Ulysses, by James Joyce

Ulysses, by James Joyce: Stephen Dedalus & Leopold Bloom

"What parallel courses did Bloom and Stephen follow returning?

Starting united both at normal walking pace from Beresford place they
followed in the order named Lower and Middle Gardiner streets and
Mountjoy square, west: then, at reduced pace, each bearing left,
Gardiner's place by an inadvertence as far as the farther corner of
Temple street: then, at reduced pace with interruptions of halt, bearing
right, Temple street, north, as far as Hardwicke place. Approaching,
disparate, at relaxed walking pace they crossed both the circus before
George's church diametrically, the chord in any circle being less than
the arc which it subtends.

Of what did the duumvirate deliberate during their itinerary?

Music, literature, Ireland, Dublin, Paris, friendship, woman,
prostitution, diet, the influence of gaslight or the light of arc and
glowlamps on the growth of adjoining paraheliotropic trees, exposed
corporation emergency dustbuckets, the Roman catholic church,
ecclesiastical celibacy, the Irish nation, jesuit education, careers, the
study of medicine, the past day, the maleficent influence of the
presabbath, Stephen's collapse.

Did Bloom discover common factors of similarity between their respective
like and unlike reactions to experience?

Both were sensitive to artistic impressions, musical in preference to
plastic or pictorial. Both preferred a continental to an insular manner
of life, a cisatlantic to a transatlantic place of residence. Both
indurated by early domestic training and an inherited tenacity of
heterodox resistance professed their disbelief in many orthodox
religious, national, social and ethical doctrines. Both admitted the
alternately stimulating and obtunding influence of heterosexual
magnetism.

Were their views on some points divergent?

Stephen dissented openly from Bloom's views on the importance of dietary
and civic selfhelp while Bloom dissented tacitly from Stephen's views on
the eternal affirmation of the spirit of man in literature. Bloom
assented covertly to Stephen's rectification of the anachronism involved
in assigning the date of the conversion of the Irish nation to
christianity from druidism by Patrick son of Calpornus, son of Potitus,
son of Odyssus, sent by pope Celestine I in the year 432 in the reign of
Leary to the year 260 or thereabouts in the reign of Cormac MacArt (died
266 A.D.), suffocated by imperfect deglutition of aliment at Sletty and
interred at Rossnaree. The collapse which Bloom ascribed to gastric
inanition and certain chemical compounds of varying degrees of
adulteration and alcoholic strength, accelerated by mental exertion and
the velocity of rapid circular motion in a relaxing atmosphere, Stephen
attributed to the reapparition of a matutinal cloud (perceived by both
from two different points of observation Sandycove and Dublin) at first
no bigger than a woman's hand.

Was there one point on which their views were equal and negative?

The influence of gaslight or electric light on the growth of adjoining
paraheliotropic trees.

Had Bloom discussed similar subjects during nocturnal perambulations in
the past?

In 1884 with Owen Goldberg and Cecil Turnbull at night on public
thoroughfares between Longwood avenue and Leonard's corner and Leonard's
corner and Synge street and Synge street and Bloomfield avenue.

In 1885 with Percy Apjohn in the evenings, reclined against the wall
between Gibraltar villa and Bloomfield house in Crumlin, barony of
Uppercross. In 1886 occasionally with casual acquaintances and
prospective purchasers on doorsteps, in front parlours, in third class
railway carriages of suburban lines. In 1888 frequently with major Brian
Tweedy and his daughter Miss Marion Tweedy, together and separately on
the lounge in Matthew Dillon's house in Roundtown. Once in 1892 and once
in 1893 with Julius (Juda) Mastiansky, on both occasions in the parlour
of his (Bloom's) house in Lombard street, west.

What reflection concerning the irregular sequence of dates 1884, 1885,
1886, 1888, 1892, 1893, 1904 did Bloom make before their arrival at their
destination?

He reflected that the progressive extension of the field of individual
development and experience was regressively accompanied by a restriction
of the converse domain of interindividual relations.

As in what ways?

From inexistence to existence he came to many and was as one received:
existence with existence he was with any as any with any: from existence
to nonexistence gone he would be by all as none perceived.

What act did Bloom make on their arrival at their destination?

At the housesteps of the 4th Of the equidifferent uneven numbers, number
7 Eccles street, he inserted his hand mechanically into the back pocket
of his trousers to obtain his latchkey.

