THE WINE DARK SEA

TELEMACHUS  6.00am to 7.30 am
A note which explains much from Joyce’s, “A Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Man.”

“The causes of his embarrassment were many; remote and near. He was angry with himself for being young, and the prey of reckless, foolish impulses; angry with the change of fortune which was shaping the world around him into a world of squalor and insincerity.  Yet his anger lent nothing to the vision; he chronicled with patience what he saw, detaching himself from it and tasted its mortifying flavour in secret.”

This anger is felt by millions as they confront the miseries of poverty, the degradation of venal servitude. Anger settles into resentment, deep seated and colouring all action; and resentment eats into and corrodes the very soul of our humanity.  The real horror of this conformity is, that the condition is accepted as the norm by the multitude:

Such corrosion and resentment is clearly evident in Australian society today. The tragedy of his life is that he never at any time outgrew the follies and resentments of his youth.

The fault is not so much the economics of society, as in the casual, careless, indifference, or ignorance in parenthood; immature parents raising immature children.  In Joyce's unhappy youth, the descent into poverty of the family.  In these first pages Stephen is angry – his ego has been offended – and he walks out, even as he later this day will walk out of his appointment as teacher at Mr Deasly's school.
 

Buck (Malachi) Mulligan would be amused. Cracking jokes at, with, by, in, the shade of the new Oliver St John Gogarty Hotel very much part with Joyce himself, of modern Dublin, courtesy not of fame, but of the Irish Tourist Board.

When Joyce threatened to put Gogarty into his book, Gogarty replied; “I don’t care what you say so long as it’s literature.” So Joyce created Buck Mulligan.  The Irish Tourist Board has commercialised the pub and thus immortalised both; this however in tourist terms!

You should be here today James, with Oliver; together walking the bright streets the thronging markets, the so different modern pubs, the city as she never was through the thousand years of her history; please God her troubles; over the soul you sought, at an end.

Your name and your work come home; your likeness cast in ageless bronze.
 

It was others with him at University who went on to awaken Ireland.

Several of his University peers were destined for active part in that awakening; the movement was already apparent in 1904, it would gather pace through the century, achieve home rule and partition, a deep awakening spirit; a stream of new thought, a poetry and literature to liberate Ireland from the mentality of it’s old serfdom.

Even the Church would find new liberties within the new generation of liberal thought; not the least a new liberal place for women in the community.

It is interesting to readers today that his Buck Mulligan was one of the leaders in this awakening; statesman, surgeon, reformer, poet and writer.

One of Ireland’s great sons.
 

Take but a cautious look
at James A. Joyce
His Ulysses
A heavy complex book 
Do not expect
Too much of it
Nor hurriedly reject

The Irish wit
Redeems the search
For the Homeric look

Thus from the beginning the flaw in the bell is apparent.

He is a loner, the 'Outsider' in his own family, in Dublin, and in the literary world.

He will ever be an outsider even in the heady years of the success for Ulysses; he sits aloof in café celebrations; the injuries of his youth still eating at his spirit.

Colin Wilson could well have written the definitive biography.  There are interesting similarities shared.  Wilson also a victim of poverty, slept in a public park, used the British Museum Library as his workplace.

Whilst Joyce worried over the mystery of transubstantiation, Wilson sublimated the experience, diverted his concerns into creative energy, produced some seventy good biographies and a score of novels, of which The Outsiders sold millions.

Wilson also had the dream of being, “The greatest writer in Europe.”  Opinion however seems to agree that Shaw might be a better contestant for that honour.

Human behaviour, the good and the bad, the beautiful and the ugly and a ceaseless examination of human consciousness occupied Wilson’s impressive mentality.

Joyce’s Ulysses is truly suburban to Wilson’s work.
 

My Odyssesean friend has been talking of our convict heritage.

An ancient wisdom says, ‘the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children into the fourth generation.’

Well, we’re into the sixth or seventh generation now and there are still the light fingered with us.

In the course of a normal, non critical conversation it was revealed that more lap tops are stolen from government departments in Canberra than are sold in retail trade there.

This hopefully only a myth, but there’s little doubt about the other legacy, our inheritance from the convict days.  From the children’s courts through the heirachy, right up into the federal parliament itself; travel rorts the abuse of privilege in a dozen forms; drunk in work hours on cheap liquor. Even down to official appointments with no responsibility; and that golden hand shake!

What?  A bar in parliament???  Why?

One wonders how much loss to the community if there were no more million dollar reviews; or commissions, no more travelling expenses, nor phone cards, nor gold cards.

The million dollar salaries and lovely director’s fees in the big companies are another matter.  The shareholders too supine to object, so it serves them right.

Some local governments also have problems. Which is a pity; some American States also have ‘a right of recall; you have failed your duty, you are dismissed.  We should introduce it in our politics.

Back in the Depression, and long before then, thousands of young men, packed a skimpy swag, kissed mum, and off out back, looking for work.

Chop up a couple of cord of timber for the house fire; muck out stables; settle in for a week or so for a harvest; build or mend fences; anything for a few bob and a meal, some tucker in the bag when they moved on.

All of them hard honest workers.

They were the fellows, who, within a few years, left the farms and stations, and the small towns, the cities, in their hundreds, off to the wars, Crete and Kakoda, as their fathers left for Gallipoli and France. Tragically so many never came back.

Today it is difficult to get young fellows to leave the easy life of the city.

With care and some good work in the advertising field; shires, counties and farms could well set up a camp or two, and recruit men for work out back; which is not so far out back today, as it was then.

There’s tree planting; fencing; the construction of thousands of culverts, overflows, crossings; roadside plantings; and other work. Such would be opportunity in Joyces day; but thousands today would object to such a policy.

The boys would be fitter and happier.

Offer a wage, good planning in the shire office; the support of experienced men and modern machinery in the field, a continuity of good work could be offered; all for the good of the country, the city, the men; and these days, some girls also.
 

Odysseus is grumbling about credit cards today – credit cards, and bank loans and bank charges.

He has noticed that when we evade bank charges when using credit cards, the banks still cash in on the transaction, I agree with him; speak a few words about the times, well remembered, when there were no such charges; agree with him that it is little better than common theft, since money is the currency and the banks control the money, the monopoly a money spinner. An establishment fee, a closing fee, a fee for every transaction, as if 5% was not enough.

In that not too distant day the banks accepted the role of service; today, like Shylock they strain most greedily for every ounce of blood.  The million or so won from such feral tactics means little to the hundreds of millions annual rip off, but as ever, means a lot to those affected in the long queues at the coal face.

‘A blight on all their houses!’  Weak government policies allow such folly to persist.  As with all profit, it is provided by the public. Without public input – no banks – no big corporations, no millionaires. Governments are only slowly beginning to recognise this special input, and beginning to demand ‘social responsibility.’ That wealth is the creation of society, is undeniable.  That it should be used for that society is becoming clear.  To argue that some of it is in fact used for and by society through credit cards and loans is also a fact.

What is needed is a clearer understanding that the exploitation of that wealth for profit is in deep need of restructuring.  The surplus wealth diverted to government for social and infrastructure uses, through the Tax system, is neither sufficient nor equitable.
 

There is a wonderful story in the 'obscenity' case against Margaret Anderson, her magazine, 'The Little Review' one of the journals which published parts of Ulysses as work in progress.  The prosecutor wished to read to the court the offending paragraphs. One of the judges objected saying, “It is not appropriate, there is a young lady present in the courtroom.” The prosecutor says, “But she is the publisher!” The judge replies; “That may be so, but she probably does not understand what she is publishing.”
 

