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Chapter 3 - Reading Joyce, again: thank you sir for your insightful remarks. what is amazing about james joyce is that his work is so complex that it honestly defies any exact interpretation. i have had professor's differ on the meaning of tennyson's ulysses. how much more could people be certain about joyce's ulysses? these books are like living creatures. a physical examination is good, but once you start an autopsy, it is necessary to admit the thing is dead. a better knowledge of the workings of a thing only lead to a loss of the beautiful mystery that surrounded it. Orkono You might also say that to take one portion and explain it all by itself endangers the stability of the remaining portions. It is easy to end up with neatly explained parts and no sense of the whole whatever. B Bob & Orkono In my case at least reading the extra material on Ulysses is very enriching. There are limits, of course, as to how much extra material one can read. But apart from one or two articles I have read, they have mostly taught me how varied the Blickwinkle (=viewpoints) could be regarding Joyce. If Murphy considered nebeneinander, nacheinander in terms of the writers of Ireland, I had till then just thought of them in terms of the steps Stephen was keeping - physical act of walking on the sand. It is not a question of which interpretation is correct, it is a question of the realising the multiple interpretations such simple words can be subjected to. I would surely proceed faster with reading Ulysses if I would trust my own two penny worth understanding of the text. But it has so far left me a sense of dissatisfaction, with a sense of not having seen what could have been seen. Today I discovered Joseph Campbell's 'Mythic Worlds, Modern Words'. In the next couple of days I should get 'Annotated Ulysses'. Surely if more people take part in the discussion and say what they particular source they are reading and have understood, we would be learning lots from one another. Do say what you make out of chapter 3. And, On last Saturday, I had said, please say how you people interpreted the following sentences: (The sentences, all from Proteus): . "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." I specially had aimed at those who are reading Ulysses without any other supplementary book. Four days later, the mail box has stayed empty. Wonder what could be the reason. If you don't like the above selection, are there other sentences in Proteus which have stayed in your minds? Do write Chandra What may have forestalled comment was the desire for replies from those who had not read any commentaries. In Joycean circles that reduces the crowd rather drastically. > 1. "Bald he was and a millionaire, maestro di color che sanno." "Master of those who know," a double-barrelled tribute to two of Joyce's idols, Dante and Aristotle. > 2. "My two feet in his boots are at the end of his legs, nebeneinander." The two feet belong to Stephen but the boots belong to Mulligan and they are moving in space (nebeneinander) > 3. "Dominie Deasy kens them a'" I can only guess. In Deasy's study are several collections: pictures of horses on the wall; shells on the desk; and the Stuart coins found on the battlefield. All of these things sum up Deasy's emptiness - pictures of horses he doesn't own; worthless shells like the ones that Stephen is now walking on; and coins that have no monetary value because the monarch that issued them fled fromthe battlefield. Stephen is being derisive in his thoughts about Deasy and calls him 'domine' sarcastically. > 4. "Aleph, alpha: nought, nought, one." Or to put this in purely numeric terms 11001. In numerology this is a number of renewal in that it exceeds the neat number (11000) that precedes it. It is, therefore, creative as opposed to static, active as opposed to passive. In Finnegans Wake Joyce plays with similar numbers: 1,001 as in 1,000 and 1 Arabian Nights Entertainment; a number for each of Anna's three children becomes 1 after 1 after 1 or one hundred and eleven. Best Bob Hi Chandra, and everyone on the list, sorry i havent had time to say much recently, i'm involved in a play at the moment: The Duchess of Malfi, but i will say something now. I am one who has no other supplementary notes or criticism on Ulysses, and the sentences you have chosen are difficult, perplexing ones. This statement in itself probably describes them perfectly. Stephen is a hyper-intellectual who revels in being as complex as possible - he strains, yearns and contrives his poetic voice throughout Ulysses, hyper-conscious of his role as artist. You must not feel, Chandra, that you have to understand the origins of all these statements, or even the meaning of them. Their isn't much enjoyment in stopping for every point that you dont quite get to check Gifford's Annotated Ulysses because you will miss the whole experience of it. Robert Martin Adams dos a very good intorduction to the book which is available online at the site: http://www.onelist.com in Mike Quest's Joyce-Ulysses e-mail group in the shared files section (you may have to sign up if you want to get it). Anyways, i can send the file to you if you want by private mail. This is the only thing i used on my 1st read of Ulysses besides the Bloomsday Book (which i STRONGLY recommend against using and which i gave up after a bit). to be honest, i dont really know what these sentences ACTUally mean, but the fact that they are obscure (to my knowledge anyway) and obtuse tells us a lot about Stephen's mentality, more (perhaps) than their actual source. The nebeneinder/nechenaninder thing: necheneinder (to my knowledge) is the form of writing that is linear with one event following after another, whereas nebeneinder describes a more 'spatial' kind of writing where linearity is lost and things become more associatively based than linearly (if that makes any sense!). But i'm not really sure on these terms, anyone care to expand?? Dominie Deasy (Master Deasy?) is Garrett Deady in Nestor. This reminds me of the keats poem, "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" where he talks about "stout Cortez" who sees things in his "ken". I think this line implies a very nautical sense of Garrett Deasy, his pride in the Englishman who knows he's "paid my [his] way". There is also sarcam in this, mocking him in saying that he kens them a[ll], he thinks himself a wise man of the world, but definitely isnt in Stephen's eyes. And where are you lurkers out there? Speak up! All the member of this list are what makes it, without input, this medium simply does not function, dont be afraid. Thanks,
Bod
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