Hades
It's interesting to think that perhaps in some earlier version of the Odyssey, as it was passed down from generation to generation in its oral tradition, the story told to the Phaeacians by Odysseus was intended to be understood as a tall tale, a fabulous lie invented by a gifted liar to charm his host and hostess. After all, aside from his various contacts with goddesses, all of Odysseus's most fantastic adventures take place within this story-within-a-story. Not the least fantastic is his voyage to the land of the dead and his communion with the shades who live there.
Bloom too visits the land of the dead; after his bath he attends the funeral and interment of Patrick Dignam at Glasnevin Cemetery. As we walk with the mourners to the grave site we follow in Bloom's mind a long meditation on the many aspects of death. His perspective is interesting, in that it is largely a practical one; Bloom does not brood about his own dissolution or agonize over what lies beyond the barrier, but rather his thoughts are of a detached and practical nature. Why not a special funeral tram instead of a parade of horse-drawn carriages? Does the caretaker ever think about his own grave? One passage in particular made me chuckle: "We are now praying for the repose of his soul. Hoping you're well and not in hell."
This episode exemplifies my idea of what Ulysses is when it's at its best, which is a poem of the everyman.* Now there's something tricky about that statement (besides the fact that it makes me sound like a freshman in English Lit 101), because one has to ask: is Leopold Bloom really an everyman? After all, he's far too specific a man to be an everyman; he's a half-Jewish Irishman, with a wife from Gibraltar, a suicide father and dead son. In some ways he's an unusual man, an outsider who is on occasion the subject of mockery, and he is also a man of a peculiar intellect; like Odysseus, he is a man of many twists and turns, in that he has an uncanny ability to see any given subject from all possible angles. Because of this, he is a man of remarkable sympathy and forbearance; if one were to go to extremes, he could be called a kind of Christ, though not so much a Christ of infinite love but rather a Christ of infinite understanding.
So, it is not so much that we see all of mankind in Leopold Bloom, but rather through him. He is a prism through which humanity is refracted in all its many colors. Or perhaps his is just the shoulder on which the angel James Joyce is perched. I think when reading we must keep a similar angelic detachment; despite the exhaustive details, Ulysses is not just about Leopold Bloom.
*The ghost of James Joyce is whispering to me. "The everyman Irishman, if you please, sir."
Bloom too visits the land of the dead; after his bath he attends the funeral and interment of Patrick Dignam at Glasnevin Cemetery. As we walk with the mourners to the grave site we follow in Bloom's mind a long meditation on the many aspects of death. His perspective is interesting, in that it is largely a practical one; Bloom does not brood about his own dissolution or agonize over what lies beyond the barrier, but rather his thoughts are of a detached and practical nature. Why not a special funeral tram instead of a parade of horse-drawn carriages? Does the caretaker ever think about his own grave? One passage in particular made me chuckle: "We are now praying for the repose of his soul. Hoping you're well and not in hell."
This episode exemplifies my idea of what Ulysses is when it's at its best, which is a poem of the everyman.* Now there's something tricky about that statement (besides the fact that it makes me sound like a freshman in English Lit 101), because one has to ask: is Leopold Bloom really an everyman? After all, he's far too specific a man to be an everyman; he's a half-Jewish Irishman, with a wife from Gibraltar, a suicide father and dead son. In some ways he's an unusual man, an outsider who is on occasion the subject of mockery, and he is also a man of a peculiar intellect; like Odysseus, he is a man of many twists and turns, in that he has an uncanny ability to see any given subject from all possible angles. Because of this, he is a man of remarkable sympathy and forbearance; if one were to go to extremes, he could be called a kind of Christ, though not so much a Christ of infinite love but rather a Christ of infinite understanding.
So, it is not so much that we see all of mankind in Leopold Bloom, but rather through him. He is a prism through which humanity is refracted in all its many colors. Or perhaps his is just the shoulder on which the angel James Joyce is perched. I think when reading we must keep a similar angelic detachment; despite the exhaustive details, Ulysses is not just about Leopold Bloom.
*The ghost of James Joyce is whispering to me. "The everyman Irishman, if you please, sir."
posted by Joe Gola at 9:11 PM
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