Come and taste my fatty meats...

In Calypso we leave the realm of Stephen’s thoughts for Bloom’s. The difficulty of seeing Stephen’s harsh self-criticism and loneliness is replaced by Bloom’s hunger. But the food Bloom eats is not just his nourishment, it is his passion. “Most of all he liked grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of scented urine” (55). Bloom’s sense of taste is so keen that his favorite meal is a certain organ, of a certain animal, cooked a certain way. When this dish is prepared Bloom does not taste it, rather the kidney gives the flavor to his palate. This personification shows Bloom’s esteem for food, how its tastes are like heavenly gifts. But his pursuit of pleasure does not end at food; he also enjoys women and money. In fact when one of the three subjects are discussed, the other two are normally associated. While waiting for his meat at the butcher, Bloom reads through a pamphlet about a farm. He imagines a farmer “slapping a palm on a ripemeated hindquarter,” and thinking, “there’s a prime one” (59). When a farmer sees a healthy looking animal he thinks, “it’ll sell well.” When looking a nice cut of meat a customer thinks, “it’ll taste good.” Here Bloom is doing both. He is thinking about the business of meat-packing and also its product. And right after he sees more ripemeated hindquarter, “the crooked skirt swinging whack by whack by whack” (59). This just shows how quick his mind will switch from one pleasurable thought to another.
One other thing that stands out about Bloom is his confidence. We often see him surprised with how clever he is. One instance is when he blueprints the story is going to get published (69). He thinks of all the things he can write about, even though most are real events. Further, we get no sense of Bloom’s writing. Therefore Bloom may think he have the content of great story, but may have no skill to write it. And anyway these thoughts are in vain because “he tore away half the prize story sharply and wiped himself with it” (70).
The last thing I noticed is Bloom’s preoccupation with his daughter. He read the letter over twice, and recalls the gift he gave her when she was four. This shows how he misses her physically and also her as a child. While I’m not sure if I’m reading this correctly, but I think Bloom is coping with his daughter growing into a sexual woman. When thinking about her he mentions “girl’s sweet light lips” and “full gluey woman’s lips” (67). Either way I’d like to learn more about Bloom and his daughter before following this trajectory further.

Connections:
In the middle of page 66 midwives are brought up, like on page 37.

Questions: What do you think of the marriage between Marian and Leopold? I get the impression Bloom does not think highly of his wife’s intelligence.

"Heva, naked eve. She had no navel"...like WonderWoman



As a stream of conscious scene the Proteus chapter spends a lot of time in Stephen’s mind. While this chapter reveals so much about Stephen it made me a little uncomfortable. I say this because a lot of this chapter is an inner dialogue, where Stephen harshly criticizes himself. My discomfort only becomes worse when he describes his loneliness, guilt, and failure. On page 40 there is one moment where Stephen addresses all these things. He makes stabs at his own intellectual credibility when he says, “reading two pages apiece of seven books every night, eh? I was young. You bowed to yourself in the mirror, stepping forward to applause earnestly, striking face” (40). In these few sentences Stephen not only questions his academic life, but his social one two. He accuses himself of wasting time with both. If he would have stuck to study more he would have written books “with letters for titles,” thereby gaining fame (footnote 1). He even blames himself of self-exaltation. The letter books would have been “sent…to all the great libraries of the world, including Alexandria” (40). Even though no one has read these unwritten books, Stephen calls himself out for thinking they would be great. And at the same time by bringing up Alexandria we see Stephen gripping with his place in history. While making himself a part of Alexandria’s catalogue Stephen is doing two things. First he is thinking about fame, for all the fathers of Western Thought had their work in Alexandria. Simultaneously it could be read that Stephen wishes he were a contemporary of these thinkers. But what is the use? For your identity could be destroyed along with the library. And also in this chapter Stephen think about his family, i.e. his personal history.

