Tag: Telemachus

Ulysses: Calypso

Happy Bloomsday! Today is June 16, which is the day James Joyce’s Ulysses is celebrated around the world. In the last couple of years, I have taken to reading Ulysses and done my level best to wrap up the reading on June 16. This year I decided to blog about each episode along the way, which, as I have learned, dramatically slows the process. However, I’m also finding that I’m getting more out of the reading this time around, so I’m happy with the process. With that said, it is time for another installment.

Calypso

“In the act of going, he stayed.” In Homer’s The Odyssey, Odysseus is ensnared by Calypso on an island during his travels. The nature of the ensnarement isn’t all bad. Although Calypso is ego-centric and selfishly wants to keep Odysseus as her own, she is a beautiful goddess-nymph  and she generally treats Odysseus well. Their relationship is carnal. But after some time – Homer’s timeline has it at 7 years – Odysseus misses his wife Penelope and wants to make his way home. It takes an appeal to the gods and Hermès finally frees him at the behest of Zeus himself.

The Cast

Now in the fourth episode of Ulysses, we finally meet our hero, Leopold Bloom. Much like the earlier parts of the book, we’re treated to a continuum of thoughts and actions, although we are limited to reading the thoughts of Bloom and Stephen. We meet Bloom’s wife, Molly, and we learn that they have a daughter, Milly. We also learn that they had a son named Rudy who died in infancy.

Relatively speaking, there is a ton of action in this episode. We have rewound to start the day at 8 AM – this time with Bloom. He goes to the butcher to pick up a pork kidney and observes the Dublin of 1904 around him. He comes home and cooks breakfast, which is a bit of a gender role reversal for this timeframe. Bloom picks up the mail dropped from the mail slot, which includes a letter for him from Milly, a card for Molly from Milly, and a letter for Molly from the antagonist, Blazes Boylan. The Blooms have a conversation about reincarnation and several polite exchanges. Leopold then eats his own breakfast and heads to the outhouse to finish off his morning ritual. There are also several interactions with the family cat throughout.

Themes

There are themes aplenty in the Calypso episode. Like Calypso, the episode has sexual references throughout. Also like the goddess, who would have been a champion for women’s equal rights, we get the strong indication that Molly will soon stray from the marriage with Boylan and that Leopold is aware. Bloom gives a lot of thought about staying and going. 

Sexual overtones: Bloom notices his wife’s feminine form and features as he interacts with her. Bloom also takes notice of the “vigorous hips” on the next-door girl in front of him at the butcher’s shop and wishes the butcher would hurry so he could walk behind her towards home. It’s “Pleasant to see first thing in the morning.” His thoughts drift off to this woman having an affair with a constable. When he misses out on walking behind the lady, his thoughts drift to his wife, Molly and pleasant evenings of the past. Back home, he thinks of being near Molly’s “ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.” The reference to the word “yes” here also will have overt sexual tones once we get to the final episode and get the chance to spend some time with Molly’s thoughts.” Additionally in this episode, Bloom recognizes that his daughter Milly, who has turned 15 yesterday is coming of age. As he considers his wife’s interest in Blazes Boylan and his daughter’s interest in Bannon, he concedes that it is impossible to prevent in either case.

Staying and Going: For me, the most important sentence of the whole episode is, “In the act of going, he stayed.” This is Calypso in a nutshell – both in Homer’s Odyssey and Joyce’s Ulysses. This sentence comes after he notices the opened letter from Boylan tucked under Molly’s pillow. He has seen the flirtation between the two. He knows they’ll be working together and he knows his wife is interested in him. However, there are faraway thoughts throughout the episode as well. Bloom thinks of Molly’s father in the Middle East and in Gibraltar. He considers investing in the tracts of land offered in Turkey to be a farmer. Bloom considers the plight of the Jewish people (Bloom is a Jew), and also considers traveling for several weeks to Mullingar, which is where the daughter Milly is staying. But at the same time, Bloom is wavering back and forth about also staying. Notably, when he goes to the outhouse he thinks about the back garden and how the soil is bad. He has a distinct thought to “Reclaim the whole place.” I believe this is poignant. Joyce is showing us rather than telling us that our hero is conflicted about what to do. Should he stay or go? Or both? Like Odysseus, maybe he will go and then come back to “reclaim his rightful place.”

Other prominent themes in the episode include business, jews, and death. The prominent public event in the story involves going to the funeral of Patrick Dignam, who died suddenly in recent days. The episode ends with the words “Poor Dignam!” as Blooms thoughts shift on a dime to close.

In Contrast

When contrasted with the other 8 AM and simultaneous episode, Telemachus, in which Stephen Daedalus is the focal point, we see several stark differences. Bloom is older and more practical about his thoughts, while Stephen is more ego-centric or fanciful. Stephen is off contemplating the stars while Bloom is calculating return on investment. Bloom is considering “staying and going” in the face of his wife’s imminent stray from the marital bedroom while Stephen is holding a grudge over his friend’s comment that his mother was “beastly dead.” These contrasts demonstrate the mastery that Joyce had over the human psyche. By showing us a difference in maturity in human thoughts while interweaving so many other themes, Ulysses is perhaps the richest case of demonstrated human understanding in the literary world.

Photo credit: Odysseus und Kalypso by Arnold Böcklin (1883), by The Yorck Project (2002) 10.000 Meisterwerke der Malerei (DVD-ROM), distributed by DIRECTMEDIA Publishing GmbH. ISBN: 3936122202., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=147930

 

Ulysses: Telemachus

It is May, which means it is time for my annual reading of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Since I’m back to my blog this year and I’ve removed my personal restriction on Quixote Goes from being a travel blog, I thought I’d spend some time introducing my faithful readers to this amazing book.