Was it there?

It was in the corresponding pocket of the trousers which he had worn on
the day but one preceding.

Why was he doubly irritated?

Because he had forgotten and because he remembered that he had reminded
himself twice not to forget.

What were then the alternatives before the, premeditatedly (respectively)
and inadvertently, keyless couple?

To enter or not to enter. To knock or not to knock.

Bloom's decision?

A stratagem. Resting his feet on the dwarf wall, he climbed over the area
railings, compressed his hat on his head, grasped two points at the lower
union of rails and stiles, lowered his body gradually by its length of
five feet nine inches and a half to within two feet ten inches of the
area pavement and allowed his body to move freely in space by separating
himself from the railings and crouching in preparation for the impact of
the fall.

Did he fall?

By his body's known weight of eleven stone and four pounds in avoirdupois
measure, as certified by the graduated machine for periodical
selfweighing in the premises of Francis Froedman, pharmaceutical chemist
of 19 Frederick street, north, on the last feast of the Ascension, to
wit, the twelfth day of May of the bissextile year one thousand nine
hundred and four of the christian era (jewish era five thousand six
hundred and sixtyfour, mohammadan era one thousand three hundred and
twentytwo), golden number 5, epact 13, solar cycle 9, dominical letters C
B, Roman indiction 2, Julian period 6617, MCMIV.

Did he rise uninjured by concussion?

Regaining new stable equilibrium he rose uninjured though concussed by
the impact, raised the latch of the area door by the exertion of force at
its freely moving flange and by leverage of the first kind applied at its
fulcrum, gained retarded access to the kitchen through the subadjacent
scullery, ignited a lucifer match by friction, set free inflammable coal
gas by turningon the ventcock, lit a high flame which, by regulating, he
reduced to quiescent candescence and lit finally a portable candle.

What discrete succession of images did Stephen meanwhile perceive?

Reclined against the area railings he perceived through the transparent
kitchen panes a man regulating a gasflame of 14 CP, a man lighting a
candle of 1 CP, a man removing in turn each of his two boots, a man
leaving the kitchen holding a candle.

Did the man reappear elsewhere?

After a lapse of four minutes the glimmer of his candle was discernible
through the semitransparent semicircular glass fanlight over the
halldoor. The halldoor turned gradually on its hinges. In the open space
of the doorway the man reappeared without his hat, with his candle.

Did Stephen obey his sign?

Yes, entering softly, he helped to close and chain the door and followed
softly along the hallway the man's back and listed feet and lighted
candle past a lighted crevice of doorway on the left and carefully down a
turning staircase of more than five steps into the kitchen of Bloom's
house.

What did Bloom do?

He extinguished the candle by a sharp expiration of breath upon its
flame, drew two spoonseat deal chairs to the hearthstone, one for Stephen
with its back to the area window, the other for himself when necessary,
knelt on one knee, composed in the grate a pyre of crosslaid resintipped
sticks and various coloured papers and irregular polygons of best Abram
coal at twentyone shillings a ton from the yard of Messrs Flower and
M'Donald of 14 D'Olier street, kindled it at three projecting points of
paper with one ignited lucifer match, thereby releasing the potential
energy contained in the fuel by allowing its carbon and hydrogen elements
to enter into free union with the oxygen of the air.

Of what similar apparitions did Stephen think?

Of others elsewhere in other times who, kneeling on one knee or on two,
had kindled fires for him, of Brother Michael in the infirmary of the
college of the Society of Jesus at Clongowes Wood, Sallins, in the county
of Kildare: of his father, Simon Dedalus, in an unfurnished room of his
first residence in Dublin, number thirteen Fitzgibbon street: of his
godmother Miss Kate Morkan in the house of her dying sister Miss Julia
Morkan at 15 Usher's Island: of his aunt Sara, wife of Richie (Richard)
Goulding, in the kitchen of their lodgings at 62 Clanbrassil street: of
his mother Mary, wife of Simon Dedalus, in the kitchen of number twelve
North Richmond street on the morning of the feast of Saint Francis Xavier
1898: of the dean of studies, Father Butt, in the physics' theatre of
university College, 16 Stephen's Green, north: of his sister Dilly
(Delia) in his father's house in Cabra.

What did Stephen see on raising his gaze to the height of a yard from the
fire towards the opposite wall?

