Nymph O’Mania

Post Twenty-four

In his schema Joyce labels ‘chapter 4’ Calypso and Homer tells us that Calypso was a nymph. A nymph that held Odysseus captive on her island for seven years of sexually frenzied hard labour. Poor guy. Yet he never lost sight of his goal Ithaca and return to family and so like Heinrich Tannhauser to Venus he pleaded ‘Göttin, lass' mich ziehn!’, Goddess, let me go! After all, there’s only so much orgiastic frenzy an Ithacan pilgrim can take.

Cajoled by Zeus via his messenger Hermes, Calypso relents and Odysseus is allowed on his way. And so in our book Bloom too is released from some sort of imprisonment to commence his Wanderings of Ulysses. Joyce takes liberties with the Homeric chronology but as he calls the chapter Calypso, we are bound to ask some questions for instance:

·        Who is our nymph?

·        What trap?

·        Where is Ithaca?

 Who is our nymph? The island of Gibraltar was originally known as Calpe’s island. That Molly is Gibraltarian must raise red flag alert that she might be Calypso and indeed there is much supporting evidence. She has her husband running around after her, making her breakfast, clearing the clothes, fetching the book etc. etc. Like Calypso, Molly is into sex; the smutty taste in literature and of course the likely infidelity that afternoon with Boylan. Even the hiding of the incriminatory letter beneath the pillow smacks of Calypso who was known as ‘the concealer’. Maybe she and Bloom have been bonking like mad these last seven years and so it all fits. We’ll see. He Bloom, certainly thinks erotic thoughts as we know from his lusty reverie concerning next door’s maid.

But there’s another contender. Midway through the chapter we learn that a framed picture ‘the Bath of the Nymph’ hangs above the marital bed. She reminds Bloom a bit of a younger Molly: “Tea before you put milk in. Not unlike her with her hair down: slimmer.”  So which is it? Or is it both?

It may be helpful to park this while we consider the other issues. 

Trap? What trap? Bloom is a free man; he ambles to the butcher and returns to his house; still apparently unfettered. Thus far, we have gleaned that he’s a decent man who makes his wife breakfast in bed and speaks empathetically with the cat. He’s a little lustful as he ogles the next door maid but inside our heads who among us isn’t?  It’s not one might think, a morning of powerful emotions. Pleasant warmth, even this early. Yet “Grey horror seared his flesh” and “He felt the flowing qualm spread over him.” This not a man without a care in the world, no matter how benign the morning.

The two phrases relate to different but related concerns and as it transpires, point I feel to the same trap. The searing of his flesh occurred amidst reading the Zionist flier and just as a cloud cast him in shadow. The Promised Land in that instant morphing from overflowing milk and honey to a desolate barren volcanic dust-bowl. The uncomfortable qualm oozes down his spine is as he reads Milly’s letter; in particular her reference to Boylan. She turned 15 the previous day and not only is she on the verge of sexual activity and now resident in Mullingar, miles from her father’s protection but she’s on the radar of Blazes Boylan. We know that Bloom suspects him of taking sexual liberties with Molly but oh my god, is this sexual predator also after his daughter Milly? Little wonder the qualm spread down his spine as he read her letter.

The trap though is sexual bondage of a broader nature. Molly’s likely infidelity and Bloom’s lusty reverie in the butcher both stem from the broken sexual chemistry between husband and wife. We don’t yet know details but throw in that their poor son Rudy died aged only eleven days and we are sensing something is amiss between the sheets. Sure enough we will ascertain in due course that it’s really been derailed since Rudy died eleven years ago.

Bloom’s Promised Land, his Zion, his Ithaca is not an Israel to be (see my post 3: The Promised Land is No Place Like Home), it’s in bed with Molly, performing the beast with two backs. He’s (indeed both of them) caught in the trap of a marriage that is sexually off the boil and he doesn’t know how to get it going again. Despite his wife telling him to scald the teapot. See my post 4: Poldy, Scald the Teapot! .

So let’s return to just who has him trapped. I’m sure Molly is quite wrapped up in it but am an insufficient amateur psychologist to explain why. I’m on sturdier ground with the nymph whose picture hangs above the bed, the ancient but younger Molly. Bloom we shall discover, believes the Jewish apocryphal tale that the baby’s health comes from the father. So blames himself for Rudy’s tragically early demise. Sex with Molly risks more babies, more death. Bloom cannot take that chance. Imagined sex with the nymph above the bed and as we shall see, similar sordid but safe encounters are a poor substitute but at least no-one is getting pregnant.

