16 (U444.3236)

 VOICES: (Sighing.)

16th cast. page 444, line 3236.

    VOICES: (Sighing.) So he’s gone. Ah yes. Yes, indeed. Bloom? Never heard of him. No? Queer kind of chap. There’s the widow. That so? Ah, yes.

　(From the suttee pyre the flame of gum camphire ascends. The pall of incense smoke screens and disperses. Out of her oakframe a nymph with hair unbound, lightly clad in teabrown artcolours, descends from her grotto and passing under interlacing yews stands over Bloom.)

Episode 15 is written in the form of a play. Illusion and reality take turns to appear. In Bella Cohen's brothel, Bloom has just been sentenced to death by Bella, who has been transformed into a man.

 

Suttee is an Indian Hindu custom in which a wife is cremated alive with her husband's corpse. Mr. Bloom was thinking about this practice in Episode 6. (U84.548)

 

The woodpile for martyrdom reminds me of the scene in the last act of Wagner's Twilight of the Gods, where Brunnhilde jumps into the woodpile burning Siegfried. I wonder if there is a connection between Hindu customs and Norse mythology.

 

I have no idea what "gum camphire" is. I assume it is a flame made of solid camphor.

 

The nymph is a picture hanging in Mr. Bloom's bedroom. It is a framed copy of a weekly magazine supplement. It appeared in Episode 4. This nymph corresponds to the goddess Calypso, who lives in a cave on the island of Augur, in correspondence with Homer's Odyssey. The trees on her island, the fragrance of the incense trees, the intertwining vines, her beautiful hair, and her long, thin robe are all reflected here.

 

"He (Mercury) flew and flew over many a weary wave, but when at last he got to the island which was his journey’s end, he left the sea and went on by land till he came to the cave where the nymph Calypso lived.
    He found her at home. There was a large fire burning on the hearth, and one could smell from far the fragrant reek of burning cedar and sandal wood. …　 A vine loaded with grapes was trained and grew luxuriantly about the mouth of the cave;"

"Ulysses put on his shirt and cloak, while the goddess wore a dress of a light gossamer fabric, very fine and graceful, with a beautiful golden girdle about her waist and a veil to cover her head."

 Homer, The Odyssey, (book V), translated by Samuel Butler

Because of its long life span and year-round blue leaves, the yew is often planted in cemeteries in Europe as a tree that symbolizes "immortality of the soul" and “rebirth”. The yew appears because it is the scene of Bloom's death in the fantasy.

Suttee 

 "Suttee, with Lord Hastings shown as accepting bribes to allow its continuation. Coloured aquatint by T. Rowlandson, 1815, after Quiz." is licensed under CC BY 4.0

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