Under a row of five coiled spring housebells a curvilinear rope,
stretched between two holdfasts athwart across the recess beside the
chimney pier, from which hung four smallsized square handkerchiefs folded
unattached consecutively in adjacent rectangles and one pair of ladies'
grey hose with Lisle suspender tops and feet in their habitual position
clamped by three erect wooden pegs two at their outer extremities and the
third at their point of junction.

What did Bloom see on the range?

On the right (smaller) hob a blue enamelled saucepan: on the left
(larger) hob a black iron kettle.

What did Bloom do at the range?

He removed the saucepan to the left hob, rose and carried the iron kettle
to the sink in order to tap the current by turning the faucet to let it
flow.

Did it flow?

Yes. From Roundwood reservoir in county Wicklow of a cubic capacity of
2400 million gallons, percolating through a subterranean aqueduct of
filter mains of single and double pipeage constructed at an initial plant
cost of 5 pounds per linear yard by way of the Dargle, Rathdown, Glen of
the Downs and Callowhill to the 26 acre reservoir at Stillorgan, a
distance of 22 statute miles, and thence, through a system of relieving
tanks, by a gradient of 250 feet to the city boundary at Eustace bridge,
upper Leeson street, though from prolonged summer drouth and daily supply
of 12 1/2 million gallons the water had fallen below the sill of the
overflow weir for which reason the borough surveyor and waterworks
engineer, Mr Spencer Harty, C. E., on the instructions of the waterworks
committee had prohibited the use of municipal water for purposes other
than those of consumption (envisaging the possibility of recourse being
had to the impotable water of the Grand and Royal canals as in 1893)
particularly as the South Dublin Guardians, notwithstanding their ration
of 15 gallons per day per pauper supplied through a 6 inch meter, had
been convicted of a wastage of 20,000 gallons per night by a reading of
their meter on the affirmation of the law agent of the corporation, Mr
Ignatius Rice, solicitor, thereby acting to the detriment of another
section of the public, selfsupporting taxpayers, solvent, sound.

What in water did Bloom, waterlover, drawer of water, watercarrier,
returning to the range, admire?

Its universality: its democratic equality and constancy to its nature in
seeking its own level: its vastness in the ocean of Mercator's
projection: its unplumbed profundity in the Sundam trench of the Pacific
exceeding 8000 fathoms: the restlessness of its waves and surface
particles visiting in turn all points of its seaboard: the independence
of its units: the variability of states of sea: its hydrostatic
quiescence in calm: its hydrokinetic turgidity in neap and spring tides:
its subsidence after devastation: its sterility in the circumpolar
icecaps, arctic and antarctic: its climatic and commercial significance:
its preponderance of 3 to 1 over the dry land of the globe: its
indisputable hegemony extending in square leagues over all the region
below the subequatorial tropic of Capricorn: the multisecular stability
of its primeval basin: its luteofulvous bed: its capacity to dissolve and
hold in solution all soluble substances including millions of tons of the
most precious metals: its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, its
persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas and
downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and
volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns:
its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones:
its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and
confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic
currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in
seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies,
freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers,
cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its
vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs and
latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and
exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate,
saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its
composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part
of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead
Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate
dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst
and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and
paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow,
hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and
bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and
archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and
arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility
in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power
stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals,
rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality
derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to
level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe),
numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity
as constituting 90 percent of the human body: the noxiousness of its
effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater,
stagnant pools in the waning moon.

Having set the halffilled kettle on the now burning coals, why did he
return to the stillflowing tap?

To wash his soiled hands with a partially consumed tablet of Barrington's
lemonflavoured soap, to which paper still adhered, (bought thirteen hours
previously for fourpence and still unpaid for), in fresh cold
neverchanging everchanging water and dry them, face and hands, in a long
redbordered holland cloth passed over a wooden revolving roller.

What reason did Stephen give for declining Bloom's offer?

That he was hydrophobe, hating partial contact by immersion or total by
submersion in cold water, (his last bath having taken place in the month
of October of the preceding year), disliking the aqueous substances of
glass and crystal, distrusting aquacities of thought and language.

