Ulysses (James Joyce) - A literary discussion

[Mister Micawber]

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Me too-- those case endings are an intrinsic part of Latin, though. We'll have to wait for MrP to let us know if JJ played with the Latin too for alliterative purposes, or just quoted something from his Jesuit past. My Latin is limited to "Veni, vidi, vici".
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Native English teacher at Mister Micawber's

[Haihao]

My Latin is limited to vice versa. :) BTW, some source says the meaning of et unam sanctam catholicam et apostolicam ecclesiam is somewhere around: The Church of the Apostles believing in the only most sacred.

And, I'm also interested in the part that follows the above:

[MrPedantic]

[MrPedantic]

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3. I think S. here perceives a resemblance between three phenomena: i) the evolution of ritual and dogma ii) the evolution of his own unusual habits of thought iii) the processes involved in the formation and evolution of stars.

4. I would take this as a reference to voices singing Palestrina's Mass for Pope Marcellus. Joyce was a musician; early music such as the choral works of Palestrina had become better known, around the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century.

5. The "stranger" I take to be Haines: a "stranger" in the less common senses "visitor" and "foreigner". Buck's jocular words on the Son's "striving to be atoned" with the Father resemble Sabellius's heresy.

6. I think "the void" implies both a Dantesque void, which awaits mockers and those who utter idle words, and an inner wasteland, of the kind that Eliot made familiar.

("Weaving the wind" has a Biblical air, as a metaphor for futile activity; it also turns up in Eliot's Gerontion. While "Arius, warring his life long upon the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, and Valentine, spurning Christ's terrene body, and the subtle African heresiarch Sabellius who held that the Father was Himself His own Son" seems to prefigure Borges.)

Best wishes,

MrP

[Haihao]

Hello MrP, Good evening!

I have another one to ask for your (MP, MM, etc.) ever informative and insightful comments.

[Mister Micawber]

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1 (and 2)--I think it is just Stephen's inner sarcasm directed toward Haines's remark ('We feel in England that we have treated you rather unfairly')-- of course, in a mock-British tone.

2-- If there are overtones of the Mass, it has gone over this atheist's head.
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Native English teacher at Mister Micawber's

[Haihao]

[Haihao]

Is this again a Joycean event?

[MrPedantic]

Hello Haihao,

3. Yes, I think that's it: the corpse announces its presence to the searching vessel with the "here I am!" of a game of hide-and-seek.

4. I think "up the pole" here means "pregnant" (cf. "up the stick", "up the junction", "up the duff").

5. In classical epic, warriors typically lift boulders to hurl at one another "that ten men in our day couldn't lift". The key to the tower has a similarly Homeric quality. (It is a tiny precursor of magic realism.)

6. I think that would be a fair interpretation. It also has a weary note, to my mind, as if Stephen finds all that dressing and undressing faintly futile.

7. I would say so, yes.

8. Likewise!

9. Probably not Hamlet and Telemachus, who deal with usurpers; but certainly Buck, who has usurped the tower, Stephen's money, his handkerchief, etc.; and by association Haines, representative of usurping England.

As a footnote to #1: the "Hear hear" and "prolonged applause" recall the accounts in Hansard of parliamentary debates. "Zut!" and "Nom de Dieu!" are presumably the ejaculations of Britain's appalled (or impressed) rival powers.

All the best,

MrP

[Haihao]

Hello MrP, good evening and wish you have a very pleasant weekend!

[MrPedantic]

Hello Haihao, a pleasant weekend to you too!

1. I would take Armstrong's profile as "silly glee in profile", from S's point of view, since he has "looked round" towards the class; like the profile of a gleeful jester. (Presumably the classmates face the front and Stephen.)

2. The boys' un-innocent faces reflect their encounters with "Edith", etc. (representative female names).

3. I would say: "Tonight, amid wild talk and drinking, I shall cunningly introduce my aphorism about the pier into the conversation, to pierce the resistant chain-mail of Haines's mind; who will then add it to his collection of my aphorisms [chapbook]."

See you later,

MrP

[Haihao]

[Haihao]

Hello MrP,

My Sunday breakfast seems to be this one with coffee:

[MrPedantic]

Yes, I find it confusing too. I can see that the choice of A rather than B ousts infinite possibilities; but not why Caesar should be "lodged in the room" of those possibilities; unless "in the room of" is used here with the now obsolete (but suitably Elizabethan) sense "in place of".

Best wishes,

MrP

[Haihao]

I see. Your comment really made me ponder on them again a lot and long... I would now like to make some wildest guesses:

a. Both Pyrrhus and Caesar were murdered. Therefore, they were fettered by the event (murder) and consequently 'lodged' in the room of actuality. On the other hand, at the moment the ousted possibilities were ousted of possibilities because of the event, they became impossibilites which were fixed or actualized at the same moment so that they were inevitably doomed to be the roommates of their counterparts to be lodged in the same room of actuality.

b. Because Pyrrhus and Caesar no longer existed, they were ousted of the infinite possibilities from that moment, so they could but become the members among the unrealized possibilities which they ousted themselves and have to lodge themselves in that room (with a sense of "in place of")

Sorry for these crazy and unreadable thoughts.

And,