[Prior: Ch3] [Up: Ulysses] [JAJportal] [Robot Wisdom home page]
As of Nov2000 these notes have been broken down into 18 separate pages, so some links will be broken (sorry). Basic skills intro.
Sun's path: Scylla WRocks
Lestry Sirens
Eolus Cyclops
Proteus Hades Nausikaa
Nestor LotusE OxenSun
Telemachus > Calypso < Circe
SD= Stephen Dedalus BM= Buck Mulligan LB= Leopold Bloom Eumeus
SiD= Simon Dedalus JAJ= James A Joyce BB= Blazes Boylan Ithaca
EB= EncycBritannica Cath= CatholicEncyc MB= Molly Bloom PenelopeThis is meant to supplement Gifford's "Ulysses Annotated" [Amazon], not replace it. Line numbers use Gabler's system. [Amazon]
Plato on Odysseus:
"Most curious, he said, was the spectacle-- sad and laughable and strange; for the choice of the souls was in most cases based on their experience of a previous life.... There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and his lot happened to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of former tolls [toils?] had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about for a considerable time in search of the life of a private man who had no cares; he had some difficulty in finding this, which was lying about and had been neglected by everybody else; and when he saw it, he said that he would have done the had his lot been first instead of last, and that he was delighted to have it." Plato (via Kenner)
Bloom's Odyssey takes 12 episodes.
1922 FW note: "Odyss - 12 predom passions"
1923 FW note: "Are Ulysses' adventures 12 diseases"
4: Calypso
[etext]
Compare text and notes via frames
Linati schema: "The departing traveller" [more]
Odyssey: V
If SD is a dispossessed son, is LB here a dispossessed husband? What lost Ithaca is he longing for? his son? his mind/soul/ego? cf 1920 Oxen notesheet: "development of egoism in LB"
1918 notebook, re Calypso: "In old Odyssey she was not double of Circe"; 1920 Eumeus notesheet: "Circe = Calypso" [comparison] [essay]
[map], [modern map] [pic] ditto ditto; Joyce's sketch of Bloom [lookalike]
outline: [password]
# LB cooks breakfast, observes and feeds cat
# LB pops out for a fresh kidney
# LB ponders grocer O'Rourke, enters butcher's
# LB ponders Zionist handout, buys kidney
# LB remembers Jewish neighbors, overshadowed by horror
# LB takes mail to MB, continues cooking
# LB brings breakfast to MB, she asks word in book
# LB explains metempsychosis, saves burning kidney
# LB reads and ponders Milly's letter
# LB prepares for morning bowel movement
# LB reads story in outhouse
4.28 "Wonder what I look like to her."
LB masochistically identifies with the mouse.
4.43 "No good eggs with this drouth."
in fact, June 1904 was not especially dry, apparently
4.47 "Why are their tongues so rough?"
if you picture LB's mind racing this way every single day of his life, it would be absurd (ie, Joyce has taken liberties).
4.51 "Still perhaps: once in a way."
a mystery, presumably consciousness of Boylan bubbling up and being pushed away.
4.56 "Chap in the paybox there got away James Stephens"
ie, helped to escape (in fact, Captain Weldon via fishing boat)
4.59 "brass quoits"
I don't think anyone but Joyce used this term. The brass uprights of the bed have ornamental rings-- that they're separate pieces may imply the bed is quite cheap. So it's presumably an echo of the Greek quoit or discus.
4.60 "Gibraltar"
[map]
4.61 "her father"
cf 1918 notebook, re Homer's Penelope: "Bed given by her father"Calypso's father is Atlas [Homer]
4.63 "Plevna"
[history] now Pleven, Bulgaria [map]
4.67 "Stamps: stickyback pictures."
this style of thinking has been cited as evidence of Bloom's artistic spirit. (It would also help him to invent variants like stickyback recordings.)
4.72 "latchkey"
cf SD's troubles with a key [cite]
4.73 "In the trousers I left off... But I couldn't go in that light suit. Make a picnic of it."
he's wearing his funeral outfit.