Another thing that makes this chapter uncomfortably personal is how it reveals some of Stephen’s sexual attitudes, mostly his frustration. Throughout this chapter there are moments when Stephen will mention, or recall a woman, and bring up her undergarments or physical appearance. For example when he sees a “woman and a man,” he states, “I see her skirties. Pinned up, I bet” (46). Not only does he think about the woman, but elaborates on her specifics. It seems much more pathetic when he mentions, “I am lonely here. O, touch me soon, now….touch, touch me” (49). The interesting thing about this sexual frustration, remembering Stephen is an atheist, is how it is rooted in Christian guilt. Stephen criticizes himself for being religious when he asks, “you were awfully holy, weren’t you?” But again, out of contemplation comes more criticism. He says, “you prayed to the devil in Serpentine Avenue that the fubsy widow in front might lift her clothes still more from the wet street” (40). This remark is so purely Catholic, because he does not scold himself for sleeping with a widow, just for merely being attracted to her. And in a sense he makes this seem worse, for he is “defiling” her while in public.

Connections:
I think I’m going to start a section of my posts just highlighting references to other places in the book. I don’t even think I’ll look at the details very critically, I just think it may help to catalogue them.

Footnote 1- Ulysses is arguably Stephen’s “letter books”

Pg. 46 Stephen calls a dead dog a “poor dogsbody.” On page 6 he refers to himself a dogsbody, one who does odd jobs.

Pg. 46-47 The fox riddle returns. Even as the dog “scrapes the earth” like the fox did pgs. 26-28.

Pg. 38 Like Deseay did in the Nestor scene, Stephen contemplates about Eve, and sin.

Questions:
We see a lot of shells in this novel. It makes sense considering the continuing emphasis on the sea. But in the last chapter we saw shells stand for money (pg. 30). With this in mind, what do you make of the parts of Proteus where people walk along the beach and have shells crush under their feet?

Deseay hates Jews....

"History, Stephen said, is a nightmare in which I am trying to awake”

The annotations say that the first two scenes are apart of the “S” section, the portion focusing on Stephen. In the Nestor scene we learn a lot more about Stephen. One of the most pressing issues Stephen deals with is being a member of history. The scene opens with Stephen questioning his class about the history of Pyrrhus. The students disinterest in the subject displays one way in which Stephen is trapped in history. When Armstrong confuses “Pyrrhus” with “piers” it raises the question of knowledge versus action. The student thinks of a contemporary landmark, one he probably has been to. On the other hand Stephen is trying to teach history. Is knowledge of one more important than the other? Or has the confusion of language made one obsolete?
One aspect of this novel I see shining through is how Joyce will contemplate a subject endlessly without resolution. While early on Joyce creates one question concerning the role of history, he immediately moves towards another. “Had Pyrrhus not fallen by a beldam’s hand in Argos or Julius Caesar not been knifed to death?” (25). Stephen’s question makes one wonder how would the world be different in another course of history? But instead of contemplating a change in society, Stephen turns his inquiry metaphysical. He wonders, “but can those have been possible seeing that they never were?,” asking whether the “other possibilities” of time know of their inexistence. And there is a sense that Stephen is contemplating this question in regards to his own role in history. This is why I opened with the quote “history…is a nightmare in which I am trying to awake,” like Stephen is yearning to leave this world (34). The intensity of history is displayed on page 31 when Stephen lists occurrences of Irish plight. And I see Stephen’s disgust with money, “something soiled by greed and misery,” stem from his hate of history. For all these printed coins, he typically notes the monarch on the piece, are just emblems of the changing regimes of history.
One more important thing I see concerning Stephen is that the world of the novel is shown through the distortion of his eyes and thoughts. Like when reading through Deseay’s letter, we do not see the content, just what Stephen picks out. And like in the Telemachus section the narrative is often interrupted by the daydreams or contemplations of Stephen. But these sections are slowly turning into my favorite portions of this book. While each is obscure on its own, the complexity in which they are linked together with allusions or images helps form the outline of the puzzle. But beyond just the text slipping in and out of coherency, Stephen does too. Like on page 26 when he blurts out, “I don’t see anything,” to Sargent, but is not responding to anything Sargent said.

