Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Great Parnell

Mr. Bloom is a refreshingly human character, isn't he? I found his attention to the fairer sex and his thoughts on culinary technique to be charming when compared against Stephen Dedalus' almost ascetic tastes, and although he is certainly a lettered individual (an add man at work for the newspaper) his inner monologue is very much grounded, so much so that one is tempted to call it "earthy." His wanderings over the course of this first day of the story rove over all of life from it's celebrated beginnings (read: women) to it's inevitable conclusion (permanent interment) .

Aught we to take offense at his admiration for an unsuspecting young woman or his attempts at trysts that never seem to get off the ground, or is that a purely modern and somewhat hypocritical response? After the nearly misogynistic pseudo spiritualism of the previous chapter I find that I can not, and I'd be lying if I claimed never to pass an appraising eye over a member of the fairer sex. I've never written love letters to another woman while married, but as vices go I can think of worse ones (see Dedalus the Elder for more on the subject in the next chapter).

In our celebration of life by way of Mr. Bloom, we also pass by the marvelous scents and textures offered by food, by a soapy bath, by the smell of perfume. Unfortunately we also carried this trend to its logical conclusion by bringing all these senses with us to the cemetery.

I'll leave aside the fairly heretical (although rather comedic) observations on priests and funeral rites, but be aware that I observed them. I wanted to talk about something else.

Fionn mac Cumhaill, anglicized as Finn Mac Cool, was an early Irish (perhaps more properly Celtic, as his legends were essentially localized around Ulster and he is spoken of in Scotland and the Isle of Man) folk hero or perhaps a giant, it sort of varies. He tramped about defeating Fir Bolg, fire-breathing faeries, and, once, the Hound of Ulster Cú Chulainn. He was the great defender of Ulster and upon his eventual death it was said of him that he would return when he was most needed by his people. His followers were called Fenians.

Ireland apparently only really has the one myth, and it's a doozy of a myth to be sure, but I find it odd that they keep shoe-horning their legendary figures into it. The Parnell isn't dead, they buried stones. I wonder then, are he and Fionn just hanging around Tir na nÓg? I actually find the idea frustrating and I'll tell you why- while this gaggle of old men are somberly walking past the old chief there lives and breaths one James Connolly (Or Séamas ó Conghaile). He had moved to Dublin in 1896 and helped form what became the Irish Socialist Republican Party- Thence the Easter Uprising in 1916 and his eventual demise.

At least Bloom, in his stark realism and rejection of even a Catholic notion of heaven, is living in the now. Parnell is dead, and it's time to decide what's next for the living.

"Thalatta! Thalatta!"

Alex: Episode I

Like Cisco, my early favoritism falls on Mulligan.  Mulligan, I understand, is a fictionalization of Joyce’s chum from Trinity, Oliver St. John Gogarty.  They actually did live for a couple days together in the old Martello Tower at Sandycove in 1904.  Joyce was one of two guests of Gogarty’s and apparently left in haste following some funny business with an imagined panther and a discharged revolver.  The tower, now conveniently a museum and gift shop—it’s a guess about the giftshop, but who bloody hell would be stupid enough to challenge this excellent guess—stands today.  Any of youse planning a trip to Dublin, however, can stay in your own private navel of the world Martello just across the bay.  Swank looking, no?

Incidentally, Oliver St. John Gogarty now has a pub named after him in the Temple Bar neighborhood of Dublin.  It is far, far too touristy and you won’t find many true Dubliners in the house.  That said, I have enjoyed a libation or two and some music there on occasion, including earlier this month.

Anyhow, back to Ulysses.

So, other than Buck and his all-in-good-fun mockery of the Church, what struck me in the first episode was the ever returning presence of the sea.  “a grey sweet mother? The snotgreen sea.  The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa pontoon.”  Am I the only one who thought of George Costanza while reading scrotumtightening sea?  “I was in the pool!  I was in the pool!”  There you have it ladies and gentlemen, James Joyce on…shrinkage.  This book has everything!

By the way, that last bit, the Greek gobbledygook, means “upon the wine-dark sea.”  It’s from…you guessed it, the Odyssey. And it’s used, secondary sources tell me, as a reoccurring epithet in the epic.  That’s epithet, not epitaph.  Although, I like it in that latter sense too, as in…he died a horrible, agonizing death upon the wine-dark sea.

And then there was Haines, the anti-Semitic Britisher.  How delightfully English his I quite understand you Irish are a touch sore about we English lording over your lands and keeping you in penury little speech. “We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly.”  Do you, I say?  Do you, really?  Well then, you’re really quite an alright chap, aren’t you? “It seems history is to blame.” Yes. 

I thank Haines alsofor giving us our first of many forays into Hamlet.  He quotes in part Horatio’s warning to feverstruck pal Hamlet not to follow the Ghost toward “the dreadful summit of the cliff/ That beetles o'er his base into the sea.”  There’s that sea again.

The sea!  The sea! Thalatta!

“A voice, sweetened and sustained, called to him from the sea. Turning the curve he waved his hand.”

Cheers,

Alex

In a final thought of the post, anyone care to guess the character who cries out the second line in Hamlet, the line following that most tension birthing of first lines ever: “Who’s there?”

