93 (U331.773) But indeed, sir, I wander from the point.

 Cast 93. Page 331, line 773.

But indeed, sir, I wander from the point. How mingled and imperfect are all our sublunary joys. Maledicity! he exclaimed in anguish. Would to God that foresight had but remembered me to take my cloak along! I could weep to think of it. Then, though it had poured seven showers, we were neither of us a penny the worse. But beshrew me, he cried, clapping hand to his forehead, tomorrow will be a new day and, thousand thunders, I know of a marchand de capotes, Monsieur Poyntz, from whom I can have for a livre as snug a cloak of the French fashion as ever kept a lady from wetting.

Episode 14. The setting is the common room of the National Maternity Hospital. Stephen Dedalus, Leopold Bloom, and the medical students are eating, drinking, and talking together. Malachi Mulligan, Stephen’s housemate, has met his friend Alec Bannon on the street after Bannon returned to Dublin from Mullingar, and the two of them have come in here together. This is part of Bannon’s speech.

Episode 14 is constructed as a sequence of stylistic imitations tracing the history of English prose from the past to the present. This passage is said to parody the style of Laurence Sterne, the eighteenth-century English novelist best known for The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, specifically his A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy (1768). That work is a travel narrative based on Sterne’s experiences during several journeys in France.

Bloom’s daughter Milly Bloom has only just turned fifteen, but is already living away from home and working at a photographer’s shop in Mullingar, County Westmeath. And Bannon is seeing Milly.

A conversation between Haines and Malachi Mulligan, who live with Stephen:

　—Is the brother with you, Malachi?

　—Down in Westmeath. With the Bannons.

　—Still there? I got a card from Bannon. Says he found a sweet young thing down there. Photo girl he calls her.

　—Snapshot, eh? Brief exposure.

(U18.682)

A passage from Milly’s letter to Bloom:

There is a young student comes here some evenings named Bannon his cousins or something are big swells・・・

(U54,407)

I looked up “Maledicity!” but could not really pin it down. “Maledict” means something like accursed, or under a curse, so perhaps it is roughly equivalent to “Curse it!”

“Would to God that …” is a literary expression meaning “if only …”.

“Cloak” means a cloak or overcoat, but here it is clearly being used as a euphemistic way of referring to a condom.

“Thousand thunders” does not seem to appear in the dictionary either. It feels much like “by thunder!”—something along the lines of “Good Lord!”, “Really!”, or “Damn it all!” Since there appears to be a thunderstorm outside, perhaps thunder is actually sounding in the scene.

“Capote” is a French word. It can mean (1) a hooded military coat, or (2) a condom. Like “cloak” above, it carries the secondary meaning of condom here.

As is well known, in Britain a condom used to be called a “French letter,” while in France it was called a “capote anglaise,” an “English coat.”

In the end, I think this passage simply means that Bannon is regretting not having had a condom with him, and lamenting that he might otherwise have slept with Milly.

Bloom is sitting there with them, but he does not realize that this man is Bannon, nor that the girl he is involved with is his own daughter.

So what is Sterne’s prose actually like? I flipped through A Sentimental Journey and the following passage seems to me to come closest in atmosphere to the one under discussion here.

The worst fault which divines and the doctors of the Sorbonne can allege against it is, that if there is but a capfull of wind in or about Paris, ’tis more blasphemously sacre Dieu’d there than in any other aperture of the whole city,—and with reason good and cogent, Messieurs; for it comes against you without crying garde d’eau, and with such unpremeditable puffs, that of the few who cross it with their hats on, not one in fifty but hazards two livres and a half, which is its full worth.

Laurence Sterne, THE FRAGMENT PARIS, A Sentimental Journey through France and Italy

Since it is a French travel narrative, the sprinkling of French is certainly similar. I searched Sterne’s work for some of the unusual turns of phrase that appear in today’s passage, but most of them do not really occur there. In terms of vocabulary and actual sentence texture, the resemblance does not seem all that close to me.

