My Ulysses Read - Proteus (1)

My Ulysses Read - 3

I finished Proteus, the third chapter in Ulysses a week ago. And read it again.
The first time, I read it mostly online, at The Joyce Project. The second time, it was the book version.
There's a world of difference. The online version is hyperlinked (in fact, its one of those charmingly old-fashioned sites, relying on plain html - the kind you hardly see any more) - and is extremely distracting, because you tend to go down - not a rabbit hole, but an absolute warren.
(Obligatory XKCD)

Reading the chapter in the book is very different - because you go through the narrative, pausing only to underline and mark stuff to look up later.

Nebeneinander Nacheinander

I'm wondering why I'm doing this. I am a literary snob, but an inverse snob. Given a choice between Edgar Wallace and David Foster Wallace, I will always go for the Feathered Serpents, the cabal of Just Men, and Mr Reeder with his rolled up umbrella. I would rather read Agatha Christie than Virginia Woolf, Lawrence Sanders than DH Lawrence, PG Wodehouse and Dashiell Hammett over everybody else.

So why am I trying to read Joyce? He's famously literary, loved by critics, very much part of the canon. And a modernist. And I wonder - is it some kind of snobbery that makes me want to read it?

I wasn't so close-minded before. When I was in college, I read reasonably omnivorously. Reveled in Stephen King and Tolkien and Conan Doyle, but also read the Castle and the Trial. We read Chaim Potok and Bernard Malamud and Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway (I can still hear Macho repeating the name 'Potok' with childish glee). I remember getting into TS Eliot after listening to Highway 61 Revisited, and from there, via Christopher Ricks to Howl and Moloch.

Somehow - maybe as a result of the serious readers I met in later in real life - I closed myself off. I stuck to pulp and crime, genre fiction and comic books - a luxury for someone growing up in pre-liberalization India, where the superhero stories you read came in comics published by Chandamama.

As I wrote earlier, maybe reading Joyce would be like playing Dark Souls, where the sheer brutality of the gameplay kept you from the payoffs of mastering enemies and their moves, figuring out attack patterns of the bosses - to that final feeling of achievement you got when Gwynn (or Gehrman in Bloodborne) finally collapses and the achievement dings on the top of your screen.

This diffidence I feel about Ulysses, this fear of my own pretentiousness, also makes me question my own enjoyment of the book. It took me a lot of listening to classical music before finding pieces that I liked - the choral was probably the easiest to like, but going from there to the Goldberg variations or the Nocturnes or Mahler's 9th took me a long time - and these are pieces generally understood to be much more accessible than - oh I don't know - a Stravinsky. And when I'm reading, something at the back of my mind wonders "Am I trying to acquire a taste?"

And I suppose the answer is - "If you're enjoying it, go for it".

And I am enjoying it. Not in the way I enjoy Hammett, where the terse prose rushes me through tales of greed and violence; not in the way I enjoy Pratchett, where he makes me grin - just before he makes me think; not in the way I enjoy Wodehouse, where laughter is the effect of sheer, effortless mastery of the language. Reading Joyce (with references) is like reading a solved cryptic puzzle, and you see the kind of effort that went in only when you understand how the clues fit in.

Nebeneinander Nacheinander

I'll probably write more about Proteus, but at the end of it - I came away with an impression of having read something beautiful.  And the words Nebeneinander Nacheinander are a part of that. The words are a reference to Gotthold Lessing's Laocoon: On the Limits of Painting and Poetry. "[Lessing’s Laokoon distinguishes] between poetry, which deals with objects one after another in time (nacheinander…), and sculpture and painting, which deal with objects next to one another in space (nebeneinander)"

Space and time.
Close up and long shot
Cross-section and time series
Stop and go
Balance sheet and P&L

Nebeneinander and Nacheinander.
It's become a mindworm, a thought-equivalent of a earworm, and now I'm trying, like Stephen, to shoehorn every duality into these two words.

