Ulysses James Joyce

Part I: Telemachia

Episode 1, Telemachus

At 8 a.m., Malachi "Buck" Mulligan, a boisterous medical student, calls aspiring writer Stephen Dedalus up to the roof of the Sandycove Martello tower, where they both live. There is tension between Dedalus and Mulligan stemming from a cruel remark Dedalus overheard Mulligan make about his recently deceased mother and from the fact that Mulligan has invited an English student, Haines, to stay with them. The three men eat breakfast and walk to the shore, where Mulligan demands from Stephen the key to the tower and a loan. The three make plans to meet at a pub, The Ship, at 12:30pm. Departing, Stephen decides that he will not return to the tower that night, as Mulligan, the "usurper," has taken it over.

Episode 2, Nestor

Stephen is teaching a history class on the victories of Pyrrhus of Epirus. After class, one student, Cyril Sargent, stays behind so that Stephen can show him how to do a set of algebraic exercises. Stephen looks at Sargent's ugly face and tries to imagine Sargent's mother's love for him. He then visits unionist school headmaster Garrett Deasy, from whom he collects his pay. Deasy asks Stephen to take his long-winded letter about foot-and-mouth disease to a newspaper office for printing. The two discuss Irish history and Deasy lectures on what he believes is the role of Jews in the economy. As Stephen leaves, Deasy jokes that Ireland has "never persecuted the Jews" because the country "never let them in". This episode is the source of some of the novel's best-known lines, such as Dedalus's claim that "history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" and that God is "a shout in the street".

Episode 3, Proteus

Stephen walks along Sandymount Strand for some time, mulling various philosophical concepts, his family, his life as a student in Paris, and his mother's death. As he reminisces he lies down among some rocks, watches a couple whose dog urinates behind a rock, scribbles some ideas for poetry and picks his nose. This chapter is characterised by a stream of consciousness narrative style that changes focus wildly. Stephen's education is reflected in the many obscure references and foreign phrases employed in this episode, which have earned it a reputation for being one of the book's most difficult chapters.

Part II: Odyssey

Episode 4, Calypso

The narrative shifts abruptly. The time is again 8 a.m., but the action has moved across the city and to the second protagonist of the book, Leopold Bloom, a part-Jewish advertising canvasser. The episode opens with the line "Mr. Leopold Bloom ate with relish the inner organs of beasts and fowls." After starting to prepare breakfast, Bloom decides to walk to a butcher to buy a pork kidney. Returning home, he prepares breakfast and brings it with the mail to his wife Molly as she lounges in bed. One of the letters is from her concert manager Blazes Boylan, with whom she is having an affair. Bloom reads a letter from their daughter Milly Bloom, who tells him about her progress in the photography business in Mullingar. The episode closes with Bloom reading a magazine story titled Matcham's Masterstroke, by Mr. Philip Beaufoy, while defecating in the outhouse.

Episode 5, Lotus Eaters

While making his way to Westland Row post office Bloom is tormented by the knowledge that Molly will welcome Boylan into her bed later that day. At the post office he surreptitiously collects a love letter from one 'Martha Clifford' addressed to his pseudonym, 'Henry Flower.' He meets an acquaintance, and while they chat, Bloom attempts to ogle a woman wearing stockings, but is prevented by a passing tram. Next, he reads the letter from Martha Clifford and tears up the envelope in an alley. He wanders into a Catholic church during a service and muses on theology. The priest has the letters I.N.R.I. or I.H.S. on his back; Molly had told Bloom that they meant I have sinned or I have suffered, and Iron nails ran in. He buys a bar of lemon soap from a chemist. He then meets another acquaintance, Bantam Lyons, who mistakenly takes him to be offering a racing tip for the horse Throwaway. Finally, Bloom heads towards the baths.

Episode 6, Hades

The episode begins with Bloom entering a funeral carriage with three others, including Stephen's father. They drive to Paddy Dignam's funeral, making small talk on the way. The carriage passes both Stephen and Blazes Boylan. There is discussion of various forms of death and burial. Bloom is preoccupied by thoughts of his dead infant son, Rudy, and the suicide of his own father. They enter the chapel for the service and subsequently leave with the coffin cart. Bloom sees a mysterious man wearing a mackintosh during the burial. Bloom continues to reflect upon death, but at the end of the episode rejects morbid thoughts to embrace "warm fullblooded life".

Episode 7, Aeolus

At the office of the Freeman's Journal, Bloom attempts to place an ad. Although initially encouraged by the editor, he is unsuccessful. Stephen arrives bringing Deasy's letter about foot-and-mouth disease, but Stephen and Bloom do not meet. Stephen leads the editor and others to a pub, relating an anecdote on the way about "two Dublin vestals". The episode is broken into short segments by newspaper-style headlines, and is characterised by an abundance of rhetorical figures and devices.

Episode 8, Lestrygonians

Bloom's thoughts are peppered with references to food as lunchtime approaches. He meets an old flame, hears news of Mina Purefoy's labour, and helps a blind boy cross the street. He enters the restaurant of the Burton Hotel, where he is revolted by the sight of men eating like animals. He goes instead to Davy Byrne's pub, where he consumes a gorgonzola cheese sandwich and a glass of burgundy, and muses upon the early days of his relationship with Molly and how the marriage has declined: "Me. And me now." Bloom's thoughts touch on what goddesses and gods eat and drink. He ponders whether the statues of Greek goddesses in the National Museum have anuses as do mortals. On leaving the pub Bloom heads toward the museum, but spots Boylan across the street and, panicking, rushes into the gallery across the street from the museum.

Episode 9, Scylla and Charybdis

At the National Library, Stephen explains to some scholars his biographical theory of the works of Shakespeare, especially Hamlet, which he argues are based largely on the posited adultery of Shakespeare's wife. Buck Mulligan arrives and interrupts to read out the telegram that Stephen had sent him indicating that he would not make their planned rendezvous at The Ship. Bloom enters the National Library to look up an old copy of the ad he has been trying to place. He passes in between Stephen and Mulligan as they exit the library at the end of the episode.

