Russell Raphael 12/12/2021 Russell Raphael 12/12/2021

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