What
memories
had he of her adolescence?
James Joyce - Ulysses
What also stimulated him in his cogitations?
The financial success achieved by Ephraim Marks and Charles A. James,
the former by his 1d bazaar at 42 George's street, south, the latter
at his 6 1/2d shop and world's fancy fair and waxwork exhibition at 30
Henry street, admission 2d, children 1d: and the infinite possibilities
hitherto unexploited of the modern art of advertisement if condensed
in triliteral monoideal symbols, vertically of maximum visibility
(divined), horizontally of maximum legibility (deciphered) and of
magnetising efficacy to arrest involuntary attention, to interest, to
convince, to decide.
Such as?
K. II. Kino's 11/- Trousers. House of Keys. Alexander J. Keyes.
Such as not?
Look at this long candle. Calculate when it burns out and you receive
gratis 1 pair of our special non-compo boots, guaranteed 1 candle power.
Address: Barclay and Cook, 18 Talbot street.
Bacilikil (Insect Powder). Veribest (Boot Blacking). Uwantit (Combined
pocket twoblade penknife with corkscrew, nailfile and pipecleaner).
Such as never?
What is home without Plumtree's Potted Meat?
Incomplete.
With it an abode of bliss.
Manufactured by George Plumtree, 23 Merchants' quay, Dublin, put up in
4 oz pots, and inserted by Councillor Joseph P. Nannetti, M. P. , Rotunda
Ward, 19 Hardwicke street, under the obituary notices and anniversaries
of deceases. The name on the label is Plumtree. A plumtree in a meatpot,
registered trade mark. Beware of imitations. Peatmot. Trumplee. Moutpat.
Plamtroo.
Which example did he adduce to induce Stephen to deduce that
originality, though producing its own reward, does not invariably
conduce to success?
His own ideated and rejected project of an illuminated showcart, drawn
by a beast of burden, in which two smartly dressed girls were to be
seated engaged in writing.
What suggested scene was then constructed by Stephen?
Solitary hotel in mountain pass. Autumn. Twilight. Fire lit. In dark
corner young man seated. Young woman enters. Restless. Solitary. She
sits. She goes to window. She stands. She sits. Twilight. She thinks.
On solitary hotel paper she writes. She thinks. She writes. She sighs.
Wheels and hoofs. She hurries out. He comes from his dark corner. He
seizes solitary paper. He holds it towards fire. Twilight. He reads.
Solitary.
What?
In sloping, upright and backhands: Queen's Hotel, Queen's Hotel, Queen's
Hotel. Queen's Ho. . .
What suggested scene was then reconstructed by Bloom?
The Queen's Hotel, Ennis, county Clare, where Rudolph Bloom (Rudolf
Virag) died on the evening of the 27 June 1886, at some hour unstated,
in consequence of an overdose of monkshood (aconite) selfadministered in
the form of a neuralgic liniment composed of 2 parts of aconite liniment
to I of chloroform liniment (purchased by him at 10. 20 a. m. on the
morning of 27 June 1886 at the medical hall of Francis Dennehy, 17
Church street, Ennis) after having, though not in consequence of having,
purchased at 3. 15 p. m. on the afternoon of 27 June 1886 a new boater
straw hat, extra smart (after having, though not in consequence of
having, purchased at the hour and in the place aforesaid, the toxin
aforesaid), at the general drapery store of James Cullen, 4 Main street,
Ennis.
Did he attribute this homonymity to information or coincidence or
intuition?
Coincidence.
Did he depict the scene verbally for his guest to see?
He preferred himself to see another's face and listen to another's
words by which potential narration was realised and kinetic temperament
relieved.
Did he see only a second coincidence in the second scene narrated to
him, described by the narrator as _A Pisgah Sight of Palestine or The
Parable of the Plums_?
It, with the preceding scene and with others unnarrated but existent by
implication, to which add essays on various subjects or moral apothegms
(e. g. _My Favourite Hero or Procrastination is the Thief of Time_)
composed during schoolyears, seemed to him to contain in itself and
in conjunction with the personal equation certain possibilities of
financial, social, personal and sexual success, whether specially
collected and selected as model pedagogic themes (of cent per cent
merit) for the use of preparatory and junior grade students or
contributed in printed form, following the precedent of Philip Beaufoy
or Doctor Dick or Heblon's _Studies in Blue_, to a publication of
certified circulation and solvency or employed verbally as intellectual
stimulation for sympathetic auditors, tacitly appreciative of successful
narrative and confidently augurative of successful achievement, during
the increasingly longer nights gradually following the summer solstice
on the day but three following, videlicet, Tuesday, 21 June (S. Aloysius
Gonzaga), sunrise 3. 33 a. m. , sunset 8. 29 p. m.
Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other
frequently engaged his mind?
What to do with our wives.
What had been his hypothetical singular solutions?
Parlour games (dominos, halma, tiddledywinks, spilikins, cup and ball,
nap, spoil five, bezique, twentyfive, beggar my neighbour, draughts,
chess or backgammon): embroidery, darning or knitting for the
policeaided clothing society: musical duets, mandoline and guitar, piano
and flute, guitar and piano: legal scrivenery or envelope addressing:
biweekly visits to variety entertainments: commercial activity as
pleasantly commanding and pleasingly obeyed mistress proprietress in
a cool dairy shop or warm cigar divan: the clandestine satisfaction of
erotic irritation in masculine brothels, state inspected and medically
controlled: social visits, at regular infrequent prevented intervals
and with regular frequent preventive superintendence, to and from female
acquaintances of recognised respectability in the vicinity: courses of
evening instruction specially designed to render liberal instruction
agreeable.
What instances of deficient mental development in his wife inclined him
in favour of the lastmentioned (ninth) solution?
In disoccupied moments she had more than once covered a sheet of paper
with signs and hieroglyphics which she stated were Greek and Irish and
Hebrew characters. She had interrogated constantly at varying intervals
as to the correct method of writing the capital initial of the name of
a city in Canada, Quebec. She understood little of political
complications, internal, or balance of power, external. In calculating
the addenda of bills she frequently had recourse to digital aid.
After completion of laconic epistolary compositions she abandoned
the implement of calligraphy in the encaustic pigment, exposed to
the corrosive action of copperas, green vitriol and nutgall. Unusual
polysyllables of foreign origin she interpreted phonetically or by false
analogy or by both: metempsychosis (met him pike hoses), _alias_ (a
mendacious person mentioned in sacred scripture).
What compensated in the false balance of her intelligence for these and
such deficiencies of judgment regarding persons, places and things?
The false apparent parallelism of all perpendicular arms of all
balances, proved true by construction. The counterbalance of her
proficiency of judgment regarding one person, proved true by experiment.
How had he attempted to remedy this state of comparative ignorance?
Variously. By leaving in a conspicuous place a certain book open at a
certain page: by assuming in her, when alluding explanatorily, latent
knowledge: by open ridicule in her presence of some absent other's
ignorant lapse.
With what success had he attempted direct instruction?
She followed not all, a part of the whole, gave attention with interest
comprehended with surprise, with care repeated, with greater difficulty
remembered, forgot with ease, with misgiving reremembered, rerepeated
with error.
What system had proved more effective?
Indirect suggestion implicating selfinterest.
Example?
She disliked umbrella with rain, he liked woman with umbrella, she
disliked new hat with rain, he liked woman with new hat, he bought new
hat with rain, she carried umbrella with new hat.
Accepting the analogy implied in his guest's parable which examples of
postexilic eminence did he adduce?
Three seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides,
author of _More Nebukim_ (Guide of the Perplexed) and Moses Mendelssohn
of such eminence that from Moses (of Egypt) to Moses (Mendelssohn) there
arose none like Moses (Maimonides).
What statement was made, under correction, by Bloom concerning a fourth
seeker of pure truth, by name Aristotle, mentioned, with permission, by
Stephen?
That the seeker mentioned had been a pupil of a rabbinical philosopher,
name uncertain.
Were other anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and children of a
selected or rejected race mentioned?
Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (composer), Baruch Spinoza (philosopher),
Mendoza (pugilist), Ferdinand Lassalle (reformer, duellist).
What fragments of verse from the ancient Hebrew and ancient Irish
languages were cited with modulations of voice and translation of texts
by guest to host and by host to guest?
By Stephen: _suil, suil, suil arun, suil go siocair agus suil go cuin_
(walk, walk, walk your way, walk in safety, walk with care).
By Bloom: _Kkifeloch, harimon rakatejch m'baad l'zamatejch_ (thy temple
amid thy hair is as a slice of pomegranate).
How was a glyphic comparison of the phonic symbols of both languages
made in substantiation of the oral comparison?
By juxtaposition. On the penultimate blank page of a book of inferior
literary style, entituled _Sweets of Sin_ (produced by Bloom and so
manipulated that its front cover came in contact with the surface of
the table) with a pencil (supplied by Stephen) Stephen wrote the Irish
characters for gee, eh, dee, em, simple and modified, and Bloom in turn
wrote the Hebrew characters ghimel, aleph, daleth and (in the absence of
mem) a substituted qoph, explaining their arithmetical values as ordinal
and cardinal numbers, videlicet 3, 1, 4, and 100.