Francois Rabelais in one of his dedications said, amongst many other wise and memorable things, “They tell me that many dispirited sick and otherwise moping and sad persons have escaped from their troubles for a cheerful hour or so, regained their spirits and taken fresh consolation by reading my Pantagruelian fictions.”

Now honestly, could you recommend either Ulysses or the Wake to; "A moping or sad dispirited sick person.” May the Gods forgive if ever you have done so.

Surely good literature, even just a good book, has for it’s purposes mainly to please and to entertain; but a schoolbook, be it physics or Greek or Philosophy, Theology or badminton, or for present purposes, Ulysses, does not offer such services.

This book demands concentration, always why and what, though rarely offensive. The dialogue is good but sparse, never for relaxation, pleasure ever qualified by query. 

Rabelais would have raised his eyebrows.
 

NESTOR  9.00am to 10.00am 
Stephen must walk some distance to Mr Deasy’s school.

Nestor was the mighty charioteer of the Iliad, now older and probably wiser, a king of men in his times. 

Here in the Odyssey he is Mr Deasy, a mild man, a schoolmaster and employs Stephen as a teacher.

Like Nestor he has some advice for Stephen, but free advice is rarely valued.

The episode is more or less written in straight Victorian, early Georgian prose. 

The hero of The Portrait updated, but the adolescent fears not much matured, developed rather into a deeper insecurity.

So the wage for this weeks work will be wasted. Wine and wild women. 

Any for mum? The girls? The baby brother?

Not today, he is well beyond this. They will only eat it.

So he drinks it! What a life.
 

Telemachus went to Nestor for advice. 

I have mentioned elsewhere Mailer’s rather fatalistic solution to our ambient desperation. He said death or booze. 

What about a good companion? A happy marriage? A brood of children reared to a happy maturity? What about a career? A vision for the future? The determination to survive?

Most, even the poor, keep despair at bay or perhaps let him in only occasionally. We don’t need booze and why haste to meet death? We are going to meet him sooner or later and why not enjoy the wait? 

Booze and drugs lead to a sleazy death, so be confident and enjoy the bounty. 

There are many better ways to counter the desperation. Let the divine discontent be an open door to realise your own abilities and be your beautiful self.
 

In a wider context, writers could, with benefit to the art, whether it be literature the stage, theatre or visual media of every expression; strongly contest the proposed extension of copyright.

This is a move strongly pushed by very powerful interests.  The world consumption of the marvellous and cheaply produced, carefully edited paper back, read by millions who would rarely look at a hardback, is very lucrative business, and copyright in perpetuity is being driven by commercial energies.

The founding principle of copyright as delivered in the test case before the court way back in John Milton’s day was; “That every cow is entitled to its calf.” And copyright was thus granted to the Author, and exercised through his publisher.

Here in Australia a foolish government has sold the issue of the IBSM number, which conveys protection on an International basis, into private hands; writers must now pay for an ISBN.  Formerly it was issued by our government to protect our writers.  Without an ISBN, you may still self publish – a rapidly growing art.  But the © which remains your only protection, clearly has little international standing indeed.

There must be soon an appeal to the courts to test the validity of such.  The growing use of the internet and web site, will impose other questions and problems on intellectual property.

Perhaps in the Global Village, copyright will be considered archaic, with no place in our communal life, replaced in modern society by the 'cow', the author, receiving his 'calf' the earnings from his work, and that’s that.  Its all that Shakespear received.
 

Watched a documentary recently; Michael Palin up amid the peaks of the Himalayas; beautiful country, majestic; and young Tibetan men on motor cycles driving herds of yak.  And more significantly, Tibetan children learning three languages; Chinese, Tibetan and English!

This in the most remote of all landscapes in this beautiful world.

So there is a real possibility that a form of English will be universally spoken, written in, and be the cultural speech of the world.

Modified somewhat indeed; probably sharper, for modern English has a deep and broad base in Early and Medieval English; this currently suffering from a waterfall of new industrial and scientific derivatives, ably assisted by the advertising agencies.

The great international companies will ensure the rapid absorption of universals; Nescafe; Nestles; Glaxo; Coke; McDonalds; Hungry Jacks; T.V.; Radio; Aeroplanes, Motor Car; Truck; and a thousand others, all in universal use; all clearly understood.  The local patois will be interesting.

It will be the task of our writers and poets to ensure that somewhat of beauty is preserved.

Already, political double speak; modernist theory; net talk; TV Americanisms; the advertising balony; the bureaucratic waffling – all these follies and more are weakening and flavouring the English we speak.

In Australia we are cursed with the weak and slovenly, "She'll be right mate." folly.  Probably the only country on earth where the customer, money to spend in his pocket, will be greeted at the counter with, “You all right?” or better still, not greeted at all, and will have to ask for service, to be told, “Yair, we got it, over there mate.”  We should never, not ever, mildly accept language which attempts to manipulate us, so its over to writers, and publishers to preserve the clarity, precision and the beauty of our beautiful English language.

That such can very easily be lost, has been made clear with three generations of the insane 'black' poetry of the modern 'poets'.

Blessed be God, good poetry still written, though almost impossibly to make the printed book.

So the future looms before us austerely beautiful, despite the follies, the great wars; seen even in the poets eye as, tinged with beauty; in the eyes of our children, a world of challenge, of opportunity and of beauty; there should be long days of creativity for the creative; days perhaps of ennui for the indifferent, but for most of the world, days of achievement filled with the pleasure and satisfaction of a full life, worth living.

They really should keep a weather eye open. Clear signs of change on the horizon. Hard to see the horizon in the cities. So much civic clatter.

But go out back – places where there is a 360? horizon – flat, nothing higher than saltbush, and spinifix perhaps the shadow of an anthill in the far distance.

But in the cities. Yet there’s plenty to see; plenty of sign! There are enough women in Parliament; The Federal one; enough to make a party. Get together ladies.  Forget Labour, forget Liberal. No real reason why that democratically elected dictator should have it all his own way. Bring your private bills before the house. Strike a blow for good government.  Insist on a place in cabinet. The blokes have had it their way for years – you now have the numbers – in the preselection committees – to hell with the power brokers – the male lobby, the chauvinist party lacks keeping the safe seats warm.

No longer necessary – providing you work together – that you sit restrained, voiceless, on a back bench.

But you must work together, and above all be firm.

You are an elected member, with the same mandate as granted the Prime Minister.  Accept the role – do your duty.
 

"You should not do this." she said, "Once, yes; but regularly, you are too good."  The Greek has brought yet another string of onions.

“All right then. You may give me a picture.  One of your paintings.  Like this one.”

She was pleased, flattered.  He flirted with her, a frank admiring smile.  “I like your work, somewhat as you like mine.  I enjoy your company, always something to talk about; I enjoy your wine; it is better than my own.” Again with that ravishing smile.

He had the picture, we the onions.

I said to my daughter, “You don’t often sell a picture for the price of some onions.”

She flushed slightly, “You know as well as I do, it’s not the onions.  He’s a good friend.  I gave it to him.”

So the friendly teasing, the compliments, a few words about her paintings are part of the story.  He is careful too, he said, "My wife Georgina, she likes your picture."

"You’re a married man?"

He laughed, "Yes, more than that, I am a man, and Monet knows that.  Monet is not with her husband. Is he dead.”

“No, they separated.  He was never at home.  Four daughters.  She bought them up herself.”

“He was home then, sometimes.” The old joke.

