Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 9

Cf. 1922 3:9; Gabler3:10

Mulligan's priestly charade continues. I linked to this page before to illustrate the "Introibo," but I didn't see the video the first time around. It will stun you.

Robert carefully gives Mulligan a classic blessing gesture. It's exactly the hand you'd see on a medieval saint. I'd go trolling through my art history books to find just the right one, but I've packed them, and Google Images isn't giving me what I need, so I leave it to you gentle reader to give me a good image in the comments. In the meantime, I give you this fascinating tradition of the eastern church, where a priest's hand uses a gesture that is also a Christogram. I had no idea.

Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 8

[Cf. 1922 3:7, Gabler 3:8]

Mulligan calls down to Stephen (whom Mulligan has nicknamed "Kinch") to join him at the top of the tower. Why does he call Stephen "fearful"? Probably because of an incident that happened during the night with a house visitor--we'll be hearing about that soon. But also because of Mulligan's blasphemy, which we've been chatting about over the last few frames. Stephen isn't a believer, but he's not above hedging his bets.

Oliver St. John Gogarty, the person on whom the character of Mulligan is based, once referred to Joyce as an "inverted Jesuit." Joyce identified closely with the Jesuit order--he was educated in Jesuit schools as a boy, and in one famous anecdote, said "you allude to me as a Catholic; you ought to allude to me as a Jesuit" (see Kevin Sullivan's Joyce among the Jesuits for an exhaustive discussion). The Society of Jesus, then and now, has been closely associated with education based on rigorous and independent scholarship. Mulligan's 'fearful Jesuit' may also pick up on the dreaded reputation of Jesuits as interlocutors.

Correction/Interjection

-Just needed to jump in here for a minute on Mike's comments. In coming up with a form for this production  blog, we thought it would be interesting to use some of my original black&white cartoons with Mike's red ink circles to indicate talking points. These earlier drawings are pretty much how Josh and Mike see them before second edits and re-adjustments to the font size, but I think it gives blog-readers a taste of how the thing is made.

The latin text in this balloon bears a typo and should read "introibo ad altare dei." We've caught it since, but some of these scans from the original art will still hold evidence of earlier mistakes. I'm not a practicing catholic, but all I can think of adding here is, "mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."

-Rob  

Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 7

[cf. Gabler 3:5, 1922 3:5]

Let's get right to what you need. Mulligan is tawkin' Latin. What he's saying translates as: "I will go up to God's altar." More pertinently, it was one of the first things the priest said at the beginning of the Catholic mass, back when the Catholic mass was said in Latin.

So yes, Mulligan's giving a little parody of the mass, and yes, this is a wicked and kinda funny thing to do.

I think it's worth noting a few points of cultural context. 1) the "introibo" would not have been an obscure phrase to any Catholic reader of Ulysses in 1922, or up to the end of the Latin mass in the 1960's. This would have been as familiar as "play ball!" to a baseball fan. 2) to a Catholic audience, in 1904 or 1922, this is sacrilege. And what follows is much worse.

What we're supposed to think of this is a little hard to say. What Joyce thinks of it we don't know, but (within the fourth wall) what Stephen thinks of it, we'll see later. Joyce was an unbeliever, but the Catholicism was so deeply dyed into him, that he was really more Catholic than the Catholics. The groundwork is all so elaborately laid out in *A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man* that it seems superfluous to talk any more about it, but I'll say for the first time of many times, that Joyce was not Stephen. it can be useful to forget that Joyce was not Stephen, but still and forever, they are not the same.

Finally, remember Mulligan is the usurper. How does this bit of mockery add to that reputation?

Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 6

[cf. Gabler 3:2; 1922 3:2]

Having had the bird's eye view in the last frame, we pull in to see what Mulligan is carrying: "a bowl of lather, on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed." On one level, a man is simply about to shave. But Joyce's careful syntax invites a deeper dive. Mulligan is about to begin chanting the opening prayer of the Catholic mass, and the visual cues Robert's been giving us have primed us to see him as a kind of priest. But here, for the moment, we get to look at Mulligan's tools: a mirror, and a razor. The razor cuts and makes distinctions--hair from skin, mostly (analysis?). The mirror reflects an image, sends back to its viewer the appearance of a person where before there had only been a disembodied experience of impressions and thoughts (synthesis?). [And yes, I'm thinking about Jacques Lacan and his "mirror stage" here.] Neither the mirror nor the razor creates anything really new. This is the opposite of what is supposed to happen during a real mass, when the priest uses his tools and the magic of transubstantiation to bring the body and blood of Christ to the table.

