Section 67 of 74 - Table of Contents
What rendered problematic for Bloom the realisation of these mutually
selfexcluding propositions?
The irreparability of the past: once at a performance of Albert Hengler's
circus in the Rotunda, Rutland square, Dublin, an intuitive particoloured
clown in quest of paternity had penetrated from the ring to a place in
the auditorium where Bloom, solitary, was seated and had publicly
declared to an exhilarated audience that he (Bloom) was his (the clown's)
papa. The imprevidibility of the future: once in the summer of 1898 he
(Bloom) had marked a florin (2/-) with three notches on the milled edge
and tendered it m payment of an account due to and received by J. and T.
Davy, family grocers, 1 Charlemont Mall, Grand Canal, for circulation on
the waters of civic finance, for possible, circuitous or direct, return.
Was the clown Bloom's son?
No.
Had Bloom's coin returned?
Never.
Why would a recurrent frustration the more depress him?
Because at the critical turningpoint of human existence he desired to
amend many social conditions, the product of inequality and avarice and
international animosity.
He believed then that human life was infinitely perfectible, eliminating
these conditions?
There remained the generic conditions imposed by natural, as distinct
from human law, as integral parts of the human whole: the necessity of
destruction to procure alimentary sustenance: the painful character of
the ultimate functions of separate existence, the agonies of birth and
death: the monotonous menstruation of simian and (particularly) human
females extending from the age of puberty to the menopause: inevitable
accidents at sea, in mines and factories: certain very painful maladies
and their resultant surgical operations, innate lunacy and congenital
criminality, decimating epidemics: catastrophic cataclysms which make
terror the basis of human mentality: seismic upheavals the epicentres of
which are located in densely populated regions: the fact of vital growth,
through convulsions of metamorphosis, from infancy through maturity to
decay.
Why did he desist from speculation?
Because it was a task for a superior intelligence to substitute other
more acceptable phenomena in the place of the less acceptable phenomena
to be removed.
Did Stephen participate in his dejection?
He affirmed his significance as a conscious rational animal proceeding
syllogistically from the known to the unknown and a conscious rational
reagent between a micro and a macrocosm ineluctably constructed upon the
incertitude of the void.
Was this affirmation apprehended by Bloom?
Not verbally. Substantially.
What comforted his misapprehension?
That as a competent keyless citizen he had proceeded energetically from
the unknown to the known through the incertitude of the void.
In what order of precedence, with what attendant ceremony was the exodus
from the house of bondage to the wilderness of inhabitation effected?
Lighted Candle in Stick borne by
BLOOM
Diaconal Hat on Ashplant borne by
STEPHEN:
With what intonation secreto of what commemorative psalm?
The 113th, MODUS PEREGRINUS: IN EXITU ISRAEL DE EGYPTO: DOMUS JACOB DE
POPULO BARBARO.
What did each do at the door of egress?
Bloom set the candlestick on the floor. Stephen put the hat on his head.
For what creature was the door of egress a door of ingress?
For a cat.
What spectacle confronted them when they, first the host, then the guest,
emerged silently, doubly dark, from obscurity by a passage from the rere
of the house into the penumbra of the garden?
The heaventree of stars hung with humid nightblue fruit.
With what meditations did Bloom accompany his demonstration to his
companion of various constellations?
Meditations of evolution increasingly vaster: of the moon invisible in
incipient lunation, approaching perigee: of the infinite lattiginous
scintillating uncondensed milky way, discernible by daylight by an
observer placed at the lower end of a cylindrical vertical shaft 5000 ft
deep sunk from the surface towards the centre of the earth: of Sirius
(alpha in Canis Maior) 10 lightyears (57,000,000,000,000 miles) distant
and in volume 900 times the dimension of our planet: of Arcturus: of the
precession of equinoxes: of Orion with belt and sextuple sun theta and
nebula in which 100 of our solar systems could be contained: of moribund
and of nascent new stars such as Nova in 1901: of our system plunging
towards the constellation of Hercules: of the parallax or parallactic
drift of socalled fixed stars, in reality evermoving wanderers from
immeasurably remote eons to infinitely remote futures in comparison with
which the years, threescore and ten, of allotted human life formed a
parenthesis of infinitesimal brevity.
