Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 14

[Cf. 1922; 3:17, Gabler 3:19]

Rob and I had a long conversation about this passage and what Buck means when he says "back to barracks." I see it as a garden-variety transubstantiation joke--wherein Mulligan is trying to keep the genie in the bottle, the spirit of Christ (or "christine," as Mulligan will say in a moment) from escaping the shaving bowl before it can be [insert precise verb here] into the shaving lather.

I'm bracketing the verb here because as I have been reading the above-linked Wikipedia post about transubstantiation, I see that the choices I was about to make (mixed, infused, combined, blended) are all wrong and invoke heresies. [side-side point. I am glad I am not a proper academic, because if I was, I would have to scorn Wikipedia. It's a little lazy for me to link to Wikipedia so many times, but it's good information, in most cases better than what you get in Gifford & Seidman (forgive me, Don & Robert. You would love Wikipedia.).

Reading through the entry, I can't help but think of Stephen's little aesthetic dissertation on perception and essence in Portrait, and the whole Aristotelian Fugue-state he enters in Proteus. [as long as I'm making these little side notes, a little David Foster Wallace homage, the fugue state idea reminds me that Proteus would be a good place to talk about Stephen as an Aspie avant-la-lettre. {OK. one more. I swear. If you followed the Aspie link, you saw that one of the "you may be an aspie" jokes was if you know the historical derivation of the word "trivia." Famous Joyce quote: when asked if he was worried that people would consider some of the puns in Finnegans Wake "trivial" he said "yes, and some are quadrivial." There you go.}]

But I trigress. or quadgress.

About the barracks. It's important to know that in the Dublin mind, a "barracks" is not an abstract or alien thing at all. In 1904, as at many times in Irish history, British troops were garrisonned in barracks that were cheek and jowl with densely populated urban neighborhoods. Because their function was to control the people living in those neighborhoods. Think Baghdad's Green Zone. Despite the comparison, this is not the way US citizens tend to think of military bases. The presence of British troops on the street, their movements, their leisure entertainments, their interactions with the "natives," are all an important part of the atmosphere of Joyce's Dublin in June of 1904. These days, the old barracks have been appropriated for various purposes... the now-called "Collins Barracks" is a stunning museum, part of the National Museum of Ireland, with exhibitions relating to decorative arts and Irish history. The barracks at "Beggars Bush" has a national printing museum.