by Marites Bundoc
Although Joyce lived mostly in Paris during The Great War, his mind was constantly in his native land, Ireland. “Joyce wrote nothing but about Dublin”[1]. His stories were commentaries about Irish society and its religious traditions. He told London publisher Grant Richards that by creating the stories in Dubliners, he was writing a chapter of Ireland’s moral history and that he had taken the first step towards his country’s spiritual liberation [2]. His critics labeled his novel Ulysses as pornographic, but they did not understand him. Today, The James Joyce Centre in Dublin, which holds lectures and performances in his honor, is a testimony to the greatness of his literary legacy to Ireland. James Joyce was the herald that sought the moral regeneration of Ireland through his writings that served as the looking glass for his countrymen.
Ulysses is a story of ironic juxtapositions. Leopold Bloom, the protagonist, is the parallel of Homer’s Odysseus but while Odysseus’ wife Penelope is faithful, Molly, Bloom’s wife, is having an affair with the tenor Blazes Boylan. While Odysseus wanders on the Mediterranean, Bloom is on his advertising trips in Dublin. In the scene where Gerty sees him for the first time on the beach, “Joyce comments on the nature of attraction, beauty, and desire, and the ways in which sentimental fiction, commodity culture, and Bloom’s own profession of advertising have affected the way we understand and seek to satisfy our deepest desires” [3].
In a dramatic irony of mock-epic proportion, Bloom is doing something indirectly sexually offensive to Gerty, the female protagonist, on the beach, while Canon O’Hanlon is exposing the Eucharist in the church. As the fireworks explode, Bloom reaches the highest point of his act while Canon O’Hanlon places the Eucharist back into the tabernacle, while singing, Laudate Dominum omnes gentes. Give praise to the Lord, O ye nations [4]. Meanwhile, Gerty’s feelings for the stranger, is purely romantic love, more of a fantasy. If she saw that magic lure in his eyes, there would be no holding back for her. Love laughs at locksmiths[5] is an allusion to Shakespeare’s poem “Venus and Adonis.” Venus is the Roman counterpart of the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite who, for all her divine beauty, and among the millions of mortals at her behest, chooses a lame blacksmith for a husband. Love will find a way.
Gerty was dying to know whether he had a wife. What if the stranger was already married? But even if – what then? Would it make a great difference? Would she consider herself to be a married man’s mistress? Her fine breeding would not let her fall to the status of prostitutes who walk with soldiers and ruffians on the streets of Dublin[6]. No, she was not willing to be compared to those harlots, like the fallen woman about to be stoned in the Bible. The sense of Victorian propriety never left her. Yet, at another moment, she was resolved to make that great sacrifice for the stranger, and she would be dearest to him, gilding his days with happiness[7] –a la Aphrodite and Hephaestus. Love was a confusing thing for the young. Leopold Bloom’s sensation, on the other hand, was purely physical and lustful, signifying realism.
Purity and impurity, faithfulness and infidelity, love and lust, and religion and spirituality are contrasting themes in “Ulysses.” Set against an ambience of Catholicism where “the touching chimes of those evening bells” remind the Irish to pray the angelus, a devotion commemorating Christ’s incarnation. “At the same time a bat flew forth from the ivied belfry through the dusk”[8]. The bat is a symbol of death and a new beginning for Ireland, a country that has undergone the ravages of war and the devastation of the Great Hunger. “And she could see far away the lights of the lighthouses”[9], symbolic of hope, lighting the traveler’s path. Gerty represents the Christian Catholic who believes that man is a sojourner on this earth, that their real home is still in the distance – heaven.
The Victorian girl is coming of age on the beach, like Nausicaa who finds Odysseus on the beach of Phaeacia and develops a huge crush on a stranger old enough to be her father. Gerty’s fantasy over that stranger on the beach is full of romantic naivety. “His eyes are sad; did he lose his wife, like the man from the land of song”, referring to Odysseus, whose tale was told by the bard Homer[10]? Unknown to her, Bloom is, indeed, losing his wife who at this time – signified by his checking the time on his watch – must be consummating an affair with the tenor Blazes Boylan[11]. Was that when he, she? O, he did. Into her. She did. Done. Ah[12]. Joyce was experimenting on a short, sketchy prose which he called an epiphany[13]. That is why he tarries on the beach – Good idea if you’re stuck. Gain time[14]. But because of his shortcomings as a husband, he is unwilling to stop the affair[15].