Were there obverse meditations of involution increasingly less vast?
Of the eons of geological periods recorded in the stratifications of the
earth: of the myriad minute entomological organic existences concealed in
cavities of the earth, beneath removable stones, in hives and mounds, of
microbes, germs, bacteria, bacilli, spermatozoa: of the incalculable
trillions of billions of millions of imperceptible molecules contained by
cohesion of molecular affinity in a single pinhead: of the universe of
human serum constellated with red and white bodies, themselves universes
of void space constellated with other bodies, each, in continuity, its
universe of divisible component bodies of which each was again divisible
in divisions of redivisible component bodies, dividends and divisors ever
diminishing without actual division till, if the progress were carried
far enough, nought nowhere was never reached.
Why did he not elaborate these calculations to a more precise result?
Because some years previously in 1886 when occupied with the problem of
the quadrature of the circle he had learned of .the existence of a number
computed to a relative degree of accuracy to be of such magnitude and of
so many places, e.g., the 9th power of the 9th power of 9, that, the
result having been obtained, 33 closely printed volumes of 1000 pages
each of innumerable quires and reams of India paper would have to be
requisitioned in order to contain the complete tale of its printed
integers of units, tens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds
of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions,
the nucleus of the nebula of every digit of every series containing
succinctly the potentiality of being raised to the utmost kinetic
elaboration of any power of any of its powers.
Did he find the problems of the inhabitability of the planets and their
satellites by a race, given in species, and of the possible social and
moral redemption of said race by a redeemer, easier of solution?
Of a different order of difficulty. Conscious that the human organism,
normally capable of sustaining an atmospheric pressure of 19 tons, when
elevated to a considerable altitude in the terrestrial atmosphere
suffered with arithmetical progression of intensity, according as the
line of demarcation between troposphere and stratosphere was approximated
from nasal hemorrhage, impeded respiration and vertigo, when proposing
this problem for solution, he had conjectured as a working hypothesis
which could not be proved impossible that a more adaptable and
differently anatomically constructed race of beings might subsist
otherwise under Martian, Mercurial, Veneral, Jovian, Saturnian, Neptunian
or Uranian sufficient and equivalent conditions, though an apogean
humanity of beings created in varying forms with finite differences
resulting similar to the whole and to one another would probably there as
here remain inalterably and inalienably attached to vanities, to vanities
of vanities and to all that is vanity.
And the problem of possible redemption?
The minor was proved by the major.
Which various features of the constellations were in turn considered?
The various colours significant of various degrees of vitality (white,
yellow, crimson, vermilion, cinnabar): their degrees of brilliancy: their
magnitudes revealed up to and including the 7th: their positions: the
waggoner's star: Walsingham way: the chariot of David: the annular
cinctures of Saturn: the condensation of spiral nebulae into suns: the
interdependent gyrations of double suns: the independent synchronous
discoveries of Galileo, Simon Marius, Piazzi, Le Verrier, Herschel,
Galle: the systematisations attempted by Bode and Kepler of cubes of
distances and squares of times of revolution: the almost infinite
compressibility of hirsute comets and their vast elliptical egressive and
reentrant orbits from perihelion to aphelion: the sidereal origin of
meteoric stones: the Libyan floods on Mars about the period of the birth
of the younger astroscopist: the annual recurrence of meteoric showers
about the period of the feast of S. Lawrence (martyr, lo August): the
monthly recurrence known as the new moon with the old moon in her arms:
the posited influence of celestial on human bodies: the appearance of a
star (1st magnitude) of exceeding brilliancy dominating by night and day
(a new luminous sun generated by the collision and amalgamation in
incandescence of two nonluminous exsuns) about the period of the birth of
William Shakespeare over delta in the recumbent neversetting
constellation of Cassiopeia and of a star (2nd magnitude) of similar
origin but of lesser brilliancy which had appeared in and disappeared
from the constellation of the Corona Septentrionalis about the period of
the birth of Leopold Bloom and of other stars of (presumably) similar
origin which had (effectively or presumably) appeared in and disappeared
from the constellation of Andromeda about the period of the birth of
Stephen Dedalus, and in and from the constellation of Auriga some years
after the birth and death of Rudolph Bloom, junior, and in and from other
constellations some years before or after the birth or death of other
persons: the attendant phenomena of eclipses, solar and lunar, from
immersion to emersion, abatement of wind, transit of shadow, taciturnity
of winged creatures, emergence of nocturnal or crepuscular animals,
persistence of infernal light, obscurity of terrestrial waters, pallor of
human beings.
