Maladroit Deshil; the Right Write

Post Nineteen

From Nestor:

“On the steps of the Paris stock exchange the goldskinned men quoting prices on their gemmed fingers. Gabble of geese. They swarmed loud, uncouth about the temple, their heads thickplotting under maladroit silk hats. Not theirs: these clothes, this speech, these gestures. Their full slow eyes belied the words, the gestures eager and unoffending, but knew the rancours massed about them and knew their zeal was vain. Vain patience to heap and hoard. Time surely would scatter all. A hoard heaped by the roadside: plundered and passing on. Their eyes knew their years of wandering and, patient, knew the dishonours of their flesh.”

This passage has troubled me. It comes hot on the heels of Deasy’s tirade against the Jews and whilst Stephen puts up some resistance, in his mind he pictures this scene from his recent experience in Paris. The goldskinned men are strange to him. Exotica. Context pins them as Jews as Stephen so assumes. The Paris stock exchange, a grand building was also known as the temple, based as it was architecturally on the Temple of Vespasian and Titus in Rome and one naturally has in mind the money-lenders expelled by Jesus from the temple in Jerusalem. So this is not a flattering image and tends to dilute Stephen’s resistance to Deasy’s antisemitism. Yet if that’s his recollection then so be it.

These men spoke not in French or Stephen would have understood. The gabble of a strange tongue. They schemed, living on their wits to make money. Thickplotting. We shall be reminded of them shortly and throughout Ulysses as our ‘Jew’ Leopold Bloom shall plot various money-making schemes. These are strangers in a strange French land, like Kevin Egan, though not on the run after blowing up buildings, these fled for their lives after pogroms, grateful to leave with the gems on their fingers but little else to build a new life in whatever sanctuary they landed. Their brethren would have been Virags from Szombathely and my own maternal grandparents from Odessa to the docks of London’s east end.

Sanctuary? In the Paris of February 1904, the Dreyfus storm still raged and France was no sanctuary for Jews. They knew the rancours massed about them and sensed and Stephen sensed, that ‘time surely would scatter all.’ Too right. A mere 18 years after publication of Ulysses, nearly a quarter of all French Jewry would be rounded up and murdered by the Nazis along with the Roma and others. No great sanctuary in Ireland either as the Jews of Limerick found to their cost at ‘this very moment, this very instant’ as Bloom would remark later that day. All of which is fitting to remember in this week of Holocaust Memorial Day.

Maladroit. It’s a very particular choice of word and Joyce was nothing if not particular. Maladroit, not straight, not right. No ‘per vias rectus’ for the likes of these. No straight road to heaven, for as Mr. Deasy tells us, they (we) sinned against the light or to put it less charitably, they (we) killed Jesus and for this they (we) must take the left-hand path which goes way below.

It puts me in mind of a phrase we’ll see at 10.30 that evening and the opening words of Oxen of the Sun episode, set in the Holles Street maternity hospital.

               ‘Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus. Deshil Holles Eamus’

A mix of three words starting according to Gifford, with a corruption of ‘deashil’, an Irish word meaning to go to the right. Turn right for the maternity hospital, right is good, left is bad, bad luck. Left is no start for a new baby. Deasil; is it just me or is that worryingly close to ‘Deasy’? Skip forward those eighteen years or so from ‘22 and standing in the line to the right or the left had wholly different and sinister connotations.

It must be a comfort in life to have certainty. To know that this way is right and that way is wrong. The Jews it seemed are destined to wander; not just Jews, this is the perennial lot of the immigrant and refugee and it is only idiots such as Garrett Deasy that consider this as a negative. Immigrants add to the soul of society. Exotica is the spice of life. As an exhausted but still practical Bloom puts it much later that night:

               “Jews, he softly imparted in an aside in Stephen's ear, are accused of ruining. Not a vestige of truth in it, I can safely say. History—would you be surprised to learn?—proves up to the hilt Spain decayed when the inquisition hounded the jews out and England prospered when Cromwell, an uncommonly able ruffian who, in other respects, has much to answer for, imported them. Why? Because they are imbued with the proper spirit. They are practical and are proved to be so.”

And even later, a belter of a line by Bloom especially for 1 o’clock in the morning as a barb to Little Irishers:

               “The most vulnerable point too of tender Achilles, your God was a jew, because mostly they appeared to imagine he came from Carrick-on-Shannon or somewhere about in the county Sligo.”

Who’s to say what god is or from where god hails but the county Sligo which I’m sure is otherwise lovely in every respect, seems for this purpose a little.. well, maladroit.

