Page 1 of Ulysses -- A Close Reading

[00:00:00]Welcome everyone to Close Reading Poetry. I'm Adam Walker and today we are going to be closely reading the first page of James Joyce's Ulyses. Now, I'm about to teach a two-monthlong course on Ulyses, which you can sign up for. Uh, and that's all going to be on first. The recordings and everything will be available for future students as well.

[00:00:18]One of the things I want my students to come away with in studying this book is just how meaningful the pros is. Now, we're going to be reading sometimes three episodes in a single week, which means we have to read it quickly. But it doesn't mean that such literature as as this won't yield to close slow reading.

[00:00:39]So, I want to give a slow close reading demonstration here of just the very first page of James Joyce's Ulyses you to give you a taste of just how much meaning is packed into this book. So, we'll have it here on the screen. I'll begin with just a simple reading and then we'll jump in with the analysis.

[00:00:56]Stately plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressing gown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and inoned in Troybo ad day.

[00:01:20]Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up coarsely, "Come up, kinch! Come up, you fearful Jesuit!"

[00:01:29]Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round guns. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding country, and the awakening and the awaking mountains. Then catching sight of Steven Datalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head.

[00:01:54]Steven Datalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase, and looked coldly at the shaking, gurgling face that blessed him, equin its length, and at the light, untured hair, grained and hued like a pale oak. Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror, and then covered the bowl smartly. Back to the barracks, he said sternly. He added in a preacher's tone. For this, oh dearly, beloved, is the genuine Christine. Body and soul and blood and oons. Slow music.

[00:02:32]Please shut your eyes, gents, one moment, a little trouble about those white corpuscals. Silence all. He peered sideways and gave a long low whistle of call, then paused a while in wrapped attention, his even white teeth glistening here and there with gold points. Chrisostamos, two strong shrill whistles answered through the call. So there we have the first page. So we've already begun reading the book, but let's stop here for a little bit of analysis. uh now the pleasure of reading can be found apart from analysis but this also helps us to understand just how much beauty and meaning can be in in language and the precise arrangement in selection of words. So let's begin with the beginning. The first sentence of the novel is somewhat of a microcosm for the rest of the book. It's like the rest of the novel in miniature but it begins with two adjectives. stately plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a and a razor lay crossed. Okay, so this is taking place on a military tower in Sandy Cove about 11 kilometers south uh southeast of Dublin. And this fellow Buck Mulligan comes up from the stairs to the top of the tower uh and below the tower top are the living quarters. So here we have these two adjectives that begin this the novel entirely, stately and plump. It is interesting to me that Buck Mulligan, who's the housemate of Steven Dalas, is the first to emerge on stage. And the first two words of the novel are these adjectives describing buck, mulligan, stately, and plump. So, it's usually this is this is a fascinating maneuver here because it's usually not good form to begin the first sentence of a paragraph this way, much less the first sentence of an entire novel. That's because we don't know yet what the adjectives are describing. We just have these these these two adjectives and we have to wait till the third and fourth word to know the noun that they modify. Buck mulligan. But he does it to to great purpose here. Um it would have been much better to have said for one point of view mulligan stately and plump came from the stairhead, right? Because then we know whom stately and plump describe.

[00:05:05]But Joyce doesn't begin the novel this way. And there are two reasons I think.

[00:05:10]And the first is that by having the main noun Buck Mulligan follow the obscure adjectives.

[00:05:18]It reproduces the effect of Buck Mulligan himself emerging from the darkness or obscurity of the stairhead onto the lightened tower top. So, it's it's almost when you can hear the actor's voice before he or she enters into the spotlight or the stage. And I think the second reason that Joyce writes this way is because this is the way that Buck Mulligan talks. And this is so important for the rest of the book. The narration in Ulyses often does this. Often when when a character is the subject of the chapter or a paragraph or a scene, the language itself will mirror the consciousness in the use of language of that character. It's almost like free and direct discourse. In fact, I would classify it as a type of free and direct discourse. And that's when the pros of a novel, the narration itself begins to take on the voice of one of its characters. And that happens because Buck Mulligan speak speaks in this very flowery language full of adverbs and adjectives. And that's exactly what we get right when we start the novel. You notice how elevated and stately the language is. Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead bearing a bowl.

