8 (U18.665)

The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind:

Eighth cast. Page 18, line 665.

 

The void awaits surely all them that weave the wind: a menace, a disarming and a worsting from those embattled angels of the church, Michael’s host, who defend her ever in the hour of conflict with their lances and their shields.

 Hear, hear! Prolonged applause. Zut! Nom de Dieu!

 

Episode 1. Stephen's thoughts in Martello Tower, where he lives. His roommate, Malachi Mulligan, a medical student, and  a visitor Haines, an Englishman, make fun of his faith, so he compares them to heretics and fantasizes about an army of angels eliminating the heretics. The "weave the wind" would be the words of the heretics. He, too, is supposed to have renounced his faith, so he comes back to himself and spits out this fantasy.

 

Nom de Dieu means "name of a god" in French, but for some reason this is a curse. In this novel, the names of gods are mentioned abundantly. Stephen escaped Dublin for a while and went to Paris to study.

 

Episodes 1-3 with Stephen and Episodes 4-6 with Mr. Bloom take place in the same time period, and there is a similarity of motifs between these three episodes. The Archangel Michael is mentioned in episode 5, in a prayer in the church that Mr. Bloom enters. (U68.443)

 

"-Blessed Michael, archangel, defend us in the hour of conflict. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil (may God restrain him, we humbly pray!):"


"Void" and "weave" are key words in Ulysses. In this passage, "void" and "weave" intersect.

 

Let me pick up "void" first.

 

the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro and microcosm, upon the void.”(U170.842

 

Tom Rochford, winner, in athletes singlet and breeches, arrives at the head of the national hurdle handicap and leaps into the void.  ”(U488.4674

 

He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational reagent between a micro and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the incertitude of the void.”(U572.1015

 

"That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void."U572.1020

 

"universes of void space constellated with other bodies"U573.1064

 

 For this novel, the world seems to be built on a bottomless void.

 

Next, pick up "weave”.

 

a riddling sentence to be woven and woven on the churchs looms. ”(U22.87

 

The harlot’s cry from street to street

Shall weave old Englands windingsheet.”(U28.356U487.4642) 

                                    A quote from a poem by William Blake

 

As we, or mother Dana, weave and unweave our bodies, Stephen said, from day to day, their molecules shuttled to and fro, so does the artist weave and unweave his image. ”(U119.376

 

wove music slow”(U231.926

 

In this novel, the repetition of various motifs is woven into the storyline. The creations by the God and the artists are seen as things to be woven.

 

Penelope, the wife of Odysseus, weaves the loom.

 

Joyce's supporter and the mother of Ulysses is Harriet Shaw Weaver (1876 - 1961) the English feminist and publisher.



Archangel Michael


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