Francisco is the mate’s name.  That would be the guard who is being relieved by Bernardo who startles him on the watch.  Thought you’d like that Cisco.

"The blue smoke rising and the brown lace sinking in the empty glass of stout."

Allow me to say in this, my opening salvo, how delighted I am that you’ve all agreed to join in the fun.  It makes me quite happy, the response I’ve gotten to the idea of a group read and discussion of Ulysses.  When I first posited the idea a week back I had only the brave buy-in of the esteemed Mr. Colón.  I’m grateful and excited by his participation, and already I look forward to his future, insightful postings.

Cisco, you will be interested to know that I’ve persuaded/pressured some other folks into this venture as well.  Many of them are friends and colleagues from work.  Yes, they couldn’t easily escape my routine nagging and several caved into my request after only, say, the fourth or fifth time I pestered them for a commitment. Welcome.  Welcome all.

So why read Ulysses? we now ask ourselves. Well, I suppose that is the question left open for us each to answer for ourselves and each other as this discussion progresses.

As to the function of this blog and my general thoughts on the structure for this reading group, let me say that I envision very few if any hard and fast rules.  I know from enough failed book club experiences that people chafe at deadlines, forced discussions, etc.  So instead, this is what I humbly propose:

Bloomsday is June 16^th, 22 weeks away and oodles of time to read a book in.  Some will no doubt want to keep a rather regular pace and read the book straight through subject to their standard reading habits.  So, some of you might be done much, much sooner than mid-June.  Others, me included, foresee spans of time where they might want or have to set Ulysses aside.  As a general rubric, try to get in about an episode a week and you’ll be golden.  Read faster should you choose or read a bit slower (but not too terribly much) and we’ll all get to the finish line of June 16^th together.

Also, on posts: talk about what you want, link to what you want, etc.  Let’s start a convention, however, of including in the header or opening line of each post a reference to where we are in the book and what we’ll be delving into.  Even better, we can tag individual posts with labels for each episode.  This way as folks begin to “check-in” with the blog they can quickly skip over what would be spoiler posts of any readers who might be several episodes/chapters ahead.  

For an example of a possible naming convention, I might call my next post,on Episode 1 something like “Mocking the Mass: Alex, Episode 1.”

That’s all from me for now.  I will be posting on Episode 1 in good time.  By the bye, I love the pint idea Cisco.  My next post will include my thoughts regarding execution of the exchange.

Cheers,

Alex C.

Incidentally, my header is a quote from Louis MacNeice’s long poem “Autumn Journal.”  MacNeice, of course, was an Irishman and one of the Auden set.  I’ve long liked the line, and thought if nothing else it speaks to the kind of atmospherics we’ll be immersing ourselves in whilst visiting on the page various haunts of dirty Dublin circa 1904.

Blasphemy and Reverence

"History is nightmare from which I am trying to escape."

In the first chapter what impressed itself most upon my mind was the inescapable (ineluctable?) tensions that seem to cause so much grief in the mind of Stephen Dedalus and within that narrow view the same tensions writ large upon the peoples of Erin herself. "I serve two masters," he states. The Church and the Queen... The Ireland we sees is in the same boat and it is a decaying land which never really recovered from the famine of the last century.

It's a sad irony that only character we encounter who speaks Irish is and Englishman, one of two we meet. The young Haines is an earnest scholar who loves Ireland as only a man who rarely travels beyond the Pale can, collecting its sayings and its folklore with all due dillagence but incapable of understanding its people as they exist in his own time. Mr. Deasy is almost easier to cope with but honestly I don't care for either them at all. I thought when the old man said by way of excusing his rudeness that he had rebel blood as well that it was in every way like a man excusing a racist joke or comment with the phrase, "Some of my best friends are black."

The only possible reactions to the absurdity of empire in the years before the Easter Uprising seem to be stark depression or bitter laughter, which rather explains Mulligan. I rather like the aggressively inappropriate Buck Mulligan. Blasphemy seems to role out of him like fog over the Liffey. He has no regard for property or commerce but is generous, at least to Stephen and with regard to possessions he's no longer using. In short, he's a lot of what people hate about the overtly intellectual class and I love him for it.

On a similar note, I will say that in reading Joyce it's rather helpful to have been raised Catholic and to have cultivated a rough but working knowledge of Irish history. I think if either of those were otherwise the lengthy ramble down the strand and through the mind of Kinch wouldn't have been as fun. I didn't know as much about the reality of Ireland in the days after the Parnell and before the Easter Uprising but it's easy to imagine the sentiment of the day standing in stark contrast to the optimism of the British at the turn of the century, lording over fully a third of the earth with seemingly limitless potential for scientific and technological advances.

Really this was fun for me, and I almost feel bad about it. Ulysses isn't Finnegan's Wake, intentionally obscured by a thick layer of brogue, but it is one of the more complained-of books English students slog through from time to time. I therefore expected to struggle a great deal with the language but I found that the sound and sense of it was playful enough to be more like an entertaining riddle and any confusion could usually be sorted out by reading a phrase or two aloud. I hope you're enjoying this as much as I am.