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What Joyce's Ulysses has to do with Homer's Odyssey - introductory remarks to Chapter 1: Chandra, excellent summary of the Odyssey. I should say, to start with, that like many who grew up in the colonial British Empire, I do not have a grounding in Greek or Latin classics; so what I know is picked from others writing about Homer and Joyce. For that matter, my seeming familiarity with Joyce is a result of years of reading about Joyce, never having read Ulysses from the first to the last page continuosly. I have seen a movie of Ulysses, heard Joseph Campbell lecturing on Joyce (on video), heard recordings of Ulysses, etc. I am listening to the first chapter of Ulysses, called Telemachus, on tape as I write this. Dubliners and A Portrait I have read more than once and enjoyed them very much. Ulysses is not an easy book, let us all admit! But it is a treasure-house, As we will discover by exploring it line by line, sometimes; other times just making comments on aspects of it, like its mythological underpinnings. Joyce had originally thought of adding Ulysses as a short story in 'Dubliners'. It was to be a short story set in Dublin. It remains that, a story set in Dublin and revolves around three main characters: Steven Dedalus, Leopols Bloom and Molly Bloom. The action takes place in a single day, the 16th of June, 1904.The Novel invokes the inner world of its charcters, who are ordinary people living in Dublin. The novel form has changed greatly in this century. Tradditional novels portrayed external reality. Proust and Joyce were major innovators of the technique called 'stream of consciousness'- the flow of thoughts and sensations of the mind. One of the best examples of this is the ultimate Episode 18 of Ulysses, called Penelope, a long unpunctuated series of Molly Bloom's internal monologue as she muses about love, life, sex, everything. As we start each chapter it may be a good idea to refer to tha parallel part of Homer's Oddesey. In Chapter 1 Telemachus is dismayed and disgusted at the behaviour of the suitors, who usurp the palace of the missing Ulysses, to court his mother Penelope. The Goddess Athena advises him to take ship and seek news of his father. This he determines to do. Chapter 1 of Ulysses opens with the early morning activities of the three residents of Martello Tower, a late eighteenth-century fortification erected by the English to frustrate an Irish rebellion. The three gentlemen who rent the place are Stephen, Buck Mulligan and Haines, an Englishman. Stephen is depressed by the recent death of his mother and becomes increasingly restive, suffering the vivaciuos but brutal wit of his companion, Buck Mullgan, a medical student.Haines is an English student from Oxford. There are deliberate deviations from the parallels with the Odyssey. Stephen is not in search of his father, and Molly Bloom, unlike Penelope, does not remain faithful, but plans and consummates an adulterous liaison with Blazes Boylan. Bloom, meek and pacific, is unlike the proud Ulysses and in fact condones the affair. Anthony Burgess made the point in an interview that it was important to note that Joyce's hero in Ulysses, Leopold Bloom, is an ordinary Jewish man, not a mainstream European man, emphasizing the theme of the outsider, the exile. The opening scene of Chapter 1 is a mockery of the Mass, the shaving bowl of Mulligan being the chalice, the Introibid the altar steps. Mulligan's razor is th sign of the slaughterer, the priest as butcher. "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing-gown, ungirdled, wsa sustained gently behind him by the mild morning aur. Hev held the bowl aloft and intoned: -- Intribo as altare Dei." Here are some of the notes to the above line in Gifford's Annotated Ulysses: yellow - ...the gold of liturgical vestments is not a yellow fabric but cloth of gold, a fabric worn wholy or in part with threads of gold. Liturgically, the colour yellow has many negative connotations: 'Yellow is sometime used to suggest infernal light, dehardation, jealousy, treason and deceit. Thus the traitor Judas is frequently painted in a garment of dingy yellow.' ungirdled-- When a priest celebrates Mass, the alb, the long white linen robe with tapered sleeves that he wears , is secured by a girdle, a narrow band ending in tassels. 'Ungirdled' suggests violation of the priestly vow of chastity. Kinch --After kinchin, or child. Joyce's boast that he would keep the professors busy for a hundred years was not an idle one. I better stop here, for the moment. It is going to be difficult not getting bogged down in detail as we go along Ulysses. It may be much better if we can getspecific questions from those reading say each chapter as we go along. -- Rasik Shah |