I said, “Fatherhood is a very small accomplishment.  It’s the nurturing the children that counts.  Parenting is the real work.”

“Yes.” he said, “I know.  I have seven children.”

Later we meet him in town.  Best clothes, with wife and two daughters.  Introduced and delighted to meet them.

The lady said somewhat the same.

“Heard so much about you, and your daughter, and we have some of her paintings and I will buy your book if you publish it.  Fancy an Australian writing about Odysseus.”

When he next called.  I complimented him, “Your wife is beautiful. So young. You did tell me seven children?”

“Yes, she was sixteen when we married.  Sensible way, she has grown up with her children, not grown old with them.  Better for everyone.”

When I told Monet, she asked, “Did you tell him how old I was when I married.”

“No, we talked only about his family.”

“Well,” she said. “When he calls tell him I was only nineteen.”

I did this. He said, “Monet is a good woman.  I like her.  So does my wife. It is my lady plaits the onions for her.” 

He replenished his glass; we sat in silence, a while, contemplating the river, placid, beautiful.

Later we invited the family to a picnic and after-wards dinner at home.  Another lovely day.
 

Thornton Wilder with his play, 'By the skin of our teeth', was accused of plagiarizing Finnegans Wake!!

Well I’ve been through the Wake and seen the play and am firmly convinced the charge of plagiarism to have been the reviewer’s sole chance of being noticed.

Wilder wrote almost compulsively on Eternal Topics; so have others; a subject of deep interest to humanity; little evidence of plagiarism.  I suspect Joyce may have had such thoughts in mind whilst writing the Wake.

His themes were elemental; all who write on such things must cover the same ground, deal with the same verities; Shaw produced 'Superman'; 'Back to Methuselah'; 'Pygmalion'; 'Joyce, The Wake'. John Buchan’s, 'Thirty Nine Steps' also dealt with verities; so did 'War and Peace', come to think of it so does 'Ulysses'; almost everything of worth in our literature deals with such verities, eternal variations, eternal truths. So much else written that deals with only the trivial, even though that be murder and it’s accessories. 

Our book is but a glimpse of our vision of such things.

It becomes a disappointment that Joyce’s mention of serious subjects is never ever extended. Allusions, sentences, phrases, words. I guess he meant it to be this way. 
 

By definition 'God' is impossible of any rational definition.

The oldest religions saw God and the Gods in the shape and temper of men and women; how could they do otherwise? Egypt for a day saw God as the Sun, an early glimpse of a reality beyond the human image.

Then we evolved the concept of spirit; still alive and well. The Christian Trinity a realisation of Ideal qualities, but we were unable to conceive these as absolute without a human resemblance. How could 'I'  be seen otherwise than as He; and why, in its creativity, why not She.

Today the concept of the infinite immortal spirit is held in many minds, indefinable, as ever it must be. When we say, however humbly, 'Father', we limit the absolute; and some are now attempting to widen the concept by including an active feminine principle and ask us to think of Mother God. Gaia is certainly fecund, creative, feminine. 

Mary Baker Eddy, an early, eager, voice for Mother. 

So we still see the absolute through our own eyes, our limited vision. So, do we limit 'It'?

Love, Mind, Spirit, Life, in the eyes of the enlightened, though they greatly enlarge the borders of our understanding also make and limit the boundary of that understanding.

Order, Purpose, Beauty, these also define a parameter in the human mind, and it must be so for perhaps an hundred million years before the mysterious processes of evolution have so ordered the living spirit, so engrossed the human mind, that we may then comprehend that Which Is. Strangely, for a great book, all three of these great principles lacking in and through Ulysses.

All that we can know of the Infinite has been defined by the unknown visionary who discussed the problem of the unknown in the Hebrew book of Isaiah.

“My ways are above your ways, my thoughts are above your thoughts as the stars in the heaven above you.”

Ages must pass before we can know as we are known, but in those ages although we do indeed have dominion over all things, this immensity of spirit is ever confined and limited by the understanding in our own selves.

We do well for ourselves when we give ourselves time to reflect on the qualities of love, of order, of beauty, and purpose; and so grow in understanding of the flow of creative love in which all things exist.

This the Bounty. 
 

PROTEUS 11 to 12pm approx.
Not many editors of today would exclaim as did Margaret Anderson over this episode of Ulysses, “This is the most beautiful thing we will ever have.”  

One must wonder just which pages, which paragraphs she has been reading.

Little doubt that Stephen’s daydream may have captivated her.  We all dream.

The remark also reflects somewhat on what other literary gems she had been reading.

Rather surprising that amongst a host of tiddlers in that pond, there were so few big fish. Yates contributed, as did, Eliot and later Hemingway.

Jane Heap, Margaret’s business partner, said when the magazine shut shop, “For years we offered the Little Review as a trail track for racers; but you don’t get racehorses from mules.  We have given space to twenty-three new systems of Art.  All now dead, and representing nineteen countries.  With all this we have not had anything approaching a masterpiece except the Ulysses of Mr Joyce.”

This, to the many writers given such opportunity to appear in print, but with small hope of full publication; might seem a harsh comment, after all the racers are few and the champions fewer and there is plenty of scope for the starters though they have little hope of ever running in the cup.
 

The Australian Odysseus has noticed the crisis in sugar.

“No one rushed to their aid when the motor car drove the blacksmith out of business.  They quickly became repair shops or found another job.”

I agree.

The thing for these growers to do is start to think. 

He continues, “I don’t believe this nonsense about suicide.  Suicide, because things are tough!  That’s not on. These blokes are Aussies”.

I agree again.

“I think they’re very lucky to get a handout from Canberra.”

I agree yet again.

He becomes silent.  He enjoys an argument and cannot understand my easy way.

To cheer him up I say: “If I were their chairman, I’d be off to the Central Queensland University, at Rocky; I’d have money in my hand.  Say to the chancellor, We sugar men have five million here.  We want a raft of new ideas for the sugar industry."

I’d say, “You ever heard of George Washington Carver?  He was a negro slave, founded his own University and developed 200 useful products from peanuts.  Now you’ve got a University, all the works, and we want a raft of useful products from sugar.”

The chancellor will probably say, “Well I don’t know.”

Then I would say, “Heres five million.  When we get the works, hows that?"

The chancellor will brighten up considerably at the sound of money crinkling.

Then I would say, “But not in ten years.  Speed is the essence of the contract.”

He laughs at that.  But I’m serious The University has the brains; the man the money.  It’s happened before this.  So the University sends a couple of boffins down to the factory.  See how things work.  They gave them an office, a computer, some overalls and coffee at 10.30, and in three months there’s a new breakfast food, a new fertiliser, a rich energy source every athlete in the world will train on; a marvellous natural energy source.

Refined Ethanol, a new fuel for the power stations, a huge new market for sugar in Russia, a soft drink that is going to put Coke out of business and a dozen other new applications for this marvellous natural energy source.

Suicide?  He was a loser.

James offered only one comment on our everlasting engagement in War.

He noted bitterly that the backbone of so many English regiments was that of the Irishmen in the uniforms.  They are a mixed blessing.  A stubborn Irishman in the Town Council can be a headache, on the other hand, many amongst the convicts, on 'ticket of leave' paroled or served their term became good leaders in the early settlement.  Vaucluse, so desirable today the home of a Freed Convict and a wealthy founding father.

James was a gentle man, not given to violence as are so many; the brutalities of war horrified him, and had no part in his book.

“England expects every Irishman to do its duties.”

