Spouse and helpmate of Adam Kadmon: Heva, naked Eve. She had no navel. Gaze. Belly without blemish, bulging big, a buckler of taut vellum, no, whiteheaped corn, orient and immortal, standing from everlasting to everlasting. Womb of sin.

Wombed in sin darkness I was too, made not begotten. By them, the man with my voice and my eyes and a ghostwoman with ashes on her breath. They clasped and sundered, did the coupler's will. From before the ages He willed me and now may not will me away or ever. A lex eterna stays about Him. Is that then the divine substance wherein Father and Son are consubstantial? Where is poor dear Arius to try conclusions? Warring his life long upon the contransmagnificandjewbangtantiality. Illstarred heresiarch' In a Greek watercloset he breathed his last: euthanasia. With beaded mitre and with crozier, stalled upon his throne, widower of a widowed see, with upstiffed omophorion, with clotted hinderparts.

Page 37 has been posted.

This is the start of Chapter 3, sometimes called Proteus, named after the creature that Menelaus struggled with when he was marooned near Egypt on his way home from Troy.

Proteus was a sea god (by some accounts second only to Poseidon, and by other accounts as a more ancient god) that could shift its shape at will.

It's an appropriate image for this chapter because, like Proteus, the words following the shifting thoughts of Stephen's "stream of consciousness" as he wanders the beach outside Dublin.

This is an especially "difficult" chapter, and I've hardly made a dent in annotating it. Where to start?

On my first approach, I tried to decipher "Ineluctable modality of the visible." But it's too tightly bound to the rest of the page to make much sense on its own.

My second approach was to start by translating all the foreign phrases. But I got bogged down by parsing the difference between "nacheinander" and "nebeneinander."

In both approaches, it seems like the reader is thrown in the middle of a philosophical arguement that Stephen is having with himself. Some people might be clued into the various points of view, but I'm lost. It will take a good bit of extracurricular reading to understand this stuff better.

However, one name comes through clear: Aristotle. It's a name that has cropped up earlier in the book, but now Joyce seems to assume greater familiarity with the man's work. Ugh.

Any suggestions on which work of Aristotle's to start first? Could any of it be considered Summer Reading?

Ineluctable modality of the visible: at least that if no more, thought through my eyes. Signatures of all things I am here to read, seaspawn and seawrack, the nearing tide, that rusty boot. Snotgreen, bluesilver, rust: coloured signs. Limits of the diaphane. But he adds: in bodies. Then he was aware of them bodies before of them coloured. How? By knocking his sconce against them, sure. Go easy.

We're still on page 34 of Ulysses.

Now I remember why I stopped posting on Ulysses for a while. I'd annotated about half that page and then lost all of the changes. Not the end of the world or anything, but school work came in and distracted me.

Ah, well. We're back, aren't we?

History is a nightmare

Here is perhaps the most famous line from the book: "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." But I really like the whole section:

"—History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which
I am trying to awake.

"From the playfield the boys raised a shout. A whirring
whistle: Goal. What if that nightmare gave you a back
kick?

"—The ways of the Creator are not our ways, Mr Deasy
said. All human history moves towards one great goal,
the manifestation of God.

"Stephen jerked his thumb towards the window, saying:

"—That is God.

"Hooray! Ay! Whrrwhee!

"—What? Mr Deasy asked.

"—A shout in the street, Stephen answered, shrugging
his shoulders."

After a full morning of listening to Brits bloviate about the inevitability of history, Stephen finally finds his retort.

I've been meaning to take a closer look at these contrasting perspectives on history: history as a straight line toward progress, and history as a cycle of recurring themes. But it became too intimidating, and I wasn't in the mood to spend time with Hegel, so we'll just pass on by, appreciate this passage, and move on.

This Is God?

That "history is a nightmare" line gets all of the attention, but the lines following it made me really like Stephen. Maybe for the first time.

Deasey talks about history inevitably leading to the manifestation of god, and Stephen comes back with the observation is, "That is God," referring to the sound of children playing outside and "a shout in the street."

Heck, it's almost a Zen-like response. If you were to say "That is God" in a normal conversation, there probably would be a moment of stunned silence before the other person would think to ask, "what is God?"

The answer would be everything that happened after you'd finished talking and before the other person started talking. Every sound, Every sensation. Every thought. It would all be God--everything and nothing.

Yeah, Stephen gets respect from me for that bit of snark.

History's March Forward

A few weeks ago, my brother reminded me of this appropriate quote from President Obama:

"In retrospect, America's march forward seems inevitable. But time and time again, it's only made possible by generations that are willing to work and sacrifice and invest in plans to make tomorrow better than today. That's the vision we can't afford to lose sight of. That's the challenge that's fallen to this generation. And that's the challenge we meet."

Page 33 has been annotated and Page 34 has been posted.

Deasy's Letter Full of Rubbish

I started annotating the first full paragraph but decided that it's more of Mr. Deasy's letter, and Stephen is only scanning over it. The specifics are not important. All you really need to know is that he believes that the continental Europeans have found a cure for hoof and mouth disease, but according to history he's a bit premature.

If you feel that you really can't sleep without learning the state of hoof and mouth disease at the beginning of the 20th century, Don Gifford's Ulyssses Annotated will send you on your way to finding the answer.

But I think it's relevance to the book is that the subject is boring and that Mr. Deasy is a bully and a blow-hard of the first order.

Another Anti-Semitic Brit in Ireland

The meat of the page happens a little farther down, when Mr. Deasy finally shows his hand:

"Mark my words, Mr Dedalus....England is in the hands of the jews. In all the highest places: her finance, her press. And they are the signs of a nation's decay."

If you didn't like this character before, Joyce has all but guaranteed that Deasy moves from being a standard-issue blow-hard to becoming "The Execrable Mr. Deasy"©.

Stephen tries to parry this comment by saying, "A merchant...is one who buys cheap and sells dear, jew or gentile, is he not?" This comment subtly pricks at the English (and Deasy's praise of all English as monetary geniuses). But it sails right over The Execrable Mr. Deasy's© head.

Judaism is a running theme of this book. So far, we have both references of the British Emprire--The Execrable Mr. Deasy's© and Haines--spout off about how the Jews are destroying the empire. Deasy does it here, and Haines, of course, says, "I don't want to see my country fall into the hands of German jews either. That's our national problem, I'm afraid, just now."

And of course the honorable Leopold Bloom is Jewish.

Though I haven't read up on it, I'm guessing that Judaism is a symbol for Ireland's outsider status. And I suspect that once Stephen and Leopold finally meet up, they will find common ground in the mutual alienation.

New Contributed Pages

In annotating this page, I've added or updated the following pages:

• An update of the Jew page, because on this page Joyce gives us another crucual example of British anti-Semitism.
• The William Blake poem Auguries of Innocence, which Stephen quotes in reference to The Execrable Mr. Deasy's © screed.
  

—I don't mince words, do I? Mr Deasy asked as Stephen read on.

Foot and mouth disease. Known as Koch's preparation. Serum and virus. Percentage of salted horses. Rinderpest. Emperor's horses at Murzsteg, lower Austria. Veterinary surgeons. Mr Henry Blackwood Price. Courteous offer a fair trial. Dictates of common sense. Allimportant question. In every sense of the word take the bull by the horns. Thanking you for the hospitality of your columns.

A friend shared this link. Joyces is furious that they are waiting for Yeats, but of course Beckett is used to waiting.