James Joyce's Ulysses; Telemachus, No. 22

[Cf. (1922, 4:1-21), (Gabler 1:34 -49)]


As promised, we move forward a little faster by doing a full page at a time.


We've talked already about Stephen as "Daedalus", master builder and what not, but Rob's first drawing on this page is a great reminder that Stephen is in a labyrinth.

Mulligan points the way to the association with his riffing on Stephen's absurd Greek name. Why is Mulligan talking about the Greeks, anyway? I'm sure part of what's going on is Joyce signalling to the reader that we are both in Homer's Greece and and in Joyce's Ireland at the same time. Mulligan's interest in Greek also marks his superior education, and for a few brave interpreters, suggests that he may be gay.

Stephen is an artist, and he's looking for direction. For many Dublin artists, the logical place to go was London--that's where the publishers and readers were, that was where the roots of English literature were planted, that was where the money was. In 1904, with a great Celtic awakening in full swing in Ireland, many artists were looking instead to the island's native culture--think of John Millington Synge, or of Miss Ivors' cutting remarks to Gabriel Conroy in "The Dead." Mulligan proposes a third way--looking to the traditions of the ancient world, and past the less-culturally-stimulating history of the Roman empire to the world of the Greeks.

Many articles have and will continue to be written on this subject, but for now, let me put in a small placeholder to indicate that that the concept of the classical world was very important for all kinds of "modern" artists--advances in archaeology in the late nineteenth century made that world suddenly far more real, and many artists of the period looked to the classical world for a purity and humanism in art that would get them past what was seen as the decadence and chauvinism of the late Victorian period. This trend is the very place Ulysses comes from, after all. [Tho' on this, another brief note--Joyce himself did not know much ancient or modern Greek. He sure knew his Latin, though!]

One would expect that Stephen would be more sympathetic to Mulligan's invitation, then. But Mulligan's invitation, we will see, is utterly insincere. And also, Telemachus doesn't go back to Troy to find his father...

James Joyce's Ulysses, No. 21

[Cf. 1922, 3:26-27; Gabler 3:28-29]

And so, patient readers, we arrive at the bottom of the first page of the 1922 Ulysses.  I promise we will pick up the speed a little bit as we move ahead--we're just getting used to this way of working! 

Since we are moving at such a stately, plump pace, however, I get to notice a few things I would normally pass over.  Like Mulligan switching off the current here.  Over the last few weeks I've said a lot about the little transubstantiation magic trick that Mulligan is doing here.  But this time, Mulligan's electricity reference struck me...  I've always read this as Mulligan making a reference to some kind of medical experiment he would have seen as a student, a la Frankenstein

Looking around the web, I found a nice piece of trivia--the Pigeon House, the famous unreached destination of Joyce's short story "An Encounter," began it's long life as an electricity power station in 1903, only a year before the events in the tower are supposed to happen.  The Poolbeg Station now surrounds the original Pigeon House, and is easily visible from the top of the Joyce tower [It also plays a starring role in U2's "Pride (in the name of love)" video.]

The first power station in Dublin was opened in 1892.  Clearly the tower doesn't have electricity.  A gas lamp gets a speaking part later on in the book, and Stephen and Bloom eventually have a conversation about electric vs. gas streetlams--I'll look forward to tracking electricity references from here...

A Word from the Artist

A word from the artist himself. Take it away, Mr. Berry:

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Okay, well, I get to pop in here on this one since this panel represents a difference of opinion between Mike and myself. I love when that happens.

Mike's referring to the noise heard here as a Mulligan's whistle bouncing off the nearby Wicklow hills, as if this is a staged joke he's made for us and Steven to witness. I think there's a joke being made here of course, but one that's a bit more elaborate, and I've used this whistle noise to indicate it.

it terms of staging and actions throughout the novel, Joyce makes great use of the "noises off" that effective the central events in his story. The roar of thunder in "Oxen of the Sun" unites the destinies of the two central characters. Stephen, upon hearing the boys in the "Nestor" chapter, refers God as "a shout in the street." These outside messages are a very important part of the mystical intrusions to the internal struggles and dialogues within the novel and there's always a kind of transformative moment surrounding them. We see it here for the first time in just the right framework; a joke of transubstantiation.

What I've tried to set up here in adapting the first chapter is barren landscape divided by sea and sky where we get a chance to understand Stephen in contrast to his foil, Mulligan. Stephen is a hugely introspective character and Mulligan, well, not so much. Mulligan is worldly, but glib by contrast. He hears the the noises of the world around him, but responds to them as if they're "all a mockery and beastly."

So the whistle noise we're seeing repeated here, the same one we saw opening the scene on page four of the adaptation and that we'll see again on page twenty-seven, isn't a sound that Mulligan made himself, but an intrusion from the outside world that he's chosen to make light of. It's the whistle from the "mailboat clearing the harbour mouth of Kingstown," the sound of a message coming in.