His (Bloom's) logical conclusion, having weighed the matter and allowing
for possible error?
That it was not a heaventree, not a heavengrot, not a heavenbeast, not a
heavenman. That it was a Utopia, there being no known method from the
known to the unknown: an infinity renderable equally finite by the
suppositious apposition of one or more bodies equally of the same and of
different magnitudes: a mobility of illusory forms immobilised in space,
remobilised in air: a past which possibly had ceased to exist as a
present before its probable spectators had entered actual present
existence.
Was he more convinced of the esthetic value of the spectacle?
Indubitably in consequence of the reiterated examples of poets in the
delirium of the frenzy of attachment or in the abasement of rejection
invoking ardent sympathetic constellations or the frigidity of the
satellite of their planet.
Did he then accept as an article of belief the theory of astrological
influences upon sublunary disasters?
It seemed to him as possible of proof as of confutation and the
nomenclature employed in its selenographical charts as attributable to
verifiable intuition as to fallacious analogy: the lake of dreams, the
sea of rains, the gulf of dews, the ocean of fecundity.
What special affinities appeared to him to exist between the moon and
woman?
Her antiquity in preceding and surviving successive tellurian
generations: her nocturnal predominance: her satellitic dependence: her
luminary reflection: her constancy under all her phases, rising and
setting by her appointed times, waxing and waning: the forced
invariability of her aspect: her indeterminate response to inaffirmative
interrogation: her potency over effluent and refluent waters: her power
to enamour, to mortify, to invest with beauty, to render insane, to
incite to and aid delinquency: the tranquil inscrutability of her visage:
the terribility of her isolated dominant implacable resplendent
propinquity: her omens of tempest and of calm: the stimulation of her
light, her motion and her presence: the admonition of her craters, her
arid seas, her silence: her splendour, when visible: her attraction, when
invisible.
What visible luminous sign attracted Bloom's, who attracted Stephen's,
gaze?
In the second storey (rere) of his (Bloom's) house the light of a
paraffin oil lamp with oblique shade projected on a screen of roller
blind supplied by Frank O'Hara, window blind, curtain pole and revolving
shutter manufacturer, 16 Aungier street.
How did he elucidate the mystery of an invisible attractive person, his
wife Marion (Molly) Bloom, denoted by a visible splendid sign, a lamp?
With indirect and direct verbal allusions or affirmations: with subdued
affection and admiration: with description: with impediment: with
suggestion.
Both then were silent?
Silent, each contemplating the other in both mirrors of the reciprocal
flesh of theirhisnothis fellowfaces.
Were they indefinitely inactive?
At Stephen's suggestion, at Bloom's instigation both, first Stephen, then
Bloom, in penumbra urinated, their sides contiguous, their organs of
micturition reciprocally rendered invisible by manual circumposition,
their gazes, first Bloom's, then Stephen's, elevated to the projected
luminous and semiluminous shadow.
Similarly?
The trajectories of their, first sequent, then simultaneous, urinations
were dissimilar: Bloom's longer, less irruent, in the incomplete form of
the bifurcated penultimate alphabetical letter, who in his ultimate year
at High School (1880) had been capable of attaining the point of greatest
altitude against the whole concurrent strength of the institution, 210
scholars: Stephen's higher, more sibilant, who in the ultimate hours of
the previous day had augmented by diuretic consumption an insistent
vesical pressure.
