Lectures on Literature

by Nabokov, Vladimir

  After three o'clock Mr. Bloom is still idling over the books for rent. He finally rents for Molly Sweets of Sin, an American novel, slightly risque in an old-fashioned manner. "He read where his finger opened.

  —All the dollarbills her husband gave her were spent in the stores on wondrous gowns and costliest frillies. For him! For Raoul!

  Yes. This. Here. Try.

  —Her mouth glued on his in a luscious voluptuous kiss while his hands felt for the opulent curves inside her deshabilé.

  Yes. Take this. The end.

  —You are late, he spoke hoarsely, eyeing her with a suspicious glare.

  The beautiful woman threw off her sabletrimmed wrap, displaying her queenly shoulders and heaving embonpoint. An imperceptible smile played round her perfect lips as she turned to him calmly."

  Dilly Dedalus, Stephen's fourth sister, who has been hanging around Dillon's auction rooms since Bloom saw her there about one o'clock, listens to the auction hand bell ringing at the sales. Her father, hard, selfish, clever, artistic old Simon Dedalus comes by and Dilly gets a shilling and tuppence out of him. This is synchronized with the viceroy's cavalcade starting out at Parkgate, Phoenix Park, the western suburb of Dublin, and heading for the center of the city, thence eastward to Sandymount, to inaugurate a bazaar. They pass through the whole city from west to east.

  Just after three o'clock Tom Kernan, tea merchant, walks, pleased with the order he has just got. He is a pompous and plump Protestant, Mr. Kernan, beside whom Bloom stood at the funeral of Dignam. Kernan is one of the few minor characters in the book whose stream of consciousness is given in detail, here in the twelfth section. In the same section Simon Dedalus meets on the street a priest, Father Cowley, with whom he is on intimate first-name terms. Elijah sails down the Liffey past Sir John Rogerson's Quay, and the viceregal cavalcade passes along Pembroke Quay. Kernan just misses it.

  In the next, a few moments after Bloom, Stephen in his turn stops at the bookstalls in Bedford Row. Father Conmee is now walking through the hamlet of Donnycarney, reading his vespers. Stephen's sister Dilly, with her high shoulders and shabby dress, halts next to him. She has bought a French primer with one of the pennies she got from her father. Abstract Stephen, although acutely aware of the misery of his four young sisters, seems to forget that he still has gold in his pocket, what is left of his schoolteacher's salary. He will be ready to give that money away for no reason at all, when drunk, in a later chapter. The section ends with his sorrow for Dilly, and the repetition of agenbite, remorse, which we heard from him in the first chapter of part one.

  In section 14 we repeat the greeting of Simon Dedalus and Father Cowley and the conversation is recorded. The priest is having money troubles with the moneylender Reuben J. Dodd and with his landlord. Then Ben Dollard comes up, an amateur singer, who is trying to be helpful to Father Cowley in staving off the bailiffs. Mr. Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell, the demented gentleman, murmuring and glassy eyed, strides down Kildare Street; this is the man who passed Bloom talking to Mrs. Breen. The Reverend Mr.. Love, who toured the warehouse-abbey with Lambert and O'Molloy, is mentioned as Father Cowley's landlord who had put out a writ for his rent.

  Next Cunningham and Power (also of the funeral party) discuss the fund for Dignam's widow, to which Bloom has contributed five shillings. Father Conmee is mentioned, and we meet for the first time two barmaids, the Misses Kennedy and Douce, who will come in later in chapter 8. The viceroy now passes Parliament Street. In section 16 the brother of the Irish patriot Parnell plays chess in a cafe where Buck Mulligan points him out to Haines, the Oxford student of folklore. The two discuss Stephen. Synchronized in this section is the one-legged sailor, growling his song and swinging along on his crutches on Nelson Street. And the crumpled pamphlet Elijah meets in the bay a home-come ship, the Rosevean.

  Then in section 17 Stephen's Italian teacher walks and so does the mad gentleman Farrell, with the long name. We shall soon realize that the most important synchronizing agent in the whole chapter is the blind youth, the blind piano tuner, whom Bloom helped to cross the street in an eastward direction, about two o'clock. Demented Farrell now walks westward on Clare Street, while the blind youth is walking eastward on the same street, still unaware that he has left his tuning fork in the Ormond Hotel. Opposite number 8, the office of a dentist Mr. Bloom, already referred to in the description of the funeral procession, no relation to Leopold, mad Farrell brushes against the frail soft body of the blind youth, who curses him.

