Starting Bloomsday with Buck, Stephen and Haines

This really wasn't so hard.

I read the first 36 pages of "Ulysses" last night and stopped at the end of the second episode. I met the plump and bizarrely talkative med student, Buck Mulligan, who spouted Catholic Latin even while shaving early on the morning of "Bloomsday" - June 16, 1904. And I met his flat-mate (or tower-mate), Stephen Dedalus, whom I first encountered 40 years ago when I read Joyce's "Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man," and who, in this book, is sharing rooms in the Martello Tower, overlooking Dublin Bay with Buck. Stephen is a passive-aggressive, deeply moody school teacher, haunted by the recent death of his mother. Then, I met Haines, a foppish Oxford-educated Brit, who seems to be Buck's house guest and a constant irritation to Stephen, although he swallows his irritation and mutters to himself.


They all go down to the rocky beach so that Buck may swim after his shave. I must say, he certainly leads these two around by the nose. Following this, they share breakfast in their tower rooms. Then, in the second episode, Stephen is facing his classroom, trying to get them to concentrate on a boring bit of classical history - the victory of Pyrrhus of Epirus (the fellow who said "another victory like that and we are done for" and gave the world the phrase "Pyrrhic victory.") The boys can't wait to be released so that they may play hockey and are cranky when Stephen tells them a truly weird riddle - totally incomprehensible. Stephen, who tortures himself over his refusal to pray with his mother at her death bed (probably due to the fact that he no longer believes in the Church), sees in one pitiful little student, whom he tries to help with his sums after the other boys have left for hockey, a child whom only a mother could love, thereby reminding himself of his own mother's love. Stephen is clearly a fellow who knows how to torture himself. The headmaster, Mr. Deasy, calls Stephen to his office and proceeds to lecture him on how to save the wages he is paying him, gives him a very strange article on hoof and mouth disease he'd like Stephen to give to his contacts at the local newspapers and then sets forth several vile anti-Semitic pronouncements and one anti-Semitic "joke," and that ends the second episode.

There is plenty of the stream-of-consciousness, which I was warned about in the Wikipedia article, and I understand that the book will become more and more "streamy" as it progresses.



I have not yet met Leopold Bloom, around whom the book is structured, but I see from my Wikipedia notes that he will be introduced in the fourth episode. The same Wikipedia notes explain the classic references and the original classical headings to the episodes. Not being a student of the classics, I never learned any of these allusions, so I am having to refer to the notes for help.


We're told that Bloom, when he is introduced, will represent Odysseus or Ulysses; Stephen, his questing son, Telemachus; and Molly Bloom (Leopold's wife), Penelope - all from the "Iliad". The first three episodes are named "Telemachus," "Nestor" and "Proteus," characters whom I find nicely explained in Wikipedia but whose links to the text remain to be made clear to me. It is Leopold or Ulysses we are to follow through "an ordinary day" in Dublin on June 16, 1904, and we are to see the classical parallels throughout. This is where I need help.


That, and the Latin/Catholic phrases throughout.

And, of course, like so many people before me, I am wondering if James Joyce wrote "Ulysses" just to torture generations of English professors, English students and the like. He is said to have chuckled over the "puzzles" he planted throughout the book.

However, if I read the text quickly, looking for the bits and pieces that move the story forward, this seems to work, so that is how I will proceed. I'll check in with this blog after I've read the next two episodes. I'm hoping that some of you will want to read along with me and share your thoughts or explain any of the Latin and classical references as well as the "puns and parodies and allusions" we are promised in the Wikipedia article. My husband and I are planning a little road trip in a few days, so it may be a while until my next posting.