Episode 10, Wandering Rocks

In this episode, nineteen short vignettes depict the movements of various characters, major and minor, through the streets of Dublin. The episode begins by following Father Conmee, a Jesuit priest, on his trip north, and ends with an account of the cavalcade of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, William Ward, Earl of Dudley, through the streets, which is encountered by several characters from the novel.

Episode 11, Sirens

In this episode, dominated by motifs of music, Bloom has dinner with Stephen's uncle at the Ormond hotel, while Molly's lover, Blazes Boylan, proceeds to his rendezvous with her. While dining, Bloom listens to the singing of Stephen's father and others, watches the seductive barmaids, and composes a reply to Martha Clifford's letter.

Episode 12, Cyclops

This episode is narrated by an unnamed denizen of Dublin who works as a debt collector. The narrator goes to Barney Kiernan's pub where he meets a character referred to only as "The Citizen". This character is believed to be a satirisation of Michael Cusack, a founder member of the Gaelic Athletic Association.[44] When Leopold Bloom enters the pub, he is berated by the Citizen, who is a fierce Fenian and anti-Semite. The episode ends with Bloom reminding the Citizen that his Saviour was a Jew. As Bloom leaves the pub, the Citizen throws a biscuit tin at Bloom's head, but misses. The episode is marked by extended tangents made in voices other than that of the unnamed narrator; these include streams of legal jargon, a report of a boxing match, Biblical passages, and elements of Irish mythology.

Episode 13, Nausicaa

All the action of the episode takes place on the rocks of Sandymount Strand, the shoreline that Stephen visited in Episode 3. A young woman, Gerty MacDowell, is seated on the rocks with her two friends, Cissy Caffrey and Edy Boardman. The girls are taking care of three children, a baby, and four-year-old twins named Tommy and Jacky. Gerty contemplates love, marriage and femininity as night falls. The reader is gradually made aware that Bloom is watching her from a distance. Gerty teases the onlooker by exposing her legs and underwear, and Bloom, in turn, masturbates. Bloom's masturbatory climax is echoed by the fireworks at the nearby bazaar. As Gerty leaves, Bloom realises that she has a lame leg, and believes this is the reason she has been "left on the shelf". After several mental digressions he decides to visit Mina Purefoy at the maternity hospital. It is uncertain how much of the episode is Gerty's thoughts, and how much is Bloom's sexual fantasy. Some believe that the episode is divided into two halves: the first half the highly romanticized viewpoint of Gerty, and the other half that of the older and more realistic Bloom.[45] Joyce himself said, however, that "nothing happened between [Gerty and Bloom]. It all took place in Bloom's imagination".[45] Nausicaa attracted immense notoriety while the book was being published in serial form. It has also attracted great attention from scholars of disability in literature.[46] The style of the first half of the episode borrows from (and parodies) romance magazines and novelettes. Bloom's contemplation of Gerty parodies Dedalus's vision of the wading girl at the seashore in A Portrait.[47][48]

Episode 14, Oxen of the Sun

Bloom visits the maternity hospital where Mina Purefoy is giving birth, and finally meets Stephen, who has been drinking with his medical student friends and is awaiting the promised arrival of Buck Mulligan. As the only father in the group of men, Bloom is concerned about Mina Purefoy in her labour. He starts thinking about his wife and the births of his two children. He also thinks about the loss of his only 'heir', Rudy. The young men become boisterous, and start discussing such topics as fertility, contraception and abortion. There is also a suggestion that Milly, Bloom's daughter, is in a relationship with one of the young men, Bannon. They continue on to a pub to continue drinking, following the successful birth of a son to Mina Purefoy. This chapter is remarkable for Joyce's wordplay, which, among other things, recapitulates the entire history of the English language. After a short incantation, the episode starts with latinate prose, Anglo-Saxon alliteration, and moves on through parodies of, among others, Malory, the King James Bible, Bunyan, Pepys, Defoe, Sterne, Walpole, Gibbon, Dickens, and Carlyle, before concluding in a Joycean version of contemporary slang. The development of the English language in the episode is believed to be aligned with the nine-month gestation period of the foetus in the womb.[49]

Episode 15, Circe

Episode 15 is written as a play script, complete with stage directions. The plot is frequently interrupted by "hallucinations" experienced by Stephen and Bloom—fantastic manifestations of the fears and passions of the two characters. Stephen and his friend Lynch walk into Nighttown, Dublin's red-light district. Bloom pursues them and eventually finds them at Bella Cohen's brothel where, in the company of her workers including Zoe Higgins, Florry Talbot and Kitty Ricketts, he has a series of hallucinations regarding his sexual fetishes, fantasies and transgressions. In one of these hallucinations, Bloom is put in the dock to answer charges by a variety of sadistic, accusing women including Mrs Yelverton Barry, Mrs Bellingham and the Hon Mrs Mervyn Talboys. In another of Bloom's hallucinations, he is crowned king of his own city, which is called Bloomusalem—Bloom imagines himself being loved and admired by Bloomusalem's citizens, but then imagines himself being accused of various charges. As a result, he is burnt at the stake and several citizens pay their respects to him as he dies.

Then the hallucination ends, Bloom finds himself next to Zoe, and the two talk. After they talk, Bloom continues to encounter other miscellaneous hallucinations, including one in which he converses with his grandfather Lipoti Virag, who lectures him about sex, among other things. At the end of the hallucination, Bloom is speaking with some prostitutes when he hears a sound coming from downstairs. He hears heels clacking on the staircase, and he observes what appears to be a male form passing down the staircase. He speaks with Zoe and Kitty for a moment, and then sees Bella Cohen come into the brothel. He observes her appearance and talks with her for a little while. But this conversation subsequently begins another hallucination, in which Bloom imagines Bella to be a man named Mr. Bello and Bloom imagines himself to be a woman. In this fantasy, Bloom imagines himself (or "herself", in the hallucination) being dominated by Bello, who both sexually and verbally humiliates Bloom. Bloom also interacts with other imaginary characters in this scene before the hallucination ends.