[00:06:30]That language itself is a little elevated. If you notice, he didn't say carrying a bowl or bringing a bowl. Just bearing a bowl. The way like a knight might bear a shield. And it's this grand way of describing a scene in a sort of romantic or heroic way. And after all that stately language, stately plump buck came from this burying a bowl. We might expect it to be something more interesting than the way the sentence ends. He's bearing what? What grand thing is he bearing? A bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

[00:07:08]He's burying shaving equipment basically. So you have this effect of what's called bos. It begins with this grand lofty language that sets our expectations to re to receive something very spectacular someone something very grand and then in a way lets us down and it has a humorous effect but this in rhetoric is called called bos and I think it's an important figure to understand ulyses because the novel in a way does this the entire model of the novel is based on Homer's theoty the great epic poem of ancient Greece.

[00:07:48]And so since since the moment you first read the title Ulyses, which speaks of heroic deeds and actions and grand uh contests and trials, from the moment you read the title, your expectations are set and tuned for the epic mode. But what we actually get is instead of men wandering across the seas struggling to find their way home are men wandering the streets of Dublin over the course of of a day. And one of the questions that readers and critics have been asking about this novel is is it really an epic? Is it a mock epic?

[00:08:29]Is it kind of making fun? Um should we take this seriously? Is it grand and lofty or is it just a bunch of ordinary fluff? And this is perhaps one of the largest questions that that have been entertaining readers since the book was published. Now, one more thing I want to mention here about this sentence, the fact that the mirror and the razor are crossed. Crosses are important here. He of course does the blessings of the cross which are implied in the actions below. But there are also schematic crosses and the crossings of characters, paths intersecting all throughout this novel. So pay attention to crosses.

[00:09:07]They're religious, they're schematic, they're rhetorical, they're also very symbolic in interesting ways. So already we have all this information packed into the first sentence setting us and it's working upon our consciousness even though we might not stop to closely read it. This is how language works.

[00:09:25]Something else to notice here before we we move on to the second sentence is that Buck Mulligan we see acting the role of the priest. He's making fun.

[00:09:36]It's a parody of the Catholic mass what's about to take place. He's shaving but he's making it like like a priest coming to the altar and we'll see that in just a moment. So the act of the Catholic mass which is of the utmost importance to uh that religion since perhaps the 13th century has been the doctrine of transubstantiation which is the idea the doctrine really that the priest transforms the ordinary elements of bread and wine into the extraordinary body of Christ. It makes it divine. And in a way, that's what the novel genre does. And we'll be talking a little bit in my course about the novel genre. The novel takes the ordinary things and lifts it into the light of the extraordinary in an act comparable to the doctrine of transsubstantiation.

[00:10:30]And so this doctrine, he's making fun of it here. It's blasphemous what he's about to do. But the novel is also doing a similar thing. So let's go on to the second to the second uh sentence here.

[00:10:41]He's described as wearing yellow. This buck mulligan a yellow dressing gown un gown ungirdled was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air.

[00:10:53]There kind of beautiful descriptions there. Again these adjectives very much very much the way Buck Mulligan thinks.

[00:11:00]Buck Mulligan has just woken up. He's gotten out of bed and he's doing what most men do in the morning. He's shaving. And some critics have theorized here that the color yellow does point to something important that in the medieval depictions of Judas, Judas is usually wearing yellow. And so Judas the traitor in the yellow here is already shading our understanding of Buck Mulligan as somebody who's not a trustworthy figure. There's also the idea that that heretics wore yellow or they were assigned the color yellow to mark them out as as dangerous figures.

[00:11:37]So, he's emerging from the stairhead like a priest carrying these elements of shaving instead of bread and wine. But the manner of his dress signals something something's wrong. Something's off about him. There's also the sense that he's ungirdled, which is a little promiscuous. And I don't know if you're so take the order of the Franciscans for example. They have the brown habit and then the three knotted cord which is tied or girdled about the waist. And the three knots symbolize their three vows.

[00:12:09]Vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. And the fact that Buck Mulligan is coming here as this mock priest with the the waist uh untied, ungirdled signifies really that he's he's a bit of a of an unholy order. He's he's not obedient. He's in a way rebellious. Um he's not chased. He's actually quite um promiscuous and he's he's not uh he doesn't have vows of poverty. He's promiscuous and proflegate there. So it's interesting to see what's encoded here in the symbology of the language. He held the bowl a loft again a nice a nice old archaic grand word a loft and in toned in trobo ad alter day and this it comes from the 42nd psalm in Latin which means I will go to the altar of god but it seems very interesting that he would use this here because it also comes from the traditional Latin mass I believe the extraordinary right where when the priest approaches the altar he actually turns to the altar Okay, the alter server and says these words. What's interesting here is that Buck Mulligan is all alone on the tower top until he calls up Steven to play the altar server. Halted. He peered down the dark winding stairs. Notice the descriptions again full of adjectives.

