Mulligan plays the priest beginning the Latin Mass, a comic blasphemy which is to
be matched by a closing parody. For Mrs Bloom, who is talking as the book ends, is
a comic inversion of the Penelope to whom Odysseus returns at the end of Homer’s
Odyssey. Unlike the faithful Penelope, Molly (a singer) awaits a lover, ‘Blazes’ Boylan.
Bloom is unheroic, indecent and unlike Odysseus; and Stephen is unlike
Telemachus, Odysseus’ faithful son. ‘Ulysses’ (pronounced ‘Oo-liss-ays’ by Joyce) is
the modern form of ‘Odysseus’ in later Western literature;Ulysses parodies much of
that tradition.
This encyclopædic tendency makes it an epic (of a heroi-comical sort) as much
as a novel. Its chapters shadow episodes of the Odyssey, and Joyce used ‘Proteus’,
‘Nausicaa’ etcetera as working titles for chapters corresponding to Homer’s story.
These Greek names do not appear in the text – which can be read without Homer,
although one misses some of the jokes. Mulligan looks out to sea.- God, he said quietly. Isn’t the sea what Algy calls it: a grey sweet mother? The
snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea. Epi oinopa ponton. Ah, Dedalus, the Greeks. I
must teach you. You must read them in the original ....
‘Algy’ is Algernon Charles Swinburne, who wrote ‘I will go back to the great [not
grey] sweet mother.’ The Greek phrase means ‘on the wine-dark sea’. Mulligan (based
on the wit Oliver St John Gogarty) coins new Homeric compound epithets, inde-
cently naturalist. Dedalus (who can read Greek) hears an old woman ask the patron-
izing Mulligan ‘Are you a medical student, sir?’
To read Ulysses it is not necessary to know Homer, Shakespeare’s biography, the
history of the English language, Dublin’s geography or Ireland’s history, though all
ofthese are part of its matter, as are newspapers, dirty postcards and a nightmare in
the brothel area. But Ulysses would be intolerable without a relish for words, a sense
of fun, and a tolerance for jokes. Time has blunted some references: the Mass no
longer beg ins Introibo. Nor can readers look for steady progress in a single mode and
an ordered syntax. The texture of many of its many pages is so intricate or discon-
tinuous that the text becomes a world of its own. Today it is read in universities,
often in select ion. Bits of it are brilliantly, outrageously comic. All of it is clever, most
re pays re-reading, much has to be puzzled out, some cannot be.
Ulysses is demanding but not intellectual. The chief conduit for its ‘stream of
consciousness’ is Leopold Bloom, who is not high-minded. M’Coy asks him about
Paddy Dignam’s funeral just when Bloom had been hoping to catch a glimpse of the
legs of a lady getting into a carriage opposite.Watch! Watch! Silk flash rich stockings white. Watch!
A heavy tramcar honking its gong slewed between.
Lost it. Curse your noisy pugnose. Feels locked out of it. Paradise and the peri. Always
happening like that. The very moment. Girl in Eustace street hallway. Monday was it
settling her garter.Her friend covering the display of.Esprit de corps.Well, what are you
gaping at?- Yes, yes, Mr Bloom said after a dull sigh. Another gone.
- One of the best,M’Coy said.
The tram passed. They drove off towards the Loop Line bridge, her rich gloved hand on
the stee l grip. Flicker, flicker: the laceflare of her hat in the sun: flicker, flick. - Wife well, I suppose? M’Coy’s changed voice said.
- O yes, Mr Bloom said. Tiptop, thanks.
He unrolled the newspaper baton idly and read idly:
348 13 · FROM POST-WAR TO POST-WAR: 1920–55