After the hallucination ends, Bloom sees Stephen overpay at the brothel, and decides to hold onto the rest of Stephen's money for safekeeping. Stephen hallucinates that his mother's rotting cadaver has risen up from the floor to confront him. He cries Non serviam!, uses his walking stick to smash a chandelier, and flees the room. Bloom quickly pays Bella for the damage, then runs after Stephen. He finds Stephen engaged in an argument with an English soldier, Private Carr, who, after a perceived insult to the King, punches Stephen. The police arrive and the crowd disperses. As Bloom tends to Stephen, he has a hallucination of his deceased son, Rudy, as an 11-year-old.

Part III: Nostos

Episode 16, Eumaeus

Bloom takes Stephen to a cabman's shelter near Butt Bridge to restore him to his senses. There, they encounter a drunken sailor, D. B. Murphy (W. B. Murphy in the 1922 text). The episode is dominated by the motif of confusion and mistaken identity, with Bloom, Stephen and Murphy's identities being repeatedly called into question. The narrative's rambling and laboured style in this episode reflects the protagonists' nervous exhaustion and confusion.

Episode 17, Ithaca

Bloom returns home with Stephen, makes him a cup of cocoa, discusses cultural and linguistic differences between them, considers the possibility of publishing Stephen's parable stories, and offers him a place to stay for the night. Stephen refuses Bloom's offer and is ambiguous in response to Bloom's proposal of future meetings. The two men urinate in the backyard, Stephen departs and wanders off into the night,[50] and Bloom goes to bed, where Molly is sleeping. She awakens and questions him about his day. The episode is written in the form of a rigidly organised and "mathematical" catechism of 309 questions and answers, and was reportedly Joyce's favourite episode in the novel. The deep descriptions range from questions of astronomy to the trajectory of urination and include a list of 25 men that purports to be the "preceding series" of Molly's suitors and Bloom's reflections on them. While describing events apparently chosen randomly in ostensibly precise mathematical or scientific terms, the episode is rife with errors made by the undefined narrator, many or most of which are intentional by Joyce.[51]

Episode 18, Penelope

The final episode consists of Molly Bloom's thoughts as she lies in bed next to her husband. The episode uses a stream-of-consciousness technique in eight paragraphs and lacks punctuation. Molly thinks about Boylan and Bloom, her past admirers, including Lieutenant Stanley G. Gardner, the events of the day, her childhood in Gibraltar, and her curtailed singing career. She also hints at a lesbian relationship in her youth, with a childhood friend, Hester Stanhope. These thoughts are occasionally interrupted by distractions, such as a train whistle or the need to urinate. Molly is surprised by the early arrival of her menstrual period, which she ascribes to her vigorous sex with Boylan. The episode concludes with Molly's remembrance of Bloom's marriage proposal, and of her acceptance: "he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."

Joyce, Shakespeare, Aquinas

In the Library episode, Stephen Dedalus explains his "idea of Hamlet." His exposition is based on 12 lectures, now lost, that Joyce gave in Trieste in 1912.[52] There are implied parallels with Ulysses.[36][37][38][53][40] Harry Blamires has identified the essential ones, as well as parallels with Christian theology: "Joyce puts himself in Ulysses as both Father (Ghost-Father) and Son. Shakespeare puts himself in Hamlet as both Ghost-Father and Son. God enters His own world as Holy Ghost and as Son."[54]

In "Telemachus", Malachi "Buck" Mulligan claims that Stephen's theory draws on Thomas Aquinas for support, and in the Library episode he mentions Stephen's study of Aquinas's Summa contra Gentiles.[55] Joyce apparently owned three copies. One was an English abridgment with annotations, which he had purchased in Trieste in 1913–1914.[55] This book, which he told Ezra Pound he had consulted on his behalf,[56] was Joseph Rickaby's Of God and His Creatures.[57]

Shortly after his Hamlet theory is mentioned in "Telemachus", Stephen thinks of doctrines on the Incarnation that Aquinas discusses in the Summa: the Catholic doctrine of consubstantiality and the heresies of Sabellius, Photius, Arius, and Valentine. During his exposition in the Library, Stephen mentions both the Sabellian heresy and Aquinas's refutation. For Blamires, "Stephen's study of Hamlet is among things and analogically theological one concerning the operation of the three Persons of the Trinity."[58]

The distinction between consubstantiality and Sabellianism explains Shakespeare’s double presence in Hamlet. The doctrine of consubstantiality holds that Father and Son are separate persons sharing the same nature.[59] Shakespeare and Hamlet are spiritually consubstantial. Hamlet is "the son of his soul", as Hamnet was "the son of his body". (Valentine, next-to-last on Stephen's list, also held that Father and Son were consubstantial, but, as a Gnostic, denied that Christ became flesh.) Sabellius taught that Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were not separate persons, but manifestations of a single divine being.[60] When the Holy Ghost descended, it was actually the Father in another form. Shakespeare is "Ghost-Father", Hamlet's spiritual father playing the role of the Ghost: "I am thy father's spirit." At the Baptism of Christ, Joyce's actual source for the "epiphany", the Holy Ghost descends and the Father speaks. In the Gospel of Mark, He addresses Christ: "Thou art my beloved Son."[61]

For Blamires, Stephen's contention that Shakespeare is both King Hamlet and the Prince "is hint enough that Joyce has represented himself in both [Leopold] Bloom and Stephen".[62] Like Shakespeare and Hamlet, Joyce and Stephen are spiritually consubstantial. Hamlet is a younger version of Shakespeare, Stephen a younger version of Joyce.[63] The Sabellian heresy defines Joyce's relation to Bloom. Like Shakespeare and King Hamlet, Joyce and Bloom are the same person. Sabellius held that the Father incarnated Himself as Christ. Bloom is the form Joyce assumes in Ulysses. Hugh Kenner has written, "Joyce built [Bloom], as he did all characters, by playing him."[64] Like the Sabellian Father, Joyce became a Jew. (Bloom says in "Cyclops", "Christ was a jew like me.") In "Calypso", Bloom refers to "Metempsychosis . . . the transmigration of souls." Bloom then is Joyce reincarnated, his "soul" in another "body".[63]