Was the knowledge possessed by both of each of these languages, the
extinct and the revived, theoretical or practical?
Theoretical, being confined to certain grammatical rules of accidence
and syntax and practically excluding vocabulary.
What points of contact existed between these languages and between the
peoples who spoke them?
The presence of guttural sounds, diacritic aspirations, epenthetic and
servile letters in both languages: their antiquity, both having been
taught on the plain of Shinar 242 years after the deluge in the seminary
instituted by Fenius Farsaigh, descendant of Noah, progenitor of Israel,
and ascendant of Heber and Heremon, progenitors of Ireland: their
archaeological, genealogical, hagiographical, exegetical, homiletic,
toponomastic, historical and religious literatures comprising the works
of rabbis and culdees, Torah, Talmud (Mischna and Ghemara), Massor,
Pentateuch, Book of the Dun Cow, Book of Ballymote, Garland of Howth,
Book of Kells: their dispersal, persecution, survival and revival: the
isolation of their synagogical and ecclesiastical rites in ghetto (S.
Mary's Abbey) and masshouse (Adam and Eve's tavern): the proscription
of their national costumes in penal laws and jewish dress acts: the
restoration in Chanah David of Zion and the possibility of Irish
political autonomy or devolution.
What anthem did Bloom chant partially in anticipation of that multiple,
ethnically irreducible consummation?
_Kolod balejwaw pnimah
Nefesch, jehudi, homijah. _
Why was the chant arrested at the conclusion of this first distich?
In consequence of defective mnemotechnic.
How did the chanter compensate for this deficiency?
By a periphrastic version of the general text.
In what common study did their mutual reflections merge?
The increasing simplification traceable from the Egyptian epigraphic
hieroglyphs to the Greek and Roman alphabets and the anticipation of
modern stenography and telegraphic code in the cuneiform inscriptions
(Semitic) and the virgular quinquecostate ogham writing (Celtic). Did
the guest comply with his host's request?
Doubly, by appending his signature in Irish and Roman characters.
What was Stephen's auditive sensation?
He heard in a profound ancient male unfamiliar melody the accumulation
of the past.
What was Bloom's visual sensation?
He saw in a quick young male familiar form the predestination of a
future.
What were Stephen's and Bloom's quasisimultaneous volitional
quasisensations of concealed identities?
Visually, Stephen's: The traditional figure of hypostasis, depicted
by Johannes Damascenus, Lentulus Romanus and Epiphanius Monachus as
leucodermic, sesquipedalian with winedark hair. Auditively, Bloom's: The
traditional accent of the ecstasy of catastrophe.
What future careers had been possible for Bloom in the past and with
what exemplars?
In the church, Roman, Anglican or Nonconformist: exemplars, the very
reverend John Conmee S. J. , the reverend T. Salmon, D. D. , provost of
Trinity college, Dr Alexander J. Dowie. At the bar, English or Irish:
exemplars, Seymour Bushe, K. C. , Rufus Isaacs, K. C. On the stage modern
or Shakespearean: exemplars, Charles Wyndham, high comedian Osmond
Tearle (died 1901), exponent of Shakespeare.
Did the host encourage his guest to chant in a modulated voice a strange
legend on an allied theme?
Reassuringly, their place, where none could hear them talk, being
secluded, reassured, the decocted beverages, allowing for subsolid
residual sediment of a mechanical mixture, water plus sugar plus cream
plus cocoa, having been consumed.
Recite the first (major) part of this chanted legend.
_Little Harry Hughes and his schoolfellows all
Went out for to play ball.
And the very first ball little Harry Hughes played
He drove it o'er the jew's garden wall.
And the very second ball little Harry Hughes played
He broke the jew's windows all. _
How did the son of Rudolph receive this first part?
With unmixed feeling. Smiling, a jew he heard with pleasure and saw the
unbroken kitchen window.
Recite the second part (minor) of the legend.
_Then out there came the jew's daughter
And she all dressed in green.
"Come back, come back, you pretty little boy,
And play your ball again. "
"I can't come back and I won't come back
Without my schoolfellows all.
For if my master he did hear
He'd make it a sorry ball. "
She took him by the lilywhite hand
And led him along the hall
Until she led him to a room
Where none could hear him call.
She took a penknife out of her pocket
And cut off his little head.
And now he'll play his ball no more
For he lies among the dead. _
How did the father of Millicent receive this second part?
With mixed feelings. Unsmiling, he heard and saw with wonder a jew's
daughter, all dressed in green.
Condense Stephen's commentary.
One of all, the least of all, is the victim predestined. Once by
inadvertence twice by design he challenges his destiny. It comes when he
is abandoned and challenges him reluctant and, as an apparition of hope
and youth, holds him unresisting. It leads him to a strange habitation,
to a secret infidel apartment, and there, implacable, immolates him,
consenting.