What different problems presented themselves to each concerning the
invisible audible collateral organ of the other?
To Bloom: the problems of irritability, tumescence, rigidity, reactivity,
dimension, sanitariness, pilosity.
To Stephen: the problem of the sacerdotal integrity of Jesus circumcised
(I January, holiday of obligation to hear mass and abstain from
unnecessary servile work) and the problem as to whether the divine
prepuce, the carnal bridal ring of the holy Roman catholic apostolic
church, conserved in Calcata, were deserving of simple hyperduly or of
the fourth degree of latria accorded to the abscission of such divine
excrescences as hair and toenails.
What celestial sign was by both simultaneously observed?
A star precipitated with great apparent velocity across the firmament
from Vega in the Lyre above the zenith beyond the stargroup of the Tress
of Berenice towards the zodiacal sign of Leo.
How did the centripetal remainer afford egress to the centrifugal
departer?
By inserting the barrel of an arruginated male key in the hole of an
unstable female lock, obtaining a purchase on the bow of the key and
turning its wards from right to left, withdrawing a bolt from its staple,
pulling inward spasmodically an obsolescent unhinged door and revealing
an aperture for free egress and free ingress.
How did they take leave, one of the other, in separation?
Standing perpendicular at the same door and on different sides of its
base, the lines of their valedictory arms, meeting at any point and
forming any angle less than the sum of two right angles.
What sound accompanied the union of their tangent, the disunion of their
(respectively) centrifugal and centripetal hands?
The sound of the peal of the hour of the night by the chime of the bells
in the church of Saint George.
What echoes of that sound were by both and each heard?
By Stephen:
LILIATA RUTILANTIUM. TURMA CIRCUMDET.
IUBILANTIUM TE VIRGINUM. CHORUS EXCIPIAT.
By Bloom:
HEIGHO, HEIGHO,
HEIGHO, HEIGHO.
Where were the several members of the company which with Bloom that day
at the bidding of that peal had travelled from Sandymount in the south to
Glasnevin in the north?
Martin Cunningham (in bed), Jack Power (in bed), Simon Dedalus (in bed),
Ned Lambert (in bed), Tom Kernan (in bed), Joe Hynes (in bed), John Henry
Menton (in bed), Bernard Corrigan (in bed), Patsy Dignam (in bed), Paddy
Dignam (in the grave).
Alone, what did Bloom hear?
The double reverberation of retreating feet on the heavenborn earth, the
double vibration of a jew's harp in the resonant lane.
Alone, what did Bloom feel?
The cold of interstellar space, thousands of degrees below freezing point
or the absolute zero of Fahrenheit, Centigrade or Reaumur: the incipient
intimations of proximate dawn.
Of what did bellchime and handtouch and footstep and lonechill remind
him?
Of companions now in various manners in different places defunct: Percy
Apjohn (killed in action, Modder River), Philip Gilligan (phthisis,
Jervis Street hospital), Matthew F. Kane (accidental drowning, Dublin
Bay), Philip Moisel (pyemia, Heytesbury street), Michael Hart (phthisis,
Mater Misericordiae hospital), Patrick Dignam (apoplexy, Sandymount).
What prospect of what phenomena inclined him to remain?
The disparition of three final stars, the diffusion of daybreak, the
apparition of a new solar disk.
Had he ever been a spectator of those phenomena?
Once, in 1887, after a protracted performance of charades in the house of
Luke Doyle, Kimmage, he had awaited with patience the apparition of the
diurnal phenomenon, seated on a wall, his gaze turned in the direction of
Mizrach, the east.
He remembered the initial paraphenomena?
More active air, a matutinal distant cock, ecclesiastical clocks at
various points, avine music, the isolated tread of an early wayfarer, the
visible diffusion of the light of an invisible luminous body, the first
golden limb of the resurgent sun perceptible low on the horizon.