[00:13:33]And called up coarsely, another adverb.

[00:13:36]He's so flowery and pompous, but the language is describing him in the way he speaks. Come up, Kench. Come up you fearful Jesuit. So Mulligan calls down to Steven Datalus, one of the main characters of this book. Why?

[00:13:51]Essentially to play the altar server, so he can play the father priest. Now this is significant because it connects us to Homer's the Odyssey. Homer's The Odyssey begins with the son of Odysius, Tmicus, at home in Ithaca, surrounded by usurpers, his mother's suitors, men who want to take the place of the absent king Odysius to marry Penelope and effectually become Tmicus' stepfather and and to keep Tmicus from the throne.

[00:14:21]Buck Mulligan is a usurper. He's in the role of the father priest here. He's always talking down to Steven and this places him as one of the suitors. So he corresponds to Antonus in the Odyssey if you're familiar with that. Uh and that's one of the reasons why he's always trying to usurp Steven Datalus who is the Tyicus figure here. He's always trying to usurp the place of the father um or the priest or the king. And Buck Mullikin is is trying to do that. And you can tell this by the way Mulligan speaks to Steven. Come up kinch, he says. Now he's calling him kinch. A kinch seems to be associated with the blade of a knife, the sharpness of a knife. It could be associated with a knot and a rope. But William York Tindle, one of the the commentators upon Ulyses, has found a more appropriate association. Kinch is probably a slang word for British slang for child kinchin which is calling him a child a kid which is exactly the way the suitors treat timicus. So, in a way, Buck Mulligan is a suitor. He's always speaking down to Steven, and Steven bears it. Just scrolling down here.

[00:15:37]Solemnly, he Buck Mulligan came forward and mounted the round gun.

[00:15:43]Again, solemnly, it's such an interesting adverb. Uh, we learn that the old gunrest of the tower is being used as the makeshift altar or sink whereon Buck Mulligan is about to shave.

[00:15:56]There's something ironic, I think, about this is all taking place on a tower in the place of a mock mass. He faced about and blessed gravely, another adverb, thrice, the tower, the surrounding country, and the awakening mountains. What's interesting about all of these adverbs is that they're describing Buck Mulligan, but they're actually nothing like Buck Mulligan. Buck Mulligan is not stately or gravely or solemn. He's he doesn't act in these ways and we know that we're kind of picking up on the joke here.

[00:16:32]That's one of the ways in which the language is encoding into the character and we're we're picking up through the language here. And I said there was something ironic about the fact that this is taking place on on the gun rest the makeshift altars there. The Martell are the Mel towers. That's what one of these towers are. They were built by the British government in the Napoleonic Wars to keep Irish Dublin from being overtaken by the French. And so it was a way that the British colonizers of the Irish were trying to keep someone else from taking over Ireland. So in a way Ireland was somewhat in the middle of this of this war. Uh and when the Napoleonic Wars ended, ships were improved and there was no need for these towers. They turned into living quarters. And that's exactly where Steven Datalus and Buck Mulligan are living now in one of these Mel towers.

[00:17:23]And now it's so it's interesting to think of this place that was once used by Ireland's enemies, the British to protect them from the British enemies, is now being used as living quarters and now a makeshift al altar. really shows this complicated relationship between religion and Irish nationalism and the Irish identity at the time because about a hundred years before this it was about 50 years before this during the Celtic revival WB Yates was a part of it the early movement it sought to restore the Irish spiritual character back to the Celtic spirituality because from one point of view Irish Catholicism is very much Irish but there existed did something before Catholicism colonized Ireland. There was Irish paganism or the the Celtic paganism for lack of a better word. And so some spiritualists said, "No, actually the the unique Irish spiritual character is not Catholic. It's not Irish Catholic.

[00:18:23]It's actually this Celtic background."