For more idle Ulysses thinking or to buy Russell’s guide to Ulysses: www.russellraphael.com

© RUSSELL RAPHAEL 2021-2023

Poldy, scald the Teapot!

Post four

Molly shouts down the stairs to Bloom to remember to scald the teapot. We will learn that whilst Bloom likes to do as he’s told especially by Molly, he also gets a bit of a thrill in the disobeying. A bit like that mouse being toyed with by the cat; ‘Curious mice never squeal. Seem to like it.’

So it will be an interesting incite into his character and the marriage dynamic if he in fact does scald the teapot. I can’t claim to be an expert in teapot temperature regulation but I note that whilst he does indeed scald the teapot, he then rinses it, which I doubt is going to help. Things look bleak as the teapot is left while he reads Milly’s letter and starts to fry the kidney. Gloomier still when upon presentation of breakfast in bed, we note that Molly holds her cup ‘nothandle’ indicating tepid at best and confirmed by her swallowing not sipping.

Oh Leopold you naughty boy, have you just sealed your fate and did you do it on purpose?

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© RUSSELL RAPHAEL 2021-2023

You Say Tomatoes, She say Met Him Pike Hoses

Post Two

Joyce in a letter to Harriet Shaw-Weaver revealed a certain scepticism for books with ‘goahead plot’. He felt it dispensable. Drama he said elsewhere, was for the journalists. So with Ulysses, ignoring phantasmagorical earthquakes, flying chariots and whatnot, not a great deal happens. Such plot as exists is largely driven by Bloom’s suspicion/expectation that Molly will be unfaithful to him that afternoon. But why does he think this?

The main clue is the letter from the would-be lover impresario Blazes Boylan, that arrives in that morning’s post. This is no great mystery, for in Calypso Molly tells Bloom that the letter is from Boylan and that he’s informing her firstly of the programme for next week’s tour of Ulster and secondly that he’ll be dropping in at 4pm that afternoon to discuss it further. We will know many episodes later that he signs off with the business-like ‘Yours ever, Hugh Boylan’ but otherwise, we do not know what else the letter says.

Bloom’s background information, for example the walk along the river Tolka and him observing Molly and Boylan’s secret hand signals (or so Bloom suspects), will seep through in subsequent episodes and he may well be suspicious of Boylan’s true agenda. This is compounded by him seeing Molly hide the letter under her pillow for more private reading. So it may not be entirely business-like.

But there is something else, something more subtle and if not quite a smoking gun then enough to challenge common claims that we must await episode 18 to discover what goes on with Molly and Boylan.

Calypso contains the very famous metempsychosis conversation with Molly asking Bloom what the word means. He explains it’s a Greek derived word meaning reincarnation, the transmigration of souls which is of course one of the book’s essential themes. She then retorts with ‘met him pike hoses’. This isn’t quoted in Calypso but we find out in Lestrygonians that that is what she said in the course of conversation either then or at least before Bloom leaves for Westland Row at about 9.30 a.m. Bloom later thinks of Molly’s endearing habit whereby she corrupts words into others more familiar to her. So metempsychosis which she doesn’t understand converts to met him pike hoses which to her at any rate, means something.

So what does it mean and what does it reveal?

Molly is pretty straightforward. That is established at the very start. So why not give Met Him its ordinary meaning. That she has met or will be meeting someone. And as the word ‘metempsychosis’ featured in the smutty book she was reading, we might give ‘met him’ rather smutty overtones. Pike, we shall return to; let us think about Hoses. Having just read Proteus we might be prepped for words having more than one meaning, that the meaning of words might reincarnate within other words. So hose suggests trousers as well as something long phallic and wriggly. Pike also is a phallic shaped slippery wriggly fish or otherwise something phallic, rigid and hard; either way, it’s lurking inside his trousers.

What with the smut of Paul de Kock’s novel as well as Boylan’s letter, it seems Molly has sex on her mind and it spills out in this corruption of ‘metempsychosis’. No wonder Bloom is concerned!

There is also something else, something psychologically subtle but Joyce is fond of subtleties. Is Molly trying to bare her soul to Bloom? To tell him without telling him? Just as Bloom leaves unlocked the drawer containing Martha Clifford’s letters? We know by episode 18 Penelope, that Molly is determined to be brazen about her infidelity as much to save the marriage as hurt Bloom and I wonder if this is a foreshadowing of that.

Just a thought.

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© RUSSELL RAPHAEL 2021-2023