That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee
Tenth cast. page 338, line 1075.
That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee—and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.
Episode 14 traces the history of English prose style from the past to the present through pastiche. This passage is considered to be in the style of the English essayist Charles Lamb (1775-1834).
The word "loins" is a euphemism for reproductive organs in the Bible..
Mr. Bloom's name was Leopold. His father's name was Rudolph. Mr. Bloom's son was also Rudolph, and he died at 11 days old.
At the end of the first volume of the Japanese translation of Ulysses in the Shueisha paperback edition, there is a commentary by the German literature scholar Osamu Ikeuchi. According to him, "Eastern European Jews liked to name their children after kings and lurers.” Mr. Blum's father was a Jew from Hungary. Both Rudolph and Leopold are names of Habsburg emperors.
In this passage, Mr. Bloom is remembering the old days. I think it is close to the nostalgic passages in Lamb’s Essays of Elia (1823).
"Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that, being nothing, art every thing! When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity—then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou called'st it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern!"
“Oxford in the Vacation”
Charles Lamb
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