Why was the host (victim predestined) sad?
He wished that a tale of a deed should be told of a deed not by him
should by him not be told.
Why was the host (reluctant, unresisting) still?
In accordance with the law of the conservation of energy.
Why was the host (secret infidel) silent?
He weighed the possible evidences for and against ritual murder: the
incitations of the hierarchy, the superstition of the populace, the
propagation of rumour in continued fraction of veridicity, the envy of
opulence, the influence of retaliation, the sporadic reappearance of
atavistic delinquency, the mitigating circumstances of fanaticism,
hypnotic suggestion and somnambulism.
From which (if any) of these mental or physical disorders was he not
totally immune?
From hypnotic suggestion: once, waking, he had not recognised his
sleeping apartment: more than once, waking, he had been for an
indefinite time incapable of moving or uttering sounds. From
somnambulism: once, sleeping, his body had risen, crouched and
crawled in the direction of a heatless fire and, having attained
its destination, there, curled, unheated, in night attire had lain,
sleeping.
Had this latter or any cognate phenomenon declared itself in any member
of his family?
Twice, in Holles street and in Ontario terrace, his daughter Millicent
(Milly) at the ages of 6 and 8 years had uttered in sleep an exclamation
of terror and had replied to the interrogations of two figures in night
attire with a vacant mute expression.
What other infantile memories had he of her?
15 June 1889. A querulous newborn female infant crying to cause and
lessen congestion. A child renamed Padney Socks she shook with shocks
her moneybox: counted his three free moneypenny buttons, one, tloo,
tlee: a doll, a boy, a sailor she cast away: blond, born of two dark,
she had blond ancestry, remote, a violation, Herr Hauptmann Hainau,
Austrian army, proximate, a hallucination, lieutenant Mulvey, British
navy.
What endemic characteristics were present?
Conversely the nasal and frontal formation was derived in a direct
line of lineage which, though interrupted, would continue at distant
intervals to more distant intervals to its most distant intervals.
What memories had he of her adolescence?
She relegated her hoop and skippingrope to a recess. On the duke's lawn,
entreated by an English visitor, she declined to permit him to make and
take away her photographic image (objection not stated). On the South
Circular road in the company of Elsa Potter, followed by an individual
of sinister aspect, she went half way down Stamer street and turned
abruptly back (reason of change not stated). On the vigil of the 15th
anniversary of her birth she wrote a letter from Mullingar, county
Westmeath, making a brief allusion to a local student (faculty and year
not stated).
Did that first division, portending a second division, afflict him?
Less than he had imagined, more than he had hoped.
What second departure was contemporaneously perceived by him similarly,
if differently?
A temporary departure of his cat.
Why similarly, why differently?
Similarly, because actuated by a secret purpose the quest of a new male
(Mullingar student) or of a healing herb (valerian). Differently,
because of different possible returns to the inhabitants or to the
habitation.
In other respects were their differences similar?
In passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in
unexpectedness.
As?
Inasmuch as leaning she sustained her blond hair for him to ribbon it
for her (cf neckarching cat). Moreover, on the free surface of the lake
in Stephen's green amid inverted reflections of trees her uncommented
spit, describing concentric circles of waterrings, indicated by the
constancy of its permanence the locus of a somnolent prostrate fish (cf
mousewatching cat).
Again, in order to remember the date, combatants, issue and consequences
of a famous military engagement she pulled a plait of her hair (cf
earwashing cat). Furthermore, silly Milly, she dreamed of having had
an unspoken unremembered conversation with a horse whose name had been
Joseph to whom (which) she had offered a tumblerful of lemonade which
it (he) had appeared to have accepted (cf hearthdreaming cat). Hence, in
passivity, in economy, in the instinct of tradition, in unexpectedness,
their differences were similar.
In what way had he utilised gifts (1) an owl, (2) a clock, given as
matrimonial auguries, to interest and to instruct her?
As object lessons to explain: 1) the nature and habits of oviparous
animals, the possibility of aerial flight, certain abnormalities of
vision, the secular process of imbalsamation: 2) the principle of the
pendulum, exemplified in bob, wheelgear and regulator, the translation
in terms of human or social regulation of the various positions of
clockwise moveable indicators on an unmoving dial, the exactitude of the
recurrence per hour of an instant in each hour when the longer and the
shorter indicator were at the same angle of inclination, _videlicet_, 5
5/11 minutes past each hour per hour in arithmetical progression.
In what manners did she reciprocate?
She remembered: on the 27th anniversary of his birth she presented to
him a breakfast moustachecup of imitation Crown Derby porcelain ware.