4.78 "George's"
[map] [pic] ditto [current fate]
4.82 "Boland's"
occupied by de Valera in 1916 [cite, French]
4.85 "steal"
[def]
4.88 "Wander through awned streets."
cf LB's imagination of places he's never been to SD's Oxford.
4.89 "Turko the terrible"
synchrony with SD's thoughts.
4.99 "in the track"
see 17.1395, Bloom owns Frederick Diodati Thompson's In The Track Of The Sun: Readings From The Diary Of A Globetrotter Appleton, New York, 1893. 'The major part of this work concerns the author's travels through the Far East, principally in Japan, Ceylon, China, and India.' [Bibliofind]Bloom's literary allusions are nothing like Stephen's!
cf? 1919 Nausikaa notesheet: "Jew -> West / East <- Zion"
4.101 "Arthur Griffith"
[bio]
4.103 "bank of Ireland"
[map] [info&pix;] [old pic] [pic] [pix index]
4.105 "O'Rourke's"
[map] [theory of publicans]
4.110 "quays"
pronounced 'keys' (elsewhere 'kays' or 'kways')
4.114 "curate"
[cite]
4.114 "Simon Dedalus takes him off to a tee with his eyes screwed up."
Mimicry motif.
4.116 "Russians... Japanese"
1904 war [old Irish Times] [EB] [Alexandra] [more 1904]
4.122 "-- Good day, Mr O'Rourke. -- Good day to you. -- Lovely weather, sir."
The 'salute' motif. Always notice who speaks first, and how each addresses the other-- nickname, etc. [AI theory of Joyce's encounters]
4.127 "Leitrim"
NW county [counties map] (Costello suggests this passage describes Joyce's maternal grandfather, John Murray.)
4.129 "cross Dublin"
[modern sampling]
4.139 "Slieve Bloom"
[pic] [map]
4.141 "polonies"
[range of colors] cf Nestor's sacrificial butchery? [Homer]
4.150 "arms"
metonymy? [analysis] Groden observes that LB's thinking follows simple associative paths, usually leading back to Molly [cite] Passive stream of consciousness, compared to SD's more active efforts of composition.
4.156 "Moses Montefiore"
[bio] [EB]
4.168 "coin"
her change is 1s 3d, so this may be: a florin (if her bill was 9d), a half-crown (if 1/3) or a crown (if 3/9) [info]
4.178 "a constable off duty cuddling her"
possibly an allusion to PC Henry Flower and housemaid Brigid Gannon [more]
4.178 "They like them sizeable"
Stannie claimed this was how Joyce expressed his taste in music hall starlets [mbk113]
4.181 "hand"
posting: [password]
4.183 "disc"
[discussion]
4.191 "Agendath Netaim"
Zionism as the Jews' longing for their Ithaca/homeland.Rose 'corrects' this to 'Agudath Netaim' [Senn]
4.203 "Molly spitting them out. Knows the taste of them now."
A clue to some pattern.
4.210 "Pleasants street"
Gogarty [aiwgdss8] says 'a charming street full of old-world two-storeyed cottages... more sunny than any street in Dublin' and home of the eccentric Tisdall Farrell
4.215 "Wonder if I'll meet him today... A cloud began to cover the sun... No, not like that. A barren land..."
Probably a suppressed thought of Boylan again, provoking depression.
4.227 "cunt"
[etym]
4.230 "Grey horror seared his flesh."
Synchronised with Stephen's hallucination.
4.234 "Sandow"
[fansite w/pix]
4.235 "Number eighty still unlet. Why is that?"
LB's strategy for dealing with depression is to throw himself into work.
4.236 "Valuation is only twentyeight."