In "Circe", Bloom and Stephen share the apparition of Shakespeare, who speaks "in dignified ventriloquy". In the Library episode, Stephen characterizes the Ghost of Hamlet's father as a "voice". Bloom is "Ghost/Father" in Ulysses, in that, as Joyce's reincarnation, he is also his voice. For example, he advocates "love . . . the opposite of hatred".[65] Most often Bloom speaks for Joyce silently, in his interior monologue. Hugh Kenner writes, "Bloom holds very much the opinions of Joyce on a wide range of Dublin topics: on Irish nationalism, on drunkenness, on literary pretensions, on death and Resurrection, on marriage, on the hierarchy of the virtues."[66]

Though only consubstantial with Joyce, Stephen is also his voice. The heresy of Photius, first on his list, holds the key. The schism between the Latin and Greek Churches was due to the Filioque clause in the Nicene Creed, and Photius was mainly responsible.[67] In juxtaposing Mulligan with Photius in "Telemachus," Stephen is recalling Mulligan's parody of his "idea of Hamlet". It ends with "he himself is the ghost of his own father." Haines points to Stephen, asking, "He himself?"[68] According to Aquinas, without the Filique clause "It will be true then to say that the Holy Ghost is the Son, and the Son the Holy Ghost." At the Baptism, the Holy Ghost descends and the Father's voice is heard.[69] Not only Joyce's consubstantial son, Stephen is also his voice.[70] Through him, for example, Joyce again delivers his 1912 lectures on Hamlet. Like Bloom, Stephen most often speaks for Joyce in his thoughts.

On occasion, Joyce's voice intrudes directly into the interior monologue. In "Lotus Eaters", he uses the words of Consecration, "This is my body", to identify Bloom as his reincarnation.[71] Another example is the paragraph in "Telemachus" which lists the doctrines on the Incarnation. The paragraph comes during a conversation with Haines. Kenner estimates it would take Stephen at least a minute to speak the paragraph to himself, "longer than he seems likely to have chattered on". He concludes that the paragraph "exits alongside the narrative, with Stephen's presence to excuse it."[72] In other words, Joyce himself is introducing the theological parallels crucial to understanding his double presence in the novel.[73]

The paragraph refers to the "Symbol [creed] of the apostles in the mass for pope Marcellus". In fact, the Nicene Creed, not the Apostles' Creed, is sung or recited during Mass. The Nicene Creed contains a narrative of Christ's mission embellished with Catholic doctrine. The Apostles' Creed, the oldest in Catholicism, offers only the narrative.[74]

I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried; he descended into hell; on the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of God the Father almighty; from there he will come to judge the living and the dead.

The Apostles' Creed reflects the doctrine of consubstantiality, and so applies to Stephen.[75]

Just before mentally reciting his parody of the Apostles' Creed in the Library episode, Stephen thinks of Photius, Mulligan, and the German anarchist Johann Most. Mulligan's "Ballad of Joking Jesus" is also a parody of the Apostles' Creed. [76] Most is the immediate source for Stephen's parody.[77][78] Photius is a reminder that Stephen is Joyce’s voice in Ulysses. The creed comes directly from him.

He Who Himself begot middler the Holy Ghost and Himself sent Himself, Agenbuyer (Christ[79]), between Himself and others, Who, put upon by His fiends, stripped and whipped, was nailed like bat to barndoor, starved on crosstree, Who let Him bury, stood up, harrowed hell, fared into heaven and there these nineteen hundred years sitteth on the right hand of His Own Self but yet shall come in the latter day to doom the quick and dead when all the quick shall be dead already.

Stephen's parody reflects the Sabellian heresy, and so applies to Bloom.[80]

Blamires has written that "Joyce's created world . . . is like God's world . . . a world into which its own creator has entered, in which he has suffered, and from which he has been raised up."[81] Both Bloom and Stephen are Christ figures. Both will suffer, die, and rise. In "Cyclops", Bloom is crucified by the Citizen and resurrected by the narrator. In "Circe", Stephen is crucified by Private Carr and resurrected by Bloom.[82]

Stephen puts the heretic Arius second on his list in "Telemachus" and thinks of him later in "Proteus." The Arians held that the Son "was one with God the Father, not by nature, but by a union of wills, and by participation in the likeness of God beyond other creatures".[83] William York Tindall has said that Stephen sees his future in Bloom.[84] Kenner has written, "Arius... proposed a relation of adoption such as is to subsist between Stephen and Bloom".[85][86]

As narratives of Christ's mission, both the Apostles' Creed and Stephen's parody end with the Last Judgment, the Second Coming of Christ. Blamires writes, "fortunately [Joyce] is now sitting on His own right hand (which held the pen that wrote Ulysses) and he will come again (he is already here) to doom the quick and the dead."[62] In Ulysses there are two Christ figures; the first coming of Christ is intertwined with the second. Bloom and Stephen not only endure but pass judgment. S. L. Goldberg refers to "the exploration of moral order" in Ulysses: "self-knowledge, self-realization, detachment, human completeness, balance, are Joyce's key concepts."[87] In their thoughts, Bloom and Stephen judge others based on such concepts.

Aquinas speaks of the radiant "souls of the just" at the Last Judgment: "then the soul in the enjoyment of the vision of God will be replenished with a spiritual brightness [italics his], so by an overflow from soul to body, the body itself, in its way, will be clad in a halo and glory of brightness."[88] In the aesthetic theory put forth in Stephen Hero, "Claritas is quidditas." At the Transfiguration of Christ, He is radiant, His divine nature showing forth. Transfiguration of the artist's self-images is continuous. While he remains invisible, like God the Father, his self-images reveal his nature. The Transfiguration is paralleled in the revelation of the artist's nature in his self-images. The bodily radiance of the just is paralleled in his revelation of other natures in his reincarnation of them.[89]

In "Oxen of the Sun", Stephen declares, "[Either] transubstantiality [or] consubstantiality but in no case subsubstantiality." The terms refer, as Richard Ellmann has noted, to opposing doctrines on the Incarnation.[90] The first is obviously a coinage formed from transubstantiation. In A Portrait, the priest is said to make "the great God of heaven come down upon the altar and take the form of bread and wine".[91] Sabellius held that the Father became His own Son when, born of the Virgin Mary, He took human form.[83] Transubstantiality refers to the Sabellian heresy and to Leopold Bloom, Joyce in another body.