Questions:
I see similarities between Buck and Deseay’s repulsive character. But their ideals are quite different, religion versus science. Do you think that despite believing in different things Joyce is defining these characters similarly?

And we begin the odyssey...

Stately plump Buck Mulligan is a jackass. Early on in the novel Joyce repeatedly points out Buck’s selfishness, egoism, and demeaning attitude. One of Buck’s first faults is his stereotypical mindset. While this attribute borders with bigotry it has a different quality. He frequently calls Stephen a Jesuit, usually carrying negative connotation. Also he complains about “those bloody English. Bursting with money and indigestion” (4). This demeanor stems from his medical background. Buck says that if everyone had the wholesome food he has, the country would not be “full of rotten teeth and rotten guts” (15 line). His ability to pass off the blight of the poor, unlike Buck who claims to be both civilized and “salty,” shows the milkmaid that he is a medical student. This shows how Buck is able to substitute sympathy with rationale. And like the organisms he studies, he groups all types of people according to similarities, even stereotypes. This portrayal of a scientific thinker as arrogant and self-admiring contradicts some facets of modernism. But beyond having negative qualities related to his method of thought, Buck is sincerely terrible. Stephen Dedalus is too often the recipient of Buck’s demeaning. The obvious example of this idea in this scene is when Buck says, “it’s only Dedalus whose mother is beastly dead” (8). Over the next few lines we see Buck’s attitude toward the comment move from denial, “did I say that?,” to rationale, “what harm is that?,” to pride, “I suppose I did say it. I didn’t mean to offend the memory of your mother” (8). And when Buck learns Stephen is the one offended, he has no need for discussion. But Buck just looks silly when one remembers that he was the one asking what was bothering Stephen. Buck’s original concern is one-way Joyce sets up that Buck and Stephen’s companionship is good for both of them. Buck, when not tormenting Stephen, invites him to be his partner to “Hellenise” the city (7). Going the other way Buck is “Mercurial,” and in the Odyssey Mercury helps Odysseus leave Calypso’s Island. And also Buck rambles on about how he knows Dedalus so well, and thereby can call him “Kinch”. Although I’ll just have to wait to see what happens with these two.
On another note there has been one intricately developed metaphor with “the mother” and the sea. It is here that Joyce ties together Stephen’s emotion, connections to The Odyssey, the Irish identity, and wonderful imagery. Buck first calls the sea “a grey mother” (5). Not even a page later Stephen gets absorbed into one of his daydreams. In this dream Stephen sees the see as “a great sweet mother” (5). Something peculiar is happening here because Dedalus uses the image that Buck gave, yet changes it. Also in this dream he remembers “the green sluggish bile which she had torn up from her rotting liver” (5). This again draws from Buck, how he called the see “snotgreen.” The emotional connection to his mother in this image is found a little later on. He notices the “white breast of the sea,” another maternal image (9). This all ties to the Odyssey because the sea is Odysseus’s main rival. And all the while these young persons, trapped in this olphamos, are inevitably molded and termed “Irish” for being on this island.

Questions:
Some of the difficulties from reading this text lie in the seamless shift between other voices, times, and realities. I think this is Joyce trying to really place the novel in the minds of his characters. Out of curiosity, what do you find most difficult?
What do you make of Haines? Both characters initially seem frustrated with him, but he doesn’t come off as so wicked.

Static Yet Dynamic

“It was the dream itself enchanted me:
Character isolated by a deed
To engross the present and dominate memory.
Players and painted stage took all my love
And not these things that they were emblems of”

“The Circus Animals’ Desertion” (28-32).

