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Chapter 15 / CIRCE - Hello all! In Dublin at the Joyce Center I was glancing through the New Bloomsday book by Harry Blamires. I remember to have read there (cannot check for sure as I do not have a copy of the book) that the chapter Oxen of the Sun to be 'disappointing' because it is much too full of Joyce, and does not in anyway contribute to the book on the whole. Not the exact words but this is what has stayed in my mind. Infact when, after returning from Dublin, I read the chapter 'Deshil Holles Eamus ...', I liked it very much. That is when I really began admiring Joyce's intelligence, and liked how he brought in all the miriad styles of the entire English literature into one chapter without in any way breaking the flow of the chapter, without marring the effect. I cannot say the same of Circe. Reading the chapter, after reading the chapter, I ask myself, 'What is the point of this chapter, what is its purpose?' Nathan had said that the purpose was the final coming of Bloom and Stephen. He actually wrote: "Like an alchemist's crucible, the chapter gathers together all the characters and symbolic strands in the work and transmutes them -- combines them in such a way and in such a relationship to Bloom and Stephen, that they take a new shape and meaning." Nathan, I see, what you say in the second half of your sentence. But I do not see how these millions of characters who peep into this chapter give a new shape to the relationship to Bloom and Stephen. What do all these Mrs. Breens, Yelverton Barrys, Bellinghams, honorable Mervyn Talboys have to do here? Why all these - let us call them hallucinations, episodes happening in the depth of the mind, whatever they are -? It may be wrong to say categorically, why these? I should perhaps add to the question ' to this extent?' One feels simply overwhelmed by all that happens, and finally one when meets Stephen - who, thank God, is still Stephen quoting his Shakespeare, and thinking lofty thoughts - what happens between him and Bloom kind of vanishes in the impressions created earlier by the innumerable happenings and characters which assault one's mind. Even that little episode with Rudy is so short as to escape one's attention that here Bloom is coming to terms with the loss of his son. Rudy could be one amongst these thousands of others who simply come, and go before they have really come! There are flashes of light though. Like the sentence: "When in doubt persecute Bloom." I guess it is with this sentence, with this episode that Joyce is pointing towards the irrationality of antisemetic feelings that must have been rampant then, before and later. The Breens, Barrys, Bellinghams were needed to show, what Elias Cannetti wrote later as Masse und Macht - Mob power. To read about this senseless but very common behaviour of human beings (when one throws a stone, one is not alone for a long time, others join him very quickly) is interesting. But these episodes roller coaster, a bit too often. I am disappointed with this chapter. It is not difficult to read, finally, but it is too superfluous. Look forward to your comments! Chandra I think that it tends to be the least interesting part of the book but the book is otherwise of such excellence that I accept that Joyce needed to work out the problems that he conceived for this chapter. He varied the approaches to the fantasy very cleverly. He set up the situation where a long fantasy takes place between a statement by one character and the reply of another (Zoe and Bloom) but never used it again. In another fantasy the elements transform the environment (the woodland invades the brothel). There are other very clever uses of variety but they are not enough to relieve the reader --- this reader anyway --- from the relentless sameness of the material. In the James Joyce Quarterly there is an article that I found illuminating. It drew an analogy between Circe and the Pantomime, a rich source of inspiration for Joyce in Finnegans Wake. The ashplant was the pantomime hero's wand as was also the ivory wand carried by Rudy. Much of the fantasy in this section can be based on this concept .This article is in the JJQ Summer/Fall 1998. 'Stephen's Ashplant as Bloom's Wonderbat in "Circe"'s Harlequinade' by Sandra Manoogian Pearce. The appearance of Rudy is brief but quantity is not everything. Joyce was a craftsman of unique ability. He was especially at his best when he used the absurd in combination with the emotional. The result can be heartbreakingly moving. In the light of Pearce's insight, the scene begins as Bloom stands by the recumbent Stephen and holds the ashplant. This is a magic wand and with it --- and with the recitation of ritual (Masonic but anything would have served, one suspects) --- he unwittingly conjures up an absurd but touching figure. This is an example of the end redeeming much that went before. Bob Williams Yes Bob, quantity is not everything. Rudy's appearance need not be long to make an impression. But the mind is jaded so much till then that a late beginner of Joyce like me is simply overblown. Perhaps, jaded is too strong a word, still the impression I had while reading this chapter is the same I had when I went once or twice in my life - for five or ten minutes at the maximum - into a disco place - too much light flashing around, too much noise to notice anything else. I do not think that I would ever have looked for and found love in a disco bar. Would be too numbed to notice it even if it would be staring in my face. This is how I felt with Rudy's appearance... Actually, I am glad to hear from you that Circe is the least interesting part of the book. Makes Joyce more human! Greetings Chandra Of course, I must have been wrong in saying that Circe is a great disappointment. Should have added 'to me, right now'. Well, yesterday I got the book, 'Tell us in plain words', a M.S. thesis submitted by Sylvia Beeretz to the RWTH Aachen, Germany. It was the title of the book which attracted me. There she quotes Joyce as saying that "he had set himself the task of writing a book from eighteen different points of view and in as many styles." (Letters of James Joyce, Vol. 1, Ed. Stuart Gilbert). (This reference to 18 goes along with the 18 chapters in Ulyssses, 18 alphabets in the Irish language, as Bob mentioned.) When I read that sentence, I felt that I have to learn to approach this book TOTALLY differently from how I approach any other book. It is not the first time that I have felt this, but I keep on forgetting about this one solid truth about Ulysses. The following paragraph about Circe from the above book is also interesting: "Usually, a word or idea that appears in the 'real' action is the starting point of a hallucination, it triggers the supernatural scene off, as it were. When Zoe reads Bloom's pal, for instance, and calls him a 'henpecked husband', immediately the rooster Black Liz materializes and crows, 'Gara. Klook....' This incident, by the way, refers us back tot he barfly's statement in Cyclops that Bloom would have 'a soft hand under a hen' which engendered a nursery rhyme about Black Liz. When Bloom hums a song about a gazelle a paradisiacal scene with leaping gazelles and oriental flavour emerges ...." I am afraid that next time I read Ulysses, I will enjoy the chapter. May be will visit a few disco places before that just to get used to. Chandra
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