What impeded Bloom from giving Stephen counsels of hygiene and
prophylactic to which should be added suggestions concerning a
preliminary wetting of the head and contraction of the muscles with rapid
splashing of the face and neck and thoracic and epigastric region in case
of sea or river bathing, the parts of the human anatomy most sensitive to
cold being the nape, stomach and thenar or sole of foot?

The incompatibility of aquacity with the erratic originality of genius.

What additional didactic counsels did he similarly repress?

Dietary: concerning the respective percentage of protein and caloric
energy in bacon, salt ling and butter, the absence of the former in the
lastnamed and the abundance of the latter in the firstnamed.

Which seemed to the host to be the predominant qualities of his guest?

Confidence in himself, an equal and opposite power of abandonment and
recuperation.

What concomitant phenomenon took place in the vessel of liquid by the
agency of fire?

The phenomenon of ebullition. Fanned by a constant updraught of
ventilation between the kitchen and the chimneyflue, ignition was
communicated from the faggots of precombustible fuel to polyhedral masses
of bituminous coal, containing in compressed mineral form the foliated
fossilised decidua of primeval forests which had in turn derived their
vegetative existence from the sun, primal source of heat (radiant),
transmitted through omnipresent luminiferous diathermanous ether. Heat
(convected), a mode of motion developed by such combustion, was
constantly and increasingly conveyed from the source of calorification to
the liquid contained in the vessel, being radiated through the uneven
unpolished dark surface of the metal iron, in part reflected, in part
absorbed, in part transmitted, gradually raising the temperature of the
water from normal to boiling point, a rise in temperature expressible as
the result of an expenditure of 72 thermal units needed to raise 1 pound
of water from 50 degrees to 212 degrees Fahrenheit.

What announced the accomplishment of this rise in temperature?

A double falciform ejection of water vapour from under the kettlelid at
both sides simultaneously.

For what personal purpose could Bloom have applied the water so boiled?

To shave himself.

What advantages attended shaving by night?

A softer beard: a softer brush if intentionally allowed to remain from
shave to shave in its agglutinated lather: a softer skin if unexpectedly
encountering female acquaintances in remote places at incustomary hours:
quiet reflections upon the course of the day: a cleaner sensation when
awaking after a fresher sleep since matutinal noises, premonitions and
perturbations, a clattered milkcan, a postman's double knock, a paper
read, reread while lathering, relathering the same spot, a shock, a
shoot, with thought of aught he sought though fraught with nought might
cause a faster rate of shaving and a nick on which incision plaster with
precision cut and humected and applied adhered: which was to be done.

Why did absence of light disturb him less than presence of noise?

Because of the surety of the sense of touch in his firm full masculine
feminine passive active hand.

What quality did it (his hand) possess but with what counteracting
influence?

The operative surgical quality but that he was reluctant to shed human
blood even when the end justified the means, preferring, in their natural
order, heliotherapy, psychophysicotherapeutics, osteopathic surgery.

What lay under exposure on the lower, middle and upper shelves of the
kitchen dresser, opened by Bloom?

On the lower shelf five vertical breakfast plates, six horizontal
breakfast saucers on which rested inverted breakfast cups, a
moustachecup, uninverted, and saucer of Crown Derby, four white
goldrimmed eggcups, an open shammy purse displaying coins, mostly copper,
and a phial of aromatic (violet) comfits. On the middle shelf a chipped
eggcup containing pepper, a drum of table salt, four conglomerated black
olives in oleaginous paper, an empty pot of Plumtree's potted meat, an
oval wicker basket bedded with fibre and containing one Jersey pear, a
halfempty bottle of William Gilbey and Co's white invalid port, half
disrobed of its swathe of coralpink tissue paper, a packet of Epps's
soluble cocoa, five ounces of Anne Lynch's choice tea at 2/- per lb in a
crinkled leadpaper bag, a cylindrical canister containing the best
crystallised lump sugar, two onions, one, the larger, Spanish, entire,
the other, smaller, Irish, bisected with augmented surface and more
redolent, a jar of Irish Model Dairy's cream, a jug of brown crockery
containing a naggin and a quarter of soured adulterated milk, converted
by heat into water, acidulous serum and semisolidified curds, which added
to the quantity subtracted for Mr Bloom's and Mrs Fleming's breakfasts,
made one imperial pint, the total quantity originally delivered, two
cloves, a halfpenny and a small dish containing a slice of fresh
ribsteak. On the upper shelf a battery of jamjars (empty) of various
sizes and proveniences.