Yeah, I'm pushing it a little hard here, but I do think we're meant to see Mulligan as energetic and vital, but also as bankrupt, as barren, as a parasite. Dedalus is weak and ineffectual, but he has the creative vitality and inner strength that Mulligan lacks.

PS: It's really hard for me to see this book the way new readers see it. It's impossible to 'unlearn' everything I know about these characters and their fictional city. I will try to be careful to respect the virginity of new readers and not give too much away or base readings on things a new reader can't possibly know (because they haven't come up in the book yet). ... but I'm going to fail. I know that already.

Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 5

Rob's drawing gives us an intriguing birds-eye view that conveys at least two important pieces of information: a) we're out in the middle of nowhere, and b) Mulligan is putting on a show without an audience. Not having an audience is intolerable for Mulligan, so he will shortly summon Stephen Dedalus to serve as an altar boy to his perverse shaving mass.

Let us say something obvious. Living in an unheated Napoleonic fortification, 7 1/2 miles from the center of town as the crow flies, is not a practical decision.
It's exactly the sort of decision that a bunch of 20-something guys make. Before they get girlfriends. Or boyfriends. And Mulligan is totally living the dream, making the most of his tower by the sea--or he's trying to.

And one more obvious thing--there's a practical reason Mulligan comes to the top of the tower to shave. It's very dark and smoky in the living quarters below, not to mention the heady aroma of one rather unclean Dedalus (more on that later) and a sleeping Englishman.

Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 4

Mulligan has emerged from the staircase, and we spend a few moments, a few images, getting our bearings on the top of the tower. I'll say more about the little doorway in a future post, but for now, I'm spending a moment on Mulligan's robe. You can't tell from this black & white, but he's wearing a yellow robe--a yellow dressinggown.

Why yellow? Don Gifford & Bob Seidman's Ulysses Annotated might be useful here (as it is throughout the journey. Professor Gifford cites a volume on Christian symbolism: "Yellow is sometimes used to suggest infernal light, degradation, jealousy, treason, and deceit. Thus, the traitor Judas is frequently painted in a garment of dingy yellow (I've been trying to get that picture--which is an image of "The Kiss of Judas" by Giotto-- see below.

I've always thought Mulligan gets a bad rap... and I identify with him in a way. Rather, that whatever it is that makes him so repellent to Stephen must happen "off camera"... in this chapter, he seems a little glib, but more sensible than Stephen. And he's funny...

Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 3

[cf. Gabler 3:1]

What if Joyce started off with "Buck Mulligan was stately and plump. He came from the stairhead, bearing..."? It sounds a little simpler that way, more American, a little more Dashiell Hammett or Hemingway. But he didn't.

We'll see that Joyce almost always values sound and associative nuance over simplicity. [And by "associative nuance" I mean that jamming the adjectives "stately" & "plump" directly up against their referent, Buck, he's invoking the old Homeric epithet style, like "gray-eyed Athena" or "resourceful Odysseus."]

Another effect of this not-so-strange-but-still-distinctive beginning is that, compared to the Americanish alternative, the narrator is in a less visible position. To say "Buck Mulligan was..." is to put a narrating storyteller clearly on the stage; it draws a frame around the events. Putting "stately" first puts us more inside the frame.

And about "stately." It's not a strange word, not an unapproachable word, not an unfamiliar word... but it calls just enough attention to itself to stand off the page a little bit. Joyce's narration always seems normal at first glance in these early chapters, but the more weight you put on it, the more you see how it presages the big weirdness that comes later. The question of "who's talking" is never as cut & dry as it seems.

So Mulligan is stately and plump. We'll meet Stephen in a minute, who is skinny and nervous. If we were casting Mulligan, we'd need someone a little officious, with a touch of wickedness and a sharp wit, a little aristocratic, a little paunchy, someone not entirely in control of their appetites but who's comfortable with that.... a young John Malkovitch, perhaps?