Comments on: ULYSSES readalong Ch 14: Oxen of the Sun

By: V

Mon, 11 May 2015 06:31:31 +0000

Oy. Just finished. I’ll take a Bass, please.

By: Janet

Janet — Tue, 05 May 2015 03:06:04 +0000

I’m just getting ready to tackle this section (I am mortified at my lagging behind on this. I’m usually compulsively punctual in everything. Oh well.). I’m glad for the comments above so I can figure out what the heck I’m reading here! Thanks to those that did the heavy lifting for me. I will get caught up if it kills me. And it might.

By: crystal

crystal — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 13:38:28 +0000

There are so many wonderful rabbit holes to fall into on this one! It’s climbing back out that’s the problem.

By: Heidi

Heidi — Wed, 29 Apr 2015 01:39:18 +0000

Really challenging episode to read. Understand Joyce’s achievement in emulating all these various historic prose forms but holy cow what a slog!

Did add a metric shedload of new unfamiliar words to my Ulysses glossary, so there’s that. Also liked the last few pages of the episode when language turned to colorful dialect and slang. And our Poldy, post *ahem* fireworks *ahem* shows himself to be the only one in the bunch of drunken rowdy men who shows empathy and care about the womenfolk at the HELLO, MATERNITY HOSPITAL NOT A BLUGGY PUB!

A few great passages of writing (always my favorite stuff):

“…a vat of silver that was moved by craft to open in the which lay strange fishes withouten heads…” (sardine tin!!!) [ML 1946, p.381]

“What of those Godpossibled souls that we nightly impossibilise” (um, I think you all get what this is about) [p.383]

“They moan, passing upon the clouds, horned and Capricorned, the trumpeted with the tusked, the lionmaned and the giantantlered, snouter and crawler, rodent, ruminant and pachyderm, all their moving moaning multitude, murderers of the sun.” [p.407]

“Come on, you winefizzling, ginsizzling, booseguzzling existences! Come on, you doggone, bullnecked, beetlebrowed, hogjowled, peanutbrained, weaseleyed fourflushers, false alarms and excess baggage! Come on, you triple extract of infamy!” [p.420-421]

And rather too many to count euphemisms for condoms.

By: girldetective

girldetective — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 21:01:51 +0000

Crystal, it is a direct reference to the Yeats poem. From Gifford’s Annotated Ulysses: “‘To the Rose Upon the Rood of Time’ is the dedicatory poem of Yeats’s volume The Rose (1893)…The poem evokes the rose as muse and contemplates the rose as the intersection between temporal and eternal beauty, as what makes it possible to see “In all poor foolish things that lie a day/Eternal beauty wandering on her way” (lines 11-12)

A quick search makes the mention of Zarathustra at line 14.362 gives the nod to Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra and was mentioned in book 1 to line 1.708 alluding that Buck Mulligan is Adam, and thus the uber mensch, or superman.

By: crystal

crystal — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 19:46:04 +0000

Also I wondered if “the rose upon the rood of time”(p. 391), was a nod to the Yeats poem of the same name?

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/172052

By: crystal

crystal — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 19:26:15 +0000

Have not quite finished this week’s episode yet. But what stuck out for me was the mention of Zarathustra and also the bull as fertility god.

A note I made:

We are borne of this fragile world miraculously. Â Take heed of this gift…

Also best phrase so far:
“Never shit on shamrocks”(p. 399)