Consubstantiality, on Stephen's list of doctrines in "Telemachus", refers here to the view that Christ is both divine as God's Son and human as the Virgin Mary's. Stephen is spiritually consubstantial with Joyce, physically consubstantial with Simon Dedalus, a younger version of each.[92] "Subsubstantiality" refers to a Christ who lacks a human body. Stephen's list of heretics in "Telemachus" included Valentine, a Gnostic who held that the Son only appeared be made flesh, lacking a true body.[93] In "Oxen", Stephen illustrates by imagining a Virgin Mary who never gave birth.[91]

In A Portrait, the Virgin's womb is a metaphor for the imagination.[94] Stephen's first two doctrines allude to artistic re-embodiment, while the last alludes to its absence. "Subsubstantiality" characterizes the apparitions in "Circe", the next chapter. Hugh Kenner notes that "their detail tends to come from earlier in the book", forming "a sort of collective vocabulary out of which, it seems, anything at all can now be composed."[95] Ellmann calls them "the agitations and images of the unconscious mind"—"Joyce's version of the cruelty of the unconscious".[96] They are "phantoms of the past, memories recent or remote", not "works of art", because the imagination has created no "possible future" for them. The two exceptions are Stephen's dead mother and Bloom's dead son: "through a process of gestation . . . they emerge as new creatures". Each is "an unforeseen blend of memory and imagination".[97] Not to say that the subsubstantial apparitions in "Circe" have no effect. Kenner compares them to "a psychoanalysis without an analyst"—a "catharsis". Bloom seems to have become "courageous, ready of mind": the "rummaging amid the roots of his secret fears and desires has brought forth a new self-possession." Hamlet-like Stephen emerges as a "man of action".[98] His rebellion's physical expression has been prefigured in earlier apparitions casting him in the role of black mass celebrant.[99]

Both the ghost of Stephen's dead mother and that of Bloom's dead son have been taken as epiphanies.[100] A composite of the Baptism of Christ and the Transfiguration is Joyce's actual source for the concept.[101] Stephen's epiphany both parallels and inverts these events. The Father's consubstantiality with Christ is manifested, Christ becoming radiant, and the Holy Ghost appears, the Father's voice addressing His Son. In "Circe", the Ghost of Stephen's mother identifies him as her son and he turns "white". But while the Father is "well-pleased" with His Son, Stephen's mother is very disappointed in hers. The Baptism marks the beginning of Christ's future on earth, His mission of suffering, death, and resurrection. Stephen's mother urges him to "Repent", to return to the faith he has rejected.

The epiphany then juxtaposes Christ's sacrifice and Satan's defiance, the one imaging Stephen's guilt, the other his desire to live and create freely. Stephen refuses to return to the Church, citing "the intellectual imagination"—his artistic mission—and using Satan's words, non serviam. The mother in turn uses language that identifies her with Christ, making mother and son archetypal adversaries. Stephen's lamp-smashing gives physical form to his rejection of Catholicism and initiates a future of his own choosing.[102]

Stephen's epiphany brought his mother back from the grave. Bloom's is a fleeting resurrection of his dead son. Rudy is an idealized image of his son had he lived to eleven,[103] an image that bears resemblance to Stephen.[104] Hugh Kenner doubts that Bloom sees Rudy, but allows that the apparition reflects Bloom's paternal feelings for Stephen.[105] That Rudy appears to be reading a Hebrew prayer book recalls Bloom's reminder in "Cyclops" that Christ was a Jew. The "white lambkin" identifies him as paschal victim, the resurrected Christ.[103] Bloom speaks his name in recognition of their consubstantiality. A little earlier he called out Stephen's name, twice. The unconscious Stephen is also Christ now, crucified by a soldier—his arms outstretched, "no bones broken,"[106] his ashplant symbolizing the Cross.[103] Prostate, he awaits resurrection. Bloom's solicitousness signifies his "adoption" of Stephen, as Arius heretically characterized the Father-Son relation.[85] [107] The Arians also believed that the Son could complete His mission only with the Father's help.[108] Bloom's imaginary raising of his dead son is a prelude to his getting Stephen back on his feet.

In "Ithaca", Bloom is said to be the "transubstantial heir" of his parents and Stephen the "consubstantial heir" of his. Like the Sabellian Christ, Bloom is both a son and a father, while Stephen, like the consubstantial Christ, is only a son. The theological terms are a late reminder of Joyce's double presence in Ulysses. Bloom is his "transubstantial heir", the mature Joyce reincarnated, and Stephen his "consubstantial heir", a portrait of the artist as a young man.[109]

Joyce and the Eucharist

Although Catholicism was a resource for Joyce, he felt animosity toward it as a belief system. According to Christopher Hitchens, "Holy Mother Church [was] Joyce's lifelong enemy."[110] On August 29, 1904, he wrote to Nora: "Six years ago I left the Catholic Church hating it most fervently. I found it impossible to remain in it on account of the impulses of my nature. . . . Now I make open war upon it by what I write and say and do."[111] In January 1904, in his essay "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man", Joyce said he had abandoned "open warfare" with the Church for what he called "urbanity in warfare",[112] which Richard Ellmann takes to mean "obliquity".[113]

Joyce started using this technique as soon as he began writing fiction. Catholicism defines its symbolism as “The power and the scope which, in the Liturgy, things, gestures and rites have to recall to mind spiritual realities.”[114] In “The Sisters,” his first published story, Joyce uses the chalice, one of the major Church’s symbols, to reveal that the complete absence of such realities. In the Mass, the priest supposedly changes the wine in the chalice into the blood of Christ. Father Flynn is said to have dropped a chalice that “contained nothing,”[115] meaning the wine was unconsecrated. Flynn’s “empty” chalice has become a symbol of the void the Church attempts to fill with its teachings.[116]

In Catholicism, "Eucharist" refers both to the act of Consecration, or transubstantiation, and its product, the body and blood of Christ under the appearances of bread and wine. Ulysses begins with a parody of the Eucharist. The setting is the Martello tower, where Stephen Dedalus has been staying with Buck Mulligan and Haines, an Englishman.

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:

—Introibo ad altare Dei

—For this, O dearly beloved, is the genuine Christine: body and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.