  Nabokov's notes on the action of Ulysses, part two, chapter 7

  The eighteenth section is devoted to the late Mr. Dignam's son, Patrick, Jr., a boy of twelve or so, who heads west on Wicklow Street, carrying some pork steaks for which he had been sent. He dawdles and looks into a shop window at the picture of two boxers who have fought recently, on 21 May. In chapter 9 one finds a delightful parody of a journalistic description of a boxing match: the sports stylist keeps varying his epithets—it is one of the funniest passages in this amusing book—Dublin's pet lamb, the sergeant major, the artilleryman, the soldier, the Irish gladiator, the redcoat, the Dubliner, the Portobello bruiser. In Grafton Street, the brightest street in Dublin, Master Dignam notices a red flower in a smartly dressed fellow's mouth—Blazes Boylan, of course. One may compare the boy's thought about his dead father with the thoughts of Stephen in the first chapter about his mother.

  In the last section the viceregal procession comes into vivid existence. It is instrumental in bringing into focus all the people we have been following through the preceding sections, plus a few others, who either salute the viceroy or ignore him. Making an appearance are Kernan, Richie Goulding, the Ormond bar girls, Simon Dedalus who salutes the viceroy with a low servile hat, Gerty MacDowell whom we shall meet in chapter 10 on the rocks, the Reverend Hugh Love, Lenehan and M'Coy, Nolan, Rochford, Flynn, gay Mulligan and grave Haines, John Parnell who does not glance up from the chessboard, Dilly Dedalus with her French primer, Mr. Menton with his oyster eyes, Mrs. Breen and her husband, and the sandwich men. Blazes Boylan, straw hatted in his indigo suit and sky blue tie, red carnation between his lips, on his way to the Ormond Hotel and thence to Eccles Street ogles the ladies in the carriage, and the mad Cashel Boyle O'Connor Fitzmaurice Tisdall Farrell stares through a fierce eyeglass across the carriages at somebody in the window of the Austro-Hungarian consulate. Also Hornblower, the Trinity College porter whom Bloom had met on his way to the baths, Paddy Dignam, Jr., two cockle gatherers, and Almidano Artifoni. The procession going towards Lower Mount Street passes the blind piano tuner still heading east, but he will recall in a minute the tuning fork he forgot at his last job and will be coming back west in a moment towards the Ormond Hotel. There is also on the list the Man in the Brown Macintosh, James Joyce, master of synchronization.

  Bloom runs into Boylan three times during the day (at 11 A.M., at 2 P.M., and at 4 P.M.) in three separate spots, and none of the times does Boylan see Bloom. The first time is in part two, chapter 3, in the carriage driving with Cunningham, Power, and Simon Dedalus to the funeral, a little after eleven, just as Bloom sees the wet bright bills of the opera on the hoardings near the Queen's Theatre. He sees Boylan emerging from the door of a restaurant, the Red Bank, a seafood place, and while the others salute him, Bloom inspects his fingernails. Boylan notices the funeral but does not notice the carriage.

  The second time is in part two, chapter 5, as Bloom enters Kildare Street on his way to the National Library just after 2 P.M. soon after seeing the blind stripling heading for Frederick Street "perhaps to Levinston's dancing academy piano"—where, if so, he did not miss his tuning fork since we see him still proceeding eastward in chapter 7. Bloom sees Boylan.

  "Straw hat in sunlight. Tan shoes" and swerves to the right, to the museum connected with the library.

  The third time is in part two, chapter 8, as Bloom crosses Ormond Quay (after crossing Essex Bridge from Wellington Quay, north bank to south bank of the Lif
fey) to buy some notepaper at Daly's stationers; he turns his head and sees Boylan in a jaunty hackney cab coming the same way Bloom just came. Boylan, to meet Lenehan for a moment, enters the bar of the Ormond Hotel. Bloom decides to enter the dining room with Richie Goulding whom he happens to meet at the door. Bloom watches Boylan from there. It is a few minutes to four now, and Boylan presently leaves the Ormond bar for Eccles Street.

  PART TWO, CHAPTER 8

  The characters in chapter 8 are

  1. In the saloon of the hotel and at the bar: two barmaids—bronze-haired Lydia Douce and gold-haired Mina Kennedy; the boots, a saucy young fellow who brings them their tea; Simon Dedalus, Stephen's father; the racing editor Lenehan, who comes in shortly afterwards to wait for Boylan; Boylan himself on his way to Molly; fat Ben Dollard and thin Father Cowley who join Simon Dedalus at the piano; Mr. Lidwell, a lawyer who courts Miss Douce; Tom Kernan, the pompous tea merchant; there are also two anonymous gentlemen drinking beer from tankards; and finally at the end of the chapter the blind piano tuner returns for his tuning fork.

