Ulysses,Telemachus, No. 13

Rob has caught an exact, if difficult to define, expresison here. It's open, sad, skeptical, perceptive, but not without warmth. Here's a famous picture of Joyce from the summer of 1904--the same time in which (in the world of fiction) Ulysses takes place:



This picture was taken by Joyce's friend Constantine Curran. The original print is part of the C. P. Curran papers at University College, Dublin. According to legend (or Ellmann), Joyce was once asked what he was thinking when Curran took the picture. Joyce said: "I was wondering would he lend me five shillings."

Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 12

Cf. 1922, 3:10-11; Gabler 3:11-12

At last, we meet Stephen. Mulligan approaches him like he’s the antichrist. He is not amused.

As the two men carry on their conversation at the top of the tower, these drawings make the contrast between them much more apparent. I love, too, how the top of the tower looks like a bull ring. Stephen will soon be called the “bullock-befriending bard,” though his pose is more that of the toreador here. I also can’t help but think of Spy vs. Spy, the old Alexander Prohais comic from Mad Magazine.

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?