Well, that’s the way it was. England lost all its colonies, expecting all to do their duty for the old girl. Today she has become a rather grandmotherly thing happy to let the children run their own lives; let the oldest of them, America, run the show, and in his own way.

The second war with Iraq, remarkable in its humane use of modern technology to take out selected targets; sparing many thousands the early death, the vast disabilities.

A new approach and a good one. But; another thought; whatever happened to the French neutron bomb? Personally, I like Bernard Shaw’s solution to war. Lock the leaders in a room, and no refreshments until they reach an amicable agreement.
 

Wodehouse, who wrote about one hundred good yarns had some sound advice for wannabe writers; one wonders just what the wannabe undergrads pick up in the study of Ulysses. 

“I believe there are two ways of writing novels, one is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life; the other is going deep down into life and not caring a damn.”

I hope his spirit will enjoy my little effort, his influence gratefully acknowledged.

Jeeves may well have offered Bertie Wooster a word or so on Ulysses.

I would not recommend it sir; it’s very difficult, and in parts incomprehensible; most of it is very dull some parts even dirty, disgusting if I might say so, Sir. You wouldn’t like it at all, Sir. 

Ah, so you’ve read it then Jeeves. 

Not really Sir. Only odd pages. Some of them very odd indeed, Sir. 

When did this happen Jeeves?

I was at the time in the service of the Hon Diggety Griddlestone. I was required to read aloud to him in the evenings Sir, as he took port before retiring. 

Good gracious! I wouldn’t suspect old Diggety of being intellectual!

Not at all Sir, the book was the subject of much discussion, animated, even acrimonious, Sir. Heartily disapproved by some very intellectual people.

Criticized you say Jeeves?

Indeed Sir, no English publisher would touch it; printed in France  Very difficult to obtain here, Sir.

Ha! Seized by the customs eh?

That it so, Sir. It had been loaned clandestinely to Mr Griddlestone for one week only, and under promise of strict security. If seen by a member of police, it might mean arrest, Sir.

Good Heavens! No one with any sense would read a book of that size in public. Must be a million words there; and the cover that blue and white, bound to attract attention what?

Indeed Sir, exactly, but less than half a million words if I might say so.

Blue and white. Colours of Greek flag eh!

Yes Sir, Ulysses though, is Latin for the Greek Odysseus.

Indeed Jeeves, you never cease to amaze me.  Greek eh.

Yes Sir, Ulysses is the Latin, the Roman name for Odysseus. A Greek hero of the Trojan wars, Sir.

Good lord Jeeves, how confusing, I suppose he knew what he was at.

It is not yet known why he chose the Roman name Sir.

Bit of a mystery eh?  Read the book, answer on the last page. A common sales ploy Jeeves. 

I should hope not Sir.

By the way Jeeves, the book must go back to Bunny Richards as soon as poss. Only a couple of weeks he said, keep it quiet, no talking about it.

Yes Sir, I know. Shall I despatch it this morning Sir?

Good lord, I haven’t read a word of it yet!

As I said Sir, I would not recommend it.

It is very difficult, very wordy, prolix if I may say so. Time consuming and with little reward. I rather think it very demanding, and in parts, offensive, commonplace even. Not at all your style Sir.

Shall I lay out the tweed Sir? Golf with Master Bingo at ten. Shall I wrap the book and return it whilst you are away, during the morning.

Perhaps the best thing, shouldn’t waste time should we Jeeves.  Thank you Jeeves.
 

Odysseus is again indignant.

This time it is cotton and the taking of the river water from a hundred other farmers to feed the cotton.

Some stupid bureaucrat issued faulted water rights.  Should never be transferable.  Revert back to the States.

It’s not right.  No decent man would rob others of water.

The others shouldn’t be allowed to.

The cotton growers say it will ruin their business to share the water. Tough.

They have ruined scores of others by taking the water, destroyed the rivers.

This is not good.  Another bureaucrat bungle. 

Only in Australia would it be allowed, only here could it happen.

He has no such fears on his own small acreage.  But knows only too well the dire results of the lost water flow.  Every gable on his little farm has its own water tank.

In the early days on the great plains of America, the men fought out the water rights with Winchester’s and the long barrelled rifle.  We are lucky; or is it just more easily robbed.
 

CALYPSO  7.30 am to 9.00 am
Introducing Bloom; at home and about.

The hints are here. 

The original meaning of the word Calypso; ‘The hidden one’.

"You have been away a long time.” she said. 

He made no reply to that but it was seven years and him a captive lover. No means of escape. 

“What are you singing?” he asks.

She is bold, “Loves old sweet song,” she says.

Bold as Brass. Bold as brassy Blazes Boylan.

“There’s a word I wanted to ask you, ‘metempsychosis’, what does it mean?”

“The transmigration of souls,” he answers. “It’s from the Greek”.

But the readers’ interest is only awakened; not to be satisfied. But it’s plain enough that Molly is Calypso, never Penelope as Homer had the wife of Odysseus. 

Perhaps the couple of sentences on metempsychosis explain all. It is for the reader to please himself if Penelope is Calypso or just Molly Bloom.  But do not be dismayed.  Books have been written, long hours devoted to the solution of such teasing work.
 

Christopher Fry, 'The Lady’s not for Burning' and many other excellent plays, made a comment on poetry, which James seemed to have in mind when he wrote poetry but alas, failed to exercise when he wrote prose, “It has the virtue of being able to say twice as much as prose in the same time, and the drawback, if you do not give it your full attention, of seeming to say half as much in twice the time.”

Ulysses is ample, even bulky evidence of the fault, the sting in the tail of Fry’s comment.

A pity, one feels all too keenly the oppressive weight of words in this episode of Ulysses and there are too many other episodes where the same dark oppression intrudes.
 

There are other essential women in Joyce’s life but all involved with Ulysses. It is certain that without the long continued aid and encouragement of these notable women, Ulysses would not have achieved either completion or publication.

They are successively his lover and wife, mother of his children Nora Barnacle.

To many who know his story, June 16, now Bloomsday, should instead honour Nora.

She took him, for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, on that day, nursed and nurtured him, kept house and home for him, carried and nurtured his children, the ever faithful wife and companion until the end. 

Ulysses and the Wake physically impossible without her support.

The next to offer companionship and support his London Editor of 'The Egoist'.

This magazine started life as a feminist imprint; it changed direction to support new writers and quickly gained reputation under the influence of Ezra Pound and later T.S. Eliot.

It’s one time editor Harriet Shaw Weaver, published serially 'The Portrait of the Artist' over 1914/15.

Weaver had trouble tolerating some episodes of Ulysses and was horrified with The Wake, which Joyce sent to her, but Pound arranged their serial publication in the American Little Review as Joyce wrote them until this magazine was also prosecuted for obscenity.

Weaver was generous to a degree rarely seen, financially supported Joyce and his family until after his death. 

During his life she supported him, met all emergencies, complained never, not even at his reckless extravagances, paid for his funeral and continued to give generous support to Nora after his death. 

Ever a loyal and provident friend.

The third woman was Sylvia Beach, an American; Sylvia had set up in Paris in the rue l’Odeon as Shakespeare and co.; her shop a rendezvous for many American and other expatriates in Paris.

There an apocryphal story that one grey cold and wet day, Joyce was present and Sylvia was called into a back room, Joyce now on his own; Hemingway rushes, in no doubt seeking a refuge from the rain, a hot coffee and a chat with Sylvia.

Instead, here is Joyce. 

Hemingway says, “You’re Joyce?”

