Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting. Womb of sin.

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch' In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.

In page 37 of Ulysses, Joyce uses the phrase, "Dominie Deasy kens them a'."

This is Scottish for "Teacher [Dominie] Deasy knows [kens] them all [a']" (i.e., "wild sea money").That is, Deasy knows all of the "wild sea money" (or shells, which can represent money).

In this passage, Stephen is walking down the beach with his eyes closed, listening to his boots step over sea shells. This remind him of his earlier conversation with Mr. Deasey (the school master at the school at which Stephen teaches). Page 29 refers to the seashells in Deasey's office, and this is the beginning of Deasey's lecture to Stephen about the importance of saving his money.

On page 37 of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus uses the phrase, "Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand?"

[Information on Sandymount strand can be found here.]

This phrase recalls a passage from William Blake's poem Milton: A Poem in 2 Books. Much of this poem involves the obscure mythology that Blake developed over the course of his life, and Joyce refers to this mythology by using the phrase Los Demiurgo that immediately precedes this sentence.

Here is the passage:

But Milton entering my Foot; I saw in the nether
Regions of the Imagination; also all men on Earth,
And all in Heaven, saw in the nether regions of the Imagination
In Ulro beneath Beulah, the vast breach of Miltons descent.
But I knew not that it was Milton, for man cannot know
What passes in his members till periods of Space & Time
Reveal the secrets of Eternity: for more extensive
Than any other earthly things, are Mans earthly lineaments.

And all this Vegetable World appeard on my left Foot,
As a bright sandal formd immortal of precious stones & gold:
I stooped down & bound it on to walk forward thro' Eternity.

-- William Blake, Milton: A Poem in 2 Books

On page 37 of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus uses the German terms “nacheinander” and “nebeneinander.”

In German, nacheinander means “one after another” or “successively”; and nebeneinander means “next to one another” or “adjacent.” To Stephen, they represent time (and by extension the audible) and space (and by extension the visual), respectively.

Most commentators trace this distinction to Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-81), whose Laökoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry distinguishes between the nebeneinander nature of static art (such as painting and sculptures) and the nacheinander nature of dynamic art (such as poetry and music).

As discussed in the this May 2007 post from the Another Reader’s Review blog, Lessing was one of the first European art critics to distinguish between these two types of art.

Static art can only capture a moment in time, and it is the artist’s job to determine the perfect moment to capture. Dynamic art, on the other hand, loses the intensity in which that moment is captured but it gains by being able to capture a sequence of events.

I've posted some samples of the essay here, and the full text can be found at the Internet Archive.

But perhaps this is the passage most relevant to Ulysses:

But I will try to prove my conclusions by starting
from first principles.

I argue thus. If it be true that painting employs
wholly different signs or means of imitation from
poetry, — the one using forms and colors in space,
the other articulate sounds in time, — and if signs
must unquestionably stand in convenient relation
with the thing signified, then signs arranged side by
side can represent only, objects existing side by side,
or whose parts so exist, while consecutive signs can
express only objects which succeed each other, or
whose parts succeed each other, in time.

Objects which exist side by side, or whose parts
so exist, are called bodies. Consequently bodies
with their visible properties are the peculiar subjects
of painting.

Objects which succeed each other, or whose parts
succeed each other in time, are actions. Consequently
actions are the peculiar subjects of poetry. . . .
bodies, however, exist not only in space, but
also in time. They continue, and, at any moment of
their continuance, may assume a different appearance
and stand in different relations) Every one of
these momentary appearances and groupings was
the result of a preceding, may become the cause of
a following, and is therefore the centre of a present,
action. Consequently painting can imitate actions
also, but only as they are suggested through forms.

Actions, on the other hand, cannot exist indepen-
dently, but must always be joined to certain agents.
In so far as those agents are bodies or are regarded
as such, poetry describes . . bodies, but only indi-'
rectly through actions.

Painting, in its coexistent compositions, can use
but a single moment of an action, and must there-
fore choose the most pregnant one, the one most
suggestive of what has gone before and what is to
follow.

Poetry, in its progressive imitations, can use but a
single attribute of bodies, and must choose that one
which gives the most vivid picture of the body as
exercised in this particular action.

Hence the rule for the employment of a single
descriptive epithet, and . the cause of the rare occur-
rence of descriptions of physical objects.

-- Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Laökoön: An Essay on the Limits of Painting and Poetry, Part 16, pages 91-92

At the beginning of the Proteus chapter of Ulysses, Stephen Dedalus uses the phrases "diaphane" and "adiaphane" to describe the phenonoma of the visual world.

Borrowing from Aristotle, Stephen imagines the diaphane to be the transparent veil of the visual world.

But if the diaphane is transparent, he thinks, then there must be its opposite--the adiaphane--on the other side. That is, if you can literally put your fingers through it ("If you can put your five fingers through it it is a gate"), then it could also be seen figuratively as a doorway to another world ("if not a door").

Stephen experiments with this by closing his eyes and walking for a few steps without sight ("Shut your eyes and see.")

Of course there is a pun here with the word "see." It reminds me of that corny joke:

"I see, said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw."

On page 37 of Ulysses, when James Joyce has his character Stephen Dedalus think the phrase, "By knocking his sconce against them," it is generally understand that it is an allusion to Samuel Johnson's response to/refutation of George Berkeley's argument (subjective idealism) against materialists.