The Latin is the first line the priest speaks in the Mass, whose central rite is the Eucharist. (In 1904, the Mass was still said in Latin.) The liturgical items and actions represented have been identified, if not always consistently.[117][118][119] The most obvious correspondence is the saving bowl and the chalice of consecrated wine, the blood of Christ. Mulligan also mentions "body and soul". The priest drops a small particle of the consecrated bread into the chalice of consecrated wine to symbolize the whole presence of Christ in both. The parody's most striking feature is that the words of transubstantiation, "This is my body", have been changed to "This . . . is the genuine Christine." (It has been suggested that Mulligan's parody is a black mass,[120] which is celebrated over a woman's naked body.)

Mulligan’s given name is Malachi, which means "messenger." Hugh Kenner has noted that in Ulysses Mulligan "introduces one theme after theme."[121] The first theme introduces is the Eucharist, which, as William York Tindall has said, "becomes the central symbol of Ulysses." [122] That Mulligan does so in the form of a parody sets the tone for the treatment of the Eucharist throughout the novel. Equating a female Christ with the consecrated wine establishes the role Dublin women will play.[123]

In A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Stephen Dedalus calls Catholicism an "absurdity", and in Ulysses Leopold Bloom proves him right.[124] Bloom attends two Catholic rituals: a Mass in "Lotus Eaters" and a funeral in "Hades". His ignorance of liturgy shows in his descriptions of it. At the beginning of the funeral service, "The priest took a stick with a knob at the end of it out of the boy's bucket and shook it over the coffin." Kenner notes, "The description of the Holy Water being sprinkled gains its grotesque effect from Bloom's innocence."[125] So does the description of Communion: "A batch knelt at the altarrails. The priest went along by them, murmuring, holding the thing in his hands. He stopped at each, took out a communion, shook a drop or two (are they in water?) off it and put it neatly into her mouth."

In Trieste, Joyce attended the Byzantine rite. John McCourt writes that Joyce "drew on his own experience as an outsider, a spectator and observer at the Greek liturgies in Trieste, when writing about Leopold Bloom attending the Catholic mass . . . and later [a] funeral."[126] Under the influence of the Greek rite Joyce revised his first version of "The Sisters",[127] and he rendered the Good Friday liturgy in Stephen Hero.[128] Bloom's description of Communion resembles Joyce's description of what he mistakenly thought was communion in the Greek rite: "a boy comes running down the side of the chapel with a large tray full of little lumps of bread. The priest comes after him and distributes the lumps to scrambling believers." (This bread isn't consecrated, but taken from the same loaf as the bread that is.)[129]

Kenner writes, "Description without knowledge is always potentially comic."[130] Moreover, Bloom's ignorance frees his imagination to create further comedy at the Church's expense. (Kenner argues that Bloom's "periphrasis" is comic in itself.[130]) Bloom focuses on both species of the Eucharist, bread and then wine.

The priest bent down to put it into her mouth, murmuring all the time. Latin. The next one. Shut your eyes and open your mouth. What? Corpus: body. Corpse. Good idea the Latin. Stupefies them first. Hospice for the dying. They don't seem to chew it: only swallow it down. Rum idea: eating bits of a corpse. Why the cannibals cotton to it.

The priest was rinsing out the chalice: then he tossed off the dregs smartly. Wine. Makes it more aristocratic than for example if he drank what they are used to Guinness's porter or some temperance beverage Wheatley's Dublin hop bitters or Cantrell and Cochrane's ginger ale (aromatic). Doesn't give them any of it: shew wine: only the other. Cold comfort. Pious fraud but quite right: otherwise they'd have one old booser worse than another coming along, cadging for a drink. Queer the whole atmosphere of the. Quite right. Perfectly right that is.

Catholic communicants receive the consecrated bread as a wafer, hence "bits of a corpse". Only the priest receives wine: "Doesn’t give them any of it." McCourt sees Bloom's thought about the Latin rite, "Queer the whole atmosphere", as very similar to Joyce’s feeling that "the Greek mass is strange."[131] Calling the Eucharist a "pious fraud" would be an act of "open warfare" against the Church were it Joyce rather than Bloom. Though Joyce is "invisible", having disappeared into Bloom, his presence is felt.

On the Sandymount strand in "Nausicaa", Bloom encounters the Eucharist again. A Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament is taking place in a nearby church. Fragments of prayers from the service pervade the narrative.[132] There are parallels between the Benediction and Bloom's adoration of Gerty MacDowell.[133] His sexual arousal creates a parallel between the elevation of the Eucharist and the erection of his penis.[134]

Bloom mistakes the Benediction for a Mass. "Mass seems to be over", he says to himself later. At the time Mass was not celebrated in the evening.[135] This is another example of his ignorance of things Catholic, and his ignorance generates further parody. His mistaken idea that the benediction is a Mass creates a parallel between his masturbation and the act of transubstantiation. In "Lotus Eaters", Bloom reflects that he's glad he didn't masturbate while bathing. His bathing corresponds to the Lavabo, the priest's ritual washing of his hands to prepare for the transubstantiation of the bread.[136] He did speak the words of Consecration, "This is my body." The act itself has been delayed till now.

The words of Consecration come at the end of the Eucharistic prayer. The prayer for Holy Thursday begins with a reference to the Last Supper: Christ, "on the day before He suffered, took bread into His holy and venerable hands . . ." Bloom is touching himself. (Gerty thinks of him as "a man of inflexible honour to his fingertips".) The prayer continues, "and [Christ] having raised His eyes to heaven". Gerty bends so far back she trembles. Bloom "had a full view high up above her knee where no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment."

The fireworks display comes to a climax as both Bloom and Gerty reach orgasm: "and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O! O! in raptures . . . O so lovely, O, soft, sweet, soft!"[137] Blamires has noted that Gerty experiences "imaginary consummation", [138] but her orgasm is real.[139][140] There is an explanation: "As she leans further and further backward, ostensibly to view the Roman candles overhead, she is 'trembling in every limb' and the pressure of her 'nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin,' contributes to an orgasm that mimics the bursts of color rising in the evening sky."[141]

Soon afterward, when Gerty has gone, Bloom thinks, "Near her monthlies, I expect." Blamires calls Gerty "a 'vessel' now holding the blood soon to be spilt".[133] At the Consecration, so Catholics believe, bread and wine are replaced by the body and blood of Christ, appearances notwithstanding. In "Nausicaa," Joyce enacts a de-Consecration. Christ's imagined body is replaced by real human flesh, his imagined blood by real human blood.[142] (That this seems to have been achieved by masturbation, forbidden by the Church, completes Joyce's triumph over it.)

