Telemachus 0027

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The flashback continues. Stephen is thinking about his mother, thinking about her room and objects he identifies with her, thinking about her memories, things she told him about her childhood.

Remember the context–Mulligan wants to use Stephen’s money, his wit, his ideas for his own benefit.  This is mostly just selfishness, but also grandiosity, in that Mulligan wants to use Stephen for his project to “Hellenise” the island, to bring a new classical age to this struggling Ireland that’s at a critical point in its history.  Several times through the day Stephen will hear about a new plan for Ireland, people will turn to him to talk about the future, or it’s artistic future. Where does this lead him?

Backwards–to thoughts about his mother–to the creation of a scene.  In these powerful and vivid fragments, you’re seeing Stephen Dedalus begin to stretch his wings (so to speak) and show the promise of his creativity.

Telemachus 0018

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Mulligan sees he has gone too far with his teasing and condescension–more to the point, he is aware that dissheveled and depressed as Stephen may seem now, he has enormous potential as a writer, at least as a crafter of epigrams, and he wants to be on the right side of that power. He suggests that Stephen could probably get some money out of Haines for the ‘cracked lookingglass of a servant” idea, and he tries to enlist Stephen in his program to “Hellenise” Ireland.  [Rob’s transformation of Mulligan into a Greek Apollo is just a taste of what the comics format can do for this book.]

What would it mean to “Hellenise” Ireland?  A few pages ago I brought up the identity crisis of Ireland at the turn of the century–should it turn backwards to Irish history for its culture?  Should it accept its place as a British capital?  Mulligan’s interest in the Greeks (mumble your innuendo here) suggests a nominal interest in democracy, but a democracy of aristocrats, with a vibrant and metropolitan culture rooted in the ancient world. Doesn’t sound so bad. The Modernists were fascinated with the classical world–we are, after all, reading a book that is a descendant of the central story of ancient Greece.  One of the significant intellectual forces propelling Modernism in the arts was the discovery of the original site of Troy in 1870 (so the Iliad is based on a real place and a real war! wild!).

So why isn’t Stephen interested?   Because it is still looking backwards? Because there’s too much of a state power in it?  Because it’s based on aristocratic and class-driven institutions?  Joyce famously thought that the best kind of government to live under was a decaying and ineffectual empire–because it stayed out of his life and his work.  His character Robert Hand, in the 1918 play Exiles, says ““If Ireland is to become a new Ireland, she must first become European.”  Robert Hand is based, in part, on Gogarty and should not necessarily be taken to speak for Joyce or Stephen Dedalus, but the line shows the pattern of thought at work here.  Who does Ireland become in order to become something new and independent?

You see in the last panel of this page a moment of Stephen’s inner thought, just as you did a few pages ago when he was thinking about his mother.  Mulligan’s reference to the “ragging” he gave Clive Kempthorpe  is obscure, but Rob’s interpretation gives you the sense of what it’s about. So what’s with all the sexual threat here?

Leopold Bloom

The everyman hero of Ulysses, Joyce’s reworking of Odysseus.  Bloom is 38 years old, Hungarian Jewish from his father (Rudolf Virag) and Irish Catholic from his mother (Ellen Higgins).  He currently works as an ad canvasser for the newspaper The Freeman’s Journal, but he’s had other odd jobs throughout his life.  He spends the day of June 16 wandering around Dublin:  going to a funeral, checking in at the office, visiting the National Library, walking on the beach.  He’s a deeply human and compassionate character, and carrying around with him two heavy emotional burdens:  grief over the death of his infant son Rudy 11 years before the action of the novel, and anxiety over his impending cuckoldry by his wife Molly, with whom he has not had full sexual relations since their son died.

Telemachus 0014

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(cf. 1922, 5.31 – 6.6; Gabler, 1.100-11)

Stephen has just been accused by Mulligan of performing more than feeling his grief, of being the “loveliest mummer of them all” who prominently wears his mourning for his mother, but who refused to honor her final wish before she died. Stephen doesn’t rise to the bait, but continues acting the part.

This is one of the first pages where we see Stephen’s internal monologue placed in the context of external events. He remembers a dream he had shortly after his mother’s death, in which she appears as a ghost (remember Hamlet? we finally have our ghost!). We will see this dream in different variations throughout the novel. For now, a few things jumped out at me… first, note the emphasis placed on smells. Joyce is one of the great smell writers… “wetted ashes” has always struck me as an amazingly precise and familiar smell. Also the green of the bile and the green of the bay… just moments ago, Mulligan suggested that ’snotgreen’ be a new color for Irish art. We get a sense of what Stephen thinks of that idea here.

Finally, note how Rob has drawn Stephen’s pose here. Joyce writes that Stephen has his palm on his brow, but Rob has focused on how Stephen is looking at the bay “beyond the threadbare cuffedge,” a marvelous bit of framing.

hopes for further discussion from you, gentle reader:

–the color green
–parallax and visual framing
–ghosts
–motherhood

Reader’s Guide for I: Telemachus

Dramatis Personae for I: Telemachus

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