonard, “Joyce and Advertising” (James Joyce Quarterly, Vol. 30/31, 1993), in T.J.R., “Joyce, Chaos and complexity” • William York Tindall, “A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake” (Syracuse University Press, 1996) • Giulio de Angelis, “Commento a Ulisse”, in “Ulisse: Guidaallalettura” (Mondadori, 2000) • Giorgio Melchiori, “L’«Ulisse»”, in “Ulisse: Guida alla lettura” (Mondadori, 2000) • Vladimir Nabokov, “Lectures on Literature” (1980) • Stuart Gilbert, “James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’: A Study” (Vintage, 1955) • Richard Ellmann, “Preface to ‘Ulysses’”, in ''Ulysses: The Corrected Text” (Random House, 1986)