RIP

the joyceworld is reeling from the unexpected death of frank delaney, still 500 pages from the conclusion of his ulysses podcast.

a small thing i'll try to do to honor his effort is reformat my annotations-blog to one page per podcast. (i've been considering it for a while anyway as a solution to other issues, specifically the complex html required for hierarchical-reveal design. while i find my footing, the normally-closed hierarchies may display as normally-open, for editing convenience.)

current page index
podcast index page

here's how frank expanded the chapters and pages:

ch1: (20pp into 53 podcasts)


p3: [1] [2] [3] [4]

p4: [5] [6] [7]

p5: [8]

p6: [9] [10] [11]

p7: [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17]

p8: [18]

p9: [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]

p10: [23] [24] [25] [26]

p11: [27] [28] [29]

p12: [30]

p13: [31] [32]

p14: [33] [35]

p15: [36] [37]

p16: [38]

p17: [39] [40] [41]

p18: [42] [43] [44]

p19: [45]

p20: [46] [47] [48] [49]

p21: [50] [51]

p22:[52] [53]

p23:



ch2: (13pp into 36 podcasts)


p24: [54]



ch3: (16pp into 68 podcasts)


p37: [90] [91] [92] [93] [94] [95] [96]




ch4: (15pp into 34 podcasts)


p53: [158]




ch5: (16pp into 44 podcasts)


p68: [192] [193] [194]




ch6: (28pp into 41 podcasts)


p84: [236] [237]



ch7: (32pp into 24 podcasts)


p112: [277]



ch8: (32pp into 32 podcasts)


p144: [301]



ch9:: (42 podcasts)

p176: [327] [368]





the 68 podcasts for proteus are the most, and to fit them into a single month in blogger's hierarchical page menu will require 3 per day, which isn't bad (eg 5am, 1pm, 9pm)

likely url format: http://rejoycenotes.blogspot.com/2016/12/podcast1.html


ch1: dec 2016
ch2: nov
ch3: oct
ch4: sep
ch5: aug
ch6: jul
ch7: jun
ch8: may
ch9: apr
ch10: mar

Episode 1. We Meet Buck Mulligan (5:30)

Delaney: [1]

QUOTE: Yeats on vulgarity

"the vulgarity of a single Dublin day prolonged through 700 pages" [WB Yeats, A Vision, 1925]
vulgar [Wiktionary]

QUOTE: Joyce on £1000

"Nobody in any of my books is worth more than a thousand pounds" to Eugene Jolas, recounted in "My friend James Joyce" 1941

WHERE: 'Martello' (Italy)

[Wikipedia]

WHERE: Sandycove

WHEN: not dawn

'dawn has broken' (dawn was actually 5 hours earlier at 3:30am, the days being especially long near the summer solstice at 53°N)

FRIV: anagrams for 'stately'

more anagrams on 'stately' include yeast, salty, style, tasty (trivial)

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan
came from the stairhead,

WORD: stately

the word 'stately' is most often conventionally followed by 'mansions'
Delaney reads it as an adverb, but it's not (his anagram business is also misleading)
Joyce emphasizes a duality between Church and State (the chapter ends with a priest) but Mulligan here is acting more priestly than royal

STYLE: cunning

Joyce crafts each sentence to win our trust, but also to hint that we'll have to pay close attention to solve the many casual riddles.
(Odysseus cunningly designed the Trojan Horse to sneak warriors into the enemy camp)

WHO: Buck Mulligan

Malachi Roland St John 'Buck' Mulligan [pix] [mentions] was based on 25yo Oliver St John Gogarty [wiki] [resources]

STYLE: libelous

it's the first of many lacerating portraits of lightly disguised real Dubliners in the book, often using their real names, risking libel charges and wounding them deeply.

WHERE: roof of Martello tower at Sandycove, Ireland

Sandycove, Ireland [map]
roof of Martello tower [pix and info] [mentions]

WHAT: stairhead

top steps of very narrow spiral staircase enclosed in west side of Tower wall

RESEARCH: dimensions?

we need the exact dimensions of stairhead, parapet, gunrest
Shakespeare's Globe Theatre stage was twice as wide as the towertop of Telemachus

ALLUSION: Homer

this is the primary Homeric 'suitor' from Stephen's point of view, 'plump' because he's gorging on food usurped from the missing Odysseus (but he's simultaneously Odysseus using the TROJAN HORSE strategem to usurp the city of Troy)

VOICE: Mulligan?

