Ulysses Reading Group 2023

I've just seen this, so will be joining a bit late if that's OK.

This is a great idea, thanks OP. I've tried to read Ulysseys a couple of seen before - when I was 16 and again in my 20s but I couldn't get into it. In my 50s now, so will give it another go, and as with some PPs, expect to sympathise with the older characters!

Well, in defence of Stephen! And not entirely devil's (non serviam) advocate. His thoughts about the boy may be unpleasant but his actions are supportive and sympathetic. Not least in the context of early 20th century schooling in Ireland, which was generally very harsh.

As for the mother thing: Stephen is an apostate. Non serviam: "I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church". The oppressive nature of Irish Catholicism, and the difficulty of standing away from a fundamentalist religion so deeply-ingrained into the life of family and community - into the fabric of life itself - may be hard to understand in a modern culture that doesn’t take religion seriously. 21st century British atheists comfortable with a bit of Anglican lip-service to get their offspring into a school won’t understand Stephen refusing to kneel for his dying mother. Or the reality of spiritual friction, of not being true to yourself.

Mulligan may be right that he has "the cursed jesuit strain ..injected the wrong way", but his apostasy is fundamental to his being. IMO that was the main reason why Joyce was vilified by the Irish establishment until relatively recently (the smuttiness was just supporting evidence). The whole oppressive edifice of fundamentalist Irish Catholicism would not have disintegrated without people like Stephen. (And Father Ted of course!).

Sure, Stephen isn’t cuddly. He’s aloof, self-centred etc etc. But sympathy does depend on the reader - and isn't zero-sum.

There's a lot of allusion to conflict. Pyrrhic victory, 'from a hill a corpse-strewn plain', toppling masonry, the hockey game compared to a joust, Deasy saying 'I like to break a lance with you.'
There's an undertext of a final battle, Troy in flames, perhaps, but all shoehorned into a scene of everyday banality.
Nestor was an old warrior, left over from a previous generation. Homer pokes fun at him. Deasy displays well-observed old man traits: the cash box with various compartments, the preoccupation with writing to the papers, The bee in his bonnet about foot and mouth, the pontification about avoiding debt (cf Polonius in Hamlet). He's a figure of fun on one level, but on another, misogynistic and virulently antisemitic. The anti-semitism points us to Bloom, as does (oddly enough) the Austrian foot and mouth stuff. Bloom's father was a Hungarian Jew and therefore a citizen of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Emperor Franz Joseph makes a guest appearance later in the book, saved from an assassination attempt by an Irishman. Leopold and Rudolph are Habsburg names: Joyce does nothing by accident. It's all so intricate and complex. The more you look, the more there is to see. Or not? Because does any of this really matter?
Then there's the mother thing, and Stephen's reaction to the unfortunate Cyril Sargent. Stephen is really not a very appealing character, is he?

This is the shortest episode! And I suppose relatively straightforward.

We know some things from Joyce's schema that aren't in the text. For example, Stephen told Buck he'd be paid this morning, but we only know from the schema it takes place between 9 and 10am (same time as Lotus Eaters), I don’t think there’s any explicit mention of the time?

Location is also implicit throughout Ulysses - at least in the sense that places aren’t explicitly introduced or even flagged up. In the case of Nestor, Dalkey is only implied as the location when Stephen places one of his charges in Vico Road, Dalkey. And it’s assumed you know Dalkey because the character knows Dalkey (there's no "Dalkey, a wealthy seaside suburb a mile south of Sandycove.."). Vico Road, Dalkey is a real place-name of course, but Giambattista Vico’s philosophy of history fits with the schema’s science/art.

Deasy's anti-Semitism amplifies that of Haines in the preceding chapter, Telemachus ("I don’t want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either”). Bloom, with a Jewish father, will at different points claim that he is and is not Jewish.

I have read several episodes ahead.

Looking back my impressions of Nestor are/were about the awkwardness of the exchange between Mr Deasy and Stephen. Mr Deasy's anti-Jewish 'joke' pave the way for our later meeting with Bloom, the outsider. Though Stephen too has put himself outside the mainstream, by his actions and his lack of faith.

What is odd for me rereading Ulysses at this point is that my identifications have changed. I am much more 'with' the older characters, by and large. The parents rather than the chlldren.

I would recommend the RTE reading/dramatisation of this episode. The dialogue comes over really well. https://www.rte.ie/radio/podcasts/21785562-episode-2-nestor/

Well, I have read chapter 1... My edition is annotated with notes explaining the Greek/Latin/literary references which is a good thing as frankly most of them would otherwise have gone straight over my head. Good to have the schema to hand too.

