Kalliope's review of Ulysses (original) (raw)

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Kalliope's Reviews > Ulysses: The 1922 Text

Ulysses by James Joyce

Ulysses: The 1922 Text
by

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Silly little kalliope, the spirally-kalliope, who had thought about entering the Labyrinth in the past but just stood outside looking at its entrance. For years. Luckily for her, the real Kalliope, the Grand, the Muse, springing out of GR where she has been dwelling in the recent past, took pity on her and after visiting the gods of literature and seeking their acceptance, decided to assist the spirally and guide her through the imposing Labyrinth.

As the Grand Kalliope-the-Muse thought that Spirally would need further assistance once she entered the traitorous mesh, she awarded her three magic weapons: an edition with footnotes; a textual companion; and an audio version.

After

religiously (strike out the word religion in Joyce) looking up every footnote, Spirally, decided after a while to forget about them. Looking at the glow-worms in the floor, even if they seemed to be illuminating the way, could also mean that Spirally would knock herself against a wall. Too much attention paid to Mr Irish1, to Mr Irish37, to Mr Irish142. Too many of them. And even if the Labyrinth exists in a particular location and in a particular time and is not a product of fantasy, too much attention paid to Dublin’s streets could make Spirally miss the right corner and enter the wrong alley and never survive the Labyrinth.

The textual companion was her safety jacket, however (view spoiler)[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5... (hide spoiler)]. It kept her afloat by giving meaning. This was the compass. Otherwise Spirally could have found herself going up and down, right and left, and as in an Escher puzzle, with no end in sight. And Spirally does not like enclosing puzzles; they are anathema to her always advancing inner spirally being.

The Audio was a blessing of the gods. The Labyrinth forms part of the spheres of sound and music, and its harmonies live in the vocal tradition. But Spirally’s ears are not tuned to its language. English is not phonetic and Spirally’s complete ignorance of Gaelic names meant that Spirally could not trust her own interior voice to unlock the right sounds, the rhymes. The Labyrinth has shifting walls and to find the right way one needs to listen to its inner reverberations and echoes. Listen to the Voice and you will Know. The voice also sculpts a high-relief out of flatness. Songs, and verses stand out and elevate themselves to the right register. With intonation. Baritones, mostly tenors, and eventually a shrilling soprano. Moments of welcomed and sonorous clarity.

So the Muse advised Spirally that the full passage would take one day, which really meant seven weeks – seven – the magic number for the Creation – but seven times slower. But at least it did not take her ten years like Ulysses.

The sixteen. One and six.

The Muse also gave Spirally the clue that she would have to find the way through eighteen chambers, and that those places had already been marked by the ‘resourceful hero’ of classical antiquity. The chambers are also grouped in complexes, with an Antechamber, the maze proper, and a welcoming Home.

Her protecting Muse also foretold her that there would be a son, and where there is a son, there must be a father – somewhere.

Having done Spirally her preparatory calisthenics with Homer, she finally enters, but is immediately baffled since she sees no Greek ruins. Optimistic, she hopes her training will bring its benefits later. There is however a Tower, and that must be the son that the Muse foretold. From the non-classical belfry she could envision vaguely the forthcoming intricate maze through which she would have to survive. At first there are no difficulties in the progress, but while still in the Antechamber, Spirally has her first taste of the dizziness that the maze could induce in her. And yet, she enjoys this protean ambiguity. Relaxing. She can let the flow take her along. Not difficult. The walls seem to become wind, or water, and the lack of definition does not prevent her from advancing. On the contrary, there is an indeterminate flow that pushes her along. Mesmerizing her.

Upon entering the intricate web, there he is, the father. The fatherly non-father. She notices the passages, and their names. She follows the broad one, Ecclesia, as welcoming as a church. There are many flowers along the way. How can they bloom with so little light? Could they serve as a way to find the way, like in Tom Thumb? As she proceeds, together with the flowers she encounters mushrooms with very wide and flat caps and make her think of the magic “nénuphars” in Boris Vian. Those mushrooms affect consciousness and it is no longer clear who is there and who is here.

Could I get dizzy if I ate the mushrooms? Is that what is making me see that the pathway has become a canal and that not only there is water, on which one could navigate, but also that it falls over the walls, forming aerial cataracts. Luckily there is a boat and I can continue until I reach a new shore and continue walking. On the floor I see a slab with the letters Inferno (has Dante been here?) I should not fall in there. I have already followed Dante and managed to get out at the other side of the Earth, propelled upwards (downwards to the antipodes). No need to try that again.