Benstock suggests the opening sentences are in Mulligan's voice (but Mulligan is a mocker of all voices)

MYSTERY: choreography?

"came from... came forward" (whose point of view is this? not Mulligan's own)

gunrest and stairhead
(camera looking SW, i think)

bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

NUANCE: bearing

'bearing' turns the act into a ritual (Catholic Mass)

WHAT: bowl

meant to be held in one hand while other hand whisks lather
traditionally a mug with a handle
later described as nickel (implausible unless nickelplated silver)

PRONUNCIATION: lather

rhymes with 'bother' not 'slather'

BACKSTORY: lather

apparently he did the whisking downstairs, where the water was

WHAT: mirror

mirror (women's paddle-shaped?, cracked) will be propped on parapet, fits in dressinggown pocket
RESEARCH: possible dimensions of mirror

WHAT: razor

folding straightrazor, fits in pocket when closed

MYSTERY: 'cross' dimensions?

"crossed" implies the mirror can be seen as one bar of a cross, the razor as the other

SYMBOLISM: cross

cross as Christian symbol

A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled,
was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air.

WHAT: dressinggown

yellow silk, worn over pants

NUANCE: why 'A' not "His'?

"A yellow dressinggown" (why 'A' not "His'?)

BACKSTORY: pants

"ungirdled" (we'll see he's wearing trousers too) cf cincture

NUANCE: by

"sustained gently behind him [by | on] the mild morning air" (without saying so, JAJ implies it's silk)

WEATHER: mild

average Dublin temperatures on 16 June: low 49°F, high 64°F (coincidentally about the same as when Joyce actually stayed there in September)
the thick granite walls of the Tower must have held the cold

TIME: morning

It's about 8:30am on Thursday 16 June 1904. The sun rose at 3:30am. (53° north, cf Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)

He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
— Introibo ad altare Dei.

CHOREOGRAPHY: held aloft

probably with both hands

QUOTE: Catholic Mass

QUOTE: Catholic Mass, in Latin
[Introibo ad altare Dei] ritually mumbled not intoned?
'introibo' is 'I will go in to' the altar of God, not 'up to'

ALLUSION: Homer

Homer's Odyssey begins with an invocation of the Muse

STYLE: italics

notice that italics in Ulysses signify: foreign languages, quotations, and song lyrics or poems. never internal monolog, never simple emphasis.

ECHO: Black Mass

cf U556: "FATHER MALACHI O'FLYNN Introibo ad altare diaboli." (this Black Mass scene will be hallucinated as set in the room below)

STYLE: Buck's blasphemies

Joyce's portrait of Gogarty was drawn specifically to reveal his blasphemous/ obscene side to his conformist patients in Dublin, confronting OG with his social hypocrisies. (His peers would already have known him well.)

OG w/JAJ, 1909: "'Well do you really want me to go to hell and be damned'. I said 'I bear you no illwill. I believe you have some points of good nature. You and I of 6 years ago are both dead. But I must write as I have felt'. He said 'I don't care a damn what you say of me so long as it is literature'. I said 'Do you mean that?' He said 'I do. Honest to Jaysus. Now will you shake hands with me at least?' I said 'I will: on that understanding.'"

OG 1922: "That bloody Joyce whom I kept in my youth has written a book you can read on all the lavatory walls of Dublin" (cf OG's own obscene songs)

[fd 0:00-1:58]

[dd 00:00-02:43]
(i imagine BM's accent being much more upperclass than DD's version here)

[im 00:00-02:28]

[lv1 01:34-03:59]

[lv2 00:22-02:13]

manuscript:
first edition:

editions: [1922] [html] [philly] [arch]
notes: [Th] [G&S] [Dent] [8] [wbks] [rw] [images] [MT] [hyper]
Delaney: [1] [2] [3] [4] Useen: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] maps: [local] [global] [*]

telemachus: 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

Episode 2. The Mocking Continues

Delaney: [2]

WORD: 'parapet'

the 'parapet' is not the whole roof, just the surrounding wall [Wiktionary]

QUOTE: Gogarty's life "ruined"?

where does Gogarty say Ulysses ruined his life?

Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely:
— Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!

NUANCE: halted by what?

"Halted" (by what?)

