Just Falling With Style
Post Ten
Oh Woody! Why’d you have to go and break the spell? Buzz was sure he was flying.
The flying to falling to flying theme undulates through Ulysses (and underpins Finnegans Wake) arguably stemming from Icarus flying too close to the sun on Daedalian wings before crashing to a watery death. He didn’t rise again unless through metempsychosis, so let’s focus on the Fall.
From the moment in Lotus Eaters when Bloom struggles to recall that the speed of a falling body is 32 feet per second, per second, Joyce conflates falling with Original Sin as represented by the number 32. In A Portrait, Stephen resisted the call of Holy Orders as he intuits his to be a different path:
“The snares of the world were its ways of sin. He would fall. He had not yet fallen but he would fall silently, in an instant. Not to fall was too hard, too hard, and he felt the silent lapse of his soul, as it would be at some instant to come, falling, falling, but not yet fallen, still unfallen, but about to fall.”
Let’s consider some of the many examples of falling in Ulysses. The first three explode in expectoration. The plum stones spat from atop Nelson’s Pillar, the graceful arced jet of hay juice as spat by Corny Kelleher, the Red Bank oyster of phlegm expelled to connote racist contempt by the citizen. The financial: a coin dropped from Molly’s outstretched hand from her bedroom window, for the beggar. The cloacal: five urinations - in Proteus, Cyclops and Ithaca (observed), in Lestrygonians and Scylla (unobserved), the faecal plops of Calypso and (currants) Lestrygonians and the menstrual gush of Penelope. The crashing of a shot-putted biscuit tin (another graceful arc) and Stephen’s body semi-conscious onto the hard road outside of Bella Cohen’s.
Flying not falling; the swooping gulls of Lestrygonians, to feed on the fallen manna from Bloom heaven.
Too many for a short blog so let’s focus on where and how a select few falling bodies land because as they teach you in Judo 101, landing well is half way to rising again.
Plum stones and hay juice both seeds of future creation land on the pavement. A harsh barren artificial surface upon which a natural substance will struggle to find any agent to fertilize. The plum stones represent Irish political hopes and dreams and so Stephen’s parable is pessimistic though maybe people need to understand the depths of the problem in order to work on a solution. The hay juice doesn’t fall directly, rather in a graceful arc. Bloom suspects Kelleher to be a police informer which many consider a sin but perhaps the line of travel indicates a more nuanced picture or perhaps insufficient evidence to convict. In any event it too lies lifeless on the stone ground.
I like Molly’s donation for the beggar that she allows to fall from the bedroom window. It plummets straight down as if to confirm both the sin she’s about to commit and its desperation to leave the scene of the crime. Yet while it too falls on barren pavement it is rescued by a passing schoolboy and placed in its intended womb, the beggar’s floor-dwelling cap. What do we make of that? Molly will commit adultery which depending on one’s religious convictions, is at worst a mortal sin and at best not very nice. Yet it helps the beggar so is not all bad just as we may think, Molly’s adultery has its place in a bigger brighter future of the Bloom marriage. Just as Stephen’s fall is precursor to Rudy’s resurrection.
Usually perhaps inevitably, the Fall is part of the Rise which is a cheery thought or as Woody observes, if Buzz cannot actually fly, he does at least fall with style.
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