In "Proteus", Stephen reflects on the fact that the Eucharist is in several places at once:

And at the same instant perhaps a priest round the corner is elevating it. Dringdring! And two streets off another locking it into a pyx. Dringadring! And in a ladychapel another taking housel all to his own cheek. Dringdring! Down, up, forward, back.

Ellmann has linked Stephen's reflection to Bloom's thoughts in "Nausicaa" on "the same identity-variety in the process of menstruation"[143]:

How many women in Dublin have it today? Martha, she. Something in the air. That's the moon. But then why don't all women menstruate at the same time with the same moon, I mean? Depends on the time they were born I suppose. Or all start scratch then get out of step.

Ellmann concludes, "Joyce is establishing a secret parallel and opposition: the body of God [Christ] and the body of woman share blood in common. In allowing Molly to menstruate at the end Joyce consecrates the blood in the chamberpot rather than the blood in the chalice, mentioned by Mulligan at the beginning of the book."[144]

Actually, Joyce establishes the "secret parallel" at the very beginning of the book, through Mulligan's parody of the transubstantiation of the wine: "This is . . . the genuine Christine." These words prefigure Molly's menstruation at the end.[145] Her blood is genuine, unlike the imagined blood in the chalice. She wholly supplants the Eucharist. In the Mass, the wine to be consecrated is mingled with water.[146] Her urine mixing with her blood creates an exact parallel with the contents of the chalice. Joyce was a precise liturgist.

A “perpetual lamp” hangs before the altar where the Eucharist is contained in a tabernacle.[147] This lamp is alluded to in "Grace" as "the red speck of light". In “Ithaca,” "the mystery of an invisible attractive person . . . Marion (Molly) Bloom, [is] denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp." Prefigured is her displacement of the Eucharist in the following episode.[148]

For Joyce, the "eternal qualities were the imagination and the sexual instinct."[149] He regarded "the individual passion as the motive power of everything"[150] and upheld the reality of the "sexual department" against the fiction of "spiritual love".[151] In his Trieste library, Joyce had the first German edition (1910) of Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood. Freud asserts that "official religions" both exploited and denied "sexual activity" and that "originally the genitals [as] the pride and hope of living beings . . . were worshiped as gods."[152]

June 16, 1904

On June 10, 1904, Joyce met Nora Barnacle for the first time. They met again on June 16.[153] On both days, the Feast of the Sacred Heart was celebrated in Irish Catholic churches.[154] The feast originated on another June 16, in 1675.[155] A young nun, Margaret Mary Alacoque, had been experiencing visions of Christ exposing his heart. During the so-called "great apparition", he asked that a new feast be established to commemorate his suffering. (In the Library episode, Mulligan calls the nun "Blessed Margaret Mary Anycock!"[156]) The Feast of the Sacred Heart was formally approved in the same year. The Jesuits had popularized the devotion, and Ireland was the first nation to dedicate itself to the Sacred Heart.[157]

When Leopold Bloom enters All Hallows Church in "Lotus Eaters", he sees women receiving Communion. "Something going on," he thinks, "some sodality." The sodality is devoted to the Sacred Heart and the women are attending mass to celebrate the feast. They have "crimson halters round their necks", suggesting slaves or animals tied and led. The halters are scapulars.Crimson, denoting bloody sacrifice, is the color of Christ's robes in Sacred Heart iconography.[158]

Once the feast was established, so was the iconography: "an image of Jesus serenely holding his own heart, now visualized more physiologically, with Christ fixing the viewer in a penetrating gaze."[159] Images of the Sacred Heart appear in Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist, and Ulysses.[160][161] In Dublin's Glasnevin Cemetery, Bloom encounters a statue of the Sacred Heart "showing it". A canvasser for newspaper advertisements, he evaluates it accordingly: "Ought to be sideways and red it should be painted like a real heart." Bloom adds that the Sacred Heart "seems anything but pleased", perhaps an allusion to Christ's complaint to Margaret Mary Alacoque during the great apparition that his suffering has gone unappreciated. Hence his request for a new feast.[162]

The young nun claimed that Christ had made 12 promises to all who would dedicate themselves to the Sacred Heart.[162] The 12th promise offers "salvation to the one who receives communion on nine consecutive First Fridays".[163] Mrs. Kiernan in the Dubliners story "Grace" and Mr. Kearney in "A Mother" try to take advantage of this promise, as did Stephen's mother.[164] A colored print of the 12 promises hangs on Eveline's wall,[165] and there are resemblances between her and Margaret Mary Alacoque and between Frank, her "open-hearted" suitor, and the Sacred Heart.[166] Both young women have been made a promise of salvation by a man professing love. Hugh Kenner argues that Frank has no intention of taking Eveline to Buenos Ayres and will seduce and abandon her in Liverpool, where the boat is actually headed.[167] Since "going to Buenos Ayres" was slang for "taking up a life of prostitution",[168] it appears that Frank does intend to take Eveline to Buenos Aires, but not to make her his wife.[169] That Eveline's print of the 12 promises made by the Sacred Heart hangs over a "broken" harmonium confirms the close similarity between the two suitors. In "Circe", the Sacred Heart devotion is concisely parodied in the apparition of Martha Clifford, Bloom's pen pal. Like the women in All Hallows, she wears a crimson halter. She calls Bloom a "heartless flirt" and accuses him of "breach of promise".[158]

