Cast 79. Page 280, line 1805.
—Mendelssohn was a jew and Karl Marx and Mercadante and Spinoza. And the Saviour was a jew and his father was a jew. Your God.
—He had no father, says Martin. That’ll do now. Drive ahead.
—Whose God? says the citizen.
—Well, his uncle was a jew, says he. Your God was a jew. Christ was a jew like me.
Episode 12. Barney Kiernan’s pub. Bloom, sun of the Jewish father, gets into an argument with the bigoted nationalist known as “the Citizen.” Martin Cunningham, who has come to meet Bloom, is trying to get him into the carriage and away from the scene. This is where Bloom hurls back his parting abuse at the citizen.
The names Bloom rattles off here are, with the exception of Marx, all privileged proper names in this novel.
First, Spinoza. Baruch de Spinoza (1632–1677) was a Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Jewish descent, one of the great metaphysicians of the seventeenth century alongside Descartes and Leibniz.
Bloom has read Spinoza in one of his father’s books, and has talked to Molly about what it says.
Clove her breath was always in theatre when she bent to ask a question. Told her what Spinoza says in that book of poor papa’s. Hypnotised, listening. Eyes like that. She bent. Chap in dresscircle staring down into her with his operaglass for all he was worth.
In Episode 17, Bloom names Spinoza as one of the notable Jews.
Were other anapocryphal illustrious sons of the law and children of a selected or rejected race mentioned?
Felix Bartholdy Mendelssohn (composer), Baruch Spinoza (philosopher), Mendoza (pugilist), Ferdinand Lassalle (reformer, duellist).
(U563.722)
In Episode 17, when the contents of Bloom’s bookshelf are listed, a work by Spinoza appears there.
Thoughts from Spinoza (maroon leather).
In Episode 18, Molly in bed remembers Bloom talking about Spinoza at the theatre.
I was fit to be tied though I wouldnt give in with that gentleman of fashion staring down at me with his glasses and him the other side of me talking about Spinoza and his soul thats dead I suppose millions of years ago
Next, Mendelssohn. As in the passage quoted above, this is presumably the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809–1847). He also appeared in Cast 32. One of Bloom’s preferred composers.
In the hallucination scene of Episode 15, Bloom’s miraculous transformations turn him into a whole series of historical figures, among them Moses Mendelssohn. Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) was a German Jewish philosopher and the grandfather of Felix Mendelssohn.
(…contracts his face so as to resemble many historical personages, Lord Beaconsfield, Lord Byron, Wat Tyler, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, Moses Mendelssohn, Henry Irving, Rip van Winkle, Kossuth, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Baron Leopold Rothschild, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes, Pasteur, …)
Moses Mendelssohn is paired in this novel with Moses Maimonides, who appeared in Cast 56. Mendelssohn is also connected with Spinoza through the Pantheism Controversy, in which he became involved over whether his friend Lessing had been a Spinozist.
In Episode 17, Bloom names him as one of the great Jews.
Accepting the analogy implied in his guest’s parable which examples of postexilic eminence did he adduce?
Three seekers of the pure truth, Moses of Egypt, Moses Maimonides, author of More Nebukim (Guide of the Perplexed) and Moses Mendelssohn of such eminence that from Moses (of Egypt) to Moses (Mendelssohn) there arose none like Moses (Maimonides).
(U563.713)
And then Mercadante. Saverio Mercadante (1795–1870) was an Italian composer, prolific especially in opera. Bloom praises Mercadante’s The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross (Le sette ultime parole di nostro Signore sulla croce). The problem is that Mercadante was not Jewish.
Some of that old sacred music splendid. Mercadante: seven last words. Mozart’s twelfth mass: Gloria in that.
Saverio Mercadante
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mercadante-young-b-w.jpg
In Episode 11 too, Bloom thinks of Mercadante.
Molly in quis est homo: Mercadante. My ear against the wall to hear. Want a woman who can deliver the goods.
In Episode 16, Bloom talks music with Stephen. He says he likes Mercadante’s The Huguenots and Meyerbeer’s The Seven Last Words on the Cross, but he has the two composers mixed up. Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864) was a German opera composer — and it is Meyerbeer, not Mercadante, who was of Jewish background.
Wagnerian music, though confessedly grand in its way, was a bit too heavy for Bloom and hard to follow at the first go-off but the music of Mercadante’s Huguenots, Meyerbeer’s Seven Last Words on the Cross and Mozart’s Twelfth Mass he simply revelled in, the Gloria in that being, to his mind, the acme of first class music as such, literally knocking everything else into a cocked hat.
Elsewhere in Episode 11, Bloom again confuses Meyerbeer and Mercadante. He is, as so often, knowledgeable but a little slapdash.
Bloom viewed a gallant pictured hero in Lionel Marks’s window. Robert Emmet’s last words. Seven last words. Of Meyerbeer that is.
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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giacomo_Meyerbeer_Kriehuber_(cropped).jpg
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