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Hello all in 2000! Yesterday (1.1.2000) morning, I made a pot of tea, lit the candle on the little table, put my feet up and started reading Ulysses. I myself was amazed at my self control, as before starting the book I spent quite some hours reading. One of the books I read was "Approaches to Teaching Joyce's Ulysses" by McCormick and Steinberg, 1993. More about it later. And then I read the first 10 pages of Ulysses and part of the introduction in the Penguin edition. Rasik, your quotations from the annotated edition are a great help. I want to write below what I understand from what I have read. I would very much like others to comment, add on, explain, etc. People and colours in chapter 1/Section 1: There are five (one absent) main characters in the first chapter - Buck Mulligan, Stephen Dedalus, Haines, an old lady who brings milk. The absent one is Stephen's mother but she is still very much present here. As I read, I asked myself, which tower is this, why a tower? Rasik's explanation answered those questions. The Gilbert's table talks of two colours being important in the first chapter - yellow and white. I found the reference to grey, black and green (snotgreen) equally widespread. Stephen does not want to wear grey shirt. The sea is grey...black as in the reference to black panther, the animal which haunts Haines in his dreams ... Characters of Buck and Stephen: The characters were interesting too. Buck comes across stately and plump, overconfident, gay, witty, one who mocks everything and everybody, looks (at himself as??) a patron of art. Is there a hint of jealousy when he says to Stephen, "The mockery of it... your absurd name, an ancient Greek.." (Page 2)? Stephen, on the other hand, comes across as being morose, moody, callous, (or principled) - he refuses to give in to his mother's wishes even as she is dying, very sensitive - though he did not do what his mother wanted him to, he is still bothered by it, tense as a knife edge, poor - wears borrowed clothes... But there are contradictions in the characterisations. Just like the contradictions in the words stately, and plump used to describe Buck (I would not have noticed this opposition in words had I not read about it!). For example, it is Stephen who wears borrowed clothes, it is Buck who hands over the clothes, and suggests to Stephen that he should sound Haines for a quid. BUT it is Stephen who has the four quids which he gets from the school, and hands over one of them to Buck. Now, I have some questions, and hope that the answers will be forthcoming: Why is it important for Buck Mulligen that the name should have a Hellenic ring? See Page 2 What is the word "ouns"? - "For this ...body and soul and blood and ouns". Page 1 "Why should I bring it down? Or leave it there all day, forgotten friendship?" Page 12 How would you start the second sentence: Or why should I leave it OR or shall I leave it ...? Contradicting meanings would result depending on the choice! The sentence which so far I loved: "Wavewhite wedded words shimmering on the dim tide". Page 9 Finally, let me echo, what Rasik wrote end of last year, and hope all those friends who were active last year while we read Dubliners come back to read with us Ulysses. Sorry, if you find the message to be too long. Could not help it. Chandra Chandra, grey, green and black were the three stages of progressive blindness associated with glaucoma. But green is also important elsewhere in Joyce. The green eyes of the pervert in 'An Encounter,' for example. Joyce makes much of grey, green and black in Finnegans Wake. Best Bob Williams A quik response to one of your questions, Chandra: The following is from "Ulysses Annotated": blood and ouns -- An abbreviation of "God's blood and wounds," a blasphemous oath from the late Middle Ages. More later. By the way, it should be possible to order "Ulysses Annotated" by Don Gifford with Robert J. Seidman, (these are notes, not the whole text of Ulysses, a hefty volume of 642 pages in paperback, published by the University of California Press, Berkeley) from Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble on the net. I recommend these notes. -- Rasik Shah Bob, You said "grey, green and black were the three stages of progressive blindness associated with glaucoma. But green is also important elsewhere in Joyce." Could you elaborate on how glaucoma is important to Ulysses? In India green is the colour of fertility. That is why it is interesting to note this difference. Chandra Chandra, I think it is more that glaucoma was important to Joyce than that it had any particular importance in Ulysses. He had a way of importing such things into his works. This became especially conspicuous in Finnegans Wake. Often this was conscious but he had fixations that were probably so deeply rooted in his psyche that they amounted to unconscious fixations. Best Bob Williams
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