Suddenly a very strong waft of air blows me over, makes me lose my balance and had I not held strongly onto my weapons, it would have pushed me back to start all over again. It is so easy to miss a reference in this intricate web. Once recovered, I feel hungry and see that on the sides there are shelves with food. But it is all disgusting food, all bloody and fleshy, human flesh? If I survive, I may become a vegetarian. I also see a man peeing in Latin. Does this labyrinth have the shape of guts? What if I am in the guts of a large cetacean? Would that explain the water, and the winds?

I hear an inner voice. Keep talking to yourself and you will not dissolve. Language is your being. It will guide you in putting order in a timely fashion: Nebeneinander and Nacheinander. Remember your texts, all the literature in your life will give you food for thought and energy. It is all bound in Mnemosyne. Hamlet knew his Shakespeare. This is the advice from the GreatMuse, and she should know. She is poetry. She warns me also: But don’t drink, or that liquid will liquefy your mind.

OMG, OhMyMuse, there is another labyrinth within the labyrinth. And now what? At least I must be in the middle. I am entering an area in which Ulysses companions waxed their ears, but Kalliope-the-Muse has given me no wax. I will have to fugue it then, and grab onto the voices as they mix and interlace, straight and inverted, with false entries, but luckily my Audio will mark my way and will allow me to advance and to do so fast. Just as the Sirens of the cars open their way in emergencies.

But I am still far from safe. In danger, I will have to pretend I am not here, in case I encounter a Monster. But MyMuse said that there would not be any monsters, at least not those of Nationalisms and bigoted Creeds. Nonetheless, I must try to stick to the wall and make anyone think that there is NoBody here. My spirally self must flatten and become linear as much as possible.

The alleys from chamber to chamber are getting longer now. One needs more stamina before reaching another break and the end cannot be envisioned yet. But I get a respite because the walls are now getting smoother and of a lighter tint. Fit for a princess, or a nymph? And I can also see better now. And I am glad the quality of my vision is somewhat restored, for there are texts written on the walls. From the script I guess they have been written long long ago. They are in a language that I can decipher, but which stays foreign. The Audio contraption I carry helps bring these texts to life and I can hear their different harmonies even if I don’t recognize the tunes.

But although I think I am advancing there comes a point in which I despair at the difficulty in finding my way and invoke Kalliope-the-Muse to come and help me. There is a new mist and it is thick and discerning forms becomes more difficult. Was I given something to drink that has bewitched me? I remember the story in Apuleius, with his Julius who turned into an ass, or was it a pig? This makes me wonder, could I be bewitched and not know? How could I find out? There are no mirroring surfaces on these shadowy walls. May be I am experiencing the very process of metempsychosis.

But suddenly I see some light and I wonder whether I have traversed through the worse and since I have memory and there was an Antechamber, may be I am reaching the Postchamber and I would not be too far from the exit and from Home. Sweet home.

And it must be so, because I feel my legs firmer on the ground. So is my vision. Clear. As clear as a catechism in which precise questions elicit precise answers and there is no way around it. My soul feels a great deal lighter. It can touch truth.

Oh.

Yes, here is the exit. Just as I stop hearing the male utterances a new one rises over the previous echoes. This sweet, mellifluous voice sings her feelings when Morpheus has silenced the past ones. Candied tone but I do not like her song. They are the words from a myth, the female that men fear. It certainly is a female voice but do I detect a male mind behind?

-------

Yes.

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Quotes Kalliope Liked

James Joyce

“And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!”
― James Joyce, Ulysses

Reading Progress

June 28, 2014 – Shelved as:to-read

June 28, 2014 – Shelved as:ireland

October 26, 2014 –Started Reading

October 29, 2014 –1.84% "Eyes, pale as the sea the wind had freshened, paler, firm and prudent."

October 29, 2014 –2.65% "Thought is the thought of thought. Tranquil brightness. The soul is in a manner all that is : the soul is the form of forms. Tranquility sudden, vast, candescent : form of forms."

October 29, 2014 –3.78% "maestro di color che sanno.. glad to meet Dante here.."

October 29, 2014 –3.88% "I am not reading this in German but I just encountered this word "contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality""

October 29, 2014 –4.69% "I can see the dog..

the dog yelped running to them, reared up and pawed them, dropping gone all fours, again reared up at them with mute bearish fawning. Unheeded he kept by them as they came towards the drier sand, and rag of wolf's tongue redpanting from his jaws. His speckled body ambled ahead of them and then loped off at a calf's gallop."

October 30, 2014 –5.1% "Guido de Cavalcanti, OrSanMichele... Dante, Boccaccio.. meeting old friends and places here... in new guises..."

