James Joyce's Ulysses, "Telemachus" episode, No. 29

[Cf. 1922 6:7-28; Gabler 1:112-134]

One thing that strikes me on reading this passage is Mulligan's none-too-subtle playing of "the class card" with Stephen. "Dogsbody" has all kinds of associations, and will gather even more in the "Proteus" episode, but at the very least it refers to an underling or a "gofer." Mulligan also teases Stephen for his "second leg" trousers, his improper etiquette, and even offers his own old clothes to him. We'll soon learn he's wearing Mulligan's boots already. ["Poxy Bowsy" is glossed in Gifford, but basically means vd-ridden lout.]

Stephen's insistence that he can't wear grey is pretty extreme. Gifford's gloss is very useful--like many other entries, it "reminds" us of things we don't yet know, that Stephen's mother died on June 23, 1903, and so it's been almost a full year... though we actually won't find out it's June 16, 2004 for a few hundred pages yet. Gifford observes that under the strictest standards of Victorian mourning, a son would wear only black for a full year after his mother's death, so Stephen's within that period. Mulligan catches the irony of Stephen's assiduous sartorial etiquette and his cruel treatment of his mother, but we don't necessarily feel better about Mulligan for this.

Point of trivia: if you're following along in your Gabler edition, you'll see that several of Mulligan's lines here end with exclamation points [Dogsbody! Insane! Bard!]. He's quite an exclaimer. The exclamation points appear in the Rosenbach manuscript, but not in the 1922. Because we're following the '22 here, they're not used. Write them in if you like.

Point of admiration: I love how Rob has Mulligan using the mirror here.

so, riddle me this:

1. We've been wondering what the mirror should look like. Anyone have a good sense of what the cracked lookingglass of a servant should look like? Please post a picture.

2. About that dogsbody. What difference does it make, given the trends and themes of this chapter, that Mulligan is talking about Stephen's body and his appearance?

3. Why is it important that Stephen is so hyper-observant of the etiquette of mourning? Can you answer this question by going through Hamlet or the Odyssey?

James Joyce's Ulysses, Telemachus No. 20

Cf. 1922, 3:24-25; Gabler, 3:26-27

Finally, we get the point of Mulligan's joke.  He's using the echo of the surrounding mountains* to add to his travesty of the mass, as we've said several different ways and times already.

In responding to this picture, I started to think about ways in which Mulligan's performance is a mini-model of the book as a whole... but I don't really buy that.

We haven't talked much about textual issues yet, but it's interesting here that  the Rosenbach manuscript does not have the sentence on which this image is based: ["Two strong shrill whistles answered through the calm."]  I have no intention of subjecting you to the full textual history--there's plenty of that on the web already.  Suffice it to say that the Rosenbach Manuscript, which is part of the collection of the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia, is an early handwritten draft of Ulysses.

Why add this sentence?  The skill of 'placing' the echo or the whistling mailboat says something about Mulligan's cleverness and awareness of his surroundings. It's likely also something that Joyce saw happen while he was writing, so he decided to stick it into the book--the man liked to add new material to the book whenever he got a chance.  This is a small, but useful example.

*Many readers believe the whistle is the call of a boat departing Kingstown harbor, perhaps the mailboat at 5:83 (Gabler).  This also seems logical to me, and probably would better explain why the returning whistles are "strong" and "shrill."  But if we go this way, we have to explain how Mulligan knows when the whistle will sound.  I note above that the "strong shrill whistles" are not in the Rosenbach Manuscript. Neither is the mailboat reference. So that makes it likely that the whistles are the boat... oops!

James Joyce's Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 18

[Cf. 1922 3:22-23; Gabler3:25]

We're waiting for Mulligan to finish up with his whistling echo trick, a high point of the little parody of the mass that begins episode 1 of Ulysses.  Here he cocks his head to the left, waiting for the echo that's going to come in a minute.

We haven't talked about the Odyssey in a while, so let's revisit that frame of reference while the echo takes its time getting back to the tower.  Stephen is Telemachus.   A young man, Telemachus is just old enough to understand the insult that Antinoos and the rest of the suitors are visiting upon his house, and just young enough to not really be able to do anything about it.  The suitors live off the wealth Odysseus and his people have hoarded for years, and make a mockery out of the traditions and customs of the city.  Telemachus wants to rid his house of them, but he doesn't have the people or the will to do it.  So Athena comes to him and tells him to learn what he can about his father's fate, and possibly raise an army to take his home back.  So Buck would seem to be Antinoos, and he's certainly making fun of the traditions of Stephen's people... but Stephen doesn't have much faith in those traditions himself.  I suppose one could say that Telemachus needs to find out what happened to his father before he can really judge Antinoos--if Odysseus were dead, it might become his duty to follow Antinoos like a father, and then to look back on the desecrations of Penelope's courtship as a necessary cost of the "leadership transition."  And voila!  We arrived at Hamlet without even knowing we left the station. We're even conveniently situated at the top of a tower.  I bet we're going to see a ghost soon!

Ulysses, Telemachus, No. 1

If you know anything about Ulysses, you might know that it bears a strong family resemblance to Homer's Odyssey. Joyce transposes elements of the ancient story to one day in the life of Dublin, a warm June day in 1904. Telemachus is the son of Odysseus (that's Ulysses to you, if you're Roman), and when you meet him, he is desperate to do something about the horde of suitors that is waiting to marry his mother and despoiling his home. He doesn't remember his father, who's been gone for a very long time.

But if you just pick up Joyce's novel, you have no idea that the first episode is called "Telemachus." [Nor, for that matter, do you know that it's June 16, 1904, 8:00 a.m., or a Thursday. It takes hundreds of pages to figure this out. But we bring it to you on a platter!]

"Telemachus" appears nowhere in the book. Joyce had Homeric titles for all of the 18 episodes, however, and he used them regularly when talking about the book with his friends. In 1920, he created a "schema" for his friend (and writer and critic) Carlo Linati, which would quickly become the first of many tools for reading the book.

So why, if Joyce used these titles when writing the book & talking about it with friends, did he not include them? Does he just like messing with us?