It is described in the first volume of James Boswell's, The Life of Samuel Johnson:

After we came out of the church, we stood talking for some time together of Bishop Berkeley's ingenious sophistry to prove the non-existence of matter, and that every thing in the universe is merely ideal. I observed, that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true, it is impossible to refute it. I never shall forget the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with mighty force against a large stone, till he rebounded from it, "I refute it thus." This was a stout exemplification of the First Truths of Pere Bouffier. or the Original Principles of Reid and of Beattie; without admitting which, we can no more argue in metaphysicks, than we can argue in mathematicks without axioms. To me it is not conceivable how Berkeley can be answered by pure reasoning; but I know that the nice and difficult task was to have been undertaken by one of the most luminous minds of the present age, had not politicks "turned him from calm philosophy aside." What an admirable display of subtilty, united with brilliance, might his contending with Berkeley have afforded us! How must we, when we reflect on the loss of such an intellectual feast, regret that he should be characterised as the man,

"Who born for the universe narrow'd his mind,
And to party gave up what was meant for mankind?"

-- James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 1, page 472

You learn something new everyday, or so they tell me. Or, as my dad is fond of saying, "I just learned something I didn't know before."

I'm still trudging through page 37. During my online research, I came across this Sheila Variations website post.

That post pointed out that James Joyce makes exactly one reference to a fact about Stephen that might be crucial to understanding this chapter: It turns out that Stephen broke his glasses the day before.

In the chapter where Stephen and Leopold Bloom are in the brothel, Joyce gives Stephen these lines:

STEPHEN: (Brings the match near his eye)
Lynx eye. Must get glasses. Broke them
yesterday. Sixteen years ago. Distance.
The eye sees all flat. (He draws the
match away. It goes out.) Brain thinks.
Near: far. Ineluctable modality of the
visible. (He frowns mysteriously) Hm.
Sphinx. The beast that has twobacks at
midnight. Married.

Ah, that makes sense. This goes a long way in explaining why Stephen happens to be thinking about the "ineluctable modality of the visible." After all, he's having trouble seeing. And, instead of interpreting this as Stephen's questioning of reality, maybe it's just Stephen is trying to find another way to experience reality (since he can't rely on his eyes).

That post also goes on to note that much of Stephen's descriptions in this early chapter center around sounds (since he's having trouble seeing), and many of the visual descriptions are fuzzy.

I'll have to keep an eye on that.

So, while this and subsequent discussion of Stephen alienation is still relevant, it's nice to know that there's also a literal component to this passage.

On page 37 of Ulysses, James Joyce has his character, Stephen Dedalus remark in his stream of consciousness:

"Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs."

The phrase "signature of all things" has already been identified as coming from Jakob Böhme of the same name.

And the lists are just Stephen matching random images (the ineluctable modality of the visible) with their colors:

seaspawn and seawrack = snotgreen
the nearing tide = bluesliver
that rusty boot = rust

For the phrase "coloured signs" and the theory of sight/colors that it represents, Giffords (on page 44) claims this is a reference a 1709 treatise by George Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, called An Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision.

Berkeley's ideas aren't too far removed from those of Aristotle, or at least they are close enough that he thinks of Aristotle's work immediately after thinking of Berkeley's work.

Gifford references (and quotes part of) Section 46. Here is the full section:

46. From what we have shown it is a manifest consequence
that the ideas of space, outness, and things placed at a
distance are not, strictly speaking, the object of sight;
they are not otherwise perceived by the eye than by the
ear. Sitting in my study I hear a coach drive along the
street; I look through the casement and see it; I walk out
and enter into it; thus, common speech would incline one
to think I heard, saw, and touched the same thing, to wit,
the coach. It is nevertheless certain, the ideas intromitted
by each sense are widely different and distinct from each
other; but having been observed constantly to go together,
they are spoken of as one and the same thing. By the
variation of the noise I perceive the different distances of
the coach, and know that it approaches before I look out.
Thus by the ear I perceive distance, just after the same
manner as I do by the eye.

An expanded selection can be found here.

The full text of this piece can be found here on Project Guttenberg.

At the beginning of the Proteus section on page 37 of Ulysses, James Joyce has his character Stephen Dedalus say, "Signatures of all things I am here to read." It's part of Stephen's stream of consciousness when he is thinking about the nature of reality; in that context, Stephen is announcing his willingness to "read" the signs left in nature and discern their "real" meaning.

Signature of All Things (1621) is the English name of a esoteric treatise by Jakob Böhme (1575-1624), a German Christian mystic. The work's original title was Signatura Rerum. (Jakob Böhme is usually rendered in English as Jacob Boehme.)

"The Doctrine of Signature" was a fairly obscure "scientific" idea before Böhme applied it to theology and popularized it.

Some herbalists of the time believe that when God made the world, he created things with shapes that suggested their purpose (particularly plants with medicinal benefits). For example, "liverwort" was shaped like a liver and as such was good for the liver and "lungwort" looked like and benefited the lungs. Even "wormwood" got its name because it looked like a worm and was believed to an antidote for snake venom; lungwort; bloodroot; toothwort; wormwood, to expel intestinal parasites

Böhme applied this concept to Christianity, saying that when God created the world, he marked aspects of nature with a "signature" (or sign) of their purpose. It was the job of the enlightened initiate to find and interpret these signs and uncover the true meaning of all creation (or something like that).

The Theosophists claim the author as one of their own.