When the ghost of Stephen's mother confronts him in "Circe", she prays, "O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on him! Save him from hell, O Divine Sacred Heart."[170] Then, as Anthony Burgess has noted, she "identifies herself with the suffering Christ."[171] The words she uses to do so, "Inexpressible was my anguish when expiring with love, grief and agony on Mount Calvary", paraphrase the most explicit reference to the Crucifixion in the Act of Reparation to the Sacred Heart: "Inconceivable they anguish when expiring with love, grief, and agony, on Mount Calvary."[172] In A Portrait, Stephen declares, "I will not serve that in which I no longer believe whether it call itself my home, my fatherland or my church." The ghost of his mother invoking the Sacred Heart to whom Ireland is dedicated is a composite image of all three.[173] Exclaiming "No!" three times, he acts out his refusal to "repent" by smashing the brothel chandelier.[174]

William York Tindall has written, "Stephen’s destruction of the chandelier becomes the Tenebrae or the extinguishing of candles on Holy Thursday to symbolize the death of God."[175] (The ceremony also takes place on Holy Wednesday and Good Friday. A page of notes on the Office of Tenebrae was found with the manuscript of Stephen Hero, and Joyce gave the title "Tenebrae" to an early poem he later discarded.[176]) The candles are not the only symbolic light extinguished on Holy Thursday. There is also the sanctuary lamp, which hangs before the altar where the Eucharist is contained in a tabernacle. This lamp is alluded to in "Grace" as "the red speck of light". During Mass on Holy Thursday two hosts are consecrated, one for that Mass, the other for the Good Friday service. The second host is taken to a repository or tabernacle on another altar. With the Eucharist now absent, the sanctuary lamp is extinguished. The protagonist of Stephen Hero describes the setting on Good Friday: "no lights or vestments, the altar naked, the door of the tabernacle gaping open."[177] Catholicism has thus provided the renegade artist with the symbolism to manifest Godforsakenness.

Like Tindall, Harry Blamires and Richard Ellmann see Stephen’s smashing of the brothel chandelier as deliberate.[178] But Kenner thinks that Stephen swings his stick at his mother's apparition and hits the chandelier instead.[179] If so, then Stephen is among Christ's executioners.[180] He raises his stick at the moment his mother's ghost identifies herself with the crucified victim. The extinguished lamp is a reminder of the darkness that descended during the Crucifixion. It also recalls the symbolically dark setting of the Good Friday liturgy. The apparition combines Mount Calvary and a Dublin church altar. Swinging his stick, Stephen both kills Christ and expels the Eucharist.[102]

A little later, in the presence of a British soldier, Stephen announces, tapping his brow, "But in here it is I must kill the priest and the king." His statement initiates the symbolic action that follows. Edward VII appears wearing "a white jersey on which an image of the Sacred Heart" is embroidered with the insignia of various military orders.[181] The image is a reminder of the devotion's close connection to June 16 and its ubiquity in Irish Catholic culture. It also foreshadows Stephen's coming transformation into the crucified Christ, while the military insignia foreshadow the violence the British soldier will inflict on him to make him so. Stephen is struck and collapses, allusions to the Crucifixion establishing the parallel with it.[103] Joyce had been injured during an altercation, and he soon likened it to the Crucifixion, his bloody handkerchief reminding him of "Veronica".[182] Stephen's plight draws Bloom to him. This is the only time in Joyce that the Sacred Heart is associated with a promise of actual salvation. The fallen Joyce was helped by Alfred H. Hunter, one model for Bloom.[183] To parallel his rescue by Hunter with the Resurrection, Joyce makes Bloom God the Father,[184] thereby deifying the charitable Hunter.

Ulysses is a book of reincarnations, and the Sacred Heart is reincarnated in D. B. Murphy, whom Bloom and Stephen encounter in "Eumaeus". Murphy is a sailor, like Frank, the Sacred Heart simulacrum in "Eveline".[185] Tindall has noted that he has returned to Dublin on a ship Stephen saw yesterday morning, "her sails brailed up on the crosstrees, homing", with "crosstree" suggesting Christ.[186] Murphy is "brokenhearted" and "red-bearded", with an image on his chest he gladly exposes, and is, as Kenner notes, "untrustworthy".[187] A question he is asked about the tattoo—"Did it hurt much?"—alludes to Christ's complaint of his suffering. The tattoo includes an anchor, the figure 16, and a young man's profile "looking frowningly". "16" alludes to the previous day, which is also the day Murphy returned to Ireland, and the "great apparition" of the Sacred Heart on another June 16. The frowning young man recalls both Christ's suffering and his displeasure over humankind's ingratitude.[188] Stephen reacts to a comment of Bloom's with a "crosstempered" gesture, shoving his coffee cup away and symbolically rejecting communion with Bloom.[186] "Crosstempered" is the second suggestion of Christ. Stephen's anger recalls his rage at his mother's ghost when she used the Act of Reparation to the Sacred Heart to persuade him to repent. Ellmann has written, "If he could, [Murphy] would deny the significance of the sixteenth day of June."[189] His comment applies to Stephen's exorcising of Christ and the Eucharist in "Circe". Murphy is a "circumnavigator", and his claim that the tattoo is the combined product of several nationalities is a reminder that the Catholic Church is universal.[190]

Mulligan's "Blessed Mary Anycock!" is relevant. Margaret Mary Alacoque's Sacred Heart visions were highly erotic.[191] There are echoes in Molly Bloom's memories of her recent sexual gratification. The young nun repeatedly compares Christ's heart to flame or fire.[192] Molly's lover is nicknamed "Blazes". "Heart" can mean the erect penis. Molly says Boylan "put some heart up into me". She even seems to be unwittingly comparing Boylan's penis to the oversized heart used in the Sacred Heart iconography when she calls it "that tremendous big red brute of a thing".[193]

Molly reincarnates the Sacred Heart devotion in another way. She describes Boylan's penis as "like iron or some kind of thick crowbar standing all the time", like the Roman spear that pierced Christ's body as it hung from the Cross. One Gospel for the feast is John 19:31-35: "one of the soldiers pierced his side with a lance, and once there came out blood an water." Molly Bloom menstruates and urinates.[193] Richard Ellmann writes, "In allowing Molly to menstruate . . . Joyce consecrates the blood in the chamberpot rather than the blood in the chalice."[144] Molly "is the genuine Christine" Mulligan invoked at the beginning of Ulysses, and in "Ithaca", "the mystery of an invisible attractive person . . . Marion (Molly) Bloom, [is] denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp."[148]