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Chapter 3 - Nebeneinander/Nacheinander: Today once again I felt the hopelessness of reading Ulysses when I read in 'James Joyce Quarterly' the article "Proteus and Prose: Paternity or Workmanship?" by Michael Murphy. Don't know who MM is but take that he is another joycean scholar. Murphy writes: " ... Stephen Dedalus is seeking (in his beach walk) the answer to another question from a Proteus of his own who takes on the form of the 'old men' of his island, most of them dead - Columbanus, Jonathan Swift, George Berkeley, Oscar Wilde - one figure after another, 'nacheinander', his literary fathers, and of some elders still very much allive, 'nebeneinander' - AE, Yeats, Douglas Hyde, Bram Stoker. Each of these men has made a name for himself, and Stephen is wrestling with them to obtain an answer to his question: what must I do to be memorable like you, my fellow Dubliners? Or, as the catechism question might have been put at Clongowes: what must I do to gain eternal life - on earth, of course, not in heaven? ----" Murphy also writes that here Stephen is still struggling with how to memorialize his mother with something as good as what John Milton wrote for a friend. I enjoyed reading the article by Murphy, but found the experience disheartening because I have no hopes of understanding even a fraction of what Joyce wrote without the help of all these supplementary articles and books. I also have no intention of becoming a 'joycean' by reading all kinds of supplementary work on every single word on every single page. I did enjoy reading the article, and admire all these peoples' fantasy, BUT the question remains to me how do I best approach this writer - in the little time I can devote to him? And but for this list, I would have given up any attempt of reading Ulysses. So the list, sleepy as it mostly is, has helped me to put down my thoughts - however simple they are. Thanks for letting me talk so freely. I hope that many of you read this thanks as acknowledgement to your participation. Chandra Chandra, many thanks for the substantial quote from Murphy. This is a very good summary of Proteus and places it in a new and startling light. All of this kind of thing is good clean fun and isn't much different from the study of any complex author - Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf, for example - but it isn't necessary for the enjoyment of any author. Often we sense what an author is doing and for purposes of enjoyment that it is enough. We don't need to dig into the text in order to enjoy it. Some of us, of course, can't help doing so but I often think that all I read from others about Finnegans Wake doesn't do much for my enjoyment of it. No book can support so much exegesis. Bob I see these words as time and space as shown in stream-of-consciousness writing. real/appearance. Stephen is dealing with his past Paris/Dublin tangled memories. He is also trying to figure out who he is in contrast to others . . . You mention that your list is "sleepy". As someone that recently Moderated a list discussion on Ulysses, (with much help from Bob), I know how you feel! I found myself doing lots of cheer leading to stimulate conversation. All and all, you doing just fine. . . Keep asking questions . . . With Ulysses the learning curve never ends. What follows WAS part of Richard Stacks fine web site. . . for what ever reason I can not access his site. However, It looks like pages of his site have been "captured" and put up here. These are some great resources for the proteus chapter. I might add that I found these from Jorn's amazing site at http://www.robotwisdom.com/jaj/portal.html. Introduction To "Proteus" and quiz http://google.com/search?q=cache:www.purchase.edu/Joyce/ch3_b1.htm Perhaps some one will wish to use the quiz to start up a fresh conversation? Proteus Quiz Model Answers http://google.com/search?q=cache:www.purchase.edu/Joyce/ch3_b2.htm Proteus MOO session number 2 http://google.com/search?q=cache:www.purchase.edu/Joyce/ch3_b3.htm Mike
Thanks, Mike, for the urls. Sabine Habermalz who writes the introduction to Proteus mentions the thing that has been in my mind since I read the wide spread understanding of nacheinander = one of the other in 'time', and nebeneinander referring to 'space'. I knew that it is not necessarily so in German. Nebeneinander can also mean things done together, so it has a time connotation. If I say, Ich mache das alles nebeneinander, it means that I will do all that one along with the other. This difference is also important if we remember Murphy's explanation that by nacheinander Joyce referred to poets who were, and by nebeneinander to those who were active at that time. So it is the time aspect which is important here. Oh, I got the Annotated Ulysses a couple of days ago. The book is very well done. I was stumped when I read the explanations given in that book to the first paragraph of Proteus. One of the facts that impressed me most was how educated Joyce must have been. What all knowledge is packed in 12 lines! Amazing, simple amazing! With the help of this book, and the one by Joseph Campbell, and you Bob, Mike, Bod, Rasik, etc, reading Ulysses would be a great pleasure, and not merely a challenge. Mike, you said, keep asking questions: I have two. Would like to know what people think of the following sentences - in the first instance, I am interested in the answers of people who have no supplementary books like the Annotated Ulysses. What I am trying to find out is how much do people really get - on their own- about all the things that are packed into Ulysses. Now the sentences, all from Proteus: 1. "Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno." 2. "My two feet in his boots are at the end of his legs, nebeneinander." 3. "Dominie Deasy kens them a'" 4. "Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one." Do write Chandra
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