Homage to Nora - Concluding Joyce's Triumphant Tale of Heroes with Penelope aka Molly Bloom

Molly Bloom, is the main female voice in Joyce's Ulysses, finishing off the epic tale in her own more intimate style.

Joyce's Ulysses has three main protagonists, we start with the brilliant but moody Stephen Delgas, then we enter Bloom's world which is more stable & mature.

Fortunately, our anti-hero Bloom is no prig, he is worldly wise and can still enjoy earthly pleasures, he even embraces the infantile: one of the surprises of Ulysses is how much you learn about his bowel movements throughout Bloom's day!

But the last words go to Molly (Mrs Bloom), there is something wonderfully touching about her long and sometimes rambling monologue. She goes from melancholy to romance, to excitement, to disobedience, to finally reconciliation and love.  

Many essays and even whole books have been written about how Joyce based his fictional heroine on his mistress Nora Barnacle (much later became Nora Joyce), who Joyce absolutely worshipped. 

Nora Barnacle (21 March 1884 – 10 April 1951) was the muse and wife of Irish author James Joyce.

"Well, Jim, I haven't read any of your books but I'll have to someday because they must be good considering how well they sell."

Dictionary of Quotations, p. 452, To her husband James Joyce, Recalled on her death, 12 April 1951

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Nora_Barnacle

Joyce was madly in love with Nora, and his ideas were extremely progressive in 1922 and some still are radical in 2022.

Although Joyce was recognised as a literary genius in his own lifetime and he never got delusions of grandeur and never attempted to become a saint. I think he understood human frailty & imperfectability at a very deep level, and that is why I expect he wasn't deluded by his literary genius status?

Getting back to Joyce's muse, one of Nora Barnacle's currently more popular and funny quotes

 "What do you think ... of a book with a big, fat, horrible married woman as the heroine?"

I feel I've heard this multiple times in 2022, and it shows plenty of wit if a bit harsh.

The main goodreads quote for Nora is also very funny

“I go to bed and then that man sits in the next room and continues laughing about his own writing. And then I knock at the door, and I say, now Jim, stop writing or stop laughing.” 

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/6884195.Nora_Barnacle

  

So the closing words Ulysses goto Molly, based on Penelope, and I believe this more carnal and femine section is what excited Marilyn Monroe, who can still be seen reading Ulysses, the internet is awash with images like this 

Penelope (/pəˈnɛləpiː/ pə-NEL-ə-pee; Greek: Πηνελόπεια, Pēnelópeia, or Greek: Πηνελόπη, Pēnelópē) is a character in Homer's Odyssey. She was the queen of Ithaca and was the daughter of Spartan king Icarius and naiad Periboea. Penelope is known for her fidelity to her husband Odysseus, despite the attention of more than a hundred suitors during his absence.

What did Shaw think of Ulysses, behind the mock horror he loved it!

George Bernard Shaw (Nobel prize 1925 and author of Pygmalion, which was adapted into the iconic musical My Fair Lady) wrote in an early review to Sylvia Beach (the publisher & owner of the Paris-based Shakespeare & Company) these very funny lines:

‘It is a revolting record of a disgusting phase of civilisation; but it is a truthful one; and I should like to put a cordon-round Dublin; round up every male person in it between the ages of 15 and 30; force them to read it; and ask them whether on reflection they could see anything amusing in all that fouled mouthed, foul minded derision and obscenity. 

Clearly, there is more than a hint of mock horror, Shaw does seem to be both shocked and intrigued. He will of appreciated that his more mainstream audience would have expected him to disapprove of this banned work. 

But also Shaw clearly sees the literary merit:

To you, possibly, it may appeal as art: you are probably (you see I don’t know you) a young barbarian – beglamoured by the-excitements and enthusiasms that art stirs up in passionate material; but to me it is all hideously real: I have walked those streets and know those shops and have heard-and taken part in those conversations...’

https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/letter-from-george-bernard-shaw-responding-to-james-joyces-ulysses

Apparently Shaw much later (1939 and well after the British and US bans had been lifted) publicly conceded that Joyce was a literary genius: "Ulysses as a masterpiece". The British Library also mentions that Joyce loved the original notariety

Shaw’s response highly amused Joyce, and he had this copy made to share with Weaver. Shaw’s original copy of the prospectus is also held by the British Library.

So what did Shaw first think of Ulysses, behind the mock horror of the banned book, it seems to me that he was also entranced and in awe of Ulysses. 

