Ulysses (first impressions + Telemachus)
Jan. 27th, 2010 04:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rushthatspeaksSo remember a while ago I was all, I am going to read Ulysses, would people like to join me?
Well, the first thing that happened after that was that my copy vanished into the mirk of our room. I know it's in there somewhere, but damn if I can find it.
Have now got one out of the library.
So I'm just through Lestrygonians, but I'm going to talk about the first section now, and then the others weekly, in hopes that if there are people who want to read the bits a week is about enough time. Also I think it will be good for me to go back and reread and really think about each chapter.
First impressions:
There has never been a book in the history of time that needed a map in the endpapers more, and of course it hasn't got one. I am used to having them provided and not needing them. I suppose it's a change from the usual?
So this is one of the most famously difficult books ever etc. etc., and I think I see why, but actually I am finding it very readable, as long as I consciously remember a couple of aspects of what it's trying to do. Namely, I identify five levels on which it's working:
one, the Odyssey, of which it's a pretty straightforward retelling;
two, Hamlet, of which it so far seems to also be a pretty straightforward retelling (neat trick, that);
three, the religious level, which is a protracted argument about Catholicism with elements of reenacting of various rituals;
four, the political level, which is a protracted discussion of Ireland and its position and various aspects of then-recent Irish history;
and five, the stream-of-consciousness of the viewpoint characters, which includes things like Stephen's attempt to grapple with the death of his mother and the way that gets symbolically tangled up with the ocean and the existence of art.
Also of course it is puns all the way down, and is full of madly free-associational pop-culture references.
And because of levels one through four, I could see getting very hung up on trying to categorize and place every allusion that goes by, and thereby driving oneself to total and complete distraction, because I am very certain that part of the point of the fifth level is that the viewpoint characters are not the reader, and that the reader is not supposed to understand everything that goes through their heads. As with any stream of consciousness, some of it is perfectly clear, and some of it makes sense if you think about it, and some of it is just too personal for anyone else to parse.
So I find this very readable if I keep the existence of the first four levels in mind, but maintain a reading pace which doesn't disrupt the narrative, understanding what I understand and only looking things up if they are obviously important to the metaphoric structure of one of the levels. Which, Joyce is pretty good about pointing out if the allusions are important, the text helps with doing this.
In general, if there are a couple of sentences about something, it can go by. If the entire paragraph or page becomes incomprehensible, I look it up. This has been working really well.
Of course, it helps that I majored in Greek religion, have read the Odyssey enough times to have forgotten how many, was sent to Catholic schools, and have read a fair bit on the history of Christian theology, so those are things I don't have to look up. But on Irish politics past 1600 A.D. I am a dead loss.
The thing that is difficult about reading this, then, is maintaining the narrative momentum. I guess that's why there isn't a map, but I'd like one in case I ever come back to be pedantic! Balancing all the layers in my head while reading at a storytelling speed is fairly tiring, but gets easier the longer one does it (which is I guess why the later chapters get more difficult; very good book at teaching one how to read it).
It probably goes without saying at this point that I agree with everyone who says this is a total frickin' masterpiece. The sheer fact that it can do what it does, half of what it does, is ridiculous. There is just more there there. And my major problem with reading speed so far has been that I keep stumbling across individual sentences that are so good that I stop and stare at them in amazement.
Telemachus:
I guess if I had read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man I would already know who Stephen Dedalus is. As it is, a very clear picture arises from oh the first couple of pages:
he is emo.
I am serious. If he were around today he would have one of those haircuts and lurk in clubs and think exactly the same things and be rather desperately trying not to be a hipster. This personality type does not change with the passing of the generations.
I therefore seriously hope that the overall arc of the book is him to some degree getting over himself, but I have some faith as he is after all Telemachus, who is a very very teenage character.
Buck Mulligan: is supposed to be Antinous? Okay, here's where we get to something that may have changed with the passing of the generations. Because all of the signifiers around Buck Mulligan say dangerous, possibly evil, certainly leading astray. I don't think the book could press this point any harder without making it explicit in Stephen's thoughts, which it very nearly is. But Buck's particular form of cheerful, witty, bright blasphemy is one that I am predisposed from experience and many, many books to think of as actually pretty awesome. I am wondering whether this novel is old enough that he was actually shocking and dangerous, or whether Joyce is using the signifiers pointed at him to say 'hey this kind of profane-ness is nowhere near as awful as the nineteenth century said', with understated irony in several directions.
I actually can't tell. I do not have the context.
Not sure what it says that Buck gets to do the invocation to the gods at the beginning of the epic.
I love the fact that it is totally immaterial whether Stephen experiences a brief flash of seeing the milk-woman as a personification of art, Ireland, his own mother, Eve, or the Virgin Mary. Correct answer is probably all of the above plus of course Athena, though as Athena is in disguise in this bit I doubt that that's actually what Stephen saw.
The passage of the sea in the course of two pages, from universal mother, to Stephen's mother, to a bowl of bile from Stephen's mother's sickbed, to her bedside mirror, to the mirror the gods walk on, to the mother of poetry, and then that poetry to the song Stephen played for his dying mother... dazzling set of transitions. Like watching the sound of one hand clapping.
