James Joyce's Ulysses, Telemachus Episode, No. 27

[cf. 1922, 5:26-30; Gabler 1:94-99]

Art?  Art Brockway?  Are you out there Art?  I will always think of you with this passage.  When Art and I were grad students at the University of Miami, he wrote what I'm sure is the definitive article on Joyce and mummery.  There is little else to say, or rather, there would be little else to say were your correspondent not writing from Philadelphia, mummery capital of the world.

(image from gophila.com, taken by R. Kennedy)

Again, I'm hoping Art will chip in at some point, but on the most basic level, when Mulligan calls Stephen a "mummer," he's saying that he's disguised, he's pretending to be something he's not.

The tradition of mumming came to Philadelphia from many places, but the strongest thread runs from Ireland & the other Celtic countries. By tradition, around the holidays, a gang of costumed men would go from house to house and basically trick or treat for booze.  There might be a play or a performance involved, but there's a costume and some kind of entertainment and probably "something sinister" in having them come into your home... as Mulligan suggests.

And as for sinister... here's another question for the masses.  Was Joyce left-handed?  Stephen, based on a number of references in this book, seems to be a leftie.  And Joyce's corresponding figure in Finnegans Wake, Shem the Penman, is left-handed.  Of course, even if Joyce were left-inclined, no school in Ireland would have let him actually write that way...

James Joyce's Ulysses, Telemachus No. 26

[Cf. 1922 5:20-27, Gabler 1:86-94]

We get an important glimpse of Stephen here, as we learn that he refused to pray for his mother at her deathbed. What kind of a**hole doesn't obey his dying mother's wish to pray with her? Discuss.

I mean, yes, Stephen is an Artist of Profound Integrity, who cannot compromise his belief in his unbelief. And yes, we are meant to think of him as kin with Hamlet, with Telemachus, with those who fight to leave behind their lives as boys to become men. And I even think that we are meant to pity Stephen more than a little, who has become so alienated through his extremism.

Mulligan refers to himself and Stephen as "hyperborean." What does this mean? Gifford gives us the basics--it's a classical allusion, to a kind of perfectly youthful master race who lived at the far ends of the earth. More specifically, Gifford pegs the reference to Nietzsche & a passage in The Will to Power, wherein the Ubermensch were described as hyperborean, as beyond the constraints of conventional morality, especially Christian morality.

Anyone out there have more to say about hyperborean? About Stephen's refusal to submit and what we're supposed to think about it?

I love the bottom panel here... Mulligan looking stately and plump indeed, beautifully framed and posed like he's about to start shooting lasers out of his hands. Which would make things interesting. His pose, his position, his framing, all speak together with the authority of Mulligan's perfectly reasonable criticism of Stephen. And Stephen knows it, but he doesn't care.

James Joyce's Ulysses, "Telemachus" No. 25

[cf. 1922 5.18, Gabler 1.85]

First of all, have you found us on Facebook yet?   Yet another in our growing arsenal of tools to bring this strange project to the world.

As I write it's the old man's birthday in Ireland. An auspicious day for a man who tended to be superstitious about the calendar. And as our subject we have a rather glorious image, and we're talking about mothers.  What's could be more appropriate?

A moment ago, Mulligan was quoting Swinburne when he referred to the sea as our "great sweet mother."  He's modulated into George William Russell a/k/a AE, who often referred to nature as the Mighty Mother.  Russell was a preeminent literary figure in turn of the century Dublin, and in 1904 he became the first person to publish a short story by Joyce--in a newspaper he edited called The Irish Homestead.  Russell has a prominent part in Episode 9--"Scylla and Charybdis"--and we'll certainly talk more about him then.

Back here in "Telemachus, Mulligan's comment will lead, a moment from now, into a discussion of Stephen's mother's death.  There's a lot to be said about the different roles of mothers and fathers in Joyce's world--especially in Episode 9.  Very briefly--mothers are associated with ultimate, undeniable truth--truth beyond language.  They may be the one true thing in life (a paraphrase). Paternity, however--especially in the days before genetic testing--was uncertain.  This uncertainty creates an intolerable vacuum, that has to be cemented over with legal, verbal certainties. In "Scylla," Stephen talks about paternity as a "legal fiction," (and you should put as much emphasis on the fiction as on the legal here).  You should also be thinking about Hamlet again, and always!