The other thing about Proteus, especially with Stephen on the beach,  is that this is so close to my experiences of being stoned. There's an appreciation of the world around, thoughts like an explosion of stars in the firmament of the mind - but one following the other. (Nebeneinander, Nacheinander). There's the sudden paranoia at the sudden appearance of the dog - the live one - the distant interest in its activities, and the spiraling back to dead mother, unknown woman and daydream of desire, a flash to the sensuous, of breeze on the face, remembered quotations (Full fathom five thy father lies - which sent me on to Eliot who used "Those are pearls that were his eyes, and from there to Hitchcock, whose Rich and Strange I saw in the British Council oh so long ago)

Since this isn't a book in the conventional sense - I don't think I will go to the next chapter just yet.
I'll read Proteus again.

Reading Ulysses - Nestor

My Ulysses Read - 2

Ah Nestor. The old windbag. Full of unheeded advice and stories of past glories. General tool, who is respectfully listened to and ignored, the general who needs to be rescued from the battlefield. (At least, that's Nestor in the Iliad. In the Odyssey, Nestor is a different person entirely. Courteous, devout and a good host, who takes in Mentor and Telemachus, and points them to the direction of Menelaus.
The parallel of Mr Deasy is more in keeping with the Nestor of the Iliad than of the Odyssey.  Deasy is a Tory, an old man who rattles on about Ireland's history and writes letters to the papers about Foot and Mouth disease. He pays Stephen, but rubs in the fact that Stephen owes money to lots of people.
The theme for this chapter is "catechism" according to Gilbert, and "Wisdom of the ancients" according to Linati.

Here are the schema entries:
Gilbert

Title	Scene	Hour	Organ	Colour	Symbol	Art	Technic
Nestor	The School	10am	-	Brown	Horse	History	Catechism (personal)

Linati

Nestor

9 — 10 a.m.

Brown

Telemachus Nestor Pisistratus Helen

History

The wisdom of the ancients

And the chapter begins with a catechism - a Q & A session, call & response, call it what you will. And its history, about Tarentum, and Pyrrhus, the man who gave us the Pyrrhic victory. I wonder if that's supposed to mean something - in the context of the Irish struggle against Britain, or in a more personal context - that every victory we win is never worth the cost of the battle?

"Thought is the thought of thought".

OK. What does that mean? It's not like a "Rose is a rose is a rose", it's something that sounds good, but again, very "pale parabola of joy"-ish. But it can lead to thought being the enemy of action, another misquoted line - but one which came much later.

I kind of get Stephen here, looking at a bunch of rich kids, their futures already made because of their parents, while he grapples with the absence of his mother. I get the routine of unprepared lessons, of a job indifferently done. 

And I get Mr Deasy - there are so many Deasys in my own family - or atleast there were. Dead now, most of them. Conservatives, staggeringly hypocritical, parsimonious, and proud of it. Full of advice and opinion, and yes, catechisms, in their own way.

— Because you don't save, Mr Deasy said, pointing his finger. You don't know yet what money is. Money is power. When you have lived as long as I have. I know, I know. If youth but knew. But what does Shakespeare say? Put but money in thy purse.

— Iago, Stephen murmured.

He lifted his gaze from the idle shells to the old man's stare.

— He knew what money was, Mr Deasy said. He made money. A poet, yes, but an Englishman too. Do you know what is the pride of the English? Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth?

The seas' ruler. His seacold eyes looked on the empty bay: history is to blame: on me and on my words, unhating.

— That on his empire, Stephen said, the sun never sets.

— Ba! Mr Deasy cried. That's not English. A French Celt said that. He tapped his savingsbox against his thumbnail.

— I will tell you, he said solemnly, what is his proudest boast. I paid my way.

The first thing I wanted to know was: "Who was the French Celt?" But unfortunately, that seems to be a red herring.  Scottish author, John Wilson, writing as "Christopher North" in Blackwood's Magazine in 1829, is sometimes credited as originating the usage. But Wikipedia has a whole page on the possible origins of this phrase, and the various empire it referred to, dating all the way back to the Bible.