She provided: at quarter day or thereabouts if or when purchases
had been made by him not for her she showed herself attentive to his
necessities, anticipating his desires. She admired: a natural phenomenon
having been explained by him to her she expressed the immediate desire
to possess without gradual acquisition a fraction of his science, the
moiety, the quarter, a thousandth part.
What proposal did Bloom, diambulist, father of Milly, somnambulist, make
to Stephen, noctambulist?
To pass in repose the hours intervening between Thursday (proper) and
Friday (normal) on an extemporised cubicle in the apartment immediately
above the kitchen and immediately adjacent to the sleeping apartment of
his host and hostess.
What various advantages would or might have resulted from a prolongation
of such an extemporisation?
For the guest: security of domicile and seclusion of study. For the
host: rejuvenation of intelligence, vicarious satisfaction. For the
hostess: disintegration of obsession, acquisition of correct Italian
pronunciation.
Why might these several provisional contingencies between a guest and
a hostess not necessarily preclude or be precluded by a permanent
eventuality of reconciliatory union between a schoolfellow and a jew's
daughter?
Because the way to daughter led through mother, the way to mother
through daughter.
To what inconsequent polysyllabic question of his host did the guest
return a monosyllabic negative answer?
If he had known the late Mrs Emily Sinico, accidentally killed at Sydney
Parade railway station, 14 October 1903.
What inchoate corollary statement was consequently suppressed by the
host?
A statement explanatory of his absence on the occasion of the interment
of Mrs Mary Dedalus (born Goulding), 26 June 1903, vigil of the
anniversary of the decease of Rudolph Bloom (born Virag).
Was the proposal of asylum accepted?
Promptly, inexplicably, with amicability, gratefully it was declined.
What exchange of money took place between host and guest?
The former returned to the latter, without interest, a sum of money
(1-7-0), one pound seven shillings sterling, advanced by the latter to
the former.
What counterproposals were alternately advanced, accepted, modified,
declined, restated in other terms, reaccepted, ratified, reconfirmed?
To inaugurate a prearranged course of Italian instruction, place
the residence of the instructed. To inaugurate a course of vocal
instruction, place the residence of the instructress. To inaugurate
a series of static semistatic and peripatetic intellectual dialogues,
places the residence of both speakers (if both speakers were resident in
the same place), the Ship hotel and tavern, 6 Lower Abbey street (W. and
E. Connery, proprietors), the National Library of Ireland, 10 Kildare
street, the National Maternity Hospital, 29, 30 and 31 Holles street, a
public garden, the vicinity of a place of worship, a conjunction of two
or more public thoroughfares, the point of bisection of a right line
drawn between their residences (if both speakers were resident in
different places).
What rendered problematic for Bloom the realisation of these mutually
selfexcluding propositions?
The irreparability of the past: once at a performance of Albert
Hengler's circus in the Rotunda, Rutland square, Dublin, an intuitive
particoloured clown in quest of paternity had penetrated from the ring
to a place in the auditorium where Bloom, solitary, was seated and had
publicly declared to an exhilarated audience that he (Bloom) was his
(the clown's) papa. The imprevidibility of the future: once in the
summer of 1898 he (Bloom) had marked a florin (2/-) with three notches
on the milled edge and tendered it m payment of an account due to and
received by J. and T. Davy, family grocers, 1 Charlemont Mall, Grand
Canal, for circulation on the waters of civic finance, for possible,
circuitous or direct, return.
Was the clown Bloom's son?
No.
Had Bloom's coin returned?
Never.
Why would a recurrent frustration the more depress him?
Because at the critical turningpoint of human existence he desired to
amend many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice and
international animosity. He believed then that human life was infinitely
perfectible, eliminating these conditions?
There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct
from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of
destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of
the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and
death: the monotonous menstruation of simian and (particularly) human
females extending from the age of puberty to the menopause: inevitable
accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very painful maladies
and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital
criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make
terror the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres
of which are located in densely populated regions: the fact of vital
growth, through convulsions of metamorphosis, from infancy through
maturity to decay.
Why did he desist from speculation?
Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other
more acceptable phenomena in the place of the less acceptable phenomena
to be removed.
Did Stephen participate in his dejection?
He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding
syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational
reagent between a micro and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the
incertitude of the void.
Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom?
Not verbally. Substantially.
What comforted his misapprehension?
That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from
the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void.
In what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony was the exodus
from the house of bondage to the wilderness of inhabitation effected?
Lighted Candle in Stick borne by
BLOOM
Diaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by
STEPHEN:
With what intonation secreto of what commemorative psalm?
The 113th, _modus peregrinus: In exitu Israel de Egypto: domus Jacob de
populo barbaro_.
