its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90 % of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon.
Episode 17. This episode is written entirely in the form of questions and answers. It is after two in the morning. Mr. Bloom has brought Stephen back to his house, and in the kitchen he turns on the tap to make cocoa for him.
What follows is a long catechism on Bloom’s knowledge of the properties of water, running to forty-three separate points.
This passage concerns the last four of them:
① its potential energy
② its fauna and flora
③ its ubiquity
④ its toxicity
“the waning moon” means the moon as it decreases from full moon toward new moon.
The opposite is “the waxing moon.”
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File:Tell-Whether-the-Moon-Is-Waxing-or-Waning-Step-9-Version-3.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
But why does the moon suddenly appear here?
I was not sure what to make of it.According to Gifford’s annotation, the waning moon symbolizes decline or decay on earth.So perhaps the idea is that the moon somehow presides over the corruption or putrefaction of stagnant waters.
That may sound rather far-fetched, but as I mentioned in Cast no. 60, Episode 17 is full of astronomical imagery, so in that sense it does fit.
A little later in the episode, the text explicitly links the moon with womanhood:
her constancy under all her phases, rising and setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning:
（U576.1162）
Another odd intrusion here is “flowerwater.”
What exactly is that doing in the middle of this quasi-scientific catalogue?
It refers to a perfumed water distilled from flower petals.
In Episode 4, Bloom notices on Molly a smell like old flower-water:
Her full lips, drinking, smiled. Rather stale smell that incense leaves next day. Like foul flowerwater.
—Would you like the window open a little?
（U52.316）
And then in Episode 5, Bloom goes into the chemist’s to order flower-water for Molly.
It turns out to be orangeflower water.
But he does not collect it that day.
—Sweet almond oil and tincture of benzoin, Mr Bloom said, and then orangeflower water...It certainly did make her skin so delicate white like wax.
—And white wax also, he said.
（U69.491）
Then again in Episode 15, in the hallucination sequence, Bloom excuses himself to Molly by saying that he was just going back to fetch it the next day:
BLOOM: I was just going back for that lotion whitewax, orangeflower water. Shop closes early on Thursday. But the first thing in the morning. (He pats divers pockets.) This moving kidney. Ah!
（U360.332）
So all through the day, the thought of stale orangeflower water has been lingering somewhere in the back of Bloom’s mind.
The blossom of the bitter orange, from which orangeflower water is made
File:Citrus aurantium - Köhler–s Medizinal-Pflanzen-042.jpg - Wikimedia Commons
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