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?