The use of dashes in dialogue, and the blending of speech with narrative prose, are techniques common to Joyce’s fiction in general, so perhaps Sterne’s influence is indeed there.

Laurence Sterne

　　　　　　　　
Joseph Nollekens | Laurence Sterne (1713–1768) | British | The Metropolitan Museum of Art (metmuseum.org)

For the method of this blog, see ☞ Here

47 (U340.1174)

However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him

47th cast. page 340, line 1174.

 

　However, as a matter of fact though, the preposterous surmise about him being in some description of a doldrums or other or mesmerised which was entirely due to a misconception of the shallowest character, was not the case at all. The individual whose visual organs while the above was going on were at this juncture commencing to exhibit symptoms of animation was as astute if not astuter than any man living and anybody that conjectured the contrary would have found themselves pretty speedily in the wrong shop.

 

Episode 14. The location is the lounge of the National Maternity Hospital. Stephen, Mr Bloom and medical students are eating, drinking and chatting.

 

Episode14 traces the stylistic history of English prose from the past to the present in a stylistic parody. This section is said to be written in the style of the English historian and politician, Thomas Babington Macaulay (1800 - 1859), author of The History of England.

 

This is just a roundabout way of saying that "Mr. Bloom appeared to be in a haze, but in fact he was clearly conscious".

 

The original meaning of “Doldrums” is tropical windless zone or windless conditions over the equatorial seas, but it can also mean a dull, listless, depressed mood.

 

“Mesmerize” is a term derived from Franz Anton Mesmer (1734 - 1815), meaning “to hypnotise”. Mesmer was a German physician and proponent of the animal magnetism theory. His theory was the basis for the development of hypnosis.

 

Gifford notes that “Doldrums” is a word associated with the story of The Odyssey, on which the motif of Ulysses is based. I see. If so, “Mesmerize” is also related to The Odyssey, as it evokes the Sirens, sea demons who seduce voyagers with their singing voices.

 

The words “sleepwalking” and “hypnotise” occur many times in the novel. (see 17th issues of the blog)

 

Mr. Bloom is staring at the red triangle on the Bass brand of beer when he seemed to go into a haze. What was he thinking? I think the Bass reminded Mr. Bloom of his wife Molly's reference to fat Ben Dollard's voice as bass barreltone. This theme appears in (U126.117-120), (U222.559 - mentioned in 19th issue of the blog), (U232,1011), (U425.2610) and (U636.1285),  

 

Mr. Bloom is not asleep but noticed that Lenehan is urging him to pour a beer into his glass.

 

I searched online and looked for long and wiggly passages from Macaulay‘s writings, such as the passages featured in this issue of blog. This is something similar in a way:

 

If the change of Pitt's sentiments attracted peculiar notice, it was not because he changed more than his neighbours; for in fact he changed less than most of them; but because his position was far more conspicuous than theirs, because he was, till Bonaparte appeared, the individual who filled the greatest space in the eyes of the inhabitants of the civilised world.    William Pitt, (1859)

 

Macaulay‘s writings seem to be more readable than one might expect, although sentences are sometimes long, and not as far-fetched as Joyce's parody.

Thomas Macaulay

File:John Watson Gordon (1788-1864) - Thomas Babington (1800–1859), 1st Baron Macaulay, Historian and Statesman - PG 1585 - National Galleries of Scotland.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

The method of this blog ⇒ Here

34 (U341.1231)

There may be, it is true, some questions which science cannot answer

34th cast. page 341, line 1231.

 

There may be, it is true, some questions which science cannot answer—at present—such as the first problem submitted by Mr L. Bloom (Pubb. Canv.) regarding the future determination of sex. Must we accept the view of Empedocles of Trinacria that the right ovary （the postmenstrual period, assert others）is responsible for the birth of males or are the too long neglected spermatozoa or nemasperms the differentiating factors or is it, as most embryologists incline to opine, such as Culpepper, Spallanzani, Blumenbach, Lusk, Hertwig, Leopold and Valenti, a mixture of both?