Yeats has led a life of contemplation. We’ve seen him grapple with the importance of sexuality, the psyche of the Irish patriot, and the frailty of the human body. After having achieving a method— his gyres, towers, and moons— to help catalogue these thoughts, we cannot expect Yeats to stray away from these themes. In fact Yeats arguably tones down his obscurity, and in some ways resembles his old poetry with these final ones. For example in “Come Gather Round me Parenellites” we hear the lyrical quality of some of the older poems. In this poem he is addressing Irish revolutionaries, as with a drinking song. Like in “Red Hanrahan’s Song about Ireland” we see Yeats making the revolutionary seem idealistic. They drink to Parnell’s action, love, and pride, but seem to do nothing else. Yeats also confronts the stereotype of the drunken Irishman, who does not toast just the man, but each of his qualities. Unlike his older poetry, Yeats now makes his poems multifaceted. Earlier Yeats may have solely focused on the Irish identity, but this poem deals with love as well. Parnell slept with another politician’s wife and the scandal and shame eventually led to the division of his political party. Like with tales of Helen and Dido, personal love led to the collapse of political forces. And we see Yeats turning Parnell’s love story into a myth. For the Irish poor, the folk, have embedded this story into their spirits. And for Yeats this gives Parnell a sort of immortality, for

“Stories that live longest
Are sung above the glass,
And Parnell loved his country
And Parnell loved his lass” (29-32).

Yeats is almost suggesting that even though Parnell “saved the Irish poor,” he will be remembered for his scandalous story. So while Yeats has not left the themes he’d been exploring for years they are still there. He places the drinking patriots in a frame of mythology like he did in the past. Instead he shows how the present, contemporary reality, will be the myth of the future. One of the most fantastic things I saw Yeats do in these poems was to kill himself. In “Under Ben Bulben” the narrator walks us by Yeats’ tomb with “no marble, no conventional phrase” (89). In some ways I find this poem to act like a will, or even a placement of himself in history, or myth. Yeats discusses the “profane perfection of mankind” (52). This line is in reference to Adam, as if all of mankind is the sculpture of Adam’s doing. And in this line Calvert, Wilson, Blake, and Claude have maybe tried to embody or represent this perfection. The reason why I would call this poem a sort of will is that it gives direction to the Irish poet. In his call to writer’s I see Yeats valuing the voice and the eye. He says to “sing the peasantry, and then/ hard-riding country gentlemen,” and other types of people. Therefore the eye would be necessary to observe the image of these classes. But Yeats also wants you to use the mind as an eye, to look at the past for “the lords and ladies gay/ that were beaten into clay/ throughout seven heroic centuries” (78-80). Since one cannot “see” past generations, Yeats is probably supporting the use of myth or history as an image of the past. Further one needs to look to the future, to see how the Irish might fit into the scope of history, the gyres, and maintain “indomitable Irishry” (83).

Reality as Told By Yeats

“Such thought, that in it bound
I need no other thing,
Wound in minds wandering
As mummies in the mummy-cloth are wound”

We have seen Yeats battle with the notions of reality throughout the whole of his work so far. In the chapter Ellman declares that Yeats found a new confidence in his writing being in moon phase 17. In this phase literature, philosophy, and nationality were able to come together as one thing (13). While this epiphany and its fruits are rightly termed “esoteric,” I see how the three forms— literature, philosophy, and nationality— come together. I opened with the closing lines of “All Soul’s Night” to show that these forms are able to come together in Yeats’s thought or perhaps his imagination. But thought has become so important, to the point he would “need no other thing,” in understanding reality. In “All Soul’s Night” Yeats conjures spirits like he did in the “Memory of Robert Gregory.” But this time he does not remember young men as if they were champions of the ancient Olympic games, but as thinkers who both learned and taught. The first person, Horton (still unsure of the allusion), is called a master of platonic love. But we also see how the loss of his love made him beg for death. Both of these aside I see the most relation to Yeats himself in how Horton’s “mind’s eye…on one sole image fell” (33-34). This shows how despite Yeats’s new confidence and stylistic change he can still get hung up on an image, and think there be some Truth in it. Another part in the book where we see this is in “The Tower” where he calls upon literary characters, both his and others’, wanting to ask them more questions. The next ghost in “All Souls’ Night” is Florence Emery. From wikipedia (sorry Robin) I learned that she was a friend and collaborator of Yeats, and also a fellow member of the Golden Dawn Occult. We see her soul “whirled about/ wherever the orbit of the moon can reach” (54-55), as if Yeats is analyzing the phases of her soul. The last ghost is MacGregor Mathers, founder of the Golden Dawn Occult (wikipedia again), obviously a person who would be absorbed in the spiritual world.
So how does the mention of these people show Yeats’s changing perspective of reality? Much of it deals with the importance of Objectivity and Subjectivity that Ellman points out. I feel that Yeats has accepted reality but in doing so has not denied the presence of myth, legend, or dreams. Rather he objectively notices how images or fantasy have changed these peoples’ thoughts. But these identities Yeats remembers have become spiritual images in his own mind, by which he can subjectively pick out truths or “a certain marvelous thing” (16). The fact that a memory of someone is somewhat eternal is found in the line “friendship never ends” (65). Even though he admits to disagreeing with Mathers, Yeats remembers a time when the two were still friends.
While this stage of Yeats’s writing is somewhat uninviting due to its obscurity and inward complexity, I find it welcoming. Seeing that he places this new emphasis on his psyche and reality allows the reader to do what Yeats has been doing with the scope of image and art for his whole life.