What did each do at the door of egress?
Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the hat on his head.
For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?
For a cat.
What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the
guest, emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from
the rere of the house into the penumbra of the garden?
The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his
companion of various constellations?
Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in
incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous
scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an
observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000
ft deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius
(alpha in Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant
and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the
precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and
nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund
and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging
towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic
drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving wanderers from
immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with
which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a
parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.
Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?
Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the
earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed
in cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds,
of microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the incalculable
trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained
by cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe
of human serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves
universes of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in
continuity, its universe of divisible component bodies of which each was
again divisible in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends
and divisors ever diminishing without actual division till, if the
progress were carried far enough, nought nowhere was never reached.
Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result?
Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the problem
of the quadrature of the circle he had learned of the existence of a
number computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such magnitude
and of so many places, e. g. , the 9th power of the 9th power of 9, that,
the result having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes of 1000
pages each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper would have to
be requisitioned in order to contain the complete tale of its printed
integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions,
billions, the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every series
containing succinctly the potentiality of being raised to the utmost
kinetic elaboration of any power of any of its powers.
Did he find the problems of the inhabitability of the planets and their
satellites by a race, given in species, and of the possible social and
moral redemption of said race by a redeemer, easier of solution?
Of a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human organism,
normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of 19 tons,
when elevated to a considerable altitude in the terrestrial atmosphere
suffered with arithmetical progression of intensity, according as
the line of demarcation between troposphere and stratosphere was
approximated from nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and vertigo,
when proposing this problem for solution, he had conjectured as a
working hypothesis which could not be proved impossible that a more
adaptable and differently anatomically constructed race of beings might
subsist otherwise under Martian, Mercurial, Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian,
Neptunian or Uranian sufficient and equivalent conditions, though
an apogean humanity of beings created in varying forms with finite
differences resulting similar to the whole and to one another would
probably there as here remain inalterably and inalienably attached to
vanities, to vanities of vanities and to all that is vanity.
And the problem of possible redemption?
The minor was proved by the major.
Which various features of the constellations were in turn considered?
The various colours significant of various degrees of vitality (white,
yellow, crimson, vermilion, cinnabar): their degrees of brilliancy:
their magnitudes revealed up to and including the 7th: their positions:
the waggoner's star: Walsingham way: the chariot of David: the annular
cinctures of Saturn: the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns: the
interdependent gyrations of double suns: the independent synchronous
discoveries of Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel,
Galle: the systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes
of distances and squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite
compressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive
and reentrant orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin of
meteoric stones: the Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the birth
of the younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence of meteoric showers
about the period of the feast of S. Lawrence (martyr, lo August): the
monthly recurrence known as the new moon with the old moon in her arms:
the posited influence of celestial on human bodies: the appearance of a
star (1st magnitude) of exceeding brilliancy dominating by night and
day (a new luminous sun generated by the collision and amalgamation in
incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns) about the period of the
birth of William Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent neversetting
constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude) of similar
origin but of lesser brilliancy which had appeared in and disappeared
from the constellation of the Corona Septentrionalis about the period
of the birth of Leopold Bloom and of other stars of (presumably) similar
origin which had (effectively or presumably) appeared in and disappeared
from the constellation of Andromeda about the period of the birth of
Stephen Dedalus, and in and from the constellation of Auriga some years
after the birth and death of Rudolph Bloom, junior, and in and from
other constellations some years before or after the birth or death of
other persons: the attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar,
from immersion to emersion, abatement of wind, transit of shadow,
taciturnity of winged creatures, emergence of nocturnal or crepuscular
animals, persistence of infernal light, obscurity of terrestrial waters,
pallor of human beings.
His (Bloom's) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and allowing
for possible error?
That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not
a heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from
the known to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally finite by the
suppositious apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of
different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space,
remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a
present before its probable spectators had entered actual present
existence.
Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle?
Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the
delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection
invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the
satellite of their planet.
Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory of astrological
influences upon sublunary disasters?
It seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the
nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to
verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the
sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity.
What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and
woman?
Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian
generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence:
her luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising
and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced
invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative
interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power
to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to
incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her
visage: the terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent
propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her
light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her
arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction,
when invisible.
What visible luminous sign attracted Bloom's, who attracted Stephen's,
gaze?
In the second storey (rere) of his (Bloom's) house the light of a
paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller
blind supplied by Frank O'Hara, window blind, curtain pole and revolving
shutter manufacturer, 16 Aungier street.
How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible attractive person, his
wife Marion (Molly) Bloom, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp?
With indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations: with subdued
affection and admiration: with description: with impediment: with
suggestion.
Both then were silent?
Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal
flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces.
Were they indefinitely inactive?
At Stephen's suggestion, at Bloom's instigation both, first Stephen,
then Bloom, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs
of micturition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual circumposition,
their gazes, first Bloom's, then Stephen's, elevated to the projected
luminous and semiluminous shadow.
Similarly?
The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations
were dissimilar: Bloom's longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form of
the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter, who in his ultimate
year at High School (1880) had been capable of attaining the point
of greatest altitude against the whole concurrent strength of the
institution, 210 scholars: Stephen's higher, more sibilant, who in the
ultimate hours of the previous day had augmented by diuretic consumption
an insistent vesical pressure.
What different problems presented themselves to each concerning the
invisible audible collateral organ of the other?
To Bloom: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity,
reactivity, dimension, sanitariness, pilosity.
To Stephen: the problem of the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus circumcised
(I January, holiday of obligation to hear mass and abstain from
unnecessary servile work) and the problem as to whether the divine
prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of the holy Roman catholic apostolic
church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving of simple hyperduly or of
the fourth degree of latria accorded to the abscission of such divine
excrescences as hair and toenails.
What celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed?
A star precipitated with great apparent velocity across the firmament
from Vega in the Lyre above the zenith beyond the stargroup of the Tress
of Berenice towards the zodiacal sign of Leo.
How did the centripetal remainer afford egress to the centrifugal
departer?
By inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an
unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and
turning its wards from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its
staple, pulling inward spasmodically an obsolescent unhinged door and
revealing an aperture for free egress and free ingress.
How did they take leave, one of the other, in separation?
Standing perpendicular at the same door and on different sides of its
base, the lines of their valedictory arms, meeting at any point and
forming any angle less than the sum of two right angles.
What sound accompanied the union of their tangent, the disunion of their
(respectively) centrifugal and centripetal hands?
The sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime of the bells
in the church of Saint George.
What echoes of that sound were by both and each heard?
By Stephen:
_Liliata rutilantium. Turma circumdet. Iubilantium te virginum. Chorus
excipiat. _
By Bloom:
_Heigho, heigho,
Heigho, heigho. _
Where were the several members of the company which with Bloom that day
at the bidding of that peal had travelled from Sandymount in the south
to Glasnevin in the north?
Martin Cunningham (in bed), Jack Power (in bed), Simon Dedalus (in bed),
Ned Lambert (in bed), Tom Kernan (in bed), Joe Hynes (in bed), John
Henry Menton (in bed), Bernard Corrigan (in bed), Patsy Dignam (in bed),
Paddy Dignam (in the grave).
Alone, what did Bloom hear?
The double reverberation of retreating feet on the heavenborn earth, the
double vibration of a jew's harp in the resonant lane.
Alone, what did Bloom feel?
The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing
point or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Reaumur: the
incipient intimations of proximate dawn.
Of what did bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill remind
him?
Of companions now in various manners in different places defunct: Percy
Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River), Philip Gilligan (phthisis,
Jervis Street hospital), Matthew F. Kane (accidental drowning, Dublin
Bay), Philip Moisel (pyemia, Heytesbury street), Michael Hart (phthisis,
Mater Misericordiae hospital), Patrick Dignam (apoplexy, Sandymount).
What prospect of what phenomena inclined him to remain?
The disparition of three final stars, the diffusion of daybreak, the
apparition of a new solar disk.
Had he ever been a spectator of those phenomena?
Once, in 1887, after a protracted performance of charades in the house
of Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the apparition
of the diurnal phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze turned in the
direction of Mizrach, the east.
He remembered the initial paraphenomena?
More active air, a matutinal distant cock, ecclesiastical clocks at
various points, avine music, the isolated tread of an early wayfarer,
the visible diffusion of the light of an invisible luminous body, the
first golden limb of the resurgent sun perceptible low on the horizon.
Did he remain?
With deep inspiration he returned, retraversing the garden, reentering
the passage, reclosing the door. With brief suspiration he reassumed the
candle, reascended the stairs, reapproached the door of the front room,
hallfloor, and reentered.
What suddenly arrested his ingress?
The right temporal lobe of the hollow sphere of his cranium came into
contact with a solid timber angle where, an infinitesimal but sensible
fraction of a second later, a painful sensation was located in
consequence of antecedent sensations transmitted and registered.
Describe the alterations effected in the disposition of the articles of
furniture.