To be honest, while we are probably a lot harder to shock in 2022 than 1922, but there are parts of the book I am still a bit icky to read? Not the sexual content and sexual fantasy, which are both fascinating and highly entertaining, but mostly Joyce's characters' private lives are quite sensitively and compelling told. 

My problem with Joyce is the reoccurring references to his various bowel problems... I struggle a bit with musical farting, Joyce does seem to be appealing to the frat-boy market? 

Still in the name of openness, that is okay, just not to my taste... his S&M fantasy seems pretty hardcore too, plus that is pure fantasy, unfortunately, I fear Joyce (and many Dubliners) really did have a lot of bowel problems in 1922?

NB I love the light in this Yousuf Karsh portrait of George Bernard Shaw

Karsh captures Shaw as a great thinker and granddaddy of the  Fabian Society (a more liberal, social democratic form of socialism).

I was once lucky enough, in the summer of 1989, to attend a lecture in Ottawa by this legendary Canadian portrait photographer. I was taken away by the exhibition while backpacking across North America and decided to stay a few extra days in Ottawa (a fine city, although the hostel I was staying in was a converted prison and the noise at night was terrible... another story), too catch Karsh's public lecture.

Joyce's great European novel and that queer fellow in Barcelona

I've been dipping in and out of Joyce's Ulysses for the last six months.

While the original text is sometimes a bit hard to follow,  with Joyce's "mischievous and obscurantist style", it is also incredibly rich and really grows on you.

Also, there are now a wealth of resources to mark it more accessible, from reading guides, an unabridged radio play version (free thanks to RTE) and university lecture courses (which you can now follow online)... 

Once you get into Ulysses it is a very rich world, and one of the commentators was discussing that every time they read (three times over 25 years?) it means something different to them. This got me thinking: what stands out to me?

A few months ago, I wrote a short piece about the connection to Amsterdam and in particular to Spinoza, whom Bloom, with his Irish-Jewish background is a fan of Spinoza. I can see this and feel this connection to Amsterdam and Spinoza, as I've been living in Amsterdam for the last 12 years, my grandparents on my mother's side were Hungarian Jews, who after World War II ended up as refugees in Amsterdam. I'm also a fan of Spinoza and his focus on the cultural element of religion and his campaigning for greater toleration of different cultural and religious practices.

Interesting it turns out that Molly Bloom also has a vague Irish-Jewish background, being born in Gibtrala to a Jewish mother, Lunita Laredo who is mentioned briefly by name in Molly's soliloquy  

$ cat -n Ulysses-Jame-Joyce-1922.txt | grep -B2 -A2 Lunita
 32041 wouldnt go mad about either or suppose I divorced him Mrs Boylan my
 32042 mother whoever she was might have given me a nicer name the Lord knows
 32043 after the lovely one she had Lunita Laredo the fun we had running along
 32044 Williss road to Europa point twisting in and out all round the other
 32045 side of Jersey they were shaking and dancing about in my blouse like

this is very much towards the end of the book (line 32043 out of 32856), just before Molly's climactic ending and Bloom's homecoming,  and I believe emotional reconciliation with Molly ...

 32851 red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well
 32852 as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again
 32853 yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and
 32854 first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could
 32855 feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and
 32856 yes I said yes I will Yes.
 32857
 32858 Trieste-Zurich-Paris
 32859

One of the recurring themes in Ulysses which stands out to me in 2022 (my first reading) is that it is a very European novel

  1021 —After all, I should think you are able to free yourself. You are your
  1022 own master, it seems to me.
  1023
  1024 —I am a servant of two masters, Stephen said, an English and an
  1025 Italian.
  1026
  1027 —Italian? Haines said.
  1028
  1029 A crazy queen, old and jealous. Kneel down before me.
  1030
  1031 —And a third, Stephen said, there is who wants me for odd jobs.
  1032
  1033 —Italian? Haines said again. What do you mean?
  1034
  1035 —The imperial British state, Stephen answered, his colour rising, and
  1036 the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church.

There aren't too many British-English characters, Haines is a racist fool:

  1065  —Of course I’m a Britisher, Haines’s voice said, and I feel as one. I
  1066  don’t want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either.
  1067  That’s our national problem, I’m afraid, just now.

