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Chapter 9 / Scylla and Charybdis - Who is Russell?: Hello! This chapter is going to be fun! I started it at midnight last night, and realised that it was a bit too late for Scylla and Charybdis. Was a lot easier today. There are quite a few new guys around in this chapter. I liked the guy Russell when I read: "All these questions are purely academic, Russell oracled out of his shadow. I mean, whether Hamlet is Shakespeare or James I or Essex. Clergymen's discussions of the historicity of Jesus. Art has to reveal to us ideas, formless spiritual essences. The supreme question about a work of art is out of how deep a life does it spring. The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas. The deepest poetry of Shelley, the words of Hamelet bring our mind into contact with the eternal wisdom, Plato's world of ideas. All the rest is the speculation of schoolboys for schoolboys." But when I read later what Russell had to say, "...The movements which work revolutions in the world are born out of the dreams and visions in a peasant's heart on the hillside ...", he did not any more come across like a serious guy, rather he came across a bit too pompous. Who is Russell? What is he doing here? And what is Hamlet doing here? Would anybody like to comment on the role of Hamlet in this chapter or in Ulysses in general? Thanks. One another thing: I like the way Joyce weaves in vedic philosophy (Hindu) with the Christian philosophy, so effortlessly: "Formless spiritual. Father, Word and Holy Breath. Allfather, the heavenly man. Hiesos Kristos, magician of the beautiful, the Logos who suffers in us at every moment. (Suddenly it becomes Hindu) This verily is that. I am the fire upon the altar. I am the sacrificial butter." Greetings Chandra George Russell (1867 - 1935) who adopted AE as his pseudonynm was a big figure in the Gaelic revival. He was also - as were many of the group - active in spiritualism of which Joyce had much knowledge and of which he tended to make a bit of fun. He is consistently rude to Joyce except for his departure. Russell was prompt, convulsively prompt and would not have stayed for the last trump if it meant missing an appointment. Otherwise there is little to be said for him. He later said that the description of this meeting in the library was substantially accurate so he not only had bad manners, he doesn't seem to have realized it. >And what is Hamlet doing here? Wow! Very big order. Hamlet the play is about paternity and this was a major problem for Joyce. He was not the oldest son of his father, he was the oldest surviving son and this colored his entire life and influenced from the core out everything that he wrote and much that he did. Notice that he tends to dissolve paternity and filiality. One way of solving his problems. I forgot to say of Scylla and Charybdis that Joyce shows the same skill at presenting his cast and their relation to their surroundings as he showed in Hades or Aeolus. The problem of Scylla and Charybdis is the complexity of movements that occur. Bob
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