A full-text translation of the work can be found at The Internet Sacred Text Archive.

Full text of Böhme's Clavis (or Key) can be found here.

And other works can be found here.

For the last couple of day, I've said that the Proteus chapter of Ulysses is not easy. But Joyce probably meant it to be hard to read. He's put us into the mind of a tortured (or at least clinically depressed) young man. How can that be an easy read?

You can't read this chapter like you would most books. It doesn't offer a conventional story with compelling characters and surprising plot twists. For the first couple of chapters, this might have been possible. But that comes to a screeching halt with the words: "Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes."

With this chapter, the reader is thrown into Stephen's "stream of consciousness" and left to sink or swim. That in itself is disorienting; but add on all of the literary and historical references, and it's all but impossible to get a handle on this material in the first or second read.

This chapter forces the reader to slow down and pay more attention (or simply skim over the whole thing, hoping it will become more interesting later...but I'm not gonna do that). Not just slow down, but really . . . slow . . . down . . . and . . . read . . . every . . . sentence . . . and . . . every . . . word.

Consider reading this chapter as you would a poem. Read it once closely (maybe looking up the occasional word in the dictionary), then read it out loud to yourself, and then read it more closely for meaning.

It will take me at least another day to finish annotating this page, and I'm sure none of the other pages will go any more quickly. But if you come to this site and find that no new pages have been added, I encourage you to re-read the page that is posted. If nothing else, the pace of my annotating will force any visitors following along to read the pages more slowly and carefully.

(By the way, does anyone come back to this site more than once?)

Robert Berry of the excellent UlyssesSeen mentioned during a recent Twitter exchange: "The Proteus chapter is hard. Best estimates claim this one sentence as the major hole in the floor most readers fall through."

I couldn't agree more.

Don't be another Ulysses casualty. Remember that Joyce is doing this on purpose, and nobody is meant to understand all of this. But it's worth struggling with this stuff. Besides, we're reading this together, right? And once we make it through this chapter, we will find our reward:

Leopold Bloom!

I came across the following explanation of the opening line of the Proteus section. It's from the Joseph Campbell book, Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce. He makes it much simplier than my explanation.

I didn't realize that Campbell was such a big fan of the book. I recognized Carl Jung in many of his ideas, but only now do I see the Joyce influences.

The story goes that he was living in Paris and came across an early copy of Ulysses. What he read pissed him off, and he went to the publisher to complain. But the book's editor set him staight and explained how the book works.

He was converted and spent much of his early life studying and lecturing on James Joyce and his work.

I plan to order a copy of this book and recommend that you think of buying it (from Amazon, if you're interest).

Anyway, here's the quote:

Ineluctable modality of the visible:…Ineluctable
means you can’t get away from it; modality refers
to the formal aspect of experience, to forms that are
visible and mobile, not to the substantiality which
cannot be penetrated by our eyes. The ineluctable
modality of the visible is what we behold.

…at least that if no more,…Stephen is trying to identify
the things that one can be sure of. This is the visible
world. What’s the substance behind this modality?
Who knows? There may or may not be a metaphysical
problem defining it. It’s ineluctable. What Stephen
knows about this modality of the visible is:

…thought through my eyes. The thought has come to
Stephen through his eyes. They are open and see only
these modalities.

-- James Joyce, Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce, page 66

I'm still plugging away with page 37. I'm almost done with the first paragraph. (Oh, boy!)

Joyce is starting to convince me that he's being purposely obscure in this chapter. I'm thinking that this section is so dense with allusions not so much because Joyce wants to impress with his learning, but because he wants to demonstrate precisely how trapped Stephen is by his own thoughts, his own learning.

In Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen bloviates at length about the true nature of beauty and art. He is enraptured by is own vision of art. The book end with him going out into the world to create art:

"Welcome, O life, I go to encounter for the millionth time the reality
of experience and to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated
conscience of my race." (from the end of Portrait)

Now, a couple of years later he's back in Dublin, his mother has died, and he's miserable. And all of his intellectual gymnastics don't mean anything.

At least in the first page (and throughout the rest of the chapter?) Stephen is pondering reality. Like I said yesterday, "What if you're all a figment of my imagination?" For instance, he wonders to himself whether the world (or at least the visual world) ceases to exist when he closes his eyes.

But more and more I'm thinking that the interesting things is not all of the allusions that Joyce can pack in a single paragraph; what's interesting is that Stephen seems incapable of an original thought. Think about it for a moment: as readers, we struggle through these words, but nowhere do we get the impression that Stephen is doing much more than spouting things he learned elsewhere.

He's reached an intellectual deadend.

So, no, it is not an easy chapter, nor is it meant to be easy. But this entry might help.

The third chapter of Ulysses (on page 37) starts with a phrase that has perhaps single-handledly caused the most readers to put down the book and never pick it up again: "Ineluctable modality of the visible."

What? I'll admit that it stopped me in my tracks and almost had me ending this project on the spot. But, no, that won't happen. I just needed to read up on Aristotle (wait, maybe I should call the whole thing off) and muddle through. As the man said, "I'm tied to the stake and I must stand the course."

Anyway, the phrase basically means the inescapability form of the visible. Vision is a fundamental component of existence. And Stephen is musing over the exact nature of reality--what is real? How can he know what is real?

As Joyce has Stephen say in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: "QUIDDITAS, the WHATNESS of a thing." (Is that really relevant? I don't know. But I like it.)

