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
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 ...
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
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:
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
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"
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
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
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).
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
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
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