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]
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