The humour was a pleasant surprise, I enjoyed Buck's banter and the Joking Jesus poem made me laugh. And the bit where he says Stephen kills his mother but won't wear grey trousers.

Also enjoyed the bits where the narrative segues into Stephen's thoughts.

Oh this sounds fabulous, but I am already committed to the Anna Karenina readalong, have to finish 2 other books by certain deadlines, plus have two non fic on the go, but I am going to lurk.

Buck Mulligan is the one who makes reference to the snotgreen sea, and is seen jumping in the water (in which case he's likely a crude appropriation of Poseidon). Stephen (who must really stink if he only washes once a month) watches him but doesn't join in, same as he does in A Portrait when his school-mates' white nakedness disgusts him as they jump into the river.

Stephen does seem to have a real aversion to corporeality, and seems to represent the more abstract (perhaps more spiritual) domain of consciousness.

Joyce is a steep learning curve for me every time I pick up one of his books. There always seems to be so much more to learn about them. It's great to be doing this alongside so many like-minded people!

Hello - I've just got back from a work trip. My copy of the book is arriving today and I am looking forward to making a start! There are some very knowledgeable people on this thread and some great comments which I will keep to hand as I read - this is going to be a steep learning curve for me....

I've been reflecting on the first two episodes, as if they were the opening chapters of a more ordinary novel - the sort of thing that might get sent to an agent.

What strikes me is the stress on Stephen's vulnerability. His plan is not to return to the Martello Tower - at the end of Telemachus he surrenders the key. In the next section, Nestor, it becomes clear that he's not very effective or engaged as a teacher. He is haunted by grief and guilt, along with plenty of anger. He's lost one parent - returned from the relative freedom of Paris - and is trapped both by country and Church. What's going to become of him? (Having read the whole thing many years ago, the answer is that the later meeting with Bloom - father figure, fellow outsider, Jew - will save him.)

Sorry about the spoiler!

Hello and glad to see you here @AceOfCups!

Really interesting stuff!

There's an odd symmetry in Joyce, and given the epic length of this book in particular, there's an economy of prose in the way he uses and reuses specific events. I wonder if the cracked mirror preempts the breaking of the chandelier in 'Circe' - the point at which Stephen finally seems to sever his emotional dependence on his dead mother and the stranglehold on him still exerted by the RC church.

The 'nets' he seems to want to fly by in POA - nationality, language and religion - seem to fit with some of your observations above.

There's a later explicit reference to Blake's 'wings of excess' which also fits with these ideas.

Hello everyone, I'd like to join this reading group!

I mostly read easy contemporary fiction these days, and really feel like I need to stretch myself a bit. I've never been able to get on with stream of consciousness / modernist literature, and have tried and failed to read Mrs Dalloway more times than I can count! So this will be a challenge for me, I'm sure. I'm looking forward to it though.

Bought my copy today.

The Omphalos was quite important in Ancient Greece - it was the navel of the earth where Zeus had set up the Oracle so it was originally Delphi, but has various connutations around pregnancy and reproduction. Perhaps Buck is a cuckoo in the nest?

https://www.shmoop.com/ulysses-joyce/omphalos-pregnancy-symbol.html

Interesting. I seem to recall Joyce used a different mirror metaphor for Dubliners - he intended to hold up a clear (undistorted) mirror for the citizens of Dublin (at least the class he belonged to) to truly see themselves. Perhaps art is different for Stephen, his character.

Stephen presumably sees Mulligan as a usurper because he feels forced out of the tower. "He wants that key. It is mine, I paid the rent".

And also perhaps that it's too prone to look back at itself though a distorting glass.
I think both Buck and Stephen are performing for the benefit of Haines, though in different ways. The sub-text is schism, as reinforced by the brief canter through early church heresies. The balance of power between Buck and Stephen has shifted, either because of Buck's dismissive and crass comment about Stephen's mother, or because of the intrusion of Haines.And, additionally, Buck is the usurper, but to what? To the tower, presented as the omphalos and therefore significant, or to something else?

https://www.bloomsandbarnacles.com/blog/2018/09/08/decoding-dedalus-heresies-in-telemachus

I found this useful.

I do think looking stuff up enriches our experience. I think what I'm wary of is the sort of critical approach that my daughter was supposed to use at A-level, where fixed meanings are attributed to absolutely everything. I suppose I'd like to keep an element of fluidity and openness to it all. It's about a kind of meeting between the reader and the text, so that different understandings are possible.

The "cracked looking glass" quip probably says that Irish art is distorted by colonialism. Most obviously British, but also the other master Stephen complains about in A Portrait - "the holy Roman catholic and apostolic church".