While Deasy is Irish, apparently he can describe as a "West Briton"

The more hardcore Irish nationalists of the era saw West Brits like Mr. Deasy as traitors and heretics. https://www.bloomsandbarnacles.com/blog/2018/12/24/deasy-of-west-britain

and he is another racist fool, with probably the worst joke in the whole of Ulysses

  1845 —I just wanted to say, he said. Ireland, they say, has the honour of
  1846 being the only country which never persecuted the jews. Do you know
  1847 that? No. And do you know why?
  1848
  1849 He frowned sternly on the bright air.
  1850
  1851 —Why, sir? Stephen asked, beginning to smile.
  1852
  1853 —Because she never let them in, Mr Deasy said solemnly.
  1854
  1855 A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a
  1856 rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing,

one of my favourite of Bloom's lines is "There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer fellow"

  2155 irlandais, nous, Irlande, vous savez ah, oui!_ She thought you wanted a
  2157 Postprandial. There was a fellow I knew once in Barcelona, queer
  2158 fellow, used to call it his postprandial. Well: _slainte!_ Around the
  2159 slabbed tables the tangle of wined breaths and grumbling gorges. His
  2160 breath hangs over our saucestained plates, the green fairy’s fang

  2156 cheese _hollandais_. Your postprandial, do you know that word?

obviously, Joyce meant queer as in the eccentric and not in the full LGBTQ sense, but I still like the double-entendre here and it intrigues me what happened to this query man in Barcelona:
* just why and in what way(s) was he a bit (or very) queer?
* also as far as a I can tell, our queer friend in Barcelona doesn't pop up anywhere else in Ulysses?  

Still from the extracts above, it seems to me that Joyce was absolutely in favour of greater European integration and toleration (religious toleration and seeing religion as a cultural tradition are major themes in Bloom's intellectual idol Spinoza, a 17th century Amsterdam Jewish philosopher).

This from another key moment in Ulysses, Bloom's argument with the citizen

 16781  Alf and Joe at him to whisht and he on his high horse about the jews
 16782  and the loafers calling for a speech and Jack Power trying to get him
 16783  to sit down on the car and hold his bloody jaw and a loafer with a
 16784  patch over his eye starts singing _If the man in the moon was a jew,
 16785  jew, jew_ and a slut shouts out of her:
 16786
 16787  —Eh, mister! Your fly is open, mister!
 16788
 16789  And says he:
 16790
 16791  —Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And
 16792  the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.
 16793
 16794  —He had no father, says Martin. That’ll do now. Drive ahead.
 16795
 16796  —Whose God? says the citizen.

The Citizen, is an Irish nationalist and another racist ...

The Citizen is a character encountered by Leopold Bloom in Barney Kiernan's pub in the Cyclops episode of Ulysses (episode 12). He is to be found in said pub with his everpresent dog, Garryowen, whom he speaks to in Irish. When Leopold Bloom enters the pub, he is berated by the Citizen, who is a fierce Fenian and anti-Semite. The episode ends with Bloom reminding the Citizen that his Saviour was a Jew. As Bloom leaves the pub, the Citizen, in anger, throws a biscuit tin at Bloom's head, but misses. The chapter is marked by extended tangents made outside the voice of the unnamed narrator: hyperboles of legal jargon, Biblical passages, Irish mythology, etc. It is thought that the character of the Citizen may be based on Michael Cusack [Mícheál Ó Cíosóg], the founder of the GAA (Gaelic Athletic Association).

https://www.goodreads.com/characters/47073-the-citizen

So there seem to be a lot of anti-Semites in Joyce's Dublin, probably the one thing which would unite the odious Deasy, Hanes and Citizen? 

But the last word goes, to his wife Molly, who knows and loves her husband so deeply, including all Bloom's foibles and fancies 

 32318  Im let wait O Jesus wait yes that thing has come on me yes now wouldnt
 32319  that afflict you of course all the poking and rooting and ploughing he
 32320  had up in me now what am I to do Friday Saturday Sunday wouldnt that
 32321  pester the soul out of a body unless he likes it some men do God knows
 32322  theres always something wrong with us 5 days every 3 or 4 weeks usual
 32323  monthly auction isnt it simply sickening that night it came on me like
 32324  that the one and only time we were in a box that Michael Gunn gave him
 32325  to see Mrs Kendal and her husband at the Gaiety something he did about
 32326  insurance for him in Drimmies I was fit to be tied though I wouldnt
 32327  give in with that gentleman of fashion staring down at me with his
 32328  glasses and him the other side of me talking about Spinoza and his soul
 32329  thats dead I suppose millions of years ago I smiled the best I could
 32330  all in a swamp leaning forward as if I was interested having to sit it
 32331  out then to the last tag I wont forget that wife of Scarli in a hurry
 32332  supposed to be a fast play about adultery that idiot in the gallery
 32333  hissing the woman adulteress he shouted I suppose he went and had a