Telemachus 0019

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Stephen has complained to Mulligan about their visitor, Haines, and Mulligan has threatened some violence against him if he acts up again.  This has led Stephen to a sequence of thoughts about Mulligan’s real or imagined hazing of one Clive Kempthorpe, involving at least the threat of castration.

From here, Stephen’s mind has skipped to Mulligan’s cultural pretensions, of establishing a “new paganism” in the tower, setting a new cultural moment, with the tower as its “omphalos.”  Poised on the knife-edge of Stephen’s analysis, Mulligan is revealed as a superficial intellectual with a violent bully not far beneath the surface. Stephen decides he can’t continue the ruse of being Mulligan’s friend.

Omphalos is a Greek word meaning navel or center, and it was used to refer to places like Delphi that were at the center of the world and a point at which the gods communicated with men.  More particularly, it was a stone sculpture like this.

Which, of course, bears more than a passing resemblance to our Martello tower.

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One thought on “Telemachus 0019

  1. – Traduction française / Translation into French –

    Stephen s’est plaint à Mulligan de leur visiteur, Haines, et Mulligan a
    menacé de s’en prendre assez violemment à celui-ci s’il venait à
    recommencer. Ceci a déclenché chez Stephen une série de pensées où
    Mulligan bizute, de manière réelle ou imaginaire, un certain Clive
    Kempthorpe, impliquant au moins la menace de le châtrer.

    De là,
    l’esprit de Mulligan passe aux prétentions culturelles de Mulligan
    d’instaurer un néopaganisme dans la tour, de créer un nouveau rite en se
    servant de la tour comme “omphalos”. Face à la finesse d’analyse de
    Stephen, Mulligan se révèle être un intellectuel superficiel sous lequel
    affleure un tyran. Stephen décide d’en finir avec sa fausse amitié pour
    Mulligan.

    “Omphalos”
    est un mot grec signifiant “ombilic” ou “centre”, employé pour désigner
    des endroits tels que Delphes comme le centre du monde et un point de
    communication entre les dieux et les hommes. Plus particulièrement, il
    s’agissait d’une pierre sculptée. Laquelle, évidemment, présente plus
    qu’une vague ressemblance avec notre tour Martello.

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