Did he remain?
With deep inspiration he returned, retraversing the garden, reentering
the passage, reclosing the door. With brief suspiration he reassumed the
candle, reascended the stairs, reapproached the door of the front room,
hallfloor, and reentered.
What suddenly arrested his ingress?
The right temporal lobe of the hollow sphere of his cranium came into
contact with a solid timber angle where, an infinitesimal but sensible
fraction of a second later, a painful sensation was located in
consequence of antecedent sensations transmitted and registered.
Describe the alterations effected in the disposition of the articles of
furniture.
A sofa upholstered in prune plush had been translocated from opposite the
door to the ingleside near the compactly furled Union Jack (an alteration
which he had frequently intended to execute): the blue and white checker
inlaid majolicatopped table had been placed opposite the door in the
place vacated by the prune plush sofa: the walnut sideboard (a projecting
angle of which had momentarily arrested his ingress) had been moved from
its position beside the door to a more advantageous but more perilous
position in front of the door: two chairs had been moved from right and
left of the ingleside to the position originally occupied by the blue and
white checker inlaid majolicatopped table.
Describe them.
One: a squat stuffed easychair, with stout arms extended and back slanted
to the rere, which, repelled in recoil, had then upturned an irregular
fringe of a rectangular rug and now displayed on its amply upholstered
seat a centralised diffusing and diminishing discolouration. The other: a
slender splayfoot chair of glossy cane curves, placed directly opposite
the former, its frame from top to seat and from seat to base being
varnished dark brown, its seat being a bright circle of white plaited
rush.
What significances attached to these two chairs?
Significances of similitude, of posture, of symbolism, of circumstantial
evidence, of testimonial supermanence.
What occupied the position originally occupied by the sideboard?
A vertical piano (Cadby) with exposed keyboard, its closed coffin
supporting a pair of long yellow ladies' gloves and an emerald ashtray
containing four consumed matches, a partly consumed cigarette and two
discoloured ends of cigarettes, its musicrest supporting the music in the
key of G natural for voice and piano of LOVE'S OLD SWEET SONG (words by
G. Clifton Bingham, composed by J. L. Molloy, sung by Madam Antoinette
Sterling) open at the last page with the final indications AD LIBITUM,
FORTE, pedal, ANIMATO, sustained pedal, RITIRANDO, close.
With what sensations did Bloom contemplate in rotation these objects?
With strain, elevating a candlestick: with pain, feeling on his right
temple a contused tumescence: with attention, focussing his gaze on a
large dull passive and a slender bright active: with solicitation,
bending and downturning the upturned rugfringe: with amusement,
remembering Dr Malachi Mulligan's scheme of colour containing the
gradation of green: with pleasure, repeating the words and antecedent act
and perceiving through various channels of internal sensibility the
consequent and concomitant tepid pleasant diffusion of gradual
discolouration.
His next proceeding?
From an open box on the majolicatopped table he extracted a black
diminutive cone, one inch in height, placed it on its circular base on a
small tin plate, placed his candlestick on the right corner of the
mantelpiece, produced from his waistcoat a folded page of prospectus
(illustrated) entitled Agendath Netaim, unfolded the same, examined it
superficially, rolled it into a thin cylinder, ignited it in the
candleflame, applied it when ignited to the apex of the cone till the
latter reached the stage of rutilance, placed the cylinder in the basin
of the candlestick disposing its unconsumed part in such a manner as to
facilitate total combustion.
What followed this operation?
The truncated conical crater summit of the diminutive volcano emitted a
vertical and serpentine fume redolent of aromatic oriental incense.
What homothetic objects, other than the candlestick, stood on the
mantelpiece?
A timepiece of striated Connemara marble, stopped at the hour of 4.46
a.m. on the 21 March 1896, matrimonial gift of Matthew Dillon: a dwarf
tree of glacial arborescence under a transparent bellshade, matrimonial
gift of Luke and Caroline Doyle: an embalmed owl, matrimonial gift of
Alderman John Hooper.
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