Joyce, laconic as ever says. “Yes.”

Hemingway discombobulated for once, turns back into the rain. 

Beach liked Ulysses, thought it had great promise; this opinion no doubt supported by a conviction of genius in the handsome writer beside her.

Weaver and Pound had sounded out the English publishers but found no takers. The work was different, obscene in parts, obscure in others, difficult, too elusive and in short, No.

Joyce himself defeated.

Sylvia Beach however, made of better material.

Please could she publish? Why not? She had contacts, the money, the determination.

Found a French printer also able and willing to tackle the book in English.

Joyce saved a third time and again by a woman.

Beach said later that it was the promise of publication that fired Joyce into finishing Ulysses. Up to this time, he had been churning out episodes as he thought of them, no real plan, no determination.

Just a story line and as is evident in the reading, a remembrance of things past, rather than an inspired creation.

Beach also said, “About a third of the thing was added to the galley proofs to the horror and distress of the printer.” Last minute thoughts after seven years of writing.

Such the vaunted genius.

He certainly owed the entire book to these women. Without them there was very little under his command.

Without these women, Ulysses only an untidy heap of manuscript, ever a reproach to its author.

Another two women Margaret Anderson and Jane Heap, published episodes of the work in America and so began his rather amazing association with the American literary world.  That association continues to this day through several Joycean societies; some prestigious indeed, a wide range of web sites; and supported by Bloomsday; an annual and unique celebration of a writer and the work.

A thousand or so books already in print on the man his family and his work.
 

THE LOTUS EATERS A traverse of the city – in part only say about 9.30am to 10.00 am
No lotus eating in Dublin today.

Eating lotus meant the loss of all desire and today, 1904 Ireland is already stirring from its long earth sleep.

Odysseus drove his men, cursing and swearing back to the ships, but today for Poldy Bloom it is keeping the eye peeled for Boylan and but naturally, avoiding him.

Alcohol or the Church, is the narcotic in Dublin.  Alcohol for the men, church for the women.  Strangely it makes men aggressive, noisy, blatant. Ends up either fighting, being rolled, or in jail, the whorehouse or a blighted home. All too often in a home of frightened children and an abused mother.

The single girls don’t have to put up with it. Often they are deceived; the suitor carefully hiding his addiction from her. He is a liar as well as an alcoholic.

It is in the Circe adventure that Odysseus loses a man to alcohol.

Here we have Bloom, daydreaming about the gardens of Ceylon, and a hundred other nothings but coming to some acceptable state of mind in relation to his future. 

The ancients knew lotus as a soporific.  Today alcohol, cannabis, tobacco, cocaine and other follies are reaping the lucrative fields of human folly; all such aids to a numb mind are desperately injurious to the body.  Even looking at the self ten years on and knowing the sickness and degradation in waiting; the toxins accumulating in the hidden parts, the sickness and the disease to be endured, is no deterrent.

As the old Greeks knew 'Even the Gods can not contend against stupidity'.

Many argue fiercely that people suffering such self-inflicted wounds should be the last in the queue at our hospitals, or better still, receive no public funds, pay for their own treatment.
 

There is that about poetry which is universal; the power to speak to the spirit rather than to the mind. All people have it, as song, dance, the troubadour and the poet and we have so expressed feeling and emotion from our far beginnings. Story telling, the creative imagination is alive in our children; but lost or broken somewhere along the line as we grow.

Australia has a rich heritage of bush poetry and story; and today’s society, also rich in its literature.

The verse produced from the influences of Pound and other deconstructionists has been an influence infecting our universities and our poetry for the best part of the last dreadful century of the millennium. Perhaps it was but a natural feature of the decadence of those apocalyptic years. 

It is also possible that the vast creativity of the hard sciences over that same period of time is also a natural feature of the times.

Many of us scribble verse; some of us even manage poetry. It helps us define life and often some inexplicable experience, our view of that spirit which animates all life and possibly governs in the illimitable universe beyond. The birth, life and death of stars, the formation over trillions of years of galaxies, their ultimate regeneration; through the brief poetic vision, infinitely more satisfying than the scientists mythology of the Big Bang.

We humans will enjoy a greater understanding in our maturity, the reality of which we are but small part.

This the reality which our poets sometimes glimpse and thank God, in part share with us.

James gave us three tiny books of verse of such poetry. We may well be grateful.
 

Someone Mailer, perhaps said, “All men live lives of quiet desperation, liquor is one way out; death is the other.” 

Personally I think he was a bit mean with the options; there are other ways to live as evidenced by the observation that despite poverty and other desperations, most of our kind enjoy life; and some of us live in the dream world of a most beautiful, wonderful experience that denies nothing of the horrors of the City of Dreadful Night; nor the terrible inertia of ennui nor the threat of the Ouija board, but face all things with confidence. 

There remains for some the reality of a quiet desperation which has within itself that which transcends all such options; controlled with the faith that is a part of the empowered life.
 

Odysseus his eye ever sharp for the novel, the interesting, picked up this.

A amusing little story from the box.

A group of American Greenies or the Yankee equivalent.  Became horrified at a documentary showing a Kangaroo drive on a South Australian station; some three to four hundred roos killed.

The group lodged a complaint with some United Nations Agency, protesting our 'cruelty' towards an 'endangered species'.  Now, lazies and jellymen, we have been here only 200 hundred years, and have a long hard haul to create something like the upper middle class, white and wealthy culture enjoyed by some Americans.

And you forget that your granddaddys exterminated millions of bison, ate an estimated five billion passenger pigeons; exterminated the mountain lion; and half a dozen other native animals.  Reduced your dingo packs to zoo specimens; and still keep your native inhabitants in reservations.

Your Captain Ahab and others destroyed a thousand seal colonies round the world, from Pole to Pole, they hunted Whales to near extinction so, dear ladies be not too hasty to condemn.

In Oz, the Roo is well established with the Emu and the Dingo.  50,000 dingo tokens are taken yearly in Queensland alone.

States and runholders have built over 50,000 km’s of dingo fences, these protect arable land from roo, emu, feral horses, camels, foxes, pigs, buffalos and other feral animals.

After a drought which reduces numbers somewhat, recovery of these vast wild populations is rapid and culling is essential for survival and for the biology.   A pack of 5 or 6 dingo will destroy 200-300 sheep in one night.  They have made millions of hectares of good grazing land unsuitable for sheep.

The desert and arid lands are good breeding ground for the ferals and they move on to cultivated lands, for water and prey.

All these creatures are beautiful in captivity, in our zoos and in nature parks, but savagely beautiful in the wild.  In the wild they are still beautiful, but competing with native cunning with domestic stock; ravaging fields and flocks.  They must be controlled.  To speak of the roo or the emu or the dingo, in terms of endangered is, sadly, a fallacy – a rather feral joke.

The fences also help control the rabbit, which despite the use of myxomatosis and other poisons is still a major but delightfully pretty little predator.

With a mere 25mm of annual rain wild populations can build up into great numbers in a year or so and unfortunately none of them; all beautiful in the eyes of the gods, not one of them is the slightest impressed by UN resolutions.

Even here in Oz the Greenies can do nothing about them.  The job is left to the runholders and the Department of Agriculture experts who conduct the culls.  With a high level of expertise, and as decently and humanly possible, in the challenging terrain.

The thing to do, is come over here for a very enjoyable month or so. Stay with one of the big stations homesteads, as a guest; see the animals; experience the country.  Nothing at all like it in America.
 