 

Episode 14. The place is the lounge of the National Maternity Hospital. Stephen, Mr. Bloom and medical students are chatting.

 

Episode 14 traces the stylistic history of English prose by means of stylistic imitations. This section is based on the style of the scientific writings of Thomas Henry Huxley (1825 - 1895).

 

What is Pubb. Canv.?

 

Since this is a parody of a scientific paper, Public Canvasser is abbreviated as if it were an academic title, just as Medicinae Universae Doctor is abbreviated as MUDr. Mr. Bloom's occupation is freelance ad taking. He appears to be commissioned by the newspaper to obtain vendors who wish to advertise in the newspaper and to create ad designs.

 

Empedocles (ca. 490 B.C. - ca. 430 B.C.) was a natural philosopher, physician, poet, and politician from Sicily. I am not sure if he had said something like this about sexual differentiation.

 

Searching around, it appears that his theories remains quoted in Aristotle's works. Looking at Aristotle's On tbe Generation of Animals, Empedocles' theories are cited in several places, but critically.

It is said by some, as by Anaxagoras and other of the physicists, that this antithesis exists from the beginning in the germs or seeds; for the germ, they say, comes from the male while the female only provides the place in which it is to be developed, and the male is from the right, the female from the left testis, and so also that the male embryo is in the right of the uterus, the female in the left. Others, as Empedocles, say that the differentiation takes place in the uterus; for he says that if the uterus is hot or cold what enters it becomes male or female, the cause of the heat or cold being the flow of the catamenia, according as it is colder or hotter, more ‘antique’ or more ‘recent’.

       Aristotle, On the Generation of Animals (BookⅣ), translated by Arthur Platt

Joyce might have transformed this passage.

In correspondence with the novel and the motif in The Odyssey, the maternity hospital is on the island of Trinakie, the island of the sun god. Trinakie Island - Trinacria  is another name for Sicily. Therefore, Empedocles was called in here.

Incidentally, Mr. Bloom states in Episode 15 that his right testicle is heavier and both are on the right side of his trousers. (U388.1300)

 

ZOE: 　How’s the nuts?

BLOOM: 　Off side. Curiously they are on the right. Heavier, I suppose. 

One in a million my tailor, Mesias, says.

All of the people listed are real scholars. I do not know if they supported the mixed theory.

Nicholas Culpeper　(1616 – 1654) 

English botanist, herbalist, physician and astrologer.

 

Lazzaro Spallanzani　(1729 - 1799)

Italian naturalist. Founder of laboratory zoology.

 

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach　(1752 - 1840）

German comparative anatomist, zoologist and anthropologist.

 

William Thompson Lusk　(1838 - 1897)

American obstetrician.

 

Oscar Hertwig 　(1849 – 1922 )

German Zoologist.

 

Christian Gerhard Leopold  (1846 - 1911)

German gynecologist.

 

Giulio Valenti　(1860 - 1933）

Italian physician and embryologist.

 

As I was writing this, I realized that combining "Blumenbach" and "Leopold" gives us the name of our main character, Leopold Bloom. So Joyce is playing a joke here.

 

In the seventh issue of this blog, I wrote that the novel Ulysses and Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey have a surprisingly large number of similarities.

 

In that movie, the spaceship Discovery, which sails the long way from Earth to Jupiter, is modeled after the shape of a sperm. The crew member, Bowman, becomes a embryo (star child) on his bed at the end of the film.

Meanwhile, regarding the conception of Episode 14 of the novel, Joyce stated in a letter to Frank Budgen, dated March 20, 1920. ” Bloom is the spermatozoon, the hospital is the womb, the nurse the ovum, Stephen the embryo."

 

Thomas Henry Huxley was an English zoologist who was active in the advocacy and defense of Darwinism. He was the grandfather of Aldous Huxley (1894 - 1963), known to literature lovers as author of Brave New World .

