Ulysses (1922), set in Dublin, Ireland in 1904, continues the story of Stephen Dedalus from James Joyce’s first semi-biographical novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916). It also continues the themes of his short story collection The Dubliners (1914). Ulysses was written over seven years from 1914 to 1921. Because the novel was banned in the United Kingdom until 1936, it was published in Paris by the owner of the Shakespeare and Co., bookstore, Syliva Beach, in 1922.
The story focuses on advertising canvasser Leopold Bloom, his wife Molly, and his friends – medical student Buck Mulligan and budding writer Stephen Dedalus – in the space of one single day: 16 June 1904. The story is loosely based on the Odyssey, the epic 8th century Greek poem by Homer in which Odysseus (Ulysses) takes 10 years to return home from Troy after the Trojan War.
It’s just one day! What can happen in one day? A lot; mostly a lot of talking to friends, debating, arguing, and thinking. It has everything – Greek mythology, Irish culture and fables, Shakespearean references, Latin sentences, French phrases, theological interpretations, national identity debates, nautical terms, lyrical verses, riddles and rhymes, political party-speak, historical timelines, French literature, geographical terms, idioms and slang, metaphysical mentions, classical allusions, creative vocabulary combobulations, hallucinations, and profanities – ‘the slow growth and change of rite and dogma like his own rare thoughts, a chemistry of stars.’
It has ordinary everyday things too, like taking breakfast, drinking tea, walking along the shore, working, reading, shopping, going to the post office, attending a funeral, having lunch, going to the library, going to the pub, visiting the maternity hospital, drinking cocoa, urinating in the backyard, and retiring to bed.
Joyce uses a variety of literary techniques, such as short dialogue, stream-of-consciousness, flashbacks and reflections, newspaper headlines, different narrators, unnamed narrators, romance novella structure, and one chapter (episode) in the form of a dramatic play.
Critics focus too much on the last chapter, Episode 18, with the run-on-sentences, rambling stream-of-consciousness, and the non-punctuated thoughts of Molly Bloom, but there are more favourable and easier-to-read episodes.
Experimental, experiential: Pick a chapter that you love, pick a chapter that you don’t. Pick your favourite words, pick your favourite phrases: ‘Among gumheavy serpentplants, milkoozing fruits, where on the tawny waters leaves lie wide. Pain is far’ – ‘loom of the moon’ – ‘Through the open doorway the bar squirted out whiffs of ginger, teadust, biscuitmush.’
This novel is the likely source of many of our everyday phrases – seachange, chooks, dribs and drabs, square it with your boss, redhot, out of sight out of mind, puke, and many more.
This tome of 783 pages has readers loving it, hating it, confused by it, infuriated by it, or just so perplexed that they give up after 50 pages. It takes a certain amount of tenacity, determination, dedication or stubbornness to read it.
This is my second reading of the novel, and this time, I let it flow – without even trying to understand all of it. My intent was to absorb the language – the words, the phrases, and the sentences. I’m glad I did, because this time around, Ulysses was far more enjoyable, and such a delight to read – but over more than one day!
MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).
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