The Greek friend grows onions for a living; with a University course, he may well be in Social Studies somewhere; or in Philosophy.

He raises the question of euthanasia, now in the news, with me.

I said, “Why do you bring these problems to me?”

He said, “They are everybody’s business.”

I said, “Only because everybody is poking their noses into someone else’s life.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that the will to die is a very personal thing, intimate.  Not everybody’s business.”

He accepted this, but said, again, “What do you think of euthanasia?”

I thought, 'he’s not going to let up', and said, “Euthanasia has been in good use these Sev’n thousand years.  Agamemnon used it at Troy; so did Hector.  These days its become an issue.  Our common enemy the TV, again. Simple really, we put our pets down; no nonsense, when necessary.  Why not humans?  A merciful release in these days of terminal disease.”

He shook his head, “The Church……..!”

I interrupted, “Forget the church; sacred human life has meant little in its blooded history.  St Vincent de Paul as much a man of the Renaissance as of the Church.  The Pope uses a motor car.  So do the bishops, and many a priest.”

He said, “What’s that to do with euthanasia?”

“A lot.  You and me, and the Pope and the rest, we all know we pollute the very air we breath when we use a car.  They cause tens of thousand of deaths, world wide, every year; cause terminal diseases of dreadful kind; millions of injuries from accidents.”

He said, “ I don’t see that cars have anything to do with euthanasia.”

So I spelled it out for him; “By using a car, your car, and the Bishops, we are helping someone to die; slowly but surely; cancers, bronchitis, euphemesia, injuries, if you appose euthanasia you must, on moral and human grounds stop using a car.”

He said, “Not much chance of that.”

“Of course we won't.  Not even when it may be our own death.”

He said, “Where do Agamemnon and Hector come into this?”

“Simple.  The Coup de Grace; the first step toward a compassionate society.  After the battle – a semi truce, they went over the battle field, and a quick heavy blow to the head for all the seriously wounded. Happened on land and sea – battle fields and battleships, clear the decks for action.  Wasn’t until the 18th Century we invented field hospitals.  Read Monsarrat; in WWII the convoys dare not stop to pick up survivors from a sinking ship.  A depth charge amongst them was a merciful death.  Only the men, the fighters can tell of such acts of mercy on the field.  One of the terrible acts rarely spoken of.  The Coup de Grace always a mercy.”

He said, “You know so much.”

I said, “Too much to be airy fairy about life,” and continued, “All my life, Captain Oates has been my hero.  It was Scotts Polar party, returning to Base, desperately exhausted, frostbite, fuel and food low, and the blizzard.  They could not make the Ten mile food depot, set up the tent for the night.  Oates said, 'I am going outside, I may be sometime.' and walked out to his certain death.  A little more food, a better chance for his companions.” 

He said, “I’ve not heard that story.”

I said, “One of our best.  Tragic that its not told in the schools these days.  All too little of real life.  Something for children to live for.”

But I was not yet finished with him. I said, “Then there are those, who, broken in heart and spirit at the death of wife or husband or lover, just go; no reason now to live, and just go.  Suicide?  Death from natural causes?  Or euthanasia?   Who knows. It is just letting go.  When I was a boy the women would say, she/he, 'Just turned their face to the wall'.  I think many die that way, even today.”

He nods, thoughtful; yes he knows of that.

So to end my homily; I said “We have taken a decisive compassionate step, in these times of so much terminal disease; we call it euthanasia; the difference between a considered decision, and suicide.” 

Which is all too often a very different thing.

Shakespeare had a word to say on euthanasia; Kent, speaking of King Lear, dying, “Let him pass; he hates him who would, on the rack of this tough world, stretch him out longer.”
 

HADES  Yet another traverse of the city.  This time a funeral. About 11.00am to 12.00 am.

   “In the midst of life we are in death.” 

Martin Cunningham first poked his silk-hatted head!

Once again the conversation amongst the party is a saving grace.

The subject is Paddy Dignam’s funeral. Paddy known to all.

Despite the occasion, the Irish wit is alive until Martin says; “We had better be serious, this is a funeral.”

Bloom is chief narrator of the infernal monologue, covering the sorrows of death, life, and some musings on the afterlife, but nothing new; no revelations.

The wordsmiths call this episode Hades, an improperly understood concept.

With Christians it is life and death then heaven or hell, though these latter have now been modified.  Thank the Gods for a brave Pope. 

Some have a limbo, a place for babes died too young to know anything about theology.

The use of Hades for hell is a corruption. Cerberus, the three-headed dog, is guardian to the entrance of Hades, which is properly a place of waiting, not of punishment.

In Homer’s Odyssey, the Kingdom of the Dead is that place where the spirits of the dead await judgement and admission to the Elysian Fields; a slow business, even there the bureaucrats are in charge.

Here however, Joyce discourses with Bloom the attitudes of the living rather than the fate of the dead. One of his more thoughtful episodes and on this occasion he does not risk the rather shaky metaphysics which he introduced in Book I. 
 

James had here a couple of paragraphs, about seven hundred words on Moses and both of interest.

Well, I was interested. I scribble verse occasionally, which is usually welcome amongst a small coterie of like-minded souls.

This on the subject of the Exodus of which you will recall Moses was the leader.
 
 

The inclusion of a few verse, or perhaps poems, into the text of this Odyssey nay raise eyebrows in some.  But be not dismayed.

Poetry speaks a universal language; without it we are poor indeed.  'Man cannot live by bread alone', the scripture warns; it is in our poets that we stir the imagination, awaken the spirit and set the mind afire.  Most of us have a spiritual or a highly developed mental aspect to our natures; subconsciously it shapes us; it is the source of our creativity, and of our sweetest pleasures.

It also has a darker side, and in the society we are living in, we have the responsibility to more strictly govern that darker side, ungoverned it leads to things like Guantinamo Prison Camp and Abu Ghaib: to the unhappy flow through our Court Houses.

Someone said, “There can be no new society without a new lyric poetry.”

This can be said of men also.  This Australian Odyssey offers a medium for light verse.  There is not too much, and it is ever relevant to our society.
 

We once honoured excellence.

Today we too often just glorify it, often use it for crude advertisements, demeaning the players, and in many minds creating contempt for the advertisers.

Some of the footy venues done up like cheap pubs.

Come on; they don’t push the stuff like this in the posh hotels.  Why impose it on us?

The adverts a bleak revelation of the mindset of the advertiser.  Thanks be to the Gods, many sponsors more civilised, more restrained; than others; in some rare instances cultured.

Art for arts sake.

It used to be football for football’s sake.

Well, art for arts sake is still the rule in the grass roots of society.  In the Dublin of Joyces day, Guiness was tops because of the excellence of the beer.

They were content to let other brewers have their share of the market.  Today’s market culture too often aggressive; opposed to competition, despite the Watchdog.

Well it’s a big wide world; room for all; its just that some are not content with being rich; they want, oh so desperately, to be filthy rich; quite happy to sacrifice all other to achieve their own aims.  A pity really, that there is now no Hell.
 

James has suffered another epiphany, and so there is another segment of Ulysses on its way.  Some of these epiphanies, brilliant indeed.

Gleams of the undying light flash even in the local papers.

Mankind has ever had intimations of our immortality. There are good reasons to believe that the next great evolutionary step; counterpart to that which gave us self consciousness, and dramatically enlarged the brain, gave us the erect posture, language, and the burgeoning intellect, and even more dramatically increased our awareness of our still dimly perceived spirituality; will as dramatically enhance that consciousness. 