[00:18:26]So in a way, Catholicism itself is a usurper here. Depending on how you look at it and depending on which Irish person you spoke to at the time, there were different views about this. And it's tricky because British Anglicanism had long been trying to usurp Irish Catholicism. And there's this long tangled history of um from uh the Irish Cath Catholicism coming in or Catholicism coming in creating a very Irish Catholic character that actually did supplant something that was older than that. Then catching sight of Steven, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air. gurgling in his throat and shaking his head.

[00:19:10]Mulligan places Steven in the role of the alter boy here doing the blessing.

[00:19:14]However, there is another tower in the mind of Steven Datalus which is very important and that's the tower of Elsenor Castle in Shakespeare's Hamlet.

[00:19:23]So there are two texts, two great works of literature haunting this book. The first we know it's Homer's Theodyssey.

[00:19:31]The second is Shakespeare's Hamlet.

[00:19:33]There's a joke in this novel that Leopold Bloom is Odysius and Steven Datalus is Tmicus, but Steven Datalus thinks he's playing the role of Hamlet.

[00:19:43]And Shakespeare's Hamlet begins on the top of a tower in Elsenor Castle as well. So, it's very interesting to to see that haunting the book here. And Hamlet will come back into um the orbit of Steven Datalus and the way that the narration kind of circles around him for a while. But now listen listen to this description of Steven Datalus here.

[00:20:04]Steven Datalus displeased and sleepy leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him equin its length and at the light unconured hair grained and hued like pale oak. Now we're beginning to see Buck Mulligan through Steven's eyes. And this is where the narration shifts. You can never quite place it in Ulyses where the narration shifts, but you can kind of put your finger on where it happens. And notice that description displeased and sleepy. These are two adjectives that describe Steven Dles.

[00:20:42]What's interesting here is that this is another crossing. So you remember, let's go up actually the first sentence stately and plump. So let's say that the construction here is adjective. We'll have a equal adjective and b equal noun.

[00:20:59]We had two adjectives followed by noun. Stately, plump, adjective, buck, mulligan, the noun.

[00:21:07]Down here, we have that reversed.

[00:21:11]It's noun followed by adjective, adjective. And what you have in this construction, if we go back to the first one mirrored here, is something called anti metabolite, which is a type of kasmus, which is a rhetorical scheme. The kasmus is a Greek rhetorical scheme uh that has its root word key which was a letter that looked like this. Here we have another cross. So the kasmus itself is a linguistic or rather a schematic crossing of the adjectives and the nouns. And what's funny about both of these, this is what's so great is that sometimes the adjectives will mirror the sounds in the noun. So the short u sound in plump is echoed in the short u sound in buck and in that name. Same thing is happening with Steven Datalus here with the long e sound and displeased and sleeping going back to the long e sound and Steven. So you have these firstname correspondencies with these adjectives and the sounds therein. So this is one of those funny and fun uh schemes that are that are very important to the novel. There's also the fact that um the words themselves that describes that describe Steven Datalus are more common place than the stately and and elevated language of Buck Mulligan. But you can tell Steven does not regard Buck Mullikin with much respect or affection to say the least. Buck Mulligan's face is described here as ecquin equin in its length meaning horselike.

[00:22:58]And you'll find that horses in this novel are associated with usurpers. Um in the episode Neestor episode 2 it figures as a symbol of history. the nightmare that's haunting a mare as a female horse and it's also the symbol of u of the of the empire because you have those paintings of the horses in the neester episode which comes right after this. So the horse the equin description here is also telling us what we should think about Buck Mulligan not a good character and here we have this next uh description. Buck Mulligan peeped an instant under the mirror. Go back to the barracks, he said sternly. Get all of the adverbs again. Mulligan, I think, is addressing the cream in the bowl here.

[00:23:46]Um, back then to make shaving cream, you had to have a scuttle or a bowl of warm water and then a a moistened brush and uh you had to lather the water up with with cream or by scraping the brush against a um something like a bar of soap. Anyway, he's whipping up the cream into a lather and he's he's got it covered so the wind doesn't mess with the suds. And he looks under and they're not ready yet. And so Mulligan is is ignoring Steven here looking at the the suds. You see this is all getting really ridiculous, but that's Buck Mulligan and that's also Ulyses and commands them to go back to the barracks the way a Sarge would dismiss uh privates or soldiers. So, so, and they're living, by the way, in a military tower. So, there's there's that aspect going on. But Melikin abandons the the military metaphor and goes back to the parody of the mass and he adds in a preacher's tone for this. Oh dearly beloved is the genuine cristine body and soul and blood and wounds. So the transformation of the warm water into lather becomes the blasphemous parody of the transformation of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. And in Catholic theology again this is the doctrine of transubstantiation that's being parody parodyied here. And Mullikin becomes even more blasphemous here by making this somewhat of a black mass. Uh genuine Christine which is the feminine version of Christ. A black mass uh legend says was celebrated over the body of woman. So this also kind of intensifies the blasphemy of Buck Mulligan and we're getting an insight into what kind of person he is. And we're also beginning to again see him through Steven's eyes at this at this point. You see syncopated here wounds is the medieval way of saying that. So that was a swear by the way in the medieval period. God's wounds you would say. And you can see this shortened in some of Shakespeare's works. If you look at Oll at some point says wounds with a Z or with an S. And that's because the god has been omitted. There's the ellipses there. So that what you get is wounds.

