Sirens
I've been reading faster than I've been able to blog, so I have to do some quick catch-up.
Sirens finds us at the Ormond Hotel, where Bloom goes to eat his dinner. There are two fetching barmaids, but the siren songs actually come from men, namely Father Cowley, Simon Dedalus and Ben Dollard, who play and sing at the bar's piano. In the Odyssey the songs of the sirens are so beautiful that sailors are lured to their deaths; in Ulysses the danger would seem to be sentimentality. Bloom hears and succumbs to feelings of sadness, particularly because he knows that Blazes Boylan is on his way to a liaison with his wife, Molly. In the end he is able to shake himself free, or at least partly, and he moves on as best he can.
What is interesting is that just at the moment that Boylan is approaching Bloom's house—we are given glimpses of his jingling carriage, though not the assignation itself—the song that is being sung is a song not about love but one with a political subtext. In "The Croppy Boy" a young Irish rebel goes to confess his sins and asks for the priest, but he is tricked and unknowingly confesses to a disguised British soldier. This is arranged by a "false priest's servant"—another betrayal.
It's also interesting that the episode returns to Bloom's correspondence with Martha Clifford (first mentioned in The Lotus Eaters), which is a kind of infidelity as well; it is as if Leopold and Molly are traveling on parallel paths. It's all a bit mysterious and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Bloom seems a bit equivocal about it as well; he mentions feeling bored by it, and yet he writes a reply anyway.
More than anything else the focus of the episode is on the style, which mimics musical composition with repetitions, rhythms, overtures and transpositions. Though difficult to follow at times, it is one of the most striking and memorable sections of the novel.
Sirens finds us at the Ormond Hotel, where Bloom goes to eat his dinner. There are two fetching barmaids, but the siren songs actually come from men, namely Father Cowley, Simon Dedalus and Ben Dollard, who play and sing at the bar's piano. In the Odyssey the songs of the sirens are so beautiful that sailors are lured to their deaths; in Ulysses the danger would seem to be sentimentality. Bloom hears and succumbs to feelings of sadness, particularly because he knows that Blazes Boylan is on his way to a liaison with his wife, Molly. In the end he is able to shake himself free, or at least partly, and he moves on as best he can.
What is interesting is that just at the moment that Boylan is approaching Bloom's house—we are given glimpses of his jingling carriage, though not the assignation itself—the song that is being sung is a song not about love but one with a political subtext. In "The Croppy Boy" a young Irish rebel goes to confess his sins and asks for the priest, but he is tricked and unknowingly confesses to a disguised British soldier. This is arranged by a "false priest's servant"—another betrayal.
It's also interesting that the episode returns to Bloom's correspondence with Martha Clifford (first mentioned in The Lotus Eaters), which is a kind of infidelity as well; it is as if Leopold and Molly are traveling on parallel paths. It's all a bit mysterious and I'm not quite sure what to make of it. Bloom seems a bit equivocal about it as well; he mentions feeling bored by it, and yet he writes a reply anyway.
More than anything else the focus of the episode is on the style, which mimics musical composition with repetitions, rhythms, overtures and transpositions. Though difficult to follow at times, it is one of the most striking and memorable sections of the novel.
posted by Joe Gola at 5:00 PM
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