Religion plays a pivotal role in the story of Ulysses, which was banned in its early days – for pornography. Mr. Bloom with careful hand recomposed his wet shirt. O Lord, that little limping devil. Begins to feel cold and clammy. After effect not pleasant. They don’t care. Go home and say night prayers with the kiddies. The strength it gives a man. Good job I let off there behind coming out of Dignam’s. Makes you want to sing after. Laccaus esant tatatara. The cause is sacred”[16]. What an irony! Gerty in Ulysses wishes to hear the music like that – the sound of the distant seas and to smell the perfume of those incense they burned in the church[17][18]. The Catholic mass and other liturgical services usually start with a procession of the celebrant and some acolytes one of whom swings an incense to symbolize purification and sanctification, which means that the prayers of the faithful rise to heaven where they worship God with the angels and saints. Canon O’Hanlan reading Panem de coelo praestitisti eist –You have given them bread from heaven – (p. 2266) alludes to the Eucharist, which Catholics take during communion.
And still the voices sang in supplication to the virgin most powerful, virgin most merciful (p. 2262). The fragrant name of her who was conceived without stain of original sin (p. 2262) refers to the Catholic belief in the immaculate conception of Mary. Spiritual vessel, pray for us (p. 2262) points to Mary who bore the Son of God in her womb. Catholics believe in the intercessory power of Mary because Jesus’ first miracle happened through her intercession for the newlyweds in Cana. She is also the “mystical rose” (p. 2262) because her own conception and her conception of Jesus, the Messiah, are wrapped in mystery. Was Joyce saying that there were realities in the universe that were foreign to man but not impossible with God? Catholic critics of Joyce argued that Ulysses was blasphemous and obscene because of the part where Bloom was doing the thing [my paraphrase] – with his hand in his pocket. Eliot, Jung, Burgess, and others on his camp, however, maintained that it was, in fact, the most Catholic of novels[19].
Gerty knew what he was doing as she saw the white-hot passion in that face, passion silent as the grave, and it had made her his[20]. It’s fireworks, Cissy – he was having his climactic moment[21]. He was at it again, that brute. A fair, unsullied soul had called to him, and wretch that he was, how had he answered? An utter cad he had been! But there was an infinite store of mercy in those eyes for him to a word of pardon even though he had erred and sinned and wandered[22]. Here, God is pictured as a merciful one who pardons every erring soul. She was not going to tell – just as the bats flew away in silence. It was their secret[23].
There is this tension between Gerty’s conventional beliefs in purity and the untrammeled, free ways of love as she rethinks how she would follow her heart when it comes to love. She is thinking of Bloom’s wife waiting for him and yet desiring him at the same time. Nothing else mattered[24]. There is irony in the juxtaposition of this scene where Gerty is entertaining an affair with a married man and her thinking that it was all right to do those things if you don’t do that other thing before marriage – fornication[25]. Besides, there is absolution, the priest’s pardoning of one’s sin in confession – a criticism of the abuse of the sacrament of penance. It was like a license to sin; after all, one could just go to confession afterwards. To Joyce, this was hypocrisy. No wonder Joyce wanted to liberate his people from their spiritual imprisonment.
Just as Homer’s Odyssey is a metaphor for man’s journey from the struggles of this world – being lost in the seas of confusion and distractions – to “coming home” to himself, so is James Joyce’s Ulysses a picture of man’s search for love and stability in one’s relationships with his loved ones, with himself, and with God. There could be no true peace for man without an inner reconciliation with himself – with all his brokenness and frailties – for these are what make him human. And there is no lasting peace for him until he finds it in God.
Footnotes:
[1] Power qtd in Aquilina, 2015
[2] Damrosch and Dettmar, p. 2216
[3] Joyce, James, Ibid. p. 2256.
[4] Ibid., p. 2268
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid. p. 2267
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid., p. 2268
[11] Ibid., 2256
[12] Ibid., p. 2271
[13] Damrosch and Dettmar, p. 2216
[14] Joyce, p. 2271.
[15] Ibid., p. 2256
[16] Ibid., p. 2271
[17] Ibid., p. 2264
[18] Ibid., pp. 2268-9
[19] Power qtd. in Aquilina
[20] Ibid., p. 2268
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid., p. 2269
[23] Ibid.
[24] Ibid., p. 2268
[25] Ibid., p. 2269
References:
Aquilina, Mike. “James Joyce: A Portrait of the Artist as a Lapsed Catholic.” Arts & Culture. 9 June 2020, https://www.fathersofthechurch.com, Accessed 17 April 2023.
Damrosch, David and Kevin Dettmar, editors, The Longman Anthology of British Literature: The Twentieth Century and Beyond. 4th ed., vol. 2C, Longman, 2010.
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