The other thing that struck me was the "Iago" quote. My grandfather was full of quotes from Shakespeare - not from any reading of the plays, but half remembered scraps from a book of quotations.

But this made me wonder, yet again, about context. Is a quote automatically suspect - and untrue - because it came from Iago? That in context, it was malicious? What about the meaning you take away from it? Does a quote become less true if someone repellent said it.

There's this bit, which could easily make it to a thousand greeting card platitudes, inspirational Twitter and political campaigns:

"And I can fight only for something that I love, love only what I respect, and respect only what I at least know"

It sounds perfectly sensible and logical. Does it become automatically suspect because it was said by Adolf Hitler?

Anyway, that's another track altogether.

Returning to Nestor and the schema, Sargent, the ugly, mathematically-challenged student, I suppose, is Pisistratus (though he isn't Nestor's son).  Who then is Helen?
But overall, an interesting chapter. There's a ton of references I don't get, but I like this kind of reading. Kind of takes me back to the days - pre-internet days - when I discovered TS Eliot, and was trying to figure out the lines, using the annotations.

Reading Ulysses - Telemachus

My Ulysses Read – 1
I've always wanted to read Ulysses. It's a strange thing. On the face of it, it's the kind of book that I should despise. It's been called a masterpiece, in so many ways, by so many people. It's supposed to be dense, and a difficult read. It's supposed to packed with allusions and references that even literary scholars have difficulty getting. And, most importantly, not much happens, there are no  murders, no violence, and the sec that shocked people in the 1920s just seems quaint in the context of fauxcest and bukkakes peddled by millions of porn sites online.
Then there's the cultishness of Joyce worship. That, by itself, is not a positive or negative – Casablanca is recognized as the classic it is because it was a cult favourite in Harvard in the 60s. Cult followings are responsible for so many long-lived cultural products – whether its literature or film or music. But the Joyce cult, with it's instagrammable Bloomsday outings in Dublin, the regular posts that appear on social media – all seem to showcase at a sense of achievement: “I read one of the most difficult novels written in the 20th century, and I loved it!”  It does, in a way, seem snobbish.
But because I like to read about books, and about authors, as much as I like to read themselves, I know a little about Ulysses. I know that Joyce wrote keys to understanding the book for friends -  the so-called Linati and Gilbert schemas, with each chapter allocated its own colour, title, symbol, organ (!) and relevant artform.
(I wonder if Joyce was just taking the piss here)
I've read the Odyssey, of course. Or atleast, I've read an abridged version when I was young, and I read Butler's translation when I was older. I know that there are parallels between the Odyssey and Ulysses, a correspondence between Joyce's chapters and the books that make up Homer's epic – but I thought it was a one-to-one thing, 24 chapters in Joyce, one for each hour of the day, each linked to one of the 24 books that make up the Odyssey, but I was mistaken. There are only 18 chapters in Joyce's book.
I wonder why I am doing this. I probably will have nothing new to say. What I will want to say has probably been said better and more succinctly by more intelligent people. The only thing here is my own ego - that despite everything, I will have something to say. And whatever else, putting your thoughts down in words also has the effect of making things clearer in your mind.
So here goes. The first chapter.

Telemachus

The first book of Homer's Odyssey doesn't have a title, but is mostly about Telemachus losing his patience with Penelope's suitors. Telemachus is still young – a teen? - and the suitors brush him off and party on his livestock and pressure his mother to marry one of them. So a lot of it is exposition – in fact – the Odyssey opens with Zeus telling Athena that yes, it's high time Odysseus returned home, and Athena going down to Ithaca to keep Telemachus' spirits up.