Rose 'corrects' this to 'seventeen'. [Senn]
4.241 "sandals"
cf Hermes "Straightway he bound beneath his feet his lovely golden sandals, that wax not old, that bare him alike over the wet sea and over the limitless land, swift as the breath of the wind." [Homer]
4.244 "Mrs Marion"
Tut, tut! [Emily Post]
4.250 "Mullingar"
[old pic]
4.281 "lough Owel"
[map] [pic] [site pic]
4.282 "seaside girls"
[lyrics]
4.283 "moustache cup"
[pic]
4.314 "Là ci darem"
Mozart duet (sounds like Monty Python Lumberjack song!? [cite]) The parallels to LB/MB/BB are quite blatant-- the eponymous Don Juan is trying to seduce the engaged-to-one-of-her-own-kind peasant girl Zerlina with lies. Bloom misremembers the lyric at 4.327 below, changing her conditional 'I would want to' to the definite 'I do want to'.[400k non-streaming RealAudio] {Italian lyric] {English bit w/pic] [Don Juan fanpage] [direct 3min RealAudio instrumental] [midi] [RealAud] ditto ditto
4.314 "Love's Old Sweet Song"
[lyric w/decent autostart-midi] lyric {RealAud Nelson Eddy] [RealAud female vocal] [RealAud violin] [GIF of music] [info]
4.330 "chamberpot"
[pic] Kenner suggests 'orangekeyed' means a Greek (or Chinese) key-fret pattern [pic]
4.345 "Dolphin's Barn"
[map]
4.346 "Ruby"
morphed by JAJ from "Ruby, or How Girls Are Trained for Circus Life," by Amye Reade 1889, 'a shocker founded on facts' [cite] [Bibliofind longshot]
4.347 "Sheet kindly lent."
maybe pun on 'Lead, Kindly Light' [RealAud] ditto [GIF of music] [info]
4.349 "Hengler's"
[passim] mirror
4.358 "de Kock"
[bio-Dutch] [Bibliofind]
4.361 "the word"
posting: [password] [discussion]
4.369 "Bath of the Nymph"
cf September Morn (1912) [orangekeyed history of cheesecake]
4.370 "Photo Bits"
[passim] passim-er w/pix
4.402 "beef to the heels"
saying "Beef to the heels like a Mullingar Heifer" [cite] [cite] (ie thick-ankled)
4.406 "Greville Arms"
[homepage]
4.426 "Musichall stage"
[poster] [pic source]
4.434 "round the Kish"
cf [modern]
4.439 "jarvey"
[explan]
4.452 "August bank holiday"
[ref]
4.454 "M'Coy"
cf Grace [etext]
4.467 "Titbits"
or Tit-Bits, founded 1881 (English import, not Irish homespun) [EB] [rant] [passim w/pix] published Conrad's first story [cite]
4.488 "Queer"
posting: [password] [discussion]
4.500 "cuckstool"
dunking-stool for punishment [cite] [passim]
4.502 "Matcham's"
cf Masterpiece
4.510 "cascara sagrada"
[ref]
4.516 "envied"
cf 1919 Cyclops notesheet: "Ulysses - projects his envy at each chapter"
4.521 "9.l5. Did Roberts pay you yet? 9.20. What had Gretta Conroy on? 9.23. What possessed me to buy this comb? 9.24. I'm swelled after that cabbage."
LB observes better than any novelist of his time!
4.522 "Roberts"
maybe George Roberts? (Joyce's publisher) [info&pic;]
4.522 "Gretta Conroy"
cf The Dead [etext]. aka Nora Barnacle?
4.526 "Ponchielli's dance of the hours."
Disney's Fantasia uses this: Ostrich Ballet (Morning); Hippo Ballet (Afternoon); Elephant Ballet (Evening); Alligator Ballet (Night) [info] [RealAud] Also Allen Sherman's 'Hello Muddah'
4.537 "wiped himself with it"
contrast SD's bodiless art [essay] and his tearing Deasy's letter for his poem
4.546 "Heigho! Heigho!"
Groden points out that this rendition of the churchbells will remain associated all day in LB's thoughts with Dignam, and he contrasts SD's 'liliata' chant. [cite]
4.551 "Poor Dignam!"
cf SD's self-centered last thought in ch1: "Usurper." [cite]
![[lookalike]](mharvey.jpg){kind=link}