  2. In the adjacent dining room there are the waiter Pat (bald, deaf Pat), Bloom, and Richie Goulding. They hear the songs in the bar, and Bloom glimpses the barmaids.

  In the course of chapter 8 three people are sensed approaching, before they actually enter,: le Ormond Hotel: Bloom, Boylan, and the blind youth coming back for hi, tuning fork. The tap of his approaching stick on the sidewalk—his leitmotiv—is heard midway through the chapter, and these taps can be traced here and there, increasing on the next pages—tap, tap, tap—, then four taps repeated. His tuning fork lying on the piano is noticed by Simon Dedalus. He is sensed coming by Daly's shop window, and finally "Tap. A youth entered a lonely Ormond hall."

  Nabokov's annotations in his teaching copy of Ulysses, part two, chapter 8

  Bloom and Boylan are not only sensed coming—they are sensed going. Boylan, after talking horses with Lenehan, drinking a slow, syrupy sloe gin, and watching coy Miss Douce imitate a ringing clock by smacking her garter against her thigh, impatiently leaves, heading for Molly, but with Lenehan starting to go with him to tell him about Tom Rochford. As the drinkers continue in the bar, and the eaters in the restaurant, his jingle jaunty jingle is sensed receding both by Bloom and the author, and his progress in the jaunting car (also known as a jaunty car) to Eccles Street is marked by such notices as "Jingle a tinkle jaunted" and "Jingle jaunted down the quays. Blazes sprawled on bounding tyres" and "By Bachelors walk jogjaunty jingled Blazes Boylan, bachelor, in sun, in heat, mare's glossy rump atrot, with flick of whip, on bounding tyres: sprawled, warmseated, Boylan impatience, ardentbold" and "By Graham Lemon's pineapple rock, by Elvery's elephant jingle jogged." Moving at a slower rate than in Bloom's mind, "Jingle by monuments of sir John Gray, Horatio onehanded Nelson, reverend father Theobald Matthew, jaunted as said before just now. Atrot, in heat, heatseated. Cloche. Sonnez la. Cloche. Sonnez la. Slower the mare went up the hill by the Rotunda, Rutland square. Too slow for Boylan, blazes Boylan, impatience Boylan, joggled the mare." Then "Jingle into Dorset street" and, coming closer, "A hackney car, number three hundred and twenty-four, driver Barton, James of number one Harmony avenue, Donnybrook, on which sat a fare, a young gentleman, stylishly dressed in an indigoblue serge suit made by George Robert Mesias, tailor and cutter, of number five Eden quay, and wearing a straw hat very dressy, bought of John Plasto of number one Great Brunswick street, hatter. Eh? This is the jingle that joggled and jingled. By Dlugacz' porkshop bright tubes of Agendath trotted a gallantbuttocked mare." The jingle even imposes itself on Bloom's stream of thought in the hotel as he is composing a letter in return to Martha: "Jingle, have you the?" The missing word is, of course, horn, for Bloom is mentally following Boylan's progress. In fact, in Bloom's feverish imagination he has Boylan arrive and make love to Molly sooner than he actually does. While Bloom listens to the music in the bar and to Richie Goulding talking, his thought ranges, and one part is, "Her wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevy hair un comb:'d"— meaning that in Bloom's hasty mind her hair has been uncombed already by her lover. Actually, at this point Boylan has only reached Dorset Street. Finally, Boylan arrives: "Jog jig jogged stopped. Dandy tan shoe of dandy Boylan socks skyblue clocks came light to earth....

  One rapped on a door, one rapped with a knock, did he knock Paul de Kock, with a loud proud knocker, with a cock carracarracarra cock. Cockcock."

  Two songs are sung in the bar. First Simon Dedalus, a wonderful singer, sings Lionel's aria "All is lost now" from Martha, a French opera with an Italian libretto by a German composer von Flotow, 1847. The "All is lost now" nicely echoes Bloom's feelings about his wife. In the adjacent restaurant Bloom writes a letter to his mysterious correspondent Martha Clifford in as coy terms as she had used to him, enclosing a small money order. Then Ben Dollard sings a ballad "The Croppy Boy," which begins, if we look up the song:

  It was early, early in the spring,

  The birds did whistle and sweetly sing,

  Changing their notes from tree to tree,

  And the song they sang was Old Ireland free.