October 31, 2014 –6.22% "Tuning into Joyce's puns...

Voglio e non vorrei. Wonder is she pronounces that right: voglio. Not in bed.

The pun also as forewarning."

November 1, 2014 –8.47% "The Lotus and Blooms' languid floating flower..."

November 1, 2014 –8.67% "As an irreverence to Saint Joyce, I am using a little "estampita" with a little Catholic Saint in it as my bookmark. Literary sacrilege.""

November 2, 2014 –9.9% "Must be twenty or thirty funeral every day... Funerals all over the world everywhere every minute. Shoveling them under by the cartload double quick. Thousands every hour. Too many in the world."

November 2, 2014 –10.2% "Holy water that was, I expect. Shaking sleep out of it. He must be fed up with that job, shaking that thing all over all the corpses they trot up."

November 4, 2014 –11.94% "Cemetery put in of course on account of the symmetry."

November 4, 2014 –12.04% "And then the lamb and the dog and the stick and the water and the butcher and then the angel of death kills the butcher and he kills the ox and the dog kills the cat."

November 4, 2014 –13.16% "What opera is like a railway line?....
...

The Rose of Castille. See the wheeze? rows of cast steel. Gee!"

November 4, 2014 –13.78% "I am going to adopt this..

Muchibus thankibus."

November 4, 2014 –15.1% "Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Sweet name too : caramel."

November 4, 2014 –16.63% "Peace and war depends on some fellow's digestion. Religions. Christmas turkeys and geese. Slaughter of innocents. Eat, drink and be merry. Then casual wards full after. Heads bandaged. Cheese digests all but itself. Mighty cheese."

November 4, 2014 –17.76% "I did not know Handel's Messiah was premiered in Dublin.... Check date, 1742.

In aid of funds for Mercer's hospital. 'The Messiah' was first given for that."

November 4, 2014 –18.06% "The painting of Gustave Moreau is the painting of ideas,

This painter is also Proustian.

"

November 4, 2014 –18.27% "France produces the finest flower of corruption in Mallarmé but the desirable life is revealed only to the poor of heart, the life of Homer's Phaeacians."

November 4, 2014 –18.67% "But Ann Hathaway?... Yes, we seem seem to be forgetting her as Shakespeare himself forgot her...

If others had their will Ann hath a way. By cock, she was to blame."

November 5, 2014 –18.78% "Peter Piper pecked a peck of pick of peck of pickled pepper."

November 5, 2014 –18.78% "Necessity is that in virtue of which it is impossible that one can be otherwise."

November 5, 2014 –18.88% "Cordelia. Cordoglio. Lir's loneliest daughter.

Where is Fionnuala?.. Wandering?"

November 5, 2014 –19.39% "For Willie Huges, is it not?..

Or Hughie Wills. Mr William Himself. W.H : who am I?"

November 5, 2014 –20.31% "Bocaccio's Calandrino..

"

November 5, 2014 –20.61% "Swiftly rectly creaking rectly rectly he was rectly gone."

November 5, 2014 –20.61% "Writing updates of Ulysses with the autocorrect on is a nightmare."

November 5, 2014 –20.92% "I believe, O Lord, help my unbelief. That is, help me to believe or help me to unbelief? Who helps to believe? Egomen. Who to unbelieve? Other chap."

November 8, 2014 –22.35% "Eppoi mi sono convito che il mondo è una bestia. E peccato."

November 8, 2014 –22.45% "Miss Dune clicked on the keyboard:

16 June 1904."

November 12, 2014 –26.84% "Tipping her tepping her tapping her topping her.

No commas."

November 12, 2014 –28.47% "Pprrpffrrppfff."

November 12, 2014 –32.35% "A nation is the same people living in the same place."

November 12, 2014 –34.08% "Why have women such eyes of witchery?"

November 14, 2014 –34.69% "Till then they had only exchanged glances of the most casual but now under the brim of her new hat she ventured a look at him and the face that met her gaze there in the twilight, wan and strangely drawn, seemed to her the saddest she had ever seen."

November 14, 2014 –35.71% "And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind blank and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lovely! O so soft, sweet, soft!"

November 14, 2014 –36.02% "Suppose he gave her money. Why not? All a prejudice. She's worth ten, fifteen, more a pound. What? I think so."

November 14, 2014 –36.63% "He gets the plums and I the plumstones."

November 14, 2014 –36.73% "Could hear them all at it. Pray for us. And pray for us. And pray for us. Good idea the repetition. Same thing with ads. Buy from us. And buy from us."

November 14, 2014 –37.24% "Cuckoo
Cuckoo
Cuckoo."