Stephen spends a lot of time in his own head. And up until now we've only seen snatches of his thoughts (as when he mind would wander in the first two sections of the book). But in this section we are meant to be wholly in Stephen's head with him, listening in on his thoughts as they dart from one idea to the next.

As the chapter opens, Stephen is walking along the shore, and he's thinking about the nature of reality. He first considers the visible as an inescapable reality, and then he starts considering what happens when you lose sight. So, he closes his eyes and starts listening to existence (the ineluctable modality of the audible).

Also, Stephen hates being back in Dublin, Ireland. He misses Paris and believes that Ireland is merely a colony to England. If ineluctable means inescapable, then he could easily say, "ineluctable modality of being Irish."

A Literal Loss of Vision

Before breaking down this phrase, it might be worth noting that Stephen had broken his glasses the day before, which goes a long way in explaining why he happens to be thinking about the "ineluctable modality of the visible."

In a later chapter, after Stephen meets Leopold Bloom, he tells Bloom, "Must get glasses. Broke them yesterday."

This Sheila Variations website post first pointed out this tidbit to me. That post goes on to note that much of Stephen's descriptions in this early chapter center around sounds (since he's having trouble seeing), and many of the visual descriptions are fuzzy.

So, while this and subsequent discussion of Stephen alienation is still relevant, it's nice to know that there's also a literal component to this passage.

Ineluctable

The word "ineluctable" means inescapable, unavoidable, or not to be avoided, changed, or resisted.

It comes from the Latin word ineluctabilis, meaning "from which there is no escape."

The in- prefix suggests that "eluctable" would be the antonym, but there doesn't seem to be such a word in English.

Modality

Modality is a word that can mean just about anything, and over the years the exact meaning has been watered down to where it doesn't mean much of anything beyond, "it's a something."

But this is probably not the case with Joyce. He chose his words very carefully, and he must've chosen these words especially carefully: This is the first line of the first truly experimental section of his masterpiece, and he'd have wanted to get it right.

Also, I can imagine that he chose his words so that they might have multiple meanings.

Joseph Campbell defines it like this: "modality refers to the formal aspect of experience, to forms that are visible and mobile, not to the substantiality which cannot be penetrated by our eyes." (from Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce)

This page refers to The Oxford English Dictionary for this broad definition: “Those aspects of a thing which relate to its mode, or manner or state of being, as distinct from its substance or identity.”

This page is a little more helpful:

1. a: the quality or state of being modal b: a modal quality or attribute : form
2. the classification of logical propositions according to their asserting or denying the possibility, impossibility, contingency, or necessity of their content
3. one of the main avenues of sensation (as vision)
4. a usually physical therapeutic agency

I'm liking definitions 1 and 3.

The first sense ("form") would introduce a distinction that Aristotle makes regarding the nature of all things: that between form and substance (or is it matter?).

The second sense ("one of the main avenues of sensation," ie, the five senses) might be the primary meaning of this use. After all, he's talking about "the visible" and "the audible" in these first paragraphs.

The Visible

This word, of course, is straightforward. But it should be noted that when James Joyce starts talking about the senses here (that is, the visible and the audible), he's thinking abou them in relation to Aristotle's definition of the senses and his theory on how they work.

Aristotle discusses his theory in De Anima (On the Soul).

The Wikipedia article is here.

For the brave (or maybe future Difficult Book-ers), here is the full text.

Also, Gifford references Aristotles Sense and Sensibilia, which I've posted here.

Classical vs Modern

In discussing this phrase with Robert Berry of Ulysseen fame, he described modality like this: "Modality, following this form, is the modernist notion of a tangible reality in flux. The changes of a modern identity....Modality is the quality of change and, to a modernist, fresh viewpoint brings subtle changes to the most concrete structure."

There's also been some talk about flux, which I don't see it in the text yet. (But I'm not looking at the forest right now, and maybe I just haven't gotten to that particular tree yet.)

Those are interesting thoughts, and I'll be keeping an eye on these themes as the chapter progresses. But right now, I'm noticing how much Stephen's mind is occupied with the work of Aristotle, as filtered through the Aquinas and the Jesuits.

It seems that he's stuffed his head with so much arcane knowledge that when his mind wanders, it's like wandering around in a hall of mirrors.

When I was in Middle School I heard a character on tv say to the rest of the cast, "What if you're all a figment of my imagination?" The studio audience laughed, but it turned my head inside-out. Who's to say everyone wasn't a figment of my imagination?

I imagine Stephen in a similar situation. Trapped in his head and desperate for escape. Escape from his own thoughts, from the past, from Ireland, from history.

There is a reason this chapter is so "difficult." Joyce was trying to capture a mind in turmoil, the mind of a person who was trapped. It's not supposed to be pretty or easy.

I hope that helped.

On page 37 of Ulysses, James Joyce makes fleeting reference to demiurge with the phrase "Los Demiurgos"

In brief, Demiurge is the creator of the physical world (as opposed to ideals, which are eternal). Some might confuse the Demiurge for the Judeo-Christian concept of God, but that would not be quite correct.

Demiurge was originally a Classical Greek word to mean something along the lines of "builder" or "artisan." Basically, in its original usage, a demiurge was someone who built something.

Demiurge seems to have been introduced to the world as a philosophical/spiritual concept in Plato's Timaeus. In this sense, demiurge came to mean the creator of the universe. "The Great Architect."