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

© RUSSELL RAPHAEL 2021-2023

Chapeau and Hats Off!

Post Fifteen

To call Bloom an ad-man, a Maddison Avenue mad man, is to stretch a point. He’s no Don Draper. He sells a bit of newspaper space to local businesses keen to persuade Dubliners to part with hard earned cash. Yet he thinks like an ad-man, he appraises adverts as he goes through the day and significantly he’s cottoned onto the fact that sex sells, so he may yet have a career in the business; despite Molly’s pleas that he get a steady job. He would no doubt have approved of the natty strapline, If You Want To Get Ahead, Get A Hat, which apparently first appeared in the 1940s and has been rolled out on a regular basis ever since.

Bloom of course wears a hat. It might be a bowler we are not sure. At least not as sure as Joseph Strick was for the 1967 movie in which Milo O’Shea models a fine specimen. For at least early on in Calypso and Lotus Eaters we know it simply as a generic hat. As well as protecting Bloom from weather, clement and inclement, it is also a very useful secret repository for hidden notes and business cards.

Stephen’s headgear is rather more illuminated. Mulligan describes it as his ‘Latin quarter hat’ as he flings it to him in Telemachus. In Proteus Stephen thinks of it as his ‘Hamlet hat’ towards which the passing cockle-picker shoots a glance. We assume it to be black with a widish brim that may be manipulated as bohemian style dictates. Buck Mulligan sports a Panama, de rigour summer wear and indicating a more superior style altogether. Dapper too, like Blazes Boylan’s straw boater which in common with Bloom’s hails from John Plasto hatter, of number one, Brunswick Street.

Martin Cunningham and other mourners appropriately adorn silk, heresiarchs flee St. Michael, mitres awry and there’s an interesting phantasmagorical chap in Nighttown, mysterious in his sombrero. But enough of this, its 1904 Dublin, blokes wore hats. No big deal. Emphasis on blokes because this is the male version of the Ulysses Hat Blog; female and androgynous versions remain in gestation.

What might be of interest is what occurs when hats leave heads and I offer a mere four examples for your delectation

1.      Mr. Leopold Bloom wanders into the maternity hospital in Holles Street to enquire of the wellbeing of Mrs. Purefoy now in her third day of labour. Bloom enters; respectful, full of ruth, greets Nurse Callan, also full of ruth. Two decent sympathetic beings. Bloom naturally removes his hat. If we are to believe what Jimmy Joyce wrote in his explanatory letter of this unfathomable Oxen of the Sun episode (and it’s his book so why wouldn’t we?), the hospital is the womb and Bloom entering it represents the ejaculate so he removing his hat allows the sperm unfettered access to do its business. Just why Joyce considered the hospital to be the womb and Bloom the spermatozoon is the whole point of the Oxen of the Sun episode but that explanation with only a sideways glance to hats, is not for now.

2.      Mr. John Henry Menton holds his silk hat inside the gate of Glasnevin cemetery after paying last respects to the buried Paddy Dignam whom he employed in his solicitors office; until he sacked him. The Hades episode has already given us the measure of this nasty bitter man and we are intrigued as Bloom approaches. He points out that he has a crease in his hat probably having sat on it during the service. Some say that this is Bloom asserting some superiority by pointing out this chink in Menton’s armour. I don’t think so, rather Bloom is doing what comes naturally to him, the decent thing though it is accompanied by mischievous thought.

3.      Mr. Stephen Dedalus is punched to the ground by Private Carr. Bloom comes to his aid which includes retrieving Stephen’s Latin quarter/Hamlet hat as it rolls towards the wall. There Bloom sees an eleven year old boy and you know who he is. If you don’t, read the book, you’re in for a treat.

4.      Mr. Charles Stuart Parnell, uncrowned King of Ireland until he wasn’t, also loses his hat. It is knocked off in a scuffle at the offices of the United Ireland newspaper. Again it is Bloom, retriever Bloom, to the rescue and is rewarded with a ‘thank you’ just as some fifteen years later in 1904, Menton squeezes same words through gritted teeth. Parnell’s gratitude is it seems heartfelt, though we only have Bloom’s recollection as evidence of that and decent chap though he may be, he is prone to a little fantasy.

There we have it. No mind-blowing hat busting conclusions but no taking the pith helmet either, just some tall tales for tall hats.

Chapeau.

For more Ulysses idle thinking: www.russellraphael.com

© RUSSELL RAPHAEL 2021-2023