[00:26:12]So god's wounds was the blasphemous swear. That's also what's being here. So it's it's really wounds. Um of course the wounds of Christ and the mass being a propitiation or reenactment of the of the sacrifice according to the council of Trent, a reenactment as it were. So we catch a glimpse into both the absurdity and the blasphemy of of Buck Mulligan. Slow music please shut your eyes gents. One moment a little trouble about those white corpuscals. And he's talking about the lather but corpuscals are bits of flesh. So again it's the mockery of the mass. Datalus by the way Datalus did attend a Jesuit school and Ulisses the book is in some ways autobiographic or at least some of the works by James Joyce Steven Datalus is sometimes a figure of Joyce he's written himself into Steven Datalus a lot Steven Datalus was educated by the Jesuits was invited to join the Jesuits declined and James Joyce mentions several times that he has an affinity for the Jesuits a very serious order and there's a bit of the Jesuit in him as well and Steven Davis is a very serious character very Jesuitlike in this way and Buck Mulligan is often commenting upon that now listen this is so just going back down so we we talked about the corpusles let's go down to this he peered sideways and gave a long low whistle of call then paused a while in wrapped attention his even white teeth glistening here and hair with gold points. Now, it seems we're observing Buck Mulligan through Steven Datalus' consciousness. And we know that because of what follows this long flowing sentence, just the brief word christomos, which is something that Steven Dalus, I think, would know. And so that's why we think it's in his mindos.

[00:28:15]It means uh golden mouthed or golden tonged. St. John of Christosimos for by for example was preacher named Christomos because he was golden tonged.

[00:28:28]He was a good teacher. And so you can see Steven Dis who's who's very religiously educated observing what's happening here seeing the gold glinting off the white teeth and thinking chrostimos. And so you'll sometimes notice that when you're reading Ulyses there are these interjections from the viewer's consciousness from the character's consciousness. and they might throw you off if you're used to reading straightforward pros, but it's all a part of this. The the the lines between consciousness and language are completely blurred in this novel. And sometimes it's confusing. And if you are confused, it's because and a lot of times you are meant to be confused. But other times, such as this, you you get a sense for who's observing and from whose consciousness the language is coming or blending. Two strong shrill whistles answered through the call.

[00:29:23]That's the end. That's the last u sentence of the first page. This is to signal that the mock consecration of the lather has taken place because in the Catholic mass when the consecration is complete the altar server will ring a bell or the bell towers will or the yeah the bells in the tower will ring to signal that the consecration has taken place. There's usually some kind of audible or sonic signal and that's what's being used here whistling and the whistles answer back through the calm.

[00:29:55]Again, it's very interesting this first page. You come back around to it. Even the mention of the fact that Christine, the genuine Christine, the the way black mass is being alluded to here by Buck Mulligan. This says so much about what the novel is trying to do, trying to consecrate the ordinary into divinity or into extraordinary. And in fact, it ends the book ends with a woman's consciousness.

[00:30:23]The final episode is Penelopey, Molly Bloom, the wife of Leopold Bloom's wife and her thought in her consciousness.

[00:30:30]And the word that's repeated is yes, the feminine affirmation which is so philosophically important both to Roman Catholic theology and to Joyce's philosophy and aesthetics as he mentions in some of his letters. Do you see how this is pointing towards once you finally read the book, you see how so much of the book and what's important to the entire book is bound up in this one episode and even in just this one page.

[00:30:55]So I hope you will join us on first for the course. I hope this video was helpful. You've already if you've completed this video, you've already started reading Joyce's Ulyses. Why don't you go and finish it? I hope you enjoy and until next