"Aeolus" - Episode Seven

Now that I've discovered http://www.sparknotes.com/ and its entry on Ulysses, I'll put the link to the episode I am blooging about in each blog entry. No need to hash over the plot, as that will be taken care of. The link to Episode Seven's explanation in Spark Notes is:



http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/ulysses/section7.rhtml



I must say that this Episode Seven just about did me in, before I discovered the Sparks website. I was unable to get any traction - no forward motion - in the story. The elaborate layering-on of allusion and elliptical thought - that darn interior monologue - created such a bizarre mishmosh that I had to wonder if Joyce was either a madman or a total genius. This "word soup" kept me from being able to decipher a single simple sentence, or so it seemed. And the headlines, which Joyce inserts rather playfully throughout the episode, didn't help one bit. I couldn't tell for awhile that the men were assembled in a newspaper office. And their buffoonery and silly oratory really threw me off (just whom were they referring to? - now I know, thanks to Sparks Notes and to my "Ulysses Annotated" guide ), not to mention not being to identify the characters - the newspapermen and their friends, who are joined by Bloom and Stephen Dedalus. The latter two are together for the first time in the book, and they are to become like father and son, in one of the continuing themes of this Ulysses-Telemachus parallel...or so my newly beloved Spark Notes tells me. Stephen gives the editor the ridiculous essay or op ed piece on Hoof and Mouth Disease, written by the equally ridiculous Mr. Deasy, and they all adjourn to a pub. That much I got. And I understood the bit about Bloom trying to sell the liquor merchant Keys an ad based on the House of Keys - the ruling body of the Isle of Mann, which had self-rule, while Ireland still did not - an ongoing issue in this book. I can see Bloom being treated as an outsider and being made fun of by the newsboy urchins, but I can't quite grasp why the men seem to like wimpy and moody Stephen Dedalus so much and defer to him. According to the notes, he is a thwarted poet and genius, last seen in "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man," when he quit medical school and went to live a Bohemian life in Paris. He is shattered by his loss of faith and by the death of his mother and is, supposedly, looking for a father figure while Bloom is looking for a son, since the death of his infant son, Rudy.



I've workd my way up to page 151 (out of 783 pages) and am about to start Episode Eight or "Lestrygonians." I'm hoping that it's more easily deciphered than Episode Seven, but, at least, I now have my Sparks Notes to refer to. I think I can hear Mr. Joyce laughing from his grave at my heroic efforts.

Finally! REAL Help for the Thoroughly Confused!

I'm back in California, after a summer in Maine, and I've opened my boxes of books, which I mailed from one coast to the other. In one box was my copy of "Ulysses" and the copy of the guide I am trying to use without too much luck: "Ulysses Annotated" I have muddled my way through episode Seven, "Aeolus," and have finished it with great difficulty, literally falling asleep several times while trying to read it. My little Wikipedia outline for "Ulysses" gives this episode very short shrift, and my huge reference book was too detailed to make much sense. I was puzzled from start to finish - about what was going on, what was being talked about. Lo and behold, I just found a FANTASTIC GUIDE TO ULYSSES ON-LINE - something called Sparks Notes, which the rest of the world may know about, but I just had to blunder onto in my desperation for some clarity. I recommend it to all of you who are trying to read along (and I know that there are a few of you, although you are invisible.) Start at the beginning and read on through. It is a dream. Every character, every bit of mythological background or bit of Irish history is clearly and briefly explained, should you need it, but, mostly you get a clear over-view of what is going on at all times. Lordy, Lordy, who is this Sparks and where has he been all my life? I will post my summary of Episode Seven shortly, but I did want to share this very helpful site with you: http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/ulysses/

Episodes Five and Six, with Help from an Expert

I seem to be doing this by myself, but it is a good discipline. In the absence of any other kind of help, I've broken down and bought the frighteningly thick "Ulysses Annotated" by Don Gifford, and that has actually slowed me down, as I now need to check anything that I don't understand in "Ulysses" with this very detailed guidebook.

However, I am about to pack both my huge copy of "Ulysses" and this even larger, new guidebook in one of the boxes I am shipping back to California from our vacation home in Maine, and this means that I won't be reading either or reporting on my progress for about two weeks. Somehow, I don't think this will be a hardship for anyone, as I don't have a single blog-follower so far.

So...in Episodes Five and Six, also called "The Lotus Eaters" and "Hades" in guidebooks, Bloom opens a letter from his secret love interest, has a bath in a public bath, then joins several men, including Stephen Dedalus' father, Simon, in a small cortege of funeral carriages, on its way to Paddy Dignam's funeral. There is a great deal of detail revealed about Bloom en route, including the fact that his infant son, Rudy, died shortly after birth; that his wife, Molly, was known to the Dublin public 15 years earlier as Madame Marion Tweedy, a noted soprano. We also learn that Bloom's father commited suicide via poison. Bloom's Jewishness and "outsider" status is hinted at, as is his actual profession as a "canvasser of ads." Stephen's father reveals that he greatly mourns the recent death of his wife, Stephen's mother, and we already know that Stephen is haunted by her death. Simon Dedalus also says to the men sharing the funeral carriage with him that he actively dislikes Stephen's room-mate (or tower-mate), Buck Mulligan.

During the burial in the grave-yard, Bloom muses ghoulishly about death and the decomposition of the human body, in keeping with his lusty and almost blood-thristy love of food and life's dramas and passions.

This brings me to Episode Seven, "Aeolus" in the guidebooks. This works out to be approx. page 114 in the original text, page 116 in my Vintage Edition.

That's it for a few weeks. Happy reading along, if you are doing that and have decided to remain silent.