A painting by Edmund Dulac,
I'm sure Yeats wished the world looked like this.
















A drawing and letter from Florence Emery. We see that Yeats may have a dark humor to him. In response to her cancer and mastectomy she writes "Last December I became an Amazon and my left breast and pectoral muscle were removed. Now my left side is a beautiful slab of flesh adorned with a handsome fern pattern made by a cut and 30 stitches."

The Mixed Influences

The inability of Yeats’s poems to resolve comes from their paradoxical nature, what I take to be negative capability. I feel that the examining this attribute is the same as answering questions concerning Yeats’s influence. Even in noticing the mythological and classical references he makes shows the different ideals he plays with. In “Solomon and Sheba” we see Yeats play with biblical characters, and then in “Lines Written in Dejection” mythological images of centaurs and heroes appear. This could easily boil down to the question of Irish identity again, paying homage to all the ancient cultures found in Ireland; he borrows Catholics and Protestants with biblical imagery, and Celtics, Romans and Greeks for mythological ones. But in this later group of poems there is a large emphasis on how these influences not only affect his identity, but his thought process. This notion is emphasized in “The Phases of the Moon,” with the man locked in his tower seeking “in a book or manuscript/ what he shall never find” (19-20). The Pre-Raphaelites influence is also found in this poem in how the reader has found “mere images.” This seems likes Yeats mocking himself, calling out his obsession with images for their own sake like many Pre-Raphaelites. Where Yeats really seems to confuse himself is that he hopes to find “an image of mysterious wisdom won by toil” (18), and unlike the pre-Raphaelites seeks Truth from these images, like those found in biblical and mythological text.
We see this image seeker in a much more depressed state in “Lines Written in Dejection.” The narrator calls witches noble and centaurs holy, which both are rather unfitting. But in his aging he has separated from the dreamlike world, created by the moon, he has to deal with sunlight. The sunlight illuminates reality for the speaker, which contrasts the candlelight that the man locked in the tower uses “The Phases of the Moon,” for he still plays in the world of image.
One last genre-bend Yeats does not only affects his psyche, but his style. While dense and eerie, “Upon a Dying Lady” has an amusing rhythm, switching between more dramatic and lyrical poetics. Not only is this poem filled with a rhythmic back and forth, but it also moves from death to dancing, and mass to dolls. The reader is even unsure of the relation to this dying Lady; she is called an enemy but is praised for her courage. In the end having courage like warring emperors. And all this confusion is only resolved with a scene of the dying woman receiving a Christmas tree and a reminder of death. I feel that this poem as a whole embodies the expanse of Yeats’s influence, but in turn leaves me the most perplexed. Is this lady meant to be favored, blamed, maybe pitied? I also wonder, since Yeats is so fascinated with cycles and death, does he pay attention to this lady only because she is dying?

http://www.vam.ac.uk/images/image/13687-large.jpg