A sofa upholstered in prune plush had been translocated from opposite
the door to the ingleside near the compactly furled Union Jack (an
alteration which he had frequently intended to execute): the blue and
white checker inlaid majolicatopped table had been placed opposite the
door in the place vacated by the prune plush sofa: the walnut sideboard
(a projecting angle of which had momentarily arrested his ingress) had
been moved from its position beside the door to a more advantageous but
more perilous position in front of the door: two chairs had been moved
from right and left of the ingleside to the position originally occupied
by the blue and white checker inlaid majolicatopped table.
Describe them.
One: a squat stuffed easychair, with stout arms extended and back
slanted to the rere, which, repelled in recoil, had then upturned an
irregular fringe of a rectangular rug and now displayed on its amply
upholstered seat a centralised diffusing and diminishing discolouration.
The other: a slender splayfoot chair of glossy cane curves, placed
directly opposite the former, its frame from top to seat and from seat
to base being varnished dark brown, its seat being a bright circle of
white plaited rush.
What significances attached to these two chairs?
Significances of similitude, of posture, of symbolism, of circumstantial
evidence, of testimonial supermanence.
What occupied the position originally occupied by the sideboard?
A vertical piano (Cadby) with exposed keyboard, its closed coffin
supporting a pair of long yellow ladies' gloves and an emerald ashtray
containing four consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and two
discoloured ends of cigarettes, its musicrest supporting the music in
the key of G natural for voice and piano of _Love's Old Sweet Song_
(words by G. Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L. Molloy, sung by Madam
Antoinette Sterling) open at the last page with the final indications
_ad libitum, forte_, pedal, _animato_, sustained pedal, _ritirando_,
close.
With what sensations did Bloom contemplate in rotation these objects?
With strain, elevating a candlestick: with pain, feeling on his right
temple a contused tumescence: with attention, focussing his gaze on
a large dull passive and a slender bright active: with solicitation,
bending and downturning the upturned rugfringe: with amusement,
remembering Dr Malachi Mulligan's scheme of colour containing the
gradation of green: with pleasure, repeating the words and antecedent
act and perceiving through various channels of internal sensibility
the consequent and concomitant tepid pleasant diffusion of gradual
discolouration.
His next proceeding?
From an open box on the majolicatopped table he extracted a black
diminutive cone, one inch in height, placed it on its circular base on
a small tin plate, placed his candlestick on the right corner of the
mantelpiece, produced from his waistcoat a folded page of prospectus
(illustrated) entitled Agendath Netaim, unfolded the same, examined
it superficially, rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited it in the
candleflame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone till the
latter reached the stage of rutilance, placed the cylinder in the basin
of the candlestick disposing its unconsumed part in such a manner as to
facilitate total combustion.
What followed this operation?
The truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano emitted a
vertical and serpentine fume redolent of aromatic oriental incense.
What homothetic objects, other than the candlestick, stood on the
mantelpiece?
A timepiece of striated Connemara marble, stopped at the hour of 4. 46
a. m. on the 21 March 1896, matrimonial gift of Matthew Dillon: a dwarf
tree of glacial arborescence under a transparent bellshade, matrimonial
gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle: an embalmed owl, matrimonial gift of
Alderman John Hooper.
What interchanges of looks took place between these three objects and
Bloom?
In the mirror of the giltbordered pierglass the undecorated back of the
dwarf tree regarded the upright back of the embalmed owl. Before
the mirror the matrimonial gift of Alderman John Hooper with a clear
melancholy wise bright motionless compassionate gaze regarded Bloom
while Bloom with obscure tranquil profound motionless compassionated
gaze regarded the matrimonial gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle.
What composite asymmetrical image in the mirror then attracted his
attention?
The image of a solitary (ipsorelative) mutable (aliorelative) man.
Why solitary (ipsorelative)?
_Brothers and sisters had he none. Yet that man's father was his
grandfather's son. _
Why mutable (aliorelative)?
From infancy to maturity he had resembled his maternal procreatrix.
From maturity to senility he would increasingly resemble his paternal
procreator.
What final visual impression was communicated to him by the mirror?
The optical reflection of several inverted volumes improperly arranged
and not in the order of their common letters with scintillating titles
on the two bookshelves opposite.
Catalogue these books.
_Thom's Dublin Post Office Directory, 1886_. Denis Florence M'Carthy's
_Poetical Works_ (copper beechleaf bookmark at p. 5). Shakespeare's
_Works_ (dark crimson morocco, goldtooled).
_The Useful Ready Reckoner_ (brown cloth).
_The Secret History of the Court of Charles II_ (red cloth, tooled
binding). _The Child's Guide_ (blue cloth).
_The Beauties of Killarney_ (wrappers).
_When We Were Boys_ by William O'Brien M. P. (green cloth, slightly
faded, envelope bookmark at p. 217).