The future will surely amend even more dramatically, our animal frame and its functions; for it is certain beyond argument that the evolution of consciousness is by no means fulfilled in our present form, just as James was not at all satisfied with the depth or the power of his message for the world, as expressed in the Portrait; faced again in Ulysses; still not satisfied; gave us Finnigan.

Even Finnigan, hopes, believes, as he sinks into Earthsleep, that he will be granted another chance, another life, in which to complete the work, and evolution has a future without visible limit in which to complete the Work.
 

On a brief but very pleasant holiday from the daily round which includes Ulysses, to a quiet house and a delightful garden.

It is early spring, September; TV is heavy with the emotion of Sept 11, a salutary counterbalance to so much of its theatrical intensity.

Outside a hint of rain, early morning misty, the lavender and the iris by the big pond glowing in the early sun.

A tall blue heron has noted that the goldfish are fed about this time; the girl with the bowl of fish flake is thoughtful, an eye on the heron. I see her pause, considering. She turns away leaving the heron undisturbed.

We watched the action, the birds takes one step, dainty, silent, her neck straightens, the certain strike, and she lifts her head manipulating the fish; we watch the neck dealing with the prey.

The girl then feeds the fish; I strolled over and watched the quick feeding frenzy.

“You let the heron have one. Ever thought of mesh over the water?”

She shook her head smiling,  “There are plenty of fish, they breed like mad, and the heron, like us has to eat. We too kill to eat. It’s a law of nature. Who are we to interfere?”

“That,” I said, “Is a great wisdom.” Later after a breakfast with a notable contribution from one or two or three other animals, and during which breakfast the girls common-sense attitude was clear, I devised the following; for the reality of the law she spoke of is never far from us here in Australia.

On this golden East Coast children can still believe that milk and cheese and sausages and steaks come from the super mart, but just a little back from the coast the reality is the daily experience.

The only relationship this note has with Ulysses and James Joyce is that we were on a brief holiday away from them, and to be honest, James was well aware of the reality of life for the little fish in the pond he called Dublin.
 

When the ewe’s young lamb was taken
 The dingo bitch and her pups
 Feasted, well satisfied,
 Their faith in life unshaken

 Is there some balance here?
 Some law that sees all things as good
 Some stern just law that all things know?
 Tell me what debt small creatures owe
 That they become life’s offering
 To the vigilant fox, or crow?

 I did not make the rules
 The dingo said
 Your question’s vain, as you should know
 The world is ever hungry; said the crow
 The fox but nodded, he must run
 For I am man, with dog and gun

The paparazzi, one of the objectionable features of our day, are at some unfortunate victim again.

Another public figure, this time a politician, careless or deliberate in his use of privilege, and so, in the eyes of the media a helpless victim.

This, in front of his home; and the assault is resented also by the neighbours.  The media intrusions are resented by all.

They pursue their victim; a group of about a dozen, pushing and shoving each other; kids at a lolly scramble; cameras are thrust in his face; offensive questions shouted at him in public; no hope of answer, merely insulting.  And all have had ‘education’.  Some have been to Uni.

The victim is clearly distressed; angry, the normal responses of a man defending himself against such loutish behaviour.  Any man will strike out, smash a camera; but no, he must not do such; they would love it; more pics, more hot news.  Man bites dog, indeed.  No, he must not fight back, so he holds his hand.  Better restraint than this mob is showing.

A bunch of louts so harassing someone in the street would be arrested, and properly so.

One looks forward to seeing some policeman so protecting a citizen from such aggravating assault.

Anything for a picture, and to hell with decency.

Screen stars, rock heads and others might enjoy this feeding frenzy.

Try getting a picture, yes, of yourself from any newspaper.  They would charge you for it!

If they ever want a pic of this writer, they must pay for it.  Why not?

The rest of us pay for what we want, even for what we need.

These fellows should be required to ask permission, and pay for the picture.

And another thing.  On scores of occasions they, particularly the TV channels, pre-empt the law with their pictures creating a climate of public opinion before some unfortunate is even accused.

It is well beyond the time when their activities should be controlled, and this only because they themselves do not act in a reasonable way.  Self regulation of such always a dismal failure.
 

Finnegan has great faith in his fond belief of awakening from Earth sleep. “In a while Mr Finnegan; not yet Mr Finnegan; we’ll call you in good time Mr Finnegan.”

Much is made of the theme in the Wake. King Solomon and others have also discussed the theme throughout history; the Hindu religion of Brahma; the Creator knows that it is the way of life. Few escape the wheel.

But James is, as so often, neither precise nor consistent, though the latter depends on the former, in this so ancient question.

Finnegan seems to believe that he will get another run as Mr Finnegan. 

The Hindu belief that he has no choice in the matter, that he has already had at least a million trials; and unless he escapes the Wheel and who does?; there is another million lives ahead of him and that he may return as Miss Finnegan not in Ireland, but in darkest Africa, and may never meet Moira or was it Macushla or Nora Barnacle again.

But to return as Mr Finnegan!! With a touch of Otherworld to bless his soul? No sir, that is not on the cards.

But the hope springs ever fresh in the human mind.
 

I was deeply impressed as a young man with a story, alas, author not remembered.

A man requests interview with the manager of a great London bank. He is old, knows he must go soon, and wishes to make an unusual request. 

He will leave a fortune in an unnamed account to be made available, without question, to that person who walks in with the request and the password, let us say 'apple pie'. 

He expects some hesitation from the manager, but the latter, after assuring himself that all is well, agrees and the formalities are completed.

Over a coffee together, the manager says, “You’ll be interested to know that we have several accounts such as that spanning the entire life of the bank, some three hundred years now. Most of these deposits now lodged in the consolidated account of the treasury.”

The man yelps, “Ah, mine, all mine, I know it.” 

The manager smiles, “Perhaps, indeed, but pray sir, what are the passwords?”

That’s the hard part; we have no memories, or no specific memories of those past lives ever. 

Wordsworth thought, 'Not in entire forgetfulness, and not in utter nakedness but trailing clouds of glory do we come from God who is our home’.

Death all too often described as the last adventure.

Certainly it is the end, but adventure? The beginning of another?  An ancient hope? To many, it is nothing other than oblivion.

Books now in plenty on the interesting phenomena of the ‘after death experiences’; Programmes on TV on 'survival after death'. None of it wholly convincing, but all with a strong fascination for the living.  What is interesting about such stories, is the strong awakeness of consiousness; the sense of great beauty and awareness of the infinite nature of life.  But clearly all such experience are personal, all subjective.

There is an interesting difference between brain dead and body dead, which leaves room for an imagined dreamlike experience in this near death experience. Ion Idriess makes this difference the theme of one of his books.

Many people in grave danger of life, have a very definite moment in which time slows down almost to a stop; all clearly seen in great detail in such moments. Clearly those who die in such incidents can tell us nothing; so even sudden unexpected death may hold a revelation. Such is the wisdom of  Life, we must face the experience alone. Those with the 'after death' experience clearly have not died.  Their ‘visions’ subjective.

The interesting feature is ever a very different level of consciousness from that of our daily life.

That second experience spoken of by people who appear to have contact with the dead, wether speaking through him or her with messages of hope and comfort seem rather to have the ability to communicate more with the living mind than the dead; an acute and very  individual mind reading.

They are most certainly real for the people involved and to their immediate family and associates; those who also must make new adjustments to the changed life experience.  But those few moments of clarity; they surely are but a few moments of our own pristine self.  Surely not of any other world.  For a few blissful moments free of the maya.