Well, the first thing that happened after that was that my copy vanished into the mirk of our room. I know it's in there somewhere, but damn if I can find it.
Have now got one out of the library.
So I'm just through Lestrygonians, but I'm going to talk about the first section now, and then the others weekly, in hopes that if there are people who want to read the bits a week is about enough time. Also I think it will be good for me to go back and reread and really think about each chapter.
First impressions:
There has never been a book in the history of time that needed a map in the endpapers more, and of course it hasn't got one. I am used to having them provided and not needing them. I suppose it's a change from the usual?
So this is one of the most famously difficult books ever etc. etc., and I think I see why, but actually I am finding it very readable, as long as I consciously remember a couple of aspects of what it's trying to do. Namely, I identify five levels on which it's working:
one, the Odyssey, of which it's a pretty straightforward retelling;
two, Hamlet, of which it so far seems to also be a pretty straightforward retelling (neat trick, that);
three, the religious level, which is a protracted argument about Catholicism with elements of reenacting of various rituals;
four, the political level, which is a protracted discussion of Ireland and its position and various aspects of then-recent Irish history;
and five, the stream-of-consciousness of the viewpoint characters, which includes things like Stephen's attempt to grapple with the death of his mother and the way that gets symbolically tangled up with the ocean and the existence of art.
Also of course it is puns all the way down, and is full of madly free-associational pop-culture references.
And because of levels one through four, I could see getting very hung up on trying to categorize and place every allusion that goes by, and thereby driving oneself to total and complete distraction, because I am very certain that part of the point of the fifth level is that the viewpoint characters are not the reader, and that the reader is not supposed to understand everything that goes through their heads. As with any stream of consciousness, some of it is perfectly clear, and some of it makes sense if you think about it, and some of it is just too personal for anyone else to parse.
So I find this very readable if I keep the existence of the first four levels in mind, but maintain a reading pace which doesn't disrupt the narrative, understanding what I understand and only looking things up if they are obviously important to the metaphoric structure of one of the levels. Which, Joyce is pretty good about pointing out if the allusions are important, the text helps with doing this.
In general, if there are a couple of sentences about something, it can go by. If the entire paragraph or page becomes incomprehensible, I look it up. This has been working really well.
Of course, it helps that I majored in Greek religion, have read the Odyssey enough times to have forgotten how many, was sent to Catholic schools, and have read a fair bit on the history of Christian theology, so those are things I don't have to look up. But on Irish politics past 1600 A.D. I am a dead loss.
The thing that is difficult about reading this, then, is maintaining the narrative momentum. I guess that's why there isn't a map, but I'd like one in case I ever come back to be pedantic! Balancing all the layers in my head while reading at a storytelling speed is fairly tiring, but gets easier the longer one does it (which is I guess why the later chapters get more difficult; very good book at teaching one how to read it).
It probably goes without saying at this point that I agree with everyone who says this is a total frickin' masterpiece. The sheer fact that it can do what it does, half of what it does, is ridiculous. There is just more there there. And my major problem with reading speed so far has been that I keep stumbling across individual sentences that are so good that I stop and stare at them in amazement.
Telemachus:
I guess if I had read Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man I would already know who Stephen Dedalus is. As it is, a very clear picture arises from oh the first couple of pages:
he is emo.
I am serious. If he were around today he would have one of those haircuts and lurk in clubs and think exactly the same things and be rather desperately trying not to be a hipster. This personality type does not change with the passing of the generations.
I therefore seriously hope that the overall arc of the book is him to some degree getting over himself, but I have some faith as he is after all Telemachus, who is a very very teenage character.
Buck Mulligan: is supposed to be Antinous? Okay, here's where we get to something that may have changed with the passing of the generations. Because all of the signifiers around Buck Mulligan say dangerous, possibly evil, certainly leading astray. I don't think the book could press this point any harder without making it explicit in Stephen's thoughts, which it very nearly is. But Buck's particular form of cheerful, witty, bright blasphemy is one that I am predisposed from experience and many, many books to think of as actually pretty awesome. I am wondering whether this novel is old enough that he was actually shocking and dangerous, or whether Joyce is using the signifiers pointed at him to say 'hey this kind of profane-ness is nowhere near as awful as the nineteenth century said', with understated irony in several directions.
I actually can't tell. I do not have the context.
Not sure what it says that Buck gets to do the invocation to the gods at the beginning of the epic.
I love the fact that it is totally immaterial whether Stephen experiences a brief flash of seeing the milk-woman as a personification of art, Ireland, his own mother, Eve, or the Virgin Mary. Correct answer is probably all of the above plus of course Athena, though as Athena is in disguise in this bit I doubt that that's actually what Stephen saw.
The passage of the sea in the course of two pages, from universal mother, to Stephen's mother, to a bowl of bile from Stephen's mother's sickbed, to her bedside mirror, to the mirror the gods walk on, to the mother of poetry, and then that poetry to the song Stephen played for his dying mother... dazzling set of transitions. Like watching the sound of one hand clapping.