 A passage from his essay;

Choose your hypothesis; I have chosen mine. I can find no warranty for believing in the distinct creation of a score of successive species of crocodiles in the course of countless ages of time. Science gives no countenance to such a wild fancy; nor can even the perverse ingenuity of a commentator pretend to discover this sense, in the simple words in which the writer of Genesis records the proceedings of the fifth and sixth days of the Creation.

Thomas Henry Huxley,  On A Piece Of Chalk　

 

 Empedocles by Luca Signorelli

"Empedocles" by █ Slices of Light █▀ ▀ ▀ is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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31 (U349.1574)

 Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o’ me.

 31st cast. page 349, line 1574.

Lynch! Hey? Sign on long o’ me. Denzille lane this way. Change here for Bawdyhouse. We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is. Righto, any old time. Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis. You coming long? Whisper, who the sooty hell’s the johnny in the black duds?

 

Episode 14. It is about eleven o'clock at night. After leaving the National Maternity Hospital, Stephen, Mr Bloom and a group of medical students go out for a drink at the nearby Burke's pub. Stephen, Lynch and Mr. Bloom, who is following them, are now on their way to the 'Night town', the brothel district.

Episode14 traces the stylistic history of English prose from the past to the present in the form of stylistic copying. This is the last part of the episode, which is a mixture of colloquialisms, slang, and dialects around the year 1904.  It is written in such a way that it is not clear who is saying which lines.

A simple re-write might look something like this

 

Stephen: Lynch!

Lynch: What is it?

Stephen: Join along of me, towards Denzil lane. Here let's change to the brothel. "We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is".

The phrase "We two, she said, will seek the kips where shady Mary is" is from a poem by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-82), The Blessed Damozel (1850).

       Stephen turns the mystical and sacred into the vulgar.

The poem is about a maiden who dies young and pines from the balustrade of the palaces of heaven for the lover she left behind on earth.

 

"We two," she said, "will seek the groves　　

Where the lady Mary is,

With her five handmaidens, whose names

Are five sweet symphonies,

Cecily, Gertrude, Magdalen,

Margaret and Rosalys.

 

Lynch: Right you are. I'm ready anytime..

Stephen: ”Laetabuntur in cubilibus suis.”

     This phrase comes from Psalm (149.5) of the Old Testament.

 Exsultabunt sancti in gloria; 

lætabuntur in cubilibus suis. 

       　  (The saints shall rejoice in glory:

　　　　they shall be joyful in their beds.) 

 This means that the saints of Israel should rejoice because of the glory that has been restored to them, and sing for joy not only during the day, but also at night in your beds

 Stephen perverted and turned a sacred verse into a vulgar one. 

Lynch: (To Mr. Bloom) Will you come along with me?  (whispering to Stephen ) Who's that asshole in the black suit?　　

    The first half is talking to Mr. Bloom, the second half is talking to Stephen.

    Mr. Bloom attended the funeral of his friend Dignam this morning, so he is         
    wearing mourning clothes.

It's a passage we might skip, but I'd never expect to find so many different things.

The Blessed Damozel painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti

File:Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Blessed Damozel.jpg - Wikimedia Commons

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28 (U327.593)

So be off now, says he, 

28th cast. page 327, line 593.

 

So be off now, says he, and do all my cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer’s blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland.

Stephen, Mr. Bloom, and the medical students are chatting in the lounge of the National Maternity Hospital.

Episode 14  traces the stylistic history of English prose from the past to the present with stylistic sketches. This section is attributed to the style of Jonathan Swift's  The Tale of a Tub (1704). A text of allegory and satire.

In correspondence with the motifs in The Odyssey, the maternity hospital is on the island of Trinacie, the island of the sun god. Odysseus' men eat the sun god's domestic cattle, despite being forbidden to do so.

 

Therefore, the bull appears as a major motif in Episode 14.