However, the classical understanding to this creator was a god that created order from chaos. That is, this god did not create something from nothing.

This perspective eventually became a central concept in Gnosticism, which starts with the assumption that the physical world is the root of all evil in the world; and if that's the case (it reasoned), then the creator of that physical world must also be evil (or at least seriously flawed).

From the Gnostic perspective, the demiurge is a fallen being that created the physical world after that fall.

You can find the Wikipedia article here.

The Catholic Encyclopedia has a surprisingly balanced article about Demiurge and links for more information on some gnostic Christian heresies.

Information on how the Demiurge relates to Gnosticism can be found here.

On page 37 of Ulysses, James Joyce uses the phrase "Los Demiurgos."

Los

At first glance, the word "Los" seems to be the definite article for "Demiurgos."

However, it could also refer to Los, a character in the mythology of William Blake. See, for instance, the poet's The Book of Los.

(Blake's mythology also appears in the poet's Milton: A Poem in 2 Books, which Joyce references with the phrase "Am I walking into eternity along Sandymount strand?")

According to William Blake's mythology, the primeval man, Albion, was split into four separate beings (which Blake called "Zoas") after The Fall.

The first Zoa is Tharmas, which represents instinct, nature, and unity.

The second Zoa is Urizen, which represents laws, culture, and conventional reason, and resembles the Gnostic concept of the Demiurge.

The third Zoa is Luvah, which represents love, passion, and rebellious energy. In his "fallen form," Luvah is called Orc.

The fourth Zoa is Urthona, which represents creativity and inspiration. In his "fallen form," Urthona is call Los.

In Blake's artwork, Los is often depicted as a smith with a hammer to represent the beating of the human heart (which might explain Joyce's phrase "made by the mallet of Los").

One of Blake's most complete description of his mythology can be found in the unpublished epic poem, Four Zoas: The Death and Judgment of Albion The Ancient Man.

A breakdown of the key characters in Blake’s mythology can be found here.

Demiurgos

“Demiurgos” is Spanish/Portuguese for the Gnostic concept o the Demiurge.

Joyce uses this form of the word to complete the multilingual pun started with “Los.”

It also happens to resemble the ancient Greek (that is, the original) form of the word.

Page 37 has been posted.

This is the start of Chapter 3, sometimes called Proteus, named after the creature that Menelaus struggled with when he was marooned near Egypt on his way home from Troy.

Proteus was a sea god (by some accounts second only to Poseidon, and by other accounts as a more ancient god) that could shift its shape at will.

It's an appropriate image for this chapter because, like Proteus, the words following the shifting thoughts of Stephen's "stream of consciousness" as he wanders the beach outside Dublin.

This is an especially "difficult" chapter, and I've hardly made a dent in annotating it. Where to start?

On my first approach, I tried to decipher "Ineluctable modality of the visible." But it's too tightly bound to the rest of the page to make much sense on its own.

My second approach was to start by translating all the foreign phrases. But I got bogged down by parsing the difference between "nacheinander" and "nebeneinander."

In both approaches, it seems like the reader is thrown in the middle of a philosophical arguement that Stephen is having with himself. Some people might be clued into the various points of view, but I'm lost. It will take a good bit of extracurricular reading to understand this stuff better.

However, one name comes through clear: Aristotle. It's a name that has cropped up earlier in the book, but now Joyce seems to assume greater familiarity with the man's work. Ugh.

Any suggestions on which work of Aristotle's to start first? Could any of it be considered Summer Reading?

I just finished reading Harpo Marx's autobiography, Harpo Speaks!. For the most part, it was an entertaining read, told in a conversational style that allowed Harpo to tell whatever stories came to his mind.

I particularly liked the stories of the early days, when they started as a very poor family that only rose in the ranks of vaudeville through the single-minded devotion of their mother, Minnie.

Later, after the Marx Brothers start gaining success on Broadway, Harpo's attention moves from the brothers and to his circle of friends. Maybe some readers might be interested in the Algonquin Round Table, but I was really only interested in the the Marx Brothers. Whenever Harpo moved away from that, I started losing interest. And by the time the Marx Brothers were making movies, Harpo's attention seemed to shift completely away from that.

Still, I'd recommend it. (Here is the link to buy the book from Amazon.com) Sometimes authors become more than narrators; in cases like this, the reader feels they are in the presence of a friend who can tell a good story.

Harpo married late in life and then adopted 4 children. While the other Marx Brothers were "marriage challenged," Harpo stayed married to Susan until the end of his life.

Late in the book, when Harpo is talking about being a father, we lists the rules of the house. I've listed them below.

Harpo Marx's Family Rules

1. Life has been created for you to enjoy, but you won't enjoy it unless you pay for it with some good, hard work. This is one price that will never be marked down.
2. You can work at whatever you want to as long as you do it as well as you can and clean up afterwards and you're at the table at mealtime and in bed at bedtime.
3. Respect what the others do. Respect Dad's harp, Mom's paints, Billy's piano, Alex's set of tools, Jimmy's designs, and Minnie's menagerie.
4. If anything makes you sore, come out with it. Maybe the rest of us are itching for a fight too.
5. If anything strikes you as funny, out with that too. Let's all the rest of us have a laugh.
6. If you have an impulse to do something you're not sure is right, go ahead and do it. Take a chance. Chances are, if you don't you'll regret it--unless you break the rules about mealtime and bedtime, in which case you'll sure as hell regret it.
7. If it's a question of whether to do what's fun or what is supposed to be good for you, and nobody is hurt by whichever you do, always do what's fun.
8. If things get too much for you and you feel the whole world's against you, go stand on your head. If you can think of anything crazier to do, do it.
9. Don't worry about what other people think. The only person in the world important enough to conform to is yourself.
10. Anybody who misteats a pet or breaks a pool cue is docked a month's pay.

