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...

Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 11

[Cf. 1922, 3:10; Gabler, 3:11]

A few quick points:

-- In case you were wondering, Portrait fans, this is the same Stephen Dedalus we last saw vowing to "forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his race." Joyce used the name as a nom de plume early in his career, in addition to giving it to his fictional alter ego. But you'll see that Stephen is a little older, a little more jaded, and more than a little depressed.

-- I know it's basic, but it doesn't hurt to have a little refresher on Daedalus. A master builder and creater of labyrinths.

-- Interesting that as Rob has drawn it, we're getting Stephen's POV here. One of Joyce's signature moves is to give his narrating voice elements of the vocabulary or stylistic tics or perceptions of a character in the scene. Where it might first seem that the narrator is your usual omniscient, once you really start to parse who's doing the talking, it can sound like the narrator's voice and style are flavored by a particular character (often described as the character "infecting" the narrator's voice). I have a perverse theory that the narrator of Portrait is actually Stephen himself, talking about himself in the third person. [Hugh Kenner called this style the "Uncle Charles Principle." in his classic Joyce's Voices]. The text here doesn't show UCP (as the Joyceans call it) so much, but this medium requires choices of perspective that can help illustrate the phenomenon.

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?