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

Shut Your Eyes and See

Post Nine

This, one of the book’s very famous quotes, appears in that atrociously tricky part of Proteus as Stephen, sense testing, walks along the beach at Sandymount Strand, crunching shells as he goes. His eyes shut, he listens as he crunches and crunches to hear. He wonders; does the world disappear when he cannot see it and will it again exist when he opens his eyes? It will; but this is not as silly as it sounds for can an object exist without a subject to perceive it? Stephen is exploring whether our sensory equipment is to be trusted for when we get down to brass tacks, our senses are our only link to a world beyond our skin (even possibly under our skin). 

This part of the book is replete with symbolism as we skirt philosophy, art and natural sciences but I am more interested here in the conduit of the visible or more to the point lack of it, for both Bloom and Stephen will contemplate blindness as they go through the day. As well as Stephen on his beach walk, Bloom will help a blind chap across the road who will then feature in the Sirens episode and no doubt in Circe; which is a safe bet as everyone appears in Circe. The Homeric blinding of Polyphemus plays out in the Cyclops episode with Bloom politically jousting and let’s say defeating the myopic nationalist in Barney Kiernan’s pub. In Lestrygonians after seeing the blind chap on his way Bloom tries to imagine life through the eyes of the blind. For example he feels his stomach and wonders in what colour the blind visualise flesh which is an interesting example and one wonders if it was prompted by the horribly racist Eugene Stratton poster advert that Bloom notices on the way to Glasnevin cemetery. 

I like how Bloom in a very practical way considers the same concepts Stephen grappled with in Proteus in his impossibly obscure style. 

So what do we read into our blind character? Is he Homer’s Tiresias there to predict Bloom’s future? Before we get excited for clues beyond 17th June, Tiresias’ predictions concerned events within our story not after. Essentially, that if Odysseus harms the sun god’s cattle, things will go very bad back home in Ithaca. Well its hardly Bloom’s fault that there’s a foot and mouth* cattle blight but certainly for him, thing’s aren’t great at home. Does our blind friend predict this? Even if he did, it was hardly news as Bloom knew it via the morning post but the tap tap tapping of his white stick in Sirens is in a kind of counterpoint to Boylan’s ‘jingly jaunty got the horny’ cab ride to Molly’s house and his cock carracarracarra cock knocking on the door once he arrived. 

But why? In a book where everything is volitional and a portal of discovery, why the blind character?  

Did we need him simply to facilitate Bloom’s translation of the ineluctable modality of the visible as suggested above? That feels underwhelming. The blind stripling links in Sirens to Robert Emmet, the whereabouts of whose mortal remains are something of a mystery, as we learn in Hades. So maybe the point of the Blind Stripling shall also remain mysterious and is a matter for the professors. Here’s to the many and full explanations that no doubt exist in whatever passes for reality out there. In here, it’s pretty much the blind leading the blind.

For more idle Ulysses thoughts: www.russellraphael.com

*Apparently Stateside, they say hoof and mouth. Either way, the cows don’t like it.

© RUSSELL RAPHAEL 2021-2023

A Rock and a Hard Place

Post One

I have been catching up on the excellent U22 The Centenary Ulysses Podcast (u22pod.com) recently as we build up to the 2nd February 2022 centenary. The latest was on ‘chapter’ Nine, Scylla & Charybdis. This difficult episode set in the National Library, is against the Homeric context of the fleet sailing through a very narrow passage that we now know as the Straits of Messina, where it must pass either by the cliff of Scylla on one side and the small rock of Charybdis on the other. This rock is marked by a single fig tree. Should they hug the cliff or veer close to the small rock? High up in the cliff lives Scylla the dragon. She has six long necks each topped with a head of nasty razor teeth. Sail too close and she will swoop to kill six of the crew. She cannot as Odysseus foolishly thinks, be beaten. Better avoid and go for the fig tree. Well that’s no plain sailing either. For underneath lurks a whirlpool and that will destroy the entire fleet. So no good choices.

An entertaining aspect of the U22 Podcast is to hear the views of students and others fairly new to Ulysses. This provides fresh energy and fascinating insight. But they considered both options to be terrible, leading to certain death. On this basis there is no choice as one naturally would opt for Scylla, the lesser of two evils and hope to lose only six. I don’t think this is quite right. The whirlpool Charybdis is not a constant. Rather it occurs three times a day and so there is a prospect of passing by it entirely unscathed. Now we have real choice. Definite loss of six against potential loss of all but possible loss of none. That brings in appraisal of risk and calculation of odds.

It’s a really tricky chapter and as if we don’t have enough to grapple with, we wonder why a genteel discussion of literature in the National Library is paralleled with Homeric Scylla and Charybdis which is red in tooth and claw. But understanding this real choice illuminates the various lifestyle and artistic choices facing Stephen and which lurk subliminally within the text and suddenly it makes a lot (or at least a bit) more sense. I’m not suggesting that this is the only way to consider the chapter but I believe it provides a reasonable framework and significantly leads to Bloom’s vital contribution (by his checking the backsides of statues!) which enables our understanding of the chapter as well as facilitates Stephen’s choice analysis.

For more idle thoughts: www.russellraphael.com

© RUSSELL RAPHAEL 2021 -2023