WHAT: stairs (pic)

"the dark winding stairs"

NUANCE: called down

Joyce seems to have rejected the obvious 'called down' in favor of 'up' or 'out' (depending on the draft)
"called [up | out] coarsely" (given the thick walls and narrow stairs, he'd have to be loud)

ALLUSION: Romeo and Juliet

Romeo and Juliet, opening line of III.3:
FRIAR LAURENCE Romeo, come forth; come forth, thou fearful man:

NUANCE: Kinch

p4: "O, my name for you is the best: Kinch, the knifeblade."
cf kink and cinch
Dialect Dictionary: "A loop, twist, noose of a rope, a hitch. (cf kink}. Kinsch-pin: a pin or stick used in twisting the ropes which bind anything together to make them firmer. A sudden twist in wrestling. An unfair or unexpected advantage; a favour; a hold. 'To keep kinches' = to act together. To manage anything dexterously (to keep their kinches). To twist, loop, knot, to tighten by twisting. To strain a muscle. A hole dug in a grassy beach; having the bottom and side puddled with clay ('the kinch was filled to the brim'). The young fry of fish. A small portion or quantity ('a kinch of bread')"
Mulligan will use "Kinch" 20 times in this episode, less than 10 times more in the rest of the book (is there any evidence Gogarty used it of Joyce?)

ECHO: (scene)

images from this episode will reappear at the climax of episode 15:
U539: "(From the top of a tower Buck Mulligan, in particoloured jester's dress of puce and yellow and clown's cap with curling bell, stands gaping at her, a smoking buttered split scone in his hand.)
BUCK MULLIGAN She's beastly dead. The pity of it! Mulligan meets the afflicted mother. (He upturns his eyes.) Mercurial Malachi.
THE MOTHER (With the subtle smile of death's madness.) I was once the beautiful May Goulding. I am dead.
STEPHEN (Horrorstruck.) Lemur, who are you? No. What bogeyman's trick is this?
BUCK MULLIGAN (Shakes his curling capbell.) The mockery of it! Kinch dogsbody killed her bitchbody. She kicked the bucket. (Tears of molten butter fall from his eyes on to the scone.) Our great sweet mother! Epi oinopa ponton."

MOTIVATION: ego?

'Not having an audience is intolerable for Mulligan'? cite

NUANCE: come/fearful

had he assumed SD was following him? is he accusing SD of balking at the stairs?

ECHO: jejune jesuit

p4: "Will he come? The jejune jesuit!"

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest.
He faced about and blessed gravely thrice
the tower, the surrounding country and the awaking mountains.

NUANCE: Solemnly

"Stately... coarsely... Solemnly" Buck is switching (mercurially) between an apparently solemn performance and an actually coarse character
(so the coarseness was an aside)

CHOREOGRAPHY: hands

again holding shaving stuff down with one hand?

WHAT: gunrest

gunrest (about 6" high, 6ft diameter)
actually called a 'traversing platform' or 'pivot block' [pdf]
"gunrest" usually refers to a support at the barrel end, for aiming
(but who'd remember what they'd officially called it in 1805?)

CHOREOGRAPHY: faced about

He had to be facing the gunrest as he mounted it, but now he turns around 180 degrees to face the stairs again

RESEARCH: blessed

is this a gesture or a phrase?

ECHO: gravely

"Stately... coarsely... Solemnly... gravely"
episode 6 (Hades) ends in a graveyard

RESEARCH: thrice

"thrice" (3 each or 3 total?)

WHERE: surrounding country

"surrounding country" land to south and west
he omits the bay (water to north and east not blessed!?)

WHERE: mountains

mountains in southwest
"awaking" not 'awakening'

Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus,
he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air,
gurgling in his throat and shaking his head.

WHO: Stephen Dedalus

maybe a parody of exorcism? [1913] "a simple and authoritative adjuration addressed to the demon in the name of God" but Stephen will call it blessing

he must use his free hand while holding the shaving stuff in the other

TROJAN HORSE: we should probably see this opening as the active betrayal of Stephen and Ireland to the British and the Roman Catholics, as Odysseus betrayed Troy with the deceptive strategem of the Trojan horse

[fd 0:00-1:58]

[dd 00:00-02:43]
(i imagine BM's accent being much more upperclass than DD's version here)

[im 00:00-02:28]

[lv1 01:34-03:59]

[lv2 00:22-02:13]

manuscript:
first edition:

editions: [1922] [html] [philly] [arch]
notes: [Th] [G&S] [Dent] [8] [wbks] [rw] [images] [MT] [hyper]
Delaney: [1] [2] [3] [4] Useen: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] maps: [local] [global] [*]

telemachus: 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23