  (Croppies were the Irish rebels of 1798 who cropped their hair in a token of sympathy with the French Revolution.)

  Nabokov's transcription of the lyrics for the "The Croppy Boy" in his teaching copy of Ulysses

  Bloom leaves the Ormond Hotel before the singing has ended, heading for the nearest post office and then to a pub where he has agreed to meet Martin Cunningham and Jack Power. His stomach starts to rumble. "Gassy thing that cider: binding too." He notices on the quay a prostitute he knows, with a black straw sailor hat, and he avoids her. (That night she will briefly look in at the cabman's shelter.) Once again his stomach rumbles. "Must be the cider or perhaps the burgund" which he had had at lunch. These rumbles are synchronized with the conversation in the bar that he has left until the patriotic conversation gets all mixed up with Bloom's stomach. As Bloom views a picture of the Irish patriot Robert Emmet in Lionel Marks's window, the men in the bar begin to talk of him and to give a toast to Emmet just as the blind youth arrives. They quote "True men like you men," from a poem "The Memory of the Dead" (1843) by John Kells Ingram. The italicized phrases that accompany Bloom's internal difficulties represent Emmet's last words, which Bloom sees under the picture: "Seabloom, Greaseabloom viewed last words. Softly. When my country takes her place among.

  Prrprr.

  Must be the bur.

  Fff.Oo. Rrpr.

  Nations of the earth. No-one behind. She's passed Then and not till then. Tram. Kran, kran, kran. Good oppor. Coming Krandlkrankran [the trolley noise]. I'm sure it's the burgund. Yes. One, two. Let my epitaph be. Karaaaaaaa. Written. I have.

  Pprrpffrrppfff

  Done."

  Joyce with all his genius has a perverse leaning towards the disgusting, and it is diabolically like him to end a chapter full of music, patriotic pathos, and broken heart song with a released borborygmos combining Emmet's last word with Bloom's murmur of satisfaction, "Done."[*]

  PART TWO, CHAPTER 9

  The anonymous narrator, a collector of debts, after loafing with old Troy of the Dublin Metropolitan Police Force, meets another friend, Joe Hynes, the reporter who took down the names of the mourners at Dignam's funeral, and they both turn into Barney Kiernan's pub. There we find the villain of the chapter, a "citizen" as he is termed. The citizen is therewith a fierce mangy dog Garryowen, belonging to his father-in-law old Giltrap. Giltrap is the maternal grandfather of Gerty MacDowell, the leading young lady of the next chapter, where she thinks about her grandpapa's lovely dog. It would thus seem that the citizen is Gerty MacDowell's father. In the preceding chapter Gerty had had her view of the viceregal procession obstructed by a passing tram as she was carrying the mail from his office. (He was in the cork and linoleum business.) In the next chapter we discover that her father, a drunkard, could not attend Dignam's funeral because of his gout.

  This chapter is timed at about five o'clock and we must sup
pose that citizen MacDowell's gout does not prevent him from limping into his favorite pub where the collector of debts and the reporter join him at the bar and are served three pints of ale by Terry O'Ryan, the bartender. Then comes another customer, Alf Bergan, who discovers Bob Doran snoring in a corner. They talk about dead Dignam, and Bergan shows a curio, a hangman's letter of application to Dublin's high sheriff. It is here that Bloom comes into the bar looking for Martin Cunningham. Then two other characters enter, Jack O'Molloy, whom we met in the newspaper office and in Lambert's warehouse, and Ned Lambert himself. They are joined by John Wyse Nolan and Lenehan the racing editor, with a long face, having lost on Sceptre. Bloom goes to the courthouse just around the corner to see if Cunningham is perhaps there, and before Bloom returns Martin Cunningham turns up at the pub with Jack Power. Bloom comes back to the pub, and the three of them set out from there, in the northwest of Dublin, in a carriage for the Dignam's residence at the far southeast side, on the bay. Their visit to Dignam's widow, with talks about Dignam's insurance money, is somehow omitted from Bloom's consciousness.

  The themes of this chapter develop in the bar before Bloom leaves. They consist of the Ascot Gold Cup race and the theme of anti-Semitism. A prejudiced discussion of patriotism which Bloom vainly tries to conduct in a rational and humane way is turned by the citizen into a brawl. A strain of parody, a grotesque travesty of legendary doings, runs through the chapter and ends with the citizen hurling an empty biscuit tin at the retreating carriage.

  PART TWO, CHAPTER 10