Before jumping in to the first episode, I want to introduce you to the cult behind Ulysses. First, it took Joyce roughly 5 years to write this book. He first serialized the beginning chapters in The American Review in 1918 and it was eventually published by an American woman named Sylvia Beach in Paris on Joyce’s 40th birthday, February 2, 1922. It was immediately banned in all English-speaking countries for what was at the time far too explicit content. The history of the book is well documented. In fact, there are plenty of books about the book Ulysses, my favorite of which is The Most Dangerous Book: The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses. The book is now celebrated around the world. There are round-the-clock public readings in New York City and a full location-to-location reenactment of the story in Dublin, all celebrated on Bloomsday, June 16.

Perhaps the other thing to note about Ulysses is that it is roughly structured on Homer’s The Odyssey and it switches literary techniques from episode to episode, which makes it a challenging read. Joyce intended Ulysses not to be a story for a million readers, but one a single reader could read a million times. This book is densely packed with multiple layers and plenty of plot connections throughout. Finally, a note about the plot. The book is set in Dublin, Ireland and takes place over one 24-hour period set on June 16, 1904. The Gilbert schema is a great reference to keep track of the times and themes of the book. 

Episode One – Telemachus

In Telemachus, who is the son of Odysseus in The Odyssey, we meet several characters – none of which are the main character. We start off with Malachi “Buck” Mulligan, the boisterous, blasphemous, fast-talking “friend” of Stephen Daedalus. We also meet Daedalus, who Joyce introduced us to in an earlier work titled, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. As that book title suggests, Daedalus represents Joyce. He is incredibly well-educated, but pensive and brooding, and certainly not one for hygiene by modern standards, as we learn about his monthly bathing policy. We’re also introduced to Haines, an Englishman who is “hanging out” in Dublin and has latched on to Mulligan and Daedalus for some exposure to Ireland and the Irish. The trio are staying in the Martello Tower on the Sandymount Beach looking out onto Dublin Bay.

This episode is based on real-life events in which Joyce, his compatriot, Oliver Gogarty (note the syllabic match to Malachi Mulligan), and an Englishman stayed in the tower. The book version doesn’t exactly match the facts available, which are well detailed in many other resources available, so I’ll stick to the plot of the book.

Over the course of the chapter, we learn that Stephen Daedalus has harbored an offense that he took when he overheard Mulligan tell his mother that Stephen’s mother was “beastly dead.” We also get introduced to the memory of Stephen’s dying mother and a sense that her death haunts Stephen. Stephen has raised societal eyebrows himself because he refused to pray over his mother when she asked him to do so as she lay dying. Like much of Ulysses, the action here isn’t very action-based. It is a book of dialogue – both outer and inner. We read the spoken words of the characters as well as the unspoken thoughts all without quotations and – as mentioned earlier – it can be a difficult thing for a new reader to sort out. 

The three young men – Daedalus, Mulligan, and Haines – have breakfast, interact with the milk maid, and then go to the bay where Mulligan has a swim. The episode ends when Mulligan demands the key for the Martello Tower and money from Daedalus. Stephen gives up the key and some money and then decides he will not return to stay there. It ends with Daedalus thinking / muttering the word “Usurper.” Several themes come out for me in the opening chapter.

  1. Ireland / the Irish people – There are several references to Ireland throughout Telemachus. Haines speaks the Irish language to the milk maid, but she – a poor Irishwoman – at first thinks he’s speaking French because she doesn’t speak or understand it. Daedalus mentions that the “cracked looking glass is the symbol of Irish art.” And in defense of his infrequent bathing habits, Daedalus remarks, “all Ireland is washed by the Gulf Stream.” Finally, and most demonstrative, Daedalus remarks to Haines about having two masters, and a third “who wants me for odd jobs.” When Haines inquires about the masters, Daedalus quips, “a crazy [English] queen, old and jealous” and “the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.” There’s plenty of commentary here about Ireland at the time: the politics of language, English rule, and the influence of the Catholic church. 
  2. Mother – I mentioned earlier about Stephen’s mother and her untimely death; as well as Stephen’s refusal to pray over her as she lay dying. This will be brought to the fore in later chapters. Mulligan was speaking to his own mother when the “beastly dead” comment was made. There is also a passage about the sea being “our great sweet mother.”
  3. The Greeks – The chapter title is Telemachus. Stephen’s last name is Greek; in mythology, Daedalus was the father of Icharus, who famously flew too close to the sun. Mulligan mentions that Daedalus “must learn Greek, so he can read the classics in the native language.” For me, the reference to the word “usurper” harkens back to Homer’s The Odyssey, in which several suitors come to Odysseus’ house and effectively usurp his lands and livestock as they set up camp and try to marry his wife Penelope while Odysseus is away.

I’m sure there are more themes than what I’ve called out. I’m sure the academics will say that I’ve gotten the major themes wrong. But that’s what I love about this book. Ulysses is for everyone who is brave enough to have a go. It is written between the lines so everyone will take different things from it and learn a little more with each new read. I hope you’ve enjoyed my take on the first Episode. I’ll continue to share as I make my way through the book with this – my fourth annual reading. I’m hoping to be done on Bloomsday (June 16), but I’m off to a slow start. Now for the questions!

Have you read Ulysses? What are your thoughts about my review of Telemachus?

Is there another book that you can read over and over?