“So now all who escaped death in battle or by shipwreck had got safely home except Ulysses, and he, though he was longing to return to his wife and country, was detained by the goddess Calypso, who had got him into a large cave and wanted to marry him. But as years went by, there came a time when the gods settled that he should go back to Ithaca; even then, however, when he was among his own people, his troubles were not yet over; nevertheless all the gods had now begun to pity him except Neptune, who still persecuted him without ceasing and would not let him get home.”

Now, this is the first chapter as per the Linati schema.

Title	Time	Colour	People	Science / Art	Meaning
Telemachus	8 — 9 a.m.	Gold / white	Telemachus Mentor Antinous Suitors Penelope	Theology	Dispossessed son in contest

Title	Technic	Organ	Symbols
Telemachus	Dialogue for three and four, narration, soliloquy	-	Hamlet, Ireland, Stephen

And this is the Gilbert schema for the first chapter.

Title	Scene	Hour	Organ	Colour	Symbol	Art	Technic
Telemachus	The Tower	8am	-	White / gold	Heir	Theology	Narrative (young)

Now, the time part of it is quite obvious, as is the place. The colour - well there are references to Buck Mulligan's teeth - white and gold, as well as Stephen's thought "Chrysostomos".  The dispossessed son is Stephen - whose mother has just died (But do we know anything about Mulligan's mother? Or Haines'?). Stephen is the heir - and the symbol? Which Stephen? Daedalus? That seems too obvious. St Stephen - the first martyr of Christianity? Hamlet and Ireland, I get, the latter especially when Stephen talks about his two masters.
As for the people, Stephen is Telemachus, fine. Mentor, atleast in the second chapter of the Odyssey, is Athena, but what's the correlation? Given Stephen's dislike of Mulligan, it kind of makes sense to think of him as Antinous, and Haines as another unwelcome guest, the suitor. But the only other woman mentioned in the chapter is the woman who serves them, and is she Penelope? Or is she Athena? I suppose I'm being oversimplistic to expect a one-to-one correspondence between the schema and the chapter, but it is puzzling,
Is this normal?

Reading Ulysses

I've always wanted to read Ulysses. It's a strange thing. On the face of it, it's the kind of book that I should despise. It's been called a masterpiece, in so many ways, by so many people. It's supposed to be dense, and a difficult read. It's supposed to packed with allusions and references that even literary scholars have difficulty getting. And, most importantly, not much happens, there are no  murders, no violence, and the sec that shocked people in the 1920s just seems quaint in the context of fauxcest and bukkakes peddled by millions of porn sites online.
Then there's the cultishness of Joyce worship. That, by itself, is not a positive or negative – Casablanca is recognized as the classic it is because it was a cult favourite in Harvard in the 60s. Cult followings are responsible for so many long-lived cultural products – whether its literature or film or music. But the Joyce cult, with it's instagrammable Bloomsday outings in Dublin, the regular posts that appear on social media – all seem to showcase at a sense of achievement: “I read one of the most difficult novels written in the 20th century, and I loved it!”  It does, in a way, seem snobbish.
But because I like to read about books, and about authors, as much as I like to read themselves, I know a little about Ulysses. I know that Joyce wrote keys to understanding the book for friends -  the so-called Linati and Gilbert schemas, with each chapter allocated its own colour, title, symbol, organ (!) and relevant artform.
(I wonder if Joyce was just taking the piss here)
I've read the Odyssey, of course. Or atleast, I've read an abridged version when I was young, and I read Butler's translation when I was older. I know that there are parallels between the Odyssey and Ulysses, a correspondence between Joyce's chapters and the books that make up Homer's epic – but I thought it was a one-to-one thing, 24 chapters in Joyce, one for each hour of the day, each linked to one of the 24 books that make up the Odyssey, but I was mistaken. There are only 18 chapters in Joyce's book.
But, with all this, there is also the certainty that I'm overthinking this.
So anyway, this was my resolution for 2020, something that I wrote about here, and I have taken my first tentative steps towards the omphalos of Telemachus.