We've just finished Chapter 2 of Ulysses (that is, finished with page 34 and completed page 35 and page 36).

If you are visiting for the first time, this is a good time to get caught up. In the next couple of days we will start on Chapter 3, which is one of the more difficult chapters of this book. Whenever people say they quite reading this book very early, they are often talking about this chapter.

It is basically Stephen walking alone and letting his mind wander. Stream of consciousness.

On one hand, it makes good reading if you take your time and accept it for what it is; but it can also be deadly dull. But when you get bored, just think of it this way: if we can make it through this chapter, we can make it through anything.

Goodbye Mr. Deasy

With the end of this chapter, we can say good bye to Mr. Deasy. And not a moment too soon. We've talked about how his anti-Semitism, but in these last pages he also proves himself a misogynist.

Here is our last image of him:

"A coughball of laughter leaped from his throat dragging after it a rattling chain of phlegm. He turned back quickly, coughing, laughing, his lifted arms waving to the air."

By the time Stephen leaves the school, we are as relieved as he is.

Some Housekeeping

We're still trying to handle all of the spammer that visit this site. If any of you have Drupal experience, please let me know if there is a good module for filtering out spam.

In the meantime, we've added a step in the sign up process. When you sign up, you just have to wait until we have the chance to grant access. Many of these spammers seem to be automatic, and adding this step has greatly reduced the spam.

I'll change it back as soon as I find another option.

Thanks.

As an Allusion to French Poetry

The phrase "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" is a nice phrase. But maybe the idea of history as a nightmare isn't especially original.

According to Gifford, this phrase has its source in Jules Laforgue (1860-87). The original quote that Gifford cites is, "la vie est trop triste, trop sale. L'histoire est un vieux cauchemar bariolé qui ne se doute pas que les meilleures plaisanteries sont les plus courtes."

Yahoo Babelfish translates this phase as:

"The life is too sad, too dirty. L' history is an old multi-coloured nightmare which does not suspect that the best jokes are shortest."

Are there any French speakers out there who can give me a better translation?

As Joyce Copying Joyce

In Ulysses it can become too easy to find allusions in everything. It's almost like a conspiracy theory, where you don't know what the source is but it has to be in there somewhere.

Another options is that, surprise, maybe Joyce thought of some of these things himself.

In reading about this phrase, I came across a book that suggested another source of the quote: James Joyce himself.

On page 98 of James Joyce and the Language of History, Robert E. Spoo, the author, quotes a passage from A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. It happens at the end of Chapter 3:

"Another life! A life of grace and virtue and happiness! It was true. It was not a dream from which he would wake. The past was past."

It's an interesting comparison between the younger Stephen and the older Stephen. The younger character found at least a brief respite in religion; the older character has grown and learned that the dream was actually a nightmare, and he hopes to wake from it.

It's nice to see a character develop from one book to the next.

We're still on page 34 of Ulysses.

Now I remember why I stopped posting on Ulysses for a while. I'd annotated about half that page and then lost all of the changes. Not the end of the world or anything, but school work came in and distracted me.

Ah, well. We're back, aren't we?

History is a nightmare

Here is perhaps the most famous line from the book: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." But I really like the whole section:

"—History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which
I am trying to awake.

"From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring
whistle: Goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back
kick?

"—The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy
said. All human history moves towards one great goal,
the manifestation of God.

"Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:

"—That is God.

"Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!

"—What? Mr Deasy asked.

"—A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging
his shoulders."

After a full morning of listening to Brits bloviate about the inevitability of history, Stephen finally finds his retort.

I've been meaning to take a closer look at these contrasting perspectives on history: history as a straight line toward progress, and history as a cycle of recurring themes. But it became too intimidating, and I wasn't in the mood to spend time with Hegel, so we'll just pass on by, appreciate this passage, and move on.

This Is God?

That "history is a nightmare" line gets all of the attention, but the lines following it made me really like Stephen. Maybe for the first time.

Deasey talks about history inevitably leading to the manifestation of god, and Stephen comes back with the observation is, "That is God," referring to the sound of children playing outside and "a shout in the street."

Heck, it's almost a Zen-like response. If you were to say "That is God" in a normal conversation, there probably would be a moment of stunned silence before the other person would think to ask, "what is God?"

The answer would be everything that happened after you'd finished talking and before the other person started talking. Every sound, Every sensation. Every thought. It would all be God--everything and nothing.

Yeah, Stephen gets respect from me for that bit of snark.

History's March Forward

A few weeks ago, my brother reminded me of this appropriate quote from President Obama:

"In retrospect, America's march forward seems inevitable. But time and time again, it's only made possible by generations that are willing to work and sacrifice and invest in plans to make tomorrow better than today. That's the vision we can't afford to lose sight of. That's the challenge that's fallen to this generation. And that's the challenge we meet."