Many children appear to have a recollection of past life but such are always vague.  There are also several serious and deeply interesting studies in the subject.  In the meantime for most of us it is the same, the same, and the same again, until we achieve Nirvana and so escape the wheel.
 

There is one dominating aspect of Ulysses.  It endears the book and the writer, to me as reader.

There are moments, long moments whole pages of the one infuriating moment, when one wishes for the beautiful simple honesty of scripture or poetry; but no; it is thus, ‘as I see the world, in all its sordid animalism’.  If you choose to read, you also must be brought to that same level.

'As I walked, a young man through Dublin; suffered the fall, from the good life, into deep poverty, so I would have you feel the horror of that fall.'

'As I went with my peers into the hell of Mabbot Street, saw the degradation of woman; so you must feel that degradation; As I heard in the news room of the local newspaper, the aimless cynical cross talk of the workers, so you too, may learn of what hopeless imaging is the world news prepared for you.'

‘It is thus through my book.  You may not like it, but it is, as things are, for most in this world.’

‘That which is writ is the Odyssey of the common man.’

‘You don’t like my starving sisters?’

‘Well do something decent about it.’

‘Sixty thousand missing husbands in your Australia.  What about it, you men?’

‘Someone else caring for the wife and children!?’

Trouble is, the casual reader, the man in the street, rarely sees this aspect; 

Charles Dickens wrote of these things in a manner which awakened even the stuffy upper class of England, and so one Bill followed another Bill thru the English Parliament and all for the better.

With Joyce, the perception is more subtle – but seems to have missed the mark.

The American scholars have adopted him.  A thousand books about Joyce or his work, but all afflicted with the aura of scholarship; his work lost to the man in the street.

Which is a great loss.
 

Much talk these days of the death of literature. Mark Twain had a few words appropriate to such. “Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.”

It was Thoreau thought; “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.”  Mailer who added; “Only two ways to escape; death or booze.”  Both imply suicide in either the fast or slow lane. Joyce also had a word or two. “My hell and Ireland’s is in this life.”

It is an observable fact that very few of us choose such ways. We are all well aware that the live dog is a far better man than a dead lion; if it is permitted to mix a couple of allegorys, and even more so than a dead drunk, or half dead from an overdose of some dirty substance. 

The stigmata of the self-inflicted wound still a deterrent for most of us, but a deterrent with little effect to many in the light of our knowledge of the tobacco risk, and the use of tobacco by young women; where is the instinct for the health of their unborn children?

As the old Greeks knew, 'even the Gods cannot contend against stupidity'.
 

It is ever the doomsters talking; possibly the same people who told us so passionately of the end of the world as we turned the millennium. Remember the millennium bug? They also scared the wits out of us with global warming, the ozone layer, eating eggs, fat, sugar, white bread, it could well be cauliflowers next. Currently it’s books and literature, art too, one supposes. Now also it’s the computer and its technology is about to destroy literature.

Even as few of us resort to bleak ultimates in our journey, so too will the Excellencies which we cherish survive with us. It will be a long, long day before the computer produces a Shakespeare, Dumas, Tolkien, Christie or a Colin Dexter or any of a comparable ten thousand of such spirits.
 

Odysseus in Hades, saw there a grand array of women, all splendid women. Tyro, she who bore twin sons for Enipus; Antiope who had twin sons by Zeus himself, Imphion and Zethus, who built Thebes; then Alcema mother of Hercules by Zeus, and Megara wife of Hercules; then Epicaste wife of fated Orestes; and Chloris mother of Nestor; then majestic Pero, a marvel of her time; then Leda mother of Castor and Polydeceus; then Iphimedeia; and Ariadne daughter of Minos who helped Theseus escape from the labyrinth; one slim thread relating this to Ulysses, Dedalus and J.J.

Regretfully, no such splendid women in his book despite the many such in his life. 
 

America – or is it only the President seems hell bent toward self destruction.

The good work of the Founding Fathers, Coke Cola, McDonalds, G.M. and Westinghouse; all threatened in the eyes of the world by the brutality revealed in Guantinamo and now Abu Ghaib.

We thought that they had learned the lesson at Mai Lai in Vietnam.

What then is happening in American gaols in the homeland?

What of those universal truths embodied in the American constitution?

What of the magnificent achievements of so many great Americans?

What, we must ask, of the future?

The good earth with too many lands, sown with land mines; these reap a deadly harvest of the innocent; President Bush speaks still of  'weapons of mass destruction'; America with the worlds greatest most deadly arsenal of such weapons, and more to come.

A President who condones the use of torture and human degradations such as used by his troops; could well be the man to use the atom bomb again.

Does the good sound heart of America have the power and the will to govern such a President?

Or America have a President strong enough to keep the war lords of the Pentagon under control?

It could perhaps help the President in his task, for him to remind his generals, that McArthur hanged, shot or imprisoned generals and other ranks for criminal abuse of prisoners of war and civilians.

This salutary punishment awarded in terms of international law – and only a few years ago.

The officers, with the soldiers who have committed these atrocities at Guantinamo and other prisons must be handed over to the International Court for trial – a full exposure of those responsible, and punishment.

You have some little time left President Bush.  What about it?

For the sake of the good name of America; her standing in the eyes of the world.
 

As it is so often, the Irish do it with grace, with ready wit, a trust and an understanding.

They have a Wake at death.

Think on this, spoken plain, clear to those with eyes to see, ears to hear, a heart to understand, is the great pivotal end of life; the clear simple fact of death.

Here today, gone tomorrow.

We shall awake from Earth sleep?

Simple, superb, brilliant, clear, a light in our darkness, purpose in our careless ways, the understanding which enables us, yea, enables us in the endurance of the long Way. It is this, hidden in us, but closely known to that inner counsellor who has endured with us long centuries of battle; borne in our women the long centuries of birth; our slow ascension along the way.

All endured with joy in birth; mirth in the enduring; and God with us to see the beauty, the simple things, the sweet, the good; and dear Lord, to know that we may be awake in death. We shall wake from Earth sleep?

We shall live again and praise God, love again, another death again and awake again. However we go, in battlefield or in bed, we shall indeed awake again; another day, another form, another age, another name, another life, another love. 

The great question.  If we do live again, why not with some recollection of that past life?  Perhaps it is for our own dear sake, that we have no such memory?  Or was Finnegan wrong in his belief?
 

Joyce mentions an item of transatlantic interest; how it related to the Odyssey is a deep mystery.

The segment has a reference to a tragic accident in New York.

This is the General Slocum tragedy, in which a new naval gun was to be demonstrated before a large group of Very Important People. Bigwigs of the navy, army, MP’s, socialites and Press. The gun exploded, killing or mutilating nearly 200 people.

The incident is memorable in that two or three of the women present had a strong premonition of disaster and left the gun deck of the ship before the fatal shot was fired.
 

Australian literati should be interested surely, in this matter of  'saying too much, saying it too often, and saying it badly'.  Much of the greatest difficulty in reading Joyce is that same fault; and repeated too often.

One recalls George Robertson, the early superman of the Australian literary world; he had a long wearisome letter from a clergyman, enclosing a manuscript; but the fellow practically rewote the book in describing its contents.

Robertson, in accepting the manuscript, was cruelly kind.  His reply read;
 

Dear Sir,

  Yes,

Yours faithfully,
George Robertson

An edition of Ulysses without the obvious padding would be interesting and infinitely more readable.  It is very nature of the human animal, that some bright spirit will do this.