What attracted his attention lying on the apron of the dresser?

Four polygonal fragments of two lacerated scarlet betting tickets,
numbered 8 87, 88 6.

What reminiscences temporarily corrugated his brow?

Reminiscences of coincidences, truth stranger than fiction, preindicative
of the result of the Gold Cup flat handicap, the official and definitive
result of which he had read in the EVENING TELEGRAPH, late pink edition,
in the cabman's shelter, at Butt bridge.

Where had previous intimations of the result, effected or projected, been
received by him?

In Bernard Kiernan's licensed premises 8, 9 and 10 little Britain street:
in David Byrne's licensed premises, 14 Duke street: in O'Connell street
lower, outside Graham Lemon's when a dark man had placed in his hand a
throwaway (subsequently thrown away), advertising Elijah, restorer of the
church in Zion: in Lincoln place outside the premises of F. W. Sweny and
Co (Limited), dispensing chemists, when, when Frederick M. (Bantam) Lyons
had rapidly and successively requested, perused and restituted the copy
of the current issue of the FREEMAN'S JOURNAL AND NATIONAL PRESS which he
had been about to throw away (subsequently thrown away), he had proceeded
towards the oriental edifice of the Turkish and Warm Baths, 11 Leinster
street, with the light of inspiration shining in his countenance and
bearing in his arms the secret of the race, graven in the language of
prediction.

What qualifying considerations allayed his perturbations?

The difficulties of interpretation since the significance of any event
followed its occurrence as variably as the acoustic report followed the
electrical discharge and of counterestimating against an actual loss by
failure to interpret the total sum of possible losses proceeding
originally from a successful interpretation.

His mood?

He had not risked, he did not expect, he had not been disappointed, he
was satisfied.

What satisfied him?

To have sustained no positive loss. To have brought a positive gain to
others. Light to the gentiles.

How did Bloom prepare a collation for a gentile?

He poured into two teacups two level spoonfuls, four in all, of Epps's
soluble cocoa and proceeded according to the directions for use printed
on the label, to each adding after sufficient time for infusion the
prescribed ingredients for diffusion in the manner and in the quantity
prescribed.

What supererogatory marks of special hospitality did the host show his
guest?

Relinquishing his symposiarchal right to the moustache cup of imitation
Crown Derby presented to him by his only daughter, Millicent (Milly), he
substituted a cup identical with that of his guest and served
extraordinarily to his guest and, in reduced measure, to himself the
viscous cream ordinarily reserved for the breakfast of his wife Marion
(Molly).

Was the guest conscious of and did he acknowledge these marks of
hospitality?

His attention was directed to them by his host jocosely, and he accepted
them seriously as they drank in jocoserious silence Epps's massproduct,
the creature cocoa.

Were there marks of hospitality which he contemplated but suppressed,
reserving them for another and for himself on future occasions to
complete the act begun?

The reparation of a fissure of the length of 1 1/2 inches in the right
side of his guest's jacket. A gift to his guest of one of the four lady's
handkerchiefs, if and when ascertained to be in a presentable condition.

Who drank more quickly?

Bloom, having the advantage of ten seconds at the initiation and taking,
from the concave surface of a spoon along the handle of which a steady
flow of heat was conducted, three sips to his opponent's one, six to two,
nine to three.

What cerebration accompanied his frequentative act?

Concluding by inspection but erroneously that his silent companion was
engaged in mental composition he reflected on the pleasures derived from
literature of instruction rather than of amusement as he himself had
applied to the works of William Shakespeare more than once for the
solution of difficult problems in imaginary or real life.

Had he found their solution?

In spite of careful and repeated reading of certain classical passages,
aided by a glossary, he had derived imperfect conviction from the text,
the answers not bearing in all points.

What lines concluded his first piece of original verse written by him,
potential poet, at the age of 11 in 1877 on the occasion of the offering
of three prizes of 10/-, 5/- and 2/6 respectively for competition by the
SHAMROCK, a weekly newspaper?

AN AMBITION TO SQUINT
AT MY VERSES IN PRINT
MAKES ME HOPE THAT FOR THESE YOU'LL FIND ROOM.
IF YOU SO CONDESCEND
THEN PLEASE PLACE AT THE END
THE NAME OF YOURS TRULY, L. BLOOM."

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