In page 34 of Ulysses, briefly describes a scene of Jews gathering around the Paris Bourse, or Stock Exchange. It includes the phrase: "They swarmed loud, uncouth about the temple"

Jesus and the Moneychangers

The first image this calls to mind is the story of Jesus driving the moneychangers out of the Temple in Jerusalem, which is told in all four of the Gospels:

12 Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13 "It is written," he said to them, "'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers.'"
-- Matthew 21:12-13

15 On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, 16 and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. 17 And as he taught them, he said, "Is it not written: "'My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations'? But you have made it 'a den of robbers.'"
-- Mark 11:15-17

45 Then he entered the temple area and began driving out those who were selling. 46 "It is written," he said to them, "'My house will be a house of prayer'; but you have made it 'a den of robbers.'"
-- Luke 19:45-46

13 When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14 In the temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money. 15 So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple area, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. 16 To those who sold doves he said, "Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!"
-- John 2:13-16

The Temple of Vespasian of Rome

Gifford informs us that the Paris Bourse was actually an archetural copy of the Temple of Vespasian and Titus in Rome.

Interested readers can compare the two buildings by looking at this digital recreation of the Temple of Vespasian and these pictures of the Paris Bourse.

If this is so, it is another example of Joyce being hyper-clever.

It turns out that Vespasian is the Roman Emperor that cast the Jews out of Israel and initiated their dispersion. That the Paris Bourse (where he imagines Jews bustling around doing business) is designed after the the temple to the Emperor who caused the diaspora is too much for coincidence.

Instead, I would attribute it to Joyce's ironic response to Deasey's comment "And that is why they are wanderers on the earth to this day" on page 33; that is, if Jews are wandering, it is not because "they sinned against the light," but because the Romans came into Jerusalem, sacked the temple, and forced them off their land.

It's an interesting, though quite round-about, rebuke to that blow hard Deasey.

The final act of King Lear (Act 5) has been posted.

That was a downer. Sure, I remembered that everyone died at the end of this play, but it's still a downer. Cordelia dies off stage, and King Lear dies of a broken heart. "General woe" pretty much covers it.

Anyway, I did not have the chance to see the Shakespeare Theatre Company's production of King Lear. It ended before I could shake myself loose from schoolwork. So, now I can look forward to the next production.

The next production is The Taming of the Shrew. They're calling it the Free For All, and it will be playing for free downtown for about a month. That's right, it's playing for free (as in "free beer"), so there can be no excuse for not going--especially since school is over.

Did you hear that? I said that school is over. After two years, I'm a Master. And suddenly I will have open nights and freetime again. What does that mean?

For this site, it means that I'm going back to Ulysses. Finally!

We start again tomorrow. See you then.

This is just a quick note that we've posted Act 4 of King Lear.

All of the pieces are in place, and Act 5 is the big finale.

Right. Where was I before we were so rudely interrupted?

I've posted the rest of King Lear Act 3, but you can also pick up with Act 3, Scene 4 if you don't want to re-read too much.

Here's the plan. I'll post Act 4 tomorrow and Act 5 on Sunday. Then, by Monday I'll be done with my final school work and can turn back to the REAL project: Ulysses.

It's been too long since I've spent time with that book, and I'm looking forward to returning.

Tied to the Stake

Anyway, one of my favorite Shakespeare lines comes in these pages. When Regan and the Duke of Cornwall are torturing the Earl of Gloucester--but before they tear his eyes out--he shouts:

"I am tied to th' stake, and I must stand the course."

The image here comes from bear baiting, where they would tie a bear to a stake and then sic attack dogs on it. Basically, it's a particularly nasty cousin to cockfighting and dog fighting. The "game" was in betting how well the bear fought and how many dogs the bear would take with it.

A gruesome image, isn't it?

For me, it's a striking image of forbearance (no pun intended, but not unwelcome either) in the face of almost certain defeat. Commitment despite discouragement.

A Bit of Lovecraft

Speaking of forebearance, thank you for not losing patience with the religious tracts that have sat on my front page for too many days. I liked them because they were comics and the "message" was an unfortunatley side effect.

To cleanse the palate, a visitor posted a link to a nice spoof of Jack Chick tracts. Called "Who Will Be Eaten First?" It uses some of the original art from "The Choice" (which can still be found on this blog post) but replaces the text with a Lovecraftian slant:

"The stars are right! The Elder Gods are going to rise and eat us all!"

Good stuff.

I haven't read any Lovecraft, but would like to give him a try. Any recommendations?

Sorry for not writing more these past couple of weeks. As I may have mentioned earlier, I'm completing a Masters degree in Publishing through The George Washington University. Almost there.

It's been a rough few weeks: 6 papers and 3 presentations. Next week we finish our last classes, and hopefully all of the papers will be written and submitted by then.

Sometime in the next couple of weeks I'll have time to resume my reading of Ulysses and post new content here. In the meantime, I'm just trying to keep my head above water.

Here's some entertainment for anyone who's interested. The Kinks are among my favorite bands; for me, they are as good as anything that came out of the "British Invasion" (except the Beatles, of course). And this is one of my favorite songs--Better Things--mashed with a vintage cartoon. A nice combination.

Anyway, it's helped to keep my spirits (and motivation) up.

"Here's wishing you the bluest skies..."

Enjoy.

This post doesn't have anything to do with Ulysses, King Lear, or any other Difficult Book for that matter (unless you consider the Bible "difficult," which wouldn't be unreasonable). But since we are coming to a "low-content" stretch, I thought people might entertain themselves with online comics.