 

The word "bull" means (1) an adult male of domestic cattle, (2) an encyclical of the Pope, and (3) a typical Englishman as John Bull. In the passage before and after this, the history of the Pope, the King of England, and Ireland is discussed in relation to cattle. This is a tough passage to decipher.

 

In the first sentence, “he” is Nicholas, a farmer, who says to the bull, "So be off now". Nicholas is Pope Hadrian IV, and the bull seems to be referring to the Catholic Church and the Pope's encyclical. Harry is King Henry II.

So be off now, says he, and do all my cousin german the lord Harry tells you and take a farmer’s blessing, and with that he slapped his posteriors very soundly. 

 

Hadrian IV (ca. 1100 - 1159) was the only Pope (reigned 1154 - 1159) from England. His real name was Nicholas Breakspear. In 1155, Hadrian IV issued a papal bull called Laudabiliter, authorizing King Henry II of England to invade Ireland.  He wanted to bring the Church of Ireland, where heresy was widespread, under the Catholic Church and cultivate the whole island.

 

Henry II (1133 - 1189), King of England, invaded Ireland in 1171 and became the first King of England to land in Ireland. He became the first Lord of Ireland and forced the Irish kings to swear an oath of obedience.

 

"Mr Vincent" is Vincent Lynch, a medical student and Stephen's friend. The second sentence is his narrative, referring to Henry II's invasion of Ireland and his indoctrination by the Catholic Church.

But the slap and the blessing stood him friend, says Mr Vincent, for to make up he taught him a trick worth two of the other so that maid, wife, abbess and widow to this day affirm that they would rather any time of the month whisper in his ear in the dark of a cowhouse or get a lick on the nape from his long holy tongue than lie with the finest strapping young ravisher in the four fields of all Ireland.

The word "cowhouse" means a chamber of confession.

 

In the " The Tale of a Tub ", there is a passage where the word bull is used to describe a callte and an encyclical. "Peter" is the personification of Catholicism.

" But of all Peter’s rarities, he most valued a certain set of bulls, whose race was by great fortune preserved in a lineal descent from those that guarded the golden-fleece.  Though some who pretended to observe them curiously doubted the breed had not been kept entirely chaste, because they had degenerated from their ancestors in some qualities, and had acquired others very extraordinary, but a foreign mixture."

Jonathan Swift, The Tale of a Tub and The History of Martin (Section Ⅳ)

John Bull triumphant

 File:John Bull triumphant. (BM 1851,0901.22).jpg - Wikimedia Commons

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10 (U338.1075)

That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee

Tenth cast. page 338, line 1075.

That youthful illusion of thy strength was taken from thee—and in vain. No son of thy loins is by thee. There is none now to be for Leopold, what Leopold was for Rudolph.

Episode 14 traces the history of English prose style from the past to the present through pastiche. This passage is considered to be in the style of the English essayist Charles Lamb (1775-1834).

The word "loins" is a euphemism for reproductive organs in the Bible..

Mr. Bloom's name was Leopold. His father's name was Rudolph. Mr. Bloom's son was also Rudolph, and he died at 11 days old.

At the end of the first volume of the Japanese translation of Ulysses in the Shueisha paperback edition, there is a commentary by the German literature scholar Osamu Ikeuchi. According to him, "Eastern European Jews liked to name their children after kings and lurers.”  Mr. Blum's father was a Jew from Hungary. Both Rudolph and Leopold are names of Habsburg emperors.

In this passage, Mr. Bloom is remembering the old days.  I think it is close to the nostalgic passages in Lamb’s Essays of Elia (1823).

"Antiquity! thou wondrous charm, what art thou? that, being nothing, art every thing! When thou wert, thou wert not antiquity—then thou wert nothing, but hadst a remoter antiquity, as thou called'st it, to look back to with blind veneration; thou thyself being to thyself flat, jejune, modern!"

“Oxford in the Vacation”

Charles Lamb

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