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Chapter 14 / OXEN OF THE SUN - Ruth red him: Paul Oh, yes we are all participants in this great book - an incredible book really. I am slowly understanding how addictive the book is. Can't wait to finish and start all over again. Now that you have unearthed the latin basis of these chants, Paul, would you have an explanation why these chants were uttered always thrice. It is the same with Sanskrit - for example, om shanti, shanti, shanti (I am leaving the endings 'h' here.) Why the three times? The passage you quote below makes one think. On first reading I have some problems with the ideas contained therein. about (a) despoils the innocence and beauty of birth... Can argue hours about these 'misfitting' objectives! More seriously, though (b) that Bloom ..... becomes the complete human being ... Okay Molly is not faithful ( I am yet to come to that part). What I have not understood so far is why Bloom is such a passive observer (promoter) of this act of infidelity. I kind of feel that he deserves it if Molly is unfaithful to him! And dear Bloom is not really all that 'innocent' either. Remember his correspondence with that girl early in the book? So how come he is a complete human being? I have to get hold of this Blamires book. There is a book by Robert Nicholson too in our library, I found out. What I still have not understood yet is why there is so much reference in this chapter to Christ. In a chapter that has to do with birth. I can see the connections, but it is not internalised yet. Perhaps the clue is in the passage you provide. Have to think about it. Now for some nice sentences: A pregnancy without joy, he said, a birth without pangs, a body withour blemish, a belly without bigness. (All about the immaculate conception, right? Where did I read that it was some pope who declared once that Christ was not born 'naturally', and it was since then (18th century) that the immaculate conception became a doctrine of the Church?) You are right that 'little mo' is little more. Similarly withouten is without any (in 'And there was a vat silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay strange fishes withouten heads...) But what does one make of 'Ruth red him, love led on with will to wander, loth to leave.' Is this Ruth led him....? Which
Ruth? Biblical?
Ruth = compassion (ruthless = compassionless) Frank Frank, when I read your explanation, I remembered the following sentence from Amitav Ghosh's novel, 'The Shadow Lines' (one of my favourite books) which goes: "And yet, when I look at her (the grandmother), lying crumpled in front of me, her white thinning hair matted with her invalid's sweat, my heart fills with love for her - love and that other thing, which is not pity but something else, something the English language knows only in its absence - ruth - a tenderness which is not merely pity and not only love." The dictionary also has no word like 'Ruth = compassion.' Then I thought that Joyce had (must have had) his own brand of dictionary, and there Ruth could as well be compassion! Chandra Perhaps appropriate to this discussion is consideration of what Shakespeare wrote in Richard II. Richard's queen has overheard the gardiner's forebodings regarding the fate of Richard and she curses his garden. The gardener compassionately speaks after she leaves the stage and says: 'here rue even for ruth shortly shall be seen In remembrance of a weeping queen.' Bob Williams Chandra said: Now that you have unearthed the latin basis of these chants, Paul, would you have an explanation why these chants were uttered always thrice. It is the same with Sanskrit - for example, om shanti, shanti, shanti (I am leaving the endings 'h' here.) Why the three times? ---------------------------------- Good question but perhaps very complex in background terms - involving magic/sociology/theology/etymology/ethnology and no doubt other assorted disciplines. There's an interesting article at: http://www.revilo-oliver.com/rpo/RPO_NewChrist/chap5.htm which is titled 'The Origins of Christianity - Ritual and Aryan Worship'. It actually touches very slightly on arvan priests and also brings in evidence for the origin of some Sanskrit terms with the Semites. [seems like everything in life is connected one way or another!!] If one assumes that Joyce is more complex than at first appearances {the safer bet I think most would agree} then some of the above information may have a place in deep analysis of this chapter (upon which I am unable to advise at all - being the ignorant bastard that I am!). But the smart money set would I think go with the explanation that 3 is the number of trimesters which occur in pregnancy - thus for this chapter - initiating the birthing metaphor/process. [This is my idea but the origin is sort of stolen - it's mentioned around the traps that this episode is twenty-seven sections long preceded by an opening invocation and followed by a recessional. Twenty-seven equals nine multiplied by three. Three is the number of trimesters of pregnancy and nine the number of months of a pregnancy.] ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ |Chandra: On first reading I have some problems with the ideas contained therein. about: (a) despoils the innocence and beauty of birth... Can argue hours about these 'misfitting' objectives! ----------------------------------------------- Perhaps the juxtaposition of drinking and irreverent students in a Hosptial where the beauty of birth takes place being representational of the despoiling of birth's beauty/innocence is rather obscure. But I don't really think that this idea can be completely denied. Joyce is seldom black and white and leans towards possibilities rather than concrete statements as someone more knowledgeable than myself has recently stated on another Joyce list. It is little wonder that you are looking forward to finishing and re-reading this little book about a little day!!! I am on my 3rd read and have heeded cautionary advice from Joycean sages that it's an important thing not to get toooooo bogged down in the grasp for meaning of peripheral complexities, especially during the first read - this book cannot be understood on too many levels without re-reading and re-reading both forwards and backwards in any event. The 2nd read might be well-assisted by consultation with the tome by Don Gifford 'Ulysses Annotated' [uni of california press 2nd ed. 1988] which is itself the biblical starting point for textual analysis of Ulysses. It demonstrates that allusions to Christ (often reflected in Bloom) and references to the bible itself are absolutely rife throughout Ulysses. Cheers Paul HOME! |