While on the town this weekend, we came across several piles of photocopied pamphlets entitled "Is Satan Your Pimp?" The insides contained the same ol' badly written evangelical palaver. But the cover? The cover included the title in big, block letters and a black silhouette of Satan dressed as a pimp, with a broad-rimmed hat, heavy overcoat, and a tail between the legs.

It was a work of art by itself (and I'll post a photo once I learn how to post photos), but it also got me thinking about Jack Chick comics.

Remember Jack Chick comics?

I used to love those small evangelical Christian tracts that were distributed all over the place. Most of the time they were fun until the god message go too heavy. But sometimes, especially when there was a focus on the devil, they would scare the be-jesus out of me.

Well, I just found out that the company, Chick Publications, offers code for embedding a handful of these cartoons. Now, I don't endorse the theological message of these tract. They are included here for entertainment purposes.

Or, if you insist that all of the content on this blog be related to Ulysses, think of it this way: Stephen Dedalus is obsessed about the Catholic Church, and these comics offer a very simple explanation of Christian beliefs. These pamphlets will help you to understand Stephen better.

If you want to learn more about Jack Chick, the man, click here. And for those of you who can't get enough, you can buy one copy of all the comics for $14.95.

Enjoy.

Act 3, Scene 1 has been posted.

And, yes, it's another short one (only two pages). You can knock this one off a couple of minutes.

At one point the Earl of Kent says, "Fie on this storm!" And I have to agree with him, but I would say "Fie on this sh@# storm!" Things are getting busier and busier, so for the time being I'll stick with this one scene and hope to have more time tomorrow.

The Natural Order

Anyway, a disguised Earl of Kent meets with a gentleman on a heath in the middle of the storm (though it isn't clear to me what that "gentleman" is doing outside in the middle of this storm). And they talk about the king's madness; Lear is wandering around the heath yelling at the elements and demanding they do his bidding.

The king's obviously nuts and is out there alone except for his sidekick, "None but the fool, who labours to outjest/His heart-struck injuries."

At this point, though, I'm wondering if he's mad (as in insane) or just mad (as in furious). He has a reason to be pissed off. His daughters have rejected and humiliated him, he's lost his kingdom and his retinue, and his favorite daughter has married the King of France (the final insult?). That might piss me off badly enough to go outside and scream in the rain for a while. Why not?

This anger might grow into insanity in later scenes. But screaming at the sea and the rain to do his bidding doesn't necessarily make him insane. The people of King Lear's time (and to a lesser extent those in Shakespeare's time, which considered itself more civilized) believed in a natural order for everything. Everything had its place, from the rock at the bottom of the ocean to the sun spinning in the sky. And human order refected this natural order: just as god was at the head of all creation, fathers were the head of the family and kings were the head of their kingdom. These might be considered sacred positions.

So, if the human order has gone completely out-of-whack, is it so strange for the king to assume that the natural order is messed up too?

But remember something. From this perspective, King Lear deserves everything he gets because he set the whole thing in motion. Just like the sun cannot retired from the heavens, a king can dissolve his kingship. It's unnatural. And King Lear abdicating the throne is the real tragedy in this story. The rest is just fall out.

The second story here is that of Edmund, the bastard, using trickery to get the land that belongs to the legimate son. It's another example of the world gone wrong, another result of King Lear's stupid decision.

Things are getting hectic at Difficult Books, and none of us have time to spare in the next week or so. But there's always time to post new content (though there won't be much commentary). So....

We've finished posting Act 2 of King Lear for your reading pleasure. That's scene 3 (which is only one page) and scene 4 (which is considerably longer; you know, the ol' Shakespeare bait-n-switch).

We're still trying to find a time to see the Shakespeare Theatre Company's performance, so let us know if you're available. The good news is that it's been extended to July 23, which will give us time to clear our plates of others things.

************

Looking forward, we have our work cut out for us. Here are the other Shakespeare plays in the Company's schedule for the rest of the 09/10 season:

As You Like It
directed by Maria Aitken
11/17/2009 - 12/20/2009

Richard II
directed by Michael Kahn
2/2/2010 - 4/11/2010

Henry V
directed by David Muse
2/4/2010 - 4/10/2010

Congratulations UlyssesSeen

Congratulations go to Rob Berry and the good folks at UlyssesSeen. On Friday, Paste Magazine did a write up on the site; you will find it here.

For those of you following us on Twitter (@difficultbooks) and Facebook, Rob generously loaned us a beautiful watercolor portrait of James Joyce that we plan to incorporate into this site (once I figure out how to do it--I'm still learning this web design stuff).

UlyssesSeen is doing some great work over there, and any promotion that draws more attention to them is a good thing. Maybe someday we're prove that Ulysses isn't as inaccessible as people claim (or fear?).

Some Housekeeping Issues

In other news, I've hit the homestretch with my masters degree. About a month from now, I will finish class work for my Masters in Publishing from The George Washington University. That's good news, but between now and then I have a lot of work to do. For some reason, the teachers decided that this last term would be the right time to dump a lot of papers and busy work on the students.

That means that I will not have the time to keep to a regular schedule posting Ulysses pages. Instead of posting pages just to post them, I plan to just step back for a couple of weeks, though I will try to post Joyce related stuff when possible.

In the meantime, I'm hoping that Boomer can keep posting King Lear.