November 17, 2014 –37.55% "Light swift her eyes kindled, bloom of blushes his word winning."

November 17, 2014 –39.18% "O quirites, ut matres familiarum nostrae lascivas cujuslibet semiviri libici titillationes testibus ponderosis atque excelsis erectionibus centurionum Romanorum magnopere anteponunt."

November 17, 2014 –39.39% "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."

November 17, 2014 –40.0% "What is the age of the soul of man? As she hath the virtue of the chameleon to change her hue at every new approach, to be gay with the merry and mournful with the downcast, so too is her age changeable as he mood."

November 17, 2014 –40.82% "There are sins (or let us call them as the world calls themI evil memories which are hidden away by man in the darkest places of the heart but hey abide there and wait. He may suffer their memory to grow dim, let them be as though they had not been and all but persuade himself that they were not or at least were otherwise."

November 20, 2014 –42.35% "Typos.

Bueñas noches, señorita Blanca, que calle es esta?"

November 20, 2014 –46.02% "Gazelles are leaping, feeding on the mountains. Near are lakes. found their shores file shadows black of cedar groves. Aroma rises, a strong hairgrowth of resin. It burns, the orient, a sky of sapphire, cleft by the bronze flight of eagles. Under it lies the womancity, nude, white, still, cool, in luxury. A fountain murmurs among damask roses. Mammoth roses murmur of scarlet winegrapes..."

November 23, 2014 –46.33% "Under an arch of triumph Bloom appear bareheaded, in a crimson velvet mantletrimmed with ermine, bearing Saint Edward's staff, the orb and scepter with the dove, the curtana."

November 23, 2014 –46.53% "The former morganatic spouse of Bloom is hastily removed in the Black Maria. The princess Selene, in monocle robes, a silver crescent hon her head, descends from a Sedan chair, borne by two giants. an outburst of cheering."

November 23, 2014 –47.04% "What is the parallax of the subsolar ecliptic of Aldebaran?"

November 23, 2014 –50.51% "Is me her was you dreamed before? Was then she him you us since knew? am all them and the same now we?"

December 2, 2014 –51.12% "The lady goes a pace a pace and the coachman goes a trot a trot and the gentleman goes a gallop a gallop a gallop a gallop."

December 2, 2014 –55.92% "Edward the Seventh appears in an archway. He wears a white jersey on which an image of the Sacred Heart is stitched, with the insignia of Garter and Thistle, Golden Fleece, Elephant of Denmark, Skinner's and Probyn's horse, Lincoln's Inns' bencher and ancient and honorable artillery company of Massachusetts. He sucks a red jujube."

December 2, 2014 –58.06% "But how to get there was the rub.

Could this be a one sentence summary of the Odyssey?"

December 8, 2014 –61.02% "I resent violence or intolerance in any shape of form. It never reaches anything or stops anything. a revolution must come on the due installments plan. It's a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular, so to speak."

December 8, 2014 –63.06% "The horse, having reached the end of his tether, so to speak, halted, and, rearing high a proud feathering tail, added his quota by letting fall on the floor, which the brush would soon brush up and polish, three smoking globes of turds. Slowly, three times, one after another..."

December 9, 2014 –64.18% "The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the electrical discharge and of counterestimating against an actual loss by failure to interpret the total sum of possible losses proceeding originally from a successful interpretation."

December 9, 2014 –64.69% "What, reduced to their simplest reciprocal form, were Bloom's thoughts about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom about Stephen's thoughts about Bloom's thoughts about Stephen?"

December 10, 2014 –66.43% "For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?
For a cat."

December 10, 2014 –66.53% "the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every series containing succinctly the potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic elaboration of any power of any of its powers."

December 10, 2014 –66.84% "At Stephen’s suggestion, at Bloom’s instigation both, first Stephen, then Bloom, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs of micturition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual circumposition, their gazes, first Bloom’s, then Stephen’s, elevated to the projected luminous and semiluminous shadow."

December 10, 2014 –66.94% "The sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime of the bells in the church of Saint George."

December 13, 2014 –68.57% "As a philosopher he knew that at the termination of any allotted life only only an infinitesimal part of any person's desires has been realized."

December 13, 2014 –69.69% "To reflect that each one who enters imagines himself to be the first to enter whereas he is always the last term of a preceding series even if the fist term of a succeeding one, each impinging himself to be first, last, only and alone whereas, he is neither first nor last nor only nor alone in a series originating in and repeated to infinity."

December 17, 2014 –Finished Reading

February 16, 2016 – Shelved as:2014

July 20, 2019 – Shelved as:joycean

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