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Chapter 3 - Streams of Consciousness: I finally get it - what these grand words 'streams of consciousness' mean. The chapter 3 is supposed to be a very good example of writing where this techniques is used. That is what Stephen does when he closes 'his eyes to hear his boots crush and crack wrack and shells.' To be conscious of things around him. To get away from the assault of the form (which he calls the ineluctable modulity) of things lying around him he closes his eyes and is very awake AND aware of himself and of the world around him. 'I am, (not because Cogito, ergo sum - at least he does not say so though it is very true here too) a stride at a time.' He IS every step he takes; every second of that time is stamped by his stride. He is very much IS, living at THE time. He plays with German words - nacheinander, nebeneinander - sound somewhat similar when you finish saying the words - but nach and neben - following, and along with. It is as if he feels these words as he walks along. He is so conscious of the moment that he can feel the eternity, the connection between what has been, and what is. It is so real, how the one thought chases the other. It happens all the time with us, in us. But rarely ever we put them down in the order they occur. Would come across too chaotic. What I did not understand is to whom does he refer when he says 'They came down the steps from Leahy's terrace ....' This sight leads him to think of the midwives at his birth, at the navel cord, 'the cord of all link back, strandentwining cable of all flesh.' In the following he is poking at the monks, mystics who sit meditating, gazing at their navel as it said often condescendingly. Thinking of the navel cord, he thinks of the telephone cable. He imagines himself sitting (idle) gazing at his navel and it is as if he is contacting the telephone operator to Eden - the beginning of everything - Hello, Kinch here. Connect me to Eden. The number is Aleph (first letter of Hebrew (and arabic) alphabet), alpha (first one of Greek alphabets, the beginning of everything) 001. Now somebody tell me how one can read this book fast, one chapter every week. I need per page one day! Chandra Hi, Chandra The "they" who come down the steps of Leahy's terrace are Mrs Florence MacCabe, a midwife, and another old woman. Joyce does not give her a name here. Later he makes up a story. In the story he uses the name of Mrs Florence MacCabe and there is a companion in the story and he calls her Anne Kearns so it is perhaps Anne Kearns who comes down the steps of Leahy's terrace with Mrs MacCabe. That Mrs MacCabe is a midwife triggers his thoughts about birth and the connection between all that live and the first mother. He imagines that Mrs MacCabe has a misbirth in her midwife's bag. In the Wandering Rocks chapter (Chapter 10) we will discover that she has perhaps come to the beach to gather mussels because it is mussels that she has in her bag. This is a good example of Joyce's method, how he expects the reader to remember everything and to put together facts that are separated by hundreds of pages.This kind of writing emphasizes the author's expectation that the reader will read Ulysses more than once. There is no other way. All of Joyce is endlessly rereadable. Bob HOME! |