23 (U510.432)

The face at the window!

23rd cast. page 510, line432.

 

The face at the window! Judge of his astonishment when he finally did breast the tape and the awful truth dawned upon him anent his better half, wrecked in his affections. You little expected me but I’ve come to stay and make a fresh start.

 

Episode 16. Midnight. After leaving the brothel, Mr. Bloom comes to a cabman's shelter to take care of drunken Stephen. There he listens to a sailor who calls himself Murphy. This passage is a description of Mr. Bloom's mind.

 

In Ulysses, each episode uses a different style and technique, and it is a pleasure to savor them. When I read through the book for the first time, I liked the style of Episode 16.

 

The narrative uses difficult phrases to describe trivial matters, uses foreign words more than usual, and uses many clichéd idioms and proverbs. The effect is curious, as if someone lacking literary talent is trying to elaborate rhetorical phrases, or an amateur is trying to write a learned text. Why did Joyce adopt this style of writing?

 

In this passage, too, the words are slightly out of sync with what is intended, making it a bad sentence that is difficult to grasp. “Truth” ,“fact” and its derivatives, are often used in this episode. The ironic effect is that we don't know the truth or facts at all.

 

Now, Mr. Bloom hears a story from a sailor who hasn't been home for seven years, and he fantasizes about the scene of his return.

 

The husband, who has been absent from home for a long time due to some reason such as a voyage or going off to war, returns unexpectedly to his wife. The wife may even be living with another man.... These incidents have happened in real life and have been featured in fiction many times.

 

Ben Bolt (1843), poem by Thomas Dunn English, music by Nelson Kneass (U510.425)  →　youtube

 

Alfred Tennyson's poem Enoch Arden (1864) (U510.425)

 

Washington Irving's short story Rip Van Winkle (1819) (U510.426)

 

“Tichborne case”, an incident that took place in England in the 1860s and 1870s (U531.1343)

 

These are mentioned in Ulysses.

 

I can also think of

 

"Martin Guerre case" occurred in 16th century France.

 (Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre,1983)

 

Nathaniel Hawthorne's novels Wakefield (1835) and The Scarlet Letter (1850)

 

Balzac's novel Colonel Chabert (1832)

 

Somerset Maugham's play Too ManyHusbands (1923)

 

In the first place, The Odyssey, which underlies Ulysses, is the story of Odysseus who went to war and returns to his wife Penelopeia after many years of itinerancy, and this framework is an important motif of the novel.

Poster for Enoch Arden

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Enoch_Arden_(1911_film).jpg?uselang=ja

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